The Lion's Bedfellow
THE LION'S BEDFELLOW TO THE world at large war is an enterprise in which not even the stoutest gambler can win. German schoolboys find Remarque's masterpiece on their list of counseled readings,...
...More generally speaking, the concordance of national and international aims cannot be effected at a stroke—that was certainly the almost fatal mistake of those who originated the League of Nations—but must be laboriously wrestled for, won inch by inch...
...For all our widely distributed Spenglerism, in a measure justified, there is not a thinking soul which fails to realize that the glory of putting forth a new effort, of once more placing the world on its shoulders, confronts the West...
...To agree to no internationalism which imposes indifference to the good rights of one's own nation is manifestly the correct formula...
...One must hope for the evolution rather than the spontaneous generation of a code...
...There is not a single Balkan country in which the situation is more secure than it was before the world war...
...The opportunity finds us badly divided and handicapped, of course...
...As Mr...
...History has always been unsettled and fearful of menaces...
...John W. Davis remarked in his address to the assembled lawyers, there is considerable difficulty in reconciling abstract and desirable principles of world justice with the restrictions and interpretations advanced by national parliaments...
...Gandhi's refusal is flat and final—it is Kipling's day again...
...Frank Kellogg is, in all probability, going to the World Court for having induced the nations to outlaw Mars...
...Popes and princes and assemblies of peoples—all have lifted voices to flay the scourge of goose-step and aviator's bomb...
...The Lambeth Conference declared that when nations have agreed in writing to seek a peaceful settlement of international differences, "the Christian Church of every nation should refuse to countenance any war in regard to which the government of its own country has not declared its willingness to submit the matter in dispute to arbitration or conciliation...
...Obviously it is the Christian West which must construct and save, if salvation is possible...
...There is, after all, more sense in a treaty than in a treatise...
...It is not much harder to expose the misteps of the thoroughgoing internationalists...
...but history is also filled with light and victory...
...Though from time immemorial a vast gulf has yawned between the aspirations of humanity and its actual achievement, the record is only relatively one of failure...
...What we do possess as a nucleus of a possible resolve to build for the future is the prayer of the Church, which is the kingdom of God on earth...
...From one point of view this is not much...
...In other words: if a country goes to war and therewith tells a lie, the Church will, at least, denounce the lie...
...perhaps it is the preface to another martial epoch during which the nation hitherto distinguished for pacifism (an indifference to aggressiveness based not, as is often supposed, on quietism but rather on weariness of fighting throughout ages) will produce new Napoleons and Von Moltkes...
...The extent to which both are right must be discerned gradually, through a kind of experimentation...
...Briand can make little headway with even the comparatively slight endeavor to develop Europe's consciousness of its interdependence...
...The point is almost frighteningly clear now...
...Take for instance this very matter of international law...
...It would be to the advantage of all of us if some clear chart summarized progress to date, year by year...
...It is not merely a question of Russia, equipped with the best army in its history and absorbed just now in playing off sabers against kulaks...
...Perhaps this epoch of horrors is a disease which springs from change, as certain optimistic commentators would have you believe...
...It is easy to enumerate the sins committed by the patriots...
...Chinese history is currently just one battle after another...
...from another it is a great deal...
...If then a nation faced and answered the question as to what it could do, practically, this very year for the advancement of international justice and amity, we might set to work collectively and do just that...
...But if the two—nationalism and internationalism— can gradually be accustomed to the same neighborhood, the same field and the same plot of grass, it may ultimately be expected with some degree of reasonableness that they will lie down side by side...
...The position in which the United States finds itself regarding either other peoples of the new world or the nations of the continent is neither definable nor satisfactory...
...German schoolboys find Remarque's masterpiece on their list of counseled readings, and Mr...
...Americans have recently played host to 200 foreign jurists, all members of the International Law Association, all interested in the problem of devising a juridical code the infraction of which would stamp any offending power as lawless and punishable...
...Is all this talk, intrinsically empty of practical meaning, or does it signify a genuine international resolve to steer clear of the horrors of 1914...
...Beyond that, one finds the earnestness of reason, expressed in such corporate groups as the jurists now assembled in New York represent...
...One should like to know—to see a little more clearly into the future than appears to be possible at present...
...India will make no settlement on the present terms...
...The lion is not going to lie down with the lamb simply because a hundred noble exhortations stress the virtues of the lamb...
...Too much has been said of the finished picture by idealists of this or that persuasion...
...Certainly the Orient is seething...
Vol. 12 • September 1930 • No. 20
