I.

Some liberals with socialistic leanings and a few professed socialists support the South African war and the Imperialism it embodies by two arguments which deserve attention. The first runs as follows: If an individual member of society, owning land, neglects to develop its natural resources or so uses it as to make it a public nuisance, or refuses permission to the public to utilize it for fair compensation, it is admitted that society has a right to compel him to refrain from such neglect or abuse and to deprive him of the control of his property if he resists. This is done on general principles of utility, amounting in extreme cases to necessity. The modern State so interprets the maxim, Salus republicae suprema lex, as to interfere more and more with the rights of individual property, not merely in land but in other sorts, on the ground that certain exercises of these rights are not self-regarding actions but are social wrongs. In similar fashion, runs the argument, if a nation or the government of a nation holding possession of a piece of territory refuses to utilize fully its resources or to permit others to do so or otherwise makes itself a nuisance to its neighbors, or to the international public, the sacred rights of nationality ought not to protect it from coercion imposed on behalf of the general good of nations. The Transvaal, it is contended, was such a State; it would not develop its resources properly nor would it let others develop them; its backward civilization was a contamination and a menace to the States around it. The conquest and annexation of the Transvaal by Great Britain is justified on the ground that the world will be gainers by a just, settled and effective administration of the country and that Great Britain, as the nearest neighbor and as otherwise the power most competent for such a task, may regard herself as delegated by the civilized world to perform this task.

Now, with the general principle which underlies this argument no one but an individualist of the old school can quarrel. It cannot seriously be maintained that any group of inhabitants, by virtue of mere priority of occupation, or because they have for a certain time exercised government over a territory, would have a right (save perhaps in a strictly legal international sense) to neglect or abuse resources, the utilization of which might be an urgent need to the world at large. An extreme case rightly tests the issue. An inundation over the land of a nation causes it to be over-populated, or some persistent disease impairs its food supply, while beyond its national border lies rich land untilled and this by people belonging to some neighboring nation. An international court of equity would certainly accord to the people of the former State a right to use the land of the latter, and if necessary would enforce that right. If this holds in an extreme case, does it not hold of cases less extreme, where the need and the public utility of coercion are less?

This is clear. But let us see what is admitted. For the justification of such coercion we assume the existence of an International Court which represents the general good of nations, as distinct from the good of any particular nation; the right accorded to the needy nation is not a “natural” right but is international and rational in origin. To say that a nation, asserting its own needs in its own case without an express commission from the “international,” has a right to apply, either on its own behalf or professedly for the general good, any such coercion, is to lapse into a national individualism which is as false as the individualism of absolute personal rights within the single nation.

Now, neither Great Britain nor any other imperial power, pleading “the general good” as a motive and result of its territorial aggressions, received a mandate or a sanction from any such International Court. In point of fact there exists, no organized or recognized mode of expression of the general will of nations. So far as that will finds form in personal expression through diplomacy and the press, instead of sanctifying, it condemns each aggressive action of Great Britain, Russia, Germany and America. It may, indeed, be a gain for world-civilization that Great Britain should annex the Boer Republics, Germany Strassburg, Russia Manchuria and so forth, but no recognition of this gain is given by Christendom which, as far as in it lies, condemns such acts as motived in each case by selfish greed and fraught with gain only to the aggressor. Though envy may bias judgment, there is no reason to doubt that the general sense of the civilized world regards our annexation in South Africa as wanton theft committed by a stronger power against a weaker, and nowise as designed to secure any general good.

To this it may be replied: “The fact that there exists no organized form of the reasonable expression of the international will must not deter Great Britain or any other nation from doing what she genuinely believes to be for the general good. If in any rude society regular processes of justice are not established, a man is justified in taking the law into his own hands; and his action must be judged upon the actual merits of the case. The admitted fact that the bias of personal interest will be present in such a case need not disqualify a man from punishing a wrong, or forcibly abating a nuisance, when no appeal is open to an impartial tribunal.” So here it is asserted that we are justified in annexing the Boer Republics because this action, though repudiated and condemned by the current unorganized and irrational sentiment of other nations, makes really for the general good of nations. The fact that we make some particular national gain for ourselves, or avenge some particular national injury, though it may naturally rouse suspicions regarding the net result of annexation, must not be allowed to prevent recognition of the actual world-gain of this policy. The Boer Republics, passing from incompetent into competent administration, will in fact, by the sound development of their resources and the freedom of access and security of life and property afforded by the British flag, yield gains in which all nations must participate. “Such an action,” it is maintained, “is really international, in that it helps to realize a truly enlightened world policy, the ‘real’ or rational will of the community of nations.”

Here again the general reasoning, while it remains hypothetical, is impregnable; but its application is riddled by illicit particular assumptions. It is admitted that no act of aggressive imperialism is sanctioned by the direct expression of an international will. Can it be seriously maintained that consideration of the international gain, as distinguished from the selfish national gain, plays any considerable part as a motive in the policy of the expanding nation? Is it contended, in the particular instance of the Boer Republic that the good of any entity larger than the British Empire exercises any influence whatever in determining the act of annexation? The consideration that such wider good is consistent with, or incidental on, the pursuance of our selfish national end, though it is not present as a conscious determination of policy, surely borders on a region of most dangerous casuistry. If we are justified, in default of any constituted court of justice, in acting as judges in our own case, it is surely essential to show that some consideration transcending our own private gain, operates consciously in our minds as a standard of utility.

Before a stronger farmer, on a frontier where no regular justice is established, can rightly compel a neighboring farmer to adopt a more enlightened method of working and of living, and on his proving refractory, can shoot him down and seize his farm, a case of overwhelming strength must be made out, and, on his proving refractory, can shoot him down and seize ercing farmer will not be the sole gainer by his policy of force. Against a man or a nation acting as judge and executioner in its own cause there must always lie the onus of showing that it is not dominated, though it may be influenced, by purely self-regarding motives. It cannot be presumed that a course of action which is profitable to the stronger coercive nation will by some general process of international reactions prove profitable to the world in general, or that such profit, if it emerges, can safely be taken to overbalance the injury which such coercion always inflicts and which is graver where it appears, as it always does, to be the persecution of a weaker by a stronger nation.

The Utilitarianism which argues that because Egypt has been a direct material gainer by our seizure of its government, that seizure was justified, though that gain was in no sense the directing motive of our seizure, is a short-sighted utilitarianism, because it ignores the utility of faith among nations, and the injury which the violation of distinct national pledges inflicts upon the moral relations between nations.

So, in the annexation of the Boer Republics, there is no evidence that we have been actuated in the policy by any consideration broader than a short-sighted calculation of British imperial interests, or that any broader interests are in fact likely to be subserved. The case for international good could hardly be weaker. The only material resources of the Transvaal which are known to exist were already in rapid course of development; nothing is gained by increasing the rate of output, nor indeed can it seriously be held that the occupation of capital and labor in these mining industries is a world-gain at all – it is rather a world-loss. Apart from the mines and the mining population it is not even pretended that any political issues would have arisen grave enough to warrant the expenditure of blood and money which has occurred, even from considerations of a purely British policy. It is difficult to show that even Great Britain will make any net industrial or political gain through annexation either on a short or a long range focus of utility: it is impossible to show that the transfer of power from the self-governing burghers to the British crown confers or will confer any general gain to the world, or that any slight industrial gain which might arise from more efficient development of the annexed countries will not be immediately outweighed by the cynical repudiation of our policy as it was defined at the outbreak of hostilities, and by the distrust and indignation which our conduct has aroused in every nation of the world.

The case of the South African War and Annexation is made still worse by the special circumstances. I have admitted that a nation may take justice into its own hands when no court of international justice exists, though it can only justify war and annexation by the clearest evidence of necessity. But in the South African business we have debarred ourselves from pleading that we are in reality the executive of a sound world-policy in pursuance of the general good of nations, by refusing to have recourse to a method of arbitration which, though not a perfect instrument of the general will of nations, is the best instrument available, and that upon our own recent admission. A Court of Arbitration for the determination of the whole issue might not have been constituted with absolute impartiality, but it must at any rate have been less partial than an appeal to the arbitrament of arms. The reason given for our refusal to arbitrate is conclusive against any pretence that our policy of imperial aggression is really designed for, or fraught with, the general good of the world. We refused to arbitrate on the ground that we had in the past forced upon the Transvaal terms of technical political inferiority. The Transvaal government disputed and denied the application of these terms: the issue resting upon the interpretation of written conventions. These conventions we refused to submit to a Court of Arbitration, although recently at The Hague we had expressly assented to a doctrine which assigned the interpretation of documents expressing international relations as a proper province of arbitration. It is true that by making the exclusion of the Transvaal a condition of our entering the Conference, and by refusing the assent to the arbitration proposals, save on the condition that no outside powers could be admitted to their benefits without the unanimous sanction of the signatory powers, we had excluded the Transvaal from claiming arbitration as a technical right. But our assent to The Hague proposal is a complete admission of the ethics of the case, and carries precisely the same moral condemnation of our forceful policy, as if the Transvaal had been a full participant at the Conference. If any reader is disposed to evade the point by falling back upon the fact that the Boers opened hostilities, it is sufficient to remind him that the words used by the British representative at Pretoria some time before the war, “Her Majesty’s government will, if necessary, press their demands by force,” form an adequate statement of our intentions.