Part 15

The facts that the caustic and restrained utterances of these gentlemen could be so construed, and that the London Daily Mail should attempt to break and mutilate my comments on the French attitude, demonstrate beyond doubt the need there was for the utmost outspokenness in this matter. But the situation is now better realized. The air is already clearer for the outburst. France, we realize, has to stop bullying Germany and threatening Italy; Europe can only be saved by the honest and unreserved co-operation of Italy, France and Britain for mutual aid and reassurance.

The repercussion of the Franco-British clash was immediately evident upon the other issues of the conference. The practical refusal of France to join in the generous renunciations of America and Britain, the feeling of insecurity created in Western Europe weakened Britain in her ability to work with America on the Pacific for a secure China and for restraint upon the possible imperialism of Japan. Britain cannot do that with a hostile neighbor behind her and an uncertain America at her side, and the prospects of a free China and for an effective limitation of the Japanese naval strength were greatly imperilled. Japanese demands stiffened. “Ten to six,” said America. “Ten to seven,” answered Japan.

The effect upon what I might call the Washington state of mind throughout the world was depressing. The easy onrush of the opening days was checked. Here was hard work ahead, complications, the traditions and mental habits of two great European peoples were in conflict and had somewhat to be adjusted if we were to get on. The Anglo-French Entente, we discovered, was in a very unsatisfactory state; it had suddenly to be sent to the wash and the washing had to be done in public, and this happened at a phase of lassitude. In the ebb of the great enthusiasm all sorts of buried rocks and shoals became apparent again. Party politics reappeared—and remained showing.

I am an innocent child in American politics; I know that I make my artless remarks upon these things at considerable peril. But I gather from the self-betrayals of one or two influential people that things are somewhat in this frame. The Democrats feel that so far they have been almost supernaturally “good” about the conference. They haven’t said a word by way of criticism; they have hailed and helped and smiled and cheered. Still——If things should so turn out that a kind of insufficiency should appear, and if people’s minds should revert thereupon toward the Democratic League of Nations idea, so much under a cloud at present, it would be rather more than human not to feel a faint gleam of pleasure and perhaps even to give the gentlest of pushes to the process of disillusionment.

And on the other hand, there betrays itself now and then a slight nervous eagerness on the part of loyal rather than good Republicans to call anything that happens a success and to become indignant when, as in the case of the Briand oration, a spade is called a spade. And that childish, undignified and dwindling tendency of certain American types to regard all foreign powers in general, and Britain in particular, as forever engaged in diabolical machinations against the peace and purity of American life is also increasingly evident. There is an open, if incoherent, press campaign against disarmament, against the British, against foreigners generally, against—any troublesome thing you like.

These are ebb tide phenomena. These are the limitations of our poor humanity under fatigue. None the less, matters have to be thrashed out and will be thrashed out. As I said in the beginning, it is hard to keep hold.

And so it was high time that the President, who embodies so much of the simplicity and strength of that real America, in which I am a profound and obstinate believer, should come back into the limelight from which he receded after delivering his great speech and leaving the chair on the opening day of the conference. In the indirect way customary with Presidents here he has been making some very important pronouncements.

My friend Mr. Michelson some days ago published a sketch of very important proposals that had already received wide support in the informal discussions that pervade Washington—for partial rescinding of the Allied debts, subject to disarmament conditions, to be considered by a second conference to be presently assembled. Following on this news the President has been talking for publication of a third experiment in the form of a second Washington Conference to take up these issues. And he has also been talking of a third conference to confirm and go on with the disarmament arrangements, a conference at which Germany and the Spanish-speaking powers, if not Russia, are apparently to have a voice. Such a periodic repetition of the conference would presently organize itself for a continuing life and so develop gradually and naturally into that Association of Nations we are all seeking.

These are refreshing promises in these days of ebb; they show that the impulse that began so splendidly two weeks ago is not dead, that the tide rises toward world discussion and world organized peace will flow again presently, wider and stronger than its previous flow. And meanwhile these frank discussions of attitude and detail must go on; they cannot be ignored, but at the same time they must not be magnified into incurable quarrels and insurmountable difficulties. They are unavoidable and necessary things, but not the big things, the main things. While the tide is out our main projects, stranded in this estuary that leads perhaps to the ocean of peace, must needs keel over and look askew; we must scrape our keels, calk leaks and wait for the great waters to return.

XVIII AMERICA AND ENTANGLING ALLIANCES

Washington, Nov. 30.

The power of the American impulse toward a world peace is undeniable. It has produced in succession the great dream of a League of Nations and now this second great dream of a gradually developing Association of Nations arising out of a series of such conferences as this one. No other nation could have raised such hopes and no other political system has the freedom of action needed to give these projects the substance and dignity which the initiative of the head of the state involves.

But if these projects are to carry through into the world of accomplished realities, if in a lifetime or so this glorious dream of a world peace—going on, as a world at peace must now inevitably do, from achievement to achievement—if that dream is to be realized, certain peculiarities of the American people and the American situation have at no very distant date to be faced.

All such gatherings and conferences as this are haunted by a peculiar foggy ghost called “Tact,” which is constantly seeking to cover up and conceal and obliterate some vitally important but rather troublesome reality in the matter. “Tact” is apparently a modern survival of the ancient “Tabu.” For example, a pleasant Indian gentleman sits among the British delegates at the conference; “Tact” demands that no one shall ever ask him or of him, “What do you conceive will be the place of India in that great World Association half a century ahead? Will it still be a British appendix?” And “Tact” becomes hysterical at the slightest whisper of the word “Senegalese,” or any inquiry about the possible uses of the French submarine. And a third question, hitherto veiled by “Tact” under the very thickest wrappings of fog, to which, greatly daring, I propose to address myself now, is: “How far is America really prepared to fix and adhere to any wide schemes for the permanent adjustment of the world’s affairs that may be arrived at by this conference or its successors?”

The other day a friend of mine in New York made a profoundly wise remark to me. “I have found,” she said, “that one can have nothing and do nothing without paying for it. If you do well or if you do ill, just the same you have to pay for it. If a mother wants to do her best by her children, she must pay for it, in giving up personal ambitions, dreams of writing or art, throughout the best years of life. If a man wants to do his best in business or politics, he must sacrifice dreams of travel and adventure.” And whatever America does with herself in the next few years, she too must be prepared to pay.

If she desires isolation, moral exaltation, irresponsibility and self-sufficiency, “America for the Americans and never mind the consequences,” she must be prepared to witness the decline and fall of the white civilization in Europe and the consolidation of a profoundly alien system across the Pacific. If, on the other hand, she now takes up this task for which she seems so inclined, as the leader and helper of white civilization, the task of organizing the permanent peace of the world upon the lines of the system of civilization to which she belongs, then for that nobler role also there is a price to be paid. She has to assume not only the dignity but the responsibilities of leadership. She has not merely to express noble sentiments, but to lay hold upon the difficulties and intricacies of the problem before her. She has not merely to criticise but to consider and sympathize and help, and she has to make decisions and abide by them.

When America really makes decisions, she abides by them—vigorously. The Monroe Doctrine was such a decision. It has saved South America for South Americans; it has saved Europe from a ruinous scramble for the Spanish inheritance. It was the first great feat of Americanism in world politics. The exponents of “Tact” will, I know, be outraged by the reminder that for a long time tacit approval of Britain and the existence of the British fleet provided a support and shield to the Monroe Doctrine, and also by the further reminder that the one serious attack upon it was made by Napoleon III. during the American Civil War—at which time, I admit, the attitude of Great Britain to the disunited States was also far from impeccable. But helped or assailed, the Monroe Doctrine held good.

The Washington Conference has developed a position with regard to the Pacific that calls for an American decision of equal vigor. It is as plain as daylight that Japanese liberal tendencies can be supported and the aggressive ambitions of Japanese imperialism can be restrained, that China can be saved for the Chinese and Eastern Siberia from foreign conquest, provided America places herself unequivocally side by side with Great Britain and France in framing and sustaining a definite system of guarantees and prohibitions in Eastern Asia. The Anglo-Japanese agreement could be ended in favor of such a new peace-pact and an enormous step forward toward world peace be made. It would mark an epoch in world statecraft.

But this means an agreement of the nature of a treaty; a mere Presidential declaration, which means some later President might set aside or some newly elected Senate reverse, is not enough. If the reader will study the position of Australia and of the British commitments in Eastern Asia, he will see why it is not enough. Britain is not strong enough to risk being left alone as the chivalrous protector of a weak, if renascent, China. She has her own people in Australia to consider. And besides, Britain alone—as the protector of China—after all that has happened in the past.... It is moral as well as material help in sustaining the new understanding that the British will require.

The plain fact of the Pacific situation is that there are only three courses before the world—either unchallenged Japanese domination in Eastern Asia from now on, or a war to prevent it soon, or an alliance of America, Britain and Japan, with whatever government China may develop, and with the other powers concerned, though perhaps less urgently concerned—an alliance of all these, for mutual restraint and mutual protection. And it is an equally plain fact, though “Tact” cries “Hush!” at the words, that the tradition of America for a hundred years, a tradition which was sustained in her refusal to come into the League of Nations, has been against any such alliance.

George Washington’s advice to his countrymen to avoid “permanent alliances” for the balance of power and suchlike ends, and Jefferson’s reiterated council to his countrymen to avoid “entangling alliances” have been interpreted too long as injunctions to avoid any alliances whatever, entangling or disentangling. The habit of avoiding association in balance-of-power schemes and the like has broadened out into a general habit of non-association. But alliances which are not aimed at a common enemy but only at a common end were not, I submit, within the intention of George Washington.

At any rate, I do not see how the disarmament proposals of Mr. Secretary Hughes can possibly he accepted without a Pacific settlement, nor how that settlement can be sustained except by some sort of alliance, meeting periodically in conference to apply or adapt the settlement to such particular issues as may arise. If America is not prepared to go as far as that, then I do not understand the enthusiasm of America for the Washington Conference. I do not understand the mentality that can contemplate world disarmament without at least that much provision for the prevention of future conflicts.

And similarly, I do not see how any effectual disarmament is possible in Europe or how any dealing with the economic and financial situation there can be possible unless America is prepared to bind itself in an alliance of mutual protection and accommodation with at least France, Germany, Britain and Italy to sustain a similar series of conferences and adjustments. At the back of the French refusal to disarm there is a suppressed demand for a protective alliance. That is an entirely reasonable demand. The form of this alliance that the French have demanded hitherto is an entangling alliance, an alliance of America and Britain and France against, at least, Germany and Russia. The necessary alliance to which France and Britain will presently assent, and which America will come to recognize as the only way to its peacemaking aims, will be against no one; it is an alliance of an entirely beneficial character, an alliance not to entangle but to release.

The disposition of the European delegations and of the British and foreign writers at Washington to treat the idea of America making treaties of alliance as outside the range of possibility, as indeed an idea tabu, seems to me a profoundly mistaken one. It is “Tact” in its extremest form. I have heard talk of the “immense inertia” of political dogmas held for a hundred years. For “immense inertia” I would rather write “expiring impulse.” The policy of non-interference in affairs outside America was an excellent thing, no doubt, for a young Republic in the self-protective state; it is a policy entirely unworthy of a Republic which has now become the predominant state in the world.

XIX AN ASSOCIATION OF NATIONS

The futility of the idea of a limitation of armaments or any limitation of warfare as a possible remedy for the present distresses of mankind, without some sort of permanent settlement of the conflicts of interest and ambition which lie at the root of warfare, has grown clearer and clearer with each day’s work of the Washington Conference. And the conviction that no permanent settlement is conceivable without a binding alliance to sustain it also grows stronger each day. For security and peace in the Pacific an alliance of at least America, Britain and Japan is imperative, and Britain cannot play her part therein unless Europe is safe also, through a binding alliance of at least France, Germany, Britain and America. To arrest the economic decadence of the world a still wider bond is needed.

So the inflexible logic of the situation brings us back to the problem of a world alliance and a world guarantee, the problem of which the League of Nations was the first attempted solution. The conference is being forced toward that ampler problem again, in spite of the severe restrictions of its agenda. After President Wilson’s “League” comes President Harding’s “Association.” Senator Borah, in alarm, emerges from the silence he has hitherto kept during the conference to declare that this “Association” is only another name for the “League.” On that we may differ from him. Association and League are alike in seeking to organize the peace of the world but in every other respect they are different schemes, differing in aims, scope and spirit.

The primary difference is that, while the League was a very clearly defined thing, planned complete from the outset, a thing as precise and inalterable as the United States Constitution, the Harding project is a tentative, experimental thing, capable of great adaptations by trial and corrected error, a flexible and living thing that is intended to grow and change in response to the needs of our perplexing and incalculable world.