While modern Jeffersonians in America are preaching “Disarmament by Example” and persuading an amazing number of Americans possessing (what one scientist calls) a female complex, to believe in it, other nations are gradually bringing their peace armaments up to date and, incidentally, sending their disarmament-preaching pacifists to lecture in America, where a more fertile field for this sort of fad exists. Armament is now going on in Europe and in Japan but it is not analogous to that pre-war race for military and naval supremacy initiated by German pretentions to European hegemony, a race which resulted in armaments now mostly gone, either wasted in war or scrapped as obsolete in post-war peace. Pre-war governments added battleships and battalions year after year to already huge establishments in preparation for war. The nations of Europe are now preparing against war by arming with a carefully calculated supply of the latest and most effective weapons, these as a means of obtaining peace from those aggressively inclined and as a means of obtaining respectful consideration and fair play in the coming race for opportunities to reach markets and to develop the natural and virgin wealth of the world as yet scarcely touched in Asia, Africa and South America. The wealth of Europe is so heavily mortgaged as a result of the war that it is only by the development of new wealth through commerce that war debts can be paid and the burden of taxation lifted. Neither indemnities nor reparations, which are unnatural methods of financing, can provide such financial sinews as concessions and commerce.
Europe is through colonizing in the political sense. Free trade and commercial opportunity throughout the world are recognized as necessary to future European prosperity by the people of Europe themselves who are saying so in no uncertain terms with parliamentary overthrows in those governments which persist in looking backward instead of forward. Free trade is a principle unpopular in the United States.
Never before in the history of Europe have there been so many representative governments functioning. With the advent of more universal popular control of government, has come the end of much secret diplomacy typical of former European chancelleries and the elimination of many causes for war bred by it. Europe is arming moderately from popular conviction that the way to end aggression and the remaining threats of war is to make war certain and destructive for an aggressor. Such armament is more an appeal to an alien people than a threat to their government. Every battleship and bayonet today is a warning to keep the peace.
There is hardly any nation now enjoying independence and a representative government which would deliberately make war without exhausting almost every possibility of peaceful solution through diplomatic prevention, economic or financial pressure, arbitration or popular referendum. Only the most unusual combination of difficult factors involving a nation’s economic existence or compromising its basic policy of self preservation would make resort to war inevitable. Yet the constant threat of war remains.
The autocratic governments are gone. The people are in the saddle of every government but Soviet Russia, the one government openly maintaining a military establishment for aggressive purposes when the time shall be ripe. With the defeat of Germany, any immediate military menace disappeared from the western world. Present and prospective armaments cannot be said to be menacing but rather encouraging as indicative of budget balancing and clearer international perspective. Of armies and unsatisfied national ambitions there are a plenty in the world and especially in Europe but, since whole nations went to war on the firing line, in the factories, in the banks, and even in the fields and homes, Europe has discovered that war is too expensive for either winner or loser, for in Europe wars cannot be localized. It can hardly be claimed that any European nation is now arming in the sense that Germany armed from 1866 to 1914. Nevertheless, European nations are deliberately arming with the latest agents of war, not for the purpose of precipitating conflicts, but with a grim determination to retain what they have, to acquire what they legitimately can, and as preventive preparedness against another such war as the last one. This armament is judicious, methodical, and expresses the majority will of the people, who though socialistically inclined, are alive for the first time, as responsible citizens, to the importance of peaceful international relations. They are determined to provide for their future national security and to maintain military and naval establishments to give weight to their national aspirations. These European people, with their recently increased civil and national rights, have recognized the responsibilities incidental to the preservation of self government. Moreover, they want no wars fought within their own borders and they are more than willing, almost bankrupt as they are, to insure a period of peace by the method of “Armament by Example” which, in effect, is a warning that aggression, though not war, henceforth is outlawed. A very healthy respect is growing up among these European peoples for each other since they have come out in the open, as peoples rather than governments, with their policies and their armaments.
We have in Europe the unusual spectacle of governments, purging themselves of almost every individual of importance who had anything to do with the prosecution of the war, which are socialistic as never before, overwhelming their military and naval establishments, and strengthening them in a most scientific way. Government in Japan, though more liberal than it was, is still unchanged, still militaristic and a fairly good mirror of popular sentiment. It would appear that no pre-war monarch, premier, nor lord of the admiralty, was more jealous to maintain his country’s strength or prestige than are these new governments of the people. There is this difference, though: The foreign policies of the various nations are no longer the foreign policies of autocratic governments but of the people themselves. The day when sovereigns declared war for non-national reasons and carried on war with funds acquired by oppressive taxation or forced loans, is over. War of that sort became too extravagant and inefficient, and too dangerous to dynastic permanence. It has dawned on the European peoples who actually go on the firing line to face shot, shell and steel, that a nation need not go to war unless it is the collective will of a people to do so and that where that will exists, the whole nation may be expected to take part in the winning of the war. These new socialistic governments of European people are curiously alike in putting forward blunt and bold warnings to each other to keep the peace and to check aggressive pretentions. To back up their words of warning, they are making no secret of their new cruisers, submarines, airplanes and regiments. While the fear of the Red army is an important factor in the maintenance of comparatively large armies by the new states of eastern Europe, jealousy of each other has been the determining factor in diverting public funds for this purpose. They are all seeking an economic foothold. They must have peace to consolidate their economic gains for they must put the greater part of their population to work or starve. To do this, they are maintaining armies larger than would be necessary were Europe stabilized but no larger than they consider necessary at present to discourage aggression or to protect the working population in their tasks of industrial and commercial reconstruction; and this protection includes the suppression of communism, especially in the countries where socialism is most strongly intrenched in the government.
Europeans, who in war time were thought to be treasonable pacifists, became in post-war days the heads of their respective governments. They graduated from pacifism. They now realize that it is the function of government to protect the whole people and with that idea of protection is indissolubly linked the idea of strong government. It is impossible for even a pacifist in power to conceive of a benevolent government ruling without the means of defending itself from internal or external danger. The pacifist out of power seeks to weaken an established government by curbing its military strength, effecting (to him) a change to a more acceptable government even though he thereby delivers the citizens of his government over to their external enemies and may, in the end, saddle them with a worse rule. The pacifist, so far-sighted that his vision is focussed on infinity, is essentially an anarchist, in that he works innocently or otherwise to overthrow government. A pacifist is a practical worker only in this quasi-anarchism. He is impractical in assuming that the demilitarization and consequent probable overthrow of government necessarily implies a change for the better and a new era of observance of the Golden Rule. The pacifist in power is as anxious to preserve his power as any militarist and becomes a logical target in his turn for the pacifist out of power. It is possible that the elevation to power of the notorious pacifists of England has done more to counteract pacifism in England than all of the heroic records of the war put together. The same seems to be true in France.
There is no evidence that any of the quasi-socialistic governments of Europe are convinced that the scrapping of certain battleships satisfied the spirit of the Limitation of Armaments Treaty of 1921. The scrapping of ships has been accompanied by the building of newer and better ones. No one but ourselves thinks of maintaining only the resulting navies of 1921 which static state, it was thought, the Limitation of Armaments had accomplished. Even the pacifists repudiate it as contentment with a poor job only half done. Only national indifference to national welfare will ever prevent armaments. There is one thing a socialist government is not, and cannot afford to be indifferent to, and that is national welfare. Socialism is militaristic at heart.
Europe has cast aside certain governmental traditions among which was the obsession that the people themselves could not be trusted to formulate foreign policy. Legislation is usurping many of the former functions of government in Europe where no Supreme Courts exist to check unconstitutional legislation. The will of the majority is law in parliamentary government. An automatic check does exist, however, in the plurality of political parties which are active in all such governments. There were fourteen political parties participating in the last election in France and over 100 parties in Italy. In England the break-up of coalition government resulted in such party jealousy that each of the major parties preferred to support a minority labor party rather than accept defeat at the hands of each other. The result was a very satisfactory temporary government in which the proletariat were governing by and with the consent and advice of those more experienced. In Italy, dissatisfaction with a government which was weakly compromising the communism, led to a popular demand for strong government which would promote the national prestige abroad and guarantee the suppression of class control at home. The leader of fascism is apparently a dictator. As a matter of fact, his power is only that delegated to him by a majority of the people and his pedestal is as insecure as the temperament of Italians is mercurial. Fascism governing through a responsible dictatorship gave the Italians what they wanted and is more truly representative of the Italian soul and body than an elected legislature would be. Through Mussolini, Italy is bluntly and boldly telling the world to beware of encroaching on Italian rights. A revival of military spirit has accompanied the acquisition of power by the people. The Italians, having no natural resources of their own, are about to expand industrially and seek world markets. They are planning to regain supremacy in the Mediterranean in an attempt to revive the Pax Romana of 2,000 years ago and are already cultivating friendly relations wherever possible in the south of Europe. They are also showing a truculent attitude toward such as seem inclined to check reasonable Italian aspirations. Europe believes that the Italians will fight if they can’t get a square deal, and consequently Italy is getting one.
Diplomacy is no longer secret because the diplomats are no longer responsible only to individuals in power no matter what their credentials say. The premiers get together nowadays and tell each other what the temper of their respective nations are and what sort of diplomatic agreements can be ratified. Diplomats are mouth pieces and little else. Their responsibility is now primarily to the people of the nation they represent and their duty of a distinctly negative character in that they must do nothing to commit their governments to anything which has not had the sanction of legislation. Nor must they initiate anything or precipitate any situation requiring legislation. Diplomacy now begins at home and the voice of the people as heard in their own legislative halls is the only safe guide for another people to listen to in formulating foreign policy. Properly to interpret the will of the people from what goes on in their parliament is probably the most important duty an accredited minister has. To attempt to influence parliamentary opinion directly or officially is probably the worst of modern diplomatic crimes. Diplomats who work overtime at diplomacy now are soon recalled. When wars were more the result of intrigue and non-national in character, it was important to know just to what extent nationals as a whole would support such a war. Since the World War it has become evident that war, when it comes for any reason, will be supported by a whole nation with every ounce of resource it has. Since the people themselves may be expected to declare war in the future, it may be expected that they will intend to prosecute it as a people. Not even a diplomat would be able to discover an ulterior motive behind a future declaration of war. It will be evident from before the firing of the first gun that a situation exists beyond the possibility of diplomatic help. Two peoples will have decided that only the sword can bring a decision, presumably after a genuine effort has been made to arbitrate. War, unless strictly localized, is bound to become such a general nuisance to the rest of the world (since it has been found impossible to preserve the rights of neutrals) that combatants will probably be forced to discontinue their war by concerted action of other nations hastily organized as a vigilance committee.
The very fact that a war must be popular in the future to receive the support necessary to its successful prosecution makes arbitration much more likely to succeed in preventing war. It is unlikely that a recourse to arms will ever again be popular enough to prevent an acceptable decision by arbitration, unless the real casus belli is inflamed racial antipathy. Arbitration seeks to effect a stable settlement of international disputes though it is questionable whether such settlement can include the removal of basic causes. In effecting a stable settlement, the commission or court of arbitration in session must take into consideration a number of factors which have to do with the respective abilities of the contestants to maintain such settlement. A disarmed nation should not be given wealth or responsibilities that it cannot or will not protect, no matter how theoretically just its cause may be. It is idle to give a decision based on theoretical justice if it imposes impossible responsibilities and duties. An example of the sort of arbitration a defeated country may expect was the decision to make a wholesale transfer of nationals to their respective countries recently effected by Turkey and Greece. Such a typically Oriental procedure, while apparently strictly impartial and equally just, is, in effect, interference in legitimate personal and national liberty, which has for its inspiration ulterior and illegitimate motives repugnant to modern civilization. This precedent is not likely to be followed in the future.
With the passing of secret diplomacy and the advent of definite national aims laid boldly on the table, it is possible to arbitrate with some chance of success. Arbitration is necessarily a compromise. If intelligent, it seeks to create stable conditions where trouble exists. Stable conditions are secured when the most vital interests are satisfied and the more temperamental and sentimental interest involved are permitted to save face. Vital interests are those on which a nation’s foreign policy is based. Too general resort to arbitration on comparatively trivial issues will tend to keep the big issues “out of court” as these must be settled, not on technicalities, but in a way which disposes of the issue involved. An international court of justice has very little “law” to work with in the first place. The more it has to invoke, the more will its decisions be technical and the less will it settle issues brought before it. Upon what a court of arbitration must base its findings and decision is the ability of the contestants to maintain amicable relations as a result of the decision. And here comes in the test of the good faith of the contestants. Were a court of arbitration to base its findings purely on theoretical justice to all nations considered as equally responsible regardless of the mental equipment and peculiar racial characteristics of the nationals, a direct invitation to small and poorly governed nations to nurse extravagant pretentions and to bring them up for arbitration is offered.
Arbitration should be the final peaceful attempt to obtain a mutually satisfactory settlement before war is considered to be inevitable. When the vital character of the respective clashing interests makes mutual adjustment impossible, then arbitration should be invoked. Nations which cannot adjust their difficulties between themselves must expect that adjustment by arbitration will be somewhat in the interests of the rest of the world. As annoyed neutrals, the rest of the world will be interested should adjustment fail and war result. It is nothing new in history or government for individuals voluntarily to surrender individual rights to a higher power in return for better protection in the exercise of remaining individual rights. This is the basis of self government. It will be the basis of future peace and of future international law and order. If arbitration is generally resorted to as the final court of international appeal to which only the vital issues are presented for settlement, and, if the decisions of such a court are such as promote the general welfare in their execution, a refusal to abide by such a decision, which results in war, will automatically outlaw that war as aggressive and give ample authority for a combination of neutral nations to suppress such war by force, and this without in any way imposing on them the blame for starting general hostilities. It is only by making arbitration representative of international welfare and by the enforcement of its verdicts that aggressive war can be practically outlawed.
The awards of arbitration are bound to be disappointing to both contestants where each have vital interests at stake. It will, however, be easier for one of the disputants to surrender claims in the interests of world welfare than to surrender them at the bayonet’s point of an adversary and entirely in the interests of that adversary. It is infinitely better to concede with a saved face than to lose with a black eye. So long as the aggressor is free from interference by the rest of the world, so long will he discount either losing or the black eye, and will go ahead to seek a decision by war. Should arbitration show him the way out peacefully and he refuse to take it, and should a decision to fight insure that he can gain thereby only isolation and hard knocks, he will have nothing to gain by war and everything to lose.
Assuming that arbitration will have its awards enforced, it can so limit the scope of intelligent though belligerently inclined people as to make war futile. However, arbitration must be an appreciable and evident asset to the world in general if it is to have the requisite international backing. Law is developed by human beings for the safe conduct of mutual relations. Hence, we have the policeman to prevent infractions of the law and to insure its observance. International law is developed by international agreement for the protection of neutral and nonbelligerent rights and for the conduct of war as humanely as possible. Common law presupposes a state of peace which it seeks to preserve. International law presupposes a state of war which it seeks to ameliorate. Each seeks to limit the scope of prospective disturbance, the policeman by the timely application of his prestige as an agent of force or by the application of the force itself legally at his disposal. International law has only its prestige to compel observance, a prestige accumulated through centuries of warfare in which humanity again and again has asserted itself. Certain laws are fundamental in nature and are obeyed instinctively by all peoples. The great majority of statutes are man-made to cover particular weaknesses in government, society, or economic conditions. As such, they require enforcement. International law, though idealistic, is no less man-made and requires enforcement if it is to be effective in a world of nations in which crowd psychology is still likely to take charge in a warlike direction. Just as international law is based on common agreement, so it must be enforced either by common action in support or by the establishment of an international military force. An international army is displeasing to any responsible government. It is the essence of the mercenary spirit and the forerunner of a world state with all the communistic stagnation which that implies. Concerted action in support of the awards of arbitration, forceful if necessary, is the only possible and acceptable method in sight for the establishment of international law as an instrument capable of outlawing aggression.
In spite of what some theorists and pacifists say, peace is not at present a normal state of society. It is, however, very necessary that civilization should have the benefit of longer and longer periods of peace if peace is to become normal. The virus of war persists in a dormant state for several generations.
Peace, like law, must be practicable to be enforced. Like law, it must be enforced for a period long enough to determine whether public opinion will be converted into instinctive respect and support of peace for peace’s sake, or whether such peace as exists is found to be imperfect and not entitled to further support. A peace which is neither respected nor supported will not last long. Therefore, peace terms must be as carefully considered as a commitment to peace, as a declaration of war is a commitment to war. It is much easier to keep the peace than it is to make peace, as actual war distorts and inflames official and private judgment to such an extent that in war time it becomes easier to continue war than to make peace. Excessive peace-time armament is merely a symptom of some cause for war for which conflict of unreasonable national aspirations is responsible. Disarmament in peace time may equally be considered a symptom of unhealthy conditions provocative of war. To prevent conflict of national aspirations is to prevent war. That controlled armament in peace time is an aid in the prevention of unreasonable national aspiration is almost obvious. If armament be controlled by common agreement among all nations capable of raising armies and building navies, peace is practically assured, not by equality or ratios of military and naval strength, but by the demonstration that the various nations can agree on anything so vital to each as their own national defense. Unfortunately, this happy state of agreement and trust in each other does not exist, though the Washington Treaty for the Limitation of Armaments was a step in that direction. What does exist at present is an inclination to outlaw unreasonable pretentions which harbor the germ of war. There is no evidence, even in religion, to prove that the world can outlaw war any more than it can outlaw the weather. Either scheme is so absurdly impracticable that none but fanatics advocate such futility. The ability and disposition to fight is inherent in man as a result of centuries of physical struggles which have made him supreme among the living things of the world. Fortunately, his reasoning power has developed as fast as his fighting ability, though it has often been submerged in vicious wars and prostituted to lethal ingenuity. The very fact that reasoning power is now developing under the stimulus of science and free from theological dogma at a rate unusual in former generations, creates, simultaneously with an insight into the causes of war, a foresight with which to prevent war. This foresight is developing faster in Europe than it is in the United States where foresight in international affairs has been stunted by the rank growth of an isolation policy so long cultivated that Americans are lazily content to subsist on peace much as a south sea islander does on bananas. We have neither courted nor caused wars through our international relations. We have always fought more or less efficiently when war was thrust upon us. We have never lost a war, principally because we were always either plentifully supplied with allies or because we engaged some nation considerably weaker than ourselves. We have never yet stood on our two feet alone against a powerful foreign antagonist. We have never done anything to foresee war, understand its causes, or prevent war through attempts to understand our international neighbors and their aspirations. We have never protected ourselves from a possible war other than to isolate ourselves in hope that the storm would blow over. We are again sniffing at approaching storm clouds like cattle and turning our tails to the wind. Not even the shepherd dogs in our Congress, Army and Navy can get the herd in motion to a place of security. Europe is setting us an example of “Armament by Example” which we would do well to follow. Moreover, should Europe be convinced that we are again sunk into Oriental dreams of pacifism and neglectful of the potential strength of fighting man power we really possess, practically the last check on another armament race abroad is removed. By cooperating with Europe in an intelligent program of adequate general armament based on the spirit and provisions of the 5-5-3 naval ratio, thereby demonstrating our intention to remain as strong as the strongest, and by demonstrating our ability to out-build and outarm any of them at short notice, we become a force for peace with which every belligerently inclined nation must reckon.
To have peace we must understand its responsibilities as well as its benefits. We must tax ourselves and surrender certain rights to independence of action just as we do when we establish a government maintaining law and order. Peace is man-made, man-maintained, and is the result of man’s determination to have peace. Man’s method has been, is now, and perhaps ever will be, to fight for what he gets, including peace, if he can’t get it in any other way. We must recognize this and prevent fighting by eliminating cause for it. Woman’s way to get anything has always been to work, to pray, or to argue for it. They are usually successful, if clever, but in the final analysis, they can never overcome their relative inferiority in fighting ability and therefore never dare to trust a vital decision to battle. What else is pacifism than this feminine fear of and exasperation with war? A pacifist and most women are afraid of war for they know themselves to be incompetents as fighters. They would emasculate their men in the hope thereby of arousing such general hatred of war as would feminize the world. There is little reason to hope that this ideal state of negative virtue would produce peace. There are always more things wanted than there are things not wanted by either men or women, militarists or pacifists. It is the wanting of things which causes conflict. Conflict results in war. Wants are relative and can be controlled and directed by common counsel and by common action, enforcement of reason, and by the threat of bloody and certain defeat. Nations which want war are possessed of a dangerous mania. We do not give a madman his way. We restrain him by force and administer his affairs in trust.
Peace which atrophies the will to fight is a dangerous and degenerate peace for it destroys its own safeguards and jeopardizes its own existence. Peace is one of the things to be fought for from time to time. It is but a relative state of conflict in which actual sanguinary combat is suspended for the temporary exercise of other competitive methods. When the competitive methods of peace become unfair and wrongs are perpetrated, resort is had again to fighting. There is no way to avoid fighting so long as unfairness and wrong are tolerated. Unfairness and wrong are also relative. It is seldom the case that only one party to a disagreement is wrong and the other right. Both are usually wrong if there is disagreement, but one is more wrong than the other, depending on which puts forth the more preposterous pretentions. The maintenance of peace or rather of peaceful competition depends absolutely on control of national aspirations and national pretention within reasonable limits. If there is any better way to control these causes for war than by making defeat certain for any nation harboring them, neither history nor ethics have been able to demonstrate it. In order to make defeat certain for transgressors, there must exist the means for defeating them apportioned among the nations of the world in a ratio which permits to each nation adequate defense to hold off aggression until such time as other nations sworn to enforce peace can bring the weight of their armaments to bear in crushing the aggressor. Man learns by experience. A few lessons of this sort demonstrating quick and certain defeat will soon serve to make war unpopular. Such general preparedness and common action, impossible without preparedness, will reduce the cost of fighting to that of ordinary insurance. It may be difficult to get the nations of the world to agree to common action but it will be much easier to do so if they have already agreed to limit their armaments and to maintain their armaments at the agreed ratio. So long as each nation is free to arm in accordance with its own unchecked ideas of its national place in the sun or in accordance with its unwarranted fears, so long will distrust of each other prevent cooperation in a common cause.
Disarmament or neglect of armament simply transfers the burden of waging war more directly to every man, woman and child in the country. A defenseless nation has no right to remain unmolested for it is a poor support in the international frame work of general peace. A nation which refuses to maintain its proportionate share of the burden of armaments and at the same time to enjoy the privileges of peace enforced by the armament of other nations is a cheat and a parasite besides being a potential source of trouble which will cause additional armaments in other countries. Adequate and proportionate armament is the bulwark behind which a country is given the chance to mobilize when war is thrust upon it. The better those bulwarks the better the mobilization possible, the less waste of blood and treasure, and the more hopeless a task for an aggressor to break through. A nation mobilized behind its military and naval forces must be destroyed or let alone. To destroy a nation so prepared is a moral and economic crime of which no future nation or combination of nations will dare be guilty. To despoil a pacifist nation unwilling to protect itself from aggression and willing only to enjoy peace without paying for it, is to follow only the economic laws of man and the immutable law of nature. It is not possible to destroy a pacifist people as the history of the Hebrew race for 2,500 years can testify. It is possible to prevent such people from governing themselves, however, and such will be the fate of any people who count freedom and self government of so little spiritual worth as not to be worth fighting for. Such people are not even let alone but are herded from country to country and from occupation to occupation like sheep—always a problem, sometimes an asset, yet never welcome. How much better to rest alertly and securely on one’s arms, free to develop and to practice the arts of peace under a national government congenial to racial type and temperament.
“Disarmament by Example” is a state of mind. “Armament by Example” is a state of security. Which will our grandchildren prefer as a heritage?