An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation Part 11

(3) Cancelment of the public debt, of the Empire and of its members--creditors of the Empire being accounted accessory to the culpable enterprise of the Imperial government;

(4) Confiscation of such industrial equipment and resources as have contributed to the carrying on of the war, as being also accessory;

(5) a.s.sumption by the league at large of all debts incurred, by the Entente belligerents or by neutrals, for the prosecution or by reason of the war, and distribution of the obligation so a.s.sumed, impartially among the members of the league, including the peoples of the defeated nations;

(6) Indemnification for all injury done to civilians in the invaded territories; the means for such indemnification to be procured by confiscation of all estates in the defeated countries exceeding a certain very modest maximum, calculated on the average of property owned, say, by the poorer three-fourths of the population,--the kept cla.s.ses being properly accounted accessory to the Empire's culpable enterprise.

The proposition to let the war debt be shared by all members of the league on a footing of impartial equality may seem novel, and perhaps extravagant. But all projects put forth for safeguarding the world's peace by a compact among the pacific nations run on the patent, though often tacit, avowal that the Entente belligerents are spending their substance and pledging their credit for the common cause. Among the Americans, the chief of the neutral nations, this is coming to be recognised more and more overtly. So that, in this instance at least, no insurmountable reluctance to take over their due share of the common burden should fairly be looked for, particularly when it appears that the projected league, if it is organised on a footing of neutrality, will relieve the republic of virtually all outlay for their own defense.

Of course, there is, in all this, no temerarious intention to offer advice as to what should be done by those who have it to do, or even to sketch the necessary course which events are bound to take. As has been remarked in another pa.s.sage, that would have to be a work of prophesy or of effrontery, both of which, it is hoped, lie equally beyond the horizon of this inquiry; which is occupied with the question of what conditions will logically have to be met in order to an enduring peace, not what will be the nature and outcome of negotiations entered into by astute delegates pursuing the special advantage, each of his own nation.

And yet the peremptory need of reaching some practicable arrangement whereby the peace may be kept, goes to say that even the most astute negotiations will in some degree be controlled by that need, and may reasonably be expected to make some approach to the simple and obvious requirements of the situation.

Therefore the argument returns to the United Kingdom and the probable limit of tolerance of that people, in respect of what they are likely to insist on as a necessary measure of democratisation in the nations of the second part, and what measure of national abnegation they are likely to accommodate themselves to. The United Kingdom is indispensable to the formation of a pacific league of neutrals. And the British terms of adhesion, or rather of initiation of such a league, therefore, will have to const.i.tute the core of the structure, on which details may be adjusted and to which concessive adjustments will have to be made by all the rest. This is not saying that the projected league must or will be dominated by the United Kingdom or administered in the British interest.

Indeed, it can not well be made to serve British particular interests in any appreciable degree, except at the cost of defeat to its main purpose; since the purposes of an enduring peace can be served only by an effectual neutralisation of national claims and interests. But it would mean that the neutralisation of national interests and discriminations to be effected would have to be drawn on lines acceptable to British taste in these matters, and would have to go approximately so far as would be dictated by the British notions of what is expedient, and not much farther. The pacific league of neutrals would have much of a British air, but "British" in this connection is to be taken as connoting the English-speaking countries rather than as applying to the United Kingdom alone; since the entrance of the British into the league would involve the entrance of the British colonies, and, indeed, of the American republic as well.

The temper and outlook of this British community, therefore, becomes a matter of paramount importance in any attempted a.n.a.lysis of the situation resulting after the war, or of any prospective course of conduct to be entered on by the pacific nations. And the question touches not so much the temper and preconceptions of the British community as known in recent history, but rather as it is likely to be modified by the war experience. So that the practicability of a neutral league comes to turn, in great measure, on the effect which this war experience is having on the habits of thought of the British people, or on that section of the British population which will make up the effectual majority when the war closes. The grave interest that attaches to this question must serve as justification for pursuing it farther, even though there can be no promise of a definite or confident answer to be found beforehand.

Certain general a.s.sertions may be made with some confidence. The experiences of the war, particularly among the immediate partic.i.p.ants and among their immediate domestic connections--a large and increasing proportion of the people at large--are plainly impressing on them the uselessness and hards.h.i.+p of such a war. There can be no question but they are reaching a conviction that a war of this modern kind and scale is a thing to be avoided if possible. They are, no doubt, willing to go to very considerable lengths to make a repet.i.tion of it impossible, and they may reasonably be expected to go farther along that line before peace returns. But the lengths to which they are ready to go may be in the way of concessions, or in the way of contest and compulsion. There need be no doubt but a profound and vindictive resentment runs through the British community, and there is no reason to apprehend that this will be dissipated in the course of further hostilities; although it should fairly be expected to lose something of its earlier exuberant malevolence and indiscrimination, more particularly if hostilities continue for some time. It is not too much to expect, that this popular temper of resentment will demand something very tangible in the way of summary vengeance on those who have brought the hards.h.i.+ps of war upon the nation.

The manner of retribution which would meet the popular demand for "justice" to be done on the enemy is likely to be affected by the fortunes of war, as also the incidence of it. Should the governmental establishment and the discretion still vest in the gentlemanly cla.s.ses at the close of hostilities, the retribution is likely to take the accustomed gentlemanly shape of pecuniary burdens imposed on the people of the defeated country, together with diplomatically specified surrender of territorial and colonial possessions, and the like; such as to leave the _de facto_ enemy courteously on one side, and to yield something in the way of pecuniary benefit to the gentlemen-investors in charge, and something more in the way of new emoluments of office to the office-holding cla.s.s included in the same order of gentlemen. The retribution in the case would manifestly fall on the underlying population in the defeated country, without seriously touching the responsible parties, and would leave the defeated nation with a new grievance to nourish its patriotic animosity and with a new incentive to a policy of watchful waiting for a chance of retaliation.

But it is to be noted that under the stress of the war there is going forward in the British community a progressive displacement of gentlemanly standards and official procedure by standards and procedure of a visibly underbred character, a weakening of the hold of the gentlemanly cla.s.ses on the control of affairs and a weakening of the hold which the sacred rights of property, investment and privilege have long had over the imagination of the British people. Should hostilities continue, and should the exigencies of the war situation continue to keep the futility of these sacred rights, as well as the fatuity of their possessors, in the public eye, after the same fas.h.i.+on as. .h.i.therto, it would not be altogether unreasonable to expect that the discretion would pa.s.s into the hands of the underbred, or into the hands of men immediately and urgently accountable to the underbred. In such a case, and with a constantly growing popular realisation that the directorate and responsible enemy in the war is the Imperial dynasty and its pedigreed aids and abettors, it is conceivable that the popular resentment would converge so effectually on these responsible instigators and directors of misfortune as to bring the incidence of the required retribution effectually to bear on them. The outcome might, not inconceivably, be the virtual erasure of the Imperial dynasty, together with the pedigreed-cla.s.s rule on which it rests and the apparatus of irresponsible coercion through which it works, in the Fatherland and in its subsidiaries and dependencies.

With a sufficiently urgent realisation of their need of peace and security, and with a realisation also that the way to avoid war is to avoid the ways and means of international jealousy and of the national discriminations out of which international jealousy grows, it is conceivable that a government which should reflect the British temper and the British hopes might go so far in insisting on a neutralisation of the peoples of the Fatherland as would leave them without the dynastic apparatus with which warlike enterprise is set afoot, and so leave them also perforce in a pacific frame of mind. In time, in the absence of their dearly beloved leavings of feudalism, an enforced reliance on their own discretion and initiative, and an enforced respite from the rant and prance of warlike swagger, would reasonably be expected to grow into a popular habit. The German people are by no means less capable of tolerance and neighbourly decorum than their British or Scandinavian neighbours of the same blood,--if they can only be left to their own devices, untroubled by the maggoty conceit of national domination.

There is no intention herewith to express an expectation that this out-and-out neutralisation of the Fatherland's international relations and of its dynastic government will come to pa.s.s on the return of peace, or that the German people will, as a precaution against recurrent Imperial rabies, be organised on a democratic pattern by constraint of the pacific nations of the league. The point is only that this measure of neutralisation appears to be the necessary condition, in the absence of which no such neutral league can succeed, and that so long as the war goes on there is something of a chance that the British community may in time reach a frame of mind combining such settled determination to safeguard the peace at all costs, with such a degree of disregard for outworn conventions, that their spokesmen in the negotiations may push the neutralisation of these peoples to that length.

The achievement of such an outcome would evidently take time as well as harsh experience, more time and harsher experience, perhaps, than one likes to contemplate.

Most men, therefore, would scarcely rate the chance of such an outcome at all high. And yet it is to be called to mind that the war has lasted long and the effect of its demands and its experience has already gone far, and that the longer it lasts the greater are the chances of its prolongation and of its continued hards.h.i.+ps, at least to the extent that with every month of war that pa.s.ses the prospect of the allied nations making peace on any terms short of unconditional surrender grows less.

And unconditional surrender is the first step in the direction of an unconditional dispossession of the Imperial establishment and its war prophets,--depending primarily on the state of mind of the British people at the time. And however unlikely, it is also always possible, as some contend, that in the course of further war experience the common man in the Fatherland may come to reflect on the use and value of the Imperial establishment, with the result of discarding and disowning it and all its works. Such an expectation would doubtless underrate the force of ancient habit, and would also involve a misapprehension of the psychological incidence of a warlike experience. The German people have substantially none of those preconceptions of independence and self-direction to go on, in the absence of which an effectual revulsion against dynastic rule can not come to pa.s.s.

Embedded in the common sense of the British population at large is a certain large and somewhat sullen sense of fair dealing. In this they are not greatly different from their neighbours, if at all, except that the body of common sense in which this British sense of fair dealing lies embedded is a maturer fas.h.i.+on of common sense than that which serves to guide the workday life of many of their neighbours. And the maturity in question appears to be chiefly a matter of their having unlearned, divested themselves of, or been by force of disuse divested of, an exceptionally large proportion of that burden of untoward conceits which western Europe, and more particularly middle Europe, at large has carried over from the Middle Ages. They have had time and occasion to forget more of what the exigencies of modern life make it expedient to have forgotten. And yet they are reputed slow, conservative. But they have been well placed for losing much of what would be well lost.

Among other things, their preconception of national animosity is not secure, in the absence of provocation. They are now again in a position to learn to do without some of the useless legacy out of the past,--useless, that is, for life as it runs today, however it may be rated in the setting in which it was all placed in that past out of which it has come. And the question is whether now, under the pressure of exigencies that make for a disestablishment of much c.u.mbersome inherited apparatus for doing what need not be done, they will be ruled by their sense of expediency and of fair dealing to the extent of cancelling out of their own scheme of life so much of this legacy of conventional preconceptions as has now come visibly to hinder their own material well-being, and at the same time to defeat that peace and security for which they have shown themselves willing to fight. It is, of course, a simpler matter to fight than it is to put away a preconceived, even if it is a bootless, superst.i.tion; as, e.g., the prestige of hereditary wealth, hereditary gentility, national vainglory, and perhaps especially national hatred. But if the school is hard enough and the discipline protracted enough there is no reason in the nature of things why the common run of the British people should not unlearn these futilities that once were the substance of things under an older and outworn order. They have already shown their capacity for divesting themselves of outworn inst.i.tutional bonds, in discarding the main substance of dynastic rule; and when they now come to face the exigencies of this new situation it should cause no great surprise if they are able to see their way to do what further is necessary to meet these exigencies.

At the hands of this British commonwealth the new situation requires the putting away of the German Imperial establishment and the military caste; the reduction of the German peoples to a footing of unreserved democracy with sufficient guarantees against national trade discriminations; surrender of all British tutelage over outlying possessions, except what may go to guarantee their local autonomy; cancelment of all extra-territorial pretensions of the several nations entering into the league; neutralisation of the several national establishments, to comprise virtual disarmament, as well as cancelment of all restrictions on trade and of all national defense of extra-territorial pecuniary claims and interests on the part of individual citizens. The naval control of the seas will best be left in British hands. No people has a graver or more immediate interest in the freedom and security of the sea-borne trade; and the United Kingdom has shown that it is to be trusted in that matter. And then it may well be that neither the national pride nor the apprehensions of the British people would allow them to surrender it; whereas, if the league is to be formed it will have to be on terms to which the British people are willing to adhere. A certain provision of armed force will also be needed to keep the governments of unneutral nations in check,--and for the purpose in hand all effectively monarchical countries are to be counted as congenitally unneutral, whatever their formal professions and whether they are members of the league or not. Here again it will probably appear that the people of the United Kingdom, and of the English-speaking countries at large, will not consent to this armed force and its discretionary use pa.s.sing out of British hands, or rather out of French-British hands; and here again the practical decision will have to wait on the choice of the British people, all the more because the British community has no longer an interest, real or fancied, in the coercive use of this force for their own particular ends. No other power is to be trusted, except France, and France is less well placed for the purpose and would a.s.suredly also not covet so invidious an honour and so thankless an office.

The theory, i.e. the logical necessities, of such a pacific league of neutral nations is simple enough, in its elements. War is to be avoided by a policy of avoidance. Which signifies that the means and the motives to warlike enterprise and warlike provocation are to be put away, so far as may be. If what may be, in this respect, does not come up to the requirements of the case, the experiment, of course, will fail. The preliminary requirement,--elimination of the one formidable dynastic State in Europe,--has been spoken of. Its counterpart in the Far East will cease to be formidable on the decease of its natural ally in Central Europe, in so far as touches the case of such a projected league. The ever increasingly dubious empire of the Czar would appear to fall in the same category. So that the pacific league's fortunes would seem to turn on what may be called its domestic or internal arrangements.

Now, the means of warlike enterprise, as well as of unadvised embroilment, is always in the last a.n.a.lysis the patriotic spirit of the nation. Given this patriotic spirit in sufficient measure, both the material equipment and the provocation to hostilities will easily be found. It should accordingly appear to be the first care of such a pacific league to reduce the sources of patriotic incitement to the practicable minimum. This can be done, in such measure as it can be done at all, by neutralisation of national pretensions. The finished outcome in this respect, such as would a.s.sure perpetual peace among the peoples concerned, would of course be an unconditional neutralisation of citizens.h.i.+p, as has already been indicated before. The question which, in effect, the spokesmen for a pacific league have to face is as to how nearly that outcome can be brought to pa.s.s. The rest of what they may undertake, or may come to by way of compromise and stipulation, is relatively immaterial and of relatively transient consequence.

A neutralisation of citizens.h.i.+p has of course been afloat in a somewhat loose way in the projects of socialistic and other "undesirable"

agitators, but nothing much has come of it. Nor have specific projects for its realisation been set afoot. That anything conclusive along that line could now be reached would seem extremely doubtful, in view of the ardent patriotic temper of all these peoples, heightened just now by the experience of war. Still, an undesigned and unguided drift in that direction has been visible in all those nations that are accounted the vanguard among modern civilised peoples, ever since the dynastic rule among them began to be displaced by a growth of "free" inst.i.tutions, that is to say inst.i.tutions resting on an accepted ground of insubordination and free initiative.

The patriotism of these peoples, or their national spirit, is after all and at the best an attenuated and impersonalised remnant of dynastic loyalty, and it amounts after all, in effect, to nothing much else than a residual curtailment or partial atrophy of that democratic habit of mind that embodies itself in the formula: Live and let live. It is, no doubt, both an ancient and a very meritorious habit. It is easily acquired and hard to put away. The patriotic spirit and the national life (prestige) on which it centers are the subject of untiring eulogy; but hitherto its encomiasts have shown no cause and put forward no claim to believe that it all is of any slightest use for any purpose that does not take it and its paramount merit for granted. It is doubtless a very meritorious habit; at least so they all say. But under the circ.u.mstances of modern civilised life it is fruitful of no other net material result than damage and discomfort. Still it is virtually ubiquitous among civilised men, and in an admirable state of repair; and for the calculable future it is doubtless to be counted in as an enduring obstacle to a conclusive peace, a constant source of anxiety and unremitting care.

The motives that work out through this national spirit, by use of this patriotic ardor, fall under two heads: dynastic ambition, and business enterprise. The two categories have the common trait that neither the one nor the other comprises anything that is of the slightest material benefit to the community at large; but both have at the same time a high prestige value in the conventional esteem of modern men. The relation of dynastic ambition to warlike enterprise, and the uses of that usufruct of the nation's resources and man-power which the nation's patriotism places at the disposal of the dynastic establishment, have already been spoken of at length above, perhaps at excessive length, in the recurrent discussion of the dynastic State and its quest of dominion for dominion's sake. What measures are necessary to be taken as regards the formidable dynastic States that threaten the peace, have also been outlined, perhaps with excessive freedom.

But it remains to call attention to that mitigated form of dynastic rule called a const.i.tutional monarchy. Instances of such a const.i.tutional monarchy, designed to conserve the well-beloved abuses of dynastic rule under a cover of democratic formalities, or to bring in effectual democratic insubordination under cover of the ancient dignities of an outworn monarchical system,--the characterisation may run either way according to the fancy of the speaker, and to much the same practical effect in either case,--instances ill.u.s.trative of this compromise monarchy at work today are to be had, as felicitously as anywhere, in the Balkan states; perhaps the case of Greece will be especially instructive. At the other, and far, end of the line will be found such other typical instances as the British, the Dutch, or, in pathetic and droll miniature, the Norwegian.

There is, of course, a wide interval between the grotesque effrontery that wears the h.e.l.lenic crown and the undeviatingly decorous self-effacement of the Dutch sovereign; and yet there is something of a common complexion runs through the whole range of establishments, all the way from the quasi-dynastic to the pseudo-dynastic. For reasons unavoidable and persistent, though not inscribed in the const.i.tuent law, the governmental establishment a.s.sociated with such a royal concern will be made up of persons drawn from the kept cla.s.ses, the n.o.bility or lesser gentlefolk, and will be imbued with the spirit of these "better"

cla.s.ses rather than that of the common run.

With what may be uncanny shrewdness, or perhaps mere tropismatic response to the unreasoned stimulus of a "consciousness of kind," the British government--habitually a syndicate of gentlefolk--has uniformly insisted on the installation of a const.i.tutional monarchy at the formation of every new national organisation in which that government has had a discretionary voice. And the many and various const.i.tutional governments so established, commonly under British auspices in some degree, have invariably run true to form, in some appreciable degree.

They may be quasi-dynastic or pseudo-dynastic, but at this nearest approach to democracy they always, and unavoidably, include at least a circ.u.mlocution office of gentlefolk, in the way of a ministry and court establishment, whose place in the economy of the nation's affairs it is to adapt the run of these affairs to the needs of the kept cla.s.ses.

There need be no imputation of sinister designs to these gentlefolk, who so are elected by force of circ.u.mstances to guard and guide the nation's interests. As things go, it will doubtless commonly be found that they are as well-intentioned as need be. But a well-meaning gentleman of good antecedents means well in a gentlemanly way and in the light of good antecedents. Which comes unavoidably to an effectual bias in favor of those interests which honorable gentlemen of good antecedents have at heart. And among these interests are the interests of the kept cla.s.ses, as contrasted with that common run of the population from which their keep is drawn.

Under the auspices, even if they are only the histrionic and decorative auspices, of so decorous an article of inst.i.tutional furniture as royalty, it follows of logical necessity that the personnel of the effectual government must also be drawn from the better cla.s.ses, whose place and station and high repute will make their a.s.sociation with the First Gentleman of the Realm not too insufferably incongruous. And then, the popular habit of looking up to this First Gentleman with that deference that royalty commands, also conduces materially to the attendant habitual att.i.tude of deference to gentility more at large.

Even in so democratic a country, and with so exanimate a crown as is to be found in the United Kingdom, the royal establishment visibly, and doubtless very materially, conduces to the continued tenure of the effectual government by representatives of the kept cla.s.ses; and it therefore counts with large effect toward the r.e.t.a.r.dation of the country's further move in the direction of democratic insubordination and direct partic.i.p.ation in the direction of affairs by the underbred, who finally pay the cost. And on the other hand, even so moderately royal an establishment as the Norwegian has apparently a sensible effect in the way of gathering the reins somewhat into the hands of the better cla.s.ses, under circ.u.mstances of such meagerness as might be expected to preclude anything like a "better" cla.s.s, in the conventional acceptation of that term. It would appear that even the extreme of pseudo-dynastic royalty, sterilised to the last degree, is something of an effectual hindrance to democratic rule, and in so far also a hindrance to the further continued neutralisation of nationalist pretensions, as also an effectual furtherance of upper-cla.s.s rule for upper-cla.s.s ends.

Now, a government by well-meaning gentlemen-investors will, at the nearest, come no nearer representing the material needs and interests of the common run than a parable comes to representing the concrete facts which it hopes to illuminate. And as bears immediately on the point in hand, these gentlemanly administrators of the nation's affairs who so cl.u.s.ter about the throne, vacant though it may be of all but the bodily presence of majesty, are after all gentlemen, with a gentlemanly sense of punctilio touching the large proprieties and courtesies of political life. The national honor is a matter of punctilio, always; and out of the formal exigencies of the national honor arise grievances to be redressed; and it is grievances of this character that commonly afford the formal ground of a breach of the peace. An appeal on patriotic grounds of wounded national pride, to the common run who have no trained sense of punctilio, by the gentlemanly responsible cla.s.s who have such a sense, backed by a.s.surances that the national prestige or the national interests are at stake, will commonly bring a suitable response. It is scarcely necessary that the common run should know just what the stir is about, so long as they are informed by their trusted betters that there is a grievance to redress. In effect, it results that the democratic nation's affairs are administered by a syndicate composed of the least democratic cla.s.s in the population.

Excepting what is to be excepted, it will commonly hold true today that these gentlemanly governments are conducted in a commendably clean and upright fas.h.i.+on, with a conscious rect.i.tude and a benevolent intention.

But they are after all, in effect, cla.s.s governments, and they unavoidably carry the bias of their cla.s.s. The gentlemanly officials and law-givers come, in the main, from the kept cla.s.ses, whose living comes to them in the way of income from investments, at home or in foreign parts, or from an equivalent source of acc.u.mulated wealth or official emolument. The bias resulting from this state of the case need not be of an intolerant character in order to bring its modic.u.m of mischief into the national policy, as regards amicable relations with other nationalities. A slight bias running on a ground of conscious right and unbroken usage may go far. So, e.g., anyone of these gentlemanly governments is within its legitimate rights, or rather within its imperative duty, in defending the foreign investments of its citizens and enforcing due payment of its citizens' claims to income or princ.i.p.al of such property as they may hold in foreign parts; and it is within its ordinary lines of duty in making use of the nation's resources--that is to say of the common man and his means of livelihood--in enforcing such claims held by the investing cla.s.ses. The community at large has no interest in the enforcement of such claims; it is evidently a cla.s.s interest, and as evidently protected by a code of rights, duties and procedure that has grown out of a cla.s.s bias, at the cost of the community at large.

This bias favoring the interests of invested wealth may also, and indeed it commonly does, take the aggressive form of aggressively forwarding enterprise in investment abroad, particularly in commercially backward countries abroad, by extension of the national jurisdiction and the active countenancing of concessions in foreign parts, by subventions, or by creation of offices to bring suitable emoluments to the younger sons of deserving families. The protective tariffs to which recourse is sometimes had, are of the same general nature and purpose. Of course, it is in this latter, aggressive or excursive, issue of the well-to-do bias in favor of investment and invested wealth that its most pernicious effect on international relations is traceable.

Free income, that is to say income not dependent on personal merit or exertion of any kind, is the breath of life to the kept cla.s.ses; and as a corollary of the "First Law of Nature," therefore, the invested wealth which gives a legally equitable claim to such income has in their eyes all the sanct.i.ty that can be given by Natural Right. Investment--often spoken of euphemistically as "savings"--is consequently a meritorious act, conceived to be very serviceable to the community at large, and properly to be furthered by all available means. Invested wealth is so much added to the aggregate means at the community's disposal, it is believed. Of course, in point of fact, income from investment in the hands of these gentlefolk is a means of tracelessly consuming that much of the community's yearly product; but to the kept cla.s.ses, who see the matter from the point of view of the recipient, the matter does not present itself in that light. To them it is the breath of life. Like other honorable men they are faithful to their bread; and by authentic tradition the common man, in whose disciplined preconceptions the kept cla.s.ses are his indispensable betters, is also imbued with the uncritical faith that the invested wealth which enables these betters tracelessly to consume a due share of the yearly product is an addition to the aggregate means in hand.

The advancement of commercial and other business enterprise beyond the national frontiers is consequently one of the duties not to be neglected, and with which no trifling can be tolerated. It is so bound up with national ideals, under any gentlemanly government, that any invasion or evasion of the rights of investors in foreign parts, or of other business involved in dealings with foreign parts, immediately involves not only the material interest of the nation but the national honour as well. Hence international jealousies and eventual embroilment.

The const.i.tutional monarchy that commonly covers a modern democratic community is accordingly a menace to the common peace, and any pacific league of neutrals will be laying up trouble and prospective defeat for itself in allowing such an inst.i.tution to stand over in any instance.

Acting with a free hand, if such a thing were possible, the projected league should logically eliminate all monarchical establishments, const.i.tutional or otherwise, from among its federated nations. It is doubtless not within reason to look for such a move in the negotiations that are to initiate the projected league of neutrals; but the point is called to mind here chiefly as indicating one of the difficult pa.s.sages which are to be faced in any attempted formation of such a league, as well as one of the abiding sources of international irritation with which the league's jurisdiction will be burdened so long as a decisive measure of the kind is not taken.

The logic of the whole matter is simple enough, and the necessary measures to be taken to remedy it are no less simple--barring sentimental objections which will probably prove insuperable. A monarchy, even a sufficiently inane monarchy, carries the burden of a gentlemanly governmental establishment--a government by and for the kept cla.s.ses; such a government will unavoidably direct the affairs of state with a view to income on invested wealth, and will see the material interests of the country only in so far as they present themselves under the form of investment and business enterprise designed to eventuate in investment; these are the only forms of material interest that give rise to international jealousies, discriminations and misunderstanding, at the same time that they are interests of individuals only and have no material use or value to the community at large. Given a monarchical establishment and the concomitant gentlemanly governmental corps, there is no avoiding this sinister prime mover of international rivalry, so long as the rights of invested wealth continue in popular apprehension to be held inviolable.

Quite obviously there is a certain _tu quoque_ ready to the hand of these "gentlemen of the old school" who see in the const.i.tutional monarchy a G.o.d-given shelter from the unreserved vulgarisation of life at the hands of the unblest and unbalanced underbred and underfed. The formally democratic nations, that have not retained even a pseudo-dynastic royalty, are not much more fortunately placed in respect of national discrimination in trade and investment. The American republic will obviously come into the comparison as the type-form of economic policy in a democratic commonwealth. There is little to choose between the economic policy pursued by such republics as France or America on the one side and their nearest counterparts among the const.i.tutional monarchies on the other. It is even to be admitted out of hand that the comparison does no credit to democratic inst.i.tutions as seen at work in these republics. They are, in fact, somewhat the crudest and most singularly foolish in their economic policy of any peoples in Christendom. And in view of the amazing facility with which these democratic commonwealths are always ready to delude themselves in everything that touches their national trade policies, it is obvious that any league of neutrals whose fortunes are in any degree contingent on their reasonable compliance with a call to neutralise their trade regulations for the sake of peace, will have need of all the persuasive power it can bring to bear.

However, the powers of darkness have one less line of defense to shelter them and their work of malversation in these commonwealths than in the const.i.tutional monarchies. The American national establishment, e.g., which may be taken as a fairly characteristic type-form in this bearing, is a government of businessmen for business ends; and there is no tabu of axiomatic gentility or of certified pedigree to hedge about this working syndicate of business interests. So that it is all nearer by one remove to the disintegrating touch of the common man and his commonplace circ.u.mstances. The businesslike regime of these democratic politicians is as undeviating in its advocacy and aid of enterprise in pursuit of private gain under shelter of national discrimination as the circ.u.mstances will permit; and the circ.u.mstances will permit them to do much and go far; for the limits of popular gullibility in all things that touch the admirable feats of business enterprise are very wide in these countries. There is a sentimental popular belief running to the curious effect that because the citizens of such a commonwealth are ungraded equals before the law, therefore somehow they can all and several become wealthy by trading at the expense of their neighbours.

Yet, the fact remains that there is only the one line of defense in these countries where the business interests have not the countenance of a time-honored order of gentlefolk, with the sanction of royalty in the background. And this fact is further enhanced by one of its immediate consequences. Proceeding upon the abounding faith which these peoples have in business enterprise as a universal solvent, the unreserved venality and greed of their businessmen--unhampered by the gentleman's _n.o.blesse oblige_--have pushed the conversion of public law to private gain farther and more openly here than elsewhere. The outcome has been divers measures in restraint of trade or in furtherance of profitable abuses, of such a cra.s.s and flagrant character that if once the popular apprehension is touched by matter-of-fact reflection on the actualities of this businesslike policy the whole structure should reasonably be expected to crumble. If the present conjuncture of circ.u.mstances should, e.g., present to the American populace a choice between exclusion from the neutral league, and a consequent probable and dubious war of self-defense, on the one hand; as against entrance into the league, and security at the cost of relinquis.h.i.+ng their national tariff in restraint of trade, on the other hand, it is always possible that the people might be brought to look their protective tariff in the face and recognise it for a commonplace conspiracy in restraint of trade, and so decide to shuffle it out of the way as a good riddance. And the rest of the Republic's businesslike policy of special favors would in such a case stand a chance of going in the discard along with the protective tariff, since the rest is of substantially the same disingenuous character.

Not that anyone need entertain a confident expectation of such an exploit of common sense on the part of the American voters. There is little encouragement for such a hope in their past career of gullibility on this head. But this is again a point of difficulty to be faced in negotiations looking to such a pacific league of neutrals. Without a somewhat comprehensive neutralisation of national trade regulations, the outlook for lasting peace would be reduced by that much; there would be so much material for international jealousy and misunderstanding left standing over and requiring continued readjustment and compromise, always with the contingency of a breach that much nearer. The infatuation of the Americans with their protective tariff and other businesslike discriminations is a sufficiently serious matter in this connection, and it is always possible that their inability to give up this superst.i.tion might lead to their not adhering to this projected neutral league. Yet it is at least to be said that the longer the time that pa.s.ses before active measures are taken toward the organisation of such a league--that is to say, in effect, the longer the great war lasts--the more amenable is the temper of the Americans likely to be, and the more reluctantly would they see themselves excluded. Should the war be protracted to some such length as appears to be promised by latterday p.r.o.nunciamentos from the belligerents, or to something pa.s.sably approaching such a duration; and should the Imperial designs and anomalous diplomacy of j.a.pan continue to force themselves on the popular attention at the present rate; at the same time that the operations in Europe continue to demonstrate the excessive cost of defense against a well devised and resolute offensive; then it should reasonably be expected that the Americans might come to such a realisation of their own case as to let no minor considerations of trade discrimination stand in the way of their making common cause with the other pacific nations.

It appears already to be realised in the most responsible quarter that America needs the succor of the other pacific nations, with a need that is not to be put away or put off; as it is also coming to be realised that the Imperial Powers are disturbers of the peace, by force of their Imperial character. Of course, the politicians who seek their own advantage in the nation's embarra.s.sment are commonly unable to see the matter in that light. But it is also apparent that the popular sentiment is affected with the same apprehension, more and more as time pa.s.ses and the aims and methods of the Imperial Powers become more patent.

Hitherto the spokesmen of a pacific federation of nations have spoken for a league of such an (indeterminate) const.i.tution as to leave all the federated nations undisturbed in all their conduct of their own affairs, domestic or international; probably for want of second thought as to the complications of copartners.h.i.+p between them in so grave and unwonted an enterprise. They have also spoken of America's share in the project as being that of an interested outsider, whose interest in any precautionary measures of this kind is in part a regard for his own tranquility as a disinterested neighbour, but in greater part a humane solicitude for the well-being of civilised mankind at large. In this view, somewhat self-complacent it is to be admitted, America is conceived to come into the case as initiator and guide, about whom the pacific nations are to cl.u.s.ter as some sort of queen-bee.

Now, there is not a little verisimilitude in this conception of America as a sort of central office and a tower of strength in the projected federation of neutral nations, however pharisaical an appearance it may all have in the self-complacent utterances of patriotic Americans. The American republic is, after all, the greatest of the pacific nations of Christendom, in resources, population and industrial capacity; and it is also not to be denied that the temper of this large population is, on the whole, as pacific as that of any considerable people--outside of China. The adherence of the American republic would, in effect, double the ma.s.s and powers of the projected league, and would so place it beyond all hazard of defeat from without, or even of serious outside opposition to its aims.