The New State · Part III · Chapter 35 (2/2)

There are many corollaries to this project. We do not need, for instance, a more vigorous protection of neutrals, but the abolition of neutrals. The invasion of the rights of neutrals in this war by both sides shows that we can no longer have neutrals in our scheme of union; all must come within the bond.

Further, diplomatic relations will be entirely changed. “Honor among thieves” means loyalty to your group: while to lie or to try to get the better of your own particular group is an unpardonable offence, you may deceive an outsider. We see now the psychological reason for this. Diplomatic lying will not go until diplomatists instead of treating with one another as members of alien groups consider themselves all as members of one larger group⁠—the League of Nations.

Moreover, one nation cannot injure another merely; the injury will be against the community, and the community of nations will look upon it as such. Under our present international system the attack of one nation on another is the same as the attack of one outlaw on another. But under a civilized international system, the attack of one individual on another is an attack on society and the whole society must punish it. The punishment, however, will not consist in keeping the offender out of the alliance. If the Allies win, Germany should not be punished by keeping her out of a European league; she must be shown how to take her place within it. And it must be remembered that we do not join a league of nations solely to work out our relations to one another, but to learn to work for the larger whole, for international values. Until this lesson is learned no league of nations can be successful.

Finally, the League of Nations is against the theory of the balance of power, but this has been already considered in the chapter on The Federal State.

To sum up all these particularist fallacies: live and let live can never be our international motto. Laissez-faire fails as ignominiously in international relations as within a single nation. Our new motto must be, Live in such manner that the fullness of life may come to all. This is “the ledge and the leap” for twentieth-century thought.

Organized cooperation is in the future to be the basis of international relations. We are international in our interests. We do not want an American education, an English education, a French education. “Movements” seek always an international society. We have international finance. Our standards of living are becoming internationalized. Socially, economically, in the world of thought, national barriers are being broken down. It is only in politics that we are national. This must soon change: with all these rapprochements we cannot be told much longer of fundamental differences between us which can be settled only by murdering each other.

People thought that Italy could not be united, that the duchies of Germany would never join. Cavour and Bismark had indeed no easy part. But if one hundred millions of people in Central Europe can be made to see the evils of separation, cannot others? With our greater facilities of communication, with our increased commercial intercourse and our increased realization of the interdependence of nations (a manufacturing nation cannot get along without the food-producing nations, etc.), this ought not now to be impossible. Or has the single state exhausted our political ability? Are we willing to acknowledge this? We have had very little idea yet of a community of nations. The great fault of Germany is not that she overestimates her own power of achievement, which is indeed marvellous, but that she has never yet had any conception of a community of nations. Let her apply all her own theory of the subordination of the individual to the whole to the subordination of Germany to an allied Europe, and she would be a most valuable member of a European league.

The group process thus shows us that a genuine community of nations means the correlation of interests, the development of an international ethics, the creation of an international will, the self-evolving of a higher loyalty, and above all and including all, the full responsibility of every nation for the welfare of every other.

With such an aim before us courts of arbitration seem a sorry makeshift. We are told that as individuals no longer fight duels but take their disputes into the courts, so nations must now arbitrate, that is, take their dispute to some court. But what has really ousted duels has not been the courts but a different conception of the relation between men; so what will do away with war will not be courts of arbitration, but a different conception of the relations between nations. We need machinery not merely for settling disputes but for preventing disputes from arising; not merely for interpreting past relations, but for giving expression to new relations; not merely to administer international law, but to make international law⁠—not a Hague court but an international legislature.

A community of nations needs a constitution, not treaties. Treaties are of the same nature as contract. Just as in internal law contract is giving way to the truer theory of community, so the same change must take place in international law. It is true that the first step must be more progressive treaties before we can hope for a closer union, but let us keep clearly before us the goal in order that in making these treaties they shall be such that they will open the way in time to a real federation, to an international law based not on “sovereign” nations.

We have already seen that it is the creation of a collective will which we need most in our social and political life, not the enforcing of it; it is the same with a league of nations⁠—we must create an international will. We want neither concession nor compromise. And a vague “brotherhood” is certainly not enough. As we have seen the group as the workshop for the making of the collective will, so we see that we cannot have an international will without creating a community of nations. Group psychology will revolutionize international law. The group gets its authority through the power it has in itself of integrating ideas and interests. No so-called collective will which is not a genuine collective will, that is, which is not evolved by this process, will have real authority; therefore no stable international relations are possible except those founded on the creation of an actual community of nations.

What interests us most in all the war literature is any proposed method of union. The importance of an international league as a peace plan is that you can never aim directly at peace, peace is what you get through other things. Much of the peace propaganda urges us to choose peace rather than war. But the decision between “war” or “peace” never lies within our power. These are mere words to gather up in convenient form of expression an enormous amount that is underneath. All sorts of interests compete, all sorts of ideas compete or join: if they can join, we have peace; if they must compete, we have war. But war or peace is merely an outcome of the process; peace or war has come, by other decisions, long before the question of peace or war ever arises.

All our hope therefore of future international relations lies, not in the ethical exhortations of the pacifists, nor in plans for an economic war, but in the recognition of the possibility of a community of nations.

In making a plea for some experiment in international cooperation, I remember, with humiliation, that we have fought because it is the easy way. Fighting solves no problems. The problems which brought on this war will all be there to be settled when the war ends. But we have war as the line of least resistance. We have war when the mind gives up its job of agreeing as too difficult.145 It is often stated that conflict is a necessity of the human soul, and that if conflict should ever disappear from among us, individuals would deteriorate and society collapse. But the effort of agreeing is so much more strenuous than the comparatively easy stunt of fighting that we can harden our spiritual muscles much more effectively on the former than the latter. Suppose I disagree with you in a discussion and we make no effort to join our ideas, but “fight it out.” I hammer away with my idea, I try to find all the weakest parts of yours, I refuse to see anything good in what you think. That is not nearly so difficult as trying to recognize all the possible subtle interweavings of thought, how one part of your thought, or even one aspect of one part, may unite with one part or one aspect of one part of mine etc. Likewise with cooperation and competition in business: cooperation is going to prove so much more difficult than competition that there is not the slightest danger of anyone getting soft under it.

The choice of war or peace is not the choice between effort and stagnation. We have thought of peace as the lambs lying down together after browsing on the consciousness of their happy agreements. We have thought of peace as a letting go and war as a girding up. We have thought of peace as the passive and war as the active way of living. The opposite is true. War is not the most strenuous life. It is a kind of rest-cure compared to the task of reconciling our differences. I knew a young business man who went to the Spanish war who said when he came back that it had been as good as going to a sanitarium; he had simply obeyed commands and had not made a decision or thought a thought since he left home. From war to peace is not from the strenuous to the easy existence; it is from the futile to the effective, from the stagnant to the active, from the destructive to the creative way of life.

If, however, peace means for you simply the abstinence from bloodshed, if it means instead of the fight of the battlefield, the fight of employer and employed, the fight of different interests in the legislature, the fight of competing business firms, that is a different matter. But if you are going to try to solve the problems of capital and labor, of competing business interests, of differing nations, it is a tougher job than standing up on the battlefield.

We are told that when the North Sea fishermen found that they were bringing flabby codfish home to market, they devised the scheme of introducing one catfish into every large tank of codfish. The consequent struggle hardened the flesh of the fish and they came firm to market. The conclusion usually drawn from all such stories is that men need fighting to keep them in moral condition. But what I maintain is that if we want to train our moral muscles we are devising a much harder job for them if we try to agree with our catfish than to fight him.

Civilization calls upon us to “Agree with thine adversary.” It means a supreme effort on our part, and the future of the world depends upon whether we can make this effort, whether we are equal to the cry of civilization to the individual man, to the individual nation. It is a supreme effort because it is not, as sometimes thought, a matter of feeling. To feel kindly, to desire peace⁠—no, we must summon every force of our natures, trained minds and disciplined characters, to find the methods of agreement. We may be angry and fight, we may feel kindly and want peace⁠—it is all about the same. The world will be regenerated by the people who rise above both these passive ways and heroically seek, by whatever hardship, by whatever toil, the methods by which people can agree.

What has this young twentieth century gone out to fight? Autocracy? The doctrine of the right of might? Yes, and wherever found, in Germany or among ourselves. And wherever found these rest on the consciousness of separateness. It is the conviction of separateness which has to be conquered before civilization can proceed. Community must be the foundation stone of the New State.

The history of modern times from the point of view of political science is the history of the growth of democracy; from the point of view of social psychology it is the history of the growth of the social consciousness. These two are one. But the mere consciousness of the social bond is not enough. Frenssen said of Jörn Uhl, “He became conscious of his soul, but it was empty and he had now to furnish it.” We have become conscious of a social soul, we have now to give it content. It is a long way from the maxim, “Religion is an affair between man and his Maker,” to the cry of Mazzini, “Italy is itself a religion,” but we surely today have come to see in the social bond and the Creative Will, a compelling power, a depth and force, as great as that of any religion we have ever known. We are ready for a new revelation of God. It is not coming through any single man, but through the men and men who are banding together with one purpose, in one consecrated service, for a great fulfilment. Many of us have felt bewildered in a confused and chaotic world. We need to focus both our aspirations and our energy; we need to make these effective and at the same time to multiply them by their continuous use. This book is a plea for the more abundant life: for the fullness of life and the growing life. It is a plea against everything static, against the idea that there need be any passive material within the social bond. It is a plea for a splendid progress dependent upon every splendid one of us. We need a new faith in humanity, not a sentimental faith or a theological tenet or a philosophical conception, but an active faith in that creative power of men which shall shape government and industry, which shall give form equally to our daily life with our neighbor and to a world league.