The Liberal Tradition

2. THE LEAGUE AND THE PEACE

127. VISCOUNT GREY OF FALLODON: The League of Nations (May 1918)

If the war does not teach mankind new lessons that will so dominate the thought and feeling of those who survive it, and those who succeed the survivors, as to make new things possible, then the war will be the greatest catastrophe as well as the most grievous trial and suffering of which mankind has any record.

Therefore it does not follow that a League of Nations to secure the peace of the world will remain impossible because it has not been possible hitherto, and I propose in this paper to consider shortly, to state rather than to examine (for it would take a long time to examine thoroughly) the conditions that have not been present before and that are present now, or may soon be present, and that are essential if the League of Nations is to become effective. These conditions appear to me to be as follows:

1. The idea must be adopted with earnestness and conviction by the Executive Heads of States. It must become an essential part of their practical policy, one of their chief reasons for being or continuing to be responsible for the policy of their States. They must not adopt it only to render lip service to other persons, whom it is inconvenient or ungracious to displease. They must lead, and not follow; they must compel if necessary, and not be compelled. . . .

2. The second condition essential to the foundation and maintenance of a League of Nations is that the Governments and Peoples of the States willing to found it understand clearly that it will impose some limitation upon the national action of each, and may entail some inconvenient obligation. The smaller and weaker nations will have rights that must be respected and upheld by the League. The stronger nations must forego the right to make their interests prevail against the weaker by force; and all the States must forego the right in any dispute to resort to force before other methods of settlement, by conference, conciliation, or, if need be, arbitration, have been tried. This is the limitation. The obligation is that if any nation will not observe this limitation upon its national action; if it breaks the agreement which is the basis of the League, rejects all methods of peaceful settlement and resorts to force, the other nations must, one and all, use their combined force against it. The economic pressure that such a League could use would in itself be very powerful, and the action of some of the smaller States composing the League could perhaps not go beyond economic pressure, but those States that have power must be ready to use all the force, economic, military, or naval, that they possess. It must be clearly understood and accepted that defection from or violation of the agreement by one or more States does not absolve all or any of the others from the obligation to enforce the agreement. . . .

Peace can never be secured by the domination of one country securing its power and prosperity by the submission and disadvantage of others, and the German idea of a world peace secured by the power of German militarism is impracticable, as well as unfair and abhorrent to other nations. It is as intolerable and impossible in the world as despotism would be here or in the United States. In opposition to this idea of Germany, the Allies should set forth, as President Wilson has already set forth, the idea of a peace secured by mutual regard between States for the rights of each and a determination to stamp out any attempt at war, as they would a plague that threatened the destruction of all. . . .

The establishment and maintenance of a League of Nations, such as President Wilson has advocated, is more important and essential to a secure peace than any of the actual terms of peace that may conclude the war; it will transcend them all. The best of them will be worth little, unless the future relations of States are to be on a basis that will prevent a recurrence of militarism in any States.

Viscount Grey, The League of Nations (1918), pp. 4-15.

128. GILBERT MURRAY: The League of Nations and the Democratic Idea (1918)

There is no way out except co-operation. We must face the sacrifice. We must give up some part of our freedom. We must be prepared on occasion to allow a Congress of Powers to settle questions which we should prefer to treat as purely domestic. We must tame our pride a little. And in return we shall both form a habit of friendly consultation with other Powers instead of hostile intrigue, and shall be saved from the deadly dilemma of either provoking war by making preparations or inviting attack by going unprepared. A number of nations which act together can be strong enough to check an aggressor though no one of them alone is so strong as to threaten its neighbours. . . .

As to machinery, what is needed in the first place is probably a very simple thing: merely an adding together of the present arbitration treaties, so that the various nations which have separately agreed to arbitrate their differences shall form a League with mutual guarantees. At present if there are two nations bound by treaty to arbitrate and one chooses to break the treaty the offender suffers no penalty. He has only one enemy, and that an enemy of his own choosing. But if there are twelve nations the offender has eleven enemies. Again, where there is a League of many Powers there is no danger, as there may be in a separate arbitration, of two arbitrating Powers settling their differences at the expense of a third. Still more important, such a League would be a permanent organ, always ready to act, and embodied in a permanent machinery. It would not, like the old Concert of Europe, have to be called into action at the last moment to deal with a trouble that is already acute. And it would not, like the Concert, consist of diplomatists whose normal business is to think only of their own country’s interests. It would consist of men trained and accustomed to think for the common good.

G. Murray, The League of Nations and the Democratic Idea (1918), passim.

129. The Manchester Guardian, Leading Article: 24 June 1919

What use have we made, what use are we making, of an unparalleled victory, an unequalled opportunity? Apart from the negative gain of dire disaster escaped, what fruit are we drawing from success, what permanent gain are we securing for the world? And it is here that rejoicing must be qualified and heavy doubts recur. We started on the waging of the war with high ideals, we entered with ideals yet higher and clearer on the making of the peace. And then—what happened? It would be hard, perhaps, fully to explain, still more to justify, but in the six or seven months of discussions and of bargaining among the victors the best fruits of victory have somehow disappeared, and the peace which emerges is not the peace we had promised ourselves or, as the enemy bitterly urges, the peace which we had promised them. The peace we had hoped for would have been one which so far as possible presented elements of finality, which had careful regard, therefore, to the deeper forces by which nations are swayed, and would enlist these on the side of peace and of permanence. It would above all have refrained from outraging the sense of nationality, that potent emotion which holds masses of men of like tradition and sentiment together and renders them capable of unlimited endurance and unlimited sacrifice. We have not done this. We have, indeed, freed more than one oppressed nationality and created new States, but at more than one point we have needlessly and flagrantly violated the national sense of existing States, and above all of Germany, the greatest of them. It is a capital error which not only violates the principle on which we professed to act but introduces an element of instability into the whole structure of the peace which goes far to destroy its value. Again, the peace was to have marked and established the triumph of democracy, but what is democracy apart from the democratic spirit? And that spirit implies the sense of common interest and of mutual good will. How much of these has gone to the making of the peace, how much of them will remain to cement it? How much thought has been bestowed on the future of the German people in the imposition of an unlimited indemnity, in the complicated system of economic restraint and isolation by which at the same time their commerce is to be ruined and their industries forbidden to expand? It may be said that to ask for any such consideration, even though the common interest of the world demanded it, from peoples who have suffered as the French and to a less extent we ourselves have suffered, is to ask too much from human nature. We do not believe it. The real democratic forces in all the countries, here, in France, in Italy, have in this matter gone far in advance of their rulers. Had they had the making of the peace it would have been far and away a better, a juster, a more stable.

The Manchester Guardian (24 June 1919).

130. J. M. KEYNES: The Economic Consequences of the Peace (December 1919)

I do not intend to enter here into details, or to attempt a revision of the Treaty clause by clause. I limit myself to three great changes which are necessary for the economic life of Europe, relating to Reparation, to Coal and Iron, and to Tariffs. . . .

By fixing the Reparation payments well within Germany’s capacity to pay, we make possible the renewal of hope and enterprise within her territory, we avoid the perpetual friction and opportunity of improper pressure arising out of Treaty clauses which are impossible of fulfilment, and we render unnecessary the intolerable powers of the Reparation Commission.

By a moderation of the clauses relating directly or indirectly to coal, and by the exchange of iron ore, we permit the continuance of Germany’s industrial life, and put limits on the loss of productivity which would be brought about otherwise by the interference of political frontiers with the natural localisation of the iron and steel industry.

By the proposed Free Trade Union some part of the loss of organisation and economic efficiency may be retrieved, which must otherwise result from the innumerable new political frontiers now created between greedy, jealous, immature, and economically incomplete nationalist States. Economic frontiers were tolerable so long as an immense territory was included in a few great Empires; but they will not be tolerable when the Empires of Germany, Austria- Hungary, Russia, and Turkey have been partitioned between some twenty independent authorities. A Free Trade Union, comprising the whole of Central, Eastern, and South-Eastern Europe, Siberia, Turkey, and (I should hope) the United Kingdom, Egypt, and India, might do as much for the peace and prosperity of the world as the League of Nations itself. Belgium, Holland, Scandinavia, and Switzerland might be expected to adhere to it shortly. And it would be greatly to be desired by their friends that France and Italy also should see their way to adhesion.

It would be objected, I suppose, by some critics that such an arrangement might go some way in effect towards realising the former German dream of Mittel-Europa. If other countries were so foolish as to remain outside the Union and to leave to Germany all its advantages, there might be some truth in this. But an economic system, to which every one had the opportunity of belonging and which gave special privileges to none, is surely absolutely free from the objections of a privileged and avowedly imperialistic scheme of exclusion and discrimination. Our attitude to these criticisms must be determined by our whole moral and emotional reaction to the future of international relations and the Peace of the World. If we take the view that for at least a generation to come Germany cannot be trusted with even a modicum of prosperity, that while our recent Allies are angels of light, all our recent enemies, Germans, Austrians, Hungarians, and the rest, are children of the devil, that year by year Germany must be kept impoverished and her children starved and crippled, and that she must be ringed round by enemies; then we shall reject all the proposals of this chapter, and particularly those which may assist Germany to regain a part of her former material prosperity and find a means of livelihood for the industrial population of her towns. But if this view of nations and of their relation to one another is adopted by the democracies of Western Europe, and is financed by the United States, heaven help us all. If we aim deliberately at the impoverishment of Central Europe, vengeance, I dare predict, will not limp. Nothing can then delay for very long that final civil war between the forces of Reaction and the despairing convulsions of Revolution, before which the horrors of the late German war will fade into nothing, and which will destroy, whoever is victor, the civilisation and the progress of our generation. Even though the result disappoint us, must we not base our actions on better expectations, and believe that the prosperity and happiness of one country promotes that of others, that the solidarity of man is not a fiction, and that nations can still afford to treat other nations as fellow-creatures?

J. M. Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919), pp. 244-51.

131. DAVID LLOYD GEORGE: Speech at the Aldwych Club, London, 7 November 1927

(Sir Austen Chamberlain) is disposed to imagine that Locarno was the first and the final step. Locarno was the beginning of a new world. Before Locarno, chaos. Europe, before Locarno, was without form and void, and darkness filled the earth. Then Locarno—and lo! there was light. . . . Where Locarno is concerned, Sir Austen Chamberlain is a Fundamentalist.

It is very important, if there is going to be peace in the world, that Locarno should be simply treated as one of a series of steps and that you must get along from it. When the Locarno treaty was reported to the House of Commons, I said it was essential that it should be treated as a basis for disarmament and arbitration, and that unless it was, it would be nothing better than a slobbering melodrama. That is my view at the present moment. Sir Austen made three allegations against me. First, that I talked with very little knowledge of the treaties which I helped to frame; second, that I falsely excited hopes which cannot be fulfilled; and third, that I falsely and recklessly distributed blame which had not been earned.

Those are very grave charges against any man, especially a man who has wielded vast responsibilities. . . .

He says that I am ignorant of the treaties. That is very odd. I spent six months with President Wilson, Signor Orlando, and especially M. Clemenceau, framing the treaties. We discussed every sentence of them. I discussed them in Parliament, and recently I have renewed my acquaintance more than once with these treaties. Yet I know nothing about them! Well, it is a serious reflection on my memory, if not my intelligence.

As to the second accusation, that I raised hopes which cannot be fulfilled, what are they? The first was that the Allied and conquering countries would fulfil the solemn pledge they gave at Versailles—that German, Austrian, and Bulgarian disarmament would be followed by disarmament of the conquering countries. . . .

Is that exciting a false hope? If it is, it is not a hope excited by me in a little speech at a League of Nations meeting. It is a hope excited by the greatest nations of the world, through their representatives—signed, sealed, and delivered to Germany. Is that denied?

The next hope I excited which ‘cannot be fulfilled’ is that disputes between nations would, if negotiations failed, be referred for settlement not to machine guns, cannon, bombs and poison gas, but to peaceful arbitration based on right, reason and judgment. Is that a false hope? If it is, God help the world. It is a hope we ventured to put in the Covenant of the League of Nations, and it is enshrined there. The third hope was that jagged ends of the treaty, which are causing irritation, disturbing the peace of the nations, would be put right and smoothed through the agency of the League.

That hope was excited by a letter written by M. Clemenceau on behalf of President Wilson, Signor Orlando, and myself to the German delegates before they ever signed the document. Does Sir Austen Chamberlain now, on behalf of the British Government, say that those are three hopes which cannot be fulfilled? If he does, all I can say is it is the most serious condemnation of his foreign policy that has ever been uttered by friend or by foe.

I have been imputing blame. I dare say I have. . . . What is the blame imputed? First, that whereas the nations had pledged themselves to follow the example we forced on Germany by disarming themselves, they have taken no steps to do so.

What are the facts? I give them and challenge anyone to deny them. They are such vital facts to the peace of the world, and the peace of the world is so vital to the life of civilisation that I am bound to repeat them. I said the conquering nations in the Great War, including the nations which came in when we were quite sure we were going to conquer, have at the present moment in the aggregate over ten millions of trained men, not merely well equipped, but better equipped for war than they were in 1914. . . . I say still it is dishonouring the solemn pledge we gave before the Germans and the rest ever signed the Treaty of Versailles. That is the blame I impute, and I stand by it.

What is the next? That territories in Europe have been annexed by force without consent of the League of Nations or of the Supreme Council. Is that denied? I say that those annexations as long as they remain will be a menace to peace in the world. Is that denied?

We put in the Treaty of Versailles provisions for the protection of minorities in the new and re-created territories. There were clauses to protect their race, religion and traditions. Those clauses have been trampled upon. Is that denied? . . .

These matters were not a question of controversy between two old friends. They were matters so important that unless they were put right, the peace of Europe would be menaced. I ask for particulars. Well, I know Sir Austen has a view that these are delicate matters not to be talked about to common people. . . . I challenge the whole attitude of our not discussing these things freely and frankly. Complete frankness in discussing these things is essential to peace. That ‘hush, hush’ policy which prevailed before the war, whenever you came to foreign policy, is responsible for the death of over ten millions of the young men of Europe. If we had had frank discussions of the events which led to the war, you would have had no war.

The war shattered the Olympian tradition, and rightly so. The gods had landed their worshippers in a quagmire of blood. There is an attempt to repair and to glue together the splinters of the Jovian throne. . . .

The god who is always piling incense on his own altar is a sorry spectacle. I really wish Sir Austen would cultivate a little more detachment and not take himself quite so seriously. Unless Europe advances beyond Locarno—it is a step—unless the advance be towards arbitration and disarmament, I say, from a long knowledge of the conditions in Europe, war is inevitable. Why, there is no agreement amongst the signatories themselves about Locarno.

Sir Austen, speaking here, never said a word about arbitration and not very much about disarmament. Guaranteeing an eastern frontier of France may lead to war. Arbitration can lead to nothing but peace. Arbitration is the only basis of disarmament; disarmament is the only guarantee for arbitration. And arbitration and disarmament together are the only security for peace.

Let Sir Austen face these problems. He has rested long enough at Locarno. It is no use standing on the shores of Maggiore, like a stork on one leg, looking preternaturally wise, and looking very satisfied because he has swallowed one trout. Let him lift up his wings and proceed on his pilgrimage of peace.

D. Lloyd George, Slings and Arrows, ed. P. Guedalla (1929), pp. 179-86.

132. PHILIP KERR: The Outlawry of War, a Paper read to the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 13 November 1928

So long as we admit that war is a rightful or inevitable method of settling the international problems of the community of nations, armaments will abound, strategic considerations will prevail, and war will continue in the future, as in the past, to be the principal plague of man. It is axiomatic that no State can long survive which tolerates the use of violence within its own borders. . . .

The inevitable end of any community which tolerates violence within its borders is anarchy and war. It is precisely the same with the world as a whole. So long as war is recognised as a rightful method of settling inter-State disputes—as it is to-day—the present-day international anarchy and ever-recurring war must inevitably continue, however passionate our longing for peace.

Let us consider for a moment what the ‘legalisation’ of war means and must mean in practice. In the first place, it spells competitive armaments. That is to say, every self-respecting nation will maintain those armaments which it believes to be necessary to its security and the defence of its vital interests. . . . Yet no nation can make its own vital interests secure by means of armaments except by making the vital interests of its neighbours insecure. This is becoming increasingly true in a shrinking world in which national interests in trade and property are stretching ever farther beyond their own borders. The legalisation of war, therefore, inevitably keeps the world in a ferment of suspicion and anxiety over the preparations which other nations are making for their own defence.

But its effects go even farther. It makes the settlement of the more important international problems on the basis of reason and justice practically impossible. Alterations of frontiers justifiable on racial or economic grounds, the union of peoples such as the Germans and Austrians, the acquisition of colonies to absorb surplus population, or coaling stations for commerce, and so forth, all have strategic implications. When such questions arise, therefore, nations inevitably regard them from the standpoint of what will be the consequence of the change proposed on their own security in the event of war, and not from the standpoint of justice and reason. The fact that war—the law of the jungle—still reigns in the international sphere continually operates to provoke the fears, grievances and injustices which make its use inevitable.

The advocates of the outlawry of war, therefore, are almost certainly right in their conviction that in a world in which every nation is armed and in which the use of violence, in the ultimate resort, is admitted to be lawful, war will in fact, in every great crisis, sweep pacific process aside, just as it did in the last fatal weeks of July 1914. There is no half-way house in this question. You cannot compromise with violence within the State. You cannot compromise with violence in the international community. War must be ‘outlawed’ and ‘delegalised’ or it will master us in the future as it has always done in the past.

So much for the general principle of outlawry. How does it differ from the Covenant of the League of Nations?

The Covenant provides for regular conferences between the nations. It creates an admirable system for the investigation of international disputes, and in appropriate cases for their settlement by the Permanent Court of International Justice, by arbitration, by conciliation, and so forth. It prescribes a period of delay, enforceable through economic sanctions, during which this pacific procedure can be tried to the utmost. But it does not outlaw war. On the contrary, it specifically permits violence as the final arbiter of nations. The outlawry school believe that without the addition of the outlawry idea the League system will in practice inevitably fail, for the reasons I have already given. I think they are right. I believe that until we base all our thinking and action on the principle that reason and justice cannot be made to prevail in the international sphere until the right to use violence is entirely dethroned, we shall in practice be unable to escape war. . . .

If any progress is to be made towards the effective outlawry of war it will be necessary to draw a clear distinction between war and police force. War is the use of violence as the instrument of national policy: as the means of accomplishing some national end. Police force is the use of violence to prevent violence from accomplishing anything and to compel resort to pacific modes of settlement. The outlawry of war is not going to end the use of force in the world any more than the creation of the State ends it in the domestic sphere. What the State does is to concentrate irresistible force in its own hands, and to use it, not to impose the Government’s solution, but to prevent the settlement of disputes by private violence anywhere within its borders, and to compel obedience to the decisions of reason and justice as determined by the law courts and the legislature. It will be just the same in a world in which war has been outlawed. As I see it, the essence of outlawry is not the abolition of force but the determination that international questions shall be settled by what may be called constitutional methods, and not by the dictation of the stronger or the disputants taking the law into their own hands. I think that the recognition of this vital distinction between war and police force is essential to any further progress towards the genuine outlawry of war.

League of Nations Union publication, No. 271 (1929), passim.

133. The Liberal Way. A survey of Liberal Policy, published by the National Liberal Federation, 1934

[This survey was drafted by Ramsay Muir.]

India. Liberalism must desire to satisfy as completely as possible the aspirations after national freedom and self-government by which the Indian peoples are now inspired, largely through British influence; and it must sympathise with the resentment which cannot but be felt by a self-respecting people at the prospect of continued subjection to alien control. But it is indispensable that these aspirations should be satisfied in such a way as not to imperil the fundamental conditions of a free and ordered society—political unity, internal peace, and equal laws. Three hundred and twenty millions of people cannot be governed against their will; and when they, or the leaders whom they follow, have been indoctrinated with the idea of liberty, it is impossible to deny their demand. This is the spirit in which Liberalism faces the complex and fascinating problem of India.

India must not be regarded as a British ‘possession’. Already she controls her own destiny to so full an extent that she can and does impose severe tariffs on British goods in order to encourage her own industries; and although Liberals (but not Protectionists) may reasonably hold that in doing so she is not serving the true interests of her own people, yet that is now her own business, and we have neither the right nor the power to prevent it. Already she is recognised as a member of the League of Nations on equal terms with other nations. And while Britain still plays a vital, though a diminishing, part in the direction of India’s destiny, her function is not that of a Sovereign Power, but that of a trustee upon whom history has imposed the duty of helping India to advance with safety along the difficult and (to her) untried path of self-government. The supreme necessity is that the inevitable transition should be made in such a way as not to disorganise Indian society, and not to imperil public order, or destroy the country’s credit; and that India should continue to be a member, and become an equal and willing partner, in that fellowship of peace and liberty which is the British Empire.

The Backward Peoples. In the administration of those colonies and dependencies which are predominantly inhabited by primitive peoples, two principles have been established by Liberalism during the nineteenth century. They have replaced the régime of pitiless exploitation which marked the relations of the European peoples with native races during the modern age, and which found its ugliest expression in the slave-trade. In the mandatory clauses of the Covenant, these principles have been in effect adopted by the League of Nations, as the rules which ought to govern the treatment of subject peoples by ruling races.

The first principle is that these territories must not be regarded as ‘possessions’ of the ruling Power, to be used solely in its interest: they must be regarded as held in trust for the simple peoples who inhabit them. It is the duty of the Government of such lands to protect the native peoples in their rights, to secure to them a sufficiency of land for their needs, to safeguard them against exploitation, to habituate them to a régime of law, to provide them with education, and to lead them gradually into a civilised way of life without any sudden or violent break-up of their traditional loyalties. On the whole, this principle has been successfully applied in most of the British colonies. . . .

The difficulty of dealing fairly with the native population is greatest in those districts, such as Kenya, which are suitable for the permanent residence of white men, and in which therefore white men and backward peoples have to live together; and in these cases some unjust exploitation has taken place which it is the duty of the ruling Power to prevent. But in other regions, such as Nigeria, the principle of trusteeship for native rights has been carried out in the spirit and the letter.

The second principle is that, since the natural resources of these territories are needed for the service of humanity, the development of these resources must be encouraged, subject always to fair dealing for the native populations. But this work must not be carried on in the sole interest of the ruling country, or made a monopoly for its citizens. Such a policy would make it intolerable that one country should control and monopolise so large a proportion of the tropical regions as Britain administers. Therefore the government of these regions must be regarded as a trust not only on behalf of the native inhabitants, but on behalf of civilisation at large. Until quite recently this principle has been systematically carried out, and the traders of all nations have been admitted to these colonies on the same terms as British traders. The result has been beneficial to the colonies, because it has enlarged their markets and increased their prosperity; it has been beneficial to the world as a whole; and it has been greatly to the advantage of Britain. It was only because Britain was known to act on these principles that the trading nations have not resented but welcomed the immense extension of the British Empire in these regions. A change of policy, and the establishment of a monopoly for British trade, might change the attitude of the world and awaken widespread hostility.

These are the principles which Liberalism established, and to which Liberalism must adhere, in the administration of dependencies not yet ripe for self-government. Today these principles are being abandoned. They must be restored.

The Liberal Way (1934), pp. 72-5.