Page:EB1911 - Volume 21.djvu/21

Rh conscription as a feature in the equalization of the citizen's rights and liabilities. Just as in Anglo-Saxon lands a national ideal is gradually materializing in the principle of the equalization of chances for all citizens, so in continental Europe, along with this equalization of chances, has still more rapidly developed the ideal of an equalization of obligations, which in turn leads to the claim for an enlargement of political rights co-extensive with the obligations. Thus universal conscription and universal suffrage tend to become in continental political development complementary conditions of the citizen's political being. In Germany, moreover, the military service is designed not only to make the recruit a good soldier, but also to give him a healthy physical, moral and mental training. German statesmen, under the powerful stimulus of the emperor William II., have, in the eyes of some critics, carried this secondary object of conscript training to such excess as to be detrimental to military efficiency. To put it shortly, the Germans have taught their soldiers to think, and not merely to obey. The French, who naturally looked to German methods for inspiration, have come to apply them more particularly in the development of their cavalry and artillery, especially in that of the former, which has taken in the French army an ever higher place as its observing and thinking organ.

Militarism on the Continent has thus become allied with the very factors which made for the reign of reason. No agitation for the development of national defences, no beating of drums to awaken the military spirit, no anti-foreign clamour or invasion panic, no parading of uniforms and futile clash of arms, are necessary to entice the groundling and the bumpkin into the service. In Germany patriotic waving of the flag, as a political method, is directed more especially to the strengthening of imperial, as distinguished from local, patriotism. Where conscription has existed for any appreciable time it has sunk into the national economy, and men do their military service with as little concern as if it were a civil apprenticeship.

As implied above, military training under conscription does not by any means necessarily tend to the promotion of the military spirit. In France, so far from taking this direction, it has resulted, under democratic government and universal suffrage, in a widespread abhorrence of war, and, in fact, has converted the French people from being the most militant into being the most pacific nation in Europe. The fact that every family throughout the land is a contributory to the military forces of the country has made peace a family, and hence a national, ideal. Paradoxical as it may seem, it is the logical conclusion of such comparisons that militarism only exists in countries where there are no citizen armies, and that, where there are citizen armies, they are one of the elements which make for permanent peace.

Normal Nature of Peace. &mdash; America has been the pioneer of the view that peace is the normal condition of mankind, and that, when the causes of war are eliminated, war ceases to have a raison d'être. The objects and causes of war are of many kinds. War for fighting's sake, although in the popular mind there may be, during most wars, only the excitement and the emotion of a great gamble, has no conscious place among the motives of those who determine the destinies of peoples. Apart, however, from self-defence, the main causes of war are four: (1) The desire for territorial expansion, due to the overgrowth of population, and insufficiency of the available food-supply; if the necessary territory cannot be obtained by negotiation, conquest becomes the only alternative to emigration to foreign lands. (2) The prompting of national ambition or a desire to wipe out the record of a humiliating defeat. (3) Ambitious potentates again may seek to deflect popular tendencies into channels more satisfactory for their dynasty. (4) Nations, on the other hand, may grow jealous of each other's commercial success or material power. In many cases the apparent cause may be of a nobler character, but historians have seldom been content to accept the allegations of those who have claimed to carry on war from disinterested motives.

On the American continent South and Central American

states have had many wars, and the disastrous effects of them not only in retarding their own development, but in impairing their national credit, have led to earnest endeavours on the part of their leading statesmen to arrive at such an understanding as will banish from their international polity all excuses for resorting to armed conflicts. In 1881 Mr Blaine, then U.S. secretary of state, addressed an instruction to the ministers of the United States of America accredited to the various Central and South American nations, directing them to invite the governments of these countries to participate in a congress, to be held at Washington in 1882, &ldquo;for the purpose of considering and discussing the methods of preventing war between the nations of America.&rdquo; Owing to different circumstances the conference was delayed till the autumn of 1889. At this conference a plan of arbitration was drawn up, under which arbitration was made obligatory in all controversies whatever their origin, with the single exception that it should not apply where, in the judgment of any one of the nations involved in the controversy, its national independence was imperilled, and even in this case arbitration, though optional for the nation so judging, was to be obligatory for the adversary power. At the second International Conference of American States, which sat in the city of Mexico from the 22nd of October 1901 to the 31st of January 1902, the same subject was again discussed, and a scheme was finally adopted as a compromise which conferred authority on the government of Mexico to ascertain the views of the different governments represented in the conference, regarding the most advanced form in which a general arbitration convention could be drawn up that would meet with the approval and secure ratification by all the countries represented, and afterwards to prepare a plan for such a general treaty. The third Pan-American Conference was held in the months of July and August 1906, and was attended by the United States, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Salvador and Uruguay. Only Haiti and Venezuela were absent. The conference, being held only a year before the time fixed for the second Hague Conference, applied itself mainly to the question of the extent to which force might be used for the collection of pecuniary claims against defaulting governments, and the forwarding of the principle of arbitration under the Hague Conventions. The possible causes of war on the American continent had meanwhile been considerably reduced. Different states had adjusted their frontiers, Great Britain in British Guiana had settled an outstanding question with Venezuela, France in French Guiana another with Brazil, Great Britain in Newfoundland had removed time-honoured grievances with France, Great Britain in Canada others with the United States of America, and now the most difficult kind of international questions which can arise, so far as the American continent is concerned, have been removed from among existing dangers to peace. Among the Southern Republics Argentina and Chile concluded in 1902 a treaty of arbitration, for the settlement of all difficulties without distinction, combined with a disarmament agreement of the same date, to which more ample reference will be made hereafter. Thus in America progress is being rapidly made towards the realization of the idea that war can be superannuated by elimination of its causes and the development of positive methods for the preservation of peace (see ).

With the American precedent to inspire him, the emperor Nicolas II. of Russia in 1898 issued his invitation to the powers to hold a similar conference of European states, with a more or less similar object. In 1899 twenty-six states met at the Hague and began the work, which was continued at the second conference in 1907, and furthered by the Maritime Conference of London of 1908-1909. The creation of the Hague Court and of a code of law to be applied by it have further eliminated causes of difference.

These efforts in the two hemispheres are based on the idea