A joint meeting of the Parliamentary Committee of the Trade Union
Congress, the Executive of the Labour Party, and the Cooperative
Parliamentary Representation Committee yesterday afternoon
issued the following statement:
We warmly welcome President Wilson’s authoritative declaration of
Allied war aims. Within the last few days the whole
international situation has been transformed, first by
the speech of the Prime Minister to the Conference of
Trade Congress Delegates, and secondly by the great
pronouncement of President Wilson. The moral quality and breadth of
vision exhibited in the latter’s address to Congress are
particularly evident in the declaration that the peace
negotiations, when they begin, must be absolutely open
and that they shall involve or sanction no secret
understanding of any kind. This is the only kind of
diplomacy that the democracies of the world can
tolerate. Humanity has had to pay dearly for the secret
covenants entered into by governments, and we rejoice
that Mr. Wilson
has so decisively proclaimed the democratic doctrine of
open diplomacy. The leaders of revolutionary Russia, as
Mr. Wilson
recognizes,
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have
initiated new methods of diplomacy, the results of which
are apparent not only in the knowledge we have of the
negotiations at Brest-Litovsk, but in Mr. Wilson’s frank approval
of the claim that the Russian representatives have acted
wisely and justly in insisting upon the conference being
held with open doors and with the whole world as
audience.1
British Labour will also welcome very heartily Mr.
Wilson’s
expression of sympathy with Russia’s agonized effort to
achieve full freedom. He has responded, as we believed
he would, to Russia’s appeal for countenance and support
by earnest affirmation of the heartfelt desire and hope
that some way may be open by which we may be privileged
to assist the people of Russia to attain their utmost
hope of liberty and ordered peace. Let us take care that
this message reaches the ears of Russia. The British
democracy desires nothing more earnestly than that the
Russian democracy shall be convinced that the whole of
the Allies are with them in their struggle for peace and
freedom, and in their effort to conserve the beneficent
fruits of the Revolution. In our judgment, these two
declarations of President Wilson, in favour of open diplomacy and
support of revolutionary Russia, will make the Congress
speech one of the classic utterances or Allied
statesmanship during the war. In the detailed programme
of world peace outlined by Mr. Wilson we find no point
upon which there is likely to be any disagreement among
the Allied democracies.
The reference to the “freedom of the seas” is to be
welcomed on the ground of its lucidity and breadth of
definition. It embodies the doctrine of freedom of
navigation both in peace and war, except so far as it
may be necessary to close the seas in whole or in part
by international action for the purpose of enforcing
international obligations violated by any nation. With
that interpretation of the doctrine of the freedom of
the seas, to which the Central Powers attach so much
importance, we all freely agree; and the Central Powers
cannot challenge it, if, indeed, they are sincere in
their repudiation of aggressive intentions. No other
formula that we have seen meets so fully the stipulation
that an island power like Great Britain is bound to make
to ensure its safety and that of the Empire in time of
war. It seems to us to be a natural corollary to the
League of Nations that freedom of navigation must be
denied to any nation that violates international
covenants for the maintenance of peace.
We welcome, too, President Wilson’s assertion of the moral issues
involved in the claim that Belgium must be evacuated and
restored. No other single act, as he justly says, will
do more to restore confidence among the nations in the
integrity and sanctity of treaties and the obligations
resting upon all nations, individually and severally, to
maintain inviolate the principles of international law.
Mr. Wilson’s
pronouncement in favour of equality of trade conditions
among all the nations consenting to the peace, and the
abolition of economic barriers, is a step in the
direction of universal free trade, which Cobden insisted
was a necessary condition of universal peace.
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Russia, in the midst of negotiations which at the moment
seem to be a menace to the integrity of her national
patrimony, will be strengthened by Mr. Wilson’s demand that
Russian territory must be evacuated, and all questions
affecting her must be settled in a manner that will
ensure her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity
to determine her political development, and a sincere
welcome into the society of free nations. That is the
test of the full faith of governments in democratic
principles—that they will be willing and eager to
recognize the fact of, and the effect of, the Russian
Revolution, and be ready to give her every kind of help
she needs to consolidate the Revolution and to establish
a true democratic self-government in accordance with her
own peculiar genius for freedom.
Finally we may say in a sentence that President Wilson’s programme is in
essential respects so similar to that which the British
Labour Party has put forward that we need not discuss
any point of difference in detail. The spirit of this
historical utterance is a spirit to which democracy all
over the world can respond, and if it reaches the people
of the Central Powers we believe it will reinvigorate
the popular movement towards peace in those countries
now under the yoke of Prussian military autocracy, and
give their demand for peace a weight and authority that
cannot be denied. In fact, we may say that peace
negotiations have now begun, and that the world waits
for the proof that the Central Powers are sincere in
their desire to carry them to a conclusion which will be
acceptable to the peoples of the world.
The statement is signed by Mr. C. W.
Bowerman, secretary of the Parliamentary
Committee, Trades Union Congress; Mr. Arthur Henderson, for the National Executive of
the Labour Party; and Mr. H. J. May,
secretary of the Cooperative Parliamentary Representation
Committee.
