III (3)

We have here at least a real beginning of effective international federation, with the rudiments of legal sanction for the establishment and enforcement of rights.

The studied ignoring of those vital facts in the more recent statecraft, and the reversion, alike of legal theorists and high politicians of the Bismarck school, to a nationalism which emphasises the exclusive rather than the inclusive aspect of patriotism and assumes the antagonism of nations as an all-important and a final fact, form the most dangerous and discreditable factor of modern politics. This conduct in politics we have already in part explained in our analysis of the economic driving forces that exhibit certain sectional interests and orders within the nation usurping the national will and enforcing their private advantages, which rest upon international antagonism, to the detriment of the national advantage, which is identical with that of other nations.

This obstinate halt in the evolution of such relations at the limit of political nationality now reached will be recognised as the most difficult of all present political phenomena for the future historian to explain. The community of interests between nations is so great, so multifarious, and so obvious, the waste, pain, and damage of conflicts so gross and palpable, that to those who do not understand the strong sectional control in every modern State it may well appear that some natural barriers of race, boundaries, or colour make any real extension of "society" outside the area of nationality impossible.

But to ascribe finality to nationalism upon the ground that members of different nations lack "the common experience necessary to found a common life" is a very arbitrary reading of modern history. Taking the most inward meaning of experience, which gives most importance to the racial and traditional characters that mark the divergences of nationality, we are obliged to admit that the fund of experience common to peoples of different nationality is growing with great rapidity under the numerous, swift, and accurate modes of intercommunication which mark the latest phases of civilisation. It is surely true that the dwellers of large towns in all the most advanced European States, an ever-growing proportion of the total population, have, not merely in the externals of their lives, but in the chief formative influences of their reading, their art, science, recreation, a larger community of experience than existed a century ago among the more distant members of any single European nation, whether dwelling in country or in town. Direct intercommunication of persons, goods, and information is so widely extended and so rapidly advancing that this growth of "the common experience necessary to found a common life" beyond the area of nationality is surely the most markworthy feature of the age. Making, then, every due allowance for the subjective factors of national character which temper or transmute the same external phenomena, there surely exists, at any rate among the more conscious and more educated sections of the chief European nations, a degree of true "like-mindedness," which forms the psychical basis of some rudimentary internationalism in the field of politics. Indeed it is curious and instructive to observe that while some of those most insistent upon "like-mindedness" and "common experience," as the tests of a true social area, apply them in defence of existing nationalities and in repudiation of attempts to absorb alien nationalities, others, like Professor Giddings, apply them in the advocacy of expansion and Imperialism.

Surely there is a third alternative to the policy of national independence on the one hand, and of the right of conquest by which the more efficient nation absorbs the less efficient nation on the other, the alternative of experimental and progressive federation, which, proceeding on the line of greatest common experience, shall weave formal bonds of political attachment between the most "like-minded" nations, extending them to others as common experience grows wider, until an effective political federation is established, comprising the whole of "the civilised world," i.e. all those nations which have attained a considerable fund of that "common experience" comprised under the head of civilisation.

This idea does not conflict with the preservation of what is really essential and valuable in nationalism, nor does it imply a suspension or abolition of any form of struggle by which the true character of a nation may express itself, in industry, in politics, in art or literature.

If it be objected that the requisite amount of "like-mindedness" or "common experience" does not exist even among the nations most subjected to modern assimilative influences, that the forces of racial and national antagonism even there preclude any truly effective union, I can only repeat that this is a matter for experiment and that the experiment has never been tried. Racial and national antagonisms have been so fed, fostered, and inflamed, for the class and personal ends and interests which have controlled politics, that the deeper underlying sympathies and community of different peoples have never been permitted free expression, much less political assertion. The most potent and pervasive forces in the industrial, intellectual, and moral life of most European races, so far as the masses of the peoples are concerned, have so rapidly and closely assimilated during the last century as of necessity to furnish a large common body of thought and feeling, interests and aspirations which furnish a "soul" for internationalism.

The main economic conditions affecting the working life of the masses of the peoples, both in town and country, on the one hand, the matter and methods of education through the school, the church, the press upon the other, show features of similarity so much stronger and more numerous than those of difference as to make it a safe assertion that the "peoples" of Europe are far closer akin in actual interests than their governments, and that this common bond is already so strong as to furnish a solid and stable foundation for political federal institutions, if only the obstruction of class governments could be broken down and the real will of the peoples set in the seat of authority. To take the commonest of concrete instances, it is at least probable that the body of the workers in different countries who fight and pay for wars would refuse to fight and pay in the future if they were allowed to understand the real nature of the issues used to inflame them.

If this view is correct, the mere facts that wars still occur and that national animosities are continually flaring up must not be taken as proof that sufficient common sympathy and experience does not exist between the different nations to render impossible a suspension of physical conflict and the establishment of a political machinery required to maintain peace.

To hold this position it is not necessary to exaggerate the extent of this international community of interests. If any considerable amount of real community exists, it furnishes the spirit which should and might inform a body of political institutions. Here is the significance of the recent Hague Conference, alike in its success and its failure. Its success, the mere fact that it was held and the permanent nucleus of internationalism it created, attests a real and felt identity of interests among different nations in the maintenance of peace; its failure and the open derision expressed by many politicians merely indicate the presence in high places of cliques and classes opposed in their interests and feelings to those of the peoples, and the necessity of dethroning these enemies of the people if the new cause of internationalism is to advance. Secure popular government, in substance and in form, and you secure internationalism: retain class government, and you retain military Imperialism and international conflicts.