A Conscience for the World: The League Problem Restated

I

PLUNGING right into the heart of the matter, I ask myself, after looking on at the Geneva experiment in internationalism: Is the League — or the Association of Nations envisaged by a certain school of American thought — to be merely another instrument of diplomacy? or is it to be a Super-State? or is it to be a free assembly of peoples expressing, not so much the realities of practical politics as the high ideals which should animate humanity? My carefully considered judgment of Geneva is that at present the League is only a diplomatic manœuvring ground, in which wheel and intrigue, in strategic formation, the representatives of the foreign offices of the world — or, rather, of a definite portion of the world, which seeks to present itself as a solid bloc before another portion of the world, while the component members at the same time aim at the triumph of their own particularist policies as against the policies of their fellow members.

The League is conceived sincerely enough by some of the delegates, who were actually chosen by their respective governments to go to Geneva; but the majority of delegates were only the tools of the statesmen at home, who are necessarily preoccupied rather with immediate national concerns than with the principles of good world-government, and are anxious above all, in letting live the League, that the League shall not run counter to their projects or the traditions of their country. There were certainly other delegates, and perhaps their number was not insignificant , who had not framed any general notion of what the League is or may be, of what the League may or may not do.

Now, I trust that I shall not be considered presumptuous if I attempt — especially at this moment, when America Is considering again what place she shall take in the mondial scheme of things — to define the League. There have been earlier attempts to define it, but they have been made in the air. No one had previously seen the League at work. It had, before the gathering at Geneva at the end of last year, no local habitation; if it had a name, it had no shape. It existed only on paper. It existed, if you like, in embryo: the Council had carried on tant bien que mai; but the Council was, quite plainly, simply another Council of Ambassadors. The Council was composed of emissaries of the governments which were at that moment engaged in a diplomatic struggle. It was hardly an innovation: we have certainly seen diplomatic conclaves ad nauseam during the past few years. It could scarcely be expected to accomplish anything, since it was dependent in every sense on Downing Street and the Quai d’Orsay — an emanation of the Supreme Council, subordinate to the Supreme Council, and fatally marked by its lack of daring, its desire to move on collateral lines with the recognized authorities.

How, indeed, could it be otherwise, even though there were on the Council of the League men of distinction, who have devoted their political lives to the promotion of the theory that principles might advantageously be introduced into the relations of nation with nation?

I am not decrying the Council; but the pre-Assembly Council must be taken for what it was. For what it was, — a strictly supervised body never moving outside the orbit of the wishes of the Great Powers, — it did creditable work. Rut the League had not really come into being: there was no authority of any kind given to the Council except the authority which it drew directly from the interested directors of diplomatic affairs.

It was the Assembly that had to decide what the League should be. Was it to be the Super-State, so much dreaded by superheated imaginations? The notion is preposterous in the present stage of progress, although, doubtless, there will be a real Super-State, when there shall be the United States of Europe as there are the United States of America, and when they shall have coalesced into one great organization of mankind known as the United States of the World. This is, indeed, the ultimate step in government. Without arguing that there is any law of progress, it is a fact that, from the wild lawlessness of the individual savage, to the associations of the family, of the clan, of the tribe, of the nation, of nations, there has been this gradual tendency to regulate common relations of fraternity on an ever broader basis, to unite for general purposes, to merge private irresponsibility in responsible coöperation for the greatest good of the mass. There should be reached at long last an epoch when there will be a Super-State, when all peoples will be content to be under one supreme government, without therefore sacrificing their own separate existence as national entities.

But we are far from that; the dream, or nightmare, as the adversaries of unity and also of unison would have us believe, is yet within the ivory gates.¹ There could be no question of a league that should impose its fiat on cabinets and presidents and kings. Obvious as this is, it is necessary to emphasize the point, since there are ardent but misguided advocates of the League who profess themselves disappointed because the League cannot enforce its conclusions on France, England, America — not even on the Poles or the Kemalists or the citizens of Fiume.

That is not a reasonable conception of the League. What I believe to be such a reasonable conception, which should satisfy the most advanced spirits and yet not provoke the opposition even of the foreign offices and the state departments, is that in which the League will remain a platonic body with spiritual powers, and in which, nevertheless, it will be completely independent of diplomatists and of diplomatic influences; in which it will be elevated above considerations of expediency, removed from the realm of the arbitrary, pursuing its deliberations in the calmer atmosphere of philosophic reflection, guided, not by the instructions of the governments, but by the principles of humanity.

II

There are, then, I think, three conceptions of a league, which are far removed from each other and which have yet become confused. From what I saw of the proceedings at Geneva, I am convinced that the countries which have adhered to the League have not clearly separated one conception from another. Hence arise misunderstandings of the most unfortunate kind. It is, I am persuaded, in consequence of this attempt to combine three sorts of leagues in one — an impossible Trinity — that America has held aloof. America is not hostile to the League; America does not understand the League. For that matter, neither do the adherent countries; but by an accident of politics they find themselves perplexed inside the League instead of being perplexed outside the League. It is strange that, after so much talk about it and about, we have not clarified our ideas. What is it that we want from the League? How should it operate? At Geneva we saw a hotchpotch of incompatible conceits. The result was crazier than any quilt made by our grandmothers, idealism alternating with realism, politics clashing with principles, nationalism criss-crossing with internationalism.

The prevailing impression left on my mind, however, in spite of a great deal of good-will, in spite of an obvious attempt on the part of many delegates, at moments on the part of all the delegates, to take detached views, was the diplomatic character of the first Geneva Assembly. Now I see in this an immense danger. The trail of diplomacy was over it all. Let me defend myself in advance from any charge of pouring undeserved scorn on diplomacy or on diplomatists. I respect both the institution and its agents. Diplomacy is a métier like any other: it is no more to be denounced out of hand than is journalism. But it has its place, and its place is not, in my opinion, in the League. The League should be the corrective to diplomacy, the antidote of diplomacy. Let me recall again the famous saying of Cavour, the creator of modern Italy: ‘If we had done for ourselves what we have done for Italy, we should have been great rascals.’

Cavour was a great statesman; he was a great man. But political morality is not, and never has been, — it probably never will be, — on as high a level as private morality. It cannot be judged by the same standards — though why it should not be so judged, it would not be easy to analyze. Certainly the consequences of a-morality in politics are disastrous: they may ruin great nations and bring unspeakable misery to millions. What statecraft without a conscience has done during the last decade constitutes an appalling lesson — which, however, will not be heeded. The conventions of diplomacy are too deeply rooted. The amazing woes of the Napoleonic era did not persuade the world that righteousness is better than might. Metternich, who dominated the Continent in a different way after Napoleon, is the perfect type of intriguer, who by dark combinations and occult schemes pursued his policy of repression for many years, holding Europe in twilight. Neither he nor Bismarck, the man of blood and iron, can be criticized on the ground of immediate failure; and we have always taken it for granted that the end justifies the means in diplomacy, even though the means increases immeasurably the sum of human sufferings.

It is clear that, from another and a higher standpoint, even national unity and national aggrandizement are too dearly bought at the price of multitudinous murder and universal unhappiness, and that in the long run the reliance on force fails. It failed for Germany: success attained by unscrupulous exercise of power must sooner or later be followed by a crash. Empire after empire has trodden the dusty road of destruction, because there has never been lasting triumph for brute force or subtle dealings. If Germany alone of modern nations (with the possible exception of Japan, who has observed that the West respects only weight of arms) has boldly proclaimed without hypocrisy the gospel of strength, and has found that strength breaking under her, countless examples of the baneful effects of a more carefully disguised employment of strength, which has equally brought countries to perdition, could be cited. Undoubtedly the diplomatists, and behind them the militarists, have nothing to boast about. But it is not necessary to condemn them utterly, for the purpose of my thesis. Accept them as necessary in this imperfect world; assume that our customary national methods are justified. It still remains true that the League is not wanted, — it is not wanted by men of good-will, at any rate, — if it is only another vehicle for the manifestations of the politicians. They have plenty of ways of operating, and certainly it is not by multiplying these ways that we change anything. If the League is to be only the appanage of the foreign offices, it is a delusion and a snare, and the sooner it is scrapped, the better.

I hope I shall be excused for insisting again and again on this point. It has, in my opinion, inexplicably escaped attention, and yet it is the most important thing to say about the League, that at present it is an annex of Whitehall and the Quai d’Orsay. It is not democratic: it is diplomatic. It is fatally the instrument of the same people who have brought us to our present pass. Let the diplomatists continue to act on their plane, but let us put the League on an entirely different plane.

III

Before I elaborate my view on the true functions of the League, let me show briefly how the foreign offices really controlled the Geneva Assembly. Everything, of course, depends upon the choice of delegates, and there was conspicuously demonstrated, in the choice of almost every one of the delegates of the twoscore-odd nations, the belief that here was a new diplomatic organ, on which only diplomatists and statesmen more or less connected with the foreign offices would be of service. It is only necessary to run down the list of names: you will find ambassadors, you will find ex-foreign secretaries, you will find former prime ministers, you will find all sorts of functionaries who belong more or less to the governmental machine, and who are not selected as citizens of the world, exponents of the League idea, but as specialists in foreign politics who thoroughly understand the point of view of their own governments.

It would have been a miracle had any decision of first-rate importance come out of such a gathering. How could it? It seems to me that already the League has been side-tracked, and that the majority of the delegates, consciously or unconsciously, went rather in the capacity of watchdogs, to prevent anything being done, than as apostles of progress. Now the difference that should exist between a leaguer and an ambassador is such that it cannot possibly be bridged. ‘My country, right or wrong’ is the very proper device of the ambassador; whereas, the leaguer should be concerned only with right. Utopian as this may sound, can anybody explain what is the purpose, what can be the benefit of a league of ambassadors? Governments do not lack facilities for getting in touch with each other. The moment the representatives consented to go to Geneva with instructions in their pockets, the League of Nations, as a league of nations, was dead.

And yet so widespread was the mistake about the character of the League, which is nothing if it is not free from governmental interference, if it is a mere packed jury, that French writers like Pertinax, expressing the view of the Quai d’Orsay, declared that it may be an admirable instrument for enforcing the Versailles Treaty — a purely antiGerman institution. Even M. Poincaré, the ex-President of the French Republic, complained that France and England had not in a preliminary meeting come to a clear accord on all subjects which were likely to arise in (he Assembly. There was a bitter campaign in the French press against M. Leon Bourgeois, the veteran advocate of the League, because he declined to have his hands tied. What! cried the shocked Quai d’Orsay; why even the highest Ambassadors carry out an imperative mandate! In England Lord Robert Cecil is certainly the chief author of the Covenant; and yet, because he was not precisely suitable in an ambassadorial rôle, he was not accepted as a British representative. Independence is indispensable if the Assembly is to mean anything, and yet everywhere the independence of delegates was curtailed. What was encouraged were private bargains in the lobbies, intrigues in the hotels of Geneva, groupings of delegates to carry or reject or whittle down proposals.

I think that no one will deny that the regard for national policies at Geneva hampered the whole proceedings, made them largely nugatory. No matter what question came up of which the common people of the world looked anxiously for a happy solution, some diplomatic interest was involved and compelled its virtual shelving. I declare my undiminished faith in the future of the League; but I am bound, as one who has written much and whole-heartedly in favor of the League from the earliest days, to confess that Geneva was disappointing, and that, unless the conception I am now trying to crystallize prevails, not much can be hoped for many years.

There came into collision the policies of the foreign offices with regard to Russia, with regard to Germany, with regard to Poland, Lithuania, Middle Europe, the Near East. A typical instance was the Armenian discussion, in which M. Viviani was clever enough to espouse rather belatedly the cause of the oppressed people, because it gave an opportunity of pressing the French case for recognition of the Turkish rebel, Mustapha Kemal Pasha, and negotiations with him; while Mr. Balfour was forced to appear opposed to Armenian well-being because the price was the sacrifice of the British anti-Kemal policy. To go into the ramifications of the Franco-British Eastern dispute would be a long and superfluous business: it is sufficient to observe that even a humanitarian problem like that of the Armenian massacres was complicated, under the present constitution of the League, by these petty parochial policies.

Again, how could representatives of the foreign offices of the Great Powers, who are wedded to the old methods of diplomacy, fail to combat the obligatory clauses of the scheme for the erection of an International Court of Justice? Could they consent to have their country dragged, at the instance of a smaller power, before a tribunal whose findings they would be pledged to accept, however strong is their navy, however big is their army? All authorities on jurisprudence agree that, unless recourse to the Court is compulsory, cobwebs will seal its doors. It is possible that upon the excellent plan of a court accepted at Geneva something immense may be built; but an essential condition of success is the universal recognition of the jurisdiction of the Court in all litigation between governments. While the Assembly is composed of diplomatists, instead of men totally detached from the immediate wisdom of cabinets, such recognition will not even be recommended. There is a rule that on all quest ions except questions of procedure, unanimity shall be obtained, — in my opinion a pernicious doctrine, which in itself must emasculate any worthy proposal, — and it is therefore obvious that the temporary ambassadors at Geneva can always, at the behest of foreign offices, block a vital motion or wring the heart out of it.

IV

Take any question you please: you will find the same nebulous result springing from the same method of representation. There is no need to argue about the desirability of the League’s universality. That is a principle that must be conceded. But while members of the League are held in leash by their governments, and those governments, for perfectly natural and (from a national standpoint) sound reasons, have a grudge against other governments, universality will never be attained. The result will be the division of the world into two camps, and the League, which depends upon its moral authority and its prestige from Pole to Pole, will be flouted.

So it is with disarmament. The nations are piling up arms as never before. Newspaper headings startle one every day — or rather are losing their power to startle. ‘Japan Preparing for the Struggle’; ‘America’s Naval Race with Britain’; and so forth. If there was one subject upon which it might have been expected that the League would speak out clear and strong at Geneva, it was disarmament. It is disarmament or—Armageddon! Eh bien, so poisonous was the influence of the foreign offices, that not even the pious expression of a wistful hope was heard at Geneva. The most that could be done was to make a recommendation that the war budgets for the next two years should not exceed the war budget for this year; and against this innocuous resolution, timidly suggesting the status quo for a limited period, seven nations, including France, Poland, Rumania, Greece, and three South American states, voted. Can it be believed that free men, having regard to the interests of humanity and not to the policy of their naval departments and foreign offices, would have done no more? I think the League of Foreign Offices stands utterly condemned. Once more I deprecate any condemnation of the foreign offices as such; but the League ought to be fearless, and approach problems from another angle.

I am tempted, too, to deal with the farcical fiction of so-called mandates to protect and to govern countries of various degrees of civilization. The conditions of the mandates are the secret of the Council of the League — a close corporation; and although feeble protests were uttered by the Assembly, it acquiesced in this utter perversion of the spirit of the Covenant, which was designed by Mr. Wilson to do away with the old methods of colonization, and not to perpetuate them under cover of self-given mandates.

But I will refrain from a discussion that would take me from my point — my point that a radical reform of the system of delegation to the League is the first thing on which all well-wishers of the League in Europe and America must insist. How can this change be brought about ? Such changes as were proposed were all set aside, and will continue to be set aside unless America comes to the rescue, or until a change in spirit is previously accomplished. That can be only by the pressure of public opinion; and that is precisely why I am concentrating on this desperate defect of the League, and am endeavoring to sweep away the mischievous false conceptions of its character and functions, and to establish what I believe to be the sole conception that is of value. Not a Super-State; not a League of governments; only a League of peoples can be of avail, if MAN is ever, in Rossetti’s phrase, to cease to be parceled out in MEN, and the earth not to fall asunder, being old.

V

The Assembly of the League should, I believe, after carefully observing the beginnings of this huge experiment in internationalism, be nothing more and nothing less than a conscience for the world. It should be composed of men and women entirely detached from their governments, and not preoccupied with diplomacy, freely enunciating the great principles which should rule mankind, careless of the practical consequences of their pronouncements, solicitous only of their truth and honesty. They should not attempt for a moment to square the realities of an imperfect world with their ideals. That is a task that should be left to others — the foreign offices, whose rôle they are neither to duplicate nor to understudy. How they should be elected, and the guaranties that should be given that they will remain unfettered by considerations of conflicting narrow national policies, is a problem that presents difficulties, but it is not insurmountable. Even the same personnel that was at Geneva would have voted very differently had the members definitely understood that in no sense were they emissaries of a nation, but missionaries of humanity. Almost any group of intelligent men without a diplomatic bias would fulfil all the conditions which I demand and which I think the times demand, provided they follow the dictates of their own conscience; it is this consensus of consciences that becomes the conscience of the world.

It should not be objected that this is in the clouds. Words are, in some sense, deeds; and it is better to have a genuine ringing declaration about armaments from the representatives of the majority of nations, — a declaration which in itself has no imperative force, which in no way commits any country or seeks to impose itself upon the governments, — than to have a fumbling attempt to shirk this great question because of a fear that one’s country will be compromised if anything vivid is said. The futility of leaving problems alone is lamentable. Nothing good can be spoken of the methods of the first Assembly. No advance whatsoever has been made. But drop the pretense that the Cavours of the world are bound by the Geneva utterances, and let those utterances, in consequence, be fearless, and I am persuaded that those apparently empty phrases will not evaporate into the air. On the contrary, they will fly like winged seeds, falling on fruitful ground, blossoming in unexpected places, filling the earth with their shade and their fragrance. It is the idea that the League can assert its authority, and that its decisions are pledges imposed upon the peoples, which results in cautiousness and sterility. It is the disannexation of principle from practice, of the ideal from the real, which will result in a surprising fertility.

This is the reply to those who advocate or dread the Super-State. Nothing has done so much harm as this confusion, which would assimilate t he League with a Super-State. Even though the Super-State does not exist in any form, the states fear the assumption by the League of overlordship prerogatives and powers, and accordingly do their best to make it ineffective, by controlling it, by crabbing it, and by using it as a deliberative diplomatic corps. If the states were wise, they would try to make the League an entire separately and distinctive organism, in no way attached to them, not moving in the same sphere. There is no reason to be afraid of a universal body viewing problems from a different angle, on a higher plane, since its conclusions are only an expression of the general sense of the world. Those responsible for the destinies of states would indeed be helped by the existence of such a guiding light in the firmament. They would doubtless continue very largely in the old stumbling paths; but now and again this voice would reach them as the voice of mankind. They would be enabled to disarm, for example, as they dare not now disarm, were Geneva to cry aloud, and insistently, that disarmament should be undertaken.

Moreover, the League can only, as it were, be useful in at once stimulating and announcing public opinion. Any other weapons are vain. There were studied by the Assembly all the arms that might be employed. There are some leaguers who are so far from this conception of a world-conscience that they ask for an international army. If we had only an international army, they say plaintively, we could regulate the affairs of the universe in a trice. The cause of all their failures is explained by their lack of physical force. Always the belief in coercion! If it is not Rome with her legions preserving order in Europe, it is the Holy Roman Empire; it is Germany, by tremendous armies, spreading her Kultur; it is even the victorious Allies, dreaming of hegemony by hordes in the cause of civilization. The League, pitifully misguided, thinks of preserving peace by making war. There are to be heterogeneous divisions, to which the commands are to be given by a battalion of interpreters. There is to be a headquarters staff kept busy planning campaigns.

Other leaguers, more modest, ask for an international police force — that is to say, small companies of soldiers, detachments sent by all the members of the League to any part of the unpacified world. This is certainly more sensible: the police troops would serve, not as a force in themselves, but as an advertisement of the force that is latent in the League, just as the policeman in Piccadilly or in Fifth Avenue does not really rely upon his truncheon, but upon the unseen and relatively inexhaustible power of the State.

Rut there still persists in all this the notion of the Super-State, called upon to govern the globe. The League, in my opinion, can do no such thing, and is not likely to get an army of any kind that could be used against its own members, or even against its non-members.

Precisely the same objection is to be made against the economic weapon with which we have been hypnotized. At Geneva the possibilities of the blockade, the boycott, and the rest of it, against culprit and recalcitrant nations, was examined, and the best that could be done was to resolve that the League should call the attention of the members to any breach of international law that could properly be punished by economic encirclement, and leave it to the members to act, or not to act, as they should think fit. They would, of course, think fit, or not think fit, precisely as it suited their national policy. The revolt against the Super-State was seen at every turn. The truth is that the League has no method of enforcing its decisions; and the sooner this is recognized, the better. There will then be a chance that the decisions will be bold, instead of betraying a pusillanimity that has lost the League many friends.

If it can get away from all these secondary considerations and, like a veritable conscience, seek no compromises, no false interpretations, no opportunist solutions, no arbitrary measures, no subservient policy, it will be respected and will thus be truly strong. It is strict adhesion to principles that will make the only appeal to public opinion. Public opinion — that is its vehicle of action; though it has not to care about action. It will set in motion countless wheels, and they will turn and turn until the very governments, the foreign offices, are turning as the League turns. What at first sight may seem to be the most ineffective system of a League is infinitely the most effective. Super-States will not work; new diplomatic conclaves are a mockery; it is a conscience for the world that is wanted.

If the Assembly has nothing to do with national conveniences, its raison d’être disappearing if it studies national conveniences and even national possibilities; if the Assembly must detach itself from the foreign offices and, unmoved by threats, uncajoled by promises, untouched by intrigues, enunciate the plain principles of international conduct, understood of all men, though ill-defined, the Court, in much the same way, must be impartial, judging according to law. The Assembly is a conscience; the Court is a code.

A conscience and a code — principles and jurisprudence — equity and justice — these are the pillars of the League. With them firmly planted in their place, it will be a veritable Temple of Humanity.

It is to be hoped that, when America comes to pronounce upon what has been done, she will insist upon the plan I have here indicated, which is the only practicable plan; which has none of the objections that arc often urged; which obliges no nation to undertake a responsibility that it is not willing to assume; which asks for no blind obedience; which cannot be suspected of diplomatic designs; which is not a hot-bed of intrigue; which yet must inevitably, however slowly, however gradually, bring the conduct of the World into consonance with law and conscience. Once established, there is no shorn Samson who would lay destructive hands on these twin pillars upon which will ultimately rest an ordered universe.