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Today the nature and extent
of the armaments regime which dominates modern industrial
civilization is far better and more generally understood than,
for example, were the nature and extent of those forces
animating the ancient regime in the eighteenth century. The
fundamental error of attempting to overthrow the crushing regime
of world armaments by appeals to a vague utilitarianism and by
mass pacifism in a separate emotional tour de force apart from
the overthrow of the economic nationalism of which armaments are
the most destructive manifestation has been made plain. This
type of disarmament campaign has been played to its bitter end.
It has been proved that national armaments are inseparable from
the material substance of the competitive nationalist regime
which they defend. On the other hand, modern armaments and the
present competitive situation are rapidly making the cost of
national sovereignty in taxation prohibitive at the present
standard of living.
The cost of this cherished right of
national states to substitute a feudal defiance for what the author of
the first declaration of national independence, Thomas Jefferson, was
pleased to call “a decent respect for the opinion of mankind” is
everywhere registered in rising budget totals. Like those institutions
of a decadent feudal society which survived in the ancient regime to the
closing years of the eighteenth century, national sovereignty today
takes its toll from the merchant, the manufacturer, the laborer, and the
farmer. From all who contribute to the constructive enterprise of
raising the standard of human life by the production and distribution of
wealth, sovereignty exacts an onerous feudal levy to arm the borders of
the national domain. A rising bourgeois at the close of the eighteenth
century, awakened by the cost of an outworn system of government which
was unable to reform the budget, overthrew the ancient regime and
abolished the feudal dues. The revolutions which followed the breakdown
of feudalism and ushered in modern times, however, did not consist in
the spectacular episodes of violent liberation, but rather in those
manifold changes in the structure of society which signified the
substitution of new things for old. The real revolution was
accomplished when enterprising merchants, after a century of enlightened
criticism, broke through the tottering defenses of feudal waste and
incompetence, and step by step replaced the outworn institutions of a
violent past with new social and economic forms adapted to the more
cooperative type of society which was already in being. Who can deny
that today, a century later, the outworn institutions of national
sovereignty constitute as menacing a burden upon the new industrial
society of the twentieth century as that imposed by the
eighteenth-century feudalism upon an era awakened to its inner
potentialities in the “Enlightenment”? Can modern business men,
emulating the merchants of the eighteenth century, break through the
feudal armaments regime of national sovereignty and reform the national
budget? Like the revolutionary movements which liberated the old regime
of armaments consists in a concerted offensive by all progressives upon
those surviving institutions of an out-dated national sovereignty—the
economic and the military frontier.
As foreign trade smashed the guilds
of the medieval city, so international trade, if the feudal control of
the national frontier is broken will today transform limited national
economies into productive members of the larger family of nations.
Between modern capitalism and the realization of this objective stand
those national frontiers which form the feudal defenses of the
privileged members of the society of nations. It is this feudal
prerogative of the modern state which has been rendered no longer
defensible without the destruction of modern civilization. The
abolition of trade barriers can no longer be considered as merely a
helpful circumstance contributing to the peace of nations. Trade
barriers are today revealed as the substance of the military regime of a
feudal national sovereignty. Economic disarmament is the crux of
military disarmament. It has become evident that capitalism can
only break through the armaments regime at this point. And it is
obvious that this break cannot be accomplished by violent frontal attack
upon economic sovereignty. It must be brought about by the substitution
of international cooperation for isolated national action.
International machinery of adjustment must be provided which is cheaper
and more effective to operate than the machinery of national force.
Events have rendered obsolete the philosophy of a static international
political world divided in perpetuo into national feudal
territories under the rigid control of the privileged have as against
the have-nots of the society of nations. It is at last generally
recognized that it is necessary to accept the well-established fact of
the inevitability of change as an essential element in human progress,
and that is the part of wisdom to employ for the control and guidance of
change the same technique utilized within the liberal constitutional
state. The constitutional state, in so far as it continues to function
as a working institution, is a demonstration of the truth that change
cannot be prohibited by force, but can be directed by intelligence. The
disastrous results of attempts to attain disarmament by the guarantee of
a static world order are before us. Social distress destined to
eventuate in mass violence and war is the natural revolt against an
unreformed international social order. It follows that war starts not
with the actual outbreak of hostilities but with the diversion of labor
and materials from constructive enterprise to arm property interests in
the status quo—whether it be American neutrality or the safety of world
empire.
Is it possible for national
economic groups to be withdrawn altogether from the unholy alliance with
national armaments? Can business be brought to renounce militarism as
an instrument of economic policy? If this is to be accomplished,
constructive machinery of peaceful change must be erected which can
successfully compete with those destructive processes of feudal change
that are perpetuated to modern times in the war system. The products of
human violence and misery must be driven from the markets of the world
by the products of peace.
This enterprise can be undertaking of
no one sect. It belongs to no “ism”. If modern civilization is to be
saved in this late year of armaments, it can be saved only by the
combined effort of all who believe in the works of peace. There must
be a united front formed by business men for the overthrow of the old
regime of armaments. The times demand a new, a broader, a more
resolute, a more concerted and better organized démarche than any so far
attempted to reform international affairs. This world reform movement
should mark the gathering in of the various enterprises and activities
which have been operating in different spheres since the war in
furtherance of international cooperation and world peace.
Such a movement was actually
inaugurated by a private international conference of prominent citizens
of high national and international repute held at Chatham House, London,
March 5-7 1935 under the auspices of the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace for the purpose of discussing, as stated in the
invitation,
Steps to be taken to restore
confidence by promotion of trade and reduction of unemployment,
stabilization of national monetary systems and better organization of
the family of nations to give security and to strengthen the foundations
on which international peace must rest. (Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, Chatham House Conference).
The conference, which included
representatives from Belgium, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Norway,
Sweden, Great Britain, Canada, and the United States, gave a broad
consideration to the three sets of problems outlined in the invitation.
The discussions took place under the chairmanship of the Marquess of
Crewe, J.A. Spencer, and Sir Austen Chamberlain. After a frank and
confidential exchange of views, the conference recommended that the
governments of the United States and Great Britain initiate action
directed toward the adoption of “measures to enable the debtor nations
to meet their obligations in goods and services,” endorsed projects for
low-tariff unions on the model of the Ouchy convention, and called
attention to the multilateral economic treaty and especially the
most-favored national clause therein, drafted at Montevideo. It
advocated provisional consultation between nations on equal terms,
thorough strengthening of the League, building of the habit of the
judicial settlement of international disputes, and checking the constant
growth of armaments. It advocated also the adoption of steps to
increase the effectiveness of the Pact of Paris, recognition of the fact
“that continuous consultation is the best safeguard against war” and
that economic measures could or would be effective if virtually
universal, rendering military measures unnecessary, and, finally,
international cooperation to raise the standard of living and to solve
social problems along the lines undertaken by the ILO...
George L.
Ridgeway
Merchants of Peace: Twenty Years of Business Diplomacy Through the
International Chamber of Commerce
Columbia University Press, 1938 |
