"A LEAGUE FULLY ARMED"

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21412, 2 March 1935, Page 15

" A LEAGUE FULLY ARMED"

—ROUSSEAU ♦ 10 MORAL USE OK FORCE Br l*rd Davies. Ernest Benn. r** ' ,n/- ** et) """ dp K « '"• MH.LIGAN.J . , uav.es' subject is of unique ;l, ce as well as difficulty. Forhis e«sav is distinguished "^ te !«i2l clarity and judicial com- *'""* with everv conclusion it not to' be impressed weight of the argument. '-; ,„, citizens and responsible have thought out and felt tfrLrity equal to the need **vti3es upon which the right *JS 5 ° f force de P end ?. is «j*fi n0U eh in the recent his- •*"? New-Zealand in Samoa, as S°« in the history of Britain ASk of the still more violent »£ exemplified m French, jSlTltalian, Russian, and Jap*2£liSs domestic and foreign, Jsra be necessary. Britain's ff Snt object lesson Lord in the Irish rebelSrfilW. Black and Tan reprisals, n% subsequent disturbances; £if fives a good deal of attentX the erratic states cf mind *Jt British legislators, which Sail this degradation of govSLt That vacillation and inS£ even in matters which we Jjgwere settled is sull normal Jgish policy, foreign as well as •Sr the circumstances of the plebiscite are a witness. In t& oi Commons only a few Ivf before British and other iJoTsl'troopb were serving as a % force under the authority of Hague's Governing Commission, £jahnSimon said that not only rtsuch a course not contemplated .? , h ere was no possibility of its

A sain, in the last few r"~r Ge:.efal Smuts in a much*peecn passionately warned against entertaining 1 the League of Nations _/"e.er f should ever be en- ■ -te" Vth armed power. If that ~-r r p c C id, "I think its fate is V' Baldwin, too. about the ' V' "' a arned another audience ,"-.".,„ s wem of collective secur* s present was only a :ui« T.nrrl

\sr ard not possible. i-.ora Jim f'lir.erly a soldier a (ir cf great estates and high i- „-f on the contrary, thinks |v tr*> deliverance of the world f' - the ui sparing disorders of war ry-as upon the exhibition of adeI 1 „ t forte morally used. It is <_- \ uedible that General Smuts : Mr Baldwin think otherwise; *-it\ Ya\e the politician's habit s rg they do. Both statesmen I*l vd to and approved of the j,gv <• cxribition of armed force force in the Political Sphere " i f ir t question that Lord " sis out to answer is: What * right or moral use of force - ') < political state? With -'.Hertion to meanings, step by ". " brings out the conclusion c Tr right use of force is con- *! t'l 'lie police function. Only '-•t a preventative and demof < fi'iment exists does coert «Cfi in favour of the laws * <••) i. the level <>{ tyrannical - did intemperate violence. j*"irtM\ represent? the triumph d"d of mutual considera- ' o er the appeal to brute force.

•'■ ;t the rpecial glory of our own 'j'-hk that we first among the "fjxs developed representative r*rarr.ent to a high level. Lord -*•>•»* appeals to us to retain wswracy through thick and thin ei to encourage its spread every- «**•*. Although it is often said '-'-K wrr.e peoples are not suited to ssr/xratie institutions, this can't > true. Ultimately every people *-l seize democracy from every im"»liilie or faetionary power try"i to stand in the way. A* L«aguc and Law and Order -p-Ting now to the armed forces •Jtat Rate, Lord Davies shows that «?"' r " av " : ''' and a ir-force are of a *-ee:t and morallv lower order f ttcpared with the police, al- ** so weak and self-injurious i toe general understanding of that »&ta we live by that nowhere are ** police honoured as equal or *9&s to the users of destructive The victories these rational forces are intended t> \'; :fcve are never the victories »>"*'» °' re, l Jresen tative govern- ■ •--'. free men and women 'extheir social desires, but vicV*. f „: le faction, the tyrant, and •V r '" r: ° J dut ''- This leads him on VrtJlfV' 1 ": ldea of the League of itfp J - :n ltE - aw - m ak'n& force•C order-compelling struc'~T, *r -"-"-"ions. There in tren'■'*t : ''^ r:ises ne sums up not only "if ■fl tnd desirable features but flaws and inadequacies. The <TrV Ceftcl m tne Lea g ue is sn " T . prAer to enforce its own *«~ ; r f°. ul PPed with power it ■ry\ pt " lce Ine territories of its V''..*? 1 staes or off er an effec- **■£.,. rr 'S ral sut >stitute for the *Js^''t- r . uced and disorder-pro- ;*»^ e i:tn ? °f national arrnalt ~ r *.-'-c objections to a League v'.*' Ji:t * fr -""ce, as he pointed hj? ",i Vf artier book. "The Prob<r Twentieth Century," are Ujt",*'.' , bul political. The '* H" " L * r a Davies sees it. ought **•£« * v t-ntually must be, a V r '\":\ il expression of democ-!p-s 'ike the democratic I'A i S V? ls an institution of -Cm units (this fyt". V* a "nu3ment of the in•V«,.v"(, p * tuat 'ng clauses of the Jst>. £ Versailles and other ! **,*/': dae against the Central V- ", <-«rmot produce govern't mricrd \ k League does Jmpiy ea * ual voting ?**«s«! ■,7'? gUa ' s votin 8 strength *fc!s\ tnat of the much more 3* t-l aT* or Ital >' the prinacy A wo "W them- ?*• '■* thk • '., A vote-strength £s* 3r«: . y contributions to the Jted r,j t "Portioned should be n ft », e P'esent division £?%, LrtJ, say opposition and * tu *i thus disappear. K*Sjf of *»"Ucal Disputes K? ty W^ 51 . im Portant points K>fcd£l ,? vies is the "fgent g**i»»u-yp a .system of arbiB^Mttfink 1 lnle gral and perB& Al?r« of the m&*™£ W the onl y court «, ; , w aeal with disputes

affecting the League and its mem- i bers is the Permanent Court of In-1 ternational Justice, sitting at the' Hague. But this court has no authority to pronounce verdicts on grounds of equity and good conscience except at the request of both disputing parties. Such "non-justi-ciable" disputes, those to which no laws or treaties apply, or which are concerned with the alteration of existing treaties—in a word, political disputes, and especially those likely to lead to war—do not go before the Permanent Court at all, but are referred to the Council and Assembly of the League. But these bodies consist exclusively of political personages, who take their orders from their governments. In this condition of things they do not and are not expected to reach decisions on grounds of right and equity. The interests and policies of their respective nations are the paramount consideration. To limit the employment of coercive force in the international sphere to police action, and that only, requires that arbitral tribunals chosen from an international panel of eminent jurists shall hear and decide political disputes in terms of equity rather than that these should be handed over to the ambiguous justico of politicians. The Lytton Commission on Manchuria has already exemplified the working of the tribunal system and shown its sound practicability. The fact that the report was rejected by Japan, and that the nations pledged to act in defence of the injured party did nothing about it, does not invalidate the tribunal system. It only proves the necessity for an organised sanction of sufficient force mobilisable at need in defence and support of the laws of the. League. Nationalism and the League These are the main conclusions brought out by Lord Davies. That his argument everywhere has a high degree of validity cannot be doubted. But whatever degree of validity an argument has it is not as valid as life is, which goes on longer than any argument. The logical instrument, like every other instrument, puts facts that won't fit on one side and takes account only of those that do. Life takes them all in and has room for General Smuts and Mr Baldwin as well as Lord Davies, room also for announcements that the collective system of security can't be made to exist together with announcements about new air pacts and what not. One of these inconvenient facts about the League not mentioned by Lord Davies is that it is not a universal League. Another is that any displeased state may secede at will. In both cases coercive action against an outsider would not be police action but the duel or the onset of bullies. Nor has Lord Davies carried his logic far enough and thoroughly enough to see that although the League can and may use coercive force against an offending nation, this can never reach the full moral standard of police action while nationalism exists. Only in proportion as nationalism disappears can the hand of the League replace the hand of the great powers on the sword of justice and the police standard of coercion be approached. And if it should happen that the League some day contends with military power against an opposing nation, what then? Will its bombs and shellbursts select only the guilty and spare the innocent? Police action is not normally like this. The function in coercion is solely to bring the guilty before a court of justice with minimum violence, not to act maximally or to destroy innocent and guilty together. Lord Davies, like most of us, accepts it as a fact that there are (he says "and. alwavs will be") amongst us "bad men'"' who must be restrained, coute que coute. Nevertheless the theory he holds, as if it were a self-evident

truth, that there are "bad nations, requires further examination. For myself I suspect that at least for many-millioned nations there is a contradiction in these two terms "bad" and "nation/' since the idea of large-scaled nationhood implies a high degree of sociality; and as a subsidiary thought I find myself unable to "believe that the worst individuals of any one nation are better than the best individuals of another. Ultimate Authority My last point is that it is a morality-based usage in all civilised nations equipped with parliament, courts, and police, to reserve capital punishment to the state. No lesser authority may kill wilfully, but must confine its penalties to lesser degrees of punishment. The kind or degree of coercive punishment and restraint that the confederacy of the League might now morally inflict for various crimes and offences is by no means clear. But what is clear is that for the League to move life-destroying forces would be to usurp a moral authority which it does not possess in virtue of its confederate structure, and which it will never fully possess in the presence of rival nationalism. The same sort of usurpation occurred on the side of the North in the American civil war. In that case the results for unborn humanity may have been worth the price paid by the living generations or they may not. But to avoid a drunken stumbling into this sort of thing, and to avoid a similar civil war in Europe especially, between League secessionist and anti-secessionist states, it is first necessary that national frontiers, through commercial and cultural contacts and by an effort of morality, lose their present meanings. Unfortunately none of these matters Lord Danes has discussed or taken into his thought-feeling system, nor has any statesman else done so as far as I am aware; and I fear that mankind will have to do much more soulwork than it has yet done, speedily and surely, or else go on "treading out the vintage in the winepress of the Lord" in the old, slow, wasteful way of misery.