[This article will be published in THE NEW STMTESMAN' AND
NATION, Friday morning, March 25, 1938, and
no quotation should appear before that time.!
POSITIVE PEACE PROGRAMME
Sweet Peace, where dost thou dwell? I humbly crave,
Let me once know.
I sought thee in a secret cave,
And asked, if Peace were there.
A hollow winde did seem to answer, No:
Go seek elsewhere.
OUR troubles are of our own making and our errors were obvious
at the time when we made them. The guilt of tile Treaty, of French
policy for ten years after that and of our own weakness and betrayals
since then, we all now acknowledge. But behind this there has
been at work another cause of undoing where we have been, not
guilty, but deceived. We have assumed that a negative pacifism,
backed by no sanctions and supported by no definite undertakings,
would prevail against a positive militarism, whenever and wherever
that might arise. If we now look back, is it not evident that
positive militarism was sure to arise somewhere at some time?
With a slightly different turn of events it would have come,
not from Germany, hut from Russia. Tile Japanese aggression is
largely independent of European totalitarianism. Negative pacifism
was most unlikely to stand any severe strain. We have been relying
on an illusion.
With the instrument of negative pacifism broken in their hands,
the Prime Minister and his group seek for Peace, it seems, "in
a secret cave." Their policy is not lightly to he rejected.
To gain time, to avoid at all costs any risk of war, how much
there is to be said for it| To keep our own liberties and lives
and happiness intact, to attain true isolation in a disastrous
world, withdrawing to our secret caves front Cornwall to Orkney
as to a cloister, how willingly, and perhaps rightly, would ninny
of us retreat. But if the Prime Minister gathers to his support
those whom a withdrawal instinctively attracts, he gains followers
who do % not belong to him, and whom he deceives. For this is not
what he means He has not decided, once and for all, to abandon
British power in the Mediterranean and to surrender without resistance
the more vulnerable portions of the British Empire. Far from
it. He is not escaping the risks of war. He is only making sure
that, when it comes, we shall have no friends and no common cause.
He is forgetting the imponderables of the world, the power of
courageous bearing, the majesty of right action, the comfort
and stiffening to our friends of Faithful words and counsel.
He is leaving all the imponderables to the other side, allowing
them to exploit the foreseen and the inevitable for purposes
of terror and prestige. Yet what a response an act of constructive
statesmanship would evoke| Is it impossible to build a bridge
between "I dare not" and "I would "? What
would one do if one had the power?
There is no middle position to-day between nonresistance and
a positive pacifism. Within the scope of the existing League
of Nations we must, therefore, set out to construct a new European
pact open to all the European members of the League, who would
give definite undertakings to one another and the power to act
by the voice of tire majority; since we know by experience that
a League with no definite sanctions and a liberum veto for each
member is useless. The constitution of such a European League
could be extremely simple. For example, the three major League
Powers, Great Britain, France and Russia would have 10 votes
each; Poland and Czecho-Slovakia four votes each; Switzerland,
Holland, Belgium, the Scandinavian and the Balkan countries two
votes each; the Baltic States and Spanish Provinces one vote
each. All the members, subject to the safeguards which follow,
would bind themselves to abide by a majority vote as to the fact
or imminence of aggression involving two European powers, the
appropriate action to avert or meet it, and all other matters,
following in general the procedure and principles of the existing
League without, however, any specific guarantee of the status
quo. It is not essential that all the eligible powers should
adhere from the outset. The Pact should Begin to function with
the three major powers and any others who were ready to join.
If our politicians mean anything by their lip-service to Collective
Security, they have a duty to make some such proposal as this.
But there is one urgent matter which they must settle first.
The British and French governments, out of regard both to their
own and the general interest, must demand an immediate armistice
in Spain and a negotiated peace on the basis of the independence
of Catalonia and the Basque Provinces; and, in tile event of
refusal there should be an end of "non-intervention"
and a free hand to France with our full support. The time has
come, on every ground of humanity and policy and the state of
public opinion, to end the Spanish war. Does anyone doubt it?
It is also a necessary preliminary to new guarantees that Czecbo-Slovakia
should at least attempt to negotiate with Germany a reasonable
solution of the problem of the Sudeten Germans, even if this
means a rectification of the Bohemian frontier. Racial frontiers
are safer and better to-day than geo-physical frontiers. But
such things will give us no enduring relief except as facilitating
a new European Pact, and to the details of this Pact let us now
return.
The sanctions attaching to the new Pact would be of three orders.
The first, financial assistance and the rupture of relations.
The second, a blockade. The third, a full military alliance.
But the smaller %powers with less than four votes should not he
committed to join in any sanctions without their own assent in
the particular case. The members of tile Pact amongst themselves
would, of course, accept the results of arbitration, endorsed
by a majority vole of the members, in all matters of dispute
between them, including frontiers, renouncing altogether the
instrument of war. Their general staffs would be in regular collaboration
with particular reference to air defense and blockade. But they
should be concerned not less with the arts of peace and aim at
becoming the nucleus of a new system of freedom in trade and
intercourse, so that to be a citizen of the European League would
be to enjoy again the old personal liberties. We ourselves should
offer on reciprocal terms freedom of trade, freedom of investment,
freedom of remittance, and freedom of the movement and employment
of individuals, or, failing that, trade and currency agreements
going as far as practicable in these directions; subject only
to safeguards relating to wholesale or abnormal movements of
capital or population. There should be an offer to Germany to
make organised arrangements for all German and Austrian Jews
who wish to migrate and be naturalised elsewhere.
What would be the relation of the new League to the old League?
The new League would bc the first-born off-spring of the old,
domiciled at Geneva, dwelling in amity in its parent's house,
sharing all common interests and activities. But the old League
should be relieved of its inoperative organs. The articles relating
to sanctions should go and all European problems should be handled
in the first instance by the new League. When the European League
decided to act, the members of the old League, including the
British Dominions, would be invited of their own free will to
participate in the decision. The hope would be for the blessing
of other offspring, in particular all American League, headed
by the United States and limited in membership to the American
continents; and perhaps in due course a Pacific League, an African
League, a League of Middle and Nearer Asia.
None of these proposals is dangerous. Their whole object is the
avoidance of war. But we are suffering to-day from the worst
of all diseases, the paralysis of will. Nothing can be more dangerous
than that. We have become incapable of constructive policy or
decisive action. We are without conviction, without foresight,
without a resolute will to protect what we care for. We just
rearm a little more, grovel a little more, and wait to see what
happens. We mutter the necessity for Collective Security and
do not lift a finger to achieve it. Our strength is great, but
our statesmen have lost the capacity to appear formidable. It
is in that loss that our greatest danger lies. Our power to win
a war may depend on increased armaments. But our power to avoid
a war depends much more on our recovering that capacity to appear
formidable, which is a quality of will and demeanour.
Mr. Churchill understands this vital element of policy, but Mr.
Chamberlain seems to forget it. The Dictators appear much more
formidable, the Democratic Powers much less formidable, than
they really are. It is the reversal of that position which will
serve most effectively to preserve the peace. If we want to lure
the adversary to his destruction, let us sharpen our teeth and
silence our snarl. But if we wish to keep him at a distance,
the lion's roar is worth more than his power to spring.
We are learning to honour more than formerly the achievements
of our predecessors and the Christian civilisation and fundamental
laws of conduct which they established in a savage world. We
are seeing and enduring events, worse than which have not been
seen and endured since man became himself. If we still recognise
the difference, not merely between peace and war, but between
good and evil and between right and wrong, we need to rouse up
and shake ourselves and offer leadership.
J. M. KEYNES