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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/11289-0.txt b/11289-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a81ad52 --- /dev/null +++ b/11289-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6061 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11289 *** + +What is Coming? + +A Forecast of Things after the War + +By H.G. WELLS + +1916 + + + +CONTENTS + + 1. FORECASTING THE FUTURE + 2. THE END OF THE WAR + 3. NATIONS IN LIQUIDATION + 4. BRAINTREE, BOCKING, AND THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD + 5. How FAR WILL EUROPE GO TOWARD SOCIALISM? + 6. LAWYER AND PRESS + 7. THE NEW EDUCATION + 8. WHAT THE WAR IS DOING FOR WOMEN + 9. THE NEW MAP OF EUROPE +10. THE UNITED STATES, FRANCE, BRITAIN, AND RUSSIA +11. THE "WHITE MAN'S BURTHEN" +12. THE OUTLOOK FOR THE GERMANS + + + + +I. FORECASTING THE FUTURE + + +Prophecy may vary between being an intellectual amusement and a serious +occupation; serious not only in its intentions, but in its consequences. +For it is the lot of prophets who frighten or disappoint to be stoned. +But for some of us moderns, who have been touched with the spirit of +science, prophesying is almost a habit of mind. + +Science is very largely analysis aimed at forecasting. The test of any +scientific law is our verification of its anticipations. The scientific +training develops the idea that whatever is going to happen is really +here now--if only one could see it. And when one is taken by surprise +the tendency is not to say with the untrained man, "Now, who'd ha' +thought it?" but "Now, what was it we overlooked?" + +Everything that has ever existed or that will ever exist is here--for +anyone who has eyes to see. But some of it demands eyes of superhuman +penetration. Some of it is patent; we are almost as certain of next +Christmas and the tides of the year 1960 and the death before 3000 A.D. +of everybody now alive as if these things had already happened. Below +that level of certainty, but still at a very high level of certainty, +there are such things as that men will probably be making aeroplanes of +an improved pattern in 1950, or that there will be a through railway +connection between Constantinople and Bombay and between Baku and Bombay +in the next half-century. From such grades of certainty as this, one may +come down the scale until the most obscure mystery of all is reached: +the mystery of the individual. Will England presently produce a military +genius? or what will Mr. Belloc say the day after to-morrow? The most +accessible field for the prophet is the heavens; the least is the secret +of the jumping cat within the human skull. How will so-and-so behave, +and how will the nation take it? For such questions as that we need the +subtlest guesses of all. + +Yet, even to such questions as these the sharp, observant man may risk +an answer with something rather better than an even chance of being +right. + +The present writer is a prophet by use and wont. He is more interested +in to-morrow than he is in to-day, and the past is just material for +future guessing. "Think of the men who have walked here!" said a tourist +in the Roman Coliseum. It was a Futurist mind that answered: "Think of +the men who will." It is surely as interesting that presently some +founder of the World Republic, some obstinate opponent of militarism or +legalism, or the man who will first release atomic energy for human use, +will walk along the Via Sacra as that Cicero or Giordano Bruno or +Shelley have walked there in the past. To the prophetic mind all history +is and will continue to be a prelude. The prophetic type will +steadfastly refuse to see the world as a museum; it will insist that +here is a stage set for a drama that perpetually begins. + +Now this forecasting disposition has led the writer not only to publish +a book of deliberate prophesying, called "Anticipations," but almost +without premeditation to scatter a number of more or less obvious +prophecies through his other books. From first to last he has been +writing for twenty years, so that it is possible to check a certain +proportion of these anticipations by the things that have happened, Some +of these shots have hit remarkably close to the bull's-eye of reality; +there are a number of inners and outers, and some clean misses. Much +that he wrote about in anticipation is now established commonplace. In +1894 there were still plenty of sceptics of the possibility either of +automobiles or aeroplanes; it was not until 1898 that Mr. S.P. Langley +(of the Smithsonian Institute) could send the writer a photograph of a +heavier-than-air flying machine actually in the air. There were articles +in the monthly magazines of those days _proving_ that flying was +impossible. + +One of the writer's luckiest shots was a description (in "Anticipations" +in 1900) of trench warfare, and of a deadlock almost exactly upon the +lines of the situation after the battle of the Marne. And he was +fortunate (in the same work) in his estimate of the limitations of +submarines. He anticipated Sir Percy Scott by a year in his doubts of +the decisive value of great battleships (_see_ "An Englishman Looks at +the World"); and he was sound in denying the decadence of France; in +doubting (before the Russo-Japanese struggle) the greatness of the power +of Russia, which was still in those days a British bogey; in making +Belgium the battle-ground in a coming struggle between the mid-European +Powers and the rest of Europe; and (he believes) in foretelling a +renascent Poland. Long before Europe was familiar with the engaging +personality of the German Crown Prince, he represented great airships +sailing over England (which country had been too unenterprising to make +any) under the command of a singularly anticipatory Prince Karl, and in +"The World Set Free" the last disturber of the peace is a certain +"Balkan Fox." + +In saying, however, here and there that "before such a year so-and-so +will happen," or that "so-and-so will not occur for the next twenty +years," he was generally pretty widely wrong; most of his time estimates +are too short; he foretold, for example, a special motor track apart +from the high road between London and Brighton before 1910, which is +still a dream, but he doubted if effective military aviation or aerial +fighting would be possible before 1950, which is a miss on the other +side. He will draw a modest veil over certain still wider misses that +the idle may find for themselves in his books; he prefers to count the +hits and leave the reckoning of the misses to those who will find a +pleasure in it. + +Of course, these prophecies of the writer's were made upon a basis of +very generalised knowledge. What can be done by a really sustained +research into a particular question--especially if it is a question +essentially mechanical--is shown by the work of a Frenchman all too +neglected by the trumpet of fame--Clement Ader. M. Ader was probably the +first man to get a mechanism up into the air for something more than a +leap. His _Eole_, as General Mensier testifies, prolonged a jump as far +as fifty metres as early as 1890. In 1897 his _Avion_ fairly flew. (This +is a year ahead of the date of my earliest photograph of S.P. Langley's +aeropile in mid-air.) This, however, is beside our present mark. The +fact of interest here is that in 1908, when flying was still almost +incredible, M. Ader published his "Aviation Militaire." Well, that was +eight years ago, and men have been fighting in the air now for a year, +and there is still nothing being done that M. Ader did not see, and +which we, if we had had the wisdom to attend to him, might not have been +prepared for. There is much that he foretells which is still awaiting +its inevitable fulfilment. So clearly can men of adequate knowledge and +sound reasoning power see into the years ahead in all such matters of +material development. + +But it is not with the development of mechanical inventions that the +writer now proposes to treat. In this book he intends to hazard certain +forecasts about the trend of events in the next decade or so. Mechanical +novelties will probably play a very small part in that coming history. +This world-wide war means a general arrest of invention and enterprise, +except in the direction of the war business. Ability is concentrated +upon that; the types of ability that are not applicable to warfare are +neglected; there is a vast destruction of capital and a waste of the +savings that are needed to finance new experiments. Moreover, we are +killing off many of our brightest young men. + +It is fairly safe to assume that there will be very little new furniture +on the stage of the world for some considerable time; that if there is +much difference in the roads and railways and shipping it will be for +the worse; that architecture, domestic equipment, and so on, will be +fortunate if in 1924 they stand where they did in the spring of 1914. In +the trenches of France and Flanders, and on the battlefields of Russia, +the Germans have been spending and making the world spend the comfort, +the luxury and the progress of the next quarter-century. There is no +accounting for tastes. But the result is that, while it was possible +for the writer in 1900 to write "Anticipations of the Reaction of +Mechanical Progress upon Human Life and Thought," in 1916 his +anticipations must belong to quite another system of consequences. + +The broad material facts before us are plain enough. It is the mental +facts that have to be unravelled. It isn't now a question of "What +thing--what faculty--what added power will come to hand, and how will it +affect our ways of living?" It is a question of "How are people going to +take these obvious things--waste of the world's resources, arrest of +material progress, the killing of a large moiety of the males in nearly +every European country, and universal loss and unhappiness?" We are +going to deal with realities here, at once more intimate and less +accessible than the effects of mechanism. + +As a preliminary reconnaissance, as it were, over the region of problems +we have to attack, let us consider the difficulties of a single +question, which is also a vital and central question in this forecast. +We shall not attempt a full answer here, because too many of the factors +must remain unexamined; later, perhaps, we may be in a better position +to do so. This question is the probability of the establishment of a +long world peace. + +At the outset of the war there was a very widely felt hope among the +intellectuals of the world that this war might clear up most of the +outstanding international problems, and prove the last war. The writer, +looking across the gulf of experience that separates us from 1914, +recalls two pamphlets whose very titles are eloquent of this +feeling--"The War that will End War," and "The Peace of the World." Was +the hope expressed in those phrases a dream? Is it already proven a +dream? Or can we read between the lines of the war news, diplomatic +disputations, threats and accusations, political wranglings and stories +of hardship and cruelty that now fill our papers, anything that still +justifies a hope that these bitter years of world sorrow are the +darkness before the dawn of a better day for mankind? Let us handle this +problem for a preliminary examination. + +What is really being examined here is the power of human reason to +prevail over passion--and certain other restraining and qualifying +forces. There can be little doubt that, if one could canvass all mankind +and ask them whether they would rather have no war any more, the +overwhelming mass of them would elect for universal peace. If it were +war of the modern mechanical type that was in question, with air raids, +high explosives, poison gas and submarines, there could be no doubt at +all about the response. "Give peace in our time, O Lord," is more than +ever the common prayer of Christendom, and the very war makers claim to +be peace makers; the German Emperor has never faltered in his assertion +that he encouraged Austria to send an impossible ultimatum to Serbia, +and invaded Belgium because Germany was being attacked. The Krupp-Kaiser +Empire, he assures us, is no eagle, but a double-headed lamb, resisting +the shearers and butchers. The apologists for war are in a hopeless +minority; a certain number of German Prussians who think war good for +the soul, and the dear ladies of the London _Morning Post_ who think war +so good for the manners of the working classes, are rare, discordant +voices in the general chorus against war. If a mere unsupported and +uncoordinated will for peace could realise itself, there would be peace, +and an enduring peace, to-morrow. But, as a matter of fact, there is no +peace coming to-morrow, and no clear prospect yet of an enduring +universal peace at the end of this war. + +Now what are the obstructions, and what are the antagonisms to the +exploitation of this world-wide disgust with war and the world-wide +desire for peace, so as to establish a world peace? + +Let us take them in order, and it will speedily become apparent that we +are dealing here with a subtle quantitative problem in psychology, a +constant weighing of whether this force or that force is the stronger. +We are dealing with influences so subtle that the accidents of some +striking dramatic occurrence, for example, may turn them this way or +that. We are dealing with the human will--and thereby comes a snare for +the feet of the would-be impartial prophet. To foretell the future is to +modify the future. It is hard for any prophet not to break into +exhortation after the fashion of the prophets of Israel. + +The first difficulty in the way of establishing a world peace is that it +is nobody's business in particular. Nearly all of us want a world +peace--in an amateurish sort of way. But there is no specific person or +persons to whom one can look for the initiatives. The world is a +supersaturated solution of the will-for-peace, and there is nothing for +it to crystallise upon. There is no one in all the world who is +responsible for the understanding and overcoming of the difficulties +involved. There are many more people, and there is much more +intelligence concentrated upon the manufacture of cigarettes or +hairpins than upon the establishment of a permanent world peace. There +are a few special secretaries employed by philanthropic Americans, and +that is about all. There has been no provision made even for the +emoluments of these gentlemen when universal peace is attained; +presumably they would lose their jobs. + +Nearly everybody wants peace; nearly everybody would be glad to wave a +white flag with a dove on it now--provided no unfair use was made of +such a demonstration by the enemy--but there is practically nobody +thinking out the arrangements needed, and nobody making nearly as much +propaganda for the instruction of the world in the things needful as is +made in selling any popular make of automobile. We have all our +particular businesses to attend to. And things are not got by just +wanting them; things are got by getting them, and rejecting whatever +precludes our getting them. + +That is the first great difficulty: the formal Peace Movement is quite +amateurish. + +It is so amateurish that the bulk of people do not even realise the very +first implication of the peace of the world. It has not succeeded in +bringing this home to them. + +If there is to be a permanent peace of the world, it is clear that +there must be some permanent means of settling disputes between Powers +and nations that would otherwise be at war. That means that there must +be some head power, some point of reference, a supreme court of some +kind, a universally recognised executive over and above the separate +Governments of the world that exist to-day. That does not mean that +those Governments Have to disappear, that "nationality" has to be given +up, or anything so drastic as that. But it does mean that all those +Governments have to surrender almost as much of their sovereignty as the +constituent sovereign States which make up the United States of America +have surrendered to the Federal Government; if their unification is to +be anything more than a formality, they will have to delegate a control +of their inter-State relations to an extent for which few minds are +prepared at present. + +It is really quite idle to dream of a warless world in which States are +still absolutely free to annoy one another with tariffs, with the +blocking and squeezing of trade routes, with the ill-treatment of +immigrants and travelling strangers, and between which there is no means +of settling boundary disputes. Moreover, as between the united States of +the world and the United States of America there is this further +complication of the world position: that almost all the great States of +Europe are in possession, firstly, of highly developed territories of +alien language and race, such as Egypt; and, secondly, of barbaric and +less-developed territories, such as Nigeria or Madagascar. There will be +nothing stable about a world settlement that does not destroy in these +"possessions" the national preference of the countries that own them and +that does not prepare for the immediate or eventual accession of these +subject peoples to State rank. Most certainly, however, thousands of +intelligent people in those great European countries who believe +themselves ardent for a world peace will be staggered at any proposal to +place any part of "our Empire" under a world administration on the +footing of a United States territory. Until they cease to be staggered +by anything of the sort, their aspirations for a permanent peace will +remain disconnected from the main current of their lives. And that +current will flow, sluggishly or rapidly, towards war. For essentially +these "possessions" are like tariffs, like the strategic occupation of +neutral countries or secret treaties; they are forms of the conflict +between nations to oust and prevail over other nations. + +Going on with such things and yet deprecating war is really not an +attempt to abolish conflict; it is an attempt to retain conflict and +limit its intensity; it is like trying to play hockey on the +understanding that the ball shall never travel faster than eight miles +an hour. + +Now it not only stands in our way to a permanent peace of the world that +the great mass of men are not prepared for even the most obvious +implications of such an idea, but there is also a second invincible +difficulty--that there is nowhere in the world anybody, any type of men, +any organisation, any idea, any nucleus or germ, that could possibly +develop into the necessary over-Government. We are asking for something +out of the air, out of nothingness, that will necessarily array against +itself the resistance of all those who are in control, or interested in +the control, of the affairs of sovereign States of the world as they are +at present; the resistance of a gigantic network of Government +organisations, interests, privileges, assumptions. + +Against this a headless, vague aspiration, however universal, is likely +to prove quite ineffective. Of course, it is possible to suggest that +the Hague Tribunal is conceivably the germ of such an overriding +direction and supreme court as the peace of the world demands, but in +reality the Hague Tribunal is a mere legal automatic machine. It does +nothing unless you set it in motion. It has no initiative. It does not +even protest against the most obvious outrages upon that phantom of a +world-conscience--international law. + +Pacificists in their search for some definite starting-point, about +which the immense predisposition for peace may crystallise, have +suggested the Pope and various religious organisations as a possible +basis for the organisation of peace. But there would be no appeal from +such a beginning to the non-Christian majority of mankind, and the +suggestion in itself indicates a profound ignorance of the nature of the +Christian churches. With the exception of the Quakers and a few Russian +sects, no Christian sect or church has ever repudiated war; most have +gone out of the way to sanction it and bless it. + +It is altogether too rashly assumed by people whose sentimentality +outruns their knowledge that Christianity is essentially an attempt to +carry out the personal teachings of Christ. It is nothing of the sort, +and no church authority will support that idea. Christianity--more +particularly after the ascendancy of the Trinitarian doctrine was +established--was and is a theological religion; it is the religion that +triumphed over Arianism, Manichseism, Gnosticism, and the like; it is +based not on Christ, but on its creeds. Christ, indeed, is not even its +symbol; on the contrary, the chosen symbol of Christianity is the cross +to which Christ was nailed and on which He died. It was very largely a +religion of the legions. It was the warrior Theodosius who, more than +any single other man, imposed it upon Europe. + +There is no reason, therefore, either in precedent or profession, for +expecting any plain lead from the churches in this tremendous task of +organising and making effective the widespread desire of the world for +peace. And even were this the case, it is doubtful if we should find in +the divines and dignitaries of the Vatican, of the Russian and British +official churches, or of any other of the multitudinous Christian sects, +the power and energy, the knowledge and ability, or even the goodwill +needed to negotiate so vast a thing as the creation of a world +authority. + +One other possible starting-point has been suggested. It is no great +feat for a naive imagination to suppose the President of the Swiss +Confederation or the President of the United States--for each of these +two systems is an exemplary and encouraging instance of the possibility +of the pacific synthesis of independent States--taking a propagandist +course and proposing extensions of their own systems to the suffering +belligerents. + +But nothing of the sort occurs. And when you come to look into the +circumstances of these two Presidents you will discover that neither of +them is any more free than anybody else to embark upon the task of +creating a State-overriding, war-preventing organisation of the world. +He has been created by a system, and he is bound to a system; his +concern is with the interests of the people of Switzerland or of the +United States of America. President Wilson, for example, is quite +sufficiently occupied by the affairs of the White House, by the clash of +political parties, by interferences with American overseas trade and the +security of American citizens. He has no more time to give to projects +for the fundamental reconstruction of international relationships than +has any recruit drilling in England, or any captain on an ocean liner, +or any engineer in charge of a going engine. + +We are all, indeed, busy with the things that come to hand every day. We +are all anxious for a permanent world peace, but we are all up to the +neck in things that leave us no time to attend to this world peace that +nearly every sane man desires. + +Meanwhile, a small minority of people who trade upon +contention--militarists, ambitious kings and statesmen, war contractors, +loan mongers, sensational journalists--follow up their interests and +start and sustain war. + +There lies the paradoxical reality of this question. Our first inquiry +lands us into the elucidation of this deadlock. Nearly everybody desires +a world peace, and yet there is not apparent anywhere any man free and +able and willing to establish it, while, on the other hand, there are a +considerable number of men in positions of especial influence and power +who will certainly resist the arrangements that are essential to its +establishment. + +But does this exhaust the question, and must we conclude that mankind is +doomed to a perpetual, futile struggling of States and nations and +peoples--breaking ever and again into war? The answer to that would +probably, be "Yes" if it were not for the progress of war. War is +continually becoming more scientific, more destructive, more coldly +logical, more intolerant of non-combatants, and more exhausting of any +kind of property. There is every reason to believe that it will continue +to intensify these characteristics. By doing so it may presently bring +about a state of affairs that will supply just the lacking elements that +are needed for the development of a world peace. + +I would venture to suggest that the present war is doing so now: that it +is producing changes in men's minds that may presently give us both the +needed energy and the needed organisation from which a world direction +may develop. + +The first, most distinctive thing about this conflict is the +exceptionally searching way in which it attacks human happiness. No war +has ever destroyed happiness so widely. It has not only killed and +wounded an unprecedented proportion of the male population of all the +combatant nations, but it has also destroyed wealth beyond precedent. It +has also destroyed freedom--of movement, of speech, of economic +enterprise. Hardly anyone alive has escaped the worry of it and the +threat of it. It has left scarcely a life untouched, and made scarcely a +life happier. There is a limit to the principle that "everybody's +business is nobody's business." The establishment of a world State, +which was interesting only to a few cranks and visionaries before the +war, is now the lively interest of a very great number of people. They +inquire about it; they have become accessible to ideas about it. + +Peace organisation seems, indeed, to be following the lines of public +sanitation. Everybody in England, for example, was bored by the +discussion of sanitation--until the great cholera epidemic. Everybody +thought public health a very desirable thing, but nobody thought it +intensely and overridingly desirable. Then the interest in sanitation +grew lively, and people exerted themselves to create responsible +organisations. Crimes of violence, again, were neglected in the great +cities of Europe until the danger grew to dimensions that evolved the +police. There come occasions when the normal concentration of an +individual upon his own immediate concerns becomes impossible; as, for +instance, when a man who is stocktaking in his business premises +discovers that the house next door is on fire. A great many people who +have never troubled their heads about anything but their own purely +personal and selfish interests are now realising that quite a multitude +of houses about them are ablaze, and that the fire is spreading. + +That is one change the war will bring about that will make for world +peace: a quickened general interest in its possibility. Another is the +certainty that the war will increase the number of devoted and fanatic +characters available for disinterested effort. Whatever other outcome +this war may have, it means that there lies ahead a period of extreme +economic and political dislocation. The credit system has been strained, +and will be strained, and will need unprecedented readjustments. In the +past such phases of uncertainty, sudden impoverishment and disorder as +certainly lie ahead of us, have meant for a considerable number of minds +a release--or, if you prefer it, a flight--from the habitual and +selfish. Types of intense religiosity, of devotion and of endeavour are +let loose, and there will be much more likelihood that we may presently +find, what it is impossible to find now, a number of devoted men and +women ready to give their whole lives, with a quasi-religious +enthusiasm, to this great task of peace establishment, finding in such +impersonal work a refuge from the disappointments, limitations, losses +and sorrows of their personal life--a refuge we need but little in more +settled and more prosperous periods. They will be but the outstanding +individuals in a very universal quickening. And simultaneously with this +quickening of the general imagination by experience there are certain +other developments in progress that point very clearly to a change under +the pressure of this war of just those institutions of nationality, +kingship, diplomacy and inter-State competition that have hitherto stood +most effectually in the way of a world pacification. The considerations +that seem to point to this third change are very convincing, to my mind. + +The real operating cause that is, I believe, going to break down the +deadlock that has hitherto made a supreme court and a federal government +for the world at large a dream, lies in just that possibility of an +"inconclusive peace" which so many people seem to dread. Germany, I +believe, is going to be beaten, but not completely crushed, by this war; +she is going to be left militarist and united with Austria and Hungary, +and unchanged in her essential nature; and out of that state of affairs +comes, I believe, the hope for an ultimate confederation of the nations +of the earth. + +Because, in the face of a league of the Central European Powers +attempting recuperation, cherishing revenge, dreaming of a renewal of +the struggle, it becomes impossible for the British, the French, the +Belgians, Russians, Italians or Japanese to think any longer of settling +their differences by war among themselves. To do so will mean the +creation of opportunity for the complete reinstatement of German +militarism. It will open the door for a conclusive German hegemony. +Now, however clumsy and confused the diplomacy of these present Allies +may be (challenged constantly, as it is, by democracy and hampered by a +free, venal and irresponsible Press in at least three of their +countries), the necessity they will be under will be so urgent and so +evident, that it is impossible to imagine that they will not set up some +permanent organ for the direction and co-ordination of their joint +international relationships. It may be a queerly constituted body at +first; it may be of a merely diplomatic pretension; it may be called a +Congress, or any old name of that sort, but essentially its business +will be to conduct a joint fiscal, military and naval policy, to keep +the peace in the Balkans and Asia, to establish a relationship with +China, and organise joint and several arbitration arrangements with +America. And it must develop something more sure and swift than our +present diplomacy. One of its chief concerns will be the right of way +through the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, and the watching of the +forces that stir up conflict in the Balkans and the Levant. It must have +unity enough for that; it must be much more than a mere leisurely, +unauthoritative conference of representatives. + +For precisely similar reasons it seems to me incredible that the two +great Central European Powers should ever fall into sustained conflict +again with one another. They, too, will be forced to create some +overriding body to prevent so suicidal a possibility. America too, it +may be, will develop some Pan-American equivalent. Probably the hundred +millions of Latin America may achieve a method of unity, and then deal +on equal terms with the present United States. The thing has been ably +advocated already in South America. Whatever appearances of separate +sovereignties are kept up after the war, the practical outcome of the +struggle is quite likely to be this: that there will be only three great +World Powers left--the anti-German allies, the allied Central Europeans, +the Pan-Americans. And it is to be noted that, whatever the constituents +of these three Powers may be, none of them is likely to be a monarchy. +They may include monarchies, as England includes dukedoms. But they will +be overriding alliances, not overriding rulers. I leave it to the +mathematician to work out exactly how much the chances of conflict are +diminished when there are practically only three Powers in the world +instead of some scores. And these new Powers will be in certain respects +unlike any existing European "States." None of the three Powers will be +small or homogeneous enough to serve dynastic ambitions, embody a +national or racial Kultur, or fall into the grip of any group of +financial enterprises. They will be more comprehensive, less romantic, +and more businesslike altogether. They will be, to use a phrase +suggested a year or so ago, Great States.... And the war threat between +the three will be so plain and definite, the issues will be so lifted +out of the spheres of merely personal ambition and national feeling, +that I do not see why the negotiating means, the standing conference of +the three, should not ultimately become the needed nucleus of the World +State for which at present we search the world in vain. + +There are more ways than one to the World State, and this second +possibility of a post-war conference and a conference of the Allies, +growing almost unawares into a pacific organisation of the world, since +it goes on directly from existing institutions, since it has none of the +quality of a clean break with the past which the idea of an immediate +World State and Pax Mundi involves, and more particularly since it +neither abolishes nor has in it anything to shock fundamentally the +princes, the diplomatists, the lawyers, the statesmen and politicians, +the nationalists and suspicious people, since it gives them years in +which to change and die out and reappear in new forms, and since at the +same time it will command the support of every intelligent human being +who gets his mind clear enough from his circumstances to understand its +import, is a far more credible hope than the hope of anything coming _de +novo_ out of Hague Foundations or the manifest logic of the war. + +But, of course, there weighs against these hopes the possibility that +the Allied Powers are too various in their nature, too biased, too +feeble intellectually and imaginatively, to hold together and maintain +any institution for co-operation. The British Press may be too silly not +to foster irritation and suspicion; we may get Carsonism on a larger +scale trading on the resuscitation of dying hatreds; the British and +Russian diplomatists may play annoying tricks upon one another by sheer +force of habit. There may be many troubles of that sort. Even then I do +not see that the hope of an ultimate world peace vanishes. But it will +be a Roman world peace, made in Germany, and there will have to be +several more great wars before it is established. Germany is too +homogeneous yet to have begun the lesson of compromise and the +renunciation of the dream of national conquest. The Germans are a +national, not an imperial people. France has learnt that through +suffering, and Britain and Russia because for two centuries they have +been imperial and not national systems. The German conception of world +peace is as yet a conception of German ascendancy. The Allied conception +becomes perforce one of mutual toleration. + +But I will not press this inquiry farther now. It is, as I said at the +beginning, a preliminary exploration of one of the great questions with +which I propose to play in these articles. The possibility I have +sketched is the one that most commends itself to me as probable. After a +more detailed examination of the big operating forces at present working +in the world, we may be in a position to revise these suggestions with a +greater confidence and draw our net of probabilities a little tighter. + + + + +II. THE END OF THE WAR[1] + + +The prophet who emerges with the most honour from this war is Bloch. It +must be fifteen or sixteen years ago since this gifted Pole made his +forecast of the future. Perhaps it is more, for the French translation +of his book was certainly in existence before the Boer War. His case was +that war between antagonists of fairly equal equipment must end in a +deadlock because of the continually increasing defensive efficiency of +entrenched infantry. This would give the defensive an advantage over the +most brilliant strategy and over considerably superior numbers that +would completely discourage all aggression. He concluded that war was +played out. + +[Footnote 1: This chapter was originally a newspaper article. It was +written in December, 1915, and published about the middle of January. +Some of it has passed from the quality of anticipation to achievement, +but I do not see that it needs any material revision on that account.] + +His book was very carefully studied in Germany. As a humble disciple of +Bloch I should have realised this, but I did not, and that failure led +me into some unfortunate prophesying at the outbreak of the war. I +judged Germany by the Kaiser, and by the Kaiser-worship which I saw in +Berlin. I thought that he was a theatrical person who would dream of +vast massed attacks and tremendous cavalry charges, and that he would +lead Germany to be smashed against the Allied defensive in the West, and +to be smashed so thoroughly that the war would be over. I did not +properly appreciate the more studious and more thorough Germany that was +to fight behind the Kaiser and thrust him aside, the Germany we British +fight now, the Ostwald-Krupp Germany of 1915. That Germany, one may now +perceive, had read and thought over and thought out the Bloch problem. + +There was also a translation of Bloch into French. In English a portion +of his book was translated for the general reader and published with a +preface by the late Mr. W.T. Stead. It does not seem to have reached the +British military authorities, nor was it published in England with an +instructive intention. As an imaginative work it would have been +considered worthless and impracticable. + +But it is manifest now that if the Belgian and French frontiers had been +properly prepared--as they should have been prepared when the Germans +built their strategic railways--with trenches and gun emplacements and +secondary and tertiary lines, the Germans would never have got fifty +miles into either France or Belgium. They would have been held at LiĆ©ge +and in the Ardennes. Five hundred thousand men would have held them +indefinitely. But the Allies had never worked trench warfare; they were +unready for it, Germans knew of their unreadiness, and their unreadiness +it is quite clear they calculated. They did not reckon, it is now clear +that they were right in not reckoning, the Allies as contemporary +soldiers. They were going to fight a 1900 army with a 1914 army, and +their whole opening scheme was based on the conviction that the Allies +would not entrench. + +Somebody in those marvellous maxims from the dark ages that seem to form +the chief reading of our military experts, said that the army that +entrenches is a defeated army. The silly dictum was repeated and +repeated in the English papers after the battle of the Marne. It shows +just where our military science had reached in 1914, namely, to a level +a year before Bloch wrote. So the Allies retreated. + +For long weeks the Allies retreated out of the west of Belgium, out of +the north of France, and for rather over a month there was a loose +mobile war--as if Bloch had never existed. The Germans were not fighting +the 1914 pattern of war, they were fighting the 1899 pattern of war, in +which direct attack, outflanking and so on were still supposed to be +possible; they were fighting confident in their overwhelming numbers, in +their prepared surprise, in the unthought-out methods of their +opponents. In the "Victorian" war that ended in the middle of September, +1914, they delivered their blow, they over-reached, they were +successfully counter-attacked on the Marne, and then abruptly--almost +unfairly it seemed to the British sportsmanlike conceptions--they +shifted to the game played according to the very latest rules of 1914. +The war did not come up to date until the battle of the Aisne. With that +the second act of the great drama began. + +I do not believe that the Germans ever thought it would come up to date +so soon. I believe they thought that they would hustle the French out of +Paris, come right up to the Channel at Calais before the end of 1914, +and then entrench, produce the submarine attack and the Zeppelins +against England, working from Calais as a base, and that they would end +the war before the spring of 1915--with the Allies still a good fifteen +years behindhand. + +I believe the battle of the Marne was the decisive battle of the war, in +that it shattered this plan, and that the rest of the 1914 fighting was +Germany's attempt to reconstruct their broken scheme in the face of an +enemy who was continually getting more and more nearly up to date with +the fighting. By December, Bloch, who had seemed utterly discredited in +August, was justified up to the hilt. The world was entrenched at his +feet. By May the lagging military science of the British had so far +overtaken events as to realise that shrapnel was no longer so important +as high explosive, and within a year the significance of machine guns, a +significance thoroughly ventilated by imaginative writers fifteen years +before, was being grasped by the conservative but by no means +inadaptable leaders of Britain. + +The war since that first attempt--admirably planned and altogether +justifiable (from a military point of view, I mean)--of Germany to +"rush" a victory, has consisted almost entirely of failures on both +sides either to get round or through or over the situation foretold by +Bloch. There has been only one marked success, the German success in +Poland due to the failure of the Russian munitions. Then for a time the +war in the East was mobile and precarious while the Russians retreated +to their present positions, and the Germans pursued and tried to +surround them. That was a lapse into the pre-Bloch style. Now the +Russians are again entrenched, their supplies are restored, the Germans +have a lengthened line of supplies, and Bloch is back upon his pedestal +so far as the Eastern theatre goes. + +Bloch has been equally justified in the Anglo-French attempt to get +round through Gallipoli. The forces of the India Office have pushed +their way through unprepared country towards Bagdad, and are now +entrenching in Mesopotamia, but from the point of view of the main war +that is too remote to be considered either getting through or getting +round; and so too the losses of the German colonies and the East African +War are scarcely to be reckoned with in the main war. They have no +determining value. There remains the Balkan struggle. But the Balkan +struggle is something else; it is something new. It must be treated +separately. It is a war of treacheries and brags and appearances. It is +not a part of, it is a sequence to, the deadlock war of 1915. + +But before dealing with this new development of the latter half of 1915 +it is necessary to consider certain general aspects of the deadlock +war. It is manifest that the Germans hoped to secure an effective +victory in this war before they ran up against Bloch. But reckoning with +Bloch, as they certainly did, they hoped that even in the event of the +war getting to earth, it would still be possible to produce novelties +that would sufficiently neutralise Bloch to secure a victorious peace. +With unexpectedly powerful artillery suddenly concentrated, with high +explosives, with asphyxiating gas, with a well-organised system of +grenade throwing and mining, with attacks of flaming gas, and above all +with a vast munition-making plant to keep them going, they had a very +reasonable chance of hacking their way through. + +Against these prepared novelties the Allies have had to improvise, and +on the whole the improvisation has kept pace with the demands made upon +it. They have brought their military science up to date, and to-day the +disparity in science and equipment between the antagonists has greatly +diminished. There has been no escaping Bloch after all, and the +deadlock, if no sudden peace occurs, can end now in only one thing, the +exhaustion in various degrees of all the combatants and the succumbing +of the most exhausted. The idea of a conclusive end of the traditional +pattern to this war, of a triumphal entry into London, Paris, Berlin or +Moscow, is to be dismissed altogether from our calculations. The end of +this war will be a matter of negotiation between practically immobilised +and extremely shattered antagonists. + +There is, of course, one aspect of the Bloch deadlock that the Germans +at least have contemplated. If it is not possible to get through or +round, it may still be possible to get over. There is the air path. + +This idea has certainly taken hold of the French mind, but France has +been too busy and is temperamentally too economical to risk large +expenditures upon what is necessarily an experiment. The British are too +conservative and sceptical to be the pioneers in any such enterprise. +The Russians have been too poor in the necessary resources of mechanics +and material. + +The Germans alone have made any sustained attempt to strike through the +air at their enemies beyond the war zone. Their Zeppelin raids upon +England have shown a steadily increasing efficiency, and it is highly +probable that they will be repeated on a much larger scale before the +war is over. Quite possibly, too, the Germans are developing an +accessory force of large aeroplanes to co-operate in such an attack. +The long coasts of Britain, the impossibility of their being fully +equipped throughout their extent, except at a prohibitive cost of men +and material, to resist air invaders, exposes the whole length of the +island to considerable risk and annoyance from such an expedition. + +It is doubtful, though, if the utmost damage an air raid is likely to +inflict upon England would count materially in the exhaustion process, +and the moral effect of these raids has been, and will be, to stiffen +the British resolution to fight this war through to the conclusive +ending of any such possibilities. + +The net result of these air raids is an inflexible determination of the +British people rather to die in death grips with German militarism than +to live and let it survive. The best chance for the aircraft was at the +beginning of the war, when a surprise development might have had +astounding results. That chance has gone by. The Germans are racially +inferior to both French and English in the air, and the probability of +effective blows over the deadlock is on the whole a probability in +favour of the Allies. Nor is there anything on or under the sea that +seems likely now to produce decisive results. We return from these +considerations to a strengthened acceptance of Bloch. + +The essential question for the prophet remains therefore the question of +which group of Powers will exhaust itself most rapidly. And following on +from that comes the question of how the successive stages of exhaustion +will manifest themselves in the combatant nations. The problems of this +war, as of all war, end as they begin in national psychology. + +But it will be urged that this is reckoning without the Balkans. I +submit that the German thrust through the wooded wilderness of Serbia is +really no part of the war that has ended in the deadlock of 1915. It is +dramatic, tragic, spectacular, but it is quite inconclusive. Here there +is no way round or through to any vital centre of Germany's antagonists. +It turns nothing; it opens no path to Paris, London, or Petrograd. It is +a long, long way from the Danube to either Egypt or Mesopotamia, and +there--and there--Bloch is waiting. I do not think the Germans have any +intention of so generous an extension of their responsibilities. The +Balkan complication is no solution of the deadlock problem. It is the +opening of the sequel. + +A whole series of new problems are opened up directly we turn to this +most troubled region of the Balkans--problems of the value of kingship, +of nationality, of the destiny of such cities as Constantinople, which +from their very beginning have never had any sort of nationality at all, +of the destiny of countries such as Albania, where a tangle of intense +tribal nationalities is distributed in spots and patches, or Dalmatia, +where one extremely self-conscious nation and language is present in the +towns and another in the surrounding country, or Asia Minor, where no +definite national boundaries, no religious, linguistic, or social +homogeneities have ever established themselves since the Roman legions +beat them down. + +But all these questions can really be deferred or set aside in our +present discussion, which is a discussion of the main war. Whatever +surprises or changes this last phase of the Eastern Empire, that +blood-clotted melodrama, may involve, they will but assist and hasten on +the essential conclusion of the great war, that the Central Powers and +their pledged antagonists are in a deadlock, unable to reach a decision, +and steadily, day by day, hour by hour, losing men, destroying material, +spending credit, approaching something unprecedented, unknown, that we +try to express to ourselves by the word exhaustion. + +Just how the people who use the word "exhaustion" so freely are +prepared to define it, is a matter for speculation. The idea seems to be +a phase in which the production of equipped forces ceases through the +using up of men or material or both. If the exhaustion is fairly mutual, +it need not be decisive for a long time. It may mean simply an ebb of +vigour on both sides, unusual hardship, a general social and economic +disorganisation and grading down. The fact that a great killing off of +men is implicit in the process, and that the survivors will be largely +under discipline, militates against the idea that the end may come +suddenly through a vigorous revolutionary outbreak. Exhaustion is likely +to be a very long and very thorough process, extending over years. A +"war of attrition" may last into 1918 or 1919, and may bring us to +conditions of strain and deprivation still only very vaguely imagined. +What happens in the Turkish Empire or India or America or elsewhere may +extend the areas of waste and accelerate or retard the process, but is +quite unlikely to end it. + +Let us ask now which of the combatants is likely to undergo exhaustion +most rapidly, and what is of equal or greater importance, which is +likely to feel it first and most? No doubt there is a bias in my mind, +but it seems to me that the odds are on the whole heavily against the +Central Powers. Their peculiar German virtue, their tremendously +complete organisation, which enabled them to put so large a proportion +of their total resources into their first onslaught and to make so great +and rapid a recovery in the spring of 1915, leaves them with less to +draw upon now. Out of a smaller fortune they have spent a larger sum. +They are blockaded to a very considerable extent, and against them fight +not merely the resources of the Allies, but, thanks to the complete +British victory in the sea struggle, the purchasable resources of all +the world. + +Conceivably the Central Powers will draw upon the resources of their +Balkan and Asiatic allies, but the extent to which they can do that may +very easily be over-estimated. There is a limit to the power for treason +of these supposititious German monarchs that Western folly has permitted +to possess these Balkan thrones--thrones which need never have been +thrones at all--and none of the Balkan peoples is likely to witness with +enthusiasm the complete looting of its country in the German interest by +a German court. Germany will have to pay on the nail for most of her +Balkan help. She will have to put more into the Balkans than she takes +out. + +Compared with the world behind the Allies the Turkish Empire is a +country of mountains, desert and undeveloped lands. To develop these +regions into a source of supplies under the strains and shortages of +war-time, will be an immense and dangerous undertaking for Germany. She +may open mines she may never work, build railways that others will +enjoy, sow harvests for alien reaping. The people the Bulgarians want in +Bulgaria are not Germans but Bulgarians; the people the Turks want in +Anatolia are not Germans but Turks. And for all these tasks Germany must +send men. Men? + +At present, so far as any judgment is possible, Germany is feeling the +pinch of the war much more even than France, which is habitually +parsimonious, and instinctively cleverly economical, and Russia, which +is hardy and insensitive. Great Britain has really only begun to feel +the stress. She has probably suffered economically no more than have +Holland or Switzerland, and Italy and Japan have certainly suffered +less. All these three great countries are still full of men, of gear, of +saleable futures. In every part of the globe Great Britain has colossal +investments. She has still to apply the great principle of conscription +not only to her sons but to the property of her overseas investors and +of her landed proprietors. She has not even looked yet at the German +financial expedients of a year ago. She moves reluctantly, but surely, +towards such a thoroughness of mobilisation. There need be no doubt that +she will completely socialise herself, completely reorganise her whole +social and economic structure sooner than lose this war. She will do it +clumsily and ungracefully, with much internal bickering, with much +trickery on the part of her lawyers, and much baseness on the part of +her landlords; but she will do it not so slowly as a logical mind might +anticipate. She will get there a little late, expensively, but still in +time.... + +The German group, I reckon, therefore, will become exhausted first. I +think, too, that Germany will, as a nation, feel and be aware of what is +happening to her sooner than any other of the nations that are sharing +in this process of depletion. In 1914 the Germans were reaping the +harvest of forty years of economic development and business enterprise. +Property and plenty were new experiences, and a generation had grown up +in whose world a sense of expansion and progress was normal. There +existed amongst it no tradition of the great hardship of war, such as +the French possessed, to steel its mind. It had none of the irrational +mute toughness of the Russians and British. It was a sentimental people, +making a habit of success; it rushed chanting to war against the most +grimly heroic and the most stolidly enduring of races. Germany came into +this war more buoyantly and confidently than any other combatant. It +expected another 1871; at the utmost it anticipated a year of war. + +Never were a people so disillusioned as the Germans must already be, +never has a nation been called upon for so complete a mental +readjustment. Neither conclusive victories nor defeats have been theirs, +but only a slow, vast transition from joyful effort and an illusion of +rapid triumph to hardship, loss and loss and loss of substance, the +dwindling of great hopes, the realisation of ebb in the tide of national +welfare. Now they must fight on against implacable, indomitable Allies. +They are under stresses now as harsh at least as the stresses of France. +And, compared with the French, the Germans are untempered steel. + +We know little of the psychology of this new Germany that has come into +being since 1871, but it is doubtful if it will accept defeat, and still +more doubtful how it can evade some ending to the war that will admit +the failure of all its great hopes of Paris subjugated, London humbled, +Russia suppliant, Belgium conquered, the Near East a prey. Such an +admission will be a day of reckoning that German Imperialism will +postpone until the last hope of some breach among the Allies, some +saving miracle in the old Eastern Empire, some dramatically-snatched +victory at the eleventh hour, is gone. + +Nor can the Pledged Allies consent to a peace that does not involve the +evacuation and compensation of Belgium and Serbia, and at least the +autonomy of the lost Rhine provinces of France. That is their very +minimum. That, and the making of Germany so sick and weary of military +adventure that the danger of German ambition will cease to overshadow +European life. Those are the ends of the main war. Europe will go down +through stage after stage of impoverishment and exhaustion until these +ends are attained, or made for ever impossible. + +But these things form only the main outline of a story with a vast +amount of collateral interest. It is to these collateral issues that the +amateur in prophecy must give his attention. It is here that the German +will be induced by his Government to see his compensations. He will be +consoled for the restoration of Serbia by the prospect of future +conflicts between Italian and Jugoslav that will let him in again to the +Adriatic. His attention will be directed to his newer, closer +association with Bulgaria and Turkey. In those countries he will be told +he may yet repeat the miracle of Hungary. And there may be also another +Hungary in Poland. It will be whispered to him that he has really +conquered those countries when indeed it is highly probable he has only +spent his substance in setting up new assertive alien allies. The +Kaiser, if he is not too afraid of the precedent of Sarajevo, may make a +great entry into Constantinople, with an effect of conquering what is +after all only a temporarily allied capital. The German will hope also +to retain his fleet, and no peace, he will be reminded, can rob him of +his hard-earned technical superiority in the air. The German air fleet +of 1930 may yet be something as predominant as the British Navy of 1915, +and capable of delivering a much more intimate blow. Had he not better +wait for that? When such consolations as these become popular in the +German Press we of the Pledged Allies may begin to talk of peace, for +these will be its necessary heralds. + +The concluding phase of a process of general exhaustion must almost +inevitably be a game of bluff. Neither side will admit its extremity. +Neither side, therefore, will make any direct proposals to its +antagonists nor any open advances to a neutral. But there will be much +inspired peace talk through neutral media, and the consultations of the +anti-German allies will become more intimate and detailed. Suggestions +will "leak out" remarkably from both sides, to journalists and neutral +go-betweens. The Eastern and Western Allies will probably begin quite +soon to discuss an anti-German Zollverein and the co-ordination of their +military and naval organisations in the days that are to follow the war. +A discussion of a Central European Zollverein is already afoot. A +general idea of the possible rearrangement of the European States after +the war will grow up in the common European and American mind; public +men on either side will indicate concordance with this general idea, and +some neutral power, Denmark or Spain or the United States or Holland, +will invite representatives to an informal discussion of these +possibilities. + +Probably, therefore, the peace negotiations will take the extraordinary +form of two simultaneous conferences--one of the Pledged Allies, sitting +probably in Paris or London, and the other of representatives of all the +combatants meeting in some neutral country--Holland would be the most +convenient--while the war will still be going on. The Dutch conference +would be in immediate contact by telephone and telegraph with the Allied +conference and with Berlin.... + +The broad conditions of a possible peace will begin to get stated +towards the end of 1916, and a certain lassitude will creep over the +operations in the field.... The process of exhaustion will probably have +reached such a point by that time that it will be a primary fact in the +consciousness of common citizens of every belligerent country. The +common life of all Europe will have become--miserable. Conclusive blows +will have receded out of the imagination of the contending Powers. The +war will have reached its fourth and last stage as a war. The war of the +great attack will have given place to the war of the military deadlock; +the war of the deadlock will have gone on, and as the great combatants +have become enfeebled relatively to the smaller States, there will have +been a gradual shifting of the interest to the war of treasons and +diplomacies in the Eastern Mediterranean. + +Quickly thereafter the last phase will be developing into predominance, +in which each group of nations will be most concerned, no longer about +victories or conquests, but about securing for itself the best chances +of rapid economic recuperation and social reconstruction. The commercial +treaties, the arrangements for future associated action, made by the +great Allies among themselves will appear more and more important to +them, and the mere question of boundaries less and less. It will dawn +upon Europe that she has already dissipated the resources that have +enabled her to levy the tribute paid for her investments in every +quarter of the earth, and that neither the Germans nor their antagonists +will be able for many years to go on with those projects for world +exploitation which lay at the root of the great war. Very jaded and +anaemic nations will sit about the table on which the new map of Europe +will be drawn.... Each of the diplomatists will come to that business +with a certain pre-occupation. Each will be thinking of his country as +one thinks of a patient of doubtful patience and temper who is coming-to +out of the drugged stupor of a crucial, ill-conceived, and unnecessary +operation ... Each will be thinking of Labour, wounded and perplexed, +returning to the disorganised or nationalised factories from which +Capital has gone a-fighting, and to which it may never return. + + + + +III. NATIONS IN LIQUIDATION + + +The war has become a war of exhaustion. One hears a great deal of the +idea that "financial collapse" may bring it to an end. A number of +people seem to be convinced that a war cannot be waged without money, +that soldiers must be paid, munitions must be bought; that for this +money is necessary and the consent of bank depositors; so that if all +the wealth of the world were nominally possessed by some one man in a +little office he could stop the war by saying simply, "I will lend you +no more money." + +Now, as a matter of fact, money is a power only in so far as people +believe in it and Governments sustain it. If a State is sufficiently +strong and well organised, its control over the money power is +unlimited. If it can rule its people, and if it has the necessary +resources of men and material within its borders, it can go on in a +state of war so long as these things last, with almost any flimsy sort +of substitute for money that it chooses to print. It can enrol and use +the men, and seize and work the material. It can take over the land and +cultivate it and distribute its products. The little man in the office +is only a power because the State chooses to recognise his claim. So +long as he is convenient he seems to be a power. So soon as the State is +intelligent enough and strong enough it can do without him. It can take +what it wants, and tell him to go and hang himself. That is the +melancholy ultimate of the usurer. That is the quintessence of +"finance." All credit is State-made, and what the State has made the +State can alter or destroy. + +The owner and the creditor have never had any other power to give or +withhold credit than the credit that was given to them. They exist by +sufferance or superstition and not of necessity. + +It is the habit of overlooking this little flaw in the imperatives of +ownership that enables people to say that this war cannot go on beyond +such and such a date--the end of 1916 is much in favour just +now--because we cannot pay for it. It would be about as reasonable to +expect a battle to end because a landlord had ordered the soldiers off +his estate. So long as there are men to fight and stuff to fight with +the war can go on. There is bankruptcy, but the bankruptcy of States is +not like the bankruptcy of individuals. There is no such thing among +States as an undischarged bankrupt who is forbidden to carry on. A State +may keep on going bankrupt indefinitely and still carry on. It will be +the next step in our prophetic exercise to examine the differences +between State bankruptcy and the bankruptcy of a subject of the State. + +The belligerent Powers are approaching a phase when they will no longer +be paying anything like twenty shillings in the pound. In a very +definite sense they are not paying twenty shillings in the pound now. +That is not going to stop the war, but it involves a string of +consequences and possibilities of the utmost importance to our problem +of what is coming when the war is over. + +The exhaustion that will bring this war to its end at last is a process +of destruction of men and material. The process of bankruptcy that is +also going on is nothing of the sort. Bankruptcy destroys no concrete +thing; it merely writes off a debt; it destroys a financial but not an +economic reality. It is, in itself, a mental, not a physical fact. "A" +owes "B" a debt; he goes bankrupt and pays a dividend, a fraction of his +debt, and gets his discharge. "B's" feelings, as we novelists used to +say, are "better imagined than described"; he does his best to satisfy +himself that "A" can pay no more, and then "A" and "B" both go about +their business again. + +In England, if "A" is a sufficiently poor man not to be formidable, and +has gone bankrupt on a small scale, he gets squeezed ferociously to +extract the last farthing from him; he may find himself in jail and his +home utterly smashed up. If he is a richer man, and has failed on a +larger scale, our law is more sympathetic, and he gets off much more +easily. Often his creditors find it advisable to arrange with him so +that he will still carry on with his bankrupt concern. They find it is +better to allow him to carry on than to smash him up. + +There are countless men in the world living very comfortably indeed, and +running businesses that were once their own property for their +creditors. There are still more who have written off princely debts and +do not seem to be a "ha'p'orth the worse." And their creditors have +found a balm in time and philosophy. Bankruptcy is only painful and +destructive to small people and helpless people; but then for them +everything is painful and destructive; it can be a very light matter to +big people; it may be almost painless to a State. + +If England went bankrupt in the completest way to-morrow, and repudiated +all its debts both as a nation and as a community of individuals, if it +declared, if I may use a self-contradictory phrase, a permanent +moratorium, there would be not an acre of ploughed land in the country, +not a yard of cloth or a loaf of bread the less for that. There would be +nothing material destroyed within the State. There would be no immediate +convulsion. Use and wont would carry most people on some days before +they even began to doubt whether So-and-so could pay his way, and +whether there would be wages at the end of the week. + +But people who lived upon rent or investments or pensions would +presently be very busy thinking how they were going to get food when the +butcher and baker insisted upon cash. It would be only with comparative +slowness that the bulk of men would realise that a fabric of confidence +and confident assumptions had vanished; that cheques and bank notes and +token money and every sort of bond and scrip were worthless, that +employers had nothing to pay with, shopkeepers no means of procuring +stock, that metallic money was disappearing, and that a paralysis had +come upon the community. + +Such an establishment as a workhouse or an old-fashioned monastery, +living upon the produce of its own farming and supplying all its own +labour, would be least embarrassed amidst the general perplexity. For it +would not be upon a credit basis, but a socialistic basis, a basis of +direct reality, and its need for payments would be incidental. And +land-owning peasants growing their own food would carry on, and small +cultivating occupiers, who could easily fall back on barter for anything +needed. + +The mass of the population in such a country as England would, however, +soon be standing about in hopeless perplexity and on the verge of +frantic panic--although there was just as much food to be eaten, just as +many houses to live in, and just as much work needing to be done. +Suddenly the pots would be empty, and famine would be in the land, +although the farms and butchers' shops were still well stocked. The +general community would be like an automobile when the magneto fails. +Everything would be there and in order, except for the spark of credit +which keeps the engine working. + +That is how quite a lot of people seem to imagine national bankruptcy: +as a catastrophic jolt. It is a quite impossible nightmare of cessation. +The reality is the completest contrast. All the belligerent countries of +the world are at the present moment quietly, steadily and progressively +going bankrupt, and the mass of people are not even aware of this +process of insolvency. + +An individual when he goes bankrupt is measured by the monetary standard +of the country he is in; he pays five or ten or fifteen or so many +shillings in the pound. A community in debt does something which is in +effect the same, but in appearance rather different. It still pays a +pound, but the purchasing power of the pound has diminished. This is +what is happening all over the world to-day; there is a rise in prices. +This is automatic national bankruptcy; unplanned, though perhaps not +unforeseen. It is not a deliberate State act, but a consequence of the +interruption of communications, the diversion of productive energy, the +increased demand for many necessities by the Government and the general +waste under war conditions. + +At the beginning of this war England had a certain national debt; it has +paid off none of that original debt; it has added to it tremendously; so +far as money and bankers' records go it still owes and intends to pay +that original debt; but if you translate the language of Ā£.s.d. into +realities, you will find that in loaves or iron or copper or hours of +toil, or indeed in any reality except gold, it owes now, so far as that +original debt goes, far less than it did at the outset. As the war goes +on and the rise in prices continues, the subsequent borrowings and +contracts are undergoing a similar bankrupt reduction. The attempt of +the landlord of small weekly and annual properties to adjust himself to +the new conditions by raising rents is being checked by legislation in +Great Britain, and has been completely checked in France. The attempts +of labour to readjust wages have been partially successful in spite of +the eloquent protests of those great exponents of plain living, economy, +abstinence, and honest, modest, underpaid toil, Messrs. Asquith, +McKenna, and Runciman. It is doubtful if the rise in wages is keeping +pace with the rise in prices. So far as it fails to do so the load is on +the usual pack animal, the poor man. + +The rest of the loss falls chiefly upon the creditor class, the people +with fixed incomes and fixed salaries, the landlords, who have let at +long leases, the people with pensions, endowed institutions, the Church, +insurance companies, and the like. They are all being scaled down. They +are all more able to stand scaling down than the proletarians. + +Assuming that it is possible to bring up wages to the level of the +higher prices, and that the rise in rents can be checked by legislation +or captured by taxation, the rise in prices is, on the whole, a thing to +the advantage of the propertyless man as against accumulated property. +It writes off the past and clears the way for a fresh start in the +future. + +An age of cheapness is an old usurers' age. England before the war was a +paradise of ancient usuries; everywhere were great houses and enclosed +parks; the multitude of gentlemen's servants and golf clubs and such +like excrescences of the comfort of prosperous people was perpetually +increasing; it did not "pay" to build labourers' cottages, and the more +expensive sort of automobile had driven the bicycle as a pleasure +vehicle off the roads. Western Europe was running to fat and not to +muscle, as America is to-day. + +But if that old usurer's age is over, the young usurer's age may be +coming. To meet such enormous demands as this war is making there are +three chief courses open to the modern State. + +The first is to _take_--to get men by conscription and material by +requisition. The British Government _takes_ more modestly than any other +in the world; its tradition from Magna Charta onward, the legal training +of most of its members, all make towards a reverence for private +ownership and private claims, as opposed to the claims of State and +commonweal, unequalled in the world's history. + +The next course of a nation in need is to _tax_ and pay for what it +wants, which is a fractional and more evenly distributed method of +taking. Both of these methods raise prices, the second most so, and so +facilitate the automatic release of the future from the boarding of the +past. So far all the belligerent Governments have taxed on the timid +side. + +Finally there is the _loan_. This mortgages the future to the present +necessity, and it has so far been the predominant source of war credits. +It is the method that produces least immediate friction in the State; it +employs all the savings of surplus income that the unrest of civil +enterprise leaves idle; it has an effect of creating property by a +process that destroys the substance of the community. In Germany an +enormous bulk of property has been mortgaged to supply the subscriptions +to the war loans, and those holdings have again been hypothecated to +subscribe to subsequent loans. The Pledged Allies with longer stockings +have not yet got to this pitch of overlapping. But everywhere in Europe +what is happening is a great transformation of the property owner into a +_rentier_, and the passing of realty into the hands of the State. + +At the end of the war Great Britain will probably find herself with a +national debt so great that she will be committed to the payment of an +annual interest greater in figures than the entire national expenditure +before the war. As an optimistic lady put it the other day: "All the +people who aren't killed will be living quite comfortably on War Loan +for the rest of their lives." + +But part, at least, of the bulk of this wealth will be imaginary rather +than real because of the rise in prices, in wages, in rent, and in +taxation. Most of us who are buying the British and French War Loans +have no illusions on that score; we know we are buying an income of +diminishing purchasing power. Yet it would be a poor creature in these +days when there is scarcely a possible young man in one's circle who has +not quite freely and cheerfully staked his life, who was not prepared to +consider his investments as being also to an undefined extent a national +subscription. + +A rise in prices is not, however, the only process that will check the +appearance of a new rich usurer class after the war. There is something +else ahead that has happened already in Germany, that is quietly coming +about among the Allies, and that is the cessation of gold payments. In +Great Britain, of course, the pound note is still convertible into a +golden sovereign; but Great Britain will not get through the war on +those terms. There comes a point in the stress upon a Government when it +must depart from the austerer line of financial rectitude--and tamper in +some way with currency. + +Sooner or later, and probably in all cases before 1917, all the +belligerents will be forced to adopt inconvertible paper money for their +internal uses. There will be British assignats or greenbacks. It will +seem to many financial sentimentalists almost as though Great Britain +were hauling down a flag when the sovereign, which has already +disappeared into bank and Treasury coffers, is locked up there and +reserved for international trade. But Great Britain has other sentiments +to consider than the finer feelings of bankers and the delicacies of +usury. The pound British will come out of this war like a company out of +a well-shelled trench--attenuated. + +Depreciation of the currency means, of course, a continuing rise in +prices, a continuing writing off of debt. If labour has any real grasp +of its true interests it will not resent this. It will merely insist +steadfastly on a proper adjustment of its wages to the new standard. On +that point, however, it will be better to write later.... + +Let us see how far we have got in this guessing. We have considered +reasons that seem to point to the destruction of a great amount of old +property and old debt, and the creation of a great volume of new debt +before the end of the war, and we have adopted the ideas that currency +will probably have depreciated more and more and prices risen right up +to the very end. + +There will be by that time a general habit of saving throughout the +community, a habit more firmly established perhaps in the propertied +than in the wages-earning class. People will be growing accustomed to a +dear and insecure world. They will adopt a habit of caution; become +desirous of saving and security. + +Directly the phase of enormous war loans ends, the new class of +_rentiers_ holding the various great new national loans will find +themselves drawing this collectively vast income and anxious to invest +it. They will for a time be receiving the bulk of the unearned income of +the world. Here, in the high prices representing demand and the need for +some reinvestment of interest representing supply, we have two of the +chief factors that are supposed to be necessary to a phase of business +enterprise. Will the economic history of the next few decades be the +story of a restoration of the capitalistic system upon a new basis? +Shall we all become investors, speculators, or workers toiling our way +to a new period of security, cheapness and low interest, a restoration +of the park, the enclosure, the gold standard and the big automobile, +with only this difference--that the minimum wage will be somewhere about +two pounds, and that a five-pound note will purchase about as much as a +couple of guineas would do in 1913? + +That is practically parallel with what happened in the opening half of +the nineteenth century after the Napoleonic wars, and it is not an +agreeable outlook for those who love the common man or the nobility of +life. But if there is any one principle sounder than another of all +those that guide the amateur in prophecy, it is that _history never +repeats itself_. The human material in which those monetary changes and +those developments of credit will occur will be entirely different from +the social medium of a hundred years ago. + +The nature of the State has altered profoundly in the last century. The +later eighteenth and earlier nineteenth centuries constituted a period +of extreme individualism. What were called "economic forces" had +unrestricted play. In the minds of such people as Harriet Martineau and +Herbert Spencer they superseded God. People were no longer reproached +for "flying in the face of Providence," but for "flying in the face of +Political Economy." + +In that state of freedom you got whatever you could in any way you +could; you were not your neighbour's keeper, and except that it +interfered with the enterprise of pickpockets, burglars and forgers, and +kept the dice loaded in favour of landlords and lawyers, the State stood +aside from the great drama of human getting. For industrialism and +speculation the State's guiding maxim was _laissez faire_. + +The State is now far less aloof and far more constructive. It is far +more aware of itself and a common interest. Germany has led the way from +a system of individuals and voluntary associations in competition +towards a new order of things, a completer synthesis. This most modern +State is far less a swarming conflict of businesses than a great +national business. It will emerge from this war much more so than it +went in, and the thing is and will remain so plain and obvious that only +the greediest and dullest people among the Pledged Allies will venture +to disregard it. The Allied nations, too, will have to rescue their +economic future from individual grab and grip and chance. + +The second consideration that forbids us to anticipate any parallelism +of the history of 1915-45 with 1815-45 is the greater lucidity of the +general mind, the fact that all Western Europe, down to the agricultural +labourers, can read and write and does read newspapers and "get ideas." +The explanation of economic and social processes that were mysterious to +the elect a hundred years ago are now the commonplaces of the tap-room. +What happened then darkly, and often unconsciously, must happen in +1916-26 openly and controllably. The current bankruptcy and liquidation +and the coming reconstruction of the economic system of Europe will go +on in a quite unprecedented amount of light. We shall see and know what +is happening much more clearly than anything of the kind has ever been +seen before. + +It is not only that people will have behind them, as a light upon what +is happening, the experiences and discussions of a hundred years, but +that the international situation will be far plainer than it has ever +been. This war has made Germany the central fact in all national affairs +about the earth. It is not going to destroy Germany, and it seems +improbable that either defeat or victory, or any mixture of these, will +immediately alter the cardinal fact of Germany's organised +aggressiveness. + +The war will not end the conflict of anti-Germany and Germany, That will +only end when the results of fifty years of aggressive education in +Germany have worn away. This will be so plain that the great bulk of +people everywhere will not only see their changing economic +relationships far more distinctly than such things have been seen +hitherto, but that they will see them as they have never been seen +before, definitely orientated to the threat of German world +predominance. The landlord who squeezes, the workman who strikes and +shirks, the lawyer who fogs and obstructs, will know, and will know that +most people know, that what he does is done, not under an empty, +regardless heaven, but in the face of an unsleeping enemy and in +disregard of a continuous urgent necessity for unity. + +So far we have followed this speculation upon fairly firm ground, but +now our inquiry must plunge into a jungle of far more difficult and +uncertain possibilities. Our next stage brings us to the question of how +people and peoples and classes of people are going to react to the new +conditions of need and knowledge this war will have brought about, and +to the new demands that will be made upon them. + +This is really a question of how far they will prove able to get out of +the habits and traditions of their former social state, how far they +will be able to take generous views and make sacrifices and unselfish +efforts, and how far they will go in self-seeking or class selfishness +regardless of the common welfare. This is a question we have to ask +separately of each great nation, and of the Central Powers as a whole, +and of the Allies as a whole, before we can begin to estimate the +posture of the peoples of the world in, say, 1946. + +Now let me here make a sort of parenthesis on human nature. It will be +rather platitudinous, but it is a necessary reminder for what follows. + +So far as I have been able to observe, nobody lives steadily at one +moral level. If we are wise we shall treat no man and no class--and for +the matter of that no nation--as either steadfastly malignant or +steadfastly disinterested. There are phases in my life when I could die +quite cheerfully for an idea; there are phases when I would not stir six +yards to save a human life. Most people fluctuate between such extremes. +Most people are self-seeking, but most people will desist from a +self-seeking cause if they see plainly and clearly that it is not in the +general interest, and much more readily if they also perceive that other +people are of the same mind and know that they know their course is +unsound. + +The fundamental error of orthodox political economy and of Marxian +socialism is to assume the inveterate selfishness of everyone. But most +people are a little more disposed to believe what it is to their +interest to believe than the contrary. Most people abandon with +reluctance ways of living and doing that have served them well. Most +people can see the neglect of duty in other classes more plainly than +they do in their own. + +This war has brought back into the everyday human life of Europe the +great and overriding conception of devotion to a great purpose. But that +does not imply clear-headedness in correlating the ways of one's +ordinary life with this great purpose. It is no good treating as cynical +villainy things that merely exhibit the incapacity of our minds to live +consistently. + +One Labour paper a month or so ago was contrasting Mr. Asquith's +eloquent appeals to the working man to economise and forgo any rise in +wages with the photographs that were appearing simultaneously in the +smart papers of the very smart marriage of Mr. Asquith's daughter. I +submit that by that sort of standard none of us will be blameless. But +without any condemnation, it is easy to understand that the initiative +to tax almost to extinction large automobiles, wedding dresses, +champagne, pĆ¢tĆ© de foie gras and enclosed parks, instead of gin and +water, bank holiday outings and Virginia shag, is less likely to come +from the Prime Minister class than from the class of dock labourers. +There is an unconscious class war due to habit and insufficient thinking +and insufficient sympathy that will play a large part in the +distribution of the burthen of the State bankruptcy that is in progress, +and in the subsequent readjustment of national life. + +And having made this parenthesis, I may perhaps go on to point out the +peculiar limitations under which various classes will be approaching the +phase of reorganisation, without being accused of making this or that +class the villain of an anticipatory drama. + +Now, three great classes will certainly resist the valiant +reconstruction of economic life with a vigour in exact proportion to +their baseness, stupidity and narrowness of outlook. They will, as +classes, come up for a moral judgment, on whose verdict the whole future +of Western civilisation depends. If they cannot achieve a considerable, +an unprecedented display of self-sacrifice, unselfish wisdom, and +constructive vigour, if the community as a whole can produce no forces +sufficient to restrain their lower tendencies, then the intelligent +father had better turn his children's faces towards the New World. For +Europe will be busy with social disorder for a century. + +The first great class is the class that owns and holds land and +land-like claims upon the community, from the Throne downward. This +Court and land-holding class cannot go on being rich and living rich +during the strains of the coming years. The reconstructing world cannot +bear it. Whatever rises in rent may occur through the rise in prices, +must go to meet the tremendous needs of the State. + +This class, which has so much legislative and administrative power in at +least three of the great belligerents--in Great Britain and Germany +perhaps most so--must be prepared to see itself taxed, and must be +willing to assist in its own taxation to the very limit of its +statistical increment. The almost vindictive greed of the landowners +that blackened the history of England after Waterloo, and brought Great +Britain within sight of revolution, must not be repeated. The British +Empire cannot afford a revolution in the face of the Central European +Powers. But in the past century there has been an enormous change in +men's opinions and consciences about property; whereas we were +Individualists, now we are Socialists. The British lord, the German +junker, has none of the sense of unqualified rights that his +great-grandfather had, and he is aware of a vigour of public criticism +that did not exist in the former time.... + +How far will these men get out of the tradition of their birth and +upbringing? + +Next comes the great class of lawyers who, through the idiotic method of +voting in use in modern democracies, are able practically to rule Great +Britain, and who are powerful and influential in all democratic +countries. + +In order to secure a certain independence and integrity in its courts, +Great Britain long ago established the principle of enormously +overpaying its judges and lawyers. The natural result has been to give +our law courts and the legal profession generally a bias in favour of +private wealth against both the public interest and the proletariat. It +has also given our higher national education an overwhelming direction +towards the training of advocates and against science and constructive +statecraft. An ordinary lawyer has no idea of making anything; that +tendency has been destroyed in his mind; he waits and sees and takes +advantage of opportunity. Everything that can possibly be done in +England is done to make our rulers Micawbers and Artful Dodgers. + +One of the most anxious questions that a Briton can ask himself to-day +is just how far the gigantic sufferings and still more monstrous +warnings of this war have shocked the good gentlemen who must steer the +ship of State through the strong rapids of the New Peace out of this +forensic levity their training has imposed upon them.... + +There, again, there are elements of hope. The lawyer has heard much +about himself in the past few years. His conscience may check his +tradition. And we have a Press--it has many faults, but it is no longer +a lawyer's Press.... + +And the third class which has immediate interests antagonistic to bold +reconstructions of our national methods is that vaguer body, the body of +investing capitalists, the savers, the usurers, who live on dividends. +It is a vast class, but a feeble class in comparison with the other +two; it is a body rather than a class, a weight rather than a power. It +consists of all sorts of people with nothing in common except the +receipt of unearned income.... + +All these classes, by instinct and the baser kinds of reason also, will +be doing their best to check the rise in prices, stop and reverse the +advance in wages, prevent the debasement of the circulation, and +facilitate the return to a gold standard and a repressive social +stability. They will be resisting any comprehensive national +reconstruction, any increase in public officials, any "conscription" of +land or railways or what not for the urgent civil needs of the State. +They will have fighting against these tendencies something in their own +consciences, something in public opinion, the tradition of public +devotion their own dead sons have revived--and certain other forces. + +They will have over against them the obvious urgent necessities of the +time. + +The most urgent necessity will be to get back the vast moiety of the +population that has been engaged either in military service or the +making of munitions to productive work, to the production of food and +necessary things, and to the restoration of that export trade which, in +the case of Great Britain at least, now that her overseas investments +have been set off by overseas war debts, is essential to the food +supply. There will be coming back into civil life, not merely thousands, +but millions of men who have been withdrawn from it. They will feel that +they have deserved well of their country. They will have had their +imaginations greatly quickened by being taken away from the homes and +habits to which they were accustomed. They will have been well fed and +inured to arms, to danger, and the chances of death. They will have no +illusions about the conduct of the war by the governing classes, or the +worshipful heroism of peers and princes. They will know just how easy is +courage, and how hard is hardship, and the utter impossibility of doing +well in war or peace under the orders of detected fools. + +This vast body will constitute a very stimulating congregation of +spectators in any attempt on the part of landlord, lawyer and investor +to resume the old political mystery dance, in which rents are to be sent +up and wages down, while the old feuds of Wales and Ireland, ancient +theological and sectarian jealousies and babyish loyalties, and so forth +are to be waved in the eyes of the no longer fascinated realist. + +"Meanwhile," they will say, with a stiff impatience unusual in their +class, "about _us_?" ... + +Here are the makings of internal conflict in every European country. In +Russia the landlord and lawyer, in France the landlord, are perhaps of +less account, and in France the investor is more universal and jealous. +In Germany, where Junker and Court are most influential and brutal, +there is a larger and sounder and broader tradition of practical +efficiency, a modernised legal profession, and a more widely diffused +scientific imagination. + +How far in each country will imagination triumph over tradition and +individualism? How far does the practical bankruptcy of Western +civilisation mean a revolutionary smash-up, and a phase that may last +for centuries, of disorder and more and more futile conflict? And how +far does it mean a reconstruction of human society, within a few score +of years, upon sounder and happier lines? Must that reconstruction be +preceded by a revolution in all or any of the countries? + +To what extent can the world produce the imagination it needs? That, so +far, is the most fundamental question to which our prophetic +explorations have brought us. + + + + +IV. BRAINTREE, BOCKING, AND THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD + + +Will the war be followed by a period of great distress, social disorder +and a revolution in Europe, or shall we pull through the crisis without +violent disaster? May we even hope that Great Britain will step straight +out of the war into a phase of restored and increasing welfare? + +Like most people, I have been trying to form some sort of answer to this +question. My state of mind in the last few months has varied from a +considerable optimism to profound depression. I have met and talked to +quite a number of young men in khaki--ex-engineers, ex-lawyers, +ex-schoolmasters, ex-business men of all sorts--and the net result of +these interviews has been a buoyant belief that there is in Great +Britain the pluck, the will, the intelligence to do anything, however +arduous and difficult, in the way of national reconstruction. And on the +other hand there is a certain stretch of road between Dunmow and +Coggeshall.... + +That stretch of road is continually jarring with my optimistic +thoughts. It is a strongly pro-German piece of road. It supports +allegations against Great Britain, as, for instance, that the British +are quite unfit to control their own affairs, let alone those of an +empire; that they are an incompetent people, a pig-headedly stupid +people, a wasteful people, a people incapable of realising that a man +who tills his field badly is a traitor and a weakness to his country.... + +Let me place the case of this high road through Braintree (Bocking +intervening) before the reader. It is, you will say perhaps, very small +beer. But a straw shows the way the wind blows. It is a trivial matter +of road metal, mud, and water-pipes, but it is also diagnostic of the +essential difficulties in the way of the smooth and rapid reconstruction +of Great Britain--and very probably of the reconstruction of all +Europe--after the war. The Braintree high road, I will confess, becomes +at times an image of the world for me. It is a poor, spiritless-looking +bit of road, with raw stones on one side of it. It is also, I perceive, +the high destiny of man in conflict with mankind. It is the way to +Harwich, Holland, Russia, China, and the whole wide world. + +Even at the first glance it impresses one as not being the road that +would satisfy an energetic and capable people. It is narrow for a high +road, and in the middle of it one is checked by an awkward bend, by +cross-roads that are not exactly cross-roads, so that one has to turn +two blind corners to get on eastward, and a policeman, I don't know at +what annual cost, has to be posted to nurse the traffic across. Beyond +that point one is struck by the fact that the south side is considerably +higher than the north, that storm water must run from the south side to +the north and lie there. It does, and the north side has recently met +the trouble by putting down raw flints, and so converting what would be +a lake into a sort of flint pudding. Consequently one drives one's car +as much as possible on the south side of this road. There is a +suggestion of hostility and repartee between north and south side in +this arrangement, which the explorer's inquiries will confirm. It may be +only an accidental parallelism with profounder fact; I do not know. But +the middle of this high road is a frontier. The south side belongs to +the urban district of Braintree; the north to the rural district of +Bocking. + +If the curious inquirer will take pick and shovel he will find at any +rate one corresponding dualism below the surface. He will find a +Bocking water main supplying the houses on the north side and a +Braintree water main supplying the south. I rather suspect that the +drains are also in duplicate. The total population of Bocking and +Braintree is probably little more than thirteen thousand souls +altogether, but for that there are two water supplies, two sets of +schools, two administrations. + +To the passing observer the rurality of the Bocking side is +indistinguishable from the urbanity of the Braintree side; it is just a +little muddier. But there are dietetic differences. If you will present +a Bocking rustic with a tin of the canned fruit that is popular with the +Braintree townsfolk, you discover one of these differences. A dustman +perambulates the road on the Braintree side, and canned food becomes +possible and convenient therefore. But the Braintree grocers sell canned +food with difficulty into Bocking. Bocking, less fortunate than its +neighbour, has no dustman apparently, and is left with the tin on its +hands. It can either bury it in its garden--if it has a garden--take it +out for a walk wrapped in paper and drop it quietly in a ditch, if +possible in the Braintree area, or build a cairn with it and its +predecessors and successors in honour of the Local Government Board +(President Ā£5,000, Parliamentary Secretary Ā£1,500, Permanent Secretary +Ā£2,000, Legal Adviser Ā£1,000 upward, a total administrative expenditure +of over Ā£300,000 ...). In death Bocking and Braintree are still divided. +They have their separate cemeteries.... + +Now to any disinterested observer there lies about the Braintree-Bocking +railway station one community. It has common industries and common +interests. There is no _octroi_ or anything of that sort across the +street. The shops and inns on the Bocking side of the main street are +indistinguishable from those on the Braintree side. The inhabitants of +the two communities intermarry freely. If this absurd separation did not +exist, no one would have the impudence to establish it now. It is +wasteful, unfair (because the Bocking piece is rather better off than +Braintree and with fewer people, so that there is a difference in the +rates), and for nine-tenths of the community it is more or less of a +nuisance. + +It is also a nuisance to the passing public because of such +inconvenience as the asymmetrical main road. It hinders local +development and the development of a local spirit. It may, of course, +appeal perhaps to the humorous outlook of the followers of Mr. G.K. +Chesterton and Mr. Belloc, who believe that this war is really a war in +the interests of the Athanasian Creed, fatness, and unrestricted drink +against science, discipline, and priggishly keeping fit enough to join +the army, as very good fun indeed, good matter for some jolly reeling +ballad about Roundabout and Roundabout, the jolly town of Roundabout; +but to anyone else the question of how it is that this wasteful +Bocking-Braintree muddle, with its two boards, its two clerks, its two +series of jobs and contracts, manages to keep on, was even before the +war a sufficiently discouraging one. + +It becomes now a quite crucial problem. Because the muddle between the +sides of the main road through Bocking and Braintree is not an isolated +instance; it is a fair sample of the way things are done in Great +Britain; it is an intimation of the way in which the great task of +industrial resettlement that the nation must face may be attempted. + +It is--or shall I write, "it may be"? + +That is just the question I do not settle in my mind. I would like to +think that I have hit upon a particularly bad case of entangled local +government. But it happens that whenever I have looked into local +affairs I have found the same sort of waste and--insobriety of +arrangement. When I started, a little while back, to go to Braintree to +verify these particulars, I was held up by a flood across the road +between Little Easton and Dunmow. Every year that road is flooded and +impassable for some days, because a bit of the affected stretch is under +the County Council and a bit under the Little Easton Parish Council, and +they cannot agree about the contribution of the latter. These things +bump against the most unworldly. And when one goes up the scale from the +urban district and rural district boundaries, one finds equally crazy +county arrangements, the same tangle of obstacle in the way of quick, +effective co-ordinations, the same needless multiplicity of clerks, the +same rich possibilities of litigation, misunderstanding, and deadlocks +of opinion between areas whose only difference is that a mischievous +boundary has been left in existence between them. And so on up to +Westminster. And to still greater things.... + +I know perfectly well how unpleasant all this is to read, this outbreak +at two localities that have never done me any personal harm except a +little mud-splashing. But this is a thing that has to be said now, +because we are approaching a crisis when dilatory ways, muddle, and +waste may utterly ruin us. This is the way things have been done in +England, this is our habit of procedure, and if they are done in this +way after the war this Empire is going to smash. + +Let me add at once that it is quite possible that things are done almost +as badly or quite as badly in Russia or France or Germany or America; I +am drawing no comparisons. All of us human beings were made, I believe, +of very similar clay, and very similar causes have been at work +everywhere. Only that excuse, so popular in England, will not prevent a +smash if we stick to the old methods under the stresses ahead. I do not +see that it is any consolation to share in a general disaster. + +And I am sure that there must be the most delightful and picturesque +reasons why we have all this overlapping and waste and muddle in our +local affairs; why, to take another example, the boundary of the Essex +parishes of Newton and Widdington looks as though it had been sketched +out by a drunken man in a runaway cab with a broken spring. + +This Bocking-Braintree main road is, it happens, an old Stane Street, +along which Roman legions marched to clean up the councils and clerks of +the British tribal system two thousand years ago, and no doubt an +historian could spin delightful consequences; this does not alter the +fact that these quaint complications in English affairs mean in the +aggregate enormous obstruction and waste of human energy. It does not +alter the much graver fact, the fact that darkens all my outlook upon +the future, that we have never yet produced evidence of any general +disposition at any time to straighten out or even suspend these fumbling +intricacies and ineptitudes. Never so far has there appeared in British +affairs that divine passion to do things in the clearest, cleanest, +least wasteful, most thorough manner that is needed to straighten out, +for example, these universal local tangles. Always we have been content +with the old intricate, expensive way, and to this day we follow it.... + +And what I want to know, what I would like to feel much surer about than +I do is, is this in our blood? Or is it only the deep-seated habit of +long ages of security, long years of margins so ample, that no waste +seemed altogether wicked. Is it, in fact, a hopeless and ineradicable +trait that we stick to extravagance and confusion? + +What I would like to think possible at the present time, up and down the +scale from parish to province, is something of this sort. Suppose the +clerk of Braintree went to the clerk of Bocking and said: "Look here, +one of us could do the work of both of us, as well or better. The easy +times are over, and offices as well as men should be prepared to die for +their country. Shall we toss to see who shall do it, and let the other +man go off to find something useful to do?" Then I could believe. Such +acts of virtue happen in the United States. Here is a quotation from the +New York _World_ of February 15th, 1916: + +"For two unusual acts Henry BruĆØre may be remembered by New York longer +than nine days. Early in his incumbency he declared that his office was +superfluous and should be abolished, the Comptroller assuming its +duties. He now abolishes by resignation his own connection with it, in +spite of its $12,000 salary." + +Suppose the people of Braintree and Bocking, not waiting for that lead, +said: "But this is absurd! Let us have an identical council and one +clerk, and get ahead, instead of keeping up this silly pretence that one +town is two." Suppose someone of that 300,000 pounds' worth of gentlemen +at the Local Government Board set to work to replan our local government +areas generally on less comic lines. Suppose his official superiors +helped, instead of snubbing him.... + +I see nothing of the sort happening. I see everywhere wary, watchful +little men, thinking of themselves, thinking of their parish, thinking +close, holding tight.... + +I know that there is a whole web of excuses for all these complicated, +wasteful, and obstructive arrangements of our local government, these +arrangements that I have taken merely as a sample of the general human +way of getting affairs done. For it is affairs at large I am writing +about, as I warned the reader at the beginning. Directly one inquires +closely into any human muddle, one finds all sorts of reasonable rights +and objections and claims barring the way to any sweeping proposals. I +can quite imagine that Bocking has admirable reasons for refusing +coalescence with Braintree, except upon terms that Braintree could not +possibly consider. I can quite understand that there are many +inconveniences and arguable injustices that would be caused by a merger +of the two areas. I have no doubt it would mean serious loss to +So-and-so, and quite novel and unfair advantage to So-and-so. It would +take years to work the thing and get down to the footing of one water +supply and an ambidextrous dustman on the lines of perfect justice and +satisfactoriness all round. + +But what I want to maintain is that these little immediate claims and +rights and vested interests and bits of justice and fairness are no +excuse at all for preventing things being done in the clear, clean, +large, quick way. They never constituted a decent excuse, and now they +excuse waste and delay and inconvenience less than ever. Let us first do +things in the sound way, and then, if we can, let us pet and compensate +any disappointed person who used to profit by their being done +roundabout instead of earning an honest living. We are beginning to +agree that reasonably any man may be asked to die for his country; what +we have to recognise is that any man's proprietorship, interest, claims +or rights may just as properly be called upon to die. Bocking and +Braintree and Mr. John Smith--Mr. John Smith, the ordinary comfortable +man with a stake in the country--have been thinking altogether too much +of the claims and rights and expectations and economies of Bocking and +Braintree and Mr. John Smith. They have to think now in a different +way.... + +Just consider the work of reconstruction that Great Britain alone will +have to face in the next year or so. (And her task is, if anything, less +than that of any of her antagonists or Allies, except Japan and Italy.) +She has now probably from six to ten million people in the British +Isles, men and women, either engaged directly in warfare or in the +manufacture of munitions or in employments such as transit, nursing, and +so forth, directly subserving these main ends. At least five-sixths of +these millions must be got back to employment of a different character +within a year of the coming of peace. Everywhere manufacture, trade and +transit has been disorganised, disturbed or destroyed. A new economic +system has to be put together within a brief score or so of weeks; great +dislocated masses of population have to be fed, kept busy and +distributed in a world financially strained and abounding in wounded, +cripples, widows, orphans and helpless people. + +In the next year or so the lives of half the population will have to be +fundamentally readjusted. Here is work for administrative giants, work +for which no powers can be excessive. It will be a task quite difficult +enough to do even without the opposition of legal rights, haggling +owners, and dexterous profiteers. It would be a giant's task if all the +necessary administrative machinery existed now in the most perfect +condition. How is this tremendous job going to be done if every Bocking +in the country is holding out for impossible terms from Braintree, and +every Braintree holding out for impossible terms from Bocking, while +the road out remains choked and confused between them; and if every John +Smith with a claim is insisting upon his reasonable expectation of +profits or dividends, his reasonable solatium and compensation for +getting out of the way? + +I would like to record my conviction that if the business of this great +crisis is to be done in the same spirit, the jealous, higgling, legal +spirit that I have seen prevailing in British life throughout my +half-century of existence, it will not in any satisfactory sense of the +phrase get done at all. This war has greatly demoralised and discredited +the governing class in Great Britain, and if big masses of unemployed +and unfed people, no longer strung up by the actuality of war, masses +now trained to arms and with many quite sympathetic officers available, +are released clumsily and planlessly into a world of risen prices and +rising rents, of legal obstacles and forensic complications, of greedy +speculators and hampered enterprises, there will be insurrection and +revolution. There will be bloodshed in the streets and the chasing of +rulers. + +There _will_ be, if we do seriously attempt to put the new wine of +humanity, the new crude fermentations at once so hopeful and so +threatening, that the war has released, into the old administrative +bottles that served our purposes before the war. + +I believe that for old lawyers and old politicians and "private +ownership" to handle the great problem of reconstruction after the war +in the spirit in which our affairs were conducted before the war is +about as hopeful an enterprise as if an elderly jobbing brick-layer, +working on strict trade-union rules, set out to stop the biggest +avalanche that ever came down a mountain-side. And since I am by no +means altogether pessimistic, in spite of my qualmy phases, it follows +that I do not believe that the old spirit will necessarily prevail. I do +not, because I believe that in the past few decades a new spirit has +come into human affairs; that our ostensible rulers and leaders have +been falling behind the times, and that in the young and the untried, +in, for example, the young European of thirty and under who is now in +such multitudes thinking over life and his seniors in the trenches, +there are still unsuspected resources of will and capacity, new mental +possibilities and new mental habits, that entirely disturb the +argument--based on the typical case of Bocking and Braintree--for a +social catastrophe after the war. + +How best can this new spirit be defined? + +It is the creative spirit as distinguished from the legal spirit; it is +the spirit of courage to make and not the spirit that waits and sees and +claims; it is the spirit that looks to the future and not to the past. +It is the spirit that makes Bocking forget that it is not Braintree and +John Smith forget that he is John Smith, and both remember that they are +England. + +For everyone there are two diametrically different ways of thinking +about life; there is individualism, the way that comes as naturally as +the grunt from a pig, of thinking outwardly from oneself as the centre +of the universe, and there is the way that every religion is trying in +some form to teach, of thinking back to oneself from greater standards +and realities. There is the Braintree that is Braintree against England +and the world, giving as little as possible and getting the best of the +bargain, and there is the Braintree that identifies itself with England +and asks how can we do best for the world with this little place of +ours, how can we educate best, produce most, and make our roads straight +and good for the world to go through. + +Every American knows the district that sends its congressman to +Washington for the good of his district, and the district, the rarer +district, that sends a man to work for the United States. There is the +John Smith who feels toward England and the world as a mite feels toward +its cheese, and the John Smith who feels toward his country as a +sheep-dog feels toward the flock. The former is the spirit of +individualism, "business," and our law, the latter the spirit of +socialism and science and--khaki.... They are both in all of us, they +fluctuate from day to day; first one is ascendant and then the other. + +War does not so much tilt the balance as accentuate the difference. One +rich British landowner sneaks off to New York State to set up a home +there and evade taxation; another turns his mansion into a hospital and +goes off to help Serbian refugees. Acts of baseness or generosity are +contagious; this man will give himself altogether because of a story of +devotion, this man declares he will do nothing until Sir F.E. Smith goes +to the front. And the would-be prophet of what is going to happen must +guess the relative force of these most impalpable and uncertain things. + +This Braintree-Bocking boundary which runs down the middle of the road +is to be found all over the world. You will find it in Ireland and the +gentlemen who trade on the jealousies of the north side and the +gentlemen who trade on the jealousies of the south. You will find it in +England among the good people who would rather wreck the Empire than +work honestly and fairly with Labour. There are not only parish +boundaries, but park boundaries and class and sect boundaries. You will +find the Bocking-Braintree line too at a dozen points on a small scale +map of Europe.... These Braintree-Bocking lines are the barbed-wire +entanglements between us and the peace of the world. Against these +entanglements in every country the new spirit struggles in many +thousands of minds. Where will it be strongest? Which country will get +clear first, get most rapidly to work again, have least of the confusion +and wrangling that must in some degree occur everywhere? Will any +country go altogether to pieces in hopeless incurable discord? + +Now I believe that the answer to that last question is "No." And my +reason for that answer is the same as my reason for believing that the +association of the Pledged Allies will not break up after the war; it is +that I believe that this war is going to end not in the complete +smashing up and subjugation of either side, but in a general exhaustion +that will make the recrudescence of the war still possible but very +terrifying. + +Mars will sit like a giant above all human affairs for the next two +decades, and the speech of Mars is blunt and plain. He will say to us +all: "Get your houses in order. If you squabble among yourselves, waste +time, litigate, muddle, snatch profits and shirk obligations, I will +certainly come down upon you again. I have taken all your men between +eighteen and fifty, and killed and maimed such as I pleased; millions of +them. I have wasted your substance--contemptuously. Now, mark you, you +have multitudes of male children between the ages of nine and nineteen +running about among you. Delightful and beloved boys. And behind them +come millions of delightful babies. Of these I have scarcely smashed and +starved a paltry hundred thousand perhaps by the way. But go on +muddling, each for himself and his parish and his family and none for +all the world, go on in the old way, stick to-your 'rights,' stick to +your 'claims' each one of you, make no concessions and no sacrifices, +obstruct, waste, squabble, and presently I will come back again and take +all that fresh harvest of life I have spared, all those millions that +are now sweet children and dear little boys and youths, and I will +squeeze it into red pulp between my hands, I will mix it with the mud of +trenches and feast on it before your eyes, even more damnably than I +have done with your grown-up sons and young men. And I have taken most +of your superfluities already; next time I will take your barest +necessities." + +So the red god, Mars; and in these days of universal education the great +mass of people will understand plainly now that that is his message and +intention. Men who cannot be swayed by the love of order and creation +may be swayed by the thought of death and destruction.... There, I +think, is the overriding argument that will burst the proprietorships +and divisions and boundaries, the web of ineffectiveness that has held +the world so long. Labour returning from the trenches to its country and +demanding promptness, planning, generous and devoted leaderships and +organisation, demanding that the usurer and financier, the landlord and +lawyer shall, if need be, get themselves altogether out of the way, will +have behind its arguments the thought of the enemy still unsubdued, +still formidable, recovering. Both sides will feel that. This world is a +more illuminated world than 1816; a thousand questions between law and +duty have been discussed since then; beyond all comparison we know +better what we are doing. I think the broad side of John Smith (and Sir +John Smith and John Smith, K.C.) will get the better of his narrow +ends--and that so it will be with Jean Dupont and Hans Meyer and the +rest of them. There may be riots here and there; there may be some +pretty considerable rows; but I do not think there is going to be a +chaotic and merely destructive phase in Great Britain or any Western +European country. I cast my guess for reconstruction and not for revolt. + + + + +V. HOW FAR WILL EUROPE GO TOWARD SOCIALISM? + + +A number of people are saying that this war is to be the end of +Individualism. "Go as you please" has had its death-blow. Out of this +war, whatever else emerges, there will emerge a more highly organised +State than existed before--that is to say, a less individualistic and +more socialistic State. And there seems a heavy weight of probability on +the side of this view. But there are also a number of less obvious +countervailing considerations that may quite possibly modify or reverse +this tendency. + +In this chapter an attempt is to be made to strike a balance between the +two systems of forces, and guess how much will be private and how much +public in Europe in 1930, or thereabouts. + +The prophets who foretell the coming of Socialism base their case on +three sets of arguments. They point out, first, the failure of +individual enterprise to produce a national efficiency comparable to +the partial State Socialism of Germany, and the extraordinary, special +dangers inherent in private property that the war has brought to light; +secondly, to the scores of approaches to practical Socialism that have +been forced upon Great Britain--for example, by the needs of the war; +and, thirdly, to the obvious necessities that will confront the British +Empire and the Allies generally after the war--necessities that no +unorganised private effort can hope to meet effectively. + +All these arguments involve the assumption that the general +understanding of the common interest will be sufficient to override +individual and class motives; an exceedingly doubtful assumption, to say +the least of it. But the general understanding of the common interest is +most likely to be kept alive by the sense of a common danger, and we +have already arrived at the conclusion that Germany is going to be +defeated but not destroyed in this war, and that she will be left with +sufficient vitality and sufficient resentment and sufficient of her +rancid cultivated nationalism to make not only the continuance of the +Alliance after the war obviously advisable and highly probable, but also +to preserve in the general mind for a generation or so that sense of a +common danger which most effectually conduces to the sweeping aside of +merely personal and wasteful claims. Into the consequences of this we +have now to look a little more closely. + +It was the weaknesses of Germany that made this war, and not her +strength. The weaknesses of Germany are her Imperialism, her Junkerism, +and her intense, sentimental Nationalism; for the former would have no +German ascendancy that was not achieved by force, and, with the latter, +made the idea of German ascendancy intolerable to all mankind. Better +death, we said. And had Germany been no more than her Court, her +Junkerism, her Nationalism, the whole system would have smashed beneath +the contempt and indignation of the world within a year. + +But the strength of Germany has saved her from that destruction. She was +at once the most archaic and modern of states. She was Hohenzollern, +claiming to be Caesar, and flaunting a flat black eagle borrowed from +Imperial Rome; and also she was the most scientific and socialist of +states. It is her science and her Socialism that have held and forced +back the avengers of Belgium for more than a year and a half. If she has +failed as a conqueror, she has succeeded as an organisation. Her +ambition has been thwarted, and her method has been vindicated. She +will, I think, be so far defeated in the contest of endurance which is +now in progress that she will have to give up every scrap of territorial +advantage she has gained; she may lose most of her Colonial Empire; she +may be obliged to complete her modernisation by abandoning her militant +Imperialism; but she will have at least the satisfaction of producing +far profounder changes in the chief of her antagonists than those she +herself will undergo. + +The Germany of the Hohenzollerns had its mortal wound at the Marne; the +Germany we fight to-day is the Germany of Krupp and Ostwald. It is +merely as if she had put aside a mask that had blinded her. She was +methodical and civilised except for her head and aim; she will become +entirely methodical. But the Britain and Russia and France she fights +are lands full of the spirit of undefined novelty. They are being made +over far more completely. They are being made over, not in spite of the +war, but because of the war. Only by being made over can they win the +war. And if they do not win the war, then they are bound to be made +over. They are not merely putting aside old things, but they are forming +and organising within themselves new structures, new and more efficient +relationships, that will last far beyond the still remote peace +settlement. + +What this war has brought home to the consciousness of every intelligent +man outside the German system, with such thoroughness as whole +generations of discussion and peace experience could never have +achieved, is a double lesson: that Germany had already gone far to +master when she blundered into the war; firstly, the waste and dangers +of individualism, and, secondly, the imperative necessity of scientific +method in public affairs. The waste and dangers of individualism have +had a whole series of striking exemplifications both in Europe and +America since the war began. Were there such a thing as a Socialist +propaganda in existence, were the so-called socialistic organisations +anything better than a shabby little back-door into contemporary +politics, those demonstrations would be hammering at the mind of +everyone. It may be interesting to recapitulate some of the most salient +instances. + +The best illustration, perhaps, of the waste that arises out of +individualism is to be found in the extreme dislocation of the privately +owned transit services of Great Britain at the present time. There is no +essential reason whatever why food and fuel in Great Britain should be +considerably dearer than they are under peace conditions. Just the same +home areas are under cultivation, just the same foreign resources are +available; indeed, more foreign supplies are available because we have +intercepted those that under normal conditions would have gone to +Germany. The submarine blockade of Britain is now a negligible factor in +this question. + +Despite these patent conditions there has been, and is, a steady +increase in the cost of provisions, coal, and every sort of necessity. +This increase means an increase in the cost of production of many +commodities, and so contributes again to the general scarcity. This is +the domestic aspect of a difficulty that has also its military side. It +is not sufficient merely to make munitions; they must also be delivered, +Great Britain is suffering very seriously from congestion of the +railways. She suffers both in social and military efficiency, and she is +so suffering because her railways, instead of being planned as one great +and simple national distributing system, have grown up under conditions +of clumsy, dividend-seeking competition. + +Each great railway company and combination has worked its own areas, and +made difficulties and aggressions at the boundaries of its sphere of +influence; here are inconvenient junctions and here unnecessary +duplications; nearly all the companies come into London, each taking up +its own area of expensive land for goods yards, sidings, shunting +grounds, and each regardless of any proper correlation with the other; +great areas of the County of London are covered with their idle trucks +and their separate coal stores; in many provincial towns you will find +two or even three railway stations at opposite ends of the town; the +streets are blocked by the vans and trolleys of the several companies +tediously handing about goods that could be dealt with at a tenth of the +cost in time and labour at a central clearing-house, did such a thing +exist; and each system has its vast separate staff, unaccustomed to work +with any other staff. + +Since the war began the Government has taken over the general direction +of this disarticulated machinery, but no one with eyes who travels about +England now can fail to remark, in the miles and miles of waiting loaded +trucks on every siding, the evidences of mischievous and now almost +insuperable congestion. The trucks of each system that have travelled on +to another still go back, for the most part, _empty_ to their own; and +thousands of privately owned trucks, which carry cargo only one way, +block our sidings. Great Britain wastes men and time to a disastrous +extent in these needless shuntings and handlings. + +Here, touching every life in the community, is one instance of the +muddle that arises naturally out of the individualistic method of +letting public services grow up anyhow without a plan, or without any +direction at all except the research for private profit. + +A second series of deficiencies that the war has brought to light in the +too individualistic British State is the entire want of connection +between private profit and public welfare. So far as the interests of +the capitalist go it does not matter whether he invests his money at +home or abroad; it does not matter whether his goods are manufactured in +London or Timbuctoo. + +But what of the result? At the outbreak of the war Great Britain found +that a score of necessary industries had drifted out of the country, +because it did not "pay" any private person to keep them here. The +shortage of dyes has been amply discussed as a typical case. A much +graver one that we may now write about was the shortage of zinc. Within +a month or so of the outbreak of the war the British Government had to +take urgent and energetic steps to secure this essential ingredient of +cartridge cases. Individualism had let zinc refining drift to Belgium +and Germany; it was the luck rather than the merit of Great Britain that +one or two refineries still existed. + +Still more extraordinary things came to light in the matter of the metal +supply. Under an individualistic system you may sell to the highest +bidder, and anyone with money from anywhere may come in and buy. Great +supplies of colonial ores were found to be cornered by semi-national +German syndicates. Supplies were held up by these contracts against the +necessities of the Empire. And this was but one instance of many which +have shown that, while industrial development in the Allied countries is +still largely a squabbling confusion of little short-sighted, +unscientific, private profit-seeking owners, in Germany it has been for +some years increasingly run on far-seeing collectivist lines. Against +the comparatively little and mutually jealous British or American +capitalists and millionaires Germany pits itself as a single great +capitalist and competitor. She has worked everywhere upon a +comprehensive plan. Against her great national electric combination, for +example, only another national combination could stand. As it was, +Germany--in the way of business--wired and lit (and examined) the forts +at LiĆ©ge. She bought and prepared a hundred strategic centres in +individualistic Belgium and France. + +So we pass from the fact that individualism is hopeless muddle to the +fact that the individualist idea is one of limitless venality, Who can +buy, may control. And Germany, in her long scheming against her +individualist rivals, has not simply set herself to buy and hold the +keys and axles of their economic machinery. She has set herself, it must +be admitted, with a certain crudity and little success, but with +unexampled vigour, to buy the minds of her adversaries. The Western +nations have taken a peculiar pride in having a free Press; that is to +say, a Press that may be bought by anyone. Our Press is constantly +bought and sold, in gross and detail, by financiers, advertisers, +political parties, and the like. Germany came into the market rather +noisily, and great papers do to a large extent live in glass houses; but +her efforts have been sufficient to exercise the minds of great numbers +of men with the problem of what might have happened in the way of +national confusion if the German attack had been more subtly +conceived.... + +It is only a partial answer to this difficulty to say that a country +that is so nationalist and aggressive as Germany is incapable of subtle +conceptions. The fact remains that in Great Britain at the present time +there are newspaper proprietors who would be good bargains for Germany +at two million pounds a head, and that there was no effectual guarantee +in the individualistic system, but only our good luck and the natural +patriotism of the individuals concerned that she did not pick up these +bargains before trading with the enemy became illegal. It happened, for +example, that Lord Northcliffe was public-spirited, That was the good +luck of Great Britain rather than her merit. There was nothing in the +individualistic system to prevent Germany from buying up the entire +Harmsworth Press--_The Times, Daily Mail_, and all--five years before +the war, and using it to confuse the national mind, destroy the national +unity, sacrifice the national interests, and frustrate the national +will. + +Not only the newspapers, but the news-agents and booksellers of both +Great Britain and America are entirely at the disposal of any hostile +power which chooses to buy them up quietly and systematically. It is +merely a question of wealth and cleverness. And if the failure of the +Germans to grip the Press of the French and English speaking countries +has been conspicuous, she has been by no means so unsuccessful in--for +example--Spain. At the present time the thought and feeling of the +Spanish speaking world is being _educated_ against the Allies. The +Spanish mind has been sold by its custodians into German control. + +Muddle and venality do not, however, exhaust the demonstrated vices of +individualism. Individualism encourages desertion and treason. +Individualism permits base private people to abscond with the national +resources and squeeze a profit out of national suffering. In the early +stages of the war some bright minds conceived the idea of a corner in +drugs. It is not illegal; it is quite the sort of thing that appeals to +the individualistic frame of mind as entirely meritorious. As the _New +Statesman_ put it recently: "The happy owners of the world's available +stock of a few indispensable drugs did not refrain from making, not only +the various Governments, but also all the sick people of the world pay +double, and even tenfold, prices for what was essential to relieve pain +and save life. What fortunes were thus made we shall probably never +know, any more than we shall know the tale of the men and women and +children who suffered and died because of their inability to pay, not +the cost of production of what would have saved them, but the +unnecessarily enhanced price that the chances of the market enabled the +owners to exact." + +And another bright instance of the value of individualism is the selling +of British shipping to neutral buyers just when the country is in the +most urgent need of every ship it can get, and the deliberate transfer +to America of a number of British businesses to evade paying a proper +share of the national bill in taxation. The English who have gone to +America at different times have been of very different qualities; at the +head of the list are the English who went over in the _Mayflower_; at +the bottom will be the rich accessions of this war.... + +And perhaps a still more impressive testimony to the rottenness of these +"business men," upon whom certain eccentric voices call so amazingly to +come and govern us, is the incurable distrust they have sown in the +minds of labour. Never was an atmosphere of discipline more lamentable +than that which has grown up in the factories, workshops, and great +privately owned public services of America and Western Europe. The men, +it is evident, _expect_ to be robbed and cheated at every turn. I can +only explain their state of mind by supposing that they have been robbed +and cheated. Their scorn and contempt for their employees' good faith +is limitless. Their _morale_ is undermined by an invincible distrust. + +It is no good for Mr. Lloyd George to attempt to cure the gathered ill +of a century with half an hour or so of eloquence. When Great Britain, +in her supreme need, turns to the workmen she has trained in the ways of +individualism for a century, she reaps the harvest individualism has +sown. She has to fight with that handicap. Every regulation for the +rapid mobilisation of labour is scrutinised to find the trick in it. + +And they find the trick in it as often as not. Smart individualistic +"business experience" has been at the draughtsman's elbow. A man in an +individualistic system does not escape from class ideas and prejudices +by becoming an official. There is profound and bitter wisdom in the deep +distrust felt by British labour for both military and industrial +conscription. + +The breakdown of individualism has been so complete in Great Britain +that we are confronted with the spectacle of this great and ancient +kingdom reconstructing itself perforce, while it wages the greatest war +in history. A temporary nationalisation of land transit has been +improvised, and only the vast, deep-rooted, political influence of the +shipowners and coalowners have staved off the manifestly necessary step +of nationalising shipping and coal. I doubt if they will be able to +stave it off to the end of the long struggle which is still before us if +the militarism of Germany is really to be arrested and discredited. +Expropriation and not conscription will be the supreme test of Britain's +loyalty to her Allies. + +The British shipowners, in particular, are reaping enormous but +precarious profits from the war. The blockade of Britain, by the British +shipowners is scarcely less effective than the blockade of Germany by +Britain. With an urgent need of every ship for the national supplies, +British ships, at the present moment of writing this, are still carrying +cheap American automobiles to Australia. They would carry munitions to +Germany if their owners thought they had a sporting chance of not +getting caught at it. These British shipowners are a pampered class with +great political and social influence, and no doubt as soon as the +accumulating strain of the struggle tells to the extent of any serious +restriction of their advantage and prospects, we shall see them shifting +to the side of the at present negligible group of British pacifists. I +do not think one can count on any limit to their selfishness and +treason. + +I believe that the calculations of some of these extreme and apparently +quite unreasonable "pacifists" are right. Before the war is over there +will be a lot of money in the pacifist business. The rich curs of the +West End will join hands with the labour curs of the Clyde. The base are +to be found in all classes, but I doubt if they dominate any. I do not +believe that any interest or group of interests in Great Britain can +stand in the way of the will of the whole people to bring this struggle +to a triumphant finish at any cost. I do not believe that the most +sacred ties of personal friendship and blood relationship with +influential people can save either shipowners or coalowners or army +contractors to the end. + +There will be no end until these profit-makings are arrested. The +necessary "conscriptions of property" must come about in Great Britain +because there is no alternative but failure in the war, and the British +people will not stand failure. I believe that the end of the war will +see, not only transit, but shipping, collieries, and large portions of +the machinery of food and drink production and distribution no longer +under the administration of private ownership, but under a sort of +provisional public administration. And very many British factories will +be in the same case. + +Two years ago no one would have dared to prophesy the tremendous +rearrangement of manufacturing machinery which is in progress in Britain +to-day. Thousands of firms of engineers and manufacturers of all sorts, +which were flourishing in 1914, exist to-day only as names, as shapes, +as empty shells. Their staffs have been shattered, scattered, +reconstructed; their buildings enlarged and modified; their machinery +exchanged, reconstituted, or taken. The reality is a vast interdependent +national factory that would have seemed incredible to Fourier. + +It will be as impossible to put back British industrialism into the +factories and forms of the pre-war era as it would be to restore the +Carthaginian Empire. There is a new economic Great Britain to-day, +emergency made, jerry-built no doubt, a gawky, weedy giant, but a giant +who may fill out to such dimensions as the German national system has +never attained. Behind it is an _idea_, a new idea, the idea of the +nation as one great economic system working together, an idea which +could not possibly have got into the sluggish and conservative British +intelligence in half a century by any other means than the stark +necessities of this war.... Great Britain cannot retrace those steps +even if she would, and so she will be forced to carry this process of +reconstruction through. And what is happening to Great Britain must, +with its national differences, be happening to France and Russia. Not +only for war ends, but for peace ends, behind the front and sustaining +the front, individualities are being hammered together into common and +concerted activities. + +At the end of this war Great Britain will find herself with this great +national factory, this great national organisation of labour, planned, +indeed, primarily to make war material, but convertible with the utmost +ease to the purposes of automobile manufacture, to transit +reconstruction, to electrical engineering, and endless such uses. + +France and Russia will be in a parallel case. All the world will be +exhausted, and none of the Allies will have much money to import +automobiles, railway material, electrical gear, and so on, from abroad. +Moreover, it will be a matter of imperative necessity for them to get +ahead of the Central Powers with their productive activities. We shall +all be too poor to import from America, and we shall be insane to import +from Germany. America will be the continent with the long purse, +prepared to buy rather than sell. Each country will have great masses of +soldiers waiting to return to industrial life, and will therefore be +extremely indisposed to break up any existing productive organisation. + +In the face of these facts, will any of the Allied Powers be so foolish +as to disband this great system of national factories and nationally +worked communications? Moreover, we have already risked the prophecy +that this war will not end with such conclusiveness as to justify an +immediate beating out of our swords into ploughshares. There will be a +military as well as a social reason for keeping the national factories +in a going state. + +What more obvious course, then, than to keep them going by turning them +on to manufacture goods of urgent public necessity? There are a number +of modern commodities now practically standardised: the bicycle, the +cheap watch, the ordinary tradesman's delivery automobile, the farmer's +runabout, the country doctor's car, much electric-lighting material, +dynamos, and so forth. And also, in a parallel case, there is +shipbuilding. The chemical side of munition work can turn itself with no +extreme difficulty to the making of such products as dyes. + +We face the fact, then, that either the State must go on with this +production, as it can do, straight off from the signing of peace, +converting with a minimum of friction, taking on its soldiers as they +are discharged from the army as employees with a minimum waste of time +and a minimum of social disorder, and a maximum advantage in the +resumption of foreign trade, or there will be a dangerous break-up of +the national factory system, a time of extreme chaos and bitter +unemployment until capital accumulates for new developments. The risks +of social convulsion will be enormous. And there is small hope that the +Central Powers, and particularly industrial Germany, will have the +politeness to wait through the ten or twelve years of economic +embarrassment that a refusal to take this bold but obviously +advantageous step into scientific Socialism will entail. + +But the prophet must be on his guard against supposing that, because a +thing is highly desirable, it must necessarily happen; or that, because +it is highly dangerous, it will be avoided. This bold and successful +economic reconstruction upon national lines is not inevitable merely +because every sound reason points us in that direction. A man may be +very ill, a certain drug may be clearly indicated as the only possible +remedy, but it does not follow that the drug is available, that the +doctor will have the sense to prescribe it, or the patient the means to +procure it or the intelligence to swallow it. + +The experience of history is that nations do not take the obviously +right course, but the obviously wrong one. The present prophet knows +only his England, but, so far as England is concerned, he can cover a +sheet of paper with scarcely a pause, jotting down memoranda of +numberless forces that make against any such rational reconstruction. +Most of these forces, in greater or less proportion, must be present in +the case of every other country under consideration. + +The darkest shadow upon the outlook of European civilisation at the +present time is not the war; it is the failure of any co-operative +spirit between labour and the directing classes. The educated and +leisured classes have been rotten with individualism for a century; they +have destroyed the confidence of the worker in any leadership whatever. +Labour stands apart, intractable. If there is to be any such rapid +conversion of the economic machinery as the opportunities and +necessities of this great time demand, then labour must be taken into +the confidence of those who would carry it through. It must be reassured +and enlightened. Labour must know clearly what is being done; it must be +an assenting co-operator. The stride to economic national service and +Socialism is a stride that labour should be more eager to take than any +other section of the community. + +The first step in reassuring labour must be to bring the greedy private +owner and the speculator under a far more drastic discipline than at +present. The property-owning class is continually accusing labour of +being ignorant, suspicious, and difficult; it is blind to the fact that +it is itself profit-seeking by habit, greedy, conceited, and half +educated. + +Every step in the mobilisation of Great Britain's vast resources for the +purposes of the war has been hampered by the tricks, the failures to +understand, and the almost instinctive disloyalties of private owners. +The raising of rents in Glasgow drove the infuriated workmen of the +Clyde district into an unwilling strike. It was an exasperating piece of +private selfishness, quite typical of the individualistic state of mind, +and the failure to anticipate or arrest it on the part of the Government +was a worse failure than Suvla Bay. And everywhere the officials of the +Ministry of Munitions find private employers holding back workers and +machinery from munition works, intriguing--more particularly through the +Board of Trade--to have all sorts of manufactures for private profit +recognised as munition work, or if that contention is too utterly +absurd, then as work vitally necessary to the maintenance of British +export trade and the financial position of the country. It is an +undeniable fact that employers and men alike have been found far readier +to risk their lives for their country than to lay aside any scale of +profits to which they have grown accustomed. + +This conflict of individualistic enterprise and class suspicion against +the synthesis of the public welfare is not peculiar to Great Britain; it +is probably going on with local variations in Germany, Russia, Italy, +France, and, indeed, in every combatant country. Because of the +individualistic forces and feelings, none of us, either friends or +enemies, are really getting anything like our full possible result out +of our national efforts. But in Germany there is a greater tradition of +subordination; in France there is a greater clarity of mind than in any +other country. + +Great Britain and Russia in this, as in so many other matters, are at +once close kindred and sharp antithesis. Each is mentally crippled by +the corruption of its educational system by an official religious +orthodoxy, and hampered by a Court which disowns any function of +intellectual stimulus. Neither possesses a scientifically educated +_class_ to which it can look for the powerful handling of this great +occasion; and each has acquired under these disadvantages the same +strange faculty for producing sane resultants out of illogical +confusions. It is the way of these unmethodical Powers to produce +unexpected, vaguely formulated, and yet effective cerebral +action--apparently from their backbones. + +As I sit playing at prophecy, and turn over the multitudinous +impressions of the last year in my mind, weighing the great necessities +of the time against obstacles and petty-mindedness, I become more and +more conscious of a third factor that is neither need nor obstruction, +and that is the will to get things right that has been liberated by the +war. + +The new spirit is still but poorly expressed, but it will find +expression. The war goes on, and we discuss this question of economic +reconstruction as though it was an issue that lay between the labour +that has stayed behind and the business men, for the most part old men +with old habits of mind, who have stayed behind. + +The real life of Europe's future lies on neither side of that +opposition. The real life is mutely busy at present, saying little +because of the uproar of the guns, and not so much learning as casting +habits and shedding delusions. In the trenches there are workers who +have broken with the old slacking and sabotage, and there are +prospective leaders who have forgotten profit. The men between eighteen +and forty are far too busy in the blood and mud to make much showing +now, but to-morrow these men will be the nation. + +When that third factor of the problem is brought in the outlook of the +horoscope improves. The spirit of the war may be counted upon to balance +and prevail against this spirit of individualism, this spirit of +suspicion and disloyalty, which I fear more than anything else in the +world. + +I believe in the young France, young England, and young Russia this war +is making, and so I believe that every European country will struggle +along the path that this war has opened to a far more completely +organised State than has existed ever before. The Allies will become +State firms, as Germany was, indeed, already becoming before the war; +setting private profit aside in the common interest, handling +agriculture, transport, shipping, coal, the supply of metals, the +manufacture of a thousand staple articles, as national concerns. + +In the face of the manifest determination of the Central Powers to do as +much, the Allies will be forced also to link their various State firms +together into a great allied trust, trading with a common interest and a +common plan with Germany and America and the rest of the world.... Youth +and necessity will carry this against selfishness, against the +unimaginative, against the unteachable, the suspicious, the "_old +fool_." + +But I do not venture to prophesy that this will come about as if it were +a slick and easy deduction from present circumstances. Even in France I +do not think things will move as lucidly and generously as that. There +will be a conflict everywhere between wisdom and cunning, between the +eyes of youth and the purblind, between energy and obstinacy. + +The reorganisation of the European States will come about clumsily and +ungraciously. At every point the sticker will be found sticking tight, +holding out to be bought off, holding out for a rent or a dividend or a +share, holding out by mere instinct. At every turn, too, the bawler will +be loud and active, bawling suspicions, bawling accusations, bawling +panic, or just simply bawling. Tricks, peculation, obstinacies, +vanities--after this war men will still be men. But I do believe that +through all the dust and din, the great reasons in the case, the steady +constructive forces of the situation, will carry us. + +I believe that out of the ruins of the nineteenth century system of +private capitalism that this war has smashed for ever, there will arise, +there does even now arise, in this strange scaffolding of national +munition factories and hastily nationalised public services, the +framework of a new economic and social order based upon national +ownership and service. + +Let us now recapitulate a little and see how far we have got in +constructing a picture of the European community as it will be in +fifteen or twenty years' time. Nominally it will be little more of a +Socialist State than it is to-day, but, as a matter of fact, the ships, +the railways, the coal and metal supply, the great metal industries, +much engineering, and most agriculture, will be more or less completely +under collective ownership, and certainly very completely under +collective control. This does not mean that there will have been any +disappearance of private property, but only that there will have been a +very considerable change in its character; the owner will be less of +controller but more of a creditor; he will be a _rentier_ or an +annuitant. + +The burthen of this class upon the community will not be relatively +quite so heavy as it would otherwise have been, because of a very +considerable rise in wages and prices. + +In a community in which all the great initiatives have been assumed by +the State, the importance of financiers and promoters will have +diminished relatively to the importance of administrative officials; the +opportunities of private exploitation, indeed, will have so diminished +that there will probably be far less evidence of great concentrations of +private wealth in the European social landscape than there was before +the war. + +On the other hand, there will be an enormously increased _rentier_ class +drawing the interest of the war loans from the community, and +maintaining a generally high standard of comfort. There will have been a +great demand for administrative and technical abilities and a great +stimulation of scientific and technical education. By 1926 we shall be +going about a world that will have recovered very largely from the +impoverishment of the struggle; we shall tour in State-manufactured +automobiles upon excellent roads, and we shall live in houses equipped +with a national factory electric light installation, and at every turn +we shall be using and consuming the products of nationalised +industry--and paying off the National Debt simultaneously, and reducing +our burden of _rentiers_. + +At the same time our boys will be studying science in their schools +more thoroughly than they do now, and they will in many cases be +learning Russian instead of Greek or German. More of our boys will be +going into the public service, and fewer thinking of private business, +and they will be going into the public service, not as clerks, but as +engineers, technical chemists, manufacturers, State agriculturists, and +the like. The public service will be less a service of clerks and more a +service of practical men. The ties that bind France and Great Britain at +the present moment will have been drawn very much closer. France, +Belgium and England will be drifting towards a French-English +bi-lingualism.... + +So much of our picture we may splash in now. Much that is quite +essential remains to be discussed. So far we have said scarcely a word +about the prospects of party politics and the problems of government +that arise as the State ceases to be a mere impartial adjudicator +between private individuals, and takes upon itself more and more of the +direction of the general life of the community. + + + + +VI. LAWYER AND PRESS + + +The riddle of administration is the most subtle of all those that the +would-be prophet of the things that are coming must attempt. We see the +great modern States confronted now by vast and urgent necessities, by +opportunities that may never recur. Individualism has achieved its +inevitable failure; "go as you please" in a world that also contained +aggressive militarism, has broken down. We live in a world of improvised +State factories, commandeered railways, substituted labour and emergency +arrangements. Our vague-minded, lax, modern democracy has to pull itself +together, has to take over and administer and succeed with a great +system of collective functions, has to express its collective will in +some better terms than "go as you please," or fail. + +And we find the affairs of nearly every great democratic State in the +hands of a class of men not specially adapted to any such constructive +or administrative work. + +I am writing here now chiefly of the Western Allies. Russia is peculiar +in having her administrative machine much more highly developed in +relation to her general national life than the free democratic +countries. She has to make a bureaucracy that has not hitherto been an +example for efficiency into a bureaucracy that will be constructive, +responsive, liberal, scientific, and efficient; the Western countries +have to do the same with that oligarchy of politicians which, as +Professor Michels has recently pointed out in his striking book on +"Political Parties," is the necessary reality of democratic government. +By different methods the Eastern and Western Powers have to attain a +common end. Both bureaucracy and pseudo-democratic oligarchy have to +accomplish an identical task, to cement the pacific alliance of the +Pledged Allies and to socialise their common industrial and economic +life, so as to make it invulnerable to foreign attack. + +Now in Great Britain, which is the democracy that has been most under +the close observation of the present prophet, there is at present a +great outcry against the "politician," and more particularly against the +"lawyer-politician." He is our embarrassment. In him we personify all +our difficulties. Let us consider the charges against this individual. +Let us ask, can we do without him? And let us further see what chances +there may be of so altering, qualifying, or balancing him as to minimise +the evil of his influence. To begin with, let us run over the essentials +of the charge against him. + +It is with a modest blush that the present prophet recapitulates these +charges. So early as the year 1902 he was lifting up his voice, not +exactly in the wilderness but at least in the Royal Institution, against +the legal as compared with the creative or futurist type of mind. The +legal mind, he insisted, looks necessarily to the past. It is dilatory +because it has no sense of coming things, it is uninventive and +wasteful, it does not create, it takes advantage. It is the type of mind +least able, under any circumstances, to organise great businesses, to +plan campaigns, to adventure or achieve. "Wait and see" crystallises its +spirit. Its resistance is admirable, and it has no "go." Nevertheless +there is a tendency for power to gravitate in all democratic countries +to the lawyer. + +In the British system the normal faults of the lawyer are enhanced, and +his predominance intensified, by certain peculiarities of our system. In +the first place, he belongs to a guild of exceptional power. In Britain +it happens that the unfortunate course was taken ages ago of bribing the +whole legal profession to be honest. The British judges and law officers +are stupendously overpaid in order to make them incorruptible; it is a +poor but perhaps a well-merited compliment to their professional code. +We have squared the whole profession to be individually unbribable. + +The judges, moreover, in the Anglo-Saxon communities are appointed from +among the leading barristers, an arrangement that a child can see is +demoralising and inadvisable. And in Great Britain all the greatest +salaries in the government service are reserved for the legal +profession. The greatest prizes, therefore, before an energetic young +man who has to make his way in Great Britain are the legal prizes, and +his line of advancement to these lies, for all the best years of his +life, not through the public service, but through the private practice +of advocacy. The higher education, such as it is, in Great Britain, +produces under the stimulus of these conditions an advocate as its +finest flower. To go from the posing and chatter of the Union Debating +Society to a university laboratory is, in Britain, to renounce ambition. +Few men of exceptional energy will do that. + +The national consequences of this state of affairs have been only too +manifest throughout the conduct of the war. The British Government has +developed all the strength and all the weakness of the great profession +it represents. It has been uninventive, dilatory, and without +initiative; it has been wasteful and evasive; but it has not been +wanting in a certain eloquence and dignity, it has been wary and shrewd, +and it has held on to office with the concentrated skill and +determination of a sucker-fish. And the British mind, with a +concentration and intensity unprecedented before the war, is speculating +how it can contrive to get a different sort of ruler and administrator +at work upon its affairs. + +There is a disposition in the Press, and much of the private talk one +hears, to get rid of lawyers from the control of national affairs +altogether, to substitute "business men" or scientific men or "experts." +That way lies dictatorship and Caesarism. And even Great Britain is not +so heedless of the experiences of other nations as to attempt again what +has already been so abundantly worked out in national disaster across +the Channel. The essential business of government is to deal between man +and man; it is not to manage the national affairs in detail, but to +secure the proper managers, investigators, administrators, generals, +and so forth, to maintain their efficiency, and keep the balance between +them. We cannot do without a special class of men for these +interventions and controls. In other words, we cannot do without a +special class of politicians. They may be elected by a public or +appointed by an autocrat; at some point they have to come in. And this +business of intervening between men and classes and departments in +public life, and getting them to work together, is so closely akin to +the proper work of a lawyer in dealing between men and men, that, unless +the latter are absolutely barred from becoming the former, it is almost +unavoidable that politicians should be drawn more abundantly from the +lawyer class than from any other class in the community. + +This is so much the case, that when the London _Times_ turns in despair +from a government of lawyers and looks about for an alternative, the +first figure that presents itself is that distinguished advocate Sir +Edward Carson! + +But there is a difference between recognising that some sort of +lawyer-politician is unavoidable and agreeing that the existing type of +lawyer who is so largely accountable for the massive slowness, the +confused action, the slovenliness rather than the weakness of purpose, +shown by Great Britain in this war, is the only possible type, The +British system of education and legal organisation is not the last word +of human wisdom in these matters. + +The real case we British have against our lawyers, if I may adopt an +expressive colloquialism, is not that they are lawyers, but that they +are such infernal lawyers. They trail into modern life most of the +faults of a mediaeval guild. They seem to have no sense of the State +they could develop, no sense of the future they might control. Their law +and procedure has never been remodelled upon the framework of modern +ideas; their minds are still set to the tune of mediaeval bickerings, +traditionalism, and State blindness. They are mystery dealers, almost +unanimously they have resisted giving the common man the protection of a +code. + +In the United Kingdom we have had no Napoleon to override the +profession. It is extraordinary how complete has been their preservation +of barbaric conceptions. Even the doctor is now largely emancipated from +his archaic limitations as a skilled retainer. He thinks more and more +of the public health, and less and less of his patron. The more recent a +profession the less there is of the individualistic personal reference; +scientific research, for example, disavows and forbids every personal +reference. + +But while everyone would be shocked at some great doctor, or some great +research institution, in these days of urgent necessity spending two or +three weeks on the minor ailments of some rich person's lapdog, nobody +is scandalised at the spectacle of Sir Edward Carson and a costly law +court spending long days upon the sordid disputes that centre upon young +Master Slingsby's ear--whether it is the Slingsby family ear or the ear +of a supposititious child--a question that any three old women might be +trusted to settle. After that he rests for a fortnight and recuperates, +and returns--to take up a will case turning upon the toy rabbits and +suchlike trifles which entertained the declining years of a +nonagenarian. This, when we are assured that the country awaits Sir +Edward as its Deliverer. It is as if Lord Kitchener took a month off to +act at specially high rates for the "movies." Our standard for the +lawyer is older and lower than it is for other men. + +There is no more reason nowadays why a lawyer should look to advocacy as +a proper use of his knowledge than that a doctor should make private +poisoning the lucrative side of his profession. There is no reason why +a court of law should ignore the plain right of the commonweal to +intervene in every case between man and man. There is every reason why +trivial disputes about wills and legitimacy should not be wasting our +national resources at the present time, when nearly every other form of +waste is being restrained. The sound case against the legal profession +in Anglo-Saxon countries is not that it is unnecessary, but that it is +almost incredibly antiquated, almost incredibly careless of the public +well-being, and that it corrupts or dwarfs all the men who enter it. + +Our urgent need is not so much to get rid of the lawyer from our affairs +as to get rid of the wig and gown spirit and of the special pleader, and +to find and develop the new lawyer, the lawyer who is not an advocate, +who is not afraid of a code, who has had some scientific education, and +whose imagination has been quickened by the realisation of life as +creative opportunity. We want to emancipate this profession from its +ancient guild restrictions--the most anti-social and disastrous of all +such restrictions--to destroy its disgraceful traditions of over-payment +and fee-snatching, to insist upon a scientific philosophical training +for its practitioners, to make the practice of advocacy a fall from +grace, and to bar professional advocates from the bench. + +In the British trenches now there must be many hundreds of fine young +lawyers, still but little corrupted, who would be only too glad to +exchange the sordid vulgarities and essential dishonour of a successful +lawyer's career under the old conditions for lives of service and +statecraft.... + +No observer of the general trend of events in Europe will get any real +grasp of what is happening until he realises the cardinal importance of +the reactions that centre upon this question. The current development of +political institutions and the possible development of a new spirit and +method in the legal profession are so intimately interwoven as to be +practically one and the same question. The international question is, +can we get a new Germany? The national question everywhere is, can we +get a better politician? + +The widely prevalent discontent with the part played by the lawyer in +the affairs of all the Western Allies is certain to develop into a +vigorous agitation for legal reconstruction. In the case of every other +great trade union the war has exacted profound and vital concessions. +The British working men, for example, have abandoned scores of +protective restrictions upon women's labour, upon unskilled labour, for +which they have fought for generations; they have submitted to a virtual +serfdom that the nation's needs might be supplied; the medical +profession has sent almost too large a proportion of its members to the +front; the scientific men, the writers, have been begging to be used in +any capacity at any price or none; the Ministry of Munitions is full of +unpaid workers, and so on. + +The British legal profession and trade union alone has made no sign of +any disposition to relax its elaborate restrictions upon the labour of +amateurs and women, or to abate one jot or one tittle of its habitual +rewards. There has been no attempt to reduce the costly law officers of +the Government, for example, or to call in the help of older men or +women to release law officers who are of military experience or age. + +And I must admit that there are small signs of the advent of the "new +lawyer," at whose possibility I have just flung a hopeful glance, to +replace the existing mass of mediaeval unsoundness. Barristers seem to +age prematurely--at least in Great Britain--unless they are born old. In +the legal profession one hears nothing of "the young"; one hears only of +"smart juniors." Reform and progressive criticism in the legal +profession, unlike all other professions, seem to be the monopoly of the +retired. + +Nevertheless, Great Britain is as yet only beginning to feel the real +stresses of the war; she is coming into the full strain a year behind +France, Germany, and Russia; and after the war there lies the +possibility of still more violent stresses; so that what is as yet a +mere cloud of criticism and resentment at our lawyer-politicians and +privileged legal profession may gather to a great storm before 1918 or +1919. + +I am inclined to foretell as one most highly probable development of the +present vague but very considerable revolt against the lawyer in British +public life, first, some clumsy proposals or even attempts to leave him +out, and use "business men," soldiers, admirals, dictators, or men of +science, in his place--which is rather like throwing away a blottesque +fountain-pen and trying to write with a walking-stick or a revolver or a +flash-light--and then when that is found to be impossible, a resolute +attempt to clean and reconstitute the legal profession on modern and +more honourable lines; a movement into which, quite possibly, a number +of the younger British lawyers, so soon as they realise that the +movement is good enough to risk careers upon, may throw themselves. A +large share in such a reform movement, if it occurs, will be brought +about by the Press; by which I mean not simply the periodical Press, but +all books and contemporary discussion. It is only by the natural playing +off of Press against lawyer-politician that democratic States can ever +come to their own. + +And that brings me to the second part of this question, which is +whether, quite apart from the possible reform and spiritual rebirth of +the legal profession, there is not also the possibility of balancing and +correcting its influence. In ancient Hebrew history--it may be a warning +rather than a precedent--there were two great forces, one formal, +conservative and corrupting, the other undisciplined, creative, and +destructive; the first was the priest, the second the prophet. Their +interaction is being extraordinarily paralleled in the Anglo-Saxon +democracies by the interaction of lawyer-politician and Press to-day. + +If the lawyer-politician is unavoidable, the Press is indispensable. It +is not in the clash and manoeuvres and mutual correction of party, but +in the essential conflict of political authority on the one hand and +Press on the other that the future of democratic government apparently +lies. In the clearer, simpler case of France, a less wealthy and finer +type of lawyer interacts with a less impersonal Press. It is in the +great contrasts and the essential parallelism of the French and the +Anglo-Saxon democratic systems that one finds the best practical reason +for anticipating very profound changes in these two inevitables of +democracy, the Press and the lawyer-politician, and for assuming that +the method of democracy has still a vast range of experimental +adjustment between them still untried. Such experimental adjustment will +be the chief necessity and business of political life in every country +of the world for the next few decades. + +The lawyer-politician and the Press are as it were the right and left +hands of a modern democracy. The war has brought this out clearly. It +has ruptured the long-weakened bonds that once linked this and that +newspaper with this and that party. For years the Press of all the +Western democracies has been drifting slowly away from the tradition--it +lasted longest and was developed most completely in Great +Britain--that-newspapers were party organs. + +In the novels of Disraeli the Press appears as an ambiguously helpful +person who is asked out to dinner, who is even admitted to week-end +conferences, by the political great. He takes his orders from the Whig +peers or the Tory peers. At his greatest he advises them respectfully. +But that was in the closing days of the British oligarchy; that was +before modern democracy had begun to produce its characteristic +political forms. It is not so very much more than a century ago that +Great Britain had her first lawyer Prime Minister. Through all the +Napoleonic wars she was still a country ruled by great feudal landlords, +and gentlemen adventurers associated with them. The lawyers only came to +their own at the close of the great Victorian duet of Disraeli and +Gladstone, the last of the political gentlemen adventurers. It is only +now, in the jolts and dissatisfactions of this war, that Great Britain +rubs her eyes and looks at her government as it is. + +The old oligarchy established the tradition of her diplomacy. Illiberal +at home, it was liberal abroad; Great Britain was the defender of +nationality, of constitutionalism, and of the balance of power against +the holy alliance. In the figure of such a gentleman as Sir Edward Grey +the old order mingles with the new. But most of his colleagues are of +the new order. They would have been incredible in the days of Lord +Melbourne. In its essential quality the present British Government is +far more closely akin to the French than it is to its predecessor of a +hundred years ago. Essentially it is a Government of lawyer-politicians +with no close family ties or intimate political traditions and +prejudices. And its natural and proper corrective is the Press, over +which it fails to exercise now even a shadow of the political and social +influence that once kept that power in subjection. + +It is the way with all human institutions; they remain in appearance +long after they have passed away in reality. It is on record that the +Roman senate still thought Rome was a republic in the third century of +the Christian era. It is nothing wonderful, therefore, that people +suppose that the King, the Lords, and the Commons, debating through a +Ministry and an Opposition, still govern the British Empire. As a matter +of fact it is the lawyer-politicians, split by factions that simulate +the ancient government and opposition, who rule, under a steadily +growing pressure and checking by the Press. Since this war began the +Press has released itself almost inadvertently from its last association +with the dying conflicts of party politics, and has taken its place as a +distinct power in the realm, claiming to be more representative of the +people than their elected representatives, and more expressive of the +national mind and will. + +Now there is considerable validity in this claim. It is easy to say +that a paper may be bought by any proprietor and set to put what he +chooses into the public mind. As a matter of fact, buying a newspaper is +far more costly and public a proceeding than buying a politician. And if +on the one hand the public has no control over what is printed in a +paper, it has on the other the very completest control over what is +read. A politician is checked by votes cast once in several years, a +newspaper is checked by sales that vary significantly from day to day. A +newspaper with no circulation is a newspaper that does not matter; a few +weeks will suffice to show if it has carried its public with it or gone +out of influence. It is absurd to speak of a newspaper as being less +responsible than a politician. + +Nevertheless, the influence of a great newspaper is so much greater than +that of any politician, and its power more particularly for +mischief--for the creation of panic conditions, for example--so much +swifter, that it is open to question whether the Press is at present +sufficiently held to its enormous responsibilities. + +Let us consider its weaknesses at the present time, let us ask what +changes in its circumstances are desirable in the public interest, and +what are likely to come about. We have already reckoned upon the Press +as a chief factor in the adequate criticism, cleansing, and +modernisation of the British lawyer-politician; is there any power to +which we may look for the security of the Press? And I submit the answer +is the Press. For while the legal profession is naturally homogeneous, +the Press is by nature heterogeneous. Dog does not eat dog, nor lawyer, +lawyer; but the newspapers are sharks and cannibals, they are in +perpetual conflict, the Press is a profession as open as the law is +closed; it has no anti-social guild feeling; it washes its dirty linen +in public by choice and necessity, and disdains all professional +etiquette. Few people know what criticisms of the Lord Chief Justice may +have ripened in the minds of Lord Halsbury or Sir Edward Carson, but we +all know, to a very considerable degree of accuracy, the worst of what +this great journalist or group of newspaper proprietors thinks of that. + +We have, therefore, considerable reason for regarding the Press as +being, in contrast with the legal profession, a self-reforming body. In +the last decade there has been an enormous mass of criticism of the +Press by the Press. There has been a tendency to exaggerate its +irresponsibility. A better case is to be made against it for what I will +call, using the word in its least offensive sense, its venality. By +venality I mean the fact, a legacy from the now happily vanishing age of +individualism, that in theory and law at least anyone may own a +newspaper and sell it publicly or secretly to anyone, that its +circulation and advertisement receipts may be kept secret or not as the +proprietors choose, and that the proprietor is accountable to no one for +any exceptional incomings or any sudden fluctuations in policy. + +A few years ago we were all discussing who should buy _The Times_; I do +not know what chances an agent of the Kaiser might not have had if he +had been sufficiently discreet. This venality will be far more dangerous +to the Allied countries after the war than during its continuance. So +long as the state of war lasts there are prompt methods available for +any direct newspaper treason, and it is in the neutral countries only +that the buying and selling of papers against the national interest has +occurred to any marked extent. + +Directly peace is signed, unless we provide for the event beforehand, +our Press will pass under neutral conditions. There will be nothing to +prevent, for example, any foreseeing foreign power coming into Great +Britain, offering to buy up not only this paper or that, but also, what +is far more important, to buy up the great book and newspaper +distributing firms. These vitally important public services, so far as +law and theory go, will be as entirely in the market as railway tickets +at a station unless we make some intelligent preventive provision. +Unless we do, and if, as is highly probable, peace puts no immediate +stop to international malignity, the Germans will be bigger fools than I +think them if they do not try to get hold of these public services. It +is a matter of primary importance in the outlook of every country in +Europe, therefore, that it should insist upon and secure responsible +native ownership of every newspaper and news and book distributing +agency, and the most drastic punishment for newspaper corruption. Given +that guarantee against foreign bribery, we may, I think, let free speech +rage. This is so much a matter of common sense that I cannot imagine +even British "wait and see" waiting for the inevitable assault upon our +national journalistic virtue that will follow the peace. + +So I spread out the considerations that I think justify our forecasting, +in a very changed Great Britain and a changed Europe, firstly, a legal +profession with a quickened conscience, a sense of public function and a +reformed organisation, and, secondly, a Press, which is recognised and +held accountable in law and in men's minds, as an estate of the realm, +as something implicitly under oath to serve the State. I do not agree +with Professor Michel's pessimistic conclusion that peace will bring +back exacerbated party politics and a new era of futility to the +democratic countries. I believe that the tremendous demonstration of +this war (a demonstration that gains weight with every week of our +lengthening effort), of the waste and inefficiency of the system of +1913-14, will break down at last even the conservatism of the most +rigidly organised and powerful and out-of-date of all professions. + +It is not only that I look to the indignation and energy of intelligent +men who are outside our legal and political system to reform it, but to +those who are in it now. A man may be quietly parasitic upon his mother, +and yet incapable of matricide. So much of our national energy and +ability has been attracted to the law in Great Britain that our nation, +with our lawyers in modern clothing instead of wigs and gowns, lawyers +who have studied science and social theory instead of the spoutings of +Cicero and the loquacious artfulness of W.E. Gladstone, lawyers who look +forward at the destiny of their country instead of backward and at the +markings on their briefs, may yet astonish the world. The British lawyer +really holds the future of the British Empire and, indeed, I could +almost say, of the whole world in his hands at the present time, as much +as any single sort of man can be said to hold it. Inside his skull +imagination and a heavy devil of evil precedent fight for his soul and +the welfare of the world. And generosity fights against tradition and +individualism. Only the men of the Press have anything like the same +great possibilities of betrayal. + +To these two sorts of men the dim spirit of the nation looks for such +leading as a democracy can follow. To them the men with every sort of +special ability, the men of science, the men of this or that sort of +administrative ability and experience, the men of creative gifts and +habits, every sort of man who wants the world to get on, look for the +removal (or the ingenious contrivance) of obstructions and +entanglements, for the allaying (or the fomentation) of suspicion, +misapprehension, and ignorant opposition, for administration (or class +blackmail). + +Yet while I sit as a prophetic amateur weighing these impalpable forces +of will and imagination and habit and interest in lawyer, pressman, +maker and administrator, and feeling by no means over-confident of the +issue, it dawns upon me suddenly that there is another figure present, +who has never been present before in the reckoning up of British +affairs. It is a silent figure. This figure stands among the pressmen +and among the lawyers and among the workers; for a couple of decades at +least he will be everywhere in the British system; he is young and he is +uniformed in khaki, and he brings with him a new spirit into British +life, the spirit of the new soldier, the spirit of subordination to a +common purpose.... + +France, which has lived so much farther and deeper and more bitterly +than Britain, knows....[2] + +[Footnote 2: In "An Englishman Looks at the World," a companion volume +to the present one, which was first published by Messrs. Cassell early +in 1914, and is now obtainable in a shilling edition, the reader will +find a full discussion of the probable benefit of proportional +representation in eliminating the party hack from political life. +Proportional representation would probably break up party organisations +altogether, and it would considerably enhance the importance and +responsibility of the Press. It would do much to accelerate the +development of the state of affairs here foreshadowed, in which the rĆ“le +of government and opposition under the party system will be played by +elected representatives and Press respectively.] + + + + +VII. THE NEW EDUCATION + + +Some few months ago Mr. Harold Spender, in the _Daily News_, was calling +attention to a very significant fact indeed. The higher education in +England, and more particularly the educational process of Oxford and +Cambridge, which has been going on continuously since the Middle Ages, +is practically in a state of suspense. Oxford and Cambridge have +stopped. They have stopped so completely that Mr. Spender can speculate +whether they can ever pick up again and resume upon the old lines. + +For my own part, as the father of two sons who are at present in +mid-school, I hope with all my heart that they will not. I hope that the +Oxford and Cambridge of unphilosophical classics and Little-go Greek for +everybody, don's mathematics, bad French, ignorance of all Europe except +Switzerland, forensic exercises in the Union Debating Society, and cant +about the Gothic, the Oxford and Cambridge that turned boys full of life +and hope and infinite possibility into barristers, politicians, +mono-lingual diplomatists, bishops, schoolmasters, company directors, +and remittance men, are even now dead. + +Quite recently I passed through Cambridge, and, with the suggestions of +Mr. Spender in my mind, I paused to savour the atmosphere of the place. +He had very greatly understated the facts of the case. He laid stress +upon the fact that instead of the normal four thousand undergraduates or +so, there are now scarcely four hundred. But before I was fairly in +Cambridge I realised that that gives no idea of the real cessation of +English education. Of the first seven undergraduates I saw upon the +Trumpington road, one was black, three were coloured, and one of the +remaining three was certainly not British, but, I should guess, +Spanish-American. And it isn't only the undergraduates who have gone. +All the dons of military age and quality have gone too, or are staying +up not in caps and gowns, but in khaki; all the vigorous teachers are +soldiering; there are no dons left except those who are unfit for +service--and the clergy. Buildings, libraries, empty laboratories, empty +lecture theatres, vestiges, refugees, neutrals, khaki; that is Cambridge +to-day. + +There never was before, there never may be again, so wonderful an +opportunity for a cleaning-up and sweeping-out of those two places, and +for a profitable new start in British education. + +The cessation of Oxford and Cambridge does not give the full measure of +the present occasion. All the other British universities are in a like +case. And the schools which feed them have been practically swept clean +of their senior boys. And not a tithe of any of this war class of +schoolboys will ever go to the universities now, not a tithe of the war +class of undergraduates will ever return. Between the new education and +the old there will be a break of two school generations. For the next +thirty or forty years an exceptional class of men will play a leading +part in British affairs, men who will have learnt more from reality and +less from lectures than either the generations that preceded or the +generations that will follow them. The subalterns of the great war will +form a distinct generation and mark an epoch. Their experiences of need, +their sense of deficiencies, will certainly play a large part in the +reconstitution of British education. _The stamp of the old system will +not be on them_. + +Now is the time to ask what sort of training should a university give to +produce the ruling, directing, and leading men which it exists to +produce? Upon that Great Britain will need to make up its mind +speedily. It is not a matter for to-morrow or the day after; it is +necessary to decide now what it is the Britain that is coming will need +and want, and to set to work revising the admission and degree +requirements, and reconstructing all those systems of public +examinations for the public services that necessarily dominate school +and university teaching, before the universities and schools reassemble. +If the rotten old things once get together again, the rotten old things +will have a new lease of life. This and no other is the hour for +educational reconstruction. And it is in the decisions and readjustments +of schools and lectures and courses, far more than anywhere else, that +the real future of Great Britain will be decided. Equally true is this +of all the belligerent countries. Much of the future has a kind of +mechanical inevitableness, but here far more than anywhere else, can a +few resolute and capable men mould the spirit and determine the quality +of the Europe to come. + +Now surely the chief things that are needed in the education of a ruling +class are these--first, the selection and development of Character, +then the selection and development of Capacity, and, thirdly, the +imparting of Knowledge upon broad and comprehensive lines, and the +power of rapidly taking up and using such detailed knowledge as may be +needed for special occasions. It is upon the first count that the +British schools and universities have been most open to criticism. We +have found the British university-trained class under the fiery tests of +this war an evasive, temporising class of people, individualistic, +ungenerous, and unable either to produce or obey vigorous leadership. On +the whole, it is a matter for congratulation, it says wonderful things +for the inherent natural qualities of the English-speaking peoples, that +things have proved no worse than they are, considering the nature of the +higher education under which they have suffered. + +Consider in what that educational process has consisted. Its backbone +has been the teaching of Latin by men who can read, write, and speak it +rather worse than a third-rate Babu speaks English, and of Ancient Greek +by teachers who at best half know this fine lost language. They do not +expect any real mastery of either tongue by their students, and +naturally, therefore, no real mastery is ever attained. The boys and +young men just muff about at it for three times as long as would be +needed to master completely both those tongues if they had "live" +teachers, and so they acquire habits of busy futility and petty +pedantry in all intellectual processes that haunt them throughout life. +There are also sterile mathematical studies that never get from +"exercises" to practice. There is a pretence of studying philosophy +based on Greek texts that few of the teachers and none of the taught can +read comfortably, and a certain amount of history. The Modern History +School at Oxford, for example, is the queerest collection of chunks of +reading. English history from the beginning, with occasional glances at +Continental affairs, European history for about a century, bits of +economics, and--the _Politics_ of Aristotle! It is not education; it is +a jack-daw collection....This sort of jumble has been the essentials of +the more pretentious type of "higher education" available in Great +Britain up to the present. + +In this manner, through all the most sensitive and receptive years of +life, our boys have been trained in "how not to get there," in a variety +of disconnected subjects, by men who have never "got there," and it +would be difficult to imagine any curriculum more calculated to produce +a miscellaneous incompetence. They have also, it happens, received a +certain training in _savoir faire_ through the collective necessities of +school life, and a certain sharpening in the arts of advocacy through +the debating society. Except for these latter helps, they have had to +face the world with minds neither more braced, nor more trained, nor +more informed than any "uneducated" man's. + +Surely the first condition that should be laid down for the new +education in Europe is that whatever is undertaken must be undertaken in +grim earnest and done. It is ridiculous to talk about the +"character-forming" value of any study that does not go through to an +end. Manifestly Greek must be dropped as a part of the general +curriculum for a highly educated man, for the simple reason that now +there are scarcely any competent teachers, and because the sham of +teaching it partially and pretentiously demoralises student and school +alike. The claim of the clergy and so forth to "know" Greek is one of +the many corrupting lies in British intellectual life. English comic +writers never weary of sneering at the Hindu who claimed to be a "failed +B.A.," but what is the ordinary classical degree man of an English +university but a "failed" Greek scholar? Latin, too, must be either +reduced to the position of a study supplementary to the native tongue, +or brought up to an honest level of efficiency. + +French and German in the case of the English, and English in the case +of the French and Russians, are essentially governess languages; any +intelligent boy or girl from a reasonably prosperous home ought to be +able to read, write, and speak either before fifteen; they are to be +taken by the way rather than regarded as a fundamental part of +education. The French, German, or English literature and literary +development up to and including contemporary work is, of course, an +entirely different matter. But there can be no doubt of the great +educational value of some highly inflected and well-developed language +_taught by men to whom it is a genuine means of expression_. Educational +needs and public necessity point alike to such languages as Russian or, +in the case of Great Britain, Hindustani to supply this sound training. + +If Great Britain means business after this war, if she is to do her duty +by the Eastern world she controls, she will not stick at the petty +expense of getting a few hundreds of good Russian and Hindu teachers +into the country, and she will place Russian and Hindustani upon at +least an equal footing with Greek in all her university and competitive +examinations. Moreover, it is necessary to set a definite aim of +application before university mathematical teaching. As the first +condition of character-building in all these things, the student should +do what he ostensibly sets out to do. No degree and no position should +be attainable by half accomplishment. + +Of course, languages and mathematics do not by any means round off the +education of a man of the leading classes. There is no doubt much +exercise in their attainment, much value in their possession. But the +essence of the higher education is now, as it always has been, +philosophy; not the antiquated pretence of "reading" Plato and +Aristotle, but the thorough and subtle examination of those great +questions of life that most exercise and strengthen the mind. Surely +that is the essential difference of the "educated" and the "common" man. +The former has thought, and thought out thoroughly and clearly, the +relations of his mind to the universe as a whole, and of himself to the +State and life. A mind untrained in swift and adequate criticism is +essentially an uneducated mind, though it has as many languages as a +courier and as much computation as a bookie. + +And what is our fundamental purpose in all this reform of our higher +education? It is neither knowledge nor technical skill, but to make our +young men talk less and think more, and to think more swiftly, surely, +and exactly. For that we want less debating society and more philosophy, +fewer prizes for forensic ability and more for strength and vigour of +analysis. The central seat of character is the mind. A man of weak +character thinks vaguely, a man of clear intellectual decisions acts +with precision and is free from vacillation. A country of educated men +acts coherently, smites swiftly, plans ahead; a country of confused +education is a country of essential muddle. + +It is as the third factor in education that the handling and experience +of knowledge comes, and of all knowledge that which is most accessible, +most capable of being handled with the greatest variety of educational +benefit, so as to include the criticism of evidence, the massing of +facts, the extraction and testing of generalisations, lies in the two +groups of the biological sciences and the exact sciences. No doubt a +well-planned system of education will permit of much varied +specialisation, will, indeed, specialise those who have special gifts +from a very early age, will have corners for Greek, Hebrew, Sanscrit, +philology, archaeology, Christian theology, and so on, and so on; +nevertheless, for that great mass of sound men of indeterminate +all-round ability who are the intellectual and moral backbone of a +nation, it is in scientific studies that their best training lies, +studies most convenient to undertake and most readily applied in life. +From either of the two groups of the sciences one may pass on to +research or to technical applications leading directly to the public +service. The biological sciences broaden out through psychology and +sociology to the theory and practice of law, and to political life. They +lead also to medical and agricultural administration. The exact sciences +lead to the administrative work of industrialism, and to general +economics. + +These are the broad, clear lines of the educational necessities of a +modern community, plain enough to see, so that every man who is not +blinded by prejudice and self-interest can see them to-day. We have now +before us a phase of opportunity in educational organisation that will +never recur again. Now that the apostolic succession of the old pedagogy +is broken, and the entire system discredited, it seems incredible that +it can ever again be reconstituted in its old seats upon the old lines. +In these raw, harsh days of boundless opportunity, the opportunity of +the new education, because it is the most fundamental, is assuredly the +greatest of all. + + + + +VIII. WHAT THE WAR IS DOING FOR WOMEN + + +Section 1 + +To discuss the effect of this war upon the relations of men and women to +each other is to enter upon the analysis of a secular process compared +with which even the vast convulsions and destructions of this world +catastrophe appear only as jolts and incidents and temporary +interruptions. There are certain matters that sustain a perennial +development, that are on a scale beyond the dramatic happenings of +history; wars, the movements of peoples and races, economic changes, +such things may accelerate or stimulate or confuse or delay, but they +cannot arrest the endless thinking out, the growth and perfecting of +ideas, upon the fundamental relationships of human Beings. First among +such eternally progressive issues is religion, the relationship of man +to God; next in importance and still more immediate is the matter of +men's relations to women. In such matters each phase is a new phase; +whatever happens, there is no going back and beginning over again. The +social life, like the religious life, must grow and change until the +human story is at an end. + +So that this war involves, in this as in so many matters, no fundamental +set-back, no reversals nor restorations. At the most it will but realise +things already imagined, release things latent. The nineteenth century +was a period of unprecedented modification of social relationships; but +great as these changes were, they were trivial in comparison with the +changes in religious thought and the criticism of moral ideals. Hell was +the basis of religious thinking in A.D. 1800, and the hangman was at the +back of the law; in 1900 both Hell and the hangman seemed on the verge +of extinction. The creative impulse was everywhere replacing fear and +compulsion in human motives. The opening decade of the twentieth century +was a period of unprecedented abundance in everything necessary to human +life, of vast accumulated resources, of leisure and release. It was +also, because of that and because of the changed social and religious +spirit, a period of great social disorganisation and confused impulses. + +We British can already look back to the opening half of 1914 as to an +age gone for ever. Except that we were all alive then and can remember, +it has become now almost as remote, almost as "historical," as the days +before the French Revolution. Our days, our methods and reactions, are +already so different. The greater part of the freedom of movement, the +travel and going to and fro, the leisure, the plenty and carelessness, +that distinguished early twentieth century life from early nineteenth +century life, has disappeared. Most men are under military discipline, +and every household economises. The whole British people has been +brought up against such elementary realities of need, danger, and +restraint as it never realised before. We discover that we had been +living like Olympians in regard to worldly affairs, we had been +irresponsibles, amateurs. Much of that fatness of life, the wrappings +and trimmings of our life, has been stripped off altogether. That has +not altered the bones of life; it has only made them plainer; but it has +astonished us as much as if looking into a looking-glass one suddenly +found oneself a skeleton. Or a diagram. + +What was going on before this war in the relations of men and women is +going on still, with more rapidity perhaps, and certainly with more +thoroughness. The war is accentuating, developing, defining. Previously +our discussions and poses and movements had merely the air of seeking +to accentuate and define. What was apparently being brought about by +discursive efforts, and in a mighty controversy and confusion, is coming +about now as a matter of course. + +Before the war, in the British community as in most civilised +communities, profound changes were already in progress, changes in the +conditions of women's employment, in the legal relations of husband and +wife, in the political status of women, in the status of illegitimate +children, in manners and customs affecting the sexes. Every civilised +community was exhibiting a falling birth-rate and a falling death-rate, +was changing the quality of its housing, and diminishing domestic labour +by organising supplies and developing, appliances. That is to say, that +primary human unit, the home, was altering in shape and size and +frequency and colour and effect. A steadily increasing proportion of +people were living outside the old family home, the home based on +maternity and offspring, altogether. A number of us were doing our best +to apprehend the summation of all this flood of change. We had a vague +idea that women were somehow being "emancipated," but just what this +word meant and what it implied were matters still under exploration. +Then came the war. For a time it seemed as if all this discussion was at +an end, as if the problem itself had vanished. + +But that was only a temporary distraction of attention. The process of +change swirled into new forms that did not fit very easily into the +accepted formulae, swirled into new forms and continued on its way. If +the discussion ceased for a time, the process of change ceased not at +all. Matters have travelled all the farther in the last two years for +travelling mutely. The questions between men and women are far more +important and far more incessant than the questions between Germans and +the rest of mankind. They are coming back now into the foreground of +human thought, but amended and altered. Our object is to state the +general nature of that alteration. It has still been "emancipation," but +very different in quality from the "emancipation" that was demanded so +loudly and incoherently in that ancient world--of 1913! + +Never had the relations of men and women been so uneasy as they were in +the opening days of 1914. The woman's movement battered and banged +through all our minds. It broke out into that tumult in Great Britain +perhaps ten years ago. When Queen Victoria died it was inaudible; search +_Punch_, search the newspapers of that tranquil age. In 1914 it kicked +up so great a dust that the Germans counted on the Suffragettes as one +of the great forces that were to paralyse England in the war. + +The extraordinary thing was that the feminist movement was never clearly +defined during all the time of its maximum violence. We begin to +perceive in the retrospect that the movement was multiple, made up of a +number of very different movements interwoven. It seemed to concentrate +upon the Vote; but it was never possible to find even why women wanted +the vote. Some, for example, alleged that it was because they were like +men, and some because they were entirely different. The broad facts that +one could not mistake were a vast feminine discontent and a vast display +of feminine energy. What had brought that about? + +Two statistical factors are to be considered here. One of these was the +steady decline in the marriage rate, and the increasing proportion of +unmarried women of all classes, but particularly of the more educated +classes, requiring employment. The second was the fall in the +birth-rate, the diminution in size of the average family, the increase +of sterile unions, and the consequent release of a considerable +proportion of the energy of married women. Co-operating with these +factors of release were the economic elaborations that were improving +the appliances of domestic life, replacing the needle by the sewing +machine, the coal fire and lamp by gas and electricity, the dustpan and +brush by the pneumatic carpet cleaner, and taking out of the house into +the shop and factory the baking, much of the cooking, the making of +clothes, the laundry work, and so forth, that had hitherto kept so many +women at home and too busy to think. The care of even such children as +there were was also less arduous; crĆŖche and school held out hands for +them, ready to do even that duty better. + +Side by side with these releases from duty was a rise in the standard of +education that was stimulating the minds and imaginations of woman +beyond a point where the needle--even if there had been any use for the +needle--can be an opiate. Moreover, the world was growing richer, and +growing richer in such a way that not only were leisure and desire +increasing, but, because of increasingly scientific methods of +production, the need in many branches of employment for any but very +keen and able workers was diminishing. So that simultaneously the world, +that vanished world before 1914, was releasing and disengaging enormous +volumes of untrained and unassigned feminine energy and also diminishing +the usefulness of unskilful effort in every department of life. There +was no demand to meet the supply. These were the underlying processes +that produced the feminist outbreak of the decade before the war. + +Now the debate between the sexes is a perennial. It began while we were +still in the trees. It has its stereotyped accusations; its stereotyped +repartees. The Canterbury Pilgrims had little to learn from Christabel +Pankhurst. Man and woman in that duet struggle perpetually for the upper +hand, and the man restrains the woman and the woman resents the man. In +every age some voice has been heard asserting, like Plato, that the +woman is a human being; and the prompt answer has been, "but such a +different human being." Wherever there is a human difference fair play +is difficult, the universal clash of races witnesses to that, and sex is +the greatest of human differences. + +But the general trend of mankind towards intelligence and reason has +been also a trend away from a superstitious treatment of sexual +questions and a recognition, so to speak, that a woman's "a man for a' +that," that she is indeed as entitled to an independent soul and a +separate voice in collective affairs. As brain has counted for more and +more in the human effort and brute strength and the advantage of not +bearing children for less and less, as man has felt a greater need for a +companion and a lesser need for a slave, and as the increase of food and +the protection of the girl from premature child-bearing has approximated +the stature and strength and enterprise of the woman more and more to +that of the man, this secular emancipation of the human female from the +old herd subordination and servitude to the patriarchal male has gone +on. Essentially the secular process has been an equalising process. It +was merely the exaggeration of its sustaining causes during the plenty +and social and intellectual expansion of the last half-century that had +stimulated this secular process to the pitch of crisis. + +There have always been two extreme aspects of the sexual debate. There +have always been the oversexed women who wanted to be treated primarily +as women, and the women who were irritated and bored by being treated +primarily as women. There have always been those women who wanted to +get, like Joan of Arc, into masculine attire, and the school of the +"mystical darlings." There have always been the women who wanted to +share men's work and the women who wanted to "inspire" it--the mates and +the mistresses. Of course, the mass of women lies between these +extremes. But it is possible, nevertheless, to discuss this question as +though it were a conflict of two sharply opposed ideals. It is +convenient to write as if there were just these two sorts of women +because so one can get a sharp definition in the picture. The ordinary +woman fluctuates between the two, turns now to the Western ideal of +citizenship and now to the Eastern of submission. These ideals fight not +only in human society, but in every woman's career. + +Chitra in Rabindranath Tagore's play, for example, tried both aspects of +the woman's life, and Tagore is at one with Plato in preferring the +Rosalind type to the houri. And with him I venture to think is the clear +reason of mankind. The real "emancipation" to which reason and the trend +of things makes is from the yielding to the energetic side of a woman's +disposition, from beauty enthroned for love towards the tall, +weather-hardened woman with a spear, loving her mate as her mate loves +her, and as sexless as a man in all her busy hours. + +But it was not simply the energies that tended towards this particular +type that were set free during the latter half of the nineteenth +century. Every sort of feminine energy was set free. And it was not +merely the self-reliant, independence-seeking women who were +discontented. The ladies who specialised in feminine arts and graces and +mysteries were also dissatisfied. They found they were not important +enough. The former type found itself insufficiently respected, and the +latter type found itself insufficiently adored. The two mingled their +voices in the most confusing way in the literature of the suffrage +movement before the war. The two tendencies mingle confusingly in the +minds of the women that this movement was stirring up to think. The Vote +became the symbol for absolutely contradictory things; there is scarcely +a single argument for it in suffragist literature that cannot be +completely negatived out of suffragist literature. + +For example, compare the writings of Miss Cicely Hamilton, the +distinguished actress, with the publications of the Pankhurst family. +The former expresses a claim that, except for prejudice, a woman is as +capable a citizen as a man and differing only in her sex; the latter +consist of a long rhapsody upon the mystical superiorities of women and +the marvellous benefits mankind will derive from handing things over to +these sacred powers. The former would get rid of sex from most human +affairs; the latter would make what our Georgian grandfathers called +"The Sex" rule the world. + +Or compare, say, the dark coquettings of Miss Elizabeth Robins' "Woman's +Secret" with the virile common sense of that most brilliant young +writer, Miss Rebecca West, in her bitter onslaught on feminine +limitations in the opening chapters of "The World's Worst Failure." The +former is an extravagance of sexual mysticism. Man can never understand +women. Women always hide deep and wonderful things away beyond masculine +discovery. Men do not even suspect. Some day, perhaps--It is someone +peeping from behind a curtain, and inviting men in provocative tones to +come and play catch in a darkened harem. The latter is like some gallant +soldier cursing his silly accoutrements. It is a hearty outbreak against +that apparent necessity for elegance and sexual specialisation that +undercuts so much feminine achievement, that reduces so much feminine +art and writing to vapidity, and holds back women from the face of +danger and brave and horrible deaths. It is West to Miss Robins' East. +And yet I believe I am right in saying that all these four women +writers have jostled one another upon suffrage platforms, and that they +all suffered blows and injuries in the same cause, during the various +riots and conflicts that occurred in London in the course of the great +agitation. It was only when the agitation of the Pankhurst family, aided +by Miss Robins' remarkable book "Where are you going to ...?" took a +form that threatened to impose the most extraordinary restrictions on +the free movements of women, and to establish a sort of universal purdah +of hostility and suspicion against those degraded creatures, those +stealers and destroyers of women, "the men," that the British feminist +movement displayed any tendency to dissociate into its opposed and +divergent strands. + +It is a little detail, but a very significant one in this connection, +that the committee that organised the various great suffrage processions +in London were torn by dispute about the dresses of the processionists. +It was urged that a "masculine style of costume" discredited the +movement, and women were urged to dress with a maximum of feminine +charm. Many women obtained finery they could ill afford, to take part in +these demonstrations, and minced their steps as womanly as possible to +freedom.... + +It would be easy to overstate the efflorescence of distinctively +feminine emotion, dressiness, mysticism, and vanity upon the suffrage +movement. Those things showed for anyone to see. This was the froth of +the whirlpool. What did not show was the tremendous development of the +sense of solidarity among women. Everybody knew that women had been +hitting policemen at Westminster; it was not nearly so showy a fact that +women of title, working women, domestic servants, tradesmen's wives, +professional workers, had all been meeting together and working together +in a common cause, working with an unprecedented capacity and an +unprecedented disregard of social barriers. One noted the nonsensical +by-play of the movement; the way in which women were accustoming +themselves to higher standards of achievement was not so immediately +noticeable. That a small number of women were apparently bent on +rendering the Vote impossible by a campaign of violence and malicious +mischief very completely masked the fact that a very great number of +girls and young women no longer considered it seemly to hang about at +home trying by a few crude inducements to tempt men to marry them, but +were setting out very seriously and capably to master the young man's +way of finding a place for oneself in the world. Beneath the dust and +noise realities were coming about that the dust and noise entirely +failed to represent. We know that some women were shrieking for the +Vote; we did not realise that a generation of women was qualifying for +it. + +The war came, the jolt of an earthquake, to throw things into their +proper relationships. + +The immediate result was the disappearance of the militant suffragists +from public view for a time, into which the noisier section hastened to +emerge in full scream upon the congenial topic of War Babies. "Men," +those dreadful creatures, were being camped and quartered all over the +country. It followed, from all the social principles known to Mrs. and +Miss Pankhurst, that it was necessary to provide for an enormous number +of War Babies. Subscriptions were invited. Statisticians are still +looking rather perplexedly for those War Babies; the illegitimate +birth-rate has fallen, and what has become of the subscriptions I do not +know. _The Suffragette_ rechristened itself _Britannia_, dropped the War +Baby agitation, and, after an interlude of self-control, broke out into +denunciations, first of this public servant and then of that, as +traitors and German spies. Finally, it discovered a mare's nest in the +case of Sir Edward Grey that led to its suppression, and the last I +have from this misleading and unrepresentative feminist faction is the +periodic appearance of a little ill-printed sheet of abuse about the +chief Foreign Office people, resembling in manner and appearance the +sort of denunciatory letter, at once suggestive and evasive, that might +be written by the curate's discharged cook. And with that the aggressive +section of the suffragist movement seems to have petered out, leaving +the broad reality of feminine emancipation to go on in a beneficent +silence. + +There can be no question that the behaviour of the great mass of women +in Great Britain has not simply exceeded expectation but hope. And there +can be as little doubt that the suffrage question, in spite of the +self-advertising violence of its extravagant section, did contribute +very materially to build up the confidence, the willingness to undertake +responsibility and face hardship, that has been so abundantly displayed +by every class of woman. It is not simply that there has been enough +women and to spare for hospital work and every sort of relief and +charitable service; that sort of thing has been done before, that was in +the tradition of womanhood. It is that at every sort of occupation, +clerking, shop-keeping, railway work, automobile driving, agricultural +work, police work, they have been found efficient beyond precedent and +intelligent beyond precedent. And in the munition factories, in the +handling of heavy and often difficult machinery, and in adaptability and +inventiveness and enthusiasm and steadfastness their achievement has +been astonishing. More particularly in relation to intricate mechanical +work is their record remarkable and unexpected. + +There is scarcely a point where women, having been given a chance, have +not more than made good. They have revolutionised the estimate of their +economic importance, and it is scarcely too much to say that when, in +the long run, the military strength of the Allies bears down the +strength of Germany, it will be this superiority of our women which +enables us to pit a woman at--the censorship will object to exact +geography upon this point--against a man at Essen which has tipped the +balance of this war. + +Those women have won the vote. Not the most frantic outbursts of +militancy after this war can prevent them getting it. The girls who have +faced death and wounds so gallantly in our cordite factories--there is a +not inconsiderable list of dead and wounded from those places--have +killed for ever the poor argument that women should not vote because +they had no military value. Indeed, they have killed every argument +against their subjection. And while they do these things, that paragon +of the virtues of the old type, that miracle of domestic obedience, the +German _haus-frau_, the faithful Gretchen, riots for butter. + +And as I have before remarked, the Germans counted on the suffragettes +as one of the great forces that were to paralyse England in this war. + +It is not simply that the British women have so bountifully produced +intelligence and industry; that does not begin their record. They have +been willing to go dowdy. The mass of women in Great Britain are wearing +the clothes of 1914. In 1913 every girl and woman one saw in the streets +of London had an air of doing her best to keep in the fashion. Now they +are for the most part as carelessly dressed as a busy business man or a +clever young student might have been. They are none the less pretty for +that, and far more beautiful. But the fashions have floated away to +absurdity. Every now and then through the austere bustle of London in +war time drifts a last practitioner of the "eternal feminine"--with the +air of a foreign visitor, with the air of devotion to some peculiar +cult. She has very high-heeled boots; she shows a leg, she has a short +skirt with a peculiar hang, due no doubt to mysteries about the waist; +she wears a comic little hat over one brow; there is something of +Columbine about her, something of the Watteau shepherdess, something of +a vivandiere, something of every age but the present age. Her face, +subject to the strange dictates of the mode, is smooth like the back of +a spoon, with small features and little whisker-like curls before the +ears such as butcher-boys used to wear half a century ago. Even so, she +dare not do this thing alone. Something in khaki is with her, to justify +her. You are to understand that this strange rig is for seeing him off +or giving him a good time during his leave. Sometimes she is quite +elderly, sometimes nothing khaki is to be got, and the pretence that +this is desired of her wears thin. Still, the type will out. + +She does not pass with impunity, the last exponent of true feminine +charm. The vulgar, the street boy, have evolved one of those strange +sayings that have the air of being fragments from some lost and +forgotten chant: + + "She's the Army Contractor's Only Daughter, + Spending it now." + +Or simply, "Spending it now." + +She does not pass with impunity, but she passes. She makes her stilted +passage across the arena upon which the new womanhood of Western Europe +shows its worth. It is an exit. There is likely to be something like a +truce in the fashions throughout Europe for some years. It is in America +if anywhere that the holy fires of smartness and the fashion will be +kept alive.... + +And so we come to prophecy. + +I do not believe that this invasion by women of a hundred employments +hitherto closed to them is a temporary arrangement that will be reversed +after the war. It is a thing that was going on, very slowly, it is true, +and against much prejudice and opposition, before the war, but it was +going on; it is in the nature of things. These women no doubt enter +these employments as substitutes, but not usually as inferior +substitutes; in quite a number of cases they are as good as men, and in +many they are not underselling, they are drawing men's pay. What reason +is there to suppose that they will relapse into a state of superfluous +energy after the war? The war has merely brought about, with the +rapidity of a landslide, a state of affairs for which the world was +ripe. The world after the war will have to adjust itself to this +extension of women's employment, and to this increase in the proportion +of self-respecting, self-supporting women. + +Contributing very largely to the establishment of this greatly enlarged +class of independent women will be the great shortage for the next +decade of marriageable men, due to the killing and disablement of the +war. The women of the next decades will not only be able to get along +economically without marriage, but they will find it much more difficult +to marry. It will also probably be a period in which a rise in prices +may, as it usually does, precede the compensating rise in wages. It may +be that for some years it will be more difficult to maintain a family. +This will be a third factor in the fixation of this class of bachelor +women. + +Various writers, brooding over the coming shortage of men, have jumped +to the conclusion that polygamy is among the probabilities of the near +future. They write in terms of real or affected alarm for which there is +no justification; they wallow in visions of Germany "legalising" +polygamy, and see Berlin seeking recuperation, in man power by +converting herself into another Salt Lake City. But I do not think that +Germany, in the face of the economic ring that the Allies will certainly +draw about her, is likely to desire a very great increase in population +for the next few years; I do not see any great possibility of a +specially rich class capable of maintaining numerous wives being +sustained by the impoverished and indebted world of Europe, nor the +sources from which a supply of women preferring to become constituents +in a polygamous constellation rather than self-supporting freewomen is +to be derived. + +The temperamental dislike of intelligent women to polygamy is at least +as strong as a man's objection to polyandry. Polygamy, open or hidden, +flourishes widely only where there are women to be bought. Moreover, +there are considerable obstacles in religion and custom to be overcome +by the innovating polygamist--even in Germany. It might mean a breach of +the present good relations between Germany and the Vatican. The relative +inferiority of the tradition of the German to that of most other +European women, its relative disposition towards feminine servitude, is +no doubt a consideration on the other scale of this discussion, but I do +not think it is one heavy enough to tilt back the beam. + +So far from a great number of men becoming polygamists, I think it would +be possible to show cause for supposing that an increasing proportion +will cease even to be monogamists. The romantic excitements of the war +have produced a temporary rise in the British marriage rate; but before +the war it had been falling slowly and the average age at marriage had +been rising, and it is quite possible that this process will be +presently resumed and, as a new generation grows up to restore the +balance of the sexes, accelerated. + +We conclude, therefore, that this increase in the class of economically +independent bachelor women that is now taking place is a permanent +increase. It is probably being reinforced by a considerable number of +war widows who will not remarry. We have to consider in what directions +this mass of capable, intelligent, energetic, undomesticated freewomen +is likely to develop, what its effect will be on social usage, and +particularly how it will react upon the lives of the married women about +them. Because, as we have already pointed out in this chapter, the +release of feminine energy upon which the feminist problem depends is +twofold, being due not only to the increased unmarriedness of women +through the disproportion of the sexes and the rise in the age of +marriage, but also to the decreased absorption of married women in +domestic duties. A woman, from the point of view of this discussion, is +not "married and done for," as she used to be. She is not so +extensively and completely married. Her large and increasing leisure +remains in the problem. + +The influence of this coming body of freewomen upon the general social +atmosphere will be, I venture to think, liberalising and relaxing in +certain directions and very bracing in others. This new type of women +will want to go about freely without an escort, to be free to travel +alone, take rooms in hotels, sit in restaurants, and so forth. Now, as +the women of the past decade showed, there are for a woman two quite +antagonistic ways of going about alone. Nothing showed the duplicate +nature of the suffragist movement more than the great variety of +deportment of women in the London streets during that time. There were +types that dressed neatly and quietly and went upon their business with +intent and preoccupied faces. Their intention was to mingle as +unobtrusively as possible into the stream of business, to be as far as +possible for the ordinary purposes of traffic "men in a world of men." A +man could speak to such women as he spoke to another man, without +suspicion, could, for example, ask his way and be directed without being +charged with annoying or accosting a delicate female. + +At the other extreme there was a type of young woman who came into the +streets like something precious that has got loose. It dressed itself +as feminine loveliness; it carried sex like a banner and like a +challenge. Its mind was fully prepared by the Pankhurst literature for +insult. It swept past distressed manhood imputing motives. It was pure +hareem, and the perplexed masculine intelligence could never determine +whether it was out for a demonstration or whether it was out for a +spree. Its motives in thus marching across the path of feminine +emancipation were probably more complicated and confused than that +alternative suggests, and sheer vanity abounded in the mixture. But +undoubtedly that extremity is the vanishing extremity of these things. +The new freewoman is going to be a grave and capable being, soberly +dressed, and imposing her own decency and neutrality of behaviour upon +the men she meets. And along the line of sober costume and simple and +restrained behaviour that the freewoman is marking out, the married +woman will also escape to new measures of freedom. + +I do not believe that among women of the same social origins and the +same educational quality there can exist side by side entirely distinct +schools of costume, deportment, and behaviour based on entirely +divergent views of life. I do not think that men can be trained to +differentiate between different sorts of women, sorts of women they will +often be meeting simultaneously, and to treat this one with frankness +and fellowship and that one with awe passion and romantic old-world +gallantry. All sorts of intermediate types--the majority of women will +be intermediate types--will complicate the problem. This conflict of the +citizen-woman ideal with the loveliness-woman ideal, which was breaking +out very plainly in the British suffrage movement before the war, will +certainly return after the war, and I have little doubt which way the +issue will fall. The human being is going to carry it against the sexual +being. The struggle is going to be extensive and various and prolonged, +but in the serious years ahead the serious type must, I feel, win. The +plain, well-made dress will oust the ribbon and the decolletage. + +In every way the war is accelerating the emancipation of women from +sexual specialisation. It is facilitating their economic emancipation. +It is liberating types that will inevitably destroy both the "atmosphere +of gallantry" which is such a bar to friendliness between people of +opposite sexes and that atmosphere of hostile distrust which is its +counterpart in the minds of the over-sexual suffragettes. It is +arresting the change of fashions and simplifying manners. + +In another way also it is working to the same end. That fall in the +birth-rate which has been so marked a feature in the social development +of all modern states has become much more perceptible since the war +began to tell upon domestic comfort. There is a full-cradle agitation +going on in Germany to check this decline; German mothers are being +urged not to leave the Crown Prince of 1930 or 1940 without the +necessary material for glory at some fresh Battle of Verdun. I doubt the +zeal of their response. But everywhere the war signifies economic stress +which must necessarily continue long after the war is over, and in the +present state of knowledge that stress means fewer children. The family, +already light, will grow lighter. This means that marriage, although it +may be by no means less emotionally sacred, will become a lighter thing. + +Once, to be married was a woman's whole career. Household cares, a dozen +children, and she was consumed. All her romances ended in marriage. All +a decent man's romance ended there, too. She proliferated and he toiled, +and when the married couple had brought up some of their children and +buried the others, and blessed their first grandchildren, life was +over. + +Now, to be married is an incident in a woman's career, as in a man's. +There is not the same necessity of that household, not the same close +tie; the married woman remains partially a freewoman and assimilates +herself to the freewoman. There is an increasing disposition to group +solitary children and to delegate their care to specially qualified +people, and this is likely to increase, because the high earning power +of young women will incline them to entrust their children to others, +and because a shortage of men and an excess of widows will supply other +women willing to undertake that care. The more foolish women will take +these releases as a release into levity, but the common sense of the +newer types of women will come to the help of men in recognising the +intolerable nuisance of this prolongation of flirting and charming on +the part of people who have had what should be a satisfying love. + +Nor will there be much wealth or superfluity to make levity possible and +desirable. Winsome and weak womanhood will be told bluntly by men and +women alike that it is a bore. The frou-frou of skirts, the delicate +mysteries of the toilette, will cease to thrill any but the very young +men. Marriage, deprived of its bonds of material necessity, will demand +a closer and closer companionship as its justification and excuse. A +marriage that does not ripen into a close personal friendship between +two equals will be regarded with increasing definiteness as an +unsatisfactory marriage. + +These things are not stated here as being desirable or undesirable. This +is merely an attempt to estimate the drift and tendency of the time as +it has been accentuated by the war. It works out to the realisation that +marriage is likely to count for less and less as a state and for more +and more as a personal relationship. It is likely to be an affair of +diminishing public and increasing private importance. People who marry +are likely to remain, so far as practical ends go, more detached and +separable. The essential link will be the love and affection and not the +home. + +With that go certain logical consequences. The first is that the +circumstances of the unmarried mother will resemble more than they have +hitherto done those of many married mothers; the harsh lines once drawn +between them will dissolve. This will fall in with the long manifest +tendency in modern society to lighten the disadvantages (in the case of +legacy duties, for example) and stigma laid upon illegitimate children. +And a type of marriage where personal compatibility has come to be +esteemed the fundamental thing will be altogether more amenable to +divorce than the old union which was based upon the kitchen and the +nursery, and the absence of any care, education, or security for +children beyond the range of the parental household. Marriage will not +only be lighter, but more dissoluble. + +To summarise all that has gone before, this war is accelerating rather +than deflecting the stream of tendency, and is bringing us rapidly to a +state of affairs in which women will be much more definitely independent +of their sexual status, much less hampered in their self-development, +and much more nearly equal to men than has ever been known before in the +whole history of mankind.... + + + + +IX. THE NEW MAP OF EUROPE + + +Section 1 + +In this chapter it is proposed to embark upon what may seem now, with +the Great War still in progress and still undecided, the most hopeless +of all prophetic adventures. This is to speculate upon the redrawing of +the map of Europe after the war. But because the detailed happenings and +exact circumstances of the ending of the war are uncertain, they need +not alter the inevitable broad conclusion. I have already discussed that +conclusion, and pointed out that the war has become essentially a war of +mutual exhaustion. This does not mean, as some hasty readers may assume, +that I foretell a "draw." We may be all white and staggering, but +Germany is, I believe, fated to go down first. She will make the first +advances towards peace; she will ultimately admit defeat. + +But I do want to insist that by that time every belligerent, and not +simply Germany, will be exhausted to a pitch of extreme reasonableness. +There will be no power left as Germany was left in 1871, in a state of +"freshness" and a dictatorial attitude. That is to say they will all be +gravitating, not to triumphs, but to such a settlement as seems to +promise the maximum of equilibrium in the future. + +If towards the end of the war the United States should decide, after +all, to abandon their present attitude of superior comment and throw +their weight in favour of such a settlement as would make the +recrudescence of militarism impossible, the general exhaustion may give +America a relative importance far beyond any influence she could exert +at the present time. In the end, America may have the power to insist +upon almost vital conditions in the settlement; though whether she will +have the imaginative force and will is, of course, quite another +question. + +And before I go on to speculate about the actual settlement, there are +one or two generalisations that it may be interesting to try over. Law +is a thin wash that we paint over the firm outlines of reality, and the +treaties and agreements of emperors and kings and statesmen have little +of the permanence of certain more fundamental human realities. I was +looking the other day at Sir Mark Sykes' "The Caliph's Inheritance," +which contains a series of coloured maps of the political boundaries of +south-western Asia for the last three thousand years. The shapes and +colours come and go--now it is Persia, now it is Macedonia, now the +Eastern Empire, now the Arab, now the Turk who is ascendant. The colours +change as if they were in a kaleidoscope; they advance, recede, split, +vanish. But through all that time there exists obstinately an Armenia, +an essential Persia, an Arabia; they, too, advance or recede a little. I +do not claim that they are eternal things, but they are far more +permanent things than any rulers or empires; they are rooted to the +ground by a peasantry, by a physical and temperamental attitude. Apart +from political maps of mankind, there are natural maps of mankind. I +find it, too, in Europe; the monarchs splash the water and break up the +mirror in endless strange shapes; nevertheless, always it is tending +back to its enduring forms; always it is gravitating back to a Spain, to +a Gaul, to an Italy, to a Serbo-Croatia, to a Bulgaria, to a Germany, to +a Poland. Poland and Armenia and Egypt destroyed, subjugated, +invincible, I would take as typical of what I mean by the natural map of +mankind. + +Let me repeat again that I do not assert there is an eternal map. It +does change; there have been times--the European settlement of America +and Siberia, for example, the Arabic sweep across North Africa, the +invasion of Britain by the Low German peoples--when it has changed very +considerably in a century or so; but at its swiftest it still takes +generations to change. The gentlemen who used to sit in conferences and +diets, and divide up the world ever and again before the nineteenth +century, never realised this. It is only within the last hundred years +that mankind has begun to grasp the fact that one of the first laws of +political stability is to draw your political boundaries along the lines +of the natural map of mankind. + +Now the nineteenth century phrased this conception by talking about the +"principle of nationality." Such interesting survivals of the nineteenth +century as Mr. C.R. Buxton still talk of settling human affairs by that +"principle." But unhappily for him the world is not so simply divided. +There are tribal regions with no national sense. There are extensive +regions of the earth's surface where the population is not homogeneous, +where people of different languages or different incompatible creeds +live village against village, a kind of human emulsion, incapable of +any true mixture or unity. Consider, for example, Central Africa, +Tyrone, Albania, Bombay, Constantinople or Transylvania. Here are +regions and cities with either no nationality or with as much +nationality as a patchwork quilt has colour.... + +Now so far as the homogeneous regions of the world go, I am quite +prepared to sustain the thesis that they can only be tranquil, they can +only develop their possibilities freely and be harmless to their +neighbours, when they are governed by local men, by men of the local +race, religion and tradition, and with a form of government that, unlike +a monarchy or a plutocracy, does not crystallise commercial or national +ambition. So far I go with those who would appeal to the "principle of +nationality." + +But I would stipulate, further, that it would enormously increase the +stability of the arrangement if such "nations" could be grouped together +into "United States" wherever there were possibilities of inter-state +rivalries and commercial friction. Where, however, one deals with a +region of mixed nationality, there is need of a subtler system of +adjustments. Such a system has already been worked out in the case of +Switzerland, where we have the community not in countries but cantons, +each with its own religion, its culture and self-government, and all at +peace under a polyglot and impartial common government. It is as plain +as daylight to anyone who is not blinded by patriotic or private +interests that such a country as Albania, which is mono-lingual indeed, +but hopelessly divided religiously, will never be tranquil, never +contented, unless it is under a cantonal system, and that the only +solution of the Irish difficulty along the belt between Ulster and +Catholic Ireland lies in the same arrangement. + +Then; thirdly, there are the regions and cities possessing no +nationality, such as Constantinople or Bombay, which manifestly +appertain not to one nation but many; the former to all the Black Sea +nations, the latter to all India. Disregarding ambitions and traditions, +it is fairly obvious that such international places would be best under +the joint control of, and form a basis of union between, all the peoples +affected. + +Now it is suggested here that upon these threefold lines it is possible +to work out a map of the world of maximum contentment and stability, and +that there will be a gravitation of all other arrangements, all empires +and leagues and what not, towards this rational and natural map of +mankind. This does not imply that that map will ultimately assert +itself, but that it will always be tending to assert itself. It will +obsess ostensible politics. + +I do not pretend to know with any degree of certainty what peculiar +forms of muddle and aggression may not record themselves upon the maps +of 2200; I do not certainly know whether mankind will be better off or +worse off then, more or less civilised; but I do know, with a very +considerable degree of certainty, that in A.D. 2200 there will still be +a France, an Ireland, a Germany, a Jugo-Slav region, a Constantinople, a +Rajputana, and a Bengal. I do not mean that these are absolutely fixed +things; they may have receded or expanded. But these are the more +permanent things; these are the field, the groundwork, the basic +reality; these are fundamental forces over which play the ambitions, +treacheries, delusions, traditions, tyrannies of international politics. +All boundaries will tend to reveal these fundamental forms as all +clothing tends to reveal the body. You may hide the waist; you will only +reveal the shoulders the more. You may mask, you may muffle the body; it +is still alive inside, and the ultimate determining thing. + +And, having premised this much, it is possible to take up the problem of +the peace of 1917 or 1918, or whenever it is to be, with some sense of +its limitations and superficiality. + + +Section 2 + +We have already hazarded the prophecy that after a long war of general +exhaustion Germany will be the first to realise defeat. This does not +mean that she will surrender unconditionally, but that she will be +reduced to bargaining to see how much she must surrender, and what she +may hold. It is my impression that she will be deserted by Bulgaria, and +that Turkey will be out of the fighting before the end. But these are +chancy matters. Against Germany there will certainly be the three great +allies, France, Russia and Britain, and almost certainly Japan will be +with them. The four will probably have got to a very complete and +detailed understanding among themselves. Italy--in, I fear, a slightly +detached spirit--will sit at the board. Hungary will be present, +sitting, so to speak, amidst the decayed remains of Austria. Roumania, a +little out of breath through hurrying at the last, may be present as the +latest ally of Italy. The European neutrals will be at least present in +spirit; their desires will be acutely felt; but it is doubtful if the +United States will count for all that they might in the decision. Such +weight as America chooses to exercise--would that she would choose to +exercise more!--will probably be on the side of the rational and natural +settlement of the world. + +Now the most important thing of all at this settlement will be the +temper and nature of the Germany with which the Allies will be dealing. + +Let us not be blinded by the passions of war into confusing a people +with its government and the artificial Kultur of a brief century. There +is a Germany, great and civilised, a decent and admirable people, masked +by Imperialism, blinded by the vanity of the easy victories of half a +century ago, wrapped in illusion. How far will she be chastened and +disillusioned by the end of this war? + +The terms of peace depend enormously upon the answer to that question. +If we take the extremest possibility, and suppose a revolution in +Germany or in South Germany, and the replacement of the Hohenzollerns in +all or part of Germany by a Republic, then I am convinced that for +republican Germany there would be not simply forgiveness, but a warm +welcome back to the comity of nations. The French, British, Belgians and +Italians, and every civilised force in Russia would tumble over one +another in their eager greeting of this return to sanity. + +If we suppose a less extreme but more possible revolution, taking the +form of an inquiry into the sanity of the Kaiser and his eldest son, and +the establishment of constitutional safeguards for the future, that also +would bring about an extraordinary modification of the resolution of the +Pledged Allies. But no ending to this war, no sort of settlement, will +destroy the antipathy of the civilised peoples for the violent, +pretentious, sentimental and cowardly imperialism that has so far +dominated Germany. All Europe outside Germany now hates and dreads the +Hohenzollerns. No treaty of peace can end that hate, and so long as +Germany sees fit to identify herself with Hohenzollern dreams of empire +and a warfare of massacre and assassination, there must be war +henceforth, open, or but thinly masked, against Germany. It will be but +the elementary common sense of the situation for all the Allies to plan +tariffs, exclusions, special laws against German shipping and +shareholders and immigrants for so long a period as every German remains +a potential servant of that system. + +Whatever Germany may think of the Hohenzollerns, the world outside +Germany regards them as the embodiment of homicidal nationalism. And +the settlement of Europe after the war, if it is to be a settlement with +the Hohenzollerns and not with the German people, must include the +virtual disarming of those robber murderers against any renewal of their +attack. It would be the most obvious folly to stop anywhere short of +that. With Germany we would welcome peace to-morrow; we would welcome +her shipping on the seas and her flag about the world; against the +Hohenzollerns it must obviously be war to the bitter end. + +But the ultimate of all sane European policy, as distinguished from +oligarchic and dynastic foolery, is the establishment of the natural map +of Europe. There exists no school of thought that can claim a moment's +consideration among the Allies which aims at the disintegration of the +essential Germany or the subjugation of any Germans to an alien rule. +Nor does anyone grudge Germany wealth, trade, shipping, or anything else +that goes with the politician's phrase of "legitimate expansion" for its +own sake. If we do now set our minds to deprive Germany of these things +in their fullness, it is in exactly the same spirit as that in which one +might remove that legitimate and peaceful implement, a bread knife, +from the hand of a homicidal maniac. Let but Germany cure herself of her +Hohenzollern taint, and the world will grudge her wealth and economic +pre-eminence as little as it grudges wealth and economic pre-eminence to +the United States. + +Now the probabilities of a German revolution open questions too complex +and subtle for our present speculation. I would merely remark in passing +that in Great Britain at least those possibilities seem to me to be +enormously underrated. For our present purpose it will be most +convenient to indicate a sort of maximum and minimum, depending upon the +decision of Germany to be entirely Hohenzollern or wholly or in part +European. But in either case we are going to assume that it is Germany +which has been most exhausted by the war, and which is seeking peace +from the Allies, who have also, we will assume, excellent internal +reasons for desiring it. + +With the Hohenzollerns it is mere nonsense to dream of any enduring +peace, but whether we are making a lasting and friendly peace with +Germany or merely a sort of truce of military operations that will be no +truce in the economic war against Hohenzollern resources, the same +essential idea will, I think, guide all the peace-desiring Powers. They +will try to draw the boundaries as near as they can to those of the +natural map of mankind. + +Then, writing as an Englishman, my first thought of the European map is +naturally of Belgium. Only absolute smashing defeat could force either +Britain or France to consent to anything short of the complete +restoration of Belgium. Rather than give that consent they will both +carry the war to at present undreamt-of extremities. Belgium must be +restored; her neutrality must be replaced by a defensive alliance with +her two Western Allies; and if the world has still to reckon with +Hohenzollerns, then her frontier must be thrust forward into the +adjacent French-speaking country so as to minimise the chances of any +second surprise. + +It is manifest that every frontier that gives upon the Hohenzollerns +must henceforth be entrenched line behind line, and held permanently by +a garrison ready for any treachery, and it becomes of primary importance +that the Franco-Belgian line should be as short and strong as possible. +Aix, which Germany has made a mere jumping-off place for aggressions, +should clearly be held by Belgium against a Hohenzollern Empire, and the +fortified and fiscal frontier would run from it southward to include the +Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, with its French sympathies and traditions, +in the permanent alliance. It is quite impossible to leave this +ambiguous territory as it was before the war, with its railway in German +hands and its postal and telegraphic service (since 1913) under +Hohenzollern control. It is quite impossible to hand over this strongly +anti-Prussian population to Hohenzollern masters. + +But an Englishman must needs write with diffidence upon this question of +the Western boundary. It is clear that all the boundaries of 1914 from +Aix to Bale are a part of ancient history. No "as you were" is possible +there. And it is not the business of anyone in Great Britain to redraw +them. That task on our side lies between France and Belgium. The +business of Great Britain in the matter is as plain as daylight. It is +to support to her last man and her last ounce of gold those new +boundaries her allies consider essential to their comfort and security. + +But I do not see how France, unless she is really convinced she is +beaten, can content herself with anything less than a strong +Franco-Belgian frontier from Aix, that will take in at least Metz and +Saarburg. She knows best the psychology of the lost provinces, and what +amount of annexation will spell weakness or strength. If she demands +all Alsace-Lorraine back from the Hohenzollerns, British opinion is +resolved to support her, and to go through with this struggle until she +gets it. To guess at the direction of the new line is not to express a +British opinion, but to speculate upon the opinion of France. After the +experience of Luxembourg and Belgium no one now dreams of a neutralised +buffer State. What does not become French or Belgian of the Rhineland +will remain German--for ever. That is perhaps conceivable, for example, +of Strassburg and the low-lying parts of Alsace. I do not know enough to +do more than guess. + +It is conceivable, but I do not think that it is probable. I think the +probability lies in the other direction. This war of exhaustion may be +going on for a year or so more, but the end will be the thrusting in of +the too extended German lines. The longer and bloodier the job is, the +grimmer will be the determination of the Pledged Allies to exact a +recompense. If the Germans offer peace while they still hold some part +of Belgium, there will be dealings. If they wait until the French are in +the Palatinate, then I doubt if the French will consent to go again. +There will be no possible advantage to Germany in a war of resistance +once the scale of her fortunes begins to sink.... + +It is when we turn to the east of Germany that the map-drawing becomes +really animated. Here is the region of great decisions. The natural map +shows a line of obstinately non-German communities, stretching nearly +from the Baltic to the Adriatic. There are Poland, Bohemia (with her +kindred Slovaks), the Magyars, and the Jugo-Serbs. In a second line come +the Great and Little Russians, the Roumanians, and the Bulgarians. And +here both Great Britain and France must defer to the wishes of their two +allies, Russia and Italy. Neither of these countries has expressed +inflexible intentions, and the situation has none of the inevitable +quality of the Western line. Except for the Tsar's promise of autonomy +to Poland, nothing has been promised. On the Western line there are only +two possibilities that I can see: the Aix-Bale boundary, or the sickness +and death of France. On the Eastern line nothing is fated. There seems +to be enormous scope for bargaining over all this field, and here it is +that the chances of compensations and consolations for Germany are to be +found. + +Let us first consider the case for Poland. The way to a reunited Poland +seems to me a particularly difficult one. The perplexity arises out of +the crime of the original partition; whichever side emerges with an +effect of victory must needs give up territory if an autonomous Poland +is to reappear. A victorious Germany would probably reconstitute the +Duchy of Warsaw under a German prince; an entirely victorious Russia +would probably rejoin Posen to Russian Poland and the Polish fragment of +Galicia, and create a dependent Polish kingdom under the Tsar. Neither +project would be received with unstinted delight by the Poles, but +either would probably be acceptable to a certain section of them. +Disregarding the dim feelings of the peasantry, Austrian Poland would +probably be the most willing to retain a connection with its old rulers. +The Habsburgs have least estranged the Poles. The Cracow district is the +only section of Poland which has been at all reconciled to foreign +control; it is the most autonomous and contented of the fragments. + +It is doubtful how far national unanimity is any longer possible between +the three Polish fragments. Like most English writers, I receive a +considerable amount of printed matter from various schools of Polish +patriotism, and wide divergences of spirit and intention appear. A weak, +divided and politically isolated Poland of twelve or fifteen million +people, under some puppet adventurer king set up between the +Hohenzollerns and the Tsardom, does not promise much happiness for the +Poles or much security for the peace of the world. An entirely +independent Poland will be a feverish field of international +intrigue--intrigue to which the fatal Polish temperament lends itself +all too readily; it may be a battlefield again within five-and-twenty +years. I think, if I were a patriotic Pole, I should determine to be a +Slav at any cost, and make the best of Russia; ally myself with all her +liberal tendencies, and rise or fall with her. And I should do my utmost +in a field where at present too little has been done to establish +understandings and lay the foundations of a future alliance with the +Czech-Slovak community to the south. But, then, I am not a Pole, but a +Western European with a strong liking for the Russians. I am democratic +and scientific, and the Poles I have met are Catholic and aristocratic +and romantic, and all sorts of difficult things that must make +co-operation with them on the part of Russians, Ruthenian peasants, +Czechs, and, indeed, other Poles, slow and insecure. I doubt if either +Germany or Russia wants to incorporate more Poles--Russia more +particularly, which has all Siberia over which to breed Russians--and I +am inclined to think that there is a probability that the end of this +war may find Poland still divided, and with boundary lines running +across her not materially different from those of 1914. That is, I +think, an undesirable probability, but until the Polish mind qualifies +its desire for absolute independence with a determination to orient +itself definitely to some larger political mass, it remains one that has +to be considered. + +But the future of Poland is not really separate from that of the +Austro-Hungarian monarchy, nor is that again to be dealt with apart from +that of the Balkans. From Danzig to the Morea there runs across Europe a +series of distinctive peoples, each too intensely different and national +to be absorbed and assimilated by either of their greater neighbours, +Germany or Russia, and each relatively too small to stand securely +alone. None have shaken themselves free from monarchical traditions; +each may become an easy prey to dynastic follies and the aggressive +obsessions of diplomacy. Centuries of bloody rearrangement may lie +before this East Central belt of Europe. + +To the liberal idealist the thought of a possible Swiss system or group +of Swiss systems comes readily to mind. One thinks of a grouping of +groups of Republics, building up a United States of Eastern Europe. But +neither Hohenzollerns nor Tsar would welcome that. The arm of democratic +France is not long enough to reach to help forward such a development, +and Great Britain is never sure whether she is a "Crowned Republic" or a +Germanic monarchy. Hitherto in the Balkans she has lent her influence +chiefly to setting up those treacherous little German kings who have +rewarded her so ill. The national monarchs of Serbia and Montenegro have +alone kept faith with civilisation. I doubt, however, if Great Britain +will go on with that dynastic policy. She herself is upon the eve of +profound changes of spirit and internal organisation. But whenever one +thinks of the possibilities of Republican development in Europe as an +outcome of this war, it is to realise the disastrous indifference of +America to the essentials of the European situation. The United States +of America could exert an enormous influence at the close of the war in +the direction of a liberal settlement and of liberal institutions.... +They will, I fear, do nothing of the sort. + +It is here that the possibility of some internal change in Germany +becomes of such supreme importance. The Hohenzollern Imperialism towers +like the black threat of a new Caesarism over all the world. It may +tower for some centuries; it may vanish to-morrow. A German revolution +may destroy it; a small group of lunacy commissioners may fold it up and +put it away. But should it go, it would at least take with it nearly +every crown between Hamburg and Constantinople. The German kings would +vanish like a wisp of smoke. Suppose a German revolution and a +correlated step forward towards liberal institutions on the part of +Russia, then the whole stage of Eastern Europe would clear as fever goes +out of a man. This age of international elbowing and jostling, of +intrigue and diplomacy, of wars, massacres, deportations _en masse_, and +the continual fluctuation of irrational boundaries would come to an end +forthwith. + +So sweeping a change is the extreme possibility. The probability is of +something less lucid and more prosaic; of a discussion of diplomatists; +of patched arrangements. But even under these circumstances the whole +Eastern European situation is so fluid and little controlled by any +plain necessity, that there will be enormous scope for any individual +statesman of imagination and force of will. + +There have recently been revelations, more or less trustworthy, of +German schemes for a rearrangement of Eastern Europe. They implied a +German victory. Bohemia, Poland, Galicia and Ruthenia were to make a +Habsburg-ruled State from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The Jugo-Slav and +the Magyar were to be linked (uneasy bedfellows) into a second kingdom, +also Habsburg ruled; Austria was to come into the German Empire as a +third Habsburg dukedom or kingdom; Roumania, Bulgaria and Greece were to +continue as independent Powers, German ruled. Recently German proposals +published in America have shown a disposition to admit the claims of +Roumania to the Wallachian districts of Transylvania. + +Evidently the urgent need to create kingdoms or confederations larger +than any such single States as the natural map supplies, is manifest to +both sides. If Germany, Italy and Russia can come to any sort of general +agreement in these matters, their arrangements will be a matter of +secondary importance to the Western Allies--saving our duty to Serbia +and Montenegro and their rulers. Russia may not find the German idea of +a Polish _plus_ Bohemian border State so very distasteful, provided that +the ruler is not a German; Germany may find the idea still tolerable if +the ruler is not the Tsar. + +The destiny of the Serbo-Croatian future lies largely in the hands of +Italy and Bulgaria. Bulgaria was not in this war at the beginning, and +she may not be in it at the end. Her King is neither immortal nor +irreplaceable. Her desire now must be largely to retain her winnings in +Macedonia, and keep the frontier posts of a too embracing Germany as far +off as possible. She has nothing to gain and much to fear from Roumania +and Greece. Her present relations with Turkey are unnatural. She has +everything to gain from a prompt recovery of the friendship of Italy and +the sea Powers. A friendly Serbo-Croatian buffer State against Germany +will probably be of equal comfort in the future to Italy and Bulgaria; +more especially if Italy has pushed down the Adriatic coast along the +line of the former Venetian possessions. Serbia has been overrun, but +never were the convergent forces of adjacent interests so clearly in +favour of her recuperation. The possibility of Italy and that strange +Latin outlier, Roumania, joining hands through an allied and friendly +Serbia must be very present in Italian thought. The allied conception of +the land route from the West and America to Bagdad and India is by Mont +Cenis, Trieste, Serbia and Constantinople, as their North European line +to India is through Russia by Baku. + +And that brings us to Constantinople. + +Constantinople is not a national city; it is now, and it has always +been, an artificial cosmopolis, and Constantinople and the Dardanelles +are essentially the gate of the Black Sea. It is to Russia that the +waterway is of supreme importance. Any other Power upon it can strangle +Russia; Russia, possessing it, is capable of very little harm to any +other country. + +Roumania is the next most interested country. But Roumania can reach up +the Danube and through Bulgaria, Serbia or Hungary to the outer world. +Her greatest trade will always be with Central Europe. For generations +the Turks held Thrace and Anatolia before they secured Constantinople. +The Turk can exist without Constantinople; he is at his best outside +Constantinople; the fall of Constantinople was the beginning of his +decay. He sat down there and corrupted. His career was at an end. I +confess that I find a bias in my mind for a Russian ownership of +Constantinople. I think that if she does not get it now her gravitation +towards it in the future will be so great as to cause fresh wars. +Somewhere she must get to open sea, and if it is not through +Constantinople then her line must lie either through a dependent Armenia +thrust down to the coast of the Levant or, least probable and least +desirable of all, through the Persian Gulf. The Constantinople route is +the most natural and least controversial of these. With the dwindling of +the Turkish power, the Turks at Constantinople become more and more like +robber knights levying toll at the pass. I can imagine Russia making +enormous concessions in Poland, for example, accepting retrocessions, +and conceding autonomy, rather than foregoing her ancient destiny upon +the Bosphorus. I believe she will fight on along the Black Sea coast +until she gets there. + +This, I think, is Russia's fundamental end, without which no peace is +worth having, as the liberation of Belgium and the satisfaction of +France is the fundamental end of Great Britain, and Trieste-Fiume is the +fundamental end of Italy. + +But for all the lands that lie between Constantinople and West Prussia +there are no absolutely fundamental ends; that is the land of _quid pro +quo_; that is where the dealing will be done. Serbia must be restored +and the Croats liberated; sooner or later the south Slav state will +insist upon itself; but, except for that, I see no impossibility in the +German dream of three kingdoms to take the place of Austro-Hungary, nor +even in a southward extension of the Hohenzollern Empire to embrace the +German one of the three. If the Austrians have a passion for Prussian +"kultur," it is not for us to restrain it. Austrian, Saxon, Bavarian, +Hanoverian and Prussian must adjust their own differences. Hungary would +be naturally Habsburg; is, in fact, now essentially Habsburg, more +Habsburg than Austria, and essentially anti-Slav. Her gravitation to the +Central Powers seems inevitable. + +Whether the Polish-Czech combination would be a Habsburg kingdom at all +is another matter. Only if, after all, the Allies are far less +successful than they have now every reason to hope would that become +possible. + +The gravitation of that west Slav state to the Central European system +or to Russia will, I think, be the only real measure of ultimate success +or failure in this war. I think it narrows down to that so far as Europe +is concerned. Most of the other things are inevitable. Such, it seems to +me, is the most open possibility in the European map in the years +immediately before us. + +If by dying I could assure the end of the Hohenzollern Empire to-morrow +I would gladly do it. But I have, as a balancing prophet, to face the +high probability of its outliving me for some generations. It is to me +a deplorable probability. Far rather would I anticipate Germany quit of +her eagles and Hohenzollerns, and ready to take her place as the leading +Power of the United States of Europe. + + + + +X. THE UNITED STATES, FRANCE, BRITAIN, AND RUSSIA + + +Section 1 + +In this chapter I propose to speculate a little about the future +development of these four great States, whose destinies are likely to be +much more closely interwoven than their past histories have been. I +believe that the stars in their courses tend to draw these States +together into a dominant peace alliance, maintaining the peace of the +world. There may be other stars in that constellation, Italy, Japan, a +confederated Latin America, for example; I do not propose to deal with +that possibility now, but only to dwell upon the development of +understandings and common aims between France, Russia, and the +English-speaking States. + +They have all shared one common experience during the last two years; +they have had an enormous loss of self-sufficiency. This has been +particularly the case with the United States of America. At the +beginning of this war, the United States were still possessed by the +glorious illusion that they were aloof from general international +politics, that they needed no allies and need fear no enemies, that they +constituted a sort of asylum from war and all the bitter stresses and +hostilities of the old world. Themselves secure, they could intervene +with grim resolution to protect their citizens all over the world. Had +they not bombarded Algiers?... + +I remember that soon after the outbreak of the war I lunched at the +Savoy Hotel in London when it was crammed with Americans suddenly swept +out of Europe by the storm. My host happened to be a man of some +diplomatic standing, and several of them came and talked to him. They +were full of these old-world ideas of American immunity. Their +indignation was comical even at the time. Some of them had been hustled; +some had lost their luggage in Germany. When, they asked, was it to be +returned to them? Some seemed to be under the impression that, war or no +war, an American tourist had a perfect right to travel about in the +Vosges or up and down the Rhine just as he thought fit. They thought he +had just to wave a little American flag, and the referee would blow a +whistle and hold up the battle until he had got by safely. One family +had actually been careering about in a cart--their automobile +seized--between the closing lines of French and Germans, brightly +unaware of the disrespect of bursting shells for American +nationality.... Since those days the American nation has lived +politically a hundred years. + +The people of the United States have shed their delusion that there is +an Eastern and a Western hemisphere, and that nothing can ever pass +between them but immigrants and tourists and trade, and realised that +this world is one round globe that gets smaller and smaller every decade +if you measure it by day's journeys. They are only going over the lesson +the British have learnt in the last score or so of years. This is one +world and bayonets are a crop that spreads. Let them gather and seed, it +matters not how far from you, and a time will come when they will be +sticking up under your nose. There is no real peace but the peace of the +whole world, and that is only to be kept by the whole world resisting +and suppressing aggression wherever it arises. To anyone who watches the +American Press, this realisation has been more and more manifest. From +dreams of aloofness and ineffable superiority, America comes round very +rapidly to a conception of an active participation in the difficult +business of statecraft. She is thinking of alliances, of throwing her +weight and influence upon the side of law and security. No longer a +political Thoreau in the woods, a sort of vegetarian recluse among +nations, a being of negative virtues and unpremeditated superiorities, +she girds herself for a manly part in the toilsome world of men. + +So far as I can judge, the American mind is eminently free from any +sentimental leaning towards the British. Americans have a traditional +hatred of the Hanoverian monarchy, and a democratic disbelief in +autocracy. They are far more acutely aware of differences than +resemblances. They suspect every Englishman of being a bit of a +gentleman and a bit of a flunkey. I have never found in America anything +like that feeling common in the mass of English people that prevents the +use of the word "foreigner" for an American; there is nothing to +reciprocate the sympathy and pride that English and Irish republicans +and radicals feel for the States. Few Americans realise that there are +such beings as English republicans. + +What has linked Americans with the British hitherto has been very +largely the common language and literature; it is only since the war +began that there seems to have been any appreciable development of +fraternal feeling. And that has been not so much discovery of a mutual +affection as the realisation of a far closer community of essential +thought and purpose than has hitherto been suspected. The Americans, +after thinking the matter out with great frankness and vigour, do +believe that Britain is on the whole fighting against aggression and not +for profit, that she is honestly backing France and Belgium against an +intolerable attack, and that the Hohenzollern Empire is a thing that +needs discrediting and, if possible, destroying in the interests of all +humanity, Germany included. + +America has made the surprising discovery that, allowing for their +greater nearness, the British are thinking about these things almost +exactly as Americans think about them. They follow the phases of the war +in Great Britain, the strain, the blunderings, the tenacity, the onset +of conscription in an essentially non-military community, with the +complete understanding of a people similarly circumstanced, differing +only by scale and distance. They have been through something of the sort +already; they may have something of the sort happen again. It had not +occurred to them hitherto how parallel we were. They begin to have +inklings of how much more parallel we may presently become. + +There is evidence of a real search for American affinities among the +other peoples of the world; it is a new war-made feature of the +thoughtful literature and journalists of America. And it is interesting +to note how partial and divided these affinities must necessarily be. +Historically and politically, the citizen of the United States must be +drawn most closely to France. France is the one other successful modern +republic; she was the instigator and friend of American liberation. With +Great Britain the tie of language, the tradition of personal freedom, +and the strain in the blood are powerful links. But both France and +Britain are old countries, thickly populated, with a great and ancient +finish and completeness, full of implicit relationships; America is by +comparison crude, uninformed, explicit, a new country, still turning +fresh soil, still turning over but half-explored natural resources. + +The United States constitute a modern country, a country on an +unprecedented scale, being organised from the very beginning on modern +lines. There is only one other such country upon the planet, and that +curiously enough is parallel in climate, size, and position--Russia in +Asia. Even Russia in Europe belongs rather to the newness that is +American than to the tradition that is European; Harvard was founded +more than half a century before Petrograd. And when I looked out of the +train window on my way to Petrograd from Germany, the little towns I saw +were like no European towns I had ever seen. The wooden houses, the +broad unmade roads, the traffic, the winter-bitten scenery, a sort of +untidy spaciousness, took my mind instantly to the country one sees in +the back part of New York State as one goes from Boston to Niagara. And +the reality follows the appearance. + +The United States and Russia are the west and the east of the same +thing; they are great modern States, developing from the beginning upon +a scale that only railways make possible. France and Britain may perish +in the next two centuries or they may persist, but there can be no doubt +that two centuries ahead Russia and the United States will be two of the +greatest masses of fairly homogeneous population on the globe. + +There are no countries with whom the people of the United States are so +likely to develop sympathy and a sense of common values and common +interests as with these three, unless it be with the Scandinavian +peoples. The Scandinavian peoples have developed a tendency to an +extra-European outlook, to look west and east rather than southwardly, +to be pacifist and progressive in a manner essentially American. From +any close sympathy with Germany the Americans are cut off at present by +the Hohenzollerns and the system of ideas that the Hohenzollerns have +imposed upon German thought. So long as the Germans cling to the tawdry +tradition of the Empire, so long as they profess militarism, so long as +they keep up their ridiculous belief in some strange racial superiority +to the rest of mankind, it is absurd to expect any co-operative feeling +between them and any other great people. + +The American tradition is based upon the casting off of a Germanic +monarchy; it is its cardinal idea. These sturdy Republicans did not +fling out the Hanoverians and their Hessian troops to prepare the path +of glory for Potsdam. But except for the gash caused by the Teutonic +monarchy, there runs round the whole world a north temperate and +sub-arctic zone of peoples, generally similar in complexion, physical +circumstances, and intellectual and moral quality, having enormous +undeveloped natural resources, and a common interest in keeping the +peace while these natural resources are developed, having also a common +interest in maintaining the integrity of China and preventing her +development into a military power; it is a zone with the clearest +prospect of a vast increase in its already enormous population, and it +speaks in the main one or other of three languages, either French, +Russian, or English. I believe that natural sympathy will march with the +obvious possibilities of the situation in bringing the American mind to +the realisation of this band of common interests and of its +compatibility with the older idea of an American continent protected by +a Monroe doctrine from any possibility of aggression from the monarchies +of the old world. + +As the old conception of isolation fades and the American mind accustoms +itself to the new conception of a need of alliances and understandings +to save mankind from the megalomania of races and dynasties, I believe +it will turn first to the idea of keeping the seas with Britain and +France, and then to this still wider idea of an understanding with the +Pledged Allies that will keep the peace of the world. + +Now Germany has taught the world several things, and one of the most +important of these lessons is the fact that the destinies of states and +peoples is no longer to be determined by the secret arrangements of +diplomatists and the agreements or jealousies of kings. For fifty years +Germany has been unifying the mind of her people against the world. She +has obsessed them with an evil ideal, but the point we have to note is +that she has succeeded in obsessing them with that ideal. No other +modern country has even attempted such a moral and mental solidarity as +Germany has achieved. And good ideals need, just as much as bad ones, +systematic inculcation, continual open expression and restatement. Mute, +mindless, or demented nations are dangerous and doomed nations. The +great political conceptions that are needed to establish the peace of +the world must become the common property of the mass of intelligent +adults if they are to hold against the political scoundrel, the royal +adventurer, the forensic exploiter, the enemies and scatterers of +mankind. The French, Americans, and English have to realise this +necessity; they have to state a common will and they have to make their +possession by that will understood by the Russian people, and they have +to share that will with the Russian people. Beyond that there lies the +still greater task or making some common system of understandings with +the intellectual masses of China and India. At present, with three of +these four great powers enormously preoccupied with actual warfare, +there is an opportunity for guiding expression on the part of America, +for a real world leadership, such as may never occur again.... + +So far I have been stating a situation and reviewing certain +possibilities. In the past half-century the United States has been +developing a great system of universities and a continental production +of literature and discussion to supplement the limited Press and the New +England literature of the earlier phase of the American process. It is +one of the most interesting speculations in the world to everyone how +far this new organisation of the American mind is capable of grasping +the stupendous opportunities and appeals of the present time. The war +and the great occasions that must follow the war will tax the mind and +the intellectual and moral forces of the Pledged Allies enormously. How +far is this new but very great and growing system of thought and +learning in the United States capable of that propaganda of ideas and +language, that progressive expression of a developing ideal of +community, that in countries so spontaneous, so chaotic or democratic as +the United States and the Pledged Allies must necessarily take the +place of the organised authoritative _Kultur_ of the Teutonic type of +state? + +As an undisguisedly patriotic Englishman, I would like to see the lead +in this intellectual synthesis of the nations, that _must_ be achieved +if wars are to cease, undertaken by Great Britain. But I am bound to +confess that in Great Britain I see neither the imaginative courage of +France nor the brisk enterprise of the Americans. I see this matter as a +question of peace and civilisation, but there are other baser but quite +as effective reasons why America, France, and Great Britain should exert +themselves to create confidences and understandings between their +populations and the Russian population. There is the immediate business +opportunity in Russia. There is the secondary business opportunity in +China that can best be developed as the partners rather than as the +rivals of the Russians. Since the Americans are nearest, by way of the +Pacific, since they are likely to have more capital and more free energy +to play with than the Pledged Allies, I do on the whole incline to the +belief that it is they who will yet do the pioneer work and the leading +work that this opportunity demands. + + +Section 2 + +If beneath the alliances of the present war there is to grow up a system +of enduring understandings that will lead to the peace of the world, +there is needed as a basis for such understandings much greater facility +of intellectual intercourse than exists at present. Firstly, the world +needs a _lingua franca_; next, the Western peoples need to know more of +the Russian language and life than they do, and thirdly, the English +language needs to be made more easily accessible than it is at present. +The chief obstacle to a Frenchman or Englishman learning Russian is the +difficult and confusing alphabet; the chief obstacle to anyone learning +English is the irrational spelling. Are people likely to overcome these +very serious difficulties in the future, and, if so, how will they do +it? And what prospects are there of a _lingua franca_? + +Wherever one looks closely into the causes and determining influences of +the great convulsions of this time, one is more and more impressed by +the apparent smallness of the ultimate directing influence. It seems to +me at least that it is a practically proven thing that this vast +aggression of Germany is to be traced back to a general tone of court +thinking and discussion in the Prussia of the eighteenth century, to +the theories of a few professors and the gathering trend of German +education in a certain direction. It seems to me that similarly the +language teachers of to-day and to-morrow may hold in their hands the +seeds of gigantic international developments in the future. + +It is not a question of the skill or devotion of individual teachers so +much as of the possibility of organising them upon a grand scale. An +individual teacher must necessarily use the ordinary books and ordinary +spelling and type of the language in which he is giving instruction; he +may get a few elementary instruction books from a private publisher, +specially printed for teaching purposes, but very speedily he finds +himself obliged to go to the current printed matter. This, as I will +immediately show, bars the most rapid and fruitful method of teaching. +And in this as in most affairs, private enterprise, the individualistic +system, shows itself a failure. In England, for example, the choice of +Russian lesson books is poor and unsatisfactory, and there is either no +serviceable Russian-English, English-Russian school dictionary in +existence, or it is published so badly as to be beyond the range of my +inquiries. But a state, or a group of universities, or even a rich +private association such as far-seeing American, French and British +business men might be reasonably expected to form, could attack the +problem of teaching a language in an altogether different fashion. + +The difficulty in teaching English lies in the inconsistency of the +spelling, and the consequent difficulties of pronunciation. If there +were available an ample series of text-books, reading books, and books +of general interest, done in a consistent phonetic type and spelling--in +which the value of the letters of the phonetic system followed as far as +possible the prevalent usage in Europe--the difficulty in teaching +English not merely to foreigners but, as the experiments in teaching +reading of the Simplified Spelling Society have proved up to the hilt, +to English children can be very greatly reduced. At first the difficulty +of the irrational spelling can be set on one side. The learner attacks +and masters the essential language. Then afterwards he can, if he likes, +go on to the orthodox spelling, which is then no harder for him to read +and master than it is for an Englishman of ordinary education to read +the facetious orthography of Artemus Ward or of the _Westminster +Gazette_ "orfis boy." The learner does one thing at a time instead of +attempting, as he would otherwise have to do, two things--and they are +both difficult and different and conflicting things--simultaneously. + +Learning a language is one thing and memorising an illogical system of +visual images--for that is what reading ordinary English spelling comes +to--is quite another. A man can learn to play first chess and then +bridge in half the time that these two games would require if he began +by attempting simultaneous play, and exactly the same principle applies +to the language problem. + +These considerations lead on to the idea of a special development or +sub-species of the English language for elementary teaching and foreign +consumption. It would be English, very slightly simplified and +regularised, and phonetically spelt. Let us call it Anglo-American. In +it the propagandist power, whatever that power might be, state, +university or association, would print not simply, instruction books but +a literature of cheap editions. Such a specialised simplified +Anglo-American variety of English would enormously stimulate the already +wide diffusion of the language, and go far to establish it as that +_lingua franca_ of which the world has need. + +And in the same way, the phonetic alphabet adopted as the English medium +could be used as the medium for instruction in French, where, as in the +British Isles, Canada, North and Central Africa, and large regions of +the East, it is desirable to make an English-speaking community +bi-lingual. At present a book in French means nothing to an uninstructed +Englishman, an English book conveys no accurate sound images to an +uninstructed Frenchman. On the other hand, a French book printed on a +proper phonetic system could be immediately read aloud--though of course +it could not be understood--by an uninstructed Englishman. From the +first he would have no difficulties with the sounds. And vice versa. +Such a system of books would mean the destruction of what are, for great +masses of French and English people, insurmountable difficulties on the +way to bi-lingualism. Its production is a task all too colossal for any +private publishers or teachers, but it is a task altogether trivial in +comparison with the national value of its consequences. But whether it +will ever be carried out is just one of those riddles of the jumping cat +in the human brain that are most perplexing to the prophet. + +The problem becomes at once graver, less hopeful, and more urgent when +we take up the case of Russian. I have looked closely into this business +of Russian teaching, and I am convinced that only a very, very small +number of French-and English-speaking people are going to master Russian +under the existing conditions of instruction. If we Westerns want to get +at Russia in good earnest we must take up this Russian language problem +with an imaginative courage and upon a scale of which at present I see +no signs. If we do not, then the Belgians, French, Americans and English +will be doing business in Russia after the war in the German +language--or through a friendly German interpreter. That, I am afraid, +is the probability of the case. But it need not be the case. Will and +intelligence could alter all that. + +What has to be done is to have Russian taught at first in a Western +phonetic type. Then it becomes a language not very much more difficult +to acquire than, say, German by a Frenchman. When the learner can talk +with some freedom, has a fairly full vocabulary, a phraseology, knows +his verb and so on, then and then only should he take up the unfamiliar +and confusing set of visual images of Russian lettering--I speak from +the point of view of those who read the Latin alphabet. How confusing it +may be only those who have tried it can tell. Its familiarity to the eye +increases the difficulty; totally unfamiliar forms would be easier to +learn. The Frenchman or Englishman is confronted with + + COP; + +the sound of that is + + SAR! + +For those who learn languages, as so many people do nowadays, by visual +images, there will always be an undercurrent toward saying "COP." The +mind plunges hopelessly through that tangle to the elements of a speech +which is as yet unknown. + +Nevertheless almost all the instruction in Russian of which I can get an +account begins with the alphabet, and must, I suppose, begin with the +alphabet until teachers have a suitably printed set of instruction books +to enable them to take the better line. One school teacher I know, in a +public school, devoted the entire first term, the third of a year, to +the alphabet. At the end he was still dissatisfied with the progress of +his pupils. He gave them Russian words, of course, words of which they +knew nothing--in Russian characters. It was too much for them to take +hold of at one and the same time. He did not even think of teaching them +to write French and English words in the strange lettering. He did not +attempt to write his Russian in Latin letters. He was apparently +ignorant of any system of transliteration, and he did nothing to +mitigate the impossible task before him. At the end of the term most of +his pupils gave up the hopeless effort. It is not too much to say that +for a great number of "visualising" people, the double effort at the +outset of Russian is entirely too much. It stops them altogether. But to +almost anyone it is possible to learn Russian if at first it is +presented in a lettering that gives no trouble. + +If I found myself obliged to learn Russian urgently, I would get some +accepted system of transliteration, carefully transcribe every word of +Russian in my text-book into the Latin characters, and learn the +elements of the language from my manuscript. A year or so ago I made a +brief visit to Russia with a "Russian Self-Taught" in my pocket. Nothing +sticks, nothing ever did stick of that self-taught Russian except the +words that I learnt in Latin type. Those I remember as I remember all +words, as groups of Latin letters. I learnt to count, for example, up to +a hundred. The other day I failed to recognise the Russian word for +eleven in Russian characters until I had spelt it out. Then I said, "Oh, +of course!" But I knew it when I heard it. + +I write of these things from the point of view of the keen learner. Some +Russian teachers will be found to agree with me; others will not. It is +a paradox in the psychology of the teacher that few teachers are willing +to adopt "slick" methods of teaching; they hate cutting corners far more +than they hate obstacles, because their interest is in the teaching and +not in the "getting there." But what we learners want is not an +exquisite, rare knowledge of particulars, we do not want to spend an +hour upon Russian needlessly; we want to get there as quickly and +effectively as possible. And for that, transliterated books are +essential. + +Now these may seem small details in the learning of languages, mere +schoolmasters' gossip, but the consequences are on the continental +scale. The want of these national text-books and readers is a great gulf +between Russia and her Allies; _it is a greater gulf than the +profoundest political misunderstanding could be_. We cannot get at them +to talk plainly to them, and they cannot get at us to talk plainly to +us. A narrow bridge of interpreters is our only link with the Russian +mind. And many of those interpreters are of a race which is for very +good reasons hostile to Russia. An abundant cheap supply, firstly, of +English and French books, _in_ English and French, but in the Russian +character, by means of which Russians may rapidly learn French and +English--for it is quite a fable that these languages are known and used +in Russia below the level of the court and aristocracy--and, secondly, +of Russian books in the Latin (or some easy phonetic development of the +Latin) type, will do more to facilitate interchange and intercourse +between Russia and France, America and Britain, and so consolidate the +present alliance than almost any other single thing. But that supply +will not be a paying thing to provide; if it is left to publishers or +private language teachers or any form of private enterprise it will +never be provided. It is a necessary public undertaking. + +But because a thing is necessary it does not follow that it will be +achieved. Bread may be necessary to a starving man, but there is always +the alternative that he will starve. France, which is most accessible to +creative ideas, is least interested in this particular matter. Great +Britain is still heavily conservative. It is idle to ignore the forces +still entrenched in the established church, in the universities and the +great schools, that stand for an irrational resistance to all new +things. American universities are comparatively youthful and sometimes +quite surprisingly innovating, and America is the country of the +adventurous millionaire. There has been evidence in several American +papers that have reached me recently of a disposition to get ahead with +Russia and cut out the Germans (and incidentally the British). Amidst +the cross-currents and overlappings of this extraordinary time, it seems +to me highly probable that America may lead in this vitally important +effort to promote international understanding. + + + + +XI. "THE WHITE MAN'S BURTHEN" + + +One of the most curious aspects of the British "Pacifist" is his +willingness to give over great blocks of the black and coloured races to +the Hohenzollerns to exploit and experiment upon. I myself being +something of a pacifist, and doing what I can, in my corner, to bring +about the Peace of the World, the Peace of the World triumphant and +armed against every disturber, could the more readily sympathise with +the passive school of Pacifists if its proposals involved the idea that +England should keep to England and Germany to Germany. My political +ideal is the United States of the World, a union of states whose state +boundaries are determined by what I have defined as the natural map of +mankind. I cannot understand those pacifists who talk about the German +right to "expansion," and babble about a return of her justly lost +colonies. That seems to me not pacificism but patriotic inversion. This +large disposition to hand over our fellow-creatures to a Teutonic +educational system, with "frightfulness" in reserve, to "efficiency" on +Wittenberg lines, leaves me--hot. The ghosts of the thirst-tormented +Hereros rise up in their thousands from the African dust, protesting. + +This talk of "legitimate expansion" is indeed now only an exploiter's +cant. The age of "expansion," the age of European "empires" is near its +end. No one who can read the signs of the times in Japan, in India, in +China, can doubt it. It ended in America a hundred years ago; it is +ending now in Asia; it will end last in Africa, and even in Africa the +end draws near. Spain has but led the way which other "empires" must +follow. Look at her empire in the atlases of 1800. She fell down the +steps violently and painfully, it is true--but they are difficult to +descend. No sane man, German or anti-German, who has weighed the +prospects of the new age, will be desirous of a restoration of the now +vanished German colonial empire, vindictive, intriguing, and +unscrupulous, a mere series of centres of attack upon adjacent +territory, to complicate the immense disentanglements and readjustments +that lie already before the French and British and Italians. + +Directly we discuss the problem of the absolutely necessary permanent +alliance that this war has forced upon at least France, Belgium, +Britain and Russia, this problem of the "empires" faces us. What are +these Allies going to do about their "subject races"? What is the world +going to do about the "subject races"? It is a matter in which the +"subject races" are likely to have an increasingly important voice of +their own. We Europeans may discuss their fate to-day among ourselves; +we shall be discussing it with them to-morrow. If we do not agree with +them then, they will take their fates in their own hands in spite of us. +Long before A.D. 2100 there will be no such thing as a "subject race" in +all the world. + +Here again we find ourselves asking just that same difficult question of +more or less, that arises at every cardinal point of our review of the +probable future. How far is this thing going to be done finely; how far +is it going to be done cunningly and basely? How far will greatness of +mind, how far will imaginative generosity, prevail over the jealous and +pettifogging spirit that lurks in every human being? Are French and +British and Belgians and Italians, for example, going to help each other +in Africa, or are they going to work against and cheat each other? Is +the Russian seeking only a necessary outlet to the seas of the world, +or has he dreams of Delhi? Here again, as in all these questions, +personal idiosyncrasy comes in; I am strongly disposed to trust the good +in the Russian. + +But apart from this uncertain question of generosity, there are in this +case two powerful forces that make against disputes, secret +disloyalties, and meanness. One is that Germany will certainly be still +dangerous at the end of the war, and the second is that the gap in +education, in efficiency, in national feeling and courage of outlook, +between the European and the great Asiatic and African communities, is +rapidly diminishing. If the Europeans squabble much more for world +ascendancy, there will be no world ascendancy for them to squabble for. +We have still no means of measuring the relative enfeeblement of Europe +in comparison with Asia already produced by this war. As it is, certain +things are so inevitable--the integration of a modernised Bengal, of +China, and of Egypt, for example--that the question before us is +practically reduced to whether this restoration of the subject peoples +will be done with the European's aid and goodwill, or whether it will be +done against him. That it will be done in some manner or other is +certain. + +The days of suppression are over. They know it in every country where +white and brown and yellow mingle. If the Pledged Allies are not +disposed to let in light to their subject peoples and prepare for the +days of world equality that are coming, the Germans will. If the Germans +fail to be the most enslaving of people, they may become the most +liberating. They will set themselves, with their characteristic +thoroughness, to destroy that magic "prestige" which in Asia +particularly is the clue to the miracle of European ascendancy. In the +long run that may prove no ill service to mankind. The European must +prepare to make himself acceptable in Asia, to state his case to Asia +and be understood by Asia, or to leave Asia. That is the blunt reality +of the Asiatic situation. + +It has already been pointed out in these chapters that if the alliance +of the Pledged Allies is indeed to be permanent, it implies something in +the nature of a Zollverein, a common policy towards the rest of the +world and an arrangement involving a common control over the +dependencies of all the Allies. It will be interesting, now that we have +sketched a possible map of Europe after the war, to look a little more +closely into the nature of the "empires" concerned, and to attempt a few +broad details of the probable map of the Eastern hemisphere outside +Europe in the years immediately to come. + +Now there are, roughly speaking, three types of overseas "possessions." +They may be either (1) territory that was originally practically +unoccupied and that was settled by the imperial people, or (2) territory +with a barbaric population having no national idea, or (3) conquered +states. In the case of the British Empire all three are present; in the +case of the French only the second and third; in the case of the Russian +only the first and third. Each of these types must necessarily follow +its own system of developments. Take first those territories originally +but thinly occupied, or not occupied at all, of which all or at least +the dominant element of the population is akin to that of the "home +country." These used to be called by the British "colonies"--though the +"colonies" of Greece and Rome were really only garrison cities settled +in foreign lands--and they are now being rechristened "Dominions." +Australia, for instance, is a British Dominion, and Siberia and most of +Russia in Asia, a Russian Dominion. Their manifest destiny is for their +children to become equal citizens with the cousins and brothers they +have left at home. + +There has been much discussion in England during the last decade upon +some modification of the British legislature that would admit +representatives from the Dominions to a proportional share in the +government of the Empire. The problem has been complicated by the +unsettled status of Ireland and the mischief-making Tories there, and by +the perplexities arising out of those British dependencies of +non-British race--the Indian states, for example, whose interests are +sometimes in conflict with those of the Dominions. + +The attractiveness of the idea of an Imperial legislature is chiefly on +the surface, and I have very strong doubts of its realisability. These +Dominions seem rather to tend to become independent and distinct +sovereign states in close and affectionate alliance with Great Britain, +and having a common interest in the British Navy. In many ways the +interests of the Dominions are more divergent from those of Great +Britain than are Great Britain and Russia, or Great Britain and France. +Many of the interests of Canada are more closely bound to those of the +United States than they are to those of Australasia, in such a matter as +the maintenance of the Monroe Principle, for example. South Africa again +takes a line with regard to British Indian subjects which is highly +embarrassing to Great Britain. There is a tendency in all the British +colonies to read American books and periodicals rather than British, if +for no other reason than because their common life, life in a newish and +very democratic land, is much more American than British in character. + +On the other hand, one must remember that Great Britain has European +interests--the integrity of Holland and Belgium is a case in +point--which are much closer to the interests of France than they are to +those of the younger Britains beyond the seas. A voice in an Alliance +that included France and the United States, and had its chief common +interest in the control of the seas, may in the future seem far more +desirable to these great and growing English-speaking Dominions than the +sending of representatives to an Imperial House of Lords at Westminster, +and the adornment of elderly colonial politicians with titles and +decorations at Buckingham Palace. + +I think Great Britain and her Allies have all of them to prepare their +minds for a certain release of their grip upon their "possessions," if +they wish to build up a larger unity; I do not see that any secure +unanimity of purpose is possible without such releases and +readjustments. + +Now the next class of foreign "possession" is that in which the French +and Belgians and Italians are most interested. Britain also has +possessions of this type in Central Africa and the less civilised +districts of India, but Russia has scarcely anything of the sort. In +this second class of possession the population is numerous, barbaric, +and incapable of any large or enduring political structure, and over its +destinies rule a small minority of European administrators. + +The greatest of this series of possessions are those in black Africa. +The French imagination has taken a very strong hold of the idea of a +great French-speaking West and Central Africa, with which the ordinary +British citizen will only too gladly see the conquered German colonies +incorporated. The Italians have a parallel field of development in the +hinterland of Tripoli. Side by side, France, Belgium and Italy, no +longer troubled by hostile intrigues, may very well set themselves in +the future to the task of building up a congenial Latin civilisation out +of the tribal confusions of these vast regions. They will, I am +convinced, do far better than the English in this domain. The +English-speaking peoples have been perhaps the most successful +_settlers_ in the world; the United States and the Dominions are there +to prove it; only the Russians in Siberia can compare with them; but as +administrators the British are a race coldly aloof. They have nothing to +give a black people, and no disposition to give. + +The Latin-speaking peoples, the Mediterranean nations, on the other +hand, have proved to be the most successful _assimilators_ of other +races that mankind has ever known. Alexandre Dumas is not the least of +the glories of France. In a hundred years' time black Africa, west of +Tripoli, from Oran to Rhodesia, will, I believe, talk French. And what +does not speak French will speak the closely related Italian. I do not +see why this Latin black culture should not extend across equatorial +Africa to meet the Indian influence at the coast, and reach out to join +hands with Madagascar. I do not see why the British flag should be any +impediment to the Latinisation of tropical Africa or to the natural +extension of the French and Italian languages through Egypt. I guess, +however, that it will be an Islamic and not a Christian cult that will +be talking Italian and French. For the French-speaking civilisation will +make roads not only for French, Belgians, and Italians, but for the +Arabs whose religion and culture already lie like a net over black +Africa. No other peoples and no other religion can so conveniently give +the negro what is needed to bring him into the comity of civilised +peoples.... + +A few words of digression upon the future of Islam may not be out of +place here. The idea of a militant Christendom has vanished from the +world. The last pretensions of Christian propaganda have been buried in +the Balkan trenches. A unification of Africa under Latin auspices +carries with it now no threat of missionary invasion. Africa will be a +fair field for all religions, and the religion to which the negro will +take will be the religion that best suits his needs. That religion, we +are told by nearly everyone who has a right to speak upon such +questions, is Islam, and its natural propagandist is the Arab. There is +no reason why he should not be a Frenchified Arab. + +Both the French and the British have the strongest interest in the +revival of Arabic culture. Let the German learn Turkish if it pleases +him. Through all Africa and Western Asia there is a great to-morrow for +a renascent Islam under Arab auspices. Constantinople, that venal city +of the waterways, sitting like Asenath at the ford, has corrupted all +who came to her; she has been the paralysis of Islam. But the Islam of +the Turk is a different thing from the Islam of the Arab. That was one +of the great progressive impulses in the world of men. It is our custom +to underrate the Arab's contribution to civilisation quite absurdly in +comparison with our debt to the Hebrew and Greek. It is to the +initiatives of Islamic culture, for example, that we owe our numerals, +the bulk of modern mathematics, and the science of chemistry. The +British have already set themselves to the establishment of Islamic +university teaching in Egypt, but that is the mere first stroke of the +pick at the opening of the mine. English, French, Russian, Arabic, +Hindustani, Spanish, Italian; these are the great world languages that +most concern the future of civilisation from the point of view of the +Peace Alliance that impends. No country can afford to neglect any of +those languages, but as a matter of primary importance I would say, for +the British, Hindustani, for the Americans, Russian or Spanish, for the +French and Belgians and Italians, Arabic. These are the directions in +which the duty of understanding is most urgent for each of these +peoples, and the path of opportunity plainest. + +The disposition to underrate temporarily depressed nations, races, and +cultures is a most irrational, prevalent, and mischievous form of +stupidity. It distorts our entire outlook towards the future. The +British reader can see its absurdity most easily when he reads the +ravings of some patriotic German upon the superiority of the "Teuton" +over the Italians and Greeks--to whom we owe most things of importance +in European civilisation. Equally silly stuff is still to be read in +British and American books about "Asiatics." And was there not some +fearful rubbish, not only in German but in English and French, about the +"decadence" of France? But we are learning--rapidly. When I was a +student in London thirty years ago we regarded Japan as a fantastic +joke; the comic opera, _The Mikado_, still preserves that foolish phase +for the admiration of posterity. And to-day there is a quite +unjustifiable tendency to ignore the quality of the Arab and of his +religion. Islam is an open-air religion, noble and simple in its broad +conceptions; it is none the less vital from Nigeria to China because it +has sickened in the closeness of Constantinople. The French, the +Italians, the British have to reckon with Islam and the Arab; where the +continental deserts are, there the Arabs are and there is Islam; their +culture will never be destroyed and replaced over these regions by +Europeanism. The Allies who prepare the Peace of the World have to make +their peace with that. And when I foreshadow this necessary liaison of +the French and Arabic cultures, I am thinking not only of the Arab that +is, but of the Arab that is to come. The whole trend of events in Asia +Minor, the breaking up and decapitation of the Ottoman Empire and the +Euphrates invasion, points to a great revival of Mesopotamia--at first +under European direction. The vast system of irrigation that was +destroyed by the Mongol armies of Hulugu in the thirteenth century will +be restored; the desert will again become populous. But the local type +will prevail. The new population of Mesopotamia will be neither European +nor Indian; it will be Arabic; and with its concentration Arabic will +lay hold of the printing press. A new intellectual movement in Islam, a +renascent Bagdad, is as inevitable as is 1950. + +I have, however, gone a little beyond the discussion of the future of +the barbaric possessions in these anticipations of an Arabic +co-operation with the Latin peoples in the reconstruction of Western +Asia and the barbaric regions of north and central Africa. But regions +of administered barbarism occur not only in Africa. The point is that +they are administered, and that their economic development is very +largely in the hands, and will for many generations remain in the hands, +of the possessing country. Hitherto their administration has been in +the interests of the possessing nation alone. Their acquisition has been +a matter of bitter rivalries, their continued administration upon +exclusive lines is bound to lead to dangerous clashings. The common +sense of the situation points to a policy of give and take, in which +throughout the possessions of all the Pledged Allies, the citizens of +all will have more or less equal civil advantages. And this means some +consolidation of the general control of those Administered Territories. +I have already hinted at the possibility that the now exclusively +British navy may some day be a world-navy controlled by an Admiralty +representing a group of allies, Australasia, Canada, Britain and, it may +be, France and Russia and the United States. To those who know how +detached the British Admiralty is at the present time from the general +methods of British political life, there will be nothing strange in this +idea of its completer detachment. Its personnel does to a large extent +constitute a class apart. It takes its boys out of the general life very +often before they have got to their fourteenth birthday. It is not so +closely linked up with specific British social elements, with political +parties and the general educational system, as are the rest of the +national services. + +There is nothing so very fantastic in this idea of a sort of +World-Admiralty; it is not even completely novel. Such bodies as the +Knights Templars transcended nationality in the Middle Ages. I do not +see how some such synthetic control of the seas is to be avoided in the +future. And now coming back to the "White Man's Burthen," is there not a +possibility that such a board of marine and international control as the +naval and international problems of the future may produce (or some +closely parallel body with a stronger Latin element), would also be +capable of dealing with these barbaric "Administered Territories"? A day +may come when Tripoli, Nigeria, the French and the Belgian Congo will be +all under one supreme control. We may be laying the foundations of such +a system to-day unawares. The unstable and fluctuating conferences of +the Allies to-day, their repeated experiences of the disadvantages of +evanescent and discontinuous co-ordinations, may press them almost +unconsciously toward this building up of things greater than they know. + +We come now to the third and most difficult type of overseas +"possessions." These are the annexed or conquered regions with settled +populations already having a national tradition and culture of their +own. They are, to put it bluntly, the suppressed, the overlaid, +nations. Now I am a writer rather prejudiced against the idea of +nationality; my habit of thought is cosmopolitan; I hate and despise a +shrewish suspicion of foreigners and foreign ways; a man who can look me +in the face, laugh with me, speak truth and deal fairly, is my brother +though his skin is as black as ink or as yellow as an evening primrose. +But I have to recognise the facts of the case. In spite of all my large +liberality, I find it less irritating to be ruled by people of my own +language and race and tradition, and I perceive that for the mass of +people alien rule is intolerable. + +Local difference, nationality, is a very obstinate thing. Every country +tends to revert to its natural type. Nationality will out. Once a people +has emerged above the barbaric stage to a national consciousness, that +consciousness will endure. There is practically always going to be an +Egypt, a Poland, an Armenia. There is no Indian nation, there never has +been, but there are manifestly a Bengal and a Rajputana, there is +manifestly a constellation of civilised nations in India. Several of +these have literatures and traditions that extend back before the days +when the Britons painted themselves with woad. Let us deal with this +question mainly with reference to India. What is said will apply +equally to Burmah or Egypt or Armenia or--to come back into +Europe--Poland. + +Now I have talked, I suppose, with many scores of people about the +future of India, and I have never yet met anyone, Indian or British, who +thought it desirable that the British should evacuate India at once. And +I have never yet met anyone who did not think that ultimately the +British must let the Indian nations control their own destinies. There +are really not two opposite opinions about the destiny of India, but +only differences of opinion as to the length of time in which that +destiny is to be achieved. Many Indians think (and I agree with them) +that India might be a confederation of sovereign states in close +alliance with the British Empire and its allies within the space of +fifty years or so. The opposite extreme was expressed by an old weary +Indian administrator who told me, "Perhaps they may begin to be capable +of self-government in four or five hundred years." These are the extreme +Liberal and the extreme Tory positions in this question. It is a choice +between decades and centuries. There is no denial of the inevitability +of ultimate restoration. No one of any experience believes the British +administration in India is an eternal institution. + +There is a great deal of cant in this matter in Great Britain. Genteel +English people with relations in the Indian Civil Service and habits of +self-delusion, believe that Indians are "grateful" for British rule. The +sort of "patriotic" self-flattery that prevailed in the Victorian age, +and which is so closely akin to contemporary German follies, fostered +and cultivated this sweet delusion. There are, no doubt, old ladies in +Germany to-day who believe that Belgium will presently be "grateful" for +the present German administration. Let us clear our minds of such cant. +As a matter of fact no Indians really like British rule or think of it +as anything better than a necessary, temporary evil. Let me put the +parallel case to an Englishman or a Frenchman. Through various political +ineptitudes our country has, we will suppose, fallen under the rule of +the Chinese. They administer it, we will further assume, with an +efficiency and honesty unparalleled in the bad old times of our lawyer +politicians. They do not admit us to the higher branches of the +administration; they go about our country wearing a strange costume, +professing a strange religion--which implies that ours is +wrong--speaking an unfamiliar tongue. They control our financial system +and our economic development--on Chinese lines of the highest merit. +They take the utmost care of our Gothic cathedrals for us. They put our +dearest racial possessions into museums and admire them very much +indeed. They teach our young men to fly kites and eat bird's nest soup. +They do all that a well-bred people can do to conceal their habit and +persuasion of a racial superiority. But they keep up their "prestige." +... You know, we shouldn't love them. It really isn't a question of +whether they rule well or ill, but that the position is against certain +fundamentals of human nature. The only possible footing upon which we +could meet them with comfortable minds would be the footing that we and +they were discussing the terms of the restoration of our country. Then +indeed we might almost feel friendly with them. That is the case with +all civilised "possessions." The only terms upon which educated British +and Indians can meet to-day with any comfort is precisely that. The +living intercourse of the British and Indian mind to-day is the +discussion of the restoration. Everything else is humbug on the one side +and self-deception on the other. + +It is idle to speak of the British occupation of India as a conquest or +a robbery. It is a fashion of much "advanced" literature in Europe to +assume that the European rule of various Asiatic countries is the +result of deliberate conquest with a view to spoliation. But that is +only the ugly side of the facts. Cases of the deliberate invasion and +spoliation of one country by another have been very rare in the history +of the last three centuries. There has always been an excuse, and there +has always been a percentage of truth in the excuse. The history of +every country contains phases of political ineptitude in which that +country becomes so misgoverned as to be not only a nuisance to the +foreigner within its borders but a danger to its neighbours. Mexico is +in such a phase to-day. And most of the aggressions and annexations of +the modern period have arisen out of the inconveniences and reasonable +fears caused by such an inept phase. I am a persistent advocate for the +restoration of Poland, but at the same time it is very plain to me that +it is a mere travesty of the facts to say that Poland, was a white lamb +of a country torn to pieces by three wicked neighbours, Poland in the +eighteenth century was a dangerous political muddle, uncertain of her +monarchy, her policy, her affinities. She endangered her neighbours +because there was no guarantee that she might not fall under the +tutelage of one of them and become a weapon against the others. + +The division of Poland was an outrage upon the Polish people, but it +was largely dictated by an entirely honest desire to settle a dangerous +possibility. It seemed less injurious than the possibility of a +vacillating, independent Poland playing off one neighbour against +another. That possibility will still be present in the minds of the +diplomatists who will determine the settlement after the war. Until the +Poles make up their minds, and either convince the Russians that they +are on the side of Russia and Bohemia against Germany for evermore, or +the Germans that they are willing to be Posenised, they will live +between two distrustful enemies. + +The Poles need to think of the future more and the wrongs of Poland +less. They want less patriotic intrigue and more racial self-respect. +They are not only Poles but members of a greater brotherhood. My +impression is that Poland will "go Slav"--in spite of Cracow. But I am +not sure. I am haunted by the fear that Poland may still find her future +hampered by Poles who are, as people say, "too clever by half." An +incalculable Poland cannot be and will not be tolerated by the rest of +Europe. + +And the overspreading of India by the British was in the same way very +clearly done under compulsion, first lest the Dutch or French should +exploit the vast resources of the peninsula against Britain, and then +for fear of a Russian exploitation. I am no apologist for British rule +in India; I think we have neglected vast opportunities there; it was our +business from the outset to build up a free and friendly Indian +confederation, and we have done not a tithe of what we might have done +to that end. But then we have not done a little of what we might have +done for our own country. + +Nevertheless we have our case to plead, not only for going to India +but--with the Berlin papers still babbling of Bagdad and beyond[3]--of +sticking there very grimly. And so too the British have a fairly sound +excuse for grabbing Egypt in their fear lest in its phase of political +ineptitude it should be the means of strangling the British Empire as +the Turk in Constantinople has been used to strangle the Russian. None +of these justifications I admit are complete, but all deserve +consideration. It is no good arguing about the finer ethics of the +things that are; the business of sane men is to get things better. The +business of all sane men in all the countries of the Pledged Allies and +in America is manifestly to sink petty jealousies and a suicidal +competitiveness, and to organise co-operation with all the intellectual +forces they can find or develop in the subject countries, to convert +these inept national systems into politically efficient independent +organisations in a world peace alliance. If we fail to do that, then all +the inept states and all the subject states about the world will become +one great field for the sowing of tares by the enemy. + +[Footnote 3: This was written late in February, 1916.] + +So that with regard to the civilised just as with regard to the barbaric +regions of the "possessions" of the European-centred empires, we come to +the same conclusion. That on the whole the path of safety lies in the +direction of pooling them and of declaring a common policy of +progressive development leading to equality. The pattern of the United +States, in which the procedure is first the annexation of "territories" +and then their elevation to the rank of "States," must, with of course +far more difficulty and complication, be the pattern for the "empires" +of to-day--so far as they are regions of alien population. The path of +the Dominions, settled by emigrants akin to the home population, +Siberia, Canada, and so forth, to equal citizenship with the people of +the Mother Country is by comparison simple and plain. + +And so the discussion of the future of the overseas "empires" brings us +again to the same realisation to which the discussion of nearly every +great issue arising out of this war has pointed, the realisation of the +imperative necessity of some great council or conference, some permanent +overriding body, call it what you will, that will deal with things more +broadly than any "nationalism" or "patriotic imperialism" can possibly +do. That body must come into human affairs. Upon the courage and +imagination of living statesmen it depends whether it will come simply +and directly into concrete reality or whether it will materialise slowly +through, it may be, centuries of blood and blundering from such phantom +anticipations as this, anticipations that now haunt the thoughts of all +politically-minded men. + + + + +XII. THE OUTLOOK FOR THE GERMANS + + +Section 1 + +Whatever some of us among the Allies may say, the future of Germany lies +with Germany. The utmost ambition of the Allies falls far short of +destroying or obliterating Germany; it is to give the Germans so +thorough and memorable an experience of war that they will want no more +of it for a few generations, and, failing the learning of that lesson, +to make sure that they will not be in a position to resume their +military aggressions upon mankind with any hope of success. After all, +it is not the will of the Allies that has determined even this resolve. +It is the declared and manifest will of Germany to become predominant in +the world that has created the Alliance against Germany, and forged and +tempered our implacable resolution to bring militarist Germany down. And +the nature of the coming peace and of the politics that will follow the +peace are much more dependent upon German affairs than upon anything +else whatever. + +This is so clearly understood in Great Britain that there is scarcely a +newspaper that does not devote two or three columns daily to extracts +from the German newspapers, and from letters found upon German killed, +wounded, or prisoners, and to letters and descriptive articles from +neutrals upon the state of the German mind. There can be no doubt that +the British intelligence has grasped and kept its hold upon the real +issue of this war with an unprecedented clarity. At the outset there +came declarations from nearly every type of British opinion that this +war was a war against the Hohenzollern militarist idea, against +Prussianism, and not against Germany. + +In that respect Britain has documented herself to the hilt. There have +been, of course, a number of passionate outcries and wild accusations +against Germans, as a race, during the course of the struggle; but to +this day opinion is steadfast not only in Britain, but if I may judge +from the papers I read and the talk I hear, throughout the whole +English-speaking community, that this is a war not of races but ideas. I +am so certain of this that I would say if Germany by some swift +convulsion expelled her dynasty and turned herself into a republic, it +would be impossible for the British Government to continue the war for +long, whether it wanted to do so or not. The forces in favour of +reconciliation would be too strong. There would be a complete revulsion +from the present determination to continue the war to its bitter but +conclusive end. + +It is fairly evident that the present German Government understands this +frame of mind quite clearly, and is extremely anxious to keep it from +the knowledge of the German peoples. Every act or word from a British +source that suggests an implacable enmity against the Germans as a +people, every war-time caricature and insult, is brought to their +knowledge. It is the manifest interest of the Hohenzollerns and +Prussianism to make this struggle a race struggle and not merely a +political struggle, and to keep a wider breach between the peoples than +between the Governments. The "Made in Germany" grievance has been used +to the utmost against Great Britain as an indication of race hostility. +The everyday young German believes firmly that it was a blow aimed +specially at Germany; that no such regulation affected any goods but +German goods. And the English, with their characteristic heedlessness, +have never troubled to disillusion him. But even the British +caricaturist and the British soldier betray their fundamental opinion +of the matter in their very insults. They will not use a word of abuse +for the Germans as Germans; they call them "Huns," because they are +thinking of Attila, because they are thinking of them as invaders under +a monarch of peaceful France and Belgium, and not as a people living in +a land of their own. + +In Great Britain there is to this day so little hostility for Germans as +such, that recently a nephew of Lord Haldane's, Sir George Makgill, has +considered it advisable to manufacture race hostility and provide the +Hohenzollerns with instances and quotations through the exertions of a +preposterous Anti-German League. Disregarding the essential evils of the +Prussian idea, this mischievous organisation has set itself to persuade +the British people that the Germans are diabolical _as a race_. It has +displayed great energy and ingenuity in pestering and insulting +naturalised Germans and people of German origin in Britain--below the +rank of the Royal Family, that is--and in making enduring bad blood +between them and the authentic British. It busies itself in breaking up +meetings at which sentiments friendly to Germany might be expressed, +sentiments which, if they could be conveyed to German hearers, would +certainly go far to weaken the determination of the German social +democracy to fight to the end. + +There can, of course, be no doubt of the good faith of Sir George +Makgill, but he could do the Kaiser no better service than to help in +consolidating every rank and class of German, by this organisation of +foolish violence of speech and act, by this profession of an irrational +and implacable hostility. His practical influence over here is trivial, +thanks to the general good sense and the love of fair play in our +people, but there can be little doubt that his intentions are about as +injurious to the future peace of the world as any intentions could be, +and there can be no doubt that intelligent use is made in Germany of the +frothings and ravings of his followers. "Here, you see, is the +disposition of the English," the imperialists will say to the German +pacifists. "They are dangerous lunatics. Clearly we must stick together +to the end." ... + +The stuff of Sir George Makgill's league must not be taken as +representative of any considerable section of British opinion, which is +as a whole nearly as free from any sustained hatred of the Germans as it +was at the beginning of the war. There are, of course, waves of +indignation at such deliberate atrocities as the _Lusitania_ outrage or +the Zeppelin raids, Wittenberg will not easily be forgotten, but it +would take many Sir George Makgills to divert British anger from the +responsible German Government to the German masses. + +That lack of any essential hatred does not mean that British opinion is +not solidly for the continuation of this war against militarist +imperialism to its complete and final defeat. But if that can be +defeated to any extent in Germany by the Germans, if the way opens to a +Germany as unmilitary and pacific as was Great Britain before this war, +there remains from the British point of view nothing else to fight +about. With the Germany of _Vorwaerts_ which, I understand, would +evacuate and compensate Belgium and Serbia, set up a buffer state in +Alsace-Lorraine, and another in a restored Poland (including Posen), the +spirit of the Allies has no profound quarrel at all, has never had any +quarrel. We would only too gladly meet that Germany at a green table +to-morrow, and set to work arranging the compensation of Belgium and +Serbia, and tracing over the outlines of the natural map of mankind the +new political map of Europe. + +Still it must be admitted that not only in Great Britain but in all the +allied countries one finds a certain active minority corresponding to +Sir George Makgill's noisy following, who profess to believe that all +Germans to the third and fourth generation (save and except the +Hanoverian royal family domiciled in Great Britain) are a vile, +treacherous, and impossible race, a race animated by an incredible +racial vanity, a race which is indeed scarcely anything but a conspiracy +against the rest of mankind. + +The ravings of many of these people can only be paralleled by the stuff +about the cunning of the Jesuits that once circulated in +ultra-Protestant circles in England. Elderly Protestant ladies used to +look under the bed and in the cupboard every night for a Jesuit, just as +nowadays they look for a German spy, and as no doubt old German ladies +now look for Sir Edward Grey. It may be useful therefore, at the present +time, to point out that not only is the aggressive German idea not +peculiar to Germany, not only are there endless utterances of French +Chauvinists and British imperialists to be found entirely as vain, +unreasonable and aggressive, but that German militarist imperialism is +so little representative of the German quality, that scarcely one of its +leading exponents is a genuine German. + +Of course there is no denying that the Germans are a very distinctive +people, as distinctive as the French. But their distinctions are not +diabolical. Until the middle of the nineteenth century it was the +fashion to regard them as a race of philosophical incompetents. Their +reputation as a people of exceptionally military quality sprang up in +the weed-bed of human delusions between 1866 and 1872; it will certainly +not survive this war. Their reputation for organisation is another +matter. They are an orderly, industrious, and painstaking people, they +have a great respect for science, for formal education, and for +authority. It is their respect for education which has chiefly betrayed +them, and made them the instrument of Hohenzollern folly. Mr. F.M. +Hueffer has shown this quite conclusively in his admirable but ill-named +book, "When Blood is Their Argument." Their minds have been +systematically corrupted by base historical teaching, and the +inculcation of a rancid patriotism. They are a people under the sway of +organised suggestion. This catastrophic war and its preparation have +been their chief business for half a century; none the less their +peculiar qualities have still been displayed during that period; they +have still been able to lead the world in several branches of social +organisation and in the methodical development of technical science. +Systems of ideas are perhaps more readily shattered than built up; the +aggressive patriotism of many Germans must be already darkened by +serious doubts, and I see no inherent impossibility in hoping that the +mass of the Germans may be restored to the common sanity of mankind, +even in the twenty or thirty years of life that perhaps still remain for +me. + +Consider the names of the chief exponents of the aggressive German idea, +and you will find that not one is German. The first begetter of +Nietzsche's "blond beast," and of all that great flood of rubbish about +a strange superior race with whitish hair and blue eyes, that has so +fatally rotted the German imagination, was a Frenchman named Gobineau. +We British are not altogether free from the disease. As a small boy I +read the History of J.R. Green, and fed my pride upon the peculiar +virtues of my Anglo-Saxon blood. ("Cp.," as they say in footnotes, +Carlyle and Froude.) It was not a German but a renegade Englishman of +the Englishman-hating Whig type, Mr. Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who +carried the Gobineau theory to that delirious level which claims Dante +and Leonardo as Germans, and again it was not a German but a British +peer, still among us, Lord Redesdale, who in his eulogistic preface to +the English translation of Chamberlain's torrent of folly, hinted not +obscurely that the real father of Christ was not the Jew, Joseph, but a +much more Germanic person. Neither Clausewitz, who first impressed upon +the German mind the theory of ruthless warfare, nor Bernhardi, nor +Treitschke, who did as much to build up the Emperor's political +imagination, strike one as bearing particularly German names. There are +indeed very grave grounds for the German complaint that Germany has been +the victim of alien flattery and alien precedents. And what after all is +the Prussian dream of world empire but an imitative response to the +British empire and the adventure of Napoleon? The very title of the +German emperor is the name of an Italian, Caesar, far gone in decay. And +the backbone of the German system at the present time is the Prussian, +who is not really a German at all but a Germanised Wend. Take away the +imported and imposed elements from the things we fight to-day, leave +nothing but what is purely and originally German, and you leave very +little. We fight dynastic ambition, national vanity, greed, and the +fruits of fifty years of basely conceived and efficiently conducted +education. + +The majority of sensible and influential Englishmen are fully aware of +these facts. This does not alter their resolution to beat Germany +thoroughly and finally, and, if Germany remains Hohenzollern after the +war, to do their utmost to ring her in with commercial alliances, +tariffs, navigation and exclusion laws that will keep her poor and +powerless and out of mischief so long as her vice remains in her. But +these considerations of the essential innocence of the German do make +all this systematic hostility, which the British have had forced upon +them, a very uncongenial and reluctant hostility. Pro-civilisation, and +not Anti-German, is the purpose of the Allies. And the speculation of +just how relentlessly and for how long this ring of suspicion and +precaution need be maintained about Germany, of how soon the German may +decide to become once more a good European, is one of extraordinary +interest to every civilised man. In other words, what are the prospects +of a fairly fundamental revolution in German life and thought and +affairs in the years immediately before us? + + +Ā§2 + +In a sense every European country must undergo revolutionary changes as +a consequence of the enormous economic exhaustion and social +dislocations of this war. But what I propose to discuss here is the +possibility of a real political revolution, in the narrower sense of +the word, in Germany, a revolution that will end the Hohenzollern +system, the German dynastic system, altogether, that will democratise +Prussia and put an end for ever to that secretive scheming of military +aggressions which is the essential quarrel of Europe with Germany. It is +the most momentous possibility of our times, because it opens the way to +an alternative state of affairs that may supersede the armed watching +and systematic war of tariffs, prohibitions, and exclusions against the +Central Empires that must quite unavoidably be the future attitude of +the Pledged Allies to any survival of the Hohenzollern empire. + +We have to bear in mind that in this discussion we are dealing with +something very new and quite untried hitherto by anything but success, +that new Germany whose unification began with the spoliation of Denmark +and was completed at Versailles. It is not a man's lifetime old. Under +the state socialism and aggressive militarism of the Hohenzollern regime +it had been led to a level of unexampled pride and prosperity, and it +plunged shouting and singing into this war, confident of victories. It +is still being fed with dwindling hopes of victory, no longer unstinted +hopes, but still hopes--by a sort of political bread-card system. The +hopes outlast the bread-and-butter, but they dwindle and dwindle. How is +this parvenu people going to stand the cessation of hope, the +realisation of the failure and fruitlessness of such efforts as no +people on earth have ever made before? How are they going to behave when +they realise fully that they have suffered and died and starved and +wasted all their land in vain? When they learn too that the cause of the +war was a trick, and the Russian invasion a lie? They have a large +democratic Press that will not hesitate to tell them that, that does +already to the best of its ability disillusion them. They are a +carefully trained and educated and disciplined people, it is true[4]; +but the solicitude of the German Government everywhere apparent, thus to +keep the resentment of the people directed to the proper quarter, is, I +think, just one of the things that are indicative of the revolutionary +possibilities in Germany. The Allied Governments let opinion, both in +their own countries and in America, shift for itself; they do not even +trouble to mitigate the inevitable exasperation of the military +censorship by an intelligent and tactful control. The German Government, +on the other hand, has organised the putting of the blame upon other +shoulders than its own elaborately and ably from the very beginning of +the war. It must know its own people best, and I do not see why it +should do this if there were not very dangerous possibilities ahead for +itself in the national temperament. + +[Footnote 4: A recent circular, which _Vorwaerts_ quotes, sent by the +education officials to the teachers of Frankfurt-am-Main, points out the +necessity of the "beautiful task" of inculcating a deep love for the +House of Hohenzollern (Crown Prince, grin and all), and concludes, "All +efforts to excuse or minimise or explain the disgraceful acts which our +enemies have committed against Germans all over the world are to be +firmly opposed by you should you see any signs of these efforts entering +the schools."] + +It is one of the commonplaces of this question that in the past the +Germans have always been loyal subjects and never made a revolution. It +is alleged that there has never been a German republic. That is by no +means conclusively true. The nucleus of Swiss freedom was the +German-speaking cantons about the Lake of Lucerne; Tell was a German, +and he was glorified by the German Schiller. No doubt the Protestant +reformation was largely a business of dukes and princes, but the +underlying spirit of that revolt also lay in the German national +character. The Anabaptist insurrection was no mean thing in rebellions, +and the history of the Dutch, who are, after all, only the extreme +expression of the Low German type, is a history of the most stubborn +struggle for freedom in Europe. This legend of German docility will not +bear close examination. It is true that they are not given to spasmodic +outbreaks, and that they do not lend themselves readily to intrigues and +pronunciamentos, but there is every reason to suppose that they have the +heads to plan and the wills to carry out as sound and orderly and +effective a revolution as any people in Europe. Before the war drove +them frantic, the German comic papers were by no means suggestive of an +abject worship of authority and royalty for their own sakes. The +teaching of all forms of morality and sentimentality in schools produces +not only belief but reaction, and the livelier and more energetic the +pupil the more likely he is to react rather than accept. + +Whatever the feelings of the old women of Germany may be towards the +Kaiser and his family, my impression of the opinion of Germans in +general is that they believed firmly in empire, Kaiser and militarism +wholly and solely because they thought these things meant security, +success, triumph, more and more wealth, more and more Germany, and all +that had come to them since 1871 carried on to the _n_th degree.... I do +not think that all the schoolmasters of Germany, teaching in unison at +the tops of their voices, will sustain that belief beyond the end of +this war. + +At present every discomfort and disappointment of the German people is +being sedulously diverted into rage against the Allies, and particularly +against the English. This is all very well as long as the war goes on +with a certain effect of hopefulness. But what when presently the beam +has so tilted against Germany that an unprofitable peace has become +urgent and inevitable? How can the Hohenzollern suddenly abandon his +pose of righteous indignation and make friends with the accursed enemy, +and how can he make any peace at all with us while he still proclaims us +accursed? Either the Emperor has to go to his people and say, "We +promised you victory and it is defeat," or he has to say, "It is not +defeat, but we are going to make peace with these Russian barbarians who +invaded us, with the incompetent English who betrayed us, with all these +degenerate and contemptible races you so righteously hate and despise, +upon such terms that we shall never be able to attack them again. This +noble and wonderful war is to end in this futility and--these graves. +You were tricked into it, as you were tricked into war in 1870--but this +time it has not turned out quite so well. And besides, after all, we +find we can continue to get on with these people." ... + +In either case, I do not see how he can keep the habitual and cultivated +German hate pointing steadily away from himself. So long as the war is +going on that may be done, but when the soldiers come home the hate will +come home as well. In times of war peoples may hate abroad and with some +unanimity. But after the war, with no war going on or any prospect of a +fresh war, with every exploiter and every industrial tyrant who has made +his unobtrusive profits while the country scowled and spat at England, +stripped of the cover of that excitement, then it is inevitable that +much of this noble hate of England will be seen for the cant it is. The +cultivated hate of the war phase, reinforced by the fresh hate born of +confusion and misery, will swing loose, as it were, seeking dispersedly +for objects. The petty, incessant irritations of proximity will count +for more; the national idea for less. The Hohenzollerns and the Junkers +will have to be very nimble indeed if the German accomplishment of hate +does not swing round upon them. + +It is a common hypothesis with those who speculate on the probable +effects of these disillusionments that Germany may break up again into +its component parts. It is pointed out that Germany is, so to speak, a +palimpsest, that the broad design of the great black eagle and the +imperial crown are but newly painted over a great number of +particularisms, and that these particularisms may return. The empire of +the Germans may break up again. That I do not believe. The forces that +unified Germany lie deeper than the Hohenzollern adventure; print, paper +and the spoken word have bound Germany now into one people for all time. +None the less those previous crowns and symbols that still show through +the paint of the new design may help greatly, as that weakens under the +coming stresses, to disillusion men about its necessity. There was, they +will be reminded, a Germany before Prussia, before Austria for the +matter of that. The empire has been little more than the first German +experiment in unity. It is a new-fangled thing that came and may go +again--leaving Germany still a nation, still with the sense of a common +Fatherland. + +Let us consider a little more particularly the nature of the mass of +population whose collective action in the years immediately ahead of us +we are now attempting to forecast. Its social strata are only very +inexactly equivalent to those in the countries of the Pledged Allies. +First there are the masses of the people. In England for purposes of +edification we keep up the legend of the extreme efficiency of Germany, +the high level of German education, and so forth. The truth is that the +average _elementary_ education of the common people in Britain is +superior to that of Germany, that the domestic efficiency of the British +common people is greater, their moral training better, and their +personal quality higher. This is shown by a number of quite conclusive +facts of which I will instance merely the higher German general +death-rate, the higher German infantile death-rate, the altogether +disproportionate percentage of crimes of violence in Germany, and the +indisputable personal superiority of the British common soldier over his +German antagonist. It is only when we get above the level of the masses +that the position is reversed. The ratio of public expenditure upon +secondary and higher education in Germany as compared with the +expenditure upon elementary education is out of all proportion to the +British ratio. + +Directly we come to the commercial, directive, official, technical and +professional classes in Germany, we come to classes far more highly +trained, more alert intellectually, more capable of collective action, +and more accessible to general ideas, than the less numerous and less +important corresponding classes in Britain. This great German middle +class is the strength and substance of the new Germany; it has increased +proportionally to the classes above and below it, it has developed +almost all its characteristics during the last half-century. At its +lower fringe it comprehends the skilled and scientifically trained +artisans, it supplies the brains of social democracy, and it reaches up +to the world of finance and quasi-state enterprise. And it is the "dark +horse" in all these speculations. + +Hitherto this middle class has been growing almost unawares. It has been +so busy coming into existence and growing, there has been so much to do +since 1871, that it has had scarcely a moment to think round the general +problem of politics at all. It has taken the new empire for granted as a +child takes its home for granted, and its state of mind to-day must be +rather like that of an intelligent boy who suddenly discovers that his +father's picturesque and wonderful speculations have led to his arrest +and brought the brokers into the house, and that there is nothing for it +but to turn to and take control of the family affairs. + +In Germany, the most antiquated and the most modern of European states, +the old dynastic Germany of the princes and junkers has lasted on by +virtue of exceptional successes and prestige into the world of steel and +electricity. But their prestige has paled before the engineering of +Krupp; their success evaporates. A new nation awakens to +self-consciousness only to find itself betrayed into apparently +irreconcilable hostility against the rest of mankind.... + +What will be the quality of the monarch and court and junkerdom that +will face this awaking new Germany? + +The monarch will be before very long the present Crown Prince. The +Hohenzollerns have at least the merit of living quickly, and the present +Emperor draws near his allotted term. He will break a record in his +family if he lives another dozen years. So that quite soon after the war +this new disillusioned Germany will be contemplating the imperial graces +of the present Crown Prince. In every way he is an unattractive and +uninspiring figure; he has identified himself completely with that +militarism that has brought about the European catastrophe; in +repudiating him Germany will repudiate her essential offence against +civilisation, and his appears to be the sort of personality that it is a +pleasure to repudiate. He or some kindred regent will be the symbol of +royalty in Germany through all those years of maximum stress and +hardship ahead. Through-out the greater part of Germany the tradition of +loyalty to his house is not a century old. And the real German loyalty +is racial and national far more than dynastic. It is not the +Hohenzollern over all that they sing about; it is Deutschland. (And--as +in the case of all imperfectly civilised people--songs of hate for +foreigners.) But it needed a decadent young American to sing: + + "Thou Prince of Peace, + Thou God of War," + +to the dismal rhetorician of Potsdam. Real emperors reconcile and +consolidate peoples, for an empire is not a nation; but the +Hohenzollerns have never dared to be anything but sedulously national, +"echt Deutsch" and advocates of black-letter. They know the people they +have to deal with. + +This new substantial middle mass of Germany has never been on friendly +terms with the Germany of the court and the landowner. It has inherited +a burgerlich tradition and resented even while it tolerated the swagger +of the aristocratic officer. It tolerated it because that sort of thing +was supposed to be necessary to the national success. But Munich, the +comic papers, Herr Harden, _Vorwaerts_, speak, I think, for the central +masses of German life far more truly than any official utterances do. +They speak in a voice a little gross, very sensible, blunt, with a kind +of heavy humour. That German voice one may not like, but one must needs +respect it. It is, at any rate, not bombastic. It is essentially honest. +When the imperial eagle comes home with half its feathers out like a +crow that has met a bear; when the surviving aristocratic officers +reappear with a vastly diminished swagger in the biergartens, I believe +that the hitherto acquiescent middle classes and skilled artisan class +of German will entirely disappoint those people who expect them to +behave either with servility or sentimental loyalty. The great +revolutionary impulse of the French was passionate and generous. The +revolutionary impulse of Germany may be even more deadly; it may be +contemptuous. It may be they will not even drag emperor and nobles down; +they will shove them aside.... + +In all these matters one must ask the reader to enlarge his perspectives +at least as far back as the last three centuries. The galaxy of German +monarchies that has over-spread so much of Europe is a growth of hardly +more than two centuries. It is a phase in the long process of the +break-up of the Roman Empire and of the catholic system that inherited +its tradition. These royalties have formed a class apart, breeding only +among themselves, and attempting to preserve a sort of caste +internationalism in the face of an advance in human intelligence, a +spread of printing, reading, and writing that makes inevitably for the +recrudescence of national and race feeling, and the increasing +participation of the people in government. + +In Russia and England these originally German dynasties are meeting the +problems of the new time by becoming national. They modify themselves +from year to year. The time when Britain will again have a Queen of +British race may not be very remote. The days when the affairs of Europe +could be discussed at Windsor in German and from a German standpoint +ended with the death of Queen Victoria, and it is only in such +improvised courts as those of Greece and Bulgaria that the national +outlook can still be contemplated from a foreign standpoint and +discussed in a foreign tongue. The age when the monarchical system made +the courts of three-quarters of Europe a German's Fatherland has ended +for ever. And with that, the last rational advantage of monarchy and +royalist sentimentality disappears from the middle-class German's point +of view. + +So it seems to me that the following conclusions about the future of +Germany emerge from these considerations. It is improbable that there +will be any such revolution as overthrew French Imperialism in 1871; the +new Prussian Imperialism is closer to the tradition of the people and +much more firmly established through the educational propaganda of the +past half-century. But liberal forces in Germany may nevertheless be +strong enough to force a peace upon the Hohenzollern empire so soon as +any hopes of aggressive successes die away, before the utmost stage of +exhaustion is reached, early in 1917, perhaps, or at latest in 1918. +This, we suppose, will be a restrictive peace so far as Germany is +concerned, humiliating her and hampering her development. The German +Press will talk freely of a _revanche_ and the renewal of the struggle, +and this will help to consolidate the Pledged Allies in their resolve to +hold Germany on every front and to retard her economic and financial +recovery. The dynasty will lose prestige gradually, the true story of +the war will creep slowly into the German consciousness, and the idea of +a middle-class republic, like the French Republic, only defensively +militant and essentially pacific and industrial, will become more and +more popular in the country. + +This will have the support of strong journalists, journalists of the +Harden type for example. The dynasty tends to become degenerate, so that +the probability of either some gross scandals or an ill-advised +reactionary movement back to absolutism may develop a crisis within a +few years of the peace settlement. The mercantile and professional +classes will join hands with the social democrats to remove the decaying +incubus of the Hohenzollern system, and Germany will become a more +modern and larger repetition of the Third French republic. This collapse +of the Germanic monarchical system may spread considerably beyond the +limits of the German empire. It will probably be effected without much +violence as a consequence of the convergence and maturity of many +streams of very obvious thought. Many of the monarchs concerned may find +themselves still left with their titles, palaces, and personal estates, +and merely deprived of their last vestiges of legal power. The way will +thus be opened for a gradual renewal of good feeling between the people +of Germany and the western Europeans. This renewal will be greatly +facilitated by the inevitable fall in the German birth-rate that the +shortage and economies of this war will have done much to promote, and +by the correlated discrediting of the expansionist idea. By 1960 or so +the alteration of perspectives will have gone so far that historians +will be a little perplexed to explain the causes of the Great War. The +militarist monomania of Germany will have become incomprehensible; her +_Welt Politik_ literature incredible and unreadable.... + +Such is my reading of the German horoscope. + +I doubt if there will be nearly so much writing and reading about the +Great War in the latter half of the twentieth century as there was about +Napoleon at the end of the nineteenth. The Great War is essentially +undramatic, it has no hero, it has no great leaders. It is a story of +the common sense of humanity suppressing certain tawdry and vulgar ideas +and ambitions, and readjusting much that was wasteful and unjust in +social and economic organisation. It is the story of how the spirit of +man was awakened by a nightmare of a War Lord.... The nightmare will +fade out of mind, and the spirit of man, with revivified energies, will +set about the realities of life, the re-establishment of order, the +increase of knowledge and creation. Amid these realities the great +qualities of the Germans mark them for a distinguished and important +rĆ“le. + + +Ā§3 + +The primary business of the Allies is not reconciliation with Germany. +Their primary concern is to organise a great League of Peace about the +world with which the American States and China may either unite or +establish a permanent understanding. Separate attempts to restore +friendship with the Germans will threaten the unanimity of the League of +Peace, and perhaps renew the intrigues and evils of the Germanic +dynastic system which this war may destroy. The essential restoration of +Germany must be the work of German men speaking plain sense to Germans, +and inducing their country to hold out its hand not to this or that +suspicious neighbour but to mankind. A militarist Germany is a Germany +self-condemned to isolation or world empire. A Germany which has +returned to the ways of peace, on the other hand, will be a country that +cannot be kept out of the system of civilisation. The tariff wall cannot +but be lowered, the watchful restrictions cannot but be discontinued +against such a Germany. Europe is a system with its heart half used, so +long as Germany is isolated. The German population is and will remain +the central and largest mass of people in Europe. That is a fact as +necessary as the Indianism of India. + +To reconstruct modern civilisation without Germany would be a colossal +artificial task that would take centuries to do. It is inconceivable +that Germany will stand out of Europeanism so long as to allow the trade +routes of the world to be entirely deflected from her. Her own +necessities march with the natural needs of the world. + +So that I give the alliance for the isolation of Germany at the outside +a life of forty years before it ceases to be necessary through the +recovered willingness of the Germans to lay aside aggression. + +But this is not a thing to be run at too hastily. It may be easily +possible to delay this national general reconciliation of mankind by an +unreal effusion. There will be no advantage in forcing the feelings of +the late combatants. It is ridiculous to suppose that for the next +decade or so, whatever happens, any Frenchmen are going to feel genial +about the occupation of their north-east provinces, or any Belgians +smile at the memory of Dinant or Louvain, or the Poles or Serbs forgive +the desolation of their country, or any English or Russians take a +humorous view of the treatment their people have had as prisoners in +Germany. So long as these are living memories they will keep a barrier +of dislike about Germany. Nor is it probable that the ordinary German +is going to survey the revised map of Africa with a happy sense of +relief, or blame no one but himself for the vanished prosperity of 1914. +That is asking too much of humanity. Unless I know nothing of Germany, +Germany will bristle with "denkmals" to keep open all such sores. The +dislike of Germany by the allied nations will be returned in the +hostility of a thwarted and disappointed people. Not even the neutrals +will be aloof from these hostilities and resentments. The world will +still, in 1950 or so, be throwing much passion into the rights and +wrongs of the sinking of the _Lusitania_. There will be a bitterness in +the memories of this and the next generation that will make the +spectacle of ardent Frenchmen or Englishmen or Belgians or Russians +embracing Germans with gusto--unpleasant, to say the least of it. + +We may bring ourselves to understand, we may bring ourselves to a cold +and reasonable forgiveness, we may suppress our Sir George Makgills and +so forth, but it will take sixty or seventy years for the two sides in +this present war to grow kindly again. Let us build no false hopes nor +pretend to any false generosities. These hatreds can die out only in one +way, by the passing of a generation, by the dying out of the wounded +and the wronged. Our business, our unsentimental business, is to set +about establishing such conditions that they will so die out. And that +is the business of the sane Germans too. Behind the barriers this war +will have set up between Germany and Anti-Germany, the intelligent men +in either camp must prepare the ultimate peace they will never enjoy, +must work for the days when their sons at least may meet as they +themselves can never meet, without accusation or resentment, upon the +common business of the World Peace. That is not to be done by any +conscientious sentimentalities, any slobbering denials of unforgettable +injuries. We want no Pro-German Leagues any more than we want +Anti-German Leagues. We want patience--and silence. + +My reason insists upon the inevitableness and necessity of this ultimate +reconciliation. I will do no more than I must to injure Germany further, +and I will do all that I can to restore the unity of mankind. None the +less is it true that for me for all the rest of my life the Germans I +shall meet, the German things I shall see, will be smeared with the +blood of my people and my friends that the wilfulness of Germany has +spilt. + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of What is Coming?, by H. G. Wells + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11289 *** diff --git a/11289-h/11289-h.htm b/11289-h/11289-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1cd72ef --- /dev/null +++ b/11289-h/11289-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,6096 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<html> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content= + "text/html; charset=UTF-8"> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of TITLE, by AUTHOR. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> + <!-- + * { font-family: Times;} + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + font-size: 14pt; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; } + blockquote {text-align: justify; + margin-left: 15%; + margin-right: 15%;} + H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; } + HR { width: 33%; } + // --> + </style> + </head> +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11289 ***</div> + +<h1>What is Coming?</h1> + +<h2>A Forecast of Things after the War</h2> + +<h3>By H.G. WELLS</h3> + +<h4>1916</h4> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<center> +<a href="#I._FORECASTING_THE_FUTURE">I. FORECASTING THE FUTURE</a><br> +<a href="#II._THE_END_OF_THE_WAR">II. THE END OF THE WAR</a><br> +<a href="#III._NATIONS_IN_LIQUIDATION">III. NATIONS IN LIQUIDATION</a><br> +<a href="#IV._BRAINTREE,_BOCKING,_AND_THE_FUTURE_OF_THE_WORLD">IV. BRAINTREE, BOCKING, AND THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD</a><br> +<a href="#V._HOW_FAR_WILL_EUROPE_GO_TOWARD_SOCIALISM?">V. HOW FAR WILL EUROPE GO TOWARD SOCIALISM?</a><br> +<a href="#VI._LAWYER_AND_PRESS">VI. LAWYER AND PRESS</a><br> +<a href="#VII._THE_NEW_EDUCATION">VII. THE NEW EDUCATION</a><br> +<a href="#VIII._WHAT_THE_WAR_IS_DOING_FOR_WOMEN">VIII. WHAT THE WAR IS DOING FOR WOMEN</a><br> +<a href="#IX._THE_NEW_MAP_OF_EUROPE">IX. THE NEW MAP OF EUROPE</a><br> +<a href="#X._THE_UNITED_STATES,_FRANCE,_BRITAIN,_AND_RUSSIA">X. THE UNITED STATES, FRANCE, BRITAIN, AND RUSSIA</a><br> +<a href="#XI._"THE_WHITE_MAN'S_BURTHEN"">XI. "THE WHITE MAN'S BURTHEN"</a><br> +<a href="#XII._THE_OUTLOOK_FOR_THE_GERMANS">XII. THE OUTLOOK FOR THE GERMANS</a><br> +</center> + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="I._FORECASTING_THE_FUTURE"></a>I. FORECASTING THE FUTURE</h2> +<br> + +<p>Prophecy may vary between being an intellectual amusement and a serious +occupation; serious not only in its intentions, but in its consequences. +For it is the lot of prophets who frighten or disappoint to be stoned. +But for some of us moderns, who have been touched with the spirit of +science, prophesying is almost a habit of mind.</p> + +<p>Science is very largely analysis aimed at forecasting. The test of any +scientific law is our verification of its anticipations. The scientific +training develops the idea that whatever is going to happen is really +here now--if only one could see it. And when one is taken by surprise +the tendency is not to say with the untrained man, "Now, who'd ha' +thought it?" but "Now, what was it we overlooked?"</p> + +<p>Everything that has ever existed or that will ever exist is here--for +anyone who has eyes to see. But some of it demands eyes of superhuman +penetration. Some of it is patent; we are almost as certain of next +Christmas and the tides of the year 1960 and the death before 3000 A.D. +of everybody now alive as if these things had already happened. Below +that level of certainty, but still at a very high level of certainty, +there are such things as that men will probably be making aeroplanes of +an improved pattern in 1950, or that there will be a through railway +connection between Constantinople and Bombay and between Baku and Bombay +in the next half-century. From such grades of certainty as this, one may +come down the scale until the most obscure mystery of all is reached: +the mystery of the individual. Will England presently produce a military +genius? or what will Mr. Belloc say the day after to-morrow? The most +accessible field for the prophet is the heavens; the least is the secret +of the jumping cat within the human skull. How will so-and-so behave, +and how will the nation take it? For such questions as that we need the +subtlest guesses of all.</p> + +<p>Yet, even to such questions as these the sharp, observant man may risk +an answer with something rather better than an even chance of being +right.</p> + +<p>The present writer is a prophet by use and wont. He is more interested +in to-morrow than he is in to-day, and the past is just material for +future guessing. "Think of the men who have walked here!" said a tourist +in the Roman Coliseum. It was a Futurist mind that answered: "Think of +the men who will." It is surely as interesting that presently some +founder of the World Republic, some obstinate opponent of militarism or +legalism, or the man who will first release atomic energy for human use, +will walk along the Via Sacra as that Cicero or Giordano Bruno or +Shelley have walked there in the past. To the prophetic mind all history +is and will continue to be a prelude. The prophetic type will +steadfastly refuse to see the world as a museum; it will insist that +here is a stage set for a drama that perpetually begins.</p> + +<p>Now this forecasting disposition has led the writer not only to publish +a book of deliberate prophesying, called "Anticipations," but almost +without premeditation to scatter a number of more or less obvious +prophecies through his other books. From first to last he has been +writing for twenty years, so that it is possible to check a certain +proportion of these anticipations by the things that have happened, Some +of these shots have hit remarkably close to the bull's-eye of reality; +there are a number of inners and outers, and some clean misses. Much +that he wrote about in anticipation is now established commonplace. In +1894 there were still plenty of sceptics of the possibility either of +automobiles or aeroplanes; it was not until 1898 that Mr. S.P. Langley +(of the Smithsonian Institute) could send the writer a photograph of a +heavier-than-air flying machine actually in the air. There were articles +in the monthly magazines of those days <i>proving</i> that flying was +impossible.</p> + +<p>One of the writer's luckiest shots was a description (in "Anticipations" +in 1900) of trench warfare, and of a deadlock almost exactly upon the +lines of the situation after the battle of the Marne. And he was +fortunate (in the same work) in his estimate of the limitations of +submarines. He anticipated Sir Percy Scott by a year in his doubts of +the decisive value of great battleships (<i>see</i> "An Englishman Looks at +the World"); and he was sound in denying the decadence of France; in +doubting (before the Russo-Japanese struggle) the greatness of the power +of Russia, which was still in those days a British bogey; in making +Belgium the battle-ground in a coming struggle between the mid-European +Powers and the rest of Europe; and (he believes) in foretelling a +renascent Poland. Long before Europe was familiar with the engaging +personality of the German Crown Prince, he represented great airships +sailing over England (which country had been too unenterprising to make +any) under the command of a singularly anticipatory Prince Karl, and in +"The World Set Free" the last disturber of the peace is a certain +"Balkan Fox."</p> + +<p>In saying, however, here and there that "before such a year so-and-so +will happen," or that "so-and-so will not occur for the next twenty +years," he was generally pretty widely wrong; most of his time estimates +are too short; he foretold, for example, a special motor track apart +from the high road between London and Brighton before 1910, which is +still a dream, but he doubted if effective military aviation or aerial +fighting would be possible before 1950, which is a miss on the other +side. He will draw a modest veil over certain still wider misses that +the idle may find for themselves in his books; he prefers to count the +hits and leave the reckoning of the misses to those who will find a +pleasure in it.</p> + +<p>Of course, these prophecies of the writer's were made upon a basis of +very generalised knowledge. What can be done by a really sustained +research into a particular question--especially if it is a question +essentially mechanical--is shown by the work of a Frenchman all too +neglected by the trumpet of fame--Clement Ader. M. Ader was probably the +first man to get a mechanism up into the air for something more than a +leap. His <i>Eole</i>, as General Mensier testifies, prolonged a jump as far +as fifty metres as early as 1890. In 1897 his <i>Avion</i> fairly flew. (This +is a year ahead of the date of my earliest photograph of S.P. Langley's +aeropile in mid-air.) This, however, is beside our present mark. The +fact of interest here is that in 1908, when flying was still almost +incredible, M. Ader published his "Aviation Militaire." Well, that was +eight years ago, and men have been fighting in the air now for a year, +and there is still nothing being done that M. Ader did not see, and +which we, if we had had the wisdom to attend to him, might not have been +prepared for. There is much that he foretells which is still awaiting +its inevitable fulfilment. So clearly can men of adequate knowledge and +sound reasoning power see into the years ahead in all such matters of +material development.</p> + +<p>But it is not with the development of mechanical inventions that the +writer now proposes to treat. In this book he intends to hazard certain +forecasts about the trend of events in the next decade or so. Mechanical +novelties will probably play a very small part in that coming history. +This world-wide war means a general arrest of invention and enterprise, +except in the direction of the war business. Ability is concentrated +upon that; the types of ability that are not applicable to warfare are +neglected; there is a vast destruction of capital and a waste of the +savings that are needed to finance new experiments. Moreover, we are +killing off many of our brightest young men.</p> + +<p>It is fairly safe to assume that there will be very little new furniture +on the stage of the world for some considerable time; that if there is +much difference in the roads and railways and shipping it will be for +the worse; that architecture, domestic equipment, and so on, will be +fortunate if in 1924 they stand where they did in the spring of 1914. In +the trenches of France and Flanders, and on the battlefields of Russia, +the Germans have been spending and making the world spend the comfort, +the luxury and the progress of the next quarter-century. There is no +accounting for tastes. But the result is that, while it was possible +for the writer in 1900 to write "Anticipations of the Reaction of +Mechanical Progress upon Human Life and Thought," in 1916 his +anticipations must belong to quite another system of consequences.</p> + +<p>The broad material facts before us are plain enough. It is the mental +facts that have to be unravelled. It isn't now a question of "What +thing--what faculty--what added power will come to hand, and how will it +affect our ways of living?" It is a question of "How are people going to +take these obvious things--waste of the world's resources, arrest of +material progress, the killing of a large moiety of the males in nearly +every European country, and universal loss and unhappiness?" We are +going to deal with realities here, at once more intimate and less +accessible than the effects of mechanism.</p> + +<p>As a preliminary reconnaissance, as it were, over the region of problems +we have to attack, let us consider the difficulties of a single +question, which is also a vital and central question in this forecast. +We shall not attempt a full answer here, because too many of the factors +must remain unexamined; later, perhaps, we may be in a better position +to do so. This question is the probability of the establishment of a +long world peace.</p> + +<p>At the outset of the war there was a very widely felt hope among the +intellectuals of the world that this war might clear up most of the +outstanding international problems, and prove the last war. The writer, +looking across the gulf of experience that separates us from 1914, +recalls two pamphlets whose very titles are eloquent of this +feeling--"The War that will End War," and "The Peace of the World." Was +the hope expressed in those phrases a dream? Is it already proven a +dream? Or can we read between the lines of the war news, diplomatic +disputations, threats and accusations, political wranglings and stories +of hardship and cruelty that now fill our papers, anything that still +justifies a hope that these bitter years of world sorrow are the +darkness before the dawn of a better day for mankind? Let us handle this +problem for a preliminary examination.</p> + +<p>What is really being examined here is the power of human reason to +prevail over passion--and certain other restraining and qualifying +forces. There can be little doubt that, if one could canvass all mankind +and ask them whether they would rather have no war any more, the +overwhelming mass of them would elect for universal peace. If it were +war of the modern mechanical type that was in question, with air raids, +high explosives, poison gas and submarines, there could be no doubt at +all about the response. "Give peace in our time, O Lord," is more than +ever the common prayer of Christendom, and the very war makers claim to +be peace makers; the German Emperor has never faltered in his assertion +that he encouraged Austria to send an impossible ultimatum to Serbia, +and invaded Belgium because Germany was being attacked. The Krupp-Kaiser +Empire, he assures us, is no eagle, but a double-headed lamb, resisting +the shearers and butchers. The apologists for war are in a hopeless +minority; a certain number of German Prussians who think war good for +the soul, and the dear ladies of the London <i>Morning Post</i> who think war +so good for the manners of the working classes, are rare, discordant +voices in the general chorus against war. If a mere unsupported and +uncoordinated will for peace could realise itself, there would be peace, +and an enduring peace, to-morrow. But, as a matter of fact, there is no +peace coming to-morrow, and no clear prospect yet of an enduring +universal peace at the end of this war.</p> + +<p>Now what are the obstructions, and what are the antagonisms to the +exploitation of this world-wide disgust with war and the world-wide +desire for peace, so as to establish a world peace?</p> + +<p>Let us take them in order, and it will speedily become apparent that we +are dealing here with a subtle quantitative problem in psychology, a +constant weighing of whether this force or that force is the stronger. +We are dealing with influences so subtle that the accidents of some +striking dramatic occurrence, for example, may turn them this way or +that. We are dealing with the human will--and thereby comes a snare for +the feet of the would-be impartial prophet. To foretell the future is to +modify the future. It is hard for any prophet not to break into +exhortation after the fashion of the prophets of Israel.</p> + +<p>The first difficulty in the way of establishing a world peace is that it +is nobody's business in particular. Nearly all of us want a world +peace--in an amateurish sort of way. But there is no specific person or +persons to whom one can look for the initiatives. The world is a +supersaturated solution of the will-for-peace, and there is nothing for +it to crystallise upon. There is no one in all the world who is +responsible for the understanding and overcoming of the difficulties +involved. There are many more people, and there is much more +intelligence concentrated upon the manufacture of cigarettes or +hairpins than upon the establishment of a permanent world peace. There +are a few special secretaries employed by philanthropic Americans, and +that is about all. There has been no provision made even for the +emoluments of these gentlemen when universal peace is attained; +presumably they would lose their jobs.</p> + +<p>Nearly everybody wants peace; nearly everybody would be glad to wave a +white flag with a dove on it now--provided no unfair use was made of +such a demonstration by the enemy--but there is practically nobody +thinking out the arrangements needed, and nobody making nearly as much +propaganda for the instruction of the world in the things needful as is +made in selling any popular make of automobile. We have all our +particular businesses to attend to. And things are not got by just +wanting them; things are got by getting them, and rejecting whatever +precludes our getting them.</p> + +<p>That is the first great difficulty: the formal Peace Movement is quite +amateurish.</p> + +<p>It is so amateurish that the bulk of people do not even realise the very +first implication of the peace of the world. It has not succeeded in +bringing this home to them.</p> + +<p>If there is to be a permanent peace of the world, it is clear that +there must be some permanent means of settling disputes between Powers +and nations that would otherwise be at war. That means that there must +be some head power, some point of reference, a supreme court of some +kind, a universally recognised executive over and above the separate +Governments of the world that exist to-day. That does not mean that +those Governments Have to disappear, that "nationality" has to be given +up, or anything so drastic as that. But it does mean that all those +Governments have to surrender almost as much of their sovereignty as the +constituent sovereign States which make up the United States of America +have surrendered to the Federal Government; if their unification is to +be anything more than a formality, they will have to delegate a control +of their inter-State relations to an extent for which few minds are +prepared at present.</p> + +<p>It is really quite idle to dream of a warless world in which States are +still absolutely free to annoy one another with tariffs, with the +blocking and squeezing of trade routes, with the ill-treatment of +immigrants and travelling strangers, and between which there is no means +of settling boundary disputes. Moreover, as between the united States of +the world and the United States of America there is this further +complication of the world position: that almost all the great States of +Europe are in possession, firstly, of highly developed territories of +alien language and race, such as Egypt; and, secondly, of barbaric and +less-developed territories, such as Nigeria or Madagascar. There will be +nothing stable about a world settlement that does not destroy in these +"possessions" the national preference of the countries that own them and +that does not prepare for the immediate or eventual accession of these +subject peoples to State rank. Most certainly, however, thousands of +intelligent people in those great European countries who believe +themselves ardent for a world peace will be staggered at any proposal to +place any part of "our Empire" under a world administration on the +footing of a United States territory. Until they cease to be staggered +by anything of the sort, their aspirations for a permanent peace will +remain disconnected from the main current of their lives. And that +current will flow, sluggishly or rapidly, towards war. For essentially +these "possessions" are like tariffs, like the strategic occupation of +neutral countries or secret treaties; they are forms of the conflict +between nations to oust and prevail over other nations.</p> + +<p>Going on with such things and yet deprecating war is really not an +attempt to abolish conflict; it is an attempt to retain conflict and +limit its intensity; it is like trying to play hockey on the +understanding that the ball shall never travel faster than eight miles +an hour.</p> + +<p>Now it not only stands in our way to a permanent peace of the world that +the great mass of men are not prepared for even the most obvious +implications of such an idea, but there is also a second invincible +difficulty--that there is nowhere in the world anybody, any type of men, +any organisation, any idea, any nucleus or germ, that could possibly +develop into the necessary over-Government. We are asking for something +out of the air, out of nothingness, that will necessarily array against +itself the resistance of all those who are in control, or interested in +the control, of the affairs of sovereign States of the world as they are +at present; the resistance of a gigantic network of Government +organisations, interests, privileges, assumptions.</p> + +<p>Against this a headless, vague aspiration, however universal, is likely +to prove quite ineffective. Of course, it is possible to suggest that +the Hague Tribunal is conceivably the germ of such an overriding +direction and supreme court as the peace of the world demands, but in +reality the Hague Tribunal is a mere legal automatic machine. It does +nothing unless you set it in motion. It has no initiative. It does not +even protest against the most obvious outrages upon that phantom of a +world-conscience--international law.</p> + +<p>Pacificists in their search for some definite starting-point, about +which the immense predisposition for peace may crystallise, have +suggested the Pope and various religious organisations as a possible +basis for the organisation of peace. But there would be no appeal from +such a beginning to the non-Christian majority of mankind, and the +suggestion in itself indicates a profound ignorance of the nature of the +Christian churches. With the exception of the Quakers and a few Russian +sects, no Christian sect or church has ever repudiated war; most have +gone out of the way to sanction it and bless it.</p> + +<p>It is altogether too rashly assumed by people whose sentimentality +outruns their knowledge that Christianity is essentially an attempt to +carry out the personal teachings of Christ. It is nothing of the sort, +and no church authority will support that idea. Christianity--more +particularly after the ascendancy of the Trinitarian doctrine was +established--was and is a theological religion; it is the religion that +triumphed over Arianism, Manichseism, Gnosticism, and the like; it is +based not on Christ, but on its creeds. Christ, indeed, is not even its +symbol; on the contrary, the chosen symbol of Christianity is the cross +to which Christ was nailed and on which He died. It was very largely a +religion of the legions. It was the warrior Theodosius who, more than +any single other man, imposed it upon Europe.</p> + +<p>There is no reason, therefore, either in precedent or profession, for +expecting any plain lead from the churches in this tremendous task of +organising and making effective the widespread desire of the world for +peace. And even were this the case, it is doubtful if we should find in +the divines and dignitaries of the Vatican, of the Russian and British +official churches, or of any other of the multitudinous Christian sects, +the power and energy, the knowledge and ability, or even the goodwill +needed to negotiate so vast a thing as the creation of a world +authority.</p> + +<p>One other possible starting-point has been suggested. It is no great +feat for a naive imagination to suppose the President of the Swiss +Confederation or the President of the United States--for each of these +two systems is an exemplary and encouraging instance of the possibility +of the pacific synthesis of independent States--taking a propagandist +course and proposing extensions of their own systems to the suffering +belligerents.</p> + +<p>But nothing of the sort occurs. And when you come to look into the +circumstances of these two Presidents you will discover that neither of +them is any more free than anybody else to embark upon the task of +creating a State-overriding, war-preventing organisation of the world. +He has been created by a system, and he is bound to a system; his +concern is with the interests of the people of Switzerland or of the +United States of America. President Wilson, for example, is quite +sufficiently occupied by the affairs of the White House, by the clash of +political parties, by interferences with American overseas trade and the +security of American citizens. He has no more time to give to projects +for the fundamental reconstruction of international relationships than +has any recruit drilling in England, or any captain on an ocean liner, +or any engineer in charge of a going engine.</p> + +<p>We are all, indeed, busy with the things that come to hand every day. We +are all anxious for a permanent world peace, but we are all up to the +neck in things that leave us no time to attend to this world peace that +nearly every sane man desires.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, a small minority of people who trade upon +contention--militarists, ambitious kings and statesmen, war contractors, +loan mongers, sensational journalists--follow up their interests and +start and sustain war.</p> + +<p>There lies the paradoxical reality of this question. Our first inquiry +lands us into the elucidation of this deadlock. Nearly everybody desires +a world peace, and yet there is not apparent anywhere any man free and +able and willing to establish it, while, on the other hand, there are a +considerable number of men in positions of especial influence and power +who will certainly resist the arrangements that are essential to its +establishment.</p> + +<p>But does this exhaust the question, and must we conclude that mankind is +doomed to a perpetual, futile struggling of States and nations and +peoples--breaking ever and again into war? The answer to that would +probably, be "Yes" if it were not for the progress of war. War is +continually becoming more scientific, more destructive, more coldly +logical, more intolerant of non-combatants, and more exhausting of any +kind of property. There is every reason to believe that it will continue +to intensify these characteristics. By doing so it may presently bring +about a state of affairs that will supply just the lacking elements that +are needed for the development of a world peace.</p> + +<p>I would venture to suggest that the present war is doing so now: that it +is producing changes in men's minds that may presently give us both the +needed energy and the needed organisation from which a world direction +may develop.</p> + +<p>The first, most distinctive thing about this conflict is the +exceptionally searching way in which it attacks human happiness. No war +has ever destroyed happiness so widely. It has not only killed and +wounded an unprecedented proportion of the male population of all the +combatant nations, but it has also destroyed wealth beyond precedent. It +has also destroyed freedom--of movement, of speech, of economic +enterprise. Hardly anyone alive has escaped the worry of it and the +threat of it. It has left scarcely a life untouched, and made scarcely a +life happier. There is a limit to the principle that "everybody's +business is nobody's business." The establishment of a world State, +which was interesting only to a few cranks and visionaries before the +war, is now the lively interest of a very great number of people. They +inquire about it; they have become accessible to ideas about it.</p> + +<p>Peace organisation seems, indeed, to be following the lines of public +sanitation. Everybody in England, for example, was bored by the +discussion of sanitation--until the great cholera epidemic. Everybody +thought public health a very desirable thing, but nobody thought it +intensely and overridingly desirable. Then the interest in sanitation +grew lively, and people exerted themselves to create responsible +organisations. Crimes of violence, again, were neglected in the great +cities of Europe until the danger grew to dimensions that evolved the +police. There come occasions when the normal concentration of an +individual upon his own immediate concerns becomes impossible; as, for +instance, when a man who is stocktaking in his business premises +discovers that the house next door is on fire. A great many people who +have never troubled their heads about anything but their own purely +personal and selfish interests are now realising that quite a multitude +of houses about them are ablaze, and that the fire is spreading.</p> + +<p>That is one change the war will bring about that will make for world +peace: a quickened general interest in its possibility. Another is the +certainty that the war will increase the number of devoted and fanatic +characters available for disinterested effort. Whatever other outcome +this war may have, it means that there lies ahead a period of extreme +economic and political dislocation. The credit system has been strained, +and will be strained, and will need unprecedented readjustments. In the +past such phases of uncertainty, sudden impoverishment and disorder as +certainly lie ahead of us, have meant for a considerable number of minds +a release--or, if you prefer it, a flight--from the habitual and +selfish. Types of intense religiosity, of devotion and of endeavour are +let loose, and there will be much more likelihood that we may presently +find, what it is impossible to find now, a number of devoted men and +women ready to give their whole lives, with a quasi-religious +enthusiasm, to this great task of peace establishment, finding in such +impersonal work a refuge from the disappointments, limitations, losses +and sorrows of their personal life--a refuge we need but little in more +settled and more prosperous periods. They will be but the outstanding +individuals in a very universal quickening. And simultaneously with this +quickening of the general imagination by experience there are certain +other developments in progress that point very clearly to a change under +the pressure of this war of just those institutions of nationality, +kingship, diplomacy and inter-State competition that have hitherto stood +most effectually in the way of a world pacification. The considerations +that seem to point to this third change are very convincing, to my mind.</p> + +<p>The real operating cause that is, I believe, going to break down the +deadlock that has hitherto made a supreme court and a federal government +for the world at large a dream, lies in just that possibility of an +"inconclusive peace" which so many people seem to dread. Germany, I +believe, is going to be beaten, but not completely crushed, by this war; +she is going to be left militarist and united with Austria and Hungary, +and unchanged in her essential nature; and out of that state of affairs +comes, I believe, the hope for an ultimate confederation of the nations +of the earth.</p> + +<p>Because, in the face of a league of the Central European Powers +attempting recuperation, cherishing revenge, dreaming of a renewal of +the struggle, it becomes impossible for the British, the French, the +Belgians, Russians, Italians or Japanese to think any longer of settling +their differences by war among themselves. To do so will mean the +creation of opportunity for the complete reinstatement of German +militarism. It will open the door for a conclusive German hegemony. +Now, however clumsy and confused the diplomacy of these present Allies +may be (challenged constantly, as it is, by democracy and hampered by a +free, venal and irresponsible Press in at least three of their +countries), the necessity they will be under will be so urgent and so +evident, that it is impossible to imagine that they will not set up some +permanent organ for the direction and co-ordination of their joint +international relationships. It may be a queerly constituted body at +first; it may be of a merely diplomatic pretension; it may be called a +Congress, or any old name of that sort, but essentially its business +will be to conduct a joint fiscal, military and naval policy, to keep +the peace in the Balkans and Asia, to establish a relationship with +China, and organise joint and several arbitration arrangements with +America. And it must develop something more sure and swift than our +present diplomacy. One of its chief concerns will be the right of way +through the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, and the watching of the +forces that stir up conflict in the Balkans and the Levant. It must have +unity enough for that; it must be much more than a mere leisurely, +unauthoritative conference of representatives.</p> + +<p>For precisely similar reasons it seems to me incredible that the two +great Central European Powers should ever fall into sustained conflict +again with one another. They, too, will be forced to create some +overriding body to prevent so suicidal a possibility. America too, it +may be, will develop some Pan-American equivalent. Probably the hundred +millions of Latin America may achieve a method of unity, and then deal +on equal terms with the present United States. The thing has been ably +advocated already in South America. Whatever appearances of separate +sovereignties are kept up after the war, the practical outcome of the +struggle is quite likely to be this: that there will be only three great +World Powers left--the anti-German allies, the allied Central Europeans, +the Pan-Americans. And it is to be noted that, whatever the constituents +of these three Powers may be, none of them is likely to be a monarchy. +They may include monarchies, as England includes dukedoms. But they will +be overriding alliances, not overriding rulers. I leave it to the +mathematician to work out exactly how much the chances of conflict are +diminished when there are practically only three Powers in the world +instead of some scores. And these new Powers will be in certain respects +unlike any existing European "States." None of the three Powers will be +small or homogeneous enough to serve dynastic ambitions, embody a +national or racial Kultur, or fall into the grip of any group of +financial enterprises. They will be more comprehensive, less romantic, +and more businesslike altogether. They will be, to use a phrase +suggested a year or so ago, Great States.... And the war threat between +the three will be so plain and definite, the issues will be so lifted +out of the spheres of merely personal ambition and national feeling, +that I do not see why the negotiating means, the standing conference of +the three, should not ultimately become the needed nucleus of the World +State for which at present we search the world in vain.</p> + +<p>There are more ways than one to the World State, and this second +possibility of a post-war conference and a conference of the Allies, +growing almost unawares into a pacific organisation of the world, since +it goes on directly from existing institutions, since it has none of the +quality of a clean break with the past which the idea of an immediate +World State and Pax Mundi involves, and more particularly since it +neither abolishes nor has in it anything to shock fundamentally the +princes, the diplomatists, the lawyers, the statesmen and politicians, +the nationalists and suspicious people, since it gives them years in +which to change and die out and reappear in new forms, and since at the +same time it will command the support of every intelligent human being +who gets his mind clear enough from his circumstances to understand its +import, is a far more credible hope than the hope of anything coming <i>de +novo</i> out of Hague Foundations or the manifest logic of the war.</p> + +<p>But, of course, there weighs against these hopes the possibility that +the Allied Powers are too various in their nature, too biased, too +feeble intellectually and imaginatively, to hold together and maintain +any institution for co-operation. The British Press may be too silly not +to foster irritation and suspicion; we may get Carsonism on a larger +scale trading on the resuscitation of dying hatreds; the British and +Russian diplomatists may play annoying tricks upon one another by sheer +force of habit. There may be many troubles of that sort. Even then I do +not see that the hope of an ultimate world peace vanishes. But it will +be a Roman world peace, made in Germany, and there will have to be +several more great wars before it is established. Germany is too +homogeneous yet to have begun the lesson of compromise and the +renunciation of the dream of national conquest. The Germans are a +national, not an imperial people. France has learnt that through +suffering, and Britain and Russia because for two centuries they have +been imperial and not national systems. The German conception of world +peace is as yet a conception of German ascendancy. The Allied conception +becomes perforce one of mutual toleration.</p> + +<p>But I will not press this inquiry farther now. It is, as I said at the +beginning, a preliminary exploration of one of the great questions with +which I propose to play in these articles. The possibility I have +sketched is the one that most commends itself to me as probable. After a +more detailed examination of the big operating forces at present working +in the world, we may be in a position to revise these suggestions with a +greater confidence and draw our net of probabilities a little tighter.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="II._THE_END_OF_THE_WAR"></a>II. THE END OF THE WAR<a name="FNanchor1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1"><sup>[1]</sup></a></h2> +<br> + +<p>The prophet who emerges with the most honour from this war is Bloch. It +must be fifteen or sixteen years ago since this gifted Pole made his +forecast of the future. Perhaps it is more, for the French translation +of his book was certainly in existence before the Boer War. His case was +that war between antagonists of fairly equal equipment must end in a +deadlock because of the continually increasing defensive efficiency of +entrenched infantry. This would give the defensive an advantage over the +most brilliant strategy and over considerably superior numbers that +would completely discourage all aggression. He concluded that war was +played out.</p> + +<blockquote> +<a name="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor1">[1]</a> This chapter was originally a newspaper article. It was +written in December, 1915, and published about the middle of January. +Some of it has passed from the quality of anticipation to achievement, +but I do not see that it needs any material revision on that account. +</blockquote> + +<p>His book was very carefully studied in Germany. As a humble disciple of +Bloch I should have realised this, but I did not, and that failure led +me into some unfortunate prophesying at the outbreak of the war. I +judged Germany by the Kaiser, and by the Kaiser-worship which I saw in +Berlin. I thought that he was a theatrical person who would dream of +vast massed attacks and tremendous cavalry charges, and that he would +lead Germany to be smashed against the Allied defensive in the West, and +to be smashed so thoroughly that the war would be over. I did not +properly appreciate the more studious and more thorough Germany that was +to fight behind the Kaiser and thrust him aside, the Germany we British +fight now, the Ostwald-Krupp Germany of 1915. That Germany, one may now +perceive, had read and thought over and thought out the Bloch problem.</p> + +<p>There was also a translation of Bloch into French. In English a portion +of his book was translated for the general reader and published with a +preface by the late Mr. W.T. Stead. It does not seem to have reached the +British military authorities, nor was it published in England with an +instructive intention. As an imaginative work it would have been +considered worthless and impracticable.</p> + +<p>But it is manifest now that if the Belgian and French frontiers had been +properly prepared--as they should have been prepared when the Germans +built their strategic railways--with trenches and gun emplacements and +secondary and tertiary lines, the Germans would never have got fifty +miles into either France or Belgium. They would have been held at Liége +and in the Ardennes. Five hundred thousand men would have held them +indefinitely. But the Allies had never worked trench warfare; they were +unready for it, Germans knew of their unreadiness, and their unreadiness +it is quite clear they calculated. They did not reckon, it is now clear +that they were right in not reckoning, the Allies as contemporary +soldiers. They were going to fight a 1900 army with a 1914 army, and +their whole opening scheme was based on the conviction that the Allies +would not entrench.</p> + +<p>Somebody in those marvellous maxims from the dark ages that seem to form +the chief reading of our military experts, said that the army that +entrenches is a defeated army. The silly dictum was repeated and +repeated in the English papers after the battle of the Marne. It shows +just where our military science had reached in 1914, namely, to a level +a year before Bloch wrote. So the Allies retreated.</p> + +<p>For long weeks the Allies retreated out of the west of Belgium, out of +the north of France, and for rather over a month there was a loose +mobile war--as if Bloch had never existed. The Germans were not fighting +the 1914 pattern of war, they were fighting the 1899 pattern of war, in +which direct attack, outflanking and so on were still supposed to be +possible; they were fighting confident in their overwhelming numbers, in +their prepared surprise, in the unthought-out methods of their +opponents. In the "Victorian" war that ended in the middle of September, +1914, they delivered their blow, they over-reached, they were +successfully counter-attacked on the Marne, and then abruptly--almost +unfairly it seemed to the British sportsmanlike conceptions--they +shifted to the game played according to the very latest rules of 1914. +The war did not come up to date until the battle of the Aisne. With that +the second act of the great drama began.</p> + +<p>I do not believe that the Germans ever thought it would come up to date +so soon. I believe they thought that they would hustle the French out of +Paris, come right up to the Channel at Calais before the end of 1914, +and then entrench, produce the submarine attack and the Zeppelins +against England, working from Calais as a base, and that they would end +the war before the spring of 1915--with the Allies still a good fifteen +years behindhand.</p> + +<p>I believe the battle of the Marne was the decisive battle of the war, in +that it shattered this plan, and that the rest of the 1914 fighting was +Germany's attempt to reconstruct their broken scheme in the face of an +enemy who was continually getting more and more nearly up to date with +the fighting. By December, Bloch, who had seemed utterly discredited in +August, was justified up to the hilt. The world was entrenched at his +feet. By May the lagging military science of the British had so far +overtaken events as to realise that shrapnel was no longer so important +as high explosive, and within a year the significance of machine guns, a +significance thoroughly ventilated by imaginative writers fifteen years +before, was being grasped by the conservative but by no means +inadaptable leaders of Britain.</p> + +<p>The war since that first attempt--admirably planned and altogether +justifiable (from a military point of view, I mean)--of Germany to +"rush" a victory, has consisted almost entirely of failures on both +sides either to get round or through or over the situation foretold by +Bloch. There has been only one marked success, the German success in +Poland due to the failure of the Russian munitions. Then for a time the +war in the East was mobile and precarious while the Russians retreated +to their present positions, and the Germans pursued and tried to +surround them. That was a lapse into the pre-Bloch style. Now the +Russians are again entrenched, their supplies are restored, the Germans +have a lengthened line of supplies, and Bloch is back upon his pedestal +so far as the Eastern theatre goes.</p> + +<p>Bloch has been equally justified in the Anglo-French attempt to get +round through Gallipoli. The forces of the India Office have pushed +their way through unprepared country towards Bagdad, and are now +entrenching in Mesopotamia, but from the point of view of the main war +that is too remote to be considered either getting through or getting +round; and so too the losses of the German colonies and the East African +War are scarcely to be reckoned with in the main war. They have no +determining value. There remains the Balkan struggle. But the Balkan +struggle is something else; it is something new. It must be treated +separately. It is a war of treacheries and brags and appearances. It is +not a part of, it is a sequence to, the deadlock war of 1915.</p> + +<p>But before dealing with this new development of the latter half of 1915 +it is necessary to consider certain general aspects of the deadlock +war. It is manifest that the Germans hoped to secure an effective +victory in this war before they ran up against Bloch. But reckoning with +Bloch, as they certainly did, they hoped that even in the event of the +war getting to earth, it would still be possible to produce novelties +that would sufficiently neutralise Bloch to secure a victorious peace. +With unexpectedly powerful artillery suddenly concentrated, with high +explosives, with asphyxiating gas, with a well-organised system of +grenade throwing and mining, with attacks of flaming gas, and above all +with a vast munition-making plant to keep them going, they had a very +reasonable chance of hacking their way through.</p> + +<p>Against these prepared novelties the Allies have had to improvise, and +on the whole the improvisation has kept pace with the demands made upon +it. They have brought their military science up to date, and to-day the +disparity in science and equipment between the antagonists has greatly +diminished. There has been no escaping Bloch after all, and the +deadlock, if no sudden peace occurs, can end now in only one thing, the +exhaustion in various degrees of all the combatants and the succumbing +of the most exhausted. The idea of a conclusive end of the traditional +pattern to this war, of a triumphal entry into London, Paris, Berlin or +Moscow, is to be dismissed altogether from our calculations. The end of +this war will be a matter of negotiation between practically immobilised +and extremely shattered antagonists.</p> + +<p>There is, of course, one aspect of the Bloch deadlock that the Germans +at least have contemplated. If it is not possible to get through or +round, it may still be possible to get over. There is the air path.</p> + +<p>This idea has certainly taken hold of the French mind, but France has +been too busy and is temperamentally too economical to risk large +expenditures upon what is necessarily an experiment. The British are too +conservative and sceptical to be the pioneers in any such enterprise. +The Russians have been too poor in the necessary resources of mechanics +and material.</p> + +<p>The Germans alone have made any sustained attempt to strike through the +air at their enemies beyond the war zone. Their Zeppelin raids upon +England have shown a steadily increasing efficiency, and it is highly +probable that they will be repeated on a much larger scale before the +war is over. Quite possibly, too, the Germans are developing an +accessory force of large aeroplanes to co-operate in such an attack. +The long coasts of Britain, the impossibility of their being fully +equipped throughout their extent, except at a prohibitive cost of men +and material, to resist air invaders, exposes the whole length of the +island to considerable risk and annoyance from such an expedition.</p> + +<p>It is doubtful, though, if the utmost damage an air raid is likely to +inflict upon England would count materially in the exhaustion process, +and the moral effect of these raids has been, and will be, to stiffen +the British resolution to fight this war through to the conclusive +ending of any such possibilities.</p> + +<p>The net result of these air raids is an inflexible determination of the +British people rather to die in death grips with German militarism than +to live and let it survive. The best chance for the aircraft was at the +beginning of the war, when a surprise development might have had +astounding results. That chance has gone by. The Germans are racially +inferior to both French and English in the air, and the probability of +effective blows over the deadlock is on the whole a probability in +favour of the Allies. Nor is there anything on or under the sea that +seems likely now to produce decisive results. We return from these +considerations to a strengthened acceptance of Bloch.</p> + +<p>The essential question for the prophet remains therefore the question of +which group of Powers will exhaust itself most rapidly. And following on +from that comes the question of how the successive stages of exhaustion +will manifest themselves in the combatant nations. The problems of this +war, as of all war, end as they begin in national psychology.</p> + +<p>But it will be urged that this is reckoning without the Balkans. I +submit that the German thrust through the wooded wilderness of Serbia is +really no part of the war that has ended in the deadlock of 1915. It is +dramatic, tragic, spectacular, but it is quite inconclusive. Here there +is no way round or through to any vital centre of Germany's antagonists. +It turns nothing; it opens no path to Paris, London, or Petrograd. It is +a long, long way from the Danube to either Egypt or Mesopotamia, and +there--and there--Bloch is waiting. I do not think the Germans have any +intention of so generous an extension of their responsibilities. The +Balkan complication is no solution of the deadlock problem. It is the +opening of the sequel.</p> + +<p>A whole series of new problems are opened up directly we turn to this +most troubled region of the Balkans--problems of the value of kingship, +of nationality, of the destiny of such cities as Constantinople, which +from their very beginning have never had any sort of nationality at all, +of the destiny of countries such as Albania, where a tangle of intense +tribal nationalities is distributed in spots and patches, or Dalmatia, +where one extremely self-conscious nation and language is present in the +towns and another in the surrounding country, or Asia Minor, where no +definite national boundaries, no religious, linguistic, or social +homogeneities have ever established themselves since the Roman legions +beat them down.</p> + +<p>But all these questions can really be deferred or set aside in our +present discussion, which is a discussion of the main war. Whatever +surprises or changes this last phase of the Eastern Empire, that +blood-clotted melodrama, may involve, they will but assist and hasten on +the essential conclusion of the great war, that the Central Powers and +their pledged antagonists are in a deadlock, unable to reach a decision, +and steadily, day by day, hour by hour, losing men, destroying material, +spending credit, approaching something unprecedented, unknown, that we +try to express to ourselves by the word exhaustion.</p> + +<p>Just how the people who use the word "exhaustion" so freely are +prepared to define it, is a matter for speculation. The idea seems to be +a phase in which the production of equipped forces ceases through the +using up of men or material or both. If the exhaustion is fairly mutual, +it need not be decisive for a long time. It may mean simply an ebb of +vigour on both sides, unusual hardship, a general social and economic +disorganisation and grading down. The fact that a great killing off of +men is implicit in the process, and that the survivors will be largely +under discipline, militates against the idea that the end may come +suddenly through a vigorous revolutionary outbreak. Exhaustion is likely +to be a very long and very thorough process, extending over years. A +"war of attrition" may last into 1918 or 1919, and may bring us to +conditions of strain and deprivation still only very vaguely imagined. +What happens in the Turkish Empire or India or America or elsewhere may +extend the areas of waste and accelerate or retard the process, but is +quite unlikely to end it.</p> + +<p>Let us ask now which of the combatants is likely to undergo exhaustion +most rapidly, and what is of equal or greater importance, which is +likely to feel it first and most? No doubt there is a bias in my mind, +but it seems to me that the odds are on the whole heavily against the +Central Powers. Their peculiar German virtue, their tremendously +complete organisation, which enabled them to put so large a proportion +of their total resources into their first onslaught and to make so great +and rapid a recovery in the spring of 1915, leaves them with less to +draw upon now. Out of a smaller fortune they have spent a larger sum. +They are blockaded to a very considerable extent, and against them fight +not merely the resources of the Allies, but, thanks to the complete +British victory in the sea struggle, the purchasable resources of all +the world.</p> + +<p>Conceivably the Central Powers will draw upon the resources of their +Balkan and Asiatic allies, but the extent to which they can do that may +very easily be over-estimated. There is a limit to the power for treason +of these supposititious German monarchs that Western folly has permitted +to possess these Balkan thrones--thrones which need never have been +thrones at all--and none of the Balkan peoples is likely to witness with +enthusiasm the complete looting of its country in the German interest by +a German court. Germany will have to pay on the nail for most of her +Balkan help. She will have to put more into the Balkans than she takes +out.</p> + +<p>Compared with the world behind the Allies the Turkish Empire is a +country of mountains, desert and undeveloped lands. To develop these +regions into a source of supplies under the strains and shortages of +war-time, will be an immense and dangerous undertaking for Germany. She +may open mines she may never work, build railways that others will +enjoy, sow harvests for alien reaping. The people the Bulgarians want in +Bulgaria are not Germans but Bulgarians; the people the Turks want in +Anatolia are not Germans but Turks. And for all these tasks Germany must +send men. Men?</p> + +<p>At present, so far as any judgment is possible, Germany is feeling the +pinch of the war much more even than France, which is habitually +parsimonious, and instinctively cleverly economical, and Russia, which +is hardy and insensitive. Great Britain has really only begun to feel +the stress. She has probably suffered economically no more than have +Holland or Switzerland, and Italy and Japan have certainly suffered +less. All these three great countries are still full of men, of gear, of +saleable futures. In every part of the globe Great Britain has colossal +investments. She has still to apply the great principle of conscription +not only to her sons but to the property of her overseas investors and +of her landed proprietors. She has not even looked yet at the German +financial expedients of a year ago. She moves reluctantly, but surely, +towards such a thoroughness of mobilisation. There need be no doubt that +she will completely socialise herself, completely reorganise her whole +social and economic structure sooner than lose this war. She will do it +clumsily and ungracefully, with much internal bickering, with much +trickery on the part of her lawyers, and much baseness on the part of +her landlords; but she will do it not so slowly as a logical mind might +anticipate. She will get there a little late, expensively, but still in +time....</p> + +<p>The German group, I reckon, therefore, will become exhausted first. I +think, too, that Germany will, as a nation, feel and be aware of what is +happening to her sooner than any other of the nations that are sharing +in this process of depletion. In 1914 the Germans were reaping the +harvest of forty years of economic development and business enterprise. +Property and plenty were new experiences, and a generation had grown up +in whose world a sense of expansion and progress was normal. There +existed amongst it no tradition of the great hardship of war, such as +the French possessed, to steel its mind. It had none of the irrational +mute toughness of the Russians and British. It was a sentimental people, +making a habit of success; it rushed chanting to war against the most +grimly heroic and the most stolidly enduring of races. Germany came into +this war more buoyantly and confidently than any other combatant. It +expected another 1871; at the utmost it anticipated a year of war.</p> + +<p>Never were a people so disillusioned as the Germans must already be, +never has a nation been called upon for so complete a mental +readjustment. Neither conclusive victories nor defeats have been theirs, +but only a slow, vast transition from joyful effort and an illusion of +rapid triumph to hardship, loss and loss and loss of substance, the +dwindling of great hopes, the realisation of ebb in the tide of national +welfare. Now they must fight on against implacable, indomitable Allies. +They are under stresses now as harsh at least as the stresses of France. +And, compared with the French, the Germans are untempered steel.</p> + +<p>We know little of the psychology of this new Germany that has come into +being since 1871, but it is doubtful if it will accept defeat, and still +more doubtful how it can evade some ending to the war that will admit +the failure of all its great hopes of Paris subjugated, London humbled, +Russia suppliant, Belgium conquered, the Near East a prey. Such an +admission will be a day of reckoning that German Imperialism will +postpone until the last hope of some breach among the Allies, some +saving miracle in the old Eastern Empire, some dramatically-snatched +victory at the eleventh hour, is gone.</p> + +<p>Nor can the Pledged Allies consent to a peace that does not involve the +evacuation and compensation of Belgium and Serbia, and at least the +autonomy of the lost Rhine provinces of France. That is their very +minimum. That, and the making of Germany so sick and weary of military +adventure that the danger of German ambition will cease to overshadow +European life. Those are the ends of the main war. Europe will go down +through stage after stage of impoverishment and exhaustion until these +ends are attained, or made for ever impossible.</p> + +<p>But these things form only the main outline of a story with a vast +amount of collateral interest. It is to these collateral issues that the +amateur in prophecy must give his attention. It is here that the German +will be induced by his Government to see his compensations. He will be +consoled for the restoration of Serbia by the prospect of future +conflicts between Italian and Jugoslav that will let him in again to the +Adriatic. His attention will be directed to his newer, closer +association with Bulgaria and Turkey. In those countries he will be told +he may yet repeat the miracle of Hungary. And there may be also another +Hungary in Poland. It will be whispered to him that he has really +conquered those countries when indeed it is highly probable he has only +spent his substance in setting up new assertive alien allies. The +Kaiser, if he is not too afraid of the precedent of Sarajevo, may make a +great entry into Constantinople, with an effect of conquering what is +after all only a temporarily allied capital. The German will hope also +to retain his fleet, and no peace, he will be reminded, can rob him of +his hard-earned technical superiority in the air. The German air fleet +of 1930 may yet be something as predominant as the British Navy of 1915, +and capable of delivering a much more intimate blow. Had he not better +wait for that? When such consolations as these become popular in the +German Press we of the Pledged Allies may begin to talk of peace, for +these will be its necessary heralds.</p> + +<p>The concluding phase of a process of general exhaustion must almost +inevitably be a game of bluff. Neither side will admit its extremity. +Neither side, therefore, will make any direct proposals to its +antagonists nor any open advances to a neutral. But there will be much +inspired peace talk through neutral media, and the consultations of the +anti-German allies will become more intimate and detailed. Suggestions +will "leak out" remarkably from both sides, to journalists and neutral +go-betweens. The Eastern and Western Allies will probably begin quite +soon to discuss an anti-German Zollverein and the co-ordination of their +military and naval organisations in the days that are to follow the war. +A discussion of a Central European Zollverein is already afoot. A +general idea of the possible rearrangement of the European States after +the war will grow up in the common European and American mind; public +men on either side will indicate concordance with this general idea, and +some neutral power, Denmark or Spain or the United States or Holland, +will invite representatives to an informal discussion of these +possibilities.</p> + +<p>Probably, therefore, the peace negotiations will take the extraordinary +form of two simultaneous conferences--one of the Pledged Allies, sitting +probably in Paris or London, and the other of representatives of all the +combatants meeting in some neutral country--Holland would be the most +convenient--while the war will still be going on. The Dutch conference +would be in immediate contact by telephone and telegraph with the Allied +conference and with Berlin....</p> + +<p>The broad conditions of a possible peace will begin to get stated +towards the end of 1916, and a certain lassitude will creep over the +operations in the field.... The process of exhaustion will probably have +reached such a point by that time that it will be a primary fact in the +consciousness of common citizens of every belligerent country. The +common life of all Europe will have become--miserable. Conclusive blows +will have receded out of the imagination of the contending Powers. The +war will have reached its fourth and last stage as a war. The war of the +great attack will have given place to the war of the military deadlock; +the war of the deadlock will have gone on, and as the great combatants +have become enfeebled relatively to the smaller States, there will have +been a gradual shifting of the interest to the war of treasons and +diplomacies in the Eastern Mediterranean.</p> + +<p>Quickly thereafter the last phase will be developing into predominance, +in which each group of nations will be most concerned, no longer about +victories or conquests, but about securing for itself the best chances +of rapid economic recuperation and social reconstruction. The commercial +treaties, the arrangements for future associated action, made by the +great Allies among themselves will appear more and more important to +them, and the mere question of boundaries less and less. It will dawn +upon Europe that she has already dissipated the resources that have +enabled her to levy the tribute paid for her investments in every +quarter of the earth, and that neither the Germans nor their antagonists +will be able for many years to go on with those projects for world +exploitation which lay at the root of the great war. Very jaded and +anaemic nations will sit about the table on which the new map of Europe +will be drawn.... Each of the diplomatists will come to that business +with a certain pre-occupation. Each will be thinking of his country as +one thinks of a patient of doubtful patience and temper who is coming-to +out of the drugged stupor of a crucial, ill-conceived, and unnecessary +operation ... Each will be thinking of Labour, wounded and perplexed, +returning to the disorganised or nationalised factories from which +Capital has gone a-fighting, and to which it may never return.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="III._NATIONS_IN_LIQUIDATION"></a>III. NATIONS IN LIQUIDATION</h2> +<br> + +<p>The war has become a war of exhaustion. One hears a great deal of the +idea that "financial collapse" may bring it to an end. A number of +people seem to be convinced that a war cannot be waged without money, +that soldiers must be paid, munitions must be bought; that for this +money is necessary and the consent of bank depositors; so that if all +the wealth of the world were nominally possessed by some one man in a +little office he could stop the war by saying simply, "I will lend you +no more money."</p> + +<p>Now, as a matter of fact, money is a power only in so far as people +believe in it and Governments sustain it. If a State is sufficiently +strong and well organised, its control over the money power is +unlimited. If it can rule its people, and if it has the necessary +resources of men and material within its borders, it can go on in a +state of war so long as these things last, with almost any flimsy sort +of substitute for money that it chooses to print. It can enrol and use +the men, and seize and work the material. It can take over the land and +cultivate it and distribute its products. The little man in the office +is only a power because the State chooses to recognise his claim. So +long as he is convenient he seems to be a power. So soon as the State is +intelligent enough and strong enough it can do without him. It can take +what it wants, and tell him to go and hang himself. That is the +melancholy ultimate of the usurer. That is the quintessence of +"finance." All credit is State-made, and what the State has made the +State can alter or destroy.</p> + +<p>The owner and the creditor have never had any other power to give or +withhold credit than the credit that was given to them. They exist by +sufferance or superstition and not of necessity.</p> + +<p>It is the habit of overlooking this little flaw in the imperatives of +ownership that enables people to say that this war cannot go on beyond +such and such a date--the end of 1916 is much in favour just +now--because we cannot pay for it. It would be about as reasonable to +expect a battle to end because a landlord had ordered the soldiers off +his estate. So long as there are men to fight and stuff to fight with +the war can go on. There is bankruptcy, but the bankruptcy of States is +not like the bankruptcy of individuals. There is no such thing among +States as an undischarged bankrupt who is forbidden to carry on. A State +may keep on going bankrupt indefinitely and still carry on. It will be +the next step in our prophetic exercise to examine the differences +between State bankruptcy and the bankruptcy of a subject of the State.</p> + +<p>The belligerent Powers are approaching a phase when they will no longer +be paying anything like twenty shillings in the pound. In a very +definite sense they are not paying twenty shillings in the pound now. +That is not going to stop the war, but it involves a string of +consequences and possibilities of the utmost importance to our problem +of what is coming when the war is over.</p> + +<p>The exhaustion that will bring this war to its end at last is a process +of destruction of men and material. The process of bankruptcy that is +also going on is nothing of the sort. Bankruptcy destroys no concrete +thing; it merely writes off a debt; it destroys a financial but not an +economic reality. It is, in itself, a mental, not a physical fact. "A" +owes "B" a debt; he goes bankrupt and pays a dividend, a fraction of his +debt, and gets his discharge. "B's" feelings, as we novelists used to +say, are "better imagined than described"; he does his best to satisfy +himself that "A" can pay no more, and then "A" and "B" both go about +their business again.</p> + +<p>In England, if "A" is a sufficiently poor man not to be formidable, and +has gone bankrupt on a small scale, he gets squeezed ferociously to +extract the last farthing from him; he may find himself in jail and his +home utterly smashed up. If he is a richer man, and has failed on a +larger scale, our law is more sympathetic, and he gets off much more +easily. Often his creditors find it advisable to arrange with him so +that he will still carry on with his bankrupt concern. They find it is +better to allow him to carry on than to smash him up.</p> + +<p>There are countless men in the world living very comfortably indeed, and +running businesses that were once their own property for their +creditors. There are still more who have written off princely debts and +do not seem to be a "ha'p'orth the worse." And their creditors have +found a balm in time and philosophy. Bankruptcy is only painful and +destructive to small people and helpless people; but then for them +everything is painful and destructive; it can be a very light matter to +big people; it may be almost painless to a State.</p> + +<p>If England went bankrupt in the completest way to-morrow, and repudiated +all its debts both as a nation and as a community of individuals, if it +declared, if I may use a self-contradictory phrase, a permanent +moratorium, there would be not an acre of ploughed land in the country, +not a yard of cloth or a loaf of bread the less for that. There would be +nothing material destroyed within the State. There would be no immediate +convulsion. Use and wont would carry most people on some days before +they even began to doubt whether So-and-so could pay his way, and +whether there would be wages at the end of the week.</p> + +<p>But people who lived upon rent or investments or pensions would +presently be very busy thinking how they were going to get food when the +butcher and baker insisted upon cash. It would be only with comparative +slowness that the bulk of men would realise that a fabric of confidence +and confident assumptions had vanished; that cheques and bank notes and +token money and every sort of bond and scrip were worthless, that +employers had nothing to pay with, shopkeepers no means of procuring +stock, that metallic money was disappearing, and that a paralysis had +come upon the community.</p> + +<p>Such an establishment as a workhouse or an old-fashioned monastery, +living upon the produce of its own farming and supplying all its own +labour, would be least embarrassed amidst the general perplexity. For it +would not be upon a credit basis, but a socialistic basis, a basis of +direct reality, and its need for payments would be incidental. And +land-owning peasants growing their own food would carry on, and small +cultivating occupiers, who could easily fall back on barter for anything +needed.</p> + +<p>The mass of the population in such a country as England would, however, +soon be standing about in hopeless perplexity and on the verge of +frantic panic--although there was just as much food to be eaten, just as +many houses to live in, and just as much work needing to be done. +Suddenly the pots would be empty, and famine would be in the land, +although the farms and butchers' shops were still well stocked. The +general community would be like an automobile when the magneto fails. +Everything would be there and in order, except for the spark of credit +which keeps the engine working.</p> + +<p>That is how quite a lot of people seem to imagine national bankruptcy: +as a catastrophic jolt. It is a quite impossible nightmare of cessation. +The reality is the completest contrast. All the belligerent countries of +the world are at the present moment quietly, steadily and progressively +going bankrupt, and the mass of people are not even aware of this +process of insolvency.</p> + +<p>An individual when he goes bankrupt is measured by the monetary standard +of the country he is in; he pays five or ten or fifteen or so many +shillings in the pound. A community in debt does something which is in +effect the same, but in appearance rather different. It still pays a +pound, but the purchasing power of the pound has diminished. This is +what is happening all over the world to-day; there is a rise in prices. +This is automatic national bankruptcy; unplanned, though perhaps not +unforeseen. It is not a deliberate State act, but a consequence of the +interruption of communications, the diversion of productive energy, the +increased demand for many necessities by the Government and the general +waste under war conditions.</p> + +<p>At the beginning of this war England had a certain national debt; it has +paid off none of that original debt; it has added to it tremendously; so +far as money and bankers' records go it still owes and intends to pay +that original debt; but if you translate the language of £.s.d. into +realities, you will find that in loaves or iron or copper or hours of +toil, or indeed in any reality except gold, it owes now, so far as that +original debt goes, far less than it did at the outset. As the war goes +on and the rise in prices continues, the subsequent borrowings and +contracts are undergoing a similar bankrupt reduction. The attempt of +the landlord of small weekly and annual properties to adjust himself to +the new conditions by raising rents is being checked by legislation in +Great Britain, and has been completely checked in France. The attempts +of labour to readjust wages have been partially successful in spite of +the eloquent protests of those great exponents of plain living, economy, +abstinence, and honest, modest, underpaid toil, Messrs. Asquith, +McKenna, and Runciman. It is doubtful if the rise in wages is keeping +pace with the rise in prices. So far as it fails to do so the load is on +the usual pack animal, the poor man.</p> + +<p>The rest of the loss falls chiefly upon the creditor class, the people +with fixed incomes and fixed salaries, the landlords, who have let at +long leases, the people with pensions, endowed institutions, the Church, +insurance companies, and the like. They are all being scaled down. They +are all more able to stand scaling down than the proletarians.</p> + +<p>Assuming that it is possible to bring up wages to the level of the +higher prices, and that the rise in rents can be checked by legislation +or captured by taxation, the rise in prices is, on the whole, a thing to +the advantage of the propertyless man as against accumulated property. +It writes off the past and clears the way for a fresh start in the +future.</p> + +<p>An age of cheapness is an old usurers' age. England before the war was a +paradise of ancient usuries; everywhere were great houses and enclosed +parks; the multitude of gentlemen's servants and golf clubs and such +like excrescences of the comfort of prosperous people was perpetually +increasing; it did not "pay" to build labourers' cottages, and the more +expensive sort of automobile had driven the bicycle as a pleasure +vehicle off the roads. Western Europe was running to fat and not to +muscle, as America is to-day.</p> + +<p>But if that old usurer's age is over, the young usurer's age may be +coming. To meet such enormous demands as this war is making there are +three chief courses open to the modern State.</p> + +<p>The first is to <i>take</i>--to get men by conscription and material by +requisition. The British Government <i>takes</i> more modestly than any other +in the world; its tradition from Magna Charta onward, the legal training +of most of its members, all make towards a reverence for private +ownership and private claims, as opposed to the claims of State and +commonweal, unequalled in the world's history.</p> + +<p>The next course of a nation in need is to <i>tax</i> and pay for what it +wants, which is a fractional and more evenly distributed method of +taking. Both of these methods raise prices, the second most so, and so +facilitate the automatic release of the future from the boarding of the +past. So far all the belligerent Governments have taxed on the timid +side.</p> + +<p>Finally there is the <i>loan</i>. This mortgages the future to the present +necessity, and it has so far been the predominant source of war credits. +It is the method that produces least immediate friction in the State; it +employs all the savings of surplus income that the unrest of civil +enterprise leaves idle; it has an effect of creating property by a +process that destroys the substance of the community. In Germany an +enormous bulk of property has been mortgaged to supply the subscriptions +to the war loans, and those holdings have again been hypothecated to +subscribe to subsequent loans. The Pledged Allies with longer stockings +have not yet got to this pitch of overlapping. But everywhere in Europe +what is happening is a great transformation of the property owner into a +<i>rentier</i>, and the passing of realty into the hands of the State.</p> + +<p>At the end of the war Great Britain will probably find herself with a +national debt so great that she will be committed to the payment of an +annual interest greater in figures than the entire national expenditure +before the war. As an optimistic lady put it the other day: "All the +people who aren't killed will be living quite comfortably on War Loan +for the rest of their lives."</p> + +<p>But part, at least, of the bulk of this wealth will be imaginary rather +than real because of the rise in prices, in wages, in rent, and in +taxation. Most of us who are buying the British and French War Loans +have no illusions on that score; we know we are buying an income of +diminishing purchasing power. Yet it would be a poor creature in these +days when there is scarcely a possible young man in one's circle who has +not quite freely and cheerfully staked his life, who was not prepared to +consider his investments as being also to an undefined extent a national +subscription.</p> + +<p>A rise in prices is not, however, the only process that will check the +appearance of a new rich usurer class after the war. There is something +else ahead that has happened already in Germany, that is quietly coming +about among the Allies, and that is the cessation of gold payments. In +Great Britain, of course, the pound note is still convertible into a +golden sovereign; but Great Britain will not get through the war on +those terms. There comes a point in the stress upon a Government when it +must depart from the austerer line of financial rectitude--and tamper in +some way with currency.</p> + +<p>Sooner or later, and probably in all cases before 1917, all the +belligerents will be forced to adopt inconvertible paper money for their +internal uses. There will be British assignats or greenbacks. It will +seem to many financial sentimentalists almost as though Great Britain +were hauling down a flag when the sovereign, which has already +disappeared into bank and Treasury coffers, is locked up there and +reserved for international trade. But Great Britain has other sentiments +to consider than the finer feelings of bankers and the delicacies of +usury. The pound British will come out of this war like a company out of +a well-shelled trench--attenuated.</p> + +<p>Depreciation of the currency means, of course, a continuing rise in +prices, a continuing writing off of debt. If labour has any real grasp +of its true interests it will not resent this. It will merely insist +steadfastly on a proper adjustment of its wages to the new standard. On +that point, however, it will be better to write later....</p> + +<p>Let us see how far we have got in this guessing. We have considered +reasons that seem to point to the destruction of a great amount of old +property and old debt, and the creation of a great volume of new debt +before the end of the war, and we have adopted the ideas that currency +will probably have depreciated more and more and prices risen right up +to the very end.</p> + +<p>There will be by that time a general habit of saving throughout the +community, a habit more firmly established perhaps in the propertied +than in the wages-earning class. People will be growing accustomed to a +dear and insecure world. They will adopt a habit of caution; become +desirous of saving and security.</p> + +<p>Directly the phase of enormous war loans ends, the new class of +<i>rentiers</i> holding the various great new national loans will find +themselves drawing this collectively vast income and anxious to invest +it. They will for a time be receiving the bulk of the unearned income of +the world. Here, in the high prices representing demand and the need for +some reinvestment of interest representing supply, we have two of the +chief factors that are supposed to be necessary to a phase of business +enterprise. Will the economic history of the next few decades be the +story of a restoration of the capitalistic system upon a new basis? +Shall we all become investors, speculators, or workers toiling our way +to a new period of security, cheapness and low interest, a restoration +of the park, the enclosure, the gold standard and the big automobile, +with only this difference--that the minimum wage will be somewhere about +two pounds, and that a five-pound note will purchase about as much as a +couple of guineas would do in 1913?</p> + +<p>That is practically parallel with what happened in the opening half of +the nineteenth century after the Napoleonic wars, and it is not an +agreeable outlook for those who love the common man or the nobility of +life. But if there is any one principle sounder than another of all +those that guide the amateur in prophecy, it is that <i>history never +repeats itself</i>. The human material in which those monetary changes and +those developments of credit will occur will be entirely different from +the social medium of a hundred years ago.</p> + +<p>The nature of the State has altered profoundly in the last century. The +later eighteenth and earlier nineteenth centuries constituted a period +of extreme individualism. What were called "economic forces" had +unrestricted play. In the minds of such people as Harriet Martineau and +Herbert Spencer they superseded God. People were no longer reproached +for "flying in the face of Providence," but for "flying in the face of +Political Economy."</p> + +<p>In that state of freedom you got whatever you could in any way you +could; you were not your neighbour's keeper, and except that it +interfered with the enterprise of pickpockets, burglars and forgers, and +kept the dice loaded in favour of landlords and lawyers, the State stood +aside from the great drama of human getting. For industrialism and +speculation the State's guiding maxim was <i>laissez faire</i>.</p> + +<p>The State is now far less aloof and far more constructive. It is far +more aware of itself and a common interest. Germany has led the way from +a system of individuals and voluntary associations in competition +towards a new order of things, a completer synthesis. This most modern +State is far less a swarming conflict of businesses than a great +national business. It will emerge from this war much more so than it +went in, and the thing is and will remain so plain and obvious that only +the greediest and dullest people among the Pledged Allies will venture +to disregard it. The Allied nations, too, will have to rescue their +economic future from individual grab and grip and chance.</p> + +<p>The second consideration that forbids us to anticipate any parallelism +of the history of 1915-45 with 1815-45 is the greater lucidity of the +general mind, the fact that all Western Europe, down to the agricultural +labourers, can read and write and does read newspapers and "get ideas." +The explanation of economic and social processes that were mysterious to +the elect a hundred years ago are now the commonplaces of the tap-room. +What happened then darkly, and often unconsciously, must happen in +1916-26 openly and controllably. The current bankruptcy and liquidation +and the coming reconstruction of the economic system of Europe will go +on in a quite unprecedented amount of light. We shall see and know what +is happening much more clearly than anything of the kind has ever been +seen before.</p> + +<p>It is not only that people will have behind them, as a light upon what +is happening, the experiences and discussions of a hundred years, but +that the international situation will be far plainer than it has ever +been. This war has made Germany the central fact in all national affairs +about the earth. It is not going to destroy Germany, and it seems +improbable that either defeat or victory, or any mixture of these, will +immediately alter the cardinal fact of Germany's organised +aggressiveness.</p> + +<p>The war will not end the conflict of anti-Germany and Germany, That will +only end when the results of fifty years of aggressive education in +Germany have worn away. This will be so plain that the great bulk of +people everywhere will not only see their changing economic +relationships far more distinctly than such things have been seen +hitherto, but that they will see them as they have never been seen +before, definitely orientated to the threat of German world +predominance. The landlord who squeezes, the workman who strikes and +shirks, the lawyer who fogs and obstructs, will know, and will know that +most people know, that what he does is done, not under an empty, +regardless heaven, but in the face of an unsleeping enemy and in +disregard of a continuous urgent necessity for unity.</p> + +<p>So far we have followed this speculation upon fairly firm ground, but +now our inquiry must plunge into a jungle of far more difficult and +uncertain possibilities. Our next stage brings us to the question of how +people and peoples and classes of people are going to react to the new +conditions of need and knowledge this war will have brought about, and +to the new demands that will be made upon them.</p> + +<p>This is really a question of how far they will prove able to get out of +the habits and traditions of their former social state, how far they +will be able to take generous views and make sacrifices and unselfish +efforts, and how far they will go in self-seeking or class selfishness +regardless of the common welfare. This is a question we have to ask +separately of each great nation, and of the Central Powers as a whole, +and of the Allies as a whole, before we can begin to estimate the +posture of the peoples of the world in, say, 1946.</p> + +<p>Now let me here make a sort of parenthesis on human nature. It will be +rather platitudinous, but it is a necessary reminder for what follows.</p> + +<p>So far as I have been able to observe, nobody lives steadily at one +moral level. If we are wise we shall treat no man and no class--and for +the matter of that no nation--as either steadfastly malignant or +steadfastly disinterested. There are phases in my life when I could die +quite cheerfully for an idea; there are phases when I would not stir six +yards to save a human life. Most people fluctuate between such extremes. +Most people are self-seeking, but most people will desist from a +self-seeking cause if they see plainly and clearly that it is not in the +general interest, and much more readily if they also perceive that other +people are of the same mind and know that they know their course is +unsound.</p> + +<p>The fundamental error of orthodox political economy and of Marxian +socialism is to assume the inveterate selfishness of everyone. But most +people are a little more disposed to believe what it is to their +interest to believe than the contrary. Most people abandon with +reluctance ways of living and doing that have served them well. Most +people can see the neglect of duty in other classes more plainly than +they do in their own.</p> + +<p>This war has brought back into the everyday human life of Europe the +great and overriding conception of devotion to a great purpose. But that +does not imply clear-headedness in correlating the ways of one's +ordinary life with this great purpose. It is no good treating as cynical +villainy things that merely exhibit the incapacity of our minds to live +consistently.</p> + +<p>One Labour paper a month or so ago was contrasting Mr. Asquith's +eloquent appeals to the working man to economise and forgo any rise in +wages with the photographs that were appearing simultaneously in the +smart papers of the very smart marriage of Mr. Asquith's daughter. I +submit that by that sort of standard none of us will be blameless. But +without any condemnation, it is easy to understand that the initiative +to tax almost to extinction large automobiles, wedding dresses, +champagne, pâté de foie gras and enclosed parks, instead of gin and +water, bank holiday outings and Virginia shag, is less likely to come +from the Prime Minister class than from the class of dock labourers. +There is an unconscious class war due to habit and insufficient thinking +and insufficient sympathy that will play a large part in the +distribution of the burthen of the State bankruptcy that is in progress, +and in the subsequent readjustment of national life.</p> + +<p>And having made this parenthesis, I may perhaps go on to point out the +peculiar limitations under which various classes will be approaching the +phase of reorganisation, without being accused of making this or that +class the villain of an anticipatory drama.</p> + +<p>Now, three great classes will certainly resist the valiant +reconstruction of economic life with a vigour in exact proportion to +their baseness, stupidity and narrowness of outlook. They will, as +classes, come up for a moral judgment, on whose verdict the whole future +of Western civilisation depends. If they cannot achieve a considerable, +an unprecedented display of self-sacrifice, unselfish wisdom, and +constructive vigour, if the community as a whole can produce no forces +sufficient to restrain their lower tendencies, then the intelligent +father had better turn his children's faces towards the New World. For +Europe will be busy with social disorder for a century.</p> + +<p>The first great class is the class that owns and holds land and +land-like claims upon the community, from the Throne downward. This +Court and land-holding class cannot go on being rich and living rich +during the strains of the coming years. The reconstructing world cannot +bear it. Whatever rises in rent may occur through the rise in prices, +must go to meet the tremendous needs of the State.</p> + +<p>This class, which has so much legislative and administrative power in at +least three of the great belligerents--in Great Britain and Germany +perhaps most so--must be prepared to see itself taxed, and must be +willing to assist in its own taxation to the very limit of its +statistical increment. The almost vindictive greed of the landowners +that blackened the history of England after Waterloo, and brought Great +Britain within sight of revolution, must not be repeated. The British +Empire cannot afford a revolution in the face of the Central European +Powers. But in the past century there has been an enormous change in +men's opinions and consciences about property; whereas we were +Individualists, now we are Socialists. The British lord, the German +junker, has none of the sense of unqualified rights that his +great-grandfather had, and he is aware of a vigour of public criticism +that did not exist in the former time....</p> + +<p>How far will these men get out of the tradition of their birth and +upbringing?</p> + +<p>Next comes the great class of lawyers who, through the idiotic method of +voting in use in modern democracies, are able practically to rule Great +Britain, and who are powerful and influential in all democratic +countries.</p> + +<p>In order to secure a certain independence and integrity in its courts, +Great Britain long ago established the principle of enormously +overpaying its judges and lawyers. The natural result has been to give +our law courts and the legal profession generally a bias in favour of +private wealth against both the public interest and the proletariat. It +has also given our higher national education an overwhelming direction +towards the training of advocates and against science and constructive +statecraft. An ordinary lawyer has no idea of making anything; that +tendency has been destroyed in his mind; he waits and sees and takes +advantage of opportunity. Everything that can possibly be done in +England is done to make our rulers Micawbers and Artful Dodgers.</p> + +<p>One of the most anxious questions that a Briton can ask himself to-day +is just how far the gigantic sufferings and still more monstrous +warnings of this war have shocked the good gentlemen who must steer the +ship of State through the strong rapids of the New Peace out of this +forensic levity their training has imposed upon them....</p> + +<p>There, again, there are elements of hope. The lawyer has heard much +about himself in the past few years. His conscience may check his +tradition. And we have a Press--it has many faults, but it is no longer +a lawyer's Press....</p> + +<p>And the third class which has immediate interests antagonistic to bold +reconstructions of our national methods is that vaguer body, the body of +investing capitalists, the savers, the usurers, who live on dividends. +It is a vast class, but a feeble class in comparison with the other +two; it is a body rather than a class, a weight rather than a power. It +consists of all sorts of people with nothing in common except the +receipt of unearned income....</p> + +<p>All these classes, by instinct and the baser kinds of reason also, will +be doing their best to check the rise in prices, stop and reverse the +advance in wages, prevent the debasement of the circulation, and +facilitate the return to a gold standard and a repressive social +stability. They will be resisting any comprehensive national +reconstruction, any increase in public officials, any "conscription" of +land or railways or what not for the urgent civil needs of the State. +They will have fighting against these tendencies something in their own +consciences, something in public opinion, the tradition of public +devotion their own dead sons have revived--and certain other forces.</p> + +<p>They will have over against them the obvious urgent necessities of the +time.</p> + +<p>The most urgent necessity will be to get back the vast moiety of the +population that has been engaged either in military service or the +making of munitions to productive work, to the production of food and +necessary things, and to the restoration of that export trade which, in +the case of Great Britain at least, now that her overseas investments +have been set off by overseas war debts, is essential to the food +supply. There will be coming back into civil life, not merely thousands, +but millions of men who have been withdrawn from it. They will feel that +they have deserved well of their country. They will have had their +imaginations greatly quickened by being taken away from the homes and +habits to which they were accustomed. They will have been well fed and +inured to arms, to danger, and the chances of death. They will have no +illusions about the conduct of the war by the governing classes, or the +worshipful heroism of peers and princes. They will know just how easy is +courage, and how hard is hardship, and the utter impossibility of doing +well in war or peace under the orders of detected fools.</p> + +<p>This vast body will constitute a very stimulating congregation of +spectators in any attempt on the part of landlord, lawyer and investor +to resume the old political mystery dance, in which rents are to be sent +up and wages down, while the old feuds of Wales and Ireland, ancient +theological and sectarian jealousies and babyish loyalties, and so forth +are to be waved in the eyes of the no longer fascinated realist.</p> + +<p>"Meanwhile," they will say, with a stiff impatience unusual in their +class, "about <i>us</i>?" ...</p> + +<p>Here are the makings of internal conflict in every European country. In +Russia the landlord and lawyer, in France the landlord, are perhaps of +less account, and in France the investor is more universal and jealous. +In Germany, where Junker and Court are most influential and brutal, +there is a larger and sounder and broader tradition of practical +efficiency, a modernised legal profession, and a more widely diffused +scientific imagination.</p> + +<p>How far in each country will imagination triumph over tradition and +individualism? How far does the practical bankruptcy of Western +civilisation mean a revolutionary smash-up, and a phase that may last +for centuries, of disorder and more and more futile conflict? And how +far does it mean a reconstruction of human society, within a few score +of years, upon sounder and happier lines? Must that reconstruction be +preceded by a revolution in all or any of the countries?</p> + +<p>To what extent can the world produce the imagination it needs? That, so +far, is the most fundamental question to which our prophetic +explorations have brought us.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="IV._BRAINTREE,_BOCKING,_AND_THE_FUTURE_OF_THE_WORLD"></a>IV. BRAINTREE, BOCKING, AND THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD</h2> +<br> + +<p>Will the war be followed by a period of great distress, social disorder +and a revolution in Europe, or shall we pull through the crisis without +violent disaster? May we even hope that Great Britain will step straight +out of the war into a phase of restored and increasing welfare?</p> + +<p>Like most people, I have been trying to form some sort of answer to this +question. My state of mind in the last few months has varied from a +considerable optimism to profound depression. I have met and talked to +quite a number of young men in khaki--ex-engineers, ex-lawyers, +ex-schoolmasters, ex-business men of all sorts--and the net result of +these interviews has been a buoyant belief that there is in Great +Britain the pluck, the will, the intelligence to do anything, however +arduous and difficult, in the way of national reconstruction. And on the +other hand there is a certain stretch of road between Dunmow and +Coggeshall....</p> + +<p>That stretch of road is continually jarring with my optimistic +thoughts. It is a strongly pro-German piece of road. It supports +allegations against Great Britain, as, for instance, that the British +are quite unfit to control their own affairs, let alone those of an +empire; that they are an incompetent people, a pig-headedly stupid +people, a wasteful people, a people incapable of realising that a man +who tills his field badly is a traitor and a weakness to his country....</p> + +<p>Let me place the case of this high road through Braintree (Bocking +intervening) before the reader. It is, you will say perhaps, very small +beer. But a straw shows the way the wind blows. It is a trivial matter +of road metal, mud, and water-pipes, but it is also diagnostic of the +essential difficulties in the way of the smooth and rapid reconstruction +of Great Britain--and very probably of the reconstruction of all +Europe--after the war. The Braintree high road, I will confess, becomes +at times an image of the world for me. It is a poor, spiritless-looking +bit of road, with raw stones on one side of it. It is also, I perceive, +the high destiny of man in conflict with mankind. It is the way to +Harwich, Holland, Russia, China, and the whole wide world.</p> + +<p>Even at the first glance it impresses one as not being the road that +would satisfy an energetic and capable people. It is narrow for a high +road, and in the middle of it one is checked by an awkward bend, by +cross-roads that are not exactly cross-roads, so that one has to turn +two blind corners to get on eastward, and a policeman, I don't know at +what annual cost, has to be posted to nurse the traffic across. Beyond +that point one is struck by the fact that the south side is considerably +higher than the north, that storm water must run from the south side to +the north and lie there. It does, and the north side has recently met +the trouble by putting down raw flints, and so converting what would be +a lake into a sort of flint pudding. Consequently one drives one's car +as much as possible on the south side of this road. There is a +suggestion of hostility and repartee between north and south side in +this arrangement, which the explorer's inquiries will confirm. It may be +only an accidental parallelism with profounder fact; I do not know. But +the middle of this high road is a frontier. The south side belongs to +the urban district of Braintree; the north to the rural district of +Bocking.</p> + +<p>If the curious inquirer will take pick and shovel he will find at any +rate one corresponding dualism below the surface. He will find a +Bocking water main supplying the houses on the north side and a +Braintree water main supplying the south. I rather suspect that the +drains are also in duplicate. The total population of Bocking and +Braintree is probably little more than thirteen thousand souls +altogether, but for that there are two water supplies, two sets of +schools, two administrations.</p> + +<p>To the passing observer the rurality of the Bocking side is +indistinguishable from the urbanity of the Braintree side; it is just a +little muddier. But there are dietetic differences. If you will present +a Bocking rustic with a tin of the canned fruit that is popular with the +Braintree townsfolk, you discover one of these differences. A dustman +perambulates the road on the Braintree side, and canned food becomes +possible and convenient therefore. But the Braintree grocers sell canned +food with difficulty into Bocking. Bocking, less fortunate than its +neighbour, has no dustman apparently, and is left with the tin on its +hands. It can either bury it in its garden--if it has a garden--take it +out for a walk wrapped in paper and drop it quietly in a ditch, if +possible in the Braintree area, or build a cairn with it and its +predecessors and successors in honour of the Local Government Board +(President £5,000, Parliamentary Secretary £1,500, Permanent Secretary +£2,000, Legal Adviser £1,000 upward, a total administrative expenditure +of over £300,000 ...). In death Bocking and Braintree are still divided. +They have their separate cemeteries....</p> + +<p>Now to any disinterested observer there lies about the Braintree-Bocking +railway station one community. It has common industries and common +interests. There is no <i>octroi</i> or anything of that sort across the +street. The shops and inns on the Bocking side of the main street are +indistinguishable from those on the Braintree side. The inhabitants of +the two communities intermarry freely. If this absurd separation did not +exist, no one would have the impudence to establish it now. It is +wasteful, unfair (because the Bocking piece is rather better off than +Braintree and with fewer people, so that there is a difference in the +rates), and for nine-tenths of the community it is more or less of a +nuisance.</p> + +<p>It is also a nuisance to the passing public because of such +inconvenience as the asymmetrical main road. It hinders local +development and the development of a local spirit. It may, of course, +appeal perhaps to the humorous outlook of the followers of Mr. G.K. +Chesterton and Mr. Belloc, who believe that this war is really a war in +the interests of the Athanasian Creed, fatness, and unrestricted drink +against science, discipline, and priggishly keeping fit enough to join +the army, as very good fun indeed, good matter for some jolly reeling +ballad about Roundabout and Roundabout, the jolly town of Roundabout; +but to anyone else the question of how it is that this wasteful +Bocking-Braintree muddle, with its two boards, its two clerks, its two +series of jobs and contracts, manages to keep on, was even before the +war a sufficiently discouraging one.</p> + +<p>It becomes now a quite crucial problem. Because the muddle between the +sides of the main road through Bocking and Braintree is not an isolated +instance; it is a fair sample of the way things are done in Great +Britain; it is an intimation of the way in which the great task of +industrial resettlement that the nation must face may be attempted.</p> + +<p>It is--or shall I write, "it may be"?</p> + +<p>That is just the question I do not settle in my mind. I would like to +think that I have hit upon a particularly bad case of entangled local +government. But it happens that whenever I have looked into local +affairs I have found the same sort of waste and--insobriety of +arrangement. When I started, a little while back, to go to Braintree to +verify these particulars, I was held up by a flood across the road +between Little Easton and Dunmow. Every year that road is flooded and +impassable for some days, because a bit of the affected stretch is under +the County Council and a bit under the Little Easton Parish Council, and +they cannot agree about the contribution of the latter. These things +bump against the most unworldly. And when one goes up the scale from the +urban district and rural district boundaries, one finds equally crazy +county arrangements, the same tangle of obstacle in the way of quick, +effective co-ordinations, the same needless multiplicity of clerks, the +same rich possibilities of litigation, misunderstanding, and deadlocks +of opinion between areas whose only difference is that a mischievous +boundary has been left in existence between them. And so on up to +Westminster. And to still greater things....</p> + +<p>I know perfectly well how unpleasant all this is to read, this outbreak +at two localities that have never done me any personal harm except a +little mud-splashing. But this is a thing that has to be said now, +because we are approaching a crisis when dilatory ways, muddle, and +waste may utterly ruin us. This is the way things have been done in +England, this is our habit of procedure, and if they are done in this +way after the war this Empire is going to smash.</p> + +<p>Let me add at once that it is quite possible that things are done almost +as badly or quite as badly in Russia or France or Germany or America; I +am drawing no comparisons. All of us human beings were made, I believe, +of very similar clay, and very similar causes have been at work +everywhere. Only that excuse, so popular in England, will not prevent a +smash if we stick to the old methods under the stresses ahead. I do not +see that it is any consolation to share in a general disaster.</p> + +<p>And I am sure that there must be the most delightful and picturesque +reasons why we have all this overlapping and waste and muddle in our +local affairs; why, to take another example, the boundary of the Essex +parishes of Newton and Widdington looks as though it had been sketched +out by a drunken man in a runaway cab with a broken spring.</p> + +<p>This Bocking-Braintree main road is, it happens, an old Stane Street, +along which Roman legions marched to clean up the councils and clerks of +the British tribal system two thousand years ago, and no doubt an +historian could spin delightful consequences; this does not alter the +fact that these quaint complications in English affairs mean in the +aggregate enormous obstruction and waste of human energy. It does not +alter the much graver fact, the fact that darkens all my outlook upon +the future, that we have never yet produced evidence of any general +disposition at any time to straighten out or even suspend these fumbling +intricacies and ineptitudes. Never so far has there appeared in British +affairs that divine passion to do things in the clearest, cleanest, +least wasteful, most thorough manner that is needed to straighten out, +for example, these universal local tangles. Always we have been content +with the old intricate, expensive way, and to this day we follow it....</p> + +<p>And what I want to know, what I would like to feel much surer about than +I do is, is this in our blood? Or is it only the deep-seated habit of +long ages of security, long years of margins so ample, that no waste +seemed altogether wicked. Is it, in fact, a hopeless and ineradicable +trait that we stick to extravagance and confusion?</p> + +<p>What I would like to think possible at the present time, up and down the +scale from parish to province, is something of this sort. Suppose the +clerk of Braintree went to the clerk of Bocking and said: "Look here, +one of us could do the work of both of us, as well or better. The easy +times are over, and offices as well as men should be prepared to die for +their country. Shall we toss to see who shall do it, and let the other +man go off to find something useful to do?" Then I could believe. Such +acts of virtue happen in the United States. Here is a quotation from the +New York <i>World</i> of February 15th, 1916:</p> + +<p>"For two unusual acts Henry Bruère may be remembered by New York longer +than nine days. Early in his incumbency he declared that his office was +superfluous and should be abolished, the Comptroller assuming its +duties. He now abolishes by resignation his own connection with it, in +spite of its $12,000 salary."</p> + +<p>Suppose the people of Braintree and Bocking, not waiting for that lead, +said: "But this is absurd! Let us have an identical council and one +clerk, and get ahead, instead of keeping up this silly pretence that one +town is two." Suppose someone of that 300,000 pounds' worth of gentlemen +at the Local Government Board set to work to replan our local government +areas generally on less comic lines. Suppose his official superiors +helped, instead of snubbing him....</p> + +<p>I see nothing of the sort happening. I see everywhere wary, watchful +little men, thinking of themselves, thinking of their parish, thinking +close, holding tight....</p> + +<p>I know that there is a whole web of excuses for all these complicated, +wasteful, and obstructive arrangements of our local government, these +arrangements that I have taken merely as a sample of the general human +way of getting affairs done. For it is affairs at large I am writing +about, as I warned the reader at the beginning. Directly one inquires +closely into any human muddle, one finds all sorts of reasonable rights +and objections and claims barring the way to any sweeping proposals. I +can quite imagine that Bocking has admirable reasons for refusing +coalescence with Braintree, except upon terms that Braintree could not +possibly consider. I can quite understand that there are many +inconveniences and arguable injustices that would be caused by a merger +of the two areas. I have no doubt it would mean serious loss to +So-and-so, and quite novel and unfair advantage to So-and-so. It would +take years to work the thing and get down to the footing of one water +supply and an ambidextrous dustman on the lines of perfect justice and +satisfactoriness all round.</p> + +<p>But what I want to maintain is that these little immediate claims and +rights and vested interests and bits of justice and fairness are no +excuse at all for preventing things being done in the clear, clean, +large, quick way. They never constituted a decent excuse, and now they +excuse waste and delay and inconvenience less than ever. Let us first do +things in the sound way, and then, if we can, let us pet and compensate +any disappointed person who used to profit by their being done +roundabout instead of earning an honest living. We are beginning to +agree that reasonably any man may be asked to die for his country; what +we have to recognise is that any man's proprietorship, interest, claims +or rights may just as properly be called upon to die. Bocking and +Braintree and Mr. John Smith--Mr. John Smith, the ordinary comfortable +man with a stake in the country--have been thinking altogether too much +of the claims and rights and expectations and economies of Bocking and +Braintree and Mr. John Smith. They have to think now in a different +way....</p> + +<p>Just consider the work of reconstruction that Great Britain alone will +have to face in the next year or so. (And her task is, if anything, less +than that of any of her antagonists or Allies, except Japan and Italy.) +She has now probably from six to ten million people in the British +Isles, men and women, either engaged directly in warfare or in the +manufacture of munitions or in employments such as transit, nursing, and +so forth, directly subserving these main ends. At least five-sixths of +these millions must be got back to employment of a different character +within a year of the coming of peace. Everywhere manufacture, trade and +transit has been disorganised, disturbed or destroyed. A new economic +system has to be put together within a brief score or so of weeks; great +dislocated masses of population have to be fed, kept busy and +distributed in a world financially strained and abounding in wounded, +cripples, widows, orphans and helpless people.</p> + +<p>In the next year or so the lives of half the population will have to be +fundamentally readjusted. Here is work for administrative giants, work +for which no powers can be excessive. It will be a task quite difficult +enough to do even without the opposition of legal rights, haggling +owners, and dexterous profiteers. It would be a giant's task if all the +necessary administrative machinery existed now in the most perfect +condition. How is this tremendous job going to be done if every Bocking +in the country is holding out for impossible terms from Braintree, and +every Braintree holding out for impossible terms from Bocking, while +the road out remains choked and confused between them; and if every John +Smith with a claim is insisting upon his reasonable expectation of +profits or dividends, his reasonable solatium and compensation for +getting out of the way?</p> + +<p>I would like to record my conviction that if the business of this great +crisis is to be done in the same spirit, the jealous, higgling, legal +spirit that I have seen prevailing in British life throughout my +half-century of existence, it will not in any satisfactory sense of the +phrase get done at all. This war has greatly demoralised and discredited +the governing class in Great Britain, and if big masses of unemployed +and unfed people, no longer strung up by the actuality of war, masses +now trained to arms and with many quite sympathetic officers available, +are released clumsily and planlessly into a world of risen prices and +rising rents, of legal obstacles and forensic complications, of greedy +speculators and hampered enterprises, there will be insurrection and +revolution. There will be bloodshed in the streets and the chasing of +rulers.</p> + +<p>There <i>will</i> be, if we do seriously attempt to put the new wine of +humanity, the new crude fermentations at once so hopeful and so +threatening, that the war has released, into the old administrative +bottles that served our purposes before the war.</p> + +<p>I believe that for old lawyers and old politicians and "private +ownership" to handle the great problem of reconstruction after the war +in the spirit in which our affairs were conducted before the war is +about as hopeful an enterprise as if an elderly jobbing brick-layer, +working on strict trade-union rules, set out to stop the biggest +avalanche that ever came down a mountain-side. And since I am by no +means altogether pessimistic, in spite of my qualmy phases, it follows +that I do not believe that the old spirit will necessarily prevail. I do +not, because I believe that in the past few decades a new spirit has +come into human affairs; that our ostensible rulers and leaders have +been falling behind the times, and that in the young and the untried, +in, for example, the young European of thirty and under who is now in +such multitudes thinking over life and his seniors in the trenches, +there are still unsuspected resources of will and capacity, new mental +possibilities and new mental habits, that entirely disturb the +argument--based on the typical case of Bocking and Braintree--for a +social catastrophe after the war.</p> + +<p>How best can this new spirit be defined?</p> + +<p>It is the creative spirit as distinguished from the legal spirit; it is +the spirit of courage to make and not the spirit that waits and sees and +claims; it is the spirit that looks to the future and not to the past. +It is the spirit that makes Bocking forget that it is not Braintree and +John Smith forget that he is John Smith, and both remember that they are +England.</p> + +<p>For everyone there are two diametrically different ways of thinking +about life; there is individualism, the way that comes as naturally as +the grunt from a pig, of thinking outwardly from oneself as the centre +of the universe, and there is the way that every religion is trying in +some form to teach, of thinking back to oneself from greater standards +and realities. There is the Braintree that is Braintree against England +and the world, giving as little as possible and getting the best of the +bargain, and there is the Braintree that identifies itself with England +and asks how can we do best for the world with this little place of +ours, how can we educate best, produce most, and make our roads straight +and good for the world to go through.</p> + +<p>Every American knows the district that sends its congressman to +Washington for the good of his district, and the district, the rarer +district, that sends a man to work for the United States. There is the +John Smith who feels toward England and the world as a mite feels toward +its cheese, and the John Smith who feels toward his country as a +sheep-dog feels toward the flock. The former is the spirit of +individualism, "business," and our law, the latter the spirit of +socialism and science and--khaki.... They are both in all of us, they +fluctuate from day to day; first one is ascendant and then the other.</p> + +<p>War does not so much tilt the balance as accentuate the difference. One +rich British landowner sneaks off to New York State to set up a home +there and evade taxation; another turns his mansion into a hospital and +goes off to help Serbian refugees. Acts of baseness or generosity are +contagious; this man will give himself altogether because of a story of +devotion, this man declares he will do nothing until Sir F.E. Smith goes +to the front. And the would-be prophet of what is going to happen must +guess the relative force of these most impalpable and uncertain things.</p> + +<p>This Braintree-Bocking boundary which runs down the middle of the road +is to be found all over the world. You will find it in Ireland and the +gentlemen who trade on the jealousies of the north side and the +gentlemen who trade on the jealousies of the south. You will find it in +England among the good people who would rather wreck the Empire than +work honestly and fairly with Labour. There are not only parish +boundaries, but park boundaries and class and sect boundaries. You will +find the Bocking-Braintree line too at a dozen points on a small scale +map of Europe.... These Braintree-Bocking lines are the barbed-wire +entanglements between us and the peace of the world. Against these +entanglements in every country the new spirit struggles in many +thousands of minds. Where will it be strongest? Which country will get +clear first, get most rapidly to work again, have least of the confusion +and wrangling that must in some degree occur everywhere? Will any +country go altogether to pieces in hopeless incurable discord?</p> + +<p>Now I believe that the answer to that last question is "No." And my +reason for that answer is the same as my reason for believing that the +association of the Pledged Allies will not break up after the war; it is +that I believe that this war is going to end not in the complete +smashing up and subjugation of either side, but in a general exhaustion +that will make the recrudescence of the war still possible but very +terrifying.</p> + +<p>Mars will sit like a giant above all human affairs for the next two +decades, and the speech of Mars is blunt and plain. He will say to us +all: "Get your houses in order. If you squabble among yourselves, waste +time, litigate, muddle, snatch profits and shirk obligations, I will +certainly come down upon you again. I have taken all your men between +eighteen and fifty, and killed and maimed such as I pleased; millions of +them. I have wasted your substance--contemptuously. Now, mark you, you +have multitudes of male children between the ages of nine and nineteen +running about among you. Delightful and beloved boys. And behind them +come millions of delightful babies. Of these I have scarcely smashed and +starved a paltry hundred thousand perhaps by the way. But go on +muddling, each for himself and his parish and his family and none for +all the world, go on in the old way, stick to-your 'rights,' stick to +your 'claims' each one of you, make no concessions and no sacrifices, +obstruct, waste, squabble, and presently I will come back again and take +all that fresh harvest of life I have spared, all those millions that +are now sweet children and dear little boys and youths, and I will +squeeze it into red pulp between my hands, I will mix it with the mud of +trenches and feast on it before your eyes, even more damnably than I +have done with your grown-up sons and young men. And I have taken most +of your superfluities already; next time I will take your barest +necessities."</p> + +<p>So the red god, Mars; and in these days of universal education the great +mass of people will understand plainly now that that is his message and +intention. Men who cannot be swayed by the love of order and creation +may be swayed by the thought of death and destruction.... There, I +think, is the overriding argument that will burst the proprietorships +and divisions and boundaries, the web of ineffectiveness that has held +the world so long. Labour returning from the trenches to its country and +demanding promptness, planning, generous and devoted leaderships and +organisation, demanding that the usurer and financier, the landlord and +lawyer shall, if need be, get themselves altogether out of the way, will +have behind its arguments the thought of the enemy still unsubdued, +still formidable, recovering. Both sides will feel that. This world is a +more illuminated world than 1816; a thousand questions between law and +duty have been discussed since then; beyond all comparison we know +better what we are doing. I think the broad side of John Smith (and Sir +John Smith and John Smith, K.C.) will get the better of his narrow +ends--and that so it will be with Jean Dupont and Hans Meyer and the +rest of them. There may be riots here and there; there may be some +pretty considerable rows; but I do not think there is going to be a +chaotic and merely destructive phase in Great Britain or any Western +European country. I cast my guess for reconstruction and not for revolt.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="V._HOW_FAR_WILL_EUROPE_GO_TOWARD_SOCIALISM?"></a>V. HOW FAR WILL EUROPE GO TOWARD SOCIALISM?</h2> +<br> + +<p>A number of people are saying that this war is to be the end of +Individualism. "Go as you please" has had its death-blow. Out of this +war, whatever else emerges, there will emerge a more highly organised +State than existed before--that is to say, a less individualistic and +more socialistic State. And there seems a heavy weight of probability on +the side of this view. But there are also a number of less obvious +countervailing considerations that may quite possibly modify or reverse +this tendency.</p> + +<p>In this chapter an attempt is to be made to strike a balance between the +two systems of forces, and guess how much will be private and how much +public in Europe in 1930, or thereabouts.</p> + +<p>The prophets who foretell the coming of Socialism base their case on +three sets of arguments. They point out, first, the failure of +individual enterprise to produce a national efficiency comparable to +the partial State Socialism of Germany, and the extraordinary, special +dangers inherent in private property that the war has brought to light; +secondly, to the scores of approaches to practical Socialism that have +been forced upon Great Britain--for example, by the needs of the war; +and, thirdly, to the obvious necessities that will confront the British +Empire and the Allies generally after the war--necessities that no +unorganised private effort can hope to meet effectively.</p> + +<p>All these arguments involve the assumption that the general +understanding of the common interest will be sufficient to override +individual and class motives; an exceedingly doubtful assumption, to say +the least of it. But the general understanding of the common interest is +most likely to be kept alive by the sense of a common danger, and we +have already arrived at the conclusion that Germany is going to be +defeated but not destroyed in this war, and that she will be left with +sufficient vitality and sufficient resentment and sufficient of her +rancid cultivated nationalism to make not only the continuance of the +Alliance after the war obviously advisable and highly probable, but also +to preserve in the general mind for a generation or so that sense of a +common danger which most effectually conduces to the sweeping aside of +merely personal and wasteful claims. Into the consequences of this we +have now to look a little more closely.</p> + +<p>It was the weaknesses of Germany that made this war, and not her +strength. The weaknesses of Germany are her Imperialism, her Junkerism, +and her intense, sentimental Nationalism; for the former would have no +German ascendancy that was not achieved by force, and, with the latter, +made the idea of German ascendancy intolerable to all mankind. Better +death, we said. And had Germany been no more than her Court, her +Junkerism, her Nationalism, the whole system would have smashed beneath +the contempt and indignation of the world within a year.</p> + +<p>But the strength of Germany has saved her from that destruction. She was +at once the most archaic and modern of states. She was Hohenzollern, +claiming to be Caesar, and flaunting a flat black eagle borrowed from +Imperial Rome; and also she was the most scientific and socialist of +states. It is her science and her Socialism that have held and forced +back the avengers of Belgium for more than a year and a half. If she has +failed as a conqueror, she has succeeded as an organisation. Her +ambition has been thwarted, and her method has been vindicated. She +will, I think, be so far defeated in the contest of endurance which is +now in progress that she will have to give up every scrap of territorial +advantage she has gained; she may lose most of her Colonial Empire; she +may be obliged to complete her modernisation by abandoning her militant +Imperialism; but she will have at least the satisfaction of producing +far profounder changes in the chief of her antagonists than those she +herself will undergo.</p> + +<p>The Germany of the Hohenzollerns had its mortal wound at the Marne; the +Germany we fight to-day is the Germany of Krupp and Ostwald. It is +merely as if she had put aside a mask that had blinded her. She was +methodical and civilised except for her head and aim; she will become +entirely methodical. But the Britain and Russia and France she fights +are lands full of the spirit of undefined novelty. They are being made +over far more completely. They are being made over, not in spite of the +war, but because of the war. Only by being made over can they win the +war. And if they do not win the war, then they are bound to be made +over. They are not merely putting aside old things, but they are forming +and organising within themselves new structures, new and more efficient +relationships, that will last far beyond the still remote peace +settlement.</p> + +<p>What this war has brought home to the consciousness of every intelligent +man outside the German system, with such thoroughness as whole +generations of discussion and peace experience could never have +achieved, is a double lesson: that Germany had already gone far to +master when she blundered into the war; firstly, the waste and dangers +of individualism, and, secondly, the imperative necessity of scientific +method in public affairs. The waste and dangers of individualism have +had a whole series of striking exemplifications both in Europe and +America since the war began. Were there such a thing as a Socialist +propaganda in existence, were the so-called socialistic organisations +anything better than a shabby little back-door into contemporary +politics, those demonstrations would be hammering at the mind of +everyone. It may be interesting to recapitulate some of the most salient +instances.</p> + +<p>The best illustration, perhaps, of the waste that arises out of +individualism is to be found in the extreme dislocation of the privately +owned transit services of Great Britain at the present time. There is no +essential reason whatever why food and fuel in Great Britain should be +considerably dearer than they are under peace conditions. Just the same +home areas are under cultivation, just the same foreign resources are +available; indeed, more foreign supplies are available because we have +intercepted those that under normal conditions would have gone to +Germany. The submarine blockade of Britain is now a negligible factor in +this question.</p> + +<p>Despite these patent conditions there has been, and is, a steady +increase in the cost of provisions, coal, and every sort of necessity. +This increase means an increase in the cost of production of many +commodities, and so contributes again to the general scarcity. This is +the domestic aspect of a difficulty that has also its military side. It +is not sufficient merely to make munitions; they must also be delivered, +Great Britain is suffering very seriously from congestion of the +railways. She suffers both in social and military efficiency, and she is +so suffering because her railways, instead of being planned as one great +and simple national distributing system, have grown up under conditions +of clumsy, dividend-seeking competition.</p> + +<p>Each great railway company and combination has worked its own areas, and +made difficulties and aggressions at the boundaries of its sphere of +influence; here are inconvenient junctions and here unnecessary +duplications; nearly all the companies come into London, each taking up +its own area of expensive land for goods yards, sidings, shunting +grounds, and each regardless of any proper correlation with the other; +great areas of the County of London are covered with their idle trucks +and their separate coal stores; in many provincial towns you will find +two or even three railway stations at opposite ends of the town; the +streets are blocked by the vans and trolleys of the several companies +tediously handing about goods that could be dealt with at a tenth of the +cost in time and labour at a central clearing-house, did such a thing +exist; and each system has its vast separate staff, unaccustomed to work +with any other staff.</p> + +<p>Since the war began the Government has taken over the general direction +of this disarticulated machinery, but no one with eyes who travels about +England now can fail to remark, in the miles and miles of waiting loaded +trucks on every siding, the evidences of mischievous and now almost +insuperable congestion. The trucks of each system that have travelled on +to another still go back, for the most part, <i>empty</i> to their own; and +thousands of privately owned trucks, which carry cargo only one way, +block our sidings. Great Britain wastes men and time to a disastrous +extent in these needless shuntings and handlings.</p> + +<p>Here, touching every life in the community, is one instance of the +muddle that arises naturally out of the individualistic method of +letting public services grow up anyhow without a plan, or without any +direction at all except the research for private profit.</p> + +<p>A second series of deficiencies that the war has brought to light in the +too individualistic British State is the entire want of connection +between private profit and public welfare. So far as the interests of +the capitalist go it does not matter whether he invests his money at +home or abroad; it does not matter whether his goods are manufactured in +London or Timbuctoo.</p> + +<p>But what of the result? At the outbreak of the war Great Britain found +that a score of necessary industries had drifted out of the country, +because it did not "pay" any private person to keep them here. The +shortage of dyes has been amply discussed as a typical case. A much +graver one that we may now write about was the shortage of zinc. Within +a month or so of the outbreak of the war the British Government had to +take urgent and energetic steps to secure this essential ingredient of +cartridge cases. Individualism had let zinc refining drift to Belgium +and Germany; it was the luck rather than the merit of Great Britain that +one or two refineries still existed.</p> + +<p>Still more extraordinary things came to light in the matter of the metal +supply. Under an individualistic system you may sell to the highest +bidder, and anyone with money from anywhere may come in and buy. Great +supplies of colonial ores were found to be cornered by semi-national +German syndicates. Supplies were held up by these contracts against the +necessities of the Empire. And this was but one instance of many which +have shown that, while industrial development in the Allied countries is +still largely a squabbling confusion of little short-sighted, +unscientific, private profit-seeking owners, in Germany it has been for +some years increasingly run on far-seeing collectivist lines. Against +the comparatively little and mutually jealous British or American +capitalists and millionaires Germany pits itself as a single great +capitalist and competitor. She has worked everywhere upon a +comprehensive plan. Against her great national electric combination, for +example, only another national combination could stand. As it was, +Germany--in the way of business--wired and lit (and examined) the forts +at Liége. She bought and prepared a hundred strategic centres in +individualistic Belgium and France.</p> + +<p>So we pass from the fact that individualism is hopeless muddle to the +fact that the individualist idea is one of limitless venality, Who can +buy, may control. And Germany, in her long scheming against her +individualist rivals, has not simply set herself to buy and hold the +keys and axles of their economic machinery. She has set herself, it must +be admitted, with a certain crudity and little success, but with +unexampled vigour, to buy the minds of her adversaries. The Western +nations have taken a peculiar pride in having a free Press; that is to +say, a Press that may be bought by anyone. Our Press is constantly +bought and sold, in gross and detail, by financiers, advertisers, +political parties, and the like. Germany came into the market rather +noisily, and great papers do to a large extent live in glass houses; but +her efforts have been sufficient to exercise the minds of great numbers +of men with the problem of what might have happened in the way of +national confusion if the German attack had been more subtly +conceived....</p> + +<p>It is only a partial answer to this difficulty to say that a country +that is so nationalist and aggressive as Germany is incapable of subtle +conceptions. The fact remains that in Great Britain at the present time +there are newspaper proprietors who would be good bargains for Germany +at two million pounds a head, and that there was no effectual guarantee +in the individualistic system, but only our good luck and the natural +patriotism of the individuals concerned that she did not pick up these +bargains before trading with the enemy became illegal. It happened, for +example, that Lord Northcliffe was public-spirited, That was the good +luck of Great Britain rather than her merit. There was nothing in the +individualistic system to prevent Germany from buying up the entire +Harmsworth Press--<i>The Times, Daily Mail</i>, and all--five years before +the war, and using it to confuse the national mind, destroy the national +unity, sacrifice the national interests, and frustrate the national +will.</p> + +<p>Not only the newspapers, but the news-agents and booksellers of both +Great Britain and America are entirely at the disposal of any hostile +power which chooses to buy them up quietly and systematically. It is +merely a question of wealth and cleverness. And if the failure of the +Germans to grip the Press of the French and English speaking countries +has been conspicuous, she has been by no means so unsuccessful in--for +example--Spain. At the present time the thought and feeling of the +Spanish speaking world is being <i>educated</i> against the Allies. The +Spanish mind has been sold by its custodians into German control.</p> + +<p>Muddle and venality do not, however, exhaust the demonstrated vices of +individualism. Individualism encourages desertion and treason. +Individualism permits base private people to abscond with the national +resources and squeeze a profit out of national suffering. In the early +stages of the war some bright minds conceived the idea of a corner in +drugs. It is not illegal; it is quite the sort of thing that appeals to +the individualistic frame of mind as entirely meritorious. As the <i>New +Statesman</i> put it recently: "The happy owners of the world's available +stock of a few indispensable drugs did not refrain from making, not only +the various Governments, but also all the sick people of the world pay +double, and even tenfold, prices for what was essential to relieve pain +and save life. What fortunes were thus made we shall probably never +know, any more than we shall know the tale of the men and women and +children who suffered and died because of their inability to pay, not +the cost of production of what would have saved them, but the +unnecessarily enhanced price that the chances of the market enabled the +owners to exact."</p> + +<p>And another bright instance of the value of individualism is the selling +of British shipping to neutral buyers just when the country is in the +most urgent need of every ship it can get, and the deliberate transfer +to America of a number of British businesses to evade paying a proper +share of the national bill in taxation. The English who have gone to +America at different times have been of very different qualities; at the +head of the list are the English who went over in the <i>Mayflower</i>; at +the bottom will be the rich accessions of this war....</p> + +<p>And perhaps a still more impressive testimony to the rottenness of these +"business men," upon whom certain eccentric voices call so amazingly to +come and govern us, is the incurable distrust they have sown in the +minds of labour. Never was an atmosphere of discipline more lamentable +than that which has grown up in the factories, workshops, and great +privately owned public services of America and Western Europe. The men, +it is evident, <i>expect</i> to be robbed and cheated at every turn. I can +only explain their state of mind by supposing that they have been robbed +and cheated. Their scorn and contempt for their employees' good faith +is limitless. Their <i>morale</i> is undermined by an invincible distrust.</p> + +<p>It is no good for Mr. Lloyd George to attempt to cure the gathered ill +of a century with half an hour or so of eloquence. When Great Britain, +in her supreme need, turns to the workmen she has trained in the ways of +individualism for a century, she reaps the harvest individualism has +sown. She has to fight with that handicap. Every regulation for the +rapid mobilisation of labour is scrutinised to find the trick in it.</p> + +<p>And they find the trick in it as often as not. Smart individualistic +"business experience" has been at the draughtsman's elbow. A man in an +individualistic system does not escape from class ideas and prejudices +by becoming an official. There is profound and bitter wisdom in the deep +distrust felt by British labour for both military and industrial +conscription.</p> + +<p>The breakdown of individualism has been so complete in Great Britain +that we are confronted with the spectacle of this great and ancient +kingdom reconstructing itself perforce, while it wages the greatest war +in history. A temporary nationalisation of land transit has been +improvised, and only the vast, deep-rooted, political influence of the +shipowners and coalowners have staved off the manifestly necessary step +of nationalising shipping and coal. I doubt if they will be able to +stave it off to the end of the long struggle which is still before us if +the militarism of Germany is really to be arrested and discredited. +Expropriation and not conscription will be the supreme test of Britain's +loyalty to her Allies.</p> + +<p>The British shipowners, in particular, are reaping enormous but +precarious profits from the war. The blockade of Britain, by the British +shipowners is scarcely less effective than the blockade of Germany by +Britain. With an urgent need of every ship for the national supplies, +British ships, at the present moment of writing this, are still carrying +cheap American automobiles to Australia. They would carry munitions to +Germany if their owners thought they had a sporting chance of not +getting caught at it. These British shipowners are a pampered class with +great political and social influence, and no doubt as soon as the +accumulating strain of the struggle tells to the extent of any serious +restriction of their advantage and prospects, we shall see them shifting +to the side of the at present negligible group of British pacifists. I +do not think one can count on any limit to their selfishness and +treason.</p> + +<p>I believe that the calculations of some of these extreme and apparently +quite unreasonable "pacifists" are right. Before the war is over there +will be a lot of money in the pacifist business. The rich curs of the +West End will join hands with the labour curs of the Clyde. The base are +to be found in all classes, but I doubt if they dominate any. I do not +believe that any interest or group of interests in Great Britain can +stand in the way of the will of the whole people to bring this struggle +to a triumphant finish at any cost. I do not believe that the most +sacred ties of personal friendship and blood relationship with +influential people can save either shipowners or coalowners or army +contractors to the end.</p> + +<p>There will be no end until these profit-makings are arrested. The +necessary "conscriptions of property" must come about in Great Britain +because there is no alternative but failure in the war, and the British +people will not stand failure. I believe that the end of the war will +see, not only transit, but shipping, collieries, and large portions of +the machinery of food and drink production and distribution no longer +under the administration of private ownership, but under a sort of +provisional public administration. And very many British factories will +be in the same case.</p> + +<p>Two years ago no one would have dared to prophesy the tremendous +rearrangement of manufacturing machinery which is in progress in Britain +to-day. Thousands of firms of engineers and manufacturers of all sorts, +which were flourishing in 1914, exist to-day only as names, as shapes, +as empty shells. Their staffs have been shattered, scattered, +reconstructed; their buildings enlarged and modified; their machinery +exchanged, reconstituted, or taken. The reality is a vast interdependent +national factory that would have seemed incredible to Fourier.</p> + +<p>It will be as impossible to put back British industrialism into the +factories and forms of the pre-war era as it would be to restore the +Carthaginian Empire. There is a new economic Great Britain to-day, +emergency made, jerry-built no doubt, a gawky, weedy giant, but a giant +who may fill out to such dimensions as the German national system has +never attained. Behind it is an <i>idea</i>, a new idea, the idea of the +nation as one great economic system working together, an idea which +could not possibly have got into the sluggish and conservative British +intelligence in half a century by any other means than the stark +necessities of this war.... Great Britain cannot retrace those steps +even if she would, and so she will be forced to carry this process of +reconstruction through. And what is happening to Great Britain must, +with its national differences, be happening to France and Russia. Not +only for war ends, but for peace ends, behind the front and sustaining +the front, individualities are being hammered together into common and +concerted activities.</p> + +<p>At the end of this war Great Britain will find herself with this great +national factory, this great national organisation of labour, planned, +indeed, primarily to make war material, but convertible with the utmost +ease to the purposes of automobile manufacture, to transit +reconstruction, to electrical engineering, and endless such uses.</p> + +<p>France and Russia will be in a parallel case. All the world will be +exhausted, and none of the Allies will have much money to import +automobiles, railway material, electrical gear, and so on, from abroad. +Moreover, it will be a matter of imperative necessity for them to get +ahead of the Central Powers with their productive activities. We shall +all be too poor to import from America, and we shall be insane to import +from Germany. America will be the continent with the long purse, +prepared to buy rather than sell. Each country will have great masses of +soldiers waiting to return to industrial life, and will therefore be +extremely indisposed to break up any existing productive organisation.</p> + +<p>In the face of these facts, will any of the Allied Powers be so foolish +as to disband this great system of national factories and nationally +worked communications? Moreover, we have already risked the prophecy +that this war will not end with such conclusiveness as to justify an +immediate beating out of our swords into ploughshares. There will be a +military as well as a social reason for keeping the national factories +in a going state.</p> + +<p>What more obvious course, then, than to keep them going by turning them +on to manufacture goods of urgent public necessity? There are a number +of modern commodities now practically standardised: the bicycle, the +cheap watch, the ordinary tradesman's delivery automobile, the farmer's +runabout, the country doctor's car, much electric-lighting material, +dynamos, and so forth. And also, in a parallel case, there is +shipbuilding. The chemical side of munition work can turn itself with no +extreme difficulty to the making of such products as dyes.</p> + +<p>We face the fact, then, that either the State must go on with this +production, as it can do, straight off from the signing of peace, +converting with a minimum of friction, taking on its soldiers as they +are discharged from the army as employees with a minimum waste of time +and a minimum of social disorder, and a maximum advantage in the +resumption of foreign trade, or there will be a dangerous break-up of +the national factory system, a time of extreme chaos and bitter +unemployment until capital accumulates for new developments. The risks +of social convulsion will be enormous. And there is small hope that the +Central Powers, and particularly industrial Germany, will have the +politeness to wait through the ten or twelve years of economic +embarrassment that a refusal to take this bold but obviously +advantageous step into scientific Socialism will entail.</p> + +<p>But the prophet must be on his guard against supposing that, because a +thing is highly desirable, it must necessarily happen; or that, because +it is highly dangerous, it will be avoided. This bold and successful +economic reconstruction upon national lines is not inevitable merely +because every sound reason points us in that direction. A man may be +very ill, a certain drug may be clearly indicated as the only possible +remedy, but it does not follow that the drug is available, that the +doctor will have the sense to prescribe it, or the patient the means to +procure it or the intelligence to swallow it.</p> + +<p>The experience of history is that nations do not take the obviously +right course, but the obviously wrong one. The present prophet knows +only his England, but, so far as England is concerned, he can cover a +sheet of paper with scarcely a pause, jotting down memoranda of +numberless forces that make against any such rational reconstruction. +Most of these forces, in greater or less proportion, must be present in +the case of every other country under consideration.</p> + +<p>The darkest shadow upon the outlook of European civilisation at the +present time is not the war; it is the failure of any co-operative +spirit between labour and the directing classes. The educated and +leisured classes have been rotten with individualism for a century; they +have destroyed the confidence of the worker in any leadership whatever. +Labour stands apart, intractable. If there is to be any such rapid +conversion of the economic machinery as the opportunities and +necessities of this great time demand, then labour must be taken into +the confidence of those who would carry it through. It must be reassured +and enlightened. Labour must know clearly what is being done; it must be +an assenting co-operator. The stride to economic national service and +Socialism is a stride that labour should be more eager to take than any +other section of the community.</p> + +<p>The first step in reassuring labour must be to bring the greedy private +owner and the speculator under a far more drastic discipline than at +present. The property-owning class is continually accusing labour of +being ignorant, suspicious, and difficult; it is blind to the fact that +it is itself profit-seeking by habit, greedy, conceited, and half +educated.</p> + +<p>Every step in the mobilisation of Great Britain's vast resources for the +purposes of the war has been hampered by the tricks, the failures to +understand, and the almost instinctive disloyalties of private owners. +The raising of rents in Glasgow drove the infuriated workmen of the +Clyde district into an unwilling strike. It was an exasperating piece of +private selfishness, quite typical of the individualistic state of mind, +and the failure to anticipate or arrest it on the part of the Government +was a worse failure than Suvla Bay. And everywhere the officials of the +Ministry of Munitions find private employers holding back workers and +machinery from munition works, intriguing--more particularly through the +Board of Trade--to have all sorts of manufactures for private profit +recognised as munition work, or if that contention is too utterly +absurd, then as work vitally necessary to the maintenance of British +export trade and the financial position of the country. It is an +undeniable fact that employers and men alike have been found far readier +to risk their lives for their country than to lay aside any scale of +profits to which they have grown accustomed.</p> + +<p>This conflict of individualistic enterprise and class suspicion against +the synthesis of the public welfare is not peculiar to Great Britain; it +is probably going on with local variations in Germany, Russia, Italy, +France, and, indeed, in every combatant country. Because of the +individualistic forces and feelings, none of us, either friends or +enemies, are really getting anything like our full possible result out +of our national efforts. But in Germany there is a greater tradition of +subordination; in France there is a greater clarity of mind than in any +other country.</p> + +<p>Great Britain and Russia in this, as in so many other matters, are at +once close kindred and sharp antithesis. Each is mentally crippled by +the corruption of its educational system by an official religious +orthodoxy, and hampered by a Court which disowns any function of +intellectual stimulus. Neither possesses a scientifically educated +<i>class</i> to which it can look for the powerful handling of this great +occasion; and each has acquired under these disadvantages the same +strange faculty for producing sane resultants out of illogical +confusions. It is the way of these unmethodical Powers to produce +unexpected, vaguely formulated, and yet effective cerebral +action--apparently from their backbones.</p> + +<p>As I sit playing at prophecy, and turn over the multitudinous +impressions of the last year in my mind, weighing the great necessities +of the time against obstacles and petty-mindedness, I become more and +more conscious of a third factor that is neither need nor obstruction, +and that is the will to get things right that has been liberated by the +war.</p> + +<p>The new spirit is still but poorly expressed, but it will find +expression. The war goes on, and we discuss this question of economic +reconstruction as though it was an issue that lay between the labour +that has stayed behind and the business men, for the most part old men +with old habits of mind, who have stayed behind.</p> + +<p>The real life of Europe's future lies on neither side of that +opposition. The real life is mutely busy at present, saying little +because of the uproar of the guns, and not so much learning as casting +habits and shedding delusions. In the trenches there are workers who +have broken with the old slacking and sabotage, and there are +prospective leaders who have forgotten profit. The men between eighteen +and forty are far too busy in the blood and mud to make much showing +now, but to-morrow these men will be the nation.</p> + +<p>When that third factor of the problem is brought in the outlook of the +horoscope improves. The spirit of the war may be counted upon to balance +and prevail against this spirit of individualism, this spirit of +suspicion and disloyalty, which I fear more than anything else in the +world.</p> + +<p>I believe in the young France, young England, and young Russia this war +is making, and so I believe that every European country will struggle +along the path that this war has opened to a far more completely +organised State than has existed ever before. The Allies will become +State firms, as Germany was, indeed, already becoming before the war; +setting private profit aside in the common interest, handling +agriculture, transport, shipping, coal, the supply of metals, the +manufacture of a thousand staple articles, as national concerns.</p> + +<p>In the face of the manifest determination of the Central Powers to do as +much, the Allies will be forced also to link their various State firms +together into a great allied trust, trading with a common interest and a +common plan with Germany and America and the rest of the world.... Youth +and necessity will carry this against selfishness, against the +unimaginative, against the unteachable, the suspicious, the "<i>old +fool</i>."</p> + +<p>But I do not venture to prophesy that this will come about as if it were +a slick and easy deduction from present circumstances. Even in France I +do not think things will move as lucidly and generously as that. There +will be a conflict everywhere between wisdom and cunning, between the +eyes of youth and the purblind, between energy and obstinacy.</p> + +<p>The reorganisation of the European States will come about clumsily and +ungraciously. At every point the sticker will be found sticking tight, +holding out to be bought off, holding out for a rent or a dividend or a +share, holding out by mere instinct. At every turn, too, the bawler will +be loud and active, bawling suspicions, bawling accusations, bawling +panic, or just simply bawling. Tricks, peculation, obstinacies, +vanities--after this war men will still be men. But I do believe that +through all the dust and din, the great reasons in the case, the steady +constructive forces of the situation, will carry us.</p> + +<p>I believe that out of the ruins of the nineteenth century system of +private capitalism that this war has smashed for ever, there will arise, +there does even now arise, in this strange scaffolding of national +munition factories and hastily nationalised public services, the +framework of a new economic and social order based upon national +ownership and service.</p> + +<p>Let us now recapitulate a little and see how far we have got in +constructing a picture of the European community as it will be in +fifteen or twenty years' time. Nominally it will be little more of a +Socialist State than it is to-day, but, as a matter of fact, the ships, +the railways, the coal and metal supply, the great metal industries, +much engineering, and most agriculture, will be more or less completely +under collective ownership, and certainly very completely under +collective control. This does not mean that there will have been any +disappearance of private property, but only that there will have been a +very considerable change in its character; the owner will be less of +controller but more of a creditor; he will be a <i>rentier</i> or an +annuitant.</p> + +<p>The burthen of this class upon the community will not be relatively +quite so heavy as it would otherwise have been, because of a very +considerable rise in wages and prices.</p> + +<p>In a community in which all the great initiatives have been assumed by +the State, the importance of financiers and promoters will have +diminished relatively to the importance of administrative officials; the +opportunities of private exploitation, indeed, will have so diminished +that there will probably be far less evidence of great concentrations of +private wealth in the European social landscape than there was before +the war.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, there will be an enormously increased <i>rentier</i> class +drawing the interest of the war loans from the community, and +maintaining a generally high standard of comfort. There will have been a +great demand for administrative and technical abilities and a great +stimulation of scientific and technical education. By 1926 we shall be +going about a world that will have recovered very largely from the +impoverishment of the struggle; we shall tour in State-manufactured +automobiles upon excellent roads, and we shall live in houses equipped +with a national factory electric light installation, and at every turn +we shall be using and consuming the products of nationalised +industry--and paying off the National Debt simultaneously, and reducing +our burden of <i>rentiers</i>.</p> + +<p>At the same time our boys will be studying science in their schools +more thoroughly than they do now, and they will in many cases be +learning Russian instead of Greek or German. More of our boys will be +going into the public service, and fewer thinking of private business, +and they will be going into the public service, not as clerks, but as +engineers, technical chemists, manufacturers, State agriculturists, and +the like. The public service will be less a service of clerks and more a +service of practical men. The ties that bind France and Great Britain at +the present moment will have been drawn very much closer. France, +Belgium and England will be drifting towards a French-English +bi-lingualism....</p> + +<p>So much of our picture we may splash in now. Much that is quite +essential remains to be discussed. So far we have said scarcely a word +about the prospects of party politics and the problems of government +that arise as the State ceases to be a mere impartial adjudicator +between private individuals, and takes upon itself more and more of the +direction of the general life of the community.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="VI._LAWYER_AND_PRESS"></a>VI. LAWYER AND PRESS</h2> +<br> + +<p>The riddle of administration is the most subtle of all those that the +would-be prophet of the things that are coming must attempt. We see the +great modern States confronted now by vast and urgent necessities, by +opportunities that may never recur. Individualism has achieved its +inevitable failure; "go as you please" in a world that also contained +aggressive militarism, has broken down. We live in a world of improvised +State factories, commandeered railways, substituted labour and emergency +arrangements. Our vague-minded, lax, modern democracy has to pull itself +together, has to take over and administer and succeed with a great +system of collective functions, has to express its collective will in +some better terms than "go as you please," or fail.</p> + +<p>And we find the affairs of nearly every great democratic State in the +hands of a class of men not specially adapted to any such constructive +or administrative work.</p> + +<p>I am writing here now chiefly of the Western Allies. Russia is peculiar +in having her administrative machine much more highly developed in +relation to her general national life than the free democratic +countries. She has to make a bureaucracy that has not hitherto been an +example for efficiency into a bureaucracy that will be constructive, +responsive, liberal, scientific, and efficient; the Western countries +have to do the same with that oligarchy of politicians which, as +Professor Michels has recently pointed out in his striking book on +"Political Parties," is the necessary reality of democratic government. +By different methods the Eastern and Western Powers have to attain a +common end. Both bureaucracy and pseudo-democratic oligarchy have to +accomplish an identical task, to cement the pacific alliance of the +Pledged Allies and to socialise their common industrial and economic +life, so as to make it invulnerable to foreign attack.</p> + +<p>Now in Great Britain, which is the democracy that has been most under +the close observation of the present prophet, there is at present a +great outcry against the "politician," and more particularly against the +"lawyer-politician." He is our embarrassment. In him we personify all +our difficulties. Let us consider the charges against this individual. +Let us ask, can we do without him? And let us further see what chances +there may be of so altering, qualifying, or balancing him as to minimise +the evil of his influence. To begin with, let us run over the essentials +of the charge against him.</p> + +<p>It is with a modest blush that the present prophet recapitulates these +charges. So early as the year 1902 he was lifting up his voice, not +exactly in the wilderness but at least in the Royal Institution, against +the legal as compared with the creative or futurist type of mind. The +legal mind, he insisted, looks necessarily to the past. It is dilatory +because it has no sense of coming things, it is uninventive and +wasteful, it does not create, it takes advantage. It is the type of mind +least able, under any circumstances, to organise great businesses, to +plan campaigns, to adventure or achieve. "Wait and see" crystallises its +spirit. Its resistance is admirable, and it has no "go." Nevertheless +there is a tendency for power to gravitate in all democratic countries +to the lawyer.</p> + +<p>In the British system the normal faults of the lawyer are enhanced, and +his predominance intensified, by certain peculiarities of our system. In +the first place, he belongs to a guild of exceptional power. In Britain +it happens that the unfortunate course was taken ages ago of bribing the +whole legal profession to be honest. The British judges and law officers +are stupendously overpaid in order to make them incorruptible; it is a +poor but perhaps a well-merited compliment to their professional code. +We have squared the whole profession to be individually unbribable.</p> + +<p>The judges, moreover, in the Anglo-Saxon communities are appointed from +among the leading barristers, an arrangement that a child can see is +demoralising and inadvisable. And in Great Britain all the greatest +salaries in the government service are reserved for the legal +profession. The greatest prizes, therefore, before an energetic young +man who has to make his way in Great Britain are the legal prizes, and +his line of advancement to these lies, for all the best years of his +life, not through the public service, but through the private practice +of advocacy. The higher education, such as it is, in Great Britain, +produces under the stimulus of these conditions an advocate as its +finest flower. To go from the posing and chatter of the Union Debating +Society to a university laboratory is, in Britain, to renounce ambition. +Few men of exceptional energy will do that.</p> + +<p>The national consequences of this state of affairs have been only too +manifest throughout the conduct of the war. The British Government has +developed all the strength and all the weakness of the great profession +it represents. It has been uninventive, dilatory, and without +initiative; it has been wasteful and evasive; but it has not been +wanting in a certain eloquence and dignity, it has been wary and shrewd, +and it has held on to office with the concentrated skill and +determination of a sucker-fish. And the British mind, with a +concentration and intensity unprecedented before the war, is speculating +how it can contrive to get a different sort of ruler and administrator +at work upon its affairs.</p> + +<p>There is a disposition in the Press, and much of the private talk one +hears, to get rid of lawyers from the control of national affairs +altogether, to substitute "business men" or scientific men or "experts." +That way lies dictatorship and Caesarism. And even Great Britain is not +so heedless of the experiences of other nations as to attempt again what +has already been so abundantly worked out in national disaster across +the Channel. The essential business of government is to deal between man +and man; it is not to manage the national affairs in detail, but to +secure the proper managers, investigators, administrators, generals, +and so forth, to maintain their efficiency, and keep the balance between +them. We cannot do without a special class of men for these +interventions and controls. In other words, we cannot do without a +special class of politicians. They may be elected by a public or +appointed by an autocrat; at some point they have to come in. And this +business of intervening between men and classes and departments in +public life, and getting them to work together, is so closely akin to +the proper work of a lawyer in dealing between men and men, that, unless +the latter are absolutely barred from becoming the former, it is almost +unavoidable that politicians should be drawn more abundantly from the +lawyer class than from any other class in the community.</p> + +<p>This is so much the case, that when the London <i>Times</i> turns in despair +from a government of lawyers and looks about for an alternative, the +first figure that presents itself is that distinguished advocate Sir +Edward Carson!</p> + +<p>But there is a difference between recognising that some sort of +lawyer-politician is unavoidable and agreeing that the existing type of +lawyer who is so largely accountable for the massive slowness, the +confused action, the slovenliness rather than the weakness of purpose, +shown by Great Britain in this war, is the only possible type, The +British system of education and legal organisation is not the last word +of human wisdom in these matters.</p> + +<p>The real case we British have against our lawyers, if I may adopt an +expressive colloquialism, is not that they are lawyers, but that they +are such infernal lawyers. They trail into modern life most of the +faults of a mediaeval guild. They seem to have no sense of the State +they could develop, no sense of the future they might control. Their law +and procedure has never been remodelled upon the framework of modern +ideas; their minds are still set to the tune of mediaeval bickerings, +traditionalism, and State blindness. They are mystery dealers, almost +unanimously they have resisted giving the common man the protection of a +code.</p> + +<p>In the United Kingdom we have had no Napoleon to override the +profession. It is extraordinary how complete has been their preservation +of barbaric conceptions. Even the doctor is now largely emancipated from +his archaic limitations as a skilled retainer. He thinks more and more +of the public health, and less and less of his patron. The more recent a +profession the less there is of the individualistic personal reference; +scientific research, for example, disavows and forbids every personal +reference.</p> + +<p>But while everyone would be shocked at some great doctor, or some great +research institution, in these days of urgent necessity spending two or +three weeks on the minor ailments of some rich person's lapdog, nobody +is scandalised at the spectacle of Sir Edward Carson and a costly law +court spending long days upon the sordid disputes that centre upon young +Master Slingsby's ear--whether it is the Slingsby family ear or the ear +of a supposititious child--a question that any three old women might be +trusted to settle. After that he rests for a fortnight and recuperates, +and returns--to take up a will case turning upon the toy rabbits and +suchlike trifles which entertained the declining years of a +nonagenarian. This, when we are assured that the country awaits Sir +Edward as its Deliverer. It is as if Lord Kitchener took a month off to +act at specially high rates for the "movies." Our standard for the +lawyer is older and lower than it is for other men.</p> + +<p>There is no more reason nowadays why a lawyer should look to advocacy as +a proper use of his knowledge than that a doctor should make private +poisoning the lucrative side of his profession. There is no reason why +a court of law should ignore the plain right of the commonweal to +intervene in every case between man and man. There is every reason why +trivial disputes about wills and legitimacy should not be wasting our +national resources at the present time, when nearly every other form of +waste is being restrained. The sound case against the legal profession +in Anglo-Saxon countries is not that it is unnecessary, but that it is +almost incredibly antiquated, almost incredibly careless of the public +well-being, and that it corrupts or dwarfs all the men who enter it.</p> + +<p>Our urgent need is not so much to get rid of the lawyer from our affairs +as to get rid of the wig and gown spirit and of the special pleader, and +to find and develop the new lawyer, the lawyer who is not an advocate, +who is not afraid of a code, who has had some scientific education, and +whose imagination has been quickened by the realisation of life as +creative opportunity. We want to emancipate this profession from its +ancient guild restrictions--the most anti-social and disastrous of all +such restrictions--to destroy its disgraceful traditions of over-payment +and fee-snatching, to insist upon a scientific philosophical training +for its practitioners, to make the practice of advocacy a fall from +grace, and to bar professional advocates from the bench.</p> + +<p>In the British trenches now there must be many hundreds of fine young +lawyers, still but little corrupted, who would be only too glad to +exchange the sordid vulgarities and essential dishonour of a successful +lawyer's career under the old conditions for lives of service and +statecraft....</p> + +<p>No observer of the general trend of events in Europe will get any real +grasp of what is happening until he realises the cardinal importance of +the reactions that centre upon this question. The current development of +political institutions and the possible development of a new spirit and +method in the legal profession are so intimately interwoven as to be +practically one and the same question. The international question is, +can we get a new Germany? The national question everywhere is, can we +get a better politician?</p> + +<p>The widely prevalent discontent with the part played by the lawyer in +the affairs of all the Western Allies is certain to develop into a +vigorous agitation for legal reconstruction. In the case of every other +great trade union the war has exacted profound and vital concessions. +The British working men, for example, have abandoned scores of +protective restrictions upon women's labour, upon unskilled labour, for +which they have fought for generations; they have submitted to a virtual +serfdom that the nation's needs might be supplied; the medical +profession has sent almost too large a proportion of its members to the +front; the scientific men, the writers, have been begging to be used in +any capacity at any price or none; the Ministry of Munitions is full of +unpaid workers, and so on.</p> + +<p>The British legal profession and trade union alone has made no sign of +any disposition to relax its elaborate restrictions upon the labour of +amateurs and women, or to abate one jot or one tittle of its habitual +rewards. There has been no attempt to reduce the costly law officers of +the Government, for example, or to call in the help of older men or +women to release law officers who are of military experience or age.</p> + +<p>And I must admit that there are small signs of the advent of the "new +lawyer," at whose possibility I have just flung a hopeful glance, to +replace the existing mass of mediaeval unsoundness. Barristers seem to +age prematurely--at least in Great Britain--unless they are born old. In +the legal profession one hears nothing of "the young"; one hears only of +"smart juniors." Reform and progressive criticism in the legal +profession, unlike all other professions, seem to be the monopoly of the +retired.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, Great Britain is as yet only beginning to feel the real +stresses of the war; she is coming into the full strain a year behind +France, Germany, and Russia; and after the war there lies the +possibility of still more violent stresses; so that what is as yet a +mere cloud of criticism and resentment at our lawyer-politicians and +privileged legal profession may gather to a great storm before 1918 or +1919.</p> + +<p>I am inclined to foretell as one most highly probable development of the +present vague but very considerable revolt against the lawyer in British +public life, first, some clumsy proposals or even attempts to leave him +out, and use "business men," soldiers, admirals, dictators, or men of +science, in his place--which is rather like throwing away a blottesque +fountain-pen and trying to write with a walking-stick or a revolver or a +flash-light--and then when that is found to be impossible, a resolute +attempt to clean and reconstitute the legal profession on modern and +more honourable lines; a movement into which, quite possibly, a number +of the younger British lawyers, so soon as they realise that the +movement is good enough to risk careers upon, may throw themselves. A +large share in such a reform movement, if it occurs, will be brought +about by the Press; by which I mean not simply the periodical Press, but +all books and contemporary discussion. It is only by the natural playing +off of Press against lawyer-politician that democratic States can ever +come to their own.</p> + +<p>And that brings me to the second part of this question, which is +whether, quite apart from the possible reform and spiritual rebirth of +the legal profession, there is not also the possibility of balancing and +correcting its influence. In ancient Hebrew history--it may be a warning +rather than a precedent--there were two great forces, one formal, +conservative and corrupting, the other undisciplined, creative, and +destructive; the first was the priest, the second the prophet. Their +interaction is being extraordinarily paralleled in the Anglo-Saxon +democracies by the interaction of lawyer-politician and Press to-day.</p> + +<p>If the lawyer-politician is unavoidable, the Press is indispensable. It +is not in the clash and manoeuvres and mutual correction of party, but +in the essential conflict of political authority on the one hand and +Press on the other that the future of democratic government apparently +lies. In the clearer, simpler case of France, a less wealthy and finer +type of lawyer interacts with a less impersonal Press. It is in the +great contrasts and the essential parallelism of the French and the +Anglo-Saxon democratic systems that one finds the best practical reason +for anticipating very profound changes in these two inevitables of +democracy, the Press and the lawyer-politician, and for assuming that +the method of democracy has still a vast range of experimental +adjustment between them still untried. Such experimental adjustment will +be the chief necessity and business of political life in every country +of the world for the next few decades.</p> + +<p>The lawyer-politician and the Press are as it were the right and left +hands of a modern democracy. The war has brought this out clearly. It +has ruptured the long-weakened bonds that once linked this and that +newspaper with this and that party. For years the Press of all the +Western democracies has been drifting slowly away from the tradition--it +lasted longest and was developed most completely in Great +Britain--that-newspapers were party organs.</p> + +<p>In the novels of Disraeli the Press appears as an ambiguously helpful +person who is asked out to dinner, who is even admitted to week-end +conferences, by the political great. He takes his orders from the Whig +peers or the Tory peers. At his greatest he advises them respectfully. +But that was in the closing days of the British oligarchy; that was +before modern democracy had begun to produce its characteristic +political forms. It is not so very much more than a century ago that +Great Britain had her first lawyer Prime Minister. Through all the +Napoleonic wars she was still a country ruled by great feudal landlords, +and gentlemen adventurers associated with them. The lawyers only came to +their own at the close of the great Victorian duet of Disraeli and +Gladstone, the last of the political gentlemen adventurers. It is only +now, in the jolts and dissatisfactions of this war, that Great Britain +rubs her eyes and looks at her government as it is.</p> + +<p>The old oligarchy established the tradition of her diplomacy. Illiberal +at home, it was liberal abroad; Great Britain was the defender of +nationality, of constitutionalism, and of the balance of power against +the holy alliance. In the figure of such a gentleman as Sir Edward Grey +the old order mingles with the new. But most of his colleagues are of +the new order. They would have been incredible in the days of Lord +Melbourne. In its essential quality the present British Government is +far more closely akin to the French than it is to its predecessor of a +hundred years ago. Essentially it is a Government of lawyer-politicians +with no close family ties or intimate political traditions and +prejudices. And its natural and proper corrective is the Press, over +which it fails to exercise now even a shadow of the political and social +influence that once kept that power in subjection.</p> + +<p>It is the way with all human institutions; they remain in appearance +long after they have passed away in reality. It is on record that the +Roman senate still thought Rome was a republic in the third century of +the Christian era. It is nothing wonderful, therefore, that people +suppose that the King, the Lords, and the Commons, debating through a +Ministry and an Opposition, still govern the British Empire. As a matter +of fact it is the lawyer-politicians, split by factions that simulate +the ancient government and opposition, who rule, under a steadily +growing pressure and checking by the Press. Since this war began the +Press has released itself almost inadvertently from its last association +with the dying conflicts of party politics, and has taken its place as a +distinct power in the realm, claiming to be more representative of the +people than their elected representatives, and more expressive of the +national mind and will.</p> + +<p>Now there is considerable validity in this claim. It is easy to say +that a paper may be bought by any proprietor and set to put what he +chooses into the public mind. As a matter of fact, buying a newspaper is +far more costly and public a proceeding than buying a politician. And if +on the one hand the public has no control over what is printed in a +paper, it has on the other the very completest control over what is +read. A politician is checked by votes cast once in several years, a +newspaper is checked by sales that vary significantly from day to day. A +newspaper with no circulation is a newspaper that does not matter; a few +weeks will suffice to show if it has carried its public with it or gone +out of influence. It is absurd to speak of a newspaper as being less +responsible than a politician.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, the influence of a great newspaper is so much greater than +that of any politician, and its power more particularly for +mischief--for the creation of panic conditions, for example--so much +swifter, that it is open to question whether the Press is at present +sufficiently held to its enormous responsibilities.</p> + +<p>Let us consider its weaknesses at the present time, let us ask what +changes in its circumstances are desirable in the public interest, and +what are likely to come about. We have already reckoned upon the Press +as a chief factor in the adequate criticism, cleansing, and +modernisation of the British lawyer-politician; is there any power to +which we may look for the security of the Press? And I submit the answer +is the Press. For while the legal profession is naturally homogeneous, +the Press is by nature heterogeneous. Dog does not eat dog, nor lawyer, +lawyer; but the newspapers are sharks and cannibals, they are in +perpetual conflict, the Press is a profession as open as the law is +closed; it has no anti-social guild feeling; it washes its dirty linen +in public by choice and necessity, and disdains all professional +etiquette. Few people know what criticisms of the Lord Chief Justice may +have ripened in the minds of Lord Halsbury or Sir Edward Carson, but we +all know, to a very considerable degree of accuracy, the worst of what +this great journalist or group of newspaper proprietors thinks of that.</p> + +<p>We have, therefore, considerable reason for regarding the Press as +being, in contrast with the legal profession, a self-reforming body. In +the last decade there has been an enormous mass of criticism of the +Press by the Press. There has been a tendency to exaggerate its +irresponsibility. A better case is to be made against it for what I will +call, using the word in its least offensive sense, its venality. By +venality I mean the fact, a legacy from the now happily vanishing age of +individualism, that in theory and law at least anyone may own a +newspaper and sell it publicly or secretly to anyone, that its +circulation and advertisement receipts may be kept secret or not as the +proprietors choose, and that the proprietor is accountable to no one for +any exceptional incomings or any sudden fluctuations in policy.</p> + +<p>A few years ago we were all discussing who should buy <i>The Times</i>; I do +not know what chances an agent of the Kaiser might not have had if he +had been sufficiently discreet. This venality will be far more dangerous +to the Allied countries after the war than during its continuance. So +long as the state of war lasts there are prompt methods available for +any direct newspaper treason, and it is in the neutral countries only +that the buying and selling of papers against the national interest has +occurred to any marked extent.</p> + +<p>Directly peace is signed, unless we provide for the event beforehand, +our Press will pass under neutral conditions. There will be nothing to +prevent, for example, any foreseeing foreign power coming into Great +Britain, offering to buy up not only this paper or that, but also, what +is far more important, to buy up the great book and newspaper +distributing firms. These vitally important public services, so far as +law and theory go, will be as entirely in the market as railway tickets +at a station unless we make some intelligent preventive provision. +Unless we do, and if, as is highly probable, peace puts no immediate +stop to international malignity, the Germans will be bigger fools than I +think them if they do not try to get hold of these public services. It +is a matter of primary importance in the outlook of every country in +Europe, therefore, that it should insist upon and secure responsible +native ownership of every newspaper and news and book distributing +agency, and the most drastic punishment for newspaper corruption. Given +that guarantee against foreign bribery, we may, I think, let free speech +rage. This is so much a matter of common sense that I cannot imagine +even British "wait and see" waiting for the inevitable assault upon our +national journalistic virtue that will follow the peace.</p> + +<p>So I spread out the considerations that I think justify our forecasting, +in a very changed Great Britain and a changed Europe, firstly, a legal +profession with a quickened conscience, a sense of public function and a +reformed organisation, and, secondly, a Press, which is recognised and +held accountable in law and in men's minds, as an estate of the realm, +as something implicitly under oath to serve the State. I do not agree +with Professor Michel's pessimistic conclusion that peace will bring +back exacerbated party politics and a new era of futility to the +democratic countries. I believe that the tremendous demonstration of +this war (a demonstration that gains weight with every week of our +lengthening effort), of the waste and inefficiency of the system of +1913-14, will break down at last even the conservatism of the most +rigidly organised and powerful and out-of-date of all professions.</p> + +<p>It is not only that I look to the indignation and energy of intelligent +men who are outside our legal and political system to reform it, but to +those who are in it now. A man may be quietly parasitic upon his mother, +and yet incapable of matricide. So much of our national energy and +ability has been attracted to the law in Great Britain that our nation, +with our lawyers in modern clothing instead of wigs and gowns, lawyers +who have studied science and social theory instead of the spoutings of +Cicero and the loquacious artfulness of W.E. Gladstone, lawyers who look +forward at the destiny of their country instead of backward and at the +markings on their briefs, may yet astonish the world. The British lawyer +really holds the future of the British Empire and, indeed, I could +almost say, of the whole world in his hands at the present time, as much +as any single sort of man can be said to hold it. Inside his skull +imagination and a heavy devil of evil precedent fight for his soul and +the welfare of the world. And generosity fights against tradition and +individualism. Only the men of the Press have anything like the same +great possibilities of betrayal.</p> + +<p>To these two sorts of men the dim spirit of the nation looks for such +leading as a democracy can follow. To them the men with every sort of +special ability, the men of science, the men of this or that sort of +administrative ability and experience, the men of creative gifts and +habits, every sort of man who wants the world to get on, look for the +removal (or the ingenious contrivance) of obstructions and +entanglements, for the allaying (or the fomentation) of suspicion, +misapprehension, and ignorant opposition, for administration (or class +blackmail).</p> + +<p>Yet while I sit as a prophetic amateur weighing these impalpable forces +of will and imagination and habit and interest in lawyer, pressman, +maker and administrator, and feeling by no means over-confident of the +issue, it dawns upon me suddenly that there is another figure present, +who has never been present before in the reckoning up of British +affairs. It is a silent figure. This figure stands among the pressmen +and among the lawyers and among the workers; for a couple of decades at +least he will be everywhere in the British system; he is young and he is +uniformed in khaki, and he brings with him a new spirit into British +life, the spirit of the new soldier, the spirit of subordination to a +common purpose....</p> + +<p>France, which has lived so much farther and deeper and more bitterly +than Britain, knows....<a name="FNanchor2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2">[2]</a></p> + +<blockquote><a name="Footnote_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor2">[2]</a> In "An Englishman Looks at the World," a companion volume +to the present one, which was first published by Messrs. Cassell early +in 1914, and is now obtainable in a shilling edition, the reader will +find a full discussion of the probable benefit of proportional +representation in eliminating the party hack from political life. +Proportional representation would probably break up party organisations +altogether, and it would considerably enhance the importance and +responsibility of the Press. It would do much to accelerate the +development of the state of affairs here foreshadowed, in which the rôle +of government and opposition under the party system will be played by +elected representatives and Press respectively. +</blockquote> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="VII._THE_NEW_EDUCATION"></a>VII. THE NEW EDUCATION</h2> +<br> + +<p>Some few months ago Mr. Harold Spender, in the <i>Daily News</i>, was calling +attention to a very significant fact indeed. The higher education in +England, and more particularly the educational process of Oxford and +Cambridge, which has been going on continuously since the Middle Ages, +is practically in a state of suspense. Oxford and Cambridge have +stopped. They have stopped so completely that Mr. Spender can speculate +whether they can ever pick up again and resume upon the old lines.</p> + +<p>For my own part, as the father of two sons who are at present in +mid-school, I hope with all my heart that they will not. I hope that the +Oxford and Cambridge of unphilosophical classics and Little-go Greek for +everybody, don's mathematics, bad French, ignorance of all Europe except +Switzerland, forensic exercises in the Union Debating Society, and cant +about the Gothic, the Oxford and Cambridge that turned boys full of life +and hope and infinite possibility into barristers, politicians, +mono-lingual diplomatists, bishops, schoolmasters, company directors, +and remittance men, are even now dead.</p> + +<p>Quite recently I passed through Cambridge, and, with the suggestions of +Mr. Spender in my mind, I paused to savour the atmosphere of the place. +He had very greatly understated the facts of the case. He laid stress +upon the fact that instead of the normal four thousand undergraduates or +so, there are now scarcely four hundred. But before I was fairly in +Cambridge I realised that that gives no idea of the real cessation of +English education. Of the first seven undergraduates I saw upon the +Trumpington road, one was black, three were coloured, and one of the +remaining three was certainly not British, but, I should guess, +Spanish-American. And it isn't only the undergraduates who have gone. +All the dons of military age and quality have gone too, or are staying +up not in caps and gowns, but in khaki; all the vigorous teachers are +soldiering; there are no dons left except those who are unfit for +service--and the clergy. Buildings, libraries, empty laboratories, empty +lecture theatres, vestiges, refugees, neutrals, khaki; that is Cambridge +to-day.</p> + +<p>There never was before, there never may be again, so wonderful an +opportunity for a cleaning-up and sweeping-out of those two places, and +for a profitable new start in British education.</p> + +<p>The cessation of Oxford and Cambridge does not give the full measure of +the present occasion. All the other British universities are in a like +case. And the schools which feed them have been practically swept clean +of their senior boys. And not a tithe of any of this war class of +schoolboys will ever go to the universities now, not a tithe of the war +class of undergraduates will ever return. Between the new education and +the old there will be a break of two school generations. For the next +thirty or forty years an exceptional class of men will play a leading +part in British affairs, men who will have learnt more from reality and +less from lectures than either the generations that preceded or the +generations that will follow them. The subalterns of the great war will +form a distinct generation and mark an epoch. Their experiences of need, +their sense of deficiencies, will certainly play a large part in the +reconstitution of British education. <i>The stamp of the old system will +not be on them</i>.</p> + +<p>Now is the time to ask what sort of training should a university give to +produce the ruling, directing, and leading men which it exists to +produce? Upon that Great Britain will need to make up its mind +speedily. It is not a matter for to-morrow or the day after; it is +necessary to decide now what it is the Britain that is coming will need +and want, and to set to work revising the admission and degree +requirements, and reconstructing all those systems of public +examinations for the public services that necessarily dominate school +and university teaching, before the universities and schools reassemble. +If the rotten old things once get together again, the rotten old things +will have a new lease of life. This and no other is the hour for +educational reconstruction. And it is in the decisions and readjustments +of schools and lectures and courses, far more than anywhere else, that +the real future of Great Britain will be decided. Equally true is this +of all the belligerent countries. Much of the future has a kind of +mechanical inevitableness, but here far more than anywhere else, can a +few resolute and capable men mould the spirit and determine the quality +of the Europe to come.</p> + +<p>Now surely the chief things that are needed in the education of a ruling +class are these--first, the selection and development of Character, +then the selection and development of Capacity, and, thirdly, the +imparting of Knowledge upon broad and comprehensive lines, and the +power of rapidly taking up and using such detailed knowledge as may be +needed for special occasions. It is upon the first count that the +British schools and universities have been most open to criticism. We +have found the British university-trained class under the fiery tests of +this war an evasive, temporising class of people, individualistic, +ungenerous, and unable either to produce or obey vigorous leadership. On +the whole, it is a matter for congratulation, it says wonderful things +for the inherent natural qualities of the English-speaking peoples, that +things have proved no worse than they are, considering the nature of the +higher education under which they have suffered.</p> + +<p>Consider in what that educational process has consisted. Its backbone +has been the teaching of Latin by men who can read, write, and speak it +rather worse than a third-rate Babu speaks English, and of Ancient Greek +by teachers who at best half know this fine lost language. They do not +expect any real mastery of either tongue by their students, and +naturally, therefore, no real mastery is ever attained. The boys and +young men just muff about at it for three times as long as would be +needed to master completely both those tongues if they had "live" +teachers, and so they acquire habits of busy futility and petty +pedantry in all intellectual processes that haunt them throughout life. +There are also sterile mathematical studies that never get from +"exercises" to practice. There is a pretence of studying philosophy +based on Greek texts that few of the teachers and none of the taught can +read comfortably, and a certain amount of history. The Modern History +School at Oxford, for example, is the queerest collection of chunks of +reading. English history from the beginning, with occasional glances at +Continental affairs, European history for about a century, bits of +economics, and--the <i>Politics</i> of Aristotle! It is not education; it is +a jack-daw collection....This sort of jumble has been the essentials of +the more pretentious type of "higher education" available in Great +Britain up to the present.</p> + +<p>In this manner, through all the most sensitive and receptive years of +life, our boys have been trained in "how not to get there," in a variety +of disconnected subjects, by men who have never "got there," and it +would be difficult to imagine any curriculum more calculated to produce +a miscellaneous incompetence. They have also, it happens, received a +certain training in <i>savoir faire</i> through the collective necessities of +school life, and a certain sharpening in the arts of advocacy through +the debating society. Except for these latter helps, they have had to +face the world with minds neither more braced, nor more trained, nor +more informed than any "uneducated" man's.</p> + +<p>Surely the first condition that should be laid down for the new +education in Europe is that whatever is undertaken must be undertaken in +grim earnest and done. It is ridiculous to talk about the +"character-forming" value of any study that does not go through to an +end. Manifestly Greek must be dropped as a part of the general +curriculum for a highly educated man, for the simple reason that now +there are scarcely any competent teachers, and because the sham of +teaching it partially and pretentiously demoralises student and school +alike. The claim of the clergy and so forth to "know" Greek is one of +the many corrupting lies in British intellectual life. English comic +writers never weary of sneering at the Hindu who claimed to be a "failed +B.A.," but what is the ordinary classical degree man of an English +university but a "failed" Greek scholar? Latin, too, must be either +reduced to the position of a study supplementary to the native tongue, +or brought up to an honest level of efficiency.</p> + +<p>French and German in the case of the English, and English in the case +of the French and Russians, are essentially governess languages; any +intelligent boy or girl from a reasonably prosperous home ought to be +able to read, write, and speak either before fifteen; they are to be +taken by the way rather than regarded as a fundamental part of +education. The French, German, or English literature and literary +development up to and including contemporary work is, of course, an +entirely different matter. But there can be no doubt of the great +educational value of some highly inflected and well-developed language +<i>taught by men to whom it is a genuine means of expression</i>. Educational +needs and public necessity point alike to such languages as Russian or, +in the case of Great Britain, Hindustani to supply this sound training.</p> + +<p>If Great Britain means business after this war, if she is to do her duty +by the Eastern world she controls, she will not stick at the petty +expense of getting a few hundreds of good Russian and Hindu teachers +into the country, and she will place Russian and Hindustani upon at +least an equal footing with Greek in all her university and competitive +examinations. Moreover, it is necessary to set a definite aim of +application before university mathematical teaching. As the first +condition of character-building in all these things, the student should +do what he ostensibly sets out to do. No degree and no position should +be attainable by half accomplishment.</p> + +<p>Of course, languages and mathematics do not by any means round off the +education of a man of the leading classes. There is no doubt much +exercise in their attainment, much value in their possession. But the +essence of the higher education is now, as it always has been, +philosophy; not the antiquated pretence of "reading" Plato and +Aristotle, but the thorough and subtle examination of those great +questions of life that most exercise and strengthen the mind. Surely +that is the essential difference of the "educated" and the "common" man. +The former has thought, and thought out thoroughly and clearly, the +relations of his mind to the universe as a whole, and of himself to the +State and life. A mind untrained in swift and adequate criticism is +essentially an uneducated mind, though it has as many languages as a +courier and as much computation as a bookie.</p> + +<p>And what is our fundamental purpose in all this reform of our higher +education? It is neither knowledge nor technical skill, but to make our +young men talk less and think more, and to think more swiftly, surely, +and exactly. For that we want less debating society and more philosophy, +fewer prizes for forensic ability and more for strength and vigour of +analysis. The central seat of character is the mind. A man of weak +character thinks vaguely, a man of clear intellectual decisions acts +with precision and is free from vacillation. A country of educated men +acts coherently, smites swiftly, plans ahead; a country of confused +education is a country of essential muddle.</p> + +<p>It is as the third factor in education that the handling and experience +of knowledge comes, and of all knowledge that which is most accessible, +most capable of being handled with the greatest variety of educational +benefit, so as to include the criticism of evidence, the massing of +facts, the extraction and testing of generalisations, lies in the two +groups of the biological sciences and the exact sciences. No doubt a +well-planned system of education will permit of much varied +specialisation, will, indeed, specialise those who have special gifts +from a very early age, will have corners for Greek, Hebrew, Sanscrit, +philology, archaeology, Christian theology, and so on, and so on; +nevertheless, for that great mass of sound men of indeterminate +all-round ability who are the intellectual and moral backbone of a +nation, it is in scientific studies that their best training lies, +studies most convenient to undertake and most readily applied in life. +From either of the two groups of the sciences one may pass on to +research or to technical applications leading directly to the public +service. The biological sciences broaden out through psychology and +sociology to the theory and practice of law, and to political life. They +lead also to medical and agricultural administration. The exact sciences +lead to the administrative work of industrialism, and to general +economics.</p> + +<p>These are the broad, clear lines of the educational necessities of a +modern community, plain enough to see, so that every man who is not +blinded by prejudice and self-interest can see them to-day. We have now +before us a phase of opportunity in educational organisation that will +never recur again. Now that the apostolic succession of the old pedagogy +is broken, and the entire system discredited, it seems incredible that +it can ever again be reconstituted in its old seats upon the old lines. +In these raw, harsh days of boundless opportunity, the opportunity of +the new education, because it is the most fundamental, is assuredly the +greatest of all.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="VIII._WHAT_THE_WAR_IS_DOING_FOR_WOMEN"></a>VIII. WHAT THE WAR IS DOING FOR WOMEN</h2> +<br> + +<h3>Section 1</h3> + +<p>To discuss the effect of this war upon the relations of men and women to +each other is to enter upon the analysis of a secular process compared +with which even the vast convulsions and destructions of this world +catastrophe appear only as jolts and incidents and temporary +interruptions. There are certain matters that sustain a perennial +development, that are on a scale beyond the dramatic happenings of +history; wars, the movements of peoples and races, economic changes, +such things may accelerate or stimulate or confuse or delay, but they +cannot arrest the endless thinking out, the growth and perfecting of +ideas, upon the fundamental relationships of human Beings. First among +such eternally progressive issues is religion, the relationship of man +to God; next in importance and still more immediate is the matter of +men's relations to women. In such matters each phase is a new phase; +whatever happens, there is no going back and beginning over again. The +social life, like the religious life, must grow and change until the +human story is at an end.</p> + +<p>So that this war involves, in this as in so many matters, no fundamental +set-back, no reversals nor restorations. At the most it will but realise +things already imagined, release things latent. The nineteenth century +was a period of unprecedented modification of social relationships; but +great as these changes were, they were trivial in comparison with the +changes in religious thought and the criticism of moral ideals. Hell was +the basis of religious thinking in A.D. 1800, and the hangman was at the +back of the law; in 1900 both Hell and the hangman seemed on the verge +of extinction. The creative impulse was everywhere replacing fear and +compulsion in human motives. The opening decade of the twentieth century +was a period of unprecedented abundance in everything necessary to human +life, of vast accumulated resources, of leisure and release. It was +also, because of that and because of the changed social and religious +spirit, a period of great social disorganisation and confused impulses.</p> + +<p>We British can already look back to the opening half of 1914 as to an +age gone for ever. Except that we were all alive then and can remember, +it has become now almost as remote, almost as "historical," as the days +before the French Revolution. Our days, our methods and reactions, are +already so different. The greater part of the freedom of movement, the +travel and going to and fro, the leisure, the plenty and carelessness, +that distinguished early twentieth century life from early nineteenth +century life, has disappeared. Most men are under military discipline, +and every household economises. The whole British people has been +brought up against such elementary realities of need, danger, and +restraint as it never realised before. We discover that we had been +living like Olympians in regard to worldly affairs, we had been +irresponsibles, amateurs. Much of that fatness of life, the wrappings +and trimmings of our life, has been stripped off altogether. That has +not altered the bones of life; it has only made them plainer; but it has +astonished us as much as if looking into a looking-glass one suddenly +found oneself a skeleton. Or a diagram.</p> + +<p>What was going on before this war in the relations of men and women is +going on still, with more rapidity perhaps, and certainly with more +thoroughness. The war is accentuating, developing, defining. Previously +our discussions and poses and movements had merely the air of seeking +to accentuate and define. What was apparently being brought about by +discursive efforts, and in a mighty controversy and confusion, is coming +about now as a matter of course.</p> + +<p>Before the war, in the British community as in most civilised +communities, profound changes were already in progress, changes in the +conditions of women's employment, in the legal relations of husband and +wife, in the political status of women, in the status of illegitimate +children, in manners and customs affecting the sexes. Every civilised +community was exhibiting a falling birth-rate and a falling death-rate, +was changing the quality of its housing, and diminishing domestic labour +by organising supplies and developing, appliances. That is to say, that +primary human unit, the home, was altering in shape and size and +frequency and colour and effect. A steadily increasing proportion of +people were living outside the old family home, the home based on +maternity and offspring, altogether. A number of us were doing our best +to apprehend the summation of all this flood of change. We had a vague +idea that women were somehow being "emancipated," but just what this +word meant and what it implied were matters still under exploration. +Then came the war. For a time it seemed as if all this discussion was at +an end, as if the problem itself had vanished.</p> + +<p>But that was only a temporary distraction of attention. The process of +change swirled into new forms that did not fit very easily into the +accepted formulae, swirled into new forms and continued on its way. If +the discussion ceased for a time, the process of change ceased not at +all. Matters have travelled all the farther in the last two years for +travelling mutely. The questions between men and women are far more +important and far more incessant than the questions between Germans and +the rest of mankind. They are coming back now into the foreground of +human thought, but amended and altered. Our object is to state the +general nature of that alteration. It has still been "emancipation," but +very different in quality from the "emancipation" that was demanded so +loudly and incoherently in that ancient world--of 1913!</p> + +<p>Never had the relations of men and women been so uneasy as they were in +the opening days of 1914. The woman's movement battered and banged +through all our minds. It broke out into that tumult in Great Britain +perhaps ten years ago. When Queen Victoria died it was inaudible; search +<i>Punch</i>, search the newspapers of that tranquil age. In 1914 it kicked +up so great a dust that the Germans counted on the Suffragettes as one +of the great forces that were to paralyse England in the war.</p> + +<p>The extraordinary thing was that the feminist movement was never clearly +defined during all the time of its maximum violence. We begin to +perceive in the retrospect that the movement was multiple, made up of a +number of very different movements interwoven. It seemed to concentrate +upon the Vote; but it was never possible to find even why women wanted +the vote. Some, for example, alleged that it was because they were like +men, and some because they were entirely different. The broad facts that +one could not mistake were a vast feminine discontent and a vast display +of feminine energy. What had brought that about?</p> + +<p>Two statistical factors are to be considered here. One of these was the +steady decline in the marriage rate, and the increasing proportion of +unmarried women of all classes, but particularly of the more educated +classes, requiring employment. The second was the fall in the +birth-rate, the diminution in size of the average family, the increase +of sterile unions, and the consequent release of a considerable +proportion of the energy of married women. Co-operating with these +factors of release were the economic elaborations that were improving +the appliances of domestic life, replacing the needle by the sewing +machine, the coal fire and lamp by gas and electricity, the dustpan and +brush by the pneumatic carpet cleaner, and taking out of the house into +the shop and factory the baking, much of the cooking, the making of +clothes, the laundry work, and so forth, that had hitherto kept so many +women at home and too busy to think. The care of even such children as +there were was also less arduous; crêche and school held out hands for +them, ready to do even that duty better.</p> + +<p>Side by side with these releases from duty was a rise in the standard of +education that was stimulating the minds and imaginations of woman +beyond a point where the needle--even if there had been any use for the +needle--can be an opiate. Moreover, the world was growing richer, and +growing richer in such a way that not only were leisure and desire +increasing, but, because of increasingly scientific methods of +production, the need in many branches of employment for any but very +keen and able workers was diminishing. So that simultaneously the world, +that vanished world before 1914, was releasing and disengaging enormous +volumes of untrained and unassigned feminine energy and also diminishing +the usefulness of unskilful effort in every department of life. There +was no demand to meet the supply. These were the underlying processes +that produced the feminist outbreak of the decade before the war.</p> + +<p>Now the debate between the sexes is a perennial. It began while we were +still in the trees. It has its stereotyped accusations; its stereotyped +repartees. The Canterbury Pilgrims had little to learn from Christabel +Pankhurst. Man and woman in that duet struggle perpetually for the upper +hand, and the man restrains the woman and the woman resents the man. In +every age some voice has been heard asserting, like Plato, that the +woman is a human being; and the prompt answer has been, "but such a +different human being." Wherever there is a human difference fair play +is difficult, the universal clash of races witnesses to that, and sex is +the greatest of human differences.</p> + +<p>But the general trend of mankind towards intelligence and reason has +been also a trend away from a superstitious treatment of sexual +questions and a recognition, so to speak, that a woman's "a man for a' +that," that she is indeed as entitled to an independent soul and a +separate voice in collective affairs. As brain has counted for more and +more in the human effort and brute strength and the advantage of not +bearing children for less and less, as man has felt a greater need for a +companion and a lesser need for a slave, and as the increase of food and +the protection of the girl from premature child-bearing has approximated +the stature and strength and enterprise of the woman more and more to +that of the man, this secular emancipation of the human female from the +old herd subordination and servitude to the patriarchal male has gone +on. Essentially the secular process has been an equalising process. It +was merely the exaggeration of its sustaining causes during the plenty +and social and intellectual expansion of the last half-century that had +stimulated this secular process to the pitch of crisis.</p> + +<p>There have always been two extreme aspects of the sexual debate. There +have always been the oversexed women who wanted to be treated primarily +as women, and the women who were irritated and bored by being treated +primarily as women. There have always been those women who wanted to +get, like Joan of Arc, into masculine attire, and the school of the +"mystical darlings." There have always been the women who wanted to +share men's work and the women who wanted to "inspire" it--the mates and +the mistresses. Of course, the mass of women lies between these +extremes. But it is possible, nevertheless, to discuss this question as +though it were a conflict of two sharply opposed ideals. It is +convenient to write as if there were just these two sorts of women +because so one can get a sharp definition in the picture. The ordinary +woman fluctuates between the two, turns now to the Western ideal of +citizenship and now to the Eastern of submission. These ideals fight not +only in human society, but in every woman's career.</p> + +<p>Chitra in Rabindranath Tagore's play, for example, tried both aspects of +the woman's life, and Tagore is at one with Plato in preferring the +Rosalind type to the houri. And with him I venture to think is the clear +reason of mankind. The real "emancipation" to which reason and the trend +of things makes is from the yielding to the energetic side of a woman's +disposition, from beauty enthroned for love towards the tall, +weather-hardened woman with a spear, loving her mate as her mate loves +her, and as sexless as a man in all her busy hours.</p> + +<p>But it was not simply the energies that tended towards this particular +type that were set free during the latter half of the nineteenth +century. Every sort of feminine energy was set free. And it was not +merely the self-reliant, independence-seeking women who were +discontented. The ladies who specialised in feminine arts and graces and +mysteries were also dissatisfied. They found they were not important +enough. The former type found itself insufficiently respected, and the +latter type found itself insufficiently adored. The two mingled their +voices in the most confusing way in the literature of the suffrage +movement before the war. The two tendencies mingle confusingly in the +minds of the women that this movement was stirring up to think. The Vote +became the symbol for absolutely contradictory things; there is scarcely +a single argument for it in suffragist literature that cannot be +completely negatived out of suffragist literature.</p> + +<p>For example, compare the writings of Miss Cicely Hamilton, the +distinguished actress, with the publications of the Pankhurst family. +The former expresses a claim that, except for prejudice, a woman is as +capable a citizen as a man and differing only in her sex; the latter +consist of a long rhapsody upon the mystical superiorities of women and +the marvellous benefits mankind will derive from handing things over to +these sacred powers. The former would get rid of sex from most human +affairs; the latter would make what our Georgian grandfathers called +"The Sex" rule the world.</p> + +<p>Or compare, say, the dark coquettings of Miss Elizabeth Robins' "Woman's +Secret" with the virile common sense of that most brilliant young +writer, Miss Rebecca West, in her bitter onslaught on feminine +limitations in the opening chapters of "The World's Worst Failure." The +former is an extravagance of sexual mysticism. Man can never understand +women. Women always hide deep and wonderful things away beyond masculine +discovery. Men do not even suspect. Some day, perhaps--It is someone +peeping from behind a curtain, and inviting men in provocative tones to +come and play catch in a darkened harem. The latter is like some gallant +soldier cursing his silly accoutrements. It is a hearty outbreak against +that apparent necessity for elegance and sexual specialisation that +undercuts so much feminine achievement, that reduces so much feminine +art and writing to vapidity, and holds back women from the face of +danger and brave and horrible deaths. It is West to Miss Robins' East. +And yet I believe I am right in saying that all these four women +writers have jostled one another upon suffrage platforms, and that they +all suffered blows and injuries in the same cause, during the various +riots and conflicts that occurred in London in the course of the great +agitation. It was only when the agitation of the Pankhurst family, aided +by Miss Robins' remarkable book "Where are you going to ...?" took a +form that threatened to impose the most extraordinary restrictions on +the free movements of women, and to establish a sort of universal purdah +of hostility and suspicion against those degraded creatures, those +stealers and destroyers of women, "the men," that the British feminist +movement displayed any tendency to dissociate into its opposed and +divergent strands.</p> + +<p>It is a little detail, but a very significant one in this connection, +that the committee that organised the various great suffrage processions +in London were torn by dispute about the dresses of the processionists. +It was urged that a "masculine style of costume" discredited the +movement, and women were urged to dress with a maximum of feminine +charm. Many women obtained finery they could ill afford, to take part in +these demonstrations, and minced their steps as womanly as possible to +freedom....</p> + +<p>It would be easy to overstate the efflorescence of distinctively +feminine emotion, dressiness, mysticism, and vanity upon the suffrage +movement. Those things showed for anyone to see. This was the froth of +the whirlpool. What did not show was the tremendous development of the +sense of solidarity among women. Everybody knew that women had been +hitting policemen at Westminster; it was not nearly so showy a fact that +women of title, working women, domestic servants, tradesmen's wives, +professional workers, had all been meeting together and working together +in a common cause, working with an unprecedented capacity and an +unprecedented disregard of social barriers. One noted the nonsensical +by-play of the movement; the way in which women were accustoming +themselves to higher standards of achievement was not so immediately +noticeable. That a small number of women were apparently bent on +rendering the Vote impossible by a campaign of violence and malicious +mischief very completely masked the fact that a very great number of +girls and young women no longer considered it seemly to hang about at +home trying by a few crude inducements to tempt men to marry them, but +were setting out very seriously and capably to master the young man's +way of finding a place for oneself in the world. Beneath the dust and +noise realities were coming about that the dust and noise entirely +failed to represent. We know that some women were shrieking for the +Vote; we did not realise that a generation of women was qualifying for +it.</p> + +<p>The war came, the jolt of an earthquake, to throw things into their +proper relationships.</p> + +<p>The immediate result was the disappearance of the militant suffragists +from public view for a time, into which the noisier section hastened to +emerge in full scream upon the congenial topic of War Babies. "Men," +those dreadful creatures, were being camped and quartered all over the +country. It followed, from all the social principles known to Mrs. and +Miss Pankhurst, that it was necessary to provide for an enormous number +of War Babies. Subscriptions were invited. Statisticians are still +looking rather perplexedly for those War Babies; the illegitimate +birth-rate has fallen, and what has become of the subscriptions I do not +know. <i>The Suffragette</i> rechristened itself <i>Britannia</i>, dropped the War +Baby agitation, and, after an interlude of self-control, broke out into +denunciations, first of this public servant and then of that, as +traitors and German spies. Finally, it discovered a mare's nest in the +case of Sir Edward Grey that led to its suppression, and the last I +have from this misleading and unrepresentative feminist faction is the +periodic appearance of a little ill-printed sheet of abuse about the +chief Foreign Office people, resembling in manner and appearance the +sort of denunciatory letter, at once suggestive and evasive, that might +be written by the curate's discharged cook. And with that the aggressive +section of the suffragist movement seems to have petered out, leaving +the broad reality of feminine emancipation to go on in a beneficent +silence.</p> + +<p>There can be no question that the behaviour of the great mass of women +in Great Britain has not simply exceeded expectation but hope. And there +can be as little doubt that the suffrage question, in spite of the +self-advertising violence of its extravagant section, did contribute +very materially to build up the confidence, the willingness to undertake +responsibility and face hardship, that has been so abundantly displayed +by every class of woman. It is not simply that there has been enough +women and to spare for hospital work and every sort of relief and +charitable service; that sort of thing has been done before, that was in +the tradition of womanhood. It is that at every sort of occupation, +clerking, shop-keeping, railway work, automobile driving, agricultural +work, police work, they have been found efficient beyond precedent and +intelligent beyond precedent. And in the munition factories, in the +handling of heavy and often difficult machinery, and in adaptability and +inventiveness and enthusiasm and steadfastness their achievement has +been astonishing. More particularly in relation to intricate mechanical +work is their record remarkable and unexpected.</p> + +<p>There is scarcely a point where women, having been given a chance, have +not more than made good. They have revolutionised the estimate of their +economic importance, and it is scarcely too much to say that when, in +the long run, the military strength of the Allies bears down the +strength of Germany, it will be this superiority of our women which +enables us to pit a woman at--the censorship will object to exact +geography upon this point--against a man at Essen which has tipped the +balance of this war.</p> + +<p>Those women have won the vote. Not the most frantic outbursts of +militancy after this war can prevent them getting it. The girls who have +faced death and wounds so gallantly in our cordite factories--there is a +not inconsiderable list of dead and wounded from those places--have +killed for ever the poor argument that women should not vote because +they had no military value. Indeed, they have killed every argument +against their subjection. And while they do these things, that paragon +of the virtues of the old type, that miracle of domestic obedience, the +German <i>haus-frau</i>, the faithful Gretchen, riots for butter.</p> + +<p>And as I have before remarked, the Germans counted on the suffragettes +as one of the great forces that were to paralyse England in this war.</p> + +<p>It is not simply that the British women have so bountifully produced +intelligence and industry; that does not begin their record. They have +been willing to go dowdy. The mass of women in Great Britain are wearing +the clothes of 1914. In 1913 every girl and woman one saw in the streets +of London had an air of doing her best to keep in the fashion. Now they +are for the most part as carelessly dressed as a busy business man or a +clever young student might have been. They are none the less pretty for +that, and far more beautiful. But the fashions have floated away to +absurdity. Every now and then through the austere bustle of London in +war time drifts a last practitioner of the "eternal feminine"--with the +air of a foreign visitor, with the air of devotion to some peculiar +cult. She has very high-heeled boots; she shows a leg, she has a short +skirt with a peculiar hang, due no doubt to mysteries about the waist; +she wears a comic little hat over one brow; there is something of +Columbine about her, something of the Watteau shepherdess, something of +a vivandiere, something of every age but the present age. Her face, +subject to the strange dictates of the mode, is smooth like the back of +a spoon, with small features and little whisker-like curls before the +ears such as butcher-boys used to wear half a century ago. Even so, she +dare not do this thing alone. Something in khaki is with her, to justify +her. You are to understand that this strange rig is for seeing him off +or giving him a good time during his leave. Sometimes she is quite +elderly, sometimes nothing khaki is to be got, and the pretence that +this is desired of her wears thin. Still, the type will out.</p> + +<p>She does not pass with impunity, the last exponent of true feminine +charm. The vulgar, the street boy, have evolved one of those strange +sayings that have the air of being fragments from some lost and +forgotten chant:</p> + +<blockquote> +"She's the Army Contractor's Only Daughter,<br> +Spending it now."<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>Or simply, "Spending it now."</p> + +<p>She does not pass with impunity, but she passes. She makes her stilted +passage across the arena upon which the new womanhood of Western Europe +shows its worth. It is an exit. There is likely to be something like a +truce in the fashions throughout Europe for some years. It is in America +if anywhere that the holy fires of smartness and the fashion will be +kept alive....</p> + +<p>And so we come to prophecy.</p> + +<p>I do not believe that this invasion by women of a hundred employments +hitherto closed to them is a temporary arrangement that will be reversed +after the war. It is a thing that was going on, very slowly, it is true, +and against much prejudice and opposition, before the war, but it was +going on; it is in the nature of things. These women no doubt enter +these employments as substitutes, but not usually as inferior +substitutes; in quite a number of cases they are as good as men, and in +many they are not underselling, they are drawing men's pay. What reason +is there to suppose that they will relapse into a state of superfluous +energy after the war? The war has merely brought about, with the +rapidity of a landslide, a state of affairs for which the world was +ripe. The world after the war will have to adjust itself to this +extension of women's employment, and to this increase in the proportion +of self-respecting, self-supporting women.</p> + +<p>Contributing very largely to the establishment of this greatly enlarged +class of independent women will be the great shortage for the next +decade of marriageable men, due to the killing and disablement of the +war. The women of the next decades will not only be able to get along +economically without marriage, but they will find it much more difficult +to marry. It will also probably be a period in which a rise in prices +may, as it usually does, precede the compensating rise in wages. It may +be that for some years it will be more difficult to maintain a family. +This will be a third factor in the fixation of this class of bachelor +women.</p> + +<p>Various writers, brooding over the coming shortage of men, have jumped +to the conclusion that polygamy is among the probabilities of the near +future. They write in terms of real or affected alarm for which there is +no justification; they wallow in visions of Germany "legalising" +polygamy, and see Berlin seeking recuperation, in man power by +converting herself into another Salt Lake City. But I do not think that +Germany, in the face of the economic ring that the Allies will certainly +draw about her, is likely to desire a very great increase in population +for the next few years; I do not see any great possibility of a +specially rich class capable of maintaining numerous wives being +sustained by the impoverished and indebted world of Europe, nor the +sources from which a supply of women preferring to become constituents +in a polygamous constellation rather than self-supporting freewomen is +to be derived.</p> + +<p>The temperamental dislike of intelligent women to polygamy is at least +as strong as a man's objection to polyandry. Polygamy, open or hidden, +flourishes widely only where there are women to be bought. Moreover, +there are considerable obstacles in religion and custom to be overcome +by the innovating polygamist--even in Germany. It might mean a breach of +the present good relations between Germany and the Vatican. The relative +inferiority of the tradition of the German to that of most other +European women, its relative disposition towards feminine servitude, is +no doubt a consideration on the other scale of this discussion, but I do +not think it is one heavy enough to tilt back the beam.</p> + +<p>So far from a great number of men becoming polygamists, I think it would +be possible to show cause for supposing that an increasing proportion +will cease even to be monogamists. The romantic excitements of the war +have produced a temporary rise in the British marriage rate; but before +the war it had been falling slowly and the average age at marriage had +been rising, and it is quite possible that this process will be +presently resumed and, as a new generation grows up to restore the +balance of the sexes, accelerated.</p> + +<p>We conclude, therefore, that this increase in the class of economically +independent bachelor women that is now taking place is a permanent +increase. It is probably being reinforced by a considerable number of +war widows who will not remarry. We have to consider in what directions +this mass of capable, intelligent, energetic, undomesticated freewomen +is likely to develop, what its effect will be on social usage, and +particularly how it will react upon the lives of the married women about +them. Because, as we have already pointed out in this chapter, the +release of feminine energy upon which the feminist problem depends is +twofold, being due not only to the increased unmarriedness of women +through the disproportion of the sexes and the rise in the age of +marriage, but also to the decreased absorption of married women in +domestic duties. A woman, from the point of view of this discussion, is +not "married and done for," as she used to be. She is not so +extensively and completely married. Her large and increasing leisure +remains in the problem.</p> + +<p>The influence of this coming body of freewomen upon the general social +atmosphere will be, I venture to think, liberalising and relaxing in +certain directions and very bracing in others. This new type of women +will want to go about freely without an escort, to be free to travel +alone, take rooms in hotels, sit in restaurants, and so forth. Now, as +the women of the past decade showed, there are for a woman two quite +antagonistic ways of going about alone. Nothing showed the duplicate +nature of the suffragist movement more than the great variety of +deportment of women in the London streets during that time. There were +types that dressed neatly and quietly and went upon their business with +intent and preoccupied faces. Their intention was to mingle as +unobtrusively as possible into the stream of business, to be as far as +possible for the ordinary purposes of traffic "men in a world of men." A +man could speak to such women as he spoke to another man, without +suspicion, could, for example, ask his way and be directed without being +charged with annoying or accosting a delicate female.</p> + +<p>At the other extreme there was a type of young woman who came into the +streets like something precious that has got loose. It dressed itself +as feminine loveliness; it carried sex like a banner and like a +challenge. Its mind was fully prepared by the Pankhurst literature for +insult. It swept past distressed manhood imputing motives. It was pure +hareem, and the perplexed masculine intelligence could never determine +whether it was out for a demonstration or whether it was out for a +spree. Its motives in thus marching across the path of feminine +emancipation were probably more complicated and confused than that +alternative suggests, and sheer vanity abounded in the mixture. But +undoubtedly that extremity is the vanishing extremity of these things. +The new freewoman is going to be a grave and capable being, soberly +dressed, and imposing her own decency and neutrality of behaviour upon +the men she meets. And along the line of sober costume and simple and +restrained behaviour that the freewoman is marking out, the married +woman will also escape to new measures of freedom.</p> + +<p>I do not believe that among women of the same social origins and the +same educational quality there can exist side by side entirely distinct +schools of costume, deportment, and behaviour based on entirely +divergent views of life. I do not think that men can be trained to +differentiate between different sorts of women, sorts of women they will +often be meeting simultaneously, and to treat this one with frankness +and fellowship and that one with awe passion and romantic old-world +gallantry. All sorts of intermediate types--the majority of women will +be intermediate types--will complicate the problem. This conflict of the +citizen-woman ideal with the loveliness-woman ideal, which was breaking +out very plainly in the British suffrage movement before the war, will +certainly return after the war, and I have little doubt which way the +issue will fall. The human being is going to carry it against the sexual +being. The struggle is going to be extensive and various and prolonged, +but in the serious years ahead the serious type must, I feel, win. The +plain, well-made dress will oust the ribbon and the decolletage.</p> + +<p>In every way the war is accelerating the emancipation of women from +sexual specialisation. It is facilitating their economic emancipation. +It is liberating types that will inevitably destroy both the "atmosphere +of gallantry" which is such a bar to friendliness between people of +opposite sexes and that atmosphere of hostile distrust which is its +counterpart in the minds of the over-sexual suffragettes. It is +arresting the change of fashions and simplifying manners.</p> + +<p>In another way also it is working to the same end. That fall in the +birth-rate which has been so marked a feature in the social development +of all modern states has become much more perceptible since the war +began to tell upon domestic comfort. There is a full-cradle agitation +going on in Germany to check this decline; German mothers are being +urged not to leave the Crown Prince of 1930 or 1940 without the +necessary material for glory at some fresh Battle of Verdun. I doubt the +zeal of their response. But everywhere the war signifies economic stress +which must necessarily continue long after the war is over, and in the +present state of knowledge that stress means fewer children. The family, +already light, will grow lighter. This means that marriage, although it +may be by no means less emotionally sacred, will become a lighter thing.</p> + +<p>Once, to be married was a woman's whole career. Household cares, a dozen +children, and she was consumed. All her romances ended in marriage. All +a decent man's romance ended there, too. She proliferated and he toiled, +and when the married couple had brought up some of their children and +buried the others, and blessed their first grandchildren, life was +over.</p> + +<p>Now, to be married is an incident in a woman's career, as in a man's. +There is not the same necessity of that household, not the same close +tie; the married woman remains partially a freewoman and assimilates +herself to the freewoman. There is an increasing disposition to group +solitary children and to delegate their care to specially qualified +people, and this is likely to increase, because the high earning power +of young women will incline them to entrust their children to others, +and because a shortage of men and an excess of widows will supply other +women willing to undertake that care. The more foolish women will take +these releases as a release into levity, but the common sense of the +newer types of women will come to the help of men in recognising the +intolerable nuisance of this prolongation of flirting and charming on +the part of people who have had what should be a satisfying love.</p> + +<p>Nor will there be much wealth or superfluity to make levity possible and +desirable. Winsome and weak womanhood will be told bluntly by men and +women alike that it is a bore. The frou-frou of skirts, the delicate +mysteries of the toilette, will cease to thrill any but the very young +men. Marriage, deprived of its bonds of material necessity, will demand +a closer and closer companionship as its justification and excuse. A +marriage that does not ripen into a close personal friendship between +two equals will be regarded with increasing definiteness as an +unsatisfactory marriage.</p> + +<p>These things are not stated here as being desirable or undesirable. This +is merely an attempt to estimate the drift and tendency of the time as +it has been accentuated by the war. It works out to the realisation that +marriage is likely to count for less and less as a state and for more +and more as a personal relationship. It is likely to be an affair of +diminishing public and increasing private importance. People who marry +are likely to remain, so far as practical ends go, more detached and +separable. The essential link will be the love and affection and not the +home.</p> + +<p>With that go certain logical consequences. The first is that the +circumstances of the unmarried mother will resemble more than they have +hitherto done those of many married mothers; the harsh lines once drawn +between them will dissolve. This will fall in with the long manifest +tendency in modern society to lighten the disadvantages (in the case of +legacy duties, for example) and stigma laid upon illegitimate children. +And a type of marriage where personal compatibility has come to be +esteemed the fundamental thing will be altogether more amenable to +divorce than the old union which was based upon the kitchen and the +nursery, and the absence of any care, education, or security for +children beyond the range of the parental household. Marriage will not +only be lighter, but more dissoluble.</p> + +<p>To summarise all that has gone before, this war is accelerating rather +than deflecting the stream of tendency, and is bringing us rapidly to a +state of affairs in which women will be much more definitely independent +of their sexual status, much less hampered in their self-development, +and much more nearly equal to men than has ever been known before in the +whole history of mankind....</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="IX._THE_NEW_MAP_OF_EUROPE"></a>IX. THE NEW MAP OF EUROPE</h2> +<br> + +<h3>Section 1</h3> + +<p>In this chapter it is proposed to embark upon what may seem now, with +the Great War still in progress and still undecided, the most hopeless +of all prophetic adventures. This is to speculate upon the redrawing of +the map of Europe after the war. But because the detailed happenings and +exact circumstances of the ending of the war are uncertain, they need +not alter the inevitable broad conclusion. I have already discussed that +conclusion, and pointed out that the war has become essentially a war of +mutual exhaustion. This does not mean, as some hasty readers may assume, +that I foretell a "draw." We may be all white and staggering, but +Germany is, I believe, fated to go down first. She will make the first +advances towards peace; she will ultimately admit defeat.</p> + +<p>But I do want to insist that by that time every belligerent, and not +simply Germany, will be exhausted to a pitch of extreme reasonableness. +There will be no power left as Germany was left in 1871, in a state of +"freshness" and a dictatorial attitude. That is to say they will all be +gravitating, not to triumphs, but to such a settlement as seems to +promise the maximum of equilibrium in the future.</p> + +<p>If towards the end of the war the United States should decide, after +all, to abandon their present attitude of superior comment and throw +their weight in favour of such a settlement as would make the +recrudescence of militarism impossible, the general exhaustion may give +America a relative importance far beyond any influence she could exert +at the present time. In the end, America may have the power to insist +upon almost vital conditions in the settlement; though whether she will +have the imaginative force and will is, of course, quite another +question.</p> + +<p>And before I go on to speculate about the actual settlement, there are +one or two generalisations that it may be interesting to try over. Law +is a thin wash that we paint over the firm outlines of reality, and the +treaties and agreements of emperors and kings and statesmen have little +of the permanence of certain more fundamental human realities. I was +looking the other day at Sir Mark Sykes' "The Caliph's Inheritance," +which contains a series of coloured maps of the political boundaries of +south-western Asia for the last three thousand years. The shapes and +colours come and go--now it is Persia, now it is Macedonia, now the +Eastern Empire, now the Arab, now the Turk who is ascendant. The colours +change as if they were in a kaleidoscope; they advance, recede, split, +vanish. But through all that time there exists obstinately an Armenia, +an essential Persia, an Arabia; they, too, advance or recede a little. I +do not claim that they are eternal things, but they are far more +permanent things than any rulers or empires; they are rooted to the +ground by a peasantry, by a physical and temperamental attitude. Apart +from political maps of mankind, there are natural maps of mankind. I +find it, too, in Europe; the monarchs splash the water and break up the +mirror in endless strange shapes; nevertheless, always it is tending +back to its enduring forms; always it is gravitating back to a Spain, to +a Gaul, to an Italy, to a Serbo-Croatia, to a Bulgaria, to a Germany, to +a Poland. Poland and Armenia and Egypt destroyed, subjugated, +invincible, I would take as typical of what I mean by the natural map of +mankind.</p> + +<p>Let me repeat again that I do not assert there is an eternal map. It +does change; there have been times--the European settlement of America +and Siberia, for example, the Arabic sweep across North Africa, the +invasion of Britain by the Low German peoples--when it has changed very +considerably in a century or so; but at its swiftest it still takes +generations to change. The gentlemen who used to sit in conferences and +diets, and divide up the world ever and again before the nineteenth +century, never realised this. It is only within the last hundred years +that mankind has begun to grasp the fact that one of the first laws of +political stability is to draw your political boundaries along the lines +of the natural map of mankind.</p> + +<p>Now the nineteenth century phrased this conception by talking about the +"principle of nationality." Such interesting survivals of the nineteenth +century as Mr. C.R. Buxton still talk of settling human affairs by that +"principle." But unhappily for him the world is not so simply divided. +There are tribal regions with no national sense. There are extensive +regions of the earth's surface where the population is not homogeneous, +where people of different languages or different incompatible creeds +live village against village, a kind of human emulsion, incapable of +any true mixture or unity. Consider, for example, Central Africa, +Tyrone, Albania, Bombay, Constantinople or Transylvania. Here are +regions and cities with either no nationality or with as much +nationality as a patchwork quilt has colour....</p> + +<p>Now so far as the homogeneous regions of the world go, I am quite +prepared to sustain the thesis that they can only be tranquil, they can +only develop their possibilities freely and be harmless to their +neighbours, when they are governed by local men, by men of the local +race, religion and tradition, and with a form of government that, unlike +a monarchy or a plutocracy, does not crystallise commercial or national +ambition. So far I go with those who would appeal to the "principle of +nationality."</p> + +<p>But I would stipulate, further, that it would enormously increase the +stability of the arrangement if such "nations" could be grouped together +into "United States" wherever there were possibilities of inter-state +rivalries and commercial friction. Where, however, one deals with a +region of mixed nationality, there is need of a subtler system of +adjustments. Such a system has already been worked out in the case of +Switzerland, where we have the community not in countries but cantons, +each with its own religion, its culture and self-government, and all at +peace under a polyglot and impartial common government. It is as plain +as daylight to anyone who is not blinded by patriotic or private +interests that such a country as Albania, which is mono-lingual indeed, +but hopelessly divided religiously, will never be tranquil, never +contented, unless it is under a cantonal system, and that the only +solution of the Irish difficulty along the belt between Ulster and +Catholic Ireland lies in the same arrangement.</p> + +<p>Then; thirdly, there are the regions and cities possessing no +nationality, such as Constantinople or Bombay, which manifestly +appertain not to one nation but many; the former to all the Black Sea +nations, the latter to all India. Disregarding ambitions and traditions, +it is fairly obvious that such international places would be best under +the joint control of, and form a basis of union between, all the peoples +affected.</p> + +<p>Now it is suggested here that upon these threefold lines it is possible +to work out a map of the world of maximum contentment and stability, and +that there will be a gravitation of all other arrangements, all empires +and leagues and what not, towards this rational and natural map of +mankind. This does not imply that that map will ultimately assert +itself, but that it will always be tending to assert itself. It will +obsess ostensible politics.</p> + +<p>I do not pretend to know with any degree of certainty what peculiar +forms of muddle and aggression may not record themselves upon the maps +of 2200; I do not certainly know whether mankind will be better off or +worse off then, more or less civilised; but I do know, with a very +considerable degree of certainty, that in A.D. 2200 there will still be +a France, an Ireland, a Germany, a Jugo-Slav region, a Constantinople, a +Rajputana, and a Bengal. I do not mean that these are absolutely fixed +things; they may have receded or expanded. But these are the more +permanent things; these are the field, the groundwork, the basic +reality; these are fundamental forces over which play the ambitions, +treacheries, delusions, traditions, tyrannies of international politics. +All boundaries will tend to reveal these fundamental forms as all +clothing tends to reveal the body. You may hide the waist; you will only +reveal the shoulders the more. You may mask, you may muffle the body; it +is still alive inside, and the ultimate determining thing.</p> + +<p>And, having premised this much, it is possible to take up the problem of +the peace of 1917 or 1918, or whenever it is to be, with some sense of +its limitations and superficiality.</p> +<br> + +<h3>Section 2</h3> + +<p>We have already hazarded the prophecy that after a long war of general +exhaustion Germany will be the first to realise defeat. This does not +mean that she will surrender unconditionally, but that she will be +reduced to bargaining to see how much she must surrender, and what she +may hold. It is my impression that she will be deserted by Bulgaria, and +that Turkey will be out of the fighting before the end. But these are +chancy matters. Against Germany there will certainly be the three great +allies, France, Russia and Britain, and almost certainly Japan will be +with them. The four will probably have got to a very complete and +detailed understanding among themselves. Italy--in, I fear, a slightly +detached spirit--will sit at the board. Hungary will be present, +sitting, so to speak, amidst the decayed remains of Austria. Roumania, a +little out of breath through hurrying at the last, may be present as the +latest ally of Italy. The European neutrals will be at least present in +spirit; their desires will be acutely felt; but it is doubtful if the +United States will count for all that they might in the decision. Such +weight as America chooses to exercise--would that she would choose to +exercise more!--will probably be on the side of the rational and natural +settlement of the world.</p> + +<p>Now the most important thing of all at this settlement will be the +temper and nature of the Germany with which the Allies will be dealing.</p> + +<p>Let us not be blinded by the passions of war into confusing a people +with its government and the artificial Kultur of a brief century. There +is a Germany, great and civilised, a decent and admirable people, masked +by Imperialism, blinded by the vanity of the easy victories of half a +century ago, wrapped in illusion. How far will she be chastened and +disillusioned by the end of this war?</p> + +<p>The terms of peace depend enormously upon the answer to that question. +If we take the extremest possibility, and suppose a revolution in +Germany or in South Germany, and the replacement of the Hohenzollerns in +all or part of Germany by a Republic, then I am convinced that for +republican Germany there would be not simply forgiveness, but a warm +welcome back to the comity of nations. The French, British, Belgians and +Italians, and every civilised force in Russia would tumble over one +another in their eager greeting of this return to sanity.</p> + +<p>If we suppose a less extreme but more possible revolution, taking the +form of an inquiry into the sanity of the Kaiser and his eldest son, and +the establishment of constitutional safeguards for the future, that also +would bring about an extraordinary modification of the resolution of the +Pledged Allies. But no ending to this war, no sort of settlement, will +destroy the antipathy of the civilised peoples for the violent, +pretentious, sentimental and cowardly imperialism that has so far +dominated Germany. All Europe outside Germany now hates and dreads the +Hohenzollerns. No treaty of peace can end that hate, and so long as +Germany sees fit to identify herself with Hohenzollern dreams of empire +and a warfare of massacre and assassination, there must be war +henceforth, open, or but thinly masked, against Germany. It will be but +the elementary common sense of the situation for all the Allies to plan +tariffs, exclusions, special laws against German shipping and +shareholders and immigrants for so long a period as every German remains +a potential servant of that system.</p> + +<p>Whatever Germany may think of the Hohenzollerns, the world outside +Germany regards them as the embodiment of homicidal nationalism. And +the settlement of Europe after the war, if it is to be a settlement with +the Hohenzollerns and not with the German people, must include the +virtual disarming of those robber murderers against any renewal of their +attack. It would be the most obvious folly to stop anywhere short of +that. With Germany we would welcome peace to-morrow; we would welcome +her shipping on the seas and her flag about the world; against the +Hohenzollerns it must obviously be war to the bitter end.</p> + +<p>But the ultimate of all sane European policy, as distinguished from +oligarchic and dynastic foolery, is the establishment of the natural map +of Europe. There exists no school of thought that can claim a moment's +consideration among the Allies which aims at the disintegration of the +essential Germany or the subjugation of any Germans to an alien rule. +Nor does anyone grudge Germany wealth, trade, shipping, or anything else +that goes with the politician's phrase of "legitimate expansion" for its +own sake. If we do now set our minds to deprive Germany of these things +in their fullness, it is in exactly the same spirit as that in which one +might remove that legitimate and peaceful implement, a bread knife, +from the hand of a homicidal maniac. Let but Germany cure herself of her +Hohenzollern taint, and the world will grudge her wealth and economic +pre-eminence as little as it grudges wealth and economic pre-eminence to +the United States.</p> + +<p>Now the probabilities of a German revolution open questions too complex +and subtle for our present speculation. I would merely remark in passing +that in Great Britain at least those possibilities seem to me to be +enormously underrated. For our present purpose it will be most +convenient to indicate a sort of maximum and minimum, depending upon the +decision of Germany to be entirely Hohenzollern or wholly or in part +European. But in either case we are going to assume that it is Germany +which has been most exhausted by the war, and which is seeking peace +from the Allies, who have also, we will assume, excellent internal +reasons for desiring it.</p> + +<p>With the Hohenzollerns it is mere nonsense to dream of any enduring +peace, but whether we are making a lasting and friendly peace with +Germany or merely a sort of truce of military operations that will be no +truce in the economic war against Hohenzollern resources, the same +essential idea will, I think, guide all the peace-desiring Powers. They +will try to draw the boundaries as near as they can to those of the +natural map of mankind.</p> + +<p>Then, writing as an Englishman, my first thought of the European map is +naturally of Belgium. Only absolute smashing defeat could force either +Britain or France to consent to anything short of the complete +restoration of Belgium. Rather than give that consent they will both +carry the war to at present undreamt-of extremities. Belgium must be +restored; her neutrality must be replaced by a defensive alliance with +her two Western Allies; and if the world has still to reckon with +Hohenzollerns, then her frontier must be thrust forward into the +adjacent French-speaking country so as to minimise the chances of any +second surprise.</p> + +<p>It is manifest that every frontier that gives upon the Hohenzollerns +must henceforth be entrenched line behind line, and held permanently by +a garrison ready for any treachery, and it becomes of primary importance +that the Franco-Belgian line should be as short and strong as possible. +Aix, which Germany has made a mere jumping-off place for aggressions, +should clearly be held by Belgium against a Hohenzollern Empire, and the +fortified and fiscal frontier would run from it southward to include the +Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, with its French sympathies and traditions, +in the permanent alliance. It is quite impossible to leave this +ambiguous territory as it was before the war, with its railway in German +hands and its postal and telegraphic service (since 1913) under +Hohenzollern control. It is quite impossible to hand over this strongly +anti-Prussian population to Hohenzollern masters.</p> + +<p>But an Englishman must needs write with diffidence upon this question of +the Western boundary. It is clear that all the boundaries of 1914 from +Aix to Bale are a part of ancient history. No "as you were" is possible +there. And it is not the business of anyone in Great Britain to redraw +them. That task on our side lies between France and Belgium. The +business of Great Britain in the matter is as plain as daylight. It is +to support to her last man and her last ounce of gold those new +boundaries her allies consider essential to their comfort and security.</p> + +<p>But I do not see how France, unless she is really convinced she is +beaten, can content herself with anything less than a strong +Franco-Belgian frontier from Aix, that will take in at least Metz and +Saarburg. She knows best the psychology of the lost provinces, and what +amount of annexation will spell weakness or strength. If she demands +all Alsace-Lorraine back from the Hohenzollerns, British opinion is +resolved to support her, and to go through with this struggle until she +gets it. To guess at the direction of the new line is not to express a +British opinion, but to speculate upon the opinion of France. After the +experience of Luxembourg and Belgium no one now dreams of a neutralised +buffer State. What does not become French or Belgian of the Rhineland +will remain German--for ever. That is perhaps conceivable, for example, +of Strassburg and the low-lying parts of Alsace. I do not know enough to +do more than guess.</p> + +<p>It is conceivable, but I do not think that it is probable. I think the +probability lies in the other direction. This war of exhaustion may be +going on for a year or so more, but the end will be the thrusting in of +the too extended German lines. The longer and bloodier the job is, the +grimmer will be the determination of the Pledged Allies to exact a +recompense. If the Germans offer peace while they still hold some part +of Belgium, there will be dealings. If they wait until the French are in +the Palatinate, then I doubt if the French will consent to go again. +There will be no possible advantage to Germany in a war of resistance +once the scale of her fortunes begins to sink....</p> + +<p>It is when we turn to the east of Germany that the map-drawing becomes +really animated. Here is the region of great decisions. The natural map +shows a line of obstinately non-German communities, stretching nearly +from the Baltic to the Adriatic. There are Poland, Bohemia (with her +kindred Slovaks), the Magyars, and the Jugo-Serbs. In a second line come +the Great and Little Russians, the Roumanians, and the Bulgarians. And +here both Great Britain and France must defer to the wishes of their two +allies, Russia and Italy. Neither of these countries has expressed +inflexible intentions, and the situation has none of the inevitable +quality of the Western line. Except for the Tsar's promise of autonomy +to Poland, nothing has been promised. On the Western line there are only +two possibilities that I can see: the Aix-Bale boundary, or the sickness +and death of France. On the Eastern line nothing is fated. There seems +to be enormous scope for bargaining over all this field, and here it is +that the chances of compensations and consolations for Germany are to be +found.</p> + +<p>Let us first consider the case for Poland. The way to a reunited Poland +seems to me a particularly difficult one. The perplexity arises out of +the crime of the original partition; whichever side emerges with an +effect of victory must needs give up territory if an autonomous Poland +is to reappear. A victorious Germany would probably reconstitute the +Duchy of Warsaw under a German prince; an entirely victorious Russia +would probably rejoin Posen to Russian Poland and the Polish fragment of +Galicia, and create a dependent Polish kingdom under the Tsar. Neither +project would be received with unstinted delight by the Poles, but +either would probably be acceptable to a certain section of them. +Disregarding the dim feelings of the peasantry, Austrian Poland would +probably be the most willing to retain a connection with its old rulers. +The Habsburgs have least estranged the Poles. The Cracow district is the +only section of Poland which has been at all reconciled to foreign +control; it is the most autonomous and contented of the fragments.</p> + +<p>It is doubtful how far national unanimity is any longer possible between +the three Polish fragments. Like most English writers, I receive a +considerable amount of printed matter from various schools of Polish +patriotism, and wide divergences of spirit and intention appear. A weak, +divided and politically isolated Poland of twelve or fifteen million +people, under some puppet adventurer king set up between the +Hohenzollerns and the Tsardom, does not promise much happiness for the +Poles or much security for the peace of the world. An entirely +independent Poland will be a feverish field of international +intrigue--intrigue to which the fatal Polish temperament lends itself +all too readily; it may be a battlefield again within five-and-twenty +years. I think, if I were a patriotic Pole, I should determine to be a +Slav at any cost, and make the best of Russia; ally myself with all her +liberal tendencies, and rise or fall with her. And I should do my utmost +in a field where at present too little has been done to establish +understandings and lay the foundations of a future alliance with the +Czech-Slovak community to the south. But, then, I am not a Pole, but a +Western European with a strong liking for the Russians. I am democratic +and scientific, and the Poles I have met are Catholic and aristocratic +and romantic, and all sorts of difficult things that must make +co-operation with them on the part of Russians, Ruthenian peasants, +Czechs, and, indeed, other Poles, slow and insecure. I doubt if either +Germany or Russia wants to incorporate more Poles--Russia more +particularly, which has all Siberia over which to breed Russians--and I +am inclined to think that there is a probability that the end of this +war may find Poland still divided, and with boundary lines running +across her not materially different from those of 1914. That is, I +think, an undesirable probability, but until the Polish mind qualifies +its desire for absolute independence with a determination to orient +itself definitely to some larger political mass, it remains one that has +to be considered.</p> + +<p>But the future of Poland is not really separate from that of the +Austro-Hungarian monarchy, nor is that again to be dealt with apart from +that of the Balkans. From Danzig to the Morea there runs across Europe a +series of distinctive peoples, each too intensely different and national +to be absorbed and assimilated by either of their greater neighbours, +Germany or Russia, and each relatively too small to stand securely +alone. None have shaken themselves free from monarchical traditions; +each may become an easy prey to dynastic follies and the aggressive +obsessions of diplomacy. Centuries of bloody rearrangement may lie +before this East Central belt of Europe.</p> + +<p>To the liberal idealist the thought of a possible Swiss system or group +of Swiss systems comes readily to mind. One thinks of a grouping of +groups of Republics, building up a United States of Eastern Europe. But +neither Hohenzollerns nor Tsar would welcome that. The arm of democratic +France is not long enough to reach to help forward such a development, +and Great Britain is never sure whether she is a "Crowned Republic" or a +Germanic monarchy. Hitherto in the Balkans she has lent her influence +chiefly to setting up those treacherous little German kings who have +rewarded her so ill. The national monarchs of Serbia and Montenegro have +alone kept faith with civilisation. I doubt, however, if Great Britain +will go on with that dynastic policy. She herself is upon the eve of +profound changes of spirit and internal organisation. But whenever one +thinks of the possibilities of Republican development in Europe as an +outcome of this war, it is to realise the disastrous indifference of +America to the essentials of the European situation. The United States +of America could exert an enormous influence at the close of the war in +the direction of a liberal settlement and of liberal institutions.... +They will, I fear, do nothing of the sort.</p> + +<p>It is here that the possibility of some internal change in Germany +becomes of such supreme importance. The Hohenzollern Imperialism towers +like the black threat of a new Caesarism over all the world. It may +tower for some centuries; it may vanish to-morrow. A German revolution +may destroy it; a small group of lunacy commissioners may fold it up and +put it away. But should it go, it would at least take with it nearly +every crown between Hamburg and Constantinople. The German kings would +vanish like a wisp of smoke. Suppose a German revolution and a +correlated step forward towards liberal institutions on the part of +Russia, then the whole stage of Eastern Europe would clear as fever goes +out of a man. This age of international elbowing and jostling, of +intrigue and diplomacy, of wars, massacres, deportations <i>en masse</i>, and +the continual fluctuation of irrational boundaries would come to an end +forthwith.</p> + +<p>So sweeping a change is the extreme possibility. The probability is of +something less lucid and more prosaic; of a discussion of diplomatists; +of patched arrangements. But even under these circumstances the whole +Eastern European situation is so fluid and little controlled by any +plain necessity, that there will be enormous scope for any individual +statesman of imagination and force of will.</p> + +<p>There have recently been revelations, more or less trustworthy, of +German schemes for a rearrangement of Eastern Europe. They implied a +German victory. Bohemia, Poland, Galicia and Ruthenia were to make a +Habsburg-ruled State from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The Jugo-Slav and +the Magyar were to be linked (uneasy bedfellows) into a second kingdom, +also Habsburg ruled; Austria was to come into the German Empire as a +third Habsburg dukedom or kingdom; Roumania, Bulgaria and Greece were to +continue as independent Powers, German ruled. Recently German proposals +published in America have shown a disposition to admit the claims of +Roumania to the Wallachian districts of Transylvania.</p> + +<p>Evidently the urgent need to create kingdoms or confederations larger +than any such single States as the natural map supplies, is manifest to +both sides. If Germany, Italy and Russia can come to any sort of general +agreement in these matters, their arrangements will be a matter of +secondary importance to the Western Allies--saving our duty to Serbia +and Montenegro and their rulers. Russia may not find the German idea of +a Polish <i>plus</i> Bohemian border State so very distasteful, provided that +the ruler is not a German; Germany may find the idea still tolerable if +the ruler is not the Tsar.</p> + +<p>The destiny of the Serbo-Croatian future lies largely in the hands of +Italy and Bulgaria. Bulgaria was not in this war at the beginning, and +she may not be in it at the end. Her King is neither immortal nor +irreplaceable. Her desire now must be largely to retain her winnings in +Macedonia, and keep the frontier posts of a too embracing Germany as far +off as possible. She has nothing to gain and much to fear from Roumania +and Greece. Her present relations with Turkey are unnatural. She has +everything to gain from a prompt recovery of the friendship of Italy and +the sea Powers. A friendly Serbo-Croatian buffer State against Germany +will probably be of equal comfort in the future to Italy and Bulgaria; +more especially if Italy has pushed down the Adriatic coast along the +line of the former Venetian possessions. Serbia has been overrun, but +never were the convergent forces of adjacent interests so clearly in +favour of her recuperation. The possibility of Italy and that strange +Latin outlier, Roumania, joining hands through an allied and friendly +Serbia must be very present in Italian thought. The allied conception of +the land route from the West and America to Bagdad and India is by Mont +Cenis, Trieste, Serbia and Constantinople, as their North European line +to India is through Russia by Baku.</p> + +<p>And that brings us to Constantinople.</p> + +<p>Constantinople is not a national city; it is now, and it has always +been, an artificial cosmopolis, and Constantinople and the Dardanelles +are essentially the gate of the Black Sea. It is to Russia that the +waterway is of supreme importance. Any other Power upon it can strangle +Russia; Russia, possessing it, is capable of very little harm to any +other country.</p> + +<p>Roumania is the next most interested country. But Roumania can reach up +the Danube and through Bulgaria, Serbia or Hungary to the outer world. +Her greatest trade will always be with Central Europe. For generations +the Turks held Thrace and Anatolia before they secured Constantinople. +The Turk can exist without Constantinople; he is at his best outside +Constantinople; the fall of Constantinople was the beginning of his +decay. He sat down there and corrupted. His career was at an end. I +confess that I find a bias in my mind for a Russian ownership of +Constantinople. I think that if she does not get it now her gravitation +towards it in the future will be so great as to cause fresh wars. +Somewhere she must get to open sea, and if it is not through +Constantinople then her line must lie either through a dependent Armenia +thrust down to the coast of the Levant or, least probable and least +desirable of all, through the Persian Gulf. The Constantinople route is +the most natural and least controversial of these. With the dwindling of +the Turkish power, the Turks at Constantinople become more and more like +robber knights levying toll at the pass. I can imagine Russia making +enormous concessions in Poland, for example, accepting retrocessions, +and conceding autonomy, rather than foregoing her ancient destiny upon +the Bosphorus. I believe she will fight on along the Black Sea coast +until she gets there.</p> + +<p>This, I think, is Russia's fundamental end, without which no peace is +worth having, as the liberation of Belgium and the satisfaction of +France is the fundamental end of Great Britain, and Trieste-Fiume is the +fundamental end of Italy.</p> + +<p>But for all the lands that lie between Constantinople and West Prussia +there are no absolutely fundamental ends; that is the land of <i>quid pro +quo</i>; that is where the dealing will be done. Serbia must be restored +and the Croats liberated; sooner or later the south Slav state will +insist upon itself; but, except for that, I see no impossibility in the +German dream of three kingdoms to take the place of Austro-Hungary, nor +even in a southward extension of the Hohenzollern Empire to embrace the +German one of the three. If the Austrians have a passion for Prussian +"kultur," it is not for us to restrain it. Austrian, Saxon, Bavarian, +Hanoverian and Prussian must adjust their own differences. Hungary would +be naturally Habsburg; is, in fact, now essentially Habsburg, more +Habsburg than Austria, and essentially anti-Slav. Her gravitation to the +Central Powers seems inevitable.</p> + +<p>Whether the Polish-Czech combination would be a Habsburg kingdom at all +is another matter. Only if, after all, the Allies are far less +successful than they have now every reason to hope would that become +possible.</p> + +<p>The gravitation of that west Slav state to the Central European system +or to Russia will, I think, be the only real measure of ultimate success +or failure in this war. I think it narrows down to that so far as Europe +is concerned. Most of the other things are inevitable. Such, it seems to +me, is the most open possibility in the European map in the years +immediately before us.</p> + +<p>If by dying I could assure the end of the Hohenzollern Empire to-morrow +I would gladly do it. But I have, as a balancing prophet, to face the +high probability of its outliving me for some generations. It is to me +a deplorable probability. Far rather would I anticipate Germany quit of +her eagles and Hohenzollerns, and ready to take her place as the leading +Power of the United States of Europe.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="X._THE_UNITED_STATES,_FRANCE,_BRITAIN,_AND_RUSSIA"></a>X. THE UNITED STATES, FRANCE, BRITAIN, AND RUSSIA</h2> +<br> + +<h3>Section 1</h3> + +<p>In this chapter I propose to speculate a little about the future +development of these four great States, whose destinies are likely to be +much more closely interwoven than their past histories have been. I +believe that the stars in their courses tend to draw these States +together into a dominant peace alliance, maintaining the peace of the +world. There may be other stars in that constellation, Italy, Japan, a +confederated Latin America, for example; I do not propose to deal with +that possibility now, but only to dwell upon the development of +understandings and common aims between France, Russia, and the +English-speaking States.</p> + +<p>They have all shared one common experience during the last two years; +they have had an enormous loss of self-sufficiency. This has been +particularly the case with the United States of America. At the +beginning of this war, the United States were still possessed by the +glorious illusion that they were aloof from general international +politics, that they needed no allies and need fear no enemies, that they +constituted a sort of asylum from war and all the bitter stresses and +hostilities of the old world. Themselves secure, they could intervene +with grim resolution to protect their citizens all over the world. Had +they not bombarded Algiers?...</p> + +<p>I remember that soon after the outbreak of the war I lunched at the +Savoy Hotel in London when it was crammed with Americans suddenly swept +out of Europe by the storm. My host happened to be a man of some +diplomatic standing, and several of them came and talked to him. They +were full of these old-world ideas of American immunity. Their +indignation was comical even at the time. Some of them had been hustled; +some had lost their luggage in Germany. When, they asked, was it to be +returned to them? Some seemed to be under the impression that, war or no +war, an American tourist had a perfect right to travel about in the +Vosges or up and down the Rhine just as he thought fit. They thought he +had just to wave a little American flag, and the referee would blow a +whistle and hold up the battle until he had got by safely. One family +had actually been careering about in a cart--their automobile +seized--between the closing lines of French and Germans, brightly +unaware of the disrespect of bursting shells for American +nationality.... Since those days the American nation has lived +politically a hundred years.</p> + +<p>The people of the United States have shed their delusion that there is +an Eastern and a Western hemisphere, and that nothing can ever pass +between them but immigrants and tourists and trade, and realised that +this world is one round globe that gets smaller and smaller every decade +if you measure it by day's journeys. They are only going over the lesson +the British have learnt in the last score or so of years. This is one +world and bayonets are a crop that spreads. Let them gather and seed, it +matters not how far from you, and a time will come when they will be +sticking up under your nose. There is no real peace but the peace of the +whole world, and that is only to be kept by the whole world resisting +and suppressing aggression wherever it arises. To anyone who watches the +American Press, this realisation has been more and more manifest. From +dreams of aloofness and ineffable superiority, America comes round very +rapidly to a conception of an active participation in the difficult +business of statecraft. She is thinking of alliances, of throwing her +weight and influence upon the side of law and security. No longer a +political Thoreau in the woods, a sort of vegetarian recluse among +nations, a being of negative virtues and unpremeditated superiorities, +she girds herself for a manly part in the toilsome world of men.</p> + +<p>So far as I can judge, the American mind is eminently free from any +sentimental leaning towards the British. Americans have a traditional +hatred of the Hanoverian monarchy, and a democratic disbelief in +autocracy. They are far more acutely aware of differences than +resemblances. They suspect every Englishman of being a bit of a +gentleman and a bit of a flunkey. I have never found in America anything +like that feeling common in the mass of English people that prevents the +use of the word "foreigner" for an American; there is nothing to +reciprocate the sympathy and pride that English and Irish republicans +and radicals feel for the States. Few Americans realise that there are +such beings as English republicans.</p> + +<p>What has linked Americans with the British hitherto has been very +largely the common language and literature; it is only since the war +began that there seems to have been any appreciable development of +fraternal feeling. And that has been not so much discovery of a mutual +affection as the realisation of a far closer community of essential +thought and purpose than has hitherto been suspected. The Americans, +after thinking the matter out with great frankness and vigour, do +believe that Britain is on the whole fighting against aggression and not +for profit, that she is honestly backing France and Belgium against an +intolerable attack, and that the Hohenzollern Empire is a thing that +needs discrediting and, if possible, destroying in the interests of all +humanity, Germany included.</p> + +<p>America has made the surprising discovery that, allowing for their +greater nearness, the British are thinking about these things almost +exactly as Americans think about them. They follow the phases of the war +in Great Britain, the strain, the blunderings, the tenacity, the onset +of conscription in an essentially non-military community, with the +complete understanding of a people similarly circumstanced, differing +only by scale and distance. They have been through something of the sort +already; they may have something of the sort happen again. It had not +occurred to them hitherto how parallel we were. They begin to have +inklings of how much more parallel we may presently become.</p> + +<p>There is evidence of a real search for American affinities among the +other peoples of the world; it is a new war-made feature of the +thoughtful literature and journalists of America. And it is interesting +to note how partial and divided these affinities must necessarily be. +Historically and politically, the citizen of the United States must be +drawn most closely to France. France is the one other successful modern +republic; she was the instigator and friend of American liberation. With +Great Britain the tie of language, the tradition of personal freedom, +and the strain in the blood are powerful links. But both France and +Britain are old countries, thickly populated, with a great and ancient +finish and completeness, full of implicit relationships; America is by +comparison crude, uninformed, explicit, a new country, still turning +fresh soil, still turning over but half-explored natural resources.</p> + +<p>The United States constitute a modern country, a country on an +unprecedented scale, being organised from the very beginning on modern +lines. There is only one other such country upon the planet, and that +curiously enough is parallel in climate, size, and position--Russia in +Asia. Even Russia in Europe belongs rather to the newness that is +American than to the tradition that is European; Harvard was founded +more than half a century before Petrograd. And when I looked out of the +train window on my way to Petrograd from Germany, the little towns I saw +were like no European towns I had ever seen. The wooden houses, the +broad unmade roads, the traffic, the winter-bitten scenery, a sort of +untidy spaciousness, took my mind instantly to the country one sees in +the back part of New York State as one goes from Boston to Niagara. And +the reality follows the appearance.</p> + +<p>The United States and Russia are the west and the east of the same +thing; they are great modern States, developing from the beginning upon +a scale that only railways make possible. France and Britain may perish +in the next two centuries or they may persist, but there can be no doubt +that two centuries ahead Russia and the United States will be two of the +greatest masses of fairly homogeneous population on the globe.</p> + +<p>There are no countries with whom the people of the United States are so +likely to develop sympathy and a sense of common values and common +interests as with these three, unless it be with the Scandinavian +peoples. The Scandinavian peoples have developed a tendency to an +extra-European outlook, to look west and east rather than southwardly, +to be pacifist and progressive in a manner essentially American. From +any close sympathy with Germany the Americans are cut off at present by +the Hohenzollerns and the system of ideas that the Hohenzollerns have +imposed upon German thought. So long as the Germans cling to the tawdry +tradition of the Empire, so long as they profess militarism, so long as +they keep up their ridiculous belief in some strange racial superiority +to the rest of mankind, it is absurd to expect any co-operative feeling +between them and any other great people.</p> + +<p>The American tradition is based upon the casting off of a Germanic +monarchy; it is its cardinal idea. These sturdy Republicans did not +fling out the Hanoverians and their Hessian troops to prepare the path +of glory for Potsdam. But except for the gash caused by the Teutonic +monarchy, there runs round the whole world a north temperate and +sub-arctic zone of peoples, generally similar in complexion, physical +circumstances, and intellectual and moral quality, having enormous +undeveloped natural resources, and a common interest in keeping the +peace while these natural resources are developed, having also a common +interest in maintaining the integrity of China and preventing her +development into a military power; it is a zone with the clearest +prospect of a vast increase in its already enormous population, and it +speaks in the main one or other of three languages, either French, +Russian, or English. I believe that natural sympathy will march with the +obvious possibilities of the situation in bringing the American mind to +the realisation of this band of common interests and of its +compatibility with the older idea of an American continent protected by +a Monroe doctrine from any possibility of aggression from the monarchies +of the old world.</p> + +<p>As the old conception of isolation fades and the American mind accustoms +itself to the new conception of a need of alliances and understandings +to save mankind from the megalomania of races and dynasties, I believe +it will turn first to the idea of keeping the seas with Britain and +France, and then to this still wider idea of an understanding with the +Pledged Allies that will keep the peace of the world.</p> + +<p>Now Germany has taught the world several things, and one of the most +important of these lessons is the fact that the destinies of states and +peoples is no longer to be determined by the secret arrangements of +diplomatists and the agreements or jealousies of kings. For fifty years +Germany has been unifying the mind of her people against the world. She +has obsessed them with an evil ideal, but the point we have to note is +that she has succeeded in obsessing them with that ideal. No other +modern country has even attempted such a moral and mental solidarity as +Germany has achieved. And good ideals need, just as much as bad ones, +systematic inculcation, continual open expression and restatement. Mute, +mindless, or demented nations are dangerous and doomed nations. The +great political conceptions that are needed to establish the peace of +the world must become the common property of the mass of intelligent +adults if they are to hold against the political scoundrel, the royal +adventurer, the forensic exploiter, the enemies and scatterers of +mankind. The French, Americans, and English have to realise this +necessity; they have to state a common will and they have to make their +possession by that will understood by the Russian people, and they have +to share that will with the Russian people. Beyond that there lies the +still greater task or making some common system of understandings with +the intellectual masses of China and India. At present, with three of +these four great powers enormously preoccupied with actual warfare, +there is an opportunity for guiding expression on the part of America, +for a real world leadership, such as may never occur again....</p> + +<p>So far I have been stating a situation and reviewing certain +possibilities. In the past half-century the United States has been +developing a great system of universities and a continental production +of literature and discussion to supplement the limited Press and the New +England literature of the earlier phase of the American process. It is +one of the most interesting speculations in the world to everyone how +far this new organisation of the American mind is capable of grasping +the stupendous opportunities and appeals of the present time. The war +and the great occasions that must follow the war will tax the mind and +the intellectual and moral forces of the Pledged Allies enormously. How +far is this new but very great and growing system of thought and +learning in the United States capable of that propaganda of ideas and +language, that progressive expression of a developing ideal of +community, that in countries so spontaneous, so chaotic or democratic as +the United States and the Pledged Allies must necessarily take the +place of the organised authoritative <i>Kultur</i> of the Teutonic type of +state?</p> + +<p>As an undisguisedly patriotic Englishman, I would like to see the lead +in this intellectual synthesis of the nations, that <i>must</i> be achieved +if wars are to cease, undertaken by Great Britain. But I am bound to +confess that in Great Britain I see neither the imaginative courage of +France nor the brisk enterprise of the Americans. I see this matter as a +question of peace and civilisation, but there are other baser but quite +as effective reasons why America, France, and Great Britain should exert +themselves to create confidences and understandings between their +populations and the Russian population. There is the immediate business +opportunity in Russia. There is the secondary business opportunity in +China that can best be developed as the partners rather than as the +rivals of the Russians. Since the Americans are nearest, by way of the +Pacific, since they are likely to have more capital and more free energy +to play with than the Pledged Allies, I do on the whole incline to the +belief that it is they who will yet do the pioneer work and the leading +work that this opportunity demands.</p> +<br> + +<h3>Section 2</h3> + +<p>If beneath the alliances of the present war there is to grow up a system +of enduring understandings that will lead to the peace of the world, +there is needed as a basis for such understandings much greater facility +of intellectual intercourse than exists at present. Firstly, the world +needs a <i>lingua franca</i>; next, the Western peoples need to know more of +the Russian language and life than they do, and thirdly, the English +language needs to be made more easily accessible than it is at present. +The chief obstacle to a Frenchman or Englishman learning Russian is the +difficult and confusing alphabet; the chief obstacle to anyone learning +English is the irrational spelling. Are people likely to overcome these +very serious difficulties in the future, and, if so, how will they do +it? And what prospects are there of a <i>lingua franca</i>?</p> + +<p>Wherever one looks closely into the causes and determining influences of +the great convulsions of this time, one is more and more impressed by +the apparent smallness of the ultimate directing influence. It seems to +me at least that it is a practically proven thing that this vast +aggression of Germany is to be traced back to a general tone of court +thinking and discussion in the Prussia of the eighteenth century, to +the theories of a few professors and the gathering trend of German +education in a certain direction. It seems to me that similarly the +language teachers of to-day and to-morrow may hold in their hands the +seeds of gigantic international developments in the future.</p> + +<p>It is not a question of the skill or devotion of individual teachers so +much as of the possibility of organising them upon a grand scale. An +individual teacher must necessarily use the ordinary books and ordinary +spelling and type of the language in which he is giving instruction; he +may get a few elementary instruction books from a private publisher, +specially printed for teaching purposes, but very speedily he finds +himself obliged to go to the current printed matter. This, as I will +immediately show, bars the most rapid and fruitful method of teaching. +And in this as in most affairs, private enterprise, the individualistic +system, shows itself a failure. In England, for example, the choice of +Russian lesson books is poor and unsatisfactory, and there is either no +serviceable Russian-English, English-Russian school dictionary in +existence, or it is published so badly as to be beyond the range of my +inquiries. But a state, or a group of universities, or even a rich +private association such as far-seeing American, French and British +business men might be reasonably expected to form, could attack the +problem of teaching a language in an altogether different fashion.</p> + +<p>The difficulty in teaching English lies in the inconsistency of the +spelling, and the consequent difficulties of pronunciation. If there +were available an ample series of text-books, reading books, and books +of general interest, done in a consistent phonetic type and spelling--in +which the value of the letters of the phonetic system followed as far as +possible the prevalent usage in Europe--the difficulty in teaching +English not merely to foreigners but, as the experiments in teaching +reading of the Simplified Spelling Society have proved up to the hilt, +to English children can be very greatly reduced. At first the difficulty +of the irrational spelling can be set on one side. The learner attacks +and masters the essential language. Then afterwards he can, if he likes, +go on to the orthodox spelling, which is then no harder for him to read +and master than it is for an Englishman of ordinary education to read +the facetious orthography of Artemus Ward or of the <i>Westminster +Gazette</i> "orfis boy." The learner does one thing at a time instead of +attempting, as he would otherwise have to do, two things--and they are +both difficult and different and conflicting things--simultaneously.</p> + +<p>Learning a language is one thing and memorising an illogical system of +visual images--for that is what reading ordinary English spelling comes +to--is quite another. A man can learn to play first chess and then +bridge in half the time that these two games would require if he began +by attempting simultaneous play, and exactly the same principle applies +to the language problem.</p> + +<p>These considerations lead on to the idea of a special development or +sub-species of the English language for elementary teaching and foreign +consumption. It would be English, very slightly simplified and +regularised, and phonetically spelt. Let us call it Anglo-American. In +it the propagandist power, whatever that power might be, state, +university or association, would print not simply, instruction books but +a literature of cheap editions. Such a specialised simplified +Anglo-American variety of English would enormously stimulate the already +wide diffusion of the language, and go far to establish it as that +<i>lingua franca</i> of which the world has need.</p> + +<p>And in the same way, the phonetic alphabet adopted as the English medium +could be used as the medium for instruction in French, where, as in the +British Isles, Canada, North and Central Africa, and large regions of +the East, it is desirable to make an English-speaking community +bi-lingual. At present a book in French means nothing to an uninstructed +Englishman, an English book conveys no accurate sound images to an +uninstructed Frenchman. On the other hand, a French book printed on a +proper phonetic system could be immediately read aloud--though of course +it could not be understood--by an uninstructed Englishman. From the +first he would have no difficulties with the sounds. And vice versa. +Such a system of books would mean the destruction of what are, for great +masses of French and English people, insurmountable difficulties on the +way to bi-lingualism. Its production is a task all too colossal for any +private publishers or teachers, but it is a task altogether trivial in +comparison with the national value of its consequences. But whether it +will ever be carried out is just one of those riddles of the jumping cat +in the human brain that are most perplexing to the prophet.</p> + +<p>The problem becomes at once graver, less hopeful, and more urgent when +we take up the case of Russian. I have looked closely into this business +of Russian teaching, and I am convinced that only a very, very small +number of French-and English-speaking people are going to master Russian +under the existing conditions of instruction. If we Westerns want to get +at Russia in good earnest we must take up this Russian language problem +with an imaginative courage and upon a scale of which at present I see +no signs. If we do not, then the Belgians, French, Americans and English +will be doing business in Russia after the war in the German +language--or through a friendly German interpreter. That, I am afraid, +is the probability of the case. But it need not be the case. Will and +intelligence could alter all that.</p> + +<p>What has to be done is to have Russian taught at first in a Western +phonetic type. Then it becomes a language not very much more difficult +to acquire than, say, German by a Frenchman. When the learner can talk +with some freedom, has a fairly full vocabulary, a phraseology, knows +his verb and so on, then and then only should he take up the unfamiliar +and confusing set of visual images of Russian lettering--I speak from +the point of view of those who read the Latin alphabet. How confusing it +may be only those who have tried it can tell. Its familiarity to the eye +increases the difficulty; totally unfamiliar forms would be easier to +learn. The Frenchman or Englishman is confronted with</p> + +<blockquote> +COP;<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>the sound of that is</p> + +<blockquote> +SAR!<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>For those who learn languages, as so many people do nowadays, by visual +images, there will always be an undercurrent toward saying "COP." The +mind plunges hopelessly through that tangle to the elements of a speech +which is as yet unknown.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless almost all the instruction in Russian of which I can get an +account begins with the alphabet, and must, I suppose, begin with the +alphabet until teachers have a suitably printed set of instruction books +to enable them to take the better line. One school teacher I know, in a +public school, devoted the entire first term, the third of a year, to +the alphabet. At the end he was still dissatisfied with the progress of +his pupils. He gave them Russian words, of course, words of which they +knew nothing--in Russian characters. It was too much for them to take +hold of at one and the same time. He did not even think of teaching them +to write French and English words in the strange lettering. He did not +attempt to write his Russian in Latin letters. He was apparently +ignorant of any system of transliteration, and he did nothing to +mitigate the impossible task before him. At the end of the term most of +his pupils gave up the hopeless effort. It is not too much to say that +for a great number of "visualising" people, the double effort at the +outset of Russian is entirely too much. It stops them altogether. But to +almost anyone it is possible to learn Russian if at first it is +presented in a lettering that gives no trouble.</p> + +<p>If I found myself obliged to learn Russian urgently, I would get some +accepted system of transliteration, carefully transcribe every word of +Russian in my text-book into the Latin characters, and learn the +elements of the language from my manuscript. A year or so ago I made a +brief visit to Russia with a "Russian Self-Taught" in my pocket. Nothing +sticks, nothing ever did stick of that self-taught Russian except the +words that I learnt in Latin type. Those I remember as I remember all +words, as groups of Latin letters. I learnt to count, for example, up to +a hundred. The other day I failed to recognise the Russian word for +eleven in Russian characters until I had spelt it out. Then I said, "Oh, +of course!" But I knew it when I heard it.</p> + +<p>I write of these things from the point of view of the keen learner. Some +Russian teachers will be found to agree with me; others will not. It is +a paradox in the psychology of the teacher that few teachers are willing +to adopt "slick" methods of teaching; they hate cutting corners far more +than they hate obstacles, because their interest is in the teaching and +not in the "getting there." But what we learners want is not an +exquisite, rare knowledge of particulars, we do not want to spend an +hour upon Russian needlessly; we want to get there as quickly and +effectively as possible. And for that, transliterated books are +essential.</p> + +<p>Now these may seem small details in the learning of languages, mere +schoolmasters' gossip, but the consequences are on the continental +scale. The want of these national text-books and readers is a great gulf +between Russia and her Allies; <i>it is a greater gulf than the +profoundest political misunderstanding could be</i>. We cannot get at them +to talk plainly to them, and they cannot get at us to talk plainly to +us. A narrow bridge of interpreters is our only link with the Russian +mind. And many of those interpreters are of a race which is for very +good reasons hostile to Russia. An abundant cheap supply, firstly, of +English and French books, <i>in</i> English and French, but in the Russian +character, by means of which Russians may rapidly learn French and +English--for it is quite a fable that these languages are known and used +in Russia below the level of the court and aristocracy--and, secondly, +of Russian books in the Latin (or some easy phonetic development of the +Latin) type, will do more to facilitate interchange and intercourse +between Russia and France, America and Britain, and so consolidate the +present alliance than almost any other single thing. But that supply +will not be a paying thing to provide; if it is left to publishers or +private language teachers or any form of private enterprise it will +never be provided. It is a necessary public undertaking.</p> + +<p>But because a thing is necessary it does not follow that it will be +achieved. Bread may be necessary to a starving man, but there is always +the alternative that he will starve. France, which is most accessible to +creative ideas, is least interested in this particular matter. Great +Britain is still heavily conservative. It is idle to ignore the forces +still entrenched in the established church, in the universities and the +great schools, that stand for an irrational resistance to all new +things. American universities are comparatively youthful and sometimes +quite surprisingly innovating, and America is the country of the +adventurous millionaire. There has been evidence in several American +papers that have reached me recently of a disposition to get ahead with +Russia and cut out the Germans (and incidentally the British). Amidst +the cross-currents and overlappings of this extraordinary time, it seems +to me highly probable that America may lead in this vitally important +effort to promote international understanding.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="XI._"THE_WHITE_MAN'S_BURTHEN""></a>XI. "THE WHITE MAN'S BURTHEN"</h2> +<br> + +<p>One of the most curious aspects of the British "Pacifist" is his +willingness to give over great blocks of the black and coloured races to +the Hohenzollerns to exploit and experiment upon. I myself being +something of a pacifist, and doing what I can, in my corner, to bring +about the Peace of the World, the Peace of the World triumphant and +armed against every disturber, could the more readily sympathise with +the passive school of Pacifists if its proposals involved the idea that +England should keep to England and Germany to Germany. My political +ideal is the United States of the World, a union of states whose state +boundaries are determined by what I have defined as the natural map of +mankind. I cannot understand those pacifists who talk about the German +right to "expansion," and babble about a return of her justly lost +colonies. That seems to me not pacificism but patriotic inversion. This +large disposition to hand over our fellow-creatures to a Teutonic +educational system, with "frightfulness" in reserve, to "efficiency" on +Wittenberg lines, leaves me--hot. The ghosts of the thirst-tormented +Hereros rise up in their thousands from the African dust, protesting.</p> + +<p>This talk of "legitimate expansion" is indeed now only an exploiter's +cant. The age of "expansion," the age of European "empires" is near its +end. No one who can read the signs of the times in Japan, in India, in +China, can doubt it. It ended in America a hundred years ago; it is +ending now in Asia; it will end last in Africa, and even in Africa the +end draws near. Spain has but led the way which other "empires" must +follow. Look at her empire in the atlases of 1800. She fell down the +steps violently and painfully, it is true--but they are difficult to +descend. No sane man, German or anti-German, who has weighed the +prospects of the new age, will be desirous of a restoration of the now +vanished German colonial empire, vindictive, intriguing, and +unscrupulous, a mere series of centres of attack upon adjacent +territory, to complicate the immense disentanglements and readjustments +that lie already before the French and British and Italians.</p> + +<p>Directly we discuss the problem of the absolutely necessary permanent +alliance that this war has forced upon at least France, Belgium, +Britain and Russia, this problem of the "empires" faces us. What are +these Allies going to do about their "subject races"? What is the world +going to do about the "subject races"? It is a matter in which the +"subject races" are likely to have an increasingly important voice of +their own. We Europeans may discuss their fate to-day among ourselves; +we shall be discussing it with them to-morrow. If we do not agree with +them then, they will take their fates in their own hands in spite of us. +Long before A.D. 2100 there will be no such thing as a "subject race" in +all the world.</p> + +<p>Here again we find ourselves asking just that same difficult question of +more or less, that arises at every cardinal point of our review of the +probable future. How far is this thing going to be done finely; how far +is it going to be done cunningly and basely? How far will greatness of +mind, how far will imaginative generosity, prevail over the jealous and +pettifogging spirit that lurks in every human being? Are French and +British and Belgians and Italians, for example, going to help each other +in Africa, or are they going to work against and cheat each other? Is +the Russian seeking only a necessary outlet to the seas of the world, +or has he dreams of Delhi? Here again, as in all these questions, +personal idiosyncrasy comes in; I am strongly disposed to trust the good +in the Russian.</p> + +<p>But apart from this uncertain question of generosity, there are in this +case two powerful forces that make against disputes, secret +disloyalties, and meanness. One is that Germany will certainly be still +dangerous at the end of the war, and the second is that the gap in +education, in efficiency, in national feeling and courage of outlook, +between the European and the great Asiatic and African communities, is +rapidly diminishing. If the Europeans squabble much more for world +ascendancy, there will be no world ascendancy for them to squabble for. +We have still no means of measuring the relative enfeeblement of Europe +in comparison with Asia already produced by this war. As it is, certain +things are so inevitable--the integration of a modernised Bengal, of +China, and of Egypt, for example--that the question before us is +practically reduced to whether this restoration of the subject peoples +will be done with the European's aid and goodwill, or whether it will be +done against him. That it will be done in some manner or other is +certain.</p> + +<p>The days of suppression are over. They know it in every country where +white and brown and yellow mingle. If the Pledged Allies are not +disposed to let in light to their subject peoples and prepare for the +days of world equality that are coming, the Germans will. If the Germans +fail to be the most enslaving of people, they may become the most +liberating. They will set themselves, with their characteristic +thoroughness, to destroy that magic "prestige" which in Asia +particularly is the clue to the miracle of European ascendancy. In the +long run that may prove no ill service to mankind. The European must +prepare to make himself acceptable in Asia, to state his case to Asia +and be understood by Asia, or to leave Asia. That is the blunt reality +of the Asiatic situation.</p> + +<p>It has already been pointed out in these chapters that if the alliance +of the Pledged Allies is indeed to be permanent, it implies something in +the nature of a Zollverein, a common policy towards the rest of the +world and an arrangement involving a common control over the +dependencies of all the Allies. It will be interesting, now that we have +sketched a possible map of Europe after the war, to look a little more +closely into the nature of the "empires" concerned, and to attempt a few +broad details of the probable map of the Eastern hemisphere outside +Europe in the years immediately to come.</p> + +<p>Now there are, roughly speaking, three types of overseas "possessions." +They may be either (1) territory that was originally practically +unoccupied and that was settled by the imperial people, or (2) territory +with a barbaric population having no national idea, or (3) conquered +states. In the case of the British Empire all three are present; in the +case of the French only the second and third; in the case of the Russian +only the first and third. Each of these types must necessarily follow +its own system of developments. Take first those territories originally +but thinly occupied, or not occupied at all, of which all or at least +the dominant element of the population is akin to that of the "home +country." These used to be called by the British "colonies"--though the +"colonies" of Greece and Rome were really only garrison cities settled +in foreign lands--and they are now being rechristened "Dominions." +Australia, for instance, is a British Dominion, and Siberia and most of +Russia in Asia, a Russian Dominion. Their manifest destiny is for their +children to become equal citizens with the cousins and brothers they +have left at home.</p> + +<p>There has been much discussion in England during the last decade upon +some modification of the British legislature that would admit +representatives from the Dominions to a proportional share in the +government of the Empire. The problem has been complicated by the +unsettled status of Ireland and the mischief-making Tories there, and by +the perplexities arising out of those British dependencies of +non-British race--the Indian states, for example, whose interests are +sometimes in conflict with those of the Dominions.</p> + +<p>The attractiveness of the idea of an Imperial legislature is chiefly on +the surface, and I have very strong doubts of its realisability. These +Dominions seem rather to tend to become independent and distinct +sovereign states in close and affectionate alliance with Great Britain, +and having a common interest in the British Navy. In many ways the +interests of the Dominions are more divergent from those of Great +Britain than are Great Britain and Russia, or Great Britain and France. +Many of the interests of Canada are more closely bound to those of the +United States than they are to those of Australasia, in such a matter as +the maintenance of the Monroe Principle, for example. South Africa again +takes a line with regard to British Indian subjects which is highly +embarrassing to Great Britain. There is a tendency in all the British +colonies to read American books and periodicals rather than British, if +for no other reason than because their common life, life in a newish and +very democratic land, is much more American than British in character.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, one must remember that Great Britain has European +interests--the integrity of Holland and Belgium is a case in +point--which are much closer to the interests of France than they are to +those of the younger Britains beyond the seas. A voice in an Alliance +that included France and the United States, and had its chief common +interest in the control of the seas, may in the future seem far more +desirable to these great and growing English-speaking Dominions than the +sending of representatives to an Imperial House of Lords at Westminster, +and the adornment of elderly colonial politicians with titles and +decorations at Buckingham Palace.</p> + +<p>I think Great Britain and her Allies have all of them to prepare their +minds for a certain release of their grip upon their "possessions," if +they wish to build up a larger unity; I do not see that any secure +unanimity of purpose is possible without such releases and +readjustments.</p> + +<p>Now the next class of foreign "possession" is that in which the French +and Belgians and Italians are most interested. Britain also has +possessions of this type in Central Africa and the less civilised +districts of India, but Russia has scarcely anything of the sort. In +this second class of possession the population is numerous, barbaric, +and incapable of any large or enduring political structure, and over its +destinies rule a small minority of European administrators.</p> + +<p>The greatest of this series of possessions are those in black Africa. +The French imagination has taken a very strong hold of the idea of a +great French-speaking West and Central Africa, with which the ordinary +British citizen will only too gladly see the conquered German colonies +incorporated. The Italians have a parallel field of development in the +hinterland of Tripoli. Side by side, France, Belgium and Italy, no +longer troubled by hostile intrigues, may very well set themselves in +the future to the task of building up a congenial Latin civilisation out +of the tribal confusions of these vast regions. They will, I am +convinced, do far better than the English in this domain. The +English-speaking peoples have been perhaps the most successful +<i>settlers</i> in the world; the United States and the Dominions are there +to prove it; only the Russians in Siberia can compare with them; but as +administrators the British are a race coldly aloof. They have nothing to +give a black people, and no disposition to give.</p> + +<p>The Latin-speaking peoples, the Mediterranean nations, on the other +hand, have proved to be the most successful <i>assimilators</i> of other +races that mankind has ever known. Alexandre Dumas is not the least of +the glories of France. In a hundred years' time black Africa, west of +Tripoli, from Oran to Rhodesia, will, I believe, talk French. And what +does not speak French will speak the closely related Italian. I do not +see why this Latin black culture should not extend across equatorial +Africa to meet the Indian influence at the coast, and reach out to join +hands with Madagascar. I do not see why the British flag should be any +impediment to the Latinisation of tropical Africa or to the natural +extension of the French and Italian languages through Egypt. I guess, +however, that it will be an Islamic and not a Christian cult that will +be talking Italian and French. For the French-speaking civilisation will +make roads not only for French, Belgians, and Italians, but for the +Arabs whose religion and culture already lie like a net over black +Africa. No other peoples and no other religion can so conveniently give +the negro what is needed to bring him into the comity of civilised +peoples....</p> + +<p>A few words of digression upon the future of Islam may not be out of +place here. The idea of a militant Christendom has vanished from the +world. The last pretensions of Christian propaganda have been buried in +the Balkan trenches. A unification of Africa under Latin auspices +carries with it now no threat of missionary invasion. Africa will be a +fair field for all religions, and the religion to which the negro will +take will be the religion that best suits his needs. That religion, we +are told by nearly everyone who has a right to speak upon such +questions, is Islam, and its natural propagandist is the Arab. There is +no reason why he should not be a Frenchified Arab.</p> + +<p>Both the French and the British have the strongest interest in the +revival of Arabic culture. Let the German learn Turkish if it pleases +him. Through all Africa and Western Asia there is a great to-morrow for +a renascent Islam under Arab auspices. Constantinople, that venal city +of the waterways, sitting like Asenath at the ford, has corrupted all +who came to her; she has been the paralysis of Islam. But the Islam of +the Turk is a different thing from the Islam of the Arab. That was one +of the great progressive impulses in the world of men. It is our custom +to underrate the Arab's contribution to civilisation quite absurdly in +comparison with our debt to the Hebrew and Greek. It is to the +initiatives of Islamic culture, for example, that we owe our numerals, +the bulk of modern mathematics, and the science of chemistry. The +British have already set themselves to the establishment of Islamic +university teaching in Egypt, but that is the mere first stroke of the +pick at the opening of the mine. English, French, Russian, Arabic, +Hindustani, Spanish, Italian; these are the great world languages that +most concern the future of civilisation from the point of view of the +Peace Alliance that impends. No country can afford to neglect any of +those languages, but as a matter of primary importance I would say, for +the British, Hindustani, for the Americans, Russian or Spanish, for the +French and Belgians and Italians, Arabic. These are the directions in +which the duty of understanding is most urgent for each of these +peoples, and the path of opportunity plainest.</p> + +<p>The disposition to underrate temporarily depressed nations, races, and +cultures is a most irrational, prevalent, and mischievous form of +stupidity. It distorts our entire outlook towards the future. The +British reader can see its absurdity most easily when he reads the +ravings of some patriotic German upon the superiority of the "Teuton" +over the Italians and Greeks--to whom we owe most things of importance +in European civilisation. Equally silly stuff is still to be read in +British and American books about "Asiatics." And was there not some +fearful rubbish, not only in German but in English and French, about the +"decadence" of France? But we are learning--rapidly. When I was a +student in London thirty years ago we regarded Japan as a fantastic +joke; the comic opera, <i>The Mikado</i>, still preserves that foolish phase +for the admiration of posterity. And to-day there is a quite +unjustifiable tendency to ignore the quality of the Arab and of his +religion. Islam is an open-air religion, noble and simple in its broad +conceptions; it is none the less vital from Nigeria to China because it +has sickened in the closeness of Constantinople. The French, the +Italians, the British have to reckon with Islam and the Arab; where the +continental deserts are, there the Arabs are and there is Islam; their +culture will never be destroyed and replaced over these regions by +Europeanism. The Allies who prepare the Peace of the World have to make +their peace with that. And when I foreshadow this necessary liaison of +the French and Arabic cultures, I am thinking not only of the Arab that +is, but of the Arab that is to come. The whole trend of events in Asia +Minor, the breaking up and decapitation of the Ottoman Empire and the +Euphrates invasion, points to a great revival of Mesopotamia--at first +under European direction. The vast system of irrigation that was +destroyed by the Mongol armies of Hulugu in the thirteenth century will +be restored; the desert will again become populous. But the local type +will prevail. The new population of Mesopotamia will be neither European +nor Indian; it will be Arabic; and with its concentration Arabic will +lay hold of the printing press. A new intellectual movement in Islam, a +renascent Bagdad, is as inevitable as is 1950.</p> + +<p>I have, however, gone a little beyond the discussion of the future of +the barbaric possessions in these anticipations of an Arabic +co-operation with the Latin peoples in the reconstruction of Western +Asia and the barbaric regions of north and central Africa. But regions +of administered barbarism occur not only in Africa. The point is that +they are administered, and that their economic development is very +largely in the hands, and will for many generations remain in the hands, +of the possessing country. Hitherto their administration has been in +the interests of the possessing nation alone. Their acquisition has been +a matter of bitter rivalries, their continued administration upon +exclusive lines is bound to lead to dangerous clashings. The common +sense of the situation points to a policy of give and take, in which +throughout the possessions of all the Pledged Allies, the citizens of +all will have more or less equal civil advantages. And this means some +consolidation of the general control of those Administered Territories. +I have already hinted at the possibility that the now exclusively +British navy may some day be a world-navy controlled by an Admiralty +representing a group of allies, Australasia, Canada, Britain and, it may +be, France and Russia and the United States. To those who know how +detached the British Admiralty is at the present time from the general +methods of British political life, there will be nothing strange in this +idea of its completer detachment. Its personnel does to a large extent +constitute a class apart. It takes its boys out of the general life very +often before they have got to their fourteenth birthday. It is not so +closely linked up with specific British social elements, with political +parties and the general educational system, as are the rest of the +national services.</p> + +<p>There is nothing so very fantastic in this idea of a sort of +World-Admiralty; it is not even completely novel. Such bodies as the +Knights Templars transcended nationality in the Middle Ages. I do not +see how some such synthetic control of the seas is to be avoided in the +future. And now coming back to the "White Man's Burthen," is there not a +possibility that such a board of marine and international control as the +naval and international problems of the future may produce (or some +closely parallel body with a stronger Latin element), would also be +capable of dealing with these barbaric "Administered Territories"? A day +may come when Tripoli, Nigeria, the French and the Belgian Congo will be +all under one supreme control. We may be laying the foundations of such +a system to-day unawares. The unstable and fluctuating conferences of +the Allies to-day, their repeated experiences of the disadvantages of +evanescent and discontinuous co-ordinations, may press them almost +unconsciously toward this building up of things greater than they know.</p> + +<p>We come now to the third and most difficult type of overseas +"possessions." These are the annexed or conquered regions with settled +populations already having a national tradition and culture of their +own. They are, to put it bluntly, the suppressed, the overlaid, +nations. Now I am a writer rather prejudiced against the idea of +nationality; my habit of thought is cosmopolitan; I hate and despise a +shrewish suspicion of foreigners and foreign ways; a man who can look me +in the face, laugh with me, speak truth and deal fairly, is my brother +though his skin is as black as ink or as yellow as an evening primrose. +But I have to recognise the facts of the case. In spite of all my large +liberality, I find it less irritating to be ruled by people of my own +language and race and tradition, and I perceive that for the mass of +people alien rule is intolerable.</p> + +<p>Local difference, nationality, is a very obstinate thing. Every country +tends to revert to its natural type. Nationality will out. Once a people +has emerged above the barbaric stage to a national consciousness, that +consciousness will endure. There is practically always going to be an +Egypt, a Poland, an Armenia. There is no Indian nation, there never has +been, but there are manifestly a Bengal and a Rajputana, there is +manifestly a constellation of civilised nations in India. Several of +these have literatures and traditions that extend back before the days +when the Britons painted themselves with woad. Let us deal with this +question mainly with reference to India. What is said will apply +equally to Burmah or Egypt or Armenia or--to come back into +Europe--Poland.</p> + +<p>Now I have talked, I suppose, with many scores of people about the +future of India, and I have never yet met anyone, Indian or British, who +thought it desirable that the British should evacuate India at once. And +I have never yet met anyone who did not think that ultimately the +British must let the Indian nations control their own destinies. There +are really not two opposite opinions about the destiny of India, but +only differences of opinion as to the length of time in which that +destiny is to be achieved. Many Indians think (and I agree with them) +that India might be a confederation of sovereign states in close +alliance with the British Empire and its allies within the space of +fifty years or so. The opposite extreme was expressed by an old weary +Indian administrator who told me, "Perhaps they may begin to be capable +of self-government in four or five hundred years." These are the extreme +Liberal and the extreme Tory positions in this question. It is a choice +between decades and centuries. There is no denial of the inevitability +of ultimate restoration. No one of any experience believes the British +administration in India is an eternal institution.</p> + +<p>There is a great deal of cant in this matter in Great Britain. Genteel +English people with relations in the Indian Civil Service and habits of +self-delusion, believe that Indians are "grateful" for British rule. The +sort of "patriotic" self-flattery that prevailed in the Victorian age, +and which is so closely akin to contemporary German follies, fostered +and cultivated this sweet delusion. There are, no doubt, old ladies in +Germany to-day who believe that Belgium will presently be "grateful" for +the present German administration. Let us clear our minds of such cant. +As a matter of fact no Indians really like British rule or think of it +as anything better than a necessary, temporary evil. Let me put the +parallel case to an Englishman or a Frenchman. Through various political +ineptitudes our country has, we will suppose, fallen under the rule of +the Chinese. They administer it, we will further assume, with an +efficiency and honesty unparalleled in the bad old times of our lawyer +politicians. They do not admit us to the higher branches of the +administration; they go about our country wearing a strange costume, +professing a strange religion--which implies that ours is +wrong--speaking an unfamiliar tongue. They control our financial system +and our economic development--on Chinese lines of the highest merit. +They take the utmost care of our Gothic cathedrals for us. They put our +dearest racial possessions into museums and admire them very much +indeed. They teach our young men to fly kites and eat bird's nest soup. +They do all that a well-bred people can do to conceal their habit and +persuasion of a racial superiority. But they keep up their "prestige." +... You know, we shouldn't love them. It really isn't a question of +whether they rule well or ill, but that the position is against certain +fundamentals of human nature. The only possible footing upon which we +could meet them with comfortable minds would be the footing that we and +they were discussing the terms of the restoration of our country. Then +indeed we might almost feel friendly with them. That is the case with +all civilised "possessions." The only terms upon which educated British +and Indians can meet to-day with any comfort is precisely that. The +living intercourse of the British and Indian mind to-day is the +discussion of the restoration. Everything else is humbug on the one side +and self-deception on the other.</p> + +<p>It is idle to speak of the British occupation of India as a conquest or +a robbery. It is a fashion of much "advanced" literature in Europe to +assume that the European rule of various Asiatic countries is the +result of deliberate conquest with a view to spoliation. But that is +only the ugly side of the facts. Cases of the deliberate invasion and +spoliation of one country by another have been very rare in the history +of the last three centuries. There has always been an excuse, and there +has always been a percentage of truth in the excuse. The history of +every country contains phases of political ineptitude in which that +country becomes so misgoverned as to be not only a nuisance to the +foreigner within its borders but a danger to its neighbours. Mexico is +in such a phase to-day. And most of the aggressions and annexations of +the modern period have arisen out of the inconveniences and reasonable +fears caused by such an inept phase. I am a persistent advocate for the +restoration of Poland, but at the same time it is very plain to me that +it is a mere travesty of the facts to say that Poland, was a white lamb +of a country torn to pieces by three wicked neighbours, Poland in the +eighteenth century was a dangerous political muddle, uncertain of her +monarchy, her policy, her affinities. She endangered her neighbours +because there was no guarantee that she might not fall under the +tutelage of one of them and become a weapon against the others.</p> + +<p>The division of Poland was an outrage upon the Polish people, but it +was largely dictated by an entirely honest desire to settle a dangerous +possibility. It seemed less injurious than the possibility of a +vacillating, independent Poland playing off one neighbour against +another. That possibility will still be present in the minds of the +diplomatists who will determine the settlement after the war. Until the +Poles make up their minds, and either convince the Russians that they +are on the side of Russia and Bohemia against Germany for evermore, or +the Germans that they are willing to be Posenised, they will live +between two distrustful enemies.</p> + +<p>The Poles need to think of the future more and the wrongs of Poland +less. They want less patriotic intrigue and more racial self-respect. +They are not only Poles but members of a greater brotherhood. My +impression is that Poland will "go Slav"--in spite of Cracow. But I am +not sure. I am haunted by the fear that Poland may still find her future +hampered by Poles who are, as people say, "too clever by half." An +incalculable Poland cannot be and will not be tolerated by the rest of +Europe.</p> + +<p>And the overspreading of India by the British was in the same way very +clearly done under compulsion, first lest the Dutch or French should +exploit the vast resources of the peninsula against Britain, and then +for fear of a Russian exploitation. I am no apologist for British rule +in India; I think we have neglected vast opportunities there; it was our +business from the outset to build up a free and friendly Indian +confederation, and we have done not a tithe of what we might have done +to that end. But then we have not done a little of what we might have +done for our own country.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless we have our case to plead, not only for going to India +but--with the Berlin papers still babbling of Bagdad and beyond<a name="FNanchor3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3">[3]</a>--of +sticking there very grimly. And so too the British have a fairly sound +excuse for grabbing Egypt in their fear lest in its phase of political +ineptitude it should be the means of strangling the British Empire as +the Turk in Constantinople has been used to strangle the Russian. None +of these justifications I admit are complete, but all deserve +consideration. It is no good arguing about the finer ethics of the +things that are; the business of sane men is to get things better. The +business of all sane men in all the countries of the Pledged Allies and +in America is manifestly to sink petty jealousies and a suicidal +competitiveness, and to organise co-operation with all the intellectual +forces they can find or develop in the subject countries, to convert +these inept national systems into politically efficient independent +organisations in a world peace alliance. If we fail to do that, then all +the inept states and all the subject states about the world will become +one great field for the sowing of tares by the enemy.</p> + +<blockquote> +<a name="Footnote_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor3">[3]</a> This was written late in February, 1916. +</blockquote> + +<p>So that with regard to the civilised just as with regard to the barbaric +regions of the "possessions" of the European-centred empires, we come to +the same conclusion. That on the whole the path of safety lies in the +direction of pooling them and of declaring a common policy of +progressive development leading to equality. The pattern of the United +States, in which the procedure is first the annexation of "territories" +and then their elevation to the rank of "States," must, with of course +far more difficulty and complication, be the pattern for the "empires" +of to-day--so far as they are regions of alien population. The path of +the Dominions, settled by emigrants akin to the home population, +Siberia, Canada, and so forth, to equal citizenship with the people of +the Mother Country is by comparison simple and plain.</p> + +<p>And so the discussion of the future of the overseas "empires" brings us +again to the same realisation to which the discussion of nearly every +great issue arising out of this war has pointed, the realisation of the +imperative necessity of some great council or conference, some permanent +overriding body, call it what you will, that will deal with things more +broadly than any "nationalism" or "patriotic imperialism" can possibly +do. That body must come into human affairs. Upon the courage and +imagination of living statesmen it depends whether it will come simply +and directly into concrete reality or whether it will materialise slowly +through, it may be, centuries of blood and blundering from such phantom +anticipations as this, anticipations that now haunt the thoughts of all +politically-minded men.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="XII._THE_OUTLOOK_FOR_THE_GERMANS"></a>XII. THE OUTLOOK FOR THE GERMANS</h2> +<br> + +<h3>Section 1</h3> + +<p>Whatever some of us among the Allies may say, the future of Germany lies +with Germany. The utmost ambition of the Allies falls far short of +destroying or obliterating Germany; it is to give the Germans so +thorough and memorable an experience of war that they will want no more +of it for a few generations, and, failing the learning of that lesson, +to make sure that they will not be in a position to resume their +military aggressions upon mankind with any hope of success. After all, +it is not the will of the Allies that has determined even this resolve. +It is the declared and manifest will of Germany to become predominant in +the world that has created the Alliance against Germany, and forged and +tempered our implacable resolution to bring militarist Germany down. And +the nature of the coming peace and of the politics that will follow the +peace are much more dependent upon German affairs than upon anything +else whatever.</p> + +<p>This is so clearly understood in Great Britain that there is scarcely a +newspaper that does not devote two or three columns daily to extracts +from the German newspapers, and from letters found upon German killed, +wounded, or prisoners, and to letters and descriptive articles from +neutrals upon the state of the German mind. There can be no doubt that +the British intelligence has grasped and kept its hold upon the real +issue of this war with an unprecedented clarity. At the outset there +came declarations from nearly every type of British opinion that this +war was a war against the Hohenzollern militarist idea, against +Prussianism, and not against Germany.</p> + +<p>In that respect Britain has documented herself to the hilt. There have +been, of course, a number of passionate outcries and wild accusations +against Germans, as a race, during the course of the struggle; but to +this day opinion is steadfast not only in Britain, but if I may judge +from the papers I read and the talk I hear, throughout the whole +English-speaking community, that this is a war not of races but ideas. I +am so certain of this that I would say if Germany by some swift +convulsion expelled her dynasty and turned herself into a republic, it +would be impossible for the British Government to continue the war for +long, whether it wanted to do so or not. The forces in favour of +reconciliation would be too strong. There would be a complete revulsion +from the present determination to continue the war to its bitter but +conclusive end.</p> + +<p>It is fairly evident that the present German Government understands this +frame of mind quite clearly, and is extremely anxious to keep it from +the knowledge of the German peoples. Every act or word from a British +source that suggests an implacable enmity against the Germans as a +people, every war-time caricature and insult, is brought to their +knowledge. It is the manifest interest of the Hohenzollerns and +Prussianism to make this struggle a race struggle and not merely a +political struggle, and to keep a wider breach between the peoples than +between the Governments. The "Made in Germany" grievance has been used +to the utmost against Great Britain as an indication of race hostility. +The everyday young German believes firmly that it was a blow aimed +specially at Germany; that no such regulation affected any goods but +German goods. And the English, with their characteristic heedlessness, +have never troubled to disillusion him. But even the British +caricaturist and the British soldier betray their fundamental opinion +of the matter in their very insults. They will not use a word of abuse +for the Germans as Germans; they call them "Huns," because they are +thinking of Attila, because they are thinking of them as invaders under +a monarch of peaceful France and Belgium, and not as a people living in +a land of their own.</p> + +<p>In Great Britain there is to this day so little hostility for Germans as +such, that recently a nephew of Lord Haldane's, Sir George Makgill, has +considered it advisable to manufacture race hostility and provide the +Hohenzollerns with instances and quotations through the exertions of a +preposterous Anti-German League. Disregarding the essential evils of the +Prussian idea, this mischievous organisation has set itself to persuade +the British people that the Germans are diabolical <i>as a race</i>. It has +displayed great energy and ingenuity in pestering and insulting +naturalised Germans and people of German origin in Britain--below the +rank of the Royal Family, that is--and in making enduring bad blood +between them and the authentic British. It busies itself in breaking up +meetings at which sentiments friendly to Germany might be expressed, +sentiments which, if they could be conveyed to German hearers, would +certainly go far to weaken the determination of the German social +democracy to fight to the end.</p> + +<p>There can, of course, be no doubt of the good faith of Sir George +Makgill, but he could do the Kaiser no better service than to help in +consolidating every rank and class of German, by this organisation of +foolish violence of speech and act, by this profession of an irrational +and implacable hostility. His practical influence over here is trivial, +thanks to the general good sense and the love of fair play in our +people, but there can be little doubt that his intentions are about as +injurious to the future peace of the world as any intentions could be, +and there can be no doubt that intelligent use is made in Germany of the +frothings and ravings of his followers. "Here, you see, is the +disposition of the English," the imperialists will say to the German +pacifists. "They are dangerous lunatics. Clearly we must stick together +to the end." ...</p> + +<p>The stuff of Sir George Makgill's league must not be taken as +representative of any considerable section of British opinion, which is +as a whole nearly as free from any sustained hatred of the Germans as it +was at the beginning of the war. There are, of course, waves of +indignation at such deliberate atrocities as the <i>Lusitania</i> outrage or +the Zeppelin raids, Wittenberg will not easily be forgotten, but it +would take many Sir George Makgills to divert British anger from the +responsible German Government to the German masses.</p> + +<p>That lack of any essential hatred does not mean that British opinion is +not solidly for the continuation of this war against militarist +imperialism to its complete and final defeat. But if that can be +defeated to any extent in Germany by the Germans, if the way opens to a +Germany as unmilitary and pacific as was Great Britain before this war, +there remains from the British point of view nothing else to fight +about. With the Germany of <i>Vorwaerts</i> which, I understand, would +evacuate and compensate Belgium and Serbia, set up a buffer state in +Alsace-Lorraine, and another in a restored Poland (including Posen), the +spirit of the Allies has no profound quarrel at all, has never had any +quarrel. We would only too gladly meet that Germany at a green table +to-morrow, and set to work arranging the compensation of Belgium and +Serbia, and tracing over the outlines of the natural map of mankind the +new political map of Europe.</p> + +<p>Still it must be admitted that not only in Great Britain but in all the +allied countries one finds a certain active minority corresponding to +Sir George Makgill's noisy following, who profess to believe that all +Germans to the third and fourth generation (save and except the +Hanoverian royal family domiciled in Great Britain) are a vile, +treacherous, and impossible race, a race animated by an incredible +racial vanity, a race which is indeed scarcely anything but a conspiracy +against the rest of mankind.</p> + +<p>The ravings of many of these people can only be paralleled by the stuff +about the cunning of the Jesuits that once circulated in +ultra-Protestant circles in England. Elderly Protestant ladies used to +look under the bed and in the cupboard every night for a Jesuit, just as +nowadays they look for a German spy, and as no doubt old German ladies +now look for Sir Edward Grey. It may be useful therefore, at the present +time, to point out that not only is the aggressive German idea not +peculiar to Germany, not only are there endless utterances of French +Chauvinists and British imperialists to be found entirely as vain, +unreasonable and aggressive, but that German militarist imperialism is +so little representative of the German quality, that scarcely one of its +leading exponents is a genuine German.</p> + +<p>Of course there is no denying that the Germans are a very distinctive +people, as distinctive as the French. But their distinctions are not +diabolical. Until the middle of the nineteenth century it was the +fashion to regard them as a race of philosophical incompetents. Their +reputation as a people of exceptionally military quality sprang up in +the weed-bed of human delusions between 1866 and 1872; it will certainly +not survive this war. Their reputation for organisation is another +matter. They are an orderly, industrious, and painstaking people, they +have a great respect for science, for formal education, and for +authority. It is their respect for education which has chiefly betrayed +them, and made them the instrument of Hohenzollern folly. Mr. F.M. +Hueffer has shown this quite conclusively in his admirable but ill-named +book, "When Blood is Their Argument." Their minds have been +systematically corrupted by base historical teaching, and the +inculcation of a rancid patriotism. They are a people under the sway of +organised suggestion. This catastrophic war and its preparation have +been their chief business for half a century; none the less their +peculiar qualities have still been displayed during that period; they +have still been able to lead the world in several branches of social +organisation and in the methodical development of technical science. +Systems of ideas are perhaps more readily shattered than built up; the +aggressive patriotism of many Germans must be already darkened by +serious doubts, and I see no inherent impossibility in hoping that the +mass of the Germans may be restored to the common sanity of mankind, +even in the twenty or thirty years of life that perhaps still remain for +me.</p> + +<p>Consider the names of the chief exponents of the aggressive German idea, +and you will find that not one is German. The first begetter of +Nietzsche's "blond beast," and of all that great flood of rubbish about +a strange superior race with whitish hair and blue eyes, that has so +fatally rotted the German imagination, was a Frenchman named Gobineau. +We British are not altogether free from the disease. As a small boy I +read the History of J.R. Green, and fed my pride upon the peculiar +virtues of my Anglo-Saxon blood. ("Cp.," as they say in footnotes, +Carlyle and Froude.) It was not a German but a renegade Englishman of +the Englishman-hating Whig type, Mr. Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who +carried the Gobineau theory to that delirious level which claims Dante +and Leonardo as Germans, and again it was not a German but a British +peer, still among us, Lord Redesdale, who in his eulogistic preface to +the English translation of Chamberlain's torrent of folly, hinted not +obscurely that the real father of Christ was not the Jew, Joseph, but a +much more Germanic person. Neither Clausewitz, who first impressed upon +the German mind the theory of ruthless warfare, nor Bernhardi, nor +Treitschke, who did as much to build up the Emperor's political +imagination, strike one as bearing particularly German names. There are +indeed very grave grounds for the German complaint that Germany has been +the victim of alien flattery and alien precedents. And what after all is +the Prussian dream of world empire but an imitative response to the +British empire and the adventure of Napoleon? The very title of the +German emperor is the name of an Italian, Caesar, far gone in decay. And +the backbone of the German system at the present time is the Prussian, +who is not really a German at all but a Germanised Wend. Take away the +imported and imposed elements from the things we fight to-day, leave +nothing but what is purely and originally German, and you leave very +little. We fight dynastic ambition, national vanity, greed, and the +fruits of fifty years of basely conceived and efficiently conducted +education.</p> + +<p>The majority of sensible and influential Englishmen are fully aware of +these facts. This does not alter their resolution to beat Germany +thoroughly and finally, and, if Germany remains Hohenzollern after the +war, to do their utmost to ring her in with commercial alliances, +tariffs, navigation and exclusion laws that will keep her poor and +powerless and out of mischief so long as her vice remains in her. But +these considerations of the essential innocence of the German do make +all this systematic hostility, which the British have had forced upon +them, a very uncongenial and reluctant hostility. Pro-civilisation, and +not Anti-German, is the purpose of the Allies. And the speculation of +just how relentlessly and for how long this ring of suspicion and +precaution need be maintained about Germany, of how soon the German may +decide to become once more a good European, is one of extraordinary +interest to every civilised man. In other words, what are the prospects +of a fairly fundamental revolution in German life and thought and +affairs in the years immediately before us?</p> +<br> + +<h3>Section 2</h3> + +<p>In a sense every European country must undergo revolutionary changes as +a consequence of the enormous economic exhaustion and social +dislocations of this war. But what I propose to discuss here is the +possibility of a real political revolution, in the narrower sense of +the word, in Germany, a revolution that will end the Hohenzollern +system, the German dynastic system, altogether, that will democratise +Prussia and put an end for ever to that secretive scheming of military +aggressions which is the essential quarrel of Europe with Germany. It is +the most momentous possibility of our times, because it opens the way to +an alternative state of affairs that may supersede the armed watching +and systematic war of tariffs, prohibitions, and exclusions against the +Central Empires that must quite unavoidably be the future attitude of +the Pledged Allies to any survival of the Hohenzollern empire.</p> + +<p>We have to bear in mind that in this discussion we are dealing with +something very new and quite untried hitherto by anything but success, +that new Germany whose unification began with the spoliation of Denmark +and was completed at Versailles. It is not a man's lifetime old. Under +the state socialism and aggressive militarism of the Hohenzollern regime +it had been led to a level of unexampled pride and prosperity, and it +plunged shouting and singing into this war, confident of victories. It +is still being fed with dwindling hopes of victory, no longer unstinted +hopes, but still hopes--by a sort of political bread-card system. The +hopes outlast the bread-and-butter, but they dwindle and dwindle. How is +this parvenu people going to stand the cessation of hope, the +realisation of the failure and fruitlessness of such efforts as no +people on earth have ever made before? How are they going to behave when +they realise fully that they have suffered and died and starved and +wasted all their land in vain? When they learn too that the cause of the +war was a trick, and the Russian invasion a lie? They have a large +democratic Press that will not hesitate to tell them that, that does +already to the best of its ability disillusion them. They are a +carefully trained and educated and disciplined people, it is true<a name="FNanchor4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4">[4]</a>; +but the solicitude of the German Government everywhere apparent, thus to +keep the resentment of the people directed to the proper quarter, is, I +think, just one of the things that are indicative of the revolutionary +possibilities in Germany. The Allied Governments let opinion, both in +their own countries and in America, shift for itself; they do not even +trouble to mitigate the inevitable exasperation of the military +censorship by an intelligent and tactful control. The German Government, +on the other hand, has organised the putting of the blame upon other +shoulders than its own elaborately and ably from the very beginning of +the war. It must know its own people best, and I do not see why it +should do this if there were not very dangerous possibilities ahead for +itself in the national temperament.</p> + +<blockquote> +<a name="Footnote_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor4">[4]</a> A recent circular, which <i>Vorwaerts</i> quotes, sent by the +education officials to the teachers of Frankfurt-am-Main, points out the +necessity of the "beautiful task" of inculcating a deep love for the +House of Hohenzollern (Crown Prince, grin and all), and concludes, "All +efforts to excuse or minimise or explain the disgraceful acts which our +enemies have committed against Germans all over the world are to be +firmly opposed by you should you see any signs of these efforts entering +the schools." +</blockquote> + +<p>It is one of the commonplaces of this question that in the past the +Germans have always been loyal subjects and never made a revolution. It +is alleged that there has never been a German republic. That is by no +means conclusively true. The nucleus of Swiss freedom was the +German-speaking cantons about the Lake of Lucerne; Tell was a German, +and he was glorified by the German Schiller. No doubt the Protestant +reformation was largely a business of dukes and princes, but the +underlying spirit of that revolt also lay in the German national +character. The Anabaptist insurrection was no mean thing in rebellions, +and the history of the Dutch, who are, after all, only the extreme +expression of the Low German type, is a history of the most stubborn +struggle for freedom in Europe. This legend of German docility will not +bear close examination. It is true that they are not given to spasmodic +outbreaks, and that they do not lend themselves readily to intrigues and +pronunciamentos, but there is every reason to suppose that they have the +heads to plan and the wills to carry out as sound and orderly and +effective a revolution as any people in Europe. Before the war drove +them frantic, the German comic papers were by no means suggestive of an +abject worship of authority and royalty for their own sakes. The +teaching of all forms of morality and sentimentality in schools produces +not only belief but reaction, and the livelier and more energetic the +pupil the more likely he is to react rather than accept.</p> + +<p>Whatever the feelings of the old women of Germany may be towards the +Kaiser and his family, my impression of the opinion of Germans in +general is that they believed firmly in empire, Kaiser and militarism +wholly and solely because they thought these things meant security, +success, triumph, more and more wealth, more and more Germany, and all +that had come to them since 1871 carried on to the <i>n</i>th degree.... I do +not think that all the schoolmasters of Germany, teaching in unison at +the tops of their voices, will sustain that belief beyond the end of +this war.</p> + +<p>At present every discomfort and disappointment of the German people is +being sedulously diverted into rage against the Allies, and particularly +against the English. This is all very well as long as the war goes on +with a certain effect of hopefulness. But what when presently the beam +has so tilted against Germany that an unprofitable peace has become +urgent and inevitable? How can the Hohenzollern suddenly abandon his +pose of righteous indignation and make friends with the accursed enemy, +and how can he make any peace at all with us while he still proclaims us +accursed? Either the Emperor has to go to his people and say, "We +promised you victory and it is defeat," or he has to say, "It is not +defeat, but we are going to make peace with these Russian barbarians who +invaded us, with the incompetent English who betrayed us, with all these +degenerate and contemptible races you so righteously hate and despise, +upon such terms that we shall never be able to attack them again. This +noble and wonderful war is to end in this futility and--these graves. +You were tricked into it, as you were tricked into war in 1870--but this +time it has not turned out quite so well. And besides, after all, we +find we can continue to get on with these people." ...</p> + +<p>In either case, I do not see how he can keep the habitual and cultivated +German hate pointing steadily away from himself. So long as the war is +going on that may be done, but when the soldiers come home the hate will +come home as well. In times of war peoples may hate abroad and with some +unanimity. But after the war, with no war going on or any prospect of a +fresh war, with every exploiter and every industrial tyrant who has made +his unobtrusive profits while the country scowled and spat at England, +stripped of the cover of that excitement, then it is inevitable that +much of this noble hate of England will be seen for the cant it is. The +cultivated hate of the war phase, reinforced by the fresh hate born of +confusion and misery, will swing loose, as it were, seeking dispersedly +for objects. The petty, incessant irritations of proximity will count +for more; the national idea for less. The Hohenzollerns and the Junkers +will have to be very nimble indeed if the German accomplishment of hate +does not swing round upon them.</p> + +<p>It is a common hypothesis with those who speculate on the probable +effects of these disillusionments that Germany may break up again into +its component parts. It is pointed out that Germany is, so to speak, a +palimpsest, that the broad design of the great black eagle and the +imperial crown are but newly painted over a great number of +particularisms, and that these particularisms may return. The empire of +the Germans may break up again. That I do not believe. The forces that +unified Germany lie deeper than the Hohenzollern adventure; print, paper +and the spoken word have bound Germany now into one people for all time. +None the less those previous crowns and symbols that still show through +the paint of the new design may help greatly, as that weakens under the +coming stresses, to disillusion men about its necessity. There was, they +will be reminded, a Germany before Prussia, before Austria for the +matter of that. The empire has been little more than the first German +experiment in unity. It is a new-fangled thing that came and may go +again--leaving Germany still a nation, still with the sense of a common +Fatherland.</p> + +<p>Let us consider a little more particularly the nature of the mass of +population whose collective action in the years immediately ahead of us +we are now attempting to forecast. Its social strata are only very +inexactly equivalent to those in the countries of the Pledged Allies. +First there are the masses of the people. In England for purposes of +edification we keep up the legend of the extreme efficiency of Germany, +the high level of German education, and so forth. The truth is that the +average <i>elementary</i> education of the common people in Britain is +superior to that of Germany, that the domestic efficiency of the British +common people is greater, their moral training better, and their +personal quality higher. This is shown by a number of quite conclusive +facts of which I will instance merely the higher German general +death-rate, the higher German infantile death-rate, the altogether +disproportionate percentage of crimes of violence in Germany, and the +indisputable personal superiority of the British common soldier over his +German antagonist. It is only when we get above the level of the masses +that the position is reversed. The ratio of public expenditure upon +secondary and higher education in Germany as compared with the +expenditure upon elementary education is out of all proportion to the +British ratio.</p> + +<p>Directly we come to the commercial, directive, official, technical and +professional classes in Germany, we come to classes far more highly +trained, more alert intellectually, more capable of collective action, +and more accessible to general ideas, than the less numerous and less +important corresponding classes in Britain. This great German middle +class is the strength and substance of the new Germany; it has increased +proportionally to the classes above and below it, it has developed +almost all its characteristics during the last half-century. At its +lower fringe it comprehends the skilled and scientifically trained +artisans, it supplies the brains of social democracy, and it reaches up +to the world of finance and quasi-state enterprise. And it is the "dark +horse" in all these speculations.</p> + +<p>Hitherto this middle class has been growing almost unawares. It has been +so busy coming into existence and growing, there has been so much to do +since 1871, that it has had scarcely a moment to think round the general +problem of politics at all. It has taken the new empire for granted as a +child takes its home for granted, and its state of mind to-day must be +rather like that of an intelligent boy who suddenly discovers that his +father's picturesque and wonderful speculations have led to his arrest +and brought the brokers into the house, and that there is nothing for it +but to turn to and take control of the family affairs.</p> + +<p>In Germany, the most antiquated and the most modern of European states, +the old dynastic Germany of the princes and junkers has lasted on by +virtue of exceptional successes and prestige into the world of steel and +electricity. But their prestige has paled before the engineering of +Krupp; their success evaporates. A new nation awakens to +self-consciousness only to find itself betrayed into apparently +irreconcilable hostility against the rest of mankind....</p> + +<p>What will be the quality of the monarch and court and junkerdom that +will face this awaking new Germany?</p> + +<p>The monarch will be before very long the present Crown Prince. The +Hohenzollerns have at least the merit of living quickly, and the present +Emperor draws near his allotted term. He will break a record in his +family if he lives another dozen years. So that quite soon after the war +this new disillusioned Germany will be contemplating the imperial graces +of the present Crown Prince. In every way he is an unattractive and +uninspiring figure; he has identified himself completely with that +militarism that has brought about the European catastrophe; in +repudiating him Germany will repudiate her essential offence against +civilisation, and his appears to be the sort of personality that it is a +pleasure to repudiate. He or some kindred regent will be the symbol of +royalty in Germany through all those years of maximum stress and +hardship ahead. Through-out the greater part of Germany the tradition of +loyalty to his house is not a century old. And the real German loyalty +is racial and national far more than dynastic. It is not the +Hohenzollern over all that they sing about; it is Deutschland. (And--as +in the case of all imperfectly civilised people--songs of hate for +foreigners.) But it needed a decadent young American to sing:</p> + +<blockquote> +"Thou Prince of Peace,<br> +Thou God of War,"<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>to the dismal rhetorician of Potsdam. Real emperors reconcile and +consolidate peoples, for an empire is not a nation; but the +Hohenzollerns have never dared to be anything but sedulously national, +"echt Deutsch" and advocates of black-letter. They know the people they +have to deal with.</p> + +<p>This new substantial middle mass of Germany has never been on friendly +terms with the Germany of the court and the landowner. It has inherited +a burgerlich tradition and resented even while it tolerated the swagger +of the aristocratic officer. It tolerated it because that sort of thing +was supposed to be necessary to the national success. But Munich, the +comic papers, Herr Harden, <i>Vorwaerts</i>, speak, I think, for the central +masses of German life far more truly than any official utterances do. +They speak in a voice a little gross, very sensible, blunt, with a kind +of heavy humour. That German voice one may not like, but one must needs +respect it. It is, at any rate, not bombastic. It is essentially honest. +When the imperial eagle comes home with half its feathers out like a +crow that has met a bear; when the surviving aristocratic officers +reappear with a vastly diminished swagger in the biergartens, I believe +that the hitherto acquiescent middle classes and skilled artisan class +of German will entirely disappoint those people who expect them to +behave either with servility or sentimental loyalty. The great +revolutionary impulse of the French was passionate and generous. The +revolutionary impulse of Germany may be even more deadly; it may be +contemptuous. It may be they will not even drag emperor and nobles down; +they will shove them aside....</p> + +<p>In all these matters one must ask the reader to enlarge his perspectives +at least as far back as the last three centuries. The galaxy of German +monarchies that has over-spread so much of Europe is a growth of hardly +more than two centuries. It is a phase in the long process of the +break-up of the Roman Empire and of the catholic system that inherited +its tradition. These royalties have formed a class apart, breeding only +among themselves, and attempting to preserve a sort of caste +internationalism in the face of an advance in human intelligence, a +spread of printing, reading, and writing that makes inevitably for the +recrudescence of national and race feeling, and the increasing +participation of the people in government.</p> + +<p>In Russia and England these originally German dynasties are meeting the +problems of the new time by becoming national. They modify themselves +from year to year. The time when Britain will again have a Queen of +British race may not be very remote. The days when the affairs of Europe +could be discussed at Windsor in German and from a German standpoint +ended with the death of Queen Victoria, and it is only in such +improvised courts as those of Greece and Bulgaria that the national +outlook can still be contemplated from a foreign standpoint and +discussed in a foreign tongue. The age when the monarchical system made +the courts of three-quarters of Europe a German's Fatherland has ended +for ever. And with that, the last rational advantage of monarchy and +royalist sentimentality disappears from the middle-class German's point +of view.</p> + +<p>So it seems to me that the following conclusions about the future of +Germany emerge from these considerations. It is improbable that there +will be any such revolution as overthrew French Imperialism in 1871; the +new Prussian Imperialism is closer to the tradition of the people and +much more firmly established through the educational propaganda of the +past half-century. But liberal forces in Germany may nevertheless be +strong enough to force a peace upon the Hohenzollern empire so soon as +any hopes of aggressive successes die away, before the utmost stage of +exhaustion is reached, early in 1917, perhaps, or at latest in 1918. +This, we suppose, will be a restrictive peace so far as Germany is +concerned, humiliating her and hampering her development. The German +Press will talk freely of a <i>revanche</i> and the renewal of the struggle, +and this will help to consolidate the Pledged Allies in their resolve to +hold Germany on every front and to retard her economic and financial +recovery. The dynasty will lose prestige gradually, the true story of +the war will creep slowly into the German consciousness, and the idea of +a middle-class republic, like the French Republic, only defensively +militant and essentially pacific and industrial, will become more and +more popular in the country.</p> + +<p>This will have the support of strong journalists, journalists of the +Harden type for example. The dynasty tends to become degenerate, so that +the probability of either some gross scandals or an ill-advised +reactionary movement back to absolutism may develop a crisis within a +few years of the peace settlement. The mercantile and professional +classes will join hands with the social democrats to remove the decaying +incubus of the Hohenzollern system, and Germany will become a more +modern and larger repetition of the Third French republic. This collapse +of the Germanic monarchical system may spread considerably beyond the +limits of the German empire. It will probably be effected without much +violence as a consequence of the convergence and maturity of many +streams of very obvious thought. Many of the monarchs concerned may find +themselves still left with their titles, palaces, and personal estates, +and merely deprived of their last vestiges of legal power. The way will +thus be opened for a gradual renewal of good feeling between the people +of Germany and the western Europeans. This renewal will be greatly +facilitated by the inevitable fall in the German birth-rate that the +shortage and economies of this war will have done much to promote, and +by the correlated discrediting of the expansionist idea. By 1960 or so +the alteration of perspectives will have gone so far that historians +will be a little perplexed to explain the causes of the Great War. The +militarist monomania of Germany will have become incomprehensible; her +<i>Welt Politik</i> literature incredible and unreadable....</p> + +<p>Such is my reading of the German horoscope.</p> + +<p>I doubt if there will be nearly so much writing and reading about the +Great War in the latter half of the twentieth century as there was about +Napoleon at the end of the nineteenth. The Great War is essentially +undramatic, it has no hero, it has no great leaders. It is a story of +the common sense of humanity suppressing certain tawdry and vulgar ideas +and ambitions, and readjusting much that was wasteful and unjust in +social and economic organisation. It is the story of how the spirit of +man was awakened by a nightmare of a War Lord.... The nightmare will +fade out of mind, and the spirit of man, with revivified energies, will +set about the realities of life, the re-establishment of order, the +increase of knowledge and creation. Amid these realities the great +qualities of the Germans mark them for a distinguished and important +rôle.</p> +<br> + +<h3>Section 3</h3> + +<p>The primary business of the Allies is not reconciliation with Germany. +Their primary concern is to organise a great League of Peace about the +world with which the American States and China may either unite or +establish a permanent understanding. Separate attempts to restore +friendship with the Germans will threaten the unanimity of the League of +Peace, and perhaps renew the intrigues and evils of the Germanic +dynastic system which this war may destroy. The essential restoration of +Germany must be the work of German men speaking plain sense to Germans, +and inducing their country to hold out its hand not to this or that +suspicious neighbour but to mankind. A militarist Germany is a Germany +self-condemned to isolation or world empire. A Germany which has +returned to the ways of peace, on the other hand, will be a country that +cannot be kept out of the system of civilisation. The tariff wall cannot +but be lowered, the watchful restrictions cannot but be discontinued +against such a Germany. Europe is a system with its heart half used, so +long as Germany is isolated. The German population is and will remain +the central and largest mass of people in Europe. That is a fact as +necessary as the Indianism of India.</p> + +<p>To reconstruct modern civilisation without Germany would be a colossal +artificial task that would take centuries to do. It is inconceivable +that Germany will stand out of Europeanism so long as to allow the trade +routes of the world to be entirely deflected from her. Her own +necessities march with the natural needs of the world.</p> + +<p>So that I give the alliance for the isolation of Germany at the outside +a life of forty years before it ceases to be necessary through the +recovered willingness of the Germans to lay aside aggression.</p> + +<p>But this is not a thing to be run at too hastily. It may be easily +possible to delay this national general reconciliation of mankind by an +unreal effusion. There will be no advantage in forcing the feelings of +the late combatants. It is ridiculous to suppose that for the next +decade or so, whatever happens, any Frenchmen are going to feel genial +about the occupation of their north-east provinces, or any Belgians +smile at the memory of Dinant or Louvain, or the Poles or Serbs forgive +the desolation of their country, or any English or Russians take a +humorous view of the treatment their people have had as prisoners in +Germany. So long as these are living memories they will keep a barrier +of dislike about Germany. Nor is it probable that the ordinary German +is going to survey the revised map of Africa with a happy sense of +relief, or blame no one but himself for the vanished prosperity of 1914. +That is asking too much of humanity. Unless I know nothing of Germany, +Germany will bristle with "denkmals" to keep open all such sores. The +dislike of Germany by the allied nations will be returned in the +hostility of a thwarted and disappointed people. Not even the neutrals +will be aloof from these hostilities and resentments. The world will +still, in 1950 or so, be throwing much passion into the rights and +wrongs of the sinking of the <i>Lusitania</i>. There will be a bitterness in +the memories of this and the next generation that will make the +spectacle of ardent Frenchmen or Englishmen or Belgians or Russians +embracing Germans with gusto--unpleasant, to say the least of it.</p> + +<p>We may bring ourselves to understand, we may bring ourselves to a cold +and reasonable forgiveness, we may suppress our Sir George Makgills and +so forth, but it will take sixty or seventy years for the two sides in +this present war to grow kindly again. Let us build no false hopes nor +pretend to any false generosities. These hatreds can die out only in one +way, by the passing of a generation, by the dying out of the wounded +and the wronged. Our business, our unsentimental business, is to set +about establishing such conditions that they will so die out. And that +is the business of the sane Germans too. Behind the barriers this war +will have set up between Germany and Anti-Germany, the intelligent men +in either camp must prepare the ultimate peace they will never enjoy, +must work for the days when their sons at least may meet as they +themselves can never meet, without accusation or resentment, upon the +common business of the World Peace. That is not to be done by any +conscientious sentimentalities, any slobbering denials of unforgettable +injuries. We want no Pro-German Leagues any more than we want +Anti-German Leagues. We want patience--and silence.</p> + +<p>My reason insists upon the inevitableness and necessity of this ultimate +reconciliation. I will do no more than I must to injure Germany further, +and I will do all that I can to restore the unity of mankind. None the +less is it true that for me for all the rest of my life the Germans I +shall meet, the German things I shall see, will be smeared with the +blood of my people and my friends that the wilfulness of Germany has +spilt.</p> + +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11289 ***</div> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..655c0a8 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #11289 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11289) diff --git a/old/11289-8.txt b/old/11289-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..abf267a --- /dev/null +++ b/old/11289-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6483 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of What is Coming?, by H. G. Wells + +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: What is Coming? + +Author: H. G. Wells + +Release Date: February 25, 2004 [EBook #11289] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT IS COMING? *** + + + + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Dave Morgan and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + + + + +What is Coming? + +A Forecast of Things after the War + +By H.G. WELLS + +1916 + + + +CONTENTS + + 1. FORECASTING THE FUTURE + 2. THE END OF THE WAR + 3. NATIONS IN LIQUIDATION + 4. BRAINTREE, BOCKING, AND THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD + 5. How FAR WILL EUROPE GO TOWARD SOCIALISM? + 6. LAWYER AND PRESS + 7. THE NEW EDUCATION + 8. WHAT THE WAR IS DOING FOR WOMEN + 9. THE NEW MAP OF EUROPE +10. THE UNITED STATES, FRANCE, BRITAIN, AND RUSSIA +11. THE "WHITE MAN'S BURTHEN" +12. THE OUTLOOK FOR THE GERMANS + + + + +I. FORECASTING THE FUTURE + + +Prophecy may vary between being an intellectual amusement and a serious +occupation; serious not only in its intentions, but in its consequences. +For it is the lot of prophets who frighten or disappoint to be stoned. +But for some of us moderns, who have been touched with the spirit of +science, prophesying is almost a habit of mind. + +Science is very largely analysis aimed at forecasting. The test of any +scientific law is our verification of its anticipations. The scientific +training develops the idea that whatever is going to happen is really +here now--if only one could see it. And when one is taken by surprise +the tendency is not to say with the untrained man, "Now, who'd ha' +thought it?" but "Now, what was it we overlooked?" + +Everything that has ever existed or that will ever exist is here--for +anyone who has eyes to see. But some of it demands eyes of superhuman +penetration. Some of it is patent; we are almost as certain of next +Christmas and the tides of the year 1960 and the death before 3000 A.D. +of everybody now alive as if these things had already happened. Below +that level of certainty, but still at a very high level of certainty, +there are such things as that men will probably be making aeroplanes of +an improved pattern in 1950, or that there will be a through railway +connection between Constantinople and Bombay and between Baku and Bombay +in the next half-century. From such grades of certainty as this, one may +come down the scale until the most obscure mystery of all is reached: +the mystery of the individual. Will England presently produce a military +genius? or what will Mr. Belloc say the day after to-morrow? The most +accessible field for the prophet is the heavens; the least is the secret +of the jumping cat within the human skull. How will so-and-so behave, +and how will the nation take it? For such questions as that we need the +subtlest guesses of all. + +Yet, even to such questions as these the sharp, observant man may risk +an answer with something rather better than an even chance of being +right. + +The present writer is a prophet by use and wont. He is more interested +in to-morrow than he is in to-day, and the past is just material for +future guessing. "Think of the men who have walked here!" said a tourist +in the Roman Coliseum. It was a Futurist mind that answered: "Think of +the men who will." It is surely as interesting that presently some +founder of the World Republic, some obstinate opponent of militarism or +legalism, or the man who will first release atomic energy for human use, +will walk along the Via Sacra as that Cicero or Giordano Bruno or +Shelley have walked there in the past. To the prophetic mind all history +is and will continue to be a prelude. The prophetic type will +steadfastly refuse to see the world as a museum; it will insist that +here is a stage set for a drama that perpetually begins. + +Now this forecasting disposition has led the writer not only to publish +a book of deliberate prophesying, called "Anticipations," but almost +without premeditation to scatter a number of more or less obvious +prophecies through his other books. From first to last he has been +writing for twenty years, so that it is possible to check a certain +proportion of these anticipations by the things that have happened, Some +of these shots have hit remarkably close to the bull's-eye of reality; +there are a number of inners and outers, and some clean misses. Much +that he wrote about in anticipation is now established commonplace. In +1894 there were still plenty of sceptics of the possibility either of +automobiles or aeroplanes; it was not until 1898 that Mr. S.P. Langley +(of the Smithsonian Institute) could send the writer a photograph of a +heavier-than-air flying machine actually in the air. There were articles +in the monthly magazines of those days _proving_ that flying was +impossible. + +One of the writer's luckiest shots was a description (in "Anticipations" +in 1900) of trench warfare, and of a deadlock almost exactly upon the +lines of the situation after the battle of the Marne. And he was +fortunate (in the same work) in his estimate of the limitations of +submarines. He anticipated Sir Percy Scott by a year in his doubts of +the decisive value of great battleships (_see_ "An Englishman Looks at +the World"); and he was sound in denying the decadence of France; in +doubting (before the Russo-Japanese struggle) the greatness of the power +of Russia, which was still in those days a British bogey; in making +Belgium the battle-ground in a coming struggle between the mid-European +Powers and the rest of Europe; and (he believes) in foretelling a +renascent Poland. Long before Europe was familiar with the engaging +personality of the German Crown Prince, he represented great airships +sailing over England (which country had been too unenterprising to make +any) under the command of a singularly anticipatory Prince Karl, and in +"The World Set Free" the last disturber of the peace is a certain +"Balkan Fox." + +In saying, however, here and there that "before such a year so-and-so +will happen," or that "so-and-so will not occur for the next twenty +years," he was generally pretty widely wrong; most of his time estimates +are too short; he foretold, for example, a special motor track apart +from the high road between London and Brighton before 1910, which is +still a dream, but he doubted if effective military aviation or aerial +fighting would be possible before 1950, which is a miss on the other +side. He will draw a modest veil over certain still wider misses that +the idle may find for themselves in his books; he prefers to count the +hits and leave the reckoning of the misses to those who will find a +pleasure in it. + +Of course, these prophecies of the writer's were made upon a basis of +very generalised knowledge. What can be done by a really sustained +research into a particular question--especially if it is a question +essentially mechanical--is shown by the work of a Frenchman all too +neglected by the trumpet of fame--Clement Ader. M. Ader was probably the +first man to get a mechanism up into the air for something more than a +leap. His _Eole_, as General Mensier testifies, prolonged a jump as far +as fifty metres as early as 1890. In 1897 his _Avion_ fairly flew. (This +is a year ahead of the date of my earliest photograph of S.P. Langley's +aeropile in mid-air.) This, however, is beside our present mark. The +fact of interest here is that in 1908, when flying was still almost +incredible, M. Ader published his "Aviation Militaire." Well, that was +eight years ago, and men have been fighting in the air now for a year, +and there is still nothing being done that M. Ader did not see, and +which we, if we had had the wisdom to attend to him, might not have been +prepared for. There is much that he foretells which is still awaiting +its inevitable fulfilment. So clearly can men of adequate knowledge and +sound reasoning power see into the years ahead in all such matters of +material development. + +But it is not with the development of mechanical inventions that the +writer now proposes to treat. In this book he intends to hazard certain +forecasts about the trend of events in the next decade or so. Mechanical +novelties will probably play a very small part in that coming history. +This world-wide war means a general arrest of invention and enterprise, +except in the direction of the war business. Ability is concentrated +upon that; the types of ability that are not applicable to warfare are +neglected; there is a vast destruction of capital and a waste of the +savings that are needed to finance new experiments. Moreover, we are +killing off many of our brightest young men. + +It is fairly safe to assume that there will be very little new furniture +on the stage of the world for some considerable time; that if there is +much difference in the roads and railways and shipping it will be for +the worse; that architecture, domestic equipment, and so on, will be +fortunate if in 1924 they stand where they did in the spring of 1914. In +the trenches of France and Flanders, and on the battlefields of Russia, +the Germans have been spending and making the world spend the comfort, +the luxury and the progress of the next quarter-century. There is no +accounting for tastes. But the result is that, while it was possible +for the writer in 1900 to write "Anticipations of the Reaction of +Mechanical Progress upon Human Life and Thought," in 1916 his +anticipations must belong to quite another system of consequences. + +The broad material facts before us are plain enough. It is the mental +facts that have to be unravelled. It isn't now a question of "What +thing--what faculty--what added power will come to hand, and how will it +affect our ways of living?" It is a question of "How are people going to +take these obvious things--waste of the world's resources, arrest of +material progress, the killing of a large moiety of the males in nearly +every European country, and universal loss and unhappiness?" We are +going to deal with realities here, at once more intimate and less +accessible than the effects of mechanism. + +As a preliminary reconnaissance, as it were, over the region of problems +we have to attack, let us consider the difficulties of a single +question, which is also a vital and central question in this forecast. +We shall not attempt a full answer here, because too many of the factors +must remain unexamined; later, perhaps, we may be in a better position +to do so. This question is the probability of the establishment of a +long world peace. + +At the outset of the war there was a very widely felt hope among the +intellectuals of the world that this war might clear up most of the +outstanding international problems, and prove the last war. The writer, +looking across the gulf of experience that separates us from 1914, +recalls two pamphlets whose very titles are eloquent of this +feeling--"The War that will End War," and "The Peace of the World." Was +the hope expressed in those phrases a dream? Is it already proven a +dream? Or can we read between the lines of the war news, diplomatic +disputations, threats and accusations, political wranglings and stories +of hardship and cruelty that now fill our papers, anything that still +justifies a hope that these bitter years of world sorrow are the +darkness before the dawn of a better day for mankind? Let us handle this +problem for a preliminary examination. + +What is really being examined here is the power of human reason to +prevail over passion--and certain other restraining and qualifying +forces. There can be little doubt that, if one could canvass all mankind +and ask them whether they would rather have no war any more, the +overwhelming mass of them would elect for universal peace. If it were +war of the modern mechanical type that was in question, with air raids, +high explosives, poison gas and submarines, there could be no doubt at +all about the response. "Give peace in our time, O Lord," is more than +ever the common prayer of Christendom, and the very war makers claim to +be peace makers; the German Emperor has never faltered in his assertion +that he encouraged Austria to send an impossible ultimatum to Serbia, +and invaded Belgium because Germany was being attacked. The Krupp-Kaiser +Empire, he assures us, is no eagle, but a double-headed lamb, resisting +the shearers and butchers. The apologists for war are in a hopeless +minority; a certain number of German Prussians who think war good for +the soul, and the dear ladies of the London _Morning Post_ who think war +so good for the manners of the working classes, are rare, discordant +voices in the general chorus against war. If a mere unsupported and +uncoordinated will for peace could realise itself, there would be peace, +and an enduring peace, to-morrow. But, as a matter of fact, there is no +peace coming to-morrow, and no clear prospect yet of an enduring +universal peace at the end of this war. + +Now what are the obstructions, and what are the antagonisms to the +exploitation of this world-wide disgust with war and the world-wide +desire for peace, so as to establish a world peace? + +Let us take them in order, and it will speedily become apparent that we +are dealing here with a subtle quantitative problem in psychology, a +constant weighing of whether this force or that force is the stronger. +We are dealing with influences so subtle that the accidents of some +striking dramatic occurrence, for example, may turn them this way or +that. We are dealing with the human will--and thereby comes a snare for +the feet of the would-be impartial prophet. To foretell the future is to +modify the future. It is hard for any prophet not to break into +exhortation after the fashion of the prophets of Israel. + +The first difficulty in the way of establishing a world peace is that it +is nobody's business in particular. Nearly all of us want a world +peace--in an amateurish sort of way. But there is no specific person or +persons to whom one can look for the initiatives. The world is a +supersaturated solution of the will-for-peace, and there is nothing for +it to crystallise upon. There is no one in all the world who is +responsible for the understanding and overcoming of the difficulties +involved. There are many more people, and there is much more +intelligence concentrated upon the manufacture of cigarettes or +hairpins than upon the establishment of a permanent world peace. There +are a few special secretaries employed by philanthropic Americans, and +that is about all. There has been no provision made even for the +emoluments of these gentlemen when universal peace is attained; +presumably they would lose their jobs. + +Nearly everybody wants peace; nearly everybody would be glad to wave a +white flag with a dove on it now--provided no unfair use was made of +such a demonstration by the enemy--but there is practically nobody +thinking out the arrangements needed, and nobody making nearly as much +propaganda for the instruction of the world in the things needful as is +made in selling any popular make of automobile. We have all our +particular businesses to attend to. And things are not got by just +wanting them; things are got by getting them, and rejecting whatever +precludes our getting them. + +That is the first great difficulty: the formal Peace Movement is quite +amateurish. + +It is so amateurish that the bulk of people do not even realise the very +first implication of the peace of the world. It has not succeeded in +bringing this home to them. + +If there is to be a permanent peace of the world, it is clear that +there must be some permanent means of settling disputes between Powers +and nations that would otherwise be at war. That means that there must +be some head power, some point of reference, a supreme court of some +kind, a universally recognised executive over and above the separate +Governments of the world that exist to-day. That does not mean that +those Governments Have to disappear, that "nationality" has to be given +up, or anything so drastic as that. But it does mean that all those +Governments have to surrender almost as much of their sovereignty as the +constituent sovereign States which make up the United States of America +have surrendered to the Federal Government; if their unification is to +be anything more than a formality, they will have to delegate a control +of their inter-State relations to an extent for which few minds are +prepared at present. + +It is really quite idle to dream of a warless world in which States are +still absolutely free to annoy one another with tariffs, with the +blocking and squeezing of trade routes, with the ill-treatment of +immigrants and travelling strangers, and between which there is no means +of settling boundary disputes. Moreover, as between the united States of +the world and the United States of America there is this further +complication of the world position: that almost all the great States of +Europe are in possession, firstly, of highly developed territories of +alien language and race, such as Egypt; and, secondly, of barbaric and +less-developed territories, such as Nigeria or Madagascar. There will be +nothing stable about a world settlement that does not destroy in these +"possessions" the national preference of the countries that own them and +that does not prepare for the immediate or eventual accession of these +subject peoples to State rank. Most certainly, however, thousands of +intelligent people in those great European countries who believe +themselves ardent for a world peace will be staggered at any proposal to +place any part of "our Empire" under a world administration on the +footing of a United States territory. Until they cease to be staggered +by anything of the sort, their aspirations for a permanent peace will +remain disconnected from the main current of their lives. And that +current will flow, sluggishly or rapidly, towards war. For essentially +these "possessions" are like tariffs, like the strategic occupation of +neutral countries or secret treaties; they are forms of the conflict +between nations to oust and prevail over other nations. + +Going on with such things and yet deprecating war is really not an +attempt to abolish conflict; it is an attempt to retain conflict and +limit its intensity; it is like trying to play hockey on the +understanding that the ball shall never travel faster than eight miles +an hour. + +Now it not only stands in our way to a permanent peace of the world that +the great mass of men are not prepared for even the most obvious +implications of such an idea, but there is also a second invincible +difficulty--that there is nowhere in the world anybody, any type of men, +any organisation, any idea, any nucleus or germ, that could possibly +develop into the necessary over-Government. We are asking for something +out of the air, out of nothingness, that will necessarily array against +itself the resistance of all those who are in control, or interested in +the control, of the affairs of sovereign States of the world as they are +at present; the resistance of a gigantic network of Government +organisations, interests, privileges, assumptions. + +Against this a headless, vague aspiration, however universal, is likely +to prove quite ineffective. Of course, it is possible to suggest that +the Hague Tribunal is conceivably the germ of such an overriding +direction and supreme court as the peace of the world demands, but in +reality the Hague Tribunal is a mere legal automatic machine. It does +nothing unless you set it in motion. It has no initiative. It does not +even protest against the most obvious outrages upon that phantom of a +world-conscience--international law. + +Pacificists in their search for some definite starting-point, about +which the immense predisposition for peace may crystallise, have +suggested the Pope and various religious organisations as a possible +basis for the organisation of peace. But there would be no appeal from +such a beginning to the non-Christian majority of mankind, and the +suggestion in itself indicates a profound ignorance of the nature of the +Christian churches. With the exception of the Quakers and a few Russian +sects, no Christian sect or church has ever repudiated war; most have +gone out of the way to sanction it and bless it. + +It is altogether too rashly assumed by people whose sentimentality +outruns their knowledge that Christianity is essentially an attempt to +carry out the personal teachings of Christ. It is nothing of the sort, +and no church authority will support that idea. Christianity--more +particularly after the ascendancy of the Trinitarian doctrine was +established--was and is a theological religion; it is the religion that +triumphed over Arianism, Manichseism, Gnosticism, and the like; it is +based not on Christ, but on its creeds. Christ, indeed, is not even its +symbol; on the contrary, the chosen symbol of Christianity is the cross +to which Christ was nailed and on which He died. It was very largely a +religion of the legions. It was the warrior Theodosius who, more than +any single other man, imposed it upon Europe. + +There is no reason, therefore, either in precedent or profession, for +expecting any plain lead from the churches in this tremendous task of +organising and making effective the widespread desire of the world for +peace. And even were this the case, it is doubtful if we should find in +the divines and dignitaries of the Vatican, of the Russian and British +official churches, or of any other of the multitudinous Christian sects, +the power and energy, the knowledge and ability, or even the goodwill +needed to negotiate so vast a thing as the creation of a world +authority. + +One other possible starting-point has been suggested. It is no great +feat for a naive imagination to suppose the President of the Swiss +Confederation or the President of the United States--for each of these +two systems is an exemplary and encouraging instance of the possibility +of the pacific synthesis of independent States--taking a propagandist +course and proposing extensions of their own systems to the suffering +belligerents. + +But nothing of the sort occurs. And when you come to look into the +circumstances of these two Presidents you will discover that neither of +them is any more free than anybody else to embark upon the task of +creating a State-overriding, war-preventing organisation of the world. +He has been created by a system, and he is bound to a system; his +concern is with the interests of the people of Switzerland or of the +United States of America. President Wilson, for example, is quite +sufficiently occupied by the affairs of the White House, by the clash of +political parties, by interferences with American overseas trade and the +security of American citizens. He has no more time to give to projects +for the fundamental reconstruction of international relationships than +has any recruit drilling in England, or any captain on an ocean liner, +or any engineer in charge of a going engine. + +We are all, indeed, busy with the things that come to hand every day. We +are all anxious for a permanent world peace, but we are all up to the +neck in things that leave us no time to attend to this world peace that +nearly every sane man desires. + +Meanwhile, a small minority of people who trade upon +contention--militarists, ambitious kings and statesmen, war contractors, +loan mongers, sensational journalists--follow up their interests and +start and sustain war. + +There lies the paradoxical reality of this question. Our first inquiry +lands us into the elucidation of this deadlock. Nearly everybody desires +a world peace, and yet there is not apparent anywhere any man free and +able and willing to establish it, while, on the other hand, there are a +considerable number of men in positions of especial influence and power +who will certainly resist the arrangements that are essential to its +establishment. + +But does this exhaust the question, and must we conclude that mankind is +doomed to a perpetual, futile struggling of States and nations and +peoples--breaking ever and again into war? The answer to that would +probably, be "Yes" if it were not for the progress of war. War is +continually becoming more scientific, more destructive, more coldly +logical, more intolerant of non-combatants, and more exhausting of any +kind of property. There is every reason to believe that it will continue +to intensify these characteristics. By doing so it may presently bring +about a state of affairs that will supply just the lacking elements that +are needed for the development of a world peace. + +I would venture to suggest that the present war is doing so now: that it +is producing changes in men's minds that may presently give us both the +needed energy and the needed organisation from which a world direction +may develop. + +The first, most distinctive thing about this conflict is the +exceptionally searching way in which it attacks human happiness. No war +has ever destroyed happiness so widely. It has not only killed and +wounded an unprecedented proportion of the male population of all the +combatant nations, but it has also destroyed wealth beyond precedent. It +has also destroyed freedom--of movement, of speech, of economic +enterprise. Hardly anyone alive has escaped the worry of it and the +threat of it. It has left scarcely a life untouched, and made scarcely a +life happier. There is a limit to the principle that "everybody's +business is nobody's business." The establishment of a world State, +which was interesting only to a few cranks and visionaries before the +war, is now the lively interest of a very great number of people. They +inquire about it; they have become accessible to ideas about it. + +Peace organisation seems, indeed, to be following the lines of public +sanitation. Everybody in England, for example, was bored by the +discussion of sanitation--until the great cholera epidemic. Everybody +thought public health a very desirable thing, but nobody thought it +intensely and overridingly desirable. Then the interest in sanitation +grew lively, and people exerted themselves to create responsible +organisations. Crimes of violence, again, were neglected in the great +cities of Europe until the danger grew to dimensions that evolved the +police. There come occasions when the normal concentration of an +individual upon his own immediate concerns becomes impossible; as, for +instance, when a man who is stocktaking in his business premises +discovers that the house next door is on fire. A great many people who +have never troubled their heads about anything but their own purely +personal and selfish interests are now realising that quite a multitude +of houses about them are ablaze, and that the fire is spreading. + +That is one change the war will bring about that will make for world +peace: a quickened general interest in its possibility. Another is the +certainty that the war will increase the number of devoted and fanatic +characters available for disinterested effort. Whatever other outcome +this war may have, it means that there lies ahead a period of extreme +economic and political dislocation. The credit system has been strained, +and will be strained, and will need unprecedented readjustments. In the +past such phases of uncertainty, sudden impoverishment and disorder as +certainly lie ahead of us, have meant for a considerable number of minds +a release--or, if you prefer it, a flight--from the habitual and +selfish. Types of intense religiosity, of devotion and of endeavour are +let loose, and there will be much more likelihood that we may presently +find, what it is impossible to find now, a number of devoted men and +women ready to give their whole lives, with a quasi-religious +enthusiasm, to this great task of peace establishment, finding in such +impersonal work a refuge from the disappointments, limitations, losses +and sorrows of their personal life--a refuge we need but little in more +settled and more prosperous periods. They will be but the outstanding +individuals in a very universal quickening. And simultaneously with this +quickening of the general imagination by experience there are certain +other developments in progress that point very clearly to a change under +the pressure of this war of just those institutions of nationality, +kingship, diplomacy and inter-State competition that have hitherto stood +most effectually in the way of a world pacification. The considerations +that seem to point to this third change are very convincing, to my mind. + +The real operating cause that is, I believe, going to break down the +deadlock that has hitherto made a supreme court and a federal government +for the world at large a dream, lies in just that possibility of an +"inconclusive peace" which so many people seem to dread. Germany, I +believe, is going to be beaten, but not completely crushed, by this war; +she is going to be left militarist and united with Austria and Hungary, +and unchanged in her essential nature; and out of that state of affairs +comes, I believe, the hope for an ultimate confederation of the nations +of the earth. + +Because, in the face of a league of the Central European Powers +attempting recuperation, cherishing revenge, dreaming of a renewal of +the struggle, it becomes impossible for the British, the French, the +Belgians, Russians, Italians or Japanese to think any longer of settling +their differences by war among themselves. To do so will mean the +creation of opportunity for the complete reinstatement of German +militarism. It will open the door for a conclusive German hegemony. +Now, however clumsy and confused the diplomacy of these present Allies +may be (challenged constantly, as it is, by democracy and hampered by a +free, venal and irresponsible Press in at least three of their +countries), the necessity they will be under will be so urgent and so +evident, that it is impossible to imagine that they will not set up some +permanent organ for the direction and co-ordination of their joint +international relationships. It may be a queerly constituted body at +first; it may be of a merely diplomatic pretension; it may be called a +Congress, or any old name of that sort, but essentially its business +will be to conduct a joint fiscal, military and naval policy, to keep +the peace in the Balkans and Asia, to establish a relationship with +China, and organise joint and several arbitration arrangements with +America. And it must develop something more sure and swift than our +present diplomacy. One of its chief concerns will be the right of way +through the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, and the watching of the +forces that stir up conflict in the Balkans and the Levant. It must have +unity enough for that; it must be much more than a mere leisurely, +unauthoritative conference of representatives. + +For precisely similar reasons it seems to me incredible that the two +great Central European Powers should ever fall into sustained conflict +again with one another. They, too, will be forced to create some +overriding body to prevent so suicidal a possibility. America too, it +may be, will develop some Pan-American equivalent. Probably the hundred +millions of Latin America may achieve a method of unity, and then deal +on equal terms with the present United States. The thing has been ably +advocated already in South America. Whatever appearances of separate +sovereignties are kept up after the war, the practical outcome of the +struggle is quite likely to be this: that there will be only three great +World Powers left--the anti-German allies, the allied Central Europeans, +the Pan-Americans. And it is to be noted that, whatever the constituents +of these three Powers may be, none of them is likely to be a monarchy. +They may include monarchies, as England includes dukedoms. But they will +be overriding alliances, not overriding rulers. I leave it to the +mathematician to work out exactly how much the chances of conflict are +diminished when there are practically only three Powers in the world +instead of some scores. And these new Powers will be in certain respects +unlike any existing European "States." None of the three Powers will be +small or homogeneous enough to serve dynastic ambitions, embody a +national or racial Kultur, or fall into the grip of any group of +financial enterprises. They will be more comprehensive, less romantic, +and more businesslike altogether. They will be, to use a phrase +suggested a year or so ago, Great States.... And the war threat between +the three will be so plain and definite, the issues will be so lifted +out of the spheres of merely personal ambition and national feeling, +that I do not see why the negotiating means, the standing conference of +the three, should not ultimately become the needed nucleus of the World +State for which at present we search the world in vain. + +There are more ways than one to the World State, and this second +possibility of a post-war conference and a conference of the Allies, +growing almost unawares into a pacific organisation of the world, since +it goes on directly from existing institutions, since it has none of the +quality of a clean break with the past which the idea of an immediate +World State and Pax Mundi involves, and more particularly since it +neither abolishes nor has in it anything to shock fundamentally the +princes, the diplomatists, the lawyers, the statesmen and politicians, +the nationalists and suspicious people, since it gives them years in +which to change and die out and reappear in new forms, and since at the +same time it will command the support of every intelligent human being +who gets his mind clear enough from his circumstances to understand its +import, is a far more credible hope than the hope of anything coming _de +novo_ out of Hague Foundations or the manifest logic of the war. + +But, of course, there weighs against these hopes the possibility that +the Allied Powers are too various in their nature, too biased, too +feeble intellectually and imaginatively, to hold together and maintain +any institution for co-operation. The British Press may be too silly not +to foster irritation and suspicion; we may get Carsonism on a larger +scale trading on the resuscitation of dying hatreds; the British and +Russian diplomatists may play annoying tricks upon one another by sheer +force of habit. There may be many troubles of that sort. Even then I do +not see that the hope of an ultimate world peace vanishes. But it will +be a Roman world peace, made in Germany, and there will have to be +several more great wars before it is established. Germany is too +homogeneous yet to have begun the lesson of compromise and the +renunciation of the dream of national conquest. The Germans are a +national, not an imperial people. France has learnt that through +suffering, and Britain and Russia because for two centuries they have +been imperial and not national systems. The German conception of world +peace is as yet a conception of German ascendancy. The Allied conception +becomes perforce one of mutual toleration. + +But I will not press this inquiry farther now. It is, as I said at the +beginning, a preliminary exploration of one of the great questions with +which I propose to play in these articles. The possibility I have +sketched is the one that most commends itself to me as probable. After a +more detailed examination of the big operating forces at present working +in the world, we may be in a position to revise these suggestions with a +greater confidence and draw our net of probabilities a little tighter. + + + + +II. THE END OF THE WAR[1] + + +The prophet who emerges with the most honour from this war is Bloch. It +must be fifteen or sixteen years ago since this gifted Pole made his +forecast of the future. Perhaps it is more, for the French translation +of his book was certainly in existence before the Boer War. His case was +that war between antagonists of fairly equal equipment must end in a +deadlock because of the continually increasing defensive efficiency of +entrenched infantry. This would give the defensive an advantage over the +most brilliant strategy and over considerably superior numbers that +would completely discourage all aggression. He concluded that war was +played out. + +[Footnote 1: This chapter was originally a newspaper article. It was +written in December, 1915, and published about the middle of January. +Some of it has passed from the quality of anticipation to achievement, +but I do not see that it needs any material revision on that account.] + +His book was very carefully studied in Germany. As a humble disciple of +Bloch I should have realised this, but I did not, and that failure led +me into some unfortunate prophesying at the outbreak of the war. I +judged Germany by the Kaiser, and by the Kaiser-worship which I saw in +Berlin. I thought that he was a theatrical person who would dream of +vast massed attacks and tremendous cavalry charges, and that he would +lead Germany to be smashed against the Allied defensive in the West, and +to be smashed so thoroughly that the war would be over. I did not +properly appreciate the more studious and more thorough Germany that was +to fight behind the Kaiser and thrust him aside, the Germany we British +fight now, the Ostwald-Krupp Germany of 1915. That Germany, one may now +perceive, had read and thought over and thought out the Bloch problem. + +There was also a translation of Bloch into French. In English a portion +of his book was translated for the general reader and published with a +preface by the late Mr. W.T. Stead. It does not seem to have reached the +British military authorities, nor was it published in England with an +instructive intention. As an imaginative work it would have been +considered worthless and impracticable. + +But it is manifest now that if the Belgian and French frontiers had been +properly prepared--as they should have been prepared when the Germans +built their strategic railways--with trenches and gun emplacements and +secondary and tertiary lines, the Germans would never have got fifty +miles into either France or Belgium. They would have been held at Liége +and in the Ardennes. Five hundred thousand men would have held them +indefinitely. But the Allies had never worked trench warfare; they were +unready for it, Germans knew of their unreadiness, and their unreadiness +it is quite clear they calculated. They did not reckon, it is now clear +that they were right in not reckoning, the Allies as contemporary +soldiers. They were going to fight a 1900 army with a 1914 army, and +their whole opening scheme was based on the conviction that the Allies +would not entrench. + +Somebody in those marvellous maxims from the dark ages that seem to form +the chief reading of our military experts, said that the army that +entrenches is a defeated army. The silly dictum was repeated and +repeated in the English papers after the battle of the Marne. It shows +just where our military science had reached in 1914, namely, to a level +a year before Bloch wrote. So the Allies retreated. + +For long weeks the Allies retreated out of the west of Belgium, out of +the north of France, and for rather over a month there was a loose +mobile war--as if Bloch had never existed. The Germans were not fighting +the 1914 pattern of war, they were fighting the 1899 pattern of war, in +which direct attack, outflanking and so on were still supposed to be +possible; they were fighting confident in their overwhelming numbers, in +their prepared surprise, in the unthought-out methods of their +opponents. In the "Victorian" war that ended in the middle of September, +1914, they delivered their blow, they over-reached, they were +successfully counter-attacked on the Marne, and then abruptly--almost +unfairly it seemed to the British sportsmanlike conceptions--they +shifted to the game played according to the very latest rules of 1914. +The war did not come up to date until the battle of the Aisne. With that +the second act of the great drama began. + +I do not believe that the Germans ever thought it would come up to date +so soon. I believe they thought that they would hustle the French out of +Paris, come right up to the Channel at Calais before the end of 1914, +and then entrench, produce the submarine attack and the Zeppelins +against England, working from Calais as a base, and that they would end +the war before the spring of 1915--with the Allies still a good fifteen +years behindhand. + +I believe the battle of the Marne was the decisive battle of the war, in +that it shattered this plan, and that the rest of the 1914 fighting was +Germany's attempt to reconstruct their broken scheme in the face of an +enemy who was continually getting more and more nearly up to date with +the fighting. By December, Bloch, who had seemed utterly discredited in +August, was justified up to the hilt. The world was entrenched at his +feet. By May the lagging military science of the British had so far +overtaken events as to realise that shrapnel was no longer so important +as high explosive, and within a year the significance of machine guns, a +significance thoroughly ventilated by imaginative writers fifteen years +before, was being grasped by the conservative but by no means +inadaptable leaders of Britain. + +The war since that first attempt--admirably planned and altogether +justifiable (from a military point of view, I mean)--of Germany to +"rush" a victory, has consisted almost entirely of failures on both +sides either to get round or through or over the situation foretold by +Bloch. There has been only one marked success, the German success in +Poland due to the failure of the Russian munitions. Then for a time the +war in the East was mobile and precarious while the Russians retreated +to their present positions, and the Germans pursued and tried to +surround them. That was a lapse into the pre-Bloch style. Now the +Russians are again entrenched, their supplies are restored, the Germans +have a lengthened line of supplies, and Bloch is back upon his pedestal +so far as the Eastern theatre goes. + +Bloch has been equally justified in the Anglo-French attempt to get +round through Gallipoli. The forces of the India Office have pushed +their way through unprepared country towards Bagdad, and are now +entrenching in Mesopotamia, but from the point of view of the main war +that is too remote to be considered either getting through or getting +round; and so too the losses of the German colonies and the East African +War are scarcely to be reckoned with in the main war. They have no +determining value. There remains the Balkan struggle. But the Balkan +struggle is something else; it is something new. It must be treated +separately. It is a war of treacheries and brags and appearances. It is +not a part of, it is a sequence to, the deadlock war of 1915. + +But before dealing with this new development of the latter half of 1915 +it is necessary to consider certain general aspects of the deadlock +war. It is manifest that the Germans hoped to secure an effective +victory in this war before they ran up against Bloch. But reckoning with +Bloch, as they certainly did, they hoped that even in the event of the +war getting to earth, it would still be possible to produce novelties +that would sufficiently neutralise Bloch to secure a victorious peace. +With unexpectedly powerful artillery suddenly concentrated, with high +explosives, with asphyxiating gas, with a well-organised system of +grenade throwing and mining, with attacks of flaming gas, and above all +with a vast munition-making plant to keep them going, they had a very +reasonable chance of hacking their way through. + +Against these prepared novelties the Allies have had to improvise, and +on the whole the improvisation has kept pace with the demands made upon +it. They have brought their military science up to date, and to-day the +disparity in science and equipment between the antagonists has greatly +diminished. There has been no escaping Bloch after all, and the +deadlock, if no sudden peace occurs, can end now in only one thing, the +exhaustion in various degrees of all the combatants and the succumbing +of the most exhausted. The idea of a conclusive end of the traditional +pattern to this war, of a triumphal entry into London, Paris, Berlin or +Moscow, is to be dismissed altogether from our calculations. The end of +this war will be a matter of negotiation between practically immobilised +and extremely shattered antagonists. + +There is, of course, one aspect of the Bloch deadlock that the Germans +at least have contemplated. If it is not possible to get through or +round, it may still be possible to get over. There is the air path. + +This idea has certainly taken hold of the French mind, but France has +been too busy and is temperamentally too economical to risk large +expenditures upon what is necessarily an experiment. The British are too +conservative and sceptical to be the pioneers in any such enterprise. +The Russians have been too poor in the necessary resources of mechanics +and material. + +The Germans alone have made any sustained attempt to strike through the +air at their enemies beyond the war zone. Their Zeppelin raids upon +England have shown a steadily increasing efficiency, and it is highly +probable that they will be repeated on a much larger scale before the +war is over. Quite possibly, too, the Germans are developing an +accessory force of large aeroplanes to co-operate in such an attack. +The long coasts of Britain, the impossibility of their being fully +equipped throughout their extent, except at a prohibitive cost of men +and material, to resist air invaders, exposes the whole length of the +island to considerable risk and annoyance from such an expedition. + +It is doubtful, though, if the utmost damage an air raid is likely to +inflict upon England would count materially in the exhaustion process, +and the moral effect of these raids has been, and will be, to stiffen +the British resolution to fight this war through to the conclusive +ending of any such possibilities. + +The net result of these air raids is an inflexible determination of the +British people rather to die in death grips with German militarism than +to live and let it survive. The best chance for the aircraft was at the +beginning of the war, when a surprise development might have had +astounding results. That chance has gone by. The Germans are racially +inferior to both French and English in the air, and the probability of +effective blows over the deadlock is on the whole a probability in +favour of the Allies. Nor is there anything on or under the sea that +seems likely now to produce decisive results. We return from these +considerations to a strengthened acceptance of Bloch. + +The essential question for the prophet remains therefore the question of +which group of Powers will exhaust itself most rapidly. And following on +from that comes the question of how the successive stages of exhaustion +will manifest themselves in the combatant nations. The problems of this +war, as of all war, end as they begin in national psychology. + +But it will be urged that this is reckoning without the Balkans. I +submit that the German thrust through the wooded wilderness of Serbia is +really no part of the war that has ended in the deadlock of 1915. It is +dramatic, tragic, spectacular, but it is quite inconclusive. Here there +is no way round or through to any vital centre of Germany's antagonists. +It turns nothing; it opens no path to Paris, London, or Petrograd. It is +a long, long way from the Danube to either Egypt or Mesopotamia, and +there--and there--Bloch is waiting. I do not think the Germans have any +intention of so generous an extension of their responsibilities. The +Balkan complication is no solution of the deadlock problem. It is the +opening of the sequel. + +A whole series of new problems are opened up directly we turn to this +most troubled region of the Balkans--problems of the value of kingship, +of nationality, of the destiny of such cities as Constantinople, which +from their very beginning have never had any sort of nationality at all, +of the destiny of countries such as Albania, where a tangle of intense +tribal nationalities is distributed in spots and patches, or Dalmatia, +where one extremely self-conscious nation and language is present in the +towns and another in the surrounding country, or Asia Minor, where no +definite national boundaries, no religious, linguistic, or social +homogeneities have ever established themselves since the Roman legions +beat them down. + +But all these questions can really be deferred or set aside in our +present discussion, which is a discussion of the main war. Whatever +surprises or changes this last phase of the Eastern Empire, that +blood-clotted melodrama, may involve, they will but assist and hasten on +the essential conclusion of the great war, that the Central Powers and +their pledged antagonists are in a deadlock, unable to reach a decision, +and steadily, day by day, hour by hour, losing men, destroying material, +spending credit, approaching something unprecedented, unknown, that we +try to express to ourselves by the word exhaustion. + +Just how the people who use the word "exhaustion" so freely are +prepared to define it, is a matter for speculation. The idea seems to be +a phase in which the production of equipped forces ceases through the +using up of men or material or both. If the exhaustion is fairly mutual, +it need not be decisive for a long time. It may mean simply an ebb of +vigour on both sides, unusual hardship, a general social and economic +disorganisation and grading down. The fact that a great killing off of +men is implicit in the process, and that the survivors will be largely +under discipline, militates against the idea that the end may come +suddenly through a vigorous revolutionary outbreak. Exhaustion is likely +to be a very long and very thorough process, extending over years. A +"war of attrition" may last into 1918 or 1919, and may bring us to +conditions of strain and deprivation still only very vaguely imagined. +What happens in the Turkish Empire or India or America or elsewhere may +extend the areas of waste and accelerate or retard the process, but is +quite unlikely to end it. + +Let us ask now which of the combatants is likely to undergo exhaustion +most rapidly, and what is of equal or greater importance, which is +likely to feel it first and most? No doubt there is a bias in my mind, +but it seems to me that the odds are on the whole heavily against the +Central Powers. Their peculiar German virtue, their tremendously +complete organisation, which enabled them to put so large a proportion +of their total resources into their first onslaught and to make so great +and rapid a recovery in the spring of 1915, leaves them with less to +draw upon now. Out of a smaller fortune they have spent a larger sum. +They are blockaded to a very considerable extent, and against them fight +not merely the resources of the Allies, but, thanks to the complete +British victory in the sea struggle, the purchasable resources of all +the world. + +Conceivably the Central Powers will draw upon the resources of their +Balkan and Asiatic allies, but the extent to which they can do that may +very easily be over-estimated. There is a limit to the power for treason +of these supposititious German monarchs that Western folly has permitted +to possess these Balkan thrones--thrones which need never have been +thrones at all--and none of the Balkan peoples is likely to witness with +enthusiasm the complete looting of its country in the German interest by +a German court. Germany will have to pay on the nail for most of her +Balkan help. She will have to put more into the Balkans than she takes +out. + +Compared with the world behind the Allies the Turkish Empire is a +country of mountains, desert and undeveloped lands. To develop these +regions into a source of supplies under the strains and shortages of +war-time, will be an immense and dangerous undertaking for Germany. She +may open mines she may never work, build railways that others will +enjoy, sow harvests for alien reaping. The people the Bulgarians want in +Bulgaria are not Germans but Bulgarians; the people the Turks want in +Anatolia are not Germans but Turks. And for all these tasks Germany must +send men. Men? + +At present, so far as any judgment is possible, Germany is feeling the +pinch of the war much more even than France, which is habitually +parsimonious, and instinctively cleverly economical, and Russia, which +is hardy and insensitive. Great Britain has really only begun to feel +the stress. She has probably suffered economically no more than have +Holland or Switzerland, and Italy and Japan have certainly suffered +less. All these three great countries are still full of men, of gear, of +saleable futures. In every part of the globe Great Britain has colossal +investments. She has still to apply the great principle of conscription +not only to her sons but to the property of her overseas investors and +of her landed proprietors. She has not even looked yet at the German +financial expedients of a year ago. She moves reluctantly, but surely, +towards such a thoroughness of mobilisation. There need be no doubt that +she will completely socialise herself, completely reorganise her whole +social and economic structure sooner than lose this war. She will do it +clumsily and ungracefully, with much internal bickering, with much +trickery on the part of her lawyers, and much baseness on the part of +her landlords; but she will do it not so slowly as a logical mind might +anticipate. She will get there a little late, expensively, but still in +time.... + +The German group, I reckon, therefore, will become exhausted first. I +think, too, that Germany will, as a nation, feel and be aware of what is +happening to her sooner than any other of the nations that are sharing +in this process of depletion. In 1914 the Germans were reaping the +harvest of forty years of economic development and business enterprise. +Property and plenty were new experiences, and a generation had grown up +in whose world a sense of expansion and progress was normal. There +existed amongst it no tradition of the great hardship of war, such as +the French possessed, to steel its mind. It had none of the irrational +mute toughness of the Russians and British. It was a sentimental people, +making a habit of success; it rushed chanting to war against the most +grimly heroic and the most stolidly enduring of races. Germany came into +this war more buoyantly and confidently than any other combatant. It +expected another 1871; at the utmost it anticipated a year of war. + +Never were a people so disillusioned as the Germans must already be, +never has a nation been called upon for so complete a mental +readjustment. Neither conclusive victories nor defeats have been theirs, +but only a slow, vast transition from joyful effort and an illusion of +rapid triumph to hardship, loss and loss and loss of substance, the +dwindling of great hopes, the realisation of ebb in the tide of national +welfare. Now they must fight on against implacable, indomitable Allies. +They are under stresses now as harsh at least as the stresses of France. +And, compared with the French, the Germans are untempered steel. + +We know little of the psychology of this new Germany that has come into +being since 1871, but it is doubtful if it will accept defeat, and still +more doubtful how it can evade some ending to the war that will admit +the failure of all its great hopes of Paris subjugated, London humbled, +Russia suppliant, Belgium conquered, the Near East a prey. Such an +admission will be a day of reckoning that German Imperialism will +postpone until the last hope of some breach among the Allies, some +saving miracle in the old Eastern Empire, some dramatically-snatched +victory at the eleventh hour, is gone. + +Nor can the Pledged Allies consent to a peace that does not involve the +evacuation and compensation of Belgium and Serbia, and at least the +autonomy of the lost Rhine provinces of France. That is their very +minimum. That, and the making of Germany so sick and weary of military +adventure that the danger of German ambition will cease to overshadow +European life. Those are the ends of the main war. Europe will go down +through stage after stage of impoverishment and exhaustion until these +ends are attained, or made for ever impossible. + +But these things form only the main outline of a story with a vast +amount of collateral interest. It is to these collateral issues that the +amateur in prophecy must give his attention. It is here that the German +will be induced by his Government to see his compensations. He will be +consoled for the restoration of Serbia by the prospect of future +conflicts between Italian and Jugoslav that will let him in again to the +Adriatic. His attention will be directed to his newer, closer +association with Bulgaria and Turkey. In those countries he will be told +he may yet repeat the miracle of Hungary. And there may be also another +Hungary in Poland. It will be whispered to him that he has really +conquered those countries when indeed it is highly probable he has only +spent his substance in setting up new assertive alien allies. The +Kaiser, if he is not too afraid of the precedent of Sarajevo, may make a +great entry into Constantinople, with an effect of conquering what is +after all only a temporarily allied capital. The German will hope also +to retain his fleet, and no peace, he will be reminded, can rob him of +his hard-earned technical superiority in the air. The German air fleet +of 1930 may yet be something as predominant as the British Navy of 1915, +and capable of delivering a much more intimate blow. Had he not better +wait for that? When such consolations as these become popular in the +German Press we of the Pledged Allies may begin to talk of peace, for +these will be its necessary heralds. + +The concluding phase of a process of general exhaustion must almost +inevitably be a game of bluff. Neither side will admit its extremity. +Neither side, therefore, will make any direct proposals to its +antagonists nor any open advances to a neutral. But there will be much +inspired peace talk through neutral media, and the consultations of the +anti-German allies will become more intimate and detailed. Suggestions +will "leak out" remarkably from both sides, to journalists and neutral +go-betweens. The Eastern and Western Allies will probably begin quite +soon to discuss an anti-German Zollverein and the co-ordination of their +military and naval organisations in the days that are to follow the war. +A discussion of a Central European Zollverein is already afoot. A +general idea of the possible rearrangement of the European States after +the war will grow up in the common European and American mind; public +men on either side will indicate concordance with this general idea, and +some neutral power, Denmark or Spain or the United States or Holland, +will invite representatives to an informal discussion of these +possibilities. + +Probably, therefore, the peace negotiations will take the extraordinary +form of two simultaneous conferences--one of the Pledged Allies, sitting +probably in Paris or London, and the other of representatives of all the +combatants meeting in some neutral country--Holland would be the most +convenient--while the war will still be going on. The Dutch conference +would be in immediate contact by telephone and telegraph with the Allied +conference and with Berlin.... + +The broad conditions of a possible peace will begin to get stated +towards the end of 1916, and a certain lassitude will creep over the +operations in the field.... The process of exhaustion will probably have +reached such a point by that time that it will be a primary fact in the +consciousness of common citizens of every belligerent country. The +common life of all Europe will have become--miserable. Conclusive blows +will have receded out of the imagination of the contending Powers. The +war will have reached its fourth and last stage as a war. The war of the +great attack will have given place to the war of the military deadlock; +the war of the deadlock will have gone on, and as the great combatants +have become enfeebled relatively to the smaller States, there will have +been a gradual shifting of the interest to the war of treasons and +diplomacies in the Eastern Mediterranean. + +Quickly thereafter the last phase will be developing into predominance, +in which each group of nations will be most concerned, no longer about +victories or conquests, but about securing for itself the best chances +of rapid economic recuperation and social reconstruction. The commercial +treaties, the arrangements for future associated action, made by the +great Allies among themselves will appear more and more important to +them, and the mere question of boundaries less and less. It will dawn +upon Europe that she has already dissipated the resources that have +enabled her to levy the tribute paid for her investments in every +quarter of the earth, and that neither the Germans nor their antagonists +will be able for many years to go on with those projects for world +exploitation which lay at the root of the great war. Very jaded and +anaemic nations will sit about the table on which the new map of Europe +will be drawn.... Each of the diplomatists will come to that business +with a certain pre-occupation. Each will be thinking of his country as +one thinks of a patient of doubtful patience and temper who is coming-to +out of the drugged stupor of a crucial, ill-conceived, and unnecessary +operation ... Each will be thinking of Labour, wounded and perplexed, +returning to the disorganised or nationalised factories from which +Capital has gone a-fighting, and to which it may never return. + + + + +III. NATIONS IN LIQUIDATION + + +The war has become a war of exhaustion. One hears a great deal of the +idea that "financial collapse" may bring it to an end. A number of +people seem to be convinced that a war cannot be waged without money, +that soldiers must be paid, munitions must be bought; that for this +money is necessary and the consent of bank depositors; so that if all +the wealth of the world were nominally possessed by some one man in a +little office he could stop the war by saying simply, "I will lend you +no more money." + +Now, as a matter of fact, money is a power only in so far as people +believe in it and Governments sustain it. If a State is sufficiently +strong and well organised, its control over the money power is +unlimited. If it can rule its people, and if it has the necessary +resources of men and material within its borders, it can go on in a +state of war so long as these things last, with almost any flimsy sort +of substitute for money that it chooses to print. It can enrol and use +the men, and seize and work the material. It can take over the land and +cultivate it and distribute its products. The little man in the office +is only a power because the State chooses to recognise his claim. So +long as he is convenient he seems to be a power. So soon as the State is +intelligent enough and strong enough it can do without him. It can take +what it wants, and tell him to go and hang himself. That is the +melancholy ultimate of the usurer. That is the quintessence of +"finance." All credit is State-made, and what the State has made the +State can alter or destroy. + +The owner and the creditor have never had any other power to give or +withhold credit than the credit that was given to them. They exist by +sufferance or superstition and not of necessity. + +It is the habit of overlooking this little flaw in the imperatives of +ownership that enables people to say that this war cannot go on beyond +such and such a date--the end of 1916 is much in favour just +now--because we cannot pay for it. It would be about as reasonable to +expect a battle to end because a landlord had ordered the soldiers off +his estate. So long as there are men to fight and stuff to fight with +the war can go on. There is bankruptcy, but the bankruptcy of States is +not like the bankruptcy of individuals. There is no such thing among +States as an undischarged bankrupt who is forbidden to carry on. A State +may keep on going bankrupt indefinitely and still carry on. It will be +the next step in our prophetic exercise to examine the differences +between State bankruptcy and the bankruptcy of a subject of the State. + +The belligerent Powers are approaching a phase when they will no longer +be paying anything like twenty shillings in the pound. In a very +definite sense they are not paying twenty shillings in the pound now. +That is not going to stop the war, but it involves a string of +consequences and possibilities of the utmost importance to our problem +of what is coming when the war is over. + +The exhaustion that will bring this war to its end at last is a process +of destruction of men and material. The process of bankruptcy that is +also going on is nothing of the sort. Bankruptcy destroys no concrete +thing; it merely writes off a debt; it destroys a financial but not an +economic reality. It is, in itself, a mental, not a physical fact. "A" +owes "B" a debt; he goes bankrupt and pays a dividend, a fraction of his +debt, and gets his discharge. "B's" feelings, as we novelists used to +say, are "better imagined than described"; he does his best to satisfy +himself that "A" can pay no more, and then "A" and "B" both go about +their business again. + +In England, if "A" is a sufficiently poor man not to be formidable, and +has gone bankrupt on a small scale, he gets squeezed ferociously to +extract the last farthing from him; he may find himself in jail and his +home utterly smashed up. If he is a richer man, and has failed on a +larger scale, our law is more sympathetic, and he gets off much more +easily. Often his creditors find it advisable to arrange with him so +that he will still carry on with his bankrupt concern. They find it is +better to allow him to carry on than to smash him up. + +There are countless men in the world living very comfortably indeed, and +running businesses that were once their own property for their +creditors. There are still more who have written off princely debts and +do not seem to be a "ha'p'orth the worse." And their creditors have +found a balm in time and philosophy. Bankruptcy is only painful and +destructive to small people and helpless people; but then for them +everything is painful and destructive; it can be a very light matter to +big people; it may be almost painless to a State. + +If England went bankrupt in the completest way to-morrow, and repudiated +all its debts both as a nation and as a community of individuals, if it +declared, if I may use a self-contradictory phrase, a permanent +moratorium, there would be not an acre of ploughed land in the country, +not a yard of cloth or a loaf of bread the less for that. There would be +nothing material destroyed within the State. There would be no immediate +convulsion. Use and wont would carry most people on some days before +they even began to doubt whether So-and-so could pay his way, and +whether there would be wages at the end of the week. + +But people who lived upon rent or investments or pensions would +presently be very busy thinking how they were going to get food when the +butcher and baker insisted upon cash. It would be only with comparative +slowness that the bulk of men would realise that a fabric of confidence +and confident assumptions had vanished; that cheques and bank notes and +token money and every sort of bond and scrip were worthless, that +employers had nothing to pay with, shopkeepers no means of procuring +stock, that metallic money was disappearing, and that a paralysis had +come upon the community. + +Such an establishment as a workhouse or an old-fashioned monastery, +living upon the produce of its own farming and supplying all its own +labour, would be least embarrassed amidst the general perplexity. For it +would not be upon a credit basis, but a socialistic basis, a basis of +direct reality, and its need for payments would be incidental. And +land-owning peasants growing their own food would carry on, and small +cultivating occupiers, who could easily fall back on barter for anything +needed. + +The mass of the population in such a country as England would, however, +soon be standing about in hopeless perplexity and on the verge of +frantic panic--although there was just as much food to be eaten, just as +many houses to live in, and just as much work needing to be done. +Suddenly the pots would be empty, and famine would be in the land, +although the farms and butchers' shops were still well stocked. The +general community would be like an automobile when the magneto fails. +Everything would be there and in order, except for the spark of credit +which keeps the engine working. + +That is how quite a lot of people seem to imagine national bankruptcy: +as a catastrophic jolt. It is a quite impossible nightmare of cessation. +The reality is the completest contrast. All the belligerent countries of +the world are at the present moment quietly, steadily and progressively +going bankrupt, and the mass of people are not even aware of this +process of insolvency. + +An individual when he goes bankrupt is measured by the monetary standard +of the country he is in; he pays five or ten or fifteen or so many +shillings in the pound. A community in debt does something which is in +effect the same, but in appearance rather different. It still pays a +pound, but the purchasing power of the pound has diminished. This is +what is happening all over the world to-day; there is a rise in prices. +This is automatic national bankruptcy; unplanned, though perhaps not +unforeseen. It is not a deliberate State act, but a consequence of the +interruption of communications, the diversion of productive energy, the +increased demand for many necessities by the Government and the general +waste under war conditions. + +At the beginning of this war England had a certain national debt; it has +paid off none of that original debt; it has added to it tremendously; so +far as money and bankers' records go it still owes and intends to pay +that original debt; but if you translate the language of £.s.d. into +realities, you will find that in loaves or iron or copper or hours of +toil, or indeed in any reality except gold, it owes now, so far as that +original debt goes, far less than it did at the outset. As the war goes +on and the rise in prices continues, the subsequent borrowings and +contracts are undergoing a similar bankrupt reduction. The attempt of +the landlord of small weekly and annual properties to adjust himself to +the new conditions by raising rents is being checked by legislation in +Great Britain, and has been completely checked in France. The attempts +of labour to readjust wages have been partially successful in spite of +the eloquent protests of those great exponents of plain living, economy, +abstinence, and honest, modest, underpaid toil, Messrs. Asquith, +McKenna, and Runciman. It is doubtful if the rise in wages is keeping +pace with the rise in prices. So far as it fails to do so the load is on +the usual pack animal, the poor man. + +The rest of the loss falls chiefly upon the creditor class, the people +with fixed incomes and fixed salaries, the landlords, who have let at +long leases, the people with pensions, endowed institutions, the Church, +insurance companies, and the like. They are all being scaled down. They +are all more able to stand scaling down than the proletarians. + +Assuming that it is possible to bring up wages to the level of the +higher prices, and that the rise in rents can be checked by legislation +or captured by taxation, the rise in prices is, on the whole, a thing to +the advantage of the propertyless man as against accumulated property. +It writes off the past and clears the way for a fresh start in the +future. + +An age of cheapness is an old usurers' age. England before the war was a +paradise of ancient usuries; everywhere were great houses and enclosed +parks; the multitude of gentlemen's servants and golf clubs and such +like excrescences of the comfort of prosperous people was perpetually +increasing; it did not "pay" to build labourers' cottages, and the more +expensive sort of automobile had driven the bicycle as a pleasure +vehicle off the roads. Western Europe was running to fat and not to +muscle, as America is to-day. + +But if that old usurer's age is over, the young usurer's age may be +coming. To meet such enormous demands as this war is making there are +three chief courses open to the modern State. + +The first is to _take_--to get men by conscription and material by +requisition. The British Government _takes_ more modestly than any other +in the world; its tradition from Magna Charta onward, the legal training +of most of its members, all make towards a reverence for private +ownership and private claims, as opposed to the claims of State and +commonweal, unequalled in the world's history. + +The next course of a nation in need is to _tax_ and pay for what it +wants, which is a fractional and more evenly distributed method of +taking. Both of these methods raise prices, the second most so, and so +facilitate the automatic release of the future from the boarding of the +past. So far all the belligerent Governments have taxed on the timid +side. + +Finally there is the _loan_. This mortgages the future to the present +necessity, and it has so far been the predominant source of war credits. +It is the method that produces least immediate friction in the State; it +employs all the savings of surplus income that the unrest of civil +enterprise leaves idle; it has an effect of creating property by a +process that destroys the substance of the community. In Germany an +enormous bulk of property has been mortgaged to supply the subscriptions +to the war loans, and those holdings have again been hypothecated to +subscribe to subsequent loans. The Pledged Allies with longer stockings +have not yet got to this pitch of overlapping. But everywhere in Europe +what is happening is a great transformation of the property owner into a +_rentier_, and the passing of realty into the hands of the State. + +At the end of the war Great Britain will probably find herself with a +national debt so great that she will be committed to the payment of an +annual interest greater in figures than the entire national expenditure +before the war. As an optimistic lady put it the other day: "All the +people who aren't killed will be living quite comfortably on War Loan +for the rest of their lives." + +But part, at least, of the bulk of this wealth will be imaginary rather +than real because of the rise in prices, in wages, in rent, and in +taxation. Most of us who are buying the British and French War Loans +have no illusions on that score; we know we are buying an income of +diminishing purchasing power. Yet it would be a poor creature in these +days when there is scarcely a possible young man in one's circle who has +not quite freely and cheerfully staked his life, who was not prepared to +consider his investments as being also to an undefined extent a national +subscription. + +A rise in prices is not, however, the only process that will check the +appearance of a new rich usurer class after the war. There is something +else ahead that has happened already in Germany, that is quietly coming +about among the Allies, and that is the cessation of gold payments. In +Great Britain, of course, the pound note is still convertible into a +golden sovereign; but Great Britain will not get through the war on +those terms. There comes a point in the stress upon a Government when it +must depart from the austerer line of financial rectitude--and tamper in +some way with currency. + +Sooner or later, and probably in all cases before 1917, all the +belligerents will be forced to adopt inconvertible paper money for their +internal uses. There will be British assignats or greenbacks. It will +seem to many financial sentimentalists almost as though Great Britain +were hauling down a flag when the sovereign, which has already +disappeared into bank and Treasury coffers, is locked up there and +reserved for international trade. But Great Britain has other sentiments +to consider than the finer feelings of bankers and the delicacies of +usury. The pound British will come out of this war like a company out of +a well-shelled trench--attenuated. + +Depreciation of the currency means, of course, a continuing rise in +prices, a continuing writing off of debt. If labour has any real grasp +of its true interests it will not resent this. It will merely insist +steadfastly on a proper adjustment of its wages to the new standard. On +that point, however, it will be better to write later.... + +Let us see how far we have got in this guessing. We have considered +reasons that seem to point to the destruction of a great amount of old +property and old debt, and the creation of a great volume of new debt +before the end of the war, and we have adopted the ideas that currency +will probably have depreciated more and more and prices risen right up +to the very end. + +There will be by that time a general habit of saving throughout the +community, a habit more firmly established perhaps in the propertied +than in the wages-earning class. People will be growing accustomed to a +dear and insecure world. They will adopt a habit of caution; become +desirous of saving and security. + +Directly the phase of enormous war loans ends, the new class of +_rentiers_ holding the various great new national loans will find +themselves drawing this collectively vast income and anxious to invest +it. They will for a time be receiving the bulk of the unearned income of +the world. Here, in the high prices representing demand and the need for +some reinvestment of interest representing supply, we have two of the +chief factors that are supposed to be necessary to a phase of business +enterprise. Will the economic history of the next few decades be the +story of a restoration of the capitalistic system upon a new basis? +Shall we all become investors, speculators, or workers toiling our way +to a new period of security, cheapness and low interest, a restoration +of the park, the enclosure, the gold standard and the big automobile, +with only this difference--that the minimum wage will be somewhere about +two pounds, and that a five-pound note will purchase about as much as a +couple of guineas would do in 1913? + +That is practically parallel with what happened in the opening half of +the nineteenth century after the Napoleonic wars, and it is not an +agreeable outlook for those who love the common man or the nobility of +life. But if there is any one principle sounder than another of all +those that guide the amateur in prophecy, it is that _history never +repeats itself_. The human material in which those monetary changes and +those developments of credit will occur will be entirely different from +the social medium of a hundred years ago. + +The nature of the State has altered profoundly in the last century. The +later eighteenth and earlier nineteenth centuries constituted a period +of extreme individualism. What were called "economic forces" had +unrestricted play. In the minds of such people as Harriet Martineau and +Herbert Spencer they superseded God. People were no longer reproached +for "flying in the face of Providence," but for "flying in the face of +Political Economy." + +In that state of freedom you got whatever you could in any way you +could; you were not your neighbour's keeper, and except that it +interfered with the enterprise of pickpockets, burglars and forgers, and +kept the dice loaded in favour of landlords and lawyers, the State stood +aside from the great drama of human getting. For industrialism and +speculation the State's guiding maxim was _laissez faire_. + +The State is now far less aloof and far more constructive. It is far +more aware of itself and a common interest. Germany has led the way from +a system of individuals and voluntary associations in competition +towards a new order of things, a completer synthesis. This most modern +State is far less a swarming conflict of businesses than a great +national business. It will emerge from this war much more so than it +went in, and the thing is and will remain so plain and obvious that only +the greediest and dullest people among the Pledged Allies will venture +to disregard it. The Allied nations, too, will have to rescue their +economic future from individual grab and grip and chance. + +The second consideration that forbids us to anticipate any parallelism +of the history of 1915-45 with 1815-45 is the greater lucidity of the +general mind, the fact that all Western Europe, down to the agricultural +labourers, can read and write and does read newspapers and "get ideas." +The explanation of economic and social processes that were mysterious to +the elect a hundred years ago are now the commonplaces of the tap-room. +What happened then darkly, and often unconsciously, must happen in +1916-26 openly and controllably. The current bankruptcy and liquidation +and the coming reconstruction of the economic system of Europe will go +on in a quite unprecedented amount of light. We shall see and know what +is happening much more clearly than anything of the kind has ever been +seen before. + +It is not only that people will have behind them, as a light upon what +is happening, the experiences and discussions of a hundred years, but +that the international situation will be far plainer than it has ever +been. This war has made Germany the central fact in all national affairs +about the earth. It is not going to destroy Germany, and it seems +improbable that either defeat or victory, or any mixture of these, will +immediately alter the cardinal fact of Germany's organised +aggressiveness. + +The war will not end the conflict of anti-Germany and Germany, That will +only end when the results of fifty years of aggressive education in +Germany have worn away. This will be so plain that the great bulk of +people everywhere will not only see their changing economic +relationships far more distinctly than such things have been seen +hitherto, but that they will see them as they have never been seen +before, definitely orientated to the threat of German world +predominance. The landlord who squeezes, the workman who strikes and +shirks, the lawyer who fogs and obstructs, will know, and will know that +most people know, that what he does is done, not under an empty, +regardless heaven, but in the face of an unsleeping enemy and in +disregard of a continuous urgent necessity for unity. + +So far we have followed this speculation upon fairly firm ground, but +now our inquiry must plunge into a jungle of far more difficult and +uncertain possibilities. Our next stage brings us to the question of how +people and peoples and classes of people are going to react to the new +conditions of need and knowledge this war will have brought about, and +to the new demands that will be made upon them. + +This is really a question of how far they will prove able to get out of +the habits and traditions of their former social state, how far they +will be able to take generous views and make sacrifices and unselfish +efforts, and how far they will go in self-seeking or class selfishness +regardless of the common welfare. This is a question we have to ask +separately of each great nation, and of the Central Powers as a whole, +and of the Allies as a whole, before we can begin to estimate the +posture of the peoples of the world in, say, 1946. + +Now let me here make a sort of parenthesis on human nature. It will be +rather platitudinous, but it is a necessary reminder for what follows. + +So far as I have been able to observe, nobody lives steadily at one +moral level. If we are wise we shall treat no man and no class--and for +the matter of that no nation--as either steadfastly malignant or +steadfastly disinterested. There are phases in my life when I could die +quite cheerfully for an idea; there are phases when I would not stir six +yards to save a human life. Most people fluctuate between such extremes. +Most people are self-seeking, but most people will desist from a +self-seeking cause if they see plainly and clearly that it is not in the +general interest, and much more readily if they also perceive that other +people are of the same mind and know that they know their course is +unsound. + +The fundamental error of orthodox political economy and of Marxian +socialism is to assume the inveterate selfishness of everyone. But most +people are a little more disposed to believe what it is to their +interest to believe than the contrary. Most people abandon with +reluctance ways of living and doing that have served them well. Most +people can see the neglect of duty in other classes more plainly than +they do in their own. + +This war has brought back into the everyday human life of Europe the +great and overriding conception of devotion to a great purpose. But that +does not imply clear-headedness in correlating the ways of one's +ordinary life with this great purpose. It is no good treating as cynical +villainy things that merely exhibit the incapacity of our minds to live +consistently. + +One Labour paper a month or so ago was contrasting Mr. Asquith's +eloquent appeals to the working man to economise and forgo any rise in +wages with the photographs that were appearing simultaneously in the +smart papers of the very smart marriage of Mr. Asquith's daughter. I +submit that by that sort of standard none of us will be blameless. But +without any condemnation, it is easy to understand that the initiative +to tax almost to extinction large automobiles, wedding dresses, +champagne, pāté de foie gras and enclosed parks, instead of gin and +water, bank holiday outings and Virginia shag, is less likely to come +from the Prime Minister class than from the class of dock labourers. +There is an unconscious class war due to habit and insufficient thinking +and insufficient sympathy that will play a large part in the +distribution of the burthen of the State bankruptcy that is in progress, +and in the subsequent readjustment of national life. + +And having made this parenthesis, I may perhaps go on to point out the +peculiar limitations under which various classes will be approaching the +phase of reorganisation, without being accused of making this or that +class the villain of an anticipatory drama. + +Now, three great classes will certainly resist the valiant +reconstruction of economic life with a vigour in exact proportion to +their baseness, stupidity and narrowness of outlook. They will, as +classes, come up for a moral judgment, on whose verdict the whole future +of Western civilisation depends. If they cannot achieve a considerable, +an unprecedented display of self-sacrifice, unselfish wisdom, and +constructive vigour, if the community as a whole can produce no forces +sufficient to restrain their lower tendencies, then the intelligent +father had better turn his children's faces towards the New World. For +Europe will be busy with social disorder for a century. + +The first great class is the class that owns and holds land and +land-like claims upon the community, from the Throne downward. This +Court and land-holding class cannot go on being rich and living rich +during the strains of the coming years. The reconstructing world cannot +bear it. Whatever rises in rent may occur through the rise in prices, +must go to meet the tremendous needs of the State. + +This class, which has so much legislative and administrative power in at +least three of the great belligerents--in Great Britain and Germany +perhaps most so--must be prepared to see itself taxed, and must be +willing to assist in its own taxation to the very limit of its +statistical increment. The almost vindictive greed of the landowners +that blackened the history of England after Waterloo, and brought Great +Britain within sight of revolution, must not be repeated. The British +Empire cannot afford a revolution in the face of the Central European +Powers. But in the past century there has been an enormous change in +men's opinions and consciences about property; whereas we were +Individualists, now we are Socialists. The British lord, the German +junker, has none of the sense of unqualified rights that his +great-grandfather had, and he is aware of a vigour of public criticism +that did not exist in the former time.... + +How far will these men get out of the tradition of their birth and +upbringing? + +Next comes the great class of lawyers who, through the idiotic method of +voting in use in modern democracies, are able practically to rule Great +Britain, and who are powerful and influential in all democratic +countries. + +In order to secure a certain independence and integrity in its courts, +Great Britain long ago established the principle of enormously +overpaying its judges and lawyers. The natural result has been to give +our law courts and the legal profession generally a bias in favour of +private wealth against both the public interest and the proletariat. It +has also given our higher national education an overwhelming direction +towards the training of advocates and against science and constructive +statecraft. An ordinary lawyer has no idea of making anything; that +tendency has been destroyed in his mind; he waits and sees and takes +advantage of opportunity. Everything that can possibly be done in +England is done to make our rulers Micawbers and Artful Dodgers. + +One of the most anxious questions that a Briton can ask himself to-day +is just how far the gigantic sufferings and still more monstrous +warnings of this war have shocked the good gentlemen who must steer the +ship of State through the strong rapids of the New Peace out of this +forensic levity their training has imposed upon them.... + +There, again, there are elements of hope. The lawyer has heard much +about himself in the past few years. His conscience may check his +tradition. And we have a Press--it has many faults, but it is no longer +a lawyer's Press.... + +And the third class which has immediate interests antagonistic to bold +reconstructions of our national methods is that vaguer body, the body of +investing capitalists, the savers, the usurers, who live on dividends. +It is a vast class, but a feeble class in comparison with the other +two; it is a body rather than a class, a weight rather than a power. It +consists of all sorts of people with nothing in common except the +receipt of unearned income.... + +All these classes, by instinct and the baser kinds of reason also, will +be doing their best to check the rise in prices, stop and reverse the +advance in wages, prevent the debasement of the circulation, and +facilitate the return to a gold standard and a repressive social +stability. They will be resisting any comprehensive national +reconstruction, any increase in public officials, any "conscription" of +land or railways or what not for the urgent civil needs of the State. +They will have fighting against these tendencies something in their own +consciences, something in public opinion, the tradition of public +devotion their own dead sons have revived--and certain other forces. + +They will have over against them the obvious urgent necessities of the +time. + +The most urgent necessity will be to get back the vast moiety of the +population that has been engaged either in military service or the +making of munitions to productive work, to the production of food and +necessary things, and to the restoration of that export trade which, in +the case of Great Britain at least, now that her overseas investments +have been set off by overseas war debts, is essential to the food +supply. There will be coming back into civil life, not merely thousands, +but millions of men who have been withdrawn from it. They will feel that +they have deserved well of their country. They will have had their +imaginations greatly quickened by being taken away from the homes and +habits to which they were accustomed. They will have been well fed and +inured to arms, to danger, and the chances of death. They will have no +illusions about the conduct of the war by the governing classes, or the +worshipful heroism of peers and princes. They will know just how easy is +courage, and how hard is hardship, and the utter impossibility of doing +well in war or peace under the orders of detected fools. + +This vast body will constitute a very stimulating congregation of +spectators in any attempt on the part of landlord, lawyer and investor +to resume the old political mystery dance, in which rents are to be sent +up and wages down, while the old feuds of Wales and Ireland, ancient +theological and sectarian jealousies and babyish loyalties, and so forth +are to be waved in the eyes of the no longer fascinated realist. + +"Meanwhile," they will say, with a stiff impatience unusual in their +class, "about _us_?" ... + +Here are the makings of internal conflict in every European country. In +Russia the landlord and lawyer, in France the landlord, are perhaps of +less account, and in France the investor is more universal and jealous. +In Germany, where Junker and Court are most influential and brutal, +there is a larger and sounder and broader tradition of practical +efficiency, a modernised legal profession, and a more widely diffused +scientific imagination. + +How far in each country will imagination triumph over tradition and +individualism? How far does the practical bankruptcy of Western +civilisation mean a revolutionary smash-up, and a phase that may last +for centuries, of disorder and more and more futile conflict? And how +far does it mean a reconstruction of human society, within a few score +of years, upon sounder and happier lines? Must that reconstruction be +preceded by a revolution in all or any of the countries? + +To what extent can the world produce the imagination it needs? That, so +far, is the most fundamental question to which our prophetic +explorations have brought us. + + + + +IV. BRAINTREE, BOCKING, AND THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD + + +Will the war be followed by a period of great distress, social disorder +and a revolution in Europe, or shall we pull through the crisis without +violent disaster? May we even hope that Great Britain will step straight +out of the war into a phase of restored and increasing welfare? + +Like most people, I have been trying to form some sort of answer to this +question. My state of mind in the last few months has varied from a +considerable optimism to profound depression. I have met and talked to +quite a number of young men in khaki--ex-engineers, ex-lawyers, +ex-schoolmasters, ex-business men of all sorts--and the net result of +these interviews has been a buoyant belief that there is in Great +Britain the pluck, the will, the intelligence to do anything, however +arduous and difficult, in the way of national reconstruction. And on the +other hand there is a certain stretch of road between Dunmow and +Coggeshall.... + +That stretch of road is continually jarring with my optimistic +thoughts. It is a strongly pro-German piece of road. It supports +allegations against Great Britain, as, for instance, that the British +are quite unfit to control their own affairs, let alone those of an +empire; that they are an incompetent people, a pig-headedly stupid +people, a wasteful people, a people incapable of realising that a man +who tills his field badly is a traitor and a weakness to his country.... + +Let me place the case of this high road through Braintree (Bocking +intervening) before the reader. It is, you will say perhaps, very small +beer. But a straw shows the way the wind blows. It is a trivial matter +of road metal, mud, and water-pipes, but it is also diagnostic of the +essential difficulties in the way of the smooth and rapid reconstruction +of Great Britain--and very probably of the reconstruction of all +Europe--after the war. The Braintree high road, I will confess, becomes +at times an image of the world for me. It is a poor, spiritless-looking +bit of road, with raw stones on one side of it. It is also, I perceive, +the high destiny of man in conflict with mankind. It is the way to +Harwich, Holland, Russia, China, and the whole wide world. + +Even at the first glance it impresses one as not being the road that +would satisfy an energetic and capable people. It is narrow for a high +road, and in the middle of it one is checked by an awkward bend, by +cross-roads that are not exactly cross-roads, so that one has to turn +two blind corners to get on eastward, and a policeman, I don't know at +what annual cost, has to be posted to nurse the traffic across. Beyond +that point one is struck by the fact that the south side is considerably +higher than the north, that storm water must run from the south side to +the north and lie there. It does, and the north side has recently met +the trouble by putting down raw flints, and so converting what would be +a lake into a sort of flint pudding. Consequently one drives one's car +as much as possible on the south side of this road. There is a +suggestion of hostility and repartee between north and south side in +this arrangement, which the explorer's inquiries will confirm. It may be +only an accidental parallelism with profounder fact; I do not know. But +the middle of this high road is a frontier. The south side belongs to +the urban district of Braintree; the north to the rural district of +Bocking. + +If the curious inquirer will take pick and shovel he will find at any +rate one corresponding dualism below the surface. He will find a +Bocking water main supplying the houses on the north side and a +Braintree water main supplying the south. I rather suspect that the +drains are also in duplicate. The total population of Bocking and +Braintree is probably little more than thirteen thousand souls +altogether, but for that there are two water supplies, two sets of +schools, two administrations. + +To the passing observer the rurality of the Bocking side is +indistinguishable from the urbanity of the Braintree side; it is just a +little muddier. But there are dietetic differences. If you will present +a Bocking rustic with a tin of the canned fruit that is popular with the +Braintree townsfolk, you discover one of these differences. A dustman +perambulates the road on the Braintree side, and canned food becomes +possible and convenient therefore. But the Braintree grocers sell canned +food with difficulty into Bocking. Bocking, less fortunate than its +neighbour, has no dustman apparently, and is left with the tin on its +hands. It can either bury it in its garden--if it has a garden--take it +out for a walk wrapped in paper and drop it quietly in a ditch, if +possible in the Braintree area, or build a cairn with it and its +predecessors and successors in honour of the Local Government Board +(President £5,000, Parliamentary Secretary £1,500, Permanent Secretary +£2,000, Legal Adviser £1,000 upward, a total administrative expenditure +of over £300,000 ...). In death Bocking and Braintree are still divided. +They have their separate cemeteries.... + +Now to any disinterested observer there lies about the Braintree-Bocking +railway station one community. It has common industries and common +interests. There is no _octroi_ or anything of that sort across the +street. The shops and inns on the Bocking side of the main street are +indistinguishable from those on the Braintree side. The inhabitants of +the two communities intermarry freely. If this absurd separation did not +exist, no one would have the impudence to establish it now. It is +wasteful, unfair (because the Bocking piece is rather better off than +Braintree and with fewer people, so that there is a difference in the +rates), and for nine-tenths of the community it is more or less of a +nuisance. + +It is also a nuisance to the passing public because of such +inconvenience as the asymmetrical main road. It hinders local +development and the development of a local spirit. It may, of course, +appeal perhaps to the humorous outlook of the followers of Mr. G.K. +Chesterton and Mr. Belloc, who believe that this war is really a war in +the interests of the Athanasian Creed, fatness, and unrestricted drink +against science, discipline, and priggishly keeping fit enough to join +the army, as very good fun indeed, good matter for some jolly reeling +ballad about Roundabout and Roundabout, the jolly town of Roundabout; +but to anyone else the question of how it is that this wasteful +Bocking-Braintree muddle, with its two boards, its two clerks, its two +series of jobs and contracts, manages to keep on, was even before the +war a sufficiently discouraging one. + +It becomes now a quite crucial problem. Because the muddle between the +sides of the main road through Bocking and Braintree is not an isolated +instance; it is a fair sample of the way things are done in Great +Britain; it is an intimation of the way in which the great task of +industrial resettlement that the nation must face may be attempted. + +It is--or shall I write, "it may be"? + +That is just the question I do not settle in my mind. I would like to +think that I have hit upon a particularly bad case of entangled local +government. But it happens that whenever I have looked into local +affairs I have found the same sort of waste and--insobriety of +arrangement. When I started, a little while back, to go to Braintree to +verify these particulars, I was held up by a flood across the road +between Little Easton and Dunmow. Every year that road is flooded and +impassable for some days, because a bit of the affected stretch is under +the County Council and a bit under the Little Easton Parish Council, and +they cannot agree about the contribution of the latter. These things +bump against the most unworldly. And when one goes up the scale from the +urban district and rural district boundaries, one finds equally crazy +county arrangements, the same tangle of obstacle in the way of quick, +effective co-ordinations, the same needless multiplicity of clerks, the +same rich possibilities of litigation, misunderstanding, and deadlocks +of opinion between areas whose only difference is that a mischievous +boundary has been left in existence between them. And so on up to +Westminster. And to still greater things.... + +I know perfectly well how unpleasant all this is to read, this outbreak +at two localities that have never done me any personal harm except a +little mud-splashing. But this is a thing that has to be said now, +because we are approaching a crisis when dilatory ways, muddle, and +waste may utterly ruin us. This is the way things have been done in +England, this is our habit of procedure, and if they are done in this +way after the war this Empire is going to smash. + +Let me add at once that it is quite possible that things are done almost +as badly or quite as badly in Russia or France or Germany or America; I +am drawing no comparisons. All of us human beings were made, I believe, +of very similar clay, and very similar causes have been at work +everywhere. Only that excuse, so popular in England, will not prevent a +smash if we stick to the old methods under the stresses ahead. I do not +see that it is any consolation to share in a general disaster. + +And I am sure that there must be the most delightful and picturesque +reasons why we have all this overlapping and waste and muddle in our +local affairs; why, to take another example, the boundary of the Essex +parishes of Newton and Widdington looks as though it had been sketched +out by a drunken man in a runaway cab with a broken spring. + +This Bocking-Braintree main road is, it happens, an old Stane Street, +along which Roman legions marched to clean up the councils and clerks of +the British tribal system two thousand years ago, and no doubt an +historian could spin delightful consequences; this does not alter the +fact that these quaint complications in English affairs mean in the +aggregate enormous obstruction and waste of human energy. It does not +alter the much graver fact, the fact that darkens all my outlook upon +the future, that we have never yet produced evidence of any general +disposition at any time to straighten out or even suspend these fumbling +intricacies and ineptitudes. Never so far has there appeared in British +affairs that divine passion to do things in the clearest, cleanest, +least wasteful, most thorough manner that is needed to straighten out, +for example, these universal local tangles. Always we have been content +with the old intricate, expensive way, and to this day we follow it.... + +And what I want to know, what I would like to feel much surer about than +I do is, is this in our blood? Or is it only the deep-seated habit of +long ages of security, long years of margins so ample, that no waste +seemed altogether wicked. Is it, in fact, a hopeless and ineradicable +trait that we stick to extravagance and confusion? + +What I would like to think possible at the present time, up and down the +scale from parish to province, is something of this sort. Suppose the +clerk of Braintree went to the clerk of Bocking and said: "Look here, +one of us could do the work of both of us, as well or better. The easy +times are over, and offices as well as men should be prepared to die for +their country. Shall we toss to see who shall do it, and let the other +man go off to find something useful to do?" Then I could believe. Such +acts of virtue happen in the United States. Here is a quotation from the +New York _World_ of February 15th, 1916: + +"For two unusual acts Henry Bručre may be remembered by New York longer +than nine days. Early in his incumbency he declared that his office was +superfluous and should be abolished, the Comptroller assuming its +duties. He now abolishes by resignation his own connection with it, in +spite of its $12,000 salary." + +Suppose the people of Braintree and Bocking, not waiting for that lead, +said: "But this is absurd! Let us have an identical council and one +clerk, and get ahead, instead of keeping up this silly pretence that one +town is two." Suppose someone of that 300,000 pounds' worth of gentlemen +at the Local Government Board set to work to replan our local government +areas generally on less comic lines. Suppose his official superiors +helped, instead of snubbing him.... + +I see nothing of the sort happening. I see everywhere wary, watchful +little men, thinking of themselves, thinking of their parish, thinking +close, holding tight.... + +I know that there is a whole web of excuses for all these complicated, +wasteful, and obstructive arrangements of our local government, these +arrangements that I have taken merely as a sample of the general human +way of getting affairs done. For it is affairs at large I am writing +about, as I warned the reader at the beginning. Directly one inquires +closely into any human muddle, one finds all sorts of reasonable rights +and objections and claims barring the way to any sweeping proposals. I +can quite imagine that Bocking has admirable reasons for refusing +coalescence with Braintree, except upon terms that Braintree could not +possibly consider. I can quite understand that there are many +inconveniences and arguable injustices that would be caused by a merger +of the two areas. I have no doubt it would mean serious loss to +So-and-so, and quite novel and unfair advantage to So-and-so. It would +take years to work the thing and get down to the footing of one water +supply and an ambidextrous dustman on the lines of perfect justice and +satisfactoriness all round. + +But what I want to maintain is that these little immediate claims and +rights and vested interests and bits of justice and fairness are no +excuse at all for preventing things being done in the clear, clean, +large, quick way. They never constituted a decent excuse, and now they +excuse waste and delay and inconvenience less than ever. Let us first do +things in the sound way, and then, if we can, let us pet and compensate +any disappointed person who used to profit by their being done +roundabout instead of earning an honest living. We are beginning to +agree that reasonably any man may be asked to die for his country; what +we have to recognise is that any man's proprietorship, interest, claims +or rights may just as properly be called upon to die. Bocking and +Braintree and Mr. John Smith--Mr. John Smith, the ordinary comfortable +man with a stake in the country--have been thinking altogether too much +of the claims and rights and expectations and economies of Bocking and +Braintree and Mr. John Smith. They have to think now in a different +way.... + +Just consider the work of reconstruction that Great Britain alone will +have to face in the next year or so. (And her task is, if anything, less +than that of any of her antagonists or Allies, except Japan and Italy.) +She has now probably from six to ten million people in the British +Isles, men and women, either engaged directly in warfare or in the +manufacture of munitions or in employments such as transit, nursing, and +so forth, directly subserving these main ends. At least five-sixths of +these millions must be got back to employment of a different character +within a year of the coming of peace. Everywhere manufacture, trade and +transit has been disorganised, disturbed or destroyed. A new economic +system has to be put together within a brief score or so of weeks; great +dislocated masses of population have to be fed, kept busy and +distributed in a world financially strained and abounding in wounded, +cripples, widows, orphans and helpless people. + +In the next year or so the lives of half the population will have to be +fundamentally readjusted. Here is work for administrative giants, work +for which no powers can be excessive. It will be a task quite difficult +enough to do even without the opposition of legal rights, haggling +owners, and dexterous profiteers. It would be a giant's task if all the +necessary administrative machinery existed now in the most perfect +condition. How is this tremendous job going to be done if every Bocking +in the country is holding out for impossible terms from Braintree, and +every Braintree holding out for impossible terms from Bocking, while +the road out remains choked and confused between them; and if every John +Smith with a claim is insisting upon his reasonable expectation of +profits or dividends, his reasonable solatium and compensation for +getting out of the way? + +I would like to record my conviction that if the business of this great +crisis is to be done in the same spirit, the jealous, higgling, legal +spirit that I have seen prevailing in British life throughout my +half-century of existence, it will not in any satisfactory sense of the +phrase get done at all. This war has greatly demoralised and discredited +the governing class in Great Britain, and if big masses of unemployed +and unfed people, no longer strung up by the actuality of war, masses +now trained to arms and with many quite sympathetic officers available, +are released clumsily and planlessly into a world of risen prices and +rising rents, of legal obstacles and forensic complications, of greedy +speculators and hampered enterprises, there will be insurrection and +revolution. There will be bloodshed in the streets and the chasing of +rulers. + +There _will_ be, if we do seriously attempt to put the new wine of +humanity, the new crude fermentations at once so hopeful and so +threatening, that the war has released, into the old administrative +bottles that served our purposes before the war. + +I believe that for old lawyers and old politicians and "private +ownership" to handle the great problem of reconstruction after the war +in the spirit in which our affairs were conducted before the war is +about as hopeful an enterprise as if an elderly jobbing brick-layer, +working on strict trade-union rules, set out to stop the biggest +avalanche that ever came down a mountain-side. And since I am by no +means altogether pessimistic, in spite of my qualmy phases, it follows +that I do not believe that the old spirit will necessarily prevail. I do +not, because I believe that in the past few decades a new spirit has +come into human affairs; that our ostensible rulers and leaders have +been falling behind the times, and that in the young and the untried, +in, for example, the young European of thirty and under who is now in +such multitudes thinking over life and his seniors in the trenches, +there are still unsuspected resources of will and capacity, new mental +possibilities and new mental habits, that entirely disturb the +argument--based on the typical case of Bocking and Braintree--for a +social catastrophe after the war. + +How best can this new spirit be defined? + +It is the creative spirit as distinguished from the legal spirit; it is +the spirit of courage to make and not the spirit that waits and sees and +claims; it is the spirit that looks to the future and not to the past. +It is the spirit that makes Bocking forget that it is not Braintree and +John Smith forget that he is John Smith, and both remember that they are +England. + +For everyone there are two diametrically different ways of thinking +about life; there is individualism, the way that comes as naturally as +the grunt from a pig, of thinking outwardly from oneself as the centre +of the universe, and there is the way that every religion is trying in +some form to teach, of thinking back to oneself from greater standards +and realities. There is the Braintree that is Braintree against England +and the world, giving as little as possible and getting the best of the +bargain, and there is the Braintree that identifies itself with England +and asks how can we do best for the world with this little place of +ours, how can we educate best, produce most, and make our roads straight +and good for the world to go through. + +Every American knows the district that sends its congressman to +Washington for the good of his district, and the district, the rarer +district, that sends a man to work for the United States. There is the +John Smith who feels toward England and the world as a mite feels toward +its cheese, and the John Smith who feels toward his country as a +sheep-dog feels toward the flock. The former is the spirit of +individualism, "business," and our law, the latter the spirit of +socialism and science and--khaki.... They are both in all of us, they +fluctuate from day to day; first one is ascendant and then the other. + +War does not so much tilt the balance as accentuate the difference. One +rich British landowner sneaks off to New York State to set up a home +there and evade taxation; another turns his mansion into a hospital and +goes off to help Serbian refugees. Acts of baseness or generosity are +contagious; this man will give himself altogether because of a story of +devotion, this man declares he will do nothing until Sir F.E. Smith goes +to the front. And the would-be prophet of what is going to happen must +guess the relative force of these most impalpable and uncertain things. + +This Braintree-Bocking boundary which runs down the middle of the road +is to be found all over the world. You will find it in Ireland and the +gentlemen who trade on the jealousies of the north side and the +gentlemen who trade on the jealousies of the south. You will find it in +England among the good people who would rather wreck the Empire than +work honestly and fairly with Labour. There are not only parish +boundaries, but park boundaries and class and sect boundaries. You will +find the Bocking-Braintree line too at a dozen points on a small scale +map of Europe.... These Braintree-Bocking lines are the barbed-wire +entanglements between us and the peace of the world. Against these +entanglements in every country the new spirit struggles in many +thousands of minds. Where will it be strongest? Which country will get +clear first, get most rapidly to work again, have least of the confusion +and wrangling that must in some degree occur everywhere? Will any +country go altogether to pieces in hopeless incurable discord? + +Now I believe that the answer to that last question is "No." And my +reason for that answer is the same as my reason for believing that the +association of the Pledged Allies will not break up after the war; it is +that I believe that this war is going to end not in the complete +smashing up and subjugation of either side, but in a general exhaustion +that will make the recrudescence of the war still possible but very +terrifying. + +Mars will sit like a giant above all human affairs for the next two +decades, and the speech of Mars is blunt and plain. He will say to us +all: "Get your houses in order. If you squabble among yourselves, waste +time, litigate, muddle, snatch profits and shirk obligations, I will +certainly come down upon you again. I have taken all your men between +eighteen and fifty, and killed and maimed such as I pleased; millions of +them. I have wasted your substance--contemptuously. Now, mark you, you +have multitudes of male children between the ages of nine and nineteen +running about among you. Delightful and beloved boys. And behind them +come millions of delightful babies. Of these I have scarcely smashed and +starved a paltry hundred thousand perhaps by the way. But go on +muddling, each for himself and his parish and his family and none for +all the world, go on in the old way, stick to-your 'rights,' stick to +your 'claims' each one of you, make no concessions and no sacrifices, +obstruct, waste, squabble, and presently I will come back again and take +all that fresh harvest of life I have spared, all those millions that +are now sweet children and dear little boys and youths, and I will +squeeze it into red pulp between my hands, I will mix it with the mud of +trenches and feast on it before your eyes, even more damnably than I +have done with your grown-up sons and young men. And I have taken most +of your superfluities already; next time I will take your barest +necessities." + +So the red god, Mars; and in these days of universal education the great +mass of people will understand plainly now that that is his message and +intention. Men who cannot be swayed by the love of order and creation +may be swayed by the thought of death and destruction.... There, I +think, is the overriding argument that will burst the proprietorships +and divisions and boundaries, the web of ineffectiveness that has held +the world so long. Labour returning from the trenches to its country and +demanding promptness, planning, generous and devoted leaderships and +organisation, demanding that the usurer and financier, the landlord and +lawyer shall, if need be, get themselves altogether out of the way, will +have behind its arguments the thought of the enemy still unsubdued, +still formidable, recovering. Both sides will feel that. This world is a +more illuminated world than 1816; a thousand questions between law and +duty have been discussed since then; beyond all comparison we know +better what we are doing. I think the broad side of John Smith (and Sir +John Smith and John Smith, K.C.) will get the better of his narrow +ends--and that so it will be with Jean Dupont and Hans Meyer and the +rest of them. There may be riots here and there; there may be some +pretty considerable rows; but I do not think there is going to be a +chaotic and merely destructive phase in Great Britain or any Western +European country. I cast my guess for reconstruction and not for revolt. + + + + +V. HOW FAR WILL EUROPE GO TOWARD SOCIALISM? + + +A number of people are saying that this war is to be the end of +Individualism. "Go as you please" has had its death-blow. Out of this +war, whatever else emerges, there will emerge a more highly organised +State than existed before--that is to say, a less individualistic and +more socialistic State. And there seems a heavy weight of probability on +the side of this view. But there are also a number of less obvious +countervailing considerations that may quite possibly modify or reverse +this tendency. + +In this chapter an attempt is to be made to strike a balance between the +two systems of forces, and guess how much will be private and how much +public in Europe in 1930, or thereabouts. + +The prophets who foretell the coming of Socialism base their case on +three sets of arguments. They point out, first, the failure of +individual enterprise to produce a national efficiency comparable to +the partial State Socialism of Germany, and the extraordinary, special +dangers inherent in private property that the war has brought to light; +secondly, to the scores of approaches to practical Socialism that have +been forced upon Great Britain--for example, by the needs of the war; +and, thirdly, to the obvious necessities that will confront the British +Empire and the Allies generally after the war--necessities that no +unorganised private effort can hope to meet effectively. + +All these arguments involve the assumption that the general +understanding of the common interest will be sufficient to override +individual and class motives; an exceedingly doubtful assumption, to say +the least of it. But the general understanding of the common interest is +most likely to be kept alive by the sense of a common danger, and we +have already arrived at the conclusion that Germany is going to be +defeated but not destroyed in this war, and that she will be left with +sufficient vitality and sufficient resentment and sufficient of her +rancid cultivated nationalism to make not only the continuance of the +Alliance after the war obviously advisable and highly probable, but also +to preserve in the general mind for a generation or so that sense of a +common danger which most effectually conduces to the sweeping aside of +merely personal and wasteful claims. Into the consequences of this we +have now to look a little more closely. + +It was the weaknesses of Germany that made this war, and not her +strength. The weaknesses of Germany are her Imperialism, her Junkerism, +and her intense, sentimental Nationalism; for the former would have no +German ascendancy that was not achieved by force, and, with the latter, +made the idea of German ascendancy intolerable to all mankind. Better +death, we said. And had Germany been no more than her Court, her +Junkerism, her Nationalism, the whole system would have smashed beneath +the contempt and indignation of the world within a year. + +But the strength of Germany has saved her from that destruction. She was +at once the most archaic and modern of states. She was Hohenzollern, +claiming to be Caesar, and flaunting a flat black eagle borrowed from +Imperial Rome; and also she was the most scientific and socialist of +states. It is her science and her Socialism that have held and forced +back the avengers of Belgium for more than a year and a half. If she has +failed as a conqueror, she has succeeded as an organisation. Her +ambition has been thwarted, and her method has been vindicated. She +will, I think, be so far defeated in the contest of endurance which is +now in progress that she will have to give up every scrap of territorial +advantage she has gained; she may lose most of her Colonial Empire; she +may be obliged to complete her modernisation by abandoning her militant +Imperialism; but she will have at least the satisfaction of producing +far profounder changes in the chief of her antagonists than those she +herself will undergo. + +The Germany of the Hohenzollerns had its mortal wound at the Marne; the +Germany we fight to-day is the Germany of Krupp and Ostwald. It is +merely as if she had put aside a mask that had blinded her. She was +methodical and civilised except for her head and aim; she will become +entirely methodical. But the Britain and Russia and France she fights +are lands full of the spirit of undefined novelty. They are being made +over far more completely. They are being made over, not in spite of the +war, but because of the war. Only by being made over can they win the +war. And if they do not win the war, then they are bound to be made +over. They are not merely putting aside old things, but they are forming +and organising within themselves new structures, new and more efficient +relationships, that will last far beyond the still remote peace +settlement. + +What this war has brought home to the consciousness of every intelligent +man outside the German system, with such thoroughness as whole +generations of discussion and peace experience could never have +achieved, is a double lesson: that Germany had already gone far to +master when she blundered into the war; firstly, the waste and dangers +of individualism, and, secondly, the imperative necessity of scientific +method in public affairs. The waste and dangers of individualism have +had a whole series of striking exemplifications both in Europe and +America since the war began. Were there such a thing as a Socialist +propaganda in existence, were the so-called socialistic organisations +anything better than a shabby little back-door into contemporary +politics, those demonstrations would be hammering at the mind of +everyone. It may be interesting to recapitulate some of the most salient +instances. + +The best illustration, perhaps, of the waste that arises out of +individualism is to be found in the extreme dislocation of the privately +owned transit services of Great Britain at the present time. There is no +essential reason whatever why food and fuel in Great Britain should be +considerably dearer than they are under peace conditions. Just the same +home areas are under cultivation, just the same foreign resources are +available; indeed, more foreign supplies are available because we have +intercepted those that under normal conditions would have gone to +Germany. The submarine blockade of Britain is now a negligible factor in +this question. + +Despite these patent conditions there has been, and is, a steady +increase in the cost of provisions, coal, and every sort of necessity. +This increase means an increase in the cost of production of many +commodities, and so contributes again to the general scarcity. This is +the domestic aspect of a difficulty that has also its military side. It +is not sufficient merely to make munitions; they must also be delivered, +Great Britain is suffering very seriously from congestion of the +railways. She suffers both in social and military efficiency, and she is +so suffering because her railways, instead of being planned as one great +and simple national distributing system, have grown up under conditions +of clumsy, dividend-seeking competition. + +Each great railway company and combination has worked its own areas, and +made difficulties and aggressions at the boundaries of its sphere of +influence; here are inconvenient junctions and here unnecessary +duplications; nearly all the companies come into London, each taking up +its own area of expensive land for goods yards, sidings, shunting +grounds, and each regardless of any proper correlation with the other; +great areas of the County of London are covered with their idle trucks +and their separate coal stores; in many provincial towns you will find +two or even three railway stations at opposite ends of the town; the +streets are blocked by the vans and trolleys of the several companies +tediously handing about goods that could be dealt with at a tenth of the +cost in time and labour at a central clearing-house, did such a thing +exist; and each system has its vast separate staff, unaccustomed to work +with any other staff. + +Since the war began the Government has taken over the general direction +of this disarticulated machinery, but no one with eyes who travels about +England now can fail to remark, in the miles and miles of waiting loaded +trucks on every siding, the evidences of mischievous and now almost +insuperable congestion. The trucks of each system that have travelled on +to another still go back, for the most part, _empty_ to their own; and +thousands of privately owned trucks, which carry cargo only one way, +block our sidings. Great Britain wastes men and time to a disastrous +extent in these needless shuntings and handlings. + +Here, touching every life in the community, is one instance of the +muddle that arises naturally out of the individualistic method of +letting public services grow up anyhow without a plan, or without any +direction at all except the research for private profit. + +A second series of deficiencies that the war has brought to light in the +too individualistic British State is the entire want of connection +between private profit and public welfare. So far as the interests of +the capitalist go it does not matter whether he invests his money at +home or abroad; it does not matter whether his goods are manufactured in +London or Timbuctoo. + +But what of the result? At the outbreak of the war Great Britain found +that a score of necessary industries had drifted out of the country, +because it did not "pay" any private person to keep them here. The +shortage of dyes has been amply discussed as a typical case. A much +graver one that we may now write about was the shortage of zinc. Within +a month or so of the outbreak of the war the British Government had to +take urgent and energetic steps to secure this essential ingredient of +cartridge cases. Individualism had let zinc refining drift to Belgium +and Germany; it was the luck rather than the merit of Great Britain that +one or two refineries still existed. + +Still more extraordinary things came to light in the matter of the metal +supply. Under an individualistic system you may sell to the highest +bidder, and anyone with money from anywhere may come in and buy. Great +supplies of colonial ores were found to be cornered by semi-national +German syndicates. Supplies were held up by these contracts against the +necessities of the Empire. And this was but one instance of many which +have shown that, while industrial development in the Allied countries is +still largely a squabbling confusion of little short-sighted, +unscientific, private profit-seeking owners, in Germany it has been for +some years increasingly run on far-seeing collectivist lines. Against +the comparatively little and mutually jealous British or American +capitalists and millionaires Germany pits itself as a single great +capitalist and competitor. She has worked everywhere upon a +comprehensive plan. Against her great national electric combination, for +example, only another national combination could stand. As it was, +Germany--in the way of business--wired and lit (and examined) the forts +at Liége. She bought and prepared a hundred strategic centres in +individualistic Belgium and France. + +So we pass from the fact that individualism is hopeless muddle to the +fact that the individualist idea is one of limitless venality, Who can +buy, may control. And Germany, in her long scheming against her +individualist rivals, has not simply set herself to buy and hold the +keys and axles of their economic machinery. She has set herself, it must +be admitted, with a certain crudity and little success, but with +unexampled vigour, to buy the minds of her adversaries. The Western +nations have taken a peculiar pride in having a free Press; that is to +say, a Press that may be bought by anyone. Our Press is constantly +bought and sold, in gross and detail, by financiers, advertisers, +political parties, and the like. Germany came into the market rather +noisily, and great papers do to a large extent live in glass houses; but +her efforts have been sufficient to exercise the minds of great numbers +of men with the problem of what might have happened in the way of +national confusion if the German attack had been more subtly +conceived.... + +It is only a partial answer to this difficulty to say that a country +that is so nationalist and aggressive as Germany is incapable of subtle +conceptions. The fact remains that in Great Britain at the present time +there are newspaper proprietors who would be good bargains for Germany +at two million pounds a head, and that there was no effectual guarantee +in the individualistic system, but only our good luck and the natural +patriotism of the individuals concerned that she did not pick up these +bargains before trading with the enemy became illegal. It happened, for +example, that Lord Northcliffe was public-spirited, That was the good +luck of Great Britain rather than her merit. There was nothing in the +individualistic system to prevent Germany from buying up the entire +Harmsworth Press--_The Times, Daily Mail_, and all--five years before +the war, and using it to confuse the national mind, destroy the national +unity, sacrifice the national interests, and frustrate the national +will. + +Not only the newspapers, but the news-agents and booksellers of both +Great Britain and America are entirely at the disposal of any hostile +power which chooses to buy them up quietly and systematically. It is +merely a question of wealth and cleverness. And if the failure of the +Germans to grip the Press of the French and English speaking countries +has been conspicuous, she has been by no means so unsuccessful in--for +example--Spain. At the present time the thought and feeling of the +Spanish speaking world is being _educated_ against the Allies. The +Spanish mind has been sold by its custodians into German control. + +Muddle and venality do not, however, exhaust the demonstrated vices of +individualism. Individualism encourages desertion and treason. +Individualism permits base private people to abscond with the national +resources and squeeze a profit out of national suffering. In the early +stages of the war some bright minds conceived the idea of a corner in +drugs. It is not illegal; it is quite the sort of thing that appeals to +the individualistic frame of mind as entirely meritorious. As the _New +Statesman_ put it recently: "The happy owners of the world's available +stock of a few indispensable drugs did not refrain from making, not only +the various Governments, but also all the sick people of the world pay +double, and even tenfold, prices for what was essential to relieve pain +and save life. What fortunes were thus made we shall probably never +know, any more than we shall know the tale of the men and women and +children who suffered and died because of their inability to pay, not +the cost of production of what would have saved them, but the +unnecessarily enhanced price that the chances of the market enabled the +owners to exact." + +And another bright instance of the value of individualism is the selling +of British shipping to neutral buyers just when the country is in the +most urgent need of every ship it can get, and the deliberate transfer +to America of a number of British businesses to evade paying a proper +share of the national bill in taxation. The English who have gone to +America at different times have been of very different qualities; at the +head of the list are the English who went over in the _Mayflower_; at +the bottom will be the rich accessions of this war.... + +And perhaps a still more impressive testimony to the rottenness of these +"business men," upon whom certain eccentric voices call so amazingly to +come and govern us, is the incurable distrust they have sown in the +minds of labour. Never was an atmosphere of discipline more lamentable +than that which has grown up in the factories, workshops, and great +privately owned public services of America and Western Europe. The men, +it is evident, _expect_ to be robbed and cheated at every turn. I can +only explain their state of mind by supposing that they have been robbed +and cheated. Their scorn and contempt for their employees' good faith +is limitless. Their _morale_ is undermined by an invincible distrust. + +It is no good for Mr. Lloyd George to attempt to cure the gathered ill +of a century with half an hour or so of eloquence. When Great Britain, +in her supreme need, turns to the workmen she has trained in the ways of +individualism for a century, she reaps the harvest individualism has +sown. She has to fight with that handicap. Every regulation for the +rapid mobilisation of labour is scrutinised to find the trick in it. + +And they find the trick in it as often as not. Smart individualistic +"business experience" has been at the draughtsman's elbow. A man in an +individualistic system does not escape from class ideas and prejudices +by becoming an official. There is profound and bitter wisdom in the deep +distrust felt by British labour for both military and industrial +conscription. + +The breakdown of individualism has been so complete in Great Britain +that we are confronted with the spectacle of this great and ancient +kingdom reconstructing itself perforce, while it wages the greatest war +in history. A temporary nationalisation of land transit has been +improvised, and only the vast, deep-rooted, political influence of the +shipowners and coalowners have staved off the manifestly necessary step +of nationalising shipping and coal. I doubt if they will be able to +stave it off to the end of the long struggle which is still before us if +the militarism of Germany is really to be arrested and discredited. +Expropriation and not conscription will be the supreme test of Britain's +loyalty to her Allies. + +The British shipowners, in particular, are reaping enormous but +precarious profits from the war. The blockade of Britain, by the British +shipowners is scarcely less effective than the blockade of Germany by +Britain. With an urgent need of every ship for the national supplies, +British ships, at the present moment of writing this, are still carrying +cheap American automobiles to Australia. They would carry munitions to +Germany if their owners thought they had a sporting chance of not +getting caught at it. These British shipowners are a pampered class with +great political and social influence, and no doubt as soon as the +accumulating strain of the struggle tells to the extent of any serious +restriction of their advantage and prospects, we shall see them shifting +to the side of the at present negligible group of British pacifists. I +do not think one can count on any limit to their selfishness and +treason. + +I believe that the calculations of some of these extreme and apparently +quite unreasonable "pacifists" are right. Before the war is over there +will be a lot of money in the pacifist business. The rich curs of the +West End will join hands with the labour curs of the Clyde. The base are +to be found in all classes, but I doubt if they dominate any. I do not +believe that any interest or group of interests in Great Britain can +stand in the way of the will of the whole people to bring this struggle +to a triumphant finish at any cost. I do not believe that the most +sacred ties of personal friendship and blood relationship with +influential people can save either shipowners or coalowners or army +contractors to the end. + +There will be no end until these profit-makings are arrested. The +necessary "conscriptions of property" must come about in Great Britain +because there is no alternative but failure in the war, and the British +people will not stand failure. I believe that the end of the war will +see, not only transit, but shipping, collieries, and large portions of +the machinery of food and drink production and distribution no longer +under the administration of private ownership, but under a sort of +provisional public administration. And very many British factories will +be in the same case. + +Two years ago no one would have dared to prophesy the tremendous +rearrangement of manufacturing machinery which is in progress in Britain +to-day. Thousands of firms of engineers and manufacturers of all sorts, +which were flourishing in 1914, exist to-day only as names, as shapes, +as empty shells. Their staffs have been shattered, scattered, +reconstructed; their buildings enlarged and modified; their machinery +exchanged, reconstituted, or taken. The reality is a vast interdependent +national factory that would have seemed incredible to Fourier. + +It will be as impossible to put back British industrialism into the +factories and forms of the pre-war era as it would be to restore the +Carthaginian Empire. There is a new economic Great Britain to-day, +emergency made, jerry-built no doubt, a gawky, weedy giant, but a giant +who may fill out to such dimensions as the German national system has +never attained. Behind it is an _idea_, a new idea, the idea of the +nation as one great economic system working together, an idea which +could not possibly have got into the sluggish and conservative British +intelligence in half a century by any other means than the stark +necessities of this war.... Great Britain cannot retrace those steps +even if she would, and so she will be forced to carry this process of +reconstruction through. And what is happening to Great Britain must, +with its national differences, be happening to France and Russia. Not +only for war ends, but for peace ends, behind the front and sustaining +the front, individualities are being hammered together into common and +concerted activities. + +At the end of this war Great Britain will find herself with this great +national factory, this great national organisation of labour, planned, +indeed, primarily to make war material, but convertible with the utmost +ease to the purposes of automobile manufacture, to transit +reconstruction, to electrical engineering, and endless such uses. + +France and Russia will be in a parallel case. All the world will be +exhausted, and none of the Allies will have much money to import +automobiles, railway material, electrical gear, and so on, from abroad. +Moreover, it will be a matter of imperative necessity for them to get +ahead of the Central Powers with their productive activities. We shall +all be too poor to import from America, and we shall be insane to import +from Germany. America will be the continent with the long purse, +prepared to buy rather than sell. Each country will have great masses of +soldiers waiting to return to industrial life, and will therefore be +extremely indisposed to break up any existing productive organisation. + +In the face of these facts, will any of the Allied Powers be so foolish +as to disband this great system of national factories and nationally +worked communications? Moreover, we have already risked the prophecy +that this war will not end with such conclusiveness as to justify an +immediate beating out of our swords into ploughshares. There will be a +military as well as a social reason for keeping the national factories +in a going state. + +What more obvious course, then, than to keep them going by turning them +on to manufacture goods of urgent public necessity? There are a number +of modern commodities now practically standardised: the bicycle, the +cheap watch, the ordinary tradesman's delivery automobile, the farmer's +runabout, the country doctor's car, much electric-lighting material, +dynamos, and so forth. And also, in a parallel case, there is +shipbuilding. The chemical side of munition work can turn itself with no +extreme difficulty to the making of such products as dyes. + +We face the fact, then, that either the State must go on with this +production, as it can do, straight off from the signing of peace, +converting with a minimum of friction, taking on its soldiers as they +are discharged from the army as employees with a minimum waste of time +and a minimum of social disorder, and a maximum advantage in the +resumption of foreign trade, or there will be a dangerous break-up of +the national factory system, a time of extreme chaos and bitter +unemployment until capital accumulates for new developments. The risks +of social convulsion will be enormous. And there is small hope that the +Central Powers, and particularly industrial Germany, will have the +politeness to wait through the ten or twelve years of economic +embarrassment that a refusal to take this bold but obviously +advantageous step into scientific Socialism will entail. + +But the prophet must be on his guard against supposing that, because a +thing is highly desirable, it must necessarily happen; or that, because +it is highly dangerous, it will be avoided. This bold and successful +economic reconstruction upon national lines is not inevitable merely +because every sound reason points us in that direction. A man may be +very ill, a certain drug may be clearly indicated as the only possible +remedy, but it does not follow that the drug is available, that the +doctor will have the sense to prescribe it, or the patient the means to +procure it or the intelligence to swallow it. + +The experience of history is that nations do not take the obviously +right course, but the obviously wrong one. The present prophet knows +only his England, but, so far as England is concerned, he can cover a +sheet of paper with scarcely a pause, jotting down memoranda of +numberless forces that make against any such rational reconstruction. +Most of these forces, in greater or less proportion, must be present in +the case of every other country under consideration. + +The darkest shadow upon the outlook of European civilisation at the +present time is not the war; it is the failure of any co-operative +spirit between labour and the directing classes. The educated and +leisured classes have been rotten with individualism for a century; they +have destroyed the confidence of the worker in any leadership whatever. +Labour stands apart, intractable. If there is to be any such rapid +conversion of the economic machinery as the opportunities and +necessities of this great time demand, then labour must be taken into +the confidence of those who would carry it through. It must be reassured +and enlightened. Labour must know clearly what is being done; it must be +an assenting co-operator. The stride to economic national service and +Socialism is a stride that labour should be more eager to take than any +other section of the community. + +The first step in reassuring labour must be to bring the greedy private +owner and the speculator under a far more drastic discipline than at +present. The property-owning class is continually accusing labour of +being ignorant, suspicious, and difficult; it is blind to the fact that +it is itself profit-seeking by habit, greedy, conceited, and half +educated. + +Every step in the mobilisation of Great Britain's vast resources for the +purposes of the war has been hampered by the tricks, the failures to +understand, and the almost instinctive disloyalties of private owners. +The raising of rents in Glasgow drove the infuriated workmen of the +Clyde district into an unwilling strike. It was an exasperating piece of +private selfishness, quite typical of the individualistic state of mind, +and the failure to anticipate or arrest it on the part of the Government +was a worse failure than Suvla Bay. And everywhere the officials of the +Ministry of Munitions find private employers holding back workers and +machinery from munition works, intriguing--more particularly through the +Board of Trade--to have all sorts of manufactures for private profit +recognised as munition work, or if that contention is too utterly +absurd, then as work vitally necessary to the maintenance of British +export trade and the financial position of the country. It is an +undeniable fact that employers and men alike have been found far readier +to risk their lives for their country than to lay aside any scale of +profits to which they have grown accustomed. + +This conflict of individualistic enterprise and class suspicion against +the synthesis of the public welfare is not peculiar to Great Britain; it +is probably going on with local variations in Germany, Russia, Italy, +France, and, indeed, in every combatant country. Because of the +individualistic forces and feelings, none of us, either friends or +enemies, are really getting anything like our full possible result out +of our national efforts. But in Germany there is a greater tradition of +subordination; in France there is a greater clarity of mind than in any +other country. + +Great Britain and Russia in this, as in so many other matters, are at +once close kindred and sharp antithesis. Each is mentally crippled by +the corruption of its educational system by an official religious +orthodoxy, and hampered by a Court which disowns any function of +intellectual stimulus. Neither possesses a scientifically educated +_class_ to which it can look for the powerful handling of this great +occasion; and each has acquired under these disadvantages the same +strange faculty for producing sane resultants out of illogical +confusions. It is the way of these unmethodical Powers to produce +unexpected, vaguely formulated, and yet effective cerebral +action--apparently from their backbones. + +As I sit playing at prophecy, and turn over the multitudinous +impressions of the last year in my mind, weighing the great necessities +of the time against obstacles and petty-mindedness, I become more and +more conscious of a third factor that is neither need nor obstruction, +and that is the will to get things right that has been liberated by the +war. + +The new spirit is still but poorly expressed, but it will find +expression. The war goes on, and we discuss this question of economic +reconstruction as though it was an issue that lay between the labour +that has stayed behind and the business men, for the most part old men +with old habits of mind, who have stayed behind. + +The real life of Europe's future lies on neither side of that +opposition. The real life is mutely busy at present, saying little +because of the uproar of the guns, and not so much learning as casting +habits and shedding delusions. In the trenches there are workers who +have broken with the old slacking and sabotage, and there are +prospective leaders who have forgotten profit. The men between eighteen +and forty are far too busy in the blood and mud to make much showing +now, but to-morrow these men will be the nation. + +When that third factor of the problem is brought in the outlook of the +horoscope improves. The spirit of the war may be counted upon to balance +and prevail against this spirit of individualism, this spirit of +suspicion and disloyalty, which I fear more than anything else in the +world. + +I believe in the young France, young England, and young Russia this war +is making, and so I believe that every European country will struggle +along the path that this war has opened to a far more completely +organised State than has existed ever before. The Allies will become +State firms, as Germany was, indeed, already becoming before the war; +setting private profit aside in the common interest, handling +agriculture, transport, shipping, coal, the supply of metals, the +manufacture of a thousand staple articles, as national concerns. + +In the face of the manifest determination of the Central Powers to do as +much, the Allies will be forced also to link their various State firms +together into a great allied trust, trading with a common interest and a +common plan with Germany and America and the rest of the world.... Youth +and necessity will carry this against selfishness, against the +unimaginative, against the unteachable, the suspicious, the "_old +fool_." + +But I do not venture to prophesy that this will come about as if it were +a slick and easy deduction from present circumstances. Even in France I +do not think things will move as lucidly and generously as that. There +will be a conflict everywhere between wisdom and cunning, between the +eyes of youth and the purblind, between energy and obstinacy. + +The reorganisation of the European States will come about clumsily and +ungraciously. At every point the sticker will be found sticking tight, +holding out to be bought off, holding out for a rent or a dividend or a +share, holding out by mere instinct. At every turn, too, the bawler will +be loud and active, bawling suspicions, bawling accusations, bawling +panic, or just simply bawling. Tricks, peculation, obstinacies, +vanities--after this war men will still be men. But I do believe that +through all the dust and din, the great reasons in the case, the steady +constructive forces of the situation, will carry us. + +I believe that out of the ruins of the nineteenth century system of +private capitalism that this war has smashed for ever, there will arise, +there does even now arise, in this strange scaffolding of national +munition factories and hastily nationalised public services, the +framework of a new economic and social order based upon national +ownership and service. + +Let us now recapitulate a little and see how far we have got in +constructing a picture of the European community as it will be in +fifteen or twenty years' time. Nominally it will be little more of a +Socialist State than it is to-day, but, as a matter of fact, the ships, +the railways, the coal and metal supply, the great metal industries, +much engineering, and most agriculture, will be more or less completely +under collective ownership, and certainly very completely under +collective control. This does not mean that there will have been any +disappearance of private property, but only that there will have been a +very considerable change in its character; the owner will be less of +controller but more of a creditor; he will be a _rentier_ or an +annuitant. + +The burthen of this class upon the community will not be relatively +quite so heavy as it would otherwise have been, because of a very +considerable rise in wages and prices. + +In a community in which all the great initiatives have been assumed by +the State, the importance of financiers and promoters will have +diminished relatively to the importance of administrative officials; the +opportunities of private exploitation, indeed, will have so diminished +that there will probably be far less evidence of great concentrations of +private wealth in the European social landscape than there was before +the war. + +On the other hand, there will be an enormously increased _rentier_ class +drawing the interest of the war loans from the community, and +maintaining a generally high standard of comfort. There will have been a +great demand for administrative and technical abilities and a great +stimulation of scientific and technical education. By 1926 we shall be +going about a world that will have recovered very largely from the +impoverishment of the struggle; we shall tour in State-manufactured +automobiles upon excellent roads, and we shall live in houses equipped +with a national factory electric light installation, and at every turn +we shall be using and consuming the products of nationalised +industry--and paying off the National Debt simultaneously, and reducing +our burden of _rentiers_. + +At the same time our boys will be studying science in their schools +more thoroughly than they do now, and they will in many cases be +learning Russian instead of Greek or German. More of our boys will be +going into the public service, and fewer thinking of private business, +and they will be going into the public service, not as clerks, but as +engineers, technical chemists, manufacturers, State agriculturists, and +the like. The public service will be less a service of clerks and more a +service of practical men. The ties that bind France and Great Britain at +the present moment will have been drawn very much closer. France, +Belgium and England will be drifting towards a French-English +bi-lingualism.... + +So much of our picture we may splash in now. Much that is quite +essential remains to be discussed. So far we have said scarcely a word +about the prospects of party politics and the problems of government +that arise as the State ceases to be a mere impartial adjudicator +between private individuals, and takes upon itself more and more of the +direction of the general life of the community. + + + + +VI. LAWYER AND PRESS + + +The riddle of administration is the most subtle of all those that the +would-be prophet of the things that are coming must attempt. We see the +great modern States confronted now by vast and urgent necessities, by +opportunities that may never recur. Individualism has achieved its +inevitable failure; "go as you please" in a world that also contained +aggressive militarism, has broken down. We live in a world of improvised +State factories, commandeered railways, substituted labour and emergency +arrangements. Our vague-minded, lax, modern democracy has to pull itself +together, has to take over and administer and succeed with a great +system of collective functions, has to express its collective will in +some better terms than "go as you please," or fail. + +And we find the affairs of nearly every great democratic State in the +hands of a class of men not specially adapted to any such constructive +or administrative work. + +I am writing here now chiefly of the Western Allies. Russia is peculiar +in having her administrative machine much more highly developed in +relation to her general national life than the free democratic +countries. She has to make a bureaucracy that has not hitherto been an +example for efficiency into a bureaucracy that will be constructive, +responsive, liberal, scientific, and efficient; the Western countries +have to do the same with that oligarchy of politicians which, as +Professor Michels has recently pointed out in his striking book on +"Political Parties," is the necessary reality of democratic government. +By different methods the Eastern and Western Powers have to attain a +common end. Both bureaucracy and pseudo-democratic oligarchy have to +accomplish an identical task, to cement the pacific alliance of the +Pledged Allies and to socialise their common industrial and economic +life, so as to make it invulnerable to foreign attack. + +Now in Great Britain, which is the democracy that has been most under +the close observation of the present prophet, there is at present a +great outcry against the "politician," and more particularly against the +"lawyer-politician." He is our embarrassment. In him we personify all +our difficulties. Let us consider the charges against this individual. +Let us ask, can we do without him? And let us further see what chances +there may be of so altering, qualifying, or balancing him as to minimise +the evil of his influence. To begin with, let us run over the essentials +of the charge against him. + +It is with a modest blush that the present prophet recapitulates these +charges. So early as the year 1902 he was lifting up his voice, not +exactly in the wilderness but at least in the Royal Institution, against +the legal as compared with the creative or futurist type of mind. The +legal mind, he insisted, looks necessarily to the past. It is dilatory +because it has no sense of coming things, it is uninventive and +wasteful, it does not create, it takes advantage. It is the type of mind +least able, under any circumstances, to organise great businesses, to +plan campaigns, to adventure or achieve. "Wait and see" crystallises its +spirit. Its resistance is admirable, and it has no "go." Nevertheless +there is a tendency for power to gravitate in all democratic countries +to the lawyer. + +In the British system the normal faults of the lawyer are enhanced, and +his predominance intensified, by certain peculiarities of our system. In +the first place, he belongs to a guild of exceptional power. In Britain +it happens that the unfortunate course was taken ages ago of bribing the +whole legal profession to be honest. The British judges and law officers +are stupendously overpaid in order to make them incorruptible; it is a +poor but perhaps a well-merited compliment to their professional code. +We have squared the whole profession to be individually unbribable. + +The judges, moreover, in the Anglo-Saxon communities are appointed from +among the leading barristers, an arrangement that a child can see is +demoralising and inadvisable. And in Great Britain all the greatest +salaries in the government service are reserved for the legal +profession. The greatest prizes, therefore, before an energetic young +man who has to make his way in Great Britain are the legal prizes, and +his line of advancement to these lies, for all the best years of his +life, not through the public service, but through the private practice +of advocacy. The higher education, such as it is, in Great Britain, +produces under the stimulus of these conditions an advocate as its +finest flower. To go from the posing and chatter of the Union Debating +Society to a university laboratory is, in Britain, to renounce ambition. +Few men of exceptional energy will do that. + +The national consequences of this state of affairs have been only too +manifest throughout the conduct of the war. The British Government has +developed all the strength and all the weakness of the great profession +it represents. It has been uninventive, dilatory, and without +initiative; it has been wasteful and evasive; but it has not been +wanting in a certain eloquence and dignity, it has been wary and shrewd, +and it has held on to office with the concentrated skill and +determination of a sucker-fish. And the British mind, with a +concentration and intensity unprecedented before the war, is speculating +how it can contrive to get a different sort of ruler and administrator +at work upon its affairs. + +There is a disposition in the Press, and much of the private talk one +hears, to get rid of lawyers from the control of national affairs +altogether, to substitute "business men" or scientific men or "experts." +That way lies dictatorship and Caesarism. And even Great Britain is not +so heedless of the experiences of other nations as to attempt again what +has already been so abundantly worked out in national disaster across +the Channel. The essential business of government is to deal between man +and man; it is not to manage the national affairs in detail, but to +secure the proper managers, investigators, administrators, generals, +and so forth, to maintain their efficiency, and keep the balance between +them. We cannot do without a special class of men for these +interventions and controls. In other words, we cannot do without a +special class of politicians. They may be elected by a public or +appointed by an autocrat; at some point they have to come in. And this +business of intervening between men and classes and departments in +public life, and getting them to work together, is so closely akin to +the proper work of a lawyer in dealing between men and men, that, unless +the latter are absolutely barred from becoming the former, it is almost +unavoidable that politicians should be drawn more abundantly from the +lawyer class than from any other class in the community. + +This is so much the case, that when the London _Times_ turns in despair +from a government of lawyers and looks about for an alternative, the +first figure that presents itself is that distinguished advocate Sir +Edward Carson! + +But there is a difference between recognising that some sort of +lawyer-politician is unavoidable and agreeing that the existing type of +lawyer who is so largely accountable for the massive slowness, the +confused action, the slovenliness rather than the weakness of purpose, +shown by Great Britain in this war, is the only possible type, The +British system of education and legal organisation is not the last word +of human wisdom in these matters. + +The real case we British have against our lawyers, if I may adopt an +expressive colloquialism, is not that they are lawyers, but that they +are such infernal lawyers. They trail into modern life most of the +faults of a mediaeval guild. They seem to have no sense of the State +they could develop, no sense of the future they might control. Their law +and procedure has never been remodelled upon the framework of modern +ideas; their minds are still set to the tune of mediaeval bickerings, +traditionalism, and State blindness. They are mystery dealers, almost +unanimously they have resisted giving the common man the protection of a +code. + +In the United Kingdom we have had no Napoleon to override the +profession. It is extraordinary how complete has been their preservation +of barbaric conceptions. Even the doctor is now largely emancipated from +his archaic limitations as a skilled retainer. He thinks more and more +of the public health, and less and less of his patron. The more recent a +profession the less there is of the individualistic personal reference; +scientific research, for example, disavows and forbids every personal +reference. + +But while everyone would be shocked at some great doctor, or some great +research institution, in these days of urgent necessity spending two or +three weeks on the minor ailments of some rich person's lapdog, nobody +is scandalised at the spectacle of Sir Edward Carson and a costly law +court spending long days upon the sordid disputes that centre upon young +Master Slingsby's ear--whether it is the Slingsby family ear or the ear +of a supposititious child--a question that any three old women might be +trusted to settle. After that he rests for a fortnight and recuperates, +and returns--to take up a will case turning upon the toy rabbits and +suchlike trifles which entertained the declining years of a +nonagenarian. This, when we are assured that the country awaits Sir +Edward as its Deliverer. It is as if Lord Kitchener took a month off to +act at specially high rates for the "movies." Our standard for the +lawyer is older and lower than it is for other men. + +There is no more reason nowadays why a lawyer should look to advocacy as +a proper use of his knowledge than that a doctor should make private +poisoning the lucrative side of his profession. There is no reason why +a court of law should ignore the plain right of the commonweal to +intervene in every case between man and man. There is every reason why +trivial disputes about wills and legitimacy should not be wasting our +national resources at the present time, when nearly every other form of +waste is being restrained. The sound case against the legal profession +in Anglo-Saxon countries is not that it is unnecessary, but that it is +almost incredibly antiquated, almost incredibly careless of the public +well-being, and that it corrupts or dwarfs all the men who enter it. + +Our urgent need is not so much to get rid of the lawyer from our affairs +as to get rid of the wig and gown spirit and of the special pleader, and +to find and develop the new lawyer, the lawyer who is not an advocate, +who is not afraid of a code, who has had some scientific education, and +whose imagination has been quickened by the realisation of life as +creative opportunity. We want to emancipate this profession from its +ancient guild restrictions--the most anti-social and disastrous of all +such restrictions--to destroy its disgraceful traditions of over-payment +and fee-snatching, to insist upon a scientific philosophical training +for its practitioners, to make the practice of advocacy a fall from +grace, and to bar professional advocates from the bench. + +In the British trenches now there must be many hundreds of fine young +lawyers, still but little corrupted, who would be only too glad to +exchange the sordid vulgarities and essential dishonour of a successful +lawyer's career under the old conditions for lives of service and +statecraft.... + +No observer of the general trend of events in Europe will get any real +grasp of what is happening until he realises the cardinal importance of +the reactions that centre upon this question. The current development of +political institutions and the possible development of a new spirit and +method in the legal profession are so intimately interwoven as to be +practically one and the same question. The international question is, +can we get a new Germany? The national question everywhere is, can we +get a better politician? + +The widely prevalent discontent with the part played by the lawyer in +the affairs of all the Western Allies is certain to develop into a +vigorous agitation for legal reconstruction. In the case of every other +great trade union the war has exacted profound and vital concessions. +The British working men, for example, have abandoned scores of +protective restrictions upon women's labour, upon unskilled labour, for +which they have fought for generations; they have submitted to a virtual +serfdom that the nation's needs might be supplied; the medical +profession has sent almost too large a proportion of its members to the +front; the scientific men, the writers, have been begging to be used in +any capacity at any price or none; the Ministry of Munitions is full of +unpaid workers, and so on. + +The British legal profession and trade union alone has made no sign of +any disposition to relax its elaborate restrictions upon the labour of +amateurs and women, or to abate one jot or one tittle of its habitual +rewards. There has been no attempt to reduce the costly law officers of +the Government, for example, or to call in the help of older men or +women to release law officers who are of military experience or age. + +And I must admit that there are small signs of the advent of the "new +lawyer," at whose possibility I have just flung a hopeful glance, to +replace the existing mass of mediaeval unsoundness. Barristers seem to +age prematurely--at least in Great Britain--unless they are born old. In +the legal profession one hears nothing of "the young"; one hears only of +"smart juniors." Reform and progressive criticism in the legal +profession, unlike all other professions, seem to be the monopoly of the +retired. + +Nevertheless, Great Britain is as yet only beginning to feel the real +stresses of the war; she is coming into the full strain a year behind +France, Germany, and Russia; and after the war there lies the +possibility of still more violent stresses; so that what is as yet a +mere cloud of criticism and resentment at our lawyer-politicians and +privileged legal profession may gather to a great storm before 1918 or +1919. + +I am inclined to foretell as one most highly probable development of the +present vague but very considerable revolt against the lawyer in British +public life, first, some clumsy proposals or even attempts to leave him +out, and use "business men," soldiers, admirals, dictators, or men of +science, in his place--which is rather like throwing away a blottesque +fountain-pen and trying to write with a walking-stick or a revolver or a +flash-light--and then when that is found to be impossible, a resolute +attempt to clean and reconstitute the legal profession on modern and +more honourable lines; a movement into which, quite possibly, a number +of the younger British lawyers, so soon as they realise that the +movement is good enough to risk careers upon, may throw themselves. A +large share in such a reform movement, if it occurs, will be brought +about by the Press; by which I mean not simply the periodical Press, but +all books and contemporary discussion. It is only by the natural playing +off of Press against lawyer-politician that democratic States can ever +come to their own. + +And that brings me to the second part of this question, which is +whether, quite apart from the possible reform and spiritual rebirth of +the legal profession, there is not also the possibility of balancing and +correcting its influence. In ancient Hebrew history--it may be a warning +rather than a precedent--there were two great forces, one formal, +conservative and corrupting, the other undisciplined, creative, and +destructive; the first was the priest, the second the prophet. Their +interaction is being extraordinarily paralleled in the Anglo-Saxon +democracies by the interaction of lawyer-politician and Press to-day. + +If the lawyer-politician is unavoidable, the Press is indispensable. It +is not in the clash and manoeuvres and mutual correction of party, but +in the essential conflict of political authority on the one hand and +Press on the other that the future of democratic government apparently +lies. In the clearer, simpler case of France, a less wealthy and finer +type of lawyer interacts with a less impersonal Press. It is in the +great contrasts and the essential parallelism of the French and the +Anglo-Saxon democratic systems that one finds the best practical reason +for anticipating very profound changes in these two inevitables of +democracy, the Press and the lawyer-politician, and for assuming that +the method of democracy has still a vast range of experimental +adjustment between them still untried. Such experimental adjustment will +be the chief necessity and business of political life in every country +of the world for the next few decades. + +The lawyer-politician and the Press are as it were the right and left +hands of a modern democracy. The war has brought this out clearly. It +has ruptured the long-weakened bonds that once linked this and that +newspaper with this and that party. For years the Press of all the +Western democracies has been drifting slowly away from the tradition--it +lasted longest and was developed most completely in Great +Britain--that-newspapers were party organs. + +In the novels of Disraeli the Press appears as an ambiguously helpful +person who is asked out to dinner, who is even admitted to week-end +conferences, by the political great. He takes his orders from the Whig +peers or the Tory peers. At his greatest he advises them respectfully. +But that was in the closing days of the British oligarchy; that was +before modern democracy had begun to produce its characteristic +political forms. It is not so very much more than a century ago that +Great Britain had her first lawyer Prime Minister. Through all the +Napoleonic wars she was still a country ruled by great feudal landlords, +and gentlemen adventurers associated with them. The lawyers only came to +their own at the close of the great Victorian duet of Disraeli and +Gladstone, the last of the political gentlemen adventurers. It is only +now, in the jolts and dissatisfactions of this war, that Great Britain +rubs her eyes and looks at her government as it is. + +The old oligarchy established the tradition of her diplomacy. Illiberal +at home, it was liberal abroad; Great Britain was the defender of +nationality, of constitutionalism, and of the balance of power against +the holy alliance. In the figure of such a gentleman as Sir Edward Grey +the old order mingles with the new. But most of his colleagues are of +the new order. They would have been incredible in the days of Lord +Melbourne. In its essential quality the present British Government is +far more closely akin to the French than it is to its predecessor of a +hundred years ago. Essentially it is a Government of lawyer-politicians +with no close family ties or intimate political traditions and +prejudices. And its natural and proper corrective is the Press, over +which it fails to exercise now even a shadow of the political and social +influence that once kept that power in subjection. + +It is the way with all human institutions; they remain in appearance +long after they have passed away in reality. It is on record that the +Roman senate still thought Rome was a republic in the third century of +the Christian era. It is nothing wonderful, therefore, that people +suppose that the King, the Lords, and the Commons, debating through a +Ministry and an Opposition, still govern the British Empire. As a matter +of fact it is the lawyer-politicians, split by factions that simulate +the ancient government and opposition, who rule, under a steadily +growing pressure and checking by the Press. Since this war began the +Press has released itself almost inadvertently from its last association +with the dying conflicts of party politics, and has taken its place as a +distinct power in the realm, claiming to be more representative of the +people than their elected representatives, and more expressive of the +national mind and will. + +Now there is considerable validity in this claim. It is easy to say +that a paper may be bought by any proprietor and set to put what he +chooses into the public mind. As a matter of fact, buying a newspaper is +far more costly and public a proceeding than buying a politician. And if +on the one hand the public has no control over what is printed in a +paper, it has on the other the very completest control over what is +read. A politician is checked by votes cast once in several years, a +newspaper is checked by sales that vary significantly from day to day. A +newspaper with no circulation is a newspaper that does not matter; a few +weeks will suffice to show if it has carried its public with it or gone +out of influence. It is absurd to speak of a newspaper as being less +responsible than a politician. + +Nevertheless, the influence of a great newspaper is so much greater than +that of any politician, and its power more particularly for +mischief--for the creation of panic conditions, for example--so much +swifter, that it is open to question whether the Press is at present +sufficiently held to its enormous responsibilities. + +Let us consider its weaknesses at the present time, let us ask what +changes in its circumstances are desirable in the public interest, and +what are likely to come about. We have already reckoned upon the Press +as a chief factor in the adequate criticism, cleansing, and +modernisation of the British lawyer-politician; is there any power to +which we may look for the security of the Press? And I submit the answer +is the Press. For while the legal profession is naturally homogeneous, +the Press is by nature heterogeneous. Dog does not eat dog, nor lawyer, +lawyer; but the newspapers are sharks and cannibals, they are in +perpetual conflict, the Press is a profession as open as the law is +closed; it has no anti-social guild feeling; it washes its dirty linen +in public by choice and necessity, and disdains all professional +etiquette. Few people know what criticisms of the Lord Chief Justice may +have ripened in the minds of Lord Halsbury or Sir Edward Carson, but we +all know, to a very considerable degree of accuracy, the worst of what +this great journalist or group of newspaper proprietors thinks of that. + +We have, therefore, considerable reason for regarding the Press as +being, in contrast with the legal profession, a self-reforming body. In +the last decade there has been an enormous mass of criticism of the +Press by the Press. There has been a tendency to exaggerate its +irresponsibility. A better case is to be made against it for what I will +call, using the word in its least offensive sense, its venality. By +venality I mean the fact, a legacy from the now happily vanishing age of +individualism, that in theory and law at least anyone may own a +newspaper and sell it publicly or secretly to anyone, that its +circulation and advertisement receipts may be kept secret or not as the +proprietors choose, and that the proprietor is accountable to no one for +any exceptional incomings or any sudden fluctuations in policy. + +A few years ago we were all discussing who should buy _The Times_; I do +not know what chances an agent of the Kaiser might not have had if he +had been sufficiently discreet. This venality will be far more dangerous +to the Allied countries after the war than during its continuance. So +long as the state of war lasts there are prompt methods available for +any direct newspaper treason, and it is in the neutral countries only +that the buying and selling of papers against the national interest has +occurred to any marked extent. + +Directly peace is signed, unless we provide for the event beforehand, +our Press will pass under neutral conditions. There will be nothing to +prevent, for example, any foreseeing foreign power coming into Great +Britain, offering to buy up not only this paper or that, but also, what +is far more important, to buy up the great book and newspaper +distributing firms. These vitally important public services, so far as +law and theory go, will be as entirely in the market as railway tickets +at a station unless we make some intelligent preventive provision. +Unless we do, and if, as is highly probable, peace puts no immediate +stop to international malignity, the Germans will be bigger fools than I +think them if they do not try to get hold of these public services. It +is a matter of primary importance in the outlook of every country in +Europe, therefore, that it should insist upon and secure responsible +native ownership of every newspaper and news and book distributing +agency, and the most drastic punishment for newspaper corruption. Given +that guarantee against foreign bribery, we may, I think, let free speech +rage. This is so much a matter of common sense that I cannot imagine +even British "wait and see" waiting for the inevitable assault upon our +national journalistic virtue that will follow the peace. + +So I spread out the considerations that I think justify our forecasting, +in a very changed Great Britain and a changed Europe, firstly, a legal +profession with a quickened conscience, a sense of public function and a +reformed organisation, and, secondly, a Press, which is recognised and +held accountable in law and in men's minds, as an estate of the realm, +as something implicitly under oath to serve the State. I do not agree +with Professor Michel's pessimistic conclusion that peace will bring +back exacerbated party politics and a new era of futility to the +democratic countries. I believe that the tremendous demonstration of +this war (a demonstration that gains weight with every week of our +lengthening effort), of the waste and inefficiency of the system of +1913-14, will break down at last even the conservatism of the most +rigidly organised and powerful and out-of-date of all professions. + +It is not only that I look to the indignation and energy of intelligent +men who are outside our legal and political system to reform it, but to +those who are in it now. A man may be quietly parasitic upon his mother, +and yet incapable of matricide. So much of our national energy and +ability has been attracted to the law in Great Britain that our nation, +with our lawyers in modern clothing instead of wigs and gowns, lawyers +who have studied science and social theory instead of the spoutings of +Cicero and the loquacious artfulness of W.E. Gladstone, lawyers who look +forward at the destiny of their country instead of backward and at the +markings on their briefs, may yet astonish the world. The British lawyer +really holds the future of the British Empire and, indeed, I could +almost say, of the whole world in his hands at the present time, as much +as any single sort of man can be said to hold it. Inside his skull +imagination and a heavy devil of evil precedent fight for his soul and +the welfare of the world. And generosity fights against tradition and +individualism. Only the men of the Press have anything like the same +great possibilities of betrayal. + +To these two sorts of men the dim spirit of the nation looks for such +leading as a democracy can follow. To them the men with every sort of +special ability, the men of science, the men of this or that sort of +administrative ability and experience, the men of creative gifts and +habits, every sort of man who wants the world to get on, look for the +removal (or the ingenious contrivance) of obstructions and +entanglements, for the allaying (or the fomentation) of suspicion, +misapprehension, and ignorant opposition, for administration (or class +blackmail). + +Yet while I sit as a prophetic amateur weighing these impalpable forces +of will and imagination and habit and interest in lawyer, pressman, +maker and administrator, and feeling by no means over-confident of the +issue, it dawns upon me suddenly that there is another figure present, +who has never been present before in the reckoning up of British +affairs. It is a silent figure. This figure stands among the pressmen +and among the lawyers and among the workers; for a couple of decades at +least he will be everywhere in the British system; he is young and he is +uniformed in khaki, and he brings with him a new spirit into British +life, the spirit of the new soldier, the spirit of subordination to a +common purpose.... + +France, which has lived so much farther and deeper and more bitterly +than Britain, knows....[2] + +[Footnote 2: In "An Englishman Looks at the World," a companion volume +to the present one, which was first published by Messrs. Cassell early +in 1914, and is now obtainable in a shilling edition, the reader will +find a full discussion of the probable benefit of proportional +representation in eliminating the party hack from political life. +Proportional representation would probably break up party organisations +altogether, and it would considerably enhance the importance and +responsibility of the Press. It would do much to accelerate the +development of the state of affairs here foreshadowed, in which the rōle +of government and opposition under the party system will be played by +elected representatives and Press respectively.] + + + + +VII. THE NEW EDUCATION + + +Some few months ago Mr. Harold Spender, in the _Daily News_, was calling +attention to a very significant fact indeed. The higher education in +England, and more particularly the educational process of Oxford and +Cambridge, which has been going on continuously since the Middle Ages, +is practically in a state of suspense. Oxford and Cambridge have +stopped. They have stopped so completely that Mr. Spender can speculate +whether they can ever pick up again and resume upon the old lines. + +For my own part, as the father of two sons who are at present in +mid-school, I hope with all my heart that they will not. I hope that the +Oxford and Cambridge of unphilosophical classics and Little-go Greek for +everybody, don's mathematics, bad French, ignorance of all Europe except +Switzerland, forensic exercises in the Union Debating Society, and cant +about the Gothic, the Oxford and Cambridge that turned boys full of life +and hope and infinite possibility into barristers, politicians, +mono-lingual diplomatists, bishops, schoolmasters, company directors, +and remittance men, are even now dead. + +Quite recently I passed through Cambridge, and, with the suggestions of +Mr. Spender in my mind, I paused to savour the atmosphere of the place. +He had very greatly understated the facts of the case. He laid stress +upon the fact that instead of the normal four thousand undergraduates or +so, there are now scarcely four hundred. But before I was fairly in +Cambridge I realised that that gives no idea of the real cessation of +English education. Of the first seven undergraduates I saw upon the +Trumpington road, one was black, three were coloured, and one of the +remaining three was certainly not British, but, I should guess, +Spanish-American. And it isn't only the undergraduates who have gone. +All the dons of military age and quality have gone too, or are staying +up not in caps and gowns, but in khaki; all the vigorous teachers are +soldiering; there are no dons left except those who are unfit for +service--and the clergy. Buildings, libraries, empty laboratories, empty +lecture theatres, vestiges, refugees, neutrals, khaki; that is Cambridge +to-day. + +There never was before, there never may be again, so wonderful an +opportunity for a cleaning-up and sweeping-out of those two places, and +for a profitable new start in British education. + +The cessation of Oxford and Cambridge does not give the full measure of +the present occasion. All the other British universities are in a like +case. And the schools which feed them have been practically swept clean +of their senior boys. And not a tithe of any of this war class of +schoolboys will ever go to the universities now, not a tithe of the war +class of undergraduates will ever return. Between the new education and +the old there will be a break of two school generations. For the next +thirty or forty years an exceptional class of men will play a leading +part in British affairs, men who will have learnt more from reality and +less from lectures than either the generations that preceded or the +generations that will follow them. The subalterns of the great war will +form a distinct generation and mark an epoch. Their experiences of need, +their sense of deficiencies, will certainly play a large part in the +reconstitution of British education. _The stamp of the old system will +not be on them_. + +Now is the time to ask what sort of training should a university give to +produce the ruling, directing, and leading men which it exists to +produce? Upon that Great Britain will need to make up its mind +speedily. It is not a matter for to-morrow or the day after; it is +necessary to decide now what it is the Britain that is coming will need +and want, and to set to work revising the admission and degree +requirements, and reconstructing all those systems of public +examinations for the public services that necessarily dominate school +and university teaching, before the universities and schools reassemble. +If the rotten old things once get together again, the rotten old things +will have a new lease of life. This and no other is the hour for +educational reconstruction. And it is in the decisions and readjustments +of schools and lectures and courses, far more than anywhere else, that +the real future of Great Britain will be decided. Equally true is this +of all the belligerent countries. Much of the future has a kind of +mechanical inevitableness, but here far more than anywhere else, can a +few resolute and capable men mould the spirit and determine the quality +of the Europe to come. + +Now surely the chief things that are needed in the education of a ruling +class are these--first, the selection and development of Character, +then the selection and development of Capacity, and, thirdly, the +imparting of Knowledge upon broad and comprehensive lines, and the +power of rapidly taking up and using such detailed knowledge as may be +needed for special occasions. It is upon the first count that the +British schools and universities have been most open to criticism. We +have found the British university-trained class under the fiery tests of +this war an evasive, temporising class of people, individualistic, +ungenerous, and unable either to produce or obey vigorous leadership. On +the whole, it is a matter for congratulation, it says wonderful things +for the inherent natural qualities of the English-speaking peoples, that +things have proved no worse than they are, considering the nature of the +higher education under which they have suffered. + +Consider in what that educational process has consisted. Its backbone +has been the teaching of Latin by men who can read, write, and speak it +rather worse than a third-rate Babu speaks English, and of Ancient Greek +by teachers who at best half know this fine lost language. They do not +expect any real mastery of either tongue by their students, and +naturally, therefore, no real mastery is ever attained. The boys and +young men just muff about at it for three times as long as would be +needed to master completely both those tongues if they had "live" +teachers, and so they acquire habits of busy futility and petty +pedantry in all intellectual processes that haunt them throughout life. +There are also sterile mathematical studies that never get from +"exercises" to practice. There is a pretence of studying philosophy +based on Greek texts that few of the teachers and none of the taught can +read comfortably, and a certain amount of history. The Modern History +School at Oxford, for example, is the queerest collection of chunks of +reading. English history from the beginning, with occasional glances at +Continental affairs, European history for about a century, bits of +economics, and--the _Politics_ of Aristotle! It is not education; it is +a jack-daw collection....This sort of jumble has been the essentials of +the more pretentious type of "higher education" available in Great +Britain up to the present. + +In this manner, through all the most sensitive and receptive years of +life, our boys have been trained in "how not to get there," in a variety +of disconnected subjects, by men who have never "got there," and it +would be difficult to imagine any curriculum more calculated to produce +a miscellaneous incompetence. They have also, it happens, received a +certain training in _savoir faire_ through the collective necessities of +school life, and a certain sharpening in the arts of advocacy through +the debating society. Except for these latter helps, they have had to +face the world with minds neither more braced, nor more trained, nor +more informed than any "uneducated" man's. + +Surely the first condition that should be laid down for the new +education in Europe is that whatever is undertaken must be undertaken in +grim earnest and done. It is ridiculous to talk about the +"character-forming" value of any study that does not go through to an +end. Manifestly Greek must be dropped as a part of the general +curriculum for a highly educated man, for the simple reason that now +there are scarcely any competent teachers, and because the sham of +teaching it partially and pretentiously demoralises student and school +alike. The claim of the clergy and so forth to "know" Greek is one of +the many corrupting lies in British intellectual life. English comic +writers never weary of sneering at the Hindu who claimed to be a "failed +B.A.," but what is the ordinary classical degree man of an English +university but a "failed" Greek scholar? Latin, too, must be either +reduced to the position of a study supplementary to the native tongue, +or brought up to an honest level of efficiency. + +French and German in the case of the English, and English in the case +of the French and Russians, are essentially governess languages; any +intelligent boy or girl from a reasonably prosperous home ought to be +able to read, write, and speak either before fifteen; they are to be +taken by the way rather than regarded as a fundamental part of +education. The French, German, or English literature and literary +development up to and including contemporary work is, of course, an +entirely different matter. But there can be no doubt of the great +educational value of some highly inflected and well-developed language +_taught by men to whom it is a genuine means of expression_. Educational +needs and public necessity point alike to such languages as Russian or, +in the case of Great Britain, Hindustani to supply this sound training. + +If Great Britain means business after this war, if she is to do her duty +by the Eastern world she controls, she will not stick at the petty +expense of getting a few hundreds of good Russian and Hindu teachers +into the country, and she will place Russian and Hindustani upon at +least an equal footing with Greek in all her university and competitive +examinations. Moreover, it is necessary to set a definite aim of +application before university mathematical teaching. As the first +condition of character-building in all these things, the student should +do what he ostensibly sets out to do. No degree and no position should +be attainable by half accomplishment. + +Of course, languages and mathematics do not by any means round off the +education of a man of the leading classes. There is no doubt much +exercise in their attainment, much value in their possession. But the +essence of the higher education is now, as it always has been, +philosophy; not the antiquated pretence of "reading" Plato and +Aristotle, but the thorough and subtle examination of those great +questions of life that most exercise and strengthen the mind. Surely +that is the essential difference of the "educated" and the "common" man. +The former has thought, and thought out thoroughly and clearly, the +relations of his mind to the universe as a whole, and of himself to the +State and life. A mind untrained in swift and adequate criticism is +essentially an uneducated mind, though it has as many languages as a +courier and as much computation as a bookie. + +And what is our fundamental purpose in all this reform of our higher +education? It is neither knowledge nor technical skill, but to make our +young men talk less and think more, and to think more swiftly, surely, +and exactly. For that we want less debating society and more philosophy, +fewer prizes for forensic ability and more for strength and vigour of +analysis. The central seat of character is the mind. A man of weak +character thinks vaguely, a man of clear intellectual decisions acts +with precision and is free from vacillation. A country of educated men +acts coherently, smites swiftly, plans ahead; a country of confused +education is a country of essential muddle. + +It is as the third factor in education that the handling and experience +of knowledge comes, and of all knowledge that which is most accessible, +most capable of being handled with the greatest variety of educational +benefit, so as to include the criticism of evidence, the massing of +facts, the extraction and testing of generalisations, lies in the two +groups of the biological sciences and the exact sciences. No doubt a +well-planned system of education will permit of much varied +specialisation, will, indeed, specialise those who have special gifts +from a very early age, will have corners for Greek, Hebrew, Sanscrit, +philology, archaeology, Christian theology, and so on, and so on; +nevertheless, for that great mass of sound men of indeterminate +all-round ability who are the intellectual and moral backbone of a +nation, it is in scientific studies that their best training lies, +studies most convenient to undertake and most readily applied in life. +From either of the two groups of the sciences one may pass on to +research or to technical applications leading directly to the public +service. The biological sciences broaden out through psychology and +sociology to the theory and practice of law, and to political life. They +lead also to medical and agricultural administration. The exact sciences +lead to the administrative work of industrialism, and to general +economics. + +These are the broad, clear lines of the educational necessities of a +modern community, plain enough to see, so that every man who is not +blinded by prejudice and self-interest can see them to-day. We have now +before us a phase of opportunity in educational organisation that will +never recur again. Now that the apostolic succession of the old pedagogy +is broken, and the entire system discredited, it seems incredible that +it can ever again be reconstituted in its old seats upon the old lines. +In these raw, harsh days of boundless opportunity, the opportunity of +the new education, because it is the most fundamental, is assuredly the +greatest of all. + + + + +VIII. WHAT THE WAR IS DOING FOR WOMEN + + +Section 1 + +To discuss the effect of this war upon the relations of men and women to +each other is to enter upon the analysis of a secular process compared +with which even the vast convulsions and destructions of this world +catastrophe appear only as jolts and incidents and temporary +interruptions. There are certain matters that sustain a perennial +development, that are on a scale beyond the dramatic happenings of +history; wars, the movements of peoples and races, economic changes, +such things may accelerate or stimulate or confuse or delay, but they +cannot arrest the endless thinking out, the growth and perfecting of +ideas, upon the fundamental relationships of human Beings. First among +such eternally progressive issues is religion, the relationship of man +to God; next in importance and still more immediate is the matter of +men's relations to women. In such matters each phase is a new phase; +whatever happens, there is no going back and beginning over again. The +social life, like the religious life, must grow and change until the +human story is at an end. + +So that this war involves, in this as in so many matters, no fundamental +set-back, no reversals nor restorations. At the most it will but realise +things already imagined, release things latent. The nineteenth century +was a period of unprecedented modification of social relationships; but +great as these changes were, they were trivial in comparison with the +changes in religious thought and the criticism of moral ideals. Hell was +the basis of religious thinking in A.D. 1800, and the hangman was at the +back of the law; in 1900 both Hell and the hangman seemed on the verge +of extinction. The creative impulse was everywhere replacing fear and +compulsion in human motives. The opening decade of the twentieth century +was a period of unprecedented abundance in everything necessary to human +life, of vast accumulated resources, of leisure and release. It was +also, because of that and because of the changed social and religious +spirit, a period of great social disorganisation and confused impulses. + +We British can already look back to the opening half of 1914 as to an +age gone for ever. Except that we were all alive then and can remember, +it has become now almost as remote, almost as "historical," as the days +before the French Revolution. Our days, our methods and reactions, are +already so different. The greater part of the freedom of movement, the +travel and going to and fro, the leisure, the plenty and carelessness, +that distinguished early twentieth century life from early nineteenth +century life, has disappeared. Most men are under military discipline, +and every household economises. The whole British people has been +brought up against such elementary realities of need, danger, and +restraint as it never realised before. We discover that we had been +living like Olympians in regard to worldly affairs, we had been +irresponsibles, amateurs. Much of that fatness of life, the wrappings +and trimmings of our life, has been stripped off altogether. That has +not altered the bones of life; it has only made them plainer; but it has +astonished us as much as if looking into a looking-glass one suddenly +found oneself a skeleton. Or a diagram. + +What was going on before this war in the relations of men and women is +going on still, with more rapidity perhaps, and certainly with more +thoroughness. The war is accentuating, developing, defining. Previously +our discussions and poses and movements had merely the air of seeking +to accentuate and define. What was apparently being brought about by +discursive efforts, and in a mighty controversy and confusion, is coming +about now as a matter of course. + +Before the war, in the British community as in most civilised +communities, profound changes were already in progress, changes in the +conditions of women's employment, in the legal relations of husband and +wife, in the political status of women, in the status of illegitimate +children, in manners and customs affecting the sexes. Every civilised +community was exhibiting a falling birth-rate and a falling death-rate, +was changing the quality of its housing, and diminishing domestic labour +by organising supplies and developing, appliances. That is to say, that +primary human unit, the home, was altering in shape and size and +frequency and colour and effect. A steadily increasing proportion of +people were living outside the old family home, the home based on +maternity and offspring, altogether. A number of us were doing our best +to apprehend the summation of all this flood of change. We had a vague +idea that women were somehow being "emancipated," but just what this +word meant and what it implied were matters still under exploration. +Then came the war. For a time it seemed as if all this discussion was at +an end, as if the problem itself had vanished. + +But that was only a temporary distraction of attention. The process of +change swirled into new forms that did not fit very easily into the +accepted formulae, swirled into new forms and continued on its way. If +the discussion ceased for a time, the process of change ceased not at +all. Matters have travelled all the farther in the last two years for +travelling mutely. The questions between men and women are far more +important and far more incessant than the questions between Germans and +the rest of mankind. They are coming back now into the foreground of +human thought, but amended and altered. Our object is to state the +general nature of that alteration. It has still been "emancipation," but +very different in quality from the "emancipation" that was demanded so +loudly and incoherently in that ancient world--of 1913! + +Never had the relations of men and women been so uneasy as they were in +the opening days of 1914. The woman's movement battered and banged +through all our minds. It broke out into that tumult in Great Britain +perhaps ten years ago. When Queen Victoria died it was inaudible; search +_Punch_, search the newspapers of that tranquil age. In 1914 it kicked +up so great a dust that the Germans counted on the Suffragettes as one +of the great forces that were to paralyse England in the war. + +The extraordinary thing was that the feminist movement was never clearly +defined during all the time of its maximum violence. We begin to +perceive in the retrospect that the movement was multiple, made up of a +number of very different movements interwoven. It seemed to concentrate +upon the Vote; but it was never possible to find even why women wanted +the vote. Some, for example, alleged that it was because they were like +men, and some because they were entirely different. The broad facts that +one could not mistake were a vast feminine discontent and a vast display +of feminine energy. What had brought that about? + +Two statistical factors are to be considered here. One of these was the +steady decline in the marriage rate, and the increasing proportion of +unmarried women of all classes, but particularly of the more educated +classes, requiring employment. The second was the fall in the +birth-rate, the diminution in size of the average family, the increase +of sterile unions, and the consequent release of a considerable +proportion of the energy of married women. Co-operating with these +factors of release were the economic elaborations that were improving +the appliances of domestic life, replacing the needle by the sewing +machine, the coal fire and lamp by gas and electricity, the dustpan and +brush by the pneumatic carpet cleaner, and taking out of the house into +the shop and factory the baking, much of the cooking, the making of +clothes, the laundry work, and so forth, that had hitherto kept so many +women at home and too busy to think. The care of even such children as +there were was also less arduous; crźche and school held out hands for +them, ready to do even that duty better. + +Side by side with these releases from duty was a rise in the standard of +education that was stimulating the minds and imaginations of woman +beyond a point where the needle--even if there had been any use for the +needle--can be an opiate. Moreover, the world was growing richer, and +growing richer in such a way that not only were leisure and desire +increasing, but, because of increasingly scientific methods of +production, the need in many branches of employment for any but very +keen and able workers was diminishing. So that simultaneously the world, +that vanished world before 1914, was releasing and disengaging enormous +volumes of untrained and unassigned feminine energy and also diminishing +the usefulness of unskilful effort in every department of life. There +was no demand to meet the supply. These were the underlying processes +that produced the feminist outbreak of the decade before the war. + +Now the debate between the sexes is a perennial. It began while we were +still in the trees. It has its stereotyped accusations; its stereotyped +repartees. The Canterbury Pilgrims had little to learn from Christabel +Pankhurst. Man and woman in that duet struggle perpetually for the upper +hand, and the man restrains the woman and the woman resents the man. In +every age some voice has been heard asserting, like Plato, that the +woman is a human being; and the prompt answer has been, "but such a +different human being." Wherever there is a human difference fair play +is difficult, the universal clash of races witnesses to that, and sex is +the greatest of human differences. + +But the general trend of mankind towards intelligence and reason has +been also a trend away from a superstitious treatment of sexual +questions and a recognition, so to speak, that a woman's "a man for a' +that," that she is indeed as entitled to an independent soul and a +separate voice in collective affairs. As brain has counted for more and +more in the human effort and brute strength and the advantage of not +bearing children for less and less, as man has felt a greater need for a +companion and a lesser need for a slave, and as the increase of food and +the protection of the girl from premature child-bearing has approximated +the stature and strength and enterprise of the woman more and more to +that of the man, this secular emancipation of the human female from the +old herd subordination and servitude to the patriarchal male has gone +on. Essentially the secular process has been an equalising process. It +was merely the exaggeration of its sustaining causes during the plenty +and social and intellectual expansion of the last half-century that had +stimulated this secular process to the pitch of crisis. + +There have always been two extreme aspects of the sexual debate. There +have always been the oversexed women who wanted to be treated primarily +as women, and the women who were irritated and bored by being treated +primarily as women. There have always been those women who wanted to +get, like Joan of Arc, into masculine attire, and the school of the +"mystical darlings." There have always been the women who wanted to +share men's work and the women who wanted to "inspire" it--the mates and +the mistresses. Of course, the mass of women lies between these +extremes. But it is possible, nevertheless, to discuss this question as +though it were a conflict of two sharply opposed ideals. It is +convenient to write as if there were just these two sorts of women +because so one can get a sharp definition in the picture. The ordinary +woman fluctuates between the two, turns now to the Western ideal of +citizenship and now to the Eastern of submission. These ideals fight not +only in human society, but in every woman's career. + +Chitra in Rabindranath Tagore's play, for example, tried both aspects of +the woman's life, and Tagore is at one with Plato in preferring the +Rosalind type to the houri. And with him I venture to think is the clear +reason of mankind. The real "emancipation" to which reason and the trend +of things makes is from the yielding to the energetic side of a woman's +disposition, from beauty enthroned for love towards the tall, +weather-hardened woman with a spear, loving her mate as her mate loves +her, and as sexless as a man in all her busy hours. + +But it was not simply the energies that tended towards this particular +type that were set free during the latter half of the nineteenth +century. Every sort of feminine energy was set free. And it was not +merely the self-reliant, independence-seeking women who were +discontented. The ladies who specialised in feminine arts and graces and +mysteries were also dissatisfied. They found they were not important +enough. The former type found itself insufficiently respected, and the +latter type found itself insufficiently adored. The two mingled their +voices in the most confusing way in the literature of the suffrage +movement before the war. The two tendencies mingle confusingly in the +minds of the women that this movement was stirring up to think. The Vote +became the symbol for absolutely contradictory things; there is scarcely +a single argument for it in suffragist literature that cannot be +completely negatived out of suffragist literature. + +For example, compare the writings of Miss Cicely Hamilton, the +distinguished actress, with the publications of the Pankhurst family. +The former expresses a claim that, except for prejudice, a woman is as +capable a citizen as a man and differing only in her sex; the latter +consist of a long rhapsody upon the mystical superiorities of women and +the marvellous benefits mankind will derive from handing things over to +these sacred powers. The former would get rid of sex from most human +affairs; the latter would make what our Georgian grandfathers called +"The Sex" rule the world. + +Or compare, say, the dark coquettings of Miss Elizabeth Robins' "Woman's +Secret" with the virile common sense of that most brilliant young +writer, Miss Rebecca West, in her bitter onslaught on feminine +limitations in the opening chapters of "The World's Worst Failure." The +former is an extravagance of sexual mysticism. Man can never understand +women. Women always hide deep and wonderful things away beyond masculine +discovery. Men do not even suspect. Some day, perhaps--It is someone +peeping from behind a curtain, and inviting men in provocative tones to +come and play catch in a darkened harem. The latter is like some gallant +soldier cursing his silly accoutrements. It is a hearty outbreak against +that apparent necessity for elegance and sexual specialisation that +undercuts so much feminine achievement, that reduces so much feminine +art and writing to vapidity, and holds back women from the face of +danger and brave and horrible deaths. It is West to Miss Robins' East. +And yet I believe I am right in saying that all these four women +writers have jostled one another upon suffrage platforms, and that they +all suffered blows and injuries in the same cause, during the various +riots and conflicts that occurred in London in the course of the great +agitation. It was only when the agitation of the Pankhurst family, aided +by Miss Robins' remarkable book "Where are you going to ...?" took a +form that threatened to impose the most extraordinary restrictions on +the free movements of women, and to establish a sort of universal purdah +of hostility and suspicion against those degraded creatures, those +stealers and destroyers of women, "the men," that the British feminist +movement displayed any tendency to dissociate into its opposed and +divergent strands. + +It is a little detail, but a very significant one in this connection, +that the committee that organised the various great suffrage processions +in London were torn by dispute about the dresses of the processionists. +It was urged that a "masculine style of costume" discredited the +movement, and women were urged to dress with a maximum of feminine +charm. Many women obtained finery they could ill afford, to take part in +these demonstrations, and minced their steps as womanly as possible to +freedom.... + +It would be easy to overstate the efflorescence of distinctively +feminine emotion, dressiness, mysticism, and vanity upon the suffrage +movement. Those things showed for anyone to see. This was the froth of +the whirlpool. What did not show was the tremendous development of the +sense of solidarity among women. Everybody knew that women had been +hitting policemen at Westminster; it was not nearly so showy a fact that +women of title, working women, domestic servants, tradesmen's wives, +professional workers, had all been meeting together and working together +in a common cause, working with an unprecedented capacity and an +unprecedented disregard of social barriers. One noted the nonsensical +by-play of the movement; the way in which women were accustoming +themselves to higher standards of achievement was not so immediately +noticeable. That a small number of women were apparently bent on +rendering the Vote impossible by a campaign of violence and malicious +mischief very completely masked the fact that a very great number of +girls and young women no longer considered it seemly to hang about at +home trying by a few crude inducements to tempt men to marry them, but +were setting out very seriously and capably to master the young man's +way of finding a place for oneself in the world. Beneath the dust and +noise realities were coming about that the dust and noise entirely +failed to represent. We know that some women were shrieking for the +Vote; we did not realise that a generation of women was qualifying for +it. + +The war came, the jolt of an earthquake, to throw things into their +proper relationships. + +The immediate result was the disappearance of the militant suffragists +from public view for a time, into which the noisier section hastened to +emerge in full scream upon the congenial topic of War Babies. "Men," +those dreadful creatures, were being camped and quartered all over the +country. It followed, from all the social principles known to Mrs. and +Miss Pankhurst, that it was necessary to provide for an enormous number +of War Babies. Subscriptions were invited. Statisticians are still +looking rather perplexedly for those War Babies; the illegitimate +birth-rate has fallen, and what has become of the subscriptions I do not +know. _The Suffragette_ rechristened itself _Britannia_, dropped the War +Baby agitation, and, after an interlude of self-control, broke out into +denunciations, first of this public servant and then of that, as +traitors and German spies. Finally, it discovered a mare's nest in the +case of Sir Edward Grey that led to its suppression, and the last I +have from this misleading and unrepresentative feminist faction is the +periodic appearance of a little ill-printed sheet of abuse about the +chief Foreign Office people, resembling in manner and appearance the +sort of denunciatory letter, at once suggestive and evasive, that might +be written by the curate's discharged cook. And with that the aggressive +section of the suffragist movement seems to have petered out, leaving +the broad reality of feminine emancipation to go on in a beneficent +silence. + +There can be no question that the behaviour of the great mass of women +in Great Britain has not simply exceeded expectation but hope. And there +can be as little doubt that the suffrage question, in spite of the +self-advertising violence of its extravagant section, did contribute +very materially to build up the confidence, the willingness to undertake +responsibility and face hardship, that has been so abundantly displayed +by every class of woman. It is not simply that there has been enough +women and to spare for hospital work and every sort of relief and +charitable service; that sort of thing has been done before, that was in +the tradition of womanhood. It is that at every sort of occupation, +clerking, shop-keeping, railway work, automobile driving, agricultural +work, police work, they have been found efficient beyond precedent and +intelligent beyond precedent. And in the munition factories, in the +handling of heavy and often difficult machinery, and in adaptability and +inventiveness and enthusiasm and steadfastness their achievement has +been astonishing. More particularly in relation to intricate mechanical +work is their record remarkable and unexpected. + +There is scarcely a point where women, having been given a chance, have +not more than made good. They have revolutionised the estimate of their +economic importance, and it is scarcely too much to say that when, in +the long run, the military strength of the Allies bears down the +strength of Germany, it will be this superiority of our women which +enables us to pit a woman at--the censorship will object to exact +geography upon this point--against a man at Essen which has tipped the +balance of this war. + +Those women have won the vote. Not the most frantic outbursts of +militancy after this war can prevent them getting it. The girls who have +faced death and wounds so gallantly in our cordite factories--there is a +not inconsiderable list of dead and wounded from those places--have +killed for ever the poor argument that women should not vote because +they had no military value. Indeed, they have killed every argument +against their subjection. And while they do these things, that paragon +of the virtues of the old type, that miracle of domestic obedience, the +German _haus-frau_, the faithful Gretchen, riots for butter. + +And as I have before remarked, the Germans counted on the suffragettes +as one of the great forces that were to paralyse England in this war. + +It is not simply that the British women have so bountifully produced +intelligence and industry; that does not begin their record. They have +been willing to go dowdy. The mass of women in Great Britain are wearing +the clothes of 1914. In 1913 every girl and woman one saw in the streets +of London had an air of doing her best to keep in the fashion. Now they +are for the most part as carelessly dressed as a busy business man or a +clever young student might have been. They are none the less pretty for +that, and far more beautiful. But the fashions have floated away to +absurdity. Every now and then through the austere bustle of London in +war time drifts a last practitioner of the "eternal feminine"--with the +air of a foreign visitor, with the air of devotion to some peculiar +cult. She has very high-heeled boots; she shows a leg, she has a short +skirt with a peculiar hang, due no doubt to mysteries about the waist; +she wears a comic little hat over one brow; there is something of +Columbine about her, something of the Watteau shepherdess, something of +a vivandiere, something of every age but the present age. Her face, +subject to the strange dictates of the mode, is smooth like the back of +a spoon, with small features and little whisker-like curls before the +ears such as butcher-boys used to wear half a century ago. Even so, she +dare not do this thing alone. Something in khaki is with her, to justify +her. You are to understand that this strange rig is for seeing him off +or giving him a good time during his leave. Sometimes she is quite +elderly, sometimes nothing khaki is to be got, and the pretence that +this is desired of her wears thin. Still, the type will out. + +She does not pass with impunity, the last exponent of true feminine +charm. The vulgar, the street boy, have evolved one of those strange +sayings that have the air of being fragments from some lost and +forgotten chant: + + "She's the Army Contractor's Only Daughter, + Spending it now." + +Or simply, "Spending it now." + +She does not pass with impunity, but she passes. She makes her stilted +passage across the arena upon which the new womanhood of Western Europe +shows its worth. It is an exit. There is likely to be something like a +truce in the fashions throughout Europe for some years. It is in America +if anywhere that the holy fires of smartness and the fashion will be +kept alive.... + +And so we come to prophecy. + +I do not believe that this invasion by women of a hundred employments +hitherto closed to them is a temporary arrangement that will be reversed +after the war. It is a thing that was going on, very slowly, it is true, +and against much prejudice and opposition, before the war, but it was +going on; it is in the nature of things. These women no doubt enter +these employments as substitutes, but not usually as inferior +substitutes; in quite a number of cases they are as good as men, and in +many they are not underselling, they are drawing men's pay. What reason +is there to suppose that they will relapse into a state of superfluous +energy after the war? The war has merely brought about, with the +rapidity of a landslide, a state of affairs for which the world was +ripe. The world after the war will have to adjust itself to this +extension of women's employment, and to this increase in the proportion +of self-respecting, self-supporting women. + +Contributing very largely to the establishment of this greatly enlarged +class of independent women will be the great shortage for the next +decade of marriageable men, due to the killing and disablement of the +war. The women of the next decades will not only be able to get along +economically without marriage, but they will find it much more difficult +to marry. It will also probably be a period in which a rise in prices +may, as it usually does, precede the compensating rise in wages. It may +be that for some years it will be more difficult to maintain a family. +This will be a third factor in the fixation of this class of bachelor +women. + +Various writers, brooding over the coming shortage of men, have jumped +to the conclusion that polygamy is among the probabilities of the near +future. They write in terms of real or affected alarm for which there is +no justification; they wallow in visions of Germany "legalising" +polygamy, and see Berlin seeking recuperation, in man power by +converting herself into another Salt Lake City. But I do not think that +Germany, in the face of the economic ring that the Allies will certainly +draw about her, is likely to desire a very great increase in population +for the next few years; I do not see any great possibility of a +specially rich class capable of maintaining numerous wives being +sustained by the impoverished and indebted world of Europe, nor the +sources from which a supply of women preferring to become constituents +in a polygamous constellation rather than self-supporting freewomen is +to be derived. + +The temperamental dislike of intelligent women to polygamy is at least +as strong as a man's objection to polyandry. Polygamy, open or hidden, +flourishes widely only where there are women to be bought. Moreover, +there are considerable obstacles in religion and custom to be overcome +by the innovating polygamist--even in Germany. It might mean a breach of +the present good relations between Germany and the Vatican. The relative +inferiority of the tradition of the German to that of most other +European women, its relative disposition towards feminine servitude, is +no doubt a consideration on the other scale of this discussion, but I do +not think it is one heavy enough to tilt back the beam. + +So far from a great number of men becoming polygamists, I think it would +be possible to show cause for supposing that an increasing proportion +will cease even to be monogamists. The romantic excitements of the war +have produced a temporary rise in the British marriage rate; but before +the war it had been falling slowly and the average age at marriage had +been rising, and it is quite possible that this process will be +presently resumed and, as a new generation grows up to restore the +balance of the sexes, accelerated. + +We conclude, therefore, that this increase in the class of economically +independent bachelor women that is now taking place is a permanent +increase. It is probably being reinforced by a considerable number of +war widows who will not remarry. We have to consider in what directions +this mass of capable, intelligent, energetic, undomesticated freewomen +is likely to develop, what its effect will be on social usage, and +particularly how it will react upon the lives of the married women about +them. Because, as we have already pointed out in this chapter, the +release of feminine energy upon which the feminist problem depends is +twofold, being due not only to the increased unmarriedness of women +through the disproportion of the sexes and the rise in the age of +marriage, but also to the decreased absorption of married women in +domestic duties. A woman, from the point of view of this discussion, is +not "married and done for," as she used to be. She is not so +extensively and completely married. Her large and increasing leisure +remains in the problem. + +The influence of this coming body of freewomen upon the general social +atmosphere will be, I venture to think, liberalising and relaxing in +certain directions and very bracing in others. This new type of women +will want to go about freely without an escort, to be free to travel +alone, take rooms in hotels, sit in restaurants, and so forth. Now, as +the women of the past decade showed, there are for a woman two quite +antagonistic ways of going about alone. Nothing showed the duplicate +nature of the suffragist movement more than the great variety of +deportment of women in the London streets during that time. There were +types that dressed neatly and quietly and went upon their business with +intent and preoccupied faces. Their intention was to mingle as +unobtrusively as possible into the stream of business, to be as far as +possible for the ordinary purposes of traffic "men in a world of men." A +man could speak to such women as he spoke to another man, without +suspicion, could, for example, ask his way and be directed without being +charged with annoying or accosting a delicate female. + +At the other extreme there was a type of young woman who came into the +streets like something precious that has got loose. It dressed itself +as feminine loveliness; it carried sex like a banner and like a +challenge. Its mind was fully prepared by the Pankhurst literature for +insult. It swept past distressed manhood imputing motives. It was pure +hareem, and the perplexed masculine intelligence could never determine +whether it was out for a demonstration or whether it was out for a +spree. Its motives in thus marching across the path of feminine +emancipation were probably more complicated and confused than that +alternative suggests, and sheer vanity abounded in the mixture. But +undoubtedly that extremity is the vanishing extremity of these things. +The new freewoman is going to be a grave and capable being, soberly +dressed, and imposing her own decency and neutrality of behaviour upon +the men she meets. And along the line of sober costume and simple and +restrained behaviour that the freewoman is marking out, the married +woman will also escape to new measures of freedom. + +I do not believe that among women of the same social origins and the +same educational quality there can exist side by side entirely distinct +schools of costume, deportment, and behaviour based on entirely +divergent views of life. I do not think that men can be trained to +differentiate between different sorts of women, sorts of women they will +often be meeting simultaneously, and to treat this one with frankness +and fellowship and that one with awe passion and romantic old-world +gallantry. All sorts of intermediate types--the majority of women will +be intermediate types--will complicate the problem. This conflict of the +citizen-woman ideal with the loveliness-woman ideal, which was breaking +out very plainly in the British suffrage movement before the war, will +certainly return after the war, and I have little doubt which way the +issue will fall. The human being is going to carry it against the sexual +being. The struggle is going to be extensive and various and prolonged, +but in the serious years ahead the serious type must, I feel, win. The +plain, well-made dress will oust the ribbon and the decolletage. + +In every way the war is accelerating the emancipation of women from +sexual specialisation. It is facilitating their economic emancipation. +It is liberating types that will inevitably destroy both the "atmosphere +of gallantry" which is such a bar to friendliness between people of +opposite sexes and that atmosphere of hostile distrust which is its +counterpart in the minds of the over-sexual suffragettes. It is +arresting the change of fashions and simplifying manners. + +In another way also it is working to the same end. That fall in the +birth-rate which has been so marked a feature in the social development +of all modern states has become much more perceptible since the war +began to tell upon domestic comfort. There is a full-cradle agitation +going on in Germany to check this decline; German mothers are being +urged not to leave the Crown Prince of 1930 or 1940 without the +necessary material for glory at some fresh Battle of Verdun. I doubt the +zeal of their response. But everywhere the war signifies economic stress +which must necessarily continue long after the war is over, and in the +present state of knowledge that stress means fewer children. The family, +already light, will grow lighter. This means that marriage, although it +may be by no means less emotionally sacred, will become a lighter thing. + +Once, to be married was a woman's whole career. Household cares, a dozen +children, and she was consumed. All her romances ended in marriage. All +a decent man's romance ended there, too. She proliferated and he toiled, +and when the married couple had brought up some of their children and +buried the others, and blessed their first grandchildren, life was +over. + +Now, to be married is an incident in a woman's career, as in a man's. +There is not the same necessity of that household, not the same close +tie; the married woman remains partially a freewoman and assimilates +herself to the freewoman. There is an increasing disposition to group +solitary children and to delegate their care to specially qualified +people, and this is likely to increase, because the high earning power +of young women will incline them to entrust their children to others, +and because a shortage of men and an excess of widows will supply other +women willing to undertake that care. The more foolish women will take +these releases as a release into levity, but the common sense of the +newer types of women will come to the help of men in recognising the +intolerable nuisance of this prolongation of flirting and charming on +the part of people who have had what should be a satisfying love. + +Nor will there be much wealth or superfluity to make levity possible and +desirable. Winsome and weak womanhood will be told bluntly by men and +women alike that it is a bore. The frou-frou of skirts, the delicate +mysteries of the toilette, will cease to thrill any but the very young +men. Marriage, deprived of its bonds of material necessity, will demand +a closer and closer companionship as its justification and excuse. A +marriage that does not ripen into a close personal friendship between +two equals will be regarded with increasing definiteness as an +unsatisfactory marriage. + +These things are not stated here as being desirable or undesirable. This +is merely an attempt to estimate the drift and tendency of the time as +it has been accentuated by the war. It works out to the realisation that +marriage is likely to count for less and less as a state and for more +and more as a personal relationship. It is likely to be an affair of +diminishing public and increasing private importance. People who marry +are likely to remain, so far as practical ends go, more detached and +separable. The essential link will be the love and affection and not the +home. + +With that go certain logical consequences. The first is that the +circumstances of the unmarried mother will resemble more than they have +hitherto done those of many married mothers; the harsh lines once drawn +between them will dissolve. This will fall in with the long manifest +tendency in modern society to lighten the disadvantages (in the case of +legacy duties, for example) and stigma laid upon illegitimate children. +And a type of marriage where personal compatibility has come to be +esteemed the fundamental thing will be altogether more amenable to +divorce than the old union which was based upon the kitchen and the +nursery, and the absence of any care, education, or security for +children beyond the range of the parental household. Marriage will not +only be lighter, but more dissoluble. + +To summarise all that has gone before, this war is accelerating rather +than deflecting the stream of tendency, and is bringing us rapidly to a +state of affairs in which women will be much more definitely independent +of their sexual status, much less hampered in their self-development, +and much more nearly equal to men than has ever been known before in the +whole history of mankind.... + + + + +IX. THE NEW MAP OF EUROPE + + +Section 1 + +In this chapter it is proposed to embark upon what may seem now, with +the Great War still in progress and still undecided, the most hopeless +of all prophetic adventures. This is to speculate upon the redrawing of +the map of Europe after the war. But because the detailed happenings and +exact circumstances of the ending of the war are uncertain, they need +not alter the inevitable broad conclusion. I have already discussed that +conclusion, and pointed out that the war has become essentially a war of +mutual exhaustion. This does not mean, as some hasty readers may assume, +that I foretell a "draw." We may be all white and staggering, but +Germany is, I believe, fated to go down first. She will make the first +advances towards peace; she will ultimately admit defeat. + +But I do want to insist that by that time every belligerent, and not +simply Germany, will be exhausted to a pitch of extreme reasonableness. +There will be no power left as Germany was left in 1871, in a state of +"freshness" and a dictatorial attitude. That is to say they will all be +gravitating, not to triumphs, but to such a settlement as seems to +promise the maximum of equilibrium in the future. + +If towards the end of the war the United States should decide, after +all, to abandon their present attitude of superior comment and throw +their weight in favour of such a settlement as would make the +recrudescence of militarism impossible, the general exhaustion may give +America a relative importance far beyond any influence she could exert +at the present time. In the end, America may have the power to insist +upon almost vital conditions in the settlement; though whether she will +have the imaginative force and will is, of course, quite another +question. + +And before I go on to speculate about the actual settlement, there are +one or two generalisations that it may be interesting to try over. Law +is a thin wash that we paint over the firm outlines of reality, and the +treaties and agreements of emperors and kings and statesmen have little +of the permanence of certain more fundamental human realities. I was +looking the other day at Sir Mark Sykes' "The Caliph's Inheritance," +which contains a series of coloured maps of the political boundaries of +south-western Asia for the last three thousand years. The shapes and +colours come and go--now it is Persia, now it is Macedonia, now the +Eastern Empire, now the Arab, now the Turk who is ascendant. The colours +change as if they were in a kaleidoscope; they advance, recede, split, +vanish. But through all that time there exists obstinately an Armenia, +an essential Persia, an Arabia; they, too, advance or recede a little. I +do not claim that they are eternal things, but they are far more +permanent things than any rulers or empires; they are rooted to the +ground by a peasantry, by a physical and temperamental attitude. Apart +from political maps of mankind, there are natural maps of mankind. I +find it, too, in Europe; the monarchs splash the water and break up the +mirror in endless strange shapes; nevertheless, always it is tending +back to its enduring forms; always it is gravitating back to a Spain, to +a Gaul, to an Italy, to a Serbo-Croatia, to a Bulgaria, to a Germany, to +a Poland. Poland and Armenia and Egypt destroyed, subjugated, +invincible, I would take as typical of what I mean by the natural map of +mankind. + +Let me repeat again that I do not assert there is an eternal map. It +does change; there have been times--the European settlement of America +and Siberia, for example, the Arabic sweep across North Africa, the +invasion of Britain by the Low German peoples--when it has changed very +considerably in a century or so; but at its swiftest it still takes +generations to change. The gentlemen who used to sit in conferences and +diets, and divide up the world ever and again before the nineteenth +century, never realised this. It is only within the last hundred years +that mankind has begun to grasp the fact that one of the first laws of +political stability is to draw your political boundaries along the lines +of the natural map of mankind. + +Now the nineteenth century phrased this conception by talking about the +"principle of nationality." Such interesting survivals of the nineteenth +century as Mr. C.R. Buxton still talk of settling human affairs by that +"principle." But unhappily for him the world is not so simply divided. +There are tribal regions with no national sense. There are extensive +regions of the earth's surface where the population is not homogeneous, +where people of different languages or different incompatible creeds +live village against village, a kind of human emulsion, incapable of +any true mixture or unity. Consider, for example, Central Africa, +Tyrone, Albania, Bombay, Constantinople or Transylvania. Here are +regions and cities with either no nationality or with as much +nationality as a patchwork quilt has colour.... + +Now so far as the homogeneous regions of the world go, I am quite +prepared to sustain the thesis that they can only be tranquil, they can +only develop their possibilities freely and be harmless to their +neighbours, when they are governed by local men, by men of the local +race, religion and tradition, and with a form of government that, unlike +a monarchy or a plutocracy, does not crystallise commercial or national +ambition. So far I go with those who would appeal to the "principle of +nationality." + +But I would stipulate, further, that it would enormously increase the +stability of the arrangement if such "nations" could be grouped together +into "United States" wherever there were possibilities of inter-state +rivalries and commercial friction. Where, however, one deals with a +region of mixed nationality, there is need of a subtler system of +adjustments. Such a system has already been worked out in the case of +Switzerland, where we have the community not in countries but cantons, +each with its own religion, its culture and self-government, and all at +peace under a polyglot and impartial common government. It is as plain +as daylight to anyone who is not blinded by patriotic or private +interests that such a country as Albania, which is mono-lingual indeed, +but hopelessly divided religiously, will never be tranquil, never +contented, unless it is under a cantonal system, and that the only +solution of the Irish difficulty along the belt between Ulster and +Catholic Ireland lies in the same arrangement. + +Then; thirdly, there are the regions and cities possessing no +nationality, such as Constantinople or Bombay, which manifestly +appertain not to one nation but many; the former to all the Black Sea +nations, the latter to all India. Disregarding ambitions and traditions, +it is fairly obvious that such international places would be best under +the joint control of, and form a basis of union between, all the peoples +affected. + +Now it is suggested here that upon these threefold lines it is possible +to work out a map of the world of maximum contentment and stability, and +that there will be a gravitation of all other arrangements, all empires +and leagues and what not, towards this rational and natural map of +mankind. This does not imply that that map will ultimately assert +itself, but that it will always be tending to assert itself. It will +obsess ostensible politics. + +I do not pretend to know with any degree of certainty what peculiar +forms of muddle and aggression may not record themselves upon the maps +of 2200; I do not certainly know whether mankind will be better off or +worse off then, more or less civilised; but I do know, with a very +considerable degree of certainty, that in A.D. 2200 there will still be +a France, an Ireland, a Germany, a Jugo-Slav region, a Constantinople, a +Rajputana, and a Bengal. I do not mean that these are absolutely fixed +things; they may have receded or expanded. But these are the more +permanent things; these are the field, the groundwork, the basic +reality; these are fundamental forces over which play the ambitions, +treacheries, delusions, traditions, tyrannies of international politics. +All boundaries will tend to reveal these fundamental forms as all +clothing tends to reveal the body. You may hide the waist; you will only +reveal the shoulders the more. You may mask, you may muffle the body; it +is still alive inside, and the ultimate determining thing. + +And, having premised this much, it is possible to take up the problem of +the peace of 1917 or 1918, or whenever it is to be, with some sense of +its limitations and superficiality. + + +Section 2 + +We have already hazarded the prophecy that after a long war of general +exhaustion Germany will be the first to realise defeat. This does not +mean that she will surrender unconditionally, but that she will be +reduced to bargaining to see how much she must surrender, and what she +may hold. It is my impression that she will be deserted by Bulgaria, and +that Turkey will be out of the fighting before the end. But these are +chancy matters. Against Germany there will certainly be the three great +allies, France, Russia and Britain, and almost certainly Japan will be +with them. The four will probably have got to a very complete and +detailed understanding among themselves. Italy--in, I fear, a slightly +detached spirit--will sit at the board. Hungary will be present, +sitting, so to speak, amidst the decayed remains of Austria. Roumania, a +little out of breath through hurrying at the last, may be present as the +latest ally of Italy. The European neutrals will be at least present in +spirit; their desires will be acutely felt; but it is doubtful if the +United States will count for all that they might in the decision. Such +weight as America chooses to exercise--would that she would choose to +exercise more!--will probably be on the side of the rational and natural +settlement of the world. + +Now the most important thing of all at this settlement will be the +temper and nature of the Germany with which the Allies will be dealing. + +Let us not be blinded by the passions of war into confusing a people +with its government and the artificial Kultur of a brief century. There +is a Germany, great and civilised, a decent and admirable people, masked +by Imperialism, blinded by the vanity of the easy victories of half a +century ago, wrapped in illusion. How far will she be chastened and +disillusioned by the end of this war? + +The terms of peace depend enormously upon the answer to that question. +If we take the extremest possibility, and suppose a revolution in +Germany or in South Germany, and the replacement of the Hohenzollerns in +all or part of Germany by a Republic, then I am convinced that for +republican Germany there would be not simply forgiveness, but a warm +welcome back to the comity of nations. The French, British, Belgians and +Italians, and every civilised force in Russia would tumble over one +another in their eager greeting of this return to sanity. + +If we suppose a less extreme but more possible revolution, taking the +form of an inquiry into the sanity of the Kaiser and his eldest son, and +the establishment of constitutional safeguards for the future, that also +would bring about an extraordinary modification of the resolution of the +Pledged Allies. But no ending to this war, no sort of settlement, will +destroy the antipathy of the civilised peoples for the violent, +pretentious, sentimental and cowardly imperialism that has so far +dominated Germany. All Europe outside Germany now hates and dreads the +Hohenzollerns. No treaty of peace can end that hate, and so long as +Germany sees fit to identify herself with Hohenzollern dreams of empire +and a warfare of massacre and assassination, there must be war +henceforth, open, or but thinly masked, against Germany. It will be but +the elementary common sense of the situation for all the Allies to plan +tariffs, exclusions, special laws against German shipping and +shareholders and immigrants for so long a period as every German remains +a potential servant of that system. + +Whatever Germany may think of the Hohenzollerns, the world outside +Germany regards them as the embodiment of homicidal nationalism. And +the settlement of Europe after the war, if it is to be a settlement with +the Hohenzollerns and not with the German people, must include the +virtual disarming of those robber murderers against any renewal of their +attack. It would be the most obvious folly to stop anywhere short of +that. With Germany we would welcome peace to-morrow; we would welcome +her shipping on the seas and her flag about the world; against the +Hohenzollerns it must obviously be war to the bitter end. + +But the ultimate of all sane European policy, as distinguished from +oligarchic and dynastic foolery, is the establishment of the natural map +of Europe. There exists no school of thought that can claim a moment's +consideration among the Allies which aims at the disintegration of the +essential Germany or the subjugation of any Germans to an alien rule. +Nor does anyone grudge Germany wealth, trade, shipping, or anything else +that goes with the politician's phrase of "legitimate expansion" for its +own sake. If we do now set our minds to deprive Germany of these things +in their fullness, it is in exactly the same spirit as that in which one +might remove that legitimate and peaceful implement, a bread knife, +from the hand of a homicidal maniac. Let but Germany cure herself of her +Hohenzollern taint, and the world will grudge her wealth and economic +pre-eminence as little as it grudges wealth and economic pre-eminence to +the United States. + +Now the probabilities of a German revolution open questions too complex +and subtle for our present speculation. I would merely remark in passing +that in Great Britain at least those possibilities seem to me to be +enormously underrated. For our present purpose it will be most +convenient to indicate a sort of maximum and minimum, depending upon the +decision of Germany to be entirely Hohenzollern or wholly or in part +European. But in either case we are going to assume that it is Germany +which has been most exhausted by the war, and which is seeking peace +from the Allies, who have also, we will assume, excellent internal +reasons for desiring it. + +With the Hohenzollerns it is mere nonsense to dream of any enduring +peace, but whether we are making a lasting and friendly peace with +Germany or merely a sort of truce of military operations that will be no +truce in the economic war against Hohenzollern resources, the same +essential idea will, I think, guide all the peace-desiring Powers. They +will try to draw the boundaries as near as they can to those of the +natural map of mankind. + +Then, writing as an Englishman, my first thought of the European map is +naturally of Belgium. Only absolute smashing defeat could force either +Britain or France to consent to anything short of the complete +restoration of Belgium. Rather than give that consent they will both +carry the war to at present undreamt-of extremities. Belgium must be +restored; her neutrality must be replaced by a defensive alliance with +her two Western Allies; and if the world has still to reckon with +Hohenzollerns, then her frontier must be thrust forward into the +adjacent French-speaking country so as to minimise the chances of any +second surprise. + +It is manifest that every frontier that gives upon the Hohenzollerns +must henceforth be entrenched line behind line, and held permanently by +a garrison ready for any treachery, and it becomes of primary importance +that the Franco-Belgian line should be as short and strong as possible. +Aix, which Germany has made a mere jumping-off place for aggressions, +should clearly be held by Belgium against a Hohenzollern Empire, and the +fortified and fiscal frontier would run from it southward to include the +Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, with its French sympathies and traditions, +in the permanent alliance. It is quite impossible to leave this +ambiguous territory as it was before the war, with its railway in German +hands and its postal and telegraphic service (since 1913) under +Hohenzollern control. It is quite impossible to hand over this strongly +anti-Prussian population to Hohenzollern masters. + +But an Englishman must needs write with diffidence upon this question of +the Western boundary. It is clear that all the boundaries of 1914 from +Aix to Bale are a part of ancient history. No "as you were" is possible +there. And it is not the business of anyone in Great Britain to redraw +them. That task on our side lies between France and Belgium. The +business of Great Britain in the matter is as plain as daylight. It is +to support to her last man and her last ounce of gold those new +boundaries her allies consider essential to their comfort and security. + +But I do not see how France, unless she is really convinced she is +beaten, can content herself with anything less than a strong +Franco-Belgian frontier from Aix, that will take in at least Metz and +Saarburg. She knows best the psychology of the lost provinces, and what +amount of annexation will spell weakness or strength. If she demands +all Alsace-Lorraine back from the Hohenzollerns, British opinion is +resolved to support her, and to go through with this struggle until she +gets it. To guess at the direction of the new line is not to express a +British opinion, but to speculate upon the opinion of France. After the +experience of Luxembourg and Belgium no one now dreams of a neutralised +buffer State. What does not become French or Belgian of the Rhineland +will remain German--for ever. That is perhaps conceivable, for example, +of Strassburg and the low-lying parts of Alsace. I do not know enough to +do more than guess. + +It is conceivable, but I do not think that it is probable. I think the +probability lies in the other direction. This war of exhaustion may be +going on for a year or so more, but the end will be the thrusting in of +the too extended German lines. The longer and bloodier the job is, the +grimmer will be the determination of the Pledged Allies to exact a +recompense. If the Germans offer peace while they still hold some part +of Belgium, there will be dealings. If they wait until the French are in +the Palatinate, then I doubt if the French will consent to go again. +There will be no possible advantage to Germany in a war of resistance +once the scale of her fortunes begins to sink.... + +It is when we turn to the east of Germany that the map-drawing becomes +really animated. Here is the region of great decisions. The natural map +shows a line of obstinately non-German communities, stretching nearly +from the Baltic to the Adriatic. There are Poland, Bohemia (with her +kindred Slovaks), the Magyars, and the Jugo-Serbs. In a second line come +the Great and Little Russians, the Roumanians, and the Bulgarians. And +here both Great Britain and France must defer to the wishes of their two +allies, Russia and Italy. Neither of these countries has expressed +inflexible intentions, and the situation has none of the inevitable +quality of the Western line. Except for the Tsar's promise of autonomy +to Poland, nothing has been promised. On the Western line there are only +two possibilities that I can see: the Aix-Bale boundary, or the sickness +and death of France. On the Eastern line nothing is fated. There seems +to be enormous scope for bargaining over all this field, and here it is +that the chances of compensations and consolations for Germany are to be +found. + +Let us first consider the case for Poland. The way to a reunited Poland +seems to me a particularly difficult one. The perplexity arises out of +the crime of the original partition; whichever side emerges with an +effect of victory must needs give up territory if an autonomous Poland +is to reappear. A victorious Germany would probably reconstitute the +Duchy of Warsaw under a German prince; an entirely victorious Russia +would probably rejoin Posen to Russian Poland and the Polish fragment of +Galicia, and create a dependent Polish kingdom under the Tsar. Neither +project would be received with unstinted delight by the Poles, but +either would probably be acceptable to a certain section of them. +Disregarding the dim feelings of the peasantry, Austrian Poland would +probably be the most willing to retain a connection with its old rulers. +The Habsburgs have least estranged the Poles. The Cracow district is the +only section of Poland which has been at all reconciled to foreign +control; it is the most autonomous and contented of the fragments. + +It is doubtful how far national unanimity is any longer possible between +the three Polish fragments. Like most English writers, I receive a +considerable amount of printed matter from various schools of Polish +patriotism, and wide divergences of spirit and intention appear. A weak, +divided and politically isolated Poland of twelve or fifteen million +people, under some puppet adventurer king set up between the +Hohenzollerns and the Tsardom, does not promise much happiness for the +Poles or much security for the peace of the world. An entirely +independent Poland will be a feverish field of international +intrigue--intrigue to which the fatal Polish temperament lends itself +all too readily; it may be a battlefield again within five-and-twenty +years. I think, if I were a patriotic Pole, I should determine to be a +Slav at any cost, and make the best of Russia; ally myself with all her +liberal tendencies, and rise or fall with her. And I should do my utmost +in a field where at present too little has been done to establish +understandings and lay the foundations of a future alliance with the +Czech-Slovak community to the south. But, then, I am not a Pole, but a +Western European with a strong liking for the Russians. I am democratic +and scientific, and the Poles I have met are Catholic and aristocratic +and romantic, and all sorts of difficult things that must make +co-operation with them on the part of Russians, Ruthenian peasants, +Czechs, and, indeed, other Poles, slow and insecure. I doubt if either +Germany or Russia wants to incorporate more Poles--Russia more +particularly, which has all Siberia over which to breed Russians--and I +am inclined to think that there is a probability that the end of this +war may find Poland still divided, and with boundary lines running +across her not materially different from those of 1914. That is, I +think, an undesirable probability, but until the Polish mind qualifies +its desire for absolute independence with a determination to orient +itself definitely to some larger political mass, it remains one that has +to be considered. + +But the future of Poland is not really separate from that of the +Austro-Hungarian monarchy, nor is that again to be dealt with apart from +that of the Balkans. From Danzig to the Morea there runs across Europe a +series of distinctive peoples, each too intensely different and national +to be absorbed and assimilated by either of their greater neighbours, +Germany or Russia, and each relatively too small to stand securely +alone. None have shaken themselves free from monarchical traditions; +each may become an easy prey to dynastic follies and the aggressive +obsessions of diplomacy. Centuries of bloody rearrangement may lie +before this East Central belt of Europe. + +To the liberal idealist the thought of a possible Swiss system or group +of Swiss systems comes readily to mind. One thinks of a grouping of +groups of Republics, building up a United States of Eastern Europe. But +neither Hohenzollerns nor Tsar would welcome that. The arm of democratic +France is not long enough to reach to help forward such a development, +and Great Britain is never sure whether she is a "Crowned Republic" or a +Germanic monarchy. Hitherto in the Balkans she has lent her influence +chiefly to setting up those treacherous little German kings who have +rewarded her so ill. The national monarchs of Serbia and Montenegro have +alone kept faith with civilisation. I doubt, however, if Great Britain +will go on with that dynastic policy. She herself is upon the eve of +profound changes of spirit and internal organisation. But whenever one +thinks of the possibilities of Republican development in Europe as an +outcome of this war, it is to realise the disastrous indifference of +America to the essentials of the European situation. The United States +of America could exert an enormous influence at the close of the war in +the direction of a liberal settlement and of liberal institutions.... +They will, I fear, do nothing of the sort. + +It is here that the possibility of some internal change in Germany +becomes of such supreme importance. The Hohenzollern Imperialism towers +like the black threat of a new Caesarism over all the world. It may +tower for some centuries; it may vanish to-morrow. A German revolution +may destroy it; a small group of lunacy commissioners may fold it up and +put it away. But should it go, it would at least take with it nearly +every crown between Hamburg and Constantinople. The German kings would +vanish like a wisp of smoke. Suppose a German revolution and a +correlated step forward towards liberal institutions on the part of +Russia, then the whole stage of Eastern Europe would clear as fever goes +out of a man. This age of international elbowing and jostling, of +intrigue and diplomacy, of wars, massacres, deportations _en masse_, and +the continual fluctuation of irrational boundaries would come to an end +forthwith. + +So sweeping a change is the extreme possibility. The probability is of +something less lucid and more prosaic; of a discussion of diplomatists; +of patched arrangements. But even under these circumstances the whole +Eastern European situation is so fluid and little controlled by any +plain necessity, that there will be enormous scope for any individual +statesman of imagination and force of will. + +There have recently been revelations, more or less trustworthy, of +German schemes for a rearrangement of Eastern Europe. They implied a +German victory. Bohemia, Poland, Galicia and Ruthenia were to make a +Habsburg-ruled State from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The Jugo-Slav and +the Magyar were to be linked (uneasy bedfellows) into a second kingdom, +also Habsburg ruled; Austria was to come into the German Empire as a +third Habsburg dukedom or kingdom; Roumania, Bulgaria and Greece were to +continue as independent Powers, German ruled. Recently German proposals +published in America have shown a disposition to admit the claims of +Roumania to the Wallachian districts of Transylvania. + +Evidently the urgent need to create kingdoms or confederations larger +than any such single States as the natural map supplies, is manifest to +both sides. If Germany, Italy and Russia can come to any sort of general +agreement in these matters, their arrangements will be a matter of +secondary importance to the Western Allies--saving our duty to Serbia +and Montenegro and their rulers. Russia may not find the German idea of +a Polish _plus_ Bohemian border State so very distasteful, provided that +the ruler is not a German; Germany may find the idea still tolerable if +the ruler is not the Tsar. + +The destiny of the Serbo-Croatian future lies largely in the hands of +Italy and Bulgaria. Bulgaria was not in this war at the beginning, and +she may not be in it at the end. Her King is neither immortal nor +irreplaceable. Her desire now must be largely to retain her winnings in +Macedonia, and keep the frontier posts of a too embracing Germany as far +off as possible. She has nothing to gain and much to fear from Roumania +and Greece. Her present relations with Turkey are unnatural. She has +everything to gain from a prompt recovery of the friendship of Italy and +the sea Powers. A friendly Serbo-Croatian buffer State against Germany +will probably be of equal comfort in the future to Italy and Bulgaria; +more especially if Italy has pushed down the Adriatic coast along the +line of the former Venetian possessions. Serbia has been overrun, but +never were the convergent forces of adjacent interests so clearly in +favour of her recuperation. The possibility of Italy and that strange +Latin outlier, Roumania, joining hands through an allied and friendly +Serbia must be very present in Italian thought. The allied conception of +the land route from the West and America to Bagdad and India is by Mont +Cenis, Trieste, Serbia and Constantinople, as their North European line +to India is through Russia by Baku. + +And that brings us to Constantinople. + +Constantinople is not a national city; it is now, and it has always +been, an artificial cosmopolis, and Constantinople and the Dardanelles +are essentially the gate of the Black Sea. It is to Russia that the +waterway is of supreme importance. Any other Power upon it can strangle +Russia; Russia, possessing it, is capable of very little harm to any +other country. + +Roumania is the next most interested country. But Roumania can reach up +the Danube and through Bulgaria, Serbia or Hungary to the outer world. +Her greatest trade will always be with Central Europe. For generations +the Turks held Thrace and Anatolia before they secured Constantinople. +The Turk can exist without Constantinople; he is at his best outside +Constantinople; the fall of Constantinople was the beginning of his +decay. He sat down there and corrupted. His career was at an end. I +confess that I find a bias in my mind for a Russian ownership of +Constantinople. I think that if she does not get it now her gravitation +towards it in the future will be so great as to cause fresh wars. +Somewhere she must get to open sea, and if it is not through +Constantinople then her line must lie either through a dependent Armenia +thrust down to the coast of the Levant or, least probable and least +desirable of all, through the Persian Gulf. The Constantinople route is +the most natural and least controversial of these. With the dwindling of +the Turkish power, the Turks at Constantinople become more and more like +robber knights levying toll at the pass. I can imagine Russia making +enormous concessions in Poland, for example, accepting retrocessions, +and conceding autonomy, rather than foregoing her ancient destiny upon +the Bosphorus. I believe she will fight on along the Black Sea coast +until she gets there. + +This, I think, is Russia's fundamental end, without which no peace is +worth having, as the liberation of Belgium and the satisfaction of +France is the fundamental end of Great Britain, and Trieste-Fiume is the +fundamental end of Italy. + +But for all the lands that lie between Constantinople and West Prussia +there are no absolutely fundamental ends; that is the land of _quid pro +quo_; that is where the dealing will be done. Serbia must be restored +and the Croats liberated; sooner or later the south Slav state will +insist upon itself; but, except for that, I see no impossibility in the +German dream of three kingdoms to take the place of Austro-Hungary, nor +even in a southward extension of the Hohenzollern Empire to embrace the +German one of the three. If the Austrians have a passion for Prussian +"kultur," it is not for us to restrain it. Austrian, Saxon, Bavarian, +Hanoverian and Prussian must adjust their own differences. Hungary would +be naturally Habsburg; is, in fact, now essentially Habsburg, more +Habsburg than Austria, and essentially anti-Slav. Her gravitation to the +Central Powers seems inevitable. + +Whether the Polish-Czech combination would be a Habsburg kingdom at all +is another matter. Only if, after all, the Allies are far less +successful than they have now every reason to hope would that become +possible. + +The gravitation of that west Slav state to the Central European system +or to Russia will, I think, be the only real measure of ultimate success +or failure in this war. I think it narrows down to that so far as Europe +is concerned. Most of the other things are inevitable. Such, it seems to +me, is the most open possibility in the European map in the years +immediately before us. + +If by dying I could assure the end of the Hohenzollern Empire to-morrow +I would gladly do it. But I have, as a balancing prophet, to face the +high probability of its outliving me for some generations. It is to me +a deplorable probability. Far rather would I anticipate Germany quit of +her eagles and Hohenzollerns, and ready to take her place as the leading +Power of the United States of Europe. + + + + +X. THE UNITED STATES, FRANCE, BRITAIN, AND RUSSIA + + +Section 1 + +In this chapter I propose to speculate a little about the future +development of these four great States, whose destinies are likely to be +much more closely interwoven than their past histories have been. I +believe that the stars in their courses tend to draw these States +together into a dominant peace alliance, maintaining the peace of the +world. There may be other stars in that constellation, Italy, Japan, a +confederated Latin America, for example; I do not propose to deal with +that possibility now, but only to dwell upon the development of +understandings and common aims between France, Russia, and the +English-speaking States. + +They have all shared one common experience during the last two years; +they have had an enormous loss of self-sufficiency. This has been +particularly the case with the United States of America. At the +beginning of this war, the United States were still possessed by the +glorious illusion that they were aloof from general international +politics, that they needed no allies and need fear no enemies, that they +constituted a sort of asylum from war and all the bitter stresses and +hostilities of the old world. Themselves secure, they could intervene +with grim resolution to protect their citizens all over the world. Had +they not bombarded Algiers?... + +I remember that soon after the outbreak of the war I lunched at the +Savoy Hotel in London when it was crammed with Americans suddenly swept +out of Europe by the storm. My host happened to be a man of some +diplomatic standing, and several of them came and talked to him. They +were full of these old-world ideas of American immunity. Their +indignation was comical even at the time. Some of them had been hustled; +some had lost their luggage in Germany. When, they asked, was it to be +returned to them? Some seemed to be under the impression that, war or no +war, an American tourist had a perfect right to travel about in the +Vosges or up and down the Rhine just as he thought fit. They thought he +had just to wave a little American flag, and the referee would blow a +whistle and hold up the battle until he had got by safely. One family +had actually been careering about in a cart--their automobile +seized--between the closing lines of French and Germans, brightly +unaware of the disrespect of bursting shells for American +nationality.... Since those days the American nation has lived +politically a hundred years. + +The people of the United States have shed their delusion that there is +an Eastern and a Western hemisphere, and that nothing can ever pass +between them but immigrants and tourists and trade, and realised that +this world is one round globe that gets smaller and smaller every decade +if you measure it by day's journeys. They are only going over the lesson +the British have learnt in the last score or so of years. This is one +world and bayonets are a crop that spreads. Let them gather and seed, it +matters not how far from you, and a time will come when they will be +sticking up under your nose. There is no real peace but the peace of the +whole world, and that is only to be kept by the whole world resisting +and suppressing aggression wherever it arises. To anyone who watches the +American Press, this realisation has been more and more manifest. From +dreams of aloofness and ineffable superiority, America comes round very +rapidly to a conception of an active participation in the difficult +business of statecraft. She is thinking of alliances, of throwing her +weight and influence upon the side of law and security. No longer a +political Thoreau in the woods, a sort of vegetarian recluse among +nations, a being of negative virtues and unpremeditated superiorities, +she girds herself for a manly part in the toilsome world of men. + +So far as I can judge, the American mind is eminently free from any +sentimental leaning towards the British. Americans have a traditional +hatred of the Hanoverian monarchy, and a democratic disbelief in +autocracy. They are far more acutely aware of differences than +resemblances. They suspect every Englishman of being a bit of a +gentleman and a bit of a flunkey. I have never found in America anything +like that feeling common in the mass of English people that prevents the +use of the word "foreigner" for an American; there is nothing to +reciprocate the sympathy and pride that English and Irish republicans +and radicals feel for the States. Few Americans realise that there are +such beings as English republicans. + +What has linked Americans with the British hitherto has been very +largely the common language and literature; it is only since the war +began that there seems to have been any appreciable development of +fraternal feeling. And that has been not so much discovery of a mutual +affection as the realisation of a far closer community of essential +thought and purpose than has hitherto been suspected. The Americans, +after thinking the matter out with great frankness and vigour, do +believe that Britain is on the whole fighting against aggression and not +for profit, that she is honestly backing France and Belgium against an +intolerable attack, and that the Hohenzollern Empire is a thing that +needs discrediting and, if possible, destroying in the interests of all +humanity, Germany included. + +America has made the surprising discovery that, allowing for their +greater nearness, the British are thinking about these things almost +exactly as Americans think about them. They follow the phases of the war +in Great Britain, the strain, the blunderings, the tenacity, the onset +of conscription in an essentially non-military community, with the +complete understanding of a people similarly circumstanced, differing +only by scale and distance. They have been through something of the sort +already; they may have something of the sort happen again. It had not +occurred to them hitherto how parallel we were. They begin to have +inklings of how much more parallel we may presently become. + +There is evidence of a real search for American affinities among the +other peoples of the world; it is a new war-made feature of the +thoughtful literature and journalists of America. And it is interesting +to note how partial and divided these affinities must necessarily be. +Historically and politically, the citizen of the United States must be +drawn most closely to France. France is the one other successful modern +republic; she was the instigator and friend of American liberation. With +Great Britain the tie of language, the tradition of personal freedom, +and the strain in the blood are powerful links. But both France and +Britain are old countries, thickly populated, with a great and ancient +finish and completeness, full of implicit relationships; America is by +comparison crude, uninformed, explicit, a new country, still turning +fresh soil, still turning over but half-explored natural resources. + +The United States constitute a modern country, a country on an +unprecedented scale, being organised from the very beginning on modern +lines. There is only one other such country upon the planet, and that +curiously enough is parallel in climate, size, and position--Russia in +Asia. Even Russia in Europe belongs rather to the newness that is +American than to the tradition that is European; Harvard was founded +more than half a century before Petrograd. And when I looked out of the +train window on my way to Petrograd from Germany, the little towns I saw +were like no European towns I had ever seen. The wooden houses, the +broad unmade roads, the traffic, the winter-bitten scenery, a sort of +untidy spaciousness, took my mind instantly to the country one sees in +the back part of New York State as one goes from Boston to Niagara. And +the reality follows the appearance. + +The United States and Russia are the west and the east of the same +thing; they are great modern States, developing from the beginning upon +a scale that only railways make possible. France and Britain may perish +in the next two centuries or they may persist, but there can be no doubt +that two centuries ahead Russia and the United States will be two of the +greatest masses of fairly homogeneous population on the globe. + +There are no countries with whom the people of the United States are so +likely to develop sympathy and a sense of common values and common +interests as with these three, unless it be with the Scandinavian +peoples. The Scandinavian peoples have developed a tendency to an +extra-European outlook, to look west and east rather than southwardly, +to be pacifist and progressive in a manner essentially American. From +any close sympathy with Germany the Americans are cut off at present by +the Hohenzollerns and the system of ideas that the Hohenzollerns have +imposed upon German thought. So long as the Germans cling to the tawdry +tradition of the Empire, so long as they profess militarism, so long as +they keep up their ridiculous belief in some strange racial superiority +to the rest of mankind, it is absurd to expect any co-operative feeling +between them and any other great people. + +The American tradition is based upon the casting off of a Germanic +monarchy; it is its cardinal idea. These sturdy Republicans did not +fling out the Hanoverians and their Hessian troops to prepare the path +of glory for Potsdam. But except for the gash caused by the Teutonic +monarchy, there runs round the whole world a north temperate and +sub-arctic zone of peoples, generally similar in complexion, physical +circumstances, and intellectual and moral quality, having enormous +undeveloped natural resources, and a common interest in keeping the +peace while these natural resources are developed, having also a common +interest in maintaining the integrity of China and preventing her +development into a military power; it is a zone with the clearest +prospect of a vast increase in its already enormous population, and it +speaks in the main one or other of three languages, either French, +Russian, or English. I believe that natural sympathy will march with the +obvious possibilities of the situation in bringing the American mind to +the realisation of this band of common interests and of its +compatibility with the older idea of an American continent protected by +a Monroe doctrine from any possibility of aggression from the monarchies +of the old world. + +As the old conception of isolation fades and the American mind accustoms +itself to the new conception of a need of alliances and understandings +to save mankind from the megalomania of races and dynasties, I believe +it will turn first to the idea of keeping the seas with Britain and +France, and then to this still wider idea of an understanding with the +Pledged Allies that will keep the peace of the world. + +Now Germany has taught the world several things, and one of the most +important of these lessons is the fact that the destinies of states and +peoples is no longer to be determined by the secret arrangements of +diplomatists and the agreements or jealousies of kings. For fifty years +Germany has been unifying the mind of her people against the world. She +has obsessed them with an evil ideal, but the point we have to note is +that she has succeeded in obsessing them with that ideal. No other +modern country has even attempted such a moral and mental solidarity as +Germany has achieved. And good ideals need, just as much as bad ones, +systematic inculcation, continual open expression and restatement. Mute, +mindless, or demented nations are dangerous and doomed nations. The +great political conceptions that are needed to establish the peace of +the world must become the common property of the mass of intelligent +adults if they are to hold against the political scoundrel, the royal +adventurer, the forensic exploiter, the enemies and scatterers of +mankind. The French, Americans, and English have to realise this +necessity; they have to state a common will and they have to make their +possession by that will understood by the Russian people, and they have +to share that will with the Russian people. Beyond that there lies the +still greater task or making some common system of understandings with +the intellectual masses of China and India. At present, with three of +these four great powers enormously preoccupied with actual warfare, +there is an opportunity for guiding expression on the part of America, +for a real world leadership, such as may never occur again.... + +So far I have been stating a situation and reviewing certain +possibilities. In the past half-century the United States has been +developing a great system of universities and a continental production +of literature and discussion to supplement the limited Press and the New +England literature of the earlier phase of the American process. It is +one of the most interesting speculations in the world to everyone how +far this new organisation of the American mind is capable of grasping +the stupendous opportunities and appeals of the present time. The war +and the great occasions that must follow the war will tax the mind and +the intellectual and moral forces of the Pledged Allies enormously. How +far is this new but very great and growing system of thought and +learning in the United States capable of that propaganda of ideas and +language, that progressive expression of a developing ideal of +community, that in countries so spontaneous, so chaotic or democratic as +the United States and the Pledged Allies must necessarily take the +place of the organised authoritative _Kultur_ of the Teutonic type of +state? + +As an undisguisedly patriotic Englishman, I would like to see the lead +in this intellectual synthesis of the nations, that _must_ be achieved +if wars are to cease, undertaken by Great Britain. But I am bound to +confess that in Great Britain I see neither the imaginative courage of +France nor the brisk enterprise of the Americans. I see this matter as a +question of peace and civilisation, but there are other baser but quite +as effective reasons why America, France, and Great Britain should exert +themselves to create confidences and understandings between their +populations and the Russian population. There is the immediate business +opportunity in Russia. There is the secondary business opportunity in +China that can best be developed as the partners rather than as the +rivals of the Russians. Since the Americans are nearest, by way of the +Pacific, since they are likely to have more capital and more free energy +to play with than the Pledged Allies, I do on the whole incline to the +belief that it is they who will yet do the pioneer work and the leading +work that this opportunity demands. + + +Section 2 + +If beneath the alliances of the present war there is to grow up a system +of enduring understandings that will lead to the peace of the world, +there is needed as a basis for such understandings much greater facility +of intellectual intercourse than exists at present. Firstly, the world +needs a _lingua franca_; next, the Western peoples need to know more of +the Russian language and life than they do, and thirdly, the English +language needs to be made more easily accessible than it is at present. +The chief obstacle to a Frenchman or Englishman learning Russian is the +difficult and confusing alphabet; the chief obstacle to anyone learning +English is the irrational spelling. Are people likely to overcome these +very serious difficulties in the future, and, if so, how will they do +it? And what prospects are there of a _lingua franca_? + +Wherever one looks closely into the causes and determining influences of +the great convulsions of this time, one is more and more impressed by +the apparent smallness of the ultimate directing influence. It seems to +me at least that it is a practically proven thing that this vast +aggression of Germany is to be traced back to a general tone of court +thinking and discussion in the Prussia of the eighteenth century, to +the theories of a few professors and the gathering trend of German +education in a certain direction. It seems to me that similarly the +language teachers of to-day and to-morrow may hold in their hands the +seeds of gigantic international developments in the future. + +It is not a question of the skill or devotion of individual teachers so +much as of the possibility of organising them upon a grand scale. An +individual teacher must necessarily use the ordinary books and ordinary +spelling and type of the language in which he is giving instruction; he +may get a few elementary instruction books from a private publisher, +specially printed for teaching purposes, but very speedily he finds +himself obliged to go to the current printed matter. This, as I will +immediately show, bars the most rapid and fruitful method of teaching. +And in this as in most affairs, private enterprise, the individualistic +system, shows itself a failure. In England, for example, the choice of +Russian lesson books is poor and unsatisfactory, and there is either no +serviceable Russian-English, English-Russian school dictionary in +existence, or it is published so badly as to be beyond the range of my +inquiries. But a state, or a group of universities, or even a rich +private association such as far-seeing American, French and British +business men might be reasonably expected to form, could attack the +problem of teaching a language in an altogether different fashion. + +The difficulty in teaching English lies in the inconsistency of the +spelling, and the consequent difficulties of pronunciation. If there +were available an ample series of text-books, reading books, and books +of general interest, done in a consistent phonetic type and spelling--in +which the value of the letters of the phonetic system followed as far as +possible the prevalent usage in Europe--the difficulty in teaching +English not merely to foreigners but, as the experiments in teaching +reading of the Simplified Spelling Society have proved up to the hilt, +to English children can be very greatly reduced. At first the difficulty +of the irrational spelling can be set on one side. The learner attacks +and masters the essential language. Then afterwards he can, if he likes, +go on to the orthodox spelling, which is then no harder for him to read +and master than it is for an Englishman of ordinary education to read +the facetious orthography of Artemus Ward or of the _Westminster +Gazette_ "orfis boy." The learner does one thing at a time instead of +attempting, as he would otherwise have to do, two things--and they are +both difficult and different and conflicting things--simultaneously. + +Learning a language is one thing and memorising an illogical system of +visual images--for that is what reading ordinary English spelling comes +to--is quite another. A man can learn to play first chess and then +bridge in half the time that these two games would require if he began +by attempting simultaneous play, and exactly the same principle applies +to the language problem. + +These considerations lead on to the idea of a special development or +sub-species of the English language for elementary teaching and foreign +consumption. It would be English, very slightly simplified and +regularised, and phonetically spelt. Let us call it Anglo-American. In +it the propagandist power, whatever that power might be, state, +university or association, would print not simply, instruction books but +a literature of cheap editions. Such a specialised simplified +Anglo-American variety of English would enormously stimulate the already +wide diffusion of the language, and go far to establish it as that +_lingua franca_ of which the world has need. + +And in the same way, the phonetic alphabet adopted as the English medium +could be used as the medium for instruction in French, where, as in the +British Isles, Canada, North and Central Africa, and large regions of +the East, it is desirable to make an English-speaking community +bi-lingual. At present a book in French means nothing to an uninstructed +Englishman, an English book conveys no accurate sound images to an +uninstructed Frenchman. On the other hand, a French book printed on a +proper phonetic system could be immediately read aloud--though of course +it could not be understood--by an uninstructed Englishman. From the +first he would have no difficulties with the sounds. And vice versa. +Such a system of books would mean the destruction of what are, for great +masses of French and English people, insurmountable difficulties on the +way to bi-lingualism. Its production is a task all too colossal for any +private publishers or teachers, but it is a task altogether trivial in +comparison with the national value of its consequences. But whether it +will ever be carried out is just one of those riddles of the jumping cat +in the human brain that are most perplexing to the prophet. + +The problem becomes at once graver, less hopeful, and more urgent when +we take up the case of Russian. I have looked closely into this business +of Russian teaching, and I am convinced that only a very, very small +number of French-and English-speaking people are going to master Russian +under the existing conditions of instruction. If we Westerns want to get +at Russia in good earnest we must take up this Russian language problem +with an imaginative courage and upon a scale of which at present I see +no signs. If we do not, then the Belgians, French, Americans and English +will be doing business in Russia after the war in the German +language--or through a friendly German interpreter. That, I am afraid, +is the probability of the case. But it need not be the case. Will and +intelligence could alter all that. + +What has to be done is to have Russian taught at first in a Western +phonetic type. Then it becomes a language not very much more difficult +to acquire than, say, German by a Frenchman. When the learner can talk +with some freedom, has a fairly full vocabulary, a phraseology, knows +his verb and so on, then and then only should he take up the unfamiliar +and confusing set of visual images of Russian lettering--I speak from +the point of view of those who read the Latin alphabet. How confusing it +may be only those who have tried it can tell. Its familiarity to the eye +increases the difficulty; totally unfamiliar forms would be easier to +learn. The Frenchman or Englishman is confronted with + + COP; + +the sound of that is + + SAR! + +For those who learn languages, as so many people do nowadays, by visual +images, there will always be an undercurrent toward saying "COP." The +mind plunges hopelessly through that tangle to the elements of a speech +which is as yet unknown. + +Nevertheless almost all the instruction in Russian of which I can get an +account begins with the alphabet, and must, I suppose, begin with the +alphabet until teachers have a suitably printed set of instruction books +to enable them to take the better line. One school teacher I know, in a +public school, devoted the entire first term, the third of a year, to +the alphabet. At the end he was still dissatisfied with the progress of +his pupils. He gave them Russian words, of course, words of which they +knew nothing--in Russian characters. It was too much for them to take +hold of at one and the same time. He did not even think of teaching them +to write French and English words in the strange lettering. He did not +attempt to write his Russian in Latin letters. He was apparently +ignorant of any system of transliteration, and he did nothing to +mitigate the impossible task before him. At the end of the term most of +his pupils gave up the hopeless effort. It is not too much to say that +for a great number of "visualising" people, the double effort at the +outset of Russian is entirely too much. It stops them altogether. But to +almost anyone it is possible to learn Russian if at first it is +presented in a lettering that gives no trouble. + +If I found myself obliged to learn Russian urgently, I would get some +accepted system of transliteration, carefully transcribe every word of +Russian in my text-book into the Latin characters, and learn the +elements of the language from my manuscript. A year or so ago I made a +brief visit to Russia with a "Russian Self-Taught" in my pocket. Nothing +sticks, nothing ever did stick of that self-taught Russian except the +words that I learnt in Latin type. Those I remember as I remember all +words, as groups of Latin letters. I learnt to count, for example, up to +a hundred. The other day I failed to recognise the Russian word for +eleven in Russian characters until I had spelt it out. Then I said, "Oh, +of course!" But I knew it when I heard it. + +I write of these things from the point of view of the keen learner. Some +Russian teachers will be found to agree with me; others will not. It is +a paradox in the psychology of the teacher that few teachers are willing +to adopt "slick" methods of teaching; they hate cutting corners far more +than they hate obstacles, because their interest is in the teaching and +not in the "getting there." But what we learners want is not an +exquisite, rare knowledge of particulars, we do not want to spend an +hour upon Russian needlessly; we want to get there as quickly and +effectively as possible. And for that, transliterated books are +essential. + +Now these may seem small details in the learning of languages, mere +schoolmasters' gossip, but the consequences are on the continental +scale. The want of these national text-books and readers is a great gulf +between Russia and her Allies; _it is a greater gulf than the +profoundest political misunderstanding could be_. We cannot get at them +to talk plainly to them, and they cannot get at us to talk plainly to +us. A narrow bridge of interpreters is our only link with the Russian +mind. And many of those interpreters are of a race which is for very +good reasons hostile to Russia. An abundant cheap supply, firstly, of +English and French books, _in_ English and French, but in the Russian +character, by means of which Russians may rapidly learn French and +English--for it is quite a fable that these languages are known and used +in Russia below the level of the court and aristocracy--and, secondly, +of Russian books in the Latin (or some easy phonetic development of the +Latin) type, will do more to facilitate interchange and intercourse +between Russia and France, America and Britain, and so consolidate the +present alliance than almost any other single thing. But that supply +will not be a paying thing to provide; if it is left to publishers or +private language teachers or any form of private enterprise it will +never be provided. It is a necessary public undertaking. + +But because a thing is necessary it does not follow that it will be +achieved. Bread may be necessary to a starving man, but there is always +the alternative that he will starve. France, which is most accessible to +creative ideas, is least interested in this particular matter. Great +Britain is still heavily conservative. It is idle to ignore the forces +still entrenched in the established church, in the universities and the +great schools, that stand for an irrational resistance to all new +things. American universities are comparatively youthful and sometimes +quite surprisingly innovating, and America is the country of the +adventurous millionaire. There has been evidence in several American +papers that have reached me recently of a disposition to get ahead with +Russia and cut out the Germans (and incidentally the British). Amidst +the cross-currents and overlappings of this extraordinary time, it seems +to me highly probable that America may lead in this vitally important +effort to promote international understanding. + + + + +XI. "THE WHITE MAN'S BURTHEN" + + +One of the most curious aspects of the British "Pacifist" is his +willingness to give over great blocks of the black and coloured races to +the Hohenzollerns to exploit and experiment upon. I myself being +something of a pacifist, and doing what I can, in my corner, to bring +about the Peace of the World, the Peace of the World triumphant and +armed against every disturber, could the more readily sympathise with +the passive school of Pacifists if its proposals involved the idea that +England should keep to England and Germany to Germany. My political +ideal is the United States of the World, a union of states whose state +boundaries are determined by what I have defined as the natural map of +mankind. I cannot understand those pacifists who talk about the German +right to "expansion," and babble about a return of her justly lost +colonies. That seems to me not pacificism but patriotic inversion. This +large disposition to hand over our fellow-creatures to a Teutonic +educational system, with "frightfulness" in reserve, to "efficiency" on +Wittenberg lines, leaves me--hot. The ghosts of the thirst-tormented +Hereros rise up in their thousands from the African dust, protesting. + +This talk of "legitimate expansion" is indeed now only an exploiter's +cant. The age of "expansion," the age of European "empires" is near its +end. No one who can read the signs of the times in Japan, in India, in +China, can doubt it. It ended in America a hundred years ago; it is +ending now in Asia; it will end last in Africa, and even in Africa the +end draws near. Spain has but led the way which other "empires" must +follow. Look at her empire in the atlases of 1800. She fell down the +steps violently and painfully, it is true--but they are difficult to +descend. No sane man, German or anti-German, who has weighed the +prospects of the new age, will be desirous of a restoration of the now +vanished German colonial empire, vindictive, intriguing, and +unscrupulous, a mere series of centres of attack upon adjacent +territory, to complicate the immense disentanglements and readjustments +that lie already before the French and British and Italians. + +Directly we discuss the problem of the absolutely necessary permanent +alliance that this war has forced upon at least France, Belgium, +Britain and Russia, this problem of the "empires" faces us. What are +these Allies going to do about their "subject races"? What is the world +going to do about the "subject races"? It is a matter in which the +"subject races" are likely to have an increasingly important voice of +their own. We Europeans may discuss their fate to-day among ourselves; +we shall be discussing it with them to-morrow. If we do not agree with +them then, they will take their fates in their own hands in spite of us. +Long before A.D. 2100 there will be no such thing as a "subject race" in +all the world. + +Here again we find ourselves asking just that same difficult question of +more or less, that arises at every cardinal point of our review of the +probable future. How far is this thing going to be done finely; how far +is it going to be done cunningly and basely? How far will greatness of +mind, how far will imaginative generosity, prevail over the jealous and +pettifogging spirit that lurks in every human being? Are French and +British and Belgians and Italians, for example, going to help each other +in Africa, or are they going to work against and cheat each other? Is +the Russian seeking only a necessary outlet to the seas of the world, +or has he dreams of Delhi? Here again, as in all these questions, +personal idiosyncrasy comes in; I am strongly disposed to trust the good +in the Russian. + +But apart from this uncertain question of generosity, there are in this +case two powerful forces that make against disputes, secret +disloyalties, and meanness. One is that Germany will certainly be still +dangerous at the end of the war, and the second is that the gap in +education, in efficiency, in national feeling and courage of outlook, +between the European and the great Asiatic and African communities, is +rapidly diminishing. If the Europeans squabble much more for world +ascendancy, there will be no world ascendancy for them to squabble for. +We have still no means of measuring the relative enfeeblement of Europe +in comparison with Asia already produced by this war. As it is, certain +things are so inevitable--the integration of a modernised Bengal, of +China, and of Egypt, for example--that the question before us is +practically reduced to whether this restoration of the subject peoples +will be done with the European's aid and goodwill, or whether it will be +done against him. That it will be done in some manner or other is +certain. + +The days of suppression are over. They know it in every country where +white and brown and yellow mingle. If the Pledged Allies are not +disposed to let in light to their subject peoples and prepare for the +days of world equality that are coming, the Germans will. If the Germans +fail to be the most enslaving of people, they may become the most +liberating. They will set themselves, with their characteristic +thoroughness, to destroy that magic "prestige" which in Asia +particularly is the clue to the miracle of European ascendancy. In the +long run that may prove no ill service to mankind. The European must +prepare to make himself acceptable in Asia, to state his case to Asia +and be understood by Asia, or to leave Asia. That is the blunt reality +of the Asiatic situation. + +It has already been pointed out in these chapters that if the alliance +of the Pledged Allies is indeed to be permanent, it implies something in +the nature of a Zollverein, a common policy towards the rest of the +world and an arrangement involving a common control over the +dependencies of all the Allies. It will be interesting, now that we have +sketched a possible map of Europe after the war, to look a little more +closely into the nature of the "empires" concerned, and to attempt a few +broad details of the probable map of the Eastern hemisphere outside +Europe in the years immediately to come. + +Now there are, roughly speaking, three types of overseas "possessions." +They may be either (1) territory that was originally practically +unoccupied and that was settled by the imperial people, or (2) territory +with a barbaric population having no national idea, or (3) conquered +states. In the case of the British Empire all three are present; in the +case of the French only the second and third; in the case of the Russian +only the first and third. Each of these types must necessarily follow +its own system of developments. Take first those territories originally +but thinly occupied, or not occupied at all, of which all or at least +the dominant element of the population is akin to that of the "home +country." These used to be called by the British "colonies"--though the +"colonies" of Greece and Rome were really only garrison cities settled +in foreign lands--and they are now being rechristened "Dominions." +Australia, for instance, is a British Dominion, and Siberia and most of +Russia in Asia, a Russian Dominion. Their manifest destiny is for their +children to become equal citizens with the cousins and brothers they +have left at home. + +There has been much discussion in England during the last decade upon +some modification of the British legislature that would admit +representatives from the Dominions to a proportional share in the +government of the Empire. The problem has been complicated by the +unsettled status of Ireland and the mischief-making Tories there, and by +the perplexities arising out of those British dependencies of +non-British race--the Indian states, for example, whose interests are +sometimes in conflict with those of the Dominions. + +The attractiveness of the idea of an Imperial legislature is chiefly on +the surface, and I have very strong doubts of its realisability. These +Dominions seem rather to tend to become independent and distinct +sovereign states in close and affectionate alliance with Great Britain, +and having a common interest in the British Navy. In many ways the +interests of the Dominions are more divergent from those of Great +Britain than are Great Britain and Russia, or Great Britain and France. +Many of the interests of Canada are more closely bound to those of the +United States than they are to those of Australasia, in such a matter as +the maintenance of the Monroe Principle, for example. South Africa again +takes a line with regard to British Indian subjects which is highly +embarrassing to Great Britain. There is a tendency in all the British +colonies to read American books and periodicals rather than British, if +for no other reason than because their common life, life in a newish and +very democratic land, is much more American than British in character. + +On the other hand, one must remember that Great Britain has European +interests--the integrity of Holland and Belgium is a case in +point--which are much closer to the interests of France than they are to +those of the younger Britains beyond the seas. A voice in an Alliance +that included France and the United States, and had its chief common +interest in the control of the seas, may in the future seem far more +desirable to these great and growing English-speaking Dominions than the +sending of representatives to an Imperial House of Lords at Westminster, +and the adornment of elderly colonial politicians with titles and +decorations at Buckingham Palace. + +I think Great Britain and her Allies have all of them to prepare their +minds for a certain release of their grip upon their "possessions," if +they wish to build up a larger unity; I do not see that any secure +unanimity of purpose is possible without such releases and +readjustments. + +Now the next class of foreign "possession" is that in which the French +and Belgians and Italians are most interested. Britain also has +possessions of this type in Central Africa and the less civilised +districts of India, but Russia has scarcely anything of the sort. In +this second class of possession the population is numerous, barbaric, +and incapable of any large or enduring political structure, and over its +destinies rule a small minority of European administrators. + +The greatest of this series of possessions are those in black Africa. +The French imagination has taken a very strong hold of the idea of a +great French-speaking West and Central Africa, with which the ordinary +British citizen will only too gladly see the conquered German colonies +incorporated. The Italians have a parallel field of development in the +hinterland of Tripoli. Side by side, France, Belgium and Italy, no +longer troubled by hostile intrigues, may very well set themselves in +the future to the task of building up a congenial Latin civilisation out +of the tribal confusions of these vast regions. They will, I am +convinced, do far better than the English in this domain. The +English-speaking peoples have been perhaps the most successful +_settlers_ in the world; the United States and the Dominions are there +to prove it; only the Russians in Siberia can compare with them; but as +administrators the British are a race coldly aloof. They have nothing to +give a black people, and no disposition to give. + +The Latin-speaking peoples, the Mediterranean nations, on the other +hand, have proved to be the most successful _assimilators_ of other +races that mankind has ever known. Alexandre Dumas is not the least of +the glories of France. In a hundred years' time black Africa, west of +Tripoli, from Oran to Rhodesia, will, I believe, talk French. And what +does not speak French will speak the closely related Italian. I do not +see why this Latin black culture should not extend across equatorial +Africa to meet the Indian influence at the coast, and reach out to join +hands with Madagascar. I do not see why the British flag should be any +impediment to the Latinisation of tropical Africa or to the natural +extension of the French and Italian languages through Egypt. I guess, +however, that it will be an Islamic and not a Christian cult that will +be talking Italian and French. For the French-speaking civilisation will +make roads not only for French, Belgians, and Italians, but for the +Arabs whose religion and culture already lie like a net over black +Africa. No other peoples and no other religion can so conveniently give +the negro what is needed to bring him into the comity of civilised +peoples.... + +A few words of digression upon the future of Islam may not be out of +place here. The idea of a militant Christendom has vanished from the +world. The last pretensions of Christian propaganda have been buried in +the Balkan trenches. A unification of Africa under Latin auspices +carries with it now no threat of missionary invasion. Africa will be a +fair field for all religions, and the religion to which the negro will +take will be the religion that best suits his needs. That religion, we +are told by nearly everyone who has a right to speak upon such +questions, is Islam, and its natural propagandist is the Arab. There is +no reason why he should not be a Frenchified Arab. + +Both the French and the British have the strongest interest in the +revival of Arabic culture. Let the German learn Turkish if it pleases +him. Through all Africa and Western Asia there is a great to-morrow for +a renascent Islam under Arab auspices. Constantinople, that venal city +of the waterways, sitting like Asenath at the ford, has corrupted all +who came to her; she has been the paralysis of Islam. But the Islam of +the Turk is a different thing from the Islam of the Arab. That was one +of the great progressive impulses in the world of men. It is our custom +to underrate the Arab's contribution to civilisation quite absurdly in +comparison with our debt to the Hebrew and Greek. It is to the +initiatives of Islamic culture, for example, that we owe our numerals, +the bulk of modern mathematics, and the science of chemistry. The +British have already set themselves to the establishment of Islamic +university teaching in Egypt, but that is the mere first stroke of the +pick at the opening of the mine. English, French, Russian, Arabic, +Hindustani, Spanish, Italian; these are the great world languages that +most concern the future of civilisation from the point of view of the +Peace Alliance that impends. No country can afford to neglect any of +those languages, but as a matter of primary importance I would say, for +the British, Hindustani, for the Americans, Russian or Spanish, for the +French and Belgians and Italians, Arabic. These are the directions in +which the duty of understanding is most urgent for each of these +peoples, and the path of opportunity plainest. + +The disposition to underrate temporarily depressed nations, races, and +cultures is a most irrational, prevalent, and mischievous form of +stupidity. It distorts our entire outlook towards the future. The +British reader can see its absurdity most easily when he reads the +ravings of some patriotic German upon the superiority of the "Teuton" +over the Italians and Greeks--to whom we owe most things of importance +in European civilisation. Equally silly stuff is still to be read in +British and American books about "Asiatics." And was there not some +fearful rubbish, not only in German but in English and French, about the +"decadence" of France? But we are learning--rapidly. When I was a +student in London thirty years ago we regarded Japan as a fantastic +joke; the comic opera, _The Mikado_, still preserves that foolish phase +for the admiration of posterity. And to-day there is a quite +unjustifiable tendency to ignore the quality of the Arab and of his +religion. Islam is an open-air religion, noble and simple in its broad +conceptions; it is none the less vital from Nigeria to China because it +has sickened in the closeness of Constantinople. The French, the +Italians, the British have to reckon with Islam and the Arab; where the +continental deserts are, there the Arabs are and there is Islam; their +culture will never be destroyed and replaced over these regions by +Europeanism. The Allies who prepare the Peace of the World have to make +their peace with that. And when I foreshadow this necessary liaison of +the French and Arabic cultures, I am thinking not only of the Arab that +is, but of the Arab that is to come. The whole trend of events in Asia +Minor, the breaking up and decapitation of the Ottoman Empire and the +Euphrates invasion, points to a great revival of Mesopotamia--at first +under European direction. The vast system of irrigation that was +destroyed by the Mongol armies of Hulugu in the thirteenth century will +be restored; the desert will again become populous. But the local type +will prevail. The new population of Mesopotamia will be neither European +nor Indian; it will be Arabic; and with its concentration Arabic will +lay hold of the printing press. A new intellectual movement in Islam, a +renascent Bagdad, is as inevitable as is 1950. + +I have, however, gone a little beyond the discussion of the future of +the barbaric possessions in these anticipations of an Arabic +co-operation with the Latin peoples in the reconstruction of Western +Asia and the barbaric regions of north and central Africa. But regions +of administered barbarism occur not only in Africa. The point is that +they are administered, and that their economic development is very +largely in the hands, and will for many generations remain in the hands, +of the possessing country. Hitherto their administration has been in +the interests of the possessing nation alone. Their acquisition has been +a matter of bitter rivalries, their continued administration upon +exclusive lines is bound to lead to dangerous clashings. The common +sense of the situation points to a policy of give and take, in which +throughout the possessions of all the Pledged Allies, the citizens of +all will have more or less equal civil advantages. And this means some +consolidation of the general control of those Administered Territories. +I have already hinted at the possibility that the now exclusively +British navy may some day be a world-navy controlled by an Admiralty +representing a group of allies, Australasia, Canada, Britain and, it may +be, France and Russia and the United States. To those who know how +detached the British Admiralty is at the present time from the general +methods of British political life, there will be nothing strange in this +idea of its completer detachment. Its personnel does to a large extent +constitute a class apart. It takes its boys out of the general life very +often before they have got to their fourteenth birthday. It is not so +closely linked up with specific British social elements, with political +parties and the general educational system, as are the rest of the +national services. + +There is nothing so very fantastic in this idea of a sort of +World-Admiralty; it is not even completely novel. Such bodies as the +Knights Templars transcended nationality in the Middle Ages. I do not +see how some such synthetic control of the seas is to be avoided in the +future. And now coming back to the "White Man's Burthen," is there not a +possibility that such a board of marine and international control as the +naval and international problems of the future may produce (or some +closely parallel body with a stronger Latin element), would also be +capable of dealing with these barbaric "Administered Territories"? A day +may come when Tripoli, Nigeria, the French and the Belgian Congo will be +all under one supreme control. We may be laying the foundations of such +a system to-day unawares. The unstable and fluctuating conferences of +the Allies to-day, their repeated experiences of the disadvantages of +evanescent and discontinuous co-ordinations, may press them almost +unconsciously toward this building up of things greater than they know. + +We come now to the third and most difficult type of overseas +"possessions." These are the annexed or conquered regions with settled +populations already having a national tradition and culture of their +own. They are, to put it bluntly, the suppressed, the overlaid, +nations. Now I am a writer rather prejudiced against the idea of +nationality; my habit of thought is cosmopolitan; I hate and despise a +shrewish suspicion of foreigners and foreign ways; a man who can look me +in the face, laugh with me, speak truth and deal fairly, is my brother +though his skin is as black as ink or as yellow as an evening primrose. +But I have to recognise the facts of the case. In spite of all my large +liberality, I find it less irritating to be ruled by people of my own +language and race and tradition, and I perceive that for the mass of +people alien rule is intolerable. + +Local difference, nationality, is a very obstinate thing. Every country +tends to revert to its natural type. Nationality will out. Once a people +has emerged above the barbaric stage to a national consciousness, that +consciousness will endure. There is practically always going to be an +Egypt, a Poland, an Armenia. There is no Indian nation, there never has +been, but there are manifestly a Bengal and a Rajputana, there is +manifestly a constellation of civilised nations in India. Several of +these have literatures and traditions that extend back before the days +when the Britons painted themselves with woad. Let us deal with this +question mainly with reference to India. What is said will apply +equally to Burmah or Egypt or Armenia or--to come back into +Europe--Poland. + +Now I have talked, I suppose, with many scores of people about the +future of India, and I have never yet met anyone, Indian or British, who +thought it desirable that the British should evacuate India at once. And +I have never yet met anyone who did not think that ultimately the +British must let the Indian nations control their own destinies. There +are really not two opposite opinions about the destiny of India, but +only differences of opinion as to the length of time in which that +destiny is to be achieved. Many Indians think (and I agree with them) +that India might be a confederation of sovereign states in close +alliance with the British Empire and its allies within the space of +fifty years or so. The opposite extreme was expressed by an old weary +Indian administrator who told me, "Perhaps they may begin to be capable +of self-government in four or five hundred years." These are the extreme +Liberal and the extreme Tory positions in this question. It is a choice +between decades and centuries. There is no denial of the inevitability +of ultimate restoration. No one of any experience believes the British +administration in India is an eternal institution. + +There is a great deal of cant in this matter in Great Britain. Genteel +English people with relations in the Indian Civil Service and habits of +self-delusion, believe that Indians are "grateful" for British rule. The +sort of "patriotic" self-flattery that prevailed in the Victorian age, +and which is so closely akin to contemporary German follies, fostered +and cultivated this sweet delusion. There are, no doubt, old ladies in +Germany to-day who believe that Belgium will presently be "grateful" for +the present German administration. Let us clear our minds of such cant. +As a matter of fact no Indians really like British rule or think of it +as anything better than a necessary, temporary evil. Let me put the +parallel case to an Englishman or a Frenchman. Through various political +ineptitudes our country has, we will suppose, fallen under the rule of +the Chinese. They administer it, we will further assume, with an +efficiency and honesty unparalleled in the bad old times of our lawyer +politicians. They do not admit us to the higher branches of the +administration; they go about our country wearing a strange costume, +professing a strange religion--which implies that ours is +wrong--speaking an unfamiliar tongue. They control our financial system +and our economic development--on Chinese lines of the highest merit. +They take the utmost care of our Gothic cathedrals for us. They put our +dearest racial possessions into museums and admire them very much +indeed. They teach our young men to fly kites and eat bird's nest soup. +They do all that a well-bred people can do to conceal their habit and +persuasion of a racial superiority. But they keep up their "prestige." +... You know, we shouldn't love them. It really isn't a question of +whether they rule well or ill, but that the position is against certain +fundamentals of human nature. The only possible footing upon which we +could meet them with comfortable minds would be the footing that we and +they were discussing the terms of the restoration of our country. Then +indeed we might almost feel friendly with them. That is the case with +all civilised "possessions." The only terms upon which educated British +and Indians can meet to-day with any comfort is precisely that. The +living intercourse of the British and Indian mind to-day is the +discussion of the restoration. Everything else is humbug on the one side +and self-deception on the other. + +It is idle to speak of the British occupation of India as a conquest or +a robbery. It is a fashion of much "advanced" literature in Europe to +assume that the European rule of various Asiatic countries is the +result of deliberate conquest with a view to spoliation. But that is +only the ugly side of the facts. Cases of the deliberate invasion and +spoliation of one country by another have been very rare in the history +of the last three centuries. There has always been an excuse, and there +has always been a percentage of truth in the excuse. The history of +every country contains phases of political ineptitude in which that +country becomes so misgoverned as to be not only a nuisance to the +foreigner within its borders but a danger to its neighbours. Mexico is +in such a phase to-day. And most of the aggressions and annexations of +the modern period have arisen out of the inconveniences and reasonable +fears caused by such an inept phase. I am a persistent advocate for the +restoration of Poland, but at the same time it is very plain to me that +it is a mere travesty of the facts to say that Poland, was a white lamb +of a country torn to pieces by three wicked neighbours, Poland in the +eighteenth century was a dangerous political muddle, uncertain of her +monarchy, her policy, her affinities. She endangered her neighbours +because there was no guarantee that she might not fall under the +tutelage of one of them and become a weapon against the others. + +The division of Poland was an outrage upon the Polish people, but it +was largely dictated by an entirely honest desire to settle a dangerous +possibility. It seemed less injurious than the possibility of a +vacillating, independent Poland playing off one neighbour against +another. That possibility will still be present in the minds of the +diplomatists who will determine the settlement after the war. Until the +Poles make up their minds, and either convince the Russians that they +are on the side of Russia and Bohemia against Germany for evermore, or +the Germans that they are willing to be Posenised, they will live +between two distrustful enemies. + +The Poles need to think of the future more and the wrongs of Poland +less. They want less patriotic intrigue and more racial self-respect. +They are not only Poles but members of a greater brotherhood. My +impression is that Poland will "go Slav"--in spite of Cracow. But I am +not sure. I am haunted by the fear that Poland may still find her future +hampered by Poles who are, as people say, "too clever by half." An +incalculable Poland cannot be and will not be tolerated by the rest of +Europe. + +And the overspreading of India by the British was in the same way very +clearly done under compulsion, first lest the Dutch or French should +exploit the vast resources of the peninsula against Britain, and then +for fear of a Russian exploitation. I am no apologist for British rule +in India; I think we have neglected vast opportunities there; it was our +business from the outset to build up a free and friendly Indian +confederation, and we have done not a tithe of what we might have done +to that end. But then we have not done a little of what we might have +done for our own country. + +Nevertheless we have our case to plead, not only for going to India +but--with the Berlin papers still babbling of Bagdad and beyond[3]--of +sticking there very grimly. And so too the British have a fairly sound +excuse for grabbing Egypt in their fear lest in its phase of political +ineptitude it should be the means of strangling the British Empire as +the Turk in Constantinople has been used to strangle the Russian. None +of these justifications I admit are complete, but all deserve +consideration. It is no good arguing about the finer ethics of the +things that are; the business of sane men is to get things better. The +business of all sane men in all the countries of the Pledged Allies and +in America is manifestly to sink petty jealousies and a suicidal +competitiveness, and to organise co-operation with all the intellectual +forces they can find or develop in the subject countries, to convert +these inept national systems into politically efficient independent +organisations in a world peace alliance. If we fail to do that, then all +the inept states and all the subject states about the world will become +one great field for the sowing of tares by the enemy. + +[Footnote 3: This was written late in February, 1916.] + +So that with regard to the civilised just as with regard to the barbaric +regions of the "possessions" of the European-centred empires, we come to +the same conclusion. That on the whole the path of safety lies in the +direction of pooling them and of declaring a common policy of +progressive development leading to equality. The pattern of the United +States, in which the procedure is first the annexation of "territories" +and then their elevation to the rank of "States," must, with of course +far more difficulty and complication, be the pattern for the "empires" +of to-day--so far as they are regions of alien population. The path of +the Dominions, settled by emigrants akin to the home population, +Siberia, Canada, and so forth, to equal citizenship with the people of +the Mother Country is by comparison simple and plain. + +And so the discussion of the future of the overseas "empires" brings us +again to the same realisation to which the discussion of nearly every +great issue arising out of this war has pointed, the realisation of the +imperative necessity of some great council or conference, some permanent +overriding body, call it what you will, that will deal with things more +broadly than any "nationalism" or "patriotic imperialism" can possibly +do. That body must come into human affairs. Upon the courage and +imagination of living statesmen it depends whether it will come simply +and directly into concrete reality or whether it will materialise slowly +through, it may be, centuries of blood and blundering from such phantom +anticipations as this, anticipations that now haunt the thoughts of all +politically-minded men. + + + + +XII. THE OUTLOOK FOR THE GERMANS + + +Section 1 + +Whatever some of us among the Allies may say, the future of Germany lies +with Germany. The utmost ambition of the Allies falls far short of +destroying or obliterating Germany; it is to give the Germans so +thorough and memorable an experience of war that they will want no more +of it for a few generations, and, failing the learning of that lesson, +to make sure that they will not be in a position to resume their +military aggressions upon mankind with any hope of success. After all, +it is not the will of the Allies that has determined even this resolve. +It is the declared and manifest will of Germany to become predominant in +the world that has created the Alliance against Germany, and forged and +tempered our implacable resolution to bring militarist Germany down. And +the nature of the coming peace and of the politics that will follow the +peace are much more dependent upon German affairs than upon anything +else whatever. + +This is so clearly understood in Great Britain that there is scarcely a +newspaper that does not devote two or three columns daily to extracts +from the German newspapers, and from letters found upon German killed, +wounded, or prisoners, and to letters and descriptive articles from +neutrals upon the state of the German mind. There can be no doubt that +the British intelligence has grasped and kept its hold upon the real +issue of this war with an unprecedented clarity. At the outset there +came declarations from nearly every type of British opinion that this +war was a war against the Hohenzollern militarist idea, against +Prussianism, and not against Germany. + +In that respect Britain has documented herself to the hilt. There have +been, of course, a number of passionate outcries and wild accusations +against Germans, as a race, during the course of the struggle; but to +this day opinion is steadfast not only in Britain, but if I may judge +from the papers I read and the talk I hear, throughout the whole +English-speaking community, that this is a war not of races but ideas. I +am so certain of this that I would say if Germany by some swift +convulsion expelled her dynasty and turned herself into a republic, it +would be impossible for the British Government to continue the war for +long, whether it wanted to do so or not. The forces in favour of +reconciliation would be too strong. There would be a complete revulsion +from the present determination to continue the war to its bitter but +conclusive end. + +It is fairly evident that the present German Government understands this +frame of mind quite clearly, and is extremely anxious to keep it from +the knowledge of the German peoples. Every act or word from a British +source that suggests an implacable enmity against the Germans as a +people, every war-time caricature and insult, is brought to their +knowledge. It is the manifest interest of the Hohenzollerns and +Prussianism to make this struggle a race struggle and not merely a +political struggle, and to keep a wider breach between the peoples than +between the Governments. The "Made in Germany" grievance has been used +to the utmost against Great Britain as an indication of race hostility. +The everyday young German believes firmly that it was a blow aimed +specially at Germany; that no such regulation affected any goods but +German goods. And the English, with their characteristic heedlessness, +have never troubled to disillusion him. But even the British +caricaturist and the British soldier betray their fundamental opinion +of the matter in their very insults. They will not use a word of abuse +for the Germans as Germans; they call them "Huns," because they are +thinking of Attila, because they are thinking of them as invaders under +a monarch of peaceful France and Belgium, and not as a people living in +a land of their own. + +In Great Britain there is to this day so little hostility for Germans as +such, that recently a nephew of Lord Haldane's, Sir George Makgill, has +considered it advisable to manufacture race hostility and provide the +Hohenzollerns with instances and quotations through the exertions of a +preposterous Anti-German League. Disregarding the essential evils of the +Prussian idea, this mischievous organisation has set itself to persuade +the British people that the Germans are diabolical _as a race_. It has +displayed great energy and ingenuity in pestering and insulting +naturalised Germans and people of German origin in Britain--below the +rank of the Royal Family, that is--and in making enduring bad blood +between them and the authentic British. It busies itself in breaking up +meetings at which sentiments friendly to Germany might be expressed, +sentiments which, if they could be conveyed to German hearers, would +certainly go far to weaken the determination of the German social +democracy to fight to the end. + +There can, of course, be no doubt of the good faith of Sir George +Makgill, but he could do the Kaiser no better service than to help in +consolidating every rank and class of German, by this organisation of +foolish violence of speech and act, by this profession of an irrational +and implacable hostility. His practical influence over here is trivial, +thanks to the general good sense and the love of fair play in our +people, but there can be little doubt that his intentions are about as +injurious to the future peace of the world as any intentions could be, +and there can be no doubt that intelligent use is made in Germany of the +frothings and ravings of his followers. "Here, you see, is the +disposition of the English," the imperialists will say to the German +pacifists. "They are dangerous lunatics. Clearly we must stick together +to the end." ... + +The stuff of Sir George Makgill's league must not be taken as +representative of any considerable section of British opinion, which is +as a whole nearly as free from any sustained hatred of the Germans as it +was at the beginning of the war. There are, of course, waves of +indignation at such deliberate atrocities as the _Lusitania_ outrage or +the Zeppelin raids, Wittenberg will not easily be forgotten, but it +would take many Sir George Makgills to divert British anger from the +responsible German Government to the German masses. + +That lack of any essential hatred does not mean that British opinion is +not solidly for the continuation of this war against militarist +imperialism to its complete and final defeat. But if that can be +defeated to any extent in Germany by the Germans, if the way opens to a +Germany as unmilitary and pacific as was Great Britain before this war, +there remains from the British point of view nothing else to fight +about. With the Germany of _Vorwaerts_ which, I understand, would +evacuate and compensate Belgium and Serbia, set up a buffer state in +Alsace-Lorraine, and another in a restored Poland (including Posen), the +spirit of the Allies has no profound quarrel at all, has never had any +quarrel. We would only too gladly meet that Germany at a green table +to-morrow, and set to work arranging the compensation of Belgium and +Serbia, and tracing over the outlines of the natural map of mankind the +new political map of Europe. + +Still it must be admitted that not only in Great Britain but in all the +allied countries one finds a certain active minority corresponding to +Sir George Makgill's noisy following, who profess to believe that all +Germans to the third and fourth generation (save and except the +Hanoverian royal family domiciled in Great Britain) are a vile, +treacherous, and impossible race, a race animated by an incredible +racial vanity, a race which is indeed scarcely anything but a conspiracy +against the rest of mankind. + +The ravings of many of these people can only be paralleled by the stuff +about the cunning of the Jesuits that once circulated in +ultra-Protestant circles in England. Elderly Protestant ladies used to +look under the bed and in the cupboard every night for a Jesuit, just as +nowadays they look for a German spy, and as no doubt old German ladies +now look for Sir Edward Grey. It may be useful therefore, at the present +time, to point out that not only is the aggressive German idea not +peculiar to Germany, not only are there endless utterances of French +Chauvinists and British imperialists to be found entirely as vain, +unreasonable and aggressive, but that German militarist imperialism is +so little representative of the German quality, that scarcely one of its +leading exponents is a genuine German. + +Of course there is no denying that the Germans are a very distinctive +people, as distinctive as the French. But their distinctions are not +diabolical. Until the middle of the nineteenth century it was the +fashion to regard them as a race of philosophical incompetents. Their +reputation as a people of exceptionally military quality sprang up in +the weed-bed of human delusions between 1866 and 1872; it will certainly +not survive this war. Their reputation for organisation is another +matter. They are an orderly, industrious, and painstaking people, they +have a great respect for science, for formal education, and for +authority. It is their respect for education which has chiefly betrayed +them, and made them the instrument of Hohenzollern folly. Mr. F.M. +Hueffer has shown this quite conclusively in his admirable but ill-named +book, "When Blood is Their Argument." Their minds have been +systematically corrupted by base historical teaching, and the +inculcation of a rancid patriotism. They are a people under the sway of +organised suggestion. This catastrophic war and its preparation have +been their chief business for half a century; none the less their +peculiar qualities have still been displayed during that period; they +have still been able to lead the world in several branches of social +organisation and in the methodical development of technical science. +Systems of ideas are perhaps more readily shattered than built up; the +aggressive patriotism of many Germans must be already darkened by +serious doubts, and I see no inherent impossibility in hoping that the +mass of the Germans may be restored to the common sanity of mankind, +even in the twenty or thirty years of life that perhaps still remain for +me. + +Consider the names of the chief exponents of the aggressive German idea, +and you will find that not one is German. The first begetter of +Nietzsche's "blond beast," and of all that great flood of rubbish about +a strange superior race with whitish hair and blue eyes, that has so +fatally rotted the German imagination, was a Frenchman named Gobineau. +We British are not altogether free from the disease. As a small boy I +read the History of J.R. Green, and fed my pride upon the peculiar +virtues of my Anglo-Saxon blood. ("Cp.," as they say in footnotes, +Carlyle and Froude.) It was not a German but a renegade Englishman of +the Englishman-hating Whig type, Mr. Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who +carried the Gobineau theory to that delirious level which claims Dante +and Leonardo as Germans, and again it was not a German but a British +peer, still among us, Lord Redesdale, who in his eulogistic preface to +the English translation of Chamberlain's torrent of folly, hinted not +obscurely that the real father of Christ was not the Jew, Joseph, but a +much more Germanic person. Neither Clausewitz, who first impressed upon +the German mind the theory of ruthless warfare, nor Bernhardi, nor +Treitschke, who did as much to build up the Emperor's political +imagination, strike one as bearing particularly German names. There are +indeed very grave grounds for the German complaint that Germany has been +the victim of alien flattery and alien precedents. And what after all is +the Prussian dream of world empire but an imitative response to the +British empire and the adventure of Napoleon? The very title of the +German emperor is the name of an Italian, Caesar, far gone in decay. And +the backbone of the German system at the present time is the Prussian, +who is not really a German at all but a Germanised Wend. Take away the +imported and imposed elements from the things we fight to-day, leave +nothing but what is purely and originally German, and you leave very +little. We fight dynastic ambition, national vanity, greed, and the +fruits of fifty years of basely conceived and efficiently conducted +education. + +The majority of sensible and influential Englishmen are fully aware of +these facts. This does not alter their resolution to beat Germany +thoroughly and finally, and, if Germany remains Hohenzollern after the +war, to do their utmost to ring her in with commercial alliances, +tariffs, navigation and exclusion laws that will keep her poor and +powerless and out of mischief so long as her vice remains in her. But +these considerations of the essential innocence of the German do make +all this systematic hostility, which the British have had forced upon +them, a very uncongenial and reluctant hostility. Pro-civilisation, and +not Anti-German, is the purpose of the Allies. And the speculation of +just how relentlessly and for how long this ring of suspicion and +precaution need be maintained about Germany, of how soon the German may +decide to become once more a good European, is one of extraordinary +interest to every civilised man. In other words, what are the prospects +of a fairly fundamental revolution in German life and thought and +affairs in the years immediately before us? + + +§2 + +In a sense every European country must undergo revolutionary changes as +a consequence of the enormous economic exhaustion and social +dislocations of this war. But what I propose to discuss here is the +possibility of a real political revolution, in the narrower sense of +the word, in Germany, a revolution that will end the Hohenzollern +system, the German dynastic system, altogether, that will democratise +Prussia and put an end for ever to that secretive scheming of military +aggressions which is the essential quarrel of Europe with Germany. It is +the most momentous possibility of our times, because it opens the way to +an alternative state of affairs that may supersede the armed watching +and systematic war of tariffs, prohibitions, and exclusions against the +Central Empires that must quite unavoidably be the future attitude of +the Pledged Allies to any survival of the Hohenzollern empire. + +We have to bear in mind that in this discussion we are dealing with +something very new and quite untried hitherto by anything but success, +that new Germany whose unification began with the spoliation of Denmark +and was completed at Versailles. It is not a man's lifetime old. Under +the state socialism and aggressive militarism of the Hohenzollern regime +it had been led to a level of unexampled pride and prosperity, and it +plunged shouting and singing into this war, confident of victories. It +is still being fed with dwindling hopes of victory, no longer unstinted +hopes, but still hopes--by a sort of political bread-card system. The +hopes outlast the bread-and-butter, but they dwindle and dwindle. How is +this parvenu people going to stand the cessation of hope, the +realisation of the failure and fruitlessness of such efforts as no +people on earth have ever made before? How are they going to behave when +they realise fully that they have suffered and died and starved and +wasted all their land in vain? When they learn too that the cause of the +war was a trick, and the Russian invasion a lie? They have a large +democratic Press that will not hesitate to tell them that, that does +already to the best of its ability disillusion them. They are a +carefully trained and educated and disciplined people, it is true[4]; +but the solicitude of the German Government everywhere apparent, thus to +keep the resentment of the people directed to the proper quarter, is, I +think, just one of the things that are indicative of the revolutionary +possibilities in Germany. The Allied Governments let opinion, both in +their own countries and in America, shift for itself; they do not even +trouble to mitigate the inevitable exasperation of the military +censorship by an intelligent and tactful control. The German Government, +on the other hand, has organised the putting of the blame upon other +shoulders than its own elaborately and ably from the very beginning of +the war. It must know its own people best, and I do not see why it +should do this if there were not very dangerous possibilities ahead for +itself in the national temperament. + +[Footnote 4: A recent circular, which _Vorwaerts_ quotes, sent by the +education officials to the teachers of Frankfurt-am-Main, points out the +necessity of the "beautiful task" of inculcating a deep love for the +House of Hohenzollern (Crown Prince, grin and all), and concludes, "All +efforts to excuse or minimise or explain the disgraceful acts which our +enemies have committed against Germans all over the world are to be +firmly opposed by you should you see any signs of these efforts entering +the schools."] + +It is one of the commonplaces of this question that in the past the +Germans have always been loyal subjects and never made a revolution. It +is alleged that there has never been a German republic. That is by no +means conclusively true. The nucleus of Swiss freedom was the +German-speaking cantons about the Lake of Lucerne; Tell was a German, +and he was glorified by the German Schiller. No doubt the Protestant +reformation was largely a business of dukes and princes, but the +underlying spirit of that revolt also lay in the German national +character. The Anabaptist insurrection was no mean thing in rebellions, +and the history of the Dutch, who are, after all, only the extreme +expression of the Low German type, is a history of the most stubborn +struggle for freedom in Europe. This legend of German docility will not +bear close examination. It is true that they are not given to spasmodic +outbreaks, and that they do not lend themselves readily to intrigues and +pronunciamentos, but there is every reason to suppose that they have the +heads to plan and the wills to carry out as sound and orderly and +effective a revolution as any people in Europe. Before the war drove +them frantic, the German comic papers were by no means suggestive of an +abject worship of authority and royalty for their own sakes. The +teaching of all forms of morality and sentimentality in schools produces +not only belief but reaction, and the livelier and more energetic the +pupil the more likely he is to react rather than accept. + +Whatever the feelings of the old women of Germany may be towards the +Kaiser and his family, my impression of the opinion of Germans in +general is that they believed firmly in empire, Kaiser and militarism +wholly and solely because they thought these things meant security, +success, triumph, more and more wealth, more and more Germany, and all +that had come to them since 1871 carried on to the _n_th degree.... I do +not think that all the schoolmasters of Germany, teaching in unison at +the tops of their voices, will sustain that belief beyond the end of +this war. + +At present every discomfort and disappointment of the German people is +being sedulously diverted into rage against the Allies, and particularly +against the English. This is all very well as long as the war goes on +with a certain effect of hopefulness. But what when presently the beam +has so tilted against Germany that an unprofitable peace has become +urgent and inevitable? How can the Hohenzollern suddenly abandon his +pose of righteous indignation and make friends with the accursed enemy, +and how can he make any peace at all with us while he still proclaims us +accursed? Either the Emperor has to go to his people and say, "We +promised you victory and it is defeat," or he has to say, "It is not +defeat, but we are going to make peace with these Russian barbarians who +invaded us, with the incompetent English who betrayed us, with all these +degenerate and contemptible races you so righteously hate and despise, +upon such terms that we shall never be able to attack them again. This +noble and wonderful war is to end in this futility and--these graves. +You were tricked into it, as you were tricked into war in 1870--but this +time it has not turned out quite so well. And besides, after all, we +find we can continue to get on with these people." ... + +In either case, I do not see how he can keep the habitual and cultivated +German hate pointing steadily away from himself. So long as the war is +going on that may be done, but when the soldiers come home the hate will +come home as well. In times of war peoples may hate abroad and with some +unanimity. But after the war, with no war going on or any prospect of a +fresh war, with every exploiter and every industrial tyrant who has made +his unobtrusive profits while the country scowled and spat at England, +stripped of the cover of that excitement, then it is inevitable that +much of this noble hate of England will be seen for the cant it is. The +cultivated hate of the war phase, reinforced by the fresh hate born of +confusion and misery, will swing loose, as it were, seeking dispersedly +for objects. The petty, incessant irritations of proximity will count +for more; the national idea for less. The Hohenzollerns and the Junkers +will have to be very nimble indeed if the German accomplishment of hate +does not swing round upon them. + +It is a common hypothesis with those who speculate on the probable +effects of these disillusionments that Germany may break up again into +its component parts. It is pointed out that Germany is, so to speak, a +palimpsest, that the broad design of the great black eagle and the +imperial crown are but newly painted over a great number of +particularisms, and that these particularisms may return. The empire of +the Germans may break up again. That I do not believe. The forces that +unified Germany lie deeper than the Hohenzollern adventure; print, paper +and the spoken word have bound Germany now into one people for all time. +None the less those previous crowns and symbols that still show through +the paint of the new design may help greatly, as that weakens under the +coming stresses, to disillusion men about its necessity. There was, they +will be reminded, a Germany before Prussia, before Austria for the +matter of that. The empire has been little more than the first German +experiment in unity. It is a new-fangled thing that came and may go +again--leaving Germany still a nation, still with the sense of a common +Fatherland. + +Let us consider a little more particularly the nature of the mass of +population whose collective action in the years immediately ahead of us +we are now attempting to forecast. Its social strata are only very +inexactly equivalent to those in the countries of the Pledged Allies. +First there are the masses of the people. In England for purposes of +edification we keep up the legend of the extreme efficiency of Germany, +the high level of German education, and so forth. The truth is that the +average _elementary_ education of the common people in Britain is +superior to that of Germany, that the domestic efficiency of the British +common people is greater, their moral training better, and their +personal quality higher. This is shown by a number of quite conclusive +facts of which I will instance merely the higher German general +death-rate, the higher German infantile death-rate, the altogether +disproportionate percentage of crimes of violence in Germany, and the +indisputable personal superiority of the British common soldier over his +German antagonist. It is only when we get above the level of the masses +that the position is reversed. The ratio of public expenditure upon +secondary and higher education in Germany as compared with the +expenditure upon elementary education is out of all proportion to the +British ratio. + +Directly we come to the commercial, directive, official, technical and +professional classes in Germany, we come to classes far more highly +trained, more alert intellectually, more capable of collective action, +and more accessible to general ideas, than the less numerous and less +important corresponding classes in Britain. This great German middle +class is the strength and substance of the new Germany; it has increased +proportionally to the classes above and below it, it has developed +almost all its characteristics during the last half-century. At its +lower fringe it comprehends the skilled and scientifically trained +artisans, it supplies the brains of social democracy, and it reaches up +to the world of finance and quasi-state enterprise. And it is the "dark +horse" in all these speculations. + +Hitherto this middle class has been growing almost unawares. It has been +so busy coming into existence and growing, there has been so much to do +since 1871, that it has had scarcely a moment to think round the general +problem of politics at all. It has taken the new empire for granted as a +child takes its home for granted, and its state of mind to-day must be +rather like that of an intelligent boy who suddenly discovers that his +father's picturesque and wonderful speculations have led to his arrest +and brought the brokers into the house, and that there is nothing for it +but to turn to and take control of the family affairs. + +In Germany, the most antiquated and the most modern of European states, +the old dynastic Germany of the princes and junkers has lasted on by +virtue of exceptional successes and prestige into the world of steel and +electricity. But their prestige has paled before the engineering of +Krupp; their success evaporates. A new nation awakens to +self-consciousness only to find itself betrayed into apparently +irreconcilable hostility against the rest of mankind.... + +What will be the quality of the monarch and court and junkerdom that +will face this awaking new Germany? + +The monarch will be before very long the present Crown Prince. The +Hohenzollerns have at least the merit of living quickly, and the present +Emperor draws near his allotted term. He will break a record in his +family if he lives another dozen years. So that quite soon after the war +this new disillusioned Germany will be contemplating the imperial graces +of the present Crown Prince. In every way he is an unattractive and +uninspiring figure; he has identified himself completely with that +militarism that has brought about the European catastrophe; in +repudiating him Germany will repudiate her essential offence against +civilisation, and his appears to be the sort of personality that it is a +pleasure to repudiate. He or some kindred regent will be the symbol of +royalty in Germany through all those years of maximum stress and +hardship ahead. Through-out the greater part of Germany the tradition of +loyalty to his house is not a century old. And the real German loyalty +is racial and national far more than dynastic. It is not the +Hohenzollern over all that they sing about; it is Deutschland. (And--as +in the case of all imperfectly civilised people--songs of hate for +foreigners.) But it needed a decadent young American to sing: + + "Thou Prince of Peace, + Thou God of War," + +to the dismal rhetorician of Potsdam. Real emperors reconcile and +consolidate peoples, for an empire is not a nation; but the +Hohenzollerns have never dared to be anything but sedulously national, +"echt Deutsch" and advocates of black-letter. They know the people they +have to deal with. + +This new substantial middle mass of Germany has never been on friendly +terms with the Germany of the court and the landowner. It has inherited +a burgerlich tradition and resented even while it tolerated the swagger +of the aristocratic officer. It tolerated it because that sort of thing +was supposed to be necessary to the national success. But Munich, the +comic papers, Herr Harden, _Vorwaerts_, speak, I think, for the central +masses of German life far more truly than any official utterances do. +They speak in a voice a little gross, very sensible, blunt, with a kind +of heavy humour. That German voice one may not like, but one must needs +respect it. It is, at any rate, not bombastic. It is essentially honest. +When the imperial eagle comes home with half its feathers out like a +crow that has met a bear; when the surviving aristocratic officers +reappear with a vastly diminished swagger in the biergartens, I believe +that the hitherto acquiescent middle classes and skilled artisan class +of German will entirely disappoint those people who expect them to +behave either with servility or sentimental loyalty. The great +revolutionary impulse of the French was passionate and generous. The +revolutionary impulse of Germany may be even more deadly; it may be +contemptuous. It may be they will not even drag emperor and nobles down; +they will shove them aside.... + +In all these matters one must ask the reader to enlarge his perspectives +at least as far back as the last three centuries. The galaxy of German +monarchies that has over-spread so much of Europe is a growth of hardly +more than two centuries. It is a phase in the long process of the +break-up of the Roman Empire and of the catholic system that inherited +its tradition. These royalties have formed a class apart, breeding only +among themselves, and attempting to preserve a sort of caste +internationalism in the face of an advance in human intelligence, a +spread of printing, reading, and writing that makes inevitably for the +recrudescence of national and race feeling, and the increasing +participation of the people in government. + +In Russia and England these originally German dynasties are meeting the +problems of the new time by becoming national. They modify themselves +from year to year. The time when Britain will again have a Queen of +British race may not be very remote. The days when the affairs of Europe +could be discussed at Windsor in German and from a German standpoint +ended with the death of Queen Victoria, and it is only in such +improvised courts as those of Greece and Bulgaria that the national +outlook can still be contemplated from a foreign standpoint and +discussed in a foreign tongue. The age when the monarchical system made +the courts of three-quarters of Europe a German's Fatherland has ended +for ever. And with that, the last rational advantage of monarchy and +royalist sentimentality disappears from the middle-class German's point +of view. + +So it seems to me that the following conclusions about the future of +Germany emerge from these considerations. It is improbable that there +will be any such revolution as overthrew French Imperialism in 1871; the +new Prussian Imperialism is closer to the tradition of the people and +much more firmly established through the educational propaganda of the +past half-century. But liberal forces in Germany may nevertheless be +strong enough to force a peace upon the Hohenzollern empire so soon as +any hopes of aggressive successes die away, before the utmost stage of +exhaustion is reached, early in 1917, perhaps, or at latest in 1918. +This, we suppose, will be a restrictive peace so far as Germany is +concerned, humiliating her and hampering her development. The German +Press will talk freely of a _revanche_ and the renewal of the struggle, +and this will help to consolidate the Pledged Allies in their resolve to +hold Germany on every front and to retard her economic and financial +recovery. The dynasty will lose prestige gradually, the true story of +the war will creep slowly into the German consciousness, and the idea of +a middle-class republic, like the French Republic, only defensively +militant and essentially pacific and industrial, will become more and +more popular in the country. + +This will have the support of strong journalists, journalists of the +Harden type for example. The dynasty tends to become degenerate, so that +the probability of either some gross scandals or an ill-advised +reactionary movement back to absolutism may develop a crisis within a +few years of the peace settlement. The mercantile and professional +classes will join hands with the social democrats to remove the decaying +incubus of the Hohenzollern system, and Germany will become a more +modern and larger repetition of the Third French republic. This collapse +of the Germanic monarchical system may spread considerably beyond the +limits of the German empire. It will probably be effected without much +violence as a consequence of the convergence and maturity of many +streams of very obvious thought. Many of the monarchs concerned may find +themselves still left with their titles, palaces, and personal estates, +and merely deprived of their last vestiges of legal power. The way will +thus be opened for a gradual renewal of good feeling between the people +of Germany and the western Europeans. This renewal will be greatly +facilitated by the inevitable fall in the German birth-rate that the +shortage and economies of this war will have done much to promote, and +by the correlated discrediting of the expansionist idea. By 1960 or so +the alteration of perspectives will have gone so far that historians +will be a little perplexed to explain the causes of the Great War. The +militarist monomania of Germany will have become incomprehensible; her +_Welt Politik_ literature incredible and unreadable.... + +Such is my reading of the German horoscope. + +I doubt if there will be nearly so much writing and reading about the +Great War in the latter half of the twentieth century as there was about +Napoleon at the end of the nineteenth. The Great War is essentially +undramatic, it has no hero, it has no great leaders. It is a story of +the common sense of humanity suppressing certain tawdry and vulgar ideas +and ambitions, and readjusting much that was wasteful and unjust in +social and economic organisation. It is the story of how the spirit of +man was awakened by a nightmare of a War Lord.... The nightmare will +fade out of mind, and the spirit of man, with revivified energies, will +set about the realities of life, the re-establishment of order, the +increase of knowledge and creation. Amid these realities the great +qualities of the Germans mark them for a distinguished and important +rōle. + + +§3 + +The primary business of the Allies is not reconciliation with Germany. +Their primary concern is to organise a great League of Peace about the +world with which the American States and China may either unite or +establish a permanent understanding. Separate attempts to restore +friendship with the Germans will threaten the unanimity of the League of +Peace, and perhaps renew the intrigues and evils of the Germanic +dynastic system which this war may destroy. The essential restoration of +Germany must be the work of German men speaking plain sense to Germans, +and inducing their country to hold out its hand not to this or that +suspicious neighbour but to mankind. A militarist Germany is a Germany +self-condemned to isolation or world empire. A Germany which has +returned to the ways of peace, on the other hand, will be a country that +cannot be kept out of the system of civilisation. The tariff wall cannot +but be lowered, the watchful restrictions cannot but be discontinued +against such a Germany. Europe is a system with its heart half used, so +long as Germany is isolated. The German population is and will remain +the central and largest mass of people in Europe. That is a fact as +necessary as the Indianism of India. + +To reconstruct modern civilisation without Germany would be a colossal +artificial task that would take centuries to do. It is inconceivable +that Germany will stand out of Europeanism so long as to allow the trade +routes of the world to be entirely deflected from her. Her own +necessities march with the natural needs of the world. + +So that I give the alliance for the isolation of Germany at the outside +a life of forty years before it ceases to be necessary through the +recovered willingness of the Germans to lay aside aggression. + +But this is not a thing to be run at too hastily. It may be easily +possible to delay this national general reconciliation of mankind by an +unreal effusion. There will be no advantage in forcing the feelings of +the late combatants. It is ridiculous to suppose that for the next +decade or so, whatever happens, any Frenchmen are going to feel genial +about the occupation of their north-east provinces, or any Belgians +smile at the memory of Dinant or Louvain, or the Poles or Serbs forgive +the desolation of their country, or any English or Russians take a +humorous view of the treatment their people have had as prisoners in +Germany. So long as these are living memories they will keep a barrier +of dislike about Germany. Nor is it probable that the ordinary German +is going to survey the revised map of Africa with a happy sense of +relief, or blame no one but himself for the vanished prosperity of 1914. +That is asking too much of humanity. Unless I know nothing of Germany, +Germany will bristle with "denkmals" to keep open all such sores. The +dislike of Germany by the allied nations will be returned in the +hostility of a thwarted and disappointed people. Not even the neutrals +will be aloof from these hostilities and resentments. The world will +still, in 1950 or so, be throwing much passion into the rights and +wrongs of the sinking of the _Lusitania_. There will be a bitterness in +the memories of this and the next generation that will make the +spectacle of ardent Frenchmen or Englishmen or Belgians or Russians +embracing Germans with gusto--unpleasant, to say the least of it. + +We may bring ourselves to understand, we may bring ourselves to a cold +and reasonable forgiveness, we may suppress our Sir George Makgills and +so forth, but it will take sixty or seventy years for the two sides in +this present war to grow kindly again. Let us build no false hopes nor +pretend to any false generosities. These hatreds can die out only in one +way, by the passing of a generation, by the dying out of the wounded +and the wronged. Our business, our unsentimental business, is to set +about establishing such conditions that they will so die out. And that +is the business of the sane Germans too. Behind the barriers this war +will have set up between Germany and Anti-Germany, the intelligent men +in either camp must prepare the ultimate peace they will never enjoy, +must work for the days when their sons at least may meet as they +themselves can never meet, without accusation or resentment, upon the +common business of the World Peace. That is not to be done by any +conscientious sentimentalities, any slobbering denials of unforgettable +injuries. We want no Pro-German Leagues any more than we want +Anti-German Leagues. We want patience--and silence. + +My reason insists upon the inevitableness and necessity of this ultimate +reconciliation. I will do no more than I must to injure Germany further, +and I will do all that I can to restore the unity of mankind. None the +less is it true that for me for all the rest of my life the Germans I +shall meet, the German things I shall see, will be smeared with the +blood of my people and my friends that the wilfulness of Germany has +spilt. + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of What is Coming?, by H. G. Wells + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT IS COMING? *** + +***** This file should be named 11289-8.txt or 11289-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/1/2/8/11289/ + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Dave Morgan and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + +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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G. Wells + +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: What is Coming? + +Author: H. G. Wells + +Release Date: February 25, 2004 [EBook #11289] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT IS COMING? *** + + + + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Dave Morgan and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + + + + + +</pre> + +<h1>What is Coming?</h1> + +<h2>A Forecast of Things after the War</h2> + +<h3>By H.G. WELLS</h3> + +<h4>1916</h4> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<center> +<a href="#I._FORECASTING_THE_FUTURE">I. FORECASTING THE FUTURE</a><br> +<a href="#II._THE_END_OF_THE_WAR">II. THE END OF THE WAR</a><br> +<a href="#III._NATIONS_IN_LIQUIDATION">III. NATIONS IN LIQUIDATION</a><br> +<a href="#IV._BRAINTREE,_BOCKING,_AND_THE_FUTURE_OF_THE_WORLD">IV. BRAINTREE, BOCKING, AND THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD</a><br> +<a href="#V._HOW_FAR_WILL_EUROPE_GO_TOWARD_SOCIALISM?">V. HOW FAR WILL EUROPE GO TOWARD SOCIALISM?</a><br> +<a href="#VI._LAWYER_AND_PRESS">VI. LAWYER AND PRESS</a><br> +<a href="#VII._THE_NEW_EDUCATION">VII. THE NEW EDUCATION</a><br> +<a href="#VIII._WHAT_THE_WAR_IS_DOING_FOR_WOMEN">VIII. WHAT THE WAR IS DOING FOR WOMEN</a><br> +<a href="#IX._THE_NEW_MAP_OF_EUROPE">IX. THE NEW MAP OF EUROPE</a><br> +<a href="#X._THE_UNITED_STATES,_FRANCE,_BRITAIN,_AND_RUSSIA">X. THE UNITED STATES, FRANCE, BRITAIN, AND RUSSIA</a><br> +<a href="#XI._"THE_WHITE_MAN'S_BURTHEN"">XI. "THE WHITE MAN'S BURTHEN"</a><br> +<a href="#XII._THE_OUTLOOK_FOR_THE_GERMANS">XII. THE OUTLOOK FOR THE GERMANS</a><br> +</center> + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="I._FORECASTING_THE_FUTURE"></a>I. FORECASTING THE FUTURE</h2> +<br> + +<p>Prophecy may vary between being an intellectual amusement and a serious +occupation; serious not only in its intentions, but in its consequences. +For it is the lot of prophets who frighten or disappoint to be stoned. +But for some of us moderns, who have been touched with the spirit of +science, prophesying is almost a habit of mind.</p> + +<p>Science is very largely analysis aimed at forecasting. The test of any +scientific law is our verification of its anticipations. The scientific +training develops the idea that whatever is going to happen is really +here now--if only one could see it. And when one is taken by surprise +the tendency is not to say with the untrained man, "Now, who'd ha' +thought it?" but "Now, what was it we overlooked?"</p> + +<p>Everything that has ever existed or that will ever exist is here--for +anyone who has eyes to see. But some of it demands eyes of superhuman +penetration. Some of it is patent; we are almost as certain of next +Christmas and the tides of the year 1960 and the death before 3000 A.D. +of everybody now alive as if these things had already happened. Below +that level of certainty, but still at a very high level of certainty, +there are such things as that men will probably be making aeroplanes of +an improved pattern in 1950, or that there will be a through railway +connection between Constantinople and Bombay and between Baku and Bombay +in the next half-century. From such grades of certainty as this, one may +come down the scale until the most obscure mystery of all is reached: +the mystery of the individual. Will England presently produce a military +genius? or what will Mr. Belloc say the day after to-morrow? The most +accessible field for the prophet is the heavens; the least is the secret +of the jumping cat within the human skull. How will so-and-so behave, +and how will the nation take it? For such questions as that we need the +subtlest guesses of all.</p> + +<p>Yet, even to such questions as these the sharp, observant man may risk +an answer with something rather better than an even chance of being +right.</p> + +<p>The present writer is a prophet by use and wont. He is more interested +in to-morrow than he is in to-day, and the past is just material for +future guessing. "Think of the men who have walked here!" said a tourist +in the Roman Coliseum. It was a Futurist mind that answered: "Think of +the men who will." It is surely as interesting that presently some +founder of the World Republic, some obstinate opponent of militarism or +legalism, or the man who will first release atomic energy for human use, +will walk along the Via Sacra as that Cicero or Giordano Bruno or +Shelley have walked there in the past. To the prophetic mind all history +is and will continue to be a prelude. The prophetic type will +steadfastly refuse to see the world as a museum; it will insist that +here is a stage set for a drama that perpetually begins.</p> + +<p>Now this forecasting disposition has led the writer not only to publish +a book of deliberate prophesying, called "Anticipations," but almost +without premeditation to scatter a number of more or less obvious +prophecies through his other books. From first to last he has been +writing for twenty years, so that it is possible to check a certain +proportion of these anticipations by the things that have happened, Some +of these shots have hit remarkably close to the bull's-eye of reality; +there are a number of inners and outers, and some clean misses. Much +that he wrote about in anticipation is now established commonplace. In +1894 there were still plenty of sceptics of the possibility either of +automobiles or aeroplanes; it was not until 1898 that Mr. S.P. Langley +(of the Smithsonian Institute) could send the writer a photograph of a +heavier-than-air flying machine actually in the air. There were articles +in the monthly magazines of those days <i>proving</i> that flying was +impossible.</p> + +<p>One of the writer's luckiest shots was a description (in "Anticipations" +in 1900) of trench warfare, and of a deadlock almost exactly upon the +lines of the situation after the battle of the Marne. And he was +fortunate (in the same work) in his estimate of the limitations of +submarines. He anticipated Sir Percy Scott by a year in his doubts of +the decisive value of great battleships (<i>see</i> "An Englishman Looks at +the World"); and he was sound in denying the decadence of France; in +doubting (before the Russo-Japanese struggle) the greatness of the power +of Russia, which was still in those days a British bogey; in making +Belgium the battle-ground in a coming struggle between the mid-European +Powers and the rest of Europe; and (he believes) in foretelling a +renascent Poland. Long before Europe was familiar with the engaging +personality of the German Crown Prince, he represented great airships +sailing over England (which country had been too unenterprising to make +any) under the command of a singularly anticipatory Prince Karl, and in +"The World Set Free" the last disturber of the peace is a certain +"Balkan Fox."</p> + +<p>In saying, however, here and there that "before such a year so-and-so +will happen," or that "so-and-so will not occur for the next twenty +years," he was generally pretty widely wrong; most of his time estimates +are too short; he foretold, for example, a special motor track apart +from the high road between London and Brighton before 1910, which is +still a dream, but he doubted if effective military aviation or aerial +fighting would be possible before 1950, which is a miss on the other +side. He will draw a modest veil over certain still wider misses that +the idle may find for themselves in his books; he prefers to count the +hits and leave the reckoning of the misses to those who will find a +pleasure in it.</p> + +<p>Of course, these prophecies of the writer's were made upon a basis of +very generalised knowledge. What can be done by a really sustained +research into a particular question--especially if it is a question +essentially mechanical--is shown by the work of a Frenchman all too +neglected by the trumpet of fame--Clement Ader. M. Ader was probably the +first man to get a mechanism up into the air for something more than a +leap. His <i>Eole</i>, as General Mensier testifies, prolonged a jump as far +as fifty metres as early as 1890. In 1897 his <i>Avion</i> fairly flew. (This +is a year ahead of the date of my earliest photograph of S.P. Langley's +aeropile in mid-air.) This, however, is beside our present mark. The +fact of interest here is that in 1908, when flying was still almost +incredible, M. Ader published his "Aviation Militaire." Well, that was +eight years ago, and men have been fighting in the air now for a year, +and there is still nothing being done that M. Ader did not see, and +which we, if we had had the wisdom to attend to him, might not have been +prepared for. There is much that he foretells which is still awaiting +its inevitable fulfilment. So clearly can men of adequate knowledge and +sound reasoning power see into the years ahead in all such matters of +material development.</p> + +<p>But it is not with the development of mechanical inventions that the +writer now proposes to treat. In this book he intends to hazard certain +forecasts about the trend of events in the next decade or so. Mechanical +novelties will probably play a very small part in that coming history. +This world-wide war means a general arrest of invention and enterprise, +except in the direction of the war business. Ability is concentrated +upon that; the types of ability that are not applicable to warfare are +neglected; there is a vast destruction of capital and a waste of the +savings that are needed to finance new experiments. Moreover, we are +killing off many of our brightest young men.</p> + +<p>It is fairly safe to assume that there will be very little new furniture +on the stage of the world for some considerable time; that if there is +much difference in the roads and railways and shipping it will be for +the worse; that architecture, domestic equipment, and so on, will be +fortunate if in 1924 they stand where they did in the spring of 1914. In +the trenches of France and Flanders, and on the battlefields of Russia, +the Germans have been spending and making the world spend the comfort, +the luxury and the progress of the next quarter-century. There is no +accounting for tastes. But the result is that, while it was possible +for the writer in 1900 to write "Anticipations of the Reaction of +Mechanical Progress upon Human Life and Thought," in 1916 his +anticipations must belong to quite another system of consequences.</p> + +<p>The broad material facts before us are plain enough. It is the mental +facts that have to be unravelled. It isn't now a question of "What +thing--what faculty--what added power will come to hand, and how will it +affect our ways of living?" It is a question of "How are people going to +take these obvious things--waste of the world's resources, arrest of +material progress, the killing of a large moiety of the males in nearly +every European country, and universal loss and unhappiness?" We are +going to deal with realities here, at once more intimate and less +accessible than the effects of mechanism.</p> + +<p>As a preliminary reconnaissance, as it were, over the region of problems +we have to attack, let us consider the difficulties of a single +question, which is also a vital and central question in this forecast. +We shall not attempt a full answer here, because too many of the factors +must remain unexamined; later, perhaps, we may be in a better position +to do so. This question is the probability of the establishment of a +long world peace.</p> + +<p>At the outset of the war there was a very widely felt hope among the +intellectuals of the world that this war might clear up most of the +outstanding international problems, and prove the last war. The writer, +looking across the gulf of experience that separates us from 1914, +recalls two pamphlets whose very titles are eloquent of this +feeling--"The War that will End War," and "The Peace of the World." Was +the hope expressed in those phrases a dream? Is it already proven a +dream? Or can we read between the lines of the war news, diplomatic +disputations, threats and accusations, political wranglings and stories +of hardship and cruelty that now fill our papers, anything that still +justifies a hope that these bitter years of world sorrow are the +darkness before the dawn of a better day for mankind? Let us handle this +problem for a preliminary examination.</p> + +<p>What is really being examined here is the power of human reason to +prevail over passion--and certain other restraining and qualifying +forces. There can be little doubt that, if one could canvass all mankind +and ask them whether they would rather have no war any more, the +overwhelming mass of them would elect for universal peace. If it were +war of the modern mechanical type that was in question, with air raids, +high explosives, poison gas and submarines, there could be no doubt at +all about the response. "Give peace in our time, O Lord," is more than +ever the common prayer of Christendom, and the very war makers claim to +be peace makers; the German Emperor has never faltered in his assertion +that he encouraged Austria to send an impossible ultimatum to Serbia, +and invaded Belgium because Germany was being attacked. The Krupp-Kaiser +Empire, he assures us, is no eagle, but a double-headed lamb, resisting +the shearers and butchers. The apologists for war are in a hopeless +minority; a certain number of German Prussians who think war good for +the soul, and the dear ladies of the London <i>Morning Post</i> who think war +so good for the manners of the working classes, are rare, discordant +voices in the general chorus against war. If a mere unsupported and +uncoordinated will for peace could realise itself, there would be peace, +and an enduring peace, to-morrow. But, as a matter of fact, there is no +peace coming to-morrow, and no clear prospect yet of an enduring +universal peace at the end of this war.</p> + +<p>Now what are the obstructions, and what are the antagonisms to the +exploitation of this world-wide disgust with war and the world-wide +desire for peace, so as to establish a world peace?</p> + +<p>Let us take them in order, and it will speedily become apparent that we +are dealing here with a subtle quantitative problem in psychology, a +constant weighing of whether this force or that force is the stronger. +We are dealing with influences so subtle that the accidents of some +striking dramatic occurrence, for example, may turn them this way or +that. We are dealing with the human will--and thereby comes a snare for +the feet of the would-be impartial prophet. To foretell the future is to +modify the future. It is hard for any prophet not to break into +exhortation after the fashion of the prophets of Israel.</p> + +<p>The first difficulty in the way of establishing a world peace is that it +is nobody's business in particular. Nearly all of us want a world +peace--in an amateurish sort of way. But there is no specific person or +persons to whom one can look for the initiatives. The world is a +supersaturated solution of the will-for-peace, and there is nothing for +it to crystallise upon. There is no one in all the world who is +responsible for the understanding and overcoming of the difficulties +involved. There are many more people, and there is much more +intelligence concentrated upon the manufacture of cigarettes or +hairpins than upon the establishment of a permanent world peace. There +are a few special secretaries employed by philanthropic Americans, and +that is about all. There has been no provision made even for the +emoluments of these gentlemen when universal peace is attained; +presumably they would lose their jobs.</p> + +<p>Nearly everybody wants peace; nearly everybody would be glad to wave a +white flag with a dove on it now--provided no unfair use was made of +such a demonstration by the enemy--but there is practically nobody +thinking out the arrangements needed, and nobody making nearly as much +propaganda for the instruction of the world in the things needful as is +made in selling any popular make of automobile. We have all our +particular businesses to attend to. And things are not got by just +wanting them; things are got by getting them, and rejecting whatever +precludes our getting them.</p> + +<p>That is the first great difficulty: the formal Peace Movement is quite +amateurish.</p> + +<p>It is so amateurish that the bulk of people do not even realise the very +first implication of the peace of the world. It has not succeeded in +bringing this home to them.</p> + +<p>If there is to be a permanent peace of the world, it is clear that +there must be some permanent means of settling disputes between Powers +and nations that would otherwise be at war. That means that there must +be some head power, some point of reference, a supreme court of some +kind, a universally recognised executive over and above the separate +Governments of the world that exist to-day. That does not mean that +those Governments Have to disappear, that "nationality" has to be given +up, or anything so drastic as that. But it does mean that all those +Governments have to surrender almost as much of their sovereignty as the +constituent sovereign States which make up the United States of America +have surrendered to the Federal Government; if their unification is to +be anything more than a formality, they will have to delegate a control +of their inter-State relations to an extent for which few minds are +prepared at present.</p> + +<p>It is really quite idle to dream of a warless world in which States are +still absolutely free to annoy one another with tariffs, with the +blocking and squeezing of trade routes, with the ill-treatment of +immigrants and travelling strangers, and between which there is no means +of settling boundary disputes. Moreover, as between the united States of +the world and the United States of America there is this further +complication of the world position: that almost all the great States of +Europe are in possession, firstly, of highly developed territories of +alien language and race, such as Egypt; and, secondly, of barbaric and +less-developed territories, such as Nigeria or Madagascar. There will be +nothing stable about a world settlement that does not destroy in these +"possessions" the national preference of the countries that own them and +that does not prepare for the immediate or eventual accession of these +subject peoples to State rank. Most certainly, however, thousands of +intelligent people in those great European countries who believe +themselves ardent for a world peace will be staggered at any proposal to +place any part of "our Empire" under a world administration on the +footing of a United States territory. Until they cease to be staggered +by anything of the sort, their aspirations for a permanent peace will +remain disconnected from the main current of their lives. And that +current will flow, sluggishly or rapidly, towards war. For essentially +these "possessions" are like tariffs, like the strategic occupation of +neutral countries or secret treaties; they are forms of the conflict +between nations to oust and prevail over other nations.</p> + +<p>Going on with such things and yet deprecating war is really not an +attempt to abolish conflict; it is an attempt to retain conflict and +limit its intensity; it is like trying to play hockey on the +understanding that the ball shall never travel faster than eight miles +an hour.</p> + +<p>Now it not only stands in our way to a permanent peace of the world that +the great mass of men are not prepared for even the most obvious +implications of such an idea, but there is also a second invincible +difficulty--that there is nowhere in the world anybody, any type of men, +any organisation, any idea, any nucleus or germ, that could possibly +develop into the necessary over-Government. We are asking for something +out of the air, out of nothingness, that will necessarily array against +itself the resistance of all those who are in control, or interested in +the control, of the affairs of sovereign States of the world as they are +at present; the resistance of a gigantic network of Government +organisations, interests, privileges, assumptions.</p> + +<p>Against this a headless, vague aspiration, however universal, is likely +to prove quite ineffective. Of course, it is possible to suggest that +the Hague Tribunal is conceivably the germ of such an overriding +direction and supreme court as the peace of the world demands, but in +reality the Hague Tribunal is a mere legal automatic machine. It does +nothing unless you set it in motion. It has no initiative. It does not +even protest against the most obvious outrages upon that phantom of a +world-conscience--international law.</p> + +<p>Pacificists in their search for some definite starting-point, about +which the immense predisposition for peace may crystallise, have +suggested the Pope and various religious organisations as a possible +basis for the organisation of peace. But there would be no appeal from +such a beginning to the non-Christian majority of mankind, and the +suggestion in itself indicates a profound ignorance of the nature of the +Christian churches. With the exception of the Quakers and a few Russian +sects, no Christian sect or church has ever repudiated war; most have +gone out of the way to sanction it and bless it.</p> + +<p>It is altogether too rashly assumed by people whose sentimentality +outruns their knowledge that Christianity is essentially an attempt to +carry out the personal teachings of Christ. It is nothing of the sort, +and no church authority will support that idea. Christianity--more +particularly after the ascendancy of the Trinitarian doctrine was +established--was and is a theological religion; it is the religion that +triumphed over Arianism, Manichseism, Gnosticism, and the like; it is +based not on Christ, but on its creeds. Christ, indeed, is not even its +symbol; on the contrary, the chosen symbol of Christianity is the cross +to which Christ was nailed and on which He died. It was very largely a +religion of the legions. It was the warrior Theodosius who, more than +any single other man, imposed it upon Europe.</p> + +<p>There is no reason, therefore, either in precedent or profession, for +expecting any plain lead from the churches in this tremendous task of +organising and making effective the widespread desire of the world for +peace. And even were this the case, it is doubtful if we should find in +the divines and dignitaries of the Vatican, of the Russian and British +official churches, or of any other of the multitudinous Christian sects, +the power and energy, the knowledge and ability, or even the goodwill +needed to negotiate so vast a thing as the creation of a world +authority.</p> + +<p>One other possible starting-point has been suggested. It is no great +feat for a naive imagination to suppose the President of the Swiss +Confederation or the President of the United States--for each of these +two systems is an exemplary and encouraging instance of the possibility +of the pacific synthesis of independent States--taking a propagandist +course and proposing extensions of their own systems to the suffering +belligerents.</p> + +<p>But nothing of the sort occurs. And when you come to look into the +circumstances of these two Presidents you will discover that neither of +them is any more free than anybody else to embark upon the task of +creating a State-overriding, war-preventing organisation of the world. +He has been created by a system, and he is bound to a system; his +concern is with the interests of the people of Switzerland or of the +United States of America. President Wilson, for example, is quite +sufficiently occupied by the affairs of the White House, by the clash of +political parties, by interferences with American overseas trade and the +security of American citizens. He has no more time to give to projects +for the fundamental reconstruction of international relationships than +has any recruit drilling in England, or any captain on an ocean liner, +or any engineer in charge of a going engine.</p> + +<p>We are all, indeed, busy with the things that come to hand every day. We +are all anxious for a permanent world peace, but we are all up to the +neck in things that leave us no time to attend to this world peace that +nearly every sane man desires.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, a small minority of people who trade upon +contention--militarists, ambitious kings and statesmen, war contractors, +loan mongers, sensational journalists--follow up their interests and +start and sustain war.</p> + +<p>There lies the paradoxical reality of this question. Our first inquiry +lands us into the elucidation of this deadlock. Nearly everybody desires +a world peace, and yet there is not apparent anywhere any man free and +able and willing to establish it, while, on the other hand, there are a +considerable number of men in positions of especial influence and power +who will certainly resist the arrangements that are essential to its +establishment.</p> + +<p>But does this exhaust the question, and must we conclude that mankind is +doomed to a perpetual, futile struggling of States and nations and +peoples--breaking ever and again into war? The answer to that would +probably, be "Yes" if it were not for the progress of war. War is +continually becoming more scientific, more destructive, more coldly +logical, more intolerant of non-combatants, and more exhausting of any +kind of property. There is every reason to believe that it will continue +to intensify these characteristics. By doing so it may presently bring +about a state of affairs that will supply just the lacking elements that +are needed for the development of a world peace.</p> + +<p>I would venture to suggest that the present war is doing so now: that it +is producing changes in men's minds that may presently give us both the +needed energy and the needed organisation from which a world direction +may develop.</p> + +<p>The first, most distinctive thing about this conflict is the +exceptionally searching way in which it attacks human happiness. No war +has ever destroyed happiness so widely. It has not only killed and +wounded an unprecedented proportion of the male population of all the +combatant nations, but it has also destroyed wealth beyond precedent. It +has also destroyed freedom--of movement, of speech, of economic +enterprise. Hardly anyone alive has escaped the worry of it and the +threat of it. It has left scarcely a life untouched, and made scarcely a +life happier. There is a limit to the principle that "everybody's +business is nobody's business." The establishment of a world State, +which was interesting only to a few cranks and visionaries before the +war, is now the lively interest of a very great number of people. They +inquire about it; they have become accessible to ideas about it.</p> + +<p>Peace organisation seems, indeed, to be following the lines of public +sanitation. Everybody in England, for example, was bored by the +discussion of sanitation--until the great cholera epidemic. Everybody +thought public health a very desirable thing, but nobody thought it +intensely and overridingly desirable. Then the interest in sanitation +grew lively, and people exerted themselves to create responsible +organisations. Crimes of violence, again, were neglected in the great +cities of Europe until the danger grew to dimensions that evolved the +police. There come occasions when the normal concentration of an +individual upon his own immediate concerns becomes impossible; as, for +instance, when a man who is stocktaking in his business premises +discovers that the house next door is on fire. A great many people who +have never troubled their heads about anything but their own purely +personal and selfish interests are now realising that quite a multitude +of houses about them are ablaze, and that the fire is spreading.</p> + +<p>That is one change the war will bring about that will make for world +peace: a quickened general interest in its possibility. Another is the +certainty that the war will increase the number of devoted and fanatic +characters available for disinterested effort. Whatever other outcome +this war may have, it means that there lies ahead a period of extreme +economic and political dislocation. The credit system has been strained, +and will be strained, and will need unprecedented readjustments. In the +past such phases of uncertainty, sudden impoverishment and disorder as +certainly lie ahead of us, have meant for a considerable number of minds +a release--or, if you prefer it, a flight--from the habitual and +selfish. Types of intense religiosity, of devotion and of endeavour are +let loose, and there will be much more likelihood that we may presently +find, what it is impossible to find now, a number of devoted men and +women ready to give their whole lives, with a quasi-religious +enthusiasm, to this great task of peace establishment, finding in such +impersonal work a refuge from the disappointments, limitations, losses +and sorrows of their personal life--a refuge we need but little in more +settled and more prosperous periods. They will be but the outstanding +individuals in a very universal quickening. And simultaneously with this +quickening of the general imagination by experience there are certain +other developments in progress that point very clearly to a change under +the pressure of this war of just those institutions of nationality, +kingship, diplomacy and inter-State competition that have hitherto stood +most effectually in the way of a world pacification. The considerations +that seem to point to this third change are very convincing, to my mind.</p> + +<p>The real operating cause that is, I believe, going to break down the +deadlock that has hitherto made a supreme court and a federal government +for the world at large a dream, lies in just that possibility of an +"inconclusive peace" which so many people seem to dread. Germany, I +believe, is going to be beaten, but not completely crushed, by this war; +she is going to be left militarist and united with Austria and Hungary, +and unchanged in her essential nature; and out of that state of affairs +comes, I believe, the hope for an ultimate confederation of the nations +of the earth.</p> + +<p>Because, in the face of a league of the Central European Powers +attempting recuperation, cherishing revenge, dreaming of a renewal of +the struggle, it becomes impossible for the British, the French, the +Belgians, Russians, Italians or Japanese to think any longer of settling +their differences by war among themselves. To do so will mean the +creation of opportunity for the complete reinstatement of German +militarism. It will open the door for a conclusive German hegemony. +Now, however clumsy and confused the diplomacy of these present Allies +may be (challenged constantly, as it is, by democracy and hampered by a +free, venal and irresponsible Press in at least three of their +countries), the necessity they will be under will be so urgent and so +evident, that it is impossible to imagine that they will not set up some +permanent organ for the direction and co-ordination of their joint +international relationships. It may be a queerly constituted body at +first; it may be of a merely diplomatic pretension; it may be called a +Congress, or any old name of that sort, but essentially its business +will be to conduct a joint fiscal, military and naval policy, to keep +the peace in the Balkans and Asia, to establish a relationship with +China, and organise joint and several arbitration arrangements with +America. And it must develop something more sure and swift than our +present diplomacy. One of its chief concerns will be the right of way +through the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, and the watching of the +forces that stir up conflict in the Balkans and the Levant. It must have +unity enough for that; it must be much more than a mere leisurely, +unauthoritative conference of representatives.</p> + +<p>For precisely similar reasons it seems to me incredible that the two +great Central European Powers should ever fall into sustained conflict +again with one another. They, too, will be forced to create some +overriding body to prevent so suicidal a possibility. America too, it +may be, will develop some Pan-American equivalent. Probably the hundred +millions of Latin America may achieve a method of unity, and then deal +on equal terms with the present United States. The thing has been ably +advocated already in South America. Whatever appearances of separate +sovereignties are kept up after the war, the practical outcome of the +struggle is quite likely to be this: that there will be only three great +World Powers left--the anti-German allies, the allied Central Europeans, +the Pan-Americans. And it is to be noted that, whatever the constituents +of these three Powers may be, none of them is likely to be a monarchy. +They may include monarchies, as England includes dukedoms. But they will +be overriding alliances, not overriding rulers. I leave it to the +mathematician to work out exactly how much the chances of conflict are +diminished when there are practically only three Powers in the world +instead of some scores. And these new Powers will be in certain respects +unlike any existing European "States." None of the three Powers will be +small or homogeneous enough to serve dynastic ambitions, embody a +national or racial Kultur, or fall into the grip of any group of +financial enterprises. They will be more comprehensive, less romantic, +and more businesslike altogether. They will be, to use a phrase +suggested a year or so ago, Great States.... And the war threat between +the three will be so plain and definite, the issues will be so lifted +out of the spheres of merely personal ambition and national feeling, +that I do not see why the negotiating means, the standing conference of +the three, should not ultimately become the needed nucleus of the World +State for which at present we search the world in vain.</p> + +<p>There are more ways than one to the World State, and this second +possibility of a post-war conference and a conference of the Allies, +growing almost unawares into a pacific organisation of the world, since +it goes on directly from existing institutions, since it has none of the +quality of a clean break with the past which the idea of an immediate +World State and Pax Mundi involves, and more particularly since it +neither abolishes nor has in it anything to shock fundamentally the +princes, the diplomatists, the lawyers, the statesmen and politicians, +the nationalists and suspicious people, since it gives them years in +which to change and die out and reappear in new forms, and since at the +same time it will command the support of every intelligent human being +who gets his mind clear enough from his circumstances to understand its +import, is a far more credible hope than the hope of anything coming <i>de +novo</i> out of Hague Foundations or the manifest logic of the war.</p> + +<p>But, of course, there weighs against these hopes the possibility that +the Allied Powers are too various in their nature, too biased, too +feeble intellectually and imaginatively, to hold together and maintain +any institution for co-operation. The British Press may be too silly not +to foster irritation and suspicion; we may get Carsonism on a larger +scale trading on the resuscitation of dying hatreds; the British and +Russian diplomatists may play annoying tricks upon one another by sheer +force of habit. There may be many troubles of that sort. Even then I do +not see that the hope of an ultimate world peace vanishes. But it will +be a Roman world peace, made in Germany, and there will have to be +several more great wars before it is established. Germany is too +homogeneous yet to have begun the lesson of compromise and the +renunciation of the dream of national conquest. The Germans are a +national, not an imperial people. France has learnt that through +suffering, and Britain and Russia because for two centuries they have +been imperial and not national systems. The German conception of world +peace is as yet a conception of German ascendancy. The Allied conception +becomes perforce one of mutual toleration.</p> + +<p>But I will not press this inquiry farther now. It is, as I said at the +beginning, a preliminary exploration of one of the great questions with +which I propose to play in these articles. The possibility I have +sketched is the one that most commends itself to me as probable. After a +more detailed examination of the big operating forces at present working +in the world, we may be in a position to revise these suggestions with a +greater confidence and draw our net of probabilities a little tighter.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="II._THE_END_OF_THE_WAR"></a>II. THE END OF THE WAR<a name="FNanchor1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1"><sup>[1]</sup></a></h2> +<br> + +<p>The prophet who emerges with the most honour from this war is Bloch. It +must be fifteen or sixteen years ago since this gifted Pole made his +forecast of the future. Perhaps it is more, for the French translation +of his book was certainly in existence before the Boer War. His case was +that war between antagonists of fairly equal equipment must end in a +deadlock because of the continually increasing defensive efficiency of +entrenched infantry. This would give the defensive an advantage over the +most brilliant strategy and over considerably superior numbers that +would completely discourage all aggression. He concluded that war was +played out.</p> + +<blockquote> +<a name="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor1">[1]</a> This chapter was originally a newspaper article. It was +written in December, 1915, and published about the middle of January. +Some of it has passed from the quality of anticipation to achievement, +but I do not see that it needs any material revision on that account. +</blockquote> + +<p>His book was very carefully studied in Germany. As a humble disciple of +Bloch I should have realised this, but I did not, and that failure led +me into some unfortunate prophesying at the outbreak of the war. I +judged Germany by the Kaiser, and by the Kaiser-worship which I saw in +Berlin. I thought that he was a theatrical person who would dream of +vast massed attacks and tremendous cavalry charges, and that he would +lead Germany to be smashed against the Allied defensive in the West, and +to be smashed so thoroughly that the war would be over. I did not +properly appreciate the more studious and more thorough Germany that was +to fight behind the Kaiser and thrust him aside, the Germany we British +fight now, the Ostwald-Krupp Germany of 1915. That Germany, one may now +perceive, had read and thought over and thought out the Bloch problem.</p> + +<p>There was also a translation of Bloch into French. In English a portion +of his book was translated for the general reader and published with a +preface by the late Mr. W.T. Stead. It does not seem to have reached the +British military authorities, nor was it published in England with an +instructive intention. As an imaginative work it would have been +considered worthless and impracticable.</p> + +<p>But it is manifest now that if the Belgian and French frontiers had been +properly prepared--as they should have been prepared when the Germans +built their strategic railways--with trenches and gun emplacements and +secondary and tertiary lines, the Germans would never have got fifty +miles into either France or Belgium. They would have been held at Liége +and in the Ardennes. Five hundred thousand men would have held them +indefinitely. But the Allies had never worked trench warfare; they were +unready for it, Germans knew of their unreadiness, and their unreadiness +it is quite clear they calculated. They did not reckon, it is now clear +that they were right in not reckoning, the Allies as contemporary +soldiers. They were going to fight a 1900 army with a 1914 army, and +their whole opening scheme was based on the conviction that the Allies +would not entrench.</p> + +<p>Somebody in those marvellous maxims from the dark ages that seem to form +the chief reading of our military experts, said that the army that +entrenches is a defeated army. The silly dictum was repeated and +repeated in the English papers after the battle of the Marne. It shows +just where our military science had reached in 1914, namely, to a level +a year before Bloch wrote. So the Allies retreated.</p> + +<p>For long weeks the Allies retreated out of the west of Belgium, out of +the north of France, and for rather over a month there was a loose +mobile war--as if Bloch had never existed. The Germans were not fighting +the 1914 pattern of war, they were fighting the 1899 pattern of war, in +which direct attack, outflanking and so on were still supposed to be +possible; they were fighting confident in their overwhelming numbers, in +their prepared surprise, in the unthought-out methods of their +opponents. In the "Victorian" war that ended in the middle of September, +1914, they delivered their blow, they over-reached, they were +successfully counter-attacked on the Marne, and then abruptly--almost +unfairly it seemed to the British sportsmanlike conceptions--they +shifted to the game played according to the very latest rules of 1914. +The war did not come up to date until the battle of the Aisne. With that +the second act of the great drama began.</p> + +<p>I do not believe that the Germans ever thought it would come up to date +so soon. I believe they thought that they would hustle the French out of +Paris, come right up to the Channel at Calais before the end of 1914, +and then entrench, produce the submarine attack and the Zeppelins +against England, working from Calais as a base, and that they would end +the war before the spring of 1915--with the Allies still a good fifteen +years behindhand.</p> + +<p>I believe the battle of the Marne was the decisive battle of the war, in +that it shattered this plan, and that the rest of the 1914 fighting was +Germany's attempt to reconstruct their broken scheme in the face of an +enemy who was continually getting more and more nearly up to date with +the fighting. By December, Bloch, who had seemed utterly discredited in +August, was justified up to the hilt. The world was entrenched at his +feet. By May the lagging military science of the British had so far +overtaken events as to realise that shrapnel was no longer so important +as high explosive, and within a year the significance of machine guns, a +significance thoroughly ventilated by imaginative writers fifteen years +before, was being grasped by the conservative but by no means +inadaptable leaders of Britain.</p> + +<p>The war since that first attempt--admirably planned and altogether +justifiable (from a military point of view, I mean)--of Germany to +"rush" a victory, has consisted almost entirely of failures on both +sides either to get round or through or over the situation foretold by +Bloch. There has been only one marked success, the German success in +Poland due to the failure of the Russian munitions. Then for a time the +war in the East was mobile and precarious while the Russians retreated +to their present positions, and the Germans pursued and tried to +surround them. That was a lapse into the pre-Bloch style. Now the +Russians are again entrenched, their supplies are restored, the Germans +have a lengthened line of supplies, and Bloch is back upon his pedestal +so far as the Eastern theatre goes.</p> + +<p>Bloch has been equally justified in the Anglo-French attempt to get +round through Gallipoli. The forces of the India Office have pushed +their way through unprepared country towards Bagdad, and are now +entrenching in Mesopotamia, but from the point of view of the main war +that is too remote to be considered either getting through or getting +round; and so too the losses of the German colonies and the East African +War are scarcely to be reckoned with in the main war. They have no +determining value. There remains the Balkan struggle. But the Balkan +struggle is something else; it is something new. It must be treated +separately. It is a war of treacheries and brags and appearances. It is +not a part of, it is a sequence to, the deadlock war of 1915.</p> + +<p>But before dealing with this new development of the latter half of 1915 +it is necessary to consider certain general aspects of the deadlock +war. It is manifest that the Germans hoped to secure an effective +victory in this war before they ran up against Bloch. But reckoning with +Bloch, as they certainly did, they hoped that even in the event of the +war getting to earth, it would still be possible to produce novelties +that would sufficiently neutralise Bloch to secure a victorious peace. +With unexpectedly powerful artillery suddenly concentrated, with high +explosives, with asphyxiating gas, with a well-organised system of +grenade throwing and mining, with attacks of flaming gas, and above all +with a vast munition-making plant to keep them going, they had a very +reasonable chance of hacking their way through.</p> + +<p>Against these prepared novelties the Allies have had to improvise, and +on the whole the improvisation has kept pace with the demands made upon +it. They have brought their military science up to date, and to-day the +disparity in science and equipment between the antagonists has greatly +diminished. There has been no escaping Bloch after all, and the +deadlock, if no sudden peace occurs, can end now in only one thing, the +exhaustion in various degrees of all the combatants and the succumbing +of the most exhausted. The idea of a conclusive end of the traditional +pattern to this war, of a triumphal entry into London, Paris, Berlin or +Moscow, is to be dismissed altogether from our calculations. The end of +this war will be a matter of negotiation between practically immobilised +and extremely shattered antagonists.</p> + +<p>There is, of course, one aspect of the Bloch deadlock that the Germans +at least have contemplated. If it is not possible to get through or +round, it may still be possible to get over. There is the air path.</p> + +<p>This idea has certainly taken hold of the French mind, but France has +been too busy and is temperamentally too economical to risk large +expenditures upon what is necessarily an experiment. The British are too +conservative and sceptical to be the pioneers in any such enterprise. +The Russians have been too poor in the necessary resources of mechanics +and material.</p> + +<p>The Germans alone have made any sustained attempt to strike through the +air at their enemies beyond the war zone. Their Zeppelin raids upon +England have shown a steadily increasing efficiency, and it is highly +probable that they will be repeated on a much larger scale before the +war is over. Quite possibly, too, the Germans are developing an +accessory force of large aeroplanes to co-operate in such an attack. +The long coasts of Britain, the impossibility of their being fully +equipped throughout their extent, except at a prohibitive cost of men +and material, to resist air invaders, exposes the whole length of the +island to considerable risk and annoyance from such an expedition.</p> + +<p>It is doubtful, though, if the utmost damage an air raid is likely to +inflict upon England would count materially in the exhaustion process, +and the moral effect of these raids has been, and will be, to stiffen +the British resolution to fight this war through to the conclusive +ending of any such possibilities.</p> + +<p>The net result of these air raids is an inflexible determination of the +British people rather to die in death grips with German militarism than +to live and let it survive. The best chance for the aircraft was at the +beginning of the war, when a surprise development might have had +astounding results. That chance has gone by. The Germans are racially +inferior to both French and English in the air, and the probability of +effective blows over the deadlock is on the whole a probability in +favour of the Allies. Nor is there anything on or under the sea that +seems likely now to produce decisive results. We return from these +considerations to a strengthened acceptance of Bloch.</p> + +<p>The essential question for the prophet remains therefore the question of +which group of Powers will exhaust itself most rapidly. And following on +from that comes the question of how the successive stages of exhaustion +will manifest themselves in the combatant nations. The problems of this +war, as of all war, end as they begin in national psychology.</p> + +<p>But it will be urged that this is reckoning without the Balkans. I +submit that the German thrust through the wooded wilderness of Serbia is +really no part of the war that has ended in the deadlock of 1915. It is +dramatic, tragic, spectacular, but it is quite inconclusive. Here there +is no way round or through to any vital centre of Germany's antagonists. +It turns nothing; it opens no path to Paris, London, or Petrograd. It is +a long, long way from the Danube to either Egypt or Mesopotamia, and +there--and there--Bloch is waiting. I do not think the Germans have any +intention of so generous an extension of their responsibilities. The +Balkan complication is no solution of the deadlock problem. It is the +opening of the sequel.</p> + +<p>A whole series of new problems are opened up directly we turn to this +most troubled region of the Balkans--problems of the value of kingship, +of nationality, of the destiny of such cities as Constantinople, which +from their very beginning have never had any sort of nationality at all, +of the destiny of countries such as Albania, where a tangle of intense +tribal nationalities is distributed in spots and patches, or Dalmatia, +where one extremely self-conscious nation and language is present in the +towns and another in the surrounding country, or Asia Minor, where no +definite national boundaries, no religious, linguistic, or social +homogeneities have ever established themselves since the Roman legions +beat them down.</p> + +<p>But all these questions can really be deferred or set aside in our +present discussion, which is a discussion of the main war. Whatever +surprises or changes this last phase of the Eastern Empire, that +blood-clotted melodrama, may involve, they will but assist and hasten on +the essential conclusion of the great war, that the Central Powers and +their pledged antagonists are in a deadlock, unable to reach a decision, +and steadily, day by day, hour by hour, losing men, destroying material, +spending credit, approaching something unprecedented, unknown, that we +try to express to ourselves by the word exhaustion.</p> + +<p>Just how the people who use the word "exhaustion" so freely are +prepared to define it, is a matter for speculation. The idea seems to be +a phase in which the production of equipped forces ceases through the +using up of men or material or both. If the exhaustion is fairly mutual, +it need not be decisive for a long time. It may mean simply an ebb of +vigour on both sides, unusual hardship, a general social and economic +disorganisation and grading down. The fact that a great killing off of +men is implicit in the process, and that the survivors will be largely +under discipline, militates against the idea that the end may come +suddenly through a vigorous revolutionary outbreak. Exhaustion is likely +to be a very long and very thorough process, extending over years. A +"war of attrition" may last into 1918 or 1919, and may bring us to +conditions of strain and deprivation still only very vaguely imagined. +What happens in the Turkish Empire or India or America or elsewhere may +extend the areas of waste and accelerate or retard the process, but is +quite unlikely to end it.</p> + +<p>Let us ask now which of the combatants is likely to undergo exhaustion +most rapidly, and what is of equal or greater importance, which is +likely to feel it first and most? No doubt there is a bias in my mind, +but it seems to me that the odds are on the whole heavily against the +Central Powers. Their peculiar German virtue, their tremendously +complete organisation, which enabled them to put so large a proportion +of their total resources into their first onslaught and to make so great +and rapid a recovery in the spring of 1915, leaves them with less to +draw upon now. Out of a smaller fortune they have spent a larger sum. +They are blockaded to a very considerable extent, and against them fight +not merely the resources of the Allies, but, thanks to the complete +British victory in the sea struggle, the purchasable resources of all +the world.</p> + +<p>Conceivably the Central Powers will draw upon the resources of their +Balkan and Asiatic allies, but the extent to which they can do that may +very easily be over-estimated. There is a limit to the power for treason +of these supposititious German monarchs that Western folly has permitted +to possess these Balkan thrones--thrones which need never have been +thrones at all--and none of the Balkan peoples is likely to witness with +enthusiasm the complete looting of its country in the German interest by +a German court. Germany will have to pay on the nail for most of her +Balkan help. She will have to put more into the Balkans than she takes +out.</p> + +<p>Compared with the world behind the Allies the Turkish Empire is a +country of mountains, desert and undeveloped lands. To develop these +regions into a source of supplies under the strains and shortages of +war-time, will be an immense and dangerous undertaking for Germany. She +may open mines she may never work, build railways that others will +enjoy, sow harvests for alien reaping. The people the Bulgarians want in +Bulgaria are not Germans but Bulgarians; the people the Turks want in +Anatolia are not Germans but Turks. And for all these tasks Germany must +send men. Men?</p> + +<p>At present, so far as any judgment is possible, Germany is feeling the +pinch of the war much more even than France, which is habitually +parsimonious, and instinctively cleverly economical, and Russia, which +is hardy and insensitive. Great Britain has really only begun to feel +the stress. She has probably suffered economically no more than have +Holland or Switzerland, and Italy and Japan have certainly suffered +less. All these three great countries are still full of men, of gear, of +saleable futures. In every part of the globe Great Britain has colossal +investments. She has still to apply the great principle of conscription +not only to her sons but to the property of her overseas investors and +of her landed proprietors. She has not even looked yet at the German +financial expedients of a year ago. She moves reluctantly, but surely, +towards such a thoroughness of mobilisation. There need be no doubt that +she will completely socialise herself, completely reorganise her whole +social and economic structure sooner than lose this war. She will do it +clumsily and ungracefully, with much internal bickering, with much +trickery on the part of her lawyers, and much baseness on the part of +her landlords; but she will do it not so slowly as a logical mind might +anticipate. She will get there a little late, expensively, but still in +time....</p> + +<p>The German group, I reckon, therefore, will become exhausted first. I +think, too, that Germany will, as a nation, feel and be aware of what is +happening to her sooner than any other of the nations that are sharing +in this process of depletion. In 1914 the Germans were reaping the +harvest of forty years of economic development and business enterprise. +Property and plenty were new experiences, and a generation had grown up +in whose world a sense of expansion and progress was normal. There +existed amongst it no tradition of the great hardship of war, such as +the French possessed, to steel its mind. It had none of the irrational +mute toughness of the Russians and British. It was a sentimental people, +making a habit of success; it rushed chanting to war against the most +grimly heroic and the most stolidly enduring of races. Germany came into +this war more buoyantly and confidently than any other combatant. It +expected another 1871; at the utmost it anticipated a year of war.</p> + +<p>Never were a people so disillusioned as the Germans must already be, +never has a nation been called upon for so complete a mental +readjustment. Neither conclusive victories nor defeats have been theirs, +but only a slow, vast transition from joyful effort and an illusion of +rapid triumph to hardship, loss and loss and loss of substance, the +dwindling of great hopes, the realisation of ebb in the tide of national +welfare. Now they must fight on against implacable, indomitable Allies. +They are under stresses now as harsh at least as the stresses of France. +And, compared with the French, the Germans are untempered steel.</p> + +<p>We know little of the psychology of this new Germany that has come into +being since 1871, but it is doubtful if it will accept defeat, and still +more doubtful how it can evade some ending to the war that will admit +the failure of all its great hopes of Paris subjugated, London humbled, +Russia suppliant, Belgium conquered, the Near East a prey. Such an +admission will be a day of reckoning that German Imperialism will +postpone until the last hope of some breach among the Allies, some +saving miracle in the old Eastern Empire, some dramatically-snatched +victory at the eleventh hour, is gone.</p> + +<p>Nor can the Pledged Allies consent to a peace that does not involve the +evacuation and compensation of Belgium and Serbia, and at least the +autonomy of the lost Rhine provinces of France. That is their very +minimum. That, and the making of Germany so sick and weary of military +adventure that the danger of German ambition will cease to overshadow +European life. Those are the ends of the main war. Europe will go down +through stage after stage of impoverishment and exhaustion until these +ends are attained, or made for ever impossible.</p> + +<p>But these things form only the main outline of a story with a vast +amount of collateral interest. It is to these collateral issues that the +amateur in prophecy must give his attention. It is here that the German +will be induced by his Government to see his compensations. He will be +consoled for the restoration of Serbia by the prospect of future +conflicts between Italian and Jugoslav that will let him in again to the +Adriatic. His attention will be directed to his newer, closer +association with Bulgaria and Turkey. In those countries he will be told +he may yet repeat the miracle of Hungary. And there may be also another +Hungary in Poland. It will be whispered to him that he has really +conquered those countries when indeed it is highly probable he has only +spent his substance in setting up new assertive alien allies. The +Kaiser, if he is not too afraid of the precedent of Sarajevo, may make a +great entry into Constantinople, with an effect of conquering what is +after all only a temporarily allied capital. The German will hope also +to retain his fleet, and no peace, he will be reminded, can rob him of +his hard-earned technical superiority in the air. The German air fleet +of 1930 may yet be something as predominant as the British Navy of 1915, +and capable of delivering a much more intimate blow. Had he not better +wait for that? When such consolations as these become popular in the +German Press we of the Pledged Allies may begin to talk of peace, for +these will be its necessary heralds.</p> + +<p>The concluding phase of a process of general exhaustion must almost +inevitably be a game of bluff. Neither side will admit its extremity. +Neither side, therefore, will make any direct proposals to its +antagonists nor any open advances to a neutral. But there will be much +inspired peace talk through neutral media, and the consultations of the +anti-German allies will become more intimate and detailed. Suggestions +will "leak out" remarkably from both sides, to journalists and neutral +go-betweens. The Eastern and Western Allies will probably begin quite +soon to discuss an anti-German Zollverein and the co-ordination of their +military and naval organisations in the days that are to follow the war. +A discussion of a Central European Zollverein is already afoot. A +general idea of the possible rearrangement of the European States after +the war will grow up in the common European and American mind; public +men on either side will indicate concordance with this general idea, and +some neutral power, Denmark or Spain or the United States or Holland, +will invite representatives to an informal discussion of these +possibilities.</p> + +<p>Probably, therefore, the peace negotiations will take the extraordinary +form of two simultaneous conferences--one of the Pledged Allies, sitting +probably in Paris or London, and the other of representatives of all the +combatants meeting in some neutral country--Holland would be the most +convenient--while the war will still be going on. The Dutch conference +would be in immediate contact by telephone and telegraph with the Allied +conference and with Berlin....</p> + +<p>The broad conditions of a possible peace will begin to get stated +towards the end of 1916, and a certain lassitude will creep over the +operations in the field.... The process of exhaustion will probably have +reached such a point by that time that it will be a primary fact in the +consciousness of common citizens of every belligerent country. The +common life of all Europe will have become--miserable. Conclusive blows +will have receded out of the imagination of the contending Powers. The +war will have reached its fourth and last stage as a war. The war of the +great attack will have given place to the war of the military deadlock; +the war of the deadlock will have gone on, and as the great combatants +have become enfeebled relatively to the smaller States, there will have +been a gradual shifting of the interest to the war of treasons and +diplomacies in the Eastern Mediterranean.</p> + +<p>Quickly thereafter the last phase will be developing into predominance, +in which each group of nations will be most concerned, no longer about +victories or conquests, but about securing for itself the best chances +of rapid economic recuperation and social reconstruction. The commercial +treaties, the arrangements for future associated action, made by the +great Allies among themselves will appear more and more important to +them, and the mere question of boundaries less and less. It will dawn +upon Europe that she has already dissipated the resources that have +enabled her to levy the tribute paid for her investments in every +quarter of the earth, and that neither the Germans nor their antagonists +will be able for many years to go on with those projects for world +exploitation which lay at the root of the great war. Very jaded and +anaemic nations will sit about the table on which the new map of Europe +will be drawn.... Each of the diplomatists will come to that business +with a certain pre-occupation. Each will be thinking of his country as +one thinks of a patient of doubtful patience and temper who is coming-to +out of the drugged stupor of a crucial, ill-conceived, and unnecessary +operation ... Each will be thinking of Labour, wounded and perplexed, +returning to the disorganised or nationalised factories from which +Capital has gone a-fighting, and to which it may never return.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="III._NATIONS_IN_LIQUIDATION"></a>III. NATIONS IN LIQUIDATION</h2> +<br> + +<p>The war has become a war of exhaustion. One hears a great deal of the +idea that "financial collapse" may bring it to an end. A number of +people seem to be convinced that a war cannot be waged without money, +that soldiers must be paid, munitions must be bought; that for this +money is necessary and the consent of bank depositors; so that if all +the wealth of the world were nominally possessed by some one man in a +little office he could stop the war by saying simply, "I will lend you +no more money."</p> + +<p>Now, as a matter of fact, money is a power only in so far as people +believe in it and Governments sustain it. If a State is sufficiently +strong and well organised, its control over the money power is +unlimited. If it can rule its people, and if it has the necessary +resources of men and material within its borders, it can go on in a +state of war so long as these things last, with almost any flimsy sort +of substitute for money that it chooses to print. It can enrol and use +the men, and seize and work the material. It can take over the land and +cultivate it and distribute its products. The little man in the office +is only a power because the State chooses to recognise his claim. So +long as he is convenient he seems to be a power. So soon as the State is +intelligent enough and strong enough it can do without him. It can take +what it wants, and tell him to go and hang himself. That is the +melancholy ultimate of the usurer. That is the quintessence of +"finance." All credit is State-made, and what the State has made the +State can alter or destroy.</p> + +<p>The owner and the creditor have never had any other power to give or +withhold credit than the credit that was given to them. They exist by +sufferance or superstition and not of necessity.</p> + +<p>It is the habit of overlooking this little flaw in the imperatives of +ownership that enables people to say that this war cannot go on beyond +such and such a date--the end of 1916 is much in favour just +now--because we cannot pay for it. It would be about as reasonable to +expect a battle to end because a landlord had ordered the soldiers off +his estate. So long as there are men to fight and stuff to fight with +the war can go on. There is bankruptcy, but the bankruptcy of States is +not like the bankruptcy of individuals. There is no such thing among +States as an undischarged bankrupt who is forbidden to carry on. A State +may keep on going bankrupt indefinitely and still carry on. It will be +the next step in our prophetic exercise to examine the differences +between State bankruptcy and the bankruptcy of a subject of the State.</p> + +<p>The belligerent Powers are approaching a phase when they will no longer +be paying anything like twenty shillings in the pound. In a very +definite sense they are not paying twenty shillings in the pound now. +That is not going to stop the war, but it involves a string of +consequences and possibilities of the utmost importance to our problem +of what is coming when the war is over.</p> + +<p>The exhaustion that will bring this war to its end at last is a process +of destruction of men and material. The process of bankruptcy that is +also going on is nothing of the sort. Bankruptcy destroys no concrete +thing; it merely writes off a debt; it destroys a financial but not an +economic reality. It is, in itself, a mental, not a physical fact. "A" +owes "B" a debt; he goes bankrupt and pays a dividend, a fraction of his +debt, and gets his discharge. "B's" feelings, as we novelists used to +say, are "better imagined than described"; he does his best to satisfy +himself that "A" can pay no more, and then "A" and "B" both go about +their business again.</p> + +<p>In England, if "A" is a sufficiently poor man not to be formidable, and +has gone bankrupt on a small scale, he gets squeezed ferociously to +extract the last farthing from him; he may find himself in jail and his +home utterly smashed up. If he is a richer man, and has failed on a +larger scale, our law is more sympathetic, and he gets off much more +easily. Often his creditors find it advisable to arrange with him so +that he will still carry on with his bankrupt concern. They find it is +better to allow him to carry on than to smash him up.</p> + +<p>There are countless men in the world living very comfortably indeed, and +running businesses that were once their own property for their +creditors. There are still more who have written off princely debts and +do not seem to be a "ha'p'orth the worse." And their creditors have +found a balm in time and philosophy. Bankruptcy is only painful and +destructive to small people and helpless people; but then for them +everything is painful and destructive; it can be a very light matter to +big people; it may be almost painless to a State.</p> + +<p>If England went bankrupt in the completest way to-morrow, and repudiated +all its debts both as a nation and as a community of individuals, if it +declared, if I may use a self-contradictory phrase, a permanent +moratorium, there would be not an acre of ploughed land in the country, +not a yard of cloth or a loaf of bread the less for that. There would be +nothing material destroyed within the State. There would be no immediate +convulsion. Use and wont would carry most people on some days before +they even began to doubt whether So-and-so could pay his way, and +whether there would be wages at the end of the week.</p> + +<p>But people who lived upon rent or investments or pensions would +presently be very busy thinking how they were going to get food when the +butcher and baker insisted upon cash. It would be only with comparative +slowness that the bulk of men would realise that a fabric of confidence +and confident assumptions had vanished; that cheques and bank notes and +token money and every sort of bond and scrip were worthless, that +employers had nothing to pay with, shopkeepers no means of procuring +stock, that metallic money was disappearing, and that a paralysis had +come upon the community.</p> + +<p>Such an establishment as a workhouse or an old-fashioned monastery, +living upon the produce of its own farming and supplying all its own +labour, would be least embarrassed amidst the general perplexity. For it +would not be upon a credit basis, but a socialistic basis, a basis of +direct reality, and its need for payments would be incidental. And +land-owning peasants growing their own food would carry on, and small +cultivating occupiers, who could easily fall back on barter for anything +needed.</p> + +<p>The mass of the population in such a country as England would, however, +soon be standing about in hopeless perplexity and on the verge of +frantic panic--although there was just as much food to be eaten, just as +many houses to live in, and just as much work needing to be done. +Suddenly the pots would be empty, and famine would be in the land, +although the farms and butchers' shops were still well stocked. The +general community would be like an automobile when the magneto fails. +Everything would be there and in order, except for the spark of credit +which keeps the engine working.</p> + +<p>That is how quite a lot of people seem to imagine national bankruptcy: +as a catastrophic jolt. It is a quite impossible nightmare of cessation. +The reality is the completest contrast. All the belligerent countries of +the world are at the present moment quietly, steadily and progressively +going bankrupt, and the mass of people are not even aware of this +process of insolvency.</p> + +<p>An individual when he goes bankrupt is measured by the monetary standard +of the country he is in; he pays five or ten or fifteen or so many +shillings in the pound. A community in debt does something which is in +effect the same, but in appearance rather different. It still pays a +pound, but the purchasing power of the pound has diminished. This is +what is happening all over the world to-day; there is a rise in prices. +This is automatic national bankruptcy; unplanned, though perhaps not +unforeseen. It is not a deliberate State act, but a consequence of the +interruption of communications, the diversion of productive energy, the +increased demand for many necessities by the Government and the general +waste under war conditions.</p> + +<p>At the beginning of this war England had a certain national debt; it has +paid off none of that original debt; it has added to it tremendously; so +far as money and bankers' records go it still owes and intends to pay +that original debt; but if you translate the language of £.s.d. into +realities, you will find that in loaves or iron or copper or hours of +toil, or indeed in any reality except gold, it owes now, so far as that +original debt goes, far less than it did at the outset. As the war goes +on and the rise in prices continues, the subsequent borrowings and +contracts are undergoing a similar bankrupt reduction. The attempt of +the landlord of small weekly and annual properties to adjust himself to +the new conditions by raising rents is being checked by legislation in +Great Britain, and has been completely checked in France. The attempts +of labour to readjust wages have been partially successful in spite of +the eloquent protests of those great exponents of plain living, economy, +abstinence, and honest, modest, underpaid toil, Messrs. Asquith, +McKenna, and Runciman. It is doubtful if the rise in wages is keeping +pace with the rise in prices. So far as it fails to do so the load is on +the usual pack animal, the poor man.</p> + +<p>The rest of the loss falls chiefly upon the creditor class, the people +with fixed incomes and fixed salaries, the landlords, who have let at +long leases, the people with pensions, endowed institutions, the Church, +insurance companies, and the like. They are all being scaled down. They +are all more able to stand scaling down than the proletarians.</p> + +<p>Assuming that it is possible to bring up wages to the level of the +higher prices, and that the rise in rents can be checked by legislation +or captured by taxation, the rise in prices is, on the whole, a thing to +the advantage of the propertyless man as against accumulated property. +It writes off the past and clears the way for a fresh start in the +future.</p> + +<p>An age of cheapness is an old usurers' age. England before the war was a +paradise of ancient usuries; everywhere were great houses and enclosed +parks; the multitude of gentlemen's servants and golf clubs and such +like excrescences of the comfort of prosperous people was perpetually +increasing; it did not "pay" to build labourers' cottages, and the more +expensive sort of automobile had driven the bicycle as a pleasure +vehicle off the roads. Western Europe was running to fat and not to +muscle, as America is to-day.</p> + +<p>But if that old usurer's age is over, the young usurer's age may be +coming. To meet such enormous demands as this war is making there are +three chief courses open to the modern State.</p> + +<p>The first is to <i>take</i>--to get men by conscription and material by +requisition. The British Government <i>takes</i> more modestly than any other +in the world; its tradition from Magna Charta onward, the legal training +of most of its members, all make towards a reverence for private +ownership and private claims, as opposed to the claims of State and +commonweal, unequalled in the world's history.</p> + +<p>The next course of a nation in need is to <i>tax</i> and pay for what it +wants, which is a fractional and more evenly distributed method of +taking. Both of these methods raise prices, the second most so, and so +facilitate the automatic release of the future from the boarding of the +past. So far all the belligerent Governments have taxed on the timid +side.</p> + +<p>Finally there is the <i>loan</i>. This mortgages the future to the present +necessity, and it has so far been the predominant source of war credits. +It is the method that produces least immediate friction in the State; it +employs all the savings of surplus income that the unrest of civil +enterprise leaves idle; it has an effect of creating property by a +process that destroys the substance of the community. In Germany an +enormous bulk of property has been mortgaged to supply the subscriptions +to the war loans, and those holdings have again been hypothecated to +subscribe to subsequent loans. The Pledged Allies with longer stockings +have not yet got to this pitch of overlapping. But everywhere in Europe +what is happening is a great transformation of the property owner into a +<i>rentier</i>, and the passing of realty into the hands of the State.</p> + +<p>At the end of the war Great Britain will probably find herself with a +national debt so great that she will be committed to the payment of an +annual interest greater in figures than the entire national expenditure +before the war. As an optimistic lady put it the other day: "All the +people who aren't killed will be living quite comfortably on War Loan +for the rest of their lives."</p> + +<p>But part, at least, of the bulk of this wealth will be imaginary rather +than real because of the rise in prices, in wages, in rent, and in +taxation. Most of us who are buying the British and French War Loans +have no illusions on that score; we know we are buying an income of +diminishing purchasing power. Yet it would be a poor creature in these +days when there is scarcely a possible young man in one's circle who has +not quite freely and cheerfully staked his life, who was not prepared to +consider his investments as being also to an undefined extent a national +subscription.</p> + +<p>A rise in prices is not, however, the only process that will check the +appearance of a new rich usurer class after the war. There is something +else ahead that has happened already in Germany, that is quietly coming +about among the Allies, and that is the cessation of gold payments. In +Great Britain, of course, the pound note is still convertible into a +golden sovereign; but Great Britain will not get through the war on +those terms. There comes a point in the stress upon a Government when it +must depart from the austerer line of financial rectitude--and tamper in +some way with currency.</p> + +<p>Sooner or later, and probably in all cases before 1917, all the +belligerents will be forced to adopt inconvertible paper money for their +internal uses. There will be British assignats or greenbacks. It will +seem to many financial sentimentalists almost as though Great Britain +were hauling down a flag when the sovereign, which has already +disappeared into bank and Treasury coffers, is locked up there and +reserved for international trade. But Great Britain has other sentiments +to consider than the finer feelings of bankers and the delicacies of +usury. The pound British will come out of this war like a company out of +a well-shelled trench--attenuated.</p> + +<p>Depreciation of the currency means, of course, a continuing rise in +prices, a continuing writing off of debt. If labour has any real grasp +of its true interests it will not resent this. It will merely insist +steadfastly on a proper adjustment of its wages to the new standard. On +that point, however, it will be better to write later....</p> + +<p>Let us see how far we have got in this guessing. We have considered +reasons that seem to point to the destruction of a great amount of old +property and old debt, and the creation of a great volume of new debt +before the end of the war, and we have adopted the ideas that currency +will probably have depreciated more and more and prices risen right up +to the very end.</p> + +<p>There will be by that time a general habit of saving throughout the +community, a habit more firmly established perhaps in the propertied +than in the wages-earning class. People will be growing accustomed to a +dear and insecure world. They will adopt a habit of caution; become +desirous of saving and security.</p> + +<p>Directly the phase of enormous war loans ends, the new class of +<i>rentiers</i> holding the various great new national loans will find +themselves drawing this collectively vast income and anxious to invest +it. They will for a time be receiving the bulk of the unearned income of +the world. Here, in the high prices representing demand and the need for +some reinvestment of interest representing supply, we have two of the +chief factors that are supposed to be necessary to a phase of business +enterprise. Will the economic history of the next few decades be the +story of a restoration of the capitalistic system upon a new basis? +Shall we all become investors, speculators, or workers toiling our way +to a new period of security, cheapness and low interest, a restoration +of the park, the enclosure, the gold standard and the big automobile, +with only this difference--that the minimum wage will be somewhere about +two pounds, and that a five-pound note will purchase about as much as a +couple of guineas would do in 1913?</p> + +<p>That is practically parallel with what happened in the opening half of +the nineteenth century after the Napoleonic wars, and it is not an +agreeable outlook for those who love the common man or the nobility of +life. But if there is any one principle sounder than another of all +those that guide the amateur in prophecy, it is that <i>history never +repeats itself</i>. The human material in which those monetary changes and +those developments of credit will occur will be entirely different from +the social medium of a hundred years ago.</p> + +<p>The nature of the State has altered profoundly in the last century. The +later eighteenth and earlier nineteenth centuries constituted a period +of extreme individualism. What were called "economic forces" had +unrestricted play. In the minds of such people as Harriet Martineau and +Herbert Spencer they superseded God. People were no longer reproached +for "flying in the face of Providence," but for "flying in the face of +Political Economy."</p> + +<p>In that state of freedom you got whatever you could in any way you +could; you were not your neighbour's keeper, and except that it +interfered with the enterprise of pickpockets, burglars and forgers, and +kept the dice loaded in favour of landlords and lawyers, the State stood +aside from the great drama of human getting. For industrialism and +speculation the State's guiding maxim was <i>laissez faire</i>.</p> + +<p>The State is now far less aloof and far more constructive. It is far +more aware of itself and a common interest. Germany has led the way from +a system of individuals and voluntary associations in competition +towards a new order of things, a completer synthesis. This most modern +State is far less a swarming conflict of businesses than a great +national business. It will emerge from this war much more so than it +went in, and the thing is and will remain so plain and obvious that only +the greediest and dullest people among the Pledged Allies will venture +to disregard it. The Allied nations, too, will have to rescue their +economic future from individual grab and grip and chance.</p> + +<p>The second consideration that forbids us to anticipate any parallelism +of the history of 1915-45 with 1815-45 is the greater lucidity of the +general mind, the fact that all Western Europe, down to the agricultural +labourers, can read and write and does read newspapers and "get ideas." +The explanation of economic and social processes that were mysterious to +the elect a hundred years ago are now the commonplaces of the tap-room. +What happened then darkly, and often unconsciously, must happen in +1916-26 openly and controllably. The current bankruptcy and liquidation +and the coming reconstruction of the economic system of Europe will go +on in a quite unprecedented amount of light. We shall see and know what +is happening much more clearly than anything of the kind has ever been +seen before.</p> + +<p>It is not only that people will have behind them, as a light upon what +is happening, the experiences and discussions of a hundred years, but +that the international situation will be far plainer than it has ever +been. This war has made Germany the central fact in all national affairs +about the earth. It is not going to destroy Germany, and it seems +improbable that either defeat or victory, or any mixture of these, will +immediately alter the cardinal fact of Germany's organised +aggressiveness.</p> + +<p>The war will not end the conflict of anti-Germany and Germany, That will +only end when the results of fifty years of aggressive education in +Germany have worn away. This will be so plain that the great bulk of +people everywhere will not only see their changing economic +relationships far more distinctly than such things have been seen +hitherto, but that they will see them as they have never been seen +before, definitely orientated to the threat of German world +predominance. The landlord who squeezes, the workman who strikes and +shirks, the lawyer who fogs and obstructs, will know, and will know that +most people know, that what he does is done, not under an empty, +regardless heaven, but in the face of an unsleeping enemy and in +disregard of a continuous urgent necessity for unity.</p> + +<p>So far we have followed this speculation upon fairly firm ground, but +now our inquiry must plunge into a jungle of far more difficult and +uncertain possibilities. Our next stage brings us to the question of how +people and peoples and classes of people are going to react to the new +conditions of need and knowledge this war will have brought about, and +to the new demands that will be made upon them.</p> + +<p>This is really a question of how far they will prove able to get out of +the habits and traditions of their former social state, how far they +will be able to take generous views and make sacrifices and unselfish +efforts, and how far they will go in self-seeking or class selfishness +regardless of the common welfare. This is a question we have to ask +separately of each great nation, and of the Central Powers as a whole, +and of the Allies as a whole, before we can begin to estimate the +posture of the peoples of the world in, say, 1946.</p> + +<p>Now let me here make a sort of parenthesis on human nature. It will be +rather platitudinous, but it is a necessary reminder for what follows.</p> + +<p>So far as I have been able to observe, nobody lives steadily at one +moral level. If we are wise we shall treat no man and no class--and for +the matter of that no nation--as either steadfastly malignant or +steadfastly disinterested. There are phases in my life when I could die +quite cheerfully for an idea; there are phases when I would not stir six +yards to save a human life. Most people fluctuate between such extremes. +Most people are self-seeking, but most people will desist from a +self-seeking cause if they see plainly and clearly that it is not in the +general interest, and much more readily if they also perceive that other +people are of the same mind and know that they know their course is +unsound.</p> + +<p>The fundamental error of orthodox political economy and of Marxian +socialism is to assume the inveterate selfishness of everyone. But most +people are a little more disposed to believe what it is to their +interest to believe than the contrary. Most people abandon with +reluctance ways of living and doing that have served them well. Most +people can see the neglect of duty in other classes more plainly than +they do in their own.</p> + +<p>This war has brought back into the everyday human life of Europe the +great and overriding conception of devotion to a great purpose. But that +does not imply clear-headedness in correlating the ways of one's +ordinary life with this great purpose. It is no good treating as cynical +villainy things that merely exhibit the incapacity of our minds to live +consistently.</p> + +<p>One Labour paper a month or so ago was contrasting Mr. Asquith's +eloquent appeals to the working man to economise and forgo any rise in +wages with the photographs that were appearing simultaneously in the +smart papers of the very smart marriage of Mr. Asquith's daughter. I +submit that by that sort of standard none of us will be blameless. But +without any condemnation, it is easy to understand that the initiative +to tax almost to extinction large automobiles, wedding dresses, +champagne, pâté de foie gras and enclosed parks, instead of gin and +water, bank holiday outings and Virginia shag, is less likely to come +from the Prime Minister class than from the class of dock labourers. +There is an unconscious class war due to habit and insufficient thinking +and insufficient sympathy that will play a large part in the +distribution of the burthen of the State bankruptcy that is in progress, +and in the subsequent readjustment of national life.</p> + +<p>And having made this parenthesis, I may perhaps go on to point out the +peculiar limitations under which various classes will be approaching the +phase of reorganisation, without being accused of making this or that +class the villain of an anticipatory drama.</p> + +<p>Now, three great classes will certainly resist the valiant +reconstruction of economic life with a vigour in exact proportion to +their baseness, stupidity and narrowness of outlook. They will, as +classes, come up for a moral judgment, on whose verdict the whole future +of Western civilisation depends. If they cannot achieve a considerable, +an unprecedented display of self-sacrifice, unselfish wisdom, and +constructive vigour, if the community as a whole can produce no forces +sufficient to restrain their lower tendencies, then the intelligent +father had better turn his children's faces towards the New World. For +Europe will be busy with social disorder for a century.</p> + +<p>The first great class is the class that owns and holds land and +land-like claims upon the community, from the Throne downward. This +Court and land-holding class cannot go on being rich and living rich +during the strains of the coming years. The reconstructing world cannot +bear it. Whatever rises in rent may occur through the rise in prices, +must go to meet the tremendous needs of the State.</p> + +<p>This class, which has so much legislative and administrative power in at +least three of the great belligerents--in Great Britain and Germany +perhaps most so--must be prepared to see itself taxed, and must be +willing to assist in its own taxation to the very limit of its +statistical increment. The almost vindictive greed of the landowners +that blackened the history of England after Waterloo, and brought Great +Britain within sight of revolution, must not be repeated. The British +Empire cannot afford a revolution in the face of the Central European +Powers. But in the past century there has been an enormous change in +men's opinions and consciences about property; whereas we were +Individualists, now we are Socialists. The British lord, the German +junker, has none of the sense of unqualified rights that his +great-grandfather had, and he is aware of a vigour of public criticism +that did not exist in the former time....</p> + +<p>How far will these men get out of the tradition of their birth and +upbringing?</p> + +<p>Next comes the great class of lawyers who, through the idiotic method of +voting in use in modern democracies, are able practically to rule Great +Britain, and who are powerful and influential in all democratic +countries.</p> + +<p>In order to secure a certain independence and integrity in its courts, +Great Britain long ago established the principle of enormously +overpaying its judges and lawyers. The natural result has been to give +our law courts and the legal profession generally a bias in favour of +private wealth against both the public interest and the proletariat. It +has also given our higher national education an overwhelming direction +towards the training of advocates and against science and constructive +statecraft. An ordinary lawyer has no idea of making anything; that +tendency has been destroyed in his mind; he waits and sees and takes +advantage of opportunity. Everything that can possibly be done in +England is done to make our rulers Micawbers and Artful Dodgers.</p> + +<p>One of the most anxious questions that a Briton can ask himself to-day +is just how far the gigantic sufferings and still more monstrous +warnings of this war have shocked the good gentlemen who must steer the +ship of State through the strong rapids of the New Peace out of this +forensic levity their training has imposed upon them....</p> + +<p>There, again, there are elements of hope. The lawyer has heard much +about himself in the past few years. His conscience may check his +tradition. And we have a Press--it has many faults, but it is no longer +a lawyer's Press....</p> + +<p>And the third class which has immediate interests antagonistic to bold +reconstructions of our national methods is that vaguer body, the body of +investing capitalists, the savers, the usurers, who live on dividends. +It is a vast class, but a feeble class in comparison with the other +two; it is a body rather than a class, a weight rather than a power. It +consists of all sorts of people with nothing in common except the +receipt of unearned income....</p> + +<p>All these classes, by instinct and the baser kinds of reason also, will +be doing their best to check the rise in prices, stop and reverse the +advance in wages, prevent the debasement of the circulation, and +facilitate the return to a gold standard and a repressive social +stability. They will be resisting any comprehensive national +reconstruction, any increase in public officials, any "conscription" of +land or railways or what not for the urgent civil needs of the State. +They will have fighting against these tendencies something in their own +consciences, something in public opinion, the tradition of public +devotion their own dead sons have revived--and certain other forces.</p> + +<p>They will have over against them the obvious urgent necessities of the +time.</p> + +<p>The most urgent necessity will be to get back the vast moiety of the +population that has been engaged either in military service or the +making of munitions to productive work, to the production of food and +necessary things, and to the restoration of that export trade which, in +the case of Great Britain at least, now that her overseas investments +have been set off by overseas war debts, is essential to the food +supply. There will be coming back into civil life, not merely thousands, +but millions of men who have been withdrawn from it. They will feel that +they have deserved well of their country. They will have had their +imaginations greatly quickened by being taken away from the homes and +habits to which they were accustomed. They will have been well fed and +inured to arms, to danger, and the chances of death. They will have no +illusions about the conduct of the war by the governing classes, or the +worshipful heroism of peers and princes. They will know just how easy is +courage, and how hard is hardship, and the utter impossibility of doing +well in war or peace under the orders of detected fools.</p> + +<p>This vast body will constitute a very stimulating congregation of +spectators in any attempt on the part of landlord, lawyer and investor +to resume the old political mystery dance, in which rents are to be sent +up and wages down, while the old feuds of Wales and Ireland, ancient +theological and sectarian jealousies and babyish loyalties, and so forth +are to be waved in the eyes of the no longer fascinated realist.</p> + +<p>"Meanwhile," they will say, with a stiff impatience unusual in their +class, "about <i>us</i>?" ...</p> + +<p>Here are the makings of internal conflict in every European country. In +Russia the landlord and lawyer, in France the landlord, are perhaps of +less account, and in France the investor is more universal and jealous. +In Germany, where Junker and Court are most influential and brutal, +there is a larger and sounder and broader tradition of practical +efficiency, a modernised legal profession, and a more widely diffused +scientific imagination.</p> + +<p>How far in each country will imagination triumph over tradition and +individualism? How far does the practical bankruptcy of Western +civilisation mean a revolutionary smash-up, and a phase that may last +for centuries, of disorder and more and more futile conflict? And how +far does it mean a reconstruction of human society, within a few score +of years, upon sounder and happier lines? Must that reconstruction be +preceded by a revolution in all or any of the countries?</p> + +<p>To what extent can the world produce the imagination it needs? That, so +far, is the most fundamental question to which our prophetic +explorations have brought us.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="IV._BRAINTREE,_BOCKING,_AND_THE_FUTURE_OF_THE_WORLD"></a>IV. BRAINTREE, BOCKING, AND THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD</h2> +<br> + +<p>Will the war be followed by a period of great distress, social disorder +and a revolution in Europe, or shall we pull through the crisis without +violent disaster? May we even hope that Great Britain will step straight +out of the war into a phase of restored and increasing welfare?</p> + +<p>Like most people, I have been trying to form some sort of answer to this +question. My state of mind in the last few months has varied from a +considerable optimism to profound depression. I have met and talked to +quite a number of young men in khaki--ex-engineers, ex-lawyers, +ex-schoolmasters, ex-business men of all sorts--and the net result of +these interviews has been a buoyant belief that there is in Great +Britain the pluck, the will, the intelligence to do anything, however +arduous and difficult, in the way of national reconstruction. And on the +other hand there is a certain stretch of road between Dunmow and +Coggeshall....</p> + +<p>That stretch of road is continually jarring with my optimistic +thoughts. It is a strongly pro-German piece of road. It supports +allegations against Great Britain, as, for instance, that the British +are quite unfit to control their own affairs, let alone those of an +empire; that they are an incompetent people, a pig-headedly stupid +people, a wasteful people, a people incapable of realising that a man +who tills his field badly is a traitor and a weakness to his country....</p> + +<p>Let me place the case of this high road through Braintree (Bocking +intervening) before the reader. It is, you will say perhaps, very small +beer. But a straw shows the way the wind blows. It is a trivial matter +of road metal, mud, and water-pipes, but it is also diagnostic of the +essential difficulties in the way of the smooth and rapid reconstruction +of Great Britain--and very probably of the reconstruction of all +Europe--after the war. The Braintree high road, I will confess, becomes +at times an image of the world for me. It is a poor, spiritless-looking +bit of road, with raw stones on one side of it. It is also, I perceive, +the high destiny of man in conflict with mankind. It is the way to +Harwich, Holland, Russia, China, and the whole wide world.</p> + +<p>Even at the first glance it impresses one as not being the road that +would satisfy an energetic and capable people. It is narrow for a high +road, and in the middle of it one is checked by an awkward bend, by +cross-roads that are not exactly cross-roads, so that one has to turn +two blind corners to get on eastward, and a policeman, I don't know at +what annual cost, has to be posted to nurse the traffic across. Beyond +that point one is struck by the fact that the south side is considerably +higher than the north, that storm water must run from the south side to +the north and lie there. It does, and the north side has recently met +the trouble by putting down raw flints, and so converting what would be +a lake into a sort of flint pudding. Consequently one drives one's car +as much as possible on the south side of this road. There is a +suggestion of hostility and repartee between north and south side in +this arrangement, which the explorer's inquiries will confirm. It may be +only an accidental parallelism with profounder fact; I do not know. But +the middle of this high road is a frontier. The south side belongs to +the urban district of Braintree; the north to the rural district of +Bocking.</p> + +<p>If the curious inquirer will take pick and shovel he will find at any +rate one corresponding dualism below the surface. He will find a +Bocking water main supplying the houses on the north side and a +Braintree water main supplying the south. I rather suspect that the +drains are also in duplicate. The total population of Bocking and +Braintree is probably little more than thirteen thousand souls +altogether, but for that there are two water supplies, two sets of +schools, two administrations.</p> + +<p>To the passing observer the rurality of the Bocking side is +indistinguishable from the urbanity of the Braintree side; it is just a +little muddier. But there are dietetic differences. If you will present +a Bocking rustic with a tin of the canned fruit that is popular with the +Braintree townsfolk, you discover one of these differences. A dustman +perambulates the road on the Braintree side, and canned food becomes +possible and convenient therefore. But the Braintree grocers sell canned +food with difficulty into Bocking. Bocking, less fortunate than its +neighbour, has no dustman apparently, and is left with the tin on its +hands. It can either bury it in its garden--if it has a garden--take it +out for a walk wrapped in paper and drop it quietly in a ditch, if +possible in the Braintree area, or build a cairn with it and its +predecessors and successors in honour of the Local Government Board +(President £5,000, Parliamentary Secretary £1,500, Permanent Secretary +£2,000, Legal Adviser £1,000 upward, a total administrative expenditure +of over £300,000 ...). In death Bocking and Braintree are still divided. +They have their separate cemeteries....</p> + +<p>Now to any disinterested observer there lies about the Braintree-Bocking +railway station one community. It has common industries and common +interests. There is no <i>octroi</i> or anything of that sort across the +street. The shops and inns on the Bocking side of the main street are +indistinguishable from those on the Braintree side. The inhabitants of +the two communities intermarry freely. If this absurd separation did not +exist, no one would have the impudence to establish it now. It is +wasteful, unfair (because the Bocking piece is rather better off than +Braintree and with fewer people, so that there is a difference in the +rates), and for nine-tenths of the community it is more or less of a +nuisance.</p> + +<p>It is also a nuisance to the passing public because of such +inconvenience as the asymmetrical main road. It hinders local +development and the development of a local spirit. It may, of course, +appeal perhaps to the humorous outlook of the followers of Mr. G.K. +Chesterton and Mr. Belloc, who believe that this war is really a war in +the interests of the Athanasian Creed, fatness, and unrestricted drink +against science, discipline, and priggishly keeping fit enough to join +the army, as very good fun indeed, good matter for some jolly reeling +ballad about Roundabout and Roundabout, the jolly town of Roundabout; +but to anyone else the question of how it is that this wasteful +Bocking-Braintree muddle, with its two boards, its two clerks, its two +series of jobs and contracts, manages to keep on, was even before the +war a sufficiently discouraging one.</p> + +<p>It becomes now a quite crucial problem. Because the muddle between the +sides of the main road through Bocking and Braintree is not an isolated +instance; it is a fair sample of the way things are done in Great +Britain; it is an intimation of the way in which the great task of +industrial resettlement that the nation must face may be attempted.</p> + +<p>It is--or shall I write, "it may be"?</p> + +<p>That is just the question I do not settle in my mind. I would like to +think that I have hit upon a particularly bad case of entangled local +government. But it happens that whenever I have looked into local +affairs I have found the same sort of waste and--insobriety of +arrangement. When I started, a little while back, to go to Braintree to +verify these particulars, I was held up by a flood across the road +between Little Easton and Dunmow. Every year that road is flooded and +impassable for some days, because a bit of the affected stretch is under +the County Council and a bit under the Little Easton Parish Council, and +they cannot agree about the contribution of the latter. These things +bump against the most unworldly. And when one goes up the scale from the +urban district and rural district boundaries, one finds equally crazy +county arrangements, the same tangle of obstacle in the way of quick, +effective co-ordinations, the same needless multiplicity of clerks, the +same rich possibilities of litigation, misunderstanding, and deadlocks +of opinion between areas whose only difference is that a mischievous +boundary has been left in existence between them. And so on up to +Westminster. And to still greater things....</p> + +<p>I know perfectly well how unpleasant all this is to read, this outbreak +at two localities that have never done me any personal harm except a +little mud-splashing. But this is a thing that has to be said now, +because we are approaching a crisis when dilatory ways, muddle, and +waste may utterly ruin us. This is the way things have been done in +England, this is our habit of procedure, and if they are done in this +way after the war this Empire is going to smash.</p> + +<p>Let me add at once that it is quite possible that things are done almost +as badly or quite as badly in Russia or France or Germany or America; I +am drawing no comparisons. All of us human beings were made, I believe, +of very similar clay, and very similar causes have been at work +everywhere. Only that excuse, so popular in England, will not prevent a +smash if we stick to the old methods under the stresses ahead. I do not +see that it is any consolation to share in a general disaster.</p> + +<p>And I am sure that there must be the most delightful and picturesque +reasons why we have all this overlapping and waste and muddle in our +local affairs; why, to take another example, the boundary of the Essex +parishes of Newton and Widdington looks as though it had been sketched +out by a drunken man in a runaway cab with a broken spring.</p> + +<p>This Bocking-Braintree main road is, it happens, an old Stane Street, +along which Roman legions marched to clean up the councils and clerks of +the British tribal system two thousand years ago, and no doubt an +historian could spin delightful consequences; this does not alter the +fact that these quaint complications in English affairs mean in the +aggregate enormous obstruction and waste of human energy. It does not +alter the much graver fact, the fact that darkens all my outlook upon +the future, that we have never yet produced evidence of any general +disposition at any time to straighten out or even suspend these fumbling +intricacies and ineptitudes. Never so far has there appeared in British +affairs that divine passion to do things in the clearest, cleanest, +least wasteful, most thorough manner that is needed to straighten out, +for example, these universal local tangles. Always we have been content +with the old intricate, expensive way, and to this day we follow it....</p> + +<p>And what I want to know, what I would like to feel much surer about than +I do is, is this in our blood? Or is it only the deep-seated habit of +long ages of security, long years of margins so ample, that no waste +seemed altogether wicked. Is it, in fact, a hopeless and ineradicable +trait that we stick to extravagance and confusion?</p> + +<p>What I would like to think possible at the present time, up and down the +scale from parish to province, is something of this sort. Suppose the +clerk of Braintree went to the clerk of Bocking and said: "Look here, +one of us could do the work of both of us, as well or better. The easy +times are over, and offices as well as men should be prepared to die for +their country. Shall we toss to see who shall do it, and let the other +man go off to find something useful to do?" Then I could believe. Such +acts of virtue happen in the United States. Here is a quotation from the +New York <i>World</i> of February 15th, 1916:</p> + +<p>"For two unusual acts Henry Bruère may be remembered by New York longer +than nine days. Early in his incumbency he declared that his office was +superfluous and should be abolished, the Comptroller assuming its +duties. He now abolishes by resignation his own connection with it, in +spite of its $12,000 salary."</p> + +<p>Suppose the people of Braintree and Bocking, not waiting for that lead, +said: "But this is absurd! Let us have an identical council and one +clerk, and get ahead, instead of keeping up this silly pretence that one +town is two." Suppose someone of that 300,000 pounds' worth of gentlemen +at the Local Government Board set to work to replan our local government +areas generally on less comic lines. Suppose his official superiors +helped, instead of snubbing him....</p> + +<p>I see nothing of the sort happening. I see everywhere wary, watchful +little men, thinking of themselves, thinking of their parish, thinking +close, holding tight....</p> + +<p>I know that there is a whole web of excuses for all these complicated, +wasteful, and obstructive arrangements of our local government, these +arrangements that I have taken merely as a sample of the general human +way of getting affairs done. For it is affairs at large I am writing +about, as I warned the reader at the beginning. Directly one inquires +closely into any human muddle, one finds all sorts of reasonable rights +and objections and claims barring the way to any sweeping proposals. I +can quite imagine that Bocking has admirable reasons for refusing +coalescence with Braintree, except upon terms that Braintree could not +possibly consider. I can quite understand that there are many +inconveniences and arguable injustices that would be caused by a merger +of the two areas. I have no doubt it would mean serious loss to +So-and-so, and quite novel and unfair advantage to So-and-so. It would +take years to work the thing and get down to the footing of one water +supply and an ambidextrous dustman on the lines of perfect justice and +satisfactoriness all round.</p> + +<p>But what I want to maintain is that these little immediate claims and +rights and vested interests and bits of justice and fairness are no +excuse at all for preventing things being done in the clear, clean, +large, quick way. They never constituted a decent excuse, and now they +excuse waste and delay and inconvenience less than ever. Let us first do +things in the sound way, and then, if we can, let us pet and compensate +any disappointed person who used to profit by their being done +roundabout instead of earning an honest living. We are beginning to +agree that reasonably any man may be asked to die for his country; what +we have to recognise is that any man's proprietorship, interest, claims +or rights may just as properly be called upon to die. Bocking and +Braintree and Mr. John Smith--Mr. John Smith, the ordinary comfortable +man with a stake in the country--have been thinking altogether too much +of the claims and rights and expectations and economies of Bocking and +Braintree and Mr. John Smith. They have to think now in a different +way....</p> + +<p>Just consider the work of reconstruction that Great Britain alone will +have to face in the next year or so. (And her task is, if anything, less +than that of any of her antagonists or Allies, except Japan and Italy.) +She has now probably from six to ten million people in the British +Isles, men and women, either engaged directly in warfare or in the +manufacture of munitions or in employments such as transit, nursing, and +so forth, directly subserving these main ends. At least five-sixths of +these millions must be got back to employment of a different character +within a year of the coming of peace. Everywhere manufacture, trade and +transit has been disorganised, disturbed or destroyed. A new economic +system has to be put together within a brief score or so of weeks; great +dislocated masses of population have to be fed, kept busy and +distributed in a world financially strained and abounding in wounded, +cripples, widows, orphans and helpless people.</p> + +<p>In the next year or so the lives of half the population will have to be +fundamentally readjusted. Here is work for administrative giants, work +for which no powers can be excessive. It will be a task quite difficult +enough to do even without the opposition of legal rights, haggling +owners, and dexterous profiteers. It would be a giant's task if all the +necessary administrative machinery existed now in the most perfect +condition. How is this tremendous job going to be done if every Bocking +in the country is holding out for impossible terms from Braintree, and +every Braintree holding out for impossible terms from Bocking, while +the road out remains choked and confused between them; and if every John +Smith with a claim is insisting upon his reasonable expectation of +profits or dividends, his reasonable solatium and compensation for +getting out of the way?</p> + +<p>I would like to record my conviction that if the business of this great +crisis is to be done in the same spirit, the jealous, higgling, legal +spirit that I have seen prevailing in British life throughout my +half-century of existence, it will not in any satisfactory sense of the +phrase get done at all. This war has greatly demoralised and discredited +the governing class in Great Britain, and if big masses of unemployed +and unfed people, no longer strung up by the actuality of war, masses +now trained to arms and with many quite sympathetic officers available, +are released clumsily and planlessly into a world of risen prices and +rising rents, of legal obstacles and forensic complications, of greedy +speculators and hampered enterprises, there will be insurrection and +revolution. There will be bloodshed in the streets and the chasing of +rulers.</p> + +<p>There <i>will</i> be, if we do seriously attempt to put the new wine of +humanity, the new crude fermentations at once so hopeful and so +threatening, that the war has released, into the old administrative +bottles that served our purposes before the war.</p> + +<p>I believe that for old lawyers and old politicians and "private +ownership" to handle the great problem of reconstruction after the war +in the spirit in which our affairs were conducted before the war is +about as hopeful an enterprise as if an elderly jobbing brick-layer, +working on strict trade-union rules, set out to stop the biggest +avalanche that ever came down a mountain-side. And since I am by no +means altogether pessimistic, in spite of my qualmy phases, it follows +that I do not believe that the old spirit will necessarily prevail. I do +not, because I believe that in the past few decades a new spirit has +come into human affairs; that our ostensible rulers and leaders have +been falling behind the times, and that in the young and the untried, +in, for example, the young European of thirty and under who is now in +such multitudes thinking over life and his seniors in the trenches, +there are still unsuspected resources of will and capacity, new mental +possibilities and new mental habits, that entirely disturb the +argument--based on the typical case of Bocking and Braintree--for a +social catastrophe after the war.</p> + +<p>How best can this new spirit be defined?</p> + +<p>It is the creative spirit as distinguished from the legal spirit; it is +the spirit of courage to make and not the spirit that waits and sees and +claims; it is the spirit that looks to the future and not to the past. +It is the spirit that makes Bocking forget that it is not Braintree and +John Smith forget that he is John Smith, and both remember that they are +England.</p> + +<p>For everyone there are two diametrically different ways of thinking +about life; there is individualism, the way that comes as naturally as +the grunt from a pig, of thinking outwardly from oneself as the centre +of the universe, and there is the way that every religion is trying in +some form to teach, of thinking back to oneself from greater standards +and realities. There is the Braintree that is Braintree against England +and the world, giving as little as possible and getting the best of the +bargain, and there is the Braintree that identifies itself with England +and asks how can we do best for the world with this little place of +ours, how can we educate best, produce most, and make our roads straight +and good for the world to go through.</p> + +<p>Every American knows the district that sends its congressman to +Washington for the good of his district, and the district, the rarer +district, that sends a man to work for the United States. There is the +John Smith who feels toward England and the world as a mite feels toward +its cheese, and the John Smith who feels toward his country as a +sheep-dog feels toward the flock. The former is the spirit of +individualism, "business," and our law, the latter the spirit of +socialism and science and--khaki.... They are both in all of us, they +fluctuate from day to day; first one is ascendant and then the other.</p> + +<p>War does not so much tilt the balance as accentuate the difference. One +rich British landowner sneaks off to New York State to set up a home +there and evade taxation; another turns his mansion into a hospital and +goes off to help Serbian refugees. Acts of baseness or generosity are +contagious; this man will give himself altogether because of a story of +devotion, this man declares he will do nothing until Sir F.E. Smith goes +to the front. And the would-be prophet of what is going to happen must +guess the relative force of these most impalpable and uncertain things.</p> + +<p>This Braintree-Bocking boundary which runs down the middle of the road +is to be found all over the world. You will find it in Ireland and the +gentlemen who trade on the jealousies of the north side and the +gentlemen who trade on the jealousies of the south. You will find it in +England among the good people who would rather wreck the Empire than +work honestly and fairly with Labour. There are not only parish +boundaries, but park boundaries and class and sect boundaries. You will +find the Bocking-Braintree line too at a dozen points on a small scale +map of Europe.... These Braintree-Bocking lines are the barbed-wire +entanglements between us and the peace of the world. Against these +entanglements in every country the new spirit struggles in many +thousands of minds. Where will it be strongest? Which country will get +clear first, get most rapidly to work again, have least of the confusion +and wrangling that must in some degree occur everywhere? Will any +country go altogether to pieces in hopeless incurable discord?</p> + +<p>Now I believe that the answer to that last question is "No." And my +reason for that answer is the same as my reason for believing that the +association of the Pledged Allies will not break up after the war; it is +that I believe that this war is going to end not in the complete +smashing up and subjugation of either side, but in a general exhaustion +that will make the recrudescence of the war still possible but very +terrifying.</p> + +<p>Mars will sit like a giant above all human affairs for the next two +decades, and the speech of Mars is blunt and plain. He will say to us +all: "Get your houses in order. If you squabble among yourselves, waste +time, litigate, muddle, snatch profits and shirk obligations, I will +certainly come down upon you again. I have taken all your men between +eighteen and fifty, and killed and maimed such as I pleased; millions of +them. I have wasted your substance--contemptuously. Now, mark you, you +have multitudes of male children between the ages of nine and nineteen +running about among you. Delightful and beloved boys. And behind them +come millions of delightful babies. Of these I have scarcely smashed and +starved a paltry hundred thousand perhaps by the way. But go on +muddling, each for himself and his parish and his family and none for +all the world, go on in the old way, stick to-your 'rights,' stick to +your 'claims' each one of you, make no concessions and no sacrifices, +obstruct, waste, squabble, and presently I will come back again and take +all that fresh harvest of life I have spared, all those millions that +are now sweet children and dear little boys and youths, and I will +squeeze it into red pulp between my hands, I will mix it with the mud of +trenches and feast on it before your eyes, even more damnably than I +have done with your grown-up sons and young men. And I have taken most +of your superfluities already; next time I will take your barest +necessities."</p> + +<p>So the red god, Mars; and in these days of universal education the great +mass of people will understand plainly now that that is his message and +intention. Men who cannot be swayed by the love of order and creation +may be swayed by the thought of death and destruction.... There, I +think, is the overriding argument that will burst the proprietorships +and divisions and boundaries, the web of ineffectiveness that has held +the world so long. Labour returning from the trenches to its country and +demanding promptness, planning, generous and devoted leaderships and +organisation, demanding that the usurer and financier, the landlord and +lawyer shall, if need be, get themselves altogether out of the way, will +have behind its arguments the thought of the enemy still unsubdued, +still formidable, recovering. Both sides will feel that. This world is a +more illuminated world than 1816; a thousand questions between law and +duty have been discussed since then; beyond all comparison we know +better what we are doing. I think the broad side of John Smith (and Sir +John Smith and John Smith, K.C.) will get the better of his narrow +ends--and that so it will be with Jean Dupont and Hans Meyer and the +rest of them. There may be riots here and there; there may be some +pretty considerable rows; but I do not think there is going to be a +chaotic and merely destructive phase in Great Britain or any Western +European country. I cast my guess for reconstruction and not for revolt.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="V._HOW_FAR_WILL_EUROPE_GO_TOWARD_SOCIALISM?"></a>V. HOW FAR WILL EUROPE GO TOWARD SOCIALISM?</h2> +<br> + +<p>A number of people are saying that this war is to be the end of +Individualism. "Go as you please" has had its death-blow. Out of this +war, whatever else emerges, there will emerge a more highly organised +State than existed before--that is to say, a less individualistic and +more socialistic State. And there seems a heavy weight of probability on +the side of this view. But there are also a number of less obvious +countervailing considerations that may quite possibly modify or reverse +this tendency.</p> + +<p>In this chapter an attempt is to be made to strike a balance between the +two systems of forces, and guess how much will be private and how much +public in Europe in 1930, or thereabouts.</p> + +<p>The prophets who foretell the coming of Socialism base their case on +three sets of arguments. They point out, first, the failure of +individual enterprise to produce a national efficiency comparable to +the partial State Socialism of Germany, and the extraordinary, special +dangers inherent in private property that the war has brought to light; +secondly, to the scores of approaches to practical Socialism that have +been forced upon Great Britain--for example, by the needs of the war; +and, thirdly, to the obvious necessities that will confront the British +Empire and the Allies generally after the war--necessities that no +unorganised private effort can hope to meet effectively.</p> + +<p>All these arguments involve the assumption that the general +understanding of the common interest will be sufficient to override +individual and class motives; an exceedingly doubtful assumption, to say +the least of it. But the general understanding of the common interest is +most likely to be kept alive by the sense of a common danger, and we +have already arrived at the conclusion that Germany is going to be +defeated but not destroyed in this war, and that she will be left with +sufficient vitality and sufficient resentment and sufficient of her +rancid cultivated nationalism to make not only the continuance of the +Alliance after the war obviously advisable and highly probable, but also +to preserve in the general mind for a generation or so that sense of a +common danger which most effectually conduces to the sweeping aside of +merely personal and wasteful claims. Into the consequences of this we +have now to look a little more closely.</p> + +<p>It was the weaknesses of Germany that made this war, and not her +strength. The weaknesses of Germany are her Imperialism, her Junkerism, +and her intense, sentimental Nationalism; for the former would have no +German ascendancy that was not achieved by force, and, with the latter, +made the idea of German ascendancy intolerable to all mankind. Better +death, we said. And had Germany been no more than her Court, her +Junkerism, her Nationalism, the whole system would have smashed beneath +the contempt and indignation of the world within a year.</p> + +<p>But the strength of Germany has saved her from that destruction. She was +at once the most archaic and modern of states. She was Hohenzollern, +claiming to be Caesar, and flaunting a flat black eagle borrowed from +Imperial Rome; and also she was the most scientific and socialist of +states. It is her science and her Socialism that have held and forced +back the avengers of Belgium for more than a year and a half. If she has +failed as a conqueror, she has succeeded as an organisation. Her +ambition has been thwarted, and her method has been vindicated. She +will, I think, be so far defeated in the contest of endurance which is +now in progress that she will have to give up every scrap of territorial +advantage she has gained; she may lose most of her Colonial Empire; she +may be obliged to complete her modernisation by abandoning her militant +Imperialism; but she will have at least the satisfaction of producing +far profounder changes in the chief of her antagonists than those she +herself will undergo.</p> + +<p>The Germany of the Hohenzollerns had its mortal wound at the Marne; the +Germany we fight to-day is the Germany of Krupp and Ostwald. It is +merely as if she had put aside a mask that had blinded her. She was +methodical and civilised except for her head and aim; she will become +entirely methodical. But the Britain and Russia and France she fights +are lands full of the spirit of undefined novelty. They are being made +over far more completely. They are being made over, not in spite of the +war, but because of the war. Only by being made over can they win the +war. And if they do not win the war, then they are bound to be made +over. They are not merely putting aside old things, but they are forming +and organising within themselves new structures, new and more efficient +relationships, that will last far beyond the still remote peace +settlement.</p> + +<p>What this war has brought home to the consciousness of every intelligent +man outside the German system, with such thoroughness as whole +generations of discussion and peace experience could never have +achieved, is a double lesson: that Germany had already gone far to +master when she blundered into the war; firstly, the waste and dangers +of individualism, and, secondly, the imperative necessity of scientific +method in public affairs. The waste and dangers of individualism have +had a whole series of striking exemplifications both in Europe and +America since the war began. Were there such a thing as a Socialist +propaganda in existence, were the so-called socialistic organisations +anything better than a shabby little back-door into contemporary +politics, those demonstrations would be hammering at the mind of +everyone. It may be interesting to recapitulate some of the most salient +instances.</p> + +<p>The best illustration, perhaps, of the waste that arises out of +individualism is to be found in the extreme dislocation of the privately +owned transit services of Great Britain at the present time. There is no +essential reason whatever why food and fuel in Great Britain should be +considerably dearer than they are under peace conditions. Just the same +home areas are under cultivation, just the same foreign resources are +available; indeed, more foreign supplies are available because we have +intercepted those that under normal conditions would have gone to +Germany. The submarine blockade of Britain is now a negligible factor in +this question.</p> + +<p>Despite these patent conditions there has been, and is, a steady +increase in the cost of provisions, coal, and every sort of necessity. +This increase means an increase in the cost of production of many +commodities, and so contributes again to the general scarcity. This is +the domestic aspect of a difficulty that has also its military side. It +is not sufficient merely to make munitions; they must also be delivered, +Great Britain is suffering very seriously from congestion of the +railways. She suffers both in social and military efficiency, and she is +so suffering because her railways, instead of being planned as one great +and simple national distributing system, have grown up under conditions +of clumsy, dividend-seeking competition.</p> + +<p>Each great railway company and combination has worked its own areas, and +made difficulties and aggressions at the boundaries of its sphere of +influence; here are inconvenient junctions and here unnecessary +duplications; nearly all the companies come into London, each taking up +its own area of expensive land for goods yards, sidings, shunting +grounds, and each regardless of any proper correlation with the other; +great areas of the County of London are covered with their idle trucks +and their separate coal stores; in many provincial towns you will find +two or even three railway stations at opposite ends of the town; the +streets are blocked by the vans and trolleys of the several companies +tediously handing about goods that could be dealt with at a tenth of the +cost in time and labour at a central clearing-house, did such a thing +exist; and each system has its vast separate staff, unaccustomed to work +with any other staff.</p> + +<p>Since the war began the Government has taken over the general direction +of this disarticulated machinery, but no one with eyes who travels about +England now can fail to remark, in the miles and miles of waiting loaded +trucks on every siding, the evidences of mischievous and now almost +insuperable congestion. The trucks of each system that have travelled on +to another still go back, for the most part, <i>empty</i> to their own; and +thousands of privately owned trucks, which carry cargo only one way, +block our sidings. Great Britain wastes men and time to a disastrous +extent in these needless shuntings and handlings.</p> + +<p>Here, touching every life in the community, is one instance of the +muddle that arises naturally out of the individualistic method of +letting public services grow up anyhow without a plan, or without any +direction at all except the research for private profit.</p> + +<p>A second series of deficiencies that the war has brought to light in the +too individualistic British State is the entire want of connection +between private profit and public welfare. So far as the interests of +the capitalist go it does not matter whether he invests his money at +home or abroad; it does not matter whether his goods are manufactured in +London or Timbuctoo.</p> + +<p>But what of the result? At the outbreak of the war Great Britain found +that a score of necessary industries had drifted out of the country, +because it did not "pay" any private person to keep them here. The +shortage of dyes has been amply discussed as a typical case. A much +graver one that we may now write about was the shortage of zinc. Within +a month or so of the outbreak of the war the British Government had to +take urgent and energetic steps to secure this essential ingredient of +cartridge cases. Individualism had let zinc refining drift to Belgium +and Germany; it was the luck rather than the merit of Great Britain that +one or two refineries still existed.</p> + +<p>Still more extraordinary things came to light in the matter of the metal +supply. Under an individualistic system you may sell to the highest +bidder, and anyone with money from anywhere may come in and buy. Great +supplies of colonial ores were found to be cornered by semi-national +German syndicates. Supplies were held up by these contracts against the +necessities of the Empire. And this was but one instance of many which +have shown that, while industrial development in the Allied countries is +still largely a squabbling confusion of little short-sighted, +unscientific, private profit-seeking owners, in Germany it has been for +some years increasingly run on far-seeing collectivist lines. Against +the comparatively little and mutually jealous British or American +capitalists and millionaires Germany pits itself as a single great +capitalist and competitor. She has worked everywhere upon a +comprehensive plan. Against her great national electric combination, for +example, only another national combination could stand. As it was, +Germany--in the way of business--wired and lit (and examined) the forts +at Liége. She bought and prepared a hundred strategic centres in +individualistic Belgium and France.</p> + +<p>So we pass from the fact that individualism is hopeless muddle to the +fact that the individualist idea is one of limitless venality, Who can +buy, may control. And Germany, in her long scheming against her +individualist rivals, has not simply set herself to buy and hold the +keys and axles of their economic machinery. She has set herself, it must +be admitted, with a certain crudity and little success, but with +unexampled vigour, to buy the minds of her adversaries. The Western +nations have taken a peculiar pride in having a free Press; that is to +say, a Press that may be bought by anyone. Our Press is constantly +bought and sold, in gross and detail, by financiers, advertisers, +political parties, and the like. Germany came into the market rather +noisily, and great papers do to a large extent live in glass houses; but +her efforts have been sufficient to exercise the minds of great numbers +of men with the problem of what might have happened in the way of +national confusion if the German attack had been more subtly +conceived....</p> + +<p>It is only a partial answer to this difficulty to say that a country +that is so nationalist and aggressive as Germany is incapable of subtle +conceptions. The fact remains that in Great Britain at the present time +there are newspaper proprietors who would be good bargains for Germany +at two million pounds a head, and that there was no effectual guarantee +in the individualistic system, but only our good luck and the natural +patriotism of the individuals concerned that she did not pick up these +bargains before trading with the enemy became illegal. It happened, for +example, that Lord Northcliffe was public-spirited, That was the good +luck of Great Britain rather than her merit. There was nothing in the +individualistic system to prevent Germany from buying up the entire +Harmsworth Press--<i>The Times, Daily Mail</i>, and all--five years before +the war, and using it to confuse the national mind, destroy the national +unity, sacrifice the national interests, and frustrate the national +will.</p> + +<p>Not only the newspapers, but the news-agents and booksellers of both +Great Britain and America are entirely at the disposal of any hostile +power which chooses to buy them up quietly and systematically. It is +merely a question of wealth and cleverness. And if the failure of the +Germans to grip the Press of the French and English speaking countries +has been conspicuous, she has been by no means so unsuccessful in--for +example--Spain. At the present time the thought and feeling of the +Spanish speaking world is being <i>educated</i> against the Allies. The +Spanish mind has been sold by its custodians into German control.</p> + +<p>Muddle and venality do not, however, exhaust the demonstrated vices of +individualism. Individualism encourages desertion and treason. +Individualism permits base private people to abscond with the national +resources and squeeze a profit out of national suffering. In the early +stages of the war some bright minds conceived the idea of a corner in +drugs. It is not illegal; it is quite the sort of thing that appeals to +the individualistic frame of mind as entirely meritorious. As the <i>New +Statesman</i> put it recently: "The happy owners of the world's available +stock of a few indispensable drugs did not refrain from making, not only +the various Governments, but also all the sick people of the world pay +double, and even tenfold, prices for what was essential to relieve pain +and save life. What fortunes were thus made we shall probably never +know, any more than we shall know the tale of the men and women and +children who suffered and died because of their inability to pay, not +the cost of production of what would have saved them, but the +unnecessarily enhanced price that the chances of the market enabled the +owners to exact."</p> + +<p>And another bright instance of the value of individualism is the selling +of British shipping to neutral buyers just when the country is in the +most urgent need of every ship it can get, and the deliberate transfer +to America of a number of British businesses to evade paying a proper +share of the national bill in taxation. The English who have gone to +America at different times have been of very different qualities; at the +head of the list are the English who went over in the <i>Mayflower</i>; at +the bottom will be the rich accessions of this war....</p> + +<p>And perhaps a still more impressive testimony to the rottenness of these +"business men," upon whom certain eccentric voices call so amazingly to +come and govern us, is the incurable distrust they have sown in the +minds of labour. Never was an atmosphere of discipline more lamentable +than that which has grown up in the factories, workshops, and great +privately owned public services of America and Western Europe. The men, +it is evident, <i>expect</i> to be robbed and cheated at every turn. I can +only explain their state of mind by supposing that they have been robbed +and cheated. Their scorn and contempt for their employees' good faith +is limitless. Their <i>morale</i> is undermined by an invincible distrust.</p> + +<p>It is no good for Mr. Lloyd George to attempt to cure the gathered ill +of a century with half an hour or so of eloquence. When Great Britain, +in her supreme need, turns to the workmen she has trained in the ways of +individualism for a century, she reaps the harvest individualism has +sown. She has to fight with that handicap. Every regulation for the +rapid mobilisation of labour is scrutinised to find the trick in it.</p> + +<p>And they find the trick in it as often as not. Smart individualistic +"business experience" has been at the draughtsman's elbow. A man in an +individualistic system does not escape from class ideas and prejudices +by becoming an official. There is profound and bitter wisdom in the deep +distrust felt by British labour for both military and industrial +conscription.</p> + +<p>The breakdown of individualism has been so complete in Great Britain +that we are confronted with the spectacle of this great and ancient +kingdom reconstructing itself perforce, while it wages the greatest war +in history. A temporary nationalisation of land transit has been +improvised, and only the vast, deep-rooted, political influence of the +shipowners and coalowners have staved off the manifestly necessary step +of nationalising shipping and coal. I doubt if they will be able to +stave it off to the end of the long struggle which is still before us if +the militarism of Germany is really to be arrested and discredited. +Expropriation and not conscription will be the supreme test of Britain's +loyalty to her Allies.</p> + +<p>The British shipowners, in particular, are reaping enormous but +precarious profits from the war. The blockade of Britain, by the British +shipowners is scarcely less effective than the blockade of Germany by +Britain. With an urgent need of every ship for the national supplies, +British ships, at the present moment of writing this, are still carrying +cheap American automobiles to Australia. They would carry munitions to +Germany if their owners thought they had a sporting chance of not +getting caught at it. These British shipowners are a pampered class with +great political and social influence, and no doubt as soon as the +accumulating strain of the struggle tells to the extent of any serious +restriction of their advantage and prospects, we shall see them shifting +to the side of the at present negligible group of British pacifists. I +do not think one can count on any limit to their selfishness and +treason.</p> + +<p>I believe that the calculations of some of these extreme and apparently +quite unreasonable "pacifists" are right. Before the war is over there +will be a lot of money in the pacifist business. The rich curs of the +West End will join hands with the labour curs of the Clyde. The base are +to be found in all classes, but I doubt if they dominate any. I do not +believe that any interest or group of interests in Great Britain can +stand in the way of the will of the whole people to bring this struggle +to a triumphant finish at any cost. I do not believe that the most +sacred ties of personal friendship and blood relationship with +influential people can save either shipowners or coalowners or army +contractors to the end.</p> + +<p>There will be no end until these profit-makings are arrested. The +necessary "conscriptions of property" must come about in Great Britain +because there is no alternative but failure in the war, and the British +people will not stand failure. I believe that the end of the war will +see, not only transit, but shipping, collieries, and large portions of +the machinery of food and drink production and distribution no longer +under the administration of private ownership, but under a sort of +provisional public administration. And very many British factories will +be in the same case.</p> + +<p>Two years ago no one would have dared to prophesy the tremendous +rearrangement of manufacturing machinery which is in progress in Britain +to-day. Thousands of firms of engineers and manufacturers of all sorts, +which were flourishing in 1914, exist to-day only as names, as shapes, +as empty shells. Their staffs have been shattered, scattered, +reconstructed; their buildings enlarged and modified; their machinery +exchanged, reconstituted, or taken. The reality is a vast interdependent +national factory that would have seemed incredible to Fourier.</p> + +<p>It will be as impossible to put back British industrialism into the +factories and forms of the pre-war era as it would be to restore the +Carthaginian Empire. There is a new economic Great Britain to-day, +emergency made, jerry-built no doubt, a gawky, weedy giant, but a giant +who may fill out to such dimensions as the German national system has +never attained. Behind it is an <i>idea</i>, a new idea, the idea of the +nation as one great economic system working together, an idea which +could not possibly have got into the sluggish and conservative British +intelligence in half a century by any other means than the stark +necessities of this war.... Great Britain cannot retrace those steps +even if she would, and so she will be forced to carry this process of +reconstruction through. And what is happening to Great Britain must, +with its national differences, be happening to France and Russia. Not +only for war ends, but for peace ends, behind the front and sustaining +the front, individualities are being hammered together into common and +concerted activities.</p> + +<p>At the end of this war Great Britain will find herself with this great +national factory, this great national organisation of labour, planned, +indeed, primarily to make war material, but convertible with the utmost +ease to the purposes of automobile manufacture, to transit +reconstruction, to electrical engineering, and endless such uses.</p> + +<p>France and Russia will be in a parallel case. All the world will be +exhausted, and none of the Allies will have much money to import +automobiles, railway material, electrical gear, and so on, from abroad. +Moreover, it will be a matter of imperative necessity for them to get +ahead of the Central Powers with their productive activities. We shall +all be too poor to import from America, and we shall be insane to import +from Germany. America will be the continent with the long purse, +prepared to buy rather than sell. Each country will have great masses of +soldiers waiting to return to industrial life, and will therefore be +extremely indisposed to break up any existing productive organisation.</p> + +<p>In the face of these facts, will any of the Allied Powers be so foolish +as to disband this great system of national factories and nationally +worked communications? Moreover, we have already risked the prophecy +that this war will not end with such conclusiveness as to justify an +immediate beating out of our swords into ploughshares. There will be a +military as well as a social reason for keeping the national factories +in a going state.</p> + +<p>What more obvious course, then, than to keep them going by turning them +on to manufacture goods of urgent public necessity? There are a number +of modern commodities now practically standardised: the bicycle, the +cheap watch, the ordinary tradesman's delivery automobile, the farmer's +runabout, the country doctor's car, much electric-lighting material, +dynamos, and so forth. And also, in a parallel case, there is +shipbuilding. The chemical side of munition work can turn itself with no +extreme difficulty to the making of such products as dyes.</p> + +<p>We face the fact, then, that either the State must go on with this +production, as it can do, straight off from the signing of peace, +converting with a minimum of friction, taking on its soldiers as they +are discharged from the army as employees with a minimum waste of time +and a minimum of social disorder, and a maximum advantage in the +resumption of foreign trade, or there will be a dangerous break-up of +the national factory system, a time of extreme chaos and bitter +unemployment until capital accumulates for new developments. The risks +of social convulsion will be enormous. And there is small hope that the +Central Powers, and particularly industrial Germany, will have the +politeness to wait through the ten or twelve years of economic +embarrassment that a refusal to take this bold but obviously +advantageous step into scientific Socialism will entail.</p> + +<p>But the prophet must be on his guard against supposing that, because a +thing is highly desirable, it must necessarily happen; or that, because +it is highly dangerous, it will be avoided. This bold and successful +economic reconstruction upon national lines is not inevitable merely +because every sound reason points us in that direction. A man may be +very ill, a certain drug may be clearly indicated as the only possible +remedy, but it does not follow that the drug is available, that the +doctor will have the sense to prescribe it, or the patient the means to +procure it or the intelligence to swallow it.</p> + +<p>The experience of history is that nations do not take the obviously +right course, but the obviously wrong one. The present prophet knows +only his England, but, so far as England is concerned, he can cover a +sheet of paper with scarcely a pause, jotting down memoranda of +numberless forces that make against any such rational reconstruction. +Most of these forces, in greater or less proportion, must be present in +the case of every other country under consideration.</p> + +<p>The darkest shadow upon the outlook of European civilisation at the +present time is not the war; it is the failure of any co-operative +spirit between labour and the directing classes. The educated and +leisured classes have been rotten with individualism for a century; they +have destroyed the confidence of the worker in any leadership whatever. +Labour stands apart, intractable. If there is to be any such rapid +conversion of the economic machinery as the opportunities and +necessities of this great time demand, then labour must be taken into +the confidence of those who would carry it through. It must be reassured +and enlightened. Labour must know clearly what is being done; it must be +an assenting co-operator. The stride to economic national service and +Socialism is a stride that labour should be more eager to take than any +other section of the community.</p> + +<p>The first step in reassuring labour must be to bring the greedy private +owner and the speculator under a far more drastic discipline than at +present. The property-owning class is continually accusing labour of +being ignorant, suspicious, and difficult; it is blind to the fact that +it is itself profit-seeking by habit, greedy, conceited, and half +educated.</p> + +<p>Every step in the mobilisation of Great Britain's vast resources for the +purposes of the war has been hampered by the tricks, the failures to +understand, and the almost instinctive disloyalties of private owners. +The raising of rents in Glasgow drove the infuriated workmen of the +Clyde district into an unwilling strike. It was an exasperating piece of +private selfishness, quite typical of the individualistic state of mind, +and the failure to anticipate or arrest it on the part of the Government +was a worse failure than Suvla Bay. And everywhere the officials of the +Ministry of Munitions find private employers holding back workers and +machinery from munition works, intriguing--more particularly through the +Board of Trade--to have all sorts of manufactures for private profit +recognised as munition work, or if that contention is too utterly +absurd, then as work vitally necessary to the maintenance of British +export trade and the financial position of the country. It is an +undeniable fact that employers and men alike have been found far readier +to risk their lives for their country than to lay aside any scale of +profits to which they have grown accustomed.</p> + +<p>This conflict of individualistic enterprise and class suspicion against +the synthesis of the public welfare is not peculiar to Great Britain; it +is probably going on with local variations in Germany, Russia, Italy, +France, and, indeed, in every combatant country. Because of the +individualistic forces and feelings, none of us, either friends or +enemies, are really getting anything like our full possible result out +of our national efforts. But in Germany there is a greater tradition of +subordination; in France there is a greater clarity of mind than in any +other country.</p> + +<p>Great Britain and Russia in this, as in so many other matters, are at +once close kindred and sharp antithesis. Each is mentally crippled by +the corruption of its educational system by an official religious +orthodoxy, and hampered by a Court which disowns any function of +intellectual stimulus. Neither possesses a scientifically educated +<i>class</i> to which it can look for the powerful handling of this great +occasion; and each has acquired under these disadvantages the same +strange faculty for producing sane resultants out of illogical +confusions. It is the way of these unmethodical Powers to produce +unexpected, vaguely formulated, and yet effective cerebral +action--apparently from their backbones.</p> + +<p>As I sit playing at prophecy, and turn over the multitudinous +impressions of the last year in my mind, weighing the great necessities +of the time against obstacles and petty-mindedness, I become more and +more conscious of a third factor that is neither need nor obstruction, +and that is the will to get things right that has been liberated by the +war.</p> + +<p>The new spirit is still but poorly expressed, but it will find +expression. The war goes on, and we discuss this question of economic +reconstruction as though it was an issue that lay between the labour +that has stayed behind and the business men, for the most part old men +with old habits of mind, who have stayed behind.</p> + +<p>The real life of Europe's future lies on neither side of that +opposition. The real life is mutely busy at present, saying little +because of the uproar of the guns, and not so much learning as casting +habits and shedding delusions. In the trenches there are workers who +have broken with the old slacking and sabotage, and there are +prospective leaders who have forgotten profit. The men between eighteen +and forty are far too busy in the blood and mud to make much showing +now, but to-morrow these men will be the nation.</p> + +<p>When that third factor of the problem is brought in the outlook of the +horoscope improves. The spirit of the war may be counted upon to balance +and prevail against this spirit of individualism, this spirit of +suspicion and disloyalty, which I fear more than anything else in the +world.</p> + +<p>I believe in the young France, young England, and young Russia this war +is making, and so I believe that every European country will struggle +along the path that this war has opened to a far more completely +organised State than has existed ever before. The Allies will become +State firms, as Germany was, indeed, already becoming before the war; +setting private profit aside in the common interest, handling +agriculture, transport, shipping, coal, the supply of metals, the +manufacture of a thousand staple articles, as national concerns.</p> + +<p>In the face of the manifest determination of the Central Powers to do as +much, the Allies will be forced also to link their various State firms +together into a great allied trust, trading with a common interest and a +common plan with Germany and America and the rest of the world.... Youth +and necessity will carry this against selfishness, against the +unimaginative, against the unteachable, the suspicious, the "<i>old +fool</i>."</p> + +<p>But I do not venture to prophesy that this will come about as if it were +a slick and easy deduction from present circumstances. Even in France I +do not think things will move as lucidly and generously as that. There +will be a conflict everywhere between wisdom and cunning, between the +eyes of youth and the purblind, between energy and obstinacy.</p> + +<p>The reorganisation of the European States will come about clumsily and +ungraciously. At every point the sticker will be found sticking tight, +holding out to be bought off, holding out for a rent or a dividend or a +share, holding out by mere instinct. At every turn, too, the bawler will +be loud and active, bawling suspicions, bawling accusations, bawling +panic, or just simply bawling. Tricks, peculation, obstinacies, +vanities--after this war men will still be men. But I do believe that +through all the dust and din, the great reasons in the case, the steady +constructive forces of the situation, will carry us.</p> + +<p>I believe that out of the ruins of the nineteenth century system of +private capitalism that this war has smashed for ever, there will arise, +there does even now arise, in this strange scaffolding of national +munition factories and hastily nationalised public services, the +framework of a new economic and social order based upon national +ownership and service.</p> + +<p>Let us now recapitulate a little and see how far we have got in +constructing a picture of the European community as it will be in +fifteen or twenty years' time. Nominally it will be little more of a +Socialist State than it is to-day, but, as a matter of fact, the ships, +the railways, the coal and metal supply, the great metal industries, +much engineering, and most agriculture, will be more or less completely +under collective ownership, and certainly very completely under +collective control. This does not mean that there will have been any +disappearance of private property, but only that there will have been a +very considerable change in its character; the owner will be less of +controller but more of a creditor; he will be a <i>rentier</i> or an +annuitant.</p> + +<p>The burthen of this class upon the community will not be relatively +quite so heavy as it would otherwise have been, because of a very +considerable rise in wages and prices.</p> + +<p>In a community in which all the great initiatives have been assumed by +the State, the importance of financiers and promoters will have +diminished relatively to the importance of administrative officials; the +opportunities of private exploitation, indeed, will have so diminished +that there will probably be far less evidence of great concentrations of +private wealth in the European social landscape than there was before +the war.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, there will be an enormously increased <i>rentier</i> class +drawing the interest of the war loans from the community, and +maintaining a generally high standard of comfort. There will have been a +great demand for administrative and technical abilities and a great +stimulation of scientific and technical education. By 1926 we shall be +going about a world that will have recovered very largely from the +impoverishment of the struggle; we shall tour in State-manufactured +automobiles upon excellent roads, and we shall live in houses equipped +with a national factory electric light installation, and at every turn +we shall be using and consuming the products of nationalised +industry--and paying off the National Debt simultaneously, and reducing +our burden of <i>rentiers</i>.</p> + +<p>At the same time our boys will be studying science in their schools +more thoroughly than they do now, and they will in many cases be +learning Russian instead of Greek or German. More of our boys will be +going into the public service, and fewer thinking of private business, +and they will be going into the public service, not as clerks, but as +engineers, technical chemists, manufacturers, State agriculturists, and +the like. The public service will be less a service of clerks and more a +service of practical men. The ties that bind France and Great Britain at +the present moment will have been drawn very much closer. France, +Belgium and England will be drifting towards a French-English +bi-lingualism....</p> + +<p>So much of our picture we may splash in now. Much that is quite +essential remains to be discussed. So far we have said scarcely a word +about the prospects of party politics and the problems of government +that arise as the State ceases to be a mere impartial adjudicator +between private individuals, and takes upon itself more and more of the +direction of the general life of the community.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="VI._LAWYER_AND_PRESS"></a>VI. LAWYER AND PRESS</h2> +<br> + +<p>The riddle of administration is the most subtle of all those that the +would-be prophet of the things that are coming must attempt. We see the +great modern States confronted now by vast and urgent necessities, by +opportunities that may never recur. Individualism has achieved its +inevitable failure; "go as you please" in a world that also contained +aggressive militarism, has broken down. We live in a world of improvised +State factories, commandeered railways, substituted labour and emergency +arrangements. Our vague-minded, lax, modern democracy has to pull itself +together, has to take over and administer and succeed with a great +system of collective functions, has to express its collective will in +some better terms than "go as you please," or fail.</p> + +<p>And we find the affairs of nearly every great democratic State in the +hands of a class of men not specially adapted to any such constructive +or administrative work.</p> + +<p>I am writing here now chiefly of the Western Allies. Russia is peculiar +in having her administrative machine much more highly developed in +relation to her general national life than the free democratic +countries. She has to make a bureaucracy that has not hitherto been an +example for efficiency into a bureaucracy that will be constructive, +responsive, liberal, scientific, and efficient; the Western countries +have to do the same with that oligarchy of politicians which, as +Professor Michels has recently pointed out in his striking book on +"Political Parties," is the necessary reality of democratic government. +By different methods the Eastern and Western Powers have to attain a +common end. Both bureaucracy and pseudo-democratic oligarchy have to +accomplish an identical task, to cement the pacific alliance of the +Pledged Allies and to socialise their common industrial and economic +life, so as to make it invulnerable to foreign attack.</p> + +<p>Now in Great Britain, which is the democracy that has been most under +the close observation of the present prophet, there is at present a +great outcry against the "politician," and more particularly against the +"lawyer-politician." He is our embarrassment. In him we personify all +our difficulties. Let us consider the charges against this individual. +Let us ask, can we do without him? And let us further see what chances +there may be of so altering, qualifying, or balancing him as to minimise +the evil of his influence. To begin with, let us run over the essentials +of the charge against him.</p> + +<p>It is with a modest blush that the present prophet recapitulates these +charges. So early as the year 1902 he was lifting up his voice, not +exactly in the wilderness but at least in the Royal Institution, against +the legal as compared with the creative or futurist type of mind. The +legal mind, he insisted, looks necessarily to the past. It is dilatory +because it has no sense of coming things, it is uninventive and +wasteful, it does not create, it takes advantage. It is the type of mind +least able, under any circumstances, to organise great businesses, to +plan campaigns, to adventure or achieve. "Wait and see" crystallises its +spirit. Its resistance is admirable, and it has no "go." Nevertheless +there is a tendency for power to gravitate in all democratic countries +to the lawyer.</p> + +<p>In the British system the normal faults of the lawyer are enhanced, and +his predominance intensified, by certain peculiarities of our system. In +the first place, he belongs to a guild of exceptional power. In Britain +it happens that the unfortunate course was taken ages ago of bribing the +whole legal profession to be honest. The British judges and law officers +are stupendously overpaid in order to make them incorruptible; it is a +poor but perhaps a well-merited compliment to their professional code. +We have squared the whole profession to be individually unbribable.</p> + +<p>The judges, moreover, in the Anglo-Saxon communities are appointed from +among the leading barristers, an arrangement that a child can see is +demoralising and inadvisable. And in Great Britain all the greatest +salaries in the government service are reserved for the legal +profession. The greatest prizes, therefore, before an energetic young +man who has to make his way in Great Britain are the legal prizes, and +his line of advancement to these lies, for all the best years of his +life, not through the public service, but through the private practice +of advocacy. The higher education, such as it is, in Great Britain, +produces under the stimulus of these conditions an advocate as its +finest flower. To go from the posing and chatter of the Union Debating +Society to a university laboratory is, in Britain, to renounce ambition. +Few men of exceptional energy will do that.</p> + +<p>The national consequences of this state of affairs have been only too +manifest throughout the conduct of the war. The British Government has +developed all the strength and all the weakness of the great profession +it represents. It has been uninventive, dilatory, and without +initiative; it has been wasteful and evasive; but it has not been +wanting in a certain eloquence and dignity, it has been wary and shrewd, +and it has held on to office with the concentrated skill and +determination of a sucker-fish. And the British mind, with a +concentration and intensity unprecedented before the war, is speculating +how it can contrive to get a different sort of ruler and administrator +at work upon its affairs.</p> + +<p>There is a disposition in the Press, and much of the private talk one +hears, to get rid of lawyers from the control of national affairs +altogether, to substitute "business men" or scientific men or "experts." +That way lies dictatorship and Caesarism. And even Great Britain is not +so heedless of the experiences of other nations as to attempt again what +has already been so abundantly worked out in national disaster across +the Channel. The essential business of government is to deal between man +and man; it is not to manage the national affairs in detail, but to +secure the proper managers, investigators, administrators, generals, +and so forth, to maintain their efficiency, and keep the balance between +them. We cannot do without a special class of men for these +interventions and controls. In other words, we cannot do without a +special class of politicians. They may be elected by a public or +appointed by an autocrat; at some point they have to come in. And this +business of intervening between men and classes and departments in +public life, and getting them to work together, is so closely akin to +the proper work of a lawyer in dealing between men and men, that, unless +the latter are absolutely barred from becoming the former, it is almost +unavoidable that politicians should be drawn more abundantly from the +lawyer class than from any other class in the community.</p> + +<p>This is so much the case, that when the London <i>Times</i> turns in despair +from a government of lawyers and looks about for an alternative, the +first figure that presents itself is that distinguished advocate Sir +Edward Carson!</p> + +<p>But there is a difference between recognising that some sort of +lawyer-politician is unavoidable and agreeing that the existing type of +lawyer who is so largely accountable for the massive slowness, the +confused action, the slovenliness rather than the weakness of purpose, +shown by Great Britain in this war, is the only possible type, The +British system of education and legal organisation is not the last word +of human wisdom in these matters.</p> + +<p>The real case we British have against our lawyers, if I may adopt an +expressive colloquialism, is not that they are lawyers, but that they +are such infernal lawyers. They trail into modern life most of the +faults of a mediaeval guild. They seem to have no sense of the State +they could develop, no sense of the future they might control. Their law +and procedure has never been remodelled upon the framework of modern +ideas; their minds are still set to the tune of mediaeval bickerings, +traditionalism, and State blindness. They are mystery dealers, almost +unanimously they have resisted giving the common man the protection of a +code.</p> + +<p>In the United Kingdom we have had no Napoleon to override the +profession. It is extraordinary how complete has been their preservation +of barbaric conceptions. Even the doctor is now largely emancipated from +his archaic limitations as a skilled retainer. He thinks more and more +of the public health, and less and less of his patron. The more recent a +profession the less there is of the individualistic personal reference; +scientific research, for example, disavows and forbids every personal +reference.</p> + +<p>But while everyone would be shocked at some great doctor, or some great +research institution, in these days of urgent necessity spending two or +three weeks on the minor ailments of some rich person's lapdog, nobody +is scandalised at the spectacle of Sir Edward Carson and a costly law +court spending long days upon the sordid disputes that centre upon young +Master Slingsby's ear--whether it is the Slingsby family ear or the ear +of a supposititious child--a question that any three old women might be +trusted to settle. After that he rests for a fortnight and recuperates, +and returns--to take up a will case turning upon the toy rabbits and +suchlike trifles which entertained the declining years of a +nonagenarian. This, when we are assured that the country awaits Sir +Edward as its Deliverer. It is as if Lord Kitchener took a month off to +act at specially high rates for the "movies." Our standard for the +lawyer is older and lower than it is for other men.</p> + +<p>There is no more reason nowadays why a lawyer should look to advocacy as +a proper use of his knowledge than that a doctor should make private +poisoning the lucrative side of his profession. There is no reason why +a court of law should ignore the plain right of the commonweal to +intervene in every case between man and man. There is every reason why +trivial disputes about wills and legitimacy should not be wasting our +national resources at the present time, when nearly every other form of +waste is being restrained. The sound case against the legal profession +in Anglo-Saxon countries is not that it is unnecessary, but that it is +almost incredibly antiquated, almost incredibly careless of the public +well-being, and that it corrupts or dwarfs all the men who enter it.</p> + +<p>Our urgent need is not so much to get rid of the lawyer from our affairs +as to get rid of the wig and gown spirit and of the special pleader, and +to find and develop the new lawyer, the lawyer who is not an advocate, +who is not afraid of a code, who has had some scientific education, and +whose imagination has been quickened by the realisation of life as +creative opportunity. We want to emancipate this profession from its +ancient guild restrictions--the most anti-social and disastrous of all +such restrictions--to destroy its disgraceful traditions of over-payment +and fee-snatching, to insist upon a scientific philosophical training +for its practitioners, to make the practice of advocacy a fall from +grace, and to bar professional advocates from the bench.</p> + +<p>In the British trenches now there must be many hundreds of fine young +lawyers, still but little corrupted, who would be only too glad to +exchange the sordid vulgarities and essential dishonour of a successful +lawyer's career under the old conditions for lives of service and +statecraft....</p> + +<p>No observer of the general trend of events in Europe will get any real +grasp of what is happening until he realises the cardinal importance of +the reactions that centre upon this question. The current development of +political institutions and the possible development of a new spirit and +method in the legal profession are so intimately interwoven as to be +practically one and the same question. The international question is, +can we get a new Germany? The national question everywhere is, can we +get a better politician?</p> + +<p>The widely prevalent discontent with the part played by the lawyer in +the affairs of all the Western Allies is certain to develop into a +vigorous agitation for legal reconstruction. In the case of every other +great trade union the war has exacted profound and vital concessions. +The British working men, for example, have abandoned scores of +protective restrictions upon women's labour, upon unskilled labour, for +which they have fought for generations; they have submitted to a virtual +serfdom that the nation's needs might be supplied; the medical +profession has sent almost too large a proportion of its members to the +front; the scientific men, the writers, have been begging to be used in +any capacity at any price or none; the Ministry of Munitions is full of +unpaid workers, and so on.</p> + +<p>The British legal profession and trade union alone has made no sign of +any disposition to relax its elaborate restrictions upon the labour of +amateurs and women, or to abate one jot or one tittle of its habitual +rewards. There has been no attempt to reduce the costly law officers of +the Government, for example, or to call in the help of older men or +women to release law officers who are of military experience or age.</p> + +<p>And I must admit that there are small signs of the advent of the "new +lawyer," at whose possibility I have just flung a hopeful glance, to +replace the existing mass of mediaeval unsoundness. Barristers seem to +age prematurely--at least in Great Britain--unless they are born old. In +the legal profession one hears nothing of "the young"; one hears only of +"smart juniors." Reform and progressive criticism in the legal +profession, unlike all other professions, seem to be the monopoly of the +retired.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, Great Britain is as yet only beginning to feel the real +stresses of the war; she is coming into the full strain a year behind +France, Germany, and Russia; and after the war there lies the +possibility of still more violent stresses; so that what is as yet a +mere cloud of criticism and resentment at our lawyer-politicians and +privileged legal profession may gather to a great storm before 1918 or +1919.</p> + +<p>I am inclined to foretell as one most highly probable development of the +present vague but very considerable revolt against the lawyer in British +public life, first, some clumsy proposals or even attempts to leave him +out, and use "business men," soldiers, admirals, dictators, or men of +science, in his place--which is rather like throwing away a blottesque +fountain-pen and trying to write with a walking-stick or a revolver or a +flash-light--and then when that is found to be impossible, a resolute +attempt to clean and reconstitute the legal profession on modern and +more honourable lines; a movement into which, quite possibly, a number +of the younger British lawyers, so soon as they realise that the +movement is good enough to risk careers upon, may throw themselves. A +large share in such a reform movement, if it occurs, will be brought +about by the Press; by which I mean not simply the periodical Press, but +all books and contemporary discussion. It is only by the natural playing +off of Press against lawyer-politician that democratic States can ever +come to their own.</p> + +<p>And that brings me to the second part of this question, which is +whether, quite apart from the possible reform and spiritual rebirth of +the legal profession, there is not also the possibility of balancing and +correcting its influence. In ancient Hebrew history--it may be a warning +rather than a precedent--there were two great forces, one formal, +conservative and corrupting, the other undisciplined, creative, and +destructive; the first was the priest, the second the prophet. Their +interaction is being extraordinarily paralleled in the Anglo-Saxon +democracies by the interaction of lawyer-politician and Press to-day.</p> + +<p>If the lawyer-politician is unavoidable, the Press is indispensable. It +is not in the clash and manoeuvres and mutual correction of party, but +in the essential conflict of political authority on the one hand and +Press on the other that the future of democratic government apparently +lies. In the clearer, simpler case of France, a less wealthy and finer +type of lawyer interacts with a less impersonal Press. It is in the +great contrasts and the essential parallelism of the French and the +Anglo-Saxon democratic systems that one finds the best practical reason +for anticipating very profound changes in these two inevitables of +democracy, the Press and the lawyer-politician, and for assuming that +the method of democracy has still a vast range of experimental +adjustment between them still untried. Such experimental adjustment will +be the chief necessity and business of political life in every country +of the world for the next few decades.</p> + +<p>The lawyer-politician and the Press are as it were the right and left +hands of a modern democracy. The war has brought this out clearly. It +has ruptured the long-weakened bonds that once linked this and that +newspaper with this and that party. For years the Press of all the +Western democracies has been drifting slowly away from the tradition--it +lasted longest and was developed most completely in Great +Britain--that-newspapers were party organs.</p> + +<p>In the novels of Disraeli the Press appears as an ambiguously helpful +person who is asked out to dinner, who is even admitted to week-end +conferences, by the political great. He takes his orders from the Whig +peers or the Tory peers. At his greatest he advises them respectfully. +But that was in the closing days of the British oligarchy; that was +before modern democracy had begun to produce its characteristic +political forms. It is not so very much more than a century ago that +Great Britain had her first lawyer Prime Minister. Through all the +Napoleonic wars she was still a country ruled by great feudal landlords, +and gentlemen adventurers associated with them. The lawyers only came to +their own at the close of the great Victorian duet of Disraeli and +Gladstone, the last of the political gentlemen adventurers. It is only +now, in the jolts and dissatisfactions of this war, that Great Britain +rubs her eyes and looks at her government as it is.</p> + +<p>The old oligarchy established the tradition of her diplomacy. Illiberal +at home, it was liberal abroad; Great Britain was the defender of +nationality, of constitutionalism, and of the balance of power against +the holy alliance. In the figure of such a gentleman as Sir Edward Grey +the old order mingles with the new. But most of his colleagues are of +the new order. They would have been incredible in the days of Lord +Melbourne. In its essential quality the present British Government is +far more closely akin to the French than it is to its predecessor of a +hundred years ago. Essentially it is a Government of lawyer-politicians +with no close family ties or intimate political traditions and +prejudices. And its natural and proper corrective is the Press, over +which it fails to exercise now even a shadow of the political and social +influence that once kept that power in subjection.</p> + +<p>It is the way with all human institutions; they remain in appearance +long after they have passed away in reality. It is on record that the +Roman senate still thought Rome was a republic in the third century of +the Christian era. It is nothing wonderful, therefore, that people +suppose that the King, the Lords, and the Commons, debating through a +Ministry and an Opposition, still govern the British Empire. As a matter +of fact it is the lawyer-politicians, split by factions that simulate +the ancient government and opposition, who rule, under a steadily +growing pressure and checking by the Press. Since this war began the +Press has released itself almost inadvertently from its last association +with the dying conflicts of party politics, and has taken its place as a +distinct power in the realm, claiming to be more representative of the +people than their elected representatives, and more expressive of the +national mind and will.</p> + +<p>Now there is considerable validity in this claim. It is easy to say +that a paper may be bought by any proprietor and set to put what he +chooses into the public mind. As a matter of fact, buying a newspaper is +far more costly and public a proceeding than buying a politician. And if +on the one hand the public has no control over what is printed in a +paper, it has on the other the very completest control over what is +read. A politician is checked by votes cast once in several years, a +newspaper is checked by sales that vary significantly from day to day. A +newspaper with no circulation is a newspaper that does not matter; a few +weeks will suffice to show if it has carried its public with it or gone +out of influence. It is absurd to speak of a newspaper as being less +responsible than a politician.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, the influence of a great newspaper is so much greater than +that of any politician, and its power more particularly for +mischief--for the creation of panic conditions, for example--so much +swifter, that it is open to question whether the Press is at present +sufficiently held to its enormous responsibilities.</p> + +<p>Let us consider its weaknesses at the present time, let us ask what +changes in its circumstances are desirable in the public interest, and +what are likely to come about. We have already reckoned upon the Press +as a chief factor in the adequate criticism, cleansing, and +modernisation of the British lawyer-politician; is there any power to +which we may look for the security of the Press? And I submit the answer +is the Press. For while the legal profession is naturally homogeneous, +the Press is by nature heterogeneous. Dog does not eat dog, nor lawyer, +lawyer; but the newspapers are sharks and cannibals, they are in +perpetual conflict, the Press is a profession as open as the law is +closed; it has no anti-social guild feeling; it washes its dirty linen +in public by choice and necessity, and disdains all professional +etiquette. Few people know what criticisms of the Lord Chief Justice may +have ripened in the minds of Lord Halsbury or Sir Edward Carson, but we +all know, to a very considerable degree of accuracy, the worst of what +this great journalist or group of newspaper proprietors thinks of that.</p> + +<p>We have, therefore, considerable reason for regarding the Press as +being, in contrast with the legal profession, a self-reforming body. In +the last decade there has been an enormous mass of criticism of the +Press by the Press. There has been a tendency to exaggerate its +irresponsibility. A better case is to be made against it for what I will +call, using the word in its least offensive sense, its venality. By +venality I mean the fact, a legacy from the now happily vanishing age of +individualism, that in theory and law at least anyone may own a +newspaper and sell it publicly or secretly to anyone, that its +circulation and advertisement receipts may be kept secret or not as the +proprietors choose, and that the proprietor is accountable to no one for +any exceptional incomings or any sudden fluctuations in policy.</p> + +<p>A few years ago we were all discussing who should buy <i>The Times</i>; I do +not know what chances an agent of the Kaiser might not have had if he +had been sufficiently discreet. This venality will be far more dangerous +to the Allied countries after the war than during its continuance. So +long as the state of war lasts there are prompt methods available for +any direct newspaper treason, and it is in the neutral countries only +that the buying and selling of papers against the national interest has +occurred to any marked extent.</p> + +<p>Directly peace is signed, unless we provide for the event beforehand, +our Press will pass under neutral conditions. There will be nothing to +prevent, for example, any foreseeing foreign power coming into Great +Britain, offering to buy up not only this paper or that, but also, what +is far more important, to buy up the great book and newspaper +distributing firms. These vitally important public services, so far as +law and theory go, will be as entirely in the market as railway tickets +at a station unless we make some intelligent preventive provision. +Unless we do, and if, as is highly probable, peace puts no immediate +stop to international malignity, the Germans will be bigger fools than I +think them if they do not try to get hold of these public services. It +is a matter of primary importance in the outlook of every country in +Europe, therefore, that it should insist upon and secure responsible +native ownership of every newspaper and news and book distributing +agency, and the most drastic punishment for newspaper corruption. Given +that guarantee against foreign bribery, we may, I think, let free speech +rage. This is so much a matter of common sense that I cannot imagine +even British "wait and see" waiting for the inevitable assault upon our +national journalistic virtue that will follow the peace.</p> + +<p>So I spread out the considerations that I think justify our forecasting, +in a very changed Great Britain and a changed Europe, firstly, a legal +profession with a quickened conscience, a sense of public function and a +reformed organisation, and, secondly, a Press, which is recognised and +held accountable in law and in men's minds, as an estate of the realm, +as something implicitly under oath to serve the State. I do not agree +with Professor Michel's pessimistic conclusion that peace will bring +back exacerbated party politics and a new era of futility to the +democratic countries. I believe that the tremendous demonstration of +this war (a demonstration that gains weight with every week of our +lengthening effort), of the waste and inefficiency of the system of +1913-14, will break down at last even the conservatism of the most +rigidly organised and powerful and out-of-date of all professions.</p> + +<p>It is not only that I look to the indignation and energy of intelligent +men who are outside our legal and political system to reform it, but to +those who are in it now. A man may be quietly parasitic upon his mother, +and yet incapable of matricide. So much of our national energy and +ability has been attracted to the law in Great Britain that our nation, +with our lawyers in modern clothing instead of wigs and gowns, lawyers +who have studied science and social theory instead of the spoutings of +Cicero and the loquacious artfulness of W.E. Gladstone, lawyers who look +forward at the destiny of their country instead of backward and at the +markings on their briefs, may yet astonish the world. The British lawyer +really holds the future of the British Empire and, indeed, I could +almost say, of the whole world in his hands at the present time, as much +as any single sort of man can be said to hold it. Inside his skull +imagination and a heavy devil of evil precedent fight for his soul and +the welfare of the world. And generosity fights against tradition and +individualism. Only the men of the Press have anything like the same +great possibilities of betrayal.</p> + +<p>To these two sorts of men the dim spirit of the nation looks for such +leading as a democracy can follow. To them the men with every sort of +special ability, the men of science, the men of this or that sort of +administrative ability and experience, the men of creative gifts and +habits, every sort of man who wants the world to get on, look for the +removal (or the ingenious contrivance) of obstructions and +entanglements, for the allaying (or the fomentation) of suspicion, +misapprehension, and ignorant opposition, for administration (or class +blackmail).</p> + +<p>Yet while I sit as a prophetic amateur weighing these impalpable forces +of will and imagination and habit and interest in lawyer, pressman, +maker and administrator, and feeling by no means over-confident of the +issue, it dawns upon me suddenly that there is another figure present, +who has never been present before in the reckoning up of British +affairs. It is a silent figure. This figure stands among the pressmen +and among the lawyers and among the workers; for a couple of decades at +least he will be everywhere in the British system; he is young and he is +uniformed in khaki, and he brings with him a new spirit into British +life, the spirit of the new soldier, the spirit of subordination to a +common purpose....</p> + +<p>France, which has lived so much farther and deeper and more bitterly +than Britain, knows....<a name="FNanchor2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2">[2]</a></p> + +<blockquote><a name="Footnote_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor2">[2]</a> In "An Englishman Looks at the World," a companion volume +to the present one, which was first published by Messrs. Cassell early +in 1914, and is now obtainable in a shilling edition, the reader will +find a full discussion of the probable benefit of proportional +representation in eliminating the party hack from political life. +Proportional representation would probably break up party organisations +altogether, and it would considerably enhance the importance and +responsibility of the Press. It would do much to accelerate the +development of the state of affairs here foreshadowed, in which the rôle +of government and opposition under the party system will be played by +elected representatives and Press respectively. +</blockquote> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="VII._THE_NEW_EDUCATION"></a>VII. THE NEW EDUCATION</h2> +<br> + +<p>Some few months ago Mr. Harold Spender, in the <i>Daily News</i>, was calling +attention to a very significant fact indeed. The higher education in +England, and more particularly the educational process of Oxford and +Cambridge, which has been going on continuously since the Middle Ages, +is practically in a state of suspense. Oxford and Cambridge have +stopped. They have stopped so completely that Mr. Spender can speculate +whether they can ever pick up again and resume upon the old lines.</p> + +<p>For my own part, as the father of two sons who are at present in +mid-school, I hope with all my heart that they will not. I hope that the +Oxford and Cambridge of unphilosophical classics and Little-go Greek for +everybody, don's mathematics, bad French, ignorance of all Europe except +Switzerland, forensic exercises in the Union Debating Society, and cant +about the Gothic, the Oxford and Cambridge that turned boys full of life +and hope and infinite possibility into barristers, politicians, +mono-lingual diplomatists, bishops, schoolmasters, company directors, +and remittance men, are even now dead.</p> + +<p>Quite recently I passed through Cambridge, and, with the suggestions of +Mr. Spender in my mind, I paused to savour the atmosphere of the place. +He had very greatly understated the facts of the case. He laid stress +upon the fact that instead of the normal four thousand undergraduates or +so, there are now scarcely four hundred. But before I was fairly in +Cambridge I realised that that gives no idea of the real cessation of +English education. Of the first seven undergraduates I saw upon the +Trumpington road, one was black, three were coloured, and one of the +remaining three was certainly not British, but, I should guess, +Spanish-American. And it isn't only the undergraduates who have gone. +All the dons of military age and quality have gone too, or are staying +up not in caps and gowns, but in khaki; all the vigorous teachers are +soldiering; there are no dons left except those who are unfit for +service--and the clergy. Buildings, libraries, empty laboratories, empty +lecture theatres, vestiges, refugees, neutrals, khaki; that is Cambridge +to-day.</p> + +<p>There never was before, there never may be again, so wonderful an +opportunity for a cleaning-up and sweeping-out of those two places, and +for a profitable new start in British education.</p> + +<p>The cessation of Oxford and Cambridge does not give the full measure of +the present occasion. All the other British universities are in a like +case. And the schools which feed them have been practically swept clean +of their senior boys. And not a tithe of any of this war class of +schoolboys will ever go to the universities now, not a tithe of the war +class of undergraduates will ever return. Between the new education and +the old there will be a break of two school generations. For the next +thirty or forty years an exceptional class of men will play a leading +part in British affairs, men who will have learnt more from reality and +less from lectures than either the generations that preceded or the +generations that will follow them. The subalterns of the great war will +form a distinct generation and mark an epoch. Their experiences of need, +their sense of deficiencies, will certainly play a large part in the +reconstitution of British education. <i>The stamp of the old system will +not be on them</i>.</p> + +<p>Now is the time to ask what sort of training should a university give to +produce the ruling, directing, and leading men which it exists to +produce? Upon that Great Britain will need to make up its mind +speedily. It is not a matter for to-morrow or the day after; it is +necessary to decide now what it is the Britain that is coming will need +and want, and to set to work revising the admission and degree +requirements, and reconstructing all those systems of public +examinations for the public services that necessarily dominate school +and university teaching, before the universities and schools reassemble. +If the rotten old things once get together again, the rotten old things +will have a new lease of life. This and no other is the hour for +educational reconstruction. And it is in the decisions and readjustments +of schools and lectures and courses, far more than anywhere else, that +the real future of Great Britain will be decided. Equally true is this +of all the belligerent countries. Much of the future has a kind of +mechanical inevitableness, but here far more than anywhere else, can a +few resolute and capable men mould the spirit and determine the quality +of the Europe to come.</p> + +<p>Now surely the chief things that are needed in the education of a ruling +class are these--first, the selection and development of Character, +then the selection and development of Capacity, and, thirdly, the +imparting of Knowledge upon broad and comprehensive lines, and the +power of rapidly taking up and using such detailed knowledge as may be +needed for special occasions. It is upon the first count that the +British schools and universities have been most open to criticism. We +have found the British university-trained class under the fiery tests of +this war an evasive, temporising class of people, individualistic, +ungenerous, and unable either to produce or obey vigorous leadership. On +the whole, it is a matter for congratulation, it says wonderful things +for the inherent natural qualities of the English-speaking peoples, that +things have proved no worse than they are, considering the nature of the +higher education under which they have suffered.</p> + +<p>Consider in what that educational process has consisted. Its backbone +has been the teaching of Latin by men who can read, write, and speak it +rather worse than a third-rate Babu speaks English, and of Ancient Greek +by teachers who at best half know this fine lost language. They do not +expect any real mastery of either tongue by their students, and +naturally, therefore, no real mastery is ever attained. The boys and +young men just muff about at it for three times as long as would be +needed to master completely both those tongues if they had "live" +teachers, and so they acquire habits of busy futility and petty +pedantry in all intellectual processes that haunt them throughout life. +There are also sterile mathematical studies that never get from +"exercises" to practice. There is a pretence of studying philosophy +based on Greek texts that few of the teachers and none of the taught can +read comfortably, and a certain amount of history. The Modern History +School at Oxford, for example, is the queerest collection of chunks of +reading. English history from the beginning, with occasional glances at +Continental affairs, European history for about a century, bits of +economics, and--the <i>Politics</i> of Aristotle! It is not education; it is +a jack-daw collection....This sort of jumble has been the essentials of +the more pretentious type of "higher education" available in Great +Britain up to the present.</p> + +<p>In this manner, through all the most sensitive and receptive years of +life, our boys have been trained in "how not to get there," in a variety +of disconnected subjects, by men who have never "got there," and it +would be difficult to imagine any curriculum more calculated to produce +a miscellaneous incompetence. They have also, it happens, received a +certain training in <i>savoir faire</i> through the collective necessities of +school life, and a certain sharpening in the arts of advocacy through +the debating society. Except for these latter helps, they have had to +face the world with minds neither more braced, nor more trained, nor +more informed than any "uneducated" man's.</p> + +<p>Surely the first condition that should be laid down for the new +education in Europe is that whatever is undertaken must be undertaken in +grim earnest and done. It is ridiculous to talk about the +"character-forming" value of any study that does not go through to an +end. Manifestly Greek must be dropped as a part of the general +curriculum for a highly educated man, for the simple reason that now +there are scarcely any competent teachers, and because the sham of +teaching it partially and pretentiously demoralises student and school +alike. The claim of the clergy and so forth to "know" Greek is one of +the many corrupting lies in British intellectual life. English comic +writers never weary of sneering at the Hindu who claimed to be a "failed +B.A.," but what is the ordinary classical degree man of an English +university but a "failed" Greek scholar? Latin, too, must be either +reduced to the position of a study supplementary to the native tongue, +or brought up to an honest level of efficiency.</p> + +<p>French and German in the case of the English, and English in the case +of the French and Russians, are essentially governess languages; any +intelligent boy or girl from a reasonably prosperous home ought to be +able to read, write, and speak either before fifteen; they are to be +taken by the way rather than regarded as a fundamental part of +education. The French, German, or English literature and literary +development up to and including contemporary work is, of course, an +entirely different matter. But there can be no doubt of the great +educational value of some highly inflected and well-developed language +<i>taught by men to whom it is a genuine means of expression</i>. Educational +needs and public necessity point alike to such languages as Russian or, +in the case of Great Britain, Hindustani to supply this sound training.</p> + +<p>If Great Britain means business after this war, if she is to do her duty +by the Eastern world she controls, she will not stick at the petty +expense of getting a few hundreds of good Russian and Hindu teachers +into the country, and she will place Russian and Hindustani upon at +least an equal footing with Greek in all her university and competitive +examinations. Moreover, it is necessary to set a definite aim of +application before university mathematical teaching. As the first +condition of character-building in all these things, the student should +do what he ostensibly sets out to do. No degree and no position should +be attainable by half accomplishment.</p> + +<p>Of course, languages and mathematics do not by any means round off the +education of a man of the leading classes. There is no doubt much +exercise in their attainment, much value in their possession. But the +essence of the higher education is now, as it always has been, +philosophy; not the antiquated pretence of "reading" Plato and +Aristotle, but the thorough and subtle examination of those great +questions of life that most exercise and strengthen the mind. Surely +that is the essential difference of the "educated" and the "common" man. +The former has thought, and thought out thoroughly and clearly, the +relations of his mind to the universe as a whole, and of himself to the +State and life. A mind untrained in swift and adequate criticism is +essentially an uneducated mind, though it has as many languages as a +courier and as much computation as a bookie.</p> + +<p>And what is our fundamental purpose in all this reform of our higher +education? It is neither knowledge nor technical skill, but to make our +young men talk less and think more, and to think more swiftly, surely, +and exactly. For that we want less debating society and more philosophy, +fewer prizes for forensic ability and more for strength and vigour of +analysis. The central seat of character is the mind. A man of weak +character thinks vaguely, a man of clear intellectual decisions acts +with precision and is free from vacillation. A country of educated men +acts coherently, smites swiftly, plans ahead; a country of confused +education is a country of essential muddle.</p> + +<p>It is as the third factor in education that the handling and experience +of knowledge comes, and of all knowledge that which is most accessible, +most capable of being handled with the greatest variety of educational +benefit, so as to include the criticism of evidence, the massing of +facts, the extraction and testing of generalisations, lies in the two +groups of the biological sciences and the exact sciences. No doubt a +well-planned system of education will permit of much varied +specialisation, will, indeed, specialise those who have special gifts +from a very early age, will have corners for Greek, Hebrew, Sanscrit, +philology, archaeology, Christian theology, and so on, and so on; +nevertheless, for that great mass of sound men of indeterminate +all-round ability who are the intellectual and moral backbone of a +nation, it is in scientific studies that their best training lies, +studies most convenient to undertake and most readily applied in life. +From either of the two groups of the sciences one may pass on to +research or to technical applications leading directly to the public +service. The biological sciences broaden out through psychology and +sociology to the theory and practice of law, and to political life. They +lead also to medical and agricultural administration. The exact sciences +lead to the administrative work of industrialism, and to general +economics.</p> + +<p>These are the broad, clear lines of the educational necessities of a +modern community, plain enough to see, so that every man who is not +blinded by prejudice and self-interest can see them to-day. We have now +before us a phase of opportunity in educational organisation that will +never recur again. Now that the apostolic succession of the old pedagogy +is broken, and the entire system discredited, it seems incredible that +it can ever again be reconstituted in its old seats upon the old lines. +In these raw, harsh days of boundless opportunity, the opportunity of +the new education, because it is the most fundamental, is assuredly the +greatest of all.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="VIII._WHAT_THE_WAR_IS_DOING_FOR_WOMEN"></a>VIII. WHAT THE WAR IS DOING FOR WOMEN</h2> +<br> + +<h3>Section 1</h3> + +<p>To discuss the effect of this war upon the relations of men and women to +each other is to enter upon the analysis of a secular process compared +with which even the vast convulsions and destructions of this world +catastrophe appear only as jolts and incidents and temporary +interruptions. There are certain matters that sustain a perennial +development, that are on a scale beyond the dramatic happenings of +history; wars, the movements of peoples and races, economic changes, +such things may accelerate or stimulate or confuse or delay, but they +cannot arrest the endless thinking out, the growth and perfecting of +ideas, upon the fundamental relationships of human Beings. First among +such eternally progressive issues is religion, the relationship of man +to God; next in importance and still more immediate is the matter of +men's relations to women. In such matters each phase is a new phase; +whatever happens, there is no going back and beginning over again. The +social life, like the religious life, must grow and change until the +human story is at an end.</p> + +<p>So that this war involves, in this as in so many matters, no fundamental +set-back, no reversals nor restorations. At the most it will but realise +things already imagined, release things latent. The nineteenth century +was a period of unprecedented modification of social relationships; but +great as these changes were, they were trivial in comparison with the +changes in religious thought and the criticism of moral ideals. Hell was +the basis of religious thinking in A.D. 1800, and the hangman was at the +back of the law; in 1900 both Hell and the hangman seemed on the verge +of extinction. The creative impulse was everywhere replacing fear and +compulsion in human motives. The opening decade of the twentieth century +was a period of unprecedented abundance in everything necessary to human +life, of vast accumulated resources, of leisure and release. It was +also, because of that and because of the changed social and religious +spirit, a period of great social disorganisation and confused impulses.</p> + +<p>We British can already look back to the opening half of 1914 as to an +age gone for ever. Except that we were all alive then and can remember, +it has become now almost as remote, almost as "historical," as the days +before the French Revolution. Our days, our methods and reactions, are +already so different. The greater part of the freedom of movement, the +travel and going to and fro, the leisure, the plenty and carelessness, +that distinguished early twentieth century life from early nineteenth +century life, has disappeared. Most men are under military discipline, +and every household economises. The whole British people has been +brought up against such elementary realities of need, danger, and +restraint as it never realised before. We discover that we had been +living like Olympians in regard to worldly affairs, we had been +irresponsibles, amateurs. Much of that fatness of life, the wrappings +and trimmings of our life, has been stripped off altogether. That has +not altered the bones of life; it has only made them plainer; but it has +astonished us as much as if looking into a looking-glass one suddenly +found oneself a skeleton. Or a diagram.</p> + +<p>What was going on before this war in the relations of men and women is +going on still, with more rapidity perhaps, and certainly with more +thoroughness. The war is accentuating, developing, defining. Previously +our discussions and poses and movements had merely the air of seeking +to accentuate and define. What was apparently being brought about by +discursive efforts, and in a mighty controversy and confusion, is coming +about now as a matter of course.</p> + +<p>Before the war, in the British community as in most civilised +communities, profound changes were already in progress, changes in the +conditions of women's employment, in the legal relations of husband and +wife, in the political status of women, in the status of illegitimate +children, in manners and customs affecting the sexes. Every civilised +community was exhibiting a falling birth-rate and a falling death-rate, +was changing the quality of its housing, and diminishing domestic labour +by organising supplies and developing, appliances. That is to say, that +primary human unit, the home, was altering in shape and size and +frequency and colour and effect. A steadily increasing proportion of +people were living outside the old family home, the home based on +maternity and offspring, altogether. A number of us were doing our best +to apprehend the summation of all this flood of change. We had a vague +idea that women were somehow being "emancipated," but just what this +word meant and what it implied were matters still under exploration. +Then came the war. For a time it seemed as if all this discussion was at +an end, as if the problem itself had vanished.</p> + +<p>But that was only a temporary distraction of attention. The process of +change swirled into new forms that did not fit very easily into the +accepted formulae, swirled into new forms and continued on its way. If +the discussion ceased for a time, the process of change ceased not at +all. Matters have travelled all the farther in the last two years for +travelling mutely. The questions between men and women are far more +important and far more incessant than the questions between Germans and +the rest of mankind. They are coming back now into the foreground of +human thought, but amended and altered. Our object is to state the +general nature of that alteration. It has still been "emancipation," but +very different in quality from the "emancipation" that was demanded so +loudly and incoherently in that ancient world--of 1913!</p> + +<p>Never had the relations of men and women been so uneasy as they were in +the opening days of 1914. The woman's movement battered and banged +through all our minds. It broke out into that tumult in Great Britain +perhaps ten years ago. When Queen Victoria died it was inaudible; search +<i>Punch</i>, search the newspapers of that tranquil age. In 1914 it kicked +up so great a dust that the Germans counted on the Suffragettes as one +of the great forces that were to paralyse England in the war.</p> + +<p>The extraordinary thing was that the feminist movement was never clearly +defined during all the time of its maximum violence. We begin to +perceive in the retrospect that the movement was multiple, made up of a +number of very different movements interwoven. It seemed to concentrate +upon the Vote; but it was never possible to find even why women wanted +the vote. Some, for example, alleged that it was because they were like +men, and some because they were entirely different. The broad facts that +one could not mistake were a vast feminine discontent and a vast display +of feminine energy. What had brought that about?</p> + +<p>Two statistical factors are to be considered here. One of these was the +steady decline in the marriage rate, and the increasing proportion of +unmarried women of all classes, but particularly of the more educated +classes, requiring employment. The second was the fall in the +birth-rate, the diminution in size of the average family, the increase +of sterile unions, and the consequent release of a considerable +proportion of the energy of married women. Co-operating with these +factors of release were the economic elaborations that were improving +the appliances of domestic life, replacing the needle by the sewing +machine, the coal fire and lamp by gas and electricity, the dustpan and +brush by the pneumatic carpet cleaner, and taking out of the house into +the shop and factory the baking, much of the cooking, the making of +clothes, the laundry work, and so forth, that had hitherto kept so many +women at home and too busy to think. The care of even such children as +there were was also less arduous; crêche and school held out hands for +them, ready to do even that duty better.</p> + +<p>Side by side with these releases from duty was a rise in the standard of +education that was stimulating the minds and imaginations of woman +beyond a point where the needle--even if there had been any use for the +needle--can be an opiate. Moreover, the world was growing richer, and +growing richer in such a way that not only were leisure and desire +increasing, but, because of increasingly scientific methods of +production, the need in many branches of employment for any but very +keen and able workers was diminishing. So that simultaneously the world, +that vanished world before 1914, was releasing and disengaging enormous +volumes of untrained and unassigned feminine energy and also diminishing +the usefulness of unskilful effort in every department of life. There +was no demand to meet the supply. These were the underlying processes +that produced the feminist outbreak of the decade before the war.</p> + +<p>Now the debate between the sexes is a perennial. It began while we were +still in the trees. It has its stereotyped accusations; its stereotyped +repartees. The Canterbury Pilgrims had little to learn from Christabel +Pankhurst. Man and woman in that duet struggle perpetually for the upper +hand, and the man restrains the woman and the woman resents the man. In +every age some voice has been heard asserting, like Plato, that the +woman is a human being; and the prompt answer has been, "but such a +different human being." Wherever there is a human difference fair play +is difficult, the universal clash of races witnesses to that, and sex is +the greatest of human differences.</p> + +<p>But the general trend of mankind towards intelligence and reason has +been also a trend away from a superstitious treatment of sexual +questions and a recognition, so to speak, that a woman's "a man for a' +that," that she is indeed as entitled to an independent soul and a +separate voice in collective affairs. As brain has counted for more and +more in the human effort and brute strength and the advantage of not +bearing children for less and less, as man has felt a greater need for a +companion and a lesser need for a slave, and as the increase of food and +the protection of the girl from premature child-bearing has approximated +the stature and strength and enterprise of the woman more and more to +that of the man, this secular emancipation of the human female from the +old herd subordination and servitude to the patriarchal male has gone +on. Essentially the secular process has been an equalising process. It +was merely the exaggeration of its sustaining causes during the plenty +and social and intellectual expansion of the last half-century that had +stimulated this secular process to the pitch of crisis.</p> + +<p>There have always been two extreme aspects of the sexual debate. There +have always been the oversexed women who wanted to be treated primarily +as women, and the women who were irritated and bored by being treated +primarily as women. There have always been those women who wanted to +get, like Joan of Arc, into masculine attire, and the school of the +"mystical darlings." There have always been the women who wanted to +share men's work and the women who wanted to "inspire" it--the mates and +the mistresses. Of course, the mass of women lies between these +extremes. But it is possible, nevertheless, to discuss this question as +though it were a conflict of two sharply opposed ideals. It is +convenient to write as if there were just these two sorts of women +because so one can get a sharp definition in the picture. The ordinary +woman fluctuates between the two, turns now to the Western ideal of +citizenship and now to the Eastern of submission. These ideals fight not +only in human society, but in every woman's career.</p> + +<p>Chitra in Rabindranath Tagore's play, for example, tried both aspects of +the woman's life, and Tagore is at one with Plato in preferring the +Rosalind type to the houri. And with him I venture to think is the clear +reason of mankind. The real "emancipation" to which reason and the trend +of things makes is from the yielding to the energetic side of a woman's +disposition, from beauty enthroned for love towards the tall, +weather-hardened woman with a spear, loving her mate as her mate loves +her, and as sexless as a man in all her busy hours.</p> + +<p>But it was not simply the energies that tended towards this particular +type that were set free during the latter half of the nineteenth +century. Every sort of feminine energy was set free. And it was not +merely the self-reliant, independence-seeking women who were +discontented. The ladies who specialised in feminine arts and graces and +mysteries were also dissatisfied. They found they were not important +enough. The former type found itself insufficiently respected, and the +latter type found itself insufficiently adored. The two mingled their +voices in the most confusing way in the literature of the suffrage +movement before the war. The two tendencies mingle confusingly in the +minds of the women that this movement was stirring up to think. The Vote +became the symbol for absolutely contradictory things; there is scarcely +a single argument for it in suffragist literature that cannot be +completely negatived out of suffragist literature.</p> + +<p>For example, compare the writings of Miss Cicely Hamilton, the +distinguished actress, with the publications of the Pankhurst family. +The former expresses a claim that, except for prejudice, a woman is as +capable a citizen as a man and differing only in her sex; the latter +consist of a long rhapsody upon the mystical superiorities of women and +the marvellous benefits mankind will derive from handing things over to +these sacred powers. The former would get rid of sex from most human +affairs; the latter would make what our Georgian grandfathers called +"The Sex" rule the world.</p> + +<p>Or compare, say, the dark coquettings of Miss Elizabeth Robins' "Woman's +Secret" with the virile common sense of that most brilliant young +writer, Miss Rebecca West, in her bitter onslaught on feminine +limitations in the opening chapters of "The World's Worst Failure." The +former is an extravagance of sexual mysticism. Man can never understand +women. Women always hide deep and wonderful things away beyond masculine +discovery. Men do not even suspect. Some day, perhaps--It is someone +peeping from behind a curtain, and inviting men in provocative tones to +come and play catch in a darkened harem. The latter is like some gallant +soldier cursing his silly accoutrements. It is a hearty outbreak against +that apparent necessity for elegance and sexual specialisation that +undercuts so much feminine achievement, that reduces so much feminine +art and writing to vapidity, and holds back women from the face of +danger and brave and horrible deaths. It is West to Miss Robins' East. +And yet I believe I am right in saying that all these four women +writers have jostled one another upon suffrage platforms, and that they +all suffered blows and injuries in the same cause, during the various +riots and conflicts that occurred in London in the course of the great +agitation. It was only when the agitation of the Pankhurst family, aided +by Miss Robins' remarkable book "Where are you going to ...?" took a +form that threatened to impose the most extraordinary restrictions on +the free movements of women, and to establish a sort of universal purdah +of hostility and suspicion against those degraded creatures, those +stealers and destroyers of women, "the men," that the British feminist +movement displayed any tendency to dissociate into its opposed and +divergent strands.</p> + +<p>It is a little detail, but a very significant one in this connection, +that the committee that organised the various great suffrage processions +in London were torn by dispute about the dresses of the processionists. +It was urged that a "masculine style of costume" discredited the +movement, and women were urged to dress with a maximum of feminine +charm. Many women obtained finery they could ill afford, to take part in +these demonstrations, and minced their steps as womanly as possible to +freedom....</p> + +<p>It would be easy to overstate the efflorescence of distinctively +feminine emotion, dressiness, mysticism, and vanity upon the suffrage +movement. Those things showed for anyone to see. This was the froth of +the whirlpool. What did not show was the tremendous development of the +sense of solidarity among women. Everybody knew that women had been +hitting policemen at Westminster; it was not nearly so showy a fact that +women of title, working women, domestic servants, tradesmen's wives, +professional workers, had all been meeting together and working together +in a common cause, working with an unprecedented capacity and an +unprecedented disregard of social barriers. One noted the nonsensical +by-play of the movement; the way in which women were accustoming +themselves to higher standards of achievement was not so immediately +noticeable. That a small number of women were apparently bent on +rendering the Vote impossible by a campaign of violence and malicious +mischief very completely masked the fact that a very great number of +girls and young women no longer considered it seemly to hang about at +home trying by a few crude inducements to tempt men to marry them, but +were setting out very seriously and capably to master the young man's +way of finding a place for oneself in the world. Beneath the dust and +noise realities were coming about that the dust and noise entirely +failed to represent. We know that some women were shrieking for the +Vote; we did not realise that a generation of women was qualifying for +it.</p> + +<p>The war came, the jolt of an earthquake, to throw things into their +proper relationships.</p> + +<p>The immediate result was the disappearance of the militant suffragists +from public view for a time, into which the noisier section hastened to +emerge in full scream upon the congenial topic of War Babies. "Men," +those dreadful creatures, were being camped and quartered all over the +country. It followed, from all the social principles known to Mrs. and +Miss Pankhurst, that it was necessary to provide for an enormous number +of War Babies. Subscriptions were invited. Statisticians are still +looking rather perplexedly for those War Babies; the illegitimate +birth-rate has fallen, and what has become of the subscriptions I do not +know. <i>The Suffragette</i> rechristened itself <i>Britannia</i>, dropped the War +Baby agitation, and, after an interlude of self-control, broke out into +denunciations, first of this public servant and then of that, as +traitors and German spies. Finally, it discovered a mare's nest in the +case of Sir Edward Grey that led to its suppression, and the last I +have from this misleading and unrepresentative feminist faction is the +periodic appearance of a little ill-printed sheet of abuse about the +chief Foreign Office people, resembling in manner and appearance the +sort of denunciatory letter, at once suggestive and evasive, that might +be written by the curate's discharged cook. And with that the aggressive +section of the suffragist movement seems to have petered out, leaving +the broad reality of feminine emancipation to go on in a beneficent +silence.</p> + +<p>There can be no question that the behaviour of the great mass of women +in Great Britain has not simply exceeded expectation but hope. And there +can be as little doubt that the suffrage question, in spite of the +self-advertising violence of its extravagant section, did contribute +very materially to build up the confidence, the willingness to undertake +responsibility and face hardship, that has been so abundantly displayed +by every class of woman. It is not simply that there has been enough +women and to spare for hospital work and every sort of relief and +charitable service; that sort of thing has been done before, that was in +the tradition of womanhood. It is that at every sort of occupation, +clerking, shop-keeping, railway work, automobile driving, agricultural +work, police work, they have been found efficient beyond precedent and +intelligent beyond precedent. And in the munition factories, in the +handling of heavy and often difficult machinery, and in adaptability and +inventiveness and enthusiasm and steadfastness their achievement has +been astonishing. More particularly in relation to intricate mechanical +work is their record remarkable and unexpected.</p> + +<p>There is scarcely a point where women, having been given a chance, have +not more than made good. They have revolutionised the estimate of their +economic importance, and it is scarcely too much to say that when, in +the long run, the military strength of the Allies bears down the +strength of Germany, it will be this superiority of our women which +enables us to pit a woman at--the censorship will object to exact +geography upon this point--against a man at Essen which has tipped the +balance of this war.</p> + +<p>Those women have won the vote. Not the most frantic outbursts of +militancy after this war can prevent them getting it. The girls who have +faced death and wounds so gallantly in our cordite factories--there is a +not inconsiderable list of dead and wounded from those places--have +killed for ever the poor argument that women should not vote because +they had no military value. Indeed, they have killed every argument +against their subjection. And while they do these things, that paragon +of the virtues of the old type, that miracle of domestic obedience, the +German <i>haus-frau</i>, the faithful Gretchen, riots for butter.</p> + +<p>And as I have before remarked, the Germans counted on the suffragettes +as one of the great forces that were to paralyse England in this war.</p> + +<p>It is not simply that the British women have so bountifully produced +intelligence and industry; that does not begin their record. They have +been willing to go dowdy. The mass of women in Great Britain are wearing +the clothes of 1914. In 1913 every girl and woman one saw in the streets +of London had an air of doing her best to keep in the fashion. Now they +are for the most part as carelessly dressed as a busy business man or a +clever young student might have been. They are none the less pretty for +that, and far more beautiful. But the fashions have floated away to +absurdity. Every now and then through the austere bustle of London in +war time drifts a last practitioner of the "eternal feminine"--with the +air of a foreign visitor, with the air of devotion to some peculiar +cult. She has very high-heeled boots; she shows a leg, she has a short +skirt with a peculiar hang, due no doubt to mysteries about the waist; +she wears a comic little hat over one brow; there is something of +Columbine about her, something of the Watteau shepherdess, something of +a vivandiere, something of every age but the present age. Her face, +subject to the strange dictates of the mode, is smooth like the back of +a spoon, with small features and little whisker-like curls before the +ears such as butcher-boys used to wear half a century ago. Even so, she +dare not do this thing alone. Something in khaki is with her, to justify +her. You are to understand that this strange rig is for seeing him off +or giving him a good time during his leave. Sometimes she is quite +elderly, sometimes nothing khaki is to be got, and the pretence that +this is desired of her wears thin. Still, the type will out.</p> + +<p>She does not pass with impunity, the last exponent of true feminine +charm. The vulgar, the street boy, have evolved one of those strange +sayings that have the air of being fragments from some lost and +forgotten chant:</p> + +<blockquote> +"She's the Army Contractor's Only Daughter,<br> +Spending it now."<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>Or simply, "Spending it now."</p> + +<p>She does not pass with impunity, but she passes. She makes her stilted +passage across the arena upon which the new womanhood of Western Europe +shows its worth. It is an exit. There is likely to be something like a +truce in the fashions throughout Europe for some years. It is in America +if anywhere that the holy fires of smartness and the fashion will be +kept alive....</p> + +<p>And so we come to prophecy.</p> + +<p>I do not believe that this invasion by women of a hundred employments +hitherto closed to them is a temporary arrangement that will be reversed +after the war. It is a thing that was going on, very slowly, it is true, +and against much prejudice and opposition, before the war, but it was +going on; it is in the nature of things. These women no doubt enter +these employments as substitutes, but not usually as inferior +substitutes; in quite a number of cases they are as good as men, and in +many they are not underselling, they are drawing men's pay. What reason +is there to suppose that they will relapse into a state of superfluous +energy after the war? The war has merely brought about, with the +rapidity of a landslide, a state of affairs for which the world was +ripe. The world after the war will have to adjust itself to this +extension of women's employment, and to this increase in the proportion +of self-respecting, self-supporting women.</p> + +<p>Contributing very largely to the establishment of this greatly enlarged +class of independent women will be the great shortage for the next +decade of marriageable men, due to the killing and disablement of the +war. The women of the next decades will not only be able to get along +economically without marriage, but they will find it much more difficult +to marry. It will also probably be a period in which a rise in prices +may, as it usually does, precede the compensating rise in wages. It may +be that for some years it will be more difficult to maintain a family. +This will be a third factor in the fixation of this class of bachelor +women.</p> + +<p>Various writers, brooding over the coming shortage of men, have jumped +to the conclusion that polygamy is among the probabilities of the near +future. They write in terms of real or affected alarm for which there is +no justification; they wallow in visions of Germany "legalising" +polygamy, and see Berlin seeking recuperation, in man power by +converting herself into another Salt Lake City. But I do not think that +Germany, in the face of the economic ring that the Allies will certainly +draw about her, is likely to desire a very great increase in population +for the next few years; I do not see any great possibility of a +specially rich class capable of maintaining numerous wives being +sustained by the impoverished and indebted world of Europe, nor the +sources from which a supply of women preferring to become constituents +in a polygamous constellation rather than self-supporting freewomen is +to be derived.</p> + +<p>The temperamental dislike of intelligent women to polygamy is at least +as strong as a man's objection to polyandry. Polygamy, open or hidden, +flourishes widely only where there are women to be bought. Moreover, +there are considerable obstacles in religion and custom to be overcome +by the innovating polygamist--even in Germany. It might mean a breach of +the present good relations between Germany and the Vatican. The relative +inferiority of the tradition of the German to that of most other +European women, its relative disposition towards feminine servitude, is +no doubt a consideration on the other scale of this discussion, but I do +not think it is one heavy enough to tilt back the beam.</p> + +<p>So far from a great number of men becoming polygamists, I think it would +be possible to show cause for supposing that an increasing proportion +will cease even to be monogamists. The romantic excitements of the war +have produced a temporary rise in the British marriage rate; but before +the war it had been falling slowly and the average age at marriage had +been rising, and it is quite possible that this process will be +presently resumed and, as a new generation grows up to restore the +balance of the sexes, accelerated.</p> + +<p>We conclude, therefore, that this increase in the class of economically +independent bachelor women that is now taking place is a permanent +increase. It is probably being reinforced by a considerable number of +war widows who will not remarry. We have to consider in what directions +this mass of capable, intelligent, energetic, undomesticated freewomen +is likely to develop, what its effect will be on social usage, and +particularly how it will react upon the lives of the married women about +them. Because, as we have already pointed out in this chapter, the +release of feminine energy upon which the feminist problem depends is +twofold, being due not only to the increased unmarriedness of women +through the disproportion of the sexes and the rise in the age of +marriage, but also to the decreased absorption of married women in +domestic duties. A woman, from the point of view of this discussion, is +not "married and done for," as she used to be. She is not so +extensively and completely married. Her large and increasing leisure +remains in the problem.</p> + +<p>The influence of this coming body of freewomen upon the general social +atmosphere will be, I venture to think, liberalising and relaxing in +certain directions and very bracing in others. This new type of women +will want to go about freely without an escort, to be free to travel +alone, take rooms in hotels, sit in restaurants, and so forth. Now, as +the women of the past decade showed, there are for a woman two quite +antagonistic ways of going about alone. Nothing showed the duplicate +nature of the suffragist movement more than the great variety of +deportment of women in the London streets during that time. There were +types that dressed neatly and quietly and went upon their business with +intent and preoccupied faces. Their intention was to mingle as +unobtrusively as possible into the stream of business, to be as far as +possible for the ordinary purposes of traffic "men in a world of men." A +man could speak to such women as he spoke to another man, without +suspicion, could, for example, ask his way and be directed without being +charged with annoying or accosting a delicate female.</p> + +<p>At the other extreme there was a type of young woman who came into the +streets like something precious that has got loose. It dressed itself +as feminine loveliness; it carried sex like a banner and like a +challenge. Its mind was fully prepared by the Pankhurst literature for +insult. It swept past distressed manhood imputing motives. It was pure +hareem, and the perplexed masculine intelligence could never determine +whether it was out for a demonstration or whether it was out for a +spree. Its motives in thus marching across the path of feminine +emancipation were probably more complicated and confused than that +alternative suggests, and sheer vanity abounded in the mixture. But +undoubtedly that extremity is the vanishing extremity of these things. +The new freewoman is going to be a grave and capable being, soberly +dressed, and imposing her own decency and neutrality of behaviour upon +the men she meets. And along the line of sober costume and simple and +restrained behaviour that the freewoman is marking out, the married +woman will also escape to new measures of freedom.</p> + +<p>I do not believe that among women of the same social origins and the +same educational quality there can exist side by side entirely distinct +schools of costume, deportment, and behaviour based on entirely +divergent views of life. I do not think that men can be trained to +differentiate between different sorts of women, sorts of women they will +often be meeting simultaneously, and to treat this one with frankness +and fellowship and that one with awe passion and romantic old-world +gallantry. All sorts of intermediate types--the majority of women will +be intermediate types--will complicate the problem. This conflict of the +citizen-woman ideal with the loveliness-woman ideal, which was breaking +out very plainly in the British suffrage movement before the war, will +certainly return after the war, and I have little doubt which way the +issue will fall. The human being is going to carry it against the sexual +being. The struggle is going to be extensive and various and prolonged, +but in the serious years ahead the serious type must, I feel, win. The +plain, well-made dress will oust the ribbon and the decolletage.</p> + +<p>In every way the war is accelerating the emancipation of women from +sexual specialisation. It is facilitating their economic emancipation. +It is liberating types that will inevitably destroy both the "atmosphere +of gallantry" which is such a bar to friendliness between people of +opposite sexes and that atmosphere of hostile distrust which is its +counterpart in the minds of the over-sexual suffragettes. It is +arresting the change of fashions and simplifying manners.</p> + +<p>In another way also it is working to the same end. That fall in the +birth-rate which has been so marked a feature in the social development +of all modern states has become much more perceptible since the war +began to tell upon domestic comfort. There is a full-cradle agitation +going on in Germany to check this decline; German mothers are being +urged not to leave the Crown Prince of 1930 or 1940 without the +necessary material for glory at some fresh Battle of Verdun. I doubt the +zeal of their response. But everywhere the war signifies economic stress +which must necessarily continue long after the war is over, and in the +present state of knowledge that stress means fewer children. The family, +already light, will grow lighter. This means that marriage, although it +may be by no means less emotionally sacred, will become a lighter thing.</p> + +<p>Once, to be married was a woman's whole career. Household cares, a dozen +children, and she was consumed. All her romances ended in marriage. All +a decent man's romance ended there, too. She proliferated and he toiled, +and when the married couple had brought up some of their children and +buried the others, and blessed their first grandchildren, life was +over.</p> + +<p>Now, to be married is an incident in a woman's career, as in a man's. +There is not the same necessity of that household, not the same close +tie; the married woman remains partially a freewoman and assimilates +herself to the freewoman. There is an increasing disposition to group +solitary children and to delegate their care to specially qualified +people, and this is likely to increase, because the high earning power +of young women will incline them to entrust their children to others, +and because a shortage of men and an excess of widows will supply other +women willing to undertake that care. The more foolish women will take +these releases as a release into levity, but the common sense of the +newer types of women will come to the help of men in recognising the +intolerable nuisance of this prolongation of flirting and charming on +the part of people who have had what should be a satisfying love.</p> + +<p>Nor will there be much wealth or superfluity to make levity possible and +desirable. Winsome and weak womanhood will be told bluntly by men and +women alike that it is a bore. The frou-frou of skirts, the delicate +mysteries of the toilette, will cease to thrill any but the very young +men. Marriage, deprived of its bonds of material necessity, will demand +a closer and closer companionship as its justification and excuse. A +marriage that does not ripen into a close personal friendship between +two equals will be regarded with increasing definiteness as an +unsatisfactory marriage.</p> + +<p>These things are not stated here as being desirable or undesirable. This +is merely an attempt to estimate the drift and tendency of the time as +it has been accentuated by the war. It works out to the realisation that +marriage is likely to count for less and less as a state and for more +and more as a personal relationship. It is likely to be an affair of +diminishing public and increasing private importance. People who marry +are likely to remain, so far as practical ends go, more detached and +separable. The essential link will be the love and affection and not the +home.</p> + +<p>With that go certain logical consequences. The first is that the +circumstances of the unmarried mother will resemble more than they have +hitherto done those of many married mothers; the harsh lines once drawn +between them will dissolve. This will fall in with the long manifest +tendency in modern society to lighten the disadvantages (in the case of +legacy duties, for example) and stigma laid upon illegitimate children. +And a type of marriage where personal compatibility has come to be +esteemed the fundamental thing will be altogether more amenable to +divorce than the old union which was based upon the kitchen and the +nursery, and the absence of any care, education, or security for +children beyond the range of the parental household. Marriage will not +only be lighter, but more dissoluble.</p> + +<p>To summarise all that has gone before, this war is accelerating rather +than deflecting the stream of tendency, and is bringing us rapidly to a +state of affairs in which women will be much more definitely independent +of their sexual status, much less hampered in their self-development, +and much more nearly equal to men than has ever been known before in the +whole history of mankind....</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="IX._THE_NEW_MAP_OF_EUROPE"></a>IX. THE NEW MAP OF EUROPE</h2> +<br> + +<h3>Section 1</h3> + +<p>In this chapter it is proposed to embark upon what may seem now, with +the Great War still in progress and still undecided, the most hopeless +of all prophetic adventures. This is to speculate upon the redrawing of +the map of Europe after the war. But because the detailed happenings and +exact circumstances of the ending of the war are uncertain, they need +not alter the inevitable broad conclusion. I have already discussed that +conclusion, and pointed out that the war has become essentially a war of +mutual exhaustion. This does not mean, as some hasty readers may assume, +that I foretell a "draw." We may be all white and staggering, but +Germany is, I believe, fated to go down first. She will make the first +advances towards peace; she will ultimately admit defeat.</p> + +<p>But I do want to insist that by that time every belligerent, and not +simply Germany, will be exhausted to a pitch of extreme reasonableness. +There will be no power left as Germany was left in 1871, in a state of +"freshness" and a dictatorial attitude. That is to say they will all be +gravitating, not to triumphs, but to such a settlement as seems to +promise the maximum of equilibrium in the future.</p> + +<p>If towards the end of the war the United States should decide, after +all, to abandon their present attitude of superior comment and throw +their weight in favour of such a settlement as would make the +recrudescence of militarism impossible, the general exhaustion may give +America a relative importance far beyond any influence she could exert +at the present time. In the end, America may have the power to insist +upon almost vital conditions in the settlement; though whether she will +have the imaginative force and will is, of course, quite another +question.</p> + +<p>And before I go on to speculate about the actual settlement, there are +one or two generalisations that it may be interesting to try over. Law +is a thin wash that we paint over the firm outlines of reality, and the +treaties and agreements of emperors and kings and statesmen have little +of the permanence of certain more fundamental human realities. I was +looking the other day at Sir Mark Sykes' "The Caliph's Inheritance," +which contains a series of coloured maps of the political boundaries of +south-western Asia for the last three thousand years. The shapes and +colours come and go--now it is Persia, now it is Macedonia, now the +Eastern Empire, now the Arab, now the Turk who is ascendant. The colours +change as if they were in a kaleidoscope; they advance, recede, split, +vanish. But through all that time there exists obstinately an Armenia, +an essential Persia, an Arabia; they, too, advance or recede a little. I +do not claim that they are eternal things, but they are far more +permanent things than any rulers or empires; they are rooted to the +ground by a peasantry, by a physical and temperamental attitude. Apart +from political maps of mankind, there are natural maps of mankind. I +find it, too, in Europe; the monarchs splash the water and break up the +mirror in endless strange shapes; nevertheless, always it is tending +back to its enduring forms; always it is gravitating back to a Spain, to +a Gaul, to an Italy, to a Serbo-Croatia, to a Bulgaria, to a Germany, to +a Poland. Poland and Armenia and Egypt destroyed, subjugated, +invincible, I would take as typical of what I mean by the natural map of +mankind.</p> + +<p>Let me repeat again that I do not assert there is an eternal map. It +does change; there have been times--the European settlement of America +and Siberia, for example, the Arabic sweep across North Africa, the +invasion of Britain by the Low German peoples--when it has changed very +considerably in a century or so; but at its swiftest it still takes +generations to change. The gentlemen who used to sit in conferences and +diets, and divide up the world ever and again before the nineteenth +century, never realised this. It is only within the last hundred years +that mankind has begun to grasp the fact that one of the first laws of +political stability is to draw your political boundaries along the lines +of the natural map of mankind.</p> + +<p>Now the nineteenth century phrased this conception by talking about the +"principle of nationality." Such interesting survivals of the nineteenth +century as Mr. C.R. Buxton still talk of settling human affairs by that +"principle." But unhappily for him the world is not so simply divided. +There are tribal regions with no national sense. There are extensive +regions of the earth's surface where the population is not homogeneous, +where people of different languages or different incompatible creeds +live village against village, a kind of human emulsion, incapable of +any true mixture or unity. Consider, for example, Central Africa, +Tyrone, Albania, Bombay, Constantinople or Transylvania. Here are +regions and cities with either no nationality or with as much +nationality as a patchwork quilt has colour....</p> + +<p>Now so far as the homogeneous regions of the world go, I am quite +prepared to sustain the thesis that they can only be tranquil, they can +only develop their possibilities freely and be harmless to their +neighbours, when they are governed by local men, by men of the local +race, religion and tradition, and with a form of government that, unlike +a monarchy or a plutocracy, does not crystallise commercial or national +ambition. So far I go with those who would appeal to the "principle of +nationality."</p> + +<p>But I would stipulate, further, that it would enormously increase the +stability of the arrangement if such "nations" could be grouped together +into "United States" wherever there were possibilities of inter-state +rivalries and commercial friction. Where, however, one deals with a +region of mixed nationality, there is need of a subtler system of +adjustments. Such a system has already been worked out in the case of +Switzerland, where we have the community not in countries but cantons, +each with its own religion, its culture and self-government, and all at +peace under a polyglot and impartial common government. It is as plain +as daylight to anyone who is not blinded by patriotic or private +interests that such a country as Albania, which is mono-lingual indeed, +but hopelessly divided religiously, will never be tranquil, never +contented, unless it is under a cantonal system, and that the only +solution of the Irish difficulty along the belt between Ulster and +Catholic Ireland lies in the same arrangement.</p> + +<p>Then; thirdly, there are the regions and cities possessing no +nationality, such as Constantinople or Bombay, which manifestly +appertain not to one nation but many; the former to all the Black Sea +nations, the latter to all India. Disregarding ambitions and traditions, +it is fairly obvious that such international places would be best under +the joint control of, and form a basis of union between, all the peoples +affected.</p> + +<p>Now it is suggested here that upon these threefold lines it is possible +to work out a map of the world of maximum contentment and stability, and +that there will be a gravitation of all other arrangements, all empires +and leagues and what not, towards this rational and natural map of +mankind. This does not imply that that map will ultimately assert +itself, but that it will always be tending to assert itself. It will +obsess ostensible politics.</p> + +<p>I do not pretend to know with any degree of certainty what peculiar +forms of muddle and aggression may not record themselves upon the maps +of 2200; I do not certainly know whether mankind will be better off or +worse off then, more or less civilised; but I do know, with a very +considerable degree of certainty, that in A.D. 2200 there will still be +a France, an Ireland, a Germany, a Jugo-Slav region, a Constantinople, a +Rajputana, and a Bengal. I do not mean that these are absolutely fixed +things; they may have receded or expanded. But these are the more +permanent things; these are the field, the groundwork, the basic +reality; these are fundamental forces over which play the ambitions, +treacheries, delusions, traditions, tyrannies of international politics. +All boundaries will tend to reveal these fundamental forms as all +clothing tends to reveal the body. You may hide the waist; you will only +reveal the shoulders the more. You may mask, you may muffle the body; it +is still alive inside, and the ultimate determining thing.</p> + +<p>And, having premised this much, it is possible to take up the problem of +the peace of 1917 or 1918, or whenever it is to be, with some sense of +its limitations and superficiality.</p> +<br> + +<h3>Section 2</h3> + +<p>We have already hazarded the prophecy that after a long war of general +exhaustion Germany will be the first to realise defeat. This does not +mean that she will surrender unconditionally, but that she will be +reduced to bargaining to see how much she must surrender, and what she +may hold. It is my impression that she will be deserted by Bulgaria, and +that Turkey will be out of the fighting before the end. But these are +chancy matters. Against Germany there will certainly be the three great +allies, France, Russia and Britain, and almost certainly Japan will be +with them. The four will probably have got to a very complete and +detailed understanding among themselves. Italy--in, I fear, a slightly +detached spirit--will sit at the board. Hungary will be present, +sitting, so to speak, amidst the decayed remains of Austria. Roumania, a +little out of breath through hurrying at the last, may be present as the +latest ally of Italy. The European neutrals will be at least present in +spirit; their desires will be acutely felt; but it is doubtful if the +United States will count for all that they might in the decision. Such +weight as America chooses to exercise--would that she would choose to +exercise more!--will probably be on the side of the rational and natural +settlement of the world.</p> + +<p>Now the most important thing of all at this settlement will be the +temper and nature of the Germany with which the Allies will be dealing.</p> + +<p>Let us not be blinded by the passions of war into confusing a people +with its government and the artificial Kultur of a brief century. There +is a Germany, great and civilised, a decent and admirable people, masked +by Imperialism, blinded by the vanity of the easy victories of half a +century ago, wrapped in illusion. How far will she be chastened and +disillusioned by the end of this war?</p> + +<p>The terms of peace depend enormously upon the answer to that question. +If we take the extremest possibility, and suppose a revolution in +Germany or in South Germany, and the replacement of the Hohenzollerns in +all or part of Germany by a Republic, then I am convinced that for +republican Germany there would be not simply forgiveness, but a warm +welcome back to the comity of nations. The French, British, Belgians and +Italians, and every civilised force in Russia would tumble over one +another in their eager greeting of this return to sanity.</p> + +<p>If we suppose a less extreme but more possible revolution, taking the +form of an inquiry into the sanity of the Kaiser and his eldest son, and +the establishment of constitutional safeguards for the future, that also +would bring about an extraordinary modification of the resolution of the +Pledged Allies. But no ending to this war, no sort of settlement, will +destroy the antipathy of the civilised peoples for the violent, +pretentious, sentimental and cowardly imperialism that has so far +dominated Germany. All Europe outside Germany now hates and dreads the +Hohenzollerns. No treaty of peace can end that hate, and so long as +Germany sees fit to identify herself with Hohenzollern dreams of empire +and a warfare of massacre and assassination, there must be war +henceforth, open, or but thinly masked, against Germany. It will be but +the elementary common sense of the situation for all the Allies to plan +tariffs, exclusions, special laws against German shipping and +shareholders and immigrants for so long a period as every German remains +a potential servant of that system.</p> + +<p>Whatever Germany may think of the Hohenzollerns, the world outside +Germany regards them as the embodiment of homicidal nationalism. And +the settlement of Europe after the war, if it is to be a settlement with +the Hohenzollerns and not with the German people, must include the +virtual disarming of those robber murderers against any renewal of their +attack. It would be the most obvious folly to stop anywhere short of +that. With Germany we would welcome peace to-morrow; we would welcome +her shipping on the seas and her flag about the world; against the +Hohenzollerns it must obviously be war to the bitter end.</p> + +<p>But the ultimate of all sane European policy, as distinguished from +oligarchic and dynastic foolery, is the establishment of the natural map +of Europe. There exists no school of thought that can claim a moment's +consideration among the Allies which aims at the disintegration of the +essential Germany or the subjugation of any Germans to an alien rule. +Nor does anyone grudge Germany wealth, trade, shipping, or anything else +that goes with the politician's phrase of "legitimate expansion" for its +own sake. If we do now set our minds to deprive Germany of these things +in their fullness, it is in exactly the same spirit as that in which one +might remove that legitimate and peaceful implement, a bread knife, +from the hand of a homicidal maniac. Let but Germany cure herself of her +Hohenzollern taint, and the world will grudge her wealth and economic +pre-eminence as little as it grudges wealth and economic pre-eminence to +the United States.</p> + +<p>Now the probabilities of a German revolution open questions too complex +and subtle for our present speculation. I would merely remark in passing +that in Great Britain at least those possibilities seem to me to be +enormously underrated. For our present purpose it will be most +convenient to indicate a sort of maximum and minimum, depending upon the +decision of Germany to be entirely Hohenzollern or wholly or in part +European. But in either case we are going to assume that it is Germany +which has been most exhausted by the war, and which is seeking peace +from the Allies, who have also, we will assume, excellent internal +reasons for desiring it.</p> + +<p>With the Hohenzollerns it is mere nonsense to dream of any enduring +peace, but whether we are making a lasting and friendly peace with +Germany or merely a sort of truce of military operations that will be no +truce in the economic war against Hohenzollern resources, the same +essential idea will, I think, guide all the peace-desiring Powers. They +will try to draw the boundaries as near as they can to those of the +natural map of mankind.</p> + +<p>Then, writing as an Englishman, my first thought of the European map is +naturally of Belgium. Only absolute smashing defeat could force either +Britain or France to consent to anything short of the complete +restoration of Belgium. Rather than give that consent they will both +carry the war to at present undreamt-of extremities. Belgium must be +restored; her neutrality must be replaced by a defensive alliance with +her two Western Allies; and if the world has still to reckon with +Hohenzollerns, then her frontier must be thrust forward into the +adjacent French-speaking country so as to minimise the chances of any +second surprise.</p> + +<p>It is manifest that every frontier that gives upon the Hohenzollerns +must henceforth be entrenched line behind line, and held permanently by +a garrison ready for any treachery, and it becomes of primary importance +that the Franco-Belgian line should be as short and strong as possible. +Aix, which Germany has made a mere jumping-off place for aggressions, +should clearly be held by Belgium against a Hohenzollern Empire, and the +fortified and fiscal frontier would run from it southward to include the +Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, with its French sympathies and traditions, +in the permanent alliance. It is quite impossible to leave this +ambiguous territory as it was before the war, with its railway in German +hands and its postal and telegraphic service (since 1913) under +Hohenzollern control. It is quite impossible to hand over this strongly +anti-Prussian population to Hohenzollern masters.</p> + +<p>But an Englishman must needs write with diffidence upon this question of +the Western boundary. It is clear that all the boundaries of 1914 from +Aix to Bale are a part of ancient history. No "as you were" is possible +there. And it is not the business of anyone in Great Britain to redraw +them. That task on our side lies between France and Belgium. The +business of Great Britain in the matter is as plain as daylight. It is +to support to her last man and her last ounce of gold those new +boundaries her allies consider essential to their comfort and security.</p> + +<p>But I do not see how France, unless she is really convinced she is +beaten, can content herself with anything less than a strong +Franco-Belgian frontier from Aix, that will take in at least Metz and +Saarburg. She knows best the psychology of the lost provinces, and what +amount of annexation will spell weakness or strength. If she demands +all Alsace-Lorraine back from the Hohenzollerns, British opinion is +resolved to support her, and to go through with this struggle until she +gets it. To guess at the direction of the new line is not to express a +British opinion, but to speculate upon the opinion of France. After the +experience of Luxembourg and Belgium no one now dreams of a neutralised +buffer State. What does not become French or Belgian of the Rhineland +will remain German--for ever. That is perhaps conceivable, for example, +of Strassburg and the low-lying parts of Alsace. I do not know enough to +do more than guess.</p> + +<p>It is conceivable, but I do not think that it is probable. I think the +probability lies in the other direction. This war of exhaustion may be +going on for a year or so more, but the end will be the thrusting in of +the too extended German lines. The longer and bloodier the job is, the +grimmer will be the determination of the Pledged Allies to exact a +recompense. If the Germans offer peace while they still hold some part +of Belgium, there will be dealings. If they wait until the French are in +the Palatinate, then I doubt if the French will consent to go again. +There will be no possible advantage to Germany in a war of resistance +once the scale of her fortunes begins to sink....</p> + +<p>It is when we turn to the east of Germany that the map-drawing becomes +really animated. Here is the region of great decisions. The natural map +shows a line of obstinately non-German communities, stretching nearly +from the Baltic to the Adriatic. There are Poland, Bohemia (with her +kindred Slovaks), the Magyars, and the Jugo-Serbs. In a second line come +the Great and Little Russians, the Roumanians, and the Bulgarians. And +here both Great Britain and France must defer to the wishes of their two +allies, Russia and Italy. Neither of these countries has expressed +inflexible intentions, and the situation has none of the inevitable +quality of the Western line. Except for the Tsar's promise of autonomy +to Poland, nothing has been promised. On the Western line there are only +two possibilities that I can see: the Aix-Bale boundary, or the sickness +and death of France. On the Eastern line nothing is fated. There seems +to be enormous scope for bargaining over all this field, and here it is +that the chances of compensations and consolations for Germany are to be +found.</p> + +<p>Let us first consider the case for Poland. The way to a reunited Poland +seems to me a particularly difficult one. The perplexity arises out of +the crime of the original partition; whichever side emerges with an +effect of victory must needs give up territory if an autonomous Poland +is to reappear. A victorious Germany would probably reconstitute the +Duchy of Warsaw under a German prince; an entirely victorious Russia +would probably rejoin Posen to Russian Poland and the Polish fragment of +Galicia, and create a dependent Polish kingdom under the Tsar. Neither +project would be received with unstinted delight by the Poles, but +either would probably be acceptable to a certain section of them. +Disregarding the dim feelings of the peasantry, Austrian Poland would +probably be the most willing to retain a connection with its old rulers. +The Habsburgs have least estranged the Poles. The Cracow district is the +only section of Poland which has been at all reconciled to foreign +control; it is the most autonomous and contented of the fragments.</p> + +<p>It is doubtful how far national unanimity is any longer possible between +the three Polish fragments. Like most English writers, I receive a +considerable amount of printed matter from various schools of Polish +patriotism, and wide divergences of spirit and intention appear. A weak, +divided and politically isolated Poland of twelve or fifteen million +people, under some puppet adventurer king set up between the +Hohenzollerns and the Tsardom, does not promise much happiness for the +Poles or much security for the peace of the world. An entirely +independent Poland will be a feverish field of international +intrigue--intrigue to which the fatal Polish temperament lends itself +all too readily; it may be a battlefield again within five-and-twenty +years. I think, if I were a patriotic Pole, I should determine to be a +Slav at any cost, and make the best of Russia; ally myself with all her +liberal tendencies, and rise or fall with her. And I should do my utmost +in a field where at present too little has been done to establish +understandings and lay the foundations of a future alliance with the +Czech-Slovak community to the south. But, then, I am not a Pole, but a +Western European with a strong liking for the Russians. I am democratic +and scientific, and the Poles I have met are Catholic and aristocratic +and romantic, and all sorts of difficult things that must make +co-operation with them on the part of Russians, Ruthenian peasants, +Czechs, and, indeed, other Poles, slow and insecure. I doubt if either +Germany or Russia wants to incorporate more Poles--Russia more +particularly, which has all Siberia over which to breed Russians--and I +am inclined to think that there is a probability that the end of this +war may find Poland still divided, and with boundary lines running +across her not materially different from those of 1914. That is, I +think, an undesirable probability, but until the Polish mind qualifies +its desire for absolute independence with a determination to orient +itself definitely to some larger political mass, it remains one that has +to be considered.</p> + +<p>But the future of Poland is not really separate from that of the +Austro-Hungarian monarchy, nor is that again to be dealt with apart from +that of the Balkans. From Danzig to the Morea there runs across Europe a +series of distinctive peoples, each too intensely different and national +to be absorbed and assimilated by either of their greater neighbours, +Germany or Russia, and each relatively too small to stand securely +alone. None have shaken themselves free from monarchical traditions; +each may become an easy prey to dynastic follies and the aggressive +obsessions of diplomacy. Centuries of bloody rearrangement may lie +before this East Central belt of Europe.</p> + +<p>To the liberal idealist the thought of a possible Swiss system or group +of Swiss systems comes readily to mind. One thinks of a grouping of +groups of Republics, building up a United States of Eastern Europe. But +neither Hohenzollerns nor Tsar would welcome that. The arm of democratic +France is not long enough to reach to help forward such a development, +and Great Britain is never sure whether she is a "Crowned Republic" or a +Germanic monarchy. Hitherto in the Balkans she has lent her influence +chiefly to setting up those treacherous little German kings who have +rewarded her so ill. The national monarchs of Serbia and Montenegro have +alone kept faith with civilisation. I doubt, however, if Great Britain +will go on with that dynastic policy. She herself is upon the eve of +profound changes of spirit and internal organisation. But whenever one +thinks of the possibilities of Republican development in Europe as an +outcome of this war, it is to realise the disastrous indifference of +America to the essentials of the European situation. The United States +of America could exert an enormous influence at the close of the war in +the direction of a liberal settlement and of liberal institutions.... +They will, I fear, do nothing of the sort.</p> + +<p>It is here that the possibility of some internal change in Germany +becomes of such supreme importance. The Hohenzollern Imperialism towers +like the black threat of a new Caesarism over all the world. It may +tower for some centuries; it may vanish to-morrow. A German revolution +may destroy it; a small group of lunacy commissioners may fold it up and +put it away. But should it go, it would at least take with it nearly +every crown between Hamburg and Constantinople. The German kings would +vanish like a wisp of smoke. Suppose a German revolution and a +correlated step forward towards liberal institutions on the part of +Russia, then the whole stage of Eastern Europe would clear as fever goes +out of a man. This age of international elbowing and jostling, of +intrigue and diplomacy, of wars, massacres, deportations <i>en masse</i>, and +the continual fluctuation of irrational boundaries would come to an end +forthwith.</p> + +<p>So sweeping a change is the extreme possibility. The probability is of +something less lucid and more prosaic; of a discussion of diplomatists; +of patched arrangements. But even under these circumstances the whole +Eastern European situation is so fluid and little controlled by any +plain necessity, that there will be enormous scope for any individual +statesman of imagination and force of will.</p> + +<p>There have recently been revelations, more or less trustworthy, of +German schemes for a rearrangement of Eastern Europe. They implied a +German victory. Bohemia, Poland, Galicia and Ruthenia were to make a +Habsburg-ruled State from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The Jugo-Slav and +the Magyar were to be linked (uneasy bedfellows) into a second kingdom, +also Habsburg ruled; Austria was to come into the German Empire as a +third Habsburg dukedom or kingdom; Roumania, Bulgaria and Greece were to +continue as independent Powers, German ruled. Recently German proposals +published in America have shown a disposition to admit the claims of +Roumania to the Wallachian districts of Transylvania.</p> + +<p>Evidently the urgent need to create kingdoms or confederations larger +than any such single States as the natural map supplies, is manifest to +both sides. If Germany, Italy and Russia can come to any sort of general +agreement in these matters, their arrangements will be a matter of +secondary importance to the Western Allies--saving our duty to Serbia +and Montenegro and their rulers. Russia may not find the German idea of +a Polish <i>plus</i> Bohemian border State so very distasteful, provided that +the ruler is not a German; Germany may find the idea still tolerable if +the ruler is not the Tsar.</p> + +<p>The destiny of the Serbo-Croatian future lies largely in the hands of +Italy and Bulgaria. Bulgaria was not in this war at the beginning, and +she may not be in it at the end. Her King is neither immortal nor +irreplaceable. Her desire now must be largely to retain her winnings in +Macedonia, and keep the frontier posts of a too embracing Germany as far +off as possible. She has nothing to gain and much to fear from Roumania +and Greece. Her present relations with Turkey are unnatural. She has +everything to gain from a prompt recovery of the friendship of Italy and +the sea Powers. A friendly Serbo-Croatian buffer State against Germany +will probably be of equal comfort in the future to Italy and Bulgaria; +more especially if Italy has pushed down the Adriatic coast along the +line of the former Venetian possessions. Serbia has been overrun, but +never were the convergent forces of adjacent interests so clearly in +favour of her recuperation. The possibility of Italy and that strange +Latin outlier, Roumania, joining hands through an allied and friendly +Serbia must be very present in Italian thought. The allied conception of +the land route from the West and America to Bagdad and India is by Mont +Cenis, Trieste, Serbia and Constantinople, as their North European line +to India is through Russia by Baku.</p> + +<p>And that brings us to Constantinople.</p> + +<p>Constantinople is not a national city; it is now, and it has always +been, an artificial cosmopolis, and Constantinople and the Dardanelles +are essentially the gate of the Black Sea. It is to Russia that the +waterway is of supreme importance. Any other Power upon it can strangle +Russia; Russia, possessing it, is capable of very little harm to any +other country.</p> + +<p>Roumania is the next most interested country. But Roumania can reach up +the Danube and through Bulgaria, Serbia or Hungary to the outer world. +Her greatest trade will always be with Central Europe. For generations +the Turks held Thrace and Anatolia before they secured Constantinople. +The Turk can exist without Constantinople; he is at his best outside +Constantinople; the fall of Constantinople was the beginning of his +decay. He sat down there and corrupted. His career was at an end. I +confess that I find a bias in my mind for a Russian ownership of +Constantinople. I think that if she does not get it now her gravitation +towards it in the future will be so great as to cause fresh wars. +Somewhere she must get to open sea, and if it is not through +Constantinople then her line must lie either through a dependent Armenia +thrust down to the coast of the Levant or, least probable and least +desirable of all, through the Persian Gulf. The Constantinople route is +the most natural and least controversial of these. With the dwindling of +the Turkish power, the Turks at Constantinople become more and more like +robber knights levying toll at the pass. I can imagine Russia making +enormous concessions in Poland, for example, accepting retrocessions, +and conceding autonomy, rather than foregoing her ancient destiny upon +the Bosphorus. I believe she will fight on along the Black Sea coast +until she gets there.</p> + +<p>This, I think, is Russia's fundamental end, without which no peace is +worth having, as the liberation of Belgium and the satisfaction of +France is the fundamental end of Great Britain, and Trieste-Fiume is the +fundamental end of Italy.</p> + +<p>But for all the lands that lie between Constantinople and West Prussia +there are no absolutely fundamental ends; that is the land of <i>quid pro +quo</i>; that is where the dealing will be done. Serbia must be restored +and the Croats liberated; sooner or later the south Slav state will +insist upon itself; but, except for that, I see no impossibility in the +German dream of three kingdoms to take the place of Austro-Hungary, nor +even in a southward extension of the Hohenzollern Empire to embrace the +German one of the three. If the Austrians have a passion for Prussian +"kultur," it is not for us to restrain it. Austrian, Saxon, Bavarian, +Hanoverian and Prussian must adjust their own differences. Hungary would +be naturally Habsburg; is, in fact, now essentially Habsburg, more +Habsburg than Austria, and essentially anti-Slav. Her gravitation to the +Central Powers seems inevitable.</p> + +<p>Whether the Polish-Czech combination would be a Habsburg kingdom at all +is another matter. Only if, after all, the Allies are far less +successful than they have now every reason to hope would that become +possible.</p> + +<p>The gravitation of that west Slav state to the Central European system +or to Russia will, I think, be the only real measure of ultimate success +or failure in this war. I think it narrows down to that so far as Europe +is concerned. Most of the other things are inevitable. Such, it seems to +me, is the most open possibility in the European map in the years +immediately before us.</p> + +<p>If by dying I could assure the end of the Hohenzollern Empire to-morrow +I would gladly do it. But I have, as a balancing prophet, to face the +high probability of its outliving me for some generations. It is to me +a deplorable probability. Far rather would I anticipate Germany quit of +her eagles and Hohenzollerns, and ready to take her place as the leading +Power of the United States of Europe.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="X._THE_UNITED_STATES,_FRANCE,_BRITAIN,_AND_RUSSIA"></a>X. THE UNITED STATES, FRANCE, BRITAIN, AND RUSSIA</h2> +<br> + +<h3>Section 1</h3> + +<p>In this chapter I propose to speculate a little about the future +development of these four great States, whose destinies are likely to be +much more closely interwoven than their past histories have been. I +believe that the stars in their courses tend to draw these States +together into a dominant peace alliance, maintaining the peace of the +world. There may be other stars in that constellation, Italy, Japan, a +confederated Latin America, for example; I do not propose to deal with +that possibility now, but only to dwell upon the development of +understandings and common aims between France, Russia, and the +English-speaking States.</p> + +<p>They have all shared one common experience during the last two years; +they have had an enormous loss of self-sufficiency. This has been +particularly the case with the United States of America. At the +beginning of this war, the United States were still possessed by the +glorious illusion that they were aloof from general international +politics, that they needed no allies and need fear no enemies, that they +constituted a sort of asylum from war and all the bitter stresses and +hostilities of the old world. Themselves secure, they could intervene +with grim resolution to protect their citizens all over the world. Had +they not bombarded Algiers?...</p> + +<p>I remember that soon after the outbreak of the war I lunched at the +Savoy Hotel in London when it was crammed with Americans suddenly swept +out of Europe by the storm. My host happened to be a man of some +diplomatic standing, and several of them came and talked to him. They +were full of these old-world ideas of American immunity. Their +indignation was comical even at the time. Some of them had been hustled; +some had lost their luggage in Germany. When, they asked, was it to be +returned to them? Some seemed to be under the impression that, war or no +war, an American tourist had a perfect right to travel about in the +Vosges or up and down the Rhine just as he thought fit. They thought he +had just to wave a little American flag, and the referee would blow a +whistle and hold up the battle until he had got by safely. One family +had actually been careering about in a cart--their automobile +seized--between the closing lines of French and Germans, brightly +unaware of the disrespect of bursting shells for American +nationality.... Since those days the American nation has lived +politically a hundred years.</p> + +<p>The people of the United States have shed their delusion that there is +an Eastern and a Western hemisphere, and that nothing can ever pass +between them but immigrants and tourists and trade, and realised that +this world is one round globe that gets smaller and smaller every decade +if you measure it by day's journeys. They are only going over the lesson +the British have learnt in the last score or so of years. This is one +world and bayonets are a crop that spreads. Let them gather and seed, it +matters not how far from you, and a time will come when they will be +sticking up under your nose. There is no real peace but the peace of the +whole world, and that is only to be kept by the whole world resisting +and suppressing aggression wherever it arises. To anyone who watches the +American Press, this realisation has been more and more manifest. From +dreams of aloofness and ineffable superiority, America comes round very +rapidly to a conception of an active participation in the difficult +business of statecraft. She is thinking of alliances, of throwing her +weight and influence upon the side of law and security. No longer a +political Thoreau in the woods, a sort of vegetarian recluse among +nations, a being of negative virtues and unpremeditated superiorities, +she girds herself for a manly part in the toilsome world of men.</p> + +<p>So far as I can judge, the American mind is eminently free from any +sentimental leaning towards the British. Americans have a traditional +hatred of the Hanoverian monarchy, and a democratic disbelief in +autocracy. They are far more acutely aware of differences than +resemblances. They suspect every Englishman of being a bit of a +gentleman and a bit of a flunkey. I have never found in America anything +like that feeling common in the mass of English people that prevents the +use of the word "foreigner" for an American; there is nothing to +reciprocate the sympathy and pride that English and Irish republicans +and radicals feel for the States. Few Americans realise that there are +such beings as English republicans.</p> + +<p>What has linked Americans with the British hitherto has been very +largely the common language and literature; it is only since the war +began that there seems to have been any appreciable development of +fraternal feeling. And that has been not so much discovery of a mutual +affection as the realisation of a far closer community of essential +thought and purpose than has hitherto been suspected. The Americans, +after thinking the matter out with great frankness and vigour, do +believe that Britain is on the whole fighting against aggression and not +for profit, that she is honestly backing France and Belgium against an +intolerable attack, and that the Hohenzollern Empire is a thing that +needs discrediting and, if possible, destroying in the interests of all +humanity, Germany included.</p> + +<p>America has made the surprising discovery that, allowing for their +greater nearness, the British are thinking about these things almost +exactly as Americans think about them. They follow the phases of the war +in Great Britain, the strain, the blunderings, the tenacity, the onset +of conscription in an essentially non-military community, with the +complete understanding of a people similarly circumstanced, differing +only by scale and distance. They have been through something of the sort +already; they may have something of the sort happen again. It had not +occurred to them hitherto how parallel we were. They begin to have +inklings of how much more parallel we may presently become.</p> + +<p>There is evidence of a real search for American affinities among the +other peoples of the world; it is a new war-made feature of the +thoughtful literature and journalists of America. And it is interesting +to note how partial and divided these affinities must necessarily be. +Historically and politically, the citizen of the United States must be +drawn most closely to France. France is the one other successful modern +republic; she was the instigator and friend of American liberation. With +Great Britain the tie of language, the tradition of personal freedom, +and the strain in the blood are powerful links. But both France and +Britain are old countries, thickly populated, with a great and ancient +finish and completeness, full of implicit relationships; America is by +comparison crude, uninformed, explicit, a new country, still turning +fresh soil, still turning over but half-explored natural resources.</p> + +<p>The United States constitute a modern country, a country on an +unprecedented scale, being organised from the very beginning on modern +lines. There is only one other such country upon the planet, and that +curiously enough is parallel in climate, size, and position--Russia in +Asia. Even Russia in Europe belongs rather to the newness that is +American than to the tradition that is European; Harvard was founded +more than half a century before Petrograd. And when I looked out of the +train window on my way to Petrograd from Germany, the little towns I saw +were like no European towns I had ever seen. The wooden houses, the +broad unmade roads, the traffic, the winter-bitten scenery, a sort of +untidy spaciousness, took my mind instantly to the country one sees in +the back part of New York State as one goes from Boston to Niagara. And +the reality follows the appearance.</p> + +<p>The United States and Russia are the west and the east of the same +thing; they are great modern States, developing from the beginning upon +a scale that only railways make possible. France and Britain may perish +in the next two centuries or they may persist, but there can be no doubt +that two centuries ahead Russia and the United States will be two of the +greatest masses of fairly homogeneous population on the globe.</p> + +<p>There are no countries with whom the people of the United States are so +likely to develop sympathy and a sense of common values and common +interests as with these three, unless it be with the Scandinavian +peoples. The Scandinavian peoples have developed a tendency to an +extra-European outlook, to look west and east rather than southwardly, +to be pacifist and progressive in a manner essentially American. From +any close sympathy with Germany the Americans are cut off at present by +the Hohenzollerns and the system of ideas that the Hohenzollerns have +imposed upon German thought. So long as the Germans cling to the tawdry +tradition of the Empire, so long as they profess militarism, so long as +they keep up their ridiculous belief in some strange racial superiority +to the rest of mankind, it is absurd to expect any co-operative feeling +between them and any other great people.</p> + +<p>The American tradition is based upon the casting off of a Germanic +monarchy; it is its cardinal idea. These sturdy Republicans did not +fling out the Hanoverians and their Hessian troops to prepare the path +of glory for Potsdam. But except for the gash caused by the Teutonic +monarchy, there runs round the whole world a north temperate and +sub-arctic zone of peoples, generally similar in complexion, physical +circumstances, and intellectual and moral quality, having enormous +undeveloped natural resources, and a common interest in keeping the +peace while these natural resources are developed, having also a common +interest in maintaining the integrity of China and preventing her +development into a military power; it is a zone with the clearest +prospect of a vast increase in its already enormous population, and it +speaks in the main one or other of three languages, either French, +Russian, or English. I believe that natural sympathy will march with the +obvious possibilities of the situation in bringing the American mind to +the realisation of this band of common interests and of its +compatibility with the older idea of an American continent protected by +a Monroe doctrine from any possibility of aggression from the monarchies +of the old world.</p> + +<p>As the old conception of isolation fades and the American mind accustoms +itself to the new conception of a need of alliances and understandings +to save mankind from the megalomania of races and dynasties, I believe +it will turn first to the idea of keeping the seas with Britain and +France, and then to this still wider idea of an understanding with the +Pledged Allies that will keep the peace of the world.</p> + +<p>Now Germany has taught the world several things, and one of the most +important of these lessons is the fact that the destinies of states and +peoples is no longer to be determined by the secret arrangements of +diplomatists and the agreements or jealousies of kings. For fifty years +Germany has been unifying the mind of her people against the world. She +has obsessed them with an evil ideal, but the point we have to note is +that she has succeeded in obsessing them with that ideal. No other +modern country has even attempted such a moral and mental solidarity as +Germany has achieved. And good ideals need, just as much as bad ones, +systematic inculcation, continual open expression and restatement. Mute, +mindless, or demented nations are dangerous and doomed nations. The +great political conceptions that are needed to establish the peace of +the world must become the common property of the mass of intelligent +adults if they are to hold against the political scoundrel, the royal +adventurer, the forensic exploiter, the enemies and scatterers of +mankind. The French, Americans, and English have to realise this +necessity; they have to state a common will and they have to make their +possession by that will understood by the Russian people, and they have +to share that will with the Russian people. Beyond that there lies the +still greater task or making some common system of understandings with +the intellectual masses of China and India. At present, with three of +these four great powers enormously preoccupied with actual warfare, +there is an opportunity for guiding expression on the part of America, +for a real world leadership, such as may never occur again....</p> + +<p>So far I have been stating a situation and reviewing certain +possibilities. In the past half-century the United States has been +developing a great system of universities and a continental production +of literature and discussion to supplement the limited Press and the New +England literature of the earlier phase of the American process. It is +one of the most interesting speculations in the world to everyone how +far this new organisation of the American mind is capable of grasping +the stupendous opportunities and appeals of the present time. The war +and the great occasions that must follow the war will tax the mind and +the intellectual and moral forces of the Pledged Allies enormously. How +far is this new but very great and growing system of thought and +learning in the United States capable of that propaganda of ideas and +language, that progressive expression of a developing ideal of +community, that in countries so spontaneous, so chaotic or democratic as +the United States and the Pledged Allies must necessarily take the +place of the organised authoritative <i>Kultur</i> of the Teutonic type of +state?</p> + +<p>As an undisguisedly patriotic Englishman, I would like to see the lead +in this intellectual synthesis of the nations, that <i>must</i> be achieved +if wars are to cease, undertaken by Great Britain. But I am bound to +confess that in Great Britain I see neither the imaginative courage of +France nor the brisk enterprise of the Americans. I see this matter as a +question of peace and civilisation, but there are other baser but quite +as effective reasons why America, France, and Great Britain should exert +themselves to create confidences and understandings between their +populations and the Russian population. There is the immediate business +opportunity in Russia. There is the secondary business opportunity in +China that can best be developed as the partners rather than as the +rivals of the Russians. Since the Americans are nearest, by way of the +Pacific, since they are likely to have more capital and more free energy +to play with than the Pledged Allies, I do on the whole incline to the +belief that it is they who will yet do the pioneer work and the leading +work that this opportunity demands.</p> +<br> + +<h3>Section 2</h3> + +<p>If beneath the alliances of the present war there is to grow up a system +of enduring understandings that will lead to the peace of the world, +there is needed as a basis for such understandings much greater facility +of intellectual intercourse than exists at present. Firstly, the world +needs a <i>lingua franca</i>; next, the Western peoples need to know more of +the Russian language and life than they do, and thirdly, the English +language needs to be made more easily accessible than it is at present. +The chief obstacle to a Frenchman or Englishman learning Russian is the +difficult and confusing alphabet; the chief obstacle to anyone learning +English is the irrational spelling. Are people likely to overcome these +very serious difficulties in the future, and, if so, how will they do +it? And what prospects are there of a <i>lingua franca</i>?</p> + +<p>Wherever one looks closely into the causes and determining influences of +the great convulsions of this time, one is more and more impressed by +the apparent smallness of the ultimate directing influence. It seems to +me at least that it is a practically proven thing that this vast +aggression of Germany is to be traced back to a general tone of court +thinking and discussion in the Prussia of the eighteenth century, to +the theories of a few professors and the gathering trend of German +education in a certain direction. It seems to me that similarly the +language teachers of to-day and to-morrow may hold in their hands the +seeds of gigantic international developments in the future.</p> + +<p>It is not a question of the skill or devotion of individual teachers so +much as of the possibility of organising them upon a grand scale. An +individual teacher must necessarily use the ordinary books and ordinary +spelling and type of the language in which he is giving instruction; he +may get a few elementary instruction books from a private publisher, +specially printed for teaching purposes, but very speedily he finds +himself obliged to go to the current printed matter. This, as I will +immediately show, bars the most rapid and fruitful method of teaching. +And in this as in most affairs, private enterprise, the individualistic +system, shows itself a failure. In England, for example, the choice of +Russian lesson books is poor and unsatisfactory, and there is either no +serviceable Russian-English, English-Russian school dictionary in +existence, or it is published so badly as to be beyond the range of my +inquiries. But a state, or a group of universities, or even a rich +private association such as far-seeing American, French and British +business men might be reasonably expected to form, could attack the +problem of teaching a language in an altogether different fashion.</p> + +<p>The difficulty in teaching English lies in the inconsistency of the +spelling, and the consequent difficulties of pronunciation. If there +were available an ample series of text-books, reading books, and books +of general interest, done in a consistent phonetic type and spelling--in +which the value of the letters of the phonetic system followed as far as +possible the prevalent usage in Europe--the difficulty in teaching +English not merely to foreigners but, as the experiments in teaching +reading of the Simplified Spelling Society have proved up to the hilt, +to English children can be very greatly reduced. At first the difficulty +of the irrational spelling can be set on one side. The learner attacks +and masters the essential language. Then afterwards he can, if he likes, +go on to the orthodox spelling, which is then no harder for him to read +and master than it is for an Englishman of ordinary education to read +the facetious orthography of Artemus Ward or of the <i>Westminster +Gazette</i> "orfis boy." The learner does one thing at a time instead of +attempting, as he would otherwise have to do, two things--and they are +both difficult and different and conflicting things--simultaneously.</p> + +<p>Learning a language is one thing and memorising an illogical system of +visual images--for that is what reading ordinary English spelling comes +to--is quite another. A man can learn to play first chess and then +bridge in half the time that these two games would require if he began +by attempting simultaneous play, and exactly the same principle applies +to the language problem.</p> + +<p>These considerations lead on to the idea of a special development or +sub-species of the English language for elementary teaching and foreign +consumption. It would be English, very slightly simplified and +regularised, and phonetically spelt. Let us call it Anglo-American. In +it the propagandist power, whatever that power might be, state, +university or association, would print not simply, instruction books but +a literature of cheap editions. Such a specialised simplified +Anglo-American variety of English would enormously stimulate the already +wide diffusion of the language, and go far to establish it as that +<i>lingua franca</i> of which the world has need.</p> + +<p>And in the same way, the phonetic alphabet adopted as the English medium +could be used as the medium for instruction in French, where, as in the +British Isles, Canada, North and Central Africa, and large regions of +the East, it is desirable to make an English-speaking community +bi-lingual. At present a book in French means nothing to an uninstructed +Englishman, an English book conveys no accurate sound images to an +uninstructed Frenchman. On the other hand, a French book printed on a +proper phonetic system could be immediately read aloud--though of course +it could not be understood--by an uninstructed Englishman. From the +first he would have no difficulties with the sounds. And vice versa. +Such a system of books would mean the destruction of what are, for great +masses of French and English people, insurmountable difficulties on the +way to bi-lingualism. Its production is a task all too colossal for any +private publishers or teachers, but it is a task altogether trivial in +comparison with the national value of its consequences. But whether it +will ever be carried out is just one of those riddles of the jumping cat +in the human brain that are most perplexing to the prophet.</p> + +<p>The problem becomes at once graver, less hopeful, and more urgent when +we take up the case of Russian. I have looked closely into this business +of Russian teaching, and I am convinced that only a very, very small +number of French-and English-speaking people are going to master Russian +under the existing conditions of instruction. If we Westerns want to get +at Russia in good earnest we must take up this Russian language problem +with an imaginative courage and upon a scale of which at present I see +no signs. If we do not, then the Belgians, French, Americans and English +will be doing business in Russia after the war in the German +language--or through a friendly German interpreter. That, I am afraid, +is the probability of the case. But it need not be the case. Will and +intelligence could alter all that.</p> + +<p>What has to be done is to have Russian taught at first in a Western +phonetic type. Then it becomes a language not very much more difficult +to acquire than, say, German by a Frenchman. When the learner can talk +with some freedom, has a fairly full vocabulary, a phraseology, knows +his verb and so on, then and then only should he take up the unfamiliar +and confusing set of visual images of Russian lettering--I speak from +the point of view of those who read the Latin alphabet. How confusing it +may be only those who have tried it can tell. Its familiarity to the eye +increases the difficulty; totally unfamiliar forms would be easier to +learn. The Frenchman or Englishman is confronted with</p> + +<blockquote> +COP;<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>the sound of that is</p> + +<blockquote> +SAR!<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>For those who learn languages, as so many people do nowadays, by visual +images, there will always be an undercurrent toward saying "COP." The +mind plunges hopelessly through that tangle to the elements of a speech +which is as yet unknown.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless almost all the instruction in Russian of which I can get an +account begins with the alphabet, and must, I suppose, begin with the +alphabet until teachers have a suitably printed set of instruction books +to enable them to take the better line. One school teacher I know, in a +public school, devoted the entire first term, the third of a year, to +the alphabet. At the end he was still dissatisfied with the progress of +his pupils. He gave them Russian words, of course, words of which they +knew nothing--in Russian characters. It was too much for them to take +hold of at one and the same time. He did not even think of teaching them +to write French and English words in the strange lettering. He did not +attempt to write his Russian in Latin letters. He was apparently +ignorant of any system of transliteration, and he did nothing to +mitigate the impossible task before him. At the end of the term most of +his pupils gave up the hopeless effort. It is not too much to say that +for a great number of "visualising" people, the double effort at the +outset of Russian is entirely too much. It stops them altogether. But to +almost anyone it is possible to learn Russian if at first it is +presented in a lettering that gives no trouble.</p> + +<p>If I found myself obliged to learn Russian urgently, I would get some +accepted system of transliteration, carefully transcribe every word of +Russian in my text-book into the Latin characters, and learn the +elements of the language from my manuscript. A year or so ago I made a +brief visit to Russia with a "Russian Self-Taught" in my pocket. Nothing +sticks, nothing ever did stick of that self-taught Russian except the +words that I learnt in Latin type. Those I remember as I remember all +words, as groups of Latin letters. I learnt to count, for example, up to +a hundred. The other day I failed to recognise the Russian word for +eleven in Russian characters until I had spelt it out. Then I said, "Oh, +of course!" But I knew it when I heard it.</p> + +<p>I write of these things from the point of view of the keen learner. Some +Russian teachers will be found to agree with me; others will not. It is +a paradox in the psychology of the teacher that few teachers are willing +to adopt "slick" methods of teaching; they hate cutting corners far more +than they hate obstacles, because their interest is in the teaching and +not in the "getting there." But what we learners want is not an +exquisite, rare knowledge of particulars, we do not want to spend an +hour upon Russian needlessly; we want to get there as quickly and +effectively as possible. And for that, transliterated books are +essential.</p> + +<p>Now these may seem small details in the learning of languages, mere +schoolmasters' gossip, but the consequences are on the continental +scale. The want of these national text-books and readers is a great gulf +between Russia and her Allies; <i>it is a greater gulf than the +profoundest political misunderstanding could be</i>. We cannot get at them +to talk plainly to them, and they cannot get at us to talk plainly to +us. A narrow bridge of interpreters is our only link with the Russian +mind. And many of those interpreters are of a race which is for very +good reasons hostile to Russia. An abundant cheap supply, firstly, of +English and French books, <i>in</i> English and French, but in the Russian +character, by means of which Russians may rapidly learn French and +English--for it is quite a fable that these languages are known and used +in Russia below the level of the court and aristocracy--and, secondly, +of Russian books in the Latin (or some easy phonetic development of the +Latin) type, will do more to facilitate interchange and intercourse +between Russia and France, America and Britain, and so consolidate the +present alliance than almost any other single thing. But that supply +will not be a paying thing to provide; if it is left to publishers or +private language teachers or any form of private enterprise it will +never be provided. It is a necessary public undertaking.</p> + +<p>But because a thing is necessary it does not follow that it will be +achieved. Bread may be necessary to a starving man, but there is always +the alternative that he will starve. France, which is most accessible to +creative ideas, is least interested in this particular matter. Great +Britain is still heavily conservative. It is idle to ignore the forces +still entrenched in the established church, in the universities and the +great schools, that stand for an irrational resistance to all new +things. American universities are comparatively youthful and sometimes +quite surprisingly innovating, and America is the country of the +adventurous millionaire. There has been evidence in several American +papers that have reached me recently of a disposition to get ahead with +Russia and cut out the Germans (and incidentally the British). Amidst +the cross-currents and overlappings of this extraordinary time, it seems +to me highly probable that America may lead in this vitally important +effort to promote international understanding.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="XI._"THE_WHITE_MAN'S_BURTHEN""></a>XI. "THE WHITE MAN'S BURTHEN"</h2> +<br> + +<p>One of the most curious aspects of the British "Pacifist" is his +willingness to give over great blocks of the black and coloured races to +the Hohenzollerns to exploit and experiment upon. I myself being +something of a pacifist, and doing what I can, in my corner, to bring +about the Peace of the World, the Peace of the World triumphant and +armed against every disturber, could the more readily sympathise with +the passive school of Pacifists if its proposals involved the idea that +England should keep to England and Germany to Germany. My political +ideal is the United States of the World, a union of states whose state +boundaries are determined by what I have defined as the natural map of +mankind. I cannot understand those pacifists who talk about the German +right to "expansion," and babble about a return of her justly lost +colonies. That seems to me not pacificism but patriotic inversion. This +large disposition to hand over our fellow-creatures to a Teutonic +educational system, with "frightfulness" in reserve, to "efficiency" on +Wittenberg lines, leaves me--hot. The ghosts of the thirst-tormented +Hereros rise up in their thousands from the African dust, protesting.</p> + +<p>This talk of "legitimate expansion" is indeed now only an exploiter's +cant. The age of "expansion," the age of European "empires" is near its +end. No one who can read the signs of the times in Japan, in India, in +China, can doubt it. It ended in America a hundred years ago; it is +ending now in Asia; it will end last in Africa, and even in Africa the +end draws near. Spain has but led the way which other "empires" must +follow. Look at her empire in the atlases of 1800. She fell down the +steps violently and painfully, it is true--but they are difficult to +descend. No sane man, German or anti-German, who has weighed the +prospects of the new age, will be desirous of a restoration of the now +vanished German colonial empire, vindictive, intriguing, and +unscrupulous, a mere series of centres of attack upon adjacent +territory, to complicate the immense disentanglements and readjustments +that lie already before the French and British and Italians.</p> + +<p>Directly we discuss the problem of the absolutely necessary permanent +alliance that this war has forced upon at least France, Belgium, +Britain and Russia, this problem of the "empires" faces us. What are +these Allies going to do about their "subject races"? What is the world +going to do about the "subject races"? It is a matter in which the +"subject races" are likely to have an increasingly important voice of +their own. We Europeans may discuss their fate to-day among ourselves; +we shall be discussing it with them to-morrow. If we do not agree with +them then, they will take their fates in their own hands in spite of us. +Long before A.D. 2100 there will be no such thing as a "subject race" in +all the world.</p> + +<p>Here again we find ourselves asking just that same difficult question of +more or less, that arises at every cardinal point of our review of the +probable future. How far is this thing going to be done finely; how far +is it going to be done cunningly and basely? How far will greatness of +mind, how far will imaginative generosity, prevail over the jealous and +pettifogging spirit that lurks in every human being? Are French and +British and Belgians and Italians, for example, going to help each other +in Africa, or are they going to work against and cheat each other? Is +the Russian seeking only a necessary outlet to the seas of the world, +or has he dreams of Delhi? Here again, as in all these questions, +personal idiosyncrasy comes in; I am strongly disposed to trust the good +in the Russian.</p> + +<p>But apart from this uncertain question of generosity, there are in this +case two powerful forces that make against disputes, secret +disloyalties, and meanness. One is that Germany will certainly be still +dangerous at the end of the war, and the second is that the gap in +education, in efficiency, in national feeling and courage of outlook, +between the European and the great Asiatic and African communities, is +rapidly diminishing. If the Europeans squabble much more for world +ascendancy, there will be no world ascendancy for them to squabble for. +We have still no means of measuring the relative enfeeblement of Europe +in comparison with Asia already produced by this war. As it is, certain +things are so inevitable--the integration of a modernised Bengal, of +China, and of Egypt, for example--that the question before us is +practically reduced to whether this restoration of the subject peoples +will be done with the European's aid and goodwill, or whether it will be +done against him. That it will be done in some manner or other is +certain.</p> + +<p>The days of suppression are over. They know it in every country where +white and brown and yellow mingle. If the Pledged Allies are not +disposed to let in light to their subject peoples and prepare for the +days of world equality that are coming, the Germans will. If the Germans +fail to be the most enslaving of people, they may become the most +liberating. They will set themselves, with their characteristic +thoroughness, to destroy that magic "prestige" which in Asia +particularly is the clue to the miracle of European ascendancy. In the +long run that may prove no ill service to mankind. The European must +prepare to make himself acceptable in Asia, to state his case to Asia +and be understood by Asia, or to leave Asia. That is the blunt reality +of the Asiatic situation.</p> + +<p>It has already been pointed out in these chapters that if the alliance +of the Pledged Allies is indeed to be permanent, it implies something in +the nature of a Zollverein, a common policy towards the rest of the +world and an arrangement involving a common control over the +dependencies of all the Allies. It will be interesting, now that we have +sketched a possible map of Europe after the war, to look a little more +closely into the nature of the "empires" concerned, and to attempt a few +broad details of the probable map of the Eastern hemisphere outside +Europe in the years immediately to come.</p> + +<p>Now there are, roughly speaking, three types of overseas "possessions." +They may be either (1) territory that was originally practically +unoccupied and that was settled by the imperial people, or (2) territory +with a barbaric population having no national idea, or (3) conquered +states. In the case of the British Empire all three are present; in the +case of the French only the second and third; in the case of the Russian +only the first and third. Each of these types must necessarily follow +its own system of developments. Take first those territories originally +but thinly occupied, or not occupied at all, of which all or at least +the dominant element of the population is akin to that of the "home +country." These used to be called by the British "colonies"--though the +"colonies" of Greece and Rome were really only garrison cities settled +in foreign lands--and they are now being rechristened "Dominions." +Australia, for instance, is a British Dominion, and Siberia and most of +Russia in Asia, a Russian Dominion. Their manifest destiny is for their +children to become equal citizens with the cousins and brothers they +have left at home.</p> + +<p>There has been much discussion in England during the last decade upon +some modification of the British legislature that would admit +representatives from the Dominions to a proportional share in the +government of the Empire. The problem has been complicated by the +unsettled status of Ireland and the mischief-making Tories there, and by +the perplexities arising out of those British dependencies of +non-British race--the Indian states, for example, whose interests are +sometimes in conflict with those of the Dominions.</p> + +<p>The attractiveness of the idea of an Imperial legislature is chiefly on +the surface, and I have very strong doubts of its realisability. These +Dominions seem rather to tend to become independent and distinct +sovereign states in close and affectionate alliance with Great Britain, +and having a common interest in the British Navy. In many ways the +interests of the Dominions are more divergent from those of Great +Britain than are Great Britain and Russia, or Great Britain and France. +Many of the interests of Canada are more closely bound to those of the +United States than they are to those of Australasia, in such a matter as +the maintenance of the Monroe Principle, for example. South Africa again +takes a line with regard to British Indian subjects which is highly +embarrassing to Great Britain. There is a tendency in all the British +colonies to read American books and periodicals rather than British, if +for no other reason than because their common life, life in a newish and +very democratic land, is much more American than British in character.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, one must remember that Great Britain has European +interests--the integrity of Holland and Belgium is a case in +point--which are much closer to the interests of France than they are to +those of the younger Britains beyond the seas. A voice in an Alliance +that included France and the United States, and had its chief common +interest in the control of the seas, may in the future seem far more +desirable to these great and growing English-speaking Dominions than the +sending of representatives to an Imperial House of Lords at Westminster, +and the adornment of elderly colonial politicians with titles and +decorations at Buckingham Palace.</p> + +<p>I think Great Britain and her Allies have all of them to prepare their +minds for a certain release of their grip upon their "possessions," if +they wish to build up a larger unity; I do not see that any secure +unanimity of purpose is possible without such releases and +readjustments.</p> + +<p>Now the next class of foreign "possession" is that in which the French +and Belgians and Italians are most interested. Britain also has +possessions of this type in Central Africa and the less civilised +districts of India, but Russia has scarcely anything of the sort. In +this second class of possession the population is numerous, barbaric, +and incapable of any large or enduring political structure, and over its +destinies rule a small minority of European administrators.</p> + +<p>The greatest of this series of possessions are those in black Africa. +The French imagination has taken a very strong hold of the idea of a +great French-speaking West and Central Africa, with which the ordinary +British citizen will only too gladly see the conquered German colonies +incorporated. The Italians have a parallel field of development in the +hinterland of Tripoli. Side by side, France, Belgium and Italy, no +longer troubled by hostile intrigues, may very well set themselves in +the future to the task of building up a congenial Latin civilisation out +of the tribal confusions of these vast regions. They will, I am +convinced, do far better than the English in this domain. The +English-speaking peoples have been perhaps the most successful +<i>settlers</i> in the world; the United States and the Dominions are there +to prove it; only the Russians in Siberia can compare with them; but as +administrators the British are a race coldly aloof. They have nothing to +give a black people, and no disposition to give.</p> + +<p>The Latin-speaking peoples, the Mediterranean nations, on the other +hand, have proved to be the most successful <i>assimilators</i> of other +races that mankind has ever known. Alexandre Dumas is not the least of +the glories of France. In a hundred years' time black Africa, west of +Tripoli, from Oran to Rhodesia, will, I believe, talk French. And what +does not speak French will speak the closely related Italian. I do not +see why this Latin black culture should not extend across equatorial +Africa to meet the Indian influence at the coast, and reach out to join +hands with Madagascar. I do not see why the British flag should be any +impediment to the Latinisation of tropical Africa or to the natural +extension of the French and Italian languages through Egypt. I guess, +however, that it will be an Islamic and not a Christian cult that will +be talking Italian and French. For the French-speaking civilisation will +make roads not only for French, Belgians, and Italians, but for the +Arabs whose religion and culture already lie like a net over black +Africa. No other peoples and no other religion can so conveniently give +the negro what is needed to bring him into the comity of civilised +peoples....</p> + +<p>A few words of digression upon the future of Islam may not be out of +place here. The idea of a militant Christendom has vanished from the +world. The last pretensions of Christian propaganda have been buried in +the Balkan trenches. A unification of Africa under Latin auspices +carries with it now no threat of missionary invasion. Africa will be a +fair field for all religions, and the religion to which the negro will +take will be the religion that best suits his needs. That religion, we +are told by nearly everyone who has a right to speak upon such +questions, is Islam, and its natural propagandist is the Arab. There is +no reason why he should not be a Frenchified Arab.</p> + +<p>Both the French and the British have the strongest interest in the +revival of Arabic culture. Let the German learn Turkish if it pleases +him. Through all Africa and Western Asia there is a great to-morrow for +a renascent Islam under Arab auspices. Constantinople, that venal city +of the waterways, sitting like Asenath at the ford, has corrupted all +who came to her; she has been the paralysis of Islam. But the Islam of +the Turk is a different thing from the Islam of the Arab. That was one +of the great progressive impulses in the world of men. It is our custom +to underrate the Arab's contribution to civilisation quite absurdly in +comparison with our debt to the Hebrew and Greek. It is to the +initiatives of Islamic culture, for example, that we owe our numerals, +the bulk of modern mathematics, and the science of chemistry. The +British have already set themselves to the establishment of Islamic +university teaching in Egypt, but that is the mere first stroke of the +pick at the opening of the mine. English, French, Russian, Arabic, +Hindustani, Spanish, Italian; these are the great world languages that +most concern the future of civilisation from the point of view of the +Peace Alliance that impends. No country can afford to neglect any of +those languages, but as a matter of primary importance I would say, for +the British, Hindustani, for the Americans, Russian or Spanish, for the +French and Belgians and Italians, Arabic. These are the directions in +which the duty of understanding is most urgent for each of these +peoples, and the path of opportunity plainest.</p> + +<p>The disposition to underrate temporarily depressed nations, races, and +cultures is a most irrational, prevalent, and mischievous form of +stupidity. It distorts our entire outlook towards the future. The +British reader can see its absurdity most easily when he reads the +ravings of some patriotic German upon the superiority of the "Teuton" +over the Italians and Greeks--to whom we owe most things of importance +in European civilisation. Equally silly stuff is still to be read in +British and American books about "Asiatics." And was there not some +fearful rubbish, not only in German but in English and French, about the +"decadence" of France? But we are learning--rapidly. When I was a +student in London thirty years ago we regarded Japan as a fantastic +joke; the comic opera, <i>The Mikado</i>, still preserves that foolish phase +for the admiration of posterity. And to-day there is a quite +unjustifiable tendency to ignore the quality of the Arab and of his +religion. Islam is an open-air religion, noble and simple in its broad +conceptions; it is none the less vital from Nigeria to China because it +has sickened in the closeness of Constantinople. The French, the +Italians, the British have to reckon with Islam and the Arab; where the +continental deserts are, there the Arabs are and there is Islam; their +culture will never be destroyed and replaced over these regions by +Europeanism. The Allies who prepare the Peace of the World have to make +their peace with that. And when I foreshadow this necessary liaison of +the French and Arabic cultures, I am thinking not only of the Arab that +is, but of the Arab that is to come. The whole trend of events in Asia +Minor, the breaking up and decapitation of the Ottoman Empire and the +Euphrates invasion, points to a great revival of Mesopotamia--at first +under European direction. The vast system of irrigation that was +destroyed by the Mongol armies of Hulugu in the thirteenth century will +be restored; the desert will again become populous. But the local type +will prevail. The new population of Mesopotamia will be neither European +nor Indian; it will be Arabic; and with its concentration Arabic will +lay hold of the printing press. A new intellectual movement in Islam, a +renascent Bagdad, is as inevitable as is 1950.</p> + +<p>I have, however, gone a little beyond the discussion of the future of +the barbaric possessions in these anticipations of an Arabic +co-operation with the Latin peoples in the reconstruction of Western +Asia and the barbaric regions of north and central Africa. But regions +of administered barbarism occur not only in Africa. The point is that +they are administered, and that their economic development is very +largely in the hands, and will for many generations remain in the hands, +of the possessing country. Hitherto their administration has been in +the interests of the possessing nation alone. Their acquisition has been +a matter of bitter rivalries, their continued administration upon +exclusive lines is bound to lead to dangerous clashings. The common +sense of the situation points to a policy of give and take, in which +throughout the possessions of all the Pledged Allies, the citizens of +all will have more or less equal civil advantages. And this means some +consolidation of the general control of those Administered Territories. +I have already hinted at the possibility that the now exclusively +British navy may some day be a world-navy controlled by an Admiralty +representing a group of allies, Australasia, Canada, Britain and, it may +be, France and Russia and the United States. To those who know how +detached the British Admiralty is at the present time from the general +methods of British political life, there will be nothing strange in this +idea of its completer detachment. Its personnel does to a large extent +constitute a class apart. It takes its boys out of the general life very +often before they have got to their fourteenth birthday. It is not so +closely linked up with specific British social elements, with political +parties and the general educational system, as are the rest of the +national services.</p> + +<p>There is nothing so very fantastic in this idea of a sort of +World-Admiralty; it is not even completely novel. Such bodies as the +Knights Templars transcended nationality in the Middle Ages. I do not +see how some such synthetic control of the seas is to be avoided in the +future. And now coming back to the "White Man's Burthen," is there not a +possibility that such a board of marine and international control as the +naval and international problems of the future may produce (or some +closely parallel body with a stronger Latin element), would also be +capable of dealing with these barbaric "Administered Territories"? A day +may come when Tripoli, Nigeria, the French and the Belgian Congo will be +all under one supreme control. We may be laying the foundations of such +a system to-day unawares. The unstable and fluctuating conferences of +the Allies to-day, their repeated experiences of the disadvantages of +evanescent and discontinuous co-ordinations, may press them almost +unconsciously toward this building up of things greater than they know.</p> + +<p>We come now to the third and most difficult type of overseas +"possessions." These are the annexed or conquered regions with settled +populations already having a national tradition and culture of their +own. They are, to put it bluntly, the suppressed, the overlaid, +nations. Now I am a writer rather prejudiced against the idea of +nationality; my habit of thought is cosmopolitan; I hate and despise a +shrewish suspicion of foreigners and foreign ways; a man who can look me +in the face, laugh with me, speak truth and deal fairly, is my brother +though his skin is as black as ink or as yellow as an evening primrose. +But I have to recognise the facts of the case. In spite of all my large +liberality, I find it less irritating to be ruled by people of my own +language and race and tradition, and I perceive that for the mass of +people alien rule is intolerable.</p> + +<p>Local difference, nationality, is a very obstinate thing. Every country +tends to revert to its natural type. Nationality will out. Once a people +has emerged above the barbaric stage to a national consciousness, that +consciousness will endure. There is practically always going to be an +Egypt, a Poland, an Armenia. There is no Indian nation, there never has +been, but there are manifestly a Bengal and a Rajputana, there is +manifestly a constellation of civilised nations in India. Several of +these have literatures and traditions that extend back before the days +when the Britons painted themselves with woad. Let us deal with this +question mainly with reference to India. What is said will apply +equally to Burmah or Egypt or Armenia or--to come back into +Europe--Poland.</p> + +<p>Now I have talked, I suppose, with many scores of people about the +future of India, and I have never yet met anyone, Indian or British, who +thought it desirable that the British should evacuate India at once. And +I have never yet met anyone who did not think that ultimately the +British must let the Indian nations control their own destinies. There +are really not two opposite opinions about the destiny of India, but +only differences of opinion as to the length of time in which that +destiny is to be achieved. Many Indians think (and I agree with them) +that India might be a confederation of sovereign states in close +alliance with the British Empire and its allies within the space of +fifty years or so. The opposite extreme was expressed by an old weary +Indian administrator who told me, "Perhaps they may begin to be capable +of self-government in four or five hundred years." These are the extreme +Liberal and the extreme Tory positions in this question. It is a choice +between decades and centuries. There is no denial of the inevitability +of ultimate restoration. No one of any experience believes the British +administration in India is an eternal institution.</p> + +<p>There is a great deal of cant in this matter in Great Britain. Genteel +English people with relations in the Indian Civil Service and habits of +self-delusion, believe that Indians are "grateful" for British rule. The +sort of "patriotic" self-flattery that prevailed in the Victorian age, +and which is so closely akin to contemporary German follies, fostered +and cultivated this sweet delusion. There are, no doubt, old ladies in +Germany to-day who believe that Belgium will presently be "grateful" for +the present German administration. Let us clear our minds of such cant. +As a matter of fact no Indians really like British rule or think of it +as anything better than a necessary, temporary evil. Let me put the +parallel case to an Englishman or a Frenchman. Through various political +ineptitudes our country has, we will suppose, fallen under the rule of +the Chinese. They administer it, we will further assume, with an +efficiency and honesty unparalleled in the bad old times of our lawyer +politicians. They do not admit us to the higher branches of the +administration; they go about our country wearing a strange costume, +professing a strange religion--which implies that ours is +wrong--speaking an unfamiliar tongue. They control our financial system +and our economic development--on Chinese lines of the highest merit. +They take the utmost care of our Gothic cathedrals for us. They put our +dearest racial possessions into museums and admire them very much +indeed. They teach our young men to fly kites and eat bird's nest soup. +They do all that a well-bred people can do to conceal their habit and +persuasion of a racial superiority. But they keep up their "prestige." +... You know, we shouldn't love them. It really isn't a question of +whether they rule well or ill, but that the position is against certain +fundamentals of human nature. The only possible footing upon which we +could meet them with comfortable minds would be the footing that we and +they were discussing the terms of the restoration of our country. Then +indeed we might almost feel friendly with them. That is the case with +all civilised "possessions." The only terms upon which educated British +and Indians can meet to-day with any comfort is precisely that. The +living intercourse of the British and Indian mind to-day is the +discussion of the restoration. Everything else is humbug on the one side +and self-deception on the other.</p> + +<p>It is idle to speak of the British occupation of India as a conquest or +a robbery. It is a fashion of much "advanced" literature in Europe to +assume that the European rule of various Asiatic countries is the +result of deliberate conquest with a view to spoliation. But that is +only the ugly side of the facts. Cases of the deliberate invasion and +spoliation of one country by another have been very rare in the history +of the last three centuries. There has always been an excuse, and there +has always been a percentage of truth in the excuse. The history of +every country contains phases of political ineptitude in which that +country becomes so misgoverned as to be not only a nuisance to the +foreigner within its borders but a danger to its neighbours. Mexico is +in such a phase to-day. And most of the aggressions and annexations of +the modern period have arisen out of the inconveniences and reasonable +fears caused by such an inept phase. I am a persistent advocate for the +restoration of Poland, but at the same time it is very plain to me that +it is a mere travesty of the facts to say that Poland, was a white lamb +of a country torn to pieces by three wicked neighbours, Poland in the +eighteenth century was a dangerous political muddle, uncertain of her +monarchy, her policy, her affinities. She endangered her neighbours +because there was no guarantee that she might not fall under the +tutelage of one of them and become a weapon against the others.</p> + +<p>The division of Poland was an outrage upon the Polish people, but it +was largely dictated by an entirely honest desire to settle a dangerous +possibility. It seemed less injurious than the possibility of a +vacillating, independent Poland playing off one neighbour against +another. That possibility will still be present in the minds of the +diplomatists who will determine the settlement after the war. Until the +Poles make up their minds, and either convince the Russians that they +are on the side of Russia and Bohemia against Germany for evermore, or +the Germans that they are willing to be Posenised, they will live +between two distrustful enemies.</p> + +<p>The Poles need to think of the future more and the wrongs of Poland +less. They want less patriotic intrigue and more racial self-respect. +They are not only Poles but members of a greater brotherhood. My +impression is that Poland will "go Slav"--in spite of Cracow. But I am +not sure. I am haunted by the fear that Poland may still find her future +hampered by Poles who are, as people say, "too clever by half." An +incalculable Poland cannot be and will not be tolerated by the rest of +Europe.</p> + +<p>And the overspreading of India by the British was in the same way very +clearly done under compulsion, first lest the Dutch or French should +exploit the vast resources of the peninsula against Britain, and then +for fear of a Russian exploitation. I am no apologist for British rule +in India; I think we have neglected vast opportunities there; it was our +business from the outset to build up a free and friendly Indian +confederation, and we have done not a tithe of what we might have done +to that end. But then we have not done a little of what we might have +done for our own country.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless we have our case to plead, not only for going to India +but--with the Berlin papers still babbling of Bagdad and beyond<a name="FNanchor3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3">[3]</a>--of +sticking there very grimly. And so too the British have a fairly sound +excuse for grabbing Egypt in their fear lest in its phase of political +ineptitude it should be the means of strangling the British Empire as +the Turk in Constantinople has been used to strangle the Russian. None +of these justifications I admit are complete, but all deserve +consideration. It is no good arguing about the finer ethics of the +things that are; the business of sane men is to get things better. The +business of all sane men in all the countries of the Pledged Allies and +in America is manifestly to sink petty jealousies and a suicidal +competitiveness, and to organise co-operation with all the intellectual +forces they can find or develop in the subject countries, to convert +these inept national systems into politically efficient independent +organisations in a world peace alliance. If we fail to do that, then all +the inept states and all the subject states about the world will become +one great field for the sowing of tares by the enemy.</p> + +<blockquote> +<a name="Footnote_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor3">[3]</a> This was written late in February, 1916. +</blockquote> + +<p>So that with regard to the civilised just as with regard to the barbaric +regions of the "possessions" of the European-centred empires, we come to +the same conclusion. That on the whole the path of safety lies in the +direction of pooling them and of declaring a common policy of +progressive development leading to equality. The pattern of the United +States, in which the procedure is first the annexation of "territories" +and then their elevation to the rank of "States," must, with of course +far more difficulty and complication, be the pattern for the "empires" +of to-day--so far as they are regions of alien population. The path of +the Dominions, settled by emigrants akin to the home population, +Siberia, Canada, and so forth, to equal citizenship with the people of +the Mother Country is by comparison simple and plain.</p> + +<p>And so the discussion of the future of the overseas "empires" brings us +again to the same realisation to which the discussion of nearly every +great issue arising out of this war has pointed, the realisation of the +imperative necessity of some great council or conference, some permanent +overriding body, call it what you will, that will deal with things more +broadly than any "nationalism" or "patriotic imperialism" can possibly +do. That body must come into human affairs. Upon the courage and +imagination of living statesmen it depends whether it will come simply +and directly into concrete reality or whether it will materialise slowly +through, it may be, centuries of blood and blundering from such phantom +anticipations as this, anticipations that now haunt the thoughts of all +politically-minded men.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="XII._THE_OUTLOOK_FOR_THE_GERMANS"></a>XII. THE OUTLOOK FOR THE GERMANS</h2> +<br> + +<h3>Section 1</h3> + +<p>Whatever some of us among the Allies may say, the future of Germany lies +with Germany. The utmost ambition of the Allies falls far short of +destroying or obliterating Germany; it is to give the Germans so +thorough and memorable an experience of war that they will want no more +of it for a few generations, and, failing the learning of that lesson, +to make sure that they will not be in a position to resume their +military aggressions upon mankind with any hope of success. After all, +it is not the will of the Allies that has determined even this resolve. +It is the declared and manifest will of Germany to become predominant in +the world that has created the Alliance against Germany, and forged and +tempered our implacable resolution to bring militarist Germany down. And +the nature of the coming peace and of the politics that will follow the +peace are much more dependent upon German affairs than upon anything +else whatever.</p> + +<p>This is so clearly understood in Great Britain that there is scarcely a +newspaper that does not devote two or three columns daily to extracts +from the German newspapers, and from letters found upon German killed, +wounded, or prisoners, and to letters and descriptive articles from +neutrals upon the state of the German mind. There can be no doubt that +the British intelligence has grasped and kept its hold upon the real +issue of this war with an unprecedented clarity. At the outset there +came declarations from nearly every type of British opinion that this +war was a war against the Hohenzollern militarist idea, against +Prussianism, and not against Germany.</p> + +<p>In that respect Britain has documented herself to the hilt. There have +been, of course, a number of passionate outcries and wild accusations +against Germans, as a race, during the course of the struggle; but to +this day opinion is steadfast not only in Britain, but if I may judge +from the papers I read and the talk I hear, throughout the whole +English-speaking community, that this is a war not of races but ideas. I +am so certain of this that I would say if Germany by some swift +convulsion expelled her dynasty and turned herself into a republic, it +would be impossible for the British Government to continue the war for +long, whether it wanted to do so or not. The forces in favour of +reconciliation would be too strong. There would be a complete revulsion +from the present determination to continue the war to its bitter but +conclusive end.</p> + +<p>It is fairly evident that the present German Government understands this +frame of mind quite clearly, and is extremely anxious to keep it from +the knowledge of the German peoples. Every act or word from a British +source that suggests an implacable enmity against the Germans as a +people, every war-time caricature and insult, is brought to their +knowledge. It is the manifest interest of the Hohenzollerns and +Prussianism to make this struggle a race struggle and not merely a +political struggle, and to keep a wider breach between the peoples than +between the Governments. The "Made in Germany" grievance has been used +to the utmost against Great Britain as an indication of race hostility. +The everyday young German believes firmly that it was a blow aimed +specially at Germany; that no such regulation affected any goods but +German goods. And the English, with their characteristic heedlessness, +have never troubled to disillusion him. But even the British +caricaturist and the British soldier betray their fundamental opinion +of the matter in their very insults. They will not use a word of abuse +for the Germans as Germans; they call them "Huns," because they are +thinking of Attila, because they are thinking of them as invaders under +a monarch of peaceful France and Belgium, and not as a people living in +a land of their own.</p> + +<p>In Great Britain there is to this day so little hostility for Germans as +such, that recently a nephew of Lord Haldane's, Sir George Makgill, has +considered it advisable to manufacture race hostility and provide the +Hohenzollerns with instances and quotations through the exertions of a +preposterous Anti-German League. Disregarding the essential evils of the +Prussian idea, this mischievous organisation has set itself to persuade +the British people that the Germans are diabolical <i>as a race</i>. It has +displayed great energy and ingenuity in pestering and insulting +naturalised Germans and people of German origin in Britain--below the +rank of the Royal Family, that is--and in making enduring bad blood +between them and the authentic British. It busies itself in breaking up +meetings at which sentiments friendly to Germany might be expressed, +sentiments which, if they could be conveyed to German hearers, would +certainly go far to weaken the determination of the German social +democracy to fight to the end.</p> + +<p>There can, of course, be no doubt of the good faith of Sir George +Makgill, but he could do the Kaiser no better service than to help in +consolidating every rank and class of German, by this organisation of +foolish violence of speech and act, by this profession of an irrational +and implacable hostility. His practical influence over here is trivial, +thanks to the general good sense and the love of fair play in our +people, but there can be little doubt that his intentions are about as +injurious to the future peace of the world as any intentions could be, +and there can be no doubt that intelligent use is made in Germany of the +frothings and ravings of his followers. "Here, you see, is the +disposition of the English," the imperialists will say to the German +pacifists. "They are dangerous lunatics. Clearly we must stick together +to the end." ...</p> + +<p>The stuff of Sir George Makgill's league must not be taken as +representative of any considerable section of British opinion, which is +as a whole nearly as free from any sustained hatred of the Germans as it +was at the beginning of the war. There are, of course, waves of +indignation at such deliberate atrocities as the <i>Lusitania</i> outrage or +the Zeppelin raids, Wittenberg will not easily be forgotten, but it +would take many Sir George Makgills to divert British anger from the +responsible German Government to the German masses.</p> + +<p>That lack of any essential hatred does not mean that British opinion is +not solidly for the continuation of this war against militarist +imperialism to its complete and final defeat. But if that can be +defeated to any extent in Germany by the Germans, if the way opens to a +Germany as unmilitary and pacific as was Great Britain before this war, +there remains from the British point of view nothing else to fight +about. With the Germany of <i>Vorwaerts</i> which, I understand, would +evacuate and compensate Belgium and Serbia, set up a buffer state in +Alsace-Lorraine, and another in a restored Poland (including Posen), the +spirit of the Allies has no profound quarrel at all, has never had any +quarrel. We would only too gladly meet that Germany at a green table +to-morrow, and set to work arranging the compensation of Belgium and +Serbia, and tracing over the outlines of the natural map of mankind the +new political map of Europe.</p> + +<p>Still it must be admitted that not only in Great Britain but in all the +allied countries one finds a certain active minority corresponding to +Sir George Makgill's noisy following, who profess to believe that all +Germans to the third and fourth generation (save and except the +Hanoverian royal family domiciled in Great Britain) are a vile, +treacherous, and impossible race, a race animated by an incredible +racial vanity, a race which is indeed scarcely anything but a conspiracy +against the rest of mankind.</p> + +<p>The ravings of many of these people can only be paralleled by the stuff +about the cunning of the Jesuits that once circulated in +ultra-Protestant circles in England. Elderly Protestant ladies used to +look under the bed and in the cupboard every night for a Jesuit, just as +nowadays they look for a German spy, and as no doubt old German ladies +now look for Sir Edward Grey. It may be useful therefore, at the present +time, to point out that not only is the aggressive German idea not +peculiar to Germany, not only are there endless utterances of French +Chauvinists and British imperialists to be found entirely as vain, +unreasonable and aggressive, but that German militarist imperialism is +so little representative of the German quality, that scarcely one of its +leading exponents is a genuine German.</p> + +<p>Of course there is no denying that the Germans are a very distinctive +people, as distinctive as the French. But their distinctions are not +diabolical. Until the middle of the nineteenth century it was the +fashion to regard them as a race of philosophical incompetents. Their +reputation as a people of exceptionally military quality sprang up in +the weed-bed of human delusions between 1866 and 1872; it will certainly +not survive this war. Their reputation for organisation is another +matter. They are an orderly, industrious, and painstaking people, they +have a great respect for science, for formal education, and for +authority. It is their respect for education which has chiefly betrayed +them, and made them the instrument of Hohenzollern folly. Mr. F.M. +Hueffer has shown this quite conclusively in his admirable but ill-named +book, "When Blood is Their Argument." Their minds have been +systematically corrupted by base historical teaching, and the +inculcation of a rancid patriotism. They are a people under the sway of +organised suggestion. This catastrophic war and its preparation have +been their chief business for half a century; none the less their +peculiar qualities have still been displayed during that period; they +have still been able to lead the world in several branches of social +organisation and in the methodical development of technical science. +Systems of ideas are perhaps more readily shattered than built up; the +aggressive patriotism of many Germans must be already darkened by +serious doubts, and I see no inherent impossibility in hoping that the +mass of the Germans may be restored to the common sanity of mankind, +even in the twenty or thirty years of life that perhaps still remain for +me.</p> + +<p>Consider the names of the chief exponents of the aggressive German idea, +and you will find that not one is German. The first begetter of +Nietzsche's "blond beast," and of all that great flood of rubbish about +a strange superior race with whitish hair and blue eyes, that has so +fatally rotted the German imagination, was a Frenchman named Gobineau. +We British are not altogether free from the disease. As a small boy I +read the History of J.R. Green, and fed my pride upon the peculiar +virtues of my Anglo-Saxon blood. ("Cp.," as they say in footnotes, +Carlyle and Froude.) It was not a German but a renegade Englishman of +the Englishman-hating Whig type, Mr. Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who +carried the Gobineau theory to that delirious level which claims Dante +and Leonardo as Germans, and again it was not a German but a British +peer, still among us, Lord Redesdale, who in his eulogistic preface to +the English translation of Chamberlain's torrent of folly, hinted not +obscurely that the real father of Christ was not the Jew, Joseph, but a +much more Germanic person. Neither Clausewitz, who first impressed upon +the German mind the theory of ruthless warfare, nor Bernhardi, nor +Treitschke, who did as much to build up the Emperor's political +imagination, strike one as bearing particularly German names. There are +indeed very grave grounds for the German complaint that Germany has been +the victim of alien flattery and alien precedents. And what after all is +the Prussian dream of world empire but an imitative response to the +British empire and the adventure of Napoleon? The very title of the +German emperor is the name of an Italian, Caesar, far gone in decay. And +the backbone of the German system at the present time is the Prussian, +who is not really a German at all but a Germanised Wend. Take away the +imported and imposed elements from the things we fight to-day, leave +nothing but what is purely and originally German, and you leave very +little. We fight dynastic ambition, national vanity, greed, and the +fruits of fifty years of basely conceived and efficiently conducted +education.</p> + +<p>The majority of sensible and influential Englishmen are fully aware of +these facts. This does not alter their resolution to beat Germany +thoroughly and finally, and, if Germany remains Hohenzollern after the +war, to do their utmost to ring her in with commercial alliances, +tariffs, navigation and exclusion laws that will keep her poor and +powerless and out of mischief so long as her vice remains in her. But +these considerations of the essential innocence of the German do make +all this systematic hostility, which the British have had forced upon +them, a very uncongenial and reluctant hostility. Pro-civilisation, and +not Anti-German, is the purpose of the Allies. And the speculation of +just how relentlessly and for how long this ring of suspicion and +precaution need be maintained about Germany, of how soon the German may +decide to become once more a good European, is one of extraordinary +interest to every civilised man. In other words, what are the prospects +of a fairly fundamental revolution in German life and thought and +affairs in the years immediately before us?</p> +<br> + +<h3>Section 2</h3> + +<p>In a sense every European country must undergo revolutionary changes as +a consequence of the enormous economic exhaustion and social +dislocations of this war. But what I propose to discuss here is the +possibility of a real political revolution, in the narrower sense of +the word, in Germany, a revolution that will end the Hohenzollern +system, the German dynastic system, altogether, that will democratise +Prussia and put an end for ever to that secretive scheming of military +aggressions which is the essential quarrel of Europe with Germany. It is +the most momentous possibility of our times, because it opens the way to +an alternative state of affairs that may supersede the armed watching +and systematic war of tariffs, prohibitions, and exclusions against the +Central Empires that must quite unavoidably be the future attitude of +the Pledged Allies to any survival of the Hohenzollern empire.</p> + +<p>We have to bear in mind that in this discussion we are dealing with +something very new and quite untried hitherto by anything but success, +that new Germany whose unification began with the spoliation of Denmark +and was completed at Versailles. It is not a man's lifetime old. Under +the state socialism and aggressive militarism of the Hohenzollern regime +it had been led to a level of unexampled pride and prosperity, and it +plunged shouting and singing into this war, confident of victories. It +is still being fed with dwindling hopes of victory, no longer unstinted +hopes, but still hopes--by a sort of political bread-card system. The +hopes outlast the bread-and-butter, but they dwindle and dwindle. How is +this parvenu people going to stand the cessation of hope, the +realisation of the failure and fruitlessness of such efforts as no +people on earth have ever made before? How are they going to behave when +they realise fully that they have suffered and died and starved and +wasted all their land in vain? When they learn too that the cause of the +war was a trick, and the Russian invasion a lie? They have a large +democratic Press that will not hesitate to tell them that, that does +already to the best of its ability disillusion them. They are a +carefully trained and educated and disciplined people, it is true<a name="FNanchor4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4">[4]</a>; +but the solicitude of the German Government everywhere apparent, thus to +keep the resentment of the people directed to the proper quarter, is, I +think, just one of the things that are indicative of the revolutionary +possibilities in Germany. The Allied Governments let opinion, both in +their own countries and in America, shift for itself; they do not even +trouble to mitigate the inevitable exasperation of the military +censorship by an intelligent and tactful control. The German Government, +on the other hand, has organised the putting of the blame upon other +shoulders than its own elaborately and ably from the very beginning of +the war. It must know its own people best, and I do not see why it +should do this if there were not very dangerous possibilities ahead for +itself in the national temperament.</p> + +<blockquote> +<a name="Footnote_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor4">[4]</a> A recent circular, which <i>Vorwaerts</i> quotes, sent by the +education officials to the teachers of Frankfurt-am-Main, points out the +necessity of the "beautiful task" of inculcating a deep love for the +House of Hohenzollern (Crown Prince, grin and all), and concludes, "All +efforts to excuse or minimise or explain the disgraceful acts which our +enemies have committed against Germans all over the world are to be +firmly opposed by you should you see any signs of these efforts entering +the schools." +</blockquote> + +<p>It is one of the commonplaces of this question that in the past the +Germans have always been loyal subjects and never made a revolution. It +is alleged that there has never been a German republic. That is by no +means conclusively true. The nucleus of Swiss freedom was the +German-speaking cantons about the Lake of Lucerne; Tell was a German, +and he was glorified by the German Schiller. No doubt the Protestant +reformation was largely a business of dukes and princes, but the +underlying spirit of that revolt also lay in the German national +character. The Anabaptist insurrection was no mean thing in rebellions, +and the history of the Dutch, who are, after all, only the extreme +expression of the Low German type, is a history of the most stubborn +struggle for freedom in Europe. This legend of German docility will not +bear close examination. It is true that they are not given to spasmodic +outbreaks, and that they do not lend themselves readily to intrigues and +pronunciamentos, but there is every reason to suppose that they have the +heads to plan and the wills to carry out as sound and orderly and +effective a revolution as any people in Europe. Before the war drove +them frantic, the German comic papers were by no means suggestive of an +abject worship of authority and royalty for their own sakes. The +teaching of all forms of morality and sentimentality in schools produces +not only belief but reaction, and the livelier and more energetic the +pupil the more likely he is to react rather than accept.</p> + +<p>Whatever the feelings of the old women of Germany may be towards the +Kaiser and his family, my impression of the opinion of Germans in +general is that they believed firmly in empire, Kaiser and militarism +wholly and solely because they thought these things meant security, +success, triumph, more and more wealth, more and more Germany, and all +that had come to them since 1871 carried on to the <i>n</i>th degree.... I do +not think that all the schoolmasters of Germany, teaching in unison at +the tops of their voices, will sustain that belief beyond the end of +this war.</p> + +<p>At present every discomfort and disappointment of the German people is +being sedulously diverted into rage against the Allies, and particularly +against the English. This is all very well as long as the war goes on +with a certain effect of hopefulness. But what when presently the beam +has so tilted against Germany that an unprofitable peace has become +urgent and inevitable? How can the Hohenzollern suddenly abandon his +pose of righteous indignation and make friends with the accursed enemy, +and how can he make any peace at all with us while he still proclaims us +accursed? Either the Emperor has to go to his people and say, "We +promised you victory and it is defeat," or he has to say, "It is not +defeat, but we are going to make peace with these Russian barbarians who +invaded us, with the incompetent English who betrayed us, with all these +degenerate and contemptible races you so righteously hate and despise, +upon such terms that we shall never be able to attack them again. This +noble and wonderful war is to end in this futility and--these graves. +You were tricked into it, as you were tricked into war in 1870--but this +time it has not turned out quite so well. And besides, after all, we +find we can continue to get on with these people." ...</p> + +<p>In either case, I do not see how he can keep the habitual and cultivated +German hate pointing steadily away from himself. So long as the war is +going on that may be done, but when the soldiers come home the hate will +come home as well. In times of war peoples may hate abroad and with some +unanimity. But after the war, with no war going on or any prospect of a +fresh war, with every exploiter and every industrial tyrant who has made +his unobtrusive profits while the country scowled and spat at England, +stripped of the cover of that excitement, then it is inevitable that +much of this noble hate of England will be seen for the cant it is. The +cultivated hate of the war phase, reinforced by the fresh hate born of +confusion and misery, will swing loose, as it were, seeking dispersedly +for objects. The petty, incessant irritations of proximity will count +for more; the national idea for less. The Hohenzollerns and the Junkers +will have to be very nimble indeed if the German accomplishment of hate +does not swing round upon them.</p> + +<p>It is a common hypothesis with those who speculate on the probable +effects of these disillusionments that Germany may break up again into +its component parts. It is pointed out that Germany is, so to speak, a +palimpsest, that the broad design of the great black eagle and the +imperial crown are but newly painted over a great number of +particularisms, and that these particularisms may return. The empire of +the Germans may break up again. That I do not believe. The forces that +unified Germany lie deeper than the Hohenzollern adventure; print, paper +and the spoken word have bound Germany now into one people for all time. +None the less those previous crowns and symbols that still show through +the paint of the new design may help greatly, as that weakens under the +coming stresses, to disillusion men about its necessity. There was, they +will be reminded, a Germany before Prussia, before Austria for the +matter of that. The empire has been little more than the first German +experiment in unity. It is a new-fangled thing that came and may go +again--leaving Germany still a nation, still with the sense of a common +Fatherland.</p> + +<p>Let us consider a little more particularly the nature of the mass of +population whose collective action in the years immediately ahead of us +we are now attempting to forecast. Its social strata are only very +inexactly equivalent to those in the countries of the Pledged Allies. +First there are the masses of the people. In England for purposes of +edification we keep up the legend of the extreme efficiency of Germany, +the high level of German education, and so forth. The truth is that the +average <i>elementary</i> education of the common people in Britain is +superior to that of Germany, that the domestic efficiency of the British +common people is greater, their moral training better, and their +personal quality higher. This is shown by a number of quite conclusive +facts of which I will instance merely the higher German general +death-rate, the higher German infantile death-rate, the altogether +disproportionate percentage of crimes of violence in Germany, and the +indisputable personal superiority of the British common soldier over his +German antagonist. It is only when we get above the level of the masses +that the position is reversed. The ratio of public expenditure upon +secondary and higher education in Germany as compared with the +expenditure upon elementary education is out of all proportion to the +British ratio.</p> + +<p>Directly we come to the commercial, directive, official, technical and +professional classes in Germany, we come to classes far more highly +trained, more alert intellectually, more capable of collective action, +and more accessible to general ideas, than the less numerous and less +important corresponding classes in Britain. This great German middle +class is the strength and substance of the new Germany; it has increased +proportionally to the classes above and below it, it has developed +almost all its characteristics during the last half-century. At its +lower fringe it comprehends the skilled and scientifically trained +artisans, it supplies the brains of social democracy, and it reaches up +to the world of finance and quasi-state enterprise. And it is the "dark +horse" in all these speculations.</p> + +<p>Hitherto this middle class has been growing almost unawares. It has been +so busy coming into existence and growing, there has been so much to do +since 1871, that it has had scarcely a moment to think round the general +problem of politics at all. It has taken the new empire for granted as a +child takes its home for granted, and its state of mind to-day must be +rather like that of an intelligent boy who suddenly discovers that his +father's picturesque and wonderful speculations have led to his arrest +and brought the brokers into the house, and that there is nothing for it +but to turn to and take control of the family affairs.</p> + +<p>In Germany, the most antiquated and the most modern of European states, +the old dynastic Germany of the princes and junkers has lasted on by +virtue of exceptional successes and prestige into the world of steel and +electricity. But their prestige has paled before the engineering of +Krupp; their success evaporates. A new nation awakens to +self-consciousness only to find itself betrayed into apparently +irreconcilable hostility against the rest of mankind....</p> + +<p>What will be the quality of the monarch and court and junkerdom that +will face this awaking new Germany?</p> + +<p>The monarch will be before very long the present Crown Prince. The +Hohenzollerns have at least the merit of living quickly, and the present +Emperor draws near his allotted term. He will break a record in his +family if he lives another dozen years. So that quite soon after the war +this new disillusioned Germany will be contemplating the imperial graces +of the present Crown Prince. In every way he is an unattractive and +uninspiring figure; he has identified himself completely with that +militarism that has brought about the European catastrophe; in +repudiating him Germany will repudiate her essential offence against +civilisation, and his appears to be the sort of personality that it is a +pleasure to repudiate. He or some kindred regent will be the symbol of +royalty in Germany through all those years of maximum stress and +hardship ahead. Through-out the greater part of Germany the tradition of +loyalty to his house is not a century old. And the real German loyalty +is racial and national far more than dynastic. It is not the +Hohenzollern over all that they sing about; it is Deutschland. (And--as +in the case of all imperfectly civilised people--songs of hate for +foreigners.) But it needed a decadent young American to sing:</p> + +<blockquote> +"Thou Prince of Peace,<br> +Thou God of War,"<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>to the dismal rhetorician of Potsdam. Real emperors reconcile and +consolidate peoples, for an empire is not a nation; but the +Hohenzollerns have never dared to be anything but sedulously national, +"echt Deutsch" and advocates of black-letter. They know the people they +have to deal with.</p> + +<p>This new substantial middle mass of Germany has never been on friendly +terms with the Germany of the court and the landowner. It has inherited +a burgerlich tradition and resented even while it tolerated the swagger +of the aristocratic officer. It tolerated it because that sort of thing +was supposed to be necessary to the national success. But Munich, the +comic papers, Herr Harden, <i>Vorwaerts</i>, speak, I think, for the central +masses of German life far more truly than any official utterances do. +They speak in a voice a little gross, very sensible, blunt, with a kind +of heavy humour. That German voice one may not like, but one must needs +respect it. It is, at any rate, not bombastic. It is essentially honest. +When the imperial eagle comes home with half its feathers out like a +crow that has met a bear; when the surviving aristocratic officers +reappear with a vastly diminished swagger in the biergartens, I believe +that the hitherto acquiescent middle classes and skilled artisan class +of German will entirely disappoint those people who expect them to +behave either with servility or sentimental loyalty. The great +revolutionary impulse of the French was passionate and generous. The +revolutionary impulse of Germany may be even more deadly; it may be +contemptuous. It may be they will not even drag emperor and nobles down; +they will shove them aside....</p> + +<p>In all these matters one must ask the reader to enlarge his perspectives +at least as far back as the last three centuries. The galaxy of German +monarchies that has over-spread so much of Europe is a growth of hardly +more than two centuries. It is a phase in the long process of the +break-up of the Roman Empire and of the catholic system that inherited +its tradition. These royalties have formed a class apart, breeding only +among themselves, and attempting to preserve a sort of caste +internationalism in the face of an advance in human intelligence, a +spread of printing, reading, and writing that makes inevitably for the +recrudescence of national and race feeling, and the increasing +participation of the people in government.</p> + +<p>In Russia and England these originally German dynasties are meeting the +problems of the new time by becoming national. They modify themselves +from year to year. The time when Britain will again have a Queen of +British race may not be very remote. The days when the affairs of Europe +could be discussed at Windsor in German and from a German standpoint +ended with the death of Queen Victoria, and it is only in such +improvised courts as those of Greece and Bulgaria that the national +outlook can still be contemplated from a foreign standpoint and +discussed in a foreign tongue. The age when the monarchical system made +the courts of three-quarters of Europe a German's Fatherland has ended +for ever. And with that, the last rational advantage of monarchy and +royalist sentimentality disappears from the middle-class German's point +of view.</p> + +<p>So it seems to me that the following conclusions about the future of +Germany emerge from these considerations. It is improbable that there +will be any such revolution as overthrew French Imperialism in 1871; the +new Prussian Imperialism is closer to the tradition of the people and +much more firmly established through the educational propaganda of the +past half-century. But liberal forces in Germany may nevertheless be +strong enough to force a peace upon the Hohenzollern empire so soon as +any hopes of aggressive successes die away, before the utmost stage of +exhaustion is reached, early in 1917, perhaps, or at latest in 1918. +This, we suppose, will be a restrictive peace so far as Germany is +concerned, humiliating her and hampering her development. The German +Press will talk freely of a <i>revanche</i> and the renewal of the struggle, +and this will help to consolidate the Pledged Allies in their resolve to +hold Germany on every front and to retard her economic and financial +recovery. The dynasty will lose prestige gradually, the true story of +the war will creep slowly into the German consciousness, and the idea of +a middle-class republic, like the French Republic, only defensively +militant and essentially pacific and industrial, will become more and +more popular in the country.</p> + +<p>This will have the support of strong journalists, journalists of the +Harden type for example. The dynasty tends to become degenerate, so that +the probability of either some gross scandals or an ill-advised +reactionary movement back to absolutism may develop a crisis within a +few years of the peace settlement. The mercantile and professional +classes will join hands with the social democrats to remove the decaying +incubus of the Hohenzollern system, and Germany will become a more +modern and larger repetition of the Third French republic. This collapse +of the Germanic monarchical system may spread considerably beyond the +limits of the German empire. It will probably be effected without much +violence as a consequence of the convergence and maturity of many +streams of very obvious thought. Many of the monarchs concerned may find +themselves still left with their titles, palaces, and personal estates, +and merely deprived of their last vestiges of legal power. The way will +thus be opened for a gradual renewal of good feeling between the people +of Germany and the western Europeans. This renewal will be greatly +facilitated by the inevitable fall in the German birth-rate that the +shortage and economies of this war will have done much to promote, and +by the correlated discrediting of the expansionist idea. By 1960 or so +the alteration of perspectives will have gone so far that historians +will be a little perplexed to explain the causes of the Great War. The +militarist monomania of Germany will have become incomprehensible; her +<i>Welt Politik</i> literature incredible and unreadable....</p> + +<p>Such is my reading of the German horoscope.</p> + +<p>I doubt if there will be nearly so much writing and reading about the +Great War in the latter half of the twentieth century as there was about +Napoleon at the end of the nineteenth. The Great War is essentially +undramatic, it has no hero, it has no great leaders. It is a story of +the common sense of humanity suppressing certain tawdry and vulgar ideas +and ambitions, and readjusting much that was wasteful and unjust in +social and economic organisation. It is the story of how the spirit of +man was awakened by a nightmare of a War Lord.... The nightmare will +fade out of mind, and the spirit of man, with revivified energies, will +set about the realities of life, the re-establishment of order, the +increase of knowledge and creation. Amid these realities the great +qualities of the Germans mark them for a distinguished and important +rôle.</p> +<br> + +<h3>Section 3</h3> + +<p>The primary business of the Allies is not reconciliation with Germany. +Their primary concern is to organise a great League of Peace about the +world with which the American States and China may either unite or +establish a permanent understanding. Separate attempts to restore +friendship with the Germans will threaten the unanimity of the League of +Peace, and perhaps renew the intrigues and evils of the Germanic +dynastic system which this war may destroy. The essential restoration of +Germany must be the work of German men speaking plain sense to Germans, +and inducing their country to hold out its hand not to this or that +suspicious neighbour but to mankind. A militarist Germany is a Germany +self-condemned to isolation or world empire. A Germany which has +returned to the ways of peace, on the other hand, will be a country that +cannot be kept out of the system of civilisation. The tariff wall cannot +but be lowered, the watchful restrictions cannot but be discontinued +against such a Germany. Europe is a system with its heart half used, so +long as Germany is isolated. The German population is and will remain +the central and largest mass of people in Europe. That is a fact as +necessary as the Indianism of India.</p> + +<p>To reconstruct modern civilisation without Germany would be a colossal +artificial task that would take centuries to do. It is inconceivable +that Germany will stand out of Europeanism so long as to allow the trade +routes of the world to be entirely deflected from her. Her own +necessities march with the natural needs of the world.</p> + +<p>So that I give the alliance for the isolation of Germany at the outside +a life of forty years before it ceases to be necessary through the +recovered willingness of the Germans to lay aside aggression.</p> + +<p>But this is not a thing to be run at too hastily. It may be easily +possible to delay this national general reconciliation of mankind by an +unreal effusion. There will be no advantage in forcing the feelings of +the late combatants. It is ridiculous to suppose that for the next +decade or so, whatever happens, any Frenchmen are going to feel genial +about the occupation of their north-east provinces, or any Belgians +smile at the memory of Dinant or Louvain, or the Poles or Serbs forgive +the desolation of their country, or any English or Russians take a +humorous view of the treatment their people have had as prisoners in +Germany. So long as these are living memories they will keep a barrier +of dislike about Germany. Nor is it probable that the ordinary German +is going to survey the revised map of Africa with a happy sense of +relief, or blame no one but himself for the vanished prosperity of 1914. +That is asking too much of humanity. Unless I know nothing of Germany, +Germany will bristle with "denkmals" to keep open all such sores. The +dislike of Germany by the allied nations will be returned in the +hostility of a thwarted and disappointed people. Not even the neutrals +will be aloof from these hostilities and resentments. The world will +still, in 1950 or so, be throwing much passion into the rights and +wrongs of the sinking of the <i>Lusitania</i>. There will be a bitterness in +the memories of this and the next generation that will make the +spectacle of ardent Frenchmen or Englishmen or Belgians or Russians +embracing Germans with gusto--unpleasant, to say the least of it.</p> + +<p>We may bring ourselves to understand, we may bring ourselves to a cold +and reasonable forgiveness, we may suppress our Sir George Makgills and +so forth, but it will take sixty or seventy years for the two sides in +this present war to grow kindly again. Let us build no false hopes nor +pretend to any false generosities. These hatreds can die out only in one +way, by the passing of a generation, by the dying out of the wounded +and the wronged. Our business, our unsentimental business, is to set +about establishing such conditions that they will so die out. And that +is the business of the sane Germans too. Behind the barriers this war +will have set up between Germany and Anti-Germany, the intelligent men +in either camp must prepare the ultimate peace they will never enjoy, +must work for the days when their sons at least may meet as they +themselves can never meet, without accusation or resentment, upon the +common business of the World Peace. That is not to be done by any +conscientious sentimentalities, any slobbering denials of unforgettable +injuries. We want no Pro-German Leagues any more than we want +Anti-German Leagues. We want patience--and silence.</p> + +<p>My reason insists upon the inevitableness and necessity of this ultimate +reconciliation. I will do no more than I must to injure Germany further, +and I will do all that I can to restore the unity of mankind. None the +less is it true that for me for all the rest of my life the Germans I +shall meet, the German things I shall see, will be smeared with the +blood of my people and my friends that the wilfulness of Germany has +spilt.</p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of What is Coming?, by H. G. 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Wells + +Release Date: February 25, 2004 [EBook #11289] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT IS COMING? *** + + + + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Dave Morgan and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + + + + +What is Coming? + +A Forecast of Things after the War + +By H.G. WELLS + +1916 + + + +CONTENTS + + 1. FORECASTING THE FUTURE + 2. THE END OF THE WAR + 3. NATIONS IN LIQUIDATION + 4. BRAINTREE, BOCKING, AND THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD + 5. How FAR WILL EUROPE GO TOWARD SOCIALISM? + 6. LAWYER AND PRESS + 7. THE NEW EDUCATION + 8. WHAT THE WAR IS DOING FOR WOMEN + 9. THE NEW MAP OF EUROPE +10. THE UNITED STATES, FRANCE, BRITAIN, AND RUSSIA +11. THE "WHITE MAN'S BURTHEN" +12. THE OUTLOOK FOR THE GERMANS + + + + +I. FORECASTING THE FUTURE + + +Prophecy may vary between being an intellectual amusement and a serious +occupation; serious not only in its intentions, but in its consequences. +For it is the lot of prophets who frighten or disappoint to be stoned. +But for some of us moderns, who have been touched with the spirit of +science, prophesying is almost a habit of mind. + +Science is very largely analysis aimed at forecasting. The test of any +scientific law is our verification of its anticipations. The scientific +training develops the idea that whatever is going to happen is really +here now--if only one could see it. And when one is taken by surprise +the tendency is not to say with the untrained man, "Now, who'd ha' +thought it?" but "Now, what was it we overlooked?" + +Everything that has ever existed or that will ever exist is here--for +anyone who has eyes to see. But some of it demands eyes of superhuman +penetration. Some of it is patent; we are almost as certain of next +Christmas and the tides of the year 1960 and the death before 3000 A.D. +of everybody now alive as if these things had already happened. Below +that level of certainty, but still at a very high level of certainty, +there are such things as that men will probably be making aeroplanes of +an improved pattern in 1950, or that there will be a through railway +connection between Constantinople and Bombay and between Baku and Bombay +in the next half-century. From such grades of certainty as this, one may +come down the scale until the most obscure mystery of all is reached: +the mystery of the individual. Will England presently produce a military +genius? or what will Mr. Belloc say the day after to-morrow? The most +accessible field for the prophet is the heavens; the least is the secret +of the jumping cat within the human skull. How will so-and-so behave, +and how will the nation take it? For such questions as that we need the +subtlest guesses of all. + +Yet, even to such questions as these the sharp, observant man may risk +an answer with something rather better than an even chance of being +right. + +The present writer is a prophet by use and wont. He is more interested +in to-morrow than he is in to-day, and the past is just material for +future guessing. "Think of the men who have walked here!" said a tourist +in the Roman Coliseum. It was a Futurist mind that answered: "Think of +the men who will." It is surely as interesting that presently some +founder of the World Republic, some obstinate opponent of militarism or +legalism, or the man who will first release atomic energy for human use, +will walk along the Via Sacra as that Cicero or Giordano Bruno or +Shelley have walked there in the past. To the prophetic mind all history +is and will continue to be a prelude. The prophetic type will +steadfastly refuse to see the world as a museum; it will insist that +here is a stage set for a drama that perpetually begins. + +Now this forecasting disposition has led the writer not only to publish +a book of deliberate prophesying, called "Anticipations," but almost +without premeditation to scatter a number of more or less obvious +prophecies through his other books. From first to last he has been +writing for twenty years, so that it is possible to check a certain +proportion of these anticipations by the things that have happened, Some +of these shots have hit remarkably close to the bull's-eye of reality; +there are a number of inners and outers, and some clean misses. Much +that he wrote about in anticipation is now established commonplace. In +1894 there were still plenty of sceptics of the possibility either of +automobiles or aeroplanes; it was not until 1898 that Mr. S.P. Langley +(of the Smithsonian Institute) could send the writer a photograph of a +heavier-than-air flying machine actually in the air. There were articles +in the monthly magazines of those days _proving_ that flying was +impossible. + +One of the writer's luckiest shots was a description (in "Anticipations" +in 1900) of trench warfare, and of a deadlock almost exactly upon the +lines of the situation after the battle of the Marne. And he was +fortunate (in the same work) in his estimate of the limitations of +submarines. He anticipated Sir Percy Scott by a year in his doubts of +the decisive value of great battleships (_see_ "An Englishman Looks at +the World"); and he was sound in denying the decadence of France; in +doubting (before the Russo-Japanese struggle) the greatness of the power +of Russia, which was still in those days a British bogey; in making +Belgium the battle-ground in a coming struggle between the mid-European +Powers and the rest of Europe; and (he believes) in foretelling a +renascent Poland. Long before Europe was familiar with the engaging +personality of the German Crown Prince, he represented great airships +sailing over England (which country had been too unenterprising to make +any) under the command of a singularly anticipatory Prince Karl, and in +"The World Set Free" the last disturber of the peace is a certain +"Balkan Fox." + +In saying, however, here and there that "before such a year so-and-so +will happen," or that "so-and-so will not occur for the next twenty +years," he was generally pretty widely wrong; most of his time estimates +are too short; he foretold, for example, a special motor track apart +from the high road between London and Brighton before 1910, which is +still a dream, but he doubted if effective military aviation or aerial +fighting would be possible before 1950, which is a miss on the other +side. He will draw a modest veil over certain still wider misses that +the idle may find for themselves in his books; he prefers to count the +hits and leave the reckoning of the misses to those who will find a +pleasure in it. + +Of course, these prophecies of the writer's were made upon a basis of +very generalised knowledge. What can be done by a really sustained +research into a particular question--especially if it is a question +essentially mechanical--is shown by the work of a Frenchman all too +neglected by the trumpet of fame--Clement Ader. M. Ader was probably the +first man to get a mechanism up into the air for something more than a +leap. His _Eole_, as General Mensier testifies, prolonged a jump as far +as fifty metres as early as 1890. In 1897 his _Avion_ fairly flew. (This +is a year ahead of the date of my earliest photograph of S.P. Langley's +aeropile in mid-air.) This, however, is beside our present mark. The +fact of interest here is that in 1908, when flying was still almost +incredible, M. Ader published his "Aviation Militaire." Well, that was +eight years ago, and men have been fighting in the air now for a year, +and there is still nothing being done that M. Ader did not see, and +which we, if we had had the wisdom to attend to him, might not have been +prepared for. There is much that he foretells which is still awaiting +its inevitable fulfilment. So clearly can men of adequate knowledge and +sound reasoning power see into the years ahead in all such matters of +material development. + +But it is not with the development of mechanical inventions that the +writer now proposes to treat. In this book he intends to hazard certain +forecasts about the trend of events in the next decade or so. Mechanical +novelties will probably play a very small part in that coming history. +This world-wide war means a general arrest of invention and enterprise, +except in the direction of the war business. Ability is concentrated +upon that; the types of ability that are not applicable to warfare are +neglected; there is a vast destruction of capital and a waste of the +savings that are needed to finance new experiments. Moreover, we are +killing off many of our brightest young men. + +It is fairly safe to assume that there will be very little new furniture +on the stage of the world for some considerable time; that if there is +much difference in the roads and railways and shipping it will be for +the worse; that architecture, domestic equipment, and so on, will be +fortunate if in 1924 they stand where they did in the spring of 1914. In +the trenches of France and Flanders, and on the battlefields of Russia, +the Germans have been spending and making the world spend the comfort, +the luxury and the progress of the next quarter-century. There is no +accounting for tastes. But the result is that, while it was possible +for the writer in 1900 to write "Anticipations of the Reaction of +Mechanical Progress upon Human Life and Thought," in 1916 his +anticipations must belong to quite another system of consequences. + +The broad material facts before us are plain enough. It is the mental +facts that have to be unravelled. It isn't now a question of "What +thing--what faculty--what added power will come to hand, and how will it +affect our ways of living?" It is a question of "How are people going to +take these obvious things--waste of the world's resources, arrest of +material progress, the killing of a large moiety of the males in nearly +every European country, and universal loss and unhappiness?" We are +going to deal with realities here, at once more intimate and less +accessible than the effects of mechanism. + +As a preliminary reconnaissance, as it were, over the region of problems +we have to attack, let us consider the difficulties of a single +question, which is also a vital and central question in this forecast. +We shall not attempt a full answer here, because too many of the factors +must remain unexamined; later, perhaps, we may be in a better position +to do so. This question is the probability of the establishment of a +long world peace. + +At the outset of the war there was a very widely felt hope among the +intellectuals of the world that this war might clear up most of the +outstanding international problems, and prove the last war. The writer, +looking across the gulf of experience that separates us from 1914, +recalls two pamphlets whose very titles are eloquent of this +feeling--"The War that will End War," and "The Peace of the World." Was +the hope expressed in those phrases a dream? Is it already proven a +dream? Or can we read between the lines of the war news, diplomatic +disputations, threats and accusations, political wranglings and stories +of hardship and cruelty that now fill our papers, anything that still +justifies a hope that these bitter years of world sorrow are the +darkness before the dawn of a better day for mankind? Let us handle this +problem for a preliminary examination. + +What is really being examined here is the power of human reason to +prevail over passion--and certain other restraining and qualifying +forces. There can be little doubt that, if one could canvass all mankind +and ask them whether they would rather have no war any more, the +overwhelming mass of them would elect for universal peace. If it were +war of the modern mechanical type that was in question, with air raids, +high explosives, poison gas and submarines, there could be no doubt at +all about the response. "Give peace in our time, O Lord," is more than +ever the common prayer of Christendom, and the very war makers claim to +be peace makers; the German Emperor has never faltered in his assertion +that he encouraged Austria to send an impossible ultimatum to Serbia, +and invaded Belgium because Germany was being attacked. The Krupp-Kaiser +Empire, he assures us, is no eagle, but a double-headed lamb, resisting +the shearers and butchers. The apologists for war are in a hopeless +minority; a certain number of German Prussians who think war good for +the soul, and the dear ladies of the London _Morning Post_ who think war +so good for the manners of the working classes, are rare, discordant +voices in the general chorus against war. If a mere unsupported and +uncoordinated will for peace could realise itself, there would be peace, +and an enduring peace, to-morrow. But, as a matter of fact, there is no +peace coming to-morrow, and no clear prospect yet of an enduring +universal peace at the end of this war. + +Now what are the obstructions, and what are the antagonisms to the +exploitation of this world-wide disgust with war and the world-wide +desire for peace, so as to establish a world peace? + +Let us take them in order, and it will speedily become apparent that we +are dealing here with a subtle quantitative problem in psychology, a +constant weighing of whether this force or that force is the stronger. +We are dealing with influences so subtle that the accidents of some +striking dramatic occurrence, for example, may turn them this way or +that. We are dealing with the human will--and thereby comes a snare for +the feet of the would-be impartial prophet. To foretell the future is to +modify the future. It is hard for any prophet not to break into +exhortation after the fashion of the prophets of Israel. + +The first difficulty in the way of establishing a world peace is that it +is nobody's business in particular. Nearly all of us want a world +peace--in an amateurish sort of way. But there is no specific person or +persons to whom one can look for the initiatives. The world is a +supersaturated solution of the will-for-peace, and there is nothing for +it to crystallise upon. There is no one in all the world who is +responsible for the understanding and overcoming of the difficulties +involved. There are many more people, and there is much more +intelligence concentrated upon the manufacture of cigarettes or +hairpins than upon the establishment of a permanent world peace. There +are a few special secretaries employed by philanthropic Americans, and +that is about all. There has been no provision made even for the +emoluments of these gentlemen when universal peace is attained; +presumably they would lose their jobs. + +Nearly everybody wants peace; nearly everybody would be glad to wave a +white flag with a dove on it now--provided no unfair use was made of +such a demonstration by the enemy--but there is practically nobody +thinking out the arrangements needed, and nobody making nearly as much +propaganda for the instruction of the world in the things needful as is +made in selling any popular make of automobile. We have all our +particular businesses to attend to. And things are not got by just +wanting them; things are got by getting them, and rejecting whatever +precludes our getting them. + +That is the first great difficulty: the formal Peace Movement is quite +amateurish. + +It is so amateurish that the bulk of people do not even realise the very +first implication of the peace of the world. It has not succeeded in +bringing this home to them. + +If there is to be a permanent peace of the world, it is clear that +there must be some permanent means of settling disputes between Powers +and nations that would otherwise be at war. That means that there must +be some head power, some point of reference, a supreme court of some +kind, a universally recognised executive over and above the separate +Governments of the world that exist to-day. That does not mean that +those Governments Have to disappear, that "nationality" has to be given +up, or anything so drastic as that. But it does mean that all those +Governments have to surrender almost as much of their sovereignty as the +constituent sovereign States which make up the United States of America +have surrendered to the Federal Government; if their unification is to +be anything more than a formality, they will have to delegate a control +of their inter-State relations to an extent for which few minds are +prepared at present. + +It is really quite idle to dream of a warless world in which States are +still absolutely free to annoy one another with tariffs, with the +blocking and squeezing of trade routes, with the ill-treatment of +immigrants and travelling strangers, and between which there is no means +of settling boundary disputes. Moreover, as between the united States of +the world and the United States of America there is this further +complication of the world position: that almost all the great States of +Europe are in possession, firstly, of highly developed territories of +alien language and race, such as Egypt; and, secondly, of barbaric and +less-developed territories, such as Nigeria or Madagascar. There will be +nothing stable about a world settlement that does not destroy in these +"possessions" the national preference of the countries that own them and +that does not prepare for the immediate or eventual accession of these +subject peoples to State rank. Most certainly, however, thousands of +intelligent people in those great European countries who believe +themselves ardent for a world peace will be staggered at any proposal to +place any part of "our Empire" under a world administration on the +footing of a United States territory. Until they cease to be staggered +by anything of the sort, their aspirations for a permanent peace will +remain disconnected from the main current of their lives. And that +current will flow, sluggishly or rapidly, towards war. For essentially +these "possessions" are like tariffs, like the strategic occupation of +neutral countries or secret treaties; they are forms of the conflict +between nations to oust and prevail over other nations. + +Going on with such things and yet deprecating war is really not an +attempt to abolish conflict; it is an attempt to retain conflict and +limit its intensity; it is like trying to play hockey on the +understanding that the ball shall never travel faster than eight miles +an hour. + +Now it not only stands in our way to a permanent peace of the world that +the great mass of men are not prepared for even the most obvious +implications of such an idea, but there is also a second invincible +difficulty--that there is nowhere in the world anybody, any type of men, +any organisation, any idea, any nucleus or germ, that could possibly +develop into the necessary over-Government. We are asking for something +out of the air, out of nothingness, that will necessarily array against +itself the resistance of all those who are in control, or interested in +the control, of the affairs of sovereign States of the world as they are +at present; the resistance of a gigantic network of Government +organisations, interests, privileges, assumptions. + +Against this a headless, vague aspiration, however universal, is likely +to prove quite ineffective. Of course, it is possible to suggest that +the Hague Tribunal is conceivably the germ of such an overriding +direction and supreme court as the peace of the world demands, but in +reality the Hague Tribunal is a mere legal automatic machine. It does +nothing unless you set it in motion. It has no initiative. It does not +even protest against the most obvious outrages upon that phantom of a +world-conscience--international law. + +Pacificists in their search for some definite starting-point, about +which the immense predisposition for peace may crystallise, have +suggested the Pope and various religious organisations as a possible +basis for the organisation of peace. But there would be no appeal from +such a beginning to the non-Christian majority of mankind, and the +suggestion in itself indicates a profound ignorance of the nature of the +Christian churches. With the exception of the Quakers and a few Russian +sects, no Christian sect or church has ever repudiated war; most have +gone out of the way to sanction it and bless it. + +It is altogether too rashly assumed by people whose sentimentality +outruns their knowledge that Christianity is essentially an attempt to +carry out the personal teachings of Christ. It is nothing of the sort, +and no church authority will support that idea. Christianity--more +particularly after the ascendancy of the Trinitarian doctrine was +established--was and is a theological religion; it is the religion that +triumphed over Arianism, Manichseism, Gnosticism, and the like; it is +based not on Christ, but on its creeds. Christ, indeed, is not even its +symbol; on the contrary, the chosen symbol of Christianity is the cross +to which Christ was nailed and on which He died. It was very largely a +religion of the legions. It was the warrior Theodosius who, more than +any single other man, imposed it upon Europe. + +There is no reason, therefore, either in precedent or profession, for +expecting any plain lead from the churches in this tremendous task of +organising and making effective the widespread desire of the world for +peace. And even were this the case, it is doubtful if we should find in +the divines and dignitaries of the Vatican, of the Russian and British +official churches, or of any other of the multitudinous Christian sects, +the power and energy, the knowledge and ability, or even the goodwill +needed to negotiate so vast a thing as the creation of a world +authority. + +One other possible starting-point has been suggested. It is no great +feat for a naive imagination to suppose the President of the Swiss +Confederation or the President of the United States--for each of these +two systems is an exemplary and encouraging instance of the possibility +of the pacific synthesis of independent States--taking a propagandist +course and proposing extensions of their own systems to the suffering +belligerents. + +But nothing of the sort occurs. And when you come to look into the +circumstances of these two Presidents you will discover that neither of +them is any more free than anybody else to embark upon the task of +creating a State-overriding, war-preventing organisation of the world. +He has been created by a system, and he is bound to a system; his +concern is with the interests of the people of Switzerland or of the +United States of America. President Wilson, for example, is quite +sufficiently occupied by the affairs of the White House, by the clash of +political parties, by interferences with American overseas trade and the +security of American citizens. He has no more time to give to projects +for the fundamental reconstruction of international relationships than +has any recruit drilling in England, or any captain on an ocean liner, +or any engineer in charge of a going engine. + +We are all, indeed, busy with the things that come to hand every day. We +are all anxious for a permanent world peace, but we are all up to the +neck in things that leave us no time to attend to this world peace that +nearly every sane man desires. + +Meanwhile, a small minority of people who trade upon +contention--militarists, ambitious kings and statesmen, war contractors, +loan mongers, sensational journalists--follow up their interests and +start and sustain war. + +There lies the paradoxical reality of this question. Our first inquiry +lands us into the elucidation of this deadlock. Nearly everybody desires +a world peace, and yet there is not apparent anywhere any man free and +able and willing to establish it, while, on the other hand, there are a +considerable number of men in positions of especial influence and power +who will certainly resist the arrangements that are essential to its +establishment. + +But does this exhaust the question, and must we conclude that mankind is +doomed to a perpetual, futile struggling of States and nations and +peoples--breaking ever and again into war? The answer to that would +probably, be "Yes" if it were not for the progress of war. War is +continually becoming more scientific, more destructive, more coldly +logical, more intolerant of non-combatants, and more exhausting of any +kind of property. There is every reason to believe that it will continue +to intensify these characteristics. By doing so it may presently bring +about a state of affairs that will supply just the lacking elements that +are needed for the development of a world peace. + +I would venture to suggest that the present war is doing so now: that it +is producing changes in men's minds that may presently give us both the +needed energy and the needed organisation from which a world direction +may develop. + +The first, most distinctive thing about this conflict is the +exceptionally searching way in which it attacks human happiness. No war +has ever destroyed happiness so widely. It has not only killed and +wounded an unprecedented proportion of the male population of all the +combatant nations, but it has also destroyed wealth beyond precedent. It +has also destroyed freedom--of movement, of speech, of economic +enterprise. Hardly anyone alive has escaped the worry of it and the +threat of it. It has left scarcely a life untouched, and made scarcely a +life happier. There is a limit to the principle that "everybody's +business is nobody's business." The establishment of a world State, +which was interesting only to a few cranks and visionaries before the +war, is now the lively interest of a very great number of people. They +inquire about it; they have become accessible to ideas about it. + +Peace organisation seems, indeed, to be following the lines of public +sanitation. Everybody in England, for example, was bored by the +discussion of sanitation--until the great cholera epidemic. Everybody +thought public health a very desirable thing, but nobody thought it +intensely and overridingly desirable. Then the interest in sanitation +grew lively, and people exerted themselves to create responsible +organisations. Crimes of violence, again, were neglected in the great +cities of Europe until the danger grew to dimensions that evolved the +police. There come occasions when the normal concentration of an +individual upon his own immediate concerns becomes impossible; as, for +instance, when a man who is stocktaking in his business premises +discovers that the house next door is on fire. A great many people who +have never troubled their heads about anything but their own purely +personal and selfish interests are now realising that quite a multitude +of houses about them are ablaze, and that the fire is spreading. + +That is one change the war will bring about that will make for world +peace: a quickened general interest in its possibility. Another is the +certainty that the war will increase the number of devoted and fanatic +characters available for disinterested effort. Whatever other outcome +this war may have, it means that there lies ahead a period of extreme +economic and political dislocation. The credit system has been strained, +and will be strained, and will need unprecedented readjustments. In the +past such phases of uncertainty, sudden impoverishment and disorder as +certainly lie ahead of us, have meant for a considerable number of minds +a release--or, if you prefer it, a flight--from the habitual and +selfish. Types of intense religiosity, of devotion and of endeavour are +let loose, and there will be much more likelihood that we may presently +find, what it is impossible to find now, a number of devoted men and +women ready to give their whole lives, with a quasi-religious +enthusiasm, to this great task of peace establishment, finding in such +impersonal work a refuge from the disappointments, limitations, losses +and sorrows of their personal life--a refuge we need but little in more +settled and more prosperous periods. They will be but the outstanding +individuals in a very universal quickening. And simultaneously with this +quickening of the general imagination by experience there are certain +other developments in progress that point very clearly to a change under +the pressure of this war of just those institutions of nationality, +kingship, diplomacy and inter-State competition that have hitherto stood +most effectually in the way of a world pacification. The considerations +that seem to point to this third change are very convincing, to my mind. + +The real operating cause that is, I believe, going to break down the +deadlock that has hitherto made a supreme court and a federal government +for the world at large a dream, lies in just that possibility of an +"inconclusive peace" which so many people seem to dread. Germany, I +believe, is going to be beaten, but not completely crushed, by this war; +she is going to be left militarist and united with Austria and Hungary, +and unchanged in her essential nature; and out of that state of affairs +comes, I believe, the hope for an ultimate confederation of the nations +of the earth. + +Because, in the face of a league of the Central European Powers +attempting recuperation, cherishing revenge, dreaming of a renewal of +the struggle, it becomes impossible for the British, the French, the +Belgians, Russians, Italians or Japanese to think any longer of settling +their differences by war among themselves. To do so will mean the +creation of opportunity for the complete reinstatement of German +militarism. It will open the door for a conclusive German hegemony. +Now, however clumsy and confused the diplomacy of these present Allies +may be (challenged constantly, as it is, by democracy and hampered by a +free, venal and irresponsible Press in at least three of their +countries), the necessity they will be under will be so urgent and so +evident, that it is impossible to imagine that they will not set up some +permanent organ for the direction and co-ordination of their joint +international relationships. It may be a queerly constituted body at +first; it may be of a merely diplomatic pretension; it may be called a +Congress, or any old name of that sort, but essentially its business +will be to conduct a joint fiscal, military and naval policy, to keep +the peace in the Balkans and Asia, to establish a relationship with +China, and organise joint and several arbitration arrangements with +America. And it must develop something more sure and swift than our +present diplomacy. One of its chief concerns will be the right of way +through the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, and the watching of the +forces that stir up conflict in the Balkans and the Levant. It must have +unity enough for that; it must be much more than a mere leisurely, +unauthoritative conference of representatives. + +For precisely similar reasons it seems to me incredible that the two +great Central European Powers should ever fall into sustained conflict +again with one another. They, too, will be forced to create some +overriding body to prevent so suicidal a possibility. America too, it +may be, will develop some Pan-American equivalent. Probably the hundred +millions of Latin America may achieve a method of unity, and then deal +on equal terms with the present United States. The thing has been ably +advocated already in South America. Whatever appearances of separate +sovereignties are kept up after the war, the practical outcome of the +struggle is quite likely to be this: that there will be only three great +World Powers left--the anti-German allies, the allied Central Europeans, +the Pan-Americans. And it is to be noted that, whatever the constituents +of these three Powers may be, none of them is likely to be a monarchy. +They may include monarchies, as England includes dukedoms. But they will +be overriding alliances, not overriding rulers. I leave it to the +mathematician to work out exactly how much the chances of conflict are +diminished when there are practically only three Powers in the world +instead of some scores. And these new Powers will be in certain respects +unlike any existing European "States." None of the three Powers will be +small or homogeneous enough to serve dynastic ambitions, embody a +national or racial Kultur, or fall into the grip of any group of +financial enterprises. They will be more comprehensive, less romantic, +and more businesslike altogether. They will be, to use a phrase +suggested a year or so ago, Great States.... And the war threat between +the three will be so plain and definite, the issues will be so lifted +out of the spheres of merely personal ambition and national feeling, +that I do not see why the negotiating means, the standing conference of +the three, should not ultimately become the needed nucleus of the World +State for which at present we search the world in vain. + +There are more ways than one to the World State, and this second +possibility of a post-war conference and a conference of the Allies, +growing almost unawares into a pacific organisation of the world, since +it goes on directly from existing institutions, since it has none of the +quality of a clean break with the past which the idea of an immediate +World State and Pax Mundi involves, and more particularly since it +neither abolishes nor has in it anything to shock fundamentally the +princes, the diplomatists, the lawyers, the statesmen and politicians, +the nationalists and suspicious people, since it gives them years in +which to change and die out and reappear in new forms, and since at the +same time it will command the support of every intelligent human being +who gets his mind clear enough from his circumstances to understand its +import, is a far more credible hope than the hope of anything coming _de +novo_ out of Hague Foundations or the manifest logic of the war. + +But, of course, there weighs against these hopes the possibility that +the Allied Powers are too various in their nature, too biased, too +feeble intellectually and imaginatively, to hold together and maintain +any institution for co-operation. The British Press may be too silly not +to foster irritation and suspicion; we may get Carsonism on a larger +scale trading on the resuscitation of dying hatreds; the British and +Russian diplomatists may play annoying tricks upon one another by sheer +force of habit. There may be many troubles of that sort. Even then I do +not see that the hope of an ultimate world peace vanishes. But it will +be a Roman world peace, made in Germany, and there will have to be +several more great wars before it is established. Germany is too +homogeneous yet to have begun the lesson of compromise and the +renunciation of the dream of national conquest. The Germans are a +national, not an imperial people. France has learnt that through +suffering, and Britain and Russia because for two centuries they have +been imperial and not national systems. The German conception of world +peace is as yet a conception of German ascendancy. The Allied conception +becomes perforce one of mutual toleration. + +But I will not press this inquiry farther now. It is, as I said at the +beginning, a preliminary exploration of one of the great questions with +which I propose to play in these articles. The possibility I have +sketched is the one that most commends itself to me as probable. After a +more detailed examination of the big operating forces at present working +in the world, we may be in a position to revise these suggestions with a +greater confidence and draw our net of probabilities a little tighter. + + + + +II. THE END OF THE WAR[1] + + +The prophet who emerges with the most honour from this war is Bloch. It +must be fifteen or sixteen years ago since this gifted Pole made his +forecast of the future. Perhaps it is more, for the French translation +of his book was certainly in existence before the Boer War. His case was +that war between antagonists of fairly equal equipment must end in a +deadlock because of the continually increasing defensive efficiency of +entrenched infantry. This would give the defensive an advantage over the +most brilliant strategy and over considerably superior numbers that +would completely discourage all aggression. He concluded that war was +played out. + +[Footnote 1: This chapter was originally a newspaper article. It was +written in December, 1915, and published about the middle of January. +Some of it has passed from the quality of anticipation to achievement, +but I do not see that it needs any material revision on that account.] + +His book was very carefully studied in Germany. As a humble disciple of +Bloch I should have realised this, but I did not, and that failure led +me into some unfortunate prophesying at the outbreak of the war. I +judged Germany by the Kaiser, and by the Kaiser-worship which I saw in +Berlin. I thought that he was a theatrical person who would dream of +vast massed attacks and tremendous cavalry charges, and that he would +lead Germany to be smashed against the Allied defensive in the West, and +to be smashed so thoroughly that the war would be over. I did not +properly appreciate the more studious and more thorough Germany that was +to fight behind the Kaiser and thrust him aside, the Germany we British +fight now, the Ostwald-Krupp Germany of 1915. That Germany, one may now +perceive, had read and thought over and thought out the Bloch problem. + +There was also a translation of Bloch into French. In English a portion +of his book was translated for the general reader and published with a +preface by the late Mr. W.T. Stead. It does not seem to have reached the +British military authorities, nor was it published in England with an +instructive intention. As an imaginative work it would have been +considered worthless and impracticable. + +But it is manifest now that if the Belgian and French frontiers had been +properly prepared--as they should have been prepared when the Germans +built their strategic railways--with trenches and gun emplacements and +secondary and tertiary lines, the Germans would never have got fifty +miles into either France or Belgium. They would have been held at Liege +and in the Ardennes. Five hundred thousand men would have held them +indefinitely. But the Allies had never worked trench warfare; they were +unready for it, Germans knew of their unreadiness, and their unreadiness +it is quite clear they calculated. They did not reckon, it is now clear +that they were right in not reckoning, the Allies as contemporary +soldiers. They were going to fight a 1900 army with a 1914 army, and +their whole opening scheme was based on the conviction that the Allies +would not entrench. + +Somebody in those marvellous maxims from the dark ages that seem to form +the chief reading of our military experts, said that the army that +entrenches is a defeated army. The silly dictum was repeated and +repeated in the English papers after the battle of the Marne. It shows +just where our military science had reached in 1914, namely, to a level +a year before Bloch wrote. So the Allies retreated. + +For long weeks the Allies retreated out of the west of Belgium, out of +the north of France, and for rather over a month there was a loose +mobile war--as if Bloch had never existed. The Germans were not fighting +the 1914 pattern of war, they were fighting the 1899 pattern of war, in +which direct attack, outflanking and so on were still supposed to be +possible; they were fighting confident in their overwhelming numbers, in +their prepared surprise, in the unthought-out methods of their +opponents. In the "Victorian" war that ended in the middle of September, +1914, they delivered their blow, they over-reached, they were +successfully counter-attacked on the Marne, and then abruptly--almost +unfairly it seemed to the British sportsmanlike conceptions--they +shifted to the game played according to the very latest rules of 1914. +The war did not come up to date until the battle of the Aisne. With that +the second act of the great drama began. + +I do not believe that the Germans ever thought it would come up to date +so soon. I believe they thought that they would hustle the French out of +Paris, come right up to the Channel at Calais before the end of 1914, +and then entrench, produce the submarine attack and the Zeppelins +against England, working from Calais as a base, and that they would end +the war before the spring of 1915--with the Allies still a good fifteen +years behindhand. + +I believe the battle of the Marne was the decisive battle of the war, in +that it shattered this plan, and that the rest of the 1914 fighting was +Germany's attempt to reconstruct their broken scheme in the face of an +enemy who was continually getting more and more nearly up to date with +the fighting. By December, Bloch, who had seemed utterly discredited in +August, was justified up to the hilt. The world was entrenched at his +feet. By May the lagging military science of the British had so far +overtaken events as to realise that shrapnel was no longer so important +as high explosive, and within a year the significance of machine guns, a +significance thoroughly ventilated by imaginative writers fifteen years +before, was being grasped by the conservative but by no means +inadaptable leaders of Britain. + +The war since that first attempt--admirably planned and altogether +justifiable (from a military point of view, I mean)--of Germany to +"rush" a victory, has consisted almost entirely of failures on both +sides either to get round or through or over the situation foretold by +Bloch. There has been only one marked success, the German success in +Poland due to the failure of the Russian munitions. Then for a time the +war in the East was mobile and precarious while the Russians retreated +to their present positions, and the Germans pursued and tried to +surround them. That was a lapse into the pre-Bloch style. Now the +Russians are again entrenched, their supplies are restored, the Germans +have a lengthened line of supplies, and Bloch is back upon his pedestal +so far as the Eastern theatre goes. + +Bloch has been equally justified in the Anglo-French attempt to get +round through Gallipoli. The forces of the India Office have pushed +their way through unprepared country towards Bagdad, and are now +entrenching in Mesopotamia, but from the point of view of the main war +that is too remote to be considered either getting through or getting +round; and so too the losses of the German colonies and the East African +War are scarcely to be reckoned with in the main war. They have no +determining value. There remains the Balkan struggle. But the Balkan +struggle is something else; it is something new. It must be treated +separately. It is a war of treacheries and brags and appearances. It is +not a part of, it is a sequence to, the deadlock war of 1915. + +But before dealing with this new development of the latter half of 1915 +it is necessary to consider certain general aspects of the deadlock +war. It is manifest that the Germans hoped to secure an effective +victory in this war before they ran up against Bloch. But reckoning with +Bloch, as they certainly did, they hoped that even in the event of the +war getting to earth, it would still be possible to produce novelties +that would sufficiently neutralise Bloch to secure a victorious peace. +With unexpectedly powerful artillery suddenly concentrated, with high +explosives, with asphyxiating gas, with a well-organised system of +grenade throwing and mining, with attacks of flaming gas, and above all +with a vast munition-making plant to keep them going, they had a very +reasonable chance of hacking their way through. + +Against these prepared novelties the Allies have had to improvise, and +on the whole the improvisation has kept pace with the demands made upon +it. They have brought their military science up to date, and to-day the +disparity in science and equipment between the antagonists has greatly +diminished. There has been no escaping Bloch after all, and the +deadlock, if no sudden peace occurs, can end now in only one thing, the +exhaustion in various degrees of all the combatants and the succumbing +of the most exhausted. The idea of a conclusive end of the traditional +pattern to this war, of a triumphal entry into London, Paris, Berlin or +Moscow, is to be dismissed altogether from our calculations. The end of +this war will be a matter of negotiation between practically immobilised +and extremely shattered antagonists. + +There is, of course, one aspect of the Bloch deadlock that the Germans +at least have contemplated. If it is not possible to get through or +round, it may still be possible to get over. There is the air path. + +This idea has certainly taken hold of the French mind, but France has +been too busy and is temperamentally too economical to risk large +expenditures upon what is necessarily an experiment. The British are too +conservative and sceptical to be the pioneers in any such enterprise. +The Russians have been too poor in the necessary resources of mechanics +and material. + +The Germans alone have made any sustained attempt to strike through the +air at their enemies beyond the war zone. Their Zeppelin raids upon +England have shown a steadily increasing efficiency, and it is highly +probable that they will be repeated on a much larger scale before the +war is over. Quite possibly, too, the Germans are developing an +accessory force of large aeroplanes to co-operate in such an attack. +The long coasts of Britain, the impossibility of their being fully +equipped throughout their extent, except at a prohibitive cost of men +and material, to resist air invaders, exposes the whole length of the +island to considerable risk and annoyance from such an expedition. + +It is doubtful, though, if the utmost damage an air raid is likely to +inflict upon England would count materially in the exhaustion process, +and the moral effect of these raids has been, and will be, to stiffen +the British resolution to fight this war through to the conclusive +ending of any such possibilities. + +The net result of these air raids is an inflexible determination of the +British people rather to die in death grips with German militarism than +to live and let it survive. The best chance for the aircraft was at the +beginning of the war, when a surprise development might have had +astounding results. That chance has gone by. The Germans are racially +inferior to both French and English in the air, and the probability of +effective blows over the deadlock is on the whole a probability in +favour of the Allies. Nor is there anything on or under the sea that +seems likely now to produce decisive results. We return from these +considerations to a strengthened acceptance of Bloch. + +The essential question for the prophet remains therefore the question of +which group of Powers will exhaust itself most rapidly. And following on +from that comes the question of how the successive stages of exhaustion +will manifest themselves in the combatant nations. The problems of this +war, as of all war, end as they begin in national psychology. + +But it will be urged that this is reckoning without the Balkans. I +submit that the German thrust through the wooded wilderness of Serbia is +really no part of the war that has ended in the deadlock of 1915. It is +dramatic, tragic, spectacular, but it is quite inconclusive. Here there +is no way round or through to any vital centre of Germany's antagonists. +It turns nothing; it opens no path to Paris, London, or Petrograd. It is +a long, long way from the Danube to either Egypt or Mesopotamia, and +there--and there--Bloch is waiting. I do not think the Germans have any +intention of so generous an extension of their responsibilities. The +Balkan complication is no solution of the deadlock problem. It is the +opening of the sequel. + +A whole series of new problems are opened up directly we turn to this +most troubled region of the Balkans--problems of the value of kingship, +of nationality, of the destiny of such cities as Constantinople, which +from their very beginning have never had any sort of nationality at all, +of the destiny of countries such as Albania, where a tangle of intense +tribal nationalities is distributed in spots and patches, or Dalmatia, +where one extremely self-conscious nation and language is present in the +towns and another in the surrounding country, or Asia Minor, where no +definite national boundaries, no religious, linguistic, or social +homogeneities have ever established themselves since the Roman legions +beat them down. + +But all these questions can really be deferred or set aside in our +present discussion, which is a discussion of the main war. Whatever +surprises or changes this last phase of the Eastern Empire, that +blood-clotted melodrama, may involve, they will but assist and hasten on +the essential conclusion of the great war, that the Central Powers and +their pledged antagonists are in a deadlock, unable to reach a decision, +and steadily, day by day, hour by hour, losing men, destroying material, +spending credit, approaching something unprecedented, unknown, that we +try to express to ourselves by the word exhaustion. + +Just how the people who use the word "exhaustion" so freely are +prepared to define it, is a matter for speculation. The idea seems to be +a phase in which the production of equipped forces ceases through the +using up of men or material or both. If the exhaustion is fairly mutual, +it need not be decisive for a long time. It may mean simply an ebb of +vigour on both sides, unusual hardship, a general social and economic +disorganisation and grading down. The fact that a great killing off of +men is implicit in the process, and that the survivors will be largely +under discipline, militates against the idea that the end may come +suddenly through a vigorous revolutionary outbreak. Exhaustion is likely +to be a very long and very thorough process, extending over years. A +"war of attrition" may last into 1918 or 1919, and may bring us to +conditions of strain and deprivation still only very vaguely imagined. +What happens in the Turkish Empire or India or America or elsewhere may +extend the areas of waste and accelerate or retard the process, but is +quite unlikely to end it. + +Let us ask now which of the combatants is likely to undergo exhaustion +most rapidly, and what is of equal or greater importance, which is +likely to feel it first and most? No doubt there is a bias in my mind, +but it seems to me that the odds are on the whole heavily against the +Central Powers. Their peculiar German virtue, their tremendously +complete organisation, which enabled them to put so large a proportion +of their total resources into their first onslaught and to make so great +and rapid a recovery in the spring of 1915, leaves them with less to +draw upon now. Out of a smaller fortune they have spent a larger sum. +They are blockaded to a very considerable extent, and against them fight +not merely the resources of the Allies, but, thanks to the complete +British victory in the sea struggle, the purchasable resources of all +the world. + +Conceivably the Central Powers will draw upon the resources of their +Balkan and Asiatic allies, but the extent to which they can do that may +very easily be over-estimated. There is a limit to the power for treason +of these supposititious German monarchs that Western folly has permitted +to possess these Balkan thrones--thrones which need never have been +thrones at all--and none of the Balkan peoples is likely to witness with +enthusiasm the complete looting of its country in the German interest by +a German court. Germany will have to pay on the nail for most of her +Balkan help. She will have to put more into the Balkans than she takes +out. + +Compared with the world behind the Allies the Turkish Empire is a +country of mountains, desert and undeveloped lands. To develop these +regions into a source of supplies under the strains and shortages of +war-time, will be an immense and dangerous undertaking for Germany. She +may open mines she may never work, build railways that others will +enjoy, sow harvests for alien reaping. The people the Bulgarians want in +Bulgaria are not Germans but Bulgarians; the people the Turks want in +Anatolia are not Germans but Turks. And for all these tasks Germany must +send men. Men? + +At present, so far as any judgment is possible, Germany is feeling the +pinch of the war much more even than France, which is habitually +parsimonious, and instinctively cleverly economical, and Russia, which +is hardy and insensitive. Great Britain has really only begun to feel +the stress. She has probably suffered economically no more than have +Holland or Switzerland, and Italy and Japan have certainly suffered +less. All these three great countries are still full of men, of gear, of +saleable futures. In every part of the globe Great Britain has colossal +investments. She has still to apply the great principle of conscription +not only to her sons but to the property of her overseas investors and +of her landed proprietors. She has not even looked yet at the German +financial expedients of a year ago. She moves reluctantly, but surely, +towards such a thoroughness of mobilisation. There need be no doubt that +she will completely socialise herself, completely reorganise her whole +social and economic structure sooner than lose this war. She will do it +clumsily and ungracefully, with much internal bickering, with much +trickery on the part of her lawyers, and much baseness on the part of +her landlords; but she will do it not so slowly as a logical mind might +anticipate. She will get there a little late, expensively, but still in +time.... + +The German group, I reckon, therefore, will become exhausted first. I +think, too, that Germany will, as a nation, feel and be aware of what is +happening to her sooner than any other of the nations that are sharing +in this process of depletion. In 1914 the Germans were reaping the +harvest of forty years of economic development and business enterprise. +Property and plenty were new experiences, and a generation had grown up +in whose world a sense of expansion and progress was normal. There +existed amongst it no tradition of the great hardship of war, such as +the French possessed, to steel its mind. It had none of the irrational +mute toughness of the Russians and British. It was a sentimental people, +making a habit of success; it rushed chanting to war against the most +grimly heroic and the most stolidly enduring of races. Germany came into +this war more buoyantly and confidently than any other combatant. It +expected another 1871; at the utmost it anticipated a year of war. + +Never were a people so disillusioned as the Germans must already be, +never has a nation been called upon for so complete a mental +readjustment. Neither conclusive victories nor defeats have been theirs, +but only a slow, vast transition from joyful effort and an illusion of +rapid triumph to hardship, loss and loss and loss of substance, the +dwindling of great hopes, the realisation of ebb in the tide of national +welfare. Now they must fight on against implacable, indomitable Allies. +They are under stresses now as harsh at least as the stresses of France. +And, compared with the French, the Germans are untempered steel. + +We know little of the psychology of this new Germany that has come into +being since 1871, but it is doubtful if it will accept defeat, and still +more doubtful how it can evade some ending to the war that will admit +the failure of all its great hopes of Paris subjugated, London humbled, +Russia suppliant, Belgium conquered, the Near East a prey. Such an +admission will be a day of reckoning that German Imperialism will +postpone until the last hope of some breach among the Allies, some +saving miracle in the old Eastern Empire, some dramatically-snatched +victory at the eleventh hour, is gone. + +Nor can the Pledged Allies consent to a peace that does not involve the +evacuation and compensation of Belgium and Serbia, and at least the +autonomy of the lost Rhine provinces of France. That is their very +minimum. That, and the making of Germany so sick and weary of military +adventure that the danger of German ambition will cease to overshadow +European life. Those are the ends of the main war. Europe will go down +through stage after stage of impoverishment and exhaustion until these +ends are attained, or made for ever impossible. + +But these things form only the main outline of a story with a vast +amount of collateral interest. It is to these collateral issues that the +amateur in prophecy must give his attention. It is here that the German +will be induced by his Government to see his compensations. He will be +consoled for the restoration of Serbia by the prospect of future +conflicts between Italian and Jugoslav that will let him in again to the +Adriatic. His attention will be directed to his newer, closer +association with Bulgaria and Turkey. In those countries he will be told +he may yet repeat the miracle of Hungary. And there may be also another +Hungary in Poland. It will be whispered to him that he has really +conquered those countries when indeed it is highly probable he has only +spent his substance in setting up new assertive alien allies. The +Kaiser, if he is not too afraid of the precedent of Sarajevo, may make a +great entry into Constantinople, with an effect of conquering what is +after all only a temporarily allied capital. The German will hope also +to retain his fleet, and no peace, he will be reminded, can rob him of +his hard-earned technical superiority in the air. The German air fleet +of 1930 may yet be something as predominant as the British Navy of 1915, +and capable of delivering a much more intimate blow. Had he not better +wait for that? When such consolations as these become popular in the +German Press we of the Pledged Allies may begin to talk of peace, for +these will be its necessary heralds. + +The concluding phase of a process of general exhaustion must almost +inevitably be a game of bluff. Neither side will admit its extremity. +Neither side, therefore, will make any direct proposals to its +antagonists nor any open advances to a neutral. But there will be much +inspired peace talk through neutral media, and the consultations of the +anti-German allies will become more intimate and detailed. Suggestions +will "leak out" remarkably from both sides, to journalists and neutral +go-betweens. The Eastern and Western Allies will probably begin quite +soon to discuss an anti-German Zollverein and the co-ordination of their +military and naval organisations in the days that are to follow the war. +A discussion of a Central European Zollverein is already afoot. A +general idea of the possible rearrangement of the European States after +the war will grow up in the common European and American mind; public +men on either side will indicate concordance with this general idea, and +some neutral power, Denmark or Spain or the United States or Holland, +will invite representatives to an informal discussion of these +possibilities. + +Probably, therefore, the peace negotiations will take the extraordinary +form of two simultaneous conferences--one of the Pledged Allies, sitting +probably in Paris or London, and the other of representatives of all the +combatants meeting in some neutral country--Holland would be the most +convenient--while the war will still be going on. The Dutch conference +would be in immediate contact by telephone and telegraph with the Allied +conference and with Berlin.... + +The broad conditions of a possible peace will begin to get stated +towards the end of 1916, and a certain lassitude will creep over the +operations in the field.... The process of exhaustion will probably have +reached such a point by that time that it will be a primary fact in the +consciousness of common citizens of every belligerent country. The +common life of all Europe will have become--miserable. Conclusive blows +will have receded out of the imagination of the contending Powers. The +war will have reached its fourth and last stage as a war. The war of the +great attack will have given place to the war of the military deadlock; +the war of the deadlock will have gone on, and as the great combatants +have become enfeebled relatively to the smaller States, there will have +been a gradual shifting of the interest to the war of treasons and +diplomacies in the Eastern Mediterranean. + +Quickly thereafter the last phase will be developing into predominance, +in which each group of nations will be most concerned, no longer about +victories or conquests, but about securing for itself the best chances +of rapid economic recuperation and social reconstruction. The commercial +treaties, the arrangements for future associated action, made by the +great Allies among themselves will appear more and more important to +them, and the mere question of boundaries less and less. It will dawn +upon Europe that she has already dissipated the resources that have +enabled her to levy the tribute paid for her investments in every +quarter of the earth, and that neither the Germans nor their antagonists +will be able for many years to go on with those projects for world +exploitation which lay at the root of the great war. Very jaded and +anaemic nations will sit about the table on which the new map of Europe +will be drawn.... Each of the diplomatists will come to that business +with a certain pre-occupation. Each will be thinking of his country as +one thinks of a patient of doubtful patience and temper who is coming-to +out of the drugged stupor of a crucial, ill-conceived, and unnecessary +operation ... Each will be thinking of Labour, wounded and perplexed, +returning to the disorganised or nationalised factories from which +Capital has gone a-fighting, and to which it may never return. + + + + +III. NATIONS IN LIQUIDATION + + +The war has become a war of exhaustion. One hears a great deal of the +idea that "financial collapse" may bring it to an end. A number of +people seem to be convinced that a war cannot be waged without money, +that soldiers must be paid, munitions must be bought; that for this +money is necessary and the consent of bank depositors; so that if all +the wealth of the world were nominally possessed by some one man in a +little office he could stop the war by saying simply, "I will lend you +no more money." + +Now, as a matter of fact, money is a power only in so far as people +believe in it and Governments sustain it. If a State is sufficiently +strong and well organised, its control over the money power is +unlimited. If it can rule its people, and if it has the necessary +resources of men and material within its borders, it can go on in a +state of war so long as these things last, with almost any flimsy sort +of substitute for money that it chooses to print. It can enrol and use +the men, and seize and work the material. It can take over the land and +cultivate it and distribute its products. The little man in the office +is only a power because the State chooses to recognise his claim. So +long as he is convenient he seems to be a power. So soon as the State is +intelligent enough and strong enough it can do without him. It can take +what it wants, and tell him to go and hang himself. That is the +melancholy ultimate of the usurer. That is the quintessence of +"finance." All credit is State-made, and what the State has made the +State can alter or destroy. + +The owner and the creditor have never had any other power to give or +withhold credit than the credit that was given to them. They exist by +sufferance or superstition and not of necessity. + +It is the habit of overlooking this little flaw in the imperatives of +ownership that enables people to say that this war cannot go on beyond +such and such a date--the end of 1916 is much in favour just +now--because we cannot pay for it. It would be about as reasonable to +expect a battle to end because a landlord had ordered the soldiers off +his estate. So long as there are men to fight and stuff to fight with +the war can go on. There is bankruptcy, but the bankruptcy of States is +not like the bankruptcy of individuals. There is no such thing among +States as an undischarged bankrupt who is forbidden to carry on. A State +may keep on going bankrupt indefinitely and still carry on. It will be +the next step in our prophetic exercise to examine the differences +between State bankruptcy and the bankruptcy of a subject of the State. + +The belligerent Powers are approaching a phase when they will no longer +be paying anything like twenty shillings in the pound. In a very +definite sense they are not paying twenty shillings in the pound now. +That is not going to stop the war, but it involves a string of +consequences and possibilities of the utmost importance to our problem +of what is coming when the war is over. + +The exhaustion that will bring this war to its end at last is a process +of destruction of men and material. The process of bankruptcy that is +also going on is nothing of the sort. Bankruptcy destroys no concrete +thing; it merely writes off a debt; it destroys a financial but not an +economic reality. It is, in itself, a mental, not a physical fact. "A" +owes "B" a debt; he goes bankrupt and pays a dividend, a fraction of his +debt, and gets his discharge. "B's" feelings, as we novelists used to +say, are "better imagined than described"; he does his best to satisfy +himself that "A" can pay no more, and then "A" and "B" both go about +their business again. + +In England, if "A" is a sufficiently poor man not to be formidable, and +has gone bankrupt on a small scale, he gets squeezed ferociously to +extract the last farthing from him; he may find himself in jail and his +home utterly smashed up. If he is a richer man, and has failed on a +larger scale, our law is more sympathetic, and he gets off much more +easily. Often his creditors find it advisable to arrange with him so +that he will still carry on with his bankrupt concern. They find it is +better to allow him to carry on than to smash him up. + +There are countless men in the world living very comfortably indeed, and +running businesses that were once their own property for their +creditors. There are still more who have written off princely debts and +do not seem to be a "ha'p'orth the worse." And their creditors have +found a balm in time and philosophy. Bankruptcy is only painful and +destructive to small people and helpless people; but then for them +everything is painful and destructive; it can be a very light matter to +big people; it may be almost painless to a State. + +If England went bankrupt in the completest way to-morrow, and repudiated +all its debts both as a nation and as a community of individuals, if it +declared, if I may use a self-contradictory phrase, a permanent +moratorium, there would be not an acre of ploughed land in the country, +not a yard of cloth or a loaf of bread the less for that. There would be +nothing material destroyed within the State. There would be no immediate +convulsion. Use and wont would carry most people on some days before +they even began to doubt whether So-and-so could pay his way, and +whether there would be wages at the end of the week. + +But people who lived upon rent or investments or pensions would +presently be very busy thinking how they were going to get food when the +butcher and baker insisted upon cash. It would be only with comparative +slowness that the bulk of men would realise that a fabric of confidence +and confident assumptions had vanished; that cheques and bank notes and +token money and every sort of bond and scrip were worthless, that +employers had nothing to pay with, shopkeepers no means of procuring +stock, that metallic money was disappearing, and that a paralysis had +come upon the community. + +Such an establishment as a workhouse or an old-fashioned monastery, +living upon the produce of its own farming and supplying all its own +labour, would be least embarrassed amidst the general perplexity. For it +would not be upon a credit basis, but a socialistic basis, a basis of +direct reality, and its need for payments would be incidental. And +land-owning peasants growing their own food would carry on, and small +cultivating occupiers, who could easily fall back on barter for anything +needed. + +The mass of the population in such a country as England would, however, +soon be standing about in hopeless perplexity and on the verge of +frantic panic--although there was just as much food to be eaten, just as +many houses to live in, and just as much work needing to be done. +Suddenly the pots would be empty, and famine would be in the land, +although the farms and butchers' shops were still well stocked. The +general community would be like an automobile when the magneto fails. +Everything would be there and in order, except for the spark of credit +which keeps the engine working. + +That is how quite a lot of people seem to imagine national bankruptcy: +as a catastrophic jolt. It is a quite impossible nightmare of cessation. +The reality is the completest contrast. All the belligerent countries of +the world are at the present moment quietly, steadily and progressively +going bankrupt, and the mass of people are not even aware of this +process of insolvency. + +An individual when he goes bankrupt is measured by the monetary standard +of the country he is in; he pays five or ten or fifteen or so many +shillings in the pound. A community in debt does something which is in +effect the same, but in appearance rather different. It still pays a +pound, but the purchasing power of the pound has diminished. This is +what is happening all over the world to-day; there is a rise in prices. +This is automatic national bankruptcy; unplanned, though perhaps not +unforeseen. It is not a deliberate State act, but a consequence of the +interruption of communications, the diversion of productive energy, the +increased demand for many necessities by the Government and the general +waste under war conditions. + +At the beginning of this war England had a certain national debt; it has +paid off none of that original debt; it has added to it tremendously; so +far as money and bankers' records go it still owes and intends to pay +that original debt; but if you translate the language of L.s.d. into +realities, you will find that in loaves or iron or copper or hours of +toil, or indeed in any reality except gold, it owes now, so far as that +original debt goes, far less than it did at the outset. As the war goes +on and the rise in prices continues, the subsequent borrowings and +contracts are undergoing a similar bankrupt reduction. The attempt of +the landlord of small weekly and annual properties to adjust himself to +the new conditions by raising rents is being checked by legislation in +Great Britain, and has been completely checked in France. The attempts +of labour to readjust wages have been partially successful in spite of +the eloquent protests of those great exponents of plain living, economy, +abstinence, and honest, modest, underpaid toil, Messrs. Asquith, +McKenna, and Runciman. It is doubtful if the rise in wages is keeping +pace with the rise in prices. So far as it fails to do so the load is on +the usual pack animal, the poor man. + +The rest of the loss falls chiefly upon the creditor class, the people +with fixed incomes and fixed salaries, the landlords, who have let at +long leases, the people with pensions, endowed institutions, the Church, +insurance companies, and the like. They are all being scaled down. They +are all more able to stand scaling down than the proletarians. + +Assuming that it is possible to bring up wages to the level of the +higher prices, and that the rise in rents can be checked by legislation +or captured by taxation, the rise in prices is, on the whole, a thing to +the advantage of the propertyless man as against accumulated property. +It writes off the past and clears the way for a fresh start in the +future. + +An age of cheapness is an old usurers' age. England before the war was a +paradise of ancient usuries; everywhere were great houses and enclosed +parks; the multitude of gentlemen's servants and golf clubs and such +like excrescences of the comfort of prosperous people was perpetually +increasing; it did not "pay" to build labourers' cottages, and the more +expensive sort of automobile had driven the bicycle as a pleasure +vehicle off the roads. Western Europe was running to fat and not to +muscle, as America is to-day. + +But if that old usurer's age is over, the young usurer's age may be +coming. To meet such enormous demands as this war is making there are +three chief courses open to the modern State. + +The first is to _take_--to get men by conscription and material by +requisition. The British Government _takes_ more modestly than any other +in the world; its tradition from Magna Charta onward, the legal training +of most of its members, all make towards a reverence for private +ownership and private claims, as opposed to the claims of State and +commonweal, unequalled in the world's history. + +The next course of a nation in need is to _tax_ and pay for what it +wants, which is a fractional and more evenly distributed method of +taking. Both of these methods raise prices, the second most so, and so +facilitate the automatic release of the future from the boarding of the +past. So far all the belligerent Governments have taxed on the timid +side. + +Finally there is the _loan_. This mortgages the future to the present +necessity, and it has so far been the predominant source of war credits. +It is the method that produces least immediate friction in the State; it +employs all the savings of surplus income that the unrest of civil +enterprise leaves idle; it has an effect of creating property by a +process that destroys the substance of the community. In Germany an +enormous bulk of property has been mortgaged to supply the subscriptions +to the war loans, and those holdings have again been hypothecated to +subscribe to subsequent loans. The Pledged Allies with longer stockings +have not yet got to this pitch of overlapping. But everywhere in Europe +what is happening is a great transformation of the property owner into a +_rentier_, and the passing of realty into the hands of the State. + +At the end of the war Great Britain will probably find herself with a +national debt so great that she will be committed to the payment of an +annual interest greater in figures than the entire national expenditure +before the war. As an optimistic lady put it the other day: "All the +people who aren't killed will be living quite comfortably on War Loan +for the rest of their lives." + +But part, at least, of the bulk of this wealth will be imaginary rather +than real because of the rise in prices, in wages, in rent, and in +taxation. Most of us who are buying the British and French War Loans +have no illusions on that score; we know we are buying an income of +diminishing purchasing power. Yet it would be a poor creature in these +days when there is scarcely a possible young man in one's circle who has +not quite freely and cheerfully staked his life, who was not prepared to +consider his investments as being also to an undefined extent a national +subscription. + +A rise in prices is not, however, the only process that will check the +appearance of a new rich usurer class after the war. There is something +else ahead that has happened already in Germany, that is quietly coming +about among the Allies, and that is the cessation of gold payments. In +Great Britain, of course, the pound note is still convertible into a +golden sovereign; but Great Britain will not get through the war on +those terms. There comes a point in the stress upon a Government when it +must depart from the austerer line of financial rectitude--and tamper in +some way with currency. + +Sooner or later, and probably in all cases before 1917, all the +belligerents will be forced to adopt inconvertible paper money for their +internal uses. There will be British assignats or greenbacks. It will +seem to many financial sentimentalists almost as though Great Britain +were hauling down a flag when the sovereign, which has already +disappeared into bank and Treasury coffers, is locked up there and +reserved for international trade. But Great Britain has other sentiments +to consider than the finer feelings of bankers and the delicacies of +usury. The pound British will come out of this war like a company out of +a well-shelled trench--attenuated. + +Depreciation of the currency means, of course, a continuing rise in +prices, a continuing writing off of debt. If labour has any real grasp +of its true interests it will not resent this. It will merely insist +steadfastly on a proper adjustment of its wages to the new standard. On +that point, however, it will be better to write later.... + +Let us see how far we have got in this guessing. We have considered +reasons that seem to point to the destruction of a great amount of old +property and old debt, and the creation of a great volume of new debt +before the end of the war, and we have adopted the ideas that currency +will probably have depreciated more and more and prices risen right up +to the very end. + +There will be by that time a general habit of saving throughout the +community, a habit more firmly established perhaps in the propertied +than in the wages-earning class. People will be growing accustomed to a +dear and insecure world. They will adopt a habit of caution; become +desirous of saving and security. + +Directly the phase of enormous war loans ends, the new class of +_rentiers_ holding the various great new national loans will find +themselves drawing this collectively vast income and anxious to invest +it. They will for a time be receiving the bulk of the unearned income of +the world. Here, in the high prices representing demand and the need for +some reinvestment of interest representing supply, we have two of the +chief factors that are supposed to be necessary to a phase of business +enterprise. Will the economic history of the next few decades be the +story of a restoration of the capitalistic system upon a new basis? +Shall we all become investors, speculators, or workers toiling our way +to a new period of security, cheapness and low interest, a restoration +of the park, the enclosure, the gold standard and the big automobile, +with only this difference--that the minimum wage will be somewhere about +two pounds, and that a five-pound note will purchase about as much as a +couple of guineas would do in 1913? + +That is practically parallel with what happened in the opening half of +the nineteenth century after the Napoleonic wars, and it is not an +agreeable outlook for those who love the common man or the nobility of +life. But if there is any one principle sounder than another of all +those that guide the amateur in prophecy, it is that _history never +repeats itself_. The human material in which those monetary changes and +those developments of credit will occur will be entirely different from +the social medium of a hundred years ago. + +The nature of the State has altered profoundly in the last century. The +later eighteenth and earlier nineteenth centuries constituted a period +of extreme individualism. What were called "economic forces" had +unrestricted play. In the minds of such people as Harriet Martineau and +Herbert Spencer they superseded God. People were no longer reproached +for "flying in the face of Providence," but for "flying in the face of +Political Economy." + +In that state of freedom you got whatever you could in any way you +could; you were not your neighbour's keeper, and except that it +interfered with the enterprise of pickpockets, burglars and forgers, and +kept the dice loaded in favour of landlords and lawyers, the State stood +aside from the great drama of human getting. For industrialism and +speculation the State's guiding maxim was _laissez faire_. + +The State is now far less aloof and far more constructive. It is far +more aware of itself and a common interest. Germany has led the way from +a system of individuals and voluntary associations in competition +towards a new order of things, a completer synthesis. This most modern +State is far less a swarming conflict of businesses than a great +national business. It will emerge from this war much more so than it +went in, and the thing is and will remain so plain and obvious that only +the greediest and dullest people among the Pledged Allies will venture +to disregard it. The Allied nations, too, will have to rescue their +economic future from individual grab and grip and chance. + +The second consideration that forbids us to anticipate any parallelism +of the history of 1915-45 with 1815-45 is the greater lucidity of the +general mind, the fact that all Western Europe, down to the agricultural +labourers, can read and write and does read newspapers and "get ideas." +The explanation of economic and social processes that were mysterious to +the elect a hundred years ago are now the commonplaces of the tap-room. +What happened then darkly, and often unconsciously, must happen in +1916-26 openly and controllably. The current bankruptcy and liquidation +and the coming reconstruction of the economic system of Europe will go +on in a quite unprecedented amount of light. We shall see and know what +is happening much more clearly than anything of the kind has ever been +seen before. + +It is not only that people will have behind them, as a light upon what +is happening, the experiences and discussions of a hundred years, but +that the international situation will be far plainer than it has ever +been. This war has made Germany the central fact in all national affairs +about the earth. It is not going to destroy Germany, and it seems +improbable that either defeat or victory, or any mixture of these, will +immediately alter the cardinal fact of Germany's organised +aggressiveness. + +The war will not end the conflict of anti-Germany and Germany, That will +only end when the results of fifty years of aggressive education in +Germany have worn away. This will be so plain that the great bulk of +people everywhere will not only see their changing economic +relationships far more distinctly than such things have been seen +hitherto, but that they will see them as they have never been seen +before, definitely orientated to the threat of German world +predominance. The landlord who squeezes, the workman who strikes and +shirks, the lawyer who fogs and obstructs, will know, and will know that +most people know, that what he does is done, not under an empty, +regardless heaven, but in the face of an unsleeping enemy and in +disregard of a continuous urgent necessity for unity. + +So far we have followed this speculation upon fairly firm ground, but +now our inquiry must plunge into a jungle of far more difficult and +uncertain possibilities. Our next stage brings us to the question of how +people and peoples and classes of people are going to react to the new +conditions of need and knowledge this war will have brought about, and +to the new demands that will be made upon them. + +This is really a question of how far they will prove able to get out of +the habits and traditions of their former social state, how far they +will be able to take generous views and make sacrifices and unselfish +efforts, and how far they will go in self-seeking or class selfishness +regardless of the common welfare. This is a question we have to ask +separately of each great nation, and of the Central Powers as a whole, +and of the Allies as a whole, before we can begin to estimate the +posture of the peoples of the world in, say, 1946. + +Now let me here make a sort of parenthesis on human nature. It will be +rather platitudinous, but it is a necessary reminder for what follows. + +So far as I have been able to observe, nobody lives steadily at one +moral level. If we are wise we shall treat no man and no class--and for +the matter of that no nation--as either steadfastly malignant or +steadfastly disinterested. There are phases in my life when I could die +quite cheerfully for an idea; there are phases when I would not stir six +yards to save a human life. Most people fluctuate between such extremes. +Most people are self-seeking, but most people will desist from a +self-seeking cause if they see plainly and clearly that it is not in the +general interest, and much more readily if they also perceive that other +people are of the same mind and know that they know their course is +unsound. + +The fundamental error of orthodox political economy and of Marxian +socialism is to assume the inveterate selfishness of everyone. But most +people are a little more disposed to believe what it is to their +interest to believe than the contrary. Most people abandon with +reluctance ways of living and doing that have served them well. Most +people can see the neglect of duty in other classes more plainly than +they do in their own. + +This war has brought back into the everyday human life of Europe the +great and overriding conception of devotion to a great purpose. But that +does not imply clear-headedness in correlating the ways of one's +ordinary life with this great purpose. It is no good treating as cynical +villainy things that merely exhibit the incapacity of our minds to live +consistently. + +One Labour paper a month or so ago was contrasting Mr. Asquith's +eloquent appeals to the working man to economise and forgo any rise in +wages with the photographs that were appearing simultaneously in the +smart papers of the very smart marriage of Mr. Asquith's daughter. I +submit that by that sort of standard none of us will be blameless. But +without any condemnation, it is easy to understand that the initiative +to tax almost to extinction large automobiles, wedding dresses, +champagne, pate de foie gras and enclosed parks, instead of gin and +water, bank holiday outings and Virginia shag, is less likely to come +from the Prime Minister class than from the class of dock labourers. +There is an unconscious class war due to habit and insufficient thinking +and insufficient sympathy that will play a large part in the +distribution of the burthen of the State bankruptcy that is in progress, +and in the subsequent readjustment of national life. + +And having made this parenthesis, I may perhaps go on to point out the +peculiar limitations under which various classes will be approaching the +phase of reorganisation, without being accused of making this or that +class the villain of an anticipatory drama. + +Now, three great classes will certainly resist the valiant +reconstruction of economic life with a vigour in exact proportion to +their baseness, stupidity and narrowness of outlook. They will, as +classes, come up for a moral judgment, on whose verdict the whole future +of Western civilisation depends. If they cannot achieve a considerable, +an unprecedented display of self-sacrifice, unselfish wisdom, and +constructive vigour, if the community as a whole can produce no forces +sufficient to restrain their lower tendencies, then the intelligent +father had better turn his children's faces towards the New World. For +Europe will be busy with social disorder for a century. + +The first great class is the class that owns and holds land and +land-like claims upon the community, from the Throne downward. This +Court and land-holding class cannot go on being rich and living rich +during the strains of the coming years. The reconstructing world cannot +bear it. Whatever rises in rent may occur through the rise in prices, +must go to meet the tremendous needs of the State. + +This class, which has so much legislative and administrative power in at +least three of the great belligerents--in Great Britain and Germany +perhaps most so--must be prepared to see itself taxed, and must be +willing to assist in its own taxation to the very limit of its +statistical increment. The almost vindictive greed of the landowners +that blackened the history of England after Waterloo, and brought Great +Britain within sight of revolution, must not be repeated. The British +Empire cannot afford a revolution in the face of the Central European +Powers. But in the past century there has been an enormous change in +men's opinions and consciences about property; whereas we were +Individualists, now we are Socialists. The British lord, the German +junker, has none of the sense of unqualified rights that his +great-grandfather had, and he is aware of a vigour of public criticism +that did not exist in the former time.... + +How far will these men get out of the tradition of their birth and +upbringing? + +Next comes the great class of lawyers who, through the idiotic method of +voting in use in modern democracies, are able practically to rule Great +Britain, and who are powerful and influential in all democratic +countries. + +In order to secure a certain independence and integrity in its courts, +Great Britain long ago established the principle of enormously +overpaying its judges and lawyers. The natural result has been to give +our law courts and the legal profession generally a bias in favour of +private wealth against both the public interest and the proletariat. It +has also given our higher national education an overwhelming direction +towards the training of advocates and against science and constructive +statecraft. An ordinary lawyer has no idea of making anything; that +tendency has been destroyed in his mind; he waits and sees and takes +advantage of opportunity. Everything that can possibly be done in +England is done to make our rulers Micawbers and Artful Dodgers. + +One of the most anxious questions that a Briton can ask himself to-day +is just how far the gigantic sufferings and still more monstrous +warnings of this war have shocked the good gentlemen who must steer the +ship of State through the strong rapids of the New Peace out of this +forensic levity their training has imposed upon them.... + +There, again, there are elements of hope. The lawyer has heard much +about himself in the past few years. His conscience may check his +tradition. And we have a Press--it has many faults, but it is no longer +a lawyer's Press.... + +And the third class which has immediate interests antagonistic to bold +reconstructions of our national methods is that vaguer body, the body of +investing capitalists, the savers, the usurers, who live on dividends. +It is a vast class, but a feeble class in comparison with the other +two; it is a body rather than a class, a weight rather than a power. It +consists of all sorts of people with nothing in common except the +receipt of unearned income.... + +All these classes, by instinct and the baser kinds of reason also, will +be doing their best to check the rise in prices, stop and reverse the +advance in wages, prevent the debasement of the circulation, and +facilitate the return to a gold standard and a repressive social +stability. They will be resisting any comprehensive national +reconstruction, any increase in public officials, any "conscription" of +land or railways or what not for the urgent civil needs of the State. +They will have fighting against these tendencies something in their own +consciences, something in public opinion, the tradition of public +devotion their own dead sons have revived--and certain other forces. + +They will have over against them the obvious urgent necessities of the +time. + +The most urgent necessity will be to get back the vast moiety of the +population that has been engaged either in military service or the +making of munitions to productive work, to the production of food and +necessary things, and to the restoration of that export trade which, in +the case of Great Britain at least, now that her overseas investments +have been set off by overseas war debts, is essential to the food +supply. There will be coming back into civil life, not merely thousands, +but millions of men who have been withdrawn from it. They will feel that +they have deserved well of their country. They will have had their +imaginations greatly quickened by being taken away from the homes and +habits to which they were accustomed. They will have been well fed and +inured to arms, to danger, and the chances of death. They will have no +illusions about the conduct of the war by the governing classes, or the +worshipful heroism of peers and princes. They will know just how easy is +courage, and how hard is hardship, and the utter impossibility of doing +well in war or peace under the orders of detected fools. + +This vast body will constitute a very stimulating congregation of +spectators in any attempt on the part of landlord, lawyer and investor +to resume the old political mystery dance, in which rents are to be sent +up and wages down, while the old feuds of Wales and Ireland, ancient +theological and sectarian jealousies and babyish loyalties, and so forth +are to be waved in the eyes of the no longer fascinated realist. + +"Meanwhile," they will say, with a stiff impatience unusual in their +class, "about _us_?" ... + +Here are the makings of internal conflict in every European country. In +Russia the landlord and lawyer, in France the landlord, are perhaps of +less account, and in France the investor is more universal and jealous. +In Germany, where Junker and Court are most influential and brutal, +there is a larger and sounder and broader tradition of practical +efficiency, a modernised legal profession, and a more widely diffused +scientific imagination. + +How far in each country will imagination triumph over tradition and +individualism? How far does the practical bankruptcy of Western +civilisation mean a revolutionary smash-up, and a phase that may last +for centuries, of disorder and more and more futile conflict? And how +far does it mean a reconstruction of human society, within a few score +of years, upon sounder and happier lines? Must that reconstruction be +preceded by a revolution in all or any of the countries? + +To what extent can the world produce the imagination it needs? That, so +far, is the most fundamental question to which our prophetic +explorations have brought us. + + + + +IV. BRAINTREE, BOCKING, AND THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD + + +Will the war be followed by a period of great distress, social disorder +and a revolution in Europe, or shall we pull through the crisis without +violent disaster? May we even hope that Great Britain will step straight +out of the war into a phase of restored and increasing welfare? + +Like most people, I have been trying to form some sort of answer to this +question. My state of mind in the last few months has varied from a +considerable optimism to profound depression. I have met and talked to +quite a number of young men in khaki--ex-engineers, ex-lawyers, +ex-schoolmasters, ex-business men of all sorts--and the net result of +these interviews has been a buoyant belief that there is in Great +Britain the pluck, the will, the intelligence to do anything, however +arduous and difficult, in the way of national reconstruction. And on the +other hand there is a certain stretch of road between Dunmow and +Coggeshall.... + +That stretch of road is continually jarring with my optimistic +thoughts. It is a strongly pro-German piece of road. It supports +allegations against Great Britain, as, for instance, that the British +are quite unfit to control their own affairs, let alone those of an +empire; that they are an incompetent people, a pig-headedly stupid +people, a wasteful people, a people incapable of realising that a man +who tills his field badly is a traitor and a weakness to his country.... + +Let me place the case of this high road through Braintree (Bocking +intervening) before the reader. It is, you will say perhaps, very small +beer. But a straw shows the way the wind blows. It is a trivial matter +of road metal, mud, and water-pipes, but it is also diagnostic of the +essential difficulties in the way of the smooth and rapid reconstruction +of Great Britain--and very probably of the reconstruction of all +Europe--after the war. The Braintree high road, I will confess, becomes +at times an image of the world for me. It is a poor, spiritless-looking +bit of road, with raw stones on one side of it. It is also, I perceive, +the high destiny of man in conflict with mankind. It is the way to +Harwich, Holland, Russia, China, and the whole wide world. + +Even at the first glance it impresses one as not being the road that +would satisfy an energetic and capable people. It is narrow for a high +road, and in the middle of it one is checked by an awkward bend, by +cross-roads that are not exactly cross-roads, so that one has to turn +two blind corners to get on eastward, and a policeman, I don't know at +what annual cost, has to be posted to nurse the traffic across. Beyond +that point one is struck by the fact that the south side is considerably +higher than the north, that storm water must run from the south side to +the north and lie there. It does, and the north side has recently met +the trouble by putting down raw flints, and so converting what would be +a lake into a sort of flint pudding. Consequently one drives one's car +as much as possible on the south side of this road. There is a +suggestion of hostility and repartee between north and south side in +this arrangement, which the explorer's inquiries will confirm. It may be +only an accidental parallelism with profounder fact; I do not know. But +the middle of this high road is a frontier. The south side belongs to +the urban district of Braintree; the north to the rural district of +Bocking. + +If the curious inquirer will take pick and shovel he will find at any +rate one corresponding dualism below the surface. He will find a +Bocking water main supplying the houses on the north side and a +Braintree water main supplying the south. I rather suspect that the +drains are also in duplicate. The total population of Bocking and +Braintree is probably little more than thirteen thousand souls +altogether, but for that there are two water supplies, two sets of +schools, two administrations. + +To the passing observer the rurality of the Bocking side is +indistinguishable from the urbanity of the Braintree side; it is just a +little muddier. But there are dietetic differences. If you will present +a Bocking rustic with a tin of the canned fruit that is popular with the +Braintree townsfolk, you discover one of these differences. A dustman +perambulates the road on the Braintree side, and canned food becomes +possible and convenient therefore. But the Braintree grocers sell canned +food with difficulty into Bocking. Bocking, less fortunate than its +neighbour, has no dustman apparently, and is left with the tin on its +hands. It can either bury it in its garden--if it has a garden--take it +out for a walk wrapped in paper and drop it quietly in a ditch, if +possible in the Braintree area, or build a cairn with it and its +predecessors and successors in honour of the Local Government Board +(President L5,000, Parliamentary Secretary L1,500, Permanent Secretary +L2,000, Legal Adviser L1,000 upward, a total administrative expenditure +of over L300,000 ...). In death Bocking and Braintree are still divided. +They have their separate cemeteries.... + +Now to any disinterested observer there lies about the Braintree-Bocking +railway station one community. It has common industries and common +interests. There is no _octroi_ or anything of that sort across the +street. The shops and inns on the Bocking side of the main street are +indistinguishable from those on the Braintree side. The inhabitants of +the two communities intermarry freely. If this absurd separation did not +exist, no one would have the impudence to establish it now. It is +wasteful, unfair (because the Bocking piece is rather better off than +Braintree and with fewer people, so that there is a difference in the +rates), and for nine-tenths of the community it is more or less of a +nuisance. + +It is also a nuisance to the passing public because of such +inconvenience as the asymmetrical main road. It hinders local +development and the development of a local spirit. It may, of course, +appeal perhaps to the humorous outlook of the followers of Mr. G.K. +Chesterton and Mr. Belloc, who believe that this war is really a war in +the interests of the Athanasian Creed, fatness, and unrestricted drink +against science, discipline, and priggishly keeping fit enough to join +the army, as very good fun indeed, good matter for some jolly reeling +ballad about Roundabout and Roundabout, the jolly town of Roundabout; +but to anyone else the question of how it is that this wasteful +Bocking-Braintree muddle, with its two boards, its two clerks, its two +series of jobs and contracts, manages to keep on, was even before the +war a sufficiently discouraging one. + +It becomes now a quite crucial problem. Because the muddle between the +sides of the main road through Bocking and Braintree is not an isolated +instance; it is a fair sample of the way things are done in Great +Britain; it is an intimation of the way in which the great task of +industrial resettlement that the nation must face may be attempted. + +It is--or shall I write, "it may be"? + +That is just the question I do not settle in my mind. I would like to +think that I have hit upon a particularly bad case of entangled local +government. But it happens that whenever I have looked into local +affairs I have found the same sort of waste and--insobriety of +arrangement. When I started, a little while back, to go to Braintree to +verify these particulars, I was held up by a flood across the road +between Little Easton and Dunmow. Every year that road is flooded and +impassable for some days, because a bit of the affected stretch is under +the County Council and a bit under the Little Easton Parish Council, and +they cannot agree about the contribution of the latter. These things +bump against the most unworldly. And when one goes up the scale from the +urban district and rural district boundaries, one finds equally crazy +county arrangements, the same tangle of obstacle in the way of quick, +effective co-ordinations, the same needless multiplicity of clerks, the +same rich possibilities of litigation, misunderstanding, and deadlocks +of opinion between areas whose only difference is that a mischievous +boundary has been left in existence between them. And so on up to +Westminster. And to still greater things.... + +I know perfectly well how unpleasant all this is to read, this outbreak +at two localities that have never done me any personal harm except a +little mud-splashing. But this is a thing that has to be said now, +because we are approaching a crisis when dilatory ways, muddle, and +waste may utterly ruin us. This is the way things have been done in +England, this is our habit of procedure, and if they are done in this +way after the war this Empire is going to smash. + +Let me add at once that it is quite possible that things are done almost +as badly or quite as badly in Russia or France or Germany or America; I +am drawing no comparisons. All of us human beings were made, I believe, +of very similar clay, and very similar causes have been at work +everywhere. Only that excuse, so popular in England, will not prevent a +smash if we stick to the old methods under the stresses ahead. I do not +see that it is any consolation to share in a general disaster. + +And I am sure that there must be the most delightful and picturesque +reasons why we have all this overlapping and waste and muddle in our +local affairs; why, to take another example, the boundary of the Essex +parishes of Newton and Widdington looks as though it had been sketched +out by a drunken man in a runaway cab with a broken spring. + +This Bocking-Braintree main road is, it happens, an old Stane Street, +along which Roman legions marched to clean up the councils and clerks of +the British tribal system two thousand years ago, and no doubt an +historian could spin delightful consequences; this does not alter the +fact that these quaint complications in English affairs mean in the +aggregate enormous obstruction and waste of human energy. It does not +alter the much graver fact, the fact that darkens all my outlook upon +the future, that we have never yet produced evidence of any general +disposition at any time to straighten out or even suspend these fumbling +intricacies and ineptitudes. Never so far has there appeared in British +affairs that divine passion to do things in the clearest, cleanest, +least wasteful, most thorough manner that is needed to straighten out, +for example, these universal local tangles. Always we have been content +with the old intricate, expensive way, and to this day we follow it.... + +And what I want to know, what I would like to feel much surer about than +I do is, is this in our blood? Or is it only the deep-seated habit of +long ages of security, long years of margins so ample, that no waste +seemed altogether wicked. Is it, in fact, a hopeless and ineradicable +trait that we stick to extravagance and confusion? + +What I would like to think possible at the present time, up and down the +scale from parish to province, is something of this sort. Suppose the +clerk of Braintree went to the clerk of Bocking and said: "Look here, +one of us could do the work of both of us, as well or better. The easy +times are over, and offices as well as men should be prepared to die for +their country. Shall we toss to see who shall do it, and let the other +man go off to find something useful to do?" Then I could believe. Such +acts of virtue happen in the United States. Here is a quotation from the +New York _World_ of February 15th, 1916: + +"For two unusual acts Henry Bruere may be remembered by New York longer +than nine days. Early in his incumbency he declared that his office was +superfluous and should be abolished, the Comptroller assuming its +duties. He now abolishes by resignation his own connection with it, in +spite of its $12,000 salary." + +Suppose the people of Braintree and Bocking, not waiting for that lead, +said: "But this is absurd! Let us have an identical council and one +clerk, and get ahead, instead of keeping up this silly pretence that one +town is two." Suppose someone of that 300,000 pounds' worth of gentlemen +at the Local Government Board set to work to replan our local government +areas generally on less comic lines. Suppose his official superiors +helped, instead of snubbing him.... + +I see nothing of the sort happening. I see everywhere wary, watchful +little men, thinking of themselves, thinking of their parish, thinking +close, holding tight.... + +I know that there is a whole web of excuses for all these complicated, +wasteful, and obstructive arrangements of our local government, these +arrangements that I have taken merely as a sample of the general human +way of getting affairs done. For it is affairs at large I am writing +about, as I warned the reader at the beginning. Directly one inquires +closely into any human muddle, one finds all sorts of reasonable rights +and objections and claims barring the way to any sweeping proposals. I +can quite imagine that Bocking has admirable reasons for refusing +coalescence with Braintree, except upon terms that Braintree could not +possibly consider. I can quite understand that there are many +inconveniences and arguable injustices that would be caused by a merger +of the two areas. I have no doubt it would mean serious loss to +So-and-so, and quite novel and unfair advantage to So-and-so. It would +take years to work the thing and get down to the footing of one water +supply and an ambidextrous dustman on the lines of perfect justice and +satisfactoriness all round. + +But what I want to maintain is that these little immediate claims and +rights and vested interests and bits of justice and fairness are no +excuse at all for preventing things being done in the clear, clean, +large, quick way. They never constituted a decent excuse, and now they +excuse waste and delay and inconvenience less than ever. Let us first do +things in the sound way, and then, if we can, let us pet and compensate +any disappointed person who used to profit by their being done +roundabout instead of earning an honest living. We are beginning to +agree that reasonably any man may be asked to die for his country; what +we have to recognise is that any man's proprietorship, interest, claims +or rights may just as properly be called upon to die. Bocking and +Braintree and Mr. John Smith--Mr. John Smith, the ordinary comfortable +man with a stake in the country--have been thinking altogether too much +of the claims and rights and expectations and economies of Bocking and +Braintree and Mr. John Smith. They have to think now in a different +way.... + +Just consider the work of reconstruction that Great Britain alone will +have to face in the next year or so. (And her task is, if anything, less +than that of any of her antagonists or Allies, except Japan and Italy.) +She has now probably from six to ten million people in the British +Isles, men and women, either engaged directly in warfare or in the +manufacture of munitions or in employments such as transit, nursing, and +so forth, directly subserving these main ends. At least five-sixths of +these millions must be got back to employment of a different character +within a year of the coming of peace. Everywhere manufacture, trade and +transit has been disorganised, disturbed or destroyed. A new economic +system has to be put together within a brief score or so of weeks; great +dislocated masses of population have to be fed, kept busy and +distributed in a world financially strained and abounding in wounded, +cripples, widows, orphans and helpless people. + +In the next year or so the lives of half the population will have to be +fundamentally readjusted. Here is work for administrative giants, work +for which no powers can be excessive. It will be a task quite difficult +enough to do even without the opposition of legal rights, haggling +owners, and dexterous profiteers. It would be a giant's task if all the +necessary administrative machinery existed now in the most perfect +condition. How is this tremendous job going to be done if every Bocking +in the country is holding out for impossible terms from Braintree, and +every Braintree holding out for impossible terms from Bocking, while +the road out remains choked and confused between them; and if every John +Smith with a claim is insisting upon his reasonable expectation of +profits or dividends, his reasonable solatium and compensation for +getting out of the way? + +I would like to record my conviction that if the business of this great +crisis is to be done in the same spirit, the jealous, higgling, legal +spirit that I have seen prevailing in British life throughout my +half-century of existence, it will not in any satisfactory sense of the +phrase get done at all. This war has greatly demoralised and discredited +the governing class in Great Britain, and if big masses of unemployed +and unfed people, no longer strung up by the actuality of war, masses +now trained to arms and with many quite sympathetic officers available, +are released clumsily and planlessly into a world of risen prices and +rising rents, of legal obstacles and forensic complications, of greedy +speculators and hampered enterprises, there will be insurrection and +revolution. There will be bloodshed in the streets and the chasing of +rulers. + +There _will_ be, if we do seriously attempt to put the new wine of +humanity, the new crude fermentations at once so hopeful and so +threatening, that the war has released, into the old administrative +bottles that served our purposes before the war. + +I believe that for old lawyers and old politicians and "private +ownership" to handle the great problem of reconstruction after the war +in the spirit in which our affairs were conducted before the war is +about as hopeful an enterprise as if an elderly jobbing brick-layer, +working on strict trade-union rules, set out to stop the biggest +avalanche that ever came down a mountain-side. And since I am by no +means altogether pessimistic, in spite of my qualmy phases, it follows +that I do not believe that the old spirit will necessarily prevail. I do +not, because I believe that in the past few decades a new spirit has +come into human affairs; that our ostensible rulers and leaders have +been falling behind the times, and that in the young and the untried, +in, for example, the young European of thirty and under who is now in +such multitudes thinking over life and his seniors in the trenches, +there are still unsuspected resources of will and capacity, new mental +possibilities and new mental habits, that entirely disturb the +argument--based on the typical case of Bocking and Braintree--for a +social catastrophe after the war. + +How best can this new spirit be defined? + +It is the creative spirit as distinguished from the legal spirit; it is +the spirit of courage to make and not the spirit that waits and sees and +claims; it is the spirit that looks to the future and not to the past. +It is the spirit that makes Bocking forget that it is not Braintree and +John Smith forget that he is John Smith, and both remember that they are +England. + +For everyone there are two diametrically different ways of thinking +about life; there is individualism, the way that comes as naturally as +the grunt from a pig, of thinking outwardly from oneself as the centre +of the universe, and there is the way that every religion is trying in +some form to teach, of thinking back to oneself from greater standards +and realities. There is the Braintree that is Braintree against England +and the world, giving as little as possible and getting the best of the +bargain, and there is the Braintree that identifies itself with England +and asks how can we do best for the world with this little place of +ours, how can we educate best, produce most, and make our roads straight +and good for the world to go through. + +Every American knows the district that sends its congressman to +Washington for the good of his district, and the district, the rarer +district, that sends a man to work for the United States. There is the +John Smith who feels toward England and the world as a mite feels toward +its cheese, and the John Smith who feels toward his country as a +sheep-dog feels toward the flock. The former is the spirit of +individualism, "business," and our law, the latter the spirit of +socialism and science and--khaki.... They are both in all of us, they +fluctuate from day to day; first one is ascendant and then the other. + +War does not so much tilt the balance as accentuate the difference. One +rich British landowner sneaks off to New York State to set up a home +there and evade taxation; another turns his mansion into a hospital and +goes off to help Serbian refugees. Acts of baseness or generosity are +contagious; this man will give himself altogether because of a story of +devotion, this man declares he will do nothing until Sir F.E. Smith goes +to the front. And the would-be prophet of what is going to happen must +guess the relative force of these most impalpable and uncertain things. + +This Braintree-Bocking boundary which runs down the middle of the road +is to be found all over the world. You will find it in Ireland and the +gentlemen who trade on the jealousies of the north side and the +gentlemen who trade on the jealousies of the south. You will find it in +England among the good people who would rather wreck the Empire than +work honestly and fairly with Labour. There are not only parish +boundaries, but park boundaries and class and sect boundaries. You will +find the Bocking-Braintree line too at a dozen points on a small scale +map of Europe.... These Braintree-Bocking lines are the barbed-wire +entanglements between us and the peace of the world. Against these +entanglements in every country the new spirit struggles in many +thousands of minds. Where will it be strongest? Which country will get +clear first, get most rapidly to work again, have least of the confusion +and wrangling that must in some degree occur everywhere? Will any +country go altogether to pieces in hopeless incurable discord? + +Now I believe that the answer to that last question is "No." And my +reason for that answer is the same as my reason for believing that the +association of the Pledged Allies will not break up after the war; it is +that I believe that this war is going to end not in the complete +smashing up and subjugation of either side, but in a general exhaustion +that will make the recrudescence of the war still possible but very +terrifying. + +Mars will sit like a giant above all human affairs for the next two +decades, and the speech of Mars is blunt and plain. He will say to us +all: "Get your houses in order. If you squabble among yourselves, waste +time, litigate, muddle, snatch profits and shirk obligations, I will +certainly come down upon you again. I have taken all your men between +eighteen and fifty, and killed and maimed such as I pleased; millions of +them. I have wasted your substance--contemptuously. Now, mark you, you +have multitudes of male children between the ages of nine and nineteen +running about among you. Delightful and beloved boys. And behind them +come millions of delightful babies. Of these I have scarcely smashed and +starved a paltry hundred thousand perhaps by the way. But go on +muddling, each for himself and his parish and his family and none for +all the world, go on in the old way, stick to-your 'rights,' stick to +your 'claims' each one of you, make no concessions and no sacrifices, +obstruct, waste, squabble, and presently I will come back again and take +all that fresh harvest of life I have spared, all those millions that +are now sweet children and dear little boys and youths, and I will +squeeze it into red pulp between my hands, I will mix it with the mud of +trenches and feast on it before your eyes, even more damnably than I +have done with your grown-up sons and young men. And I have taken most +of your superfluities already; next time I will take your barest +necessities." + +So the red god, Mars; and in these days of universal education the great +mass of people will understand plainly now that that is his message and +intention. Men who cannot be swayed by the love of order and creation +may be swayed by the thought of death and destruction.... There, I +think, is the overriding argument that will burst the proprietorships +and divisions and boundaries, the web of ineffectiveness that has held +the world so long. Labour returning from the trenches to its country and +demanding promptness, planning, generous and devoted leaderships and +organisation, demanding that the usurer and financier, the landlord and +lawyer shall, if need be, get themselves altogether out of the way, will +have behind its arguments the thought of the enemy still unsubdued, +still formidable, recovering. Both sides will feel that. This world is a +more illuminated world than 1816; a thousand questions between law and +duty have been discussed since then; beyond all comparison we know +better what we are doing. I think the broad side of John Smith (and Sir +John Smith and John Smith, K.C.) will get the better of his narrow +ends--and that so it will be with Jean Dupont and Hans Meyer and the +rest of them. There may be riots here and there; there may be some +pretty considerable rows; but I do not think there is going to be a +chaotic and merely destructive phase in Great Britain or any Western +European country. I cast my guess for reconstruction and not for revolt. + + + + +V. HOW FAR WILL EUROPE GO TOWARD SOCIALISM? + + +A number of people are saying that this war is to be the end of +Individualism. "Go as you please" has had its death-blow. Out of this +war, whatever else emerges, there will emerge a more highly organised +State than existed before--that is to say, a less individualistic and +more socialistic State. And there seems a heavy weight of probability on +the side of this view. But there are also a number of less obvious +countervailing considerations that may quite possibly modify or reverse +this tendency. + +In this chapter an attempt is to be made to strike a balance between the +two systems of forces, and guess how much will be private and how much +public in Europe in 1930, or thereabouts. + +The prophets who foretell the coming of Socialism base their case on +three sets of arguments. They point out, first, the failure of +individual enterprise to produce a national efficiency comparable to +the partial State Socialism of Germany, and the extraordinary, special +dangers inherent in private property that the war has brought to light; +secondly, to the scores of approaches to practical Socialism that have +been forced upon Great Britain--for example, by the needs of the war; +and, thirdly, to the obvious necessities that will confront the British +Empire and the Allies generally after the war--necessities that no +unorganised private effort can hope to meet effectively. + +All these arguments involve the assumption that the general +understanding of the common interest will be sufficient to override +individual and class motives; an exceedingly doubtful assumption, to say +the least of it. But the general understanding of the common interest is +most likely to be kept alive by the sense of a common danger, and we +have already arrived at the conclusion that Germany is going to be +defeated but not destroyed in this war, and that she will be left with +sufficient vitality and sufficient resentment and sufficient of her +rancid cultivated nationalism to make not only the continuance of the +Alliance after the war obviously advisable and highly probable, but also +to preserve in the general mind for a generation or so that sense of a +common danger which most effectually conduces to the sweeping aside of +merely personal and wasteful claims. Into the consequences of this we +have now to look a little more closely. + +It was the weaknesses of Germany that made this war, and not her +strength. The weaknesses of Germany are her Imperialism, her Junkerism, +and her intense, sentimental Nationalism; for the former would have no +German ascendancy that was not achieved by force, and, with the latter, +made the idea of German ascendancy intolerable to all mankind. Better +death, we said. And had Germany been no more than her Court, her +Junkerism, her Nationalism, the whole system would have smashed beneath +the contempt and indignation of the world within a year. + +But the strength of Germany has saved her from that destruction. She was +at once the most archaic and modern of states. She was Hohenzollern, +claiming to be Caesar, and flaunting a flat black eagle borrowed from +Imperial Rome; and also she was the most scientific and socialist of +states. It is her science and her Socialism that have held and forced +back the avengers of Belgium for more than a year and a half. If she has +failed as a conqueror, she has succeeded as an organisation. Her +ambition has been thwarted, and her method has been vindicated. She +will, I think, be so far defeated in the contest of endurance which is +now in progress that she will have to give up every scrap of territorial +advantage she has gained; she may lose most of her Colonial Empire; she +may be obliged to complete her modernisation by abandoning her militant +Imperialism; but she will have at least the satisfaction of producing +far profounder changes in the chief of her antagonists than those she +herself will undergo. + +The Germany of the Hohenzollerns had its mortal wound at the Marne; the +Germany we fight to-day is the Germany of Krupp and Ostwald. It is +merely as if she had put aside a mask that had blinded her. She was +methodical and civilised except for her head and aim; she will become +entirely methodical. But the Britain and Russia and France she fights +are lands full of the spirit of undefined novelty. They are being made +over far more completely. They are being made over, not in spite of the +war, but because of the war. Only by being made over can they win the +war. And if they do not win the war, then they are bound to be made +over. They are not merely putting aside old things, but they are forming +and organising within themselves new structures, new and more efficient +relationships, that will last far beyond the still remote peace +settlement. + +What this war has brought home to the consciousness of every intelligent +man outside the German system, with such thoroughness as whole +generations of discussion and peace experience could never have +achieved, is a double lesson: that Germany had already gone far to +master when she blundered into the war; firstly, the waste and dangers +of individualism, and, secondly, the imperative necessity of scientific +method in public affairs. The waste and dangers of individualism have +had a whole series of striking exemplifications both in Europe and +America since the war began. Were there such a thing as a Socialist +propaganda in existence, were the so-called socialistic organisations +anything better than a shabby little back-door into contemporary +politics, those demonstrations would be hammering at the mind of +everyone. It may be interesting to recapitulate some of the most salient +instances. + +The best illustration, perhaps, of the waste that arises out of +individualism is to be found in the extreme dislocation of the privately +owned transit services of Great Britain at the present time. There is no +essential reason whatever why food and fuel in Great Britain should be +considerably dearer than they are under peace conditions. Just the same +home areas are under cultivation, just the same foreign resources are +available; indeed, more foreign supplies are available because we have +intercepted those that under normal conditions would have gone to +Germany. The submarine blockade of Britain is now a negligible factor in +this question. + +Despite these patent conditions there has been, and is, a steady +increase in the cost of provisions, coal, and every sort of necessity. +This increase means an increase in the cost of production of many +commodities, and so contributes again to the general scarcity. This is +the domestic aspect of a difficulty that has also its military side. It +is not sufficient merely to make munitions; they must also be delivered, +Great Britain is suffering very seriously from congestion of the +railways. She suffers both in social and military efficiency, and she is +so suffering because her railways, instead of being planned as one great +and simple national distributing system, have grown up under conditions +of clumsy, dividend-seeking competition. + +Each great railway company and combination has worked its own areas, and +made difficulties and aggressions at the boundaries of its sphere of +influence; here are inconvenient junctions and here unnecessary +duplications; nearly all the companies come into London, each taking up +its own area of expensive land for goods yards, sidings, shunting +grounds, and each regardless of any proper correlation with the other; +great areas of the County of London are covered with their idle trucks +and their separate coal stores; in many provincial towns you will find +two or even three railway stations at opposite ends of the town; the +streets are blocked by the vans and trolleys of the several companies +tediously handing about goods that could be dealt with at a tenth of the +cost in time and labour at a central clearing-house, did such a thing +exist; and each system has its vast separate staff, unaccustomed to work +with any other staff. + +Since the war began the Government has taken over the general direction +of this disarticulated machinery, but no one with eyes who travels about +England now can fail to remark, in the miles and miles of waiting loaded +trucks on every siding, the evidences of mischievous and now almost +insuperable congestion. The trucks of each system that have travelled on +to another still go back, for the most part, _empty_ to their own; and +thousands of privately owned trucks, which carry cargo only one way, +block our sidings. Great Britain wastes men and time to a disastrous +extent in these needless shuntings and handlings. + +Here, touching every life in the community, is one instance of the +muddle that arises naturally out of the individualistic method of +letting public services grow up anyhow without a plan, or without any +direction at all except the research for private profit. + +A second series of deficiencies that the war has brought to light in the +too individualistic British State is the entire want of connection +between private profit and public welfare. So far as the interests of +the capitalist go it does not matter whether he invests his money at +home or abroad; it does not matter whether his goods are manufactured in +London or Timbuctoo. + +But what of the result? At the outbreak of the war Great Britain found +that a score of necessary industries had drifted out of the country, +because it did not "pay" any private person to keep them here. The +shortage of dyes has been amply discussed as a typical case. A much +graver one that we may now write about was the shortage of zinc. Within +a month or so of the outbreak of the war the British Government had to +take urgent and energetic steps to secure this essential ingredient of +cartridge cases. Individualism had let zinc refining drift to Belgium +and Germany; it was the luck rather than the merit of Great Britain that +one or two refineries still existed. + +Still more extraordinary things came to light in the matter of the metal +supply. Under an individualistic system you may sell to the highest +bidder, and anyone with money from anywhere may come in and buy. Great +supplies of colonial ores were found to be cornered by semi-national +German syndicates. Supplies were held up by these contracts against the +necessities of the Empire. And this was but one instance of many which +have shown that, while industrial development in the Allied countries is +still largely a squabbling confusion of little short-sighted, +unscientific, private profit-seeking owners, in Germany it has been for +some years increasingly run on far-seeing collectivist lines. Against +the comparatively little and mutually jealous British or American +capitalists and millionaires Germany pits itself as a single great +capitalist and competitor. She has worked everywhere upon a +comprehensive plan. Against her great national electric combination, for +example, only another national combination could stand. As it was, +Germany--in the way of business--wired and lit (and examined) the forts +at Liege. She bought and prepared a hundred strategic centres in +individualistic Belgium and France. + +So we pass from the fact that individualism is hopeless muddle to the +fact that the individualist idea is one of limitless venality, Who can +buy, may control. And Germany, in her long scheming against her +individualist rivals, has not simply set herself to buy and hold the +keys and axles of their economic machinery. She has set herself, it must +be admitted, with a certain crudity and little success, but with +unexampled vigour, to buy the minds of her adversaries. The Western +nations have taken a peculiar pride in having a free Press; that is to +say, a Press that may be bought by anyone. Our Press is constantly +bought and sold, in gross and detail, by financiers, advertisers, +political parties, and the like. Germany came into the market rather +noisily, and great papers do to a large extent live in glass houses; but +her efforts have been sufficient to exercise the minds of great numbers +of men with the problem of what might have happened in the way of +national confusion if the German attack had been more subtly +conceived.... + +It is only a partial answer to this difficulty to say that a country +that is so nationalist and aggressive as Germany is incapable of subtle +conceptions. The fact remains that in Great Britain at the present time +there are newspaper proprietors who would be good bargains for Germany +at two million pounds a head, and that there was no effectual guarantee +in the individualistic system, but only our good luck and the natural +patriotism of the individuals concerned that she did not pick up these +bargains before trading with the enemy became illegal. It happened, for +example, that Lord Northcliffe was public-spirited, That was the good +luck of Great Britain rather than her merit. There was nothing in the +individualistic system to prevent Germany from buying up the entire +Harmsworth Press--_The Times, Daily Mail_, and all--five years before +the war, and using it to confuse the national mind, destroy the national +unity, sacrifice the national interests, and frustrate the national +will. + +Not only the newspapers, but the news-agents and booksellers of both +Great Britain and America are entirely at the disposal of any hostile +power which chooses to buy them up quietly and systematically. It is +merely a question of wealth and cleverness. And if the failure of the +Germans to grip the Press of the French and English speaking countries +has been conspicuous, she has been by no means so unsuccessful in--for +example--Spain. At the present time the thought and feeling of the +Spanish speaking world is being _educated_ against the Allies. The +Spanish mind has been sold by its custodians into German control. + +Muddle and venality do not, however, exhaust the demonstrated vices of +individualism. Individualism encourages desertion and treason. +Individualism permits base private people to abscond with the national +resources and squeeze a profit out of national suffering. In the early +stages of the war some bright minds conceived the idea of a corner in +drugs. It is not illegal; it is quite the sort of thing that appeals to +the individualistic frame of mind as entirely meritorious. As the _New +Statesman_ put it recently: "The happy owners of the world's available +stock of a few indispensable drugs did not refrain from making, not only +the various Governments, but also all the sick people of the world pay +double, and even tenfold, prices for what was essential to relieve pain +and save life. What fortunes were thus made we shall probably never +know, any more than we shall know the tale of the men and women and +children who suffered and died because of their inability to pay, not +the cost of production of what would have saved them, but the +unnecessarily enhanced price that the chances of the market enabled the +owners to exact." + +And another bright instance of the value of individualism is the selling +of British shipping to neutral buyers just when the country is in the +most urgent need of every ship it can get, and the deliberate transfer +to America of a number of British businesses to evade paying a proper +share of the national bill in taxation. The English who have gone to +America at different times have been of very different qualities; at the +head of the list are the English who went over in the _Mayflower_; at +the bottom will be the rich accessions of this war.... + +And perhaps a still more impressive testimony to the rottenness of these +"business men," upon whom certain eccentric voices call so amazingly to +come and govern us, is the incurable distrust they have sown in the +minds of labour. Never was an atmosphere of discipline more lamentable +than that which has grown up in the factories, workshops, and great +privately owned public services of America and Western Europe. The men, +it is evident, _expect_ to be robbed and cheated at every turn. I can +only explain their state of mind by supposing that they have been robbed +and cheated. Their scorn and contempt for their employees' good faith +is limitless. Their _morale_ is undermined by an invincible distrust. + +It is no good for Mr. Lloyd George to attempt to cure the gathered ill +of a century with half an hour or so of eloquence. When Great Britain, +in her supreme need, turns to the workmen she has trained in the ways of +individualism for a century, she reaps the harvest individualism has +sown. She has to fight with that handicap. Every regulation for the +rapid mobilisation of labour is scrutinised to find the trick in it. + +And they find the trick in it as often as not. Smart individualistic +"business experience" has been at the draughtsman's elbow. A man in an +individualistic system does not escape from class ideas and prejudices +by becoming an official. There is profound and bitter wisdom in the deep +distrust felt by British labour for both military and industrial +conscription. + +The breakdown of individualism has been so complete in Great Britain +that we are confronted with the spectacle of this great and ancient +kingdom reconstructing itself perforce, while it wages the greatest war +in history. A temporary nationalisation of land transit has been +improvised, and only the vast, deep-rooted, political influence of the +shipowners and coalowners have staved off the manifestly necessary step +of nationalising shipping and coal. I doubt if they will be able to +stave it off to the end of the long struggle which is still before us if +the militarism of Germany is really to be arrested and discredited. +Expropriation and not conscription will be the supreme test of Britain's +loyalty to her Allies. + +The British shipowners, in particular, are reaping enormous but +precarious profits from the war. The blockade of Britain, by the British +shipowners is scarcely less effective than the blockade of Germany by +Britain. With an urgent need of every ship for the national supplies, +British ships, at the present moment of writing this, are still carrying +cheap American automobiles to Australia. They would carry munitions to +Germany if their owners thought they had a sporting chance of not +getting caught at it. These British shipowners are a pampered class with +great political and social influence, and no doubt as soon as the +accumulating strain of the struggle tells to the extent of any serious +restriction of their advantage and prospects, we shall see them shifting +to the side of the at present negligible group of British pacifists. I +do not think one can count on any limit to their selfishness and +treason. + +I believe that the calculations of some of these extreme and apparently +quite unreasonable "pacifists" are right. Before the war is over there +will be a lot of money in the pacifist business. The rich curs of the +West End will join hands with the labour curs of the Clyde. The base are +to be found in all classes, but I doubt if they dominate any. I do not +believe that any interest or group of interests in Great Britain can +stand in the way of the will of the whole people to bring this struggle +to a triumphant finish at any cost. I do not believe that the most +sacred ties of personal friendship and blood relationship with +influential people can save either shipowners or coalowners or army +contractors to the end. + +There will be no end until these profit-makings are arrested. The +necessary "conscriptions of property" must come about in Great Britain +because there is no alternative but failure in the war, and the British +people will not stand failure. I believe that the end of the war will +see, not only transit, but shipping, collieries, and large portions of +the machinery of food and drink production and distribution no longer +under the administration of private ownership, but under a sort of +provisional public administration. And very many British factories will +be in the same case. + +Two years ago no one would have dared to prophesy the tremendous +rearrangement of manufacturing machinery which is in progress in Britain +to-day. Thousands of firms of engineers and manufacturers of all sorts, +which were flourishing in 1914, exist to-day only as names, as shapes, +as empty shells. Their staffs have been shattered, scattered, +reconstructed; their buildings enlarged and modified; their machinery +exchanged, reconstituted, or taken. The reality is a vast interdependent +national factory that would have seemed incredible to Fourier. + +It will be as impossible to put back British industrialism into the +factories and forms of the pre-war era as it would be to restore the +Carthaginian Empire. There is a new economic Great Britain to-day, +emergency made, jerry-built no doubt, a gawky, weedy giant, but a giant +who may fill out to such dimensions as the German national system has +never attained. Behind it is an _idea_, a new idea, the idea of the +nation as one great economic system working together, an idea which +could not possibly have got into the sluggish and conservative British +intelligence in half a century by any other means than the stark +necessities of this war.... Great Britain cannot retrace those steps +even if she would, and so she will be forced to carry this process of +reconstruction through. And what is happening to Great Britain must, +with its national differences, be happening to France and Russia. Not +only for war ends, but for peace ends, behind the front and sustaining +the front, individualities are being hammered together into common and +concerted activities. + +At the end of this war Great Britain will find herself with this great +national factory, this great national organisation of labour, planned, +indeed, primarily to make war material, but convertible with the utmost +ease to the purposes of automobile manufacture, to transit +reconstruction, to electrical engineering, and endless such uses. + +France and Russia will be in a parallel case. All the world will be +exhausted, and none of the Allies will have much money to import +automobiles, railway material, electrical gear, and so on, from abroad. +Moreover, it will be a matter of imperative necessity for them to get +ahead of the Central Powers with their productive activities. We shall +all be too poor to import from America, and we shall be insane to import +from Germany. America will be the continent with the long purse, +prepared to buy rather than sell. Each country will have great masses of +soldiers waiting to return to industrial life, and will therefore be +extremely indisposed to break up any existing productive organisation. + +In the face of these facts, will any of the Allied Powers be so foolish +as to disband this great system of national factories and nationally +worked communications? Moreover, we have already risked the prophecy +that this war will not end with such conclusiveness as to justify an +immediate beating out of our swords into ploughshares. There will be a +military as well as a social reason for keeping the national factories +in a going state. + +What more obvious course, then, than to keep them going by turning them +on to manufacture goods of urgent public necessity? There are a number +of modern commodities now practically standardised: the bicycle, the +cheap watch, the ordinary tradesman's delivery automobile, the farmer's +runabout, the country doctor's car, much electric-lighting material, +dynamos, and so forth. And also, in a parallel case, there is +shipbuilding. The chemical side of munition work can turn itself with no +extreme difficulty to the making of such products as dyes. + +We face the fact, then, that either the State must go on with this +production, as it can do, straight off from the signing of peace, +converting with a minimum of friction, taking on its soldiers as they +are discharged from the army as employees with a minimum waste of time +and a minimum of social disorder, and a maximum advantage in the +resumption of foreign trade, or there will be a dangerous break-up of +the national factory system, a time of extreme chaos and bitter +unemployment until capital accumulates for new developments. The risks +of social convulsion will be enormous. And there is small hope that the +Central Powers, and particularly industrial Germany, will have the +politeness to wait through the ten or twelve years of economic +embarrassment that a refusal to take this bold but obviously +advantageous step into scientific Socialism will entail. + +But the prophet must be on his guard against supposing that, because a +thing is highly desirable, it must necessarily happen; or that, because +it is highly dangerous, it will be avoided. This bold and successful +economic reconstruction upon national lines is not inevitable merely +because every sound reason points us in that direction. A man may be +very ill, a certain drug may be clearly indicated as the only possible +remedy, but it does not follow that the drug is available, that the +doctor will have the sense to prescribe it, or the patient the means to +procure it or the intelligence to swallow it. + +The experience of history is that nations do not take the obviously +right course, but the obviously wrong one. The present prophet knows +only his England, but, so far as England is concerned, he can cover a +sheet of paper with scarcely a pause, jotting down memoranda of +numberless forces that make against any such rational reconstruction. +Most of these forces, in greater or less proportion, must be present in +the case of every other country under consideration. + +The darkest shadow upon the outlook of European civilisation at the +present time is not the war; it is the failure of any co-operative +spirit between labour and the directing classes. The educated and +leisured classes have been rotten with individualism for a century; they +have destroyed the confidence of the worker in any leadership whatever. +Labour stands apart, intractable. If there is to be any such rapid +conversion of the economic machinery as the opportunities and +necessities of this great time demand, then labour must be taken into +the confidence of those who would carry it through. It must be reassured +and enlightened. Labour must know clearly what is being done; it must be +an assenting co-operator. The stride to economic national service and +Socialism is a stride that labour should be more eager to take than any +other section of the community. + +The first step in reassuring labour must be to bring the greedy private +owner and the speculator under a far more drastic discipline than at +present. The property-owning class is continually accusing labour of +being ignorant, suspicious, and difficult; it is blind to the fact that +it is itself profit-seeking by habit, greedy, conceited, and half +educated. + +Every step in the mobilisation of Great Britain's vast resources for the +purposes of the war has been hampered by the tricks, the failures to +understand, and the almost instinctive disloyalties of private owners. +The raising of rents in Glasgow drove the infuriated workmen of the +Clyde district into an unwilling strike. It was an exasperating piece of +private selfishness, quite typical of the individualistic state of mind, +and the failure to anticipate or arrest it on the part of the Government +was a worse failure than Suvla Bay. And everywhere the officials of the +Ministry of Munitions find private employers holding back workers and +machinery from munition works, intriguing--more particularly through the +Board of Trade--to have all sorts of manufactures for private profit +recognised as munition work, or if that contention is too utterly +absurd, then as work vitally necessary to the maintenance of British +export trade and the financial position of the country. It is an +undeniable fact that employers and men alike have been found far readier +to risk their lives for their country than to lay aside any scale of +profits to which they have grown accustomed. + +This conflict of individualistic enterprise and class suspicion against +the synthesis of the public welfare is not peculiar to Great Britain; it +is probably going on with local variations in Germany, Russia, Italy, +France, and, indeed, in every combatant country. Because of the +individualistic forces and feelings, none of us, either friends or +enemies, are really getting anything like our full possible result out +of our national efforts. But in Germany there is a greater tradition of +subordination; in France there is a greater clarity of mind than in any +other country. + +Great Britain and Russia in this, as in so many other matters, are at +once close kindred and sharp antithesis. Each is mentally crippled by +the corruption of its educational system by an official religious +orthodoxy, and hampered by a Court which disowns any function of +intellectual stimulus. Neither possesses a scientifically educated +_class_ to which it can look for the powerful handling of this great +occasion; and each has acquired under these disadvantages the same +strange faculty for producing sane resultants out of illogical +confusions. It is the way of these unmethodical Powers to produce +unexpected, vaguely formulated, and yet effective cerebral +action--apparently from their backbones. + +As I sit playing at prophecy, and turn over the multitudinous +impressions of the last year in my mind, weighing the great necessities +of the time against obstacles and petty-mindedness, I become more and +more conscious of a third factor that is neither need nor obstruction, +and that is the will to get things right that has been liberated by the +war. + +The new spirit is still but poorly expressed, but it will find +expression. The war goes on, and we discuss this question of economic +reconstruction as though it was an issue that lay between the labour +that has stayed behind and the business men, for the most part old men +with old habits of mind, who have stayed behind. + +The real life of Europe's future lies on neither side of that +opposition. The real life is mutely busy at present, saying little +because of the uproar of the guns, and not so much learning as casting +habits and shedding delusions. In the trenches there are workers who +have broken with the old slacking and sabotage, and there are +prospective leaders who have forgotten profit. The men between eighteen +and forty are far too busy in the blood and mud to make much showing +now, but to-morrow these men will be the nation. + +When that third factor of the problem is brought in the outlook of the +horoscope improves. The spirit of the war may be counted upon to balance +and prevail against this spirit of individualism, this spirit of +suspicion and disloyalty, which I fear more than anything else in the +world. + +I believe in the young France, young England, and young Russia this war +is making, and so I believe that every European country will struggle +along the path that this war has opened to a far more completely +organised State than has existed ever before. The Allies will become +State firms, as Germany was, indeed, already becoming before the war; +setting private profit aside in the common interest, handling +agriculture, transport, shipping, coal, the supply of metals, the +manufacture of a thousand staple articles, as national concerns. + +In the face of the manifest determination of the Central Powers to do as +much, the Allies will be forced also to link their various State firms +together into a great allied trust, trading with a common interest and a +common plan with Germany and America and the rest of the world.... Youth +and necessity will carry this against selfishness, against the +unimaginative, against the unteachable, the suspicious, the "_old +fool_." + +But I do not venture to prophesy that this will come about as if it were +a slick and easy deduction from present circumstances. Even in France I +do not think things will move as lucidly and generously as that. There +will be a conflict everywhere between wisdom and cunning, between the +eyes of youth and the purblind, between energy and obstinacy. + +The reorganisation of the European States will come about clumsily and +ungraciously. At every point the sticker will be found sticking tight, +holding out to be bought off, holding out for a rent or a dividend or a +share, holding out by mere instinct. At every turn, too, the bawler will +be loud and active, bawling suspicions, bawling accusations, bawling +panic, or just simply bawling. Tricks, peculation, obstinacies, +vanities--after this war men will still be men. But I do believe that +through all the dust and din, the great reasons in the case, the steady +constructive forces of the situation, will carry us. + +I believe that out of the ruins of the nineteenth century system of +private capitalism that this war has smashed for ever, there will arise, +there does even now arise, in this strange scaffolding of national +munition factories and hastily nationalised public services, the +framework of a new economic and social order based upon national +ownership and service. + +Let us now recapitulate a little and see how far we have got in +constructing a picture of the European community as it will be in +fifteen or twenty years' time. Nominally it will be little more of a +Socialist State than it is to-day, but, as a matter of fact, the ships, +the railways, the coal and metal supply, the great metal industries, +much engineering, and most agriculture, will be more or less completely +under collective ownership, and certainly very completely under +collective control. This does not mean that there will have been any +disappearance of private property, but only that there will have been a +very considerable change in its character; the owner will be less of +controller but more of a creditor; he will be a _rentier_ or an +annuitant. + +The burthen of this class upon the community will not be relatively +quite so heavy as it would otherwise have been, because of a very +considerable rise in wages and prices. + +In a community in which all the great initiatives have been assumed by +the State, the importance of financiers and promoters will have +diminished relatively to the importance of administrative officials; the +opportunities of private exploitation, indeed, will have so diminished +that there will probably be far less evidence of great concentrations of +private wealth in the European social landscape than there was before +the war. + +On the other hand, there will be an enormously increased _rentier_ class +drawing the interest of the war loans from the community, and +maintaining a generally high standard of comfort. There will have been a +great demand for administrative and technical abilities and a great +stimulation of scientific and technical education. By 1926 we shall be +going about a world that will have recovered very largely from the +impoverishment of the struggle; we shall tour in State-manufactured +automobiles upon excellent roads, and we shall live in houses equipped +with a national factory electric light installation, and at every turn +we shall be using and consuming the products of nationalised +industry--and paying off the National Debt simultaneously, and reducing +our burden of _rentiers_. + +At the same time our boys will be studying science in their schools +more thoroughly than they do now, and they will in many cases be +learning Russian instead of Greek or German. More of our boys will be +going into the public service, and fewer thinking of private business, +and they will be going into the public service, not as clerks, but as +engineers, technical chemists, manufacturers, State agriculturists, and +the like. The public service will be less a service of clerks and more a +service of practical men. The ties that bind France and Great Britain at +the present moment will have been drawn very much closer. France, +Belgium and England will be drifting towards a French-English +bi-lingualism.... + +So much of our picture we may splash in now. Much that is quite +essential remains to be discussed. So far we have said scarcely a word +about the prospects of party politics and the problems of government +that arise as the State ceases to be a mere impartial adjudicator +between private individuals, and takes upon itself more and more of the +direction of the general life of the community. + + + + +VI. LAWYER AND PRESS + + +The riddle of administration is the most subtle of all those that the +would-be prophet of the things that are coming must attempt. We see the +great modern States confronted now by vast and urgent necessities, by +opportunities that may never recur. Individualism has achieved its +inevitable failure; "go as you please" in a world that also contained +aggressive militarism, has broken down. We live in a world of improvised +State factories, commandeered railways, substituted labour and emergency +arrangements. Our vague-minded, lax, modern democracy has to pull itself +together, has to take over and administer and succeed with a great +system of collective functions, has to express its collective will in +some better terms than "go as you please," or fail. + +And we find the affairs of nearly every great democratic State in the +hands of a class of men not specially adapted to any such constructive +or administrative work. + +I am writing here now chiefly of the Western Allies. Russia is peculiar +in having her administrative machine much more highly developed in +relation to her general national life than the free democratic +countries. She has to make a bureaucracy that has not hitherto been an +example for efficiency into a bureaucracy that will be constructive, +responsive, liberal, scientific, and efficient; the Western countries +have to do the same with that oligarchy of politicians which, as +Professor Michels has recently pointed out in his striking book on +"Political Parties," is the necessary reality of democratic government. +By different methods the Eastern and Western Powers have to attain a +common end. Both bureaucracy and pseudo-democratic oligarchy have to +accomplish an identical task, to cement the pacific alliance of the +Pledged Allies and to socialise their common industrial and economic +life, so as to make it invulnerable to foreign attack. + +Now in Great Britain, which is the democracy that has been most under +the close observation of the present prophet, there is at present a +great outcry against the "politician," and more particularly against the +"lawyer-politician." He is our embarrassment. In him we personify all +our difficulties. Let us consider the charges against this individual. +Let us ask, can we do without him? And let us further see what chances +there may be of so altering, qualifying, or balancing him as to minimise +the evil of his influence. To begin with, let us run over the essentials +of the charge against him. + +It is with a modest blush that the present prophet recapitulates these +charges. So early as the year 1902 he was lifting up his voice, not +exactly in the wilderness but at least in the Royal Institution, against +the legal as compared with the creative or futurist type of mind. The +legal mind, he insisted, looks necessarily to the past. It is dilatory +because it has no sense of coming things, it is uninventive and +wasteful, it does not create, it takes advantage. It is the type of mind +least able, under any circumstances, to organise great businesses, to +plan campaigns, to adventure or achieve. "Wait and see" crystallises its +spirit. Its resistance is admirable, and it has no "go." Nevertheless +there is a tendency for power to gravitate in all democratic countries +to the lawyer. + +In the British system the normal faults of the lawyer are enhanced, and +his predominance intensified, by certain peculiarities of our system. In +the first place, he belongs to a guild of exceptional power. In Britain +it happens that the unfortunate course was taken ages ago of bribing the +whole legal profession to be honest. The British judges and law officers +are stupendously overpaid in order to make them incorruptible; it is a +poor but perhaps a well-merited compliment to their professional code. +We have squared the whole profession to be individually unbribable. + +The judges, moreover, in the Anglo-Saxon communities are appointed from +among the leading barristers, an arrangement that a child can see is +demoralising and inadvisable. And in Great Britain all the greatest +salaries in the government service are reserved for the legal +profession. The greatest prizes, therefore, before an energetic young +man who has to make his way in Great Britain are the legal prizes, and +his line of advancement to these lies, for all the best years of his +life, not through the public service, but through the private practice +of advocacy. The higher education, such as it is, in Great Britain, +produces under the stimulus of these conditions an advocate as its +finest flower. To go from the posing and chatter of the Union Debating +Society to a university laboratory is, in Britain, to renounce ambition. +Few men of exceptional energy will do that. + +The national consequences of this state of affairs have been only too +manifest throughout the conduct of the war. The British Government has +developed all the strength and all the weakness of the great profession +it represents. It has been uninventive, dilatory, and without +initiative; it has been wasteful and evasive; but it has not been +wanting in a certain eloquence and dignity, it has been wary and shrewd, +and it has held on to office with the concentrated skill and +determination of a sucker-fish. And the British mind, with a +concentration and intensity unprecedented before the war, is speculating +how it can contrive to get a different sort of ruler and administrator +at work upon its affairs. + +There is a disposition in the Press, and much of the private talk one +hears, to get rid of lawyers from the control of national affairs +altogether, to substitute "business men" or scientific men or "experts." +That way lies dictatorship and Caesarism. And even Great Britain is not +so heedless of the experiences of other nations as to attempt again what +has already been so abundantly worked out in national disaster across +the Channel. The essential business of government is to deal between man +and man; it is not to manage the national affairs in detail, but to +secure the proper managers, investigators, administrators, generals, +and so forth, to maintain their efficiency, and keep the balance between +them. We cannot do without a special class of men for these +interventions and controls. In other words, we cannot do without a +special class of politicians. They may be elected by a public or +appointed by an autocrat; at some point they have to come in. And this +business of intervening between men and classes and departments in +public life, and getting them to work together, is so closely akin to +the proper work of a lawyer in dealing between men and men, that, unless +the latter are absolutely barred from becoming the former, it is almost +unavoidable that politicians should be drawn more abundantly from the +lawyer class than from any other class in the community. + +This is so much the case, that when the London _Times_ turns in despair +from a government of lawyers and looks about for an alternative, the +first figure that presents itself is that distinguished advocate Sir +Edward Carson! + +But there is a difference between recognising that some sort of +lawyer-politician is unavoidable and agreeing that the existing type of +lawyer who is so largely accountable for the massive slowness, the +confused action, the slovenliness rather than the weakness of purpose, +shown by Great Britain in this war, is the only possible type, The +British system of education and legal organisation is not the last word +of human wisdom in these matters. + +The real case we British have against our lawyers, if I may adopt an +expressive colloquialism, is not that they are lawyers, but that they +are such infernal lawyers. They trail into modern life most of the +faults of a mediaeval guild. They seem to have no sense of the State +they could develop, no sense of the future they might control. Their law +and procedure has never been remodelled upon the framework of modern +ideas; their minds are still set to the tune of mediaeval bickerings, +traditionalism, and State blindness. They are mystery dealers, almost +unanimously they have resisted giving the common man the protection of a +code. + +In the United Kingdom we have had no Napoleon to override the +profession. It is extraordinary how complete has been their preservation +of barbaric conceptions. Even the doctor is now largely emancipated from +his archaic limitations as a skilled retainer. He thinks more and more +of the public health, and less and less of his patron. The more recent a +profession the less there is of the individualistic personal reference; +scientific research, for example, disavows and forbids every personal +reference. + +But while everyone would be shocked at some great doctor, or some great +research institution, in these days of urgent necessity spending two or +three weeks on the minor ailments of some rich person's lapdog, nobody +is scandalised at the spectacle of Sir Edward Carson and a costly law +court spending long days upon the sordid disputes that centre upon young +Master Slingsby's ear--whether it is the Slingsby family ear or the ear +of a supposititious child--a question that any three old women might be +trusted to settle. After that he rests for a fortnight and recuperates, +and returns--to take up a will case turning upon the toy rabbits and +suchlike trifles which entertained the declining years of a +nonagenarian. This, when we are assured that the country awaits Sir +Edward as its Deliverer. It is as if Lord Kitchener took a month off to +act at specially high rates for the "movies." Our standard for the +lawyer is older and lower than it is for other men. + +There is no more reason nowadays why a lawyer should look to advocacy as +a proper use of his knowledge than that a doctor should make private +poisoning the lucrative side of his profession. There is no reason why +a court of law should ignore the plain right of the commonweal to +intervene in every case between man and man. There is every reason why +trivial disputes about wills and legitimacy should not be wasting our +national resources at the present time, when nearly every other form of +waste is being restrained. The sound case against the legal profession +in Anglo-Saxon countries is not that it is unnecessary, but that it is +almost incredibly antiquated, almost incredibly careless of the public +well-being, and that it corrupts or dwarfs all the men who enter it. + +Our urgent need is not so much to get rid of the lawyer from our affairs +as to get rid of the wig and gown spirit and of the special pleader, and +to find and develop the new lawyer, the lawyer who is not an advocate, +who is not afraid of a code, who has had some scientific education, and +whose imagination has been quickened by the realisation of life as +creative opportunity. We want to emancipate this profession from its +ancient guild restrictions--the most anti-social and disastrous of all +such restrictions--to destroy its disgraceful traditions of over-payment +and fee-snatching, to insist upon a scientific philosophical training +for its practitioners, to make the practice of advocacy a fall from +grace, and to bar professional advocates from the bench. + +In the British trenches now there must be many hundreds of fine young +lawyers, still but little corrupted, who would be only too glad to +exchange the sordid vulgarities and essential dishonour of a successful +lawyer's career under the old conditions for lives of service and +statecraft.... + +No observer of the general trend of events in Europe will get any real +grasp of what is happening until he realises the cardinal importance of +the reactions that centre upon this question. The current development of +political institutions and the possible development of a new spirit and +method in the legal profession are so intimately interwoven as to be +practically one and the same question. The international question is, +can we get a new Germany? The national question everywhere is, can we +get a better politician? + +The widely prevalent discontent with the part played by the lawyer in +the affairs of all the Western Allies is certain to develop into a +vigorous agitation for legal reconstruction. In the case of every other +great trade union the war has exacted profound and vital concessions. +The British working men, for example, have abandoned scores of +protective restrictions upon women's labour, upon unskilled labour, for +which they have fought for generations; they have submitted to a virtual +serfdom that the nation's needs might be supplied; the medical +profession has sent almost too large a proportion of its members to the +front; the scientific men, the writers, have been begging to be used in +any capacity at any price or none; the Ministry of Munitions is full of +unpaid workers, and so on. + +The British legal profession and trade union alone has made no sign of +any disposition to relax its elaborate restrictions upon the labour of +amateurs and women, or to abate one jot or one tittle of its habitual +rewards. There has been no attempt to reduce the costly law officers of +the Government, for example, or to call in the help of older men or +women to release law officers who are of military experience or age. + +And I must admit that there are small signs of the advent of the "new +lawyer," at whose possibility I have just flung a hopeful glance, to +replace the existing mass of mediaeval unsoundness. Barristers seem to +age prematurely--at least in Great Britain--unless they are born old. In +the legal profession one hears nothing of "the young"; one hears only of +"smart juniors." Reform and progressive criticism in the legal +profession, unlike all other professions, seem to be the monopoly of the +retired. + +Nevertheless, Great Britain is as yet only beginning to feel the real +stresses of the war; she is coming into the full strain a year behind +France, Germany, and Russia; and after the war there lies the +possibility of still more violent stresses; so that what is as yet a +mere cloud of criticism and resentment at our lawyer-politicians and +privileged legal profession may gather to a great storm before 1918 or +1919. + +I am inclined to foretell as one most highly probable development of the +present vague but very considerable revolt against the lawyer in British +public life, first, some clumsy proposals or even attempts to leave him +out, and use "business men," soldiers, admirals, dictators, or men of +science, in his place--which is rather like throwing away a blottesque +fountain-pen and trying to write with a walking-stick or a revolver or a +flash-light--and then when that is found to be impossible, a resolute +attempt to clean and reconstitute the legal profession on modern and +more honourable lines; a movement into which, quite possibly, a number +of the younger British lawyers, so soon as they realise that the +movement is good enough to risk careers upon, may throw themselves. A +large share in such a reform movement, if it occurs, will be brought +about by the Press; by which I mean not simply the periodical Press, but +all books and contemporary discussion. It is only by the natural playing +off of Press against lawyer-politician that democratic States can ever +come to their own. + +And that brings me to the second part of this question, which is +whether, quite apart from the possible reform and spiritual rebirth of +the legal profession, there is not also the possibility of balancing and +correcting its influence. In ancient Hebrew history--it may be a warning +rather than a precedent--there were two great forces, one formal, +conservative and corrupting, the other undisciplined, creative, and +destructive; the first was the priest, the second the prophet. Their +interaction is being extraordinarily paralleled in the Anglo-Saxon +democracies by the interaction of lawyer-politician and Press to-day. + +If the lawyer-politician is unavoidable, the Press is indispensable. It +is not in the clash and manoeuvres and mutual correction of party, but +in the essential conflict of political authority on the one hand and +Press on the other that the future of democratic government apparently +lies. In the clearer, simpler case of France, a less wealthy and finer +type of lawyer interacts with a less impersonal Press. It is in the +great contrasts and the essential parallelism of the French and the +Anglo-Saxon democratic systems that one finds the best practical reason +for anticipating very profound changes in these two inevitables of +democracy, the Press and the lawyer-politician, and for assuming that +the method of democracy has still a vast range of experimental +adjustment between them still untried. Such experimental adjustment will +be the chief necessity and business of political life in every country +of the world for the next few decades. + +The lawyer-politician and the Press are as it were the right and left +hands of a modern democracy. The war has brought this out clearly. It +has ruptured the long-weakened bonds that once linked this and that +newspaper with this and that party. For years the Press of all the +Western democracies has been drifting slowly away from the tradition--it +lasted longest and was developed most completely in Great +Britain--that-newspapers were party organs. + +In the novels of Disraeli the Press appears as an ambiguously helpful +person who is asked out to dinner, who is even admitted to week-end +conferences, by the political great. He takes his orders from the Whig +peers or the Tory peers. At his greatest he advises them respectfully. +But that was in the closing days of the British oligarchy; that was +before modern democracy had begun to produce its characteristic +political forms. It is not so very much more than a century ago that +Great Britain had her first lawyer Prime Minister. Through all the +Napoleonic wars she was still a country ruled by great feudal landlords, +and gentlemen adventurers associated with them. The lawyers only came to +their own at the close of the great Victorian duet of Disraeli and +Gladstone, the last of the political gentlemen adventurers. It is only +now, in the jolts and dissatisfactions of this war, that Great Britain +rubs her eyes and looks at her government as it is. + +The old oligarchy established the tradition of her diplomacy. Illiberal +at home, it was liberal abroad; Great Britain was the defender of +nationality, of constitutionalism, and of the balance of power against +the holy alliance. In the figure of such a gentleman as Sir Edward Grey +the old order mingles with the new. But most of his colleagues are of +the new order. They would have been incredible in the days of Lord +Melbourne. In its essential quality the present British Government is +far more closely akin to the French than it is to its predecessor of a +hundred years ago. Essentially it is a Government of lawyer-politicians +with no close family ties or intimate political traditions and +prejudices. And its natural and proper corrective is the Press, over +which it fails to exercise now even a shadow of the political and social +influence that once kept that power in subjection. + +It is the way with all human institutions; they remain in appearance +long after they have passed away in reality. It is on record that the +Roman senate still thought Rome was a republic in the third century of +the Christian era. It is nothing wonderful, therefore, that people +suppose that the King, the Lords, and the Commons, debating through a +Ministry and an Opposition, still govern the British Empire. As a matter +of fact it is the lawyer-politicians, split by factions that simulate +the ancient government and opposition, who rule, under a steadily +growing pressure and checking by the Press. Since this war began the +Press has released itself almost inadvertently from its last association +with the dying conflicts of party politics, and has taken its place as a +distinct power in the realm, claiming to be more representative of the +people than their elected representatives, and more expressive of the +national mind and will. + +Now there is considerable validity in this claim. It is easy to say +that a paper may be bought by any proprietor and set to put what he +chooses into the public mind. As a matter of fact, buying a newspaper is +far more costly and public a proceeding than buying a politician. And if +on the one hand the public has no control over what is printed in a +paper, it has on the other the very completest control over what is +read. A politician is checked by votes cast once in several years, a +newspaper is checked by sales that vary significantly from day to day. A +newspaper with no circulation is a newspaper that does not matter; a few +weeks will suffice to show if it has carried its public with it or gone +out of influence. It is absurd to speak of a newspaper as being less +responsible than a politician. + +Nevertheless, the influence of a great newspaper is so much greater than +that of any politician, and its power more particularly for +mischief--for the creation of panic conditions, for example--so much +swifter, that it is open to question whether the Press is at present +sufficiently held to its enormous responsibilities. + +Let us consider its weaknesses at the present time, let us ask what +changes in its circumstances are desirable in the public interest, and +what are likely to come about. We have already reckoned upon the Press +as a chief factor in the adequate criticism, cleansing, and +modernisation of the British lawyer-politician; is there any power to +which we may look for the security of the Press? And I submit the answer +is the Press. For while the legal profession is naturally homogeneous, +the Press is by nature heterogeneous. Dog does not eat dog, nor lawyer, +lawyer; but the newspapers are sharks and cannibals, they are in +perpetual conflict, the Press is a profession as open as the law is +closed; it has no anti-social guild feeling; it washes its dirty linen +in public by choice and necessity, and disdains all professional +etiquette. Few people know what criticisms of the Lord Chief Justice may +have ripened in the minds of Lord Halsbury or Sir Edward Carson, but we +all know, to a very considerable degree of accuracy, the worst of what +this great journalist or group of newspaper proprietors thinks of that. + +We have, therefore, considerable reason for regarding the Press as +being, in contrast with the legal profession, a self-reforming body. In +the last decade there has been an enormous mass of criticism of the +Press by the Press. There has been a tendency to exaggerate its +irresponsibility. A better case is to be made against it for what I will +call, using the word in its least offensive sense, its venality. By +venality I mean the fact, a legacy from the now happily vanishing age of +individualism, that in theory and law at least anyone may own a +newspaper and sell it publicly or secretly to anyone, that its +circulation and advertisement receipts may be kept secret or not as the +proprietors choose, and that the proprietor is accountable to no one for +any exceptional incomings or any sudden fluctuations in policy. + +A few years ago we were all discussing who should buy _The Times_; I do +not know what chances an agent of the Kaiser might not have had if he +had been sufficiently discreet. This venality will be far more dangerous +to the Allied countries after the war than during its continuance. So +long as the state of war lasts there are prompt methods available for +any direct newspaper treason, and it is in the neutral countries only +that the buying and selling of papers against the national interest has +occurred to any marked extent. + +Directly peace is signed, unless we provide for the event beforehand, +our Press will pass under neutral conditions. There will be nothing to +prevent, for example, any foreseeing foreign power coming into Great +Britain, offering to buy up not only this paper or that, but also, what +is far more important, to buy up the great book and newspaper +distributing firms. These vitally important public services, so far as +law and theory go, will be as entirely in the market as railway tickets +at a station unless we make some intelligent preventive provision. +Unless we do, and if, as is highly probable, peace puts no immediate +stop to international malignity, the Germans will be bigger fools than I +think them if they do not try to get hold of these public services. It +is a matter of primary importance in the outlook of every country in +Europe, therefore, that it should insist upon and secure responsible +native ownership of every newspaper and news and book distributing +agency, and the most drastic punishment for newspaper corruption. Given +that guarantee against foreign bribery, we may, I think, let free speech +rage. This is so much a matter of common sense that I cannot imagine +even British "wait and see" waiting for the inevitable assault upon our +national journalistic virtue that will follow the peace. + +So I spread out the considerations that I think justify our forecasting, +in a very changed Great Britain and a changed Europe, firstly, a legal +profession with a quickened conscience, a sense of public function and a +reformed organisation, and, secondly, a Press, which is recognised and +held accountable in law and in men's minds, as an estate of the realm, +as something implicitly under oath to serve the State. I do not agree +with Professor Michel's pessimistic conclusion that peace will bring +back exacerbated party politics and a new era of futility to the +democratic countries. I believe that the tremendous demonstration of +this war (a demonstration that gains weight with every week of our +lengthening effort), of the waste and inefficiency of the system of +1913-14, will break down at last even the conservatism of the most +rigidly organised and powerful and out-of-date of all professions. + +It is not only that I look to the indignation and energy of intelligent +men who are outside our legal and political system to reform it, but to +those who are in it now. A man may be quietly parasitic upon his mother, +and yet incapable of matricide. So much of our national energy and +ability has been attracted to the law in Great Britain that our nation, +with our lawyers in modern clothing instead of wigs and gowns, lawyers +who have studied science and social theory instead of the spoutings of +Cicero and the loquacious artfulness of W.E. Gladstone, lawyers who look +forward at the destiny of their country instead of backward and at the +markings on their briefs, may yet astonish the world. The British lawyer +really holds the future of the British Empire and, indeed, I could +almost say, of the whole world in his hands at the present time, as much +as any single sort of man can be said to hold it. Inside his skull +imagination and a heavy devil of evil precedent fight for his soul and +the welfare of the world. And generosity fights against tradition and +individualism. Only the men of the Press have anything like the same +great possibilities of betrayal. + +To these two sorts of men the dim spirit of the nation looks for such +leading as a democracy can follow. To them the men with every sort of +special ability, the men of science, the men of this or that sort of +administrative ability and experience, the men of creative gifts and +habits, every sort of man who wants the world to get on, look for the +removal (or the ingenious contrivance) of obstructions and +entanglements, for the allaying (or the fomentation) of suspicion, +misapprehension, and ignorant opposition, for administration (or class +blackmail). + +Yet while I sit as a prophetic amateur weighing these impalpable forces +of will and imagination and habit and interest in lawyer, pressman, +maker and administrator, and feeling by no means over-confident of the +issue, it dawns upon me suddenly that there is another figure present, +who has never been present before in the reckoning up of British +affairs. It is a silent figure. This figure stands among the pressmen +and among the lawyers and among the workers; for a couple of decades at +least he will be everywhere in the British system; he is young and he is +uniformed in khaki, and he brings with him a new spirit into British +life, the spirit of the new soldier, the spirit of subordination to a +common purpose.... + +France, which has lived so much farther and deeper and more bitterly +than Britain, knows....[2] + +[Footnote 2: In "An Englishman Looks at the World," a companion volume +to the present one, which was first published by Messrs. Cassell early +in 1914, and is now obtainable in a shilling edition, the reader will +find a full discussion of the probable benefit of proportional +representation in eliminating the party hack from political life. +Proportional representation would probably break up party organisations +altogether, and it would considerably enhance the importance and +responsibility of the Press. It would do much to accelerate the +development of the state of affairs here foreshadowed, in which the role +of government and opposition under the party system will be played by +elected representatives and Press respectively.] + + + + +VII. THE NEW EDUCATION + + +Some few months ago Mr. Harold Spender, in the _Daily News_, was calling +attention to a very significant fact indeed. The higher education in +England, and more particularly the educational process of Oxford and +Cambridge, which has been going on continuously since the Middle Ages, +is practically in a state of suspense. Oxford and Cambridge have +stopped. They have stopped so completely that Mr. Spender can speculate +whether they can ever pick up again and resume upon the old lines. + +For my own part, as the father of two sons who are at present in +mid-school, I hope with all my heart that they will not. I hope that the +Oxford and Cambridge of unphilosophical classics and Little-go Greek for +everybody, don's mathematics, bad French, ignorance of all Europe except +Switzerland, forensic exercises in the Union Debating Society, and cant +about the Gothic, the Oxford and Cambridge that turned boys full of life +and hope and infinite possibility into barristers, politicians, +mono-lingual diplomatists, bishops, schoolmasters, company directors, +and remittance men, are even now dead. + +Quite recently I passed through Cambridge, and, with the suggestions of +Mr. Spender in my mind, I paused to savour the atmosphere of the place. +He had very greatly understated the facts of the case. He laid stress +upon the fact that instead of the normal four thousand undergraduates or +so, there are now scarcely four hundred. But before I was fairly in +Cambridge I realised that that gives no idea of the real cessation of +English education. Of the first seven undergraduates I saw upon the +Trumpington road, one was black, three were coloured, and one of the +remaining three was certainly not British, but, I should guess, +Spanish-American. And it isn't only the undergraduates who have gone. +All the dons of military age and quality have gone too, or are staying +up not in caps and gowns, but in khaki; all the vigorous teachers are +soldiering; there are no dons left except those who are unfit for +service--and the clergy. Buildings, libraries, empty laboratories, empty +lecture theatres, vestiges, refugees, neutrals, khaki; that is Cambridge +to-day. + +There never was before, there never may be again, so wonderful an +opportunity for a cleaning-up and sweeping-out of those two places, and +for a profitable new start in British education. + +The cessation of Oxford and Cambridge does not give the full measure of +the present occasion. All the other British universities are in a like +case. And the schools which feed them have been practically swept clean +of their senior boys. And not a tithe of any of this war class of +schoolboys will ever go to the universities now, not a tithe of the war +class of undergraduates will ever return. Between the new education and +the old there will be a break of two school generations. For the next +thirty or forty years an exceptional class of men will play a leading +part in British affairs, men who will have learnt more from reality and +less from lectures than either the generations that preceded or the +generations that will follow them. The subalterns of the great war will +form a distinct generation and mark an epoch. Their experiences of need, +their sense of deficiencies, will certainly play a large part in the +reconstitution of British education. _The stamp of the old system will +not be on them_. + +Now is the time to ask what sort of training should a university give to +produce the ruling, directing, and leading men which it exists to +produce? Upon that Great Britain will need to make up its mind +speedily. It is not a matter for to-morrow or the day after; it is +necessary to decide now what it is the Britain that is coming will need +and want, and to set to work revising the admission and degree +requirements, and reconstructing all those systems of public +examinations for the public services that necessarily dominate school +and university teaching, before the universities and schools reassemble. +If the rotten old things once get together again, the rotten old things +will have a new lease of life. This and no other is the hour for +educational reconstruction. And it is in the decisions and readjustments +of schools and lectures and courses, far more than anywhere else, that +the real future of Great Britain will be decided. Equally true is this +of all the belligerent countries. Much of the future has a kind of +mechanical inevitableness, but here far more than anywhere else, can a +few resolute and capable men mould the spirit and determine the quality +of the Europe to come. + +Now surely the chief things that are needed in the education of a ruling +class are these--first, the selection and development of Character, +then the selection and development of Capacity, and, thirdly, the +imparting of Knowledge upon broad and comprehensive lines, and the +power of rapidly taking up and using such detailed knowledge as may be +needed for special occasions. It is upon the first count that the +British schools and universities have been most open to criticism. We +have found the British university-trained class under the fiery tests of +this war an evasive, temporising class of people, individualistic, +ungenerous, and unable either to produce or obey vigorous leadership. On +the whole, it is a matter for congratulation, it says wonderful things +for the inherent natural qualities of the English-speaking peoples, that +things have proved no worse than they are, considering the nature of the +higher education under which they have suffered. + +Consider in what that educational process has consisted. Its backbone +has been the teaching of Latin by men who can read, write, and speak it +rather worse than a third-rate Babu speaks English, and of Ancient Greek +by teachers who at best half know this fine lost language. They do not +expect any real mastery of either tongue by their students, and +naturally, therefore, no real mastery is ever attained. The boys and +young men just muff about at it for three times as long as would be +needed to master completely both those tongues if they had "live" +teachers, and so they acquire habits of busy futility and petty +pedantry in all intellectual processes that haunt them throughout life. +There are also sterile mathematical studies that never get from +"exercises" to practice. There is a pretence of studying philosophy +based on Greek texts that few of the teachers and none of the taught can +read comfortably, and a certain amount of history. The Modern History +School at Oxford, for example, is the queerest collection of chunks of +reading. English history from the beginning, with occasional glances at +Continental affairs, European history for about a century, bits of +economics, and--the _Politics_ of Aristotle! It is not education; it is +a jack-daw collection....This sort of jumble has been the essentials of +the more pretentious type of "higher education" available in Great +Britain up to the present. + +In this manner, through all the most sensitive and receptive years of +life, our boys have been trained in "how not to get there," in a variety +of disconnected subjects, by men who have never "got there," and it +would be difficult to imagine any curriculum more calculated to produce +a miscellaneous incompetence. They have also, it happens, received a +certain training in _savoir faire_ through the collective necessities of +school life, and a certain sharpening in the arts of advocacy through +the debating society. Except for these latter helps, they have had to +face the world with minds neither more braced, nor more trained, nor +more informed than any "uneducated" man's. + +Surely the first condition that should be laid down for the new +education in Europe is that whatever is undertaken must be undertaken in +grim earnest and done. It is ridiculous to talk about the +"character-forming" value of any study that does not go through to an +end. Manifestly Greek must be dropped as a part of the general +curriculum for a highly educated man, for the simple reason that now +there are scarcely any competent teachers, and because the sham of +teaching it partially and pretentiously demoralises student and school +alike. The claim of the clergy and so forth to "know" Greek is one of +the many corrupting lies in British intellectual life. English comic +writers never weary of sneering at the Hindu who claimed to be a "failed +B.A.," but what is the ordinary classical degree man of an English +university but a "failed" Greek scholar? Latin, too, must be either +reduced to the position of a study supplementary to the native tongue, +or brought up to an honest level of efficiency. + +French and German in the case of the English, and English in the case +of the French and Russians, are essentially governess languages; any +intelligent boy or girl from a reasonably prosperous home ought to be +able to read, write, and speak either before fifteen; they are to be +taken by the way rather than regarded as a fundamental part of +education. The French, German, or English literature and literary +development up to and including contemporary work is, of course, an +entirely different matter. But there can be no doubt of the great +educational value of some highly inflected and well-developed language +_taught by men to whom it is a genuine means of expression_. Educational +needs and public necessity point alike to such languages as Russian or, +in the case of Great Britain, Hindustani to supply this sound training. + +If Great Britain means business after this war, if she is to do her duty +by the Eastern world she controls, she will not stick at the petty +expense of getting a few hundreds of good Russian and Hindu teachers +into the country, and she will place Russian and Hindustani upon at +least an equal footing with Greek in all her university and competitive +examinations. Moreover, it is necessary to set a definite aim of +application before university mathematical teaching. As the first +condition of character-building in all these things, the student should +do what he ostensibly sets out to do. No degree and no position should +be attainable by half accomplishment. + +Of course, languages and mathematics do not by any means round off the +education of a man of the leading classes. There is no doubt much +exercise in their attainment, much value in their possession. But the +essence of the higher education is now, as it always has been, +philosophy; not the antiquated pretence of "reading" Plato and +Aristotle, but the thorough and subtle examination of those great +questions of life that most exercise and strengthen the mind. Surely +that is the essential difference of the "educated" and the "common" man. +The former has thought, and thought out thoroughly and clearly, the +relations of his mind to the universe as a whole, and of himself to the +State and life. A mind untrained in swift and adequate criticism is +essentially an uneducated mind, though it has as many languages as a +courier and as much computation as a bookie. + +And what is our fundamental purpose in all this reform of our higher +education? It is neither knowledge nor technical skill, but to make our +young men talk less and think more, and to think more swiftly, surely, +and exactly. For that we want less debating society and more philosophy, +fewer prizes for forensic ability and more for strength and vigour of +analysis. The central seat of character is the mind. A man of weak +character thinks vaguely, a man of clear intellectual decisions acts +with precision and is free from vacillation. A country of educated men +acts coherently, smites swiftly, plans ahead; a country of confused +education is a country of essential muddle. + +It is as the third factor in education that the handling and experience +of knowledge comes, and of all knowledge that which is most accessible, +most capable of being handled with the greatest variety of educational +benefit, so as to include the criticism of evidence, the massing of +facts, the extraction and testing of generalisations, lies in the two +groups of the biological sciences and the exact sciences. No doubt a +well-planned system of education will permit of much varied +specialisation, will, indeed, specialise those who have special gifts +from a very early age, will have corners for Greek, Hebrew, Sanscrit, +philology, archaeology, Christian theology, and so on, and so on; +nevertheless, for that great mass of sound men of indeterminate +all-round ability who are the intellectual and moral backbone of a +nation, it is in scientific studies that their best training lies, +studies most convenient to undertake and most readily applied in life. +From either of the two groups of the sciences one may pass on to +research or to technical applications leading directly to the public +service. The biological sciences broaden out through psychology and +sociology to the theory and practice of law, and to political life. They +lead also to medical and agricultural administration. The exact sciences +lead to the administrative work of industrialism, and to general +economics. + +These are the broad, clear lines of the educational necessities of a +modern community, plain enough to see, so that every man who is not +blinded by prejudice and self-interest can see them to-day. We have now +before us a phase of opportunity in educational organisation that will +never recur again. Now that the apostolic succession of the old pedagogy +is broken, and the entire system discredited, it seems incredible that +it can ever again be reconstituted in its old seats upon the old lines. +In these raw, harsh days of boundless opportunity, the opportunity of +the new education, because it is the most fundamental, is assuredly the +greatest of all. + + + + +VIII. WHAT THE WAR IS DOING FOR WOMEN + + +Section 1 + +To discuss the effect of this war upon the relations of men and women to +each other is to enter upon the analysis of a secular process compared +with which even the vast convulsions and destructions of this world +catastrophe appear only as jolts and incidents and temporary +interruptions. There are certain matters that sustain a perennial +development, that are on a scale beyond the dramatic happenings of +history; wars, the movements of peoples and races, economic changes, +such things may accelerate or stimulate or confuse or delay, but they +cannot arrest the endless thinking out, the growth and perfecting of +ideas, upon the fundamental relationships of human Beings. First among +such eternally progressive issues is religion, the relationship of man +to God; next in importance and still more immediate is the matter of +men's relations to women. In such matters each phase is a new phase; +whatever happens, there is no going back and beginning over again. The +social life, like the religious life, must grow and change until the +human story is at an end. + +So that this war involves, in this as in so many matters, no fundamental +set-back, no reversals nor restorations. At the most it will but realise +things already imagined, release things latent. The nineteenth century +was a period of unprecedented modification of social relationships; but +great as these changes were, they were trivial in comparison with the +changes in religious thought and the criticism of moral ideals. Hell was +the basis of religious thinking in A.D. 1800, and the hangman was at the +back of the law; in 1900 both Hell and the hangman seemed on the verge +of extinction. The creative impulse was everywhere replacing fear and +compulsion in human motives. The opening decade of the twentieth century +was a period of unprecedented abundance in everything necessary to human +life, of vast accumulated resources, of leisure and release. It was +also, because of that and because of the changed social and religious +spirit, a period of great social disorganisation and confused impulses. + +We British can already look back to the opening half of 1914 as to an +age gone for ever. Except that we were all alive then and can remember, +it has become now almost as remote, almost as "historical," as the days +before the French Revolution. Our days, our methods and reactions, are +already so different. The greater part of the freedom of movement, the +travel and going to and fro, the leisure, the plenty and carelessness, +that distinguished early twentieth century life from early nineteenth +century life, has disappeared. Most men are under military discipline, +and every household economises. The whole British people has been +brought up against such elementary realities of need, danger, and +restraint as it never realised before. We discover that we had been +living like Olympians in regard to worldly affairs, we had been +irresponsibles, amateurs. Much of that fatness of life, the wrappings +and trimmings of our life, has been stripped off altogether. That has +not altered the bones of life; it has only made them plainer; but it has +astonished us as much as if looking into a looking-glass one suddenly +found oneself a skeleton. Or a diagram. + +What was going on before this war in the relations of men and women is +going on still, with more rapidity perhaps, and certainly with more +thoroughness. The war is accentuating, developing, defining. Previously +our discussions and poses and movements had merely the air of seeking +to accentuate and define. What was apparently being brought about by +discursive efforts, and in a mighty controversy and confusion, is coming +about now as a matter of course. + +Before the war, in the British community as in most civilised +communities, profound changes were already in progress, changes in the +conditions of women's employment, in the legal relations of husband and +wife, in the political status of women, in the status of illegitimate +children, in manners and customs affecting the sexes. Every civilised +community was exhibiting a falling birth-rate and a falling death-rate, +was changing the quality of its housing, and diminishing domestic labour +by organising supplies and developing, appliances. That is to say, that +primary human unit, the home, was altering in shape and size and +frequency and colour and effect. A steadily increasing proportion of +people were living outside the old family home, the home based on +maternity and offspring, altogether. A number of us were doing our best +to apprehend the summation of all this flood of change. We had a vague +idea that women were somehow being "emancipated," but just what this +word meant and what it implied were matters still under exploration. +Then came the war. For a time it seemed as if all this discussion was at +an end, as if the problem itself had vanished. + +But that was only a temporary distraction of attention. The process of +change swirled into new forms that did not fit very easily into the +accepted formulae, swirled into new forms and continued on its way. If +the discussion ceased for a time, the process of change ceased not at +all. Matters have travelled all the farther in the last two years for +travelling mutely. The questions between men and women are far more +important and far more incessant than the questions between Germans and +the rest of mankind. They are coming back now into the foreground of +human thought, but amended and altered. Our object is to state the +general nature of that alteration. It has still been "emancipation," but +very different in quality from the "emancipation" that was demanded so +loudly and incoherently in that ancient world--of 1913! + +Never had the relations of men and women been so uneasy as they were in +the opening days of 1914. The woman's movement battered and banged +through all our minds. It broke out into that tumult in Great Britain +perhaps ten years ago. When Queen Victoria died it was inaudible; search +_Punch_, search the newspapers of that tranquil age. In 1914 it kicked +up so great a dust that the Germans counted on the Suffragettes as one +of the great forces that were to paralyse England in the war. + +The extraordinary thing was that the feminist movement was never clearly +defined during all the time of its maximum violence. We begin to +perceive in the retrospect that the movement was multiple, made up of a +number of very different movements interwoven. It seemed to concentrate +upon the Vote; but it was never possible to find even why women wanted +the vote. Some, for example, alleged that it was because they were like +men, and some because they were entirely different. The broad facts that +one could not mistake were a vast feminine discontent and a vast display +of feminine energy. What had brought that about? + +Two statistical factors are to be considered here. One of these was the +steady decline in the marriage rate, and the increasing proportion of +unmarried women of all classes, but particularly of the more educated +classes, requiring employment. The second was the fall in the +birth-rate, the diminution in size of the average family, the increase +of sterile unions, and the consequent release of a considerable +proportion of the energy of married women. Co-operating with these +factors of release were the economic elaborations that were improving +the appliances of domestic life, replacing the needle by the sewing +machine, the coal fire and lamp by gas and electricity, the dustpan and +brush by the pneumatic carpet cleaner, and taking out of the house into +the shop and factory the baking, much of the cooking, the making of +clothes, the laundry work, and so forth, that had hitherto kept so many +women at home and too busy to think. The care of even such children as +there were was also less arduous; creche and school held out hands for +them, ready to do even that duty better. + +Side by side with these releases from duty was a rise in the standard of +education that was stimulating the minds and imaginations of woman +beyond a point where the needle--even if there had been any use for the +needle--can be an opiate. Moreover, the world was growing richer, and +growing richer in such a way that not only were leisure and desire +increasing, but, because of increasingly scientific methods of +production, the need in many branches of employment for any but very +keen and able workers was diminishing. So that simultaneously the world, +that vanished world before 1914, was releasing and disengaging enormous +volumes of untrained and unassigned feminine energy and also diminishing +the usefulness of unskilful effort in every department of life. There +was no demand to meet the supply. These were the underlying processes +that produced the feminist outbreak of the decade before the war. + +Now the debate between the sexes is a perennial. It began while we were +still in the trees. It has its stereotyped accusations; its stereotyped +repartees. The Canterbury Pilgrims had little to learn from Christabel +Pankhurst. Man and woman in that duet struggle perpetually for the upper +hand, and the man restrains the woman and the woman resents the man. In +every age some voice has been heard asserting, like Plato, that the +woman is a human being; and the prompt answer has been, "but such a +different human being." Wherever there is a human difference fair play +is difficult, the universal clash of races witnesses to that, and sex is +the greatest of human differences. + +But the general trend of mankind towards intelligence and reason has +been also a trend away from a superstitious treatment of sexual +questions and a recognition, so to speak, that a woman's "a man for a' +that," that she is indeed as entitled to an independent soul and a +separate voice in collective affairs. As brain has counted for more and +more in the human effort and brute strength and the advantage of not +bearing children for less and less, as man has felt a greater need for a +companion and a lesser need for a slave, and as the increase of food and +the protection of the girl from premature child-bearing has approximated +the stature and strength and enterprise of the woman more and more to +that of the man, this secular emancipation of the human female from the +old herd subordination and servitude to the patriarchal male has gone +on. Essentially the secular process has been an equalising process. It +was merely the exaggeration of its sustaining causes during the plenty +and social and intellectual expansion of the last half-century that had +stimulated this secular process to the pitch of crisis. + +There have always been two extreme aspects of the sexual debate. There +have always been the oversexed women who wanted to be treated primarily +as women, and the women who were irritated and bored by being treated +primarily as women. There have always been those women who wanted to +get, like Joan of Arc, into masculine attire, and the school of the +"mystical darlings." There have always been the women who wanted to +share men's work and the women who wanted to "inspire" it--the mates and +the mistresses. Of course, the mass of women lies between these +extremes. But it is possible, nevertheless, to discuss this question as +though it were a conflict of two sharply opposed ideals. It is +convenient to write as if there were just these two sorts of women +because so one can get a sharp definition in the picture. The ordinary +woman fluctuates between the two, turns now to the Western ideal of +citizenship and now to the Eastern of submission. These ideals fight not +only in human society, but in every woman's career. + +Chitra in Rabindranath Tagore's play, for example, tried both aspects of +the woman's life, and Tagore is at one with Plato in preferring the +Rosalind type to the houri. And with him I venture to think is the clear +reason of mankind. The real "emancipation" to which reason and the trend +of things makes is from the yielding to the energetic side of a woman's +disposition, from beauty enthroned for love towards the tall, +weather-hardened woman with a spear, loving her mate as her mate loves +her, and as sexless as a man in all her busy hours. + +But it was not simply the energies that tended towards this particular +type that were set free during the latter half of the nineteenth +century. Every sort of feminine energy was set free. And it was not +merely the self-reliant, independence-seeking women who were +discontented. The ladies who specialised in feminine arts and graces and +mysteries were also dissatisfied. They found they were not important +enough. The former type found itself insufficiently respected, and the +latter type found itself insufficiently adored. The two mingled their +voices in the most confusing way in the literature of the suffrage +movement before the war. The two tendencies mingle confusingly in the +minds of the women that this movement was stirring up to think. The Vote +became the symbol for absolutely contradictory things; there is scarcely +a single argument for it in suffragist literature that cannot be +completely negatived out of suffragist literature. + +For example, compare the writings of Miss Cicely Hamilton, the +distinguished actress, with the publications of the Pankhurst family. +The former expresses a claim that, except for prejudice, a woman is as +capable a citizen as a man and differing only in her sex; the latter +consist of a long rhapsody upon the mystical superiorities of women and +the marvellous benefits mankind will derive from handing things over to +these sacred powers. The former would get rid of sex from most human +affairs; the latter would make what our Georgian grandfathers called +"The Sex" rule the world. + +Or compare, say, the dark coquettings of Miss Elizabeth Robins' "Woman's +Secret" with the virile common sense of that most brilliant young +writer, Miss Rebecca West, in her bitter onslaught on feminine +limitations in the opening chapters of "The World's Worst Failure." The +former is an extravagance of sexual mysticism. Man can never understand +women. Women always hide deep and wonderful things away beyond masculine +discovery. Men do not even suspect. Some day, perhaps--It is someone +peeping from behind a curtain, and inviting men in provocative tones to +come and play catch in a darkened harem. The latter is like some gallant +soldier cursing his silly accoutrements. It is a hearty outbreak against +that apparent necessity for elegance and sexual specialisation that +undercuts so much feminine achievement, that reduces so much feminine +art and writing to vapidity, and holds back women from the face of +danger and brave and horrible deaths. It is West to Miss Robins' East. +And yet I believe I am right in saying that all these four women +writers have jostled one another upon suffrage platforms, and that they +all suffered blows and injuries in the same cause, during the various +riots and conflicts that occurred in London in the course of the great +agitation. It was only when the agitation of the Pankhurst family, aided +by Miss Robins' remarkable book "Where are you going to ...?" took a +form that threatened to impose the most extraordinary restrictions on +the free movements of women, and to establish a sort of universal purdah +of hostility and suspicion against those degraded creatures, those +stealers and destroyers of women, "the men," that the British feminist +movement displayed any tendency to dissociate into its opposed and +divergent strands. + +It is a little detail, but a very significant one in this connection, +that the committee that organised the various great suffrage processions +in London were torn by dispute about the dresses of the processionists. +It was urged that a "masculine style of costume" discredited the +movement, and women were urged to dress with a maximum of feminine +charm. Many women obtained finery they could ill afford, to take part in +these demonstrations, and minced their steps as womanly as possible to +freedom.... + +It would be easy to overstate the efflorescence of distinctively +feminine emotion, dressiness, mysticism, and vanity upon the suffrage +movement. Those things showed for anyone to see. This was the froth of +the whirlpool. What did not show was the tremendous development of the +sense of solidarity among women. Everybody knew that women had been +hitting policemen at Westminster; it was not nearly so showy a fact that +women of title, working women, domestic servants, tradesmen's wives, +professional workers, had all been meeting together and working together +in a common cause, working with an unprecedented capacity and an +unprecedented disregard of social barriers. One noted the nonsensical +by-play of the movement; the way in which women were accustoming +themselves to higher standards of achievement was not so immediately +noticeable. That a small number of women were apparently bent on +rendering the Vote impossible by a campaign of violence and malicious +mischief very completely masked the fact that a very great number of +girls and young women no longer considered it seemly to hang about at +home trying by a few crude inducements to tempt men to marry them, but +were setting out very seriously and capably to master the young man's +way of finding a place for oneself in the world. Beneath the dust and +noise realities were coming about that the dust and noise entirely +failed to represent. We know that some women were shrieking for the +Vote; we did not realise that a generation of women was qualifying for +it. + +The war came, the jolt of an earthquake, to throw things into their +proper relationships. + +The immediate result was the disappearance of the militant suffragists +from public view for a time, into which the noisier section hastened to +emerge in full scream upon the congenial topic of War Babies. "Men," +those dreadful creatures, were being camped and quartered all over the +country. It followed, from all the social principles known to Mrs. and +Miss Pankhurst, that it was necessary to provide for an enormous number +of War Babies. Subscriptions were invited. Statisticians are still +looking rather perplexedly for those War Babies; the illegitimate +birth-rate has fallen, and what has become of the subscriptions I do not +know. _The Suffragette_ rechristened itself _Britannia_, dropped the War +Baby agitation, and, after an interlude of self-control, broke out into +denunciations, first of this public servant and then of that, as +traitors and German spies. Finally, it discovered a mare's nest in the +case of Sir Edward Grey that led to its suppression, and the last I +have from this misleading and unrepresentative feminist faction is the +periodic appearance of a little ill-printed sheet of abuse about the +chief Foreign Office people, resembling in manner and appearance the +sort of denunciatory letter, at once suggestive and evasive, that might +be written by the curate's discharged cook. And with that the aggressive +section of the suffragist movement seems to have petered out, leaving +the broad reality of feminine emancipation to go on in a beneficent +silence. + +There can be no question that the behaviour of the great mass of women +in Great Britain has not simply exceeded expectation but hope. And there +can be as little doubt that the suffrage question, in spite of the +self-advertising violence of its extravagant section, did contribute +very materially to build up the confidence, the willingness to undertake +responsibility and face hardship, that has been so abundantly displayed +by every class of woman. It is not simply that there has been enough +women and to spare for hospital work and every sort of relief and +charitable service; that sort of thing has been done before, that was in +the tradition of womanhood. It is that at every sort of occupation, +clerking, shop-keeping, railway work, automobile driving, agricultural +work, police work, they have been found efficient beyond precedent and +intelligent beyond precedent. And in the munition factories, in the +handling of heavy and often difficult machinery, and in adaptability and +inventiveness and enthusiasm and steadfastness their achievement has +been astonishing. More particularly in relation to intricate mechanical +work is their record remarkable and unexpected. + +There is scarcely a point where women, having been given a chance, have +not more than made good. They have revolutionised the estimate of their +economic importance, and it is scarcely too much to say that when, in +the long run, the military strength of the Allies bears down the +strength of Germany, it will be this superiority of our women which +enables us to pit a woman at--the censorship will object to exact +geography upon this point--against a man at Essen which has tipped the +balance of this war. + +Those women have won the vote. Not the most frantic outbursts of +militancy after this war can prevent them getting it. The girls who have +faced death and wounds so gallantly in our cordite factories--there is a +not inconsiderable list of dead and wounded from those places--have +killed for ever the poor argument that women should not vote because +they had no military value. Indeed, they have killed every argument +against their subjection. And while they do these things, that paragon +of the virtues of the old type, that miracle of domestic obedience, the +German _haus-frau_, the faithful Gretchen, riots for butter. + +And as I have before remarked, the Germans counted on the suffragettes +as one of the great forces that were to paralyse England in this war. + +It is not simply that the British women have so bountifully produced +intelligence and industry; that does not begin their record. They have +been willing to go dowdy. The mass of women in Great Britain are wearing +the clothes of 1914. In 1913 every girl and woman one saw in the streets +of London had an air of doing her best to keep in the fashion. Now they +are for the most part as carelessly dressed as a busy business man or a +clever young student might have been. They are none the less pretty for +that, and far more beautiful. But the fashions have floated away to +absurdity. Every now and then through the austere bustle of London in +war time drifts a last practitioner of the "eternal feminine"--with the +air of a foreign visitor, with the air of devotion to some peculiar +cult. She has very high-heeled boots; she shows a leg, she has a short +skirt with a peculiar hang, due no doubt to mysteries about the waist; +she wears a comic little hat over one brow; there is something of +Columbine about her, something of the Watteau shepherdess, something of +a vivandiere, something of every age but the present age. Her face, +subject to the strange dictates of the mode, is smooth like the back of +a spoon, with small features and little whisker-like curls before the +ears such as butcher-boys used to wear half a century ago. Even so, she +dare not do this thing alone. Something in khaki is with her, to justify +her. You are to understand that this strange rig is for seeing him off +or giving him a good time during his leave. Sometimes she is quite +elderly, sometimes nothing khaki is to be got, and the pretence that +this is desired of her wears thin. Still, the type will out. + +She does not pass with impunity, the last exponent of true feminine +charm. The vulgar, the street boy, have evolved one of those strange +sayings that have the air of being fragments from some lost and +forgotten chant: + + "She's the Army Contractor's Only Daughter, + Spending it now." + +Or simply, "Spending it now." + +She does not pass with impunity, but she passes. She makes her stilted +passage across the arena upon which the new womanhood of Western Europe +shows its worth. It is an exit. There is likely to be something like a +truce in the fashions throughout Europe for some years. It is in America +if anywhere that the holy fires of smartness and the fashion will be +kept alive.... + +And so we come to prophecy. + +I do not believe that this invasion by women of a hundred employments +hitherto closed to them is a temporary arrangement that will be reversed +after the war. It is a thing that was going on, very slowly, it is true, +and against much prejudice and opposition, before the war, but it was +going on; it is in the nature of things. These women no doubt enter +these employments as substitutes, but not usually as inferior +substitutes; in quite a number of cases they are as good as men, and in +many they are not underselling, they are drawing men's pay. What reason +is there to suppose that they will relapse into a state of superfluous +energy after the war? The war has merely brought about, with the +rapidity of a landslide, a state of affairs for which the world was +ripe. The world after the war will have to adjust itself to this +extension of women's employment, and to this increase in the proportion +of self-respecting, self-supporting women. + +Contributing very largely to the establishment of this greatly enlarged +class of independent women will be the great shortage for the next +decade of marriageable men, due to the killing and disablement of the +war. The women of the next decades will not only be able to get along +economically without marriage, but they will find it much more difficult +to marry. It will also probably be a period in which a rise in prices +may, as it usually does, precede the compensating rise in wages. It may +be that for some years it will be more difficult to maintain a family. +This will be a third factor in the fixation of this class of bachelor +women. + +Various writers, brooding over the coming shortage of men, have jumped +to the conclusion that polygamy is among the probabilities of the near +future. They write in terms of real or affected alarm for which there is +no justification; they wallow in visions of Germany "legalising" +polygamy, and see Berlin seeking recuperation, in man power by +converting herself into another Salt Lake City. But I do not think that +Germany, in the face of the economic ring that the Allies will certainly +draw about her, is likely to desire a very great increase in population +for the next few years; I do not see any great possibility of a +specially rich class capable of maintaining numerous wives being +sustained by the impoverished and indebted world of Europe, nor the +sources from which a supply of women preferring to become constituents +in a polygamous constellation rather than self-supporting freewomen is +to be derived. + +The temperamental dislike of intelligent women to polygamy is at least +as strong as a man's objection to polyandry. Polygamy, open or hidden, +flourishes widely only where there are women to be bought. Moreover, +there are considerable obstacles in religion and custom to be overcome +by the innovating polygamist--even in Germany. It might mean a breach of +the present good relations between Germany and the Vatican. The relative +inferiority of the tradition of the German to that of most other +European women, its relative disposition towards feminine servitude, is +no doubt a consideration on the other scale of this discussion, but I do +not think it is one heavy enough to tilt back the beam. + +So far from a great number of men becoming polygamists, I think it would +be possible to show cause for supposing that an increasing proportion +will cease even to be monogamists. The romantic excitements of the war +have produced a temporary rise in the British marriage rate; but before +the war it had been falling slowly and the average age at marriage had +been rising, and it is quite possible that this process will be +presently resumed and, as a new generation grows up to restore the +balance of the sexes, accelerated. + +We conclude, therefore, that this increase in the class of economically +independent bachelor women that is now taking place is a permanent +increase. It is probably being reinforced by a considerable number of +war widows who will not remarry. We have to consider in what directions +this mass of capable, intelligent, energetic, undomesticated freewomen +is likely to develop, what its effect will be on social usage, and +particularly how it will react upon the lives of the married women about +them. Because, as we have already pointed out in this chapter, the +release of feminine energy upon which the feminist problem depends is +twofold, being due not only to the increased unmarriedness of women +through the disproportion of the sexes and the rise in the age of +marriage, but also to the decreased absorption of married women in +domestic duties. A woman, from the point of view of this discussion, is +not "married and done for," as she used to be. She is not so +extensively and completely married. Her large and increasing leisure +remains in the problem. + +The influence of this coming body of freewomen upon the general social +atmosphere will be, I venture to think, liberalising and relaxing in +certain directions and very bracing in others. This new type of women +will want to go about freely without an escort, to be free to travel +alone, take rooms in hotels, sit in restaurants, and so forth. Now, as +the women of the past decade showed, there are for a woman two quite +antagonistic ways of going about alone. Nothing showed the duplicate +nature of the suffragist movement more than the great variety of +deportment of women in the London streets during that time. There were +types that dressed neatly and quietly and went upon their business with +intent and preoccupied faces. Their intention was to mingle as +unobtrusively as possible into the stream of business, to be as far as +possible for the ordinary purposes of traffic "men in a world of men." A +man could speak to such women as he spoke to another man, without +suspicion, could, for example, ask his way and be directed without being +charged with annoying or accosting a delicate female. + +At the other extreme there was a type of young woman who came into the +streets like something precious that has got loose. It dressed itself +as feminine loveliness; it carried sex like a banner and like a +challenge. Its mind was fully prepared by the Pankhurst literature for +insult. It swept past distressed manhood imputing motives. It was pure +hareem, and the perplexed masculine intelligence could never determine +whether it was out for a demonstration or whether it was out for a +spree. Its motives in thus marching across the path of feminine +emancipation were probably more complicated and confused than that +alternative suggests, and sheer vanity abounded in the mixture. But +undoubtedly that extremity is the vanishing extremity of these things. +The new freewoman is going to be a grave and capable being, soberly +dressed, and imposing her own decency and neutrality of behaviour upon +the men she meets. And along the line of sober costume and simple and +restrained behaviour that the freewoman is marking out, the married +woman will also escape to new measures of freedom. + +I do not believe that among women of the same social origins and the +same educational quality there can exist side by side entirely distinct +schools of costume, deportment, and behaviour based on entirely +divergent views of life. I do not think that men can be trained to +differentiate between different sorts of women, sorts of women they will +often be meeting simultaneously, and to treat this one with frankness +and fellowship and that one with awe passion and romantic old-world +gallantry. All sorts of intermediate types--the majority of women will +be intermediate types--will complicate the problem. This conflict of the +citizen-woman ideal with the loveliness-woman ideal, which was breaking +out very plainly in the British suffrage movement before the war, will +certainly return after the war, and I have little doubt which way the +issue will fall. The human being is going to carry it against the sexual +being. The struggle is going to be extensive and various and prolonged, +but in the serious years ahead the serious type must, I feel, win. The +plain, well-made dress will oust the ribbon and the decolletage. + +In every way the war is accelerating the emancipation of women from +sexual specialisation. It is facilitating their economic emancipation. +It is liberating types that will inevitably destroy both the "atmosphere +of gallantry" which is such a bar to friendliness between people of +opposite sexes and that atmosphere of hostile distrust which is its +counterpart in the minds of the over-sexual suffragettes. It is +arresting the change of fashions and simplifying manners. + +In another way also it is working to the same end. That fall in the +birth-rate which has been so marked a feature in the social development +of all modern states has become much more perceptible since the war +began to tell upon domestic comfort. There is a full-cradle agitation +going on in Germany to check this decline; German mothers are being +urged not to leave the Crown Prince of 1930 or 1940 without the +necessary material for glory at some fresh Battle of Verdun. I doubt the +zeal of their response. But everywhere the war signifies economic stress +which must necessarily continue long after the war is over, and in the +present state of knowledge that stress means fewer children. The family, +already light, will grow lighter. This means that marriage, although it +may be by no means less emotionally sacred, will become a lighter thing. + +Once, to be married was a woman's whole career. Household cares, a dozen +children, and she was consumed. All her romances ended in marriage. All +a decent man's romance ended there, too. She proliferated and he toiled, +and when the married couple had brought up some of their children and +buried the others, and blessed their first grandchildren, life was +over. + +Now, to be married is an incident in a woman's career, as in a man's. +There is not the same necessity of that household, not the same close +tie; the married woman remains partially a freewoman and assimilates +herself to the freewoman. There is an increasing disposition to group +solitary children and to delegate their care to specially qualified +people, and this is likely to increase, because the high earning power +of young women will incline them to entrust their children to others, +and because a shortage of men and an excess of widows will supply other +women willing to undertake that care. The more foolish women will take +these releases as a release into levity, but the common sense of the +newer types of women will come to the help of men in recognising the +intolerable nuisance of this prolongation of flirting and charming on +the part of people who have had what should be a satisfying love. + +Nor will there be much wealth or superfluity to make levity possible and +desirable. Winsome and weak womanhood will be told bluntly by men and +women alike that it is a bore. The frou-frou of skirts, the delicate +mysteries of the toilette, will cease to thrill any but the very young +men. Marriage, deprived of its bonds of material necessity, will demand +a closer and closer companionship as its justification and excuse. A +marriage that does not ripen into a close personal friendship between +two equals will be regarded with increasing definiteness as an +unsatisfactory marriage. + +These things are not stated here as being desirable or undesirable. This +is merely an attempt to estimate the drift and tendency of the time as +it has been accentuated by the war. It works out to the realisation that +marriage is likely to count for less and less as a state and for more +and more as a personal relationship. It is likely to be an affair of +diminishing public and increasing private importance. People who marry +are likely to remain, so far as practical ends go, more detached and +separable. The essential link will be the love and affection and not the +home. + +With that go certain logical consequences. The first is that the +circumstances of the unmarried mother will resemble more than they have +hitherto done those of many married mothers; the harsh lines once drawn +between them will dissolve. This will fall in with the long manifest +tendency in modern society to lighten the disadvantages (in the case of +legacy duties, for example) and stigma laid upon illegitimate children. +And a type of marriage where personal compatibility has come to be +esteemed the fundamental thing will be altogether more amenable to +divorce than the old union which was based upon the kitchen and the +nursery, and the absence of any care, education, or security for +children beyond the range of the parental household. Marriage will not +only be lighter, but more dissoluble. + +To summarise all that has gone before, this war is accelerating rather +than deflecting the stream of tendency, and is bringing us rapidly to a +state of affairs in which women will be much more definitely independent +of their sexual status, much less hampered in their self-development, +and much more nearly equal to men than has ever been known before in the +whole history of mankind.... + + + + +IX. THE NEW MAP OF EUROPE + + +Section 1 + +In this chapter it is proposed to embark upon what may seem now, with +the Great War still in progress and still undecided, the most hopeless +of all prophetic adventures. This is to speculate upon the redrawing of +the map of Europe after the war. But because the detailed happenings and +exact circumstances of the ending of the war are uncertain, they need +not alter the inevitable broad conclusion. I have already discussed that +conclusion, and pointed out that the war has become essentially a war of +mutual exhaustion. This does not mean, as some hasty readers may assume, +that I foretell a "draw." We may be all white and staggering, but +Germany is, I believe, fated to go down first. She will make the first +advances towards peace; she will ultimately admit defeat. + +But I do want to insist that by that time every belligerent, and not +simply Germany, will be exhausted to a pitch of extreme reasonableness. +There will be no power left as Germany was left in 1871, in a state of +"freshness" and a dictatorial attitude. That is to say they will all be +gravitating, not to triumphs, but to such a settlement as seems to +promise the maximum of equilibrium in the future. + +If towards the end of the war the United States should decide, after +all, to abandon their present attitude of superior comment and throw +their weight in favour of such a settlement as would make the +recrudescence of militarism impossible, the general exhaustion may give +America a relative importance far beyond any influence she could exert +at the present time. In the end, America may have the power to insist +upon almost vital conditions in the settlement; though whether she will +have the imaginative force and will is, of course, quite another +question. + +And before I go on to speculate about the actual settlement, there are +one or two generalisations that it may be interesting to try over. Law +is a thin wash that we paint over the firm outlines of reality, and the +treaties and agreements of emperors and kings and statesmen have little +of the permanence of certain more fundamental human realities. I was +looking the other day at Sir Mark Sykes' "The Caliph's Inheritance," +which contains a series of coloured maps of the political boundaries of +south-western Asia for the last three thousand years. The shapes and +colours come and go--now it is Persia, now it is Macedonia, now the +Eastern Empire, now the Arab, now the Turk who is ascendant. The colours +change as if they were in a kaleidoscope; they advance, recede, split, +vanish. But through all that time there exists obstinately an Armenia, +an essential Persia, an Arabia; they, too, advance or recede a little. I +do not claim that they are eternal things, but they are far more +permanent things than any rulers or empires; they are rooted to the +ground by a peasantry, by a physical and temperamental attitude. Apart +from political maps of mankind, there are natural maps of mankind. I +find it, too, in Europe; the monarchs splash the water and break up the +mirror in endless strange shapes; nevertheless, always it is tending +back to its enduring forms; always it is gravitating back to a Spain, to +a Gaul, to an Italy, to a Serbo-Croatia, to a Bulgaria, to a Germany, to +a Poland. Poland and Armenia and Egypt destroyed, subjugated, +invincible, I would take as typical of what I mean by the natural map of +mankind. + +Let me repeat again that I do not assert there is an eternal map. It +does change; there have been times--the European settlement of America +and Siberia, for example, the Arabic sweep across North Africa, the +invasion of Britain by the Low German peoples--when it has changed very +considerably in a century or so; but at its swiftest it still takes +generations to change. The gentlemen who used to sit in conferences and +diets, and divide up the world ever and again before the nineteenth +century, never realised this. It is only within the last hundred years +that mankind has begun to grasp the fact that one of the first laws of +political stability is to draw your political boundaries along the lines +of the natural map of mankind. + +Now the nineteenth century phrased this conception by talking about the +"principle of nationality." Such interesting survivals of the nineteenth +century as Mr. C.R. Buxton still talk of settling human affairs by that +"principle." But unhappily for him the world is not so simply divided. +There are tribal regions with no national sense. There are extensive +regions of the earth's surface where the population is not homogeneous, +where people of different languages or different incompatible creeds +live village against village, a kind of human emulsion, incapable of +any true mixture or unity. Consider, for example, Central Africa, +Tyrone, Albania, Bombay, Constantinople or Transylvania. Here are +regions and cities with either no nationality or with as much +nationality as a patchwork quilt has colour.... + +Now so far as the homogeneous regions of the world go, I am quite +prepared to sustain the thesis that they can only be tranquil, they can +only develop their possibilities freely and be harmless to their +neighbours, when they are governed by local men, by men of the local +race, religion and tradition, and with a form of government that, unlike +a monarchy or a plutocracy, does not crystallise commercial or national +ambition. So far I go with those who would appeal to the "principle of +nationality." + +But I would stipulate, further, that it would enormously increase the +stability of the arrangement if such "nations" could be grouped together +into "United States" wherever there were possibilities of inter-state +rivalries and commercial friction. Where, however, one deals with a +region of mixed nationality, there is need of a subtler system of +adjustments. Such a system has already been worked out in the case of +Switzerland, where we have the community not in countries but cantons, +each with its own religion, its culture and self-government, and all at +peace under a polyglot and impartial common government. It is as plain +as daylight to anyone who is not blinded by patriotic or private +interests that such a country as Albania, which is mono-lingual indeed, +but hopelessly divided religiously, will never be tranquil, never +contented, unless it is under a cantonal system, and that the only +solution of the Irish difficulty along the belt between Ulster and +Catholic Ireland lies in the same arrangement. + +Then; thirdly, there are the regions and cities possessing no +nationality, such as Constantinople or Bombay, which manifestly +appertain not to one nation but many; the former to all the Black Sea +nations, the latter to all India. Disregarding ambitions and traditions, +it is fairly obvious that such international places would be best under +the joint control of, and form a basis of union between, all the peoples +affected. + +Now it is suggested here that upon these threefold lines it is possible +to work out a map of the world of maximum contentment and stability, and +that there will be a gravitation of all other arrangements, all empires +and leagues and what not, towards this rational and natural map of +mankind. This does not imply that that map will ultimately assert +itself, but that it will always be tending to assert itself. It will +obsess ostensible politics. + +I do not pretend to know with any degree of certainty what peculiar +forms of muddle and aggression may not record themselves upon the maps +of 2200; I do not certainly know whether mankind will be better off or +worse off then, more or less civilised; but I do know, with a very +considerable degree of certainty, that in A.D. 2200 there will still be +a France, an Ireland, a Germany, a Jugo-Slav region, a Constantinople, a +Rajputana, and a Bengal. I do not mean that these are absolutely fixed +things; they may have receded or expanded. But these are the more +permanent things; these are the field, the groundwork, the basic +reality; these are fundamental forces over which play the ambitions, +treacheries, delusions, traditions, tyrannies of international politics. +All boundaries will tend to reveal these fundamental forms as all +clothing tends to reveal the body. You may hide the waist; you will only +reveal the shoulders the more. You may mask, you may muffle the body; it +is still alive inside, and the ultimate determining thing. + +And, having premised this much, it is possible to take up the problem of +the peace of 1917 or 1918, or whenever it is to be, with some sense of +its limitations and superficiality. + + +Section 2 + +We have already hazarded the prophecy that after a long war of general +exhaustion Germany will be the first to realise defeat. This does not +mean that she will surrender unconditionally, but that she will be +reduced to bargaining to see how much she must surrender, and what she +may hold. It is my impression that she will be deserted by Bulgaria, and +that Turkey will be out of the fighting before the end. But these are +chancy matters. Against Germany there will certainly be the three great +allies, France, Russia and Britain, and almost certainly Japan will be +with them. The four will probably have got to a very complete and +detailed understanding among themselves. Italy--in, I fear, a slightly +detached spirit--will sit at the board. Hungary will be present, +sitting, so to speak, amidst the decayed remains of Austria. Roumania, a +little out of breath through hurrying at the last, may be present as the +latest ally of Italy. The European neutrals will be at least present in +spirit; their desires will be acutely felt; but it is doubtful if the +United States will count for all that they might in the decision. Such +weight as America chooses to exercise--would that she would choose to +exercise more!--will probably be on the side of the rational and natural +settlement of the world. + +Now the most important thing of all at this settlement will be the +temper and nature of the Germany with which the Allies will be dealing. + +Let us not be blinded by the passions of war into confusing a people +with its government and the artificial Kultur of a brief century. There +is a Germany, great and civilised, a decent and admirable people, masked +by Imperialism, blinded by the vanity of the easy victories of half a +century ago, wrapped in illusion. How far will she be chastened and +disillusioned by the end of this war? + +The terms of peace depend enormously upon the answer to that question. +If we take the extremest possibility, and suppose a revolution in +Germany or in South Germany, and the replacement of the Hohenzollerns in +all or part of Germany by a Republic, then I am convinced that for +republican Germany there would be not simply forgiveness, but a warm +welcome back to the comity of nations. The French, British, Belgians and +Italians, and every civilised force in Russia would tumble over one +another in their eager greeting of this return to sanity. + +If we suppose a less extreme but more possible revolution, taking the +form of an inquiry into the sanity of the Kaiser and his eldest son, and +the establishment of constitutional safeguards for the future, that also +would bring about an extraordinary modification of the resolution of the +Pledged Allies. But no ending to this war, no sort of settlement, will +destroy the antipathy of the civilised peoples for the violent, +pretentious, sentimental and cowardly imperialism that has so far +dominated Germany. All Europe outside Germany now hates and dreads the +Hohenzollerns. No treaty of peace can end that hate, and so long as +Germany sees fit to identify herself with Hohenzollern dreams of empire +and a warfare of massacre and assassination, there must be war +henceforth, open, or but thinly masked, against Germany. It will be but +the elementary common sense of the situation for all the Allies to plan +tariffs, exclusions, special laws against German shipping and +shareholders and immigrants for so long a period as every German remains +a potential servant of that system. + +Whatever Germany may think of the Hohenzollerns, the world outside +Germany regards them as the embodiment of homicidal nationalism. And +the settlement of Europe after the war, if it is to be a settlement with +the Hohenzollerns and not with the German people, must include the +virtual disarming of those robber murderers against any renewal of their +attack. It would be the most obvious folly to stop anywhere short of +that. With Germany we would welcome peace to-morrow; we would welcome +her shipping on the seas and her flag about the world; against the +Hohenzollerns it must obviously be war to the bitter end. + +But the ultimate of all sane European policy, as distinguished from +oligarchic and dynastic foolery, is the establishment of the natural map +of Europe. There exists no school of thought that can claim a moment's +consideration among the Allies which aims at the disintegration of the +essential Germany or the subjugation of any Germans to an alien rule. +Nor does anyone grudge Germany wealth, trade, shipping, or anything else +that goes with the politician's phrase of "legitimate expansion" for its +own sake. If we do now set our minds to deprive Germany of these things +in their fullness, it is in exactly the same spirit as that in which one +might remove that legitimate and peaceful implement, a bread knife, +from the hand of a homicidal maniac. Let but Germany cure herself of her +Hohenzollern taint, and the world will grudge her wealth and economic +pre-eminence as little as it grudges wealth and economic pre-eminence to +the United States. + +Now the probabilities of a German revolution open questions too complex +and subtle for our present speculation. I would merely remark in passing +that in Great Britain at least those possibilities seem to me to be +enormously underrated. For our present purpose it will be most +convenient to indicate a sort of maximum and minimum, depending upon the +decision of Germany to be entirely Hohenzollern or wholly or in part +European. But in either case we are going to assume that it is Germany +which has been most exhausted by the war, and which is seeking peace +from the Allies, who have also, we will assume, excellent internal +reasons for desiring it. + +With the Hohenzollerns it is mere nonsense to dream of any enduring +peace, but whether we are making a lasting and friendly peace with +Germany or merely a sort of truce of military operations that will be no +truce in the economic war against Hohenzollern resources, the same +essential idea will, I think, guide all the peace-desiring Powers. They +will try to draw the boundaries as near as they can to those of the +natural map of mankind. + +Then, writing as an Englishman, my first thought of the European map is +naturally of Belgium. Only absolute smashing defeat could force either +Britain or France to consent to anything short of the complete +restoration of Belgium. Rather than give that consent they will both +carry the war to at present undreamt-of extremities. Belgium must be +restored; her neutrality must be replaced by a defensive alliance with +her two Western Allies; and if the world has still to reckon with +Hohenzollerns, then her frontier must be thrust forward into the +adjacent French-speaking country so as to minimise the chances of any +second surprise. + +It is manifest that every frontier that gives upon the Hohenzollerns +must henceforth be entrenched line behind line, and held permanently by +a garrison ready for any treachery, and it becomes of primary importance +that the Franco-Belgian line should be as short and strong as possible. +Aix, which Germany has made a mere jumping-off place for aggressions, +should clearly be held by Belgium against a Hohenzollern Empire, and the +fortified and fiscal frontier would run from it southward to include the +Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, with its French sympathies and traditions, +in the permanent alliance. It is quite impossible to leave this +ambiguous territory as it was before the war, with its railway in German +hands and its postal and telegraphic service (since 1913) under +Hohenzollern control. It is quite impossible to hand over this strongly +anti-Prussian population to Hohenzollern masters. + +But an Englishman must needs write with diffidence upon this question of +the Western boundary. It is clear that all the boundaries of 1914 from +Aix to Bale are a part of ancient history. No "as you were" is possible +there. And it is not the business of anyone in Great Britain to redraw +them. That task on our side lies between France and Belgium. The +business of Great Britain in the matter is as plain as daylight. It is +to support to her last man and her last ounce of gold those new +boundaries her allies consider essential to their comfort and security. + +But I do not see how France, unless she is really convinced she is +beaten, can content herself with anything less than a strong +Franco-Belgian frontier from Aix, that will take in at least Metz and +Saarburg. She knows best the psychology of the lost provinces, and what +amount of annexation will spell weakness or strength. If she demands +all Alsace-Lorraine back from the Hohenzollerns, British opinion is +resolved to support her, and to go through with this struggle until she +gets it. To guess at the direction of the new line is not to express a +British opinion, but to speculate upon the opinion of France. After the +experience of Luxembourg and Belgium no one now dreams of a neutralised +buffer State. What does not become French or Belgian of the Rhineland +will remain German--for ever. That is perhaps conceivable, for example, +of Strassburg and the low-lying parts of Alsace. I do not know enough to +do more than guess. + +It is conceivable, but I do not think that it is probable. I think the +probability lies in the other direction. This war of exhaustion may be +going on for a year or so more, but the end will be the thrusting in of +the too extended German lines. The longer and bloodier the job is, the +grimmer will be the determination of the Pledged Allies to exact a +recompense. If the Germans offer peace while they still hold some part +of Belgium, there will be dealings. If they wait until the French are in +the Palatinate, then I doubt if the French will consent to go again. +There will be no possible advantage to Germany in a war of resistance +once the scale of her fortunes begins to sink.... + +It is when we turn to the east of Germany that the map-drawing becomes +really animated. Here is the region of great decisions. The natural map +shows a line of obstinately non-German communities, stretching nearly +from the Baltic to the Adriatic. There are Poland, Bohemia (with her +kindred Slovaks), the Magyars, and the Jugo-Serbs. In a second line come +the Great and Little Russians, the Roumanians, and the Bulgarians. And +here both Great Britain and France must defer to the wishes of their two +allies, Russia and Italy. Neither of these countries has expressed +inflexible intentions, and the situation has none of the inevitable +quality of the Western line. Except for the Tsar's promise of autonomy +to Poland, nothing has been promised. On the Western line there are only +two possibilities that I can see: the Aix-Bale boundary, or the sickness +and death of France. On the Eastern line nothing is fated. There seems +to be enormous scope for bargaining over all this field, and here it is +that the chances of compensations and consolations for Germany are to be +found. + +Let us first consider the case for Poland. The way to a reunited Poland +seems to me a particularly difficult one. The perplexity arises out of +the crime of the original partition; whichever side emerges with an +effect of victory must needs give up territory if an autonomous Poland +is to reappear. A victorious Germany would probably reconstitute the +Duchy of Warsaw under a German prince; an entirely victorious Russia +would probably rejoin Posen to Russian Poland and the Polish fragment of +Galicia, and create a dependent Polish kingdom under the Tsar. Neither +project would be received with unstinted delight by the Poles, but +either would probably be acceptable to a certain section of them. +Disregarding the dim feelings of the peasantry, Austrian Poland would +probably be the most willing to retain a connection with its old rulers. +The Habsburgs have least estranged the Poles. The Cracow district is the +only section of Poland which has been at all reconciled to foreign +control; it is the most autonomous and contented of the fragments. + +It is doubtful how far national unanimity is any longer possible between +the three Polish fragments. Like most English writers, I receive a +considerable amount of printed matter from various schools of Polish +patriotism, and wide divergences of spirit and intention appear. A weak, +divided and politically isolated Poland of twelve or fifteen million +people, under some puppet adventurer king set up between the +Hohenzollerns and the Tsardom, does not promise much happiness for the +Poles or much security for the peace of the world. An entirely +independent Poland will be a feverish field of international +intrigue--intrigue to which the fatal Polish temperament lends itself +all too readily; it may be a battlefield again within five-and-twenty +years. I think, if I were a patriotic Pole, I should determine to be a +Slav at any cost, and make the best of Russia; ally myself with all her +liberal tendencies, and rise or fall with her. And I should do my utmost +in a field where at present too little has been done to establish +understandings and lay the foundations of a future alliance with the +Czech-Slovak community to the south. But, then, I am not a Pole, but a +Western European with a strong liking for the Russians. I am democratic +and scientific, and the Poles I have met are Catholic and aristocratic +and romantic, and all sorts of difficult things that must make +co-operation with them on the part of Russians, Ruthenian peasants, +Czechs, and, indeed, other Poles, slow and insecure. I doubt if either +Germany or Russia wants to incorporate more Poles--Russia more +particularly, which has all Siberia over which to breed Russians--and I +am inclined to think that there is a probability that the end of this +war may find Poland still divided, and with boundary lines running +across her not materially different from those of 1914. That is, I +think, an undesirable probability, but until the Polish mind qualifies +its desire for absolute independence with a determination to orient +itself definitely to some larger political mass, it remains one that has +to be considered. + +But the future of Poland is not really separate from that of the +Austro-Hungarian monarchy, nor is that again to be dealt with apart from +that of the Balkans. From Danzig to the Morea there runs across Europe a +series of distinctive peoples, each too intensely different and national +to be absorbed and assimilated by either of their greater neighbours, +Germany or Russia, and each relatively too small to stand securely +alone. None have shaken themselves free from monarchical traditions; +each may become an easy prey to dynastic follies and the aggressive +obsessions of diplomacy. Centuries of bloody rearrangement may lie +before this East Central belt of Europe. + +To the liberal idealist the thought of a possible Swiss system or group +of Swiss systems comes readily to mind. One thinks of a grouping of +groups of Republics, building up a United States of Eastern Europe. But +neither Hohenzollerns nor Tsar would welcome that. The arm of democratic +France is not long enough to reach to help forward such a development, +and Great Britain is never sure whether she is a "Crowned Republic" or a +Germanic monarchy. Hitherto in the Balkans she has lent her influence +chiefly to setting up those treacherous little German kings who have +rewarded her so ill. The national monarchs of Serbia and Montenegro have +alone kept faith with civilisation. I doubt, however, if Great Britain +will go on with that dynastic policy. She herself is upon the eve of +profound changes of spirit and internal organisation. But whenever one +thinks of the possibilities of Republican development in Europe as an +outcome of this war, it is to realise the disastrous indifference of +America to the essentials of the European situation. The United States +of America could exert an enormous influence at the close of the war in +the direction of a liberal settlement and of liberal institutions.... +They will, I fear, do nothing of the sort. + +It is here that the possibility of some internal change in Germany +becomes of such supreme importance. The Hohenzollern Imperialism towers +like the black threat of a new Caesarism over all the world. It may +tower for some centuries; it may vanish to-morrow. A German revolution +may destroy it; a small group of lunacy commissioners may fold it up and +put it away. But should it go, it would at least take with it nearly +every crown between Hamburg and Constantinople. The German kings would +vanish like a wisp of smoke. Suppose a German revolution and a +correlated step forward towards liberal institutions on the part of +Russia, then the whole stage of Eastern Europe would clear as fever goes +out of a man. This age of international elbowing and jostling, of +intrigue and diplomacy, of wars, massacres, deportations _en masse_, and +the continual fluctuation of irrational boundaries would come to an end +forthwith. + +So sweeping a change is the extreme possibility. The probability is of +something less lucid and more prosaic; of a discussion of diplomatists; +of patched arrangements. But even under these circumstances the whole +Eastern European situation is so fluid and little controlled by any +plain necessity, that there will be enormous scope for any individual +statesman of imagination and force of will. + +There have recently been revelations, more or less trustworthy, of +German schemes for a rearrangement of Eastern Europe. They implied a +German victory. Bohemia, Poland, Galicia and Ruthenia were to make a +Habsburg-ruled State from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The Jugo-Slav and +the Magyar were to be linked (uneasy bedfellows) into a second kingdom, +also Habsburg ruled; Austria was to come into the German Empire as a +third Habsburg dukedom or kingdom; Roumania, Bulgaria and Greece were to +continue as independent Powers, German ruled. Recently German proposals +published in America have shown a disposition to admit the claims of +Roumania to the Wallachian districts of Transylvania. + +Evidently the urgent need to create kingdoms or confederations larger +than any such single States as the natural map supplies, is manifest to +both sides. If Germany, Italy and Russia can come to any sort of general +agreement in these matters, their arrangements will be a matter of +secondary importance to the Western Allies--saving our duty to Serbia +and Montenegro and their rulers. Russia may not find the German idea of +a Polish _plus_ Bohemian border State so very distasteful, provided that +the ruler is not a German; Germany may find the idea still tolerable if +the ruler is not the Tsar. + +The destiny of the Serbo-Croatian future lies largely in the hands of +Italy and Bulgaria. Bulgaria was not in this war at the beginning, and +she may not be in it at the end. Her King is neither immortal nor +irreplaceable. Her desire now must be largely to retain her winnings in +Macedonia, and keep the frontier posts of a too embracing Germany as far +off as possible. She has nothing to gain and much to fear from Roumania +and Greece. Her present relations with Turkey are unnatural. She has +everything to gain from a prompt recovery of the friendship of Italy and +the sea Powers. A friendly Serbo-Croatian buffer State against Germany +will probably be of equal comfort in the future to Italy and Bulgaria; +more especially if Italy has pushed down the Adriatic coast along the +line of the former Venetian possessions. Serbia has been overrun, but +never were the convergent forces of adjacent interests so clearly in +favour of her recuperation. The possibility of Italy and that strange +Latin outlier, Roumania, joining hands through an allied and friendly +Serbia must be very present in Italian thought. The allied conception of +the land route from the West and America to Bagdad and India is by Mont +Cenis, Trieste, Serbia and Constantinople, as their North European line +to India is through Russia by Baku. + +And that brings us to Constantinople. + +Constantinople is not a national city; it is now, and it has always +been, an artificial cosmopolis, and Constantinople and the Dardanelles +are essentially the gate of the Black Sea. It is to Russia that the +waterway is of supreme importance. Any other Power upon it can strangle +Russia; Russia, possessing it, is capable of very little harm to any +other country. + +Roumania is the next most interested country. But Roumania can reach up +the Danube and through Bulgaria, Serbia or Hungary to the outer world. +Her greatest trade will always be with Central Europe. For generations +the Turks held Thrace and Anatolia before they secured Constantinople. +The Turk can exist without Constantinople; he is at his best outside +Constantinople; the fall of Constantinople was the beginning of his +decay. He sat down there and corrupted. His career was at an end. I +confess that I find a bias in my mind for a Russian ownership of +Constantinople. I think that if she does not get it now her gravitation +towards it in the future will be so great as to cause fresh wars. +Somewhere she must get to open sea, and if it is not through +Constantinople then her line must lie either through a dependent Armenia +thrust down to the coast of the Levant or, least probable and least +desirable of all, through the Persian Gulf. The Constantinople route is +the most natural and least controversial of these. With the dwindling of +the Turkish power, the Turks at Constantinople become more and more like +robber knights levying toll at the pass. I can imagine Russia making +enormous concessions in Poland, for example, accepting retrocessions, +and conceding autonomy, rather than foregoing her ancient destiny upon +the Bosphorus. I believe she will fight on along the Black Sea coast +until she gets there. + +This, I think, is Russia's fundamental end, without which no peace is +worth having, as the liberation of Belgium and the satisfaction of +France is the fundamental end of Great Britain, and Trieste-Fiume is the +fundamental end of Italy. + +But for all the lands that lie between Constantinople and West Prussia +there are no absolutely fundamental ends; that is the land of _quid pro +quo_; that is where the dealing will be done. Serbia must be restored +and the Croats liberated; sooner or later the south Slav state will +insist upon itself; but, except for that, I see no impossibility in the +German dream of three kingdoms to take the place of Austro-Hungary, nor +even in a southward extension of the Hohenzollern Empire to embrace the +German one of the three. If the Austrians have a passion for Prussian +"kultur," it is not for us to restrain it. Austrian, Saxon, Bavarian, +Hanoverian and Prussian must adjust their own differences. Hungary would +be naturally Habsburg; is, in fact, now essentially Habsburg, more +Habsburg than Austria, and essentially anti-Slav. Her gravitation to the +Central Powers seems inevitable. + +Whether the Polish-Czech combination would be a Habsburg kingdom at all +is another matter. Only if, after all, the Allies are far less +successful than they have now every reason to hope would that become +possible. + +The gravitation of that west Slav state to the Central European system +or to Russia will, I think, be the only real measure of ultimate success +or failure in this war. I think it narrows down to that so far as Europe +is concerned. Most of the other things are inevitable. Such, it seems to +me, is the most open possibility in the European map in the years +immediately before us. + +If by dying I could assure the end of the Hohenzollern Empire to-morrow +I would gladly do it. But I have, as a balancing prophet, to face the +high probability of its outliving me for some generations. It is to me +a deplorable probability. Far rather would I anticipate Germany quit of +her eagles and Hohenzollerns, and ready to take her place as the leading +Power of the United States of Europe. + + + + +X. THE UNITED STATES, FRANCE, BRITAIN, AND RUSSIA + + +Section 1 + +In this chapter I propose to speculate a little about the future +development of these four great States, whose destinies are likely to be +much more closely interwoven than their past histories have been. I +believe that the stars in their courses tend to draw these States +together into a dominant peace alliance, maintaining the peace of the +world. There may be other stars in that constellation, Italy, Japan, a +confederated Latin America, for example; I do not propose to deal with +that possibility now, but only to dwell upon the development of +understandings and common aims between France, Russia, and the +English-speaking States. + +They have all shared one common experience during the last two years; +they have had an enormous loss of self-sufficiency. This has been +particularly the case with the United States of America. At the +beginning of this war, the United States were still possessed by the +glorious illusion that they were aloof from general international +politics, that they needed no allies and need fear no enemies, that they +constituted a sort of asylum from war and all the bitter stresses and +hostilities of the old world. Themselves secure, they could intervene +with grim resolution to protect their citizens all over the world. Had +they not bombarded Algiers?... + +I remember that soon after the outbreak of the war I lunched at the +Savoy Hotel in London when it was crammed with Americans suddenly swept +out of Europe by the storm. My host happened to be a man of some +diplomatic standing, and several of them came and talked to him. They +were full of these old-world ideas of American immunity. Their +indignation was comical even at the time. Some of them had been hustled; +some had lost their luggage in Germany. When, they asked, was it to be +returned to them? Some seemed to be under the impression that, war or no +war, an American tourist had a perfect right to travel about in the +Vosges or up and down the Rhine just as he thought fit. They thought he +had just to wave a little American flag, and the referee would blow a +whistle and hold up the battle until he had got by safely. One family +had actually been careering about in a cart--their automobile +seized--between the closing lines of French and Germans, brightly +unaware of the disrespect of bursting shells for American +nationality.... Since those days the American nation has lived +politically a hundred years. + +The people of the United States have shed their delusion that there is +an Eastern and a Western hemisphere, and that nothing can ever pass +between them but immigrants and tourists and trade, and realised that +this world is one round globe that gets smaller and smaller every decade +if you measure it by day's journeys. They are only going over the lesson +the British have learnt in the last score or so of years. This is one +world and bayonets are a crop that spreads. Let them gather and seed, it +matters not how far from you, and a time will come when they will be +sticking up under your nose. There is no real peace but the peace of the +whole world, and that is only to be kept by the whole world resisting +and suppressing aggression wherever it arises. To anyone who watches the +American Press, this realisation has been more and more manifest. From +dreams of aloofness and ineffable superiority, America comes round very +rapidly to a conception of an active participation in the difficult +business of statecraft. She is thinking of alliances, of throwing her +weight and influence upon the side of law and security. No longer a +political Thoreau in the woods, a sort of vegetarian recluse among +nations, a being of negative virtues and unpremeditated superiorities, +she girds herself for a manly part in the toilsome world of men. + +So far as I can judge, the American mind is eminently free from any +sentimental leaning towards the British. Americans have a traditional +hatred of the Hanoverian monarchy, and a democratic disbelief in +autocracy. They are far more acutely aware of differences than +resemblances. They suspect every Englishman of being a bit of a +gentleman and a bit of a flunkey. I have never found in America anything +like that feeling common in the mass of English people that prevents the +use of the word "foreigner" for an American; there is nothing to +reciprocate the sympathy and pride that English and Irish republicans +and radicals feel for the States. Few Americans realise that there are +such beings as English republicans. + +What has linked Americans with the British hitherto has been very +largely the common language and literature; it is only since the war +began that there seems to have been any appreciable development of +fraternal feeling. And that has been not so much discovery of a mutual +affection as the realisation of a far closer community of essential +thought and purpose than has hitherto been suspected. The Americans, +after thinking the matter out with great frankness and vigour, do +believe that Britain is on the whole fighting against aggression and not +for profit, that she is honestly backing France and Belgium against an +intolerable attack, and that the Hohenzollern Empire is a thing that +needs discrediting and, if possible, destroying in the interests of all +humanity, Germany included. + +America has made the surprising discovery that, allowing for their +greater nearness, the British are thinking about these things almost +exactly as Americans think about them. They follow the phases of the war +in Great Britain, the strain, the blunderings, the tenacity, the onset +of conscription in an essentially non-military community, with the +complete understanding of a people similarly circumstanced, differing +only by scale and distance. They have been through something of the sort +already; they may have something of the sort happen again. It had not +occurred to them hitherto how parallel we were. They begin to have +inklings of how much more parallel we may presently become. + +There is evidence of a real search for American affinities among the +other peoples of the world; it is a new war-made feature of the +thoughtful literature and journalists of America. And it is interesting +to note how partial and divided these affinities must necessarily be. +Historically and politically, the citizen of the United States must be +drawn most closely to France. France is the one other successful modern +republic; she was the instigator and friend of American liberation. With +Great Britain the tie of language, the tradition of personal freedom, +and the strain in the blood are powerful links. But both France and +Britain are old countries, thickly populated, with a great and ancient +finish and completeness, full of implicit relationships; America is by +comparison crude, uninformed, explicit, a new country, still turning +fresh soil, still turning over but half-explored natural resources. + +The United States constitute a modern country, a country on an +unprecedented scale, being organised from the very beginning on modern +lines. There is only one other such country upon the planet, and that +curiously enough is parallel in climate, size, and position--Russia in +Asia. Even Russia in Europe belongs rather to the newness that is +American than to the tradition that is European; Harvard was founded +more than half a century before Petrograd. And when I looked out of the +train window on my way to Petrograd from Germany, the little towns I saw +were like no European towns I had ever seen. The wooden houses, the +broad unmade roads, the traffic, the winter-bitten scenery, a sort of +untidy spaciousness, took my mind instantly to the country one sees in +the back part of New York State as one goes from Boston to Niagara. And +the reality follows the appearance. + +The United States and Russia are the west and the east of the same +thing; they are great modern States, developing from the beginning upon +a scale that only railways make possible. France and Britain may perish +in the next two centuries or they may persist, but there can be no doubt +that two centuries ahead Russia and the United States will be two of the +greatest masses of fairly homogeneous population on the globe. + +There are no countries with whom the people of the United States are so +likely to develop sympathy and a sense of common values and common +interests as with these three, unless it be with the Scandinavian +peoples. The Scandinavian peoples have developed a tendency to an +extra-European outlook, to look west and east rather than southwardly, +to be pacifist and progressive in a manner essentially American. From +any close sympathy with Germany the Americans are cut off at present by +the Hohenzollerns and the system of ideas that the Hohenzollerns have +imposed upon German thought. So long as the Germans cling to the tawdry +tradition of the Empire, so long as they profess militarism, so long as +they keep up their ridiculous belief in some strange racial superiority +to the rest of mankind, it is absurd to expect any co-operative feeling +between them and any other great people. + +The American tradition is based upon the casting off of a Germanic +monarchy; it is its cardinal idea. These sturdy Republicans did not +fling out the Hanoverians and their Hessian troops to prepare the path +of glory for Potsdam. But except for the gash caused by the Teutonic +monarchy, there runs round the whole world a north temperate and +sub-arctic zone of peoples, generally similar in complexion, physical +circumstances, and intellectual and moral quality, having enormous +undeveloped natural resources, and a common interest in keeping the +peace while these natural resources are developed, having also a common +interest in maintaining the integrity of China and preventing her +development into a military power; it is a zone with the clearest +prospect of a vast increase in its already enormous population, and it +speaks in the main one or other of three languages, either French, +Russian, or English. I believe that natural sympathy will march with the +obvious possibilities of the situation in bringing the American mind to +the realisation of this band of common interests and of its +compatibility with the older idea of an American continent protected by +a Monroe doctrine from any possibility of aggression from the monarchies +of the old world. + +As the old conception of isolation fades and the American mind accustoms +itself to the new conception of a need of alliances and understandings +to save mankind from the megalomania of races and dynasties, I believe +it will turn first to the idea of keeping the seas with Britain and +France, and then to this still wider idea of an understanding with the +Pledged Allies that will keep the peace of the world. + +Now Germany has taught the world several things, and one of the most +important of these lessons is the fact that the destinies of states and +peoples is no longer to be determined by the secret arrangements of +diplomatists and the agreements or jealousies of kings. For fifty years +Germany has been unifying the mind of her people against the world. She +has obsessed them with an evil ideal, but the point we have to note is +that she has succeeded in obsessing them with that ideal. No other +modern country has even attempted such a moral and mental solidarity as +Germany has achieved. And good ideals need, just as much as bad ones, +systematic inculcation, continual open expression and restatement. Mute, +mindless, or demented nations are dangerous and doomed nations. The +great political conceptions that are needed to establish the peace of +the world must become the common property of the mass of intelligent +adults if they are to hold against the political scoundrel, the royal +adventurer, the forensic exploiter, the enemies and scatterers of +mankind. The French, Americans, and English have to realise this +necessity; they have to state a common will and they have to make their +possession by that will understood by the Russian people, and they have +to share that will with the Russian people. Beyond that there lies the +still greater task or making some common system of understandings with +the intellectual masses of China and India. At present, with three of +these four great powers enormously preoccupied with actual warfare, +there is an opportunity for guiding expression on the part of America, +for a real world leadership, such as may never occur again.... + +So far I have been stating a situation and reviewing certain +possibilities. In the past half-century the United States has been +developing a great system of universities and a continental production +of literature and discussion to supplement the limited Press and the New +England literature of the earlier phase of the American process. It is +one of the most interesting speculations in the world to everyone how +far this new organisation of the American mind is capable of grasping +the stupendous opportunities and appeals of the present time. The war +and the great occasions that must follow the war will tax the mind and +the intellectual and moral forces of the Pledged Allies enormously. How +far is this new but very great and growing system of thought and +learning in the United States capable of that propaganda of ideas and +language, that progressive expression of a developing ideal of +community, that in countries so spontaneous, so chaotic or democratic as +the United States and the Pledged Allies must necessarily take the +place of the organised authoritative _Kultur_ of the Teutonic type of +state? + +As an undisguisedly patriotic Englishman, I would like to see the lead +in this intellectual synthesis of the nations, that _must_ be achieved +if wars are to cease, undertaken by Great Britain. But I am bound to +confess that in Great Britain I see neither the imaginative courage of +France nor the brisk enterprise of the Americans. I see this matter as a +question of peace and civilisation, but there are other baser but quite +as effective reasons why America, France, and Great Britain should exert +themselves to create confidences and understandings between their +populations and the Russian population. There is the immediate business +opportunity in Russia. There is the secondary business opportunity in +China that can best be developed as the partners rather than as the +rivals of the Russians. Since the Americans are nearest, by way of the +Pacific, since they are likely to have more capital and more free energy +to play with than the Pledged Allies, I do on the whole incline to the +belief that it is they who will yet do the pioneer work and the leading +work that this opportunity demands. + + +Section 2 + +If beneath the alliances of the present war there is to grow up a system +of enduring understandings that will lead to the peace of the world, +there is needed as a basis for such understandings much greater facility +of intellectual intercourse than exists at present. Firstly, the world +needs a _lingua franca_; next, the Western peoples need to know more of +the Russian language and life than they do, and thirdly, the English +language needs to be made more easily accessible than it is at present. +The chief obstacle to a Frenchman or Englishman learning Russian is the +difficult and confusing alphabet; the chief obstacle to anyone learning +English is the irrational spelling. Are people likely to overcome these +very serious difficulties in the future, and, if so, how will they do +it? And what prospects are there of a _lingua franca_? + +Wherever one looks closely into the causes and determining influences of +the great convulsions of this time, one is more and more impressed by +the apparent smallness of the ultimate directing influence. It seems to +me at least that it is a practically proven thing that this vast +aggression of Germany is to be traced back to a general tone of court +thinking and discussion in the Prussia of the eighteenth century, to +the theories of a few professors and the gathering trend of German +education in a certain direction. It seems to me that similarly the +language teachers of to-day and to-morrow may hold in their hands the +seeds of gigantic international developments in the future. + +It is not a question of the skill or devotion of individual teachers so +much as of the possibility of organising them upon a grand scale. An +individual teacher must necessarily use the ordinary books and ordinary +spelling and type of the language in which he is giving instruction; he +may get a few elementary instruction books from a private publisher, +specially printed for teaching purposes, but very speedily he finds +himself obliged to go to the current printed matter. This, as I will +immediately show, bars the most rapid and fruitful method of teaching. +And in this as in most affairs, private enterprise, the individualistic +system, shows itself a failure. In England, for example, the choice of +Russian lesson books is poor and unsatisfactory, and there is either no +serviceable Russian-English, English-Russian school dictionary in +existence, or it is published so badly as to be beyond the range of my +inquiries. But a state, or a group of universities, or even a rich +private association such as far-seeing American, French and British +business men might be reasonably expected to form, could attack the +problem of teaching a language in an altogether different fashion. + +The difficulty in teaching English lies in the inconsistency of the +spelling, and the consequent difficulties of pronunciation. If there +were available an ample series of text-books, reading books, and books +of general interest, done in a consistent phonetic type and spelling--in +which the value of the letters of the phonetic system followed as far as +possible the prevalent usage in Europe--the difficulty in teaching +English not merely to foreigners but, as the experiments in teaching +reading of the Simplified Spelling Society have proved up to the hilt, +to English children can be very greatly reduced. At first the difficulty +of the irrational spelling can be set on one side. The learner attacks +and masters the essential language. Then afterwards he can, if he likes, +go on to the orthodox spelling, which is then no harder for him to read +and master than it is for an Englishman of ordinary education to read +the facetious orthography of Artemus Ward or of the _Westminster +Gazette_ "orfis boy." The learner does one thing at a time instead of +attempting, as he would otherwise have to do, two things--and they are +both difficult and different and conflicting things--simultaneously. + +Learning a language is one thing and memorising an illogical system of +visual images--for that is what reading ordinary English spelling comes +to--is quite another. A man can learn to play first chess and then +bridge in half the time that these two games would require if he began +by attempting simultaneous play, and exactly the same principle applies +to the language problem. + +These considerations lead on to the idea of a special development or +sub-species of the English language for elementary teaching and foreign +consumption. It would be English, very slightly simplified and +regularised, and phonetically spelt. Let us call it Anglo-American. In +it the propagandist power, whatever that power might be, state, +university or association, would print not simply, instruction books but +a literature of cheap editions. Such a specialised simplified +Anglo-American variety of English would enormously stimulate the already +wide diffusion of the language, and go far to establish it as that +_lingua franca_ of which the world has need. + +And in the same way, the phonetic alphabet adopted as the English medium +could be used as the medium for instruction in French, where, as in the +British Isles, Canada, North and Central Africa, and large regions of +the East, it is desirable to make an English-speaking community +bi-lingual. At present a book in French means nothing to an uninstructed +Englishman, an English book conveys no accurate sound images to an +uninstructed Frenchman. On the other hand, a French book printed on a +proper phonetic system could be immediately read aloud--though of course +it could not be understood--by an uninstructed Englishman. From the +first he would have no difficulties with the sounds. And vice versa. +Such a system of books would mean the destruction of what are, for great +masses of French and English people, insurmountable difficulties on the +way to bi-lingualism. Its production is a task all too colossal for any +private publishers or teachers, but it is a task altogether trivial in +comparison with the national value of its consequences. But whether it +will ever be carried out is just one of those riddles of the jumping cat +in the human brain that are most perplexing to the prophet. + +The problem becomes at once graver, less hopeful, and more urgent when +we take up the case of Russian. I have looked closely into this business +of Russian teaching, and I am convinced that only a very, very small +number of French-and English-speaking people are going to master Russian +under the existing conditions of instruction. If we Westerns want to get +at Russia in good earnest we must take up this Russian language problem +with an imaginative courage and upon a scale of which at present I see +no signs. If we do not, then the Belgians, French, Americans and English +will be doing business in Russia after the war in the German +language--or through a friendly German interpreter. That, I am afraid, +is the probability of the case. But it need not be the case. Will and +intelligence could alter all that. + +What has to be done is to have Russian taught at first in a Western +phonetic type. Then it becomes a language not very much more difficult +to acquire than, say, German by a Frenchman. When the learner can talk +with some freedom, has a fairly full vocabulary, a phraseology, knows +his verb and so on, then and then only should he take up the unfamiliar +and confusing set of visual images of Russian lettering--I speak from +the point of view of those who read the Latin alphabet. How confusing it +may be only those who have tried it can tell. Its familiarity to the eye +increases the difficulty; totally unfamiliar forms would be easier to +learn. The Frenchman or Englishman is confronted with + + COP; + +the sound of that is + + SAR! + +For those who learn languages, as so many people do nowadays, by visual +images, there will always be an undercurrent toward saying "COP." The +mind plunges hopelessly through that tangle to the elements of a speech +which is as yet unknown. + +Nevertheless almost all the instruction in Russian of which I can get an +account begins with the alphabet, and must, I suppose, begin with the +alphabet until teachers have a suitably printed set of instruction books +to enable them to take the better line. One school teacher I know, in a +public school, devoted the entire first term, the third of a year, to +the alphabet. At the end he was still dissatisfied with the progress of +his pupils. He gave them Russian words, of course, words of which they +knew nothing--in Russian characters. It was too much for them to take +hold of at one and the same time. He did not even think of teaching them +to write French and English words in the strange lettering. He did not +attempt to write his Russian in Latin letters. He was apparently +ignorant of any system of transliteration, and he did nothing to +mitigate the impossible task before him. At the end of the term most of +his pupils gave up the hopeless effort. It is not too much to say that +for a great number of "visualising" people, the double effort at the +outset of Russian is entirely too much. It stops them altogether. But to +almost anyone it is possible to learn Russian if at first it is +presented in a lettering that gives no trouble. + +If I found myself obliged to learn Russian urgently, I would get some +accepted system of transliteration, carefully transcribe every word of +Russian in my text-book into the Latin characters, and learn the +elements of the language from my manuscript. A year or so ago I made a +brief visit to Russia with a "Russian Self-Taught" in my pocket. Nothing +sticks, nothing ever did stick of that self-taught Russian except the +words that I learnt in Latin type. Those I remember as I remember all +words, as groups of Latin letters. I learnt to count, for example, up to +a hundred. The other day I failed to recognise the Russian word for +eleven in Russian characters until I had spelt it out. Then I said, "Oh, +of course!" But I knew it when I heard it. + +I write of these things from the point of view of the keen learner. Some +Russian teachers will be found to agree with me; others will not. It is +a paradox in the psychology of the teacher that few teachers are willing +to adopt "slick" methods of teaching; they hate cutting corners far more +than they hate obstacles, because their interest is in the teaching and +not in the "getting there." But what we learners want is not an +exquisite, rare knowledge of particulars, we do not want to spend an +hour upon Russian needlessly; we want to get there as quickly and +effectively as possible. And for that, transliterated books are +essential. + +Now these may seem small details in the learning of languages, mere +schoolmasters' gossip, but the consequences are on the continental +scale. The want of these national text-books and readers is a great gulf +between Russia and her Allies; _it is a greater gulf than the +profoundest political misunderstanding could be_. We cannot get at them +to talk plainly to them, and they cannot get at us to talk plainly to +us. A narrow bridge of interpreters is our only link with the Russian +mind. And many of those interpreters are of a race which is for very +good reasons hostile to Russia. An abundant cheap supply, firstly, of +English and French books, _in_ English and French, but in the Russian +character, by means of which Russians may rapidly learn French and +English--for it is quite a fable that these languages are known and used +in Russia below the level of the court and aristocracy--and, secondly, +of Russian books in the Latin (or some easy phonetic development of the +Latin) type, will do more to facilitate interchange and intercourse +between Russia and France, America and Britain, and so consolidate the +present alliance than almost any other single thing. But that supply +will not be a paying thing to provide; if it is left to publishers or +private language teachers or any form of private enterprise it will +never be provided. It is a necessary public undertaking. + +But because a thing is necessary it does not follow that it will be +achieved. Bread may be necessary to a starving man, but there is always +the alternative that he will starve. France, which is most accessible to +creative ideas, is least interested in this particular matter. Great +Britain is still heavily conservative. It is idle to ignore the forces +still entrenched in the established church, in the universities and the +great schools, that stand for an irrational resistance to all new +things. American universities are comparatively youthful and sometimes +quite surprisingly innovating, and America is the country of the +adventurous millionaire. There has been evidence in several American +papers that have reached me recently of a disposition to get ahead with +Russia and cut out the Germans (and incidentally the British). Amidst +the cross-currents and overlappings of this extraordinary time, it seems +to me highly probable that America may lead in this vitally important +effort to promote international understanding. + + + + +XI. "THE WHITE MAN'S BURTHEN" + + +One of the most curious aspects of the British "Pacifist" is his +willingness to give over great blocks of the black and coloured races to +the Hohenzollerns to exploit and experiment upon. I myself being +something of a pacifist, and doing what I can, in my corner, to bring +about the Peace of the World, the Peace of the World triumphant and +armed against every disturber, could the more readily sympathise with +the passive school of Pacifists if its proposals involved the idea that +England should keep to England and Germany to Germany. My political +ideal is the United States of the World, a union of states whose state +boundaries are determined by what I have defined as the natural map of +mankind. I cannot understand those pacifists who talk about the German +right to "expansion," and babble about a return of her justly lost +colonies. That seems to me not pacificism but patriotic inversion. This +large disposition to hand over our fellow-creatures to a Teutonic +educational system, with "frightfulness" in reserve, to "efficiency" on +Wittenberg lines, leaves me--hot. The ghosts of the thirst-tormented +Hereros rise up in their thousands from the African dust, protesting. + +This talk of "legitimate expansion" is indeed now only an exploiter's +cant. The age of "expansion," the age of European "empires" is near its +end. No one who can read the signs of the times in Japan, in India, in +China, can doubt it. It ended in America a hundred years ago; it is +ending now in Asia; it will end last in Africa, and even in Africa the +end draws near. Spain has but led the way which other "empires" must +follow. Look at her empire in the atlases of 1800. She fell down the +steps violently and painfully, it is true--but they are difficult to +descend. No sane man, German or anti-German, who has weighed the +prospects of the new age, will be desirous of a restoration of the now +vanished German colonial empire, vindictive, intriguing, and +unscrupulous, a mere series of centres of attack upon adjacent +territory, to complicate the immense disentanglements and readjustments +that lie already before the French and British and Italians. + +Directly we discuss the problem of the absolutely necessary permanent +alliance that this war has forced upon at least France, Belgium, +Britain and Russia, this problem of the "empires" faces us. What are +these Allies going to do about their "subject races"? What is the world +going to do about the "subject races"? It is a matter in which the +"subject races" are likely to have an increasingly important voice of +their own. We Europeans may discuss their fate to-day among ourselves; +we shall be discussing it with them to-morrow. If we do not agree with +them then, they will take their fates in their own hands in spite of us. +Long before A.D. 2100 there will be no such thing as a "subject race" in +all the world. + +Here again we find ourselves asking just that same difficult question of +more or less, that arises at every cardinal point of our review of the +probable future. How far is this thing going to be done finely; how far +is it going to be done cunningly and basely? How far will greatness of +mind, how far will imaginative generosity, prevail over the jealous and +pettifogging spirit that lurks in every human being? Are French and +British and Belgians and Italians, for example, going to help each other +in Africa, or are they going to work against and cheat each other? Is +the Russian seeking only a necessary outlet to the seas of the world, +or has he dreams of Delhi? Here again, as in all these questions, +personal idiosyncrasy comes in; I am strongly disposed to trust the good +in the Russian. + +But apart from this uncertain question of generosity, there are in this +case two powerful forces that make against disputes, secret +disloyalties, and meanness. One is that Germany will certainly be still +dangerous at the end of the war, and the second is that the gap in +education, in efficiency, in national feeling and courage of outlook, +between the European and the great Asiatic and African communities, is +rapidly diminishing. If the Europeans squabble much more for world +ascendancy, there will be no world ascendancy for them to squabble for. +We have still no means of measuring the relative enfeeblement of Europe +in comparison with Asia already produced by this war. As it is, certain +things are so inevitable--the integration of a modernised Bengal, of +China, and of Egypt, for example--that the question before us is +practically reduced to whether this restoration of the subject peoples +will be done with the European's aid and goodwill, or whether it will be +done against him. That it will be done in some manner or other is +certain. + +The days of suppression are over. They know it in every country where +white and brown and yellow mingle. If the Pledged Allies are not +disposed to let in light to their subject peoples and prepare for the +days of world equality that are coming, the Germans will. If the Germans +fail to be the most enslaving of people, they may become the most +liberating. They will set themselves, with their characteristic +thoroughness, to destroy that magic "prestige" which in Asia +particularly is the clue to the miracle of European ascendancy. In the +long run that may prove no ill service to mankind. The European must +prepare to make himself acceptable in Asia, to state his case to Asia +and be understood by Asia, or to leave Asia. That is the blunt reality +of the Asiatic situation. + +It has already been pointed out in these chapters that if the alliance +of the Pledged Allies is indeed to be permanent, it implies something in +the nature of a Zollverein, a common policy towards the rest of the +world and an arrangement involving a common control over the +dependencies of all the Allies. It will be interesting, now that we have +sketched a possible map of Europe after the war, to look a little more +closely into the nature of the "empires" concerned, and to attempt a few +broad details of the probable map of the Eastern hemisphere outside +Europe in the years immediately to come. + +Now there are, roughly speaking, three types of overseas "possessions." +They may be either (1) territory that was originally practically +unoccupied and that was settled by the imperial people, or (2) territory +with a barbaric population having no national idea, or (3) conquered +states. In the case of the British Empire all three are present; in the +case of the French only the second and third; in the case of the Russian +only the first and third. Each of these types must necessarily follow +its own system of developments. Take first those territories originally +but thinly occupied, or not occupied at all, of which all or at least +the dominant element of the population is akin to that of the "home +country." These used to be called by the British "colonies"--though the +"colonies" of Greece and Rome were really only garrison cities settled +in foreign lands--and they are now being rechristened "Dominions." +Australia, for instance, is a British Dominion, and Siberia and most of +Russia in Asia, a Russian Dominion. Their manifest destiny is for their +children to become equal citizens with the cousins and brothers they +have left at home. + +There has been much discussion in England during the last decade upon +some modification of the British legislature that would admit +representatives from the Dominions to a proportional share in the +government of the Empire. The problem has been complicated by the +unsettled status of Ireland and the mischief-making Tories there, and by +the perplexities arising out of those British dependencies of +non-British race--the Indian states, for example, whose interests are +sometimes in conflict with those of the Dominions. + +The attractiveness of the idea of an Imperial legislature is chiefly on +the surface, and I have very strong doubts of its realisability. These +Dominions seem rather to tend to become independent and distinct +sovereign states in close and affectionate alliance with Great Britain, +and having a common interest in the British Navy. In many ways the +interests of the Dominions are more divergent from those of Great +Britain than are Great Britain and Russia, or Great Britain and France. +Many of the interests of Canada are more closely bound to those of the +United States than they are to those of Australasia, in such a matter as +the maintenance of the Monroe Principle, for example. South Africa again +takes a line with regard to British Indian subjects which is highly +embarrassing to Great Britain. There is a tendency in all the British +colonies to read American books and periodicals rather than British, if +for no other reason than because their common life, life in a newish and +very democratic land, is much more American than British in character. + +On the other hand, one must remember that Great Britain has European +interests--the integrity of Holland and Belgium is a case in +point--which are much closer to the interests of France than they are to +those of the younger Britains beyond the seas. A voice in an Alliance +that included France and the United States, and had its chief common +interest in the control of the seas, may in the future seem far more +desirable to these great and growing English-speaking Dominions than the +sending of representatives to an Imperial House of Lords at Westminster, +and the adornment of elderly colonial politicians with titles and +decorations at Buckingham Palace. + +I think Great Britain and her Allies have all of them to prepare their +minds for a certain release of their grip upon their "possessions," if +they wish to build up a larger unity; I do not see that any secure +unanimity of purpose is possible without such releases and +readjustments. + +Now the next class of foreign "possession" is that in which the French +and Belgians and Italians are most interested. Britain also has +possessions of this type in Central Africa and the less civilised +districts of India, but Russia has scarcely anything of the sort. In +this second class of possession the population is numerous, barbaric, +and incapable of any large or enduring political structure, and over its +destinies rule a small minority of European administrators. + +The greatest of this series of possessions are those in black Africa. +The French imagination has taken a very strong hold of the idea of a +great French-speaking West and Central Africa, with which the ordinary +British citizen will only too gladly see the conquered German colonies +incorporated. The Italians have a parallel field of development in the +hinterland of Tripoli. Side by side, France, Belgium and Italy, no +longer troubled by hostile intrigues, may very well set themselves in +the future to the task of building up a congenial Latin civilisation out +of the tribal confusions of these vast regions. They will, I am +convinced, do far better than the English in this domain. The +English-speaking peoples have been perhaps the most successful +_settlers_ in the world; the United States and the Dominions are there +to prove it; only the Russians in Siberia can compare with them; but as +administrators the British are a race coldly aloof. They have nothing to +give a black people, and no disposition to give. + +The Latin-speaking peoples, the Mediterranean nations, on the other +hand, have proved to be the most successful _assimilators_ of other +races that mankind has ever known. Alexandre Dumas is not the least of +the glories of France. In a hundred years' time black Africa, west of +Tripoli, from Oran to Rhodesia, will, I believe, talk French. And what +does not speak French will speak the closely related Italian. I do not +see why this Latin black culture should not extend across equatorial +Africa to meet the Indian influence at the coast, and reach out to join +hands with Madagascar. I do not see why the British flag should be any +impediment to the Latinisation of tropical Africa or to the natural +extension of the French and Italian languages through Egypt. I guess, +however, that it will be an Islamic and not a Christian cult that will +be talking Italian and French. For the French-speaking civilisation will +make roads not only for French, Belgians, and Italians, but for the +Arabs whose religion and culture already lie like a net over black +Africa. No other peoples and no other religion can so conveniently give +the negro what is needed to bring him into the comity of civilised +peoples.... + +A few words of digression upon the future of Islam may not be out of +place here. The idea of a militant Christendom has vanished from the +world. The last pretensions of Christian propaganda have been buried in +the Balkan trenches. A unification of Africa under Latin auspices +carries with it now no threat of missionary invasion. Africa will be a +fair field for all religions, and the religion to which the negro will +take will be the religion that best suits his needs. That religion, we +are told by nearly everyone who has a right to speak upon such +questions, is Islam, and its natural propagandist is the Arab. There is +no reason why he should not be a Frenchified Arab. + +Both the French and the British have the strongest interest in the +revival of Arabic culture. Let the German learn Turkish if it pleases +him. Through all Africa and Western Asia there is a great to-morrow for +a renascent Islam under Arab auspices. Constantinople, that venal city +of the waterways, sitting like Asenath at the ford, has corrupted all +who came to her; she has been the paralysis of Islam. But the Islam of +the Turk is a different thing from the Islam of the Arab. That was one +of the great progressive impulses in the world of men. It is our custom +to underrate the Arab's contribution to civilisation quite absurdly in +comparison with our debt to the Hebrew and Greek. It is to the +initiatives of Islamic culture, for example, that we owe our numerals, +the bulk of modern mathematics, and the science of chemistry. The +British have already set themselves to the establishment of Islamic +university teaching in Egypt, but that is the mere first stroke of the +pick at the opening of the mine. English, French, Russian, Arabic, +Hindustani, Spanish, Italian; these are the great world languages that +most concern the future of civilisation from the point of view of the +Peace Alliance that impends. No country can afford to neglect any of +those languages, but as a matter of primary importance I would say, for +the British, Hindustani, for the Americans, Russian or Spanish, for the +French and Belgians and Italians, Arabic. These are the directions in +which the duty of understanding is most urgent for each of these +peoples, and the path of opportunity plainest. + +The disposition to underrate temporarily depressed nations, races, and +cultures is a most irrational, prevalent, and mischievous form of +stupidity. It distorts our entire outlook towards the future. The +British reader can see its absurdity most easily when he reads the +ravings of some patriotic German upon the superiority of the "Teuton" +over the Italians and Greeks--to whom we owe most things of importance +in European civilisation. Equally silly stuff is still to be read in +British and American books about "Asiatics." And was there not some +fearful rubbish, not only in German but in English and French, about the +"decadence" of France? But we are learning--rapidly. When I was a +student in London thirty years ago we regarded Japan as a fantastic +joke; the comic opera, _The Mikado_, still preserves that foolish phase +for the admiration of posterity. And to-day there is a quite +unjustifiable tendency to ignore the quality of the Arab and of his +religion. Islam is an open-air religion, noble and simple in its broad +conceptions; it is none the less vital from Nigeria to China because it +has sickened in the closeness of Constantinople. The French, the +Italians, the British have to reckon with Islam and the Arab; where the +continental deserts are, there the Arabs are and there is Islam; their +culture will never be destroyed and replaced over these regions by +Europeanism. The Allies who prepare the Peace of the World have to make +their peace with that. And when I foreshadow this necessary liaison of +the French and Arabic cultures, I am thinking not only of the Arab that +is, but of the Arab that is to come. The whole trend of events in Asia +Minor, the breaking up and decapitation of the Ottoman Empire and the +Euphrates invasion, points to a great revival of Mesopotamia--at first +under European direction. The vast system of irrigation that was +destroyed by the Mongol armies of Hulugu in the thirteenth century will +be restored; the desert will again become populous. But the local type +will prevail. The new population of Mesopotamia will be neither European +nor Indian; it will be Arabic; and with its concentration Arabic will +lay hold of the printing press. A new intellectual movement in Islam, a +renascent Bagdad, is as inevitable as is 1950. + +I have, however, gone a little beyond the discussion of the future of +the barbaric possessions in these anticipations of an Arabic +co-operation with the Latin peoples in the reconstruction of Western +Asia and the barbaric regions of north and central Africa. But regions +of administered barbarism occur not only in Africa. The point is that +they are administered, and that their economic development is very +largely in the hands, and will for many generations remain in the hands, +of the possessing country. Hitherto their administration has been in +the interests of the possessing nation alone. Their acquisition has been +a matter of bitter rivalries, their continued administration upon +exclusive lines is bound to lead to dangerous clashings. The common +sense of the situation points to a policy of give and take, in which +throughout the possessions of all the Pledged Allies, the citizens of +all will have more or less equal civil advantages. And this means some +consolidation of the general control of those Administered Territories. +I have already hinted at the possibility that the now exclusively +British navy may some day be a world-navy controlled by an Admiralty +representing a group of allies, Australasia, Canada, Britain and, it may +be, France and Russia and the United States. To those who know how +detached the British Admiralty is at the present time from the general +methods of British political life, there will be nothing strange in this +idea of its completer detachment. Its personnel does to a large extent +constitute a class apart. It takes its boys out of the general life very +often before they have got to their fourteenth birthday. It is not so +closely linked up with specific British social elements, with political +parties and the general educational system, as are the rest of the +national services. + +There is nothing so very fantastic in this idea of a sort of +World-Admiralty; it is not even completely novel. Such bodies as the +Knights Templars transcended nationality in the Middle Ages. I do not +see how some such synthetic control of the seas is to be avoided in the +future. And now coming back to the "White Man's Burthen," is there not a +possibility that such a board of marine and international control as the +naval and international problems of the future may produce (or some +closely parallel body with a stronger Latin element), would also be +capable of dealing with these barbaric "Administered Territories"? A day +may come when Tripoli, Nigeria, the French and the Belgian Congo will be +all under one supreme control. We may be laying the foundations of such +a system to-day unawares. The unstable and fluctuating conferences of +the Allies to-day, their repeated experiences of the disadvantages of +evanescent and discontinuous co-ordinations, may press them almost +unconsciously toward this building up of things greater than they know. + +We come now to the third and most difficult type of overseas +"possessions." These are the annexed or conquered regions with settled +populations already having a national tradition and culture of their +own. They are, to put it bluntly, the suppressed, the overlaid, +nations. Now I am a writer rather prejudiced against the idea of +nationality; my habit of thought is cosmopolitan; I hate and despise a +shrewish suspicion of foreigners and foreign ways; a man who can look me +in the face, laugh with me, speak truth and deal fairly, is my brother +though his skin is as black as ink or as yellow as an evening primrose. +But I have to recognise the facts of the case. In spite of all my large +liberality, I find it less irritating to be ruled by people of my own +language and race and tradition, and I perceive that for the mass of +people alien rule is intolerable. + +Local difference, nationality, is a very obstinate thing. Every country +tends to revert to its natural type. Nationality will out. Once a people +has emerged above the barbaric stage to a national consciousness, that +consciousness will endure. There is practically always going to be an +Egypt, a Poland, an Armenia. There is no Indian nation, there never has +been, but there are manifestly a Bengal and a Rajputana, there is +manifestly a constellation of civilised nations in India. Several of +these have literatures and traditions that extend back before the days +when the Britons painted themselves with woad. Let us deal with this +question mainly with reference to India. What is said will apply +equally to Burmah or Egypt or Armenia or--to come back into +Europe--Poland. + +Now I have talked, I suppose, with many scores of people about the +future of India, and I have never yet met anyone, Indian or British, who +thought it desirable that the British should evacuate India at once. And +I have never yet met anyone who did not think that ultimately the +British must let the Indian nations control their own destinies. There +are really not two opposite opinions about the destiny of India, but +only differences of opinion as to the length of time in which that +destiny is to be achieved. Many Indians think (and I agree with them) +that India might be a confederation of sovereign states in close +alliance with the British Empire and its allies within the space of +fifty years or so. The opposite extreme was expressed by an old weary +Indian administrator who told me, "Perhaps they may begin to be capable +of self-government in four or five hundred years." These are the extreme +Liberal and the extreme Tory positions in this question. It is a choice +between decades and centuries. There is no denial of the inevitability +of ultimate restoration. No one of any experience believes the British +administration in India is an eternal institution. + +There is a great deal of cant in this matter in Great Britain. Genteel +English people with relations in the Indian Civil Service and habits of +self-delusion, believe that Indians are "grateful" for British rule. The +sort of "patriotic" self-flattery that prevailed in the Victorian age, +and which is so closely akin to contemporary German follies, fostered +and cultivated this sweet delusion. There are, no doubt, old ladies in +Germany to-day who believe that Belgium will presently be "grateful" for +the present German administration. Let us clear our minds of such cant. +As a matter of fact no Indians really like British rule or think of it +as anything better than a necessary, temporary evil. Let me put the +parallel case to an Englishman or a Frenchman. Through various political +ineptitudes our country has, we will suppose, fallen under the rule of +the Chinese. They administer it, we will further assume, with an +efficiency and honesty unparalleled in the bad old times of our lawyer +politicians. They do not admit us to the higher branches of the +administration; they go about our country wearing a strange costume, +professing a strange religion--which implies that ours is +wrong--speaking an unfamiliar tongue. They control our financial system +and our economic development--on Chinese lines of the highest merit. +They take the utmost care of our Gothic cathedrals for us. They put our +dearest racial possessions into museums and admire them very much +indeed. They teach our young men to fly kites and eat bird's nest soup. +They do all that a well-bred people can do to conceal their habit and +persuasion of a racial superiority. But they keep up their "prestige." +... You know, we shouldn't love them. It really isn't a question of +whether they rule well or ill, but that the position is against certain +fundamentals of human nature. The only possible footing upon which we +could meet them with comfortable minds would be the footing that we and +they were discussing the terms of the restoration of our country. Then +indeed we might almost feel friendly with them. That is the case with +all civilised "possessions." The only terms upon which educated British +and Indians can meet to-day with any comfort is precisely that. The +living intercourse of the British and Indian mind to-day is the +discussion of the restoration. Everything else is humbug on the one side +and self-deception on the other. + +It is idle to speak of the British occupation of India as a conquest or +a robbery. It is a fashion of much "advanced" literature in Europe to +assume that the European rule of various Asiatic countries is the +result of deliberate conquest with a view to spoliation. But that is +only the ugly side of the facts. Cases of the deliberate invasion and +spoliation of one country by another have been very rare in the history +of the last three centuries. There has always been an excuse, and there +has always been a percentage of truth in the excuse. The history of +every country contains phases of political ineptitude in which that +country becomes so misgoverned as to be not only a nuisance to the +foreigner within its borders but a danger to its neighbours. Mexico is +in such a phase to-day. And most of the aggressions and annexations of +the modern period have arisen out of the inconveniences and reasonable +fears caused by such an inept phase. I am a persistent advocate for the +restoration of Poland, but at the same time it is very plain to me that +it is a mere travesty of the facts to say that Poland, was a white lamb +of a country torn to pieces by three wicked neighbours, Poland in the +eighteenth century was a dangerous political muddle, uncertain of her +monarchy, her policy, her affinities. She endangered her neighbours +because there was no guarantee that she might not fall under the +tutelage of one of them and become a weapon against the others. + +The division of Poland was an outrage upon the Polish people, but it +was largely dictated by an entirely honest desire to settle a dangerous +possibility. It seemed less injurious than the possibility of a +vacillating, independent Poland playing off one neighbour against +another. That possibility will still be present in the minds of the +diplomatists who will determine the settlement after the war. Until the +Poles make up their minds, and either convince the Russians that they +are on the side of Russia and Bohemia against Germany for evermore, or +the Germans that they are willing to be Posenised, they will live +between two distrustful enemies. + +The Poles need to think of the future more and the wrongs of Poland +less. They want less patriotic intrigue and more racial self-respect. +They are not only Poles but members of a greater brotherhood. My +impression is that Poland will "go Slav"--in spite of Cracow. But I am +not sure. I am haunted by the fear that Poland may still find her future +hampered by Poles who are, as people say, "too clever by half." An +incalculable Poland cannot be and will not be tolerated by the rest of +Europe. + +And the overspreading of India by the British was in the same way very +clearly done under compulsion, first lest the Dutch or French should +exploit the vast resources of the peninsula against Britain, and then +for fear of a Russian exploitation. I am no apologist for British rule +in India; I think we have neglected vast opportunities there; it was our +business from the outset to build up a free and friendly Indian +confederation, and we have done not a tithe of what we might have done +to that end. But then we have not done a little of what we might have +done for our own country. + +Nevertheless we have our case to plead, not only for going to India +but--with the Berlin papers still babbling of Bagdad and beyond[3]--of +sticking there very grimly. And so too the British have a fairly sound +excuse for grabbing Egypt in their fear lest in its phase of political +ineptitude it should be the means of strangling the British Empire as +the Turk in Constantinople has been used to strangle the Russian. None +of these justifications I admit are complete, but all deserve +consideration. It is no good arguing about the finer ethics of the +things that are; the business of sane men is to get things better. The +business of all sane men in all the countries of the Pledged Allies and +in America is manifestly to sink petty jealousies and a suicidal +competitiveness, and to organise co-operation with all the intellectual +forces they can find or develop in the subject countries, to convert +these inept national systems into politically efficient independent +organisations in a world peace alliance. If we fail to do that, then all +the inept states and all the subject states about the world will become +one great field for the sowing of tares by the enemy. + +[Footnote 3: This was written late in February, 1916.] + +So that with regard to the civilised just as with regard to the barbaric +regions of the "possessions" of the European-centred empires, we come to +the same conclusion. That on the whole the path of safety lies in the +direction of pooling them and of declaring a common policy of +progressive development leading to equality. The pattern of the United +States, in which the procedure is first the annexation of "territories" +and then their elevation to the rank of "States," must, with of course +far more difficulty and complication, be the pattern for the "empires" +of to-day--so far as they are regions of alien population. The path of +the Dominions, settled by emigrants akin to the home population, +Siberia, Canada, and so forth, to equal citizenship with the people of +the Mother Country is by comparison simple and plain. + +And so the discussion of the future of the overseas "empires" brings us +again to the same realisation to which the discussion of nearly every +great issue arising out of this war has pointed, the realisation of the +imperative necessity of some great council or conference, some permanent +overriding body, call it what you will, that will deal with things more +broadly than any "nationalism" or "patriotic imperialism" can possibly +do. That body must come into human affairs. Upon the courage and +imagination of living statesmen it depends whether it will come simply +and directly into concrete reality or whether it will materialise slowly +through, it may be, centuries of blood and blundering from such phantom +anticipations as this, anticipations that now haunt the thoughts of all +politically-minded men. + + + + +XII. THE OUTLOOK FOR THE GERMANS + + +Section 1 + +Whatever some of us among the Allies may say, the future of Germany lies +with Germany. The utmost ambition of the Allies falls far short of +destroying or obliterating Germany; it is to give the Germans so +thorough and memorable an experience of war that they will want no more +of it for a few generations, and, failing the learning of that lesson, +to make sure that they will not be in a position to resume their +military aggressions upon mankind with any hope of success. After all, +it is not the will of the Allies that has determined even this resolve. +It is the declared and manifest will of Germany to become predominant in +the world that has created the Alliance against Germany, and forged and +tempered our implacable resolution to bring militarist Germany down. And +the nature of the coming peace and of the politics that will follow the +peace are much more dependent upon German affairs than upon anything +else whatever. + +This is so clearly understood in Great Britain that there is scarcely a +newspaper that does not devote two or three columns daily to extracts +from the German newspapers, and from letters found upon German killed, +wounded, or prisoners, and to letters and descriptive articles from +neutrals upon the state of the German mind. There can be no doubt that +the British intelligence has grasped and kept its hold upon the real +issue of this war with an unprecedented clarity. At the outset there +came declarations from nearly every type of British opinion that this +war was a war against the Hohenzollern militarist idea, against +Prussianism, and not against Germany. + +In that respect Britain has documented herself to the hilt. There have +been, of course, a number of passionate outcries and wild accusations +against Germans, as a race, during the course of the struggle; but to +this day opinion is steadfast not only in Britain, but if I may judge +from the papers I read and the talk I hear, throughout the whole +English-speaking community, that this is a war not of races but ideas. I +am so certain of this that I would say if Germany by some swift +convulsion expelled her dynasty and turned herself into a republic, it +would be impossible for the British Government to continue the war for +long, whether it wanted to do so or not. The forces in favour of +reconciliation would be too strong. There would be a complete revulsion +from the present determination to continue the war to its bitter but +conclusive end. + +It is fairly evident that the present German Government understands this +frame of mind quite clearly, and is extremely anxious to keep it from +the knowledge of the German peoples. Every act or word from a British +source that suggests an implacable enmity against the Germans as a +people, every war-time caricature and insult, is brought to their +knowledge. It is the manifest interest of the Hohenzollerns and +Prussianism to make this struggle a race struggle and not merely a +political struggle, and to keep a wider breach between the peoples than +between the Governments. The "Made in Germany" grievance has been used +to the utmost against Great Britain as an indication of race hostility. +The everyday young German believes firmly that it was a blow aimed +specially at Germany; that no such regulation affected any goods but +German goods. And the English, with their characteristic heedlessness, +have never troubled to disillusion him. But even the British +caricaturist and the British soldier betray their fundamental opinion +of the matter in their very insults. They will not use a word of abuse +for the Germans as Germans; they call them "Huns," because they are +thinking of Attila, because they are thinking of them as invaders under +a monarch of peaceful France and Belgium, and not as a people living in +a land of their own. + +In Great Britain there is to this day so little hostility for Germans as +such, that recently a nephew of Lord Haldane's, Sir George Makgill, has +considered it advisable to manufacture race hostility and provide the +Hohenzollerns with instances and quotations through the exertions of a +preposterous Anti-German League. Disregarding the essential evils of the +Prussian idea, this mischievous organisation has set itself to persuade +the British people that the Germans are diabolical _as a race_. It has +displayed great energy and ingenuity in pestering and insulting +naturalised Germans and people of German origin in Britain--below the +rank of the Royal Family, that is--and in making enduring bad blood +between them and the authentic British. It busies itself in breaking up +meetings at which sentiments friendly to Germany might be expressed, +sentiments which, if they could be conveyed to German hearers, would +certainly go far to weaken the determination of the German social +democracy to fight to the end. + +There can, of course, be no doubt of the good faith of Sir George +Makgill, but he could do the Kaiser no better service than to help in +consolidating every rank and class of German, by this organisation of +foolish violence of speech and act, by this profession of an irrational +and implacable hostility. His practical influence over here is trivial, +thanks to the general good sense and the love of fair play in our +people, but there can be little doubt that his intentions are about as +injurious to the future peace of the world as any intentions could be, +and there can be no doubt that intelligent use is made in Germany of the +frothings and ravings of his followers. "Here, you see, is the +disposition of the English," the imperialists will say to the German +pacifists. "They are dangerous lunatics. Clearly we must stick together +to the end." ... + +The stuff of Sir George Makgill's league must not be taken as +representative of any considerable section of British opinion, which is +as a whole nearly as free from any sustained hatred of the Germans as it +was at the beginning of the war. There are, of course, waves of +indignation at such deliberate atrocities as the _Lusitania_ outrage or +the Zeppelin raids, Wittenberg will not easily be forgotten, but it +would take many Sir George Makgills to divert British anger from the +responsible German Government to the German masses. + +That lack of any essential hatred does not mean that British opinion is +not solidly for the continuation of this war against militarist +imperialism to its complete and final defeat. But if that can be +defeated to any extent in Germany by the Germans, if the way opens to a +Germany as unmilitary and pacific as was Great Britain before this war, +there remains from the British point of view nothing else to fight +about. With the Germany of _Vorwaerts_ which, I understand, would +evacuate and compensate Belgium and Serbia, set up a buffer state in +Alsace-Lorraine, and another in a restored Poland (including Posen), the +spirit of the Allies has no profound quarrel at all, has never had any +quarrel. We would only too gladly meet that Germany at a green table +to-morrow, and set to work arranging the compensation of Belgium and +Serbia, and tracing over the outlines of the natural map of mankind the +new political map of Europe. + +Still it must be admitted that not only in Great Britain but in all the +allied countries one finds a certain active minority corresponding to +Sir George Makgill's noisy following, who profess to believe that all +Germans to the third and fourth generation (save and except the +Hanoverian royal family domiciled in Great Britain) are a vile, +treacherous, and impossible race, a race animated by an incredible +racial vanity, a race which is indeed scarcely anything but a conspiracy +against the rest of mankind. + +The ravings of many of these people can only be paralleled by the stuff +about the cunning of the Jesuits that once circulated in +ultra-Protestant circles in England. Elderly Protestant ladies used to +look under the bed and in the cupboard every night for a Jesuit, just as +nowadays they look for a German spy, and as no doubt old German ladies +now look for Sir Edward Grey. It may be useful therefore, at the present +time, to point out that not only is the aggressive German idea not +peculiar to Germany, not only are there endless utterances of French +Chauvinists and British imperialists to be found entirely as vain, +unreasonable and aggressive, but that German militarist imperialism is +so little representative of the German quality, that scarcely one of its +leading exponents is a genuine German. + +Of course there is no denying that the Germans are a very distinctive +people, as distinctive as the French. But their distinctions are not +diabolical. Until the middle of the nineteenth century it was the +fashion to regard them as a race of philosophical incompetents. Their +reputation as a people of exceptionally military quality sprang up in +the weed-bed of human delusions between 1866 and 1872; it will certainly +not survive this war. Their reputation for organisation is another +matter. They are an orderly, industrious, and painstaking people, they +have a great respect for science, for formal education, and for +authority. It is their respect for education which has chiefly betrayed +them, and made them the instrument of Hohenzollern folly. Mr. F.M. +Hueffer has shown this quite conclusively in his admirable but ill-named +book, "When Blood is Their Argument." Their minds have been +systematically corrupted by base historical teaching, and the +inculcation of a rancid patriotism. They are a people under the sway of +organised suggestion. This catastrophic war and its preparation have +been their chief business for half a century; none the less their +peculiar qualities have still been displayed during that period; they +have still been able to lead the world in several branches of social +organisation and in the methodical development of technical science. +Systems of ideas are perhaps more readily shattered than built up; the +aggressive patriotism of many Germans must be already darkened by +serious doubts, and I see no inherent impossibility in hoping that the +mass of the Germans may be restored to the common sanity of mankind, +even in the twenty or thirty years of life that perhaps still remain for +me. + +Consider the names of the chief exponents of the aggressive German idea, +and you will find that not one is German. The first begetter of +Nietzsche's "blond beast," and of all that great flood of rubbish about +a strange superior race with whitish hair and blue eyes, that has so +fatally rotted the German imagination, was a Frenchman named Gobineau. +We British are not altogether free from the disease. As a small boy I +read the History of J.R. Green, and fed my pride upon the peculiar +virtues of my Anglo-Saxon blood. ("Cp.," as they say in footnotes, +Carlyle and Froude.) It was not a German but a renegade Englishman of +the Englishman-hating Whig type, Mr. Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who +carried the Gobineau theory to that delirious level which claims Dante +and Leonardo as Germans, and again it was not a German but a British +peer, still among us, Lord Redesdale, who in his eulogistic preface to +the English translation of Chamberlain's torrent of folly, hinted not +obscurely that the real father of Christ was not the Jew, Joseph, but a +much more Germanic person. Neither Clausewitz, who first impressed upon +the German mind the theory of ruthless warfare, nor Bernhardi, nor +Treitschke, who did as much to build up the Emperor's political +imagination, strike one as bearing particularly German names. There are +indeed very grave grounds for the German complaint that Germany has been +the victim of alien flattery and alien precedents. And what after all is +the Prussian dream of world empire but an imitative response to the +British empire and the adventure of Napoleon? The very title of the +German emperor is the name of an Italian, Caesar, far gone in decay. And +the backbone of the German system at the present time is the Prussian, +who is not really a German at all but a Germanised Wend. Take away the +imported and imposed elements from the things we fight to-day, leave +nothing but what is purely and originally German, and you leave very +little. We fight dynastic ambition, national vanity, greed, and the +fruits of fifty years of basely conceived and efficiently conducted +education. + +The majority of sensible and influential Englishmen are fully aware of +these facts. This does not alter their resolution to beat Germany +thoroughly and finally, and, if Germany remains Hohenzollern after the +war, to do their utmost to ring her in with commercial alliances, +tariffs, navigation and exclusion laws that will keep her poor and +powerless and out of mischief so long as her vice remains in her. But +these considerations of the essential innocence of the German do make +all this systematic hostility, which the British have had forced upon +them, a very uncongenial and reluctant hostility. Pro-civilisation, and +not Anti-German, is the purpose of the Allies. And the speculation of +just how relentlessly and for how long this ring of suspicion and +precaution need be maintained about Germany, of how soon the German may +decide to become once more a good European, is one of extraordinary +interest to every civilised man. In other words, what are the prospects +of a fairly fundamental revolution in German life and thought and +affairs in the years immediately before us? + + +Sec.2 + +In a sense every European country must undergo revolutionary changes as +a consequence of the enormous economic exhaustion and social +dislocations of this war. But what I propose to discuss here is the +possibility of a real political revolution, in the narrower sense of +the word, in Germany, a revolution that will end the Hohenzollern +system, the German dynastic system, altogether, that will democratise +Prussia and put an end for ever to that secretive scheming of military +aggressions which is the essential quarrel of Europe with Germany. It is +the most momentous possibility of our times, because it opens the way to +an alternative state of affairs that may supersede the armed watching +and systematic war of tariffs, prohibitions, and exclusions against the +Central Empires that must quite unavoidably be the future attitude of +the Pledged Allies to any survival of the Hohenzollern empire. + +We have to bear in mind that in this discussion we are dealing with +something very new and quite untried hitherto by anything but success, +that new Germany whose unification began with the spoliation of Denmark +and was completed at Versailles. It is not a man's lifetime old. Under +the state socialism and aggressive militarism of the Hohenzollern regime +it had been led to a level of unexampled pride and prosperity, and it +plunged shouting and singing into this war, confident of victories. It +is still being fed with dwindling hopes of victory, no longer unstinted +hopes, but still hopes--by a sort of political bread-card system. The +hopes outlast the bread-and-butter, but they dwindle and dwindle. How is +this parvenu people going to stand the cessation of hope, the +realisation of the failure and fruitlessness of such efforts as no +people on earth have ever made before? How are they going to behave when +they realise fully that they have suffered and died and starved and +wasted all their land in vain? When they learn too that the cause of the +war was a trick, and the Russian invasion a lie? They have a large +democratic Press that will not hesitate to tell them that, that does +already to the best of its ability disillusion them. They are a +carefully trained and educated and disciplined people, it is true[4]; +but the solicitude of the German Government everywhere apparent, thus to +keep the resentment of the people directed to the proper quarter, is, I +think, just one of the things that are indicative of the revolutionary +possibilities in Germany. The Allied Governments let opinion, both in +their own countries and in America, shift for itself; they do not even +trouble to mitigate the inevitable exasperation of the military +censorship by an intelligent and tactful control. The German Government, +on the other hand, has organised the putting of the blame upon other +shoulders than its own elaborately and ably from the very beginning of +the war. It must know its own people best, and I do not see why it +should do this if there were not very dangerous possibilities ahead for +itself in the national temperament. + +[Footnote 4: A recent circular, which _Vorwaerts_ quotes, sent by the +education officials to the teachers of Frankfurt-am-Main, points out the +necessity of the "beautiful task" of inculcating a deep love for the +House of Hohenzollern (Crown Prince, grin and all), and concludes, "All +efforts to excuse or minimise or explain the disgraceful acts which our +enemies have committed against Germans all over the world are to be +firmly opposed by you should you see any signs of these efforts entering +the schools."] + +It is one of the commonplaces of this question that in the past the +Germans have always been loyal subjects and never made a revolution. It +is alleged that there has never been a German republic. That is by no +means conclusively true. The nucleus of Swiss freedom was the +German-speaking cantons about the Lake of Lucerne; Tell was a German, +and he was glorified by the German Schiller. No doubt the Protestant +reformation was largely a business of dukes and princes, but the +underlying spirit of that revolt also lay in the German national +character. The Anabaptist insurrection was no mean thing in rebellions, +and the history of the Dutch, who are, after all, only the extreme +expression of the Low German type, is a history of the most stubborn +struggle for freedom in Europe. This legend of German docility will not +bear close examination. It is true that they are not given to spasmodic +outbreaks, and that they do not lend themselves readily to intrigues and +pronunciamentos, but there is every reason to suppose that they have the +heads to plan and the wills to carry out as sound and orderly and +effective a revolution as any people in Europe. Before the war drove +them frantic, the German comic papers were by no means suggestive of an +abject worship of authority and royalty for their own sakes. The +teaching of all forms of morality and sentimentality in schools produces +not only belief but reaction, and the livelier and more energetic the +pupil the more likely he is to react rather than accept. + +Whatever the feelings of the old women of Germany may be towards the +Kaiser and his family, my impression of the opinion of Germans in +general is that they believed firmly in empire, Kaiser and militarism +wholly and solely because they thought these things meant security, +success, triumph, more and more wealth, more and more Germany, and all +that had come to them since 1871 carried on to the _n_th degree.... I do +not think that all the schoolmasters of Germany, teaching in unison at +the tops of their voices, will sustain that belief beyond the end of +this war. + +At present every discomfort and disappointment of the German people is +being sedulously diverted into rage against the Allies, and particularly +against the English. This is all very well as long as the war goes on +with a certain effect of hopefulness. But what when presently the beam +has so tilted against Germany that an unprofitable peace has become +urgent and inevitable? How can the Hohenzollern suddenly abandon his +pose of righteous indignation and make friends with the accursed enemy, +and how can he make any peace at all with us while he still proclaims us +accursed? Either the Emperor has to go to his people and say, "We +promised you victory and it is defeat," or he has to say, "It is not +defeat, but we are going to make peace with these Russian barbarians who +invaded us, with the incompetent English who betrayed us, with all these +degenerate and contemptible races you so righteously hate and despise, +upon such terms that we shall never be able to attack them again. This +noble and wonderful war is to end in this futility and--these graves. +You were tricked into it, as you were tricked into war in 1870--but this +time it has not turned out quite so well. And besides, after all, we +find we can continue to get on with these people." ... + +In either case, I do not see how he can keep the habitual and cultivated +German hate pointing steadily away from himself. So long as the war is +going on that may be done, but when the soldiers come home the hate will +come home as well. In times of war peoples may hate abroad and with some +unanimity. But after the war, with no war going on or any prospect of a +fresh war, with every exploiter and every industrial tyrant who has made +his unobtrusive profits while the country scowled and spat at England, +stripped of the cover of that excitement, then it is inevitable that +much of this noble hate of England will be seen for the cant it is. The +cultivated hate of the war phase, reinforced by the fresh hate born of +confusion and misery, will swing loose, as it were, seeking dispersedly +for objects. The petty, incessant irritations of proximity will count +for more; the national idea for less. The Hohenzollerns and the Junkers +will have to be very nimble indeed if the German accomplishment of hate +does not swing round upon them. + +It is a common hypothesis with those who speculate on the probable +effects of these disillusionments that Germany may break up again into +its component parts. It is pointed out that Germany is, so to speak, a +palimpsest, that the broad design of the great black eagle and the +imperial crown are but newly painted over a great number of +particularisms, and that these particularisms may return. The empire of +the Germans may break up again. That I do not believe. The forces that +unified Germany lie deeper than the Hohenzollern adventure; print, paper +and the spoken word have bound Germany now into one people for all time. +None the less those previous crowns and symbols that still show through +the paint of the new design may help greatly, as that weakens under the +coming stresses, to disillusion men about its necessity. There was, they +will be reminded, a Germany before Prussia, before Austria for the +matter of that. The empire has been little more than the first German +experiment in unity. It is a new-fangled thing that came and may go +again--leaving Germany still a nation, still with the sense of a common +Fatherland. + +Let us consider a little more particularly the nature of the mass of +population whose collective action in the years immediately ahead of us +we are now attempting to forecast. Its social strata are only very +inexactly equivalent to those in the countries of the Pledged Allies. +First there are the masses of the people. In England for purposes of +edification we keep up the legend of the extreme efficiency of Germany, +the high level of German education, and so forth. The truth is that the +average _elementary_ education of the common people in Britain is +superior to that of Germany, that the domestic efficiency of the British +common people is greater, their moral training better, and their +personal quality higher. This is shown by a number of quite conclusive +facts of which I will instance merely the higher German general +death-rate, the higher German infantile death-rate, the altogether +disproportionate percentage of crimes of violence in Germany, and the +indisputable personal superiority of the British common soldier over his +German antagonist. It is only when we get above the level of the masses +that the position is reversed. The ratio of public expenditure upon +secondary and higher education in Germany as compared with the +expenditure upon elementary education is out of all proportion to the +British ratio. + +Directly we come to the commercial, directive, official, technical and +professional classes in Germany, we come to classes far more highly +trained, more alert intellectually, more capable of collective action, +and more accessible to general ideas, than the less numerous and less +important corresponding classes in Britain. This great German middle +class is the strength and substance of the new Germany; it has increased +proportionally to the classes above and below it, it has developed +almost all its characteristics during the last half-century. At its +lower fringe it comprehends the skilled and scientifically trained +artisans, it supplies the brains of social democracy, and it reaches up +to the world of finance and quasi-state enterprise. And it is the "dark +horse" in all these speculations. + +Hitherto this middle class has been growing almost unawares. It has been +so busy coming into existence and growing, there has been so much to do +since 1871, that it has had scarcely a moment to think round the general +problem of politics at all. It has taken the new empire for granted as a +child takes its home for granted, and its state of mind to-day must be +rather like that of an intelligent boy who suddenly discovers that his +father's picturesque and wonderful speculations have led to his arrest +and brought the brokers into the house, and that there is nothing for it +but to turn to and take control of the family affairs. + +In Germany, the most antiquated and the most modern of European states, +the old dynastic Germany of the princes and junkers has lasted on by +virtue of exceptional successes and prestige into the world of steel and +electricity. But their prestige has paled before the engineering of +Krupp; their success evaporates. A new nation awakens to +self-consciousness only to find itself betrayed into apparently +irreconcilable hostility against the rest of mankind.... + +What will be the quality of the monarch and court and junkerdom that +will face this awaking new Germany? + +The monarch will be before very long the present Crown Prince. The +Hohenzollerns have at least the merit of living quickly, and the present +Emperor draws near his allotted term. He will break a record in his +family if he lives another dozen years. So that quite soon after the war +this new disillusioned Germany will be contemplating the imperial graces +of the present Crown Prince. In every way he is an unattractive and +uninspiring figure; he has identified himself completely with that +militarism that has brought about the European catastrophe; in +repudiating him Germany will repudiate her essential offence against +civilisation, and his appears to be the sort of personality that it is a +pleasure to repudiate. He or some kindred regent will be the symbol of +royalty in Germany through all those years of maximum stress and +hardship ahead. Through-out the greater part of Germany the tradition of +loyalty to his house is not a century old. And the real German loyalty +is racial and national far more than dynastic. It is not the +Hohenzollern over all that they sing about; it is Deutschland. (And--as +in the case of all imperfectly civilised people--songs of hate for +foreigners.) But it needed a decadent young American to sing: + + "Thou Prince of Peace, + Thou God of War," + +to the dismal rhetorician of Potsdam. Real emperors reconcile and +consolidate peoples, for an empire is not a nation; but the +Hohenzollerns have never dared to be anything but sedulously national, +"echt Deutsch" and advocates of black-letter. They know the people they +have to deal with. + +This new substantial middle mass of Germany has never been on friendly +terms with the Germany of the court and the landowner. It has inherited +a burgerlich tradition and resented even while it tolerated the swagger +of the aristocratic officer. It tolerated it because that sort of thing +was supposed to be necessary to the national success. But Munich, the +comic papers, Herr Harden, _Vorwaerts_, speak, I think, for the central +masses of German life far more truly than any official utterances do. +They speak in a voice a little gross, very sensible, blunt, with a kind +of heavy humour. That German voice one may not like, but one must needs +respect it. It is, at any rate, not bombastic. It is essentially honest. +When the imperial eagle comes home with half its feathers out like a +crow that has met a bear; when the surviving aristocratic officers +reappear with a vastly diminished swagger in the biergartens, I believe +that the hitherto acquiescent middle classes and skilled artisan class +of German will entirely disappoint those people who expect them to +behave either with servility or sentimental loyalty. The great +revolutionary impulse of the French was passionate and generous. The +revolutionary impulse of Germany may be even more deadly; it may be +contemptuous. It may be they will not even drag emperor and nobles down; +they will shove them aside.... + +In all these matters one must ask the reader to enlarge his perspectives +at least as far back as the last three centuries. The galaxy of German +monarchies that has over-spread so much of Europe is a growth of hardly +more than two centuries. It is a phase in the long process of the +break-up of the Roman Empire and of the catholic system that inherited +its tradition. These royalties have formed a class apart, breeding only +among themselves, and attempting to preserve a sort of caste +internationalism in the face of an advance in human intelligence, a +spread of printing, reading, and writing that makes inevitably for the +recrudescence of national and race feeling, and the increasing +participation of the people in government. + +In Russia and England these originally German dynasties are meeting the +problems of the new time by becoming national. They modify themselves +from year to year. The time when Britain will again have a Queen of +British race may not be very remote. The days when the affairs of Europe +could be discussed at Windsor in German and from a German standpoint +ended with the death of Queen Victoria, and it is only in such +improvised courts as those of Greece and Bulgaria that the national +outlook can still be contemplated from a foreign standpoint and +discussed in a foreign tongue. The age when the monarchical system made +the courts of three-quarters of Europe a German's Fatherland has ended +for ever. And with that, the last rational advantage of monarchy and +royalist sentimentality disappears from the middle-class German's point +of view. + +So it seems to me that the following conclusions about the future of +Germany emerge from these considerations. It is improbable that there +will be any such revolution as overthrew French Imperialism in 1871; the +new Prussian Imperialism is closer to the tradition of the people and +much more firmly established through the educational propaganda of the +past half-century. But liberal forces in Germany may nevertheless be +strong enough to force a peace upon the Hohenzollern empire so soon as +any hopes of aggressive successes die away, before the utmost stage of +exhaustion is reached, early in 1917, perhaps, or at latest in 1918. +This, we suppose, will be a restrictive peace so far as Germany is +concerned, humiliating her and hampering her development. The German +Press will talk freely of a _revanche_ and the renewal of the struggle, +and this will help to consolidate the Pledged Allies in their resolve to +hold Germany on every front and to retard her economic and financial +recovery. The dynasty will lose prestige gradually, the true story of +the war will creep slowly into the German consciousness, and the idea of +a middle-class republic, like the French Republic, only defensively +militant and essentially pacific and industrial, will become more and +more popular in the country. + +This will have the support of strong journalists, journalists of the +Harden type for example. The dynasty tends to become degenerate, so that +the probability of either some gross scandals or an ill-advised +reactionary movement back to absolutism may develop a crisis within a +few years of the peace settlement. The mercantile and professional +classes will join hands with the social democrats to remove the decaying +incubus of the Hohenzollern system, and Germany will become a more +modern and larger repetition of the Third French republic. This collapse +of the Germanic monarchical system may spread considerably beyond the +limits of the German empire. It will probably be effected without much +violence as a consequence of the convergence and maturity of many +streams of very obvious thought. Many of the monarchs concerned may find +themselves still left with their titles, palaces, and personal estates, +and merely deprived of their last vestiges of legal power. The way will +thus be opened for a gradual renewal of good feeling between the people +of Germany and the western Europeans. This renewal will be greatly +facilitated by the inevitable fall in the German birth-rate that the +shortage and economies of this war will have done much to promote, and +by the correlated discrediting of the expansionist idea. By 1960 or so +the alteration of perspectives will have gone so far that historians +will be a little perplexed to explain the causes of the Great War. The +militarist monomania of Germany will have become incomprehensible; her +_Welt Politik_ literature incredible and unreadable.... + +Such is my reading of the German horoscope. + +I doubt if there will be nearly so much writing and reading about the +Great War in the latter half of the twentieth century as there was about +Napoleon at the end of the nineteenth. The Great War is essentially +undramatic, it has no hero, it has no great leaders. It is a story of +the common sense of humanity suppressing certain tawdry and vulgar ideas +and ambitions, and readjusting much that was wasteful and unjust in +social and economic organisation. It is the story of how the spirit of +man was awakened by a nightmare of a War Lord.... The nightmare will +fade out of mind, and the spirit of man, with revivified energies, will +set about the realities of life, the re-establishment of order, the +increase of knowledge and creation. Amid these realities the great +qualities of the Germans mark them for a distinguished and important +role. + + +Sec.3 + +The primary business of the Allies is not reconciliation with Germany. +Their primary concern is to organise a great League of Peace about the +world with which the American States and China may either unite or +establish a permanent understanding. Separate attempts to restore +friendship with the Germans will threaten the unanimity of the League of +Peace, and perhaps renew the intrigues and evils of the Germanic +dynastic system which this war may destroy. The essential restoration of +Germany must be the work of German men speaking plain sense to Germans, +and inducing their country to hold out its hand not to this or that +suspicious neighbour but to mankind. A militarist Germany is a Germany +self-condemned to isolation or world empire. A Germany which has +returned to the ways of peace, on the other hand, will be a country that +cannot be kept out of the system of civilisation. The tariff wall cannot +but be lowered, the watchful restrictions cannot but be discontinued +against such a Germany. Europe is a system with its heart half used, so +long as Germany is isolated. The German population is and will remain +the central and largest mass of people in Europe. That is a fact as +necessary as the Indianism of India. + +To reconstruct modern civilisation without Germany would be a colossal +artificial task that would take centuries to do. It is inconceivable +that Germany will stand out of Europeanism so long as to allow the trade +routes of the world to be entirely deflected from her. Her own +necessities march with the natural needs of the world. + +So that I give the alliance for the isolation of Germany at the outside +a life of forty years before it ceases to be necessary through the +recovered willingness of the Germans to lay aside aggression. + +But this is not a thing to be run at too hastily. It may be easily +possible to delay this national general reconciliation of mankind by an +unreal effusion. There will be no advantage in forcing the feelings of +the late combatants. It is ridiculous to suppose that for the next +decade or so, whatever happens, any Frenchmen are going to feel genial +about the occupation of their north-east provinces, or any Belgians +smile at the memory of Dinant or Louvain, or the Poles or Serbs forgive +the desolation of their country, or any English or Russians take a +humorous view of the treatment their people have had as prisoners in +Germany. So long as these are living memories they will keep a barrier +of dislike about Germany. Nor is it probable that the ordinary German +is going to survey the revised map of Africa with a happy sense of +relief, or blame no one but himself for the vanished prosperity of 1914. +That is asking too much of humanity. Unless I know nothing of Germany, +Germany will bristle with "denkmals" to keep open all such sores. The +dislike of Germany by the allied nations will be returned in the +hostility of a thwarted and disappointed people. Not even the neutrals +will be aloof from these hostilities and resentments. The world will +still, in 1950 or so, be throwing much passion into the rights and +wrongs of the sinking of the _Lusitania_. There will be a bitterness in +the memories of this and the next generation that will make the +spectacle of ardent Frenchmen or Englishmen or Belgians or Russians +embracing Germans with gusto--unpleasant, to say the least of it. + +We may bring ourselves to understand, we may bring ourselves to a cold +and reasonable forgiveness, we may suppress our Sir George Makgills and +so forth, but it will take sixty or seventy years for the two sides in +this present war to grow kindly again. Let us build no false hopes nor +pretend to any false generosities. These hatreds can die out only in one +way, by the passing of a generation, by the dying out of the wounded +and the wronged. Our business, our unsentimental business, is to set +about establishing such conditions that they will so die out. And that +is the business of the sane Germans too. Behind the barriers this war +will have set up between Germany and Anti-Germany, the intelligent men +in either camp must prepare the ultimate peace they will never enjoy, +must work for the days when their sons at least may meet as they +themselves can never meet, without accusation or resentment, upon the +common business of the World Peace. That is not to be done by any +conscientious sentimentalities, any slobbering denials of unforgettable +injuries. We want no Pro-German Leagues any more than we want +Anti-German Leagues. We want patience--and silence. + +My reason insists upon the inevitableness and necessity of this ultimate +reconciliation. I will do no more than I must to injure Germany further, +and I will do all that I can to restore the unity of mankind. None the +less is it true that for me for all the rest of my life the Germans I +shall meet, the German things I shall see, will be smeared with the +blood of my people and my friends that the wilfulness of Germany has +spilt. + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of What is Coming?, by H. G. Wells + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT IS COMING? *** + +***** This file should be named 11289.txt or 11289.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/1/2/8/11289/ + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Dave Morgan and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + +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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