A better world

Foreword

As these words are written, it is yet doubtful whether the United States is to enter the League of Nations or not. The decision is not important to the argument of the following pages.

The world becomes neither better nor worse by the mere setting up of any political institution. Surely the time is here when mankind is weary of legalistic debate and quibbling phrases. A better world does not hang on a word or phrase of law but on a better public opinion.

Back of all this tiresome disputation is the blunt question, sp often overlooked in the debate, as to the present moral and spiritual resources of mankind for peaceful, cooperative living. This is the question which we cannot dodge or hide from, and even though the League of Nations were functioning in full panoplied power, the quality of the public opinion supporting it would be the absolutely fundamental question to which we ought to address ourselves.

The so-called Christian nations are approaching moral and spiritual bankruptcy as is clearly revealed by the apathy of public opinion on the great moral issues which underlie the Treaty and the League. While the Christian people of the vi FOEEWORD

world do not think straight and feel straight on moral questions, there is small chance that any political institution will function righteously.

The moral foundations of the world have not been shaken because the Treaty and the League are not received with more joyous acclaim. On the contrary, the actions of the Peace Conference were what they were because the moral foundations of the world have not yet been established.

Nowhere has the doctrine of laissez faire been so thoroughly discredited as in the matter of religion. Religious faith is as much subject to conscious direction, change and improvement as any intellectual, political or industrial condition. This book, therefore, argues boldly and without evasion that the day is already here when the Christian peoples of the earth must, in self-defense if for no nobler motive, definitely set before themselves the task of bringing all mankind, themselves included, to the acceptance and practice of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I The Unfinished Task 13

II The League and a Changing World . . 39

Chapter I The Unfinished Task I

THE SPIKITUAIj PICTUKESQUENESS OF THE PEACE CON- FERENCE

*^A LIVING thing is born in this document/' said President Wilson in quiet, level tones, in the few remarks with which he concluded the reading of the first draft of the covenant of the League of Nations.

"Here, sitting around these tables, are delegates of fourteen States,'' he said, "and I have calculated that we represent more than twelve hundred millions of people. When you think of the variety of circumstances among these fourteen nationalities there is great significance in the fact that we have reached a unanimous result."

' ' Armed force is in the background in this constitution," continued President Wilson. "If the moral force of the world will not suffice, physical force shall, but only as a last resource."

An American correspondent, in one of those dull days of the early part of the Peace Conference when news was scanty, sat down and dashed off a dispatch which was published under the caption: ^*Why is the Peace Conference not Impressive?" It was a most amazing question. True, the Peace Conference did not contain much gold lace, not much pomp and circumstance, but man alive! the Peace Conference was the most spectacular, the most spiritually spectacular, conference which was ever staged in the history of the world.

''The arrangement of the tables,'' wrote the correspondent, ''suggests a luncheon for some sixty or seventy business men, except that in place of the linen and dishes and silverware the tables are covered with green cloth and there are writing pads and racks for stationery. There is a head table from which two long side tables project the length of the room, leaving a well in the center. Every minute it seems as if the waiters ought to come trooping in with the oysters."

But think who were seated at those tables, delegates from Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, British Empire including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India, China, Cuba, Czecho-slovakia, Equador, France, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, Hedjaz, Honduras, Italy, Japan, Liberia, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Eumania, Serbia, Siam, and Uruguay, as well as the United States.

Or, to view it less from a national and more Tom a racial point of view, where before in the 'listory of the world did you ever see the legally accredited representatives of the government of ;he black man, the brown man, the yellow man and he white man all sitting down in conference toi^ether with their feet under the same table ? The ?eace Conference was spiritually the most picturesque assembly which was ever staged. It was vorth all that it cost just to put it up before the (yes of the world.

The Peace Conference, and the proposed ^eague of Nations, was more than a conference: t was a symbol, it is a symbol, of the hopes and ispirations of the world.

We may make a legitimate distinction between he object which we are viewing, the Conference, ind the symbolism which attaches to it. Objects s symbols are chiefly to be judged by what they uggest to the imagination. In themselves they aay be even crude and ugly, as a tawdry and batered crucifix, and yet they may speak to the soul -nd stir the heart to purposes sublime and ex- [uisitely beautiful. Thus may be judged the Peace inference. To those who grubbed around in the auck and dirt of a Paris winter, encountering day ly day all the unlovely and despicable traits that Luman flesh is heir to, the Conference was often [isillusioning, disappointing, heart-breaking; and ^et the symbolism remains. All that the Peace Conference promised to be, and hoped to be, but failed to be, the world may yet become — yes, must become, if civilization is not to destroy itself.

A living thing was born, a visible symbol of a democracy which shall be not merely nation wide and nation deep, but international, yes, and even' inter-racial. Inadequate and disappointing as it was, the Peace Conference approached more nearly than the world has yet seen to being the visible political sign of the Kingdom of God. That it did not come nearer only shows ns how far the world is still removed from that ideal of which the ancient prophets dreamed and of which the Master spoke.

We shall never have a better Peace Conference, or a better League of Nations, until we have a better world.

DEFICIENCY OF IDEALISM

It is easy to criticize the Peace Conference, the Treaty of Peace and the League of Nations. It is particularly easy to criticize on the basis of wrong presuppositions.

*^I must say," said President Wilson in his Metropolitan Opera House speech, in March, just before returning to Paris, 'Hhat I have been puzzled by some of the criticisms — not by the criticisms themselves : I can understand them perfectly, even when there was no foundation for them — but by the fact of the criticism. I cannot imagine how these gentlemen can live and not live in the atmosphere of the world. I particularly can not imagine how they can be Americans and set up a doctrine of careful selfishness, thought out to the last detail. I have heard no counsel of generosity in their criticism: I have heard no constructive suggestion. I have heard nothing except, ^^Will it not be dangerous to us to help the world r'

But it is easy, especially easy without the facts which reveal the choices that were presented in Paris, to criticize on the constructive side, to measure the work of the Paris conference by a moral ideal of absolute justice, and to find both Treaty and League very deficient. Such criticism should not be discouraged. It would indeed be deplorable if the world were now to settle down and assume that the Treaty of Peace has taken the place of the Bible, and the League of Nations is a school of the prophets.

The embarrassments which faced the Peace Conference were of three kinds. It was of the utmost importance, first of all, to lay down as a base-line a moral ideal according to which the new world should be built. Secondly, it was necessary to gain the assent of the nations to those principles. Thirdly, the military, geographical, political and economic terms of the treaty must be fixed.

*^What we seek is the reign of law based upoK the consent of the governed, and sustained by the organized opinion of mankind,'' said President

Wilson. This, in its simplest form, was tlie base-line. It was, so far as the ^^Big Powers" were concerned, exclusively an American contribution, for no other one of them came to Paris either willing or free to accept it. The opinion of mankind was not organized and it had meager representation at the Peace Table. The ideal was not accepted in its integrity. In the resulting treaty it is therefore difficult to recognize any underlying <;onsistent, moral principle.

It is barely possible that more of the principle of ^* consent of the governed," the moral ideal of democracy, might have been imposed upon the Peace Conference, and through it upon the world, if sufficient force had been applied. But the application of that force, in itself, would have been an even greater transgression of morality than any of the compromises which were adopted. A moral ideal is violated and vitiated when it is imposed upon those unwilling to accept it.

Democracy does not begin at the top and work down. It works up from the bottom or it does not work at all.

The unfinished task of the peace is the transcending moral task of organizing the opinion of mankind in support of a world social order which rests on the consent of the governed. This is essentially a religious task, the Christianizing of the world order.

^^Thus it comes back," writes Herbert Croly of the New Republic in an article on The Obstacle to

Peace (April 26, 1919), **to the amount of idealism wMch the democratic peoples bring to the new task. . . . The richest source of the needed ideology is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The westem democracies have ahead of them a perfectly plain although an extremely difficult task. They have to stop dogmatizing about Christianity and to stop practicing it merely as a vehicle of personal salvation. They have to begin the immediate application of it to the anarchy produced in their own moral sanctuary by the existing distribution of industrial and political power.

**In its social aspect Christianity consists, first, in the repentant recognition by Christians of the sin of their past bondage to selfish preoccupations, and secondly, in their redemption not by enforcing penalties for breaking the law but by active faith in the inexhaustible possibility of human deliverance and regeneration. The practice of such a belief in human nature will create the Great Society which can heal the wounds and repair the losses of the war. After their prolonged recent indulgence in the morality of taking a life for a life, the salvation of the western peoples can only come from a great outburst of humanism. They can no longer meet their needs with the rule of live and let live upon which liberal capitalism of the Victorian era prided itself. They must reach towards the peremptory gospel of human brotherhood which demands here and now that we live in order to enhance life.'' The Peace Conference was embarrassed by a deficiency of that sort of idealism.

Ill

The war was the most colossal vindication of Christian ethics which the world has ever seen. It demonstrated again that we cannot violate the moral law without suffering the penalties. We cannot be even a silent and inactive member of a group which violates the law and expect that when the punishment falls upon the group we can be spared. The largest group to which, we belong is mankind, and no one escapes individual responsibility even for the sins of that largest group. Everyone is called on to bear his part of the penalty. Thus, if in no other way, are we compelled to recognize our widest social responsibilities. If the war has not taught us to stand in awe and reverence before the great truth that we must live in order to enhance life, then are we miserable indeed. Ours is the unpardonable sin of being unwilling to learn. No military measures in the future, as in the past, are adequate to defend us from the penalties which are | visited upon those who ignore their social responsibility.

Even the most loyal defenders of the Peace Conference would not attempt to argue that every nation represented there was content to take the lowest seat until it was urged to come up higher, nor did any nation appear in Paris as esteeming others better than itself. The idea of a nation at the service of the world, a servant in the human brotherhood, eager to confer favors, regardless of receiving them, was jeered at.

And yet, it is very doubtful whether the war could have been won without that great appeal to the Christian ideal which was voiced so often by President Wilson. We know perfectly well that the American people would have repudiated the cause of the Allies even as they judged the cause of the Central Powers if, instead of appealing to the American people l;o save democracy. President Wilson had asked us to send ^ye million men to Europe to add one acre of territory to any imperial domain in Europe, Africa, or Asia. It is even questionable whether Italy, France and England could have kept their soldiers in the trenches through the year of 1917 if the governments had published their secret treaties or made an honest statement of their war aims with reference to Eussia, China, Africa, Asia Minor, and certain parts of Eastern Europe.

The world is now faced with the gravest of moral crises. The peoples of the world were deeply stirred to moral earnestness and to action. The Peace Conference, a conference of governments, repudiated the application of the principles to which the peoples of the world had given their assent. On the one hand governments themselves stand convicted before their own peopies, and on the other hand stand revealed as disqualified for moral leadership before that two thirds of the world, eight or nine hundred millions of people, whose rights to consent in their own government were all but ignored.

The crisis is the more grave because of the fact that the appeals of President Wilson will not soon be forgotten by the peoples who accepted them and if history teaches us anything it is that the will of the people cannot be thwarted eternally, i If the Treaty of Peace is the best and the last word which existing governments have to offer on the consent of the governed, racial equality, the color question and the rights of weak nations and races, then the question of government itself is up for discussion and even the wildest anarchist may always be sure of a most attentive audience. The general *' Social Revolution'' may be postponed a year or even five years in Europe and the race war may not come for fifty years or even for a century but Christian faith and Christian culture are doomed.

Fortunately the last word on moral questions is not delivered by governments or by diplomatic representatives. It comes from the people, and the people of the world have not repudiated the moral ideal of Christian liberty or the kindred ideal of Christian democracy. It is safe to say that these ideals never claimed so many adherents as they do today. The unfinished task of the war is to organize and extend the number of believers until their will becomes the law.

And what is this task but that of Christian discipleship, the application of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the extension of it, and then the application and extension of it again, until it includes under its righteous and peaceful sway the entire world?

The slogans under which the war was fought and won, ^ ' The defense of weak nations, " ^ ^ respect for treaties,'' ^'Government by consent of the governed,'' ''autocracy must go," and "make the world safe for democracy" aroused many hopes in the hearts of mankind which the Treaty of Peace did not fulfil. They were legitimate hopes, too, and these unfulfilled yet legitimate hopes of mankind bound the unfinished task which is upon us. The greatest question before the world is not how much Germany will pay, but rather how much these nations and races and social classes which were so little represented at Paris will have to pay. And for what they do have to pay, these backward, ignorant, unrepresented, oppressed peoples, the "under dogs" of the world, will they get value received?

IV

liberty's frightful, mien

Angel Eye-lash made a speech in Barcelona one night in December just as the delegates were hurrying across the world to form the Peace Conf erenee. Angel Eye-lash, or to leave the name untranslated Angel Pestana, is not less picturesque than his name would indicate. He is a Spanish anarchist. Addressing a group of kindred spirits in one of the Liberal Clubs with which Spain is generously supplied, he demanded, working up to an impassioned climax: ^^Why are our children not permitted to sit down at the feast of the good things of life!" Everyone waited, breathlessly wondering how he would define the ' 'good things" of life. Would they be diamonds, wine and automobiles? No. He continued: ''We want for our children the schools, the art and the music which now only the rich people enjoy. ' '

A woman in the Casa del Pueblo (Peoples' House: the Madrid Socialist Headquarters) was asked what the women of Madrid desired most. She replied: "Education for the girls and daynurseries where we may leave our babies when we go out to work." Not a very revolutionary request it would seem, but a few days later, when the bread-shop riots broke out in Madrid, she was not only one of the first to reach the center of the disorder but later proudly boasted that although most of the looting was very conservative the soldiers had to call out the fire department to stop the fires that she set.

A few weeks later I was interviewing a group of radical leaders in Barcelona, seeking to discover whether there is any likelihood that the numerous liberal parties, now largely local and quite separated in their leadership and aims, would unite on any single moderate program of reform such as the establishment of a republic. They were only mildly interested. ^^Of course,'' they said, ^^we would favor a republic, although we would not expect much from it. We would husband our energies, try to get as much out of the change as we could ; but we are really waiting for the Social Eevolution to begin."

^^And when do you expect the Social Eevolution T' I asked.

*^ Within three or four years. It will probably start in either Italy or France. Then we shall join it. It would be useless for Spain to start the Social Revolution now, for the forces of the League of Nations would be immediately mobilized against us and we would be crushed."

Sehor Maura, recently Premier, the chairman of the Spanish Commission appointed by the government to study the idea of the League of Nations, included in his official report a reconnnendation that Spain increase the size of her army. This fact was offered to me by one of the very moderate leaders of Spain as an evidence that ^Hhe ruling classes of Spain are still living in the Middle Ages. ' ' Then he added : * ^ No one knows when the change will come, but come it will. The merchants and the laboring classes have not failed to note what is passing in the world north of the Pyrenees. ' '

In every country where misgovemment is enthroned and where the masses of the people are denied the right of self-expression and seK-determination you will find similar groups of people, the intensity of whose convictions vary directly with the degree of their poverty, the unequal distribution of wealth and the rigor of military control. !

It is interesting to see that this demand for self-determination has already invaded Japan, a country which until very recently has been closed to such ideas. * * It is inevitable that Japan should be a:ffected by the world-wide tide of liberalism, but I hope that a critical situation can be averted by granting the people universal suffrage — ^for the men, that is — and improving the condition of the laboring classes." Thus speaks Yukio Ozaki, formerly Japanese Minister of Justice and also former mayor of Tokio, as quoted by the New York Evening Post, April 18, 1919. The distinguished speaker is also reported as being disappointed over the fact that the Japanese Diet, which recently reduced the property and tax qualifications so that the number of voters is about doubled, did not increase the extent of suffrage very much more. He reported that undercurrents of Socialism and labor agitation are appearing in Japan.

It was perhaps such facts as one can gather in Spain, or Italy, or Japan, or even in France, that President Wilson had in mind when he spoke of '* economic serfdom" and when he wondered where some of the leaders of American public opinion have been living that they do not understand what the masses are thinking and what they are demanding for the new world which has been promised.

The League of Nations, in creating machinery to prevent the outbreak of war between states, creates machinery which could be used also, so far as armies can be controlled, to prevent the outbreak of this new war against economic serfdom.

This is one of the grave questions arising out of the deliberations and action of the Peace Conference. The world longs for peace ; those of us who are not hungry, whose children are not deprived of the **good things of life," who share the privileges which the rich enjoy, incline to feel that peace is a supreme consideration. But if this general war-weariness, this yearning for peace, are the very trenches behind which feudalism seeks to protect itself, if the maintenance of peace means also the sustaining of an unrighteous social order in Europe for Bourbons who ^^ never learn,'' how then shall we vote to utilize the League of Nations, or what measures shall we consent to its employing^

The war against the Central Powers was sustained year after year, and was won after the most persistent appeals to democracy and explicit promises repeated over and over again that democracy must win. Now that the war has been won the common people have discovered that autocracy was not confined to Germany, even as the governments have discovered that Bolshevism cannot be confined to Russia.

As a direct result of the appeal which was made to democracy new hopes and aspirations were born in every country in the world. But Liberty, as she comes nearer, proves to wear a terrifying mien. We draw back in alarm. We have granted the premises : we hardly dare draw the conclusion. We tremble before the fact that the world is not yet prepared for the liberty which is promised. This is the first disillusionment and the first challenge.

V

THE EIGHTS OF WEAK NATIONS

But the democratic aspirations stimulated by the war are not confined to the internal economic and political concerns of individual states of either Europe or Asia. There has been an unparalleled resurrection of the spirit of nationality and a demand for the recognition of what may be called the democracy of nationalities. This demand, like the voice of the depressed masses of Europe, comes from the bottom. The little nationalities, the weak and forgotten ones, demand democratic liberties in the world by the side of the master nations.

*^Ten new States have sprung into existence," reported Lloyd George, toward the end of the Peace Conference. ^'Some of them are independent, some of them are dependent, some of them may be protectorates; and, at any rate, although we may not define their boundaries, we must give indications of them. Boundaries of fourteen countries will have to be recast/' But this enumeration by no means gives adequate indication of the extent of the problem, such a large part of which was not made the concern of the Peace Conference at all.

The Koreans, having waited a dozen years for a favorable opportunity, have now appealed their case to the court of the world. *^For ten years we have been oppressed by a militaristic and imperialistic Government. With no more right than Germany when she crushed Belgium under her heel and brought down upon herself the condemnation of Christendom, the Japanese Government has not only robbed us of our national liberty, but has deprived us of those rights which were the heritage of every human being. It has deprived us of justice, of freedom of thought, of our language, of the right to educate our children according to our ideals, imposing upon us a system of education destructive not only of our national ideals, but imperilling the very foundations of the Christian religion." Thus runs the appeal.

One of the most notable features of the Korean outbreak has been the outspoken Japanese disapproval, voiced not only in America but in Japan, of the prevailing policy in Chosen. Yukio Ozaki stated in the interview quoted above that ^*the cause of the revolution, if it may be so called, is another instance of the evils of military control in Japanese affairs. The Governor-Generals of Korea, as well as of Formosa, always have been military men. Men from civil life have been given little opportunity in colonial control and the natives have resented it. It is time, too, that the Koreans be given a stronger voice in their Government." The immediate initiation of reforms in Korea which have followed the exposure of the situation is still further proof of vitality of the new democratic movement in Asia. In Japan, I have heard distinguished citizens argue earnestly that Japan ought to relinquish entirely the control of Korea even as the United States has promised to relinquish control in the Philippines, although the speakers dropped their voices and spoke hardly above a whisper when they expressed such convictions. But that was several years ago. '* What right have the Japanese to look down upon the Koreans r^ they asked, contemptuously.

Within two months after the first draft of the Covenant of the League of Nations was published the Nationalists of Egypt were throwing vitriol, and the same day we read of Indian riots in Amritsar being quelled from the sky by aeroplanes. It is crude, criminal stupidity to think that such movements can be dismissed from attention under the general term Bolshevism, and it is equally crude to drive them underground by bringing out the machine-guns.

Yet, we again find ourselves facing the fact that the granting of all the unrestricted liberties and freedoms which may logically be deduced from a doctrine of national self-determination would not enthrone liberty and would extend a frightful chaos. Koreans must admit that the alleged misgovernment of Korea by Japan represents an immeasurable improvement over the misgovernment which Korea administered to herself before the Japanese annexation. The demand of the radicals of India for absolute self-government, even within the Empire, will not stand examination as a measure likely to increase either justice or happiness among the vast and ununified millions of India.

The world is ill prepared for uncompromising democracy. It would be hardly more successful in many places than in a kindergarten.

VI

Another sore spot in the Peace Conference was the color question.

The Pan- African Congress, the first, I suppose, in the history of the world, held a three-day session in Paris during the second month of the peace deliberations. Its presiding officer was M. Diagne, Senegalese representative in the French Chamber of Deputies. Prof. W. E. B. Du Bois was the leading representative from the United States. The resolutions which were adopted bear in every line the marks of the inspiration and hope which have come to the colored peoples because of the war and because of their participation in it. The Congress was agreed that the condition of the black race in America is far more serious than in anyother country. Not much ground for American pride in that ! But the resolutions bearing on the relation of the subject black races to the governments over them are worth recording as the first Negro Declaration of Rights : ?

''The Governments of the Allied Powers and their associates ought to establish a law of international protection for the natives, as they establish an international law for the working world.

''In the League of Nations a permanent secretary's office ought to be engaged, especially with the political, social and economic measures which comprise the status of the natives. The negroes of the world demand that henceforth the natives of Africa and the people of African origin shall be governed according to the following principles, wherever they are not already applied:

^* Lands: the soil and the natural resources shall be reserved and safeguarded for the natives. Ownership of the land shall be extended to those who are able to improve it.

'^Capital: the law of concessions must be regulated so as to prevent the exploitation of the natives, and the draining of the natural riches of the country. These concessions, which must always be temporary, must function under the control of the state. The growing needs of the natives must be considered. A portion of the profits from the concessions must be nsed for the moral , and material welfare of the natives.