^' •/>„ -s*^ ^^. .-^^ S M , , , '^/.. '".X* ^O t/- s^ ^^ ^^ <• .<-6 -^^ Oo^ ^■^'V^i^"^"^' oV '^ V. -^ "oo^ ^v. „^' •^^^^ v^^ -% .V^^ -J^. t^ :S^ \. v^ vOo, I?' V ■^V. .vN^'^ -^• ./ "*., 'd 0^ -~ .^^ '^'t C- X Mir-' <. o:^ ct- ^. « .-, > ^ .^^"^ ,^\. <^^'\ f%- <^% J^% .0^ aV •/ ' • c, •>> / * ^ ..^^ ^/>. ■>*. <^ l\ POPULAR EDITION WITH NEW PREFACE THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY By WALTER LIPPMANN ** Author of " Drift and Mastery," "A Preface to Politics," etc. MR. LIPPMANN'S new preface contains his expla- nation of President Wilson's diplomacy in the great war. It gives the large reasons which seem to lie behind American foreign policy at the present time, and lays down the premises which are in the minds of those who realize what the President meant when he said that this was the last great war in which the United States could be neutral. It is an informed interpretation of the Wilson doctrine which is now being unfolded. This book makes a proposal which might do away with the prime cause of international friction, by pre- venting the emotion of patriotism and questions of national prestige from becoming involved in the pro- tection of citizens and commercial interests in the back- ward places of the earth. It is with exactly those questions of constructive world policy which all of us are now anxiously asking ourselves that the author grapples. "By far his most logical, most coherent, best rounded book." — Boston Transcritt IF E STAKES OF DIPLOMACY BY THE SAME AUTHOR THE POEMS OF PAUL MARIETT Edited with an introduction A PREFACE TO POLITICS DRIFT AND MASTERY HE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY BY WALTER LIPPMANN " It is the great amount of unexploited raw material in territories politically backward, and now imper- fectly possessed by the nominal owners, which at the present moment constitutes the temptation and the impulse to war of European States." — Rear-Admi- RAL A. T. Maham: Force 171 International Relations. SECOND EDITION NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY -n^^^ ^ ^ ^ V \Vl COPTHIQHT, 1915, 1917, BY HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY Published Novend)er, 1915 fo y^" 'Cl,Ai57325 THE QUINN A BOOEN CO. PRESS 8AHW*r, N. i. FEB 23 1917 '1 TO THE STAFF OF The New Republic CONTENTS CHAFTKB PAGE ■v Preface. At the Turning Point of Amer- ican FoREiGK Policy ix Introductiok 3 PART I. I. A Discovery for Democrats .... 15 II, The Uses of a Kino 26 III. V Foreigners and Frontiers 38 IV. /The Line of Least Resistance .... 47 V. Patriotism in the Rough 58 VI. Patriotism, Business, and Diplomacy . . 71 PART II. VII. Arenas of Friction 87 VIII. A Little Realpolitik Ill IX. A Proposal "" . 127 X. Algeciras: a Landmark 136 XK The Core of Imperialism 150 PART III. XII. The Reaction at Home 163 XIII. The Future of Patriotism 172 XIV^ A Broader Base for Diplomacy .... 189 XV. Public Opinion in Foreign Affairs . . . 196 PART IV. Epilogue XVI. The Strategy of Peace 207 Index 231 vii PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION AT THE TURNING POINT OF AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY In President Wilson's circular note of Decem- ber 18, 1916, he used one sentence which brought forth a storm of anger from the people of the Allied nations. The unhappy passage said that: " He takes the liberty of calling attention to the fact that the objects which the statesmen of the bellig- erents on both sides have in mind in this war are virtually the same, as stated in general terms to their own people and to the world. " On second thought it was obvious enough that what the President meant to write was something like this : When the statesmen on both sides state in general terms to their own people and to the world what they have in mind they use virtually the same words. The biting truth of the passage is evident enough. It says not that the German Emperor and the King of the Belgians have the same objects in mind, but that every statesman, angel or devil if you like, is quoting the same scripture. Iz X THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY It is a queer and very important fact, the per- sistence with which hypocrisy continues to be the homage vice pays to virtue. Governments will send armies forth to turn nations into ash heaps and shambles, but they always proclaim they are doing it to enhance civilization, safeguard liberty, and fulfill the wishes of the all-highest. German officials did commit two bits of frankness before the invasion of Belgium, the one containing the phrase about a scrap of paper, the other stating that the violation of an inoffensive neutral was a wrong. But the candor proved too costly, not only with the outer world but with the German people, and ever since there has been a persistent propaganda to blur and confuse the matter. In spite of the supposed efficiency of the German state education, in spite of the supposed prussian- ization of the people, their stomachs were not strong enough for the truth about the minds of their rulers. The whole ghastly business had to be overlaid with buncombe even for the greatest military people in the world. They had to be told, in fact they insisted upon being told, they were knights without fear and above reproach. This book is primarily an analysis of that pop- PREFACE xi ular gullibility which makes democracy the victim of its diplomacy. It attempts to show how patri- otism and idealism are subtly entangled in impe- rialist politics, how they are unconsciously exploited for purposes which rarely appear on the surface of public opinion. It goes on to say that these purposes are not as so many pacifists im- agine a mere conspiracy against democracy. The struggle for the possession of backward terri- tories, the giddy oscillations of the balance of power, the conflict of armaments are due at bot- tom to two great facts : first, the profound and tempting disorganization of practically all the territory of Asia, Africa, the Near East and Latin- America ; and second, the weakness, the in- efficiency and the sloth of liberalism which has ignored that problem and left it as a field of in- trigue. Until liberalism is triumphant at home, powerful and intelligent abroad to create a work- able organization for the weak states, it will be used and abused by governments and cliques at infinite cost. It will continue to be the lamb's skin which the wolf wears. This book contains some harsh criticism of the League to Enforce Peace. It was written before xii THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY the idea had gained currency, before any govern- ment had declared in favor of it. But the success of the propaganda has been so great, President Wilson has committed the country so deeply to the idea, that no one who is seeking for material out of which to build a better international struc- ture can now dismiss the fact of its success be- cause the idea is weak and inadequate. To do that is to be guilty of pride of opinion and to waste an opportunity. Although the idea of such a league has existed for centuries, its popularity just now is due to the feeling that *' this thing must never happen again." " This thing " is the indecent haste with which Germany precipitated Europe into war. The object of the league is to have all nations banded together against another such assault. The feeling behind it is that longing for order and security for which the bulk of the people in Britain and France are fighting. The plan is liked by the democracies, distrusted, half-heartedly accepted or altogether rejected by the insiders. Mr. Roosevelt, for example, is an insider in interna- tional affairs, trained to think of them much as Bismarck, Disraeli and Delcasse have thought of PREFACE xiii them. In the early months of the war Mr. Roose- velt was caught in the sweeping tide of humani- tarianism and was the first American of promi- nence to advocate a league to enforce peace. He called it a posse comitatus of nations. But as time went on, Mr. Roosevelt recovered his balance and began to run true to form. He has since ex- pressed the insider's dislike for the scheme. Much of this distrust would disappear, I imagine, if the plan were looked at in its relation to the practical political situation at the close of this war and the period that will follow. It is not one of those paper schemes which will automat- ically bring peace to the world. On paper it is a poor scheme from a pacifist point of view because it ignores the roots of international disorder. The real value of the idea is generally concealed, but can be stated bluntly and roughly as follows: There are now and will probably be for some time to come at least two and perhaps three serious trouble-makers in the world, Germany, Japan, and Russia. Britain, France, and the United States are not saints but they have gone so far towards liberalism, and they are so well sated in territory, that they desire a peaceful world. xiv THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY Around them cluster the American Republics, the small neutrals of Europe, and China, the supreme danger spot of the world's future. Britain, France, America must draw together because their interests are at bottom the same. But in drawing together they are confronted with the possibility of a coalition between Germany, Austria, Russia, and Japan. That is the night- mare which today haunts the secret thought of the western world, for it opens up an indefinite vista of armament and dread and agony. That the danger is not imaginary is shown by many signs : by the Russo-Japanese treaty, the very open hostility in Japan to Britain and the hearty admiration for Germany, the existence in Russia of a powerful pro-German party, and in Germany of a powerful pro-Russian party. The keystone of the coalition is Germany, and the fundamental problem of the coming peace is whether Germany will become an eastern or a western power. If she can be attached to the west, the world is fairly safe for a long time to come. For many years Russia could not think of aggression which the Occident opposed, and Japan would be isolated. But with Germany and Japan PREFACE XV in alliance, with all Russia's resources to organize, the liberal powers would be almost helpless. This struggle for Germany exists within Ger- many. It is reflected roughly in the conflict be- tween the Foreign office and the conservatives, be- tween semi-liberal Germany and those who follow von Tirpitz and Falkenhayn. These two groups are sharply distinguished in Germany, but from the western point of view not sharply enough. It is clear that Bethmann-HoUweg, for example, represents a Germany which is far better than that of his opponents. It is not clear that he is strong enough, or at least liberal enough, to force Germany into the western group to which America inevitably belongs. The thing for which France and Britain are fighting is called the destruction of Prussian mili- tarism. What they mean is that they are fighting to discredit and destroy the prestige of the con- servative military party. They believe quite rightly that if they can do this a democratic Germany will shake itself free, and with that Ger- many they can live in some harmony. This is the reason Americans could not be neutral in thought or impartial in act during the war. The main xvi THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY object of the Allies is essentiial to the safety of the western world. And if we should be drawn into the war, as is not altogether improbable, that too would be our chief purpose. But all along another danger has existed. It was that aggressive groups in the Entente na- tions would talk about carrying the war or would actually try to carry the war to a point where the German people would find themselves helpless for the future. A vindictive policy instead of destroy- ing German militarism would almost surely con- firm it. There is nothing that strengthens despotism so much as fear. What liberal friends of the Allies have dreaded is that violent and self- ish forces would wish to prolong the war so hid- eously, would advocate so harsh a peace, that the people of the Central Empires would come to think of Prussian leadership as their one perma- nent means of protection. Roughly speaking what liberals must wish for is a fearful jar on the bat- tlefield which will lower the German army's pride, and then a generous policy towards the German nation to show it that life is possible without ex- treme militarism. So far as Germany is to be ** taught a lesson " this seems to be about all that PREFACE xvii warfare can teach her. For the more delicate task of reforming her government, her morals, and her manners, we must trust to the memories of this agony, the failure to accomplish anything by it, and the immense burden of debt which will gener- ate class struggles within Germany. The Allies can show that the military leadership is neither profitable nor invincible ; the rest they must leave to the evolution of democracy. Having taught what they could to Germany they will have to look within their own hearts and wash out the Pharisee's taint. In all this America inevitably plays an im- mense role, though silently and undramatically. Our neutrality has been so benevolent to the Allies that it is difficult to conceive what the course of the war would have been had we enforced our " rights " impartially on both sides. One thing is clear. An unflinching assertion of American com- mercial rights against allied sea power would have brought us into collision with Britain and France long before the submarine brought us to the edge of a collision with Germany. We hardly dare to imagine the full consequences, but the net effect would have been to make us the virtual xviii THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY ally of Germany. We chose instead, and chose wisely I think, to become what the Germans rightly describe as the tacit partner of the Entente. We have not been impartial, we have not meant to be, because we could not afford to aid the aggressor. Within the limits which the American people would approve, our government has thrown its weight against Germany. We have wished to see the liberal purposes of the Allies achieved. With the more aggressive purposes which emerge now and then the American people have had no sympathy. They have no desire, for example, to help Russia to Constanti- nople or Rumania to Transylvania. It is only in the main purposes of the Allies that we, or for that matter the democracies of England and France, have any vital interest. By a benevolent neutrality, perhaps even by entrance into the war, we would help them realize those ends. But we cannot give sympathy or aid to a policy which becomes illiberal and overshoots the mark. Our part is to act as a stabilizing influence upon the European system. We have consciously to exert our influence against aggression and undue power. Our resources give us a weight in world PREFACE xix politics which it is impossible to ignore. There is no such thing as " staying out." To do nothing is in the condition of Europe just as positive an act as to do something. The real choice is not between isolation and partnership, but between a partnership which will create security and one which will encourage trouble. How best to use the power which we possess is the problem of our diplomacy. To join the Allies by an unlimited pledge would not accomplish our objects. Inevitably it would encourage tory influences to use the strength we would add for aggressive purposes. To join the Central Empires is of course out of the question. The policy which we are looking for is one which associates us with the Allied democracies and still acts as a moderating influence on their imperial- ism. This means that in case we entered the war we did so on a basis of limited liability, and that after the war our power was a conscious factor against aggression. More concretely this means that we would be ready to fight in this war or in the future to guarantee a public law under which small nations were sheltered and all nations pro- tected against the refusal to submit quarrels to XX THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY legal adjustment and the opinion of the world. This is still merely a formula, but a very valu- able one at the moment. What it actually does is to offer France and Britain a defensive alliance, and to the German nation a reason for abandon- ing militarism as the chief method of diplomacy. It is a method of using our influence so that the people of Europe are not forced to put their whole faith in armies. It is a way of strengthen- ing the democracies. If it is taken seriously, and skillfully pressed, it may help to ensure that mod- erate settlement by which alone the better objects of the war can be realized. Looked at this way the League to Enforce Peace is something more than pacifist sentiment. It is a fairly accurate reflection of a new American foreign policy. It expresses in idealistic terms our relationship to the balance of power in Europe. The idea has been welcomed, let us say mildly, by the liberals of western Europe. It has been taken up with something like real enthusiasm in America. This is not an accident. It is due at bottom, I believe, to the fact that the plan of the league actually grows out of our present position in the world. PREFACE xxi This interpretation will shock many who have subscribed to the idea. Its realistic basis has been discussed very little, and on that basis it might never be accepted by the American people. It is not a popular way of stating the theory, and if the plan is to be popular it will not be preached widely as practical world politics. Nevertheless the unattractive truth can not be shirked, and it would be folly to pretend that a league of peace would by its mere existence keep the peace perma- nently. What it may do is to keep Europe in equilibrium for a generation, create a certain atmosphere of security and internationalism; it may allay fear and distrust. It is two things. It is an expression of Ameri- can interest in foreign politics, and it is a tem- porary shelter after the storm. Under that shelter the real work can perhaps begin. That work is to create international tissue and a safer national structure. The League might become the administrative center of that considerable web of political, legal, economic, social, and cultural organization which existed before the war and will continue to be essential after it. The League might become the means of adjusting tariffs, of xxii THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY maintaining the open door in backward territories. It might even become the trustee of disputed areas. There is no difficulty in inventing machin- ery if the forces that operate it are fairly stable. The League might, for example, administer the Dardanelles, might control railroads and ports that several nations claim and no nation should \ monopolize. It might appoint the United States or a European neutral trustee for some contested territory, or it might set up the international commissions which are suggested in this book. There is a wide choice of instruments once a morale exists. So far as one can judge now the only method of creating that morale is to intro- duce American influence in Europe through a League to Enforce Peace. It is only a beginning to be sure, but it appears to be the right one. A little stability will encourage a little more democracy, and democracy in its turn by reducing aggression will add to stability. The immediate tactics of peace are to establish enough order for a few decades at least in order to release some of the more generous forces of mankind. W. L. January first, 1917. INTRODUCTION An antarctic explorer once told me that while he was in the polar regions his dreams by night and his fancies by day were concerned almost exclu- sively with the dinner he would order at his club in London. His mind reached out lovingly for complicated meals, polished silverware, and fine linen, for large high-ceilinged rooms, thick soft carpets, and the shining shirt-fronts of perfectly ordered men. That for the time being had been his notion of paradise, and I dare say the vision was what all true visions are. They tell us what we should like to have but haven't, what we should have liked to do but didn't, what we intend to do but can't. In all the diplomatic dispatches which preceded the war, there is nothing more pathetic than Sir Edward Grey'^ despairing effort at the very last moment to picture a better European system. With great caution, while the armies were mobiliz- ing, he suggested a European concert, " some 3 4 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY more definite rapprochement between the Powers," a plan " hitherto too Utopian to form the sub- ject of definite proposals." What was it that had made a plan " hitherto utopian " suddenly com- mend itself to this diplomat? It was the immedi- ate prospect of a war which every well-informed person has been expecting for a decade. But so long as the war was not an immediate menace, the diplomatic imagination regarded its thin vision of a concert as utopian. It was only when the chan- celleries were refusing to agree at all that the idea of agreement seemed a practical vision. It was as if the emotion which had formerly animated the intricate game of diplomacy, and had starved the vision of another and better game, was suddenly deflected from all its other preoccupations into the more single idea of European harmony. But the fact is that the European concert was more utopian when Sir Edward Grey embraced it than "hitherto" when he had rejected it. In the last days of July it was indeed a half-baked scheme. Why was it a half-baked scheme? What do we mean by " half-baked "? We mean, it seems to me, that the idea has never grown in the warmth of our interest. It is an idea, rather cold and a INTRODUCTION 5 little stale, because it has lain neglected upon the top layers of the mind. A really mature idea is saturated with our experience ; it is an idea which we have lived with, our love and fear have wrought it. Around it have clustered great strains of asso- ciation; it has been weathered by time. But Sir Edward Grey's plan was the mere ghost of an idea, conjured up by despair. The war has produced many such visions, which when analyzed turn out to be, like the antarctic explorer's dinner, a pathetic feeling that what we haven't got is what we most need. Of course, there was this much obvious truth in it : Europe at war most needed peace. But the feeling that the oppo- site was desirable went further than that. It dominated the thoughts of liberals and gave life to a number of plans for permanent peace. I was in Europe when the war broke out, and I can recall vividly that two of the outstanding im- pressions of the last days of negotiation were the secrecy of the diplomats and the swiftness of events. It all seemed like a terrific plunge, let loose by a few men who consulted nobody. On top of that came the sense that Germany was the ag- gressor against small nations like Belgium and 6 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY against the French Republic. In the heart of Europe lay democratic Switzerland at peace. Be- yond the ocean men saw America outside the broil. Was it any wonder that liberals jumped to the conclusion that the enemy of peace was secret diplomacy, the refusal to arbitrate, and that the remedy for war was the preservation of small na- tions, the downfall of dynasties, and the spread of democracies.'^ Those were the opposites of the forces which seemed to have precipitated Europe into war, and liberal emotion flowed to them. Eu- rope was fighting; fighting is monstrous. Europe was armed ; let us work for disarmament. Europe was undemocratic ; let us insist on democracy. Small nations were trampled; they must be pre- served. One nation refused to arbitrate; arbitra- tion should be made compulsory. The peace pro- grammes most current in England and America to-day were the inevitable reaction to what the lovers of peace knew and felt in the early days of August. They were born of that pain which is at once their honor and their bias. As the war has dragged on, other ideas have made themselves felt. There has been a vague but grudging recognition that trade and finance are INTRODUCTION ' 7 involved in diplomacy, and there has appeared a mass of literature interested not so much in the machinery of peace as in dealing with the provoca- tions to war. But the chief effect of strain has been the eruption of a great uncertainty within the minds of men, followed by a rushing to cover. I do not refer alone to the agitation for " prepared- ness." I refer to the renascence of very old loyal- ties — a kind of world-wide retreat to the father- land. For it is not the German-Americans alone whose loyalty has become hyphenated. Every- where men are reviving their oldest associations — turning back to their origins — searching for a pride in what they came from which obscures the hopes of their goal. For origins are a haven in distress. They are our mother's arms, and they are more friendly in time of danger than the open country of a future. " There," we say, " is our identity. Let us cling to that lest we be sub- merged. Adventure must wait for more prosperous times." Like sheep in a shower we huddle about the leader. Whatever seems firm and established we turn to instinctively. A procession of reaction- aries has returned from exile ; men whom we hoped 8 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY never again to see in public life are with us once more, feeling more certain of themselves than they have felt for fifteen years. The old shibboleths are uttered without a blush, for all old things are congenial to us now. They promise rest in a world at war. And though the assurance they offer is disheartening, it is assurance, and panic is in the air. A subtle analyst might follow the effects of this apprehensiveness into the intimacies of our souls. He might show, I imagine, that we are less flexible in our thinking, at once more dogmatic and more capricious. It is no longer surprising to find pacifists non-resistant in one breath and eager to annihilate Germany in the other. There has been such a loss of liberal ease that all of us take our ideas with an animal loyalty. For the time being we have identified our opinions with our safety; whoever attacks them attacks us. There is more intolerance abroad than we have been used to, and the humane capacity for playing with ideas and speculating freely has almost disappeared. We take thought seriously, perhaps the worst way there is of taking thought. For the life which ideas are intended to control is tumbled and varied INTRODUCTION 9 and flowing, alive with curiosity, and exhaustingly subtle. Even in our surest moments, thought has always plodded along behind clumsily enough ; but now with the grimness of war to weigh us down and panic to make us uncertain, we are more heavy-footed than ever. We are hardly in the temper to see facts lucidly or to be inventive about our problem. These difficulties are made more acute by the fact that the things we have to think about are so unreal to us. We are feeding on maps, talking of populations as if they were abstract lumps, and tuning our minds to a scale unheard of in history. To how many of us does the word Slovak convey the picture of fathers and mothers and children, of human beings with habits and personalities as intimate as our own? Even to highly cultivated people the word Slovak probably calls up the as- sociation of " light pink patches with diagonal shading " somewhere in bewildering Austria- Hungary. How many people have ever heard of the Szekels of Transylvania? Yet there are over 800,000 of them, all entitled to a place in the sun and all capable of making trouble if it is denied to them. When you consider what a mystery the 10 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY East Side of New York is to the West Side, the business of arranging the world to the satisfaction of the people in it may be seen in something like its true proportions. It is no wonder that we have taken refuge in abstractions like Nationality, Race, Culture. They are easier to think about than men. They introduce that simplicity into the mind which it longs for so ardently. Nor is it any wonder that we have embraced thin solutions of intricate ques- tions, that Mr. Bryan banks on arbitration treaties, that a section of American socialists asks for a referendum on declarations of war, that others have decided they will never fight, or that many women are refusing to buy lead soldiers for their children. We hesitate in bewilderment between those who advise us to be too weak to fight and those who wish us to be too strong to fight. The man who claimed that he was not bewildered would write himself down a fool. We are chal- lenged, every one of us, to think our way out of the terrors amidst which we live. That challenge is an excuse for adding to the endless books in- spired by the war. I have been told that this is INTRODUCTION 11 a time for deeds, not words. There is no lack of deeds in the world. They happen, however, to be monstrous deeds. W. L. New York City. September, 1915. PART I CHAPTER I A DISCOVERY FOR DEMOCRATS The day after the Lusitania was destroyed, we realized that one man had it in his power to send this country to war. The responsibility and the power, so tremendous that it might decide the world war, so far-reaching that it might alter our whole history, turned for a few dizzy days on the judgment of one man. Had Mr. Wilson wished war with Germany he could have had it. We were in his hands, and no amount of elections, or con- stitutional reservations about the right of Congress to declare war, can alter the fact that the real war-making power in the United States is the President. Americans have never intended to give any one man such importance. They have always believed they possessed that democratic control of foreign affairs for which European liberals are agitating. The United States makes no secret treaties ; the treaties it does make have to be ratified by the 15 16 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY people's representatives ; and Congress has to agree before war can be declared. Yet the real power is with the President, and all this constitutional ma- chinery counts for practically nothing in a crisis. When Mr. Wilson decided to seize Vera Cruz, he had to go to Congress for permission. I am told on good authority that a large number of the Con- gressmen were against the expedition. But they " supported " the President ; " politics ceased at the water's edge " ; the people's representatives voted Mr. Wilson the power he asked. Congress was not in session in May, 1915, when affairs with Germany were strained to the break- ing point. There was some discussion as to whether Congress ought to be summoned, and I suppose It would have been difficult to find a per- son In the country anxious for peace who didn't also wish Congress to stay at home. It was a curious paradox for those of us who would like to believe that democratic institutions make for peace. Instead of shouting for the people's repre- sentatives to assemble and restrain the autocrat, we knew that the mere act of summoning Congress would be a threat of war. So certain were we that Congress would aggravate the situation that many A DISCOVERY FOR DEMOCRATS 17 of us debated whether the calling of Congress might not be the best way of threatening Germany, We never assumed that Congress would make things calmer, or that it would force the Presi- dent to take a milder course. For as one genial cynic remarked : " It is easier to summon Congress than to adjourn it; it is easier to open the flood- gates of heroic patriotism than to close them." The picture of Congress upholding the Presi- dent's hands when the situation required that the President should lower them a bit; the prospect of lavish rhetoric and lavish appropriation, of reso- lutions calling on the Secretary of State to ex- plain this and furnish information about that, the interviews, proposals, and speeches which might be let loose, the heat which would be engendered, made those of us who hoped for peace prefer to trust the cool intentions of Mr. Wilson. But it was a curious choice for democrats to make, a choice about which we can hardly feel very comfortable. What if Mr. Wilson had hap- pened to believe that an occasional war was good for a country, or that the United States ought to seize a decent excuse to intervene in Europe? It is useless to pretend that the people in electing the 18 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY President take care not to choose a man with such views. They don't inquire about a candidate's philosophy of war, or even about his notions of foreign policy. So far as I can recall, Mr. Wil- son's campaign speeches made almost no reference whatever to international affairs, and even if they did, the views he expressed probably did not influ- ence two hundred votes. Our Presidents are elected by various means ; the deliberate choice even of domestic policies plays a small part ; the choice of foreign policies enters practically not at all. To be sure there are certain traditional views on which the parties are supposed to agree and to divide. They are supposed to render equal hom- age to the Monroe Doctrine and the Open Door; the Republicans are supposed to be for a " strong " foreign policy with a tendency to " expansion " ; the Democrats are said to stand for a mild foreign policy with a passion for isolation. But as a matter of fact each administration makes its own interpretation, and fills catch phrases like the " Monroe Doctrine " with a meaning of its own. Thus the Democrats may deplore the " dollar diplomacy " of Mr. Knox and the Taft adminis- tration, but Mr. Wilson has proposed a treaty A DISCOVERY FOR DEMOCRATS 19 with Haiti which, whatever its merits, is built on the most approved model of modern economic im- perialism. Traditional American policy is so vague that the administration may subscribe to it and still do pretty much whatever it pleases. It is no real check on the power of the President. In reality it is the great bulwark of his power. A phrase like the " Monroe Doctrine " may mean everything or nothing in the actual affairs of Central and South America, but it means for the American people a cluster of loyalties which can be summoned to ac- tion. As to all phrases which are sanctioned by our habits, the reaction to " Monroe Doctrine " is almost automatic. It may cover a totally new course of action. In the last ninety years or so it has covered many courses of action. But it has covered them. Because the covering was familiar, the action has been palatable. We have been ready to fight in defense of the Monroe Doctrine, leaving it for the President to decide what it means. It doesn't follow that there is no such thing as American public opinion in regard to foreign affairs, or the making of war and peace. It does follow that we have certain conventional ways 20 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY of reacting, certain habitual associations about phrases, and a number of set loyalties which are easily aroused. It would be sheer hypocrisy to pretend to more than that, to suppose that any large section of the American people is informed, or interested, or thoughtful about international relations. Our opinion about foreign affairs is hardened into a number of molds, named the Mon- roe Doctrine, the Open Door, No Entangling Alli- ances, and I suppose one should add Peace-if- possible. Into these molds patriotism is ready to flow; into these molds patriotism can be made to flow. The President has enormous power of direct- ing that flow. His decision as to what shall be published and what concealed is one of the su- preme attributes of his oiBce. He has no legal power of censoring the news. But often he alone knows what the news is, he can publish it when and how it seems best to him. The rest of us have to make up our minds as well as we can on the information which he furnishes us. We had trouble with Japan over Califomian land laws. The correspondence was published after the negotiations. We had some discussion with Japan and China over the situation created by the A DISCOVERY FOR DEMOCRATS 21 fall of Tsing-tao. As I write, the nature of that discussion has not been revealed. We have been bickering for two years on the edge of Mexican intervention, but the real facts about conditions in Mexico have been carefully censored and concealed. Mr. Wilson has not wished to intervene, and so he has not published the alarming reports which must have come to him from day to day. But suppose he had decided to intervene. What would have been easier than to arouse feeling in the United States by publishing the news? Moreover, the real facts of any diplomatic situ- ation are not contained in the official notes. Al- most always there is a personal conference between the ambassador and the Secretary of State ; some- thing is done to give a human tone to the guarded language of the document. Diplomats do not mumble and stutter as much as their written dis- patches make them seem to. They add something in conversation intended to lead or mislead. But they do not rely on the inexpressive language they use when they write to each other. I do not know what Mr. Bryan said to the Austrian Ambassador after the first note to Germany about the Lusi- tania. But he seems to have said something which 22 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY Ambassador Dumba told the German Foreign Office so as to help the German diplomats under- stand what the Wilson administration really in- tended to do. This personal side of diplomacy cannot be published. It may consist merely of an inflection in the voice or a gesture of the hand, which nevertheless gives the real meaning of a document. Then, too, every document which is to be pub- lished is written with an eye to its publication. The diplomat has to consider not only what he means, but what different people will think he means, and how they will feel about what they think he means. All this sounds very Machiavellian and not at all democratic, but there is no use pre- tending that it doesn't occur. When Mr. Wilson said that he was waiting for the American people to speak, he undoubtedly meant what he said. He knew that the first note to Germany must express American feeling about the Lusitania. His first note was a kind of national work of art which re- lieved our feelings immensely. By the time the second note had to be written we were cooler and we had counted the cost of war. The second note certainly retracted much of the first, but it ex- A DISCOVERY FOR DEMOCRATS 23 pressed our feeling at the time it was written, and public opinion was satisfied. Mr. Wilson may not have managed the situation consciously. It may be that he himself went through the same change of feeling that the rest of us did. But had he set out to control opinion, he could not have done it more skillfully. He controlled it, not by dominat- ing it, but by absorbing it. It is possible to say that, after all, American public opinion has governed in the crisis with Ger- many. I should not deny that. But the point I am making is that it was an accident that Mr. Wilson felt with a majority rather than a minority of the American people. Had he belonged to that powerful group in this country who would like to fight on the side of the Allies, he could have used the Lusitania incident to make war inevitable. Nothing would have been easier than to dramatize the issue, to close the door of negotiation, to in- flame the press by publishing the whispered rumors about many of the undoubted provocations which German diplomacy has offered us. The raw ma- terial of war existed, and the power to work upon it was in the hands of the President. It is true that we have had no President re- 24 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY cently who used his power to make war. Those wars which the United States has fought have been forced upon an unwilHng President. Mr. Mc- Kinley not only did not foment, he actually opposed the Spanish-American War, and Mr. Roosevelt, for all his reputation, kept an unbroken peace for the whole term of his office. How, then, does it matter that the Executive has this supreme power, if in actual fact he has never used it? Isn't the question a rather unreal one? I think not. The question seems to me impor- tant not only because it is part of our preparation for future emergencies, but because it reveals with a good deal of suggestion the problem of a democ- racy and its relation to war. If we can under- stand why in our republic such great power has gravitated to one man, why in spite of all our pre- tensions to democracy we have happened to give over the greatest question of all to the decision of one man, if we can explain the curious fact that those of us who believe in democracy preferred to trust Mr. Wilson in the Lusitania crisis, we shall, I believe, have learned something of considerable value. We have just passed through — indeed at the/ A DISCOVERY FOR DEMOCRATS 25" moment it is still optimistic to say that we have passed through — one of the gravest episodes of our history. In a way it illuminated as nothing else would have done the question of how democ- racies face the issue of war. To our surprise and humiliation some of us discovered that our desire for peace and our faith in democratic institutions conflicted. We had to choose between them, and if we have won peace, it is by an abandonment of the pretense that the people could control their foreign relations in any positive way. We trusted a President who was elected before the submarine war was dreamed of, and as it happened he turned out to be a man who wanted peace. But it was such a hair-raising escape, so replete with accident, that we are compelled, in self-respect, to search out the meaning of the discovery that on the issue of our national existence we are not a self-govern- ing people. CHAPTER II THE USES OF A KING The reason why we trust one man, rather than many, is because one man can negotiate and many men can't. Two masses of people have no way of dealing directly with each other. They have to deal through representatives. It is a pure fic- tion to speak of negotiations between the United States and Germany. For when you look around to find the " United States " you discover a hun- dred million people spread over vast territory, with certain common habits, ideas, and loyalties, but nowhere do you find anything called the *' United States " which can strike a bargain with ** Germany.'* The American people cannot all seize the same pen and indite a note to sixty-five million people living within the German Empire. They cannot say : We ask for this, but if you will grant that, we'll do so-and-so, and then we'll both be satisfied. Each man may know what he thinks (a tremendous assumption), but what "we the 26 THE USES OF A KING 27 American people " think is one of the most diffi- cult matters in the world to find out. We all try to find it out. The papers print edi- torial comment from different parts of the coun- try, they interview leaders of opinion, publish let- ters from correspondents, take straw ballots, and ask questions in the smoking-room of the club, on the street car, and at the quick-lunch counter. They may throw some light on the general reaction to a particular event. But more accurate than this it is hardly possible to be. The " will " and " mind " and " voice " of a great people are not the same thing as the will and mind and voice of a single man. When an individual thinks out a course of action, he goes through a delicate mental operation, a good part of which is unconscious. But a whole people can no more think in unison than it can make love in unison. The individual thinks, and you may, if you are fond of abstrac- tions, say that the common thoughts, or the domi- nating thoughts of a mass of individuals, are their will and mind. But in saying it you are opening the door to great self-deception. The moment you assume that there is a collective soul, a collective heart, 28 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY and a collective mind, you are falling into that old error of statecraft which obsesses men like Bem- hardi. It is the error of treating a nation as an individual, rather than as a group of people. I call it an error because as a matter of observation that which we call the thought of a nation is very different from the thought of a person. The nation has no eyes, ears, or mouth. Its " will " is compounded of many wills, and when it speaks it speaks through a person. That person may have taken into account what other persons think and feel, but the words he utters are at the utmost somebody's notion of what most people would like to have said. It is often stated that the public is " fickle " ; that its interest fades quickly, or is easily diverted. This is natural enough, for a great people is very diverse; it has innumerable interests which com- pete for the attention, and it cannot give itself as devotedly to one object as the individual may. But from the point of view of diplomatic negotia- tion, it is far truer to say that a mass of people is really much too inflexible for successful dealing. One diplomat can find out that he was wrong, and change his mind; a whole people unlearns very THE USES OF A KING 29 slowly. One diplomat may see what is in the other diplomat's mind, and tune his utterance ac- cordingly ; a whole people cannot see quickly into another people's mind, and its utterance is inevi- tably crude. The very qualities which are needed for negotiation — quickness of mind, direct contact, adaptiveness, invention, the right proportion of give and take — are the very qualities which masses of people do not possess. This isn't entirely due to the ignorance of masses ; it is a question of inertia. A large body of highly trained scientists by the sheer fact of its size would show much the same heaviness of movement. This inertia, which means a tendency to stay where you are put, or to keep moving when you start, is natural to all large bodies. It is as much a problem for the traffic policeman as for the statesman. The only large groups of people which have real mobility are highly trained troops. They come as near to the ideal of one heart, one mind, and one movement, as masses of people ever do. They achieve it by automatic obedience, by as complete an annihilation of the individual as discipline can produce. But even years of training and subordi- nation will not give to an army anything like the 30 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY resourcefulness of a clever group of free-moving bandits. An army, however, is the outside limit of uni- formity for masses. It has something of a common mind and will, because it has sacrificed almost completely individual mind and will. There are few freethinkers in well-drilled armies, and they are likely to be shot. But a civil population, even with the most vigorous school system and press censorship, is a straggling and varied collection of people. And in our democracy, where the fron- tier tradition is not yet dead, there is no possibility of anything like drilled and concerted action. Even if there were, it would not enable a whole people to negotiate. We might all think alike when we thought, but it is a physical impossibility that we should all know the same facts at the same moment. The best we can do is to express gen- eral sentiments, allow a leader or a President to translate them into action, and then see whether most of us like what he has done for us. We are a little like the customer who can say yes or no to what is offered by the salesman, but who cannot de- scribe exactly what he wants. The whole difficulty can be visualized by imagin- THE USES OF A KING SI ing the situation between two nations which had no diplomats and no government. One nation tries to tell the other that it is outraged by the sinking of the Lusitania. The American newspapers print editorials which are telegraphed to the German newspapers and reprinted. The German writers then proceed to write their thoughts. One of them — perhaps Count von Reventlow — says proudly : " Damn the Americans." Another who has just read the Evening Telegram says : " My God, what liars those Americans are." Another reads a de- fense of the sinking in the Fatherland and says: " They are a reasonable people, those Americans. Gott strafe England." Another editor discovers that most Americans are angry, and writes a long, reasonable editorial asking : " What does America want.''" All this is cabled back to us, slightly mangled in translation. Our editors proceed to answer. Some tell von Reventlow what they think of him; others tell the New York Evening Tele- gram what they think of it. Some say the Ger- mans are in a compromising frame of mind ; others say we have been insulted. It would not be long before the sensible people in both countries were shouting that if only each S2 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY nation could appoint somebody who really was fitted to speak for it, there would be some pos- sibility of getting somewhere. The sheer problem of exchanging ideas, formulating demands, and making compromises would have demonstrated more clearly than any amount of theorizing that the " national mind and will " must negotiate through some person. It was a recognition of this that made the most democratic among us prefer " trusting the President " to summoning Congress in the Lusitania crisis. We believed he could do for us what we wanted done better than we could tell him what we wanted done. It was a situation in which the people desired certain results — abate- ment of submarine warfare and peace, but for the intricate business of obtaining those results they saw that the flexibility of one mind was superior to the inertia of many. It was the explanation of the paradox that a democracy was willing to grant onp man plenary power over war and peace. In the diplomatic exchanges at the end of July, 1914*, there was a very illuminating example of the danger to all negotiation when a nation has not granted its diplomats full power. It will be remem- bered that Sir Edward Grey was asked repeatedly THE USES OF A KING 2S by Sazonof and Cambon to state where England would stand in case of war. He replied that he could not promise intervention without a grant from Parliament. That hesitancy of his was un- doubtedly sincere, but it made all the negotiations immensely difficult. No one was certain what Eng- land would do, and the complaint of Germans that England fell upon them has that much foundation. Sir Edward Grey represented a somewhat uncer- tain democracy dealing with powers governed by men who had full authority. They knew what they could do; he didn't. They could threaten, promise, and bargain; Sir Edward Grey never knew how much he could count upon the support of his nation. He was, in other words, a limited delegate negotiating with plenipotentiaries. The full force of the Empire was not behind him, and he was not the equal of the men he was dealing with. I don't mean to suggest that war could have been avoided if Sir Edward Grey had been freer to com- mit himself at the end of July. I think it is argu- able that Germany would have hesitated had she known as an absolute certainty that England would be drawn in. But it is clear at least that the com- 34 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY plete power of England could not be exerted in the negotiations, because the ultimate power lay with Parliament. Some such reasoning as this is what makes the traditional diplomat shy of democratic control of foreign affairs. His idea is to wield the power of his nation as a rapier. He does not wish foreign affairs made the subject of party politics. He prefers secrecy ; he desires above all other things to face foreign diplomats with the assurance that a united people is behind him. We in America have accepted this diplomatic ideal. For us " poli- tics ceases at the water's edge " ; we announce in " one " voice that we shall act as " one " man ; and in a crisis we resent with peculiar intolerance the opposition of anybody to the government's policy. It is called " rocking the boat," and the epithet " treason " trembles on the tip of the edi- torial pen. We feel that division at home is weak- ness abroad. Though there are a hundred million of us with differing opinions, though we profess to value liberty of thought and action, we are deeply hostile to any use of this liberty when the question of war and peace is at issue. In other words, it is not only politics which THE USES OF A KING 35 ceases at the water's edge, but democracy too. The moment we are dealing with a foreign people, a totally new conception of government appears. We ask to be led by a man to whom we give su- preme power. We form behind him and obey. We try to forget all our differences ; we drop conten- tious issues, declare a truce, and make every effort to be unanimous. We believe that unanimity should be purchased at almost any price — if neces- sary at the price of our deepest convictions. " My country right or wrong," and no reservations al- lowed. Free criticism disappears, a great same- ness descends upon the minds of men. In it we feel the premonition of war — that hardening of nerve and body, that awful concentration which iS^a na- tion's power. It is deeper than all reason. The sense of an enemy makes us huddle together for defense and offense. The psychologists of war are right. We forget ourselves, our ambitions, our ideas, our lives. No one in time of peace can imagine the change which external danger brings. That is why no one can understand how commonplace is courage. Clerks who were timid about asking for a half- holiday face machine-guns. War, or the sense of S6 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY war, does indeed bring that simplification of the spirit which its eulogists glorify. It almost ob- literates personality, and throws us back into a herd with animal loves and animal hates. Some call it an unimaginably great experience. A young German girl whose husband fell at Ypres wrote to me of " Zeiten unendlich gross." She had forgot- ten herself, him, her baby, her future. She was welded into the power of Germany, as the fingers are welded into a clenched fist. Our instincts are not different from hers. In every essential respect we believe that external danger requires complete and submissive unity. Patriotism, then, means that a hundred million people shall fuse so that no division is visible from the outside. We secure external strength by inner harmony. That is the diplomatic and military value of unanimity. Danger requires us to be as " one man." But it obscures with a horrible shadow the differences of many men out of which is born the curiosity of civilized life. External danger makes us revert from the demo- cratic to the dynastic conception of the state. When we become " one man," we become so in the same sense that Germany personifies itself in the THE USES OF A KING $7 Emperor, or England in the Crown. The " one man " that danger fuses us into is not a living person named William Hohenzollern, but it serves the same purpose. For when sovereignty passed from the monarch to the people, it did not lose its character. The sovereign people in its dealing with foreign powers has not ceased to be dynastic. The virtue of kings, their morality, their honor, and many of their ambitions remain in this new sov- ereign — the people acting as " one man." Foreign affairs are in fact the last stronghold of court etiquette and royal tradition. In their dealings with foreign powers, even republics act as mon- archs, because they have enthroned the people in- stead of destroying the throne. CHAPTER III FOREIGNERS AND FRONTIERS When a family quarrels, the hostilities are not regarded as worthy of public notice until there is what people call a " break." The husband rushes off to his saloon or his club, slamming the door behind him ; the wife takes to her room, slamming the door behind her. Then lawyers can be engaged, the friends and relatives can line up, and disorderly friction is turned into an orderly battle. When civil war breaks out in a country, no real fighting is possible until the contending factions are or- ganized on separate territory. The more compact the two territories are, the more cleanly they divide a country, the better for the fighting, the nearer the whole business is to a real war. Two popula- tions cannot fight successfully if they are entirely interlaced. Our own Civil War was one of the completest wars in history because the North and the South were not only pretty clearly divided in territory, they were separate in their culture and 38 FOREIGNERS AND FRONTIERS 39 tradition. Unless you can find some territorial division upon which to base political differences, it is impossible to turn civil war into anything more than a riot. A frontier is necessary to organized fighting. Experience with the industrial struggle bears this out. The strikes which have produced large violence always take place in regions where labor and capital can really pair off'. In the bloody West Virginia struggle, the miners were in gullies and on the slopes of the mountains ; the operators and their agents did not live in the same community with them. When you find a town or a county completely devoted to one industry, with the own- ers living in another city, there you have the mak- ings of civil war. This was the case in Colorado and in Calumet. The segregation of the two sides makes possible a real line-up of fighting forces. But in a highly complicated city each side is diluted by the presence of those neutrals who constitute what is called the public, and a long, bitter, fighting strike is far less possible. There are no frontiers behind which to organize a class war. That is why governments can indulge in supreme 40 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY violence. The opponent is an alien, and the ter- ritorial division is as strategically perfect as diplomacy can make it. Two nations don't have to " break " as a family does ; they are already " broken " and proud of it. They don't have to improvise frontiers as revolutionists do. They don't have to contend with the same amount of corrosive neutral opinion. When you start a civil war, you never know how much the interlacing of classes and interests will spoil your plans ; but in an international war every impulse of patriot- ism works to cut the cross-frontier loyalties and solidify the populations. The more perfect the spiritual division of the two nations the better is their military morale. It is no accident that the eulogists of war, the jingoes, the aggressive nationalists, and pug- nacious people generally, are at the same time the devotees of Pure Races, and the implacable enemies of mixed populations, or loose and tolerant states. A varied population is a weakness in war, espe- cially if it lives in a country free enough to allow the different peoples civil equality. Once you fill a territory with a population mixed in its sympathies you destroy that unity which successful war re- FOREIGNERS AND FRONTIERS 41 quires. It would be easier for the United States to fight Japan than Germany ; it was a very ticklish business for the Bdtish Empire, with its large Mo- hammedan population, to fight the Turks. The great variety of the Empire makes war difficult, for the enemy's friends and spiritual relations are likely to be its own citizens. That is why military men are not fond of tolerance. They are almost always ready to sanction racial oppression — to Russify, Germanize, Magyarize, or Anglicize if possible. I don't mean to say that the military authorities always initiate racial intolerance. The causes of that lie deeper. But they will generally support it for the best of professional reasons. To them an alien culture is a potential enemy within the gates, and so offensive power abroad is likely to be accompanied by intolerance and op- pression at home. I once heard the most important officer in the American army argue for military preparedness. He addressed us as young men of a " class which had something to lose," and before he had finished his speech had referred to the need for troops who could " shoot to kill " in a strike, had described Ellis Island as a " human sewer," and laid some !12 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY pretty insult upon the " niggers." He is regarded as an unusually cultivated officer, and he was ap- pealing to us as good Americans. It never oc- curred to him that he was a traitor to the very Americanism for which a civilized person might lay down his life. I understood Zabern then, and the revolt of the British army officers in Ulster; I understood why liberals the world over are so much afraid of militarism. The true ideal of the military man is necessarily a solidified population. If he advocates anything else, it is because his democratic citizenship has weakened him. For his whole training prejudices him in favor of obedience and uniformity, making him instinctively unfriendly to tolerant govern- ments and varied populations. The military tradi- tion is also suspicious of commercial life. No se- verer denunciation of sordid business can be read than in the utterances of officers. They often in- sist that commerce is ignoble; they will contrast the sacrifice of the soldier with the selfishness of the trader, and many of them say that war is a holy thing just because it calls out so many non-com- mercial qualities. This feeling appears most candidly in a book hy. FOREIGNERS AND FRONTIERS 43 the Gennan Crown Prince called Deutschland in Wajfen — (Germany in Arms). He writes: " Since the last big war Germany has passed through a period of economic development, which has something disconcerting about it. The standard of living has risen so much for all classes of our peo- ple, that the demands for necessities and luxuries have grown considerably. Certainly one ought not ungratefully to deny that a higher economic de- velopment does much good. But the dark sides of this too quick development appear painfully and threateningly in many ways. Already the desire for money has taken hold of us with such strength, that one can only contemplate it with anxiety. . . . The old ideals — even the pride and the honor of the nation may be sympathetically affected; for to make money without disturbance, peace is required, peace at any price." A democrat might say that to cure the evils of commercialism by precipitating war was like burn- ing down the house to roast the pig. But he had better reserve his comment, and try to understand. The opposition of the military idealist is not alone to the evils of commercialism; it governs all his social theories. Fighting men are not only afraid of confused populations ; they are inclined to oppose the specialization of international trade. 44 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY They would prefer, for obvious military reasons, to have a country self-sufficient within its own borders. Thus the military party in Germany has been in alliance with the agrarians in their long struggle against industry. These men saw truly according to their lights. The Germans are a better fighting people, better able to withstand British sea power because the Junkers dominated their domestic policy. The more a country de- velops its export trade, the more it lives by ex- change with other nations, the greai^er is the difficulty of waging war. And if there must be export trade, the war party will clamor for a mer- chant marine to carry it and a navy large enough to protect it. To men who think in terms of national conflict, the plight of the United States with its shipping controlled by England is an actual menace to our " independence." We have given a hostage to fortune, as all cooperators must. And every time these people read that New York is becoming the money center of the world their hearts rejoice. They are indefatigable separatists, and the spec- tacle of nations so bound together that war is almost an impossibility is a vision which frightens FOREIGNERS AND FRONTIERS 45 them. They know that world-wide markets are corroding frontiers, creating supemational group- ings, and mixing the populations. But their ideal calls for a " pure " race, a single nationality, strategic frontiers, a unanimous people, and a self- sufficing industrial system. No wonder they shake their heads. The process of fusion has gone so far that war itself has ceased to be a national enter- prise. The separate sovereignties have been partly merged into alliances. It would be a great mistake, however, to over- estimate either the intermixture of people or the erosion of frontiers. The process is very young to-day, and it has not gone very deep. On the whole, nations still live on their own territory, sur- rounded by frontiers over which few people ever look. Inside those frontiers they have abolished many smaller ones and ended many old sacred states' rights. Within these areas some democ racy can prevail. But when two organized lands deal with each other, they are dealing with for- eigners, each focused into a sovereignty and there- fore run not on the democratic but on the dynastic principle. They settle differences by negotiation or by war. 46 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY For these their internal democracy is an actual weakness, and so the most advanced republics are autocratic in the management of foreign affairs. They are autocratic because democracy can never deal with an affair that is " foreign." CHAPTER IV THE LINE OF LEAST RESISTANCE Because a whole people clamors for a war, and gets it, there is no ground for calling the war democratic. One might just as well call the sub- jection of negroes democratic because the whole white South desires it, or acquiesce in the oppres- sion of Slavs because the Magyars are united in its favor. The mere fact that a whole mass of people is unanimous doesn't make their decision a democratic one. This isn't because democracies are not capable of evil, or because I as a democrat would prefer to call whatever I don't like undemo- cratic. It is because a thing can be popular and still lack the very essence of democracy. Kings, lynchings, and crusades can be popular, but they are not democratic because the interests of all groups concerned have not entered into the making of them. Democracy is a meaningless word unless it signifies that differences of opinion have been 47 48 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY expressed, represented, and even satisfied in the decision. But in the relation of governments, the opposi- tions live on two sides of a frontier. When there is an issue to be settled, each side formulates its demands — expresses what it regards as its vital interest — and calls that its sovereign will. The two diplomats who actually speak for the sovereign will start with the infatuation that whatever they say has a peculiar sanctity. To be tentative, ex- perimental, flexible, to be human and sensible in their dealings, is not compatible with complete sov- ereignty. They are haunted by the ghost of a king, who held his power by divine grace and was inclined to regard his opinions as infallible. These older habits of mind survive in the relations of governments long after they have perished in the relations of men. Within our borders we may be a commonwealth; we try to face the world as a sovereign. That is why international morality is so unlike private morality. Nations hold to the theory that they are sovereign — which comes pretty close to meaning that they can do no wrong. They have a " right " to organize violence, a " right " to refuse arbitration, a " right " to follow their THE LINE OF LEAST RESISTANCE 49 own " interests." There may be a few conventions of honor or expediency which they won't violate, but their obedience is part of their sovereign will, an accidental decency in the midst of their supreme pretensions. In other words, there are sections of the globe marked off by frontiers. Within those sections live masses of people organized in governments. Some of these governments exist by consent, others by choice, others by hereditary power. In theory these governments are all of them sovereign, and anything they desire or ask for is judged not on its merits alone. The opinions of a sovereign have a mystical importance. They are easily identified with the opinions of God, and it is hard for God to back down. The curious thing is that the inhabitants of a country rarely dispute the external sovereignty of their government. They may know as a matter of bitter experience that their rulers are a corrupt, stupid, reactionary group of men. But when those rulers speak to a foreign people, these opinions acquire an almost supernatural importance. They become the " national will," and men will be maimed, and starved, and frozen, and killed for 50 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY them. It seems as if foreign politics tapped deeper levels of habit and instinct than domestic affairs. They are notoriously less reasonable, more touchy, and more inflammable. Men think less about them and sacrifice more for them. They blur personality and education, and evoke buried loyalties and an- cient pugnacity. Now in a consideration of the differences between the psychology of domestic and of foreign politics, the most striking difference appears to be this: In domestic affairs we live with and know the men who disagree with us ; in foreign affairs the oppo- sition lives behind a frontier, and probably speaks a different language. Simple and obvious as this sounds, the consequences are enormous. Thus when a nation crystallizes its feelings, it does so prac- tically unopposed. The average man meets al- most nobody who disagrees with him. It is like being in the old solid South where men lived and died without ever having met anyone who wasn't a Democrat. The people all know what their gov- ernment permits them to know, and the habit of imitation is uncorrected — ^the state of feeling grows by its sheer unanimity until disagreement becomes positively dangerous. All the people we THE LINE OF LEAST RESISTANCE 51 know think alike — people who disagree about every- thing else agree about our relation to the for- eigner. Of course, such an opinion acquires sanc- tity, seems supreme, and takes on the airs of a sovereign. It is like the opinion of an only child — being the only opinion in his universe, he defies anyone to thwart it. And the person who does thwart it seems very wicked indeed. All our pas- sion runs freely into our demands, is " let loose " because it is not civilized by opposition. In fact, opposition is about the only incentive we have to practice reason and tolerance. Unless our ideas are questioned, they become part of the furniture of eternity. It is only by incessant criticism, by constant rubbing in of differences, that any of our ideas remain human and decent. The easy way is when we are not opposed. That enables us to be dogmatic, and to regard whatever we happen to believe as of sovereign value. To keep a faith pure, man had better retire to a monastery. Where all think alike, no one thinks very much. But whatever he does think, he can think with all his soul. It is at the cross-roads that skepticism is born, not in a hermitage. With- out contact and friction, without experience, in 52 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY short, our animal loyalties are supreme. Thought is not made in a vacuum, nor created out of like- ness. It requires travel and shipping and the com- ing and going of strangers to impregnate a civiliza- tion. That is why thought has flourished in cities which lie along the paths of communication. \ Nineveh, Athens, Alexandria, Rome, Venice, the Hansa towns, London, Paris — they have made ideas out of the movement and contact of many people. Men are jostled into thought. Left alone they spin the same thread from the same dream. A community which is self-contained and homo- geneous and secluded is intellectually deaf, dumb, and blind. It can cultivate robust virtue and sim- ple dogmatism, but it will not invent or throw out a profusion of ideas. In places where men are used to differences they inevitably become tolerant. Within modem communities this rubbing together of diff^erences has gone far enough to cover most political strife with a decent humanity. But there are some clashes even within a country which are fought upon a different plane. Where workingmen are new immigrants and live almost completely shut off from the rest of the people, wherever class THE LINE OF LEAST RESISTANCE 5$ division is very acute, there the industrial struggle is fought with special bitterness. Each side is dogmatic and simple-minded ; there is not enough contact and experience to produce much thought. Each side attributes sovereignty to its opinions, and feels very exalted about them. When we deal with a foreign people, our passion is not diluted by opposition. We are consequently not in the least sicklied o'er by the pale cast of thought, and neither conscience nor consciousness makes cowards of us. Ideas which are agreed to by everyone we know, ideas which are sanctioned by all the authorities we have ever followed, are sov- ereign ideas. They have a weight which no do- mestic opinion can have. Just because we have had no incentive to doubt them, we cannot see why they should be contradicted. To disagree with them, then, is to attack us, to deny our right to sovereignty. In this sense all wars are defensive. They defend our desire to be unopposed. What is called " jingoism " finds a butt in the foreigner simply because a " foreigner " is a per- son you don't live with, don't meet, about whom you are naive, who remains alien and opaque, who doesn't stimulate different ideas or create the com- 54 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY plexity of feeling which is the atmosphere of rea- son. Nobody pleads the foreigner's cause very strenuously. It is difficult, requiring much in- formation and much courage. Moreover, it is a thankless task which almost always evokes tribal suspicion. The peacemaker is easily identified with the alien, as Lord Haldane has been identified with the Germans. He is " against his own coun- try," which means that he is trying to correct the passionate trend of his fellow-citizens. His ideas are rarely judged on their merits, because they rest on knowledge with which the community is not at home. It is small wonder that newspapers are in the main instruments of irritation between peoples. I leave out of account here the deliberately pacifist press as well as the reptile press of the war parties. It is the ordinary middle-class newspapers which I have in mind, the papers run as commercial enter- prises. With all their faults admitted, no one can possibly assert that their owners are criminal enough to provoke war. Yet in almost every crisis the tension is increased by the newspapers. The reason is in part that war is more sensa- tional than peace — the possibility of conflict is a THE LINE OF LEAST RESISTANCE 55 cheaper and more obvious form of news. It is hard to conceive of a newspaper breaking out into lurid headlines to announce in time of peace that *' good will between Japan and the United States is on the increase." It would sound silly. The press cannot shout about the aggression that will not take place, or announce with joy the markets that are not coveted. Indeed, any attempt to do it would be regarded as suspicious. Men would say that the news was intended to conceal some- thing. No one has discovered a way of making good will, harmony, reasonableness, easily dra- matic. In overwhelming measure the news of the day is the news of trouble and conflict. Those journals which devote themselves to telling of the real advances of mankind — the technological progress, the administrative triumphs, the con- quests of prejudice — are not popular. They lack the "punch." To this condition of news-reporting, interna- tional affairs have to conform. As the negotia- tions of governments are conducted with loaded weapons at hand, and with the pretension to sov- ereignty by both sides, almost any international situation contains news of trouble. At the same 56 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY time the editor is publishing his paper for a com- munity in which the opposition is probably not represented. It is easy and natural for him to take a " strong " stand. A " strong " stand is the least dangerous, for it flatters everybody, produces an exhilarating sense of importance, risks no of- fense to any significant section of his readers. A ** weak " stand, a reasonable, complicated desire for adjustment, is a costly and thankless task for an editor. It means that he appeals to thought which is pale rather than to lusts which are strong. He appears academic, mugwumpish, unmanly. And though it requires the highest kind of courage to run against patriotic sentiment, he is likely to be called a coward. Sympathy for foreigners is the most disinter- ested and civilized form of sympathy. It is not difficult to understand why editors display so little of it. There is almost no incentive to understand foreign peoples. They are distant. They speak a foreign language. They do not often reward their friends in another land. At home, the editor faces the fact that ignorance and distrust of the alien is the most natural and the cheapest channel into which high passion and united feeling can THE LINE OF LEAST RESISTANCE 57 flow. It is the greatest object of uncorrected en- thusiasm, the greatest drama in which the villain is neither an advertiser nor a reader of the news- paper. It is one field of interest where people are at once unanimous and excited, and not many edi- tors have the strength to resist cultivating that field. Then, too, the editor is himself a member of the community subject to the same influences. He is a good American or a good Britisher, some- times a somewhat professionally good patriot. In following the easiest way, which is the way of irri- tation, he is not guilty of any malevolent plan. He does it with a good conscience, for the human conscience is never so much at ease as when it follows the line of least resistance. Only saints, heroes, and specialists in virtue feel remorse be- cause they have done what everybody was doing and agreed with what everybody was thinking. CHAPTER V PATRIOTISM IN THE ROUGH "And the man removed from his country has torn from his shoulders the net of human relationship wherein he might have learnt love, which so greatly fortifies the will to live. Never will he be knit to many people by laughter over local jokes, never will he join with strangers in the shamelessly un- tuneful singing of old songs about past national glories. . . . Only in one's own country is the rose of life planted where one would have it, shaped as far as could be by the will of one's own people, nourished by one's own blood." — From an article on " Redemption and Dostoevsky," by Rebecca West — published in The New Republic, July 10, 1915. " And yet, when one attempts to define ' a nation,' one finds the definition impossible. Language, race, geographical area, past history, manners and customs, origins, religions, ideals, all enter into its realization. But ultimately one is obliged to fall back upon the assertion that a nation exists where its component atoms believe it to be a nation; where they are will- ing to live for and to die for a mystical entity whose life includes the lives of all the individuals, but whose life transcends the lives of those individuals." — The Nation (London), June 26, 1915. To Robert E. Lee the mystical entity was not the United States but Virginia ; to many Canadians and Australians to-day the mystical entity is that quarter of the human race which is organized 58 PATRIOTISM IN THE ROUGH 59 in the British Empire. Once there were about three hundred mystical entities on German terri- tory, each with its local jokes and old songs sung out of tune. But the local jokes have of late em- braced the railway to Bagdad, and the old songs were heard in Kiao-Chow. Men lived and died for that mystical entity known as the fortress of Tsing-tao with its hinterland of coal mines. And yet I take it that this inflated national sentiment is in origin the same as the love of Mecklenburg- Schwerin or the intense pride of the inhabitants of Kokomo, Indiana. * There is a famous piece of practical wisdom fre- quently oiFered to young men from small towns. " It is better," the saying goes, " to be it in Mid- dleburg than nit in New York." It is also easier, not only because there are less people in Middle- burg, but because, as Rebecca West says in the passage quoted at the head of this chapter, only in Middleburg is the rose of life planted where one would have it, shaped as far as could be by the will of one's own people, nourished by one's own blood. Nationality is a word from the Latin. It de- notes birth. But quite naturally it has come to 60 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY mean something more than physical birth. It covers our first loyalty, our first impressions, our earliest associations. It is at bottom a cluster of primitive feelings, absorbed into a man and rooted within him long before conscious education begins. The house, the street, the meadow and hill upon which he first opened his eyes, the reactions to family and strangers which remain as types of his loves and hates, the earliest sounds which brought fear and pleasure — these are the stuff out of which nationality is made. They constitute the ultimate background of the mind, its first culture and the most tenacious one. What comes after is. a compromise with this infantile accumulation. It modifies, and is modified by it. But in the open- ing environment the directions of taste and prejudice are given, each person takes on his " na- tional " character. His subtlest bents are deter- mined, a pervasive flavor is given to his spirit, he learns loves and hates that are never altogether forgotten. His childish prayers are always a little nearer to his heart than any other; the lan- guage of his nursery is the speech of his soul. It may be buried under much later experience, forgot- ten perhaps beyond easy recall. But it does not PATRIOTISM IN THE ROUGH 61 perish. It is the form of his most obscure impulse, the original quality of his mind. In time of easy prosperity we are very little aware of it. We seem to live in the superficial layers of character. But when war breaks out, or threatening uncertainty, there is a swift retreat into our origins. We become intensely aware of the earliest things with which we were associated ; we love the security where we were bom, we huddle to the people with whom we played as children ; the gods grown old in our skeptical maturity live again to comfort us, the ancient battles we thrilled over, the old pretensions that made us exalt, become once more the active substance of our minds. The past that is warm with our childish loyalty, the alleys and the rookeries where we first met the world, are transfigured in memory. They are us, more poignant than recent attachments, deeper than all later theories. Whatever conflicts with them breaks down. We cannot imagine anything to be right or worthy which these dumb affections do not sanction. " We can see for the first time," said Mr. Lloyd George recently, " the fundamental things that matter in life and that have been obscured from our 62 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY vision by the tropical growth of prosperity." The fundamental things in life are just these earliest loyalties, for they seem to survive the breakage of everything else. When they go in some over- whelming panic, man disintegrates into an animal striving to preserve a life that his deepest loyalties will prevent him from enjoying. That is what cowardice is, a kind of brute disavowal of those early associations which no man can have dis- avowed and live at ease. Lord Jim did it in Con- rad's novel, and he suffered as all people do who have poisoned the sources of their being. What is called pride of race is the sense that our origins are worthy of respect. It is hard for a freed slave to be happy ; it is hard for a bastard to avoid that furtiveness which dogs the soul. Man must be at peace with the sources of his life. If he is ashamed of them, if he is at war with them, thej*^ will haunt him forever. They will rob him of the basis of assurance, leave him an interloper in the world. When we speak of thwarted nationality like that of the Irish, the Jb»6, the Poles, the Negroes, we mean something more intimate than political subjection. We mean a kind of homeless- ness upon the planet, a homelessness which houses PATRIOTISM IN THE ROUGH 63 of brick can obscure but never remedy. We mean that the origins upgn which strength feeds and from which loyalty rises — that the origins of these denationalized people have been hurt. They are the children ,oi a broken household, and they are never altogether free. They are never quite sure of themselves. This uncertainty may take many forms. It may issue in futile dreams and high- sounding visions of a past that is irrevocable or of a future that is impossible. It may issue in that over-assurance which is so often the mask of shyness. Since the war began, the Germans in America have suffered acutely the pains of denationaliza- tion. Almost overnight a burst of hate was let loose upon the Fatherland. The place where they were bom was proclaimed to be barbarous. They were practically called upon to denounce Germany or to be denounced themselves. The country to which their earliest memories were attached had become a moral outlaw. Of course, they couldn't believe it. It was the scene of their childhood. It was the home of their parents and childish games ; reason and evidence could make no impression upon what their hearts told them was warm. At the 64 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY same time they had a newer attachment to America, the scene of their ambitions. A more cruel choice was never offered to any body of people. The result we know — an instinctive devotion to Ger- many and a theoretical devotion to America. The hyphen was a cut between their dumb but deepest affections and their conscious duties. Their spiritual life has been a terrible torment to them, and their efforts to find a decent compromise be- tween their childhood patriotism and their mature citizenship has been grotesque when it wasn't pathetic. They have tried every kind of ingenuity. They have tried to twist the British Lion's tail, and evoke in Americans the memory of conflicts with England. ' They have exalted Germany to the heavens, for if any part of their claims were be- lieved Germany would not be condemned so much. Their loud, persistent declamation about Grerman greatness was really a way of saying to Americans : *' You should not look down upon us. We are the scions of a noble race. Our father's house is a good one, and you mustn't ask us to despise it." German- Americanism' might be described as a re- treat into an earlier piety. The strain of great PATRIOTISM IN THE ROUGH 65 events resulted in a sort of rush of blood from the head to the heart, from mature interests to childish memories. It wasn't a reasoned study of the causes of the war which produced the German propa- ganda. It was something far deeper and much less understood than that. The motives were not in the least simple. They were in part a defensive movement, an attempt to save the social standing of German things in America. They were in part a desire to enhance the German name here by as- sociating it with a mighty empire. I know one of the German-American " leaders " too well to have any serious doubts on this point. The discovery of the hyphen was the making of him. He was interviewed, talked about, cheered, hissed, and if he suffered at all, he endured a noble public pain, a tragedy enacted on a dazzling stage. Such sor- row many men enjoy hugely. The real hurt was not among the advertised figures against whom the editorials were written. It was among the voiceless men and women whose relatives were dying in Europe, whose standing in America was threatened. There were good Amer- icans who increased the hurt ; who stopped trading with German butchers, who discharged German 66 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY servant girls, who turned around and scowled when they heard the German language spoken. They were cutting the bonds of loyalty — they were help- ing to hyphenate our population. By their lack of understanding, irritated no doubt by the vocifera- tions of men like Mr. Viereck, these Americans were putting an unbearable cross upon those of German speech and habit. They were attacking the Ger- mans in America for being what they could not help being, and with the cruelty of the incipient mob they were indicting a whole race. Inevitably- large masses of German-Americans drew into them- selves, became defensive, and tried to defend the name they bore. For the surest way to arouse na- tionalism is to attack it, and by nationalism I mean the loyalties of childhood, not the education of maturity. Turkish oppression exasperated Balkan nationalism to a fanatic pitch. Jew-baiting pro- duced the ghetto and is compelling Zionism; the bad economic habits of many Jews, their exploit- ing of simpler people, have often caused the victims to assert their own nationalism. The fierce power of national feeling is due to the fact that it rises from the deepest sources of our being. It is the primitive stuff of which we are PATRIOTISM IN THE ROUGH 67 made, our first loyalties, our first aggressions, the type and image of our souls. It is fixed in the nursery, and the spell of it is never lost. The things we knew as children, the standards we re- ceived, the tones we heard, the pictures we stored in our minds, the scenery, the houses, the gestures, the prayers, the rhymes, the games, shape us and color us. They are our nationality, that essence of our being which defines us against the back- ground of the world. Life would be a dry, thin business without it. A civilization made out of intellect and grown-up ambitions would have cut itself off from that rich fund of dumb meanings which we drag behind us from our childhood. A fine art is unthinkable among a people which knew no color and music in its infancy. Bring up children in the gray and muddy sanctions of a modern city, in the sterilized morality of desolate country towns, let them listen only to bad hymns and cheap jingles, let them wear clothes that are dull uniforms, and handle only lifeless machine-made furniture and trappings, and you starve art at its source. You produce what we have got in America, an art made out of fads at the top of the mind, conventionalized by prac- \ 68 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY tice, and averting its gaze from any passion that stabs at reality. It is deeply true that a new coun- try cannot produce an art, for it has not had the time to become saturated with memory and weather- beaten with experience. This congeries of memories and emotions gives us standing and distinction in the world. If the nationality to which we belong is honored, we feel honored ; we swell up perceptibly at bearing a name that is great in the world. The American abroad is almost a specialist in this field. He feels lonely traveling through cities where men speak a lan- guage he doesn't understand and are preoccupied with affairs in which he takes no part. He feels lost and unimportant. And then perhaps he sees a sign — " American Bar " or " American Shoes " ; he finds a place where American Ice Cream Soda is sold, he sees the American Consul's shield over a doorway, he hears " Dixie " at a cabaret, and purrs. A friend of mine told me once that the deepest emotion he experienced while exploring in Thibet was the sight of an American sewing- machine. Under no other circumstances could he have been passionate about a sewing-machine. But in Thibet it was the nucleus of his love. PATRIOTISM IN THE ROUGH 69 The American abroad will defend everything in America, will draw a picture of it that would make him roar with laughter at home. An individual feels instinctively that his own importance is asso- ciated with the importance of his group. " I've got a big brother at Harvard," says the small boy to his admiring companions. " I've got an uncle who has an automobile that can go sixty miles an hour," and the other small boys look upon him as one who can himself go sixty miles an hour. " Our export trade is three hundred million dollars a year," says the fifteen-dollar-a-week clerk, and he feels rich. The sisters, cousins, and aunts of a champion are looked upon as great athletes ; who does not feel that Jess Willard's wife must be a leader among women.'' When the German talks about his Luther, Kant, and Goethe, he is perhaps not without a sneaking suspicion that he belongs to the same breed. No wonder men speak of a " mystical entity whose life includes the lives of all the individuals, but whose life transcends the lives of those indi- viduals." When most intense, nationality turns a group of people into one super-person. The group lives, the individual is lost in its greater glory. 70 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY This union with the sources of one's birth is the most powerful factor in all politics. Its mani- festations are innumerable. It may appear as a desire to see the American flag waving over Costa Rica, as a desperate defense of American cooking against the world, or as a readiness to sacrifice love, home, business, and life itself for the " honor " of the nation. But whatever the form it takes, patriotism is the offensive and the defensive reac- tion to our first experience of the world. It is the desire to have, to hold, to increase, to fortify whatever can be identified with our earliest hates and loves. CHAPTER VI PATRIOTISM, BUSINESS, AND DIPLOMACY In Thorstein Veblen's new book ^ there is an inter- esting description of the American country town: " The nucleus of its population is the local busi- ness men, whose interests constitute the municipal policy and control its municipal administration. These local business men are such as the local bank- ers, merchants of many kinds and degrees, real estate promoters, local lawyers, local clergymen. . . . The business men who take up the local traffic in merchan- dizing, litigation, church enterprise and the like, com- monly begin with some share in the real estate specu- lation. This affords a common bond and a common ground of pecuniary interest, which commonly mas- querades under the name of local patriotism, public spirit, civic pride, and the like. This pretense of public spirit is so consistently maintained that most of these men come presently to believe in their own professions on that head. Pecuniary interest in local land values involves an interest in the continued * Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution, Sup- plementary Note IV, p. 317. 71 72 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY growth of the town. Hence any creditable misrepre- sentation of the town's volume of business traffic, population, tributary farming community, or natural resources, is rated as serviceable to the common good. And any member of this business-like community will be rated as a meritorious citizen in proportion as he is serviceable to this joint pecuniary interest of these ' influential citizens.' " There is, it seems to me, one serious fault to be found with this satirical analysis. It is the use of the phrases " masquerades " and " pretense of public spirit." Had Professor Veblen analyzed the origin of patriotism, he would have found, I think, that it is not an ideal in a vacuum, but at bottom a primitive tendency to protect a home and satisfy ambitions. He would not have found, as he as- sumes, that patriotism is a disinterested passion which can be contrasted sharply with commercial motives. There are no separate compartments of the human spirit labeled respectively the " eco- nomic " and the " patriotic " interest. The attachment of a child to its toys, to candy, its preempting of trees and caves and alleys, its desire to be part of the best gang in town, are not regarded as " economic " because they do not in- volve the use of money. But the pursuits of later PATRIOTISM, BUSINESS, DIPLOMACY 73 life are not a break with these childlike ambitions. They are a development of them — the doU's house turns into a suburban villa, the dolls are babies, the leader of the gang becomes president of the cham- ber of commerce. The transition from the wants of childhood to the wants of maturity is main- tained. There is, to be sure, great modification in them. But essentially we seek as men what we sought as children, and there is no point at which one can say: here the economic motive enters. From suckling at the breast and reaching for the moon to speculation in stocks and the purchase of a motor-car, there is an unbroken stream of appe- tite, which for some purposes we describe as eco- nomic. But in the most accurate sense, that is to say, in the most human sense, the motive is almost always mixed. We buy a house, not only to gather future increments of value, but because we like the neighbors and the scenery and are attached to the " old place." We desire promotion, not only because the pay is higher, but because the job is more interesting, the prestige is greater, because it will enable us to travel, it will make the wife happier, and permit us to play golf on Saturday afternoon. 74 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY If you look at a human being as he lives in the world, instead of treating liim as an abstraction, there is simply no way of isolating what is called the economic or the patriotic motive. They are both aspects of the business of life, the business of getting on. That is why I should quarrel with the tone of Professor Veblen's analysis. He implies that patriotism is something other-worldly, some- thing sharply distinguished from the ordinary con- duct of life. Now the local pride of the real estate men may be a narrow patriotism, an uneducated patriotism, but it certainly isn't a masquerade. When a king speaks of the glory of his dominions, you may picture him, if you like, as a magnified real estate owner. When men resist armed inva- sion, they are protecting their real estate. You can say that in this war the Germans have cap- tured a great many parcels of French, Belgian, and Polish real estate. The fixing of frontiers is a real estate operation. Because real estate is in- volved, you can call the patriotism which sur- rounds it a masquerade. But the truer thing to say, it seems to me, is that patriotism envelops the real estate because the real estate nourishes the lives and careers of the PATRIOTISM, BUSINESS, DIPLOMACY 75 patriots. Professor Veblen's small town magnates dote upon real estate rather than geometry, be- ' cause real estate is their way to the protection and enhancement of themselves. If religion offers such opportunity there will be many churches ; if the army oif ers them there will be many soldiers ; if inheritance offers them, there will be many idle sons. The emotions of loyalty and value congre- gate about the " vital interests " of our lives. When they don't, we regard them, as insane. And yet the local patriots will fight for their real estate, and some of them will die that others may keep it. That is the riddle about patriotism in its relation to economics. The riddle, I fancy, may perhaps be read in some such way as this : out of our childhood rises a stream of appetite, colored by our earliest at- tachments. It seeks to satisfy itself, to magnify its importance, to protect what statesmen call its prestige and satirists call its vanity. This stream flows into the channels of business opportunity. By real estate or selling shoes our appetites search for their food. But in the process the forms of business are overlaid with our emotion. We wrap ourselves around our money-making, and trans- 76 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY figure it. It is identified then with all that is most precious. The export of bicycles or steel rails is no longer the cold-blooded thing it looks like in statistical reports of commerce. It is integrated with our passion. It is wife and children and being respected. So when trade is attacked, we are attacked. The thing which was a means to an end has become part of ourselves. We are ready to fight and die for it because it taps the loyalties which are what we are. Passion is not an abstraction. It is what makes us move and act and feel. Passion must take some form, must have something to feed upon. And it seems to be able to feed upon almost anything from the thinnest dreams to the export of copper. But whatever it does feed upon is for the time being the passion itself. When copper exports are at- tacked, it isn't reasoned calculation alone which makes the decision for action. It is the feeling of the people whose passion is fused with the copper trade. How does it happen, though, that the people not concerned in a special interest are so ready to defend it against the world ? Plain men who have no financial interest in copper will feel aggrieved if PATRIOTISM, BUSINESS, DIPLOMACY 77^ American copper interests in a foreign land are attacked. The German people felt " humiliated " because German trade was thwarted in Morocco. The most obvious reason for this is that the pri- vate citizens are in the main abysmally ignorant of what the real stakes of diplomacy are. They do not think in terms of railroad concessions, mines, banking, and trade. When they envisage Morocco they do not think of the Mannesmann Brothers, but of " German prestige " and " French influence." When the Triple Entente compelled Germany to recede in the Moroccan affair of 1911, the rage of the German people was not due to a counting of their economic losses. They were furi- ous, not that they had lost Morocco, but that they had lost the dispute. There is small doubt that the masses of people in no country would risk war to secure mining concessions in Africa. But the choice is never presented to them that way. Each contest for economic privileges appears to the pub- lic as a kind of sporting event with loaded weapons. The people wish their team, that is, their country, to win. Just as strong men will weep because the second baseman fumbles at the crucial moment, so they will go into tantrums of rage because corpora- 78 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY tions of their own nationality are thwarted in a commercial ambition. They may have nothing tangible to gain or lose by the transaction ; certainly they do not know whether they have. But they feel that " our " trade is their own, and though they share few of its profits they watch its career with tender solici- tude. Above all, they feel that if " our " German traders are beaten in Morocco, the whole value of being a German has been somewhat lessened. This is where business and national prestige flow to- gether. Business is the chief form which competi- tion between nations can assume. To be worsted in that competition means more than to lose money; it means a loss of social importance as well. Trademarks like " Made in Germany " were a constant humiliation to Englishmen, even though they were glad to buy the goods because they were cheaper and better. But when from all over the world Englishmen came home beaten by a greater vitality and more modem organization, their dam- aged pocketbooks were only the smallest part of their loss. The real wound was the wound of self- respect, the lurking fear that there has been a depreciation in Englishmen. The fear is empha- PATRIOTISM, BUSINESS, DIPLOMACY 79 sized by the public opinion of the world which judges by trade efficiency and asks heartrending questions like: Is England decadent? Friendly critics rub salt into the wound by commenting on the obsolete machinery of British manufacture, the archaic habits of British merchants. Is it any wonder that what starts as a loss of dollars and cents is soon transfigured into a loss of the Eng- lishman's importance in the world? But when you attack that you attack the sources of his patriot- ism, and when he starts to reassert his importance, the proceeding has ceased to appear as a commer- cial enterprise. It has become a defense of British civilization. This is the mood for a strong foreign policy, which means a policy that uses political power to increase national prestige. The way to increase national prestige is to win economic victories by diplomatic methods. British diplomacy has been winning them for fifteen years — ^in Egypt, Persia, Africa. While Germany was capturing trade. Great Britain was scoring the diplomatic victories — the greatest of them being that in Morocco. From an economic point of view England had more to lose than to gain by a French dominion in 80 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY Morocco. The real economic interest probably lay in that internationalization of Moroccan oppor- tunity for which Germany contended. But Eng- land's interest was not primarily economic. Her interest was the defeat of German aggrandizement. She fought German prestige, and by threatening war in Mr. Lloyd George's Mansion House speech she won. She sent German diplomats home to re- ceive the jeers of the German people. The actual trade of Morocco was insignificant In the melee. Morocco became the bone on which Germany and England tested the sharpness of their teeth. The two populations cared very little for any particular iron mine, but they cared enor- mously about the standing of Englishmen and Germans in settling world problems. The conse- quences of the Moroccan affair have been terrible beyond words. National feeling was unloosened which overflowed the original dispute. Morocco meant not money, but bad will, suspicion, fear, re- sentment. To the British it was evidence of Ger- man aggression ; to the German it represented the tightening of the iron ring, the policy of encircle- ment. The strongest passions of defense in both countries were called into the European arena, and PATRIOTISM, BUSINESS, DIPLOMACY 81 when both sides claim to be defensive I see no rea- son for questioning their sincerity. It is perfectly possible for two nations both to feel attacked at the same time. In some such way as this patriotism becomes in- volved in business. Specific disputes over specific trade opportunities become the testing points of national pride. Just as a man will fight a law- suit at tremendous cost for a trivial sum, so na- tions will risk war to score a diplomatic victory. They feel that a defeat on one point will exhibit weakness and carry in its train defeat on other points. So they throw into the scales of decision their armaments. Navies and armies are prepared for peace as well as war. They are prepared to underline and emphasize diplomatic negotiation. They are a kind of initiation fee to the diplomatic corps. The weak threat of a strong Power counts for more than the strong threat of a weak one. When two diplomats meet, the decisive thing is not their good manners nor the justice of their pleas, it is the potential power of the nation for which they speak. Costa Rica may have envoys at European capitals, but they are not listened to eagerly. Imagine Costa Rica with a great navy, 82 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY and her minister's view would be consulted with real interest. There are in the world to-day not more than eight Powers which really count — Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Japan, and the United States. When I say " count," I mean that the effective force of the world is in their hands, and that the decision of world affairs is for them. The other nations lie in the orbit of the Great Powers. They follow but do not lead. Central America can have no foreign policy without consulting the United States. The immediate cause of the war was over the question of whether Serbia should become a satellite of the Germanic-Magyar combination or of the Russian Empire. Turkey in the last few years has fol- lowed a German lead. England's prime interest in Belgium was that it should not fall within the German sphere. > There is an incessant competition between gov- ernments to attach these smaller states to them- selves. At no point can one say that specific trade opportunities are the prize. The real prize for the diplomats is an increase of power, a greater em- phasis to their word. Their nations rally behind PATRIOTISM, BUSINESS, DIPLOMACY 83 them — the interested business men see it as dollar diplomacy, the mass of the people, hardly aware of the concrete issues, see it as a gigantic com- petition involving their own sense of importance. The diplomatic struggle is played in Morocco, at Constantinople, in Pekin, wherever there are stakes for which to play. At home there is joy in vic- tory, anger at defeat. Armament is added as an " insurance " for diplomacy, and of course mili- tary preparation always calls forth military prepa- ration. Every international incident is seen then, not on its " merits," but in its relation to the whole vast complicated game, forever teetering on the edge of war. PART II CHAPTER VII ARENAS OF FRICTION This whole business of jockeying for position is at first glance so incredibly siUy that many liberals regard diplomacy as a cross between sinister con- spiracy and a meaningless etiquette. It would be all of that if the stakes of diplomacy were not real. Those stakes have to be understood, for without such an understanding diplomacy is in- comprehensible and any scheme of world peace an idle fancy. The chief, the overwhelming problem of diplo- macy seems to be the weak state — the Balkans, the African sultanates, Turkey, China, and Latin America, with the possible exception of the Argen- tine, Chile, and Brazil. These states are " weak " because they are industrially backward and at pres- ent politically incompetent. They are rich in re- sources and cheap labor, poor in capital, poor in political experience, poor in the power of defense. The government of these states is the supreme 87 88 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY problem of diplomacy. Just as the chief task of American politics to the Civil War was the organi- zation of the unexploited West, so the chief task of world diplomacy to-day is the organization of virgin territory and backward peoples. I use backward in the conventional sense to mean a people unaccustomed to modem commerce and modern political administration. This solicitude about backward peoples seems to many good democrats a combination of super- ciliousness and greed. I have heard wise old Hin- dus grow tense with rage at the thought of some cockney Kiplingesque bureaucrat bringing " civili- zation " to the saturated civilization of the Bast. I have walked through Boston slums with an Indian, and it was I who did the apologizing. We laughed together over the white man's burden. " I'd rather be in hell than in the British Em- pire," said the Hindu. " How about being in the Russian or German Empires ? " I inquired. " I've thought of it," he replied ; " that's why I am a loyal subject of the British Crown." He went on to explain that he had given up the dream of his youth, which was to see India an inde- pendent nation. " It can't be done," he said ; ARENAS OF FRICTION 89 " we'd fight, and our princes would intrigue, and before long some Europeans would be killed. If the British didn't come back, the Russians would come, or even the Japanese, and we couldn't defend ourselves. We know how to fight in the old- fashioned way, but modern war, which is so much a question of factories and machinery and discipline, that's not the kind of thing we can carry on — now. We can't build submarines and dreadnoughts and all the other things you people call civiliza- tion. So we'll have to live under your ' protection ' — that's the way they describe it — ^while our people learn to sweat in factories and putter around on the stock exchange. Yes, we'll read newspapers, and learn the names and dates of the English kings, and when the upstarts who govern us are harsh we'll know how to make it hot for them. The white man won't swallow us, and we'll go on and learn to have pride and to organize, and who knows but our great-grandchildren may be able to ride in Pullman cars with the lords of the earth." To the dogmatic anti-imperialist it seems ab- surd that white people do not stay at home and civilize themselves, leaving the Indians and Moors and Hottentots and Yaquis to wort out their 90 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY own salvation. The whole business of expansion by the western peoples is hateful to these liberals. They remember the caste system, the arrogance, the unspeakable horrors of the Congo and Puto- mayo, the ravishing and despoiling and debauching of natives by the European. It is a hideous story. And yet the plain fact is that the interrelation of peoples has gone so far that to advocate interna- tional laissez-faire now is to speak a counsel of despair. Commercial cunning, lust of conquest, rum, bibles, rifles, missionaries, traders, conces- sionaires have brought the two civilizations into contact, and the problem created must be solved, not evaded. The great African empires, for example, were not created deliberately by theoretical imperialists. Explorers, missionaries, and traders penetrated these countries. They found rubber, oil, cocoa, tin; they could sell cotton goods, rifles, liquor. The native rulers bartered away enormous riches at trivial prices. But the trading-posts and the concessions were insecure. There were raids and massacres. No public works existed, no adminis- trative machinery. The Europeans exploited the natives cruelly, and the natives retaliated. Con- ARENAS OF FRICTION 91 cession hunters and merchants from other nations began to come in. They bribed and bullied the chiefs, and created still greater insecurity. An appeal would be made to the home government for help, which generally meant declaring a protecto- rate of the country. Armed forces were sent in to pacify, and civil servants to administer the coun- try. These protectorates were generally sanc- tioned by the other European governments on the proviso that trade should be free to all. The record of government by Europeans is varied. The Belgian Congo, for example, was un- til recently, at least, desperately mismanaged ; British Nigeria seems to have been the maturest ex- perience of British imperialism. The contrasts are extraordinary. In the Congo, before the Belgian government took it over, the administration was corrupt and cruel. " It is very evident," wrote Consul Nightingale to Sir Edward Grey in 1906, " that an idea prevails that the native is as much a part and parcel of the concessionary companies' property, as if he were a bundle of rubber or gum." ^ In Nigeria the British seem to have gone ' Nov. SO, 1906, Brit, Pari. Papers, 1906, Congo, Ed. 3450, No. 28, p. 47, quoted in Intervention and ColonxzO' 92 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY as far as it was humanly possible, not only to protect the native, but to preserve his civilization under the new conditions. For example, revenue was needed for governmental purposes. But " the people were unaccustomed to regular taxes; and many of the chiefs had been deprived of their main source of income by the abolition of slave trading. . . . The new scheme of taxation was simple and based upon the old method employed by the Emirs of the Mohammedan states, who had farmed out the taxes to certain favored headmen and levied them on the basis described in the Koran." ^ The system was modified later, but the interesting point about the experiment is the humane wisdom by which an effort was made to adjust modern necessities to ancient habits. The same policy was pursued in the courts. The first attempt was to substitute English common law for the native legal system; " but in 1904 the local criminal law was very wisely substituted for the British. In 1906 detailed proclamations were published reestablishing the Alkalis Court, authorizing the Judicial Council, tion in Africa, by Norman Dwight Harris, p. 44, Houghton Mifflin Co. 1 Idem, pp. 152-3. ARENAS OF FRICTION 93 and empowering the provincial courts to punish for disobedience to the native authorities or courts within their spheres." No attempt here to make imitation Englishmen out of the Nigerians. When schools were erected, the instruction was in the Hausa language, and in the Church Missionary School no child is allowed to learn English until he can read his native language. Granting all human limitations, what the British have attempted is to introduce Nigeria into the administrative structure of the modern world without thwarting its native growth or destroying its local integrity. It is essential to remember that what turns a territory into a diplomatic " problem " is the com- bination of natural resources, cheap labor, markets, defenselessness, corrupt and inefficient government. The desert of Sahara is no " problem," except where there are oases and trade routes. Switzer- land is no "problem," for Switzerland is a highly organized modern state. But Mexico is a problem, and Haiti, and Turkey, and Persia. They have the pretension of political independence which they do not fulfill. They are seething with corruption, eaten up with " foreign " concessions, and unable to control the adventurers they attract or safe- 94 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY guard the rights which these adventurers claim. More foreign capital is invested in the United States than in Mexico, but the United States is not a " problem " and Mexico is. The difference was hinted at in President Wilson's speech at Mobile. Foreigners invest in the United States, and they are assured that life will be reasonably safe and that titles to property are secured by orderly legal means. But in Mexico they are given " con- cessions," which means that they secure extra privi- leges and run greater risks, and they count upon the support of European governments or of the United States to protect them and their property. The weak states, in other words, are those which lack the political development that modem com- merce requires. To take an extreme case which brings out the real nature of the " problem," sup- pose that the United States was organized politi- cally as England was in the time of William the Con- queror. Would it not be impossible to do business in the United States ? There would be an everlast- ing clash between an impossible legal system and a growing commercial development. And the in- ternal affairs of the United States would consti- tute a diplomatic " problem." ARENAS OF FRICTION 95 This, it seems to me, is the reason behind the outburst of modern imperialism among the Great Powers. It is not enough to say that they are " expanding " or " seeking markets " or " grab- bing resources." They are doing all these things, of course. But if the world into which they are expanding were not politically archaic, the growth of foreign trade would not be accompanied by po- litical imperialism. Germany has " expanded " wonderfully in the British Empire, in Russia, in the United States, but no German is silly enough to insist on planting his flag wherever he sells his dyestufFs or stoves. It is only when his expansion is into weak states — into China, Morocco, Turkey, or elsewhere that foreign trade is imperialistic. This imperialism is actuated by many motives — by a feeling that political control insures special privileges, by a desire to play a large part in the world, by national vanity, by a passion for " owner- ship," but none of these motives would come into play if countries like China or Turkey were not politically backward. Imperialism in our day begins generally as an attempt to police and pacify. This attempt stimu- lates national pride, it creates bureaucrats with a 96 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY vested interest in imperialism, it sucks in and re- ceives added strength from concessionaires and traders who are looking for economic privileges. There is no doubt that certain classes in a nation gain by imperialism, though to the people as a whole the adventure may mean nothing more than an increased burden of taxes. Some pacifists have attempted to deny that a nation could ever gain anything by political con- trol of weak states. They have not defined the " nation." VVhat they overlook is that even the most ad*'anced nations are governed, not by the " people," but by groups with special interests. These groups do gain, just as the railroad men who controlled American legislatures gained. A knot of traders closely in league with the colonial office of a great Power can make a good deal of money out of its friendships. Every government has contracts to be let, franchises to give; it establishes tariffs, fixes railroad rates, apportions taxes, creates public works, builds roads. To be favored by that power is to be favored indeed. The favoritism may cost the motherland and the colony dear, but the colonial merchant is not a philanthropist. ARENAS OF FRICTION 97 The whole question of imperialism is as complex as the motives of the African trader who sub- sidizes the African missionary. He does not know where business ends and religion begins ; he is able to make no sharp distinction between his humani- tarianism and his profits. He feels that business is a good thing, and religion is a good thing. He likes to help himself, and to see others helped. The same complexity of motives appears in imperialist statesmen. " France must make herself loved as well as re- spected," said M. Raymond Poincare in explaining the protectorate treaty of 1912 over Morocco. " In the examination and defense of her interests and her rights, France has not separated her own cause from that of Europe. She has remembered that it was her duty to aid the march of civiliza- tion," said M. Pichon in discussing Moroccan af- fairs. We are inclined to smile at these fine words when we remember the exploitation which generally accompanies these protectorates. And yet the speech of M. Pichon is candid. When he speaks of " interests " and the " march of civilization " he pictures the twin motives which actuate imperial- ism. It is neither disinterested service nor sheer 98 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY grabbing. It is an effort to make civilization march so that interests are protected. For modem nations have learned that interests thrive best where civilization in the Western commercial sense has been introduced. They cannot milk the cow without feeding her, and after a while, if the milk is good, they develop a considerable affection for the cow. The whole situation might be summed up by say- I ing that the commercial development of the world will not wait until each territory has created for itself a stable and fairly modem political system. By some means or other the weak states have to be brought within the framework of commercial ad- ministration. Their independence and integrity, so-called, are dependent upon their creating con- ditions under which world-wide business can be conducted. The pressure to organize the globe is enormous. How enormous it is can be seen by studying the action of those great Powers which have had no colonial ambition. In the early eighties Germany under Bismarck set its face against expansion in Africa.* But back in 1842 a German missionary ^Idem, p. 64. ARENAS OF FRICTION 99 society had acquired twelve mission stations and considerable property in what is now German Southwest Africa. In 1863 there was a civil war between the Herreros and Hottentots, and sev- eral missions were destroyed. In 1868 the Prus- sian government petitioned the British to establish a protectorate over Walfish Bay and the Herrero- land. The British Foreign Office declined to do this, but it sent out a Commissioner who estab- lished peace between the tribes. Trouble continued. Finally, nine years later, in 1877, the protectorate was created. The British did not care for the job. It was expensive and dangerous. In 1880 another war broke out, and this time the British refused to intervene with military force. The Germans again asked protection, and the British refused any special aid. In 1883 Count Herbert Bismarck asked Great Britain whether she would protect a Bremen merchant named Liideritz who wished to set up a factory on the coast. The English said they would do their best. Herr Liideritz sent out his expedition, and purchased 150 square miles near Angra Pequena Bay from the Hottentot chief. The price was two hundred rifles and one hundred dollars in cash. Then Herr Liideritz pro- 100 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY ceeded to enlarge his domain. He bought an im- mense tract for three thousand dollars and sixty guns. But it happened unluckily that he had bought places already preempted by British trad- ers. The British appealed to their government, Herr Liideritz to his. The British sent a warship to Angra Pequena Bay to keep the German and British traders from exploding. There were communications between the govern- ments, and protestations from Germany that she had no intention of acquiring political rights. The British hesitated, and could not decide. Finally, in 1884, Bismarck announced that Herr Liideritz and his business were under the protection of the Ger- man Empire. There was some intrigue, and the Germans sent a warship to take possession of the territory. The negotiations were carried out, and Germany was an African Power with 215,000 square miles of territory. Another illuminating example of how European Powers become " interested " in weaker states is to be found in Italy's relations to Tripoli. Mr. Mor- ton Fullerton introduces the story as follows : ^ *' Signor Guglielmo Ferrero has pointed out that * Cf. Fullerton, Problems of Power, p. 249. ARENAS OF FRICTION 101 ' if Turkey has lost Tripoli, it is because the belli- cose enthusiasm of a new nationalistic Italy has forced the hand of the Government.' The rapid rise and the effective activity of the young Italian nationalists is one of the most interesting socio- political phenomena of our time. But, behind this remarkable movement, a curious series of invisible financial causes prepared Italian public opinion for the conquest of the ancient Roman province of Lybia." Mr. FuUerton then quotes an extract from an article by M. Pinon,^ which I take the liberty of reproducing : "At the beginning of the reign of Leo XIII, the Banco di Roma was a financial house of relatively slight importance, established by private individuals. Its manager, Ernesto Pacelli, succeeded in winning the confidence of the Pope's entourage, and Leo XIII intrusted to him the funds of the Holy See. The addition of this new capital made it possible for the Banco di Roma to develop its business. But its rela- tions with the Vatican prevented it from penetrating into the business world connected with the Quirinal, and notably to get its bills discounted by the Bank of Italy. Eager to force that door, the Banco di Roma sought advice in Government circles. The * " L'Europe et La Guerre Italo-Turque," by Ren6 Pinon — the Revue des deux Mondes, June 1, 1912. 102 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY President of its Board of Directors was the Presi- dent of the Chamber of Commerce^ brother of the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Signor Tittoni. It was the period when the Italian Government was signing with M. Delcasse the agreements declaring that France repudiated her interests in the Tripoli- taine, and that Italy repudiated hers in Morocco. The Italian Government wished to secure in the Tripolitaine economic interests, which would permit it to develop Italian industry and commerce there, which would virtually amount to securing a mortgage on the province, and might, were the case ever to arise, provide an opportunity for armed intervention. The Banco di Roma secured the coveted business connection with the Bank of Italy, promising in re- turn to participate in Italian enterprises in the Tripolitaine and in Cyrenaica, A whole series of undertakings and ventures were then founded in Tripoli and along the coast, with the capital, and under the direction of an agent of the Banco di Roma, Signor Bresciani, an ex-official of Erythrea; oil in- dustries, soap manufactures, grain elevators, fishr eries, the sponge trade, the purchase of land, electric works at Benghazi, a shipping line subventioned by the Government, and possessing at present four steamers. Missions were sent inland to enter into relations with the influential chiefs and marabouts. The Banco di Roma increased its capital to 80,000,- 000 francs, and recently augmented it still further. Notwithstanding these efforts trade remained stag- nant; business did not develop; the capital expended ARENAS OF FRICTION 103 remained unproductive; the financial obligations be- came more and more serious. The Ottoman officials put all kinds of obstacles in the way of the economic development of the province, seeking particularly to thwart the Italian ventures ; at Benghazi, for instance, the electric power works for the lighting of the town were not authorized. The Banco di Roma, having engaged a considerable capital in Africa, in 'the interest and almost at the suggestion of the Gov- ernment, with the assurance that one day the Tripoli- taine and Cyrenaica would pass under Italian domina- tion, and that the expectations of the shareholders would eventually be recompensed, found itself, it is said, in difficulties. Last year, its manager informed the Government that he was on the point of being driven to a liquidation of his interests in the Tripoli- taine, and that he was preparing to enter upon pour- parlers with an English group and a German group. It would appear that the prospect greatly contributed to the determination of the Government to intervene, if necessary, by arms. Once hostilities began, the Banco di Roma obtained the contract for the com- missariat operations and the clothing of the troops of the expeditionary corps. It remains associated with the Government for the development of Italian interests in the Tripolitaine. Thus, the Bank which has the confidence of the Vatican happens, at the same time, to be the first and foremost promoter of Italian enterprises in the Tripolitaine: an elegant comhinazione, uniting, for a work of Italian expan- sion and Christian propaganda, the two historic forces 104 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY of Rome which officially ignore each other and sev- erally combat one another." What are the factors of this situation? They are what might be called a scab bank, a government desiring increased political power, a class of traders associated with the government and desiring new markets and resources, an agreement with Euro- pean Powers virtually turning Tripoli over to Italy, a hostile and no doubt inefficient and cor- rupt Turkish administration, the sinking of much money which had to be retrieved, an expanding Italian pride spinning dreams of ancient Rome, a natural Christian contempt for infidels. Given that situation, the Italian enterprise finds itself balked. " The Turks are hampering Italians." Nothing easier than to regard it as a point of honor. News that Englishmen and Germans may have to replace the bankrupt Italians. Nothing easier than to regard that as a point of honor. A general feeling that to beat the Turks is for the glory of God anyway. Church money risked in a country of unbelievers. Influential and worried shareholders, who perhaps control sympathetic newspapers. Socialist agitation at home which re- ARENAS OF FRICTION 105 quires the sedative of patriotism. Large numbers of unemployed orators, poets, and officers who feel that a little military glory would help. Perhaps some French and English diplomatic nudging in order to push Italy, which is Germany's ally, into a war with Turkey, which is also Germany's ally. The prospect of war contracts, of administrative jobs in the conquered province. The people who have something to gain play upon the national pride of those who think they have nothing to lose. The electric power plant at Benghazi becomes a point in a Holy War, a crusade, a defense of Italian sovereignty, a safeguarding of Christian sufferers, an interest of civilization, of Latin genius, of Papal power, of the Roman eagles, of Cassar, Augustus, Vergil, Dante, of Jesus Christ against Mohammed. Nobody talks about the Banco di Roma. The formula of modern imperialism seems to be that financial groups enter a weak state and create " national interests," which then evoke national feeling. The corruption and inefficiency of the weak state " endanger " the interests ; patriotism rises to defend them, and political control follows. JThe prestige of a Power in the councils of the 106 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY world depends upon the weight of " interests " and the patriotic fervor with which they are " pro- tected." I am told that it was the State Depart- ment at Washington which, in order to secure a diplomatic " foothold," invited the American financial group to enter China. A government which hesitates very long at intervention, as the United States has done in Mexico, depreciates the value of its diplomatic power everywhere. Out of this complexity of motive there is created a union of various groups on the imperial programme : the diplomatic group is interested pri- marily in prestige; the military group in an op- portunity to act ; the bureaucratic in the creation of new positions ; the financial groups in safe- guarding investments ; traders in securing protec- tion and privileges, religious groups in civilizing the heathen, the " intellectuals," in realizing theories of expansion and carrying out " manifest destinies," the people generally in adventure and glory and the sense of being great. These inter- ested groups severally control public opinion, and under modem methods of publicity public opinion is easily " educated." Who should intervene in backward states, what ARENAS OF FRICTION 107 the intervention shall mean, how the protectorate shall be conducted — this is the bone and sinew of raodern diplomacy. The weak spots of the world are the arenas of friction. This friction is in- creased and made popular by frontier disputes over Alsace-Lorraine or Italia Irredenta, but in my judgment the boundary lines of Europe are not the grand causes of diplomatic struggle. Signor Ferrero confessed recently that the present genera- tion of Italians had all but forgotten Italia Irre- denta, and the Revanche has been a decadent French dream until the Entente and the Dual Alli- ance began to clash in Morocco, in Turkey, in China. Alsace-Lorraine has no doubt kept alive suspicion of Germany, and predisposed French opinion to inflicting diplomatic defeats in Morocco. But the arena where the European Powers really measure their strength against each other is in the Balkans, in Africa, and in Asia. Our Monroe Doctrine is part of this world- wide diplomatic contest. It is the announcement that this hemisphere is not to be made part of the substance of European diplomacy. In return we virtually agree to protect by force the interests of modern commerce in the weaker Latin-American lOS THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY states. We forbid European intervention, but we guarantee to remove the cause by which European intervention would be justified by Continental Powers. We have tried to establish an American oasis, free from the shiftings of European power. So far circumstances have enabled us to fulfill our pretensions. But over the rest of the world this struggle has brooded for decades, and the accumu- lated irritations of it have produced the great war. Diplomacy has appealed to arms because no satis- factory international solution has been found for the Balkan, Turkish, African, and Chinese prob- lems. This war is fought not for specific possessions, but for that diplomatic prestige and leadership which are required to solve all the different prob- lems. It is like a great election to decide who shall have the supreme power in the Concert of Europe. Austria began the contest to secure her position as a great Power in the Balkans ; Russia entered it to thwart this ambition ; France was engaged because German diplomatic supremacy would reduce France to a " second-class power," which means a power that holds world power on sufi'erance ; England could not afford to see France ARENAS OF FRICTION 10^ " crushed " or Belgium annexed because British imperialism cannot alone cope with the vigor of Germanj ; Germany felt herself " encircled," which meant that wherever she went — to Morocco, Asia Minor, or China — there a coalition was ready to thwart her. The ultimate question involved was this : whenever in the future diplomats meet to settle a problem in the backward countries, which European nation shall be listened to most ear- nestly? What shall be the relative prestige of Germans and Englishmen and Frenchmen and Rus- sians ; what sense of their power, what historical halo, what threat of force, what stimulus to admi- ration shall they possess? To lose this war will be like being a Republican politician in the solid South when the Democrats are in power at Wash- ington. It will mean political, social, and economic inferiority. Americans have every reason to understand the dangers of unorganized territory, to realize clearly why it is a " problem." Our Civil War was pre- ceded by thirty or forty years of diplomatic strug- gle for a balance of power in the West. Should the West be slave or free, that is, should it be the scene of homesteads and free labor, or of planta- 110 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY tions and slaves? Should it be formed into states which sent senators and representatives to support the South or the North? We were virtually two nations, each trying to upset the balance of power in its own favor. And when the South saw that it was beaten, that is to say " encircled," when its place in the Western sun was denied, the South seceded and fought. Until the problem of organ- izing the West had been settled, peace and federal union were impossible. The world's problem is the same problem tre- mendously magnified and complicated. CHAPTER VIII A LITTLE REALPOLITIK One of the most puzzling aspects of international politics is the stubborn way in which the ordinary citizen refuses to bother his head about the ques- tions which really trouble the diplomats. He will not think about foreign affairs in terms of mar- kets, concessions, and the exploitation of weak peoples. The stakes of diplomacy figure hardly at all in popular thinking. The big items are frontier disputes, the oppression of kindred people, racial mysticism, and a huge sentimental interest in pres- tige. Now these preoccupations no doubt count enormously in creating the explosive energies of international affairs. They explain the existence of hostile feeling among the masses of the people. They do not explain the direction which that hos- tility takes. It has often been pointed out that within the memory of living men the nations of Europe now fighting have been friends with their enemies and 111 112 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY enemies with their friends. On no theory of racial antagonism, nationality, or cultural difference and affinity can you explain the fact that up to twenty years ago England was friends with Germany, and deeply hostile to France and Russia ; it isn't " Mus- covite barbarism " versus " Teutonic Kultur " which explains the dropping of Bismarck's alli- ance with Russia; it isn't any sentimental theory which explains why Germany supplanted England as the friend of Turkey; why Russia and Japan fought ten years ago and have become allies now. The attempt to explain the world war in terms of Alsace-Lorraine, Poland, Italia Irredenta, and so forth, breaks down utterly in the face of the real issues which have dominated the Armed Peace since 1870. The world-wide struggle between Great Britain and Germany has not been over the na- tional boundaries of Europe. To say that Great Britain is fighting for the small nations of the Continent when her ally Russia is the oppressor of Finns, Poles, and Jews, and her ally Japan is the aggressor on Chinamen and Koreans, when Great Britain herself is one of the partitioners of Persia, is nothing but the talk of English liberal* who make a pious wish father to a pious thought. A LITTLE REALPOLITIK 113 The mere mention of recent diplomatic events ought to dispel the illusion that the line-up in Europe is cultural or national. Fashoda: in 1898 France and England were on the verge of war over it. Where is Fashoda? In the heart of Africa. The Entente Cordiale: on what basis was it made? Primarily on the basis of an agreement about Newfoundland fisheries, West African boundaries, Siam, Madagascar, the New Hebrides, and above all Egypt and Morocco; it was the settling of those differences in order to present a united front to Germany. Algeciras, Casablanca, Agadir: all of them in Africa. The Bagdad Railway : in Asia Minor. The Balkan crisis. The division of Persia. The Russo-Japanese War : Manchuria. The Italo- Turkish War: Tripoli. The Bosnian crisis. The Spanish- American War: Cuba, Porto Rico, the Philippines. The Venezuelan affair with England. It has been the weakness of almost all pacifists that they have never grappled with these problems from which the shifting antagonisms of nations receive their direction. They will not face the fact that the diplomatic struggle, the armed peace, and the war itself revolves about the exploitation of weak territories; that the Balance of Power, 114 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY the secret alliances, the desire for prestige, and the rest of the diplomatic paraphernalia are for use in the archaic and unorganized portions of the globe; that the anarchy of Europe is due to the anarchy of the Balkans, Africa, and Asia. The diplomats have at least seen the reality, as a read- ing of their negotiations will show. They have failed to solve the problem, but most pacifists have not even seen the problem. The diplomats have even had a programme for the peaceful organization of backward countries. Their formula has been " the preservation of their integrity and the open door to the commerce of all nations." Almost every recent diplomatic document dealing with Asia or Africa contains some such announcement. The doctrine is intended to allay suspicion, but it does more than that. In a half- hearted way it grasps at a solution of the world problem. For if you can preserve the integrity of a country, and you can keep the door open, then you preclude any one nation from monopoly, you give all nations an interest in preventing aggres- sion, and you remove the prime source of friction, which is the attempt of traders to secure control of the territory and discriminate against their A LITTLE REALPOLITIK 115 competitors. The diplomats diagnosed the malady. They saw that the weakness of these countries in- vited aggressive competition, so they proclaimed territorial integrity. They saw that the chief in- terest of all nations was trade, so they proclaimed the Open Door. They saw that only one nation could gain by imperial control and special economic privilege, and they hoped that the interests of all the others would prevent the absorption of weaker states. The ideal they stood for was international. Taken at its face value, it meant that modern com- merce was to penetrate without destroying the life of the natives and without preempting the ter- ritory for the business men of any one nationality. The only trouble with the ideal was that it could not be taken at its face value. Integrity and the Open Door have almost never been realized, and the phrases of treaties have frequently remained an empty aspiration. Americans ought to have no difficulty in understanding this result. We too have an ideal of the open door to all comers, and we know how hard it has been to make our govern- ment live up to that ideal. We know how rail- roads have discriminated in their rates, how officials have given special privileges to special interests^ 116 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY We have fought a long fight against it. Well, the same kind of forces which have so often shut the open door in the United States are at work in these weak countries where governments extend their imperial control. Groups of business men tend to secure political power in the vassal terri- tory, and after that integrity and the Open Door are likely to be a good deal of a mockery. A rough formula of what happens may be drawn up. A government for one reason or another ac- quires dominion over a backward people. Nowa- days it almost always does so with the consent of the other Powers. The act is proclaimed to be a European stewardship, a disinterested piece of international policing, all nations are promised equal rights, the " protected " people are promised a benevolent guardian. This work is done, not by angels, but by colonial officials. These human, all-too-human, beings become associated with con- tractors, concessionaires, bankers, traders. The officials have big favors to give — franchises, min- ing rights, docking privileges, land laws, taxation, customs administration, public works. The colo- nial officials must give them to somebody and they have to translate the phrase " open door " into A LITTLE REALPOLITIK 117 these concrete matters. If they are French officials knowing French business men, what is more natural than that these decisions should go against the German competitors? With the best intentions in the world it would be hard to maintain equal rights. And their intentions are not always the best in the world. They are living in a distant country. They are homesick, they are afraid of the natives, they form clubs, and the wives of officials know the wives of the business men. There is an interlock- ing of interest, friendship, prejudice, and corrup- tion. The Open Door disappears in the shuffle. There is no strong public opinion to maintain it. The disinterested people at home, if there are any, cannot watch the details of every colonial adminis- trative order. They have no adequate way of knowing whether their officials are betraying or fulfilling the pledge given to the world. Even if the people at home did have a way of knowing, they would not be over-anxious to hold the trust sacred. The people at home believe that *' our colonies " are for " our trade " ; they want to see " our business men " increase " our wealth." The popular philosophy of the world is that trade 118 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY is a national enterprise to be advanced by national political actions. A real internationalism of com- merce is still Utopian and silly to public opinion in every country. People believe that trade fol- lows the flag, that to enlarge political control is to increase prosperity. This philosophy prevents the home government from checking the favoritism of colonial officials even when that favoritism is turning treaties into scraps of paper. Many writers, notably Mr. Norman Angell, have argued that this philosophy is a great illusion. A people cannot prosper, they say, by extending political control. They claim that free trade is the best road to prosperity, that a nation cannot gain wealth for itself by tariffs and discriminations and privileges in its colonies. They may be right, although the evidence is to my mind far from com- plete. But whatever may be the truth about the loss or gain to a whole people, there can be little doubt that there is a real possibility of gain to a group of capitalists. The French peasant may be poorer because his government administers an African empire, but that certain French bankers or business men are richer there can be no question. If those capi- A LITTLE REALPOLITIK 119 talists can secure a monopoly, the whole world may suffer but the capitalists gain. Free trade may make for the prosperity of the masses, but tariffs, rebates, and monopolies create millionaires. And it is not the masses which control governments ; it is certain economic classes, and the colonial gov- ernments are very likely to be controlled by colonial capitalists. Those capitalists are not suffering from the Great Illusion. They know quite defi- nitely that it is more profitable for them to secure a privilege than to have someone else secure it. The Great Illusion, such as it is, must be in the belief of French peasants and artisans and shop- keepers that they have something to gain by en- riching French capitalists in Africa. But even here I am not altogether sure that it is a total illusion. The workingmen in a tariff-protected industry are generally protectionists ; the railroad workers are not hostile to high rates. They be- lieve that they can either share the profits of privi- lege, or that if the privilege were wiped out they would be ruined. Introduce free trade in the United States and thousands of workingmen would be thrown out of employment ; reduce rail- road rates too drastically and the railwaymen 120 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY must abandon hope of wage increases. In like manner, if you create a real open door in subject territory, if you allow fierce competition, the workmen at home who produce for the colonial export trade will suffer. If they suffer, the shop- keepers from whom they buy, their landlords, and their dependents will suffer. Out of these people there arises public opinion at home to back capi- talists abroad. It may still be true that the people in general would gain by free trade, which is only another name for the Open Door. But the people in gen- eral do not exist except in the minds of philoso- phers. The people who are heard from are those whose profits and livelihood depend upon these privileges. They are the only ones sufficiently interested to care. To all the other people the problem seems thin and academic: they are too busy to fight privileged groups in the interest of what to them is a vague ideal of internationalism. Moreover, they are, on the whole, convinced that any increase of colonial wealth will help rather than hurt them. There is rarely an interest powerful enough in any country to force its colonial administration A LITTLE REALPOLITIK 121 into a loyal observance of the spirit and letter of the promise given to the world. There is almost never a political power at home sufficiently active to make the administration of a weak state a dis- interested service to the international community. The groups directly interested in breaking the promise are too constantly at work. They appear as " national interests," evoke patriotism ; they corrupt and destroy the guarantees given to the world. But they are not unopposed. The groups in other countries in whose faces the door has been shut protest to their governments. Their govern- ments take up the matter diplomatically, and an issue has been raised between the nations. The Germans claim, for example, that the French did not live up to the agreements about Morocco, that the visit of the Emperor to the Sultan of Tangiers, the sending of the Panther to Agadir, were at- tempts to make France discuss her Moroccan policy with the governments of Europe. I cannot pretend to know the real facts of the situation, but it is difficult not to believe that there is some truth in the German claim. There may have been less truth than the actions of Germany warranted, 122 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY but there is every human reason for suspecting that Morocco was dominated less in the interests of the world than in the interests of French colonial capitalists. For the purposes of this argument it is not im- portant to decide the exact truth of the issue. I have read English and French and Belgian com- ment which agreed with Germany; I have read German comment which agreed with France. But the main lesson of the business is that the issue is difficult to settle, that the only way open for set- tling it was by diplomacy between the German government and the Entente Powers. But such diplomacy could never be limited to the Moroccan problem alone. The vexed question of whether the claims of the Mannesmann Brothers were fic- titious or real became inevitably a European prob- lem in which every irritation, every blindness of patriotism, rose up to cloud the issue. The Moroc- can affair ceased to be a matter of determining claims ; it became an effort to test the solidity of the Entente, a question of prestige. It was a small match which on two occasions almost set off an immense powder magazine. Some English liberals have protested vigorously A LITTLE REALPOLITIK 123 against the idea that England should have threat- ened war with Germany to support the French policy in Morocco. They dismiss, quite rightly, the notion that England's action was based on a conviction that the French had abstract justice on their side. No nation risks war for the sake of abstract justice in some corner of the world. These English liberals then point out that England stood to lose economically by the French policy in Morocco. Why did England do what she did.f* She' did it for what we Americans call " log- rolling " reasons. She supported France in Morocco because she wanted French support in Egypt and elsewhere. She did it to preserve the Entente, to resist what she felt was German ag- gression. The English liberals often point to the secret pact with France. Whether it was moral or immoral, wise or unwise, need not be dis- cussed. The significance of it for us is that the Anglo-French harmony was like a political party in which one congressman agrees to vote for an- other congressman's appropriation in exchange for support of his own. The Entente and the Teutonic Alliance were the two political parties of the world which made non-partisan government 124 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY of weak territory impossible. Yet non-partisan- ship is what the Open Door promises. Just as Democrats and Republicans will cover each other with mud in a quarrel over a two-thousand-dollar appointment, so these nations of Europe, lined up into political coalitions, have covered each other with blood over a series of quarrels about privi- leges in backward states. Let me make myself clear: I do not think Europe is fighting about any particular privilege in the Balkans or in Africa. I think she is fighting be- cause Europe had been divided into two groups which clashed again and again over the organiza- tion of the backward parts of the world. Those clashes involved prestige, called forth national sus- picions, created the armaments, and after a while no question could be settled on its merits. Each question involved the standing of the Powers, each question was a test of relative strength. No nation felt it could afford to lose even if it hap- pened to be wrong. Since no question could be settled, every question continued to pour its poison into the European mind. It was the memory of diplomatic defeats, the fear of future defeats, that in July, 1914, had made European diplomacy in- A LITTLE REALPOLITIX 125 capable of preserving the peace. The struggle had hardened the governing mind to a point where stub- born insistence and uninventive appeals for peace were all that was left. The mind of Europe collapsed. The appeal to arms was the result of that criminal recklessness which decides to hack its way through when no other solution presents itself to the mind. We tinker futilely with a machine until in exasperation we kick it. But when Europe is through kicking itself to pieces it will have to start tinkering again. The problems which drove it to the war will still require constructive solutions. Those problems arose out of the chaos and backwardness of weak states. This war will have increased the chaos and the backwardness. It will leave all Europe ex- hausted for the work. It may change the Balance of Power, but whatever the relative position of the nations at the end, they will have to resume their interrupted work of making the whole world politically fit for modern commerce. They may listen to one Power more and to another less, but the bedazzled and flouted task of internationalizing the unorganized earth will continue to demand their attention. They may fight " to the last man," 126 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY but they will not escape the problem, nor by fight- ing can they solve it. They can perhaps exhaust themselves so thoroughly that Africa and Asia will be too strong to be " civilized " by Europe. But the chances are that they will begin again to re- build the international structure which they built so badly and wrecked so hideously. CHAPTER IX A PROPOSAL The point I have been making will, I fear, seem a paradox to many readers, — that the anarchy of the world is due to the backwardness of weak states ; that the modern nations have lived in an armed peace and collapsed into hideous warfare because in Asia, Africa, the Balkans, Central and South America there are rich territories in which weakness invites exploitation, in which inefficiency and corruption invite imperial expansion, in which the prizes are so great that the competition for them is to the knife. This is the world problem upon which all schemes for arbitration, leagues of peace, reduc- tion of armaments must prove themselves. The diplomats have in general recognized this. It was commonly said for a generation that Europe would be lucky if it escaped a general war over the break- up of Turkey in Europe. The Sick Man has infected the Continent. Our own " preparedness " campaign is based on the fear that the defenseless- 127 128 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY ness of Latin- America will invite European aggres- sion, that the defenselessness of China will bring on a struggle in the Pacific. Few informed people imagine for a moment that any nation of the world contemplates seizing or holding our own territory. That would be an adventure so ridiculous that no statesman would think of it. If we get into trouble it will be over some place like Mexico, or Haiti, or the Philippines, or the Panama Canal, or Man- churia, or Hawaii. Our Monroe Doctrine has meant, in a rough way, that this hemisphere was not to be made part of the stakes of diplomacy. We have regarded it as an announcement to Europe that if any force was to be used in regulating the weak American republics, the United States alone would use that force. We almost went to war with England in 1896 because we insisted that the United States, not Great Britain, was the policeman of Venezuela. During our Civil War France sent an army into Mexico. We were too weak to stop her. We were, in fact, for the time being, one of the disorderly parts of the world, and we invited aggression. But when the Union was saved, France had to with' draw from Mexico, A PROPOSAL 129 Experts in international affairs tell us that the Monroe Doctrine has really been nothing but a gigantic bluff made possible by the fact that Europe was so busy it did not dare to risk war with us. Europe, especially Great Britain, has let us hold the Doctrine. But it has implied that we must be responsible for the protection of trade and capital and life. In other words, we can have the Monroe Doctrine if we act as international guardian of the weak Americas. If we failed to do that, Europe would call us to account. She would undoubtedly have called us to account long ago over Mexico if it had not been for the war. Just now President Wilson is trying to re- organize Mexico. He plans to pacify the country, not as an imperial act, but as a Pan-American duty. The outcome is not clear, the difficulties are enormous. But the point which needs to be borne in mind is that the Monroe Doctrine, Pan-American action, and the rest of the paraphernalia are the existing machinery through which Mr. Wilson can exercise some of the functions of a world govern- ment. If an actual world state existed, Mexico would be policed by international force. No such world state exists, but the Monroe Doctrine and ISO THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY Pan- Americanism are attempts to fill the vacuum. The need is so great that these substitutes have had to be invented. Europe has also recognized that some kind of world government must be created. The phrase world government, of course, arouses immediate opposition; the idea of a European legislature would be pronounced Utopian. Yet there have been a number of European legislatures. The Berlin Conference of 1885 was called to discuss " freedom of commerce in the basin and mouths of the Congo ; application to the Congo and Niger of the principles adopted at the Congress of Vienna with a view to preserve freedom of navigation on certain international rivers . . . and a definition of formalities to be observed so that new occupa- tions on the African coasts shall be deemed ef- fective." The Powers represented made all sorts of reservations, but they managed to pass a " General Act of the West African Conference." The Congo Free State was recognized. As Mr. Harris says : ^ " Bismarck saw in this a means of preventing armed conflict over the Congo Basin, of restricting the Portuguese advance, and of pre- ' Intervention and Colonization in Africa, by Norman Dwight Harris, p. 28. A PROPOSAL 131 serving the region to free trade." What was it that Bismarck saw? He saw that the great wealth of the Congo and its political weakness might make trouble in Europe unless the Congo was organized into the legal structure of the world. The Conference at Algeciras was an interna- tional legislature in which even the United States was represented ; the London Conference after the Balkan wars was a gathering of ambassadors try- ing to legislate out of existence the sources of European trouble in the Balkans. But all these legislatures have had one great fault. They met, they passed laws, they adjourned, and left the enforcement of their mandate to the conscience of the individual Powers. The legislature was inter- national, but the executive was merely national. The legislature moreover had no way of checking up or controlling the executive. The representa- tives of all the nations would pass laws for the government of weak territories, but the translation of those laws into practice was left to the colonial bureaucrats of some one nation. If the law was not carried out, to whom would an appeal be made? Not to the Conference, for it had ceased to exist. There was no way in which a 132 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY European legislature could recall the officials who did not obey its will. Those officials were respon- sible to their home government, although they were supposed to be executing a European mandate. Those who were injured had also to appeal to their home government, and the only way to remedy an abuse or even sift out the truth of an allegation was by negotiation between the Powers. This raised the question of their sovereignty, called forth patriotic feeling, revived a thousand memo- ries, and made any satisfactory interpretation of the European Act or any criticism of its adminis- tration a highly explosive adventure. Suppose, for example, that Congress had power to pass laws, but that the execution of them was left to the states. Suppose New York had its own notions of tariff administration. How would the other states compel the New York customs officials to execute the spirit and letter of the federal law? Suppose every criticism by Penn- sylvania of a New York Collector was regarded as an infringement of New York's sovereignty, as a blow at New York's pride, what kind of chaos would we suffer from? Yet that is the plight of our world society. A PROPOSAL 133 The beginnings of a remedy would seem to lie in not disbanding these European conferences when they have passed a law. They ought to continue in existence as a kind of senate, meeting from time to time. They ought to regard themselves as watchers over the legislation which they have passed. To them could be brought grievances, by them amendments could be passed when needed. The colonial officials should at least be made to report to this senate, and all important matters of policy should be laid open to its criticism and suggestion. In this way a problem like that of Morocco, for example, might be kept localized to a permanent European Conference on Morocco. Europe would never lose its grip on the situation, because it would have representatives on the spot watching the details of administration, in a position to learn the facts, and with a real opportunity for stating grievances. The development of such a senate would prob- ably be towards an increasing control of colonial officials. At first it would have no power of ap- pointment or removal. It would be limited to criticism. But it Is surely not fantastic to sup- pose that the colonial civil service would in time 134 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY be internationalized ; that is to say, opened to men of different nationalities. The senate, if it de- veloped any traditions, would begin to supervise the budget, would fight for control of salaries, and might well take over the appointing power alto- gether. It would become an upper house for the government of the protected territorj', not essen- tially different perhaps from the American Philip- pine Commission. The lower house would be native, and there would probably be a minority of natives in the senate. The liberal Powers would undoubt- edly clash with the others over the policy to be presented as the natives rose to self-consciousness and demanded increasing power in their own country. An organization of this kind would meet all the difficulties that our Continental Congress or that any other primitive legislature has had to deal with. There would be conflicts of jurisdiction, puzzling questions of interpretation, and some place of final appeal would have to be provided. It might be the Senate of European representatives ; but if the Senate deadlocked, an appeal might be taken to The Hague. The details of all this are ob- viously speculative at the moment. A PROPOSAL 135 The important point is that there should be in existence permanent international commissions to deal with those spots of the earth where world crises originate. How many there should be need not be suggested here. There should have been one for Morocco, for the Congo, for the Balkan penin- sula, perhaps for Manchuria ; there may have to be one for Constantinople, for certain countries fac- ing the Caribbean Sea. Such international gov- erning bodies are needed wherever the prizes are great, the territory unorganized, and the com- petition active. The idea is not over-ambitious. It seems to me the necessary development of schemes which Euro- pean diplomacy has been playing with for some time. It represents an advance along the line that governments, driven by necessity, have been taking of their own accord. What makes it espe- cially plausible is that it grasps the real problems of diplomacy, that it provides not a panacea but a method and the beginnings of a technique. It Is internationalism, not spread thin as a Parliament of Man, but sharply limited to those areas of friction where internationalism is most obviously needed. CHAPTER X ALGECIRAS: A LANDMARK The proposal made in the last chapter differs in many important ways from the peace programmes now being discussed in England and America. The differences are in themselves worth discussing because they throw into relief some of the real issues of world organization. The magic word in America to-day is arbitra- tion. The song " I Didn't Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier " contains the sincere, though unmusical, lines, " Let nations arbitrate their future troubles. It's time to lay the sword and gun away." On a Chautauqua circuit the orator can almost always draw applause by insisting that war is as obsolete as dueling, that nations should settle their differences in court and not on the battlefield. The idea seems to be that diplomats should be as reasonable as possible, and that when they can- 186 ALGECIRAS: A LANDMARK 137 not come to agreement the case should be taken to the Hague Tribunal and settled for them. The fatal flaw of the scheme is, of course, that nations will arbitrate only their unimportant dif- ferences. They will not, and cannot, arbitrate such matters as the relative prestige of Germany and England, the right of the Entente to fight a diplo- matic war with the Dual Alliance, or what the balance of power is to be in future negotiations about Africa and Asia. There is no court which can help the anger of Republicans at being " en- circled " by Democrats in the solid South. Yet the alignment of nations is more like the alignment of political parties than it is like the opposition of two men engaged in a lawsuit. Behind most of the specific differences between nations looms the conviction that the quarrel is a test of strength. They are afraid of losing not only the actual dispute, but their prestige in future disputes. Thus Prince Biilow, in explaining the German government's position to his ambassador in Lon- don (April 15, 1905), writes: " We are acting in regard to our interests, of which there is appar- ently the desire to dispose without our assent. The importance of these interests is in this corir 138 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY nection a secondary matter. . . . We possess eco- nomic interests in Morocco. ... If, by our si- lence, we renounce them, we shall then encourage the world, which is watching us, to adopt a similar lack of consideration to our detriment in other questions, perhaps more important." Again, on April 28, 1905, he writes to his am- bassador in Paris : " If a great Power were to admit this fashion of ignoring its existence, the said Power would be incurring inconvenience in the future, not to say dangers. The material value of the threatened interests only comes in here as a secondary factor." So the diplomats describe their interest as a vital interest involving honor which is not justiciable. They mean, as Prince Billow says, that the merits of the controversy are less important than the loss or gain of influence. Moreover, it is very difficult to see how a court could arbitrate the important matters. A court consists of judges. These judges can take a treaty and " interpret " it — that is to say, they can say what they believe it means. They can make a human judgment about evidence submitted and issue a decree. But as everyone knows, there are more ways than one of frustrating any legal de- ALGECIRAS: A LANDMARK 139 cision : the letter of the law can be observed and the spirit denied. The Hague Court has no ma- chinery for following up its decree, no way of controlling the administrative effects of its deci- sions. It gives a static interpretation of static treaties and hopes they will apply reasonably to dynamic conditions. The' Court must frankly enunciate judge-made law for new conditions or it will forever be trying to fit antiquated formulae to the complexity of life. All this means that the Hague Court is impo- tent without legislation and without executive. It can deal with minor points where the will not to fight is strong, but it is certain to break down where the dander is up, where nations feel that the law is archaic, or that the execution of it is unfair. Germany's real quarrel with the Entente has been that it was insisting upon the sanctification of international laws that had been outgrown, that those laws were conservative, and were fatal to her progress. She wanted not a legal interpretation of existing law, but a revision of it. In that desire the Germans say they were blocked at every point. Now by what process at The Hague could the law have been altered.'* The Court could hardly do 140 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY much more than interpret the very law to which Germany objected, unless the Court was to make itself into a European legislature. But the na- tions would not to-day tolerate such usurpation of power by international judges. These difficulties are, it seems to me, supreme. Arbitration will fail at the crucial points, because the real need is for lawmaking and control of administration. As a great American statesman has said : " I was willing to arbitrate the dispute over such-and-such because I knew we were sure to win." He would not have submitted the matter to arbitration if he had not been sure of the re- sult. This sentiment among governments has one result: nothing will induce them to arbitrate an important point unless they feel sure the Court will be with them. Many pacifists have seized upon this defect of the Hague idea and tried to find a remedy for it. They say that there must be international force to compel arbitration and to sanction its decrees. The result is the proposed League of Peace, an agreement that all nations will fight any one na- tion which refuses to submit its quarrels to .The Hague. ALGECIRAS: A LANDMARK 141 Such a league might keep the peace, but it would be a very unsatisfactory peace. It would mean that small countries like Holland, Denmark, and Switzerland would be drawn at once into a quarrel between Great Britain and Germany. It would mean that the French peasants on the Meuse lived in fear and trembling at the prospect that they would have to take part in a war between, let us say, Germany and the United States. Belgium and Poland would be the battlefields of every at- tempt to compel Germany to arbitrate her ambi- tions. The League is really an Anglo-American idea, a rather comfortable proposal on our part to make others bear the brunt of our troubles. It is a plan profoundly unjust in its distribution of costs. It is obviously, though unconsciously, of course, devised in the selfish interest of the na- tions which are not likely to be invaded. Even if it were feasible, it would not meet the situation. When a nation had been buUied into arbitration, the Hague Court would still be an inadequate instrument for meeting the situation. It would still be unable to legislate or to control administration. The whole idea seems to be based on a false con- 142 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY ception of the world problem. It contains no method for organizing the world, for dealing day by day with the weak spots which are the areas of friction. When the fire is just about to break out, arbitration arrives with a teaspoonful of water. It offers no technique for the constructive elimination of the causes of war; it merely tries to stop war when the causes have operated to the breaking point. It has hindsight and it lacks foresight. It acts on the mistaken notion that the quarrels of nations are over specific points, and fails to recognize that what the world needs is not the adjudication of deadlocks, but the per- sistent, creative administration of those terri- tories where deadlocks are likely to occur. Arbi- tration is always too late, even when it is success- ful. It is applied onjy when the quarrel has aroused patriotism, has become a " vital interest," has grown to proportions where defeat is more than a nation will endure. The scheme is a bashful attempt to create a world state out of courts alone. A world state is meaningless without legislative and executive powers. It is all very well to talk of going to court instead of fighting a duel, but if there were ALGECIRAS: A LANDMARK 14S no legislature which had power to make laws and no executive to enforce them we should continue to fight duels. The mere fact that there were men called judges ready to decide about laws which were vague in the minds of judges and unsatis- factory to everyone would not compel much loyalty. Realizing this, many people dream of a Federa- tion of the World, with a Parliament of Man, a World Police, World Courts, and World Officials. It is a valiant dream which will be realized if this planet is to fulfill man's best hopes. It is clearly the goal of humane political endeavor, and no civilized man can afford to sneer at it or to lay it altogether outside his mind. Its difficulties to- day are obvious. They are chiefly these: that too few people desire such a world state, that such a world state to-day would be tyrannical to weaker peoples, that the administrative capacity of the peoples of the earth is not yet ready for it, that no Parliament of Man could possibly know enough or find time enough to deal with the enor- mous complexities of the earth. The British Par- liament is choked with the mere volume of business which imperial and domestic affairs put before it. 144 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY A World Parliament would collapse under its tre- mendous burdens. The Hague plan, with all its ramifications, fails because it lacks the essentials of government — legislative and executive power. The World State is at present too ambitious. The proposal I have ventured to make provides for a series of local world governments, each charged with some one of the world problems. Developed out of the idea of world conferences like that about the Congo and Morocco, it would construct a number of minia- ture world legislatures, with the hope that they would become localized organs of a world state. No step proposed goes very far beyond existing experience. In some parts of the world the cus- toms or the debt is internationally administered (Turkey, for example, and China) ; for others there have been European legislatures (such as the Berlin Congress of 1885) dependent upon na- tional administration ; in some places the courts are extraterritorial (China; Turkey till recently). The suggestion is that the legislature be made permanent, that the administration be coordinated with it. There would thus be established full- fledged world governments limited to special ALGECIRAS: A LANDMAEK 145 areas. They would demand in the beginning no more relinquishment of national sovereignty than the experience and sense of the world has already fairly well agreed to. The case of Morocco is illuminating because it shows the older diplomacy experimenting with the rudiments of a world state. Back in 1880 Morocco was seen to be an international problem, and a convention was held at Madrid to discuss her af- fairs. Everybody concerned protested loudly his unalterable attachment to the integrity of Morocco and to equal trading rights for all nations. There is no use pretending that these professions were loyally carried out. France, Spain, Great Britain, and Germany were involved in bargains, demands, and adventures of all kinds which made Moroccan independence and the open door fairly idle words. Then the German Emperor paid his visit to Tan- giers, and some months later the European nations and the United States met at Algeciras and cre- ated a kind of world charter for the future of Morocco. Some of the details of the Algeciras Act show very clearly that the need for international gov- ernment was felt by the diplomats in 1905 to be a 146 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY practical consideration for statesmanship. They would not have called it a bit of world government, but here are some of the things they provided for in the act, which was itself the work of an inter- national legislature: A police force was to be raised under the " sov- ereign " (!) authority of the Sultan and dis- tributed among the eight commercial ports. From forty-six to sixty French and Spanish offi- cers approved by the Sultan were to help or- ganize the force for five years; a Swiss was to be made inspector-general for five years. He was to report to the Moorish government, but a copy of his reports was to be handed to the Diplomatic Body at Tangier. The Morocco State Bank was to be established. It was to be disbursing treasurer and financial agent of the Moorish Empire. Spanish money was made legal tender; French corporation law was to apply to the bank, and, finally, it was pro- vided that the German Imperial Bank, the Bank of England, the Bank of Spain, and the Bank of France should each appoint a censor to watch over the administration. There were provisions about taxes, acquisition ALGECIRAS: A LANDMARK 147 of property, custom duties, navigation, and pub- lic works — the execution was to be settled by agree- ment between the Moorish government and the Diplomatic Body at Tangier. Supervision of fraud and smuggling was placed in the hands of a mixed Customs Valuation Committee and a mixed Customs Committee. The awarding of contracts for public works was to be regulated by the Moorish government and the Diplomatic Body. Bids " without respect for nationality " were to be made on all public works and supply contracts. It was clearly an attempt to create an interna- tional rather than an imperial control of Morocco. Those diplomats at Algeciras were trying amidst enormous difficulties to solve the problem of the weak state by bringing it under the control not of one empire but of the united powers of the west- ern world. They saw that the only way out of the issues raised by defenseless rich territory is to make them dependencies of a World State. They saw that no one nation could be trusted to act as international steward, so they gave the whole Diplomatic Body a supervising control of certain aspects of administration. 148 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY They failed. The international government they set up was torn to bits by intrigues and bar- gains, by the disrupting forces of nationalism. It is no new experience for the world. Whenever a government is constructed which calls for a loy- alty larger than the patriotism to which men are accustomed, it is very difficult to keep that gov- ernment going. When we think how difficult a task it was to bring about Italian, German, and American union, we need not be surprised that the | experiment with a World State to control Morocco should have ended in disastrous failure. French, Spanish, British, and German finance, bureaucratic ambition and national pride played the same part that " state's rights," " particularism," " separa- tion " have always played in the world. They were unloyal, uncontrollable, and destructive. •' But just as no vigorous man would abandon the idea of American union because the Articles of Confederation were a failure, or because state's rights threatened to break the government in 1861, so men to-day dare not turn away from the path marked out at Algeciras. If the world is to be saved from the hideous clashing of empires, it must establish a world control in the territories where ALGECIRAS: A LANDMARK 149 the clashes occur. Algeciras, though a failure, is a great precedent, the most hopeful effort at world organization made up to the present. I venture to say that if the spirit of the Algeciras Act had been realized it would have been more important than all the Hague rules about how to fight in " civilized " fashion, all the arbitration treaties, all the reduction of armament proposals with which the earth is deluged. Algeciras grasped the prob- lem of diplomacy — the conflict of empires in weak territory. Algeciras gallantly tried to introduce a world government to control it. The men at Algeciras failed. If we cannot succeed where they failed, the outlook for the future is desperate. CHAPTER XI THE CORE OF IMPERIALISM Peace foundations and universities could not do a more useful work than to make an exhaustive, analytical study of the international failure at Morocco. If we knew with any certainty why the spirit and the letter of the Algeciras Act were frustrated, why imperialism conquered interna- tionalism, we should have an invaluable experi- ence for the future. At present the whole con- troversy is in the hands either of desperate patriots or desperate anti-patriots, the facts, the interpre- tations, the conclusions are a seething mass of un- certainty. Morocco made Europe see red; the literature of the subject, written several years ago, is blind with the fury and apprehension of this war. Though it is impossible now to arrive at any exact judgment of this infinitely complex situa- tion, it is useful, I think, to imagine and sketch out a working hypothesis. What are the probable factors which defeat the attempt to internation- 150 THE CORE OF IMPERIALISM 151 alize the control of a backward state? They may perhaps be described as follows: Missionaries, explorers, adventurers, prospect- ors come back home with tales of unbounded wealth. The tales are told to merchants with goods to sell, to capitalists with money to invest, to church congresses with a gospel to spread. Pri- vate companies are formed to exploit the new mar- ket and the new riches. Their directors at home consult with the colonial officials and receive what are rather vague promises of support. The news of the venture spreads to the trading and financial centers of other nations ; they too begin to form companies and send out capital and goods. Trouble appears in the country which is being opened. It may be that the natives put exorbitant custom duties on merchandise; it may be that in transacting business the invading business men outrage local superstitions ; it may be that an in- solent missionary is killed in a riot ; it may be that business rivals stir up the natives against one another. The newspapers at home are furnished with lurid accounts of anarchy and of the danger to their " nationals." At the same time some concessionaire company may be working on the 152 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY feeling of the bureaucracy at home with the object of securing some important monopoly — perhaps an exclusive franchise, perhaps the control of mines, perhaps harbor rights or navigation facil- ities on a river. The anarchy in the country fur- nishes not only a justification but a pretext, too, and some kind of intervention takes place. There are visions of manifest destiny and the white man's burden among those who have read too much Kip- ling or smoked too many cigarettes in their edi- torial careers. The other Powers, also having manifest destinies and ambitious financiers, protest at the intervention and ask an accounting. Then, after much gnashing of teeth and an unlimited out- flow of careless patriotism, a European conference meets to deal with the situation. The well-known psychology of a horse deal is naive and trusting compared to the state of mind in which the diplomats take up the international task. They bristle with dignity, they are explosive with prestige, they are rigid with notions of sov- ereignty. The problem before them is not treated on its merits. It is set in magnificent and in- definite theories of world politics, and practically every judgment is based by the grand strategy THE CORE OF IMPERIALISM 153 of international diplomacy. Between intrigue, secret understandings, and a morbid national van- ity, the negotiations are carried on and an act is framed. The act is passed by the conference either in the name of humanity or, as at Algeciras, " in the name of God Almighty." The act is, of course, a compromise, and so far as the machinery of enforcement goes, it is in large measure an evasion. Nevertheless it represents an interna- tional effort to deal with an international problem. Unfortunately the act provides for no modifica- tion or development except in so far as the phrases of it are vague enough to be interpreted in many different ways. The act becomes a set of verbal announcements, which it is hoped wiU cover the new situations which arise or are created. It doesn't, to be sure. Even supposing that each nation were scrupulously loyal to the act, the act would in the natural course of events soon become antiquated. An act which is antiquated soon loses the little respect it commanded, and the way is open for intrigue and adventure to destroy the whole intention of it. There is every incentive to do this. The trad- ing and financial groups of any one nationality 154 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY are seduced constantly by the vision of the money they could make if only they had more political power. The strongest group loses no opportunity to get the better of weaker ones ; the weaker ones retaliate. Under cover of the international act governing the territory, different concessionaire groups plot and fight for control. They use na- tional pride to support them ; they work them- selves into the confidence of the imperialist poli- ticians and editors. Their own motives are not always clear to them, and to the people at home they are completely hidden. The tactics by which the international act can be destroyed are, of course, many. It may be that usurious loans are forced upon the helpless ruler of the exploited country, that his revenues are mortgaged to serve the debt, and that the pro- tection of those revenues becomes the excuse for intervention. It may be that border raids are instituted, that native tribes are aroused, that mer- chants or missionaries are declared to be in dan- ger. At any rate, whatever the methods used, the object is to create a new situation, meet it by some aggression, and then confront the other Powers with what diplomats call a fait accompli, a phrase THE CORE OF IMPERIALISM 155 which means " What are you going to do about it? " They can either go to war about it, or '■ seek compensation elsewhere." In either case the international experiment is destroyed. The proposal advocated in this book is that the international control should be turned into a local international government, with power to legislate and to hold administrative officials accountable. This would at least give internationalism a chance. For instead of a rigid act with practically no ma- chinery of enforcement, there would exist a living legislature with some means for carrying out its will. The scheme would make it possible to meet a new situation as it arose, instead of allowing the world to be faced with the curse of a fait accompli. But, clearly enough, the scheme, if set in motion, would be still the prey of intrigue and disruption. The new government, just because it might be strong and efficient, would make enemies. What then can be done to fortify it.? I take it that no government has any chance of survival unless it serves the interests of powerful economic groups. The problem, it seems to me, is to transfer the allegiance of concessionaires, financiers, missionaries, and merchants from their 156 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY own national government to this international government. If they support it, there is a chance of its success. If they fight it, failure is certain. The only way to do this would appear to be by handing over the protection of outgoing traders and capitalists and adventurers to these local in- ternational governments. Unless the national governments are willing to say that investments and markets abroad must not look for protection at home, there is no incentive to strengthen the international government in the backward state, i In other words, the people at home must say to their foreign traders and capitalists : " When you enter territory which is internationally organized you are expected to obey its laws and look to it for protection. We have backed you up hitherto because no adequate government existed in these backward states. Now it does exist, and we are no longer under any obligation to risk wars in order to protect you. If you are not satisfied with the treatment accorded you, appeal to The Hague, but appeal as a private citizen and not as one of our ' nationals.' We may, perhaps, if your case is good, help you by diplomatic argument to the international government. But you must THE CORE OF IMPERIALISM 157 under no circumstances feel that the military forces of this country are at your disposal." If that were the condition, the foreign trader would be compelled to strengthen the international government, to acknowledge citizenship in it, and interest himself in making it efficient and useful. So long as he trusts in his home government for special support and special privilege he will re- main an enemy of internationalism. Only when he is thrown upon the mercy of international gov- ernment will he have any stimulus to loyalty. His case may be illuminated by imagining the situation if no federal government existed in the United States, and if capitalists from New York or Illinois were beginning to open up Alaska. They would be forever appealing and intriguing in New York and Illinois politics. But with Alaska under federal control. New York can wash its hands of the capitalist, and his dealings are with the federal government. He may stiU plot for special advantages, but his plots cannot em- broil the states, and they serve as an object lesson for the increasing power of the federal gov- ernment. If in a backward state men of all nationalities 158 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY had to cease running home to mother, if they were tied up securely to the conduct of the Interna- tional state, they would have to learn to manage that state. There would be conflicts of interests, corruption, bargains, just as there are in any other government, but the sheer need of protection — the primitive want of " law and order " — ^would attach the more substantial economic groups to the international power. Concessionaires, bureau- crats, traders would discover vested interests in it. The spoils and the protection, all the ad- vantages of government, in fact, would be cen- tered in an international administration and fairly well localized to one area. For a long time such an administration would probably be a spectacle of capitalist control, native oppression, log-rolling, pork-barrel legislation, and what not. But all these evils now accompany imperialism, which car- ries with it always the hideous possibility of im- perial wars. To set up international states in certain territories is to construct the only possible substitute for imperialism. And we must neither be too surprised nor too pained if international government for a long time is not a golden brotherhood of man. Internationalism will not THE CORE OF IMPERIALISM 159 rise much higher than its source. If it comes, therefore, from nations that are competitive, capi- talistic, and filled with corruption, it will bear all the marks of its origin. Even then it will be a comparative blessing to the world. The crux of our. problem is whether the flag is to follow trade. The task of internationalism depends on whether it can destroy the theory that a man must rely on his home government for sup- port when he ventures into backward countries. This is the central nerve of imperialism, and our business is to excise it. We cannot do that, how- ever, until we substitute for national support some kind of international organization. . The proposal to organize these local world administrations is an attempt to create an agency to which a nation can hand over the protection of its nationals abroad. For the excuse, the power, the prestige of imperial- ism depend upon the theory that the flag covers its citizens in backward territory. PART III CHAPTER XII THE REACTION AT HOME " Touch me," says the hero to the Hottentot chief, " and to-morrow morning you will be look- ing into the angry eyes of a hundred million American citizens." No audience within the mem- ory of the oldest theatrical producer has ever failed to respond. Nor does it seem to make much difference what the " Touch me " means. It may relate to the hero's safety, or to his honor, or to his just rights, or to what he thinks are his just rights, or to what he thinks is due him as a good fellow and a superior person. The people at home have no way of knowing the truth about their compatriots abroad, and distance invariably lends enchantment. The abused person abroad may be a dirty scoundrel, but how is patriotism to discriminate.? He is in a foreign land, he claims to be abused, he wraps himself in the flag, a great nation cannot disown her sons. The activities of some of these sons are lurid 168 164 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY and hideous. Thrusting themselves upon some un- worldly people, they often debauch it with cruel cynicism. The easiest trade is firearms and spirits. They ply that trade. They extort concessions from natives who do not realize their value ; they force usurious loans upon the potentate till they have got him sewed up beyond all possibility of escape. They bribe native officials, and keep the finances of the country in bankrupt chaos. To serve the debt they secure mortgages on the reve- nues, and drive the rulers of the country to tyr- annous taxation. This in turn produces revolts, which the inefficient government, with its cor- rupted and badly paid army, is unable to handle. Under these conditions legitimate commerce suf- fers, and innocent people are endangered. In any one of these activities the adventurers can claim to be acting on their " rights " and " upholding their national interests," and in most cases the government at home will back them up with ulti- mata and a parade of force. It is never possible to say how much of the dis- order is due to trickery and intrigue, how much to sheer native incompetence. There is no way of knowing, for example, whether Persia would have THE REACTION AT HOME l65 been reorganized and modernized if Russian offi- cials, abetted by the British, had not adopted one of the meanest policies of destruction in modem history. Perhaps it is not altogether important to distribute the blame accurately. These back- ward countries are at the mercy of their own gov- erning cliques and the foreign adventurers who are attracted by easy profits. If the Powers merely acted on the principle of " hands off," the situation would not be much better. Filibustering expeditions, bribery, tricky loans will not cease be- cause diplomacy ignores the situation. If coun- tries like Persia or Mexico are to become stable and powerful, their neighbors in the world have got to pursue a policy which is really sympa- thetic. They have got to refuse arms and sup- plies to rebels, they have got to control the terms of loans, they have got to protect the frail gov- ernment from insidious corruption. Mere laissez- faire is an invitation to the adventurer to let her rip. There is no way in which we can dodge the fact that we are deeply involved in the fate of backward countries. So long as they are disorderly and weak, they will lure in the concessionaire and the exploiter. 166 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY who, whenever his rights or his life are endangered, will summon patriotism at home to defend him. And no government will under those conditions refuse support. An imperialist policy grows naturally and imperceptibly on defenseless terri- tory. Out of the clash of imperialist policies modern war arises. For if once these territories can be organ- ized, big profits cease, concession-hunting turns into legitimate investment, a more decent trade can flourish, the provocations to intervention dis- appear. You do not have to wrap the flag around trade in regions where a fairly modem government exists. There must be a flag, which represents order and power, but it need not be the flag under which the trader was born. The whole status of foreign nations is different in a small country like Denmark than it is in a small country like Persia. The difference lies in the fact that the government of Denmark is modern and stable, and that of Persia isn't. The question is not one of size, nor of military power, nor of dark races or white races. Japan is small and yellow, but the domestic affairs of Japan are not an international problem. China is large and yellow, and it is the most serious THE REACTION AT HOME 167 question in the future of the world. The Scandi- navian countries are weak, they may be attacked, but they are not the objects of constant diplomatic meddling. They are not part of the stakes of diplomacy, because they have a modern political structure. A few people have remarked that the world- wide sympathy for Belgium was extraordinary in view of the treatment of Persia and China. Why, they ask, all the horror at this violation when vio- lation is not uncommon by any European Power? The answer is that the world has not the same attitude of mind towards a modern state that it has towards a weak and bankrupt one. Had Belgium been a chronic disorder in the heart of Europe, it would have been conquered and annexed long ago. It was the high organization of Belgium which had won for it recognition by the world. It was the fact that Belgium belonged to modernity and fought to defend its place that secured for it the affection of liberals everywhere. The small states are none of them secure, but the well-organized ones are perhaps as secure as the great empires. In a chaotic world they are occasionally trampled upon. So are the Great 168 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY Powers., But the disorganized state is utterly in- secure. How to organize it is the chief task of diplo- macy. There are a number of general policies which may be pursued. One is to conquer it and administer it. This policy is falling more and more into disrepute, in part because the masses in civilized countries are anti-imperialist, but mainly because the Powers are unwilling to have any one Power aggrandize itself too much. An- other method is the protectorate, which means generally a control of finances and police. We are pursuing it in regard to Haiti. It has the advantage of giving a kind of invisible control without the oppressive arrogance of military oc- cupation. A country can sometimes be put on its feet by reorganizing its revenues without the friction which comes from daily interference with the private lives of its people. Another method is that of sending experts to a country, as we did to Persia, and allowing the experts to be serv- ants of the country which they are reconstructing. The weakness of this method is that the experts are at the mercy of intrigue when they have no backing from a great Power. THE REACTION AT HOME 169 All of these policies have been tried in various places, not without some success.. But there are some portions of the globe so distracted, so eaten up by competing imperialisms, so full of " vital interests," so corroded with suspicion that none of these methods will work. Morocco was such a country, Constantinople is perhaps such a place, and China may well become one. For these some more heroic treatment is required, and so I have ventured to suggest what amounts to an interna- tional protectorate. Where the Powers are all so desperately interested, the only solution seems to be to reorganize the country under joint super- vision. Employing experts from the developed nations, they would make them responsible to an international commission, consisting perhaps of the Diplomatic Body in the country. There are two great objects to be attained. The first is the creation of efficient authority in the weak states ; the second is the development of international political agencies. In these sore parts of the world would arise the beginnings of a world state. If such a policy were successful, we should be 'depriving competitive imperialism of its excuse 170 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY and its stimulus. There would no longer be the need of national intervention if disorder reigned. There would be a recognized government to which men could look for protection and to which they could make their appeals. And while no Power would have to announce that it would no longer back up its citizens abroad, the need for backing them up would have been organized out of exist- ence. Then the democracies at home would have a chance to assert themselves. They would no longer be harassed by the troubles of their citizens abroad; they would not be stirred constantly by the question of whether Americans or Germans or Englishmen were being given a chance to exploit Persia or Morocco. When a man went out to in- vest or to trade in one of these international pro- tectorates, his position would be similar to that of a man going to do business in Alaska or in Chile. He would be going to a place where government existed. And while he might be en- couraged from home, he would no longer be the embodiment of his country's honor and prestige. In my opinion this is the only cure for the morbid conceptions of nationality and sovereignty THE REACTION AT HOME 171 which afflict the world. Nationality and sover- eignty are primarily offensive and defensive reac- tions to fear. They appear in time of trouble. Psychologically, they are a way of rushing to cover, of tightening up for a fight, and they are, of course, most evident where there is chaos and danger. They subside whenever men live with ease and spaciousness ; they break out again at the threat of war or in the struggle for markets and concessions. That is why it is so supremely important to organize the backward portions of the earth. They are the arenas in which danger stimulates a primitive patriotism and rich prizes stimulate a primitive adventure. Reduce the dan- ger and the prizes by stable government, and the whole world will breathe more easily. CHAPTER XIII THE FUTURE OF PATRIOTISM There is another way of looking at this matter which will appeal to those who are speculating upon the future of mankind. Anyone who thinks about the possibility of a world state is stopped to-day by the fact that there is no world patriotism to support it. How are we to transfer allegiance from the national to the international state? The answer depends upon an analysis of na- tionality. I have described it as a retreat to the authority and flavor of our earliest associations, as a defensive-offensive reaction to what seems to us secure. Our loyalty turns to what we associate with our protection and our ambitions. The rea- son we are not loyal to mankind in general or to The Hague or to internationalism is that these conceptions are cold and abstract beside the warmth of the country and place where we were bom. Impressed by the fear of Russian invasion, the internationalism of German socialists vanished. 173 THE FUTURE OF PATRIOTISM 173 Internationalism offered no protection. The Ger- man army did. To be a German was to be part of a tangible group with power; to be a citizen of the world was to be homeless everywhere. And yet we find Canadians and Australians and New Zealanders fighting and dying for a thing called the British Empire, a vague, formless or- ganization of one-quarter of the human race. What is it that has produced this super-national patriotism? Nothing less, it seems to me, than a realization that the protection and growth of the Dominions is bound up with the strength of the Empire. Home is the place where you are safe; loyalty reaches back to the source of your secur- ity. That is why danger has welded the British Empire instead of disintegrating it. Imagine the Empire shattered, its navy gone, and the Dominions left to fetch for themselves. What would Canada and Australia do? They would, it seems to me, develop a great loyalty to the United States. They would not face the world alone. They would have to find some larger po- litical organization in which they could feel se- cure. In other words, loyalty overflows the national 174 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY state because in the world to-day the national state is no longer a sufficient protection. People have got to a point in their development where iso- lation terrifies them. They want to be members of a stronger group. In Europe they turned to a system of alliances because no nation dared to stand alone. We have turned in this country in part to an understanding with Great Britain, in part to the Latin-American states. All of which proves that patriotism is not a fixed quantity, that it is not attached to the map as it was drawn when we were at school, and that it is not only capable of expansion, but is crying for it. Fear has almost always played a large part in welding states together. The fear of England was a great argument for federal union under our Con- stitution; the sense of weakness in the presence of unfriendly neighbors undoubtedly helped to break down the separatism of the little German principalities. Just as the appearance of an enemy tends to blot out political differences within a nation, so it will often unite a number of nations. The rise of Germany had that eifect on the Great Powers of Europe ; the fear of her created a league almost coextensive with western civilization. It THE FUTURE OF PATRIOTISM 175 covered up the feud between France and England which comes down through the centuries; it jolted together an understanding with Russia, the great bogy of liberals. It is not pleasant to think of fear as one of the most powerful forces that unify mankind. It would be more gratifying to think that coopera- tion was always spontaneous and free. But the facts will not justify this belief. The inner im- pulse to compose differences seems often to work most actively when there is pressure from with- out. Forced by danger to cooperate, men seem to discover the advantages of cooperation. The Ger- mans are daily discovering good qualities in the Turks ; the British are seeing deeper into the souls of Russians. On the rim of the Pacific an issue has appeared which opens up difficulties far greater than those which have hitherto troubled diplomacy. The im- perial clashes of to-day, the intrigues and com- petitions and wars that harass our world, revolve about the spread of western commerce among backward peoples. But a new problem has arisen in California, Canada, Australia, infinitely more painful than the struggle of empires. It is a real 176 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY friction of peoples who do not know how to live together and are forced therefore to compete for territory. The Hindus who cannot settle in Can- ada, the Japanese and Chinese excluded from the United States, are the first symptoms of a world problem to which no man has proposed a satis- factory answer. As the pressure of the East upon the West be- comes more intense, as the East becomes stronger, prouder, and better organized, men may wonder how they could ever have fought suicidal wars over the present stakes of diplomacy. Differences which once seemed " vital " may appear in a new perspective, and those who plead for a unification of western civilization be listened to with a more urgent interest. Out of the desire to preserve western power in Asia, and out of the fear of Asiatic aggression, may come some of the strongest incentives to the creation of a super-national state. It is useful perhaps to try to realize as con- cretely as possible the kind of Great State which is at present humanly possible. It will not be a simple organization of the whole world, governed by a world parliament, elected by the equal suf- THE FUTURE OF PATRIOTISM 177 frage of the inhabitants of the globe. It will be some kind of federation of the existing Powers, and probably not an equal federation at that. Its cen- tral force may be some coalition of western states, .acting towards the rest of the world a little, it may be, as Prussia has acted towards the other German states, or England towards the Empire. There will unquestionably be an effort to keep the power in the hands of western peoples, but among those western peoples there is every reason to expect jealousy and what is called "politics." They will hold together as best they can to pre- serve their dominion and prevent aggression. The greater state, as it is likely to be in actual life, will at the utmost probably not be more extensive than western commercial civilization. This state will face attack from without, disruption within. In any candid speculation it is necessary to take these possibilities into account. In short, the larger state which we are trying to create will for a long time bear slight resem- blance to the Federation of Mankind. It is likely to be unequal, coercive, conservative, and unsatis- factory. In the World State those of us who dream of it to-day would, I fancy, find ourselves for a 178 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY long time members of Its Majesty's loyal oppo- sition. I don't know whether liberals would relish the prospect of this larger state if they conceived it realistically. They picture it in ideal terms to-day — as a peaceful democratic federation — be- cause the pictures of our fantasy are rarely made by a critical imagination. What we project upon the screen of the future is what our hearts desire, not what can be created out of the conflict between desire and reality. A true picture of the greater state must not whitewash its illiberal character. Even if we suc- ceed in unifying the western peoples in one state and ending the likelihood of war between them, we shall be a long way from elysium. Yet though we be a long way not only from elysium but from ele- ^ mentary human decency, though oppression, preju- dice, disorder, and the waste of opportunity con- tinue, we have every reason to believe that a more inclusive grouping of men will be a great gain. The larger the number of people who can practice cooperation, the more the civilizing forces are re- leased. Whatever our quarrel with the American Constitution or the German Empire, few will doubt that they are blessings compared to the evils of THE FUTURE OF PATRIOTISM 179 disunion. We must work for the larger state, rec- ognizing its dangers. By building with our eyes open we may even in some measure forestall the dangers we see. The only way in which world organization can command a world patriotism is by proving its use- fulness. If it affords a protection and produces a prosperity such as the national state cannot pro- duce, it will begin to draw upon the emotions of men. If they are capable of loving anything so abstract and complicated as the British Empire, or even the United States, they are not incapable of attaching themselves to a still larger state. For the moment it was evident that patriotism could embrace something more extensive and abstract than a village which a man might know personally, world organization ceased to be an idle dream. If men could be citizens of an empire scattered over all the seas, there was no longer anything inconceivable about their becoming citizens of a state which covered modem civilization. The idea has ceased to be a psychological impossibility. Our problem is to broaden the basis of loyalty. And for that task we have considerable experi- ence to guide us. Within a hundred and twenty- 180 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY i five years we have seen the welding together of the United States, Germany, Italy, and Austria- Hungary. We have seen small rival states con- verted into members of federal unions. We have watched patriotism expand from the local unit to |j the larger one. We have seen Massachusetts pa- triots converted into American patriots, Bavarians into Germans, Venetians into Italians. In the last few years we have been witnessing the growth of an imperial patriotism within the British Empire. There is, so far as I can see, not the least ground for supposing that the broadening of loy- alty must stop at the existing frontiers. The task of the great unifiers, like Hamilton, Cavour, and j Bismarck, looked just as difficult in their day as ] ours does now. They had states' rights, sover- eignty, traditional jealousy, and economic conflicts i to overcome. They conquered them. Who dares to say that we must fail.'' We might sketch the elements with which they built. There was a propaganda behind them which had made the idea of union the vision of en- lightened people. The thing had been sung and preached until it had ceased to be an unfamiliar notion. They were certain of some spiritual re- THE FUTURE OF PATRIOTISM 181 sponse, although practical people hesitated and locally minded people raised obstructions at the audacity of the idea. Behind this propaganda was a growing experience of the nuisance of little fron- tiers, the cost to trade of conflicting sovereignties, the danger to peace of rivalry within and weak- ness abroad. In arguing for the federal Constitution, Ham- ilton made points which apply with almost equal force to the nations to-day. " In the wide field of western territory," he wrote, " we perceive an ample theater for hostile pretensions." The West was to the American states what Morocco and China are to the world to-day. " Each state . . . would pursue a system of commercial polity pe- culiar to itself. This would occasion distinctions, preferences, and exclusions, which would beget dis- content." He argued, too, that if no union, or a weak union, were created, the states would be at the mercy of foreign aggression. Hamilton and his group saw more clearly, perhaps, than we see to-day the danger of separatism and the need for union. But to see this and to say so is not enough. The construction of a greater state out of small 182 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY ones cannot be accomplished by wishing it. What the successful nation-builders have always recog- nized is that they must found their union on the self-interest of powerful groups ; by attaching these to the idea of union a real support would be created- They did not try to establish an ideal state without special interests on the model of some perfected democracy. They played a shrewder game than that. As Professor Beard shows/ the movement for the Constitution of the United States was originated and carried through by four groups of personalty interests which had been adversely affected under the Articles of Confederation: money, public securities, manufactures, trade, and shipping. These groups made the Constitution, and arranged matters so that they had everything to gain by its success. This gave them a business interest in the Union and secured their patriotic allegiance. In Germany the union was preceded by a Customs Union, in which large groups of traders through- out Germany learned the advantages of breaking down separatism. And when Bismarck consoli- dated the Empire he gave Prussia, the most power- * An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution, THE FUTURE OF PATRIOTISM 183 ful state, a special position, thus assuring its sup- port and leadership. When Great Britain began to think of imperial federation the first steps proposed were preferential tariffs and customs union. Even Austria-Hungary, which it is the fashion to regard as a meaningless collection of nationalities, is held together by powerful eco- nomic interests. As Mr. Arnold Tonybee says:^ " The two sections of the Monarchy which meet at Vienna are economically complementary. Coopera- tion with the South-East assures to the North- western worker that raw materials will not run short and that the cost of living will remain low ; co- operation with the North-West guarantees the South- E astern husbandman and shepherd a stable market for their annual surplus. Isolated, each section would be exposed to all the dislocations of shortage and over-production; combined, they constitute a self- sufficient economic unit." These unifying economic interests are the forces which any state-builder has to rely upon. If enough powerful people can be given a stake in union, a true basis for it has been laid. Once you have laid the basis in self-interest, once you have made union the power by which men can live bet- ^ Nationality and the War. 184 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY ter, feel securer, and follow their ambitions more easily, union begins to become warm and personal to them. They become patriots of the union. It is possible to illustrate this point from many sources. When, for example, a nation hardens into class divisions, when labor finds the govern- ment hostile, trade organizations develop around which clusters the same kind of loyalty that we usually call patriotism. The trade union is their bulwark and it commands their allegiance. When a nationality is oppressed, as the Irish, the Jews, the Balkan peoples, or the Hindus, they give their allegiance to a dream — Zionism, Ireland a nation, Indian nationalism. They dream of a government in which they shall be somebody, a sovereignty which will protect and advance them. For loyalty is a fluctuating force, not attached by any necessity to some one spot on the map or contained within some precise frontier. Loyalty seeks an authority to which it can be loyal, and when it finds an authority which gives security and progress and opportunity it fastens itself there. The problem of world organization is to attach enough loyalty to the immature World State to enable it to weather the inevitable attacks. THE FUTURE OF PATRIOTISM 185 This is the problem I have tried to hold con- stantly before me in writing this book. But be- fore any kind of answer could be given it was necessary to analyze the nature of patriotism and the chief issues upon which it is expended. The conclusion reached was that patriotisms clashed most of all in the backward territories of the world, and the suggestion followed that the or- ganization of these territories was the great task of international politics. In that organization lies, it seems to me, the entering wedge of the World State. The areas of imperial friction are the natural and easiest place to begin our construction. If there is one field of affairs where the international state is most obviously needed it is in the chaotic regions of the globe. There exists, moreover, sound prece- dent, for Africa and China, and now Latin- Amer- ica, are recognized as international problems. Even conservative diplomacy has experimented with world legislation and administration to deal with these territories. They offer the best opening, because the least amount of national vanity is involved. Germans and Englishmen may object with good reason to 186 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY submitting their domestic affairs to a European or to a world legislature. But they can object with far less enthusiasm to submitting the affairs of Morocco. Yet if international government can be established in these distant regions, there will begin that whittling away of sovereign pre- tensions and national separatism which is neces- sary to any cooperation of mankind. I cannot imagine the nations agreeing to a uni- versal free trade or to disarmament or to unlim- ited arbitration. The forces that disunite are far too strong for any such plan. But they have already submitted to world conferences and regu- lations about backward countries. If that expe- rience can be augmented and elaborated, if it can be made to serve the traders who are interested in peaceful development, there could be no better opportunity of showing the world the concrete value of international government. Only comparatively small groups in a few nations have much to gain by the old-fashioned imperial aggression. But these will dominate foreign affairs so long as the backward countries show big risks, exorbitant profits, and general insecurity. By making these countries stable THE FUTURE OF PATRIOTISM 187 under international control, we should, I imagine, draw to them the interest of the great mass of peaceful traders. It is in them that the embryo World State would find its backing. And they could count on the support of the workers and farmers who die in imperial wars and stagger under the taxes for armaments. In other words, by organizing the scenes of ex- ploitation we should open up the world to foreign trade and investment under far safer conditions. Instead of concessionaires, exploiters, and adven- turers seeking quick, high profits, we should draw in the merchants and investors who are seeking stable markets and orderly development. This would have an enormous effect on conditions at home, for it would mean that foreign affairs be- came an interest not of an imperialist group but of the far more extended middle class, and even working class. To-day these people take almost no interest in foreign affairs, with the result that their man- agement goes by default to a small coalition of aristocratic, military, bureaucratic, and exploit- ing interests. This is inevitable so long as the world is for the adventurer. By opening it up to 188 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY conservative business, foreign affairs must become the interest of a much larger group of people. This seems to me the only condition under which a real democratization of diplomacy can take place. Enlarge the group who are directly interested in the stakes of diplomacy, their attention and activ- ity will follow. CHAPTER XIV A BROADER BASE FOR DIPLOMACY On first consideration it seems rather curious to hear it argued that the establishment of success- ful government in backward states will democratize the control of diplomacy in the so-called civilized nations. That is not all, however. It can be main- tained, I believe, that the effect will be to blur frontiers, to diminish the sense of sovereignty, and weaken separatism. The really internationalizing forces of finance, commerce, labor, science, and human sympathy, distracted and distorted to-day by " national necessities," will be given a freer chance to assert themselves. This is, I realize, a large hypothesis, and only as an hypothesis would I wish to defend it. Organized behind their frontiers, even the most advanced democracies deal with other nations as " one man." Diff^erences of interest and opinion are sunk in order to present a united front to the world. J'he sinking of differences means the 189 190 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY absence of effective discussion and criticism of diplomacy. The lack of criticism creates the sense of sovereignty, the feeling that a nation is, on the whole, a law unto itself. The result of this is to center on foreign affairs only the most primi- tive emotions of offense and defense, to charge them with the high explosives of uncorrected and unconscious emotion. Governments face each other with an almost savage unity of feeling, a unity which is sovereign in its pretensions, unedu- cated, impatient of criticism, gullible, and panicky. The places where governments face each other are the lands which are in process of being opened up to commerce. The competition of concession- aires and exploiters is severe. These men are backed by their governments, and their advance- ment becomes a national concern. The people at home, living blindly behind their frontiers, regard these foreign business men almost as their repre- sentatives, and when the struggle is acute the in- tensity of it radiates to all the governments and people represented. The nations themselves come to regard themselves as competitors, as living or- ganisms which can win or be defeated. Of course they wish to win, and they come to measure victory A BROADER BASE FOR DIPLOMACY 191 by the success of their concessionaires and ex- porters in the new markets. Each advantage lost or gained becomes part of the score in which the prestige of a nation is counted. The people take an almost childish interest in whether German or British capital shall finance the railway to Bag- dad. In order to increase their prestige they in- crease their armaments, their object being to weight with force the diplomatic negotiation for privileges. This whole situation rests upon the fact that there are rich undeveloped countries to exploit. As soon as a territory becomes well-governed and a normal commerce begins, that territory ceases to be part of the stakes of diplomacy. A nation like the Argentine differs from Persia in that Persia is a field for imperialism and the Argen- tine is not. When a country reaches the maturity of the Argentine the diplomatic tension over it is relaxed. The adventurers and militarists and usurers turn elsewhere and the better kind of mer- chant and investor comes in. We have seen this process In our own history. When our West was undeveloped it was the scene of grabbing and grafting and wildcat exploita- 192 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY tion which came near to poisoning our whole national life. But when the West filled up, and the chances of huge profit diminished, the various reform movements which represented the middle class became dominant in our politics, and our Western empire-builders transferred their atten- tions to Mexico and China and Alaska. At the same time a new nationalism began to pervade America. It meant that with the disappearance of our Western empire the unifying forces had come to the top, and in the last ten years or so we have taken enormous steps towards the centralizing of power in the federal government. The incentive to stay separate was disappearing. The new na- tionalism, however, had another aspect. We drew closer together within our boundaries because we were entering upon an imperial competition in Asia and Latin-America. We united among ourselves when our backward regions were organized, and we united against other nations because we were en- tering the backward regions where they were competing. We shall draw closer to other nations when the new fields of imperialism have been brought under control. Why shall we draw closer to them ? Chiefly be- A BROADER BASE FOR DIPLOMACY 193 cause the organization of weak territory will alter the character of national competition. At present it is an unscrupulous struggle for privileges in which no one dares to relax, because the other man will monopolize everything if he does. A nation may not want imperial expansion, but neither does it want another nation to close mar- kets and concessions against it. It is a competi- tion in which the lowest survives. And the only choice open is to grab yourself or to have some- one else grab. That is the dilemma which draws enlightened people into the imperialist camp. But when the territory becomes strong and ably governed, no one can grab, and the more civilized Powers are freed from the imperialist nightmare. The territory ceases to be a place where prestige and sovereignty are tested, and becomes one of the peaceful markets of the world. The people who go into it then represent much wider interests in the community. They are con- cerned in having the country efficiently governed. They profit by improvements, by the education of the natives, by sane development of resources and communication. It is only a small class that has much to gain by intrigue and corruption and dis- 194 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY order. The world's commerce as a whole thrives best under efficient and progressive government. The first imperialist adventurers can make high profits by debauching a country. But the great mass of merchants can make a steadier profit in a healthy country when the skill of labor and the wants of the consumer are increasing. The people of a country have to be rich to afford a good mar- ket to a wide group of merchants. By stabilizing the backward countries, then, for- eign trade can really develop. And the larger the group at home interested in foreign trade, the larger will be the interest in foreign politics. This will bring diplomacy under the scrutiny of busi- ness men instead of leaving it, as to-day, to be the exclusive preserve of an aristocratic class in cahoots with adventurers. By increasing the number of people concerned in diplomacy, publicity, criticism, and discussion must follow. From them education. The real- ities of diplomacy which are hidden to-day under a cloud of ambiguous phrases and primitive emotion will be revealed. The false unity of nationalism will be superseded by complex facts about which men will differ and argue. And because people A BROADER BASE FOR DIPLOMACY 195 differ, their sense of sovereignty must diminish ; their isolation behind frontiers must disappear. Agreements and disagreements will cross frontiers. Men will discover that they are more in sympathy with a group in some foreign, country than with some of their own fellow-citizens. Politics will no longer cease at the water's edge, and nations will no longer be able to face each other as irritable monarchs. The people will be less easily led by the nose ; diplomacy will become more and more the bargaining of groups, and cease to be the touchy competition of " national wills." The real effect of democracy on foreign affairs will be to make them no longer foreign. For democracy brings out the real alignment of classes and in- terests. When the people have had some experience of diplomatic problems, they will discover what far- seeing democrats have always knovra — that the values of mankind do not entirely coincide with national frontiers ; that mankind, once it realized its own interests, will tend to reduce the frontier from a monstrous chasm to a convenient adminis- trative division, behind which local autonomy can protect the healthier aspects of nationalism. CHAPTER XV PUBLIC OPINION IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS The theory I have been advancing is that the way to create wide interest in foreign affairs is to give a wider number of people an interest in them, and that this can be accomplished by making foreign trade and investment in backward countries a less risky and more normal enterprise. The effect of this enlarged interest would be to break down the uncanny pretentiousness of diplo- macy. If people discussed it long enough, and mulled around through it, they would soon dis- cover that it is neither more mysterious nor more sacred than politics at Washington or Albany. Diplomacy is carried on now by aristocrats in the language of royalty, and at first sight the democrat is inclined to feel that he is not suffi- ciently well dressed to talk about such high af- fairs. He is as uncomfortable as a man in a soft shirt among the starched bosoms at the opera. But this exclusiveness is an illusion which collapses 196 OPINION IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS 197 when anyone goes behind the etiquette of diplo- macy to the substance of it. People will not go behind it, however, unless they are made to feel that the subject-matter of diplomacy is related to their daily lives. Without some direct and constant interest, public opinion ignores foreign affairs until a crisis is reached. Everyone is interested in a dramatic event or a possible war. But the tedious negotiations and jockeyings which prepare the situations leading to crises and wars are not much discussed, because they deal with distant, shadowy countries in Asia or Africa or Central America. Few people could even locate on a map the places where most of the international friction occurs. But if trade with these regions were extended, hundreds of firms would be sending buyers and traveling salesmen to them, establishing branch of- fices, and in endless ways intensifying communi- cation. Business men would have to learn lan- guages, study history and political conditions, and some knowledge of foreign countries would be- come a commercial necessity. The schools would have to meet the demand, the newspapers would have to give space to foreign news, there would 198 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY be a growing section of the public well enough informed to ask the State Department pertinent questions. Congressmen would have to show that they knew not only that there was urgent need for a new postoffice in Ashtabula, but what was the political situation in China or in Costa Rica. In brief, to have public opinion there must be interest, and this can be created not by preaching but by making the subject of it part of the busi- ness of life. So long as foreign politics is re- served for evenings and Sundays democracy will discuss baseball and remain perfunctory. And be- hind the apathy of the public an. invisible diplo- macy will be carried on, directed by a small class with special interests and abetted by the routine complacency of old-fashioned diplomats. Just as there is a political machine which governs because the voter is too ignorant and too lazy to govern himself, so there is a diplomatic machine which counts upon the apathy, the docility, and the ex- plosive emotions of the people. In this darkness and silence the world is rigged, and aU manner of cruelty and selfishness flourishes. The great healing effect of publicity is that by revealing men's motives it civilizes them. If people OPINION IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS 199 have to declare publicly what they want and why they want it, they cannot be altogether ruthless. It takes more courage than most men have to be openly selfish and regardless of the judgments of their fellows. A special interest frankly avowed is no terror to democracy. It is neutralized by pub- licity^ The danger democracy has always to guard against is the identification of special inter- ests with the national will, patriotism, humanity. The emotions of the people are easily tapped, and therefore easily exploited. And since the begin- ning of time they have been exploited in the in- terests of dynasties, oligarchies, priesthoods, and economic classes. The people have suffered, worked, paid, and perished for ends they did not understand. They have gone to battle with noble words in their hearts, ignorant of the true mo- tives and ambitions which arranged the battle. The great virtue of democracy — in fact, its su- preme virtue — is that it supplies a method for dragging the realities into the light, of summon- ing our rulers to declare themselves and submit to judgment. The enemies of democracies recog- nize the importance of this power, for they pay it the tribute of hypocrisy. They always put on 200 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY a good face, they dress up their plans In high- sounding phrases, they touch the heart when they approach the pocket. There are certain technical difficulties in the way of a democratic control of foreign affairs. , The chief one is the congestion of business in all legislative bodies. There is so much to do that nothing can be done well. All modern states, moreover, are increasing every day the burden upon their governments. The attempt to socialize industry is adding unheard-of difficulties to the work of officials and representatives. To multiply them by intruding the affairs of distant countries seems like an attempt to break the camel's back- Shall we not collapse under the sheer multiplicity of things we are called upon to consider,'' For, after all, important as foreign affairs are, we can- not afford for one moment to relinquish the task of civilizing ourselves. The answer seems to be that the effort to make democracy technically efficient has just begun. The development of administrative commissions, the unifying of government departments under ex- ecutive leadership, the turning of the legislature into a criticising and controlling body, is a recent OPINION IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS 201 enthusiasm. Under our old naive notions of politi- cal machinery public opinion could not possibly assert itself effectively. To have added the control of foreign affairs would simply have been to com- pound chaos. But there is on foot a highly intel- ligent movement to reconstruct political machin- ery so that government becomes visible and simple and responsible. The relief which this brings fur- nishes the hope that the technique of government may be far enough advanced to allow wider and wider groups to take part in the affairs of diplo- macy. In addition to the complexity of government, we suffer to-day from the false unity of political parties. It is false because men may agree on foreign politics and disagree on domestic. But they have to vote wholesale though they think re- tail. The danger of this has been made evident by recent English history. For it is safe to say that the best Liberal thought was friendly to the internal policy of the Asquith government and hostile to its foreign policy. But the Liberals who wanted Lloyd-George had to swallow Sir Ed- ward Grey and Winston Churchill. They could not change their diplomacy without wrecking their 202 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY social reform. I believe it to be a fact that in- telligent English thought is trying to invent some way by which it will be possible to separate poli- cies, to disentangle the Moroccan situation from the British landlords, and give public opinion a chance to discriminate. The same difficulty exists in this country. We have to choose not between the domestic policies of Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt, nor between their foreign poli- cies, but between a muddle of the two. The voter who goes to the polls has to make up his mind how the value of Mr. Wilson's diplomacy com- pares with his views about business and labor. Under these conditions public opinion cannot help being confused and uncertain. But these issues carry us further afield than this sketch would justify. They illustrate how closely interrelated are the old domestic problems with the new foreign ones. The two sets of interests wait upon each other, and there is no such thing as dealing with one and ignoring the other. The whole development of democracy is distorted by the international situation, and this in turn is what it is through the social conditions within the dif- ferent frontiers. A relief, an improvement any- OPINION IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS 203 where, radiates throughout the world organiza- tion. The imperial rivalries in Morocco and China have meant high taxes, military services, and delayed development in every nation of Europe. The menace of Prussian oligarchy, of Russian backwardness, of Japanese ambition, broods over the whole world. A victory for liberal democracy, the resurrection of a weak people, makes life safer and prosperity more certain in all the regions where men work. The effect of democracy is justly feared by those who wish to achieve national power by sub- missive unity. A people that was sophisticated about foreign affairs would be hard to lead, and its diplomats could not wield it with the same sense of sovereign power. But this loss of unity, dangerous under conditions to-day, would be a great blessing once the weak spots of the world were organized, for then the fearful tension of imperial competition would be relaxed, and the need for drilled submission, for presenting an un- broken front, would diminish. The effect would be double. The organization of backward countries would draw wider interests to them, and these wider interests, assuming control of diplomacy, 204, THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY would democratize it and weaken its sovereign pre- tensions. There would be less need of sovereignty, less need of rigid military frontiers, less need of docile, uncritical patriotism, and consequently a vast increase of human cooperation. The great empires will cease to face each other as hostile rivals when the sources of their rivalry, the stakes of modern diplomacy, have been organized out of existence. That, you may say, will undoubtedly take a long time, and many bitter wars will be fought be- fore it is achieved. But I do not offer it as a quick panacea. I offer it simply as a compass by which democrats can try to steer their course. PART IV EPILOGUE CHAPTER XVI THE STRATEGY OF PEACE There is something unhappy about the word pacifism. It irritates great numbers of people who sincerely hate the obscenity of war, and for some reason or other the professional pacifist seems to be a stultified person. Why should this be? He preaches an undeniable truth — that war is hideous and insane, that peace is preferable to it. Yet, though almost everyone agrees with him, the great majority of active people feel in their hearts that he is either irrelevant or considerably in the way. The reason for this attitude towards pacifism is that the world is not helped much by being told every morning that two and two are four. It is not helped by being told to love men as brothers. Men have been told that for ages, and their in- variable retort is : "I would gladly love him if only he weren't so cussed. But I start to love him, and he robs me. I try to treat him as a 207 208 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY brother, and he plots to burn down my house. What is the good of telling me not to fight him, when he is getting ready to fight me? Preach peace to him. I'm all right." The feeling that war is always defensive wrecks the peace propaganda. The word defensive is capable of being stretched indefinitely. It is not confined necessarily to preventing an invasion. A people will feel that it is fighting a defensive war if it attacks a nation which may attack it in the future. The people say to themselves : " Unless we strike now before that army is reorganized and the strategic railways built, we shall be overrun five years from now. We take the offensive for defensive reasons." Or the people may feel that what it regards as its legitimate expansion is being thwarted. It fights to defend its right to grow. It defends itself against encirclement and stran- | gling. It may feel that its influence in the world, " its standing as a great Power," is endangered by a diplomatic defeat. It fights to defend its prestige. So by imperceptible gradations every war can be justified, and, as a matter of fact, is justified as defensive. There is nothing extraordi- nary about this. Indeed, it is a platitude. No- THE STRATEGY OF PEACE 209 body thinks of saying to himself: "I want more than I deserve. I'm the aggressor." Everybody says : " I want what is justly due me, and I'll fight to defend it." Having discovered that in practice no one distinguishes between offensive and defensive war- fare, the radical pacifist simply denounces all fighting, urges disarmament, and says that no nation should have weapons of attack or defense. But this doctrine goes to pieces completely before the determination of a people not to be invaded or to have its country overrun by armies. Against that determination pacifism is not likely to make much headway. In fact, when pacifism confines itself to the propaganda of not fighting, of peace-at-any-price, it has given up the ghost. All pretense of leadership has dropped away from it. What is left is little more than a pious futility. It is a futility because it shirks the whole prob- lem. Everyone knows that war is a stupid way to deal with issues, but to repeat this is in no way to deal with the issues. War is the desperation which follows a collapse of civilized adjustments. It is recognized everywhere as a terrible evil, but 210 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY it is almost always accompanied by the question: " What else was there to do? " And unless the advocates of peace can throw some light on that question, they might as well paint coal black as insist that war is horrible. Thus the men in Europe who can really claim to have worked for peace are not those who wanted to disarm their own country, to keep it neutral under all circumstances. They were not those who talked naval holidays, and said nice things about other nations. The true peacemakers were those who grasped the real struggle between the Entente and the Alliance, and proposed concrete improvements in the diplomacy about Africa, Asia Minor, and the Far East. The men who had better solutions of the Moroccan, Congo, and Balkan problems were the ones who can claim now to have done their share of thinking for civilization. The constructive critics of British, French, German, Austrian, and Russian diplomacy carried in them what hope there was for peace. Those who saw the source of the friction and tried to remedy it were the real internationalists. But the people who wanted to be weak, who wanted to submit at all points, who bragged about General Strikes and not , THE STRATEGY OF PEACE 211 voting military credits, were deceiving themselves and the world. For peace is not to be had by any policy so sterile as not fighting. Peace is to be had as a result of wise organization. It prevails not where men have failed to act, but in places where they have had the sense and the power to legislate and administer well. This country would be a bloody chaos if all that had been offered to the Thirteen States was a policy of non-resistance. What saved this territory of ours from interstate strug- gle was the establishment of a federal union strongly enough supported to resist dissolution. Peace will not come to the world on easier terms. It will come not by declaiming about the ab- surdity of armed compulsion, but by enlarging the areas within which force takes a more civilized form. For what has happened within territories like the United States is not the abolition of force, but its sublimation. We do by elections what sovereign states do by war. In some of the Latin- American countries an election is a war. The ballot and the bullet are almost indistinguishable. But in comparatively advanced countries one group prevails over another by voting it out of 212 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY office, not by shooting it out of office. Where no elections take place, or where the elections are corrupt, an appeal to arms is always an open pos- sibility. The grand disputes of states are not over the interpretation of recognized international law. If they were, the future of arbitration would be brighter than it is. The real disputes are matters of policy. They are attempts to say how some- thing shall be done, whose word of command shall be recognized. The differences are political, not juridical. They resemble the dispute between the high protectionism of the Republican party and the tariff-for-revenue theory of the Democrats. It is a clash of views which cannot be settled by a court. Only an election can settle it. What does an election mean.? It means that there is a counting of electoral strength, followed by one party's taking possession of the government. The victors move in to the Capitol at Washington, put their followers in the administrative offices, and see that their policy is carried out. When no such political organization exists, where there are no satisfactory elections, the peo- ple out of power have to find some other way of THE STRATEGY OF PEACE 213 making their views prevail. They may send a war- ship to overawe a city. They may mobilize on the frontier. They may declare an economic boy- cott. They may actually march in, throw their opponents out of their office chairs, and put their own officials in power. The modern substitute for war is not arbitra- tion, but election. In a primitive society you have to drive your opponent out of office at the point of the sword. In more advanced societies you force your opponents out of office, change the personnel of the government by patronage and what is known as the spoils system. In the most mature govern- ments we know the body of administrators is so well educated and so sensitive that it will register the result of an election, " carry out the will of the majority " with a minimum of physical change. The element of force has practically disappeared, because people are able to form opinions, express them, and trust their fellow-citizens to realize them in practice. The difference between the so-called evolution- ary and revolutionary socialists depends chiefly upon this point. The revolutionist has lost faith in election, and believes that it is necessary to 214 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY seize authority by force and carry out his pro- gramme by compulsion. The moderate radical believes that democratic governments will respond to a majority, that " capitalist officials " may even be ready to administer socialist policies. It is a difference of opinion (based on a difference of temperament and experience) as to whether strug- gle can be sublimated into politics. Industrial statesmanship to-day is not con- cerned with preaching non-resistance to labor. Its task, as we begin to see it, is to translate class warfare from the plane of strike and lockout to the level of representative government. Our ob- ject is to introduce political method into the gov- ernment of industry, to substitute the use of democratic machinery for the existing autocracy tempered by revolt. Instead of compelling work- ingmen to use the costly method of terrorizing the employer, the aim is to have labor secure recog- nized industrial power in the management of in- dustry. Between governments no adequate machinery exists by which one policy can be made to sup- plant another. No court can supply that machin- ery. For the real problem is to legislate and have THE STRATEGY OF PEACE 215 the laws administered. The dispute cannot be settled by a judicial inquiry based on accepted principles. The dispute is a matter of clashing interests and beliefs, and the solution is not a judgment, but a choice. The question is not which of these two groups is abstractly right, but which of these two groups is to have the say-so. In the last analysis our troubles are due to the fact that there is no omniscient tribunal which makes decisions for us. We have beliefs, opinions, ihterests which we tend to proclaim as truth. But as human beings we see different truths in the same situations, and no pope exists whom we are ready to have pronounce between us. That is why we put compulsion behind our beliefs, why we wish to back up our notion of right with a good supply of might. If the right were so clear that all could see it and accept it gladly, there would be no need of force. It is the obscurity of truth and justice, the finite human quality of them, which makes them unable to prevail alone. Within a nation we do not pretend that pro- tectionism is " absolutely right " because the Re- publicans have won the election. We say simply that the Republicans are entitled to introduce pro- 216 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY tectionism and experiment with it. We do not claim that God is on the side of either of the big guns or the big votes ; we merely submit to having the view with the big votes prevail. If we can test the strength of an idea by votes rather than guns, we feel we have made an enormous advance in civilization. Now, to make big decisions by counting votes may be only a little less absurd than by killing men, but it has obvious advantages. And till we discover some subtler way of trans- lating clashes of human interest, we must regard the methods of politics as a superb advance over the methods of war. The political method, however, depends upon or- ganization. It cannot be applied between two sovereign states or between two warring classes each with pretensions to sovereignty. Before people can act together politically they have to break down the sovereign frontier, and merge in some kind of larger union. Their fundamental patriotism has to include the whole group of which their opponents are a part. Political oppo- nents have to have a common loyalty if they are to settle their differences by political methods. Peace implies not only the construction of THE STRATEGY OF PEACE 217 machinery for unifying mankind, but the readi- ness of enough men to defend that machinery. Such readiness is, of course, a risk. We may be fooled. But a war fought to preserve the fabric of international order would be worth fighting, for that order is the only approach we have to the permanent peace of mankind. To refuse defense to the international society is not a way of avoid- ing war. It is an invitation to many wars. Indeed, the policy of peace-at-any-price is a peril to internationalism. The people who are most likely to adopt it are those whose influence is most needed in world politics. The half-civilized aggressors will not be converted. The democrats may be. The humane people, the very ones who ought to be influential, are most susceptible to this teaching. They are the desirable members of any international society. But peace-at-any-price means an abdication by them. They resign, and leave the world to harder men. Some influence they would no doubt continue to have. But if they succeed in convincing the conquering empires that they will not resist, pacifist democrats must for the present give up hope of acting effectively in world politics. They wiU not be heard about 218 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY China, Africa, Central America, if they make it known that under no circumstances will they stand up and fight. The only policy they can possibly adopt is that of isolation. They can stay at home, and pass resolutions against the evils being done in other parts of the world. They may not be invaded. They may escape with a whole skin. But they must give up even the shadow of a pretense that they are working for the world's peace. They can be good monks, and perhaps they will be saved by faith. They will not be saved by works. For they are leaving mankind and the future in the lurch. It would indeed be a tragic situation if the humane and enlightened people abandoned their influence in world politics. It would resemble the well-known process of being kicked upstairs. The more spiritually fit a people was for international leadership, the more it would withdraw from the turmoil. The nations which were least inclined to exploit and subjugate, which had the highest re- gard for defenseless peoples, would lose their pres- tige because they were committed to the dogma that force is evil. To put the matter concretely. THE STRATEGY OF PEACE 219 imagine the world if the comparatively liberal Powers — the United States, France, Great Britain, (and even Germany — were to isolate themselves within their frontiers, and take no decisive share in the outer politics of the world. Would the cause of peace be advanced by the giving of a free hand to Russian and Japanese imperialism? The more serious indictment of the peace-at- any-price propaganda is that its success would mean not the abandonment of force, but the con- centration of force in the least democratic em- pires. The weaker western civilization became, the stronger the despotisms would be. For though the pacifists may possibly in the end convert the despotisms too, they will convert the liberal coun- tries first. They will be accomplishing the very result which every lover of peace ought to dread the most — the focusing of power in the hands of those who are least likely to use it well. If there are to be armaments in the world, it is surely better that they should be controlled by people who have been civilized in democracy than by oligarchies who dominate a docile, mystically consecrated population. Our irreverent, shirt-sleeved, strag- gling people is a far safer master of force than an 220 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY empire in which a Tsar or a Mikado is not only the autocrat of the state, but the vicar of God. I do not see how anyone with pretensions to in- ternational loyalty can contemplate abandoning the organization of the half-developed parts of the earth to the illiberal Powers. Surely, if any of our finer hopes are to be realized, it will be be- cause the more enlightened democracies assume a decisive position in world politics. Unless the people who are humane and sympathetic, the peo- ple who wish to live and let live, are masters of the situation, the world faces an indefinite vista of conquest and terrorism. Yet the people who are humane are the ones who listen to the propa- ganda of non-resistance. If they are converted, they put themselves in a position where they can- not oppose the intrigue and brutality of the ag- gressive empires. Ask an imaginative Chinaman whether the withdrawal of the United States from his country has worked for or against his security and happiness. Ask a far-seeing Brazilian whether he would in his candid moments like to see the United States scrap its navy. The ideal condition for the world would, of course, be the concentration of power in the hands THE STRATEGY OF PEACE 221 of those whose purposes were civilized. Little force would actually be employed. The potential- ity of it would then be enough to keep the ag- gressor in check, and government by consent and education would be the normal process of affairs. Just because coercion is the worst instrument of politics, the possibility of coercion must rest with those who have least incentive to use it. We have had to strengthen the power of our government in order to tame the power of corporations. If our government had remained weak, special interests would flourish unchecked. By concentrating supe- rior force in the national administration, demo- cratic politics can operate. But if we said dog- matically, as the anarchists do say, that state power is an unmitigated evil, we should simply be encouraging corporations to govern as they please. The labor movement has discovered the same truth. It is beginning to know that its only way to respectful treatment is by accumulating power to offset the employers. Industrial democ- racy begins to be practiced where labor's prestige is great enough to be impressive. I realize that this sounds suspiciously like the doctrine known as the Balance of Power. That is 222 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY just what it is, and there is no need to be afraid of a bad name. Where coercive force exists, it must either be neutralized by force or employed in the interests of what we regard as civilization. Those who are working for a securely organized democratic world, for an international coopera- tion, have got somehow to meet the great forces which fight against them. They will not be al- lowed to construct in peace according to their heart's desire. At every step they will be resisted from without by governments with different pur- poses, from within by groups of people with dif- ferent philosophies and special interests. How they are to overcome this resistance without bal- ancing off its power, I do not see. To be sure, the mere fact that democrats possess force may destroy their democratic faith. The tool may be- come the god. But if democrats are not sure enough of themselves to keep the faith, if they are in mortal dread of being led into temptation, they are pretty poor servants of a finer world. This dread is an old one among democrats. It rests on some experience. Too often they have seen men acquire power only to destroy their cause. The result is that all liberal movements are cor- THE STRATEGY OF PEACE 22S roded by distrust and a fear of responsibility. They prefer to stay weak, that they may remain pure. But it is a blind alley. When they are weak the purposes of their movement are thwarted. They purchase their integrity at the price of impotence. This is just what the pacifist is inclined to do. Rather than risk the danger of seeing his own country become aggressive and im- perialistic, he prefers to see it take no part in world politics. He preaches isolation because he fears contact. To be sure, contact is dangerous. If America enters the arenas of friction it will be exposed to many threats not only from other nations, but from within the country. The danger of war will be increased, and the danger of what is known as militarism. Now, our virtue may be so poor a thing that it will vanish with temptation. We may be like one of those teetotalers who does not dare to pass a saloon. Having tasted world power, we may go drunk with it. But if that is the kind of people we are, how impudent of us to utter one word in criticism of the military empires. If experience of democracy, if a century of com- parative order and prosperity and human equality 224. THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY have made no difference, if we are bound to act like all the rest as soon as we touch the world's affairs, then we might as well humbly retire and cultivate our private gardens. It may be an unwarranted optimism, but there are not many of us who will accept this counsel of despair. We do not believe that the world can be regenerated by our assuming a passive but morally perfect attitude towards it. The problem of or- ganizing the globe against competitive exploitation is an immensely intricate positive programme, re- quiring power and ability and inventiveness for its realization. To lay all our emphasis on not fight- ing and being amiable is to divert the attention : from the real business at hand. For the supreme task of world politics is not the prevention of war, but a satisfactory organization of mankind. Peace will follow from that. That is, in fact, what peace is. We shall end war by dealing effectively with our problems, not by reiterating that war is horrible. Is there any pacifist so dogmatic that he can rejoice because the defenselessness of China made it unable to resist aggression? Is anything gained for the world's permanent peace by the THE STRATEGY OF PEACE 9.25 prospect of a conquered or disintegrated China? Only the blindness which does not see beyond the immediate present can feel anything but sorrow if China is on the road to chaos. For the trouble being prepared by the weakness of China will trou- ble the world. It will haunt its peace. And no clairvoyance is needed to prophesy that if China is unable to stand on its feet and assume control of its own affairs, innocent people the world over will pay taxes for armaments, and those who are boys to-day will perish on distant battlefields. This is no scaremongering. The Chinese are al- most a quarter of the human race. Let them sink into helpless disorder, thwart them, oppress them, and they will become to the world what Turkey and the Balkan states have been to Europe — a run- ning sore which infects everyone. How irrelevant to such a problem is the doctrine preached by the ordinary pacifist. As if not fight- ing were a policy which touched even the fringes of this problem so gigantic that it darkens the thought of anyone who looks into the future. For of all the stakes ever offered to diplomacy China is the richest and largest. If comparatively in- significant territories like Morocco and Bosnia can 226 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY bring the world to the edge of war, what lusts of imperialism will a helpless China arouse? If we are to grapple with the issues which dis- tract the world, we have got to enter the theaters of trouble. If the United States is to be a leader, or even an important factor, in the stabilizing of mankind, it must create interests which will jus- tify its participation in world politics. It must invest and trade in the backward countries. This will give our diplomacy a leverage on events. And to be effective that diplomacy will have to be weighted with armaments of sufficient power to make it heard by the Great Powers. Moreover, we shall have to abandon our traditional dislike of European alliances. If we enter the arena of the world, we cannot stand entirely alone; we shall have to work in coalition with the Powers whose policy is most nearly like our own. That is, I realize, a terrifying programme to most Americans. It terrifies me, and disturbs every prejudice of my training. We have all of us been educated to isolation, and we love the irre- sponsibility of it. But that isolation must be abandoned if we are to do anything effective for internationalism. Of course, if we wish to let the THE STRATEGY OF PEACE 227 world go hang, we may be able to defend our coasts against attack, and establish a kind of hermit security for ourselves. But even that security will be precarioua in a world arranged as this one has come to be. Less and less is it possible to remain neutral, to stay out of the conflicts. Without the slightest intention of taking part in the great war we have several times almost been dragged into it. And though we may have escaped fight- ing, we have suffered tremendously because the dis- location of the globe affects all its parts* Real isolation has, in fact, become a myth, and our only choice is between being the passive vic- tim of international disorder and resolving to be an active leader in ending it. It is not an easy choice. As Lord Morley has said, politics is the science of the second best, and in surrendering our isolation we shall surrender much that is precious to us. But one thing is certain : we shall be safer by surrendering it deliberately, by making the choice with our eyes open, than by allowing our- selves to be dragged unprepared and surprised into the melee of the nations. Finally, the internationalist to-day cannot be effective as an unorganized private citizen. He 228 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY cannot deflect appreciably the course of world politics from the platform of a peace society. He must work through some agency which has pres- tige with the governments. The only available agency is his own government. The strategy of peace is to use the democratic governments as organs of leadership in world poli- tics. The pacifist must work to control his own government, not in order to make it powerless, but in order to make it a power in the decent handling of what are now the stakes of diplomacy. If a world state is created, it will be through the initiative of national governments. They are to the internationalist what the trades unions are to industrial democracy — organs of power through which a new view can be made to prevail. These, as I see them, are the conditions under which an internationalist remains a patriot, not in order to support his country right or wrong, not in order to aggrandize it, but in order to use it as a lever of influence in world politics. By be- coming an anti-patriot he simply cuts himself off from the only organization through which he can hope to make himself eff^ective in the aff'airs of nations. The failure of the German socialists is THE STRATEGY OF PEACE 229 not that they neglected to destroy the German Empire, but that they were unable to control its policy. Had they succeeded, they might have turaed the power of Germany into an incompar- able guardian of civilization. The difference, then, between the true interna- tionalist and the unreasoning patriot lies in the supremacy of his conscious purpose. He is loyal for reasons, and not merely by habit. He holds his local patriotism with a sense that it is tem- porary, knowing that he must be ready to merge it in a larger devotion. He remains a nationalist in practice because that is the only effective way he can work for internationalism. He preserves his country in trust for that greater state which will embrace civilization. He regards his alle- giance as a stewardship. It is true that he may for- get. He may sink into a dangerous patriotism. That is one of the risks of an active life. It is always possible that men will lose sight of the end and become fanatic about the means. There is no guarantee against this insidious danger. Only constant criticism and candid discussion can guard against it. INDEX Africa, 90; Germany in, 98, 99, 100 Algeciras, 131 ; lesson, 148, 149; Morocco charter, 145- 147. See also Morocco Alsace-Lorraine, 107 American abroad, the, 68, 69 American countrj-^ town, 70 Americanism, 42 Angell, Norman, 118 Anglo-French Entente, 123 Arbitration, 136, 138, 139; failure of, 140; weakness of, 142 Argentina, 191 Army mobility, 29, 30 Art, American, 67, 68 Asia, 176 Austria-Hungary, 183 Australia, 173 Backward countries, 87, 88; difficulties in international- izing, 151-155; exploiting, 190, 191; stabilizing, 194; trade in, 163, 164; war in Europe over, 124, 125 Balance of Power, 221, 222 Banco di Roma, 101-105 Beard, Charles A., cited, 182 Belgian Congo. See Congo Belgium, 82, 167 Berlin Conference of 1885, 130 Bernhardi, 28 Bismarck, 130, 131, 182 "Breaks," 38, 40 British Empire, 88, 173 Bryan, William J., 10, 21 Billow, Prince, quoted, 137, 138 Business, diplomacy, and patriotism, 71-83 Canada, 173 Childhood, 60, 67 China, 166, 167, 224-226 Civil War, 38, 109, 110 Commerce, 42 Commercial development, 98 Competition, national, 193 Concessions, 94 Congo, 91, 130 Congress, distrust of, 16, 32 Constitution, U. S., 182 Copper, 76, 77 Corporations, 221 Country town, 71 Cowardice, 62 Cultural diiferences, 112, 113 Democracy, ceasing at wa- ter's edge, 34, 35; efficient, 200, 201; essence of, 47; fear of, 203; foreign af- fairs and, 195; virtue of, 199; war and, 24; war- making power of, 15 Denmark, 166 Deutschland in Waff en, 43 Diplomacy: Algeciras lesson, 148, 149; British, 79; broader base for, 189-195; decisive thing in, 81 ; hid- den, 194, 198; patriotism, business, and, 71-83; per- sonal side of, 22; popular thinking about, 111; prize^ 281 232 INDEX 82; chief problem of, 87; secret, 6 Diplomatic events, recent, 113 Diplomats: lack of power, 32, 33; personal conference of, 21 Dogmatism, 51, 53 Economic interests, 183 Economic motive, patriotism and, 72, 73 Editors, 56, 57 Elections, 211, 212, 213 England: decadent?, 78, 79; Germany and, 33; Mo- rocco threat, 123 European concert, 3, 4, 108 European legislature. See Legislatures Europeans, government rec- ord, 91 Expansion, 90 Fatherland, 31 Fear, 172, 174, 175 Firearms and spirits, 164 Flag, trade and the, 159, 166 Foreign affairs, American people's opinion, 18-20; democracy's control, 25, 34, 35, 46, 200; domestic and, 50; public interest in, 187, 188; public opinion in, 196-204 Foreigners, 38, S3, 54; sym- pathy for, 56 France, Morocco and, 97; Mexico and, 128 Free trade, 118, 119, 120 Friction arenas, 87-109 Frontiers, 38, 195; erosion, 45; government, 49; neces- sity, 39 Fullerton, Morton, quoted, 100, 101 German Crown Prince, 43 German propaganda, 65 German Southwest Africa, 99 German-Americanism, 63-66 Germany as the Fatherland, 63; economic development, 43; England and, 33; inter- ests and prestige, 137, 138; real quarrel, 139; union, 182 Government, publicity in, 201; strong, 221 Great Illusion, 118, 119 Great Powers, 82 Grey, Sir Edward, 91, 201; effort for European con- cert, 3; lack of power, 33 Hague Court, 139; defect, 140 Haiti, 168 Haldane, Lord, 54 Hamilton, 181 Harris, Norman Dwight, quoted, 91, 92, 130 Herreros, 99 Humane persons, 217-220 Hyphen, 64, 65 Imperialism: cause of war, 166; central nerve, 159; complexity, 97; core of, 150-159; evils, 158; for- mula, 105; groups of in- terests, 106; outbreak, 95 India, 88 Industrial democracy, 221 Industrial statesmanship, 214 International governments, 148; destroying, 153-155; evils, 158; supporting, 155- 157 Internationalism, 135; peril, 217; proposal advocated, 155 INDEX 233 Isolation, 218, 223, 226, 227 Italia Irredenta, 107 Italy and Tripoli, 100-105 Japan, 20, 41 Jews, 66 Jingoism, 53 King, uses of, 26-38 Labor, 221 Laissez-faire, 165 League of Peace, 140, 141 Legislatures: European, 130; international, 131 ; inter- national, failure of, 132; permanent world, 133-135, 144 Lloyd George, 80, 201; quoted, 61, 62 Local pride, 71-74 London Conference, 131 Loyalties, early, 61, 62 Loyalty, 184; broadening the basis of, 179, 180 Luderitz, Herr, 99, 100 Lusitania, 15, 21, 22, 23, 24, 31, 32 McKinley, President, 24 " Made in Germany," 78 Mexico, 93, 94, 165; France in, 128, 129; intervention, 21; Wilson's policy, 129 Militarism, ideal of, 42 Monroe Doctrine, 18, 19, 107, 128 Morley, Lord, cited, 227 Morocco, 77, 80, 97, 121, 122, 145; study needed, 150 Nation: mystical entity, 58, 59; thought of, 28. See also People Nation (London), quoted, 58 National interests, 137 National unity in danger, 36 Nationality, 59, 60; arousing, 66; essence, 67, 69; mor- bid, 171; thwarted, 62 New York Evening Tele- gram, 31 Newspapers in wartime, 54, 55 Nigeria, 91, 92, 93 Nightingale, Consul, quoted, 91 Non-resistance, 220 One-man power. See Presi- dent ; King Open door, 114-117, 120 Opposition, value, 51 Organizing, 168. See also Peace Origins: Haven in distress, 7; retreat to, 61; worthy, 62 Pacelli, Ernesto, 101 Pacific Ocean problem, 175 Pacifism, irrelevancy, 297 Pacifists, duty, 228; weak- ness, 113, 114 Pan-Americanism, 129 Panic in thinking, 8-10 Passion, 76 Patriotism, 57; business, diplomacy, and 71-73; clashing, 185; expanding, 173, 174; future, 172-188; in the rough, 58-70; mean- ing, 36; primitive, 171; true, 228, 229; world, 172, 179 Peace, agency of, 228 ; at any price, 209, 217-219; Euro- pean programmes before the war, 6; organization the basis of, 211, 224; permanent, 5, 217; pro- grammes, 136; strategy of. 234 INDEX 207-228. See also Pa- cifism; Pacifists Peace-makers, real, 210 People, American, thoughts and will, 26, 27 People, inertia, 28, 29; nego- tiating, 26, 30-32 Persia, 164, 165, 166, 168, 191 Pichon, M., quoted, 97 Pinon, M., quoted, 101 Poincar6, M. Raymond, quoted, 97 Political parties, false unity, 201, 202 Politics, 216 Population, mixed, 40, 41; solidified, 42 Power. See Balance of Power Powers, Great, 89 Preparedness, basis, 127, 128 President, U. S., opinions, 17, 18; war-making power, 15-25 Prestige, national, 77, 78, 79, 108, 137 Pride of race, 62 Protection, 119 Protectorate, 168 ; interna- tional, 169, 170 Prussia, 182, 183 Public. See People Public opinion. President's control, 22, 23 Public spirit, 71, 72 Publicity, 198, 199, See also Foreign affairs Pure races, 40, 45 Real estate, patriotism and, 74 75 Realpolitik, 111-126 Roosevelt, Theodore, 24 Senate, world, 133 Serbia, 82 Shipping, England's control of U. S., 44 Small states, 166, 167. Se« also Backward countries Socialists, evolutionary and revolutionary, 213, 214; German, 228, 229 Sovereignty of ideas, 53 Sovereignty, theory of na- tional, 48. See also Na- tionality State, dynastic conception, 36, 37. See also Govern- ment; World state Strikes, pairing off, 39 Thinking alike, 51 " Touch me," 163 Toynbee, Arnold, quoted, 183 Trade, flag following, 159 Trade union, 184 Tripoli, 100-105 Turks, 42, 127; Tripoli, Italy, and, 101-105 Ulster, 42 Union, 178-184 United States, 94; duty, 226, 227 Veblen, Thorstein, quoted, 71, 72 Vera Cruz, 16 Viereck, G. S., 66 Votes, 216. See also Elec- tions War, commerce and, 42; de- fensive, 208 ; democracy and, 24; escape, 23, 25; fusion of nations against, 45; industry and, 43, 44; modern substitute, 213; platitudes about, 207- 210; psychology of, 35, 36. Se« also Militarism INDEX 235 War in Europe: cause, 82, 127; real contest, 124, 125 War-making power in tlie United States, 15 Weak states. See Backward countries; Small states West, the, 191, 192 West, Rebecca, quoted, 58, 59 Western peoples, 177, 178 Wilson, Woodrow, 15 World government, 130 World problem, 127 World State: difficulties, 143, 144; entering wedge, 185- 187; organizing, 224; pres- ent possibility, 176, 177, 178; United States and, 226 Zabern, 49 %w 1.^^ ,-^ >. ^=,^""' . "^Cr>.<^'^' ^;^f^% '-^ .^ ^.^^ "--1'. ,H '^<. ..^^ .-^ "^^^ .<^ ' V "^^ Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process aV ^., Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide ^ ' ' Treatment Date: JIJN 20^^ ^^^ ^ ' « . % ' " ^ ' ^\\ PreservationTechnologies CP c <. '^. v"*' A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATIOI _, ^ - ^ '^ ^^ 1 1 1 Thomson Pari( Drive O IV ^ "^ ^ Cranberry Township, PA 16066 (724)779-2111 0^ ^^^», -^o V'\ ^> o. -r^ i "-^^ ■ >'■' c "^. ' ' 8 1 \ " "'/ . , *^-' " A C' \' ^ s "^ '/, ^ ■<■' .-^^/>f^ ■ X . ,<>'' -:t- .v_^ V^. '-%. /• "o a'< ■i' ^^.- V*' - sOO. %