Socialism and the League of Nations

The idea of a League of Nations to maintain the world's peace was born long before these anxious moments engendered a universal desire to cease recourse to war. Our examination of the subject will not suffer by a rapid, cursory survey of the projects from time to time advanced to promote arbitration between states, or a League to comprise all. The history of anti-militarism indicates, however, as with every movement making for human progress, that whilst the thought and idealism of some few noble men and women in every age outpaced the collective mind, their dreams and aspirations await fulfilment until the mode of producing wealth and its distribution—until the economic forms of society can give material shape to the ideas they held so long before the times.

As we were reminded, with cynical reiteration, during the last few years, the profoundest intellects have framed arguments and constitutions designed to effect the abandonment of war. Replying to the conundrums the mediæval theologians put to the jurists: Can a Christian wage war? Can Christians make war upon a the infidel for any reason but his infidelity? Grotius, the father of international law, arrived at the pious conclusion that since there is a concensus of opinion among the wise and instructed against war, the mass of men eventually will profit by that exemplary teaching. To this day the jurist and the legislator are as remote from reality as Grotius, unless guided in their studies and their application by the normal economic interests of classes which constitute the most powerful factors in the growth of social institutions. Not the least memorable king of his age, Henry of Navarre, specu​lated upon a possible leadership of a family of nations, the cause of conflict removed from their midst by the universal freedom of public worship. For rather more than two hundred years Saint-Pierre's "Perpetual Peace," to be preserved, according to its author, by an elaborate constitution calculated to lead to as much trouble in expounding as the religious disputations of a bygone age, laid on the shelves of libraries provoking the derision of practical men. Not for lack of reminding are we likely to forget that William Penn, Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant spun scintillating theories of international peace and wove exact constitutions for courts of arbitration: The powerful forces in the modern State which profit by the manufacture of arms, and the Press they control, never fail to point to the nonfulfilment of the hope, surviving through ten generations, that at last mankind would permit reason to function and keep the hands tied. Amid the trump of war the anti-militarist persisted in repeating failures. The cut-throats of military prowess who pronounce the "glory" of war, as common and as voluble in this country as they were in middle Europe, never succeeded in silencing the still small voice that rises above the trumpet blare of chauvinist nationalism, and in an audible whisper declares the masses of all nations to be of one family and to have one true cause.

Now a new fact comes into the world. The rulers of mankind do not always resort to force in order to gain their ends. Often times they resort to guile. In domestic politics it is the common workaday rule that a demand for an improvement in the condition of the working masses which encroaches, ever so slightly, upon income derived from private property shall first of all be resisted strenuously. By that means the agitation for redress may be driven under, at least until time elapses for recovery. If, on the other hand, the demand for working-class houses, for example—and here I digress to say that the house required by the worker has not yet been built, and cannot be built under the conditions of, capitalist erection of dwelling-houses, inasmuch as the worker wants a small house, which it is impossible for the builder to construct at the uneconomic rent within the means of the tenant—if the ​demand for working-class houses, or land for cultivation, or old age pensions, is not diminished by hostility from the dominant class, the rulers change their tactics. They turn from force to guile. They accept the principle that the workers must be housed, that land shall be accessible to the rural labourer, that pensions shall be paid from public funds, and rapid contortion being of the essence of politics, their political organs forthwith proclaim a victory for democracy. But there is a long, long road between the acceptance of a principle and its translation on to the material plane of institutions. Hence, invariably the workers find that when their demands are accepted by the ruling class, the latter, in giving effect to the principle, so distort the process at all its stages that the final result is far removed from the purpose which called forth prolonged effort and sacrifice from Labour. This disillusion, so often recurring in democratic history, points the moral that the workers, by their own direct action, political and industrial, should themselves carry out and realise their own demands. The bearing of this revolutionary doctrine upon the main problem before the League of Nations is acute. It accounts for the exclusion by the Governments of Independent Labour and Socialism from all participation in the preliminaries of peace.

On March 14th, 1790, the National Assembly of France decreed the abolition of war, only to be compelled by the coalition of kings resolved to stamp out the Republic to take up arms again and to become the missionary of European liberty. One cannot miss the striking historical parallel between Revolutionary France proclaiming the end of war and returning to a colossal military establishment, with the action of the Bolsheviks in laying down their arms in the hope of peace by agreement between the workers of all nations, yet forced to resume war by the onslaught of the enemies of economic self-determination expressed in a Socialist Republic. On the 23rd April, 1795, the Abbe Grégoire laid before ​the Convention a Declaration of the Rights of Peoples propounding the doctrine of the legal co-existence of nations and the equality of states. On this principle is based the provision in the League of Nations Covenant that at the delegate meetings of the League each nation, whatever its rank in the scale of nations, shall have one vote only. There is nothing new under the sun. The fifth article of the Treaty of November 20th, 1815, requires the contracting parties to meet to assure the peace of Europe. Four years later Metternich, saturated with antipathy to liberalism in all its forms, proposed a capital city for the Holy Alliance, where the common interests of States might be adjusted and plans developed to subserve monarchism. The reactionary policy inaugurated by the Holy Alliance, which aided the suppression of the rising in Naples with an offer of Austrian troops, and the suppression of the Spanish Revolution with an offer of French troops, preserved the balance of power in Europe until 1848, the year of sporadic revolt in the cause of nationality.

It fell to the Government of Louis Napoleon to play a major part in the next step to secure a covenanted agreement between certain Powers. At the Conference held in Paris after the War in the Crimea, the rising Imperialism of France, seeking to gain more from the settlement, in return for French support to Britain, than the right of general protection over the Christians in the East, played with the idea of a League. Powers that were pacific in intention agreed with Powers moving towards Imperialism in supporting the proposal to carry international law a stage further by such amendments of the Law of the Sea as would limit Britain's claim to determine the sphere of her own authority on the water. France had poignant reasons to remember the disastrous effect of British sea-power on French shipping during the Great War. Louis Napoleon, the Adventurer, seizing the desire for peace that always follows war as the groundwork for an instalment of internationalism, moved to deny the adage, "England rules the Storm" current since the days of the Armada.

Notwithstanding that during the nineteenth century rather more than one hundred matters in dispute ​between nations were settled by arbitration, history did not present an example of a federation to preserve peace until 1890, when ten republics on the American continent agreed to a general treaty of arbitration, Nevertheless, a quarter of a century was yet to elapse before the Senate ratified an Arbitration Treaty between the United States and Great Britain. The recent prodigious growth of manufactures in the United States, making the American manufacturer the greatest potential exporter of industrial nations, may well put to the utmost strain any treaty between the United States and Great Britain.

The idealism of the friends of peace contending for the principles of civil law in the sphere of international relations, notwithstanding, economic difficulties towards the end of the nineteenth century were the cause and occasion for the most notable step made by Governments towards arbitration between States. When Holland, in the seventeenth century, until then the Queen of the Seas, observed her strength declining before British sea-power, the jurists of the Dutch Netherlands argued the principle of a pacific law of equal rights at sea. When Holland was supreme on the high seas Van Tromp could nail his broom to the mast-head with impunity, and have no care at all about the right of search or capture in peace or war so long as he had the power. So was the case of Tzarist Russia in 1898. Impoverished by famine, the consequence of uncontrolled plunder by the minions of autocracy, seething with discontent and hatred begotten of the long and bloody persecution by the Romanoffs, her struggling industry and stupendous agriculture alike under the toll of foreign bond-holders, Russia was incapable of sustaining efficient armaments when Nicholas the Last assumed the role of pacificator. The great bankers controlling the money-power, to whom modern society gives the right to determine the policy of States by stipulating the conditions governing the grant of aid by loans, were unanimous in their opinion that in the event of war Russia would be utterly defeated. Her failure in the war with Japan confirmed this deduction. Quite early in the life of the unnatural compact between despotic Tzarism and Republican France—then a demo​cratic country, not yet abandoned under Clemenceau to dreams of conquest—it was clear that the old Russia could never pay in cash the debt due to the French peasantry. While French peasants permitted their savings to be mobilised for the support of the Tzar's tyrariny, the governing classes of Europe knew that the return would be made some day in war. Then, to draw away attack from the north-eastern provinces of France, millions of Russian peasants would be thrown unarmed, to fight their way into East Prussia with sticks and stones against German artillery. When the Russian armies in the first two years of the war piled up their ramparts of dead, ignorant men who knew not why they fought, they gave to the bankers of London and Paris the security purchased with the French peasants' money.

The first Conference at The Hague, meeting in response to the Tzar's Peace Rescript, sought to limit the expansion of armaments, and failed. Feeling, doubtless, that had that assembly separated without framing at least one Convention, the natural derision of mankind for diplomatists would have been excited unduly, the Conference drafted an International Convention with respect to Laws and Customs of War on Land, designed to check the severity of war and to secure recognition of the claims of humanity on the part of belligerents. All the Great Powers ratified the document and at once proceeded to augment armaments and to perfect Cochrane's invention of poison gas.

The second Hague Conference, not to be outdone in cynicism by its predecessor, considered the preparation of a Code of Laws and Customs of War at Sea. Hallam, the historian of the British Constitution, has written "When neither robbery nor private warfare was any longer tolerated, there remained that great common of mankind—the Sea—unclaimed by any king, so that the liberty of the sea was but another name for the security of plunderers." The growth of foreign trade, the common interests of the exporting merchant, the ship owner, and the buyer overseas, coalesced to secure the gradual suppression of piracy in times of peace. At a later stage, systems of insurance deriving profits ​from the progressive reduction of risk were also a contributing factor of the utmost importance in securing property rights at sea. By this agency the consent of nations was promoted, and correct charting and the marking of dangerous places was encouraged.

When war breaks out, as the second Hague Conference found, the Law of the Sea is at an end. Never yet has there been an agreed definition of contraband. The Federal Courts, during the American Civil War, reviving the doctrine of continuous voyage, made the test of contraband the presumed ultimate destination of the cargo. In the war with Japan, Russia, contrary to the doctrines of her own international lawyers, made provisions, fuel, and cotton absolute contraband, sunk prizes before bringing them in for trial, and claimed the right to convert merchant vessels on the high seas into ships of war. She revealed the Law of the Sea in nudity, and showed it to be an organised piracy by nations. The English Courts, in opposition to all foreign nations enforce the doctrine that neutral merchantmen under a convoy of warships of their own country are liable to belligerent search, though this prerogative was modified during the war in the case of the Dutch convoy. The theory of blockade maintained by Britain and the United States is contrary to the view of Continental nations. At length, and in desperation, the second Hague Conference, finding no Law of the Sea, in view of the conflicting claims of nations, was content to formulate a project for an International Court for the Revision of Prize Decisions.

A League composed of constituents with a common aim and a common interest would sweep away the several and conflicting national interpretations of the Law of the Sea. Such a League, by conferring a universal Freedom of the Seas, would render obsolete the anomolous laws of blockade, capture, and search. The Covenant of the League of Nations reserves for use against recalcitrant peoples every power hitherto used by single nations to establish dominion on the sea. There can be no Freedom of the Seas until the economic freedom of all nations is achieved.

​One other decision of the second Hague Conference is not without interest. The contracting parties agreed not to use force for the recovery of money due from a debtor nation, but the compact seemed to have small effect on investors when the Russian Republic repudiated se a debt it had not contracted.

We have seen that Governments and statesmen philandered with the popular demand for international arbitration as readily as they fanned the flames of racial passion and patriotic hate. The making of war, the settlements of peace, are alike beyond the control of the peoples. The conferences of statesmen, diplomatists, and financiers, since 1914, leave the common people of the world, the workers, outside the Conference Chamber, still the pawns of property that knows no frontier, and still without effect on the greater issues of affairs. It is near upon a century since Socialism first proclaimed its essentially internationalist character. The "Communist Manifesto," recoiling from the nationalism of '48, which threw the revolutionists of one country against the revolutionists of another, thunders, forth the oneness, identity of aim, the unity of Czech and German, Slav and Latin, Brition and Gael. The first International becomes a power magnified out of all proportion to reality by the fears of Louis Napoleon and of Bismarck. In the first "Manifesto on the War between France and Germany," 1870, the International Working Men's Association declares: "Whatever turn the impending horrid war may take, the alliance of the working classes of all countries will ultimately kill war!"

In the quest of peace the Labour movement has been more assiduous than the statesmen, and, let us hope that time will prove, much more successful.

On numerous occasions the working men of different countries met to discuss the technical conditions of labour. International Conferences were held of the glove-makers and tobacco workers (1871); pottery ​workers (1873); glass-blowers (1886); workers in the printing trades (1889); weavers and railway employees (1890); wood-workers (1891); and miners (1899). Since then international gatherings have met representing labour in every trade. Without exception they spoke the language of fraternity and voiced their common love of peace, but never a one ventured to discuss the attitude to be assumed by the worker-towards the State that went to war. That was politics; beyond the range of matters proper for labour organisations to consider. Thus reasoned trade union leaders, like Mr. Mawdsley, Mr. Cowie, and Mr. David Holmes. At least it can be urged in their extenuation that they did not venture into the realm of international questions for the simple reason, as they were ready to admit, that being without knowledge of the source and movement of policies, they left these high considerations to their masters. The trade, union leaders of to-day are not so modest.

But, indeed, even Socialists are not free to cast stones at trade unionism on the score of its uncertain touch on war and arbitration. By the natural logic of facts the theories of Socialism on armaments and war developed as occasion required, and always lagged a little behind the circumstances the theories were intended to explain.

At the International Socialist Congress held in London in 1896, the official, resolution denounced war as the inevitable outcome of the capitalist system, and, pending the overthrow of capitalism, called for arbitration between States. During the ensuing ten years European armaments were multiplied prodigiously, and when the International Socialist Congress assembled at Stuttgart in 1907, all the world hung on its declarations in the hope that workmen, the raw material of the conscript armies, by agreement on a common course for the prevention of war, would dispel the menace that hung over Europe like an impending plague, European Socialism succumbed to the fatal contradictions involved in the sanction of national defence. French Socialists said their action in the event of war would depend upon the Germans; the German Social Democratic Party expected to make its course contingent ​upon the action of the Russian army; and at that day Western Socialism was unanimous in the opinion that the Russian proletariat was the Tzar's scourge against civilisation and democracy. So Europe armed for war. When the cataclysm hurled the millions on the thousand miles of battle front, when the strength of Socialism vanished, apparently, with less resistance than the smoke of cannon offered to the cleansing winds, there were men in every land who looked askance, fearing Socialism had betrayed mankind, whereas, in truth, International Socialism had failed only because it lacked the numbers and clear conviction which alone could have saved the world from a war engendered by capitalist imperialism.

The tale of shattered hope halts at President Wilson's project for a League of Nations to enforce peace. It is a commonplace of critical Socialism that the capitalist system contains within itself the immanent cause of war. But capitalism has its mutations. In the process of its development, though the principle on which it rests—the exploitation of wage labour—continues to operate without abatement, the legislative functions of the Executive change. By a gradual introduction of order into the competitive chaos, contradicitons are reconciled. When the functionaries of the capitalist system remove or diminish the possibility of military war between nations there will remain the danger of civil war between classes, eventually to assume an international character.

No examination of the foreign policies of States during the last 140 years can be undertaken without revealing the increasing importance of the economic factors. Almost the sole matters dealt with in every treaty or convention of recent times are matters of trade, commercial and financial arrangements. Since about 1870, the need for investment overseas having driven capitalism beyond domestic development to imperialism, the treaties, conventions and agreements ​made between the Powers deal almost exclusively with the exploitation of countries outside the control of the contracting parties. Tariffs, railway development, facilities for banking and financial operations, access to abundant supplies of raw material, these are the cause of quarrels between States. During the last half century Egypt, Morocco, the Congo, Asia Minor, Persia, China, Mexico, were the storm clouds of foreign policy. The war we emerge from was the consequence and creation of the antagonisms arising from a general desire to profit by appropriation of the natural resources of Asia and Africa, and by the employment of their cheaper labour.

The supremacy of economic considerations in the relations of States is forcibly presented by President Wilson in a letter addressed to the Reform Club of New York, before the entry of the United States in the War. "Consider," writes President Wilson, "the situation of the present belligerents. Servia wants a window to the sea, and is shut out by Austrian influence. Austria wants an outlet in the East, Constantinople or Salonica. Russia wants ice-free ports on the Baltic and Pacific, Constantinople, and a free outlet from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean. Germany claims to be hemmed in by a ring of steel, and needs the facilities of Antwerp and Rotterdam for her Rhine Valley commerce, security against being shut out from the East by commercial restrictions on the overland route, and freedom of the seas for her foreign commerce. England must receive uninterrupted supplies of food and raw materials, and her overseas communications must be maintained. This is true also of France, Germany, Belgium and other European countries. Japan, like Germany, must have opportunity for her expanding population, interests and commerce. The foreign policies of the nations still at peace are also determined by trade relations. Our own country desires the open door in the East."

Before the war. the normal advance of capitalism in the principal countries was leading financiers and the great industrial magnates towards the adjustment of commercial differences by other means than war. At one epoch war was the missionary of capitalist enter​prise, opening up the backward places to the surplus commodity. The passing of Britain's supremacy by the entry of all the larger white populations into the circle of nations manufacturing for export added to the ever-present danger of war. This menace, and the disturbing effect of war on trade, produced a tendency on the part of capitalist proprietors to favour more pacific courses, and_in all but the trades actually maintained solely by the manufacture of armaments, by 1914, great numbers of the owners of capital were disposed favourably towards a modification of the system calculated to reduce the risk of war.

Furthermore, the growth of economic internationalism proceeded with amazing vigour in the two decades preceding 1914. The increase in foreign trade of all the chief European countries was considerable. Russia was the only country that did not show an increasing surplus of import over export values. In Germany the surplus of imports rose from under 50 millions in 1901 to 92 millions in 1912; in France from 16 millions to 59 millions. In the case of Italy and Austria the excess of imports was partly due to remittances from emigrants in America. In the case of Germany, France, Belgium, and Britain, the import balance is in part a payment for shipping services, but in the main it is accounted for by the greater sum of interest coming in from the growing volume of capital invested abroad. In fact, whilst the foreign trade of all principal countries grows more rapidly than internal trade, the most significant feature of recent economic history is not the growth of trade across frontiers, but the rapidly accumulating investment of capital in foreign countries. From 1903 to 1913 the capital subscribed in London for investment abroad, in each year, was far in excess of the amount subscribed for investment in the United Kingdom. Says Mr. C. K. Hobson, in his Export of Capital: "The main purpose for which these gigantic sums are required is still railway construction in almost every part of the world. Docks, water and gas works, electric lighting, telegraphs and tramways, form another important group of enterprises which are constantly demanding fresh capital. All of these activities are ​conducted by governmental authorities—central or local—and by joint-stock companies. In addition there are mining concerns and plantations, land mortgage companies, banks, trust insurance and trading companies, all of which figured prominently during earlier periods of foreign investment. There is, however, a new characteristic visible in the course of foreign investment during the past few years—namely, a tendency to invest in manufacturing and industrial concerns."

With Britain investing abroad at the rate of 200 millions per annum, France 100 millions, and Germany 60 millions, it is not remarkable that the project of a League of Nations finds favour among the governing classes. A few years since the rich and wealthy were convinced of the biological necessity for war. They laughed to scorn the idea that instead of fighting for markets and new fields of investment, the several national capitalist groups could arrange matters much more satisfactorily by agreement. Now it is becoming understood, with the movement of capital beyond the country of its origin, that the strategic problem of defence entirely changes in character. Relatively the defence of the homeland becomes subordinate. Neither a national army nor an imperial navy can provide adequate protection for capital exported to regions where labour yields more ample return. A League of Nations becomes the surest guarantee for the safety of capitalist property abroad. The economic determinism which at one period controlled policies and made for war, now inspires the policy that would preserve peace. True it is that in the capitalist order war is made when it pays; peace when it is more profitable.

There are other reasons causing a League of Nations on the model of the Draft Covenant presented to the Paris Conference to find favour among the capitalist proprietors. The income-producing capacity of Great Britain and the United States will be greatly enhanced when normal industrial conditions are resumed. The United States, like Japan, is no longer indebted to ​European financiers for the capital required to move the wheels of industry. In the Statistical Journal, May, 1916, Sir George Paish enlarged upon the consequences of the withdrawal of British capital from abroad, at that date amounting to 500 millions only of the 3,800 millions of British capital. invested overseas in 1914. The effect on the rate of interest of a too plentiful supply of capital at home compels investors not to miss their opportunities abroad. There is small prospect that the capital requirements of the self-governing colonies will make any substantial or highly-profitable demands upon the "savings" of British capitalists. But the devastation of Northern France, Belgium, Serbia, and Poland require great sums in reparation. If the impossible were achieved and the cost of reparation were thrown entirely on the German people the wasted territories would even then provide a rich field for industrial capital. The German militarists, not having exterminated the entire working populations of the distressed countries, having generously permitted some wage slaves to remain, there is still the chance for Allied capitalism to reap profit from their labour. And what could be more just? The prospect of gain for the investors of the Allied States by the restoration of industry in the invaded territories is a contributory cause for agreement among them. It is also one of the reasons for excluding Germany from the League.

Then there is the realisation by the rulers and financiers of the unrest among the working classes throughout the world. They see the dreaded Socialism gaining habitation in the minds of proletarians everywhere. Were it possible for the rulers of nations acting in the interests of their respective national capitalisms, to agree upon a scale of reduced armaments, on the number of men each State should keep under arms, the financial savings would be considerable indeed. Nay, more, argue certain supporters of the League. The fabulous sums now thrown away in war and preparation for war, could be used to ameliorate the social condition of the people and to allay their discontent. The rulers ​turn from force to guile. It is suggested that by building houses instead of ships and cannon the capitalist order can be preserved.

It is more than probable that were the Governments progressively to reduce armaments and to devote the expenditure saved to meeting the cost of universal improvement in the condition of labour, satisfaction, for a time, would prevail among the workers. The improbability of such an agreement is demonstrated by the meagre efforts of Governments in international Labour legislation, by the perfunctory proceedings of the Labour Commission attached to the Paris Peace Conference, and still more forcibly by the feverish haste with which the nations constituting the League are arming against each other. Moreover, the satisfaction of the workers could not be permanent. The progress of Socialism. does not depend on the actual misery of the working class. The factors that make for its additional strength are the advancing education of the workers in a knowledge of their own power, causing them to perceive that a co-operative commonwealth provides surer guarantees for economic justice. The advance of that knowledge and its translation into power cannot be retarded by concessions—either economic or political—on the part of authority.

There is adequate ground for the assumption that the more powerful supporters of the League are moved by the expectation that the day is near at hand when the conflict of labour and capital will overleap national boundaries. Only when confronted by that danger would capitalist polity have consented to limit the Sovereignty of States, which the League necessarily entails.

We read that the most perplexing problem coming before the Paris Conference is the state of Russia. To speak of a world peace, secure from disruption, with the millions of Russia excluded from the compact, is a travesty of possible things. Yet how treat these Bolsheviks, who see through the machinations and intrigues ​of statesmen; who make mere labourers understand how and why statesmen are the puppets of financial capital? Their admission to the Conference would be tantamount to the recognition of Socialism as a world-power, and with all the Allies' plea for self-determination, the line must be drawn at the right of nations to make common property of their land and capital! It is urged that Germany, Austria, Bulgaria and Turkey should be admitted to the League: that neither historical precedent nor moral justification can be found for excluding vanquished nations from a Conference to frame a peace. We can imagine President Wilson, representing a Government that inflicts the sentence of twenty years, imprisonment on Socialists who oppose war, in cordial agreement with M. Clemenceau, representing a Government that has not yet brought to trial the assassin of Jaurès, and Mr. Lloyd George—who agrees with everybody—fixed in their mutual determination to exclude Germany, Austria and Bulgaria, for the simple reason that they happen to be nations where Socialism is completing the acquisition of power. To admit to the Peace Conference representatives of countries where Socialism is politically in control, would have introduced into the discussions on the League a set of principles wholly incompatible with the aims of the capitalist powers.

The League of Nations is a League of Governments who are not, by the spurious forms of Western democracy, the representatives of peoples. Despite all the years of war which prove the failure of the past, the League of Nations is still concerned with maintaining a balance of power and alliances between States.

In the name of "international co-operation to secure international peace and security by the acceptance of obligations not to resort to war," the Covenant of the League of Nations proposes the most formidable engine of resistance to the advance of Socialism and the fulfilment of political democracy in the power of Governments to establish. The League is the figure of ​victorious force. When President Wilson, in submitting the Covenant to the Peace Conference, cried, "Force is vanquished," he uttered the most stupendous, appalling lie that ever passed the lips of man.

The Covenant gives to the five Great Powers—the British Empire, the United States, France, Italy, and "democratic" Japan—the complete mastery of the world. In the Executive they have a permanent majority. On them devolves the duty of fixing the scale of armaments for all other nations in the League or desiring admission thereto. The magnitude of their own armaments they fix themselves. The Great Powers become the mandatory powers for the administration of territorial areas formerly in the hands of Germany. Each one of the mandatory powers has a long and shameful history in its dealings with subject races, either brought under the heel of capitalist oppression or ruthlessly exterminated. Yet the Great Powers themselves determine the limits of the mandate.

The extremity of danger to Labour, however, is contained in the claim of the League to admit to membership only those nations which commend themselves to the League's approval. Neither unalloyed desire to maintain the peace nor sheer inability to make war confers a title of admission to the League. The nation desiring to enter that unholy fraternity will be called upon to guarantee an internal social system in harmony with the institutions of private property, which it is now the function of the Allied armies to preserve. The. League is the framework of the military organisation, which prepares war to confine Socialism east of the Rhine.

The formation of the League of Nations and the general acceptance by the ruling class of the Wilsonian philosophy is the triumph of the interests of property over political systems. The League of Nations is an Holy Alliance of the Emperors, reconstructed to suit the altered times and more efficiently equipped to combat the movement of the working class towards control of the productive force maintaining the life of peoples. What advantage to the cause of Peace might otherwise have resulted from the institution of a Court of Arbitra​tion and a permanent Court of International Justice are outweighed by the evil power against political and economic democracy which the constitution of the League reposes in the hands of the Executive Committee of the Capitalist Class—now the Governments of the Allied States.

The restoration of International Socialism is become of supreme importance in view of the League of Nations. The Governments of twenty-seven States, leagued together, still have the right to conscript their nations' manhood and to drive millions forth to war. It may be argued of the few States in the League, whose subjects enjoy political rights, that the democracies of this far-flung federation can change their rulers and the whole spirit of the League. For Socialism and the anti-militarist working-class to confine its efforts to the tardy substitution of Labour leaders for Cabinet Ministers would be a ruinous policy to pursue. Let the workers of the Allied States take steps to expel from the Executive and Delegate body of the League every diplomatist in love with secrecy, every statesman who would conserve property in the means of life; let the workers eject from the administrative offices of the League every civil servant not in agreement with a policy of internationalism. But let them not confine themselves to these purely constitutional methods of political action, or their masters, with long training in the elaborate game of check and counter-check, will outwit them at every turn. Before the danger now confronting International Labour the workers must adopt extra-constitutional measures or suffer the temporary destruction of Socialism in Russia, Germany, and Austria, and the then inevitable supremacy of reaction in all its grosser forms throughout the rest of the world.

We think of a nation as an aggregate of individuals bound by the ties of common language and a sense of danger from without, which only the workers' Inter​national can remove. Within the capitalist order culture is not yet in common, and cannot be until class divisions disappear with the advent of Socialism. We hold that all nations have equal rights to raw materials, the gift of nature, and that no impediment to freedom should bear upon one that all do not have to bear.

As Socialists we have no wish to violate any frontier, to change forcibly the institutions or customs of peoples speaking other tongues. We want to live in peace, in co-operation with our fellows to complete mans' mastery over nature, to give expanse to knowledge and enlarge the conquest of invention, to refine the crude and elevate the base, to hand on the torch of life burning ever brighter to the runners in the race who know not yet their high destiny. We wish this joy, this plentitude of life for all. The peoples are never in reality enemies, since when they fight, though on opposing sides, they fight for the same things.

Our League of the Workers of All Nations will not range itself with Governments. It spreads abroad the idea that the sole ultimate guarantee of peace is the organised refusal of the workers to make war on other workmen. It dissolves the League of Nations with a thought—transcending human differences, proclaiming that all who labour are of one class, a brotherhood.

Since political authority directs the use of armed force we shall organise for the control of the political power of all States by the workers.

We shall carry our propaganda and organisation into all armies, navies, and into every police force.

We shall urge the soldier to hear the word of command and be still, the sailor to turn back the ship, the workman to fold his arms.

We shall aid in creating the industrial organs required to secure to the workers the democratic control of the socially owned instruments of production.

​The League of International Labour will break the League of Nations.

Labour, so long prostrate, dumb, degraded, at last aflame with the spirit of Socialism, will lean across the frontiers, and amidst the laughter of children who know not the smoking ruin, the blood-soaked field, will dwell on the folly of the millions who made war, when they were told, for the profit of a few.

The decision of the Supreme War Council (March, 1919) to incorporate in the Terms of Peace, articles that are designed to reduce German armaments so that they become sufficient for internal purposes only, gives additional importance to Section 8 of the Covenant of the League of Nations.

Section 8 of this historic document sets out the vital guarantees entered into by the nations composing the League relating to the reduction of armaments to the "lowest point consistent with national safety." The Executive Council, that is, the representatives of the five great Powers, together with representatives of four other States, members of the League, are instructed to formulate plans for the reduction of national armaments. In the preparation of their plans they are to exercise a special regard for the geographical situation and the circumstances of each State. An inquiry into the circumstances of a State from the viewpoint of its position in War must comprise more than an estimate of its population and the proportion that is recruitable. It must cover also examination of the sources whence the supplies of a State are drawn, and the distance separating the source from the place where the articles are used, the means of internal transport, and the character of its manufactures. Clearly, then, it is to fall within the province of the Executive Council of the League to determine not only the relative proportions of the forces permitted to each nation, and ​their equipment, but to review from a central point the movement of commodities across the face of the world. This last office of the League may well become of greater service to mankind than the attempt to reduce armaments which is sure to bear within it much that is haphazard.

Let us assume that the reduction of armaments proceeds under the auspices of the League. It is an open question how far the restriction of organised force tends to the removal of war. Mankind has made frequent recourse to war, despite the changing character of his weapons, and, until recently, it was held widely that the peace was best preserved by the augmentation of armaments until their vastness caused a fear to release them. There is a fashion in thought, and now the prevailing custom is to contend that arms are provocative. It is frequently argued that if war were localised at least great numbers would be saved from the horrors and ruin that marks the track of fighting armies. If the covenants made in peace, however, were adhered to on the outbreak of hostilities, reduced armaments would no longer contribute to the localisation of war. The new means of aerial warfare already indicate far-reaching changes in the whole character of military conflict. The period of trench warfare was unprecedentedly intense; its life is unprecedentedly short.

Aerial navigation is causing war to pass from the relatively static state, where great armies face each other backed by immense artillery, to a series of scattered attacks widely diffused. There is no reason to believe that applied science, cannot render the scattered attacks as formidable as the assault of the field artillery in the largest battles of the recent war.

On the general question of confining armaments to an agreed scale, the doctrine of Clausewitz: "In War the use of force is absolute," is not in the smallest degree weakened in its hold on the ruling classes of all nations by the limitation of the German artillery to guns of a calibre not exceeding 150 millimitres.

Further, there is the substantial probability that if the League continues its present policy and Socialism ​in Central and Eastern Europe were crushed, a second League will be formed eventually, composed of Germany, Russia, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Turkey, and some nations that were neutral in the War. Against this combination, Great Britain and the United States are the only members of the present League with populations large enough to bear the brunt of a war of the magnitude occasioned by conflict between the opposing Leagues. The populations of Great Britain and the United States are 137 millions. The populations of Germany and Russia are 238 millions.

The extent of a nation's armaments depend upon several factors, of which geographical position is not the most important. The several factors that decide the weight of a nation's armed force may be enumerated. Thus: population, and its rate of increase, the area of land under cultivation, and the quantity of wheat grown, the quantity raised of coal, iron and steel, the number of railway locomotives and waggons, the character of the railway system, and the national command of shipping for carriage. Together, these constitute the resources for recruitment, rations, munition, and transport. These factors are almost exclusively economic. They result from the varying productivity of labour,and are forever in a state of flux and change. Yet these are the bases—the floating foundation—that the League must build upon in constructing its scale of proportional armaments.

The reduction of armaments to a standard which gives to each Power a weight of fighting materials governed by these changing factors, is just the doctrine of the Balance of Power over again. Such regulation is bound to fail, as the laboured attempts to preserve the Balance lamentably failed. If security is the end in view a house cannot be built on moving ground. None of the European nations are in the category of China, where, despite the penetration of much foreign capital and an approach in the political system towards Western methods, the progress expected a generation since has not materialised. Strangely enough—here again we see the compelling power of the economic factors—France was the only European nation almost ​static before the War. The following table shows the last decennial increase of the principal white populations:

In the provision of food supplies France is almost self-supporting, and in that respect is in a more favourable condition than either the United Kingdom, Italy, or Germany. This is the fact which enables France to occupy a position among the nations disproportionate to population and manufactures.

The variability of the bases of any comparative scale of armaments would be revealed forcibly by the transfer of the Lorraine iron ore mines from Germany to France. It is, of course, assumed that with the transfer of territorial ownership the real ownership would pass from the hands of German capitalists to French capitalists. The Westphalian coalfield, in the Ruhr Valley, which is the principal manufacturing district of Germany, depends upon Lorraine for 21 million tons out of the 27 million tons of iron ore raised annually in Germany. By all the principles of strategic geography, and by all the laws of private and national property, if the French win from the Lorraine mines as much iron ore as they yielded under German control, French armaments should be increased for the protection of iron mining. But with the change of ownership another disturbing factor would come into play. Unless the French population is greatly augmented, which is improbable, the appropriation of this new industry by French financiers would draw into iron mining much of the labour that agriculture now employs. The French now raise their food supplies from their own, soil. With the gravitation of labour towards the Lorraine mines, France, entering the circle of manufacturing nations producing ​for export, would become in part dependent for food on foreign sources of supply. The French ruling class will then maintain that the necessity has arisen for a larger navy "consistent with national safety."

The case of Italy affords a further proof of the instability the League of Nations rests upon in the matter of disarmament. The population of Italy, 34 millions, is smaller than any of the other great Powers, but it increases rapidly, and in time will exceed the population of France. The almost complete lack of coal and iron ore causes the country to depend on external sources for these essentials of modern industry. At different periods the Germanic Empires and Great Britain were the economic props of the Italian State. Italy's relations with France, and therefore with Britain, would undergo a radical change by the French ownership of the iron mines of Lorraine. Of even greater moment is the fact that the main technical problem of Italian: industry is the use of electricity derived from water power. As this proceeds apace, with the increasing economy of coal consumption on the one hand and the greater use of iron and steel on the other, the position of Italy among the nations is subject to continuous change. The armaments Italy would require to defend her lines of supply and means of sale will vary with every new development of economic life.

A new railway, the discovery of unopened coal, iron or oil fields, radical changes in the cultivation of the soil, are more potent factors to disturb the balance of military power than the mere addition of men to the armed force of a State. Not the reduction of armaments, but their abolition, is the only practical policy if the end in view is the permanent peace of the world.