The Lost Fruits of Waterloo

One of their suggestions is a league of peace, to be composed of the civilized nations. As we have seen, it is loosely organized and does not allow the central authority of the league enough power to punish a state that tries to withdraw from the league. Nor does it grant the central authority the right to punish a state which, after submitting its case to the proposed tribunal of arbitration and losing the decision, decides to go to war in defiance of the tribunal’s judgment. What would Germany do, for example, if she had lost such a judgment and did not wish to accept her defeat? Strong and well prepared for war, she might disregard all respect for the opinion of the world, if she felt that her future was at stake, and we can hardly doubt that her own people would support her.

Connected with the idea of a league is the plan, advocated by those who place respect for law above all other considerations, for creating a high court of judicature, with judges selected from all nations, which shall have authority to try and give judgment on all disputes of nations. As a part of a strongly organized federation such a court would have great influence, but if it existed under a league it could hardly have enough authority to secure the obedience of the great states. As for the small states, they never give trouble any how, except as they act in association with some great state, or as they are threatened by some great power. No union for peace can accomplish its object that does not deal with the great states, and any scheme suggested may leave the small states out of consideration. On the other hand, the small states are deeply interested in forming such a union, since it would give them a safety they could hardly get otherwise.

The proposed plans for a league of peace and for an international court of arbitration were announced before the war or in its early stages. They were made with an eye to the most that the nations could be induced to give up of their control over their own actions. It is possible that their authors would not follow the same plans if they were forced to make them today. The war has shown us several things. It has revealed Germany’s reason for opposing steadily all the real peace plans at the Hague conferences. It has shown us what fate awaits the world after the war, unless there is a return to reason and coöperation. It is possible that in writing out a plan for peace today the gentlemen who met in Carpenters’ Hall, Philadelphia, in June, 1915, would feel justified in supporting a stronger proposition.

Mr. H. N. Brailsford, in a book called A League of Nations, London, 1917, announces the outline of a working scheme, which he hopes the friends of peace will consider. Its chief features are: 1. An international court of justice to consider and pass on justiciable cases, with a council of conciliation to pass on non-justiciable cases, and a pledge by the states that they will not make war nor mobilize their troops until the court or council has within a stipulated time passed on the several matters in dispute. 2. An executive of the league to take steps, military or economic, to enforce the obligations of the members of the league. 3. The guarantee of the right of secession together with the possibility of expelling a state. 4. A consideration of disarmament on land and sea. 5. An international commission to see that all the signatory powers have access to raw material in manufactures, with a pledge to permit trading among themselves without discrimination and to follow the “open door” policy in trade with the undeveloped regions of the world.

In this scheme we see the influence of the war. The author is brought to see that some form of central authority to coërce a state is necessary. On the other hand, he does not allow his league to become a law-making body, an omission that goes far to weaken the united efforts of the league. Guaranteeing the right of secession, also shows that the author of the plan is unwilling to merge the nations into a great state, in which they will each give up a portion of their sovereignty. His plan is a little stronger than the American plan but it nevertheless falls short of being a federation.

If we are to make a serious attempt to obtain enduring peace by coöperation it behooves us to start on the basis of sufficient force to insure that the attempt will be worth while. If that cannot be done, it is unwise to make the attempt, since to trust ourselves at this juncture to that which we have good reason to believe insufficient only lulls us to a false sense of security and dissipates resolution that might with better effect be used in an opposite direction. If we do not have peace through coöperation we must maintain a sharp state of preparation for war. Furthermore, no people can be rallied to a scheme which seems insufficient to them. Give them that which they can trust and they can perhaps be made to support it, in spite of the inconveniences they find in it.

Probably it is not too much to say that the only form of united action that can be relied on is a federation with enough cohesive force to guard against secession, repress any constituent state that defies the united will, make laws that concern the purposes for which the federation is formed, exercise the right of interpreting those laws by a system of federal courts, and maintain an executive that can make itself obeyed. It need not have these extensive functions for all the areas of government, but it should have them for those things that concern the declaration of war and the preservation of peace. It means that to escape an era of conflict ending, perhaps, in a world united through conquest as the Roman Empire was united, we establish by agreement a world united through federation, as the United States of America were united. A league of nations, under the plans suggested above, would be only a half-way house that would lead to rupture and failure or to some future struggle out of which a world taught by experience might possibly form “a more perfect union.”

Some of the fundamental ideas of a federation were embodied, as we have seen, in the plans of the Abbé St. Pierre and the philosopher, Kant. Living at a time when the state was conceived as the seat of power, they trusted to force to execute the will of the suggested government that was to provide peace. Bentham, however, was deeply impressed with morality as a force for good government, and he was willing to trust his proposed system to the reasonable impulses of men. To him it is possible to reply that if men were so reasonable that they would respect an agreement to settle disputes by arbitration, they would be reasonable enough to avoid the differences which run into such disputes. In our modern world reason thrives best when it is reënforced by authority.

The attempt of Alexander I, of Russia, to obtain some practical realization of the principle of a federated Europe in behalf of peace followed these lines as closely as could be expected, but, it must be confessed, in a very lame way. The failure of his efforts has been taken as proof that the idea is impracticable. But it does not follow that it is impracticable to the same extent and in the same way today as in 1815. No Metternich now controls the policy of the majority of the European courts. Republican institutions exist to an appreciable extent in most of them. The mind of Europe is more nearly a unit today than a century ago, and commerce, travel, and international sympathy bind nations together as never before. Moreover all these unifying forces are growing rapidly. When the feeling engendered by the war subsides, and it always does subside after a war, the nations will be more conscious of one another and less willing to challenge one another than before they engaged in the present appalling struggle. In these things there is a hope that the federation of Europe for the preservation of peace would be more possible than in the times of Metternich. I do not mean that all obstacles are removed, but they are fewer than formerly.

Considering these things I find myself driven, in closing my essay, to a serious examination of the possibility of creating a world federation out of the chaos that now floats over the globe – not an integrated world empire, with power over all phases of political action, but a federation that will have authority to regulate the forces that make for war. If such a thing could be created and accepted by the states of the world, it would make the present struggle, with all its horrors, the best and most fortunate event that has come to humanity since the beginning of the Christian era. If the war should result in the thorough defeat of the present régime in Germany, followed by the creation of a world federation into which Germany should be forced to come, with her pride so reduced that she could be kept obedient to the federation until the virus of world power should get out of her system, the world would have passed a milestone in civilization, and for our part in it future generations would thank us to the end of time.

The organization of the American Union in 1787–1789 was a similar process on a smaller scale. So many of its features are analogous to conditions that suggest themselves in connection with the proposition of a world federation that it is worth while to recall them. If we are not led to conclude that a similar step should be taken at this time in the larger sphere, we shall at least have a clearer idea of what such a federation would mean, and it may happen that we shall conclude that it is not so difficult a thing to establish as appears on first sight.

Before the war for independence the American colonies it is true, were not as separate as the present European states, but they were so distinct in their ideals and purposes that no one thought their union possible. When Franklin proposed a very mild sort of concentration in 1754 his suggestion was rejected in the colonies because it involved the surrender of some of the colonial separateness. Had no pressure come from the outside it is difficult to see what would have forced the thirteen colonies to come together.

The external pressure was the conviction that Great Britain was about to adopt a policy by which the interests of the colonies would be subservient to the interests of British traders, thus destroying their partially avowed hope of a distinctly American policy. Then came seven years of war and four years of fear lest Great Britain should recover through American dissension what she had lost in the trial of arms. Under such conditions the newly liberated states were willing to form the American union.

A similar pressure on the nations will exist in the burden of preparedness and the danger of a renewal of the present struggle. The last three years of conflict are more burdensome to the world than the seven years of the American revolution to the states engaged against Great Britain. Moreover, the danger of chaotic conditions in the future is as great as the danger that confronted the Americans in 1787. Every period is a critical period in history, but that which follows the present struggle is especially important.

When our revolution ended a majority of our people thought the old system good enough. The men – and there were many of them – who pointed out the advantages to the western world of a great federated state were pronounced idealists. “Practical” men meant to go on living in a “practical” way. But the idealists were led by Washington, Madison, and Hamilton, and the logic of events came to their aid. Dissensions appeared, taxes were not paid, and the national debt seemed on the verge of repudiation. Then the country was willing to listen to the idealists; and the American federated state was established.

It was received with derision by the publicists of Europe. They could not believe that republican government would succeed in an area as large as that of the thirteen states. Their fears were not realized and today most of their descendants live under republican government of some form or other. We should not blame them too much. They had never seen republican government operated on a large scale, and they were not able to imagine that it could operate on a large scale. If they could have seen it working with their mind’s eye, they would have had confidence in its operation. The Americans were accustomed to using their imagination, and seeing the “experiment” working in their imagination, they could adopt it and make it work.

The greatest obstacle to “federation” in the American constitutional convention was the jealousy of small states toward the large states. Since it would have been unwise to leave any state out of the proposed system, the small states were in a position to make demands. When they were allowed equality in the senate they became quite reasonable. This obstacle could hardly exist in the formation of a great federation for the elimination of war; for the small states would probably be the first to accept such a plan, as our small states were most willing to adopt our constitution, once it was prepared. It would give them as perfect security as they could desire, and without such a guaranty their continued existence is always precarious.

Next to the fears of the small states was the unwillingness of many people in the states to give up the idea that only a state should control the happiness of its citizens, and that the union, if formed, would destroy or lessen individual liberty. This idea inhered in whatever idea of state sovereignty the people of the day held. To form a federation to enforce peace would undoubtedly limit to some extent the sovereignty of the present states of Europe. But sovereignty in itself is worth nothing. It exists to give in general some forms of life and dignity to states. If a surrender of part of a state’s sovereignty will give that state immunity from wars perpetually, is it not sovereignty well exchanged? No American state suffered because it gave up control over its right to make war, but, on the contrary, it gained immensely. Such a right is a costly necessity, a thing to be held tenaciously as long as we are in a condition which makes wars necessary, but to be given up as quickly as we can do without it.

To enter a federation would mean that individual nations would give up the right to expand their territories. Germany could not acquire more territory under such a system, unless she got it by agreement of the parties concerned. The British empire could become no larger by any forceful process. But this would not be a hardship. The only real justification of expansion is to enlarge trade areas. A federation to eliminate war would necessarily adopt a policy which allowed all states an “open door” in trade. This was one of the essential things in the formation of our union; for we read that no state shall interfere within its borders with the rights of the citizens of other states to trade there. Under such circumstances territorial expansion becomes useless.

When the American states were trying to form that simple kind of union that was expressed in the articles of confederation, Maryland long refused to join. She was jealous of the great size of her neighbors and especially of Virginia, whose claim to the Northwest was in general not disputed. Experience showed that her fears were groundless. Virginia not only never became a menace to Maryland, but she soon realized that her wide boundaries were worthless to her under a system which guaranteed her against quarrels with her neighbors, and as a result she surrendered her Northwestern lands. Under a federation an undeveloped part of Asia or Africa would be open as freely to Germans as to others for trade, settlement, and the happiness of life, just as our Northwest was open to Virginians, Pennsylvanians, and New Englanders alike. The only thing that Virginia gave up in relinquishing her lands was the right to call herself a big state, that is, self-glorification, a thing the nations would have to give up in a federation. But might it not be well exchanged for the right to call themselves safe from warfare?

When the American constitution was being debated the small states declared they would not “federate” unless they were given privileges which guaranteed them against absorption by the large states, while the large states declared they would not “federate” unless it was arranged that the small states should not have the power to defeat measures that were for the common good. Each side was very honest in suspecting the other, and great patience and persistence were necessary to bring them together in a compromise which gave neither what it at first demanded. For us it is interesting to observe that in actual practice there has never been a time when the large states seemed to threaten to devour the small states, nor a time when the small states placed their welfare against any measure that concerned the general good of the country. The union formed, the people began to debate questions that had nothing to do with this or that state, general policies that cut across great sections of the federation, without regard to the states as such.

It seems that if a federation of Europe were once formed a development might be expected of a somewhat similar nature. At least, it is not unlikely that the clashes predicted by the doubters would not be as violent as they fear. It seems certain that at once a new class of issues would engage the minds of the politicians, issues that would spring from the general interests that were conceived essential to life in the new grouping. It is not possible to say what clashes might grow out of these general issues, but it is probable that the genius of man would be as competent to take care of them as to direct the issues that will arise if the world goes on under a system like that now in use; for clashes we must have in any event. After all, humanity has to manage its own problems, and there will never be a government under which it will not have all it can do to make the doubts of today resolve themselves into the confidence of tomorrow.

In our American constitution-making one often heard the question, “What will become of the liberties of the citizen of the state under the federation?” The answer was well made at the time: “Will not the citizen of the state still be the citizen of the state, and will not the state continue to guarantee him all that it can now guarantee him? Does he not also pass under the protection of the federation as truly as the citizens of any of the states? All that the federation proposes to do is to take charge of the functions that concern the things for which the federation is founded, and these are things to which the states are not so well adjusted as a united government.” And so it proved in practice. No American has ever had reason to think his liberty lessened because the union was formed; and he has been immensely stronger in all his rights on the high seas, in traveling abroad, in being safe from the burdens of foreign wars, and in his rights of trade in the uttermost parts of the earth; for he has been the citizen of a great federation of small states.

Applying the analogy to the suggested federation of the world it appears that under such a system the citizen of France, Great Britain, Russia, or the United States would in nowise lose his rights under his own government, and he would gain vastly in relief from burdens. He would no longer have to think of wars, his trade relations would be adjusted in such a way that no other man could have what he did not have. In short, for all the purposes for which the federation was founded he would stand on equal footing with any other man, and for the purposes for which his own state existed he would have all the rights he had before. His only losses would be in casting off the burdens that grow out of international rivalry under the present system.

One of the things for which the American union was created was the payment of the revolutionary debts. Compared with the debts the colony had incurred individually before the revolution, and compared with their ability to pay them at the time, these debts were large, although they proved, under the union, a very small burden. It was the sense of security under a government which had eliminated the possibility of interstate wars that made the burden light.

The amount of indebtedness that the several nations in the present war have contracted seems appalling. It would become a comparatively light burden, if we could feel that for the future the world had nothing to do but to pay it. The waste of interstate rivalry, the burden of preparations for future wars, the loss to industry through uncertainties on account of wars, all these things would disappear from the consideration of the financiers, the credit of a federated world would become excellent, and bonds that are likely to be quoted very low when the artificial stimulus they get from patriotism is taken away would be considered better investments than any bonds ever offered under the existing system of states. The capitalists of the world, like the American capitalists of 1787–1789, should be the most earnest supporters of federation.

In the United States a great deal has been said about “entangling alliances.” As the term was used a century ago it meant an alliance that was likely to make us parties to the quarrels of European states, one against the other. Into such a maze of selfish maneuvers it would never be well for us to enter. But to take our place in a federation to preserve peace would be quite another thing. That it would pledge us to the discharge of a duty is not to be doubted; but we should be entering no intrigue. We should be doing the most patriotic thing possible; for the very essence of the act would be to protect ourselves from the possibility of being drawn into “entangling alliances” with Europe. Let us suppose that the old system is continued, and that Germany has a mind to pay off what she may consider an old score. Suppose she tries to set Mexico up against us, or to induce Japan to attack the Philippines, or to interfere with any weaker American government in such a way as to threaten the integrity of the Monroe doctrine, have we not an “entangling alliance” on hand? If Germany emerges from the present war strong enough to threaten the world as before the war, when other nations found it necessary to form ententes against her, we shall not dare remain outside of some kind of alliance that will be formed to check her pretensions. World federation is the guaranty against the formation of “entangling alliances” on the part of the United States.

In drawing the parallels between the formation of our union and the possible creation of a federation of nations, it is hard to avoid the inference that the two systems lead to the same end, federated general government. And yet they are not the same. Our union was created to take over a large area of government which the individual states could not conduct successfully. It has a direct bearing on the citizens of the states, it even has its own citizenship, although it was a long time after 1787 before it was defined. It has popular elections, a postal system, and hundreds of other things which no one would allot to the kind of federation discussed here. It has been cited only for the argument that can legitimately be derived from analogous conditions relating to the difficulties of forming the union.

A world federation, on the other hand, could have only one main purpose, the preservation of peace. No other bonds should knit it together except those which exist for that purpose. They would be strong enough for the strain that would be put upon them, and no stronger. They would be made for a specific object by persons who would be careful that they were properly made. A federation of this kind could not be adopted until it was approved by the authorities in the constituent nations, which would guarantee that it did not sacrifice the individuality of those nations. In fact, so great would be the obstacles at this point that it is safe to say that there would be more danger that the federation would be too weak rather than that it would be too strong.

Here ends this statement of the arguments for the only possible plan of coöperation that will, if adopted, give the world enduring peace. It would be easier to form a league to enforce peace by arbitration and moral suasion than to form a federation with power sufficient to enforce its decrees. But a league would in all probability be flouted by the states as often as their interests seemed to them to make it advisable. Reverting to the analogy of our own formative period in national government, a league would be like our articles of confederation, weak and insufficient because they did not authorize the central government to coërce a recalcitrant state. As a step toward a more desirable end the articles of federation were worth while: as a similar step a league of nations might be better than nothing, but it would not lead to the end to which the world is looking.