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 United States of the World would face the same problem, though
on a much more difficult scale. It will find that a court to adjust
mistakes is not enough, for the really important conflicts that provoke
war are not “justiciable.” They are matters upon which a policy has
to be declared—upon which, in brief, legislation is needed. Some kind
of legislature a League of Peace would have to establish, and with a
legislature and court would have to go an executive. This would open up
the problem of representation, of the large and populous State as against
the small ones, of the “satisfied Powers” against the “unsatisfied.”
For it is clear that the British Empire will not consent to give to
Montenegro equal representation, or the United States to Venezuela. Here
will be the question of conflicts between international and national
legislation, similar to the conflicts which our Supreme Court is called
upon to settle. All the problems of home rule, such as that of Ireland
within the Empire, and of Ulster within Ireland, would have to be met in
territory like that of the Balkans, by the League of Peace. It would have
to determine whether, for example, the sovereignty of a national India
was an internal question for the British Empire, or a legitimate subject
for international settlement.
[Sidenote: The business of such a League.]
The League would have to work out the problem of unexploited territories,
of weaker peoples, and of disorderly States. Just as our original
Union had the whole West to organize, so the League would have Africa,
large parts of Asia, and the middle Americas as a kind of international
domain. It would have to meet those who want merely to exploit, and to
support those who are liberal enough to throw about weaker peoples that
protection under which they can really grow to freedom. Nor would that
be all. The League would have to legislate about concessions, trading
rights, tariffs, about spheres of influence, about the use of great ocean
and land highways. As soon as it grappled with the economic aspects of
diplomacy, it would find, just as our government found, that interstate
commerce cannot be regulated satisfactorily by conflicting state
interests.
In other words, there is no stopping short at a league to prevent war.
Such a league would either grow to a world federalism, or it would break
up in civil war. But that, far from being an argument against the League,
is the strongest possible argument for it. It is the first step towards
a closer world organization, and once that step is taken, the world will
have to choose between taking some of the next steps and returning to the
anarchy of sovereign nationalities. The vast implications of the League
of Peace are what make it important. And its real service to mankind
may well be that it will establish the first rallying point of a world
citizenship.
[Sidenote: It would mean a new world-federalism.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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