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been considerably developed. Now the modern world has taken a further step, and, by the establishment of the League of Nations, is seeking to place this larger co-operation on a more permanent and regular basis. But there are serious obstacles in the way, obstacles which are clearly revealed by the experience of the last hundred years.

One of these is the principle of intervention. John Stuart Mill based his doctrine of liberty upon the distinction between self-regarding and non-self-regarding actions. He postulated full freedom for actions of the individual which concern himself alone, and the interference with liberty only in the sphere of actions which concern others. It was a neat theory, but it has been abandoned because of the impossibility of finding any clear-cut distinction between these two supposed classes of actions. What is true of individuals is true also of states in this regard. Internal affairs cannot be separated absolutely from external affairs; there are inevitable repercussions. If each government did exactly what it willed at home, its relations with other governments would be most certainly endangered. The Boer War was an internal affair of the British Empire, but it had serious effects upon Britain's foreign relations. Before the close of that war, the feeling of hostility upon the continent rose to a dangerous pitch. The Irish problem was an internal affair of the British Isles, but everyone knows how the British government's Irish policy has imposed until recently a serious strain upon Anglo-American friendship. These are but illustrations of the interdependence of internal and external affairs in every state, which has a vital bearing upon organized international effort to preserve the peace. This was clearly demonstrated by several incidents of a century ago. Europe had just recovered from a terrible experience of twenty-five years of warfare, which had been precipitated by the outbreak of the French Revolution. Very naturally, the average man of that time regarded revolution in general as the root of all the ills which Europe has suffered. To appreciate this attitude, one must imagine a parallel situation to-day. If the late war had arisen not from German aggression in Belgium, but from the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, Bolshevism would be to-day the horror of the many

instead of merely the nightmare of the few. We would seek to nip it in the bud whenever it appeared, lest it once more throw the whole world into a welter of war. A hundred years ago this was the common feeling about revolution; it was the one great danger to peace. The chief powers of that day were determined to preserve the peace, and accordingly, when a revolution broke out in 1820 against the reactionary government of Naples, they assembled in conference and decided that the welfare of Europe required the suppression of this rising. Austria, therefore, with international backing, sent down an army which quickly extinguished the dangerous flame. Three years later, France intervened in Spain because the Spanish government could not preserve order and there was a possibility of the disturbance spreading across the Pyrenees. It is well known how the Powers have more than once stepped into the Balkans to stop friction which threatened to light a European conflagration. Many examples might be piled up, but these will perhaps suffice to force home the principle that any international organization to prevent war, if it is to accomplish its end, will have to intervene sooner or later in the internal affairs of some country, and that no country can be sure of its immunity from this intervention. This has been squarely faced in the past. The first Concert of Europe a century ago inspired Englishmen to talk of Cossacks encamped in Hyde Park to overawe the Houses of Parliament. The instinctive distrust of the foreigner's meddling in internal affairs has operated hitherto as a strong deterrent to any permanent organized effort to prevent war.

Behind this distrust stands a great principle, that of the sovereignty of the state. A very good justification can be found for the doctrine that the government of any independent state is and should be supreme over every other organization without or within. Perhaps the best way to bring it out is to draw a parallel between the society of individuals and the society of states. Single individuals, apart from the state, are not self-sufficing. They are so interdependent, their mutual contact is so intimate, that they have evolved the conception, conscious or unconscious, of a good that is greater than the individual, a good for which the individual should be sacrificed

whenever necessary. So we pay our taxes and obey the laws of our country, though at times the former be onerous and the latter objectionable. Occasionally we even fight and die to preserve this greater good. But with the society of states it is quite different. Compared with individuals, states are selfsufficing; their mutual contact is nothing so intimate and complete as that of individuals. The most important part of an individual's life is his relation to his fellows, but the most important part of a state's life is internal not external. Therefore there has not existed that clear conception of a good so much greater than the state, that the state, to save it, would voluntarily sacrifice itself. Up to the present, the state has remained the ultimate. A man may give up his life for another, but Canada would not for Mexico. A French statesman put it neatly when, in one of the crises of the last century, his country was called upon to make a sacrifice on behalf of Poland. He said, 'the blood of France belongs to France alone.' So much for the principle, now for the application. After the overthrow of Napoleon, the chief allies bound themselves in an alliance known as the first Concert of Europe. The purpose and the method of this union were clearly set out in the instrument of the alliance. 'In order to consolidate the tie which unites the four sovereigns for the happiness of the world, the High Contracting Powers have agreed to renew at fixed intervals. . . meetings consecrated to great common objects and to the examination of such measures as at each one of these epochs shall be judged most salutary for the peace and prosperity of the nations and for the maintenance of the peace of Europe.' It is open to question whether at any time the present League of Nations has inspired greater hope of the peace of the world than did the first Concert of Europe, which was wrecked on this very reef, the sovereignty of the state. Britain was the one who forced the issue. She began to realize that she was linking herself up to a hard and fast international system which would bind her by unknown obligations in the uncertain future. She shrank from this prospect and drew out of the alliance. She was willing to undertake fixed and known obligations laid down in specific treaties, but she would not give a blank cheque upon her future. This was

a hundred years ago, and the intervening century has brought less change than many think. History has repeated itself very closely. This time it was the United States who refused to enter the League of Nations on the very ground that it would mean a general surrender of her freedom of decision in the future, a surrender of her sovereignty in favour of others. Even membership in the League does not mean that this obstacle has been entirely overcome. Poincaré's recent policy of falling back upon the old diplomatic channels of foreign office and ambassadors, in place of the new-fangled Georgean policy of round table conferences, betrayed the same shrinking from blanket obligations. Moreover, none of the major powers have accepted that section of the Statute of the Court of International Justice which provides for compulsory arbitration. A year ago in the Assembly of the League, one of the Swiss delegates uttered an eloquent but vain plea for some great power to come forward and set an example to the others in assuming this obligation, which if generally accepted would eliminate countless causes of war. To-day, as in the past, the unwillingness of states to curtail their full freedom of action in the future is a very serious difficulty in the way of preventing war by international organization.

This doctrine of the sovereignty of the state would not be so powerful were it not supported by the divergence of national interests, or the belief that they must be divergentwhich has amounted to the same thing. Each nation is different in character and in situation; each has its own conception of what is right and wrong, of what is its own interest. Though people often speak of friendship between nations, this happy phrase is misleading. Friendships are something permanent, something positive. But these so-called international friendships are not the same at all; they are only temporary unions based on a negative principle, the fear of other states. While some definite interest may have held nations together for a while, the underlying differences, being more permanent, have pulled them apart. Whenever an important interest of a particular state has been seriously engaged, either of two things has happened. When this interest was contrary to the general welfare, the state in question has not yielded except

under duress. When, on the other hand, it was coincident with the common good, it has only too often occurred that the rest demur, lest the one state particularly concerned gain an advantage greater in proportion to that which they may reap. At the Congress of Vienna, the British government, urged by the humanitarian movement at home, pressed strongly for the abolition of the slave trade. This urgency, though disinterested, aroused the suspicions of the other governments represented at that Congress. They were at once profoundly suspicious that Britain was pursuing some Machiavellian game, that she was seeking to lower the value of the colonies which she had ceded and to enhance the value of those which she retained. The result was that nothing was done. Three years later at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, the question came up again. All of course agreed that the iniquitous traffic should be stopped. There was only one suggestion of how this might be done and it was advanced by Britain. She proposed that the powers should agree to reciprocal rights of search by war vessels specially designed for the purpose. But at this the other states balked, for they feared that such a solution would increase Britain's maritime supremacy. An attempt to settle the problem by an international board of control failed for the same reason. At this time also a similar impasse was reached on another question of great concern. The Barbary pirates were a pest in the Mediterranean and all the powers wished to see their suppression. The Czar of Russia proposed an international squadron in the Mediterranean. This would seem a most sensible suggestion. It would have conferred a great benefit upon Europe generally, but it was rejected because it would have given an additional advantage to Russia. It would have admitted her to the Mediterranean, from which she was then excluded. The Brussels Conference of 1874 on the rules of war affords another illustration. It was proposed that all combatants should bear some distinct military sign and have at their head some responsible person with authority. To put it simply, the suggestion was that a hard and fast line should be drawn between combatants and non-combatants. At first glance this might seem quite innocent, but no agreement was possible, for there was a great issue at stake. Against

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