The Fruits of Victory: A Sequel to The Great IllusionAngell, Norman
History
The Fruits of Victory: A Sequel to The Great Illusion
Angell, Norman
Economic history -- 1918-1945; World War, 1914-1918 -- Influence
Until we have managed somehow to create an economic code or comity which
makes the sovereignty of each nationality subject to the general need of
the whole body of organised society, this struggle, in which nationality
is for ever threatened, will go on.
The alternatives were very clearly stated on the other side of the
Atlantic:--
'The underlying assumption heretofore has been that a nation's security
and prosperity rest chiefly upon its own strength and resources. Such an
assumption has been used to justify statesmen in attempting, on the
ground of the supreme need for national security, to increase their own
nation's power and resources by insistence upon strategic frontiers,
territory with raw material, outlets to the sea, even though that course
does violence to the security and prosperity of others. Under any system
in which adequate defence rests upon individual preponderance of power,
the security of one must involve the insecurity of another, and must
inevitably give rise to covert or overt competitions for power and
territory, dangerous to peace and destructive to justice.
'Under such a system of competitive as opposed to co-operative
nationalism, the smaller nationalities can never be really secure.
International commitments of some kind there must be. The price of
secure nationality is some degree of internationalism.
'The problem is to modify the conditions that lead to war. It will be
quite inadequate to establish courts of arbitration or of law if they
have to arbitrate or judge on the basis of the old laws and practices.
These have proved insufficient.
'It is obvious that any plan ensuring national security and equality of
opportunity will involve a limitation of national sovereignty. States
possessing ports that are the natural outlet of a hinterland occupied by
another people, will perhaps regard it as an intolerable invasion of
their independence if their sovereignty over those ports is not absolute
but limited by the obligation to permit of their use by a foreign and
possibly rival people on equal terms. States possessing territories in
Africa or Asia inhabited by populations in a backward state of
development, have generally heretofore looked for privileged and
preferential treatment of their own industry and commerce in those
territories. Great interests will be challenged, some sacrifice of
national pride demanded, and the hostility of political factions in some
countries will be aroused.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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