THE TREND OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS .sx SINCE THE WAR .sx By ARNOLD J. TOYNBEE .sx WHEN we try to survey the course of international affairs during the twelve years and more that have elapsed since the Armistice of 1918 we are apt to be bewildered at first sight by the multitude and complexity of the tendencies which we perceive .sx Yet , on reflection , we may find ourselves able to gather up the manifold tendencies in a single formula .sx The formula which I would suggest for your consideration is this :sx In the " post-War " period the principal tendency in international affairs has been the tendency of all human affairs to become international .sx Expressed in these bald terms , my formula perhaps strikes you as an exaggeration .sx Let me put it to the test by very briefly considering the facts .sx And let us distinguish between one set of facts and another .sx Let us take our stand first on the economic plane , then on the political , and then on the cultural , and examine in succession the facts that present themselves to our vision on each of these horizons .sx I start from the economic plane because here my formula is a truism .sx On the economic plane , the tendency for all affairs to become international affairs has not declared itself since the Armistice for the first time .sx It was well established long before the War .sx It goes back to the Industrial Revolution , which .sx made the whole world a market for our Western manufactures .sx And it goes even further back than that , to the voyages of discovery which turned all the navigable seas on the face of the planet into highways for our Western carrying-trade .sx Really , the present economic unification of the world was implicit in the first circumnavigation of the globe , more than four centuries ago , by Western navigators .sx But this process of unification has proceeded at a very different pace on our three different planes of social activity .sx Consider the situation at the outbreak of war in 1914 .sx At that moment , when the economic unification of the world was well within sight , its political unification had not yet begun .sx Economically , the world in 1914 was already displaying the lineaments of a single great cooperative society .sx Politically , the world of 1914 was still in that state of anarchy into which Western Christendom had fallen at the end of the Middle Ages , after the politico-religious unity which had been created and maintained by the mediaeval Western Church had broken down .sx During the intervening four or five centuries , practically nothing had been done to fill the fearful void which the break-up of mediaeval Western Christendom had left behind .sx And the situation had become much more serious , because the area of the anarchy had spread .sx The Western Christendom which broke up into a cluster of local sovereign independent states at the close of the Middle Ages occupied only an insignificant portion of the earth's surface and contained only an insignificant fraction of the living generation of mankind .sx If Western Christendom had been wiped off the map - or had wiped itself off the map by internecine warfare-in the year 1414 or in the year 1514 of the Christian era , civilisation could have survived and human progress could have continued .sx But this could no longer be said in 1914 .sx During the intervening four centuries , the economic system of Western Christendom had spread all over the world ; and our Western political anarchy had spread with it - supplanting all the other political anarchies and political orders which had been produced by other societies .sx The wars which our Western anarchy had provoked in its earlier stages had been confined , in their effects , to Western Europe .sx The War of 1914-18 was a world-war , which left no people or country , in any continent , entirely unaffected .sx On the cultural plane , again , in 1914 , the unification which was already an accomplished fact on the economic plane was still in embryo .sx By 1914 the Oriental had become implicated in .sx our Western society in his economic activities .sx He had become accustomed to sell his raw cotton to the Western manufacturer and to buy the Western manufacturer's cotton cloth .sx But this economic intercourse seemed to have had singularly little effect upon the life of the spirit .sx Out of every million Hindus or Chinese who were then exchanging goods and services with the peoples of the West , you could almost count on your fingers the number who had also begun to exchange emotions and perceptions and ideas - who had established an intercourse with Western civilisation in the spiritual domains of religion and art and thought .sx Economically , the Hindu or the Chinese peasant might have become a cog in the great world-compelling Western economic machine .sx Culturally , he apparently remained as much of an Oriental and as little of a Westerner as ever .sx Even the Japanese , who had learnt to spin and weave his own cotton and to build his own battleships , was reported by competent Western observers to have retained almost intact his Japanese soul .sx This , then , in a general way , was the situation on the eve of the War .sx The unification of the world had made remarkable progress on the economic plane , whereas on the political and cultural planes it had scarcely begun .sx The great new development since the War , as I see it , has been this :sx the tendency towards world-unity has not only persisted in the economic life of mankind , but it has also asserted itself - rather suddenly and very powerfully - in our political and cultural life as well .sx An observer from another planet , making a survey of human affairs on this planet before the War , must have been struck by the contrast between the tendency towards world-wide cooperation which was in the ascendant in our economic life and the strangely different conditions which then prevailed on the other two planes of human activity :sx the political anarchy in the relations between States and the spiritual isolation from one another of the heirs to the several great historic cultures which divided the spiritual allegiance of the civilised majority of the human race .sx This contrast pointed to a social disharmony which went to the root of our international troubles and which was one of the deeper causes of the World War itself .sx In the perspective of the past twelve years , we can now see that , since the restoration of peace , this dangerous discrepancy has begun to be attenuated and toned down .sx It is as though people had begun to realise , half-consciously , that mankind could not permanently lead a double life :sx a new-fangled international life on the economic plane and an .sx antiquated parochial life on the political and cultural planes .sx Either our modern economic internationalism has to be sacrificed , or else we must learn to live our political and our cultural life on the modern world-wide scale , which we have achieved in our economic life already .sx Sacrifice our modern economic inter-nationalism !sx Why , that would mean abandoning the industrial system , scrapping machinery and falling back to the economic level of the Middle Ages !sx As soon as we face that alternative , we realise that the destruction of life , wealth and happiness which it would entail would be stupendous .sx If this disaster were to overtake us , it would be by far the greatest calamity on record in human history .sx No human being in his senses could dream of submitting to it deliberately .sx Any human being who has once become even dimly aware of the choice before us is bound to make some exertion in order to avert this alternative by bringing the other alternative to pass .sx The other alternative , of course , is that we should bring our political and our cultural life into harmony with our economic life ; that we should pre-serve our economic internationalism by internationalising our social life through and through , in all its layers .sx It seems as though , since the restoration of peace , people are becoming aware that this thorough-going internationalism is the only alternative to the breakdown of modern civilisation .sx A deter-mined effort to internationalise our political and cultural life , as we have already internationalised our economic life , is surely the key-note of this " post-War " age - a keynote which rings out so clear that it is unmistakable , short though the period of its dominance has been so far .sx Let us examine this " post-War " internationalism , first in the field of politics and then in the field of culture .sx In the field of politics the strength of our effort , since the Armistice , to substitute internationalism for nationalism , world-wide organisation for parochialism , order for anarchy , is surely impressive .sx Without over-estimating our achievement up to date , or under-estimating the amount , or the difficulty , of what still remains to be done , I think we can fairly say that , in these last dozen years , we have made more progress towards overcoming the anarchy in the relations between States than our predecessors made during the previous four centuries .sx The Covenant of the League of Nations , the Multilateral Treaty of Paris for the Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy , the Statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice , the General Act of Arbitration and Conciliation , the .sx Protocol for Financial Assistance to States Victims of Aggression , and the World Disarmament Conference which is to begin its work eight months hence-these are achievements which would have astonished an older generation .sx Indeed , they would have astonished us ourselves in the state of mind in which we grew up before the War .sx If such projects had been foreshadowed to us in our " pre-War " existence , we should have dismissed them , without hesitation , as fantastic suggestions which were quite incapable of being realised in practical politics .sx So much for our successes ; but I dare say you will agree with me in finding even more impressive evidence of our determination in our obstinate refusal to be discouraged by our failures .sx Since our statesmen have had the greater courage not to despair of these failures , we scholars and publicists can assuredly summon up the lesser courage required in order to recall how serious some of these failures and set-backs have been .sx The refusal of the Senate at Washington to ratify the Covenant of the League ; the equally emphatic rebuff which has been given to the League , since the outset , by the Soviet Government ; the abortive Treaty of Mutual Assistance ; the abortive Geneva Protocol for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes ; the failure to bring about the admission of Germany to member-ship in the League of Nations in March 1926 ; the failure of the Three-Power Geneva Naval Conference between the British Empire , Japan and the United States in 1927 ; the failure of France and Italy to come into line with one another and with the three oceanic Naval Powers during the London Naval Conference of 1930 ; the dangerous situation which arose during the concluding session of the Preparatory Commission for the Disarmament Conference last autumn-here is a list of failures as striking as the list of successes which I recited just now .sx In ordinary circumstances-or ( shall I say ?sx ) in " pre-War " circumstances-any one of those failures might have been enough to make the statesmen and the peoples of the world abandon in weariness or disgust or despair this great enterprise of establishing a political world-order .sx The point-and it is a very encouraging point-to which I want to draw your attention is that we , in our generation , have not allowed any of these failures to daunt us .sx In every one of these cases we have persisted in our endeavours until we have achieved in the end what we failed to achieve at the first or the second attempt ; or else we have found some way of circumventing the obstacle which we were unable to surmount .sx To take the most recent example , the troubles which arose .sx during the concluding session of the Preparatory Commission have not deterred us from fixing a date for the World Disarmament Conference .sx I confidently believe that , if the first World Disarmament Conference does not achieve its purpose , we shall call a second , and that , if the second does not succeed , we shall call a third .sx I believe that we shall persist until we have solved not only the special problem of national armaments but the general problem of international anarchy , of which armaments are a symptom .sx