NA TURE 



577 



THURSDAY, JULY 7, 1921. 



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Internationalism. 



AT the outbreak of war in 19 14 it was widely 

 proclaimed that the Allies were fighting for 

 the integrity of small nations. The war was 

 fought and won to no small extent through appeal 

 to the spirit of nationality. At the time of the 

 Armistice small peoples sprang up here and there — 

 as, for instance, in the Caucasus- — clamouring for 

 *' the recognition of their national aspirations ' ' ; 

 and the minor wars and disputes which have fol- 

 lowed have arisen largely from the encouragement 

 afforded to national ambitions by the attempt to 

 fix boundaries or to allocate territory in those 

 areas in which "ethnological affinities " are uncer- 

 tain or the distribution of races is ill defined. Con- 

 comitantly with this quickened sense of nationality 

 there grew up . an idea which is necessarily, to 

 some extent, in conflict with it. The desire to 

 avert the recurrence of a catastrophe which 

 rapidly assumed such proportions as to imperil the 

 whole world turned the thoughts of men to the 

 conception of an international union which should 

 exercise such control over its members as to pre- 

 vent precipitancy in action and in the ultimate re- 

 sort be in a position to exert such force as to 

 check an appeal to the arbitrament of war. 



In a sense, the League of Nations represents a 

 compromise between the two ideas. It aims at a 

 comity of nations without undue interference with 

 the sovereignty of the constituent States. Sprirtg- 

 ing from a desire that the war should end war, to 

 use the common phrase, the League has become 

 NO. 2697, VOL. 107] 



an expression of a broader humanitarian ideal. 

 The duties of the mandatory Powers are a " sacred 

 trust," and this spirit animates the whole con- 

 ception. The more influential supporters of the 

 League, in this country at least, have approached 

 the problem in no doctrinaire spirit. They recog- 

 nise that progress must be slow, and that the key- 

 stone of success lies in the education of the peoples 

 of the several States, upon whom the continued 

 existence of the League must ultimately depend. 

 The fact that members of the League have trans- 

 gressed both the spirit and the letter of the 

 Covenant does not necessarily condemn the League. 

 Its position is not yet sufficiently assured to resist 

 the stress of abnormal conditions. 



To Mr. H. G. Wells, however, the League of 

 Nations merely represents a number of vague 

 movements for a world-law, world-disarmament, 

 and the like among intellectuals ; and in his work, 

 "The Salvaging of Civilization," he proposes a 

 different type of international unity. Holding that 

 there cannot be any world-control without a merger 

 of sovereignty, he plumps boldly for a world- 

 State as the sole possible preventive of a 

 series of wars which will come to an end only 

 when knowledge has perished and we have sunk 

 into a state of barbarism. To avoid this con- 

 tingency, or rather certainty, Mr. Wells would 

 arouse in mankind a recognition of the fact that 

 the world has become one community, and as such 

 should be regulated by a world-law. That such 

 an attitude of mind is not an impossible ideal is 

 indicated by the feeling which was aroused even 

 in the remotest parts of the world by ex-President 

 Wilson's first proposal for a League of Nations. 

 To attain this acceptance of a world-law Mr. 

 Wells relies upon education, particularly of the 

 young, in accordance with a scheme which he has 

 sketched in outline. 



While in many respects this scheme of educa- 

 tion may be suitable for a highly civilised Western 

 people, it ignores differences of outlook and cul- 

 ture. "Schooling," says Mr. Wells, "is, in fact, 

 . . . the expansion and development of the primi- 

 tive savage mind, which is still all that we inherit, 

 to adapt it to the needs of a larger community." 

 This statement is at best ' but a half-truth. 

 The highly civilised races of Europe and America 

 have centuries of development behind them, and 

 notwithstanding the "speeding up" which has 

 become possible with the development of modern 

 conditions, the less advanced races, even of parts 

 of Europe, such as the Balkan Peninsula, are not 

 likely to assimilate these ideals for some time to 



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