Part 3

DEVELOPMENT OF INTERNATIONAL LAW

International Law is in its infancy. It is mainly concerned with procedure in war――a procedure no longer observed. It needs to be extended and codified. I believe that this can best be done by a commission of the League of Nations, which shall report from time to time to the League of Nations Assembly. Late news from Rome indicates that this is being provided for by the Council of the League.

CONFERENCE ON REDUCTION OF ARMAMENTS

Both the League of Nations and President Coolidge have given expression to the universal desire to reduce the burden of armaments in the interest of economy and world peace. Armaments, speaking generally, express a nation’s fears or the ambitions of its controlling classes. Reduction of armaments will follow increasing world security and still more extensively an increasing sense of security, which is a very different matter. We are used to our armaments as we are used to locking our doors at night. Neither actually gives security, although we have been brought up to think both do. I have shown above that armaments cannot give security from another world war, and that is the only security that would be worth having.

Increase of armaments increases the general sense of insecurity. Therefore, while waiting for another conference on the limitation of armaments, we should not hold “defense days” nor competitively multiply our cruisers, submarines, and other arms. President Coolidge is right in “standing pat” on the vast sum of $550,000,000 as enough for war preparation for the year 1926.

On the other hand, drastic reduction of armaments, except by international agreement, is psychologically impracticable for us in the present state of things. Hence another conference for the reduction and limitation of land, sea, and air forces is necessary. To be fruitful, it must include all nations. France cannot disarm unless Russia does. Although it might seem that Washington would in some respects offer the best atmosphere for such a conference, it must be remembered that France has not yet ratified some of the important treaties adopted here three years ago (1921). Delegates achieve nothing permanent if they go beyond public sentiment at home. Consequently, as the League of Nations is considering such a conference, I believe it might be well for it to meet in Geneva. There would, perhaps, be greater probability that its decisions would be accepted by the powers represented.

NO SALVATION IN MACHINERY

Machinery will not save the world. It is dead by itself. When legislation gets too far ahead of public opinion, we have trouble in enforcing our laws. Similarly the weakness of the League of Nations has been mainly the weakness of the public opinion behind the League. It will be remembered that the League was set up at a time when to a considerable degree the world was skeptical of its practicability.

Press opinion in France scoffed at “Wilson’s ideology.” Lloyd George exacted payment for his support. Our Senate rejected the League through the efforts of a determined minority of doubters. Puny and unwelcome, it lived by the faith of a few men until Italy last year, by defying it, proved to the small nations its vital worth.

Now the terrors of the future have made the League the cornerstone of the foreign policy of several states including France. It is flouted still by the nationalists of every country when it stands in their way; but even they do not dare try to destroy it. Without it no one sees any hope ahead――nothing but universal warfare and wholesale extermination until the end.

GROWING PUBLIC OPINION BEHIND LEAGUE

The change, be it noted, has been in public opinion. The small nations saw in the attack on Greece the fact that their existence rests with the League. French liberals perceived that they could reduce the burden of armaments and achieve security only through the League. Statesmen, leaders of thought everywhere, discovered that they were leaning upon it more and more heavily as they looked ahead into the dark.

Winston Churchill, sincere imperialist though he be, writes: “It is through the League of Nations alone that the path to safety and salvation can be found. To sustain and aid the League of Nations is the duty of all.” His government failed to live up to his wise admonition in the recent crisis in Egypt, but it is something that he should have recognized the obligation in principle. The League will progressively destroy imperialism, one may hope.

BUILDING WORLD OPINION

We have only to read our morning paper thoughtfully to become aware that the sound world opinion required to make the new machinery of justice effective will not come of itself. It must be built by the conscious and purposeful cooperation of governments and of all good citizens.

ENGLAND AND EGYPT

England’s conservative government has just thrown away a precious opportunity of this kind in refusing to submit to the League her quarrel with Egypt and resorting to the coercive policy of the old diplomacy, seizing the opportunity of a murder to advance the interests of the empire.

The thirst for liberty that is stirring North Africa, the Near East, and India cannot be quenched by repression. “Only a few agitators are to blame for this unrest,” say the old-school imperialists. That is what they said with some justice of the American Colonies once. England would have been wiser to strengthen the League now against the difficult days that everyone can see ahead of the British Empire.

It is by such voluntary submission of important matters to the Court and League by governments strong enough to evade doing so that in the last instance our world opinion must be built.

A TASK FOR ALL GOOD CITIZENS

Despite two glaring instances of Congressional insularity that are at present in our minds――passage of the Japanese Exclusion Act and two years’ delay in taking up the World Court――in the long run and haltingly a democratic government obeys the people’s will. If we want international law and order in place of war and chaos, we must say so and keep saying so.

How is public opinion created? How was Mr. Coolidge elected president? Talk, talk, talk and talk, talk, talk. Not, as it happens in this instance, by Mr. Coolidge but by those who wanted him for president. It was talk in the press and talk from the soapbox and talk in the circles in which one moved, talk with convincing earnestness, talk with arguments that reached down to the motives on which men really act.

Similarly in furthering the only policy that can save our country and our civilization from being ruined by another war, we must talk, talk, talk and talk, talk, talk――in the press, from the pulpit, in the schoolroom, in books, from the billboards, in public meetings, and through the programs of club and lodge and grange. We must work as men in haste, remembering that we are sure only of this “period of exhaustion,” in which to build machinery and world opinion, both strong enough to bear incredible strain. It will be only as by the skin of our teeth that the world will get by some of the danger corners that we all can see must be passed.

Why America particularly? Because what is whispered in America today echoes and re-echoes around the world.

MUST BEGIN IN THE SCHOOLS

All movements that succeed start in the schools. It is in the schools of the world that the peace movement will succeed or fail. If the old style militant nationalism continues to be taught there――the arrogance, the hate of past days――there is no hope.

Hate is being taught now in the schools of every land and sometimes it is called patriotism. For myself, I learned to love France and to hate England as a schoolboy, through the lessons of the Revolutionary War. These lessons could have been taught without breeding hate, I think; but they weren’t.

South and North have not yet agreed on a history of the United States. Both are handing down from generation to generation the animosities of the Civil War by using different textbooks with utterly different viewpoints. They call this loyalty. It is loyalty to the past but not to the future. The future demands that the glorification of war with its hatreds shall cease.