LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
[Correspondents are requested to keep their letters as brief as is reasonably possible. Signed letters are given a preference over those bearing a pseudonym, and the latter must be accompanied by the name and address of the author, which will be treated as confidential.—Ed. THE SPECTATOR]
WHAT COLLECTIVE SECURITY MEANS
Sin,—Mr. J. A. Spender implies that the Peace Front arrange- ments into which we are now entering are incompatible with collective security as hei etofore understood. He says that these recent arrangements are of the pre-War alliance order, "to which we have unfortunately been compelled to return at all events for the time being" as "an emergency mea- sure." He suggests that they are the "absolute antithesis" of the League system and that such antithesis must be kept in mind if misunderstandings are to be avoided.
I would suggest as a contrary consideration that far graver misun&rstanding arises from regarding the two methods of the Peace Front and Collective Security as mutually exclu- sive, and that this idea involves a confusion which as much as anything has contributed to the vacillation and indecision of our policy this last seven or eight years, to the failure of the collective principle and to the creation of the appalling danger of the present situation.
No Collective System can possibly be an effective instru- ment of peace unless it embodies the basic principle of the Peace Front—the principle that the power of the whole combi- nation is available for the defence of any member ; that an attack on one is an attack on all. It must, it is true, embody more than that, but if that much is absent then it will fail. Without it the whole idea of economic sanctions, for instance, becomes nonsense. For a group of States to say to a poten- tial aggressor, "We will apply economic sanctions, withhold from you the means of war," and then add, "But if you care to take those means by force from one of our weaker members we shall not aid him to resist you," is to reduce the whole system to a sham ; to make it a death-trap for all smaller Powers. It is, indeed, why the lesser Powers have with- drawn.
The League was an alliance based on the principle that aggression against any one member was a threat to the whole and should be resisted by the action of the group. Again and again we refused to apply that principle.
We have suddenly applied it in the case cf a group made up of Britain, France, Poland, Turkey, Greece, Rumania, and tomorrow, we hope, Russia, with others, we hope, to follow. We now see that unless we are prepared to defend others we shall ultimately reach a position in which, allies necessary to our own defence having been eliminated one by one, we are unable to defend ourselves. What we refused to China in 1931 (before the rearmament of Germany ; before the Axis ; with Russia actively and the United States diplomatically support- ing China), we give to Poland in 1939 after the rearmament of Germany, the formation of the Axis and before we are sure of the co-operation of Russia. In none of the cases of League failure would the discharge of our obligations have involved greater risks than those we have assumed for Poland. Indeed, had we been prepared to take for Manchuria or Abyssinia a tithe of the risk we are now taking for the defence of Poland, the League would never have failed.
Mr. Spender suggests that the present Peace Front arrange- ments are temporary. Does this mean that when the crisis is over we shall withdraw our guarantees from Poland, Russia, Turkey, &c.? If that is so, Germany has merely to bide her time. The pressure of the totalitarian States will plainly be renewed just so soon as the new collective defence disinte- grates.
Mr. Spender says: Groups of Powers threatening one another may obtain a respite from war by balancing their armed forces ; but that is a very different thing from their working together to keep the peace .. . an object of endeavour to be kept clear and distinct in our thoughts.
This is a completely false antithesis.
In a certain Western territory of the United States to- wards the end of the last century, a conflict—one of many— arose between a group of cattle barons on the one hand and settlers on the other, over questions of fencing, water-holes, &c. The settlers demanded a judgement by the courts or by
arbitration. The cattle men scornfully refused and proceeded in various ways to drive out the settlers one by one. The settlers combined, stood firm, and finally compelled the cattle men to accept the rule of the courts. Peace as well as justice was secured. Had the settlers been willing to submit to the violence of the cattle men, neither law nor negotiation would have had a chance. The force of the settlers was not the alternative to negotiation, to "working together for peace." It was the indispensable condition of any negotiation at all. To resist violation of the law is often the condition sine qua non of its maintenance. The settlers, in fact, were putting their force behind the law.
But assume that the settlers in combining to resist the cattle men had also said: "No arbitration, no courts; we shall impose our verdict when we have defeated the cattle mm." Then their force would not have been a force behind the law, merely behind the claim to be their own judges in their own cause ; and their victory would not have brought peace, for the cattle men, too, had their rights.
In both cases we had one alliance confronting another. In the former case one of the groups stood for a principle—third- party judgement—which it was prepared to offer to the other as well as to abide by ; in the latter case each would have stood for a principle—a claim to be its own judge—which by its very terms it denied to the other. In the one case power is used to vindicate equality of right, in the other to deny equality of right.
And that, not the degree of universality in either of the alliances, indicates the difference between the alliance of the pre-War type and that demanded by Collective Security.—
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