{"id":1154,"date":"2013-07-13T01:32:57","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:32:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1154"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:32:57","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:32:57","slug":"67-a-league-of-nations-vol-15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15\/67-a-league-of-nations-vol-15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15","title":{"rendered":"-67_A League of Nations.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n

\nA League of Nations<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0            
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\nA<\/font><\/b>NCIENT tradition believed in a golden age of mankind which
\nlay in the splendid infancy of a primeval past; it looked back to some type or
\nsymbol of original perfection, Saturnian epoch, Satya Yuga, an age of
\nsincere being and free unity when the sons of heaven were leaders of the human
\nlife and mind and the law of God was written, not in ineffective books, but on
\nthe tablets of man’s heart. Then he needed no violence of outer law or
\ngovernment to restrain him from evil or to cut and force his free being into the
\nmachine- made Procrustean mould of a social ideal; for a natural divine rule in
\nhis members was the spontaneous and sufficient safeguard of his liberty. This
\ntradition was once so universal that one might almost be tempted to see in it
\nthe race memory of some golden and splendid realisation, not perhaps a
\nmiraculous divine beginning, but some past spiral cusp and apex, some topmost
\ngloriously mounting arc of the cycles, – if there were not the equal chance of
\nits being no more than a heightened example of that very common ideally
\nretrospective tendency in the human mind which glorifies the past out of all
\nperspective or proportion, blots out its shadows and sees it in some haze or
\ndeceiving light against the dark immediate shadow of the present,<\/font>
\n–<\/font> or else a
\nprojection from his sense of the something divine, pure and perfect within him
\nfrom which he has fallen, placed by symbolic legend not in the eternal but in
\ntime, not inwardly in his spiritual being, but outwardly in his obscure
\nexistence on this crude and transient crust of Earth. What concerns us more is
\nthat we find often associated with this memory or this backward-looking
\nillusion, a vague hope far or near, or even a more precise prophetic or
\nreligious forward- looking tradition of a coming back to us of that golden
\nperfection, Astraea redux, Saturnia regna, <\/i>-let us say, a return from
\nthe falling line of the cycle to another similar, perhaps even greater
\nhigh-glowing cusp and apex. Thus in the human mind<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-608<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n

which
\nlooks always before and after, its great dream of the ideal past completed
\nitself by a greater dream of the ideal future.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>These things modern man with his
\nscientific and secularised mentality finds it difficult to believe in unless he
\nhas first theosophised or mysticised himself into a fine freedom from the
\npositive scientific intelligence. Science which traces so confidently the nobly
\ncomplete and astonishing evolution of our race in a fairly swift straight line
\nfrom the ape man to the dazzlingly unfixable brilliancy of Mr. Lloyd George and
\nthe dyspeptic greatness of Rockefeller, rejects the old traditions as dreams
\nand poetic figments. But to recompense us for our loss it has given us instead
\na more practicable, persistent and immediate vision of modern progress and the
\nfuture hope of a rational and mechanically perfectible society: that is the one
\nreal religion sti111eft, the new Jerusalem of the modem creed of a positivist
\nsociology. The ideal past has lost its glamour, but a sober glamour of the
\nfuture is brought near to us and takes on to the constructive human reason a
\ncloser hue of reality. The Asiatic mind is indeed still incurably prone to the
\nolder type of imagination which took and still takes so many inspiring forms,
\nsecond coming of Christ, City of God, the Divine Family, advent of Messiah,
\nMahdi or Avatar,<\/font> –<\/font> but whatever the variety of the form, the essence is
\nthe same, a religious or spiritual idealisation of a possible future humanity.
\nThe European temperament – and we are all trying to become for the moment, superficially
\nat least, white, brown, yellow or black Europeans,- demands something more
\nfamiliarly terrestrial and tangible, a secular, social, political dream of
\nevolving humanity, a perfected democracy, socialism, communism, anarchism. But
\nwhichever line we take and whether it be truth or illusion, the thing behind is
\nthe same and would seem to be a necessity of our human mind and will to action.
\nWe cannot do without some kind of futurist idealism. Something we must labour
\nto build individually and collectively out of ourselves and our life, unless we
\nwould be content with the commonness and stumbling routine of a half-made and
\nhalf-animal manhood, – a self-dethronement to which that which is greatest in
\nus will never consent,- and man cannot build greatly whether in art or life,
\nunless<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-609<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n

he
\ncan conceive an idea and form of perfection and, conceiving, believe in his
\npower to achieve it out of however rebellious and unductile a stuff of nature.
\nDeprive him of this faith in his power for perfection and you slay or maim his
\ngreatest creative or self-creative faculty. In the absence then of any
\nimmediate practicability of that higher and profounder dream of a spiritually
\nunited and perfected humanity, the dream of social and political meliorism may
\nbe accepted as the strongest available incentive to keep humanity going
\nforward. It is better that it should have the ideal of a saving machinery than
\nthat it should have no ideal at all, no figure of a larger, better and sweeter
\nlife.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>This secular dream of a future
\ngolden or half-golden age of a more perfected, rational and peacefully
\nco-operative society has taken recently a singular step forward in the
\neffectuating imagination of mankind and even got as far as some attempt at a
\nfirst step towards actual effectuation. In ideal and imagination it has assumed
\nthe form of a political and economic society of the nations which will get rid
\nof the cruel and devastating device of war, establish a reign of international
\nlaw and order and solve without clash, strife or collision, by reason, by
\nco-operation, by arbitration, by mutual accommodation all the more dangerous
\nproblems which still disturb or imperil the comfortable peace, amity and
\norganised productiveness which should be the reasonable state of mankind. International
\npeace an ordered legality and arrangement of the world’s affairs, a guaranteed
\nliberty, – or for the unfit a preparation and schooling for liberty,<\/font>
\n–<\/font> an organised
\nunity -of the life of the race, this is the figure of the golden age which we
\nare now promised. – At the first sight one has some sense of a lacuna
\nsomewhere, a suspicion of a perfection too external and too well-regulated by
\nclock-work and a timidly insistent idea that it may perhaps be neither so
\nreadily feasible nor so lyrically enchanting as its prophets pretend. One may
\nbe disposed to ask, what of the spirit and soul of man, the greatness of the
\ninner perfection which can alone support and give security and some kind of
\npsychological reality to even the most ideal arrangement of his outer life,
\n-how far that has gone or is likely to go in the near<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-610<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/font><\/span>future, or what means or opportunities the
\nnew order proposes to offer for its growth and satisfaction? But this is no doubt
\ntoo esoteric a way of looking at things. The practical western mind does not
\ntrouble itself overmuch with these subtleties; it prefers, and rightly enough,
\nsince to get something. done seems to be the chief actual business of man in
\nlife, to hasten to the matter in hand and realise something useful, visible and
\ntangible, good enough for a practical beginning or step forward. It believes
\nbesides in the omnipotence of law and institution to make the life of man
\nconformable to his intellectual or spiritual ideals; it is satisfied if it can
\nwrite down and find sanctions for a good and convenient system of laws, a
\ncompact or constitution, set up the mechanical means for the enforcement of its
\nidea, build into effective form a workable institution. Other less palpable
\nthings, if they are at all indispensable, are expected to develop of
\nthemselves, as surely they ought under good mechanical conditions.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>Good philosophical as well as practical
\njustification may be put forward for this attitude. Form, after all, is an
\neffective suggestion to the soul; machinery, as even churches and religions
\nhave been prone to believe, is all-powerful and can be trusted to create
\nwhatever you may need of the spirit. God himself or contriving Nature had first
\nto invent the machinery and form of a universe and could only then work out in
\nits mould some figure of the spirit. Therefore, the sign of great hope, the
\ngood tidings of peace and good will unto men is not that a new and diviner or
\nsimply a more human spirit has been born into humanity, seized upon its leaders
\nand extended itself among its ego-ridden, passion-driven, interest-governed
\nmillions, but that an institution has been begotten at Paris with the blessings
\nof Premiers and Presidents,<\/font> –<\/font> the constitution of an inter- national society,
\nsupported by the armed force of great nations and empires and therefore sure to
\nbe practicable, prosper and succeed, has been got into shape which will make
\nwar, militarism, oppression, exploitation an ugly dream of the past, induce Capital
\nand Labour, lion and lamb, to lie down side by side in peace and not, as a
\nwicked Bolshevism proposes, one well digested inside the other, and in fact
\nbring about before<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-611<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n

long,
\nsooner it is hoped rather than later, the grand fraternity of mankind. This is
\ngood news, if true. Still, before we enter the house of thanksgiving, let us
\npause a little and cast an eye of scrutiny on this new infant phenomenon. <\/font>
\n <\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>A just, generous, cordial and valid
\nLeague of Nations is the thing which has been created, it seems to replace the
\nold unjust Balances of Power and stumbling, quarrelsome Concerts. And if it is
\nto succeed better than the loose, ineffective and easily dissoluble things which
\nit supplants, it must satisfy, one would think, certain conditions which they
\ndid not even attempt to fulfil. And one would at first sight fix something like
\nthe following as the indispensable conditions. First, this League must draw
\ninto its circle in one way or another all the existing nations of the earth;
\nand that it must do on both just and agreeable terms so that they may join
\nwillingly and gladly and without any serious misgivings, reservations or
\nheart-burnings; it must satisfy each and all by a fair and effective and, one
\nmust add in these democratic days, an honourable and equal position in this new
\nsociety of the peoples. Since it should command and retain their moral assent
\nand support, if it is to maintain in being an otherwise insecure material
\nadhesion, it must, in order to do that constantly, not only at the moment of
\nformation but in the future, base itself on no self-regarding law or
\nestablished table of institutions fixed by any arbitrary will of those who for
\nthe moment are the strongest but on some firm, recognisable and always
\nevolvable principle of equity and justice, for only where these things are is
\nthere a moral guarantee and security. The constitution of the League must
\nprovide a trustworthy means for the solution of all difficult, delicate and
\nembarrassing questions which may hereafter endanger the infant and precarious
\nframework of international society, and for that purpose it must establish a
\npermanent, a central and a strong authority which all nations can readily
\nrecognise and accept as a natural head and faithful dynamic expression of the
\ncorporate being of mankind. These, one would think, are not at all nebulous,
\nfanciful or too idealistic demands, but the practical necessities of any system
\nof yet loose unification such as now is contemplated, conditions it must from
\nthe first and increasingly<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-612<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n

satisfy
\nif it is to survive the enormous difficulties of an enterprise which, as it
\nproceeds, will have to work out of being most’ of the natural egoistic
\ninstincts and rooted past habits of the international mentality of the race.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>This new gigantic bantling which has come
\ninto existence with War for its father and an armed and enforced Peace for its
\nmother, with threatening and bloodily suppressed revolutions, a truncated
\ninternationalistic idealism and many half-curbed, just snaffled rearing
\nnational egoisms for its witnesses and god-parents, has not, when looked at
\nfrom this standpoint, in spite of certain elements of promise, an altogether
\nreassuring appearance. The circumstances of its inception were adverse and
\nexcept by a tremendous effort of self-conquest in the minds of the rulers and
\nstatesmen of the victorious nations, a self- conquest rendered a thousand times
\nmore difficult by the stupendous magnitude and the intoxicating completeness of
\ntheir victory, any at all complete result and auspicious new beginning could
\nnot be hoped for. This league now in the last throes of formation has not been
\na spontaneous creation of a peaceful, equal and well-combined will towards
\nunity of all the world’s peoples. It comes into being overshadowed by the
\nlegacy of hatreds, reprisals, apprehensions, ambitions of a murderous world war
\nchequered by revolutions which have opened a new and alarming vista of
\nworld-wide unrest and disturbance. It has grown out of a vague but strong
\naspiration,<\/font> – <\/font>
\nmore<\/font><\/span> among the rank
\nand file of the nations, and even so not equally common to all of them, than
\namong their governing men or classes, – to find some means for the future
\navoidance of violent catastrophes in the international life of mankind. It has
\nbeen precipitated into actual and immediate being by the determination of an
\neminent idealistic statesman with the modified and in some cases unwilling
\nassent of others who shared only partially or not at all his idealism, one man
\nof strong will who, aided by a commanding position given to him by
\ncircumstances and a flexible obstinacy in his use of them, has been able to
\nimpose some shadow or some first incomplete <\/font>form of his ideal
\n–<\/font> the future alone can show which it is to be
\n– on the crude course of events and the realistic
\negoism of<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\n
\nPage-613<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n

governments
\nand imperial nations. But in present fact the large and complete ideal with
\nwhich he began his ‘York, has been so impinged upon by the necessities of
\nnational passions, ambition, self-interest and by pressure of the force of
\ncircumstances, – still in spite of all idealism the chief determining factors
\nof life,<\/font> –<\/font> that it is difficult to put one’s hand on any thing in the concrete
\narrangement formulated and say without doubt or qualm that here is the very
\nembodiment of the high principles in whose name the great war was fought and
\nwon. This is not surprising, nor should it be disappointing except to those who
\ntrusted more to their hopes than to experience. All we have to see is whether
\nthose high original principles were indeed necessary to the future security and
\nevolution of this new association of the peoples and, if so, what chance they
\nhave of
\nemerging from the forms in which they now seem to have been rather buried than
\ngiven a body. And that will depend on the extent to which the conditions
\nalready suggested are realised or evolvable from the League’s incipient
\nconstitution.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>An effective League of Nations must draw
\ninto itself all the existing nations of mankind; for any considerable omission
\nor exclusion will bring in almost inevitably an element of future danger, of
\npossible disagreements and collisions, perhaps of a rival grouping with
\njealousies which must lead to another and more colossal catastrophe. In its
\nostensible figure this new League does not by any means wear a catholic:
\nappearance. Professedly, it is nothing but an association of actual friends and
\nallies. In the front rank stand confident and masterful five great and powerful
\nempires or nations,<\/font> –<\/font> the sole great Powers left standing by the hurricane
\nin unimpaired strength, and two of them indeed with an enormously increased
\npower, influence and dominion: behind crowd in dimly and ineffectively a number
\nof smaller European and American peoples, those who were allied to them or
\notherwise on their side in the war, and one feeble and disjointed oriental
\nleviathan; but all these seem to partake only with a passive assent or a
\nsubordinate co-operation, – and in fact with very much of the first and very
\nlittle of the latter,<\/font> –<\/font> whether in the determining of the form of the League
\nor in its control and government. And the<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-614<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n

immediate
\nprofessed object of the association is not to knit the world together in the
\nbeginnings of a well-conceived unity, – that could only have been done if all
\nthe peoples had taken a free and equal part in these deliberations, whereas in
\nfact the whole thing has been hastily constructed in semi-secret conference by
\nthe victors of the war, and chiefly by the will of the five leading Powers. Its
\nobject is to regulate the interests and mutual relations of the members of the
\nLeague by rule, agreement, deliberation and arbitration and their relations
\nwith other States -outside the League as much as may be by the same means; it
\nis this only and in the beginning it is nothing more. But a door is left open
\nfor the nations still outside to enter in a given time, provided they subscribe
\nunquestioningly to a system which they will have had no hand in framing, though
\nunder it they will have to live. On the other hand a door of egress is also
\nprovided for any nation wishing to recede hereafter from the League, and if
\ndisunion should set in among the greater Powers, this dangerous, though under
\nthe circumstances perhaps unavoidable provision, may easily lead to the
\nautomatic dissolution of even this hesitating first frame of a partial unity.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>But the facts and forces of the situation
\nare perhaps more favourable than ostensible paper provisions. The nations not
\nyet included are with two great and perilous exceptions small and
\ninconsiderable and their position outside will be so disadvantageous, they will
\nbe at every turn so much at the mercy of this formidable combination,<\/font>
\n–<\/font> for the five
\ndominant Powers will easily be able, if they are determined and united, to
\nenforce their will vigorously against all dissidents,<\/font> –<\/font>
\nthat they may
\nbe expected to subscribe more or less readily to its terms or at any rate to
\nenter in after a few years’ experience of exclusion. The Great Powers too are
\nnot likely to have strong reasons for breaking asunder for some years to come,
\nand time may perhaps, pro- vided no new revolutions sweep across the world,
\nconfirm the habit of united action. We may assume that here we have in fact,
\nthough not yet in name, the beginnings of a council or an imperfect federation
\nof the world’s peoples.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>But the constitution of this
\nCouncil and the conditions under which the variously circumstanced nations are
\nadmitted into or<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-615<\/font><\/span><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n

brought
\nunder it, have a still more baffling appearance. They do not at all correspond
\nwith the democratic idealism of the human mind of to-day but rather strike one
\nas a structure of almost mediaeval irregularity, complexity, incoherent
\nconstruction, a well-nigh feudal political building with some formal
\nconcessions on its ground floor to the modern canon of liberty and equality. A
\nunification of mankind may proceed very much on the same lines as past
\nunifications of smaller peoples into nations or empires. It might have been
\nbrought about by the military force or the political influence of some powerful
\nking-state preponderant by land and sea,<\/font> –<\/font>
\npampotent par terre et mer, <\/font><\/i>as Nostradamus prophetically described the British
\nEmpire,<\/font> –<\/font> not necessarily despotic and absolute but easily first among equals;
\nand that I suppose is what would have happened if Germany had come up top dog
\nin the struggle instead of a very much mutilated and flattened undermost. Nor
\nis it at all certain that something of the sort will not eventually come about
\nif the present attempt or crude sketch of a system should come to grief; but
\nfor the moment this contingency has been prevented or at least postponed. That
\npossibility eliminated, the unification may still take the form of an oligarchy
\nor hegemony of great Powers, leaders and masters of the herd, with the weaker
\nrabble rest hanging on the flanks or posteriors of their mighty bellwethers and
\nfollowing them and their omnipotent decisions in sometimes a submissive and
\napprobatory, sometimes a mutinous and discordant chorus; something very much of
\nthis kind is what this new League has certainly been in its formation and is
\nlikely to turn out in its execution. But there was also the vain present hope
\nor dream, the strong future though far-off possibility of an equal, just and
\ndemocratic federation of the peoples in which the dwarf and Goliath nations,
\nthe strong and the weak, the wealthy and the less wealthy, the immediately
\nsuccessful and the long or temporarily unfortunate,<\/font> –<\/font>
\nwho may yet
\nhave better gifts, have done really <\/font>more for mankind than the arrivistes
\namong the nations, –<\/font> will have, as is the rule or the ideal in all democratic
\nbodies, in law and in initial fact an equal position and there will be only a
\nnatural leadership and influence to differentiate by a freely accorded\u00a0 <\/span>greater weight and voice. These were the
\nthree possibilities,<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-616<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n

and
\nthey represent respectively the ideal of the past which is said to have been
\nburied in the grave of imperial Germany, the fact of the present which is a
\nfact only and to none an ideal, and the ideal of the future, loudly trumpeted
\nduring the war, though there is none now, except the vanquished, the subject
\nand the revolutionary, so poor and weak as to do it reverence.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The initial constitution of the League is
\nalmost frankly oligarchic in its disposal of the international balance of
\npower, – not quite an absolute oligarchy, indeed, for there is certainly a
\ngeneral assembly which is so far democratic that all its members will exult in
\nthe dignifying possession of an equal vote. Honduras and Guatemala may, if the
\nfancy pleases them, indulge themselves in some feeling of being lifted up to an
\nequality with imperial England, America, the new arbiter of the world, and
\nvictorious France. But this is an illusion, a trompe <\/i>l’ ad!. <\/i>For
\nwe find that this general assembly is in no sense the governing body but only a
\nsecondary authority, a court of approval and reference, to which the powerful
\nexecutive nations will refer, mostly at their own discretion, this or that
\ndoubtful question for discussion. In practice and fact the new sovereign of the
\nworld under <\/font>this constitution, –<\/font> jagadiSvaro
\nvii? <\/i>–<\/font> will be the executive body of League of Nations. But there the five great Powers will
\nsit in a secure and formidable permanence, while a changeable selection of
\nrepresentatives picked out from the common herd will diminutively assist their
\ndeliberations, assisting or discussing in the giant obscurity of their shadow.
\nOne can easily see how the superior management of the world’s affairs will go
\nunder these conditions and in fact have already had a taste of its quality in
\nthe process of this formation and this building of a basis for what\u00a0 <\/span>it is still hoped by many will be a long or
\neven a permanent peace. Evidently in such a governing body the Great Five will
\ndeter- mine the whole policy and action; nothing will readily pass which will
\nbe at all displeasing to these new masters of the earth, or let us say, to this
\nnew composite hegemony,<\/font> – for its <\/font>
\ndeci<\/font><\/span>sions will at no time be guided by that perilous,
\nductile and variable thing, a majority, but must be by unanimity. What in
\nprinciple is this system but a novel, an improved, an enlarged and <\/font>regularised
\nedition of the Concert of Powers, –<\/font>
\nliberalised a little<\/font><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-617<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n

in
\nform because buttressed by a democratic general assembly which may, indeed, as
\ncircumstances develop and conditions change, become something, but may equally
\nremain a dignified or undignified cypher,<\/font> –<\/font>
\nbut still in essence another and firmer Avatar
\nof that old, loose and dubious body? Even something of that historic device,
\nthe balance of power, though now much changed, shifted, disjointed and
\nperilously lopsided, still remains subtly concealed in this form of a novel
\norder. And that element is likely to pronounce itself later on; for where there
\nis no impersonal governing principle and no clear original structure in the
\ninternational body, its motions must be determined by a balance of interests,
\nand the balance of interests can only be kept reasonably steady by carefully
\npreserving an established balance of power. That was the justification of the
\nold armed order; it is likely to be a necessity of this new system for
\nregulating chaos. <\/font>
\n <\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>This creation is a realistic practical
\nconstruction with a very minimum concession to the new idealism: it has been
\nerected by statesmen who have been concerned to legalise the actual facts and
\norganise the actual forces which have emerged from the World War – a few
\ninconveniently new-born and of a menacing significance which have been barred
\nand boycotted, blockaded or pressed out of existence: it is hoped also to
\nsecure their system against attack by any resuscitable ghost of the past or
\nviolently subversive genius of the future. From that point of view it has been
\nconstructed with a remarkable skill and fidelity to present realities, though
\none may be tempted to think with an insufficient allowance for obscure but
\nalready visible potentialities. The correspondence between fact and form is
\naccurate to perfection. Five Powers have been the real victors of the war,
\nthree of them central and decisive forces who now actually control the world by
\ntheir will, and two others who intervened as less powerful subsidiary
\nstrengths, but can put in some effective claim and material weight into the
\nfuture balance of forces. This fact is reproduced in the constitution of the
\ngoverning body; it is these Five who by virtue of their wealth and force are to
\nhave in it a permanent voice, the three great ones’ to strike the major chords
\nand determine the general harmony of the concert, the two others to bring in,
\nas best they can and when they can, minor<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-618<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/font><\/span>chords and unessential variations. Then there
\nare the great number of small or weaker nations who have at their command minor
\nmaterial effectives and, though incapable of being principals in any very great
\nconflict may be useful as minor auxiliaries, the free peoples, allies included
\nfrom the beginning by right, neutrals invited to participate in a settled
\norganisation of ‘peace though they did not throw their weight into the decision
\nof war, enemies, old or new, who may be admitted when they have satisfied more
\nor less onerous or crushing and disabling conditions. These will make the
\ngeneral assembly: some of them will have from time to time an uncertain voice
\nin the governing body; the rest will be the mass, the commons, the general body
\nwho will possess some limited amount of actual power and some kind of moral
\nforce behind the executive. Labour too has been made by the War a great though
\nas yet incoherent international power, and the League, wishing evidently to be
\nwise in time and make terms with this formidable new fact, recognises at its
\nside Labour in a special separate conference.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>But there are also new Asiatic peoples
\nwho cannot now be admitted, because they are infants and unripe; there are
\nsubject and protected nations for whom the war was not fought and who cannot
\nshare in the once hoped-for general freedom, but must trust to the generous and
\nunselfish liberalism of their rulers and protectors; there are African tribes
\nwho are the yet unmanufactured raw material of humanity. These are to be left
\nunder the old or put under a new control or are to be entrusted to the paternal
\nhands of this or that governing power who will be in the legal style of the new
\ndispensation, not masters and conquerors, –<\/font> for in this just and miraculous peace there are
\nno annexations, only rectified arrangements of control and territory,<\/font>
\n–<\/font> but trustees,
\nmandatories. A mandate from the League will be the safe- guard of these less
\nfortunate peoples. For we are, it seems, about to live in quite a new moralized
\nworld in which the general con- science of mankind will be wide awake and
\neffective and the League is there to represent it. As its representative it
\nwill take a periodical report of their trust from the trustees, – who also as
\nthe great Powers of the League will be themselves at once mandatories, leaders
\nand deputies of this same general con-<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-<\/font>619<\/font><\/span><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n

science.
\nAll existing forces are represented in just proportions in this very remarkable
\nconstitution. .<\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The idealist may find much to
\nobject against the perpetuation and hardening of the unideal existent fact on
\nwhich the system of the League is founded, but undoubtedly that system has a
\n.good deal to say for itself, can urge very urgent considerations from the
\npoint of view of practical possibility. One indispensable condition of its
\nsuccess is a solid central authority, strong and permanent, capable of enforcing
\nits decisions, and it must be an organ which all nations can accept as the
\nnatural head and faithful dynamic expression of the corporate being of mankind.
\nAs far as is at all practicable at the moment, here is, it may be said, just
\nsuch an authority. The international body of mankind is still an amorphous
\nmass, its constituent peoples unaccustomed to act together, heterogeneous by
\nvirtue of their various degrees of development, organised power, experience,
\ncivilisation: a free general assembly, a parliament of the world, an equal
\nfederation of mankind, is out of the question; even an equal federation of free
\nand civilised peoples is likely to be an incoherent and futile body incapable
\nof effective corporate action. What is to enforce and give practicality to the
\ngeneral needs and desires if not the power, influence, authority and, where
\nneed is, the strong arm of the great nations and empires acting in concert but
\nwith a due regard for the common interests and general voice? Who else are to
\ndetermine preponderatingly the decisions they will have to enforce or can give
\nto them a permanent principle or sustained practical policy? No combination of
\nlittle American republics and minor European Powers could dictate a world
\npolicy to the United States, France and the British Empire or could be allowed
\nto play by the blind rule of a majority with these great interests. But in the
\nLeague the various constituents of the corporate body are so ranked and related
\nas to give precisely a faithful dynamic expression of it in its present
\nconditions; whatever evolution is necessary can be worked out through a general
\ncontrol and a periodical revision of treaties and relations. In brief, the
\nwhole international condition of the world is a chaos that has to be brought into
\norder and shape, and that is a work which cannot be done by an idyllic idealism
\nor an abs-<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-620<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n

tract
\nperfection of principles which are not in correspondence with the actualities of
\nthings and, if prematurely applied, are likely to bring in a worse confusion,
\nbut can only be accomplished by a strong and capable organised Force which will
\ntake things as they stand, impose a new system of law and order on this chaos,
\nsome firm however imperfect initial framework, and watch over its development
\nwith a strict eye on the practical possibilities of progress. On that safe and
\nfirm basis a slow but sure and deliberate advance can be made towards a future
\nbetter law and ideal order. There is another side to the question, but let us
\nsuppress it for the moment and give full value and weight to the
\nconsiderations.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>But all the more indispensable does it
\nthen become <\/i>that the principles of the progress to be made shall be
\nrecognised from the beginning in the law and constitution of the League, or at
\nleast indicated in such a way and so impressed on its system as to ensure that
\non those lines or towards the fulfilment of those principles its action should
\nproceed and not be diverted to other, baser, reactionary or obstructive uses.
\nThe declaration of general principles and their embodiments and safeguards in
\nthe democratic constitutions promulgated in the eighteenth century were no
\nbarren ideologists’ formularies, – any more than the affirmation of
\nconstitutional principles in earlier documents like the Magna Charta, – but
\nlaid down the basis on which government and progress must proceed in the
\nnew-born order of the world and were at once a signpost and an effective moral
\nguarantee for the assured march of Democracy. We look in vain in the
\nconstitution of the League for any such great guiding principles. The
\nprovisions for the diminution of the possibilities of war, the creation of some
\nnew small nation and the safety given to those that already existed can hardly
\nbe called by that name. There is here no hint of any charter of the
\ninternational rights and duties of the peoples in a new order making at once
\nfor liberty and union. The principle of self-determination over which the later
\nstages of the war were fought has been ruthlessly thrown overboard and
\nswallowed up in the jaws of a large pot-bellied diplomatic transaction, – it
\nmay be only for a time like the prophet in the stomach of the whale, but for
\nthe nonce there is an<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-621<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n

almost
\nperfect disappearance. Some infinitesimal shadow of it we see in petty
\ntransactions like the arrangements’ about Schleswig- Holstein, but for the rest
\nthe map of the world has been altered very much in the old familiar fashion
\nwithout any consistent regard to nationality or choice, but rather by the
\nagreement and fiat of armed victorious nations. A famous pronouncement during
\nthe war had denounced the theory of trusteeship, that cloak which can cover
\nwith so noble a grace the hard reality of domination and exploitation,<\/font>
\n–<\/font> things now too
\ngross in their nakedness to be presented undraped to the squeamish moral sense
\nof a modern humanity. But in this after-war system that very theory of
\ntrusteeship is glorified and consecrated, though with the gloss of a mandate subject
\nto examination<\/font> –<\/font> by a body whose action and deliberation will be
\ncontrolled by the trustees. Subject nations are still to exist in this world;
\nfor the system of mandates is only to be applied where a previous subjection
\nhas been abrogated, it is to be applied to some of the Asiatic or African
\npeoples who lay under the uplifted scourge of the now fallen empires; the rest
\nwho had the advantage of milder masters, the remaining subject peoples from
\nIreland to Korea, have no need of any such safeguard!
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>It may be that all this denial of a too ideal principle of liberty was
\ninevitable; for we must, we are now told, not be in too great a hurry to get
\nfrom midnight to midday; the law of the times and seasons must be observed, a
\nmitigated darkness must first come and then twilight and then dawn and then the
\nglad confident morning before we can live in the golden noon of a universalised
\nliberty and justice. But meanwhile what other guiding principle, what embodied
\nidea of law and right, what equitable and equal balance of obligations is to be
\nthe firm basis of the new order? We find none, only a machinery for the
\ndiminution of the chances of war, not for their removal, by compulsory
\narbitration, by the threat or actuality of armed force and economic pressure;
\nfor the revision of treaties; for the secured possession of colonies,
\ndependencies, markets, frontiers, ports, mandates; for the international
\ndiscussion and settlement of the conflicting claims of Capital and Labour.
\nThere is a system of immediately practicable relations, an attempt to affirm
\nand to secure a new<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-622<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n


\nstatus
\nquo, <\/font><\/i>a provision for minor
\nmanipulations and alterations; but there is little actual foundation for a new
\nand nobler world-, order. A preparation for it may have been the intention of
\nthe institutors, but the fulfilment of their intention is left very much at the
\nmercy of the uncertain chances of the future. The idealism of the founder has
\nso far triumphed as to get some limited form of a League of Nations admitted
\nand put into shape, but at every other point the idealist has gone under and
\nthe stamp of the politician and diplomat is over this whole new modern machine,
\n– of the mere practical man with his short sight and his rough and ready
\nmethods. It is a leaky and ill-balanced ship launched on waters of tempest and
\nchaos without a chart or compass or sailing instructions.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Well, but in other times devices as
\nrough and unbecoming have been the foundations of great structures, and if this
\nLeague can be kept in being there may be some chance of getting it suffused
\nwith the principles and ideals for whose realisation the vague heart and
\nconscience of mankind, baffled always by its own lax complicities, is beginning
\nto thirst and weary. But to the eye of the critic this new pact would seem to
\ncarry in itself the ominous seeds of its own future mutability and perhaps
\ndissolution. For first of all the League is entering into being with a very
\nlimited and feeble enthusiasm on its behalf even in the nations which are
\ninterested in its maintenance; America does not seem to be in a quite flawless
\nharmony of agreement with its President in his self-satisfaction over the
\nshapely beauty of his nursling; the world of Labour and socialism is critical,
\ndissatisfied, distrustful, uneasy, simmering over into brief and uncertain but
\nwidespread and menacing strikes and formidable demands and murmurings. These
\nare not favourable signs. The League will need all the support and hearty
\nacquiescence it can get to overcome the difficulties that it will meet in
\nconstructing the world according to its own idea and fashion, a task which will
\nnot end but only be just beginning when peace is concluded, and it is doubtful
\nwhether it will have what it needs in any but the most grudging measure. Not
\nenthusiastic support, but a sort of muttering acquiescence for want of any
\nchance of a better thing at the moment is the general mood of the world’s
\npeoples whose<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-623<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n

interests
\nit proposes to manage. A poor starting wind for so momentous a voyage.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>But let us suppose the system accepted
\nand under way,<\/font> – what are the actual facts which will meet it in the
\nfuture? Its system will stand for a long time to come for the nations conquered
\nin the war as a perpetuation of their downfall diminution and disgrace; it will
\nbe to them a gaoler and inflicter of penalties, a guardian of tasks and
\npayments with an uplifted scourge. It need not have been so, if a generous and
\nequal peace had been made or, better, if apart from an such questions, there
\nhad been a peace based not on the will of a conquering might, even though
\nbetter-minded than the might it conquered, but on clear and undeniable
\nprinciples, such as the utmost possible self-determination, equal opportunity,
\nequal position for the world’s peoples; that would have been indeed a peace
\nwithout any other victors or vanquished than vanquished force and wrong and
\nvictorious equity. But the leading nations have chosen to impose a diplomatic
\npeace in which the League which imposes it figures as an administrator of criminal
\njustice. The vanquished nations, now for the most part democracies and no
\nlonger the old aggressive militarisms which made the war, were, it is said,
\ncriminals and breakers of peace and the penalty inflicted is far too light in
\ncomparison with their crimes. It may be so in literal terms,<\/font>
\n– though a
\ncriminal justice inflicted by one of two parties in a quarrel on his beaten
\nopponent and not by an impartial judge is apt rightly or wrongly to be suspect
\nto the mere human reason and at best much of what is caned justice is only
\nlegalised revenge, – but still it may be that nothing but justice or even less
\nthan justice has been done. But that makes no difference to the fact that a
\nnumber of new democracies, vigorous and intellectual peoples, born to a new life
\nwhich should have been one of hope and good will to the coming order, will be
\nthere inevitably as a source of revolt and disorder, eager to support any
\nchange which will remove their burdens, gratify resentment and heal their
\nfestering wounds. They may be held down, kept weak and maimed, even though one
\nof them is laborious, skilful, organised Germany, but that will mean a weakness
\nand an ill-balance in the new order itself, and if they recover strength, it
\nwill not be to<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\nPage-624<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n

acquiesce
\nin their inferior place and the perpetual triumph and <\/font>
\ngreatness of their ancient
\nrivals. Only in a legalised system o<\/font>f<\/font><\/b><\/span> equal democracies can there be some true
\nchance of the cessation of these jealousies, enmities, recurrent struggles.
\nOtherwise war will break out again or in some other form the old battle
\ncontinue. An unequal balance can never be a security for a steady and peaceful
\nworld-system.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>Pass, if this were the only peril of the
\nnewly inaugurated sys- tem. But this League seems also to stand for a perpetuation
\nof a new status quo <\/i>to be arrived at by the peace which is being made
\nits foundation. The great Powers, it would seem, have arrived at a compact to
\nsecure their dominions and holdings against any future menace of diminution.
\nThis arrangement is of the nature at once of a balance of power,<\/font>
\n–<\/font> but with all
\nthe dangers of an unequal balance, – and of an attempt to perpetuate for ever
\ncertain at present preponderating influences and established greatnesses. That attempt
\nis against all the teaching of history and all. the perennial movement of
\nNature; the League which stands committed to it is committed to a jealously
\nguarded insecurity and the preservation of an unstable equilibrium. It is not
\ncertain that the constructing Powers themselves remain consistently satisfied
\nwith the terms of their compact or able to resist that urge of national and of
\nhuman destiny which is greater than any diplomatic arrangement or the wills of
\ngovernments and statesmen. But even if that unheard-of thing be realised
\nbetween <\/font>them,<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\na durable international
\nfriendship and alliance, it may<\/font><\/span> serve for a time, but will it serve for a very long time
\nagainst the world’s urge towards change? Power rots by having security, and
\nthose who are powerful to-day to impose their will on the nations, may not
\nalways keep that force in spite of their bulk and wealth and armed magnitudes.
\nThen there are old sores perpetuated and new sores opened by this arrangement
\nof a hastily made peace of devices and compromises. Whether the Balkan question
\nwill be permanently settled is at least dubious; but there will be now the
\nquestion of a German Bohemia, a particoloured Poland, perhaps, a Saar region
\nwith its wealth in the possession of a foreign Power, an insoluble question of
\nYugoslav and Italian, a new question of Tyrol, an Irish trouble and a<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-625<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n

Korean
\ntrouble in which the League cannot interfere without deep offence to England
\nand Japan and which yet clamour more and more for a settlement, a Russian chaos.
\nThere is a Mahomedan world which will one day have a word to say about the new status
\nquo. <\/i>There is the whole question of Asia and Africa., which is the most
\nformidable but of which much need not be said, for its issues are patent to
\nevery eye. The partition of Africa between a few European powers with all its
\neconomical advantages can be no permanent solution. Asia is arising in the
\nsurge of an upward wave and cannot always be kept in a condition of weakness,
\ntutelage and vassalage. When the time comes, how will a league mainly of
\nEuropean and American peoples deal with her claims? Will Europe be content to
\nrecede from Asia? Will the mandatories be in any haste to determine their
\nmandate? Can there be any modified perpetuation of present conditions which will
\nbe at all compatible with an equality between the two continents? These are
\nquestions which no imperfect sketch of a league of nations on the existing
\nbasis can decide according to its phantasy; only the onward moving world-spirit
\ncan give them their answer.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>None of these dangers and difficulties
\nare as yet formidable in their immediate incidence, but there is another
\nproblem of a pressing, immediate insistency and menace which touches with its
\nclose foreshadowing finger the very life of any new international system and
\nthat is the approaching struggle for supremacy between Capital and Labour. This
\nis a far other matter than the clash of conflicting imperialisms in the broad
\nspaces or the wrangle of quarrelsome nationalisms snarling at each other’s
\nheels or tearing each other in the narrower ways of the Earth; for those are
\nquestions at most of division of power, territory and economic opportunity on
\nthe present basis of society, but this means a questioning of that basis and a
\nshaking of the very foundations of the European world-order. This League is a
\nleague of governments, and all these governments are bourgeois monarchies or
\nrepublics, instruments of a capitalistic system assailed by the tides of
\nsocialism.. Their policy is to compromise, to concede in detail, but to prolong
\ntheir own principle so that they may survive and capitalism be still the
\ndominant power of a new mixed semi-<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-626<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n

socialistic
\norder, very much as the governments which formed the Holy Alliance sought to save
\nthe dominance of the old idea of aristocratic monarchy by a compromise with the
\ngrowing spirit of democracy. What they offer is better and more human
\nconditions for the labourer, even a certain association in the government of
\nthe society, but still a second and not a primary place in the scale. This was
\nindeed all to which Labour itself formerly aspired, and it is all to which the
\nrear of its army still looks for- ward, but it is already ceasing to be the
\nsignificance of the Labour movement; a new idea has arisen, the dominance, the
\nrule of labour, and it has already formulated itself and captured a great
\nportion of the forces of socialism. It has even established for a while in
\nRussia a new kind of government, a dictatorship of the proletariate, which
\naspires to effect a rapid transition to another order of society.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Against this novel idea and its
\nforce the existing governments are compelled by the very principle of their
\nbeing to declare war and to struggle against its coming with all the strength
\nat their disposal and strive to mobilise against it whatever faith in existing
\nthings still remains in the mind of the peoples. The old order has still no
\ndoubt strength enough to crush out of existencet if it wills, the form which
\nthis coming of Demogorgon has already taken and to make a more or less speedy
\nend of Russian Bolshevism. The Bolshevist system, isolated in a single country,
\nweakened by its own initial crudities and revolutionary violencest struggling
\nfiercely against impracticable odds, may well be annihilated; but the thing
\nwhich is behind Bolshevism and has given it its un- expected virility and
\nvitality, cannot be so easily conjured or pressed out of being. That thing is
\nthe transference of the basis of society from wealth to labour, from the power
\nof money to the simple power of the man and his work, and that cannot be
\nstopped or prevented, – though it may be for a time put off,<\/font>
\n– not because
\nlabour any more than wealth is the true basis of society, but because this is
\nthe logical and inevitable outcome of the whole evolution of European society.
\nThe rule of the warrior and aristocrat, the Kshatriya, founded upon power has
\ngiven place to the rule of the Vaishyas, the professional and industrial
\nclasses, founded upon wealth and legalism, and that again must<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-627<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/font><\/span>the others. cannot be accomplished without much strife and
\nupheaval and there is every sign that its course will be attended with the
\nshattering violence of revolution. It is proposed indeed to the new force that
\nit shall work itself out calmly, slowly, peacefully by the recognised means of Parliamentarism; but Parliamentarism is passing through a phase of considerable
\ndiscredit, and a doubt has arisen in the minds of the workers whether it is at
\nall a right or possible means for their object and whether by a reliance upon
\nit they will not be playing into the hands of their opponents: for Parliament
\nis actually a great machine of the propertied classes and even the
\nParliamentary socialist tends easily to become a semi-disguised or a half yield
\nto the rule of the Shudra, the proletariate, founded upon work and association.
\nThis change like and half bourgeois. The new order of society would seem to
\ndemand the institution of a new system of government. If then a new order of
\nsociety is bound to come with its inevitable reversal of existing conditions,
\nand still more if it comes by a revolutionary struggle, how will a system of a
\nLeague of Nations based upon existing conditions, a League not really of
\nnations but of governments, and of governments committed to the maintenance of
\nthe old order and using their closer association as a means for combating the
\nnew idea which is hostile to their own form of existence, be likely to fare in
\nthis earth-shaking or this tornado? It is more likely to disappear than to
\nundergo a gentle transformation, and if it disappears, another system of
\ninternational comity may replace it, but it will not be a League of Nations.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>We will suppose, however, or even
\ntrust, that the League embodying in spite of appearances the best combined
\nstatesman- ship of the world, circumvents all these perils, weathers every
\nstorm and leads forward the destinies of mankind in the paths of an at first
\nmore or less uneasy, but eventually firmer increasing peace and mutual .accommodation.
\nWhat is it then that it will have at the beginning or in the end actually
\naccomplished? It will have made some beginning of the substitution of a state
\nof law for the older international status which alternated and oscillated
\nbetween outbreaks of war and an armed peace. That, no doubt, if at all firmly
\ndone, will be a great step forward in the known<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-628<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n

history
\nof human civilisation. For it will mean that what was founded in the unit of
\nthe nation centuries ago, will be now at last founded in the society of the
\nnations. But let us not leap too easily at what may well be an unsound
\nparallel. What civilised society has done most effectively from the beginning
\nis to substitute some kind of legalised relation, legalised offence and defence,
\nlegalised compensation or revenge for injuries in place of the state of
\ninsecure peace and frequent private or tribal warfare in which each man had to
\nclaim what he considered to be justice by the aid of his kin or the strength of
\nhis own hand. At present the persistent survival of crime is the only remnant
\nof that earlier pre-legal state of natural violence. But for an organised
\nsociety to deal with the refractory individual is a comparatively facile task;
\nhere the units are nations with a complex corporate personality, great masses
\nof men themselves too organised, representing the vital interests, claims,
\npassions of millions of men divided by corporate, powerful and persistent
\nexclusivenesses, hatreds, jealousies, antipathies which the founding of this would-be
\nall- healing League and new society of peoples finds much acerbated, much more
\npronounced than in the days before the deluge when a tolerant and easy
\ncosmopolitanism was more in fashion, and which its disposition seems calculated
\nto deepen and perpetuate rather than to heal and abolish. And it is on this
\nincoherent mass of peoples void of all living principle or urgent will of union
\nthat a status of peace and settled law has to be imposed and this in a period
\nof increasing chaos, upheaval, menace of revolution.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The national society succeeded only
\nin proportion as it developed an indivisible unity and a single homogeneous
\nauthority which could both legislate, or at least codify and maintain law, and
\nsee to the rigorous execution of its settled rules, decrees, and ordinances.
\nHere the work has to be done by an institution which represents no embodied
\nunity, but rather a jamming or stringing together of very strongly separate
\nunits, and which does not legislate, but only passes very partial and opportunist
\nspecial decrees ad hoc, <\/i>and to enforce them has constantly to resort to
\nintimidation, blockade, economical pressure, menace of a wholesale starvation
\nof peoples, menace of violent military occupation,<\/font> –<\/font> things
\nwhich
\nprolong the after-war state of unrest and recoil in their<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-<\/font>629<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/font><\/span>secondary effects upon the countries whose governments are engaged
\nin this singular international pastime. It is not difficult to see that a
\nbetter system and a better means must be found if the latest strong hope of
\nhumanity is to turn out anything more than one other generous illusion of the
\nintellectuals and one other chimerical wave of longing in the vague heart of
\nthe peoples. <\/font>
\n <\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>Even the national society has not been able after so long a
\ntime and so much experience to eliminate in its own body the disease of strife
\nbetween its members, class war, bitter hostility of interests and ideas
\nbreaking out at times into bloody clashes, civil wars, sanguinary revolutions
\nor disastrous, grimly obstinate and ruthless economical struggles which are the
\npreparers of an eventual physical conflict. And the reason is not far to seek.
\nLaw for all its ermine of pomp and solemn bewigged pretension of dignity was in
\nits origin nothing but the law of the stronger and the more skilful and
\nsuccessful who imposed their rule on the acquiescent or subjugated rest of the
\npeople. It was the decrees of the dominant class which were imposed on the
\nprevious mass of existing customs and new-shaped them into the mould of the
\nprevailing idea and interest; Law was itself a regulated and organised Force
\nestablishing its own rules of administration and maintaining them by an
\nimminent menace of penalty and coercion. That is the sense of the symbolic
\nsword of Justice, and as for her more mythical balance, a balance is a
\ncommercial and artificial sign, not a symbol of either natural or ideal equity,
\nand even so this balance of Justice had for its use only a theoretical or not
\nalways even a theoretical equality of weights and measures. Law was often in
\ngreat measure a system of legalised oppression and exploitation and on its
\npolitical side has had often enough plainly that stamp, though it has assumed
\nalways the solemn face of a sacrosanct order and government and justice.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The history of mankind has been
\nvery largely a long struggle to get unjust law changed into justice, – not a
\nmystic justice of an imposed decree and rule "by law established"
\nclaiming to be right because it is established, but the intelligible justice of
\nequality and equity. Much has been done, but as much or more still remains to
\nbe done, and so long as it is not established, there can be no sure end to
\ncivil strife and unrest and revolution. For the<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-630<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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injustice
\nof law can only be tolerated so long as there is either in those who suffer by
\nit a torpid blindness or acquiescent submission or else, the desire of equity
\nonce awakened, a ready means to their hand of natural and peaceful
\nrectification. And a particular unjust law may indeed be got altered with less
\nof effort and difficulty, but if injustice or, let us say simply, absence of
\njust equality and equity pervades a state of things, a system, then there must
\nbe grave trouble and there can be no real equilibrium and peace till it is
\namended. Thus in modern society strikes and lockouts are its form of civil war,
\ndisastrous enough to both sides, but still they are constantly resorted to and
\ncannot be replaced by a better way, because there is no confidence in any
\npossible legal award or "compulsory" arbitration which can be
\nprovided for under the existing conditions. The stronger side relies on the ad-
\nvantage which it enjoys under the established system, the weaker feels that the
\nlegalised balance of the State exists by a law which still favours the
\ncapitalist interest and the domination of wealth and that at most it can get
\nfrom this State only inadequate con- cessions which involve by their inadequacy
\nmore numerous struggles in the future. They cling to the strike as their
\nnatural weapon and one trustworthy resource. For that reason all ingeminations
\nand exhortations to economical peace and brotherhood are a futile counsel. The
\nonly remedy is a. better, more equal and more equitable system of society. And
\nthis is only a particular instance of a situation common enough in different
\nforms under the present world-order.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The application is evident to the present
\ninternational at- tempt and its hopes of a legalised and peaceful human
\nsociety. The League of Nations has been established by victorious Force,
\nclaiming no doubt to be the force of victorious right and justice, but
\nincapable by the vice of its birth of embodying the real non- combatant justice
\nof an equal and impartial equity. Its decrees and acts are based on no
\nascertainable impersonal principle, but are mainly the decrees, the sic
\nvolo, sic jubeo <\/i>of three or four mighty nations. Even if they happen to be
\njust, they have this fatal vice that there is nothing to convince the mind of
\nthe losing parties or even the common mind that there is behind them any surety
\nof a general and reliable equity, and as a matter of fact<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-631<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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many
\nof them have aroused very generally grave dissatisfaction and hostile
\ncriticism. And the Supreme Council, that veiled hieratic autocrat of the
\nsituation, does not seem itself to appeal to any distinct higher principles in
\nits action, even when such do actually exist and could be insisted on with
\nforce and clarity. At the time of writing, there has been a case of the
\ndenudation of a suffering and now half-starved country by the army of a small
\noccupying power – victorious not by its own arms, but by the moral and economic
\npressure of the League<\/font> –<\/font> and the council has very rightly interfered. But it
\nhas. not done that publicly on grounds that have anything to do with
\ninternational justice or humanity or even the rudiments of international
\nethics, such as they are, but on this ground that the property of the
\nvanquished country is the common spoil, or, let us say, means of compensation
\nof the victors and this one little rapacious ally cannot be allowed to
\nappropriate it all by main force to the detriment of its greater
\nfellow-administrators of a self-regarding justice,<\/font> –
\n<\/font>who<\/font><\/span> may even as a result find Hungary thrown as a starving
\npauper on their hands instead of serving their will as a solvent debtor! If
\nthis realistic spirit is to be the spirit of the new international system and
\nthat is to persist, its success is likely to be more formidable to humanity
\nthan its failure. For it may mean to the suffering portions of mankind the
\nlegalisation and perpetuation of in- tolerable existing injustices for which
\nthere could have been a hope of more easy remedy and redress in the previous
\nlooser conditions. If this League of Nations is to serve and not merely to
\ndominate mankind, if it is to raise and free, as it claims and professes, and
\nnot to bind and depress humanity, it must be cast in another mould and animated
\nby another spirit. This age is not like that in which the reign of law was
\nestablished in individual<\/font> nations; men
\nare no longer inclined, as then they were, to submit to existing conditions in
\nthe idea that they are an inevitable dispensation of Nature. The idea of
\nequity, of equality, of common rights has been generalised in the mind of the
\nrace, and human society must move henceforward steadily towards its
\nsatisfaction on peril of constant unrest and a rising gradation of catastrophe.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>That means that the whole spirit and
\nsystem of the League will have to be remodelled, the initial mistakes of its
\ncomposition<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-632<\/font><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n

\nrectified and the defects inherent in its origin got
\nrid of, before it <\/font> <\/span>can be brought into
\nreal consonance with the nobler hopes or even the pressing needs of the human
\nrace. At present it is, to reverse the old phrase, a pouring of an old and very
\nmusty wine into showy new bottles, – the old discredited spirit of the
\ndiplomacy of concert and balance and the government of the strongest, of the
\nfew dominant kingdoms, States and empires. That must disappear in a more just
\nand democratic international system. The evil legacy of the war with its
\ndistinctions between "enemy", allied and friendly nations or more
\nfavoured or less favoured peoples, will have to be got out of the system of the
\nLeague, for so long as it is there, it will act as a virus which will prevent
\nall healthy growth and functioning. A League of Nations which is to bring a
\nreal peace and beginning of justice and ordered comity in progress to the world
\nand a secret council of allied governments imposing as best they can their
\nirresponsible will on a troubled and dissatisfied Europe, Asia and Africa are
\ntwo very different things, and while one lasts, the other cannot be got into
\nbeing. The haphazard make of the League will have to be remoulded into a thing
\nof plain and candid structure and meaning and made to admit that element of
\nclear principle which it has omitted from its constitution. An equal system of
\ninternational rights and obligations, just liberties and wholesome necessary
\nrestrictions can alone be a sound basis of international law and order. And
\nthere can be no other really sound basis of the just and equal liberty of the
\npeoples than that principle of self-determination which was so loudly trumpeted
\nduring the war, but of which an opportunist statesmanship has made short work
\nand reduced to a deplorable nullity. A true principle of self-determination is
\nnot at all incompatible with international unity and mutual obligation, the two
\nare rather indispensable complements, even as individual liberty in its right
\nsense of a just and sufficient room for healthy self-development and
\nself-determination is not at all incompatible with unity of spirit and mutual
\nobligation between man and man. How to develop it out of present conditions,
\nantipathies, ambitions, grievances, national lusts, jealousies, egoisms is
\nindeed a problem, but it is a problem which will have to be attended to to-day
\nor to-morrow on peril of worse<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-633<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n

\nthings. To say that these developments are
\nimpossible is to say that a league of nations in the real sense as opposed to a
\nleague of some nations for their common benefit, a dominant alliance, is an
\nimpossibility. In that case the present institution called by that imposing
\nname can only be an enlarged and more mechanised edition of the old Concert or
\na latter-day Holy Alliance of the governments and will sooner or later go the
\nway of its predecessors. If that is so, then the sooner we recognise it, the
\nbetter for all concerned; there will be less of false hopes and misdirected
\nenergies with their burden of disappointment, unrest, irritation and perilous
\nreaction. To go on upon the present lines is to lead straight towards another
\nand greater catastrophe. To insist on these things is not to discourage unduly
\nthe spirit of hope which humanity needs for its progress; it is necessary in
\norder that that hope may not nourish itself on illusions and turn towards
\nmisdirecting paths, but may rather see clearly the right conditions of its
\nfulfilment and fix its energy on their realisation. It is a comfortable but a
\ndangerous thing to trust with a facile faith that a bad system will
\nautomatically develop into a good thing or that some easy change is bound to
\ncome which will make for- salvation, as for instance that Europe will evolve
\ntrue democracy and that the League of Nations, now so imperfectly established,
\nwill be made perfect by its better spirit. The usual result of this temper of
\nsanguine acceptance or toleration is that the expected better State makes
\nindeed some ameliorations when it comes, but takes into it too a legacy of the past,
\nmuch of its obscure spirit and a goodly inheritance of its evils, while it adds
\nto the burden new errors of its own making. Certainly, the thing which was
\nbehind this new formation, this league of governments, is bound in some way or
\nother to come; for I take it that a closer system of international life is
\nsooner or later inevitable because it is a necessary outcome of modern
\nconditions, of the now much closer relations and interactions of the life of
\nthe human race, and the only alternative is increasing trouble, disorder and
\nultimate chaos. But this inevitable development may take, according to the way
\nand principle we follow, a better or a worse turn. It may come in the form of a
\nmechanical and oppressive<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\n
\nPage-634<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n

system
\nas false and defective as the industrial civilization of Europe which in its
\ninflated and monstrous course brought about the present wreck, or it may come
\nin the form and healthy movement of a sounder shaping force which can be made
\nthe basis or at least the starting-point for a still greater and more
\nbeneficial human progress. No system indeed by its own force can bring about
\nthe change that humanity really needs; for that can only come by its growth
\ninto the firmly realised possibilities of its own higher nature, and this growth
\ndepends on an inner and not an outer change. But outer changes may at least
\nprepare favourable conditions for that more real amelioration,<\/font>
\n–<\/font> or on the
\ncontrary they may lead to such conditions that the sword of Kalki can alone purify
\nthe earth from the burden of an obstinately Asuric humanity. The choice lies
\nwith the race itself; for as it sows, so shall it reap the fruit of its Karma.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>And that brings us back to the idea with
\nwhich we started and with it we may as well close, however remote it may sound
\nto the practical mind of a still materialistic generation. The idea which
\nEurope follows of an outer political and social perfection reposes, as far as
\nit goes, on a truth, but only on one half of the truth and that the lower half
\nof its periphery. A greater side of it is hidden behind the other older idea,
\nstill not quite dead in Asia and now strong enough to be born again in Europe,
\nthat as with the individual, so with the community of mankind, salvation cannot
\ncome by the outer Law alone; for the Law is only an intermediate means intended
\nto impose a rein of stringent obligation and a better standard on the original
\ndisorder of our egoistic nature. Salvation for individual or community comes
\nnot by the Law but by the Spirit1<\/sup>  The
\nconditions of individual and social perfection are indeed the same, freedom and
\nunity; the two things are complements and to follow one at the expense of the
\nother is a vain heresy. But real unity cannot come to the race, until man
\nsurmounting his egoistic nature is one in heart and spirit with man and real
\nfreedom cannot be till he is free from his own lower nature and finds the force
\nof the truth which has been<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

1 <\/sup>
\nWe in India have also yet to realise that truth –
\nnot by the Shastra, but by the Atman<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-635<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n

so
\nvainly taught by the saints and sages that the fullness of his perfected
\nindividuality is one thing with a universality by which he can embrace all
\nmankind in his heart, mind and .spirit. But at present individuals and nations
\nare equally remote from accepting any such inner mantra <\/i>of unity and we
\ncan only hope at most that the best will increasingly turn their minds in that
\ndirection and create again and this time with a newer and more luminous
\ninsistence a higher standard of human aspiration. Till then jarring leagues of
\nnations and some mechanical dissoluble federation of the race must serve our
\nturn for practice and for a far-off expectation. But only then can the dream of
\na golden age of a true communal living become feasible and be founded on a
\nspiritual and therefore a real reign of freedom and unity when the race learns
\nto turn its eyes inward and not any longer these things, but mankind, the
\npeople of God and a soul and body of the Divine, becomes the ideal of our
\nperfection.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>Page-636<\/font><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A League of Nations   \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0             ANCIENT tradition believed in a golden age of mankind which lay in the splendid infancy of a primeval past;…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15","wpcat-25-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}