the peaceful hegemony of the Germans (he does not say this explicitly, but it must be understood from p. 100); and by expressing the wish that Britain had yielded colonies to the Germans. He does not seem to know that, as a matter of fact, Britain has so yielded. The New Europe has already quoted on that point such an authority as the leader of Pangermanism, Herr Rohrbach. We have here an instance of how Mr. Russell’s geometrical method in politics must of necessity lead to grave mistakes; but it is not only the method, it is the unsound philosophy of politics which misleads Mr. Russell. Though an advocate of activism he falls a victim to pacifist passivism; he is, for instance, also willing to accept unfavourable alterations in the map (p. 86) now and still more in the future, when the Parliament of Nations have altered the distnbution of territories (p. 87). This view of his is dangerous because of its vagueness—it is one of the great defects of the “Principles” that the urgent question of nationality has not been expounded. On what principle are territories to be redistributed, and to what extent? Because of its abstractness Mr. Russell’s pacifism is not practical. In the question at issue we can rely on the authority of the Danish pacifist Nordentoft (“Practical Pacifism and its Adversaries,” George Allen and Unwin, 1917), who rightly claims as one of the principal tasks of pacifism the securing of the rights of language and nationality to the peoples under foreign rule.
Mr. Russell concedes that conditional Liberalism is not sufficient to meet the problems and dangers of the present crisis; we fully appreciate his endeavour to implant a more effective and strenuous philosophy of politics, but we must confess that the “Principles,” though they are one of the best attempts at a truly philosophical foundation of pacifism, are a philosophic failure; the psychology of Mr. Russell’s pacifist politics is vague and wrong, and so is its ethical foundation. The principles of the “Principles” are lacking.
Monsieur Ribot’s Government
The personality of Monsieur Ribot, the new French Premier, is a sufficient guarantee that plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. The high resolve of Frenchmen to prosecute the war to a fruitful end is embodied in this veteran friend of the Triple Entente whose Government, alike in its personnel and in its declaration to the Chamber of Deputies, is as emphatically a war Government as its predecessor.
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