THE FORUM FOR JULY 1911 T THE REMEDY FOR ARMED PEACE * BARON D'ESTOURNELLES DE CONSTANT HE German Emperor once found it; there is nothing to be done except to apply it: that is, European union substituted for European anarchy; European union. cemented by Franco-German reconciliation. Through what derisive contradiction was this remedy mentioned only at the period when its realization seemed impossible? Now that it appears less distant, at the time when facts speak and no longer words, nothing is said of it. Governments have no confidence in anything except the increase of their armaments; the experience of these last years shows them the progress of an organization of peace, yet they despair at the moment when they ought to begin to hope. Insensible to the tremendous unpopularity which they are accumulating against themselves among the masses, they flatter themselves that they can cause it to be accepted, as a patriotic doctrine, that the more a modern State ruins itself in unproductive expenses, the stronger it is; they assert that the more a country neglects its natural resources, the more it will be respected; they pretend that the more it checks the movement of men and capital, with a view to a war which no one desires, the better it will resist the double assault of external competition and internal rebellion. They pay no attention to the new facts which illumine the world and whose full importance public opinion thoroughly comprehends. These new facts have modified international relations in the political system as profoundly as steam, * Translated by Mary J. Safford. electricity, aviation, have transformed them in the economic system. Twice within ten years a general Peace Conference has united representatives of all the Governments. It was destined to fail; yet it led twice to practical, tested agreements. The Hague Tribunal has been created; it has performed its functions to the satisfaction of all; it operates more and more frequently for the benefit of the great States as well as the small ones; it has enabled England and Russia, the United States, Mexico, Japan, to settle juridically and peacefully serious conflicts. This experience of a few years, already valuable through the catastrophes it has been able to prevent, is of still greater importance as a testimony of what it promises for the future. It is now demonstrated that the great military powers can avoid war, if they desire. The arbitration of Casablanca did not occasion a single protest from any quarter, while war would have left in its train only ruin, hatred, and fresh burdens. Each one of these beneficent proofs in favor of arbitration should have been regarded in every country, every school and family, as a stage passed, bringing mankind nearer to the final organization which it invokes with its most ardent desires. But no; interest in the object diminishes as it stands out more and more distinctly from the mists of the horizon. Governments witness the awakening of a new faith, a hope finally justified among the masses; and they confine themselves to developing the progress of arbitration; they refuse to go down to the root of the matter. Why are they waiting to be the last to arouse? For what impatience, what threats, what rebellions? They are waiting until the Franco-German reconciliation upon which everything else depends has become an accomplished fact; but at the same time they refuse to believe in the possibility of such a miracle: they confine themselves to shaking their heads and abstain from any other compromising gesture. They are absorbed in their daily preoccupations, neglecting the vital problem for whose solution the entire world, with France and Germany, is waiting to breathe freely again. Alsace-Lorraine, as usual, pays the cost of this two-fold impotence; she complains, and her protestations draw from one side sympathy, from the other harshness. The slightest incident |