American World Policies Part 18

Undoubtedly the struggle of subject nationalities to be {275} free, and of independent nations to annex their kin, has been a fruitful source of strife during the last century. The sense of nationality has been intensified by the nation's mobilisation of the economic interests of its citizens; it has become almost pathological as a result of petty nationalistic fragments competing for separate existence. Bulgarians, Greeks and Serbians want the same tract in Macedonia; Roumanians, Italians and Serbs wish to redeem their subject brethren in the Austro-Hungarian Empire; France seeks to rescue the Francophile though German-speaking Alsatians and Lothringians, and Germany would gladly welcome the Dutch and Flemings back to their putative German allegiance. There is no limit to these nationalistic claims; no room for arbitration; no fixed principle to determine to which nation each group shall be awarded. The result, quite apart from any action among the Great Powers, seems war--inevitable and endless.[3]

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It is impossible to withhold one's admiration for the inspiring fight which oppressed peoples all over the world are making for their independence. We thrill over the old story of the Grecian revolt against Turkey, of the great risorgimento of Italy, of the long slow struggle of Germany to achieve statehood. The century since the Vienna Congress has marked an almost uninterrupted victory for the principle of nationality. Yet though we sympathise with the aspirations of Poles, Finns, Armenians and Bohemians, an unlimited independence cannot always be desired. Nationalities are not sundered geographically, but men of diverse stocks and traditions are interspersed, as though a malign power had wished to make concord forever impossible. Ireland cannot secure autonomy, to say nothing of independence of Great Britain, without encountering Ulster's demand to be independent of Ireland. Similarly a Great Roumania, a Greater Serbia, a Poland, an independent Bohemia can be secured only by denying the equal rights of lesser racial groups. To-day Hungarians misrule the Roumanians of Transylvania; to-morrow a Greater Roumania may misrule the Transylvania Hungarians. The principle of the independence of nationalities collides with itself.

It also collides with overwhelming economic facts. Racially Trieste is semi-Italian, but if Italy acquires the city (and includes it in her customs union), a vast Austrian and German _hinterland_ is deprived of a necessary commercial outlet. Italy can hold the East Adriatic only by smothering Serbia. Moreover many of these foetal nationalities are too weak and geographically too insecure for independent political existence. What reality would attach to an independent Bohemia held in a vice between two hostile German neighbours, and with a German population in its own territory? Even in peace the {277} Teutonic powers could gently strangle the new nation by means of discriminating tariffs.

Finally many of the claims for nationalistic expansion are inspired by a motive quite different from what appears on the surface. What the nation usually wants is not merely its own unredeemed brethren, but more territory and people. Its unredeemed brethren are the easiest to take. But while Roumania demands sovereignty over the Roumanians of Transylvania, she will not let the Bulgarians of the Dobrudja go. In the one case she upholds the sacred principle of nationality; in the other she discards that principle for the sake of a strategic frontier.

Serbians and Greeks ask not only for the right to recover their ancient territory but also for the right to rule over Bulgarians and Turks.

What they really desire is access to the sea, ample resources for an adequate population, and the national power, without which an independent existence is an illusion.

It is too late to dream of a really independent existence for each pigmy nationality, strewn about in Eastern Europe. In the absence of a Balkan Confederation, Servia, Roumania, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Greece may preserve their separate sovereignties, though only if they submit to the "advice" of greater nations, as Portugal submits to Britain.

But for such nations to have conflicting nationalistic aspirations, to wage b.l.o.o.d.y wars for larger territory and more subjects, is a ridiculous and a tragic situation. Servia, dreaming of the restoration of the empire of Tsar Stephen Dushan, whose armies marched to the walls of Constantinople, Greece aspiring to the Empire of the East, are a menace to the peace of the world. It is doubtful whether all of these ambitious nationalities can even preserve their separate national existence. If the welfare of Europe conflicts with the {278} independence of a Montenegro or a Bohemia, some lesser form of self-government must be discovered.

That lesser form of self-government might be sought in a local autonomy under a federal government. It is not improbable that the political development, of south-eastern Europe for example, will tend towards group organisations based on the co-operation of diverse nationalities and stocks somewhat on the Swiss model. If the political question could be divorced from the question of the economic exploitation of these small nations, and if each nationalistic group were permitted to retain its language, traditions and _Kultur_, the result might be better than a mere _morcellement_ of south-eastern Europe, with petty nationalities fighting the battles of their big backers. In such a larger Switzerland, each group might be represented in proportion to its numbers, and the worst evils of the present racial contests be avoided.

The important question in the present connection, however, is not what the particular solution is to be, but whether any solution is possible.

It need not be a perfect but only a permanent settlement. Such a settlement presupposes a concert among the Great Powers, an agreement concerning their own problems. Given such an agreement, however, the Powers could in time work out a Balkan arrangement, which neither Servia nor Bulgaria, Roumania nor Greece would dare resist. In the end, if the arrangement were definite, practicable, in reasonable conformity with nationalistic lines, and with a strong and certain sanction, the small nations would become resigned. To-day they have boundless ambitions because the division among the Great Powers gives them a chance of realising ambitions, and what ambitions they have not to start with, Austria or Russia will lend to them on short notice. In this sense and to this extent, the {279} nationalistic problem in its worst form is an appendage to the vast struggle between the powers, and it may cease to be provocative of great wars once a basis of agreement is established among these larger nations.

With the best will such a basis of international agreement among the Great Powers cannot be established in a few years. It requires a gradual development, a progressive give and take, a continuous widening of the principle of joint use. An international convention, altering the rules of maritime warfare, would be a long step in this direction; a congress of the nations for opening up the trade of colonies (like our international postal conventions) would be another step. The internationalisation of Panama, Kiel, Gibraltar, Constantinople, would immensely enhance security, and advance the progress of internationalisation. So also an economic convention between France and Germany, or between Germany and Russia, in which reciprocal industrial advantages were accorded. Such specific arrangements, which permit of international interpretation and enforcement, would help to bring about a larger economic internationalism.

But for the real foundations of peace we must look far below the level of all these diplomatic and political arrangements, in the world industry itself. To-day we are still in the full momentum of an economic development that makes for war, but we are also at the beginning of an economic trend towards peace. In the present world-economy the nation is the unit and international friction the rule, but the movement, at what rate we do not know, tends towards a world business in which the unit will be international and there will be peace between partners. We are already in the first beginnings of the internationalism of capital.

This development is in part the cause of a general {280} phenomenon, the growth of an internationalism of cla.s.s. Each social group seeks to establish relations with similar groups across the border, for the protection of interests that traverse national boundaries. Thus we have a certain internationalism of the wage-earning cla.s.s, of finance, of various scientific groups. The possibility of this internationalism grows with the integration of the world through commerce, industry, communication and the spread of knowledge.

The most obviously international of social groups is the proletariat.

Though sundered on the question of immigration, though (in some countries) nationalistic and even militaristic in spirit, the wage-earners on the whole have less to gain from imperialism and national aggression than have wealthier cla.s.ses, while they share disproportionately in the burdens that war entails. On the other hand workers have less influence in the making of diplomatic decisions than do their employers. In the end, moreover, their decision, like that of the capitalist cla.s.s, is chiefly determined by economic forces largely beyond their control. It is the nascent internationalism of capital, not of capitalists or of wage-earners, that is the supreme element making for peace.

We must beware, however, of welcoming all foreign investment as a portent of a growing internationalism of capital. Much that is accounted economic internationalism is in truth merely an extended nationalism, an extra-nationalism. For investments to allay international discord they should create a community of interest between nations potentially hostile. If Britain invested freely in Germany and Germany in Britain there would be created a mutuality of interest which would render peace probable. Each nation would have a stake in the prosperity of the other; each would have given hostages to peace. {281} But when the London financier puts his money in India, Canada or the Argentine, he is not co-operating but competing with potentially hostile nations. The process is an extension of the national economy to outlying districts, a transition to a larger national unit, like that created in the Middle Ages when the free cities ruled adjoining farm territory. Such an economic extension exacerbates national antagonisms and leads to war.

While foreign investment is preponderatingly of this sort, however, there also exist the beginnings of a movement more truly international.

The securities of one nation are dealt with upon the stock exchanges of another, capital flows across national borders and great international business concerns are created. The movement in favourable circ.u.mstances is likely to accelerate, either by the mutual economic interpenetration of nations, as when the French build factories in Germany or the Germans in France, or by the amalgamation of the capitals of two countries and their use in joint enterprises. The formation of large international syndicates for the exploitation of backward countries, whatever its other consequences, tends towards the creation of a community of interest. If the powers unite, for example, and can agree upon a Chinese loan, a step forward will have been taken towards an internationalism of capital.

The process of trust formation tends in the same direction. As competing industries within a nation frequently end by combining, so in many great industries the competing national units may develop a gentleman's agreement to regulate output and finally may establish an international cartel. Considerable progress has already been made in the division of the international field. A further development along these lines, though not easy, is by no means impossible or even improbable.

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We may seek to understand this eventual international evolution of business by visualising a world organisation of the steel industry.

Either one corporation might be formed or a common control might be established among national steel companies through an interchange of stock. The result might be somewhat as follows: In the United States we should have an organisation comprising all American steel concerns, its directors representing const.i.tuent companies as well as the government, labour and consumers. In its domestic affairs, it would be under governmental jurisdiction. Its capital might amount to a few billion dollars, of which a part would represent holdings of European companies in return for American stock, transferred to European companies.

Such a world corporation would be a financial aggregation immensely greater than any in the past. Its principles of organisation, however, would not materially differ from those with which we are familiar. In each country a board of directors would hold control over const.i.tuent companies, and at London, Paris or New York a high Federal Council would settle controversies and make arrangements for the business of the world. Each company would have two elements of protection against unfair treatment; a community of interest secured through an interchange of stock and a representative on the Federal Council.

A development, such as is here outlined, is in advance of the psychological preparation of the world. We have not yet succeeded in regulating corporations, and there would remain innumerable difficulties and inequalities as between nations, which could not easily be settled. The price which such concerns might be allowed to pay for ores or charge for finished products and the pressure which they might put upon workmen might cause financial {283} quarrels, leading to international controversies. If the governments held hands off, even greater evils might result. The various peoples would hesitate to turn over their basic industries to a private corporation beyond the regulation either of compet.i.tors or of their own government.

But we are here concerned not with the end but with the direction of international capitalism, and this direction tends to be the same as that of national capitalism. Division of the field, interchange of stock, community of interest, co-operation and combination in one form or another are as much a temptation in the relation of firms separated by a frontier as between those within one customs union. Capital is fluid. It is quant.i.tative. It is potentially international. A hundred dollars is indistinguishable from a certain number of pounds, marks or francs. The machinery for an international combination of capital is already present, the beginnings of international investment have already been made. Further progress waits only upon the removal of barriers, in part traditional. The larger economic interests of the nations, and of most of the cla.s.ses within the nations, lead towards the removal of these barriers and towards the gaining of that security without which international investment is dangerous and conventions and agreements almost worthless.

Given such an economic co-operation and such an economic interpenetration of rival European nations, and the political and diplomatic conflicts would grow less acrid and dangerous. As the process continued the interest of each nation in the welfare of its neighbours would become so great as to make international war as unthinkable as a war of Pennsylvania against New York. A vital and powerful international spirit, which already exists but is held in check by the fear and insecurity of each {284} independent nation, would be given full sway. There would be a new Europe and a new world, in which war would be but a vague and hateful memory.

Such developments, however, are slow and generations live their uncertain lives during a period of transition. While waiting for an economic internationalism to develop to maturity the nations remain on guard, armed, threatened and threatening. The change from our present anarchy to a future concord will not be swift.

For the time even an increase of the economic unit to include several nations instead of one is not likely to put an end to all international economic strife. It is not improbable that the proximate economic development will be not internationalism but _supra-nationalism_. Just as the customs union grew from a district to a nation, so it may grow to include a group of nations but not the whole world. The world may come to be divided into a group of five or six vast economic units, each of which would be composed of one or several or indeed many political units. The British Empire, the Russian Empire, the United States, China and j.a.pan, South America, one or two economic coalitions of west and central Europe (with their colonial possessions) would furnish a far more stable economic equilibrium for the world than is the present division of the powers. Each of these groups would have both agricultural and manufacturing resources; none of them would be imperatively obliged to fight for new territories. While there would be friction, while one group would have a population in proportion to its resources in excess of a neighbouring group, the sheer brutal necessity of expansion which now forces nations to fight would be largely moderated.

Such a division of the world into seven or six or perhaps fewer economic aggregates though not easy is quite within {285} the bounds of possibility. Three of these aggregates, Britain, Russia and the United States, are already political units; the chief difficulty would consist of western and central Europe. No thoroughgoing political amalgamation of such countries as France, Germany and Italy is at all proximate, but some form of economic unity is not impossible. The bond which would join these countries might be less tight and therefore stronger than the _Ausgleich_, which holds together the kingdoms of Austria and Hungary. In the beginning it might be merely a series of trade conventions terminable on notice; from this it might grow to more permanent trade agreements and finally to a customs union. While the opposition to such an economic union would be strong the forces driving in this direction would also be powerful. As the really great nations emerge, as Russia, the United States and the British Empire increase their population into the hundreds of millions and their wealth into the hundreds of billions, the individual nations of Europe will become economically insignificant and economically unsafe. Only by a pooling of their resources will they be able to escape from the crus.h.i.+ng superiority of the nations with large bulk and from an insecurity which makes for war.

Even with such an economic rearrangement of the world the west European coalitions would be unsafe unless they lessened the rate of increase of their population. Never before has this population grown so rapidly.

In the decade ending 1810 western Europe (including the nations lying to the west of Russia), added 6.3 millions to its numbers; in the decade ending 1900 it added almost 19 millions. Despite a decline in the birth-rate, the mortality has fallen so far that the population is reaching a point where it will be difficult to secure adequate food supplies from abroad. Rather than starve or live under the {286} constraint of scarce food and high food prices, the West European powers will fight for new territory from which to feed their people.

With the industrial development of Asia, and especially of China, this danger will be enhanced. Of the three great nuclei of population in the world, Eastern Asia, Southern Asia and Western (and Central) Europe, only one has been able to draw upon the surplus food of the world. Eight hundred million Asiatics have been forced to live on their own meagre home resources. As China begins to export coal, iron, textiles and other manufactured products, however, she will be able, whether politically independent or not, to compete with Europe for the purchase of this food supply. Not only will China's population probably increase with the advent of industrialism but the standard of living of her population will rise, and her compet.i.tion with Europe for the sale of manufactured products and the purchase of food will become intense. The cheap, patient, disciplined labour of China's hundreds of millions will be fighting with the Belgian, the German and the Italian wage-earners to secure the food which it will be necessary to import.

It is not a yellow, but a human peril; a mere addition to the hungry mouths that are to be fed. The supply of exportable food that can be raised in the world has of course not reached its maximum, but beyond a certain point every increase in agricultural production means a more than proportional increase in the cost of the product. To feed eight hundred millions costs much more than twice as much as to feed four hundred millions. Even though China secure only a minor part of the exportable food, it will by just so much increase the strain upon the industrial populations of Europe.

It is a crisis for European industrialism, a slowly {287} preparing crisis with infinitely tragic possibilities. What it involves is not a mere re-distribution of wealth and income but an adjustment of population to the available home and foreign resources in food.

Collectivism will not permanently save the European wage-earner from hunger if he continues to multiply his numbers faster than the visible food supply increases. A decline in the rate of population growth is essential.

Fortunately this decline is already in progress. All the nations of Western and Central Europe are moving towards a lower birth-rate and in France this diminution has reached a point where there is no longer a natural increase. In a few decades the birth rate will probably begin to fall everywhere faster than the death rate declines. An adjustment of the population to its probable resources will be in progress.

In this progressive decline in the birth rate is to be found the greatest of all the factors making for internationalism and peace. It is a development which takes away the edge from the present frantic effort of industrial nations to secure a monopolistic control of foreign resources. It permits the gradual creation of an equilibrium between the nation's population and its physical resources at home and abroad.

Powerful forces in the world are at present slowly making for an economic internationalism to supplant the economic nationalism which to-day makes for war. The problem that faces the United States is what shall be its policy and action in view of the present nationalistic strife and of the slowly maturing economic internationalism.

[1] November, 1916.

[2] The proposal to boycott Germany after the war is sometimes based upon weirdly moral rather than economic considerations. "Is it possible," writes one C. R. Enoch, "that trade relations with the nation that has outraged every tenet of international and moral decency, every consideration of humanity, and has committed unspeakable atrocities, as has Germany in her conduct of the war, can be taken up again at the point where they were broken off? ... There is only one procedure compatible with honour and justice--namely, that no ordinary commercial dealings should be carried out with Germany until the _generation of Teutons that did these things has pa.s.sed away_, unless absolute penitence and reparation--if reparation be possible--is done therefor." "Can We Set the World in Order." London, 1916, p. 197.

(My italics.)

[3] The granting of permission to the people of the disputed district to decide their own allegiance is a good general principle, but, unfortunately, does not carry us far. The main difficulty lies in determining what shall be the unit of territory and population which is to decide. If Ireland votes as a unit, all Ireland will have home rule; if each county is to have the right of self direction, Ulster will be detached from the rest of the island. If Alsace-Lorraine votes to become French, whole districts, which will have voted to remain German, will be dissatisfied. Moreover, in the latter case, should all the residents of the two provinces be permitted to vote or only those people and their descendants who were living there in 1870? If the first plan is adopted a premium is placed upon the policy of legally dispossessing the inhabitants of a conquered land and filling their places with loyal _immigres_; if the latter is chosen, the principle of the right of a population to determine its allegiance is abandoned.

Finally, if the decision of the population of the disputed district were adverse to the interests of Europe as a whole, it would be irrational to validate such a result. The interests of Europe are superior to those of any nation, however powerful, and vastly superior to those of a Luxemburg, Ulster or Alsace-Lorraine.

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CHAPTER XXI

AN IMMEDIATE PROGRAMME

To the practical man who wants to know what to do and when and how to do it, general principles seem unreal and valueless. He is interested in the decisions of the next few months, not in a vague general direction of events for the coming century. And so in international politics he would like to decide what the nation shall do _now_ about the British blacklist, the German submarines, the Mexican revolution, the California-j.a.panese situation, and he is not keenly interested in the formulation of a policy which seems to hang high above the difficult concrete problems that must be solved immediately. He may languidly agree with proposals to create a community of interest among colonising nations and to establish the freedom of the sea, but he wishes to know whether in the meanwhile we are to back up Carranza in Mexico and what we are to do if the revolutionists "shoot up" an American town. While we work for these ideals, are we to allow Germany to sink our liners and j.a.pan to swallow up China, or are we to fight?

This att.i.tude is not unreasonable. A general policy is of little value unless we can make successive decisions conform to it. But it is not easy or always possible to predict these decisions. We can tell approximately how many people in the United States will die next year, but not how many will die in any particular family. We can {289} advise a man who is walking from New York to San Francisco to take a generally westward course, but for any given mile of the road the direction may be north or south or east. A trend of policy is made up of innumerable deflections, small or large; it is an irregular chain of successive actions, which do not all tend in one direction. Even if we narrow our field of vision and seek to elaborate a more immediate policy, we do not escape from the vagueness which inheres in all such general conclusions.

In the main our problem consists in using the influence of the United States to create such an economic harmony among the nations, and to give each nation such a measure of security as to permit them to agree upon an international policy, which will be in the interest of all.

The chief elements of this programme are two in number: to create conditions within the United States which will permit us to exert a real influence; and to use this influence in the creation of an international organisation, which will give each nation a measure of economic and military security, and prevent any nation from wantonly breaking the peace.

How far we can progress towards such an organisation will depend upon the course and uncertain issue of the present war. The war may end with the Central Allies crushed, with Germany reduced in size and Austria and Turkey dismembered. It may end with a lesser defeat for the Central Powers and with lesser penalties. There may be an inconclusive peace, which may either be a mere truce or a new basis of agreement between nations disillusioned by the conflict. Finally the war may end with the partial or even complete victory of the Central Powers, either through their overcoming the united opposition of their enemies or by detaching one or more from their alliances.

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