A PROGRESSIVE POLICY : III. FOREIGN AFFAIRS
By LORD EUSTACE PERCY
WHAT is realism in foreign policy ? International relations are made up of two elements : the inten- tions of statesmen and the needs of their peoples. Diplomacy is mainly concerned with the first, but diplomacy is not foreign policy. In these days the personal policies of statesmen are important only in so far as they are the individualized expression of popular wants. The whole structure of the League of Nations is based on the calculation that, given adequate machinery for " international co-operation " in the adjustment of real national interests, any temporary and irrelevant ambitions of statesmen can be checked by a very moderate use of collective sanctions. Such sanctions—Article 16 and the rest—are important because, so long as human nature is what it is, wanton aggression will remain a danger. But no author of the Covenant ever dreamed that a system of sanctions could be devised strong enough to enforce the permanent renunciation by any nation of its substantial needs. The lesson of the League's failures in Manchuria and at the Disarmament Conference is not that we must perfect the system of sanctions, but rather that where a nation pleads its strict legal rights without reference to the needs and grievances of its neighbours, it may get judgement in its favour, but cannot rely on having the judgement enforced. That is as it should be, for a logical system of sanctions means a Holy Alliance. But, if we are not to be driven back on logical sanctions, we must work the alternative system of international co-operation for all it is worth. That is the only realism. Both in Europe and the Pacific, we must make an honest attempt to estimate real national needs.
Now, neither Disarmament nor Treaty Revision is a major national need per se. When, within national frontiers, chronic unemployment seems associated with a chronic surplus of productive power, battleship pro- grammes may be no more a " burden " than programmes of public works. The real national need in this field is security from attack, and no nation really regards collective sanctions as anything more than a welcome reinforcement of its own self-armament. Competition in armaments is dangerous, but almost invariably such competition is a symptom of unsatisfied national needs. There are only two exceptions to this rule today : the suppressed, but still lingering, difference between the British Empire and the United States, commonly known as the Freedom of the Seas, and what may be called the Air Raid Scare in the " Locarno area " of Western Europe. These fears, disturbing otherwise settled friend- ships or accepted frontiers, need special treatment. The moment has perhaps come when the first may be removed by a special extension of belligerent rights at sea in the only kind of war where the action of the British Navy has been seriously challenged by American jurists—a war against an outlaw. The second calls for joint . action between the Western " Locarno " nations, with the assistance of Holland, which might extend to the creation of a neutral zone and a joint air police, and to the joint control of all air traffic in Western Europe. A far-reaching regional agreement of this kind is a practical proposition, while schemes for a League Air Force are only an ambitious dream. But land armaments in Central and Eastern Europe, and naval armaments in the Mediterranean and the Pacific, are not susceptible of any such direct treatment, for here the real problem with which we have to deal is not competition in armaments but conflict of national needs. Nor can those needs be met by Treaty Revision. Such modifications of the Versailles and St. Germain territorial settlements as the most sanguine revisionists might hope to attain by peaceful means would, at best, remove some incon- veniences and allay some heart-bumings. They could not sensibly relieve that sense of constriction in Central Europe which, now as before 1914, is the real danger to peace. They could not create a settled balance of power in the Mediterranean. They could not solve Japan's population problem. These, and such as these, are the real problems of foreign policy.
In fact, the main cause of war is so obvious that it can hardly be stated without platitude. States become warlike when they can find no other sufficient outlet for the energy of their peoples than territorial aggrandize- ment. The nineteenth century offered two great alter- natives : international trade and individual migration.
Both these outlets have now been closed. The con- sequent damming back of human energy is acutely felt in all countries, but it may be seen most clearly in the official youth organizations of Italy and Germany, those great reservoirs of power and idealism which find no way to discharge themselves into the working- life of the world. Yet the simple but enormous problem of employment, though it is the dominant preoccupation of every nation, hardly enters into any international discussion of high policy. International debt conferences and negotiations for trade agreements between particular nations touch the fringes of it ; the Economic Conference might have reached it if it had not lost its way in currency arguments ; but the problem itself is tucked away in the International Labour Office, where governments are only allowed to play a minor, and therefore usually an obstructionist, part. Here, as so often in the policies of governments, the obvious has been ignored in order that the abstruse might be patiently investigated. But let us be warned in time. European dictatorships are, in their essence, a popular reaction towards the obvious, and the real danger of war today lies in a popular revolt against the indirect approach to burning problems, so dear to the official mind.
In an article like this one can do no more than enter this general plea for, so to speak, a change of venue in international discussions. A programme for such dis- cussions cannot be formulated here. Nor is the subject one, at this moment, for any full-dress conference, but rather for quiet preliminary exploration with the nations most affected. Yet even this general plea may suggest at least a new attitude towards those comparatively superficial commotions in international affairs with which diplomacy is chiefly concerned. To smooth over such commotions by non-aggression pacts and the like is all to the good ; but such pacts can have only a temporary value. The attitude required of every statesman today who desires peace is that he should refuse to treat unem- ployment in any country as a matter of purely national concern. And this country has a special contribution to make to this change of venue. The British Empire has, on the whole, shown most statesmanship in dealing with its own national employment problems, and it has, for that reason, the duty of leadership. But we have hitherto neglected to mobilize the Empire in the field of foreign. policy. In the Dominions, particularly in Canada, interest in foreign affairs is growing with extra- ordinary rapidity ; and with it is growing a demand for leadership from London which the National Govern- ment has done little to satisfy. Unity of policy in the British Empire is the essential step to agreement on policy with the United States, and the establishment of such unity should be the main aim of this Jubilee year.
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