TOPICS OF THE DAY.
PRESIDENT WILSON'S VISIT AND ITS SEQUELS. THE heartiest greetings of the whole British race go to President Wilson and the most sincere wishes for the success of his historic mission. The fact that Mr. Wilson has left the United States during his term of office as President, and has thus created a precedent, makes his visit to Europe • unique incident. As the circumstances are exceptional, tio is the act by which the President marks his sense of the occasion. Legalists and political opponents of the President in his own country may find reasons for doubting the wisdom of his self-appointed task, but with these objections we have o sort of concern. We are confident that the one feeling Of British people is pleasure and gratification at Mr. Wilson's visit. They are conscious that his personal opinion will have a very great deal to do with the approaching settlement, and they are delighted that this should be so. Further, they feel that since this is so, it is very much better that Mr. Wilson should be where the discussions are taking place than thousands 'of miles away at the end of a cable or in the neighbourhood of n wireless installation. It was not to be supposed that Mr. Wilson would descend from the high symbolic position which he occupies as the Chief Magistrate of the United States to enter regularly into the arena of Peace discussions, and give and take the hard exchanges of round-table bargaining. But he will be in the very near foreground ; both at Pans and Versailles he will be the inspirer and sanctioner of every- thing that is done in the name of the United States.
In all speculation as to the line that Mr. Wilson will take a great deal is being said here about the very important question of the "Freedom of the Seas." It will be remembered that in the President's famous fourteen points this expression has the honour of the second place. It is not to be wondered at that the whole problem of sea policy should figure so pro- minently in the minds of Englishmen, because we are all profoundly conscious that without the British Navy. Germany would have won the war. The British Navy was not only "the sure shield," as the King called it, of the Alliance, but the cement which held the whole Alliance together. Some Englishmen—let us face the facts squarely—have a misgiving that the point of view of the United States about sea-power is irreconcilable with their own ; and they are afraid that President Wilson, with all his majestic power of words, his intellectual penetration, and his force of ratiocination, may urge what is regarded as the traditional American doctrine of sea policy against the traditional British doctrine. Naturally there is some cause on the surface for such anxiety, because the opposition to our age-long British policy has habitually taken the form of asserting the rights of Neutrals. Now the United States, as a Power standing normally in grand isolation from Vie quarrels of the Old World, has very naturally become accustomed to act as the representative of Neutral Powers. Here then, it may be said—and by some persons is actually being said—is an inevitable clash between the protagonists of traditional rival policies.
Before we go any further, however, let us say with all the emphasis possible that in our opinion there is not only no cause of serious difference between ourselves and the United States, but no possibility of misunderstanding, if only we keep clearly before us the imperative need of deep and lasting friendship between the two nations. That friendship, to our way of thinking, is the pivot upon wbich the whole future of the world will turn. If the Americans and ourselves remain not merely in amity, but in the most intimate and constant co-operation in living up to an ideal standard in our relations with other nations, and (so far as it may fall to us) in our management of the affairs of the world, the dangerous aspects of international dealings which have been so familiar in the past can never appear seriously again. The principles of America and the Bntish Empire are identical ; they bear the impress of the Anglo-Saxon code. It is an amazing achieve- ment on the part of America to have coaxed and developed the Anglo-Saxon, and in the best sense the Puritan, ethos of the early Colonists through many stages and vicissitudes, and finally to have imposed it upon a nation of a hundred millions of people who are only too glad to be absorbed by it and to profess allegiance to it. The task before the British and American nations is fortunately very simple as things are, for we have only to be true to ourselves in order to be true . to each other. If this great nucleus of a League of Nations remains in operative being, as we confidently believe it will, no power of evil can prevail against it. Every other good thing that we desire in discussions about Leagues of Nations and so forth will follow as a matter of course. For our part, we are as certain as one can humanly be certain of anything that Mr. Wilson has this vision continually before him. Be may want more and greater things, but he does not and cannot want less. Is it not then ridiculous to fancy that Mr. Wilson has it in mind to do something rash and unconsidered which would be sure to antagonize the vast majority of the most serious-thinking and most practical-minded Englishmen ? To fancy such a thing is a gross injustice to Mr. Wilson, who throughout the war, and during the negotiations which pre- ceded the entry of his country into the war, proved himself above all things a wise and prudent man, one who had a deep-rooted sense of responsibility in dealing with large questions and in considering the earnest convictions of his fellow-men. It may be rash to prophesy in most circum- stances, but on this occasion there is no rashness at all ; Mr. Wilson will of course behave as the very reasonable and careful man he is. The last thing he will do will be to fly in a tantrum of idealism into extreme courses of which the immediate attractiveness veils the ultimate danger.
The phrase "the freedom of the seas" has been used in so many contrary senses and with so much looseness that quite able men sometimes exclaim that they do not know what it means. Let us say, therefore, in a very few words what British naval policy has been and what it has meant to us. We have not space, of course, to go into details, and our words must be in every sense a summary. Great Britain has aimed at sea-power for the simple reason that it was her only means of defending herself. Her sea-power does not mean, and has not meant, any challenge to any other nation. All nations are free to trade wherever they please. In times of peace there has always been absolute freedom of the seas. There are no ports in the United Kingdom or in any part of the British Empire where foreign ships are not free to enter and to load or to unload cargoes. A foreign ship may go into the Mersey empty, load a cargo, and convey it to Southampton or to any other British port. No country in the world has upheld the freedom of the seas more thoroughly than the British Empire has upheld it. The United States has her own shipping laws, and, as most of our readers probably know, it is not possible for foreign ships to engage in American coastal trade. Great Britain while defending herself, however, has incidentally performed the service to the whole world of policing. the seas and 'keeping them free from pirates and other pests. So far there can be no question about the freedom. It is when we come to the condi- tions of war that the rights of Neutrals are asserted voci- ferously. In the act of waging war for the purpose of defending herself Great Britain has had to capture the private property of Neutrals at sea, and to establish blockades which prevented the delivery of Neutral goods on enemy shores. Over and over again codes have been drawn up in attempts to distin- guish between cargoes which would be useful to the enemy for military purposes and those which would not be useful. Hence the complicated doctrines of "Contraband of War." But we have finally reached a situation in which it is necessary to recognize that virtually everything is contraband of war in the sense that everything, however innocent it might have been held to be in former days, does in some degree or other enable the enemy to carry on war. The truth is that in the days before the present great war no one had any conception of what war would mean when it became a huge national effort in which every kind of resource, every kind of aptitude, every kind of article, whether food or clothes or metal or paper, would be used towards the efficacy of military opera- tions. To weaken the power of our Navy in cutting off the supplies of an enemy is a short and sure way of enabling our enemy to win.
We do not know precisely what Lincoln would have done If he had been British Prime Minister in this war, but we feel pretty sure. His own declaration of blockade against the Confederates in the American Civil War was of an astoundingly sweeping nature. Moreover, he had not really the power to do what he threatened ; and yet it was provided in inter- national understandings that a blockade could not be declared without the proper means to maintain it. We may guess therefore that if Lincoln had managed our affairs for us in this war, he would have dealt with the rights of Neutrals in a far more drastic fashion than either Mr. Asquith or Mr. Lloyd George did. As for the general American standpoint, it is different from Lincoln's, but is sufficiently well known. At the Hague Conference in 1907 the United States proposed that "the private property of citizens of the signatory Powers except contraband of war shall be exempt at sea from capture or seizure by the armed ships or military forces of the said Powers." Of course Mr. Wilson has expanded that doctrine, and has spoken of "the absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas outside territorial waters alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants." What Germany has meant by "freedom of the seas," and by her argument that the immunity of private property at sea should be recognized in time of war, may be very tersely described. She meant that the British Navy should be deprived of the power to wage war. That would have been very convenient for Germany. She never mentioned what in all logic is the parallel case of the freedom of the land. With her gigantic military machine she was to be free to do what she liked—to use that terrible weapon in the most oppressive possible ways—and no objection was to be raised. The explanation is that Germany had, at all events when she began the war, a supreme Army but she had not a supreme Navy. She wanted freedom for her own particular means of fighting and a denial of freedom for the British means.
Suppose that the best that men are dreaming of happens in the settlement ; suppose that it is possible to erect a perfect League of Nations with everything in working order—it would still be necessary to have a supreme naval force to control the seas and to defeat any such uprising of evil as Germany planned. The League of Nations must be master in its own house. It cannot be contemplated that the Navy of the League of Nations should be robbed of its power to enforce its will. Yet that is what the freedom of the seas would mean if it were interpreted in any but the British sense. We cannot have our minds too clear on this point. Every- thing depends upon it. In the degree that Mr. Wilson believes in the League of Nations, in the same degree must he believe in its having the means to exercise its authority. All we say is that the British Empire should not be asked to cease making the seas safe till the task can be confidently committed to somebody else. And now as to the form in which this matter will be dis- cussed. We earnestly hope that the Government will be extremely careful about the arrangements of the Peace programme. We hold very strongly that the first thing is for the Allies to settle among themselves the terms of Peace which will be imposed upon the Germans—not negotiated with the Germans. Discussion with the Germans will be necessary on a great many details, but those details will have reference solely to the manner in which the terms imposed by us will be carried out. In this respect we are bound to listen to the Germans, if only for our own convenience. When all that is finished, the great Peace Conference will take 'place, and to this, as we hope, Neutrals, but not Germans, will be invited. The Allies and the Neutrals will work out the details of the new Grand Alliance of the World ; in other words, the League of Nations. The League of Nations would of course have power to draw up the conditions under which Germany, either in part or in whole, would be admitted to membership. Naturally Germany would never be admitted till she had paid her whole indemnity ; that is to say, till she could come to the League with perfeetly clean hands. On the other hand, parts of Austria and new nations like Poland could be ad- mitted at once. Now we come again to the freedom of the seas. It seems to us that there must be a perfectly clear understanding throughout that this question is to be dealt with by the League, and that it cannot be dealt with at all until the League has been created. Until the League comes into existence the freedom of the seas will necessarily be an academic question ; it will be an academic question, that is to say, for the purposes of discussion, though • it is an intense reality for the British Empire. To be precise, the British Empire cannot dream of giving up its powers of ' self-defence until the weapon to be taken from its hands can be placed in other hands which are very strong and very safe. This is the common-sense of the whole matter, and it provides an unanswerable reason why the freedom of the seas should not be a subject of dis- cussion in the Peace terms. To mix it up with the Peace discussions would be a cardinal mistake.
We 'must now venture to say something about a matter very dear to Americans which we think ought to be brought prominently forward in the settlement. We have written throughout of sea-power as the primary concern of the British Empire, though we are well aware that, properly understood, its maintenance is of equal interest to Americans. Similarly, though the matter we are going to refer to is in form primarily an American interest, it is, properly understood, of no less interest for ourselves, and indeed for the whole world. We mean the Monroe Doctrine. This Doctrine has been of incalculable value in the past because it has simplified inter- national relations. By means of it virtually the whole of the Western World has been ruled out of dispute. By means of the Doctrine and its extensions the United States has said : "Hands off ! Nothing may be touched here." We sincerely hope that this salutary Doctrine will be accepted as part of the public law of the world. It ought to be duly formulated and confirmed with the sanction of all the parties to the settlement. Another matter which in our opinion ought to be dealt with in the settlement is slavery. May we appeal for Mr. Wilson's help ? Why should it not be clearly understood and laid down for all ages to come that no civilized nation—no nation which professes enlightenment by the very act of being a member of the League of Nations—should permit slavery within its own borders or within any territory which it rules ? By slavery we mean not only slavery in the full sense, but all those aliases of slavery which are often casuistically defended as not really being slavery at all. The probability of slavery in some form or other bemg continued or introduced is much greater in small States than in large States. It is the weak nations deriving a revenue from their Colonies which are under the temptation to depend upon what they consider the cheapest form of labour.
To sum up, there is nothing to fear, but everything to hope for, from Mr. Wilson's visit. The Germans will never succeed in making bad blood between Great Britain and the United States, though no doubt they are trying to do so. Our friendship is a fact, and so it shall continue. How much the greatest thing it is that ever happened ! "—to borrow the words of Fox about the taking of the Bastille. Failing to make trouble between Great Britain and America, the Germans will doubtless try to make trouble in the United States. They will try to set Republicans and Democrats at one another's throats—very likely about the freedom of the seas. But American politics is a subject which, as we have already said, it would be improper for us to deal with. If the Americans are aware of the danger, they will certainly be able to guard against it.
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