![Chapter VIII.
A DEMOCRATIC WORLD.[44]
“We believe in association—which is but the reduction to action of our faith
in one sole God, and one sole law, and one sole aim—as the only means we
possess of realising the truth; as the method of progress; the path leading
towards perfection. The highest possible degree of human progress will
correspond to the discovery and application of the vastest formula of
association.
We believe, therefore, in the Holy Alliance of the Peoples as the vastest
formula of association possible in our epoch;—in the liberty and equality of
the peoples without which no true association can exist; in nationality, which
is the conscience of the peoples, and which, by assigning to them their part in
the work of association, their function in humanity, constitutes their mission
upon earth, that is to say, their individuality, without which neither liberty nor
equality is possible; in the sacred Fatherland, cradle of nationality, altar and
worship of the individuals of which each people is composed.
And, as we believe in humanity as the sole interpreter of the law of God, so
do we believe in the people of every state as the sole master, sole sovereign,
and sole interpreter of the law of humanity, which governs every national
mission. We believe in the people, one and indivisible, recognising neither
castes nor privileges, neither proletariat nor aristocracy, whether landed or
financial; but simply an aggregate of faculties and forces consecrated to the
well-being of all, to the administration of the common substance and
possession, the terrestrial globe.”—
Mazzini.
44. This chapter was written some time before the League of Nations plan
adopted at the Peace Conference was issued. It is, in spite of a few points
which might require modification, allowed to stand as it was written, since
the general course of the argument still appears to be sound, especially as it](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/16658-250422023436-78ca79e0/85/Life-Span-Development-A-Topical-Approach-3rd-Edition-Feldman-Solutions-Manual-19-320.jpg)
![them. With the crumbling of the dynastic tradition, the one
substantial cause still outstanding of international misunderstanding
is commercial rivalry; but this commercial rivalry is in no sense a
rivalry between peoples; it is purely a rivalry between the capitalist
interests in the different countries. Are the democracies still
prepared to suffer arrest of their own development by retaining a
sort of potential war-footing in the interests of what are after all
mainly class-adventures?[45]
45. The proposal to establish an International Labour Standard will, of course,
do something to rob the protectionist argument of the force it borrows from
playing up the “dumping” of goods produced by underpaid foreign labour.
But it may be urged that even in the event of the elimination of
this type of commercial rivalry, the national feeling would still remain
—intrinsically and without the adventitious aid of dynastic or
commercial interests—a permanent ground of separation and
possible dissension between peoples, even democratic peoples. We
are told that there is such a thing as national “honour” which is a
sacred trust and which the nation must be prepared to defend
against all comers. It may be seriously questioned whether this
conception of national “honour” is not an archaism which has lapped
over from the age when men still talked of gambling debts as “debts
of honour” and gentlemen adjusted their differences by means of
“affairs of honour.” It should be evident that no nation has any kind
of honour which is subject to real offence save at its own hands, or
which can be forfeited save by its own act; and a nation in anything
like a mature stage of ethical development should be (in a
memorable phrase) “too proud to fight” merely because its amour
propre had been pricked by some ill-behaved urchin among the
nations. No self-respecting citizen resorts to fisticuffs in order to
avenge an insult; and the more self-respecting he is the more
effectual is the interior constraint which forbids him to act in that
way. And it is equally inconceivable that a self-respecting nation
should think it worth while to assert itself in a retaliatory way against
what after all can amount to no more than rudeness or
impertinence. It is true that there is a good deal of residual](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/16658-250422023436-78ca79e0/85/Life-Span-Development-A-Topical-Approach-3rd-Edition-Feldman-Solutions-Manual-26-320.jpg)
![aggregations of polyglot peoples comprehended under a single
national name—like the British Empire and the United States. The
“nation” possesses no fixity, and national feeling undergoes continual
change and modification as the result of changing circumstances.
There are many like the present writer whose early schooling left
them with the impression that there was a necessary and permanent
antagonism of interest between the British and French; but since
then the Entente Cordiale and other momentous happenings have
completely banished that hoary tradition from the British mind. It is,
moreover, not open to question that the increase and improvement
of means of communication have done much to dispel the ignorance
from which national prejudice and international suspicion drew their
strength. The biological judgment upon nationality is pertinent to
this point: “All the most important agencies producing the divergent
modification of the nations are human products and can be
altered.”[46]
These agencies are presumably the factors which
constitute what Mr. Benjamin Kidd called social heredity; and he has
shown with great force how possible it is to “impose the elements of
a new social heredity” on a whole people and to change its character
accordingly.[47]
The sum of the matter is that nationality is a fluid and
changing entity; and its intrinsic nature and its history appear to
point to the conclusion that it is a necessary stage in the evolution of
human society, by which the caveman is to become at last a citizen
of the world. There is nothing to justify the expectation that present
national characters and national frontiers will remain as permanent
factors in the life of the world.
46. Chalmers Mitchell, Evolution and the War, p. 90.
47. Benjamin Kidd, The Science of Power, p. 305.
This does not mean that the world will not continue to be
organised on the basis of nationality; it means only that the present
national divisions are not permanent. The law of natural variation
will operate in producing diversity in the complexion and culture of
communities; and the race will contain to the end an infinite variety
of social types. Indeed as the dynastic imperial tradition decays, the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/16658-250422023436-78ca79e0/85/Life-Span-Development-A-Topical-Approach-3rd-Edition-Feldman-Solutions-Manual-28-320.jpg)
![or legal doctrinaires. The thing has been done and is in practice on a
large scale already. That vast unity called the United States of
America became and remains possible only because independent
states have voluntarily ceded certain elements of their sovereignty to
a federal authority; and there is no objection other than that of
chauvinistic prejudice or of academic theory which could effectually
prevent the creation of a United States of Europe on the same basis
and a greatly extended United States of America as well.
But it requires to be emphasised at this point that we need less a
league of nations than a league of peoples; and if it be alleged that
this is a distinction which implies no real difference, the answer must
be made that the difference is indeed deep and vital. Sir
Rabindranath Tagore has lately criticised the idea of the nation on
the ground that it is the organisation of a people in the interests of
its material welfare and power;[48]
and insomuch as the nation finds
its focus in the sovereign state, its effect is separative and divisive. A
league of nations in the Western World would tend to be a league of
states, of governments; and the psychological inheritance of such a
league would tend to an undue preoccupation with schemes and
policies rather than the broader matters of human intercourse. It is
inconceivable that a league of nations will be able to divest itself
from the characteristic stock-in-trade of the specialist in “foreign
affairs,” since it would naturally be engineered by statesmen
schooled in the traditional order. No league has any chance of
permanence which does not break wholly with the current
conventions of international business; and the only hope of such a
break lies in the direct selection by the people of the various
countries of their own representatives on the council of the league.
The league must be democratically controlled; and that with as
much direct democratic power as such expedients as proportional
representation and recall can secure. The foreign offices of Europe
are so incurably steeped in an evil tradition that the less they have
to do with any future league the better. The secrecy, the intrigue,
the diplomatic finesse in which they have been expert are
incongruous with the democratic principle; and it is necessary in the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/16658-250422023436-78ca79e0/85/Life-Span-Development-A-Topical-Approach-3rd-Edition-Feldman-Solutions-Manual-35-320.jpg)
![V
It is, however, likely that the force of circumstances may expedite
this process of education. The articles of the coming peace are
guaranteed to contain a provision for general disarmament; and so
far as Europe is concerned, this will be a work of necessity and not
of supererogation. Professor Delbrück, for instance, has come to
acknowledge that the “derided notions” of disarmament, hitherto
“entertained only by persons of no account,” are likely to be raised
to “the position of the ruling principle of our time.”[49]
His conversion
is due to the fact that the war will leave the belligerents of Europe in
a financial position which will not only make the increase of
armaments impossible, but will require the very drastic reduction of
their military establishments. The only danger to the process of
disarmament lies in the circumstance that two of the belligerent
powers, the United States and Japan, have been so little crippled by
the war that they are in a position and may get into the mood to
maintain large armaments. It is useless to obscure from ourselves
the further circumstance that these two powers that are in a position
to afford large military establishments look upon one another with a
considerable measure of suspicion despite their recent association
upon the same side in the war, and the formal professions of mutual
good-will that have latterly been made. It must be borne in mind
that Japan is still mainly dynastic in government and consequently
imperialistic in spirit, that its economic development seems to
require an expansion of marketing opportunities, and that its over-
population will stimulate emigration. In these matters there is plenty
of inflammable stuff; and we should be guilty of not facing the facts
of the case, did we not perceive that by reason of the attraction
which Western America has for the Japanese emigrant, and of the
peculiar interest which America has taken in the welfare of China,
situations of very great peril may arise between Japan and the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/16658-250422023436-78ca79e0/85/Life-Span-Development-A-Topical-Approach-3rd-Edition-Feldman-Solutions-Manual-38-320.jpg)
![United States. It is upon such a state of the case that the argument
for universal military service in America will be based; and indeed
must be based; as it is inconceivable that any American in his senses
should apprehend any danger from the other side of the Atlantic.
The certain democratisation of Europe and the virtual certainty of
the impossibility on financial grounds of any considerable war-like
enterprise on the part of the European nations make the
contingency of a Transatlantic war unthinkable at the present time,
or indeed at any future time. This, of course, pre-supposes that the
causes of friction likely to arise from the national underwriting of
private foreign investments will be removed by a common
understanding that the private ventures of capital abroad are made
at its own risk.
49. Prüssische Jahrbucher (November, 1917).
The possible strain of the situation between the United States and
Japan is, however, already alleviated to some extent by the prospect
of a democratic movement in the latter country. Japan can in any
case hardly expect to keep its institutions intact if it enters into
reciprocal relations with democratic communities. Now, for the first
time, a commoner is premier of Japan; and the widespread social
discontent is likely to stimulate the tendency to popularise the
machinery of government. It is probably too much to expect in the
present state of Japanese education, that the veneration in which
the dynasty is held will speedily disappear. Yet after the swift and
dramatic disappearance of “divine rights” in Germany, it is not wise
to assume that historical processes of this type are necessarily slow.
Apart, however, from the possible causes of friction between the
United States and Japan, there seems to be little insuperable
difficulty in reaching an international understanding concerning
disarmament.[50]
Upon such an understanding, the whole future of
the projected League of Nations hangs. The League will be no more
than an empty shell if the constituent nations still continue to go
about with loaded fire-arms. Yet even if the League itself were not to
come into existence immediately the economic necessity of](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/16658-250422023436-78ca79e0/85/Life-Span-Development-A-Topical-Approach-3rd-Edition-Feldman-Solutions-Manual-39-320.jpg)
![institution of a system of international tutelage and supervision. It
goes without saying, of course, that any such international action
should consist not only of protection and tutelage, but of education
into self-government. The question as to the mode in which this
international supervision should be exercised is secondary. The
proposal that it should be made effective by means of international
commissions is met with the objection that international
commissions have proved to be a failure in practice. In some cases
this is doubtless true; but it is not the whole truth. The Danube
Commission and the Postal Union furnish examples of successful
management by international commission. But there is no need to
mix up the question of international supervision with the method of
rendering it effective. There appears to be no inconsistency in
maintaining that the method of international commission would be
most fruitful in some instances, while the method of devolving the
work upon a single nation suitably placed for doing it would be more
advantageous in other cases. In those instances, where a weak or
backward people is capable of appreciating the alternatives, there is
no reason why the choice should not be left to the people
themselves.
One of the further consequences of the contraction of the world is
that health has become an international question. The days when a
plague could be confined to a city are over.[51]
The recent spread of
the so-called “Spanish” influenza is an instance which proves how
indissolubly bound together the world has come to be. And the
system of national quarantines has to be superseded by an
international organ for the localisation and the extirpation of
diseases which like the bubonic and the pneumonic plagues are
capable of easy and destructive diffusion; and for the removal of
those conditions of filth and insanitation in any part of the world to
which these scourges owe their origin. It is likely, moreover, that the
great increase in pulmonary and venereal diseases as by-products of
the war require international handling if their worst consequences
are to be averted.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/16658-250422023436-78ca79e0/85/Life-Span-Development-A-Topical-Approach-3rd-Edition-Feldman-Solutions-Manual-45-320.jpg)
![VIII
But may not this concentration of authority in the hands of an
international body create a kind of super-state? In any case this
danger is very remote at the present time; but it is no less necessary
that at its inception conditions should be agreed upon which will
safeguard it from such a tendency. This might be done in one of two
ways. It might, for instance, be ordained that the machinery of the
League should not be unitary, but that the commissions requisite for
various purposes should be independently appointed by the
contracting nations and derive their mandate directly from them;
and in the event of overlapping, the commissions concerned might
adjust the matter by joint session. The other alternative is that there
should be a supreme international authority, but that it should be
subject to a “Barrier Act.”[52]
This would provide that the power and
the enactments of the authority should be perpetually subject to the
revision of the contracting parties; and it would be impossible for the
international body to take any material step outside the limits of its
mandate and consequently to extend its sphere of authority without
the general consent of the nations concerned. Perhaps both these
conditions are necessary—the direct appointment of commissions
and the Barrier Act; and in any case a general agreement should be
reached beforehand as to the limits and nature of the functions to
be vested in the international body. It is plain, of course, that in any
event the League must stand upon consent. It will be a voluntary
association of free peoples; and its maintenance will depend upon
the impossibility of its ever accruing any authority sufficient to
prevent the withdrawal of any nation which might be so minded. It is
questionable whether once the League had come into operation, any
nation could afford to withdraw; but no power should be veiled in it
to coerce a nation to remain in the League against its will. The basis](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/16658-250422023436-78ca79e0/85/Life-Span-Development-A-Topical-Approach-3rd-Edition-Feldman-Solutions-Manual-49-320.jpg)
![of free and voluntary association is the only guarantee of genuine
and fruitful solidarity.
52. The Barrier Act was a Presbyterian device against hasty innovation. “Every
proposal which contemplates a material change in the constitution of the
Church or in its laws respecting doctrine, discipline, government, or worship,
after being considered and accepted by the Synod, must be sent down to
Presbyteries for their approval or disapproval, before it can become the law
of the Church.” (The Book of Order of the Presbyterian Church of England, p.
50.) Just so, the Federal Amendment to the Constitution of the United States
relative to prohibition had to be referred to the several states for
endorsement before final ratification.
This, however, raises the question of whether the League should
be armed with powers to enforce its decisions. That it should be
endowed with a definite judicial authority goes without saying; but is
it to be supported by a police organisation? In the present state of
opinion it appears likely that some kind of international police force
will be attached to the League; but there are some reasons for
doubting whether such a provision is necessary or likely to be useful.
In this connection the interesting point has been raised that the
Constitution of the United States established a court to adjudicate
upon disputes between the States, with no provision of force to
compel a State to accept the Court’s decision, but depending upon
public opinion alone to validate the judgment. Had there been any
attempt on the part of those who framed the Constitution to invest
the federal authority with power to coerce a recalcitrant state, it is
likely that the Union would never have come into existence; but the
Union was founded and survived despite the absence of coercive
sanctions, and the venture of faith has been vindicated by the
growth and unity of the American people.[53]
There is a real danger
lest the institution of a police force at the disposal of the League
might prove a disruptive factor; and the question should be carefully
canvassed before a decision is reached. In any case it is safe to say
that it should be the business of the League to work towards the
ultimate elimination of coercive sanctions.
53. Technically, in the Civil War, force was used to prevent the secession of the
South; but what the North really fought for was the abolition of slavery.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/16658-250422023436-78ca79e0/85/Life-Span-Development-A-Topical-Approach-3rd-Edition-Feldman-Solutions-Manual-50-320.jpg)
![helpful to the realisation of the ideal of democracy. A League to
enforce peace may be no more than the Holy Alliance redivivus, an
unholy alliance in defence of the status quo.[54]
What is needed is a
League to guarantee freedom and to promote fellowship, and given
such a League peace will largely look after itself. It is not sufficiently
recognised that to make peace an object in itself is to condemn the
world to virtual stagnation. The only peace, like the only happiness
which is permanent, is that which is a bye-product. Permanent
peace will come from a voluntary association of peoples co-operating
on a basis of reciprocity; and such a consummation is not so far off
as it would at fist sight appear. The reciprocity which has been
established between the Allied peoples in the war will have to be
continued long after the war. Their needs are so vast that they will
only escape death and want by close co-operation. Moreover, the
agreement of the Allies reported in the press as these pages are
written to send food to their late enemies, is an asset of the utmost
importance to the creation of the League. And once the League is
properly afoot, we may live in the hope of the day which William
Blake foretold:
“In my exchanges, every land shall walk,
And mine in every land;
Mutual shall build Jerusalem,
Both heart in heart, and hand in hand.”
54. It is hardly possible to resist the remark at this point that the League as
fashioned in Paris bears a strong family likeness to the Holy Alliance, and so
far behaves uncommonly like it,—e.g., towards Russia and Hungary.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/16658-250422023436-78ca79e0/85/Life-Span-Development-A-Topical-Approach-3rd-Edition-Feldman-Solutions-Manual-52-320.jpg)
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- 4. Copyright © 2017, 2014, 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. 137 Chapter 6 COGNITIVE GROWTH: INFORMATION PROCESSING APPROACHES CONTENTS Chapter-at-a-Glance 138 Learning Objectives 139 Chapter Outline 140 Lecture Launchers 145 Student Activities 146 Supplemental Reading 147 Multimedia Ideas 148 Handouts 149
- 5. Copyright © 2017, 2014, 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. 138 CHAPTER-AT-A-GLANCE Chapter Outline Instructor’s Resources Professor Notes Module 6.1: The Basics of Information Processing Encoding, Storage, and Retrieval: The Foundations of Information Processing Cognitive Architecture: The Three-System Approach Comparing Information Processing Approaches to Alternative Theories of Cognitive Development Learning Objectives 6.1, 6.2, 6.3 Lecture Launchers 6.1, 6.2 Module 6.2: Attention and Memory Attention Memory and Its Duration Memory Development and Control Learning Objectives 6.4, 6.5, 6.6 Lecture Launcher 6.3 Student Activity 6.1 MyDevelopmentalLab Video: School and Education in Middle Childhood Across Cultures Module 6.3: Applying Information Processing Approaches Children’s Eyewitness Testimony: Memory on Trial Information Processing Contributions to the Classroom Reconsidering the Information Processing Perspective Learning Objectives 6.7, 6.8, 6.9 Student Activity 6.2 < Return to Contents
- 6. Copyright © 2017, 2014, 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. 139 LEARNING OBJECTIVES LO 6.1: Describe how information is taken in, held, and used, according to information processing theorists. LO 6.2: Explain how the architecture of the human information processing system functions. LO 6.3: Compare the information processing approaches to Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. LO 6.4: Explain why attention is important for children’s cognitive development. LO 6.5: Describe memory improvements during childhood and analyze how childhood memories change over time. LO 6.6: Analyze how memory changes as people age and describe strategies for developing and improving memory. LO 6.7: Describe applications of information processing approaches to the recall of events for legal purposes. LO 6.8: Apply insights from information processing theory to classroom instruction. LO 6.9: Compare the strengths and weaknesses of the information processing approach and other approaches to cognitive development. < Return to Contents
- 7. Copyright © 2017, 2014, 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. 140 CHAPTER OUTLINE I. Module 6.1: The Basics of Information Processing Learning Objectives 6.1, 6.2, 6.3 Lecture Launchers 6.1, 6.2 A. Encoding, Storage, and Retrieval: The Foundations of Information Processing 1. INFORMATION PROCESSING is the process by which information is encoded, stored, and retrieved. a. Encoding is the process by which information is initially recorded in a form usable to memory. b. Storage refers to the maintenance of material saved in memory. c. Retrieval is the process by which material in memory storage is located, brought into awareness, and used. 2. Automatization is the degree to which an activity requires attention. a. Processes that require little attention are automatic. b. Processes that require large amounts of attention are controlled. c. Automatization processes help children in their initial encounters with the world by “automatically” priming them to process information in particular ways. d. Children learn how different stimuli are found together simultaneously. This permits the development of concepts, categorizations of objects, events, or people that share common properties. e. Automatization permits more efficient processing to enable concentration. f. Sometimes automatization prevents more focused, intentional, nonautomatic responses. B. Cognitive Architecture: The Three-System Approach 1. Information moves through the cognitive architecture: the basic, enduring structures and features of information processing that are constant over the course of development. a. Atkinson and Shiffrin posit processes for encoding, storage, and retention that are not located in physical locations in the brain but are more abstract functions performed by the brain. 2. The SENSORY STORE is the initial, momentary storage of information, lasting only an instant. a. If information is not attended to and sent on for further processing, it is lost forever. b. highly accurate and detailed information 3. SHORT-TERM MEMORY is the short-duration, limited-capacity memory component in which selected input from the memory store is worked on. a. thoughtful, deliberate processing of meaning b. lasts for 15 to 20 seconds c. limited capacity, increases with age d. Adults can hold up to 7 items or “chunks” of items at a time. e. Children aged 2 or 3 can hold 2 items. f. At age 7, children can recall up to 5 items. g. Capacity or memory span increases due to better rehearsal strategies and increased speed. 4. WORKING MEMORY is a set of active, temporary memory stores that actively manipulate and rehearse information.
- 8. Copyright © 2017, 2014, 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. 141 a. Memory is determined by a central executive that coordinates processing, directs attention, and selects strategies. 5. LONG-TERM MEMORY is the memory component in which information is stored on a relatively permanent basis. a. Processing includes filing and cataloguing information for retrieval. b. nearly limitless in capacity c. Retrieval problems and availability of retrieval cues—stimuli that permit recall by guiding attention to a specific memory—restrict what is recalled. d. Different types of long-term memory modules comprise this system. (1) declarative memory (2) procedural memories C. Comparing Information Processing Approaches to Alternative Theories of Cognitive Development 1. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development posits stages of development. 2. In contrast, information-processing theorists posit gradual, continuous improvements in how children perceive, understand, and remember. a. As children process information more efficiently, they become more sophisticated in complex forms of thinking and problem-solving. b. Quantitative changes constitute development, rather than the qualitative changes posited by Piaget. II. Module 6.2: Attention and Memory Learning Objectives 6.4, 6.5, 6.6 Lecture Launcher 6.3 Student Activity 6.1 MyDevelopmentalLab Video: School and Education in Middle Childhood Across Cultures A. ATTENTION is information processing involving the ability to strategically choose between and sort out different stimuli in the environment. 1. Without attention, information is not noticed. 2. Children and adults do not differ in the way they initially encode information into the sensory store. 3. Failure to remember is likely due to not being able to retrieve information from memory. 4. Variation in attentional factors determines how effectively information is processed. 5. Control of Attention a. Ability to tune into certain stimuli while tuning out others is an indication of cognitive control of attention. b. Ability to concentrate, as well as to ignore irrelevant stimuli, increases with age. 6. PLANNING is the ability to allocate attentional resources on the basis of goals that one wishes to achieve. a. Young children exhibit some level of “planfulness.” b. Gradual development from childhood leads adolescents to become highly proficient. c. Children have difficulty in effective planning due to: (1) difficulty choosing what to do and what not to do to achieve their goals (2) Over-optimism about their ability to reach their goals leaves them unmotivated to plan. (3) lacking skills to coordinate and cooperate with others (4) limits in dividing attention
- 9. Copyright © 2017, 2014, 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. 142 d. Combined with increases in brain maturation and educational demands, planning and attention greatly improve over time. B. Memory and Its Duration 1. The ability to recognize previously encountered objects and events implies some memory. 2. Infants’ memories improve with age. 3. Research suggests that memory during infancy is processed in ways similar to processing during adulthood, but that recall may depend upon different structures of the brain. 4. Duration of Memories a. Research supports the notion of INFANTILE AMNESIA, the lack of memory for experiences that occurred prior to 3 years of age. (1) Although memories are stored from early infancy, they cannot be easily retrieved. (2) Early memories are susceptible to interference from later events. (3) Memories are sensitive to environmental context. b. AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY, memory of particular events from one’s own life, is not very accurate until after age 3. (1) Preschoolers’ autobiographical memories fade, they may not be accurate (depending on when they are assessed), and they are susceptible to suggestions. (2) Adults, too, show errors in autobiographical memories. C. Memory Development and Control 1. Memory Control Strategies a. With age, people use more control strategies: conscious, intentionally used tactics to improve cognitive processing. b. Children also learn ways to organize information into coherent patterns. c. They also begin to use strategies that are explicitly taught by others, such as the keyword strategy. d. As they get older, children increasingly organize their memories of familiar events in terms of SCRIPTS, general representations in memory of a sequence or series of events and the order in which they occur. e. With age, scripts become more elaborate. 2. The Growth of Metamemory and Content Knowledge a. METAMEMORY: an understanding and knowledge about the processes that underlie memory; emerges and improves during middle childhood. b. With metamemory, children realize their memory limitations and how to overcome them by spending more time examining and studying material. c. Teaching metamemory skills to children helps them understand material better. d. Increasing knowledge in all domains leads to increases in how much they can recall as well as what they remember. e. As more knowledge in a given topic is stored in memory, it is easier to learn new, related material. Older children therefore are better able to recall information than younger children. 3. Perspectives on Memory Development a. Memory improves through childhood and adolescence. b. This is due to: (1) increased amount of information remembered in working memory as information processing becomes more efficient (2) Control strategies improve as people get older.
- 10. Copyright © 2017, 2014, 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. 143 (3) metamemory understanding and knowledge about how memory works (4) Increased knowledge permits older children to learn new, related material more efficiently. (5) The more children know about a topic, the better they remember it, and the faster they learn new material that relates to it. (6) These changes take on different levels of importance across different periods of childhood. 4. Memory in Adulthood: You Must Remember This a. For most people, memory peaks in early adulthood. b. Long-term memory declines with age as people register and store information less efficiently. c. People are also less efficient in retrieving stored information as they age. d. These declines typically present as minimal memory loss. e. Most people are absentminded throughout life, but with cultural stereotypes, adults attribute this absentmindedness to aging. f. Adults can compensate for declines in memory. III. Module 6.3: Applying Information-Processing Approaches Learning Objectives 6.7, 6.8, 6.9 Student Activity 6.2 A. Children’s Eyewitness Testimony: Memory on Trial 1. Preschoolers have difficulty describing certain information and oversimplify recollections that may have implications for eyewitness testimony. 2. Young children are susceptible to suggestions from adults, and sometimes what they appear to recall is not accurate. 3. Repeated and leading questioning by adults may lead to inaccurate memory reports by children. 4. Questioning children right after the event and outside the courtroom may produce more accurate recollections. 5. Adults’ memories are also prone to significant error, even when they are confident in their accuracy. B. Information Processing: Contributions to the Classroom 1. Proponents of code-based approaches to reading believe that reading should be taught by presenting the basic skills that underlie reading. a. They emphasize processing the individual parts of reading (sounds, letters) and combining them into words and meanings. 2. In contrast, whole-language approaches value the construction of meaning of words as they are placed in context through trial and error. 3. Data suggests that code-based approaches are superior to whole-language approaches. 4. Teaching Critical Thinking a. Critical thinking is thinking that makes use of cognitive skills and strategies that increase the likelihood of solving problems, forming inferences, and making decisions appropriately and successfully. b. The critical thinker considers information, weighs alternatives, comes to a reasoned decision. c. U.S. children typically do not demonstrate high levels of critical thinking skills in comparison to age-mates from other cultures. d. Four components of critical thinking are:
- 11. Copyright © 2017, 2014, 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. 144 (1) Identify and challenge assumptions underlying a statement or contention. (2) Check for factual accuracy and logical consistency among statements. (3) Take the context of a situation into account. (4) Imagine and explore alternatives. C. Reconsidering the Information-Processing Perspective 1. With age and practice, preschoolers can process information more efficiently and with more sophistication. 2. According to information-processing approaches, cognitive development consists of gradual improvements in the ways people perceive, understand, and remember. a. These changes are quantitative, not qualitative as Piaget argued. (1) Preschoolers begin to process information with greater sophistication. (2) They have longer attention spans, attend to more than one dimension of an object, and can better monitor that to which they are attending. 3. Information processing provides a clear, logical, and full account of cognitive development. 4. It is also testable and empirical in nature, and provides logical sets of concepts focusing on processes that underlie children’s thinking. 5. Information-processing theorists also focus on aspects of development typically not attended to by alternative theories. a. role of memory, attention b. more comprehensive accounting of cognitive skills 6. Criticisms focus upon several aspects of the approach to development. a. lack of attention to motivations and goals that inform much of people’s thinking (aspects of humans that set them apart from animals and cold processing machines) b. Information-processing developmentalists contend that their models are precisely stated and testable, and that more research supports their theories than any others. c. Reliance on well-defined processes that can be tested is one of this perspective’s most important features. d. Information-processing theorists pay little attention to social and cultural factors. e. Information-processing theorists pay so much attention to the detailed, individual sequence of processes that they never paint a comprehensive picture of cognitive development. < Return to Contents
- 12. Copyright © 2017, 2014, 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. 145 LECTURE LAUNCHERS Lecture Launcher 6.1: How Kids Learn Some of your students may be parents of preschoolers or entering the field of education. Recent arguments suggest that children between the ages of 5 and 8 learn differently than older children. Young children learn best through active, hands-on teaching methods like games or dramatic play, not from hours of workbooks and homework. Raise this issue with your students and ask for their opinions, as well as their own experiences when they were young. Lecture Launcher 6.2: Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) Students are fascinated by the concept of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder because they all seem to be aware of someone who has been diagnosed with it. Your lecture should concentrate on three areas: (a) the current DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for ADHD (see Handout 9-1); (b) the effects on school performance and social interactions; and (c) the treatment of the disorder, which often includes stimulants such as Ritalin and Dexadrin and cognitive behavior training. Lecture Launcher 6.3: A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words Young children sometimes have difficulty recalling information. One study suggests that drawing can enhance children’s memories for events. Sarnia Butler, of the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, led a study involving 5- and 6-year- olds who took a field trip to a fire station. While there, the children clambered on the fire engines, watched drills performed by the firefighters, tried on the firefighting gear, and even watched as one of their chaperones slid down the firepole, much to the displeasure of the tour leader, who reprimanded her. (This event, and several others, were prearranged ahead of time.) Both one day and one month later, the children were asked about their outing. Those children who were asked to draw and describe the events of that day—how they got there, what they saw, the events that transpired—accurately reported much more information than those children who were simply asked to tell what happened. This effect was not observed among 3- to 4-year-olds, although among both groups drawing did not appear to increase errors in recall. This research indicates that memory for pleasant events may be increased by coupling words and pictures. It remains to be seen whether the same effect would hold for negative events. If so, this technique may hold promise for boosting children’s recall of abuse, incest, or other traumatic events. Butler, S., Gross, J., & Hayne, H. (1995). The effect of drawing on memory performance in young children. Developmental Psychology, 31(4), 597–608. Staff (1995). Kids draw on their memories. Science News, 148, 111. < Return to Contents
- 13. Copyright © 2017, 2014, 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. 146 STUDENT ACTIVITIES Student Activity 6.1: Let’s Share, Show, or Recall Select a class meeting when you’ll be discussing memory, and ask students to bring a photo of themselves as a preschooler, preferably engaged in some activity or attending some event. If students are unable to locate an early photo, ask them to make a note about their very earliest memory. At the beginning of class you might divide the students into groups and have them share as much as they can remember about what was going on when their photo was taken. Can they remember the place, who took the photo, how old they were, the time of year, anything special about the clothes they were wearing or any props in the photo? Similarly, have students describe their earliest memory. Encourage students to interpret their memories in light of knowledge about young children’s cognitive development. Invite the class into a discussion about memory capabilities of preschoolers, especially autobiographical memory. Note that memories are not very accurate until after age 3, and that they are susceptible to suggestion. Also discuss the fact that preschoolers have difficulty describing certain information and tend to oversimplify recollections. You might also discuss whether preschoolers can learn to remember. What strategies might parents or preschool teachers employ to facilitate children’s memory? Ask the students to share whether they felt their memories of those earlier times had been influenced in some way. Ask them if they have learned to improve their ability to remember information. You might engage in a more in- depth discussion of information processing theory (e.g., sensory memory, short-term memory, long-term memory) as well as metacognitive strategies (e.g., rehearsal, mnemonic devices). Student Activity 6.2: Reflective Journal Use Handout 5-3 to help your students reflect on their own intellectual growth during infancy. < Return to Contents
- 14. Copyright © 2017, 2014, 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. 147 SUPPLEMENTAL READING Baillargeon, R. (October, 1994). How do infants learn about the physical world? Current Directions in Psychological Science. pp. 133–140. Emmons, H., & Alter, D. (2015). Staying sharp: 9 keys for a youthful brain through modern science and ageless wisdom. New York: Touchstone Books. Schaie, K. W. (1994). The course of adult intellectual development. American Psychologist, 49(4), 304–313. Schaie followed 5,000 adults for over 35 years in the Seattle Longitudinal Study to assess whether intelligence changes over adulthood. He and his wife also tested various intervention strategies that worked to offset the loss of fluid intelligence. Siegler, R. S. (2004). Children’s thinking (4th ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Zigler, E., & Styfco, S. (2010). The hidden history of Head Start. New York: Oxford University Press. < Return to Contents
- 15. Copyright © 2017, 2014, 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. 148 MULTIMEDIA IDEAS MyDevelopmentLab Video Series The MyDevelopmentLab Video Series engages students and brings to life a wide range of topics spanning prenatal development through the end of the lifespan. New international videos shot on location allow students to observe similarities and differences in human development across various cultures. Video: School and Education in Middle Childhood Across Cultures Discussion Questions 1. What common educational threads do you see among the individuals in this video? 2. If you did not know the teacher in this video was from Africa, would you think (based on her responses) that she could have been discussing teaching in the U.S.? < Return to Contents
- 16. Copyright © 2017, 2014, 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. 149 Handout 6-1 Diagnostic Criteria for Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) Inattention: Six or more symptoms of inattention for children up to age 16, or five or more for adolescents 17 and older and adults; symptoms of inattention have been present for at least 6 months, and they are inappropriate for developmental level: • Often fails to give close attention to details or makes careless mistakes in schoolwork, at work, or with other activities. • Often has trouble holding attention on tasks or play activities. • Often does not seem to listen when spoken to directly. • Often does not follow through on instructions and fails to finish schoolwork, chores, or duties in the workplace (e.g., loses focus, side-tracked). • Often has trouble organizing tasks and activities. • Often avoids, dislikes, or is reluctant to do tasks that require mental effort over a long period of time (such as schoolwork or homework). • Often loses things necessary for tasks and activities (e.g. school materials, pencils, books, tools, wallets, keys, paperwork, eyeglasses, mobile telephones). • Is often easily distracted. • Is often forgetful in daily activities. Hyperactivity and Impulsivity: Six or more symptoms of hyperactivity-impulsivity for children up to age 16, or five or more for adolescents 17 and older and adults; symptoms of hyperactivity- impulsivity have been present for at least 6 months to an extent that is disruptive and inappropriate for the person’s developmental level: • Often fidgets with or taps hands or feet, or squirms in seat. • Often leaves seat in situations when remaining seated is expected. • Often runs about or climbs in situations where it is not appropriate (adolescents or adults may be limited to feeling restless). • Often unable to play or take part in leisure activities quietly. • Is often “on the go,” acting as if “driven by a motor.” • Often talks excessively. • Often blurts out an answer before a question has been completed. • Often has trouble waiting his or her turn. • Often interrupts or intrudes on others (e.g., butts into conversations or games). In addition, the following conditions must be met: • Several inattentive or hyperactive-impulsive symptoms were present before age 12 years. • Several symptoms are present in two or more settings (e.g., at home, school or work; with friends or relatives; in other activities). • There is clear evidence that the symptoms interfere with, or reduce the quality of, social, school, or work functioning. • The symptoms do not happen only during the course of schizophrenia or another psychotic disorder. The symptoms are not better explained by another mental disorder (e.g. Mood Disorder, Anxiety Disorder, Dissociative Disorder, or a Personality Disorder).
- 17. Copyright © 2017, 2014, 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. 150 Handout 6-2 Reflective Journal Exercise If possible, ask your parents to help you write about your cognitive development during the first two years of life. (If your parents are not available, you can write about your own children or interview a parent of an infant.) You can use the following questions to help you reflect. What were your first words? What is your earliest memory? How old were you? Was there a game you particularly liked to play, such as peek-a-boo or patty cake? What were your favorite books? How did your parents try to stimulate your intellectual growth? Was your intelligence ever tested? Was more than one language spoken at home? If so, which did you prefer to use? < Return to Contents
- 18. Exploring the Variety of Random Documents with Different Content
- 19. Chapter VIII. A DEMOCRATIC WORLD.[44] “We believe in association—which is but the reduction to action of our faith in one sole God, and one sole law, and one sole aim—as the only means we possess of realising the truth; as the method of progress; the path leading towards perfection. The highest possible degree of human progress will correspond to the discovery and application of the vastest formula of association. We believe, therefore, in the Holy Alliance of the Peoples as the vastest formula of association possible in our epoch;—in the liberty and equality of the peoples without which no true association can exist; in nationality, which is the conscience of the peoples, and which, by assigning to them their part in the work of association, their function in humanity, constitutes their mission upon earth, that is to say, their individuality, without which neither liberty nor equality is possible; in the sacred Fatherland, cradle of nationality, altar and worship of the individuals of which each people is composed. And, as we believe in humanity as the sole interpreter of the law of God, so do we believe in the people of every state as the sole master, sole sovereign, and sole interpreter of the law of humanity, which governs every national mission. We believe in the people, one and indivisible, recognising neither castes nor privileges, neither proletariat nor aristocracy, whether landed or financial; but simply an aggregate of faculties and forces consecrated to the well-being of all, to the administration of the common substance and possession, the terrestrial globe.”— Mazzini. 44. This chapter was written some time before the League of Nations plan adopted at the Peace Conference was issued. It is, in spite of a few points which might require modification, allowed to stand as it was written, since the general course of the argument still appears to be sound, especially as it
- 20. D raises points in relation to which the official scheme will most certainly require great changes. “Come, read the meaning of the deep! The use of winds and waters learn! ’Tis not to make the mother weep For sons that never will return. ’Tis not to make the nations show Contempt for all whom seas divide; ’Tis not to pamper war and woe Nor feed traditionary pride; It is to knit with loving life The interests of land to land, To join in far-seen fellowship The tropic and the polar strand. And more, for Knowledge crowns the gain Of intercourse with other souls, And wisdom travels not in vain The plunging spaces of the poles. O may our voice have power to say How soon the wrecking discords cease, When every wandering wave is gay With golden argosies of peace.” —George Meredith. EMOCRACY can only thrive in a democratic setting; and while any powerful remnants of the dynastic tradition survive in the world, it is unlikely that democracy will be able to reach the full term of its own development. For the dynastic tradition is from the nature of the case of an incurably predatory character; and democracy will be arrested in its self-realisation by so much of the dynastic habit of
- 21. thought and way of life as it may be necessary to retain in order to gain immunity from attack. It has been one of the commonplaces of the Great War that the democratic countries have been compelled to defend themselves against Prussianism by adopting the familiar Prussian methods of repression and regimentation. And what the war has actually provoked is always potentially present. So long as there are dynastic nations with highly centralised and omnicompetent authority and consequently in a more or less advanced state of preparation for military enterprise, it is not to be expected that their democratic neighbours will leave themselves at their mercy; and the common democratic rights of freedom— whether of the person or of thought—have to be so far permanently subject to curtailment and even entire suspension in the event of war. It is easy to say that once the danger is past, the former liberties will be automatically restored; but it does not so work out in actual fact. For authority is ever loth to relinquish any advantage it has gained; and there are always parties in every community who either on selfish or academic grounds are favourable to the curtailment of democratic rights. The restoration of these rights has commonly to be effected against the opposition of parties interested in their curtailment. It is a matter of common knowledge that powerful interests are already at work, for instance, to secure that the hard-won privileges of the Trade Unions shall not be restored to them; and we may expect to find very considerable and dangerous opposition to the re-establishment of those civil liberties which were suspended “for the duration of the war.” It is not likely, however, that this opposition can be long maintained. But it is certain that it will be some time after the close of the war before the domestic liberties of the democratic countries will be restored to the point which they had reached at the beginning of the war; and by so much democratic advance will have been retarded.
- 22. I So that the development of the democratic principle requires the cessation of war and of preparedness for war. And this to begin with requires the disappearance of the dynastic tradition. But will the disappearance of the dynastic tradition necessarily carry with it the abolition of that preoccupation with national “prestige” and the like out of which it has always drawn its strength? The dynasty may vanish; but nationalism may remain; and the catchwords of national prestige and national honour may conceivably become a menace to peace and therefore to freedom as real as the dynastic tradition. And at the present time there is, as has been previously shown, a very real possibility that the disappearance of the dynastic tradition may leave the door open to another type of predatory nationalism no less injurious to the cause of democracy. This is that “commercial imperialism” to which reference has already been made. The impression has been deeply made upon this generation that the accumulation of wealth constitutes the primary business of the community. It should aim to become the richest, wealthiest nation. It is not generally perceived that the distribution of this wealth is of a character which robs it of any right to be regarded as a “national” interest. It is the interest only of a comparatively small class within the nation. Yet so sedulously has this illusion of national prosperity been cultivated, and so feeble is the faculty of discrimination in the multitude, that it will yet be possible for commercial adventurers to invoke and receive national endorsement of their projects even to the extent of a guarantee of military support in case of need. The surplus capital of a nation will seek avenues of activity beyond its frontiers and it will move heaven and earth to secure that the nation shall be committed to the business of protecting it when it goes abroad. And it will do this by fostering the illusion that in some mysterious way its profitable foreign excursions bring prosperity to
- 23. the home community. A moment’s reflection should be sufficient to show that operations of this kind will bring to no nation any compensation that is even remotely commensurate with the cost of guaranteeing them. Nor is it for their foreign adventures alone that these particular interests will work up national pride and prejudice. They look upon the home market with the same avid eye as the foreign; and it is an affair of common knowledge that they have not hesitated to inflame national feeling in order to secure invidious protective tariffs against other nations. “Keep out the foreigner” is always an effective battlecry; it bears a certain immediate and obvious plausibility to the untutored and uncritical mind. The argument for free trade labours under the disadvantage of not possessing this kind of effective simplicity. Except in cases where free trade has been tried and is supported by experience, the argument for it has to lean upon postulates which are not so easily demonstrable to the crowd and which do not lend themselves to glib catchwords such as the protectionists delight in. It is easy for instance, to show that the prosperity of a particular industry depends upon its security against a foreign competition which apparently starts with the superior advantage of cheap labour; and a case may be fairly made for the protection of a young and struggling industry from unequal competition. The protectionist, however, extends his argument to cover all industry; his concern is not for the growth of a struggling industry but for a monopoly of the home markets—what time he is also actively invading foreign markets. The free trader has in reply to show that a protective tariff is a stranglehold upon all industry. Because, for instance, it renders the capitalist producer immune from foreign competition, it reduces the necessity on his part to improve methods of production; and in so much as his care is for his profits rather than the real development of industry for the good of the social whole, he will tend to remain content with obsolete and antiquated methods of production so long as improvement is not essential to the maintenance of profits. Moreover, it works in the direction of compelling the industries of the nation to utilise the raw
- 24. materials available within its own borders even though these be inferior in quality to those obtainable elsewhere, with the result that the national industries are seriously handicapped in competition in foreign markets, even in some cases in the home markets. The problem of clothing oneself in the United States of America is a sufficient illustration of the fantastic illusion that a protective tariff makes for the common good. The tariff on woollen goods may be useful to the owners of the woollen industries in America; but the advantage is gained at the expense of the whole people, including the very operatives in woollen mills. This is, however, not the place to state the whole case as between protection and free trade. Chiefly it is to our point here to emphasise the fact that the advocates of a protective tariff belong mainly to the capitalist class; and that they will plead for a protective tariff on the ground of national prosperity, and that national pride and prejudice will be invoked in support of the argument. They will be careful to abstain from calling undue attention to the point that a protective tariff will discriminate in favour of the classes that are already sufficiently prosperous, and their popular argument will have much to say about the high wages of the worker. “Make the foreigner pay” was the battlecry of the Chamberlainite fiscal reformer in England; and what the foreigner pays we all enjoy together. It sounds fair enough; until it is seen that by no chance whatsoever does the foreigner pay anything. He may lose something in the diminution of his trade; but he pays nothing. The payment is made by the domestic consumer in the higher prices which immediately prevail in respect of “protected” commodities; and this higher price brings an advantage to whom? To the worker? Not at all, if the capitalist can help it. Will the worker get higher wages? Only if he is strong enough to demand it. The empty hypocrisy of this talk about national prosperity should be evident from the fact that the very people who are interested in high prices are those who are equally interested in lowering wages. The increase of the wage rate during the war has not automatically or proportionately followed the rise in prices; it has always to be wrested by main force from those whose
- 25. interest lies in keeping prices high and wages low. Under a protectionist régime, wages are rarely high enough to compensate for the higher cost of living, and the more dependent a country is upon importation from abroad, the truer is this statement. It is only in countries like the United States of America where the natural resources are large and more or less easily available that protection can effect any substantial appearance of social prosperity, and even in these cases it is scarcely doubtful that the general prosperity would be greatly increased by the removal of a protective tariff. The dividends upon invested capital would no doubt be lower; but the general level of material well-being would be appreciably raised. Democracy must make up its mind upon this point. It must turn a cold and critical eye upon all plausible talk about national prosperity and ask whether this prosperity is in fact the thing it professes to be. National wealth is so inequitably distributed that the production of wealth as a national concern is a polity pour rire. Protection and commercial imperialism are devices which work in the interests of the already prosperous classes, a very small minority of the community. This is not to say that there are not advocates of protective tariffs who sincerely believe all they say so fluently about “national” prosperity; of these good people it is not the disinterestedness that is to be called into question but the intelligence. But it as sure as anything can very well be that if a statutory limit were set upon profits, incomes and fortunes, we should hear very little about protective tariffs and the need of protecting commercial interests “in partibus infidelibus.” To say that this would immediately crush the incentive to the commercial and industrial enterprise of the nation would be an unworthy reflection upon the patriotism of those who are at present directing the enterprise. In any case the point which is coming up for the decision of democratic communities is whether they are going to identify themselves with, and commit themselves to, the support of enterprises which primarily serve the interests of a class already well enough provided for and which can bring no advantage to the people at large commensurate with the risk involved in endorsing
- 26. them. With the crumbling of the dynastic tradition, the one substantial cause still outstanding of international misunderstanding is commercial rivalry; but this commercial rivalry is in no sense a rivalry between peoples; it is purely a rivalry between the capitalist interests in the different countries. Are the democracies still prepared to suffer arrest of their own development by retaining a sort of potential war-footing in the interests of what are after all mainly class-adventures?[45] 45. The proposal to establish an International Labour Standard will, of course, do something to rob the protectionist argument of the force it borrows from playing up the “dumping” of goods produced by underpaid foreign labour. But it may be urged that even in the event of the elimination of this type of commercial rivalry, the national feeling would still remain —intrinsically and without the adventitious aid of dynastic or commercial interests—a permanent ground of separation and possible dissension between peoples, even democratic peoples. We are told that there is such a thing as national “honour” which is a sacred trust and which the nation must be prepared to defend against all comers. It may be seriously questioned whether this conception of national “honour” is not an archaism which has lapped over from the age when men still talked of gambling debts as “debts of honour” and gentlemen adjusted their differences by means of “affairs of honour.” It should be evident that no nation has any kind of honour which is subject to real offence save at its own hands, or which can be forfeited save by its own act; and a nation in anything like a mature stage of ethical development should be (in a memorable phrase) “too proud to fight” merely because its amour propre had been pricked by some ill-behaved urchin among the nations. No self-respecting citizen resorts to fisticuffs in order to avenge an insult; and the more self-respecting he is the more effectual is the interior constraint which forbids him to act in that way. And it is equally inconceivable that a self-respecting nation should think it worth while to assert itself in a retaliatory way against what after all can amount to no more than rudeness or impertinence. It is true that there is a good deal of residual
- 27. superstition in this particular region which is apt to magnify out of all proportion the significance of such improprieties as disrespect to the flag; but a little good humoured realism is all the antidote that is required. Such things as these have no real meaning except where symbolic and formal punctilio still takes precedence over the actualities of life. For the rest, the only possible sources of offence to national honour lies in the region where national honour travels abroad in the persons of official and unofficial individuals of that nation. But at this time of day, it is inconceivable that any issues should arise in this region which are not capable of easy and friendly adjustment. In point of fact, that is what usually happens. Apologies are made; a formula is adopted; and the affair blows over. It will occur to the cynical that in recent times the point of honour has been chiefly insisted upon on such occasions as the pursuit seemed likely to eventuate in some material advantage; in any case the point of honour survives only as an affair of statesmen and diplomats and provokes no more than a languid interest in the remainder of the nation, which has more pressing concerns on hand. National “honour” seems on the whole to be but a frill left over from the day in which the divine right of kings was still a live dogma. In the fact of nationality itself there is nothing which necessarily tends to a breach of the peace. We know that it represents no fact of organic inheritance which is bound to perpetuate divisions of an unfriendly or unneighbourly kind between peoples. There is no modern “nation” which can claim homogeneity of racial origin, of language, of religion. It describes a political unity within which a people by the simple process of living together has developed and is continuing to develop a particular way of life and quality of culture. The peculiar colour of national life is due of course to some extent to its geographical location, to the circumstances of its history, and to its natural resources, but national unity is achieved in the evolution of a common tradition and a common culture. Nor is it possible to fix any real bounds to the growth of a nation. It is a historical commonplace how the small primitive groupings of man have steadily grown in extent until we have reached the stage of vast
- 28. aggregations of polyglot peoples comprehended under a single national name—like the British Empire and the United States. The “nation” possesses no fixity, and national feeling undergoes continual change and modification as the result of changing circumstances. There are many like the present writer whose early schooling left them with the impression that there was a necessary and permanent antagonism of interest between the British and French; but since then the Entente Cordiale and other momentous happenings have completely banished that hoary tradition from the British mind. It is, moreover, not open to question that the increase and improvement of means of communication have done much to dispel the ignorance from which national prejudice and international suspicion drew their strength. The biological judgment upon nationality is pertinent to this point: “All the most important agencies producing the divergent modification of the nations are human products and can be altered.”[46] These agencies are presumably the factors which constitute what Mr. Benjamin Kidd called social heredity; and he has shown with great force how possible it is to “impose the elements of a new social heredity” on a whole people and to change its character accordingly.[47] The sum of the matter is that nationality is a fluid and changing entity; and its intrinsic nature and its history appear to point to the conclusion that it is a necessary stage in the evolution of human society, by which the caveman is to become at last a citizen of the world. There is nothing to justify the expectation that present national characters and national frontiers will remain as permanent factors in the life of the world. 46. Chalmers Mitchell, Evolution and the War, p. 90. 47. Benjamin Kidd, The Science of Power, p. 305. This does not mean that the world will not continue to be organised on the basis of nationality; it means only that the present national divisions are not permanent. The law of natural variation will operate in producing diversity in the complexion and culture of communities; and the race will contain to the end an infinite variety of social types. Indeed as the dynastic imperial tradition decays, the
- 29. tendency to induce uniformity among the peoples brought under a common rule will disappear; and the free play of variation will probably be more evident in the future than it has been, at least in the near past. The emphasis upon the rights of small nations and the disruption of Russia and of the Dual Monarchy into their constituent nations both alike indicate that we shall have a considerable accentuation of distinctive national types in the years ahead of us. But this is not in any sense a matter for misgiving; for the larger the variety of typical national cultures, the more varied and rich will the life of the race become. As Lord Bryce said in the early days of the war, the world was already too uniform and was becoming more uniform every day; and a reaction from uniformity is a sign of renewed life. At the same time it must not be forgotten that without some balancing principle there are dangers inherent in nationality. It has been justly observed that nationality is an admirable thing when it is being struggled for, but that once achieved it is apt to become a peril. The passion for nationality may overshoot its mark. National self-consciousness may breed national self-conceit; and out of this temper especially under the conditions of modern commerce may grow the spirit of aggression. It is useless to hide this fact from ourselves; the recent history of Italy gives ample demonstration of it. The Italy of Garibaldi was hardly recognisable in the Italy of the Tripoli adventure. It is therefore necessary that the nations that have come to new birth in the world-travail of these last five years, should be preserved from the danger of becoming aggressive at the expense of their neighbours, and in this necessity is contained in little the entire problem of international integration which is likely to occupy the minds of statesmen and political thinkers in the coming century. At the same time the ultimate security of the peace which is necessary to the progress of the democratic principle must lie not in external safeguards and checks but in the increasing democratisation of national life. The elimination of those residual predatory interests which still dog the steps of democracy and are still able to pervert it to their own ends may be helped by the creation of international
- 30. machinery which will limit the area of their opportunities; but it depends most of all upon the progressive disappearance of class and sectional privileges within the nations. For privilege is always predatory; and so long as there still remain privileged classes within the nations no international machinery of adjustment and restraint can do more than preserve a highly precarious equilibrium between conflicting interests.
- 31. III Upon this whole subject there is little to be said which is not already perfectly clear to those who have given it any serious thought. Two courses are open, and only two, to modern democracies. They may choose to retain the traditional dogmas of national sovereignty and “honour,” and the current acceptances of the business system, or they may resolve upon a break with the past. The consequences of the first choice are perfectly evident from the state into which the world has been brought by its operation in the near past. It implies the retention of a privileged class with interests to be defended at home and abroad; it will work out in competitive commerce and as a natural corollary in competitive armaments. And competitive armaments soon or late mean war. It has already been pointed out how the doctrine of military “preparedness” must inevitably retard and arrest the realisation of democratic liberty within the nation, but it must farther be recognised that any general retention of military establishments, under the conditions of modern industry, must eventuate in the total destruction of democracy and civilisation. The other choice means a deliberate and progressive attempt to organise the intercourse of nations upon a basis of reciprocity and co-operation. Even though the consequences of such an attempt may be at present uncertain and problematical, it may at least be asserted that they cannot be worse than those which have so tragically ensued from the former tradition. Indeed, we have already come to a state of the world in which the former tradition has long ceased to correspond to actuality. So long as the means of communication remained elementary and slow, it was possible for nations to live more or less independent lives and it was in their interest to become self-sufficing and self-contained. They were sufficiently far from one another to meet only in the
- 32. event of border brawls or of predatory excursions on a large scale on the part of a strong neighbour against a weaker. But with the modern development of the means of communication a policy of isolation has become utterly impossible. The world has become a neighbourhood; and national interests are inextricably intertwined. When President Wilson said in 1916 that the European War was the last great war out of participation in which it would be possible for the United States to remain, he was speaking with this particular circumstance in mind; and not even his foresight was sufficient at that time to see that the day of isolation was already over. In six months, the United States was engulfed in the bloody maelstrom. The policy of national isolation is obsolete; and the persons who advocate military preparedness and protective tariffs are “back numbers.” These atavistic policies are no longer possible except at the cost of the incalculable impoverishment of the nation which adopts them. The nation that shuts others out also shuts itself in and will slowly perish from an inbreeding mind and an ingrowing energy. For the barrier against mutual confidence and goodwill which is military preparedness, and the barrier against reciprocal trade, which is a protective tariff, hinder much more than the exchanges of friendship and trade. They hinder that exchange of spiritual, intellectual and cultural goods which are on any radical analysis more essential to a people’s growth and wealth than its trade. Even as things are, those barriers are not sufficient to prevent a certain mutuality in trade and in culture. Neither the German tariff could keep Sheffield steel out of Germany, nor does the United States tariff keep Bradford cloth out of America, and in the region of intellectual and cultural interests the commerce has attained in recent times a considerable briskness. But in the present state of the world, why should a nation still cling to the illusion that it is a source of strength to be self-contained? It is simply silly to continue to live on homemade goods and homemade ideas when one’s neighbours are ready to supply those which they are in a position to produce better than ourselves, and to supply them freely on a basis of fair exchange; and it is no compensation for the consumption of second-
- 33. rate goods that it helps to increase the bank balance of a few of one’s countrymen, especially when these few countrymen who are thus profited can out of their profits procure the superior foreign article which they put out of the reach of the rest. The organisation of the world upon a basis of international reciprocity becomes a necessity by reason of the proximity into which modern means of communication have thrown the peoples. The process is indeed already afoot and in spite of hindrances will inevitably grow in power and range; and we are only anticipating events when we set out to organise the nations on a foundation of mutuality. The process is, however, not without its difficulties; and the conditions which are necessary in order to create a league of nations bound together by a principle of reciprocity may be passed in brief review.
- 34. IV First of all it is necessary that the last vestige of imperial dominion should disappear. A nation which is held unwillingly within a particular political unity should be emancipated and be set up in independence. Real reciprocity is only possible on a foundation of common freedom, and it is a pre-requisite of any scheme of world federation that any so-called “subject” nation which puts in a claim to independence should have its claim conceded at sight. The whole conception of reciprocity is denied when a nation is dragged into the scheme at the tail of another. At the same time it should be made clear that an independence thus recognised does not carry with it the prerogative of a sovereignty of the traditional kind. Independence is to mean autonomy in domestic affairs but not independent action in external affairs. Reciprocity implies joint action in matters of international interest; and in so much as the working of a reciprocal scheme implies the power of authoritative action by some superior joint council, it is clear that there must be a cession of such portion of national sovereignty as is implied in the joint transaction of international affairs. Nor is this to be a rule merely for the lesser or the newly emancipated nations. Clearly it must be a rule for all nations great or small which enter into the arrangement. It is supposed that the nations will be found unready to make this surrender; in which case it is in no need of demonstration that a League of Nations is impossible save only for the purely negative business of adjusting difficulties and settling disputes. That indeed were a great gain, even though from the nature of the case it would in all probability be only temporary. Nations still boasting sovereignty would soon or late be tempted to take matters into their own hands in the event of adjustments and settlements which proved unsatisfactory. But in point of fact there is no difficulty at all about this cession of sovereignty except in the minds of incurable jingoes
- 35. or legal doctrinaires. The thing has been done and is in practice on a large scale already. That vast unity called the United States of America became and remains possible only because independent states have voluntarily ceded certain elements of their sovereignty to a federal authority; and there is no objection other than that of chauvinistic prejudice or of academic theory which could effectually prevent the creation of a United States of Europe on the same basis and a greatly extended United States of America as well. But it requires to be emphasised at this point that we need less a league of nations than a league of peoples; and if it be alleged that this is a distinction which implies no real difference, the answer must be made that the difference is indeed deep and vital. Sir Rabindranath Tagore has lately criticised the idea of the nation on the ground that it is the organisation of a people in the interests of its material welfare and power;[48] and insomuch as the nation finds its focus in the sovereign state, its effect is separative and divisive. A league of nations in the Western World would tend to be a league of states, of governments; and the psychological inheritance of such a league would tend to an undue preoccupation with schemes and policies rather than the broader matters of human intercourse. It is inconceivable that a league of nations will be able to divest itself from the characteristic stock-in-trade of the specialist in “foreign affairs,” since it would naturally be engineered by statesmen schooled in the traditional order. No league has any chance of permanence which does not break wholly with the current conventions of international business; and the only hope of such a break lies in the direct selection by the people of the various countries of their own representatives on the council of the league. The league must be democratically controlled; and that with as much direct democratic power as such expedients as proportional representation and recall can secure. The foreign offices of Europe are so incurably steeped in an evil tradition that the less they have to do with any future league the better. The secrecy, the intrigue, the diplomatic finesse in which they have been expert are incongruous with the democratic principle; and it is necessary in the
- 36. interest of international understanding that they should be put out of commission with all decent haste. The kind of domestic organisation for foreign business which a league of nations requires differs toto coelo from the existing institution; and it will have to be built from the bottom up. 48. See Atlantic Monthly, March, 1917, p. 291. A league of peoples requires plain dealing in the open; but there is nothing gained even then if there be no public apprehension of the nature of the business in hand. Hitherto, the common man has displayed but a flickering interest in the external affairs of his country; and this vast and important region has been left the monopoly of a comparatively small coterie of people who have made the shunning of publicity a fine art. This circumstance is bound up with the fact that speaking generally these persons have consistently belonged to the prosperous classes; and the conventions of the diplomatic tradition have made it a preserve of people possessing considerable independent incomes. It is needless to observe how inevitably the whole service must be vitiated by this anti-democratic discrimination. The established system is secured by employing in it only those whose upbringing and education have instilled into them the spirit of class superiority and ascendency. The Foreign Offices of Europe have from the nature of the case been the breeding ground of jingoism and chauvinism. The principle of democratic control in foreign affairs, both by the public discussion of international business and by the thorough democratisation of Foreign Offices is a sine qua non not alone of democracy at home but of any such league of peoples as may be established. It follows as a corollary that there should be a systematic education of the people in foreign affairs. Popular ignorance would nullify any advantage which accrued from the democratisation of the control and the conduct of international business. For the control and conduct would under such conditions pass back into the hands of specialists and experts and interested parties. This popular education does not fail to be considered in detail at this point. But it
- 37. may be questioned whether it can be effectively sustained unless in some form or another foreign relations can be made a permanent issue of domestic politics. Perhaps we may come to the point of instituting the popular election of the persons in whom the responsibility of foreign business shall be vested. At the present time it is only rarely, and then but in a subordinate way, that questions of foreign policy enter into the issues of an election; and until some means is devised of educating the public mind in the subject-matter of foreign relations, this condition will continue.
- 38. V It is, however, likely that the force of circumstances may expedite this process of education. The articles of the coming peace are guaranteed to contain a provision for general disarmament; and so far as Europe is concerned, this will be a work of necessity and not of supererogation. Professor Delbrück, for instance, has come to acknowledge that the “derided notions” of disarmament, hitherto “entertained only by persons of no account,” are likely to be raised to “the position of the ruling principle of our time.”[49] His conversion is due to the fact that the war will leave the belligerents of Europe in a financial position which will not only make the increase of armaments impossible, but will require the very drastic reduction of their military establishments. The only danger to the process of disarmament lies in the circumstance that two of the belligerent powers, the United States and Japan, have been so little crippled by the war that they are in a position and may get into the mood to maintain large armaments. It is useless to obscure from ourselves the further circumstance that these two powers that are in a position to afford large military establishments look upon one another with a considerable measure of suspicion despite their recent association upon the same side in the war, and the formal professions of mutual good-will that have latterly been made. It must be borne in mind that Japan is still mainly dynastic in government and consequently imperialistic in spirit, that its economic development seems to require an expansion of marketing opportunities, and that its over- population will stimulate emigration. In these matters there is plenty of inflammable stuff; and we should be guilty of not facing the facts of the case, did we not perceive that by reason of the attraction which Western America has for the Japanese emigrant, and of the peculiar interest which America has taken in the welfare of China, situations of very great peril may arise between Japan and the
- 39. United States. It is upon such a state of the case that the argument for universal military service in America will be based; and indeed must be based; as it is inconceivable that any American in his senses should apprehend any danger from the other side of the Atlantic. The certain democratisation of Europe and the virtual certainty of the impossibility on financial grounds of any considerable war-like enterprise on the part of the European nations make the contingency of a Transatlantic war unthinkable at the present time, or indeed at any future time. This, of course, pre-supposes that the causes of friction likely to arise from the national underwriting of private foreign investments will be removed by a common understanding that the private ventures of capital abroad are made at its own risk. 49. Prüssische Jahrbucher (November, 1917). The possible strain of the situation between the United States and Japan is, however, already alleviated to some extent by the prospect of a democratic movement in the latter country. Japan can in any case hardly expect to keep its institutions intact if it enters into reciprocal relations with democratic communities. Now, for the first time, a commoner is premier of Japan; and the widespread social discontent is likely to stimulate the tendency to popularise the machinery of government. It is probably too much to expect in the present state of Japanese education, that the veneration in which the dynasty is held will speedily disappear. Yet after the swift and dramatic disappearance of “divine rights” in Germany, it is not wise to assume that historical processes of this type are necessarily slow. Apart, however, from the possible causes of friction between the United States and Japan, there seems to be little insuperable difficulty in reaching an international understanding concerning disarmament.[50] Upon such an understanding, the whole future of the projected League of Nations hangs. The League will be no more than an empty shell if the constituent nations still continue to go about with loaded fire-arms. Yet even if the League itself were not to come into existence immediately the economic necessity of
- 40. disarmament would of itself suffice to change international relationships very profoundly. Reduction in armaments will involve a revolution in foreign policy. For the two things go together. A particular kind of foreign policy requires a corresponding scale of armaments; and the state of a nation’s armaments very materially affects the objects and the tone of its foreign policy. In a word the reduction of armaments would compel the nations in some sort to moralise their mutual relations. The old basis of ambition-cum-fear backed by force will have to be displaced by a practice of plain dealing and mutual understanding. Since the nations cannot afford to fight one another for some time to come, there is nothing for it but that they learn to behave themselves properly toward each other. After a while it is permissible to hope that they would not want to fight each other. 50. This statement does not seem quite so true now as when it was written, in view of the provisions of the Peace Treaty.
- 41. VI But if disarmament is likely to compel a new type of international dealing, it is plain that there must be some kind of international clearing house. We have gone past the stage at which one nation can transact a bargain with another which will not affect the interests of a third party. The shrinkage of the world has thrown the nations too closely together for any of them to suppose that they can determine their policies in isolation and carry them through piece-meal with this one and that, without reference to the rest. Preferential trade agreements, for instance, are not merely an affair of the contrasting parties; they affect all the nations. And it is impossible any longer—in the absence of force majeure—to establish relations of that kind without the consent of the rest of the world. The case for an international clearing house is indeed at this time of day irresistible. Moreover, the immediate stress of the food-situation throughout the world is certain to require some such organ for the co-ordination and the distribution of the available food-supply. It seems likely that the supply of food for the world will be for some years inadequate to the need without careful distribution; and it will require the most careful organisation and rationing of what food there is if the people of some parts of the world are to escape very great and protracted hardship. For this, a clearing house is necessary. Fortunately we have the foundations of this organisation already laid—on the one hand in the machinery of international distribution created by Mr. Hoover, and on the other in Mr. David Lubin’s far-seeing institution of an international bureau for the survey of the world’s grain resources. From a central organisation of this kind the world will need to receive its food for some time to come. Nor is the problem of food the only urgent matter of this kind. There will be presently a very great demand for the raw material of
- 42. industrial production. In the past, raw material has been provided by means of private ventures of all kinds on a competitive basis. Any reversion to such a chaotic and uncoordinated method of providing raw material would be attended by consequences of a most disastrous kind. There would be no guarantee of equitable distribution among the nations; with the result that those unfavourably placed in the matter of capital or credit, would be put in a position of permanent and increasing economic dependence and disability. If the nations now released from ancient tyrannies are to be set upon their feet, it is plain that they must receive supplies of raw material as nearly adequate for their need as possible. Otherwise we may create a number of pauper nations. In addition to this fact, there is also the danger that the private exploitation of the sources of raw material would tend to the subjugation of backward peoples whose lands chanced to be rich in such material. It is an old and a shameful story how the need of civilisation for raw material has led to the laceration and impoverishment of the native population of (say) Africa; and it is necessary that the conscience of the world should refuse to tolerate the system of concessions and the like which made this criminality possible. On both grounds—the need of industrial production among the civilised people, and the rights of the undeveloped peoples—a system of the joint international quest and distribution of raw material is requisite. This international rationing of raw material may seem a drastic and impracticable proposal; but any consideration of its alternatives must drive us to the conclusion that we cannot escape some experiment however inadequate in this direction. In the present state of the world, the balance is so overwhelmingly in favour of the strong nations that any perpetuation of the private and competitive quest of raw materials will simply lead to a struggle of great commercial imperialisms in which the victims will be the weak nations. Just as the unprivileged classes within the nation have been the victims of the great industrial powers, the weaker nations which start with a handicap in the struggle will be disabled in perpetuity and will be squeezed between their stronger neighbours. It is
- 43. difficult to see that the economic dependence and subjection of one nation to another differs appreciably in its consequences to the people at large from that political dependence and subjection to destroy which the European war was undertaken and fought at so terrific a cost.
- 44. VII The necessity and the logic of the case leads us therefore, to expect the creation of an international organisation which shall have certain positive functions in addition to the negative task of mitigating the causes of international friction and the adjustment of differences. The hope of the permanence of the League lies in its positive activities rather than in its purely negative offices. Moreover, the just rationing of food and raw material would of itself so considerably diminish the possibility of international misunderstanding, that we may look to the extension of the positive and integrative functions of the League while the need of purely mediatorial activity would naturally decrease. Nor have we exhausted the matters in which the need of the nations requires action and organisation of a constructive and positive kind. At the present time it is plain that some of the peoples newly liberated are not in a position to conduct their affairs without outside assistance. Palestine, Syria, and Mesopotamia, for instance, must be guided and protected for some time to come; and while the peoples of these countries might choose to be placed under the wing of one or other of the existing “great” powers, it is not open to argument that such a connection should be under an arrangement which secured the accountability of the protecting power to an international body. If Great Britain becomes foster-mother to Palestine, or France to Syria, the agreement should be so formulated that this relationship is always subject to revision at the hands of the League of Peoples. The case with the native populations in the former German colonies is still more clear. Africa, in especial, has suffered unspeakable things from the imperialistic rivalries of the European nations; and its whole future development is bound up with a guarantee that its territory and its peoples shall be immune from invasion and exploitation at the hands of nations with selfish purposes. This again points to the
- 45. institution of a system of international tutelage and supervision. It goes without saying, of course, that any such international action should consist not only of protection and tutelage, but of education into self-government. The question as to the mode in which this international supervision should be exercised is secondary. The proposal that it should be made effective by means of international commissions is met with the objection that international commissions have proved to be a failure in practice. In some cases this is doubtless true; but it is not the whole truth. The Danube Commission and the Postal Union furnish examples of successful management by international commission. But there is no need to mix up the question of international supervision with the method of rendering it effective. There appears to be no inconsistency in maintaining that the method of international commission would be most fruitful in some instances, while the method of devolving the work upon a single nation suitably placed for doing it would be more advantageous in other cases. In those instances, where a weak or backward people is capable of appreciating the alternatives, there is no reason why the choice should not be left to the people themselves. One of the further consequences of the contraction of the world is that health has become an international question. The days when a plague could be confined to a city are over.[51] The recent spread of the so-called “Spanish” influenza is an instance which proves how indissolubly bound together the world has come to be. And the system of national quarantines has to be superseded by an international organ for the localisation and the extirpation of diseases which like the bubonic and the pneumonic plagues are capable of easy and destructive diffusion; and for the removal of those conditions of filth and insanitation in any part of the world to which these scourges owe their origin. It is likely, moreover, that the great increase in pulmonary and venereal diseases as by-products of the war require international handling if their worst consequences are to be averted.
- 46. 51. If, indeed, there ever were any such days. In 1665, the Great Plague was brought from London to Eyam, a little Derbyshire town, in a parcel of cloth consigned to the local tailor! It will also belong to the proposed international body to oversee and improve the facilities for travel and transport. Obviously this is largely a question of keeping the seas an open highway for traffic. The phrase “the freedom of the seas” has a special connotation in current discussions which is apt to obscure the real point at issue. The claim made by the German Government for the establishment of the “freedom of the seas” seemed and was intended to imply that British naval supremacy had constituted a hindrance to sea-borne trade in normal times. No one with any historical knowledge would be able to consent to that judgment. British naval supremacy has been in no sense a limitation upon the “freedom of the seas” in times of peace. The seas have always been free in modern times; and so far from its having been restricted by British naval supremacy, a good case may be made out for the contrary view. The safety of the high seas is possibly more connected with the efficiency of the British navy than a superficial judgment might allow. The freedom of the seas only comes in question in war time; and if we are minded to eliminate war from the world the whole problem loses its relevancy anyhow, except in so far that some measure of police surveillance may continue to be necessary. In the meantime it should be remembered that the insular position of Great Britain has created the necessity in past times for a strong navy in order to secure the freedom of the seas for its own commerce; but it is not to be maintained for a moment that it has in recent times used its supremacy to limit the freedom of other commerce. Even if the policing of the high seas should be placed by the international authority in the hands of Great Britain, its past record shows that it may be trusted; and in any case its own interest in the free and unimpeded passage of commerce upon the seas is a guarantee that it would discharge its office effectually. Still, it is probably not desirable that the control of the seas should be devolved upon a single power. The universal interests of the
- 47. nations in the franchise of the ocean highways make it necessary that their protection be an international obligation. This part of the problem should, however, present no insuperable difficulty. In practice the high seas are to all intents and purposes already neutralised. Our difficulties arise when we come to the question of narrow inter-ocean waterways. The most conspicuous, though perhaps not the most important, case of this type, is the water connecting the Black and the Ægean Seas; and the obvious solution lies in the permanent neutralisation of the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmora and the Dardanelles. There is no difficulty involved in the institution of an international commission to carry this project into effect. This particular outlet affects so many nations that it is intolerable that it should remain the particular property of a single nation; and the only possible alternative is this of neutralisation under international commission. The straits of Gibraltar present a different though a no more difficult problem. With the development of modern ordnance, the military and political importance of the Rock of Gibraltar has virtually disappeared; and its value is chiefly that of a naval base and coaling station. It is difficult to see what purpose under modern conditions the retention of a kind of British sovereignty in the Straits serves. In the days when the route to India had to be protected, it was of course another story; and there is really no reason why the Straits of Gibraltar—as well as all other narrow waterways—should not be neutralised in perpetuity under international guarantee. The experience of the present war in the matter of submarine attacks on merchant ships in the Mediterranean showed how ineffectual any guardianship of the Straits is likely to be in the future; and the same thing is true of all waterways which are not sufficiently narrow to be swiftly barred against entrance by submarine craft. The most thorny part of this problem lies in the question of the two great inter-ocean canals, Suez and Panama. These two passages are now held by single powers though they are governed in such a way as to give virtual equality of use to the seacraft of all nations. Apart from the profits which accrue to the possessing
- 48. nations from the charges upon traffic, it is difficult to see what advantage the arrangement possesses. It is in the interest of the possessing nations to encourage the general use of the canals, so much so, indeed, that it has been found expedient by the United States to renounce the idea of preferential treatment to its own shipping in the Panama Canal. Probably not much would be immediately gained by the neutralisation of these canals, though it is likely that the pressure of circumstances may lead to such an event at a later time. Nevertheless, any international authority would find it necessary to secure that craft of all nations should have free and equal access to the canals at all times. But the facilitation of international traffic is not an affair of the water only. It is no less essential that the great trunk railroads should be effectually co-ordinated. The British project of an “all-red route” round the world is an instance of the kind of co-ordination that is required. The Interstate Railroad Commission of the United States supplies the idea at another angle. The convenient international transport of persons and commodities, the regulation of time-schedules, of fares and freights, is surely part of the subject matter of a League of Nations. It has long been seen that the roads of a nation are its arteries and veins; and the provision of cheap and easy transit for persons and things may well become one of the most potent factors in the cohesive energy of a League of Nations. Enough has already been said upon the conditions of international trade which are requisite to the project of a League of Peoples. Invidious protective tariffs, “favoured nation” clauses, preferential arrangements of any kind must work injuriously to the process of integration. That these devices are also injurious to the nations which utilise them is of less moment to us at this point than their effect in creating rivalry and antagonism. To secure a genuine and universal reciprocity in trade should be one of the aims of the league, as it will also be one of the primary conditions of its consolidation and growth.
- 49. VIII But may not this concentration of authority in the hands of an international body create a kind of super-state? In any case this danger is very remote at the present time; but it is no less necessary that at its inception conditions should be agreed upon which will safeguard it from such a tendency. This might be done in one of two ways. It might, for instance, be ordained that the machinery of the League should not be unitary, but that the commissions requisite for various purposes should be independently appointed by the contracting nations and derive their mandate directly from them; and in the event of overlapping, the commissions concerned might adjust the matter by joint session. The other alternative is that there should be a supreme international authority, but that it should be subject to a “Barrier Act.”[52] This would provide that the power and the enactments of the authority should be perpetually subject to the revision of the contracting parties; and it would be impossible for the international body to take any material step outside the limits of its mandate and consequently to extend its sphere of authority without the general consent of the nations concerned. Perhaps both these conditions are necessary—the direct appointment of commissions and the Barrier Act; and in any case a general agreement should be reached beforehand as to the limits and nature of the functions to be vested in the international body. It is plain, of course, that in any event the League must stand upon consent. It will be a voluntary association of free peoples; and its maintenance will depend upon the impossibility of its ever accruing any authority sufficient to prevent the withdrawal of any nation which might be so minded. It is questionable whether once the League had come into operation, any nation could afford to withdraw; but no power should be veiled in it to coerce a nation to remain in the League against its will. The basis
- 50. of free and voluntary association is the only guarantee of genuine and fruitful solidarity. 52. The Barrier Act was a Presbyterian device against hasty innovation. “Every proposal which contemplates a material change in the constitution of the Church or in its laws respecting doctrine, discipline, government, or worship, after being considered and accepted by the Synod, must be sent down to Presbyteries for their approval or disapproval, before it can become the law of the Church.” (The Book of Order of the Presbyterian Church of England, p. 50.) Just so, the Federal Amendment to the Constitution of the United States relative to prohibition had to be referred to the several states for endorsement before final ratification. This, however, raises the question of whether the League should be armed with powers to enforce its decisions. That it should be endowed with a definite judicial authority goes without saying; but is it to be supported by a police organisation? In the present state of opinion it appears likely that some kind of international police force will be attached to the League; but there are some reasons for doubting whether such a provision is necessary or likely to be useful. In this connection the interesting point has been raised that the Constitution of the United States established a court to adjudicate upon disputes between the States, with no provision of force to compel a State to accept the Court’s decision, but depending upon public opinion alone to validate the judgment. Had there been any attempt on the part of those who framed the Constitution to invest the federal authority with power to coerce a recalcitrant state, it is likely that the Union would never have come into existence; but the Union was founded and survived despite the absence of coercive sanctions, and the venture of faith has been vindicated by the growth and unity of the American people.[53] There is a real danger lest the institution of a police force at the disposal of the League might prove a disruptive factor; and the question should be carefully canvassed before a decision is reached. In any case it is safe to say that it should be the business of the League to work towards the ultimate elimination of coercive sanctions. 53. Technically, in the Civil War, force was used to prevent the secession of the South; but what the North really fought for was the abolition of slavery.
- 51. But meantime is there any method by which the League could effectually deal with recalcitrant nations other than direct physical compulsion? A good deal has been said about the use of economic boycott; but it requires some casuistry to distinguish successfully between military coercion and economic boycott. Certainly in intention both devices come within the same category, and in result they may work out in curiously identical fashion. Constraint by starvation bears in effect a strong family resemblance to constraint by destructive force majeure. At the same time it is evident that a nation which chooses to put itself “in contumaciam” must in some way or another pay the penalty of its offence. The Bank Clearing House deals with an offending and impenitent member by the simple process of exclusion. In the League of Nations, a nation in the same position should be dealt with in the same fashion; it should understand that its persistency in the offending attitude carries with it exclusion from the comity of nations. It should, that is, be compelled to accept the responsibility of imposing the punishment upon itself. It has put itself outside the pale; and no injustice is involved in accepting its deed at its obvious face value and letting it remain where it has chosen to place itself until such time as it elects to think better of its action. It is doubtful whether any constituent nation would think it worth while to indulge in a contumacy which automatically led to excommunication. It would take us too far afield from our purpose to discuss the details of the organisation required by a League of Nations. Questions of constitution and representation, the problems involved in the adhesion to the League of vast composite aggregates like the British Empire, and of the place of some of the minute independent states that still remain in the world,—these and many more matters will have to be faced in the institution of the League. Here, however, it has been our business merely to point out that some such device as a League of Peoples is entirely necessary to the further development of the democratic principle, and to pass in brief review certain of the conditions which the League must satisfy, and certain of the functions it must assume, if it is to be consistent with and
- 52. helpful to the realisation of the ideal of democracy. A League to enforce peace may be no more than the Holy Alliance redivivus, an unholy alliance in defence of the status quo.[54] What is needed is a League to guarantee freedom and to promote fellowship, and given such a League peace will largely look after itself. It is not sufficiently recognised that to make peace an object in itself is to condemn the world to virtual stagnation. The only peace, like the only happiness which is permanent, is that which is a bye-product. Permanent peace will come from a voluntary association of peoples co-operating on a basis of reciprocity; and such a consummation is not so far off as it would at fist sight appear. The reciprocity which has been established between the Allied peoples in the war will have to be continued long after the war. Their needs are so vast that they will only escape death and want by close co-operation. Moreover, the agreement of the Allies reported in the press as these pages are written to send food to their late enemies, is an asset of the utmost importance to the creation of the League. And once the League is properly afoot, we may live in the hope of the day which William Blake foretold: “In my exchanges, every land shall walk, And mine in every land; Mutual shall build Jerusalem, Both heart in heart, and hand in hand.” 54. It is hardly possible to resist the remark at this point that the League as fashioned in Paris bears a strong family likeness to the Holy Alliance, and so far behaves uncommonly like it,—e.g., towards Russia and Hungary.