MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
AT Brighton on Monday the Archbishop of Canterbury gave an excellent address upon the subject of law and force. It is a subject which in this country and in the United States has led during the last twenty-three years to much confusion of thought. We have in fact been faced with the eternal paradox that whereas violence is among the greatest of all human ills, it can, in the last resort, only be restrained by greater violence. Dr. Temple urged us " to make up our minds " about this paradox. " Force," he said, " must either be renounced altogether—as the pacifists urged—or subjected to the control of law." In other words, power was neces- sary to secure that force was never lawlessly used. In national or internal affairs this obvious truth has for generations been part of the accustomed furniture of our minds. In international affairs—a realm in which security becomes a matter of far greater complexity— the relations between law and power have been sadly misconceived. Since the First German War the theory has gained wide currency that power is in itself an evil thing, and men have winced away from the horrid anomaly that in order to defeat evil one must
commit evil. I do not regard this misconception as inevitable. What has really happened is that we have lost simultaneously a correct theory of law and a correct theory of power. We have lost in the first place what Dr. Temple called " a common standard," or in other words that theory of international conduct to which all civilised nations were expected to conform. Until the present century the general conscience of Europe was in fact alive to certain standards of international behaviour, and had in fact experienced the correct employment of power. The old tradition of the Roman Empire survived in the moral leadership of the Papacy and in later years in the vaguer but still operative theory of " The Concert of Europe." Certain common standards were recognised and to a great extent maintained. One of the major purposes of this Second German War is to re-establish such common standards.
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We had forgotten also that these standards must in the last resort be reinforced by power. It is not sufficiently realised, either in this country or in the world, that the Pax Britannica which exercised its influence from 1815 to 1914 was on the whole a highly beneficial authority. Our command of the seas was in those days so un- challenged that we were in fact enabled to exercise a decisive vote in all European controversies. There were moments when we hesitated ; there were moments when we applied our power for self- centred purposes ; but it was always there. It represinted in a care- less and unrealised form an ultimate police force by which, in extreme cases, the rule of law could be enforced. Nor in those days was this enforcement so very difficult. It sufficed for us to send a few ships to Bezika Bay, or even a gunboat up the Yangtze, to alter and affect the whole proportions of contemporary power. Nor is it correct to say that we abused that privilege unduly. Europe is all too apt to forget our gestures of unselfishness. We were not unduly greedy in 1815, even as we were not unduly greedy in 1918. We have had our moments of enlightenment and moderation. We surrendered the Dutch East Indies even as we gave the Ionian Islands to Greece. It would be very advantageous to us today did we still possess Corfu or the fine harbour of Cephallonia. Nor is it fitting to forget that during the hundred years through which we possessed and maintained this domination we did not arouse, as Germany has aroused, the united resentment of the smaller Powers. The truth of this assertion can be tested by an obvious question. Supposing that some terrific invention, such as the atomic bomb, were to place supreme power in the hands of some belligerent, to which countries would the world least unwillingly entrust so horrible a force? Not to Germany or to Japan. In all certitude, if the world could vote on such an issue, they would vote for the United States and ourselves. And that surely means that the Anglo-Saxons are the only peoples who could be trusted not to use force lawlessly.
It is unnecessary to be self-righteous on the subject. Our use of so tremendous a weapon would not prove beneficial solely owing to the fact that our standards of conduct are more generous or humane. There are practical reasons also which would ensure that such power, if entrusted to the United States or to ourselves, would not be unduly abused. Apart from their very real idealism, the American people are not as yet a domineering race. And we, with our far-flung communications, with our vital organs and arteries strung across the Seven Seas, are too vulnerable to provoke the world-wide resentment which oppression would cause. The whole basis of our international theory is contained in the famous Memorandum written in the first decade of this century by that acute realist, Sir Eyre Crowe. He contended that our power must always be conditioned by our vulnerability ; that whereas our exposed position as an island off the peninsula of Europe, an island dependent for its subsistence on imports from overseas, must inevitably oblige us to oppose the domination of Europe by any single Power or group of Powers, yet our interests were indissolubly wedded to the interests of the smaller countries. For him it was " a law of Nature " that British policy should be directed towards the strengthening of the rights and prosperity of weaker peoples. How different in effect is this theory from the undiluted smash-and-grab policy enunciated recently by Goering and Goebbels! "We occupy territories," said Goebbels, " in order to organise them for ourselves." " Whoever starves," said Goering, " it will not be Germans."
The days of our unchallenged hegemony may well be over. We shall not possess either the resources or the desire to return to the
Pax Britannica of the nineteenth century. Yet the problem of law and power must still be solved in something like the same terms. It is customary in these days to assume that the Covenant of the League of Nations was little more than a day-dream, the mists of which melted as soon as the fierce sun of violence rose above the horizon. That, surely, is an unintelligent assumption. The Covenant remains one of the wisest documents ever contrived by the mind of civilised man. It was not the Covenant that failed ; it was the democracies of the world who failed to understand its purpose, its implications or its necessity. The transient popularity which the Covenant acquired in this country was due to the illu- sion that it implied a relaxation of effort, to the fiction that it would provide security without self-sacrifice. The Covenant, even in its early form, could certainly have preserved us from the present catastrophe had it, in every detail, been rigidly, enforced. It was not the Covenant which betrayed us ; it was we ourselves who betrayed the Covenant. The road which led us astray from that great Charter is marked today by many cenotaphs—Corfu, Man- chukuo, Abyssinia, Spain. It is not necessary today to contrive a better Covenant ; it is necessary only to consider the means by which the old Covenant can be enforced.
The Archbishop, on Monday, referred to the aeroplane as an error in human inventiveness. May it not prove in the end that this terrifying weapon of war is, in fact, the solution of the problem of law and power? Is it not conceivable that in the aeroplane we possess the police force which is essential to the maintenance of law? Is it not conceivable that if an international air force were placed at the disposal of the Covenant, if no single nation were allowed to possess an air-force of its own, that with slight expenditure, with comparatively feasible control, it could be rendered impossible for any country, however overwhelming might be its fleets or armies, to defy the law of nations or the conscience of mankind? I regret that so much fine thinking should be devoted to the elaboration of new Covenants, of new institutions, of new federal ideas. The old Covenant, with but slight modifications, should provide the necessary law. What is really required is to devise means for its rapid and unchallenged enforcement.
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