[ p. 91 ]
THE Lonomne for freedom asa natural drive in the individual finds its parallel in the drive for independence in the lives of nations. Indeed, the impulse towards national independence is just as powerful a natural drive in history as the impulse for individual freedom. Just as the French Revolution was the greatest symbolic event in the liberation of the individual and in proclaiming the Rights of Man, the greatest symbolic event in the obtainment of national independence from foreign rule was the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence. These two great revolutions had the same root and were based on the same principles. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, and the Declaration of Independence were both based on the “Laws of Nature,” on certain inalienable rights, on equality, liberty, fraternity, and on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The drive for national independence has gained tremendous stride during the nineteenth century and reached its climax in the peace treaties of 1919, when—at least in Europe and America—each nation, even the smallest one, [ p. 92 ] became independent. It was the basic principle of the order created in 1919 that each nation, regardless of its size, had the right to organize its independent national life, as the United States of America, Great Britain and the French Republic organized their national lives, according to the principles of the eighteenth century. The Czechs, Lithuanians, the Poles and Rumanians became independent, and in 1920 more nations than in any other period in history achieved complete independence.
What became of this widely spread independence?
Twenty years later more nations than ever before were subjugated cither by direct military conquest or by other means of political domination. And this modern kind of subjugation has been more relentless than any other form of dependence before the great revolutions for freedom and independence.
Why was it impossible for so many nations to keep their independence longer than a mere few years?
The answer is a very simple one. The total independence of all the nations created in the international life as anarchic a situation as would be inevitable in any state in which there was total freedom of the individual, without any restrictions, without any laws, without compulsion.
Wilson, Col. House, Masaryk, Lord Cecil, Leon Bourgeois, and the other encyclopedists of the 1919 treaties, thought that each nation would be happy to be independent and that through collaboration of these independent states, based on mutual good-will, we could maintain peace, organize international life and develop human progress. They entirely disregarded a great number of forceful impulses in [ p. 93 ] human nature just as “natural” as the drive for freedom and independence, which, if not regulated, controlled and checked, bring more misery into the lives of “independent” nations than the worst kind of slavery.
They completely disregarded the fact that political independence of each national state is incompatible with present economic conditions. And so we witnessed in the short period between 1920 and 1940 that the world as it was made safe for democracy was incapable of preventing a reaction to the democratic ideas, to the ideas of self-determination, of independence and of equality, more violent and more volcanic than any other change in history in such a short time.
The independence of the nations was a taboo, and no independent government was prepared to make international commitments, fearing that any such commitment might jeopardize the independence of their country. There was no binding international law and there was no organization to compel the nations to obey such law. Consequently, the governments of the independent nations distrusted each other and intrigued against each other, just as the absolute monarchs did when they ruled over subjugated peoples.
Each independent nation was dominated by the deep, natural impulse which we call fear and which is the root of so many evil human actions. Through fear, mutual mistrust and jealousies which no appeal to reason has ever been able to eradicate, natural conflicts arose among nations just as they arose when they were not independent. In each case where such a conflict arose, the independent governments met to study the factors involved and to determine who was [ p. 94 ] responsible. There being no law and no generally accepted definition for such cases, they exchanged their own subjective views, each one, of course, trying to defend the interests of his own nation. Obviously, they never arrived at any practical conclusion; the solution of each one of those conflicts was put off, with the result that the number and the gravity of these conflicts grew in geometrical sequence. The same juridical persons, the “representatives” of the independent nations, were in international life the legislators, the judges and the executors. The idea was that a gathering of the representatives of such independent governments should fulfill all the three functions of a democratic international life. This primitive conception of international life based on national independence led from conflict to conflict, until in the case of Italian aggression in Ethiopia, world opinion was aroused to a point which made some sort of action unavoidable. 5 For the first time it was attempted to apply sanctions against a great power violating the independence of another nation. The procedure was based on such an improvised collaboration of nations. The result was a total failure. Nobody explained more clearly the reasons for this failure than the former French President, Millerand, in a speech in the French Senate on June 26, 1936. The Nationalist French statesman, urging the recognition of the Mussolini conquest, said:“. . . In reality, the cause of the failure of the sanctions is entirely different. In order to understand it, it is sufficient to remember that there is not one nation in the world which would consent to wage war, a modern war, except in the [ p. 95 ] case when its vital interests were involved, when its national independence is threatened, and its frontiers menaced.”
This reasoning is the natural expression of a conception of independence we have established in the past and to which most of our statesmen still adhere.
It was best explained by Senator Borah while he was Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the American Senate.
The Senator from Idaho said: “There are some things in this world more to be desired than peace, and one of them is the unembarrassed and unhampered and untrammeled political independence of this republic—the right and power to determine in every crisis, when that crisis comes, untrammeled by any previous commitments, the course which it is best for the people of this nation to pursue. If peace cannot be had without our surrendering that freedom of action, then I am not for peace.”
It is to be hoped that the catastrophe in which we find ourselves today as a result of such an interpretation of independence will cause some of our leaders to think about this problem in present-day terms, in relation to the presentday trends and realities‘of the world, and to see whether the expression of independence, as it is codified today in democratic constitutions, does help us to a better life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for the purpose of which it was proclaimed.
Today political independence has no sense without economic independence. And economic independence obviously cannot be obtained by any single nation. We used to believe that there are at least two or three big nations in the [ p. 96 ] world which can call themselves economically independent. But the present war has shown that not even the United States of America, not even Soviet Russia, is economically independent.
In the presence of these revealing facts, proving that no nation, not even the mightiest, can achieve economic independence, we must realize that at the present stage of history, political independence is no more an ideal which can help us in attaining our goal. As a practical institution, it is catastrophic.