The Lost Fruits of Waterloo 6

The Lost Fruits of Waterloo 6

The “peace movement,” as the totality of these activities is called,

has thus gained strength, and it would seem that it must eventually

prevail in public opinion. It received an important momentum in

1910, when Mr. Andrew Carnegie gave $10,000,000 to establish the

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, an organization which has

contributed powerfully to the promotion of peace ideas. It acts on

scientific principles, seeking to gather and publish such facts bearing

on international relations, the laws of economics and history, and the

science of international law, as will show in what respect war is to be

removed from its hold on society.

 

The careless enthusiasm with which a great many people hailed the

outbreak of war in 1914 swept the peace advocates into the background

and was the occasion of some sarcasm at their expense. But as the

struggle grew in grimness and horrors the advocates of peace on

principle returned to their old position in public esteem, and have

steadily gained on it. It seems undeniable that the war has done more

to convince the world of the madness of war than many decades of

agitation could do.

 

One of the manifestations of the rebound here mentioned was the

organization in June, 1915, of “The League to Enforce Peace.” This

society was created in a meeting of representative men assembled in

Carpenters’ Hall, Philadelphia, the place in which the Declaration

of Independence was adopted. Its principles are embraced in the

following proposals: 1. A judicial tribunal to which will be referred

judiciable disputes between the signatory powers, subject to existing

treaties, the tribunals to have power to pass on the merits of the

disputes submitted as well as on its jurisdiction over them. 2. The

reference of other disputes between the signatory states to a council

of conciliation, which will hear the cases submitted and recommend

settlements in accordance with its ideas of justice. 3. If any

signatory state threatens war before its case is submitted to the

judicial tribunal or the council of conciliation, the other states will

jointly employ diplomatic pressure to prevent war; and if hostilities

actually begin under such circumstances they will jointly use their

military forces against the power in contempt of the league. 4. The

signatory states will from time to time hold conferences to formulate

rules of international law which are to be executed by the tribunal of

arbitration unless within a stated time some state vetoes the proposal.

 

The system of coöperation embodied in these proposals is not a

federation, within the meaning that I have given to that term. It is

what it pretends to be, merely a league. It seems to concede the right

of a state to secede from the league at will. As to what would happen

under it if a signatory state refusing to abide the decision of the

tribunal or council of conciliation should attempt to withdraw and

make war at once, we can have little doubt. In such a case the attempt

to secede would probably be considered defiance and steps be taken to

reduce the state to submission. Nevertheless it might happen that a

state within the league, finding its action restricted so that it could

not adopt some policy which it considered essential to its welfare,

might proceed to withdraw in view of a line of conduct it intended

to take at a later time. In that case it is difficult to see how the

league could resist unless it was willing to take the position that it

had a kind of sovereignty over all interstate relations, a position

that involves more concentration than the form of the league seems to

imply.

 

At this point in our inquiry into the subject of coöperation to secure

universal peace an inviting field of speculation opens before us, but

we must turn aside for the time, in order to consider various phases

of the process by which the world has arrived at the crisis now before

it. This chapter will serve its purpose if it gives the reader a view

of the earliest suggestions of systems of common action and if it makes

clear the differences between the two general plans that have been

formulated, the league and the federation.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER III

 

PROBLEMS OF THE NAPOLEONIC WARS

 

 

The career of Napoleon, which has long commanded the greatest interest,

not to say enthusiasm, of students of history, aroused grave fears in

the minds of most of the thoughtful men of his day who did not live

in France. His design to conquer all his neighbors was most evident,

and his apparent ability to carry it into execution caused him to

be regarded as the embodiment of greed and insatiable ambition. Not

since the days of Louis XIV had Europe felt such thrills of danger and

horror. All its energy was called into play to withstand his attacks.

Wars followed wars in a series of campaigns that ended after many years

of extreme anxiety in his ruin, only when France had been worn out

by his repeated victories. When he began his wars he was at the head

of the best prepared nation in the world. He struck with sudden and

vigorous blows against nations that were not united, defeating one

after the other with startling effect. Their lack of preparation was

most marked and was probably the most effective cause of his initial

success. After years of conflict they learned how to oppose him. From

his own example they learned the value of organization and method in

fighting, and from their own disasters they at last acquired the sense

of union that was necessary to give him the final blow that made him

no longer a menace to their national integrity. It was not until 1815

that he was finally defeated and reduced to the state of ineffective

personal power from which he had risen.

 

From the beginning of the struggle he was to his opponents the

incarnation of all that was hateful in government. Few of the epithets

now hurled at the kaiser were not as lavishly cast at Napoleon. He was

tyrant, robber, brute, and murderer in turn, and it was pronounced a

service to humanity to suppress him. In the beginning of the wars his

pretensions were treated with disdain, but as his victories followed

one another in bewildering rapidity, his power was treated with more

respect, although there was no greater disposition to contemplate

his triumph with complacency. As the struggle became fiercer, the

other states than France began to think of some permanent form of

coöperation for restraining him; and they even began to speculate on

the possibility of some permanent arrangement by which the world might

be saved from a recurrence of such a vast waste of life and treasure as

was involved in the struggle. It was thus that suggestions were made

during the Napoleonic era for abolishing war through international

effort. For us, who are today burdened with the ruin of a similar

but more stupendous struggle, these efforts have a special interest,

and the space of a single chapter is none too much to give to their

consideration.

 

It is singular that these plans should have found their most

conspicuous supporters in the heads of the two governments most widely

apart with reference to the popular character of their institutions.

It was in autocratic Russia that one found the most advanced idea of

dealing with the future, and in Great Britain, the most liberal of

the great powers, that the most conservative design was held. Each

plan was supported by the head of these two governments respectively,

each ran through its own development while the armies were locked in

deadly struggle, and each was debated with seriousness in the moment of

victory when the statesmen of the winning powers met to arrange for the

future relations of the states whose victories made them the arbiters

of Europe.

 

The initiative was taken by Alexander I, of Russia. He was a man

of the best intentions, and throughout the period with which we

are now dealing he showed himself persistently favorable to views

which, to say the least, were a hundred years ahead of his time. By

temperament he was imaginative and sympathetic. In his personal life

were irregularities, but not as many as in Napoleon’s, Louis XIV’s,

or Talleyrand’s. He lacked the royal vice of despotism, and his

escape from it was probably due to the influence of Fréderic César

de La Harpe, an instructor of his youth, who arrived in Russia with

his head full of the dynamic ideas of the French philosophers of the

pre-revolutionary period.

 

While “liberty, equality, and fraternity” maddened France, long

oppressed by the dull repression of the ancient régime, La Harpe was

converting his royal pupil to the doctrine of the “Rights of Man.” So

well was the lesson taught that a long series of encounters with the

solid wall of Russian autocracy was necessary before the pupil ceased

to try to do something to ameliorate the condition of his people.

Historians have called Alexander a dreamer, but what is a man to do

who is born a tsar and has the misfortune to believe in the doctrines

for which we honor Lincoln and Jefferson? I am willing to call him

impractical, but I cannot withhold sympathy from a man who tried, as

he, to strike blows in behalf of the forms of government which makes my

own country a home of liberty.

 

Alexander I came to the throne of Russia in 1801, anxious to carry

out his liberal plans.[3] In 1804, through his minister in London, he

suggested to Pitt, the prime minister, a plan for settling the affairs

of Europe after the defeat of Napoleon. France, he said, must be made

to realize that the allies did not war against her people but against

Napoleon, from whose false power they proposed to set her free. Once

liberated she was to be allowed to choose any government she desired.

From La Harpe he had imbibed a deep repugnance to the government of the

Bourbons, and in all his future discussions of the subject he showed no

enthusiasm for restoring that line to their throne.

 

[3] For an excellent treatment of the events discussed in this

chapter see W. A. Phillips, _The Confederation of Europe_,

London, 1914.

 

One of the charges often made by the allies was that Napoleon overthrew

international law. It was a part of Alexander’s plan to reëstablish its

potency and to have the nations see to it that no future violations

of it could occur. He also suggested that the firm agreement then

existing between Russia and Great Britain should continue after the

establishment of peace and that other great powers should be brought

into it so that there should be a means of securing common action in

affairs of mutual significance. At this time he had not, it seems,

fully determined just what form of coöperation ought to be adopted,

but in the suggestion of 1804 can be found the germ of all his later

designs for permanent peace.

 

At that moment Pitt was looking for the renewal of the European war

and he expected the formation of the great coalition of 1805, in which

Russia, Great Britain, Austria, and Sweden undertook to defeat France.