I

DEMOCRACY AND PEACE.

N his thoughtful pamphlet on "the true historic relations of England and America," Mr. Edwin D. Mead cites the opinion of Immanuel Kant to the effect that universal democracy would mean universal peace. In this Kant represented accurately the doctrine of democratic reformers in his day. It was a part of their creed that the common man of all countries is essentially peaceable, fair-minded toward the men of other countries. Kings alone made wars; their dynastic ambitions and rivalries alone stood between the people and lasting peace.

The terrible wars attending the advent of revolutionary democracy in France did not greatly shake this doctrine. The democrats of 1792 professed to wage their war with kings, not with other peoples. It was to be a sacred war for human liberty and equality-heralded by the decree of Fraternity. Once the power of kings, the privileges of nobles, and the exorbitant pretensions of the clergy were done away, the whole world was to enter on a new era of universal peace and brotherhood. We know how quickly the movement of 1792 degenerated into an ignoble war of conquest; and many infer that the professions with which it was begun were mere sham and pretense. Yet those professions were at least in full accord with the democratic philosophy of the time; and in spite of the long wars that followed, in spite, too, of the fact that the restored monarchs and their Holy Alliance gave Europe forty years of peace, the doctrine of the superior peaceableness of democracy, continued to live and flourish.

There is, of course, no question here as to the merits of democracy as a system of domestic government. We are all believers in popular government. It is the only system that can maintain itself under modern conditions. Our present question is confined to a mere incidental phase of the system: does the inevitable spread of democracy, in and of itself, make for international peace?

It is, of course, too early to reach a conclusive judgment on this question. Yet a few things are plain. It so happens that the

half-century which has witnessed so great an extension of popular ⚫ control in government has been marked by an unusual number of wars and threats of war. In Central and South America where, at least in theory, democracy has the whole field, where also there are no differences of race, language or religion among the ruling classes, wars, as we know, have been almost chronic. The precise causes of those troubles are too little known to enable us to point their moral; we therefore leave them out of the account. We may also leave out petty struggles, such as the Bulgarian-Servian war of 1885, our own war in the Philippines, England's many wars with the uncivilized and semi-civilized peoples bordering on her wide-spread empire, the wars of France in Tunis, Madagascar and Tonquin, and other similar disturbances of the world's peace. Omitting all these, there have been, in our half-century, ten serious wars: an average of one for every five years.

Of these ten great wars it can be shown pretty conclusively, that seven were largely, if not wholly, due to popular excitement on one side or the other, rather than to the inherent difficulty of reaching a peaceful adjustment of the matters at issue. The war of 1859 so far as France and Austria were concerned, and the war of 1866 between Austria and Prussia, were clearly wars of the old sort-made, that is to say, by the governments. The war of 1877 was also, perhaps, of that sort, although popular clamor in Russia was said by some to have had much influence in deciding the Tsar to adopt warlike measures. If we look into the state of things immediately preceding each of the remaining seven wars, we find in movement toward armed conflict. Crimean war against the judgment press and the public insisted on it. in 1863 forced the new king into a course which could only result in war with Germany. Popular excitement, rather than the real difficulty of the question at issue, brought on the Southern Rebellion of 1861. Popular clamor drove Napoleon III to make his fatal war of 1870. Popular excitement in Athens drove the King of Greece into his fatal war with the Turks in 1897. Popular demand for extreme measures with Spain took the Cuban

every case a strong popular England was carried into the of its ministry, because the Popular outcry in Denmark

question out of the field of diplomacy in 1898. Not greed of capitalists and not English lust for conquest, but popular agitation and race-feeling in South Africa, have brought on the present unhappy contest in that quarter of the world.

The truth is that the international side of democracy is its weak side, and this for two obvious reasons. First, it is on international questions that the strongest feelings of the multitude-race-feeling and national sentiment-come into play. Calm reason, openness of mind for the other side of the case, are apt to fail us. We think the other country is wilfully perverse, when her people may be quite as honestly confident in the justice of their cause as we are in the justice of our own. Secondly, the democratic method of settling contentions is not available between nations. In our domestic affairs we have our party issues and often fall into angry disputes; but we can usually agree to let the ballot decide. Majority rule, more or less diluted with other rules, is the fundamental principle of democracy; but internationally it cannot apply. Arbitration may, indeed, be regarded as an effort to apply a modified form of the democratic principle to the settlement of international difficulties.

Several new agencies have come in, during the past fifty years, to alter profoundly the conditions of diplomacy-especially of diplomacy under the sway of democracy. The electric telegraph and the penny newspaper probably affect international relations even more deeply than they affect home politics. The slow methods of the old diplomacy left intervals for reflection. The despatch-bearer might apply whip and spur, but his most urgent message was half-forgotten before the answer came back. Now, however, despatch and answer are practically simultaneous. In the fervid days of July, 1870, the duc de Gramont stood at the Paris end of the telegraph line insisting on immediate answer from Benedetti and King Wilhelm at the German end. All Paris was ablaze with excitement: the editors and the boulevards would have immediate reply. The street interview at Ems, the Prussian circular despatch, and the angry cry for war from a thousand presses on both sides of the Rhine, came on one and the same day.

The new conditions have revolutionized diplomacy. The ambassador of old days had of necessity large liberty of action: the distance and the slow communication with his government required that he should have much independent initiative. In a critical time he had leisure for smoothing out if he would the asperities of international debate. Time, the great healer, was on his side; he could reason and explain and feel his way to a possible settlement of troubles. From his superior, up-to-date knowledge of the situation at the foreign end of the difficulty, he could exercise much influence for moderation on his own government. The softening agencies of diplomacy had time to produce their effect. There were unhappily wars before the telegraph was invented; and some one may wish to interpose the suggestion that an Atlantic cable might have averted the war of 1812. A possible rejoinder is that the absence of telegraphs and penny papers had the effect of postponing the outbreak till 1812 and came near to preventing it altogether. It can hardly be. doubted that if present conditions had prevailed in 1809, we should have gone to war with one or both of the European belligerents in that year, instead of passing the non-intercourse act.

In quiet times and on minor questions the ambassador has undoubtedly still a useful function. Even in critical times circumstances may arise which give him opportunity for the exercise of some moderating influence. Those who have read the recently published Memoirs and Correspondence of Lord Playfair will think at once of the illustration afforded by Ambassador Bayard during our Venezuelan madness. Our State Department had sent out a despatch adopting as our own a thoroughly false account of the disputed boundary question between British Guiana and Venezuela. We demanded a prompt reply to the question whether Great Britain would agree to submit the boundary dispute "in its entirety" to arbitration. The answer was that if its entirety meant the whole demand made by Venezuela, the proposal could not be granted. Venezuela had steadily insisted on bringing into question titles to lands held under Dutch and British jurisdiction for more than a century. Her Majesty's government declined to submit to the judgment of any foreign power, or of any foreign jurist however eminent, the question

whether those lands and their inhabitants belonged to the Colony or not. Then followed the wild message to Congress and the war cries of our excited press.

Fortunately no answer was attempted to Lord Salisbury's despatch; in truth no answer was easily possible that should at once justify our action and be true to the facts. The silence of our State Department gave time for the friends of peace to correct the mistake of the administration. The letters that passed between Mr. Bayard, Lord Playfair, and Mr. Chamberlain show how our government was led, somewhat grudgingly as it would appear, to admit the justice of the English claim that long settled lands on both sides of the line should be excluded from the proposed arbitration. The whole furnishes a comforting illustration of the good work that may still be done by a real ambassador in spite of the new conditions.

This brings us to another and perhaps more important feature of diplomatic relations under democracy. Diplomacy in old times was synonymous with secrecy. The sovereign instructed his ambassador, received and answered the communication of other sovereigns, keeping the whole from the public and even, sometimes, from his own ministers. Some occult flavor and reminiscence of this old theory still lingers about foreign offices. The ordinary humdrum intercourse of governments is allowed to proceed under a veil of great secrecy.

Given, however, a case offering materials for a public excitement, a case therefore in which successful negotiation may depend much on real secrecy, and you have at once a widely different situation. In such a case the so-called new diplomacy makes no attempt at secrecy. Instant publication of every despatch has become the rule. The practice is called new, but there are examples of it more than a century old.

The reasons for publication in such cases are probably mixed. One reason alone seems conclusive to some. If the people are sovereign, surely this critical and momentous business concerns the sovereign, and ought not to be withheld from public knowledge. Nobody would propose to settle any great domestic question by stealth: on what ground shall one contend that government by the people, for the people,