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The Unity of Civilization by Various

V >> Various >> The Unity of Civilization




We are fully aware of the immense social danger in the desire for
riches; but that is no objection to the desire for bread and clothing
and the bare necessities of human life. And the seemingly materialistic
enthusiasm which will gradually transform our semi-bestial civilization
is no less poetic or religious than any Eastern aloofness or Tolstoian
simplicity. Poetry is not all rhyming couplets: religion is not all for
the intellectually or artistically incompetent. So, a world in which
twenty per cent. of humanity did not slowly starve to death would not
necessarily be less worthy of admiration. Nor would religion disappear
if every one were healthy, unless religion means the result of
neurasthenia or dyspepsia or premature ageing. No doubt there is some
exaggeration in this element of the common social ideals. Not even a
poor man lives on bread alone; and it is indeed possible to have a
perfectly well-fed society which would be quite barbarous. But we must
regard the fine flower of culture as purchased at too high a price if,
for the sake of a few connoisseurs and courtiers not to say bourgeois
plutocrats, the majority in every nation must lack a bare human life.
Some declare that the division between nations is more important than
that between the rich and the poor. It may be so; but the only reason
must be that what the few have, the many, however dimly, may hope to
share or may be induced to think they do share. Humanity is infinitely
gullible. But in every nation there is rising a murmur which may yet
become an articulate cry.

The writers of modern Utopias in their detailed conception of what is
desirable may speak only for themselves; but it is a sign of the common
enthusiasm that they all attach so much importance to organization and
to physical health. This indicates that we all, in every nation, look
forward, however vaguely, to a society in which human life shall be less
difficult for the majority to obtain. We speak sometimes of the
redistribution of leisure--August Bebel made it one of the chief
articles of his creed. But this as an ideal does not indicate any desire
that the dock-labourer should have time to loaf in a club, or his wife
time to play bridge, except in so far as time to loaf is an opportunity
for some other employment than the mere struggle for food. There is
nothing inevitable in a situation which makes the development of most of
the human faculties a privilege of a few and an impossibility for the
greater number. Nor is it correct to suppose that the half-starved and
the ill-clothed should be satisfied with being 'virtuous', and leave it
to others, possibly wicked and certainly far from simple, to cultivate
art and science.

Nor again is it absurd to hope for a world in which all should have at
least the opportunity for the development of any faculties they may
possess. The social gain would be immense. It would be like the change
from a harmony which is produced by a few amateurs to one of a full
orchestra.

Thirdly, it is increasingly evident that no one state or nation can act
effectively in social reform unless it acts in concert with others.
Treaties of commerce, common prison legislation, and common measures for
sanitation and medicine have proved effective because they are in the
nature of things. They are necessary means for the desired prosperity
even of the most selfish and segregated state.

But ignorance and prejudice and irrational violence spread as easily as
disease or crime. Knowledge is not secure until it is widespread; and
civilization perishes, which is segregated in a world of barbarism.
Therefore education also, in its widest sense, must be contrived in
common. Not merely school systems influenced by foreign ideas, but the
very atmosphere of thought must change in harmony among all nations, if
we are not to go toppling down into the abyss from which by painful
centuries we have ascended.

* * * * *

This ideal of social reform then seems to be agreed upon between some
men of all nations, that more common action should be taken. It is not a
vague sentiment for the abolition of conflict between states; nor is it
a pious aspiration for peace. It is the clear perception that the state
cannot fulfil its functions in modern life if it continues to act as
isolated or segregated. That for which the state itself stands cannot be
attained even within the frontiers of one state by any state acting
alone.

This is not the place to distinguish those subjects upon which states
should act together from those on which they should act separately. That
is simply the problem as to the limits of political regionalism. The
fact which is sufficient for our argument here is that certain forces,
chiefly economic, have come into existence in recent years, which
disregard state boundaries. In concrete terms, these are international
trusts and international labour interests. But it is increasingly
evident that these cannot be effectively dealt with by any one state
acting separately. The isolated sovereign state of earlier times is
simply helpless before the elaborate world-system of economics; and
control can only be secured by an established world-system of politics.
The states, one supposes, exist for justice and liberty. Divided, they
will perish or become mere playthings in the hands of non-moral economic
'interests'.

To save itself and all it stands for, the state must cease to pose as a
possible opponent to any other state, and must deliberately co-operate
in an increasing number of reforms.

It is better to put into the coldest terms a conception which has too
often hitherto proved futile, because it arose rather from vague
discontent, than from the perception of a definite evil. The fire of
enthusiasm must indeed work upon that conception before any effective
change can be made in the attitude of governments or of peoples. But
enthusiasm will be wasted if we cannot pause to see against what we are
contending.

We are struggling with the greatest of all obstacles to social reform
when we attack the isolation of nations. Unless that is overcome we
shall perhaps patch and prop; but, time and again, we shall be enslaved
to the immensely powerful non-moral forces, in the midst of which
humanity finds its way. I cannot speak more clearly--[Greek: bous epi
glosse]. The nations face each other in conflict, while death, disease,
violence, bestial indolence and docility corrode every state.

* * * * *

But when war was at its brutish worst Grotius spoke with effect of a
moral bond which survived between men who in physical conflict had been
trying to take their 'enemies' for beasts and stones. And humanity began
once more its long struggle with the beast in man. So now--I leave it to
your imagination.

We have made immense progress by assisting each other across the
frontiers of states in such science as may provide high explosive and
submarine warfare. In these the nations have co-operated. The guns which
kill the English at the Dardanelles were made by Englishmen. There may
yet come a time when high explosives will be out of date, and the state
will use the careful dissemination of disease among its enemies. The
only reason, I think, why it is not now done, is that no group can be
certain of making itself immune from the disease it may spread among
its enemies.

* * * * *

Our conclusion, therefore, is that one of the elements in the present
attitude towards social reform is a tendency to co-operation between
nations. We have seen that this has already had effect in various
details of law and administration; and there is every reason to suppose
that the method will be carried further.

But the problem cannot be left there. Co-operation as a word is a mere
charm, like Evolution. There has been, and there may be co-operation in
doing wrong. That action has become common does not prove that it is
right; and an ideal implies at least some ethical judgement. Therefore,
in every nation there are some few who are convinced of the necessity
for more deliberately moral action in common between men of different
races. If there can be so much co-operation in the making of armaments
or the defrauding of shareholders, there may yet be more co-operation in
the elimination of disease and poverty. And not only may there be such
co-operation, but it must be. The situation no longer exists in which
most of the effects of an evil regime are confined within frontiers. The
social distress of European nations must be dealt with as a whole
because it is a whole. Therefore whatever militates against the unity of
western civilization destroys the possibility of social reform.

Many times before it has been seen that there are nobler conflicts than
the struggle for markets or for the political domination of one clique
or one nation. Many times before it has been felt, at least by a few,
that man is deceived when he imagines that man is his enemy. And many
times when the deliverance seemed near we have been enslaved again by an
evil magic. A hundred years ago, at the end of the Napoleonic wars, the
dreamers imagined that humanity would have done with its false prophets
and lay the ghosts which have haunted it since it began to shake off the
manners of the beasts. But a dismal succession of new falsehoods and new
blind guides appeared. And now, in this so advanced age, we have to face
the same possibility. There is much to excuse a despair; from which
nothing can free us but a new enthusiasm. The evil magic must be
overcome by magic of another kind, and how acute the crisis seems it is
hardly possible to indicate.

The quality of our age was its expectancy. For that reason men of every
nation were moved to desire a transformed society. But perhaps that
quality of expectancy was the quality of youth. For the first time in
history, in the early twentieth century, age was giving place to youth
in the political equilibrium of the generations. Now--I dare not speak
too plainly. The young men of the western world are already, since
August 1914, noticeably fewer. Death may have made no difference to
them. It has made an immense difference to the future. It means that the
eager expectancy of youth, which is the source of so much enthusiasm for
a better world, is being lost. The crisis is here. As yet the common
ideals of civilized nations still survive; but the desire for a better
future is at ebb and flow with a tired acquiescence in the established
order. It is in our hands to decide which shall overcome. No generation
has faced a greater issue. We cannot tell what will be the outcome; but
to hope too much is at least a more generous fault than to despair too
soon.


BOOKS FOR REFERENCE

C.D. Burns, _Political Ideals_. Clarendon Press.

P. Geddes, _Cities in Evolution_. Williams & Norgate.

J.A. Hobson, _Towards International Government_. Allen & Unwin.

P.S. Reinsch, _Public International Unions_. Ginn & Co.




XII

POLITICAL BASES OF A WORLD-STATE


World-state is a term likely to be offensive in its arrogance, if it be
taken to mean the substitution of a single political community and
government for the numerous separate national states which have hitherto
existed. I therefore hasten to say that I intend no such meaning, but
use the term as a convenient expression to cover any body of political
arrangements, to which most of the principal nations of the world are
parties, sufficiently stable in character and wide in scope to merit the
title of international government.

Towards such a possibility the nineteenth century has made three great
contributions. During that century great advances have been made in the
settlement of political government upon a basis of nationality. This
process has been accomplished partly by throwing off the dominion of
some foreign power, as in the case of Belgium, Greece, Montenegro,
Bulgaria, Rumania, and Serbia, and the South American colonies of Spain;
partly by the closer federal union of independent states, as in the case
of Germany and Switzerland; partly by a blend of the two methods as in
the case of Italy; and partly by the peaceful dissolution of an
unnatural union, as with Norway and Sweden. Though much still remains to
be done before the identification of statehood with nationality even for
Europe is completed, and some backward steps have been taken, the
growing acceptance of the conception of nationality as a just and
expedient basis of government is a powerful guarantee for the
persistence of this joint work of liberation and of union. If, as the
result of the settlement following this war, political readjustments are
made which fairly satisfy the remaining aspirations after national
autonomy, the more pacific atmosphere will favour all opportunities for
co-operation between nations.

The second contribution of the nineteenth century towards political
internationalism is of a more positive character. It consists in a
series of inchoate and fragmentary but genuine attempts of the Great
Powers to work together upon critical occasions in the interests of
'justice and order', as they understood those terms, and to embody in
acts or conventions some policy which is the result of their
deliberations. This flickering light, called the Concert of Europe,
first kindled at the Congress of Vienna, has reappeared fitfully
throughout the century. The treaties, declarations, and conventions,
proceeding from these conferences or congresses of the Powers, have
marked important advances, not only in the substance of international
law, but in the method of legislation. For whereas, before the Congress
of Vienna, all the treaties between states which helped to form the body
of international law were the acts of two or, at the most, a small group
of states, since that time law-making treaties of general application
and of world-wide importance have come into being. The most noteworthy
examples of these general treaties are the Final Act of the Vienna
Congress in 1815, the Declaration of Paris in 1856, the Geneva
Convention of 1864, the Treaty of Berlin in 1878, the General Act of the
Congo Conference in 1885, and the two Hague Conferences of 1899 and
1907. Having regard to the general character of many of the rules laid
down at these conferences, as, for instance, the abolition of the slave
trade, the neutralization of certain lands and waters, and the
regulation of the rules of war, it is clear that we have to recognize
throughout last century the existence of a rudimentary organ of
international legislation, very irregular in its operation, very
imperfect in structure and authority, but none the less a genuine
experiment in international government.

Hardly less significant for our purpose has been the prominent assertion
of the principle of federalism in the formation or growth of national
government. The great example of the United States has been followed by
Switzerland and Germany, by Mexico, Argentine, Brazil, and Venezuela,
and by the dominions of the British Empire in Canada, Australia, and
South Africa. I must not in this brief survey even touch upon the
different forms of federalism. It must suffice to remark that, whether
as a a principle of devolution, as in the case of the proposal of Home
Rule for the constituent parts of Great Britain, or as a principle of
closer union, as in the proposal for a federated British Empire,
federalism is very much alive. It furnishes a hopeful mode not only for
reconciling demands for local autonomy with effective central
sovereignty among the provinces or districts of a single national state,
but even for harmonizing the claims of separate nationality with those
of wider racial, linguistic, and traditional sympathy. But even more
important than these distinctively political movements and events, as a
pledge of the coming world-state, is the manifold structure of
industrial and commercial internationalism which has been growing during
the last few generations at an ever accelerating pace. The network of
material, financial, and intellectual communications, connecting all
parts of the developed world, and establishing quick, constant, cheap,
and reliable modes of transport for men, goods, money, and information,
form the actual basis of what may not improperly be called an economic
world-state. Though much of this machinery, with the great work of
international trade and capitalistic co-operation which it assists to
perform, lies outside the sphere of politics, there are innumerable
points of political contact and pressure. The realities of foreign
policy in every state are more and more concerned with issues of trade,
communications, and concessions, and the treaties and other formal
arrangements between states are to a growing extent the instruments and
the expressions of the internationalism of economic interests. The
imperialism and the colonial policy of each great Power, though composed
of various ingredients, are mainly directed by commerce and finance.
Most of the disagreements and conflicts between governments relate to
interferences with the free play of economic internationalism by states
whose policy is still dominated by foolish and obsolescent rules of a
narrowly national economy. An enlightened interpretation of the needs
and interests of modern man demands that all such national economic
barriers be removed and replaced by governmental co-operation to secure,
by free trade and an open door, for capital and labour the fullest and
best development and distribution of the economic resources of the
world.

While, therefore, the most impressive political events of the nineteenth
century have been the expression and the successful realization of
nationalism, many powerful undercurrents of internationalism have been
gathering force. The pressures of civilization have been more and more
towards extra-national activities. Thoughtful men and women in our time
recognize the urgent need of closer international communion for three
related purposes: First, the consolidation, extension, and effective
sanction of the existing body of international law; secondly, the
establishment of peace on a basis of reliable methods for the just
settlement of differences; thirdly, the provision of regular accepted
means for the co-operation of nations in all sorts of positive
constructive work for the human commonwealth.

These general considerations I will ask you to regard as introductory
to the grave practical question which confronts us. Is this essential
work of internationalism consistent with the preservation of the
sovereignty and independence of the present national state, or does its
performance involve some definite cession of these national state-rights
to the requirements of an international government?

The terrible events which are passing to-day ripen and sharpen this
issue. They bring into powerful relief the inherent defects of an
international polity based upon the absolute independence of the several
states, and the futile mechanical balances and readjustments by which
foreign policy has been conducted hitherto. But how far do they offer
assistance or security for the achievement of organic reform? After this
war has come to a close, will the nations and governments be enabled to
lay a sound basis for pacific settlement of disputes and for active
co-operation in the common cause of humanity for the future? No
confident answer to this question is possible. For nobody can predict
the composition and the relative strength of the feelings and ideas
which will constitute 'the state of mind' of the several nations and
their statesmen. As regards immediate or early policy, much will, of
course, depend upon the definiteness of the victory and defeat, and the
consequent distribution and intensity of the passions of elation and
depression, anger and revenge, which peace may leave behind. It is, of
course, part of the fighting strength of every belligerent to persuade
himself that an overwhelming victory for himself affords the best
security of peace and progress in the future. But this conclusion, based
on the prior assumption, equally liable to error, that one's own cause
is entirely right and one's enemy's entirely wrong, is unlikely to be
sound. A peace which brings the least intensity of triumph and
humiliation, the most even distribution of gains and losses, would seem
to give an atmosphere most favourable to the growth of pacific
internationalism. This, of course, will be sharply contested, and those
who contest it will exhibit the usual excessive confidence of those
whose mind moves in a shut oven of heated but unmeaning phrases about
fighting to a finish, crushing German militarism, and 'a war to end
war'. But there is no stronger evidence of the intellectual and moral
havoc of war than the easy acceptance of what Ruskin called 'masked
words' in lieu of thinking.

"There are masked words abroad, I say, which nobody understands, but
which everybody uses, and most people will also fight for, live for, or
even die for, fancying they mean this or that or other of the things
dear to them. There were never creatures of prey so mischievous, never
diplomatists so cunning, never poisoners so deadly, as these masked
words; they are the unjust stewards of all men's ideas; whatever fancy
or favourite instinct a man most cherishes, he gives to his favourite
masked word to take care of for him; the word at last comes to have an
infinite power over him--you cannot get at him but by its ministry." In
war-time this domination of 'masked words' is all-powerful, and is
likely to leave the thinking powers of all Europe seriously impaired
when the war is over.

There are those who hold that sheer exhaustion, nervous and economic,
will compel the nations to seek concerted action against the recurrence
of so shattering an experience, that some sheer instinct of
self-preservation will find expression in adequate political
arrangements. I should be the last to deny the reality of the collective
instinct. But remember that, as an instinct, it works blindly, and is
liable to be diverted and frustrated in a thousand ways by the
conflicting streams of narrow passion amongst which it moves. Mere
exhaustion and a general feeling of insecurity cannot yield a
sufficient motive and directing force for the work of international
construction. It is necessary to rationalize this instinct of
self-preservation and co-operation, in order to make it of effective
service. Here lies the heart of our difficulty. War is the most
intensely derationalizing process, and the long steeping of European
civilization in the boiling cauldron will have twisted and blunted the
very instruments of thought. As Professor Murray points out in a
powerful essay, war rapidly undoes the slow secular process by which
liberty and capacity for individual thought have grown up, and plunges
the personal judgement into the common trough of the herd-mind. It is, I
take it, the recognition of this peril to the human mind, this necessity
of safeguarding the powers of individual thought and personal
responsibility, that brings us here. We seek to fortify the separate
centres of personal judgement, to inform the individual mind, because
the work of making a positive contribution to the unity of civilization
depends upon the vigorous independent functioning of many minds.

This consideration brings me directly to confront the enemy, that is to
say, those who contend that a world-state or any real international
government is now and must always remain an impossibility, an
unrealizable Utopian dream. The process of social evolution on its
political side ends with the national state. It is a final product.
National states cannot, will not, and ought not, to abate one jot or
tittle of their inherent sovereignty and independence, and the
experience of history shows that all attempts at international
federation or union are pre-doomed to failure.

It is evidently quite impossible for me to present here a full formal
refutation of these positions. I will therefore content myself with
brief demurrers. To the argument from social evolution I would reply
that evolution knows no finality of type, and that the presumption lies
in favour of those who hold that the centripetal or co-operative powers,
which have forged the national state out of the smaller social unities,
are not exhausted, but are capable of carrying the organizing process
further. To those who rely upon the authority of history, citing the
collapse of the experiments in federation which followed the Congress of
Vienna as proof that similar experiments will similarly fail to-day or
to-morrow, I reply that this view is based on a false interpretation of
the statement that 'history repeats itself'. A psychological or
sociological experiment is not the same when fundamental changes have
taken place in the psychical and social conditions. We have already
recognized that the nineteenth century has seen a series of vital
changes in the economic and spiritual structure of civilization. The
evidence of 1815 cannot, therefore, be conclusive as regards the
possibilities of 1915. To those who insist on the sovereignty and
independence of the national state as an eternal verity, I will make no
further reply than to say that such language has for me no more meaning
than talk of 'the divine right of kings', 'the natural rights of man',
or any other phrase of the abracadabra of metaphysical politics. The
actual world in which we live knows no such absolutes. Sovereignty and
independence, like all other legal claims, are subject to modification
and compromise. Every bargain made by treaty or agreement with another
state, every acceptance of international law or custom, involves some
real diminution of sovereign independence, unless indeed the liberty to
break all treaties and to violate all laws is expressly reserved as an
inalienable right of nations. Moreover, within the limits of a single
nation, sovereignty is itself divided and distributed. Alike in the
United States of America, the Swiss Republic, and the German Empire, the
constituent states as well as the nations are recognized as sovereign,
possessing certain rights or powers safeguarded by the constitution
against all encroachments of the central or federal government. So again
within the state itself, the sovereignty is often no longer concentrated
in a single person or a single body of persons, but is exercised by the
joint action of several organs, as in Great Britain, where the king and
the Houses of Parliament are the joint administrators of the sovereignty
of the state. Sovereignty thus becomes more and more a question of
degree and of adjustment. International lawyers will doubtless insist
that neither treaties nor international laws involve any derogation of
sovereign powers. But when the substantial liberties of action are
curtailed by any binding agreement, the unimpaired sovereignty is an
idle abstraction.

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