THE FOUNDATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL POLITY NORMAN ANGELL 7r Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from Microsoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/foundationsofintOOangeiala THE FOUNDATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL POLITY — BY THE SAME AUTHOR THE GREAT ILLUSION A STUDY OF THE RELATION OF MILITARY POWER TO NATIONAL ADVANTAGE Crown 8vo., 2s. 6d. net. " No piece of political thinking has in recent years more stirred the world which controls the movement of politicsi ... A fervour, a simplicity, and a force which no political writer of our generation has equalled . rank its author, with Cobden, among the greatest of our pamphleteers, perhaps the greatest since Swift " Nation. THE CITIZEN AND SOCIETY FIRST PRINCIPLES OF THEIR RELATIONSHIP [In preparation. PEACE THEORIES AND THE BALKAN WAR LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN Ex Libris C. K. OGDEN THE FOUNDATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL POLITY BY NORMAN ANGELL LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN Copyright, 1914. J A SANTA Ri^p.T,. * M 7£ TO VISCOUNT ESHER, G.C.B., G.C.V.O. AS A TOKEN OF APPRECIATION FOR WISE COUNSEL, CAUTION, AND ENCOURAGEMENT PREFACE Although the six chapters of this book appear in the form of various addresses delivered to audiences having apparently as little in common as those at the Royal United Service Institution, the Institute of Bankers of Great Britain, and a group of German Universities, the papers have been so selected as to represent the natural development and elaboration of an underlying general principle and to make a connected whole. I have attempted to render this unity still plainer by summarizing the entire argument in an introductory paper of some length. A part of one of these addresses (a portion of that to the Institute of Bankers) has already appeared in the later editions of a previous work of mine, but not in the earlier editions; nowhere has the whole address found a permanent record, and its natural place is that which I have given it in this sequence of papers. In order that these addresses should follow the natural development of the subject, I have taken slight liberties with the original form, adding, that is, to one address what as a matter of fact, when delivered, formed part of another; but very little viii PREFACE forgery of this kind has been necessary, and where it has it has for the most part been indicated. As each paper was in its original form an inde- pendent production, there is necessarily some slight repetition of argument and illustration. I have been at no special pains to correct this. It is a some- what transparent literary convention that a reader, in following an argument through several hundred pages, will always recall in the latter part the pre- cise details of a fact or illustration given in an earlier part, or will refer thereto; and that on no account should such fact or illustration be repeated. I have deemed it a service to the reader and an economy of his attention to disregard this convention in one or two cases. I am indebted to the editors of the Journal of the Royal United Service Institution and the Journal of the Institute of Bankers for permission to reprint addresses which have appeared in their publications, and to Messrs. Watts and Co. for permission to reprint a portion of the Conway Memorial address delivered at South Place Institute. I am glad to take this opportunity of acknowledg- ing my very deep sense of gratitude and indebted- ness to more friends than I can mention, in England, Germany, France, and America, who, since the appearance of an earlier work of mine in 1910, have helped me with suggestions, advice, and criticism. To certain friends in the Universities of those countries I am in a special sense indebted, notably to Professors Dr. Sieper of Munich, Piloty of Wiirzburg, Schucking of Marburg, Hermann Levy PREFACE ix of Heidelberg, Dr. Mez of Freiburg, Presidents Murray Butler of Columbia and David Starr Jor- dan of Stanford, and to several valued friends in Cambridge and Oxford. Mr. Harold Wright, Mr. Langdon - Davies, and Mr. Dennis Robertson of Cambridge have rendered valued assistance in the revision of proofs, and Mr. John Hilton in the com- pilation of the index. As to the larger number who in England and Germany during that period have made great personal sacrifices to encourage and organize in a definite way the study of the subjects dealt with here, it would be impertinent and fatuous in an author to assume that thanks are due from him. I happen to know how great in many cases those sacrifices have been, but they have been made on behalf of a general cause of intellectual sanitation to which my own works are, happily, but a small contribution. NORMAN ANGELL. London, January, 1914. CONTENTS PAGES INTRODUCTORY SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT . xv-xlviii I THE NEED FOR RESTATEMENT OF CERTAIN PRIN- CIPLES, AND THE GROUNDS OF ENQUIRY . 1-34 It is not mainly the more visible evils of war and armaments which give the greatest value to the study of the accepted theories of international polity, but the fact that the fundamental misunderstanding of any large human issue involves the mis- understanding in some degree of all human relations. The continued justification of the military form of international society has involved perpetuating a political philosophy which misrepresents the basic principles of human association and co-operation, a distortion which has widespread moral results as affecting not merely the form of our social structures within the nation, but our relative valuation of the qualities of human character ; and large material results in diminishing the effective- ness of that exploitation of the earth by which we wring our subsistence from nature. The fundamental misconception is that concerning the part that physical coercion plays in co-operation. The interdependence which necessarily comes of the division of labour involves a progressive decline in the effectiveness of physical coercion. The role of transport and intercommunica- tion in those factors. The application of these principles to typical problems of modern s'atecraft. We are dealing with ideas common to the whole Western world, and to the reform of such ideas each nation must contribute its quota, or reform will not be possible. We all owe our civilization to foreigners. Not merely the material, but the moral and intellectual, develop- ment of society must necessarily be international. xi xii CONTENTS II PAGES MORAL AND MATERIAL FACTORS IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 35-80 Morally the existing statecraft is cannibalistic, and no new con- " ception could possibly be more sordid. The alleged " sordidness of considering economic results in national policy due to mental confusion. The "well-being of society" is the final sanction, whether in politics, morals, or religious codes. Whatever the "well-being of society" may mean, economics are a part of the problem, as they are a part of morality, and morality of economics. The development of religious idealism in this sense, and its political parallel. Bridging the imaginary gulf between interest and morality, idealism and reason. The relation of emotion and intuition to rationalism in political aims. The important truths of life clearly visible without great learning if not obscured by false theories. The common mind now seizing as self-evident truths which men of learning in the past could not see. The hope for a similar development of the common mind in the field of politics. Keeping of the peace does not involve any weakening of the passion to defend our right, but a growth of respect for the rights of others. Those who do not believe in coercion necessarily believe in defence. Prevailing confusion between the use of force and the neutralization of force. The basis of civilization is a convention not to use force, and this essential to the growth of understanding in societies. The growing ineffectiveness of physical coercion illustrated by the abandonment of its use by Governments for the imposition of dogma, a highly-valued prerogative, and by its present growing ineffectiveness in the destruction of nationality. The argument that, as human passion will always override a rationally-con- ceived recognition of right, it serves no purpose to reason about the right, makes man the helpless puppet of external forces, and is an abdication of his place in nature, the surrender of his soul. Ill THE INFLUENCE OF CREDIT UPON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 81-139 The object of this paper is to show that international credit has endowed the social body of mankind—organized society—with a highly-developed system of sensory nerves, a means by which serious damage to one part is immediately made known to the rest, a consciousness of which in the case of an animal organism CONTENTS xiii PAGES we should call pain. The fact that this endowment with means of avoiding damage gives it better vital control, a means of better conscious adaptation, is itself a demonstration that the scattered parts do in truth form one whole, are interdependent, and is necessarily destructive of the old idea that one part could profit by the damage of another, still less live parasitically upon it. The fact of this interdependence, its nature, the processes it involves (herein described), are all but completely ignored by European statesmen, with consequent havoc to their policies, which in the characteristic cases have had results the exact con- trary to those aimed at. The increasing visibility of this human solidarity—a solidarity not merely of communities on opposite sides of the world, but of the present with the past and the future—must have profound moral as well as material results. IV THE PLACE OF MILITARY FORCE IN MODERN STATE- CRAFT 140-162 Summarizing by a series of illustrations the actual political con- ditions which have resulted from the operation of the principles described and elaborated in the preceding papers, the part which still remains for military force usefully to play in modern statecraft is here indicated.