Arbitration and Our Relations With England

THE subject of the relations between the United States and Great Britain has been lately brought very suddenly and very prominently into view. For a long time they have been so friendly and so free from disturbance as to have come to be regarded in both countries as a matter of course. In the last seventy-five years the two nations have been drawn more closely together than any others ever were, not only because we are the descendants of England, and have derived from and hold in common with her language, religion, literature, law, the principles of free government, and the customs of social life; nor merely because, ever since our independence, our population has been recruited from hers by a steadfast tide of immigration, only once interrupted, which has brought many millions of her subjects here ; but because our actual intercourse of all kinds with that country and her dependencies has been and is greater than with all the rest of the world put together. Our business concerns and hers are inextricably connected. Sixty per cent of our exports go to her, as against forty per cent to all other countries. The proportion of our imports from her is more than one third of the whole. Our financial operations are in an even greater ratio. Great Britain has been the chief market abroad for the bonds of the United States government and for all our other investment securities, and the principal banker for the vast multitude of Americans who annually visit that country and overspread Europe. The sayings, often repeated, that we are brethren, cousins, with a common inheritance, hopes, and qualities; that blood is thicker than water ; that to disturb relations so natural, so intimate, so profitable, and so pleasant would be worse than a crime, and so on through the whole gamut of effusive occasions, are platitudes which we have grown weary of hearing, since what is undeniable need not be so often reasserted.

It is needless to refer here to the cause of the sudden and unexpected disturbance of the relations between the United States and Great Britain. It arose out of no quarrel or dispute between the two countries, nor from any of those sudden provocations that sometimes, by somebody’s blunder or misconduct, assume an international character. The matter out of which it sprung was one that did not concern us in the least, of the merits of which we knew nothing, in which our interference was altogether without justification or reasonable object ; and it took both nations by surprise. It is to be believed that it has now passed into history, and that no useful purpose can be served by further discussion of the questions it involved.

But a question more important than the merits of this particular case in dealing with the relations between ourselves and Great Britain is, how the unexpected prospect of a collision was received by the people on both sides. It is now happily apparent that the position taken by the United States government will not be permitted by the people of either nation to have the result that was at first apprehended. But the shock that followed has not yet spent its force. From its instant and destructive effect upon the business of the country, struggling as it was with long-continued disaster, we have not yet, recovered, and this is a slight but appalling indication of what the calamities of a real war would be. On the part of Congress, the President’s Venezuelan message was received by a large majority in both Houses with frantic expressions of joy and approval. Politicians of all sorts made haste to array themselves in favor of a war with England, and to vie with one another to be foremost in its advocacy. If their conduct were to be taken as an index of American feeling, it would seem of no use to compose this controversy, since another would inevitably take its place. But the time has passed when Congress either represents or directs public opinion in this country. While both Houses still contain men of both parties who command respect, they are but the minority, and can control neither the Houses nor the parties they belong to. Congressional zeal for a causeless war rapidly subsided when it was found that a decisive public sentiment was the other way. and its ephemeral outbreak needs now to be considered only so far as it can be taken to indicate the existence of a corresponding feeling among the people. But it gives an ominous significance to those words in the Constitution of the United States, "Congress shall have power to declare war.”

By a very large proportion of the best intelligence of the country, the proposal of the President to intervene by force between Great Britain and Venezuela was promptly repudiated. But it is not to be denied that the action of Congress is significant of a certain unreasoning impulse among a portion of the people, not inconsiderable in numbers, in favor of a war with Great Britain, or, failing that, with some other country. To such indications the practical politician is preternaturally sensitive. He is, therefore, a sort of thermometer that shows pretty accurately the temperature of a class which he always assumes to be a majority, when he sees that they are in the wrong. It would be unsafe to deny that there does exist among a body of voters, larger in some sections of this country than in others, an undefined but not less real feeling that would readily join in a hurrah for war, with whatever nation and for whatever cause. The source of it is not so easy to be understood, for nothing is more difficult to analyze than the currents of popular caprice. Of these it may truly be said that the wind bloweth where it listeth, and we hear the sound thereof, but cannot tell whence it cometh nor whither it goeth. The politician who deals with them as the basis of his baleful industry does not concern himself about their origin or their consequences, but accepts them as natural forces that can be worked for gain. Perhaps it is true that at certain intervals there arises in the minds of men a thirst for blood that only war can assuage ; so that war may be set down at periods in the history of the human race, happily growing less and less frequent, as one of its normal conditions, which will never cease from off the earth. The impulse toward a war with England, when thwarted, turned instantly toward an equally groundless and useless quarrel with Spain. There are always men enough, likewise, such as they are, who believe that they have nothing to lose, but somehow something to gain, in the general catastrophe of war. In the multitude of lives that must be laid down as its price they never include their own. Incapable of perceiving that in times of national distress it is the poorest class that suffers most in the end, such men, “ the cankers of a calm world and a long peace,” readily enlist in the ragged regiments of the demagogues, who see in the prospect of hostilities an endless vista of successful elections, offices, contracts, plunder, and pensions; who anticipate what Dr. Johnson describes as the chief fruits of war, “ the sudden glories of contractors and commissaries, agents and paymasters, whose palaces arise like exhalations, and whose equipages dazzle like meteors.”

But aside from this impulse toward war for the sake of war, it is not to be disguised that there exists in some quarters a certain prejudice against England for which no sensible reason could be given, and which would make war with her particularly attractive to those who share it. The traditions of two wars yet linger among us, the first of which made us a nation, and gave to the men most celebrated in early American history the renown that is the justly cherished tradition of the country. Until the civil war, our chief military achievements by land and sea were against the mother country. Many still living recall the time when, in the mimic warfare of the schoolboy, the enemy was always “the British,” and when patriotism consisted chiefly, in the popular mind, especially on the Fourth of July, in a readiness to fight that hereditary foe, as our fathers did before us. More recent influences, limited in their sphere, are still considerable where they have force. We have a very large Irish population, who all take to politics as ducks do to water, whose hatred of England is born out of that unhappy history whose memories will never perish. It is natural that they should be fed in partisan newspapers on an habitual disparagement of England; and these papers afford reading and instruction to many who are not Irish, but who are not beyond their influence. To the laboring class, who are taught that foreign competition in manufactures is the chief obstacle to their prosperity. England, which under free trade has become the workshop of the world, is constantly held up as an enemy, ready at all times, with “ British gold “ as well as with argument and influence, to thwart the exertions of the friends of American labor. The advocates of a silver currency are led to believe that England is the author, not the disciple, of those economical teachings which they find insuperable, and is in natural harmony with the “ gold bugs of Wall Street ” and “ the bloated bondholders.” Not impossibly, there may be something in the very supremacy of England among the nations of her hemisphere, in the steadfast course and continuance of her foreign policy, in her vast naval power, and in the extension of her empire in all parts of the world, not always perhaps by the most scrupulous means, that excites in some minds a sentiment of hostility. And it is to be remembered, finally, that a conglomerate race is being formed in this country with accelerating rapidity out of all the nations of the European continent, whose emigrants are made voters before they learn what suffrage means : to whom England, so far as they know anything about her, is foreign, if not hostile; and with whom the sentimental considerations natural to her descendants are invoked in vain.

But it is certainly true that the great body of the more intelligent Americans have no share in these feelings. They harbor no prejudices or jealousies in respect to England, as has been clearly shown in the expressions of opinion which recent events have called out. They desire no controversy with her. Proud of their own country, believing in its destiny, resolute to defend it when it needs defense in any quarter, for the greatness of England they have a cordial admiration ; and in her forward march they know that they and the world are profited. They see that wherever her flag goes it stands for law and order and good government, and that under it the rights of all men are safer than under the rule of any other country. They perceive that if Ave are to have relations or friends anywhere, they must be found among the people of our own race ; that the two countries are natural and necessary allies, whom God has joined together, kindred who even if they quarrel would he kindred still ; that if business and industry are to prosper in either, they must prosper in both ; and that if Christianity, liberty, and the principles of free government are ever to overspread the earth, they must be carried by the English language, which has thus far been their vehicle. In the minds of such men there is no room for the paltriness of Anglomania on the one hand, or of Anglophobia on the other, — for servile imitation or groundless jealousy. They desire with England only that honorable peace, those friendly relations, and that kindly intercourse which subsist between nations supremely great, who respect and trust each other, and who do not seek to infringe rights which by either side, as both well know, would be promptly defended if it unhappily became necessary.

In giving voice to these sentiments, we are not holding out the olive branch to an enemy; we are but accepting that which is held out to us. Nothing could show more clearly the friendly feeling that exists among the English people toward this country than the utterances in England which the late disturbance occasioned. In the Queen’s speech to Parliament at its opening, in which the Venezuelan question was necessarily touched upon, the oidy allusion to the President’s message is in these words : “The government of the United States have expressed a wish to cooperate in terminating differences which have existed for many years between my government and the republic of Venezuela, upon the boundary between that country and my colony of British Guiana. I have expressed my sympathy with the desire to come to an equitable arrangement, and trust that further negotiation will lead to a satisfactory settlement.” Language hardly admits of a more kindly rebuke than is contained in these few mild, courteous, and dignified words. In the extended debate in the House of Commons on the address in reply to the Queen’s speech, in which all the leading members in both parties took part, there was not an unkindly or a harsh word toward the United States or its government, but only an universal avowal of sorrowful surprise at its attitude in respect to a dispute with Venezuela which is regarded in England as unimportant. The language of the leading press in Great Britain was chiefly in the same strain, although so grave an infraction of the proprieties of diplomatic intercourse as had taken place might naturally enough have provoked a spirited if not a hostile retort. The contrast is very striking between the effect produced in England by the Venezuelan message and the flame kindled throughout the kingdom by the telegram of congratulation from the German Emperor to President Krüger on the repulse of an expedition which Great Britain disclaimed, and with the authors of which she is now dealing in her criminal courts. But the English have learned to discriminate between the language of the government of the United States and the sentiment of the people it officially represents, and it is to be hoped and believed that in the result the bonds between the nations will be cemented rather than loosened. Peace will be maintained on our part, so long as it ought to be, by that substantial class of the American people who in time of peace do the work of the country, and who, if war unhappily comes, must chiefly be relied on for its defense.

But to insure peace in our time and in all times the first requisite is to deserve it, by refraining, and by compelling our representatives to refrain, from all such infringement of the just rights of other nations as we should ourselves resent if inflicted upon us. And then it needs, perhaps, to be more clearly perceived, by those who wisely and humanely desire to preserve peace, from what quarter the danger to it is to be expected. The issues of peace and war rest no longer with governments, for governments at this day can neither bring about wars nor prevent them. They will occur when the people of the countries concerned become inflamed against each other to the fighting point. When that is the case, a cause of war is not far to seek, and an incident small in itself may bring it on at any moment. The combustible mass must first be prepared, and it is then very easy to set it on fire. When the opposite feeling prevails among the people on both sides and war between them is deprecated, any difference or dispute that arises will be surely in some way accommodated or compromised. The war of the Revolution began by the imposition of a small tax on tea; the war of 1812, by the taking by British out of American ships of one or two deserters from the British service; the war of the Rebellion, by the firing on Fort Sumter, without much harm done, by a few hotheaded men in Charleston. But does any one suppose these incidents to have been the causes of those wars ? They were only their occasions, the signals for them to begin. The causes lay far deeper, and had long been ripening in the popular mind. The process by which the national temper is wrought, up to fighting heat is educational and requires time. It cannot grow without something to feed on. Mutual misunderstanding, misrepresentation, a long course of irritation and provocation, are its natural nourishment. It may well be doubted whether a war can ever take place in these days between nations whose people thoroughly understand each other.

It is to this source, therefore, that it would seem that the efforts of the friends of peace should be first directed, — to the cultivation of the spirit of peace among men, and to the restraint and rebuke of vituperation, unjust language, and untrue assertion in respect to foreign nations, whether on the floor of Congress, in the newspaper press, or by orators at large, which naturally tend to goad those nations to resentment, and at the same time to educate our own people, through misapprehension and hostility, up to passion and a desire for violence. This courtesy, due to all nations, is especially due to those who practice it toward us. It is well to understand that among nations, as among individuals, friendly relations are largely dependent upon good manners. Calm language, firm but courteous, addressed through the proper channels to a foreign government, will always be found sufficient, as far as language can be, for the assertion of any right, or just demand, and will leave the door open for adjustment instead of closing it in advance.

The Venezuelan message of the President, has brought forth a considerable movement among men of the best quality and purest motives, in behalf of some scheme of permanent international arbitration between the United States and Great Britain. The project has been much discussed, mainly by those to whom the theory seems attractive as a means of maintaining peace, but who probably have not reflected on its practical difficulties. It is not the most promising way to establish friendship, to begin to construct machinery to settle expected disputes. Nor is the occasion which has given rise to the proposal the most fortunate. It looks too much as if it were anticipated that we may find it desirable, in future political exigencies, to make similar attacks, and wish to secure ourselves beforehand against their being resented. But since the discussion is on the side of peace, it can do no harm, and will doubtless indirectly be productive of good.

Compulsory arbitration is a contradiction in terms, since that process must necessarily take place through a voluntary agreement, incapable of application until the occasion for it arises. To agree to arbitrate future controversies is one thing; actually to arbitrate an existing controversy is quite another. It is manifest that there must be many cases, quite impossible to foresee, to which such an agreement would not apply, or would be, by one side or the other, repudiated as inapplicable, and the question whether the case is within the agreement would be likely to make more trouble than the case itself. It might almost as well be hoped to prevent disputes by agreeing beforehand that we will never have them, — a practicable method, undoubtedly, if it could only be settled at the same time to what disputes the agreement not to dispute should apply.

But arbitration will still be resorted to in the future, as it has been in the past, in that limited class of international cases where the questions involved are questions of fact, depending for decision upon evidence. Such cases, while they may be compromised, can never be determined except by some tribunal which can hear the evidence, and so ascertain the truth ; and sometimes they may be too important for compromise. Even in those cases this mode of trial encounters many obstacles. If the tribunal is composed, in whole or in part, of members appointed from the countries that are parties to the controversy, they cease to be judges, and become only representatives and opposing advocates. If it is made up of members from other countries, serious embarrassment arises out of the difficulty of obtaining those who are satisfactory ; the foreign languages they speak ; the systems of law and methods of legal thought, very different from ours, in which they are trained ; the want of power in the court, under whatever exigencies, except that which is precisely conferred by the treaty, even so much as is necessary to enforce its own orders; and the lack of any system of procedure or rules of evidence such as in all other tribunals are found indispensable. These and other difficulties will be found quite sufficient to conduct those who have to deal with them to the conclusion that a court is not a court of justice which is only the creature of the parties litigant; and that, in order to be effectual, it must be invested with a larger and more independent authority than can be derived from their consent. But, grave as these obstacles are, and lessening, as they always must, the chances of a really just decision, they are nevertheless not insuperable, since what has been done before, however imperfectly, can be done again with no greater imperfection.

Beyond cases turning upon questions of fact, arbitration, however plausible in theory, is not likely to be found practicable. In cases involving questions of law, which means of course international law, it is not available. Such questions are necessarily new, for no tribunal is requisite to decide between nations those points in respect to which the law is already settled. Unlike a court of justice, which deals with municipal law and is empowered to extend its principles to every case of new impression, so that there can be no dispute too novel or too difficult to be decided, an arbitration cannot extend the rules of international law beyond what is already established, since those rules find their only sanction and authority in the general consent of nations. The inquiry in every ease is, therefore, whether the proposition advanced has received such assent. If not, however just in itself, it is idle to expect arbitrators, empowered only by the agreement of two nations to decide a particular case, to take it upon themselves to enlarge the law of nations, and to add to its existing rules any new proposition ; or in other words, to declare that to be law which is not law, and which they have no authority to make law. Hence no rule of law can be adopted by such a court unless it can be shown to have been previously acquiesced in ; and arbitration can be useful in no case depending upon a question of international law, except those cases in which it will be unnecessary, since the point involved will have been already settled.

Nor can it be expected that any controversy whatever which involves national honor will be submitted to arbitration by any nation capable of self-vindication. The same considerations will likewise prevent the reference to such a tribunal of any dispute involving the integrity of the territory of a nation, which has been occupied by its subjects under a claim of right for any considerable period of time on the faith of their country’s protection. And finally, it is obvious that in no case whatever can that remedy be successfully proposed, where popular feeling on the one side or the other has reached fighting heat, and has passed beyond the control of representative government. A casual review of the wars that have occurred in modern times between countries so governed, and of the conditions that preceded them, will show how utterly futile in such emergencies would have been, or would be likely to be hereafter, the attempt at the lingering and uncertain process of submitting to the decision of foreign jurists the quarrel that had set men’s minds on fire. It will probably be apparent, therefore, to those who will reflect upon these suggestions, that it is a mistake to suppose that international arbitration can ever become, as has been fondly hoped, a substitute for war. On no such artificial and cumbrous contrivance can peace on earth and good will among men be made to depend. These reside in the temper of nations, not in the decision of courts.

Neither can it be made a substitute for that diplomacy, though to a certain limited extent it may be an adjunct to it, through which international affairs must always be conducted if conducted successfully; for wise diplomacy is a great deal better than arbitration, and in nineteen cases out of twenty can do without it. Statesmanship proceeds not so much by the settlement of questions in dispute as by avoiding their settlement. Its resource is judicious compromise of the concrete case, leaving the abstract question to those who may be unfortunate enough to have to encounter it. Among nations capable of asserting their rights, there is no middle ground between compromise and conquest, since, even if war is resorted to, only one or the other can result. The history of diplomacy, if it is ever written, will be found to be a history of compromises, through which wars have been avoided or terminated, advantages gained, injuries redressed, claims adjusted, and peace maintained. All treaties are made up of mutual concessions, except those dictated to a prostrate enemy ; and the greatest diplomatists have been those who have saved the most blood and shed the least ink.

The success of British foreign policy is due to its freedom from the influence of domestic politics, its continuity and steadfast consistency, its dignity, its courage, and perhaps more than all to the committal of its conduct to the most skillful hands the country possesses.

If we cannot invent a new tribunal to take the place of statesmanship, we can at least reconstruct and improve our diplomatic machinery, and in doing so profit, as we have done in so many other things, by the example of our British ancestors. International affairs are conducted through two agencies, at home and abroad. In our own case, both these are capable of being greatly strengthened. The Secretary of State necessarily changes with each successive administration, and often more frequently. Within less than four years we have had four secretaries. As the panorama of American politics never turns back, no secretary holds office a second time ; the incumbent is always a new one, often unfamiliar with the difficult and delicate business with which he is charged, — how difficult and delicate those only know who have had to do with it. His subordinates, except those who change with him, are usually little more than clerks, who rarely have a long tenure of office, and the whole business of foreign affairs is virtually begun over again with each new head of the department, or at the least with each new administration. The State Department would be largely reinforced by the creation of three or four under-secretaries, appointed for life, who should be men of conspicuous ability and attainment. They would become possessed of a complete acquaintance with all foreign questions, their history, precedents, facts, and traditions, and entirely versed in the principles of law and the considerations of policy on which they depend, as well as in the methods and proprieties of diplomatic procedure. Their counsel and assistance would be invaluable to the overwrought Secretary, and would give to our foreign policy the continuity, consistency, and sound legal foundation without which we cannot hope that it will be successful. With such an accomplished staff the British Foreign Office is always furnished, and the incoming Secretary finds the work ready to his hand and is assured of the ground on which he stands.

The diplomatic representatives of the country abroad constitute the other agency through which foreign affairs are dealt with. Every civilized country but ours has a diplomatic corps, composed chiefly of men who devote their lives to the service as a profession; who, beginning in youth with its lower grades, advance with time and experience as far as their abilities warrant. In America alone, diplomacy consists principally in the distribution and rapid redistribution of diplomatic offices. While in the higher posts we have often had men of competent and even distinguished ability, they have withdrawn almost as soon as they became really familiar with the requirements. The less important places will not be accepted for a short term of office by that class of men, and they are therefore often filled with those not adequate to any serious emergency, and who are at best only messengers between the State Department and the government to which they are accredited. Yet grave complications are quite as likely to occur in small as in greater countries. If we had a regular diplomatic service of permanent tenure, into the subordinate places of which young men could enter, and then grow up to its higher and perhaps to its highest duties, there would soon be no post that would not be capably filled. We should have at every legation a trained and competent sentinel on duty, equal to any necessity that might arise. The diplomatic service is a profession by itself, and should be a life work if great success in it is to be attained. The time is past when we can afford to treat any of its places as sinecures, to be awarded for political service, or given to ornamental figures not adapted to real use. The existence of a permanent corps would not at all interfere with the occasional appointment of first-class men, not belonging to it, to its most important positions. We should combine that advantage with those of the permanent and specially trained service, from which also, as in other professions, first-class men might reasonably be expected to appear.

The true work of diplomacy must be done abroad. It may receive its guidance and general direction from home, but to be carried to successful results it often needs personal presence and intercourse. It is like an army in the field, which cannot be guided in its movements by a congressional committee or a Secretary of War, but must be entrusted to the commander for the accomplishment of the objects to which it is directed. The formal communications at arm’s length between governments, all of which have in time to be made public, are only proclamations, which rarely bring anything to pass except counter-proclamations. Every word has to be weighed and considered, lest anything be said that ever need be taken back or modified. They are like the firing between armies at very long range, fruitful of little but noise and smoke. International questions, like other negotiations, are best settled by competent men who can come face to face in a free and confidential interchange of views. Thus can be found out the wise middle ground attainable, and thus the way can be prepared for formal communications that will follow, and not precede, mutual understanding, and will result in satisfactory conclusions.

But it is more important than any facilities for promoting the conduct of our foreign relations that they should be divorced from the business of domestic politics, which mean, not the adoption of policy, but the acquisition of office. Nothing else need be done for our foreign affairs, if they are to be a football in the hands of the players of this game, since their condition will soon be hopeless. It would remain only to provide as soon as possible a powerful military and naval armament, of which we are sure to stand in need. The present presidential canvass has nearly cost us two wars, with nations with whom we had no cause of quarrel whatever. We have made the emoluments of war so attractive to a certain class that they become a most dangerous inducement to those who traffic in votes. The suggestions already made would tend, if carried out, toward withdrawing our diplomatic affairs from political influence ; and this result would be further advanced if the necessity for the ratification of treaties by a vote of the Senate could be done away with. It is no longer the body to which that duty was originally entrusted, and no corresponding power exists in such a body in any other country. The Executive should be charged with the duty and the responsibility of treaties with foreign governments, which might always contain a clause providing for future revocation. This change would of course require a constitutional amendment, not easy to be obtained by itself, but which might find a place among the other amendments that will be required at no distant day.

Some good on both sides may perhaps result from the disturbance that has taken place between ourselves and Great Britain, beside impressing on the mind of both nations the value of peace. We may be shown the necessity of sparing money enough from the demands of politics to put the country in a condition for defense, and of no longer inviting war, in case of controversy, by lying at the mercy of every respectable maritime enemy. And Great Britain may perceive the importance of so far repressing the conduct of Canada towards us as to guard against the sort of injustice that irritates, perhaps, even more than it wrongs. That is the only quarter in which any serious trouble between England and the United States is reasonably to be looked for. Aggressions from that direction have taken place heretofore, and have been submitted to, when a just firmness in our own government would have prevented them. The consciousness of that is not without its effect on the American mind, which it would be wise not to feed too often upon such nutriment.

But after all means have been exhausted for the preservation of peace, the greatest of national blessings and the most earnestly to be sought, it still remains to be remembered that this side of the millennium it cannot always be insured. The time may come to any country when it is necessary to fight. Self-defense is the highest duty, when unhappily necessary to be resorted to. And when the vindication of the national honor or the protection of the essential interests of the country shall be really required, that people is not worthy to be free who would shrink from the duty or stop to count its cost.

E. J. Phelps.