Books of the Day
A Realist in Search of a Utopia
The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919-1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations. By Edward Hallett Carr. (Macmillan. tos. 6d.)
THE " crisis " which forms the subject of this book is not the political tension in Europe, as its title might suggest. It is the disturbance in the realm of thought and opinion due to the emergence of foreign affairs into the position tradi- tionally occupied by domestic issues. For the last twenty years international relations have been the centre of political interest in this country. The average voter has found himself ill-equipped with the kind of knowledge that would have enabled him to form a common-sense judgement on them. Yet they have seemed to him of such vital importance that he could not stand aside and suspend his opinion. This combination of inexperience and intense concern resulted in a prolonged mood of wishful thinking, or what Professor Carr calls " utopianism." The object of his book is to bring " realist criticism " to bear on this " utopian edifice."
Thus, in spite of its arrangement in the form of a treatise, the volume is really what Matthew Arnold would have called " an essay in criticism." The onslaught is made with a zest and gusto which must have been as enjoyable to the writer as they are to the reader, and is constantly enlivened by shrewd and well-documented thrusts at the representatives of the different varieties of " utopian " doctrine. Twenty pages at the close are indeed devoted to " the prospects of a new international order "; but these provide no more than a dim outline, and add little to what is said or implied in the body of the book.
Who are these blind leaders of the blind against whom the attack is directed? The flash of Professor Carr's sabre is so dazzling that it is not very easy to distinguish them. At one moment it is " the Left " in general, at another the Pacifists, at another the international lawyers, at another the Free Traders, at another the supporters of the League of Nations, at another the defenders of the status quo in the relations between the Great Powers, at another the exponents of ethical or spiritual values. The most concentrated attack is, however, that delivered against Woodrow Wilson, who is evidently, in the author's mind, the " utopian " par excellence, for the threefold reason that his ideas were exceptionally rigid, exceptionally out of date, and exceptionally influential.
Where exactly, according to Professor Carr, did Woodrow Wilson go wrong? Firstly, he was a bad psychologist. He regarded man as primarily an intellectual being. This en- snared him in a double fallacy—the belief that men form their opinions on politics rationally, and the belief that when they have formed them they will act on them. Hence his con- fidence in the power of public opinion to restrain the wicked- ness of politicians. Secondly, he was a bad sociologist. He thought the world was much more united than in fact it was in 1918, or is today. Hence his confidence in the existence of " the international community " and in the power of " world public opinion." Thirdly, he was a bad political scientist. He thought that the interest of States, and particularly of the Great Powers, formed a natural harmony. Hence his con- fidence in the League of Nations as an agency of international co-operation. Fourthly, he was a bad philosopher. He thought that international relations could be subjected to moral judge- ments, whereas, for the present at least, there in no standard to which such judgements can be referred.
If we examine the criticism thus all too briefly summarised, we find that three-quarters of it is justified, but that its force is weakened by the inadequacy of the remaining quarter. Professor Carr is on firm ground when he criticises the Utopians, and President Wilson in particular, for not•knowing what they are talking about—for their blindness to " human nature in politics," to the obstacles to international soli- darity, to the forces that underlie the policies of the Great Powers. He has sat in the Foreign Office with an observing eye. The chapters in which he exposes the inadequacy of the traditional framework of international law, for instance, should be made compulsory reading for all who
are tempted to indulge in amateur projects of world-order. All-in arbitration, the judicial. settlement of international
disputes, the application of Article XIX of the Covenant—all these and more besides are exhibited to us in the dis- enchanting light of realism.
But it is when the ex-Foreign Office official has concluded his survey and the teacher of international relations comes
on the scene that his guidance begins to fail us. Two courses were open to him. He might have defined his task as that of seeking to understand the actual conditions of the twentieth- century world, with its forces new and old, political, social and economic, and of bringing to bear on them the traditional standards of Western civilisation, as embodied in the old watchviords of justice and liberty. Or, if that seemed to him too ambitious, he might have taken some middle ground and indicated a constructive approach, out of his own wide ex- perience, to some at least of the problems of today. But he has adopted neither of these courses. Instead, he takes our breath away by advising us to try to beat the Utopians at their own discredited game. " Having demolished the current Utopia with the weapons of realism," he tells us (p. 118), " we still need to build a new Utopia of our own which will one day fall to the same weapons." The thorough-going relativism—not to say scepticism—here revealed undermines the force of his expert criticism. For the strength of the attack on absolute values in politics—the attack on the " ideologues " whom Professor Carr so much enjoys chastising --has always consisted, from Aristotle onwards, in the de- monstration that they misapplied values drawn from a deeper maim. But if there are no such permanent values, if justice and liberty, courage and self-sacrifice, mercy and decency, right and wrong, are only matters of ephemeral convention, the student of international relations is left with a sense of blank frustration. For how can he nerve himself to the effort of building up what is no more than a temporarily plausible illusion?
Certainly, as the author urges, the problem before us is one of education rather than of machinery. But education in international relations does not consist in persuading men and women to accept and popularise intellectual patterns appropriate to the material conditions of the age. It consists in evoking the deeper elements of human nature—elements of spirit and will, as well as of mind and desire—in the task of promoting the good life, as it can be lived under twentieth- century conditions. That cannot be done by running away from the notion of good because it is liable to misuse by the ignorant, the muddle-headed and the ill-intentioned or by refusing to admit that one foreign policy or one national tradition or one political cause can be " better " than another.
ALFRED ZIMMERN.
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