CATT, Carrie Chapman SPEECH, ARTICLE, BOOK FILE Article: "The Outlawry of War" [*noted Nov 28/34*] Reprinted from The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Philadelphia, July, 1928. Publication No. 2151. The Outlawry of War BY CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT Chairman, National Committee on the Cause and Cure of War The nations of the world are confronted by a situation which is a proverbial dilemma with two horns. The Treaty of Versailles imposed disarmament upon Germany and her allies down to the point held necessary for internal defense. In accordance with the imposition, the so-called Central Powers have been disarmed and none of them has navy or army of sufficient size to menace other nations. These humiliating terms of the treaty were softened by the solemn agreement of the allied victors in the Great War that they would disarm themselves to the same degree. The first horn of the dilemma is, therefore, the honorable pledge of the Allies to disarm themselves. The second horn is that the Allies do not feel so much inclined to virtue in 1928 as they did in 1919, when the treaty was written and they were sore troubled and war weary. They now would like to wriggle out of that pledge if a successful camouflage of reasonableness could be thrown over the process. The Allies might delude themselves into a belief that the pledge could not be carried out, since, as Caesar said, "Men believe that which they wish"; and they might deceive the people, since great men have repeatedly charged them stupidity; but in the forum of the League of Nations stands Germany, quite clear brained on one point at least, and she has no intention of permitting the Allies to forget their agreement. Herr Bernstorff vociferously contends, in tones and logic that have literally rung around the world, that the Allies must either disarm or permit Germany to arm. Thus the second horn of the dilemma is complete. Naturally, the hangovers from primitive times of fear, distrust, tradition, and the habit of war, together with the slogan "Since men always have fought, they always will," combine to form a powerful resistant to all thinking about disarmament. To thinking thus already beclouded, are added three very practical situations that are not discussed in public debate, but serve as effective deterrents to forward action in the back of the minds of statesmen. PRACTICAL SITUATIONS 1. The Great War, in which half the nations of the world were engaged, drove nations to increase their munitions to the highest limit of quantity and variety that their financial credit, often much attenuated, would permit. While some of this armament, slightly out of fashion and shop-worn, has been sold on credit to smaller nations— notably China—which, in consequence, would have been able to keep small wars going, and some of it has been destroyed, the great bulk is stored somewhere at enormous cost, with billions invested in it; billions, too, for which bonds are outstanding; billions which must be raised by oppressive taxation in many lands through successive generations. War lords who have no faith in a world of peace will preserve at any cost these precious accumulations of war materials from the destructive threats of disarmament. 2. Dark hints were heard at the close of the Great War concerning surprises of more deadly agencies of destruction had the war continued another year. 1 2 The Annals of the American Academy The close of the war did not bring an end of the challenge to inventors and manufacturers. Germany introduced submarines during the war and kept the world at bay until her enemies were equipped with them. Now every nation has spent many millions in improving this new form of armament. The submarine has traveled around the world since 1918; its structure and apparatus are more perfect; its torpedoes more deadly, and it now carries guns. Germany startled the world with its Big Bertha. It is alleged that each of the Great Powers is now equipped with a bigger Bertha that can be fired at longer range and that carries heavier projectiles. Great Britain astounded Germany with its tanks. Now all the nations have them; bigger, carrying larger guns, more destructive and terrifying. Types of munitions go out of fashion as rapidly as a lady's bonnet. Examples of the evolution of the private's gun, for instance, from the flintlock of our Revolutionary fathers to the latest rifle, would fill a large room in a museum. The fact of continual change challenges the inventor, intrigues the manufacturer, and invites the cupidity of the investor. The continuous appeal to carry preparations forward, with the new improvements, the new inventions, the new schemes, the possible surprises, and to try them out in another war is an enormous power which is stimulating the building of armament in this time of peace instead of cutting it down, as the honorable pledges of nations demand. 3. Statesmen in all the so-called great nations now leading the world in industry, trade, and finance see the futility of such nations making war upon each other. They are calculating the advantage of composing their rivalries and yielding to each other some share in the international place in the sun. They even consider a sunny corner for Germany, for they recognize the unpleasant fact that if the war habit goes on, they may lose their own bright sphere in an unsuccessful attempt to drive out a rival. Yet this encouraging fact does not persuade statesmen to make haste in fulfilling their pledge to Germany. There is a reason. Every great power is now a virtual empire. Its possessions include its homeland, plus colonies and dependencies. Some of these holdings were won by bold imperialism when nations scrambled for territory; some have more recently been acquired through the new variety of imperialism known as economic penetration. The facts are that it is as necessary to "good form" for nations stepping forward to possess a colony or two as for a rich man to ride in an automobile. "Keeping up with Lizzie" is an infection not confined to neighborhoods. The possession of a colony, or a string of colonies, is the first long step toward becoming a big nation; the second, to jostle other trade nations out of its markets and to steal theirs. Dependencies of Super-Nations More than one-half the world's land surface and two-thirds of the world's population are included in the dependencies of the super-nations. According to Dr. Parker Thomas Moon in "Imperialism and Politics," the exports of the United States to our own and other colonies amounted in 1900 to less than one-fifth of a billion dollars; in 1920 to more than a billion and a half. Exports to colonies were multiplied by 8.8; other exports by 5.4. Non-European countries absorbed only 23 per cent of the exports of the United States before 1900; but in 1923 the The Outlawry of War 3 percentage of exports of the United States to non-European countries was 48.8 per cent. The struggle for trade in Asia, Africa, and the Islands of the Sea has become a great game which certain men of large affairs enjoy as others do golf. It grows more intense and desperate with each year. It calls for strategy, clever moves, aggression. It is not always played by church rules. "Nations are much like people," says one humorist; "when they get big, they can do things they would have been spanked for when little." This comment applies to many things done in modern trade. Trade is a game that sometimes calls for military aid, and this fact is the chief cause of hesitancy to disarm. When certain citizens of a great nation are pushing the cotton trade, for example, in a huge market, it is gratifying to these affluent merchant traders that the navy of their nation is as big as that of any other trader pushing the cotton trade in the same market. Or when a little nation is being economically penetrated, and regarding the process as something like a surgical operation without an anaesthetic, the interest on a loan may be overdue, or a preelection campaign may become stormy, and it is then considered useful tactics to anchor a war hip in the peaceful blue waters of its chief harbor. In truth, a navy is an inevitable source of pride to its own nation and an instrument of impertinence to neighbors. When a warship is built, it must be stored somewhere to be ready for the war which it is to serve, and the only handy place to store a warship is on the sea. It might as well be in one harbor as another. The effect of a warship in the harbor of a small nation is said to be "moral." When a debt is overdue, it may be valuable as a moral aid to collection, but its effect on neighborly friendship is quite certainly unmoral and unhappy. Imagine a mortgagor driving up in his luxurious limousine and parking before your front gate when and if you delayed the interest on the mortgage he held on your little house and garden. You might not be able to fight; but you would feel like it. Many a warship "sitting pretty" on a blue sea under the brilliant sun has stirred up enough war spirit to supply another World War. Warships make trouble when they least intend it. Another reason for wanting a navy is that in all dependencies an incipient revolution is fermenting. Apparently no people, however primitive, trust completely an overlord of another race, however superior. Although the white race has talked more eloquently than others of the brotherhood of man, there are few, if any, individuals who have been able to put the theory into noticeable practice. The superiority complex never fails to make itself felt and the inferiority complex responds eternally with resentment. That one-third of all the people in the world may have and may hold these outlying posts containing two-thirds of all the people; that they may keep the population reasonably content and quiet, augment trade, sow and reap dollars, are the chief aims of the super-nation. "The white man's burden" theory was once a sparkling bubble, glittering bright for the poet and the theorist, and a challenge to the missionary. But, alas, it has been sadly punctured by closer scrutiny of hard business. Big business in all lands wants a navy and an army at its right hand and a warmly cooperative government to order them into action. Thus, war hangs ever threatening on the wings of colonial trade, and when great men meet in naval or general disarmament conferences confronted by the need to carry out the pledge to Germany and her allies, there arises in the 4 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY back of their minds these three considerations, the greatest of which is the rivalry of trade. Their vision of the task becomes so blurred that their responses are chiefly notable for vague inconclusiveness. EFFECT OF THE GENNEVA CONFERENCE The recent naval conference at Geneva is a fair example. It ended futilely, with a practically universal belief in the United States that Great Britain was stubbornly ambitious to break the agreement of the 5:5:3 ratio and maintain the greatest navy in the world; at the same time all Great Britain lays the cause of failure upon the untoward ambition of this country, which, they say, wants not parity but superiority. The effect of the conference is nothing done toward disarmament, an irritated distrust between the countries, and a threat of naval competition. The facts are that each of the three nations approached the problem with the thought and belief in probable war and not with the determination to cooperate in bringing a reign of certain peace. This situation has been aggravated by the proposed big naval program of our own country. It is doubtful if disarmament conferences can or will make much progress through direct discussion of disarmament itself. It will be of little avail for technicians, who alone can determine the manner in which, by degrees, the nations can proportionately reduce armament, to meet for this purpose while the political and commercial minds of their nations are centered upon probable war and preparations for imagined defense. Disarmament is more political in character than military, and more psychological than political. Successful and effective disarmament will come sooner if the approach is through another avenue than a disarmament conference. WAR VS. PEACE It is well at this point to recall that war is probably the oldest institution known to man. It is older than marriage and preceded the time when men recognized their fatherhood of children. War in the probable thousands of years intervening has been continuous, the preparations constant. Peace has been only a temporary cessation of war. It is a mighty evolution from fists and stones to Big Berthas, but the spirit is the same. War has grown into an universally established, honored institution supported by all the power of every government. A Department of War and the Navy makes ready for it. In democratic governments where "the people rule," there is no vote as to whether there shall be war or not, and when war begins, little vestige of self-government remains. Dictatorships, not only of all the affairs of the nation but also of the wills of the people, take possession. When men are needed, they may be and are conscripted; when money is needed, taxes compel it to come; men or women who disagree with the war policy may be and are arrested and thrown in jail, in many lands, without trial or hearing. This is a condition possessing all people since time immemorial. What I want to make clear is that war is an institution and peace is not; peace is merely the negative of war. There is no authority to support peace, and it can neither conscript men or money. Andrew W. Mellon, in the report of the Secretary of the Treasury for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1927, and submitted to Congress in November, assigned 82 per cent of the Federal expenditures for 1927 to past and future wars. That is, eighty-two cents out of every dollar paid in Federal taxes by the people of the nation goes to the maintenance of the institution THE OUTLAWRY OF WAR 5 of war. The amount of money spent on peace by our nation is so small it has never been named in the budget. Not only is war an aggressive and established institution, but it has become a vested interest by which fortunes are made and by which millions of people earn their daily bread. Such people build ships, preserve food, make munitions, manufacture clothes, and what not. The government, at the close of the Great War, estimated that a possible 21,000 millionaires had been made in our own country. One munition plant, it was alleged in the press, made a profit of approximately a hundred million dollars during the war. The amounts are of no consequence; the important thing is that there are vast investments in war and none in peace. I am not trying to make out a case against war, but to show that when men meet to reduce the power of an institution so securely established in law and tradition and so completely bound up with the profits of business, they are met by resistance too emphatic to be easily overcome. DEFINITION OF TERMS ESSENTIAL To this resistance is added a curious but powerful helper. It seems too simple and too silly to hold back the progress of the world, and yet, this is what it actually does. The obstacle is merely the absence of definitions of words that are necessary to compacts of disarmament or to treaties for permanent peace. Treaties of arbitration are often weak and unworthy public confidence, which doubts if they will hold in time of stress, because they exclude such subjects as national honor, domestic concern, vital interests; yet none of these terms has been internationally defined and not two nations would probably agree upon a definition. The United States often excludes the Monroe Doctrine, yet neither our own nor any other nation quite knows what it is. In disarmament conferences it is necessary to define "adequate" self-defense. Disarmament would naturally proceed down to the point necessary for adequate self-defense. But who can determine when a nation is prepared adequately for self-defense? The great need as a preliminary to disarmament and as a preliminary to the erection of a dependable peace institution is an international parliament with authority to agree upon a few definitions--the vocabulary need scarcely exceed fifty words, beginning with the word WAR itself. What is war and when is the use of force war? At present conferences meet to discuss disarmament and, with no authority to define words to be used in compacts, may expend the entire time of the conference discussing futilely the meaning of such terms. The beginning of an international dictionary would assist a disarmament conference far more than any other contribution that could be made. If the first law passed by such an international parliament, to be called by the League of Nations or a combination of Powers, was a commandment "There shall be no more war," it is clear that disarmament would follow speedily, and as Lloyd George comments, "there could be no more competition in cruisers." UNDETERMINED POLICY HINDERS The question of sanctions, and undetermined policy hinders disarmament. Roughly one may say that about one-half the world believes that force must be brought to bear upon the nation which may break its solemn agreement not to go to war; the other half believes that the united moral power of all the nations will suffice to hold any nation to full compliance with its agreement. 6 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY That question calls for much talk and many conferences. Before the Great War there was no positive machinery for peace. The Hague Tribunal and arbitration treaties, usually of advisory character, only pointed a beginning. The League of Nations, through which fifty-five nations have agreed to arbitrate their differences under a pledge not to resort to war, was a phenomenal step forward. When the Covenant was written, thirty-two nations, just half of the entire world, had emerged from the most terrible war in all history. They were still timorous and distrustful, and between the lines one senses the lack of confidence in their own pledges. There is in most countries a minority bitterly opposed to the League of Nations because it did not come forth with a bolder pronouncement. Since the Covenant was written, however, the world has moved, and pacts of Locarno and those between other nations-- notably those solicited by Switzerland and Sweden--have closed gaps in the arbitration commitments of the League. The multilateral group treaty proposed by Secretary Kellogg, with its pledge to renounce war among the signatories and to find peaceful methods for the settlement of any dispute arising, will go far to prepare the way for disarmament. Such a treaty between the big naval powers--the only nations equipped with men and money enough for a big war--must produce a psychological reaction that will give a new viewpoint to politics and lend a bolder spirit to disarmament conferences. With treaties frankly expressed and honorably ratified renouncing war, war between the European and American nations would in a generation or so become a wholly discarded habit. Not so in the Pacific and the fields of economic exploitation. War, however, cannot solve the problems here. Economic conferences should and probably will arbitrate the rivalry between nations for markets. Imagine John Doe, American, rich, energetic, and ambitious. Kingships and kingdoms are no longer fashionable and banditry on a grand scale no longer offers adventure, so he decides to build a world rubber trust as the most inviting road to power. At the same moment, Richard Roe, British, equally rich and vacuous as to a life work, conceives the same aim; and each starts in a different dependency of his respective country and in time each achieves a monopoly and then discovers the other impertinently blocking his path to world control. Like Alexanders or Napoleons they pit themselves against each other. Meanwhile we, the suppliant people of these respective lands, having been taxed to maintain a great navy with its accompaniment of marines, airplanes, bombs, poison gas, etc., in order to be ready now come forward with banners flying to back our particular magnate, under the usual cry of "protection to life and property." This is the economic and military situation as it is. The example is far less fatuous than it sounds. If there is another war, it will be quite as sordid, but not so simple as this example. GENERAL SOLUTIONS My solution of the disarmament question is to proceed by a flank movement to build up a peace institution that will be positive and aggressive, not negative; compacts that will employ the word SHALL, not may; put the peace institution under the State Department and develop that Department into an active unafraid power for peace. Give the new peace institution some of the eighty-two cents per dollar now going to the war institution and set up as lively a publicity section for THE OUTLAWRY OF WAR 7 arbitration as there is for a big navy. Keep the building going until confidence in the positive aggressiveness of peace produces in all the advanced countries the sense of security, as it certainly will. Disarmament will follow as quietly as barnacles drop off a ship in fresh waters. Why have armaments, men will say, when war has gone out of fashion? Some of you may say that the abolition of war is an impossible ideal. I say it is as certain to come as that the sun will rise tomorrow. Transcribed and reviewed by volunteers participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.