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diff --git a/old/10097-8.txt b/old/10097-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..395c4b2 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/10097-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5340 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Healing of Nations and the Hidden +Sources of Their Strife, by Edward Carpenter + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife + +Author: Edward Carpenter + +Release Date: November 16, 2003 [EBook #10097] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HEALING NATIONS *** + + + + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Dave Morgan and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + +THE HEALING OF NATIONS AND THE HIDDEN SOURCES OF THEIR STRIFE + + +By Edward Carpenter + + +1915 + + + +"_The Tree of Life ... whose leaves are for the Healing of the Nations_" + + + + +CONTENTS + + I. INTRODUCTORY + + II. WAR-MADNESS + + III. THE ROOTS OF THE GREAT WAR + + IV. THE CASE AGAINST GERMANY + + V. THE CASE FOR GERMANY + + VI. THE HEALING OF NATIONS + + VII. PATRIOTISM AND INTERNATIONALISM + + VIII. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR AND RECRUITING + + IX. CONSCRIPTION + + X. HOW SHALL THE PLAGUE BE STAYED? + + XI. COMMERCIAL PROSPERITY THE PROSPERITY OF A CLASS + + XII. COLONIES AND SEAPORTS + + XIII. WAR AND THE SEX IMPULSE + + XIV. THE OVER-POPULATION SCARE + + XV. THE FRIENDLY AND THE FIGHTING INSTINCTS + + XVI. NEVER AGAIN! + + XVII. THE TREE OF LIFE + + APPENDIX-- + + A New and Better Peace + + The Change from the Old Germany to the New + + Classes in Germany for and against the War + + Political Ignorance + + Purpose of the War: Max Harden + + England's Perfidy: Professors Haeckel and Eucken + + Manifesto of Professor Eucken + + Nietzsche on Disarmament + + The Effect of Disarmament + + The Principle of Nationality: Winston Churchill + + Conscription + + Neutralization of the Sea: H.G. Wells + + The War and Democracy: Arnold Bennett + + The Future Settlement: G. Lowes Dickinson + + Brutality of Warfare: H.M. Tomlinson + + Patriotism: Romain Rolland + + No Patriotism in Business! + + Manifesto, Independent Labour Party + + Responsibility of the whole Capitalist Class + + Text of Karl Liebknecht's Protest in Reichstag + + The Russian Danger + + Letter on Russia by P. Kropotkin + + On the Future of Europe, by the same + + Servia: R.W. Seton-Watson + + The Battlefield: Walt Whitman + + Chinese Christians on the War: Dr. A. Salter + + Essential Friendliness of Peoples + + Reconciliation in Death + + Christmas at the Front, 1914 + + Letter from the Trenches by Baron Marschall von Bieberstein + + + + +I + + +INTRODUCTORY + +The following Studies and Notes, made during the earlier period of the +present war and now collected together for publication, do not--as will +be evident to the reader--pretend to any sort of completeness in their +embrace of the subject, or finality in its presentation. Rather they are +scattered thoughts suggested by the large and tangled drama which we are +witnessing; and I am sufficiently conscious that their expression +involves contradictions as well as repetitions. + +The truth is that affairs of this kind--like all the _great_ issues of +human life, Love, Politics, Religion, and so forth, do not, at their +best, admit of final dispatch in definite views and phrases. They are +too vast and complex for that. It is, indeed, quite probable that such +things cannot be adequately represented or put before the human mind +_without_ logical inconsistencies and contradictions. But (perhaps for +that very reason) they are the subjects of the most violent and dogmatic +differences of opinion. Nothing people quarrel about more bitterly than +Politics--unless it be Religion: both being subjects of which all that +one can really say for certain is--that nobody understands them. + +When, as in the present war, a dozen or more nations enter into conflict +and hurl at each other accusations of the angriest sort (often quite +genuinely made and yet absolutely irreconcilable one with another), and +when on the top of that scores and hundreds of writers profess to +explain the resulting situation in a few brief phrases (but +unfortunately their explanations are all different), and calmly affix +the blame on "Russia" or "Germany" or "France" or "England"--just as if +these names represented certain responsible individuals, supposed for +the purposes of the argument to be of very wily and far-scheming +disposition--whereas it is perfectly well known that they really +represent most complex whirlpools of political forces, in which the +merest accidents (as whether two members of a Cabinet have quarrelled, +or an Ambassador's dinner has disagreed with him) may result in a long +and fatal train of consequences--it becomes obvious that all so-called +"explanations" (though it may be right that they should be attempted) +fall infinitely short, of the reality.[1] + +Feeling thus the impossibility of dealing at all adequately with the +present situation, I have preferred to take here and there just an +aspect of it for consideration, with a view especially to the +differences between Germany and England. I have thought that instead of +spending time over recriminations one might be on safer ground by +trying to get at the root-causes of this war (and other wars), thus +making one's conclusions to some degree independent of a multitude of +details and accidents, most of which must for ever remain unknown to us. + +There are in general four rather well-marked species of wars--Religious +wars, Race wars, wars of Ambition and Conquest, and wars of Acquisition +and Profit--though in any particular case the four species may be more +or less mingled. The religious and the race motives often go together; +but in modern times on the whole (and happily) the religious motive is +not so very dominant. Wars of race, of ambition, and of acquisition are, +however, still common enough. Yet it is noticeable, as I frequently have +occasion to remark in the following papers, that it only very rarely +happens that any of these wars are started or set in motion by the +mass-peoples themselves. The mass-peoples, at any rate of the more +modern nations, are quiescent, peaceable, and disinclined for strife. +Why, then, do wars occur? It is because the urge to war comes, not from +the masses of a nation but from certain classes within it. In every +nation, since the dawn of history, there have been found, beside the +toiling masses, three great main cliques or classes, the Religious, the +Military, and the Commercial. It was so in far-back ancient India; it is +so now. Each of these classes endeavours in its turn--as one might +expect--to become the ruling class and to run the government of the +nation. The governments of the nations thus become class-governments. +And it is one or another of these classes that for reasons of its own, +alone or in combination with another class, foments war and sets it +going. + +In saying this I do not by any means wish to say anything against the +mere existence of Class, in itself. In a sense that is a perfectly +natural thing. There _are_ different divisions of human activity, and it +is quite natural that those individuals whose temperament calls them to +a certain activity--literary or religious or mercantile or military or +what not--should range themselves together in a caste or class; just as +the different functions of the human body range themselves in definite +organs. And such grouping in classes may be perfectly healthy _provided +the class so created subordinates itself to the welfare of the Nation_. +But if the class does _not_ subordinate itself to the general welfare, +if it pursues its own ends, usurps governmental power, and dominates the +nation for its own uses--if it becomes parasitical, in fact--then it and +the nation inevitably become diseased; as inevitably as the human body +becomes diseased when its organs, instead of supplying the body's needs, +become the tyrants and parasites of the whole system. + +It is this Class-disease which in the main drags the nations into the +horrors and follies of war. And the horrors and follies of war are the +working out and expulsion on the surface of evils which have long been +festering within. How many times in the history of "civilization" has a +bigoted religious clique, or a swollen-headed military clique, or a +greedy commercial gang--caring not one jot for the welfare of the people +committed to its charge--dragged them into a senseless and ruinous war +for the satisfaction of its own supposed interests! It is here and in +this direction (which searches deeper than the mere weighing and +balancing of Foreign policies and Diplomacies) that we must look for the +"explanation" of the wars of to-day. + +And even race wars--which at first sight seem to have little to do with +the Class trouble--illustrate the truth of my contention. For they +almost always arise from the hatred generated in a nation by an alien +class establishing itself in the midst of that nation--establishing +itself, maybe, as a governmental or dominant class (generally a military +or landlord clique) or maybe as a parasitical or competing class (as in +the case of the Jews in Europe and the Japanese in America and so +forth). They arise, like all other wars, from the existence of a class +within the nation which is not really in accord with the people of that +nation, but is pursuing its own interests apart from theirs. In the +second of the following papers, "The Roots of the Great War," I have +drawn attention to the influence of the military and commercial classes, +especially in Germany, and the way in which their policy, coming into +conflict with a similar policy in the other Western nations, has +inevitably led to the present embroilment. In Eastern Europe similar +causes are at work, but there the race elements--and even the +religious--constitute a more important factor in the problem. + +By a curious fatality Germany has become the centre of this great war +and world-movement, which is undoubtedly destined--as the Germans +themselves think, though in a way quite other than they think--to be of +vast importance, and the beginning of a new era in human evolution. And +the more one considers Germany's part in the affair, the more one sees, +I think, that from the combined influence of her historical antecedents +and her national psychology this fatality was to be expected. In roughly +putting together these antecedent elements and influences, I have +entitled the chapter "The Case _for_ Germany," because on the principle +of _tout comprendre_ the fact of the evolution being inevitable +constitutes her justification. The nations cannot fairly complain of her +having moved along a line which for a century or more has been slowly +and irresistibly prepared for her. On the other hand, the nations do +complain of the manner and the methods with which at the last she has +precipitated and conducted the war--as indeed they have shown by so +widely combining against her. However right, from the point of view of +destiny and necessity, Germany may be, she has apparently from the point +of view of the moment put herself in the wrong. And the chapter dealing +with this phase of the question I have called "The Case _against_ +Germany." + +Whatever further complications and postponements may arise, there will +certainly come a time of recovery and reconstruction on a wide and +extended scale over Europe and a large part of the world. To even +outline this period would be impossible at present; but in the sixth +chapter and the last, as well as in the intermediate pieces, I have +given some suggestions towards this future Healing of the Nations. + + * * * * * + +The Evil--huge and monstrous as it is--is not senseless, one may feel +sure. Even now here in England one perceives an extraordinary pulling +together and bracing up of the people, a development of solidarity and +mutual helpfulness, a greater seriousness, and a disregarding of +artificialities, which are all to the good. These things are gains, even +though the way of their manifestation be through much of enmity and +ignorance. And one may fairly suppose that similar results are traceable +in the other nations concerned. Wounds and death may seem senseless and +needless, but those who suffer them do not suffer in vain. All these +shattering experiences, whether in a nation's career or in the career of +an individual, cause one--they force one--to look into the bases of life +and to get nearer its realities. If, in this case, the experiences of +the war, and the fire which the nations are passing through, serve to +destroy and burn up much of falsity in their respective habits and +institutions, we shall have to admit that the attendant disasters have +not been all loss--even though at the same time we admit that if we had +had a grain of sense we might have mended our falsities in far more +economical and sensible fashion. + +If in the following pages--chiefly concerned as they are with Germany +and England--I have seemed to find fault with either party or to affix +blame on one or the other, it is not necessary to suppose that one +harbours ill-feeling towards either, or that one fails to recognize the +splendid devotion of both the combatants. Two nations so closely related +as the Germans and the English cannot really be so hopelessly different +in temperament and character; and a great deal of the supposed +difference is obviously artificial and class-made for the occasion. +Still, there _are_ differences; and as we both think we are right, and +as we are unable to argue the matter out in a rational way, there seems +to be nothing for it but to fight. + +War has often been spoken of as a great Game; and Mr. Jerome K. Jerome +has lately written eloquently on that subject. It is a game in which the +two parties agree, so to speak, to differ. They take sides, and in +default of any more rational method, resort to the arbitrament of force. +The stakes are high, and if on the one hand the game calls forth an +immense amount of resource, skill, alertness, self-control, endurance, +courage, and even tenderness, helpfulness, and fidelity; on the other +hand, it is liable to let loose pretty bad passions of vindictiveness +and cruelty, as well as to lead to an awful accumulation of mental and +physical suffering and of actual material loss. To call war "The Great +Game" may have been all very well in the more rudimentary wars of the +past; but to-day, when every horrible invention of science is conjured +up and utilized for the express purpose of blowing human bodies to bits +and strewing battlefields with human remains, and the human spirit +itself can hardly hold up against such a process of mechanical +slaughter, the term has ceased to be applicable. The affections and the +conscience of mankind are too violently outraged by the spectacle; and a +great mass of feeling is forming which one may fairly hope will ere long +make this form of strife impossible among the more modern peoples. + +Still, even now, as Mr. Jerome himself contends, the term is partly +justified by a certain fine feeling of which it is descriptive and which +is indeed very noticeable in all ranks. Whether in the Army or Navy, +among bluejackets or private soldiers or officers, the feeling is +certainly very much that of a big game--with its own rules of honour and +decency which must be adhered to, and carried on with extraordinary +fortitude, patience, and good-humour. Whether it arises from the +mechanical nature of the slaughter, or from any other cause, the fact +remains that among our fighting people to-day--at any rate in the +West--there is very little feeling of _hatred_ towards the "enemy." It +is difficult, indeed, to hate a foe whom you do not even see. Chivalry +is not dead, and at the least cessation of the stress of conflict the +tendency to honour opponents, to fraternize with them, to succour the +wounded, and so forth, asserts itself again. And chivalry demands that +what feelings of this kind we credit to ourselves we should also credit +to the other parties in the game. We do cordially credit them to our +French and Belgian allies, and if we do not credit them quite so +cordially to the Germans, that is _partly_ at least because every lapse +from chivalrous conduct on the part of our opponents is immediately +fastened upon and made the most of by our Press. Chivalry is by no means +dead in the Teutonic breast, though the sentiment has certainly been +obscured by some modern German teachings. + +While these present war-producing conditions last, we have to face them +candidly and with as much good sense as we can command (which is for the +most part only little!). We have to face them and make the best of +them--though by no means to encourage them. Perhaps after all even a war +like the present one--monstrous as it is--does not denote so great a +deviation of the old Earth from its appointed orbit as we are at first +inclined to think. Under normal conditions the deaths on our planet (and +many of them exceedingly lingering and painful) continue at the rate of +rather more than one every second--say 90,000 a day. The worst battles +cannot touch such a wholesale slaughter as this. Life at its normal best +is full of agonizings and endless toil and sufferings; what matters, +what _it is really there for_, is that we should learn to conduct it +with Dignity, Courage, Goodwill--to transmute its dross into gold. If +war _has_ to continue yet for a time, there is still plenty of evidence +to show that we can wrest--even from its horrors and insanities--some +things that are "worth while," and among others the priceless jewel of +human love and helpfulness. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] Some people take great pleasure in analysing White Books and Grey +Books and Orange Books and Yellow Books without end, and proving this or +that from them--as of course out of such a mass of material they can +easily do, according to their fancy. But when one remembers that almost +all the documents in these books have been written with a _view_ to +their later publication; and when one remembers also that, however +incompetent diplomatists as a class may be, no one supposes them to be +such fools as to entrust their _most_ important _ententes_ and +understandings with each other to printed records--why, one comes to the +conclusion that the analysis of all these State papers is not a very +profitable occupation. + + + + +II + + +WAR-MADNESS + +_September_, 1914. + +How mad, how hopelessly mad, it all seems I With fifteen to twenty +million soldiers already mobilized, and more than half that number in +the fighting lines; with engines of appalling destruction by land and +sea, and over the land and under the sea; with Northern France, Belgium, +and parts of Germany, Poland, Russia, Servia, and Austria drenched in +blood; the nations exhausting their human and material resources in +savage conflict--this war, marking the climax, and (let us hope) the +_finale_ of our commercial civilization, is the most monstrous the old +Earth has ever seen. And yet, as in a hundred earlier and lesser wars, +we hardly know the why and wherefore of it. It is like the sorriest +squabbles of children and schoolboys--utterly senseless and unreasoning. +But broken bodies and limbs and broken hearts and an endless river of +blood and suffering are the outcome. + + + + +III + + +THE ROOTS OF THE GREAT WAR[2] + +_October_, 1914. + +In the present chapter I wish especially to dwell on (1) the danger to +society, mentioned in the Introduction, of class-ascendancy and +class-rule; and (2) the hope for the future in the international +solidarity of the workers. + +Through all the mist of lies and slander created on such an occasion--by +which each nation after a time succeeds in proving that its own cause is +holy while that of its opponent is wicked and devilish; through the +appeals to God and Justice, common to both sides; through the shufflings +and windings of diplomats, and the calculated attitudes of politicians, +adopted for public approval; through the very real rage and curses of +soldiers, the desperate tears and agony of women, the murder of babes, +and the smoke of burning towns and villages: it is difficult, indeed, to +arrive at clear and just conclusions. + +When the war first broke out no one could give an adequate reason for +it. It all seemed absurd, monstrous, impossible. Then arose a Babel of +explanations. It was that Germany desired to crush France finally; it +was that she was determined to break Great Britain's naval and +commercial supremacy; it was that she must have an outlet on the sea +through Belgium and Holland; that she must force a way to the +Mediterranean through Servia; that she must carry out her financial +schemes in Asia Minor and the Baghdad region. It was her hatred of the +Slav and her growing dread of Russia; it was her desire for a Colonial +Empire; it was fear of a revolution at home; it was the outcome of long +years of Pan-Germanist philosophy; it was the result of pure military +ambition and the class-domination of the Junkers. Each and all of these +reasons (and many others) were in turn cited, and magnified into the +mainspring of the war; and yet even to-day we cannot say which _was_ the +main reason, or if we admit them all we cannot say in what exact +proportions their influences were combined. + +Moreover, they all assume that Germany was the aggressor; and we have to +remember that this would not be admitted for a moment by a vast number +of the Germans themselves--who cease not to say that the war was simply +forced upon them by the hostile preparations of Russia, by the +vengefulness of France, by the jealous foreign policy of England, and by +the obvious threat embodied in the _Entente_ between those three +nations; and that if they (the Germans) made preparations for, or even +precipitated it, that was only out of the sheer necessity of +self-preservation.[3] + +Thus we are still left without any generally accepted conclusion in the +matter. Moreover, we are struck, in considering the list of reasons +cited, by a feeling that they are all in their way rather partial and +superficial--that they do not go to the real root of the subject. + +Out of them all--and after the first period of confusion and doubt has +passed--our own people at home have settled down into the conviction +that German militarism in general, and Prussian Junkerdom in particular, +are to blame, and that for the good of the world as well as for our own +good we are out to fight these powers of evil. Prussian +class-militarism, it is said, under which for so long the good people of +Germany have groaned, has become a thing intolerable. The arrogance, the +insolence, of the Junker officer, his aristocratic pretension, his +bearish manners, have made him a byword, not only in his own country but +all over Europe; and his belief in sheer militarism and Jingo +imperialism has made him a menace. The Kaiser has only made things +worse. Vain and flighty to a degree, and, like most vain people, rather +shallow, Wilhelm II has supposed himself to be a second and greater +Bismarck, destined by Providence to create the said Teutonic +world-empire. It is simply to fight these powers of evil that we are +out. + +Of course, there is a certain amount of truth in this view; at the same +time, it is lamentably insufficient. The fact is that in the vast flux +of destiny which is involved in such a war as the present, and which no +argument can really adequately represent, we are fain to snatch at +_some_ neat phrase, however superficial, by way of explanation. And we +are compelled, moreover, to find a phrase which will put our own efforts +in an ideal light--otherwise we cannot go on fighting. No nation can +fight confessedly for a mean or base object. Every nation inscribes on +its banner _Freedom, Justice, Religion, Culture_ versus _Barbarism_, or +something of the kind, and in a sense redeems itself in so fighting. It +saves its soul even though bodily it may be conquered. And this is not +hypocrisy, but a psychological necessity, though each nation, of course, +accuses the other of hypocrisy. + +We are fighting "to put down militarism and the dominance of a military +class," says the great B.P., and one can only hope that when the war is +over we shall remember and rivet into shape this great and good +purpose--not only with regard to foreign militarism, but also with +regard to our own. Certainly, whatever other or side views we may take +of the war, we are bound to see in it an illustration of the danger of +military class-rule. You cannot keep a 60-h.p. Daimler motor-car in your +shed for years and years and still deny yourself the pleasure of going +out on the public road with it--even though you know you are not a very +competent driver; and you cannot continue for half a century perfecting +your military and naval organization without in the end making the +temptation to become a political road-hog almost irresistible. + +Still, accepting for the moment the popular explanation given above of +Germany's action as to some degree justified, we cannot help seeing how +superficial and unsatisfactory it is, because it at once raises the +question, which, indeed, is being asked in all directions, and not +satisfactorily answered: "How does it happen that so peace-loving, +sociable, and friendly a people as the great German mass-folk, as we +have hitherto known them, with their long scientific and literary +tradition, their love of music and philosophy, their lager beer and +tobacco, and their generally democratic habits, should have been led +into a situation like the present, whether by a clique of Junkers or by +a clique of militarist philosophers and politicians?" And the answer to +this is both interesting and important. + +It resolves itself into two main causes: (1) the rise of the great +German commercial class; and (2) the political ignorance of the German +people. + +It is obvious, I think, that a military aristocracy alone, or even with +the combined support of empire-building philosophers and a jack-boot +Kaiser, could not have hurried the solid German nation into so strange a +situation. In old days, and under an avowedly feudal order of society, +such a thing might well have happened. But to-day the source and seat of +power has passed from crowned heads and barons into another social +stratum. It is the financial and commercial classes in the modern States +who have the sway; and unless these classes desire it the military +cliques may plot for war in vain. Since 1870, and the unification of +Germany, the growth of her manufactures and her trade has been enormous; +her commercial prosperity has gone up by leaps and bounds; and this +extension of trade, especially of international trade, has led--as it +had already so conspicuously done in England--to the development of +corresponding ideals and habits of life among the population. The +modest, simple-living, middle-class households of fifty years ago have +largely disappeared, and in their place have sprung up, at any rate in +the larger towns, the very same commercial and parasitical classes, with +their Philistine luxury and fatuous ideals, which have been so +depressing and distressing a feature of _our_ social life during the +same period. Naturally, the desire of these classes has been for the +glorification of Germany, the establishment of an absolutely world-wide +commercial supremacy, and the ousting of England from her markets. + +"Germany," said Peter Kropotkin[4] a year or two ago, "on entering a +striking period of juvenile activity, quickly succeeded in doubling and +trebling her industrial productivity, and soon increasing it tenfold; +and now the German middle classes covet new sources of enrichment in +the plains of Poland, in the prairies of Hungary, on the plateaux of +Africa, and especially around the railway line to Baghdad--in the rich +valleys of Asia Minor, which can provide German capitalists with a +labouring population ready to be exploited under one of the most +beautiful skies in the world. It may be so with Egypt some day. +Therefore it is ports for exports, and especially military ports, in the +Adriatic, the Persian Gulf, on the African coast in Beira, and also in +the Pacific, that these schemers of German colonial trade wish to +conquer. Their faithful servant, the German Empire, with its armies and +ironclads, is at their service for this purpose." + +It is this class, then, which by backing both financially and morally +the military class has been chiefly responsible for bringing about the +war. Not that I mean, in saying so, that the commercial folk of Germany +have directly instigated its outbreak at the present moment and in the +present circumstances--for many, or most of them, must have seen how +dangerous it was likely to prove to their trade. But in respect of the +general policy which they have so long pursued they are responsible. One +cannot go on for years (and let England, too, remember this) preaching +militarism as a means of securing commercial advantage, and then refuse +to be answerable for the results to which such a policy may lead. The +Junker classes of Prussia and their Kaiser might be suffering from a bad +attack of swelled head; vanity and arrogance might be filling them with +dreams of world-empire; but there would have been no immediate European +war had not the vast trade-interests of Germany come into conflict, or +seemed to come into conflict, with the trade-interests of the +surrounding nations--had not the financial greed of the nation been +stirred, as well as its military vanity. + +And talking of general trade and finance, one must not forget to include +the enormous powers exercised in the present day by individual +corporations and individual financiers who intrude their operations into +the sphere of politics. We saw _that_ in our own Boer War; and behind +the scenes in Germany to-day similar influences are at work. The +Deutsche Bank, with immense properties all over the world, and some +£85,000,000 sterling in its hands in deposits alone, initiated +financially the Baghdad Railway scheme. Its head, Herr Arthur von +Gwinner, the great financier, is a close adviser of the Kaiser. "The +railway is already nearly half built, and it represents a German +investment of between £16,000,000 and £18,000,000. Let this be thought +of when people imagine that Germany and Austria went to war with the +idea of avenging the murder of an Archduke.... All German trade would +suffer if the Baghdad Railway scheme were to fail."[5] Then there is +Herr August Thyssen--"King Thyssen"--who owns coalmines, rolling mills, +harbours, and docks throughout Germany, iron-ore mines in France, +warehouses in Russia, and _entrepôts_ in nearly every country from +Brazil and Argentina to India.[6] He has declared that German interests +in Asia Minor must be safeguarded at all costs. But Russia also has +large prospective commercial interests in Asia Minor. The moral is clear +and needs no enforcing. Such men as these--and many others, the +Rathenaus, Siemens, Krupps, Ballins, and Heinekens--exercise in Germany +an immense political influence, just as do our financial magnates at +home. They represent the peaks and summits of wide-spreading commercial +activities whose bases are rooted among the general public. Yet through +it all it must not be forgotten that they represent in each case (as I +shall explain more clearly presently) the interests of a _class_--the +commercial class--but not of the whole nation. + +One must, then, modify the first conclusion, that the blame of the war +rests with the military class, by adding a second factor, namely, the +rise and influence of the commercial class. These two classes, acting +and reacting on each other, and pushing--though for different +reasons--in the same direction, are answerable, as far as Germany is +concerned, for dragging Europe into this trouble; and they must share +the blame. + +If it is true, as already suggested, that Germany's action has only been +that of the spark that fires the magazine, still her part in the affair +affords such an extraordinarily illuminating text and illustration that +one may be excused for dwelling on it. + +Here, in her case, we have the divisions of a nation's life set out in +well-marked fashion. We have a military clique headed by a personal and +sadly irresponsible ruler; we have a vulgar and much swollen commercial +class; and then, besides these two, we have a huge ant's nest of +professors and students, a large population of intelligent and +well-trained factory workers, and a vast residuum of peasants. Thus we +have at least five distinct classes, but of these the last three +have--till thirty or forty years ago--paid little or no attention to +political matters. The professors and students have had their noses +buried in their departmental science and _fach_ studies; the artisans +have been engrossed with their technical work, and have been only +gradually drifting away from their capitalist employers and into the +Socialist camp; and the peasants--as elsewhere over the world, absorbed +in their laborious and ever-necessary labours--have accepted their fate +and paid but little attention to what was going on over their heads. +Yet these three last-mentioned classes, forming the great bulk of the +nation, have been swept away, and suddenly at the last, into a huge +embroilment in which to begin with they had no interest or profit. + +This may seem strange, but the process after all is quite simple, and to +study it in the case of Germany may throw helpful light on our own +affairs. However the blame may be apportioned between the Junker and +commercial classes, it is clear that, fired by the Bismarckian +programme, and greatly overstretching it, they played into each other's +hands. The former relied for the financing of its schemes on the support +of the commercials. The latter saw in the militarists a power which +might increase Germany's trade-supremacy. Vanity and greed are met +together, patriotism and profits have kissed each other. A Navy League +and an Army League and an Air League arose. Professors and teachers were +subsidized in the universities; the children were taught Pan-Germanism +in the schools; a new map of Europe was put before them. An enormous +literature grew up on the lines of Treitschke, Houston Chamberlain, and +Bernhardi, with novels and romances to illustrate side-issues, and the +Press playing martial music. The students and intellectuals began to be +infected; the small traders and shopkeepers were moved; and the +war-fever gradually spread through the nation. As to the artisans, they +may, as I have said, have largely belonged to the Socialist party--with +its poll of four million votes in the last election--and in the words of +Herr Haase in the Reichstag just before the war, they may have wished to +hold themselves apart from "this cursed Imperialist policy"; but when +the war actually arrived, and the fever, and the threat of Russia, and +the fury of conscription, they perforce had to give way and join in. How +on earth could they do otherwise? And the peasants--even if they escaped +the fever--could not escape the compulsion of authority nor the old +blind tradition of obedience. They do not know, even to-day, why they +are fighting; and they hardly know whom they are fighting, but in their +ancient resignation they accept the inevitable and shout "Deutschland +über Alles" with the rest. And so a whole nation is swept off its feet +by a small section of it, and the insolence of a class becomes, as in +Louvain and Rheim's, the scandal of the world.[7] + +And the people bleed; yes, it is always the people who bleed. The trains +arrive at the hospital bases, hundreds, positively hundreds of them, +full of wounded. Shattered human forms lie in thousands on straw inside +the trucks and wagons, or sit painfully reclined in the passenger +compartments, their faces grimed, their clothes ragged, their toes +protruding from their boots. Some have been stretched on the battlefield +for forty-eight hours, or even more, tormented by frost at night, +covered with flies by day, without so much as a drink of water. And +those that have not already become a mere lifeless heap of rags have +been jolted in country carts to some railway-station, and there, or at +successive junctions, have been shunted on sidings for endless hours. +And now, with their wounds still slowly bleeding or oozing, they are +picked out by tender hands, and the most crying cases are roughly, +dressed before consigning to a hospital. And some faces are shattered, +hardly recognizable, and some have limbs torn away; and there are +internal wounds unspeakable, and countenances deadly pallid, and +moanings which cannot be stifled, and silences worse than moans. + +Yes, the agony and bloody sweat of battlefields endured for the +domination or the ambition of a class is appalling. But in many cases, +though more dramatic and appealing to the imagination, one may doubt if +it is worse than the year-long and age-long agony of daily life endured +for the same reason. + +Maeterlinck, in his eloquent and fiery letter to the _Daily Mail_ of +September 14th, maintained that the whole German nation is equally to +blame in this affair--that all classes are equally involved in it, with +no _degrees_ of guilt. We may excuse the warmth of personal feeling +which makes him say this, but we cannot accept the view. We are bound to +point out that it is only by some such analysis as the above, and +estimation of the method by which the delusions of one class may be +communicated to the others, that we can guard ourselves, too, from +falling into similar delusions. + +I mentioned that besides the growth of the commercial class, a second +great cause of the war was the political ignorance of the German people. +And this is important. Fifty years ago, and before that, when Germany +was divided up into scores of small States and Duchies, the mass of its +people had no practical interest in politics. Such politics as existed, +as between one Duchy and another, were mere teacup politics. Read +Eckermann's _Conversations_, and see how small a part they played in +Goethe's mind. That may have been an advantage in one way. The brains of +the nation went into science, literature, music. And when, after 1870, +the unification of Germany came, and the political leadership passed +over to Prussia, the same state of affairs for a long time continued; +the professors continued their investigations in the matters of the +thyroid gland or the rock inscriptions in the Isle of Thera, but they +left the internal regulation of the State and its foreign policy +confidently in the hands of the Kaiser and the nominees of the great +and rising _bourgeoisie_, and themselves remained unobservant and +uninstructed in such matters. It was only when these latter powers +declared--as in the Emperor's pan-German proclamation of 1896--that a +Teutonic world-empire was about to be formed, and that the study of +_Welt-politik_ was the duty of every serious German, that the thinking +and reading portion of the population suddenly turned its attention to +this subject. An immense mass of political writings--pamphlets, +prophecies, military and economic treatises, romances of German +conquest, and the like--naturally many of them of the crudest sort, was +poured forth and eagerly accepted by the public, and a veritable Fool's +Paradise of German suprernacy arose. It is only in this way, by noting +the long-preceding ignorance of the German citizen in the matter of +politics, his absolute former non-interference in public affairs, and +the dazed state of his mind when he suddenly found himself on the +supposed pinnacle of world-power--that we can explain his easy +acceptance of such cheap and _ad hoc_ publications as those of +Bernhardi and Houston Chamberlain, and the fact that he was so easily +rushed into the false situation of the present war.[8] The absurd +_canards_ which at an early date gained currency, in Berlin--as that the +United States had swallowed Canada, that the Afghans in mass were +invading; India, that Ireland was plunged in civil war--point in the +same direction; and so do the barbarities of the Teutonic troops in the +matters of humanity and art. For though in all war and in the heat of +battle there are barbarities perpetrated, it argues a strange state of +the German national psychology that in this case a heartless severity +and destruction of the enemy's life and property should have been +preached beforehand, and quite deliberately, by professors and +militarists, and accepted, apparently, by the general public. It argues, +to say the least, a strange want of perception of the very unfavourable +impression which such a programme must inevitably excite in the mind of +the world at large. + + * * * * * + +It is, no doubt, pleasant in its way for us British to draw this picture +of Germany, and to trace the causes which led the ruling powers there, +years ago, to make up their minds for war, because, of course, the +process in some degree exonerates us. But, as I have already said, I +have dwelt on Germany, not only because she affords such a good +illustration of what to avoid, but also because she affords so clear an +example of what is going on elsewhere in Europe--in England and France +and Italy, and among all the modern nations. We cannot blame Germany +without implicitly also blaming these. + +What, indeed, shall we say of England? Germany has for years maintained +that with her own growing population and her growing trade she needs a +more extended seaboard in Europe, and coaling stations and colonies in +other regions of the globe, but that England, jealous of commercial +supremacy, has been determined to deny her these, and, if possible, to +crush her; that she (Germany) has lived in perpetual fear and panic; +and that if in this case she has been the first to strike, it has only +been because to wait England's opportunity would have been to court +defeat. Allowing for the exaggerations inseparable from opposed points +of view, is there not some justification for this plea? England, who +plunged into the Crimean War in order to _prevent_ Russia from obtaining +a seaboard and her natural commercial expansion, and who afterwards +joined with Russia in order to plunder Persia and to prevent Germany +from getting her railways along the Persian Gulf; who calmly +appropriated Egypt, with its valuable cottonlands and market; who, at +the behest of a group of capitalists and financiers, turned her great +military machine on a little nation of Boer farmers in South Africa; +who, it is said,[9] sold 300,000 tons of coal to Russia to aid her fleet +against Japan, and at the same time furnished Japan with gold at a high +rate of interest for use against Russia--what trust can be placed in +her? "England," says Bernhardi, "in spite of all her pretences of a +liberal and philanthropic policy, has never sought any other object +than personal advantage and the unscrupulous suppression of her rivals." +Let us hope that this "never" is _too_ harsh; let us at least say +"hardly ever"; but still, are we not compelled to admit that if the rise +of commercial ambition in Germany has figured as a danger to _us_, our +far greater commercial ambitions have not only figured as a danger to +Germany, but, in conjunction with our alliance with France and Russia, +her ancient foes, may well have led to a state of positive panic among +her people? And if, as the Allies would doubtless say, there was really +no need for any such panic, the situation was obviously sufficiently +grave to be easily made use of by a military class for its own ends, or +by an armaments ring or a clique of financiers for theirs. Indeed, it +would be interesting to know what enormous profits Kruppism (to use H.G. +Wells' expressive term) _has_ already made out of this world-madness. +Nor can it be denied that the commercial interest in England, if not +deliberately intending to provoke war with Germany, has not been at all +sorry to seize this opportunity of laying a rival Power low--if only in +order to snatch the said rival's trade. That, indeed, the daily Press +reveals only too clearly. + +From all this the danger of class-domination emerges more and more into +relief. In Prussia the old Feudal caste remains--in a decadent state, +certainly, but perhaps for that very reason more arrogant, more vulgar, +and less conscious of any _noblesse oblige_ than even before. By itself, +however, and if unsupported by the commercial class, it would probably +have done little harm. In Britain the Feudal caste has ceased to be +exclusively military, and has become blended with the commercial class. +The British aristocracy now consists largely or chiefly of retired +grocers and brewers. Commercialism here has become more confessedly +dominant than in Germany, and whereas there the commercial class may +_support_ the military in its ambitions, here the commercial class +_uses_ the military as a matter of course and for its own ends. We have +become a Nation of Shopkeepers having our own revolvers and machine-guns +behind the counter. + +And yet not really a Nation of Shopkeepers, but rather a nation ruled +by a shopkeeping _class_. + +[This is the point in the text referred to by Footnote 25 below] + +People sometimes talk as if commercial prosperity and the interests of +the commercial folk represented the life of the whole nation. That is a +way of speaking, and it illustrates certainly a common modern delusion. +But it is far from the truth. The trading and capitalist folk are only a +class, and they do _not_, properly speaking, represent the nation. They +do not represent the landowning and the farming interests, both of which +detest them; they do not represent the artisans and industrial workers, +who have expressly formed themselves into unions in order to fight them, +and who have only been able to maintain their rights by so doing; they +do not represent the labourers and peasants, who are ground under their +heel. It would take too long to go into the economics of this subject, +interesting though they are.[10] But a very brief survey of facts shows +us that wherever the capitalist and trading classes have triumphed--as +in England early last century, and until Socialistic legislation was +called in to check them--the condition of the mass of the people has by +no means improved, rather the contrary. Japan has developed a world +trade, and is on the look out for more, yet never before has there been +such distress among her mass-populations. Russia has been lately moving +in the same direction; her commercial interests are rapidly progressing, +but her peasantry is at a standstill, France and Italy have already +grown a fat _bourgeoisie_, but their workers remain in a limbo of +poverty and strikes. And in all these countries, including Germany, +Socialism has arisen as a protest against the commercial order--which +fact certainly does not look as if commercialism were a generally +acknowledged benefit. + +No, commercial prosperity means only the prosperity of a class. Yet such +is the curious glamour that surrounds this, subject and makes a fetish +of statistics about "imports and exports," that nothing is more common +than for such prosperity to be taken to mean the prosperity of the +nation as a whole. The commercial people, having command of the Press, +and of the avenues and highways of public influence, do not find it at +all difficult to persuade the nation that _they_ are its +representatives, and that _their_ advantage is the advantage of all. +This illusion is only a part, I suppose, of a historical necessity, +which as the Feudal regime passes brings into prominence the Commercial +regime; but do not let us be deluded by it, nor forget that in +submitting to the latter we are being nose-led by a class just as much +as the Germans have been in submitting to the Prussian Junkers. Do not +let us, at the behest of either class, be so foolish as to set out in +vain pursuit of world-empire; and, above all, do not let us, in freeing +ourselves from military class-rule, fall under the domination of +financiers and commercial diplomats. Let us remember that wars for +world-markets are made for the benefit of the merchant _class_ and not +for the benefit of the mass-people, and that in this respect England has +been as much to blame as Germany or any other nation--nay, pretty +obviously more so. + +What is clearly wanted--and indeed is the next stage of human evolution +in England and in all Western lands--is that the people should +emancipate themselves from class-domination, class-glamour, and learn +to act freely from their own initiative. I know it is difficult. It +means a spirit of independence, courage, willingness to make sacrifice. +It means education, alertness to guard against the insidious schemes of +wire-pullers and pressmen, as well as of militarists and commercials. It +means the perception that only through eternal vigilance can freedom be +maintained. Yet it is the only true Democracy; and the logic of its +arrival is assured to us by the historical necessity that progress in +all countries must pass through the preliminary stages of feudalism and +commercialism on its way to realize the true life of the mass-peoples. + +To-day the uprising of Socialist ideals, of the power of Trade Unions, +and especially the formation of International Unions, show us that we +are on the verge of this third stage. We are shaping our way towards the +real Democracy, with the attainment of which wars--though they will not +cease from the world--will certainly become much rarer. The +international _entente_ already establishing itself among the manual +workers of all the European countries--and which has now become an +accepted principle of the Labour movement--is a guarantee and a promise +of a more peaceful era; and those who know the artisans and peasants of +this and other countries know well how little enmity they harbour in +their breasts against each other. Racial and religious wars will no +doubt for long continue; but wars to satisfy the ambitions of a military +clique or a personal ruler, or the ambitions of a commercial group, or +the schemes of financiers, or the engineering of the Press--wars from +these all too fruitful causes will, under a sensible Democracy, cease. +If Britain, during the last twenty years, had really favoured the cause +of the People and their international understanding, there would have +been no war now, for her espousal of the mass-peoples' cause would have +made her so strong that it would have been too risky for any Government +to attack her. But of course that could not have happened, for the +simple reason that Conservatism and Liberalism are not Democracy. +Conservatism is Feudalism, Liberalism is Commercialism, and Socialism +only is in its essence Democracy. It is no good scolding at Sir Edward +Grey for making friends with the Russian Government; for his only +alternative would have been to join the "International"--which he +certainly could not do, being essentially a creature of the commercial +regime. The "Balance of Power" and the _ententes_ and alliances of +Figure-head Governments _had_ to go on, till the day--which we hope is +at hand--when Figure-heads will be no more needed. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[2] Reprinted by kind permission from the _English Review_ for December, +1914. + +[3] As an example of this belief, read the manifesto of Professor +Eucken, who represents such a large section of German opinion, and note +the absolute sincerity of its tone--as well as its simplicity. + +[4] _Wars and Capitalism_, by P. Kropotkin. (Freedom Press.) + +[5] See _Nash's Magazine_ for October, 1914, article by "Diplomatist." + +[6] Ibid. + +[7] In order to realize how easy such a process is, we have only to +remember the steps by which the outbreak of the Boer War in 1899 was +engineered. + +[8] Of course we must remember that there has been all along and is now +in Germany a very large party, Socialist and other, which has _not_ been +thus carried away; but for the moment its mouth is closed and it cannot +make itself heard. + +[9] See Kropotkin's _War and Capitalism_, p. 12. + +[10] See note _infra_ on "Commercial Prosperity," p. 167. +(Chapter XI below) + + + + +IV + + +THE CASE AGAINST GERMANY; + +_November_, 1914. + +With every wish to do justice to Germany, to whose literature I feel I +owe such a debt, and among whose people I have so many personal friends; +allowing also the utmost for the general causes in Europe which have +been for years leading up towards war--and some of which I have +indicated already in the pages above--I still feel it is impossible not +to throw on her the _immediate_ blame for the present catastrophe. + +However we distribute the indictment and the charges among the various +parties concerned, whether we accuse mainly the sway of Prussian +Militarism or the rise of German Commercialism, or the long tradition +and growth of a _Welt-politik_ philosophy, or the general political +ignorance which gave to these influences such rash and uncritical +acceptance; or whether we accuse the somewhat difficult and variable +personal equation of the Kaiser himself--the fact still remains that for +years and years this war has been by the German Government most +deliberately and systematically prepared for. The fact remains that +Britain--though for a long period she had foreseen danger and had on the +naval side slowly braced herself to meet it--was on the military side +caught at the last moment unprepared; that France was so little +intending war that a large portion of the nation was actually still +protesting against an increase in the size of the standing army; and +that Russia--whatever plans she may have had, or not had, in mind--was +confessedly at the same period two years or so behind in the +organization and completion of her military establishment. + +Whether right or wrong, it can hardly be denied that the moment of the +precipitation of war was chosen and insisted on by Germany. After +Austria's monstrous and insulting dictation to Servia (23rd July), and +Servia's incredibly humble apology (25th), Austria was still not +allowed to accept the latter, and the conference proposed (26th July) by +Sir E. Grey--though accepted by France, Russia, and Italy--was refused +by Germany (27th). On the 28th Austria declared war on Servia. It was +perfectly clear to every one that Russia--after what had happened before +in 1908-9, with regard to Bosnia and Herzegovina--could not possibly +allow this insult to Servia to pass. Germany, therefore, by this move +forced Russia's hand; and at a moment when Russia was known or supposed +to be comparatively unprepared.[11] France had been involved in some +military scandals and was still debating as to the two years' instead of +three years' period for her normal military service. The German +Ambassador at Vienna had openly said that France was not in a condition +for facing a war. England was currently supposed in Germany to be +seriously hampered by domestic troubles at home--chiefly of course +among the Irish, but also amongst the Suffragettes(!) _and_ by +widespread disaffection in India. It was thought, therefore, that +England would certainly remain neutral--and I think we may fairly say +that the extent to which Germany counted on this expected neutrality is +evidenced by her disappointment and public rage when she found that she +was mistaken. + +Germany's initiative in the matter is further evidenced by her _instant +readiness_ to attack. She was in Luxemburg within a few hours of the +declaration of war with Russia; and it was clearly her intention to +"rush" Paris and then turn back upon Russia. + +It may be said that from her own point of view Germany was quite right +to take the initiative. If she sincerely believed that the _Entente_ was +plotting her downfall, she was justified in attacking instead of waiting +to be attacked. That may be so. It is the line to which General +Bernhardi again returns in his latest book (_Britain as Germany's +Vassal_, translated by J. Ellis Barker). But it does not alter the fact +that this was an immense responsibility to take, and that the immediate +onus of the war rests with Germany. If she under all the above +circumstances precipitated war, she can hardly be surprised if the +judgment of Europe (one may also say the world) is against her. If she +has played her cards so badly as to put herself entirely in the wrong, +she must naturally "dree her weird." + +There remains the case of her treatment of Belgium. Britain +certainly--who has only lately assisted at the dismemberment of Persia, +and who is even now allowing Russia (in the face of Persian protests) to +cross neutral territory in the neighbourhood of Tabriz on her way to +attack Turkey, who has uttered, moreover, no word of protest against the +late Ukase (of mid-November) by which the independent rights of Finland +have been finally crushed--Britain, I say, need talk no cant about +Belgian neutrality. Britain, for her own absolute safety, has always +required and still requires Belgian neutrality to be respected. And that +by itself is a sufficient, and the most honest, reason. But in the eyes +of the world at large Germany's deliberate and determined sacrifice of +Belgium, simply because the latter stood in the way of the rapid +accomplishment of her warlike designs against France (and England), can +never be condoned--little Belgium who had never harmed or offended +Germany in any way. Add to this her harsh and brutish ill-treatment of +the Belgian civilian people, her ravage of their ancient buildings and +works of art, and her clearly expressed intention both in word and deed +to annex their territory by force should the fortunes of war favour +her--all these facts, which we may say are proven beyond the shadow of a +doubt, form a most serious indictment. They substantiate the charge that +Germany by acting throughout in this high-handed way has deeply violated +the natural laws of the Comity of Nations, which are the safeguards of +Civilization, and they confirm the rightful claim of Europe to sit in +judgment on her. + +I say nothing at the moment about the charges of atrocities committed by +German troops, partly because such charges are always in warfare made by +each side against the other, and partly because their verification +should be the subject of a world-inquiry later on. It may be said, +however, that the Belgian and French Commissions of inquiry have +certainly presented material and evidence which _ought_ to be +investigated later--material which would hardly be credible of so humane +and cultured a people as the Germans, were it not for the fact, alluded +to already, of such severities having been deliberately recommended +beforehand by the philosophical writers, military and political, who +have during the last half-century moulded German public opinion. + +England, as I say, is in no position herself to sit in judgment on +Germany and lecture her--much as she undoubtedly enjoys doing so. +England's long-standing policy of commercial greed, leading to political +grab in every part of the world; her infidelity in late years towards +small peoples, like the Boers and the Persians; her neglect of treaty +obligations and silence about them when they do not suit her; her most +dubious alliance with a military despotism like Russia: all render it +impossible for her to accuse Germany. The extraordinary thing is that in +the face of such prevarications as these, which are patent to the whole +world, Britain at any moment of serious crisis always comes forward +with the air of utmost sincerity and in an almost saintly pose as the +champion of political morality! How is it? The world laughs and talks of +_heuchlerei_ and _cant Britannique_. But I almost think (perhaps I +stretch a point in order to save the credit of my country) that the real +cause is not so much British hypocrisy as British _stupidity_--stupidity +which keeps our minds in watertight compartments and prevents us +perceiving how confused and inconsistent our own judgments are and how +insincere they appear to our neighbours. At any rate, whether the cause +is pure hypocrisy or pure stupidity, or whether a Scotch mixture of +these, it cannot be denied that its result is most irritating to +decent-minded people. + +It is curious how a certain strain or vein of temperament, like that +just mentioned, will run through a nation's whole life, and colour its +actions in all departments, recognized and commented on by the whole +outside world, and yet remain unobserved by the nation itself. + +Every one who has known the Germans at home--even years back--has been +conscious of a certain strain in the Teutonic character which has had a +like bearing in the German national life. How shall I describe it? It is +a certain want of tact, unperceptiveness--a kind of overbearing +simplicity of mind. Whether it be in the train or the hotel or the +private house, the German does not always seem to see the personal +situation. Whether you prefer to talk or remain silent, whether you wish +the window open or shut, whether you desire to partake of such and such +a dish or whether you don't--of such little matters he (or she) seems +unaware. Perhaps it is that the Teutonic mind is so vigorous that it +overrides you without being conscious of doing so, or that it is so +convinced of its own Tightness; or perhaps it is that the scientific +type of mind, depending always on formulae and statistics, necessarily +loses a certain finer quality. Anyhow, the fact remains that sociable, +kindly, _gemüthlich_ and so forth as the Germans are, there is a lack of +delicate touch and perception about them, of gentle manners, and a +certain insensitiveness to the opinion of those with whom they have to +deal. The strain may not be without its useful bearings in the +direction of strength and veracity, but it runs curiously through the +national life, and colours deeply, not only the domestic and social +relations of the people but their foreign politics also, and even their +war tactics and strategy. + +I have spoken before of the political ignorance of the German +mass-people, which, dating from years back, caused them to be easily led +by their empire-building philosophers to a certain very dangerous +pinnacle of ambition, and there tempted. The same want of perception of +how their actions would be viewed by the world in general caused the +Government to act in the most egregiously high-handed manner in the +matter of the precipitation and declaration of the war itself, and +subsequently likewise in the ruthless invasion of Belgium and treatment +of her people and her cities. The want of discernment of what was going +on outside the sphere of her own psychology led her into fatal delusions +as to the attitude of England, of Ireland, of Belgium, Italy, India, and +so forth. It caused her generals to miscalculate and seriously +under-estimate the strategic forces opposed to them, both in France and +Russia; and in actual battles it has caused them to adopt, with +disastrous results, tactics which were foolishly inspired by contempt of +the enemy. Without insisting too much on the stories of +atrocities--which are still to a certain extent _sub judice_--it does +rather appear that even those excesses which the Commissions of inquiry +have reported (and which occurred, be it said, chiefly in the early days +of the campaign) were due to an intoxication, not merely of champagne +but of excited self-glorification and blindness to the human rights of +peoples at least as brave as themselves.[12] + +However that last point may be, it is certainly curious to think +how--whether it be in the case of the German or the English or any other +people--a vein of temperament or character may decide a nation's fate or +colour its history quite as much as or even more than matters of wealth +and armament. + +Personally one feels sorry for the great and admirable German +people--though I do not suppose it will matter to them whether one feels +sorry or not! And I look forward to the day when there will come a +better understanding between them and ourselves--better perhaps than has +ever been before--when we shall forgive them their sins against us, and +they will forgive us our sins against them, one of which certainly is +our meanness and shopkeeperiness in rejoicing in the war as a means of +"collaring their trade." I feel sure that the German mass-people will +wake up one day to the knowledge that they have been grossly betrayed at +home, not only by Prussian militarism but by pan-German commercial +philosophy and bunkum, as well as by their own inattention to, and +consequent ignorance of, political affairs. And I hope they will wake up +to the conviction that Destiny and the gods in this matter are after all +bringing them to a conclusion and a consummation far finer than anything +they have perhaps imagined for themselves. If, indeed, when the war is +over, they are fortunate enough to be compelled by the terms of +settlement to abandon their Army and Navy--or _all_ but the merest +residue of these--the consequences undoubtedly will be that, freed from +the frightful burdens which the upkeep of these entails, they will romp +away over the world through an era of unexampled prosperity and +influence. Their science, liberated, will give them the lead in many +arts and industries; their philosophy and literature, no longer crippled +by national vanities, will rise to the splendid world-level of former +days; their colonizing enterprise, unhindered by conscriptionist vetoes, +will carry them far and wide over the globe; and even their trade will +find that without fortified seaports and tariff walls it will, in these +days of universal movement and intercommunication, do fully as well as, +if not much better than, ever it did before. In that day, however, let +us hope that--the more communal conception of public life having +prevailed and come to its own--the success of Trade, among any nation or +people, will no longer mean the successful manufacture of a dominant and +vulgar class, but the real prosperity and welfare of the whole nation, +including all classes. + +And in that day, possibly, the other nations, witnessing the +extraordinary prosperity and success of that one which has abandoned +armaments and Kruppisms, will--if they have a grain of sense left in +them--follow suit and, voluntarily divesting themselves too of their +ancient armour, give up the foolishness of national enmities and +jealousies, and adopt the attitude of humanity and peace, which alone +can be the worthy and sensible attitude for us little mortals, when we +shall have arrived at years of discretion upon the earth. + +[Just after writing the above I received the following remarks in a +letter of a friend from South America, which may be worth reprinting. He +says: "In spite of the events of 1815 and 1870, French 'culture' is +supreme to-day over all South America. South America is a suburb of +Paris, and French culture has won its triumphs wholly irrespective of +the defeat of French arms. Therefore I incline to think that true German +culture in science and music will gain rather than lose by the +destruction of German arms. Not only will that nation cease to spend its +time writing dull military books, but other nations will be more likely +to appreciate what there is in German thought and culture when this is +no longer offered us at the point of the bayonet! German commerce in +South America has suffered rather than gained by talk of 'shining +armour.' And the poet, scientist and business man will gain rather than +lose if no longer connected with Potsdam."] + +FOOTNOTES: + +[11] It is said that Russia took some steps towards mobilization as +early as the 25th. If she did, that would seem quite natural under the +circumstances. + +[12] There may possibly be found another explanation of these +excesses--namely, in the galling strictness of the Prussian military +regime. After years and years of monotonously regulated and official +lives, it may be that to both officers and men, in their different ways, +orgies of one kind or another came as an almost inevitable reaction. + + + + +V. + + +THE CASE FOR GERMANY + +Having put in the last chapter some of the points which seem to throw +the immediate blame of the war on Germany, it would be only fair in the +present chapter to show how in the long run and looking to the general +European situation to-day as well as to the history of Germany in the +past, the war had become inevitable, and in a sense necessary, as a +stage in the evolution of European politics. + +After the frightful devastation of Germany by the religious dissensions +of the early part of the seventeenth century and the Thirty Years War, +it fell to Frederick the Great, not only to lay a firm foundation for +the Prussian State but to elevate it definitely as a rival to Austria in +the leadership of Germany. Thenceforth Prussia grew in power and +influence, and became the nucleus of a new Germany. It would almost seem +that things could not well have been otherwise. Germany was seeking for +a new root from which to grow. Clerical and ultra-Catholic Austria was +of no use for this purpose. Bavaria was under the influence of France. +Lutheran Prussia attracted the best elements of the Teutonic mind. It +seems strange, perhaps, that the sandy wastes of the North-East, and its +rather arid, dour population, _should_ have become the centre of growth +for the new German nation, considering the latter's possession of its +own rich and vital characteristics, and its own fertile and beautiful +lands; but so it was. Perhaps the general German folk, with their +speculative, easygoing, almost sentimental tendencies, _needed_ this +hard nucleus of Prussianism--and its matter-of-fact, organizing type of +ability--to crystallize round. + +The Napoleonic wars shattered the old order of society, and spread over +Europe the seeds of all sorts of new ideas, in the direction of +nationality, republicanism, and so forth. Fichte, stirred by Napoleon's +victory at Jena (Fichte's birthplace) and the consequent disaster to +his own people, wrote his _Addresses to the German Nation_, pleading +eloquently for a "national regeneration." He, like Vom Stein, +Treitschke, and many others in their time, came to Berlin and +established himself there as in the centre of a new national activity. +Vom Stein, about the same time, carried out the magnificent and +democratic work by which he established on Napoleonic lines (and much to +Napoleon's own chagrin) the outlines of a great and free and federated +Germany. Carl von Clausewitz did in the military world much what Stein +did in the civil world. He formulated the strategical methods and +teachings of Napoleon, and in his book _Vom Krieg_ (published 1832) not +only outlined a greater military Germany, but laid the basis, it has +been said, of all serious study in the art of war. Vom Stein and +Clausewitz died in the same year, 1831. In 1834 Heinrich von Treitschke +was born. + +The three Hohenzollern kings, all named Frederick William, who reigned +from the death of Frederick the Great (1786) to the accession of William +I (1861) did not count much personally. The first and third of those +mentioned were decidedly weakminded, and the third towards the close of +his reign became insane. But the ideas already initiated in Germany +continued to expand. The Zollverein was established, the Teutonic +Federation became closer, and the lead of Prussia more decided. With the +joint efforts of William I and Bismarck the policy became more +governmental, more positive, and more deliberate--the policy of +consolidation and of aggrandisement; and with this definite programme in +view, Bismarck engineered the three wars of 1864, 1866, and 1870, +against Denmark, Austria, and France. They all three had the effect of +confirming the military power of Prussia. The first war gave her a much +desired increase of access to the North Sea; the second led to the +treaty with Austria, and ultimately to the formation of the Triple +Alliance; the third ended in the definite establishment of the Prussian +hegemony, the crowning of William I as Emperor, and the union and +consolidation of all the German States under him; but alas! it left a +seed of evil in the wresting of Alsace-Lorraine from France. For +France never forgave this. Bismarck and Moltke knew she would not +forgive, and were sorely tempted to engineer a _second_ war which should +utterly disable her; but this war never came off. The seed of Revenge, +however, remained with France, and the seed of Fear with Germany; and +these two things were destined to lead to a harvest of disaster. + +In 1866 Treitschke came to Berlin. Though Saxon by birth, he became +ultra-Prussian in sympathy and temperament. Somewhat deaf, and by no +means yielding or facile in temper, he was not cut out for a political +career. But politics were his interest; his lectures on history were +successful at Leipzig and had still more scope at Berlin. He became the +strongest of German Unionists, and with a keen but somewhat narrow mind +took an absolute pleasure in attacking every movement or body of people +that seemed to him in any way to stand in the path of Germany's +advancement, or not to assist in her consolidation. Thus he poured out +his wrath in turn on Saxony (his own land) and on Hanover, on the Poles, +the Socialists, and the Catholics, and ultimately in his later years on +Britain.[13] + +He conceived, following the lines of the Prussian tradition, that +Germany had a great military mission to fulfil. Her immense energy and +power, which had bulked so large in the early history of Europe, and +which had been so sadly scattered during the religious wars, was now to +come to its own again. She was to make for herself a great place in +Europe, and to expand in colonies over the world. It was a pleasing and +natural ambition, and the expression of it gave a great vogue and +popularity to Treitschke's lectures. The idea was enormously reinforced +by the cause which I have already mentioned and dwelt upon--the growth +of the commercial interest in Germany. From 1870 onwards this growth was +huge and phenomenal. In a comparatively short time a whole new social +class sprang up in the land, and a whole new public opinion. If +expansion from the point of view of Junker ambition had been desirable +before, the same from the point of view of the financial and trading +classes was doubly so now. If a military irruption into the politics of +the world was favoured before, it was clamoured for now when a powerful +class had arisen which not only, called the tune but could pay the +piper. + +Thus by the combination of military and commercial interests and +entanglements the web of Destiny was woven and Germany was hurried along +a path which--though no definite war was yet in sight--was certain to +lead to war. The general military, programme of Treitschke, the +conviction that force and force alone could give his country her +rightful place in the world, was more and more cordially adopted. In a +sense this was a perfectly natural and logical programme, and amid the +surrounding European conditions excusable--as I shall point out +presently. But before long it became a weird enthusiasm, almost an +obsession. It was taken up over the land, and repeated in a thousand +books and on as many platforms. One of these propagandists was General +von Bernhardi, who entered in more detail into the technical and +strategical aspects of the programme. The rude and almost brutal +frankness of both writers may be admired; but the want of real depth and +breadth of view cannot be concealed and must be deplored. The arguments +in favour of force, of unscrupulousness, of terrorism are--especially in +Bernhardi[14]--casuistical to a degree. They are those of a man who is +determined to press his country into war at all costs, and who will use +any kind of logic as long as it will lead in his direction. The whole +movement--largely made possible by the political ignorance of the +mass-people, of which I have spoken in a former chapter--culminated in +an extraordinary national fever of ambition; and in the announcement of +schemes for the Germanization of the world, almost juvenile in the want +of experience and the sense of proportion which they display. It would +not be fair to take one writer as conclusive; but as a _specimen_ of the +kind of thing we may quote the following extract (given by Mr. H.A.L. +Fisher, the Oxford historian, in his able brochure _The War: Its Causes +and Issues_) from the writings of Bronsart von Schellendorf: "Do not let +us forget the civilizing task which the decrees of Providence have +assigned to us. Just as Prussia was destined to be the nucleus of +Germany, so the regenerated Germany shall be the nucleus of a future +Empire of the West. And in order that no one shall be left in doubt, we +proclaim from henceforth that our continental nation has a right to the +sea, not only to the North Sea, but to the Mediterranean and Atlantic. +Hence we intend to absorb one after another all the provinces which +neighbour on Prussia. We will successively annex Denmark, Holland, +Belgium, Northern Switzerland, then Trieste and Venice, finally Northern +France from the Sambre to the Loire. This programme we fearlessly +pronounce. It is not the work of a madman. The Empire we intend to found +will be no Utopia. We have ready to our hands the means of founding it, +and no coalition in the world can stop us." + +Bronsart von Schellendorf (1832-91) was one of the Prussian Generals who +negotiated the surrender of the French at Sedan. He became Chief of the +Staff, and War Minister (1883-9), and wrote on Tactics, etc. His above +utterance, therefore, cannot be neglected as that of an irresponsible +person. + +There is, as I have already had occasion to say, a certain easygoing +absurdity in the habit we commonly have of talking of nations +--"Germany," "France," "England," and so forth--as if they were +simple and plainly responsible persons or individuals, when all the time +we know perfectly well that they are more like huge whirlpools of +humanity caused by the impact and collision of countless and often +opposing currents flowing together from various directions. Yet there is +this point of incontestable similarity between nations and individual +persons, that both occasionally go mad! If Germany was afflicted by a +kind of madness or divine _dementia_ previous to the present war, +Britain can by no means throw that in her teeth, for Britain certainly +went mad over Mafeking; and it was sheer madness that in 1870 threw the +people of France and Napoleon III--utterly unready for war as they +were, and over a most trifling quarrel--into the arms of Bismarck for +the fulfilment of his schemes. + +But that some sort of madness did, in consequence of the above-mentioned +circumstances, seize the German people shortly before the outbreak of +the present war we can hardly doubt, though (remembering the proverb) we +must not put the blame for that on her, but on the gods. It was a heady +intoxication, caused largely, I believe, by that era of unexampled +commercial prosperity following upon a period of great political and +military expansion, and confirmed by the direct incitement of the +military and political teachers I have mentioned. All these things, +acting on a people unskilled in politics--of whom Bernhardi himself says +"We are a non-political people"[15]--had their natural effect. But it +seems part of the irony of fate that at this very juncture Germany +should have fallen under the influence of a man who of all the world was +perhaps least fitted to guide her steadily through a difficult crisis. +"We all know the Kaiser," says Mr. Fisher, "the most amazing and amusing +figure on the great stage of politics. The outlines of his character are +familiar to everybody, for his whole life is spent in the full glare of +publicity. We know his impulsiveness, his naïveté, his heady fits of +wild passion, his spacious curiosity and quick grasp of detail, his +portentous lack of humour and delicacy, his childish vanity and +domineering will. A character so romantic, spontaneous, and robust must +always be a favourite with the British people, who, were his lunacies +less formidable, would regard him as the most delectable burlesque of +the age." + +However the British generally may regard him, it is certain that the +German nation accepted him as their acclaimed leader. Clever, +good-looking, versatile, imperious, fond of the romantic pose, Wilhelm +was exactly the hero in shining armour that would capture the enthusiasm +of this innocent people. They idolized him. And it is possible that +their quick response confirmed him in his rather generous estimate of +his own capabilities. He dismissed Bismarck and became his own Foreign +Secretary, and entered upon a perilous career as Imperial politician, +under the aegis of God and the great tradition of the Hohenzollerns, a +career made all the more perilous by his constant change of rôle and his +real uncertainty as to his own mind. His "seven thousand speeches and +three hundred uniforms" were only the numerous and really emblematic +disguises of a character unable to concentrate persistently and +effectively on any one settled object. With a kind of theatrical +sincerity he made successive public appearances as War Lord or William +the Peaceful, as Artist, Poet, Architect, Biblical Critic, Preacher, +Commercial Magnate, Generalissimo of land forces and Creator of a World +Navy; and with Whitman he might well have said, "I can resist anything +better than my own diversity." + +If Wilhelm II was popular (as he was) among his own mass-people, it may +well be guessed that he was a perfect terror to his own political +advisers and generals. Undoubtedly a large share of responsibility for +the failure of German diplomacy before the war, and of German strategy +during the war, must be laid to the account of his ever-changing plans +and ill-judged interferences. It is difficult, indeed, to imagine a +character more dangerous as a great nation's leader. But out of dangers +great things do often arise. A kind of fatality, as I have said, has +enveloped the whole situation, and still leads on to new and pregnant +evolutions for the German people and for the whole world. Germany will +in the end be justified, but in a way far different from what she +imagined. + +Up to the period of Germany's rising commercial prosperity Germany and +England had been on fairly friendly terms. There was no particular cause +of difference between them. But when Commercial and Colonial expansion +became a definite and avowed object of the former's policy, she found, +whereso she might look, that Britain was there, in the way--"everywhere +British colonies, British coaling stations, and floating over a fifth of +the globe the British flag." Could anything be more exasperating? And +these "absent-minded beggars" the English, without any forethought or +science or design, without Prussian organization or Prussian bureaucracy +and statecraft, had simply walked into this huge inheritance without +knowing what they were doing! It certainly was most provoking. But what +England had done why should not Germany do--and do it indeed much +better, with due science and method? Britain had shown no scruple in +appropriating a fifth part of the globe, and dealing summarily with her +opponents, whether savage or civilized; why should Germany show scruple? + +And it must be confessed that here Germany had a very good case. +Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. And if Germany, approving +Britain's example, could only show herself strong enough to imitate it +in actual fact, Britain at least could not blame her. Besides, in her +internal industrial development Germany was already showing her equality +with England. In her iron and steel manufactures, her agricultural +machines, her cutlery, her armament works, her glass works, her aniline +dyes, her toys, and her production of a thousand and one articles (like +lamps) of household use, she was showing a splendid record--better in +some ways than England. For while England was losing ground, Germany was +gaining all the time. England was becoming degenerate and lacking in +enterprise. The Zeiss glassworks at Jena have now become the centre of +the optical-glass industry of the world. Carl Zeiss, the founder, tried +hard at one time to get the English glass-makers to turn out a special +glass for his purpose, with very high refractive index. They would not +trouble about it. Zeiss consequently was forced to take the matter up +himself, succeeded at last in getting such glass made in Germany, and +"collared" the trade. The same happened in other departments. + +A certain amount of friction arose. The Germans at one time, knowing the +English reputation for cutlery, marked their knives and razors as "made +in Scheffield." The English retaliated in what seemed an insulting way, +by marking the Fatherland's goods as "made in Germany." With Germany's +success, commercial jealousy between the two nations (founded on the +utterly mistaken but popular notion that the financial prosperity of +the country you trade with is inimical to your own prosperity) began to +increase. On the German side it was somewhat bitter. On the English +side, though not so bitter, it was aggravated by the really shameful +ignorance prevailing in this country with regard to things German, and +the almost entire neglect of the German tongue in our schools and +universities and among our literary folk. As an expression (though one +hopes exceptional) of commercial jealousy on our side I may quote a +passage from a letter from a business friend of mine in Lancashire. He +says: "I remember about a _fortnight before_ the war broke out with +Germany having a conversation with a business man in Manchester, and he +said to me that we most certainly ought to join in with the other +nations and sweep the Germans off the face of the earth; I asked him +_why_, and his only answer was, '_Look at the figures of Germany's +exports; they are almost as high as ours_!' All he had against them was +their enterprise--commercial jealousy." + +On the other hand, the head of a large warehouse told me only a few days +later that when travelling in Germany for his firm some fifteen years +ago he had a conversation with a German, in the course of which he (the +Englishman) said: "I find your people so obliging and friendly that I +think surely whatever little differences there are between us as nations +will be dispelled by closer intercourse, and so all danger of war will +pass away." "No," replied the German, "you are quite mistaken. You and I +are friendly; but that is only as individuals. As nations we shall never +rest till we have war. The English nation may well be contented because +they have already _got_ all the good things of the Earth--their trade, +their ports, their colonies; but Germany will not allow this to go on +for ever. She will fight for her rightful position in the world; she +will challenge England's mercantile supremacy. She will have to do so, +and she will not fail."[16] + +Thus the plot thickened; the entanglement increased. The Boer War roused +ill-feeling between England and Germany. The German Navy Bill followed +in 1900, and the Kaiser announced his intention of creating a sea-power +the equal of any in the world. Britain of course replied with her Navy +Bills; and the two countries were committed to a mad race of armaments. +The whole of Europe stood by anxious. Fear and Greed, the two meanest of +human passions, ruled everywhere. Fear of a militarist Germany began to +loom large upon the more pacific States of Europe. On the other hand, +the fatality of Alsace-Lorraine loomed in Germany, full of forebodings +of revenge. France had found a friend in Russia--a sinister alliance. +Britain, convinced that trouble was at hand, came to an understanding +with France in 1904 and with Russia in 1907. The Triple Entente was born +as a set-off against the Triple Alliance. The Agadir incident in 1911 +betrayed the purely commercial nature of the designs of the four Powers +concerned--France, Spain, England, and Germany--and a war over the +corpse of Morocco was only narrowly avoided. Germany felt quite +naturally that she was the victim of a plot, and thenceforth was +alternately convulsed by mad Ambition and haunted by a lurking Terror. + +And now we come to the last act of the great drama. So far the +relations of Germany with Russia had not been strained. If there was any +fear of Russia, it was quite in the background. The Junkers--themselves +half Slavs--had supplied a large number of the Russian officials, men +like Plehve and Klingenberg; the Russian bureaucracy was founded on and +followed the methods of the German. The Japanese War called Russia's +attention away to another part of the world, and at the same time +exposed her weakness. But if Germany was not troubled about Russia, a +different sentiment was growing up in Russia itself. The people there +were beginning to hate the official German influence and its hard +atmosphere of militarism, so foreign to the Russian mind. They were +looking more and more to France. Bismarck had made a great mistake in +the Treaty of Berlin--mistake which he afterwards fully recognized and +regretted. He had used the treaty to damage and weaken Russia, and had +so thrown Russia into the arms of France. + +A strange Nemesis was preparing. The programme of German +expansion--natural enough in itself, but engineered by Prussia during +all this long period with that kind of blind haughtiness and overbearing +assurance which indeed is a "tempting of Providence"--had so far not +concerned itself much about Muscovite policy; but now there arose a +sudden fear of danger in that quarter. Hitherto the main German +"objective" had undoubtedly been England and France, Belgium and +Holland--the westward movement towards the Atlantic and the great world. +But now all unexpectedly, or at any rate with dramatic swiftness, Russia +appeared on the scenes, and there was a _volte face_ towards the East. +The Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913 broke out. Whatever simmerings of +hostility there may have been between Germany and Russia before, the +relations of the two now became seriously strained. The Balkan League, +formed under Russian influence, was nominally directed against Turkey; +but it was also a threat to Austria. It provided a powerful backing to +the Servian agitation, it was a step towards the dissolution of Austria, +and it decisively closed the door on Germany's ambition to reach +Salonika and to obtain a direct connection with the Baghdad Railway. +Germany and Austria all at once found themselves isolated in the midst +of Europe, with Russia, Servia, France, and England hostile on every +side. It was indeed a tragic situation, and all the more so when viewed +as the sorry outcome and culmination of a hundred years of Prussian +diplomacy and statecraft. + +Why under these circumstances Austria (with Germany of course behind +her) should have dictated most insulting terms to Servia, and then +refused to accept Servia's most humble apology, is difficult to +understand. The only natural explanation is that the Germanic Powers on +the whole thought it best, even as matters stood, to precipitate war; +that notwithstanding all the complications, they thought that the +long-prepared-for hour had come. The German White Book puts the matter +as a mere _necessity_ of self-defence. "Had the Servians been allowed, +with the help of Russia and France, to endanger the integrity of the +neighbouring Monarchy much longer, the consequence must have been the +gradual disruption of Austria and the subjection of the whole Slav +world to the Russian sceptre, with the result that the position of the +German race in Central Europe would have become untenable"; but it is +obvious that this plea is itself untenable, since it makes a quite +distant and problematic danger the excuse for a sudden and insulting +blow--for a blow, in fact, almost certain to precipitate the danger! How +the matter was decided in Berlin we cannot at present tell, or what the +motives exactly were. It seems rather probable that the Kaiser threw his +weight on the side of peace. The German Executive at any rate saw that +the great war they had so long contemplated and so long prepared for was +close upon them--only in an unexpected form, hugely complicated and +threatening. They must have realized the great danger of the situation, +but they very likely may have thought that by another piece of bluff +similar to that of 1908-9 they might intimidate Russia a second time; +and they believed that Russia was behindhand in her military +preparations. They also, it appears, thought that England would not +fight, being too much preoccupied with Ireland, India, and other +troubles. And so it may have seemed that Now was the psychological +moment. + +Austria opened with war on Servia (28th of July), and the next day +Russia declared a considerable though not complete mobilization. From +that moment a general conflagration was practically inevitable. The news +of Russia's warlike movement caused a perfect panic in Berlin. The +tension of feeling swung round completely for the time being from enmity +against England and France to fear of Russia. The final mobilization of +the Russian troops (31st of July) was followed by the telegrams between +the Kaiser and the Tsar, and by the formal mobilization (really already +complete) of the German Army and Navy on the 1st of August. War was +declared at Berlin on the 1st of August, and the same or next day the +German forces entered Luxemburg. On August 4th they entered Belgium, and +war was declared by England against Germany. + + * * * * * + +Looking back at the history of the whole affair, one seems to see, as I +have said, a kind of fatality about it. The great power and vigour of +the German peoples, shown by their early history in Europe, had been +broken up by the religious and other dissensions of the sixteenth and +seventeenth centuries. It fell to Prussia to become the centre of +organization for a new Germany. The rich human and social material of +the German States--their literary, artistic, and scientific culture, +their philosophy, their learning--clustered curiously enough round the +hard and military nucleus of the North. It was perhaps their instinct +and, for the time, their salvation to do so. The new Germany, hemmed in +on all sides by foreign Powers, could only see her way to reasonable +expansion and recognition, and a field for her latent activities, by the +use of force, military force. A long succession of political +philosophers drilled this into her. She embarked in small wars and +always with success. She became a political unity and a Great Power in +Europe. And then came her commercial triumph. Riches beyond all +expectation flowed in; and a mercantile class arose in her midst whose +ideals of life were of a corresponding character--the ideals of the +wealthy shopkeeper. What wonder that, feeling her power, feeling herself +more than ever baulked of her rights, she cast her eyes abroad, and +coveted the imperial and commercial supremacy of the world? + +In this she had the example of Britain before her. Britain had laid land +to land and market to market over the globe, and showed no particular +scruple in the matter. Why should not Germany do the same? It was true +that Britain always carried the Bible with her--but this was mere +British cant. Britain carried the Bible in her left hand, but in her +right a sword; and when she used the latter she always let the former +drop. Germany could do likewise--but without that odious pretence of +morality, and those crocodile tears over the unfortunates whom she +devoured. It was only a question of Might and Organization and Armament. + +So far Germany seems to have had a perfectly good case; and though we in +England might not like her ambitions, we could not reasonably find fault +with motives so perfectly similar to our own. We might, indeed, make a +grievance of the frank brutality displayed in her methods and the +defence of them; but then, she might with equal right object to our +everlasting pretence of "morality," and our concealment of mercenary +and imperial aims under the cloak of virtue and innocence. One really +must confess that it is difficult to say which is the worse. + +But if the crystallization of Germany round the Prussian nucleus was for +the time the source of Germany's success, it is a question whether it is +not even now becoming something quite different, and the likely cause of +a serious downfall. It would seem hardly probable that the amalgamation +between elements so utterly dissimilar can permanently endure. The +kindly, studious, sociable, rather naïvely innocent German mass-people +dragged by the scruff of the neck into the arena of militarism and +world-politics, may for a time have had their heads turned by the +exalted position in which they found themselves; but it is not likely +that they will continue for long to enjoy the situation. With no great +instinct for politics, nor any marked gift of tact and discernment, +unsuccessful as a rule as colonists,[17] and with no understanding of +how to govern--except on the Prussian lines, which are every day +becoming more obsolete and less adapted to the modern world--the rôle +which their empire-building philosophers set out for them is one which +they are eminently unfitted to fulfil. It is sad, but we cannot blame +them for the defect. They blame the world in general for siding against +them in this affair, but do not see that in most cases it has been their +own want of perception which has left them on the wrong side of the +hedge. + +Bismarck, with his "Blood and Iron" policy, made a huge blunder in not +perceiving that in the modern world spiritual forces are arising which +must for ever discredit the same. He emphasized the blunder by wresting +Alsace-Lorraine from France, and again by crippling Russia in the treaty +of 1878--thus making enemies where generosity might have brought him +friends. The German Executive in July of last year (1914) showed +extraordinary want of tact in not seeing that Russia, rebuffed in 1908 +over Bosnia and Herzegovina, would never put up with a _second_ insult +of the same kind over Servia. The same Government was strangely unable +to perceive that whatever it might tactically gain by the invasion and +devastation of Belgium would be more than lost by the moral effect of +such action on the whole world; and notwithstanding its army of spies, +it had not the sense to see that England, whether morally bound to or +not, was certain, at all costs, to fight in defence of Belgium's +neutrality. So true it is that without the understanding which comes +from the heart, all the paraphernalia of science and learning and the +material results of organization and discipline are of little good. + +But however we choose to apportion the blame or at least the +responsibility for the situation among the various Governments +concerned, the main point and the main lesson of it all is to see that +any such apportionment does not much matter! As long as our Governments +are constructed as they are--that is, on the principle of representing, +not the real masses of their respective peoples, but the interests of +certain classes, especially the commercial, financial, and military +classes--so long will such wars be inevitable. The real blame rests, +not with the particular Foreign policy of this or that country but with +the fact that Europe, already rising through her mass-peoples into a far +finer and more human and spiritual life than of old, still lies bound in +the chains of an almost Feudal social order. + +When the great German mass-peoples find this out, when they discover the +little rift in the lute which now separates their real quality from the +false standards of their own dominant military and commercial folk, then +their true rôle in the world will begin, and a glorious rôle it will be. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[13] "A German," he said, "could not live long in the atmosphere of +England--an atmosphere of sham, prudery, conventionality, and +hollowness"! See article on "Treitschke," by W.H. Dawson, in the +_Nineteenth Century_ for January 1915. + +[14] The influence, however, of Bernhardi in his own country has been +somewhat exaggerated in England. + +[15] It seems that the same remark is made about the Germans in the +U.S.A., that they take little interest in politics there. + +[16] This attitude is exactly corroborated by Herr Maximilian Harden's +manifesto, originally published in _Die Zukunft,_ and lately reprinted +in the _New York Times_. + +[17] Though this is only, perhaps, true of their State colonies. In +their individual and missionary colonizing groups, and as pioneer +settlers, they seem to have succeeded well. + + + + +VI + + +THE HEALING OF, NATIONS[18] + +It is quite possible that the little rift within the lute, alluded to in +the concluding paragraph of last chapter, may widen so far as to cause +before long great internal changes and reconstructions in Germany +herself; but short of that happening, it would seem that there is no +alternative for the Allies but to continue the war until her Militarism +can be put out of court, and that for long years to come. There is no +alternative, because she has revealed her hand too clearly as a +menace--if she should prevail--of barbarous force to the whole world. It +is this menace which has roused practically the whole world against her. +And there is this amount of good in the situation, namely, that while +with the victory of Germany a German "terror" might be established +through the world, with the victory of the Allies neither England, nor +France, nor Russia, nor little Belgium, nor any other country, could +claim a final credit and supremacy. With the latter victory we shall be +freed from the nightmare claim of any one nation's world-empire. + +But in order to substantiate this result England must also abdicate her +claim. She must abdicate her mere crass insistence on commercial +supremacy. The "Nation of Shopkeepers" theory, which has in the past +made her the hated of other nations, which has created within her +borders a vulgar and unpleasant class--the repository of much arrogant +wealth--must cease to be the standard of her life. I have before me at +this moment a manifesto of "The British Empire League," patronized by +royalty and the dukes, and of which Lord Rothschild is treasurer. The +constitution of the League was framed in 1895; and I note with regret +that positively the five "principal objects of the League" mentioned +therein have solely to do with the extension and facilitation of +Britain's trade, and the "co-operation of the military and naval forces +of the Empire with a special view to the due protection of the trade +routes." Not a word is said _in the whole manifesto_ about the human and +social responsibilities of this vast Empire; not a word about the +guardianship and nurture of native races, their guidance and assistance +among the pitfalls of civilization; not a word about the principles of +honour and just dealing with regard to our civilized neighbour-nations +in Europe and elsewhere; not a word about the political freedom and +welfare of all classes at home. One rubs one's eyes, and looks at the +document again; but it is so. Its one inspiration is--Trade. Seeing +that, I confess to a sinking of the heart. Can we blame Germany for +struggling at all costs to enlarge her borders, when _that_ is what the +British Empire means? + +Until we rise, as a nation, to a conception of what we mean by our +national life, finer and grander than a mere counting of trade-returns, +what can we expect save failure and ill-success? + +Possibly in the conviction that she is fighting for a worthy object (the +ending of militarism), and in the determination (if sincerely carried +out) of once more playing her part in the world as the protector of +small nations, Britain may find her salvation, and a cause which will +save her soul. It is certainly encouraging to find that there is a +growing feeling in favour of the recognition and rehabilitation of the +small peoples of the world. If it is true that Britain by her grasping +Imperial Commercialism in the past (and let us hope that period _is_ +past) has roused jealousy and hatred among the other nations, equally is +it true that Germany to-day, by her dreams of world-conquest, has been +rousing hatred and fear. But the day has gone by of world-empires +founded on the lust of conquest, whether that conquest be military or +commercial. The modern peoples surely are growing out of dreams so +childish as that. The world-empire of Goethe and Beethoven is even now +far more extensive, far more powerful, than that which Wilhelm II and +his Junkers are seeking to encompass. There is something common, +unworthy, in the effort of domination; and while the Great Powers have +thus vulgarized themselves, it is the little countries who have gone +forward in the path of progress. "In modern Europe what do we not owe to +little Switzerland, lighting the torch of freedom six hundred years ago, +and keeping it alight through all the centuries when despotic monarchies +held the rest of the European Continent? And what to free Holland, with +her great men of learning and her painters surpassing those of all other +countries save Italy? So the small Scandinavian nations have given to +the world famous men of science, from Linnaeus downwards, poets like +Tegner and Björnson, scholars like Madvig, dauntless explorers like +Fridthiof Nansen. England had, in the age of Shakespeare, Bacon, and +Milton, a population little larger than that of Bulgaria to-day. The +United States, in the days of Washington and Franklin and Jefferson and +Hamilton and Marshall, counted fewer inhabitants than Denmark or +Greece."[19] + +In all their internal politics and social advancement, Switzerland, +Holland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, Finland (until the paw of the Bear +was on her) and Belgium (till the claw of the Spread-Eagle) have been +well to the fore. It is they who have carried on the banner of idealism +which Germany herself uplifted when she was a small people or a group of +small peoples. It is they who have really had prosperous, healthy, +independent, and alert populations. How much more interesting, we may +say, would Europe be under the variety of such a regime than under the +monotonous bureaucracy and officialism of any Great Power! And to some +such scheme we must adhere. It would mean, of course, the alliance of +all the States of Western Europe, large and small (and including both a +remodelled Germany and a largely remodelled Austria) in one great +Federation--whose purpose would be partly to unite and preserve Europe +against any common foe, from the East or elsewhere, and partly to +regulate any overweening ambition of a member of the Federation, such as +might easily become a menace to the other members. A secondary but most +important result of the formation of such a United States of Europe +would be that while each State would probably preserve a small military +establishment of its own, the enormous and fatal incubus of the present +armaments system would be rendered unnecessary, and so at last the +threat of national bankruptcy and ruin, which has of late pursued the +nations Like an evil dream, might pass away. But in that matter of +finance it cannot be disguised that a terrible period still awaits the +European peoples. Already the moneylenders sitting on their chests form +a veritable nightmare; but with fresh debts by the thousand million +sterling being contracted, there is great danger that the mass-peoples +beneath will be worse paralysed and broken even than they are +now--unless, indeed, with a great effort they rouse themselves and throw +off the evil burden. + +That the world is waking up to a recognition of _racial_ rights--that +is, the right of each race to have as far as possible its own +Government, instead of being lorded over by an alien race--is a good +sign; and a European settlement along that line must be pressed for. At +last, after centuries of discomfort, we at home are finding our solution +of the Irish question in this very obvious way; and it may be that +Europe, tired of war, may finally have the sense to adopt the same +principle. Of course, there are cases where populations are so mixed, +as, for instance, the Czechs and Slovaks and Germans in Bohemia and +Moravia, or where small colonies of one race are so embedded in the +midst of another race, as are the Germans among the Roumanians of +Transylvania, that this solution may be difficult. That is no reason, +however, why the general principle should not be applied. It _must_, +indeed, be applied if Europe is not to return to barbarism. + +And it interests us--having regard to what I have said about _class_ +rule being so fruitful a cause of war--to remember that the rule of one +race by another always does mean class rule. The alien conquerors who +descend upon a country become the military and landlord caste there. +Thus the Norman barons in England, the English squires in Ireland, the +Magyars in Hungary, the German barons in East Prussia and the Baltic +provinces, and so forth. They make their profit and maintain themselves +out of the labour and the taxation of the subject peoples. + +In the earlier forms of social life, when men lived in tribes, a rude +equality and democracy prevailed; there was nothing that could well be +called class-government; there was simply custom and the leadership of +the elders of the tribe. Then with the oncoming of what we call +civilization, and the growth of the sense of property, differences +arose--accumulations of wealth and power by individuals, enslavements of +tribes by other tribes; and classes sprang up, and class-government, and +so the material of endless suffering and oppression and hatred and +warfare. I have already explained (in the Introduction) that Class in +itself as the mere formation within a nation of groups of similar +occupation and activity--working harmoniously with each other and with +the nation--is a perfectly natural and healthy phenomenon; it is only +when it means groups pursuing their own interests counter to each other +and to the nation that it becomes diseased. There will come a time when +the class-element in this latter sense will be ejected from society, and +society will return again to its democratic form and structure. There +will be no want, in that time, of variety of occupation and talent, or +of differentiation in the social organism; quite the contrary; but +simply there will be no predatory or parasitical groups within such +organism, whose, interests will run counter to the whole, and which will +act (as such classes act now) as foci and seedbeds of disease and strife +within the whole. With a return to the recognition of racial rights and +autonomies over the world, it is clear that one great cause of strife +will be removed, and we shall be one step nearer to the ending of the +preposterous absurdity of war. + +And talking about the difficulty of sorting out mixed populations, or of +dealing with small colonies of one race embedded in the midst of another +race, it is evident that once you get rid of autocratic or military or +class-government of any kind, and return to democratic forms, this +difficulty will be much reduced or disappear. Small democratic communes +are perfectly simple to form in groups of any magnitude or minuteness +which may be desirable; and such groups would easily federate or ally +themselves with surrounding democracies of alien race, whereas if +lorded over by alien conquerors they would be in a state of chronic +rebellion. Of such democratic alliance and federation of peoples of +totally different race, Switzerland supplies a well-recognized and +far-acclaimed example. + + * * * * * + +That in the future there will be an outcry in favour of Conscription +made by certain parties in Britain goes without saying; but that must be +persistently opposed. The nation says it is fighting to put down +Militarism. Why, then, make compulsory militarism foundational in our +national life? To abolish militarism _by_ militarism is like "putting +down Drink" by swallowing it! The whole lesson of this war is against +conscription. Germany could never have "imposed herself" on Europe +without it. And yet her soldiers, brave as they naturally are, and +skilfully as they have fought, have not done themselves justice. How +could they under such conditions--forced into battle by their officers, +flung in heaps on the enemy's guns? The voluntary response in Britain to +the call to arms has been inspiriting; and if voluntaryism means +momentary delay in a crisis, still it means success in the end. No +troops have fought more finely than the British. Said Surgeon-General +Evatt, speaking in London in October--and General Evatt's word in such a +matter ought to carry weight: "After long experience in studying +Russian, German, Bavarian, Saxon, French, Spanish, and American fighting +units, my verdict is unhesitatingly in favour of the British.... What +has occurred lately has been a splendid triumph of citizenship, because +people were allowed their proper liberty and the consciousness of +freely, sharing in a great Empire." + +Besides it must always be remembered that conscription gives a +Government power to initiate an iniquitous war, whereas voluntaryism +keeps the national life clean and healthy. A free people will not fight +for the trumped-up schemes and selfish machinations of a class--not, +indeed, unless they are grossly deceived by, Press and Class plots. +Anyhow, to force men to fight in causes which they do not approve, to +compel them to adopt a military career when their temperaments are +utterly unsuited to such a thing, or when their consciences or their +religion forbid them--these things are both foolish and wicked. + +If the nation wants soldiers it must pay for them. England, for example, +is rolling in wealth; and it is simply a scandal that the wealthy +classes should sit at home in comfort and security and pay to the man in +the trenches--who is risking his life at every moment, and often living +in such exhaustion and misery as actually to wish for the bullet which +will _end_ his life--no more than the minimum wage of an ordinary +day-labourer; and that they should begrudge every penny paid to his +dependents--whether he be living or dead--or to himself when he returns, +a lifelong cripple, to his home. To starve and stint your own soldiers, +to discourage recruiting, and then to make the consequent failure of men +to come forward into an excuse for conscription is the meanest of +policies. As a matter of fact, the circumstances of the present war show +that with anything like decent reward for their services there is an +abundant, an almost over-abundant, supply of men ready to flock to the +standard of their country in a time of necessity. Nor must it be +forgotten, in this matter of pay, that the general type and average of +our forces to-day, whether naval or military, is far higher than it was +fifty, years ago. The men are just as plucky, and more educated, more +alert, more competent in every way. To keep them up to this high +standard of efficiency they need a high standard of care and +consideration. + +It may, however, be said--in view of our present industrial conditions, +and the low standard of physical health and vitality prevailing among +the young folk of our large towns--that physical drill and scout +training, including ambulance and other work, and qualification in +_some_ useful trade, might very well be made a part of our general +educational system, for rich and poor alike, say, between the ages of +sixteen and eighteen. Such a training would to each individual boy be +immensely valuable, and by providing some rudimentary understanding of +military, affairs and the duties of public service and citizenship, +would enable him to choose _how_ he could be helpful to the +nation--provided always he were not forced to make his choice in a +direction distasteful or repugnant to him. In any good cause, as in a +war of _defence_ against a foreign enemy, it is obvious enough, as I +have said, that there would be plenty of native enthusiasm forthcoming +without legal or official pressure. However, I have enlarged a little on +the subject of Conscription in a later chapter, and will say no more +here. + +But the burning and pressing question is: Why should we--we, the +"enlightened and civilized" nations of Europe--get involved in these +senseless wars at all? And surely _this_ war will, of all wars, force an +answer to the question. Here, for the last twenty years, have these +so-called Great Powers been standing round, all professing that their +one desire is peace, and all meanwhile arming to the teeth; each +accusing the others of militant intentions, and all lamenting that "war +is inevitable." Here they have been forming their _Ententes_ and +Alliances, carrying on their diplomatic cabals and intrigues, studying +the map and adjusting the Balance of Power--all, of course, with the +best intentions--and lo! with the present result! What nonsense! What +humbug! What an utter bankruptcy of so-called diplomacy! When will the +peoples themselves arise and put a stop to this fooling--the people who +give their lives and pay the cost of it all? If the present-day, +diplomats and Foreign Ministers have sincerely striven for peace, then +their utter incapacity and futility have been proved to the hilt, and +they must be swept away. If they have not sincerely striven for peace, +but only pretended to so strive, then also they must be swept away, for +deceit in such a matter is unpardonable. + +And no doubt the latter alternative is the true one. There has been a +pretence of the Governments all round--a pretence of deep concern for +humanity and the welfare of the mass-peoples committed to their charge; +but the real moving power beneath has been _class_-interest--the +interest of the great commercial class in each nation, with its acolyte +and attendant, the military or aristocratic. It is this class, with its +greeds and vanities and suspicions and jealousies, which is the cause of +strife; the working-masses of the various nations have no desire to +quarrel with each other. Nay, they are animated by a very different +spirit. + +In an interesting article published by the German Socialist paper +_Vorwärts_, on September 27, 1914, and reproduced in our Press, occurred +the following passage, in which the war is traced to its commercial +sources: "Germany has enjoyed an economical prosperity such as no other +country has experienced during the last decade. That meant with the +capitalist class a revival of strong Imperialist tendencies, which have +been evident enough. This, again, gave rise to mistrust abroad, at +least in capitalist circles, who did their best to communicate their +feelings to the great masses, ... and so the German people as a whole +has been made responsible for what has been the work of a small +class.... The comrades abroad can be assured that though German workmen +are ready to defend their country they will, above all, not forget that +their interests are the same as those of the proletariat in other +countries, who also against their will were forced into the war and now +do their duty. They can rest assured that the German people are not less +humane than others--a result to which education through workmen's +organizations has greatly contributed. If German soldiers in the +excitement of war should commit atrocities, it can be said that among +us--and also in other circles--there will not be a single person to +approve of them." + +Reading this statement--so infinitely more sensible and human than +anything to be found in the ordinary Capitalist Press of England and +Germany--one cannot help feeling that there is practically little hope +for the future _until_ the international working masses throughout +Europe come forward and, joining hands with each other, take charge of +the foolish old Governments (who represent the remains of the decadent +feudal and commercial systems), and shape the Western world at last to +the heart's desire of the peoples that inhabit it. + +"The peoples of the world desire peace," said Bourtzeff, the Russian +exile[20]--and he, who has been in many lands, ought to know. But they +also--if they would obtain peace--must exercise an eternal vigilance +lest they fall into the hands of class-schemers and be betrayed into +that which they do _not_ desire. The example of Germany--which we have +considered above--shows how easily a good and friendly and pacific +people may, by mere political inattention and ignorance, and by a +quasi-scientific philosophy, which imposes on its political ignorance, +be led into a disastrous situation. It shows how preposterous it is that +Governments generally--as at present constituted--should set themselves +up as the representatives of the mass-peoples' wishes, and as the +arbiters of national destinies. And it shows how vitally necessary it is +that the people, even the working masses and the peasants, should have +some sort of political education and understanding. + +In that matter, of the political education of the masses, America, in +her United States and Canada, yields a fine example. Though not +certainly perfect, her general standard of education and alertness is +infinitely superior to that of the peoples of the Old World. And some +writers contend that it is just in that--in her general level and not in +her freaks of genius--that America's claim lies to distinction among the +nations of the earth. If you consider the peoples of the Old World, +whether in England, Scotland, or Ireland, in France, Spain, Italy, +Germany, Austria, Russia, or farther East and farther South over the +earth, you will find the great masses, on the land or in the workshops, +still sunk in vast ignorance, apathy, and irresponsibility. Only here +and there among those I have mentioned, and notably among the smaller +peoples of Western Europe, like Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, and +Sweden, are the masses beginning to stir, as it were, towards the +daylight. It can only be with the final opening of their eyes and +awakening from slumber that the rule of the classes will be at an end. +But that awakening--with the enormous spread of literature and +locomotion and intercommunication of all kinds over the modern world, +cannot now, one would say, be long delayed. + + * * * * * + +Meanwhile, and until that era arrives, we can only insist (at any rate +in our own country) on a different kind of foreign policy from what we +have had--a policy open and strong, not founded on Spread-Eagleism, and +decidedly not founded on commercialism and the interests of the trading +classes (as the Empire League seem to desire), but directed towards the +real welfare of the masses in our own and other lands. If our rulers and +representatives really seek peace, here is the obvious way to ensue and +secure it--namely, by making political friends of those in all countries +who _desire peace_ and are already stretching hands of amity to each +other. What simpler and more obvious way can there be? "We hail our +working-class comrades of every land," says the Manifesto of the +Independent Labour Party. "Across the roar of guns we send greeting to +the German Socialists. They have laboured unceasingly to promote good +relations with Britain, as we with Germany. They are no enemies of ours, +but faithful friends. In forcing this appalling crime upon the nations, +it is the rulers, the diplomats, the militarists, who have sealed their +doom. In tears and blood and bitterness the greater Democracy will be +born. With steadfast faith we greet the future; our cause is holy and +imperishable, and the labour of our hands has not been in vain." + +Yes, we must have a foreign policy strong and sincere--and not only so, +but open and avowed. The present Diplomatic system is impossible of +continuance. It has grown up in an automatic way out of antiquated +conditions, and no one in particular can be blamed for it. But that +young men, profoundly ignorant of the world, and having the very _borné_ +outlook on life which belongs to our gilded youth (67 per cent. of the +candidates for the Diplomatic Corps being drawn from Eton alone), having +also in high degree that curious want of cosmopolitan sympathy and +adaptability which is characteristic of the English wealthy classes +(every candidate for the Corps must have at least £400 a year of his +own)--that such a type should be charged with the representation of the +United Kingdom in foreign affairs is to-day a hopeless anomaly, and +indeed a very great danger. The recommendations just published of the +Royal Commission are in the right direction, but they need urgent +reinforcement and extension by the pressure of public opinion. And if in +the present-day situation of affairs we cannot refer every question +which arises directly to the nation, we must at least do away with the +one-man-Secretary system, and have in his place a large and responsible +committee, representative, not of any one party or class but as far as +possible of the whole people. [At this moment, for instance, as far as +we know, the terms of settlement of the present war may actually be +being arranged over our heads, and yet that may be taking place quite +apart from the approval and the wishes of the most weighty portion of +the nation.] + +Another thing that we must look to with some hope for the future is the +influence of Women. Profoundly shocked as they are by the senseless +folly and monstrous bloodshed of the present conflict, it is certain +that when this phase is over they will insist on having a voice in the +politics of the future. The time has gone by when the mothers and wives +and daughters of the race will consent to sit by meek and silent while +the men in their madness are blowing each other's brains out and making +mountains out of corpses. It is hardly to be expected that war will +cease from the earth this side of the millennium; but women will surely +only, condone it when urged by some tremendous need or enthusiasm; they +will not rejoice--as men sometimes do--in the mere lust of domination +and violence. With their keen perception of the little things of life, +and the way in which the big things are related to these, they will see +too clearly the cost of war in broken hearts and ruined homes to allow +their men to embark in it short of the direst necessity. + +And through the women I come back to the elementary causes and roots of +the present war--the little fibres in our social life which have fed, +and are still feeding, the fatal tree whose fruits are, not the healing +but the strife of nations. In the present day--though there may be other +influences--it is evident enough that rampant and unmeasured commercial +greed, concentrating itself in a special class, is the main cause, the +tap-root, of the whole business. And this, equally evidently, springs +out of the innumerable greed of _individuals_--the countless fibres that +combine to one result--the desire of private persons to get rich quick +at all costs, to make their gains out of others' losses, to take +advantage of each other, to triumph in success regardless of others' +failures. And these unworthy motives and inhuman characteristics again +spring obviously out of the mean and materialistic ideals of life which +still have sway among us--the ideals of wealth and luxury and +display--of which the horrors of war are the sure and certain obverse. +As long as we foster these things in our private life, so long will they +lead in our public life to the embitterment of nation against nation. +What is the ruling principle of the interior and domestic conduct of +each nation to-day--even within its own borders--but an indecent +scramble of class against class, of individual against individual? To +rise to noisy power and influence, and to ill-bred wealth and riches, by +trampling others down and profiting by their poverty is--as Ruskin long +ago told us--the real and prevailing motive of our peoples, whatever +their professions of Christianity may be. Small wonder, then, if out of +such interior conditions there rise to dominance in the great world +those very classes who exhibit the same vulgarities in their most +perfect form, and that _their_ conflict with each other, as between +nation and nation, exhibit to us, in the magnified and hideous form of +war, the same sore which is all the time corrupting our internal +economy. The brutality, and atrocity of modern war is but the reflection +of the brutality and inhumanity of our commercial regime and ideals. The +slaughter of the battlefields may be more obvious, but it is less +deliberate, and it is doubtful whether it be really worse, than the +daily and yearly slaughter of the railways, the mines, and the +workshops. That being so, it is no good protesting against, and being +shocked at, an evil which is our very own creation; and to cry out +against war-lords is useless, when it is _our_ desires and ambitions +which set the war-lords in motion. Let all those who indulge and +luxuriate in ill-gotten wealth to-day (and, indeed, their name is +Legion), as well as all those who meanly and idly groan because their +wealth is taken from them, think long and deeply on these things. Truth +and simplicity of life are not mere fads; they are something more than +abstractions and private affairs, something more than social ornaments. +They are vital matters which lie at the root of national well-being. +They are things which in their adoption or in their denial search right +through the tissue of public life. To live straightforwardly by your +own labour is to be at peace with the world. To live on the labour of +others is not only to render your life false at home, but it is to +encroach on those around you, to invite resistance and hostility; and +when such a principle of life is favoured by a whole people, that people +will not only be in a state of internal strife, but will assuredly raise +up external enemies on its borders who will seek its destruction. + +The working masses and the peasants, whose lives are in the great whole +honest--who support themselves (and a good many others besides) by their +own labour--_have no quarrel_; and they are the folk who to-day +--notwithstanding lies and slanders galore, and much of race-prejudice +and ignorance--stretch hands of amity and peace to each other wellnigh +all over the world. It is of the modern moneyed classes that we may say +that their life-principle (that of taking advantage of others and living +on their labour) is essentially false[21]; and these are the classes +which are distinctively the cause of enmities in the modern world, and +which, as I have explained above, are able to make use of the military +class in order to carry out their designs. It can only be with the +ending of the commercial and military classes, as classes, that peace +can come to the world. China, founded on the anti-commercial principles +of Confucius, disbanded her armies a thousand years ago, and only quite +lately--under the frantic menace of Western civilization--felt compelled +to reorganize them. She was a thousand years before her time. It can +only be with the emergence of a new structure of society, based on the +principle of solidarity and mutual aid among the individuals of a +nation, and so extending to solidarity and mutual aid among nations, +that peace can come to the Western world. It is the best hope of the +present war that, like some frightful illness, it marks the working out +of deep-seated evils and their expulsion from the social organism; and +that with its ending the old false civilization, built on private gain, +will perish, crushed by its own destructive forces; and in its place the +new, the real culture, will arise, founded on the essential unity of +mankind. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[18] Reprinted by permission from the _English Review_ for January, +1915. + +[19] Lord Bryce in the _Daily Chronicle_, October, 1914. + +[20] In a letter to the _Times_, September 18, 1914. + +[21] There is no reason in itself why Commercialism should be false. +Commerce and interchange of goods is of course a perfectly natural and +healthy function of social life. Indeed, it is a function which should +have a most beneficent influence in binding nations together. It is when +that function is perverted to private gain that it becomes false. But of +course without this perversion there would be no distinctively +commercial _class_ with interests opposed to those of the community. + + + + +VII + + +PATRIOTISM AND INTERNATIONALISM + +Many Socialists and sympathizers with the Labour movement over the world +belittle Patriotism, and seem to think that by decrying and discouraging +the love of one's country one will bring nearer the day of +Internationalism. + +I do not agree. Of course we all know there is a lot of sham and false +Patriotism--such as, for instance, Pressmongers magnify and make use of +in order to sell their papers, or such as comfortable, well-to-do folk +with big dividends do so heartily encourage among the poorer classes, +who can thus be persuaded to fight for them; we know, indeed, that there +is a good deal of very mean and unworthy Patriotism--the flag-waving +variety, for instance, which we saw in the Boer war--exultant over a +small nation of farmers defending their homes, and whipped up +deliberately by a commercial gang for their own purposes; or the +narrow-minded, lying, canting variety which blinds a people to its own +faults, and credits itself with all the moral virtues, while at the same +time it gloats over every defamation of the enemy. There is a good deal +of that variety in the present war. And it is easy to understand that +many people, sick of that sort of Patriotism, would go straight for a +ready-made denial of all frontiers and boundaries. + +Still, allowing to the full all that can be said in the above direction, +one must admit also that there is such a thing as a true Patriotism, and +I do not see why--however socialist or cosmopolitan we may be--we should +not recognize what is an obvious fact. There is a love of one's own +country--a genuine attachment to and preference for it--"in spite of all +temptations to belong to other nations"--which after all is very +natural, and on the whole a sound and healthy thing. There may be some +people whose minds are so lofty that to them all peoples and races are +alike and without preference; but one knows that the vast multitudes of +our mortal earth are not made like that. "If a man love not his brother +whom he hath seen, how shall he love God whom he hath not seen?" It is +certainly easier and more natural to make an effort and a sacrifice for +the sake of your own countrymen whom you know so well and with whom you +are linked by a thousand ties than for the sake of foreigners who are +little more than a name--however worthy you may honestly believe the +latter to be. It is more obvious and instinctive for a man to work for +his own family than to give his services to his municipality or his +county council. Charity begins at home, and the wider spirit of human +love and helpfulness which passes beyond the narrow bounds of the family +hearth has perhaps to find an intermediate sphere before it can unfold +itself and expand in the great field of Humanity among all colours and +races. + +Personally, I am probably more International by temperament than +Patriotic. I feel a strange kinship and intimacy with all sorts of queer +and outlandish races--Chinese, Egyptian, Mexican, or Polynesian--and +always a slight but persistent sense of estrangement and +misapprehension among my own people. Flag-waving certainly, does not +stir me. Still, I feel that, whatever one's country may be, the love of +it has value and is not to be scoffed at. The Nation is bigger than the +Parish; and to a man of limited outlook it is a means of getting him out +of his own very narrow and local circle of life; to rob him of that in +order to jump him into a cosmopolitan attitude (which to him may be +quite empty and arid) is a mistake. It is easy enough to break the shell +for the growing chick, but if you break it too soon your chick, when +hatched, will be dead. + +If you look at the great majority of those who are enthusing just now +about our country and patriotically detesting the Germans, you will see +that notwithstanding lies and slanders and cant galore, and much of +conceit and vanity, their patriotism _is_ pulling them together from one +end of Britain to another, causing them to help each other in a thousand +ways, urging them to make sacrifices for the common good, helping them +to grow the sinews and limbs of the body politic, and even the wings +which will one day transport that body into a bigger world. Really, I +think we ought to be very grateful to the Germans for doing all this for +us; and the Germans ought to be grateful to us for an exactly similar +reason. You will see plainly enough that the great majority of those who +are at this moment giving their thoughts and lives for their countrymen +and neighbours either in Germany or in England could not by any manner +of possibility be expected to act with similar self-surrender and +enthusiasm in an International cause. They are not grown to that point +of development yet, and it is better that they should learn helpfulness +and brotherhood within somewhat narrow bounds than perhaps not learn +these things at all in the open and indiscriminate field of universal +equality. After all, to stimulate love and friendship there is nothing +like a common enemy! + +It is an old story and an old difficulty. There comes a time when every +institution of social life becomes rotten and diseased and has to be +removed to make way for the new life which is expanding behind it. +Broadly speaking, we may say that the institution of Patriotism is +_approaching_ this period--at any rate over Western Europe. The outlines +of an International life are becoming clearly visible behind it. + +What we have to do is to help on that international life and spirit to +our best, and certainly clear out a lot of sham patriotism that stands +in its way; but this has to be done with discrimination and a certain +tact. People must be made to see that "my country, right or wrong," is +not the genuine article. They must be made to understand how easily this +sort of slapdash sentiment throws them into the hands of scheming +politicians and wire-pullers for sinister purposes--how readily it can +be made use of directly it has become a mere unreasoning instinct and +habit. If a war is wanted, or conscription, or a customs tariff--it may +be merely to suit the coward fears of autocratic rulers, or the selfish +interests of some group of contractors or concession-hunters--all that +the parties concerned have to do is to play the patriotic stop, and they +stand a good chance of getting what they want. Just now there is a good +bit of fleecing going on in this fashion--both of the public and the +wage-workers. Even in its more healthy forms, when delayed in too long, +patriotism easily becomes morbid and delays also the birth of the larger +spirit which is waiting behind it. The Continental Socialists complain +that their cause has hitherto made little progress in Alsace-Lorraine +and Poland for the simple reason that political circumstances have +over-accentuated the patriotic devotion in both these regions. + +Thus we have to push on with discrimination. Always we have to remember +that the wide, free sense of equality and kinship which lies at the root +of Internationalism is the real goal, and that the other thing is but a +step on the way, albeit a necessary step. Always we have to press on +towards that great and final liberation--the realization of our common +humanity, the recognition of the same great soul of man slumbering under +all forms in the heart of all races--the one guarantee and assurance of +the advent of World-peace. + +That we are verging rapidly towards some altered perspective I quite +believe; and the day is coming when in the social and political spheres +International activity will make excessive patriotism seem somewhat +ridiculous--as, in fact, it has already done in the spheres of Science +and Industry and Art. Still, I also do not see any reason why the two +tendencies should not work side by side. The health of local organs and +members in the human body is by no means incompatible with the health of +the whole organism, and we may understand the great map of Humanity all +the better for its being differently coloured in different parts. + + + + +VIII + + +THE PSYCHOLOGY OF, WAR AND RECRUITING + +_November_, 1914. + +I sometimes think the country-folk round about where I live the most +sensible people I know. They say with regard to the War--or said at its +outset: "What are they fighting about? _I_ can't make out, and nobody +seems to know. What I've seen o' the Germans they're a decent enough +folk--much like ourselves. If there's got to be fightin', why don't them +as makes the quarrel go and fight wi' each other? But killing all them +folk that's got no quarrel, and burnin' their houses and farms, and +tramplin' down all that good corn--and all them brave men dead what can +never live again--its scandalous, I say." + +This at the outset. But afterwards, when the papers had duly explained +that the Germans were mere barbarians and savages, bent on reducing the +whole world to military slavery, they began to take sides and feel there +was good cause for fighting. Meanwhile almost exactly the same thing was +happening in Germany, where England was being represented as a greedy +and deceitful Power, trying to boss and crush all the other nations. +Thus each nation did what was perhaps, from its own point of view, the +most sensible thing to do--persuaded itself that it was fighting in a +just and heroic cause, that it was a St. George against the Dragon, a +David out to slay Goliath. + +The attitude of the peasant, however, or agriculturist, all over the +world, is the same. He does not deal in romantic talk about St. George +and the Dragon. He sees too clearly the downright facts of life. He has +no interest in fighting, and he does not want to fight. Being the one +honest man in the community--the one man who creates, not only his own +food but the food of others besides, and who knows the value of his +work, he perceives without illusion the foolery of War, the hideous +waste of it, the shocking toll of agony and loss which it inflicts--and +if left to himself would as a rule have no hand in it. It is only +occasionally--when ground down beyond endurance by the rent-racking +classes above him, or threatened beyond endurance by an enemy from +abroad, that he turns his reaping-hook into a sword and his muck-fork +into a three-pronged bayonet, exchanges his fowling-piece for a rifle, +and fights savagely for his home and his bit of a field. + +England, curiously enough, is almost the only country in the world where +the peasant or ordinary field-worker _has_ no field of his own[22]; and +I find that in the villages and among the general agricultural +population there is even now but little enthusiasm for the present +war--though the raid on our coasts at Scarborough and other places +certainly did something to stimulate it. Partly this is, as I have said, +because the agricultural worker knows that his work is foundational, and +that nothing else is of importance compared with it. [At this moment, +for instance, there are peasants in Belgium and Northern France +ploughing and sowing, and so forth, actually close to the trenches and +between the fighting lines.] Partly it is because in England, alas! the +countryman _has_ so little right or direct interest in the soil. One +wonders sometimes why he _should_ feel any enthusiasm. Why should men +want to fight for their land when they have no land to fight for--when +the most they can do is to die at the foot of a trespass-board, singing, +"Britons never, never shall be slaves!" + +If the War is ever finished, surely one of the first things to be +insisted on afterwards, with regard to England, must be the settlement +of the actual people (not the parasites) on the land. Else how, after +all that they have gone through, can it be expected that they will ever +again "fight for their country"? But that this vast landless population +in the villages and country districts--hungering as it is for some sure +tenure and interest in the soil--should actually, as now, be berated and +scolded by superior persons of the "upper" classes, and threatened with +conscription if it does not "come forward" more readily, is a spectacle +sufficient to gratify the most hardened cynic. + +Certainly it is remarkable that such numbers of the great working masses +of this country (including villagers) should come forward in connexion +with the war, and join the standard and the ranks of fighting men--as +they do--and it is a thing for which one must honour them. But in that +matter there are not a few considerations to be kept in mind. + +In the first place a large number are not really very enthusiastic, but +simply join because pressure to do so is put upon them by their +"masters." The press-gangs of old exist no longer, but substitutes for +them revive in subtler form. Many large landlords, for instance, have +given notice to a percentage of their gamekeepers, gardeners, park +employees, and the like, to the effect that their services are no +longer required, but that if they enlist in the ranks now they will be +reinstated in their masters' service again when the war is over ("if +still alive" is, we presume, understood). Large numbers of manufacturing +and other firms have notified their workmen and clerks in similar terms. +This means pretty serious economic pressure. A man in the prime of life, +suddenly ousted from his job, and with no prospect either of finding a +similar job elsewhere or of learning any new one, is in a pretty fix. +His only certain refuge lies in the fact that he can be taught to use a +rifle in a few weeks; and in a few weeks perhaps it becomes clear to him +that to accept that offer and the pay that goes with it--poor as it +is--is his only chance. + +There are others, again--perhaps a very large number--who do not care +much about the war in itself, and probably have only the vaguest notion +of what it is all about, but for them to join the ranks means adventure, +comradeship, the open air--all fascinating things; and they hail the +prospect with joy as an escape from intolerable dullness--from the +monotony of the desk and the stuffy office, from the dreary round and +mechanical routine of the factory bench, from the depressing environment +of "home" and domestic squalor. + +I must confess--though I have no general prejudice in favour of +war--that I have been much struck, since the outbreak of the present +one, by the altered look of crowds of young men whom I personally +know--who are now drilling or otherwise preparing for it. The gay look +on their faces, the blood in their cheeks, the upright carriage and +quick, elate step--when compared with the hang-dog, sallow, dull +creatures I knew before--all testify to the working of some magic +influence. + +As I say, I do not think that this influence in most cases has much to +do with enthusiasm for the "cause" or any mere lust of "battle" (happily +indeed for the most part they do not for a moment realize what modern +battle means). It is simply escape from the hateful conditions of +present-day commercialism and its hideous wage-slavery into something +like the normal life of young manhood--a life in the open under the wide +sky, blood-stirring enterprise, risk if you will, co-operation and +_camaraderie_. These are the inviting, beckoning things, the things +which swing the balance down--even though hardships, low pay, and high +chances of injury and death are thrown in the opposite scale. + +Nevertheless, and despite these other considerations, there does +certainly remain, in this as in other wars, a fair number of men among +those who enlist who are _bonâ fide_ inspired by some Ideal which they +feel to be worth fighting for. It may be Patriotism or love of their +country; it may be "to put down militarism"; it may be Religion or +Honour or what not. And it is fine that it should be so. They may in +cases be deluded, or mistaken about facts; the ideal they fight for may +be childish (as in the mediaeval Crusades); still, even so it is fine +that people should be willing to give their lives for an idea--that they +should be capable of being inspired by a vision. Humanity has at least +advanced as far as that. + +I suppose patriotism, or love of country--when it comes to its full +realization, as in the case of invasion by an enemy, is the most +powerful and tremendous of such ideals, sweeping everything before it. +It represents something ingrained in the blood. In that case all the +other motives for fighting--economic or what not--disappear and are +swallowed up. Material life and social conditions under a German +government might externally be as comfortable and prosperous as under +our own, but for most of us something in the soul would wither and +sicken at the thought. + +Anyhow, whatever the motives may be which urge _individuals_ into +war--whether sheer necessity or patriotism, or the prospect of wages or +distinction, or the love of adventure--a nation or a people in order to +fight _must_ have a "cause" to fight for, something which its public +opinion, its leaders, and its Press can appropriate--some phrase which +it can inscribe on its shield: be it "Country" or "God" or "Freedom from +Tyranny," or "Culture _versus_ Barbarism." It must have some such cry, +else obviously it could not fight with any whole-heartedness or any +force. + +The thing is a psychological necessity. Every one, when he gets into a +quarrel, justifies himself and accuses the other party. He puts his own +conduct in an ideal light, and the conduct of his opponent in the +reverse! Doubtless if we were all angels and could impartially enter +into all the origins of the quarrel, we should not fight, because to +"understand" would be to "forgive"; but as we have not reached that +stage, and as we cannot even explain why we are quarrelling--the matter +being so complex--we are fain to adopt a phrase and fight on the +strength of that. It is useless to call this hypocrisy. It is a +psychological necessity. It is the same necessity which makes a mistress +dismiss her maid on the score of a broken teapot, though really she has +no end of secret grievances against her; or which makes the man of +science condense the endless complexity of certain physical phenomena +into a neat but lying formula which he calls a _Law of Nature_. He could +not possibly give all the real facts, and so he uses a phrase. + +In war, therefore, each nation adopts a motto as its reason for +fighting. Sometimes the two opposing nations both adopt the same motto I +England and Germany both inscribe on their banners: "Culture _versus_ +Barbarism." Each believes in its own good faith, and each accuses the +other of hypocrisy. + +In a sense this is all right, and could not be better. It does not so +much matter which is really the most cultured nation, England or +Germany, as that each should really _believe_ that it is fighting in the +cause of Culture. Then, so fighting for what it knows to be a good +cause, the wounds and death endured and the national losses and +depletion are not such sad and dreadful things as they at first appear. +They liberate the soul of the individual; they liberate the soul of the +nation. They are sacrifices made for an ideal; and (provided they are +truly such) the God within is well-pleased and comes one step nearer to +his incarnation. Whatever inner thing you make sacrifices for, the same +will in time appear visibly in your life--blessing or cursing you. +Therefore, beware I and take good care as to what that inner thing +really is. + +Such is the meaning of the use of a phrase or "battle-cry"; but we have, +indeed, to be on our guard against _how_ we use it. It can so easily +become a piece of cant or hypocrisy. It can so easily be engineered by +ruling cliques and classes for their own purposes--to persuade and +compel the people to fight _their_ battles. The politicians get us (for +reasons which they do not explain) into a nice little entanglement +--perhaps with some tribe of savages, perhaps with a great +European Power; and before the nation knows where it is it finds itself +committed to a campaign which may develop and become a serious war. Then +there is no alternative but for Ministers to repair to a certain Cabinet +where the well-dried formulae they need are kept hanging, and select one +for their use. It may be "Women and Children," or it may be "Immoral +Savages," or it may be "Empire," or it may be "Our Word of Honour." +Having selected the right one, and duly displayed and advertised it, +they have little difficulty in making the nation rise to the bait, and +fight whatever battles they desire. + +Since the early beginnings of the human race we can perceive the same +processes in operation. We can almost guess the grade of advancement +reached among primitive tribes by simply taking note of their _totems_. +These were emblems of the things which held the mind of the tribe, as +admirable or terrible, with which it was proud to identify itself--the +fox, for instance, or the bear, the kangaroo, or the eagle. To be worthy +of _such ideals_ men fought. Later, every little people, every knightly, +family, every group of adventurers, adopted a device for its shield, a +motto for its flag, a figure of some kind, human, or more often animal. +Even the modern nations have not got much farther; and we can judge of +_their_ stage of advancement by the beasts of prey they, flaunt on their +banners or the deep-throat curses which resound in their national +anthems. + +But surely the time has now come--even with this world-war--when the +great heart of the peoples will wake up to the savagery and the folly +perpetrated in their names. The people, who, although they enjoy a +"scrap" now and then, are essentially peaceful, essentially friendly, +all the world over; who in the intervals of slaughter offer cigarettes +to their foes, and tenderly dress their enemies' wounds; whose worst and +age-long sin it is that they allow themselves so easily to be dominated +and led by, ambitious and greedy schemers--surely it is time that they +should wake up and throw off these sham governments--these governments +that are three-quarters class-scheming and fraud and only one-quarter +genuine expressions of public spirit--and declare the heart of +solidarity that is within them. + +The leaders and high priests of the world have used the name of +Christianity to bless their own nefarious works with, till the soul is +sick at the very sound of the word; but surely the time has come when +the peoples themselves out of their own heart will proclaim the advent +of the Son of Man--conscious of it, indeed, as a great light of +brotherhood shining within them, even amid the clouds of race-enmity and +ignorance, and will deny once for all the gospel of world-empire and +conquest which has so long been foisted on them for insidiously selfish +ends. + +An empire based on brotherhood--a holy _human_ empire of the World, +including all races and colours in a common unity and equality--yes! But +these shoddy empires based on militarism and commercialism, and built up +in order to secure the unclean ascendancy of two outworn and effete +classes over the rest of mankind--a thousand times no! That +dispensation, thank Heaven! is past. "These fatuous empires with their +parade of power and their absolute lack of any real policy--this British +Lion, this Russian Bear, these German, French, and American +Eagles--these birds and beasts of prey--with their barbaric notions of +Greed and War, their impossible armaments, and their swift financial +ruin impending--will fall and be rent asunder. The hollow masks of them +will perish. And the sooner the better. But underneath surely there will +be rejoicing, for it will be found that so after all the real peoples of +the earth have come one degree nearer together--yes, one degree nearer +together." + +FOOTNOTES: + +[22] In Servia, for instance, which many folk doubtless regard as a +benighted country, more than four-fifths of the people are peasant +farmers and cultivate lands belonging to their own families. "These +holdings cannot be sold or mortgaged entire; the law forbids the +alienation for debt of a peasant's cottage, his garden or courtyard, his +plough, the last few acres of his land, and the cattle necessary for +working his farm." [Encycl. Brit.] In 1910 there were altogether _five +hundred_ agricultural co-operative societies in Servia. + + + + +IX + + +CONSCRIPTION + +_December_, 1914. + +While protesting, as I have already done, against forced military +service, it must still be admitted that the argument in favour of it +retains a certain validity: to the extent, namely, that every one owes a +duty of some kind to his own people, that it is mean to accept all the +advantages of citizenship--security, protection, settled conditions of +life, and so forth--and still to refuse to make sacrifice for one's +country in a time of distress or danger. It is difficult of course for +any one to trace all the threads and fibres which have worked themselves +into his life from his own homeland--as it is difficult for a child to +trace all the qualities of blood that it owes to its mother; but there +they are, and though some of these native inheritances and conditions +may not really be to a man's liking, yet he can hardly refuse to +acknowledge them, or to confess the debt of gratitude that he owes to +the land of his birth. + +Granting all this, however, most fully, there still remains a long +stretch from this admission to that of forced military service. The +drawbacks to this latter are many. In the first place compulsion anyhow +is bad. A voluntary citizen army may be all right; but to _compel_ a man +to fight, whether he will or not--in violation, perhaps, of his +conscience, of his instinct, of his temperament--is an inexcusable +outrage on his rights as a human being. In the second place it is gross +folly; for a man who fights devoid of freewill and against his +conscience, against his temperament, cannot possibly make a good +fighter. An army of such recusants, however large, would be useless; and +even a few mixed with the others do, as a matter of fact, greatly lower +the efficiency of the whole force associated with them. In the third +place compulsion means compulsion by a Government, and Government, at +any rate to-day, means class-rule. Forced military service means service +under and subjection to a Class. That means Wars carried on abroad to +serve the interests, often iniquitous enough, of the Few; and military +operations entered into at home to suppress popular discontent or to +confirm class-power. To none of these things could any high-minded man +of democratic temper consent. There are other drawbacks, but these will +do to begin with. + +On the other hand, if we reject enforced militarism are we to throw +overboard the idea of "national service" altogether? + +I think not. The way out is fairly clear and obvious. Let it be +understood that there _is_ such a thing as national or public service, +to which (within the limits of individual conscience and capacity) every +one is bound to respond. Let it be understood that at a certain age, say +from sixteen to eighteen (but the period would no doubt be a movable +one) every one, boy or girl, rich or poor, shall go through a course of +training fitting him or her for healthy and effective citizenship. This +would include _first of all_ bodily exercises and drill (needed by +almost all, but especially in the present day by town workers), all +sorts of scouting-work, familiarity with Nature, camp and outdoor life; +then all kinds of elementary and necessary trades, like agriculture in +some form or other, metal-work, wood-work, cloth-work, tailoring, +bootmaking; then such things as rifle-shooting, ambulance-work, nursing, +cookery, and so on. Let it be understood that _every one_, male or +female, rich or poor, learned or ignorant, is expected to qualify--not +in the whole programme, but first of all and as far as humanly possible +in the primary condition of physical health and development, and then +after that in some one, at any rate, of the above-mentioned or similar +trades--so that in case of general need or distress he can do +_something_ of use. That would at least be an approach to a valuable and +reasonable institution. + +As things are it is appalling to think of the abject futility and +_uselessness_ of vast classes in all the modern nations of to-day,--but +perhaps especially in our own nation. Think of the populations of our +drawing-rooms, of our well-to-do clubs, of our universities, of our +commercial and professional offices, whose occupations, whatever they +are, are entirely remote from the direct needs and meanings of life; or +again of the vast masses who inhabit the mean streets of our great +towns, ignorant, ill-grown, unskilled, and in a chronic state of most +precarious and uncertain employment. What would these populations do in +any case of national crisis--say in a case of serious war or famine or +huge bankruptcy of trade or multitudinous invasion by Chinese or +Japanese, or of total collapse of credit and industry? With a few +brilliant exceptions they would collapse too. They could not feed +themselves, clothe themselves, or defend themselves; they could not +build shelters from the storm, or make tools or weapons of any kind for +their own use; they would be unable to nurse each other in illness or +cook for each other in health. A tribe of Arabs or a commando of Boer +farmers would be far more competent than they. + +But the said deficiency, which would be painfully illustrated by a +serious crisis, is there equally in ordinary humdrum times of peace. The +crippled and idiotic life which would bring disaster _then_ is +undermining our very existence _now_. Is it not time that a sensible +nation should look to it that every one of its members, when adult, +should at least be healthy, well-fed, and well-grown, and that each +should not only be decently developed in himself or herself, but should +be capable of bearing a useful part of some kind in the life of the +nation? Is it not time that the nation should place _first of all_ on +its programme the creation of capable and healthy citizens? Can a nation +be really effective, really strong, really secure, without this? I do +not seem to doubt a large _willingness_ among our people to-day for +mutual service and helpfulness--I believe a vast number of our young +women of the well-to-do type are at this moment deeply regretting their +inability to do anything except knit superfluous mufflers--but was there +ever in the history of the world such huge, such wide-flooding +_incompetence_? The willingness of the well-to-do classes may be judged +from their readiness to come forward with subscriptions, their +incompetence from the fact that they have _nothing else to offer_: that +is, that all they can offer is to set _some one else_ (by means of their +money) to do useful work in their place. They cannot themselves nurse +wounded soldiers, or make boots for them, or build huts or weave +blankets; they cannot help in housing or building schemes, or in schemes +for the reclaiming and cultivation of waste lands; they cannot grow corn +or bake bread or cook simple meals for the assistance of the indigent or +the aged or the feeble, because they understand none of these things; +but they can _pay some one else_ to do them--that is, they can divert +some of the money, which they have already taken from the workers, to +setting the latter toiling again! But what use would that be on the day +when our monetary system broke down--as it nearly did at the +commencement of this war? What use would it be on some critical day when +a hostile invasion called every competent man and woman to do the work +of defence absolutely necessary at the moment? What use would it be in +the hour when complete commercial dislocation caused downright famine? +Who would look at offers of money then? Could the nation Carry this vast +mass of incompetents and idlers on its back then; and can it reasonably +be expected to do so now? + +A terrible and serious crisis, as I have already said, awaits us--even +when the War is over--a crisis probably worse than that which we are +passing through now. We have to remember the debts that are being piled +up. If the nations are staggering along now under the enormous load of +idlers and parasites living on interest, how will it be then? Unless we +can reorganize our Western societies on a real foundation of actual +life, of practical capacity, of honest and square living, and of mutual +help instead of mutual robbery, they will infallibly collapse, or pass +into strange and alien hands. Now is the critical moment when with the +enormous powers of production which we wield it may be possible to make +a new start, and base the social life of the future on a generous +recognition of the fellowship of all. How many times have the +civilizations of the past, ignoring this salvation, gone down into the +gulf! Can we find a better hope for our civilization to-day? + +It is clear, I think, that any nation that wants to stand the shock of +events in the future, and to hold its own in the vast flux of racial and +political changes which is coming on the world, will have to found its +life, not on theories and views, or on the shifting sands of literature +and fashion, but on the solid rock of the real _material_ capability of +its citizens, and on their willingness, their readiness to help each +other--their ingrained instinct of mutual service. A conscript army, +forced upon us by a government and becoming inevitably a tool for the +use of a governing class, we do not want and we will not have; but a +nation of capable men and women, who know what life is and are prepared +to meet it at all points--who will in many cases make a free gift of +their capital and land for such purposes as I have just outlined--we +_must_ have. Personally I would not even here--though the need is a +crying one--advocate downright compulsion; but I would make these things +a part of the recognized system of education, with appropriate +regulations and the strongest recommendations and inducements to every +individual to fall in and co-operate with them. Thus in time an urgent +public opinion might be formed which would brand as disgraceful the +conduct of any person who refused to qualify himself for useful +service, or who, when qualified, deliberately refused to respond to the +call for such service, if needed. Under such conditions the question of +military defence would solve itself. Thousands and thousands of men +would of their own free choice at an early age and during a certain +period qualify themselves in military matters; other thousands, men and +women, would qualify in nursing or ambulance work; other millions, +again, would be prepared to aid in transport work, or in the production +of food, clothing, shelter, and the thousand and one necessaries of +life. No one would be called upon to do work which he had not chosen, no +one would be forced to take up an activity which was hateful to him, yet +all would feel that what they could do and did do would be helpful to +the other ranks and ranges, and would be _solidaire_ with the rest of +the nation. Such a nation would be sane and prosperous in time of peace, +and absolutely safe and impregnable in the hour of danger. + + + + +X + + +HOW SHALL THE PLAGUE BE STAYED? + +_Christmas_, 1914. + +People ask what new arrangements of diplomacy or revivals of +Christianity--what alliances, _ententes_, leagues of peace, Hague +tribunals, regulation of armaments, weeks of prayer, or tons of +Christmas puddings sent into the enemies' camps--will finally scotch +this pestilence of war. And there is no answer, because the answer is +too close at hand for us to see it. + +Nothing but the general abandonment of the system of living on the +labour of others will avail. _There is no other way_. This, whether as +between individuals or as between nations, is--and has been since the +beginning of the world--the root-cause of war. Early and primitive wars +were for this--to raid crops and cattle, to carry off slaves on whose +toil the conquerors could subsist; and the latest wars are the same. To +acquire rubber concessions, gold-mines, diamond-mines, where coloured +labour may be exploited to its bitterest extreme; to secure colonies and +outlying lands, where giant capitalist enterprises (with either white or +coloured labour) may make huge dividends out of the raising of minerals +and other industrial products; to crush any other Power which stands in +the way of these greedy and inhuman ambitions--such are the objects of +wars to-day. And we do not see the cause of the sore because it is so +near to us, because it is in our blood. The whole private life of the +commercial and capitalist classes (who stand as the representatives of +the nations to-day) is founded on the same principle. As individuals our +one object is to find some worker or group of workers whose labour value +we can appropriate. Look at the endless columns of stock and share +quotations in the daily papers, and consider the armies of those who +scan these lists over their breakfast-tables with the one view of +finding some-where an industrial concern whose slave-driven toilers +will yield the shareholder 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12 per cent, on his capital. +Undisguised and shameless parasitism is the order, or disorder, of our +days. The rapacity of beasts of prey is in our social life but thinly +veiled--thinly veiled indeed by a wash of "Christian" sentiment and by a +network of philanthropic institutions for the supposed benefit of the +very victims whom we have robbed. + +Is it any wonder that this principle of internecine warfare and rapacity +which rules in our midst, this vulgar greed, which loads people's bodies +with jewels and furs and their tables with costly food, regardless of +those from whom these comforts are snatched, should eventuate ultimately +in rapacity and violence on the vast stage of the drama of nations, and +in red letters of war and conflict written across the continents? It is +no good, with a pious snuffle, to say we are out to put down warfare and +militarism, and all the time to encourage in our own lives, and in our +Church and Empire Leagues and other institutions, the most sordid and +selfish commercialism--which itself is in essence a warfare, only a +warfare of a far meaner and more cowardly kind than that which is +signalized by the shock of troops or the rage of rifles and cannon. + +No, there is no other way; and only by the general abandonment of our +present commercial and capitalist system will the plague of war be +stayed.[23] + +FOOTNOTES: + +[23] When these hundreds and hundreds of thousands of men return home +after the war is over, do we expect them to go meekly back to the +idiotic slavery of dingy offices and dirty workshops? If we do I trust +that we shall be disappointed. These men who have fought so nobly for +their land, and who have tasted, even under the most trying conditions, +something of the largeness and gladness of a free open-air life, will, I +hope, refuse to knuckle down again to the old commercialism. Now at last +arises the opportunity for our outworn Civilization to make a fresh +start. Now comes the chance to establish great self-supporting Colonies +in our own countrysides and co-operative concerns where real Goods may +be manufactured and Agriculture carried on in free and glad and healthy +industry. + + + + +XI + + +COMMERCIAL PROSPERITY THE PROSPERITY OF A CLASS + +The economics of the statement that "commercial prosperity means little +more than the prosperity of a _class_"[24] may be roughly indicated by +the following considerations: International trade means division of +labour among the nations. There is certainly a gain in such division, a +margin of advantage in production; and that gain, that margin, is +secured by the trading class. That is all. + +Let us take an example, and to simplify the problem let us leave out of +account those exotic products--like tea or rubber or raw cotton--which +_can_ only be produced in one of the exchanging countries. Let us take +the case of Germany and England, both producing cutlery and both +producing cloth. There is no reason why each country should not produce +_both_ articles exclusively for its own use; and as a matter of fact for +a long time they did so. But presently it was found that the cost of +production of certain kinds of cutlery was less in Germany, and the cost +of production of certain kinds of cloth less in England. Merchants and +dealers came in and effected the exchange, and so an intertrade has +sprung up. The effect of this on the workers in England is simply to +transfer a certain amount of employment from the cutlery trade to the +cloth trade, and on the workers in Germany to transfer an equal amount +from the cloth trade to the cutlery trade. This may mean dislocation of +industry; but the actual number of persons employed or of wages received +in both countries may in such a case remain just the same as before. +There is nothing in the mere fact of exchange to alter those figures. +There is, however, a gain, there is a marginal advantage, in the +exchange; and that is collared by the merchants and dealers. It is, in +fact, _in order to secure this margin_ that the merchant class arises. +This is, of course, a very simple and elementary statement of the +problem, and the exceptions to it or modifications of it may be supplied +by the reader. But in the main it embodies the very obvious truth that +trade is created for the advantage of the trader (who often also in +modern times is the manufacturer himself). What advantages may here and +there leak through to the public or to the employee are small and, so to +speak, accidental. The mere fact of exchange in itself forms no index of +general prosperity. Yet it is often assumed that it does. If, for +instance, it should happen that the whole production of cutlery, as +between Germany and England, were secured by Germany, and the whole +production of cloth were secured by England, so that the _whole_ of +these products on each side had to be exchanged, then doubtless there +would be great jubilation--talk of the immense growth of oversea trade +in both countries, the wonderful increase of exports and imports, the +great prosperity, and so forth; but really and obviously it would only +mean the jubilation and the prosperity of the merchants, the brokers, +the railway and shipping companies of both lands. There would be an +increase in _their_ riches (and an increase in the number of their +employees). It would mean more merchant palaces in Park Lane, bigger +dividends on the shares of transport companies; but after that the +general position of the manual workers in both trades, the numbers +employed, and their rates of wages would be much as before. Prices also, +as regards the general Public, would be but little altered. It is only +because this great trading, manufacturing, and commercial class has +amassed such enormous wealth and influence, and is able to command the +Press, and social position, and votes and representation on public +bodies and in both Houses of Parliament, that it succeeds in impressing +the nation generally with the idea that _its_ welfare is the welfare of +the whole people, and its prosperity the advantage of every citizen. And +it is in this very fact that its great moral and social danger to the +community lies. + +It must not be thought (but I believe I have said this before) that in +making out that the commercial classes are largely to blame for modern +wars I mean to say that the present war, and many previous ones, have +been _directly_ instigated by commercial folk. It is rather that the +atmosphere of commercial competition and rivalry automatically leads up +to military rivalries and collisions, which often at the last moment +(though not always) turn out contrary to the wishes of the commercial +people themselves. Also I would repeat that it is not _Commerce_ but the +_class_ interest that is to blame. Commerce and exchange, as we know in +a thousand ways, have the effect of drawing peoples together, giving +them common interests, acquaintance, and understanding of each other, +and so making for peace. The great jubilation during the latter half of +the nineteenth century--from 1851 onwards--over world-wide trade and +Industrial Exhibitions, as the heralds of the world's peace and amity--a +jubilation voiced in Tennyson's earlier _Locksley Hall_--was to a +certain extent justified. There is no doubt that the nations have been +drawn together by intertrading and learned to know each other. Bonds, +commercial and personal, have grown up between them, and are growing +up, which must inevitably make wars more difficult in the future and +less desirable. And if it had been possible to carry on this intertrade +in a spirit of real friendliness and without grasping or greed the +result to-day would be incalculably great. But, unfortunately, this +latter element came in to an extent quite unforeseen and blighted the +prophetic hopes. The second _Locksley Hall_ was a wail of +disillusionment. The growth of large mercantile classes, intoxicated +with wealth and pursuing their own interests _apart from, and indeed +largely in opposition to_, those of the mass-peoples, derailed the +forward movement, and led in some of the ways which I have indicated +above to more of conflict between the nations and less of peace. + +Doubtless the growth of these mercantile classes has to a certain extent +been inevitable; and we must do them the justice to acknowledge that +their enterprise and ingenuity (even set in action for their own private +advantage) have been of considerable benefit to the world, and that +their growth may represent a necessary stage in affairs. Still, we +cannot help looking forward to a time when, this stage having been +completed, and commerce between nation and nation having ceased to be +handled for mere private profit and advantage, the parasitical power in +our midst which preys upon the Commonweal will disappear, the mercantile +classes will become organic with the Community, and one great and +sinister source of wars will also cease. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[24] See p. 50 above. + + + + +XII + + +COLONIES AND SEAPORTS + +There is another point of economics on which there seems to be some +confusion of mind. If mere extension of Trade is the thing sought for, +it really does not matter much, in these days of swift and international +transport, whether the outlying lands with which the Trader deals or the +ports _through_ which he deals are the property of his own nation or of +some other nation. The trade goes on all the same. England certainly has +colonies all over the world; but with her free trade and open ports it +often happens that one of her colonies takes more German or French goods +of a certain class than English goods of the same class; or that it +exports more to Germany and France than it does to England. The bulk, +for instance, of the produce of our West African colonies goes, in +normal times, to Germany. German or French trade does not suffer in +dealing with English colonies, though English trade may sometimes suffer +in dealing with French, German or other foreign colonies on account of +the preferential duties they put on in favour of their own goods. Except +for these tariff-walls and bounty systems (which after all, on account +of their disturbing and crippling effect, seem to be gradually going out +of fashion) trade flows over the world, regardless of national barriers, +and will continue so to flow. It is all a question of relative +efficiency and price. German goods, owing to their cheapness and their +accuracy of construction, have of late years been penetrating +everywhere; and to the German trader, as a pure matter of trade, it +makes no difference whether he sells to a foreign nation or a German +colony. + +It is the same with seaports. Holland is delighted to provide passage +for Germany's exports and imports, and probably does so at a minimum +cost. The Berlin manufacturer or merchant would be no better off, as far +as trade conditions are concerned, if Germany instead of Holland held +the mouths of the Rhine. The same with a harbour like Salonika. Germany +or Austria may covet dreadfully its possession; and for strategic or +political reasons they may be right, but for pure trade purposes +Salonika in the hands of the Greeks would probably (except for certain +initial expenses in the enlargement of dock accommodation) serve them as +well as in their own hands. + +Of course there _are_ other reasons which make nations desire colonies +and ports. Such things may be useful for offensive or defensive purposes +against other nations; they feed a jealous sense of importance and +Imperialism; they provide outlets for population and access to lands +where the institutions and customs of the Homeland prevail; they supply +financiers with a field for the investment of capital under the +protection of their own Governments; they favour the development of a +national _carrying_ trade; and, above all, they supply plentiful +official and other posts and situations for the young men of the middle +and commercial classes; but for the mere extension and development of +the nation's general trade and commerce it is doubtful whether they have +anything like the importance commonly credited to them. + + + + +XIII + + +WAR AND THE SEX IMPULSE + +_January_, 1915. + +It seems that War, like all greatest things--like Passion, Politics, +Religion, and so forth--is impossible to reckon up. It belongs to +another plane of existence than our ordinary workaday life, and breaks +into the latter as violently and unreasonably, as a volcano into the +cool pastures where cows and sheep are grazing. No arguments, protests, +proofs, or explanations are of any avail; and those that are advanced +are confused, contradictory, and unconvincing. Just as people quarrel +most violently over Politics and Religion, because, in fact, those are +the two subjects which no one really understands, so they quarrel in +Warfare, not really knowing _why_, but impelled by deep, inscrutable +forces. Spectators even and neutrals, for the same reason, take sides +and range themselves bitterly, if only in argument, against each other. + +But Logic and Morals are of no use on these occasions. They are too +thin. They are only threads in a vast fabric. You extract a single +thread from the weaving of a carpet, and note its colour and its +concatenations, but that gives you no faintest idea of the pattern of +the carpet; and then you extract another, and another, but you are no +nearer the design. Logic and morals are similar threads in the great web +of life. You may follow them in various directions, but without +effective result. Life is so much greater than either; and War is a +volcanic manifestation of Life which gives them little or no heed. + +There is a madness of nations, as well as of individual people. Every +one who has paid attention to the fluctuations of popular sentiment +knows how strange, how unaccountable, these are. They seem to suggest +the coming to the surface, from time to time, of hidden +waves--groundswells of some deep ocean. The temper, the temperament, the +character, the policy of a whole nation will change, and it is +difficult to see why. Sometimes a passion, a fury, a veritable mania, +quite unlike its ordinary self, will seize it. There is a madness of +peoples, which causes them for a while to hate each other with bitter +hatred, to fight furiously and wound and injure each other; and then lo! +a little while more and they are shaking hands and embracing and +swearing eternal friendship! What does it all mean? + +It is all as mad and unreasonable as Love is--and that is saying a good +deal! In love, too, people desire to _hurt_ each other; they do not +hesitate to wound one another--wounding hearts, wounding bodies even, +and hating themselves even while they act so. What does it all mean? Are +they trying the one to reach the other _at all costs_--if not by +embraces, at least by injuries--each longing to make his or her +personality felt, to _impress_ himself or herself upon the other in such +wise as never again to be forgotten. Sometimes a man will stab the girl +he loves, if he cannot get at her any other way. Sex itself is a +positive battle. Lust connects itself only too frequently with violence +and the spilling of blood. + +Is it possible that something the same happens with whole nations and +peoples--an actual lust and passion of conflict, a mad intercourse and +ravishment, a kind of generation in each other, and exchange of +life-essences, leaving the two peoples thereafter never more the same, +but each strangely fertilized towards the future? Is it this that +explains the extraordinary ecstasy which men experience on the +battlefield, even amid all the horrors--an ecstasy so great that it +calls them again and again to return? "Have you noticed," says one of +our War correspondents,[25] "how many of our colonels fall? Do you know +why? It is for five minutes of _life_. It is for the joy of riding, when +the charge sounds, at the crest of a wave of men." + +Is it this that explains the curious fact that Wars--notwithstanding all +their bitterness and brutishness--do not infrequently lead to strange +amalgamations and generations? The spreading of the seeds of Greek +culture over the then known world by Alexander's conquests, or the +fertilizing of Europe with the germs of republican and revolutionary +ideas by the armies of Napoleon, or the immense reaction on the +mediaeval Christian nations caused by the Crusades, are commonplaces of +history; and who--to come to quite modern times--could have foreseen +that the Boer War would end in the present positive alliance between the +Dutch and English in South Africa, or that the Russo-Japanese conflict +would so profoundly modify the ideas and outlook of the two peoples +concerned? + +In making these remarks I do not for a moment say that the gains +resulting from War are worth the suffering caused by it, or that the +gains are _not_ worth the suffering. The whole subject is too vast and +obscure for one to venture to dogmatize on it. I only say that if we are +to find any order and law (as we must inevitably _try_ to do) in these +convulsions of peoples, these tempests of human history, it is probably +in the direction that I have indicated. + +Of course we need not leave out of sight the ordinary theory and +explanation, that wars are simply a part of the general struggle for +existence--culminating explosions of hatred and mutual destruction +between peoples who are competing with each other for the means of +subsistence. That there is something in this view one can hardly deny; +and it is one which I have already touched upon. Still, I cannot help +thinking that there is something even deeper--something that connects +War with the amatory instinct; and that this probably is to be found in +the direction of a physiological impact and fusion between the two (or +more) peoples concerned, which fertilizes and regenerates them, and is +perhaps as necessary in the life of Nations as the fusion of cells is in +the life of Protozoa, or the phenomena of sex in the evolution of Man. + +And while the Nations fight, the little mortals who represent them have +only the faintest idea of what is really going on, of what the warfare +means. They _feel_ the sweep of immense passions; ecstasies and horrors +convulse and dislocate their minds; but they do not, cannot, understand. +And the dear creatures in the trenches and the firing-lines give their +lives--equally beautiful, equally justified, on both sides: fascinated, +rapt, beyond and beside themselves, as foes hating each other with a +deadly hatred; seized with hideous, furious, nerve-racking passions; +performing heroic, magnificent deeds, suffering untold, indescribable +wounds and pains, and lying finally side by side (as not unfrequently +happens) on the deserted battlefield, reconciled and redeemed and +clasping hands of amity even in death. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[25] H.M. Tomlinson, in the _Daily News_. + + + + +XIV + + +THE OVER-POPULATION SCARE + +Some cheerful and rather innocent people insist that because of the +over-population difficulty wars must go on for ever. The population of +the world, they say--or at any rate of the civilized countries--is +constantly increasing, and if war did not from time to time reduce the +numbers there would soon be a deadlock. They seem to think that the only +way to solve the problem is for the men to murder each other. This says +nothing about the women, who, after all, are the chief instruments of +multiplication. It may also be pointed out that even the barbaric method +of slaughter is not practicable. Although wars of extermination may have +now and then occurred in the past among tribes and small peoples, such +wars are not considered decent nowadays; and the numbers killed in +modern campaigns--horribly "scientific" and "efficient" as the methods +are--is such a small fraction of the population concerned as to have no +appreciable result. The population of Germany is about seventy millions, +and I suppose the wildest anti-Teuton could hardly hope that _more_ than +a million Germans will be actually killed in the present conflict--less +than 1-1/2 per cent.--a fraction which would probably soon be +compensated by the increased uxoriousness of the returning troops. + +No, War is no solution for the over-population question. If that +question is a difficulty, other means must be employed. We ask +therefore: (1) Is it a serious difficulty? (2) If so, what is the +remedy? + +That over-population is in certain localities a serious difficulty few +would deny. China, with her four hundred millions, is probably +over-populated; that is, with her present resources in production the +population presses against the margin of subsistence and can only just +maintain itself. There is evidence to show that in the past the natives +of some of the Pacific islands, isolated in the great ocean and unable +to migrate to other lands, have suffered from the same trouble. Britain +is often said to be over-populated; but here quite other considerations +come in. Though it might be pleasant for many reasons to have more land +at our immediate command, we cannot fairly say that our population +presses against the margin of subsistence, for the simple reason that +with our immense powers of industrial production and the enormous wealth +here yearly obtained the total, if evenly distributed (anything like as +well, for instance, as in China), would yield to every man, woman, and +child in the United Kingdom an ample affluence.[26] The _appearance_ +here of over-population arises from the fact that while the wage-earners +actually produce this mass of wealth, two-thirds of it are taken by the +employers and employing classes. Great portions, therefore, of the +actual producers or producing classes _are_ on the margin of +subsistence, while the rest of the wealth of the country is absorbed by +those trading and dividend-consuming classes of whom I have spoken more +than once in previous pages. There is over-population certainly, but it +is an over-population (as any one may see who walks through the West End +of London or the corresponding quarters of any of our large towns) of +idlers and futile people, who are a burden to the nation. With our +extraordinary industrial system--or want of system--it commonly happens +that the abundance of ill-paid or unemployed workers at one end of the +social scale, by reducing the rates of wages and so increasing the rates +of dividends, actually creates a greater abundance of unemployed rich at +the other end; but neither excess points in itself to over-population +--only to a diseased state of distribution. What we really +ought to aim at creating is a nation in which every one was +capable of doing useful or beautiful work of some kind or other and was +gladly occupied in doing it. Such a nation would be truly healthy. It +would be powerful and productive beyond all our present dreams. But the +Western nations of to-day, with their huge burdens of unskilled, +ill-grown poor and their huge burden of incompetent, feeble rich--it is +a wonder that they survive. They would not survive a decade or two if +the Chinese or the Japanese in their numbers were to come into personal +and direct competition with them. + +If Britain is not really at present over-populated, the same is probably +even more true of Germany. For Germany, with a larger and more fertile +area in proportion to her population, is safer than we are in the matter +of self-support. But again in Germany the outcry of over-population has +arisen, and has arisen from the same cause as here--namely, the rise of +the commercial system, the division of the nation into extremes of +poverty and riches, and the consequent _appearance_ of excess population +in both directions. And this diseased state of the nation has led to a +fever of "expansion" and has been (as already said) one of the chief +causes of the present war. As long as the modern nations are such fools +as to conduct their industrial affairs in the existing way they will not +only be full of strife, disease, and discord in themselves, but they +will inevitably quarrel with their neighbours. + +All this, however, does not prove that a genuine over-population +difficulty may not occur even now in localities, and possibly in some +far future time over the whole earth. And it may be just as well to +consider these possibilities. + +Dismissing War and Disease as solutions--as belonging to barbarous and +ignorant ages of human evolution--there remain, perhaps, three rational +methods of dealing with the question: (1) the organization and +improvement of industrial production on existing lands so far as to +allow the support of a larger population; (2) the transport of excess +populations to new and undeveloped lands (colonization); (3) the +limitation of families. + +The first method hardly needs discussion here. Its importance is too +obvious. It needs, however, more public discussion in England than it +has hitherto received. The second method--operating at present only in a +very casual and unsystematic way--ought, one would say, to be very +systematically considered and dealt with by the modern States. For a +nation to plant out large bodies of colonists on comparatively +unoccupied lands, as in Africa or Australia or Canada, in a deliberate +and organized fashion, with every facility towards co-operation and +success, and yet on the principle of leaving, each colonial unit plenty +of freedom and autonomy, would not be a very difficult task, nor a very +expensive one, considering the end in view. And in such a case there +would really be no adequate reason for jealousy between States having +colonies in the neighbourhood of each other. If Germany (or any other +country) wishes to have a colony in East Africa or West Africa, it is +really ridiculous to go to war about such a matter. Any peaceful +arrangement would be less expensive; and, as a matter of fact, a +flourishing German (or other) colony in the neighbourhood of a British +settlement would help to bring prosperity to the latter. The two +colonies would benefit each other. It is only _unreasoning jealousy_ +which prevents people understanding this. + +Finally, there is the third method, of the intentional limitation of +families. Surely the time has come when blind and unlimited propagation +among civilized and self-respecting peoples must come to an end. The +old text "Blessed is he that hath his quiver full of them" has ceased to +have any use or application. Eugenic and healthy conditions of +child-rearing and nurture demand small families. The well-to-do and +educated do already limit their families; and for the poorer classes to +breed and propagate indefinitely is only to play into the hands of the +dividend-hunting rich by increasing the supply of cheap labour, while at +the same time the general standard of the population becomes more and +more degraded. It is indeed a curious question why, in the Press and +among the official classes, every effort to spread abroad the knowledge +of how in a healthy, humane, and eugenic way to limit the size of the +family is discountenanced. Sometimes one thinks that this is done partly +in order to encourage that said pullulation of workers which is so +favourable to, the keeping down of wages; but, of course, ancient +reasons of ignorance and religious bias weigh also. In the United States +the persecutions of Comstockery are worse than here. + +The aborigines of Australia are so ignorant that they do not even know +that conception arises from the meeting of the male and female elements. +They think that certain bushes and trees are haunted by the spirits of +babies, which leap unawares into the bodies of passing women. It can be +imagined what evils and delusions spring from such a theory. We do not +want to return to such a period; and yet it would seem that many folk do +not want to go forward from our present condition, with all _its_ evils +and delusions, to something better and more intelligent. + +If the nations haven't the sense to be able (if they wish) to limit +their families--short of resorting to such methods as War, Cannibalism, +the spread of Disease, the exposure of Infants, and the like--one can +only conclude that they must go on fighting and preying upon each other +(industrially and militarily) till they gain the sense. Mere unbridled +and irrational lust may have led to wars of extermination in the past. +Love and the sacrament of a true and intimate union may come some day +with the era of peace. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[26] Militating also against the idea of over-population is the fact +that so much of our agricultural land is obviously uncared for and +neglected. + + + + +XV + + +THE FRIENDLY AND THE FIGHTING INSTINCTS + +_January_, 1915. + +Fighting is certainly a deeply ingrained instinct in the human race--the +masculine portion. In the long history of human development it has +undoubtedly played an important part. It has even (such is the +cussedness and contrariety of Nature) helped greatly in the evolution of +love and social solidarity. There is no greater bond in early stages +between the members of a group or tribe than the consciousness that they +have a common enemy.[27] It is also obviously still a great _pleasure_ +to a very large proportion of our male populations--as, indeed, the fact +of its being the fulfilment of a deep instinct would lead us to expect. +It does not follow, however, from these remarks that we expect war in +its crudest form to continue for ever. There will come a term to this +phase of evolution. Probably the impact and collision between +nations--if required for their impregnation and fecundity--will come +about in some other way. + +If fighting is an ingrained instinct, the sociable or friendly instinct +is equally ingrained. We may, indeed, suppose it roots deeper. In the +midst of warfare maddest foes will turn and embrace each other. In the +tale of _Cuchulain of Muirthemne_[28] he (Cuchulain) and Ferdiad fought +for three days on end, yet at the close of each day kissed each other +affectionately; and in the present war there are hundreds of stories +already in circulation of acts of grace and tenderness between enemies, +as well as the quaintest quips and jokes and demonstrations of +sociability between men in opposing trenches who "ought" to have been +slaying each other. In the Russo-Japanese War during the winter, when +military movement was not easy, and the enemy lines in some cases were +very near each other, the men, Russians and Japanese, played games +together as a convenient and pleasant way of passing the time, and not +unfrequently took to snowballing each other. + +A friend of mine, who was in that war, told me the following story. The +Japanese troops were attacking one of the forts near Port Arthur with +their usual desperate valour. They cut _zig-zag_ trenches up the +hillside, and finally stormed and took a Russian trench close under the +guns of the fort. The Russians fled, leaving their dead and wounded +behind. After the _mêlée_, when night fell, five Japanese found +themselves in that particular trench with seven Russians--all pretty +badly wounded--with many others of course dead. The riflemen in the fort +were in such a nervous state, that at the slightest movement in the +trench they fired, regardless of whom they might hit. The whole party +remained quiet during the night and most of the next day. They were +suffering from wounds, and without food or water, but they dared not +move; they managed, however, to converse with each other a +little--especially through the Japanese lieutenant, who knew a little +Russian. On the second night the fever for water became severe. One of +the less wounded Russians volunteered to go and fetch some. He raised +himself from the ground, stood up in the darkness, but was discerned +from the fort, and shot. A second Russian did the same and was shot. A +Japanese did likewise. Then the rest lay, quiet again. Finally, the +darkness having increased and the thirst and the wounds being +intolerable, the Japanese lieutenant, who had been wounded in the legs +and could not move about, said that if one of the remaining Russians +would take him on his back he would guide the whole party into a place +of safety in the Japanese lines. So they did. The Russian soldier +crawled on his belly with the Japanese officer lying on his back, and +the others followed, keeping close to the ground. They reached the +Japanese quarters, and were immediately, looked after and cared for. A +few days afterwards the five Russians came on board the transport on +which my friend was engineer. They were being taken as prisoners to +Japan; but the Japanese crew could not do enough for them in the way of +tea and cigarettes and dressing their wounds, and they made quite a +jolly party all together on deck. The Japanese officer was also on +board, and he told my friend the story. + +Gallantry towards the enemy has figured largely in the history of +War--sometimes as an individual impulse, sometimes as a recognized +instruction. European records afford us plenty of examples. The Chinese, +always great sticklers for politeness, used to insist in early times +that a warrior should not take advantage of his enemy when the latter +had emptied his quiver, but wait for him to pick up his arrows before +going on with the fight. And in one tale of old Japan, when one Daimio +was besieging another, the besieged party, having run short of +ammunition, requested a truce in order to fetch some more--which the +besiegers courteously granted! + +The British officer who the other day picked up a wounded German soldier +and carried him across into the German lines, acted in quite the same +spirit. He saw that the man had been left accidentally when the Germans +were clearing away their wounded; and quite simply he walked forward +with the object of restoring him. But it cost him his life; for the +Germans, not at first perceiving his intention, fired and hit him in two +or three places. Nevertheless he lifted the man and succeeded in bearing +him to the German trench. The firing of course ceased, and the German +colonel saluted and thanked the officer, and pinned a ribbon to his +coat. He returned to the British lines, but died shortly after of the +wounds received. + +"Ils sont superbes, ces braves!" said a French soldier in hospital to +Mrs. Haden Guest, indicating the German wounded also there. And a dying +German whispered to her: "I would never have fought against the French +and English had I known how kind they were. I was told that I was only +going on manoeuvres!"[29] + +The French are generous in the recognition of bravery. A small company +rushed a Prussian battery in the neighbourhood of the Aisne and put all +the gunners out of action, except one who fought gamely to the last and +would not give in till he was fairly surrounded and made prisoner. "_Tu +est chic, tu--tu est bien chic_" shouted the _pioupious_ with one +accord, and shook him cordially by the hand as they led him away. How +preposterous do such stories as these make warfare appear!--and others, +such as the two opposing forces tacitly agreeing to fetch water at the +evening hour from an intervening stream without molestation on either +side; or the two parties using an old mill as a post-office, by means of +which letters could pass between France and Germany in defiance of all +decent war-regulations! How they illustrate the absolutely instinctive +and necessary tendency of the natural man (notwithstanding occasional +bouts of fury) to aid his fellow and fall into some sort of +understanding with him! Finally the fraternizations last Christmas +between the opposing lines in Northern France almost threatened at one +time to dissolve all the proprieties of official warfare. If they had +spread a little farther and lasted a little longer, who knows what might +have happened? High politics might have been utterly confounded, and +the elaborate schemes of statesmen on both sides entirely frustrated. +Headquarters had, through the officers, to interfere and all such +demonstrations of amity to be for the future forbidden. Could anything +more clearly show the beating of the great heart of Man beneath the +thickly overlying husks of class and class-government? When, oh! when +indeed, will the real human creature emerge from its age-long chrysalis? + +FOOTNOTES: + +[27] And even the hundred and one humane Associations of to-day derive a +great part of their enthusiasm and vitality from fighting each other! + +[28] Put into English by Lady Gregory. (John Murray, 6s. net.) + +[29] From _T.P.'s Weekly_, November 7, 1914. + + + + +XVI + + +NEVER AGAIN! + +Like a great cry these words to-day rise from the lips of the +nations--"Never Again!" Never before certainly have such enormous masses +of human beings been locked in deadly grip with each other over the +earth, and never before, equally certainly, has their warfare been so +horrible in its deliberate preparation, so hideous, so ghastly in its +after-effects, as to-day. The nations stand round paralysed with disgust +and despair, almost unable to articulate; and when they do find voice it +is with the words above written. + +How are we to give effect to the cry? Must we not call upon the Workers +of all countries--those who are the least responsible for the inception +of wars, and yet who suffer most by them, who bear the brunt of the +wounds, the slaughter, the disease, and the misery which are a necessary +part of them--to rise up and forbid them for ever from the earth? Let us +do so! For though few may follow and join with us to-day, yet to-morrow +and every day in the future, and every year, as the mass-peoples come +into their own, and to the knowledge of what they are and what they +desire to be, those numbers will increase, till the cry itself is no +longer a mere cry but an accomplished fact. + +It is a hopeful sign that not only among bewildered onlookers and +outsiders but among the soldiers themselves (of the more civilized +countries) this cry is being taken up. Who, indeed, should know better +than they what they are talking about? The same words are on the lips at +this moment of thousands and thousands of French and English and German +soldiers,[30] and in no faint-hearted or evasive sense, but with the +conviction and indignation of experience. We may hope they will not be +forgotten this time when the war is over. + +The truth is that not only was this particular war "bound to come," but +(among the civilized peoples) the refusal of war is also bound to come. +Two great developments are leading to this result. On the one hand, the +soldiers themselves, the fighters, are as a class becoming infinitely +more sensitive, more intelligent, more capable of humane feeling, less +stupidly "patriotic" and prejudiced against their enemies than were the +soldiers of a century ago--say, of the time of Wellington; on the other +hand, the horrors, the hideousness, the folly, and the waste of war are +infinitely greater. It is inevitable that these two contradictory +movements, mounting up on opposite sides, must at last clash. The rising +conscience of Humanity must in the end say to the War-fiend, "Get thee +behind me, Satan!" Never before have there passed over the fields of +Europe armies so intelligent, so trained, so observant, so sensitive as +those to-day of Belgium, France, England, and Germany. Some day or other +they will return to their homes; but when they do it will be with a +tale that will give to the Western world an understanding of what war +means, such as it never had before. + +All the same, if the word _is_ to be "Never Again!" it must come through +the masses themselves (from whom the fighters are mainly drawn); it must +be through them that this consummation must be realized. It must be +through the banding together and determined and combined effort of the +Unions, local, national, and international, and through the weight of +the workers' influence in all their associations and in all countries. +To put much reliance in this matter upon the "classes" is rash; for +though just now the latter are sentimentalizing freely over the +subject--having got into nearer touch with it than ever before--yet when +all is settled down, and the day arrives once more that _their_ +interests point to war, it is only too likely that they (or the majority +of them) will not hesitate to sacrifice the masses--unless, indeed, the +power to do so has already departed from them. + +And it is no good for _us_ to sentimentalize on the subject. We must not +blink facts. And the fact is that "it's a long way" to _Never Again_. +The _causes_ of War must be destroyed first; and, as I have more than +once tried to make clear, the causes ramify through our midst; they are +like the roots, pervading the body politic, of some fell disease whose +outbreak on the surface shocks and affrights us. To dislodge and +extirpate these roots is a long business. But there is this consolation +about it--that it is a business which we can all of us begin at once, in +our own lives! + +Probably wars will still for many a century continue, though less +frequent we hope. And if the people themselves _want_ to fight, and must +fight, who is to say them Nay? In such case we need not be overmuch +troubled. There are many things worse than fighting; and there are many +wounds and injuries which people inflict on each other worse than bodily +wounds and injuries--only they are not so plain to see. But I certainly +would say--as indeed the peasant says in every land--"Let those who +begin the quarrel do the fighting"; and let those who have to do the +fighting and bear the brunt of it (including the women) decide whether +there _shall_ be fighting or not. To leave the dread arbitrament of War +in the hands of private groups and cliques who, for their own ends and +interests, are willing to see the widespread slaughter of their +fellow-countrymen and the ruin of innumerable homes is hateful beyond +words. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[30] See "A War-Note for Democrats," by H.M. Tomlinson _(English +Review_, December, 1914). "This war was bound to come, and we've got to +finish it proper. No more of this bloody rot for the kids, an' chance +it." + + + + +XVII + + +THE TREE OF LIFE + +_February_, 1915. + +Finally, and looking back on all we have said, and especially on the +Christmas scenes and celebrations between the trenches in this war and +the many similar fraternizations of the rank and file of opposing armies +in former wars, one realizes the monstrosity and absurdity of the +present conflict--its anachronism and out-of-dateness in the existing +age of human thought and feeling. The whole European situation resembles +a game of marbles played by schoolboys. It is not much more dignified +than that. Each boy tries on the quiet to appropriate some of the +marbles out of another boy's bag. From time to time, in consequence, +furious scrimmages arise--generally between two boys--the others +looking' on and laughing, knowing well that they themselves are guilty +of the same tricks. Presently, in the fortunes of the game, one boy--a +little more blundering or a little less disguised than the others--lays +himself open to the accusations of the whole crew. They all fall upon +him, and give him a good drubbing; and even some of them say they are +punishing him _for his good_! When shall we make an end, once for all, +of this murderous nonsense? + +However our Tommy Atkinses have been worked up to fighting point by +fears for the safety of old England, or by indignation at atrocities +actually observed or distantly reported; however the German soldiers +have been affected by similar fears and indignations, or the French the +same; however the political coil has been engineered (as engineered in +such cases it always is), and whatever inducements of pay or patriotism +have been put in operation and sentiments circulated by the Press--one +thing remains perfectly certain: that left to themselves these men would +never have quarrelled, never have attacked each other. One thing is +perfectly certain: that such a war as the present is the result of the +activity of governing cliques and classes in the various nations, +acting through what are called "Diplomatic" channels, for the most part +in secret and unbeknown to their respective mass-peoples, and for +motives best known to themselves. + +One would not venture to say that _all_ wars are so engineered, for +there certainly are occasionally wars which are the spontaneous +expression of two nations' natural hostility and hatred; but these are +rare, very rare, and the war in which we are concerned at present is +certainly not one of them. Also one would not venture to say that though +in the present affair the actuating motives have been of class origin, +and have been worked through secret channels, the motives so put in +action have all been base and mean. That would be going too far. Some of +the motives may have been high-minded and generous, some may have been +mean, and others may have been mean and yet _unconsciously_ so. But +certainly when one looks at the conditions of public and political life, +and the arrangements and concatenations by which influence there is +exerted and secured, and sees (as one must) the pretty bad corruption +which pervades the various parties in all the modern States--the +commercial briberies, the lies of the Press, the poses and +prevarications of Diplomats and Ministers--one cannot but realize the +great probability that the private advantage of individuals or classes +has been (in the present case) a prevailing instigation. The fact that +in Britain two influential and honourable Cabinet Ministers resigned at +once on the declaration of war (a fact upon which the Press has been +curiously silent) cannot but "give one to think." One cannot but realize +that the fighting men in all these nations are the pawns and counters of +a game which is being played for the benefit--or supposed benefit--of +certain classes; that public opinion is a huge millstream which has to +be engineered; that the Press is a channel for its direction, and Money +the secret power which commands the situation. + +The fact is sad, but it must be faced. And the facing of it leads +inevitably to the question, "How, then, can Healing ever come?" If (it +will be said) the origin of wars is in the diseased condition of the +nations, what prospect is there of their ever ceasing? And one sees at +once that the prospect is not immediate. One sees at once that Peace +Societies and Nobel Prizes and Hague Tribunals and reforms of the +Diplomatic Service and democratic control of Foreign Secretaries and +Quaker and Tolstoyan preachments--though all these things may be good in +their way--will never bring us swiftly to the realization of peace. The +roots of the Tree of Life lie deeper. + +We have seen it a dozen times in the foregoing pages. Only when the +nations cease to be diseased in themselves will they cease fighting with +each other. And the disease of the modern nations is the disease of +disunity--not, as I have already said, the mere existence of variety of +occupation and habit, for that is perfectly natural and healthy, but the +disease by which one class preys upon another and upon the nation--the +disease of parasitism and selfish domination. The health of a people +consists in that people's real _unity_, the organic life by which each +section contributes freely and generously to the welfare of the whole, +identifies itself with that welfare, and holds it a dishonour to snatch +for itself the life which should belong to all. A nation which realized +_that_ kind of life would be powerful and healthy beyond words; it would +not only be splendidly glad and prosperous and unassailable in itself, +but it would inevitably infect all other nations with whom it had +dealings with the same principle. Having the Tree of Life well rooted +within its own garden, its leaves and fruit and all its acts and +expressions would be for the healing of the peoples around. But a nation +divided against itself by parasitic and self-exalting cliques and +sections could never stand. It could never be healthy. No armaments nor +ingenuity of science and organization could save it, and even though the +form of its institutions were democratic, if the reality of Democracy +were not there, its peace crusades and prizes and sentimental +Conferences and Christianities would be of little avail. + +At this juncture, then, all over Europe, when the classes are failing us +and by their underhand machinations continually embroiling one nation +with another, it is above all necessary that the mass-peoples should +move and insist upon the representation of their great unitary and +communal life and interests. It is high time that they should open +their eyes and see with clear vision what is going on over their heads, +and more than high time that they should refuse to take part in the +Quarrels of those who (professionally) live upon their labour. It is +indeed astonishing that the awakening has been so long in coming; but +surely it cannot be greatly delayed now. Underneath all the ambitions of +certain individuals and groups; underneath all the greed and chicanery +of others; underneath the widespread ignorance, mother of prejudice, +which sunders folk of different race or colour-deep down the human heart +beats practically the same in all lands, drawing us little mortals +together. + +Strangely enough--and yet not strangely--it beats strongest and clearest +often in the simplest, the least sophisticated. Those who live nearest +the truth of their own hearts are nearest to the hearts of others. Those +who have known the realities of the world, and what Life is close to the +earth--they are the same in all lands--they have at least the key to the +understanding of each other. The old needs of life, its destinies and +fatalities, its sorrows and joys, its exaltations and depressions +--these are the same everywhere; and to the manual workers +--the peasant, the labourer, the sailor, the mechanic--the +world-old trades, pursuits, crafts, and callings with which they are so +familiar supply a kind of freemasonry which ensures them even among +strangers a kindly welcome and an easy admittance. If you want to travel +in foreign lands, you will find that to be skilled in one or two manual +trades is better than a high official passport. + +Among such people there is no natural hatred of each other. Despite all +the foam and fury of the Press over the present war, I doubt whether +there is any really violent feeling of the working masses on either side +between England and Germany. There certainly is no great amount in +England, either among the country-folk or the town artisans and +mechanics; and if there be much in Germany (which is quite doubtful) it +is fairly obviously due to the _animus_ which has been aroused and the +_virus_ which has been propagated by political and social schemers. + +We have had enough of Hatred and Jealousy. For a century now commercial +rivalry and competition, the perfectionment of the engines of war, and +the science of destruction have sufficiently occupied the nations--with +results only of disaster and distress and ruin to all concerned. To-day +surely another epoch opens before us--an epoch of intelligent +helpfulness and fraternity, an epoch even of the simplest common sense. +We have rejoiced to tread and trample the other peoples underfoot, to +malign and traduce them, to single out and magnify their defects, to +boast ourselves over them. And acting thus we have but made the more +enemies. Now surely comes an era of recognition and understanding, and +with it the glad assurance that we have friends in all the ends of the +earth. + +We--and I speak of the European nations generally--have talked loudly of +our own glory; but have we welcomed and acclaimed the glory and beauty +of the other peoples and races around us--among whom it is our privilege +to dwell? We have boasted to love each our own country, but have we +cared at all for the other countries too? Verily I suspect that it is +because we have _not_ truly loved our own countries, but have betrayed +them for private profit, that we have thought fit to hate our neighbours +and ill-use them for our profit too. + +What a wonderful old globe this is, with its jewelled constellations of +humanity! Alfred Russel Wallace, in his _Travels on the Amazon_ (1853, +ch. xvii), says: "I do not remember a single circumstance in my travels +so striking and so new, or that so well fulfilled all previous +expectation, as my first view of the real uncivilized inhabitants of the +river Uaupés.... I felt that I was as much in the midst of something new +and startling, as if I had been instantaneously transported to a distant +and unknown country." He then speaks of the "quiet, good-natured, +inoffensive" character of these copper-coloured natives, and of their +quickness of hand and skill, and continues: "Their figures are generally +superb; and I have never felt so much pleasure in gazing at the finest +statue as at these living illustrations of the beauty of the human +form." Elsewhere he says[31]: "Their whole aspect and manner were +different [from the semi-civilized Indians]; they walked with the free +step of the independent forest-dweller ... original and self-sustaining +as the wild animals of the forest ... living their own lives in their +own way, as they had done for countless generations before America was +discovered. The true denizen of the Amazonian forests, like the forest +itself, is unique and not to be forgotten." + +Not long ago I was talking to a shrewd, vigorous old English lady who +had spent some forty years of her life among the Kafirs in South Africa +and knew them intimately. She said (not knowing anything about _my_ +feelings): "Ah! you British think a great deal about yourselves. You +think you are the finest race on earth; but I tell you the Kafirs are +finer. They are splendid. Whether for their physical attributes, or +their mental, or for their qualities of soul, I sometimes think _they_ +are the finest people in the world." Whether the old lady was right (and +one has heard others say much the same), or whether she was carried away +by her enthusiasm, the fact remains that here is a people _capable_ of +exciting such enthusiasm, and certainly capable of exciting much +admiration among all who know them well. + +Read the accounts of the Polynesian peoples at an early period--before +commerce and the missionaries had come among them--as given in the pages +of Captain Cook, of Herman Melville, or even as adumbrated in their past +life in the writings of R.L. Stevenson--what a picture of health and +gaiety and beauty! Surely never was there a more charming and happy +folk--even if long-pig did occasionally in their feasts alternate with +wild-pig. + +And yet how strange that the white man, with all his science and all his +so-called Christianity, has only come among these three peoples +mentioned (and how many more?) to destroy and defile them--to flog the +mild and innocent native of the Amazons to death for greed of his +rubber; to rob the Kafir of his free wild lands and blast his life with +drink and slavery in the diamond mines; to degrade and exterminate the +Pacific islanders with all the vices and diseases of "civilization"! + +Think of the Chinese--that extraordinary people coming down from the +remotest ages of history, with their habits and institutions apparently +but little changed--so kindly, so "all there," so bent on making the +best of this world. "At the first sight of these ugly, cheery, vigorous +people I loved them. Their gaiety, as of children, their friendliness, +their profound humanity, struck me from the first and remained with me +to the last."[32] And the verdict of all who know the people well--in +the interior of the country of course--is the same. Think of the +Japanese with their slight and simple, but exceedingly artistic and +exceedingly heroic type of civilization. + +Or, again, of the East Indian peoples, so unfitted as a rule for making +the best of this world, so passive, dreamy, subtle, unpractical, and yet +with their marvellous spiritual gift, their intuition (also since the +dawn of history) and conviction of another plane of being than that in +which we mostly move, and their occasional power of distinctly sensing +that plane and acting on its indications. Think of their ancient +religious philosophy--their doctrine of world-unity--absolutely +foundational and inexpugnable, the corner-stone of all metaphysics, +science, and politics, and of the latest most modern democracy; and +still realized and believed in in India as nowhere else in the world. + +Think of the gentle Buddhistic Burmese, the active, social Malays, the +hard-featured, hard-lived Thibetans and Mongolians. Think of the Arabian +and Moorish and Berber races, who, once the masters of the science and +comforts of civilization, of their own accord (but in accordance also +with their religion) abandoned the worship of all these idols and +returned to the Biblical simplicity of four thousand years ago--having +realized that they already possessed something better, namely, the glory +of the sky and the earth, the sun and the desert sands, and the freedom +of love and adventure. How strange, and yet how natural, that sundered +only by a narrow strip of sea they even now should look back upon all +the laborious, feverish, and overcrowded wealth of Europe and _seeing +the cost thereof_ should feel for it only contempt! For that, indeed, +is actually for the most part the case--though not of course without +exceptions among certain sections of the population. + +Or again, the millions and millions of Great and Little Russian +peasants. Big-framed, big-hearted, patient, friendly, with a great +natural gift for association and co-operation, peacefully minded and +profoundly religious; yet superstitious, and capable of rising at any +moment _en masse_ to the call of a great crusade or "holy war"; it might +seem that they hold all Western Europe in the hollow of their hands. +Indeed they constitute not only a hope and promise of deliverance to our +modern world, but also a considerable danger. All depends on how we +dispose ourselves towards them. Should the nations of Western Europe +rouse their hatred by chicanery and mean treatment the result might be +fatal. If their flood once began to move, no battle array of armaments +would be of any use--any more than a revolver against a rising tide--the +flood would flow round and over us. But if on the other hand we could +really reach the heart of this great people, if we could treat them +really generously and with understanding, we should create a response +there, and a recognition, which would remove all risk to ourselves, and +possibly help to free Russia from the great burden of political +servitude and ignorance which has so long oppressed her peasantry. + +Or think of the Servians--that hospitable people, good lovers and good +haters, with their ancient, almost prehistoric, system of family +communities surviving down to modern days, and blossoming out in a +perfect genius for co-operative agriculture and Raffeisen banks! + +Or the Finns, the Swedes, the Norwegians, and the Danes (if I may class +these together); what a clear, clean-minded, healthy people are these, +so direct in their touch on Nature and the human instincts, so +democratic, bold, and progressive in their social organizations--what a +privilege to have them as our near neighbours and relatives! Or the +Germans, in many ways resembling the last mentioned group, only richer +and more varied in their culture and racial characteristics! Or the +Dutch, so well-based and broad-seated both in body and mind, with their +ample bowels of compassion and their well-equipped brains, so full of +tenderness and of sturdy commonsense, what a gift has been theirs to +Europe, what a legacy of artistic treasure and of heroic record! Or the +Spanish with their beautiful and dignified women, or the French with +their fine logical and artistic sense, or the Hungarians, Greeks, and +Italians! + +Have we nothing to do but to prepare engines of death and of slaughter +against all these peoples? Is our main idea of relation to them one of +domination and profit? Have we no use for them but to gain their riches, +and in exchange to lose our own souls? Or shall we, like the Prussians, +seek to "impose" our own standards of so-called culture on them, and +trim their infinite variety and grace to one sorry pattern? These are +all in their diverse glory and beauty as leaves of the one great Tree +whose branches spread over the earth. Whoever understands this, and +penetrating to the great heart beneath, recognizes the same original +life in them all, will possess the secret of salvation; whatever nation +first casts aside the filthy rags of its own self-righteousness and the +defiling and sordid garment of mercenary gain, and accepts the others +frankly as its brother and sister nations, all of one family--that +nation will become the Healer and Redeemer of the World. + +It is interesting to find that, according to the Book of Revelation, the +tree of which we have been speaking grows with its roots "in the pure +river of the water of Life, which proceeds from the throne of God and +the Lamb." What exactly the author of the book meant by this passage has +been much debated. It is clear that there is here a veiled allusion to +the Zodiac--that mysterious belt of constellations which runs like a +river round the whole starry heavens, and rises in the constellation of +the Ram or He-lamb--but to debate _that_ question now would be +unprofitable, even were one fully competent to do so. More to the point +is it to see that this remarkable simile has an inner sense applicable +to mankind, and so far independent of any allusion to the Zodiac. This +Tree that is for the healing of the nations has its roots in the pure +water of Life which flows from the great Throne. We have seen in an +early chapter where the roots of Strife between the nations are to be +sought for, and whence they draw their nourishment. They are to be found +in the very muddy waters of domination and selfishness and greed. But +the roots of the Tree of Healing are in the pure waters of Life. Right +down below all the folly and meanness which clouds men's souls flows the +universal Life pure from its original source. The longer you live, the +more clearly and certainly you will perceive it. In the eyes of the men +and women around you you will perceive it, and in the eyes of the +children--aye, and even of the animals. Unclean, no doubt, will the +surface be--muddied with meannesses and self-motives; and among those +classes and currents of people who chiefly delight to dwell in the midst +of such things (who dwell in the floating mire of malice and envy and +self-assertion and avarice and conceit and deceit and domination and +other such refuse), the waters will be foul indeed; but below these +classes, among the simple, comparatively unselfconscious types of +humanity who everywhere represent the universal life (without, in a +sense, being aware of it), and again, above them, among those whose +spirits have passed "in compassion and determination around the whole +earth and found only equals and lovers," the water flows pure and free. +These two groups--between them forming far the largest and most +important mass of human kind--are those whose influence and tendency is +toward peace and amity. It is only the scurrying, avaricious, +fever-stricken, and, for all their wealth, poverty-stricken classes and +cliques of the civilization-period who are the sources of discord and +strife--and they only for a time. In the end it will be found that by +every river and stream and tiny brook over the whole earth grows the +invincible Tree of Life, whose roots are deep in the human heart, and +whose leaves are for the healing of the Nations. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[31] _My Life_, vol ii, p. 288. + +[32] G. Lowes Dickinson, _Civilizations of India, China, and Japan_, +p.43. See also Eugene Simon, _La Cité Chinoise,_ passim. + + + + + * * * * * + + + + +APPENDIX + + +[The following extracts, mostly from contemporaneous sources, are +gathered together in an Appendix with the object of throwing +side-lights, _often from opposing points of view_, on the questions +raised in the text.] + + + + + * * * * * + + + + +APPENDIX + + + +A NEW AND BETTER PEACE. + + +"If we now destroy the German national idol, it must not be to set up an +idol of our own in its place. There will be ruin enough after the war to +repair, and a heavy task for all the nations in repairing it; but if +they have learned then that peace is not a disguised war but a state of +being in which men and nations alike pursue their own ideas of +excellence without rivalry, then we shall know that the irrevocable dead +have not died in vain."--_"Times" Literary Supplement_, _September_ 17, +1914. + + * * * * * + +THE CHANGE FROM THE GERMANY OF KANT AND GOETHE AND SCHUBERT TO THE +GERMANY OF TO-DAY--AND THE DELUSION OF IMPERIALISM. + + +"What, then, has wrought this wonderful change in a people so closely +allied to ourselves, whose race is so similar that their children in the +hotels of France and Italy are mistaken for British children? The human +raw material is the same, and until half a century ago gave results +which won our respect and admiration. What is this change of the last +half-century which from the same material gives results so different? +There can be only one answer. The old Germany was a Germany of small, +self-governing States, of small political power; the new Germany is a +'great' Germany, with a new ideal and spirit which comes of victory and +military and political power, of the reshaping of political and social +institutions which the retention of conquered territory demands, its +militarization, regimentation, centralization, and unchallenged +authority; the cultivation of the spirit of domination, the desire to +justify and to frame a philosophy to buttress it. Some one has spoken of +the war which made 'Germany great and Germans small.'..." + +"...So in our day, it is not the German national faith, the +_Deutschtum_, the belief that the German national ideal is best for the +German--it is not that belief that is a danger to Europe. It is a belief +that that German national ideal is the best for all other people, and +that the Germans have a right to impose it by the force of their armies. +It is that belief alone which can be destroyed by armies. We must show +that we do not intend to be brought under German rule, or have German +ideals imposed upon us, and having demonstrated that, the Allies must +show that they in their turn have no intention of imposing their ideals +or their rule or their dominance upon German peoples. The Allies must +show after this war that they do not desire to be the masters of the +German peoples or States, but their partners and associates in a Europe +which none shall dominate, but which all shall share."--_From "Shall +this War End German Militarism?" by Norman Angell_. + + * * * * * + +GERMAN PUBLIC OPINION IN 1913 WITH REGARD TO THE IMPENDING WAR. + + +The Report on this subject given in the French Yellow Book (Section 5) +throws much light on the attitude of the various classes in Germany. In +favour of peace (it says) are "the large mass of workmen, artisans, and +peasants, who are peaceful by instinct"; a considerable number of +non-military nobility, and of "manufacturers, merchants, and financiers +of minor importance, to whom even a victorious war would bring +bankruptcy"; also a vast number of those who are continually in a state +of "suppressed revolt against Prussian policy," like the "Government and +ruling classes of the great southern States, Saxony, Bavaria, +Wurtemburg," and so forth. + +On the other hand, in favour of war are the great, mainly Prussian, war +party, consisting of the military aristocracy and nobility "who see with +terror the democratization of Germany and the growing force of the +Socialist party"; "others who consider war as necessary for economic +reasons found in over-population and over-production, the need of +markets and outlets"; the great _bourgeoisie_, "which also has its +reasons of a social nature--the upper middle class being no less +affected than the nobility by the democratization of Germany ... and, +finally, the gun and armour-plate manufacturers, the great merchants who +clamour for greater markets, and the bankers who speculate on the Golden +Age and the indemnity of war. These, too, think that war would be good +business." + +The whole paper is too long for extensive citation here, but is well +worth reading. + + * * * * * + +POLITICAL IGNORANCE IN GERMANY. + + +"On Tuesday last at the Union Society Mr. Dudley Ward, late Berlin +correspondent of the _Daily Chronicle_ and other English papers, and +Fellow of St. John's College, dealt with 'The War from the German Point +of View.' Mr. Ward's profound knowledge of Germany, especially since +1911, and his obvious attempt to review recent events with impartiality, +was a revelation to Cambridge, and a very large audience showed its +enthusiastic appreciation of his ability and his frankness. + +"Mr. Ward emphasized particularly the _astonishing political ignorance_ +of the German people as a whole, an ignorance quite unintelligible to +any one unacquainted with their Press and their political institutions. +Public opinion, as he said, counts for little in Germany, and the +Government can generally guide it into any direction it may please, and +this fact is essential to the understanding of the events--diplomatic +events--which led to the declaration of war."--_From the "Cambridge +Magazine," December 5, 1914._ + + * * * * * + +"One of the political phenomena of America has always been the +indifference of the German to active participation in politics. Efforts +to persuade him to organize with any political party have never +succeeded except in isolated cases. The German-American has been +regarded as an independent politically. Until Europe's conflict raised +concealed characteristics to the surface the German-American's +indifference to politics had not been looked upon as a serious +matter."--_From article by Alt. John Herbert in the London "Daily News," +December,_ 1914. + + * * * * * + +GERMANY'S PURPOSE. + + +_According to Herr Maximilien Harden's article in "Die Zukunft," as +reproduced in the "New York Times," December, 1914_. + +"Not as weak-willed blunderers have we under-taken the fearful risk of +this war. We wanted it. Because we had to wish it and could wish it. May +the Teuton devil throttle those whiners whose pleas for excuses make us +ludicrous in these hours of lofty experience. We do not stand, and shall +not place ourselves, before the Court of Europe. Our power shall create +new law in Europe. Germany strikes. If it conquers new realms for its +genius, the priesthood of all the gods will sing songs of praise to the +good war. + +"We are at the beginning of a war the development and duration of which +are incalculable, and in which up to date no foe has been brought to his +knees. We wage the war in order to free enslaved peoples, and thereafter +to comfort ourselves with the unselfish and useless consciousness of our +own righteousness. We wage it from the lofty point of view and with the +conviction that Germany, as a result of her achievements and in +proportion to them, is justified in asking, and must obtain, wider room +on earth for development and for working out the possibilities that are +in her." + + * * * * * + +ENGLAND'S PERFIDY. + + +_From the Manifesto of Professors Haeckel and Eucken, September, 1914._ + +"What is happening to-day surpasses every instance from the past; this +last example will be permanently characterized in the annals of the +world as the _indelible shame of England_. Great Britain is fighting for +a Slavic, semi-Asiatic Power _against Teutonism_; she is fighting, not +only in the ranks of barbarism but also on the side of _wrong and +injustice_, for let it not be forgotten that Russia began the war, +because she refused to permit adequate expiation for a miserable +assassination; but the blame for extending the limits of the present +conflict to the proportions of a world-war, through which the sum of +human culture is threatened, rests upon England. + +"And the reason for all this? Because England was _envious_ of Germany's +greatness, because she was bound to hinder further expansion of the +German sphere at any cost! There cannot be the least doubt that England +was determined from the start to break in upon Germany's great conflict +for _national existence_, to cast as many stones as possible in +Germany's path, and to block her every effort toward adequate expansion. +England lay in wait until the favourable opportunity for inflicting a +lasting injury upon Germany should come, and promptly seized upon _the +unavoidable German invasion of Belgian territory_ as a pretext for +draping her own brutal national egotism in a mantle of decency. + +"_Or is there in the whole world a person so simple as to believe that +England would have declared war upon France, had the latter Power +invaded Belgium?_ In that event, England would have shed hypocritical +tears over the necessary violation of international law, while +concealing a laughing face behind the mask. The most repulsive thing in +the whole business is this hypocritical Pharisaism; it merits only +contempt. + +"History shows that such sentiments as these, far from guiding nations +upward, lead them along the downward path. But we of this present time +have fixed our faith firm as a rock upon our righteous cause, and upon +the superior power and the inflexible will for victory that abide in the +German nation. Nevertheless the deplorable fact remains, that the +boundless egotism already mentioned has for that span of the future +discernible to us destroyed the collaboration of the two nations which +was so full of promise for the intellectual uplift of humanity. But the +other party has willed it so. Upon England alone rests the monstrous +guilt and the responsibility in the eye of world-history." + +"ERNST HAECKEL. + +"RUDOLF EUCKEN." + + * * * * * + +FROM THE MANIFESTO OF PROFESSOR EUCKEN. + + +"Let us hope that our German weapons will show the Englishmen that they +were entirely wrong in their reckoning; but first let us point out the +wide discrepancy between their motives and ours. + +"With them it is self-seeking, envy, calculation; with us the conviction +that we are fighting for the holiest possessions of our people, for +right and justice." + + * * * * * + +NIETZSCHE ON DISARMAMENT. + + +The following extract from _Nietzsche_ may be worth quoting as +presenting one aspect of his many-sided thought:-- + +"Perhaps a memorable day will come when a nation renowned in wars and +victories, distinguished by the highest development of military order +and intelligence, and accustomed to make the heaviest sacrifices for +these objects, will voluntarily exclaim, 'We will break our swords,' and +will destroy its whole military system, lock, stock, and barrel. To make +ourselves defenceless (after having been most strongly defended), from +loftiness of sentiment, is the means towards genuine peace.... The +so-called armed peace that prevails at present in all countries is a +sign of a bellicose disposition, that trusts neither itself nor its +neighbour, and, partly from hate partly from fear, refuses to lay down +its weapons. Better to perish than to hate and fear; and twice better to +perish than to make oneself hated and feared."--_From "Human all too +Human," vol. ii. (translated by P.V. Colm, 1911)_. + + * * * * * + +THE EFFECT OF DISARMAMENT. + + +"Just as the growth of armaments increases the common danger, so a +policy of reduction would have the opposite effect, and were one +European country boldly to adopt disarmament it would strengthen +incalculably the forces making for peace in all countries. The armaments +of European nations are interdependent, and were such a policy pursued +by one nation it would be followed, if not by immediate disarmament in +other nations, at any rate, by very considerable reductions. It is very +easy to underrate the feeling which for some time past has been growing +throughout Europe against the colossal waste of armaments. Even in +Germany, whose geographical position from a military point of view is +weak, the Socialist vote, which is cast strenuously against armaments, +has grown at each election until it now represents some 35 per cent, of +the total electorate. The great weapon with which reaction has attempted +to combat Socialist growth has been an appeal against the 'unpatriotic' +opposition to armaments. What effect would this appeal have in face of +disarmament abroad? The Socialist party, with its anti-militarist +programme, would sweep Germany and compel the Government rapidly to +follow suit. Sooner or later the internal pressure of public opinion +would force the adoption of a similar policy upon the Government of +every civilized country in Europe."--_From "Why Britain Should Disarm" +by George Benson (National Labour Press, 1d.)_. + + * * * * * + +THE PRINCIPLE OF NATIONALITY. + + +"Now the war has come, and when it is over let us be careful not to make +the same mistake or the same sort of mistake as Germany made when she +had France prostrate at her feet in 1870. (Cheers.) Let us, whatever we +do, fight for and work towards great and sound principles for the +European system. And the first of those principles which we should keep +before us is the principle of nationality--that is to say, not the +conquest or subjugation of any great community or of any strong race of +men, but the setting free of those races which have been subjugated and +conquered; and if doubt arises about disputed areas of country we should +try to settle their ultimate destination in the reconstruction of Europe +which must follow from this war with a fair regard to the wishes and +feelings of the people who live in them."--_From the speech of Mr. +Churchill, September_ 11, 1914, at the London Opera House. + + * * * * * + + +CONSCRIPTION. + +"If we, in a moment of unthinking panic, adopt the advice of our +militarists and develop an Army based on universal service, we shall +prepare for ourselves the very situation in which Germany finds itself +at this moment. However much we may protest that our aims are pacific, +and that our Army is intended only for defensive purposes, foreign +nations will view it with alarm, and will reflect that, by the help of +our Navy, we can land an armed force in any country that has a sea +coast. We shall thus incur the risk of a coalition against us. It is +said that if we had had a conscript Army, the present war would not have +taken place. But it is not realized that a different and far more +dangerous war would have been probable, a war in which we should have +had no continental Allies, but should have been resisted, as Germany is +being resisted, in order to relieve Europe of an intolerable terror.... + +"In a word, of all the measures open to us to adopt, none is so likely +to bring us to disaster as universal military service."--_By Hon. +Bertrand Russell (in "The Labour Leader," October 15, 1914)._ + + * * * * * + +H.G. WELLS ON THE REGULATION OF ARMAMENTS AND NEUTRALIZATION OF THE SEA. + + +"If there is courage and honesty enough in men, I believe it will be +possible to establish a world Council for the regulation of armaments as +the natural outcome of this war. First, the trade in armaments must be +absolutely killed. And then the next supremely important measure to +secure the peace of the world is the neutralization of the sea. + +"It will lie in the power of England, France, Russia, Italy, Japan, and +the United States, if Germany and Austria are shattered in this war, to +forbid the further building of any more ships of war at all."--_From the +"Daily Chronicle," August 21, 1914._ + + * * * * * + +THE WAR AND DEMOCRACY. + + +"It will be necessary soon to consider the relations of democracy to the +war. The war is a war of nationalities, but it was not made by peoples. +Its begetter was a comparatively small band of unscrupulous, blind, and +conceited persons, who were clever and persistent enough to demoralize a +whole people. In so far as they permitted themselves to be demoralized +the people were to blame, but the chief blame lies on the small band. +Europe is laid waste, hundreds of thousands of men murdered, and +practically every human being in the occidental hemisphere made to +suffer, not for the amelioration of a race, but in order to satisfy the +idiotic ambitions of a handful. Let not this fact be forgotten. +Democracy will not forget it. And foreign policy in the future will not +be left in the hands of any autocracy, by whatever specious name the +autocracy may call itself. Ruling classes have always said that masses +were incapable of understanding foreign policy. The masses understand it +now. They understand that in spite of very earnest efforts in various +Cabinets, the ruling classes have failed to avert the most terrible +disaster in history. The masses will say to themselves, 'At any rate we +couldn't have done worse than that.' The masses know that if the war +decision had been openly submitted to a representative German chamber, +instead of being taken in concealment and amid disgusting chicane, no +war would have occurred. It is absolutely certain that the triumph of +democracy, and nothing else, will end war as an institution. War will be +ended when the Foreign Offices are subjected to popular control. That +popular control is coming."--_Arnold Bennett in the "Daily News," October +15, 1914._ + + * * * * * + +THE FUTURE SETTLEMENT. + + +Let us turn, then, from the past to the future and ask, first, what the +governmental mind, left to itself, is likely to make of Europe when the +war is finished; secondly, what we, on our part, want and mean to make +of it. What the diplomatists will make of it is written large on every +page of history. Again and again they have "settled" Europe, and always +in such a way as to leave roots for the growth of new wars. For always +they have settled it from the point of view of States, instead of from +the point of view of human life. How one "Power" may be aggrandized and +another curtailed, how the spoils may be divided among the victors, how +the "balance" may be arranged--these kinds of considerations and these +alone have influenced their minds. The desires of peoples, the +interests of peoples, that sense of nationality which is as real a thing +as the State is fictitious--to all that they have been indifferent.... + +What can be foreseen with certainty is, that if the peace is to be made +by the same men who made the war it will be so made that in another +quarter of a century there will be another war on as gigantic a +scale.... + +When this war is over Europe might be settled, then and there, if the +peoples so willed it and made their will effective, in such a way that +there would never again be a European War.... + +First, the whole idea of aggrandizing one nation and humiliating another +must be set aside.... Secondly, in rearranging the boundaries of States, +one point, and one only, must be kept in mind: to give to all peoples +suffering and protesting under alien rule the right to decide whether +they will become an autonomous unit, or will join the political system +of some other nation.... Let no community be coerced under British rule +that wants to be self-governing. We have had the courage, though late, +to apply this principle to South Africa and Ireland. There remains our +greatest act of courage and wisdom--to apply it to India.--_G. Lowes +Dickinson, "The War and the Way Out," pp. 34 et seq._ + + * * * * * + +A WAR NOTE FOR DEMOCRATS. + + +"The truth about the present fighting--well, it cannot be rendered in +words significant enough to shock into understanding the people who are +looking in the newspapers now for stories of heroism, 'brilliant bayonet +charges,' and the rest of the inducements which sell stories of warfare, +but tell us nothing about it. Perhaps, indeed, there are no words for +it. I doubt whether the sincerest artist, finely sensitive, and with the +choicest army of words at his ready and accurate command, could assemble +the case. The mind of a witness in France is not stirred; it is stunned. +One is speechless before the spectacle of men, not fighting in the way +two angry men would fight, but coolly blasting great masses of their +opponents to pieces at long range, and out of sight of each other, till +a region with its wrecked towns and homesteads is littered with human +bowels and fragments. It is possible to value human life too highly, +maybe. But what profit, physical, moral, or economic, can be got from +draining several nations' best male generative force into the clay, I +leave it to worshippers of tribal war-gods of whatever church, and to +the military minds, to explain. But unless the democracies of Europe, +after settling this business, see to securing such a settlement +--whatever the governing classes desire--that this Continental +waste can never occur again, then one would have to admit human nature +is too stupid and base to be troubled over any longer."--_H.M. +Tomlinson, "English Review," December, 1914, p. 75_. + + * * * * * + +PATRIOTISM! + + +"It would seem, then, that love of our country can flourish only through +the hatred of other countries, and the massacre of those who sacrifice +themselves in defence of them. There is in this theory a ferocious +absurdity, a Neronian dilettantism which repels me in the very depths of +my being. No! Love of my country does not demand that I shall hate and +slay those noble and faithful souls who also love their country, but +rather that I should honour them, and seek to unite myself with them for +our common good.... + +"You Socialists on both sides claim to be defending liberty against +tyranny--French liberty against the Kaiser, Germany liberty against the +Tsar. Would you defend one despotism against another? _Unite and make +war on both_. There was no reason for war between the Western nations; +French, English, and German, we are all brothers, and do not hate one +another. The war-preaching Press is envenomed by a minority, a minority +vitally interested in maintaining these hatreds; but our peoples, I +know, ask for peace and liberty, and that alone."--_From Romain +Rolland's pamphlet "Above the Battlefield," Cambridge, 1914_. + + * * * * * + +NO PATRIOTISM IN BUSINESS! + + +The following leaderette is from the _Glasgow Evening Citizen_ for the +15th of January:-- + +"In business patriotism does not enter. Insistently the pocket comes +first. And if the British consumer of aniline dyes can obtain his raw +material more advantageously from the German than from the British +producer, he will probably be ready to do so for the greater gain of +more economic production in his own business." + + * * * * * + +MANIFESTO OF THE INDEPENDENT LABOUR PARTY. + + +"We desire neither the aggrandizement of German militarism nor Russian +militarism, but the danger is that this war will promote one or the +other. Britain has placed herself behind Russia, the most reactionary, +corrupt, and oppressive Power in Europe. If Russia is permitted to +gratify her territorial ambitions and extend her Cossack rule, +civilization and democracy will be gravely imperilled. Is it for this +that Britain has drawn the sword? + +"To us who are Socialists the workers of Germany and Austria, no less +than the workers of France and Russia, are comrades and brothers; in +this hour of carnage and eclipse we have friendship and compassion to +all victims of militarism. Our nationality and independence, which are +dear to us, we are ready to defend, but we cannot rejoice in the +organized murder of tens of thousands of workers of other lands who go +to kill and be killed at the command of rulers to whom the people are as +pawns. + +"The People must everywhere resist such territorial aggression and +national abasement as will pave the way for fresh wars; and, throughout +Europe, the workers must press for frank and honest diplomatic policies, +controlled by themselves, for the suppression of militarism and the +establishment of the United States of Europe, thereby advancing towards +the world's peace. Unless these steps are taken Europe, after the +present calamity, will be still more subject to the increasing +domination of militarism, and liable to be drenched with blood." + + * * * * * + +RESPONSIBILITY RESTS ON THE WHOLE CAPITALIST CLASS. + + +"Prussian militarism, as we have shown in previous issues, exists, as +all militarism does, to further and protect trade. The furtherance of +that trade meant territorial expansion, which in its turn was a menace +to Britain and her allies. Thus it is that this war, carefully +manoeuvred by the diplomats, is being fought to conserve to one set of +capitalists their right to exploit the peoples, and to check another set +from encroaching upon that right. + +"Germany--or rather, the capitalists of Germany, for whom the Kaiser has +always been the "Publicity Agent"--has consistently worked toward the +objective of challenging the right of Britain to a world-wide Empire. To +the German capitalists this war is but the realization of their +philosophy, "Might is Right," and, reckless of human life and suffering, +a European war is to them the way to vaster fields of exploitation and +greater wealth. Their militarism was the machine, and the workers the +cogs of the wheels. British capitalists, on the other hand, determined +to maintain what they hold, forgetful of how it had been obtained, were +thus compelled to take up the cudgels for their own sakes; and here, as +in Germany, the workers are the tools used to save their fortunes and +conserve their rights."--"_The Voice of Labour," October_, 1914. + +"And it is not unlikely that the present bloody catastrophe will at last +awaken the people from their indifference. The bitter pain and fearful +suffering will perhaps make a deeper impression than the words of the +revolutionaries. It is possible that the Social Revolution will be the +last act in the present tragedy; possible that murderous militarism will +be drowned in the blood of its numberless victims; that the people of +the different countries will unite against the bloody regime of modern +Capitalism and its institutions, and finally produce a new social +culture upon the basis of free Socialism."--"_Freedom," September 14._ + +In an American contemporary a quotation is given from an issue of +_Vorwärts_ which was suppressed by the German Government. It reads:-- + +"The comrades abroad can be assured that the German working class +disapproves to-day of every piratical policy of State just as it has +always disapproved and that it is determined to resist the predatory +subjugation of foreign peoples as strongly as the circumstances permit. +The comrades in foreign lands can be assured that, though the German +workmen are also protecting their Fatherland, they will nevertheless not +forget that their interests are the same as those of the proletariat in +other countries, who, like themselves, have been compelled to go to war +against their will, indeed, even against their often repeated +pronouncements in favour of peace." + + * * * * * + +TEXT OF LIEBKNECHT'S PROTEST. + + +The _Berner Tagwacht_ publishes the full text of Karl Liebknecht's +protest against the vote of credit by the Reichstag on December 2nd. The +protest was not read, the President having vetoed it under pretext that +it would entail a call to order. The protest was communicated to the +German Press. Not one paper published it. It runs:-- + +"This war, desired by none of the peoples concerned, has not broken out +in behalf of the welfare of the German people or any other. It is an +Imperialist war, a war for the capitalist domination of the world's +markets and for the political domination of important regions for the +placing of industrial and banking capital. From the point of view of +rivalry in armaments, it is a preventive war provoked by the German and +Austrian war parties together in the obscurity of semi-absolutism and of +secret diplomacy." + +After declaring that this is not a defensive war for Germany, the +protest continues:-- + +"A rapid peace, one which does not humiliate anybody, a peace without +conquests, this is what we must demand. Every effort in this direction +must be favourably received. The continuous and simultaneous affirmation +of this desire, in all the belligerent countries, can alone put a stop +to the bloody massacre before the complete exhaustion of all the peoples +concerned. A peace based upon the international solidarity of the +working class and on the liberty of all the peoples can alone be a +lasting peace. It is in this sense that the proletariats of all +countries must furnish, even in the course of this war, a Socialist +effort for peace. + +"But my protest is against the war, against those who are responsible +for it, against those who direct it; it is against the capitalist policy +which gave it birth; it is directed against the capitalist objects +pursued by it, against the plans of annexation, against the violation of +the neutrality of Belgium and Luxemburg, against military dictatorship, +against the total oblivion of social and political duties of which the +Government and ruling classes are still to-day guilty. For this reason, +I reject the military credits asked for."--_From the "Daily News," +December 14, 1914._ + +"KARL LIEBKNECHT. + +"BERLIN, _December 2_." + + * * * * * + +DANGER OF RUSSIA. + + +The following is the text of the resolution passed by the Central +Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Party in reply to M. +Vandervelde's appeal on behalf of the Allied cause:-- + +"We recognize the anti-democratic character of the Prussian hegemony, +but as Russian Social Democrats we cannot forget another enemy of the +workers, and no less dangerous--Russian absolutism. In home affairs this +enemy remains what it always has been, a merciless oppressor and an +unceasing exploiter. Even at the present moment, when we should have +thought this despotism would be more cautious, it remains the same and +continues the political persecution of the democracy, and of all subject +nationalities. To-day all Socialist journals are stopped, all working +class organizations are disbanded, many hundreds of members are +arrested, and our brave comrades are sent to exile just as before. +Should this war end in victory for our present Government, it will +become the centre and mainstay of international reaction.... Our +immediate objective should be the convocation of a Constitutional +Assembly. We demand this in the interests of the same European democracy +on whose behalf you appeal. Our party is a very important section of the +world's democracies, and by fighting for our interests we are at the +same time fighting for the interests of all democracies, enlarging and +strengthening them. We hope that our interests are not considered as +opposed to those of other European democracies which we esteem as highly +as our own. We are persuaded that Russian absolutism is the chief +support of reactionary militarism in Europe, and that it has bred in the +German hegemony the dangerous enmity towards European democracy." + + * * * * * + +LETTER ON RUSSIA FROM P. KROPOTKIN. + + +"'But what about the danger of Russia?' my readers will probably ask. + +"To this question, every serious person will probably answer, that when +you are menaced by a great, very great danger, the first thing to do is +to combat this danger, and then see to the next. Belgium and a good deal +of France _are_ conquered by Germany, and the whole civilization of +Europe is menaced by its iron fist. Let us cope first with this danger. + +"As to the next, Is there anybody who has not thought himself that the +present war, in which all parties in Russia have risen unanimously +against the common enemy, will render a return to the autocracy of old +materially impossible? And then, those who have seriously followed the +revolutionary movement of Russia in 1905 surely know what were the ideas +which dominated in the First and Second, approximately freely elected +Dumas. They surely know that complete Home Rule for all the component +parts of the Empire was a fundamental point of all the Liberal and +Radical parties. More than that: Finland then actually _accomplished_ +her revolution in the form of a democratic autonomy, and the Duma +approved it. + +"And finally, those who know Russia and her last movement certainly feel +that _autocracy will never more be re-established in the forms it had +before_ 1905, _and that a Russian Constitution could never take the +Imperialist forms and spirit which Parliamentary rule has taken in +Germany_. As to us, who know Russia from the inside, we are sure that +the Russians never will be capable of becoming the aggressive, warlike +nation Germany is. Not only the whole history of the Russians shows it, +but with the Federation which Russia is _bound to_ become in +the very near future, such a warlike spirit would be absolutely +incompatible."--_Quoted in "Freedom," also in the "Manchester Guardian," +October, 1914_. + + * * * * * + +THE FUTURE OF EUROPE. + +_Portion of a letter written by P. Kropotkin to Mr. R.J. Kelly, K.C., of +Dublin, December 15, 1915._ + +"The same for the South Slavs and for all nationalities oppressed in +Europe. When the last Balkan War had shown the inner power of the South +Slavs, I greeted in it the disintegration of the Turkish Empire, which +would be followed by the disintegration of the three other +Empires--Austria, Russia, and Germany--so as to open the way for two, +three, or more federations. A South Slavonic federation--the Balkan +United State was the dream of Bakunin--would be followed by a free +Poland, free Finland, Free Caucasia, free Siberia, federated for peace +purposes. Yes, dear Mr. Kelly, you are right, we are on the eve of great +events in Europe. Warmest wishes that this should become a reality, or +receive a sound beginning of realization, during the coming new year, +and my very best wishes to you of health and vigour.--Sincerely yours, + +"P. KROPOTKIN." + + * * * * * + + +SERVIA. + + +"We are therefore justified in declining to accept such evidence. We are +witnessing the birththroes of a new nation, the triumph of the idea of +national unity among the disunited Southern Slavs, and it is the duty of +Britain and France, whose Fleets are now operating on the Adriatic, to +insist upon a just and permanent solution, based upon the principle of +nationality and the wishes of the Southern Slav race. Only by treating +the problem as an organic whole and avoiding patchwork we can hope to +remove one of the chief danger centres in Europe."--_Lecture at Essex +Hall, November 13, 1914, by R.W. Seton Watson_. + + * * * * * + +THE BATTLEFIELD. + + +"Then the camps of the wounded--O heavens what scene is this?--is this +indeed _humanity_--these butchers' shambles? There are several of them. +There they lie, in the largest, in an open space in the woods, from two +hundred to three hundred poor fellows--the groans and screams--the odour +of blood, mixed with the fresh scent of the night, the grass, the +trees--that slaughter-house! Oh, well is it their mothers, their sisters +cannot see them--cannot conceive and never conceived these things. + +"One man is shot by a shell, both in the arm and leg--both are +amputated--there lie the rejected members. Some have their legs blown +off--some bullets through the breast--some indescribably horrid wounds +in the face or head, all mutilated, sickening, torn, gouged out--some in +the abdomen--some mere boys--many rebels, badly hurt--they take their +regular turns with the rest, just the same as any--the surgeons use them +just the same. Such is the camp of the wounded--such a fragment, a +reflection afar off of the bloody scene--while all over the clear, large +moon comes out at times softly, quietly shining. + +"Amid the woods, the scene of flitting souls--amid the crack and crash +and yelling sounds--the impalpable perfume of the woods--and yet the +pungent, stifling smoke--the radiance of the moon, looking from heaven +at intervals so placid--the sky so heavenly--the clear-obscure up there, +those buoyant upper oceans--a few large, placid stars beyond, coming +silently and languidly out, and then disappearing--the melancholy, +draperied night above, around. And never one more desperate in any age +or land--both parties now in force--masses--no fancy battle, no +semi-play, but fierce and savage demons fighting there--courage and +scorn of death is the rule, exceptions almost none."--_From Walt +Whitman_. + + * * * * * + +CHINESE CHRISTIANS ON THE WAR. + + +"The most remarkable attitude yet taken in regard to the war by any body +of people in the world is that of the native Christian Churches in +China. I was told a fortnight ago by a missionary just returned from +China that the Chinese Christians are holding daily prayer meetings to +pray for peace. They are also praying earnestly that the Christians in +Europe may be forgiven for killing each other, and, in particular, that +the British and German churches and ministers may be forgiven for the +blasphemy of praying to the Common Father for victory over one another, +_i.e._ for Divine assistance in smashing and maiming and murdering more +of their fellow Christians. I am also told that these Chinese Christians +appreciate perfectly that for the most part the people to be killed are +helpless, innocent workmen, who have had nothing to do with the cause of +all the trouble. + +"That action of the Chinamen is of the essence of real Christianity. It +is the real spirit. It has been expressed in Europe only by the Pope, on +the one hand, and, on the other, by the Socialists of the neutral +countries and by the I.L.P. in England. It is the echo of the angel song +of the first Christmas two thousand years ago. It is the true note, the +eternal note. It is the note which will bring mankind back to its senses +when the hideous passions, the false idealisms, and the sordid greeds +behind this world tragedy are shown up for what they are."--_By Dr. +Alfred Salter in "The Labour Leader," December_ 31, 1914. + + * * * * * + +ESSENTIAL FRIENDLINESS OF PEOPLES. + + +"This essential friendliness, not between nations, but between people of +different nations, is one of the biggest facts of civilization. And yet +it has counted for so little that half the nations in Europe are +fighting one another. Are the causes, then, that have set us fighting +stronger still? Yes, when it is a question of national conscience. And +one must regretfully say yes, as long as it is possible for those who +rule nations and desire war to carry out their will. + +"Is that wicked, mediaeval power--in the hands of the few, but still +strong enough to overrule the natural tendencies of peoples towards +peace and friendship and to turn their likings into hatreds--is it going +to continue when this war is over? Who can doubt, if it were possible to +take a plebiscite of all the nations who are fighting now as to whether +international disputes should be settled by war or arbitration, what the +result would be? Is the desire of the many to have its chance when this +war shall be ended, or shall we submit ourselves again to be dominated +by the desire of the few?"--_From "The Daily News," October_ 5, 1914. + +"At one spot where there had been a fierce hand-to-hand fight there +were indications that the combatants when wounded had shared their +water-bottles. Near them were a Briton and a Frenchman whose cold hands +were clasped in death, a touching symbol of the unity of the two nations +in this terrible conflict."--_From "The Sheffield Telegraph," November +14, 1914._ + + * * * * * + +RECONCILIATION IN DEATH. + + +_Letter written by a French cavalry officer as he lay wounded and dying +in Flanders._ + +"There are two other men lying near me, and I do not think there is much +hope for them either. One is an officer of a Scottish regiment, and the +other a private in the Uhlans. They were struck down after me, and when +I came to myself I found them bending over me rendering first aid. + +"The Britisher was pouring water down my throat from his flask, while +the German was endeavouring to staunch my wound with an antiseptic +preparation served out to them by their medical corps. The Highlander +had one of his legs shattered, and the German had several pieces of +shrapnel buried in his side. + +"In spite of their own sufferings they were trying to help me, and when +I was fully conscious again the German gave us a morphia injection and +took one himself. His medical corps had also provided him with the +injection and the needle, together with printed instructions for its +use. + +"After the injection, feeling wonderfully at ease, we spoke of the lives +we had lived before the war. We all spoke English, and we talked of the +women we had left at home. Both the German and the Britisher had only +been married a year. + +"I wondered, and I suppose the others did, why we had fought each other +at all. I looked at the Highlander, who was falling to sleep exhausted, +and in spite of his drawn face and mud-stained uniform he looked the +embodiment of freedom. Then I thought of the tricolor of France, and all +that France had done for liberty. Then I watched the German, who had +ceased to speak. He had taken a prayer-book from his knapsack, and was +trying to read a service for soldiers wounded in battle." + +The letter ends with a reference to the failing light and the roar of +the guns. It was found at the dead officer's side by a Red Cross file, +and was forwarded to his fiancée.--_From "The Daily Citizen," December +21, 1914._ + + * * * * * + +CHRISTMAS, 1914. + + +_Letters from the Front (from the Daily Press)._ + +"Last night (Christmas Eve) was the weirdest stunt I have ever seen. All +day the Germans had been sniping industriously, with some success, but +after sunset they started singing, and we replied with carols. Then they +shouted, 'Happy Christmas!' to us, and some of us replied in German. It +was a topping moonlight night, and we carried on long conversations, and +kept singing to each other and cheering. Later they asked us to send one +man out to the middle, between the trenches, with a cake, and they would +give us a bottle of wine. + +"Hunt went out, and five of them came out and gave him the wine, +cigarettes, and cigars. After that you could hear them for a long time +calling from half-way, 'Engleeshman, kom hier.' So one or two more of +our chaps went out and exchanged cigarettes, etc., and they all seemed +decent fellows." + + * * * * * + +"We had quite a sing-song last night (Christmas Eve)," says one writer. +"The Germans gave a song, and then our chaps gave them one in return. A +German that could speak English, and some others, came right up to our +trenches, and we gave them cigarettes and papers to read, as they never +get any news, and then we let them walk back to their own trenches. Then +our chaps went over to their trenches, and they let them come back all +right. About five o'clock on Christmas Eve one of them shouted across +and told us that if we did not fire on them they would not open fire on +us, and so the officers agreed. About twenty of them came up all at +once and started chatting away to our chaps like old chums, and neither +side attempted to shoot." + + * * * * * + +"I suppose I have experienced about the most extraordinary Christmas one +could conceive. About seven o'clock on Christmas Eve the Saxons, who are +entrenched about seventy yards from our trenches, began singing. They +had a band playing, and our chaps cheered and shouted to them. After +some time they stood on the top of their trenches, and we did likewise. +We mutually agreed to cease fire, and all night we sang and shouted to +each other. To cap everything, their band played 'God save the King.' + +"When daylight came two of our fellows, at the invitation of the enemy, +left the trenches, met half-way, and drank together. That completed it. +They said they would not fire if we did not; so after that we strolled +about talking to each other." + + * * * * * + +"On Christmas morning it was very foggy, so we had a short run on the +top of the trenches to get warm. When the fog lifted we, as well as the +Germans, were exposed. No firing occurred, and the Germans began to wave +umbrellas and rifles, and we answered. They sang and we sang. When we +met we found they were fairly old fellows. They gave us sausages, +cigars, sweets, and perkin. We mixed together, played mouth-organs, and +took part in dances. My word! the Germans can't half sing part-songs. We +exchanged addresses and souvenirs, and when the time came we shook hands +and saluted each other, returning to our trenches." + + * * * * * + +"On Christmas morning one of the Germans came out of a trench and held +up his hands. Then lots of us did the same, and we met half-way, and for +the rest of the day we fraternized, exchanging cigars, cigarettes, and +souvenirs. The Germans also gave us sausages, and we gave them some of +our food. The Scotsmen then started the bagpipes, and we had a rare old +jollification, which included football, in which the Germans took part. +The Germans said they were tired of the war, and wished it was over. +Next day we got an order that all communication and friendly intercourse +must cease." + + * * * * * + +"I went up into the trenches on Christmas night. One wouldn't have +thought there was a war going on. All day our soldiers and the Germans +were talking and singing half-way between the opposing trenches. The +space was filled with English and Germans handing one another cigars. At +night we sang carols." + + * * * * * + +EXTRACT FROM A LETTER PUBLISHED BY THE "_Berliner Tageblatt_" OF +DECEMBER 24, 1914. + +The author of the letter is Baron Marschall von Bieberstein, a captain +of the reserves and Prussian "Landrat," obviously a kinsman of the late +diplomatist and Ambassador in London. He wrote on October 18 from the +trenches. He said:-- + +"Whoever fights in this war in the front ranks, whoever realizes all the +misery and unspeakable wretchedness caused by a modern war ... will +unavoidably arrive at the conviction, if he had not acquired it earlier, +that mankind must find a way of overcoming war. It is untrue that +eternal peace is a dream, and not even a beautiful one. A time will and +must arrive which will no longer know war, and this time will mark a +gigantic progress in comparison with our own. Just as human morality has +overcome the war of all against all; just as the individual had to +accustom himself to seek redress of his grievances at the hands of the +State after blood feuds and duels had been banished by civil peace, so +in their development will the nations discover ways and means to settle +budding conflicts not by means of wars, but in some other regulated +fashion, irrespective of what each of us individually may think." + +Unfortunately, the writer of this thoughtful letter fell on the +battlefield. + + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Healing of Nations and the Hidden +Sources of Their Strife, by Edward Carpenter + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HEALING NATIONS *** + +***** This file should be named 10097-8.txt or 10097-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/0/9/10097/ + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Dave Morgan and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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