The stakes of diplomacy

Front matter

I

BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE

SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND

Introduction

INTRODUCTION

An antarctic explorer once told me that while he was in the polar regions his dreams by night and his fancies by day were concerned almost exclusively with the dinner he would order at his club in London. His mind reached out lovingly for complicated meals, polished silverware, and fine linen, for large high-ceilinged rooms, thick soft carpets, and the shining shirt-fronts of perfectly ordered men. That for the time being had been his notion of paradise, and I dare say the vision was what all true visions are. They tell us whal we should like to have but haven't, what we shouh have liked to do but didn't, what we intend to d( but can't.

In all the diplomatic dir>patches which preceded the war, there is nothing more pathetic than Sir Edward Grey's despairing effort at the very last moment to picture a better European system. With great caution, while the armies were mobilizing, he suggested a European concert, " some more definite rapprochement between the Powers," a plan " hitherto too Utopian to form the subject of definite proposals." What was it that had made a plan " hitherto Utopian " suddenly commend itself to this diplomat? It was the immediate prospect of a war which every well-informed person has been expecting for a decade. But so long as the war was not an immediate menace, the diplomatic imagination regarded its thin vision of a concert as Utopian. It was only when the chancelleries were refusing to agree at all that the idea of agreement seemed a practical vision. It was as if the emotion which had formerly animated the intricate game of diplomacy, and had starved the vision of another and better game, was suddenly deflected from all its other preoccupations into the more single idea of European harmony.

But the fact is that the European concert was more Utopian when Sir Edward Grey embraced it than " hitherto " when he had rejected it. In the last days of July it was indeed a half-baked scheme. Why was it a half-baked scheme.^ What do we mean by " half-baked "? We mean, it seems to me, that the idea has never grown in the warmth of our interest. It is an idea, rather cold and a

INTRODUCTION 5

little stale, because it has lain neglected upon the top layers of the mind. A really mature idea is saturated with our experience ; it is an idea which we have lived with, our love and fear have wrought it. Around it have clustered great strains of association ; it has been weathered by time. But Sir Edward Grey's plan was the mere ghost of an idea, conjured up by despair.

The war has produced many such visions, which when analyzed turn out to be, like the antarctic explorer's dinner, a pathetic feeling that what we haven't got is what we most need. Of course, there was this much obvious truth in it : Europe at war most needed peace. But the feeling that the opposite was desirable went further than that. It dominated the thoughts of liberals and gave life to a number of plans for permanent peace.

I was in Europe when the war broke out, and I can recall vividly that two of the outstanding impressions of the last days of negotiation were the secrecy of the diplomats and the swiftness of events. It all seemed like a terrific plunge, let loose by a few men who consulted nobody. On top of that came the sense that Germany was the aggressor against small nations like Belgium and against the French Republic. In the heart of Europe lay democratic Switzerland at peace. Beyond the ocean men saw America outside the broil. Was it any wonder that liberals jumped to the conclusion that the enemy of peace was secret diplomacy, the refusal to arbitrate, and that the remedy for war was the preservation of small nations, the downfall of dynasties, and the spread of democracies? Those were the opposites of the forces which seemed to have precipitated Europe into war, and liberal emotion flowed to them. Europe was fighting; fighting is monstrous. Europe was armed ; let us work for disarmament. Europe was undemocratic; let us insist on democracy. Small nations were trampled; they must be preserved. One nation refused to arbitrate; arbitration should be made compulsory. The peace programmes most current in England and America to-day were the inevitable reaction to what the lovers of peace knew and felt in the early days of August. They were born of that pain which is at once their honor and their bias.

As the war has dragged on, other ideas have made themselves felt. There has been a vague but grudging recognition that trade and finance are

INTRODUCTION 7

involved in diplomacy, and there has appeared a mass of literature interested not so much in the machinery of peace as in dealing with the provocations to war. But the chief effect of strain has been the eruption of a great uncertainty within the minds of men, followed by a rushing to cover. I do not refer alone to the agitation for " preparedness." I refer to the renascence of very old loyalties — a kind of world-wide retreat to the fatherland. For it is not the German-Americans alone whose loyalty has become hyphenated. Everywhere men are reviving their oldest associations — turning back to their origins — ^searching for a pride in what they came from which obscures the hopes of their goal. For origins are a haven in distress. They are our mother's arms, and they are more friendly in time of danger than the open country of a future. " There,'* we say, " is our identity. Let us cling to that lest we be submerged. Adventure must wait for more prosperous times."

Like sheep in a shower we huddle about the leader. Whatever seems firm and established we turn to instinctively. A procession of reactionaries has returned from exile ; men whom we hoped never again to see in public life are with us once more, feeling more certain of themselves than they have felt for fifteen years. The old shibboleths are uttered without a blush, for all old things are congenial to us now. They promise rest in a world at war. And though the assurance they offer is disheartening, it is assurance, and panic is in the air.

A subtle analyst might follow the effects of this apprehensiveness into the intimacies of our souls. He might show, I imagine, that we are less flexible in our thinking, at once more dogmatic and more capricious. It is no longer surprising to find pacifists non-resistant in one breath and eager to annihilate Germany in the other. There has been such a loss of liberal ease that all of us take our ideas with an animal loyalty. For the time being we have identified our opinions with our safety; whoever attacks them attacks us. There is more intolerance abroad than we have been used to, and the humane capacity for playing with ideas and speculating freely has almost disappeared. We take thought seriously, perhaps the worst way there is of taking thought. For the life which ideas are intended to control is tumbled and varied

INTRODUCTION 9

and flowing, alive with curiosity, and exhaustingly subtle. Even in our surest moments, thought has always plodded along behind clumsily enough ; but now with the grimness of war to weigh us down and panic to make us uncertain, we are more heavy-footed than ever. We are hardly in the temper to see facts lucidly or to be inventive about our problem.

These difficulties are made more acute by the fact that the things we have to think about are so unreal to us. We are feeding on maps, talking of populations as if they were abstract lumps, and tuning our minds to a scale unheard of in history. To how many of us does the word Slovak convey the picture of fathers and mothers and children, of human beings with habits and personalities as intimate as our own? Even to highly cultivated people the word Slovak probably calls up the association of " light pink patches with diagonal shading '* somewhere in bewildering Austria- Hungary. How many people have ever heard of the Szekels of Transylvania? Yet there are over 800,000 of them, all entitled to a place in the sun and all capable of making trouble if it is denied ta them. When you consider what a mystery the

East Side of' New York is to the West Side, the business of arranging the world to the satisfaction of the people in it may be seen in something like its true proportions.

It is no wonder that we have taken refuge in abstractions like Nationality, Race, Culture. They are easier to think about than men. They introduce that simplicity into the mind which it longs for so ardently. Nor is it any wonder that we have embraced thin solutions of intricate questions, that Mr. Bryan banks on arbitration treaties, that a section of American socialists asks for a referendum on declarations of war, that others have decided they will never fight, or that many women are refusing to buy lead soldiers for their children. We hesitate in bewilderment between those who advise us to be too weak to fight and those who wish us to be too strong to fight.

The man who claimed that he was not bewildered would write himself down a fool. We are challenged, every one of us, to think our way out of the terrors amidst which we live. That challenge is an excuse for adding to the endless books inspired by the war. I have been told that this is

INTRODUCTION 11

a time for deeds, not words. There is no lack of deeds in the world. They happen, however, to be monstrous deeds.

W. L.

New York City.

September, 1915.

Chapter I

The day after the Lusitania was destroyed, we realized that one man had it in his power to send this country to war. The responsibility and the power, so tremendous that it might decide the world war, so far-reaching that it might alter our whole history, turned for a few dizzy days on the judgment of one man. Had Mr. Wilson wished war with Germany he could have had it. We were in his hands, and no amount of elections, or constitutional reservations about the right of Congress to declare war, can alter the fact that the real war-making power in the United States is the President.

Americans have never intended to give any one man such importance. They have always believed they possessed that democratic control of foreign affairs for which European liberals are agitating. The United States makes no secret treaties; the

treaties it does make have to be ratified by the people's representatives ; and Congress has to agree before war can be declared. Yet the real power is with the President, and all this constitutional machinery counts for practically nothing in a crisis. When Mr. Wilson decided to seize Vera Cruz, he had to go to Congress for permission. I am told on good authority that a large number of the Congressmen were against the expedition. But they " supported " the President ; " politics ceased at the water's edge " ; the people's representatives voted Mr. Wilson the power he asked.

Congress was not in session in May, 1915, when affairs with Germany were strained to the breaking point. There was some discussion as to whether Congress ought to be summoned, and I suppose it would have been difficult to find a person in the country anxious for peace who didn't also wish Congress to stay at home. It was a curious paradox for those of us who would like to believe that democratic institutions make for peace. Instead of shouting for the people's representatives to assemble and restrain the autocrat, we knew that the mere act of summoning Congress would be a threat of war. So certain were we that Congress would aggravate the situation that many of us debated whether the calling of Congress might not be the best way of threatening Germany. We never assumed that Congress would make things calmer, or that it would force the President to take a milder course. For as one genial cynic remarked: " It is easier to summon Congress than to adjourn it; it is easier to open the floodgates of heroic patriotism than to close them."

The picture of Congress upholding the President's hands when the situation required that the President should lower them a bit; the prospect of lavish rhetoric and lavish appropriation, of resolutions calling on the Secretary of State to explain this and furnish information about that, the interviews, proposals, and speeches which might be let loose, the heat which would be engendered, made those of us who hoped for peace prefer to trust the cool intentions of Mr. Wilson.

But it was a curious choice for democrats to make, a choice about which we can hardly feel very comfortable. What if Mr. Wilson had happened to believe that an occasional war was good for a country, or that the United States ought to seize a decent excuse to intervene in Europe ? It is useless to pretend that the people in electing the

President take care not to choose a man with such views. They don't inquire about a candidate's philosophy of war, or even about his notions of foreign policy. So far as I can recall, Mr. Wilson's campaign speeches made almost no reference whatever to international affairs, and even if they did, the views he expressed probably did not influence two hundred votes. Our Presidents are elected by various means; the deliberate choice even of domestic policies plays a small part ; the choice of foreign policies enters practically not at all.

To be sure there are certain traditional views on which the parties are supposed to agree and to divide. They are supposed to render equal homage to the Monroe Doctrine and the Open Door; the Republicans are supposed to be for a " strong " foreign policy with a tendency to " expansion " ; the Democrats are said to stand for a mild foreign policy with a passion for isolation. But as a matter of fact each administration makes its own interpretation, and fills catch phrases like the " Monroe Doctrine " with a meaning of its own. Thus the Democrats may deplore the " dollar diplomacy " of Mr. Knox and the Taft administration, but Mr. Wilson has proposed a treaty with Haiti which, whatever its merits, is built on the most approved model of modem economic imperialism.

Traditional American policy is so vague that the administration may subscribe to it and still do pretty much whatever it pleases. It is no real check on the power of the President. In reality it is the great bulwark of his power. A phrase like the " Monroe Doctrine " may mean everything or nothing in the actual affairs of Central and South America, but it means for the American people a cluster of loyalties which can be summoned to action. As to all phrases which are sanctioned by our habits, the reaction to " Monroe Doctrine " is almost automatic. It may cover a totally new course of action. In the last ninety years or so it has covered many courses of action. But it has covered them. Because the covering was famiHar, the action has been palatable. We have been ready to fight in defense of the Monroe Doctrine, leaving it for the President to decide what it means.

It doesn't follow that there is no such thing as American public opinion in regard to foreign affairs, or the making of war and peace. It does follow that we have certain conventional ways of reacting, certain habitual associations aliout phrases, and a number of set loyalties which are easily aroused. It would be sheer hypocrisy to pretend to more than that, to suppose that any large section of the American people is infojmed, or interested, or thoughtful about international relations. Our opinion about foreign affairs is hardened into a number of molds, named the Monroe Doctrine, the Open Door, No Entangling Alliances, and I suppose one should add Peace-ifpossible. Into these molds patriotism is ready to flow; into these molds patriotism can be made to flow. The President has enormous power of directing that flow. His decision as to what shall be published and what concealed is one of the supreme attributes of his office. He has no legal power of censoring the news. But often he alone knows what the news is, he can publish it when and how it seems best to him. The rest of us have to make up our minds as well as we can on the information which he furnishes us.

We had trouble with Japan over Califomian land laws. The correspondence was published after the negotiations. We had some discussion with Japan and China over the situation created by the fall of Tsing-tao, As I write, the nature of that discussion has not been revealed. We have been bickering for two j'ears on the edge of Mexican intervention, but the real facts about conditions in Mexico have been carefully censored and concealed. Mr. Wilson has not wished to intervene, and so he has not published the alarming reports which must have come to him from day to day. But suppose he had decided to intervene. What would have been easier than to arouse feeling in the United States by publishing the news?

Moreover, the real facts of any diplomatic situation are not contained in the official notes. Almost always there is a personal conference between the ambassador and the Secretary of State ; something is done to give a human tone to the guarded language of the document. Diplomats do not mumble and stutter as much as their written dispatches make them seem to. They add something in conversation intended to lead or mislead. But they do not rely on the inexpressive language they use when they write to each other. I do not know what Mr. Bryan said to the Austrian Ambassador after the first note to Germany about the LtLsitonia. But he seems to have said something which

Ambassador Dumba told the Gennan Foreign Office so as to help the German diplomats understand what the Wilson administration really intended to do. This personal side of diplomacy cannot be published. It may consist merely of an inflection in the voice or a gesture of the hand, which nevertheless gives the real meaning of a document.

Then, too, every document which is to be published is written with an eye to its publication. The diplomat has to consider not only what he means, but what different people will think he means, and how they will feel about what they think he means. All this sounds very Machiavellian and not at all democratic, but there is no use pretending that it doesn't occur. When Mr. Wilson said that he was waiting for the American people to speak, he undoubtedly meant what he said. He knew that the first note to Germany must express American feeling about the Lusitania, His first note was a kind of national work of art which relieved our feelings immensely. By the time the second note had to be written we were cooler and we had counted the cost of war. The second note certainly retracted much of the first, but it expressed our feeling at the time it was written, and public opinion was satisfied. Mr. Wilson may not have managed the situation consciously. It may be that he himself went through the same change of feeling that the rest of us did. But had he set out to control opinion, he could not have done it more skillfully. He controlled it, not by dominating it, but by absorbing it.

It is possible to say that, after all, American public opinion has governed in the crisis with Germany. I should not deny that. But the point I am making is that it was an accident that Mr. Wilson felt with a majority rather than a minority of the American people. Had he belonged to that powerful group in this country who would like to fight on the side of the Allies, he could have used the Lusitania incident to make war inevitable. Nothing would have been easier than to dramatize the issue, to close the door of negotiation, to inflame the press by publishing the whispered rumors about many of the undoubted provocations which German diplomacy has offered us. The raw material of war existed, and the power to work upon it was in the hands of the President.

It is true that we have had no President recently who used his power to make war. Those wars which the United States has fought have been forced upon an unwilling President. Mr. Mc- Kinley not only did not foment, he actually opposed the Spanish-American War, and Mr. Roosevelt, for all his reputation, kept an unbroken peace for the whole term of his office. How, then, does it matter that the Executive has this supreme power, if in actual fact he has never used it? Isn't the question a rather unreal one?

I think not. The question seems to me important not only because it is part of our preparation for future emergencies, but because it reveals with a good deal of suggestion the problem of a democracy and its relation to war. If we can understand why in our republic such great power has gravitated to one man, why in spite of all our pretensions to democracy we have happened to give over the greatest question of all to the decision of one man, if we can explain the curious fact that those of us who believe in democracy preferred to trust Mr. Wilson in the Liisitania crisis, we shall, I believe, have learned something of considerable value.

We have just passed through — ^indeed at the moment it is still optimistic to say that we have passed through — one of the gravest episodes of our history. In a way it illuminated as nothing else would have done the question of how democracies face the issue of war. To our surprise and humiliation some of us discovered that our desire for peace and our faith in democratic institutions conflicted. We had to choose between them, and if we have won peace, it is by an abandonment of the pretense that the people could control their foreign relations in any positive way. We trusted a President who was elected before the submarine war was dreamed of, and as it happened he turned out to be a man who wanted peace. But it was iBUch a hair-raising escape, so replete with accident, that we are compelled, in self-respect, to search out the meaning of the discovery that on the issue of our national existence we are not a self-governing people.

Chapter II

The reason why we trust one man, rather than many, is because one man can negotiate and many men can't. Two masses of people have no way of dealing directly with each other. They have to deal through representatives. It is a pure fiction to speak of negotiations between the United States and Germany. For when you look around to find the " United States " you discover a hundred million people spread over vast territory, with certain common habits, ideas, and loyalties, but nowhere do you find anything called the " United States " which can strike a bargain with " Germany.'' The American people cannot all seize the same pen and indite a note to sixty-five million people living within the German Empire. They cannot say : We ask for this, but if you will grant that, we'll do so-and-so, and then we'll both be satisfied. Each man may know what he thinks

(a tremendous assumption), but what "we the

American people " think is one of the most difficult matters in the world to find out.

We all try to find it out. The papers print editorial comment from different parts of the country, they interview leaders of opinion, publish letters from correspondents, take straw ballots, and ask questions in the smoking-room of the club, on the street car, and at the quick-lunch counter. They may throw some light on the general reaction to a particular event. But more accurate than this it is hardly possible to be. The " will " and " mind " and " voice '* of a great people are not the same thing as the will and mind and voice of a single man. When an individual thinks out a course of action, he goes through a delicate mental operation, a good part of which is unconscious. But a whole people can no more think in unison than it can make love in unison. The individual thinks, and you may, if you are fond of abstractions, say that the common thougKts, or the dominating thoughts of a mass of individuals, are their will and mind.

But in saying it you are opening the door to great self-deception. The moment you assume that there is a collective soul, a collective heart.

and a collective mind, you are falling into that old error of statecraft which obsesses men like Bemhardi. It is the error of treating a nation as an individual, rather than as a group of people. I call it an error because as a matter of observation that which we call the thought of a nation is very different from the thought of a person. The nation has no eyes, ears, or mouth. Its " will " is compounded of many wills, and when it speaks it speaks through a person. That person may have taken into account what other persons think and feel, but the words he utters are at the utmost somebody's notion of what most people would like to have said.

It is often stated that the pubhc is " fickle " ; that its interest fades quickly, or is easily diverted. This is natural enough, for a great people is very diverse; it has innumerable interests which compete for the attention, and it cannot give itself as devotedly to one object as the individual may. But from the point of view of diplomatic negotiation, it is far truer to say that a mass of people is really much too inflexible for successful dealing. One diplomat can find out that he was wrong, and change his mind; a whole people unlearns very slowly. One diplomat may see what is in the other diplomat's mind, and tune his utterance accordingly; a whole people cannot see quickly into another people's mind, and its utterance is inevitably crude. The very qualities which are needed for negotiation — quickness of mind, direct contact, adaptiveness, invention, the right proportion of give and take — are the very qualities which masses of people do not possess. This isn't entirely due to the ignorance of masses ; it is a question of inertia. A large body of highly trained scientists by the sheer fact of its size would show much the same heaviness of movement. This inertia, which means a tendency to stay where you are put, or to keep moving when you start, is natural to all large bodies. It is as much a problem for the traffic policeman as for the statesman.

The only large groups of people which have real mobility are highly trained troops. They come as near to the ideal of one heart, one mind, and one movement, as masses of people ever do. They achieve it by automatic obedience, by as complete an annihilation of the individual as discipline can produce. But even years of training and subordination will not give to an army anything like the resourcefulness of a clever group of free-movir bandits.

An army, however, is the outside limit of un f ormity for masses. It has something of a commc mind and will, because it has sacrificed almoi completely individual mind and will. There a: few freethinkers in well-drilled armies, and the are likely to be shot. But a civil population, eve with the most vigorous school system and prei censorship, is a straggling and varied collectic of people. And in our democracy, where the f roi tier tradition is not yet dead, there is no possibilil of anything like drilled and concerted action.

Even if there were, it would not enable a who people to negotiate. We might all think alii when we thought, but it is a physical impossibilii that we should all know the same facts at the san moment. The best we can do is to express gei eral sentiments, allow a leader or a President 1 translate them into action, and then see wheth( most of us like what he has done for us. We ai a little like the customer who can say yes or no 1 what is offered by the salesman, but who cannot d scribe exactly what he wants.

The whole difficulty can be visualized by imagh

THE USES OF A KING SI

ing the situation between two nations which had no diplomats and no government. One nation tries to tell the other that it is outraged by the sinking of the Lusitania. The American newspapers print editorials which are telegraphed to the German newspapers and reprinted. The German writers then proceed to write their thoughts. One of them — perhaps Count von Reventlow — says proudly: " Damn the Americans." Another who has just read the Evening Telegram says : " My God, what liars those Americans are." Another reads a defense of the sinking in the Fatherland and says: " They are a reasonable people, those Americans. Gott strafe England." Another editor discovers that most Americans are angry, and writes a long, reasonable editorial asking : " What does America want.?" All this is cabled back to us, slightly mangled in translation. Our editors proceed to answer. Some tell von Reventlow what they think of him; others tell the New York Evening Telegram what they think of it. Some say the Germans are in a compromising frame of mind ; others say we have been insulted.