A political pilgrim in Europe by Ethel Snowden - HTML preview

CONCLUSION

And the fruits of these wanderings abroad are—what?

For two hours I sat in the old-world garden of an English manor house pondering the answer to that question. Old-fashioned and variegated flowers in every colour of the rainbow massed themselves around the moss-covered rocks, climbed the walls, and peeped out of the crevices and corners, throwing out strong, sweet scents of the wallflower and the jasmine. The shadow on the sundial crept slowly round its withered face. Tall elm trees sheltered the noisy crows. A bold cuckoo competed with the lark for our attention and regard. A typical English scene, suggestive of peace and plenty; so entirely different from any scene in the torn and stricken lands of Europe.

The twofold character of my work abroad has been told in these pages. The physical relief of suffering goes on through the American Relief agencies, the Society of Friends and the Save the Children Fund. The utmost that can be done is but a drop in the bucket of Europe’s overwhelming needs. It is only the first dressing of wounds, which cannot be cured except by probing to the cause and clearing away the poison. This is not the business of philanthropy when the cause is political. An exaggerated sympathy, which is the very essence of charitable enterprise, could even hinder the work of political and economic recovery by an uninformed emphasis of the patient’s suffering and a forgetfulness of his guilt. A stable internationalism can be built only upon a universal recognition of partnership in the guilt which has laid the world so low. But in such internationalism lies the hope of the future.

I returned from my travels reinforced a thousand-fold in the conviction of the necessity of internationalism if the world is to be saved; with this in addition, that the present problem for mankind is not to persuade the world to internationalism. It is rather to teach it the right kind of internationalism. Internationalism of one sort or another is as inevitable as the rising of the sun. The League of Nations is the second embodiment of an idea which held great masses of men and women before even the first, the Workers’ International, was born. This idea can be safely trusted to persist and grow in spite of every menace, because it is in the direct line of political and economic evolution. It is the next inevitable step in the march of ordered progress.

In the realms of art, science, invention, commerce, industry, economics and finance nationalism is languishing towards its inevitable decay—if it is not already dead. Political internationalism is destined to crown the structure of the world society of the future as surely as the night follows the day.

But what kind of political internationalism is it to be? That is the question. Heaven forbid that it should be the anti-nationalism of Lenin, wrongly called internationalism, which will prevail over the earth. That would be to menace too alarmingly the truly valuable differences amongst men. The characteristic differences of nations should be, with very great reluctance and only for sufficient reason, sought to be obliterated. The variety in dress, manners, customs, speech of the various races and nations is the very spice of the world’s life which gives it all its flavours. Difficulties of language, so fruitful of the misunderstandings which create wars, should be overcome by the provision of larger educational opportunities rather than by the establishment of one universal tongue. Esperanto is a wise and simple device to facilitate discussion between men and nations; but the compulsory study of French, German and English in the elementary schools would be of greater value to mankind than a knowledge of the most useful of languages manufactured for a purpose, and not born of a living nation’s intellectual and spiritual growth. A knowledge of languages would add a richness and beauty to life which might well give place to the boasted utilitarianism of most British curricula.

But although Lenin’s anti-nationalism is to be avoided like the plague, the militarist internationalism of a capitalist order of society should be shunned like the pestilence. The new “Balance of Power” would then be the balance of classes, the possessors in every country leagued against the possessed in every land. Victory would go to that side which controlled the fighting material. All the disorders of the old system would afflict the new, with the added terror which increased efficiency would produce.

To save the new international organization, the League of Nations, from such an evolution, is enlightened Labour’s best reason for giving its support to the League. It is Labour’s business to see that the organization of the League is on thoroughly democratic lines; that it admits at no distant date every country within its fold, and that the broad matters of its discussions be not conducted in secrecy nor its broad lines of policy be adopted without the knowledge and consent of the peoples of the world themselves.

And for the Workers’ International, I know of no line of policy which they could adopt more advantageous to themselves than that of educating the public opinions of the various countries included therein to compel their respective Governments to disarm. The rationality of total disarmament has always been seriously questioned by those who have passed for wise. But total disarmament by all the nations is the only rational solution of the problems of peace and war. Such action may have to be gradual; it must certainly be taken in concert. But if the responsible statesmen of all lands would together lead the van and, scorning vested and professional interests, would declare for the ploughshare and the pruning-hook instead of the sword and the spear, the hosts of mankind would joyfully follow them in such a holy crusade.

It may be that men and women will have to wade through oceans of suffering before they recognize modern warfare for the organized filthiness it is. There was a certain personal dignity in physical strife when men met with bare hands, or with a stick or even a single sword, the human foe equally equipped. But the modern machine-gun, the tank, the poison gas, the fighting aeroplane—all the resources of science used against the innocent and guilty alike—women, old folks and babes—what single element of dignity or decency in such a conflict; honour, democracy, freedom, the pledged word setting the monstrous machine in motion, since men are too good in the mass to fight for anything less than these; and lurking in the shadow, anxious but safe, that insatiable dragon of greed, which for oil-wells and mining interests and timber concessions and goldfields will see millions of men welter in blood and millions of children and their mothers succumb to famine and disease.

Which brings me to my final word. That for the evils which afflict mankind there is no remedy save the elimination of selfishness, which is “the whole of the law and the prophets.” Selfishness in the individual, selfishness in the State. When it is universally recognized that every child born is entitled to the “development of all the perfection of which it is capable”; when the equal rights of nations, great and small, are admitted by all the States in Council; when the power of law and not the rule of force is the governing factor in the relations of men and nations, then begins the new era.

On such a foundation only can the true International Order be securely built.