Twenty years after the complete and utter defeat of autocratic and militaristic principles and states, the world is now undergoing the greatest onslaught in history by those same autocratic, militaristic forces. Twenty years after the greatest victory of democratic principles and of democratic nations, democracy is on the defensive all along the line. All the democratic nations of continental Europe have been vanquished and conquered. The two most powerful units of the world—the British Commonwealth of Nations and the United States of America—are forced to mobilize their entire resources in order to defend themselves and to escape defeat and conquest by those very same anti-democratic forces which were laid prostrate by them twenty years ago.
What has happened during those twenty years?
After their victory in 1918, the democratic, freedom-loving nations had full control of and absolute power over this planet. Those forces which were threatening the security and peace of the democracies were not stronger than the few criminals who are always threatening individual security and public order within an organized state.
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Everybody yearned for peace. Everybody wanted disarmament. Everybody wanted a wider freedom of international trade. Everybody wanted a better organization of international economic life in order to secure for each nation and each individual more wealth and greater safety than ever before. Technical developments seemed to place all those hopes within the grasp of reality. In spite of the fact that the forces who supported those aspirations were ten to one— maypbe fifty to one—against those who opposed them, from 1930 onwards, year by year, month by month, we were steadily marching towards greater armaments, sharper antagonisms, more poverty, diminution of trade, towards intolerance, persecutions, dictatorships, imperialism—towards the Second World War.
A young man, whose entire education was based on the hopes of the nineteen-twenties, and who followed closely step by step those events which led to the Second World War, can hardly understand this baffling development, unless he had been completely misled by the disintegrating propaganda of a movement of demagogic masses. Ponder as he will, there seems nothing for him to do but admit that he understands nothing in this world, and to think back to the words he learned at school—the words uttered by the Swedish Chancellor Oxenstierna, when he sent his son in 1648 as Minister Plenipotentiary to Westphalia: “You will see, my son, with what little wisdom this world is governed.” He must ask himself fearfully: Where is even this iota of wisdom with which the world is supposed to be governed ?
The simplest way to explain this rapid and almost catastrophic [ p. 5 ] decline of the democracies during the short period between 1920 and 1940 is to accuse certain statesmen who have committed the greatest blunders. We like to blame the inefficiency of the liberal regimes of Nitti and Facta for the advent of Mussolini, and the weaknesses of the Weimar Republic for the advent of Hitler. We used to blame Lodge, Borah, Reed and the other isolationist Senators for the torpedoing of the League of Nations, even before it was launched. We used to condemn Clemenceau, Poincaré and the other French nationalists for having prevented the strengthening of democracy in Germany. We hold Sir Austen Chamberlain and the Tories in England responsible for the failure of the Geneva Protocol. We believe MacDonald, Baldwin and Henderson are the men responsible for British disarmament and weakness. We think that Pilsudski and Beck are to be blamed for the failure of an Eastern Locarno. We have accused Sir Samuel Hoare and Pierre Laval for the betrayal of Ethiopia and the sabotaging of the League. We think that Neville Chamberlain, Daladier and Georges Bonnet are the men who committed the crime of Munich. We used to accuse Leon Blum and Pierre Cot of being responsible for the weaknesses of the French armed forces. And we used to accuse Charles Lindbergh, Senator Wheeler, Nye, Johnson and others for American isolationism and for having made it impossible for the United States to be adequately prepared to meet attack.
All these personal responsibilities are valid, but only to a certain degree. They cannot explain the iron logic of the events which have taken place in this strange period between the two world wars. They cannot offer explanations [ p. 6 ] because obviously none of these statesmen was able to control events or to lead his country. They were controlled and led by greater forces. Several examples prove that. When public opinion in England and France revolted against the policy of Hoare and Laval in the Ethiopian conflict, their strongest opponents, Anthony Eden and Yvon Delbos replaced them. Shortly after the Ethiopian incident, another conflict of the same forces arose—the Spanish “Civil War.” And in this conflict, carrying the most powerfully felt international repercussions, Eden and Delbos committed exactly the same errors for which they so vehemently denounced their predecessors, and handled this new problem in exactly the same way as Hoare and Laval would have handled it. Innumerable citations of this kind could be made.
It is indisputable that the human quality of the leaders of democracy between the two wars was not on a par with those of their predecessors of the nineteenth century. If any private enterprise were managed in the way that the great democratic nations have been managed during the past years, certainly the directors of that enterprise would be discharged.
It seems to be a law in the history of great nations or great families that after a certain time a generation arises which lacks those qualities which are indispensable for effective leadership and continued progress. This is usually the time when such families and such nations suffer decline. It is a tragic symptom which arises periodically and which can only be overcome by an infusion of fresh blood.
However weak the statesmen of the democratic nations [ p. 7 ] may have been, they have not been altogether the criminals and imbeciles that public imagination believes when judging them by all those blunders which are identified with their names. The long series of defeats, the gradual sinking from world domination to subjugation certainly can not be adequately explained by the lack of statesmanship of our leaders, no matter to what extent they have been responsible.
Another school of thought will make us believe that this reversal of the tide in human history was caused by the great dynamic forces represented by the Nazi, Fascist and other totalitarian movements all over the world. They say that Hitler and Mussolini are tyrants, megalomaniacs, militarists, ruthless demagogues, and that they and their gangs are responsible for the ills and miseries of the world.
However obvious and simple such an explanation may appear to be, it cannot stand close examination.
The democracies were overwhelmingly powerful when these movements were started a few years ago by a limited number of individuals. These movements could have been stopped and destroyed on innumerable occasions, with a minimum of effort, energy and force. No democracy was able or willing to do so, although these anti-democratic forces never made any attempt to conceal their character, their programs and their purpose.
To accuse the Nazis or the Fascists of sole responsibility for this war is like accusing the tuberculosis microbe of causing tuberculosis.
Of course, it does. It is its only and inevitable object.
For many years we were aware of what the virus of Fascism was doing in the blood stream of a nation, just as we [ p. 8 ] know what the microbe of tuberculosis does from the moment it begins to develop in the lung of a man. But if aman infected with tuberculosis refuses to fight it, flagrantly and willfully ignores the advice of his doctor and allows his entire organism to be ravished by the microbe, then it cannot be said that his death was caused by the microbe. His death was caused rather by his own lack of will and capacity to fight that microbe.
Years ago the Nazis and Fascists declared that they wanted to destroy the democratic way of life, the Christian religion, and every form of individual liberty. They condemned peace and pacifism and declared war to be the natural way of life.
They educated their youth on a strictly militaristic basis. They wanted to prepare for and wage wars of conquest, believing it to be a historical law that the strong nations should conquer and rule the weaker ones.
In view of the fact that this program was openly promulgated for years, that it was repeated in speeches and writings, that it was openly and rapidly put into operation, it is impossible to declare in the midst of this world struggle that the responsibility lies only with Hitler. He was a ridiculous, miserable, ineffectual nobody when he first proclaimed his program, but the great democracies permitted him to grow stronger and stronger until he became so powerful as to challenge the whole human race.
No, Hitler cannot be looked upon as solely responsible for this world catastrophe. He is following his vocation. He is the incarnation of evil that Providence brings forth from time to time in order to remind man that peace, liberty, happiness, [ p. 9 ] tolerance, fraternity, progress, man’s rights, nay, even the right to exist, are not natural endowments, but the fruits of centuries of tremendous struggle, surpassed only by the struggle necessary to maintain and keep this heritage.
Almost every day we listen to orators or we read articles and books by commentators and political writers, deploring the long series of failures committed by the democracies during the past years. These critics say: If only Sir John Simon had taken a stand against the Japanese in Manchuria . . . If only Britain and France had applied sanctions against Italy to stop her aggression in Ethiopia . . . If only the Popular Front Government in France had sufficiently supported the Republicans in Spain . . . If only this or that nation, if only this or that statesman had done this or that…
All this is obviously correct. It is certain that if the democratic powers had been willing to sacrifice 5,000 soldiers in Manchuria, 10,000 soldiers in order to save Ethiopia, 20,000 soldiers to prevent the Germans and Italians from establishing a puppet regime in Spain, if they had been prepared to risk 50,000 soldiers to prevent the occupation of Austria, it would not have been necessary two or three years later for the British Empire and the United States to mobilize their entire man power, from 18 to 65, and to spend a hundred billion dollars or more a year for armaments.
But in spite of these “if only’s . . .”, in spite of these many conditional arguments, it remains a fact that no democracy ever was in a position or willing to take the step that might have averted the catastrophe. Why?
In many cases, it was possible for the democratic powers [ p. 10 ] to act efficiently at the right moment, but none of them did. Why? i
In the reply to this question, in the proper diagnosis of the past twenty years lies the only hope of a better future. It is obvious that the real cause of the disaster and of the impossibility to stop it must lie deeper than merely in the failure of certain individuals or certain governments.
In our anger and helpless fury we call Hitler and his associates “criminals,” “outlaws,” “gangsters.” But have we the right to use such big words?
What is a “criminal”?
There is no other possible definition of a criminal than that he is a man who violates some existing law accepted by the community.
But where were the laws Hitler supposedly violated? Were we ever prepared to enact international legislation, so that its terms would be binding and its violation could have been called a crime? Such laws have never existed and the great democracies have refused to enact them when they had an opportunity to organize a new world. They refused to accept any international order other than the old one created by agreements and treaties between sovereign nations. Such agreements and treaties cannot be regarded as laws unless one of the parties is prepared to apply force if the other party violates them.
But has any one of the democracies been willing to punish Germany or Italy or Japan when they violated those primitive laws which are made by international treaties? Whenever such a treaty was unilaterally violated, the lawabiding democracies always accepted the fait accompli. And [ p. 11 ] from a purely moral point of view, it is difficult to say what is a greater crime—to violate a law or to tolerate such vioJation.
In every sphere of life—in private life, in family life, in business life—the only recognized correct way to conduct affairs is by a course of thought-out, well-planned action which goes beyond merely the possible advantages, benefits and comforts of the next five minutes following the action. Every private individual, every businessman, the head of every family has to conduct his affairs in such a way that any event that might happen tomorrow or the following day will not catch him unawares, unprepared and completely ata loss.
Only in public life is it required that statesmen and governments need not go beyond consideration of the immediate problems of the present. They are required to restrict their thoughts and activities to the most urgent and unavoidable questions of the day, whether or not such ad hoc solutions of immediate problems are advantageous or disadvantageous to the nation, seen not only from the point of view of the day of action, but in a perspective of a few years, or even just a few months.
In every other field of life we call such conduct of affairs careless and frivolous. In politics, we call it “realistic.”
In every field of life, the method of conducting affairs which looks beyond the events that might happen in later years, we call wise and far-sighted. In public affairs, we call it “unrealistic” and “Utopian.”
The democracies have been driven by their enemies and by their confused leaders to the acceptance of that sophism [ p. 12 ] which seeks to persuade us that a realistic policy is not a policy which creates realities, but a policy which at any given moment bows before the realities created by the others.
The total chaos in which the entire human race has been plunged today, is the result of the complete disruption of all the moral and spiritual values which history has developed. After many thousands of years of religious, moral, social and political progress we find ourselves once again in a world as strange, as insecure, as unexplored as Adam must have found it after his expulsion from the Garden of Eden.
There is no other way out of this confusion, except to start again at the very beginning. We must undertake a thorough examination of all those elementary principles on which our social and political life is built. There are some twenty of these elementary, basic notions, the meaning of which has been so completely confused that nobody knows any more what their exact import is, how they react, in what form they can be applied and how they must be handled. We must start where Confucius said all statesmanship must start: To give the words we are using their exact and unmistakable meaning.
If we analyze these elementary principles of a democratic order, we shall see that the interpretation given to them by our existing constitutions, laws, rules and customs are utterly inadequate, that in most cases they are in total contradiction to the very essence of these principles themselves, and that we let ideals which have always been the most powerful propelling force of human progress and advancement degenerate into meaningless words devoid of any substance.
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We shall see that the “democratic order” we want to defend is no more a democratic order at all—merely the first attempt towards it, undertaken at the end of the eighteenth century and based on conditions and considerations of the eighteenth century.
The complete lack of any reaction to the Atlantic Charter, the complete lack of enthusiasm with which it has been received in the democratic countries, prove that the peoples have an unconscious feeling of the unreality of this past order.
An examination of the real meaning of these basic principles of social and international life, will reveal that there is no democratic order to defend, but that there is a democratic world order zo create. |
The correct interpretation of these principles, the understanding of their reactions upon each other, give us the only proper diagnosis of the decadence of that order which was established in 1919, and which was supposed to be the basis of a world “safe for democracy.” Such a diagnosis of the causes of the present chaos in itself consists of 90 per cent of the therapeutic measures which are needed to organize a democratic world founded on the economic, social and political realities as they present themselves in the middle of the twentieth century.