An Appeal to Sanity
In international relations the world alternates between contrasting phases, resulting from variation of emotion between the phases of low and high tension.
In the low phase, a disturbance in one region due to some specific disorder remains local. It does not arouse emotions elsewhere. In such circumstances international relations take the form of local agreements or of local disputes, sometimes culminating in local wars. Determinate finite questions are in this way settled one by one, without reference to each other.
In the phase of high tension, vivid emotions excite each other, and tend to spread throughout the nations, disturbing every variety of topic.
To-day the world is plunged in this second phase of contagious emotion. Thus, in the survey which constitutes this appeal, no item can be considered separately.
What is the justification of “isolation” on the part of a powerful nation, when evil is turbulent in any part of the world?
The answer is that history discloses habitual disorganization among nations, somewhere or other. War is a throw-back from civilization for victors and vanquished, whatever be the initial objects of these crusades. Even presupposing victory, we must weigh carefully the losses against the gains.
Thus the habitual policy should be “Isolation — Unless . . .”
Each nation is a trustee for the fostering of certain types of civilization within areas for which it is directly responsible. Its supreme duty is there. Thus a nation should remain isolated, unless (1) the evils of the world threaten this supreme duty, or (2) these evils can be rectified by an effort which will not indirectly defeat the performance of this special duty.
This article was first published in March, 1939, on the eve of the Second World War. To-day, after the experience of the last seven years, I see no hope for the future of civilization apart from world unity based on sympathetic compromise within a framework of morality which the United Nations Organization now represents.
I
Now as to England. This country is a European island with a world-wide co-ordinating influence of many types. The continental civilization of Europe, and its political organizations, develop with singularly little reference to England. Throughout the last four hundred years the keynote of the English policy in Europe has been safety, and otherwise isolation (non-intervention) — that is, such isolation as is consistent with safety. The
