Disarmament--American Plan

I

THE solution of the problem of disarmament cannot be found within the problem itself, but outside it. In fact, the problem of disarmament is not the problem of disarmament. It really is the problem of the organization of the world-community.

Armaments are instruments of policy. They are indeed the most important instrument of policy, together with financial power — a rarer thing. It is evident, therefore, that no disarmament is possible as long as no alternative instrument of policy is devised to armaments. and no reduction of armaments is possible as long as the utility of armaments as instruments of policy has not been reduced.

As an illustration of this assertion, let us recall the proposals for wholesale and immediate disarmament made by the Soviet delegation at the Geneva meetings (December 1927 and March 1928). Why should Soviet Russia be the first nation to be ready to disarm? Simply because it is the first to have evolved an alternative instrument of policy. For, the Soviet Union being in effect a Church-State, its only foreign policy consists in the spreading of the communistic gospel. Its foreign policy, being one, needs but one method everywhere; and this method, the fostering of a communistic revolution in every nation, has no need of Russian armaments, and would fare better without foreign ones.

Since, in the absence of a wellorganized world-community, armaments remain indispensable as instruments of policy, disarmament conferences can never hope to succeed. For in effect every delegation goes to the conference determined to secure an increase in the relative armaments of its own nation, even though the conference may lead to an all-round reduction of absolute armaments. What matters for the expert is: (a) the national standing power in relation to that of the nation’s potential adversary; (b) the national potential power (power for expanding armaments) in relation to that of the nation’s adversary. It is clear that a cleverly conducted negotiation in conference may increase these two relative quantities even though the absolute values concerned be reduced.

In fact, in the absence of a preliminary organization of the worldcommunity and of its activities, all disarmament conferences are bound to degenerate into armament conferences. Each of the delegations present has for its main aim to secure the highest possible increase of its relative armaments in a general reduction of absolute forces, if such a reduction there must be.

Viewed in the light of this conclusion, the Covenant of the League of Nations is essentially a statesmanlike effort to solve the problem of disarmament. It aims at organizing the world-community in such a way that armaments may be rendered less and less useful for war, as the collective way for dealing with international events is learned and trusted by all nations, and for policy, as the ways and means devised for dealing with international life are developed in peace. And yet Article VIII, which provides for a reduction of the armaments of all League members, is still unfulfilled. Why is it, then, that, though the Covenant is an effective measure for reducing wars, the work of disarmament does not show any tangible progress?

II

In May 1920, the Council of the League, sitting in Rome, adopted a report submitted by the French Representative, M. Léon Bourgeois, organizing the commission provided for in Article IX. The report was all that could be expected. The commission was to be entirely composed of military, naval, and air men. Each of the nations represented in the Council was to send a delegation of three experts, one for each of the three services. The secretariat was also to be composed of a group of three experts, one for each Service. The commission would be divided into three subcommittees, military, naval, and air, for each of which one of the three members of the secretariat would act as secretary.

It was as foolish to expect a disarmament convention from such a commission as a declaration of atheism from a commission of clergymen. But this opinion must be clearly defined. Much offensive and inoffensive scorn has been poured on the several military commissions which have dealt with disarmament matters in the League. In my opinion such an attitude is grossly unfair to the military profession. The military profession cannot recognize any duty above that which constitutes its very essence: ensuring the safety of its country. A military delegation sent to discuss disarmament problems cannot and should not envisage them — as it is implicitly requested to do — in a somewhat general and abstract light. It can only view them as it should only view them, with an eye on the home forces.

When the first Assembly of the League of Nations met in November 1920, it found that the commission had reported negatively on practically every point of the programme submitted to it by the Council. What else could be expected ? The Assembly, led by Lord Cecil, took a bold and statesmanlike course. The Council had chosen to stultify the effect of Article IX by creating a commission of military men; the Assembly decided to set up another commission which would differ from the first on two all-important points: —

1. It would be predominantly civilian, though containing a certain number of military experts chosen in the other commission.

2. Its members would not be government representatives or government nominees. They would be chosen by the Council on their own merits.

With its two commissions, its secretariat, the Council at the helm, and the Assembly providing the gentle gales of inspiration, the Ship of Disarmament sailed forth into the seas of time. Its course was somewhat wayward at first. Disarmament, we know, is a tendency prompted by two different lines of thought: (a) arms cause war; (b) wars cause arms. And so we find the methods followed by the disarmament organization of the League influenced now by one, now by the other, of these two ways of thinking.

For it is obvious that if arms are the cause of wars the proper way to set about is to disarm, and so the school here called ‘pacifist’ leads to what might be described as the direct or technical method, a method whereby a direct solution is sought in the examination of the technical means for reducing and limiting armaments at once; while if wars are the cause of arms the right thing to do is to study the cause and cure of war, and therefore the school here known as ‘realist’ leads to what might be described as the indirect or political method, whereby the solution of the problem is sought in the creation of the political circumstances required for disarmament to take place, so to say, of itself. The evolution of the work of disarmament is determined by the interplay between these two methods and schools, in its turn dependent on the evolutions which take place in the public opinion and policy of the two protagonistic nations, France and England.

The direct method still prevails during the first years of the work of the Temporary Mixed Commission, between November 1920, when it is created, and September 1922, when Lord Cecil takes over the leadership of the work. During this period the Temporary Mixed Commission as the initiating body and the Permanent Advisory Commission as the technical body are engaged in investigating the possibilities of a technical solution for the problem of disarmament. Two attempts are made in this direction: the plan known as Lord Esher’s scheme and the Anglo-Franco-Italian proposals for extending the principles of the Washington Treaty to the nonsignatory Powers.

In a sense, both these plans emanate from the Washington Conference. This conference may be said to be the only endeavor to reduce and limit armaments which has led to any tangible results. The American Government is entitled to all the merit which it has claimed now and then for this success. If, in the remarks that follow, the achievement is not put quite so high, allowances must be made for a difference in perspective and for the natural effects of distance.

At the time of the Washington Conference there was in Geneva an international worker who now and then sought relief from his none too easy life of toil by indulging in good-humored cynicism. I thought that his opinion on the event might be valuable to me, and I knocked at his door in search of illumination. The wise though youthful observer smiled and said: ‘The choicest things in life — and the Washington Conference is one of them — can best be understood in terms of parables. In the old days when Florence led the world there were five bankers in the city well known for their friendly rivalry. They all were solid and sound men, fearful of God, loving their good wives and enjoying their still better mistresses. Of these, Signor Jonathani and Signor Giovanni Toro had so many that neither the curious town nor the fortunate bankers themselves knew the exact number thereof; Signor Nipponi, Signor Gallo, and Signor Savoia had a lesser, though still comfortable, number. But winds cannot always blow fair, and, a foul weather having set in on the seas of business, the five rivals and friends bethought themselves of the necessity of reducing their costly establishments. So Signor Jonathani, the wealthiest of the group and therefore its leader, — for you must know that among bankers the wealthiest leads as among holy men the holiest, — called a conference of the five, and it was decided, not without difficulty, for the five men were healthy and loved their flesh and the ladies were fair and brought them much pleasure and prestige — it was decided, I say, that Signor Jonathani and Signor Giovanni Toro should limit the number of their fair friends to five apiece; Signor Nipponi to three; while Signori Gallo and Savoia should be reduced to one each with occasional visits to one other, which visits they would carefully keep equal in number; and in order that their credit — I mean their financial prestige— should not suffer thereby, the five friendly rivals agreed to make it quite clear to the curious city that their sacrifices were made in deference to the sanctity of marriage.’

My skeptic friend’s parable does not, of course, exhaust the aspects under which the Washington Conference can be envisaged, yet I confess to some inclination to agree with his views in so far as they represent the Conference and its results as inspired mainly in financial considerations. There is no question that the five Washington Powers refrained then from doing a very foolish thing — starting a race which would have brought some of them to the verge of ruin. The world has become so modest that the abstention from folly is nowadays trumpeted forth as wisdom. But can it be said in all honesty that the Washington Conference was as rich in true international wealth as it was in five national savings? Anyone who cared to hear candid comment could get an earful of it per second at the time in Washington. Every delegation was convinced that every other delegation had ‘done it in.’ The Machiavellism of a prominent Englishman in charge of the press was the object of delighted or indignant comment according to taste and nationality, while the French delegation, so fiercely attacked both in Washington and in London, came home in a state of utter discontent and irritation. Distrust continued. The fulfillment of the clauses was jealously watched, and alleged violations denounced. The construction of the Singapore Base, strictly within the letter of the Treaty yet less strictly within its professed spirit, was an admirable illustration of the ultimate inanity of these half-measures for premature disarmament. The Washington Conference proved once more that, in the absence of a constructive effort to organize the world-community, disarmament conferences turn into armament conferences.

The Washington Conference, in other words, was a typical example of the inanity of the direct method. Similar though quicker effects were experienced by the League in its two attempts along this line. Lord Esher’s plan sought to reduce armaments by setting up a unit of armament, say 30,000 men, and attributing to each nation a figure or coefficient which, multiplied by the unit of armament, would represent the army allowed to the nation concerned. Thus, France would have a coefficient of 6, Italy of 4, England of 3, and therefore their respective arms would be 180,000, 120,000, and 90,000. The Permanent Advisory Commission, to which the scheme was referred for technical advice, rejected it on the ground that no practical criterion existed to determine a unit of armament having a reasonable degree of comparative value.

The second effort of the League on the path of direct disarmament was not more fortunate. The members of the League signatories of the Washington Treaty were anxious to make other naval nations benefit by the blessings which they were experiencing under their enlightened régime. In other words, having voluntarily limited their fleets, they sought to induce Spain, Brazil, Holland, Sweden, the Argentine Republic, Chile, Greece, Turkey, and other naval nations of lesser importance to reduce theirs. We are now in a position to estimate the true intention of this move. We know that a disarmament conference in the present, state of development of the world-community is bound to turn out as an armament conference. England, France, Italy, and Japan aimed, therefore, at improving their relative armaments by limiting the tonnage of the remaining naval nations.

In 1922 Lord Cecil, who had created the Temporary Mixed Commission, joined it. From that moment the Commission fell under the leadership of this most attractive of international figures yet most representative of Englishmen. Lord Cecil is a supremely intelligent Conservative British statesman — a rara avis, I grant, in English Conservatism. And if he finds himself somewhat isolated in his own country, it is not at all owing to ‘radicalism,’ of which he has no trace, but to his intelligent vision, of which he has perhaps more than his British Conservative friends can bear without feeling uncomfortable.

By training and nationality Lord Cecil belongs to the ‘pacifist’ school. I mean that his heart is with disarmament. By intellectual adaptation, however, he rises above his national limitations and realizes that the direct method is premature. Yet he does not altogether espouse the indirect method pure and simple. He strives at a middle course. Such is the origin of his famous proposals, in which for the first time the technical or direct and the political or indirect aspects of the problem appear firmly bracketed together under the respective names of ‘disarmament’ and ‘guarantee.’

Lord Cecil realized the fact that disarmament has no separate existence and that it is not so much intimately connected with the general political problem as in fact one of the aspects of this problem itself. Now, at the time, the predominant feature in the situation was the sense of insecurity which prevailed in certain European quarters. Curiously enough, these regions suffering from nervousness were not the defeated and disarmed, but some of the victorious and still armed, nations. The paradox is easily solved once it is realized that victory had transferred territories and privileges from the former to the latter. Lord Cecil realized that the problem of disarmament could not be solved unless this all-important psychological situation was taken into account. He sought to meet the position by means of a general treaty of guarantee which would act as a rider to the Covenant.

Nothing can be gained for our purpose from a detailed account and analysis of an instrument stillborn, the interest of which remains purely historical. The Draft Treaty and even the Protocol, which was the reincarnation of the same spirit of one year later, must be for us as milestones on the road of our evolution towrard the full realization of the world-community. All we need retain of the Treaty is its essentials.

Guarantee. The treaty stipulates a double guarantee: one of all to all; the other by means of special treaties linking together States which may wish to prepare more definitely the plans they would eventually carry out in case they were attacked.

Disarmament. The Treaty stipulates that the Signatory Powers must communicate to the Council the reductions or limitations which they may be ready to adopt in view of the additional security gained by the Treaty itself.

Aggression. Article I of the Treaty declares aggression to be an international crime, and the Signatory Powers solemnly declare that they will not be guilty of it. The Treaty provides for specific measures to be taken by the Council, not merely in case of aggression, but even in case of threat of aggression or even of aggressive policy.

The British Government rejected the Treaty in a letter dated July 5, 1924, and signed ‘J. Ramsay MacDonald, P. M.’

Nothing better shows the superficial and immature character of the reasons brought forward by Mr. MacDonald for rejecting the Draft Treaty than his splendid attitude in Geneva when, hand in hand with M. Herriot, he laid down the basis of the Protocol (1924). In its components the Protocol does not differ from the Draft Treaty; but it does in the emphasis laid on each of them. The Draft Treaty was mostly guarantee and disarmament; arbitration was relegated to an annex as one of the criteria whereby the Council might well detect the aggressor. In the Protocol, arbitration is brought to the foreground. In one year, at most in two, the idea had made great strides in the conscience of the world. It is to the honor of Mr. Ramsay MacDonald that he brought it boldly to the fore in the League Assembly and that he made of it the very basis of the work of disarmament in Geneva.

British public opinion was loud — is still loud — in its condemnation of the Protocol on the ground that it is an instrument devised for the preservation of the status quo. The fact is that this often heard argument against the Protocol was not the determining factor in the situation, though it added force to Britain’s rejection of the scheme. The two main factors which explain this rejection are the position of the United States of America and the psychological attitude of Great Britain herself toward the scheme.

The position of the United States of America was bound to be of the first importance for British statesmen. It is obvious that no nation can lightly assume obligations which may eventually bring her into armed opposition to the United States. Now, the Protocol might have worked automatically in this highly dangerous way: the lonely path followed by the American nation might lead her to take action which the more elastic Covenant would in all likelihood stare blankly at, while the more rigid Protocol would have to register it as contrary to its tenets. In such a case, the position of Great Britain would not be theoretically worse than that of the remaining members of the League, but practically she would have to bear the brunt of the difficulty both in actual responsibilities and in the psychological consequences of the conflict.

The United States remained disentangled, which, of course, made it easier and more reasonable that England should remain disentangled also. For the fact is that none of the ingenious and at times amusing reasons given in the British official answer are any more than intellectual ‘superstructures’ sincerely and honestly held, yet superstructures explaining a posteriori an opposition springing from the subconscious being of England. England turned down the Protocol because she is not yet ready to give up or even to qualify or in any way hinder her freedom of action. While France, intellectualistic, foreseeing, and relatively weak, saw in the Protocol a juridical prop to her power, England, empirical, strong, felt in it a shackle for her liberty. The outcry in England about putting the British fleet at the beck and call of a council of foreigners (it is one of the worst drawbacks of international life that it cannot be carried on with out foreigners) is characteristic in thisrespect.

Much as the detached observer may regret that the Protocol should have been branded by its enemies as a scheme in the clouds and insulted with the scathing criticism that it was the work of idealists, it is but fair to acknowledge the great service rendered the world by Dr. Stresemann, M. Briand, and Sir Austen Chamberlain when they showed in Locarno that disarmament is but one of the aspects of politics, and that, even if good principles must wait, a political good job is a good job for all that.

The system of treaties and conventions known as ‘Locarno’ aims at something more than the solution of the Rhine question. In its essentials it may be described as the application of the ideas and tendencies which shaped the Protocol to the area of possible conflicts lying west, south, and east of Germany.

It is worth noticing how much it owes to the Protocol. First, and foremost, it adopts the principle of peaceful settlement, providing definite machinery in order to ensure a concrete result. All possibility of war is excluded in the west under threat of armed intervenlion by Great Britain and Italy as guarantors. Moreover, owing to the provisions of Article XIX, that most important of Protocol ideas, the preventive or ‘conservatory’ measures to be taken in order to limit the conflict while the dispute is argued out, is introduced into the Locarno system, not only in the west, but in the south and east also. These provisions are of the utmost importance because they contribute in a large measure to force the parties to declare their attitude in the period preceding hostilities, so that the would-be aggressor designates itself, so to say, by its own doing while the conflict is before the world. So much for the general principles of the Protocol which underlie Locarno. Considering the grave and concrete issues at stake, their application in so clear and uncompromising a manner to the most, sensitive zone in the world must be registered as a great triumph of statesmanship, most of the credit of which undoubtedly belongs to Germany and her leading statesman, Dr. Stresemann.

III

In the recess between the second and third sessions of the Preparatory Commission, President Coolidge bethought himself of the advantages of a separate conference, and he issued an official inquiry to the British, French, Italian, and Japanese Governments (February 10, 1927) in order to ascertain whether they would be disposed to empower their representatives at the forthcoming meeting of the Preparatory Commission to begin negotiations toward a limitation of naval armaments. Much as this step has been commented upon since it was taken, there is one particular aspect of it which has not obtained all the attention it deserves. The United States Government acted exactly as if the work done in Geneva to date had been transacted in a language utterly unknown to it.

Nor was that all. For there is no question that the calling of an international conference of five Powers to discuss one of the points which twenty other Powers were already debating with them was, to put it mildly, an unexpected action.

But nothing succeeds like success, and if what came to be known as the Coolidge Conference had succeeded all these thorns of reproach would have turned into laurels. Yes. But the fact is that success was impossible. For the Conference aimed at limiting the vessels not dealt with in the Washington Conference, and the Washington Conference had succeeded precisely because those vessels were left out of it.

It is only plain honesty to recognize that Anglo-American relations were never more strained in recent years than they were then. Why should an endeavor to disarm give rise to such heated situations? It seems that a difference in method as to how to do away with armaments should never lead to suspicion and controversy of the bitter character which obtained then. We know, of course, the key to this paradox: under the vocabulary and gestures of disarmament, what was at stake in the Coolidge Conference was armament. The three nations there present, and particularly the United States and Great Britain, were ready for any reduction of absolute naval power all round which would result in leaving their own relative naval power stationary at any rate, and, if possible, increased. The arguments exchanged in Geneva have no meaning whatever if they have not that meaning. True, if England did not control the sea roads she might be starved in a fortnight. But the argument applies to Finland just as well, and, moreover, who wants to starve England? Where is the enemy? And as to the United States — true that, having no naval bases dotted all over the world, she would be put in an inferior position if she were forced to build her total tonnage in the form of small cruisers; but in an inferior position toward whom? In what kind of conflict?

For let it be said again, and not for the last time, the only solution of the problem of disarmament lies in the organization of the world-community in such a way that power may be used only as the weapon of the worldcommunity against lawbreakers.

The Coolidge Conference was sprung upon the world as if the work of the Disarmament Conference did not exist. The Kellogg Pact has been presented to the world as if the Covenant itself did not exist. The Kellogg Pact was born in Paris. It owes its origin to that most beneficent and clear-sighted of international workers, Professor Shotwell, of Columbia University. In its origin, it was an offer made by M. Briand to the American people to the effect that France and the United States should agree to outlaw war as between themselves. The next stage begins when the Department of State made the countersuggestion that the Treaty should not be confined to France and the United States. The French Government grew uneasy. It was all very well to outlaw war between France and the United States, but when it came to Europe the matter became more delicate — so delicate, indeed, that it proved too much for France’s legal advisers, and the official correspondence of the French Government seemed for a time to cast a doubt on the compatibility of the American suggestion with the principles of the Covenant.

But why was America so difficult about it all? Why did she not content herself with the French suggestion and limit herself merely to outlawing aggressive wars? The first answer we find we may as well give in the terms in which it was couched by Mr. Kellogg himself in his address to the Council of Foreign Relations (New York, March 15, 1928): ‘My objection to limiting the scope of an anti-war treaty to merely wars of aggression is based partly upon a very real disinclination to see the ideal of world peace qualified in any way, and partly upon the absence of any satisfactory definition of the word “aggressor” or the phrase “wars of aggression.”’

The claim thus implicitly made that a universal, absolute, and unqualified renunciation of war is embodied in the Kellogg Pact is, with all respect, preposterous, and no grown-up person can suggest it in earnest without insult to his audience or injury to himself. That is the honest truth which chancelleries long to speak out, but are debarred from declaring out of international courtesy. The ‘ideal of world peace’ must be qualified, and the ‘disinclination’ to do so in the American Secretary of State is due to the fact that there is only one honest and efficient way of qualifying it — the organization of the world-community, a method to which the American State objects for well-known reasons.

This brings us to the second reason put forward by Secretary Kellogg for refusing the qualification to the outlawry of war suggested by the French — ‘the absence of any satisfactory definition of the word “aggressor” or the phrase “ wars of aggression.” ’ Now this assertion is contrary to the facts. Thanks to the League of Nations’ work, there exists to-day a satisfactory practical standard of aggression. Moreover, let us observe that, whether the border cases are easy to define or not, wars may be classed under three perfectly clear heads: (1) aggressive wars; (2) defensive wars; (3) wars to obtain redress of a wrong after all conciliatory methods have failed.

Now, leaving aside border cases and questions of definition, the difference between the French and the American proposals was that the French proposal outlawed the first category only, while the American proposal outlawed all but the second; or, in other words, that while the American proposal outlawed the third category the French proposal did not. This difference, however, in actual practice and within the League would not amount to much. The kind of war in question was no doubt much prized by the French merely as a hypothetical form of defense for the European system. But, given the suppleness of the Covenant, and particularly the all but omnipotent mandate which the Council can assume in cases of crisis under Article XI, the chances of actual permissible wars under the Covenant are very small indeed for members of the League of Nations. The matter, however, presents quite a different complexion if a conflict outside the League or between a League member and a powerful outsider be considered.

First, while a war of self-defense is of course permissible both under the Covenant and under the Kellogg Pact, it is in the Covenant severely watched over and regulated by the complicated system of outlawry which Articles VIII-XX imply, while nothing prevents a State outside the League from waging any kind of war it wishes and calling it defensive. Bad faith is not the greatest danger here. The gravest danger is wrong-headedness, a stout conviction that ‘my country is in the right’ even in ludicrously wrong circumstances. It is impossible to discuss this point without drawing the reader’s attention to the fact that the very nation which suggested the outlawry of war without qualifications was at the same time waging a war in a foreign country. The Nicaraguan affair may be described in a variety of ways, but if the outlawry of war is to be considered as compatible with that, the idea is less ideal than some American idealists would have us believe.

The efficiency of the Pact is naturally proportional to the efficiency of its second article, whereby the High Contracting Parties agree that the settlement or solution of all disputes or conflicts which may arise among them, of whatsoever nature or origin they may be, shall never be sought except by pacific means. Now this article implies such a startling alteration in the policy followed by the United States, not merely in recent years, but under Mr. Kellogg himself, that the natural conclusion to which not a few men and even governments have jumped is that the article does not mean what it says. What, for instance, about the Monroe Doctrine? In a note singularly lacking in political wisdom from both the point of view of the world and the national British point of view, the British Government reserved for itself freedom of action (whatever that may mean) in certain areas of the world, invoking the similar position existing under the Monroe Doctrine for the United States. Now the Monroe Doctrine had not been mentioned by the American Government in connection with the Kellogg Pact. It would be a difficult subject to raise without qualifying ‘the ideal of world peace’ which Secretary Kellogg wants to maintain spotlessly unqualified. But there are such things as eloquent silences, and, despite the indiscreet blurting out of the thing by the British Government, the American Government remained obstinately silent about the Monroe Doctrine. There is only one way of interpreting a silent being: by watching his actions. Now the same Secretary of State who put forward this unqualified ideal of world peace has been actively engaged in renewing treaties of arbitration with a number of Powers in which a reservation in favor of the Monroe Doctrine has been introduced now, though such a reservation did not exist in the previous form of the treaties. In the circumstances, the inevitable conclusion is that the United States does not mean to arbitrate any question arising out of the Monroe Doctrine, which for practical purposes means any question arising out of events happening on the American continent.

What is, then, the value of the Kellogg Pact? First it must be made quite clear that as a pact for the outlawry of war, as a psychological method for driving war out of human possibilities, the Pact is as good as nonexistent. Not only in its reservations and interpretations, but in its very essence, the Pact does not outlaw all wars. It must therefore be considered merely as one of the systems before the world whereby a certain number of wars are forbidden by collective treaty. Viewed in this light, the Pact presents quite a different efficiency, according to whether it is considered in its effects on League members or on non-League members.

From another point of view the Kellogg Pact has often been considered as an important step in international politics, because statesmen and critics of international affairs have seen it as the beginning of an evolution of the United States of America toward the organized world-community and the League. This argument calls in question the whole genesis and evolution of the Pact from the American side. The Pact was evidently born of the outlawry-of-war school. This school, we know, is led by idealists of transparent honesty, who, however, hold strong prejudices about Europe and about the League. Their opposition to political conciliation as distinct from judicial settlement is inspired in noble if, I believe, mistaken conceptions. Theirs is the all-or-nothing attitude about outlawry without qualification. The obvious step following the initial suggestion of a multilateral treaty should therefore have been a round-table conference — the conciliatory international method put at the service of the conciliatory international aim. The idea was of course mooted in Europe. Mr. Kellogg frowned hard. For the chief attraction of his Pact was that America could contribute a magnificent ‘unqualified’ idea to the peace movement without paying a cent in loss of international liberty and independence in its conduct. The Pact, therefore, though aiming at peace and coöperation, was transacted by methods of power and isolation. Hence the maze of speeches, declarations, notes, reservations, and silences which obscure its meaning. And on the day the thought was mooted that it might be considered as the first step to further collaboration between the United States and Europe the most authoritative voices in the State rose to put down the error severely. America was ready to promise that she would not go to war unless she wanted and that she would arbitrate whenever she thought fit on the points which her Senate would define (and that is ultimately what the Pact means), but she was not going to give up one inch of her international sovereignty. America thus took back in the spirit what she gave in the letter, and in the Kellogg Pact she showed the world a magnificent example of splendid isolation and power in terms of idealism.

The result was felt soon enough. The American President, after having congratulated himself and his nation on the idealism of the Kellogg Pact outlawing war, proceeded to advocate a strong navy to guarantee American defense.

IV

The reader is now familiar with the idea which underlies these pages — that in the absence of an alternative system of policy, which can be no other than coöperative international running of the world, armaments are indispensable as instruments of power, and that therefore all disarmament discussions are bound to transform themselves into armament discussions. No more brilliant and more authoritative confirmation of this view could be wished than the significant incident which excited the Western world during the summer of 1928. France and England, the two protagonists of the League Disarmament Commission, could not agree about the principle to be adopted for naval reductions. France said Total Tonnage; England said Tonnage by Categories. The Commission, finding its works blocked by this disagreement, hinted that a direct negotiation between the two governments would be an excellent occupation during the recess. The two governments took the hint and presently came to an agreement. The British Foreign Office, eager to cheer up the world, gave the bare news without going into details. But the world, instead of smiling, frowned severely. Italy growled that she knew nothing and would know nothing about it. Germany began to put questions. America was angry. What had happened? ‘For once that we try to agree,’ said M. Briand, shrugging his shoulders before the whole League Assembly, ‘we were not lucky!’

Please note that growls, grumbles, and protests began before anything was known of the agreement except that it existed. In the absence of a universal agreement never to use arms except on collective authority, armaments can only be increased (relatively, which is what matters); they can never be decreased. Hence the growls and grumbles of the others. How were the armaments of these two going to be increased? Against whom? And note the origin of the grumbles and growls; Italy lest her claim of equality with France had gone by the board; Germany lest her insistence on limitation of (French) trained reserves had been the land price of sea concessions made to England; the United States lest these sea concessions had taken a form favorable to the type of cruiser which would strengthen the British navy and weaken her own. And mark the result: all these fears were justified when the terms of the agreement became known.

Disarmament is not an isolated problem; armaments are one of the features of our present international life. It is therefore hopeless to try to solve the problem of armaments in isolation from the remaining problems of the world. Indeed, this idea seems to me to form the very basis of the question. As long as it has not been grasped, and as long as it does not impose itself on governments and peoples alike, we shall be wasting our time in vain endeavors. The Russian proposal for immediate disarmament, the Kellogg Pact, sent across the world waves of influence which ultimately are bound to act in the right direction if only because the trend of our present-day evolution is irresistibly set in the right direction. But such good effects as they may ultimately have are not inherent in them or due to their virtues. In so far as such schemes fail to recognize the solidarity of all the manifestations of international life, they are irrelevant, they miss the point.

In our opinion the chief responsibility for the stagnant state of disarmament lies with the nations which remain outside the League. The League is a courageous attempt at solving world problems in a world way, and those who remain out of it are badly crippling this effort without contributing any positive alternative of a true constructive character.

We have heard many a so-called reason for the United States to remain outside. There is no reason whatsoever for such a thing. There are explanations of the fact; but though the fact may be explained, the act cannot be justified.

The American reader, however, may say that America has contributed an alternative and a better alternative in the doctrine of the outlawry of war. The outlawry-of-war doctrine is the best-meaning red herring that ever navigated in the waters of international thoughts and politics, but a red herring for all that. The worst about it is the high standing, the generosity, and even the intellectual distinction of its trainers and inspirers. Let us briefly recapitulate the tenets of the school and confront them with our own conclusions.

1. War must be outlawed as an institution — all wars without exception. But self-defense remains. No general guarantees are given of what a nation may come to consider as self-defense. For instance, if Mexico granted Japan a ninety-nine years’ lease on a comfortable little bay in Lower California, the outlawry-of-war school does not tell us what would happen. Curiously enough, the outlawry-of-war school, while allowing self-defense, condemns sanctions. Yet sanctions, we know, is but another name for collective self-defense. We are therefore entitled to define the outlawry-of-war school as a party which condemns all wars except irresponsible self-defense; and the Covenant as a system which condemns all wars including irresponsible self-defense, except wars fought after collective selfdefense has broken down.

2. There is going to be a world court with affirmative jurisdiction, ‘with a code of law of peace based upon equality and justice between all nations.’ This is excellent; but alas, we are told that ‘the greater nations know that compulsory arbitration is for them fraught with grave dangers.’¹ And moreover, ‘there are some questions which, in the present state of the world, or in any conceivable state of this world, cannot be decided by a tribunal of any sort. In the case of the United States we have only to think of tariffs, and immigration, and the Monroe Doctrine, and prohibition, and the allied debts, to see how a meddlesome nation, under cover of our pledge to arbitrate any dispute whatsoever, could provocatively precipitate an issue which was none of its business — in any sense which an independent country like the United States would acknowledge — and then demand that we go to arbitration with it.’ It is difficult to choose the brightest in such a string of pearls. We notice the ‘independent’ nation (there’s the rub — independent, yes, not merely in law but in spirit, cut loose, isolated from the commonalty of the world); we notice the imposing list of examples, for they are only examples, of the questions on which the United States would refuse to arbitrate; we observe that the Monroe Doctrine is one of these questions, and, knowing the admirable elasticity of this expression, we begin to wonder whether its scope can be limited even to the vast American continent. Imagine France or Germany suggesting that she would arbitrate everything but European affairs!

This simple, nay, simple-minded panacea — the outlawry of war — holds the imagination of many an American citizen. You outlaw wars and you submit your differences to a court. What more perfect? This bald form is that under which it circulates and gathers converts. The holes, the gaps, the abysses, opened out in it by further elaboration do not appear before the public eye. They are believed to be just slight qualifications of the general principle, and not what they really are — its utter negation.

Then the outlawry-of-war school enables the American nation to bridge over the gap between its two favorite tendencies: the tendency to isolation (from Europe, at any rate), and the tendency to see itself as a leading nation in moral as well as in material progress. There is no question that the ethical urge is an earnest and sincere element in American psychology; hence the implicit demand of the public for moral international leadership on the part of the government. Now the government’s task is not particularly easy. It must satisfy the public’s pride in being ‘good’; their pride in being strong; their romantic attachment to the no-entanglement advice which Washington is supposed to have given them; their mystical belief in the mystery of the Monroe Doctrine. In these circumstances is it strange that the government should have adopted this admirable pact, which gives everything in a magnificent general public principle, safeguards everything by means of rather intricate judicialpolitical inferences, and enables the United States to remain outside the Covenant of the League?

Unfortunately, the people of the United States have but few opportunities to hear a straightforward statement of the position. The immense majority of them honestly think that the United States is the only peace-loving nation with decent standards of international life. Few realize that their nation bears perhaps the heaviest responsibility for the slow development of international peace. The absence of the United States from the League would suffice to justify this statement. It is sometimes argued on its behalf that it coöperates in nearly all the activities of the League. The observation is correct but irrelevant, for the main point is not movement, work, activity; it is trust, confidence, moral tone. And what is wanted is not merely that the United States should be represented in all the League commissions, but that it should assume all the League obligations. The issue has been befogged both by well-meaning fools and by ill-meaning knaves with an argument representing Europe as anxious to entangle America in European wars: ‘Europe wants your boys again.’ Such an argument leaves us cold. We, at any rate, want no American ‘boys’ to come to Europe. We should be delighted if they stayed at home. We should be even delighted if they declined to go to Nicaragua. Our wish is that American boys should not go to war at all in any continent whatsoever. For it is all very well to speak of European politics as squabbles, intrigues, and wars; but had a European nation carried out in regard to another European nation exactly the policy which the United States has carried out in half a dozen Central American countries, there would have been a grave European war. The reason why the American continent is peaceful is not that the United States has succeeded in maintaining a higher level of international politics in it than in Europe, but that the United States, being incomparably stronger than any other of the American nations, has been free to develop whatever policy, high or low, it wished, without fear of endangering the peace of the continent.

It is not that we want America as an ally in Europe; we want her as a peaceful nation in America. We do not want her to strengthen League armies for League wars; we want her to strengthen the League’s peace by bowing before the Covenant and submitting to the courts.

The responsibility of America is due to the fact that she gives the world a lesson of unlimited and irresponsible sovereignty every day. She does not accept the Court except under her own conditions, which fifty-five other nations consider inadmissible; she does not arbitrate except in a few cases, and when her Senate has carefully defined the issue; she does not join the League, but picks and chooses whichever points she wishes for coöperation, according to her own ideals, wishes, whims, or interests; she ignores the Covenant and brings forward an alternative scheme, as if the ten years of work done by practically all of the remaining nations had been the futile cackle of hens.

I am not — never was — of the opinion that America may be made to glide into the League in a kind of absent-minded way. I hold that the American people must face the issue squarely; that the nation must realize, on the one hand, the immense gravity of its responsibility while it remains outside, on the other the full meaning of its obligations if it joins. I believe that the very breadth and difficulty of the true position, once it is put squarely before the American people, are of a kind to appeal to their imagination. The American people have a remarkable psychology, a mobility amounting almost to fluidity; a genuine desire for what is good; an enterprising, an almost adventurous spirit, ready to experiment with new ideas; and, finally, a readiness to be led. That is why, though in my opinion the United States is the blackest obstacle in the path toward disarmament, I believe it to be also our brightest hope.