{"id":3062,"date":"2013-07-13T01:45:42","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:45:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3062"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:45:42","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:45:42","slug":"68-a-league-of-nations-vol-25-the-human-cycle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/25-the-human-cycle\/68-a-league-of-nations-vol-25-the-human-cycle","title":{"rendered":"-68_A League of Nations.html"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tA League of Nations <\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA<\/font>NCIENT<\/b> tradition believed in a golden age of mankind which lay in the splendid infancy of a primeval past; it
\nlooked back to some type or symbol of original perfection, Saturnian epoch, Satya Yuga, an age of sincere being and
\nfree unity when the sons of heaven were leaders of the human life and mind and the law of God was written, not in ineffective
\nbooks, but on the tablets of man’s heart. Then he needed no violence of outer law or government to restrain him from evil or to
\ncut and force his free being into the machine-made Procrustean mould of a social ideal; for a natural divine rule in his members
\nwas the spontaneous and sufficient safeguard of his liberty. This tradition was once so universal that one might almost be tempted
\nto see in it the race memory of some golden and splendid realisation, not perhaps a miraculous divine beginning, but some past
\nspiral cusp and apex, some topmost gloriously mounting arc of the cycles, \u2014 if there were not the equal chance of its being no
\nmore than a heightened example of that very common ideally retrospective tendency in the human mind which glorifies the
\npast out of all perspective or proportion, blots out its shadows and sees it in some haze or deceiving light against the dark
\nimmediate shadow of the present, or else a projection from his sense of the something divine, pure and perfect within him from
\nwhich he has fallen, placed by symbolic legend not in the eternal but in time, not inwardly in his spiritual being, but outwardly
\nin his obscure existence on this crude and transient crust of Earth. What concerns us more is that we find often associated
\nwith this memory or this backward-looking illusion, a vague hope far or near, or even a more precise prophetic or religious
\nforward-looking tradition of a coming back to us of that golden perfection, Astraea redux, Saturnia regna<\/i>,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 let us say, a return from the falling line of the cycle to another
\n\t\t\tsimilar, perhaps even greater high-glowing cusp and apex. <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tThus in the human mind which looks always before and after, its great dream of the ideal
\npast completed itself by a greater dream of the ideal future. These things modern man with his scientific and secularised mentality finds it difficult to believe in unless he has first theosophised or mysticised himself into a fine freedom
\nfrom the positive scientific intelligence. Science which traces so confidently the nobly complete and astonishing evolution
\nof our race in a fairly swift straight line from the ape man to the dazzlingly unfixable brilliancy of Mr. Lloyd George and
\nthe dyspeptic greatness of Rockefeller, rejects the old traditions as dreams and poetic figments. But to recompense us for our
\nloss it has given us instead a more practicable, persistent and immediate vision of modern progress and the future hope of
\na rational and mechanically perfectible society: that is the one real religion still left, the new Jerusalem of the modern creed of
\na positivist sociology. The ideal past has lost its glamour, but a sober glamour of the future is brought near to us and takes on
\nto the constructive human reason a closer hue of reality. The Asiatic mind is indeed still incurably prone to the older type of
\nimagination which took and still takes so many inspiring forms, second coming of Christ, City of God, the Divine Family, advent
\nof Messiah, Mahdi or Avatar, \u2014 but whatever the variety of the form, the essence
\n\t\t\tis the same, a religious or spiritual idealisation of a possible
\n\t\t\tfuture humanity. The European temperament \u2014 and we are all trying to
\n\t\t\tbecome for the moment, superficially at least, white, brown, yellow
\n\t\t\tor black Europeans, \u2014 demands something more familiarly terrestrial
\n\t\t\tand tangible, a secular, social, political dream of evolving
\n\t\t\thumanity, a perfected democracy, socialism, communism, anarchism.
\n\t\t\tBut whichever line we take and whether it be truth or illusion, the
\n\t\t\tthing behind is the same and would seem to be a necessity of our
\n\t\t\thuman mind and will to action. We cannot do without some kind of
\n\t\t\tfuturist idealism. Something we must labour to build individually
\n\t\t\tand collectively out of ourselves and our life, unless we would be
\n\t\t\tcontent with the commonness and stumbling routine of a half-made and
\n\t\t\thalf-animal manhood, \u2014 a self-dethronement to which that which is greatest in us will never consent, \u2014 and man cannot build greatly whether in art or life, unless he
\ncan conceive an idea and form of perfection and, conceiving, believe in his power to achieve it out of however rebellious
\nand unductile a stuff of nature. <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tDeprive him of this faith in his power for perfection and you slay or maim his greatest
\ncreative or self-creative faculty. In the absence then of any immediate practicability of that higher and profounder dream
\nof a spiritually united and perfected humanity, the dream of social and political meliorism may be accepted as the strongest
\navailable incentive to keep humanity going forward. It is better that it should have the ideal of a saving machinery than that
\nit should have no ideal at all, no figure of a larger, better and sweeter life. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis secular dream of a future golden or half-golden age of a more perfected, rational and peacefully cooperative society
\nhas taken recently a singular step forward in the effectuating imagination of mankind and even got as far as some attempt at
\na first step towards actual effectuation. In ideal and imagination it has assumed the form of a political and economic society of
\nthe nations which will get rid of the cruel and devastating device of war, establish a reign of international law and order and solve
\nwithout clash, strife or collision, by reason, by cooperation, by arbitration, by mutual accommodation all the more dangerous
\nproblems which still disturb or imperil the comfortable peace, amity and organised productiveness which should be the reasonable state of mankind. International peace, an ordered legality and arrangement of the world’s affairs, a guaranteed liberty,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 or for the unfit a preparation and schooling for liberty, \u2014 an organised unity of the life of the race, this is the figure of
\nthe golden age which we are now promised. At the first sight one has some sense of a lacuna somewhere, a suspicion of a
\nperfection too external and too well-regulated by clockwork and a timidly insistent idea that it may perhaps be neither
\nso readily feasible nor so lyrically enchanting as its prophets pretend.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tOne may be disposed to ask, what of the spirit and
\nsoul of man, the greatness of the inner perfection which can
\n\t\t\talone support and give security and some kind of psychological
\n\t\t\treality to even the most ideal arrangement of his outer life, -how
\n\t\t\tfar that has gone or is likely to go in the near future, or what
\n\t\t\tmeans or opportunities the new order proposes to offer for its
\n\t\t\tgrowth and satisfaction. But this is no doubt too esoteric a way of
\n\t\t\tlooking at things. The practical western mind does not trouble
\n\t\t\titself overmuch with these subtleties; it prefers, and rightly
\n\t\t\tenough, since to get something done seems to be the chief actual
\n\t\t\tbusiness of man in life, to hasten to the matter in hand and realise
\n\t\t\tsomething useful, visible and tangible, good enough for a practical
\n\t\t\tbeginning or step forward. It believes besides in the omnipotence of
\n\t\t\tlaw and institution to make the life of man conformable to his
\n\t\t\tintellectual or spiritual ideals; it is satisfied if it can write
\n\t\t\tdown and find sanctions for a good and convenient system of laws, a
\n\t\t\tcompact or constitution, set up the mechanical means for the
\n\t\t\tenforcement of its idea, build into effective form a workable
\n\t\t\tinstitution. Other less palpable things, if they are at all
\n\t\t\tindispensable, are expected to develop of themselves, as surely they
\n\t\t\tought under good mechanical conditions.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tGood philosophical as well as practical
\n\t\t\tjustification may be put forward for this attitude. Form after all
\n\t\t\tis an effective suggestion to the soul; machinery, as even churches
\n\t\t\tand religions have been prone to believe, is all-powerful and can be
\n\t\t\ttrusted to create whatever you may need of the spirit. God himself
\n\t\t\tor contriving Nature had first to invent the machinery and form of a
\n\t\t\tuniverse and could only then work out in its mould some figure of
\n\t\t\tthe spirit. Therefore the sign of great hope, the good tidings of
\n\t\t\tpeace and good will unto men is not that a new and diviner or simply
\n\t\t\ta more human spirit has been born into humanity, seized upon its
\n\t\t\tleaders and extended itself among its ego-ridden, passiondriven,
\n\t\t\tinterest-governed millions, but that an institution has been
\n\t\t\tbegotten at Paris with the blessings of Premiers and Presidents,
\n\t\t\t-the constitution of an international society, supported by the
\n\t\t\tarmed force of great nations and empires and therefore sure to be
\n\t\t\tpracticable, prosper and succeed, has been got into shape which will
\n\t\t\tmake war, militarism, oppression, exploitation an ugly dream of the
\n\t\t\tpast, induce Capital and Labour, lion and lamb, to lie down
\n\t\t\tside by side in peace and not, as a wicked Bolshevism proposes, one
\n\t\t\twell digested inside the other, and in fact bring about before long,
\n\t\t\tsooner it is hoped rather than later, the grand fraternity of
\n\t\t\tmankind. <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tThis is good news, if true. Still,
\n\t\t\tbefore we enter the house of thanksgiving, let us pause a little and
\n\t\t\tcast an eye of scrutiny on this new infant phenomenon. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA just, generous, cordial and valid League of nations is the thing
\n\t\t\twhich has been created, it seems, to replace the old unjust Balances
\n\t\t\tof Power and stumbling, quarrelsome Concerts. And if it is to
\n\t\t\tsucceed better than the loose, ineffective and easily dissoluble
\n\t\t\tthings which it supplants, it must satisfy, one would think, certain
\n\t\t\tconditions which they did not even attempt to fulfil. And one would
\n\t\t\tat first sight fix something like the following as the indispensable
\n\t\t\tconditions. First, this League must draw into its circle in one way
\n\t\t\tor another all the existing nations of the earth; and that it must
\n\t\t\tdo on both just and agreeable terms so that they may join willingly
\n\t\t\tand gladly and without any serious misgivings, reservations or
\n\t\t\theart-burnings; it must satisfy each and all by a fair and effective
\n\t\t\tand, one must add in these democratic days, an honourable and equal
\n\t\t\tposition in this new society of the peoples. Since it should command
\n\t\t\tand retain their moral assent and support, if it is to maintain in
\n\t\t\tbeing an otherwise insecure material adhesion, it must, in order to
\n\t\t\tdo that constantly, not only at the moment of formation but in the
\n\t\t\tfuture, base itself on no self-regarding law or established table of
\n\t\t\tinstitutions fixed by any arbitrary will of those who for the moment
\n\t\t\tare the strongest but on some firm, recognisable and always
\n\t\t\tevolvable principle of equity and justice, for only where these
\n\t\t\tthings are is there a moral guarantee and security. The constitution
\n\t\t\tof the League must provide a trustworthy means for the solution of
\n\t\t\tall difficult, delicate and embarrassing questions which may
\n\t\t\thereafter endanger the infant and precarious framework of
\n\t\t\tinternational society, and for that purpose it must establish a
\n\t\t\tpermanent, a central and a strong authority which all nations can
\n\t\t\treadily recognise and accept as a natural head and faithful dynamic
\n\t\t\texpression of the corporate being of mankind. <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tThese, one would think, are not at all nebulous, fanciful or too
\n\t\t\tidealistic demands, but the practical necessities of any system of
\n\t\t\tyet loose unification such as now is contemplated, conditions it
\n\t\t\tmust from the first and increasingly satisfy if it is to survive the
\n\t\t\tenormous difficulties of an enterprise which, as it proceeds, will
\n\t\t\thave to work out of being most of the natural egoistic instincts and
\n\t\t\trooted past habits of the international mentality of the race. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis new gigantic bantling which has come into
\n\t\t\texistence with War for its father and an armed and enforced Peace
\n\t\t\tfor its mother, with threatening and bloodily suppressed
\n\t\t\trevolutions, a truncated internationalistic idealism and many
\n\t\t\thalf-curbed, just snaffled rearing national egoisms for its
\n\t\t\twitnesses and godparents, has not, when looked at from this
\n\t\t\tstandpoint, in spite of certain elements of promise, an altogether
\n\t\t\treassuring appearance. The circumstances of its inception were
\n\t\t\tadverse and except by a tremendous effort of self-conquest in the
\n\t\t\tminds of the rulers and statesmen of the victorious nations, a
\n\t\t\tself-conquest rendered a thousand times more difficult by the
\n\t\t\tstupendous magnitude and the intoxicating completeness of their
\n\t\t\tvictory, any at all complete result and auspicious new beginning
\n\t\t\tcould not be hoped for. This league now in the last throes of
\n\t\t\tformation has not been a spontaneous creation of a peaceful, equal
\n\t\t\tand well-combined will towards unity of all the world’s peoples. It
\n\t\t\tcomes into being overshadowed by the legacy of hatreds, reprisals,
\n\t\t\tapprehensions, ambitions of a murderous world war chequered by
\n\t\t\trevolutions which have opened a new and alarming vista of world-wide
\n\t\t\tunrest and disturbance. It has grown out of a vague but strong
\n\t\t\taspiration, -more among the rank and file of the nations, and even
\n\t\t\tso not equally common to all of them, than among their governing men
\n\t\t\tor classes, -to find some means for the future avoidance of violent
\n\t\t\tcatastrophes in the international life of mankind. It has been
\n\t\t\tprecipitated into actual and immediate being by the determination of
\n\t\t\tan eminent idealistic statesman with the modified and in some cases
\n\t\t\tunwilling assent of others who shared only partially or not at all
\n\t\t\this idealism, one man of strong will who aided by a commanding
\n\t\t\tposition given to him by circumstances and a flexible obstinacy in
\n\t\t\this use of them, has been able to impose some shadow or some first
\n\t\t\tincomplete <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tform of his ideal -the future alone can show which it is to be -on
\n\t\t\tthe crude course of events and the realistic egoism of governments
\n\t\t\tand imperial nations. But in present fact the large and complete
\n\t\t\tideal with which he began his work, has been so impinged upon by the
\n\t\t\tnecessities of national passions, ambition, self-interest and by
\n\t\t\tpressure of the force of circumstances -still in spite of all
\n\t\t\tidealism the chief determining factors of life -that it is difficult
\n\t\t\tto put one’s hand on anything in the concrete arrangement formulated
\n\t\t\tand say without doubt or qualm that here is the very embodiment of
\n\t\t\tthe high principles in whose name the great war was fought and won.
\n\t\t\tThis is not surprising, nor should it be disappointing except to
\n\t\t\tthose who trusted more to their hopes than to experience. All we
\n\t\t\thave to see is whether those high original principles were indeed
\n\t\t\tnecessary to the future security and evolution of this new
\n\t\t\tassociation of the peoples and, if so, what chance they have of
\n\t\t\temerging from the forms in which they now seem to have been rather
\n\t\t\tburied than given a body. And that will depend on the extent to
\n\t\t\twhich the conditions already suggested are realised or evolvable
\n\t\t\tfrom the league’s incipient constitution. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn effective League of Nations must draw into itself all the
\n\t\t\texisting nations of mankind; for any considerable omission or
\n\t\t\texclusion will bring in almost inevitably an element of future
\n\t\t\tdanger, of possible disagreements and collisions, perhaps of a rival
\n\t\t\tgrouping with jealousies which must lead to another and more
\n\t\t\tcolossal catastrophe. In its ostensible figure this new League does
\n\t\t\tnot by any means wear a catholic appearance. Professedly, it is
\n\t\t\tnothing but an association of actual friends and allies. In the
\n\t\t\tfront rank stand confident and masterful five great and powerful
\n\t\t\tempires or nations, -the sole great powers left standing by the
\n\t\t\thurricane in unimpaired strength, and two of them indeed with an
\n\t\t\tenormously increased power, influence and dominion: behind crowd in
\n\t\t\tdimly and ineffectively a number of smaller European and American
\n\t\t\tpeoples, those who were allied to them or otherwise on their side in
\n\t\t\tthe war, and one feeble and disjointed oriental leviathan; but all
\n\t\t\tthese seem to partake only with a passive assent or a subordinate
\n\t\t\tcooperation, -and in fact with very much of the first and very
\n\t\t\tlittle of the latter, -whether in the determining of the form of the
\n\t\t\tLeague or in its control and government.  <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tAnd the immediate professed object of the
\n\t\t\tassociation is not to knit the world together in the beginnings of a
\n\t\t\twell-conceived unity, -that could only have been done if all the
\n\t\t\tpeoples had taken a free and equal part in these deliberations,
\n\t\t\twhereas in fact the whole thing has been hastily constructed in
\n\t\t\tsemi-secret conference by the victors of the war, and chiefly by the
\n\t\t\twill of the five leading powers. Its object is to regulate the
\n\t\t\tinterests and mutual relations of the members of the League by rule,
\n\t\t\tagreement, deliberation and arbitration and their relations with
\n\t\t\tother states outside the League as much as may be by the same means;
\n\t\t\tit is this only and in the beginning it is nothing more. But a door
\n\t\t\tis left open for the nations still outside to enter in a given time,
\n\t\t\tprovided they subscribe unquestioningly to a system which they will
\n\t\t\thave had no hand in framing, though under it they will have to live.
\n\t\t\tOn the other hand a door of egress is also provided for any nation
\n\t\t\twishing to recede hereafter from the League, and if disunion should
\n\t\t\tset in among the greater powers, this dangerous, though under the
\n\t\t\tcircumstances perhaps unavoidable provision, may easily lead to the
\n\t\t\tautomatic dissolution of even this hesitating first frame of a
\n\t\t\tpartial unity. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut the facts and forces of the situation are perhaps more
\n\t\t\tfavourable than ostensible paper provisions. The nations not yet
\n\t\t\tincluded are with two great and perilous exceptions small and
\n\t\t\tinconsiderable and their position outside will be so
\n\t\t\tdisadvantageous, they will be at every turn so much at the mercy of
\n\t\t\tthis formidable combination, -for the five dominant powers will
\n\t\t\teasily be able, if they are determined and united, to enforce their
\n\t\t\twill vigorously against all dissidents, -that they may be expected
\n\t\t\tto subscribe more or less readily to its terms or at any rate to
\n\t\t\tenter in after a few years’ experience of exclusion. The Great
\n\t\t\tPowers too are not likely to have strong reasons for breaking
\n\t\t\tasunder for some years to come, and time may perhaps, provided no
\n\t\t\tnew revolutions sweep across the world, confirm the habit of united
\n\t\t\taction. We may assume that here we have in
\n\t\t\tfact, though not yet in name, the beginnings of a council or an
\n\t\t\timperfect federation of the world’s peoples. <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tBut the constitution of this Council and the
\n\t\t\tconditions under which the variously circumstanced nations are
\n\t\t\tadmitted into or brought under it, have a still more baffling
\n\t\t\tappearance. They do not at all correspond with the democratic
\n\t\t\tidealism of the human mind of today but rather strike one as a
\n\t\t\tstructure of almost mediaeval irregularity, complexity, incoherent
\n\t\t\tconstruction, a well-nigh feudal political building with some formal
\n\t\t\tconcessions on its ground floor to the modern canon of liberty and
\n\t\t\tequality. A unification of mankind may proceed very much on the same
\n\t\t\tlines as past unifications of smaller peoples into nations or
\n\t\t\tempires. It might have been brought about by the military force or
\n\t\t\tthe political influence of some powerful king-state preponderant by
\n\t\t\tland and sea, –pampotent par terre et mer<\/i>, as Nostradamus
\n\t\t\tprophetically described the British Empire, -not necessarily
\n\t\t\tdespotic and absolute but easily first among equals; and that I
\n\t\t\tsuppose is what would have happened if Germany had come up top dog
\n\t\t\tin the struggle instead of a very much mutilated and flattened
\n\t\t\tundermost. Nor is it at all certain that something of the sort will
\n\t\t\tnot eventually come about if the present attempt or crude sketch of
\n\t\t\ta system should come to grief; but for the moment this contingency
\n\t\t\thas been prevented or at least postponed. That possibility
\n\t\t\teliminated, the unification may still take the form of an oligarchy
\n\t\t\tor hegemony of great powers, leaders and masters of the herd, with
\n\t\t\tthe weaker rabble rest hanging on the flanks or posteriors of their
\n\t\t\tmighty bellwethers and following them and their omnipotent decisions
\n\t\t\tin sometimes a submissive and approbatory, sometimes a mutinous and
\n\t\t\tdiscordant chorus; something very much of this kind is what this new
\n\t\t\tleague has certainly been in its formation and is likely to turn out
\n\t\t\tin its execution. But there was also the vain present hope or dream,
\n\t\t\tthe strong future though far-off possibility of an equal, just and
\n\t\t\tdemocratic federation of the peoples in which the dwarf and Goliath
\n\t\t\tnations, the strong and the weak, the wealthy and the less wealthy,
\n\t\t\tthe immediately successful and the long or temporarily unfortunate,
\n\t\t\t-who may yet have better gifts, have done really more for
\n\t\t\tmankind than the arrivistes among the nations, -will have, as is the
\n\t\t\trule or the ideal in all democratic bodies, in law and in initial
\n\t\t\tfact an equal position, and there will be only a natural leadership
\n\t\t\tand influence to differentiate by a freely accorded greater weight
\n\t\t\tand voice.   <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t These were the three
\n\t\t\tpossibilities, and they represent respectively the ideal of the past
\n\t\t\twhich is said to have been buried in the grave of imperial Germany,
\n\t\t\tthe fact of the present which is a fact only and to none an ideal,
\n\t\t\tand the ideal of the future, loudly trumpeted during the war, though
\n\t\t\tthere is none now, except the vanquished, the subject and the
\n\t\t\trevolutionary, so poor and weak as to do it reverence. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe initial constitution of the League is almost
\n\t\t\tfrankly oligarchic in its disposal of the international balance of
\n\t\t\tpower, -not quite an absolute oligarchy, indeed, for there is
\n\t\t\tcertainly a general assembly which is so far democratic that all its
\n\t\t\tmembers will exult in the dignifying possession of an equal vote.
\n\t\t\tHonduras and Guatemala may, if the fancy pleases them, indulge
\n\t\t\tthemselves in some feeling of being lifted up to an equality with
\n\t\t\timperial England, America, the new arbiter of the world, and
\n\t\t\tvictorious France. But this is an illusion, a trompe l’oeil. <\/i>
\n\t\t\tFor we find that this general assembly is in no sense the governing
\n\t\t\tbody but only a secondary authority, a court of approval and
\n\t\t\treference, to which the powerful executive nations will refer,
\n\t\t\tmostly at their own discretion, this or that doubtful question for
\n\t\t\tdiscussion. In practice and fact the new sovereign of the
\n\t\t\tworld under this constitution, –jagadīś<\/font>varo vā<\/font>? <\/i>-will be the
\n\t\t\texecutive body of the League of Nations. But there the five great
\n\t\t\tpowers will sit in a secure and formidable permanence, while a
\n\t\t\tchangeable selection of representatives picked out from the common
\n\t\t\therd will diminutively assist their deliberations, assisting or
\n\t\t\tdiscussing in the giant obscurity of their shadow. One can easily
\n\t\t\tsee how the superior management of the world’s affairs will go under
\n\t\t\tthese conditions and in fact have already had a taste of its quality
\n\t\t\tin the process of this formation and this building of a basis for
\n\t\t\twhat it is still hoped by many will be a long or even a permanent
\n\t\t\tpeace. Evidently in such a governing body the Great   <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tFive will determine the whole policy and action; nothing will
\n\t\t\treadily pass which will be at all displeasing to these new masters
\n\t\t\tof the earth, or let us say, to this new composite hegemony, -for
\n\t\t\tits decisions will at no time be guided by that perilous, ductile
\n\t\t\tand variable thing, a majority, but must be by unanimity. What in
\n\t\t\tprinciple is this system but a novel, an improved, an enlarged and
\n\t\t\tregularised edition of the Concert of Powers -liberalised a little
\n\t\t\tin form because buttressed by a democratic general assembly which
\n\t\t\tmay, indeed, as circumstances develop and conditions change, become
\n\t\t\tsomething, but may equally remain a dignified or undignified cypher,
\n\t\t\t-but still in essence another and firmer Avatar of that old loose
\n\t\t\tand dubious body? Even something of that historic device, the
\n\t\t\tbalance of power, though now much changed, shifted, disjointed and
\n\t\t\tperilously lopsided, still remains subtly concealed in this form of
\n\t\t\ta novel order. And that element is likely to pronounce itself later
\n\t\t\ton; for where there is no impersonal governing principle and no
\n\t\t\tclear original structure in the international body, its motions must
\n\t\t\tbe determined by a balance of interests, and the balance of
\n\t\t\tinterests can only be kept reasonably steady by carefully preserving
\n\t\t\tan established balance of power. That was the justification of the
\n\t\t\told armed order; it is likely to be a necessity of this new system
\n\t\t\tfor regulating chaos. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis creation is a realistic practical
\n\t\t\tconstruction with a very minimum concession to the new idealism: it
\n\t\t\thas been erected by statesmen who have been concerned to legalise
\n\t\t\tthe actual facts and organise the actual forces which have emerged
\n\t\t\tfrom the world-war; a few inconveniently new-born and of a menacing
\n\t\t\tsignificance have been barred and boycotted, blockaded or pressed
\n\t\t\tout of existence: it is hoped also to secure their system against
\n\t\t\tattack by any resuscitable ghost of the past or violently subversive
\n\t\t\tgenius of the future. From that point of view it has been
\n\t\t\tconstructed with a remarkable skill and fidelity to present
\n\t\t\trealities, though one may be tempted to think with an insufficient
\n\t\t\tallowance for obscure but already visible potentialities. The
\n\t\t\tcorrespondence between fact and form is accurate to perfection. <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t Five powers have been the real victors of the war, three of
\n\t\t\tthem 
\n\t\t\tcentral and decisive forces who now actually control the world by
\n\t\t\ttheir will, and two others who intervened as less powerful
\n\t\t\tsubsidiary strengths, but can put in some effective claim and
\n\t\t\tmaterial weight into the future balance of forces. This fact is
\n\t\t\treproduced in the constitution of the governing body; it is these
\n\t\t\tfive who by virtue of their wealth and force are to have in it a
\n\t\t\tpermanent voice, the three great ones to strike the major chords and
\n\t\t\tdetermine the general harmony of the concert, the two others to
\n\t\t\tbring in, as best they can and when they can, minor chords and
\n\t\t\tunessential variations. Then there are the great number of small or
\n\t\t\tweaker nations who have at their command minor material effectives
\n\t\t\tand, though incapable of being principals in any very great conflict
\n\t\t\tmay be useful as minor auxiliaries, the free peoples, allies
\n\t\t\tincluded from the beginning by right, neutrals invited to
\n\t\t\tparticipate in a settled organisation of peace though they did not
\n\t\t\tthrow their weight into the decision of war, enemies, old or new,
\n\t\t\twho may be admitted when they have satisfied more or less onerous or
\n\t\t\tcrushing and disabling conditions. These will make the general
\n\t\t\tassembly: some of them will have from time to time an uncertain
\n\t\t\tvoice in the governing body; the rest will be the mass, the commons,
\n\t\t\tthe general body who will possess some limited amount of actual
\n\t\t\tpower and some kind of moral force behind the executive. Labour too
\n\t\t\thas been made by the War a great though as yet incoherent
\n\t\t\tinternational power, and the League, wishing evidently to be wise in
\n\t\t\ttime and make terms with this formidable new fact, recognises at its
\n\t\t\tside Labour in a special separate conference. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut there are also new Asiatic peoples who cannot
\n\t\t\tnow be admitted, because they are infants and unripe; there are
\n\t\t\tsubject and protected nations for whom the war was not fought and
\n\t\t\twho cannot share in the once hoped-for general freedom, but must
\n\t\t\ttrust to the generous and unselfish liberalism of their rulers and
\n\t\t\tprotectors; there are African tribes who are the yet unmanufactured
\n\t\t\traw material of humanity. These are to be left under the old or put
\n\t\t\tunder a new control or are to be entrusted to the paternal hands of
\n\t\t\tthis or that governing power who will be in the legal style of the
\n\t\t\tnew dispensation, not masters and conquerors, -for
\n\t\t\tin this just and miraculous peace there are no annexations, only
\n\t\t\trectified arrangements of control and territory, -but trustees,
\n\t\t\tmandatories. <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tA mandate from the League will be the safeguard of
\n\t\t\tthese less fortunate peoples. For we are, it seems, about to live in
\n\t\t\tquite a new moralised world in which the general conscience of
\n\t\t\tmankind will be wide awake and effective and the League is there to
\n\t\t\trepresent it. As its representative it will take a periodical report
\n\t\t\tof their trust from the trustees, -who also as the great powers of
\n\t\t\tthe League will be themselves at once mandatories, leaders and
\n\t\t\tdeputies of this same general conscience. All existing forces are
\n\t\t\trepresented in just proportions in this very remarkable
\n\t\t\tconstitution. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe idealist may find much to object against the
\n\t\t\tperpetuation and hardening of the unideal existent fact on which the
\n\t\t\tsystem of the League is founded, but undoubtedly that system has a
\n\t\t\tgood deal to say for itself, can urge very urgent considerations
\n\t\t\tfrom the point of view of practical possibility. One indispensable
\n\t\t\tcondition of its success is a solid central authority, strong and
\n\t\t\tpermanent, capable of enforcing its decisions, and it must be an
\n\t\t\torgan which all nations can accept as the natural head and faithful
\n\t\t\tdynamic expression of the corporate being of mankind. As far as is
\n\t\t\tat all practicable at the moment, here is, it may be said, just such
\n\t\t\tan authority. The international body of mankind is still an
\n\t\t\tamorphous mass, its constituent peoples unaccustomed to act
\n\t\t\ttogether, heterogeneous by virtue of their various degrees of
\n\t\t\tdevelopment, organised power, experience, civilisation: a free
\n\t\t\tgeneral assembly, a parliament of the world, an equal federation of
\n\t\t\tmankind, is out of the question; even an equal federation of free
\n\t\t\tand civilised peoples is likely to be an incoherent and futile body
\n\t\t\tincapable of effective corporate action. What is to enforce and give
\n\t\t\tpracticality to the general needs and desires if not the power,
\n\t\t\tinfluence, authority and, where need is, the strong arm of the great
\n\t\t\tnations and empires acting in concert but with a due regard for the
\n\t\t\tcommon interests and general voice? Who else are to determine
\n\t\t\tpreponderatingly the decisions they will have to enforce or can give
\n\t\t\tto them a permanent principle or sustained practical policy? <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tNo combination of little American republics
\n\t\t\tand minor European powers could dictate a world policy to the United
\n\t\t\tStates, France and the British Empire or could be allowed to play by
\n\t\t\tthe blind rule of a majority with these great interests. But in the
\n\t\t\tLeague the various constituents of the corporate body are so ranked
\n\t\t\tand related as to give precisely a faithful dynamic expression of it
\n\t\t\tin its present conditions; whatever evolution is necessary can be
\n\t\t\tworked out through a general control and a periodical revision of
\n\t\t\ttreaties and relations. In brief, the whole international condition
\n\t\t\tof the world is a chaos that has to be brought into order and shape,
\n\t\t\tand that is a work which cannot be done by an idyllic idealism or an
\n\t\t\tabstract perfection of principles which are not in correspondence
\n\t\t\twith the actualities of things and, if prematurely applied, are
\n\t\t\tlikely to bring in a worse confusion, but can only be accomplished
\n\t\t\tby a strong and capable organised Force which will take things as
\n\t\t\tthey stand, impose a new system of law and order on this chaos, some
\n\t\t\tfirm however imperfect initial framework, and watch over its
\n\t\t\tdevelopment with a strict eye on the practical possibilities of
\n\t\t\tprogress. On that safe and firm basis a slow but sure and deliberate
\n\t\t\tadvance can be made towards a future better law and ideal order.
\n\t\t\tThere is another side to the question, but let us suppress it for
\n\t\t\tthe moment and give full value and weight to these considerations. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut all the more indispensable does it then
\n\t\t\tbecome that the principles of the progress to be made shall be
\n\t\t\trecognised from the beginning in the law and constitution of the
\n\t\t\tLeague, or at least indicated in such a way and so impressed on its
\n\t\t\tsystem as to ensure that on those lines or towards the fulfilment of
\n\t\t\tthose principles its action should proceed and not be diverted to
\n\t\t\tother, baser, reactionary or obstructive uses. The declaration of
\n\t\t\tgeneral principles and their embodiments and safeguards in the
\n\t\t\tdemocratic constitutions promulgated in the eighteenth century were
\n\t\t\tno barren ideologists’ formularies, -any more than the affirmation
\n\t\t\tof constitutional principles in earlier documents like the Magna
\n\t\t\tCharta, -but laid down the basis on which government and progress
\n\t\t\tmust proceed in the new-born order of the world and were at once a
\n\t\t\tsignpost and an effective moral guarantee for the assured march of
\n\t\t\tDemocracy.   <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tWe look in vain in the constitution of the League for any such great
\n\t\t\tguiding principles. The provisions for the diminution of the
\n\t\t\tpossibilities of war, the creation of some new small nations and the
\n\t\t\tsafety given to those that already existed can hardly be called by
\n\t\t\tthat name. There is here no hint of any charter of the international
\n\t\t\trights and duties of the peoples in a new order making at once for
\n\t\t\tliberty and union. The principle of selfdetermination over which the
\n\t\t\tlater stages of the war were fought has been ruthlessly thrown
\n\t\t\toverboard and swallowed up in the jaws of a large pot-bellied
\n\t\t\tdiplomatic transaction, -it may be only for a time like the prophet
\n\t\t\tin the stomach of the whale, but for the nonce there is an almost
\n\t\t\tperfect disappearance. Some infinitesimal shadow of it we see in
\n\t\t\tpetty transactions like the arrangement about Schleswig-Holstein,
\n\t\t\tbut for the rest the map of the world has been altered very much in
\n\t\t\tthe old familiar fashion without any consistent regard to
\n\t\t\tnationality or choice, but rather by the agreement and fiat of armed
\n\t\t\tvictorious nations. A famous pronouncement during the war had
\n\t\t\tdenounced the theory of trusteeship, that cloak which can cover with
\n\t\t\tso noble a grace the hard reality of domination and exploitation,
\n\t\t\t-things now too gross in their nakedness to be presented undraped to
\n\t\t\tthe squeamish moral sense of a modern humanity. But in this
\n\t\t\tafter-war system that very theory of trusteeship is glorified and
\n\t\t\tconsecrated, though with the gloss of a mandate subject to
\n\t\t\texamination -by a body whose action and deliberation will be
\n\t\t\tcontrolled by the trustees. Subject nations are still to exist in
\n\t\t\tthis world; for the system of mandates is only to be applied where a
\n\t\t\tprevious subjection has been abrogated, it is to be applied to some
\n\t\t\tof the Asiatic or African peoples who lay under the uplifted scourge
\n\t\t\tof the now fallen empires; the rest who had the advantage of milder
\n\t\t\tmasters, the remaining subject peoples from Ireland to Korea, have
\n\t\t\tno need of any such safeguard! <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt may be that all this denial of a too ideal principle of liberty
\n\t\t\twas inevitable; for we must, we are now told, not be in too great a
\n\t\t\thurry to get from midnight to midday; the law of the times and
\n\t\t\tseasons must be observed, a mitigated darkness must first come and
\n\t\t\tthen twilight and then dawn and then the
\n\t\t\tglad confident morning before we can live in the golden noon of a
\n\t\t\tuniversalised liberty and justice. <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tBut meanwhile what other guiding
\n\t\t\tprinciple, what embodied idea of law and right, what equitable and
\n\t\t\tequal balance of obligations is to be the firm basis of the new
\n\t\t\torder? We find none, only a machinery for the diminution of the
\n\t\t\tchances of war, not for their removal, by compulsory arbitration, by
\n\t\t\tthe threat or actuality of armed force and economic pressure; for
\n\t\t\tthe revision of treaties; for the secured possession of colonies,
\n\t\t\tdependencies, markets, frontiers, ports, mandates; for the
\n\t\t\tinternational discussion and settlement of the conflicting claims of
\n\t\t\tCapital and Labour. There is a system of immediately practicable
\n\t\t\trelations, an attempt to affirm and to secure a new status quo<\/i>,
\n\t\t\ta provision for minor manipulations and alterations; but there is
\n\t\t\tlittle actual foundation for a new and nobler world-order. A
\n\t\t\tpreparation for it may have been the intention of the institutors,
\n\t\t\tbut the fulfilment of their intention is left very much at the mercy
\n\t\t\tof the uncertain chances of the future. The idealism of the founder
\n\t\t\thas so far triumphed as to get some limited form of a League of
\n\t\t\tNations admitted and put into shape, but at every other point the
\n\t\t\tidealist has gone under and the stamp of the politician and diplomat
\n\t\t\tis over this whole new modern machine, -of the mere practical man
\n\t\t\twith his short sight and his rough and ready methods. It is a leaky
\n\t\t\tand ill-balanced ship launched on waters of tempest and chaos
\n\t\t\twithout a chart or compass or sailing instructions. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWell, but in other times devices as rough and
\n\t\t\tunbecoming have been the foundations of great structures, and if
\n\t\t\tthis League can be kept in being there may be some chance of getting
\n\t\t\tit suffused with the principles and ideals for whose realisation the
\n\t\t\tvague heart and conscience of mankind, baffled always by its own lax
\n\t\t\tcomplicities, is beginning to thirst and weary. But to the eye of
\n\t\t\tthe critic this new pact would seem to carry in itself the ominous
\n\t\t\tseeds of its own future mutability and perhaps dissolution. For
\n\t\t\tfirst of all the League is entering into being with a very limited
\n\t\t\tand feeble enthusiasm on its behalf even in the nations which are
\n\t\t\tinterested in its maintenance; <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tAmerica does not seem to be in a quite flawless harmony of agreement
\n\t\t\twith its President in his self-satisfaction over the shapely beauty
\n\t\t\tof his nursling; the world of Labour and socialism is critical,
\n\t\t\tdissatisfied, distrustful, uneasy, simmering over into brief and
\n\t\t\tuncertain but wide-spread and menacing strikes and formidable
\n\t\t\tdemands and murmurings. These are not favourable signs. The League
\n\t\t\twill need all the support and hearty acquiescence it can get to
\n\t\t\tovercome the difficulties that it will meet in constructing the
\n\t\t\tworld according to its own idea and fashion, a task which will not
\n\t\t\tend but only be just beginning when peace is concluded, and it is
\n\t\t\tdoubtful whether it will have what it needs in any but the most
\n\t\t\tgrudging measure. Not enthusiastic support, but a sort of muttering
\n\t\t\tacquiescence for want of any chance of a better thing at the moment
\n\t\t\tis the general mood of the world’s peoples whose interests it
\n\t\t\tproposes to manage. A poor starting wind for so momentous a voyage. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut let us suppose the system accepted and under
\n\t\t\tway, -what are the actual facts which will meet it in the future?
\n\t\t\tIts system will stand for a long time to come for the nations
\n\t\t\tconquered in the war as a perpetuation of their downfall, diminution
\n\t\t\tand disgrace; it will be to them a gaoler and inflicter of
\n\t\t\tpenalties, a guardian of tasks and payments with an uplifted
\n\t\t\tscourge. It need not have been so, if a generous and equal peace had
\n\t\t\tbeen made or, better, if apart from all such questions, there had
\n\t\t\tbeen a peace based not on the will of a conquering might, even
\n\t\t\tthough better-minded than the might it conquered, but on clear and
\n\t\t\tundeniable principles, such as the utmost possible
\n\t\t\tselfdetermination, equal opportunity, equal position for the world’s
\n\t\t\tpeoples; that would have been indeed a peace without any other
\n\t\t\tvictors or vanquished than vanquished force and wrong and victorious
\n\t\t\tequity. But the leading nations have chosen to impose a diplomatic
\n\t\t\tpeace in which the league which imposes it figures as an
\n\t\t\tadministrator of criminal justice. The vanquished nations, now for
\n\t\t\tthe most part democracies and no longer the old aggressive
\n\t\t\tmilitarisms which made the war, were, it is said, criminals and
\n\t\t\tbreakers of peace and the penalty inflicted is far too light in
\n\t\t\tcomparison with their crimes. <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tIt may be so in literal terms, -though a criminal justice inflicted
\n\t\t\tby one of two parties
\n\t\t\tin a quarrel on his beaten opponent and not by an impartial judge is
\n\t\t\tapt rightly or wrongly to be suspect to the mere human reason and at
\n\t\t\tbest much of what is called justice is only legalised revenge, -but
\n\t\t\tstill it may be that nothing but justice or even less than justice
\n\t\t\thas been done. But that makes no difference to the fact that a
\n\t\t\tnumber of new democracies, vigorous and intellectual peoples, born
\n\t\t\tto a new life which should have been one of hope and good will to
\n\t\t\tthe coming order, will be there inevitably as a source of revolt and
\n\t\t\tdisorder, eager to support any change which will remove their
\n\t\t\tburdens, gratify their resentment and heal their festering wounds.
\n\t\t\tThey may be held down, kept weak and maimed, even though one of them
\n\t\t\tis laborious, skilful, organised Germany, but that will mean a
\n\t\t\tweakness and an illbalance in the new order itself, and if they
\n\t\t\trecover strength, it will not be to acquiesce in their inferior
\n\t\t\tplace and the perpetual triumph and greatness of their ancient
\n\t\t\trivals. Only in a legalised system of equal democracies can there be
\n\t\t\tsome true chance of the cessation of these jealousies, enmities,
\n\t\t\trecurrent struggles. Otherwise war will break out again or in some
\n\t\t\tother form the old battle continue. An unequal balance can never be
\n\t\t\ta security for a steady and peaceful world-system. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPass, if this were the only peril of the newly
\n\t\t\tinaugurated system. But this league seems also to stand for a
\n\t\t\tperpetuation of a new status quo
\n<\/i>to be arrived at by the peace which is being made its foundation. The great
\n\t\t\tpowers, it would seem, have arrived at a compact to secure their
\n\t\t\tdominions and holdings against any future menace of diminution. This
\n\t\t\tarrangement is of the nature at once of a balance of power -but with
\n\t\t\tall the dangers of an unequal balance -and of an attempt to
\n\t\t\tperpetuate for ever certain at present preponderating influences and
\n\t\t\testablished greatnesses. That attempt is against all the teaching of
\n\t\t\thistory and all the perennial movement of Nature; the league which
\n\t\t\tstands committed to it is committed to a jealously guarded
\n\t\t\tinsecurity and the preservation of an unstable equilibrium. It is
\n\t\t\tnot certain that the constructing powers will themselves remain
\n\t\t\tconsistently satisfied with the terms of their compact or able to
\n\t\t\tresist that urge of national and of human destiny which is greater
\n\t\t\tthan any diplomatic arrangement or the wills of governments and
\n\t\t\tstatesmen.    <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tBut even if that unheard-of thing be realised between
\n\t\t\tthem, a durable international friendship and alliance, it may serve
\n\t\t\tfor a time, but will it serve for a very long time against the
\n\t\t\tworld’s urge towards change? Power rots by having and security, and
\n\t\t\tthose who are powerful today to impose their will on the nations,
\n\t\t\tmay not always keep that force in spite of their bulk and wealth and
\n\t\t\tarmed magnitudes. Then there are old sores perpetuated and new sores
\n\t\t\topened by this arrangement of a hastily made peace of devices and
\n\t\t\tcompromises. Whether the Balkan question will be permanently settled
\n\t\t\tis at least dubious; but there will be now the question of a German
\n\t\t\tBohemia, a particoloured Poland, perhaps a Saar region with its
\n\t\t\twealth in the possession of a foreign power, an insoluble question
\n\t\t\tof Yugoslav and Italian, a new question of Tyrol, an Irish trouble
\n\t\t\tand a Korean trouble in which the League cannot interfere without
\n\t\t\tdeep offence to England and Japan and which yet clamour more and
\n\t\t\tmore for a settlement, a Russian chaos. There is a Mahomedan world
\n\t\t\twhich will one day have a word to say about the new
\nstatus quo. <\/i>There is the whole question of Asia and Africa, which is the
\n\t\t\tmost formidable but of which much need not be said, for its issues
\n\t\t\tare patent to every eye. The partition of Africa between a few
\n\t\t\tEuropean powers with all its economic advantages can be no permanent
\n\t\t\tsolution. Asia is arising in the surge of an upward wave and cannot
\n\t\t\talways be kept in a condition of weakness, tutelage and vassalage.
\n\t\t\tWhen the time comes, how will a league mainly of European and
\n\t\t\tAmerican peoples deal with her claims? Will Europe be content to
\n\t\t\trecede from Asia? Will the mandatories be in any haste to determine
\n\t\t\ttheir mandate? Can there be any modified perpetuation of present
\n\t\t\tconditions which will be at all compatible with an equality between
\n\t\t\tthe two continents? These are questions which no imperfect sketch of
\n\t\t\ta league of nations on the existing basis can decide according to
\n\t\t\tits phantasy; only the onward moving world-spirit can give them
\n\t\t\ttheir answer. <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tNone of these dangers and difficulties are as yet formidable in
\n\t\t\ttheir immediate incidence, but there is another problem of a
\n\t\t\tpressing, immediate insistency and menace which touches with its
\n\t\t\tclose foreshadowing finger the very life of any new international
\n\t\t\tsystem and that is the approaching struggle for supremacy between
\n\t\t\tCapital and Labour. This is a far other matter than the clash of
\n\t\t\tconflicting imperialisms in the broad spaces or the wrangle of
\n\t\t\tquarrelsome nationalisms snarling at each other’s heels or tearing
\n\t\t\teach other in the narrower ways of the Earth; for those are
\n\t\t\tquestions at most of division of power, territory and economic
\n\t\t\topportunity on the present basis of society, but this means a
\n\t\t\tquestioning of that basis and a shaking of the very foundations of
\n\t\t\tthe European world-order. This League is a league of governments,
\n\t\t\tand all these governments are bourgeois monarchies or republics,
\n\t\t\tinstruments of a capitalistic system assailed by the tides of
\n\t\t\tsocialism. Their policy is to compromise, to concede in detail, but
\n\t\t\tto prolong their own principle so that they may survive and
\n\t\t\tcapitalism be still the dominant power of a new mixed
\n\t\t\tsemi-socialistic order, very much as the governments which formed
\n\t\t\tthe Holy Alliance sought to save the dominance of the old idea of
\n\t\t\taristocratic monarchy by a compromise with the growing spirit of
\n\t\t\tdemocracy. What they offer is better and more human conditions for
\n\t\t\tthe labourer, even a certain association in the government of the
\n\t\t\tsociety, but still a second and not a primary place in the scale.
\n\t\t\tThis was indeed all to which Labour itself formerly aspired, and it
\n\t\t\tis all to which the rear of its army still looks forward, but it is
\n\t\t\talready ceasing to be the significance of the Labour movement; a new
\n\t\t\tidea has arisen, the dominance, the rule of labour, and it has
\n\t\t\talready formulated itself and captured a great portion of the forces
\n\t\t\tof socialism. It has even established for a while in Russia a new
\n\t\t\tkind of government, a dictatorship of the proletariate, which
\n\t\t\taspires to effect a rapid transition to another order of society. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAgainst this novel idea and its force the
\n\t\t\texisting governments are compelled by the very principle of their
\n\t\t\tbeing to declare war and to struggle against its coming with all the
\n\t\t\tstrength at their disposal and strive to mobilise against it
\n\t\t\twhatever faith in existing things still remains in the mind of the
\n\t\t\tpeoples. <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tThe old order has still no doubt strength enough to crush
\n\t\t\tout of  
\n654<\/i> War and Self-Determination<\/i>
\n\t\t\texistence, if it wills, the form which this coming of Demogorgon has
\n\t\t\talready taken and to make a more or less speedy end of Russian
\n\t\t\tBolshevism. The Bolshevist system, isolated in a single country,
\n\t\t\tweakened by its own initial crudities and revolutionary violences,
\n\t\t\tstruggling fiercely against impracticable odds, may well be
\n\t\t\tannihilated; but the thing which is behind Bolshevism and has given
\n\t\t\tit its unexpected virility and vitality, cannot be so easily
\n\t\t\tconjured or pressed out of being. That thing is the transference of
\n\t\t\tthe basis of society from wealth to labour, from the power of money
\n\t\t\tto the simple power of the man and his work, and that cannot be
\n\t\t\tstopped or prevented, -though it may be for a time put off, -not
\n\t\t\tbecause labour any more than wealth is the true basis of society,
\n\t\t\tbut because this is the logical and inevitable outcome of the whole
\n\t\t\tevolution of European society. The rule of the warrior and
\n\t\t\taristocrat, the Kshatriya, founded upon power has given place to the
\n\t\t\trule of the Vaishyas, the professional and industrial classes,
\n\t\t\tfounded upon wealth and legalism, and that again must yield to the
\n\t\t\trule of the Shudra, the proletariate, founded upon work and
\n\t\t\tassociation. This change like the others cannot be accomplished
\n\t\t\twithout much strife and upheaval and there is every sign that its
\n\t\t\tcourse will be attended with the shattering violence of revolution. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt is proposed indeed to the new force that it
\n\t\t\tshall work itself out calmly, slowly, peacefully by the recognised
\n\t\t\tmeans of Parliamentarism; but Parliamentarism is passing through a
\n\t\t\tphase of considerable discredit, and a doubt has arisen in the minds
\n\t\t\tof the workers whether it is at all a right or possible means for
\n\t\t\ttheir object and whether by a reliance upon it they will not be
\n\t\t\tplaying into the hands of their opponents: for Parliament is
\n\t\t\tactually a great machine of the propertied classes and even the
\n\t\t\tParliamentary socialist tends easily to become a semi-disguised or a
\n\t\t\thalf and half bourgeois. The new order of society would seem to
\n\t\t\tdemand the institution of a new system of government. If then a new
\n\t\t\torder of society is bound to come with its inevitable reversal of
\n\t\t\texisting conditions, and still more if it comes by a revolutionary
\n\t\t\tstruggle, how will a system of a League of Nations based upon
\n\t\t\texisting conditions, a League
\n\t\t\tnot really of nations but of governments, and of governments
\n\t\t\tcommitted to the maintenance of the old order and using their closer
\n\t\t\tassociation as a means for combating the new idea which is hostile
\n\t\t\tto their own form of existence, be likely to fare in this
\n\t\t\tearth-shaking or this tornado? <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tIt is more likely to disappear than
\n\t\t\tto undergo a gentle transformation, and if it disappears, another
\n\t\t\tsystem of international comity may replace it, but it will not be a
\n\t\t\tLeague of Nations. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWe will suppose, however, or even trust, that the League, embodying
\n\t\t\tin spite of appearances the best combined statesmanship of the
\n\t\t\tworld, circumvents all these perils, weathers every storm and leads
\n\t\t\tforward the destinies of mankind in the paths of an at first more or
\n\t\t\tless uneasy, but eventually firmer increasing peace and mutual
\n\t\t\taccommodation. What is it then that it will have at the beginning or
\n\t\t\tin the end actually accomplished? It will have made some beginning
\n\t\t\tof the substitution of a state of law for the older international
\n\t\t\tstatus which alternated and oscillated between outbreaks of war and
\n\t\t\tan armed peace. That, no doubt, if at all firmly done, will be a
\n\t\t\tgreat step forward in the known history of human civilisation. For
\n\t\t\tit will mean that what was founded in the unit of the nation
\n\t\t\tcenturies ago, will be now at last founded in the society of the
\n\t\t\tnations. But let us not leap too easily at what may well be an
\n\t\t\tunsound parallel. What civilised society has done most effectively
\n\t\t\tfrom the beginning is to substitute some kind of legalised relation,
\n\t\t\tlegalised offence and defence, legalised compensation or revenge for
\n\t\t\tinjuries in place of the state of insecure peace and frequent
\n\t\t\tprivate or tribal warfare in which each man had to claim what he
\n\t\t\tconsidered to be justice by the aid of his kin or the strength of
\n\t\t\this own hand. At present the persistent survival of crime is the
\n\t\t\tonly remnant of that earlier pre-legal state of natural violence.
\n\t\t\tBut for an organised society to deal with the refractory individual
\n\t\t\tis a comparatively facile task; here the units are nations with a
\n\t\t\tcomplex corporate personality, great masses of men themselves too
\n\t\t\torganised, representing the vital interests, claims, passions of
\n\t\t\tmillions of men divided by corporate, powerful and persistent
\n\t\t\texclusivenesses, hatreds, jealousies, antipathies which the
\n\t\t\tfounding of this would-be all-healing League and new society of
\n\t\t\tpeoples finds much acerbated, much more pronounced than in the days
\n\t\t\tbefore the deluge when a tolerant and easy cosmopolitanism was more
\n\t\t\tin fashion, and which its dispositions seem calculated to deepen and
\n\t\t\tperpetuate rather than to heal and abolish. <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tAnd it is on this
\n\t\t\tincoherent mass of peoples void of all living principle or urgent
\n\t\t\twill of union that a status of peace and settled law has to be
\n\t\t\timposed and this in a period of increasing chaos, upheaval and
\n\t\t\tmenace of revolution. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe national society succeeded only in proportion
\n\t\t\tas it developed an indivisible unity and a single homogeneous
\n\t\t\tauthority which could both legislate, or at least codify and
\n\t\t\tmaintain law, and see to the rigorous execution of its settled
\n\t\t\trules, decrees, and ordinances. Here the work has to be done by an
\n\t\t\tinstitution which represents no embodied unity, but rather a jamming
\n\t\t\tor stringing together of very strongly separate units, and which
\n\t\t\tdoes not legislate, but only passes very partial and opportunist
\n\t\t\tspecial decrees
\nad hoc<\/i>, and to enforce them has constantly to resort to intimidation,
\n\t\t\tblockade, economic pressure, menace of a wholesale starvation of
\n\t\t\tpeoples, menace of violent military occupation, -things which
\n\t\t\tprolong the after-war state of unrest and recoil in their secondary
\n\t\t\teffects upon the countries whose governments are engaged in this
\n\t\t\tsingular international pastime. It is not difficult to see that a
\n\t\t\tbetter system and a better means must be found if the latest strong
\n\t\t\thope of humanity is to turn out anything more than one other
\n\t\t\tgenerous illusion of the intellectuals and one other chimerical wave
\n\t\t\tof longing in the vague heart of the peoples. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEven the national society has not been able after
\n\t\t\tso long a time and so much experience to eliminate in its own body
\n\t\t\tthe disease of strife between its members, class war, bitter
\n\t\t\thostility of interests and ideas breaking out at times into bloody
\n\t\t\tclashes, civil wars, sanguinary revolutions or disastrous, grimly
\n\t\t\tobstinate and ruthless economic struggles which are the preparers of
\n\t\t\tan eventual physical conflict. <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tAnd the reason is not far to seek. Law for all its ermine of pomp
\n\t\t\tand solemn bewigged pretension of dignity was in its origin nothing
\n\t\t\tbut the law of the stronger
\n\t\t\tand the more skilful and successful who imposed their rule on the
\n\t\t\tacquiescent or subjugated rest of the people. It was the decrees of
\n\t\t\tthe dominant class which were imposed on the previous mass of
\n\t\t\texisting customs and new-shaped them into the mould of the
\n\t\t\tprevailing idea and interest; Law was itself a regulated and
\n\t\t\torganised Force establishing its own rules of administration and
\n\t\t\tmaintaining them by an imminent menace of penalty and coercion. That
\n\t\t\tis the sense of the symbolic sword of Justice, and as for her more
\n\t\t\tmythical balance, a balance is a commercial and artificial sign, not
\n\t\t\ta symbol of either natural or ideal equity, and even so this balance
\n\t\t\tof Justice had for its use only a theoretical or not always even a
\n\t\t\ttheoretical equality of weights and measures. Law was often in great
\n\t\t\tmeasure a system of legalised oppression and exploitation and on its
\n\t\t\tpolitical side has had often enough plainly that stamp, though it
\n\t\t\thas assumed always the solemn face of a sacrosanct order and
\n\t\t\tgovernment and justice. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe history of mankind has been very largely a
\n\t\t\tlong struggle to get unjust law changed into justice, -not a mystic
\n\t\t\tjustice of an imposed decree and rule "by law established" claiming
\n\t\t\tto be right because it is established, but the intelligible justice
\n\t\t\tof equality and equity. Much has been done, but as much or more
\n\t\t\tstill remains to be done, and so long as it is not established,
\n\t\t\tthere can be no sure end to civil strife and unrest and revolution.
\n\t\t\tFor the injustice of law can only be tolerated so long as there is
\n\t\t\teither in those who suffer by it a torpid blindness or acquiescent
\n\t\t\tsubmission or else, the desire of equity once awakened, a ready
\n\t\t\tmeans to their hand of natural and peaceful rectification. And a
\n\t\t\tparticular unjust law may indeed be got altered with less of effort
\n\t\t\tand difficulty, but if injustice or, let us say simply, absence of
\n\t\t\tjust equality and equity pervades a state of things, a system, then
\n\t\t\tthere must be grave trouble and there can be no real equilibrium and
\n\t\t\tpeace till it is amended. Thus in modern society strikes and
\n\t\t\tlockouts are its form of civil war, disastrous enough to both sides,
\n\t\t\tbut still they are constantly resorted to and cannot be replaced by
\n\t\t\ta better way, because there is no confidence in any possible legal
\n\t\t\taward or "compulsory" arbitration which can be provided for under
\n\t\t\tthe existing conditions. <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tThe stronger side
\n\t\t\trelies on the advantage which it enjoys under the established
\n\t\t\tsystem, the weaker feels that the legalised balance of the State
\n\t\t\texists by a law which still favours the capitalist interest and the
\n\t\t\tdomination of wealth and that at most it can get from this State
\n\t\t\tonly inadequate concessions which involve by their inadequacy more
\n\t\t\tnumerous struggles in the future. They cling to the strike as their
\n\t\t\tnatural weapon and one trustworthy resource. For that reason all
\n\t\t\tingeminations and exhortations to economic peace and brotherhood are
\n\t\t\ta futile counsel. The only remedy is a better, more equal and more
\n\t\t\tequitable system of society. And this is only a particular instance
\n\t\t\tof a situation common enough in different forms under the present
\n\t\t\tworld-order. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe application is evident to the present
\n\t\t\tinternational attempt and its hopes of a legalised and peaceful
\n\t\t\thuman society. The League of Nations has been established by
\n\t\t\tvictorious Force, claiming no doubt to be the force of victorious
\n\t\t\tright and justice, but incapable by the vice of its birth of
\n\t\t\tembodying the real noncombatant justice of an equal and impartial
\n\t\t\tequity. Its decrees and acts are based on no ascertainable
\n\t\t\timpersonal principle, but are mainly the decrees, the
\nsic volo, sic jubeo <\/i>of three or four mighty nations. Even if they happen
\n\t\t\tto be just, they have this fatal vice that there is nothing to
\n\t\t\tconvince the mind of the losing parties or even the common mind that
\n\t\t\tthere is behind them any surety of a general and reliable equity,
\n\t\t\tand as a matter of fact many of them have aroused very generally
\n\t\t\tgrave dissatisfaction and hostile criticism. And the Supreme
\n\t\t\tCouncil, that veiled hieratic autocrat of the situation, does not
\n\t\t\tseem itself to appeal to any distinct higher principles in its
\n\t\t\taction, even when such do actually exist and could be insisted on
\n\t\t\twith force and clarity. At the time of writing, there has been a
\n\t\t\tcase of the denudation of a suffering and now half-starved country
\n\t\t\tby the army of a small occupying power -victorious not by its own
\n\t\t\tarms, but by the moral and economic pressure of the League -and the
\n\t\t\tcouncil has very rightly interfered. <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tBut it has not done that publicly on grounds that have anything to
\n\t\t\tdo with international justice or humanity or even the rudiments of
\n\t\t\tinternational ethics, such as they are, but on this ground that the
\n\t\t\tproperty of the
\n\t\t\tvanquished country is the common spoil, or, let us say, means of
\n\t\t\tcompensation of the victors and this one little rapacious ally
\n\t\t\tcannot be allowed to appropriate it all by main force to the
\n\t\t\tdetriment of its greater fellow-administrators of a self-regarding
\n\t\t\tjustice, -who may even as a result find Hungary thrown as a starving
\n\t\t\tpauper on their hands instead of serving their will as a solvent
\n\t\t\tdebtor! If this realistic spirit is to be the spirit of the new
\n\t\t\tinternational system and that is to persist, its success is likely
\n\t\t\tto be more formidable to humanity than its failure. For it may mean
\n\t\t\tto the suffering portions of mankind the legalisation and
\n\t\t\tperpetuation of intolerable existing injustices for which there
\n\t\t\tcould have been a hope of more easy remedy and redress in the
\n\t\t\tprevious looser conditions. If this league of nations is to serve
\n\t\t\tand not merely to dominate mankind, if it is to raise and free, as
\n\t\t\tit claims and professes, and not to bind and depress humanity, it
\n\t\t\tmust be cast in another mould and animated by another spirit. This
\n\t\t\tage is not like that in which the reign of law was established in
\n\t\t\tindividual nations; men are no longer inclined, as then they were,
\n\t\t\tto submit to existing conditions in the idea that they are an
\n\t\t\tinevitable dispensation of nature. The idea of equity, of equality,
\n\t\t\tof common rights has been generalised in the mind of the race, and
\n\t\t\thuman society must move henceforward steadily towards its
\n\t\t\tsatisfaction on peril of constant unrest and a rising gradation of
\n\t\t\tcatastrophe. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThat means that the whole spirit and system of
\n\t\t\tthe league will have to be remodelled, the initial mistakes of its
\n\t\t\tcomposition rectified and the defects inherent in its origin got rid
\n\t\t\tof, before it can be brought into real consonance with the nobler
\n\t\t\thopes or even the pressing needs of the human race. At present it
\n\t\t\tis, to reverse the old phrase, a pouring of an old and very musty
\n\t\t\twine into showy new bottles, -the old discredited spirit of the
\n\t\t\tdiplomacy of concert and balance and the government of the
\n\t\t\tstrongest, of the few dominant kingdoms, states and empires. That
\n\t\t\tmust disappear in a more just and democratic international system. <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tThe evil legacy of the war with its distinctions between "enemy",
\n\t\t\tallied and friendly nations or more favoured or less favoured
\n\t\t\tpeoples, will have to be got out of the system of the
\n\t\t\tleague, for so long as it is there, it will act as a virus which
\n\t\t\twill prevent all healthy growth and functioning. A league of nations
\n\t\t\twhich is to bring a real peace and beginning of justice and ordered
\n\t\t\tcomity in progress to the world and a secret council of allied
\n\t\t\tgovernments imposing as best they can their irresponsible will on a
\n\t\t\ttroubled and dissatisfied Europe, Asia and Africa are two very
\n\t\t\tdifferent things, and while one lasts, the other cannot be got into
\n\t\t\tbeing. The haphazard make of the League will have to be remoulded
\n\t\t\tinto a thing of plain and candid structure and meaning and made to
\n\t\t\tadmit that element of clear principle which it has omitted from its
\n\t\t\tconstitution. An equal system of international rights and
\n\t\t\tobligations, just liberties and wholesome necessary restrictions can
\n\t\t\talone be a sound basis of international law and order. And there can
\n\t\t\tbe no other really sound basis of the just and equal liberty of the
\n\t\t\tpeoples than that principle of self-determination which was so
\n\t\t\tloudly trumpeted during the war, but of which an opportunist
\n\t\t\tstatesmanship has made short work and reduced to a deplorable
\n\t\t\tnullity. A true principle of self-determination is not at all
\n\t\t\tincompatible with international unity and mutual obligation, the two
\n\t\t\tare rather indispensable complements, even as individual liberty in
\n\t\t\tits right sense of a just and sufficient room for healthy
\n\t\t\tself-development and selfdetermination is not at all incompatible
\n\t\t\twith unity of spirit and mutual obligation between man and man. How
\n\t\t\tto develop it out of present conditions, antipathies, ambitions,
\n\t\t\tgrievances, national lusts, jealousies, egoisms is indeed a problem,
\n\t\t\tbut it is a problem which will have to be attended to today or
\n\t\t\ttomorrow on peril of worse things. To say that these developments
\n\t\t\tare impossible is to say that a league of nations in the real sense
\n\t\t\tas opposed to a league of some nations for their common benefit, a
\n\t\t\tdominant alliance, is an impossibility. In that case the present
\n\t\t\tinstitution called by that imposing name can only be an enlarged and
\n\t\t\tmore mechanised edition of the old Concert or a latterday Holy
\n\t\t\tAlliance of the governments and will sooner or later go the way of
\n\t\t\tits predecessors. If that is so, then the sooner we recognise it,
\n\t\t\tthe better for all concerned; there will be less of false hopes and
\n\t\t\tmisdirected energies with their burden of
\n\t\t\tdisappointment, unrest, irritation and perilous reaction. To go on
\n\t\t\tupon the present lines is to lead straight towards another and
\n\t\t\tgreater catastrophe. <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tTo insist on these things is not to discourage unduly the spirit of
\n\t\t\thope which humanity needs for its progress; it is necessary in order
\n\t\t\tthat that hope may not nourish itself on illusions and turn towards
\n\t\t\tmisdirecting paths, but may rather see clearly the right conditions
\n\t\t\tof its fulfilment and fix its energy on their realisation. It is a
\n\t\t\tcomfortable but a dangerous thing to trust with a facile faith that
\n\t\t\ta bad system will automatically develop into a good thing or that
\n\t\t\tsome easy change is bound to come which will make for salvation, as
\n\t\t\tfor instance that Europe will evolve true democracy and that the
\n\t\t\tLeague of Nations, now so imperfectly established, will be made
\n\t\t\tperfect by its better spirit. The usual result of this temper of
\n\t\t\tsanguine acceptance or toleration is that the expected better state
\n\t\t\tmakes indeed some ameliorations when it comes, but takes into it too
\n\t\t\ta legacy of the past, much of its obscure spirit and a goodly
\n\t\t\tinheritance of its evils, while it adds to the burden new errors of
\n\t\t\tits own making. Certainly, the thing which was behind this new
\n\t\t\tformation, this league of governments, is bound in some way or other
\n\t\t\tto come; for I take it that a closer system of international life is
\n\t\t\tsooner or later inevitable because it is a necessary outcome of
\n\t\t\tmodern conditions, of the now much closer relations and interactions
\n\t\t\tof the life of the human race, and the only alternative is
\n\t\t\tincreasing trouble, disorder and ultimate chaos. But this inevitable
\n\t\t\tdevelopment may take, according to the way and principle we follow,
\n\t\t\ta better or a worse turn. It may come in the form of a mechanical
\n\t\t\tand oppressive system as false and defective as the industrial
\n\t\t\tcivilisation of Europe which in its inflated and monstrous course
\n\t\t\tbrought about the present wreck, or it may come in the form and
\n\t\t\thealthy movement of a sounder shaping force which can be made the
\n\t\t\tbasis or at least the starting-point for a still greater and more
\n\t\t\tbeneficial human progress. No system indeed by its own force can
\n\t\t\tbring about the change that humanity really needs; for that can only
\n\t\t\tcome by its growth into the firmly realised possibilities of its own
\n\t\t\thigher nature, and this growth depends on an
\n\t\t\tinner and not an outer change. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 661<\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/font><\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut outer changes may at least
\n\t\t\tprepare favourable conditions for that more real amelioration, -or
\n\t\t\ton the contrary they may lead to such conditions that the sword of Kalki can alone purify the earth from the burden of an obstinately
\n\t\t\tAsuric humanity. The choice lies with the race itself; for as it
\n\t\t\tsows, so shall it reap the fruit of its Karma. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd that brings us back to the idea with which we
\n\t\t\tstarted and with it we may as well close, however remote it may
\n\t\t\tsound to the practical mind of a still materialistic generation. The
\n\t\t\tidea which Europe follows of an outer political and social
\n\t\t\tperfection reposes, as far as it goes, on a truth, but only on one
\n\t\t\thalf of the truth and that the lower half of its periphery. A
\n\t\t\tgreater side of it is hidden behind the other older idea, still not
\n\t\t\tquite dead in Asia and now strong enough to be born again in Europe,
\n\t\t\tthat as with the individual, so with the community of mankind,
\n\t\t\tsalvation cannot come by the outer Law alone; for the Law is only an
\n\t\t\tintermediate means intended to impose a rein of stringent obligation
\n\t\t\tand a better standard on the original disorder of our egoistic
\n\t\t\tnature. Salvation for individual or community comes not by the Law
\n\t\t\tbut by the Spirit.1<\/sup> The conditions of individual and social
\n\t\t\tperfection are indeed the same, freedom and unity; the two things
\n\t\t\tare complements and to follow one at the expense of the other is a
\n\t\t\tvain heresy. But real unity cannot come to the race, until man
\n\t\t\tsurmounting his egoistic nature is one in heart and spirit with man
\n\t\t\tand real freedom cannot be till he is free from his own lower nature
\n\t\t\tand finds the force of the truth which has been so vainly taught by
\n\t\t\tthe saints and sages that the fullness of his perfected
\n\t\t\tindividuality is one thing with a universality by which he can
\n\t\t\tembrace all mankind in his heart, mind and spirit. But at present
\n\t\t\tindividuals and nations are equally remote from accepting any such
\n\t\t\tinner mantra of unity and we can only hope at most that the best
\n\t\t\twill increasingly turn their minds in that direction and create
\n\t\t\tagain and this time with a newer and more luminous insistence a
\n\t\t\thigher standard of human aspiration. Till then jarring leagues of
\n\t\t\tnations and some mechanical dissoluble federation of the race must
\n\t\t\tserve our turn for practice and for a far-off expectation. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t1<\/font><\/sup>We in India have also yet to realise that truth
\n\t\t\t-not by the Shastra, but by the Atman.   <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 662<\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/font><\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut only then can the dream of a golden age of
\n\t\t\ta true communal living become feasible and be founded on a spiritual
\n\t\t\tand therefore a real reign of freedom and unity when the race learns
\n\t\t\tto turn its eyes inward and not any longer these things, but
\n\t\t\tmankind, the people of God and a soul and body of the Divine,
\n\t\t\tbecomes the ideal of our perfection. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 663<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A League of Nations   ANCIENT tradition believed in a golden age of mankind which lay in the splendid infancy of a primeval past; it…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-25-the-human-cycle","wpcat-58-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3062","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=3062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3062\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}