BOOKS.
THE PEACE NEGOTIATIONS.*
WE are not going to argue at length whether Mr. Lansing ought or ought not to have written his book. He no doubt wrote and published because he thought it was of real importance to his own country and to the world at large that light should be thrown upon the doings of the Paris Conference. That was per se a good motive. All the same it would have been better to have respected that implied oath of secrecy which is in all great affairs, and especially in foreign matters binds all sub- ordinate instruments. Without that implied vow how could it be possible to regulate the business of the world ? If, however, we can forgive the breach of a rule which should bind like that of the confessional, we must admit that Mr. Lansing's book is of deep interest.
The book is notable from two points of view. In the first place, it gives us a picture of President Wilson of the most amaz- ing kind. That, however, we shall leave our readers to peruse for themselves. It is a piece of incidental portraiture worthy of St. Simon. There is no intention to portray a character, but the result of the record is portentous. In the second place, it shows the dire consequences which ensue when the interests of a great nation, nay of all the nations, are reposed in the hands of a man who has the temperament not of the- statesman but of a highly strung man of letters possessed of the
• ThiPeabe N Notiatierie. Byldebett Lansbig. London: Constable. Roi.act.1
academic type of mind—the man who does not know how to act with or even to confer with, others ; who resents advice unless it is sympathetic or even adulatory ; who regards opposition not merely as an insult but as a personal wound. Mr. George Meredith describes such a man in his great novel. But though we laugh at Sir Willoughby Patterns, who could but weep if President Wilson wore the Egoist ?
As interesting as the portrait drawn of President Wilson is Mr. Lansing's analysis of the inherent evils of the Covenant. In these sections of the book Mr. Lansing proves himself strangely prescient. None has ever shown us so clearly the weak points of the League, of the dangers latent in the Guarantees or in the principle of self-determination. Self. determination was in truth, though President Wilson never seems to have known it, " the uncreating word." If it had been allowed to be applied in practice as it was in theory, it must have destroyed the League of Nations as soon as it was born. Here are Mr. Lansing's words on the point :-
"Among my notes I find one of December 20th, 1918— that is, one week after the American Commission landed in France—in which I recorded my thoughts concerning certain phrases or epigrams of the President which he had declared to be bases of peace, and which I considered to contain the seeds of future trouble. In regard to the asserted right of `self-determination' I wrote : When the President talks of " self-determination " what unit has he in mind ? Does ho mean a race, a territorial area, or a community ? Without a definite unit which is practical, application of this principlo is dangerous to peace and stability.' Ten days later (December 30th) the frequent repetition of the phrase in the Press and by members of certain groups and unofficial delegations, who were in Paris seeking to obtain hearings before the Conference, caused me to write the following : The more I think about the President's declaration as to the right of " self-determina- tion," the more convinced I am of the danger of putting such ideas into the minds of certain races. It is bound to be the basis of impossible demands of the Peace Congress and create) trouble in many lands. What effect will it have on the Irish, the Indians, the Egyptians, and the nationalists among the Boers ? Will it not breed discontent, disorder, and rebellion 7 Will not the Mohammedans of Syria and Palestine and possibly of Morocco and Tripoli rely on it ? How can it be harmonized with Zionism, to which the President is practically committed ? The phrase is simply loaded with dynamite. It will raise hopes which can never be realized. It will, I fear, cost thousands of lives. In the end it is bound to be discredited, to be called the dream of an idealist who failed to realize the danger until too late to check those who attempt to put the principle in force. What a calamity that thephrase was ever uttered 1 What misery it will cause ! ' Since the foregoing notes were written the impracticability of the universal or even of the general application of the principle has been fully demonstrated. Mr. Wilson resurrected the consent of the governed' regardless of the fact that history denied its value as a practical guide in modern political relations. He proclaimed it in the phrase of ' self-determination,' declaring it to be an imperative principle of action.' He made it one of the bases of peace. And yet, in the negotiations at Paris and in the formulation of the foreign policy of the United States, he has by his acts denied the existence of the right other than as the expression of a moral precept, as something to be desired, but generally unattainable in the lives of nations. In the actual conduct of affairs, in the practical and concrete relations between individuals and Governments, it doubtless exercises and should exercise a measure of influence, but it is not a controlling influence."
It is all very well to be able to write like this now. But remember that Mr. Lansing's memorandum was written in December, 1918. To the passage we have just quoted we must add another on the point of self-determination It may be pointed out as a matter of special interest to the student of American history that, if the right of ' self- determination' were sound in principle and uniformly applic- able in establishing political allegiance and territorial sovereignty, the endeavour of the Southern States to secede from the American Union in 1801 would have been wholly justifiable ; and, con- versely, the Northern States, in forcibly preventing secession and compelling the inhabitants of the States composing the Confederacy to remain under the authority of the Federal Government, would have perpetrated a great and indefensible wrong against the people of the South by depriving them of a right to which they were by .nature entitled. This is the logic of the application of the principle of self-determination ' to the political rights at issue in the American Civil War. I do not believe that there are many Americans of the present generation who would support the proposition that the South was inherently right and the North was inherently wrong in that great conflict. There were, at the time when the sections were arrayed in arms against each other, and there may still be, differences of opinion as to the legal right of secession under the Constitution of the United States, but the inherent right of a people of a State to throw off at will their allegiance to the Federal Union and resume complete sovereignty over the territory of the State was never urged as a conclusive argu- ment. It was the legal right and not the natural right which was emphasized as justifying those who took up arms in order to disrupt the Union. But if an American citizen denies that the principle of self-determination ' can be rightly applied to the affairs of his own country, how can he consistently maintain that it is a right inseparable from a true conoeption of political liberty and therefore universally applicable, just in principle, and wise from the practical point of view ? "
As to the question of the Guarantees—i.e., Article 10—Mr. Lansing writes with equal acumen. He saw at once the danger into which the President was not only himself rushing headlong, but was driving the world ; and he (Mr. Lansing) did his very best to remonstrate and to lead his chief to adopt safer courses. The Secretary of State realized that if there was to be an Association of Nations, they would want some sort of guarantee that they were not be to perpetually interfered with. At the same time he saw clearly that to give them what we may call a Holy Alliance guarantee—i.e., one like that against which
Castlereagh fought so determinedly—would ruin the pact because it would either be unsustainable or else create a world tyranny. Accordingly, Mr. Lansing, with great ingenuity, devised a system which provided what might be called a negative rather than an affirmative guarantee. We cannot, however, dwell in detail upon this matter, nor, again, show Mr. Lansing's dis- crimination in saying that if the idea of independence was to be preserved, you must preserve the idea of sovereignty, and that if sovereignty was to be preserved, it was essential to maintain the equality of States and not to emphasize, as has been done in the League of Nations, the difference between the big States and the little States. That difference, remember, under the Treaty and Covenant, is not merely one of degree but becomes one of kind.
Instead, however, of dealing with this matter, we desire to quote from the speech made by Mr. Lansing on December 5th, 1919, to the American Bar Association :- "While abstract justice cannot (under present conditions) be depended upon as a firm basis on which to constitute an international concord for the preservation of peace and good relations between nations, legal justice offers a common ground where the nations can meet to settle their controversies. No nation can refuse in the face of the opinion of the world to declare its unwillingness to recognize the legal rights of other nations or to submit to the judgment of an impartial tribunal a dispute involving the determination of such rights. The moment, however, that we go beyond the clearly defined field of legal justice we enter the field of diplomacy where national interests and ambitions are to-day the controlling factors of national action. Concession and compromise are the chief agents of diplomatic settlement instead of the impartial applica- tion of legal justice which is essential to a judicial settlement. Furthermore, the two modes of settlement differ in that a judicial settlement rests upon the precept that all nations, whether great or small, are equal; but in the sphere of diplomacy the inequality of nations is not only recognized, but unquestion- ably influences the adjustment of international differences. Any change in the relative power of nations, a change which is continually taking place, makes more or less temporary diplomatic settlements, but in no way affects a judicial settle- ment. However, then, international society may be organized for the future, and whatever machinery may be set up to minimize the possibilities of war, I believe that the agency which may be counted upon to function with certainty is that which develops and applies legal justice. Every other agency, regardless of its form, will be found, when analysed, to be diplomatic in character and subject to those impulses and purposes which generally affect diplomatic negotiations. With a full appreciation of the advantage to be gained for the world st large through the common consideration of a vexatious international question by a body representing all nations, we ought not to lose sight of the fact that such consideration and the action resulting from it are essentially diplomatic in nature. It is, in brief, the transference of a dispute in a particular case from the capitals of the disputants to the place where the delegates of the nations assemble to deliberate together on matters which affect their common interests. It does not— and this we should understand—remove the question from the processes of diplomacy or prevent the influences which
enter into diplomacy from affecting its consideration. or does it to an appreciable extent change the actual inequality which exists among nations in the matter of power and influence."
This passage is specially worthy of notice at the moment. As far as we can see, it is on these lines that President Harding intends to move.
We may say in conclusion that Mr. Lansing's manner of writing, especially in his official memoranda, follows the beet traditions of American legal literature, and these are the beet traditions of our race and language as a whole. Mansfield's judgments and Blackstone's Commentaries belong as much to America as to us. America does not take by purchase, but by the right of birth.
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