THE NEW ORDERS
COWE still unite, we still strive mightily," said President Roosevelt in his Armistice Day speech, "to preserve intact that New Order of the ages founded by the fathers of America." It happened that on the same day the Governments of Poland and Czecho-Slovakia spontaneously issued a declaration stating their determination after the war to enter as independent and sovereign States into "a closer political and economic association, which would become the basis of a new order in Central Europe and a guarantee of its stability." These two confident affu-mations of a New Order already in process of becoming or about to begin are based in the one case upon a conviction acted upon as long ago as 1776, when the American Declaration of Independence was signed and published, and in the other upon a hope not more forlorn of sweeping away another absolute tyranny and setting up in its place an association of free nations.
The New Order proclaimed by Mr. Roosevelt is an ideal that has never been absent from the minds of men since the Revolution in England, the Declaration of Independence in America, and the more general ferment caused by the Revolution in France. It is one that has profoundly affected the destinies of all the democracies and has influenced countries which were not democracies. The institutions that have grown up under its inspiration have been imitated, sometimes successfully, sometimes un- successfully, and efforts have been made to extend some of their characteristics from the national to the inter- national sphere. The New Order, as conceived in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, is still in process of creation, still imperfect, still struggling against older ideas feudal or barbaric in their origin, and now threatened by them, but capable of arising stronger than ever when the debris of the old order, shattered by the war, is intelligently swept away.
But the devil can quote Scripture. A New Order has also been proclaimed by Japan in the Far East. A New Order has been proclaimed by Hitler in Europe. Earlier still Fascism arrived with fair promises, undertaking to sweep away the abuses of democracy and to set up a new order based on centralised government, on authority sub- duing the divergent wills of individuals to the despotic will of one. The absolute power doctrine, its scope at first restricted to a single State, could not stop there. It is the nature of absolute power to seek more power, to force its " order " not only upon one people but on more and more peoples. The "New Order" declared by Japan required that China, accepting a puppet Government, should become subservient to Japan; it required that Far Eastern territories coveted by Japan should be brought into a relationship with her which would enable her to control their economy. It simply meant the expansion of Japan 'and the exploitation of the Far East in her interest.
Hider, too, can talk Scripture, even if he knows it only in corrupt versions. After France had fallen under his control, when he sought to woo Spain to his side and persuade Balkan countries to submit without fighting, he, ,too, began to talk of a New Order—the New Order in gurope. It was to be a splendid state of affairs on the Continent whose complete realisation was only hindered by the perversity of Great Britain. In the proclamation of this Millennium nothing was said about the superiority and supremacy of the Nordic races and Germans in par- ticular, about the inferiority of less worthy races, the suppression of the Jews, or the German ambition to find room to live in Europe at the expense of those who already lived there. It said nothing about the treatment of the Poles and Czecho-Slovaks, described by their provisional Governments—" the expulsions of the native population from large areas of its secular homelands, the banishing of hundreds of thousands of men and women to the interior of Germany. as forced labour, mass executions and deporta- tions to concentration camps, the plundering of public and private property, the extermination of the intellectual class and of all manifestations of cultural life." If Hitler triumphed he might succeed in imposing a German order upon the whole of Europe as Rome did upon the Roman Empire, sustained by force, and based upon submission to the conquerors' rules, but without the Roman law, without the Roman tolerance, without any Roman con- ception of a lus Gentium—without anything whatever for the conquered to compensate them for the loss of liberty.
The New Order of Hitler is a myth. The New Order of President Roosevelt is something that already exists for part of the world, even though its operation is not yet perfected, and is capable of expansion in the spirit in which the Polish and Czecho-Slovak Governments desire to expand it. Mr. Roosevelt is right in going back to those earlier conceptions of liberty formulated in the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self- evident," it ran, "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." Little More than this is needed for the complete statement of all that is funda- mental in democracy. If its ideals are far from fulfilment, if there are still inequality of opportunity and grave barriers to the pursuit of happiness, none the less it is a fact that institutions exist in Britain, America and elsewhere for giving effect to its principles, and that popular sympathy in the democratic countries is in tune with its humane doctrines and is horrified when they are palpably violated. It implies also an Order which demands to be• realised in the international as well as the national sphere. Great Britain and the American Colonies drifted into war and separated because the reactionary Government of George III was incapable of realising that democracy could be exported. The British Commonwealth of Nations has remained intact and indissoluble because Britain had learnt its lesson, and because self-governing countries, united- under the Empire, cannot desire to relinquish the advantages of their unique association. It is the deep-lying conviction of these "self-evident truths," asserted in the Declaration, that holds the British Empire together, compelling its nations to unite for the defence of their " Order " in war as in peace. It is the same awareness of the possession of a common "Order " which already exists and must be upheld that now draws the United States to the support of Great Britain. The maintenance of this, an already existing relationship between States, which presupposes peace and increaing future co-operation to enable men to live "in pursuit of happiness," is one essential of our "war aims "; and the second is similar—its extension to other States. The Pc:Ish- Czecho-Slovak declaration is entirely in accord, prom ing "closer political and economic association" co-operation based on "respect for the freedom of nations, the principles of democracy, and the dignity of man. President Roosevelt's promise of a New Order starts then, not from the imaginary and the Utopian, but from an a, tuality—the Order that already exists in the United States of America and in the British Commonwealth of Nations, powerful combinations which are now treading the same path together, united by inner necessity. That the countries of Europe, too, will rise to the opportunity of braking down barriers in a more closely knitted world" Is a possibility that the very destruction of the present war, the smashing up of existing organisations by German brutality, may make more realisable. In this terrific struggle against the re-emergent forces of the Dark Ages Britain, the Dominions and also the United States stand fast, bound together by laws of their being which transcend the policies of a moment—by their history, their institutions, their nature and consequent resolve to make a still better thing of democracy. By their example and leadership the countries that remain intact and un- tarnished will lend their help in constructing a real order out of the chaos left by the dictators.
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