How do we know that these difficulties are doctrinaire ones? It is the British Empire which supplies the answer. The British Empire is made up in large part of practically independent States, and Great Britain not only exercises no control over their acts, but has surrendered in advance any intention of employing force concerning them.103 The British States have disagreements among themselves. They may or may not refer their differences to the British Government, but if they do, is Great Britain going to send an army to Canada, say, to enforce her judgment? Everyone knows that that is impossible. Even when one State commits what is in reality a serious breach of international comity on another, not only does Great Britain refrain from using force herself, but so far as she interferes at all, it is to prevent the employment of physical force. For years now British Indians have been subjected to most cruel and unjust treatment in the State of Natal.104 The British Government makes no secret of the fact that she regards this treatment as unjust and cruel; were Natal a foreign State, it is conceivable that she would employ force, but, following the principle laid down by Sir C. P. Lucas, “whether they are right or whether they are wrong, more perhaps when they are wrong than when they are right, they cannot be made amenable by force,” the two States are left to adjust the difficulty as best they may, without resort to force. In the last resort the British Empire reposes upon the expectation that its Colonies will behave as civilized communities, and in the long run the expectation is, of course, a well-founded one, because, if they do not so behave, retribution will come more surely by the ordinary operation of social and economic forces than it could come by any force of arms.
The case of the British Empire is not an isolated one. The fact is that most of the States of the world maintain their relations one with another without any possibility of a resort to force; half the States of the world have no means of enforcing by arms such wrongs as they may suffer at the hands of other States. Thousands of Englishmen, for instance, make their homes in Switzerland, and it has happened that wrongs have been suffered by Englishmen at the hands of the Swiss Government. Would, however, the relations between the two States, or the practical standard of protection of British subjects in Switzerland, be any the better were Switzerland the whole time threatened by the might of Great Britain? Switzerland knows that she is practically free from the possibility of the exercise of that force, but this has not prevented her from behaving as a civilized community towards British subjects.
What is the real guarantee of the good behavior of one State to another? It is the elaborate interdependence which, not only in the economic sense, but in every sense, makes an unwarrantable aggression of one State upon another react upon the interests of the aggressor. Switzerland has every interest in affording an absolutely secure asylum to British subjects; that fact, and not the might of the British Empire, gives protection to British subjects in Switzerland. Where, indeed, the British subject has to depend upon the force of his Government for protection it is a very frail protection indeed, because in practice the use of that force is so cumbersome, so difficult, so costly, that any other means are to be preferred to it. When the traveller in Greece had to depend upon British arms, great as was relatively the force of those arms, it proved but a very frail protection. In the same way, when physical force was used to impose on the South American and Central American States the observance of their financial obligations, such efforts failed utterly and miserably—so miserably that Great Britain finally surrendered any attempt at such enforcement. What other means have succeeded? The bringing of those countries under the influence of the great economic currents of our time, so that now property is infinitely more secure in Argentina than it was when British gunboats were bombarding her ports. More and more in international relationship is the purely economic motive—and the economic motive is only one of several possible ones—being employed to replace the use of physical force. Austria, the other day, was untouched by any threat of the employment of the Turkish army when the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina was consummated, but when the Turkish population enforced a very successful commercial boycott of Austrian goods and Austrian ships, Austrian merchants and public opinion made it quickly plain to the Austrian Government that pressure of this nature could not be disregarded.
I anticipate the plea that while the elaborate interconnection of economic relations renders the employment of force as between nations unnecessary in so far
