A TRUE POLICY OF PEACE
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Sta,—I do not know whether you will be willing to print a postscript to the excellent letter from Viator, but the subject is so important that no effort should be spared to make it understood. Politics, as taught in England and America, is an empirical science. It is based on experience, not oil any abstract- theory. But this is not the Continental view. On the Continent, and especially in France, the theory pro- pounded by Austin, that every law requires to be supported by the power to compel obedience, is widely accepted.
It is, in fact, a theory widely field by most men who regard Society from the standpoint of the Code Napoleon. But the conflicting theories must be judged by evidence—the evidence of experience, and there is ample evidence on which to form is judgment. The Congress of Vienna created a League of Nations of thirty-eight independent States known as the German Confederation. Art. 63 of the Vienna Act engaged the States to defend not only Germany, but each individual State, and guaranteed all of them their possessions.
In 1864 a dispute arose with Denmark respecting Schleswig- Holstein, the King of Denmark being a member of the German Federation as Duke of Holstein. For the purposes of our enquiry it matters not who was right in the dispute—the essential point is that the German Diet, by a majority of one, declared Federal Execution, that is, " sanctions " against Denmark, and Holstein was occupied by Saxons and Hano- verians, Schleswig was subsequently conquered by Prussians and Austrians. The war of 1864 produced the war of 1866, and the war of 1866 produced the war of 1870-71, whilst the war, or rather the Peace, following the war of 1870, was one of the causes of the war of 1914. Here we have a chain of wars all starting from a single case of " sanctions" in a most complicated dispute.
Now let us examine the evidence in support of the case for arbitration without "sanctions." In the appendix to his book on International Tribunals, 1904, the late Dr. Evans Darby gave 471 "Instances of International Settlements, involving the application of the Principles of International Arbitration," occurring during the nineteenth century alone. There was no "sanction" behind these settlements, but they secured peace.
Surely this evidence justifies the refusal of the authors of the American constitution to permit the inclusion of coercive powers in their Fundamental Law, and American as well as European experience, justifies the second Article of the Kellogg Pact, which reads as follows :—
"The high contracting parties agree that the settlement or solution of all disputes or conflicts of whatever nature, or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them shall never be sought except by pacific means."
In face of this evidence we may confidently say that we do not promote peace by undertaking to go to war, that we do not stop a fight by joining in it ourselves', and we do not secure peace by subsidizing a belligerent.
Our true policy is to walk hand in hand with the United States, whose statesmen have shown the greatest wisdom in their attitude to this question and to join with them in a refusal to sanction war for any purpose or on any pretext, or to adopt engagements which bind us to place our forces or our Treasury at the disposal of an alien assembly, with an alien mentality and alien interests.—I am, Sir, &c.,
Studzcell Lodge, Droxford, Hants. GRAHAM BOWER.
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