III.

Two objections are raised against this idea of internationalism. One is historical in its nature; it consists in a denial that “a society of nations” does or can exist at the present time or in that future which concerns us. The physical and psychical relations which exist between nations, it is urged, have no real analogy with those existing between individuals or tribes within a nation. Society is dependent on a certain homogeneity of character, interests and sympathies in those who form it. In the ancient world this was seldom found of sufficient strength save among close neighbors, and the city state was the true social type; the actual and possible relations of these city states with one another were commonly those of war, modified by transitory compacts which rarely led to any truly national unity. In such a condition close-welded cooperation of citizens was essential as a condition of civic survival and progress; and a struggle for life between the several city states was a means of progress in accordance with the biological law. The nation state stands now where the city state stood in ancient Greece or mediaeval Italy; there remains the same historical and even ethical necessity to retain the struggle between nations now as there was in earlier times to retain the struggle between cities.

Social psychologists attempt to fortify this position by emphasis upon the primary psychical condition of a national life. The possible area of a genuine society, a nation, is determined by the extension of a “consciousness of kind” – an “ethical like-mindedness.” This may be applied as a limiting condition by a “little Englander,” or as a principle to justify imperial expansion, according to the quantity and quality of like-mindedness that is taken as the basis of social unity in a nation or an empire. The most precise statement of this doctrine in its application as a barrier to ethical and political internationalism is that of Dr. Bosanquet: “The Nation State is the widest organisation which has the common experience necessary to found a common life.” He carries the finality of the national type of society so far as virtually to repudiate the ethical fact and the utility of the common conception of humanity.

According to the current ideas of our civilisation, a great part of the lives which are being lived and have been lived by mankind are not lives worth living, in the sense of embodying qualities for which life seems valuable to us. This being so, it seems to follow that the object of our ethical idea of humanity is not really mankind as a single community. Putting aside the impossibilities arising from succession in time, we see that no such identical experience can be pre-supposed in all mankind as is necessary to effective membership of a common society and exercise of a general will.

Though a subtle qualification follows, based on the duty of states to recognize humanity, not as a fact but as a type of life, “and in accordance with it to recognise and deal with the rights of alien individuals and communities,” the real upshot of this line of thought is to emphasize the ethical sovereignty of a nation and to deny the validity of any practical standard of the conduct of nations towards one another, at any rate so far as the relations between “higher” and “lower,” eastern and western, nations are concerned.

This view is stoutly supported by some sociologists and statesmen from the juridical standpoint. There can be, we are told, no real rights of nations because there exists no sanction, no recognized tribunal to define and enforce rights. The legal rigor of this position I am not greatly concerned to question. It may here suffice to say that the maintenance under ordinary conditions of treaty relations, international credit and exchange, a common postal and, within narrower limits, a common railway system, not to mention the actual machinery of conventions and conferences for concerted international action and the whole unwritten law of war and international courtesies, embassies, consulates and the like – all these things rest upon a basis of recognition of reciprocal duties, the neglect or violation of which would be punished by forfeiture of treatment as “most favoured nations” in the future, and by the reprobation and the possibly combined intervention of other states. 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 these vital facts in the more recent statecraft and the reversion alike of legal theorists and of “high politicians” of the Bismarck school to a nationalism which emphasizes the exclusive rather than the inclusive aspect of patriotism and assumes the antagonism of nations as an all-important and a final fact, is the most dangerous and discreditable factor of modern politics. This conduct in politics, and in no small degree its defense among political theorists, may be in part explained through analysis of the economic driving forces. This reveals certain sectional interests and orders within the nation usurping the national will and enforcing their private interests, which rest upon international antagonism, to the detriment of the national interest, which is identical with that of other nations.

This obstinate halt in the evolution of social relations at the limit of political nationality now reached will be recognized by the future historian as the most difficult of all present-day political phenomena to explain. The community of interests between nations is so great, so multifarious and so obvious, the waste, pain and damage of conflicts are 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 color make impossible any real extension of “society” beyond the area of nationality.

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,” the meaning which gives most importance to the racial and traditional characters that mark differences 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 civilization. It is surely true that the dwellers in large towns in all the most advanced European states, an ever-growing proportion of the total population, have, not merely in the externals but in the chief formative influences of their lives – their reading, their art, their science, their recreation – a larger community of experience than existed a century ago among the more distant members of any 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 defense 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.

But as between the policy of national independence on the one hand, and on the other the right of conquest, by which “the more efficient nation” subjugates and absorbs the less efficient, there is surely a third alternative, namely, experimental and progressive federation which, proceeding on the line of greatest common experience, shall develop 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 civilized world,” that is, all those nations which have attained a considerable fund of the common experience that is comprised under the head of civilization. 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 all forms of struggle by which the true personality of a nation may express itself, in industry, 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 subject 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 are 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, and, on the other, the matter and methods of education through the school, the church and the press, 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 present sympathy than their governments, and that this sympathy is already strong enough 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 and to determine them.

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

And, on the other hand, 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 Hague Conference, alike in its success and its failure. Its success – the mere fact that it was held and the permanent nucleus of internationalism created – attests a real and conscious 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, you retain militant imperialism and international conflicts.