THE ARBITRATION TREATIES AND PEACE
Kent, William
The Arbitration Treaties and Peace NEED FOR STATESMANLIKE CONSIDERATION OF THIS NEWEST DIPLOMACY By WILLIAM KENT PEACE is a state of mind and not a matter of legal enactment. The "Pax Romana,"...
...Questions to be arbitrated must have at once a bearing on our internal affairs, and must carry in their content consequences which other Nations deem to concern the welfare of their people...
...EVERY ANALOGY of private life would go to show that these matters should not be arbitrated...
...Doubt and suspicion and uncertainty are always provocative of strife...
...We can afford no more such questions, and yet we may have them forced upon us under the guise of arbitration...
...It finds no formulation in any definite code of Constitution...
...We have one such problem that has bathed our land in blood and tears, that destroyed our people and wasted our substance, that has held back our development, and disordered our democracy...
...This education can only progress when freed from inter-racial antipathies, and wide variations of standards of living and of ethics...
...But what is international law...
...If in the interests of peace they can be amended, amendments should be made...
...Under no circumstances can we conceive it good public policy to admit to our country all who choose to come...
...If the matter is considered a proper subject for arbitration, it goes before an International Court that should have the power to enforce its decrees, as otherwise there could be no reason for the existence of such a court...
...No citizen of enlightened patriotism would follow his country "right or wrong" into a war of aggression, nor would he be foreclosed by any treaty against fighting for National preservation and the integrity of the race...
...It is but an ephemeral expression of changing public policy...
...No court would entertain the question as to whom we should seat at our tables, whom we should adopt into our families or to whom we should sell the lot adjoining our own...
...Thus, while there may be two sorts of apparent tranquility, there is but one state of stable peace—in a democracy there can be no tranquility, except under conditions that meet the approval of the people...
...We certainly can not accept the subjects of other Nations who happen to be members of non-assimilable and irreconcilable races...
...In entering into treaties we are entitled to demand that the international law we shall create and invoke shall be of such a nature as to justify our acquiescence in its enforcement...
...The High Commission that will intervene, has its burden and its function in determining and declaring the things to be arbitrated...
...The country cares little about the prerogatives of the Senate, but it is of tremendous moment to the country what the Senate may do at this juncture, that may forever influence our future...
...They concern the treatment to be accorded to foreign subjects after reaching our shores, and therefore questions of naturalization and citizenship...
...We can not make treaties with them and then ask for differing treaties with Oriental Nations for this would surely be cause for friction and possible strife...
...They concern the property rights of aliens among us, and therefore include the question of land tenure by aliens...
...IF, IN A SINCERE desire for peace, the President has entered into negotiations that are apt to be provocative of uncertainty, of misunderstanding, of continuing irritation, and therefore point rather to war than to peace, it is the clear duty of the Senate to see to it, that the axioms we hold concerning our foreign relations should be clearly embodied in the treaties, for this is in the interest of peace...
...The highest service we may render the world is the inculcation of the Christian doctrine of peace—a peace founded in the realization of justice between men...
...The "Pax Romana," the superficial tranquility of despotism but yesterday exemplified in the Diaz regime of Mexico, is not peace, but more resembles repression of dangerous gases, ultimately certain to result in explosion...
...The Jameson raid, the opium trade forced by England upon China, the invasion of territory, are not arbitrable but simply indicate a call for the patrol wagon and punishment by an International Police Court...
...IT SEEMS TO ME that among international questions that may be decided arbitrable, unless specifically excluded, the most vital to us are those arising in connection with immigration, naturalization, and tenure of land by aliens...
...It is obvious that matters that concern only our internal policy cannot cause foreign friction, and therefore are negligible...
...By its decisions it creates International Law, and through its irrevocable decisions it has more power than all the people in matters most vitally affecting the Nation...
...WE CAN NOT afford to make treaties with England and with France that ignore this matter of our inherent right and purpose to restrict in whatever way we may see fit...
...Just as the government of our States and Nation must rest upon consent of the governed, so must international law rest upon conditions satisfactory to the Nations affected...
...Peace can not rest upon such insecurity...
...It must be backed by the police power of State, Nation, or of an international alliance...
...They concern our tariffs and our custom houses...
...They concern the immigration of foreign subjects...
...It is claimed by the advocates of the present treaties that these are, by international law, defined as matters of internal policy...
...WE ARE NOW asked by the President to subscribe to certain treaties of arbitration intended, in all good faith, to promote the cause of peace...
...If they lead to peace, they are good—if to irritation and war they are bad...
...There are none in all the world to whom we ought not to hold out the hand of friendship and good will...
...Our dictum in the Monroe Doctrine is surely a matter for arbitration unless specifically excluded...
...Failing to formulate and declare such axioms it is far better that the questions, as to what we are willing to arbitrate, should be determined by a body of our own citizens rather than by any Commission of an international nature...
...We do not know how many more white immigrants are desirable for our economic adjustment...
...Education of the peoples of the world away from the barbaric instinct of strife, —this is the greatest movement toward peace, far greater than any dicta of treaty or international law...
...Except for questions involving boundary lines, international rights upon the ocean, the preservation of the common assets of the world in the neutral territory of the sea, there are few other questions that can be haled before Commission or tribunal...
...By parity of reasoning Nations will not indulge in war because some members of one Nation have made faces at another Nation, or have applied approbrious epithets...
...What is the use of considering the arbitration of matters of such a nature, that we would not and could not abide by a decree adverse to our deep seated National instinct...
...Long ago it was determined that questions of "Personal Honor" between truculent gentlemen should not be settled with rapiers or pistols...
...There is more hope in the resolution of thousands upon thousands of English and German working people, not to fight against each other, than in all the treaties ever entered into by the winking, crossed-fingered diplomacy of the past...
...Even installation in the Ananias Club no longer calls aloud to high Heaven for gunshot wounds and antiseptics...
...As lovers of peace, as men believing in the inviolability of treaties, and in the enforcement of law, domestic and international, we must know what the law is, and is to be, before we can register our allegiance, without .reservations, which would be destructive of the whole program...
...In questions of international dispute, the treaties provide for a Commission consisting of an equal number of representatives for each of the jarring Nations to determine whether the cause of friction is arbitrable...
...National Honor" has been cited as something that must be vindicated by warlike means, but "National Honor" is a vague term at best...
...August 12, 1911...
...WHAT may be arbitrated...
...The race problem is too serious to be trifled with...
...The way of peace lies in the avoidance of uncertainty, in a policy of frankness and freedom from procrastination...
...Word has gone out to the country that the Senate of the United States, jealous of its prerogatives and actuated solely by that consideration, is opposing the treaties...
...If such is international law, let it be so declared and sanctioned that there shall be no doubt about it...
...They concern the treatment that we may ask for our citizens in foreign lands, as for instance, Russia's attitude toward our citizens of the Hebrew race, and the relation of our citizens of German birth to service in the German army...
...No law, internal or international, can be self-executing...
...Such matters then, relate to our foreign policy, whether commercial, personal, or military...
...What the Commission declares shall be arbitrated goes to the tribunal and the verdict must be enforced...
...If these matters are purely internal affairs, concerning which we have the full, unhampered decision as is claimed by the apologists and advocates of the treaties, the time to make such declaration is now, and in the treaties themselves...
...We recognize the questions of race, for we wish to preserve our democracy, and can realize it only in a population free from permanent stratification...
...There are many whose advent among us is incompatible with our democracy and our economic welfare...
...Before requesting that the Senate ratify them, it is but judicious that we should consider the form they take, and the matters embraced in their scope...
...There is nothing but trouble in putting on diplomatic blinders, and failing to state our position...
...We now limit our national hospitality to those capable of self-support and free from disease or criminal record...
...There is no review of the findings...
...And yet it is safe to predict that questions of immigration, naturalization and the tenure of land by those who can not, and should not become citizens, will be among the first taken up for consideration, unless they are specifically declared to be our sole and peculiar business...
...The noblest effort of our time is the protest against the inhuman crime of war, and against the incalculable economic waste of preparing to fight, and thereafter fighting...
...Nor will Nations often call in the police for such breaches of etiquette...
Vol. 3 • September 1911 • No. 36
