Various - Essays in Liberalism

V >> Various >> Essays in Liberalism

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15

ESSAYS
IN
LIBERALISM

_Being the Lectures and Papers which were
delivered at the Liberal Summer School
at Oxford, 1922_

LONDON: 48 PALL MALL
W. COLLINS SONS & CO. LTD.
GLASGOW MELBOURNE AUCKLAND
Copyright 1922

_Manufactured in Great Britain_

PREFACE

The papers contained in this volume are summaries--in some cases, owing
to the defectiveness of the reports, very much abridged summaries--of a
series of discourses delivered at the Liberal Summer School at Oxford in
the first ten days of August, 1922. In two cases ("The State and
Industry" and "The Machinery of Government") two lectures have been
condensed into a single paper.

The Summer School was not arranged by any of the official organisations
of the Liberal party, nor was any part of its expenses paid out of party
funds. It was the outcome of a spontaneous movement among a number of
men and women who, believing that Liberalism is beyond all other
political creeds dependent upon the free discussion of ideas, came to
the conclusion that it was desirable to create a platform upon which
such discussion could be carried on, in a manner quite different from
what is usual, or indeed practicable, at ordinary official party
gatherings. From the first the movement received cordial support and
encouragement from the leaders of the party, who were more than content
that a movement so essentially Liberal in character should be carried
on quite independently of any official control. The meetings were
inaugurated by an address by Mr. Asquith, and wound up by a valediction
from Lord Grey, while nearly all the recognised leaders of the party
presided at one or more of the meetings, or willingly consented to give
lectures. In short, while wholly unofficial, the meetings drew together
all that is most vital in modern Liberalism.

In some degree the Summer School represented a new departure in
political discussion. Most of the lectures were delivered, not by active
politicians, but by scholars and experts whose distinction has been won
in other fields than practical politics. One or two of the speakers
were, indeed, not even professed Liberals. They were invited to speak
because it was known that on their subjects they would express the true
mind of modern Liberalism. Whatever Lord Robert Cecil, for example, may
call himself, Liberals at any rate recognise that on most subjects he
expresses their convictions.

As a glance at the list of contents will show, the papers cover almost
the whole range of political interest, foreign, domestic, and imperial,
but the greatest emphasis is laid upon the problems of economic and
industrial organisation. Yet, since it is impossible to survey the
universe in ten days, there are large and important themes which remain
unexplored, while many subjects of vital significance are but lightly
touched upon. Perhaps the most notable of these omissions is that of any
treatment of local government, and of the immensely important
subjects--education, public health, housing, and the like--for which
local authorities are primarily held responsible. These subjects are
held over for fuller treatment in later schools; and for that reason two
papers--one on local government and one on education--which were
delivered at Oxford have not been included in the present volume.

It must be obvious, from what has been said above, that these papers
make no pretence to define what may be called an official programme or
policy for the Liberal party. It was with study rather than with
programme-making that the School was concerned, and its aim was the
stimulation of free inquiry rather than the formulation of dogmas. Every
speaker was, and is, responsible for the views expressed in his paper,
though not for the form which the abridged report of it has assumed; and
there are doubtless passages in this book which would not win the assent
of all Liberals, for Liberalism has always encouraged and welcomed
varieties of opinion.

Nevertheless, taken as a whole, these papers do fairly represent the
outlook and temper of modern Liberalism. And the candid reader will not
fail to recognise in them a certain unity of tone and temper, in spite
of the diversity of their authorship and subject-matter. Whether the
subject is foreign politics, or imperial problems, or government, or
industry, the same temper shows itself--a belief in freedom rather than
in regimentation; an earnest desire to substitute law for force; a
belief in persuasion rather than in compulsion as the best mode of
solving difficult problems; an eagerness to establish organised methods
of discussion and co-operation as the best solvent of strife, in
international relations and in industrial affairs quite as much as in
the realm of national politics, to which these methods have long since
been applied.

That is the spirit of modern Liberalism, which gives unity to the
diversity of this little volume. As has often been said, Liberalism is
an attitude of mind rather than a body of definitely formulated
doctrine. It does not claim to know of any formula which will guide us
out of all our troubles, or of any panacea that will cure every social
ill. It recognises that we are surrounded in every field of social and
political life by infinitely difficult problems for which there is no
easy solution. It puts its trust in the honest inquiry and thought of
free men who take their civic responsibilities seriously.

CONTENTS

PAGE
Preface v

The League of Nations and the
Rehabilitation of Europe _Rt. Hon. Lord Robert Cecil_ 1

The Balance of Power _Professor A.F. Pollard_ 19

International Disarmament _Sir Frederick Maurice_ 37

Reparations and Inter-Allied Debt _John Maynard Keynes_ 51

The Outlook for National Finance _Sir Josiah Stamp_ 59

Free Trade _Rt. Hon. J.M. Robertson_ 74

India _Sir Hamilton Grant_ 92

Egypt _J.A. Spender_ 111

The Machinery of Government _Ramsay Muir_ 120

The State and Industry _W.T. Layton_ 145

The Regulation of Wages _Professor L.T. Hobhouse_ 165

Unemployment _H.D. Henderson_ 176

The Problem of the Mines _Arnold D. McNair_ 194

The Land Question _A.S. Comyns Carr_ 212

Agricultural Questions _Rt. Hon. F.D. Acland_ 227

THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS AND THE REHABILITATION OF EUROPE

BY THE RT. HON. LORD ROBERT CECIL

K.C., M.P., Assistant Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 1918.
Minister of Blockade, 1916-1918. Representative of Union of South Africa
at Assembly of League of Nations.

Lord Robert Cecil said:--I ought to explain that I am here rather by
accident. The speaker who was to have addressed you was my great
personal friend, Professor Gilbert Murray, and you have greatly suffered
because he is not present. He is prevented by being at Geneva on a
matter connected with the League, and he suggested that I might take his
place. I was very glad to do so, for, let me say quite frankly, I am
ready to advocate the League of Nations before any assembly, certainly
not least an assembly of Liberals. But not only an assembly of
Liberals--I should be ready to advocate it even before an assembly of
"Die-Hards."

Your chairman has said, and said truly, that the League is not a party
question. We welcome, we are anxious for support from every one. We have
seen in another great country the very grave danger that may accrue to
the cause of the League if it unhappily becomes identified with party
politics. We welcome support, yes, I will say even from the Prime
Minister; indeed no one will reject the support of the Prime Minister of
England for any cause. I am bound to admit when I first read the speech
to which reference has already been made, I was a little reminded of the
celebrated letter of Dr. Johnson to Lord Chesterfield. Lord Chesterfield
only began to recognise the value of Johnson's works when Johnson had
already succeeded, and in one of the bitter phrases Dr. Johnson then
used he said, "Is not a patron one who looks with unconcern on a man
struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground
incommodes him with help?" That was a passing phase in my mind, and I am
a little ashamed of it, because, after all, we cannot say the League has
reached ground as yet. We need and are grateful for the help of any one
who will genuinely come to its assistance. I hope we may look not only
for words, but for deeds. The League needs all the support it can get in
the very perilous and menacing times which are before us. I was glad to
note that the Government has announced--it is one of the great test
questions--that not only is it in favour of the entry of Germany into
the League, but it would support the election of Germany to the Council
of the League. That is an earnest of what we trust may be a real League
policy from the Government of this country. And yet, though I have
thought it right to emphasise the non-party aspect of this question, I
am conscious, and I am sure all of you are, there are two ways in which
the League is regarded. It is not only that, as your chairman would
say, some people have more faith than others, but there is really a
distinct attitude of mind adopted by some supporters of the League from
that adopted by others.

THE TWO VIEWS OF THE LEAGUE

There is what I may call the empirical view of the League. There are
those of us in this country, and indeed all over the world, who,
profoundly impressed with the horrors of war, hating war from the bottom
of their hearts as an evil thing--a company which must include, as far
as I can see, all Christian men and women--these people, impressed with
the horrors of war, look about for some means of keeping it away, some
safeguard against its renewal. And they say: "We have tried everything
else, we have tried the doctrine of the preparation for war as a great
safeguard of peace; we have tried the doctrine of the Balance of Power;
we have tried the doctrine of making one State or group of States so
powerful that it can enforce its will on the rest of the world. We have
tried all these expedients, and we are driven to the conclusion that
they lead not to peace, but to war. Is there anything else?" And then
they come quite legitimately to the League as their last hope of
preserving the peace of the world. I was talking to a distinguished
Frenchman the other day, and that was his attitude. It is the attitude
of a great many people. In my judgment it is quite sound as far as it
goes. But it is not inspiring. It depends in the last resort merely on
a frank appeal to the terrors of mankind.

Against that view you may set the more fundamental way of approaching
this question. You may say if you are to have peace in the world it is
not enough merely to provide safeguards against war. You must aim at
creating a new international spirit, a new spirit in international
affairs; you must build from the very foundations. That is the positive
as opposed to the negative way of approaching this question. It is not
enough to cast out the war spirit and leave its habitation swept and
garnished. You have to replace the war spirit by a spirit of
international co-operation. And that is the way of regarding this great
movement which some people think can be disposed of by describing it as
idealism--a favourite term of abuse, I learn, now, but which seems to me
not only good politics and good morality, but common sense as well.

THE NEGATIVE AND THE POSITIVE

These two points of view do represent undoubtedly fundamental
differences of political attitude, and you will find that the two sets
of advocates or supporters of the League whom I have tried to describe,
will inevitably regard with different emphasis the provisions of the
Covenant, and even the achievements of the League. For if you read the
Covenant you will find two sets of provisions in that document. It does
recognise the two schools, as it were, that I have been describing. It
has a set of provisions which deal with the enforcement, the
safeguarding of peace, and a set of provisions which deal with the
building up of international co-operation. You will notice the two sets
of provisions. There are those aiming directly at the settlement of
disputes without war. This is the central part of the League. It is the
first thing before you can hope to do anything else. Before you can
begin to build up your international spirit you must get rid as far as
you can of the actual menace of war; and in that sense this is the
central part of the Covenant. But, in my view, the most enduring and
perhaps the most important part is that set of provisions which cluster
round the group of articles beginning with Article 10 perhaps, certainly
Article 12, and going on to Article 17--the group which says in effect
that before nations submit their disputes to the arbitrament of war they
are bound to try every other means of settling their differences. It
lays down first the principle that every dispute should come to some
kind of arbitration, either by the new Court of International
Justice--one of the great achievements of the League--or discussion
before a specially constituted Arbitration Court, or failing both, then
discussion before the Council of the League; and Articles 15 and 16
provide that until that discussion has taken place, and until adequate
time has been allowed for the public opinion of the world to operate on
the disputants as the result of that examination, no war is to take
place, and if any war takes place the aggressor is to be regarded as
perhaps what may be called an international outlaw.

Before you begin to build you must have freedom from actual war, and
the provisions have been effective. They are not merely theoretic. I am
not sure whether it is generally recognised, even in so instructed an
assembly as this, how successful these provisions have actually been in
practice. Let me give you briefly two illustrations: the dispute between
Sweden and Finland, and the much more urgent case of the dispute between
Serbia and Albania. In the first case you had a dispute about the
possession of certain islands in the Baltic. It was boiling up to be a
serious danger to the peace of the world. It was referred to the League
for discussion. It was before the existence of the International Court.
A special tribunal was constituted. The matter was threshed out with
great elaboration; a decision was come to which, it is interesting to
observe, was a decision against the stronger of the two parties. It was
accepted, not with enthusiasm by the party that lost, but with great
loyalty. It has been adopted, worked out in its details by other organs
of the League, and as far as one can tell, as far as it is safe to
prophesy about anything, it has absolutely closed that dispute, and the
two countries are living in a greater degree of amity than existed
before the dispute became acute.

But the Albanian case is stronger. You had a very striking case: a small
country only just struggling into international existence. Albania had
only just been created before the war as an independent State, and
during the war its independence had in effect vanished. The first thing
that happened was its application for membership of the League. That
was granted, and thereby Albania came into existence really for the
first time as an independent State. Then came its effort to secure the
boundaries to which it was entitled, which had been provisionally
awarded to it before the war. While that dispute was still unsettled,
its neighbour, following some rather disastrous examples given by
greater people in Europe, thought to solve the question by seizing even
more of the land of Albania than it already occupied. Thereupon the
Articles of the Covenant were brought into operation. The Council was
hastily summoned within a few days. It was known that this country was
prepared to advocate before that Council the adoption of the coercive
measures described in Article 16. The Council met, and the aggressive
State immediately recognised that as a member of the League it had no
course open but to comply with its obligations, and that as a prudent
State it dared not face the danger which would be caused to it by the
operation of Article 16. Immediately, before the dispute had actually
been developed, before the Council, the Serbians announced that they
were prepared to withdraw from Albanian territory, and gave orders to
their troops to retire beyond the boundary. Let us recognise that this
decision having been come to, it was carried out with absolute loyalty
and completeness. The troops withdrew. The territory was restored to
Albania without a hitch. No ill-feeling remains behind, and the next
thing we hear is that a commercial treaty is entered into between the
two States, so that they can live in peace and amity together.

THE SPIRIT OF THE LEAGUE

I want to emphasise one point about these two cases. It is not so much
that the coercive powers provided in the Covenant were effectively used.
In Sweden and Finland they never came into the question at all, and in
the other case there was merely a suggestion of their operation. What
really brought about a settlement of these two disputes was that the
countries concerned really desired peace, and were really anxious to
comply with their obligations as members of the League of Nations. That
is the essential thing--the League spirit. And if you want to see how
essential it is you have to compare another international incident: the
dispute between Poland and Lithuania, where the League spirit was
conspicuous by its absence. There you had a dispute of the same
character. But ultimately you did secure this: that from the date of the
intervention of the League till the present day--about two years--there
has been no fighting; actual hostilities were put an end to. Though that
is in itself an immensely satisfactory result, and an essential
preliminary for all future international progress, yet one must add that
the dispute still continues, and there is much recrimination and
bitterness between the two countries. The reason why only partial
success has been attained is because one must say Poland has shown a
miserable lack of the true spirit of the League.

Let me turn to the other parts of the Covenant--those which aim
directly at building up international co-operation. I am not sure that
it is always sufficiently realised that that is not only an implicit but
also an explicit object of the Covenant--that it is the main purpose for
which the League exists. International co-operation are the very first
words of the preamble to the Covenant. This is the fundamental idea I
cannot insist on too strongly, because it does really go down to the
very foundations of my whole creed in political matters. International
co-operation, class co-operation, individual co-operation--that is the
essential spirit if we are to solve the difficulties before us. Let me
remind you of the two instances of the action of the League in dealing
with the threat of epidemics to Europe. A conference was called at
Washington to consider what could be done to save Europe from the danger
of epidemics coming from the East. What is interesting is that in that
conference you had present not only members of the League considering
and devising means for the safety of Europe, but you had representatives
of Germany and Russia--a splendid example of the promotion of
international co-operation extending even beyond the limits of the
membership of the League. Admirable work was done. All countries
co-operated quite frankly and willingly under the presidency of a
distinguished Polish scientist.

That is one example of what we mean by international co-operation.
Perhaps an even more striking example was the great work of Dr. Nansen
in liberating the prisoners of war who were in Russia. He was entrusted
with the work on behalf of the League. The prisoners of war belonged to
all nationalities, including our enemies in the late war. He
accomplished his work because he went about it in the true spirit of the
League, merely anxious to promote the welfare of all, leaving aside all
prejudices whether arising from the war or from any other cause. Dr.
Nansen is in my judgment the incarnation of the spirit of the League,
and his work, immensely successful, restored to their homes some 350,000
persons, and he did it for less money than he originally estimated it
would cost.

Do not put me down as a facile optimist in this matter. In the matter of
international co-operation we have a long way to go before we reach our
goal, and we can already see one or two serious failures. I deeply
deplore that last year the League found itself unable, through the
instructions given by the Governments which composed it, to do anything
effective on behalf of the famine in Russia. It was a most deplorable
failure for the League, and still more deplorable for this country. It
was a great opportunity for us to show that we really did mean to be
actuated by a new spirit in international affairs, and that we did
recognise that the welfare of all human beings was part--if you like to
put it so--of our national interests. We failed to make that
recognition. We have been trying feebly and unsuccessfully to repair
that great mistake ever since, and for my part I do not believe there is
any hope of a solution of the Russian difficulty until we absolutely
acknowledge the failure we then made, and begin even at this late hour
to retrace the false step we then took.

I could give other instances of failure, but I do not wish to depress
you, and there are cheering things we may look at. It is a matter of
great relief and congratulation that the policy of mandates really does
appear to be becoming effective, and one of the greatest activities of
the League. Nothing is better than the conception which the mandate
clause embodies, that the old ideas of conquest are to be put aside;
that you are not to allow nations to go out and take chunks of territory
for themselves; that they must hold new territory not for themselves,
but on behalf of and for the benefit of mankind at large. This is at the
bottom of mandates. Since I am speaking on behalf of Professor Murray, I
ought to remind you of the provisions of the Covenant for the protection
of racial linguistic minorities, and minorities in different countries.
It has not yet become an effective part of the machinery of the League,
but I look forward to the time when we shall have established the
doctrine that all racial minorities are entitled to be treated on a
footing absolutely equal with other nationals of the country in which
they live. If that could be established, one of the great difficulties
in the way of international co-operation in the spirit of peace will be
removed.

THE MISTAKE OF VERSAILLES

These are the two aspects I wanted to bring before you. If we are to get
down to the root of the matter; if we are to uproot the old jungle
theory of international relations, we must recognise that the chief
danger and difficulty before us is what may be described as excessive
nationalism. We have to recognise in this and other countries that a
mere belief in narrow national interests will never really take you
anywhere. You must recognise that humanity can only exist and prosper as
a whole, and that you cannot separate the nation in which you live, and
say you will work for its prosperity and welfare alone, without
considering that its prosperity and welfare depend on that of others.
And the differences on that point go right through a great deal of the
political thought of the day.

Take the question of reparations. I am not going to discuss in detail
what ought to be done in that difficult and vexed question, but I want
to call your attention to the mistake which was originally made, and
which we have never yet been able to retrieve. The fundamental error of
Versailles was the failure to recognise that even in dealing with a
conquered enemy you can only successfully proceed by co-operation. That
was the mistake--the idea that the victorious Powers could impose their
will without regard to the feelings and desires and national sentiment
of their enemy, even though he was beaten. For the first time in the
history of peace conferences, the vanquished Power was not allowed to
take part in any real discussion of the terms of the treaty. The
attitude adopted was, "These are our terms, take or leave them, but you
will get nothing else." No attempt was made to appreciate, or even
investigate the view put forward by the Germans on that occasion. And
last, but not least, they were most unfortunately excluded from
membership of the League at that time. I felt profoundly indignant with
the Germans and their conduct of the war. I still believe it was due
almost exclusively to the German policy and the policy of their rulers
that the war took place, and that it was reasonable and right to feel
profound indignation, and to desire that international misdeeds of that
character should be adequately punished. But what was wrong was to think
that you could as a matter of practice or of international ethics try to
impose by main force a series of provisions without regard to the
consent or dissent of the country on which you were trying to impose
them. That is part of the heresy that force counts for everything. I
wish some learned person in Oxford or elsewhere would write an essay to
show how little force has been able to achieve in the world. And the
curious and the really remarkable thing is that it was this heresy which
brought Germany herself to grief. It is because of the false and immoral
belief in the all-powerfulness of force that Germany has fallen, and yet
those opposed to Germany, though they conquered her, adopted only too
much of her moral code.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15