第38章 Chapter 6(3)

It may be necessary to remark, by way of parenthesis, that while this description of these corrective measures may seem to hint at a fault, that is by no means its purpose. The fault may be there, of course, but if so it has no bearing on the argument at this point. It should also be remarked in the same connection that this description of facts does not overlook the well-conceived verbal reservations and preambles with which cautious statesmen habitually surround the common good in the face of any unseasonable rapacity on the part of the greater vested interests; it is only that the run of the facts has been quite patently to the effect so indicated. In the same connection it may also not be out of place to recall that a vested interest is a prescriptive right to get something for nothing; in which again the kinship and resemblance between vested interests in business and the sovereign rights of nations comes into view.

So, on the other hand, the great war has brought into a strong light the obvious fact that, given the existing state of the industrial arts, any unseasonable rapacity on the part of the great Powers in exercising their inalienable right of national self-determination will effectually suppress the similarly inalienable right of self-determination in any minor nationality that gets in the way. All of which is obnoxious to the liberal principle of self-help or to that of equal opportunity.

Unhappily, these two guiding principles of the modern point of view self-help and equal opportunity -- have proved to be incompatible with one another under the circumstances of the new order of things. So there has come into view this project of a league, by which it is proposed to play fast and loose with the inalienable right of national self-help by setting up some sort of a collusive arrangement between the Powers, a conspiracy in restraint of national intrigue, looking to a reasonable disallowance of force and fraud in the pursuit of national ambitions.

Under the material circumstances of the new order those correctives that were once counted on to keep the run of things within the margin of tolerance have ceased to be a sufficient safeguard. By use and wont, in the Liberal scheme of statecraft as well as in the scheme of freely competitive business, implicit faith has hitherto been given to the remedial effect of punitive competition and the punitive correction of excesses by law and custom. It has been a system of adjustment by punitive afterthought. All of which may once have been well enough in its time, so long as the rate and scale of the movement of things were slow enough and small enough to be effectually overtaken and set to rights by afterthought. The modern -- eighteenth-century -- point of view presumes an order of things which is amenable to remedial adjustment after the event. But the new order of industry, and that sweeping equilibrium of material forces that embodies the new order, is not amenable to afterthought. Where human life and human fortunes are exposed to the swing of the machine system, or to the onset of national ambitions that are served by the machine industry, it is safety first or none.

However, ripe statesmen and over-ripe captains of finance have so secure a grasp of first principles that they are still able to believe quite sincerely in the good old plan of remedial afterthought, and it still commands the affectionate service of the jurists and the diplomatic corps. Meantime the far-reaching, swift-moving, wide-sweeping machine technology has been drawn into the service of national pretensions, as well as of the vested interests that find shelter under the national pretensions, and both the remedial diplomats and the self-determination of nations are on the way to become a tale that was told.

The divine right of nations appears to be a blurred after-image of the divine rights of kings. It rests on ground more archaic and less open to scrutiny than the Natural Right of self-direction as it applies in the case of individual persons.

It is a highly prized national asset, in the nature of an imponderable; and, very much as is true of the divine right of kings, any spoken doubt of its paramount validity comes near being a sin against the Holy Ghost. It can not safely be scrutinised or defined in matter-of-fact words. As is true of the divine right of kings, so also as regards the divine right of nations, it is extremely difficult to show that it serves the common good in any material way, in any way that can be formulated or verified in terms of tangible performance.

Evidently it does not come in under that mechanistic conception that rules the scheme of knowledge and belief wherever and so far as material science and the machine technology have reshaped men's habits of thought. Indeed, it is not a technological conception, late or early. It is not statable in terms of mechanical efficiency, or even in terms of price. Hence it is spoken of, often and eloquently, as being "beyond price." It is more nearly akin to magic and religion. It should perhaps best be conceived as an end in itself, or a thing-in-itself -- again in close analogy with the divine right of kings. But there is no question of its substantial reality and its paramount efficacy for good and ill.

The divine -- that is to say inscrutable and irresponsible --