Rebuilding Civilization

We shall not rebuild civilisation on the large scale. It is no accident that on the whole there was more beauty and decency to be found in the life of the small peoples, and that among the large ones there was more happiness and content in proportion as they had avoided the deadly blight of centralisation. Least of all shall we preserve democracy or foster its growth if all the power and most of the important decisions rest with an organisation far too big for the common man to surveyor comprehend. Nowhere has democracy ever worked well without a great measure oflocal self-government, providing a school of political training for the people at large as much as for their future leaders. It is only where responsibility can be learnt and practised in affairs with which most people are familiar, where it is the awareness of one’s neighbour rather than some theoretical knowledge of the needs of other people which guides action,

1 See on this Professor Robbins’s already quoted book, pp. 240-57. 2 As late as the closing years of the nineteenth century Henry Sidgwick thought it “not beyond the limits of a sober forecast to conjecture that some future integration may take place in the West European states: and if it should take place, it seems probable that the example of America will be followed, and that the new political aggregate will be formed on the basis of a federal polity” (The Development of European Polity, published posthumously in 1903, p. 439).

that the ordinary man can take a real part in public affairs because they concern the world he knows. Where the scope of the political measures becomes so large that the necessary knowledge is almost exclusively possessed by the bureaucracy, the creative impulses of the private person must flag. I believe that here the experience of the small countries like Holland and Switzerland contains much from which even the most fortunate larger countries like Great Britain can learn. We shall all be the gainers if we can create a world fit for small states to live in. But the small can preserve their independence in the international as in the national sphere only within a true system of law which guarantees both that certain rules are invariably enforced and that the authority which has the power to enforce these cannot use it for any other purpose. While for its task of enforcing the common law the super-national authority must be very powerful, its constitution must at the same time be so designed that it prevents the international as well as the national authorities from becoming tyrannical. We shall never prevent the abuse of power if we are not prepared to limit power in a way which occasionally may also prevent its use for desirable purposes. The great opportunity we shall have at the end of this war is that the great victorious powers, by themselves first submitting to a system of rules which they have the power to enforce, may at the same time acquire the moral right to impose the same rules upon others.

An international authority which effectively limits the powers of the state over the individual will be one of the best safeguards of peace. The international Rule ofLaw must become a safeguard as much against the tyranny of the state over the individual as against the tyranny of the new super-state over the national communities. Neither an omnipotent super-state, nor a loose association of “free nations” , but a community of nations offree men must be our goal. We have long pleaded that it had become impossible to behave in international affairs as we thought it desirable because others would not play the game. The coming settlement will be the opportunity to show that we have been sincere and that we are prepared to accept the same restrictions on our freedom of action which in the common interest we think it necessary to impose upon others.

Wisely used, the federal principle of organisation may indeed prove the best solution of some of the world’s most difficult problems. But its application is a task of extreme difficulty and we are not likely to succeed if in an over-ambitious attempt we strain it beyond its capacity. There will probably exist a strong tendency to make any new international organisation allcomprehensive and world-wide; and there will, of course, be an imperative need for some such comprehensive organisation, some new League of Nations. The great danger is that, if in the attempt to rely exclusively on this world organisation it is charged with all the tasks which it seems desirable to place in the hands of an international organisation, they will not in fact be adequately performed. It has always been my conviction that such ambitions were at the root ofthe weakness ofthe League of Nations: that in the (unsuccessful) attempt to make it worldwide it had to be made weak, and that a smaller and at the same time more powerful League might have been a better instrument to preserve peace. I believe that these considerations still hold and that a degree of co-operation could be achieved between, say, the British Empire and the nations of Western Europe and probably the United States which would not be possible on a world scale. The comparatively close association which a Federal Union represents will not at first be practicable beyond perhaps even as narrow a region as part of Western Europe, though it may be possible gradually to extend it.

It is true that with the formation of such regional federations the possibility of war between the different blocs still remains, and that to reduce this risk as much as possible we must rely on a larger and looser association. My point is that the need for some such other organisation should not form an obstacle to a closer association of those countries which are more similar in their civilisation, outlook, and standards. While we must aim at preventing future wars as much as possible, we must not believe that we can at one stroke create a permanent organisation which will make all war in any part of the world entirely impossible. We should not only not succeed in such an attempt, but we should thereby probably spoil our chances of achieving success in a more limited sphere. As is true with respect to other great evils, the measures by which war might be made altogether impossible for the future may well be worse than even war itself If we can reduce the risk of friction likely to lead to war, this is probably all we can reasonably hope to achieve.