CHAPTER IX

THE SETTLEMENT: PARTIES, ISSUES AND METHODS

I.

IN the nine months covered by this survey, the peace aims of the various belligerents, and the forces behind these aims, have shifted again and again. Three chief points of view seem to have been represented in the councils of the nations.

The Imperialists. There is first the point of view of the imperialists, militarists, Junkers, expansionists, annexationists statesmen of the old predatory type. They are inclined to regard all alien territory as possible and legitimate booty. Men of this way of thinking are most powerful, most cynical, and, we believe, proportionately most numerous, in Prussia, but no country is without them.

The Liberals. There is secondly the point of view of those who may be called the Liberals such men as President Wilson, Dr. Eliot, Balfour, Delbrück, Milyukov. They think in terms of States, of national commerce, of national honor. But beyond national States they envisage with more or less vigorous belief a State of States, a politically organized world.

The Social-Radicals. There is thirdly the point of view of the social radicals who constitute a force not easily to be measured or appraised, but suddenly

made important by the Russian Revolution. Those of them who are Socialists are strongly organized in all European countries as political parties in good standing. Before the war they were internationally organized, and since the spring of 1917 the International has once more commenced to assert itself. In Germany the Socialists have been regarded as rather successfully "tamed." But in Russia a sufficiently "untamed" variety is now in power. In both Germany and Russia they desire peace, though with very different minds. But both favor internationally organized working-class pressure as a means of bringing peace about.

It may be roughly said that those in control in Germany represent the first point of view, in England and France the second, in revolutionary Russia the third. The coming in of the United States, in which public opinion is pretty solidly of the second type, enormously increased the impact of this set of ideas, to which President Wilson's intellect and eloquence give a finely tempered edge.

Their Instruments: (1) A Military Settlement. The first group desire a settlement by military means and by military men based on strategic considerations. It is their idea, as was said to me in prerevolutionary Russia, that "peace terms are not to be settled, do not deceive yourself as to that, by cabinets or parliaments or any civilians, but by generals in the field."

(2) Politico-Economic Pressure. The second group, when circumstances permit them to use their appropriate instruments, look rather to economic and political means of pressure. The blockade has meant more than "drives"; the Paris Conference on the one side, and the fear of the economic menace

of a Mittel-Europa organized for commercial aggression on the other, have caused more dismay than armies. President Wilson appears to rest the hopes of the Allies for an early peace in a change of political equilibrium in Germany.

(3) Working-class Solidarity. And the third, the social-radical group, interpreting the war as due to causes acting on both sides causes, such as colonial expansion, for which the nationalism of the Liberals bears a full share of responsibility - hopes for a peace to be achieved by neither military nor commercial pressure, but through the most complete working-class internationalism.

All of these points of view are represented in each country, but it is difficult to say to what extent they are held by the populations, since no government has undertaken to find out definitely what the silent masses who bear the bulk of the suffering really want in regard to the settlement of the war. No one knows how many are ready to go on fighting for imperialistic ends; how many believe that they must conquer or submit," as President Wilson said to Russia; how many desire a peace now on the Russian terms.

Each of these groups finds it hard to understand the other points of view. The Junker-Jingo group honestly thinks, as Napoleon did, that the Liberal is a hypocrite or a shop-keeper and dollar-chaser. So the Liberal thinks the Junker a brute beast, a "mad dog." Both regard the third man as little better than an anarchist, to be kept as quiet as possible. The social-radical, also, may misread as pure hypocrisy the "bourgeois ideology which sees the war Mr. Bonar Law put it in the parliamentary debate of July 27 -as a struggle between right and wrong to decide whether moral force or wickedness is to rule the world."

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Or he may feel that a genuine but misguided passion of moral feeling, putting behind the determination to "fight to a finish" more driving force even than lust for power or wealth or glory, is perhaps the most serious obstacle in the way of the solution in which he sees the hope of the world.

The Church and Other Forces. Suddenly upon a scene occupied by these three great figures the soldier, the statesman, the revolutionary worker - the priest entered, the oldest International in Europe invited the wayward sons of men to serene deliberation.1 Here was a new peacemaker.

These are so far the characters occupying the stage in this stupendous play. And behind the scenes? There is talk of an international gathering of bankers assembling in Switzerland. Is High Finance also reassembling its internationalism? How far are current suspicions, and cynical interpretations of events in terms of commercial juggling, justified? Is "Wall Street widely believed to have played an important part in bringing the United States into the war, and for its own purposes going to take part, too, in bringing war to an end when the time comes? If, as many believe, the fear of menacing social unrest spurred Italy and Russia into war to stave off internal troubles, will the same fear in one or another country induce conservative leaders to call the war off? These questions can be asked but not answered.

"We

1 Cf., the remark of the pan-German Deutsche Zeitung: are permitted to behold the three great international powers, Rome, Social Democracy, and Judaism, working in complete unison to bring to shame the German victory for which hundreds of thousands have bled and died."

The Issues. But, if such are the forces, what are the issues? What must the settlement decide, what are the proposals now before the world?

Such proposals are not generally to be found in their most complete or candid form in state papers nor in political speeches, but in the freer and more disinterested programs of organizations and individual students. A formula that will serve as a slogan is however capable of great political service.

"A Fight to a Finish." The formula that is above all others simple and, from a certain point of view, safe, is the military slogan, "a fight to a finish." From the point of view of those who utter this phrase, any consideration of possible peace-settlements is likely to be regarded as seditious "peace talk," or at least as a withdrawal of attention from the one proper concern of all patriotic citizens to wit, fighting.

This feeling towards the consideration of terms draws strength not only from the instinct of pugnacity, and from the danger to the partnership of stating too clearly what for instance Turkey or Bulgaria or Japan or Italy may hope for; it has an added intensity in proportion as victory is conceived as the vindication of the righteous and the punishment of the wicked.

statements

"Guarantees." The large phrases of the earlier as to war-aims were in great part merely decorous generalizations meant to cover the diverse and necessarily more or less conflicting de

1 Some of these are given in Part II: among the most interesting are those of President Jordan, the British Union of Democratic Control, the Executive Committee of the British Labor Party and the two German Socialist Parties.