America's International Ideals

by Jay William Hudson

 

THE MASSACHUSETTS PEACE SOCIETY

 

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AMERICA'S
INTERNATIONAL IDEALS

 

BY

JAY WILLIAM HUDSON

Professor of Philosophy, University of Missouri
Director Education Department, Massachusetts Peace Society

 

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THE MASSACHUSETTS PEACE SOCIETY
31 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass.

 

THE MASSACHUSETTS PEACE SOCIETY

 

The Massachusetts Peace Society

 

AMERICA'S
INTERNATIONAL IDEALS

 

BY

JAY WILLIAM HUDSON

Professor of Philosophy, University of Missouri
Director Education Department, Massachusetts Peace Society

 

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THE MASSACHUSETTS PEACE SOCIETY
31 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass.

Poole Printing Company
251 Causeway Street
Boston, Mass.

AMERICA'S INTERNATIONAL IDEALS

I

"IMAGINE Napoleon in the full tide of any of his successful campaigns stopping to explain to some neutral Power why he had destroyed some architectural treasures in the wrath of war!" exclaims a newspaper writer in a recent article. And yet, as this writer proceeds to state, European nations now at war have taken the trouble to make persistent appeals to the American people for their good will and justification. From the very first, not only the rulers, but the enlightened scholars of the various countries, have done their utmost to persuade the public opinion of the United States of the righteousness of their cause, the nobility of their ideals. This literature of justification, consisting not merely of tracts and magazine articles, but of hundreds of books, has grown so astoundingly voluminous that it is doubtful that any single person could read it through in his lifetime. Indeed, this war among the authors of the various nations who are trying to justify their respective countries is being waged on almost as great a scale as the war waged by means of guns and ships and aeroplanes. This war of ideas has been waged so earnestly and to such length that one American newspaper wittily asks, "Why not stop the war and let the German and English authors fight it out?"

However, this appeal of the warring nations of Europe to the American people is a phenomenon of incalculable significance both to America and to the world. First of all, it means that the great American public which is reading this literature is receiving a practical education which enables it more than ever to think in terms of world problems and international outlooks. Never be fore has the average man of any country so had his vision widened by a compelled attention to the questions of international welfare and ideals. Every phase of the fundamental principles involved in the relations of nations and races has been emphasized and brought to his notice and has become part of his daily thought and conversation. This daily reaction in intellectual terms upon a great international situation is perhaps the most pervasive and important educational force that has ever molded the popular mind of any country. It will contribute mightily to the formation of the character not only of the American of this generation, but of the American of the future.

Second, this appeal to the American public is significant as showing that civilization has at last reached that stage where certain codes of righteousness inherent in the popular convictions are to be reckoned with. Whether any nation in Europe is really justified is not the point: the great and illuminating fact is that they seek justification. In other words, the world has come to a stage of progress where it is so well recognized that might alone does not make right, that might must perforce approve itself on grounds of morality before the conscience of the world. This is a phenomenon new in the history of war; and, to those who see deeply, it means the beginning of the end of the attempt to solve great problems by the use of mere force. For Europe so much as confesses that mere force and the victory that comes therefrom is not sufficient; force in itself can no longer be justified by the mere glory of its prowess. No, the battle is lifted at last to the higher plane where reason is the only justification for the right, the very reason which, in the logic of its growing supremacy, shall finally supplant force entirely as the court of great issues between peoples.

Third, this appeal to American public opinion is especially significant because it recognizes that America has a unique part in world welfare and world progress. America the conscience of the world! Now, a conscience when appealed to, must answer. It is not passive; it has unequivocal obligations to utter truth and to guide to righteous action. This is America's supreme responsibility at the present time: to answer the innumerable appeals to her sense of fair play and her ideals with an unambiguous message to Europe's warring Powers. Even if America had not been appealed to at all by these Powers, she ought, as the greatest of neutral nations, to realize her grave responsibility and supreme opportunity to do all that she can to aid the world to bring order out of chaos and to see to it that this order shall be a new order, in terms of which the war system shall be seen to be irrational and impossible.

To some minds it seems perilous for the American people to assume any definite responsibilities in the present conflict, since anything that the American people might say or do would seem likely to involve a breach of the neutrality which we have been trying to observe. But this is wholly to misunderstand what neutrality means. America is indeed anxious that her possibilities of service to the warring nations shall not be imperilled by her taking sides in favor of a nation, or group of nations, either through her government or through her public opinion. But such neutrality with regard to countries does not at all involve a passive neutrality with regard to great principles of social welfare, which are being imperilled not by any one nation in particular, but by the very existence of the European conflict, especially as viewed in terms of its historic causes and possible results.

For ages the race has been struggling toward what we somewhat vaguely call civilization. This struggle has meant the gradual realization of certain fundamental desires and needs of the human spirit, the attainment of which was always thought of as involving a social order in which the individual would be given larger and larger opportunities for the achievement of those ideals which alone give value to his life. For the realization of this social order, not only the great leaders of men, but the masses have thought and toiled and sacrificed and died ever since man began to lift himself above the blind instincts of the brute. Nor has this ideal social order been merely an undefined dream. Gradually, as mankind has grown more self-conscious, it has gained definiteness, until it has been seen to involve the supremacy of certain principles without which any permanent civilization is impossible. The race learns by long and arduous experience: and the emerging of these principles themselves into the mere thoughts of what might some day be is a long and fascinating story, for which we have no time here. The great truth to be made apparent is this: these indispensable principles of human welfare have nowhere been more speedily or more fully realized than in the social and political institutions of the American people.

Now, if this is so, America has a unique responsibility as the custodian and defender of these principles. If any social movement or international complication happens to involve the denial or betrayal of these principles for which America has fought and for which her civilization stands, the American people surely cannot be neutral with regard to such a social movement or international complication. Well, at this present moment these principles of human welfare are being denied, betrayed, prejudiced and imperilled by the European conflict together with its significant and far-reaching influences. Thus America has a decisive message to Europe, not only in behalf of her own ideals, but for the sake of the welfare and progress of human beings everywhere. In standing for these principles America will be exemplifying a new patriotism: a patriotism not merely to a plot of ground which we call our native land, but a patriotism to those truths upon the triumph of which depend the conservation of universal progress and the security of the future of the world.

What are these principles for which the race has struggled? In what way can American life be said to stand for them? How has Europe denied them? And what is America's message to Europe in view of this denial?

 

II

One thing for which the race has insistently struggled is the supremacy of reason in human affairs. If man is not yet "the rational animal" he has, at any rate, striven to become more and more rational. Indeed, one could almost define the progress of civilization as a struggle toward reasonableness. Thus the great philosophers have been busy from time immemorial in trying to express in terms of reason what man is and what is his relation to his universe. The great scientists have bent all their energies to a discovery of the laws of reason that govern all phenomena and have attempted to reduce man's world to logical order. The great moralists have always appealed to reason as the final guide of human conduct, and have taught us to see the illuminating truth that to be right is to be reasonable, and that to be thoroughly reasonable is to be thoroughly right. Thus civilization, turning its thought more and more upon itself, has more and more endeavored to justify itself by its rationality. Thus it is that every institution has had to defend itself finally by convincing the world of the logic of its claims to recognition. Thus it is that the goal of education has been to teach the average man to reason for himself that he might indeed "prove all things" and "hold fast that which is good."

If there is any country which more than any other has recognized and approximated this desire for the reign of reason in human affairs, it is the United States. Indeed, this is the fundamental significance of American democracy. Why free speech? For the purpose of giving every man a free chance of expressing his reasoned convictions on all great issues of social welfare, and for the purpose of giving him the opportunity of freely hearing the freely uttered reasons of his fellows. Free speech makes possible social reason: that is its only excuse. And why the ideal of the universal ballot? So that reasoned convictions may be made final, operative and efficient in deciding the great social and political problems, the solution of which means human progress. This democracy is above all a school of reason; a school more effective than any ordinary school, since its members must perforce suffer through their own errors and thus all the more speedily learn to think intelligently and cautiously upon those issues upon which their happiness depends. The public school system of America is the greatest system of education ever devised. It came into being in order that a self-governing people should achieve the intelligence to think and act through reasoned convictions rather than prejudice and impulse. Far as America is from realizing the perfect ideal of Utopian dreamers, she comes nearer than any country of history to exemplifying what might be called an "age of reason."

America has not only insisted upon the reign of reason in national affairs, but in the great problems of international relations as well. For over one hundred years there has been a growing movement among American thinkers of international repute in favor of arbitration and adjudication as the true methods of solving the difficulties that arise between nations. Ever since 1815, when the first peace society of the world was organized in America, the sentiment in favor of the rational settlement of international disputes has gained more and more adherents among the masses of the people. To-day the American organizations that look toward the substitution of law for war are among the most influential and efficient in the world. America's leadership for the reign of reason in international affairs has been evinced nowhere more conspicuously than at the Hague Conferences. America's representatives to these Conferences were men who had attained a high place in the regard of the American people. To the First Conference were sent men of such signal eminence as Andrew Dickson White and Frederick W. Holls. To the Second Conference were sent Joseph H. Choate and Gen. Horace Porter. At both of these Conferences the American representatives made important contributions to the discussions. After the Hague Conference established the Permanent Court of Arbitration, the first case which this court had to decide was one brought before it by the United States and Mexico. Thus in the public mind, in public speech, and in conspicuous deed America has more and more been the champion of international democracy,—as over against the reign of autocratic force as the arbiter of international questions.

It is this principle of reason in civilization which the European conflict now ruthlessly repudiates. First, if the issue, whatever it is, over which the European war is being fought, is a rational issue, a civilization of reason would settle that rational issue by the only means that can settle issues of reason: namely, reason itself. But it is notorious that no serious and concerted attempt was made by the European nations to settle their difficulties by an appeal to arbitration. Indeed, the conflict was precipitated too quickly for public opinion to reason about the issues at all, or even to know precisely what the issues were. Instead of appealing to reason, which alone can settle rational problems, there was an immediate appeal to force, which in itself never solved a single rational problem. But it may be objected that the issues concerning which the European nations are fighting do not represent the sorts of problems which could be decided by an appeal to reason. If this is the case, then the problems themselves are not rational problems and European civilization sins in going to war on account of irrational or non-rational impulses and prejudices rather than on account of intelligible and intelligent ideals. If it be replied that not all European civilization is to be thus accused, but only the selfish aggression of a single country or group of countries, which thus have only a secondary respect for a rational world order, one must, of course, modify his judgment of European culture as a whole in terms of this fact. However, the large truth which we contemplate is this: European nations are engaged in a desperate struggle of the primitive sort that endeavors to show not, through reason, which is right, but, through force, which is strongest. The dilemma is clear; either the issues of Europe should have been submitted to reason: or, if they were issues that were irrational to begin with, so that reason could not solve them, they should never have been allowed to prevail to the extent of causing the international anarchy which is Europe's situation at the present time. Thus, in either case, the European struggle represents a denial of the reign of reason in civilization,—the fundamental truth for which the American democracy has stood both nationally and internationally.

Furthermore, the European conflict violates the principle of reason in civilization through the fact that it indefinitely injures and retards that international co-operation in intellectual endeavors which has been one of the most signal expressions of the civilization of the last fifty years. Science, yea, culture of all sorts had become an achievement of the co-operation of all races and of all nations. One of the visible expressions of this cultural co-operation was to be found in the existence of the numerous international congresses and international journals, through which the leading thinkers of all peoples interchanged their thought and gained untold inspiration. For the time this is a thing of the past; and it will be years before this cordial international co-operation is re-established. The destruction of the complex system of economic interchange is disastrous enough: but the destruction of the spiritual sympathy and the common cultural ideals of mankind is infinitely worse; for, after all, the former is the expression of the latter.

In view of this assault upon the supremacy of reason in civilization America's message to Europe is direct and unequivocal. In terms of our own democracy and its appeal to reason, Americans should convince themselves and the rest of the world that there is such a thing as a logic in history: that no question is settled until it is settled rationally and in accordance with righteousness and justice: that might without right is futile, since if a question is settled by might alone, it will arise to confront civilization in some form even more crucial than before, to demand settlement by intelligence and not by force. Thus indirectly the American people are constrained to feel that part of the solution of Europe s age-long difficulties is the gradual institution among the people of those efficient auxiliaries of reason, free speech and universal suffrage,—in short, democracy. For the more democracy comes to itself, the more is it opposed to the war system: since the war system is itself opposed to democracy's reason and moreover is utterly against the fundamental interests of the common man. Democracy is essentially antithetical to war, and war is essentially incompatible with the genius of democracy.

In the first place, war and despotism go hand in hand. The spirit and principles of war are thoroughly despotic. Even a democracy is transformed into a qualified despotism in times of war. "With war," says John Quincy Adams, "comes a full power over the whole subject, even of slavery. It is a war-power; and when your country is actually in war, Congress has power to carry it on, and must carry it on according to the laws of war; and by those laws a country has all its laws and institutions swept by the board and martial law takes the place of them. Peace is essential to our prosperous or permanent freedom. Almost every republic in the world has fallen a victim to war; and if our liberties are ever lost, they will, in like manner be cloven down by the sword. The soldiers even of Washington, urged him in a moment of passion, to assume the sceptre; had he been almost any other man, he would have seized the occasion to raise for himself a throne upon the ruins of our nascent freedom; and though that incomparable man spurned the offer, yet, must war, become either habitual or frequent, bring on, sooner or later, such exigencies as will leave us at the mercy of some future Caesar or Napoleon." This may seem a little too radical an opinion, and yet so calm a judicial mind as that of Judge Jay uttered itself of the sentiment that "war has always been adverse to political freedom." Madison is very full and emphatic concerning the despotic tendencies of war. "Of all the enemies of public liberty," he says, "war is perhaps the most to be dreaded."

In a speech in the Reichstag on February 9, 1876, Bismarck made this significant statement: "The mass of the people has usually no inclination for war. The torch of war is lit by minorities, or, in absolute governments, by rulers or cabinets." If this is true—and it undoubtedly is—the people should be given more and more of a share in the power to decide rationally what war decides by force,—especially as it is also true, to quote Bismarck again, that "even a successful war" is "in itself an evil and from which peoples must be saved by the science of statesmanship." With the rise of democracy will come the decline of secret diplomacy, which has been one of the most insidious of the proximate causes beneath the present European conflict. For secret diplomacy, while almost indispensable to the war system, is inimical to the full spirit of democratic institutions. The International Peace Bureau at Berne rightly introduced the following as the fifth plank of its recent program for international order:

"Diplomacy in all countries is to be placed under the control of parliament and public opinion. Contentions which are not made public and to which the people's representatives in all the countries concerned do not agree are de facto null and void."

But America's message to Europe in behalf of the reign of reason is not expressed merely in terms of words and theories. Our country itself exemplifies to the world in its Union of States the way in which law may be made to replace war. The states of our Union do not settle their disputes by an appeal to arms, nor are their boundaries bristling with fortifications. The appeal to a federated reason has become so much of a common place in this country that the average citizen hardly appreciates what a significant triumph the American Union is and what a living example such a Union is of what may yet be achieved, however gradually, in the development of world politics. Let no individual nation lose its national integrity, any more than our individual states lose their integrity, though combining for purposes of common welfare. But let the world learn, as we have learned, that variety and unity can go together,—must go together if the highest things of human welfare are to be achieved. Let the United States of America be followed by the United Nations of the World!

 

III

The second great principle for which American civilization has stood is the value of the individual. The securing of this recognition of the individual has been the result of a long and painful struggle. There was a time when the individual counted for naught; when the social unit was everything and the individual nothing. There was little initiative accorded the individual, even in the regulation of what might be called his own private affairs; social tradition dictated most of the things that he had to do and how he was to do them. In religion this insignificance of the individual was expressed in the denial of personal immortality and in making it the sum of religious duty to lose all personal desires, and indeed all personal identity, in God as the Absolute in whom all things are merged. The person was but a passing wave in the infinite sea,—an illusion, in short. In the state, this idea of the worthlessness of the individual was expressed in the doctrine that the individual exists to be used by the state for its own purposes: it was a controversion of political philosophy to suppose that the state existed for the individual.

Out of the suppression involved in such social solidarity the individual has gradually emerged and claimed his freedom and his rights. To-day in America the individual has come to his own to an extent never before found in human history. No longer does the individual exist for society or for the state: all social institutions, including government, are conceived of as justified only because they minister to the welfare of the individuals for whom all social organization exists. American civilization has insisted more and more that the individual is priceless: that he is an end in himself, and not a mere thing to be used as a thing. Thus the great watch-cries of American progress have been Freedom and Equality; the freedom of the individual to realize the best that is in him in terms of an inexpugnable personal identity; and the equality of opportunity which carries the doctrine of the pricelessness of persons to its practical conclusion in giving every soul an equal chance in government, in legal recourse, and in the advantages of social institutions.

But this doctrine of the value of the individual, the practical realization of which has been one of America's greatest contributions to modern civilization, is another principle that is being denied and imperilled by the very existence of the European conflict. For the war system which Europe is exemplifying at the present time utterly ignores the individual as such and makes the nation or race the unit of civilization. In the first place, the war came into being not only without the initiative of the average man, but probably counter to his fundamental wishes. The vast armies of individuals who are now engaged in killing each other and in destroying what the average man has built were not consulted with regard to the issues concerning which they are now fighting; they find themselves absolutely ignored as individuals and recognized only as soldiers,—as so much material to be used up by the state as it may seem fit. Furthermore, at this stage of human progress the war system itself involves more of a denial of the rights and welfare of the average individual than ever it did before. For, while the European conflict is waged in terms of supposingjay hudson new internationalism? that nations and races are the real units of civilization, the fact is, as Norman Angell has so well pointed out, that all the things fundamentally worth while to the life of the average person have become international and interracial property and can exist only in terms of international and interracial co-operation. In the very methods of modern warfare the individual is denied as never before: for these methods involve the use of a sort of machinery of slaughter that almost ignores individual bravery and prowess, and thus gives less chance for the breeding of individual heroism than has been true in the wars of the past. Thus, no matter from what angle one looks at the European conflict, whether it be from the standpoint of politics, economics, ethics, or the very conduct of the war itself, the rights of the individual for which America stands are ignored or repudiated.

Thus again, America has an unequivocal message to Europe, and calls upon Europe's nations to realize that there is no excuse for any function of government save as it gives the greatest number of individuals the chance to achieve self-realization to the utmost: to realize that the true difference between men is not the difference created by the accident of nativity, citizenship or race, but is to be found in their variations in development toward that common human ideal of culture and of welfare which fundamentally unites all men. America calls upon Europe to substitute for autocracy, equality; for oppression, freedom; and for the doctrine that the individual is a thing to be used, the great truth that the human soul, with its body—every human soul, with its bodyis sacred and priceless and shall not be violated by the capricious or permanent will of any society or of any government.

 

IV

But while America has stood for the priceless value of the individual, she has also insisted that individuals are social by nature, and that they have not only individual rights, but social responsibilities. Now, this social nature of the individual seems to be one of the most difficult conceptions for even enlightened people to attain. It is easy to think of the goal of civilization, the unit of progress, as being either society or the individual; but it is not so easy to see that the true unit of progress is neither society nor the individual abstracted from each other, but both taken together. The danger of modern individualism, even as exemplified in America, is to suppose that, since the individual is everything, society is nothing, and that social obligations are secondary to individual self-assertion. The fact, is, however, that no individual is anything at all by himself, conceived apart from his fellows. Thus, while America has been insisting upon the rights of the individual, it must never be forgotten that this individual is a social individual, whose every right is balanced by a corresponding obligation to others. In other words, individuals are socially interdependent in all the interests which go to make up human welfare. For all that he values, the modern man must rely upon the social institutions of which he is a part. His education, his pleasures, his economic prosperity, his religion, his culture, all are social in their nature,—unattainable save in terms of co-operation with his fellow man. This outward social co-operation, as expressed in social institutions, is merely the external expression of the deep and eternal truth that man is social by nature and does not end with that narrower self which we popularly think of as his person. The modern man can well put to himself this question: Where do I end? And when he asks this question intelligently, he must answer it by acknowledging that he involves, yea, includes, in his very complex life and in his far-reaching actual and potential interests, all that has been, is, or shall be. It is in this sense that every person is an infinite person. In one sense society includes him, but in another sense just as real he includes all society.

Nothing has better taught us this absolute interdependence of all things human than modern science, which teaches us that there is no event that is not vitally related to every other event in the universe of time and space. The history of evolution is wrongly read if it is supposed that it is a history of individual struggling with individual for the survival of mere individuals. No, the evolution of human beings, at any rate, is the story of the increased co-operation of individuals in their common struggle for a common life, a common welfare, and a common ideal. The higher one goes in the scale of evolution, the more one finds that the struggle for existence is the co-operative struggle of all human society for the sake of the realization of the human aspirations of the individuals that compose it, who in turn grow more and more altruistic, even for the sake of their own welfare, which they growingly conceive to include the welfare of all men.

This age-long struggle for the socializing of the individual, while yet maintaining the reasonable liberty of the individual, has come nearer attainment in America than anywhere else. While insisting upon the value of the individual and his freedom, Americans have always emphasized the fact that the liberty of democracy by no means signifies license. No, the freedom of democracy is a social freedom, not a freedom to seek one's own regardless of others. The freedom of American democracy means the freedom of every man to seek the social goal, his larger self, in accordance with his own reason, indeed: but voluntarily and freely subject to the reason of all. This is what American law means. Perhaps no other people appeal to law more for the regulation of the social order than do Americans. Their liberty is seemingly curbed on every side by the laws which they have put upon the statute books. How, then, with all this restraint of law, can the American individual be said to be free? He is free, not because he is not subject to law, but because this law is not legislated upon him from without, but is created through his own reason and his own conviction and is thus his own product, which he freely recognizes as a just restraint for the sake of a social order which he freely wants and for which he is freely responsible.

But again, the European conflict arises out of a conception of society which utterly ignores the social responsibilities of individuals and groups. The citizens of certain European nations may not, indeed, be so short-sighted as to suppose that their selves end with their individual persons; but there is an overwhelming tendency for them to conceive of their fundamental interests, and thus their fundamental responsibilities, as ending with the boundaries of their particular nations. But this is to deny the entire trend of the development of modern civilization, as well as to deny the social nature and responsibilities of national groups with reference to each other. Just as an individual can never circumscribe his social nature and duties within any arbitrarily chosen group of persons: so no nation can say justly or logically that its fundamental being and responsibilities end with itself. It sins against the social nature of man the moment it adopts courses of action for mere selfish aggrandizement, as over against the welfare of mankind in the large. And yet the European war is the product of precisely this point of view: that a nation can legitimately consider itself as ending with its own national boundary, and that it may be pardoned in doing almost anything it pleases for the sake of a narrow self-interest if it can justify itself by force.

Thus again, America has a most significant message to Europe in a truth which America herself is beginning to exemplify more and more in her international relations. This message is that the ideals of nations must rise above the standpoint of mere selfish interest and must cheer fully and insistently reckon with the fundamental and permanent welfare of other nations. It is not to be pretended for one moment that America herself has fully realized this new international vision in all her acts; but her relations with other nations in recent years have more and more exemplified this new and larger statesmanship. Indeed, truly seen, America's policy of neutrality during the European war has not been merely a policy of self-interest, although it is partly this, perhaps largely this. But there is another reason why America should remain neutral,—a reason which has arisen in the consciousness of a number of the best leaders of American thought. This other reason is that by keeping out of the European conflict America may not only best serve herself, but the nations now at war and the world at large. She is anxious, as the greatest of neutral Powers, to be in a position where she can not only aid Europe in arresting the present conflict sooner than might otherwise be the case: but where she can aid Europe to a swift recovery after the war is over, in the meantime preserving for her the arts, the sciences, the culture, which for the time are retarded and imperilled by the European struggle.

May the time soon come when not only the true American citizen, but the enlightened European nations, shall realize that there is only one liberty of nations and races as well as of individuals: the liberty which is thoroughly social,—the liberty of each nation to seek the international goal, in accordance with the reason of each nation, indeed, but voluntarily subject to the revision of all.

 

V

Another thing for which America has stood, although she has scarcely premeditated it, is a cosmopolitan culture: a culture which shall not be narrow and provincial, but which shall be the product of the commingling of the best cultures of all nations and races. While it may be that civilization has not been thoroughly conscious of its trend, still the tendency has been progressively towards an increased interchange of the ideas and ideals of all peoples. Here in America this free interchange of the culture of all races has been best exemplified: so that American civilization is to-day not so much a civilization co-ordinate with the restricted civilizations of other countries, as a synthesis of all the various cultures of the earth. From all peoples America has received her intellectual contributions: we have welcomed equally the best ideas of Slav, Teuton, Latin and Anglo-Saxon. A concomitant of this intellectual hospitality has been the doctrine of the equality of practically all races under the American institutions of society and government. This American civilization represents the world in miniature, and we have gained so much by this free interchange of cultures that we have come to lay less and less stress upon differences of race and to recognize that every race has its valuable and permanent contribution to that which makes modern civilization worth while.

But, once more, the European war is based upon premises which are utterly antagonistic to the American point of view. For from across the seas we hear the continual insistence that one culture is so ineffably better than another that it deserves to prevail, even to the destruction of every other culture in the world. That one culture should try to obtain predominance over the rest, not through its intellectual and moral superiority, but through expertness in killing and destroying, is paradoxical enough; but it is still more paradoxical that any culture worthy the name should deny co-operation and help, even for the sake of its own development, to the other cultures, which are themselves also the result of long ages of striving toward ideals valuable and indispensable to the race.

America cannot look upon this provincial conception of culture passively. Indeed, many Americans are not at all sure that any solution of European difficulties is to be found in a final segregation of races in terms of separate national integrities: for this might mean only an intensification of both racial and national antipathies, the existence of which has been one of the main causes of the European conflict, and the perpetuation of which may be the cause of further strife. But whatever the American people may say with regard to racial pride and that racial civilization which is its motive and ideal, the sum of our message to Europe in this regard is to be found, not in mere words, but in example. For in the New World there has never been experienced any insurmountable difficulty through the policy of a free interchange and blending of racial ideals; and the result in our component American life is a sufficient proof of the wisdom of supposing that civilization is not made poorer but richer through the free commingling of the contributions of all races and nations. To deny the practical triumph of this policy is to deny American civilization in its totality. America can hardly stand by and see this—one of her most cherished ideals of what a sane civilization means—trampled under foot by an anachronistic race prejudice and a self-defeating racial selfishness.

 

VI

What are the immediate things that America can do to bring about a new world order in which the outgrown war system shall find no place?

First of all, even at this time we are doing one momentous thing. For, in the very midst of the European war, America has been negotiating with over thirty nations a form of treaty which will be most significant as a means of minimizing, if not of obliterating, the chief causes of war. I refer to those treaties which provide that all disputes of every nature whatsoever, to the settlement of which previous arbitration treaties do not apply in their terms, or are not applied in fact, shall, when diplomatic methods of adjustment have failed, be referred for investigation and report to a permanent international commission. The nations bound by these treaties agree not to declare war or begin hostilities during such investigation and before a report is submitted. The treaties specify that the report of the commission shall be completed within one year after it shall declare its investigation to have begun. Although all the contracting parties reserve the right to act independently after the report is submitted, it is believed that a year's time will have the effect of "sober second thought" on all nations and will prevent an outbreak of the precipitate sort which plunged Europe into war.

The inauguration of these treaties is one of the most important measures ever undertaken to safeguard the common interests of nations against the blind arbitrament involved in the war system. Secretary of State Bryan has pointed out clearly three advantages that will accrue from the adoption of these peace commission treaties. First, "it secures an investigation of the facts; and if you can but separate the facts from the question of honor, the chances are a hundred to one that you can settle both the fact and the question of honor without war." Second, such an investigation "gives time for calm consideration . . . . A man excited is a very different animal from a man calm, and questions ought to be settled not by passion, but by deliberation. … If we can but stay the hand of war until conscience can assert itself, war will be made more remote." The third advantage of such investigation is that "it gives opportunity to mobilize public opinion for the compelling of a peaceful settlement. … If time is given for marshaling the force of public opinion, peace will be promoted."

Another thing that the United States may do in response to an ever-growing public opinion is to call a conference of the neutral nations of the world, not only for the purpose of protecting neutral rights and interests during the European conflict, but to look forward to a basis of permanent world peace and to give the world an example of how the conception of international co-operation may be made practical. Whether the United States shall undertake to call such a conference depends entirely upon the progress of events which no man can foresee. It is quite evident, however, that in the hands of the United States, as the greatest of neutral Powers rests a signal obligation to the other neutral nations for the maintenance of international law and the guaranteeing that civilization shall be protected, so far as possible, from the effects of the anarchic situation now prevailing in the Old World.

Through all that America shall do beckons the ideal of international democracy: a democracy where the rights of every nation shall have a voice, and yet where the rights of no one nation shall be achieved through the ignoring of the rights of others: a democracy of nations in which the small nations shall be guaranteed their integrity with the same surety as the larger nations guard their own integrity as sacred and inviolable. We cannot afford to see the smaller nations perish merely because they cannot marshal instruments of destruction so rapidly, extensively, and efficiently as the world's larger states. If history has taught us anything with regard to the sources of civilization, it is, as Vice-Chancellor H. A. L. Fisher says, that "almost everything which is most precious in our civilization has come from small states, the Old Testament, the Homeric poems, the Attic and the Elizabethan drama, the art of the Italian Renaissance, the common law of England." With the ideal of this sort of an international democracy in mind, the American people must realize that its achievement is to be attained largely through the persistent and self-sacrificing leadership of the world s greatest democracy,—the democracy which we ourselves have built and only through whose principles of reason, equality, and freedom, international democracy can be attained.

Having in mind some such mission for America in a coming world-reconstruction, Norman Angell recently urged the following:

"That America shall use her influence to secure the abandonment by the powers of Christendom of rival group alliances and the creation instead of an alliance of all the civilized powers having as its aim some common action—not necessarily military—which will constitute a collective guarantee of each against aggression."

This is only one expression out of many that might be chosen from the great thinkers of various countries indicating that the world is looking more and more to our own country for leadership in the solving of the international problems which confront our civilization.

 

VII

The only thing that could defeat America's leadership for the achievement of a new world order is a conversion of the American people to the belief that the great lesson of the European war is for America seriously to enter into the Old World competition in armaments: a competition which has been the menace of Europe for the last fifty years and which culminated in the present conflict. That the American people will actually be converted to such a reactionary and futile program is unbelievable. And yet, a persistent agitation is being waged for such a program, motived by fear of whatever nations may be the European victors; by feelings of so-called patriotism, however mistaken; by the life-long ideals, thoroughly honest, of those in military and naval circles; and by the vast interests of those who manufacture munitions of war and who are engaged in the same competition for business and the protection of their capital as is any business man. This agitation is pressed largely in the name of our supposed "unpreparedness" against attack. We are told that our coasts are defenseless, our army small and inefficient, and our navy woefully inadequate. It is urged that to strengthen our military preparedness need not mean the cultivation of a militaristic spirit. Any policy of aggression or conquest is disclaimed. The sole motive of increasing our army and navy, it is said, is the common-sense one of putting our country in a position where it may be thoroughly capable of defending itself against its foes.

Let us not question for one moment the sincerity and the patriotism of those who wish America to increase her military efficiency. Certainly, it is a trying time in the history of the world: a time in which it is exceedingly difficult to read aright the progress of events. Furthermore, there is not a single American citizen who does not want his country adequately defended against probable attack. But, before we embark upon any military program of great magnitude, it might be well for us thoroughly to realize a few significant truths.

First of all, in order to plan a naval program which shall be definite and practical, we must ask in all seriousness who is likely to attack us. It is quite evident that the amount of our preparation is entirely dependent upon this, since it is quite clear that we intend no aggression ourselves. Who, then, is likely to attack the United States?

Military experts do not seem to have any unanimous opinion on this subject. In the very nature of the case, they cannot be unanimous: for no one can foretell future events, much less the events that depend upon the present uncertain character of international relations. Indeed, it is this very point that is most urged by those who are advocating military preparedness: we do not know who will strike, or when. It might be Japan, we are told; it might be Germany; indeed, it might be even Great Britain. The other day I listened lo the congressman who has been most prominent of all in the recent agitation for America's preparedness. Unequivocally, he urged that adequate preparedness means preparation against a possible attack from Great Britain. Certainly, if we are to enter the armament competition with right good will and with the purpose; of preparing ourselves against all possible contingencies, we must, with characteristic American thoroughness, be able to meet successfully the attack of any nation of the world. If the military program is to be practical at all, this is precisely what it must mean.

But, now, suppose we adopt this as our program. We are to prepare against war with Great Britain. Just what does this mean? We certainly must fortify our 3,840 miles of Canadian frontier, for no military expert can possibly doubt that Canada would be made one of the strategic bases of operations on land. We must make our army large; enough and efficient enough to withstand any invasion over this frontier. We must thoroughly fortify our extensive coast line on the Atlantic and on the Pacific. We must increase our navy to the point where it is equal to, if not better than, Great Britain's navy. There must be no guess-work about it. Great Britain's policy has been two keels to one: and even this is thought by many Englishmen to be not enough. Well, let our naval program call for two keels to one. Let us at last be thoroughly prepared.

But there is one little question that emerges right at this point. Can we ever catch up? Suppose that Great Britain's navy, for instance, remained precisely as it is for a period of years. Suppose, too, that we built battleships as fast as we could. How long would it take to create a navy as efficient as that of Great Britain, let alone a navy so much larger that there would be no question of its superiority? And with such a naval program before the world, known to be directed against Great Britain (and of course everybody would know it), what would Great Britain be doing all this time? Would she suddenly abandon her own traditional naval policy? Or, would she add to her navy as fast as she could to meet the new international situation which we had created? It is inconceivable that she would not. If she did this, then how long would it take for America to catch up? We could not catch up at all on the basis of the relatively meager program advanced by our agitators for national defense. And on any program at all we could not catch up in from fifty to one hundred years.

But suppose we could catch up in fifty years. Would Great Britain wait for us? Why should she, when now, according to the agitators for defense, we are totally unprepared against her? No, it seems reasonable to suppose that if the United States announces to the world her entrance into the armament competition and a policy of building up a greater military strength than Great Britain's, so that she will be able to defeat Great Britain in any possible war with her, the latter will surely strike during the long period of preparation and not wait until her case is hopeless. If you reply that there is no danger of any attack from Great Britain anyway, and that Great Britain is really our ally, then, of course, the whole question of any new military program of magnitude on the part of the United States falls with the fears in terms of which it was urged.

But how about Germany? Is not Germany likely to attack us, especially if she emerges as victor from the European war? Well, of course, anything is possible: but very few indeed who make a study of international relations think that there is any probability that Germany would attack us, even supposing she is victor, and these few are almost unanimous in placing the degree of probability extremely low. The fact is, there are no probabilities at all sufficient upon which to base a huge military program. They are so slight, if they exist at all, that our efforts should rather be directed to eliminating them. And the easiest way to eliminate them is surely not by aiming a naval program at Germany. The best way is to continue to cultivate a cordial friendship and understanding. There is still less reason to discard this policy now, when Germany, no matter whether she wins or not, will be in no condition to begin a war of aggression upon the best friend that she has among the nations. No, the burden of proof still lies with those who base an anachronistic military program, involving billions of dollars and a certain unsettling of international friendships, upon a speculation so wild that it transcends in its visionary character any so-called dream that any peace advocate ever had in his most somnolent moment. If it can be proved that there is a real probability that Germany will attack us, and that no diplomacy of an honorable sort could remove the probability, then let us regretfully abandon the American way and spend our billions in preparing a military program against her with whom we have co-operated so long!

And if this remote thing happens—that we are ever obliged to be "prepared" on a grand scale against the attack of any nation—let us at the same time work all we can to do away with such an abominable international situation as is based upon the futile doctrine that any great national interest is really subserved by murderous aggression or that any international problem can be permanently or rightly settled by other than rational means. This is what a sane peace movement means: relentless war upon the war system,—but, in the meantime, of course, whatever defense is truly necessary against any genuine peril to our country's integrity which the war system may create.

But amid all such suspicions which are so likely to result in militaristic hysteria, let us remember the main fact that many American thinkers, as well as many European thinkers, see that if there is any one thing which the European war has proved, it is that the sort of diplomacy which relies upon the never-ending competition in armaments is a diplomacy which leads directly toward war, not away from it. America will not be so anachronistic as to adopt the European way. Our strongest defense against Great Britain and Germany and Japan is our friendship, our mutual understanding, which results in a constructive international co-operation rather than a destructive international rivalry. In this day and age it is not a question whether nations want to co-operate or not. Economic conditions alone have become so complexly interrelated that nations will more and more be forced, in self-defense, to understand each other and work with each other for common international interests, rather than to destroy those interests through a mutual attempt at annihilation. This is the great lesson of the European war, and there is absolutely no doubt that Europe will be compelled for the sake of its very life to read that lesson in such a way that she will henceforth see the utter futility of adopting barbaric methods for the solving of civilized questions in an age which has entirely reorganized the financial and cultural relations between peoples. The facts of this financial and cultural interrelation were in existence before the war began: but it was necessary that the peoples of the world have a thorough consciousness of these facts before the facts themselves could count efficiently in the achievement of a new international situation. This consciousness is growing every day. America can help it to become a conviction by her own international policy. She is at the parting of the ways. America can follow Europe and adopt an international outlook now fast becoming obsolete even with Europe herself: or America can help to lead Europe to a new internationalism and a new world order, based upon the new and unquestioned facts of the new international life that has arisen during the last half-century, together with its new international obligations and ideals. Either America will adopt the European way, or Europe will adopt the American way. Which shall it be? More than we realize, it depends upon America s own far-sightedness.

 

VIII

In Washington is the marble palace of the Pan American Union. This building, without doubt the most beautiful in our capital city, is a significant symbol of the new internationalism as exemplified in the friendship and co-operation of the twenty-one American republics whose diplomatic representatives at Washington meet there every month rationally to discuss their common interests and common ideals. The Secretary of State of the United States is ex officio Chairman. The purpose of the conferences is to develop and conserve "peace, friendship, and commerce" among these, all the independent nations of the Western Hemisphere. Through these conferences the peoples represented are rapidly achieving a mutual understanding which they could have attained in no other way,—certainly not through mutual fear and suspicion and a diplomacy backed by competitive armaments. The activities of the Pan American Union are already so various and far-reaching that it would require an entire book to describe them. It points the only practicable way to permanent international peace: for, as its efficient Director General, John Barrett, lately remarked to me, "The greatest achievement of the Pan American Union is the gradual growth of understanding and friendship between the republics of the Western Hemisphere; and it is chiefly through such a friendship that we shall gain any genuine constructive co-operation and any permanent peace."

Only the evening before, Secretary of State Bryan had expressed the same thought to me in different language. "Not through mutual fear will peace come to the world," he said. "You remember the words of the angels' song, 'peace on earth'; the very next phrase of their song gave the true condition of peace on earth, 'good will toward men!'"

Let the Pan American Union be followed by a Pan European Union. If such a conference of the European nations had been in the habit of meeting in some European capital during the last fifty years, with the same sincere desire for peace and friendship as is being evinced by the Pan American Union, it is extremely unlikely that there would have been a European war.

Let us look forward, indeed, not only to a Pan European Union, but to a Pan World Union!

 

PAMPHLET SERIES

ON

THE NEW INTERNATIONALISM

 

BY JAY WILLIAM HUDSON

Professor of Philosophy, University of Missouri
Director Education Department, Massachusetts Peace Society

 

Published by the Massachusetts Peace Society

 

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1.	What is the New Internationalism?
2.	The Arithmetic of War
3.	Agencies for Promoting World Order
4.	A Practical International Program
5.	America's International Ideals

 

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These pamphlets have been prepared especially for those who wish a comprehensive statement in simple language of what the International Peace Movement of to-day means. They are particularly adapted for Reading Circles.

 

Single copies, five cents. Price in quantities on application

 

THE MASSACHUSETTS PEACE SOCIETY
31 Beacon Street, Boston