Towards an enduring peace : $b A symposium of peace proposals and programs 1914-1916
History
Towards an enduring peace : $b A symposium of peace proposals and programs 1914-1916
Peace; World War, 1914-1918 -- Peace
The fatal objection to any alliance of this kind is that it does not
really meet the difficulty that no State will abandon its sovereignty.
This alliance would not be a League of Peace unless it were prepared to
exercise a very sharp supervision over the foreign policy of its members.
If the old Anglo-Franco-Russian entente had been a genuine League of
Peace, it would have had to say, for example, to Serbia, “You may join
us, but if you do join us, you must abandon forever your Irredentist
ambitions at the expense of Austria. We will protect you against any
unprovoked attack by Austria. But you on your side must refrain from any
encouragement to those who would dismember her.” It would have had to say
with equal decision to France, “Join us by all means, but at the cost of
refraining from any expansion in Morocco. You cannot march on Fez without
provoking some German reply.” Such a League, in short, would be a mutual
insurance society, but the risks would be too high unless the society
could prohibit its members from any deliberate playing with fire. It is
not enough to say, “We will murder an Archduke once in a way, but when
he is dead and buried we will go to The Hague about him”; or, “We will,
to be sure, take places in the sun which other people covet, but when we
have taken them we shall not wantonly attack any unsuccessful rivals.”
The League of Peace would either be the old imperialistic alliance under
a dishonest name, or else it would be a highly conservative federation
which would keep its members in a very strait pacifist jacket. If great
powers would really endure such a control they might as well face at once
the limitation of sovereignty implied in a United States of Europe.
[Sidenote: All interests must be reconciled.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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