第44章 Chapter 7(2)

Meanwhile， abroad， the gentlemen of the old school who direct the affairs of the nations are laying down the lines on which peace is to be established and maintained， with a painstaking regard for all those national pretensions and discriminations that have always made for international embroilment， and with an equally painstaking disregard for all those exigencies of the new order that call for a de facto observance of the rule of Live and Let Live. It is notorious beyond need of specification that the new order in industry， even more insistently than any industrial situation that has gone before， calls for a wide and free intercourse in trade and industry， regardless of national frontiers and national jealousies. In this connection a national frontier， as it is commonly made use of in current statecraft， is a line of demarkation for working at cross-purposes， for mutual obstruction and distrust， it is only necessary to recall that the erection of a new national frontier across any community which has previously enjoyed the privilege of free intercourse unburdened with customs frontiers will be felt to be a grievous burden； and that the erection of such a line of demarkation for other diplomatic work at mutual cross-purposes is likewise an unmistakable nuisance.

Yet， in the peace negotiations now going forward the gentlemen of the old school to whom the affairs of the nations have been "entrusted" -- by shrewd management on their own part -- continue to safeguard all this apparatus of mutual defeat and distrust， -- and indeed this is the chief or sole object of their solicitude， as it also is the chief or sole object of those vested interests for whose benefit the diplomatic gentlemen of the old school continue to manage the affairs of the nations.

The state of the case is plainly to be seen in the proposals of those nationalities that are now coming forward with a new claim to national self-determination， invariably any examination of the bill of particulars set up by the spokesmen of these proposed new national establishments will show that the material point of it all is an endeavor to set up a national apparatus for working at mutual cross-purposes with their neighbors， to add something to the waste and confusion caused by the national discriminations already in force， to violate the rule of Live and Let Live at some new point and by some further apparatus of discomfort.

There are nationalities that get along well enough， to all appearance， without being "nations" in that militant and obstructive fashion that is aimed at in these projected creations of the diplomatic nation-makers. Such are the Welsh and the Scotch， for instance. But it is not the object-lesson of Welsh or Scottish experience that guides the new projects. The nationalities which are now escaping from a rapacious imperialism of the old order are being organized and managed by the safe and sane gentlemen of the old school， who have got their notions of safety and sanity from the diplomatic intrigue of that outworn imperialism out of which these oppressed nationalities aim to escape. And these gentlemen of the old school are making no move in the direction of tolerance and good will -- as how should they when all their conceptions of what is right and expedient are the diplomatic preconceptions of the old regime. They， being gentlemen of the old school， will have none of that amicable and unassuming nationality which contents the Welsh and the Scotch who have tried out this matter and have in the end come to hold fast only so much of their national pretensions as will do no material harm. What is aimed at is not a disallowance of bootless national jealousies， but only a shift from an intolerable imperialism on a large scale to an ersatz-imperialism drawn on a smaller scale， conducted on the same general lines of competitive diplomacy and serving interests of the same general kind --

vested interests of business or of privilege.

The projected new nations are not patterned on the Welsh or the Scottish model， but for all that there is nothing novel in their design； and how should there be when they are the offspring of the imagination of these safe and sane gentlemen of the old school fertilised with the ancient conceptions of imperialistic diplomacy and national prestige？ In effect it is all drawn to the scale and pattern already made notorious by the Balkan states. It should also be safe to presume that the place and value of these newly emerging nations in the comity of peoples under the prospective r間ime of provisional peace will be something not notably different from what the Balkan states have habitually placed on view； which may be deprecated by many well-meaning persons， but which is scarcely to be undone by well-wishing. The chances of war and politics have thrown the fortunes of these projected new nations into the hands of these politic gentlemen of the old school， and by force of inveterate habit these very practical persons are unable to conceive that anything else than a Balkan state is fit to take the place of that imperial rule that has now fallen into decay. So Balkan-state national establishments appear to be the best there is in prospect in the new world of safe democracy.