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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Fruits of Victory, by Norman Angell
-
-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/license
-
-
-Title: The Fruits of Victory
-       A Sequel to The Great Illusion
-
-Author: Norman Angell
-
-Release Date: August 29, 2013 [EBook #43598]
-
-Language: English
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FRUITS OF VICTORY ***
-
-
-
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 43598 ***
 
 Produced by David Edwards, Chuck Greif and the Online
 Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
@@ -12676,366 +12656,4 @@ econmic=> economic {pg 303}
 
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+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 43598 ***
diff --git a/43598-8.txt b/43598-8.txt
deleted file mode 100644
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--- a/43598-8.txt
+++ /dev/null
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Fruits of Victory, by Norman Angell
-
-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/license
-
-
-Title: The Fruits of Victory
-       A Sequel to The Great Illusion
-
-Author: Norman Angell
-
-Release Date: August 29, 2013 [EBook #43598]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FRUITS OF VICTORY ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by David Edwards, Chuck Greif and the Online
-Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
-file was produced from images generously made available
-by The Internet Archive)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-                         THE FRUITS OF VICTORY
-
-
-
-
-                    "THE GREAT ILLUSION" CONTROVERSY
-
-
-     'Mr. Angell's pamphlet was a work as unimposing in form as it was
-     daring in expression. For a time nothing was heard of it in public,
-     but many of us will remember the curious way in which ... "Norman
-     Angellism" suddenly became one of the principal topics of
-     discussion amongst politicians and journalists all over Europe.
-     Naturally at first it was the apparently extravagant and
-     paradoxical elements that were fastened upon most--that the whole
-     theory of the commercial basis of war was wrong, that no modern war
-     could make a profit for the victors, and that--most astonishing
-     thing of all--a successful war might leave the conquerors who
-     received the indemnity relatively worse off than the conquered who
-     raid it. People who had been brought up in the acceptance of the
-     idea that a war between nations was analogous to the struggle of
-     two errand boys for an apple, and that victory inevitably meant
-     economic gain, were amazed into curiosity. Men who had never
-     examined a Pacifist argument before read Mr. Angell's book. Perhaps
-     they thought that his doctrines sounded so extraordinarily like
-     nonsense that there really must be some sense in them or nobody
-     would have dared to propound them.'--_The New Stateman_, October
-     11, 1913.
-
-     'The fundamental proposition of the book is a mistake.... And the
-     proposition that the extension of national territory--that is the
-     bringing of a large amount of property under a single
-     administration--is not to the financial advantage of a nation
-     appears to me as illusory as to maintain that business on a small
-     capital is as profitable as on a large.... The armaments of
-     European States now are not so much for protection against conquest
-     as to secure to themselves the utmost possible share of the
-     unexploited or imperfectly exploited regions of the world.'--The
-     late ADMIRAL MAHAN.
-
-     'I have long ago described the policy of _The Great Illusion_ ...
-     not only as a childish absurdity but a mischievous and immoral
-     sophism.'--MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.
-
-     'Among the mass of printed books there are a few that may be
-     counted as acts, not books. _The Control Social_ was indisputably
-     one; and I venture to suggest to you that _The Great Illusion_ is
-     another. The thesis of Galileo was not more diametrically opposed
-     to current ideas than those of Norman Angell. Yet it had in the end
-     a certain measure of success.'--VISCOUNT ESHER.
-
-     'When all criticisms are spent, it remains to express a debt of
-     gratitude to Mr. Angell. He belongs to the cause of
-     internationalism--the greatest of all the causes to which a man can
-     set his hands in these days. The cause will not triumph by
-     economics. But it cannot reject any ally. And if the economic
-     appeal is not final, it has its weight. "We shall perish of
-     hunger," it has been said, "in order to have success in murder." To
-     those who have ears for that saying, it cannot be said too
-     often.'--_Political Thought in England, from Herbert Spencer to the
-     Present Day_, by ERNEST BARKER.
-
-     'A wealth of closely reasoned argument which makes the book one of
-     the most damaging indictments that have yet appeared of the
-     principles governing the relation of civilized nations to one
-     another.'--_The Quarterly Review._
-
-     'Ranks its author with Cobden amongst the greatest of our
-     pamphleteers, perhaps the greatest since Swift.'--_The Nation._
-
-     'No book has attracted wider attention or has done more to
-     stimulate thought in the present century than _The Great
-     Illusion_.'--_The Daily Mail._
-
-     'One of the most brilliant contributions to the literature of
-     international relations which has appeared for a very long
-     time.'--_Journal of the Institute of Bankers._
-
-     'After five and a half years in the wilderness, Mr. Norman Angell
-     has come back.... His book provoked one of the great controversies
-     of this generation.... To-day, Mr. Angell, whether he likes it or
-     not, is a prophet whose prophesies have come true.... It is hardly
-     possible to open a current newspaper without the eye lighting on
-     some fresh vindication of the once despised and rejected doctrine
-     of Norman Angellism.'--_The Daily News_, February 25, 1920.
-
-
-
-
-                                  THE
-                           FRUITS OF VICTORY
-
-                              A SEQUEL TO
-                          "THE GREAT ILLUSION"
-
-                                   BY
-                             NORMAN ANGELL
-
-                        [Illustration: colophon]
-
-                                NEW YORK
-
-                            THE CENTURY CO.
-
-                                  1921
-
-
-
-
-   _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
-
-      PATRIOTISM UNDER THREE FLAGS
-      THE GREAT ILLUSION
-      THE FOUNDATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL POLITY
-      WHY FREEDOM MATTERS
-      WAR AND THE WORKER
-      AMERICA AND THE WORLD STATE (AMERICA)
-      PRUSSIANISM AND ITS DESTRUCTION
-      THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY (AMERICA)
-      WAR AIMS
-      DANGERS OF HALF-PREPAREDNESS (AMERICA)
-      POLITICAL CONDITIONS OF ALLIED SUCCESS (AMERICA)
-      THE BRITISH REVOLUTION AND THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY (AMERICA)
-      THE PEACE TREATY AND THE ECONOMIC CHAOS
-
-
-                          Copyright, 1921, by
-                            THE CENTURY CO.
-
-                       _Printed in the U. S. A._
-
-
-
-
-                                To H. S.
-
-
-
-
-INTRODUCTION TO THE AMERICAN EDITION
-
-
-The case which is argued in these pages includes the examination of
-certain concrete matters which very obviously and directly touch
-important American interests--American foreign trade and investments,
-the exchanges, immigration, armaments, taxation, industrial unrest and
-the effect of these on social and political organisation. Yet the
-greatest American interest here discussed is not any one of those
-particular issues, or even the sum of them, but certain underlying
-forces which more than anything else, perhaps, influence all of them.
-The American reader will have missed the main bearing of the argument
-elaborated in these pages unless that point can be made clear.
-
-Let us take a few of the concrete issues just mentioned. The opening
-chapter deals with the motives which may push Great Britain still to
-struggle for the retention of predominant power at sea. The force of
-those motives is obviously destined to be an important factor in
-American politics, in determining, for instance, the amount of American
-taxation. It bears upon the decisions which American voters and American
-statesmen will be called upon to make in American elections within the
-next few years. Or take another aspect of the same question: the
-peculiar position of Great Britain in the matter of her dependence upon
-foreign food. This is shown to be typical of a condition common to very
-much of the population of Europe, and brings us to the problem of the
-pressure of population in the older civilisations upon the means of
-subsistence. That "biological pressure" is certain, in some
-circumstances, to raise for America questions of immigration, of
-relations generally with foreign countries, of defence, which American
-statesmanship will have to take into account in the form of definite
-legislation that will go on to American Statute books. Or, take the
-general problem of the economic reconstruction of Europe, with which the
-book is so largely occupied. That happens to bear, not merely on the
-expansion of American trade, the creation of new markets, that is, and
-on the recovery of American debts, but upon the preservation of markets
-for cotton, wheat, meat and other products, to which large American
-communities have in the past looked, and do still look, for their
-prosperity and even for their solvency. Again, dealing with the manner
-in which the War has affected the economic organisation of the European
-society, the writer has been led to describe the process by which
-preparation for modern war has come to mean, to an increasing degree,
-control by the government of the national resources as a whole, thus
-setting up strong tendencies towards a form of State Socialism. To
-America, herself facing a more far-reaching organisation of the national
-resources for military purposes than she has known in the past, the
-analysis of such a process is certainly of very direct concern. Not less
-so is the story of the relation of revolutionary forces in the
-industrial struggle--"Bolshevism"--to the tendencies so initiated or
-stimulated.
-
-One could go on expanding this theme indefinitely, and write a whole
-book about America's concern in these things. But surely in these days
-it would be a book of platitudes, elaborately pointing out the obvious.
-Yet an American critic of these pages in their European form warns me
-that I must be careful to show their interest for American readers.
-
-Their main interest for the American is not in the kind of relationship
-just indicated, very considerable and immediate as that happens to be.
-Their chief interest is in this: they attempt an analysis of the
-ultimate forces of policies in Western society; of the interrelation of
-fundamental economic needs and of predominant political ideas--public
-opinion, with its constituent elements of "human nature," social--or
-anti-social--instinct, the tradition of Patriotism and Nationalism, the
-mechanism of the modern Press. It is suggested in these pages that some
-of the main factors of political action, the dominant motives of
-political conduct, are still grossly neglected by "practical statesmen";
-and that the statesmen still treat as remote and irrelevant certain
-moral forces which recent events have shown to have very great and
-immediate practical importance. (A number of cases are discussed in
-which practical and realist European statesmen have seen their plans
-touching the stability of alliances, the creation of international
-credit, the issuing of international loans, indemnities, a "new world"
-generally, all this frustrated because in drawing them up they ignored
-the invisible but final factor of public feeling and temper, which the
-whole time they were modifying or creating, thus unconsciously
-undermining the edifices they were so painfully creating. Time and again
-in the last few years practical men of affairs in Europe have found
-themselves the helpless victims of a state of feeling or opinion which
-they so little understood that they had often themselves unknowingly
-created it.)
-
-In such hard realities as the exaction of an indemnity, we see
-governments forced to policies which can only make their task more
-difficult, but which they are compelled to adopt in order to placate
-electoral opinion, or to repel an opposition which would exploit some
-prevailing prejudice or emotion.
-
-To understand the nature of forces which must determine America's main
-domestic and foreign policies--as they have determined those of Western
-Society in Europe during the last generation--is surely an "American
-interest"; though indeed, in neglecting the significance of those
-"hidden currents flowing continually beneath the surface of political
-history," American students of politics would be following much
-European precedent. Although public opinion and feeling are the raw
-material with which statesmen deal, it is still considered irrelevant
-and academic to study the constituent elements of that raw material.
-
-Americans are sufficiently detached from Europe to see that in the way
-of a better unification of that Continent for the purposes of its own
-economic and moral restoration stand disruptive forces of
-"Balkanisation," a development of the spirit of Nationalism which the
-statesmen for years have encouraged and exploited. The American of
-to-day speaks of the Balkanisation of Europe just as the Englishman of
-two or three years ago spoke of the Balkanisation of the Continent, of
-the wrangles of Poles, Czecho-Slovaks, Hungarians, Rumanians, Italians,
-Jugo-Slavs. And the attitude of both Englishman and American are alike
-in this: to the Englishman, watching the squabbles of all the little new
-States and the breaking out of all the little new wars, there seemed at
-work in that spectacle forces so suicidal that they could never in any
-degree touch his own political problems; the American to-day, watching
-British policy in Ireland or French policy towards Germany, feels that
-in such conflict are moral forces that could never produce similar
-paralysis in American policy. "Why," asks the confident American, "does
-England bring such unnecessary trouble upon herself by her military
-conduct in Ireland? Why does France keep three-fourths of a Continent
-still in ferment, making reparations more and more remote"? Americans
-have a very strong feeling that they could not be guilty of the Irish
-mess, or of prolonging the confusion which threatens to bring Europe's
-civilisation to utter collapse. How comes it that the English people, so
-genuinely and so sincerely horrified at the thought of what a Bissing
-could do in Belgium, unable to understand how the German people could
-tolerate a government guilty of such things, somehow find that their own
-British Government is doing very similar things in Cork and Balbriggan;
-and finding it, simply acquiesce? To the American the indefensibility of
-British conduct is plain. "America could never be guilty of it." To the
-Englishman just now, the indefensibility of French conduct is plain. The
-policy which France is following is seen to be suicidal from the point
-of view of French interests. The Englishman is sure that "English
-political sense" would never tolerate it in an English government.
-
-The situation suggests this question: would Americans deny that England
-in the past has shown very great political genius, or that the French
-people are alert, open-minded, "realist," intelligent? Recalling what
-England has done in the way of the establishment of great free
-communities, the flexibility and "practicalness" of her imperial policy,
-what France has contributed to democracy and European organisation, can
-we explain the present difficulties of Europe by the absence, on the
-part of Englishmen or Frenchmen, or other Europeans, of a political
-intelligence granted only so far in the world's history to Americans? In
-other words, do Americans seriously argue that the moral forces which
-have wrought such havoc in the foreign policy of European States could
-never threaten the foreign policy of America? Does the American plead
-that the circumstances which warp an Englishman's or Frenchman's
-judgment could never warp an American's? Or that he could never find
-himself in similar circumstances? As a matter of fact, of course, that
-is precisely what the American--like the Englishman or Frenchman or
-Italian in an analogous case--does plead. To have suggested five years
-ago to an Englishman that his own generals in India or Ireland would
-copy Bissing, would have been deemed too preposterous even for anger:
-but then equally, to Americans, supporting in their millions in 1916 the
-League to Enforce Peace, would the idea have seemed preposterous that a
-few years later America, having the power to take the lead in a Peace
-League, would refuse to do so, and would herself be demanding, as the
-result of participation in a war to end war, greater armament than
-ever--as protection against Great Britain.
-
-I suggest that if an English government can be led to sanction and
-defend in Ireland the identical things which shocked the world when
-committed in Belgium by Germans, if France to-day threatens Europe with
-a military hegemony not less mischievous than that which America
-determined to destroy, the causes of those things must be sought, not in
-the special wickedness of this or that nation, but in forces which may
-operate among any people.
-
-One peculiarity of the prevailing political mind stands out. It is
-evident that a sensible, humane and intelligent people, even with
-historical political sense, can quite often fail to realise how one step
-of policy, taken willingly, must lead to the taking of other steps which
-they detest. If Mr. Lloyd George is supporting France, if the French
-Government is proclaiming policies which it knows to be disastrous, but
-which any French Government must offer to its people or perish, it is
-because somewhere in the past there have been set in motion forces the
-outcome of which was not realised. And if the outcome was not realised,
-although, looking back, or looking at the situation from the distance of
-America from Europe, the inevitability of the result seems plain enough,
-I suggest that it is because judgment becomes warped as the result of
-certain feelings or predominant ideas; and that it will be impossible
-wisely to guide political conduct without some understanding of the
-nature of those feelings and ideas, and unless we realise with some
-humility and honesty that all nations alike are subject to these
-weaknesses.
-
-We all of us clamantly and absolutely deny this plain fact when it is
-suggested that it also applies to our own people. What would have
-happened to the publicist who, during the War, should have urged:
-"Complete and overwhelming victory will be bad, because we shall misuse
-it?" Yet all the victories of history would have been ground for such a
-warning. Universal experience was not merely flouted by the
-uninstructed. One of the curiosities of war literature is the fashion in
-which the most brilliant minds, not alone in politics, but in literature
-and social science, simply disregard this obvious truth. We each knew
-"our" people--British, French, Italian, American--to be good people:
-kindly, idealistic, just. Give them the power to do the Right--to do
-justice, to respect the rights of others, to keep the peace--and it will
-be done. That is why we wanted "unconditional surrender" of the Germans,
-and indignantly rejected a negotiated peace. It was admitted, of course,
-that injustice at the settlement would fail to give us the world we
-fought for. It was preposterous to suppose that we, the defenders of
-freedom and democracy, arbitration, self-determination,--America,
-Britain, France, Japan, Russia, Italy, Rumania--should not do exact and
-complete justice. So convinced, indeed, were we of this that we may
-search in vain the works of all the Allied writers to whom any attention
-was paid, for any warning whatsoever of the one danger which, in fact,
-wrecked the settlement, threw the world back into its oldest
-difficulties, left it fundamentally just where it was, reduced the War
-to futility. The one condition of justice--that the aggrieved party
-should not be in the position of imposing his unrestrained will--, the
-one truth which, for the world's welfare, it was most important to
-proclaim, was the one which it was black heresy and blasphemy to utter,
-and which, to do them justice, the moral and intellectual guides of the
-nations never did utter.
-
-It is precisely the truth which Americans to-day are refusing to face.
-We all admit that, "human nature being what it is," preponderance of
-power, irresponsible power, is something which no nation (but our own)
-can be trusted to use wisely or with justice. The backbone of American
-policy shall therefore be an effort to retain preponderance of power. If
-this be secured, little else matters. True, the American advocate of
-isolation to-day says: "We are not concerned with Europe. We ask only
-to be let alone. Our preponderance of power, naval or other, threatens
-no-one. It is purely defensive." Yet the truth is that the demand for
-preponderance of armaments itself involves a denial of right. Let us see
-why.
-
-No one denies that the desire to possess a definitely preponderant navy
-is related, at least in some degree, to such things as, shall we say,
-the dispute over the Panama tolls. A growing number feel and claim that
-that is a purely American dispute. To subject it to arbitral decision,
-in which necessarily Europeans would have a preponderance, would be to
-give away the American case beforehand. With unquestioned naval
-preponderance over any probable combination of rivals, America is in a
-position to enforce compliance with what she believes to be her just
-rights. At this moment a preponderant navy is being urged on precisely
-those grounds. In other words, the demand is that in a dispute to which
-she is a party she shall be judge, and able to impose her own judgement.
-That is to say, she demands from others the acceptance of a position
-which she would not herself accept. There is nothing at all unusual in
-the demand. It is the feeling which colours the whole attitude of
-combative nationalism. But it none the less means that "adequate
-defence" on this basis inevitably implies a moral aggression--a demand
-upon others which, if made by others upon ourselves, we should resist to
-the death.
-
-It is not here merely or mainly the question of a right: American
-foreign policy has before it much the same alternatives with reference
-to the world as a whole, as were presented to Great Britain with
-reference to the Continent in the generation which preceded the War. Her
-"splendid isolation" was defended on grounds which very closely resemble
-those now put forward by America as the basis of the same policy.
-Isolation meant, of course, preponderance of power, and when she
-declared her intention to use that power only on behalf of even-handed
-justice, she not only meant it, but carried out the intention, at least
-to an extent that no other nation has done. She accorded a degree of
-equality in economic treatment which is without parallel. One thing only
-led her to depart from justice: that was the need of maintaining the
-supremacy. For this she allowed herself to become involved in certain
-exceedingly entangling Alliances. Indeed, Great Britain found that at no
-period of her history were her domestic politics so much dominated by
-the foreign situation as when she was proclaiming to the world her
-splendid isolation from foreign entanglements. It is as certain, of
-course, that American "isolation" would mean that the taxation of Gopher
-Prairie would be settled in Tokio; and that tens of thousands of
-American youth would be sentenced to death by unknown elderly gentlemen
-in a European Cabinet meeting. If the American retorts that his country
-is in a fundamentally different position, because Great Britain
-possesses an Empire and America does not, that only proves how very much
-current ideas in politics fail to take cognizance of the facts. The
-United States to-day has in the problem of the Philippines, their
-protection and their trade, and the bearing of those things upon
-Japanese policy; in Hayti and the West Indies, and their bearing upon
-America's subject nationality problem of the negro; in Mexico, which is
-likely to provide America with its Irish problem; in the Panama Canal
-tolls question and its relation to the development of a mercantile
-marine and naval competition with Great Britain, in these things alone,
-to mention no others, subjects of conflict, involving defence of
-American interests, out of which will arise entanglements not differing
-greatly in kind from the foreign questions which dominated British
-domestic policy during the period of British isolation.
-
-Now, what America will do about these things will not depend upon highly
-rationalised decisions, reached by a hundred million independent
-thinkers investigating the facts concerning the Panama Treaty, the
-respective merits of alternative alliance combinations, or the real
-nature of negro grievances. American policy will be determined by the
-same character of force as has determined British policy in Ireland or
-India, in Morocco or Egypt, French policy in Germany or in Poland, or
-Italian policy in the Adriatic. The "way of thinking" which is applied
-to the decisions of the American democracy has behind it the same kind
-of moral and intellectual force that we find in the society of Western
-Europe as a whole. Behind the American public mind lie practically the
-same economic system based on private property, the same kind of
-political democracy, the same character of scholastic training, the same
-conceptions of nationalism, roughly the same social and moral values. If
-we find certain sovereign ideas determining the course of British or
-French or Italian policy, giving us certain results, we may be sure that
-the same ideas will, in the case of America, give us very much the same
-results.
-
-When Britain spoke of "splendid isolation," she meant what America means
-by the term to-day, namely, a position by virtue of which, when it came
-to a conflict of policy between herself and others, she should possess
-preponderant power, so that she could impose her own view of her own
-rights, be judge and executioner in her own case. To have suggested to
-an Englishman twenty years ago that the real danger to the security of
-his country lay in the attitude of mind dominant among Englishmen
-themselves, that the fundamental defect of English policy was that it
-asked of others something which Englishmen would never accord if asked
-by others of them, and that such a policy was particularly inimical in
-the long run to Great Britain, in that her population lived by processes
-which dominant power could not, in the last resort, exact--such a line
-of argument would have been, and indeed was, regarded as too remote from
-practical affairs to be worth the attention of practical politicians. A
-discussion of the Japanese Alliance, the relations with Russia, the size
-of foreign fleets, the Bagdad railway, would have been regarded as
-entirely practical and relevant. These things were the "facts" of
-politics. It was not regarded as relevant to the practical issues to
-examine the role of certain general ideas and traditions which had grown
-up in England in determining the form of British policy. The growth of a
-crude philosophy of militarism, based on a social pseudo-Darwinism, the
-popularity of Kipling and Roberts, the jingoism of the Northcliffe
-Press--these things might be regarded as items in the study of social
-psychology; they were not regarded as matters for the practical
-statesman. "What would you have us do about them, anyway?"
-
-It has happened to the present writer, in addressing American students,
-to lay stress upon the r�le of certain dominant ideas in determining
-policy (upon the idea, say, of the State as a person, upon the
-conception of States as necessarily rival entities), and afterwards to
-get questions in this wise: "Your lecture seems to imply an
-internationalist policy. What is your plan? What ought we to do? Should
-we make a naval alliance, with Great Britain, or form a new League of
-Nations, or denounce Article X, or ...?" I have replied: "The first
-thing to do is to change your ideas and moral values; or to get to know
-them better. That is the most practical and immediate platform, because
-all others depend on it. We all profess great love of peace and justice.
-What will you pay for it, in terms of national sovereignty? What degree
-of sovereignty will you surrender as your contribution to a new order?
-If your real feeling is for domination, then the only effect of writing
-constitutions of the League of Nations will be to render international
-organisation more remote than ever, by showing how utterly incompatible
-it is with prevailing moral values."
-
-But such a reply is usually regarded as hopelessly "unpractical." There
-is no indication of something to be "done"--a platform to be defended or
-a law to be passed. To change fundamental opinions and redirect desires
-is not apparently to "do" anything at all. Yet until that invisible
-thing is done our Covenants and Leagues will be as futile as have been
-the numberless similar plans of the past, "concerning which," as one
-seventeenth century critic wrote, "I know no single imperfection save
-this: That by no possibility would any Prince or people be brought to
-abide by them." It was, I believe, regarded as a triumph of practical
-organisation to have obtained nation-wide support for the 'League to
-Enforce Peace' proposal, "without raising controversial matters at
-all"--leaving untouched, that is, the underlying ideas of patriotism, of
-national right and international obligation, the prevailing moral and
-political values, in fact. The subsequent history of America's relation
-to the world's effort to create a League of Nations is sufficient
-commentary as to whether it is "practical" to devise plans and
-constitutions without reference to a prevailing attitude of mind.
-
-America has before her certain definite problems of foreign
-policy--Japanese immigration into the United States and the Philippines;
-concessions granted to foreigners in Mexico; the question of disorder in
-that country; the relations with Hayti (which will bear on the question
-of America's subject nationality, the negro); the exemption of American
-ships from tolls in the Panama Canal; the exclusion of foreign shipping
-from "coastwise" trade with the Philippines. It would be possible to
-draw up plans of settlement with regard to each item which would be
-equitable. But the development of foreign policy (which, more than any
-other department of politics, will fix the quality of American society
-in the future) will not depend upon the more or less equitable
-settlement of those specific questions. The specific differences between
-England and Germany before the War were less serious than those between
-England and America--and were nearly all settled when war broke out.
-Whether an issue like Japanese immigration or the Panama tolls leads to
-war will not depend upon its intrinsic importance, or whether Britain or
-Japan or America make acceptable proposals on the subject. Mr
-ex-Secretary Daniels has just told us that the assertion of the right
-to establish a cable station on the Island of Yap is good ground for
-risking war. The specific issues about which nations fight are so little
-the real cause of the fight that they are generally completely forgotten
-when it comes to making the peace. The future of submarine warfare was
-not mentioned at Versailles. Given a certain state of mind, a difference
-about cables on the Island of Yap is quite sufficient to make war
-inevitable. We should probably regard it as a matter of national honour,
-concerning which there must be no argument. Another mood, and it would
-be impossible to get the faintest ripple of interest in the subject.
-
-It was not British passion for Serbian nationality which brought Britain
-to the side of Russia in 1914. It was the fear of German power and what
-might be done with it, a fear wrought to frenzy pitch by a long
-indoctrination concerning German wickedness and aggression. Passion for
-the subjugation of Germany persisted long after there was any ground of
-fear of what German power might accomplish. If America fights Japan, it
-will not be over cables on Yap; it will be from fear of Japanese power,
-the previous stimulation of latent hatreds for the strange and foreign.
-And if the United States goes to war over Panama Canal tolls, it will
-not be because the millions who will get excited over that question have
-examined the matter, or possess ships or shares in ships that will
-profit by the exemption; it will be because all America has read of
-Irish atrocities which recall school-day histories of British atrocities
-in the American Colonies; because the "person," Britain, has become a
-hateful and hostile person, and must be punished and coerced.
-
-War either with Japan or Britain or both is, of course, quite within the
-region of possibility. It is merely an evasion of the trouble which
-facing reality always involves, to say that war between Britain and
-America is "unthinkable." If any war, as we have known it these last ten
-years, is thinkable, war between nations that have already fought two
-wars is obviously not unthinkable. And those who can recall at all
-vividly the forces which marked the growth of the conflict between
-Britain and Germany will see just those forces beginning to colour the
-relations of Britain and America. Among those forces none is more
-notable than this: a disturbing tendency to stop short at the ultimate
-questions, a failure to face the basic causes of divergence. Among
-people of good will there is a tendency to say: "Don't let's talk about
-it. Be discreet. Let us assume we are good friends and we shall be. Let
-us exchange visits." In just such a way, even within a few weeks of war,
-did people of good will in England and Germany decide not to talk of
-their differences, to be discreet, to exchange visits. But the men of
-ill will talked--talked of the wrong things--and sowed their deadly
-poison.
-
-These pages suggest why neither side in the Anglo-German conflict came
-down to realities before the War. To have come to fundamentals would
-have revealed the fact to both parties that any real settlement would
-have asked things which neither would grant. Really to have secured
-Germany's future economic security would have meant putting her access
-to the resources of India and Africa upon a basis of Treaty, of
-contract. That was for Britain the end of Empire, as Imperialists
-understood it. To have secured in exchange the end of "marching and
-drilling" would have been the end of military glory for Prussia. For
-both it would have meant the surrender of certain dominations, a
-recasting of patriotic ideals, a revolution of ideas.
-
-Whether Britain and America are to fight may very well depend upon this:
-whether the blinder and more unconscious motives rooted in traditional
-patriotisms, and the impulse to the assertion of power, will work their
-evil before the development of ideas has brought home to us a clearer
-vision of the abyss into which we fall; before we have modified, in
-other words, our tradition of patriotism, our political moralities, our
-standard of values. Without that more fundamental change no scheme of
-settlement of specific differences, no platforms, Covenants,
-Constitution can avail, or have any chance of acceptance or success.
-
-As a contribution to that change of ideas and of values these pages are
-offered.
-
-
-SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT
-
-The central conclusion suggested by the following analysis of the events
-of the past few years is that, underlying the disruptive processes so
-evidently at work--especially in the international field--is the
-deep-rooted instinct to the assertion of domination, preponderant power.
-This impulse sanctioned and strengthened by prevailing traditions of
-'mystic' patriotism, has been unguided and unchecked by any adequate
-realisation either of its anti-social quality, the destructiveness
-inseparable from its operation, or its ineffectiveness to ends
-indispensable to civilisation.
-
-The psychological roots of the impulse are so deep that we shall
-continue to yield to it until we realise more fully its danger and
-inadequacy to certain vital ends like sustenance for our people, and
-come to see that if civilisation is to be carried on we must turn to
-other motives. We may then develop a new political tradition, which will
-'discipline' instinct, as the tradition of toleration disciplined
-religious fanaticism when that passion threatened to shatter European
-society.
-
-Herein lies the importance of demonstrating the economic futility of
-military power. While it may be true that conscious economic motives
-enter very little into the struggle of nations, and are a very small
-part of the passions of patriotism and nationalism, it is by a
-realisation of the economic truth regarding the indispensable condition
-of adequate life, that those passions will be checked, or redirected and
-civilised.
-
-This does not mean that economic considerations should dominate life,
-but rather the contrary--that those considerations will dominate it if
-the economic truth is neglected. A people that starves is a people
-thinking only of material things--food. The way to dispose of economic
-pre-occupations is to solve the economic problem.
-
-The bearing of this argument is that developed by the present writer in
-a previous book, _The Great Illusion_, and the extent to which it has
-been vindicated by events, is shown in the Addendum.
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
-
-CHAPTER                                                             PAGE
-
-  I OUR DAILY BREAD                                                    3
-
- II THE OLD ECONOMY AND THE POST-WAR STATE                            61
-
-III NATIONALITY, ECONOMICS, AND THE ASSERTION OF
-RIGHT                                                                 81
-
- IV MILITARY PREDOMINANCE--AND INSECURITY                            112
-
-  V PATRIOTISM AND POWER IN WAR AND PEACE: THE
-SOCIAL OUTCOME                                                       142
-
- VI THE ALTERNATIVE RISKS OF STATUS AND CONTRACT                     169
-
-VII THE SPIRITUAL ROOTS OF THE SETTLEMENT                            199
-
-    ADDENDUM: SOME NOTES ON 'THE GREAT ILLUSION'
-    AND ITS PRESENT RELEVANCE                                        253
-
-    I. The 'Impossibility of War' Myth. II. 'Economic'
-    and 'Moral' Motives in International Affairs. III. The
-    'Great Illusion' Argument. IV. Arguments now out of
-    date. V. The Argument as an attack on the State.
-    VI. Vindication by Events. VII. Could the War have
-    been prevented?
-
-
-
-
-SYNOPSIS
-
-
-CHAPTER I (pp. 3-60)
-
-OUR DAILY BREAD
-
-An examination of the present conditions in Europe shows that much of
-its dense population (particularly that of these islands) cannot live at
-a standard necessary for civilisation (leisure, social peace, individual
-freedom) except by certain co-operative processes which must be carried
-on largely across frontiers. (The prosperity of Britain depends on the
-production by foreigners of a surplus of food and raw material above
-their own needs.) The present distress is not mainly the result of the
-physical destruction of war (famine or shortage is worst, as in the
-Austrian and German and Russian areas, where there has been no
-destruction). The Continent as a whole has the same soil and natural
-resources and technical knowledge as when it fed its populations. The
-causes of its present failure at self-support are moral: economic
-paralysis following political disintegration, 'Balkanisation'; that, in
-its turn, due to certain passions and prepossessions.
-
-A corresponding phenomenon is revealed within each national society: a
-decline of production due to certain moral disorders, mainly in the
-political field; to 'unrest,' a greater cleavage between groups,
-rendering the indispensable co-operation less effective.
-
-The necessary co-operation, whether as between nations or groups within
-each nation, cannot be compelled by physical coercion, though disruptive
-forces inseparable from the use of coercion can paralyse co-operation.
-Allied preponderance of power over Germany does not suffice to obtain
-indemnities, or even coal in the quantities demanded by the Treaty. The
-output of the workers in Great Britain would not necessarily be improved
-by adding to the army or police force. As interdependence increases, the
-limits of coercion are narrowed. Enemies that are to pay large
-indemnities must be permitted actively to develop their economic life
-and power; they are then so potentially strong that enforcement of the
-demands becomes correspondingly expensive and uncertain. Knowledge and
-organisation acquired by workers for the purposes of their labour can be
-used to resist oppression. Railwaymen or miners driven to work by force
-would still find means of resistance. A proletarian dictatorship cannot
-coerce the production of food by an unwilling peasantry. The processes
-by which wealth is produced have, by increasing complexity, become of a
-kind which can only be maintained if there be present a large measure of
-voluntary acquiescence, which means, in its turn, confidence. The need
-for that is only made the more imperative by the conditions which have
-followed the virtual suspension of the gold standard in all the
-belligerent States of Europe, the collapse of the exchanges and other
-manifestations of instability of the currencies.
-
-European statesmanship, as revealed in the Treaty of Versailles, and in
-the conduct of international affairs since the Armistice, has recognised
-neither the fact of interdependence--the need for the economic unity of
-Europe--nor the futility of attempted coercion. Certain political ideas
-and passions give us an unworkable Europe. What is their nature? How
-have they arisen? How can they be corrected? These questions are part of
-the problem of sustenance; which is the first indispensable of
-civilisation.
-
-
-CHAPTER II (pp. 61-80)
-
-THE OLD ECONOMY AND THE POST-WAR STATE
-
-The trans-national processes which enabled Europe to support itself
-before the War were based mainly on private exchanges prompted by the
-expectation of individual advantage. They were not dependent upon
-political power. (The fifteen millions for whom German soil could not
-provide lived by trade with countries over which Germany had no
-political control, as a similar number of British live by similar
-non-political means.)
-
-The old individualist economy has been largely destroyed by the State
-Socialism introduced for war purposes: the nation, taking over
-individual enterprise, became trader and manufacturer in increasing
-degree. The economic clauses of the Treaty, if enforced, must prolong
-this tendency, rendering a large measure of such Socialism permanent.
-
-The change may be desirable. But if co-operation must in future be less
-as between individuals for private advantage, and much more as between
-_nations_, governments acting in an economic capacity, the political
-emotions of nationalisation will play a much larger role in the economic
-processes of Europe. If to Nationalist hostilities as we have known them
-in the past is to be added the commercial rivalry of nations now
-converted into traders and capitalists, we are likely to have not a less
-but a more quarrelsome world, unless the fact of interdependence is much
-more vividly realised than in the past.
-
-
-CHAPTER III (pp. 81-111)
-
-NATIONALITY, ECONOMICS, AND THE ASSERTION OF RIGHT
-
-
-The change noted in the preceding chapter raises a profound question of
-Right--Have we the right to use our power to deny to others the means of
-life? By our political power we _can_ create a Europe which, while not
-assuring advantage to the victor, deprives the vanquished of means of
-existence. The loss of both ore and coal by the Central Powers might
-well make it impossible for their future populations to find food. What
-are they to do? Starve? To disclaim responsibility is to claim that we
-are entitled to use our power to deny them life.
-
-This 'right' to starve foreigners can only be invoked by invoking the
-conception of nationalism--'Our nation first.' But the policy of placing
-life itself upon a foundation of preponderant force, instead of mutually
-advantageous co-operation, compels statesmen perpetually to betray the
-principle of nationality; not only directly, (as in the case of the
-annexation of territory, economically necessary, but containing peoples
-of alien nationality,) but indirectly; for the resistance which our
-policy (of denying means of subsistence to others) provokes, makes
-preponderance of power the condition of survival. All else must give way
-to that need.
-
-Might cannot be pledged to Right in these conditions. If our power is
-pledged to Allies for the purpose of the Balance (which means, in fact,
-preponderance), it cannot be used against them to enforce respect for
-(say) nationality. To turn against Allies would break the Balance. To
-maintain the Balance of Power we are compelled to disregard the moral
-merits of an Ally's policy (as in the case of the promise to the Czar's
-government not to demand the independence of Poland). The maintenance of
-a Balance (_i.e._ preponderance) is incompatible with the maintenance of
-Right. There is a conflict of obligation.
-
-
-CHAPTER IV (pp. 112-141)
-
-MILITARY PREDOMINANCE--AND INSECURITY
-
-The moral questions raised in the preceding chapter have a direct
-bearing on the effectiveness of military power based on the National
-unit, or a group of National units, such as an Alliance. Military
-preponderance of the smaller Western National units over large and
-potentially powerful groups, like the German or the Russian, must
-necessitate stable and prolonged co-operation. But, as the present
-condition of the Alliance which fought the War shows, the rivalries
-inseparable from the fears and resentments of 'instinctive' nationalism,
-make that prolonged co-operation impossible. The qualities of
-Nationalism which stand in the way of Internationalism stand also in the
-way of stable alliances (which are a form of Internationalism) and make
-them extremely unstable foundations of power.
-
-The difficulties encountered by the Allies in taking combined action in
-Russia show that to this fundamental instability due to the moral nature
-of Nationalism, must be added, as causes of military paralysis, the
-economic disruption which reduces the available material resources, and
-the social unrest (largely the result of the economic difficulties)
-which undermines the cohesion even of the national unit.
-
-These forces render military predominance based on the temporary
-co-operation of units still preserving the Nationalist outlook extremely
-precarious and unreliable.
-
-
-CHAPTER V (pp. 142-168)
-
-PATRIOTISM AND POWER IN WAR AND PEACE: THE SOCIAL OUTCOME
-
-The greatest and most obvious present need of Europe, for the salvation
-of its civilisation, is unity and co-operation. Yet the predominant
-forces of its politics push to conflict and disunity. If it is the
-calculating selfishness of 'realist' statesmen that thus produces
-impoverishment and bankruptcy, the calculation would seem to be
-defective. The Balkanisation of Europe obviously springs, however, from
-sources belonging to our patriotisms, which are mainly uncalculating
-and instinctive, 'mystic' impulses and passions. Can we safely give
-these instinctive pugnacities full play?
-
-One side of patriotism--gregariousness, 'herd instinct'--has a socially
-protective origin, and is probably in some form indispensable. But
-coupled with uncontrolled pugnacity, tribal gregariousness grows into
-violent partisanship as against other groups, and greatly strengthens
-the instinct to coercion, the desire to impose our power.
-
-In war-time, pugnacity, partisanship, coerciveness can find full
-satisfaction in the fight against the enemy. But when the war is over,
-these instincts, which have become so highly developed, still seek
-satisfaction. They may find it in two ways: in conflict between Allies,
-or in strife between groups within the nation.
-
-We may here find an explanation of what seems otherwise a moral enigma:
-that just _after a war_, universally lauded as a means of national
-unity, 'bringing all classes together,' the country is distraught by
-bitter social chaos, amounting to revolutionary menace; and that after
-the war which was to wipe out at last all the old differences which
-divided the Allies, their relations are worse than before the War (as in
-the case of Britain and America and Britain and France).
-
-Why should the fashionable lady, capable of sincere self-sacrifice
-(scrubbing hospital floors and tending canteens) for her countrymen when
-they are soldiers, become completely indifferent to the same countrymen
-when they have returned to civil life (often dangerous and hard, as in
-mining and fishing)? In the latter case there is no common enmity
-uniting duchess and miner.
-
-Another enigma may be solved in the same way: why military terrorism,
-unprovoked war, secret diplomacy, autocratic tyranny, violation of
-nationality, which genuinely appal us when committed by the enemy, leave
-us unmoved when political necessity' provokes very similar conduct on
-our part; why the ideals for which we went to war become matters of
-indifference to us when we have achieved victory. Gregariousness, which
-has become intense partisanship, makes right that which our side does or
-desires; wrong that which the other side does.
-
-This is fatal, not merely to justice, but to sincerity, to intellectual
-rectitude, to the capacity to see the truth objectively. It explains why
-we can, at the end of a war, excuse or espouse the very policies which
-the war was waged to make impossible.
-
-
-CHAPTER VI (pp. 169-198)
-
-THE ALTERNATIVE RISKS OF STATUS AND CONTRACT
-
-Instinct, being co-terminous with all animal life, is a motive of
-conduct immeasurably older and more deeply rooted than reasoning based
-on experience. So long as the instinctive, 'natural' action succeeds, or
-appears to succeed in its object, we do not trouble to examine the
-results of instinct or to reason. Only failure causes us to do that.
-
-We have seen that the pugnacities, gregariousness, group partisanship
-embodied in patriotism, give a strong emotional push to domination, the
-assertion of our power over others as a means of settling our relations
-with them. Physical coercion marks all the early methods in politics (as
-in autocracy and feudalism), in economics (as in slavery), and even in
-the relations of the sexes.
-
-But we try other methods (and manage to restrain our impulse
-sufficiently) when we really discover that force won't work. When we
-find we cannot coerce a man but still need his service, we offer him
-inducements, bargain with him, enter a contract. This is the result of
-realising that we really need him, and cannot compel him. That is the
-history of the development from status to contract.
-
-Stable international co-operation cannot come in any other way. Not
-until we realise the failure of national coercive power for
-indispensable ends (like the food of our people) shall we cease to
-idealise power and to put our intensest political emotions, like those
-of patriotism, behind it.
-
-The alternative to preponderance is partnership of power. Both may imply
-the employment of force (as in policing), but the latter makes force the
-instrument of a conscious social purpose, offering to the rival that
-challenges the force (as in the case of the individual criminal within
-the nation) the same rights as those claimed by the users of force.
-Force as employed by competitive nationalism does not do this. It says
-'You or me,' not 'You and me.' The method of social co-operation may
-fail temporarily; but it has the perpetual opportunity of success. It
-succeeds the moment that the two parties both accept it. But the other
-method is bound to fail; the two parties cannot both accept it. Both
-cannot be masters. Both can be partners.
-
-The failure of preponderant power on a nationalist basis for
-indispensable ends would be self-evident but for the push of the
-instincts which warp our judgment.
-
-Yet faith in the social method is the condition of its success. It is a
-choice of risks. We distrust and arm. Others, then, are entitled also to
-distrust; their arming is our justification for distrusting them. The
-policy of suspicion justifies itself. To allay suspicion we must accept
-the risk of trust. That, too, will justify itself.
-
-Man's future depends on making the better choice, for either the
-distrust or the faith will justify itself. His judgment will not be fit
-to make that choice if it is warped by the passions of pugnacity and
-hate that we have cultivated as part of the apparatus of war.
-
-
-CHAPTER VII (pp. 199-251)
-
-THE SPIRITUAL ROOTS OF THE SETTLEMENT
-
-If our instinctive pugnacities and hates are uncontrollable, and they
-dictate conduct, no more is to be said. We are the helpless victims of
-outside forces, and may as well surrender. But many who urge this most
-insistently in the case of our patriotic pugnacities obviously do not
-believe it: their demands for the suppression of 'defeatist' propaganda
-during the War, their support of war-time propaganda for the maintenance
-of morale, their present fears of the 'deadly infection' of Bolshevist
-ideas, indicate, on the contrary, a very real belief that feelings can
-be subject to an extremely rapid modification or redirection. In human
-society mere instinct has always been modified or directed in some
-measure by taboos, traditions, conventions, constituting a social
-discipline. The character of that discipline is largely determined by
-some sense of social need, developed as the result of the suggestion of
-transmitted ideas, discussions, intellectual ferment.
-
-The feeling which made the Treaty inevitable was the result of a partly
-unconscious but also partly conscious propaganda of war half-truths,
-built up on a sub-structure of deeply rooted nationalist conceptions.
-The systematic exploitation of German atrocities, and the systematic
-suppression of similar Allied offences, the systematic suppression of
-every good deed done by our enemy, constituted a monstrous half-truth.
-It had the effect of fortifying the conception of the enemy people as a
-single person; its complete collective responsibility. Any one of
-them--child, woman, invalid--could properly be punished (by famine, say)
-for any other's guilt. Peace became a problem of repressing or
-destroying this entirely bad person by a combination of nations entirely
-good.
-
-This falsified the nature of the problem, gave free rein to natural and
-instinctive retaliations, obscured the simplest human realities, and
-rendered possible ferocious cruelty on the part of the Allies. There
-would have been in any case a strong tendency to ignore even the facts
-which in Allied interest should have been considered. In the best
-circumstances it would have been extremely difficult to put through a
-Wilsonian (type 1918) policy, involving restraint of the sacred
-egoisms, the impulsive retaliations, the desire for dominion inherent
-in 'intense' nationalisms. The efficiency of the machinery by which the
-Governments for the purpose of war formed the mind of the nation, made
-it out of the question.
-
-If ever the passions which gather around the patriotisms disrupting and
-Balkanising Europe are to be disciplined or directed by a better social
-tradition, we must face without pretence or self-deception the results
-which show the real nature of the older political moralities. We must
-tell truths that disturb strong prejudices.
-
-
-
-
-
-THE FRUITS OF VICTORY
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-OUR DAILY BREAD
-
-
-I
-
-_The relation of certain economic facts to Britain's independence and
-Social Peace_
-
-Political instinct in England, particularly in the shaping of naval
-policy, has always recognised the intimate relation which must exist
-between an uninterrupted flow of food to these shores and the
-preservation of national independence. An enemy in a position to stop
-that flow would enjoy not merely an economic but a political power over
-us--the power to starve us into ignominious submission to his will.
-
-The fact has, of course, for generations been the main argument for
-Britain's right to maintain unquestioned command of the sea. In the
-discussions before the War concerning the German challenge to our naval
-power, it was again and again pointed out that Britain's position was
-very special: what is a matter of life and death for her had no
-equivalent importance for other powers. And it was when the Kaiser
-announced that Germany's future was upon the sea that British fear
-became acute! The instinct of self-preservation became aroused by the
-thought of the possible possession in hostile hands of an instrument
-that could sever vital arteries.
-
-The fact shows how impossible it is to divide off into watertight
-compartments the 'economic' from the political or moral. To preserve the
-capacity to feed our people, to see that our children shall have milk,
-is certainly an economic affair--a commercial one even. But it is an
-indispensable condition also of the defence of our country, of the
-preservation of our national freedom. The ultimate end behind the
-determination to preserve a preponderant navy may be purely nationalist
-or moral; the means is the maintenance of a certain economic situation.
-
-Indeed the task of ensuring the daily bread of the people touches moral
-and social issues nearer and more intimate even than the preservation of
-our national independence. The inexorable rise in the cost of living,
-the unemployment and loss and insecurity which accompany a rapid fall in
-prices, are probably the predominating factors in a social unrest which
-may end in transforming the whole texture of Western society. The worker
-finds his increased wage continually nullified by increase of price. Out
-of this situation arises an exasperation which, naturally enough, with
-peoples habituated by five years of war to violence and emotional
-mass-judgments, finds expression, not necessarily in organised
-revolution--that implies, after all, a plan of programme, a hope of a
-new order--but rather in sullen resentment; declining production, the
-menace of general chaos. However restricted the resources of a country
-may have become, there will always be some people under a r�gime of
-private capital and individual enterprise who will have more than a mere
-sufficiency, whose means will reach to luxury and even ostentation. They
-may be few in number; the amount of waste their luxury represents may in
-comparison with the total resources be unimportant. But their existence
-will suffice to give colour to the charge of profiteering and
-exploitation and to render still more acute the sullen discontent, and
-finally perhaps the tendency to violence.
-
-It is in such a situation that the price of a few prime
-necessaries--bread, coal, milk, sugar, clothing--becomes a social,
-political, and moral fact of the first importance. A two-shilling loaf
-may well be a social and political portent.
-
-In the week preceding the writing of these lines five cabinets have
-fallen in Europe. The least common denominator in the cause is the
-grinding poverty which is common to the peoples they ruled. In two cases
-the governments fell avowedly over the question of bread, maintained by
-subsidy at a fraction of its commercial cost. Everywhere the social
-atmosphere, the temper of the workers, responds to stimulus of that
-kind.
-
-When we reach the stage at which mothers are forced to see their
-children slowly die for lack of milk and bread, or the decencies of life
-are lost in a sordid scramble for sheer physical existence, then the
-economic problem becomes the gravest moral problem. The two are merged.
-
-The obvious truth that, if economic preoccupations are not to dominate
-the minds and absorb the energies of men to the exclusion of less
-material things, then the fundamental economic needs must be satisfied;
-the fact, that though the foundations are certainly not the whole
-building, civilisation does rest upon foundations of food, shelter,
-fuel, and that if it is to be stable they must be sound--these things
-have been rendered commonplace by events since the Armistice. But before
-the War they were not commonplaces. The suggestion that the economic
-results of war were worth considering was quite commonly rejected as
-'offensive,' implying that men went to war for 'profit.' Nations in
-going to war, we were told, were lifted beyond the region of
-'economics.' The conception that the neglect of the economics of war
-might mean--as it has meant--the slow torture of tens of millions of
-children and the disintegration of whole civilisations, and that if
-those who professed to be the trustees of their fellows were not
-considering these things they ought to be--this was, very curiously as
-it now seems to us at this date, regarded as sordid and material. We now
-see that the things of the spirit depend upon the solution of these
-material problems.
-
-The one fact which stood out clear above all others after the Armistice
-was the actual shortage of goods at a time when millions were literally
-dying of hunger. The decline of productivity was obvious. It was due in
-part to diversion of energies to the task of war, to the destruction of
-materials, failure in many cases to maintain plant (factories, railways,
-roads, housing); to a varying degree of industrial and commercial
-demoralisation arising out of the War and, later, out of the struggle
-for political rearrangements both within States and as between States;
-to the shortening of the hours of labour; to the dislocation, first of
-mobilisation, and then of demobilisation; to relaxation of effort as
-reaction from the special strain of war; to the demoralisation of credit
-owing to war-time financial shifts. We had all these factors of reduced
-productivity on the one side, and on the other a generally increased
-habit and standard of expenditure, due in part to a stimulation of
-spending power owing to the inflation of the currency and in part to the
-recklessness which usually follows war; and above all an increasingly
-insistent demand on the part of the worker everywhere in Europe for a
-higher general standard of living, that is to say, not only a larger
-share of the diminished product of his labour, but a larger absolute
-amount drawn from a diminished total.
-
-This created an economic _impasse_--the familiar 'vicious circle.' The
-decline in the purchasing power of money and the rise in the rate of
-interest set up demands for compensating increases both of wages and of
-profits, which increases in turn added to the cost of production, to
-prices. And so on _da capo_. As the first and last remedy for this
-condition one thing was urged, to the exclusion of almost all
-else--increased production. The King, the Cabinet, economists, Trades
-Union leaders, the newspapers, the Churches, all agreed upon that one
-solution. Until well into the autumn of 1920 all were enjoining upon the
-workers their duty of an ever-increasing output.
-
-By the end of that year, workers, who had on numberless occasions been
-told that their one salvation was to increase their output, and who had
-been upbraided in no mild terms because of their tendency to diminish
-output, were being discharged in their hundreds of thousands because
-there was a paralysing over-production and glut! Half a world was
-famished and unclothed, but vast stores of British goods were rotting
-and multitudes of workers unemployed. America revealed the same
-phenomena. After stories of the fabulous wealth which had come to her as
-the result of the War and the destruction of her commercial competitors,
-we find, in the winter of 1920-21 that over great areas in the South and
-West her farmers are near to bankruptcy because their cotton and wheat
-are unsaleable at prices that are remunerative, and her industrial
-unemployment problem as acute as it has been in a generation. So bad is
-it, indeed, that the Labour Unions are unable to resist the Open Shop
-campaign forced upon them by the employers, a campaign menacing the
-gains in labour organisation that it has taken more than a generation to
-make. America's commercial competitors being now satisfactorily disposed
-of by the War, and 'the economic conquest of the world' being now open
-to that country, we find the agricultural interests (particularly cotton
-and wheat) demanding government aid for the purpose of putting these
-aforesaid competitors once more on their feet (by loan) in order that
-they may buy American products. But the loans can only be repaid and the
-products paid for in goods. This, of course, constitutes, in terms of
-nationalist economics, a 'menace.' So the same Congress which receives
-demands for government credits to European countries, also receives
-demands for the enactment of Protectionist legislation, which will
-effectually prevent the European creditors from repaying the loans or
-paying for the purchases. The spectacle is a measure of the chaos in our
-thinking on international economics.[1]
-
-But the fact we are for the moment mainly concerned with is this: on the
-one side millions perishing for lack of corn or cotton; on the other
-corn and cotton in such abundance that they are burned, and their
-producers face bankruptcy.
-
-Obviously therefore it is not merely a question of production, but of
-production adjusted to consumption, and vice versa; of proper
-distribution of purchasing power, and a network of processes which must
-be in increasing degree consciously controlled. We should never have
-supposed that mere production would suffice, if there did not
-perpetually slip from our minds the very elementary truth that in a
-world where division of labour exists wealth is not a material but a
-material plus a process--a process of exchange. Our minds are still
-dominated by the medi�val aspect of wealth as a 'possession' of static
-material such as land, not as part of a flow. It is that oversight which
-probably produced the War; it certainly produced certain clauses of the
-Treaty. The wealth of England is not coal, because if we could not
-exchange it (or the manufactures and services based on it) for other
-things--mainly food--it certainly would not even feed our population.
-And the process by which coal becomes bread is only possible by virtue
-of certain adjustments, which can only be made if there be present such
-things as a measure of political security, stability of conditions
-enabling us to know that crops can be gathered, transported and sold for
-money of stable value; if there be in other words the indispensable
-element of contract, confidence, rendering possible the indispensable
-device of credit. And as the self-sufficing economic unit--quite
-obviously in the case of England, less obviously but hardly less
-certainly in other notable cases--cannot be the national unit, the field
-of the contract--the necessary stability of credit, that is--must be, if
-not international, then trans-national. All of which is extremely
-elementary; and almost entirely overlooked by our statesmanship, as
-reflected in the Settlement and in the conduct of policy since the
-Armistice.
-
-
-2
-
-     _Britain's dependence on the production by foreigners of a surplus
-     of food and raw materials beyond their own needs_
-
-The matter may be clarified if we summarise what precedes, and much of
-what follows, in this proposition:--
-
-     The present conditions in Europe show that much of its dense
-     population (notably the population of these islands) can only live
-     at a standard necessary for civilisation (leisure, social peace,
-     individual freedom) by means of certain co-operative processes,
-     which must be carried on largely across frontiers. The mere
-     physical existence of much of the population of Britain is
-     dependent upon the production by foreigners of a surplus of food
-     and raw materials beyond their own needs.
-
-     The processes of production have become of the complex kind which
-     cannot be compelled by preponderant power, exacted by physical
-     coercion.
-
-     But the attempt at such coercion, the inevitable results of a
-     policy aimed at securing predominant power, provoking resistance
-     and friction, can and does paralyse the necessary processes, and by
-     so doing is undermining the economic foundations of British life.
-
-What are the facts supporting the foregoing proposition?
-
-Many whose instincts of national protection would become immediately
-alert at the possibility of a naval blockade of these islands, remain
-indifferent to the possibility of a blockade arising in another but
-every bit as effective a fashion.
-
-That is through the failure of the food and raw material, upon which our
-populations and our industries depend, to be produced at all owing to
-the progressive social disintegration which seems to be going on over
-the greater part of the world. To the degree to which it is true to say
-that Britain's life is dependent upon her fleet, it is true to say that
-it is dependent upon the production by foreigners of a surplus above
-their own needs of food and raw material. This is the most fundamental
-fact in the economic situation of Britain: a large portion of her
-population are fed by the exchange of coal, or services and manufactures
-based on coal, for the surplus production, mainly food and raw material,
-of peoples living overseas.[2] Whether the failure of food to reach us
-were due to the sinking of our ships at sea or the failure of those
-ships to obtain cargoes at the port of embarkation the result in the end
-would be the same. Indeed, the latter method, if complete, would be the
-more serious as an armistice or surrender would not bring relief.
-
-The hypothesis has been put in an extreme form in order to depict the
-situation as vividly as possible. But such a condition as the complete
-failure of the foreigner's surplus does not seem to-day so preposterous
-as it might have done five years ago. For that surplus has shrunk
-enormously and great areas that once contributed to feeding us can do so
-no longer. Those areas already include Russia, Siberia, the Balkans, and
-a large part of the Near and Far East. What we are practically concerned
-with, of course, is not the immediate disappearance of that surplus on
-which our industries depend, but the degree to which its reduction
-increases for us the cost of food, and so intensifies all the social
-problems that arise out of an increasing cost of living. Let the
-standard alike of consumption and production of our overseas white
-customers decline to the standard of India and China, and our foreign
-trade would correspondingly decrease; the decline in the world's
-production of food would mean that much less for us; it would reduce the
-volume of our trade, or in terms of our own products, cost that much
-more; this in turn would increase the cost of our manufactures, create
-an economic situation which one could describe with infinite technical
-complexity, but which, however technical and complex that description
-were made, would finally come to this--that our own toil would become
-less productive.
-
-That is a relatively new situation. In the youth of men now living,
-these islands with their twenty-five or thirty million population were,
-so far as vital needs are concerned, self-sufficing. What will be the
-situation when the children now growing up in our homes become members
-of a British population which may number fifty, sixty, or seventy
-millions? (Germany's population, which, at the outbreak of war, was
-nearly seventy millions, was in 1870 a good deal less than the present
-population of Great Britain.)
-
-Moreover, the problem is affected by what is perhaps the most important
-economic change in the world since the industrial revolution, namely the
-alteration in the ratio of the exchange value of manufactures and
-food--the shift over of advantage in exchange from the side of the
-industrialist and manufacturer to the side of the producer of food.
-
-Until the last years of the nineteenth century the world was a place in
-which it was relatively easy to produce food, and nearly the whole of
-its population was doing it. In North and South America, in Russia,
-Siberia, China, India, the universal occupation was agriculture, carried
-on largely (save in the case of China and India) upon new soil, its
-first fertility as yet unexhausted. A tiny minority of the world's
-population only was engaged in industry in the modern sense: in
-producing things in factories by machinery, in making iron and steel.
-Only in Great Britain, in Northern Germany, in a few districts in the
-United States, had large-scale industry been systematically developed.
-It is easy to see, therefore, what immense advantage in exchange the
-industrialist had. What he had for sale was relatively scarce; what the
-agriculturist had for sale was produced the world over and was, _in
-terms of manufactures_, extremely cheap. It was the economic paradox of
-the time that in countries like America, South and North, the
-farmer--the producer of food--was naturally visualised as a
-poverty-stricken individual--a 'hayseed' dressed in cotton jeans,
-without the conveniences and amenities of civilisation, while it was in
-the few industrial centres that the vast wealth was being piled up. But
-as the new land in North America and Argentina and Siberia became
-occupied and its first fertility exhausted, as the migration from the
-land to the towns set in, it became possible with the spread of
-technical training throughout the world, with the wider distribution of
-mechanical power and the development of transport, for every country in
-some measure to engage in manufacture, and the older industrial centres
-lost some of their monopoly advantage in dealing with the food producer.
-In Cobden's day it was almost true to say that England spun cotton for
-the world. To-day cotton is spun where cotton is grown; in India, in the
-Southern States of America, in China.
-
-This is a condition which (as the pages which follow reveal in greater
-detail) the intensification of nationalism and its hostility to
-international arrangement will render very much more acute. The
-patriotism of the future China or Argentina--or India and Australia, for
-that matter--may demand the home production of goods now bought in (say)
-England. It may not in economic terms benefit the populations who thus
-insist upon a complete national economy. But 'defence is more than
-opulence.' The very insecurity which the absence of a definitely
-organised international order involves will be invoked as justifying the
-attempt at economic self-sufficiency. Nationalism creates the situation
-to which it points as justification for its policy: it makes the very
-real dangers that it fears. And as Nationalism thus breaks up the
-efficient transnational division of labour and diminishes total
-productivity, the resultant pressure of population or diminished means
-of subsistence will push to keener rivalry for the conquest of
-territory. The circle can become exceedingly vicious--so vicious,
-indeed, that we may finally go back to the self-sufficing village
-community; a Europe sparsely populated if the resultant clerical
-influence is unable to check prudence in the matter of the birth-rate,
-densely populated to a Chinese or Indian degree if the birth-rate is
-uncontrolled.
-
-The economic chaos and social disintegration which have stricken so
-much of the world have brought a sharp reminder of the primary, the
-elemental place of food in the catalogue of man's needs, and the
-relative ease and rapidity with which most else can be jettisoned in our
-complex civilisation, provided only that the stomach can be filled.
-
-Before the War the towns of Europe were the luxurious and opulent
-centres; the rural districts were comparatively poor. To-day it is the
-cities of the Continent that are half-starved or famine-stricken, while
-the farms are well-fed and relatively opulent. In Russia, Poland,
-Hungary, Germany, Austria, the cities perish, but the peasants for the
-most part have a sufficiency. The cities are finding that with the
-breakdown of the old stability--of the transport and credit systems
-particularly--they cannot obtain food from the farmers. This process
-which we now see at work on the Continent is in fact the reversal of our
-historical development.
-
-As money acquired a stable value and transport and communication became
-easy and cheap, the manor ceased to be self-contained, to weave its own
-clothes and make its own implements. But the Russian peasants are
-proving to-day that if the railroads break down, and the paper money
-loses its value, the farm can become once more self-sufficing. Better to
-thresh the wheat with a flail, to weave clothes from the wool, than to
-exchange wheat and wool for a money that will buy neither cloth nor
-threshing machinery. But a country-side that weaves its own cloth and
-threshes its grain by hand is one that has little surplus of food for
-great cities--as Vienna, Buda-Pest, Moscow, and Petrograd have already
-discovered.
-
-If England is destined in truth to remain the workshop of that world
-which produces the food and raw material, then she has indeed a very
-direct interest in the maintenance of all those processes upon which the
-pre-war exchange between farm and factory, city and country,
-depended.[3]
-
-The 'farm' upon which the 'factory' of Great Britain depends is the
-food-producing world as a whole. It does not suffice that the overseas
-world should merely support itself as it did, say, in the tenth century,
-but it must be induced by hope of advantage to exchange a surplus for
-those things which we can deliver to it more economically than it can
-make them for itself. Because the necessary social and political
-stability, with its material super-structure of transport and credit,
-operating trans-nationally, has broken down, much of Europe is returning
-to its earlier simple life of unco-ordinated production, and its total
-fertility is being very greatly reduced. The consequent reaction of a
-diminished food supply for ourselves is already being felt.
-
-
-3
-
-_The 'Prosperity' of Paper Money_
-
-It will be said: Does not the unquestioned rise in the standard of
-wages, despite all the talk of debt, expenditure, unbalanced budgets,
-public bankruptcy, disprove any theory of a vital connection between a
-stable Europe and our own prosperity? Indeed, has not the experience of
-the War discredited much of the theory of the interdependence of
-nations?
-
-The first few years of the War did, indeed, seem to discredit it, to
-show that this interdependence was not so vital as had been supposed.
-Germany seemed for a long time really to be self-supporting, to manage
-without contact with other peoples. It seemed possible to re-direct the
-channels of trade with relative ease. It really appeared for a time that
-the powers of the Governments could modify fundamentally the normal
-process of credit almost at will, which would have been about equivalent
-to the discovery of perpetual motion! Not only was private credit
-maintained by governmental assistance, but exchanges were successfully
-'pegged'; collapse could be prevented apparently with ease. Industry
-itself showed a similar elasticity. In this country it seemed possible
-to withdraw five or six million men from actual production, and so
-organise the remainder as to enable them to produce enough not only to
-maintain themselves, but the country at large and the army, in food,
-clothing and other necessaries. And this was accomplished at a standard
-of living above rather than below that which obtained when the country
-was at peace, and when the six or seven or eight millions engaged in war
-or its maintenance were engaged in the production of consumable wealth.
-It seemed an economic miracle that with these millions withdrawn from
-production, though remaining consumers, the total industrial output
-should be very little less than it was before the War.
-
-But we are beginning to see how this miracle was performed, and also
-what is the truth as to the self-sufficiency of the great nations. As
-late as the early summer of 1918, when, even after four years of the
-exhausting drain of war, well-fed German armies were still advancing and
-gaining victories, and German guns were bombarding Paris (for the first
-time in the War), the edifice of German self-sufficiency seemed to be
-sound. But this apparently stalwart economic structure crumbled in a few
-months into utter ruins and the German population was starving and
-freezing, without adequate food, fuel, clothing. England has in large
-measure escaped this result just because her contacts with the rest of
-the world have been maintained while Germany's have not. These latter
-were not even re-established at the Armistice; in many respects her
-economic isolation was more complete after the War than during it.
-Moreover, because our contacts with the rest of the world are
-maintained by shipping, a very great flexibility is given to our
-extra-national economic relationships. Our lines of communication can be
-switched from one side of the world to the other instantly, whereas a
-country whose approaches are by railroads may find its communications
-embarrassed for a generation if new frontiers render the old lines
-inapplicable to the new political conditions.
-
-In the first year or so following the Armistice there was a curious
-contradiction in the prevailing attitude towards the economic situation
-at home. The newspapers were full of headlines about the Road to Ruin
-and National Bankruptcy; the Government plainly was unable to make both
-ends meet; the financial world was immensely relieved when America
-postponed the payments of debts to her; we were pathetically appealing
-to her to come and save us; the British sovereign, which for generations
-has been a standard of value for the world and the symbol of security,
-dropped to a discount of 20 per cent, in terms of the dollar; our
-Continental creditors were even worse off; the French could only pay us
-in a depreciated paper currency, the value of which in terms of the
-dollar varied between a third and a fourth of what it was before the
-War; the lira was cheaper still. Yet side by side with this we had
-stories of a trade boom (especially in textiles and cotton), so great
-that merchants and manufacturers refused to go to their offices, in
-order to dodge the flood of orders so vastly in excess of what they
-could fulfil. Side by side with depreciated paper currency, with public
-debts so crippling that the Government could only balance its budget by
-loans which were not successful when floated, the amusement trades
-flourished as never before. Theatre, music hall, and cinematograph
-receipts beat all records. There was a greater demand for motor-cars
-than the trade could supply. The Riviera was fuller than it had ever
-been before. The working class itself was competing with others for the
-purchase of luxuries which in the past that class never knew. And while
-the financial situation made it impossible, apparently, to find capital
-for building houses to live in, ample capital was forthcoming wherewith
-to build cinema palaces. We heard and read of famine almost at our
-doors, and saw great prosperity around us; read daily of impending
-bankruptcy--and of high profits and lavish spending; of world-wide
-unrest and revolution--and higher wages than the workers had ever known.
-
-Complex and contradictory as the facts seemed, the difficulty of a true
-estimate was rendered greater by the position in which European
-Governments found themselves placed. These Governments were faced by the
-necessity of maintaining credit and confidence at almost any cost. They
-must not, therefore, throw too great an emphasis upon the dark features.
-Yet the need for economy and production was declared to be as great as
-it was during the war. To create a mood of seriousness and sober
-resolution adequate to the situation would involve stressing facts
-which, in their efforts to obtain loans, internal or external, and to
-maintain credit, governments were compelled to minimise.
-
-Then, of course, the facts were obscured mainly by the purchasing power
-created by the manufacture of credit and paper money. Some light is
-thrown upon this ambiguous situation by a fact which is now so
-manifest--that this juxtaposition of growing indebtedness and lavish
-spending, high wages, high profits, active trade, and a rising standard
-of living, were all things that marked the condition of Germany in the
-first few years of the War. Industrial concerns showed profits such as
-they had never shown before; wages steadily rose; and money was
-plentiful. But the profits were made and the wages were paid in a money
-that continually declined in value--as ours is declining. The higher
-consumption drew upon sources that were steadily being depleted--as ours
-are being depleted. The production was in certain cases maintained by
-very uneconomic methods: as by working only the best seams in the coal
-mines, by devoting no effort to the proper upkeep of plant (locomotives
-on the railway which ordinarily would go into the repair shop every six
-weeks were kept running somehow during the whole course of the War). In
-this sense the people were 'living upon capital'--devoting, that is, to
-the needs of current consumption energy which should have been devoted
-to ensuring future production. In another way, they were converting into
-income what is normally a source of capital. An increase in profits or
-wages, which ordinarily would have provided a margin, over and above
-current expenditure, out of which capital for new plant, etc., could
-have been drawn, was rapidly nullified by a corresponding increase in
-prices. Loans for the purpose even of capital expenditure involved an
-inflation of currency which still further increased prices, thus
-diminishing the value of the capital so provided, necessitating the
-issue of further loans which had the same effect. And so the vicious
-circle was narrowed. Even after four years of this kind of thing the
-edifice had in many respects the outward appearances of prosperity. As
-late as April, 1918, the German organisation, as we have noted, was
-still capable of maintaining a military machine which could not only
-hold its own but compel the retirement of the combined forces of France,
-Britain, America, and minor Allies. But once the underlying process of
-disintegration became apparent, the whole structure went to pieces.
-
-It is that unnoticed process of disintegration, preceding the final
-collapse, which should interest us. For the general method employed by
-Germany for meeting the consumption of war and disguising the growing
-scarcity is in many respects the method her neighbours adopted for
-meeting the consumption of a new standard of life on the basis of less
-total wealth--a standard which, on the part of the workers, means both
-shorter hours and a larger share of their produce, and on the part of
-other classes a larger share of the more expensive luxuries. Like the
-Germans of 1914-18, we are drawing for current consumption upon the fund
-which, in a more healthy situation, would go to provide for renewal of
-plant and provision of new capital. To 'eat the seed corn' may give an
-appearance of present plenty at the cost of starvation later.
-
-It is extremely unlikely that there will ever be in England the sudden
-catastrophic economic collapse which we have witnessed in Russia,
-Germany, Austria, and Central Europe generally. But we shall none the
-less be concerned. As the increased wages gained by strikes lose with
-increasing rapidity their value in purchasing power, thus wiping out the
-effect of the industrial 'victory,' irritation among the workers will
-grow. On minds so prepared the Continental experiments in social
-reconstruction--prompted by conditions immeasurably more acute--will act
-with the force of hypnotic suggestion. Our Government may attempt to
-cope with these movements by repression or political devices. Tempers
-will be too bad and patience too short to give the sound solutions a
-real chance. And an economic situation, not in itself inherently
-desperate, may get steadily worse because of the loss of social
-discipline and of political insight, the failure to realise past
-expectations, the continuance of military burdens created by external
-political chaos.
-
-
-4
-
-_The European disintegration: Britain's concern._
-
-What has actually happened in so much of Europe around us ought
-certainly to prevent any too complacent sense of security. In the midst
-of this old civilisation are (in Mr. Hoover's calculation) some hundred
-million folk, who before the War managed to support themselves in fair
-comfort but are now unable to be truly self-supporting. Yet they live
-upon the same soil and in the presence of the same natural resources as
-before the War. Their inability to use that soil and those materials is
-not due to the mere physical destruction of war, for the famine is worst
-where there has been no physical destruction at all. It is not a lack
-of labour, for millions are unemployed, seeking work. Nor is it lack of
-technical or scientific knowledge, upon which (very erroneously) we are
-apt to look as the one sufficient factor of civilisation; for our
-technical knowledge in the management of matter is greater even than
-before the War.
-
-What then is the reason why these millions starve in the midst of
-potential plenty? It is that they have lost, from certain moral causes
-examined later in these pages, the capacity to co-ordinate their labour
-sufficiently to carry on the processes by which alone labour and
-knowledge can be applied to an exploitation of nature sufficiently
-complete to support our dense modern populations.
-
-The fact that wealth is not to-day a material which can be taken, but a
-process which can only be maintained by virtue of certain moral factors,
-marks a change in human relationship, the significance of which still
-seems to escape us.
-
-The manor, or even the eighteenth century village, was roughly a
-self-sufficing unit. It mattered little to that unit what became of the
-outside world. The manor or village was independent; its people could be
-cut off from the outside world, could ravage the near parts of it and
-remain unaffected. But when the development of communication and the
-discovery of steam turns the agricultural community into coal miners,
-these are no longer indifferent to the condition of the outside world.
-Cut them off from the agriculturalists who take their coal or
-manufactures, or let these latter be unable to carry on their calling,
-and the miner starves. He cannot eat his coal. He is no longed
-independent. His life hangs upon certain activities of others. Where his
-forebears could have raided and ravaged with no particular hurt to
-themselves, the miner cannot. He is dependent upon those others and has
-given them hostages. He is no longer 'independent,' however clamorously
-in his Nationalist oratory he may use that word. He has been forced into
-a relation of partnership. And how very small is the effectiveness of
-any physical coercion he can apply, in order to exact the services by
-which he lives, we shall see presently.
-
-This situation of interdependence is of course felt much more acutely by
-some countries than others--much more by England, for instance, than by
-France. France in the matter of essential foodstuffs can be nearly
-self-supporting, England cannot. For England, an outside world of fairly
-high production is a matter of life and death; the economic
-consideration must in this sense take precedence of others. In the case
-of France considerations of political security are apt to take
-precedence of economic considerations. France can weaken her neighbours
-vitally without being brought to starvation. She can purchase security
-at the cost of mere loss of profits on foreign trade by the economic
-destruction of, say, Central Europe. The same policy would for Britain
-in the long run spell starvation. And it is this fundamental difference
-of economic situation which is at the bottom of much of the divergence
-of policy between Britain and France which has recently become so acute.
-
-This is the more evident when we examine recent changes of detail in
-this general situation special to England. Before the War a very large
-proportion of our food and raw material was supplied by the United
-States. But our economic relationship with that country has been changed
-as the result of the War. Previous to 1914 we were the creditor and
-America the debtor nation. She was obliged to transmit to us large sums
-in interest on investments of British capital. These annual payments
-were in fact made in the form of food and raw materials, for which, in a
-national sense, we did not have to give goods or services in return. We
-are now less in the position of creditor, more in that of debtor.
-America does not have to transmit to us. Whereas, originally, we did an
-immense proportion of America's carrying trade, because she had no
-ocean-going mercantile marine, she has begun to do her own carrying.
-Further, the pressure of her population upon her food resources is
-rapidly growing. The law diminishing returns is in some instances
-beginning to apply to the production of food, which in the past has been
-plentiful without fertilisers and under a very wasteful and simple
-system. And in America, as elsewhere, the standard of consumption, owing
-to a great increase of the wage standard, has grown, while the standard
-of production has not always correspondingly increased.
-
-The practical effect of this is to throw England into greater dependence
-upon certain new sources of food--or trade, which in the end is the same
-thing. The position becomes clearer if we reflect that our dependence
-becomes more acute with every increase of our population. Our children
-now at school may be faced by the problem of finding food for a
-population of sixty or seventy millions on these islands. A high
-agricultural productivity on the part of countries like Russia and
-Siberia and the Balkans might well be then a life and death matter.
-
-Now the European famine has taught us a good deal about the necessary
-conditions of high agricultural productivity. The co-operation of
-manufactures--of railways for taking crops out and fertilisers in, of
-machinery, tools, wagons, clothing--is one of them. That manufacturing
-itself must be done by division of labour is another: the country or
-area that is fitted to supply textiles or cream separators is not
-necessarily fitted to supply steel rails: yet until the latter are
-supplied the former cannot be obtained. Often productivity is paralysed
-simply because transport has broken down owing to lack of rolling stock,
-or coal, or lubricants, or spare parts for locomotives; or because a
-debased currency makes it impossible to secure food from peasants, who
-will not surrender it in return for paper that has no value--the
-manufactures which might ultimately give it value being paralysed. The
-lack of confidence in the maintenance of the value of paper money, for
-instance, is rapidly diminishing the food productivity of the soil;
-peasants will not toil to produce food which they cannot exchange,
-through the medium of money, for the things which they need--clothing,
-implements, and so on. This diminishing productivity is further
-aggravated by the impossibility of obtaining fertilisers (some of which
-are industrial products, and all of which require transport), machines,
-tools, etc. The food producing capacity of Europe cannot be maintained
-without the full co-operation of the non-agricultural industries--transport,
-manufactures, coal mining, sound banking--and the maintenance of
-political order. Nothing but the restoration of all the economic
-processes of Europe as a whole can prevent a declining productivity
-that must intensify social and political disorder, of which we may
-merely have seen the beginning.
-
-But if this interdependence of factory and farm in the production of
-food is indisputable, though generally ignored, it involves a further
-fact just as indisputable, and even more completely ignored. And the
-further fact is that the manufacturing and the farming, neither of which
-can go on without the other, may well be situated in different States.
-Vienna starves largely because the coal needed for its factories is now
-situated in a foreign State--Czecho-Slovakia--which, partly from
-political motives perhaps, fails to deliver it. Great food producing
-areas in the Balkans and Russia are dependent for their tools and
-machinery, for the stability of the money without which the food will
-not be produced, upon the industries of Germany. Those industries are
-destroyed, the markets have disappeared, and with them the incentive to
-production. The railroads of what ought to be food producing States are
-disorganized from lack of rolling stock, due to the same paralysis of
-German industry; and so the food production is diminished. Tens of
-millions of acres outside Germany, whose food the world sorely needs,
-have been rendered barren by the industrial paralysis of the Central
-Empires which the economic terms of the Treaty render inevitable.
-
-Speaking of the need of Russian agriculture for German industry, Mr.
-Maynard Keynes, who has worked out the statistics revealing the relative
-position of Germany to the rest of Europe, writes:--
-
-'It is impossible geographically and for many other reasons for
-Englishmen, Frenchmen, or Americans to undertake it--we have neither the
-incentive nor the means for doing the work on a sufficient scale.
-Germany, on the other hand, has the experience, the incentive, and to a
-large extent, the materials for furnishing the Russian peasant with the
-goods of which he has been starved for the past five years, for
-reorganising the business of transport and collection, and so for
-bringing into the world's pool, for the common advantage, the supplies
-from which we are now disastrously cut off.... If we oppose in detail
-every means by which Germany or Russia can recover their material
-well-being, because we feel a national, racial, or political hatred for
-their populations or their governments, we must be prepared to face the
-consequences of such feelings. Even if there is no moral solidarity
-between the newly-related races of Europe, there is an economic
-solidarity which we cannot disregard. Even now, the world markets are
-one. If we do not allow Germany to exchange products with Russia and so
-feed herself, she must inevitably compete with us for the produce of the
-New World. The more successful we are in snapping economic relations
-between Germany and Russia, the more we shall depress the level of our
-own economic standards and increase the gravity of our own domestic
-problems.'[4]
-
-It is not merely the productivity of Russia which is involved. Round
-Germany as a central support the rest of the European economic system
-grouped itself, and upon the prosperity and enterprise of Germany the
-prosperity of the rest of the Continent mainly depended. Germany was the
-best customer of Russia, Norway, Poland, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy,
-and Austria-Hungary; she was the second best customer of Great Britain,
-Sweden, and Denmark; and the third best customer of France. She was the
-largest source of supply to Russia, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Poland,
-Switzerland, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria; and the
-second largest source of supply to Great Britain, Belgium, and France.
-Britain sent more experts to Germany than to any other country in the
-world except India, and bought more from her than any other country in
-the world except the United States. There was no European country except
-those west of Germany which did not do more than a quarter of their
-total trade with her; and in the case of Russia, Austria-Hungary, and
-Poland, the proportion was far greater. To retard or prevent the
-economic restoration of Germany means retarding the economic
-reconstruction of Europe.
-
-This gives us a hint of the deep causes underlying the present
-divergence of French and British policy with reference to the economic
-reconstruction of Russia and Central Europe. A Britain of sixty or
-seventy millions faced by the situation with reference to America that
-has just been touched upon, might well find that the development of the
-resources of Russia, Siberia, and the Near East--even at the cost of
-dividing the profits thereof in terms of industrial development with
-Germany, each supplying that for which it was best suited--was the
-essential condition of food and social peace. France has no such
-pre-occupation. Her concern is political: the maintenance of a military
-predominance on which she believes her political security to depend, an
-object that might well be facilitated by the political disintegration of
-Europe even though it involved its economic disintegration.
-
-That brings us to the political factor in the decline in productivity.
-From it we may learn something of the moral factor, which is the
-ultimate condition of any co-operation whatsoever.
-
-The relationship of the political to the economic situation is
-illustrated most vividly, perhaps, in the case of Austria. Mr. Hoover,
-in testimony given to a United States Senate Committee, has declared
-bluntly that it is no use talking of loans to Austria which imply future
-security, if the present political status is to be maintained, because
-that status has rendered the old economic activities impossible.
-Speaking before the Committee, he said:--
-
-     'The political situation in Austria I hesitate to discuss, but it
-     is the cause of the trouble. Austria has now no hope of being
-     anything more than a perpetual poorhouse, because all her lands
-     that produce food have been taken from her. This, I will say, was
-     done without American inspiration. If this political situation
-     continues, and Austria is made a perpetual mendicant, the United
-     States should not provide the charity. We should make the loan
-     suggested with full notice that those who undertake to continue
-     Austria's present status must pay the bill. Present Austria faces
-     three alternatives--death, migration, or a complete industrial
-     diversion and re-organization. Her economic rehabilitation seems
-     impossible after the way she was broken up at the Peace Conference.
-     Her present territory will produce only enough food for three
-     months, and she has now no factories which might produce products
-     to be exchanged for food.'[5]
-
-To realise what can really be accomplished by statesmanship that has a
-soul above such trifles as food and fuel, when it sets its hand to
-map-drawing, one should attempt to visualise the state of Vienna to-day.
-Mr A. G. Gardiner, the English journalist, has sketched it thus:--
-
-     'To conceive its situation one must imagine London suddenly cut off
-     from all the sources of its life, no access to the sea, frontiers
-     of hostile Powers all round it, every coalfield of Yorkshire or
-     South Wales or Scotland in foreign hands, no citizen able to travel
-     to Birmingham or Manchester without a passport, the mills it had
-     financed in Lancashire taken from it, no coal to burn, no food to
-     eat, and--with its shilling down in value to a farthing--no money
-     to buy raw materials for its labour, industry at a standstill,
-     hundreds of thousands living (or dying) on charity, nothing
-     prospering except the vile exploiters of misery, the traffickers in
-     food, the traffickers in vice. That is the Vienna which the peace
-     criminals have made.
-
-     'Vienna was the financial and administrative centre of fifty
-     million of people. It financed textile factories, paper
-     manufacturing, machine works, beet growing, and scores of other
-     industries in German Bohemia. It owned coal mines at Teschen. It
-     drew its food from Hungary. From every quarter of the Empire there
-     came to Vienna the half-manufactured products of the provinces for
-     the finishing processes, tailoring, dyeing, glass-working, in which
-     a vast population found employment.
-
-     'Suddenly all this elaborate structure of economic life was swept
-     away. Vienna, instead of being the vital centre of fifty millions
-     of people, finds itself a derelict city with a province of six
-     millions. It is cut off from its coal supplies, from its food
-     supplies, from its factories, from everything that means existence.
-     It is enveloped by tariff walls.'
-
-The writer goes on to explain that the evils are not limited to Austria.
-In this unhappy Balkanised Society that the peace has created at the
-heart of Europe, every State is at issue with its neighbours: the Czechs
-with the Poles, the Hungarians with the Czechs, the Rumanians with the
-Hungarians, and all with Austria. The whole Empire is parcelled out into
-quarrelling factions, with their rival tariffs, their passports and
-their animosities. All free intercourse has stopped, all free
-interchange of commodities has ceased. Each starves the other and is
-starved by the other. 'I met a banker travelling from Buda-Pest to
-Berlin by Vienna and Bavaria. I asked him why he went so far out of his
-way to get to his goal, and he replied that it was easier to do that
-than to get through the barbed-wire entanglements of Czecho-Slovakia.
-There is great hunger in Bohemia, and it is due largely to the same
-all-embracing cause. Formerly the Czech peasants used to go to Hungary
-to gather the harvest and returned with corn as part payment. Now
-intercourse has stopped, the Hungarian cornfields are without the
-necessary labour, and the Czech peasant starves at home, or is fed by
-the American Relief Fund. "One year of peace," said Herr Renner, the
-Chancellor, to me, "has wrought more ruin than five years of war."'
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Mr Gardiner's final verdict[6] does not in essence differ from that of
-Mr Hoover:--
-
-     'It is the levity of mind which has plunged this great city into
-     ruin that is inexplicable. The political dismemberment of Austria
-     might be forgiven. That was repeatedly declared by the Allies not
-     to be an object of the War; but the policy of the French, backed by
-     the industrious propaganda of a mischievous newspaper group in this
-     country, triumphed and the promise was dishonoured. Austria-Hungary
-     was broken into political fragments. That might be defended as a
-     political necessity. But the economic dismemberment was as
-     gratuitous as it was deadly. It could have been provided against if
-     ordinary foresight had been employed. Austria-Hungary was an
-     economic unit, a single texture of the commercial, industrial, and
-     financial interests.'[7]
-
-We have talked readily enough in the past of this or that being a
-'menace to civilisation.' The phrase has been applied indifferently to a
-host of things from Prussian Militarism to the tango. No particular
-meaning was attached to the phrase, and we did not believe that the
-material security of our civilisation--the delivery of the letters and
-the milk in the morning, and the regular running of the 'Tubes'--would
-ever be endangered in our times.
-
-But this is what has happened in a few months. We have seen one of the
-greatest and most brilliant capitals of Europe, a city completely
-untouched by the physical devastation of war, endowed beyond most with
-the equipment of modern technical learning and industry, with some of
-the greatest factories, medical schools and hospitals of our times,
-unable to save its children from death by simple starvation--unable,
-with all that equipment, to provide them each with a little milk and a
-few ounces of flour every day.
-
-
-5
-
-_The Limits of Political Control_
-
-It is sometimes suggested that as political factors (particularly the
-drawing of frontiers) entered to some extent at least into the present
-distribution of population, political forces can re-distribute that
-population. But re-distribution would mean in fact killing.
-
-So to re-direct the vast currents of European industry as to involve a
-great re-distribution of the population would demand a period of time
-so great that during the necessary stoppage of the economic process most
-of the population concerned would be dead--even if we could imagine
-sufficient stability to permit of these vast changes taking place
-according to the na�ve and what we now know to be fantastic, programme
-of our Treaties. And since the political forces--as we shall see--are
-extremely unstable, the new distribution would presumably again one day
-undergo a similarly murderous modification.
-
-That brings us to the question suggested in the proposition set out some
-pages back, how far preponderant political power can ensure or compel
-those processes by which a population in the position of that of these
-islands lives.
-
-For, as against much of the foregoing, it is sometimes urged that
-Britain's concern in the Continental chaos is not really vital, because
-while the British Isles cannot be self-sufficing, the British Empire can
-be.
-
-During the War a very bold attempt was made to devise a scheme by which
-political power should be used to force the economic development of the
-world into certain national channels, a scheme whereby the military
-power of the dominant group should be so used as to ensure it a
-permanent preponderance of economic resources. The plan is supposed to
-have emanated from Mr Hughes, the Prime Minister of Australia, and the
-Allies (during Mr Asquith's Premiership incidentally) met in Paris for
-its consideration. Mr Hughes's idea seems to have been to organise the
-world into economic categories: the British Empire first in order of
-mutual preference, the Allies next, the neutrals next, and the enemy
-States last of all. Russia was, of course, included among the Allies,
-America among the neutrals, the States then Austria-Hungary among the
-enemies.
-
-One has only to imagine some such scheme having been voted and put into
-operation, and the modifications which political changes would to-day
-compel, to get an idea of merely the first of the difficulties of using
-political and military power, with a basis of separate and competing
-nationalisms, for economic purposes. The very nature of military
-nationalism makes surrender of competition in favour of long continued
-co-operation for common purposes, a moral impossibility. The foundations
-of the power are unstable, the wills which determine its use
-contradictory.
-
-Yet military power must rest upon Alliance. Even the British Empire
-found that its defence needed Allies. And if the British Empire is to be
-self-sufficing, its trade canalised into channels drawn along certain
-political lines, the preferences and prohibitions will create many
-animosities. Are we to sacrifice our self-sufficiency for the sake of
-American and French friendship, or risk losing the friendship by
-preferences designed to ensure self-sufficiency? Yet to the extent that
-our trade is with countries like North and South America we cannot
-exercise on its behalf even the shadow of military coercion.
-
-But that is only the beginning of the difficulty.
-
-A suggestive fact is that ever since the population of these islands
-became dependent upon overseas trade, that trade has been not mainly
-with the Empire but with foreigners. It is to-day.[8] And if one
-reflects for a moment upon the present political relationship of the
-Imperial Government to Ireland, Egypt, India, South Africa, and the
-tariff and immigration legislation that has marked the economic history
-of Australia and Canada during the last twenty years, one will get some
-idea of the difficulty which surrounds the employment of political power
-for the shaping of an economic policy to subserve any large and
-long-continued political end.
-
-The difficulties of an imperial policy in this respect do not differ
-much in character from the difficulties encountered in Paris. The
-British Empire, too, has its problems of 'Balkanisation,' problems that
-have arisen also from the anti-social element of 'absolute' nationalism.
-The present Nationalist fermentation within the Empire reveals very
-practical limits to the use of political power. We cannot compel the
-purchase of British goods by Egyptian, Indian, or Irish Nationalists.
-Moreover, an Indian or Egyptian boycott or Irish agitation, may well
-deprive political domination of any possibility of economic advantage.
-The readiness with which British opinion has accepted very large steps
-towards the independence and evacuation of Egypt after having fiercely
-resisted such a policy for a generation, would seem to suggest that some
-part of the truth in this matter is receiving general recognition. It is
-hardly less noteworthy that popular newspapers--that one could not have
-imagined taking such a view at the time, say, of the Boer war--now
-strenuously oppose further commitments in Mesopotamia and Persia--and do
-so on financial grounds. And even where the relations of the Imperial
-Government with States like Canada or Australia are of the most cordial
-kind, the impotence of political power for exacting economic advantage
-has become an axiom of imperial statecraft. The day that the Government
-in London proposed to set in motion its army or navy for the purpose of
-compelling Canada or Australia to cease the manufacture of cotton or
-steel in order to give England a market, would be the day, as we are all
-aware, of another Declaration of Independence. Any preference would be
-the result of consent, agreement, debate, contract: not of coercion.
-
-But the most striking demonstration yet afforded in history of the
-limits placed by modern industrial conditions upon the economic
-effectiveness of political power is afforded by the story of the attempt
-to secure reparations, indemnity, and even coal from Germany, and the
-attempt of the victors, like France, to repair the disastrous financial
-situation which has followed war by the military seizure of the wealth
-of a beaten enemy. That story is instructive both by reason of the light
-which it throws upon the facts as to the economic value of military
-power, and upon the attitude of public and statesmen towards these
-facts.
-
-When, some fifteen years ago, it was suggested that, given the
-conditions of modern trade and industry, a victor would not in practice
-be able to turn his military preponderance to economic account even in
-such a relatively simple matter as the payment of an indemnity, the
-suggestion was met with all but universal derision. European economists
-of international reputation implied that an author who could make a
-suggestion of that kind was just playing with paradox for the purpose of
-notoriety. And as for newspaper criticism--it revealed the fact that in
-the minds of the critics it was as simple a matter for an army to 'take'
-a nation's wealth once military victory had been achieved, as it would
-be for a big schoolboy to take an apple from a little one.
-
-Incidentally, the history of the indemnity negotiations illuminates
-extraordinarily the truth upon which the present writer happens so often
-to have insisted, namely, that in dealing with the economics of
-nationalism, one cannot dissociate from the problem the moral facts
-which make the nationalism--without which there would be no
-nationalisms, and therefore no 'international' economics.
-
-A book by the present author published some fifteen years ago has a
-chapter entitled 'The Indemnity Futility.' In the first edition the main
-emphasis of the chapter was thrown on this suggestion: on the morrow of
-a great war the victor would be in no temper to see the foreign trade of
-his beaten enemy expand by leaps and bounds, yet by no other means than
-by an immense foreign trade could a nation pay an indemnity commensurate
-with the vast expenditure of modern war. The idea that it would be paid
-in 'money,' which by some economic witchcraft should not involve the
-export of goods, was declared to be a gross and ignorant fallacy. The
-traders of the victorious nation would have to face a greatly sharpened
-competition from the beaten nation; or the victor would have to go
-without any very considerable indemnity. The chapter takes the ground
-that an indemnity is not in terms of theoretical economics an
-impossibility: it merely indicates the indispensable condition of
-securing it--the revival of the enemy's economic strength--and suggests
-that this would present for the victorious nation, not only a practical
-difficulty of internal politics (the pressure of Protectionist groups)
-but a grave political difficulty arising out of the theory upon which
-defence by preponderant isolated national power is based. A country
-possessing the economic strength to pay a vast indemnity is of potential
-military strength. And this is a risk your nationalists will not accept.
-
-Even friendly Free Trade critics shook their heads at this and implied
-that the argument was a reversion to Protectionist illusions for the
-purpose of making a case. That misunderstanding (for the argument does
-not involve acceptance of Protectionist premises) seemed so general that
-in subsequent editions of the book this particular passage was
-deleted.[9]
-
-It is not necessary now to labour the point, in view of all that has
-happened in Paris. The dilemma suggested fifteen years ago is precisely
-the dilemma which confronted the makers of the Peace Treaty; it is,
-indeed, precisely the dilemma which confronts us to-day.
-
-It applies not only to the Indemnity, Reparations, but to our entire
-policy, to larger aspects of our relations with the enemy. Hence the
-paralysis which results from the two mutually exclusive aims of the
-Treaty of Versailles: the desire on the one hand to reduce the enemy's
-strength by checking his economic vitality--and on the other to restore
-the general productivity of Europe, to which the economic life of the
-enemy is indispensable.
-
-France found herself, at the end of the War, in a desperate financial
-position and in dire need of all the help which could come from the
-enemy towards the restoration of her devastated districts. She presented
-demands for reparation running to vast, unprecedented sums. So be it.
-Germany then was to be permitted to return to active and productive
-work, to be permitted to have the iron and the other raw materials
-necessary for the production of the agricultural machinery, the building
-material and other sorts of goods France needed. Not the least in the
-world! Germany was to produce this great mass of wealth, but her
-factories were to remain closed, her rolling stock was to be taken from
-her, she was to have neither food nor raw materials. This is not some
-malicious travesty of the attitude which prevailed at the time that the
-Treaty was made. It was, and to a large extent still is, the position
-taken by many French publicists as well as by some in England. Mr.
-Vanderlip, the American banker, describes in his book[10] the attitude
-which he found in Paris during the Conference in these words: 'The
-French burn to milk the cow but insist first that its throat must be
-cut.'
-
-Despite the lessons of the year which followed the signing of the
-Treaty, one may doubt whether even now the nature of wealth and 'money'
-has come home to the Chauvinists of the Entente countries. The demand
-that we should at one and the same time forbid Germany to sell so much
-as a pen-knife in the markets of the world and yet compel her to pay us
-a tribute which could only be paid by virtue of a foreign trade greater
-than any which she has been able to maintain in the past--these mutually
-exclusive demands are still made in our own Parliament and Press.
-
-How powerfully the Nationalist fears operate to obscure the plain
-alternatives is revealed in a letter of M. Andr� Tardieu, written more
-than eighteen months after the Armistice.
-
-M. Tardieu, who was M. Clemenceau's political lieutenant in the framing
-of the Treaty, and one of the principal inspirers of the French policy,
-writing in July, 1920, long after the condition of Europe and the
-Continent's economic dependence on Germany had become visible, 'warns'
-us of the 'danger' that Germany may recover unless the Treaty is applied
-in all its rigour! He says:--
-
-     'Remember your own history and remember what the _rat de terre de
-     cousin_ which Great Britain regarded with such disdain after the
-     Treaty of Frankfurt became in less than forty years. We shall see
-     Germany recover economically, profiting by the ruins she has made
-     in other countries, with a rapidity which will astonish the world.
-     When that day arrives, if we have given way at Spa to the madness
-     of letting her off part of the debt that was born of her crime, no
-     courses will be too strong for the Governments which allowed
-     themselves to be duped. M. Clemenceau always said to British and
-     American statesmen: "We of France understand Germany better than
-     you." M. Clemenceau was right, and in bringing his colleagues round
-     to his point of view he did good work for the welfare of humanity.
-     If the work of last year is to be undone, the world will be
-     delivered up to the economic hegemony of Germany before twenty-five
-     years have passed. There could be no better proof than the recent
-     despatches of _The Times_ correspondent in Germany, which bear
-     witness to the fever of production which consumes Herr Stinnes and
-     his like. Such evidence is stronger than the biased statistics of
-     Mr Keynes. Those who refuse to take it into account will be the
-     criminals in the eyes of their respective countries.'[11]
-
-Note M. Tardieu's argument. He fears the restoration of Germany
-industry, _unless_ we make her pay the whole indemnity. That is to say,
-in other words, if we compel Germany to produce during the next
-twenty-five years something like ten thousand millions worth of wealth
-_over and above her own needs_, involving as it must a far greater
-output from her factories, mines, shipyards, laboratories, a far greater
-development of her railways, ports, canals, a far greater efficiency and
-capacity in her workers than has ever been known in the past, if that
-takes place as it must if we are to get an indemnity on the French
-scale, why, in that case, there will be no risk of Germany's making too
-great an economic recovery!
-
-The English Press is not much better. It was in December, 1918, that
-Professor Starling presented to the British Government his report
-showing that unless Germany had more food she would be utterly unable to
-pay any large indemnity to aid in reparations to France. Fully eighteen
-months later we find the _Daily Mail_ (June 18, 1920) rampaging and
-shouting itself hoarse at the monstrous discovery that the Government
-have permitted Germans to purchase wheat! Yet the _Mail_ has been
-foremost in insisting upon France's dire need for a German indemnity in
-order to restore devastated districts. If the _Mail_ is really
-representative of John Bull, then that person is at present in the
-position of a farmer who at seed-time is made violently angry at the
-suggestion that grain should be taken for the purpose of sowing the
-land, and shouts that it is a wicked proposal to take food from the
-mouths of his children. Although the Northcliffe Press has itself
-published page advertisements (from the Save the Children Fund)
-describing the incredible and appalling conditions in Europe, the _Daily
-Mail_ shouts in its leading article: 'Is British Food to go to the
-Boches?' The thing is in the best war style. 'Is there any reason why
-the Briton should be starved to feed the German?' asks the _Mail_. And
-there follows, of course, the usual invective about the submarines, war
-criminals, the sinking of hospital ships, and the approval by the whole
-German people of all these crimes.
-
-We get here, as at every turn and twist of our policy, not any
-recognition of interdependence, but a complete repudiation of that idea,
-and an assumption, instead, of a conflict of interest. If the children
-of Vienna or Berlin are to be fed, then it is assumed that it must be at
-the expense of the children of Paris and London. The wealth of the world
-is conceived as a fixed quantity, unaffected by any process of
-co-operation between the peoples sharing the world. The idea is, of
-course, an utter fallacy. French or Belgian children will have more, not
-less, if we take measures to avoid European conditions in which the
-children of Vienna are left to die. If, during the winter of 1919-1920,
-French children died from sickness due to lack of fuel, it was because
-the German coal was not delivered, and the German coal was not delivered
-because, among other things, of general disorganization of transport, of
-lack of rolling stock, of underfeeding of the miners, of collapse of the
-currency, political unrest, uncertainty of the future.
-
-It is one of the contradictions of the whole situation that France
-herself gives intermittent recognition to the fact of this
-interdependence. When, at Spa, it became evident that coal simply could
-not be delivered in the quantities demanded unless Germany had some
-means of buying imported food, France consented to what was in fact a
-loan to Germany (to the immense mystification of certain journalistic
-critics in Paris). One is prompted to ask what those who, before the War
-so scornfully treated the present writer for throwing doubts upon the
-feasibility of a post-war indemnity, would have said had he predicted
-that on the morrow of victory, the victor, instead of collecting a vast
-indemnity would from the simplest motives of self-protection, out of his
-own direly depleted store of capital, be advancing money to the
-vanquished.[12]
-
-The same inconsistency runs through much of our post-war behaviour. The
-famine in Central Europe has become so appalling that very great sums
-are collected in Britain and America for its relief. Yet the reduced
-productivity out of which the famine has arisen was quite obviously
-deliberately designed, and most elaborately planned by the economic
-provisions of the Treaty and by the blockades prolonged after the
-Armistice, for months in the case of Germany and years in the case of
-Russia. And at the very time that advertisements were appearing in the
-_Daily Mail_ for 'Help to Starving Europe,' and only a few weeks before
-France consented to advance money for the purpose of feeding Germany,
-that paper was working up 'anti-Hun stunts' for the purpose of using
-our power to prevent any food whatsoever going to Boches. It is also a
-duplication of the American phenomenon already touched upon: One Bill
-before Congress for the loaning of American money to Europe in order
-that cotton and wheat may find a market: another Bill before the same
-Congress designed, by a stiffly increased tariff, to keep out European
-goods so that the loans can never be repaid.[13]
-
-The experience of France in the attempt to exact coal by the use of
-military pressure throws a good deal of light upon what is really
-annexed when a victor takes over territory containing, say, coal; as
-also upon the question of getting the coal when it has been annexed. 'If
-we need coal,' wrote a Paris journalist plaintively during the Spa
-Conference, 'why in heaven's name don't we go and take it.' The
-implication being that it could be 'taken' without payment, for nothing.
-But even if France were to occupy the Ruhr and to administer the mines,
-the plant would have to be put in order, rolling stock provided,
-railroads restored, and, as France has already learned, miners fed and
-clothed and housed. But that costs money--to be paid as part of the cost
-of the coal. If Germany is compelled to provide those things--mining
-machinery, rolling stock, rails, miners' houses and clothing and
-food--we are confronted with pretty much the same dilemma as we
-encounter in compelling the payment of an indemnity. A Germany that can
-buy foreign food is a Germany of restored credit; a Germany that can
-furnish rolling stock, rails, mining machinery, clothing and housing for
-miners, is a Germany restored to general economic health--and
-potentially powerful. That Germany France fears to create. And even
-though we resort to a military occupation, using forced labour
-militarily controlled, we are faced by the need of all the things that
-must still enter in the getting of the coal, from miners' food and
-houses to plant and steel rails. Their cost must be charged against the
-coal obtained. And the amount of coal obtained in return for a given
-outlay will depend very largely, as we know in England to our cost, upon
-the willingness of the miner himself. Even the measure of resistance
-provoked in British miners by disputes about workers' control and
-Nationalisation, has meant a great falling off in output. But at least
-they are working for their own countrymen. What would be their output if
-they felt they were working for an enemy, and that every ton they mined
-might merely result in increasing the ultimate demands which that enemy
-would make upon their country? Should we get even eighty per cent, of
-the pre-war output or anything like it?[14] Yet that diminished output
-would have to stand the cost of all the permanent charges aforesaid.
-Would the cost of the coal to France, under some scheme of forced
-labour, be in the end less than if she were to buy it in the ordinary
-commercial way from German mines, as she did before the War? This latter
-method would almost certainly be in economic terms more advantageous.
-Where is the economic advantage of the military method? This, of course,
-is only the re-discovery of the old truth that forced or slave labour is
-more costly than paid labour.
-
-The ultimate explanation of the higher cost of slave labour is the
-ultimate explanation of the difficulty of using political power for
-economic ends, of basing our economic security upon military
-predominance. Here is France, with her old enemy helpless and prostrate.
-She needs his work for reparations, for indemnities, for coal. To
-perform that work the prostrate enemy must get upon his feet. If he
-does, France fears that he will knock her down. From that fear arise
-contradictory policies, self-stultifying courses. If she overcomes her
-fear sufficiently to allow the enemy to produce a certain amount of
-wealth for her, it is extremely likely that more than the amount of that
-wealth will have to be spent in protecting herself against the danger of
-the enemy's recovered vitality. Even when wars were less expensive than
-they are, indemnities were soon absorbed in the increase of armament
-necessitated by the Treaties which exacted the indemnities.
-
-Again, this is a very ancient story. The victor on the Egyptian vase has
-his captured enemy on the end of a rope. We say that one is free, the
-other bond. But as Spencer has shown us, both are bond. The victor is
-tied to the vanquished: if he should let go the prisoner would escape.
-The victor spends his time seeing that the prisoner does not escape; the
-prisoner his time and energy trying to escape. The combined efforts in
-consequence are not turned to the production of wealth; they are
-'cancelled out' by being turned one against another. Both may come near
-to starvation in that condition if much labour is needed to produce
-food. Only if they strike a bargain and co-operate will they be in the
-position each to turn his energy to the best economic account.
-
-But though the story is ancient, men have not yet read it. These pages
-are an attempt to show why it has not been read.
-
-Let us summarise the conclusions so far reached, namely:--
-
-     That predominant political and military power is important to exact
-     wealth is shown by the inability of the Allies to turn their power
-     to really profitable account; notably by the failure of France to
-     alleviate her financial distress by adequate reparations--even
-     adequate quantities of coal--from Germany; and by the failure of
-     the Allied statesmen as a whole, wielding a concentration of power
-     greater perhaps than any known in history to arrest an economic
-     disintegration, which is not only the cause of famine and vast
-     suffering, but is a menace to Allied interest, particularly to the
-     economic security of Britain.
-
-     The causes of this impotence are both mechanical and moral. If
-     another is to render active service in the production of wealth for
-     us--particularly services of any technical complexity in industry,
-     finance, commerce--he must have strength for that activity,
-     knowledge, and the instruments. But all those things can be turned
-     against us as means of resistance to our coercion. To the degree
-     to which we make him strong for our service we make him strong for
-     resistance to our will. As resistance increases we are compelled to
-     use an increasing proportion of what we obtain from him in
-     protecting ourselves against him. Energies cancel each other,
-     indemnities must be used in preparation for the next war. Only
-     voluntary co-operation can save this waste and create an effective
-     combination for the production of wealth that can be utilised for
-     the preservation of life.
-
-
-6
-
-_The Ultimate Moral Factor_
-
-The problem is not merely one of foreign politics or international
-relationship. The passions which obscure the real nature of the process
-by which men live are present in the industrial struggle also,
-and--especially in the case of communities situated as is the
-British--make of the national and international order one problem.
-
-It is here suggested that:--
-
-     Into the processes which maintain life within the nation an
-     increasing measure of consent and acquiescence by all parties must
-     enter: physical coercion becomes increasingly impotent to ensure
-     them. The problem of declining production by (_inter alios_)
-     miners, cannot be solved by increasing the army or police. The
-     dictatorship of the proletariat fails before the problem of
-     exacting big crops by the coercion of the peasant or countryman. It
-     would fail still more disastrously before the problem of obtaining
-     food or raw materials from foreigners (without which the British
-     could not live) in the absence of a money of stable value.
-
-One of the most suggestive facts of the post-war situation is that
-European civilization almost breaks down before one of the simplest of
-its mechanical problems: that of 'moving some stones from where they
-are not needed to the places where they are needed,' in other words
-before the problem of mining and distributing coal. Millions of children
-have died in agony in France during this last year or two because there
-was no coal to transport the food, to warm the buildings. Coal is the
-first need of our massed populations. Its absence means collapse of
-everything--of transport, of the getting of food to the towns, of
-furnishing the machinery and fertilisers by which food can be produced
-in sufficient quantity. It is warmth, it is clothing, it is light, it is
-the daily newspaper, it is water, it is communication. All our
-elaboration of knowledge and science fails in the presence of this
-problem of 'taking some stones from one heap and putting them on
-another.' The coal famine is a microcosm of the world's present failure.
-
-But if all those things--and spiritual things also are involved because
-the absence of material well-being means widespread moral evils--depend
-upon coal, the getting of the coal itself is dependent upon them. We
-have touched upon the importance of the one element of sheer goodwill on
-the part of the miners as a factor in the production of coal; upon the
-hopelessness of making good its absence by physical coercion. But we
-have also seen that just as the attempted use of coercion in the
-international field, though ineffective to exact necessary service or
-exchange, can and does produce paralysis of the indispensable processes,
-so the 'power' which the position of the miner gives him is a power of
-paralysis only.
-
-A later chapter shows that the instinct of industrial groups to solve
-their difficulties by simple coercion, the sheer assertion of power, is
-very closely related to the psychology of nationalism, so disruptive in
-the international field. Bolshevism, in the sense of belief in the
-effectiveness of coercion, represents the transfer of jingoism to the
-industrial struggle. It involves the same fallacies. A mining strike can
-bring the industrial machine to a full stop; to set that machine to work
-for the feeding of the population--which involves the co-ordination of
-a vast number of industries, the purchase of food and raw material from
-foreigners, who will only surrender it in return for promises to pay
-which they believe will be fulfilled--means not only technical
-knowledge, it means also the presence of a certain predisposition to
-co-operation. This Balkanised Europe which cannot feed itself has all
-the technical knowledge that it ever had. But its natural units are
-dominated by a certain temper which make impossible the co-operations by
-which alone the knowledge can be applied to the available natural
-resources.
-
-It is also suggestive that the virtual abandonment of the gold standard
-is playing much the same r�le (rendering visible the inefficiency of
-coercion) in the struggle between the industrial that it is between the
-national groups. A union strikes for higher wages and is successful. The
-increase is granted--and is paid in paper money.
-
-When wages were paid in gold an advance in wages, gained as the result
-of strike or agitation, represented, temporarily at least, a real
-victory for the workers. Prices might ultimately rise and wipe out the
-advantage, but with a gold currency price movements have nothing like
-the rapidity and range which is the case when unlimited paper money can
-be printed. An advance in wages paid in paper may mean nothing more than
-a mere readjustment of symbols. The advance, in other words, can be
-cancelled by 'a morning's work of the inflationist' as a currency expert
-has put it. The workers in these conditions can never know whether that
-which they are granted with the right hand of increased wages will not
-be taken away by the left hand of inflation.
-
-In order to be certain that they are not simply tricked, the workers
-must be in a position to control the conditions which determine the
-value of currency. But again, that means the co-ordination of the most
-complex economic processes, processes which can only be ensured by
-bargaining with other groups and with foreign countries.
-
-This problem would still present itself as acutely on the morrow of the
-establishment of a British Soviet Republic as it presents itself to-day.
-If the British Soviets could not buy food and raw materials in twenty
-different centres throughout the world they could not feed the people.
-We should be blockaded, not by ships, but by the worthlessness of our
-money. Russia, which needs only an infinitesimal proportion relatively
-of foreign imports has gold and the thing of absolutely universal need,
-food. We have no gold--only things which a world fast disintegrating
-into isolated peasantries is learning somehow to do without.
-
-Before blaming the lack of 'social sense' on the part of striking miners
-or railwaymen let us recall the fact that the temper and attitude to
-life and the social difficulties which lie at the bottom of the
-Syndicalist philosophy have been deliberately cultivated by Government,
-Press, and Church, during five years for the purposes of war; and that
-the selected ruling order have shown the same limitation of vision in
-not one whit less degree.
-
-Think what Versailles actually did and what it might have done.
-
-Here when the Conference met, was a Europe on the edge of famine--some
-of it over the edge. Every country in the world, including the
-wealthiest and most powerful, like America, was faced with social
-maladjustment in one form or another. In America it was an
-inconvenience, but in the cities of a whole continent--in Russia,
-Poland, Germany, Austria--it was shortly to mean ill-health, hunger,
-misery, and agony to millions of children and their mothers. Terms of
-the study like 'the interruption of economic processes' were to be
-translated into such human terms as infantile cholera, tuberculosis,
-typhus, hunger-oedema. These, as events proved, were to undermine the
-social sanity of half a world.
-
-The acutest statesmen that Europe can produce, endowed with the most
-autocratic power, proceed to grapple with the situation. In what way do
-they apply that power to the problem of production and distribution, of
-adding to the world's total stock of goods, which nearly every
-government in the world was in a few weeks to be proclaiming as
-humanity's first need, the first condition of reconstruction and
-regeneration?
-
-The Treaty and the policy pursued since the Armistice towards Russia
-tell us plainly enough. Not only do the political arrangements of the
-Treaty, as we have seen, ignore the needs of maintaining the machinery
-of production in Europe[15] but they positively discourage and in many
-cases are obviously framed to prevent, production over very large areas.
-
-The Treaty, as some one has said, deprived Germany of both the means and
-the motive of production. No adequate provision was made for enabling
-the import of food and raw materials, without which Germany could not
-get to work on the scale demanded by the indemnity claims; and the
-motive for industry was undermined by leaving the indemnity claims
-indeterminate.
-
-The victor's passion, as we have seen, blinded him to the indispensable
-condition of the very demands which he was making. Europe was unable
-temperamentally to reconcile itself to the conditions of that increased
-productivity, by which alone it was to be saved. It is this element in
-the situation--its domination, that is, by an uncalculating popular
-passion poured out lavishly in support of self-destructive
-policies--which prompts one to doubt whether these disruptive forces
-find their roots merely in the capitalist organization of society: still
-less whether they are due to the conscious machinations of a small group
-of capitalists. No considerable section of capitalism any where has any
-interest in the degree of paralysis that has been produced. Capitalism
-may have overreached itself by stimulating nationalist hostilities until
-they have got beyond control. Even so, it is the unseeing popular
-passion that furnishes the capitalist with his arm, and is the factor of
-greatest danger.
-
-Examine for a moment the economic manifestation of international
-hostilities. There has just begun in the United States a clamorous
-campaign for the denunciation of the Panama Treaty which places British
-ships on an equality with American. American ships must be exempt from
-the tolls. 'Don't we own the Canal?' ask the leaders of this campaign.
-There is widespread response to it. But of the millions of Americans who
-will become perhaps passionately angry over that matter and extremely
-anti-British, how many have any shares in any ships that can possibly
-benefit by the denunciation of the Treaty? Not one in a thousand. It is
-not an economic motive operating at all.
-
-Capitalism--the management of modern industry by a small economic
-autocracy of owners of private capital--has certainly a part in the
-conflicts that produce war. But that part does not arise from the direct
-interest that the capitalists of one nation as a whole have in the
-destruction of the trade or industry of another. Such a conclusion
-ignores the most elementary facts in the modern organisation of
-industry. And it is certainly not true to say that British capitalists,
-as a distinct group, were more disposed than the public as a whole to
-insist upon the Carthaginian features of the Treaty. Everything points
-rather to the exact contrary. Public opinion as reflected, for instance,
-by the December, 1918, election, was more ferociously anti-German than
-capitalists are likely to have been. It is certainly not too much to say
-that if the Treaty had been made by a group of British--or
-French--bankers, merchants, shipowners, insurance men, and
-industrialists, liberated from all fear of popular resentment, the
-economic life of Central Europe would not have been crushed as it has
-been.
-
-Assuredly, such a gathering of capitalists would have included groups
-having direct interest in the destruction of German competition. But it
-would also have included others having an interest in the restoration of
-the German market and German credit, and one influence would in some
-measure have cancelled the other.
-
-As a simple fact we know that not all British capitalists, still less
-British financiers, _are_ interested in the destruction of German
-prosperity. Central Europe was one of the very greatest markets
-available for British industry, and the recovery of that market may
-constitute for a very large number of manufacturers, merchants,
-shippers, insurance companies, and bankers, a source of immense
-potential profit. It is a perfectly arguable proposition, to put it at
-the very lowest, that British 'capitalism' has, as a whole, more to gain
-from a productive and stable Europe than from a starving and unstable
-one. There is no reason whatever to doubt the genuineness of the
-internationalism that we associate with the Manchester School of
-Capitalist Economics.
-
-But in political nationalism as a force there are no such cross currents
-cancelling out the hostility of one nation to another. Economically,
-Britain is not one entity and Germany another. But as a sentimental
-concept, each may perfectly well be an entity; and in the imagination of
-John Citizen, in his political capacity, voting on the eve of the Peace
-Conference, Britain is a triumphant and heroic 'person,' while Germany
-is an evil and cruel 'person,' who must be punished, and whose pockets
-must be searched. John has neither the time nor has he felt the need,
-for a scientific attitude in politics. But when it is no longer a
-question of giving his vote, but of earning his income, of succeeding as
-a merchant or shipowner in an uncertain future, he will be thoroughly
-scientific. When it comes to carrying cargoes or selling cotton goods,
-he can face facts. And, in the past at least, he knows that he has not
-sold those materials to a wicked person called 'Germany,' but to a
-quite decent and human trader called Schmidt.
-
-What I am suggesting here is that for an explanation of the passions
-which have given us the Treaty of Versailles we must look much more to
-rival nationalisms than to rival capitalisms; not to hatreds that are
-the outgrowth of a real conflict of interests, but to certain
-nationalist conceptions, 'myths,' as Sorel has it. To these conceptions
-economic hostilities may assuredly attach themselves. At the height of
-the war-hatred of things German, a shopkeeper who had the temerity to
-expose German post cards or prints for sale would have risked the
-sacking of his shop. The sackers would not have been persons engaged in
-the post card producing trade. Their motive would have been patriotic.
-If their feelings lasted over the war, they would vote against the
-admission of German post cards. They would not be moved by economic,
-still less by capitalistic motives. These motives do enter, as we shall
-see presently, into the problems raised by the present condition of
-Europe. But it is important to see at what point and in what way. The
-point for the moment--and it has immense practical importance--is that
-the Treaty of Versailles and its economic consequences should be
-attributed less to capitalism (bad as that has come to be in its total
-results) than to the pressure of a public opinion that had crystallised
-round nationalist conceptions.[16]
-
-Here, at the end of 1920, is the British Press still clamouring for the
-exclusion of German toys. Such an agitation presumably pleases the
-millions of readers. They are certainly not toymakers or sellers; they
-have no commercial interest in the matter save that 'their toys will
-cost them more' if the agitation succeeds. They are actuated by
-nationalist hostility.
-
-If Germany is not to be allowed to sell even toys, there will be very
-few things indeed that she can sell. We are to go on with the policy of
-throttling Europe in order that a nation whose industrial activity is
-indispensable to Europe shall not become strong. We do not see, it is
-true, the relation between the economic revival of Europe and the
-industrial recuperation of Germany; we do not see it because we can be
-made to feel anger at the idea of German toys for British children so
-much more readily than we can be made to see the causes which deprive
-French children of warmth in their schoolrooms. European society seems
-to be in the position of an ill-disciplined child that cannot bring
-itself to swallow the medicine that would relieve it of its pain. The
-passions which have been cultivated in five years of war must be
-indulged, whatever the ultimate cost to ourselves. The judgment of such
-a society is swamped in those passions.
-
-The restoration of much of Europe will involve many vast and complex
-problems of reconstruction. But here, in the alternatives presented by
-the payment of a German indemnity, for instance, is a very simple issue:
-if Germany is to pay, she must produce goods, that is, she must be
-economically restored; if we fear her economic restoration, then we
-cannot obtain the execution of the reparation clauses of the Treaty. But
-that simple issue one of the greatest figures of the Conference cannot
-face. He has not, eighteen months after the Treaty, emerged from the
-most elementary confusion concerning it. If the psychology of
-Nationalism renders so simple a problem insoluble, what will be its
-effect upon the problem of Europe as a whole?
-
-Again, it may be that shipowners are behind the American agitation and
-toy manufacturers behind the British. A Coffin Trust might intrigue
-against measures to prevent a repetition of the influenza epidemic. But
-what should we say of the fitness for self-government of a people that
-should lend itself by millions to such an intrigue of Coffin-makers,
-showing as the result of its propaganda a fierce hostility to
-sanitation? We should conclude that it deserved to die. If Europe went
-to war as the result of the intrigues of a dozen capitalists, its
-civilisation is not worth saving; it cannot be saved, for as soon as the
-capitalists were removed, its inherent helplessness would place it at
-the mercy of some other form of exploitation.
-
-Its only hope lies in a capacity for self-management, self-rule, which
-means self-control. But a few financial intriguers, we are told, have
-only to pronounce certain words, 'fatherland above all,' 'national
-honour,' put about a few stories of atrocities, clamour for revenge, for
-the millions to lose all self-control, to become completely blind as to
-where they are going, what they are doing, to lose all sense of the
-ultimate consequences of their acts.
-
-The gravest fact in the history of the last ten years is not the fact of
-war; it is the temper of mind, the blindness of conduct on the part of
-the millions, which alone, ultimately, explains our policies. The
-suffering and cost of war may well be the best choice of evils, like the
-suffering and cost of surgery, or the burdens we assume for a clearly
-conceived moral end. But what we have seen in recent history is not a
-deliberate choice of ends with a consciousness of moral and material
-cost. We see a whole nation demanding fiercely in one breath certain
-things, and in the next just as angrily demanding other things which
-make compliance with the first impossible; a whole nation or a whole
-continent given over to an orgy of hate, retaliation, the indulgence of
-self-destructive passions. And this collapse of the human mind does but
-become the more appalling if we accept the explanation that 'wars are
-caused by capitalism' or 'Junkerthum'; if we believe that six Jew
-financiers sitting in a room can thus turn millions into something
-resembling madmen. No indictment of human reason could be more severe.
-
-To assume that millions will, without any real knowledge of why they do
-it or of the purpose behind the behests they obey, not only take the
-lives of others and give their own, but turn first in one direction and
-then in another the flood of their deepest passions of hate and
-vengeance, just as a little group of mean little men, manipulating mean
-little interests, may direct, is to argue a moral helplessness and
-shameful docility on the part of those millions which would deprive the
-future of all hope of self-government. And to assume that they are _not_
-unknowing as to the alleged cause--that would bring us to moral
-phantasmagoria.
-
-We shall get nearer to the heart of our problem if, instead of asking
-perpetually '_Who_ caused the War?' and indicting 'Capitalists' or
-'Junkers,' we ask the question: 'What is the cause of that state of mind
-and temper in the millions which made them on the one side welcome war
-(as we allege of the German millions), or on the other side makes them
-acclaim, or impose, blockades, famines,' 'punitive' 'Treaties of
-Peace?'
-
-Obviously 'selfishness' is not operating so far as the mass is
-concerned, except of course in the sense that a yielding to the passion
-of hate is self-indulgence. Selfishness, in the sense of care for social
-security and well-being, might save the structure of European society.
-It would bring the famine to an end. But we have what a French writer
-has called a 'holy and unselfish hate.' Balkan peasants prefer to burn
-their wheat rather than send it to the famished city across the river.
-Popular English newspapers agitate against a German trade which is the
-only hope of necessitous Allies obtaining any considerable reparation
-from Germany. A society in which each member is more desirous of hurting
-his neighbour than of promoting his own welfare, is one in which the
-aggregate will to destruction is more powerful than the will to
-preservation.
-
-The history of these last years shows with painful clarity that as
-between groups of men hostilities and hates are aroused very much more
-easily than any emotion of comradeship. And the hate is a hungrier and
-more persistent emotion than the comradeship. The much proclaimed
-fellowship of the Allies, 'cemented by the blood shed on the field,'
-vanished rapidly. But hate remained and found expression in the social
-struggle, in fierce repressions, in bickerings, fears, and rancours
-between those who yesterday fought side by side. Yet the price of
-survival is, as we have seen, an ever closer cohesion and social
-co-operation.
-
-And while it is undoubtedly true that the 'hunger of hate'--the actual
-desire to have something to hate--may so warp our judgment as to make us
-see a conflict of interest where none exists, it is also true that a
-sense of conflict of vital interest is a great feeder of hate. And that
-sense of conflict may well become keener as the problem of man's
-struggle for sustenance on the earth becomes more acute, as his numbers
-increase and the pressure upon that sustenance becomes greater.
-
-Once more, as millions of children are born at our very doors into a
-world that cannot feed them, condemned, if they live at all, to form a
-race that will be defective, stunted, unhealthy, abnormal, this question
-which Malthus very rightly taught our grandfathers to regard as the
-final and ultimate question of their Political Economy, comes
-dramatically into the foreground. How can the earth, which is limited,
-find food for an increase of population which is unlimited?
-
-The haunting anxieties which lie behind the failure to find a conclusive
-answer to that question, probably affect political decisions and deepen
-hostilities and animosities even where the reason is ill-formulated or
-unconscious. Some of us, perhaps, fear to face the question lest we be
-confronted with morally terrifying alternatives. Let posterity decide
-its own problems. But such fears, and the motives prompted by them, do
-not disappear by our refusal to face them. Though hidden, they still
-live, and under various moral disguises influence our conduct.
-
-Certainly the fears inspired by the Malthusian theory and the facts upon
-which it is based, have affected our attitude to war; affected the
-feeling of very many for whom war is not avowedly, as it is openly and
-avowedly to some of its students, 'the Struggle for Bread.'[17]
-
-_The Great Illusion_ was an attempt frankly to face this ultimate
-question of the bearing of war upon man's struggle for survival. It took
-the ground that the victory of one nation over another, however
-complete, does not solve the problem; it makes it worse in that the
-conditions and instincts which war accentuates express themselves in
-nationalist and racial rivalries, create divisions that embarrass and
-sometimes make impossible the widespread co-operation by which alone man
-can effectively exploit nature.
-
-That demonstration as a whole belongs to the pages that follow. But
-bearing upon the narrower question of war in relation to the world's
-good, this much is certain:--
-
-If the object of the combatants in the War was to make sure of their
-food, then indeed is the result in striking contrast with that
-intention, for food is assuredly more insecure than ever alike for
-victor and vanquished. They differ only in the degree of insecurity. The
-War, the passions which it has nurtured, the political arrangements
-which those passions have dictated, have given us a Europe immeasurably
-less able to meet its sustenance problem than it was before. So much
-less able that millions, who before the War could well support
-themselves by their own labour, are now unable so to do and have to be
-fed by drawing upon the slender stocks of their conquerors--stocks very
-much less than when some at least of those conquerors were in the
-position of defeated peoples.
-
-This is not the effect of the material destruction of war, of the mere
-battering down of houses and bridges and factories by the soldier.
-
-The physical devastation, heart-breaking as the spectacle of it is, is
-not the difficult part of the problem, nor quantitatively the most
-important.[18] It is not the devastated districts that are suffering
-from famine, nor their losses which appreciably diminish the world
-supply of food. It is in cities in which not a house has been destroyed,
-in which, indeed, every wheel in every factory is still intact, that the
-population dies of hunger, and the children have to be fed by our
-charity. It is the fields over which not a single soldier has tramped
-that are condemned to sterility because those factories are idle, while
-the factories are condemned to idleness because the fields are sterile.
-
-The real 'economic argument' against war does not consist in the
-presentation of a balance sheet showing so much cost and destruction and
-so much gain. The real argument consists in the fact that war, and still
-more the ideas out of which it arises, produce ultimately an unworkable
-society. The physical destruction and perhaps the cost are greatly
-exaggerated. It is perhaps true that in the material foundations of
-wealth Britain is as well off to-day as before the War. It is not from
-lack of technical knowledge that the economic machine works with such
-friction: that has been considerably increased by the War. It is not
-from lack of idealism and unselfishness. There has been during the last
-five years such an outpouring of devoted unselfishness--the very hates
-have been unselfish--as history cannot equal. Millions have given their
-lives for the contrary ideals in which they believed. It is sometimes
-the ideals for which men die that make impossible their life and work
-together.
-
-The real 'economic argument,' supported by the experience of our
-victory, is that the ideas which produce war--the fears out of which it
-grows and the passions which it feeds--produce a state of mind that
-ultimately renders impossible the co-operation by which alone wealth can
-be produced and life maintained. The use of our power or our knowledge
-for the purpose of subduing Nature to our service depends upon the
-prevalence of certain ideas, ideas which underlie the 'art of living
-together.' They are something apart from mere technical knowledge which
-war, as in Germany, may increase, but which can never be a substitute
-for this 'art of living together.' (The arms, indeed, may be the
-instruments of anarchy, as in so much of Europe to-day).
-
-The War has left us a defective or perverted social sense, with a group
-of instincts and moralities that are disintegrating Western society, and
-will, unless checked, destroy it.
-
-These forces, like the 'ultimate art' which they have so nearly
-destroyed, are part of the problem of economics. For they render a
-production of wealth adequate to welfare impossible. How have they
-arisen? How can they be corrected? These questions will form an integral
-part of the problems here dealt with.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-THE OLD ECONOMY AND THE POST-WAR STATE
-
-
-This chapter suggests the following:--
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The trans-national processes which enabled Europe to support itself
-before the War, were based mainly on private exchanges prompted by the
-expectation of individual advantage. They were not dependent upon
-political power. (The fifteen millions for whom German soil could not
-provide, lived by trade with countries over which Germany had no
-political control, as a similar number of British live by similar
-non-political means.)
-
-The old individualist economy has been largely destroyed by the State
-Socialism introduced for war purposes; the Nation, taking over
-individual enterprise, became trader and manufacturer in increasing
-degree. The economic clauses of the Treaty, if enforced, must prolong
-this tendency, rendering a large measure of such Socialism permanent.
-
-The change may be desirable. But if co-operation must in future be less
-as between individuals for private advantage, and much more as between
-_nations_, Governments acting in an economic capacity, the political
-emotions of nationalism will play a much larger r�le in the economic
-processes of Europe. If to Nationalist hostilities as we have known them
-in the past, is to be added the commercial rivalry of nations now
-converted into traders and capitalists, we are likely to have not a less
-but more quarrelsome world, unless the fact of interdependence is much
-more vividly realised than in the past.
-
-The facts of the preceding chapter touching the economic chaos in
-Europe, the famine, the debauchery of the currencies, the collapse of
-credit, the failure to secure indemnities, and particularly the remedies
-of an international kind to which we are now being forced, all confirm
-what had indeed become pretty evident before the War, namely, that much
-of Europe lives by virtue of an international, or, more correctly, a
-transnational economy. That is to say, there are large populations that
-cannot live at much above a coolie standard unless there is a
-considerable measure of economic co-operation across frontiers. The
-industrial countries, like Britain and Germany, can support their
-populations only by exchanging their special products and
-services--particularly coal, iron, manufactures, ocean carriage--for
-food and raw materials; while more agricultural countries like Italy and
-even Russia, can maintain their full food-producing capacity only by an
-apparatus of railways, agricultural machinery, imported coal and
-fertilisers, to which the industry of the manufacturing area is
-indispensable.
-
-That necessary international co-operation had, as a matter of fact, been
-largely developed before the War. The cheapening of transport, the
-improvement of communication, had pushed the international division of
-labour very far indeed. The material in a single bale of clothes would
-travel half round the world several times, and receive the labour of
-half a dozen nationalities, before finally reaching its consumer. But
-there was this very significant fact about the whole process;
-Governments had very little to do with it, and the process did not rest
-upon any clearly defined body of commercial right, defined in a regular
-code or law. One of the greatest of all British industries, cotton
-spinning, depended upon access to raw material under the complete
-control of a foreign State, America. (The blockade of the South in the
-War of Secession proved how absolute was the dependence of a main
-British industry upon the political decisions of a foreign Government).
-The mass of contradictory uncertainties relating to rights of neutral
-trade in war-time, known as International Law, furnished no basis of
-security at all. It did not even pretend to touch the source--the right
-of access to the material itself.
-
-That right, and the international economy that had become so
-indispensable to the maintenance of so much of the population of Western
-Europe, rested upon the expectation that the private owner of raw
-materials--the grower of wheat or cotton, or the owner of iron ore or
-coal-mines--would continue to desire to sell those things, would always,
-indeed, be compelled so to do, in order to turn them to account. The
-main aim of the Industrial Era was markets--to sell things. One heard of
-'economic invasions' before the War. This did not mean that the invader
-took things, but that he brought them--for sale. The modern industrial
-nation did not fear the loss of commodities. What it feared was their
-receipt. And the aid of Governments was mainly invoked, not for the
-purpose of preventing things leaving the country, but for the purpose of
-putting obstacles in the way of foreigners bringing commodities into the
-country. Nearly every country had 'Protection' against foreign goods.
-Very rarely did we find countries fearing to lose their goods and
-putting on export duties. Incidentally such duties are forbidden by the
-American Constitution.
-
-Before the War it would have seemed a work of supererogation to frame
-international regulations to protect the right to buy: all were
-searching for buyers. In an economic world which revolved on the
-expectation of individual profit, the competition for profit kept open
-the resources of the world.
-
-Under that system it did not matter much, economically, what political
-administration--provided always that it was an orderly one--covered the
-area in which raw materials were found, or even controlled ports and
-access to the sea. It was in no way indispensable to British industry
-that its most necessary raw material--cotton, say--should be under its
-own control. That industry had developed while the sources of the
-material were in a foreign State. Lancashire did not need to 'own'
-Louisiana. If England had 'owned' Louisiana, British cotton-spinners
-would still have had to pay for the cotton as before. When a writer
-declared before the War that Germany dreamed of the conquest of Canada
-because she needed its wheat wherewith to feed her people, he certainly
-overlooked the fact that Germany could have had the wheat of Canada on
-the same conditions as the British who 'owned' the country--and who
-certainly could not get it without paying for it.
-
-It was true before the War to write:--
-
-     'Co-operation between nations has become essential for the very
-     life of their peoples. But that co-operation does not take place as
-     between States at all. A trading corporation called "Britain" does
-     not buy cotton from another corporation called "America." A
-     manufacturer in Manchester strikes a bargain with a merchant in
-     Louisiana in order to keep a bargain with a dyer in Germany, and
-     three, or a much larger number of parties, enter into virtual, or
-     perhaps actual, contract, and form a mutually dependent economic
-     community (numbering, it may be, with the work-people in the group
-     of industries involved, some millions of individuals)--an economic
-     entity so far as one can exist which does not include all organised
-     society. The special interests of such a community may become
-     hostile to those of another community, but it will almost certainly
-     not be a "national" one, but one of a like nature, say a shipping
-     ring or groups of international bankers or Stock Exchange
-     speculators. The frontiers of such communities do not coincide with
-     the areas in which operate the functions of the State. How could a
-     State, say Britain, act on behalf of an economic entity such as
-     that just indicated? By pressure against America or Germany? But
-     the community against which the British manufacturer in this case
-     wants pressure exercised is not "America" or "Germany"--both want
-     it exercised against the shipping ring or the speculators or the
-     bankers who in part are British. If Britain injures America or
-     Germany as a whole, she injures necessarily the economic entity
-     which it was her object to protect.'[19]
-
-This line of reasoning is no longer valid, for it was based upon a
-system of economic individualism, upon a distinction between the
-functions proper to the State and those proper to the citizen. This
-individualist system has been profoundly transformed in the direction of
-national control by the measures adopted everywhere for the purposes of
-war; a transformation that the confiscatory clauses of the Treaty and
-the arrangements for the payment of the indemnity help to render
-permanent. While the old understanding or convention has been
-destroyed--or its disappearance very greatly accelerated--by the Allies,
-no new one has so far been established to take its place. To that fact
-we must ascribe much of the economic paralysis that has come upon the
-world.
-
-I am aware, of course, that the passage I have quoted did not tell the
-whole story; that already before the War the power of the political
-State was being more and more used by 'big business'; that in China,
-Mexico, Central America, the Near East, Morocco, Persia, Mesopotamia,
-wherever there was undeveloped _and disorderly_ territory, private
-enterprise was exercising pressure upon the State to use its power to
-ensure sources of raw material or areas for the investment of capital.
-That phase of the question is dealt with at greater length
-elsewhere.[20] But the actual (whatever the potential) economic
-importance of the territory about which the nations quarrelled was as
-yet, in 1914, small; the part taken by Governments in the control and
-direction of international trade was negligible. Europe lived by
-processes that went on without serious obstacle across frontiers. Little
-States, for instance, without Colonies (Scandinavia, Switzerland) not
-only maintained a standard of living for their people quite as high as
-that in the great States, but maintained it moreover by virtue of a
-foreign trade relatively as considerable. And the forces which preserved
-the international understanding by which that trade was carried on were
-obviously great.
-
-It was not true, before the War, to say that Germany had to expand her
-frontiers to feed her population. It is true that with her, as with us,
-her soil did not produce the food needed for the populations living on
-it; as with us, about fifteen millions were being fed by means of trade
-with territories which politically she did not 'own,' and did not need
-to 'own'--with Russia, with South America, with Asia, with our own
-Colonies. Like us Germany was turning her coal and iron into bread. The
-process could have gone on almost indefinitely, so long as the coal and
-iron lasted, as the tendency to territorial division of labour was being
-intensified by the development of transport and invention. (The pressure
-of the population on the food resources of these islands was possibly
-greater under the Heptarchy than at present, when they support
-forty-five millions.) Under the old economic order conquest meant, not a
-transfer of wealth from one set of persons to another--for the soil of
-Alsace, for instance, remained in the hands of those who had owned it
-under France--but a change of administration. The change may have been
-as unwarrantable and oppressive as you will, but it did not involve
-economic strangulation of the conquered peoples or any very fundamental
-economic change at all. French economic life did not wither as the
-result of the changes of frontier in 1872, and French factories were not
-shut off from raw material, French cities were not stricken with
-starvation as the result of France's defeat. Her economic and financial
-recovery was extraordinarily rapid; her financial position a year or two
-after the War was sounder than that of Germany. It seemed, therefore,
-that if Germany, of all nations, and Bismarck, of all statesmen, could
-thus respect the convention which after war secured the immunity of
-private trade and property, it must indeed be deeply rooted in
-international comity.
-
-Indeed, the 'trans-national' economic activities of individuals, which
-had ensued so widespread an international economy, and the principle of
-the immunity of private property from seizure after conquest, had become
-so firmly rooted in international relationship as to survive all the
-changes of war and conquest. They were based on a principle that had
-received recognition in English Treaties dating back to the time of
-Magna Carta, and that had gradually become a convention of international
-relationship.
-
-At Versailles the Germans pointed out that their country was certainly
-not left with resources to feed its population. The Allies replied to
-that, not by denying the fact--to which their own advisers, like Mr
-Hoover, have indeed pointedly called attention--but as follows:--
-
-     'It would appear to be a fundamental fallacy that the political
-     control of a country is essential in order to procure a reasonable
-     share of its products. Such a proposal finds no foundation in
-     economic law or history.'[21]
-
-In making their reply the Allies seemed momentarily to have overlooked
-one fact--their own handiwork in the Treaty.
-
-Before the War it would have been a true reply. But the Allies have
-transformed what were, before the War, dangerous fallacies into
-monstrous truths.
-
-President Wilson has described the position of Germany under the Treaty
-in these terms:--
-
-     'The Treaty of Peace sets up a great Commission, known as the
-     Reparations Commission.... That Reparation Commission can
-     determine the currents of trade, the conditions of credit, of
-     international credit; it can determine how much Germany is going to
-     buy, where it is going to buy, and how it is going to pay for
-     it.'[22]
-
-In other words, it is no longer open to Germany, as the result of
-guarantees of free movement accorded to individual traders, to carry on
-that process by which before the War she supported herself. Individual
-Germans cannot now, as heretofore, get raw materials by dealing with
-foreign individuals, without reference to their nationality. Germans are
-now, in fact, placed in the position of having to deal through their
-State, which in turn deals with other States. To buy wheat or iron, they
-cannot as heretofore go to individuals, to the grower or mine-owner, and
-offer a price; the thing has to be done through Governments. We have
-come much nearer to a condition in which the States do indeed 'own'
-(they certainly control) their raw material.
-
-The most striking instance is that of access to the Lorraine iron, which
-before the War furnished three-fourths of the raw material of Germany's
-basic industry. Under the individualist system, in which 'the buyer is
-king' in which efforts were mainly directed to finding markets, no
-obstacle was placed on the export of iron (except, indeed, the obstacle
-to the acquisition by French citizens of Lorraine iron set up by the
-French Government in the imposition of tariffs). But under the new
-order, with the French State assuming such enormously increased economic
-functions, the destination of the iron will be determined by political
-considerations. And 'political considerations,' in an order of
-international society in which the security of the nation depends, not
-upon the collective strength of the whole society, but upon its relative
-strength as against rival units, mean the deliberate weakening of
-rivals. Thus, no longer will the desire of private owners to find a
-market for their wares be a guarantee of the free access of citizens in
-other States to those materials. In place of a play of factors which
-did, however clumsily, ensure in practice general access to raw
-materials, we have a new order of motives; the deliberate desire of
-States, competing in power, owning great sources of raw material, to
-deprive rival States of the use of them.
-
-That the refusal of access will not add to the welfare of the people of
-the State that so owns these materials, that, indeed, it will inevitably
-lower the standard of living in all States alike, is certainly true. But
-so long as there is no real international society organised on the basis
-of collective strength and co-operation, the motive of security will
-override considerations of welfare. The condition of international
-anarchy makes true what otherwise need not be true, that the vital
-interests of nations are conflicting.
-
-Parenthetically, it is necessary to say this: the time may have come for
-the destruction of the older order. If the individualist order was that
-which gave us Armageddon, and still more, the type of mind which
-Armageddon and the succeeding 'peace' revealed, then the present writer,
-for one, sheds no tears over its destruction. In any case, a discussion
-of the intrinsic merits, social and moral, of socialism and
-individualism respectively, would to-day be quite academic. For those
-who profess to stand for individualism are the most active agents of its
-destruction. The Conservative Nationalists, who oppose the socialisation
-of wealth and yet advocate the conscription of life; oppose
-Nationalisation, yet demand the utmost military preparedness in an age
-when effective preparation for war means the mobilisation particularly
-of the nation's industrial resources; resent the growing authority of
-the State, yet insist that the power of the National State shall be such
-as to give it everywhere domination; do, indeed, demand omelets without
-eggs, and bricks not only without straw but without clay.
-
-A Europe of competing military nationalisms means a Europe in which the
-individual and all his activities must more and more be merged in his
-State for the purpose of that competition. The process is necessarily
-one of progressively intense socialisation; and the war measures carried
-it to very great lengths indeed. Moreover, the point to which our
-attention just now should be directed, is the difference which
-distinguishes the process of change within the State from that which
-marks the change in the international field. Within the State the old
-method is automatically replaced by the new (indeed nationalisation is
-mostly the means by which the old individualism is brought to an end);
-between nations, on the other hand, no organised socialistic
-internationalism replaces the old method which is destroyed. The world
-is left without any settled international economy.
-
-Let us note the process of destruction of the old economy.
-
-In July, 1914, the advocacy of economic nationalisation or Socialism
-would have been met with elaborate arguments from perhaps nine average
-Englishmen out of ten, to the effect that control or management of
-industries and services by the Government was impossible, by reason of
-the sheer inefficiency which marks Governmental work. Then comes the
-War, and an efficient railway service and the co-ordination of industry
-and finance to national ends becomes a matter of life and death. In this
-grave emergency, what policy does this same average Englishman, who has
-argued so elaborately against State control, and the possibility of
-governments ever administering public services, pursue? Almost as a
-matter of course, as the one thing to be done, he clamours for the
-railways and other public services to be taken over by the Government,
-and for the State to control the industry, trade, and finance of the
-country.
-
-Now it may well be that the Socialist would deny that the system which
-obtained during the War was Socialism, and would say that it came nearer
-to being State Capitalism than State Socialism; the individualist may
-argue that the methods would never be tolerated as a normal method of
-national life. But when all allowances are made the fact remains that
-when our need was greatest we resorted to the very system which we had
-always declared to be the worst from the point of view of efficiency. As
-Sir Leo Chiozza Money, in sketching the history of this change, which he
-has called 'The Triumph of Nationalisation,' says: 'The nation won
-through the unprecedented economic difficulties of the greatest War in
-history by methods which it had despised. National organisation
-triumphed in a land where it had been denied.' In this sense the England
-of 1914-1920 was a Socialist England; and it was a Socialist England by
-common consent.
-
-This fact has an effect on the moral outlook not generally realised.
-
-For very many, as the War went on and increasing sacrifices of life and
-youth were demanded, new light was thrown upon the relations of the
-individual to the State. A whole generation of young Englishmen were
-suddenly confronted with the fact that their lives did not belong to
-themselves, that each owed his life to the State. But if each must give,
-or at least risk, everything that he possessed, even life itself, were
-others giving or risking what they possessed? Here was new light on the
-institution of private property. If the life of each belongs to the
-community, then assuredly does his property. The Communist State which
-says to the citizen, 'You must work and surrender your private property
-or you will have no vote,' asks, after all, somewhat less than the
-_bourgeois_ Military State which says to the conscript, 'Fight and give
-your person to the State or we will kill you.' For great masses of the
-British working-classes conscription has answered the ethical problem
-involved in the confiscation of capital. The Eighth Commandment no
-longer stands in the way, as it stood so long in the case of a people
-still religiously minded and still feeling the weight of Puritan
-tradition.
-
-Moreover, the War showed that the communal organisation of industry
-could be made to work. It could 'deliver the goods' if those goods
-were, say, munitions. And if it could work for the purposes of war, why
-not for those of peace? The War showed that by co-ordinated and
-centralised action the whole economic structure can without disaster be
-altered to a degree that before the War no economist would have supposed
-possible. We witnessed the economic miracle mentioned in the last
-chapter, but worth recalling here. Suppose before the War you had
-collected into one room all the great capitalist economists in England,
-and had said to them: 'During the next few years you will withdraw from
-normal production five or six millions of the best workers. The mere
-residue of the workers will be able to feed, clothe, and generally
-maintain those five or six millions, themselves, and the country at
-large, at a standard of living on the whole as high, if not higher, than
-that to which the people were accustomed before those five or six
-million workers were withdrawn.' If you had said that to those
-capitalist economists, there would not have been one who would have
-admitted the possibility of the thing, or regarded the forecast as
-anything but rubbish.
-
-Yet that economic miracle has been performed, and it has been performed
-thanks to Nationalisation and Socialism, and could not have been
-performed otherwise.
-
-However, one may qualify in certain points this summary of the
-outstanding economic facts of the War, it is impossible to exaggerate
-the extent to which the revelation of economic possibilities has
-influenced working-class opinion.
-
-To the effect of this on the minds of the more intelligent workers, we
-have to add another psychological effect, a certain recklessness,
-inseparable from the conditions of war, reflected in the workers'
-attitude towards social reform.
-
-Perhaps a further factor in the tendency towards Communism is the
-habituation to confiscation which currency inflation involves. Under the
-influence of war contrivances States have learned to pay their debts in
-paper not equivalent in value to the gold in which the loan was made:
-whole classes of bondholders have thus been deprived of anything from
-one-half to two-thirds of the value of their property. It is
-confiscation in its most indiscriminate and sometimes most cruel form.
-_Bourgeois_ society has accepted it. A socialistic society of to-morrow
-may be tempted to find funds for its social experiments in somewhat the
-same way.
-
-Whatever weight we may attach to some of these factors, this much is
-certain: not only war, but preparation for war, means, to a much greater
-degree than it has ever meant before, mobilisation of the whole
-resources of the country--men, women, industry. This form of
-'nationalisation' cannot go on for years and not affect the permanent
-form of the society subjected to it. It has affected it very deeply. It
-has involved a change in the position of private property and individual
-enterprise that since the War has created a new cleavage in the West.
-The future of private property which was before the War a theoretical
-speculation, has become within a year or two, and especially, perhaps,
-since the Bolshevist Revolution in Russia, a dominating issue in
-European social and political development. It has subjected European
-society to a new strain. The wearing down of the distinction between the
-citizen and the State, and the inroads upon the sacro-sanctity of
-private property and individual enterprise, make each citizen much more
-dependent upon his State, much more a part of it. Control of foreign
-trade so largely by the State has made international trade less a matter
-of processes maintained by individuals who disregarded their
-nationality, and more a matter of arrangement between States, in which
-the non-political individual activity tends to disappear. We have here a
-group of forces which has achieved a revolution, a revolution in the
-relationship of the individual European to the European State, and of
-the States to one another.
-
-The socialising and communist tendencies set up by measures of
-industrial mobilisation for the purposes of the War, have been carried
-forward in another sphere by the economic terms of the Treaty of
-Versailles. These latter, if even partly carried into effect, will mean
-in very large degree the compulsory socialisation, even communisation,
-of the enemy States. Not only the country's foreign trade, but much of
-its internal industry must be taken out of the hands of private traders
-or manufacturers. The provisions of the Treaty assuredly help to destroy
-the process upon which the old economic order in Europe rested.
-
-Let the reader ask himself what is likely to be the influence upon the
-institution of private property and private commerce of a Treaty
-world-wide in its operation, which will take a generation to carry out,
-which may well be used as a precedent for future settlements between
-States (settlements which may include very great politico-economic
-changes in the position of Egypt, Ireland, and India), and of which the
-chief economic provisions are as follows:--
-
-     'It deprives Germany of nearly the whole of her overseas marine. It
-     banishes German sovereignty and economic influence from all her
-     overseas possessions, and sequestrates the private property of
-     Germans in those places, in Alsace-Lorraine, and in all countries
-     within Allied jurisdiction. It puts at the disposal of the Allies
-     all German financial rights and interests, both in the countries of
-     her former Allies and in the States and territories which have been
-     formed out of them. It gives the Reparations Commission power to
-     put its finger on any great business or property in Germany and to
-     demand its surrender. Outside her own frontiers Germany can be
-     stripped of everything she possesses, and inside them, until an
-     impossible indemnity has been paid to the last farthing, she can
-     truly call nothing her own.
-
-     'The Treaty inflicts on an Empire built up on coal and iron the
-     loss of about one-third cf her coal supplies, with such a heavy
-     drain on the scanty remainder as to leave her with an annual supply
-     of only 60 million tons, as against the pre-war production of over
-     190 million tons, and the loss of over three-quarters of her iron
-     ore. It deprives her of all effective control over her own system
-     of transport; it takes the river system of Germany out of German
-     hands, so that on every International Committee dealing with German
-     waters, Germans are placed in a clear minority. It is as though the
-     Powers of Central Europe were placed in a majority on the Thames
-     Conservancy or the Port of London Authority. Finally, it forces
-     Germany for a period of years to concede "most favoured nation"
-     treatment to the Allies, while she receives no such reciprocal
-     favour in return.'
-
-This wholesale confiscation of private property[23] is to take place
-without the Allies affording any compensation to the individuals
-expropriated, and the proceeds will be employed, first, to meet private
-debts due to Allied nationals from any German nationals, and, second, to
-meet claims due from Austrian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, or Turkish
-nationals. Any balance may either be returned by the liquidating power
-direct to Germany, or retained by them. If retained, the proceeds must
-be transferred to the Reparations Commission for Germany's credit in
-the Reparations account. Note, moreover, how the identification of a
-citizen with his State is carried forward by the discrimination made
-against Germans in overseas trade. Heretofore there were whole spheres
-of international trade and industrial activity in which the individual's
-nationality mattered very little. It was a point in favour of individual
-effort, and, incidentally, of international peace. Under the Treaty,
-whereas the property of Allied nationals within German jurisdiction
-reverts to Allied ownership on the conclusion of peace, the property of
-Germans within Allied jurisdiction is to be retained and liquidated as
-described above, with the result that the whole of German property over
-a large part of the world can be expropriated, and the large properties
-now within the custody of Public Trustees and similar officials in the
-Allied countries may be retained permanently. In the second place, such
-German assets are chargeable, not only with the liabilities of Germans,
-but also, if they run to it, with 'payment of the amounts due in respect
-of claims by the nationals of such Allied or Associated Power with
-regard to their property, rights, and interests in the territory of
-other Enemy Powers,' as, for example, Turkey, Bulgaria, and Austria.
-This is a remarkable provision, which is naturally non-reciprocal. In
-the third place, any final balance due to Germany on private account
-need not be paid over, but can be held against the various liabilities
-of the German Government.[24] The effective operation of these articles
-is guaranteed by the delivery of deeds, titles, and information.
-
-It will be noted how completely the Treaty returns to the Tribal
-conception of a collective responsibility, and how it wipes away the
-distinction heretofore made in International Law, between the civilian
-citizen and the belligerent Government. An Austrian who has lived and
-worked in England or China or Egypt all his life, and is married to an
-English woman and has children who do not speak a word of German, who is
-no more responsible for the invasion of Belgium than an Icelander or a
-Chinaman, finds that the savings of his lifetime left here in the faith
-of British security, are confiscated under the Treaty in order to
-satisfy the claims of France or Japan. And, be it noted, whenever
-attention is directed to what the defenders of the Treaty like to call
-its 'sternness' (as when it deprives Englishborn women and their
-children of their property) we are invited to repress our misgiving on
-that score in order to contemplate the beauty of its 'justice,' and to
-admire the inexorable accuracy with which reward and punishment are
-distributed. It is the standing retort to critics of the Treaty: they
-forget its 'justice.'[25]
-
-How far this new tendency is likely to go towards a reassertion of the
-false doctrine of the complete submergence of the individual in the
-State, the erection of the 'God-State' which at the beginning we
-declared to be the main moral cause of the War and set out to destroy,
-will be discussed later. The point for the moment is that the
-enforcement of this part of the Treaty, like other parts, will go to
-swell communistic tendencies. It will be the business of the German
-State to maintain the miners who are to deliver the coal under the
-Treaty, the workers in the shipyards who are to deliver the yearly toll
-of ships. The intricate and elaborate arrangements for 'searching
-Germany's pockets' for the purpose of the indemnity mean the very
-strictest Governmental control of private trade in Germany, in many
-spheres its virtual abolition. All must be done through the Government
-in order that the conditions of the Treaty may be fulfilled. Foreign
-trade will be no longer the individual enterprise of private citizens.
-It will, by the order of the Allies, be a rigidly controlled
-Governmental function, as President Wilson reminded us in the passage
-quoted above.
-
-To a lesser degree the same will be true of the countries receiving the
-indemnity. Mr. Lloyd George promises that it will not be paid in cheap
-goods, or in such a way as to damage home industries. But it must be
-paid in some goods: ships, dyes, or (as some suggest) raw materials.
-Their distribution to private industry, the price that these industries
-shall pay, must be arranged by the receiving Government. This inevitably
-means a prolongation of the State's intervention in the processes of
-private trade and industry. Nor is it merely the disposal of the
-indemnity in kind which will compel each Allied Government to continue
-to intervene in the trade and industry of its citizens. The fact that
-the Reparations Commission is, in effect, to allocate the amount of ore,
-cotton, shipping, Germany is to get, to distribute the ships and coal
-which she may deliver, means the establishment of something resembling
-international rationing. The Governments will, in increasing degree,
-determine the amount and direction of trade.
-
-The more thoroughly we 'make Germany pay,' the more State-controlled do
-we compel her (and only to a lesser extent ourselves) to become. We
-should probably regard a standard of life in Germany very definitely
-below that of the rest of Western Europe, as poetic justice. But it
-would inevitably set up forces, both psychological and economic, that
-make not only for State-control--either State Socialism or State
-Capitalism--but for Communism.
-
-Suppose we did our work so thoroughly that we took absolutely all
-Germany could produce over and above what was necessary for the
-maintenance of the physical efficiency of her population. That would
-compel her to organise herself increasingly on the basis of equality of
-income: no one, that is, going above the line of physical efficiency and
-no one falling below it.
-
-Thus, while British, French, and American anti-socialists are declaring
-that the principle enunciated by the Russian Government, that all trade
-must be through the Soviet, is one which will prove most mischievous in
-its example, it is precisely that principle which increasingly, if the
-Treaty is enforced, they will in fact impose upon a great country,
-highly organised, of great bureaucratic efficiency, far more likely by
-its training and character to make the principle a success.
-
-This tendency may be in the right direction or the wrong one. The point
-is that no provision has been made to meet the condition which the
-change creates. The old system permitted the world to work under
-well-defined principles. The new regimen, because it has not provided
-for the consequences of the changes it has provoked, condemns a great
-part of Europe to economic paralysis which must end in bitter anarchic
-struggles unless the crisis is anticipated by constructive
-statesmanship.
-
-Meantime the continued coercion of Germany will demand on the part of
-the Western democracies a permanent maintenance of the machine of war,
-and so a perpetuation of the tendency, in the way already described,
-towards a militarised Nationalisation.
-
-The resultant 'Socialism' will assuredly not be of the type that most
-Socialists (among whom, incidentally, the present writer counts himself)
-would welcome. But it will not necessarily be for that reason any less
-fatal to the workable transnational individualism.
-
-Moreover, military nationalisation presupposes international conflict,
-if not perpetually recurrent war; presupposes, that is, first, an
-inability to organise a stable international economy indispensable to a
-full life for Europe's population; and, secondly, an increasing
-destructiveness in warfare--self-destruction in terms of European
-Society as a whole. 'Efficiency' in such a society would be efficiency
-in suicide.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-NATIONALITY, ECONOMICS, AND THE ASSERTION OF RIGHT
-
-
-The change noted in the preceding chapter raises certain profound
-questions of Right. These may be indicated as follows:--
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-By our political power we _can_ create a Europe which, while not
-assuring advantage to the victor, deprives the vanquished of means of
-existence. The loss of both ore and coal by the Central Powers might
-well make it impossible for their future populations to find food. What
-are they to do? Starve? To disclaim responsibility is to claim that we
-are entitled to use our power to deny them life.
-
-This 'right' to starve foreigners can only be invoked by invoking the
-concept of nationalism. 'Our nation first.' But the policy of placing
-life itself upon a foundation of preponderant force instead of mutually
-advantageous co-operation, compels statesmen perpetually to betray the
-principle of nationality; not only directly (as in the case of the
-annexation of territory, economically necessary, but containing peoples
-of alien nationality), but indirectly; for the resistance which our
-policy (of denying means of subsistence to others) provokes, makes
-preponderance of power the condition of survival. All else must give way
-to that need.
-
-Might cannot be pledged to Right in these conditions. If our power is
-pledged to Allies for the purposes of the Balance (which means, in fact,
-preponderance), it cannot be used against them to enforce respect for
-(say) nationality. To turn against Allies would break the Balance. To
-maintain the Balance of Power we are compelled to disregard the moral
-merits of an Ally's policy (as in the case of the promise to the Czar's
-Government not to demand the independence of Poland). The maintenance of
-a Balance (_i.e._ preponderance) is incompatible with the maintenance of
-Right. There is a conflict of obligation.
-
-Before the War, a writer in the _National Review_, desiring to show the
-impossibility of obviating war by any international agreement, took the
-example of the conflict with Germany and put the case as follows:--
-
-     'Germany _must_ go to war. Every year an extra million babies are
-     crying out for more room, and as the expansion of Germany by
-     peaceful means seems impossible, Germany can only provide for those
-     babies at the cost of potential foes.
-
-     'This ... it cannot be too often repeated, is not mere envious
-     greed, but stern necessity. The same struggle for life and space
-     which more than a thousand years ago drove one Teutonic wave after
-     another across the Rhine and the Alps, is now once more a great
-     compelling force.... This aspect of the case may be all very sad
-     and very wicked, but it is true.... Herein lies the ceaseless and
-     ruinous struggle for armaments, and herein for France lies the dire
-     necessity of linking her foreign policy with that of powerful
-     allies.'
-
-'And so,' adds the writer, 'it is impossible and absurd to accept the
-theory of Mr. Norman Angell.'
-
-Now that theory was, not that Germany and others would not fight--I was
-very insistent indeed that[26] unless there was a change in European
-policy they would--but that war, however it might end, would not solve
-the question. And that conclusion at least, whatever may be the case
-with others, is proved true.
-
-For we have had war; we have beaten Germany; and those million babies
-still confront us. The German population and its tendency to increase is
-still there. What are we going to do about it? The War has killed two
-million out of about seventy million Germans; it killed very few of the
-women. The subsequent privations of the blockade certainly disposed of
-some of the weaker among both women and children. The rate of increase
-may in the immediate future be less. It was declining before the War as
-the country became more prosperous, following in this what seems to be a
-well-established rule: the higher the standard of civilisation the more
-does the birth-rate decline. But if the country is to become extremely
-frugal and more agricultural, this tendency to decline is likely to be
-checked. In any case the number of mouths to be fed will not have been
-decreased by war to the same extent that the resources by which they
-might have been fed have been decreased.
-
-What do we propose to Germany, now that we have beaten her, as the means
-of dealing with those million babies? Professor Starling, in a report to
-the British Government,[27] suggests emigration:--
-
-     'Before the War Germany produced 85 per cent. of the total food
-     consumed by her inhabitants. This large production was only
-     possible by high cultivation, and by the plentiful use of manure
-     and imported feeding stuffs, means for the purchase of these being
-     furnished by the profits of industry.... The loss to Germany of 40
-     per cent. of its former coal output must diminish the number of
-     workers who can be maintained. The great increase in German
-     population during the last twenty-five years was rendered possible
-     only by exploiting the agricultural possibilities of the soil to
-     the greatest possible extent, and this in its turn depended on the
-     industrial development of the country. The reduction by 20 per
-     cent. in the productive area of the country, and the 40 per cent.
-     diminution in the chief raw material for the creation of wealth,
-     renders the country at present over-populated, and it seems
-     probable that within the next few years many million (according to
-     some estimates as many as fifteen million) workers and their
-     families will be obliged to emigrate, since there will be neither
-     work nor food for them to be obtained from the reduced industries
-     of the country.'
-
-But emigration where? Into Russia? The influence of Germans in Russia
-was very great even before the War. Certain French writers warn us
-frantically against the vast danger of Russia's becoming a German colony
-unless a cordon of border States, militarily strong, is created for the
-purpose of keeping the two countries apart. But we should certainly get
-a Germanisation of Russia from the inside if five or ten or fifteen
-million Germans were dispersed therein and the country became a
-permanent reservoir for those annual million babies.
-
-And if not Russia, where? Imagine a migration of ten or fifteen million
-Huns throughout the world--a dispersion before which that of the Jews
-and of the Irish would pale. We know how the migration from an Ireland
-of eight millions that could not feed itself has reacted upon our
-politics and our relations with America. What sort of foreign problems
-are we going to bequeath to our children if our policy forces a great
-German migration into Russia, or the Balkans, or Turkey?
-
-This insistent fact of a million more or less of little Huns being born
-into the world every year remains. Shall we suggest to Germany that she
-must deal with this problem as the thrifty householder deals with the
-too frequent progeny of the family cat?
-
-Or shall we do just nothing, and say that it is not our affair; that as
-we have the power over the iron of Lorraine and Morocco, over the
-resources of Africa and Asia, over the ocean highways of the world, we
-are going to see that that power, naval and military, is used to ensure
-abundance for ourselves and our friends; that as for others, since they
-have not the power, they may starve? _Vae victis_ indeed![28]
-
-Just note what is involved. This war was fought to destroy the doctrine
-that might is right. Our power, we say, gives us access to the wealth of
-the world; others shall be excluded. Then we are using our power to deny
-to some millions the most elemental of all rights, the right to
-existence. By the economic use of our military power (assuming that
-military power is as effective as we claim) we compel some millions to
-choose between war and penury or starvation; we give to war, in their
-case, the justification that it is on behalf of the bread of their
-children, their livelihood.
-
-Let us compare France's position. Unlike the German, the French
-population has hardly increased at all in recent generations. In the
-years immediately preceding the War, indeed, it showed a definite
-decline, a tendency naturally more marked since the War. This low
-birth-rate has greatly concerned French statesmen, and remedies have
-been endlessly discussed, with no result. The causes are evidently very
-deep-rooted indeed. The soil which has been inherited by this declining
-population is among the richest and most varied in the world, producing
-in the form of wines, brandies, and certain other luxuries, results
-which can be duplicated nowhere else. It stretches almost into the
-sub-tropics. In addition, the nation possesses a vast colonial
-empire--in Algeria, Tunis, Morocco (which include some of the greatest
-food-growing areas in the world), Madagascar, Equatorial Africa,
-Cochin-China; an empire managed, by the way, on strongly protectionist
-principles.
-
-We have thus on the one side a people of forty millions with no tendency
-to increase, mainly not industrial (because not needing to be),
-possessing undeveloped areas capable, in their food and mineral
-resources (home and colonial), of supporting a population very many
-times its size. On the other hand is a neighbouring group, very much
-larger, and rapidly increasing, occupying a poorer and smaller
-territory. It is unable to subsist at modern standards on that territory
-without a highly-developed industry. The essential raw materials have
-passed into the hands of the smaller group. The latter on grounds of
-self-defence, fearing to be outnumbered, may withhold those materials
-from the larger group; and its right so to do is to be unquestioned.
-
-Does any one really believe that Western Society could remain stable,
-resting on moral foundations of this kind? Can one disregard primary
-economic need in considering the problem of preserving the Europe of
-'free and independent national states' of Mr. Asquith's phrase?[29]
-
-If things are left where this Treaty leaves them, then the militarist
-theories which before were fallacies will have become true. We can no
-longer say that peoples as distinct from imperialist parties have no
-interest in conquest. In this new world of to-morrow--this 'better and
-more stable world'--the interests of peoples themselves will be in
-deadly conflict. For an expanding people it will be a choice between
-robbery of neighbours' territory and starvation. Re-conquest of Lorraine
-will become for the Germans not a matter of hurt pride or sentiment, but
-a matter of actual food need, a need which will not, like hurt pride,
-diminish with the lapse of time, but increase with the growth of the
-population. On the side of war, then, truly we shall find 'the human
-stomach and the human womb.'
-
-The change is a deeper reversion than we seem to realise. Even under
-feudalism the means of subsistence of the people, the land they
-cultivated, remained as before. Only the lords were changed--and one
-lord was very like another. But where, under modern industrial economy,
-titles to property in indispensable raw materials can be cancelled by a
-conqueror and become the State property of the conquering nation, which
-enforces the right to distribute them as it pleases, whole populations
-may find themselves deprived of the actual means of supporting
-themselves on the territory that they occupy.
-
-We shall have set up a disruptive ferment working with all the force of
-the economic needs of 50 or 100 million virile folk to bring about once
-more some vast explosion. Europe will once more be living on a volcano,
-knowing no remedy save futile efforts to 'sit on the lid.'
-
-The beginnings of the attempt are already visible. Colonel Repington
-points out that owing to the break up of Russia and Austria, and the
-substitution for these two powerful States of a large number of small,
-independent ones likely to quarrel among themselves, Germany will be the
-largest and most cohesive of all the European Continental nations,
-relatively stronger than she was before the War. He demands in
-consequence, that not only France, but Holland and Belgium, be extended
-to the Rhine, which must become the strategic frontier of civilisation
-against barbarism. He says there can be no sort of security otherwise.
-He even reminds us that it was Rome's plan. (He does not remind us that
-if it had notably succeeded then we should hardly be trying it again two
-thousand years later.) The plan gives us, in fact, this prospect: the
-largest and most unified racial block in Europe will find itself
-surrounded by a number of lesser States, containing German minorities,
-and possessing materials indispensable to Germany's economic life, to
-which she is refused peaceful access in order that she may not become
-strong enough to obtain access by force; an attempt which she will be
-compelled to make because peaceful access is denied to her. Our measures
-create resistance; that resistance calls forth more extreme measures;
-those measures further resistance, and so on. We are in the thick once
-more of Balance of Power, strategic frontiers, every element of the old
-stultifying statecraft against which all the Allies--before the
-Armistice--made flaming protest.
-
-And when this conflict of rights--each fighting as he believes for the
-right to life--has blazed up into passions that transcend all thought of
-gain or advantage, we shall be asked somewhat contemptuously what
-purpose it serves to discuss so cold a thing as 'economics' in the midst
-of this welter.
-
-It won't serve any purpose. But the discussion of economics before it
-had become a matter for passion might have prevented the conflict.
-
-The situation has this complication--and irony: Increasing prosperity, a
-higher standard of living, sets up a tendency prudentially to check
-increase of population. France, and in hardly less degree even new and
-sparsely populated countries like Australia, have for long shown a
-tendency to a decline of the rate of increase. In France, indeed, as has
-already been mentioned, an absolute decrease had set in before the War.
-But as soon as this tendency becomes apparent, the same nationalist who
-invokes the menace of over-population as the justification for war, also
-invokes nationalism to reverse the tendency which would solve the
-over-population problem. This is part of the mystic nature of the
-nationalist impulse. Colonel Roosevelt is not the only warlike
-nationalist who has exhausted the resources of invective to condemn
-'race suicide' and to enjoin the patriotic duty of large families.
-
-We may gather some idea of the morasses into which the conception of
-nationalism and its 'mystic impulses' may lead us when applied to the
-population problem by examining some current discussions of it. Dr
-Raymond Pearl, of John Hopkins University, summarises certain of his
-conclusions thus:--
-
-     'There are two ways which have been thought of and practised, by
-     which a nation may attempt to solve its problem of population after
-     it has become very pressing and after the effects of internal
-     industrial development and its creation of wealth have been
-     exhausted. These are respectively the methods of France and
-     Germany. By consciously controlled methods, France endeavoured, and
-     on the whole succeeded, in keeping her birth-rate at just such a
-     delicate balance with the death-rate as to make the population
-     nearly stationary. Then any industrial developments simply
-     operated to raise the standard of living of those fortunate enough
-     to be born. France's condition, social economy, and political, in
-     1914 represented, I think, the results of about the maximum
-     efficiency of what may be called the birth-control method of
-     meeting the problem of population.
-
-     'Germany deliberately chose the other plan of meeting the problem
-     of population. In fewest words the scheme was, when your population
-     pressed too hard upon subsistence, and you had fully liquidated the
-     industrial development asset, to go out and conquer some one,
-     preferably a people operating under the birth-control population
-     plan, and forcibly take his land for your people. To facilitate
-     this operation a high birth-rate is made a matter of sustained
-     propaganda, and in every other possible way encouraged. An
-     abundance of cannon fodder is essential to the success of the
-     scheme.'[30]
-
-A word or two as to the facts alleged in the foregoing. We are told that
-the two nations not only followed respectively two different methods,
-but that it was in each case a deliberate national choice, supported by
-organised propaganda. 'By consciously controlled methods, France,' we
-are told, 'endeavoured' to keep her birth-rate down. The fact is, of
-course, that all the conscious endeavours of 'France,' if by France is
-meant the Government, the Church, the learned bodies, were in the
-exactly contrary direction. Not only organised propaganda, but most
-elaborate legislation, aiming through taxation at giving a preference to
-large families, has for a generation been industriously urging an
-increase in the French population. It has notoriously been a standing
-dish in the menu of the reformers and uplifters of nearly every
-political party. What we obviously have in the case of France is not a
-decision made by the nation as a corporate body and the Government
-representing it, but a tendency which their deliberate decision, as
-represented by propaganda and legislation, has been unable to check.[31]
-
-In discussing the merits of the two plans, Dr Pearl goes on:--
-
-     'Now the morals of the two plans are not at issue here. Both are
-     regarded, on different grounds to be sure, as highly immoral by
-     many people. Here we are concerned only with actualities. There can
-     be no doubt that in general and in the long run the German plan is
-     bound to win over the birth-control plan, if the issue is joined
-     between the two and only the two, and its resolution is military in
-     character.... So long as there are on the earth aggressively-minded
-     peoples who from choice deliberately maintain a high birth-rate, no
-     people can afford to put the French solution of the population
-     problem into operation unless they are prepared to give up,
-     practically at the asking, both their national integrity and their
-     land.'
-
-Let us assume, therefore, that France adopts the high birth-rate plan.
-She, too, will then be compelled, if the plan has worked out
-successfully, 'to get out and conquer some one.' But that some one will
-also, for the same reasons, have been following the plan of high
-birth-rate. What is then to happen? A competition in fecundity as a
-solution of the excess population problem seems inadequate. Yet it is
-inevitably prompted by the nationalist impulse.
-
-Happily the general rise in the standard of life itself furnishes a
-solution. As we have seen, the birth-rate is, within certain limits, in
-inverse ratio to a people's prosperity. But again, nationalism, by
-preventing the economic unification of Europe, may well stand in the way
-of that solution also. It checks the tendencies which would solve the
-problem.
-
-A fall in the birth-rate, as a concomitant of a rising standard of
-living, was beginning to be revealed in Germany also before the War.[32]
-If now, under the new order, German industrialism is checked and we get
-an agricultural population compelled by circumstances to a standard of
-life not higher than that of the Russian _moujik_, we may perhaps also
-be faced by a revival of high fertility in mystic disregard of the
-material means available for the support of the population.
-
-There is a further point.
-
-Those who have dealt with the world's food resources point out that
-there are great sources of food still undeveloped. But the difficulties
-do not arise from a total shortage. They arise from a mal-distribution
-of population, coupled with the fact that as between nations the Ten
-Commandments--particularly the eighth--do not run. By the code of
-nationalism we have no obligation towards starving foreigners. A nation
-may seize territory which it does not need, and exclude from it those
-who direly need its resources. While we insist that internationalism is
-political atheism, and that the only doctrine fit for red-blooded people
-is what Colonel Roosevelt called 'intense Nationalism,' intense
-nationalism means, in economic practice, the attempt, even at some
-cost, to render the political unit also the economic unit, and as far as
-possible self-sufficing.
-
-It serves little purpose, therefore, to point out that one or two States
-in South America can produce food for half the world, if we also create
-a political tradition which leads the patriotic South American to insist
-upon having his own manufactures, even at cost to himself, so that he
-will not need ours. He will achieve that result at the cost of
-diminishing his production of food. Both he and the Englishman will be
-poorer, but according to the standard of the intense nationalist, the
-result should be a good one, though it may confront many of us with
-starvation, just as the intense nationalism of the various nations of
-Eastern and South-Eastern Europe actually results in famine on soil
-fully capable, before the War, of supporting the population, and capable
-of supporting still greater populations if natural resources are used to
-the best advantage. It is political passions, anti-social doctrines, and
-the muddle, confusion, and hostility that go therewith which are the
-real cause of the scarcity.
-
-And that may forecast the position of Europe as a whole to-morrow: we
-may suffer starvation for the patriotic joy of seeing foreigners--Boche
-or Bolshevist--suffer in still greater degree.
-
-Given the nationalist conception of a world divided into completely
-distinct groups of separate corporate bodies, entities so different that
-the binding social ties between them (laws, in fact) are impossible of
-maintenance, there must inevitably grow up pugnacities and rivalries,
-creating a general sense of conflict that will render immeasurably
-difficult the necessary co-operation between the peoples, the kind of
-co-operation which the Treaty of Versailles has, in so large degree,
-deliberately destroyed. Whether the hostility comes, in the first
-instance, from the 'herd,' or tribal, instinct, and develops into a
-sense of economic hostility, or whether the hostility arises from the
-conviction that there exists a conflict of interest, the result is
-pretty much the same. I happen to have put the case elsewhere in these
-terms:--
-
-If it be true that since the world is of limited space, we must fight
-one another for it, that if our children are to be fed others must
-starve, then agreement between peoples will be for ever impossible.
-Nations will certainly not commit suicide for the sake of peace. If this
-is really the relationship of two great nations, they are, of course, in
-the position of two cannibals, one of whom says to the other: 'Either I
-have got to eat you, or you have got to eat me. Let's come to a friendly
-agreement about it.' They won't come to a friendly agreement about it.
-They will fight. And my point is that not only would they fight if it
-really were true that the one had to kill and eat the other, but they
-would fight as long as they believed it to be true. It might be that
-there was ample food within their reach--out of their reach, say, so
-long as each acted alone, but within their reach if one would stand on
-the shoulders of the other ('this is an allegory'), and so get the fat
-cocoa-nuts on the higher branches. But they would, nevertheless, be
-cannibals so long as each believed that the flesh of the other was the
-only source of food. It would be that mistake, not the necessary fact,
-which would provoke them to fight.
-
-When we learn that one Balkan State refuses to another a necessary raw
-material, or access over a railroad, because it prefers the suffering of
-that neighbour to its own welfare, we are shocked and talk about
-primitive and barbarous passions. But are we ourselves--Britain or
-France--in better state? The whole story of the negotiations about the
-indemnity and the restoration of Europe shows that we are not. Quite
-soon after the Armistice the expert advisers of the British Government
-urged the necessity, for the economic safety of the Allies themselves,
-of helping in the restoration of Germany. But they also admitted that it
-was quite hopeless to go to Parliament with any proposal to help
-Germany. And even when one gets a stage further and there is general
-admission 'in the abstract' that if France is to secure reparations,
-Germany must be fed and permitted to work, the sentiment of hostility
-stands in the way of any specific measure.
-
-We are faced with certain traditions and moralities, involving a
-psychology which, gathering round words like 'patriotism,' deprives us
-of the emotional restraint and moral discipline necessary to carry
-through the measures which intellectually we recognise to be
-indispensable to our country's welfare.
-
-We thus see why it is impossible to speak of international economics
-without predicating the nation as a concept. In the economic problems of
-nations or States, one is necessarily dealing not only with economic
-facts, but with political facts: a political entity in its economic
-relations (before the War inconsiderable, but since the War very great);
-group consciousness; the interests, or what is sometimes as important,
-the supposed interests of this group or area as distinct from that; the
-moral phenomena of nationalism--group preferences or prejudices, herd
-instinct, tribal hostility. All this is part of the economic problem in
-international politics. Protection, for instance, is only in part a
-problem of economics; it is also a problem of political preferences: the
-manufacturer who is content to face the competition of his own
-countrymen, objects to facing that of foreigners. Political conceptions
-are part of the economic problem when dealing with nations, just as
-primary economic need must be taken into account as part of the cause of
-the conflict of nationalisms.
-
-One very commonly hears the argument: 'What is the good of discussing
-economic forces in relation to the conflict of Europe when our
-participation, for instance, in the War, was in no way prompted by
-economic considerations?'
-
-Our motive may not have been economic, yet the cause of the War may very
-well have been mainly economic. The sentiment of nationality may be a
-stronger motive in European politics than any other. The chief menace
-to nationality may none the less be economic need.
-
-While it may be perfectly true that Belgians, Serbs, Poles, Bohemians,
-fought from motives of nationality, it may also be true that the wars
-which they were compelled to fight had an economic cause.
-
-If the desire of Germany or Austria for undeveloped territory had
-anything to do with that thrust towards the Near East in the way of
-which stood Serbian nationality, then economic causes _had_ something to
-do with compelling Serbia and Belgium to fight for their nationality.
-Owing to the pressure of the economic need or greed of others, we are
-still concerned with economic forces, though we may be actuated only by
-the purest nationalism: the economic pressure of others is obviously
-part of the problem of our national defence. And if one examines in turn
-the chief problems of nationality, one finds in almost every case that
-any aggression by which it may be menaced is prompted by the need, or
-assumed need, of other nations for mines, ports, access to the sea (warm
-water or other), or for strategic frontiers to defend those things.
-
-Why should the desire of one people to rule itself, to be free, be
-thwarted by another making exactly the same demands? In the case of the
-Germans we ascribe it to some special and evil lust peculiar to their
-race and training. But the Peace has revealed to us that it exists in
-every people, every one.
-
-A glance at the map enables us to realise readily enough why a given
-State may resist the 'complete independence' of a neighbouring
-territory.
-
-Here, on the borders of Russia, for instance, are a number of small
-States in a position to block the access of the population of Russia to
-the sea; in a position, indeed, by their control of certain essential
-raw materials, to hold up the development of a hundred million people,
-very much as the robber barons of the Rhine held up the commerce of that
-waterway. No powerful Russia, Bolshevik or Czarist, will permanently
-recognise the absolute right of a little State, at will (at the
-bidding, perhaps, of some military dictator, who in South American
-fashion may have seized its Government), to block her access to the
-'highways of the world.' 'Sovereignty and independence'--absolute
-sovereignty over its own territory, that is--may well include the
-'right' to make the existence of others intolerable. Ought any nation to
-have such a right? Like questions are raised in the case of the States
-that once were Austria. They have achieved their complete freedom and
-independence. Some of the results are dealt with in the first chapter.
-In some cases the new States are using their 'freedom, sovereignty, and
-independence' for the purpose of worsening a condition of famine and
-economic paralysis that spells indescribable suffering for millions of
-completely innocent folk.[33]
-
-So far, the new Europe is economically less competent than the old. The
-old Austrian grouping, for instance, made possible a stable and orderly
-life for fifty million people. A Mittel Europa, with its Berlin-Bagdad
-designs, would, whatever its dangers otherwise, have given us a vastly
-greater area of co-ordinated production, an area approaching that of the
-United States; it would have ensured the effective co-operation of
-populations greatly in excess of those of the United States. Whatever
-else might have happened, there would have been no destruction by famine
-of the populations concerned if some such plan of organised production
-had materialised. The old Austria at least ensured for the children
-physical health and education, for the peasants work in their fields, in
-security; and although denial of full national rights was doubtless an
-evil thing, it still left free a vast field of human activities--those
-of the family, of productive labour, of religion, music, art, love,
-laughter.
-
-A Europe of small 'absolute' nationalisms threatens to make these things
-impossible. We have no standard, unhappily, by which we can appraise the
-moral loss and gain in the exchange of the European life of July, 1914,
-for that which Europe now faces and is likely to face in the coming
-years. But if we cannot measure or weigh the moral value of absolute
-nationalism, the present situation does enable us to judge in some
-measure the degree of security achieved for the principle of
-nationality, and to what extent it may be menaced by the economic needs
-of the millions of Europe. And one is impelled to ask whether
-nationality is not threatened by a danger far greater than any it had to
-meet in the old Europe, in the anarchy and chaos that nationalism itself
-is at present producing.
-
-The greater States, like Germany, may conceivably manage somehow to find
-a _modus vivendi_. A self-sufficing State may perhaps be developed (a
-fact which will enable Germany at one and the same time to escape the
-payment of reparations and to defy future blockades). But that will mean
-embittered nationalism. The sense of exclusion and resentment will
-remain.
-
-The need of Germany for outside raw materials and food may, as the
-result of this effort to become self-sufficing, prove less than the
-above considerations might suggest. But unhappily, assumed need can be
-as patent a motive in international politics as real need. Our recent
-acquiescence in the independence of Egypt would imply that our need for
-persistent occupation was not as great as we supposed. Yet the desire to
-remain in Egypt helped to shape our foreign policy during a whole
-generation, and played no small part in the bargaining with France over
-Morocco which widened the gulf between ourselves and Germany.
-
-The preservation of the principle of nationality depends upon making it
-subject at least to some form of internationalism. If 'self-determination'
-means the right to condemn other peoples to death by starvation, then
-that principle cannot survive. The Balkanisation of Europe, turning it
-into a cauldron of rival 'absolute' nationalisms, does not mean safety
-for the principle of nationality, it means its ultimate destruction
-either by anarchy or by the autocratic domination of the great
-Powers. The problem is to reconcile national right and international
-obligation. That will mean a discipline of the national impulse, and
-of the instincts of domination which so readily attach themselves to
-it. The recognition of economic needs will certainly help towards such
-discipline. However 'materialistic' it may be to recognise the right of
-others to life, that recognition makes a sounder foundation for human
-society than do the instinctive impulses of mystic nationalism.
-
-Until we have managed somehow to create an economic code or comity which
-makes the sovereignty of each nationality subject to the general need of
-the whole body of organised society, this struggle, in which nationality
-is for ever threatened, will go on.
-
-The alternatives were very clearly stated on the other side of the
-Atlantic:--
-
-'The underlying assumption heretofore has been that a nation's security
-and prosperity rest chiefly upon its own strength and resources. Such an
-assumption has been used to justify statesmen in attempting, on the
-ground of the supreme need for national security, to increase their own
-nation's power and resources by insistence upon strategic frontiers,
-territory with raw material, outlets to the sea, even though that course
-does violence to the security and prosperity of others. Under any system
-in which adequate defence rests upon individual preponderance of power,
-the security of one must involve the insecurity of another, and must
-inevitably give rise to covert or overt competitions for power and
-territory, dangerous to peace and destructive to justice.
-
-'Under such a system of competitive as opposed to co-operative
-nationalism, the smaller nationalities can never be really secure.
-International commitments of some kind there must be. The price of
-secure nationality is some degree of internationalism.
-
-'The problem is to modify the conditions that lead to war. It will be
-quite inadequate to establish courts of arbitration or of law if they
-have to arbitrate or judge on the basis of the old laws and practices.
-These have proved insufficient.
-
-'It is obvious that any plan ensuring national security and equality of
-opportunity will involve a limitation of national sovereignty. States
-possessing ports that are the natural outlet of a hinterland occupied by
-another people, will perhaps regard it as an intolerable invasion of
-their independence if their sovereignty over those ports is not absolute
-but limited by the obligation to permit of their use by a foreign and
-possibly rival people on equal terms. States possessing territories in
-Africa or Asia inhabited by populations in a backward state of
-development, have generally heretofore looked for privileged and
-preferential treatment of their own industry and commerce in those
-territories. Great interests will be challenged, some sacrifice of
-national pride demanded, and the hostility of political factions in some
-countries will be aroused.
-
-'Yet if, after the War, States are to be shut out from the sea; if
-rapidly expanding populations find themselves excluded from raw
-materials indispensable to their prosperity; if the privileges and
-preferences enjoyed by States with overseas territories place the less
-powerful States at a disadvantage, we shall have re-established potent
-motives for that competition for political power which, in the past, has
-been so large an element in the causation of war and the subjugation of
-weaker peoples. The ideal of the security of all nations and "equality
-of opportunity" will have failed of realisation.'[34]
-
-
-_The Balance of Power and Defence of Law and Nationality._
-
-'Why were you so whole-soully for this war?' asked the interviewer of Mr
-Lloyd George.
-
-'Belgium,' was the reply.
-
-The Prime Minister of the morrow continued:--
-
-     'The Saturday after war had actually been declared on the Continent
-     (Saturday, 1st August), a poll of the electors of Great Britain
-     would have shown ninety-five per cent. against embroiling this
-     country in hostilities. Powerful city financiers whom it was my
-     duty to interview this Saturday on the financial situation, ended
-     the conference with an earnest hope that Britain would keep out of
-     it. A poll on the following Tuesday would have resulted in a vote
-     of ninety-nine per cent. in favour of war.
-
-     'What had happened in the meantime? The revolution in public
-     sentiment was attributable entirely to an attack made by Germany on
-     a small and unprotected country, which had done her no wrong, and
-     what Britain was not prepared to do for interests political and
-     commercial, she readily risked to help the weak and helpless. Our
-     honour as a nation is involved in this war, because we are bound in
-     an honourable obligation to defend the independence, the liberty,
-     the integrity of a small neighbour that has lived peaceably; but
-     she could not have compelled us, being weak. The man who declined
-     to discharge his debt because his creditor is too poor to enforce
-     it, is a blackguard.'
-
-A little later, in the same interview, Mr Lloyd George, after allusion
-to German misrepresentations, said:--
-
-     'But this I know is true--after the guarantee given that the German
-     fleet would not attack the coast of France or annex any French
-     territory, _I_ would not have been party to a declaration of war,
-     had Belgium not been invaded, and I think I can say the same thing
-     for most, if not all, of my colleagues. If Germany had been wise,
-     she would not have set foot on Belgian soil. The Liberal Government
-     then would not have intervened. Germany made a grave mistake.'[35]
-
-This interview compels several very important conclusions. One, perhaps
-the most important--and the most hopeful--is profoundly creditable to
-English popular instinct and not so creditable to Mr Lloyd George.
-
-If Mr Lloyd George is speaking the truth (it is difficult to find just
-the phrase which shall express one's meaning and be Parliamentary), if
-he believes it would have been entirely safe for Great Britain to have
-kept out of the War provided only that the invasion of Belgium could
-have been prevented, then indeed is the account against the Cabinet, of
-which he was then a member and (after modifications in it) was shortly
-to become the head, a heavy one. I shall not pursue here the inquiry
-whether in point of simple political fact, Belgium was the sole cause of
-our entrance into the War, because I don't suppose anybody believes it.
-But--and here Mr Lloyd George almost certainly does speak the truth--the
-English people gave their whole-souled support to the war because they
-believed it to be for a cause of which Belgium was the shining example
-and symbol: the right of the small nation to the same consideration as
-the great. That objective may not have been the main inspiration of the
-Governments: it was the main moral inspiration of the British people,
-the sentiment which the Government exploited, and to which it mainly
-appealed.
-
-'The purpose of the Allies in this War,' said Mr Asquith, 'is to pave
-the way for an international system which will secure the principle of
-equal rights for all civilised States ... to render secure the principle
-that international problems must be handled by free people and that
-their settlement shall no longer be hampered and swayed by the
-overmastering dictation of a Government controlled by a military
-caste.' We should not sheathe the sword 'until the rights of the smaller
-nationalities of Europe are placed upon an unassailable foundation.'
-Professor Headlam (an ardent upholder of the Balance of Power, by the
-way), in a book that is characteristic of the early war literature, says
-the cardinal principles for which the War was fought were two: first,
-that Europe is, and should remain, divided between independent national
-States, and, second, that subject to the condition that it did not
-threaten or interfere with the security of other States, each country
-should have full and complete control over its own affairs.
-
-How far has our victory achieved that object? Is the policy which our
-power supported before the War--and still supports--compatible with it?
-Does it help to strengthen the national security of Belgium, and other
-weak States like Yugo-Slavia, Poland, Albania, Finland, the Russian
-Border States, China?
-
-It is here suggested, first, that our commitments under the Balance of
-Power policy which we had espoused[36] deprived our national force of
-any preventive effectiveness whatever in so far as the invasion of
-Belgium was concerned, and secondly, that our post-war policy, which is
-also in fact a Balance of Power policy is betraying in like fashion the
-cause of the small State.
-
-It is further suggested that the very nature of the operation of the
-Balance of Power policy sets up in practice a conflict of obligation: if
-our power is pledged to the support of one particular group, like the
-Franco-Russian group of 1914, it cannot also be pledged to the support,
-honestly and impartially, of a general principle of European law.
-
-We were drawn into the War, Mr Lloyd George tells us, to vindicate the
-integrity of Belgium. Very good. We know what happened in the
-negotiations. Germany wanted very much to know what would induce us to
-keep out of the War. Would we keep out of the War if Germany refrained
-from crossing the Belgian frontier? Such an assurance, giving Germany
-the strongest material reasons for not invading Belgium, converting a
-military reason (the only reason, we are told, that Germany would listen
-to) for that offence into an immensely powerful military reason against
-it, could not be given. In order to be able to maintain the Balance of
-Power against Germany we must 'keep our hands free.'
-
-It is not a question here of Germany's trustworthiness, but of using her
-sense of self-interest to secure our object of the protection of
-Belgium. The party in the German councils opposed to the invasion would
-say: 'If you invade Belgium you will have to meet the hostility of Great
-Britain. If you don't, you will escape that hostility.' To which the
-general staff was able to reply: 'Britain's Balance of Power policy
-means that you will have to meet the enmity of Britain in any case. In
-terms of expediency, it does not matter whether you go through Belgium
-or not.'
-
-The fact that the principle of the 'Balance' compelled us to support
-France, whether Germany respected the Treaty of 1839 or not, deprived
-our power of any value as a restraint upon German military designs
-against Belgium. There was, in fact, a conflict of obligations: the
-obligations to the Balance of Power rendered that to the support of the
-Treaty of no avail in terms of protection. If the object of force is to
-compel observance of law on the part of those who will not observe it
-otherwise, that object is defeated by the entanglements of the Balance
-of Power.
-
-Sir Edward Grey's account of that stage of the negotiations at which the
-question of Belgium was raised, is quite clear and simple. The German
-Ambassador asked him 'whether, if Germany gave a promise not to violate
-Belgian neutrality, we would engage to remain neutral.' 'I replied,'
-writes Sir Edward, 'that I could not say that; our hands were still
-free, and we were considering what our attitude should be. I did not
-think that we could give a promise of neutrality on that condition
-alone. The Ambassador pressed me as to whether I could not formulate
-conditions on which we would remain neutral. He even suggested that the
-integrity of France and her Colonies might be guaranteed. I said that I
-felt obliged to refuse definitely any promise to remain neutral on
-similar terms, and I could only say that we must keep our hands free.'
-
-'If language means anything,' comments Lord Loreburn,[37] 'this means
-that whereas Mr Gladstone bound this country to war in order to
-safeguard Belgian neutrality, Sir Edward would not even bind this
-country to neutrality to save Belgium. He may have been right, but it
-was not for the sake of Belgian interests that he refused.'
-
-Compare our experience, and the attitude of Sir Edward Grey in 1914,
-when we were concerned to maintain the Balance of Power, with our
-experience and Mr Gladstone's behaviour when precisely the same problem
-of protecting Belgium was raised in 1870. In these circumstances Mr
-Gladstone proposed both to France and to Prussia a treaty by which Great
-Britain undertook that, if either of the belligerents should in the
-course of that war violate the neutrality of Belgium, Great Britain
-would co-operate with the other belligerent in defence of the same,
-'employing for that purpose her naval and military forces to ensure its
-observance.' In this way both France and Germany knew and the whole
-world knew, that invasion of Belgium meant war with Great Britain.
-Whichever belligerent violated the neutrality must reckon with the
-consequences. Both France and Prussia signed that Treaty. Belgium was
-saved.
-
-Lord Loreborn (_How the War Came_) says of the incident:--
-
-     'This policy, which proved a complete success in 1870, indicated
-     the way in which British power could effectively protect Belgium
-     against an unscrupulous neighbour. But then it is a policy which
-     cannot be adopted unless this country is itself prepared to make
-     war against either of the belligerents which shall molest Belgium.
-     For the inducement to each of such belligerents is the knowledge
-     that he will have Great Britain as an enemy if he invades Belgium,
-     and as an Ally if his enemy attacks him through Belgian territory.
-     And that cannot be a security unless Great Britain keeps herself
-     free to give armed assistance to either should the other violate
-     the Treaty. The whole leverage would obviously disappear if we took
-     sides in the war on other grounds.'[38]
-
-This, then, is an illustration of the truth above insisted upon: to
-employ our force for the maintenance of the Balance of Power is to
-deprive it of the necessary impartiality for the maintenance of Right.
-
-Much more clear even than in the case of Belgium was the conflict in
-certain other cases between the claims of the Balance of Power and our
-obligation to place 'the rights of the smaller nationalities of Europe
-upon an unassailable foundation' which Mr Asquith proclaimed as the
-object of the War.
-
-The archetype of suppressed nationality was Poland; a nation with an
-ancient culture, a passionate and romantic attachment to its ancient
-traditions, which had simply been wiped off the map. If ever there was a
-case of nation-murder it was this. And one of the culprits--perhaps the
-chief culprit--was Russia. To-day the Allies, notably France, stand as
-the champions of Polish nationality. But as late as 1917, as part of
-that kind of bargain which inevitably marks the old type of diplomatic
-Alliance, France was agreeing to hand over Poland, helpless, to her old
-jailer, the Czarist Government. In March, 1916, the Russian Ambassador
-in Paris was instructed that, at the then impending diplomatic
-conference[39]
-
-     'It is above all necessary to demand that the Polish question
-     should be excluded from the subjects of international negotiation,
-     and that all attempts to place Poland's future under the guarantee
-     and control of the Powers should be prevented.'
-
-On February 12th, 1917, the Russian Foreign Minister informed the
-Russian Ambassador that M. Doumergue (French Ambassador in Petrograd)
-had told the Czar of France's wish to get Alsace-Lorraine at the end of
-the War, and also 'a special position in the Saar Valley, and to bring
-about the detachment from Germany of the territories west of the Rhine
-and their reorganisation in such a way that in future the Rhine may form
-a permanent strategic obstacle to any German advance.' The Czar was
-pleased to express his approval in principle of this proposal.
-Accordingly the Russian Foreign Minister expressed his wish that an
-Agreement by exchange of Notes should take place on this subject, and
-desired that if Russia agreed to the unrestricted right of France and
-Britain to fix Germany's western frontiers, so Russia was to have an
-assurance of freedom of action in fixing Germany's future frontier on
-the east. (This means the Russian western frontier.)[40]
-
-Or take the case of Serbia, the oppressed nationality whose struggle for
-freedom against Austria was the immediate cause of the War. It was
-because Russia would not permit Austria to do with reference to Serbia,
-what Russia claimed the right to do with reference to Poland, that the
-latter made of the Austrian policy a _casus belli_.
-
-Very well. We stood at least for the vindication of Serbian nationality.
-But the 'Balance' demanded that we should win Italy to our side of the
-scale. She had to be paid. So on April 20th, 1915, without informing
-Serbia, Sir Edward Grey signed a Treaty (the last article of which
-stipulated that it should be kept secret) giving to Italy the whole of
-Dalmatia, in its present extent, together with the islands north and
-west of the Dalmatian coast and Istria as far as the Quarnero and the
-Istrian Islands. That Treaty placed under Italian rule whole populations
-of Southern Slavs, creating inevitably a Southern Slav irredentism, and
-put the Yugo-Slavia, that we professed to be creating, under the same
-kind of economic disability which it had suffered from the Austrian
-Empire. One is not astonished to find Signor Salandra describing the
-principles which should guide his policy as 'a freedom from all
-preoccupations and prejudices, and from every sentiment except that of
-"Sacred egoism" (_sacro egoismo_) for Italy.'
-
-To-day, it need hardly be said, there is bitter hatred between our
-Serbian Ally and our Italian Ally, and most patriotic Yugo-Slavs regard
-war with Italy one day as inevitable.[41] Yet, assuredly, Sir Edward
-Grey is not to be blamed. If allegiance to the Balance of Power was to
-come first, allegiance to any principle, of nationality or of anything
-else, must come second.
-
-The moral implications of this political method received another
-illustration in the case of the Rumanian Treaty. Its nature is indicated
-in the Report of General Polivanov, amongst the papers published at
-Petrograd and dated 7th-20th November, 1916. It explains how Rumania was
-at first a neutral, but shifting between different inclinations--a wish
-not to come in too late for the partition of Austria-Hungary, and a wish
-to earn as much as possible at the expense of the belligerents. At
-first, according to this Report, she favoured our enemies and had
-obtained very favourable commercial agreements with Germany and
-Austria-Hungary. Then in 1916, on the Russian successes under Brusilov,
-she inclined to the Entente Powers. The Russian Chief of the Staff
-thought Rumanian neutrality preferable to her intervention, but later on
-General Alexeiev adopted the view of the Allies, 'who looked upon
-Rumania's entry as a decisive blow for Austria-Hungary and as the
-nearing of the War's end.' So in August, 1916, an agreement was signed
-with Rumania (by whom it was signed is not stated), assigning to her
-Bukovina and all Transylvania. 'The events which followed,' says the
-report, 'showed how greatly our Allies were mistaken and how they
-overvalued Rumania's entry.' In fact, Rumania was in a brief time
-utterly overthrown. And then Polivanov points out that the collapse of
-Rumania's plans as a Great Power 'is not particularly opposed to
-Russia's interests.'
-
-One might follow up this record and see how far the method of the
-Balance has protected the small and weak nation in the case of Albania,
-whose partition was arranged for in April, 1915, under the Treaty of
-London; in the case of Macedonia and the Bulgarian Macedonians; in the
-case of Western Thrace, of the Serbian Banat, of the Bulgar Dobrudja, of
-the Southern Tyrol, of German Bohemia, of Shantung--of still further
-cases in which we were compelled to change or modify or betray the cause
-for which we entered the War in order to maintain the preponderance of
-power by which we could achieve military success.
-
-The moral paralysis exemplified in this story is already infecting our
-nascent efforts at creating a society of nations--witness the relation
-of the League with Poland. No one in 1920 justified the Polish claims
-made against Russia. Our own communications to Russia described them as
-'imperialistic.' The Prime Minister condemned them in unmeasured terms.
-Poland was a member of the League. Her supplies of arms and ammunition,
-military stores, credit, were obtained by the grace of the chief members
-of the League. The only port by which arms could enter Poland was a city
-under the special control of the League. An appeal was made to the
-League to take steps to prevent the Polish adventure. Lord Robert Cecil
-advocated the course with particular urgency. The Soviet Government
-itself, while Poland was preparing, appealed to the chief constitutional
-governments of the League for some preventive action. Why was none
-taken? Because the Balance of Power demanded that we should 'stand by
-France,' and Polish Imperialism was part of the policy quite overtly and
-deliberately laid down by M. Clemenceau, who, with a candour entirely
-admirable, expressed his preference for the old system of alliances as
-against the newfangled Society of Nations. We could not restrain Poland
-and at the same time fulfil our Alliance obligations to France, who was
-supporting the Polish policy.[42]
-
-By reason of the grip of this system we supported (while proclaiming the
-sacredness of the cause of oppressed nationalities) or acquiesced in the
-policy of Czarist Russia against Poland, and incidentally Finland; we
-supported Poland against republican Russia; we encouraged the creation
-of small border States as means of fighting Soviet Russia, while we
-aided Koltchak and Denikin, who would undoubtedly if successful have
-suppressed the border States. We supported the Southern Slavs against
-Austria when we desired to destroy the latter; we supported Italy (in
-secret treaties) against the Southern Slavs when we desired the help of
-the former. Violations and repressions of nationality which, when
-committed by the enemy States, we declared should excite the deathless
-resistance of all free men and call down the punishment of Heaven, we
-acquiesce in and are silent about when committed by our Allies.
-
-This was the Fight for Right, the war to vindicate the moral law in the
-relations of States.
-
-The political necessities of the Balance of Power have prevented the
-country from pledging its power, untrammelled, to the maintenance of
-Right. The two objects are in theory and practice incompatible. The
-Balance of Power is in fact an assertion of the principle of
-_Macht-Politik_, of the principle that Might makes Right.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-MILITARY PREDOMINANCE--AND INSECURITY
-
-
-The War revealed this: However great the military power of a State, as
-in the case of France; however great its territorial extent, as in the
-case of the British Empire; or its economic resources and geographical
-isolation as in the case of the United States, the conditions of the
-present international order compel that State to resort to Alliance as
-an indispensable part of its military defence. And the peace reveals
-this: that no Alliance can long resist the disruptive forces of
-nationalist psychology. So rapid indeed has been the disintegration of
-the Alliance that fought this War, that, from this one cause, the power
-indispensable for carrying out the Treaty imposed upon the enemy has on
-the morrow of victory already disappeared.
-
-So much became patent in the year that followed the signing of the
-Treaty. The fact bears of course fundamentally upon the question of the
-use of political power for those economic ends discussed in the
-preceding pages. If the economic policy of the Treaty of Versailles is
-to be carried out, it will in any case demand a preponderance of power
-so immense and secure that the complete political solidarity of the
-Alliance which fought the War must be assumed. It cannot be assumed.
-That Alliance has in fact already gone to pieces; and with it the
-unquestioned preponderance of power.
-
-The fact bears not only upon the use of power for the purpose of
-carrying an economic policy--or some moral end, like the defence of
-Nationality--into effect. The disruptive influence of the Nationalisms
-of which alliances are composed raises the question of how far a
-military preponderance resting on a National foundation can even give us
-political security.
-
-If the moral factors of nationality are, as we have seen, an
-indispensable part of the study of international economics, so must
-those same factors be considered as an indispensable part of the problem
-of the power to be exercised by an alliance.
-
-During the War there was an extraordinary neglect of this simple truth.
-It seemed to occur to no one that the intensification of the psychology
-of nationalism--not only among the lesser States but in France and
-America and England--ran the risk of rendering the Alliance powerless
-after its victory. Yet that is what has happened.
-
-The power of an Alliance (again we are dealing with things that are
-obvious but neglected) does not depend upon the sum of its material
-forces--navies, armies, artillery. It depends upon being able to
-assemble those things to a common purpose; in other words, upon policy
-fit to direct the instrument. If the policy, or certain moral elements
-within it, are such that one member of the Alliance is likely to turn
-his arms against the others, the extent of _his_ armament does not add
-to the strength of the Alliance. It was with ammunition furnished by
-Britain and France that Russia in 1919 and 1920 destroyed British and
-French troops. The present building of an enormous navy by America is
-not accepted in Britain as necessarily adding to the security of the
-British Empire.
-
-It is worth while to note how utterly fallacious are certain almost
-universal assumptions concerning the relation of war psychology to the
-problem of alliance solidarity. An English visitor to the United States
-(or an American visitor to England) during the years 1917-1918 was apt
-to be deluged by a flood of rhetoric to this effect: The blood shed on
-the same battle-fields, the suffering shared in common in the same
-common cause, would unite and cement as nothing had ever yet united the
-two great branches of the English-speaking race, destined by
-Providence....
-
-But the same visitor moving in the same circle less than two years later
-found that this eternal cement of friendship had already lost its
-potency. Never, perhaps, for generations were Anglo-American relations
-so bad as they had become within a score or so of months of the time
-that Englishmen and Americans were dying side by side on the
-battle-field. At the beginning of 1921, in the United States, it was
-easier, on a public platform, to defend Germany than to present a
-defence of English policy in Ireland or in India. And at that period one
-might hear commonly enough in England, in trams and railway carriages, a
-repetition of the catch phrase, 'America next.' If certain popular
-assumptions as to war psychology were right, these things would be
-impossible.
-
-Yet, as a matter of fact, the psychological phenomenon is true to type.
-It was not an accident that the internationalist America of 1915, of
-'Peace without Victory,' should by 1918 have become more fiercely
-insistent upon absolute victory and unconditional surrender than any
-other of the belligerents, whose emotions had found some outlet during
-three years of war before America had begun. The complete reversal of
-the 'Peace without Victory' attitude was demanded--cultivated,
-deliberately produced--as a necessary part of war morale. But these
-emotions of coercion and domination cannot be intensively cultivated and
-then turned off as by a tap. They made America fiercely nationalist,
-with necessarily a temperamental distaste for the internationalism of Mr
-Wilson. And when a mere year of war left the emotional hungers
-unsatisfied, they turned unconsciously to other satisfactions. Twenty
-million Americans of Irish descent or association, among others,
-utilised the opportunity.
-
-One feature--perhaps the very largest feature of all--of war morale, had
-been the exploitation of the German atrocities. The burning of Louvain,
-and other reprisals upon the Belgian civilian population, meant
-necessarily a special wickedness on the part of a definite entity, known
-as 'Germany,' that had to be crushed, punished, beaten, wiped out. There
-were no distinctions. The plea that all were not equally guilty excited
-the fierce anger reserved for all such 'pacifist' and pro-German pleas.
-A German woman had laughed at a wounded American: all German women were
-monsters. 'No good German but a dead German.' It was in the German blood
-and grey matter. The elaborate stories--illustrated--of Germans sticking
-bayonets into Belgian children produced a thesis which was beyond and
-above reason or explanation: for that atrocity, 'Germany'--seventy
-million people, ignorant peasants, driven workmen, the babies, the
-invalids, the old women gathering sticks in the forest, the children
-trooping to school--all were guilty. To state the thing in black and
-white sounds like a monstrous travesty. But it is not a travesty. It is
-the thesis we, too, maintained; but in America it had, in the American
-way, an over simplification and an extra emphasis.
-
-And then after the War an historical enemy of America's does precisely
-the same thing. In the story of Amritsar and the Irish reprisals it is
-the Indian and Sinn Fein version only which is told; just as during the
-War we got nothing but the anti-German version of the burning of
-Louvain, or reprisals upon civilians. Why should we expect that the
-result should be greatly different upon American opinion? Four hundred
-unarmed and hopeless people, women and children as well as men, are mown
-down by machine-guns. Or, in the Irish reprisals, a farmer is shot in
-the presence of his wife and children. The Government defends the
-soldiers. 'Britain' has done this thing: forty-five millions of people,
-of infinitely varying degrees of responsibility, many opposing it, many
-ignorant of it, almost all entirely helpless. To represent them as
-inhuman monsters because of these atrocities is an infinitely
-mischievous falsehood. But it is made possible by a theory, which in the
-case of Germany we maintained for years as essentially true. And now it
-is doing as between Britain and America what a similar falsehood did as
-between Germany and England, and will go on doing so long as Nationalism
-includes conceptions of collective responsibility which fly in the face
-of common sense and truth. If the resultant hostilities can operate as
-between two national groups like the British and the American, what
-groups can be free of them?
-
-It is a little difficult now, two years after the end of the War, with
-the world in its present turmoil, to realise that we really did expect
-the defeat of Germany to inaugurate an era of peace and security, of
-reduction of armaments, the virtual end of war; and believed that it was
-German militarism, 'that trampling, drilling foolery in the heart of
-Europe, that has arrested civilisation and darkened the hopes of mankind
-for forty years,'[43] as Mr Wells wrote in _The War that will End War_,
-which accounted for nearly all the other militarisms, and that after its
-destruction we could anticipate 'the end of the armament phase of
-European history.' For, explained Mr Wells, 'France, Italy, England, and
-all the smaller Powers of Europe are now pacific countries; Russia,
-after this huge War, will be too exhausted for further adventure.'[44]
-
-'When will peace come?' asked Professor Headlam, and answered that
-
-     'It will come when Germany has learnt the lesson of the War, when
-     it has learnt, as every other nation has had to learn, that the
-     voice of Europe cannot be defied with impunity.... Men talk about
-     the terms of peace. They matter little. With a Germany victorious
-     no terms could secure the future of Europe, with a Germany
-     defeated, no artificial securities will be wanted, for there will
-     be a stronger security in the consciousness of defeat.'[45]
-
-There were to be no limits to the political or economic rearrangements
-which victory would enable us to effect. Very authoritative military
-critics like Mr Hilaire Belloc became quite angry and contemptuous at
-the suggestion that the defeat of the enemy would not enable us to
-rearrange Europe at our will. The doctrine that unlimited power was
-inherent in victory was thus stated by Mr Belloc:--
-
-     'It has been well said that the most straightforward and obvious
-     conclusions on the largest lines of military policy are those of
-     which it is most difficult to convince a general audience; and we
-     find in this matter a singular miscalculation running through the
-     attitude of many Western publicists. They speak as though, whatever
-     might happen in the West, the Alliance, which is fighting for
-     European civilisation, the Western Allies and the United States,
-     could not now affect the destinies of Eastern Europe....
-
-     Such an attitude is, upon the simplest principles of military
-     science, a grotesque error.... If we are victorious ... the
-     destruction of the enemy's military power gives us as full an
-     opportunity for deciding the fate of Eastern Europe as it does for
-     deciding the fate of Western Europe. Victory gained by the Allies
-     will decide the fate of all Europe, and, for that matter, of the
-     whole world. It will open the Baltic and the Black Sea. It will
-     leave us masters with the power to dictate in what fashion the new
-     boundaries shall be arranged, how the entries to the Eastern
-     markets shall be kept open, garrisoned and guaranteed....
-
-     Wherever they are defeated, whether upon the line they now hold or
-     upon other lines, their defeat and our victory will leave us with
-     complete power. If that task be beyond our strength, then
-     civilisation has suffered defeat, and there is the end of it.'
-
-German power was to be destroyed as the condition of saving
-civilisation. Mr Belloc wrote:--
-
-     'If by some negotiation (involving of course the evacuation of the
-     occupied districts in the West) the enemy remains undefeated,
-     civilised Europe has lost the war and Prussia has won it.'[46]
-
-Such was the simple and popular thesis. Germany, criminal and barbarian,
-challenged Europe, civilised and law-abiding. Civilisation can only
-assert itself by the punishment of Germany and save itself by the
-destruction of German power. Once the German military power is
-destroyed, Europe can do with Germany what it will.
-
-I suggest that the experience of the last two years, and our own present
-policy, constitute an admission or demonstration, first, that the moral
-assumption of this thesis--that the menace of German power was due to
-some special wickedness on the part of the German nation not shared by
-other peoples in any degree--is false; and, secondly, that the
-destruction of Germany's military force gives to Europe no such power to
-control Germany.
-
-Our power over Germany becomes every day less:
-
-First, by the break-up of the Alliance. The 'sacred egoisms' which
-produced the War are now disrupting the Allies. The most potentially
-powerful European member of the Alliance or Association--Russia--has
-become an enemy; the most powerful member of all, America, has withdrawn
-from co-operation; Italy is in conflict with one Ally, Japan with
-another.
-
-Secondly, by the more extended Balkanisation of Europe. The States
-utilised by (for instance) France as the instruments of Allied policy
-(Poland, Hungary, Ukrainia, Rumania, Czecho-Slovakia) are liable to
-quarrel among themselves. The groups rendered hostile to Allied
-policy--Germany, Russia, China--are much larger, and might well once
-more become cohesive units. The Nationalism which is a factor of Allied
-disintegration may nevertheless work for the consolidation of the groups
-opposed to us.
-
-Thirdly, by the economic disorganisation of Europe (resulting mainly
-from the desire to weaken the enemy), which deprives the Alliance of
-economic resources sufficient for a military task like that of the
-conquest of Russia or the occupation of Germany.
-
-Fourthly, by the social unrest within each country (itself due in part
-to the economic disorganisation, in part to the introduction of the
-psychology of jingoism into the domain of industrial strife):
-Bolshevism. A long war of intervention in Russia by the Alliance would
-have broken down under the strain of internal unrest in Allied
-countries.
-
-The Alliance thus succumbs to the clash of Nationalisms and the clash of
-classes.
-
-These moral factors render the purpose which will be given to
-accumulated military force--'the direction in which the guns will
-shoot'--so uncertain that the amount of material power available is no
-indication of the degree of security attained.
-
-If it were true, as we argued so universally before and during the War,
-that German power was the final cause of the armament rivalry in Europe,
-then the disappearance of that power should mark, as so many prophesied
-it would mark, the end of the 'armament era.'[47] Has it done so? Or
-does any one to-day seriously argue that the increase of armament
-expenditure over the pre-war period is in some mystic way due to
-Prussian militarism?
-
-Let us turn to a _Times_ leader in the summer of 1920:--
-
-     'To-day the condition of Europe and of a large portion of the world
-     is scarcely less critical than it was six years ago. Within a few
-     days, or at most a few weeks, we may know whether the Peace Treaty
-     signed at Versailles will possess effective validity. The
-     independent existence of Poland, which is a keystone of the
-     reorganisation of Europe contemplated by the Treaty, is in grave
-     peril; and with it, though perhaps not in the manner currently
-     imagined in Germany, is jeopardised the present situation of
-     Germany herself.
-
-... There is undoubtedly a widespread plot against Western
-     civilisation as we know it, and probably against British liberal
-     institutions as a principal mainstay of that civilisation. Yet if
-     our institutions, and Western civilisation with them, are to
-     withstand the present onslaught, they must be defended.... We never
-     doubted the staunchness and vigour of England six years ago, and we
-     doubt them as little to-day.'[48]
-
-And so we must have even larger armaments than ever. Field-Marshal Earl
-Haig and Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson in England, Marshal Foch in
-France, General Leonard Wood in America, all urge that it will be
-indispensable to maintain our armaments at more than the pre-war scale.
-The ink of the Armistice was barely dry before the _Daily Mail_
-published a long interview with Marshal Foch[49] in the course of which
-the Generalissimo enlarged on the 'inevitability' of war in the future
-and the need of being 'prepared for it.' Lord Haig, in his Rectorial
-Address at St Andrews (May 14th, 1919) followed with the plea that as
-'the seeds of future conflict are to be found in every quarter, only
-waiting the right condition, moral, economic, political, to burst once
-more into activity,' every man in the country must immediately be
-trained for war. The _Mail_, supporting his plea, said:--
-
-     'We all desire peace, but we cannot, even in the hour of complete
-     victory, disregard the injunction uttered by our first soldier,
-     that "only by adequate preparation for war can peace in every way
-     be guaranteed."
-
-     '"A strong citizen army on strong territorial lines," is the advice
-     Sir Douglas Haig urges on the country. A system providing twelve
-     months' military training for every man in the country should be
-     seriously thought of.... Morally and physically the War has shown
-     us that the effect of discipline upon the youths of the country is
-     an asset beyond calculation.'
-
-So that the victory which was to end the 'trampling and drilling
-foolery' is made a plea for the institution of permanent conscription in
-England, where, before the victory, it did not exist.
-
-The admission involved in this recommendation, the admission that
-destruction of German power has failed to give us security, is as
-complete as it well could be.
-
-If this was merely the exuberant zeal of professional soldiers, we might
-perhaps disregard these declarations. But the conviction of the soldiers
-is reflected in the policy of the Government. At a time when the
-financial difficulties of all the Allied countries are admittedly
-enormous, when the bankruptcy of some is a contingency freely discussed,
-and when the need of economy is the refrain everywhere, there is not an
-Allied State which is not to-day spending more upon military and naval
-preparations than it was spending before the destruction of the German
-power began. America is preparing to build a bigger fleet than she has
-ever had in her history[50]--a larger fleet than the German armada,
-which was for most Englishmen perhaps the decisive demonstration of
-Germany's hostile intent. Britain on her side has at present a larger
-naval budget than that of the year which preceded the War; while for the
-new war instrument of aviation she has a building programme more costly
-than the shipbuilding programmes of pre-war time. France is to-day
-spending more on her army than before the War; spending, indeed, upon it
-now a sum larger than that which she spent upon the whole of her
-Government when German militarism was undestroyed.
-
-Despite all this power possessed by the members of the Alliance, the
-predominant note in current political criticism is that Germany is
-evading the execution of the Treaty of Versailles, that in the payment
-of the indemnity, the punishment of military criminals, and disarmament,
-the Treaty is a dead letter, and the Allies are powerless. As the
-_Times_ reminds us, the very keystone of the Treaty, in the independence
-of Poland, trembles.
-
-It is not difficult to recall the fashion in which we thought and wrote
-of the German menace before and during the War. The following from _The
-New Europe_ (which had taken as its device 'La Victoire Int�grale') will
-be recognised as typical:--
-
-     'It is of vital importance to us to understand, not only Germany's
-     aims, but the process by which she hopes to carry them through. If
-     Germany wins, she will not rest content with this victory. Her next
-     object will be to prepare for further victories both in Asia and in
-     Central and Western Europe.
-
-     'Those who still cherish the belief that Prussia is pacifist show a
-     profound misunderstanding of her psychology.... On this point the
-     Junkers have been frank: those who have not been frank are the
-     wiseacres who try to persuade us that we can moderate their
-     attitude by making peace with them. If they would only pay a
-     little more attention to the Junkers' avowed objects, and a little
-     less attention to their own theories about those objects, they
-     would be more useful guides to public opinion in this country,
-     which finds itself hopelessly at sea on the subject of Prussianism.
-
-     'What then are Germany's objects? What is likely to be her view of
-     the general situation in Europe at the present moment?... Whatever
-     modifications she may have introduced into her immediate programme,
-     she still clings to her desire to overthrow our present
-     civilisation in Europe, and to introduce her own on the ruins of
-     the old order....
-
-     'Buoyed up by recent successes ... her offers of peace will become
-     more insistent and more difficult to refuse. Influences will
-     clamour for the resumption of peace on economic and financial
-     grounds.... We venture to say that it will be very difficult for
-     any Government to resist this pressure, and, _unless the danger of
-     coming to terms with Germany is very clearly and strongly put
-     before the public, we may find ourselves caught in the snares that
-     Germany has for a long time past been laying for us_.
-
-... 'We shall be told that once peace is concluded the Junkers will
-     become moderate, and all those who wish to believe this will
-     readily accept it without further question.
-
-     'But, while we in our innocence may be priding ourselves on the
-     conclusion of peace to Germany it will not be a peace, but a
-     "respite." ... This "respite" will be exceedingly useful to Germany
-     not only for propaganda purposes, but in order to replenish her
-     exhausted resources necessary for future aggression. Meanwhile
-     German activities in Asia and Ireland are likely to continue
-     unabated until the maximum inconvenience to England has been
-     produced.'
-
-If the reader will carry his mind back a couple of years, he will recall
-having read numberless articles similar to the above, concerning the
-duty of annihilating the power of Germany.
-
-Well, will the reader note that _the above does not refer to Germany at
-all, but to Russia_? I have perpetrated a little forgery for his
-enlightenment. In order to bring home the rapidity with which a change
-of roles can be accomplished, an article warning us against any peace
-with _Russia_, appearing in the _New Europe_ of January 8th, 1920, has
-been reproduced word for word, except that 'Russia' or 'Lenin' has been
-changed to 'Germany' or 'the Junkers,' as the case may be.
-
-Now let us see what this writer has to say as to the German power
-to-day?
-
-Well, he says that the security of civilisation now depends upon the
-restoration, in part at least, of that German power, for the destruction
-of which the world gave twenty million lives. The danger to civilisation
-now is mainly 'the breach between Germany and the West, and the
-rivalries of nationalism.' Lenin, plotting our destruction, relies
-mainly on that:--
-
-     'Above all we may be sure that his attention is concentrated on
-     England and Germany. So long as Germany remains aloof and feelings
-     of bitterness against the Allies are allowed to grow still more
-     acute, Lenin can rub his hands with glee; what he fears more than
-     anything is the first sign that the sores caused by five years of
-     war are being healed, and that England, France, and Germany are
-     preparing to treat one another as neighbours, who have each their
-     several parts to play in the restoration of normal economic
-     conditions in Europe.'
-
-As to the policy of preventing Germany's economic restoration for fear
-that she should once more possess the raw material of military power,
-this writer declares that it is precisely that Carthaginian policy
-(embodied in the Treaty of Versailles) which Lenin would most of all
-desire:--
-
-     'As a trained economist we may be sure that he looks first and
-     foremost at the widespread economic chaos. We can imagine his
-     chuckle of satisfaction when he sees the European exchanges getting
-     steadily worse and national antagonisms growing more acute.
-     Disputes about territorial questions are to him so much grist to
-     the Bolshevik mill, as they all tend to obscure the fundamental
-     question of the economic reconstruction of Europe, without which no
-     country in Europe can consider itself safe from Bolshevism.
-
-     'He must realise to the full the lamentable condition of the
-     finances of the new States in Central and South-east Europe.'
-
-In putting forward these views, The _New Europe_ is by no means alone.
-Already in January, 1920, Mr J. L. Garvin had declared what indeed was
-obvious, that it was out of the question to expect to build a new Europe
-on the simultaneous hostility of Germany _and_ Russia.
-
-     'Let us face the main fact. If there is to be no peace with the
-     Bolshevists _there must be an altogether different understanding
-     with Germany.... For any sure and solid barrier against the
-     external consequences of Bolshevism Germany is essential._'
-
-Barely six months later Mr Winston Churchill, Secretary of State for War
-in the British Cabinet, chooses the _Evening News_, probably the
-arch-Hun-Hater of all the English Press, to open out the new policy of
-Alliance with Germany against Russia. He says:--
-
-     'It will be open to the Germans ... by a supreme effort of
-     sobriety, of firmness, of self-restraint, and of
-     courage--undertaken, as most great exploits have to be, under
-     conditions of peculiar difficulty and discouragement--to build a
-     dyke of peaceful, lawful, patient strength and virtue against the
-     flood of red barbarism flowing from the East, and thus safeguard
-     their own interests and the interests of their principle
-     antagonists in the West.
-
-     'If the Germans were able to render such a service, not by
-     vainglorious military adventure or with ulterior motives, they
-     would unquestionably have taken a giant step upon that path of
-     self-redemption which would lead them surely and swiftly as the
-     years pass by to their own great place in the councils of
-     Christendom, and would have rendered easier the sincere
-     co-operation between Britain, France, and Germany, on which the
-     very salvation of Europe depends.'
-
-So the salvation of Europe depends upon our co-operation with Germany,
-upon a German dyke of 'patient strength.'[51]
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-One wonders why we devoted quite so many lives and so much agony to
-knocking Germany out; and why we furnished quite so much treasure to the
-military equipment of the very Muscovite 'barbarians' who now threaten
-to overflow it.
-
-One wonders also, why, if 'the very salvation of Europe' in July, 1920,
-depends upon sincere co-operation of the Entente with Germany, those
-Allies were a year earlier exacting by force her signature to a Treaty
-which not even its authors pretended was compatible with German
-reconciliation.
-
-If the Germans are to fulfil the role Mr Churchill assigns to them, then
-obviously the Treaty of Versailles must be torn up. If they are to be
-the 'dyke' protecting Western civilisation against the Red military
-flood, it must, according to the Churchillian philosophy, be a military
-dyke: the disarmament clauses must be abolished, as must the other
-clauses--particularly the economic ones--which would make of any people
-suffering from them the bitter enemy of the people that imposed them.
-Our Press is just now full of stories of secret Treaties between Germany
-and Russia against France and England. Whether the stories are true or
-not, it is certain that the effect of the Treaty of Versailles and the
-Allied policy to Russia will be to create a Russo-German understanding.
-And Mr Churchill (phase 1920) has undoubtedly indicated the
-alternatives. If you are going to fight Russia to the death, then you
-must make friends with Germany; if you are going to maintain the Treaty
-of Versailles, then you must make friends with Russia. You must 'trust'
-either the Boche or the Bolshevist.
-
-Popular feeling at this moment (or rather the type of feeling envisaged
-by the Northcliffe Press) won't do either. Boche and Bolshevist alike
-are 'vermin' to be utterly crushed, and any policy implying co-operation
-with either is ruled out. 'Force ... force to the uttermost' against
-both is demanded by the _Times_, the _Daily Mail_, and the various
-evening, weekly, or monthly editions thereof.
-
-Very well. Let us examine the proposal to 'hold down' by force both
-Russia and Germany. Beyond Russia there is Asia, particularly India. The
-_New Europe_ writer reminds us:--
-
-     ' ... If England cannot be subdued by a direct attack, she is, at
-     any rate, vulnerable in Asia, and it is here that Lenin is
-     preparing to deliver his real propaganda offensive. During the last
-     few months more and more attention has been paid to Asiatic
-     propaganda, and this will not be abandoned, no matter what
-     temporary arrangements the Soviet Government may attempt to make
-     with Western Europe. It is here, and here only, that England can be
-     wounded, so that she may be counted out of the forth-coming
-     revolutionary struggle in Europe that Lenin is preparing to engage
-     in at a later date....
-
-     'We should find ourselves so much occupied in maintaining order in
-     Asia that we should have little time or energy left for interfering
-     in Europe.'
-
-As a matter of fact, we know how great are the forces that can be
-absorbed[52] when the territory for subjection stretches from Archangel
-to the Deccan--through Syria, Arabia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia,
-Afghanistan. Our experience in Archangel, Murmansk, Vladivostock, and
-with Koltchak, Denikin, and Wrangel shows that the military method must
-be thorough or it will fail. It is no good hoping that a supply of
-surplus ammunition to a counter-revolutionary general will subdue a
-country like Russia. The only safe and thorough-going plan is complete
-occupation--or a very extended occupation--of both countries. M.
-Clemenceau definitely favoured this course, as did nearly all the
-military-minded groups in England and America, when the Russian policy
-was discussed at the end of 1918 and early in 1919.
-
-Why was that policy not carried out?
-
-The history of the thing is clear enough. That policy would have called
-upon the resources in men and material of the whole of the Alliance, not
-merely those of the Big Four, but of Poland, Czecho-Slovakia,
-Yugo-Slavia, Italy, Greece, and Japan as well. The 'March to Berlin and
-Moscow' which so many, even in England and America, were demanding at
-the time of the Armistice would not have been the march of British
-Grenadiers; nor the succeeding occupation one like that of Egypt or
-India. Operations on that scale would have brought in sooner or later
-(indeed, much smaller operations have already brought in) the forces of
-nations in bitter conflict the one with the other. We know what the
-occupation of Ireland by British troops has meant. Imagine an Ireland
-multiplied many times, occupied not only by British but by 'Allied'
-troops--British side by side with Senegalese negroes, Italians with
-Yugo-Slavs, Poles with Czecho-Slovaks and White Russians, Americans with
-Japanese. Remember, moreover, how far the disintegration of the Alliance
-had already advanced. The European member of the Alliance greatest in
-its potential resources, human and material, was of course the very
-country against which it was now proposed to act; the 'steamroller' had
-now to be destroyed ... by the Allies. America, the member of the
-Alliance, which, at the time of the Armistice, represented the greatest
-unit of actual material force, had withdrawn into a nationalist
-isolation from, and even hostility to, the European Allies. Japan was
-pursuing a line of policy which rendered increasingly difficult the
-active co-operation of certain of the Western democracies with her; her
-policy had already involved her in declared and open hostility to the
-other Asiatic element of the Alliance, China. Italy was in a state of
-bitter hostility to the nationality--Greater Serbia--whose defence was
-the immediate occasion of the War, and was soon to mark her feeling
-towards the peace by returning to power the Minister who had opposed
-Italy's entrance into the War; a situation which we shall best
-understand if we imagine a 'pro-German' (say, for instance, Lord Morley,
-or Mr Ramsay MacDonald, or Mr Philip Snowden) being made Prime Minister
-of England. What may be termed the minor Allies, Yugo-Slavia,
-Czecho-Slovakia, Rumania, Greece, Poland, the lesser Border States, the
-Arab kingdom that we erected, were drifting towards the entangling
-conflicts which have since broken out. Already, at a time when the Quai
-d'Orsay and Carmelite House were both clamouring for what must have
-meant in practice the occupation of both Germany and Russia, the
-Alliance had in fact disintegrated, and some of its main elements were
-in bitter conflict. The picture of a solid alliance of pacific and
-liberal democracies standing for the maintenance of an orderly European
-freedom against German attacks had completely faded away. Of the Grand
-Alliance of twenty-four States as a combination of power pledged to a
-common purpose, there remained just France and England--and their
-relations, too, were becoming daily worse; in fundamental disagreement
-over Poland, Turkey, Syria, the Balkan States, Austria, and Germany
-itself, its indemnities, and its economic treatment generally. Was this
-the instrument for the conquest of half a world?
-
-But the political disintegration of the Alliance was not the only
-obstacle to a thorough-going application of military force to the
-problem of Germany and Russia.
-
-By the very terms of the theory of security by preponderant power,
-Germany had to be weakened economically, for her subjugation could never
-be secure if she were permitted to maintain an elaborate, nationally
-organised economic machinery, which not only gives immense powers of
-production, capable without great difficulty of being transformed to the
-production of military material, but which, through the organisation of
-foreign trade, gives influence in countries like Russia, the Balkans,
-the Near and Far East.
-
-So part of the policy of Versailles, reflected in the clauses of the
-Treaty already dealt with, was to check the economic recovery of Germany
-and more particularly to prevent economic co-operation between that
-country and Russia. That Russia should become a 'German Colony' was a
-nightmare that haunted the minds of the French peace-makers.[53]
-
-But, as we have already seen, to prevent the economic co-operation of
-Germany and Russia meant the perpetuation of the economic paralysis of
-Europe. Combined with the maintenance of the blockade it would
-certainly have meant utter and perhaps irretrievable collapse.
-
-Perhaps the Allies at the beginning of 1919 were in no mood to be
-greatly disturbed by the prospect. But they soon learned that it had a
-very close bearing both on the aims which they had set before themselves
-in the Treaty and, indeed, on the very problem of maintaining military
-predominance.
-
-In theory, of course, an army of occupation should live on the occupied
-country. But it soon became evident that it was quite out of the
-question to collect even the cost of the armies for the limited
-occupation of the Rhine territories from a country whose industrial life
-was paralysed by blockade. Moreover, the costs of the German occupation
-were very sensibly increased by the fact of the Russian blockade.
-Deprived of Russian wheat and other products, the cost of living in
-Western Europe was steadily rising, the social unrest was in consequence
-increasing, and it was vitally necessary, if something like the old
-European life was to be restored, that production should be restarted as
-rapidly as possible. We found that a blockade of Russia which cut off
-Russian foodstuffs from Western Europe, was also a blockade of
-ourselves. But the blockade, as we have seen, was not the only economic
-device used as a part of military pressure: the old economic nerves
-between Germany and her neighbours had been cut out and the creeping
-paralysis of Europe was spreading in every direction. There was not a
-belligerent State on the Continent of Europe that was solvent in the
-strict sense of the term--able, that is, to discharge its obligations in
-the gold money in which it had contracted them. All had resorted to the
-shifts of paper--fictitious--money, and the debacle of the exchanges was
-already setting in. Whence were to come the costs of the forces and
-armies of occupation necessitated by the policy of complete conquest of
-Russia and Germany at the same time?
-
-When, therefore (according to a story current at the time), President
-Wilson, following the announcement that France stood for the military
-coercion of Russia, asked each Ally in turn how many troops and how much
-of the cost it would provide, each replied: 'None.' It was patent,
-indeed, that the resources of an economically paralysed Western Europe
-were not adequate to this enterprise. A half-way course was adopted.
-Britain supplied certain counter-revolutionary generals with a very
-considerable quantity of surplus stores, and a few military missions;
-France adopted the policy of using satellite States--Poland, Rumania,
-and even Hungary--as her tools. The result we know.
-
-Meantime, the economic and financial situation at home (in France and
-Italy) was becoming desperate. France needed coal, building material,
-money. None of these things could be obtained from a blockaded,
-starving, and restless Germany. One day, doubtless, Germany will be able
-to pay for the armies of occupation; but it will be a Germany whose
-workers are fed and clothed and warmed, whose railways have adequate
-rolling stock, whose fields are not destitute of machines, and factories
-of coal and the raw materials of production. In other words, it will be
-a strong and organised Germany, and, if occupied by alien troops, most
-certainly a nationalist and hostile Germany, dangerous and difficult to
-watch, however much disarmed.
-
-But there was a further force which the Allied Governments found
-themselves compelled to take into consideration in settling their
-military policy at the time of the Armistice. In addition to the
-economic and financial difficulties which compelled them to refrain from
-large scale operations in Russia and perhaps in Germany; in addition to
-the clash of rival nationalisms among the Allies, which was already
-introducing such serious rifts into the Alliance, there was a further
-element of weakness--revolutionary unrest, the 'Bolshevik' fever.
-
-In December, 1918, the British Government was confronted by the refusal
-of soldiers at Dover, who believed that they were being sent to Russia,
-to embark. A month or two later the French Government was faced by a
-naval mutiny at Odessa. American soldiers in Siberia refused to go into
-action against the Russians. Still later, in Italy, the workers enforced
-their decision not to handle munitions for Russia, by widespread
-strikes. Whether the attempt to obtain troops in very large quantities
-for a Russian war, involving casualties and sacrifices on a considerable
-scale, would have meant at the beginning of 1919 military revolts, or
-Communist, Spartacist, or Bolshevik revolutionary movements, or not, the
-Governments were evidently not prepared to face the issue.
-
-We have seen, therefore, that the blockade and the economic weakening of
-our enemy are two-edged weapons, only of effective use within very
-definite limits; that these limits in turn condition in some degree the
-employment of more purely military instruments like the occupation of
-hostile territory; and indeed condition the provision of the
-instruments.
-
-The power basis of the Alliance, such as it is, has been, since the
-Armistice, the naval power of England, exercised through the blockades,
-and the military force of France exercised mainly through the management
-of satellite armies. The British method has involved the greater
-immediate cruelty (perhaps a greater extent and degree of suffering
-imposed upon the weak and helpless than any coercive device yet
-discovered by man) though the French has involved a more direct negation
-of the aims for which the War was fought. French policy aims quite
-frankly at the re-imposition of France's military hegemony of the
-Continent. That aim will not be readily surrendered.
-
-Owing to the division in Socialist and Labour ranks, to the growing fear
-and dislike of 'confiscatory' legislation, by a peasant population and a
-large _petit rentier_ class, conservative elements are bound to be
-predominant in France for a long time. Those elements are frankly
-sceptical of any League of Nations device. A League of Nations would
-rob them of what in the Chamber of Deputies a Nationalist called 'the
-Right of Victory.' But the alternative to a League as a means of
-security is military predominance, and France has bent her energies
-since the Armistice to securing it. To-day, the military predominance of
-France on the Continent is vastly greater than that of Germany ever was.
-Her chief antagonist is not only disarmed--forbidden to manufacture
-heavy artillery, tanks or fighting aircraft--but as we have seen, is
-crippled in economic life by the loss of nearly all his iron and much of
-his coal. France not only retains her armament, but is to-day spending
-more upon it than before the War. The expenditure for the army in 1920
-amounted to 5000 millions of francs, whereas in 1914 it was only 1200
-millions. Translate this expenditure even with due regard to the changed
-price level into terms of policy, and it means, _inter alia_, that the
-Russo-Polish war and Feisal's deposition in Syria are burdens beyond her
-capacity. And this is only the beginning. Within a few months France has
-revived the full flower of the Napoleonic tradition so far as the use of
-satellite military States is concerned. Poland is only one of many
-instruments now being industriously fashioned by the artisans of the
-French military renaissance. In the Ukraine, in Hungary, in
-Czecho-Slovakia, in Rumania, in Yugo-Slavia; in Syria, Greece, Turkey,
-and Africa, French military and financial organisers are at work.
-
-M. Clemenceau, in one of his statements to the Chamber[54] on France's
-future policy, outlined the method:--
-
-     'We have said that we would create a system of barbed wire. There
-     are places where it will have to be guarded to prevent Germany from
-     passing. There are peoples like the Poles, of whom I spoke just
-     now, who are fighting against the Soviets, who are resisting, who
-     are in the van of civilisation. Well, we have decided ... to be
-     the Allies of any people attacked by the Bolsheviks. I have spoken
-     of the Poles, of the help that we shall certainly get from them in
-     case of necessity. Well, they are fighting at this moment against
-     the Bolsheviks, and if they are not equal to the task--but they
-     will be equal to it--the help which we shall be able to give them
-     in different ways, and which we are actually giving them,
-     particularly in the form of military supplies and uniforms--that
-     help will be continued. There is a Polish army, of which the
-     greater part has been organised and instructed by French
-     officers.... The Polish army must now be composed of from 450,000
-     to 500,000 men. If you look on the map at the geographical
-     situation of this military force, you will think that it is
-     interesting from every point of view. There is a Czecho-Slovak
-     army, which already numbers nearly 150,000 men, well equipped, well
-     armed, and capable of sustaining all the tasks of war. Here is
-     another factor on which we can count. But I count on many other
-     elements. I count on Rumania.'
-
-Since then Hungary has been added, part of the Hungarian plan being the
-domination of Austria by Hungary, and, later, possibly the restoration
-of an Austrian Monarchy, which might help to detach monarchical and
-clerical Bavaria from Republican Germany.[55] This is the revival of the
-old French policy of preventing the unification of the German
-people.[56] It is that aspiration which largely explains recent French
-sympathy for Clericalism and Monarchism and the reversal of the policy
-heretofore pursued by the Third Republic towards the Vatican.
-
-The systematic arming of African negroes reveals something of Napoleon's
-leaning towards the military exploitation of servile races. We are
-probably only at the beginning of the arming of Africa's black millions.
-They are, of course, an extremely convenient military material. French
-or British soldiers might have scruples against service in a war upon a
-Workers' Republic. Cannibals from the African forest 'conscribed' for
-service in Europe are not likely to have political or social scruples of
-that kind. To bring some hundreds of thousands of these Africans to
-Europe, to train them systematically to the use of European arms; to
-teach them that the European is conquerable; to put them in the position
-of victors over a vanquished European people--here indeed are
-possibilities. With Senegalese negroes having their quarters in Goethe's
-house, and placed, if not in authority, at least as the instruments of
-authority over the population of a European university city; and with
-the Japanese imposing their rule upon great stretches of what was
-yesterday a European Empire (and our Ally) a new page may well have
-opened for Europe.
-
-But just consider the chances of stability for power based on the
-assumption of continued co-operation of a number of 'intense'
-nationalisms, each animated by its sacred egoisms. France has turned to
-this policy as a substitute for the alliance of two or three great
-States, which national feeling and conflicting interests have driven
-apart. Is this collection of mushroom republics to possess a stability
-to which the Entente could not attain?
-
-One looks over the list. We have, it is true, after a century, the
-re-birth of Poland, a great and impressive case of the vindication of
-national right. But Poland, yesterday the victim of the imperialist
-oppressor, has, herself, almost in a few hours, as it were, acquired an
-imperialism of her own. The Pole assures us that his nationality can
-only be secure if he is given dominion over territories with largely
-non-Polish populations; if, that is, some fifteen millions of Ruthenes,
-Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Russians, are deprived of a separate national
-existence. Italy, it is true, is now fully redeemed; but that redemption
-involves the 'irredentism' of large numbers of German Tyrolese,
-Yugo-Slavs, and Greeks. The new Austria is forbidden to federate with
-the main branch of the race to which her people belong--though
-federation alone can save them from physical extinction. The
-Czecho-Slovak nation is now achieved, but only at the expense of a
-German unredeemed population larger numerically than that of
-Alsace-Lorraine. And Slovaks and Czechs already quarrel--many foresee
-the day when the freed State will face its own rebels. The Slovenes and
-Croats and the Serbs do not yet make a 'nationality,' and threaten to
-fight one another as readily as they would fight the Bulgarians they
-have annexed in Bulgarian Macedonia. Rumania has marked her redemption
-by the inclusion of considerable Hungarian, Bulgarian, and Serbian
-'irredentisms' within her new borders. Finland, which with Poland
-typified for so long the undying struggle for national right, is to-day
-determined to coerce the Swedes on the Aaland Islands and the Russians
-on the Carelian Territory. Greek rule of Turks has already involved
-retaliatory, punitive, or defensive measures which have needed Blue Book
-explanation. Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaidjan have not yet acquired
-their subject nationalities.
-
-The prospect of peace and security for these nationalities may be
-gathered in some measure by an enumeration of the wars which have
-actually broken out since the Peace Conference met in Paris, for the
-appeasement of Europe. The Poles have fought in turn, the
-Czecho-Slovaks, the Ukrainians, the Lithuanians, and the Russians. The
-Ukrainians have fought the Russians and the Hungarians. The Finns have
-fought the Russians, as have also the Esthonians and the Letts. The
-Esthonians and Letts have also fought the Baltic Germans. The Rumanians
-have fought Hungary. The Greeks have fought the Bulgarians and are at
-present in 'full dress' war with the Turks. The Italians have fought the
-Albanians, and the Turks in Asia Minor. The French have been fighting
-the Arabs in Syria and the Turks in Cilicia. The various British
-expeditions or missions, naval or military, in Archangel, Murmansk, the
-Baltic, the Crimea, Persia, Siberia, Turkestan, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor,
-the Soudan, or in aid of Koltchak, Denikin, Yudenitch, or Wrangel, are
-not included in this list as not arising in a strict sense perhaps out
-of nationality problems.
-
-Let us face what all this means in the alignment of power in the world.
-The Europe of the Grand Alliance is a Europe of many nationalities:
-British, French, Italian, Rumanian, Polish, Czecho-Slovak, Yugo-Slav,
-Greek, Belgian, Magyar, to say nothing of the others. None of these
-States exceeds greatly forty millions of people, and the populations of
-most are very much less. But the rival group of Germany and Russia,
-making between them over two hundred millions, comprises just two great
-States. And contiguous to them, united by the ties of common hatreds,
-lie the Mahomedan world and China. Prusso-Slavdom (combining racial
-elements having common qualities of amenity to autocratic discipline)
-might conceivably give a lead to Chinese and other Asiatic millions,
-brought to hate the West. The opposing group is a Balkanised Europe of
-irreconcilable national rivalries, incapable, because of those
-rivalries, of any prolonged common action, and taking a religious pride
-in the fact of this incapacity to agree. Its moral leaders, or many of
-them, certainly its powerful and popular instrument of education, the
-Press, encourage this pugnacity, regarding any effort towards its
-restraint or discipline as political atheism; deepening the tradition
-which would make 'intense' nationalism a noble, virile, and inspiring
-attitude, and internationalism something emasculate and despicable.
-
-We talk of the need of 'protecting European civilisation' from hostile
-domination, German or Russian. It is a danger. Other great civilisations
-have found themselves dominated by alien power. Seeley has sketched for
-us the process by which a vast country with two or three hundred million
-souls, not savage or uncivilised but with a civilisation, though
-descending along a different stream of tradition, as real and ancient as
-our own, came to be utterly conquered and subdued by a people, numbering
-less than twelve millions, living on the other side of the world. It
-reversed the teaching of history which had shown again and again that it
-was impossible really to conquer an intelligent people alien in
-tradition from its invaders. The whole power of Spain could not in
-eighty years conquer the Dutch provinces with their petty population.
-The Swiss could not be conquered. At the very time when the conquest of
-India's hundreds of millions was under way, the English showed
-themselves wholly unable to reduce to obedience three millions of their
-own race in America. What was the explanation? The Inherent Superiority
-of the Anglo-Saxon Stock?
-
-For long we were content to draw such a flattering conclusion and leave
-it at that, until Seeley pointed out the uncomfortable fact that the
-great bulk of the forces used in the conquest of India were not British
-at all. They were Indian. India was conquered for Great Britain by the
-natives of India.
-
-     'The nations of India (says Seeley) have been conquered by an army
-     of which, on the average, about a fifth part was English. India can
-     hardly be said to have been conquered at all by foreigners; she was
-     rather conquered by herself. If we were justified, which we are
-     not, in personifying India as we personify France or England, we
-     could not describe her as overwhelmed by a foreign enemy; we should
-     rather have to say that she elected to put an end to anarchy by
-     submitting to a single government, even though that government were
-     in the hands of foreigners.'[57]
-
-In other words, India is an English possession because the peoples of
-India were incapable of cohesion, the nations of India incapable of
-internationalism.
-
-The peoples of India include some of the best fighting stock in the
-world. But they fought one another: the pugnacity and material power
-they personified was the force used by their conquerors for their
-subjection.
-
-I will venture to quote what I wrote some years ago touching Seeley's
-moral:--
-
-     'Our successful defeat of tyranny depends upon such a development
-     of the sense of patriotism among the democratic nations that it
-     will attach itself rather to the conception of the unity of all
-     free co-operative societies, than to the mere geographical and
-     racial divisions; a development that will enable it to organise
-     itself as a cohesive power for the defence of that ideal, by the
-     use of all the forces, moral and material, which it wields.
-
-'That unity is impossible on the basis of the old policies, the European
-statecraft of the past. For that assumes a condition of the world in
-which each State must look for its national security to its own isolated
-strength; and such assumption compels each member, as a measure of
-national self-preservation, and so justifiably, to take precaution
-against drifting into a position of inferior power, compels it, that is,
-to enter into a competition for the sources of strength--territory and
-strategic position. Such a condition will inevitably, in the case of any
-considerable alliance, produce a situation in which some of its members
-will be brought into conflict by claims for the same territory. In the
-end, that will inevitably disrupt the Alliance.
-
-'The price of the preservation of nationality is a workable
-internationalism. If this latter is not possible then the smaller
-nationalities are doomed. Thus, though internationalism may not be in
-the case of every member of the Alliance the object of war, it is the
-condition of its success.'
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-PATRIOTISM AND POWER IN WAR AND PEACE
-
-
-In the preceding chapter attention has been called to a phenomenon which
-is nothing short of a 'moral miracle' if our ordinary reading of war
-psychology is correct. The phenomenon in question is the very definite
-and sudden worsening of Anglo-American relations, following upon common
-suffering on the same battle-fields, our soldiers fighting side by side;
-an experience which we commonly assume should weld friendship as nothing
-else could.[58]
-
-This miracle has its replica within the nation itself: intense
-industrial strife, class warfare, revolution, embittered rivalries,
-following upon a war which in its early days our moralists almost to a
-man declared at least to have this great consolation, that it achieved
-the moral unity of the nation. Pastor and poet, statesman and professor
-alike rejoiced in this spiritual consolidation which dangers faced in
-common had brought about. Never again was the nation to be riven by the
-old differences. None was now for party and all were for the State. We
-had achieved the '_union sacr�e_' ... 'duke's son, cook's son.' On this
-ground alone many a bishop has found (in war time) the moral
-justification of war.[59]
-
-Now no one can pretend that this sacred union has really survived the
-War. The extraordinary contrast between the disunity with which we
-finish war and the unity with which we begin it, is a disturbing thought
-when we recollect that the country cannot always be at war, if only
-because peace is necessary as a preparation for war, for the creation of
-things for war to destroy. It becomes still more disturbing when we add
-to this post-war change another even more remarkable, which will be
-dealt with presently: the objects for which at the beginning of a war we
-are ready to die--ideals like democracy, freedom from military
-regimentation and the suppression of military terrorism, the rights of
-small nations--are things about which at the end of the War we are
-utterly indifferent. It would seem either that these are not the things
-that really stirred us--that our feelings had some other unsuspected
-origin--or that war has destroyed our feeling for them.
-
-Note this juxtaposition of events. We have had in Europe millions of men
-in every belligerent country showing unfathomable capacity for
-disinterested service. Millions of youngsters--just ordinary folk--gave
-the final and greatest sacrifice without hesitation and without
-question. They faced agony, hardship, death, with no hope or promise of
-reward save that of duty discharged. And, very rightly, we acclaim them
-as heroes. They have shown without any sort of doubt that they are
-ready to die for their country's cause or for some even greater
-cause--human freedom, the rights of a small nation, democracy, or the
-principle of nationality, or to resist a barbarous morality which can
-tolerate the making of unprovoked war for a monarchy's ambition or the
-greed of an autocratic clique.
-
-And, indeed, whatever our final conclusion, the spectacle of vast
-sacrifices so readily made is, in its ultimate meaning one of infinite
-inspiration and hope. But the War's immediate sequel puts certain
-questions to us that we cannot shirk. For note what follows.
-
-After some years the men who could thus sacrifice themselves, return
-home--to Italy, or France, or Britain--and exchange khaki for the
-miner's overall or the railway worker's uniform. And it would then seem
-that at that moment their attitude to their country and their country's
-attitude to them undergo a wonderful change. They are ready--so at least
-we are told by a Press which for five years had spoken of them daily as
-heroes, saints, and gentlemen--through their miners' or railway Unions
-to make war upon, instead of for, that community which yesterday they
-served so devotedly. Within a few months of the close of this War which
-was to unify the nation as it had never been unified before (the story
-is the same whichever belligerent you may choose) there appear divisions
-and fissures, disruptions and revolutions, more disturbing than have
-been revealed for generations.
-
-Our extreme nervousness about the danger of Bolshevist propaganda shows
-that we believe that these men, yesterday ready to die for their
-country, are now capable of exposing it to every sort of horror.
-
-Or take another aspect of it. During the War fashionable ladies by
-thousands willingly got up at six in the morning to scrub canteen floors
-or serve coffee, in order to add to the comfort of their working-class
-countrymen--in khaki. They did this, one assumes, from the love of
-countrymen who risked their lives and suffered hardship in the
-execution of duty. It sounds satisfactory until the same countryman
-ceases fighting and turns to extremely hard and hazardous duties like
-mining, or fishing in winter-time in the North Sea. The ladies will no
-longer scrub floors or knit socks for him. They lose all real interest
-in him. But if it was done originally from 'love of fellow-countrymen,'
-why this cessation of interest? He is the same man. Into the psychology
-of that we shall inquire a little more fully later. The phenomenon is
-explained here in the conviction that its cause throws light upon the
-other phenomenon equally remarkable, namely, that victory reveals a most
-astonishing post-war indifference to those moral and ideal ends for
-which we believed we were fighting. Is it that they never were our real
-aims at all, or that war has wrought a change in our nature with
-reference to them?
-
-The importance of knowing what really moves us is obvious enough. If our
-potential power is to stand for the protection of any principle--nationality
-or democracy--that object must represent a real purpose, not a
-convenient clothing for a quite different purpose. The determination
-to defend nationality can only be permanent if our feeling for it
-is sufficiently deep and sincere to survive in the competition of
-other moral 'wishes.' Where has the War, and the complex of desires
-it developed, left our moral values? And, if there has been a
-re-valuation, why?
-
-The Allied world saw clearly that the German doctrine--the right of a
-powerful State to deny national independence to a smaller State, merely
-because its own self-preservation demanded it--was something which
-menaced nationality and right. The whole system by which, as in Prussia,
-the right of the people to challenge the political doctrines of the
-Government was denied (as by a rigorous control of press and education),
-was seen to be incompatible with the principles upon which free
-government in the West has been established. All this had to be
-destroyed in order that the world might be made 'safe for democracy.'
-The trenches in Flanders became 'the frontiers of freedom.' To uphold
-the rights of small nations, freedom of speech and press, to punish
-military terror, to establish an international order based on right as
-against might--these were things for which free men everywhere should
-gladly die. They did die, in millions. Nowhere so much, perhaps, as in
-America were these ideals the inspiration which brought that country
-into the War. She had nothing to gain territorially or materially. If
-ever the motive to war was an ideal motive, America's was.
-
-Then comes the Peace. And the America which had discarded her tradition
-of isolation to send two million soldiers on the European continent, 'at
-the call of the small nation,' was asked to co-operate with others in
-assuring the future security of Belgium, in protecting the small States
-by the creation of some international order (the only way in which they
-ever can be effectively protected); to do it in another form for a small
-nation that has suffered even more tragically than Belgium, Armenia;
-definitely to organise in peace that cause for which she went to war.
-And then a curious discovery is made. A cause which can excite immense
-passion when it is associated with war, is simply a subject for boredom
-when it becomes a problem of peace-time organisation. America will give
-lavishly of the blood of her sons to fight for the small nations; she
-will not be bothered with mandates or treaties in order to make it
-unnecessary to fight for them. It is not a question whether the
-particular League of Nations established at Paris was a good one. The
-post-war temper of America is that she does not want to be bothered with
-Europe at all: talk about its security makes the American public of 1920
-irritable and angry. Yet millions were ready to die for freedom in
-Europe two years ago! A thing to die for in 1918 is a thing to yawn
-over, or to be irritable about, when the war is done.
-
-Is America alone in this change of feeling about the small State?
-Recall all that we wrote and talked about the sacredness of the rights
-of small nations--and still in certain cases talk and write. There is
-Poland. It is one of the nations whose rights are sacred--to-day. But in
-1915 we acquiesced in an arrangement by which Poland was to be
-delivered, bound hand and foot, at the end of the war, to its worst and
-bitterest enemy, Czarist Russia. The Alliance (through France, to-day
-the 'protector of Poland') undertook not to raise any objection to any
-policy that the Czar's Government might inaugurate in Poland. It was to
-have a free hand. A secret treaty, it will be urged, about which the
-public knew nothing? We were fighting to liberate the world from
-diplomatic autocracies using their peoples for unknown and unavowed
-purposes. But the fact that we were delivering over Poland to the
-mercies of a Czarist Government was not secret. Every educated man knew
-what Russian policy under the Czarist Government would be, must be, in
-Poland. Was the Russian record with reference to Poland such that the
-unhampered discretion of the Czarist Government was deemed sufficient
-guarantee of Polish independence? Did we honestly think that Russia had
-proved herself more liberal in the treatment of the Poles than Austria,
-whose Government we were destroying? The implication, of course, flew in
-the face of known facts: Austrian rule over the Poles, which we proposed
-to destroy, had proved itself immeasurably more tolerant than the
-Russian rule which we proposed to re-enforce and render more secure.
-
-And there were Finland and the Border States. If Russia had remained in
-the War, 'loyal to the cause of democracy and the rights of small
-nations,' there would have been no independent Poland, or Finland, or
-Esthonia, or Georgia; and the refusal of our Ally to recognise their
-independence would not have disturbed us in the least.
-
-Again, there was Serbia, on behalf of whose 'redemption' in a sense, the
-War began. An integral part of that 'redemption' was the inclusion of
-the Dalmatian coast in Serbia--the means of access of the new Southern
-Slav State to the sea. Italy, for naval reasons, desired possession of
-that coast, and, without informing Serbia, we undertook to see that
-Italy should get it. (Italy, by the way, also entered the War on behalf
-of the principle of Nationality.)[60]
-
-It is not to be supposed, however, that the small State itself, however
-it may declaim about 'liberty or death,' has, when the opportunity to
-assert power presents itself, any greater regard for the rights of
-nationality--in other people. Take Poland. For a hundred and fifty years
-Poland has called upon Heaven to witness the monstrous wickedness of
-denying to a people its right to self-determination; of forcing a people
-under alien rule. After a hundred and fifty years of the martyrdom of
-alien rule, Poland acquires its freedom. That freedom is not a year old
-before Poland itself becomes in temper as imperialistic as any State in
-Europe. It may be bankrupt, racked with typhus and famine, split by
-bitter factional quarrels, but the one thing upon which all Poles will
-unite is in the demand for dominion over some fifteen millions of
-people, not merely non-Polish, but bitterly anti-Polish. Although Poland
-is perhaps the worst case, all the new small States show a similar
-disposition: Czecho-Slovakia, Yugoslavia, Rumania, Finland, Greece, have
-all now their own imperialism, limited only, apparently, by the extent
-of their power. All these people have fought for the right to national
-independence; there is not one that is not denying the right to national
-independence. If every Britain has its Ireland, every Ireland has its
-Ulster.
-
-But is this belief in Nationality at all? What should we have thought of
-a Southerner of the old Slave States fulminating against the crime of
-slavery? Should we have thought his position any more logical if he had
-explained that he was opposed to slavery because he did not want to
-become a slave? The test of his sincerity would have been, not the
-conduct he exacted of others, but the conduct he proposed to follow
-towards others. 'One is a Nationalist,' says Professor Corradini, one of
-the prophets of Italian _sacro egoismo_, 'while waiting to be able to
-become an Imperialist.' He prophesies that in twenty years 'all Italy
-will be Imperialist.'[61]
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The last thing intended here is any excuse of German violence by a
-futile _tu quoque_. But what it is important to know, if we are to
-understand the real motives of our conduct--and unless we do, we cannot
-really know where our conduct is leading us, where we are going--is
-whether we really cared about the 'moral aims of war,' the things for
-which we thought we were willing to die. Were we not as a matter of fact
-fighting--and dying--for something else?
-
-Test the nature of our feelings by what was after all perhaps the most
-dramatised situation in the whole drama: the fact that in the Western
-world a single man, or a little junta of military chiefs, could by a
-word send nations into war, millions to their death; and--worse still in
-a sense--that those millions would accept the fact of thus being made
-helpless pawns, and with appalling docility, without question, kill and
-be killed for reasons they did not even know. It must be made impossible
-ever again for half a dozen Generals or Cabinet Ministers thus to play
-with nations and men and women as with pawns.
-
-The War is at last over. And in Eastern Europe, the most corrupt, as it
-was one of the potentially most powerful of all the military
-autocracies--that of the Czar--has either gone to pieces from its own
-rottenness, or been destroyed by the spontaneous uprising of the people.
-Bold experiments, in entirely new social and economic methods, are
-attempted in this great community which may have so much to teach the
-Western world, experiments which challenge not only old political
-institutions, but old economic ones as well. But the men who were the
-Czar's Ministers are still in Paris and London, in close but secret
-confabulation with Allied Governments.
-
-And one morning we find that we are at war with the first Workers'
-Republic of the world, the first really to try a great social
-experiment. There had been no declaration, no explanation. President
-Wilson had, indeed, said that nothing would induce the Allies to
-intervene. Their behaviour on that point would be the 'acid test' of
-sincerity. But in Archangel, Murmansk, Vladivostock, the Crimea, on the
-Polish border, on the shores of the Caspian, our soldiers were killing
-Russians, or organising their killing; our ships sank Russian ships and
-bombarded Russian cities. We found that we were supporting the Royalist
-parties--military leaders who did not hide in the least their intention
-to restore the monarchy. But again, there is no explanation. But
-somewhere, for some purpose undefined, killing has been proclaimed. And
-we kill--and blockade and starve.
-
-The killing and blockading are not the important facts. Whatever may be
-behind the Russian business, the most disturbing portent is the fact
-which no one challenges and which indeed is most generally offered as a
-sort of defence. It is this: Nobody knows what the policy of the
-Government in Russia is, or was. It is commonly said they had no policy.
-Certainly it was changeable. That means that the Government does not
-need to give an explanation in order to start upon a war which may
-affect the whole future form of Western society. They did not have to
-explain because nobody particularly cared. Commands for youths to die in
-wars of unknown purpose do not strike us as monstrous when the commands
-are given by our own Governments--Governments which notoriously we do
-not trouble to control. Public opinion as a whole did not have any
-intense feeling about the Russian war, and not the slightest as to
-whether we used poison gas, or bombarded Russian cathedrals, or killed
-Russian civilians. We did not want it to be expensive, and Mr Churchill
-promised that if it cost too much he would drop it. He admitted finally
-that it was unnecessary by dropping it. But it was not important enough
-for him to resign over. And as for bringing anybody to trial for it, or
-upsetting the monarchy....[62]
-
-There is another aspect of our feeling about the Prussian tendencies and
-temper, to rid the world of which we waged the War.
-
-All America (or Britain, for that matter: America is only a striking and
-so a convenient example) knew that the Bismarckian persecution of the
-Socialists, the imprisonment of Bebel, of Liebknecht, the prosecution of
-newspapers for anti-militarist doctrines, the rigid control of
-education, by the Government, were just the natural prelude to what
-ended in Louvain and Aerschot, to the shooting down of the civilians of
-an invaded country. Again, that was why Prussia had to be destroyed in
-the interest of human freedom and the safety of democracy. The
-newspapers, the professors, the churches, were telling us all this
-endlessly for five years. Within a year of the end of the War, America
-is engaged in an anti-Socialist campaign more sweeping, more ruthless,
-by any test which you care to apply--the numbers arrested, the severity
-of the sentences imposed, the nature of the offences alleged--than
-anything ever attempted by Bismarck or the Kaiser. Old men of seventy
-(one selected by the Socialist party as Presidential Candidate), young
-girls, college students, are sent to prison with sentences of ten,
-fifteen, or twenty years. The elected members of State Legislatures are
-not allowed to sit, on the ground of their Socialist opinions. There are
-deportations in whole shiploads. If one takes the Espionage Act and
-compares it with any equivalent German legislation (the tests applied to
-school teachers or the refusal of mailing privileges to Socialist
-papers), one finds that the general principle of control of political
-opinion by the Government, and the limitations imposed upon freedom of
-discussion, and the Press, are certainly pushed further by the post-war
-America than they were by the pre-war Germany--the Germany that had to
-be destroyed for the precise reason that the principle of government by
-free discussion was more valuable than life itself.
-
-And as to military terrorism. Americans can see--scores of American
-papers are saying it every day--that the things defended by the British
-Government in Ireland are indistinguishable from what brought upon
-Germany the wrath of Allied mankind. But they do not even know and
-certainly would not care if they did know, that American marines in
-Hayti--a little independent State that might one day become the hope and
-symbol of a subject nationality, an unredeemed race that has suffered
-and does suffer more at American hands than Pole or Alsatian ever
-suffered at German hands--have killed ten times as many Haytians as the
-Black and Tans have killed Irish. Nor for that matter do Americans know
-that every week there takes place in their own country--as there has
-taken place week after week in the years of peace for half a
-century--atrocities more ferocious than any which are alleged against
-even the British or the German. Neither of the latter burn alive,
-weekly, untried fellow-countrymen with a regularity that makes the thing
-an institution.
-
-If indeed it was the militarism, the terrorism, the crude assertion of
-power, the repressions of freedom, which made us hate the German, why
-are we relatively indifferent when all those evils raise their heads,
-not far away, among a people for whom after all we are not responsible,
-but at home, near to us, where we have some measure of responsibility?
-
-For indifferent in some measure to those near-by evils we all are.
-
-The hundred million people who make up America include as many kindly,
-humane, and decent folk as any other hundred million anywhere in the
-world. They have a habit of carrying through extraordinary and unusual
-measures--like Prohibition. Yet nothing effective has been done about
-lynching, for which the world holds them responsible, any more than we
-have done anything effective about Ireland, for which the world holds us
-responsible. Their evil may one day land them in a desperate 'subject
-nationality' problem, just as our Irish problem lands us in political
-difficulty the world over. Yet neither they nor we can manage to achieve
-one-tenth of the emotional interest in our own atrocity or oppression,
-which we managed in a few weeks to achieve in war-time over the German
-barbarities in Belgium. If we could--if every schoolboy and maid-servant
-felt as strongly over Balbriggan or Amritsar as they felt over the
-_Lusitania_ and Louvain--our problem would be solved; whereas the action
-and policy which arose out of our feeling about Louvain did not solve
-the evil of military terrorism. It merely made it nearly universal.
-
-It brings us back to the original question. Is it mainly, or at all, the
-cruelty or the danger of oppression which moves us, which is at the
-bottom of our flaming indignation over the crimes of the enemy?
-
-We believed that we were fighting because of a passionate feeling for
-self-rule; for freedom of discussion, of respect for the rights of
-others, particularly the weak; the hatred of the mere pride of power out
-of which oppression grows; of the regimentation of minds which is its
-instrument. But after the War we find that in truth we have no
-particular feeling about the things we fought to make impossible. We
-rather welcome them, if they are a means of harassing people that we do
-not happen to like. We get the monstrous paradox that the very
-tendencies which it was the object of the War to check, are the very
-tendencies that have acquired an elusive power in our own
-country--possibly as the direct result of the War!
-
-Perhaps if we examine in some detail the process of the break-up after
-war, within the nation, of the unity which marked it during war, we may
-get some explanation of the other change just indicated.
-
-The unity on which we congratulated ourselves was for a time a fact. But
-just as certainly the patriotism which prompted the duchess to scrub
-floors was not simply love of her countrymen, or it would not suddenly
-cease when the war came to an end. The self-same man who in khaki was a
-hero to be taken for drives in the duchess's motor-car, became as
-workman--a member of some striking union, say--an object of hostility
-and dislike. The psychology revealed here has a still more curious
-manifestation.
-
-When in war-time we read of the duke's son and the cook's son peeling
-potatoes into the same tub, we regard this aspect of the working of
-conscription as something in itself fine and admirable, a real national
-comradeship in common tasks at last. Colonel Roosevelt orates; our
-picture papers give us photographs; the country thrills to this note of
-democracy. But when we learn that for the constructive purposes of
-peace--for street-cleaning--the Soviet Government has introduced
-precisely this method and compelled the sons of Grand Dukes to shovel
-snow beside common workmen, the same papers give the picture as an
-example of the intolerable tyranny of socialism, as a warning of what
-may happen in England if the revolutionists are listened to. That for
-years that very thing _had_ been happening in England for the purposes
-of war, that we were extremely proud of it, and had lauded it as
-wholesome discipline and a thing which made conscription fine and
-democratic, is something that we are unable even to perceive, so strong
-and yet so subtle are the unconscious factors of opinion. This peculiar
-psychological twist explains, of course, several things: why we are all
-socialists for the purposes of war, and why socialism can then give
-results which nothing else could give; why we cannot apply the same
-methods successfully to peace; and why the economic miracles possible in
-war are not possible in peace. And the outcome is that forces,
-originally social and unifying, are at present factors only of
-disruption and destruction, not merely internationally, but, as we shall
-see presently, nationally as well.
-
-When the accomplishment of certain things--the production of shells, the
-assembling of certain forces, the carriage of cargoes--became a matter
-of life and death, we did not argue about nationalisation or socialism;
-we put it into effect, and it worked. There existed for war a will which
-found a way round all the difficulties of credit adjustment,
-distribution, adequate wages, unemployment, incapacitation. We could
-take over the country's railways and mines, control its trade, ration
-its bread, and decide without much discussion that those things were
-indispensable for its purposes. But we can do none of these things for
-the upbuilding of the country in peace time. The measures to which we
-turn when we feel that the country must produce or perish, are precisely
-the measures which, when the war is over, we declare are the least
-likely to get anything done at all. We could make munitions; we cannot
-make houses. We could clothe and feed our soldiers and satisfy all their
-material wants; we cannot do that for the workers. Unemployment in
-war-time was practically unknown; the problem of unemployment in peace
-time seems beyond us. Millions go unclothed; thousands of workers who
-could make clothes are without employment. One speaks of the sufferings
-of the army of poverty as though they were dispensations of heaven. We
-did not speak thus of the needs of soldiers in war-time. If soldiers
-wanted uniforms and wool was obtainable, weavers did not go unemployed.
-Then there existed a will and common purpose. That will and common
-purpose the patriotism of peace-time cannot give us.
-
-Yet, again, we cannot always be at war. Women must have time and
-opportunity to bear and to bring up children, and men to build up a
-country-side, if only in order to have men for war to slay and things
-for war to destroy. Patriotism fails as a social cement within the
-nation at peace, it fails as a stimulus to its constructive tasks; and
-as between nations, we know it acts as a violent irritant and disruptive
-force.
-
-We need not question the genuineness of the emotion which moves our
-duchess when she knits socks for the dear boys in the trenches--or when
-she fulminates against the same dear boys as working men when they come
-home. As soldiers she loved them because her hatred of Germans--that
-atrocious, hostile 'herd'--was deep and genuine. She felt like killing
-Germans herself. Consequently, to those who risked their lives to fulfil
-this wish of hers, her affections went out readily enough. But why
-should she feel any particular affection for men who mine coal, or
-couple railway trucks, or catch fish in the North Sea? Dangerous as are
-those tasks, they are not visibly and intimately related to her own
-fierce emotions. The men performing them are just workpeople, the
-relation of whose labour to her own life is not, perhaps, always very
-clear. The suggestion that she should scrub floors or knit socks for
-_them_ would appear to her as merely silly or offensive.
-
-But unfortunately the story does not end there. During these years of
-war her very genuine emotions of hate were fed and nourished by war
-propaganda; her emotional hunger was satisfied in some measure by the
-daily tale of victories over the enemy. She had, as it were, ten
-thousand Germans for breakfast every morning. And when the War stopped,
-certainly something went out of her life. No one would pretend that
-these flaming passions of five years went for so little in her emotional
-experience that they could just be dropped from one day to another
-without something going unsatisfied.
-
-And then she cannot get coal; her projected journey to the Riviera is
-delayed by a railway strike; she has troubles with servants; faces a
-preposterous super-tax and death duties; an historical country seat can
-no longer be maintained and old associations must be broken up; Labour
-threatens revolution--or her morning paper says it does; Labour leaders
-say grossly unfair things about dukes. Here, indeed, is a new hostility,
-a new enemy tribe, on which the emotions cultivated so assiduously
-during five years, but hungry and unfed since the War, can once more
-feed and find some satisfaction. The Bolshevist, or the Labour agitator,
-takes the place of the Hun; the elements of enmity and disruption are
-already present.
-
-And something similar takes place with the miner, or labour man, in
-reference to the duchess and what she stands for. For him also the main
-problem of life had resolved itself during the War into something simple
-and emotional; an enemy to be fought and overcome. Not a puzzling
-intellectual difficulty, with all the hesitations and uncertainties of
-intellectual decision dependent upon sustained mental effort. The
-rights and wrongs were settled for him; right was our side, wrong the
-enemy's. What we had to do was to crush him. That done, it would be a
-better world, his country 'a land fit for heroes to live in.'
-
-On return from the War he does not find quite that. He can, for
-instance, get no house fit to live in at all. High prices, precarious
-employment. What is wrong? There are fifty theories, all puzzling. As to
-housing, he is sometimes told it is his own fault; the building unions
-won't permit dilution. When the 'high-brows' are all at sixes and
-sevens, what is a man to think? But it is suggested to him that behind
-all this is one enemy: the Capitalist. His papers have a picture of him:
-very like the Hun. Now here is something emotionally familiar. For years
-he has learned to hate and fight, to embody all problems in the one
-problem of fighting some definite--preferably personified--enemy. Smash
-him; get him by the throat, and then all these brain-racking puzzles
-will clear themselves up. Our side, our class, our tribe, will then be
-on top, and there will be no real solution until it is. To this respond
-all the emotions, the whole state of feeling which years of war have
-cultivated. Once more the problem of life is simple; one of power,
-domination, the fight for mastery; loyalty to our side, our lot, 'right
-or wrong.' Workers to be masters, workers who have been shoved and
-ordered about, to do the shoving and the ordering. Dictatorship of the
-proletariat. The headaches disappear and one can live emotionally free
-once more.
-
-There are 'high-brows' who will even philosophise the thing for him, and
-explain that only the psychology of war and violence will give the
-emotional drive to get anything done; that only by the myths which mark
-patriotism can real social change be made. Just as for the hate which
-keeps war going, the enemy State must be a single 'person,' a
-collectivity in which any one German can be killed as vengeance or
-reprisal for any other,[63] so 'the capitalist class' must be a
-personality, if class hatred is to be kept alive in such a way as to
-bring the class war to victory.
-
-But that theory overlooks the fact that just as the nationalism which
-makes war also destroys the Alliances by which victory can be made
-effective, so the transfer of the psychology of Nationalism to the
-industrial field has the same effect of Balkanisation. We get in both
-areas, not the definite triumph of a cohesive group putting into
-operation a clear-cut and understandable programme or policy, but the
-chaotic conflict of an infinite number of groups unable to co-operate
-effectively for any programme.
-
-If the hostilities which react to the Syndicalistic appeal were confined
-to the Capitalist, there might be something to be said for it from the
-point of view of the Labour movement. But forces so purely instinctive,
-by their very nature repelling the restraint of self-imposed discipline
-by intelligent foresight of consequences, cannot be the servant of an
-intelligent purpose, they become its master. The hostility becomes more
-important than the purpose. To the industrial Jingo, as to the
-nationalist Jingo, all foreigners are potential enemies. The hostile
-tribe or herd may be constituted by very small differences; slight
-variations of occupation, interest, race, speech, and--most potently of
-all perhaps--dogma or belief. Heresy-hunting is, of course, one
-manifestation of tribal animosity; and a heretic is the person who has
-the insufferable impudence to disagree with us.
-
-So the Sorelian philosophy of violence and instinctive pugnacity gives
-us, not the effective drive of a whole movement against the present
-social order (for that would require order, discipline, self-control,
-tolerance, and toleration); it gives us the tendency to an infinite
-splitting of the Labour movement. No sooner does the Left of some party
-break off and found a new party than it is immediately confronted by its
-own 'Leftism.' And your dogmatist hates the dissenting member of his own
-sect more fiercely than the rival sect; your Communist some rival
-Communism more bitterly than the Capitalist. Already the Labour movement
-is crossed by the hostilities of Communist against Socialist, the Second
-International against the Third, the Third against the Fourth; Trades
-Unionism by the hostility of skilled against unskilled, and in much of
-Europe there is also the conflict of town against country.
-
-This tendency has happily not yet gone far in England; but here, as
-elsewhere, it represents the one great danger, the tendency to be
-watched. And it is a tendency that has its moral and psychological roots
-in the same forces which have given us the chaos in the international
-field: The deep human lust for coercion, domination; the irksomeness of
-toleration, thought, self-discipline.
-
-The final difficulty in social and political discussion is, of course,
-the fact that the ultimate values--what is the highest good, what is the
-worst evil--cannot usually be argued about at all; you accept them, you
-see that they are good or bad as the case may be, or you don't.
-
-Yet we cannot organise a society save on the basis of some sort of
-agreement concerning these least common denominators; the final argument
-for the view that Western Europe had to destroy German Prussianism was
-that the system challenged certain ultimate moral values common to
-Western society. On the morrow of the sinking of the _Lusitania_ an
-American writer pointed out that if the cold-blooded slaughter of
-innocent women and children were accepted as a normal incident of war,
-like any other, the whole moral standards of the West would then
-definitely be placed on another plane. That elusive but immeasurably
-important moral sense, which gives a society sufficient community of aim
-to make common action possible, would have been radically altered. The
-ancient world--highly civilised and cultured as much of it was--had a
-_Sittlichkeit_ which made the chattel-slavery of the greater part of the
-human race an entirely normal--and, as they thought, inevitable--condition
-of things. It was accepted by the slaves themselves, and it was this
-acquiescence in the arrangement by both parties to it which mainly
-accounted for its continuance through a very long period of a very high
-civilisation. The position of women illustrates the same thing. There
-are to-day highly developed civilisations in which a man of education
-buys a wife, or several, as in the West he would buy a racehorse. And
-the wife, or wives, accept that situation; there can be no change in
-that particular matter until certain quite 'unarguable' moral values
-have altered in the minds of those concerned.
-
-The American writer raised, therefore, an extremely important question
-in relation to the War. Has its total outcome affected certain values of
-the fundamental kind just indicated? What has been its effect upon
-social impulses? Has it any direct relation to certain moral tendencies
-that have succeeded it?
-
-Perhaps the War is now old enough to enable us to face a few quite
-undeniable facts with some measure of detachment.
-
-When the Germans bombarded Scarborough early in the War, there was such
-a hurricane of moralisation that one rejoiced that this War would not be
-marked on our side, at least, by the bombardment of open cities. But
-when our Press began to print reports of French bombs falling on circus
-tents full of children, scores being killed, there was simply no protest
-at all. And one of the humours of the situation was that after more than
-a year, in which scores of such reports had appeared in the Press, some
-journalistic genius began an agitation on behalf of 'reprisals' for air
-raids.[64]
-
-At a time when it seemed doubtful whether the Germans would sign the
-Treaty or not, and just what would be the form of the Hungarian
-Government, the _Evening News_ printed the following editorial:--
-
-     'It might take weeks or months to bring the Hungarian Bolshevists
-     and recalcitrant Germans to book by extensive operations with
-     large forces. It might take but a few days to bring them to reason
-     by adequate use of aircraft.
-
-     'Allied airmen could reach Buda-pest in a few hours, and teach its
-     inhabitants such a lesson that Bolshevism would lose its
-     attractions for them.
-
-     'Strong Allied aerodromes on the Rhine and in Poland, well equipped
-     with the best machines and pilots, could quickly persuade the
-     inhabitants of the large German cities of the folly of having
-     refused to sign the peace.
-
-     'Those considerations are elementary. For that reason they may be
-     overlooked. They are "milk for babes."'[65]
-
-Now the prevailing thesis of the British, and particularly the
-Northcliffe Press, in reference to Bolshevism, was that it is a form of
-tyranny imposed by a cruel minority upon a helpless people. The proposal
-amounts, therefore, either to killing civilians for a form of Government
-which they cannot possibly help, or to an admission that Bolshevism has
-the support of the populace, and that as the outcome of our war for
-democracy we should refuse them the right to choose the government they
-prefer.
-
-When the Germans bombarded Scarborough and dropped bombs on London, the
-Northcliffe Press called Heaven to witness (_a_) that only fiends in
-human form could make war on helpless civilian populations, women, and
-children; (_b_) that not only were the Huns dastardly baby-killers for
-making war in that fashion, but were bad psychologists as well, because
-our anger at such unheard-of devilries would only render our resistance
-more unconquerable than ever; and (_c_) that no consideration whatever
-would induce English soldiers to blow women and children to pulp--unless
-it were as a reprisal. Well, Lord Northcliffe proposed to _commence_ a
-war against Hungarians (as it had already been commenced against the
-Russians) by such a wholesale massacre of the civil population that a
-Government, which he tells us is imposed upon them against their will,
-may 'lose its attractions.' This would be, of course, the second edition
-of the war waged to destroy militarist modes of thought, to establish
-the reign of righteousness and the protection of the defenceless and the
-weak.
-
-The _Evening News_ is the paper, by the way, whose wrath became violent
-when it learned that some Quakers and others were attempting to make
-some provision for the children of interned Austrians and Germans. Those
-guilty of such 'un-English' conduct as a little mercy and pity extended
-to helpless children, were hounded in headlines day after day as
-'Hun-coddlers,' traitors 'attempting to placate the Hun tiger by bits of
-cake to its cubs'; and when the War is all over--a year after all the
-fighting is stopped--a vicar of the English Church opposes, with
-indignation, the suggestion that his parish should be contaminated by
-'enemy' children brought from the famine area to save them from
-death.[66]
-
-On March 3, 1919, Mr Winston Churchill stated in the House of Commons,
-speaking of the blockade:--
-
-     ' ... This weapon of starvation falls mainly upon the women and
-     children, upon the old and the weak and the poor, after all the
-     fighting has stopped.'
-
-One might take this as a prelude to a change of policy. Not at all: he
-added that we were 'enforcing the blockade with rigour' and would
-continue to do so.
-
-Mr Churchill's indication as to how the blockade acts is important. We
-spoke of it as 'punishment' for Germany's crimes, or Bolshevist
-infamies, as the case may be. But it did not punish 'Germany' or the
-Bolshevists.[67] Its penalties are in a peculiar degree unevenly
-distributed. The country districts escape almost entirely, the peasants
-can feed themselves. It falls on the cities. But even in the cities the
-very wealthy and the official classes can as a rule escape. Virtually
-its whole weight--as Mr Churchill implies--falls upon the urban poor,
-and particularly the urban child population, the old, the invalids, the
-sick. Whoever may be the parties responsible for the War, these are
-guiltless. But it is these we punish.
-
-Very soon after the Armistice there was ample evidence available as to
-the effect of the blockade, both in Russia and in Central Europe.
-Officers of our Army of Occupation reported that their men 'could not
-stand' the spectacle of the suffering around them. Organisations like
-the 'Save the Children Fund' devoted huge advertisements to
-familiarising the public with the facts. Considerable sums for relief
-were raised--but the blockade was maintained. There was no connection
-between the two things--our foreign policy and the famine in Europe--in
-the public mind. It developed a sort of moral shock absorber. Facts did
-not reach it or disturb its serenity.
-
-This was revealed in a curious way at the time of the signature of the
-Treaty. At the gathering of the representatives, the German delegate
-spoke sitting down. It turned out afterwards that he was so ill and
-distraught, that he dared not trust himself to stand up. Every paper was
-full of the incident, as also of the fact that the paper-cutter in front
-of him on the table was found afterwards to be broken; that he placed
-his gloves upon his copy of the Treaty; and that he had thrown away his
-cigarette on entering the room. These were the offences which prompted
-the _Daily Mail_ to say: 'After this no one will treat the Huns as
-civilised or repentant.' Almost the entire Press rang with the story of
-'Rantzau's insult.' But not one paper, so far as I could discover, paid
-any attention to what Rantzau had said. He said:--
-
-     'I do not want to answer by reproaches to reproaches.... Crimes in
-     war may not be excusable, but they are committed in the struggle
-     for victory and in the defence of national existence, and passions
-     are aroused which make the conscience of peoples blunt. The
-     hundreds of thousands of non-combatants who have perished since
-     November 11 by reason of the blockade, were killed with cold
-     deliberation, after our adversaries had conquered and victory had
-     been assured them. Think of that when you speak of guilt and
-     punishment.'
-
-No one seems to have noticed this trifle in presence of the heinousness
-of the cigarette, the gloves, and the other crimes. Yet this was an
-insult indeed. If true, it shamefully disgraces England--if England is
-responsible. The public presumably simply did not care whether it was
-true or not.
-
-A few months after the Armistice I wrote as follows:--
-
-     'When the Germans sank the _Lusitania_ and slew several hundred
-     women and children, _we_ knew--at least we thought we knew--that
-     that was the kind of thing which Englishmen could not do. In all
-     the hates and stupidities, the dirt and heartbreaks of the war,
-     there was just this light on the horizon: that there were certain
-     things to which we at least could never fall, in the name of
-     victory or patriotism, or any other of the deadly masked words that
-     are "the unjust stewards of men's ideas."
-
-     'And then we did it. We, too, sank _Lusitanias_. We, too, for some
-     cold political end, plunged the unarmed, the weak, the helpless,
-     the children, the suffering women, to agonising death and torture.
-     Without a tremor. Not alone in the bombing of cities, which we did
-     so much better than the enemy. For this we had the usual excuse. It
-     was war.
-
-     'But after the War, when the fighting was finished, the enemy was
-     disarmed, his submarines surrendered, his aeroplanes destroyed, his
-     soldiers dispersed; months afterwards, we kept a weapon which was
-     for use first and mainly against the children, the weak, the sick,
-     the old, the women, the mothers, the decrepit: starvation and
-     disease. Our papers told us--our patriotic papers--how well it was
-     succeeding. Correspondents wrote complacently, sometimes
-     exultingly, of how thin and pinched were all the children, even
-     those well into teens; how stunted, how defective, the next
-     generation would be; and how the younger children, those of seven
-     and eight, looked like children of three and four; and how those
-     beneath this age simply did not live. Either they were born dead,
-     or if they were born alive--what was there to give them? Milk? An
-     unheard-of luxury. And nothing to wrap them in; even in hospitals
-     the new-born children were wrapped in newspapers, the lucky ones in
-     bits of sacking. The mothers were most fortunate when the children
-     were born dead. In an insane asylum a mother wails: "If only I did
-     not hear the cry of the children for food all day long, all day
-     long!" To "bring Germany to reason" we had, you see, to drive
-     mothers out of their reason.
-
-     '"It would have been more merciful," said Bob Smillie, "to turn the
-     machine-guns on those children." Put this question to yourself,
-     patriot Englishmen: "Was the sinking of the _Lusitania_ as cruel,
-     as prolonged, as mean, as merciless a death as this?" And we--you
-     and I--do it every day, every night.
-
-     'Here is the _Times_ of May 21, half a year after the cessation of
-     war, telling the Germans that they do not know how much more severe
-     we can still make the "domestic results" of starvation, if we
-     really put our mind to it. To the blockade we shall add the
-     "horrors of invasion." The invasion of a country already disarmed
-     is to be marked--when we do it--by horror.
-
-     'But the purpose! That justifies it! What purpose? To obtain the
-     signature to the Treaty of Peace. Many Englishmen--not Pacifists,
-     not sentimentalists, not conscientious objectors, or other vermin
-     of that kind, but Bishops, Judges, Members of the House of Lords,
-     great public educators. Tory editors--have declared that this
-     Treaty is a monstrous injustice. Some Englishmen at least think so.
-     But if the Germans say so, that becomes a crime which we shall know
-     how to punish. "The enemy have been reminded already" says the
-     _Times_, proud organ of British respectability, of Conservatism, of
-     distinguished editors and ennobled proprietors, "that the machinery
-     of the blockade can again be put into force at a few hours' notice
-... the intention of the Allies to take military action if
-     necessary.... Rejection of the Peace terms now offered them, will
-     assuredly lead to fresh chastisement."
-
-     'But will not Mr Lloyd George be able to bring back _signatures_?
-     Will he not have made Peace--permanent Peace? Shall we not have
-     destroyed this Prussian philosophy of frightfulness, force, and
-     hate? Shall we not have proved to the world that a State without
-     military power can trust to the good faith and humanity of its
-     neighbours? Can we not, then, celebrate victory with light hearts,
-     honour our dead and glorify our arms? Have we not served faithfully
-     those ideals of right and justice, mercy and chivalry, for which a
-     whole generation of youth went through hell and gave their lives?'
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-THE ALTERNATIVE RISKS OF STATUS AND CONTRACT
-
-
-The facts of the present situation in Europe, so far sketched, reveal
-broadly this spectacle: everywhere the failure of national power to
-indispensable ends, sustenance, political security, nationality, right;
-everywhere a fierce struggle for national power.
-
-Germany, which successfully fed her expanding population by a system
-which did not rest upon national power, wrecked that system in order to
-attempt one which all experience showed could not succeed. The Allied
-world pilloried both the folly and the wickedness of such a statecraft;
-and at the peace proceeded to imitate it in every particular. The faith
-in the complete efficacy of preponderant power which the economic and
-other demands of the Treaty of Versailles and the policy towards Russia
-reveal, is already seen to be groundless (for the demands, in fact, are
-being abandoned). There is in that document an element of _na�vet�_, and
-in the subsequent policy a cruelty which will be the amazement of
-history--if our race remains capable of history.
-
-Yet the men who made the Treaty, and accelerated the famine and break-up
-of half a world, including those, like M. Tardieu, who still demand a
-ruined Germany and an indemnity-paying one, were the ablest statesmen of
-Europe, experienced, realist, and certainly not morally monsters. They
-were probably no worse morally, and certainly more practical, than the
-passionate democracies, American and European, who encouraged all the
-destructive elements of policy and were hostile to all that was
-recuperative and healing.
-
-It is perfectly true--and this truth is essential to the thesis here
-discussed--that the statesmen at Versailles were neither fools or
-villains. Neither were the Cardinals and the Princes of the Church, who
-for five hundred years, more or less, attempted to use physical coercion
-for the purpose of suppressing religious error. There is, of course an
-immeasurably stronger case for the Inquisition as an instrument of
-social order than there is for the use of competing national military
-power as the basis of modern European society. And the stronger case for
-the Inquisition as an instrument of social by a modern statesman when he
-goes to war. It was less. The inquisitor, in burning and torturing the
-heretic, passionately believed that he obeyed the voice of God, as the
-modern statesman believes that he is justified by the highest dictates
-of patriotism. We are now able to see that the Inquisitor was wrong, his
-judgment twisted by some overpowering prepossession: Is some similar
-prepossession distorting vision and political wisdom in modern
-statecraft? And if so, what is the nature of this prepossession?
-
-As an essay towards the understanding of its nature, the following
-suggestions are put forward:--
-
-     The assertion of national power, domination, is always in line with
-     popular feeling. And in crises--like that of the settlement with
-     Germany--popular feeling dictates policy.
-
-     The feelings associated with coercive domination evidently lie near
-     the surface of our natures and are easily excited. To attain our
-     end by mere coercion instead of bargain or agreement, is the method
-     in conduct which, in the order of experiments, our race generally
-     tries first, not only in economics (as by slavery) but in sex, in
-     securing acquiescence to our religious beliefs, and in most other
-     relationships. Coercion is not only the response to an instinct; it
-     relieves us of the trouble and uncertainties of intellectual
-     decision as to what is equitable in a bargain.
-
-     To restrain the combative instinct sufficiently to realise the need
-     of co-operation, demands a social discipline which the prevailing
-     political traditions and moralities of Nationalism and Patriotism
-     not only do not furnish, but directly discourage.
-
-     But when some vital need becomes obvious and we find that force
-     simply cannot fulfil it, we then try other methods, and manage to
-     restrain our impulse sufficiently to do so. If we simply must have
-     a man's help, and we find we cannot force him to give it, we then
-     offer him inducements, bargain, enter a contract, even though it
-     limits our independence.
-
-     Stable international co-operation cannot come in any other way. Not
-     until we realise the failure of national coercive power for
-     indispensable ends (like the food of our people) shall we cease to
-     idealise power and to put our most intense political emotions (like
-     those of patriotism) behind it. Our traditions will buttress and
-     'rationalise' the instinct to power until we see that it is
-     mischievous. We shall then begin to discredit it and create new
-     traditions.
-
-An American sociologist (Professor Giddings of Columbia University) has
-written thus:--
-
-     'So long as we can confidently act, we do not argue; but when we
-     face conditions abounding in uncertainty, or when we are confronted
-     by alternative possibilities, we first hesitate, then feel our way,
-     then guess, and at length venture to reason. Reasoning,
-     accordingly, is that action of the mind to which we resort when the
-     possibilities before us and about us are distributed substantially
-     according to the law of chance occurrence, or, as the mathematician
-     would say, in accordance with "the normal curve" of random
-     frequency. The moment the curve is obviously skewed, we decide; if
-     it is obviously skewed from the beginning, by authority, or
-     coercion, our reasoning is futile or imperfect. So, in the State,
-     if any interest or coalition of interests is dominant, and can act
-     promptly, it rules by absolutist methods. Whether it is benevolent
-     or cruel, it wastes neither time nor resources upon government by
-     discussion; but if interests are innumerable, and so distributed as
-     to offset one another, and if no great bias or overweighting
-     anywhere appears, government by discussion inevitably arises. The
-     interests can get together only if they talk. If power shall be
-     able to dictate, it will also rule, and the appeal to reason will
-     be vain.'
-
-This means that a realisation of interdependence--even though it be
-subconscious--is the basis of the social sense, the feeling and
-tradition which make possible a democratic society, in which freedom is
-voluntarily limited for the purpose of preserving any freedom at all.
-
-It indicates also the relation of certain economic truths to the
-impulses and instincts that underlie international conflict. We shall
-excuse or justify or fail to restrain those instincts, unless and until
-we see that their indulgence stands in the way of the things which we
-need and must have if society is to live. We shall then discredit them
-as anti-social, as we have discredited religious fanaticism, and build
-up a controlling _Sittlichkeit_.
-
-The statement of Professor Giddings, quoted above, leaves out certain
-psychological facts which the present writer in an earlier work has
-attempted to indicate. He, therefore, makes no apology for reproducing a
-somewhat long passage bearing on the case before us:--
-
-     'The element in man which makes him capable, however feebly, of
-     choice in the matter of conduct, the one fact distinguishing him
-     from that vast multitude of living things which act unreflectingly,
-     instinctively (in the proper and scientific sense of the word), as
-     the mere physical reaction to external prompting, is something not
-     deeply rooted, since it is the latest addition of all to our
-     nature. The really deeply rooted motives of conduct, those having
-     by far the greatest biological momentum, are naturally the
-     "motives" of the plant and the animal, the kind that marks in the
-     main the acts of all living things save man, the unreflecting
-     motives, those containing no element of ratiocination and free
-     volition, that almost mechanical reaction to external forces which
-     draw the leaves towards the sun-rays and makes the tiger tear its
-     living food limb from limb.
-
-     'To make plain what that really means in human conduct, we must
-     recall the character of that process by which man turns the forces
-     of nature to his service instead of allowing them to overwhelm him.
-     Its essence is a union of individual forces against the common
-     enemy, the forces of nature. Where men in isolated action would
-     have been powerless, and would have been destroyed, union,
-     association, co-operation, enabled them to survive. Survival was
-     contingent upon the cessation of struggle between them, and the
-     substitution therefor of common action. Now, the process both in
-     the beginning and in the subsequent development of this device of
-     co-operation is important. It was born of a failure of force. If
-     the isolated force had sufficed, the union of force would not have
-     been resorted to. But such union is not a mere mechanical
-     multiplication of blind energies; it is a combination involving
-     will, intelligence. If mere multiplication of physical energy had
-     determined the result of man's struggles, he would have been
-     destroyed or be the helpless slave of the animals of which he makes
-     his food. He has overcome them as he has overcome the flood and the
-     storm--by quite another order of action. Intelligence only emerges
-     where physical force is ineffective.
-
-     'There is an almost mechanical process by which, as the complexity
-     of co-operation grows, the element of physical compulsion declines
-     in effectiveness, and is replaced by agreement based on mutual
-     recognition of advantage. There is through every step of this
-     development the same phenomenon: intelligence and agreement only
-     emerge as force becomes ineffective. The early (and purely
-     illustrative) slave-owner who spent his days seeing that his slave
-     did not run away, and compelling him to work, realised the economic
-     defect of the arrangement: most of the effort, physical and
-     intellectual, of the slave was devoted to trying to escape; that of
-     the owner, trying to prevent him. The force of the one,
-     intellectual or physical, cancelled the force of the other, and the
-     energies of both were lost so far as productive value was
-     concerned, and the needed task, the building of the shelter or the
-     catching of the fish, was not done, or badly done, and both went
-     short of food and shelter. But from the moment that they struck a
-     bargain as to the division of labour and of spoils, and adhered to
-     it, the full energies of both were liberated for direct production,
-     and the economic effectiveness of the arrangement was not merely
-     doubled, but probably multiplied many times. But this substitution
-     of free agreement for coercion, with all that it implied of
-     contract, of "what is fair," and all that followed of mutual
-     reliance in the fulfilment of the agreement, was _based upon mutual
-     recognition of advantage_. Now, that recognition, without which the
-     arrangement could not exist at all, required, relatively, a
-     considerable mental effort, _due in the first instance to the
-     failure of force_. If the slave-owner had had more effective means
-     of physical coercion, and had been able to subdue his slave, he
-     would not have bothered about agreement, and this embryo of human
-     society and justice would not have been brought into being. And in
-     history its development has never been constant, but marked by the
-     same rise and fall of the two orders of motive; as soon as one
-     party or the other obtained such preponderance of strength as
-     promised to be effective, he showed a tendency to drop free
-     agreement and use force; this, of course, immediately provoked the
-     resistance of the other, with a lesser or greater reversion to the
-     earlier profitless condition.
-
-     'This perpetual tendency to abandon the social arrangement and
-     resort to physical coercion is, of course, easily explainable by
-     the biological fact just touched on. To realise at each turn and
-     permutation of the division of labour that the social arrangement
-     was, after all, the best demanded on the part of the two characters
-     in our sketch, not merely control of instinctive actions, but a
-     relatively large ratiocinative effort for which the biological
-     history of early man had not fitted him. The physical act of
-     compulsion only required a stone axe and a quickness of purely
-     physical movement for which his biological history had afforded
-     infinitely long training. The more mentally-motived action, that of
-     social conduct, demanding reflection as to its effect on others,
-     and the effect of that reaction upon our own position and a
-     conscious control of physical acts, is of modern growth; it is but
-     skin-deep; its biological momentum is feeble. Yet on that feeble
-     structure has been built all civilisation.
-
-     'When we remember this--how frail are the ultimate foundations of
-     our fortress, how much those spiritual elements which alone can
-     give us human society are outnumbered by the pre-human elements--is
-     it surprising that those pre-social promptings of which
-     civilisation represents the conquest, occasionally overwhelm man,
-     break up the solidarity of his army, and push him back a stage or
-     two nearer to the brute condition from which he came? That even at
-     this moment he is groping blindly as to the method of distributing
-     in the order of his most vital needs the wealth he is able to wring
-     from the earth; that some of his most fundamental social and
-     political conceptions--those, among others, with which we are now
-     dealing--have little relation to real facts; that his animosities
-     and hatreds are as purposeless and meaningless as his enthusiasms
-     and his sacrifices; that emotion and effort which quantitatively
-     would suffice amply for the greater tasks before him, for the
-     firmer establishment of justice and well-being, for the cleaning up
-     of all the festering areas of moral savagery that remain, are as a
-     simple matter of fact turned to those purposes hardly at all, but
-     to objects which, to the degree to which they succeed, merely
-     stultify each other?
-
-     'Now, this fact, the fact that civilisation is but skin-deep and
-     that man is so largely the unreflecting brute, is not denied by
-     pro-military critics. On the contrary they appeal to it as the
-     first and last justification of their policy. "All your talk will
-     never get over human nature; men are not guided by logic; passion
-     is bound to get the upper hand," and such phrases, are a sort of
-     Greek chorus supplied by the military party to the whole of this
-     discussion.
-
-     'Nor do the militarist advocates deny that these unreflecting
-     elements are anti-social; again, it is part of their case that,
-     unless they are held in check by the "iron hand," they will
-     submerge society in a welter of savagery. Nor do they deny--it is
-     hardly possible to do so--that the most important securities which
-     we enjoy, the possibility of living in mutual respect of right
-     because we have achieved some understanding of right; all that
-     distinguishes modern Europe from the Europe of (among other things)
-     religious wars and St. Bartholomew massacres, and distinguishes
-     British political methods from those Turkey or Venezuela, are due
-     to the development of moral forces (since physical force is most
-     resorted to in the less desirable age and area), and particularly
-     to the general recognition that you cannot solve religious and
-     political problems by submitting them to the irrelevant hazard of
-     physical force.
-
-     'We have got thus far, then: both parties to the discussion are
-     agreed as to the fundamental fact that civilisation is based upon
-     moral and intellectual elements in constant danger of being
-     overwhelmed by more deeply-rooted anti-social elements. The plain
-     facts of history past and present are there to show that where
-     those moral elements are absent the mere fact of the possession of
-     arms only adds to the destructiveness of the resulting welter.
-
-     'Yet all attempts to secure our safety by other than military means
-     are not merely regarded with indifference; they are more generally
-     treated either with a truly ferocious contempt or with definite
-     condemnation.
-
-     'This apparently on two grounds: first, that nothing that we can do
-     will affect the conduct of other nations; secondly, that, in the
-     development of those moral forces which do undoubtedly give us
-     security, government action--which political effort has in
-     view--can play no part.
-
-     'Both assumptions are, of course, groundless. The first implies not
-     only that our own conduct and our own ideas need no examination,
-     but that ideas current in one country have no reaction on those of
-     another, and that the political action of one State does not affect
-     that of others. "The way to be sure of peace is to be so much
-     stronger than your enemy that he will not dare to attack you," is
-     the type of accepted and much-applauded "axioms" the unfortunate
-     corollary of which is (since both parties can adopt the rule) that
-     peace will only be finally achieved when each is stronger than the
-     other.
-
-     'So thought and acted the man with the stone axe in our
-     illustration, and in both cases the psychological motive is the
-     same: the long-inherited impulse to isolated action, to the
-     solution of a difficulty by some simple form of physical movement;
-     the tendency to break through the more lately acquired habit of
-     action based on social compact and on the mental realisation of its
-     advantage. It is the reaction against intellectual effort and
-     responsible control of instinct, a form of natural protest very
-     common in children and in adults not brought under the influence of
-     social discipline.
-
-     'The same general characteristics are as recognisable in militarist
-     politics within the nation as in the international field. It is not
-     by accident that Prussian and Bismarckian conceptions in foreign
-     policy are invariably accompanied by autocratic conceptions in
-     internal affairs. Both are founded upon a belief in force as the
-     ultimate determinant in human conduct; a disbelief in the things of
-     the mind as factors of social control, a disbelief in moral forces
-     that cannot be expressed in "blood and iron." The impatience shown
-     by the militarist the world over at government by discussion, his
-     desire to "shut up the talking shops" and to govern autocratically,
-     are but expressions of the same temper and attitude.
-
-     'The forms which Governments have taken and the general method of
-     social management, are in large part the result of its influence.
-     Most Governments are to-day framed far more as instruments for the
-     exercise of physical force than as instruments of social
-     management.
-
-     'The militarist does not allow that man has free will in the matter
-     of his conduct at all; he insists that mechanical forces on the one
-     side or the other alone determine which of two given courses shall
-     be taken; the ideas which either hold, the r�le of intelligent
-     volition, apart from their influence in the manipulation of
-     physical force, play no real part in human society. "Prussianism,"
-     Bismarckian "blood and iron," are merely political expressions of
-     this belief in the social field--the belief that force alone can
-     decide things; that it is not man's business to question authority
-     in politics or authority in the form of inevitability in nature. It
-     is not a question of who is right, but of who is stronger. "Fight
-     it out, and right will be on the side of the victor"--on the side,
-     that is, of the heaviest metal or the heaviest muscle, or, perhaps,
-     on that of the one who has the sun at his back, or some other
-     advantage of external nature. The blind material things--not the
-     seeing mind and the soul of man--are the ultimate sanction of human
-     society.
-
-     'Such a doctrine, of course, is not only profoundly anti-social, it
-     is anti-human--fatal not merely to better international relations,
-     but, in the end, to the degree to which it influences human conduct
-     at all, to all those large freedoms which man has so painfully won.
-
-     'This philosophy makes of man's acts, not something into which
-     there enters the element of moral responsibility and free volition,
-     something apart from and above the mere mechanical force of
-     external nature, but it makes man himself a helpless slave; it
-     implies that his moral efforts and the efforts of his mind and
-     understanding are of no worth--that he is no more the master of his
-     conduct than the tiger of his, or the grass and the trees of
-     theirs, and no more responsible.
-
-     'To this philosophy the "civilist" may oppose another: that in man
-     there is that which sets him apart from the plants and the animals,
-     which gives him control of and responsibility for his social acts,
-     which makes him the master of his social destiny if he but will it;
-     that by virtue of the forces of his mind he may go forward to the
-     completer conquest, not merely of nature, but of himself, and
-     thereby, and by that alone, redeem human association from the evils
-     that now burden it.'
-
-
-_From Balance to Community of Power_
-
-Does the foregoing imply that force or compulsion has no place in human
-society? Not the least in the world. The conclusions so far drawn might
-be summarised, and certain remaining ones suggested, thus:--
-
-     Coercion has its place in human society, and the considerations
-     here urged do not imply any sweeping theory of non-resistance. They
-     are limited to the attempt to show that the effectiveness of
-     political power depends upon certain moral elements usually utterly
-     neglected in international politics, and particularly that
-     instincts inseparable from Nationalism as now cultivated and
-     buttressed by prevailing political morality, must condemn political
-     power to futility. Two broad principles of policy are available:
-     that looking towards isolated national power, or that looking
-     towards common power behind a common purpose. The second may fail;
-     it has risks. But the first is bound to fail. The fact would be
-     self-evident but for the push of certain instincts warping our
-     judgment in favour of the first. If mankind decides that it can do
-     better than the first policy, it will do better. If it decides that
-     it cannot, that decision will itself make failure inevitable. Our
-     whole social salvation depends upon making the right choice.
-
-In an earlier chapter certain stultifications of the Balance of Power as
-applied to the international situation were dealt with. It was there
-pointed out that if you could get such a thing as a real Balance, that
-would certainly be a situation tempting the hot-heads of both sides to a
-trial of strength. An obvious preponderance of power on one side might
-check the temper of the other. A 'balance' would assuredly act as no
-check. But preponderance has an even worse result.
-
-How in practical politics are we to say when a group has become
-preponderantly powerful? We know to our cost that military power is
-extremely difficult of precise estimate. It cannot be weighed and
-balanced exactly. In political practice, therefore, the Balance of Power
-means a rivalry of power, because each to be on the safe side wants to
-be just a bit stronger than the other. The competition creates of itself
-the very condition it sets out to prevent.
-
-The defect of principle here is not the employment of force. It is the
-refusal to put force behind a law which may demand our allegiance. The
-defect lies in the attempt to make ourselves and our own interests by
-virtue of preponderant power superior to law.
-
-The feature which stood condemned in the old order was not the
-possession by States of coercive power. Coercion is an element in every
-good society that we have heretofore known. The evil of the old order
-was that in case of States the Power was anti-social; that it was not
-pledged to the service of some code or rule designed for mutual
-protection, but was the irresponsible possession of each individual,
-maintained for the express purpose of enabling him to enforce his own
-views of his own rights, to be judge and executioner in his own case,
-when his view came into collision with that of others. The old effort
-meant in reality the attempt on the part of a group of States to
-maintain in their own favour a preponderance of force of undefined and
-unlimited purpose. Any opposing group that found itself in a position of
-manifest inferiority had in fact to submit in international affairs to
-the decision of the possessor of preponderant power for the time being.
-It might be used benevolently; in that case the weaker obtained his
-rights as a gift from the stronger. But so long as the possession of
-power was unaccompanied by any defined obligation, there could be no
-democracy of States, no Society of Nations. To destroy the power of the
-preponderant group meant merely to transpose the situation. The security
-of one meant always the insecurity of the other.
-
-The Balance of Power in fact adopts the fundamental premise of the
-'might makes right' principle, because it regards power as the ultimate
-fact in politics; whereas the ultimate fact is the purpose for which the
-power will be used. Obviously you don't want a Balance of Power between
-justice and injustice, law and crime; between anarchy and order. You
-want a preponderance of power on the side of justice, of law and of
-order.
-
-We approach here one of the commonest and most disastrous confusions
-touching the employment of force in human society, particularly in the
-Society of Nations.
-
-It is easy enough to make play with the absurdities and contradictions
-of the _si vis pacem para bellum_ of our militarists. And the hoary
-falsehood does indeed involve a flouting of all experience, an
-intellectual astigmatism that almost makes one despair. But what is the
-practical alternative?
-
-The anti-militarist who disparages our reliance upon 'force' is almost
-as remote from reality, for all society as we know it in practice, or
-have ever known it, does rely a great deal upon the instrument of
-'force,' upon restraint and coercion.
-
-We have seen where the competition in arming among European nations has
-led us. But it may be argued: suppose you were greatly to reduce all
-round, cut in half, say, the military equipment of Europe, would the
-power for mutual destruction be sensibly reduced, the security of Europe
-sensibly greater? 'Adequacy' and 'destructiveness' of armament are
-strictly relative terms. A country with a couple of battleships has
-overwhelming naval armament if its opponent has none. A dozen
-machine-guns or a score of rifles against thousands of unarmed people
-may be more destructive of life than a hundred times that quantity of
-material facing forces similarly armed. (Fifty rifles at Amritsar
-accounted for two thousand killed and wounded, without a single casualty
-on the side of the troops.) Wars once started, instruments of
-destruction can be rapidly improvised, as we know. And this will be
-truer still when we have progressed from poison gas to disease germs, as
-we almost certainly shall.
-
-The first confusion is this:--
-
-The issue is made to appear as between the 'spiritual' and the
-'material'; as between material force, battleships, guns, armies on the
-one side as one method, and 'spiritual' factors, persuasion, moral
-goodness on the other side, as the contrary method. 'Force v. Faith,' as
-some evangelical writer has put it. The debate between the Nationalist
-and the Internationalist is usually vitiated at the outset by an
-assumption which, though generally common to the two parties, is not
-only unproven, but flatly contrary to the weight of evidence. The
-assumption is that the military Nationalist, basing his policy upon
-material force--a preponderant navy, a great army, superior
-artillery--can dispense with the element of trust, contract, treaty.
-
-Now to state the issue in that way creates a gross confusion, and the
-assumption just indicated is quite unjustifiable. The militarist quite
-as much as the anti-militarist, the nationalist quite as much as the
-internationalist, has to depend upon a moral factor, 'a contract,' the
-force of tradition, and of morality. Force cannot operate at all in
-human affairs without a decision of the human mind and will. Guns do not
-get pointed and go off without a mind behind them, and as already
-insisted, the direction in which the gun shoots is determined by the
-mind which must be reached by a form of moral suasion, discipline, or
-tradition; the mind behind the gun will be influenced by patriotism in
-one case, or by a will to rebellion and mutiny, prompted by another
-tradition or persuasion, in another. And obviously the moral decision,
-in the circumstances with which we are dealing, goes much deeper and
-further back. The building of battleships, or the forming of armies, the
-long preparation which is really behind the material factor, implies a
-great deal of 'faith.' These armies and navies could never have been
-brought into existence and be manoeuvred without vast stores of faith
-and tradition. Whether the army serves the nation, as in Britain or
-France, or dominates it as in a Spanish-American Republic (or in a
-somewhat different sense in Prussia), depends on a moral factor: the
-nature of the tradition which inspires the people from whom the army is
-drawn. Whether the army obeys its officers or shoots them is determined
-by moral not material factors, for the officers have not a preponderance
-of physical force over the men. You cannot form a pirate crew without a
-moral factor: the agreement not to use force against one another, but to
-act in consort and combine it against the prey. Whether the military
-material we and France supplied Russia, and the armies France helped to
-train, are employed against us or the Germans, depends upon certain
-moral and political factors inside Russia, certain ideas formed in the
-minds of certain men. It is not a situation of Ideas against Guns, but
-of ideas using guns. The confusion involves a curious distortion in our
-reading of the history of the struggle against privilege and tyranny.
-
-Usually when we speak of the past struggles of the people against
-tyranny, we have in our minds a picture of the great mass held down by
-the superior physical force of the tyrant. But such a picture is, of
-course, quite absurd. For the physical force which held down the people
-was that which they themselves supplied. The tyrant had no physical
-force save that with which his victims furnished him. In this struggle
-of 'People _v._ Tyrant,' obviously the weight of physical force was on
-the side of the people. This was as true of the slave States of
-antiquity as it is of the modern autocracies. Obviously the free
-minority--the five or ten or fifteen per cent.--of Rome or Egypt, or the
-governing orders of Prussia or Russia, did not impose their will upon
-the remainder by virtue of superior physical force, the sheer weight of
-numbers, of sinew and muscle. If the tyranny of the minority had
-depended upon its own physical power, it could not have lasted a day.
-The physical force which the minority used was the physical force of the
-majority. The people were oppressed by an instrument which they
-themselves furnished.
-
-In that picture, therefore, which we make of the mass of mankind
-struggling against the 'force' of tyranny, we must remember that the
-force against which they struggled was not in the last analysis physical
-force at all; it was their own weight from which they desired to be
-liberated.
-
-Do we realise all that this means? It means that tyranny has been
-imposed, as freedom has been won: through the Mind.
-
-The small minority imposes itself and can only impose itself by getting
-first at the mind of the majority--the people--in one form or another:
-by controlling it through keeping knowledge from it, as in so much of
-antiquity, or by controlling the knowledge itself, as in Germany. It is
-because the minds of the masses have failed them that they have been
-enslaved. Without that intellectual failure of the masses, tyranny could
-have found no force wherewith to impose its burdens.
-
-This confusion as to the relation of 'force' to the moral factor is of
-all confusions most worth while clearing up: and for that purpose we may
-descend to homely illustrations.
-
-You have a disorderly society, a frontier mining camp, every man armed,
-every man threatened by the arms of his neighbour and every man in
-danger. What is the first need in restoring order? More force--more
-revolvers and bowie knives? No; every man is fully armed already. If
-there exists in this disorder the germ of order some attempt will be
-made to move towards the creation of a police. But what is the
-indispensable prerequisite for the success of such an effort? It is the
-capacity for a nucleus of the community to act in common, to agree
-together to make the beginnings of a community. And unless that nucleus
-can achieve agreement--a moral and intellectual problem--there can be no
-police force. But be it noted well, this first prerequisite--the
-agreement among a few members necessary to create the first Vigilance
-Committee--is not force; it is a decision of certain minds determining
-how force shall be used, how combined. Even when you have got as far as
-the police, this device of social protection will entirely break down
-unless the police itself can be trusted to obey the constituted
-authority, and the constituted authority itself to abide by the law. If
-the police represents a mere preponderance of power, using that power to
-create a privileged position for itself or for its employers--setting
-itself, that is, against the community--you will sooner or later get
-resistance which will ultimately neutralise that power and produce a
-mere paralysis so far as any social purpose is concerned. The existence
-of the police depends upon general agreement not to use force except as
-the instrument of the social will, the law to which all are party. This
-social will may not exist; the members of the vigilance committee or
-town council or other body may themselves use their revolvers and knives
-each against the other. Very well, in that case you will get no police.
-'Force' will not remedy it. Who is to use the force if no one man can
-agree with the other? All along the line here we find ourselves,
-whatever our predisposition to trust only 'force,' thrown back upon a
-moral factor, compelled to rely upon contract, an agreement, before we
-can use force at all.
-
-It will be noted incidentally that effective social force does not rest
-upon a Balance of Power: society does not need a Balance of Power as
-between the law and crime; it wants a preponderance of power on the
-side of the law. One does not want a Balance of Power between rival
-parties in the State. One wants a preponderance of power on behalf of a
-certain fundamental code upon which all parties, or an immense majority
-of parties, will be agreed. As against the Balance of Power we need a
-Community of Power--to use Mr. Wilson's phrase--on the side of a purpose
-or code of which the contributors to the power are aware.
-
-One may read in learned and pretentious political works that the
-ultimate basis of a State is force--the army--which is the means by
-which the State's authority is maintained. But who compels the army to
-carry out the State's orders rather than its own will or the personal
-will of its commander? _Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?_ The following
-passage from an address delivered by the present writer in America may
-perhaps help to make the point clear:--
-
-     'When, after the counting of the votes, you ask Mr Wilson to step
-     down from the President's chair, how do you know he will get down?
-     I repeat, How do you know he will get down? You think that a
-     foolish and fantastic question? But, in a great many interesting
-     American republics, Mexico, Venezuela, or Hayti, he would not get
-     down! You say, "Oh, the army would turn him out." I beg your
-     pardon. It is Mr Wilson who commands the army; it is not the army
-     that commands Mr Wilson. Again, in many American republics a
-     President who can depend on his army, when asked to get out of the
-     Presidency, would reply almost as a matter of course, "Why should I
-     get down when I have an army that stands by me?"
-
-     'How do we know that Mr Wilson, able, we will assume, to count on
-     his army, or, if you prefer, some President particularly popular
-     with the army, will not do that? Is it physical force which
-     prevents it? If so, whose? You may say: "If he did that, he knows
-     that the country would raise an army of rebellion to turn him out."
-     Well, suppose it did? You raise this army, as they would in
-     Mexico, or Venezuela, and the army turns him out. And your man gets
-     into the Presidential chair, and then, when you think he has stolen
-     enough, you vote _him_ down. He would do precisely the same thing.
-     He would say: "My dear people, as very great philosophers tell you,
-     the State is Force, and as a great French monarch once said. 'I am
-     the State.' _J'y suis, j'y reste._". And then you would have to get
-     another army of rebellion to turn _him_ out--just as they do in
-     Mexico, Venezuela, Hayti, or Honduras.'
-
-There, then, is the crux of the matter. Every constitution at times
-breaks down. But if that fact were a conclusive argument for the
-anarchical arming of each man against the other as preferable to a
-police enforcing law, there could be no human society. The object of
-constitutional machinery for change is to make civil war unnecessary.
-
-There will be no advance save through an improved tradition. Perhaps it
-will be impossible to improve the tradition. Very well, then the old
-order, whether among the nations of Europe or the political parties of
-Venezuela, will remain unchanged. More 'force,' more soldiers, will not
-do it. The disturbed areas of Spanish-America each show a greater number
-of soldiers to population than States like Massachusetts or Ohio. So in
-the international solution. What would it have availed if Britain had
-quadrupled the quantity of rifles to Koltchak's peasant soldiers so long
-as his land policy caused them to turn their rifles against his
-Government? Or for France to have multiplied many times the loans made
-to the Ukraine, if at the same time the loans made to Poland so fed
-Polish nationalism that the Ukrainians preferred making common cause
-with the Bolsheviks to becoming satellites of an Imperialist Poland? Do
-we add to the 'force' of the Alliance by increasing the military power
-of Serbia, if that fact provokes her to challenge Italy? Do we
-strengthen it by increasing at one and the same time the military forces
-of two States--say Poland and Czecho-Slovakia--if the nationalism which
-we nurse leads finally to those two States turning their forces one
-against the other? Unless we know the policy (again a thing of the mind,
-of opinion) which will determine the use to which guns will be put, it
-does not increase our security--it may diminish it--to add more guns.
-
-
-_The Alternative Risks_
-
-We see, therefore, that the alternatives are not in fact a choice
-between 'material' and 'spiritual' means. The material can only operate,
-whether for our defence or against us, by virtue of a spiritual thing,
-the will. 'The direction in which the gun will shoot'--a rather
-important point in its effectiveness as a defensive weapon--depends not
-on the gun but on the mind of the man using it, the moral factor. The
-two cannot be separated.
-
-It is untrue to say that the knife is a magic instrument, saving the
-cancer patient's life: it is the mind of the surgeon using the material
-thing in a certain way which saves the patient's life. A child or savage
-who, failing to realise the part played by the invisible element of the
-surgeon's mind, should deem that a knife of a particular pattern used
-'boldly' could be depended upon to cure cancer, would merely, of course
-commit manslaughter.
-
-It is foolish to talk of an absolute guarantee of security by force, as
-of guarantee of success in surgical operations by perfection of knives.
-In both cases we are dealing with instruments, indispensable, but not of
-themselves enough. The mind behind the instrument, technical in one
-case, social in the other, may in both cases fail; then we must improve
-it. Merely to go on sharpening the knife, to go on applying, for
-instance, to the international problem more 'force,' in the way it has
-been applied in the past, can only give us in intenser degree the
-present results.
-
-Yet the truth here indicated is perpetually being disregarded,
-particularly by those who pique themselves on being 'practical.' In the
-choice of risks by men of the world and realist statesmen the choice
-which inevitably leads to destruction is for ever being made on grounds
-of safety; the choice which leads at least in the direction of security
-is for ever being rejected on the grounds of its danger.
-
-Why is this? The choice is instinctive assuredly; it is not the result
-of 'hard-headed calculation' though it often professes to be. We speak
-of it as the 'protective' instinct. But it is a protective instinct
-which obviously destroys us.
-
-I am suggesting here that, at the bottom of the choice in favour of the
-Balance of Power or preponderance as a political method, is neither the
-desire for safety nor the desire to place 'might behind right,' but the
-desire for domination, the instinct of self-assertion, the anti-social
-wish to be judge in our own case; and further, that the way out of the
-difficulty is to discipline this instinct by a better social tradition.
-To do that we must discredit the old tradition--create a different
-feeling about it; to which end it is indispensable to face frankly the
-nature of its moral origins; to look its motives in the face.[68]
-
-It is extremely suggestive in this connection that the 'realist'
-politician, the 'hard-headed practical man,' disdainful of Sunday School
-standards,' in his defence of national necessity, is quite ready to be
-contemptuous of national safety and interest when these latter point
-plainly to a policy of international agreement as against domination.
-Agreement is then rejected as pusillanimous, and consideration for
-national interest as placing 'pocket before patriotism.' We are then
-reminded, even by the most realist of nationalists, that nations live
-for higher things than 'profit' or even safety. 'Internationalism,' says
-Colonel Roosevelt, 'inevitably emasculates its sincere votaries,' and
-'every civilisation worth calling such' must be based 'on a spirit of
-intense nationalism.' For Colonel Roosevelt or General Wood in America
-as for Mr Kipling, or Mr Chesterton, or Mr Churchill, or Lord
-Northciffe, or Mr Bottomley, and a vast host of poets, professors,
-editors, historians, bishops, publicists of all sorts in England and
-France, 'Internationalist' and 'Pacifist' are akin to political atheist.
-A moral consideration now replaces the 'realist.' The metamorphosis is
-only intelligible on the assumption here suggested that both
-explanations or justifications are a rationalisation of the impulse to
-power and domination.
-
-Our political, quite as much as our social, conduct is in the main the
-result of motives that are mainly unconscious instinct, habit,
-unquestioned tradition. So long as we find the result satisfactory, well
-and good. But when the result of following instinct is disaster, we
-realise that the time has come to 'get outside ourselves,' to test our
-instincts by their social result. We have then to see whether the
-'reasons' we have given for our conduct are really its motives. That
-examination is the first step to rendering the unconscious motive
-conscious. In considering, for instance, the two methods indicated in
-this chapter, we say, in 'rationalising' our decision, that we chose the
-lesser of two risks. I am suggesting that in the choice of the method of
-the Balance of Power our real motive was not desire to achieve security,
-but domination. It is just because our motives are not mainly
-intellectual but 'instinctive' that the desire for domination is so
-likely to have played the determining role: for few instincts and
-innate desires are stronger than that which pushes to 'self-affirmation'--the
-assertion of preponderant force.
-
-We have indeed seen that the Balance of Power means in practice the
-determination to secure a preponderance of power. What is a 'Balance?'
-The two sides will not agree on that, and each to be sure will want it
-tilted in its favour. We decline to place ourselves within the power of
-another who may differ from us as to our right. We demand to be
-stronger, in order that we may be judge in our own case. This means that
-we shall resist the claim of others to exactly the same thing.
-
-The alternative is partnership. It means trust. But we have seen that
-the exercise of any form of force, other than that which one single
-individual can wield, must involve an element of 'trust.' The soldiers
-must be trusted to obey the officers, since the former have by far the
-preponderance of force; the officers must be trusted to obey the
-constitution instead of challenging it; the police must be trusted to
-obey the authorities; the Cabinet must be trusted to obey the electoral
-decision; the members of an alliance to work together instead of against
-one another, and so on. Yet the assumption of the 'Power Politician' is
-that the method which has succeeded (notably within the State) is the
-'idealistic' but essentially unpractical method in which security and
-advantage are sacrificed to Utopian experiment; while the method of
-competitive armament, however distressing it may be to the Sunday
-Schools, is the one that gives us real security. 'The way to be sure of
-preserving peace,' says Mr Churchill, 'is to be so much stronger than
-your enemy that he won't dare to attack you.' In other words it is
-obvious that the way for two people to keep the peace is for each to be
-stronger than the other.
-
-'You may have made your front door secure' says Marshal Foch, arguing
-for the Rhine frontier, 'but you may as well make sure by having a good
-high garden wall as well.'
-
-'Make sure,' that is the note--_si vis pacem_.... And he can be sure
-that 'the average practical man,' who prides himself on 'knowing human
-nature' and 'distrusting theories' will respond to the appeal. Every
-club smoking room will decide that 'the simple soldier' knows his
-business and has judged human forces aright.
-
-Yet of course the simple truth is that the 'hard-headed soldier' has
-chosen the one ground upon which all experience, all the facts, are
-against him. Then how is he able to 'get away with it'--to ride off
-leaving at least the impression of being a sternly practical
-unsentimental man of the world by virtue of having propounded an
-aphorism which all practical experience condemns? Here is Mr Churchill.
-He is talking to hard-headed Lancashire manufacturers. He desires to
-show that he too is no theorist, that he also can be hard-headed and
-practical. And he--who really does know the mind of the 'hard-headed
-business man'--is perfectly aware that the best road to those hard heads
-is to propound an arrant absurdity, to base a proposed line of policy on
-the assumption of a physical impossibility, to follow a will-o'-the-wisp
-which in all recorded history has led men into a bog.
-
-They applaud Mr Churchill, not because he has put before them a cold
-calculation of relative risk in the matter of maintaining peace, an
-indication, where, on the whole, the balance of safety lies; Mr
-Churchill, of course, knows perfectly well that, while professing to do
-that, he has been doing nothing of the sort. He has, in reality, been
-appealing to a sentiment, the emotion which is strongest and steadiest
-in the 'hard-faced men' who have elbowed their way to the top in a
-competitive society. He has 'rationalised' that competitive sentiment of
-domination by putting forward a 'reason' which can be avowed to them and
-to others.
-
-Colonel Roosevelt managed to inject into his reasons for predominance a
-moral strenuousness which Mr Churchill does not achieve.
-
-The following is a passage from one of the last important speeches made
-by Colonel Roosevelt--twice President of the United States and one of
-the out-standing figures in the world in his generation:--
-
-     'Friends, be on your guard against the apostles of weakness and
-     folly when peace comes. They will tell you that this is the last
-     great war. They will tell you that they can make paper treaties and
-     agreements and guarantees by which brutal and unscrupulous men will
-     have their souls so softened that weak and timid men won't have
-     anything to fear and that brave and honest men won't have to
-     prepare to defend themselves.
-
-     'Well, we have seen that all such treaties are worth less than
-     scraps of paper when it becomes to the interests of powerful and
-     ruthless militarist nations to disregard them.... After this War is
-     over, these foolish pacifist creatures will again raise their
-     piping voices against preparedness and in favour of patent devices
-     for maintaining peace without effort. Let us enter into every
-     reasonable agreement which bids fair to minimise the chances of war
-     and to circumscribe its area.... But let us remember it is a
-     hundred times more important for us to prepare our strength for our
-     own defence than to enter any of these peace treaties, and that if
-     we thus prepare our strength for our own defence we shall minimise
-     the chances of war as no paper treaties can possibly minimise them;
-     and we shall thus make our views effective for peace and justice in
-     the world at large as in no other way can they be made
-     effective.'[69]
-
-Let us dispose of one or two of the more devastating confusions in the
-foregoing.
-
-First there is the everlasting muddle as to the internationalist
-attitude towards the likelihood of war. To Colonel Roosevelt one is an
-internationalist or 'pacifist' because one thinks war will not take
-place. Whereas probably the strongest motive of internationalism is the
-conviction that without it war is inevitable, that in a world of rival
-nationalisms war cannot be avoided. If those who hate war believe that
-the present order will without effort give them peace, why in the name
-of all the abuse which their advocacy brings on their heads should they
-bother further about the matter?
-
-Secondly, internationalism is assumed to be the _alternative_ to the
-employment of force or power of arms, whereas it is the organisation of
-force, of power (latent or positive) to a common--an international--end.
-
-Our incurable habit of giving to homely but perfectly healthy and
-justifiable reasons of conduct a high faluting romanticism sometimes
-does morality a very ill service. When in political situations--as in
-the making of a Peace Treaty--a nation is confronted by the general
-alternative we are now discussing, the grounds of opposition to a
-co-operative or 'Liberal' or 'generous' settlement are almost always
-these: 'Generosity' is lost upon a people as crafty and treacherous as
-the enemy; he mistakes generosity for weakness; he will take advantage
-of it; his nature won't be softened by mild treatment; he understands
-nothing but force.
-
-The assumption is that the liberal policy is based upon an appeal to the
-better side of the enemy; upon arousing his nobler nature. And such an
-assumption concerning the Hun or the Bolshevik, for instance (or at an
-earlier date, the Boer or the Frenchman), causes the very gorge of the
-Roosevelt-Bottomley patriot to rise in protest. He simply does not
-believe in the effective operation of so remote a motive.
-
-But the real ground of defence for the liberal policy is not the
-existence of an abnormal if heretofore successfully disguised nobility
-on the part of the enemy, but of his very human if not very noble fears
-which, from our point of view, it is extremely important not to arouse
-or justify. If our 'punishment' of him creates in his mind the
-conviction that we are certain to use our power for commercial
-advantage, or that in any case our power is a positive danger to him,
-he _will_ use his recovered economic strength for the purpose of
-resisting it; and we should face a fact so dangerous and costly to us.
-
-To take cognisance of this fact, and to shape our policy accordingly is
-not to attribute to the enemy any particular nobility of motive. But
-almost always when that policy is attacked, it is attacked on the ground
-of its 'Sunday School' assumption of the accessibility of the enemy to
-gratitude or 'softening' in Colonel Roosevelt's phrase.
-
-We reach in the final analysis of the interplay of motive a very clear
-political pragmatism. Either policy will justify itself, and by the way
-it works out in practice, prove that it is right.
-
-Here is a statesman--Italian, say--who takes the 'realist' view, and
-comes to a Peace Conference which may settle for centuries the position
-of his country in the world--its strength, its capacity for defending
-itself, the extent of its resources. In the world as he knows it, a
-country has one thing, and one thing only, upon which it can depend for
-its national security and the defence of its due rights; and that thing
-is its own strength. Italy's adequate defence must include the naval
-command of the Adriatic and a strategic position in the Tyrol. This
-means deep harbours on the Dalmatian coast and the inclusion in the
-Tyrol of a very considerable non-Italian population. To take them may,
-it is true, not only violate the principle of nationality but shut off
-the new Yugo-Slav nation from access to the sea and exchange one
-irredentism for another. But what can the 'realist' Italian statesman,
-whose first duty is to his own country do? He is sorry, but his own
-nationality and its due protection are concerned; and the Italian nation
-will be insecure without those frontiers and those harbours.
-Self-preservation is the law of life for nations as for other living
-things. You have, unfortunately, a condition in which the security of
-one means the insecurity of another, and if a statesman in these
-circumstances has to choose which of the two is to be secure, he must
-choose his own country.
-
-Some day, of course, there may come into being a League of Nations so
-effective that nations can really look to it for their safety. Meantime
-they must look to themselves. But, unfortunately, for each nation to
-take these steps about strategic frontiers means not only killing the
-possibility of an effective League: it means, sooner or later, killing
-the military alliance which is the alternative. If one Alsace-Lorraine
-could poison European politics in the way it did, what is going to be
-the effect ultimately of the round dozen that we have created under the
-treaty? The history of Britain in reference to Arab and Egyptian
-Nationality; of France in relation to Poland and other Russian border
-States; of all the Allies in reference to Japanese ambitions in China
-and Siberia, reveals what is, fundamentally, a precisely similar
-dilemma.
-
-When the statesmen--Italian or other--insist upon strategic frontiers
-and territories containing raw materials, on the ground that a nation
-must look to itself because we live in a world in which international
-arrangements cannot be depended on, they can be quite certain that the
-reason they give is a sound one: because their own action will make it
-so: their action creates the very conditions to which they appeal as the
-reason for it. Their decision, with the popular impulse of sacred egoism
-which supports it, does something more than repudiate Mr Wilson's
-principles; it is the beginning of the disruption of the Alliance upon
-which their countries have depended. The case is put in a manifesto
-issued a year or two ago by a number of eminent Americans from which we
-have already quoted in Chapter III.
-
-It says:--
-
-     'If, as in the past, nations must look for their future security
-     chiefly to their own strength and resources, then inevitably, in
-     the name of the needs of national defence, there will be claims for
-     strategic frontiers and territories with raw material which do
-     violence to the principle of nationality. Afterwards those who
-     suffer from such violations would be opposed to the League of
-     Nations, because it would consecrate the injustice of which they
-     would be the victims. A refusal to trust to the League of Nations,
-     and a demand for "material" guarantees for future safety, will set
-     up that very distrust which will afterwards be appealed to as
-     justification for regarding the League as impracticable because it
-     inspires no general confidence. A bold "Act of Political Faith" in
-     the League will justify itself by making the League a success; but,
-     equally, lack of faith will justify itself by ruining the League.'
-
-That is why, when in the past the realist statesman has sometimes
-objected that he does not believe in internationalism because it is not
-practical, I have replied that it is not practical because he does not
-believe in it.
-
-The prerequisite to the creation of a society is the Social Will. And
-herein lies the difficulty of making any comparative estimate of the
-respective risks of the alternative courses. We admit that if the
-nations would sink their sacred egoisms and pledge their power to mutual
-and common protection, the risk of such a course would disappear. We get
-the paradox that there is no risk if we all take the risk. But each
-refuses to begin. William James has illustrated the position:--
-
-     'I am climbing the Alps, and have had the ill luck to work myself
-     into a position from which the only escape is by a terrible leap.
-     Being without similar experience, I have no evidence of my ability
-     to perform it successfully; but hope and confidence in myself make
-     me sure that I shall not miss my aim, and nerve my feet to execute
-     what, without those subjective emotions, would have been
-     impossible.
-
-     'But suppose that, on the contrary, the emotions ... of mistrust
-     predominate.... Why, then, I shall hesitate so long that at last,
-     exhausted and trembling, and launching myself in a moment of
-     despair, I miss my foothold and roll into the abyss. In this case,
-     and it is one of an immense class, the part of wisdom is to believe
-     what one desires; for the belief is one of the indispensable,
-     preliminary conditions of the realisation of its object. There are
-     cases where faith creates its own justification. Believe, and you
-     shall be right, for you shall save yourself; doubt, and you shall
-     again be right, for you shall perish.'
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-THE SPIRITUAL ROOTS OF THE SETTLEMENT
-
-
-_'Human Nature is always what it is'_
-
-'You may argue as much as you like. All the logic chopping will never
-get over the fact that human nature is always what it is. Nations will
-always fight.... always retaliate at victory.'
-
-If that be true, and our pugnacities, and hates, and instincts
-generally, are uncontrollable, and they dictate conduct, no more is to
-be said. We are the helpless victims of outside forces, and may as well
-surrender, without further discussion, or political agitation, or
-propaganda. For if those appeals to our minds can neither determine the
-direction nor modify the manifestation of our innate instincts, nor
-influence conduct, one rather wonders at our persistence in them.
-
-Why so many of us find an obvious satisfaction in this fatalism, so
-patently want it to be true, and resort to it in such convenient
-disregard of the facts, has been in some measure indicated in the
-preceding chapter. At bottom it comes to this: that it relieves us of so
-much trouble and responsibility; the life of instinct and emotion is so
-easily flowing a thing, and that of social restraints and rationalised
-decisions so cold and dry and barren.
-
-At least that is the alternative as many of us see it. And if the only
-alternative to an impulse spending itself in hostilities and hatreds
-destructive of social cohesion, were the sheer restraint of impulse by
-calculation and reason; if our choice were truly between chaos,
-anarchy, and the perpetual repression of all spontaneous and vigorous
-impulse--then the choice of a fatalistic refusal to reason would be
-justifiable.
-
-But happily that is not the alternative. The function of reason and
-discipline is not to repress instinct and impulse, but to turn those
-forces into directions in which they may have free play without
-disaster. The function of the compass is not to check the power of the
-ship's engines; it is to indicate a direction in which the power can be
-given full play, because the danger of running on to the rocks has been
-obviated.
-
-Let us first get the mere facts straight--facts as they have worked out
-in the War and the Peace.
-
-It is not true that the directions taken by our instincts cannot in any
-way be determined by our intelligence. 'A man's impulses are not fixed
-from the beginning by his native disposition: within certain limits they
-are profoundly modified by his circumstances and way of life.'[70] What
-we regard as the 'instinctive' part of our character is, again, within
-large limits very malleable: by beliefs, by social circumstances, by
-institutions, and above all by the suggestibility of tradition, the work
-is often of individual minds.
-
-It is not so much the _character_ of our impulsive and instinctive life
-that is changed by these influences, as the direction. The elements of
-human nature may remain unchangeable, but the manifestations resulting
-from the changing combinations may be infinitely various as are the
-forms of matter which result from changing combinations of the same
-primary elements.
-
-It is not a choice between a life of impulse and emotion on the one
-side, and wearisome repressions on the other. The perception that
-certain needs are vital will cause us to use our emotional energy for
-one purpose instead of another. And just because the traditions that
-have grouped around nationalism turn our combativeness into the
-direction of war, the energy brought into play by that impulse is not
-available for the creativeness of peace. Having become habituated to a
-certain reagent--the stimulus of some personal or visible enemy--energy
-fails to react to a stimulus which, with a different way of life, would
-have sufficed. Because we must have gin to summon up our energy, that is
-no proof that energy is impossible without it. It is hardly for an
-inebriate to laud the life of instinct and impulse. For the time being
-that is not the attitude and tendency that most needs encouragement.
-
-As to the fact that the instinctive and impulsive part of our behaviour
-is dirigible and malleable by tradition and discussion, that is not only
-admitted, but it is apt to be over-emphasised--by those who insist upon
-the 'unchangeability of human nature.' The importance which we attached
-to the repression of pacifist and defeatist propaganda during the War,
-and of Bolshevist agitation after the War, proves that we believe these
-feelings, that we allege to be unchangeable, can be changed too easily
-and readily by the influence of ideas, even wrong ones.
-
-The type of feeling which gave us the Treaty was in a large degree a
-manufactured feeling, in the sense that it was the result of opinion,
-formed day by day by a selection only of the facts. For this manufacture
-of opinion, we consciously created a very elaborate machinery, both of
-propaganda and of control of news. But that organisation of public
-opinion, justifiable in itself perhaps as a war measure, was not guided
-(as the result shows) by an understanding of what the political ends,
-which, in the early days of the War, we declared to be ours, would need
-in the way of psychology. Our machinery developed a psychology which
-made our higher political aims quite impossible of realisation.
-
-Public opinion, 'human nature,' would have been more manageable, its
-'instincts' would have been sounder, and we should have had a Europe
-less in disintegration, if we had told as far as possible that part of
-the truth which our public bodies (State, Church, Press, the School)
-were largely occupied in hiding. But the opinion which dictated the
-policy of repression is itself the result of refusing to face the truth.
-To tell the truth is the remedy here suggested.
-
-
-_The Paradox of the Peace_
-
-The supreme paradox of the Peace is this:--
-
-We went into the War with certain very definitely proclaimed principles,
-which we declared to be more valuable than the lives of the men that were
-sacrificed in their defence. We were completely victorious, and went into
-the Conference with full power, so far as enemy resistance was concerned,
-to put those principles into effect.[71] We did not use the victory which
-our young men had given us to that end, but for enforcing a policy which
-was in flat contradiction to the principles we had originally proclaimed.
-
-In some respects the spectacle is the most astounding of all history. It
-is literally true to say that millions of young soldiers gladly gave
-their lives for ideals to which the survivors, when they had the power
-to realise them (again so far as physical force can give us power,)
-showed complete indifference, sometimes a contemptuous hostility.
-
-It was not merely an act of the statesmen. The worst features of the
-Treaty were imposed by popular feeling--put into the Treaty by statesmen
-who did not believe in them, and only included them in order to satisfy
-public opinion. The policy of President Wilson failed in part because of
-the humane and internationalist opinion of the America of 1916 had
-become the fiercely chauvinist and coercive opinion of 1919, repudiating
-the President's efforts.
-
-Part of the story of these transformations has been told in the
-preceding pages. Let us summarise the story as a whole.
-
-We saw at the beginning of the War a real feeling for the right of
-peoples to choose their own form of government, for the principle of
-nationality. At the end of the War we deny that right in half a score of
-cases,[72] where it suits our momentary political or military interest.
-The very justification of 'necessity,' which shocks our conscience when
-put forward by the enemy, is the one we invoke callously at the
-peace--or before it, as when we agree to allow Czarist Russia to do what
-she will with Poland, and Italy with Serbia. Having sacrificed the small
-State to Russia in 1916, we are prepared to sacrifice Russia to the
-small State in 1919, by encouraging the formation of border
-independencies, which, if complete independencies, must throttle Russia,
-and which no 'White' Russian would accept. While encouraging the lesser
-States to make war on Russia, we subsidise White Russian military
-leaders who will certainly destroy the small States if successful. We
-entered the War for the destruction of militarism, and to make
-disarmament possible, declaring that German arms were the cause of our
-arms; and having destroyed German arms, we make ours greater than they
-were before the War, and introduce such new elements as the systematic
-arming of African savages for European warfare. We fought to make the
-secret bringing about of war by military or diplomatic cliques
-impossible, and after the Armistice the decision to wage war on the
-Russian Republic is made without even public knowledge, in opposition to
-sections in the Cabinets concerned, by cliques of whose composition the
-public is completely ignorant.[73] The invasion of Russia from the
-north, south, east, and west, by European, Asiatic, and negro troops, is
-made without a declaration of war, after a solemn statement by the chief
-spokesman of the Allies that there should be no invasion. Having
-declared, during the War, on a score of occasions, that we were not
-fighting against any right or interest of the German people[74]--or the
-German people at all--because we realised that only by ensuring that
-right and interest ourselves could we turn Germany from the ways of the
-past, at the peace we impose conditions which make it impossible for the
-German people even adequately to feed their population, and leave them
-no recourse but the recreation of their power. Having promised at the
-Armistice not to use our power for the purpose of preventing the due
-feeding of Germany, we continue for months a blockade which, even by the
-testimony of our own officials, creates famine conditions and literally
-kills very many of the children.
-
-At the beginning of the War, our statesmen, if not our public, had some
-rudimentary sense of the economic unity of mankind, of our need of one
-another's work, and the idea of blockading half a world in time of dire
-scarcity would have appalled them. Yet at the Armistice it was done so
-light-heartedly that, having at last abandoned it, they have never even
-explained what they proposed to accomplish by it, for, says Mr Maynard
-Keynes. 'It is an extraordinary fact that the fundamental economic
-problem of a Europe starving and disintegrating before their eyes, was
-the one question in which it was impossible to arouse the interest of
-the Four.'[75] At the beginning of the War we invoked high heaven to
-witness the danger and anomaly of autocratic government in our day. We
-were fighting for Parliamentary institutions, 'open Covenants openly
-arrived at.' After victory, we leave the real settlement of Europe to be
-made by two or three Prime Ministers, rendering no account of their
-secret deliberations and discussions to any Parliament until, in
-practice, it is too late to alter them. At the beginning of the War we
-were profoundly moved by the wickedness of military terrorism; at its
-close we employ it--whether by means of starvation, blockade, armed
-negro savages in German cities, reprisals in Ireland, or the ruthless
-slaughter of unarmed civilians in India--without creating any strong
-revulsion of feeling at home. At the beginning of the War we realised
-that the governmental organisation of hatred with the prostitution of
-art to 'hymns of hate' was vile and despicable. We copied that
-governmental organisation of hatred, and famous English authors duly
-produce _our_ hymns of hate.[76] We felt at the beginning that all human
-freedom was menaced by the German theory of the State as the master of
-man and not as his instrument, with all that means of political
-inquisition and repression. When some of its worst features are applied
-at home, we are so indifferent to the fact that we do not even recognise
-that the thing against which we fought has been imposed upon
-ourselves.[77]
-
-Many will dissent from this indictment. Yet its most important item--our
-indifference to the very evils against which we fought--is something
-upon which practically all witnesses testifying to the state of public
-opinion to-day agree. It is a commonplace of current discussion of
-present-day feeling. Take one or two at random, Sir Philip Gibbs and Mr.
-Sisley Huddleston, both English journalists. (I choose journalists
-because it is their business to know the nature of the public mind and
-spirit.) Speaking of the wholesale starvation, unimaginable misery, from
-the Baltic to the Black Sea, Mr. Huddleston writes:--
-
-     'We read these things. They make not the smallest impression on us.
-     Why? How is it that we are not horrified and do not resolve that
-     not for a single day shall any preventable evil exist? How is it,
-     that, on the contrary, for two years we have been cheerfully
-     engaged in intensifying the sum of human suffering? Why are we so
-     heedless? Why are we so callous? Why do we allow to be committed,
-     in our name, a thousand atrocities, and to be written, in our name
-     and for our delectation, a million vile words which reveal the most
-     amazing lack either of feeling or of common sense?
-
-     'There have been crimes perpetrated by the politicians--by all the
-     politicians--which no condemnation could fitly characterise. But
-     the peoples must be blamed. The peoples support the war-making
-     politicians. It is my business to follow the course of events day
-     by day, and it is sometimes difficult to stand back and take a
-     general view. Whenever I do so, I am appalled at the blundering or
-     the wickedness of the leaders of the world. Without party
-     prejudices or personal predilections, an impartial observer, I
-     cannot conceive how it is possible to be always blind to the truth,
-     the glaring truth, that since the Armistice we have never sought to
-     make peace, but have sought only some pretext and method for
-     prolonging the War.
-
-     'Hate exudes from every journal in speaking of certain peoples--a
-     weary hate, a conventional hate, a hate which is always whipping
-     itself into a passion. It is, perhaps, more strictly, apathy
-     masquerading as hate--which is worst of all. The people are
-     _blas�_: they seek only bread and circuses for themselves. They
-     regard no bread for others as a rather boring circus for
-     themselves.'
-
-Mr. Huddleston was present throughout most of the Conference. This is
-his verdict:--
-
-     ' ... Cynicism soon became naked. In the East all pretence of
-     righteousness was abandoned. Every successive Treaty was more
-     frankly the expression of shameful appetites. There was no pretence
-     of conscience in politics. Force rules without disguise. What was
-     still more amazing was the way in which strife was stirred up
-     gratuitously. What advantage was it, even for a moment, to any one
-     to foment civil war in Russia, to send against the unhappy,
-     famine-stricken country army after army? The result was so
-     obviously to consolidate the Bolshevist Government around which
-     were obliged to rally all Russians who had the spirit of
-     nationality. It seemed as if everywhere we were plotting our own
-     ruin and hastening our own end. A strange dementia seized our
-     rulers, who thought peace, replenishment of empty larders, the
-     fraternisation of sorely tired nations, ignoble and delusive
-     objects. It appeared that war was for evermore to be humanity's
-     fate.
-
-     'Time after time I saw excellent opportunities of universal peace
-     deliberately rejected. There was somebody to wreck every Prinkipo,
-     every Spa. It was almost with dismay that all Europeans who had
-     kept their intelligence unclouded saw the frustration of peace, and
-     heard the peoples applaud the men who frustrated peace. I care not
-     whether they still enjoy esteem: history will judge them harshly
-     and will judge harshly the turbulence which men plumed themselves
-     on creating two years after the War.'
-
-As to the future:--
-
-     'If it is certain that France must force another fight with Germany
-     in a short span of years, if she pursues her present policy of
-     implacable antagonism; if it is certain that England is already
-     carefully seeking the European equilibrium, and that a responsible
-     minister has already written of the possibility of a military
-     accord with Germany; if there has been seen, owing to the foolish
-     belief of the Allies in force--a belief which increases in inverse
-     ratio to the Allied possession of effective force--the re-birth of
-     Russian militarism, as there will assuredly be seen the re-birth of
-     German militarism; if there are quarrels between Greece and Italy,
-     between Italy and the Jugo-Slavs, between Hungary and Austria,
-     between every tiny nation and its neighbour, even between England
-     and France, it is because, when war has once been invoked, it
-     cannot easily be exorcised. It will linger long in Europe: the
-     straw will smoulder and at any moment may break into flame....
-
-     'This is not lurid imagining: it is as logical as a piece of
-     Euclidean reasoning. Only by a violent effort to change our fashion
-     of seeing things can it be averted. War-making is now a habit.'
-
-And as to the outcome on the mind of the people:--
-
-     'The war has killed elasticity of mind, independence of judgment,
-     and liberty of expression. We think not so much of the truth as of
-     conforming to the tacitly accepted fiction of the hour.[78]
-
-Sir Philip Gibbs renders on the whole a similar verdict. He says:--
-
-     'The people of all countries were deeply involved in the general
-     blood-guiltiness of Europe. They made no passionate appeal in the
-     name of Christ or in the name of humanity for the cessation of the
-     slaughter of boys and the suicide of nations, and for a
-     reconciliation of peoples upon terms of some more reasonable
-     argument than that of high explosives. Peace proposals from the
-     Pope, from Germany, from Austria, were rejected with fierce
-     denunciation, most passionate scorn, as "peace plots" and "peace
-     traps," not without the terrible logic of the vicious circle,
-     because indeed, there was no sincerity of renunciation in some of
-     those offers of peace, and the Powers opposite to us were simply
-     trying our strength and our weakness in order to make their own
-     kind of peace, which should be that of conquest. The gamblers,
-     playing the game of "poker," with crowns and armies as their
-     stakes, were upheld generally by the peoples, who would not abate
-     one point of pride, one fraction of hate, one claim of vengeance,
-     though all Europe should fall in ruin, and the last legions of boys
-     be massacred. There was no call from people to people across the
-     frontiers of hostility. "Let us end this homicidal mania. Let us
-     get back to sanity and save our younger sons. Let us hand over to
-     justice those who will continue the slaughter of our youth!" There
-     was no forgiveness, no generous instinct, no large-hearted common
-     sense in any combatant nation of Europe. Like wolves they had their
-     teeth in one another's throats, and would not let go, though all
-     bloody and exhausted, until one should fall at the last gasp, to be
-     mangled by the others. Yet in each nation, even in Germany, there
-     were men and women who saw the folly of the war and the crime of
-     it, and desired to end it by some act of renunciation and
-     repentance, and by some uplifting of the people's spirit to vault
-     the frontiers of hatred and the barbed wire which hedged in
-     patriotism. Some of them were put in prison. Most of them saw the
-     impossibility of counteracting the forces of insanity which had
-     made the world mad, and kept silent, hiding their thoughts and
-     brooding over them. The leaders of the nations continued to use
-     mob-passion as their argument and justification, excited it anew
-     when its fires burned low, focussed it upon definite objectives,
-     and gave it a sense of righteousness by the high-sounding
-     watchwords of liberty, justice, honour, and retribution. Each side
-     proclaimed Christ as its captain, and invoked the blessing and aid
-     of the God of Christendom, though Germans were allied with Turks,
-     and France was full of black and yellow men. The German people did
-     not try to avert their ruin by denouncing the criminal acts of
-     their War Lords nor by deploring the cruelties they had committed.
-     The Allies did not help them to do so, because of their lust for
-     bloody vengeance and their desire for the spoils of victory. The
-     peoples shared the blame of their rulers because they were not
-     nobler than their rulers. They cannot now plead ignorance or
-     betrayal by false ideals which duped them, because character does
-     not depend on knowledge, and it was the character of European
-     peoples which failed in the crisis of the world's fate, so that
-     they followed the call-back of the beast in the jungle rather than
-     the voice of the Crucified One whom they pretended to adore.'
-
-And perhaps most important of all (though the clergy here just stand for
-the complacent mob mind; they were no worse than the laity), this:--
-
-     'I think the clergy of all nations, apart from a heroic and saintly
-     few, subordinated their faith, which is a gospel of charity, to
-     national limitations. They were patriots before they were priests,
-     and their patriotism was sometimes as limited, as narrow, as
-     fierce, and as blood-thirsty as that of the people who looked to
-     them for truth and light. They were often fiercer, narrower, and
-     more desirous of vengeance than the soldiers who fought, because it
-     is now a known truth that the soldiers, German and Austrian, French
-     and Italian and British, were sick of the unending slaughter long
-     before the ending of the war, and would have made a peace more fair
-     than that which now prevails if it had been put to the common vote
-     in the trenches; whereas the Archbishop of Canterbury, the
-     Archbishop of Cologne, and the clergy who spoke from many pulpits
-     in many nations under the Cross of Christ, still stoked up the
-     fires of hate and urged the armies to go on fighting "in the cause
-     of Justice," "for the defence of the Fatherland," "for Christian
-     righteousness," to the bitter end. Those words are painful to
-     write, but as I am writing this book for truth's sake, at all cost,
-     I let them stand.'[79]
-
-
-_From Passion to Indifference: the Result of Drift_
-
-A common attitude just now is something like this:--
-
-'With the bitter memory of all that the Allies had suffered strong upon
-them, it is not astonishing that at the moment of victory an attitude of
-judicial impartiality proved too much to ask of human nature. The real
-terms will depend upon the fashion in which the formal terms are
-enforced. Much of the letter of the Treaty--trial of the Kaiser,
-etc.--has already disappeared. It is an intolerable priggishness to rake
-up this very excusable debauch just as we are returning to sobriety.'
-
-And that would be true, if, indeed, we had learned the lesson, and were
-adopting a new policy. But we are not. We have merely in some measure
-exchanged passion for lassitude and indifference. Later on we shall
-plead that the lassitude was as 'inevitable' as the passion. On such a
-line of reasoning, it is no good reacting by a perception of
-consequences against a mood of the moment. That is bad psychology and
-disastrous politics. To realise what 'temperamental politics' have
-already involved us in, is the first step towards turning our present
-drift into a more consciously directed progress.
-
-Note where the drift has already carried us with reference to the
-problem of the new Germany which it was our declared object to create.
-There were weeks following the Armistice in Germany, when a faithful
-adherence to the spirit of the declarations made by the Allies during
-the War would have brought about the utter moral collapse of the
-Prussianism we had fought to destroy. The Prussian had said to the
-people: 'Only Germany's military power has stood between her and
-humiliating ruin. The Allies victorious will use their victory to
-deprive Germany of her vital rights.' Again and again had the Allies
-denied this, and Germany, especially young Germany, watched to see which
-should prove right. A blockade, falling mainly, as Mr Churchill
-complacently pointed out (months after an armistice whose terms had
-included a promise to take into consideration the food needs of Germany)
-upon the feeble, the helpless, the children, answered that question for
-millions in Germany. Her schools and universities teem with hundreds of
-thousands stricken in their health, to whom the words 'never again' mean
-that never more will they put their trust in the 'na�ve innocence' of
-an internationalism that could so betray them.
-
-The militarism which morally was at so low an ebb at the Armistice, has
-been rehabilitated by such things as the blockade and its effects, the
-terms of the Treaty, and by minor but dramatic features like the
-retention of German prisoners long after Allied prisoners had returned
-home, and the occupation of German university town by African negroes.
-So that to-day a League of Nations offered by the Allies would probably
-be regarded with a contemptuous scepticism--somewhat similar to that
-with which America now regards the political beatitudes which it
-applauded in 1916-17.
-
-We are in fact modifying the Treaty. But those modifications will not
-meet the present situation, though they might well have met the
-situation in 1918. If we had done then what we are prepared to do _now_,
-Europe would have been set on the right road.
-
-Suppose the Allies had said in December, 1918 (as they are in effect
-being brought to say in 1920): 'We are not going to play into the hands
-of your militarists by demanding the surrender of the Kaiser or the
-punishment of the war criminals, vile as we believe their offences to
-be. We are not going to stimulate your waning nationalism by demanding
-an acknowledgment of your sole guilt. Nor are we going to ruin your
-industry or shatter your credit. On the contrary, we will start by
-making you a loan, facilitating your purchases of food and raw
-materials, and we will admit you into the League of Nations.'
-
-We are coming to that. If it could have been our policy early instead of
-late, how different this story would have been.
-
-And the tragedy is this: To do it late is to cause it to lose its
-effectiveness, for the situation changes. The measures which would have
-been adequate in 1918 are inadequate in 1920. It is the story of Home
-Rule. In the eighties Ireland would have accepted Gladstonian Home Rule
-as a basis at least of co-operation. English and Ulster opinion was not
-ready even for Home Rule. Forty years later it had reconciled itself to
-Home Rule. But by the time Britain was ready for the remedy, the
-situation had got quite beyond it. It now demanded something for which
-slow-moving opinion was unprepared. So with a League of Nations. The
-plan now supported by Conservatives would, as Lord Grey has avowed, have
-assuredly prevented this War if adopted in place of the mere Arbitration
-plans of the Hague Conference. At that date the present League of
-Nations Covenant would have been adequate to the situation. But some of
-the self-same Conservatives who now talk the language of
-internationalism--even in economic terms--poured contumely and scorn
-upon those of us who used it a decade or two since. And now, it is to be
-feared, the Government for which they are ready will certainly be
-inadequate to the situation which we face.
-
-
-_'An evil idealism and self-sacrificing hates.'_
-
-'The cause of this insanity,' says Sir Philip Gibbs, 'is the failure of
-idealism.' Others write in much the same strain that selfishness and
-materialism have reconquered the world. But this does not get us very
-far. By what moral alchemy was this vast outpouring of unselfishness,
-which sent millions to their death as to a feast (for men cannot die for
-selfish motives, unless more certain of their heavenly reward than we in
-the Western world are in the habit of being) turned into selfishness;
-their high ideals into low desires--if that is what has happened? Can it
-be a selfishness which ruins and starves us all? Is it selfishness on
-the part of the French which causes them to adopt towards Germany a
-policy of vengeance that prevents them receiving the Reparations that
-they so sorely need? Is it not indeed what one of their writers had
-called a 'holy hate,' instinctive, intuitive, purged of all calculation
-of advantage or disadvantage? Would not selfishness--enlightened
-selfishness--have given us not only a sounder Europe in the material
-sense, but a more humane Europe, with its hostilities softened by the
-very fact of contact and co-operation, and the very obviousness of our
-need for one another? The last thing desired here is to raise the old
-never-ending question of egoism versus altruism. All that is desired is
-to point out that a mere appeal to feeling, to a 'sense of
-righteousness' and idealism, is not enough. We have an illimitable
-capacity for sublimating our own motives, and of convincing ourselves
-completely, passionately, that our evil is good. And the greater our
-fear that intellectual inquiry, some sceptical rationalism, might shake
-the certitude of our righteousness, the greater the passion with which
-we shall stand by the guide of 'instinct and intuition.' Can there not
-be a destructive idealism as well as a social one? What of the Holy
-Wars? What of the Prussian who, after all, had his ideal, as the
-Bolshevist has his? What of all fanatics ready to die for their
-idealism?
-
-It is never the things that are obviously and patently evil that
-constitute the real menace to mankind. If Prussian nationalism had been
-nothing but gross lust and cruelty and oppression, as we managed to
-persuade ourselves during the War that it was, it would never have
-menaced the world. It did that because it could rally to its end great
-enthusiasms; because men were ready to die for it. Then it threatened
-us. Only those things which have some element of good are dangerous.
-
-A Treaty of the character of that Versailles would never have been
-possible if men had not been able to justify it to themselves on the
-ground of its punitive justice. The greeds expressed in the annexation
-of alien territory, and the violation of the principle of nationality,
-would never have been possible but for the plea of the sacred egoism of
-patriotism; our country before the enemy's, our country right or wrong.
-The assertion of sheer immoralism embodied in this last slogan can be
-made into the garments of righteousness if only our idealism is
-instinctive enough.
-
-Some of the worst crimes against justice have been due to the very
-fierceness of our passion for righteousness--a passion so fierce that it
-becomes undiscriminating and unseeing. It was the passion for what men
-believed to be religious truth which gave us the Inquisition and the
-religious wars; it was the passion for patriotism which made France for
-so many years, to the astonishment of the world, refuse justice to
-Dreyfus; it is a righteous loathing for negro crime which has made
-lynching possible for half a century in the United States, and which
-prevents the development of an opinion which will insist on its
-suppression. It is 'the just anger that makes men unjust.' The righteous
-passion that insists on a criminal's dying for some foul crime, is the
-very thing which prevents our seeing that the crime was not committed by
-him at all.
-
-It was something akin to this that made the Treaty of Versailles
-possible. That is why merely to appeal to idealism and feeling will
-fail, unless the defect of vision which makes evil appear good is
-corrected. It is not the feeling which is at fault; it is the defective
-vision causing feeling to be misused, as in the case of our feeling
-against the man accused on what seem to us good grounds, of a detestable
-offence. He is loathsome to our sight, because the crime is loathsome.
-But when some one else confesses to the crime, our feeling against the
-innocent man disappears. The direction it took, the object upon which it
-settled, was due to a misconception.
-
-Obviously that error may occur in politics. Equally certainly something
-worse may happen. With some real doubt in our mind whether this man is
-the criminal, we may yet, in the absence of any other culprit, stifle
-that doubt because of our anger, and our vague desire to have some
-victim suffer for so vile a crime. Feeling will be at fault, in such a
-case, as well as vision. And this thing happens, as many a lynching
-testifies. ('The innocence of Dreyfus would be a crime,' said a famous
-anti-Dreyfusard.) Both defects may have played their part in the tragedy
-of Versailles. In making our appeal to idealism, we assume that it is
-there, somewhere, to be aroused on behalf of justice; we must assume,
-consequently, that if it has not been aroused, or has attached itself to
-wrong purposes, it is because it has not seen where justice lay.
-
-Our only protection against these miscarriages, by which our passion is
-borne into the wrong channel, against the innocent while the guilty
-escape, is to keep our minds open to all the facts, all the truth. But
-this principle, which we have proclaimed as the very foundation stone of
-our democratic faith, was the first to go when we began the War. The
-idea that in war time, most particularly, a democracy needs to know the
-enemy's, or the Pacifist, or even the internationalist and liberal case,
-would have been regarded as a bad joke. Yet the failure to do just that
-thing inevitably created a conviction that all the wrong was on one side
-and all the right on the other, and that the problem of the settlement
-was mainly a problem of ruthless punishment. One of that temper may have
-come the errors of the Treaty and the miseries that have flowed from
-them. It was the virtual suppression of free debate on the purposes and
-aims of the War and their realisation that delivered public opinion into
-the keeping of the extremest Jingoes when we came to make the peace.
-
-
-_We create the temper that destroys us_
-
-Behind the war-time attitude of the belligerents, when they suppressed
-whatever news might tell in favour of the enemy, was the conviction that
-if we could really understand the enemy's position we should not want to
-fight him. That is probably true. Let us assume that, and assume
-consequently the need for control of news and discussion. If we are to
-come to the control by governments of political belief, as we once
-attempted control by ecclesiastical authority of religious belief, let
-us face the fact, and drop pretence about freedom of discussion, and see
-that the organisation of opinion is honest and efficient. There is a
-great deal to be said for the suppression of freedom of discussion. Some
-of the greatest minds in the world have refused to accept it as a
-working principle of society. Theirs is a perfectly arguable, extremely
-strong and thoroughly honest case.[80] But virtually to subpress the
-free dissemination of facts, as we have done not only during, but after
-the War, and at the same time to go on with our talk about free speech,
-free Press, free discussion, free democracy is merely to add to the
-insincerities and falsehoods, which can only end by making society
-unworkable. We not only disbelieve in free discussion in the really
-vital crises; we disbelieve in truth. That is one fact. There is another
-related to it. If we frankly admitted that public opinion has to be
-'managed,' organised, shaped, we should demand that it be done
-efficiently with a view to the achievement of conscious ends, which we
-should place before ourselves. What happened during the War was that
-everybody, including the governments who ought to have been free from
-the domination of the myths they were engaged in creating, lost sight of
-the ultimate purposes of the War, and of the fact that they were
-creating forces which would make the attainment of those ends
-impossible; rob victory, that is, of its effectiveness.
-
-Note how the process works. We say when war is declared: 'A truce to
-discussion. The time is for action, not words.' But the truce is a
-fiction. It means, not that talk and propaganda shall cease, only that
-all liberal contribution to it must cease. The _Daily News_ suspends its
-internationalism, but the _Daily Mail_ is more fiercely Chauvinist than
-ever. We must not debate terms. But Mr Bottomley debates them every
-week, on the text that Germans are to be exterminated like vermin. What
-results? The natural defenders of a policy even as liberal as that of an
-Edward Grey are silenced. The function of the liberal Press is
-suspended. The only really articulate voices on policy are the voices of
-Lord Northcliffe and Mr Bottomley. On such subjects as foreign policy
-those gentlemen do not ordinarily embrace all wisdom; there is something
-to be said in criticism of their views. But in the matter of the future
-settlement of Europe, to have criticised those views during the War
-would have exposed the critic to the charge of pro-Germanism. So
-Chauvinism had it all its own way. For months and years the country
-heard one view of policy only. The early policy of silence did really
-impose a certain silence upon the _Daily News_ or the _Manchester
-Guardian_; none whatever upon the _Times_ or the _Daily Mail_. None of
-us can, day after day, be under the influence of such a process without
-being affected by it.[81] The British public were affected by it. Sir
-Edward Grey's policy began to appear weak, an�mic, pro-German. And in
-the end he and his colleagues disappeared, partly, at least, as the
-result of the very policy of 'leaving it to the Government' upon which
-they had insisted at the beginning of the War. And the very group which,
-in 1914, was most insistent that there should be no criticism of
-Asquith, or McKenna, or Grey, were the very group whose criticisms
-turned those leaders out of office! While in 1914 it was accepted as
-proof of treason to say a word in criticism of (say) Grey, by 1916 it
-had almost become evidence of treason to say a word for him ... and that
-while he was still in office!
-
-The history of America's attitude towards the War displays a similar
-line of development. We are apt to forget that the League of Nations
-idea entered the realm of practical politics as the result of a great
-spontaneous popular movement in America in 1916, as powerful and
-striking as any since the movement against chattel-slavery. A year of
-war morale resulted, as has already been noted, in a complete reversal
-of attitude. America became the opponent and Britain the protagonist of
-the League of Nations.
-
-In passing, one of the astonishing things is that statesmen, compelled
-by the conditions of their profession to work with the raw material of
-public opinion, seem blind to the fact that the total effect of the
-forces which they set in motion will be to transform opinion and render
-it intractable. American advisers of President Wilson scouted the idea,
-when it was suggested to them early in the War, that the growth of the
-War temper would make it difficult for the President to carry out his
-policy.[82] A score of times the present writer has heard it said by
-Americans who ought to have known better, that the public did not care
-what the foreign policy of the country was, and that the President could
-carry out any policy that he liked. At that particular moment it was
-true, but quite obviously there was growing up at the time, as the
-direct result of war propaganda, a fierce Chauvinism, which should have
-made it plain to any one who observed its momentum, that the notion of
-President Wilson's policy being put into execution after victory was
-simply preposterous.
-
-Mr Asquith's Government was thus largely responsible for creating a
-balance of force in public opinion (as we shall see presently) which was
-responsible for its collapse. Mr Lloyd George has himself sanctioned a
-jingoism which, if useful temporarily, becomes later an insuperable
-obstacle to the putting into force of workable policies. For while
-Versailles could do what it liked in matters that did not touch the
-popular passion of the moment, in the matters that did, the statesmen
-were the victims of the temper they had done so much to create. There
-was a story current in Paris at the time of the Conference: 'You can't
-really expect to get an indemnity of ten thousand millions, so what is
-the good of putting it in the Treaty,' an expert is said to have
-remarked. 'My dear fellow,' said the Prime Minister, 'if the election
-had gone on another fortnight, it would have been fifty thousand
-millions.' But the insertion of these mythical millions into the Treaty
-has not been a joke; it has been an enormous obstacle to the
-reconstruction of Europe. It was just because public opinion was not
-ready to face facts in time, that the right thing had to be done at the
-wrong time, when perhaps it was too late. The effect on French policy
-has been still more important. It is the illusions concerning
-illimitable indemnities--directly fostered by the Governments in the
-early days of the Armistice--still dominating French public opinion,
-which more than anything else, perhaps, explains an attitude on the part
-of the French Government that has come near to smashing Europe.
-
-Even minds extraordinarily brilliant, as a rule, miscalculated the
-weight of this factor of public passion stimulated by the hates of war,
-and the deliberate exploitation of it for purposes of 'war morale' and
-propaganda. Thus Mr Wells,[83] writing even after two years of war,
-predicted that if the Germans were to make a revolution and overthrow
-the Kaiser, the Allies would 'tumble over each other' to offer Germany
-generous terms. What is worse is that British propaganda in enemy
-countries seems to have been based very largely on this assumption.[84]
-It constituted an elaboration of the offers implicit in Mr Wilson's
-speeches, that once Germany was democratised there should be, in Mr
-Wilson's words, 'no reprisal upon the German people, who have themselves
-suffered all things in this War which they did not choose.' The
-statement made by the German rulers that Germany was fighting against a
-harsh and destructive fate at the hands of the victors, was, President
-Wilson said, 'wantonly false.' 'No one is threatening the peaceful
-enterprise of the German Empire.' Our propaganda in Germany seems to
-have been an expansion of this text, while the negotiations which
-preceded the Armistice morally bound us to a 'Fourteen Points peace'
-(less the British reservation touching the Freedom of the Seas). The
-economic terms of the Peace Treaty, the meaning of which has been so
-illuminatingly explained by the representative of the British Treasury
-at the Conference, give the measure of our respect for that obligation
-of honour, once we had the Germans at our mercy.[85]
-
-
-_Fundamental Falsehoods and their Outcome_
-
-We witnessed both in England and America very great changes in the
-dynamics of opinion. Not only was one type of public man being brought
-forward and another thrust into the background, but one group of
-emotions and of motives of public policy were being developed and
-another group atrophied. The use of the word 'opinion,' with its
-implication of a rationalised process of intellectual decision, may be
-misleading. 'Public opinion' is here used as the sum of the forces which
-become articulate in a country, and which a government is compelled not
-necessarily to obey, but to take into account. (A government may
-bamboozle it or dodge it, but it cannot openly oppose it.)
-
-And when reference is made to the force of ideas--Nationalist or
-Socialist or Revolutionary--a power which we all admit by our panic
-fears of defeatist or Red Propaganda, it is necessary to keep in mind
-the kind of force that is meant. One speaks of Communist or Socialist,
-Pacifist or Patriotic ideas gaining influence, or creating a ferment.
-The idea of Communism, for instance, has obviously played some part in
-the vast upheavals that have followed the War.[86] But in a world where
-the great majority are still condemned to intense physical labour in
-order to live at all, where peoples as a whole are overworked, harassed,
-pre-occupied, it is impossible that ideas like those of Karl Marx
-should be subjected to elaborate intellectual analysis. Rather is it
-_an_ idea--of the common ownership of wealth or its equal distribution,
-of poverty being the fault of a definite class of the corporate body--an
-idea which fits into a mood produced largely by the prevailing
-conditions of life, which thus becomes the predominating factor of the
-new public opinion. Now foreign policy is certainly influenced, and in
-some great crises determined, by public opinion. But that opinion is not
-the resultant of a series of intellectual analyses of problems of Balkan
-nationalities or of Eastern frontiers; that is an obvious impossibility
-for a busy headline-reading public, hard at work all day and thirsty for
-relaxation and entertainment at night. The public opinion which makes
-itself felt in Foreign Policy--which, when war is in the balance after a
-longish period of peace, gives the preponderance of power to the most
-Chauvinistic elements; which, at the end of a war and on the eve of
-Treaty-making, as in the December 1918 election, insists upon a
-rigorously punitive peace--this opinion is the result of a few
-predominant 'sovereign ideas' or conceptions giving a direction to
-certain feelings.
-
-Take one such sovereign idea, that of the enemy nation as a person: the
-conception of it as a completely responsible corporate body. Some
-offence is committed by a German: 'Germany' did it, Germany including
-all Germans. To punish any German is to inflict satisfactory punishment
-for the offence, to avenge it. The idea, when we examine it, is found to
-be extremely abstract, with but the faintest relation to human
-realities. 'They drowned my brother,' said an Allied airman, when asked
-his feelings on a reprisal bombing raid over German cities. Thus,
-because a sailor from Hamburg drowns an Englishman in the North Sea, an
-old woman in a garret in Freiburg, or some children, who have but dimly
-heard of the war, and could not even remotely be held responsible for
-it, or have prevented it, are killed with a clear conscience because
-they are German. We cannot understand the Chinese, who punish one member
-of a family for another's fault, yet that is very much more rational
-than the conception which we accept as the most natural thing in the
-world. It is never questioned, indeed, until it is applied to ourselves.
-When the acts of British troops in Ireland or India, having an
-extraordinary resemblance to German acts in Belgium, are taken by
-certain American newspapers as showing that 'Britain,' (_i.e._ British
-people) is a bloodthirsty monster who delights in the killing of unarmed
-priests or peasants, we know that somehow the foreign critic has got it
-all wrong. We should realise that for some Irishman or Indian to
-dismember a charwoman or decapitate a little girl in Somersetshire,
-because of the crime of some Black and Tan in Cork, or English General
-at Amritsar, would be unadulterated savagery, a sort of dementia. In any
-case the poor folk in Somerset were not responsible; millions of English
-folk are not. They are only dimly aware of what goes on in India or
-Ireland, and are not really able in all matters, by any means, to
-control their government--any more than the Americans are able to
-control theirs.
-
-Yet the idea of responsibility attaching to a whole group, as
-justification for retaliation, is a very ancient idea, savage, almost
-animal in its origin. And anything can make a collectivity. To one small
-religious sect in a village it is a rival sect who are the enemies of
-the human race; in the mind of the tortured negro in the Congo any man,
-woman, or child of the white world could fairly be punished for the
-pains that he has suffered.[87] The conception has doubtless arisen out
-of something protective, some instinct useful, indispensable to the
-race; as have so many of the instincts which, applied unadapted to
-altered conditions, become socially destructive.
-
-Here then is evidence of a great danger, which can, in some measure, be
-avoided on one condition: that the truth about the enemy collectively is
-told in such a way as to be a reminder to us not to slip into injustices
-that, barbarous in themselves, drag us back into barbarism.
-
-But note how all the machinery of Press control and war-time colleges of
-propaganda prepared the public mind for the extremely difficult task of
-the settlement and Treaty-making that lay before it. (It was a task in
-which everything indicated that, unless great care were taken, public
-judgment would be so swamped in passion that a workable peace would be
-impossible.) The more tribal and barbaric aspect of the conception of
-collective responsibility was fortified by the intensive and deliberate
-exploitation of atrocities during the years of the War. The atrocities
-were not just an incident of war-time news: the principal emotions of
-the struggle came to centre around them. Millions whom the obscure
-political debate behind the conflict left entirely cold, were profoundly
-moved by these stories of cruelty and barbarity. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
-was among those who urged their systematic exploitation on that ground,
-in a Christmas communication to the _Times_.[88] With reference to
-stories of German cruelty, he said:--
-
-     'Hate has its uses in war, as the Germans have long discovered. It
-     steels the mind and sets the resolution as no other emotion can do.
-     So much do they feel this that Germans are constrained to invent
-     all sorts of reasons for hatred against us, who have, in truth,
-     never injured them in any way save that history and geography both
-     place us before them and their ambitions. To nourish hatred they
-     invent every lie against us, and so they attain a certain national
-     solidity....
-
-     'The bestiality of the German nation has given us a driving power
-     which we are not using, and which would be very valuable in this
-     stage of the war. Scatter the facts. Put them in red-hot fashion.
-     Do not preach to the solid south, who need no conversion, but
-     spread the propaganda wherever there are signs of any intrigue--on
-     the Tyne, the Clyde, in the Midlands, above all in Ireland, and
-     French Canada. Let us pay no attention to platitudinous Bishops or
-     gloomy Deans or any other superior people, who preach against
-     retaliation or whole-hearted warfare. We have to win, and we can
-     only win by keeping up the spirit of resolution of our own people.'
-
-Particularly does Sir Arthur Conan Doyle urge that the munition
-workers--who were, it will be remembered, largely woman--be stimulated
-by accounts of atrocities:
-
-     'The munition workers have many small vexations to endure, and
-     their nerves get sadly frayed. They need strong elemental emotions
-     to carry them on. Let pictures be made of this and other incidents.
-     Let them be hung in every shop. Let them be distributed thickly in
-     the Sinn Fein districts of Ireland, and in the hot-beds of
-     Socialism and Pacifism in England and Scotland. The Irishman has
-     always been of a most chivalrous nature.'
-
-It is possible that Sinn Fein has now taken to heart this counsel as to
-the use that may be made of cruelties committed by the enemy in war.
-
-Now there is no reason to doubt the truth of atrocities, whether they
-concern the horrible ill-treatment of prisoners in war-time of which Sir
-Arthur Conan Doyle writes, or the burning alive of negro women in peace
-time in Texas and Alabama, or the flogging of women in India, or
-reprisals by British soldiers in Ireland, or by Red Russians against
-White and White against Red. Every story may be true. And if each side
-told the whole truth, instead of a part of it, these atrocities would
-help us towards an understanding of this complex nature of ours. But we
-never do tell the whole truth. Always in war-time does each side leave
-out two things essential to the truth: the good done by the enemy and
-the evil done by ourselves. If that elementary condition of truth were
-fulfilled, these pictures of cruelty, bestiality, obscenity, rape,
-sadism, sheer ferocity, might possibly tell us this: 'There is the
-primeval tiger in us; man's history--and especially the history of his
-wars--is full of these warnings of the depths to which he can descend.
-Those ten thousand men and women of pure English stock gloating over the
-helpless prisoners whom they are slowly roasting alive, are not normally
-savages.[89] Most of them are kindly and decent folk. These stories of
-the September massacres of the Terror no more prove French nature to be
-depraved than the history of the Inquisition, or of Ireland or India,
-proves Spanish or British nature to be depraved.'
-
-But the truth is never so told. It was not so told during the War. Day
-after day, month after month, we got these selected stories. In the
-Press, in the cinemas, in Church services, they were related to us. The
-message the atrocity carried was not: here is a picture of what human
-nature is capable of; let us be on our guard that nothing similar marks
-our history. That was neither the intention nor the result of
-propaganda. It said in effect and was intended to say:--
-
-'This lecherous brute abusing a woman is a picture of Germany. All
-Germans are like that; and no people but Germans are like that. That
-sort of thing never happens in other armies; cruelty, vengeance, and
-blood-lust are unknown in the Allied forces. That is why we are at war.
-Remember this at the peace table.'
-
-That falsehood was conveyed by what the Press and the cinema
-systematically left out. While they told us of every vile thing done by
-the enemy, they told us of not one act of kindness or mercy among all
-those hundred million during the years of war.
-
-The suppression of everything good of the enemy was paralleled by the
-suppression of everything evil done by our side. You may search Press
-and cinemas in vain for one single story of brutality committed by
-Serbian, Rumanian, Greek, Italian, French, or Russian--until the last in
-time became an enemy. Then suddenly our papers were full of Russian
-atrocities. At first these were Bolshevik atrocities only, and of the
-'White' troops we heard no evil. Then when later the self-same Russian
-troops that had fought on our side during the War fought Poland, our
-papers were full of the atrocities inflicted on Poles.
-
-By the daily presentation during years of a picture which makes the
-enemy so entirely bad as not to be human at all, and ourselves entirely
-good, the whole nature of the problem is changed. Admit these premises,
-and policies like those proposed by Mr Wells become sheer rubbish. They
-are based on the assumption that Germans are accessible to ordinary
-human influences like other human beings. But every day for years we
-have been denying that premise. If the daily presentation of the facts
-is a true presentation, the _New York Tribune_ is right:--
-
-     'We shall not get permanent peace by treating the Hun as if he were
-     not a Hun. One might just as well attempt to cure a man-eating
-     tiger of his hankering for human flesh by soft words as to break
-     the German of his historic habits by equally futile kind words. The
-     way to treat a German, while Germans follow their present methods,
-     is as a common peril to all civilised mankind. Since the German
-     employs the method of the wild beast he must be treated as beyond
-     the appeal of generous or kind methods. When one is generous to a
-     German, he plans to take advantage of that generosity to rob or
-     murder; this is his international history, never more
-     conspicuously illustrated than here in America. Kindness he
-     interprets as fear, regard for international law as proof of
-     decadence; agitation for disarmament has been for him the final
-     evidence of the degeneracy of his neighbours.'[90]
-
-That conclusion is inevitable if the facts are really as presented by
-the _Daily Mail_ for four years. The problem of peace in that case is
-not one of finding a means of dealing, by the discipline of a common
-code or tradition, with common shortcomings--violences, hates,
-cupidities, blindnesses. The problem is not of that nature at all. We
-don't have these defects; they are German defects. For five years we
-have indoctrinated the people with a case, which if true, renders only
-one policy in Europe admissible; either the ruthless extermination of
-these monsters, who are not human beings at all; or their permanent
-subjugation, the conversion of Germany into a sort of world lunatic
-asylum.
-
-When therefore the big public, whether in America or France or Britain,
-simply will not hear (in 1919) of any League of Nations that shall ever
-include Germany they are right--if we have been telling them the truth.
-
-Was it necessary thus to 'organise' hate for the purposes of war?
-Violent partisanship would assuredly assert itself in war-time without
-such stimulus. And if we saw more clearly the relationship of these
-instincts and emotions to the formation of policy, we should organise,
-not their development, but their restraint and discipline, or, that
-being impossible in sufficient degree (which it may be), organise their
-re-direction to less anti-social ends.
-
-As it was, it ended by making the war entered upon sincerely, so far as
-public feeling was concerned, for a principle or policy, simply a war
-for no purpose beyond victory--and finally for domination at the price
-of its original purpose. For one who is attracted to the purpose, a
-thousand are attracted to the war--the simple success of 'our side.'
-Partisanship as a motive is animal in its deep, remote innateness.
-Little boys and girls at the time of the University boat race will
-choose the Oxford or the Cambridge colours, and from that moment
-passionately desire the victory of 'their' side. They may not know what
-Oxford is, or what a University is, or what a boat race is: it does not
-in the least detract from the violence of their partisanship. You get
-therefore a very simple mathematical explanation of the increasing
-subservience of the War's purpose to the simple purpose of victory and
-domination for itself. Every child can understand and feel for the
-latter, very few adults for the former.
-
-This competitive feeling, looking to victory, domination, is feeding the
-whole time the appetite for power. These instincts, and the clamant
-appetite for domination and coercion are whetted to the utmost and then
-re-inforced by a moral indignation, which justifies the impulse to
-retaliation on the ground of punitive justice for inhuman horrors. We
-propose to establish with this outlaw a relationship of contract! To
-bargain with him about our respective rights! In the most favourable
-circumstances it demands a very definite effort of discipline to impose
-upon ourselves hampering restrictions in the shape of undertakings to
-another Power, when we believe that we are in a position to impose our
-will. But to suggest imposing upon ourselves the restrictions of such a
-relationship with an enemy of the human race.... The astonishing thing
-is that those who acquiesced in this deliberate cultivation of the
-emotions and instincts inseparable from violent partisanship, should
-ever have expected a policy of impartial justice to come out of that
-state of mind. They were asking for psychological miracles.
-
-That the propaganda was in large part conscious and directed was proved
-by the ease with which the flood of atrocity stories could suddenly be
-switched over from Germans to Russians. During the time that the Russian
-armies were fighting on our side, there was not a single story in our
-Press of Russian barbarity. But when the same armies, under the same
-officers, are fighting against the Poles, atrocities even more ingenious
-and villainous than those of the Germans in Belgium suddenly
-characterise the conduct of the Russian troops. The atrocities are
-transposed with an ease equal to that with which we transfer our
-loyalties.[91] When Pilsudski's troops fought against Russia, all the
-atrocities were committed by them, and of the Russian troops we heard
-nothing but heroism. When Brusiloff fights under Bolshevik command our
-papers print long Polish accounts of the Russian barbarities.
-
-We have seen that behind the conception of the enemy as a single person
-is a falsehood: it is obvious that seventy millions of men, women, and
-children, of infinitely varying degrees of responsibility, are not a
-single person. The falsehood may be, in some degree, an unwitting one, a
-primitive myth that we have inherited from tribal forbears. But if that
-is so, we should control our news with a view to minimizing the dangers
-of mythical fallacies, bequeathed to us by a barbaric past. If it is
-necessary to use them for the purposes of war morale, we should drop
-them when the war is over, and pass round the word, to the Churches for
-instance, that on the signing of an armistice the moratorium of the
-Sermon on the Mount comes to an end. As it is, two years after the
-Armistice, an English Vicar tells his congregation that to bring
-Austrian children to English, to save them from death by famine, is an
-unpatriotic and seditious act.
-
-Note where the fundamental dishonesties of our propaganda lead us in the
-matter of policy, in what we declared to be one of the main objects of
-the War: the erection of Europe upon a basis of nationality. Our whole
-campaign implied that the problem resolved itself into the destruction
-of one great Power, who denied that principle, as against the Allies,
-who were ready to grant it. How near that came to the truth, the round
-score of 'unredeemed' nationalities deliberately created by the Allies
-in the Treaties sufficiently testifies. If we had avowed the facts, that
-a Europe of completely independent nationalities is not possible, that
-great populations will not be shut off from the sea, or recognise
-independent nationalities to the extent of risking economic or political
-strangulation, we should then necessarily have gone on to devise the
-limitations and obligations which all must accept and the rights which
-all must accord. We should have been fighting for a body of principles
-as the basis of a real association of States. The truth, or some measure
-of it, would have prepared us all for that limitation of independence
-without which no nationality can be secure. The falsehood that Germany
-alone stood in the way of the recognition of nationality, made a treaty
-really based on that principle (namely, upon all of us consenting to
-limit our independence) impossible of acceptance by our own opinion. And
-one falsehood leads to another. Because we refused to be sincere about
-the inducements which we held out in turn to Italy, Bulgaria, Rumania,
-Greece, we staggered blindly into the alternative betrayal first of one
-party, then of another. Just as we were faithless to the principle of
-nationality when we acquiesced in the Russian attitude towards Finland
-and Poland, and the Italian towards Serbia, so later we were to prove
-faithless to the principle of the Great State when we supported the
-Border Nationalities in their secession from Russia. We have encouraged
-and helped States like Ukrainia, Azerbaidjan. But we have been just as
-ready to stand for 'Great Russia,' if Koltchak appeared to be winning,
-knowing perfectly well that we cannot be loyal to both causes.
-
-Our defence is apparent enough. It is fairly illustrated in the case of
-Italy. If Italy had not come into the war, Serbia's prospect of any
-redemption at all would have been hopeless; we were doing the best we
-could for Serbia.[92]
-
-Assuredly--but we happened to be doing it by false pretences, sham
-heroics, immeasurable hypocrisy. And the final effect was to be the
-defeat of the aims for which we were fighting. If our primary aims had
-been those we proclaimed, we could no more have violated the principle
-of nationality to gain an ally, than we could have ceded the Isle of
-Wight to Germany, and the intellectual rectitude which would have
-enabled us to see that, would also have enabled us to see the necessity
-of the conditions on which alone a society of nations is possible.
-
-The indispensable step to rendering controllable those passions now
-'uncontrollable' and disrupting Europe, is to tell the truth about the
-things by which we excuse them. Again, our fundamental nature may not
-change, any more than it would if we honestly investigated the evidence
-proving the innocence of the man, whose execution we demand, of the
-crime which is the cause of our hatred. That investigation would be an
-effort of the mind; the result of it would be a change in the direction
-of our feelings. The facts which it is necessary to face are not
-abstruse or difficult. They are self-evident to the simplest mind. The
-fact that the 'person' whose punishment we demand in the case of the
-enemy is not a person at all, either bad or good, but millions of
-different persons of varying degrees of badness and goodness, many of
-them--millions--without any responsibility at all for the crime that
-angers us, this fact, if faced, would alter the nature of our feelings.
-We should see that we were confronted by a case of mistaken identity.
-Perhaps we do not face this evidence because we treasure our hate. If
-there were not a 'person' our hate could have no meaning; we could not
-hate an 'administrative area,' nor is there much satisfaction in
-humiliating it and dominating it. We can desire to dominate and
-humiliate a person, and are often ready to pay a high price for the
-pleasure. If we ceased to think of national States as persons, we might
-cease to think of them as conflicting interests, in competition with one
-another, and begin to think of them instead as associations within a
-great association.
-
-Take another very simple truth that we will not face: that our arms do,
-and must do, the things that raise our passions when done by the enemy.
-Our blockades and bombardments also kill old women and children. Our
-soldiers, too, the gallant lads who mount our aeroplanes, the sailors
-who man our blockades, are baby-killers. They must be; they cannot help
-it if they are to bomb or blockade at all. Yet we never do admit this
-obvious fact. We erect a sheer falsehood, and then protect ourselves
-against admitting it by being so 'noble' about it that we refuse to
-discuss it. We simply declare that in no circumstances could England, or
-English soldiers, ever make war upon women and children, or even be
-unchivalrous to them. That is a moral premise beyond or behind which
-patriotism will not permit our minds to go. If the 'nobility' of
-attitude had any relation to our real conduct, one would rejoice. When,
-during the armistice negotiations, the Germans exacted that they should
-be permitted means, after the surrender of their fleet, of feeding their
-people, a New York paper declared the condition an insult to the Allies.
-'The Germans are prisoners,' it said, 'and the Allies do not starve
-prisoners.' But one discovers a few weeks later that these noble
-gestures are quite compatible with the maintenance of the blockade, on
-the ground that Germans for their sins ought to be starved. We then
-become the agents of Providence in punitive justice.
-
-When the late Lord Fisher[93] came out squarely and publicly in defence
-of the killing of women and children (in the submarine sinking) as a
-necessary part of war, there seemed a chance for intellectual honesty in
-the matter; for a real examination of the principles of our conduct. If
-we faced the facts in this honest sailor-like fashion there was some
-hope either that we should refuse to descend to reprisals by
-disembowelling little girls; or, if it should appear that such things
-are inseparable from war, that it would help to get a new feeling about
-war. But Lord Fisher complains that the Editor of the paper to which he
-sent his letter suppressed it from the later editions of his paper for
-fear it should shock the public. Shock!
-
-You see, _our_ shells falling on schools and circuses don't disembowel
-little girls; our blockades don't starve them. Everybody knows that
-British shells and British blockades would not do such things. When
-Britain blockades, pestilence and hunger and torture are not suffering;
-a dying child is not a dying child. Patriotism draws a shutter over our
-eyes and ears.
-
-When this degree of self-deception is possible, there is no infamy of
-which a kindly, humane, and emotionally moral people may not prove
-themselves capable; no moral contradiction or absurdity which mankind
-may not approve. Anything may become right, anything may become wrong.
-
-The evil is not only in its resultant inhumanities. It lies much more in
-the fact that this development of moral blinkers deprives us of the
-capacity to see where we are going, and what we are crushing underfoot;
-and that may well end by our walking over the precipice.
-
-During the War, we formed judgments of the German character which
-literally make it sub-human. For our praise of the French (during the
-same period) language failed us. Yet less than twenty years ago the
-r�les were reversed.[94] The French were the mad dogs, and the Germans
-of our community of blood.
-
-The refusal to face the plain facts of life, a refusal made on grounds
-which we persuade ourselves are extremely noble, but which in fact
-result too often in simple falsehood and distortion, is revealed by the
-common pre-war attitude to the economic situation dealt with in this
-book. The present writer took the ground before the War that much of the
-dense population of modern Europe could not support itself save by
-virtue of an economic internationalism which political ideas (ideas
-which war would intensify) were tending to make impossible. Now it is
-obvious that before there can be a spiritual life, there must be a
-fairly adequate physical one. If life is a savage and greedy scramble
-over the means of sheer physical sustenance, there cannot be much in it
-that is noble and inspiring. The point of the argument was, as already
-mentioned, not that the economic pre-occupation _should_ occupy the
-whole of life, but that it _will_ if it is simply disregarded; the way
-to reduce the economic pre-occupation is to solve the economic problem.
-Yet these plain and undeniable truths were somehow twisted into the
-proposition that men went to war because they believed it 'paid,' in the
-stockbroking sense, and that if they saw it did not 'pay' they would not
-go to war. The task of attempting to find the conditions in which it
-will be possible for men to live at all with decent regard for their
-fellows, without drifting into cannibalistic struggles for sustenance
-one against another, is made to appear something sordid, a 'usurer's
-gospel.' And on that ground, very largely, the 'economics' of
-international policy were neglected. We are still facing the facts. Self
-deception has become habitual.
-
-President Wilson failed to carry through the policy he had proclaimed,
-as greater men have failed in similar moral circumstances. The failure
-need not have been disastrous to the cause which he had espoused. It
-might have marked merely a step towards ultimate success, if he had
-admitted the failure. Had he said in effect: 'Reaction has won this
-battle; we have been guilty of errors and shortcomings, but we shall
-maintain the fight, and avoid such errors in future,' he would have
-created for the generation which followed a clear-cut issue. Whatever
-there was of courage and sincerity of purpose in the idealism he had
-created earlier in the War, would have rallied to his support. Just
-because such a declaration would have created an issue dividing men
-sharply and even bitterly, it would have united each side strongly; men
-would have had the two paths clearly and distinctly before their eyes,
-and though forced for the time along that of reaction, they would have
-known the direction in which they were travelling. Again and again
-victory has come out of defeat; again and again defeat has nerved men to
-greater effort.
-
-But when defeat is represented as victory by the trusted leader, there
-follows the subtlest and most paralysing form of confusion and doubt.
-Men no longer know who are the friends and who the enemies of the things
-they care for. When callous cruelty is called righteous, and cynical
-deception justice, men begin to lose their capacity to distinguish the
-one from the other, and to change sides without consciousness of their
-treason.
-
-In the field of social relationship, the better management by men of
-their society, a sincere facing of the simple truths of life, right
-conclusions from facts that are of universal knowledge, are of
-immeasurably greater importance than erudition. Indeed we see that again
-and again learning obscures in this field the simpler truths. The
-Germany that had grown up before the War is a case in point. Vast
-learning, meticulous care over infinite detail, had become the mark of
-German scholarship. But all the learning of the professors did not
-prevent a gross misreading of what, to the rest of the world, seemed all
-but self-evident--simple truths which perhaps would have been clearer if
-the learning had been less, used as it was to buttress the lusts of
-domination and power.
-
-The main errors of the Treaty (which, remember, was the work of the
-greatest diplomatic experts in Europe) reveal something similar. If the
-punitive element--which is still applauded--defeats finally the aims
-alike of justice, our own security, appeasement, disarmament, and sets
-up moral forces that will render our New World even more ferociously
-cruel and hopeless than the Old, it will not be because we were ignorant
-of the fact that 'Germany'--or 'Austria' or 'Russia'--is not a person
-that can be held responsible and punished in this simple fashion. It did
-not require an expert knowledge of economics to realise that a ruined
-Germany could not pay vast indemnities. Yet sometimes very learned men
-were possessed by these fallacies. It is not learning that is needed to
-penetrate them. A wisdom founded simply on the sincere facing of
-self-evident facts would have saved European opinion from its most
-mischievous excesses. This ignorance of the learned may perhaps be
-related to another phenomenon; a great increase in our understanding of
-inert matter, unaccompanied by any corresponding increase in our
-understanding of human conduct. This latter understanding demands a
-temperamental self-control and detachment, which mere technical
-knowledge does not ask. Although in technical science we have made such
-advances as would cause the Athenians, say, to look on us as gods, we
-show no corresponding advance upon them, or upon the Hebrew prophets for
-that matter, in the understanding of conduct and its motives. And the
-spectacle of Germany--of the modern world, indeed--so efficient in the
-management of matter, so clumsy in the understanding of the essentials
-of human relationship, reminds us once more of the futility of mere
-technical knowledge, unless accompanied by a better moral understanding.
-For without the latter we are unable to use the improvement in technique
-(as Europe is unable to use it to-day) for indispensable human ends. Or
-worse still, technical knowledge, in the absence of wisdom and
-discipline, merely gives us more efficient weapons of collective
-suicide. Butler's fantasy of the machines which men have made acquiring
-a mind of their own, and then rounding upon their masters and
-destroying them, has very nearly come true. If some new force, like the
-release of atomic energy, had been discovered during this war, and
-applied (as Mr Wells has imagined it being applied) to bombs that would
-go on exploding without cessation for a week or two, we know that
-passions ran so high that both sides would have used them, as both sides
-in the next war will use super-poison gas and disease germs. Not only
-the destruction, therefore, but the passion and the ruthlessness, the
-fears and hates, the universal pre-emption of wealth for 'defence'
-perpetually translating itself into preventive offence, would have
-grown. Man's society would assuredly have been destroyed by the
-instruments that he himself had made, and Butler's fantasy would have
-come true.
-
-It is coming true to-day. What starves Europe is not lack of technical
-knowledge; there is more technical knowledge than when Europe could feed
-itself. If we could combine our forces to effective co-operation, the
-Malthusian dragon could be kept at bay. It is the group of ideas which
-underlie the process of Balkanisation that stand in the way of turning
-our combined forces against Nature instead of against one another.
-
-We have gone wrong mainly in certain of the simpler and broader issues
-of human relationship, and this book has attempted to disentangle from
-the complex mass of facts in the international situation, those
-'sovereign ideas' which constitute in crises the basic factors of public
-action and opinion. In so doing there may have been some
-over-simplification. That will not greatly matter, if the result is some
-re-examination and clarification of the predominant beliefs that have
-been analysed. 'Truth comes out of error more easily than out of
-confusion,' as Bacon warned us. It is easier to correct a working
-hypothesis of society, which is wrong in some detail, than to achieve
-wise conduct in society without any social principle. If social or
-political phenomena are for us first an unexplained tangle of forces,
-and we live morally from hand to mouth, by opinions which have no
-guiding principle, our emotions will be at the mercy first of one
-isolated fact or incident, and then of another.
-
-A certain parallel has more than once been suggested in these pages.
-European society is to-day threatened with disintegration as the result
-of ideas and emotions that have collected round Patriotism. A century or
-two since it was threatened by ideas and passions which gathered round
-religious dogma. By what process did we arrive at religious toleration
-as a social principle? That question has been suggested because to
-answer it may throw some light on our present problem of rendering
-Patriotism a social instead of an anti-social force.
-
-If to-day, for the most part, in Europe and America one sect can live
-beside another in peace, where a century or two ago there would have
-been fierce hatreds, wars, massacres, and burnings, it is not because
-the modern population is more learned in theology (it is probably less
-so), but rather conversely, because theological theory gave place to lay
-judgment in the ordinary facts of life.
-
-If we have a vast change in the general ideas of Europe in the religious
-sphere, in the attitude of men to dogma, in the importance which they
-attach to it, in their feeling about it; a change which for good or evil
-is a vast one in its consequences, a moral and intellectual revulsion
-which has swept away one great difficulty of human relationship and
-transformed society; it is because the laity have brought the discussion
-back to principles so broad and fundamental that the data became the
-facts of human life and experience--data with which the common man is as
-familiar as the scholar. Of the present-day millions for whom certain
-beliefs of the older theologians would be morally monstrous, how many
-have been influenced by elaborate study concerning the validity of this
-or that text? The texts simply do not weigh with them, though for
-centuries they were the only things that counted. What do weigh with
-them are profounder and simpler things--a sense of justice,
-compassion--things which would equally have led the man of the sixteenth
-century to question the texts and the premises of the Church, if
-discussion had been free. It is because it was not free that the social
-instinct of the mass, the general capacity to order their relations so
-as to make it possible for them to live together, became distorted and
-vitiated. And the wars of religion resulted. To correct this vitiation,
-to abolish these disastrous hates and misconceptions, elaborate learning
-was not needed. Indeed, it was largely elaborate learning which had
-occasioned them. The judges who burned women alive for witchcraft, or
-inquisitors who sanctioned that punishment for heresy, had vast and
-terrible stores of learning. _What was needed was that these learned
-folk should question their premises in the light of facts of common
-knowledge._ It is by so doing that their errors are patent to the quite
-unlearned of our time. No layman was equipped to pass judgment on the
-historical reasons which might support the credibility of this or that
-miracle, or the intricate arguments which might justify this or that
-point of dogma. But the layman was as well equipped, indeed, he was
-better equipped than the schoolman, to question whether God would ever
-torture men everlastingly for the expression of honest belief; the
-observer of daily occurrences, to say nothing of the physicist, was as
-able as the theologian to question whether a readiness to believe
-without evidence is a virtue at all. Questions of the damnation of
-infants, eternal torment, were settled not by the men equipped with
-historical and ecclesiastical scholarship, but by the average man, going
-back to the broad truths, to first principles, asking very simple
-questions, the answer to which depended not upon the validity of texts,
-but upon correct reasoning concerning facts which are accessible to all;
-upon our general sense of life as a whole, and our more elementary
-institutions of justice and mercy; reasoning and intuitions which the
-learning of the expert often distorts.
-
-Exactly the service which extricated us from the intellectual and moral
-confusion that resulted in such catastrophes in the field of religion,
-is needed in the field of politics. From certain learned folk--writers,
-poets, professors (German and other), journalists, historians, and
-rulers--the public have taken a group of ideas concerning Patriotism,
-Nationalism, Imperialism, the nature of our obligation to the State, and
-so on, ideas which may be right or wrong, but which we are all agreed,
-will have to be very much changed if men are ever to live together in
-peace and freedom; just as certain notions concerning the institution of
-private property will have to be changed if the mass of men are to live
-in plenty.
-
-It is a commonplace of militarist argument that so long as men feel as
-they do about their Fatherland, about patriotism and nationalism,
-internationalism will be an impossibility. If that is true--and I think
-it is--peace and freedom and welfare will wait until those large issues
-have been raised in men's minds with sufficient vividness to bring about
-a change of idea and so a change of feeling with reference to them.
-
-It is unlikely, to say the least, that the mass of Englishmen or
-Frenchmen will ever be in possession of detailed knowledge sufficient to
-equip them to pass judgment on the various rival solutions of the
-complex problems that face us, say, in the Balkans. And yet it was
-immediately out of a problem of Balkan politics that the War arose, and
-future wars may well arise out of those same problems if they are
-settled as badly in the future as in the past.
-
-The situation would indeed be hopeless if the nature of human
-relationship depended upon the possession by the people as a whole of
-expert knowledge in complex questions of that kind. But happily the
-Sarajevo murders would never have developed into a war involving twenty
-nations but for the fact that there had been cultivated in Europe
-suspicions, hatreds, insane passions, and cupidities, due largely to
-false conceptions (though in part also themselves prompting the false
-conceptions) of a few simple facts in political relationship;
-conceptions concerning the necessary rivalry of nations, the idea that
-what one nation gains another loses, that States are doomed by a fate
-over which they have no control to struggle together for the space and
-opportunities of a limited world. But for the atmosphere that these
-ideas create (as false theological notions once created a similar
-atmosphere between rival religious groups) most of these at present
-difficult and insoluble problems of nationality and frontiers and
-government, would have solved themselves.
-
-The ideas which feed and inflame these passions of rivalry, hostility,
-fear, hate, will be modified, if at all, by raising in the mind of the
-European some such simple elementary questions as were raised when he
-began to modify his feeling about the man of rival religious belief. The
-Political Reformation in Europe will come by questioning, for instance,
-the whole philosophy of patriotism, the morality or the validity, in
-terms of human well-being, of a principle like that of 'my country,
-right or wrong';[95] by questioning whether a people really benefit by
-enlarging the frontiers of their State; whether 'greatness' in a nation
-particularly matters; whether the man of the small State is not in all
-the great human values the equal of the man of the great Empire; whether
-the real problems of life are greatly affected by the colour of the
-flag; whether we have not loyalties to other things as well as to our
-State; whether we do not in our demand for national sovereignty ignore
-international obligation without which the nations can have neither
-security nor freedom; whether we should not refuse to kill or horribly
-mutilate a man merely because we differ from him in politics. And with
-those, if the emergence from chattel-slavery is to be complemented by
-the emergence from wage slavery, must be put similarly fundamental
-questions touching problems like that of private property and the
-relation of social freedom thereto; we must ask why, if it is rightly
-demanded of the citizen that his life shall be forfeit to the safety of
-the State, his surplus money, property, shall not be forfeit to its
-welfare.
-
-To very many, these questions will seem a kind of blasphemy, and they
-will regard those who utter them as the subjects of a loathsome
-perversion. In just that way the orthodox of old regarded the heretic
-and his blasphemies. And yet the solution of the difficulties of our
-time, this problem of learning to live together without mutual homicide
-and military slavery, depends upon those blasphemies being uttered.
-Because it is only in some such way that the premises of the differences
-which divide us, the realities which underlie them, will receive
-attention. It is not that the implied answer is necessarily the truth--I
-am not concerned now for a moment to urge that it is--but that until the
-problem is pushed back in our minds to these great yet simple issues,
-the will, temper, general ideas of Europe on this subject will remain
-unchanged. And if _they_ remain unchanged so will its conduct and
-condition.
-
-The tradition of nationalism and patriotism, around which have gathered
-our chief political loyalties and instincts, has become in the actual
-conditions of the world an anti-social and disruptive force. Although we
-realize perhaps that a society of nations of some kind there must be,
-each unit proclaims proudly its anti-social slogan of sacred egoisms and
-defiant immoralism; its espousal of country as against right.[96]
-
-The danger--and the difficulty--resides largely in the fact that the
-instincts of gregariousness and group solidarity, which prompt the
-attitude of 'my country right or wrong,' are not in themselves evil:
-both gregariousness and pugnacity are indispensable to society.
-Nationality is a very precious manifestation of the instincts by which
-alone men can become socially conscious and act in some corporate
-capacity. The identification of 'self' with society, which patriotism
-accomplishes within certain limits, the sacrifice of self for the
-community which it inspires--even though only when fighting other
-patriotisms--are moral achievements of infinite hope.
-
-The Catharian heresy that Jehovah of the Old Testament is in reality
-Satan masquerading as God has this pregnant suggestion; if the Father of
-Evil ever does destroy us, we may be sure that he will come, not
-proclaiming himself evil, but proclaiming himself good, the very Voice
-of God. And that is the danger with patriotism and the instincts that
-gather round it. If the instincts of nationalism were simply evil, they
-would constitute no real danger. It is the good in them that has made
-them the instrument of the immeasurable devastation which they
-accomplish.
-
-That Patriotism does indeed transcend all morality, all religious
-sanctions as we have heretofore known them, can be put to a very simple
-test. Let an Englishman, recalling, if he can, his temper during the
-War, ask himself this question: Is there anything, anything whatsoever,
-that he would have refused to do, if the refusal had meant the triumph
-of Germany and the defeat of England? In his heart he knows that he
-would have justified any act if the safety of his country had hung upon
-it.
-
-Other patriotisms have like justifications. Yet would defeat,
-submission, even to Germany, involve worse acts than those we have felt
-compelled to commit during the War and since--in the work of making our
-power secure? Did the German ask of the Alsatian or the Pole worse than
-we have been compelled to ask of our own soldiers in Russia, India, or
-Ireland?
-
-The old struggle for power goes on. For the purpose of that struggle we
-are prepared to transform our society in any way that it may demand. For
-the purposes of the war for power we will accept anything that the
-strength of the enemy imposes: we will be socialist, autocratic,
-democratic, or communist; we will conscribe the bodies, souls, wealth of
-our people; we will proscribe, as we do, the Christian doctrine, and
-all mercy and humanity; we will organise falsehood and deceit, and call
-it statecraft and strategy; lie for the purpose of inflaming hate, and
-rejoice at the effectiveness of our propaganda; we will torture helpless
-millions by pestilence and famine--as we have done--and look on unmoved;
-our priests, in the name of Christ, will reprove misplaced pity, and
-call for the further punishment of the wicked, still greater efforts in
-the Fight for Right. We shall not care what transformations take place
-in our society or our natures; or what happens to the human spirit.
-Obediently, at the behest of the enemy--because, that is, his power
-demands that conduct of us--shall we do all those things, or anything,
-save only one: we will not negotiate or make a contract with him. _That_
-would limit our 'independence'; by which we mean that his submission to
-our mastery would be less complete.
-
-We can do acts of infinite cruelty; disregard all accepted morality; but
-we cannot allow the enemy to escape the admission of defeat.
-
-If we are to correct the evils of the older tradition, and build up one
-which will restore to men the art of living together, we must honestly
-face the fact that the older tradition has failed. So long as the old
-loyalties and patriotisms, tempting us with power and dominion, calling
-to the deep hunger excited by those things, and using the banners of
-righteousness and justice, seem to offer security, and a society which,
-if not ideal, is at least workable, we certainly shall not pay the price
-which all profound change of habit demands. We have seen that as a fact
-of his history man only abandons power and force over others when it
-fails. At present, almost everywhere, we refuse to face the failure of
-the old forms of political power. We don't believe that we need the
-co-operation of the foreigner, or we believe that we can coerce him.
-
-Little attention has been given here to the machinery of
-internationalism--League of Nations, Courts of Arbitration, Disarmament.
-This is not because machinery is unimportant. But if we possessed the
-Will, if we were ready each to pay his contribution in some sacrifice of
-his independence, of his opportunity of domination, the difficulties of
-machinery would largely disappear. The story of America's essay in
-internationalism has warned us of the real difficulty. Courts of
-Arbitration, Leagues of Nations, were devices to which American opinion
-readily enough agreed; too readily. For the event showed that the old
-conceptions were not changed. They had only been disregarded. No
-machinery of internationalism can work so long as the impulses and
-prepossessions of irresponsible nationalism retain their power. The test
-we must apply to our sincerity is our answer to the question:--What
-price, in terms of national independence, are we prepared to pay for a
-world law? What, in fact, _is_ the price that is asked of us? To this
-last question, the pages that precede, and to some extent those that
-follow, have attempted to supply an answer. We should gain many times in
-freedom and independence the contribution in those things that we made.
-
-Perhaps we may be driven by hunger--the actual need of our children for
-bread--to forsake a method which cannot give them bread or freedom, in
-favour of one that can. But, for the failure of power to act as a
-deterrent upon our desire for it, we must perceive the failure. Our
-angers and hatreds obscure that failure, or render us indifferent to it.
-Hunger does not necessarily help the understanding; it may bemuse it by
-passion and resentment. We may in our passion wreck civilisation as a
-passionate man in his anger will injure those he loves. Yet, well fed,
-we may refuse to concern ourselves with problems of the morrow. The
-mechanical motive will no longer suffice. In the simpler, more animal
-forms of society, the instinct of each moment, with no thought of
-ultimate consequence, may be enough. But the Society which man has built
-up can only go forward or be preserved as it began: by virtue of
-something which is more than instinct. On man is cast the obligation to
-be intelligent; the responsibility of will; the burden of thought.
-
-If some of us have felt that, beyond all other evils which translate
-themselves into public policy, those with which these pages deal
-constitute the greatest, it is not because war means the loss of life,
-the killing of men. Many of our noblest activities do that. There are so
-many of us that it is no great disaster that a few should die. It is not
-because war means suffering. Suffering endured for a conscious and
-clearly conceived human purpose is redeemed by hope of real achievement;
-it may be a glad sacrifice for some worthy end. But if we have
-floundered hopelessly into a bog because we have forgotten our end and
-purpose in the heat of futile passion, the consolation which we may
-gather from the willingness with which men die in the bog should not
-stand in the way of our determination to rediscover our destination and
-create afresh our purpose. These pages have been concerned very little
-with the loss of life, the suffering of the last seven years. What they
-have dealt with mainly is the fact that the War has left us a less
-workable society, has been marked by an increase in the forces of chaos
-and disintegration. That is the ultimate indictment of this War as of
-all wars: the attitude towards life, the ideas and motive forces out of
-which it grows, and which it fosters, makes men less able to live
-together, their society less workable, and must end by making free
-society impossible. War not only arises out of the failure of human
-wisdom, from the defect of that intelligence by which alone we can
-successfully fight the forces of nature; it perpetuates that failure and
-worsens it. For only by a passion which keeps thought at bay can the
-'morale' of war be maintained. The very justification which we advance
-for our war-time censorships and propaganda, our suspension of free
-speech and discussion, is that if we gave full value to the enemy's
-case, saw him as he really is, blundering, foolish, largely helpless
-like ourselves; saw the defects of our own and our Allies' policy, saw
-what our own acts in war really involved and how nearly they resembled
-those which aroused our anger when done by the enemy, if we saw all
-this and kept our heads, we should abandon war. A thousand times it has
-been explained that in an impartial mood we cannot carry on war; that
-unless the people come to feel that all the right is on our side and all
-the wrong on the enemy's, morale will fail. The most righteous war can
-only be kept going by falsehood. The end of that falsehood is that our
-mind collapses. And although the mind, thought, judgment, are not
-all-sufficient for man's salvation, it is impossible without them.
-Behind all other explanations of Europe's creeping paralysis is the
-blindness of the millions, their inability to see the effects of their
-demands and policy, to see where they are going.
-
-Only a keener feeling for truth will enable them to see. About
-indifferent things--about the dead matter that we handle in our
-science--we can be honest, impartial, true. That is why we succeed in
-dealing with matter. But about the things we care for--which are
-ourselves--our desires and lusts, our patriotisms and hates, we find a
-harder test of thinking straight and truly. Yet there is the greater
-need; only by that rectitude shall we be saved. There is no refuge but
-in truth.
-
-
-
-
-ADDENDUM
-
-THE ARGUMENT OF _THE GREAT ILLUSION_
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-THE 'IMPOSSIBILITY OF WAR' MYTH
-
-
-It will illustrate certain difficulties which have marked--and mark--the
-presentation of the argument of this book, if the reader will consider
-for a few minutes the justice of certain charges which have been brought
-against _The Great Illusion_. Perhaps the commonest is that it argued
-that 'war had become impossible.' The truth of that charge at least can
-very easily be tested. The first page of that book, the preface,
-referring to the thesis it proposed to set out, has these words: 'the
-argument is _not_ that war is impossible, but that it is futile.' The
-next page but one describes what the author believes to be the main
-forces at work in international politics: a fierce struggle for
-preponderant power 'based on the universal assumption that a nation, in
-order to find outlets for expanding population and increasing industry,
-or simply to ensure the best conditions possible for its people, is
-necessarily pushed to territorial expansion and the exercise of
-political force against others ... that nations being competing units,
-advantage, in the last resort, goes to the possessor of preponderant
-military force, the weaker going to the wall, as in the other forms of
-the struggle for life.' A whole chapter is devoted to the evidence which
-goes to show that this aggressive and warlike philosophy was indeed the
-great actuating force in European politics. The first two paragraphs of
-the first chapter forecast the likelihood of an Anglo-German explosion;
-that chapter goes on to declare that the pacifist effort then current
-was evidently making no headway at all against the tendencies towards
-rivalry and conflict. In the third chapter the ideas underlying those
-tendencies are described as 'so profoundly mischievous,' and so
-'desperately dangerous,' as to threaten civilisation itself. A chapter
-is devoted to showing that the fallacy and folly of those all but
-universal ideas was no guarantee at all that the nations would not act
-upon them. (Particularly is the author insistent on the fact that the
-futility of war will never in itself suffice to stop war. The folly of a
-given course of action will only be a deterrent to the degree to which
-men realise its folly. That was why the book was written.) A warning is
-uttered against any reliance upon the Hague Conferences, which, it is
-explained at length, are likely to be quite ineffective against the
-momentum of the motives of aggression. A warning is uttered towards the
-close of the book against any reduction of British armaments,
-accompanied, however, by the warning that mere increase of armaments
-unaccompanied by change of policy, a Political Reformation in the
-direction of internationalism, will provoke the very catastrophe it is
-their object to avoid; only by that change of policy could we take a
-real step towards peace 'instead of _a step towards war, to which the
-mere piling up of armaments, unchecked by any other factor, must in the
-end inevitably lead_.'[97]
-
-The last paragraph of the book asks the reader which of two courses we
-are to follow: a determined effort towards placing European policy on a
-new basis, or a drift along the current of old instincts and ideas, a
-course which would condemn us to the waste of mountains of treasure and
-the spilling of oceans of blood.
-
-Yet, it is probably true to say that, of the casual newspaper references
-(as distinct from reviews) made during the last ten years to the book
-just described, four out of five are to the effect that its author said
-'war was impossible because it did not pay.'
-
-The following are some passages referred to in the above summary:--
-
-     'Not the facts, but men's opinions about the facts is what matters.
-     This is because men's conduct is determined, not necessarily by the
-     right conclusion from facts, but the conclusion they believe to be
-     right.... As long as Europe is dominated by the old beliefs, those
-     beliefs will have virtually the same effect in politics as though
-     they were intrinsically sound.'--(p. 327.)
-
-     'It is evident that so long as the misconception we are dealing
-     with is all but universal in Europe, so long as the nations believe
-     that in some way the military and political subjugation of others
-     will bring with it a tangible material advantage to the conqueror,
-     we all do, in fact, stand in danger from such aggression. Not his
-     interest, but what he deems to be his interest, will furnish the
-     real motive of our prospective enemy's action. And as the illusion
-     with which we are dealing does, indeed, dominate all those minds
-     most active in European politics, we must, while this remains the
-     case, regard an aggression, even such as that which Mr Harrison
-     foresees, as within the bounds of practical politics.... On this
-     ground alone I deem that we or any other nation are justified in
-     taking means of self-defence to prevent such aggression. This is
-     not, therefore, a plea for disarmament irrespective of the action
-     of other nations. So long as current political philosophy in Europe
-     remains what it is, I would not urge the reduction of our war
-     budget by a single sovereign.'--(p. 329.)
-
-     'The need for defence arises from the existence of a motive for
-     attack.... That motive is, consequently, part of the problem of
-     defence.... Since as between the European peoples we are dealing
-     with in this matter, one party is as able in the long run to pile
-     up armaments as the other, we cannot get nearer to solution by
-     armaments alone; we must get at the original provoking cause--the
-     motive making for aggression.... If that motive results from a
-     true judgment of the facts; if the determining factor in a nation's
-     well-being and progress is really its power to obtain by force
-     advantage over others, the present situation of armament rivalry
-     tempered by war is a natural and inevitable one.... If, however,
-     the view is a false one, our progress towards solution will be
-     marked by the extent to which the error becomes generally
-     recognised in European public opinion.'--(p. 337.)
-
-     'In this matter it seems fatally easy to secure either one of two
-     kinds of action: that of the "practical man" who limits his
-     energies to securing a policy which will perfect the machinery of
-     war and disregard anything else; or that of the Pacifist, who,
-     persuaded of the brutality or immorality of war, is apt to
-     deprecate effort directed at self-defence. What is needed is the
-     type of activity which will include both halves of the problem:
-     provision for education, for a Political Reformation in this
-     matter, _as well as_ such means of defence as will meantime
-     counterbalance the existing impulse to aggression. To concentrate
-     on either half to the exclusion of the other half is to render the
-     whole problem insoluble.'--(p. 330.)
-
-     'Never has the contest of armament been so keen as when Europe
-     began to indulge in Peace Conferences. Speaking roughly and
-     generally, the era of great armament expansion dates from the first
-     Hague Conference. The reader who has appreciated the emphasis laid
-     in the preceding pages on working through the reform of ideas will
-     not feel much astonishment at the failure of efforts such as these.
-     The Hague Conferences represented an attempt, not to work through
-     the reform of ideas, but to modify by mechanical means the
-     political machinery of Europe, without reference to the ideas which
-     had brought it into existence.
-
-     'Arbitration treaties, Hague Conferences, International Federation,
-     involve a new conception of relationship between nations. But the
-     ideals--political, economical, and social--on which the old
-     conceptions are based, our terminology, our political literature,
-     our old habits of thought, diplomatic inertia, which all combine to
-     perpetuate the old notions, have been left serenely undisturbed.
-     And surprise is expressed that such schemes do not succeed.'--(p.
-     350.)
-
-Very soon after the appearance of the book, I find I am shouting myself
-hoarse in the Press against this monstrous 'impossibility of war'
-foolishness. An article in the _Daily Mail_ of September 15th, 1911,
-begins thus:--
-
-     ' ... One learns, with some surprise, that the very simple facts to
-     which I have now for some years been trying to draw the attention
-     they deserve, teach that:--
-
-     1. War is now impossible.
-
-     2. War would ruin both the victor and the vanquished.
-
-     3. War would leave the victor worse off than the vanquished.
-
-     'May I say with every possible emphasis that nothing I have ever
-     written justifies any one of these conclusions.
-
-     'I have always, on the contrary, urged that:--
-
-     (1) War is, unhappily, quite possible, and, in the prevailing
-     condition of ignorance concerning certain elementary
-     politico-economic facts, even likely.
-
-     (2) There is nothing to justify the conclusion that war would
-     "ruin" both victor and vanquished. Indeed, I do not quite know what
-     the "ruin" of a nation means.
-
-     (3) While in the past the vanquished has often profited more by
-     defeat than he could possibly have done by victory, it is no
-     necessary result, and we are safest in assuming that the vanquished
-     will suffer most.'
-
-Nearly two years later I find myself still engaged in the same task.
-Here is a letter to the _Saturday Review_ (March 8th, 1913):--
-
-     'You are good enough to say that I am "one of the very few
-     advocates of peace at any price who is not altogether an ass." And
-     yet you also state that I have been on a mission "to persuade the
-     German people that war in the twentieth century is impossible." If
-     I had ever tried to teach anybody such sorry rubbish I should be
-     altogether an unmitigated ass. I have never, of course, nor so far
-     as I am aware, has any one ever said that war was impossible.
-     Personally, not only do I regard war as possible, but extremely
-     likely. What I have been preaching in Germany is that it is
-     impossible for Germany to benefit by war, especially a war against
-     us; and that, of course, is quite a different matter.'
-
-It is true that if the argument of the book as a whole pointed to the
-conclusion that war was 'impossible,' it would be beside the point to
-quote passages repudiating that conclusion. They might merely prove the
-inconsequence of the author's thought. But the book, and the whole
-effort of which it was a part, would have had no _raison d'�tre_ if the
-author had believed war unlikely or impossible. It was a systematic
-attack on certain political ideas which the author declared were
-dominant in international politics. If he had supposed those powerful
-ideas were making _not_ for war, but for peace, why as a pacifist should
-he be at such pains to change them? And if he thought those
-war-provoking ideas which he attacked were not likely to be put into
-effect, why, in that case either, should he bother at all? Why, for that
-matter, should a man who thought war impossible engage in not too
-popular propaganda against war--against something which could not occur?
-
-A moment's real reflection on the part of those responsible for this
-description of _The Great Illusion_, should have convinced them that it
-could not be a true one.
-
-I have taken the trouble to go through some of the more serious
-criticisms of the book to see whether this extraordinary confusion was
-created in the mind of those who actually read the book instead of
-reading about it. So far as I know, not a single serious critic has come
-to a conclusion that agrees with the 'popular' verdict. Several going to
-the book after the War, seem to express surprise at the absence of any
-such conclusion. Professor Lindsay writes:--
-
-     'Let us begin by disposing of one obvious criticism of the
-     doctrines of _The Great Illusion_ which the out-break of war has
-     suggested. Mr Angell never contended that war was impossible,
-     though he did contend that it must always be futile. He insisted
-     that the futility of war would not make war impossible or armament
-     unnecessary until all nations recognised its futility. So long as
-     men held that nations could advance their interests by war, so long
-     war would last. His moral was that we should fight militarism,
-     whether in Germany or in our own country, as one ought to fight an
-     idea with better ideas. He further pointed out that though it is
-     pleasanter to attack the wrong ideals held by foreigners, it is
-     more effective to attack the wrong ideals held in our own
-     country.... The pacifist hope was that the outbreak of a European
-     war, which was recognised as quite possible, might be delayed
-     until, with the progress of pacifist doctrine, war became
-     impossible. That hope has been tragically frustrated, but if the
-     doctrines of pacifism are convincing and irrefutable, it was not in
-     itself a vain hope. Time was the only thing it asked of fortune,
-     and time was denied it.'
-
-Another post-war critic--on the other side of the Atlantic--writes:--
-
-     'Mr. Angell has received too much solace from the unwisdom of his
-     critics. Those who have denounced him most vehemently are those who
-     patently have not read his books. For example, he cannot properly
-     be classed, as frequently asserted in recent months, as one of
-     those Utopian pacifists who went about proclaiming war impossible.
-     A number of passages in _The Great Illusion_ show him fully alive
-     to the danger of the present collapse; indeed, from the narrower
-     view of politics his book was one of the several fruitless attempts
-     to check that growing estrangement between England and Germany
-     whose sinister menace far-sighted men discerned. Even less
-     justifiable are the flippant sneers which discard his argument as
-     mercenary or sordid. Mr Angell has never taken an "account book" or
-     "breeches pocket" view of war. He inveighs against what he terms
-     its political and moral futilities as earnestly as against its
-     economic futility.'
-
-It may be said that there must be some cause for so persistent a
-misrepresentation. There is. Its cause is that obstinate and deep-seated
-fatalism which is so large a part of the prevailing attitude to war and
-against which the book under consideration was a protest. Take it as an
-axiom that war comes upon us as an outside force, like the rain or the
-earthquake, and not as something that we can influence, and a man who
-'does not believe in war,' must be a person who believes that war is not
-coming;[98] that men are naturally peaceable. To be a Pacifist because
-one believes that the danger of war is very great indeed, or because one
-believes men to be naturally extremely prone to war, is a position
-incomprehensible until we have rid our minds of the fatalism which
-regards war as an 'inevitable' result of uncontrollable forces.
-
-What is a writer to do, however, in the face of persistent
-misrepresentation such as this? If he were a manufacturer of soap and
-some one said his soap was underweight, or he were a grocer and some one
-said his sugar was half sand, he could of course obtain enormous
-damages. But a mere writer, having given some years of his life to the
-study of the most important problem of his time, is quite helpless when
-a tired headline writer, or a journalist indulging his resentment, or
-what he thinks is likely to be the resentment of his readers, describes
-a book as proclaiming one thing when as a matter of simple fact it
-proclaims the exact contrary.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-So much for myth or misrepresentation No. 1. We come to a second,
-namely, that _The Great Illusion_ is an appeal to avarice; that it urges
-men not to defend their country 'because to do so does not pay;' that it
-would have us place 'pocket before patriotism,' a view reflected in
-Benjamin Kidd's last book, pages of which are devoted to the
-condemnation of the 'degeneracy and futility' of resting the cause of
-peace on no higher ground than that it is 'a great illusion to believe
-that a national policy founded on war can be a profitable policy for any
-people in the long run.'[99] He quotes approvingly Sir William Robertson
-Nicoll for denouncing those who condemn war because 'it would postpone
-the blessed hour of tranquil money getting.'[100] As a means of
-obscuring truths which it is important to realise, of creating by
-misrepresentation a moral repulsion to a thesis, and thus depriving it
-of consideration, this second line of attack is even more important than
-the first.
-
-To say of a book that it prophesied 'the impossibility of war,' is to
-imply that it is mere silly rubbish, and its author a fool. Sir William
-Robertson Nicoll's phrase would of course imply that its doctrine was
-morally contemptible.
-
-The reader must judge, after considering dispassionately what follows,
-whether this second description is any truer than the first.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-'ECONOMIC' AND 'MORAL' MOTIVES IN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
-
-
-_The Great Illusion_ dealt--among other factors of international
-conflict--with the means by which the population of the world is driven
-to support itself; and studied the effect of those efforts to find
-sustenance upon the relations of States. It therefore dealt with
-economics.
-
-On the strength of this, certain critics (like some of those quoted in
-the last chapter) who cannot possibly have read the book thoroughly,
-seem to have argued: If this book about war deals with 'economics,' it
-must deal with money and profits. To bring money and profits into a
-discussion of war is to imply that men fight for money, and won't fight
-if they don't get money from it; that war does not 'pay.' This is wicked
-and horrible. Let us denounce the writer for a shallow Hedonist and
-money-grubber....
-
-As a matter of simple fact, as we shall see presently, the book was
-largely an attempt to show that the economic argument usually adduced
-for a particularly ruthless form of national selfishness was not a sound
-argument; that the commonly invoked justification for a selfish
-immoralism in Foreign Policy was a fallacy, an illusion. Yet the critics
-somehow managed to turn what was in fact an argument against national
-egoism into an argument for selfishness.
-
-What was the political belief and the attitude towards life which _The
-Great Illusion_ challenged? And what was the counter principle which it
-advocated as a substitute therefore?
-
-It challenged the theory that the vital interests of nations are
-conflicting, and that war is part of the inevitable struggle for life
-among them; the view that, in order to feed itself, a nation with an
-expanding population must conquer territory and so deprive others of the
-means of subsistence; the view that war is the 'struggle for
-bread.'[101] In other words, it challenged the economic excuse or
-justification for the 'sacred egoism' which is so largely the basis of
-the nationalist political philosophy, an excuse, which, as we shall see,
-the nationalist invokes if not to deny the moral law in the
-international field, at least to put the morality governing the
-relations of States on a very different plane from that which governs
-the relations of individuals. As against this doctrine _The Great
-Illusion_ advanced the proposition, among others, that the economic or
-biological assumption on which it is based is false; that the policy of
-political power which results from this assumption is economically
-unworkable, its benefits an illusion; that the amount of sustenance
-provided by the earth is not a fixed quantity so that what one nation
-can seize another loses, but is an expanding quantity, its amount
-depending mainly upon the efficiency with which men co-operate in their
-exploitation of Nature. As already pointed out, a hundred thousand Red
-Indians starved in a country where a hundred million modern Americans
-have abundance. The need for co-operation, and the faith on which alone
-it can be maintained, being indispensable to our common welfare, the
-violation of the social compact, international obligation, will be
-visited with penalties just as surely as are violations of the moral law
-in relations between individuals. The economic factor is not the sole or
-the largest element in human relations, but it is the one which occupies
-the largest place in public law and policy. (Of two contestants, each
-can retain his religion or literary preferences without depriving the
-other of like possessions; they cannot both retain the same piece of
-material property.) The economic problem is vital in the sense of
-dealing with the means by which we maintain life; and it is invoked as
-justification for the political immoralism of States. Until the
-confusions concerning it are cleared up, it will serve little purpose to
-analyse the other elements of conflict.
-
-What justifies the assumption that the predatory egotism, sacred or
-profane, here implied, was an indispensable part of the pre-war
-political philosophy, explaining the great part of policy in the
-international field?[102]
-
-First the facts: the whole history of international conflict in the
-decade or two which preceded the War; and the terms of the Treaty of
-Versailles. If you would find out the nature of a people's (or a
-statesman's) political morality, note their conduct when they have
-complete power to carry their desires into effect. The terms of peace,
-and the relations of the Allies with Russia, show a deliberate and
-avowed pre-occupation with sources of oil, iron, coal; with indemnities,
-investments, old debts; with Colonies, markets; the elimination of
-commercial rivals--with all these things to a degree very much greater
-and in a fashion much more direct than was assumed in _The Great
-Illusion_.
-
-But the tendency had been evident in the conflicts which preceded the
-War. These conflicts, in so far as the Great Powers were concerned, had
-been in practically every case over territory, or roads to territory;
-over Madagascar, Egypt, Morocco, Korea, Mongolia; 'warm water' ports,
-the division of Africa, the partitioning of China, loans thereto and
-concessions therein; the Persian Gulf, the Bagdad Railway, the Panama
-Canal. Where the principle of nationality was denied by any Great Power
-it was generally because to recognise it might block access to the sea
-or raw materials, throw a barrier across the road to undeveloped
-territory.
-
-There was no denial of this by those who treated of public affairs. Mr
-Lloyd George declared that England would be quite ready to go to war
-rather than have the Morocco question settled without reference to her.
-Famous writers like Mahan did not balk at conclusions like this:--
-
-     'It is the great amount of unexploited raw material in territories
-     politically backward, and now imperfectly possessed by the nominal
-     owners, which at the present moment constitutes the temptation and
-     the impulse to war of European States.'[103]
-
-Nor to justify them thus:--
-
-     'More and more Germany needs the assured importation of raw
-     materials, and, where possible, control of regions productive of
-     such materials. More and more she requires assured markets, and
-     security as to the importation of food, since less and less
-     comparatively is produced within her own borders for her rapidly
-     increasing population. This all means security at sea.... Yet the
-     supremacy of Great Britain in European seas means a perpetually
-     latent control of German commerce.... The world has long been
-     accustomed to the idea of a predominant naval power, coupling it
-     accurately with the name of Great Britain: and it has been noted
-     that such power, when achieved, is commonly found associated with
-     commercial and industrial pre-eminence, the struggle for which is
-     now in progress between Great Britain and Germany. Such
-     pre-eminence forces a nation to seek markets, and, where possible,
-     to control them to its own advantage by preponderant force, the
-     ultimate expression of which is possession.... From this flow two
-     results: the attempt to possess, and the organisation of force by
-     which to maintain possession already achieved.... This statement is
-     simply a specific formulation of the general necessity stated;
-     itself an inevitable link in a chain of logical sequence: industry,
-     markets, control, navy, bases....[104]
-
-Mr Spenser Wilkinson, of a corresponding English school, is just as
-definite:--
-
-     'The effect of growth is an expansion and an increase of power. It
-     necessarily affects the environment of the growing organisms; it
-     interferes with the _status quo_. Existing rights and interests are
-     disturbed by the fact of growth, which is itself a change. The
-     growing community finds itself hedged in by previously existing and
-     surviving conditions, and fettered by prescriptive rights. There
-     is, therefore, an exertion of force to overcome resistance. No
-     process of law or of arbitration can deal with this phenomenon,
-     because any tribunal administering a system of right or law must
-     base its decision upon the tradition of the past which has become
-     unsuited to the new conditions that have arisen. The growing State
-     is necessarily expansive or aggressive.'[105]
-
-Even more decisive as a definite philosophy are the propositions of Mr
-Petre, who, writing on 'The Mandate of Humanity,' says:--
-
-     'The conscience of a State cannot, therefore, be as delicate, as
-     disinterested, as altruistic, as that of the noblest individuals.
-     The State exists primarily for its own people and only secondarily
-     for the rest of the world. Hence, given a dispute in which it feels
-     its rights and welfare to be at stake, it may, however erroneously,
-     set aside its moral obligations to international society in favour
-     of its obligations to the people for whom it exists.
-
-     'But no righteous conscience, it may be said, could give its
-     verdict against a solemn pledge taken and reciprocated; no
-     righteous conscience could, in a society of nations, declare
-     against the ends of that society. Indeed I think it could, and
-     sometimes would, if its sense of justice were outraged, if its duty
-     to those who were bone of its bone and flesh of its flesh came into
-     conflict with its duty to those who were not directly belonging to
-     it....
-
-     'The mechanism of a State exists mainly for its own preservation,
-     and cannot be turned against this, its legitimate end. The
-     conscience of a State will not traverse this main condition, and to
-     weaken its conscience is to weaken its life....
-
-     'The strong will not give way to the weak; the one who thinks
-     himself in the right will not yield to those whom he believes to be
-     in the wrong; the living generations will not be restrained by the
-     promises to a dead one; nature will not be controlled by
-     conventions.'[106]
-
-It is the last note that gives the key to popular feeling about the
-scramble for territory. In _The Great Illusion_ whole pages of popular
-writing are quoted to show that the conception of the struggle as in
-truth the struggle for survival had firmly planted itself in the popular
-consciousness. One of the critics who is so severe upon the present
-writer for trying to undermine the economic foundation of that popular
-creed, Benjamin Kidd, himself testifies to the depth and sweep of this
-pseudo-Darwinism (he seems to think indeed that it is true Darwinism,
-which it is not, as Darwin himself pointed out). He declares that 'there
-is no precedent in the history of the human mind to compare with the
-saturnalia of the Western intellect' which followed the popularisation
-of what he regards as Darwin's case and I would regard as a distortion
-of it. Kidd says it 'touched the profoundest depth of the psychology of
-the West.' 'Everywhere throughout civilisation an almost inconceivable
-influence was given to the doctrine of the law of biological necessity
-in books of statecraft and war-craft, of expanding military empires.'
-'Struggle for life,' 'a biological necessity,' 'survival of the fit,'
-had passed into popular use and had come to buttress popular feeling
-about the inevitability of war and its ultimate justification and the
-uselessness of organising the natives save on a basis of conflict.
-
-We are now in a position to see the respective moral positions of the
-two protagonists.
-
-The advocate of Political Theory No. 1, which an overwhelming
-preponderance of evidence shows to be the prevailing theory, says:--You
-Pacifists are asking us to commit national suicide; to sacrifice future
-generations to your political ideals. Now, as voters or statesmen we are
-trustees, we act for others. Sacrifice, suicide even, on behalf of an
-ideal, may be justified when we are sacrificing ourselves. But we cannot
-sacrifice others, our wards. Our first duty is to our own nation, our
-own children; to their national security and future welfare. It is
-regrettable if, by the conquests, wars, blockades, rendered necessary by
-those objects other people starve, and lose their national freedom and
-see their children die; but that is the hard necessity of life in a hard
-world.
-
-Advocate of Political Theory No. 2 says:--I deny that the excuse of
-justification which you give for your cruelty to others is a valid
-excuse or justification. Pacifism does not ask you to sacrifice your
-people, to betray the interest of your wards. You will serve their
-interests best by the policy we advocate. Your children will not be more
-assured of their sustenance by these conquests that attempt to render
-the feeding of foreign children more difficult; yours will be less
-secure. By co-operating with those others instead of using your
-energies against them, the resultant wealth....
-
-Advocate No. 1:--Wealth! Interest! You introduce your wretched economic
-calculations of interest into a question of Patriotism. You have the
-soul of a bagman concerned only to restore 'the blessed hour of tranquil
-money-getting,' and Sir William Robertson Nicoll shall denounce you in
-the _British Weekly_!
-
-And the discussion usually ends with this moral flourish and gestures of
-melodramatic indignation.
-
-But are they honest gestures? Here are the upholders of a certain
-position who say:--'In certain circumstances as when you are in a
-position of trustee, the only moral course, the only right course, is to
-be guided by the interests of your ward. Your duty then demands a
-calculation of advantage. You may not be generous at your ward's
-expense. This is the justification of the "sacred egoism" of the poet.'
-
-If in that case a critic says: 'Very well. Let us consider what will be
-the best interests of your ward,' is it really open to the first party
-to explain in a paroxysm of moral indignation: 'You are making a
-shameful and disgraceful appeal to selfishness and avarice?'
-
-This is not an attempt to answer one set of critics by quoting another
-set. The self-same people take those two attitudes. I have quoted above
-a passage of Admiral Mahan's in which he declares that nations can never
-be expected to act from any other motive than that of interest (a
-generalisation, by the way, from which I should most emphatically
-dissent). He goes on to declare that Governments 'must put first the
-rival interests of their own wards ... their own people,' and are thus
-pushed to the acquisition of markets by means of military predominance.
-
-Very well. _The Great Illusion_ argued some of Admiral Mahan's
-propositions in terms of interest and advantage. And then, when he
-desired to demolish that argument, he did not hesitate in a long
-article in the _North American Review_ to write as follows:--
-
-     'The purpose of armaments, in the minds of those maintaining them,
-     is not primarily an economical advantage, in the sense of depriving
-     a neighbour State of its own, or fear of such consequences to
-     itself through the deliberate aggression of a rival having that
-     particular end in view.... The fundamental proposition of the book
-     is a mistake. Nations are under no illusion as to the
-     unprofitableness of war in itself.... The entire conception of the
-     work is itself an illusion, based upon a profound misreading of
-     human action. To regard the world as governed by self-interest only
-     is to live in a non-existent world, an ideal world, a world
-     possessed by an idea much less worthy than those which mankind, to
-     do it bare justice, persistently entertains.'[107]
-
-Admiral Mahan was a writer of very great and deserved reputation, in the
-very first rank of those dealing with the relations of power to national
-politics, certainly incapable of any conscious dishonesty of opinion.
-Yet, as we have seen, his opinion on the most important fact of all
-about war--its ultimate purpose, and the reasons which justify it or
-provoke it--swings violently in absolute self-contradiction. And the
-flat contradiction here revealed shows--and this surely is the moral of
-such an incident--that he could never have put to himself detachedly,
-coldly, impartially the question: 'What do I really believe about the
-motives of nations in War? To what do the facts as a whole really
-point?' Had he done so, it might have been revealed to him that what
-really determined his opinion about the causes of war was a desire to
-justify the great profession of arms, to one side of which he had
-devoted his life and given years of earnest labour and study; to defend
-from some imputation of futility one of the most ancient of man's
-activities that calls for some at least of the sublimest of human
-qualities. If a widened idealism clearly discredited that ancient
-institution, he was prepared to show that an ineradicable conflict of
-national interests rendered it inevitable. If it was shown that war was
-irrelevant to those conflicts, or ineffective as a means of protecting
-the interests concerned, he was prepared to show that the motives
-pushing to war were not those of interest at all.
-
-It may be said that none the less the thesis under discussion
-substitutes one selfish argument for another; tries by appealing to
-self-interest (the self-interest of a group or nation) to turn
-selfishness from a destructive result to a more social result. Its basis
-is self. Even that is not really true. For, first, that argument ignores
-the question of trusteeship; and, secondly, it involves a confusion
-between the motive of a given policy and the criterion by which its
-goodness or badness shall be tested.
-
-How is one to deal with the claim of the 'mystic nationalist' (he exists
-abundantly even outside the Balkans) that the subjugation of some
-neighbouring nationalism is demanded by honour; that only the great
-State can be the really good State; that power--'majesty,' as the
-Oriental would say--is a thing good in itself?[108] There are ultimate
-questions as to what is good and what is bad that no argument can
-answer; ultimate values which cannot be discussed. But one can reduce
-those unarguable values to a minimum by appealing to certain social
-needs. A State which has plenty of food may not be a good State; but a
-State which cannot feed its population cannot be a good State, for in
-that case the citizens will be hungry, greedy, and violent.
-
-In other words, certain social needs and certain social utilities--which
-we can all recognise as indispensables--furnish a ground of agreement
-for the common action without which no society can be established. And
-the need for such a criterion becomes more manifest as we learn more of
-the wonderful fashion in which we sublimate our motives. A country
-refuses to submit its dispute to arbitration, because its 'honour' is
-involved. Many books have been written to try and find out precisely
-what honour of this kind is. One of the best of them has decided that it
-is anything which a country cares to make it. It is never the presence
-of coal, or iron, or oil, which makes it imperative to retain a given
-territory: it is honour (as Italy's Foreign Minister explained when
-Italy went to war for the conquest of Tripoli). Unfortunately, rival
-States have also impulses of honour which compel them to claim the same
-undeveloped territory. Nothing can prove--or disprove--that honour, in
-such circumstances, is invoked by each or either of the parties
-concerned to make a piece of acquisitiveness or megalomania appear as
-fine to himself as possible: that, just because he has a lurking
-suspicion that all is not well with the operation, he seeks to justify
-it to himself with fine words that have a very vague content. But on
-this basis there can be no agreement. If, however, one shifts the
-discussion to the question of what is best for the social welfare of
-both, one can get a _modus vivendi_. For each to admit that he has no
-right so to use his power as to deprive the other of means of life,
-would be the beginning of a code which could be tested. Each might
-conceivably have that right to deprive the other of means of livelihood,
-if it were a choice between the lives of his own people or others.
-
-The economic fact is the test of the ethical claim: if it really be true
-that we must withhold sources of food from others because otherwise our
-own would starve, there is some ethical justification for such use of
-our power. If such is not the fact, the whole moral issue is changed,
-and with it, to the degree to which it is mutually realised, the social
-outlook and attitude. The knowledge of interdependence is part, at
-least, of an attitude which makes the 'social sense'--the sense that one
-kind of arrangement is fair and workable, and another is not. To bring
-home the fact of this interdependence is not simply an appeal to
-selfishness: it is to reveal a method by which an apparently
-irreconcilable conflict of vital needs can be reconciled. The sense of
-interdependence, of the need of one for another, is part of the
-foundation of the very difficult art of living together.
-
-Much mischief arises from the misunderstanding of the term 'economic
-motive.' Let us examine some further examples of this. One is a common
-confusion of terms: an economic motive may be the reverse of selfish.
-The long sustained efforts of parents to provide fittingly for their
-children--efforts continued, it may be, through half a lifetime--are
-certainly economic. Just as certainly they are not selfish in any exact
-sense of the term. Yet something like this confusion seems to overlie
-the discussion of economics in connection with war.
-
-Speaking broadly, I do not believe that men ever go to war from a cold
-calculation of advantage or profit. I never have believed it. It seems
-to me an obvious and childish misreading of human psychology. I cannot
-see how it is possible to imagine a man laying down his life on the
-battle-field for personal gain. Nations do not fight for their money or
-interests, they fight for their rights, or what they believe to be their
-rights. The very gallant men who triumphed at Bull Run or
-Chancellorsville were not fighting for the profits on slave-labour: they
-were fighting for what they believed to be their independence: the
-rights, as they would have said, to self-government or, as we should now
-say, of self-determination. Yet it was a conflict which arose out of
-slave labour: an economic question. Now the most elementary of all
-rights, in the sense of the first right which a people will claim, is
-the right to existence--the right of a population to bread and a decent
-livelihood.[109] For that nations certainly will fight. Yet, as we see,
-it is a right which arises out of an economic need or conflict. We have
-seen how it works as a factor in our own foreign policy: as a compelling
-motive for the command of the sea. We believe that the feeding of these
-islands depends upon it: that if we lost it our children might die in
-the streets and the lack of food compel us to an ignominious surrender.
-It is this relation of vital food supply to preponderant sea power which
-has caused us to tolerate no challenge to the latter. We know the part
-which the growth of the German Navy played in shaping Anglo-Continental
-relations before the War; the part which any challenge to our naval
-preponderance has always played in determining our foreign policy. The
-command of the sea, with all that that means in the way of having built
-up a tradition, a battle-cry in politics, has certainly bound up with it
-this life and death fact of feeding our population. That is to say it is
-an economic need. Yet the determination of some millions of Englishmen
-to fight for this right to life, to die rather than see the daily bread
-of their people in jeopardy, would be adequately described by some
-phrase about Englishmen going to war because it 'paid.' It would be a
-silly or dishonest gibe. Yet that is precisely the kind of gibe that I
-have had to face these fifteen years in attempting to disentangle the
-forces and motives underlying international conflict.
-
-What picture is summoned to our minds by the word 'economics' in
-relation to war? To the critics whose indignation is so excited at the
-introduction of the subject at all into the discussion of war--and they
-include, unhappily, some of the great names of English literature--'economic'
-seems to carry no picture but that of an obese Semitic stockbroker, in
-quaking fear for his profits. This view cannot be said to imply either
-much imagination or much sense of reality. For among the stockbrokers,
-the usurers, those closest to financial manipulation and in touch with
-financial changes, are to be found some groups numerically small, who
-are more likely to gain than to lose by war; and the present writer has
-never suggested the contrary.
-
-But the 'economic futility' of war expresses itself otherwise: in half a
-Continent unable to feed or clothe or warm itself; millions rendered
-neurotic, abnormal, hysterical by malnutrition, disease, and anxiety;
-millions rendered greedy, selfish, and violent by the constant strain of
-hunger; resulting in 'social unrest' that threatens more and more to
-become sheer chaos and confusion: the dissolution and disintegration of
-society. Everywhere, in the cities, are the children who cry and who are
-not fed, who raise shrunken arms to our statesmen who talk with
-pride[110] of their stern measures of 'rigorous' blockade. Rickety and
-dying children, and undying hate for us, their murderers, in the hearts
-of their mothers--these are the human realities of the 'economics of
-war.'
-
-The desire to prevent these things, to bring about an order that would
-render possible both patriotism and mercy, would save us from the
-dreadful dilemma of feeding our own children only by the torture and
-death of others equally innocent--the effort to this end is represented
-as a mere appeal to selfishness and avarice, something mean and ignoble,
-a degradation of human motive.
-
-'These theoretical dilemmas do not state accurately the real conditions
-of politics,' the reader may object. 'No one proposes to inflict famine
-as a means of enforcing our policy' ... 'England does not make war on
-women and children.'
-
-Not one man or woman in a million, English or other, would wittingly
-inflict the suffering of starvation upon a single child, if the child
-were visible to his eyes, present in his mind, and if the simple human
-fact were not obscured by the much more complex and artificial facts
-that have gathered round our conceptions of patriotism. The heaviest
-indictment of the military-nationalist philosophy we are discussing is
-that it manages successfully to cover up human realities by dehumanising
-abstractions. From the moment that the child becomes a part of that
-abstraction--'Russia,' 'Austria,' 'Germany'--it loses its human
-identity, and becomes merely an impersonal part of the political problem
-of the struggle of our nation with others. The inverted moral alchemy,
-by which the golden instinct that we associate with so much of direct
-human contact is transformed into the leaden cruelty of nationalist hate
-and high statecraft, has been dealt with at the close of Part I. When in
-tones of moral indignation it is declared that Englishmen 'do not make
-war on women and children,' we must face the truth and say that
-Englishmen, like all peoples, do make such war.
-
-An action in public policy--the proclamation of the blockade, or the
-confiscation of so much tonnage, or the cession of territory, or the
-refusal of a loan--these things are remote and vague; not only is the
-relation between results and causes remote and sometimes difficult to
-establish, but the results themselves are invisible and far away. And
-when the results of a policy are remote, and can be slurred over in our
-minds, we are perfectly ready to apply, logically and ruthlessly, the
-most ferocious of political theories. It is of supreme importance then
-what those theories happen to be. When the issue of war and peace hangs
-in the balance, the beam may well be kicked one way or the other by our
-general political philosophy, these somewhat vague and hazy notions
-about life being a struggle, and nature red of tooth and claw, about
-wars being part of the cosmic process, sanctioned by professors and
-bishops and writers. It may well be these vague notions that lead us to
-acquiesce in the blockade or the newest war. The typhus or the rickets
-do not kill or maim any the less because we do not in our minds connect
-those results with the political abstractions that we bandy about so
-lightly. And we touch there the greatest service which a more 'economic'
-treatment of European problems may perform. If the Treaty of Versailles
-had been more economic it would also have been a more humane and human
-document. If there had been more of Mr Keynes and less of M. Clemenceau,
-there would have been not only more food in the world, but more
-kindliness; not only less famine, but less hate; not only more life, but
-a better way of life; those living would have been nearer to
-understanding and discarding the way of death.
-
-Let us summarise the points so far made with reference to the 'economic'
-motive.
-
-We need not accept any hard and fast (and in the view of the present
-writer, unsound) doctrine of economic determinism, in order to admit the
-truth of the following:--
-
-1. Until economic difficulties are so far solved as to give the mass of
-the people the means of secure and tolerable physical existence,
-economic considerations and motives will tend to exclude all others. The
-way to give the spiritual a fair chance with ordinary men and women is
-not to be magnificently superior to their economic difficulties, but to
-find a solution for them. Until the economic dilemma is solved, no
-solution of moral difficulties will be adequate. If you want to get rid
-of the economic preoccupation, you must solve the worst of the economic
-problem.
-
-2. In the same way the solution of the economic conflict between nations
-will not of itself suffice to establish peace; but no peace is possible
-until that conflict is solved. That makes it of sufficient importance.
-
-3. The 'economic' problem involved in international politics the use of
-political power for economic ends--is also one of Right, including the
-most elemental of all rights, that to exist.
-
-4. The answer which we give to that question of Right will depend upon
-our answer to the actual query of _The Great Illusion_: must a country
-of expanding population expand its territory or trade by means of its
-political power, in order to live? Is the political struggle for
-territory a struggle for bread?
-
-5. If we take the view that the truth is contained in neither an
-unqualified affirmative nor an unqualified negative, then all the more
-is it necessary that the interdependence of peoples, the necessity for a
-truly international economy, should become a commonplace. A wider
-realisation of those facts would help to create that pre-disposition
-necessary for a belief in the workability of voluntary co-operation, a
-belief which must precede any successful attempt to make such
-co-operation the basis of an international order.
-
-6. The economic argument of _The Great Illusion_, if valid, destroys the
-pseudo-scientific justification for political immoralism, the doctrine
-of State necessity, which has marked so much of classical statecraft.
-
-7. The main defects of the Treaty of Versailles are due to the pressure
-of a public opinion obsessed by just those ideas of nations as persons,
-of conflicting interests, which _The Great Illusion_ attempted to
-destroy. If the Treaty had been inspired by the ideas of interdependence
-of interest, it would have been not only more in the interests of the
-Allies, but morally sounder, providing a better ethical basis for future
-peace.
-
-8. To go on ignoring the economic unity and interdependence of Europe,
-to refuse to subject nationalist pugnacities to that needed unity
-because 'economics' are sordid, is to refuse to face the needs of human
-life, and the forces that shape it. Such an attitude, while professing
-moral elevation, involves a denial of the right of others to live. Its
-worst defect, perhaps, is that its heroics are fatal to intellectual
-rectitude, to truth. No society built upon such foundations can stand.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-THE GREAT ILLUSION ARGUMENT
-
-
-The preceding chapters have dealt rather with misconceptions concerning
-_The Great Illusion_ than with its positive propositions. What, outlined
-as briefly as possible, was its central argument?
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-That argument was an elaboration of these propositions: Military
-preponderance, conquest, as a means to man's most elemental
-needs--bread, sustenance--is futile, because the processes (exchange,
-division of labour) to which the dense populations of modern Western
-society are compelled to resort, cannot be exacted by military coercion;
-they can only operate as the result of a large measure of voluntary
-acquiescence by the parties concerned. A realisation of this truth is
-indispensable for the restraint of the instinctive pugnacities that
-hamper human relationship, particularly where nationalism enters.[111]
-The competition for power so stimulates those pugnacities and fears,
-that isolated national power cannot ensure a nation's political security
-or independence. Political security and economic well-being can only be
-ensured by international co-operation. This must be economic as well as
-political, be directed, that is, not only at pooling military forces for
-the purpose of restraining aggression, but at the maintenance of some
-economic code which will ensure for all nations, whether militarily
-powerful or not, fair economic opportunity and means of subsistence.
-
-It was, in other words, an attempt to clear the road to a more workable
-international policy by undermining the main conceptions and
-prepossessions inimical to an international order.[112] It did not
-elaborate machinery, but the facts it dealt with point clearly to
-certain conclusions on that head.
-
-While arguing that prevailing beliefs (false beliefs for the most part)
-and feelings (largely directed by the false beliefs) were the
-determining factors in international politics, the author challenged the
-prevailing assumption of the unchangeability of those ideas and
-feelings, particularly the proposition that war between human groups
-arises out of instincts and emotions incapable of modification or
-control or re-direction by conscious effort. The author placed equal
-emphasis on both parts of the proposition--that dealing with the alleged
-immutability of human pugnacity and ideas, and that which challenged the
-representation of war as an inevitable struggle for physical
-sustenance--if only because no exposure of the biological fallacy would
-be other than futile if the former proposition were true.[113]
-
-If conduct in these matters is the automatic reaction to uncontrollable
-instinct and is not affected by ideas, or if ideas themselves are the
-mere reflection of that instinct, obviously it is no use attempting
-demonstrations of futility, economic or other. The more we demonstrate
-the intensity of our inherent pugnacity and irrationalism, the more do
-we in fact demonstrate the need for the conscious control of those
-instincts. The alternative conclusion is fatalism: an admission not only
-that our ship is not under control, but that we have given up the task
-of getting it under control. We have surrendered our freedom.
-
-Moreover, our record shows that the direction taken by our
-pugnacities--their objective--is in fact largely determined by
-traditions and ideas which are in part at least the sum of conscious
-intellectual effort. The history of religious persecution--its wars,
-inquisitions, repressions--shows a great change (which we must admit as
-a fact, whether we regard it as good or bad) not only of idea but of
-feeling.[114] The book rejected instinct as sufficient guide and urged
-the need of discipline by intelligent foresight of consequence.
-
-To examine our subconscious or unconscious motives of conduct is the
-first step to making them conscious and modifying them.
-
-This does not imply that instincts--whether of pugnacity or other--can
-readily be repressed by a mere effort of will. But their direction, the
-object upon which they expend themselves, will depend upon our
-interpretation of facts. If we interpret the hailstorm or the curdled
-milk in one way, our fear and hatred of the witch is intense; the same
-facts interpreted another way make the witch an object of another
-emotion, pity.
-
-Reason may be a very small part of the apparatus of human conduct
-compared with the part played by the unconscious and subconscious, the
-instinctive and the emotional. The power of a ship's compass is very
-small indeed compared with the power developed by the engines. But the
-greater the power of the engines, the greater will be the disaster if
-the relatively tiny compass is deflected and causes the ship to be
-driven on to the rocks. The illustration indicates, not exactly but with
-sufficient truth, the relationship of 'reason' to 'instinct.'
-
-The instincts that push to self-assertion, to the acquisition of
-preponderant power, are so strong that we shall only abandon that method
-as the result of perceiving its futility. Co-operation, which means a
-relationship of partnership and give and take, will not succeed till
-force has failed.
-
-The futility of power as a means to our most fundamental and social ends
-is due mainly to two facts, one mechanical, and the other moral. The
-mechanical fact is that if we really need another, our power over him
-has very definite limits. Our dependence on him gives him a weapon
-against us. The moral fact is that in demanding a position of
-domination, we ask something to which we should not accede if it were
-asked of us: the claim does not stand the test of the categorical
-imperative. If we need another's labour, we cannot kill him; if his
-custom, we cannot forbid him to earn money. If his labour is to be
-effective, we must give him tools, knowledge; and these things can be
-used to resist our exactions. To the degree to which he is powerful for
-service he is powerful for resistance. A nation wealthy as a customer
-will also be ubiquitous as a competitor.
-
-The factors which have operated to make physical compulsion (slavery) as
-a means of obtaining service less economical than service for reward,
-operate just as effectively between nations. The employment of military
-force for economic ends is an attempt to apply indirectly the principle
-of chattel-slavery to groups; and involves the same disadvantages.[115]
-
-In so far as coercion represents a means of securing a wider and more
-effective social co-operation as against a narrower social co-operation,
-or more anarchic condition, it is likely to be successful and to justify
-itself socially. The imposition of Western government upon backward
-peoples approximates to the role of police; the struggles between the
-armed forces of rival Western Powers do not. The function of a police
-force is the exact contrary to that of armies competing with one
-another.[116]
-
-The demonstration of the futility of conquest rested mainly on these
-facts. After conquest the conquered people cannot be killed. They
-cannot be allowed to starve. Pressure of population on means of
-subsistence has not been reduced, but probably increased, since the
-number of mouths to fill eliminated by the casualty lists is not
-equivalent to the reduced production occasioned by war. To impose by
-force (e.g. exclusion from raw materials) a lower standard of living,
-creates (_a_) resistance which involves costs of coercion (generally in
-military establishments, but also in the political difficulties in which
-the coercion of hostile peoples--as in Alsace-Lorraine and
-Ireland--generally involves their conqueror), costs which must be
-deducted from the economic advantage of the conquest; and (_b_) loss of
-markets which may be indispensable to countries (like Britain) whose
-prosperity depends upon an international division of labour. A
-population that lives by exchanging its coal and iron for (say) food,
-does not profit by reducing the productivity of subject peoples engaged
-in food production.
-
-In _The Great Illusion_ the case was put as follows:--
-
-     'When we conquer a nation in these days, we do not exterminate it:
-     we leave it where it was. When we "overcome" the servile races, far
-     from eliminating them, we give them added chances of life by
-     introducing order, etc., so that the lower human quality tends to
-     be perpetuated by conquest by the higher. If ever it happens that
-     the Asiatic races challenge the white in the industrial or military
-     field, it will be in large part thanks to the work of race
-     conservation, which has been the result of England's conquest in
-     India, Egypt, and Asia generally.'--(pp. 191-192.)
-
-     'When the division of labour was so little developed that every
-     homestead produced all that it needed, it mattered nothing if part
-     of the community was cut off from the world for weeks and months at
-     a time. All the neighbours of a village or homestead might be slain
-     or harassed, and no inconvenience resulted. But if to-day an
-     English county is by a general railroad strike cut off for so much
-     as forty-eight hours from the rest of the economic organism, we
-     know that whole sections of its population are threatened with
-     famine. If in the time of the Danes England could by some magic
-     have killed all foreigners, she would presumably have been the
-     better off. If she could do the same thing to-day half her
-     population would starve to death. If on one side of the frontier a
-     community is, say, wheat-producing, and on the other
-     coal-producing, each is dependent for its very existence on the
-     fact of the other being able to carry on its labour. The miner
-     cannot in a week set to and grow a crop of wheat; the farmer must
-     wait for his wheat to grow, and must meantime feed his family and
-     dependents. The exchange involved here must go on, and each party
-     have fair expectation that he will in due course be able to reap
-     the fruits of his labour, or both starve; and that exchange, that
-     expectation, is merely the expression in its simplest form of
-     commerce and credit; and the interdependence here indicated has, by
-     the countless developments of rapid communication, reached such a
-     condition of complexity that the interference with any given
-     operation affects not merely the parties directly involved, but
-     numberless others having at first sight no connection therewith.
-
-     'The vital interdependence here indicated, cutting athwart
-     frontiers, is largely the work of the last forty years; and it has,
-     during that time, so developed as to have set up a financial
-     interdependence of the capitals of the world, so complex that
-     disturbance in New York involves financial and commercial
-     disturbance in London, and, if sufficiently grave, compels
-     financiers of London to co-operate with those of New York to put an
-     end to the crisis, not as a matter of altruism, but as a matter of
-     commercial self-protection. The complexity of modern finance makes
-     New York dependent on London, London upon Paris, Paris upon Berlin,
-     to a greater degree than has ever yet been the case in history.
-     This interdependence is the result of the daily use of those
-     contrivances of civilisation which date from yesterday--the rapid
-     post, the instantaneous dissemination of financial and commercial
-     information by means of telegraphy, and generally the incredible
-     progress of rapidity in communication which has put the half-dozen
-     chief capitals of Christendom in closer contact financially, and
-     has rendered them more dependent the one upon the other than were
-     the chief cities of Great Britain less than a hundred years
-     ago.--(pp. 49-50.)
-
-     'Credit is merely an extension of the use of money, and we can no
-     more shake off the domination of the one than we can of the other.
-     We have seen that the bloodiest despot is himself the slave of
-     money, in the sense that he is compelled to employ it. In the same
-     way no physical force can in the modern world set at naught the
-     force of credit. It is no more possible for a great people of the
-     modern world to live without credit than without money, of which it
-     is a part.... The wealth of the world is not represented by a fixed
-     amount of gold or money now in the possession of one Power, and now
-     in the possession of another, but depends on all the unchecked
-     multiple activities of a community for the time being. Check that
-     activity, whether by imposing tribute, or disadvantageous
-     commercial conditions, or an unwelcome administration which sets up
-     sterile political agitation, and you get less wealth--less wealth
-     for the conqueror, as well as less for the conquered. The broadest
-     statement of the case is that all experience--especially the
-     experience indicated in the last chapter--shows that in trade by
-     free consent carrying mutual benefit we get larger results for
-     effort expended than in the exercise of physical force which
-     attempts to exact advantage for one party at the expense of the
-     other.'--(pp. 270-272.)
-
-In elaboration of this general thesis it is pointed out that the
-processes of exchange have become too complex for direct barter, and can
-only take place by virtue of credit; and it is by the credit system, the
-'sensory nerve' of the economic organism, that the self-injurious
-results of economic war are first shown. If, after a victorious war, we
-allow enemy industry and international trade to go on much as before,
-then obviously our victory will have had very little effect on the
-fundamental economic situation. If, on the other hand, we attempt for
-political or other reasons to destroy our enemy's industry and trade, to
-keep him from the necessary materials of it, we should undermine our own
-credit by diminishing the exchange value of much of our own real wealth.
-For this reason it is 'a great illusion' to suppose that by the
-political annexation of colonies, territories with iron-mines,
-coal-mines, we enrich ourselves by the amount of wealth their
-exploitation represents.[117]
-
-The large place which such devices as an international credit system
-must take in our international economy, adds enormously to the
-difficulty of securing any 'spoils of victory' in the shape of
-indemnity. A large indemnity is not impossible, but the only condition
-on which it can be made possible--a large foreign trade by the defeated
-people--is not one that will be readily accepted by the victorious
-nation. Yet the dilemma is absolute: the enemy must do a big foreign
-trade (or deliver in lieu of money large quantities of goods) which will
-compete with home production, or he can pay no big indemnity--nothing
-commensurate with the cost of modern war.
-
-Since we are physically dependent on co-operation with foreigners, it
-is obvious that the frontiers of the national State are not co-terminous
-with the frontiers of our society. Human association cuts athwart
-frontiers. The recognition of the fact would help to break down that
-conception of nations as personalities which plays so large a part in
-international hatred. The desire to punish this or that 'nation' could
-not long survive if we had in mind, not the abstraction, but the babies,
-the little girls, old men, in no way responsible for the offences that
-excited our passions, whom we treated in our minds as a single
-individual.[118]
-
-As a means of vindicating a moral, social, religious, or cultural
-ideal--as of freedom or democracy--war between States, and still more
-between Alliances, must be largely ineffective for two main reasons.
-First, because the State and the moral unit do not coincide. France or
-the British Empire could not stand as a unit for Protestanism as opposed
-to Catholicism, Christianity as opposed to Mohammedanism, or
-Individualism as opposed to Socialism, or Parliamentary Government as
-opposed to Bureaucratic Autocracy, or even for European ascendancy as
-against Coloured Races. For both Empires include large coloured
-elements; the British Empire is more Mohammedan than Christian, has
-larger areas under autocratic than under Parliamentary government; has
-powerful parties increasingly Socialistic. The State power in both cases
-is being used, not to suppress, but to give actual vitality to the
-non-Christian or non-European or coloured elements that it has
-conquered. The second great reason why it is futile to attempt to use
-the military power of States for ends such as freedom and democracy, is
-that the instincts to which it is compelled to appeal, the spirit it
-must cultivate and the methods it is compelled increasingly to employ,
-are themselves inimical to the sentiment upon which freedom must rest.
-Nations that have won their freedom as the result of military victory,
-usually employ that victory to suppress the freedom of others. To rest
-our freedom upon a permanent basis of nationalist military power, is
-equivalent to seeking security from the moral dangers of Prussianism by
-organising our States on the Prussian model.
-
-Our real struggle is with nature: internecine struggles between men
-lessen the effectiveness of the human army. A Continent which supported
-precariously, with recurrent famine, a few hundred thousand savages
-fighting endlessly between themselves, can support, abundantly a hundred
-million whites who can manage to maintain peace among themselves and
-fight nature.
-
-Nature here includes human nature. Just as we turn the destructive
-forces of external nature from our hurt to our service, not by their
-unintelligent defiance, but by utilising them through a knowledge of
-their qualities, so can the irrepressible but not 'undirectable' forces
-of instinct, emotion, sentiment, be turned by intelligence to the
-service of our greatest and most permanent needs.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-ARGUMENTS NOW OUT OF DATE
-
-
-For the purposes of simplicity and brevity the main argument of _The
-Great Illusion_ assumed the relative permanence of the institution of
-private property in Western society, and the persistence of the tendency
-of victorious belligerents to respect it, a tendency which had steadily
-grown in strength for five hundred years. The book assumed that the
-conqueror would do in the future what he has done to a steadily
-increasing degree in the past, especially as the reasons for such
-policy, in terms of self-interest, have so greatly grown in force during
-the last generation or two. To have argued its case in terms of
-non-existent and hypothetical conditions which might not exist for
-generations or centuries, would have involved hopelessly bewildering
-complications. And the decisive reason for not adding this complication
-was the fact that _though it would vary the form of the argument, it
-would not effect the final conclusion_.
-
-As already explained in the first part of this book (Chapter II) this
-war has marked a revolution in the position of private property and the
-relation of the citizen to the State. The Treaty of Versailles departs
-radically from the general principles adhered to, for instance, in the
-Treaty of Frankfurt; the position of German traders and that of the
-property of German citizens does not at all to-day resemble the position
-in which the Treaty of Frankfurt left the French trader and French
-private property.
-
-The fact of the difference has already been entered into at some length.
-It remains to see how the change affects the general argument adopted in
-_The Great Illusion_.
-
-It does not affect its final conclusions. The argument ran: A conqueror
-cannot profit by 'loot' in the shape of confiscations, tributes,
-indemnities, which paralyse the economic life of the defeated enemy.
-They are economically futile. They are unlikely to be attempted, but if
-they are attempted they will still be futile.[119]
-
-Events have confirmed that conclusion, though not the expectation that
-the enemy's economic life would be left undisturbed. We have started a
-policy which does injure the economic life of the enemy. The more it
-injures him, the less it pays us. And we are abandoning it as rapidly as
-nationalist hostilities will permit us. In so far as pre-war conditions
-pointed to the need of a definitely organised international economic
-code, the situation created by the Treaty has only made the need more
-visible and imperative. For, as already explained in the first Part, the
-old understandings enabled industry to be built up on an international
-basis; the Treaty of Versailles and its confiscations, prohibitions,
-controls, have destroyed those foundations. Had that instrument treated
-German trade and industry as the Germans treated French in 1871 we might
-have seen a recovery of German economic life relatively as rapid as that
-which took place in France during the ten years which followed her
-defeat. We should not to-day be faced by thirty or forty millions in
-Central and Eastern Europe without secure means of livelihood.
-
-The present writer confesses most frankly--and the critics of _The Great
-Illusion_ are hereby presented with all that they can make of the
-admission--that he did not expect a European conqueror, least of all
-Allied conquerors, to use their victory for enforcing a policy having
-these results. He believed that elementary considerations of
-self-interest, the duty of statesmen to consider the needs of their own
-countries just emerging from war, would stand in the way of a policy of
-this kind. On the other hand, he was under no illusions as to what would
-result if they did attempt to enforce that policy. Dealing with the
-damage that a conqueror might inflict, the book says that such things as
-the utter destruction of the enemy's trade
-
-     could only be inflicted by an invader as a means of punishment
-     costly to himself, or as the result of an unselfish and expensive
-     desire to inflict misery for the mere joy of inflicting it. In this
-     self-seeking world it is not practical to assume the existence of
-     an inverted altruism of this kind.--(p. 29.)
-
-Because of the 'interdependence of our credit-built finance and
-industry'
-
-     the confiscation by an invader of private property, whether stocks,
-     shares, ships, mines, or anything more valuable than jewellery or
-     furniture--anything, in short, which is bound up with the economic
-     life of the people--would so react upon the finance of the
-     invader's country as to make the damage to the invader resulting
-     from the confiscation exceed in value the property confiscated--(p.
-     29).
-
-     Speaking broadly and generally, the conqueror in our day has before
-     him two alternatives: to leave things alone, and in order to do
-     that he need not have left his shores; or to interfere by
-     confiscation in some form, in which case he dries up the source of
-     the profit which tempted him--(p. 59).
-
-All the suggestions made as to the economic futility of such a
-course--including the failure to secure an indemnity--have been
-justified.[120]
-
-In dealing with the indemnity problem the book did forecast the
-likelihood of special trading and manufacturing interests within the
-conquering nation opposing the only condition upon which a very large
-indemnity would be possible--that condition being either the creation of
-a large foreign trade by the enemy or the receipt of payment in kind, in
-goods which would compete with home production. But the author certainly
-did not think it likely that England and France would impose conditions
-so rapidly destructive of the enemy's economic life that they--the
-conquerors--would, for their own economic preservation, be compelled to
-make loans to the defeated enemy.
-
-Let us note the phase of the argument that the procedure adopted renders
-out of date. A good deal of _The Great Illusion_ was devoted to showing
-that Germany had no need to expand territorially; that her desire for
-overseas colonies was sentimental, and had little relation to the
-problem of providing for her population. At the beginning of 1914 that
-was certainly true. It is not true to-day. The process by which she
-supported her excess population before the War will, to put it at its
-lowest, be rendered extremely difficult of maintenance as the result of
-allied action. The point, however, is that we are not benefiting by
-this paralysis of German industry. We are suffering very greatly from
-it: suffering so much that we can be neither politically nor
-economically secure until this condition is brought to an end. There can
-be no peace in Europe, and consequently no safety for us or France, so
-long as we attempt by power to maintain a policy which denies to
-millions in the midst of our civilisation the possibility of earning
-their living. In so far as the new conditions create difficulties which
-did not originally exist, our victory does but the more glaringly
-demonstrate the economic futility of our policy towards the vanquished.
-
-An argument much used in _The Great Illusion_ as disproving the claims
-made for conquest was the position of the population of small States.
-'Very well,' may say the critic, 'Germany is now in the position of a
-small State. But you talk about her being ruined!'
-
-In the conditions of 1914, the small State argument was entirely valid
-(incidentally the Allied Governments argue that it still holds).[121] It
-does not hold to-day. In the conditions of 1920 at any rate, the small
-State is, like Germany, economically at the mercy of British sea power
-or the favoritism of the French Foreign Office, to a degree that was
-unknown before the War. How is the situation to develop? Is the Dutch or
-Swedish or Austrian industrial city permanently to be dependent upon the
-good graces of some foreign official sitting in Whitehall or the Quai
-d'Orsay? At present, if an industrialist in such a city wishes to import
-coal or to ship a cargo to one of the new Baltic States, he may be
-prevented owing to political arrangements between France and England. If
-that is to be the permanent situation of the non-Entente world, then
-peace will become less and less secure, and all our talk of having
-fought for the rights of the small and weak will be a farce. The
-friction, the irritation, and sense of grievance will prolong the unrest
-and uncertainty, and the resultant decline in the productivity of
-Europe will render our own economic problems the more acute. The power
-by which we thus arrogate to ourselves the economic dictatorship of
-Europe will ultimately be challenged.
-
-Can we revert to the condition of things which, by virtue of certain
-economic freedoms that were respected, placed the trader or
-industrialist of a small State pretty much on an equality, in most
-things, with the trader of the Great State? Or shall we go forward to a
-recognised international economic system, in which the small States will
-have their rights secured by a definite code?
-
-Reversion to the old individualist 'trans-nationalism' or an
-internationalism without considerable administrative machinery--seems
-now impossible. The old system is destroyed at its sources within each
-State. The only available course now is, recognising the fact of an
-immense growth in the governmental control or regulation of foreign
-trade, to devise definite codes or agreements to meet the case. If the
-obtaining of necessary raw materials by all the States other than France
-and England is to be the subject of wrangles between officials, each
-case to be treated on its merits, we shall have a much worse anarchy
-than before the War. A condition in which two or three powers can lay
-down the law for the world will indeed be an anti-climax.
-
-We may never learn the lesson; the old futile struggles may go on
-indefinitely. But if we do put our intelligences to the situation it
-will call for a method of treatment somewhat different from that which
-pre-war conditions required.
-
-For the purposes of the War, in the various Inter-Allied bodies for the
-apportionment of shipping and raw material, we had the beginnings of an
-economic League of Nations, an economic World Government. Those bodies
-might have been made democratic, and enlarged to include neutral
-interests, and maintained for the period of Reconstruction (which might
-in any case have been regarded as a phase properly subject to war
-treatment in these matters). But these international organisations were
-allowed to fall to pieces on the removal of the common enmity which held
-the European Allies and America together.
-
-The disappearance of these bodies does not mean the disappearance of
-'controls,' but the controls will now be exercised in considerable part
-through vast private Capitalist Trusts dealing with oil, meat, and
-shipping. Nor will the interference of government be abolished. If it is
-considered desirable to ensure to some group a monopoly of phosphates,
-or palm nuts, the aid of governments will be invoked for the purpose.
-But in this case the government will exercise its powers not as the
-result of a publicly avowed and agreed principle, but illicitly,
-hypocritically.
-
-While professing to exercise a 'mandate' for mankind, a government will
-in fact be using its authority to protect special interests. In other
-words we shall get a form of internationalism in which the international
-capitalist Trust will control the Government instead of the Government's
-controlling the Trust.
-
-The fact that this was happening more and more before the War was one
-reason why the old individualist order has broken down. More and more
-the professed position and function of the State was not its real
-position and function. The amount of industry and trade dependent upon
-governmental intervention (enterprises of the Chinese Loan and Bagdad
-Railway type) before the War was small compared with the quantity that
-owed nothing to governmental protection. But the illicit pressure
-exercised upon governments by those interested in the exploitation of
-backward countries was out of proportion to the public importance of
-their interests.
-
-It was this failure of democratic control of 'big business' by the
-pre-war democracies which helped to break down the old individualism.
-While private capital was apparently gaining control over the democratic
-forces, moulding the policy of democratic governments, it was in fact
-digging its own grave. If political democracy in this respect had been
-equal to its task, or if the captains of industry had shown a greater
-scruple or discernment in their use of political power, the
-individualist order might have given us a workable civilisation; or its
-end might have been less painful.
-
-_The Great Illusion_ did not assume its impending demise. Democracy had
-not yet organised socialistic controls within the nation. To have
-assumed that the world of nationalisms would face socialistic regulation
-and control as between States, would have implied an agility on the part
-of the public imagination which it does not in fact possess. An
-international policy on these lines would have been unintelligible and
-preposterous. It is only because the situation which has followed
-victory is so desperate, so much worse than anything _The Great
-Illusion_ forecast, that we have been brought to face these remedies
-to-day.
-
-Before the War, the line of advance, internationally, was not by
-elaborate regulation. We had seen a congeries of States like those of
-the British Empire maintain not only peace but a sort of informal
-Federation, without limitation in any formal way of the national freedom
-of any one of them. Each could impose tariffs against the mother
-country, exclude citizens of the Empire, recognise no common defined
-law. The British Empire seemed to forecast a type of international
-Association which could secure peace without the restraints or
-restrictions of a central authority in anything but the most shadowy
-form. If the merely moral understanding which held it together and
-enabled co-operation in a crisis could have been extended to the United
-States; if the principle of 'self-determination' that had been applied
-to the white portion of the Empire were gradually extended to the
-Asiatic; if a bargain had been made with Germany and France as to the
-open door, and equality of access to undeveloped territory made a matter
-of defined agreement, we should have possessed the nucleus of a world
-organisation giving the widest possible scope for independent national
-development. But world federation on such lines depended above all, of
-course, upon the development of a certain 'spirit,' a guiding temper, to
-do for nations of different origin what had already been done for
-nations of a largely common origin (though Britain has many different
-stocks--English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, and, overseas, Dutch and French
-as well). But the spirit was not there. The whole tradition in the
-international field was one of domination, competition, rivalry,
-conflicting interest, 'Struggle for life.'
-
-The possibility of such a free international life has disappeared with
-the disappearance of the _laisser-faire_ ideal in national organisation.
-We shall perforce be much more concerned now with the machinery of
-control in both spheres as the only alternative to an anarchy more
-devastating than that which existed before the War. For all the reasons
-which point to that conclusion the reader is referred once more to the
-second chapter of the first part of this book.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-THE ARGUMENT AS AN ATTACK ON THE STATE
-
-
-There was not before the War, and there has not been since, any serious
-challenge to the economic argument of _The Great Illusion_. Criticism
-(which curiously enough does not seem to have included the point dealt
-with in the preceding Chapter) seems to have centred rather upon the
-irrelevance of economic considerations to the problem of war--the
-problem, that is, of creating an international society. The answer to
-that is, of course, both explicit and implicit in much of what precedes.
-
-The most serious criticism has been directed to one specific point. It
-is made notably both by Professor Spenser Wilkinson[122] and Professor
-Lindsay,[123] and as it is relevant to the existing situation and to
-much of the argument of the present book, it is worth dealing with.
-
-The criticism is based on the alleged disparagement of the State implied
-in the general attitude of the book. Professor Lindsay (whose article,
-by the way, although hostile and misapprehending the spirit of the book,
-is a model of fair, sincere, and useful criticism) describes the work
-under criticism largely as an attack on the conception of 'the State as
-a person.' He says in effect that the present author argues thus:--
-
-     'The only proper thing to consider is the interest or the happiness
-     of individuals. If a political action conduces to the interests of
-     individuals, it must be right; if it conflicts with these interests
-     it must be wrong.'
-
-Professor Lindsay continues:--
-
-     'Now if pacifism really implied such a view of the relation of the
-     State and the individual, and of the part played by self-interest
-     in life, its appeal has little moral force behind it....
-
-     'Mr. Angell seems to hold that not only is the national State being
-     superseded, but that the supersession is to be welcomed. The
-     economic forces which are destroying the State will do all the
-     State has done to bind men together, and more.'
-
-As a matter of fact Professor Lindsay has himself answered his own
-criticism. For he goes on:--
-
-     'The argument of _The Great Illusion_ is largely based on the
-     public part played by the organisation of credit. Mr Angell has
-     been the first to notice the great significance of its activity. It
-     has misled him, however, into thinking that it presaged a
-     supersession of political by economic control.... The facts are,
-     not that political forces are being superseded by economic, but
-     that the new industrial situation has called into being new
-     political organisations.... To co-ordinate their activities ...
-     will be impossible if the spirit of exclusive nationalism and
-     distrust of foreigners wins the day; it will be equally impossible
-     if the strength of our existing centres of patriotism and public
-     spirit are destroyed.'
-
-Very well. We had here in the pre-war period two dangers, either of
-which in Professor Lindsay's view would make the preservation of
-civilisation impossible: one danger was that men would over-emphasise
-their narrower patriotism and surrender themselves to the pugnacities
-of exclusive nationalism and distrust of foreigners, forgetting that the
-spiritual life of densely packed societies can only be rendered possible
-by certain widespread economic co-operations, contracts; the other
-danger was that we should under-emphasise each our own nationalism and
-give too much importance to the wider international organisation of
-mankind.
-
-Into which danger have we run as a matter of simple fact? Which tendency
-is it that is acting as the present disruptive force in Europe? Has
-opinion and statesmanship--as expressed in the Treaty, for
-instance--given too much or too little attention to the interdependence
-of the world, and the internationally economic foundations of our
-civilisation?
-
-We have seen Europe smashed by neglecting the truths which _The Great
-Illusion_ stressed, perhaps over-stressed, and by surrendering to the
-exclusive nationalism which that book attacked. The book was based on
-the anticipation that Europe would be very much more likely to come to
-grief through over-stressing exclusive nationalism and neglecting its
-economic interdependence, than through the decay of the narrower
-patriotism.
-
-If the book had been written _in vacuo_, without reference to impending
-events, the emphasis might have been different.[124]
-
-But in criticising the emphasis that is thrown upon the welfare of the
-individual, Professor Lindsay would seem to be guilty of confusing the
-_test_ of good political conduct with the _motive_. Certainly _The Great
-Illusion_ did not disparage the need of loyalty to the social group--to
-the other members of the partnership. That need is the burden of most
-that has been written in the preceding pages when dealing with the facts
-of interdependence. An individual who can see only his own interest does
-not see even that; for such interest is dependent on others. (These
-arguments of egoism versus altruism are always circular.) But it
-insisted upon two facts which modern Europe seemed in very great danger
-of forgetting. The first was that the Nation-State was not the social
-group, not co-terminous with the whole of Society, only a very
-arbitrarily chosen part of it; and the second was that the _test_ of the
-'good State' was the welfare of the citizens who composed it. How
-otherwise shall we settle the adjustment between national right and
-international obligation, answer the old and inevitable question, 'What
-is the _Good_ State?' The only intelligible answer is: the State which
-produces good men, subserves their welfare. A State which did not
-subserve the welfare of its citizens, that produced men morally,
-intellectually, physically poor and feeble, could not be a good State. A
-State is tested by the degree to which it serves individuals.
-
-Now the fact of forgetting the first truth, that the Nation-State is not
-the whole of Society but only a part, and that we have obligations to
-the other part, led to a distortion of the second. The Hegelianism which
-denied any obligation above or beyond that of the Nation-State sets up a
-conflict of sovereignties, a competition of power, stimulating the
-instinct of domination, making indeed the power and position of the
-State with reference to rival States the main end of politics. The
-welfare of men is forgotten. The fact that the State is made for man,
-not man for the State, is obscured. It was certainly forgotten or
-distorted by the later political philosophers of Prussia. The oversight
-gave us Prussianism and Imperialism, the ideal of political power as an
-end in itself, against which _The Great Illusion_ was a protest. The
-Imperialism, not alone in Prussia, takes small account of the quality of
-individual life, under the flag. The one thing to be sought is that the
-flag should be triumphant, be flown over vast territories, inspire fear
-in foreigners, and be an emblem of 'glory.' There is a discernible
-distinction of aim and purpose between the Patriot, Jingo, Chauvinist,
-and the citizen of the type interested in such things as social reform.
-The military Patriot the world over does not attempt to hide his
-contempt for efforts at the social betterment of his countryman. That is
-'parish pump.' Mr Maxse or Mr Kipling is keenly interested in England,
-but not in the betterment of Englishmen; indeed, both are in the habit
-of abusing Englishmen very heartily, unless they happen to be soldiers.
-In other words, the real end of politics is forgotten. It is not only
-that the means have become the end, but that one element of the means,
-power, has become the end.
-
-The point I desired to emphasise was that unless we keep before
-ourselves the welfare of the individual as the _test_ of politics (not
-necessarily the motive of each individual for himself) we constantly
-forget the purpose and aim of politics, and patriotism becomes not the
-love of one's fellow countrymen and their welfare, but the love of power
-expressed by that larger 'ego' which is one's group. 'Mystic
-Nationalism' comes to mean something entirely divorced from any
-attribute of individual life. The 'Nation' becomes an abstraction apart
-from the life of the individual.
-
-There is a further consideration. The fact that the Nation-State is not
-co-terminous with Society is shown by its vital need of others; it
-cannot live by itself; it must co-operate with others; consequently it
-has obligations to those others. The demonstration of that fact involves
-an appeal to 'interest,' to welfare. The most visible and vital
-co-operation outside the limits of the Nation-State is the economic; it
-gives rise to the most definite, as to the most fundamental
-obligation--the obligation to accord to others the right to existence.
-It is out of the common economic need that the actual structure of some
-mutual arrangement, some social code, will arise, has indeed arisen.
-This makes the beginning of the first visible structure of a world
-society. And from these homely beginnings will come, if at all, a more
-vivid sense of the wider society. And the 'economic' interest, as
-distinct from the temperamental interest of domination, has at least
-this social advantage. Welfare is a thing that in society may well grow
-the more it is divided: the better my countrymen the richer is my life
-likely to become. Domination has not this quality: it is mutually
-exclusive. We cannot all be masters. If any country is to dominate,
-somebody or some one else's country must be dominated; if the one is to
-be the Superior Race, some other must be inferior. And the inferior
-sooner or later objects, and from that resistance comes the
-disintegration that now menaces us.
-
-It is perfectly true that we cannot create the kind of State which will
-best subserve the interests of its citizens unless each is ready to give
-allegiance to it, irrespective of his immediate personal 'interest.'
-(The word is put in inverted commas because in most men not compelled by
-bad economic circumstances to fight fiercely for daily bread, sheer
-physical sustenance, the satisfaction of a social and creative instinct
-is a very real 'interest,' and would, in a well-organised society, be as
-spontaneous as interest in sport or social ostentation.) The State must
-be an idea, an abstraction, capable of inspiring loyalty, embodying the
-sense of interdependence. But the circumstances of the independent
-modern national State, in frequent and unavoidable contact with other
-similar States, are such as to stimulate not mainly the motives of
-social cohesion, but those instincts of domination which become
-anti-social and disruptive. The nationalist stands condemned not because
-he asks allegiance or loyalty to the social group, but first, because he
-asks absolute allegiance to something which is not the social group but
-only part of it, and secondly, because that exclusive loyalty gives rise
-to disruptive pugnacities, injurious to all.
-
-In pointing out the inadequacy of the unitary political Nation-State as
-the embodiment of final sovereignty, an inadequacy due to precisely the
-development of such organisations as Labour, the present writer merely
-anticipated the drift of much political writing of the last ten years on
-the problem of State sovereignty; as also the main drift of
-events.[125]
-
-If Mr Lindsay finds the very mild suggestions in _The Great Illusion_
-touching the necessary qualification of the sovereignty of the
-Nation-State subversive, one wonders what his feelings are on reading,
-say, Mr Cole, who in a recent book (_Social Theory_) leaves the
-Political State so attenuated that one questions whether what is left is
-not just ghost. At the best the State is just one collateral association
-among others.
-
-The sheer mechanical necessities of administration of an industrial
-society, so immeasurably more complex than the simple agricultural
-society which gave us the unitary political State, seem to be pushing us
-towards a divided or manifold sovereignty. If we are to carry over from
-the National State into the new form of the State--as we seem now in
-danger of doing--the attitude of mind which demands domination for 'our'
-group, the pugnacities, suspicions, and hostilities characteristic of
-nationalist temper, we may find the more complex society beyond our
-social capacity. I agree that we want a common political loyalty, that
-mere obedience to the momentary interest of our group will not give it;
-but neither will the temper of patriotism as we have seen it manifested
-in the European national State. The loyalty to some common code will
-probably only come through a sense of its social need. (It is on the
-ground of its social need that Mr Lindsay defends the political State.)
-At present we have little sense of that need, because we have (as
-Versailles proved) a belief in the effectiveness of our own power to
-exact the services we may require. The rival social or industrial groups
-have a like belief. Only a real sense of interdependence can undermine
-that belief; and it must be a visible, economic interdependence.
-
-A social sense may be described as an instinctive feeling for 'what will
-work.' We are only yet at the beginning of the study of human motive. So
-much is subconscious that we are certainly apt to ascribe to one motive
-conduct which in fact is due to another. And among the neglected motives
-of conduct is perhaps a certain sense of art--a sense, in this
-connection, of the difficult 'art of living together.' It is probably
-true that what some, at least, find so revolting in some of the
-manifestations of nationalism, chauvinism, is that they violently
-challenge the whole sense of what will work, to say nothing of the
-rights of others. 'If every one took that line, nobody could live.' In a
-social sense this is gross and offensive. It has an effect on one like
-the manners of a cad. It is that sort of motive, perhaps, more than any
-calculation of 'interest,' which may one day cause a revulsion against
-Balkanisation. But to that motive some informed sense of interdependence
-is indispensable.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-VINDICATION BY EVENTS
-
-
-If the question merely concerned the past, if it were only a matter of
-proving that this or that 'School of thought' was right, this
-re-examination of arguments put forward before the War would be a
-sterile business enough. But it concerns the present and the future;
-bears directly and pertinently upon the reasons which have led us into
-the existing chaos; and the means by which we might hope to emerge. As
-much to-day as before the War (and far more obviously) is it true that
-upon the reply to the questions raised in this discussion depends the
-continuance of our civilisation. Our society is still racked by a fierce
-struggle for political power, our populations still demand the method of
-coercion, still refuse to face the facts of interdependence, still
-insist clamorously upon a policy which denies those facts.
-
-The propositions we are here discussing were not, it is well to recall,
-merely to the effect that 'war does not pay,' but that the ideas and
-impulses out of which it grows, and which underlay--and still
-underlie--European politics, give us an unworkable society; and that
-unless they can be corrected they will increasingly involve social
-collapse and disintegration.
-
-That conclusion was opposed, as we have seen, on two main grounds. One
-was that the desire for conquest and extension of territory did not
-enter appreciably into the causes of war, 'since no one really believed
-that victory could advantage them.' The other ground of objection, in
-contradistinction, was that the economic advantages of conquest or
-military predominance were so great and so obvious that to deny them was
-mere paradox-mongering.
-
-The validity of both criticisms has been very thoroughly tested in the
-period that has followed the Armistice. Whether it be true or not that
-the competition for territory, the belief that predominant power could
-be turned to economic account, entered into the causes of the War, that
-competition and belief have certainly entered into the settlement and
-must be reckoned among the causes of the next war. The proposition that
-the economic advantages of conquest and coercion are illusory is hardly
-to-day a paradox, however much policy may still ignore the facts.
-
-The outstanding facts of the present situation most worth our attention
-in this connection are these: Military predominance, successful war,
-evidently offer no solution either of specifically international or of
-our common social and economic problems. The political disintegration
-going on over wide areas in Europe is undoubtedly related very
-intimately to economic conditions: actual lack of food, the struggle for
-ever-increasing wages and better conditions. Our attempted remedies--our
-conferences for dealing with international credit, the suggestion of an
-international loan, the loans actually made to the enemy--are a
-confession of the international character of that problem. All this
-shows that the economic question, alike nationally and internationally,
-is not, it is true, something that ought to occupy all the energies of
-men, but something that will, unless dealt with adequately; is a
-question that simply cannot be swept aside with magnificent gestures.
-Finally, the nature of the settlement actually made by the victor, its
-characteristic defects, the failure to realise adequately the victor's
-dependence on the economic life of the vanquished, show clearly enough
-that, even in the free democracies, orthodox statecraft did indeed
-suffer from the misconception which _The Great Illusion_ attributed to
-it.
-
-What do we see to-day in Europe? Our preponderant military
-power--overwhelming, irresistible, unquestioned--is impotent to secure
-the most elementary forms of wealth needed by our people: fuel, food,
-shelter. France, who in the forty years of her 'defeat' had the soundest
-finances in Europe, is, as a victor over the greatest industrial nation
-in Europe, all but bankrupt. (The franc has fallen to a discount of over
-seventy per cent.) All the recurrent threats of extended military
-occupation fail to secure reparations and indemnities, the restoration
-of credit, exchange, of general confidence and security.
-
-And just as we are finding that the things necessary for the life of our
-peoples cannot be secured by military force exercised against foreign
-nations or a beaten enemy, so are we finding that the same method of
-force within the limits of the nation used by one group as against
-another, fails equally. The temper or attitude towards life which leads
-us to attempt to achieve our end by the forcible imposition of our will
-upon others, by dictatorship, and to reject agreement, has produced in
-some degree everywhere revolt and rebellion on the one side, and
-repression on the other; or a general disruption and the breakdown of
-the co-operative processes by which mankind lives. All the raw materials
-of wealth are here on the earth as they were ten years ago. Yet Europe
-either starves or slips into social chaos, because of the economic
-difficulty.
-
-In the way of the necessary co-operation stands the Balkanisation of
-Europe. Why are we Balkanised rather than Federalised? Why do Balkan and
-other border States fight fiercely over this coalfield or that harbour?
-Why does France still oppose trade with Russia, and plot for the control
-of an enlarged Poland or a reactionary Hungary? Why does America now
-wash her hands of the whole muddle in Europe?
-
-Because everywhere the statesmen and the public believe that if only
-the power of their State were great enough, they could be independent of
-rival States, achieve political and economic security and dispense with
-agreements and obligations.
-
-If they had any vivid sense of the vast dangers to which reliance upon
-isolated power exposed any State, however great; if they had realised
-how the prosperity and social peace of their own States depended upon
-the reconciliation and well-being of the vanquished, the Treaty would
-have been a very different document, peace would long since have been
-established with Russia, and the moral foundations of co-operation would
-be present.
-
-By every road that presented itself, _The Great Illusion_ attempted to
-reveal the vital interdependence of peoples--within and without the
-State--and, as a corollary to that interdependence, the very strict
-limits of the force that can be exercised against any one whose life,
-and daily--and willing--labour is necessary to us. It was not merely the
-absence of these ideas but the very active presence of the directly
-contrary ideas of rival and conflicting interest, which explained the
-drift that the present writer thought--and said so often--would, unless
-checked, lead Western civilisation to a vast orgy of physical
-self-destruction and moral violence and chaos.
-
-The economic conditions which constitute one part of the vindication of
-_The Great Illusion_ are of course those described in the first part of
-this book, particularly in the first chapter. All that need be added
-here are a few suggestions as to the relationship between those
-conditions and the propositions we are concerned to verify.
-
-As bearing upon the truth of those propositions, we cannot neglect the
-condition of Germany.
-
-If ever national military power, the sheer efficiency of the military
-instrument, could ensure a nation's political and economic security,
-Germany should have been secure. It was not any lack of the 'impulse to
-defence,' of the 'manly and virile qualities' so beloved of the
-militarist, no tendency to 'softness,' no 'emasculating
-internationalism' which betrayed her. She fell because she failed to
-realise that she too, for all her power, had need of a co-operation
-throughout the world, which her force could not compel; and that she
-must secure a certain moral co-operation in her purposes or be defeated.
-She failed, not for lack of 'intense nationalism,' but by reason of it,
-because the policy which guided the employment of her military
-instrument had in it too small a regard for the moral factors in the
-world at large, which might set in motion material forces against her.
-
-It is hardly possible to doubt that the easy victories of 1871 marked
-the point at which the German spirit took the wrong turning, and
-rendered her statesmen incapable of seeing the forces which were massing
-for her destruction. The presence in 1919 of German delegates at
-Versailles in the capacity of vanquished can only be adequately
-explained by recalling the presence there of German statesmen as victors
-in 1871. It took forty years for some of the moral fruits of victory to
-manifest themselves in the German spirit.
-
-But the very severity of the present German lot is one that lends itself
-to sophistry. It will be argued: 'You say that preponderant military
-power, victory, is ineffective to economic ends. Well, look at the
-difference between ourselves and Germany. The victors, though they may
-not flourish, are at least better off than the vanquished. If we are
-lean, they starve. Our military power is not economically futile.'
-
-If to bring about hardship to ourselves in order that some one else may
-suffer still greater hardship is an economic gain, then it is untrue to
-say that conquest is economically futile. But I had assumed that
-advantage or utility was to be measured by the good to us, not by the
-harm done to others at our cost. We are arguing for the moment the
-economic, and not the ethical aspect of the thing. Keep for a moment to
-those terms. If you were told that an enterprise was going to be
-extremely profitable and you lost half your fortune in it, you would
-certainly regard as curious the logic of the reply, that after all you
-_had_ gained, because others in the same enterprise had lost everything.
-
-We are considering in effect whether the facts show that nations must,
-in order to provide bread for their people, defeat in war competing
-nations who otherwise would secure it. But that economic case for the
-'biological inevitability' of war is destroyed if it is true that, after
-having beaten the rival nation, we find that we have less bread than
-before; that the future security of our food is less; and that out of
-our own diminished store we have to feed a defeated enemy who, before
-his defeat, managed to feed himself, and helped to feed us as well.
-
-And that is precisely what the present facts reveal.
-
-Reference has already been made to the position of France. In the forty
-years of her defeat France was the banker of Europe. She exacted tribute
-in the form of dividends and interest upon investments from Russia, the
-Near East, Germany herself; exacted it in a form which suited the
-peculiar genius of her people and added to the security of her social
-life. She was Germany's creditor, and managed to secure from her
-conqueror of 1871 the prompt payment of the debts owing to her. When
-France was not in a position to compel anything whatsoever from Germany
-by military force, the financial claims of Frenchmen upon Germany were
-readily discountable in any market of the world. To-day, the financial
-claims on Germany, made by a France which is militarily all-powerful,
-simply cannot be discounted anywhere. The indemnity vouchers, whatever
-may be the military predominance behind them, are simply not negotiable
-instruments so long as they depend upon present policy. They are a form
-of paper which no banker would dream of discounting on their commercial
-merits.
-
-To-day France stands as the conquerer of the richest ore-fields in the
-world, of territory which is geographically the industrial centre of
-Europe; of a vast Empire in Africa and Asia; in a position of
-predominance in Poland, Hungary, and Rumania. She has acquired through
-the Reparations Commission such power over the enemy countries as to
-reduce them almost to the economic position of an Asiatic or African
-colony. If ever wealth could be conquered, France has conquered it. If
-political power could really be turned to economic account, France ought
-to-day to be rich beyond any nation in history. Never was there such an
-opportunity of turning military power into wealth.
-
-Then why is she bankrupt? Why is France faced by economic and financial
-difficulties so acute that the situation seems inextricable save by
-social revolution, a social reconstruction, that is, involving new
-principles of taxation, directly aiming at the re-distribution of
-wealth, a re-distribution resisted by the property-owning classes.
-These, like other classes, have since the Armistice been so persistently
-fed upon the fable of making the Boche pay, that the government is
-unable to induce them to face reality.[126]
-
-With a public debt of 233,729 million of francs (about �9,300,000,000,
-at the pre-war rate of exchange); with the permanent problem of a
-declining population accentuated by the loss of millions of men killed
-and wounded in the war, and complicated by the importation of coloured
-labour; with the exchange value of the franc reduced to sixty in terms
-of the British pound, and to fifteen in terms of the American
-dollar,[127] the position of victorious France in the hour of her
-complete military predominance over Europe seems wellnigh desperate.
-
-She could of course secure very considerable alleviation of her present
-difficulties if she would consent to the only condition upon which
-Germany could make a considerable contribution to Reparations; the
-restoration of German industry. But to that one indispensable condition
-of indemnity or reparation France will not consent, because the French
-feel that a flourishing Germany would be a Germany dangerous to the
-security of France.
-
-In this condition one may recall a part of _The Great Illusion_ case
-which, more than any other of the 'preposterous propositions,' excited
-derision and scepticism before the War. That was the part dealing with
-the difficulties of securing an indemnity. In a chapter (of the early
-1910 Edition) entitled _The Indemnity Futility_, occurred these
-passages:--
-
-     'The difficulty in the case of a large indemnity is not so much the
-     payment by the vanquished as the receiving by the victor ...
-
-     'When a nation receives an indemnity of a large amount of gold, one
-     or two things happens: either the money is exchanged for real
-     wealth with other nations, in which case the greatly increased
-     imports compete directly with the home producers, or the money is
-     kept within the frontiers and is not exchanged for real wealth from
-     abroad, and prices inevitably rise.... The rise in price of home
-     commodities hampers the nation receiving the indemnity in selling
-     those commodities in the neutral markets of the world, especially
-     as the loss of so large a sum by the vanquished nation has just the
-     reverse effect of cheapening prices and therefore, enabling that
-     nation to compete on better terms with the conqueror in neutral
-     markets.'--(p. 76.)
-
-The effect of the payment of the French indemnity of 1872 upon German
-industry was analysed at length.
-
-This chapter was criticised by economists in Britain, France, and
-America. I do not think that a single economist of note admitted the
-slightest validity in this argument. Several accused the author of
-adopting protectionist fallacies in an attempt to 'make out a case.' It
-happens that he is a convinced Free Trader. But he is also aware that it
-is quite impracticable to dissociate national psychology from
-international commercial problems. Remembering what popular feeling
-about the expansion of enemy trade must be on the morrow of war, he
-asked the reader to imagine vast imports of enemy goods as the means of
-paying an indemnity, and went on:--
-
-     'Do we not know that there would be such a howl about the ruin of
-     home industry that no Government could stand the clamour for a
-     week?... That this influx of goods for nothing would be represented
-     as a deep-laid plot on the part of foreign nations to ruin the home
-     trade, and that the citizens would rise in their wrath to prevent
-     the accomplishment of such a plot? Is not this very operation by
-     which foreign nations tax themselves to send abroad goods, not for
-     nothing (that would be a crime at present unthinkable), but at
-     below cost, the offence to which we have given the name of
-     "dumping"? When it is carried very far, as in the case of sugar,
-     even Free Trade nations like Great Britain join International
-     Conferences to prevent these gifts being made!...'
-
-The fact that not one single economist, so far as I know, would at the
-time admit the validity of these arguments, is worth consideration. Very
-learned men may sometimes be led astray by keeping their learning in
-watertight compartments, 'economics' in one compartment and 'politics'
-or political psychology in another. The politicians seemed to misread
-the economies and the economists the politics.
-
-What are the post-war facts in this connection? We may get them
-summarised on the one hand by the Prime Minister of Great Britain and on
-the other by the expert adviser of the British Delegation to the Peace
-Conference.
-
-Mr Lloyd George, speaking two years after the Armistice, and after
-prolonged and exhaustive debates on this problem, says:--
-
-     'What I have put forward is an expression of the views of all the
-     experts.... Every one wants gold, which Germany has not got, and
-     they will not take German goods. Nations can only pay debts by
-     gold, goods, services, or bills of exchange on nations which are
-     its debtors.[128]
-
-     'The real difficulty ... is due to the difficulty of securing
-     payment outside the limits of Germany. Germany could pay--pay
-     easily--inside her own boundary, but she could not export her
-     forests, railways, or land across her own frontiers and make them
-     over to the Allies. Take the railways, for example. Suppose the
-     Allies took possession of them and doubled the charges; they would
-     be paid in paper marks which would be valueless directly they
-     crossed the frontier.
-
-     'The only way Germany could pay was by way of exports--that is by
-     difference between German imports and exports. If, however, German
-     imports were too much restricted, the Germans would be unable to
-     obtain food and raw materials necessary for their manufactures.
-     Some of Germany's principal markets--Russia and Central
-     Europe--were no longer purchasers, and if she exported too much to
-     the Allies, it meant the ruin of their industry and lack of
-     employment for their people. Even in the case of neutrals it was
-     only possible generally to increase German exports by depriving our
-     traders of their markets.'[129]
-
-There is not a line here that is not a paraphrase of the chapter in the
-early edition of _The Great Illusion_.
-
-The following is the comment of Mr Maynard Keynes, ex-Advisor to the
-British Treasury, on the claims put forward after the Paris Conference
-of January 1921:--
-
-     'It would be easy to point out how, if Germany could compass the
-     vast export trade which the Paris proposals contemplate, it could
-     only be by ousting some of the staple trades of Great Britain from
-     the markets of the world. Exports of what commodities, we may ask,
-     in addition to her present exports, is Germany going to find a
-     market for in 1922--to look no farther ahead--which will enable her
-     to make the payment of between �150,000,000 and �200,000,000
-     including the export proportion which will be due from her in that
-     year? Germany's five principal exports before the War were iron,
-     steel, and machinery, coal and coke, woollen goods and cotton
-     goods. Which of these trades does Paris think she is going to
-     develop on a hitherto unprecedented scale? Or if not these, what
-     others? And how is she going to finance the import of raw materials
-     which, except in the case of coal and coke, are a prior necessity
-     to manufacture, if the proceeds of the goods when made will not be
-     available to repay the credits? I ask these questions in respect of
-     the year 1922 because many people may erroneously believe that
-     while the proposed settlement is necessarily of a problematic
-     character for the later years--only time can show--it makes some
-     sort of a start possible. These questions are serious and
-     practical, and they deserve to be answered. If the Paris proposals
-     are more than wind, they mean a vast re-organisation of the
-     channels of international trade. If anything remotely like them is
-     really intended to happen, the reactions on the trade and industry
-     of this country are incalculable. It is an outrage that they should
-     be dealt with by the methods of the poker party of which news comes
-     from Paris.'[130]
-
-If the expert economists failed to admit the validity of _The Great
-Illusion_ argument fifteen years ago, the general public has barely a
-glimmering of it to-day. It is true that our miners realise that vast
-deliveries of coal for nothing by Germany disorganise our coal export
-trade. British shipbuilding has been disastrously affected by the Treaty
-clauses touching the surrender of German tonnage--so much so that the
-Government have now recommended the abandonment of these clauses, which
-were among the most stringent and popular in the whole Treaty. The
-French Government has flatly refused to accept German machinery to
-replace that destroyed by the German armies, while French labour refuses
-to allow German labour, in any quantity, to operate in the devastated
-regions. Thus coal, ships, machinery, manufactures, labour, as means of
-payment, have either already created great economic havoc or have been
-rejected because they might. Yet our papers continue to shout that
-'Germany can pay,' implying that failure to do so is merely a matter of
-her will. Of course she can pay--if we let her. Payment means increasing
-German foreign trade. Suppose, then, we put the question 'Can German
-Foreign Trade be increased?' Obviously it can. It depends mainly on us.
-To put the question in its truer form shows that the problem is much
-more a matter of our will than of Germany's. Incidentally, of course,
-German diplomacy has been as stupid as our own. If the German
-representatives had said, in effect: 'It is common ground that we can
-pay only in commodities. If you will indicate the kind and quantity of
-goods we shall deliver, and will facilitate the import into Germany of,
-and the payment for, the necessary food and raw material, we will
-accept--on that condition--even your figures of reparation.' The Allies,
-of course, could not have given the necessary undertaking, and the real
-nature of the problem would have stood revealed.[131]
-
-The review of the situation of France given in the preceding pages will
-certainly be criticised on the ground that it gives altogether too great
-weight to the temporary embarrassment, and leaves out the advantages
-which future generations of Frenchmen will reap.
-
-Now, whatever the future may have in store, it will certainly have for
-France the task of defending her conquests if she either withholds their
-product (particularly iron) from the peoples of Central Europe who need
-them, or if she makes of their possession a means of exacting a tribute
-which they feel to be burdensome and unjust. Again we are faced by the
-same dilemma; if Germany gets the iron, her population goes on
-expanding and her potential power of resistance goes on increasing. Thus
-France's burden of defence would grow steadily greater, while her
-population remained constant or declined. This difficulty of French
-deficiency in human raw material is not a remote contingency; it is an
-actual difficulty of to-day, which France is trying to meet in part by
-the arming of the negro population of her African colonies, and in part
-by the device of satellite militarisms, as in Poland. But the
-precariousness of such methods is already apparent.
-
-The arming of the African negro carries its appalling possibilities on
-its face. Its development cannot possibly avoid the gravest complication
-of the industrial problem. It is the Servile State in its most sinister
-form; and unless Europe is itself ready for slavery it will stop this
-reintroduction of slavery for the purposes of militarism.
-
-The other device has also its self-defeating element. To support an
-imperialist Poland means a hostile Russia; yet Poland, wedged in between
-a hostile Slav mass on the one side and a hostile Teutonic one on the
-other, herself compounded of Russian, German, Austrian, Lithuanian,
-Ukrainian, and Jewish elements, ruled largely by a landowning
-aristocracy when the countries on both sides have managed to transfer
-the great estates to the peasants, is as likely, in these days, to be a
-military liability as a military asset.
-
-These things are not irrelevant to the problem of turning military power
-to economic account: they are of the very essence of the problem.
-
-Not less so is this consideration: If France should for political
-reasons persist in a policy which means a progressive reduction in the
-productivity of Europe, that policy would be at its very roots directly
-contrary to the vital interests of England. The foregoing pages have
-explained why the increasing population of these islands, that live by
-selling coal or its products, are dependent upon the high productivity
-of the outside world. France is self-supporting and has no such
-pre-occupation. Already the divergence is seen in the case of the
-Russian policy. Britain direly needs the wheat of Russia to reduce the
-cost of living--or improve the value of what she has to sell, which is
-very nearly the same thing. France does not need Russian foodstuffs, and
-in terms of narrow self-interest (cutting her losses in Czarist bonds)
-can afford to be indifferent to the devastation of Russia. As soon as
-this divergence reaches a certain degree, rupture becomes inevitable.
-
-The mainspring of French policy during the last two years has been
-fear--fear of the economic revival of Germany which might be the
-beginning of a military revival. The measures necessary to check German
-economic revival inevitably increase German resentment, which is taken
-as proof of the need for increasingly severe measures of repression.
-Those measures are tending already to deprive France of her most
-powerful military Allies. That fact still further increases the burden
-that will be thrown upon her. Such burdens must inevitably make very
-large deductions from the 'profits' of her new conquests.
-
-Note in view of these circumstances some further difficulties of turning
-those conquests to account. Take the iron mines of Lorraine.[132] France
-has now within her borders what is, as already noted, the geographical
-centre of Continental industry. How shall she turn that fact to account?
-
-For the iron to become wealth at all, for France to become the actual
-centre of European industry, there must be a European industry: the
-railroads and factories and steamship lines as consumers of the iron
-must once more operate. To do that they in their turn must have _their_
-market in the shape of active consumption on the part of the millions of
-Europe. In other words the Continent must be economically restored. But
-that it cannot be while Germany is economically paralysed. Germany's
-industry is the very keystone of the European industry and
-agriculture--whether in Russia, Poland, the Balkans, or the Near
-East--which is the indispensable market of the French iron.[133] Even if
-we could imagine such a thing as a reconstruction of Europe on lines
-that would in some wonderful way put seventy or eighty million Germans
-into a secondary place--involving as it would vast redistributions of
-population--the process obviously would take years or generations.
-Meantime Europe goes to pieces. 'Men will not always die quietly' as Mr
-Keynes puts it. What is to become of French credit while France is
-suppressing Bolshevik upheavals in Poland or Hungary caused by the
-starvation of cities through the new economic readjustments? Europe
-famishes now for want of credit. But credit implies a certain dependence
-upon the steady course of future events, some assurance, for instance,
-that this particular railway line to which advances are made will not
-find itself, in a year or two's time, deprived of its traffic in the
-interest of economic rearrangements resulting from an attempt to re-draw
-the economic map of Europe. Nor can such re-drawing disregard the
-present. It is no good telling peasants who have not ploughs or reapers
-or who cannot get fertilisers because their railroad has no locomotives,
-that a new line running on their side of the new frontier will be built
-ten or fifteen years hence. You cannot stop the patients breathing 'for
-just a few hours' while experiments are made with vital organs. The
-operation must adapt itself to the fact that all the time he must
-breathe. And to the degree to which we attempt violently to re-direct
-the economic currents, does the security upon which our credit depends
-decline.[134]
-
-There are other considerations. A French journalist asks plaintively:
-'If we want the coal why don't we go in and take it'--by the occupation
-of the Ruhr. The implication is that France could get the coal for
-nothing. Well, France has taken over the Saar Valley. By no means does
-she get the coal for nothing. The miners have to be paid. France tried
-paying them at an especially low rate. The production fell off; the
-miners were discontented and underfed. They had to be paid more. Even so
-the Saar has been 'very restless' under French control, and the last
-word, as we know, will rest with the men. Miners who feel they are
-working for the enemy of their fatherland are not going to give a high
-production. It is a long exploded illusion that slave labour--labour
-under physical compulsion--is a productive form of labour. Its output
-invariably is small. So assuredly France does not get this coal for
-nothing. And from the difference between the price which it costs her as
-owner of the mines and administrator of their workers, and that which
-she would pay if she had to buy the coal from the original owners and
-administrators (if there is a difference on the credit side at all) has
-to be deducted the ultimate cost of defence and of the political
-complications that that has involved. Precise figures are obviously not
-available; but it is equally obvious that the profit of seizure is
-microscopic.
-
-Always does the fundamental dilemma remain. France will need above all,
-if she is to profit by these raw materials of European industry,
-markets, and again markets. But markets mean that the iron which has
-been captured must be returned to the nation from which it was taken, on
-conditions economically advantageous to that nation. A central Europe
-that is consuming large quantities of metallurgical products is a
-Central Europe growing in wealth and power and potentially dangerous
-unless reconciled. And reconciliation will include economic justice,
-access to the very 'property' that has been seized.
-
-The foregoing is not now, as it was when the present author wrote in
-similar terms a decade since, mere speculation or hypothesis. Our
-present difficulties with reference to the indemnity or reparations, the
-fall in the exchanges, or the supply of coal, are precisely of the order
-just indicated. The conqueror is caught in the grip of just those
-difficulties in turning conquest to economic account upon which _The
-Great Illusion_ so repeatedly insisted.
-
-The part played by credit--as the sensory nerve of the economic
-organism--has, despite the appearances to the contrary in the early part
-of the War, confirmed those propositions that dealt with it. Credit--as
-the extension of the use of money--is society's bookkeeping. The
-debauchery of the currencies means of course juggling with the promises
-to pay. The general relation of credit to a certain dependability upon
-the future has already been dealt with.[135] The object here is to call
-attention to the present admissions that the maintenance or re-creation
-of credit is in very truth an indispensable element in the recovery of
-Europe. Those admissions consist in the steps that are being taken
-internationally, the emphasis which the governments themselves are
-laying upon this factor. Yet ten years ago the 'diplomatic expert'
-positively resented the introduction of such a subject into the
-discussion of foreign affairs at all. Serious consideration of the
-subject was generally dismissed by the orthodox authority on
-international politics with some contemptuous reference to 'cosmopolitan
-usury.'
-
-Even now we seize every opportunity of disguising the truth to
-ourselves. In the midst of the chaos we may sometimes see flamboyant
-statements that England at any rate is greater and richer than before.
-(It is a statement, indeed, very apt to come from our European
-co-belligerents, worse off than ourselves.) It is true, of course, that
-we have extended our Empire; that we have to-day the same materials of
-wealth as--or more than--we had before the War; that we have improved
-technical knowledge. But we are learning that to turn all this to
-account there must be not only at home, but abroad, a widespread
-capacity for orderly co-operation; the diffusion throughout the world of
-a certain moral quality. And the war, for the time being, at least, has
-very greatly diminished that quality. Because Welsh miners have absorbed
-certain ideas and developed a certain temperament, the wealth of many
-millions who are not miners declines. The idea of a self-sufficing
-Empire that can disregard the chaos of the outside world recedes
-steadily into the background when we see the infection of certain ideas
-beginning the work of disintegration within the Empire. Our control over
-Egypt has almost vanished; that over India is endangered; our relations
-with Ireland affect those with America and even with some of our white
-colonies. Our Empire, too, depends upon the prevalence of certain
-ideas.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-COULD THE WAR HAVE BEEN PREVENTED?
-
-
-'But the real irrelevance of all this discussion,' it will be said, 'is
-that however complete our recognition of these truths might have been,
-that recognition would not have affected Germany's action. We did not
-want territory, or colonies, or mines, or oil-wells, or phosphate
-islands, or railway concessions. We fought simply to resist aggression.
-The alternatives for us were sheer submission to aggression, or war, a
-war of self-defence.'
-
-Let us see. Our danger came from Germany's aggressiveness. What made her
-more aggressive than other nations, than those who later became our
-Allies--Russia, Rumania, Italy, Japan, France? Sheer original sin, apart
-from political or economic circumstance?
-
-Now it was an extraordinary thing that those who were most clamant about
-the danger were for the most part quite ready to admit--even to urge and
-emphasise as part of their case--that Germany's aggression was _not_ due
-to inherent wickedness, but that any nation placed in her position would
-behave in just about the same way. That, indeed, was the view of very
-many pre-eminent before the War in their warnings of the German peril,
-of among others, Lord Roberts, Admiral Mahan, Mr Frederic Harrison, Mr
-Blatchford, Professor Wilkinson.
-
-Let us recall, for instance, Mr Harrison's case for German
-aggression--Germany's 'poor access to the sea and its expanding
-population':--
-
-     'A mighty nation of 65,000,000, with such superb resources both for
-     peace and war, and such overweening pride in its own superiority
-     and might, finds itself closed up in a ring-fence too narrow for
-     its fecundity as for its pretensions, constructed more by history,
-     geography, and circumstances than by design--a fence maintained by
-     the fears rather than the hostility of its weaker neighbours. That
-     is the rumbling subterranean volcano on which the European State
-     system rests.
-
-     'It is inevitable but that a nation with the magnificent resources
-     of the German, hemmed in a territory so inadequate to their needs
-     and pretensions, and dominated by a soldier, bureaucratic, and
-     literary caste, all deeply imbued with the Bismarckian doctrine,
-     should thirst to extend their dominions, and their power at any
-     sacrifice--of life, of wealth, and of justice. One must take facts
-     as they are, and it is idle to be blind to facts, or to rail
-     against them. It is as silly to gloss over manifest perils as it is
-     to preach moralities about them.... England, Europe, civilisation,
-     is in imminent peril from German expansion.'[136]
-
-Very well. We are to drop preaching moralities and look at the facts.
-Would successful war by us remove the economic and political causes
-which were part at least of the explanation of German aggression? Would
-her need for expansion become less? The preceding pages answer that
-question. Successful war by us would not dispose of the pressure of
-German population.
-
-If the German menace was due in part at least to such causes as 'poor
-access to the sea,' the absence of any assurance as to future provision
-for an expanding population, what measures were proposed for the removal
-of those causes?
-
-None whatever. Not only so, but any effort towards a frank facing of the
-economic difficulty was resisted by the very people who had previously
-urged the economic factors of the conflict, as a 'sordid' interpretation
-of that conflict. We have seen what happened, for instance, in the case
-of Admiral Mahan. He urged that the competition for undeveloped
-territory and raw materials lay behind the political struggle. So be it;
-replies some one; let us see whether we cannot remove that economic
-cause of conflict, whether indeed there is any real economic conflict at
-all. And the Admiral then retorts that economics have nothing to do with
-it. To Mr Frederic Harrison '_The Great Illusion_ policy is childish and
-mischievous rubbish.' What was that policy? To deny the existence of the
-German or other aggressiveness? The whole policy was prompted by the
-very fact of that danger. Did the policy suggest that we should simply
-yield to German political pretensions? Again, as we have seen, such a
-course was rejected with every possible emphasis. The one outstanding
-implication of the policy was that while arming we must find a basis of
-co-operation by which both peoples could live.
-
-In any serious effort to that end, one overpowering question had to be
-answered by Englishmen who felt some responsibility for the welfare of
-their people. Would that co-operation, giving security to others, demand
-the sacrifice of the interest or welfare of their own people? _The Great
-Illusion_ replied, No, and set forth the reasons for that reply. And the
-setting-forth of those reasons made the book an 'appeal to avarice
-against patriotism,' an attempt 'to restore the blessed hour of money
-getting.' Eminent Nonconformist divines and patriotic stockbrokers
-joined hands in condemning the appalling sordidness of the demonstration
-which might have led to a removal of the economic causes of
-international quarrel.
-
-It is not true to say that in the decade preceding Armageddon the
-alternatives to fighting Germany were exhausted, and that nothing was
-left but war or submission. We simply had not tried the remedy of
-removing the economic excuse for aggression. The fact that Germany did
-face these difficulties and much future uncertainty was indeed urged by
-those of the school of Mr Harrison and Lord Roberts as a conclusive
-argument against the possibility of peace or any form of agreement with
-her. The idea that agreement should reach to such fundamental things as
-the means of subsistence seemed to involve such an invasion of
-sovereignty as not even to be imaginable.
-
-To show that such an agreement would not ask a sacrifice of vital
-national interest, that indeed the economic advantages which could be
-exacted by military preponderance were exceedingly small or
-non-existent, seemed the first indispensable step towards bringing some
-international code of economic right within the area of practical
-politics, of giving it any chance of acceptance by public opinion. Yet
-the effort towards that was disparaged and derided as 'materialistic.'
-
-One hoped at least that this disparagement of material interest as a
-motive in international politics might give us a peace settlement which
-would be free from it. But economic interest which is 'sordid' when
-appealed to as a means of preserving the peace, becomes a sacred egoism
-when invoked on behalf of a policy which makes war almost inevitable.
-
-Why did it create such bitter resentment before the War to suggest that
-we should discuss the economic grounds of international conflict--why
-before the War were many writers who now demand that discussion so angry
-at it being suggested? Among the very hostile critics of _The Great
-Illusion_--hostile mainly on the ground that it misread the motive
-forces in international politics--was Mr J. L. Garvin. Yet his own first
-post-war book is entitled: _The Economic Foundations of Peace_, and its
-first Chapter Summary begins thus:--
-
-     'A primary war, largely about food and raw materials: inseparable
-     connection of the politics and economics of the peace.'
-
-And his first paragraph contains the following:--
-
-     'The war with many names was in one main aspect a war about food
-     supply and raw materials. To this extent it was Germany's fight to
-     escape from the economic position of interdependence without
-     security into which she had insensibly fallen--to obtain for
-     herself independent control of an ample share in the world's
-     supplies of primary resources. The war meant much else, but it
-     meant this as well and this was a vital factor in its causes.'
-
-His second chapter is thus summarised:--
-
-     'Former international conditions transformed by the revolution in
-     transport and telegraphic intelligence; great nations lose their
-     former self-sufficient basis: growth of interdependence between
-     peoples and continents.... Germany without sea power follows
-     Britain's economic example; interdependence without security:
-     national necessities and cosmopolitan speculation: an Armageddon
-     unavoidable.'
-
-Lord Grey has said that if there had existed in 1914 a League of Nations
-as tentative even as that embodied in the Covenant, Armageddon could in
-any case have been delayed, and delay might well have meant prevention.
-We know now that if war had been delayed the mere march of events would
-have altered the situation. It is unlikely that a Russian revolution of
-one kind or another could have been prevented even if there had been no
-war; and a change in the character of the Russian government might well
-have terminated on the one side the Serbian agitation against Austria,
-and on the other the genuine fear of German democrats concerning
-Russia's imperialist ambitions. The death of the old Austrian emperor
-was another factor that might have made for peace.[137]
-
-Assume, in addition to such factors, that Britain had been prepared to
-recognise Germany's economic needs and difficulties, as Mr Garvin now
-urges we should recognise them. Whether even this would have prevented
-war, no man can say. But we can say--and it is implicit in the economic
-case now so commonly urged as to the need of Germany for economic
-security--that since we did not give her that security we did not do all
-that we might have done to remove the causes of war. 'Here in the
-struggle for primary raw materials' says Mr Garvin in effect over the
-six hundred pages more or less of his book, 'are causes of war that must
-be dealt with if we are to have peace.' If then, in the years that
-preceded Armageddon, the world had wanted to avoid that orgy, and had
-had the necessary wisdom, these are things with which it would have
-occupied itself.
-
-Yet when the attempt was made to draw the attention of the world to just
-those factors, publicists even as sincere and able as Mr Garvin
-disparaged it; and very many misrepresented it by silly distortion. It
-is easy now to see where that pre-war attempt to work towards some
-solution was most defective: if greater emphasis had been given to some
-definite scheme for assuring Germany's necessary access to resources,
-the real issue might have been made plainer. A fair implication of _The
-Great Illusion_ was that as Britain had no real interest in thwarting
-German expansion, the best hope for the future lay in an increasingly
-clear demonstration of the fact of community of interest. The more valid
-conclusion would have been that the absence of conflict in vital
-interests should have been seized upon as affording an opportunity for
-concluding definite conventions and obligations which would assuage
-fears on both sides. But criticism, instead of bringing out this defect,
-directed itself, for the most part, to an attempt to show that the
-economic fears or facts had nothing to do with the conflict. Had
-criticism consisted in taking up the problem where _The Great Illusion_
-left it, much more might have been done--perhaps sufficient--to make
-Armageddon unnecessary.[138]
-
-The importance of the phenomenon we have just touched upon--the
-disparagement before war of truths we are compelled to face after
-war--lies in its revelation of subconscious or unconscious motive. There
-grows up after some years of peace in every nation possessing military
-and naval traditions and a habit of dominion, a real desire for
-domination, perhaps even for war itself; the opportunity that it affords
-for the assertion of collective power; the mysterious dramatic impulse
-to 'stop the cackle with a blow; strike, and strike home.'
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-For the moment we are at the ebb of that feeling and another is
-beginning perhaps to flow. The results are showing in our policy. We
-find in what would have been ten years ago very strange places for such
-things, attacks upon the government for its policy of 'reckless
-militarism' in Mesopotamia or Persia. Although public opinion did not
-manage to impose a policy of peace with Russia, it did at least make
-open and declared war impossible, and all the efforts of the Northcliffe
-Press to inflame passion by stories of Bolshevist atrocities fell
-completely flat. For thirty years it has been a crime of _l�se patrie_
-to mention the fact that we have given solemn and repeated pledges for
-the evacuation of Egypt. And indeed to secure a free hand in Egypt we
-were ready to acquiesce in the French evasion of international
-obligations in Morocco, a policy which played no small part in widening
-the gulf between ourselves and Germany. Yet the political position on
-behalf of which ten years ago these risks were taken is to-day
-surrendered with barely a protest. A policy of almost unqualified
-'scuttle' which no Cabinet could have faced a decade since, to-day
-causes scarcely a ripple. And as to the Treaty, certain clauses therein,
-around which centred less than two years ago a true dementia--the trial
-of the Kaiser in London, the trial of war prisoners--we have simply
-forgotten all about.
-
-It is certain that sheer exhaustion of the emotions associated with war
-explains a good deal. But Turks, Poles, Arabs, Russians, who have
-suffered war much longer, still fight. The policy of the loan to
-Germany, the independence of Egypt, the evacuation of Mesopotamia, the
-refusal to attempt the removal of the Bolshevist 'menace to freedom and
-civilisation' by military means, are explained in part at least by a
-growing recognition of both the political and the economic futility of
-the military means, and the absolute need of replacing or supplementing
-the military method by an increasing measure of agreement and
-co-operation. The order of events has been such as to induce an
-interpretation, bring home a conviction, which has influenced policy.
-But the strength and permanence of the conviction will depend upon the
-degree of intelligence with which the interpretation is made. Discussion
-is indispensable and that justifies this re-examination of the
-suggestions made in _The Great Illusion_.
-
-In so far as it is mere emotional exhaustion which we are now feeling,
-and not the beginning of a new tradition and new attitude in which
-intelligence, however dimly, has its part, it has in it little hope. For
-inertia has its dangers as grave as those of unseeing passion. In the
-one case the ship is driven helplessly by a gale on to the rocks, in the
-other it drifts just as helplessly into the whirlpool. A consciousness
-of direction, a desire at least to be master of our fate and to make the
-effort of thought to that end, is the indispensable condition of
-freedom, salvation. That is the first and last justification for the
-discussion we have just summarised.
-
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[1] But British policy can hardly be called less contradictory. A year
-after the enactment of a Treaty which quite avowedly was framed for the
-purpose of checking the development of German trade, we find the
-unemployment crisis producing on the part of the _New Statesman_ the
-following comment:--
-
-'It must be admitted, however, that the present wave of depression and
-unemployment is far more an international than a national problem. The
-abolition of "casual labour" and the adoption of a system of "industrial
-maintenance" would appreciably affect it. The international aspect of
-the question has always been important, but never so overwhelmingly
-important as it is to-day.
-
-'The present great depression, however, is not normal. It is due in the
-main to the breakdown of credit and the demoralisation of the
-"exchanges" throughout Europe. France cannot buy locomotives in England
-if she has to pay 60 francs to the pound sterling. Germany, with an
-exchange of 260 (instead of the pre-war 20) marks to the pound, can buy
-scarcely anything. Russia, for other reasons cannot buy at all. And even
-neutral countries like Sweden and Denmark, which made much money out of
-the war and whose "exchanges" are fairly normal, are financially almost
-_hors de combat_, owing presumably to the ruin of Germany. There appears
-to be no remedy for this position save the economic rehabilitation of
-Central Europe.
-
-'As long as German workmen are unable to exercise their full productive
-capacity, English workmen will be unemployed. That, at present, is the
-root of the problem. For the last two years we, as an industrial nation,
-have been cutting off our nose to spite our face. In so far as we ruin
-Germany we are ruining ourselves; and in so far as we refuse to trade
-with revolutionary Russia we are increasing the likelihood of violent
-upheavals in Great Britain. Sooner or later we shall have to scrap every
-Treaty that has been signed and begin again the creation of the New
-Europe on the basis of universal co-operation and mutual aid. Where we
-have demanded indemnities we must offer loans.
-
-'A system of international credit--founded necessarily on British
-credit--is as great a necessity for ourselves as it is for Central
-Europe. We must finance our customers or lose them and share their ruin,
-sinking deeper every month into the morass of doles and relief works.
-That is the main lesson of the present crisis.'--(Jan. 1st, 1921.)
-
-[2] Out of a population of 45,000,000 our home-grown wheat suffices for
-only about 12,500,000, on the basis of the 1919-20 crop. Sir Henry Rew,
-_Food Supplies in Peace and War_, says: 'On the basis of our present
-population ... we should still need to import 78 per cent. of our
-requirements.' (p. 165). Before the War, according to the same
-authority, home produce supplied 48 per cent. in food value of the total
-consumption, but the table on which this figure is based does not
-include sugar, tea, coffee, or cocoa.
-
-[3] The growing power of the food-producing area and its determination
-to be independent as far as possible of the industrial centre, is a fact
-too often neglected in considering the revolutionary movements of
-Europe. The war of the classes almost everywhere is crossed by another
-war, that between cities and country. The land-owning countryman,
-whether peasant or noble, tends to become conservative, clerical,
-anti-socialist (and anti-social) in his politics and outlook.
-
-[4] 'The Economic Consequences of the Peace,' pp. 275-277.
-
-[5] _Manchester Guardian_, Weekly Edition, February 6th., 1920.
-
-[6] _Daily News_, June 28th., 1920.
-
-[7] Sir William Goode, British Director of Relief, has said, (_Times_
-Dec. 6th., 1919):--
-
-'I have myself recently returned from Vienna. I feel as if I had spent
-ten days in the cell of a condemned murderer who has given up all hope
-of reprieve. I stayed at the best hotel, but I saw no milk and no eggs
-the whole time I was there. In the bitter, cold hall of the hotel, once
-the gayest rendezvous in Europe, the visitors huddled together in the
-gloom of one light where there used to be forty. They were more like
-shadows of the Embankment than representatives of the rich. Vienna's
-world-famous Opera House is packed every afternoon. Why? Women and men
-go there in order to keep themselves warm, and because they have no work
-to do.'
-
-He went on:--
-
-'First aid was to hasten peace. Political difficulties combined with
-decreased production, demoralisation of railway traffic, to say nothing
-of actual shortages of coal, food, and finance, had practically
-paralysed industrial and commercial activity. The bold liberation or
-creation of areas, without simultaneous steps to reorganise economic
-life, had so far proved to be a dangerous experiment. Professor Masaryk,
-the able President of Czecho-Slovakia, put the case in a nutshell when
-he said: "It is a question of the export of merchandise or of
-population."'
-
-[8] The figures for 1913 are:--
-
-  Imports.         From British Possessions      �192,000,000.
-                   From Foreign Countries        �577,000,000.
-  Exports.         To British Possessions        �195,000,000.
-                   To Foreign Countries          �330,000,000.
-  Re-exports.      To British Possessions         �14,000,000.
-                   To Foreign Countries           �96,000,000.
-
-
-[9] The question is dealt with more fully in the last chapter of the
-'Addendum' to this book. The chapter of 'The Great Illusion' dealing
-with the indemnity says: 'The difficulty in the case of a large
-indemnity is not so much the payment by the vanquished as the receiving
-by the victor.' (p. 76, 1910 Edition.) Mr Lloyd George (Jan. 28th.,
-1921) says: 'The real difficulty is in securing payment outside the
-limits of Germany.... The only way Germany can pay is by exports--the
-difference between German imports and exports.... If she exports too
-much for the Allies it means the ruin of their industry.'
-
-Thus the main problem of an indemnity is to secure wealth in exportable
-form which will not disorganise the victor's trade. Yet so obscured does
-the plainest fact become in the murky atmosphere of war time that in
-many of the elaborate studies emanating from Westminster and Paris, as
-to 'What Germany can pay' this phase of the problem is not even touched
-upon. We get calculations as to Germany's total wealth in railroads,
-public buildings, houses, as though these things could be picked up and
-transported to France or Belgium. We are told that the Allies should
-collect the revenues of the railroads; the _Daily Mail_ wants us to
-'take' the income of Herr Stinnes, all without a word as to the form in
-which this wealth is to _leave Germany_. Are we prepared to take the
-things made in the factories of Herr Stinnes or other Germans? If not,
-what do we propose that Germany shall give? Paper marks increased in
-quantity until they reach just the value of the paper they are printed
-on? Even to secure coal, we must, as we have seen, give in return food.
-
-If the crux of the situation were really understood by the memorialists
-who want Germany's pockets searched, their studies would be devoted
-_not_ to showing what Germany might produce under favourable
-circumstances, which her past has shown to be very great indeed, but
-what degree of competitive German production Allied industrialists will
-themselves be ready to face.
-
-"Big business" in England is already strongly averse to the payment of
-an indemnity, as any conversation in the City or with industrialists
-readily reveals. Yet it was the suggestion of what has actually taken
-place which excited the derision of critics a few years ago. Obviously
-the feasibility of an indemnity is much more a matter of our will than
-of Germany's, for it depends on what shall be the size of Germany's
-foreign trade. Clearly we can expand that if we want to. We might give
-her a preference!
-
-[10] 'What Happened to Europe.'
-
-[11] _Times_, July 3rd., 1920.
-
-[12] The proposal respecting Austria was a loan of 50 millions in
-instalments of five years.
-
-[13] Mr Hoover seems to suggest that their repayment should never take
-place. To a meeting of Bankers he says:--
-
-'Even if we extend these credits and if upon Europe's recovery we then
-attempt to exact the payment of these sums by import of commodities, we
-shall have introduced a competition with our own industries that cannot
-be turned back by any tariff wall.... I believe that we have to-day an
-equipment and a skill in production that yield us a surplus of
-commodities for export beyond any compensation we can usefully take by
-way of imported commodities.... Gold and remittances and services cannot
-cover this gulf in our trade balance.... To me there is only one remedy,
-and that is by the systematic permanent investment of our surplus
-production in reproductive works abroad. We thus reduce the return we
-must receive to a return of interest and profit.'
-
-A writer in the _New Republic_ (Dec. 29th., 1920.) who quotes this says
-pertinently enough:--
-
-'Mr Hoover disposes of the principal of our foreign loans. The debtors
-cannot return it and we cannot afford to receive it back. But the
-interest and profit which he says we may receive--that will have to be
-paid in commodities, as the principal would be if it were paid at all.
-What shall we do when the volume of foreign commodities received in
-payment of interest and profit becomes very large and our industries cry
-for protection?'
-
-[14] The present writer declines to join in the condemnation of British
-miners for reduced output. In an ultimate sense (which is no part of the
-present discussion) the decline in effort of the miner is perhaps
-justified. But the facts are none the less striking as showing how great
-the difference of output can be. Figures given by Sir John Cadman,
-President of the Institute of Mining Engineers a short time ago (and
-quoted in the _Fortnightly Review_ for Oct. 1920.), show that in 1916
-the coal production per person employed in the United Kingdom was 263
-tons, as against 731 tons in the United States. In 1918 the former
-amounted to 236 tons, and during 1919 it sank to 197� tons. In 1913 the
-coal produced per man per day in this country was 0.98 tons, and in
-America it was 3.91 tons for bituminous coal and 2.19 tons for
-anthracite. In 1918 the British output figure was 0.80 tons, and the
-American 3.77 tons for bituminous coal and 2.27 for anthracite. Measured
-by their daily output, a single American miner does just as much work as
-do five Englishmen.
-
-The inferiority in production is, of course, 'to some considerable
-extent' due to the fact that the most easily workable deposits in
-England are becoming exhausted, while the United States can most easily
-draw on their most prolific and most easily workable sites....
-
-It is the fact that in our new and favourable coalfields, such as the
-South Yorkshire area, the men working under the most favourable modern
-conditions and in new mines where the face is near the shaft, do not
-obtain as much coal per man employed, as that got by the miners in the
-country generally under the conditions appertaining forty and fifty
-years ago.
-
-[15] Mr J. M. Keynes, 'The Economic Consequences of the Peace,' p. 211,
-says:--'It is an extraordinary fact that the fundamental economic
-problem of a Europe starving and disintegrating before their eyes, was
-the one question in which it was impossible to arouse the interest of
-the Four.'
-
-[16] Incidentally we see nations not yet brought under capitalist
-organisation (e.g. the peasant nations of the Balkans) equally subject
-to the hostilities we are discussing.
-
-Bertrand Russell writes (_New Republic_, September 15th., 1920):--'No
-doubt commercial rivalry between England and Germany had a great deal to
-do with causing the war, but rivalry is a different thing from
-profit-seeking. Probably by combination, English and German capitalists
-could have made more than they did out of rivalry, but the rivalry was
-instinctive, and its economic form was accidental. The capitalists were
-in the grip of nationalist instinct as much as their proletarian
-'dupes.' In both classes some have gained by the war, but the universal
-will to war was not produced by the hope of gain. It was produced by a
-different set of instincts, one which Marxian psychology fails to
-recognise adequately....
-
-Men desire power, they desire satisfaction for their pride and their
-self-respect. They desire victory over their rivals so profoundly that
-they will invent a rivalry for the unconscious purpose of making a
-victory possible. All these motives cut across the pure economic motive
-in ways that are practically important.
-
-There is need of a treatment of political motives by the methods of
-psycho-analysis. In politics, as in private life, men invent myths to
-rationalise their conduct. If a man thinks that the only reasonable
-motive in politics is economic self-advancement, he will persuade
-himself that the things he wishes to do will make him rich. When he
-wants to fight the Germans, he tells himself that their competition is
-ruining his trade. If, on the other hand, he is an 'idealist,' who holds
-that his politics should aim at the advancement of the human race, he
-will tell himself that the crimes of the Germans demand their
-humiliation. The Marxian sees through this latter camouflage, but not
-through the former.
-
-[17] 'If the Englishman sells goods in Turkey or Argentina, he is taking
-trade from the German, and if the German sells goods in either of these
-countries--or any other country, come to that--he is taking trade from
-the Englishman; and the well-being of every inhabitant of the great
-manufacturing towns, such as London, Paris, or Berlin, is bound up in
-the power of the capitalist to sell his wares; and the production of
-manufactured articles has outstripped the natural increase of demand by
-67 per cent., therefore new markets must be found for these wares or the
-existing ones be "forced"; hence the rush for colonies and feverish
-trade competition between the great manufacturing countries. And the
-production of manufactured goods is still increasing, and the great
-cities must sell their wares or starve. Now we understand what trade
-rivalry really is. It resolves itself, in fact, into the struggle for
-bread.' (A Rifleman: '_Struggle for Bread._' p. 54.)
-
-[18] Mr J. M. Keynes, _The Economic Consequences of the Peace_, says: 'I
-do not put the money value of the actual _physical_ loss to Belgian
-property by destruction and loot above �150,000,000 as a _maximum_, and
-while I hesitate to put yet lower an estimate which differs so widely
-from those generally current, I shall be surprised if it proves possible
-to substantiate claims even to this amount.... While the French claims
-are immensely greater, here too, there has been excessive exaggeration,
-as responsible French statisticians have themselves pointed out. Not
-above 10 per cent. of the area of France was effectively occupied by the
-enemy, and not above 4 per cent. lay within the area of substantial
-devastation.... In short, it will be difficult to establish a bill
-exceeding �500,000,000 for _physical and material_ damage in the
-occupied and devastated areas of Northern France.' (pp. 114-117.)
-
-[19] _The Foundations of International Policy_ pp. xxiii-xxiv.
-
-It is true, of course, that Governments were for their armies and navies
-and public departments considerable purchasers in the international
-market. But the general truth of the distinction here made is
-unaffected. The difference in degree, in this respect, between the
-pre-war and post-war state in so great as to make a difference of kind.
-The dominant motive for State action has been changed.
-
-[20] See Addendum and also the authors' _War and the Workers_. (National
-Labour Press). pp. 29-50.
-
-[21] Note of May 22, 1919.
-
-[22] Speech of September 5, 1919. From report in Philadelphia Public
-Ledger, Sept 6.
-
-[23] In German East Africa we have a case in which practically the whole
-of the property in land was confiscated. The whole European population
-were evicted from the farms and plantations--many, of course,
-representing the labour of a lifetime--and deported. A visitor to the
-colony describes it as an empty shell, its productivity enormously
-reduced. In contradistinction, however, one welcomes General Smuts's
-statement in the Union House of Assembly in regard to the Government's
-intentions as to German property. He declared that the balance of nine
-millions in the hands of the Custodian after claims for damages had been
-recovered, would not be paid to the Reparations Commission, as this
-would practically mean confiscation. The Government would take the nine
-millions, plus interest, as a loan to South Africa for thirty years at
-four per cent. While under the Peace Treaty they had the right to
-confiscate all private property in South-West Africa, they did not
-intend to avail themselves of those rights. They would leave private
-property alone. As to the concessions, if the titles to these were
-proved, they would also be left untouched. The statement of the South
-African Government's intentions, which are the most generous of any
-country in the world, was received with repeated cheers from all
-sections of the House.
-
-[24] Since the above lines were written the following important
-announcement has appeared (according to _The Times_ of October 26th.,
-1920.) in the _Board of Trade Journal_ of October 21st.:--
-
-'H. M. Government have informed the German Government that they do not
-intend to exercise their rights under paragraph 18 of Annex II to Part
-VIII of the Treaty of Versailles, to seize the property of German
-nationals in this country in case of voluntary default by Germany. This
-applies to German property in the United Kingdom or under United Kingdom
-control, whether in the form of bank balances, or in that of goods in
-British bottoms, or of goods sent to this country for sale.
-
-'It has already been announced that German property, rights, and
-interests acquired since the publication of the General Licence
-permitting the resumption of trade with Germany (i.e. since July 12th.,
-1919), are not liable to retention under Art. 297 of the Peace Treaty,
-which gives the Allied and Associated Powers the right to liquidate all
-German property, rights, and interests within their territories at the
-date of the coming into force of the Treaty.'
-
-This announcement has called forth strong protests from France and from
-some quarters in this country, to which the British Government has
-rejoined by a semi-official statement that the concession has been made
-solely on account of British commercial interests. The incident
-illustrates the difficulty of waiving even permissive powers under the
-Treaty, although the exercise of those powers would obviously injure
-British traders. Moreover, the Reparations (Recovery) Act, passed in
-March 1921, appears to be inconsistent with the above announcement.
-
-[25] A point that seems to have been overlooked is the effect of this
-Treaty on the arrangements which may follow changes in the political
-status of, say, Egypt or India or Ireland. If some George Washington of
-the future were to apply the principles of the Treaty to British
-property, the effects might be far-reaching.
-
-A _Quarterly Review_ critic (April 1920) says of these clauses of the
-Treaty (particularly Article 297b.):--
-
-'We are justified in regarding this policy with the utmost apprehension,
-not only because of its injustice, but also because it is likely to form
-precedents of a most mischievous character in the future. If, it will be
-said, the Allied Governments ended their great war for justice and right
-by confiscating private property and ruining those unfortunate
-individuals who happened to have investments outside their own country,
-how can private wealth at home complain if a Labour Government proposes
-to confiscate private property in any business which it thinks suitable
-for "nationalisation"? Under another provision the Reparations
-Commission is actually allowed to demand the surrender of German
-properties and German enterprises in _neutral_ countries. This will be
-found in Article 235, which "introduces a quite novel principle in the
-collection of indemnities."'
-
-[26] See quotations in Addendum.
-
-[27] Cmd. 280 (1919), p. 15.
-
-[28] The dilemma is not, of course, as absolute, as this query would
-suggest. What I am trying to make perfectly clear here is the _kind_ of
-problem that faces us rather than the precise degree of its difficulty.
-My own view is that after much suffering especially to the children, and
-the reduction during a generation or two, perhaps, of the physical
-standard of the race, the German population will find a way round the
-sustenance difficulty. For one thing, France needs German coke quite as
-badly as Germany needs French ore, and this common need may be made the
-basis of a bargain. But though Germany may be able to surmount the
-difficulties created for her by her victors, it is those difficulties
-which will constitute her grievance, and will present precisely the
-kind, if not the degree, of injustice here indicated.
-
-[29] One very commonly sees the statement that France had no adequate
-resources in iron ore before the War. This is an entire mistake, as the
-Report of the Commission appointed by the Minister of Munitions to visit
-Lorraine (issued July, 1919), points out (p. 11.):--'Before the War the
-resources of Germany of iron ore were 3,600,000,000 tons and those of
-France 3,300,000,000.' What gave Germany the advantage was the
-possession not of greater ore resources than France, but of coal
-suitable for furnace coke, and this superiority in coal will still
-remain even after the Treaty, although the paralysis of transport and
-other indispensable factors may render the superiority valueless. The
-report just quoted says:--'It is true that Germany will want iron ore
-from Lorraine (in 1913 she took 14,000,000 tons from Briey and
-18,500,000 tons from Lorraine), but she will not be so entirely
-dependent upon this one source of supply as the Lorraine works will be
-upon Germany for coke, unless some means are provided to enable Lorraine
-to obtain coke from elsewhere, or to produce her own needs from Saar
-coal and imported coking coal.' The whole report seems to indicate that
-the _mise en valeur_ of France's new 'property' depends upon supplies of
-German coal--to say nothing of the needs of a German market and the
-markets depending on that market. As it is, the Lorraine steel works are
-producing nothing like their full output because of the inability of
-Germany to supply furnace coke, owing largely to the Westphalian labour
-troubles and transport disorganisation. Whether political passion will
-so far subside as to enable the two countries to come to a bargain in
-the matter of exchange of ore or basic pig-iron for furnace coke,
-remains to be seen. In any case one may say that the ore-fields of
-Lorraine will only be of value to France provided that much of their
-product is returned to Germany and used for the purpose of giving value
-to German coal.
-
-[30] From the summary of a series of lectures on the _Biology of Death_,
-as reported in the _Boston Herald_ of December 19th., 1920.
-
-[31] A recent book on the subject, summing up the various
-recommendations made in France up to 1918 for increasing the birth-rate
-is _La Natalit�: ses Lois Economiques et Psychologiques_, by Gaston
-Rageot.
-
-The present writer remembers being present ten years before the War at a
-Conference at the Sorbonne on this subject. One of the lecturers
-summarised all the various plans that had been tried to increase the
-birth-rate. 'They have all failed,' he concluded, 'and I doubt if
-anything remains to be done.' And one of the savants present added:
-'Except to applaud.'
-
-[32] Mr William Harbutt Dawson gives the figures as follows:--
-
-'The decline in the birth-rate was found to have become a settled factor
-in the population question.... The birth-rate for the whole Empire
-reached the maximum figure in 1876, when it stood at 41.0 per 1000 of
-the population.... Since 1876 the movement has been steadily downward,
-with the slightest possible break at the beginning of the 'nineties....
-Since 1900 the rate has decreased as follows:--
-
-  1900      35.6 per 1000.
-  1901      35.7 per   "
-  1902      35.1 per   "
-  1903      33.9 per   "
-  1904      34.1 per 1000.
-  1905      33.0 per   "
-  1906      33.1 per   "
-
-(_The Evolution of Modern Germany._ p. 309)
-
-[33] Conversely it may be said that the economic position of the border
-States becomes impossible unless the greater States are orderly. In
-regard to Poland, Mr Keynes remarks: 'Unless her great neighbours are
-prosperous and orderly, Poland is an economic impossibility, with no
-industry but Jew-baiting.'
-
-Sir William Goode (the British Director of Relief) states that he found
-'everywhere never-ending vicious circles of political paradox and
-economic complication, with consequent paralysis of national life and
-industry. The new States of repartitioned Europe seem not only incapable
-of maintaining their own economic life, but also either unable or
-unwilling to help their neighbours.' (Cmd. 521 (1920), p. 6.)
-
-[34] From a manifesto signed by a large number of American
-intellectuals, business men, and Labour Leaders ('League of Free Nations
-Association') on the eve of President Wilson's departure for Paris.
-
-[35] Interview published by _Pearson's Magazine_, March, 1915.
-
-[36] _Times_, March 8, 1915. 'Our honour and interest must have
-compelled us to join France and Russia even if Germany had scrupulously
-respected the rights of her small neighbours and had sought to hack her
-way through the Eastern fortresses. The German Chancellor has insisted
-more than once upon this truth. He has fancied apparently that he was
-making an argumentative point against us by establishing it. That, like
-so much more, only shows his complete misunderstanding of our attitude
-and our character.... We reverted to our historical policy of the
-Balance of Power.'
-
-The _Times_ maintains the same position five years later (July 31st,
-1920): 'It needed more than two years of actual warfare to render the
-British people wholly conscious that they were fighting not a quixotic
-fight for Belgium and France, but a desperate battle for their own
-existence.'
-
-[37] _How the War Came_, p. 238.
-
-[38] Lord Loreburn adds:--
-
-'But Sir Edward Grey in 1914 did not and could not offer similar
-Treaties to France and Germany because our relations with France and the
-conduct of Germany were such, that for us to join Germany in any event
-was unthinkable. And he did not proclaim our neutrality because our
-relations with France, as described in his own speech, were such that he
-could not in honour refuse to join France in the war. Therefore the
-example of 1870 could not be followed in 1914, and Belgium was not saved
-but destroyed.'
-
-[39] See the Documents published by the Russian Government in November,
-1917.
-
-[40] It is not clear whether the undertaking to Russia was actually
-given. Lord R. Cecil in the House of Commons on July 24th, 1917, said:
-'It will be for this country to back up the French in what they desire.
-I will not go through all the others of our Allies--there are a good
-many of them--but the principle (to stand by our Allies) will be equally
-there in the case of all and particularly in the case of Serbia.'
-
-[41] Since these lines were written, there has been a change of
-government and of policy in Italy. An agreement has been reached with
-Yugo-Slavia, which appears to satisfy the moderate elements in both
-countries.
-
-[42] Lord Curzon (May 17th, 1920) wrote that he did not see how we could
-invoke the League to restrain Poland. The Poles, he added, must choose
-war or peace on their own responsibility. Mr Lloyd George (June 19th,
-1920) declared that 'the League of Nations could not intervene in
-Poland.'
-
-[43] _The War that will End War_, p. 14.
-
-[44] _Ibid._, p. 19.
-
-[45] _The Issue_, p. 37-39.
-
-[46] _Land and Water_, February 21st, 1918.
-
-[47] Even as late as January 13th, 1920, Mr H. W. Wilson of the _Daily
-Mail_ writes that if the disarmament of Germany is carried out 'the real
-cause of swollen armaments in Europe will vanish.'
-
-On May 18th, 1920, Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson (_Morning Post_, May
-19th) declares himself thus:--
-
-'We were told that after this last war we were to have peace. We have
-not; there are something between twenty and thirty bloody wars going on
-at the present moment. We were told that the great war was to end war.
-It did not; it could not. We have a very difficult time ahead, whether
-on the sea, in the air, or on the land.' He wanted them to take away the
-warning from a fellow soldier that their country and their Empire both
-wanted them to-day as much as ever they had, and if they were as proud
-of belonging to the British Empire as he was they would do their best,
-in whatever capacity they served, to qualify themselves for the times
-that were coming.
-
-[48] July 31st, 1920.
-
-[49] April 19th, 1919.
-
-[50] A Reuter Despatch dated August 31st, 1920, says:--
-
-'Speaking to-day at Charleston (West Virginia) Mr Daniels, U. S. Naval
-Secretary, said: "We are building enormous docks and are constructing 18
-dreadnoughts and battle cruisers, with a dozen other powerful ships
-which in effective fighting power will give our navy world primacy."'
-
-[51] We are once more back to the Carlylean 'deep, patient ... virtuous
-... Germany.'
-
-[52] Sir Henry Wilson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, in a
-memorandum dated December 1st, 1919, which appears in a Blue Book on
-'the Evacuation of North Russia, 1919,' says:--'There is one great
-lesson to be learned from the history of the campaign.... It is that
-once a military force is involved in operations on land it is almost
-impossible to limit the magnitude of its commitments.'
-
-[53] And Russo-German co-operation is of course precisely what French
-policy must create. Says an American critic:--
-
-'France certainly carries a big stick, but she does not speak softly;
-she takes her own part, but she seems to fear neither God nor the
-revulsion of man. Yet she has reason to fear. Suppose she succeeds for a
-while in reducing Germany to servitude and Russia to a dictatorship of
-the Right, in securing her own dominion on the Continent as overlord by
-the petty States of Europe. What then? What can be the consequence of a
-common hostility of the Teutonic and Slavonic peoples, except in the end
-common action on their part to throw off an intolerable yoke? The
-nightmare of a militant Russo-German alliance becomes daily a more
-sinister prophecy, as France teaches the people of Europe that force
-alone is the solvent. France has only to convince all of Germany that
-the Treaty of Versailles will be enforced in all its rigour, which means
-occupation of the Ruhr and the loss of Silesia, to destroy the final
-resistance of those Germans who look to the West rather than to the East
-for salvation. Let it be known that the barrier of the Rhine is all
-bayonet and threat, and western-minded Germany must go down before the
-easterners, Communist or Junker. It will not matter greatly which.'
-(_New Republic_, Sept. 15th, 1920).
-
-[54] December 23rd, 1919.
-
-[55] _The Times_ of September 4th, 1920 reproduces an article from the
-Matin, on M. Millerand's policy with regard to small States. M.
-Millerand's aim was that economic aid should go hand in hand with French
-military protection. With this policy in view, a number of large
-businesses recently passed under French control, including the Skoda
-factory in Czecho-Slovakia, big works at Kattowitz in Upper Silesia, the
-firm of Huta-Bankowa in Poland, railway factories in Rumania, and
-certain river systems and ports in Yugo-Slavia. In return for assistance
-to Admiral Horthy, an agreement was signed whereby France obtained
-control of the Hungarian State Railways, of the Credit Bank, the
-Hungarian river system and the port of Buda-pest. Other reports state
-that France has secured 85 per cent. of the oil-fields of Poland, in
-return for her help at the time of the threat to Warsaw. As the majority
-of shares in the Polish Oil Company 'Galicia,' which have been in
-British hands until recently, have been bought up by a French Company,
-the 'Franco-Polonaise,' France now holds an important weapon of
-international policy.
-
-[56] The present writer would like to enter a warning here that nothing
-in this chapter implies that we should disregard France's very
-legitimate fears of a revived militarist Germany. The implication is
-that she is going the right way about to create the very dangers that
-terrify her. If this were the place to discuss alternative policies, I
-should certainly go on to urge that England--and America--should make it
-plain to France that they are prepared to pledge their power to her
-defence. More than that, both countries should offer to forgo the debts
-owing to them by France on condition of French adhesion to more workable
-European arrangements. The last thing to be desired is a rupture, or a
-mere change of r�les: France to become once more the 'enemy' and Germany
-once more the 'Ally.' That outcome would merely duplicate the weary
-story of the past.
-
-[57] _The Expansion of England_, p. 202.
-
-[58] The assumption marks even post-war rhetoric. M. Millerand's message
-to the Senate and Chamber upon his election as President of the Republic
-says: 'True to the Alliances for ever cemented by blood shed in common,'
-France will strictly enforce the Treaty of Versailles, 'a new charter of
-Europe and the World.' (_Times_, Sept. 27th, 1920). The passage is
-typical of the moral fact dealt with in this chapter. M. Millerand
-knows, his hearers know, that the war Alliance 'for ever cemented by
-blood shed in common,' has already ceased to exist. But the admission of
-this patent fact would be fatal to the 'blood' heroics.
-
-[59] Dr L. P. Jacks, Editor of _The Hibbert Journal_, tells us that
-before the War the English nation, regarded from the moral point of
-view, was a scene of 'indescribable confusion; a moral chaos.' But there
-has come to it 'the peace of mind that comes to every man who, after
-tossing about among uncertainties, finds at last a mission, a cause to
-which he can devote himself.' For this reason, he says, the War has
-actually made the English people happier than they were before:
-'brighter, more cheerful. The Englishman worries less about himself....
-The tone and substance of conversation are better.... There is more
-health in our souls and perhaps in our bodies.' And he tells how the War
-cured a friend of insomnia. (_The Peacefulness of Being at War_, _New
-Republic_, September 11, 1915).
-
-[60] The facts of both the Russian and the Italian bargains are dealt
-with in more detail in Chap. III.
-
-[61] Quoted by Mr T. L. Stoddard in an article on Italian Nationalism,
-in the _Forum_, Sept. 1915. One may hope that the outcome of the War has
-modified the tendencies in Italy of which he treats. But the quotations
-he makes from Italian Nationalist writers put Treitschke and Bernhardi
-in the shade. Here are some. Corradini says: 'Italy must become once
-more the first nation in the world.' Rocco: 'It is said that all the
-other territories are occupied. But strong nations, or nations on the
-path of progress, conquer.... territories occupied by nations in
-decadence.' Luigi Villari rejoices that the cobwebs of mean-spirited
-Pacifism have been swept away. Italians are beginning to feel, in
-whatever part of the world they may happen to be, something of the pride
-of Roman citizens.' Scipione Sighele writes: 'War must be loved for
-itself.... To say "War is the most horrible of evils," to talk of war as
-"an unhappy necessity," to declare that we should "never attack but
-always know how to defend ourselves," to say these things is as
-dangerous as to make out-and-out Pacifist and anti-militarist speeches.
-It is creating for the future a conflict of duties: duties towards
-humanity, duties towards the Fatherland.' Corradini explains the
-programme of the Nationalists: 'All our efforts will tend towards making
-the Italians a warlike race. We will give it a new will; we will instil
-into it the appetite for power, the need of mighty hopes. We will create
-a religion--the religion of the Fatherland victorious over the other
-nations.'
-
-I am indebted to Mr Stoddard for the translations; but they read quite
-'true to type.'
-
-[62] It is true that the Labour Party, alone of all the parties, did
-take action, happily effective, against the Russian adventure--after it
-had gone on in intermittent form for two years. But the above paragraphs
-refer particularly to the period which immediately succeeded the War,
-and to a general temper which was unfortunately a fact despite Labour
-action.
-
-[63] Mr Hartley Manners, the playwright, who produced during the War a
-book entitled _Hate with a Will to Victory_, writes thus:--
-
-'And in voicing our doctrine of Hate let us not forget that the German
-people were, and are still, solidly behind him (the Kaiser) in
-everything he does.' ...
-
-'The German people are actively and passively with their Government to
-the last man and the last mark. No people receive their faith and their
-rules of conduct more fatuously from their rulers than do the German
-people. Fronting the world they stand as one with their beloved Kaiser.
-He who builds on a revolution in Germany as a possible ending of the
-war, knows not what he says. They will follow through any degradation of
-the body, through any torture of spirit, the tyrants they have been
-taught from infancy to regard as their Supreme Masters of body and
-soul.' ...
-
-And here is his picture of 'the German':--
-
-... 'a slave from birth, with no rights as a free man, owing allegiance
-to a militaristic Government to whom he looks for his very life; crushed
-by taxation to keep up the military machine; ill-nourished, ignorant,
-prone to crime in greater measure than the peasants of any other
-country--as the German statistics of crime show--a degraded peasant, a
-wretched future, and a loathesome past--these are the inheritances to
-which the German peasant is born. What type of nature can develop in
-such conditions? But one--the _brute_. And the four years' commerce of
-this War has shown the German from prince to peasant as offspring of the
-one family--the _brute_ family.' ...
-
-[64] The following--which appeared in _The Times_ of April 17, 1915--is
-merely a type of at least thirty or forty similar reports published by
-the German Army Headquarters: 'In yesterday's clear weather the airmen
-were very active. Enemy airmen bombarded places behind our positions.
-Freiburg was again visited, and several civilians, the majority being
-children, were killed and wounded.' A few days later the Paris _Temps_
-(April 22, 1915) reproduced the German accounts of French air-raids
-where bombs were dropped on Kandern, Loerrach, Mulheim, Habsheim,
-Wiesenthal, T�blingen, Mannheim. These raids were carried out by squads
-of airmen, and the bombs were thrown particularly at railway stations
-and factories. Previous to this, British and French airmen had been
-particularly active in Belgium, dropping bombs on Zeebrugge, Bruges,
-Middlekirke, and other towns. One German official report tells how a
-bomb fell on to a loaded street car, killing many women and children.
-Another (dated September 7, 1915) contains the following: 'In the course
-of an enemy aeroplane attack on Lichtervelde, north of Roulers in
-Flanders, seven Belgian inhabitants were killed and two injured.' A
-despatch from Z�rich, dated Sept. 24, 1915, says: 'At yesterday's
-meeting of the Stuttgart City Council, the Mayor and Councillors
-protested vigorously against the recent French raid upon an undefended
-city. Burgomaster Lautenschlager asserted that an enemy that attacked
-harmless civilians was fighting a lost cause.'
-
-[65] March 27th, 1919.
-
-[66] In Drinkwater's play, _Abraham Lincoln_, the fire-eating wife of
-the war-profiteer, who had been violently abusing an old Quaker lady, is
-thus addressed by Lincoln:--
-
-'I don't agree with her, but I honour her. She's wrong, but she is
-noble. You've told me what you think. I don't agree with you, and I'm
-ashamed of you and your like. You, who have sacrificed nothing babble
-about destroying the South while other people conquer it. I accepted
-this war with a sick heart, and I've a heart that's near to breaking
-every day. I accepted it in the name of humanity, and just and merciful
-dealing, and the hope of love and charity on earth. And you come to me,
-talking of revenge and destruction, and malice, and enduring hate. These
-gentle people are mistaken, but they are mistaken cleanly, and in a
-great name. It is you that dishonour the cause for which we stand--it is
-you who would make it a mean and little thing....'
-
-[67] The official record of the Meeting of the Council of Ten on January
-16, 1919, as furnished to the Foreign Relations Committee of the
-American Senate, reports Mr Lloyd George as saying:--
-
-'The mere idea of crushing Bolshevism by military force is pure
-madness....
-
-'The Russian blockade would be a "death cordon," condemning women and
-children to starvation, a policy which, as humane people, those present
-could not consider.'
-
-[68] While attempting in this chapter to reveal the essential difference
-of the two methods open to us, it is hardly necessary to say that in the
-complexities and cross-currents of human society practical policy can
-rarely be guided by a single absolute principle. Reference has been made
-to the putting of the pooled force of the nations behind a principle or
-law as the alternative of each attempting to use his own for enforcing
-his own view. The writer does not suppose for an instant that it is
-possible immediately to draw up a complete Federal Code of Law for
-Europe, to create a well-defined European constitution and then raise a
-European army to defend it, or body of police to enforce it. He is
-probably the last person in the world likely to believe the political
-ideas of the European capable of such an agile adaptation.
-
-[69] Delivered at Portland, Maine, on March 28th, 1918; reported in _New
-York Times_, March 29th.
-
-[70] Bertrand Russell: _Principles of Social Reconstruction._
-
-Mr. Trotter in _Instincts of the Herd in War and Peace_, says:--
-
-'We see one instinct producing manifestations directly hostile to each
-other--prompting to ever-advancing developments of altruism while it
-necessarily leads to any new product of advance being attacked. It
-shows, moreover ... that a gregarious species rapidly developing a
-complex society can be saved from inextricable confusion only by the
-appearance of reason and the application of it to life. (p. 46.)
-
-... 'The conscious direction of man's destiny is plainly indicated by
-Nature as the only mechanism by which the social life of so complex an
-animal can be guaranteed against disaster and brought to yield its full
-possibilities, (p. 162.)
-
-... 'Such a directing intelligence or group of intelligences would take
-into account before all things the biological character of man.... It
-would discover when natural inclinations in man must be indulged, and
-would make them respectable, what inclinations in him must be controlled
-for the advantage of the species, and make them insignificant.' (p.
-162-3.)
-
-[71] The opening sentence of a five volume _History of the Peace
-Conference of Paris_, edited by H. W. V. Temperley, and published under
-the auspices of the Institute of International Affairs, is as follows:--
-
-'The war was a conflict between the principles of freedom and of
-autocracy, between the principles of moral influence and of material
-force, of government by consent and of government by compulsion.'
-
-[72] Foremost as examples stand out the claims of German Austria to
-federate with Germany; the German population of the Southern Tyrol with
-Austria; the Bohemian Germans with Austria; the Transylvanian Magyars
-with Hungary; the Bulgarians of Macedonia, the Bulgarians of the
-Dobrudja, and the Bulgarians of Western Thrace with Bulgaria; the Serbs
-of the Serbian Banat with Yugo-Slavia; the Lithuanians and Ukrainians
-for freedom from Polish dominion.
-
-[73] We know now (see the interview with M. Paderewski in the _New York
-World_) that we compelled Poland to remain at war when she wanted to
-make peace. It has never been fully explained why the Prinkipo peace
-policy urged by Mr Lloyd George as early as December 1918 was defeated,
-and why instead we furnished munitions, tanks, aeroplanes, poison gas,
-military missions and subsidies in turn to Koltchak, Denikin, Yudenitch,
-Wrangel, and Poland. We prolonged the blockade--which in the early
-phases forbade Germany that was starving to catch fish in the Baltic,
-and stopped medicine and hospital supplies to the Russians--for fear,
-apparently, of the very thing which might have helped to save Europe,
-the economic co-operation of Russia and Central Europe.
-
-[74] 'We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling
-towards them but one of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon their
-impulse that their government acted in entering this war.' ... 'We are
-glad ... to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world, and for the
-liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included: for the rights
-of nations great and small ... to choose their way of life.' (President
-Wilson, Address to Congress, April 2nd, 1917).
-
-[75] _The Economic Consequences of the Peace_, p. 211.
-
-[76] See quotations from Sir A. Conan Doyle, later in this Chapter.
-
-[77] See, e.g., the facts as to the repression of Socialism in America,
-Chapter V.
-
-[78] _The Atlantic Monthly_, November 1920.
-
-[79] _Realities of War_, pp. 426-7, 441.
-
-[80] Is it necessary to say that the present writer does not accept it?
-
-[81] The argument is not invalidated in the least by sporadic instances
-of liberal activity here--an isolated article or two. For iteration is
-the essence of propaganda as an opinion forming factor.
-
-[82] In an article in the _North American Review_, just before America's
-entrance into the War, I attempted to indicate the danger by making one
-character in an imaginary symposium say: 'One talks of "Wilson's
-programme," "Wilson's policy." There will be only one programme and one
-policy possible as soon as the first American soldier sets foot on
-European soil: Victory. Bottomley and Maxse will be milk and water to
-what we shall see America producing. We shall have a settlement so
-monstrous that Germany will offer any price to Russia and Japan for
-their future help.... America's part in the War will absorb about all
-the attention and interest that busy people can give to public affairs.
-They will forget about these international arrangements concerning the
-sea, the League of Peace--the things for which the country entered the
-War. In fact if Wilson so much as tries to remind them of the objects of
-the War he will be accused of pro-Germanism, and you will have their
-ginger Press demanding that the "old gang" be "combed out."'
-
-[83] 'If we take the extremist 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.' (_What is
-coming?_ p. 198).
-
-[84] See the memoranda published in _The Secrets of Crewe House_.
-
-[85] Mr Keynes is not alone in declaring that the Treaty makes of our
-armistice engagements a 'scrap of paper.' _The Round Table_, in an
-article which aims at justifying the Treaty as a whole, says: 'Opinions
-may differ as to the actual letter of the engagements which we made at
-the Armistice, but the spirit of them is undoubtedly strained in some of
-the detailed provisions of the peace. There is some honest ground for
-the feeling manifested in Germany that the terms on which she laid down
-her arms have not been observed in all respects.'
-
-A very unwilling witness to our obligations is Mr Leo Maxse, who writes
-(_National Review_, February, 1921):--
-
-'Thanks to the American revelations we are in a better position to
-appreciate the trickery and treachery of the pre-Armistice negotiations,
-as well as the hideous imposture of the Paris Peace Conference, which,
-we now learn for the first time, was governed by the self-denying
-ordinance of the previous November, when, unbeknown to the countries
-betrayed, the Fourteen Points had been inextricably woven into the
-Armistice. Thus was John Bull effectively 'dished' of every farthing of
-his war costs.'
-
-As a fact, of course, the self-denying ordinance was not 'unbeknown to
-the countries betrayed.' The Fourteen Points commitment was quite open;
-the European Allies could have repudiated them, as, on one point,
-Britain did.
-
-[86] A quite considerable school, who presumably intend to be taken
-seriously, would have us believe that the French Revolution, the Russian
-Revolution, the English Trade Union Movement are all the work of a small
-secret Jewish Club or Junta--their work, that is, in the sense that but
-for them the Revolutions or Revolutionary movements would not have taken
-place. These arguments are usually brought by 'intense nationalists' who
-also believe that sentiments like nationalism are so deeply rooted that
-mere ideas or theories can never alter them.
-
-[87] An American playwright has indicated amusingly with what ingenuity
-we can create a 'collectivity.' One of the characters in the play
-applies for a chauffeur's job. A few questions reveal the fact that he
-does not know anything about it. 'Why does he want to be a chauffeur?'
-'Well, I'll tell you, boss. Last year I got knocked down by an
-automobile and badly hurt. And I made up my mind that when I came out of
-the hospital I'd get a bit of my own back. Get even by knocking over a
-few guys, see?' A policy of 'reprisals,' in fact.
-
-[88] December 26th, 1917.
-
-[89] A thing which happens about once a week in the United States.
-
-[90] October 16th, 1917.
-
-[91] The amazing rapidity with which we can change sides and causes, and
-the enemy become the Ally, and the Ally the enemy, in the course of a
-few weeks, approaches the burlesque.
-
-At the head of the Polish armies is Marshal Pilsudski, who fought under
-Austro-German command, against Russia. His ally is the Ukrainian
-adventurer, General Petlura, who first made a separate peace at
-Brest-Litovsk, and contracted there to let the German armies into the
-Ukraine, and to deliver up to them its stores of grain. These in May
-1920 were the friends of the Allies. The Polish Finance Minister at the
-time we were aiding Poland was Baron Bilinski, a gentleman who filled
-the same post in the Austrian Cabinet which let loose the world war,
-insisted hotly on the ultimatum to Serbia, helped to ruin the finances
-of the Hapsburg dominions by war, and then after the collapse repeated
-the same operation in Poland. On the other side the command has passed,
-it is said, to the dashing General Brusiloff, who again and again saved
-the Eastern front from Austrian and German offensives. He is now the
-'enemy' and his opponents our 'Allies.' They are fighting to tear the
-Ukraine, which means all South Russia, away from the Russian State. The
-preceding year we spent millions to achieve the opposite result. The
-French sent their troops to Odessa, and we gave our tanks to Denikin, in
-order to enable him to recover this region for Imperial Russia.
-
-[92] The Russian case is less evident. But only the moral inertia
-following on a long war could have made our Russian record possible.
-
-[93] He complained that I had 'publicly reproved him' for supporting
-severity in warfare. He was mistaken. As he really did believe in the
-effectiveness of terrorism, he did a very real service by standing
-publicly for his conviction.
-
-[94] Here is what the _Times_ of December 10th, 1870, has to say about
-France and Germany respectively, and on the Alsace-Lorraine question:--
-
-'We must say with all frankness that France has never shown herself so
-senseless, so pitiful, so worthy of contempt and reprobation, as at the
-present moment, when she obstinately declines to look facts in the face,
-and refuses to accept the misfortune her own conduct has brought upon
-her. A France broken up in utter anarchy, Ministers who have no
-recognised chief, who rise from the dust in their air balloons, and who
-carry with them for ballast shameful and manifest lies and proclamations
-of victories that exist only in their imagination, a Government which is
-sustained by lies and imposture, and chooses rather to continue and
-increase the waste of lives than to resign its own dictatorship and its
-wonderful Utopia of a republic; that is the spectacle which France
-presents to-day. It is hard to say whether any nation ever before
-burdened itself with such a load of shame. The quantity of lies which
-France officially and unofficially has been manufacturing for us in the
-full knowledge that they are lies, is something frightful and absolutely
-unprecedented. Perhaps it is not much after all in comparison with the
-immeasurable heaps of delusions and unconscious lies which have so long
-been in circulation among the French. Their men of genius who are
-recognised as such in all departments of literature are apparently of
-opinion that France outshines other nations in a superhuman wisdom, that
-she is the new Zion of the whole world, and that the literary
-productions of the French, for the last fifty years, however insipid,
-unhealthy, and often indeed devilish, contain a real gospel, rich in
-blessing for all the children of men.
-
-We believe that Bismarck will take as much of Alsace-Lorraine, too, as
-he chooses, and that it will be the better for him, the better for us,
-the better for all the world but France, and the better in the long run
-for France herself. Through large and quiet measures, Count von Bismarck
-is aiming with eminent ability at a single object; the well-being of
-Germany and of the world, of the large-hearted, peace-loving,
-enlightened, and honest people of Germany growing into one nation; and
-if Germany becomes mistress of the Continent in place of France, which
-is light-hearted, ambitious, quarrelsome, and over-excitable, it will be
-the most momentous event of the present day, and all the world must hope
-that it will soon come about.'
-
-[95] We realise without difficulty that no society could be formed by
-individuals each of whom had been taught to base his conduct on adages
-such as these: 'Myself alone'; 'myself before anybody else'; 'my ego is
-sacred'; 'myself over all'; 'myself right or wrong.' Yet those are the
-slogans of Patriotism the world over and are regarded as noble and
-inspiring, shouted with a moral and approving thrill.
-
-[96] However mischievous some of the manifestations of Nationalism may
-prove, the worst possible method of dealing with it is by the forcible
-repression of any of its claims which can be granted with due regard to
-the general interest. To give Nationalism full play, as far as possible,
-is the best means of attenuating its worst features and preventing its
-worst developments. This, after all, is the line of conduct which we
-adopt to certain religious beliefs which we may regard as dangerous
-superstitions. Although the belief may have dangers, the social dangers
-involved in forcible repression would be greater still.
-
-[97] _The Great Illusion_, p. 326
-
-[98] 'The Pacifists lie when they tell us that the danger of war is
-over.' General Leonard Wood.
-
-[99] _The Science of Power_, p. 14.
-
-[100] Ibid, p. 144.
-
-[101] See quotations, Part I, Chapters I and III.
-
-[102] The validity of this assumption still holds even though we take
-the view that the defence of war as an inevitable struggle for bread is
-merely a rationalisation (using that word in the technical sense of the
-psychologists) of impulse or instinct, merely, that is, an attempt to
-find a 'reason' for conduct the real explanation of which is the
-subconscious promptings of pugnacities or hostilities, the craving of
-our nature for certain kinds of action. If we could not justify our
-behaviour in terms of self-preservation, it would stand so plainly
-condemned ethically and socially that discipline of instinct--as in the
-case of sex instinct--would obviously be called for and enforced. In
-either case, the road to better behaviour is by a clearer revelation of
-the social mischief of the predominant policy.
-
-[103] Rear-Admiral A. T. Mahan: _Force in International Relations_.
-
-[104] _The Interest of America in International Conditions_, by
-Rear-Admiral A. T. Mahan, pp. 47-87.
-
-[105] _Government and the War_, p. 62.
-
-[106] _State Morality and a League of Nations_, pp 83-85.
-
-[107] _North American Review_, March 1912.
-
-[108] Admiral Mahan himself makes precisely this appeal:--
-
-'That extension of national authority over alien communities, which is
-the dominant note in the world politics of to-day, dignifies and
-enlarges each State and each citizen that enters its fold.... Sentiment,
-imagination, aspiration, the satisfaction of the rational and moral
-faculties in some object better than bread alone, all must find a part
-in a worthy motive. Like individuals, nations and empires have souls as
-well as bodies. Great and beneficent achievement ministers to worthier
-contentment than the filling of the pocket.'
-
-[109] It is not necessary to enter exhaustively into the difficult
-problem of 'natural right.' It suffices for the purpose of this argument
-that the claim of others to life will certainly be made and that we can
-only refuse it at a cost which diminishes our own chances of survival.
-
-[110] See Mr Churchill's declaration, quoted Part I Chapter V.
-
-[111] Mr J. L. Garvin, who was among those who bitterly criticised this
-thesis on account of its 'sordidness,' now writes: 'Armageddon might
-become almost as frequent as General Elections if belligerency were not
-restrained by sheer dread of the consequences in an age of economic
-interdependence when even victory has ceased to pay.'
-
-(Quoted in _Westminster Gazette_, Jan. 24, 1921.)
-
-[112] The introductory synopsis reads:--
-
-What are the fundamental motives that explain the present rivalry of
-armaments in Europe, notably the Anglo-German? Each nation pleads the
-need for defence; but this implies that some one is likely to attack,
-and has therefore a presumed interest in so doing. What are the motives
-which each State thus fears its neighbours may obey?
-
-They are based on the universal assumption that a nation, in order to
-find outlets for expanding population and increasing industry, or simply
-to ensure the best conditions possible for its people, is necessarily
-pushed to territorial expansion and the exercise of political force
-against others (German naval competition is assumed to be the expression
-of the growing need of an expanding population for a larger place in the
-world, a need which will find a realisation in the conquest of English
-Colonies or trade, unless these were defended); it is assumed,
-therefore, that a nation's relative prosperity is broadly determined by
-its political power; that nations being competing units, advantage, in
-the last resort, goes to the possessor of preponderant military force,
-the weaker going to the wall, as in the other forms of the struggle for
-life.
-
-The author challenges this whole doctrine.
-
-[113] See chapters _The Psychological Case for Peace_, _Unchanging Human
-Nature_, and _Is the Political Reformation Possible?_
-
-'Not the facts, but men's opinions about the facts, is what matters.
-Men's conduct is determined, not necessarily by the right conclusion
-from facts, but the conclusion they believe to be right.'
-
-In another pre-war book of the present writer (_The Foundations of
-International Polity_) the same view is developed, particularly in the
-passage which has been reproduced in Chapter VI of this book, 'The
-Alternative Risks of Status and Contract.'
-
-[114] The cessation of religious war indicates the greatest outstanding
-fact in the history of civilised mankind during the last thousand years,
-which is this: that all civilised Governments have abandoned their claim
-to dictate the belief of their subjects. For very long that was a right
-tenaciously held, and it was held on grounds for which there is an
-immense deal to be said. It was held that as belief is an integral part
-of conduct, that as conduct springs from belief, and the purpose of the
-State is to ensure such conduct as will enable us to go about our
-business in safety, it was obviously the duty of the State to protect
-those beliefs, the abandonment of which seemed to undermine the
-foundations of conduct. I do not believe that this case has ever been
-completely answered.... Men of profound thought and profound learning
-to-day defend it, and personally I have found it very difficult to make
-a clear and simple case for the defence of the principle on which every
-civilised Government in the world is to-day founded. How do you account
-for this--that a principle which I do not believe one man in a million
-could defend from all objections has become the dominating rule of
-civilised government throughout the world?
-
-'Well, that once universal policy has been abandoned, not because every
-argument, or even perhaps most of the arguments, which led to it, have
-been answered, but because the fundamental one has. The conception on
-which it rested has been shown to be, not in every detail, but in the
-essentials at least, an illusion, a _mis_conception.
-
-'The world of religious wars and of the Inquisition was a world which
-had a quite definite conception of the relation of authority to
-religious belief and to truth--as that authority was the source of
-truth; that truth could be, and should be, protected by force; that
-Catholics who did not resent an insult offered to their faith (like the
-failure of a Huguenot to salute a passing religious procession) were
-renegade.
-
-'Now, what broke down this conception was a growing realisation that
-authority, force, was irrelevant to the issues of truth (a party of
-heretics triumphed by virtue of some physical accident, as that they
-occupied a mountain region); that it was ineffective, and that the
-essence of truth was something outside the scope of physical conflict.
-As the realisation of this grew, the conflicts declined.'--_Foundations
-of International Polity_, p. 214.
-
-[115] An attempt is made, in _The Great Illusion_, to sketch the process
-which lies behind the progressive substitution of bargain for coercion
-(The Economic Interpretation of the History of Development 'From Status
-to Contract') on pages 187-192, and further developed in a chapter 'the
-Diminishing Factor of Physical Force' (p. 257).
-
-[116] 'When we learn that London, instead of using its police for the
-running in of burglars and "drunks," is using them to lead an attack on
-Birmingham for the purpose of capturing that city as part of a policy of
-"municipal expansion," or "Civic Imperialism," or "Pan-Londonism," or
-what not; or is using its force to repel an attack by the Birmingham
-police acting as the result of a similar policy on the part of the
-Birmingham patriots--when that happens you can safely approximate a
-police force to a European army. But until it does, it is quite evident
-that the two--the army and the police force--have in reality
-diametrically opposed roles. The police exist as an instrument of social
-co-operation; the armies as the natural outcome of the quaint illusion
-that though one city could never enrich itself by "capturing" or
-"subjugating" another, in some wonderful (and unexplained) way one
-country can enrich itself by capturing or subjugating another....
-
-'France has benefited by the conquest of Algeria, England by that of
-India, because in each case the arms were employed not, properly
-speaking, for conquest, but for police purposes, for the establishment
-and maintenance of order; and, so far as they filled that role, their
-role was a useful one....
-
-'Germany has no need to maintain order in England, nor England in
-Germany, and the latent struggle, therefore, between these two countries
-is futile....
-
-'It is one of the humours of the whole Anglo-German conflict that so
-much has the British public been concerned with the myths and bogeys of
-the matter, that it seems calmly to have ignored the realities. While
-even the wildest Pan-German does not cast his eyes in the direction of
-Canada, he does cast them in the direction of Asia Minor; and the
-political activities of Germany may centre on that area for precisely
-the reasons which result from the distinction between policing and
-conquest which I have drawn. German industry is coming to have a
-dominating situation in the Near East, and as those interests--her
-markets and investments--increase, the necessity for better order in,
-and the better organisation of, such territories, increases in
-corresponding degree. Germany may need to police Asia Minor.' (_The
-Great Illusion_, pp. 131-2-3.)
-
-[117] 'If a great country benefits every time it annexes a province, and
-her people are the richer for the widened territory, the small nations
-ought to be immeasurably poorer than the great; instead of which, by
-every test which you like to apply--public credit, amounts in savings
-banks, standard of living, social progress, general well-being--citizens
-of small States are, other things being equal, as well off as, or better
-off than, the citizens of great. The citizens of countries like Holland,
-Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, are, by every possible test, just as
-well off as the citizens of countries like Germany, Austria, or Russia.
-These are the facts which are so much more potent than any theory. If it
-were true that a country benefited by the acquisition of territory, and
-widened territory meant general well-being, why do the facts so
-eternally deny it? There is something wrong with the theory.' (_The
-Great Illusion_, p. 44).
-
-[118] See Chapters of _The Great Illusion_, _The State as a Person_, and
-_A False Analogy and its Consequences_.
-
-[119] In the synopsis of the book the point is put thus: 'If credit and
-commercial contract are tampered with an attempt at confiscation, the
-credit-dependent wealth is undermined, and its collapse involves that of
-the conqueror; so that if conquest is not to be self-injurious it must
-respect the enemy's property, in which case it becomes economically
-futile.'
-
-[120] 'We need markets. What is a market? "A place where things are
-sold." That is only half the truth. It is a place where things are
-bought and sold, and one operation is impossible without the other, and
-the notion that one nation can sell for ever and never buy is simply the
-theory of perpetual motion applied to economics; and international trade
-can no more be based upon perpetual motion than can engineering. As
-between economically highly-organised nations a customer must also be a
-competitor, a fact which bayonets cannot alter. To the extent to which
-they destroy him as a competitor, they destroy him, speaking generally
-and largely, as a customer.... This is the paradox, the futility of
-conquest--the great illusion which the history of our own empire so well
-illustrates. We "own" our empire by allowing its component parts to
-develop themselves in their own way, and in view of their own ends, and
-all the empires which have pursued any other policy have only ended by
-impoverishing their own populations and falling to pieces.' (p. 75).
-
-[121] See Part I, Chapter II.
-
-[122] _Government and the War_, pp. 52-59.
-
-[123] _The Political Theory of Mr Norman Angell_, by Professor A. D.
-Lindsay, _The Political Quarterly_, December 1914.
-
-[124] In order that the reader may grasp more clearly Mr Lindsay's
-point, here are some longer passages in which he elaborates it:--
-
-'If all nations really recognised the truth of Mr Angell's arguments,
-that they all had common interests which war destroyed, and that
-therefore war was an evil for victors as well as for vanquished, the
-European situation would be less dangerous, but were every one in the
-world as wisely concerned with their own interests as Mr Angell would
-have men to be, if they were nevertheless bound by no political ties,
-the situation would be infinitely more dangerous than it is. For
-unchecked competition, as Hobbes showed long ago, leads straight to war
-however rational men are. The only escape from its dangers is by
-submitting it to some political control. And for that reason the growth
-of economic relations at the expense of political, which Mr Angell
-heralds with such enthusiasm, is the greatest peril of modern times.
-
-'If men are to avoid the danger that, in competing with one another in
-the small but immediate matters where their interests diverge, they may
-overreach themselves and bring about their mutual ruin, two things are
-essential, one moral or emotional, the other practical. It is not enough
-that men should recognise that what they do affects other men, and vice
-versa. They must care for how their actions affect other men, not only
-for how they may react on themselves. They must, that is, love their
-neighbours. They must further agree with one another in caring for
-certain ways of action quite irrespective of how such ways of action
-affect their personal interests. They must, that is, be not only
-economic but moral men. Secondly, recognising that the range of their
-personal sympathies with other men is more restricted than their
-interdependence, and that in the excitement of competition all else is
-apt to be neglected, they must depute certain persons to stand out of
-the competitive struggle and look after just those vital common
-interests and greater issues which the contending parties are apt to
-neglect. These men will represent the common interests of all, their
-common ideals and their mutual sympathies; they will give to men's
-concern for these common ends a focus which will enable them to resist
-the pull of divergent interests and round their actions will gather the
-authority which these common ends inspire....
-
-' ... Such propositions are of course elementary. It is, however,
-important to observe that economic relations are in this most
-distinguished from political relations, that men can enter into economic
-relations without having any real purpose in common. For the money which
-they gain by their co-operation may represent power to carry out the
-most diverse and conflicting purposes....
-
-' ... Politics implies mutual confidence and respect and a certain
-measure of agreement in ideals. The consequence is that co-operation for
-economic is infinitely easier than for political purposes and spreads
-much more rapidly. Hence it easily overruns any political boundaries,
-and by doing so has produced the modern situation which Mr Angell has
-described.'
-
-[125] I have in mind, of course, the writings of Cole, Laski, Figgis,
-and Webb. In _A Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth of Great
-Britain_, Mr Webb writes:--
-
-'Whilst metaphysical philosophers had been debating what was the nature
-of the State--by which they always meant the sovereign Political
-State--the sovereignty, and even the moral authority of the State
-itself, in the sense of the political government, were being silently
-and almost unwittingly undermined by the growth of new forms of
-Democracy.' (p. xv.)
-
-In _Social Theory_, Mr Cole, speaking of the necessary co-ordination of
-the new forms of association, writes:--
-
-'To entrust the State with the function of co-ordination would be to
-entrust it in many cases with the task of arbitrating between itself and
-some other functional association, say a church or a trade union.' There
-must be a co-ordinating body, but it 'must be not any single
-association, but a combination of associations, a federal body in which
-some or all of the various functional associations are linked together.'
-(pp. 101 and 134.) A reviewer summarises Mr Cole as saying: 'I do not
-want any single supreme authority. It is the sovereignty of the State
-that I object to, as fatal to liberty. For single sovereignty I
-substitute a federal union of functions, and I see the guarantee of
-personal freedom in the severalty which prevents any one of them from
-undue encroachments.'
-
-[126] The British Treasury has issued statements showing that the French
-people at the end of last year were paying �2. 7s., and the British
-people �15. 3s. per head in direct taxation. The French tax is
-calculated at 3.5. per cent. on large incomes, whereas similar incomes
-in Great Britain would pay at least 25 per cent. This does not mean that
-the burden of taxes on the poor in France is small. Both the working and
-middle classes have been very hard hit by indirect taxes and by the rise
-in prices, which is greater in France than in England.
-
-The point is that in France the taxation is mainly indirect, this
-falling most heavily upon the poor; while in England it is much more
-largely direct.
-
-The French consumers are much more heavily taxed than the British, but
-the protective taxes of France bring in comparatively little revenue,
-while they raise the price of living and force the French Government and
-the French local authorities to spend larger and larger amounts on
-salaries and wages.
-
-The Budget for the year 1920 is made the occasion for an illuminating
-review of France's financial position by the reporter of the Finance
-Commission, M. Paul Doumar.
-
-The expenditure due to the War until the present date amounts roughly to
-233,000 million francs (equivalent, at the normal rate of exchange, to
-�9,320,000,000) whereof the sum of 43,000 million francs has been met
-out of revenue, leaving a deficit of 190 billions.
-
-This huge sum has been borrowed in various ways--26 billions from the
-Bank of France, 35 billions from abroad, 46 billions in Treasury notes,
-and 72 billions in regular loans. The total public debt on July 1 is put
-at 233,729 millions, reckoning foreign loans on the basis of exchange at
-par.
-
-M. Doumer declares that so long as this debt weighs on the State, the
-financial situation must remain precarious and its credit mediocre.
-
-[127] January, 1921.
-
-[128] An authorised interview published by the daily papers of January
-28th, 1921.
-
-M. Briand, the French Premier, in explaining what he and Mr Lloyd George
-arranged at Paris to the Chamber and Senate on February 3rd, remarked:--
-
-'We must not lose sight of the fact that in order to pay us Germany must
-every year create wealth abroad for herself by developing her exports
-and reducing her imports to strictly necessary things. She can only do
-that to the detriment of the commerce and industry of the Allies. That
-is a strange and regrettable consequence of facts. The placing of an
-annuity on her exports, payable in foreign values, will, however,
-correct as much as possible this paradoxical situation.'
-
-[129] Version appearing in the _Times_ of January 28th, 1921.
-
-[130] _The Manchester Guardian_, Jan 31st, 1921.
-
-[131] Mr John Foster Dulles, who was a member of the American delegation
-at the Peace Conference, has, in an article in _The New Republic_ for
-March 30th, 1921, outlined the facts concerning the problem of payment
-more completely than I have yet seen it done. The facts he reveals
-constitute a complete and overwhelming vindication of the case as stated
-in the first edition of _The Great Illusion_.
-
-[132] As the Lorraine ores are of a kind that demand much less than
-their own weight of coal for smelting, it is more economic to bring the
-coal to the ore than vice versa. It was for political and military
-reasons that the German State encouraged the placing of some of the
-great furnaces on the right instead of the left bank of the Rhine.
-
-[133] It is worth while to recall here a passage from _The Economic
-Consequences of the Peace_, by Mr J. M. Keynes, quoted in Chapter I. of
-this book.
-
-[134] There is one aspect of the possible success of France which is
-certainly worth consideration. France has now in her possession the
-greatest iron ore fields in Europe. Assume that she is so far successful
-in her policy of military coercion that she succeeds in securing vast
-quantities of coal and coke for nothing. French industry then secures a
-very marked advantage--and an artificial and 'uneconomic' one--over
-British industry, in the conversion of raw materials into finished
-products. The present export by France of coal which she gets for
-nothing to Dutch and other markets heretofore supplied by Britain might
-be followed by the 'dumping' of steel and iron products on terms which
-British industry could not meet. This, of course, is on the hypothesis
-of success in obtaining 'coal for nothing,' which the present writer
-regards as extremely unlikely for the reasons here given. But it should
-be noted that the failure of French effort in this matter will be from
-causes just as disastrous for British prosperity as French success would
-be.
-
-[135] See Part I, Chapter I.
-
-[136] _English Review_, January 1913.
-
-Lord Roberts, in his 'Message to the Nation,' declared that Germany's
-refusal to accept the world's _status quo_ was 'as statesmanlike as it
-is unanswerable.' He said further:--
-
-'How was this Empire of Britain founded? War founded this Empire--war
-and conquest! When we, therefore, masters by war of one-third of the
-habitable globe, when _we_ propose to Germany to disarm, to curtail her
-navy or diminish her army, Germany naturally refuses; and pointing, not
-without justice, to the road by which England, sword in hand, has
-climbed to her unmatched eminence, declares openly, or in the veiled
-language of diplomacy, that by the same path, if by no other, Germany is
-determined also to ascend! Who amongst us, knowing the past of this
-nation, and the past of all nations and cities that have ever added the
-lustre of their name to human annals, can accuse Germany or regard the
-utterance of one of her greatest a year and a half ago, (or of General
-Bernhardi three months ago) with any feelings except those of respect?'
-(pp. 8-9.)
-
-[137] Lord Loreburn says: 'The whole train of causes which brought about
-the tragedy of August 1914 would have been dissolved by a Russian
-revolution.... We could have come to terms with Germany as regards Asia
-Minor: Nor could the Alsace-Lorraine difficulty have produced trouble.
-No one will pretend that France would have been aggressive when deprived
-of Russian support considering that she was devoted to peace even when
-she had that support. Had the Russian revolution come, war would not
-have come.' (_How the War Came_, p. 278.)
-
-[138] Mr Walter Lippmann did tackle the problem in much the way I have
-in mind in _The Stakes of Diplomacy_. That book is critical of my own
-point of view. But if books like that had been directed at _The Great
-Illusion_, we might have made headway. As it is, of course, Mr
-Lippmann's book has been useful in suggesting most that is good in the
-mandate system of the League of Nations.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
-
-wth Great Britain=> with Great Britain {pg xvii}
-
-his colleages=> his colleagues {pg 38}
-
-retore devastated districts=> restore devastated districts {pg 39}
-
-aquiescence=> acquiescence {pg 45}
-
-indispensible=> indispensable {pg 46}
-
-the Lorrarine work=> the Lorraine work {pg 86}
-
-rcently passed=> recently passed {pg 135}
-
-Allied aerodomes on the Rhine=> Allied aerodromes on the Rhine {pg 163}
-
-the sublest=> the subtlest {pg 239}
-
-the enemy's propetry=> the enemy's property {pg 294}
-
-a monoply=> a monopoly {pg 299}
-
-goverments=> governments {pg 299}
-
-econmic=> economic {pg 303}
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Fruits of Victory, by Norman Angell
-
-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/license
-
-
-Title: The Fruits of Victory
-       A Sequel to The Great Illusion
-
-Author: Norman Angell
-
-Release Date: August 29, 2013 [EBook #43598]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ASCII
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FRUITS OF VICTORY ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by David Edwards, Chuck Greif and the Online
-Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
-file was produced from images generously made available
-by The Internet Archive)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-                         THE FRUITS OF VICTORY
-
-
-
-
-                    "THE GREAT ILLUSION" CONTROVERSY
-
-
-     'Mr. Angell's pamphlet was a work as unimposing in form as it was
-     daring in expression. For a time nothing was heard of it in public,
-     but many of us will remember the curious way in which ... "Norman
-     Angellism" suddenly became one of the principal topics of
-     discussion amongst politicians and journalists all over Europe.
-     Naturally at first it was the apparently extravagant and
-     paradoxical elements that were fastened upon most--that the whole
-     theory of the commercial basis of war was wrong, that no modern war
-     could make a profit for the victors, and that--most astonishing
-     thing of all--a successful war might leave the conquerors who
-     received the indemnity relatively worse off than the conquered who
-     raid it. People who had been brought up in the acceptance of the
-     idea that a war between nations was analogous to the struggle of
-     two errand boys for an apple, and that victory inevitably meant
-     economic gain, were amazed into curiosity. Men who had never
-     examined a Pacifist argument before read Mr. Angell's book. Perhaps
-     they thought that his doctrines sounded so extraordinarily like
-     nonsense that there really must be some sense in them or nobody
-     would have dared to propound them.'--_The New Stateman_, October
-     11, 1913.
-
-     'The fundamental proposition of the book is a mistake.... And the
-     proposition that the extension of national territory--that is the
-     bringing of a large amount of property under a single
-     administration--is not to the financial advantage of a nation
-     appears to me as illusory as to maintain that business on a small
-     capital is as profitable as on a large.... The armaments of
-     European States now are not so much for protection against conquest
-     as to secure to themselves the utmost possible share of the
-     unexploited or imperfectly exploited regions of the world.'--The
-     late ADMIRAL MAHAN.
-
-     'I have long ago described the policy of _The Great Illusion_ ...
-     not only as a childish absurdity but a mischievous and immoral
-     sophism.'--MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.
-
-     'Among the mass of printed books there are a few that may be
-     counted as acts, not books. _The Control Social_ was indisputably
-     one; and I venture to suggest to you that _The Great Illusion_ is
-     another. The thesis of Galileo was not more diametrically opposed
-     to current ideas than those of Norman Angell. Yet it had in the end
-     a certain measure of success.'--VISCOUNT ESHER.
-
-     'When all criticisms are spent, it remains to express a debt of
-     gratitude to Mr. Angell. He belongs to the cause of
-     internationalism--the greatest of all the causes to which a man can
-     set his hands in these days. The cause will not triumph by
-     economics. But it cannot reject any ally. And if the economic
-     appeal is not final, it has its weight. "We shall perish of
-     hunger," it has been said, "in order to have success in murder." To
-     those who have ears for that saying, it cannot be said too
-     often.'--_Political Thought in England, from Herbert Spencer to the
-     Present Day_, by ERNEST BARKER.
-
-     'A wealth of closely reasoned argument which makes the book one of
-     the most damaging indictments that have yet appeared of the
-     principles governing the relation of civilized nations to one
-     another.'--_The Quarterly Review._
-
-     'Ranks its author with Cobden amongst the greatest of our
-     pamphleteers, perhaps the greatest since Swift.'--_The Nation._
-
-     'No book has attracted wider attention or has done more to
-     stimulate thought in the present century than _The Great
-     Illusion_.'--_The Daily Mail._
-
-     'One of the most brilliant contributions to the literature of
-     international relations which has appeared for a very long
-     time.'--_Journal of the Institute of Bankers._
-
-     'After five and a half years in the wilderness, Mr. Norman Angell
-     has come back.... His book provoked one of the great controversies
-     of this generation.... To-day, Mr. Angell, whether he likes it or
-     not, is a prophet whose prophesies have come true.... It is hardly
-     possible to open a current newspaper without the eye lighting on
-     some fresh vindication of the once despised and rejected doctrine
-     of Norman Angellism.'--_The Daily News_, February 25, 1920.
-
-
-
-
-                                  THE
-                           FRUITS OF VICTORY
-
-                              A SEQUEL TO
-                          "THE GREAT ILLUSION"
-
-                                   BY
-                             NORMAN ANGELL
-
-                        [Illustration: colophon]
-
-                                NEW YORK
-
-                            THE CENTURY CO.
-
-                                  1921
-
-
-
-
-   _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
-
-      PATRIOTISM UNDER THREE FLAGS
-      THE GREAT ILLUSION
-      THE FOUNDATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL POLITY
-      WHY FREEDOM MATTERS
-      WAR AND THE WORKER
-      AMERICA AND THE WORLD STATE (AMERICA)
-      PRUSSIANISM AND ITS DESTRUCTION
-      THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY (AMERICA)
-      WAR AIMS
-      DANGERS OF HALF-PREPAREDNESS (AMERICA)
-      POLITICAL CONDITIONS OF ALLIED SUCCESS (AMERICA)
-      THE BRITISH REVOLUTION AND THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY (AMERICA)
-      THE PEACE TREATY AND THE ECONOMIC CHAOS
-
-
-                          Copyright, 1921, by
-                            THE CENTURY CO.
-
-                       _Printed in the U. S. A._
-
-
-
-
-                                To H. S.
-
-
-
-
-INTRODUCTION TO THE AMERICAN EDITION
-
-
-The case which is argued in these pages includes the examination of
-certain concrete matters which very obviously and directly touch
-important American interests--American foreign trade and investments,
-the exchanges, immigration, armaments, taxation, industrial unrest and
-the effect of these on social and political organisation. Yet the
-greatest American interest here discussed is not any one of those
-particular issues, or even the sum of them, but certain underlying
-forces which more than anything else, perhaps, influence all of them.
-The American reader will have missed the main bearing of the argument
-elaborated in these pages unless that point can be made clear.
-
-Let us take a few of the concrete issues just mentioned. The opening
-chapter deals with the motives which may push Great Britain still to
-struggle for the retention of predominant power at sea. The force of
-those motives is obviously destined to be an important factor in
-American politics, in determining, for instance, the amount of American
-taxation. It bears upon the decisions which American voters and American
-statesmen will be called upon to make in American elections within the
-next few years. Or take another aspect of the same question: the
-peculiar position of Great Britain in the matter of her dependence upon
-foreign food. This is shown to be typical of a condition common to very
-much of the population of Europe, and brings us to the problem of the
-pressure of population in the older civilisations upon the means of
-subsistence. That "biological pressure" is certain, in some
-circumstances, to raise for America questions of immigration, of
-relations generally with foreign countries, of defence, which American
-statesmanship will have to take into account in the form of definite
-legislation that will go on to American Statute books. Or, take the
-general problem of the economic reconstruction of Europe, with which the
-book is so largely occupied. That happens to bear, not merely on the
-expansion of American trade, the creation of new markets, that is, and
-on the recovery of American debts, but upon the preservation of markets
-for cotton, wheat, meat and other products, to which large American
-communities have in the past looked, and do still look, for their
-prosperity and even for their solvency. Again, dealing with the manner
-in which the War has affected the economic organisation of the European
-society, the writer has been led to describe the process by which
-preparation for modern war has come to mean, to an increasing degree,
-control by the government of the national resources as a whole, thus
-setting up strong tendencies towards a form of State Socialism. To
-America, herself facing a more far-reaching organisation of the national
-resources for military purposes than she has known in the past, the
-analysis of such a process is certainly of very direct concern. Not less
-so is the story of the relation of revolutionary forces in the
-industrial struggle--"Bolshevism"--to the tendencies so initiated or
-stimulated.
-
-One could go on expanding this theme indefinitely, and write a whole
-book about America's concern in these things. But surely in these days
-it would be a book of platitudes, elaborately pointing out the obvious.
-Yet an American critic of these pages in their European form warns me
-that I must be careful to show their interest for American readers.
-
-Their main interest for the American is not in the kind of relationship
-just indicated, very considerable and immediate as that happens to be.
-Their chief interest is in this: they attempt an analysis of the
-ultimate forces of policies in Western society; of the interrelation of
-fundamental economic needs and of predominant political ideas--public
-opinion, with its constituent elements of "human nature," social--or
-anti-social--instinct, the tradition of Patriotism and Nationalism, the
-mechanism of the modern Press. It is suggested in these pages that some
-of the main factors of political action, the dominant motives of
-political conduct, are still grossly neglected by "practical statesmen";
-and that the statesmen still treat as remote and irrelevant certain
-moral forces which recent events have shown to have very great and
-immediate practical importance. (A number of cases are discussed in
-which practical and realist European statesmen have seen their plans
-touching the stability of alliances, the creation of international
-credit, the issuing of international loans, indemnities, a "new world"
-generally, all this frustrated because in drawing them up they ignored
-the invisible but final factor of public feeling and temper, which the
-whole time they were modifying or creating, thus unconsciously
-undermining the edifices they were so painfully creating. Time and again
-in the last few years practical men of affairs in Europe have found
-themselves the helpless victims of a state of feeling or opinion which
-they so little understood that they had often themselves unknowingly
-created it.)
-
-In such hard realities as the exaction of an indemnity, we see
-governments forced to policies which can only make their task more
-difficult, but which they are compelled to adopt in order to placate
-electoral opinion, or to repel an opposition which would exploit some
-prevailing prejudice or emotion.
-
-To understand the nature of forces which must determine America's main
-domestic and foreign policies--as they have determined those of Western
-Society in Europe during the last generation--is surely an "American
-interest"; though indeed, in neglecting the significance of those
-"hidden currents flowing continually beneath the surface of political
-history," American students of politics would be following much
-European precedent. Although public opinion and feeling are the raw
-material with which statesmen deal, it is still considered irrelevant
-and academic to study the constituent elements of that raw material.
-
-Americans are sufficiently detached from Europe to see that in the way
-of a better unification of that Continent for the purposes of its own
-economic and moral restoration stand disruptive forces of
-"Balkanisation," a development of the spirit of Nationalism which the
-statesmen for years have encouraged and exploited. The American of
-to-day speaks of the Balkanisation of Europe just as the Englishman of
-two or three years ago spoke of the Balkanisation of the Continent, of
-the wrangles of Poles, Czecho-Slovaks, Hungarians, Rumanians, Italians,
-Jugo-Slavs. And the attitude of both Englishman and American are alike
-in this: to the Englishman, watching the squabbles of all the little new
-States and the breaking out of all the little new wars, there seemed at
-work in that spectacle forces so suicidal that they could never in any
-degree touch his own political problems; the American to-day, watching
-British policy in Ireland or French policy towards Germany, feels that
-in such conflict are moral forces that could never produce similar
-paralysis in American policy. "Why," asks the confident American, "does
-England bring such unnecessary trouble upon herself by her military
-conduct in Ireland? Why does France keep three-fourths of a Continent
-still in ferment, making reparations more and more remote"? Americans
-have a very strong feeling that they could not be guilty of the Irish
-mess, or of prolonging the confusion which threatens to bring Europe's
-civilisation to utter collapse. How comes it that the English people, so
-genuinely and so sincerely horrified at the thought of what a Bissing
-could do in Belgium, unable to understand how the German people could
-tolerate a government guilty of such things, somehow find that their own
-British Government is doing very similar things in Cork and Balbriggan;
-and finding it, simply acquiesce? To the American the indefensibility of
-British conduct is plain. "America could never be guilty of it." To the
-Englishman just now, the indefensibility of French conduct is plain. The
-policy which France is following is seen to be suicidal from the point
-of view of French interests. The Englishman is sure that "English
-political sense" would never tolerate it in an English government.
-
-The situation suggests this question: would Americans deny that England
-in the past has shown very great political genius, or that the French
-people are alert, open-minded, "realist," intelligent? Recalling what
-England has done in the way of the establishment of great free
-communities, the flexibility and "practicalness" of her imperial policy,
-what France has contributed to democracy and European organisation, can
-we explain the present difficulties of Europe by the absence, on the
-part of Englishmen or Frenchmen, or other Europeans, of a political
-intelligence granted only so far in the world's history to Americans? In
-other words, do Americans seriously argue that the moral forces which
-have wrought such havoc in the foreign policy of European States could
-never threaten the foreign policy of America? Does the American plead
-that the circumstances which warp an Englishman's or Frenchman's
-judgment could never warp an American's? Or that he could never find
-himself in similar circumstances? As a matter of fact, of course, that
-is precisely what the American--like the Englishman or Frenchman or
-Italian in an analogous case--does plead. To have suggested five years
-ago to an Englishman that his own generals in India or Ireland would
-copy Bissing, would have been deemed too preposterous even for anger:
-but then equally, to Americans, supporting in their millions in 1916 the
-League to Enforce Peace, would the idea have seemed preposterous that a
-few years later America, having the power to take the lead in a Peace
-League, would refuse to do so, and would herself be demanding, as the
-result of participation in a war to end war, greater armament than
-ever--as protection against Great Britain.
-
-I suggest that if an English government can be led to sanction and
-defend in Ireland the identical things which shocked the world when
-committed in Belgium by Germans, if France to-day threatens Europe with
-a military hegemony not less mischievous than that which America
-determined to destroy, the causes of those things must be sought, not in
-the special wickedness of this or that nation, but in forces which may
-operate among any people.
-
-One peculiarity of the prevailing political mind stands out. It is
-evident that a sensible, humane and intelligent people, even with
-historical political sense, can quite often fail to realise how one step
-of policy, taken willingly, must lead to the taking of other steps which
-they detest. If Mr. Lloyd George is supporting France, if the French
-Government is proclaiming policies which it knows to be disastrous, but
-which any French Government must offer to its people or perish, it is
-because somewhere in the past there have been set in motion forces the
-outcome of which was not realised. And if the outcome was not realised,
-although, looking back, or looking at the situation from the distance of
-America from Europe, the inevitability of the result seems plain enough,
-I suggest that it is because judgment becomes warped as the result of
-certain feelings or predominant ideas; and that it will be impossible
-wisely to guide political conduct without some understanding of the
-nature of those feelings and ideas, and unless we realise with some
-humility and honesty that all nations alike are subject to these
-weaknesses.
-
-We all of us clamantly and absolutely deny this plain fact when it is
-suggested that it also applies to our own people. What would have
-happened to the publicist who, during the War, should have urged:
-"Complete and overwhelming victory will be bad, because we shall misuse
-it?" Yet all the victories of history would have been ground for such a
-warning. Universal experience was not merely flouted by the
-uninstructed. One of the curiosities of war literature is the fashion in
-which the most brilliant minds, not alone in politics, but in literature
-and social science, simply disregard this obvious truth. We each knew
-"our" people--British, French, Italian, American--to be good people:
-kindly, idealistic, just. Give them the power to do the Right--to do
-justice, to respect the rights of others, to keep the peace--and it will
-be done. That is why we wanted "unconditional surrender" of the Germans,
-and indignantly rejected a negotiated peace. It was admitted, of course,
-that injustice at the settlement would fail to give us the world we
-fought for. It was preposterous to suppose that we, the defenders of
-freedom and democracy, arbitration, self-determination,--America,
-Britain, France, Japan, Russia, Italy, Rumania--should not do exact and
-complete justice. So convinced, indeed, were we of this that we may
-search in vain the works of all the Allied writers to whom any attention
-was paid, for any warning whatsoever of the one danger which, in fact,
-wrecked the settlement, threw the world back into its oldest
-difficulties, left it fundamentally just where it was, reduced the War
-to futility. The one condition of justice--that the aggrieved party
-should not be in the position of imposing his unrestrained will--, the
-one truth which, for the world's welfare, it was most important to
-proclaim, was the one which it was black heresy and blasphemy to utter,
-and which, to do them justice, the moral and intellectual guides of the
-nations never did utter.
-
-It is precisely the truth which Americans to-day are refusing to face.
-We all admit that, "human nature being what it is," preponderance of
-power, irresponsible power, is something which no nation (but our own)
-can be trusted to use wisely or with justice. The backbone of American
-policy shall therefore be an effort to retain preponderance of power. If
-this be secured, little else matters. True, the American advocate of
-isolation to-day says: "We are not concerned with Europe. We ask only
-to be let alone. Our preponderance of power, naval or other, threatens
-no-one. It is purely defensive." Yet the truth is that the demand for
-preponderance of armaments itself involves a denial of right. Let us see
-why.
-
-No one denies that the desire to possess a definitely preponderant navy
-is related, at least in some degree, to such things as, shall we say,
-the dispute over the Panama tolls. A growing number feel and claim that
-that is a purely American dispute. To subject it to arbitral decision,
-in which necessarily Europeans would have a preponderance, would be to
-give away the American case beforehand. With unquestioned naval
-preponderance over any probable combination of rivals, America is in a
-position to enforce compliance with what she believes to be her just
-rights. At this moment a preponderant navy is being urged on precisely
-those grounds. In other words, the demand is that in a dispute to which
-she is a party she shall be judge, and able to impose her own judgement.
-That is to say, she demands from others the acceptance of a position
-which she would not herself accept. There is nothing at all unusual in
-the demand. It is the feeling which colours the whole attitude of
-combative nationalism. But it none the less means that "adequate
-defence" on this basis inevitably implies a moral aggression--a demand
-upon others which, if made by others upon ourselves, we should resist to
-the death.
-
-It is not here merely or mainly the question of a right: American
-foreign policy has before it much the same alternatives with reference
-to the world as a whole, as were presented to Great Britain with
-reference to the Continent in the generation which preceded the War. Her
-"splendid isolation" was defended on grounds which very closely resemble
-those now put forward by America as the basis of the same policy.
-Isolation meant, of course, preponderance of power, and when she
-declared her intention to use that power only on behalf of even-handed
-justice, she not only meant it, but carried out the intention, at least
-to an extent that no other nation has done. She accorded a degree of
-equality in economic treatment which is without parallel. One thing only
-led her to depart from justice: that was the need of maintaining the
-supremacy. For this she allowed herself to become involved in certain
-exceedingly entangling Alliances. Indeed, Great Britain found that at no
-period of her history were her domestic politics so much dominated by
-the foreign situation as when she was proclaiming to the world her
-splendid isolation from foreign entanglements. It is as certain, of
-course, that American "isolation" would mean that the taxation of Gopher
-Prairie would be settled in Tokio; and that tens of thousands of
-American youth would be sentenced to death by unknown elderly gentlemen
-in a European Cabinet meeting. If the American retorts that his country
-is in a fundamentally different position, because Great Britain
-possesses an Empire and America does not, that only proves how very much
-current ideas in politics fail to take cognizance of the facts. The
-United States to-day has in the problem of the Philippines, their
-protection and their trade, and the bearing of those things upon
-Japanese policy; in Hayti and the West Indies, and their bearing upon
-America's subject nationality problem of the negro; in Mexico, which is
-likely to provide America with its Irish problem; in the Panama Canal
-tolls question and its relation to the development of a mercantile
-marine and naval competition with Great Britain, in these things alone,
-to mention no others, subjects of conflict, involving defence of
-American interests, out of which will arise entanglements not differing
-greatly in kind from the foreign questions which dominated British
-domestic policy during the period of British isolation.
-
-Now, what America will do about these things will not depend upon highly
-rationalised decisions, reached by a hundred million independent
-thinkers investigating the facts concerning the Panama Treaty, the
-respective merits of alternative alliance combinations, or the real
-nature of negro grievances. American policy will be determined by the
-same character of force as has determined British policy in Ireland or
-India, in Morocco or Egypt, French policy in Germany or in Poland, or
-Italian policy in the Adriatic. The "way of thinking" which is applied
-to the decisions of the American democracy has behind it the same kind
-of moral and intellectual force that we find in the society of Western
-Europe as a whole. Behind the American public mind lie practically the
-same economic system based on private property, the same kind of
-political democracy, the same character of scholastic training, the same
-conceptions of nationalism, roughly the same social and moral values. If
-we find certain sovereign ideas determining the course of British or
-French or Italian policy, giving us certain results, we may be sure that
-the same ideas will, in the case of America, give us very much the same
-results.
-
-When Britain spoke of "splendid isolation," she meant what America means
-by the term to-day, namely, a position by virtue of which, when it came
-to a conflict of policy between herself and others, she should possess
-preponderant power, so that she could impose her own view of her own
-rights, be judge and executioner in her own case. To have suggested to
-an Englishman twenty years ago that the real danger to the security of
-his country lay in the attitude of mind dominant among Englishmen
-themselves, that the fundamental defect of English policy was that it
-asked of others something which Englishmen would never accord if asked
-by others of them, and that such a policy was particularly inimical in
-the long run to Great Britain, in that her population lived by processes
-which dominant power could not, in the last resort, exact--such a line
-of argument would have been, and indeed was, regarded as too remote from
-practical affairs to be worth the attention of practical politicians. A
-discussion of the Japanese Alliance, the relations with Russia, the size
-of foreign fleets, the Bagdad railway, would have been regarded as
-entirely practical and relevant. These things were the "facts" of
-politics. It was not regarded as relevant to the practical issues to
-examine the role of certain general ideas and traditions which had grown
-up in England in determining the form of British policy. The growth of a
-crude philosophy of militarism, based on a social pseudo-Darwinism, the
-popularity of Kipling and Roberts, the jingoism of the Northcliffe
-Press--these things might be regarded as items in the study of social
-psychology; they were not regarded as matters for the practical
-statesman. "What would you have us do about them, anyway?"
-
-It has happened to the present writer, in addressing American students,
-to lay stress upon the role of certain dominant ideas in determining
-policy (upon the idea, say, of the State as a person, upon the
-conception of States as necessarily rival entities), and afterwards to
-get questions in this wise: "Your lecture seems to imply an
-internationalist policy. What is your plan? What ought we to do? Should
-we make a naval alliance, with Great Britain, or form a new League of
-Nations, or denounce Article X, or ...?" I have replied: "The first
-thing to do is to change your ideas and moral values; or to get to know
-them better. That is the most practical and immediate platform, because
-all others depend on it. We all profess great love of peace and justice.
-What will you pay for it, in terms of national sovereignty? What degree
-of sovereignty will you surrender as your contribution to a new order?
-If your real feeling is for domination, then the only effect of writing
-constitutions of the League of Nations will be to render international
-organisation more remote than ever, by showing how utterly incompatible
-it is with prevailing moral values."
-
-But such a reply is usually regarded as hopelessly "unpractical." There
-is no indication of something to be "done"--a platform to be defended or
-a law to be passed. To change fundamental opinions and redirect desires
-is not apparently to "do" anything at all. Yet until that invisible
-thing is done our Covenants and Leagues will be as futile as have been
-the numberless similar plans of the past, "concerning which," as one
-seventeenth century critic wrote, "I know no single imperfection save
-this: That by no possibility would any Prince or people be brought to
-abide by them." It was, I believe, regarded as a triumph of practical
-organisation to have obtained nation-wide support for the 'League to
-Enforce Peace' proposal, "without raising controversial matters at
-all"--leaving untouched, that is, the underlying ideas of patriotism, of
-national right and international obligation, the prevailing moral and
-political values, in fact. The subsequent history of America's relation
-to the world's effort to create a League of Nations is sufficient
-commentary as to whether it is "practical" to devise plans and
-constitutions without reference to a prevailing attitude of mind.
-
-America has before her certain definite problems of foreign
-policy--Japanese immigration into the United States and the Philippines;
-concessions granted to foreigners in Mexico; the question of disorder in
-that country; the relations with Hayti (which will bear on the question
-of America's subject nationality, the negro); the exemption of American
-ships from tolls in the Panama Canal; the exclusion of foreign shipping
-from "coastwise" trade with the Philippines. It would be possible to
-draw up plans of settlement with regard to each item which would be
-equitable. But the development of foreign policy (which, more than any
-other department of politics, will fix the quality of American society
-in the future) will not depend upon the more or less equitable
-settlement of those specific questions. The specific differences between
-England and Germany before the War were less serious than those between
-England and America--and were nearly all settled when war broke out.
-Whether an issue like Japanese immigration or the Panama tolls leads to
-war will not depend upon its intrinsic importance, or whether Britain or
-Japan or America make acceptable proposals on the subject. Mr
-ex-Secretary Daniels has just told us that the assertion of the right
-to establish a cable station on the Island of Yap is good ground for
-risking war. The specific issues about which nations fight are so little
-the real cause of the fight that they are generally completely forgotten
-when it comes to making the peace. The future of submarine warfare was
-not mentioned at Versailles. Given a certain state of mind, a difference
-about cables on the Island of Yap is quite sufficient to make war
-inevitable. We should probably regard it as a matter of national honour,
-concerning which there must be no argument. Another mood, and it would
-be impossible to get the faintest ripple of interest in the subject.
-
-It was not British passion for Serbian nationality which brought Britain
-to the side of Russia in 1914. It was the fear of German power and what
-might be done with it, a fear wrought to frenzy pitch by a long
-indoctrination concerning German wickedness and aggression. Passion for
-the subjugation of Germany persisted long after there was any ground of
-fear of what German power might accomplish. If America fights Japan, it
-will not be over cables on Yap; it will be from fear of Japanese power,
-the previous stimulation of latent hatreds for the strange and foreign.
-And if the United States goes to war over Panama Canal tolls, it will
-not be because the millions who will get excited over that question have
-examined the matter, or possess ships or shares in ships that will
-profit by the exemption; it will be because all America has read of
-Irish atrocities which recall school-day histories of British atrocities
-in the American Colonies; because the "person," Britain, has become a
-hateful and hostile person, and must be punished and coerced.
-
-War either with Japan or Britain or both is, of course, quite within the
-region of possibility. It is merely an evasion of the trouble which
-facing reality always involves, to say that war between Britain and
-America is "unthinkable." If any war, as we have known it these last ten
-years, is thinkable, war between nations that have already fought two
-wars is obviously not unthinkable. And those who can recall at all
-vividly the forces which marked the growth of the conflict between
-Britain and Germany will see just those forces beginning to colour the
-relations of Britain and America. Among those forces none is more
-notable than this: a disturbing tendency to stop short at the ultimate
-questions, a failure to face the basic causes of divergence. Among
-people of good will there is a tendency to say: "Don't let's talk about
-it. Be discreet. Let us assume we are good friends and we shall be. Let
-us exchange visits." In just such a way, even within a few weeks of war,
-did people of good will in England and Germany decide not to talk of
-their differences, to be discreet, to exchange visits. But the men of
-ill will talked--talked of the wrong things--and sowed their deadly
-poison.
-
-These pages suggest why neither side in the Anglo-German conflict came
-down to realities before the War. To have come to fundamentals would
-have revealed the fact to both parties that any real settlement would
-have asked things which neither would grant. Really to have secured
-Germany's future economic security would have meant putting her access
-to the resources of India and Africa upon a basis of Treaty, of
-contract. That was for Britain the end of Empire, as Imperialists
-understood it. To have secured in exchange the end of "marching and
-drilling" would have been the end of military glory for Prussia. For
-both it would have meant the surrender of certain dominations, a
-recasting of patriotic ideals, a revolution of ideas.
-
-Whether Britain and America are to fight may very well depend upon this:
-whether the blinder and more unconscious motives rooted in traditional
-patriotisms, and the impulse to the assertion of power, will work their
-evil before the development of ideas has brought home to us a clearer
-vision of the abyss into which we fall; before we have modified, in
-other words, our tradition of patriotism, our political moralities, our
-standard of values. Without that more fundamental change no scheme of
-settlement of specific differences, no platforms, Covenants,
-Constitution can avail, or have any chance of acceptance or success.
-
-As a contribution to that change of ideas and of values these pages are
-offered.
-
-
-SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT
-
-The central conclusion suggested by the following analysis of the events
-of the past few years is that, underlying the disruptive processes so
-evidently at work--especially in the international field--is the
-deep-rooted instinct to the assertion of domination, preponderant power.
-This impulse sanctioned and strengthened by prevailing traditions of
-'mystic' patriotism, has been unguided and unchecked by any adequate
-realisation either of its anti-social quality, the destructiveness
-inseparable from its operation, or its ineffectiveness to ends
-indispensable to civilisation.
-
-The psychological roots of the impulse are so deep that we shall
-continue to yield to it until we realise more fully its danger and
-inadequacy to certain vital ends like sustenance for our people, and
-come to see that if civilisation is to be carried on we must turn to
-other motives. We may then develop a new political tradition, which will
-'discipline' instinct, as the tradition of toleration disciplined
-religious fanaticism when that passion threatened to shatter European
-society.
-
-Herein lies the importance of demonstrating the economic futility of
-military power. While it may be true that conscious economic motives
-enter very little into the struggle of nations, and are a very small
-part of the passions of patriotism and nationalism, it is by a
-realisation of the economic truth regarding the indispensable condition
-of adequate life, that those passions will be checked, or redirected and
-civilised.
-
-This does not mean that economic considerations should dominate life,
-but rather the contrary--that those considerations will dominate it if
-the economic truth is neglected. A people that starves is a people
-thinking only of material things--food. The way to dispose of economic
-pre-occupations is to solve the economic problem.
-
-The bearing of this argument is that developed by the present writer in
-a previous book, _The Great Illusion_, and the extent to which it has
-been vindicated by events, is shown in the Addendum.
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
-
-CHAPTER                                                             PAGE
-
-  I OUR DAILY BREAD                                                    3
-
- II THE OLD ECONOMY AND THE POST-WAR STATE                            61
-
-III NATIONALITY, ECONOMICS, AND THE ASSERTION OF
-RIGHT                                                                 81
-
- IV MILITARY PREDOMINANCE--AND INSECURITY                            112
-
-  V PATRIOTISM AND POWER IN WAR AND PEACE: THE
-SOCIAL OUTCOME                                                       142
-
- VI THE ALTERNATIVE RISKS OF STATUS AND CONTRACT                     169
-
-VII THE SPIRITUAL ROOTS OF THE SETTLEMENT                            199
-
-    ADDENDUM: SOME NOTES ON 'THE GREAT ILLUSION'
-    AND ITS PRESENT RELEVANCE                                        253
-
-    I. The 'Impossibility of War' Myth. II. 'Economic'
-    and 'Moral' Motives in International Affairs. III. The
-    'Great Illusion' Argument. IV. Arguments now out of
-    date. V. The Argument as an attack on the State.
-    VI. Vindication by Events. VII. Could the War have
-    been prevented?
-
-
-
-
-SYNOPSIS
-
-
-CHAPTER I (pp. 3-60)
-
-OUR DAILY BREAD
-
-An examination of the present conditions in Europe shows that much of
-its dense population (particularly that of these islands) cannot live at
-a standard necessary for civilisation (leisure, social peace, individual
-freedom) except by certain co-operative processes which must be carried
-on largely across frontiers. (The prosperity of Britain depends on the
-production by foreigners of a surplus of food and raw material above
-their own needs.) The present distress is not mainly the result of the
-physical destruction of war (famine or shortage is worst, as in the
-Austrian and German and Russian areas, where there has been no
-destruction). The Continent as a whole has the same soil and natural
-resources and technical knowledge as when it fed its populations. The
-causes of its present failure at self-support are moral: economic
-paralysis following political disintegration, 'Balkanisation'; that, in
-its turn, due to certain passions and prepossessions.
-
-A corresponding phenomenon is revealed within each national society: a
-decline of production due to certain moral disorders, mainly in the
-political field; to 'unrest,' a greater cleavage between groups,
-rendering the indispensable co-operation less effective.
-
-The necessary co-operation, whether as between nations or groups within
-each nation, cannot be compelled by physical coercion, though disruptive
-forces inseparable from the use of coercion can paralyse co-operation.
-Allied preponderance of power over Germany does not suffice to obtain
-indemnities, or even coal in the quantities demanded by the Treaty. The
-output of the workers in Great Britain would not necessarily be improved
-by adding to the army or police force. As interdependence increases, the
-limits of coercion are narrowed. Enemies that are to pay large
-indemnities must be permitted actively to develop their economic life
-and power; they are then so potentially strong that enforcement of the
-demands becomes correspondingly expensive and uncertain. Knowledge and
-organisation acquired by workers for the purposes of their labour can be
-used to resist oppression. Railwaymen or miners driven to work by force
-would still find means of resistance. A proletarian dictatorship cannot
-coerce the production of food by an unwilling peasantry. The processes
-by which wealth is produced have, by increasing complexity, become of a
-kind which can only be maintained if there be present a large measure of
-voluntary acquiescence, which means, in its turn, confidence. The need
-for that is only made the more imperative by the conditions which have
-followed the virtual suspension of the gold standard in all the
-belligerent States of Europe, the collapse of the exchanges and other
-manifestations of instability of the currencies.
-
-European statesmanship, as revealed in the Treaty of Versailles, and in
-the conduct of international affairs since the Armistice, has recognised
-neither the fact of interdependence--the need for the economic unity of
-Europe--nor the futility of attempted coercion. Certain political ideas
-and passions give us an unworkable Europe. What is their nature? How
-have they arisen? How can they be corrected? These questions are part of
-the problem of sustenance; which is the first indispensable of
-civilisation.
-
-
-CHAPTER II (pp. 61-80)
-
-THE OLD ECONOMY AND THE POST-WAR STATE
-
-The trans-national processes which enabled Europe to support itself
-before the War were based mainly on private exchanges prompted by the
-expectation of individual advantage. They were not dependent upon
-political power. (The fifteen millions for whom German soil could not
-provide lived by trade with countries over which Germany had no
-political control, as a similar number of British live by similar
-non-political means.)
-
-The old individualist economy has been largely destroyed by the State
-Socialism introduced for war purposes: the nation, taking over
-individual enterprise, became trader and manufacturer in increasing
-degree. The economic clauses of the Treaty, if enforced, must prolong
-this tendency, rendering a large measure of such Socialism permanent.
-
-The change may be desirable. But if co-operation must in future be less
-as between individuals for private advantage, and much more as between
-_nations_, governments acting in an economic capacity, the political
-emotions of nationalisation will play a much larger role in the economic
-processes of Europe. If to Nationalist hostilities as we have known them
-in the past is to be added the commercial rivalry of nations now
-converted into traders and capitalists, we are likely to have not a less
-but a more quarrelsome world, unless the fact of interdependence is much
-more vividly realised than in the past.
-
-
-CHAPTER III (pp. 81-111)
-
-NATIONALITY, ECONOMICS, AND THE ASSERTION OF RIGHT
-
-
-The change noted in the preceding chapter raises a profound question of
-Right--Have we the right to use our power to deny to others the means of
-life? By our political power we _can_ create a Europe which, while not
-assuring advantage to the victor, deprives the vanquished of means of
-existence. The loss of both ore and coal by the Central Powers might
-well make it impossible for their future populations to find food. What
-are they to do? Starve? To disclaim responsibility is to claim that we
-are entitled to use our power to deny them life.
-
-This 'right' to starve foreigners can only be invoked by invoking the
-conception of nationalism--'Our nation first.' But the policy of placing
-life itself upon a foundation of preponderant force, instead of mutually
-advantageous co-operation, compels statesmen perpetually to betray the
-principle of nationality; not only directly, (as in the case of the
-annexation of territory, economically necessary, but containing peoples
-of alien nationality,) but indirectly; for the resistance which our
-policy (of denying means of subsistence to others) provokes, makes
-preponderance of power the condition of survival. All else must give way
-to that need.
-
-Might cannot be pledged to Right in these conditions. If our power is
-pledged to Allies for the purpose of the Balance (which means, in fact,
-preponderance), it cannot be used against them to enforce respect for
-(say) nationality. To turn against Allies would break the Balance. To
-maintain the Balance of Power we are compelled to disregard the moral
-merits of an Ally's policy (as in the case of the promise to the Czar's
-government not to demand the independence of Poland). The maintenance of
-a Balance (_i.e._ preponderance) is incompatible with the maintenance of
-Right. There is a conflict of obligation.
-
-
-CHAPTER IV (pp. 112-141)
-
-MILITARY PREDOMINANCE--AND INSECURITY
-
-The moral questions raised in the preceding chapter have a direct
-bearing on the effectiveness of military power based on the National
-unit, or a group of National units, such as an Alliance. Military
-preponderance of the smaller Western National units over large and
-potentially powerful groups, like the German or the Russian, must
-necessitate stable and prolonged co-operation. But, as the present
-condition of the Alliance which fought the War shows, the rivalries
-inseparable from the fears and resentments of 'instinctive' nationalism,
-make that prolonged co-operation impossible. The qualities of
-Nationalism which stand in the way of Internationalism stand also in the
-way of stable alliances (which are a form of Internationalism) and make
-them extremely unstable foundations of power.
-
-The difficulties encountered by the Allies in taking combined action in
-Russia show that to this fundamental instability due to the moral nature
-of Nationalism, must be added, as causes of military paralysis, the
-economic disruption which reduces the available material resources, and
-the social unrest (largely the result of the economic difficulties)
-which undermines the cohesion even of the national unit.
-
-These forces render military predominance based on the temporary
-co-operation of units still preserving the Nationalist outlook extremely
-precarious and unreliable.
-
-
-CHAPTER V (pp. 142-168)
-
-PATRIOTISM AND POWER IN WAR AND PEACE: THE SOCIAL OUTCOME
-
-The greatest and most obvious present need of Europe, for the salvation
-of its civilisation, is unity and co-operation. Yet the predominant
-forces of its politics push to conflict and disunity. If it is the
-calculating selfishness of 'realist' statesmen that thus produces
-impoverishment and bankruptcy, the calculation would seem to be
-defective. The Balkanisation of Europe obviously springs, however, from
-sources belonging to our patriotisms, which are mainly uncalculating
-and instinctive, 'mystic' impulses and passions. Can we safely give
-these instinctive pugnacities full play?
-
-One side of patriotism--gregariousness, 'herd instinct'--has a socially
-protective origin, and is probably in some form indispensable. But
-coupled with uncontrolled pugnacity, tribal gregariousness grows into
-violent partisanship as against other groups, and greatly strengthens
-the instinct to coercion, the desire to impose our power.
-
-In war-time, pugnacity, partisanship, coerciveness can find full
-satisfaction in the fight against the enemy. But when the war is over,
-these instincts, which have become so highly developed, still seek
-satisfaction. They may find it in two ways: in conflict between Allies,
-or in strife between groups within the nation.
-
-We may here find an explanation of what seems otherwise a moral enigma:
-that just _after a war_, universally lauded as a means of national
-unity, 'bringing all classes together,' the country is distraught by
-bitter social chaos, amounting to revolutionary menace; and that after
-the war which was to wipe out at last all the old differences which
-divided the Allies, their relations are worse than before the War (as in
-the case of Britain and America and Britain and France).
-
-Why should the fashionable lady, capable of sincere self-sacrifice
-(scrubbing hospital floors and tending canteens) for her countrymen when
-they are soldiers, become completely indifferent to the same countrymen
-when they have returned to civil life (often dangerous and hard, as in
-mining and fishing)? In the latter case there is no common enmity
-uniting duchess and miner.
-
-Another enigma may be solved in the same way: why military terrorism,
-unprovoked war, secret diplomacy, autocratic tyranny, violation of
-nationality, which genuinely appal us when committed by the enemy, leave
-us unmoved when political necessity' provokes very similar conduct on
-our part; why the ideals for which we went to war become matters of
-indifference to us when we have achieved victory. Gregariousness, which
-has become intense partisanship, makes right that which our side does or
-desires; wrong that which the other side does.
-
-This is fatal, not merely to justice, but to sincerity, to intellectual
-rectitude, to the capacity to see the truth objectively. It explains why
-we can, at the end of a war, excuse or espouse the very policies which
-the war was waged to make impossible.
-
-
-CHAPTER VI (pp. 169-198)
-
-THE ALTERNATIVE RISKS OF STATUS AND CONTRACT
-
-Instinct, being co-terminous with all animal life, is a motive of
-conduct immeasurably older and more deeply rooted than reasoning based
-on experience. So long as the instinctive, 'natural' action succeeds, or
-appears to succeed in its object, we do not trouble to examine the
-results of instinct or to reason. Only failure causes us to do that.
-
-We have seen that the pugnacities, gregariousness, group partisanship
-embodied in patriotism, give a strong emotional push to domination, the
-assertion of our power over others as a means of settling our relations
-with them. Physical coercion marks all the early methods in politics (as
-in autocracy and feudalism), in economics (as in slavery), and even in
-the relations of the sexes.
-
-But we try other methods (and manage to restrain our impulse
-sufficiently) when we really discover that force won't work. When we
-find we cannot coerce a man but still need his service, we offer him
-inducements, bargain with him, enter a contract. This is the result of
-realising that we really need him, and cannot compel him. That is the
-history of the development from status to contract.
-
-Stable international co-operation cannot come in any other way. Not
-until we realise the failure of national coercive power for
-indispensable ends (like the food of our people) shall we cease to
-idealise power and to put our intensest political emotions, like those
-of patriotism, behind it.
-
-The alternative to preponderance is partnership of power. Both may imply
-the employment of force (as in policing), but the latter makes force the
-instrument of a conscious social purpose, offering to the rival that
-challenges the force (as in the case of the individual criminal within
-the nation) the same rights as those claimed by the users of force.
-Force as employed by competitive nationalism does not do this. It says
-'You or me,' not 'You and me.' The method of social co-operation may
-fail temporarily; but it has the perpetual opportunity of success. It
-succeeds the moment that the two parties both accept it. But the other
-method is bound to fail; the two parties cannot both accept it. Both
-cannot be masters. Both can be partners.
-
-The failure of preponderant power on a nationalist basis for
-indispensable ends would be self-evident but for the push of the
-instincts which warp our judgment.
-
-Yet faith in the social method is the condition of its success. It is a
-choice of risks. We distrust and arm. Others, then, are entitled also to
-distrust; their arming is our justification for distrusting them. The
-policy of suspicion justifies itself. To allay suspicion we must accept
-the risk of trust. That, too, will justify itself.
-
-Man's future depends on making the better choice, for either the
-distrust or the faith will justify itself. His judgment will not be fit
-to make that choice if it is warped by the passions of pugnacity and
-hate that we have cultivated as part of the apparatus of war.
-
-
-CHAPTER VII (pp. 199-251)
-
-THE SPIRITUAL ROOTS OF THE SETTLEMENT
-
-If our instinctive pugnacities and hates are uncontrollable, and they
-dictate conduct, no more is to be said. We are the helpless victims of
-outside forces, and may as well surrender. But many who urge this most
-insistently in the case of our patriotic pugnacities obviously do not
-believe it: their demands for the suppression of 'defeatist' propaganda
-during the War, their support of war-time propaganda for the maintenance
-of morale, their present fears of the 'deadly infection' of Bolshevist
-ideas, indicate, on the contrary, a very real belief that feelings can
-be subject to an extremely rapid modification or redirection. In human
-society mere instinct has always been modified or directed in some
-measure by taboos, traditions, conventions, constituting a social
-discipline. The character of that discipline is largely determined by
-some sense of social need, developed as the result of the suggestion of
-transmitted ideas, discussions, intellectual ferment.
-
-The feeling which made the Treaty inevitable was the result of a partly
-unconscious but also partly conscious propaganda of war half-truths,
-built up on a sub-structure of deeply rooted nationalist conceptions.
-The systematic exploitation of German atrocities, and the systematic
-suppression of similar Allied offences, the systematic suppression of
-every good deed done by our enemy, constituted a monstrous half-truth.
-It had the effect of fortifying the conception of the enemy people as a
-single person; its complete collective responsibility. Any one of
-them--child, woman, invalid--could properly be punished (by famine, say)
-for any other's guilt. Peace became a problem of repressing or
-destroying this entirely bad person by a combination of nations entirely
-good.
-
-This falsified the nature of the problem, gave free rein to natural and
-instinctive retaliations, obscured the simplest human realities, and
-rendered possible ferocious cruelty on the part of the Allies. There
-would have been in any case a strong tendency to ignore even the facts
-which in Allied interest should have been considered. In the best
-circumstances it would have been extremely difficult to put through a
-Wilsonian (type 1918) policy, involving restraint of the sacred
-egoisms, the impulsive retaliations, the desire for dominion inherent
-in 'intense' nationalisms. The efficiency of the machinery by which the
-Governments for the purpose of war formed the mind of the nation, made
-it out of the question.
-
-If ever the passions which gather around the patriotisms disrupting and
-Balkanising Europe are to be disciplined or directed by a better social
-tradition, we must face without pretence or self-deception the results
-which show the real nature of the older political moralities. We must
-tell truths that disturb strong prejudices.
-
-
-
-
-
-THE FRUITS OF VICTORY
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-OUR DAILY BREAD
-
-
-I
-
-_The relation of certain economic facts to Britain's independence and
-Social Peace_
-
-Political instinct in England, particularly in the shaping of naval
-policy, has always recognised the intimate relation which must exist
-between an uninterrupted flow of food to these shores and the
-preservation of national independence. An enemy in a position to stop
-that flow would enjoy not merely an economic but a political power over
-us--the power to starve us into ignominious submission to his will.
-
-The fact has, of course, for generations been the main argument for
-Britain's right to maintain unquestioned command of the sea. In the
-discussions before the War concerning the German challenge to our naval
-power, it was again and again pointed out that Britain's position was
-very special: what is a matter of life and death for her had no
-equivalent importance for other powers. And it was when the Kaiser
-announced that Germany's future was upon the sea that British fear
-became acute! The instinct of self-preservation became aroused by the
-thought of the possible possession in hostile hands of an instrument
-that could sever vital arteries.
-
-The fact shows how impossible it is to divide off into watertight
-compartments the 'economic' from the political or moral. To preserve the
-capacity to feed our people, to see that our children shall have milk,
-is certainly an economic affair--a commercial one even. But it is an
-indispensable condition also of the defence of our country, of the
-preservation of our national freedom. The ultimate end behind the
-determination to preserve a preponderant navy may be purely nationalist
-or moral; the means is the maintenance of a certain economic situation.
-
-Indeed the task of ensuring the daily bread of the people touches moral
-and social issues nearer and more intimate even than the preservation of
-our national independence. The inexorable rise in the cost of living,
-the unemployment and loss and insecurity which accompany a rapid fall in
-prices, are probably the predominating factors in a social unrest which
-may end in transforming the whole texture of Western society. The worker
-finds his increased wage continually nullified by increase of price. Out
-of this situation arises an exasperation which, naturally enough, with
-peoples habituated by five years of war to violence and emotional
-mass-judgments, finds expression, not necessarily in organised
-revolution--that implies, after all, a plan of programme, a hope of a
-new order--but rather in sullen resentment; declining production, the
-menace of general chaos. However restricted the resources of a country
-may have become, there will always be some people under a regime of
-private capital and individual enterprise who will have more than a mere
-sufficiency, whose means will reach to luxury and even ostentation. They
-may be few in number; the amount of waste their luxury represents may in
-comparison with the total resources be unimportant. But their existence
-will suffice to give colour to the charge of profiteering and
-exploitation and to render still more acute the sullen discontent, and
-finally perhaps the tendency to violence.
-
-It is in such a situation that the price of a few prime
-necessaries--bread, coal, milk, sugar, clothing--becomes a social,
-political, and moral fact of the first importance. A two-shilling loaf
-may well be a social and political portent.
-
-In the week preceding the writing of these lines five cabinets have
-fallen in Europe. The least common denominator in the cause is the
-grinding poverty which is common to the peoples they ruled. In two cases
-the governments fell avowedly over the question of bread, maintained by
-subsidy at a fraction of its commercial cost. Everywhere the social
-atmosphere, the temper of the workers, responds to stimulus of that
-kind.
-
-When we reach the stage at which mothers are forced to see their
-children slowly die for lack of milk and bread, or the decencies of life
-are lost in a sordid scramble for sheer physical existence, then the
-economic problem becomes the gravest moral problem. The two are merged.
-
-The obvious truth that, if economic preoccupations are not to dominate
-the minds and absorb the energies of men to the exclusion of less
-material things, then the fundamental economic needs must be satisfied;
-the fact, that though the foundations are certainly not the whole
-building, civilisation does rest upon foundations of food, shelter,
-fuel, and that if it is to be stable they must be sound--these things
-have been rendered commonplace by events since the Armistice. But before
-the War they were not commonplaces. The suggestion that the economic
-results of war were worth considering was quite commonly rejected as
-'offensive,' implying that men went to war for 'profit.' Nations in
-going to war, we were told, were lifted beyond the region of
-'economics.' The conception that the neglect of the economics of war
-might mean--as it has meant--the slow torture of tens of millions of
-children and the disintegration of whole civilisations, and that if
-those who professed to be the trustees of their fellows were not
-considering these things they ought to be--this was, very curiously as
-it now seems to us at this date, regarded as sordid and material. We now
-see that the things of the spirit depend upon the solution of these
-material problems.
-
-The one fact which stood out clear above all others after the Armistice
-was the actual shortage of goods at a time when millions were literally
-dying of hunger. The decline of productivity was obvious. It was due in
-part to diversion of energies to the task of war, to the destruction of
-materials, failure in many cases to maintain plant (factories, railways,
-roads, housing); to a varying degree of industrial and commercial
-demoralisation arising out of the War and, later, out of the struggle
-for political rearrangements both within States and as between States;
-to the shortening of the hours of labour; to the dislocation, first of
-mobilisation, and then of demobilisation; to relaxation of effort as
-reaction from the special strain of war; to the demoralisation of credit
-owing to war-time financial shifts. We had all these factors of reduced
-productivity on the one side, and on the other a generally increased
-habit and standard of expenditure, due in part to a stimulation of
-spending power owing to the inflation of the currency and in part to the
-recklessness which usually follows war; and above all an increasingly
-insistent demand on the part of the worker everywhere in Europe for a
-higher general standard of living, that is to say, not only a larger
-share of the diminished product of his labour, but a larger absolute
-amount drawn from a diminished total.
-
-This created an economic _impasse_--the familiar 'vicious circle.' The
-decline in the purchasing power of money and the rise in the rate of
-interest set up demands for compensating increases both of wages and of
-profits, which increases in turn added to the cost of production, to
-prices. And so on _da capo_. As the first and last remedy for this
-condition one thing was urged, to the exclusion of almost all
-else--increased production. The King, the Cabinet, economists, Trades
-Union leaders, the newspapers, the Churches, all agreed upon that one
-solution. Until well into the autumn of 1920 all were enjoining upon the
-workers their duty of an ever-increasing output.
-
-By the end of that year, workers, who had on numberless occasions been
-told that their one salvation was to increase their output, and who had
-been upbraided in no mild terms because of their tendency to diminish
-output, were being discharged in their hundreds of thousands because
-there was a paralysing over-production and glut! Half a world was
-famished and unclothed, but vast stores of British goods were rotting
-and multitudes of workers unemployed. America revealed the same
-phenomena. After stories of the fabulous wealth which had come to her as
-the result of the War and the destruction of her commercial competitors,
-we find, in the winter of 1920-21 that over great areas in the South and
-West her farmers are near to bankruptcy because their cotton and wheat
-are unsaleable at prices that are remunerative, and her industrial
-unemployment problem as acute as it has been in a generation. So bad is
-it, indeed, that the Labour Unions are unable to resist the Open Shop
-campaign forced upon them by the employers, a campaign menacing the
-gains in labour organisation that it has taken more than a generation to
-make. America's commercial competitors being now satisfactorily disposed
-of by the War, and 'the economic conquest of the world' being now open
-to that country, we find the agricultural interests (particularly cotton
-and wheat) demanding government aid for the purpose of putting these
-aforesaid competitors once more on their feet (by loan) in order that
-they may buy American products. But the loans can only be repaid and the
-products paid for in goods. This, of course, constitutes, in terms of
-nationalist economics, a 'menace.' So the same Congress which receives
-demands for government credits to European countries, also receives
-demands for the enactment of Protectionist legislation, which will
-effectually prevent the European creditors from repaying the loans or
-paying for the purchases. The spectacle is a measure of the chaos in our
-thinking on international economics.[1]
-
-But the fact we are for the moment mainly concerned with is this: on the
-one side millions perishing for lack of corn or cotton; on the other
-corn and cotton in such abundance that they are burned, and their
-producers face bankruptcy.
-
-Obviously therefore it is not merely a question of production, but of
-production adjusted to consumption, and vice versa; of proper
-distribution of purchasing power, and a network of processes which must
-be in increasing degree consciously controlled. We should never have
-supposed that mere production would suffice, if there did not
-perpetually slip from our minds the very elementary truth that in a
-world where division of labour exists wealth is not a material but a
-material plus a process--a process of exchange. Our minds are still
-dominated by the mediaeval aspect of wealth as a 'possession' of static
-material such as land, not as part of a flow. It is that oversight which
-probably produced the War; it certainly produced certain clauses of the
-Treaty. The wealth of England is not coal, because if we could not
-exchange it (or the manufactures and services based on it) for other
-things--mainly food--it certainly would not even feed our population.
-And the process by which coal becomes bread is only possible by virtue
-of certain adjustments, which can only be made if there be present such
-things as a measure of political security, stability of conditions
-enabling us to know that crops can be gathered, transported and sold for
-money of stable value; if there be in other words the indispensable
-element of contract, confidence, rendering possible the indispensable
-device of credit. And as the self-sufficing economic unit--quite
-obviously in the case of England, less obviously but hardly less
-certainly in other notable cases--cannot be the national unit, the field
-of the contract--the necessary stability of credit, that is--must be, if
-not international, then trans-national. All of which is extremely
-elementary; and almost entirely overlooked by our statesmanship, as
-reflected in the Settlement and in the conduct of policy since the
-Armistice.
-
-
-2
-
-     _Britain's dependence on the production by foreigners of a surplus
-     of food and raw materials beyond their own needs_
-
-The matter may be clarified if we summarise what precedes, and much of
-what follows, in this proposition:--
-
-     The present conditions in Europe show that much of its dense
-     population (notably the population of these islands) can only live
-     at a standard necessary for civilisation (leisure, social peace,
-     individual freedom) by means of certain co-operative processes,
-     which must be carried on largely across frontiers. The mere
-     physical existence of much of the population of Britain is
-     dependent upon the production by foreigners of a surplus of food
-     and raw materials beyond their own needs.
-
-     The processes of production have become of the complex kind which
-     cannot be compelled by preponderant power, exacted by physical
-     coercion.
-
-     But the attempt at such coercion, the inevitable results of a
-     policy aimed at securing predominant power, provoking resistance
-     and friction, can and does paralyse the necessary processes, and by
-     so doing is undermining the economic foundations of British life.
-
-What are the facts supporting the foregoing proposition?
-
-Many whose instincts of national protection would become immediately
-alert at the possibility of a naval blockade of these islands, remain
-indifferent to the possibility of a blockade arising in another but
-every bit as effective a fashion.
-
-That is through the failure of the food and raw material, upon which our
-populations and our industries depend, to be produced at all owing to
-the progressive social disintegration which seems to be going on over
-the greater part of the world. To the degree to which it is true to say
-that Britain's life is dependent upon her fleet, it is true to say that
-it is dependent upon the production by foreigners of a surplus above
-their own needs of food and raw material. This is the most fundamental
-fact in the economic situation of Britain: a large portion of her
-population are fed by the exchange of coal, or services and manufactures
-based on coal, for the surplus production, mainly food and raw material,
-of peoples living overseas.[2] Whether the failure of food to reach us
-were due to the sinking of our ships at sea or the failure of those
-ships to obtain cargoes at the port of embarkation the result in the end
-would be the same. Indeed, the latter method, if complete, would be the
-more serious as an armistice or surrender would not bring relief.
-
-The hypothesis has been put in an extreme form in order to depict the
-situation as vividly as possible. But such a condition as the complete
-failure of the foreigner's surplus does not seem to-day so preposterous
-as it might have done five years ago. For that surplus has shrunk
-enormously and great areas that once contributed to feeding us can do so
-no longer. Those areas already include Russia, Siberia, the Balkans, and
-a large part of the Near and Far East. What we are practically concerned
-with, of course, is not the immediate disappearance of that surplus on
-which our industries depend, but the degree to which its reduction
-increases for us the cost of food, and so intensifies all the social
-problems that arise out of an increasing cost of living. Let the
-standard alike of consumption and production of our overseas white
-customers decline to the standard of India and China, and our foreign
-trade would correspondingly decrease; the decline in the world's
-production of food would mean that much less for us; it would reduce the
-volume of our trade, or in terms of our own products, cost that much
-more; this in turn would increase the cost of our manufactures, create
-an economic situation which one could describe with infinite technical
-complexity, but which, however technical and complex that description
-were made, would finally come to this--that our own toil would become
-less productive.
-
-That is a relatively new situation. In the youth of men now living,
-these islands with their twenty-five or thirty million population were,
-so far as vital needs are concerned, self-sufficing. What will be the
-situation when the children now growing up in our homes become members
-of a British population which may number fifty, sixty, or seventy
-millions? (Germany's population, which, at the outbreak of war, was
-nearly seventy millions, was in 1870 a good deal less than the present
-population of Great Britain.)
-
-Moreover, the problem is affected by what is perhaps the most important
-economic change in the world since the industrial revolution, namely the
-alteration in the ratio of the exchange value of manufactures and
-food--the shift over of advantage in exchange from the side of the
-industrialist and manufacturer to the side of the producer of food.
-
-Until the last years of the nineteenth century the world was a place in
-which it was relatively easy to produce food, and nearly the whole of
-its population was doing it. In North and South America, in Russia,
-Siberia, China, India, the universal occupation was agriculture, carried
-on largely (save in the case of China and India) upon new soil, its
-first fertility as yet unexhausted. A tiny minority of the world's
-population only was engaged in industry in the modern sense: in
-producing things in factories by machinery, in making iron and steel.
-Only in Great Britain, in Northern Germany, in a few districts in the
-United States, had large-scale industry been systematically developed.
-It is easy to see, therefore, what immense advantage in exchange the
-industrialist had. What he had for sale was relatively scarce; what the
-agriculturist had for sale was produced the world over and was, _in
-terms of manufactures_, extremely cheap. It was the economic paradox of
-the time that in countries like America, South and North, the
-farmer--the producer of food--was naturally visualised as a
-poverty-stricken individual--a 'hayseed' dressed in cotton jeans,
-without the conveniences and amenities of civilisation, while it was in
-the few industrial centres that the vast wealth was being piled up. But
-as the new land in North America and Argentina and Siberia became
-occupied and its first fertility exhausted, as the migration from the
-land to the towns set in, it became possible with the spread of
-technical training throughout the world, with the wider distribution of
-mechanical power and the development of transport, for every country in
-some measure to engage in manufacture, and the older industrial centres
-lost some of their monopoly advantage in dealing with the food producer.
-In Cobden's day it was almost true to say that England spun cotton for
-the world. To-day cotton is spun where cotton is grown; in India, in the
-Southern States of America, in China.
-
-This is a condition which (as the pages which follow reveal in greater
-detail) the intensification of nationalism and its hostility to
-international arrangement will render very much more acute. The
-patriotism of the future China or Argentina--or India and Australia, for
-that matter--may demand the home production of goods now bought in (say)
-England. It may not in economic terms benefit the populations who thus
-insist upon a complete national economy. But 'defence is more than
-opulence.' The very insecurity which the absence of a definitely
-organised international order involves will be invoked as justifying the
-attempt at economic self-sufficiency. Nationalism creates the situation
-to which it points as justification for its policy: it makes the very
-real dangers that it fears. And as Nationalism thus breaks up the
-efficient transnational division of labour and diminishes total
-productivity, the resultant pressure of population or diminished means
-of subsistence will push to keener rivalry for the conquest of
-territory. The circle can become exceedingly vicious--so vicious,
-indeed, that we may finally go back to the self-sufficing village
-community; a Europe sparsely populated if the resultant clerical
-influence is unable to check prudence in the matter of the birth-rate,
-densely populated to a Chinese or Indian degree if the birth-rate is
-uncontrolled.
-
-The economic chaos and social disintegration which have stricken so
-much of the world have brought a sharp reminder of the primary, the
-elemental place of food in the catalogue of man's needs, and the
-relative ease and rapidity with which most else can be jettisoned in our
-complex civilisation, provided only that the stomach can be filled.
-
-Before the War the towns of Europe were the luxurious and opulent
-centres; the rural districts were comparatively poor. To-day it is the
-cities of the Continent that are half-starved or famine-stricken, while
-the farms are well-fed and relatively opulent. In Russia, Poland,
-Hungary, Germany, Austria, the cities perish, but the peasants for the
-most part have a sufficiency. The cities are finding that with the
-breakdown of the old stability--of the transport and credit systems
-particularly--they cannot obtain food from the farmers. This process
-which we now see at work on the Continent is in fact the reversal of our
-historical development.
-
-As money acquired a stable value and transport and communication became
-easy and cheap, the manor ceased to be self-contained, to weave its own
-clothes and make its own implements. But the Russian peasants are
-proving to-day that if the railroads break down, and the paper money
-loses its value, the farm can become once more self-sufficing. Better to
-thresh the wheat with a flail, to weave clothes from the wool, than to
-exchange wheat and wool for a money that will buy neither cloth nor
-threshing machinery. But a country-side that weaves its own cloth and
-threshes its grain by hand is one that has little surplus of food for
-great cities--as Vienna, Buda-Pest, Moscow, and Petrograd have already
-discovered.
-
-If England is destined in truth to remain the workshop of that world
-which produces the food and raw material, then she has indeed a very
-direct interest in the maintenance of all those processes upon which the
-pre-war exchange between farm and factory, city and country,
-depended.[3]
-
-The 'farm' upon which the 'factory' of Great Britain depends is the
-food-producing world as a whole. It does not suffice that the overseas
-world should merely support itself as it did, say, in the tenth century,
-but it must be induced by hope of advantage to exchange a surplus for
-those things which we can deliver to it more economically than it can
-make them for itself. Because the necessary social and political
-stability, with its material super-structure of transport and credit,
-operating trans-nationally, has broken down, much of Europe is returning
-to its earlier simple life of unco-ordinated production, and its total
-fertility is being very greatly reduced. The consequent reaction of a
-diminished food supply for ourselves is already being felt.
-
-
-3
-
-_The 'Prosperity' of Paper Money_
-
-It will be said: Does not the unquestioned rise in the standard of
-wages, despite all the talk of debt, expenditure, unbalanced budgets,
-public bankruptcy, disprove any theory of a vital connection between a
-stable Europe and our own prosperity? Indeed, has not the experience of
-the War discredited much of the theory of the interdependence of
-nations?
-
-The first few years of the War did, indeed, seem to discredit it, to
-show that this interdependence was not so vital as had been supposed.
-Germany seemed for a long time really to be self-supporting, to manage
-without contact with other peoples. It seemed possible to re-direct the
-channels of trade with relative ease. It really appeared for a time that
-the powers of the Governments could modify fundamentally the normal
-process of credit almost at will, which would have been about equivalent
-to the discovery of perpetual motion! Not only was private credit
-maintained by governmental assistance, but exchanges were successfully
-'pegged'; collapse could be prevented apparently with ease. Industry
-itself showed a similar elasticity. In this country it seemed possible
-to withdraw five or six million men from actual production, and so
-organise the remainder as to enable them to produce enough not only to
-maintain themselves, but the country at large and the army, in food,
-clothing and other necessaries. And this was accomplished at a standard
-of living above rather than below that which obtained when the country
-was at peace, and when the six or seven or eight millions engaged in war
-or its maintenance were engaged in the production of consumable wealth.
-It seemed an economic miracle that with these millions withdrawn from
-production, though remaining consumers, the total industrial output
-should be very little less than it was before the War.
-
-But we are beginning to see how this miracle was performed, and also
-what is the truth as to the self-sufficiency of the great nations. As
-late as the early summer of 1918, when, even after four years of the
-exhausting drain of war, well-fed German armies were still advancing and
-gaining victories, and German guns were bombarding Paris (for the first
-time in the War), the edifice of German self-sufficiency seemed to be
-sound. But this apparently stalwart economic structure crumbled in a few
-months into utter ruins and the German population was starving and
-freezing, without adequate food, fuel, clothing. England has in large
-measure escaped this result just because her contacts with the rest of
-the world have been maintained while Germany's have not. These latter
-were not even re-established at the Armistice; in many respects her
-economic isolation was more complete after the War than during it.
-Moreover, because our contacts with the rest of the world are
-maintained by shipping, a very great flexibility is given to our
-extra-national economic relationships. Our lines of communication can be
-switched from one side of the world to the other instantly, whereas a
-country whose approaches are by railroads may find its communications
-embarrassed for a generation if new frontiers render the old lines
-inapplicable to the new political conditions.
-
-In the first year or so following the Armistice there was a curious
-contradiction in the prevailing attitude towards the economic situation
-at home. The newspapers were full of headlines about the Road to Ruin
-and National Bankruptcy; the Government plainly was unable to make both
-ends meet; the financial world was immensely relieved when America
-postponed the payments of debts to her; we were pathetically appealing
-to her to come and save us; the British sovereign, which for generations
-has been a standard of value for the world and the symbol of security,
-dropped to a discount of 20 per cent, in terms of the dollar; our
-Continental creditors were even worse off; the French could only pay us
-in a depreciated paper currency, the value of which in terms of the
-dollar varied between a third and a fourth of what it was before the
-War; the lira was cheaper still. Yet side by side with this we had
-stories of a trade boom (especially in textiles and cotton), so great
-that merchants and manufacturers refused to go to their offices, in
-order to dodge the flood of orders so vastly in excess of what they
-could fulfil. Side by side with depreciated paper currency, with public
-debts so crippling that the Government could only balance its budget by
-loans which were not successful when floated, the amusement trades
-flourished as never before. Theatre, music hall, and cinematograph
-receipts beat all records. There was a greater demand for motor-cars
-than the trade could supply. The Riviera was fuller than it had ever
-been before. The working class itself was competing with others for the
-purchase of luxuries which in the past that class never knew. And while
-the financial situation made it impossible, apparently, to find capital
-for building houses to live in, ample capital was forthcoming wherewith
-to build cinema palaces. We heard and read of famine almost at our
-doors, and saw great prosperity around us; read daily of impending
-bankruptcy--and of high profits and lavish spending; of world-wide
-unrest and revolution--and higher wages than the workers had ever known.
-
-Complex and contradictory as the facts seemed, the difficulty of a true
-estimate was rendered greater by the position in which European
-Governments found themselves placed. These Governments were faced by the
-necessity of maintaining credit and confidence at almost any cost. They
-must not, therefore, throw too great an emphasis upon the dark features.
-Yet the need for economy and production was declared to be as great as
-it was during the war. To create a mood of seriousness and sober
-resolution adequate to the situation would involve stressing facts
-which, in their efforts to obtain loans, internal or external, and to
-maintain credit, governments were compelled to minimise.
-
-Then, of course, the facts were obscured mainly by the purchasing power
-created by the manufacture of credit and paper money. Some light is
-thrown upon this ambiguous situation by a fact which is now so
-manifest--that this juxtaposition of growing indebtedness and lavish
-spending, high wages, high profits, active trade, and a rising standard
-of living, were all things that marked the condition of Germany in the
-first few years of the War. Industrial concerns showed profits such as
-they had never shown before; wages steadily rose; and money was
-plentiful. But the profits were made and the wages were paid in a money
-that continually declined in value--as ours is declining. The higher
-consumption drew upon sources that were steadily being depleted--as ours
-are being depleted. The production was in certain cases maintained by
-very uneconomic methods: as by working only the best seams in the coal
-mines, by devoting no effort to the proper upkeep of plant (locomotives
-on the railway which ordinarily would go into the repair shop every six
-weeks were kept running somehow during the whole course of the War). In
-this sense the people were 'living upon capital'--devoting, that is, to
-the needs of current consumption energy which should have been devoted
-to ensuring future production. In another way, they were converting into
-income what is normally a source of capital. An increase in profits or
-wages, which ordinarily would have provided a margin, over and above
-current expenditure, out of which capital for new plant, etc., could
-have been drawn, was rapidly nullified by a corresponding increase in
-prices. Loans for the purpose even of capital expenditure involved an
-inflation of currency which still further increased prices, thus
-diminishing the value of the capital so provided, necessitating the
-issue of further loans which had the same effect. And so the vicious
-circle was narrowed. Even after four years of this kind of thing the
-edifice had in many respects the outward appearances of prosperity. As
-late as April, 1918, the German organisation, as we have noted, was
-still capable of maintaining a military machine which could not only
-hold its own but compel the retirement of the combined forces of France,
-Britain, America, and minor Allies. But once the underlying process of
-disintegration became apparent, the whole structure went to pieces.
-
-It is that unnoticed process of disintegration, preceding the final
-collapse, which should interest us. For the general method employed by
-Germany for meeting the consumption of war and disguising the growing
-scarcity is in many respects the method her neighbours adopted for
-meeting the consumption of a new standard of life on the basis of less
-total wealth--a standard which, on the part of the workers, means both
-shorter hours and a larger share of their produce, and on the part of
-other classes a larger share of the more expensive luxuries. Like the
-Germans of 1914-18, we are drawing for current consumption upon the fund
-which, in a more healthy situation, would go to provide for renewal of
-plant and provision of new capital. To 'eat the seed corn' may give an
-appearance of present plenty at the cost of starvation later.
-
-It is extremely unlikely that there will ever be in England the sudden
-catastrophic economic collapse which we have witnessed in Russia,
-Germany, Austria, and Central Europe generally. But we shall none the
-less be concerned. As the increased wages gained by strikes lose with
-increasing rapidity their value in purchasing power, thus wiping out the
-effect of the industrial 'victory,' irritation among the workers will
-grow. On minds so prepared the Continental experiments in social
-reconstruction--prompted by conditions immeasurably more acute--will act
-with the force of hypnotic suggestion. Our Government may attempt to
-cope with these movements by repression or political devices. Tempers
-will be too bad and patience too short to give the sound solutions a
-real chance. And an economic situation, not in itself inherently
-desperate, may get steadily worse because of the loss of social
-discipline and of political insight, the failure to realise past
-expectations, the continuance of military burdens created by external
-political chaos.
-
-
-4
-
-_The European disintegration: Britain's concern._
-
-What has actually happened in so much of Europe around us ought
-certainly to prevent any too complacent sense of security. In the midst
-of this old civilisation are (in Mr. Hoover's calculation) some hundred
-million folk, who before the War managed to support themselves in fair
-comfort but are now unable to be truly self-supporting. Yet they live
-upon the same soil and in the presence of the same natural resources as
-before the War. Their inability to use that soil and those materials is
-not due to the mere physical destruction of war, for the famine is worst
-where there has been no physical destruction at all. It is not a lack
-of labour, for millions are unemployed, seeking work. Nor is it lack of
-technical or scientific knowledge, upon which (very erroneously) we are
-apt to look as the one sufficient factor of civilisation; for our
-technical knowledge in the management of matter is greater even than
-before the War.
-
-What then is the reason why these millions starve in the midst of
-potential plenty? It is that they have lost, from certain moral causes
-examined later in these pages, the capacity to co-ordinate their labour
-sufficiently to carry on the processes by which alone labour and
-knowledge can be applied to an exploitation of nature sufficiently
-complete to support our dense modern populations.
-
-The fact that wealth is not to-day a material which can be taken, but a
-process which can only be maintained by virtue of certain moral factors,
-marks a change in human relationship, the significance of which still
-seems to escape us.
-
-The manor, or even the eighteenth century village, was roughly a
-self-sufficing unit. It mattered little to that unit what became of the
-outside world. The manor or village was independent; its people could be
-cut off from the outside world, could ravage the near parts of it and
-remain unaffected. But when the development of communication and the
-discovery of steam turns the agricultural community into coal miners,
-these are no longer indifferent to the condition of the outside world.
-Cut them off from the agriculturalists who take their coal or
-manufactures, or let these latter be unable to carry on their calling,
-and the miner starves. He cannot eat his coal. He is no longed
-independent. His life hangs upon certain activities of others. Where his
-forebears could have raided and ravaged with no particular hurt to
-themselves, the miner cannot. He is dependent upon those others and has
-given them hostages. He is no longer 'independent,' however clamorously
-in his Nationalist oratory he may use that word. He has been forced into
-a relation of partnership. And how very small is the effectiveness of
-any physical coercion he can apply, in order to exact the services by
-which he lives, we shall see presently.
-
-This situation of interdependence is of course felt much more acutely by
-some countries than others--much more by England, for instance, than by
-France. France in the matter of essential foodstuffs can be nearly
-self-supporting, England cannot. For England, an outside world of fairly
-high production is a matter of life and death; the economic
-consideration must in this sense take precedence of others. In the case
-of France considerations of political security are apt to take
-precedence of economic considerations. France can weaken her neighbours
-vitally without being brought to starvation. She can purchase security
-at the cost of mere loss of profits on foreign trade by the economic
-destruction of, say, Central Europe. The same policy would for Britain
-in the long run spell starvation. And it is this fundamental difference
-of economic situation which is at the bottom of much of the divergence
-of policy between Britain and France which has recently become so acute.
-
-This is the more evident when we examine recent changes of detail in
-this general situation special to England. Before the War a very large
-proportion of our food and raw material was supplied by the United
-States. But our economic relationship with that country has been changed
-as the result of the War. Previous to 1914 we were the creditor and
-America the debtor nation. She was obliged to transmit to us large sums
-in interest on investments of British capital. These annual payments
-were in fact made in the form of food and raw materials, for which, in a
-national sense, we did not have to give goods or services in return. We
-are now less in the position of creditor, more in that of debtor.
-America does not have to transmit to us. Whereas, originally, we did an
-immense proportion of America's carrying trade, because she had no
-ocean-going mercantile marine, she has begun to do her own carrying.
-Further, the pressure of her population upon her food resources is
-rapidly growing. The law diminishing returns is in some instances
-beginning to apply to the production of food, which in the past has been
-plentiful without fertilisers and under a very wasteful and simple
-system. And in America, as elsewhere, the standard of consumption, owing
-to a great increase of the wage standard, has grown, while the standard
-of production has not always correspondingly increased.
-
-The practical effect of this is to throw England into greater dependence
-upon certain new sources of food--or trade, which in the end is the same
-thing. The position becomes clearer if we reflect that our dependence
-becomes more acute with every increase of our population. Our children
-now at school may be faced by the problem of finding food for a
-population of sixty or seventy millions on these islands. A high
-agricultural productivity on the part of countries like Russia and
-Siberia and the Balkans might well be then a life and death matter.
-
-Now the European famine has taught us a good deal about the necessary
-conditions of high agricultural productivity. The co-operation of
-manufactures--of railways for taking crops out and fertilisers in, of
-machinery, tools, wagons, clothing--is one of them. That manufacturing
-itself must be done by division of labour is another: the country or
-area that is fitted to supply textiles or cream separators is not
-necessarily fitted to supply steel rails: yet until the latter are
-supplied the former cannot be obtained. Often productivity is paralysed
-simply because transport has broken down owing to lack of rolling stock,
-or coal, or lubricants, or spare parts for locomotives; or because a
-debased currency makes it impossible to secure food from peasants, who
-will not surrender it in return for paper that has no value--the
-manufactures which might ultimately give it value being paralysed. The
-lack of confidence in the maintenance of the value of paper money, for
-instance, is rapidly diminishing the food productivity of the soil;
-peasants will not toil to produce food which they cannot exchange,
-through the medium of money, for the things which they need--clothing,
-implements, and so on. This diminishing productivity is further
-aggravated by the impossibility of obtaining fertilisers (some of which
-are industrial products, and all of which require transport), machines,
-tools, etc. The food producing capacity of Europe cannot be maintained
-without the full co-operation of the non-agricultural industries--transport,
-manufactures, coal mining, sound banking--and the maintenance of
-political order. Nothing but the restoration of all the economic
-processes of Europe as a whole can prevent a declining productivity
-that must intensify social and political disorder, of which we may
-merely have seen the beginning.
-
-But if this interdependence of factory and farm in the production of
-food is indisputable, though generally ignored, it involves a further
-fact just as indisputable, and even more completely ignored. And the
-further fact is that the manufacturing and the farming, neither of which
-can go on without the other, may well be situated in different States.
-Vienna starves largely because the coal needed for its factories is now
-situated in a foreign State--Czecho-Slovakia--which, partly from
-political motives perhaps, fails to deliver it. Great food producing
-areas in the Balkans and Russia are dependent for their tools and
-machinery, for the stability of the money without which the food will
-not be produced, upon the industries of Germany. Those industries are
-destroyed, the markets have disappeared, and with them the incentive to
-production. The railroads of what ought to be food producing States are
-disorganized from lack of rolling stock, due to the same paralysis of
-German industry; and so the food production is diminished. Tens of
-millions of acres outside Germany, whose food the world sorely needs,
-have been rendered barren by the industrial paralysis of the Central
-Empires which the economic terms of the Treaty render inevitable.
-
-Speaking of the need of Russian agriculture for German industry, Mr.
-Maynard Keynes, who has worked out the statistics revealing the relative
-position of Germany to the rest of Europe, writes:--
-
-'It is impossible geographically and for many other reasons for
-Englishmen, Frenchmen, or Americans to undertake it--we have neither the
-incentive nor the means for doing the work on a sufficient scale.
-Germany, on the other hand, has the experience, the incentive, and to a
-large extent, the materials for furnishing the Russian peasant with the
-goods of which he has been starved for the past five years, for
-reorganising the business of transport and collection, and so for
-bringing into the world's pool, for the common advantage, the supplies
-from which we are now disastrously cut off.... If we oppose in detail
-every means by which Germany or Russia can recover their material
-well-being, because we feel a national, racial, or political hatred for
-their populations or their governments, we must be prepared to face the
-consequences of such feelings. Even if there is no moral solidarity
-between the newly-related races of Europe, there is an economic
-solidarity which we cannot disregard. Even now, the world markets are
-one. If we do not allow Germany to exchange products with Russia and so
-feed herself, she must inevitably compete with us for the produce of the
-New World. The more successful we are in snapping economic relations
-between Germany and Russia, the more we shall depress the level of our
-own economic standards and increase the gravity of our own domestic
-problems.'[4]
-
-It is not merely the productivity of Russia which is involved. Round
-Germany as a central support the rest of the European economic system
-grouped itself, and upon the prosperity and enterprise of Germany the
-prosperity of the rest of the Continent mainly depended. Germany was the
-best customer of Russia, Norway, Poland, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy,
-and Austria-Hungary; she was the second best customer of Great Britain,
-Sweden, and Denmark; and the third best customer of France. She was the
-largest source of supply to Russia, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Poland,
-Switzerland, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria; and the
-second largest source of supply to Great Britain, Belgium, and France.
-Britain sent more experts to Germany than to any other country in the
-world except India, and bought more from her than any other country in
-the world except the United States. There was no European country except
-those west of Germany which did not do more than a quarter of their
-total trade with her; and in the case of Russia, Austria-Hungary, and
-Poland, the proportion was far greater. To retard or prevent the
-economic restoration of Germany means retarding the economic
-reconstruction of Europe.
-
-This gives us a hint of the deep causes underlying the present
-divergence of French and British policy with reference to the economic
-reconstruction of Russia and Central Europe. A Britain of sixty or
-seventy millions faced by the situation with reference to America that
-has just been touched upon, might well find that the development of the
-resources of Russia, Siberia, and the Near East--even at the cost of
-dividing the profits thereof in terms of industrial development with
-Germany, each supplying that for which it was best suited--was the
-essential condition of food and social peace. France has no such
-pre-occupation. Her concern is political: the maintenance of a military
-predominance on which she believes her political security to depend, an
-object that might well be facilitated by the political disintegration of
-Europe even though it involved its economic disintegration.
-
-That brings us to the political factor in the decline in productivity.
-From it we may learn something of the moral factor, which is the
-ultimate condition of any co-operation whatsoever.
-
-The relationship of the political to the economic situation is
-illustrated most vividly, perhaps, in the case of Austria. Mr. Hoover,
-in testimony given to a United States Senate Committee, has declared
-bluntly that it is no use talking of loans to Austria which imply future
-security, if the present political status is to be maintained, because
-that status has rendered the old economic activities impossible.
-Speaking before the Committee, he said:--
-
-     'The political situation in Austria I hesitate to discuss, but it
-     is the cause of the trouble. Austria has now no hope of being
-     anything more than a perpetual poorhouse, because all her lands
-     that produce food have been taken from her. This, I will say, was
-     done without American inspiration. If this political situation
-     continues, and Austria is made a perpetual mendicant, the United
-     States should not provide the charity. We should make the loan
-     suggested with full notice that those who undertake to continue
-     Austria's present status must pay the bill. Present Austria faces
-     three alternatives--death, migration, or a complete industrial
-     diversion and re-organization. Her economic rehabilitation seems
-     impossible after the way she was broken up at the Peace Conference.
-     Her present territory will produce only enough food for three
-     months, and she has now no factories which might produce products
-     to be exchanged for food.'[5]
-
-To realise what can really be accomplished by statesmanship that has a
-soul above such trifles as food and fuel, when it sets its hand to
-map-drawing, one should attempt to visualise the state of Vienna to-day.
-Mr A. G. Gardiner, the English journalist, has sketched it thus:--
-
-     'To conceive its situation one must imagine London suddenly cut off
-     from all the sources of its life, no access to the sea, frontiers
-     of hostile Powers all round it, every coalfield of Yorkshire or
-     South Wales or Scotland in foreign hands, no citizen able to travel
-     to Birmingham or Manchester without a passport, the mills it had
-     financed in Lancashire taken from it, no coal to burn, no food to
-     eat, and--with its shilling down in value to a farthing--no money
-     to buy raw materials for its labour, industry at a standstill,
-     hundreds of thousands living (or dying) on charity, nothing
-     prospering except the vile exploiters of misery, the traffickers in
-     food, the traffickers in vice. That is the Vienna which the peace
-     criminals have made.
-
-     'Vienna was the financial and administrative centre of fifty
-     million of people. It financed textile factories, paper
-     manufacturing, machine works, beet growing, and scores of other
-     industries in German Bohemia. It owned coal mines at Teschen. It
-     drew its food from Hungary. From every quarter of the Empire there
-     came to Vienna the half-manufactured products of the provinces for
-     the finishing processes, tailoring, dyeing, glass-working, in which
-     a vast population found employment.
-
-     'Suddenly all this elaborate structure of economic life was swept
-     away. Vienna, instead of being the vital centre of fifty millions
-     of people, finds itself a derelict city with a province of six
-     millions. It is cut off from its coal supplies, from its food
-     supplies, from its factories, from everything that means existence.
-     It is enveloped by tariff walls.'
-
-The writer goes on to explain that the evils are not limited to Austria.
-In this unhappy Balkanised Society that the peace has created at the
-heart of Europe, every State is at issue with its neighbours: the Czechs
-with the Poles, the Hungarians with the Czechs, the Rumanians with the
-Hungarians, and all with Austria. The whole Empire is parcelled out into
-quarrelling factions, with their rival tariffs, their passports and
-their animosities. All free intercourse has stopped, all free
-interchange of commodities has ceased. Each starves the other and is
-starved by the other. 'I met a banker travelling from Buda-Pest to
-Berlin by Vienna and Bavaria. I asked him why he went so far out of his
-way to get to his goal, and he replied that it was easier to do that
-than to get through the barbed-wire entanglements of Czecho-Slovakia.
-There is great hunger in Bohemia, and it is due largely to the same
-all-embracing cause. Formerly the Czech peasants used to go to Hungary
-to gather the harvest and returned with corn as part payment. Now
-intercourse has stopped, the Hungarian cornfields are without the
-necessary labour, and the Czech peasant starves at home, or is fed by
-the American Relief Fund. "One year of peace," said Herr Renner, the
-Chancellor, to me, "has wrought more ruin than five years of war."'
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Mr Gardiner's final verdict[6] does not in essence differ from that of
-Mr Hoover:--
-
-     'It is the levity of mind which has plunged this great city into
-     ruin that is inexplicable. The political dismemberment of Austria
-     might be forgiven. That was repeatedly declared by the Allies not
-     to be an object of the War; but the policy of the French, backed by
-     the industrious propaganda of a mischievous newspaper group in this
-     country, triumphed and the promise was dishonoured. Austria-Hungary
-     was broken into political fragments. That might be defended as a
-     political necessity. But the economic dismemberment was as
-     gratuitous as it was deadly. It could have been provided against if
-     ordinary foresight had been employed. Austria-Hungary was an
-     economic unit, a single texture of the commercial, industrial, and
-     financial interests.'[7]
-
-We have talked readily enough in the past of this or that being a
-'menace to civilisation.' The phrase has been applied indifferently to a
-host of things from Prussian Militarism to the tango. No particular
-meaning was attached to the phrase, and we did not believe that the
-material security of our civilisation--the delivery of the letters and
-the milk in the morning, and the regular running of the 'Tubes'--would
-ever be endangered in our times.
-
-But this is what has happened in a few months. We have seen one of the
-greatest and most brilliant capitals of Europe, a city completely
-untouched by the physical devastation of war, endowed beyond most with
-the equipment of modern technical learning and industry, with some of
-the greatest factories, medical schools and hospitals of our times,
-unable to save its children from death by simple starvation--unable,
-with all that equipment, to provide them each with a little milk and a
-few ounces of flour every day.
-
-
-5
-
-_The Limits of Political Control_
-
-It is sometimes suggested that as political factors (particularly the
-drawing of frontiers) entered to some extent at least into the present
-distribution of population, political forces can re-distribute that
-population. But re-distribution would mean in fact killing.
-
-So to re-direct the vast currents of European industry as to involve a
-great re-distribution of the population would demand a period of time
-so great that during the necessary stoppage of the economic process most
-of the population concerned would be dead--even if we could imagine
-sufficient stability to permit of these vast changes taking place
-according to the naive and what we now know to be fantastic, programme
-of our Treaties. And since the political forces--as we shall see--are
-extremely unstable, the new distribution would presumably again one day
-undergo a similarly murderous modification.
-
-That brings us to the question suggested in the proposition set out some
-pages back, how far preponderant political power can ensure or compel
-those processes by which a population in the position of that of these
-islands lives.
-
-For, as against much of the foregoing, it is sometimes urged that
-Britain's concern in the Continental chaos is not really vital, because
-while the British Isles cannot be self-sufficing, the British Empire can
-be.
-
-During the War a very bold attempt was made to devise a scheme by which
-political power should be used to force the economic development of the
-world into certain national channels, a scheme whereby the military
-power of the dominant group should be so used as to ensure it a
-permanent preponderance of economic resources. The plan is supposed to
-have emanated from Mr Hughes, the Prime Minister of Australia, and the
-Allies (during Mr Asquith's Premiership incidentally) met in Paris for
-its consideration. Mr Hughes's idea seems to have been to organise the
-world into economic categories: the British Empire first in order of
-mutual preference, the Allies next, the neutrals next, and the enemy
-States last of all. Russia was, of course, included among the Allies,
-America among the neutrals, the States then Austria-Hungary among the
-enemies.
-
-One has only to imagine some such scheme having been voted and put into
-operation, and the modifications which political changes would to-day
-compel, to get an idea of merely the first of the difficulties of using
-political and military power, with a basis of separate and competing
-nationalisms, for economic purposes. The very nature of military
-nationalism makes surrender of competition in favour of long continued
-co-operation for common purposes, a moral impossibility. The foundations
-of the power are unstable, the wills which determine its use
-contradictory.
-
-Yet military power must rest upon Alliance. Even the British Empire
-found that its defence needed Allies. And if the British Empire is to be
-self-sufficing, its trade canalised into channels drawn along certain
-political lines, the preferences and prohibitions will create many
-animosities. Are we to sacrifice our self-sufficiency for the sake of
-American and French friendship, or risk losing the friendship by
-preferences designed to ensure self-sufficiency? Yet to the extent that
-our trade is with countries like North and South America we cannot
-exercise on its behalf even the shadow of military coercion.
-
-But that is only the beginning of the difficulty.
-
-A suggestive fact is that ever since the population of these islands
-became dependent upon overseas trade, that trade has been not mainly
-with the Empire but with foreigners. It is to-day.[8] And if one
-reflects for a moment upon the present political relationship of the
-Imperial Government to Ireland, Egypt, India, South Africa, and the
-tariff and immigration legislation that has marked the economic history
-of Australia and Canada during the last twenty years, one will get some
-idea of the difficulty which surrounds the employment of political power
-for the shaping of an economic policy to subserve any large and
-long-continued political end.
-
-The difficulties of an imperial policy in this respect do not differ
-much in character from the difficulties encountered in Paris. The
-British Empire, too, has its problems of 'Balkanisation,' problems that
-have arisen also from the anti-social element of 'absolute' nationalism.
-The present Nationalist fermentation within the Empire reveals very
-practical limits to the use of political power. We cannot compel the
-purchase of British goods by Egyptian, Indian, or Irish Nationalists.
-Moreover, an Indian or Egyptian boycott or Irish agitation, may well
-deprive political domination of any possibility of economic advantage.
-The readiness with which British opinion has accepted very large steps
-towards the independence and evacuation of Egypt after having fiercely
-resisted such a policy for a generation, would seem to suggest that some
-part of the truth in this matter is receiving general recognition. It is
-hardly less noteworthy that popular newspapers--that one could not have
-imagined taking such a view at the time, say, of the Boer war--now
-strenuously oppose further commitments in Mesopotamia and Persia--and do
-so on financial grounds. And even where the relations of the Imperial
-Government with States like Canada or Australia are of the most cordial
-kind, the impotence of political power for exacting economic advantage
-has become an axiom of imperial statecraft. The day that the Government
-in London proposed to set in motion its army or navy for the purpose of
-compelling Canada or Australia to cease the manufacture of cotton or
-steel in order to give England a market, would be the day, as we are all
-aware, of another Declaration of Independence. Any preference would be
-the result of consent, agreement, debate, contract: not of coercion.
-
-But the most striking demonstration yet afforded in history of the
-limits placed by modern industrial conditions upon the economic
-effectiveness of political power is afforded by the story of the attempt
-to secure reparations, indemnity, and even coal from Germany, and the
-attempt of the victors, like France, to repair the disastrous financial
-situation which has followed war by the military seizure of the wealth
-of a beaten enemy. That story is instructive both by reason of the light
-which it throws upon the facts as to the economic value of military
-power, and upon the attitude of public and statesmen towards these
-facts.
-
-When, some fifteen years ago, it was suggested that, given the
-conditions of modern trade and industry, a victor would not in practice
-be able to turn his military preponderance to economic account even in
-such a relatively simple matter as the payment of an indemnity, the
-suggestion was met with all but universal derision. European economists
-of international reputation implied that an author who could make a
-suggestion of that kind was just playing with paradox for the purpose of
-notoriety. And as for newspaper criticism--it revealed the fact that in
-the minds of the critics it was as simple a matter for an army to 'take'
-a nation's wealth once military victory had been achieved, as it would
-be for a big schoolboy to take an apple from a little one.
-
-Incidentally, the history of the indemnity negotiations illuminates
-extraordinarily the truth upon which the present writer happens so often
-to have insisted, namely, that in dealing with the economics of
-nationalism, one cannot dissociate from the problem the moral facts
-which make the nationalism--without which there would be no
-nationalisms, and therefore no 'international' economics.
-
-A book by the present author published some fifteen years ago has a
-chapter entitled 'The Indemnity Futility.' In the first edition the main
-emphasis of the chapter was thrown on this suggestion: on the morrow of
-a great war the victor would be in no temper to see the foreign trade of
-his beaten enemy expand by leaps and bounds, yet by no other means than
-by an immense foreign trade could a nation pay an indemnity commensurate
-with the vast expenditure of modern war. The idea that it would be paid
-in 'money,' which by some economic witchcraft should not involve the
-export of goods, was declared to be a gross and ignorant fallacy. The
-traders of the victorious nation would have to face a greatly sharpened
-competition from the beaten nation; or the victor would have to go
-without any very considerable indemnity. The chapter takes the ground
-that an indemnity is not in terms of theoretical economics an
-impossibility: it merely indicates the indispensable condition of
-securing it--the revival of the enemy's economic strength--and suggests
-that this would present for the victorious nation, not only a practical
-difficulty of internal politics (the pressure of Protectionist groups)
-but a grave political difficulty arising out of the theory upon which
-defence by preponderant isolated national power is based. A country
-possessing the economic strength to pay a vast indemnity is of potential
-military strength. And this is a risk your nationalists will not accept.
-
-Even friendly Free Trade critics shook their heads at this and implied
-that the argument was a reversion to Protectionist illusions for the
-purpose of making a case. That misunderstanding (for the argument does
-not involve acceptance of Protectionist premises) seemed so general that
-in subsequent editions of the book this particular passage was
-deleted.[9]
-
-It is not necessary now to labour the point, in view of all that has
-happened in Paris. The dilemma suggested fifteen years ago is precisely
-the dilemma which confronted the makers of the Peace Treaty; it is,
-indeed, precisely the dilemma which confronts us to-day.
-
-It applies not only to the Indemnity, Reparations, but to our entire
-policy, to larger aspects of our relations with the enemy. Hence the
-paralysis which results from the two mutually exclusive aims of the
-Treaty of Versailles: the desire on the one hand to reduce the enemy's
-strength by checking his economic vitality--and on the other to restore
-the general productivity of Europe, to which the economic life of the
-enemy is indispensable.
-
-France found herself, at the end of the War, in a desperate financial
-position and in dire need of all the help which could come from the
-enemy towards the restoration of her devastated districts. She presented
-demands for reparation running to vast, unprecedented sums. So be it.
-Germany then was to be permitted to return to active and productive
-work, to be permitted to have the iron and the other raw materials
-necessary for the production of the agricultural machinery, the building
-material and other sorts of goods France needed. Not the least in the
-world! Germany was to produce this great mass of wealth, but her
-factories were to remain closed, her rolling stock was to be taken from
-her, she was to have neither food nor raw materials. This is not some
-malicious travesty of the attitude which prevailed at the time that the
-Treaty was made. It was, and to a large extent still is, the position
-taken by many French publicists as well as by some in England. Mr.
-Vanderlip, the American banker, describes in his book[10] the attitude
-which he found in Paris during the Conference in these words: 'The
-French burn to milk the cow but insist first that its throat must be
-cut.'
-
-Despite the lessons of the year which followed the signing of the
-Treaty, one may doubt whether even now the nature of wealth and 'money'
-has come home to the Chauvinists of the Entente countries. The demand
-that we should at one and the same time forbid Germany to sell so much
-as a pen-knife in the markets of the world and yet compel her to pay us
-a tribute which could only be paid by virtue of a foreign trade greater
-than any which she has been able to maintain in the past--these mutually
-exclusive demands are still made in our own Parliament and Press.
-
-How powerfully the Nationalist fears operate to obscure the plain
-alternatives is revealed in a letter of M. Andre Tardieu, written more
-than eighteen months after the Armistice.
-
-M. Tardieu, who was M. Clemenceau's political lieutenant in the framing
-of the Treaty, and one of the principal inspirers of the French policy,
-writing in July, 1920, long after the condition of Europe and the
-Continent's economic dependence on Germany had become visible, 'warns'
-us of the 'danger' that Germany may recover unless the Treaty is applied
-in all its rigour! He says:--
-
-     'Remember your own history and remember what the _rat de terre de
-     cousin_ which Great Britain regarded with such disdain after the
-     Treaty of Frankfurt became in less than forty years. We shall see
-     Germany recover economically, profiting by the ruins she has made
-     in other countries, with a rapidity which will astonish the world.
-     When that day arrives, if we have given way at Spa to the madness
-     of letting her off part of the debt that was born of her crime, no
-     courses will be too strong for the Governments which allowed
-     themselves to be duped. M. Clemenceau always said to British and
-     American statesmen: "We of France understand Germany better than
-     you." M. Clemenceau was right, and in bringing his colleagues round
-     to his point of view he did good work for the welfare of humanity.
-     If the work of last year is to be undone, the world will be
-     delivered up to the economic hegemony of Germany before twenty-five
-     years have passed. There could be no better proof than the recent
-     despatches of _The Times_ correspondent in Germany, which bear
-     witness to the fever of production which consumes Herr Stinnes and
-     his like. Such evidence is stronger than the biased statistics of
-     Mr Keynes. Those who refuse to take it into account will be the
-     criminals in the eyes of their respective countries.'[11]
-
-Note M. Tardieu's argument. He fears the restoration of Germany
-industry, _unless_ we make her pay the whole indemnity. That is to say,
-in other words, if we compel Germany to produce during the next
-twenty-five years something like ten thousand millions worth of wealth
-_over and above her own needs_, involving as it must a far greater
-output from her factories, mines, shipyards, laboratories, a far greater
-development of her railways, ports, canals, a far greater efficiency and
-capacity in her workers than has ever been known in the past, if that
-takes place as it must if we are to get an indemnity on the French
-scale, why, in that case, there will be no risk of Germany's making too
-great an economic recovery!
-
-The English Press is not much better. It was in December, 1918, that
-Professor Starling presented to the British Government his report
-showing that unless Germany had more food she would be utterly unable to
-pay any large indemnity to aid in reparations to France. Fully eighteen
-months later we find the _Daily Mail_ (June 18, 1920) rampaging and
-shouting itself hoarse at the monstrous discovery that the Government
-have permitted Germans to purchase wheat! Yet the _Mail_ has been
-foremost in insisting upon France's dire need for a German indemnity in
-order to restore devastated districts. If the _Mail_ is really
-representative of John Bull, then that person is at present in the
-position of a farmer who at seed-time is made violently angry at the
-suggestion that grain should be taken for the purpose of sowing the
-land, and shouts that it is a wicked proposal to take food from the
-mouths of his children. Although the Northcliffe Press has itself
-published page advertisements (from the Save the Children Fund)
-describing the incredible and appalling conditions in Europe, the _Daily
-Mail_ shouts in its leading article: 'Is British Food to go to the
-Boches?' The thing is in the best war style. 'Is there any reason why
-the Briton should be starved to feed the German?' asks the _Mail_. And
-there follows, of course, the usual invective about the submarines, war
-criminals, the sinking of hospital ships, and the approval by the whole
-German people of all these crimes.
-
-We get here, as at every turn and twist of our policy, not any
-recognition of interdependence, but a complete repudiation of that idea,
-and an assumption, instead, of a conflict of interest. If the children
-of Vienna or Berlin are to be fed, then it is assumed that it must be at
-the expense of the children of Paris and London. The wealth of the world
-is conceived as a fixed quantity, unaffected by any process of
-co-operation between the peoples sharing the world. The idea is, of
-course, an utter fallacy. French or Belgian children will have more, not
-less, if we take measures to avoid European conditions in which the
-children of Vienna are left to die. If, during the winter of 1919-1920,
-French children died from sickness due to lack of fuel, it was because
-the German coal was not delivered, and the German coal was not delivered
-because, among other things, of general disorganization of transport, of
-lack of rolling stock, of underfeeding of the miners, of collapse of the
-currency, political unrest, uncertainty of the future.
-
-It is one of the contradictions of the whole situation that France
-herself gives intermittent recognition to the fact of this
-interdependence. When, at Spa, it became evident that coal simply could
-not be delivered in the quantities demanded unless Germany had some
-means of buying imported food, France consented to what was in fact a
-loan to Germany (to the immense mystification of certain journalistic
-critics in Paris). One is prompted to ask what those who, before the War
-so scornfully treated the present writer for throwing doubts upon the
-feasibility of a post-war indemnity, would have said had he predicted
-that on the morrow of victory, the victor, instead of collecting a vast
-indemnity would from the simplest motives of self-protection, out of his
-own direly depleted store of capital, be advancing money to the
-vanquished.[12]
-
-The same inconsistency runs through much of our post-war behaviour. The
-famine in Central Europe has become so appalling that very great sums
-are collected in Britain and America for its relief. Yet the reduced
-productivity out of which the famine has arisen was quite obviously
-deliberately designed, and most elaborately planned by the economic
-provisions of the Treaty and by the blockades prolonged after the
-Armistice, for months in the case of Germany and years in the case of
-Russia. And at the very time that advertisements were appearing in the
-_Daily Mail_ for 'Help to Starving Europe,' and only a few weeks before
-France consented to advance money for the purpose of feeding Germany,
-that paper was working up 'anti-Hun stunts' for the purpose of using
-our power to prevent any food whatsoever going to Boches. It is also a
-duplication of the American phenomenon already touched upon: One Bill
-before Congress for the loaning of American money to Europe in order
-that cotton and wheat may find a market: another Bill before the same
-Congress designed, by a stiffly increased tariff, to keep out European
-goods so that the loans can never be repaid.[13]
-
-The experience of France in the attempt to exact coal by the use of
-military pressure throws a good deal of light upon what is really
-annexed when a victor takes over territory containing, say, coal; as
-also upon the question of getting the coal when it has been annexed. 'If
-we need coal,' wrote a Paris journalist plaintively during the Spa
-Conference, 'why in heaven's name don't we go and take it.' The
-implication being that it could be 'taken' without payment, for nothing.
-But even if France were to occupy the Ruhr and to administer the mines,
-the plant would have to be put in order, rolling stock provided,
-railroads restored, and, as France has already learned, miners fed and
-clothed and housed. But that costs money--to be paid as part of the cost
-of the coal. If Germany is compelled to provide those things--mining
-machinery, rolling stock, rails, miners' houses and clothing and
-food--we are confronted with pretty much the same dilemma as we
-encounter in compelling the payment of an indemnity. A Germany that can
-buy foreign food is a Germany of restored credit; a Germany that can
-furnish rolling stock, rails, mining machinery, clothing and housing for
-miners, is a Germany restored to general economic health--and
-potentially powerful. That Germany France fears to create. And even
-though we resort to a military occupation, using forced labour
-militarily controlled, we are faced by the need of all the things that
-must still enter in the getting of the coal, from miners' food and
-houses to plant and steel rails. Their cost must be charged against the
-coal obtained. And the amount of coal obtained in return for a given
-outlay will depend very largely, as we know in England to our cost, upon
-the willingness of the miner himself. Even the measure of resistance
-provoked in British miners by disputes about workers' control and
-Nationalisation, has meant a great falling off in output. But at least
-they are working for their own countrymen. What would be their output if
-they felt they were working for an enemy, and that every ton they mined
-might merely result in increasing the ultimate demands which that enemy
-would make upon their country? Should we get even eighty per cent, of
-the pre-war output or anything like it?[14] Yet that diminished output
-would have to stand the cost of all the permanent charges aforesaid.
-Would the cost of the coal to France, under some scheme of forced
-labour, be in the end less than if she were to buy it in the ordinary
-commercial way from German mines, as she did before the War? This latter
-method would almost certainly be in economic terms more advantageous.
-Where is the economic advantage of the military method? This, of course,
-is only the re-discovery of the old truth that forced or slave labour is
-more costly than paid labour.
-
-The ultimate explanation of the higher cost of slave labour is the
-ultimate explanation of the difficulty of using political power for
-economic ends, of basing our economic security upon military
-predominance. Here is France, with her old enemy helpless and prostrate.
-She needs his work for reparations, for indemnities, for coal. To
-perform that work the prostrate enemy must get upon his feet. If he
-does, France fears that he will knock her down. From that fear arise
-contradictory policies, self-stultifying courses. If she overcomes her
-fear sufficiently to allow the enemy to produce a certain amount of
-wealth for her, it is extremely likely that more than the amount of that
-wealth will have to be spent in protecting herself against the danger of
-the enemy's recovered vitality. Even when wars were less expensive than
-they are, indemnities were soon absorbed in the increase of armament
-necessitated by the Treaties which exacted the indemnities.
-
-Again, this is a very ancient story. The victor on the Egyptian vase has
-his captured enemy on the end of a rope. We say that one is free, the
-other bond. But as Spencer has shown us, both are bond. The victor is
-tied to the vanquished: if he should let go the prisoner would escape.
-The victor spends his time seeing that the prisoner does not escape; the
-prisoner his time and energy trying to escape. The combined efforts in
-consequence are not turned to the production of wealth; they are
-'cancelled out' by being turned one against another. Both may come near
-to starvation in that condition if much labour is needed to produce
-food. Only if they strike a bargain and co-operate will they be in the
-position each to turn his energy to the best economic account.
-
-But though the story is ancient, men have not yet read it. These pages
-are an attempt to show why it has not been read.
-
-Let us summarise the conclusions so far reached, namely:--
-
-     That predominant political and military power is important to exact
-     wealth is shown by the inability of the Allies to turn their power
-     to really profitable account; notably by the failure of France to
-     alleviate her financial distress by adequate reparations--even
-     adequate quantities of coal--from Germany; and by the failure of
-     the Allied statesmen as a whole, wielding a concentration of power
-     greater perhaps than any known in history to arrest an economic
-     disintegration, which is not only the cause of famine and vast
-     suffering, but is a menace to Allied interest, particularly to the
-     economic security of Britain.
-
-     The causes of this impotence are both mechanical and moral. If
-     another is to render active service in the production of wealth for
-     us--particularly services of any technical complexity in industry,
-     finance, commerce--he must have strength for that activity,
-     knowledge, and the instruments. But all those things can be turned
-     against us as means of resistance to our coercion. To the degree
-     to which we make him strong for our service we make him strong for
-     resistance to our will. As resistance increases we are compelled to
-     use an increasing proportion of what we obtain from him in
-     protecting ourselves against him. Energies cancel each other,
-     indemnities must be used in preparation for the next war. Only
-     voluntary co-operation can save this waste and create an effective
-     combination for the production of wealth that can be utilised for
-     the preservation of life.
-
-
-6
-
-_The Ultimate Moral Factor_
-
-The problem is not merely one of foreign politics or international
-relationship. The passions which obscure the real nature of the process
-by which men live are present in the industrial struggle also,
-and--especially in the case of communities situated as is the
-British--make of the national and international order one problem.
-
-It is here suggested that:--
-
-     Into the processes which maintain life within the nation an
-     increasing measure of consent and acquiescence by all parties must
-     enter: physical coercion becomes increasingly impotent to ensure
-     them. The problem of declining production by (_inter alios_)
-     miners, cannot be solved by increasing the army or police. The
-     dictatorship of the proletariat fails before the problem of
-     exacting big crops by the coercion of the peasant or countryman. It
-     would fail still more disastrously before the problem of obtaining
-     food or raw materials from foreigners (without which the British
-     could not live) in the absence of a money of stable value.
-
-One of the most suggestive facts of the post-war situation is that
-European civilization almost breaks down before one of the simplest of
-its mechanical problems: that of 'moving some stones from where they
-are not needed to the places where they are needed,' in other words
-before the problem of mining and distributing coal. Millions of children
-have died in agony in France during this last year or two because there
-was no coal to transport the food, to warm the buildings. Coal is the
-first need of our massed populations. Its absence means collapse of
-everything--of transport, of the getting of food to the towns, of
-furnishing the machinery and fertilisers by which food can be produced
-in sufficient quantity. It is warmth, it is clothing, it is light, it is
-the daily newspaper, it is water, it is communication. All our
-elaboration of knowledge and science fails in the presence of this
-problem of 'taking some stones from one heap and putting them on
-another.' The coal famine is a microcosm of the world's present failure.
-
-But if all those things--and spiritual things also are involved because
-the absence of material well-being means widespread moral evils--depend
-upon coal, the getting of the coal itself is dependent upon them. We
-have touched upon the importance of the one element of sheer goodwill on
-the part of the miners as a factor in the production of coal; upon the
-hopelessness of making good its absence by physical coercion. But we
-have also seen that just as the attempted use of coercion in the
-international field, though ineffective to exact necessary service or
-exchange, can and does produce paralysis of the indispensable processes,
-so the 'power' which the position of the miner gives him is a power of
-paralysis only.
-
-A later chapter shows that the instinct of industrial groups to solve
-their difficulties by simple coercion, the sheer assertion of power, is
-very closely related to the psychology of nationalism, so disruptive in
-the international field. Bolshevism, in the sense of belief in the
-effectiveness of coercion, represents the transfer of jingoism to the
-industrial struggle. It involves the same fallacies. A mining strike can
-bring the industrial machine to a full stop; to set that machine to work
-for the feeding of the population--which involves the co-ordination of
-a vast number of industries, the purchase of food and raw material from
-foreigners, who will only surrender it in return for promises to pay
-which they believe will be fulfilled--means not only technical
-knowledge, it means also the presence of a certain predisposition to
-co-operation. This Balkanised Europe which cannot feed itself has all
-the technical knowledge that it ever had. But its natural units are
-dominated by a certain temper which make impossible the co-operations by
-which alone the knowledge can be applied to the available natural
-resources.
-
-It is also suggestive that the virtual abandonment of the gold standard
-is playing much the same role (rendering visible the inefficiency of
-coercion) in the struggle between the industrial that it is between the
-national groups. A union strikes for higher wages and is successful. The
-increase is granted--and is paid in paper money.
-
-When wages were paid in gold an advance in wages, gained as the result
-of strike or agitation, represented, temporarily at least, a real
-victory for the workers. Prices might ultimately rise and wipe out the
-advantage, but with a gold currency price movements have nothing like
-the rapidity and range which is the case when unlimited paper money can
-be printed. An advance in wages paid in paper may mean nothing more than
-a mere readjustment of symbols. The advance, in other words, can be
-cancelled by 'a morning's work of the inflationist' as a currency expert
-has put it. The workers in these conditions can never know whether that
-which they are granted with the right hand of increased wages will not
-be taken away by the left hand of inflation.
-
-In order to be certain that they are not simply tricked, the workers
-must be in a position to control the conditions which determine the
-value of currency. But again, that means the co-ordination of the most
-complex economic processes, processes which can only be ensured by
-bargaining with other groups and with foreign countries.
-
-This problem would still present itself as acutely on the morrow of the
-establishment of a British Soviet Republic as it presents itself to-day.
-If the British Soviets could not buy food and raw materials in twenty
-different centres throughout the world they could not feed the people.
-We should be blockaded, not by ships, but by the worthlessness of our
-money. Russia, which needs only an infinitesimal proportion relatively
-of foreign imports has gold and the thing of absolutely universal need,
-food. We have no gold--only things which a world fast disintegrating
-into isolated peasantries is learning somehow to do without.
-
-Before blaming the lack of 'social sense' on the part of striking miners
-or railwaymen let us recall the fact that the temper and attitude to
-life and the social difficulties which lie at the bottom of the
-Syndicalist philosophy have been deliberately cultivated by Government,
-Press, and Church, during five years for the purposes of war; and that
-the selected ruling order have shown the same limitation of vision in
-not one whit less degree.
-
-Think what Versailles actually did and what it might have done.
-
-Here when the Conference met, was a Europe on the edge of famine--some
-of it over the edge. Every country in the world, including the
-wealthiest and most powerful, like America, was faced with social
-maladjustment in one form or another. In America it was an
-inconvenience, but in the cities of a whole continent--in Russia,
-Poland, Germany, Austria--it was shortly to mean ill-health, hunger,
-misery, and agony to millions of children and their mothers. Terms of
-the study like 'the interruption of economic processes' were to be
-translated into such human terms as infantile cholera, tuberculosis,
-typhus, hunger-oedema. These, as events proved, were to undermine the
-social sanity of half a world.
-
-The acutest statesmen that Europe can produce, endowed with the most
-autocratic power, proceed to grapple with the situation. In what way do
-they apply that power to the problem of production and distribution, of
-adding to the world's total stock of goods, which nearly every
-government in the world was in a few weeks to be proclaiming as
-humanity's first need, the first condition of reconstruction and
-regeneration?
-
-The Treaty and the policy pursued since the Armistice towards Russia
-tell us plainly enough. Not only do the political arrangements of the
-Treaty, as we have seen, ignore the needs of maintaining the machinery
-of production in Europe[15] but they positively discourage and in many
-cases are obviously framed to prevent, production over very large areas.
-
-The Treaty, as some one has said, deprived Germany of both the means and
-the motive of production. No adequate provision was made for enabling
-the import of food and raw materials, without which Germany could not
-get to work on the scale demanded by the indemnity claims; and the
-motive for industry was undermined by leaving the indemnity claims
-indeterminate.
-
-The victor's passion, as we have seen, blinded him to the indispensable
-condition of the very demands which he was making. Europe was unable
-temperamentally to reconcile itself to the conditions of that increased
-productivity, by which alone it was to be saved. It is this element in
-the situation--its domination, that is, by an uncalculating popular
-passion poured out lavishly in support of self-destructive
-policies--which prompts one to doubt whether these disruptive forces
-find their roots merely in the capitalist organization of society: still
-less whether they are due to the conscious machinations of a small group
-of capitalists. No considerable section of capitalism any where has any
-interest in the degree of paralysis that has been produced. Capitalism
-may have overreached itself by stimulating nationalist hostilities until
-they have got beyond control. Even so, it is the unseeing popular
-passion that furnishes the capitalist with his arm, and is the factor of
-greatest danger.
-
-Examine for a moment the economic manifestation of international
-hostilities. There has just begun in the United States a clamorous
-campaign for the denunciation of the Panama Treaty which places British
-ships on an equality with American. American ships must be exempt from
-the tolls. 'Don't we own the Canal?' ask the leaders of this campaign.
-There is widespread response to it. But of the millions of Americans who
-will become perhaps passionately angry over that matter and extremely
-anti-British, how many have any shares in any ships that can possibly
-benefit by the denunciation of the Treaty? Not one in a thousand. It is
-not an economic motive operating at all.
-
-Capitalism--the management of modern industry by a small economic
-autocracy of owners of private capital--has certainly a part in the
-conflicts that produce war. But that part does not arise from the direct
-interest that the capitalists of one nation as a whole have in the
-destruction of the trade or industry of another. Such a conclusion
-ignores the most elementary facts in the modern organisation of
-industry. And it is certainly not true to say that British capitalists,
-as a distinct group, were more disposed than the public as a whole to
-insist upon the Carthaginian features of the Treaty. Everything points
-rather to the exact contrary. Public opinion as reflected, for instance,
-by the December, 1918, election, was more ferociously anti-German than
-capitalists are likely to have been. It is certainly not too much to say
-that if the Treaty had been made by a group of British--or
-French--bankers, merchants, shipowners, insurance men, and
-industrialists, liberated from all fear of popular resentment, the
-economic life of Central Europe would not have been crushed as it has
-been.
-
-Assuredly, such a gathering of capitalists would have included groups
-having direct interest in the destruction of German competition. But it
-would also have included others having an interest in the restoration of
-the German market and German credit, and one influence would in some
-measure have cancelled the other.
-
-As a simple fact we know that not all British capitalists, still less
-British financiers, _are_ interested in the destruction of German
-prosperity. Central Europe was one of the very greatest markets
-available for British industry, and the recovery of that market may
-constitute for a very large number of manufacturers, merchants,
-shippers, insurance companies, and bankers, a source of immense
-potential profit. It is a perfectly arguable proposition, to put it at
-the very lowest, that British 'capitalism' has, as a whole, more to gain
-from a productive and stable Europe than from a starving and unstable
-one. There is no reason whatever to doubt the genuineness of the
-internationalism that we associate with the Manchester School of
-Capitalist Economics.
-
-But in political nationalism as a force there are no such cross currents
-cancelling out the hostility of one nation to another. Economically,
-Britain is not one entity and Germany another. But as a sentimental
-concept, each may perfectly well be an entity; and in the imagination of
-John Citizen, in his political capacity, voting on the eve of the Peace
-Conference, Britain is a triumphant and heroic 'person,' while Germany
-is an evil and cruel 'person,' who must be punished, and whose pockets
-must be searched. John has neither the time nor has he felt the need,
-for a scientific attitude in politics. But when it is no longer a
-question of giving his vote, but of earning his income, of succeeding as
-a merchant or shipowner in an uncertain future, he will be thoroughly
-scientific. When it comes to carrying cargoes or selling cotton goods,
-he can face facts. And, in the past at least, he knows that he has not
-sold those materials to a wicked person called 'Germany,' but to a
-quite decent and human trader called Schmidt.
-
-What I am suggesting here is that for an explanation of the passions
-which have given us the Treaty of Versailles we must look much more to
-rival nationalisms than to rival capitalisms; not to hatreds that are
-the outgrowth of a real conflict of interests, but to certain
-nationalist conceptions, 'myths,' as Sorel has it. To these conceptions
-economic hostilities may assuredly attach themselves. At the height of
-the war-hatred of things German, a shopkeeper who had the temerity to
-expose German post cards or prints for sale would have risked the
-sacking of his shop. The sackers would not have been persons engaged in
-the post card producing trade. Their motive would have been patriotic.
-If their feelings lasted over the war, they would vote against the
-admission of German post cards. They would not be moved by economic,
-still less by capitalistic motives. These motives do enter, as we shall
-see presently, into the problems raised by the present condition of
-Europe. But it is important to see at what point and in what way. The
-point for the moment--and it has immense practical importance--is that
-the Treaty of Versailles and its economic consequences should be
-attributed less to capitalism (bad as that has come to be in its total
-results) than to the pressure of a public opinion that had crystallised
-round nationalist conceptions.[16]
-
-Here, at the end of 1920, is the British Press still clamouring for the
-exclusion of German toys. Such an agitation presumably pleases the
-millions of readers. They are certainly not toymakers or sellers; they
-have no commercial interest in the matter save that 'their toys will
-cost them more' if the agitation succeeds. They are actuated by
-nationalist hostility.
-
-If Germany is not to be allowed to sell even toys, there will be very
-few things indeed that she can sell. We are to go on with the policy of
-throttling Europe in order that a nation whose industrial activity is
-indispensable to Europe shall not become strong. We do not see, it is
-true, the relation between the economic revival of Europe and the
-industrial recuperation of Germany; we do not see it because we can be
-made to feel anger at the idea of German toys for British children so
-much more readily than we can be made to see the causes which deprive
-French children of warmth in their schoolrooms. European society seems
-to be in the position of an ill-disciplined child that cannot bring
-itself to swallow the medicine that would relieve it of its pain. The
-passions which have been cultivated in five years of war must be
-indulged, whatever the ultimate cost to ourselves. The judgment of such
-a society is swamped in those passions.
-
-The restoration of much of Europe will involve many vast and complex
-problems of reconstruction. But here, in the alternatives presented by
-the payment of a German indemnity, for instance, is a very simple issue:
-if Germany is to pay, she must produce goods, that is, she must be
-economically restored; if we fear her economic restoration, then we
-cannot obtain the execution of the reparation clauses of the Treaty. But
-that simple issue one of the greatest figures of the Conference cannot
-face. He has not, eighteen months after the Treaty, emerged from the
-most elementary confusion concerning it. If the psychology of
-Nationalism renders so simple a problem insoluble, what will be its
-effect upon the problem of Europe as a whole?
-
-Again, it may be that shipowners are behind the American agitation and
-toy manufacturers behind the British. A Coffin Trust might intrigue
-against measures to prevent a repetition of the influenza epidemic. But
-what should we say of the fitness for self-government of a people that
-should lend itself by millions to such an intrigue of Coffin-makers,
-showing as the result of its propaganda a fierce hostility to
-sanitation? We should conclude that it deserved to die. If Europe went
-to war as the result of the intrigues of a dozen capitalists, its
-civilisation is not worth saving; it cannot be saved, for as soon as the
-capitalists were removed, its inherent helplessness would place it at
-the mercy of some other form of exploitation.
-
-Its only hope lies in a capacity for self-management, self-rule, which
-means self-control. But a few financial intriguers, we are told, have
-only to pronounce certain words, 'fatherland above all,' 'national
-honour,' put about a few stories of atrocities, clamour for revenge, for
-the millions to lose all self-control, to become completely blind as to
-where they are going, what they are doing, to lose all sense of the
-ultimate consequences of their acts.
-
-The gravest fact in the history of the last ten years is not the fact of
-war; it is the temper of mind, the blindness of conduct on the part of
-the millions, which alone, ultimately, explains our policies. The
-suffering and cost of war may well be the best choice of evils, like the
-suffering and cost of surgery, or the burdens we assume for a clearly
-conceived moral end. But what we have seen in recent history is not a
-deliberate choice of ends with a consciousness of moral and material
-cost. We see a whole nation demanding fiercely in one breath certain
-things, and in the next just as angrily demanding other things which
-make compliance with the first impossible; a whole nation or a whole
-continent given over to an orgy of hate, retaliation, the indulgence of
-self-destructive passions. And this collapse of the human mind does but
-become the more appalling if we accept the explanation that 'wars are
-caused by capitalism' or 'Junkerthum'; if we believe that six Jew
-financiers sitting in a room can thus turn millions into something
-resembling madmen. No indictment of human reason could be more severe.
-
-To assume that millions will, without any real knowledge of why they do
-it or of the purpose behind the behests they obey, not only take the
-lives of others and give their own, but turn first in one direction and
-then in another the flood of their deepest passions of hate and
-vengeance, just as a little group of mean little men, manipulating mean
-little interests, may direct, is to argue a moral helplessness and
-shameful docility on the part of those millions which would deprive the
-future of all hope of self-government. And to assume that they are _not_
-unknowing as to the alleged cause--that would bring us to moral
-phantasmagoria.
-
-We shall get nearer to the heart of our problem if, instead of asking
-perpetually '_Who_ caused the War?' and indicting 'Capitalists' or
-'Junkers,' we ask the question: 'What is the cause of that state of mind
-and temper in the millions which made them on the one side welcome war
-(as we allege of the German millions), or on the other side makes them
-acclaim, or impose, blockades, famines,' 'punitive' 'Treaties of
-Peace?'
-
-Obviously 'selfishness' is not operating so far as the mass is
-concerned, except of course in the sense that a yielding to the passion
-of hate is self-indulgence. Selfishness, in the sense of care for social
-security and well-being, might save the structure of European society.
-It would bring the famine to an end. But we have what a French writer
-has called a 'holy and unselfish hate.' Balkan peasants prefer to burn
-their wheat rather than send it to the famished city across the river.
-Popular English newspapers agitate against a German trade which is the
-only hope of necessitous Allies obtaining any considerable reparation
-from Germany. A society in which each member is more desirous of hurting
-his neighbour than of promoting his own welfare, is one in which the
-aggregate will to destruction is more powerful than the will to
-preservation.
-
-The history of these last years shows with painful clarity that as
-between groups of men hostilities and hates are aroused very much more
-easily than any emotion of comradeship. And the hate is a hungrier and
-more persistent emotion than the comradeship. The much proclaimed
-fellowship of the Allies, 'cemented by the blood shed on the field,'
-vanished rapidly. But hate remained and found expression in the social
-struggle, in fierce repressions, in bickerings, fears, and rancours
-between those who yesterday fought side by side. Yet the price of
-survival is, as we have seen, an ever closer cohesion and social
-co-operation.
-
-And while it is undoubtedly true that the 'hunger of hate'--the actual
-desire to have something to hate--may so warp our judgment as to make us
-see a conflict of interest where none exists, it is also true that a
-sense of conflict of vital interest is a great feeder of hate. And that
-sense of conflict may well become keener as the problem of man's
-struggle for sustenance on the earth becomes more acute, as his numbers
-increase and the pressure upon that sustenance becomes greater.
-
-Once more, as millions of children are born at our very doors into a
-world that cannot feed them, condemned, if they live at all, to form a
-race that will be defective, stunted, unhealthy, abnormal, this question
-which Malthus very rightly taught our grandfathers to regard as the
-final and ultimate question of their Political Economy, comes
-dramatically into the foreground. How can the earth, which is limited,
-find food for an increase of population which is unlimited?
-
-The haunting anxieties which lie behind the failure to find a conclusive
-answer to that question, probably affect political decisions and deepen
-hostilities and animosities even where the reason is ill-formulated or
-unconscious. Some of us, perhaps, fear to face the question lest we be
-confronted with morally terrifying alternatives. Let posterity decide
-its own problems. But such fears, and the motives prompted by them, do
-not disappear by our refusal to face them. Though hidden, they still
-live, and under various moral disguises influence our conduct.
-
-Certainly the fears inspired by the Malthusian theory and the facts upon
-which it is based, have affected our attitude to war; affected the
-feeling of very many for whom war is not avowedly, as it is openly and
-avowedly to some of its students, 'the Struggle for Bread.'[17]
-
-_The Great Illusion_ was an attempt frankly to face this ultimate
-question of the bearing of war upon man's struggle for survival. It took
-the ground that the victory of one nation over another, however
-complete, does not solve the problem; it makes it worse in that the
-conditions and instincts which war accentuates express themselves in
-nationalist and racial rivalries, create divisions that embarrass and
-sometimes make impossible the widespread co-operation by which alone man
-can effectively exploit nature.
-
-That demonstration as a whole belongs to the pages that follow. But
-bearing upon the narrower question of war in relation to the world's
-good, this much is certain:--
-
-If the object of the combatants in the War was to make sure of their
-food, then indeed is the result in striking contrast with that
-intention, for food is assuredly more insecure than ever alike for
-victor and vanquished. They differ only in the degree of insecurity. The
-War, the passions which it has nurtured, the political arrangements
-which those passions have dictated, have given us a Europe immeasurably
-less able to meet its sustenance problem than it was before. So much
-less able that millions, who before the War could well support
-themselves by their own labour, are now unable so to do and have to be
-fed by drawing upon the slender stocks of their conquerors--stocks very
-much less than when some at least of those conquerors were in the
-position of defeated peoples.
-
-This is not the effect of the material destruction of war, of the mere
-battering down of houses and bridges and factories by the soldier.
-
-The physical devastation, heart-breaking as the spectacle of it is, is
-not the difficult part of the problem, nor quantitatively the most
-important.[18] It is not the devastated districts that are suffering
-from famine, nor their losses which appreciably diminish the world
-supply of food. It is in cities in which not a house has been destroyed,
-in which, indeed, every wheel in every factory is still intact, that the
-population dies of hunger, and the children have to be fed by our
-charity. It is the fields over which not a single soldier has tramped
-that are condemned to sterility because those factories are idle, while
-the factories are condemned to idleness because the fields are sterile.
-
-The real 'economic argument' against war does not consist in the
-presentation of a balance sheet showing so much cost and destruction and
-so much gain. The real argument consists in the fact that war, and still
-more the ideas out of which it arises, produce ultimately an unworkable
-society. The physical destruction and perhaps the cost are greatly
-exaggerated. It is perhaps true that in the material foundations of
-wealth Britain is as well off to-day as before the War. It is not from
-lack of technical knowledge that the economic machine works with such
-friction: that has been considerably increased by the War. It is not
-from lack of idealism and unselfishness. There has been during the last
-five years such an outpouring of devoted unselfishness--the very hates
-have been unselfish--as history cannot equal. Millions have given their
-lives for the contrary ideals in which they believed. It is sometimes
-the ideals for which men die that make impossible their life and work
-together.
-
-The real 'economic argument,' supported by the experience of our
-victory, is that the ideas which produce war--the fears out of which it
-grows and the passions which it feeds--produce a state of mind that
-ultimately renders impossible the co-operation by which alone wealth can
-be produced and life maintained. The use of our power or our knowledge
-for the purpose of subduing Nature to our service depends upon the
-prevalence of certain ideas, ideas which underlie the 'art of living
-together.' They are something apart from mere technical knowledge which
-war, as in Germany, may increase, but which can never be a substitute
-for this 'art of living together.' (The arms, indeed, may be the
-instruments of anarchy, as in so much of Europe to-day).
-
-The War has left us a defective or perverted social sense, with a group
-of instincts and moralities that are disintegrating Western society, and
-will, unless checked, destroy it.
-
-These forces, like the 'ultimate art' which they have so nearly
-destroyed, are part of the problem of economics. For they render a
-production of wealth adequate to welfare impossible. How have they
-arisen? How can they be corrected? These questions will form an integral
-part of the problems here dealt with.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-THE OLD ECONOMY AND THE POST-WAR STATE
-
-
-This chapter suggests the following:--
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The trans-national processes which enabled Europe to support itself
-before the War, were based mainly on private exchanges prompted by the
-expectation of individual advantage. They were not dependent upon
-political power. (The fifteen millions for whom German soil could not
-provide, lived by trade with countries over which Germany had no
-political control, as a similar number of British live by similar
-non-political means.)
-
-The old individualist economy has been largely destroyed by the State
-Socialism introduced for war purposes; the Nation, taking over
-individual enterprise, became trader and manufacturer in increasing
-degree. The economic clauses of the Treaty, if enforced, must prolong
-this tendency, rendering a large measure of such Socialism permanent.
-
-The change may be desirable. But if co-operation must in future be less
-as between individuals for private advantage, and much more as between
-_nations_, Governments acting in an economic capacity, the political
-emotions of nationalism will play a much larger role in the economic
-processes of Europe. If to Nationalist hostilities as we have known them
-in the past, is to be added the commercial rivalry of nations now
-converted into traders and capitalists, we are likely to have not a less
-but more quarrelsome world, unless the fact of interdependence is much
-more vividly realised than in the past.
-
-The facts of the preceding chapter touching the economic chaos in
-Europe, the famine, the debauchery of the currencies, the collapse of
-credit, the failure to secure indemnities, and particularly the remedies
-of an international kind to which we are now being forced, all confirm
-what had indeed become pretty evident before the War, namely, that much
-of Europe lives by virtue of an international, or, more correctly, a
-transnational economy. That is to say, there are large populations that
-cannot live at much above a coolie standard unless there is a
-considerable measure of economic co-operation across frontiers. The
-industrial countries, like Britain and Germany, can support their
-populations only by exchanging their special products and
-services--particularly coal, iron, manufactures, ocean carriage--for
-food and raw materials; while more agricultural countries like Italy and
-even Russia, can maintain their full food-producing capacity only by an
-apparatus of railways, agricultural machinery, imported coal and
-fertilisers, to which the industry of the manufacturing area is
-indispensable.
-
-That necessary international co-operation had, as a matter of fact, been
-largely developed before the War. The cheapening of transport, the
-improvement of communication, had pushed the international division of
-labour very far indeed. The material in a single bale of clothes would
-travel half round the world several times, and receive the labour of
-half a dozen nationalities, before finally reaching its consumer. But
-there was this very significant fact about the whole process;
-Governments had very little to do with it, and the process did not rest
-upon any clearly defined body of commercial right, defined in a regular
-code or law. One of the greatest of all British industries, cotton
-spinning, depended upon access to raw material under the complete
-control of a foreign State, America. (The blockade of the South in the
-War of Secession proved how absolute was the dependence of a main
-British industry upon the political decisions of a foreign Government).
-The mass of contradictory uncertainties relating to rights of neutral
-trade in war-time, known as International Law, furnished no basis of
-security at all. It did not even pretend to touch the source--the right
-of access to the material itself.
-
-That right, and the international economy that had become so
-indispensable to the maintenance of so much of the population of Western
-Europe, rested upon the expectation that the private owner of raw
-materials--the grower of wheat or cotton, or the owner of iron ore or
-coal-mines--would continue to desire to sell those things, would always,
-indeed, be compelled so to do, in order to turn them to account. The
-main aim of the Industrial Era was markets--to sell things. One heard of
-'economic invasions' before the War. This did not mean that the invader
-took things, but that he brought them--for sale. The modern industrial
-nation did not fear the loss of commodities. What it feared was their
-receipt. And the aid of Governments was mainly invoked, not for the
-purpose of preventing things leaving the country, but for the purpose of
-putting obstacles in the way of foreigners bringing commodities into the
-country. Nearly every country had 'Protection' against foreign goods.
-Very rarely did we find countries fearing to lose their goods and
-putting on export duties. Incidentally such duties are forbidden by the
-American Constitution.
-
-Before the War it would have seemed a work of supererogation to frame
-international regulations to protect the right to buy: all were
-searching for buyers. In an economic world which revolved on the
-expectation of individual profit, the competition for profit kept open
-the resources of the world.
-
-Under that system it did not matter much, economically, what political
-administration--provided always that it was an orderly one--covered the
-area in which raw materials were found, or even controlled ports and
-access to the sea. It was in no way indispensable to British industry
-that its most necessary raw material--cotton, say--should be under its
-own control. That industry had developed while the sources of the
-material were in a foreign State. Lancashire did not need to 'own'
-Louisiana. If England had 'owned' Louisiana, British cotton-spinners
-would still have had to pay for the cotton as before. When a writer
-declared before the War that Germany dreamed of the conquest of Canada
-because she needed its wheat wherewith to feed her people, he certainly
-overlooked the fact that Germany could have had the wheat of Canada on
-the same conditions as the British who 'owned' the country--and who
-certainly could not get it without paying for it.
-
-It was true before the War to write:--
-
-     'Co-operation between nations has become essential for the very
-     life of their peoples. But that co-operation does not take place as
-     between States at all. A trading corporation called "Britain" does
-     not buy cotton from another corporation called "America." A
-     manufacturer in Manchester strikes a bargain with a merchant in
-     Louisiana in order to keep a bargain with a dyer in Germany, and
-     three, or a much larger number of parties, enter into virtual, or
-     perhaps actual, contract, and form a mutually dependent economic
-     community (numbering, it may be, with the work-people in the group
-     of industries involved, some millions of individuals)--an economic
-     entity so far as one can exist which does not include all organised
-     society. The special interests of such a community may become
-     hostile to those of another community, but it will almost certainly
-     not be a "national" one, but one of a like nature, say a shipping
-     ring or groups of international bankers or Stock Exchange
-     speculators. The frontiers of such communities do not coincide with
-     the areas in which operate the functions of the State. How could a
-     State, say Britain, act on behalf of an economic entity such as
-     that just indicated? By pressure against America or Germany? But
-     the community against which the British manufacturer in this case
-     wants pressure exercised is not "America" or "Germany"--both want
-     it exercised against the shipping ring or the speculators or the
-     bankers who in part are British. If Britain injures America or
-     Germany as a whole, she injures necessarily the economic entity
-     which it was her object to protect.'[19]
-
-This line of reasoning is no longer valid, for it was based upon a
-system of economic individualism, upon a distinction between the
-functions proper to the State and those proper to the citizen. This
-individualist system has been profoundly transformed in the direction of
-national control by the measures adopted everywhere for the purposes of
-war; a transformation that the confiscatory clauses of the Treaty and
-the arrangements for the payment of the indemnity help to render
-permanent. While the old understanding or convention has been
-destroyed--or its disappearance very greatly accelerated--by the Allies,
-no new one has so far been established to take its place. To that fact
-we must ascribe much of the economic paralysis that has come upon the
-world.
-
-I am aware, of course, that the passage I have quoted did not tell the
-whole story; that already before the War the power of the political
-State was being more and more used by 'big business'; that in China,
-Mexico, Central America, the Near East, Morocco, Persia, Mesopotamia,
-wherever there was undeveloped _and disorderly_ territory, private
-enterprise was exercising pressure upon the State to use its power to
-ensure sources of raw material or areas for the investment of capital.
-That phase of the question is dealt with at greater length
-elsewhere.[20] But the actual (whatever the potential) economic
-importance of the territory about which the nations quarrelled was as
-yet, in 1914, small; the part taken by Governments in the control and
-direction of international trade was negligible. Europe lived by
-processes that went on without serious obstacle across frontiers. Little
-States, for instance, without Colonies (Scandinavia, Switzerland) not
-only maintained a standard of living for their people quite as high as
-that in the great States, but maintained it moreover by virtue of a
-foreign trade relatively as considerable. And the forces which preserved
-the international understanding by which that trade was carried on were
-obviously great.
-
-It was not true, before the War, to say that Germany had to expand her
-frontiers to feed her population. It is true that with her, as with us,
-her soil did not produce the food needed for the populations living on
-it; as with us, about fifteen millions were being fed by means of trade
-with territories which politically she did not 'own,' and did not need
-to 'own'--with Russia, with South America, with Asia, with our own
-Colonies. Like us Germany was turning her coal and iron into bread. The
-process could have gone on almost indefinitely, so long as the coal and
-iron lasted, as the tendency to territorial division of labour was being
-intensified by the development of transport and invention. (The pressure
-of the population on the food resources of these islands was possibly
-greater under the Heptarchy than at present, when they support
-forty-five millions.) Under the old economic order conquest meant, not a
-transfer of wealth from one set of persons to another--for the soil of
-Alsace, for instance, remained in the hands of those who had owned it
-under France--but a change of administration. The change may have been
-as unwarrantable and oppressive as you will, but it did not involve
-economic strangulation of the conquered peoples or any very fundamental
-economic change at all. French economic life did not wither as the
-result of the changes of frontier in 1872, and French factories were not
-shut off from raw material, French cities were not stricken with
-starvation as the result of France's defeat. Her economic and financial
-recovery was extraordinarily rapid; her financial position a year or two
-after the War was sounder than that of Germany. It seemed, therefore,
-that if Germany, of all nations, and Bismarck, of all statesmen, could
-thus respect the convention which after war secured the immunity of
-private trade and property, it must indeed be deeply rooted in
-international comity.
-
-Indeed, the 'trans-national' economic activities of individuals, which
-had ensued so widespread an international economy, and the principle of
-the immunity of private property from seizure after conquest, had become
-so firmly rooted in international relationship as to survive all the
-changes of war and conquest. They were based on a principle that had
-received recognition in English Treaties dating back to the time of
-Magna Carta, and that had gradually become a convention of international
-relationship.
-
-At Versailles the Germans pointed out that their country was certainly
-not left with resources to feed its population. The Allies replied to
-that, not by denying the fact--to which their own advisers, like Mr
-Hoover, have indeed pointedly called attention--but as follows:--
-
-     'It would appear to be a fundamental fallacy that the political
-     control of a country is essential in order to procure a reasonable
-     share of its products. Such a proposal finds no foundation in
-     economic law or history.'[21]
-
-In making their reply the Allies seemed momentarily to have overlooked
-one fact--their own handiwork in the Treaty.
-
-Before the War it would have been a true reply. But the Allies have
-transformed what were, before the War, dangerous fallacies into
-monstrous truths.
-
-President Wilson has described the position of Germany under the Treaty
-in these terms:--
-
-     'The Treaty of Peace sets up a great Commission, known as the
-     Reparations Commission.... That Reparation Commission can
-     determine the currents of trade, the conditions of credit, of
-     international credit; it can determine how much Germany is going to
-     buy, where it is going to buy, and how it is going to pay for
-     it.'[22]
-
-In other words, it is no longer open to Germany, as the result of
-guarantees of free movement accorded to individual traders, to carry on
-that process by which before the War she supported herself. Individual
-Germans cannot now, as heretofore, get raw materials by dealing with
-foreign individuals, without reference to their nationality. Germans are
-now, in fact, placed in the position of having to deal through their
-State, which in turn deals with other States. To buy wheat or iron, they
-cannot as heretofore go to individuals, to the grower or mine-owner, and
-offer a price; the thing has to be done through Governments. We have
-come much nearer to a condition in which the States do indeed 'own'
-(they certainly control) their raw material.
-
-The most striking instance is that of access to the Lorraine iron, which
-before the War furnished three-fourths of the raw material of Germany's
-basic industry. Under the individualist system, in which 'the buyer is
-king' in which efforts were mainly directed to finding markets, no
-obstacle was placed on the export of iron (except, indeed, the obstacle
-to the acquisition by French citizens of Lorraine iron set up by the
-French Government in the imposition of tariffs). But under the new
-order, with the French State assuming such enormously increased economic
-functions, the destination of the iron will be determined by political
-considerations. And 'political considerations,' in an order of
-international society in which the security of the nation depends, not
-upon the collective strength of the whole society, but upon its relative
-strength as against rival units, mean the deliberate weakening of
-rivals. Thus, no longer will the desire of private owners to find a
-market for their wares be a guarantee of the free access of citizens in
-other States to those materials. In place of a play of factors which
-did, however clumsily, ensure in practice general access to raw
-materials, we have a new order of motives; the deliberate desire of
-States, competing in power, owning great sources of raw material, to
-deprive rival States of the use of them.
-
-That the refusal of access will not add to the welfare of the people of
-the State that so owns these materials, that, indeed, it will inevitably
-lower the standard of living in all States alike, is certainly true. But
-so long as there is no real international society organised on the basis
-of collective strength and co-operation, the motive of security will
-override considerations of welfare. The condition of international
-anarchy makes true what otherwise need not be true, that the vital
-interests of nations are conflicting.
-
-Parenthetically, it is necessary to say this: the time may have come for
-the destruction of the older order. If the individualist order was that
-which gave us Armageddon, and still more, the type of mind which
-Armageddon and the succeeding 'peace' revealed, then the present writer,
-for one, sheds no tears over its destruction. In any case, a discussion
-of the intrinsic merits, social and moral, of socialism and
-individualism respectively, would to-day be quite academic. For those
-who profess to stand for individualism are the most active agents of its
-destruction. The Conservative Nationalists, who oppose the socialisation
-of wealth and yet advocate the conscription of life; oppose
-Nationalisation, yet demand the utmost military preparedness in an age
-when effective preparation for war means the mobilisation particularly
-of the nation's industrial resources; resent the growing authority of
-the State, yet insist that the power of the National State shall be such
-as to give it everywhere domination; do, indeed, demand omelets without
-eggs, and bricks not only without straw but without clay.
-
-A Europe of competing military nationalisms means a Europe in which the
-individual and all his activities must more and more be merged in his
-State for the purpose of that competition. The process is necessarily
-one of progressively intense socialisation; and the war measures carried
-it to very great lengths indeed. Moreover, the point to which our
-attention just now should be directed, is the difference which
-distinguishes the process of change within the State from that which
-marks the change in the international field. Within the State the old
-method is automatically replaced by the new (indeed nationalisation is
-mostly the means by which the old individualism is brought to an end);
-between nations, on the other hand, no organised socialistic
-internationalism replaces the old method which is destroyed. The world
-is left without any settled international economy.
-
-Let us note the process of destruction of the old economy.
-
-In July, 1914, the advocacy of economic nationalisation or Socialism
-would have been met with elaborate arguments from perhaps nine average
-Englishmen out of ten, to the effect that control or management of
-industries and services by the Government was impossible, by reason of
-the sheer inefficiency which marks Governmental work. Then comes the
-War, and an efficient railway service and the co-ordination of industry
-and finance to national ends becomes a matter of life and death. In this
-grave emergency, what policy does this same average Englishman, who has
-argued so elaborately against State control, and the possibility of
-governments ever administering public services, pursue? Almost as a
-matter of course, as the one thing to be done, he clamours for the
-railways and other public services to be taken over by the Government,
-and for the State to control the industry, trade, and finance of the
-country.
-
-Now it may well be that the Socialist would deny that the system which
-obtained during the War was Socialism, and would say that it came nearer
-to being State Capitalism than State Socialism; the individualist may
-argue that the methods would never be tolerated as a normal method of
-national life. But when all allowances are made the fact remains that
-when our need was greatest we resorted to the very system which we had
-always declared to be the worst from the point of view of efficiency. As
-Sir Leo Chiozza Money, in sketching the history of this change, which he
-has called 'The Triumph of Nationalisation,' says: 'The nation won
-through the unprecedented economic difficulties of the greatest War in
-history by methods which it had despised. National organisation
-triumphed in a land where it had been denied.' In this sense the England
-of 1914-1920 was a Socialist England; and it was a Socialist England by
-common consent.
-
-This fact has an effect on the moral outlook not generally realised.
-
-For very many, as the War went on and increasing sacrifices of life and
-youth were demanded, new light was thrown upon the relations of the
-individual to the State. A whole generation of young Englishmen were
-suddenly confronted with the fact that their lives did not belong to
-themselves, that each owed his life to the State. But if each must give,
-or at least risk, everything that he possessed, even life itself, were
-others giving or risking what they possessed? Here was new light on the
-institution of private property. If the life of each belongs to the
-community, then assuredly does his property. The Communist State which
-says to the citizen, 'You must work and surrender your private property
-or you will have no vote,' asks, after all, somewhat less than the
-_bourgeois_ Military State which says to the conscript, 'Fight and give
-your person to the State or we will kill you.' For great masses of the
-British working-classes conscription has answered the ethical problem
-involved in the confiscation of capital. The Eighth Commandment no
-longer stands in the way, as it stood so long in the case of a people
-still religiously minded and still feeling the weight of Puritan
-tradition.
-
-Moreover, the War showed that the communal organisation of industry
-could be made to work. It could 'deliver the goods' if those goods
-were, say, munitions. And if it could work for the purposes of war, why
-not for those of peace? The War showed that by co-ordinated and
-centralised action the whole economic structure can without disaster be
-altered to a degree that before the War no economist would have supposed
-possible. We witnessed the economic miracle mentioned in the last
-chapter, but worth recalling here. Suppose before the War you had
-collected into one room all the great capitalist economists in England,
-and had said to them: 'During the next few years you will withdraw from
-normal production five or six millions of the best workers. The mere
-residue of the workers will be able to feed, clothe, and generally
-maintain those five or six millions, themselves, and the country at
-large, at a standard of living on the whole as high, if not higher, than
-that to which the people were accustomed before those five or six
-million workers were withdrawn.' If you had said that to those
-capitalist economists, there would not have been one who would have
-admitted the possibility of the thing, or regarded the forecast as
-anything but rubbish.
-
-Yet that economic miracle has been performed, and it has been performed
-thanks to Nationalisation and Socialism, and could not have been
-performed otherwise.
-
-However, one may qualify in certain points this summary of the
-outstanding economic facts of the War, it is impossible to exaggerate
-the extent to which the revelation of economic possibilities has
-influenced working-class opinion.
-
-To the effect of this on the minds of the more intelligent workers, we
-have to add another psychological effect, a certain recklessness,
-inseparable from the conditions of war, reflected in the workers'
-attitude towards social reform.
-
-Perhaps a further factor in the tendency towards Communism is the
-habituation to confiscation which currency inflation involves. Under the
-influence of war contrivances States have learned to pay their debts in
-paper not equivalent in value to the gold in which the loan was made:
-whole classes of bondholders have thus been deprived of anything from
-one-half to two-thirds of the value of their property. It is
-confiscation in its most indiscriminate and sometimes most cruel form.
-_Bourgeois_ society has accepted it. A socialistic society of to-morrow
-may be tempted to find funds for its social experiments in somewhat the
-same way.
-
-Whatever weight we may attach to some of these factors, this much is
-certain: not only war, but preparation for war, means, to a much greater
-degree than it has ever meant before, mobilisation of the whole
-resources of the country--men, women, industry. This form of
-'nationalisation' cannot go on for years and not affect the permanent
-form of the society subjected to it. It has affected it very deeply. It
-has involved a change in the position of private property and individual
-enterprise that since the War has created a new cleavage in the West.
-The future of private property which was before the War a theoretical
-speculation, has become within a year or two, and especially, perhaps,
-since the Bolshevist Revolution in Russia, a dominating issue in
-European social and political development. It has subjected European
-society to a new strain. The wearing down of the distinction between the
-citizen and the State, and the inroads upon the sacro-sanctity of
-private property and individual enterprise, make each citizen much more
-dependent upon his State, much more a part of it. Control of foreign
-trade so largely by the State has made international trade less a matter
-of processes maintained by individuals who disregarded their
-nationality, and more a matter of arrangement between States, in which
-the non-political individual activity tends to disappear. We have here a
-group of forces which has achieved a revolution, a revolution in the
-relationship of the individual European to the European State, and of
-the States to one another.
-
-The socialising and communist tendencies set up by measures of
-industrial mobilisation for the purposes of the War, have been carried
-forward in another sphere by the economic terms of the Treaty of
-Versailles. These latter, if even partly carried into effect, will mean
-in very large degree the compulsory socialisation, even communisation,
-of the enemy States. Not only the country's foreign trade, but much of
-its internal industry must be taken out of the hands of private traders
-or manufacturers. The provisions of the Treaty assuredly help to destroy
-the process upon which the old economic order in Europe rested.
-
-Let the reader ask himself what is likely to be the influence upon the
-institution of private property and private commerce of a Treaty
-world-wide in its operation, which will take a generation to carry out,
-which may well be used as a precedent for future settlements between
-States (settlements which may include very great politico-economic
-changes in the position of Egypt, Ireland, and India), and of which the
-chief economic provisions are as follows:--
-
-     'It deprives Germany of nearly the whole of her overseas marine. It
-     banishes German sovereignty and economic influence from all her
-     overseas possessions, and sequestrates the private property of
-     Germans in those places, in Alsace-Lorraine, and in all countries
-     within Allied jurisdiction. It puts at the disposal of the Allies
-     all German financial rights and interests, both in the countries of
-     her former Allies and in the States and territories which have been
-     formed out of them. It gives the Reparations Commission power to
-     put its finger on any great business or property in Germany and to
-     demand its surrender. Outside her own frontiers Germany can be
-     stripped of everything she possesses, and inside them, until an
-     impossible indemnity has been paid to the last farthing, she can
-     truly call nothing her own.
-
-     'The Treaty inflicts on an Empire built up on coal and iron the
-     loss of about one-third cf her coal supplies, with such a heavy
-     drain on the scanty remainder as to leave her with an annual supply
-     of only 60 million tons, as against the pre-war production of over
-     190 million tons, and the loss of over three-quarters of her iron
-     ore. It deprives her of all effective control over her own system
-     of transport; it takes the river system of Germany out of German
-     hands, so that on every International Committee dealing with German
-     waters, Germans are placed in a clear minority. It is as though the
-     Powers of Central Europe were placed in a majority on the Thames
-     Conservancy or the Port of London Authority. Finally, it forces
-     Germany for a period of years to concede "most favoured nation"
-     treatment to the Allies, while she receives no such reciprocal
-     favour in return.'
-
-This wholesale confiscation of private property[23] is to take place
-without the Allies affording any compensation to the individuals
-expropriated, and the proceeds will be employed, first, to meet private
-debts due to Allied nationals from any German nationals, and, second, to
-meet claims due from Austrian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, or Turkish
-nationals. Any balance may either be returned by the liquidating power
-direct to Germany, or retained by them. If retained, the proceeds must
-be transferred to the Reparations Commission for Germany's credit in
-the Reparations account. Note, moreover, how the identification of a
-citizen with his State is carried forward by the discrimination made
-against Germans in overseas trade. Heretofore there were whole spheres
-of international trade and industrial activity in which the individual's
-nationality mattered very little. It was a point in favour of individual
-effort, and, incidentally, of international peace. Under the Treaty,
-whereas the property of Allied nationals within German jurisdiction
-reverts to Allied ownership on the conclusion of peace, the property of
-Germans within Allied jurisdiction is to be retained and liquidated as
-described above, with the result that the whole of German property over
-a large part of the world can be expropriated, and the large properties
-now within the custody of Public Trustees and similar officials in the
-Allied countries may be retained permanently. In the second place, such
-German assets are chargeable, not only with the liabilities of Germans,
-but also, if they run to it, with 'payment of the amounts due in respect
-of claims by the nationals of such Allied or Associated Power with
-regard to their property, rights, and interests in the territory of
-other Enemy Powers,' as, for example, Turkey, Bulgaria, and Austria.
-This is a remarkable provision, which is naturally non-reciprocal. In
-the third place, any final balance due to Germany on private account
-need not be paid over, but can be held against the various liabilities
-of the German Government.[24] The effective operation of these articles
-is guaranteed by the delivery of deeds, titles, and information.
-
-It will be noted how completely the Treaty returns to the Tribal
-conception of a collective responsibility, and how it wipes away the
-distinction heretofore made in International Law, between the civilian
-citizen and the belligerent Government. An Austrian who has lived and
-worked in England or China or Egypt all his life, and is married to an
-English woman and has children who do not speak a word of German, who is
-no more responsible for the invasion of Belgium than an Icelander or a
-Chinaman, finds that the savings of his lifetime left here in the faith
-of British security, are confiscated under the Treaty in order to
-satisfy the claims of France or Japan. And, be it noted, whenever
-attention is directed to what the defenders of the Treaty like to call
-its 'sternness' (as when it deprives Englishborn women and their
-children of their property) we are invited to repress our misgiving on
-that score in order to contemplate the beauty of its 'justice,' and to
-admire the inexorable accuracy with which reward and punishment are
-distributed. It is the standing retort to critics of the Treaty: they
-forget its 'justice.'[25]
-
-How far this new tendency is likely to go towards a reassertion of the
-false doctrine of the complete submergence of the individual in the
-State, the erection of the 'God-State' which at the beginning we
-declared to be the main moral cause of the War and set out to destroy,
-will be discussed later. The point for the moment is that the
-enforcement of this part of the Treaty, like other parts, will go to
-swell communistic tendencies. It will be the business of the German
-State to maintain the miners who are to deliver the coal under the
-Treaty, the workers in the shipyards who are to deliver the yearly toll
-of ships. The intricate and elaborate arrangements for 'searching
-Germany's pockets' for the purpose of the indemnity mean the very
-strictest Governmental control of private trade in Germany, in many
-spheres its virtual abolition. All must be done through the Government
-in order that the conditions of the Treaty may be fulfilled. Foreign
-trade will be no longer the individual enterprise of private citizens.
-It will, by the order of the Allies, be a rigidly controlled
-Governmental function, as President Wilson reminded us in the passage
-quoted above.
-
-To a lesser degree the same will be true of the countries receiving the
-indemnity. Mr. Lloyd George promises that it will not be paid in cheap
-goods, or in such a way as to damage home industries. But it must be
-paid in some goods: ships, dyes, or (as some suggest) raw materials.
-Their distribution to private industry, the price that these industries
-shall pay, must be arranged by the receiving Government. This inevitably
-means a prolongation of the State's intervention in the processes of
-private trade and industry. Nor is it merely the disposal of the
-indemnity in kind which will compel each Allied Government to continue
-to intervene in the trade and industry of its citizens. The fact that
-the Reparations Commission is, in effect, to allocate the amount of ore,
-cotton, shipping, Germany is to get, to distribute the ships and coal
-which she may deliver, means the establishment of something resembling
-international rationing. The Governments will, in increasing degree,
-determine the amount and direction of trade.
-
-The more thoroughly we 'make Germany pay,' the more State-controlled do
-we compel her (and only to a lesser extent ourselves) to become. We
-should probably regard a standard of life in Germany very definitely
-below that of the rest of Western Europe, as poetic justice. But it
-would inevitably set up forces, both psychological and economic, that
-make not only for State-control--either State Socialism or State
-Capitalism--but for Communism.
-
-Suppose we did our work so thoroughly that we took absolutely all
-Germany could produce over and above what was necessary for the
-maintenance of the physical efficiency of her population. That would
-compel her to organise herself increasingly on the basis of equality of
-income: no one, that is, going above the line of physical efficiency and
-no one falling below it.
-
-Thus, while British, French, and American anti-socialists are declaring
-that the principle enunciated by the Russian Government, that all trade
-must be through the Soviet, is one which will prove most mischievous in
-its example, it is precisely that principle which increasingly, if the
-Treaty is enforced, they will in fact impose upon a great country,
-highly organised, of great bureaucratic efficiency, far more likely by
-its training and character to make the principle a success.
-
-This tendency may be in the right direction or the wrong one. The point
-is that no provision has been made to meet the condition which the
-change creates. The old system permitted the world to work under
-well-defined principles. The new regimen, because it has not provided
-for the consequences of the changes it has provoked, condemns a great
-part of Europe to economic paralysis which must end in bitter anarchic
-struggles unless the crisis is anticipated by constructive
-statesmanship.
-
-Meantime the continued coercion of Germany will demand on the part of
-the Western democracies a permanent maintenance of the machine of war,
-and so a perpetuation of the tendency, in the way already described,
-towards a militarised Nationalisation.
-
-The resultant 'Socialism' will assuredly not be of the type that most
-Socialists (among whom, incidentally, the present writer counts himself)
-would welcome. But it will not necessarily be for that reason any less
-fatal to the workable transnational individualism.
-
-Moreover, military nationalisation presupposes international conflict,
-if not perpetually recurrent war; presupposes, that is, first, an
-inability to organise a stable international economy indispensable to a
-full life for Europe's population; and, secondly, an increasing
-destructiveness in warfare--self-destruction in terms of European
-Society as a whole. 'Efficiency' in such a society would be efficiency
-in suicide.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-NATIONALITY, ECONOMICS, AND THE ASSERTION OF RIGHT
-
-
-The change noted in the preceding chapter raises certain profound
-questions of Right. These may be indicated as follows:--
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-By our political power we _can_ create a Europe which, while not
-assuring advantage to the victor, deprives the vanquished of means of
-existence. The loss of both ore and coal by the Central Powers might
-well make it impossible for their future populations to find food. What
-are they to do? Starve? To disclaim responsibility is to claim that we
-are entitled to use our power to deny them life.
-
-This 'right' to starve foreigners can only be invoked by invoking the
-concept of nationalism. 'Our nation first.' But the policy of placing
-life itself upon a foundation of preponderant force instead of mutually
-advantageous co-operation, compels statesmen perpetually to betray the
-principle of nationality; not only directly (as in the case of the
-annexation of territory, economically necessary, but containing peoples
-of alien nationality), but indirectly; for the resistance which our
-policy (of denying means of subsistence to others) provokes, makes
-preponderance of power the condition of survival. All else must give way
-to that need.
-
-Might cannot be pledged to Right in these conditions. If our power is
-pledged to Allies for the purposes of the Balance (which means, in fact,
-preponderance), it cannot be used against them to enforce respect for
-(say) nationality. To turn against Allies would break the Balance. To
-maintain the Balance of Power we are compelled to disregard the moral
-merits of an Ally's policy (as in the case of the promise to the Czar's
-Government not to demand the independence of Poland). The maintenance of
-a Balance (_i.e._ preponderance) is incompatible with the maintenance of
-Right. There is a conflict of obligation.
-
-Before the War, a writer in the _National Review_, desiring to show the
-impossibility of obviating war by any international agreement, took the
-example of the conflict with Germany and put the case as follows:--
-
-     'Germany _must_ go to war. Every year an extra million babies are
-     crying out for more room, and as the expansion of Germany by
-     peaceful means seems impossible, Germany can only provide for those
-     babies at the cost of potential foes.
-
-     'This ... it cannot be too often repeated, is not mere envious
-     greed, but stern necessity. The same struggle for life and space
-     which more than a thousand years ago drove one Teutonic wave after
-     another across the Rhine and the Alps, is now once more a great
-     compelling force.... This aspect of the case may be all very sad
-     and very wicked, but it is true.... Herein lies the ceaseless and
-     ruinous struggle for armaments, and herein for France lies the dire
-     necessity of linking her foreign policy with that of powerful
-     allies.'
-
-'And so,' adds the writer, 'it is impossible and absurd to accept the
-theory of Mr. Norman Angell.'
-
-Now that theory was, not that Germany and others would not fight--I was
-very insistent indeed that[26] unless there was a change in European
-policy they would--but that war, however it might end, would not solve
-the question. And that conclusion at least, whatever may be the case
-with others, is proved true.
-
-For we have had war; we have beaten Germany; and those million babies
-still confront us. The German population and its tendency to increase is
-still there. What are we going to do about it? The War has killed two
-million out of about seventy million Germans; it killed very few of the
-women. The subsequent privations of the blockade certainly disposed of
-some of the weaker among both women and children. The rate of increase
-may in the immediate future be less. It was declining before the War as
-the country became more prosperous, following in this what seems to be a
-well-established rule: the higher the standard of civilisation the more
-does the birth-rate decline. But if the country is to become extremely
-frugal and more agricultural, this tendency to decline is likely to be
-checked. In any case the number of mouths to be fed will not have been
-decreased by war to the same extent that the resources by which they
-might have been fed have been decreased.
-
-What do we propose to Germany, now that we have beaten her, as the means
-of dealing with those million babies? Professor Starling, in a report to
-the British Government,[27] suggests emigration:--
-
-     'Before the War Germany produced 85 per cent. of the total food
-     consumed by her inhabitants. This large production was only
-     possible by high cultivation, and by the plentiful use of manure
-     and imported feeding stuffs, means for the purchase of these being
-     furnished by the profits of industry.... The loss to Germany of 40
-     per cent. of its former coal output must diminish the number of
-     workers who can be maintained. The great increase in German
-     population during the last twenty-five years was rendered possible
-     only by exploiting the agricultural possibilities of the soil to
-     the greatest possible extent, and this in its turn depended on the
-     industrial development of the country. The reduction by 20 per
-     cent. in the productive area of the country, and the 40 per cent.
-     diminution in the chief raw material for the creation of wealth,
-     renders the country at present over-populated, and it seems
-     probable that within the next few years many million (according to
-     some estimates as many as fifteen million) workers and their
-     families will be obliged to emigrate, since there will be neither
-     work nor food for them to be obtained from the reduced industries
-     of the country.'
-
-But emigration where? Into Russia? The influence of Germans in Russia
-was very great even before the War. Certain French writers warn us
-frantically against the vast danger of Russia's becoming a German colony
-unless a cordon of border States, militarily strong, is created for the
-purpose of keeping the two countries apart. But we should certainly get
-a Germanisation of Russia from the inside if five or ten or fifteen
-million Germans were dispersed therein and the country became a
-permanent reservoir for those annual million babies.
-
-And if not Russia, where? Imagine a migration of ten or fifteen million
-Huns throughout the world--a dispersion before which that of the Jews
-and of the Irish would pale. We know how the migration from an Ireland
-of eight millions that could not feed itself has reacted upon our
-politics and our relations with America. What sort of foreign problems
-are we going to bequeath to our children if our policy forces a great
-German migration into Russia, or the Balkans, or Turkey?
-
-This insistent fact of a million more or less of little Huns being born
-into the world every year remains. Shall we suggest to Germany that she
-must deal with this problem as the thrifty householder deals with the
-too frequent progeny of the family cat?
-
-Or shall we do just nothing, and say that it is not our affair; that as
-we have the power over the iron of Lorraine and Morocco, over the
-resources of Africa and Asia, over the ocean highways of the world, we
-are going to see that that power, naval and military, is used to ensure
-abundance for ourselves and our friends; that as for others, since they
-have not the power, they may starve? _Vae victis_ indeed![28]
-
-Just note what is involved. This war was fought to destroy the doctrine
-that might is right. Our power, we say, gives us access to the wealth of
-the world; others shall be excluded. Then we are using our power to deny
-to some millions the most elemental of all rights, the right to
-existence. By the economic use of our military power (assuming that
-military power is as effective as we claim) we compel some millions to
-choose between war and penury or starvation; we give to war, in their
-case, the justification that it is on behalf of the bread of their
-children, their livelihood.
-
-Let us compare France's position. Unlike the German, the French
-population has hardly increased at all in recent generations. In the
-years immediately preceding the War, indeed, it showed a definite
-decline, a tendency naturally more marked since the War. This low
-birth-rate has greatly concerned French statesmen, and remedies have
-been endlessly discussed, with no result. The causes are evidently very
-deep-rooted indeed. The soil which has been inherited by this declining
-population is among the richest and most varied in the world, producing
-in the form of wines, brandies, and certain other luxuries, results
-which can be duplicated nowhere else. It stretches almost into the
-sub-tropics. In addition, the nation possesses a vast colonial
-empire--in Algeria, Tunis, Morocco (which include some of the greatest
-food-growing areas in the world), Madagascar, Equatorial Africa,
-Cochin-China; an empire managed, by the way, on strongly protectionist
-principles.
-
-We have thus on the one side a people of forty millions with no tendency
-to increase, mainly not industrial (because not needing to be),
-possessing undeveloped areas capable, in their food and mineral
-resources (home and colonial), of supporting a population very many
-times its size. On the other hand is a neighbouring group, very much
-larger, and rapidly increasing, occupying a poorer and smaller
-territory. It is unable to subsist at modern standards on that territory
-without a highly-developed industry. The essential raw materials have
-passed into the hands of the smaller group. The latter on grounds of
-self-defence, fearing to be outnumbered, may withhold those materials
-from the larger group; and its right so to do is to be unquestioned.
-
-Does any one really believe that Western Society could remain stable,
-resting on moral foundations of this kind? Can one disregard primary
-economic need in considering the problem of preserving the Europe of
-'free and independent national states' of Mr. Asquith's phrase?[29]
-
-If things are left where this Treaty leaves them, then the militarist
-theories which before were fallacies will have become true. We can no
-longer say that peoples as distinct from imperialist parties have no
-interest in conquest. In this new world of to-morrow--this 'better and
-more stable world'--the interests of peoples themselves will be in
-deadly conflict. For an expanding people it will be a choice between
-robbery of neighbours' territory and starvation. Re-conquest of Lorraine
-will become for the Germans not a matter of hurt pride or sentiment, but
-a matter of actual food need, a need which will not, like hurt pride,
-diminish with the lapse of time, but increase with the growth of the
-population. On the side of war, then, truly we shall find 'the human
-stomach and the human womb.'
-
-The change is a deeper reversion than we seem to realise. Even under
-feudalism the means of subsistence of the people, the land they
-cultivated, remained as before. Only the lords were changed--and one
-lord was very like another. But where, under modern industrial economy,
-titles to property in indispensable raw materials can be cancelled by a
-conqueror and become the State property of the conquering nation, which
-enforces the right to distribute them as it pleases, whole populations
-may find themselves deprived of the actual means of supporting
-themselves on the territory that they occupy.
-
-We shall have set up a disruptive ferment working with all the force of
-the economic needs of 50 or 100 million virile folk to bring about once
-more some vast explosion. Europe will once more be living on a volcano,
-knowing no remedy save futile efforts to 'sit on the lid.'
-
-The beginnings of the attempt are already visible. Colonel Repington
-points out that owing to the break up of Russia and Austria, and the
-substitution for these two powerful States of a large number of small,
-independent ones likely to quarrel among themselves, Germany will be the
-largest and most cohesive of all the European Continental nations,
-relatively stronger than she was before the War. He demands in
-consequence, that not only France, but Holland and Belgium, be extended
-to the Rhine, which must become the strategic frontier of civilisation
-against barbarism. He says there can be no sort of security otherwise.
-He even reminds us that it was Rome's plan. (He does not remind us that
-if it had notably succeeded then we should hardly be trying it again two
-thousand years later.) The plan gives us, in fact, this prospect: the
-largest and most unified racial block in Europe will find itself
-surrounded by a number of lesser States, containing German minorities,
-and possessing materials indispensable to Germany's economic life, to
-which she is refused peaceful access in order that she may not become
-strong enough to obtain access by force; an attempt which she will be
-compelled to make because peaceful access is denied to her. Our measures
-create resistance; that resistance calls forth more extreme measures;
-those measures further resistance, and so on. We are in the thick once
-more of Balance of Power, strategic frontiers, every element of the old
-stultifying statecraft against which all the Allies--before the
-Armistice--made flaming protest.
-
-And when this conflict of rights--each fighting as he believes for the
-right to life--has blazed up into passions that transcend all thought of
-gain or advantage, we shall be asked somewhat contemptuously what
-purpose it serves to discuss so cold a thing as 'economics' in the midst
-of this welter.
-
-It won't serve any purpose. But the discussion of economics before it
-had become a matter for passion might have prevented the conflict.
-
-The situation has this complication--and irony: Increasing prosperity, a
-higher standard of living, sets up a tendency prudentially to check
-increase of population. France, and in hardly less degree even new and
-sparsely populated countries like Australia, have for long shown a
-tendency to a decline of the rate of increase. In France, indeed, as has
-already been mentioned, an absolute decrease had set in before the War.
-But as soon as this tendency becomes apparent, the same nationalist who
-invokes the menace of over-population as the justification for war, also
-invokes nationalism to reverse the tendency which would solve the
-over-population problem. This is part of the mystic nature of the
-nationalist impulse. Colonel Roosevelt is not the only warlike
-nationalist who has exhausted the resources of invective to condemn
-'race suicide' and to enjoin the patriotic duty of large families.
-
-We may gather some idea of the morasses into which the conception of
-nationalism and its 'mystic impulses' may lead us when applied to the
-population problem by examining some current discussions of it. Dr
-Raymond Pearl, of John Hopkins University, summarises certain of his
-conclusions thus:--
-
-     'There are two ways which have been thought of and practised, by
-     which a nation may attempt to solve its problem of population after
-     it has become very pressing and after the effects of internal
-     industrial development and its creation of wealth have been
-     exhausted. These are respectively the methods of France and
-     Germany. By consciously controlled methods, France endeavoured, and
-     on the whole succeeded, in keeping her birth-rate at just such a
-     delicate balance with the death-rate as to make the population
-     nearly stationary. Then any industrial developments simply
-     operated to raise the standard of living of those fortunate enough
-     to be born. France's condition, social economy, and political, in
-     1914 represented, I think, the results of about the maximum
-     efficiency of what may be called the birth-control method of
-     meeting the problem of population.
-
-     'Germany deliberately chose the other plan of meeting the problem
-     of population. In fewest words the scheme was, when your population
-     pressed too hard upon subsistence, and you had fully liquidated the
-     industrial development asset, to go out and conquer some one,
-     preferably a people operating under the birth-control population
-     plan, and forcibly take his land for your people. To facilitate
-     this operation a high birth-rate is made a matter of sustained
-     propaganda, and in every other possible way encouraged. An
-     abundance of cannon fodder is essential to the success of the
-     scheme.'[30]
-
-A word or two as to the facts alleged in the foregoing. We are told that
-the two nations not only followed respectively two different methods,
-but that it was in each case a deliberate national choice, supported by
-organised propaganda. 'By consciously controlled methods, France,' we
-are told, 'endeavoured' to keep her birth-rate down. The fact is, of
-course, that all the conscious endeavours of 'France,' if by France is
-meant the Government, the Church, the learned bodies, were in the
-exactly contrary direction. Not only organised propaganda, but most
-elaborate legislation, aiming through taxation at giving a preference to
-large families, has for a generation been industriously urging an
-increase in the French population. It has notoriously been a standing
-dish in the menu of the reformers and uplifters of nearly every
-political party. What we obviously have in the case of France is not a
-decision made by the nation as a corporate body and the Government
-representing it, but a tendency which their deliberate decision, as
-represented by propaganda and legislation, has been unable to check.[31]
-
-In discussing the merits of the two plans, Dr Pearl goes on:--
-
-     'Now the morals of the two plans are not at issue here. Both are
-     regarded, on different grounds to be sure, as highly immoral by
-     many people. Here we are concerned only with actualities. There can
-     be no doubt that in general and in the long run the German plan is
-     bound to win over the birth-control plan, if the issue is joined
-     between the two and only the two, and its resolution is military in
-     character.... So long as there are on the earth aggressively-minded
-     peoples who from choice deliberately maintain a high birth-rate, no
-     people can afford to put the French solution of the population
-     problem into operation unless they are prepared to give up,
-     practically at the asking, both their national integrity and their
-     land.'
-
-Let us assume, therefore, that France adopts the high birth-rate plan.
-She, too, will then be compelled, if the plan has worked out
-successfully, 'to get out and conquer some one.' But that some one will
-also, for the same reasons, have been following the plan of high
-birth-rate. What is then to happen? A competition in fecundity as a
-solution of the excess population problem seems inadequate. Yet it is
-inevitably prompted by the nationalist impulse.
-
-Happily the general rise in the standard of life itself furnishes a
-solution. As we have seen, the birth-rate is, within certain limits, in
-inverse ratio to a people's prosperity. But again, nationalism, by
-preventing the economic unification of Europe, may well stand in the way
-of that solution also. It checks the tendencies which would solve the
-problem.
-
-A fall in the birth-rate, as a concomitant of a rising standard of
-living, was beginning to be revealed in Germany also before the War.[32]
-If now, under the new order, German industrialism is checked and we get
-an agricultural population compelled by circumstances to a standard of
-life not higher than that of the Russian _moujik_, we may perhaps also
-be faced by a revival of high fertility in mystic disregard of the
-material means available for the support of the population.
-
-There is a further point.
-
-Those who have dealt with the world's food resources point out that
-there are great sources of food still undeveloped. But the difficulties
-do not arise from a total shortage. They arise from a mal-distribution
-of population, coupled with the fact that as between nations the Ten
-Commandments--particularly the eighth--do not run. By the code of
-nationalism we have no obligation towards starving foreigners. A nation
-may seize territory which it does not need, and exclude from it those
-who direly need its resources. While we insist that internationalism is
-political atheism, and that the only doctrine fit for red-blooded people
-is what Colonel Roosevelt called 'intense Nationalism,' intense
-nationalism means, in economic practice, the attempt, even at some
-cost, to render the political unit also the economic unit, and as far as
-possible self-sufficing.
-
-It serves little purpose, therefore, to point out that one or two States
-in South America can produce food for half the world, if we also create
-a political tradition which leads the patriotic South American to insist
-upon having his own manufactures, even at cost to himself, so that he
-will not need ours. He will achieve that result at the cost of
-diminishing his production of food. Both he and the Englishman will be
-poorer, but according to the standard of the intense nationalist, the
-result should be a good one, though it may confront many of us with
-starvation, just as the intense nationalism of the various nations of
-Eastern and South-Eastern Europe actually results in famine on soil
-fully capable, before the War, of supporting the population, and capable
-of supporting still greater populations if natural resources are used to
-the best advantage. It is political passions, anti-social doctrines, and
-the muddle, confusion, and hostility that go therewith which are the
-real cause of the scarcity.
-
-And that may forecast the position of Europe as a whole to-morrow: we
-may suffer starvation for the patriotic joy of seeing foreigners--Boche
-or Bolshevist--suffer in still greater degree.
-
-Given the nationalist conception of a world divided into completely
-distinct groups of separate corporate bodies, entities so different that
-the binding social ties between them (laws, in fact) are impossible of
-maintenance, there must inevitably grow up pugnacities and rivalries,
-creating a general sense of conflict that will render immeasurably
-difficult the necessary co-operation between the peoples, the kind of
-co-operation which the Treaty of Versailles has, in so large degree,
-deliberately destroyed. Whether the hostility comes, in the first
-instance, from the 'herd,' or tribal, instinct, and develops into a
-sense of economic hostility, or whether the hostility arises from the
-conviction that there exists a conflict of interest, the result is
-pretty much the same. I happen to have put the case elsewhere in these
-terms:--
-
-If it be true that since the world is of limited space, we must fight
-one another for it, that if our children are to be fed others must
-starve, then agreement between peoples will be for ever impossible.
-Nations will certainly not commit suicide for the sake of peace. If this
-is really the relationship of two great nations, they are, of course, in
-the position of two cannibals, one of whom says to the other: 'Either I
-have got to eat you, or you have got to eat me. Let's come to a friendly
-agreement about it.' They won't come to a friendly agreement about it.
-They will fight. And my point is that not only would they fight if it
-really were true that the one had to kill and eat the other, but they
-would fight as long as they believed it to be true. It might be that
-there was ample food within their reach--out of their reach, say, so
-long as each acted alone, but within their reach if one would stand on
-the shoulders of the other ('this is an allegory'), and so get the fat
-cocoa-nuts on the higher branches. But they would, nevertheless, be
-cannibals so long as each believed that the flesh of the other was the
-only source of food. It would be that mistake, not the necessary fact,
-which would provoke them to fight.
-
-When we learn that one Balkan State refuses to another a necessary raw
-material, or access over a railroad, because it prefers the suffering of
-that neighbour to its own welfare, we are shocked and talk about
-primitive and barbarous passions. But are we ourselves--Britain or
-France--in better state? The whole story of the negotiations about the
-indemnity and the restoration of Europe shows that we are not. Quite
-soon after the Armistice the expert advisers of the British Government
-urged the necessity, for the economic safety of the Allies themselves,
-of helping in the restoration of Germany. But they also admitted that it
-was quite hopeless to go to Parliament with any proposal to help
-Germany. And even when one gets a stage further and there is general
-admission 'in the abstract' that if France is to secure reparations,
-Germany must be fed and permitted to work, the sentiment of hostility
-stands in the way of any specific measure.
-
-We are faced with certain traditions and moralities, involving a
-psychology which, gathering round words like 'patriotism,' deprives us
-of the emotional restraint and moral discipline necessary to carry
-through the measures which intellectually we recognise to be
-indispensable to our country's welfare.
-
-We thus see why it is impossible to speak of international economics
-without predicating the nation as a concept. In the economic problems of
-nations or States, one is necessarily dealing not only with economic
-facts, but with political facts: a political entity in its economic
-relations (before the War inconsiderable, but since the War very great);
-group consciousness; the interests, or what is sometimes as important,
-the supposed interests of this group or area as distinct from that; the
-moral phenomena of nationalism--group preferences or prejudices, herd
-instinct, tribal hostility. All this is part of the economic problem in
-international politics. Protection, for instance, is only in part a
-problem of economics; it is also a problem of political preferences: the
-manufacturer who is content to face the competition of his own
-countrymen, objects to facing that of foreigners. Political conceptions
-are part of the economic problem when dealing with nations, just as
-primary economic need must be taken into account as part of the cause of
-the conflict of nationalisms.
-
-One very commonly hears the argument: 'What is the good of discussing
-economic forces in relation to the conflict of Europe when our
-participation, for instance, in the War, was in no way prompted by
-economic considerations?'
-
-Our motive may not have been economic, yet the cause of the War may very
-well have been mainly economic. The sentiment of nationality may be a
-stronger motive in European politics than any other. The chief menace
-to nationality may none the less be economic need.
-
-While it may be perfectly true that Belgians, Serbs, Poles, Bohemians,
-fought from motives of nationality, it may also be true that the wars
-which they were compelled to fight had an economic cause.
-
-If the desire of Germany or Austria for undeveloped territory had
-anything to do with that thrust towards the Near East in the way of
-which stood Serbian nationality, then economic causes _had_ something to
-do with compelling Serbia and Belgium to fight for their nationality.
-Owing to the pressure of the economic need or greed of others, we are
-still concerned with economic forces, though we may be actuated only by
-the purest nationalism: the economic pressure of others is obviously
-part of the problem of our national defence. And if one examines in turn
-the chief problems of nationality, one finds in almost every case that
-any aggression by which it may be menaced is prompted by the need, or
-assumed need, of other nations for mines, ports, access to the sea (warm
-water or other), or for strategic frontiers to defend those things.
-
-Why should the desire of one people to rule itself, to be free, be
-thwarted by another making exactly the same demands? In the case of the
-Germans we ascribe it to some special and evil lust peculiar to their
-race and training. But the Peace has revealed to us that it exists in
-every people, every one.
-
-A glance at the map enables us to realise readily enough why a given
-State may resist the 'complete independence' of a neighbouring
-territory.
-
-Here, on the borders of Russia, for instance, are a number of small
-States in a position to block the access of the population of Russia to
-the sea; in a position, indeed, by their control of certain essential
-raw materials, to hold up the development of a hundred million people,
-very much as the robber barons of the Rhine held up the commerce of that
-waterway. No powerful Russia, Bolshevik or Czarist, will permanently
-recognise the absolute right of a little State, at will (at the
-bidding, perhaps, of some military dictator, who in South American
-fashion may have seized its Government), to block her access to the
-'highways of the world.' 'Sovereignty and independence'--absolute
-sovereignty over its own territory, that is--may well include the
-'right' to make the existence of others intolerable. Ought any nation to
-have such a right? Like questions are raised in the case of the States
-that once were Austria. They have achieved their complete freedom and
-independence. Some of the results are dealt with in the first chapter.
-In some cases the new States are using their 'freedom, sovereignty, and
-independence' for the purpose of worsening a condition of famine and
-economic paralysis that spells indescribable suffering for millions of
-completely innocent folk.[33]
-
-So far, the new Europe is economically less competent than the old. The
-old Austrian grouping, for instance, made possible a stable and orderly
-life for fifty million people. A Mittel Europa, with its Berlin-Bagdad
-designs, would, whatever its dangers otherwise, have given us a vastly
-greater area of co-ordinated production, an area approaching that of the
-United States; it would have ensured the effective co-operation of
-populations greatly in excess of those of the United States. Whatever
-else might have happened, there would have been no destruction by famine
-of the populations concerned if some such plan of organised production
-had materialised. The old Austria at least ensured for the children
-physical health and education, for the peasants work in their fields, in
-security; and although denial of full national rights was doubtless an
-evil thing, it still left free a vast field of human activities--those
-of the family, of productive labour, of religion, music, art, love,
-laughter.
-
-A Europe of small 'absolute' nationalisms threatens to make these things
-impossible. We have no standard, unhappily, by which we can appraise the
-moral loss and gain in the exchange of the European life of July, 1914,
-for that which Europe now faces and is likely to face in the coming
-years. But if we cannot measure or weigh the moral value of absolute
-nationalism, the present situation does enable us to judge in some
-measure the degree of security achieved for the principle of
-nationality, and to what extent it may be menaced by the economic needs
-of the millions of Europe. And one is impelled to ask whether
-nationality is not threatened by a danger far greater than any it had to
-meet in the old Europe, in the anarchy and chaos that nationalism itself
-is at present producing.
-
-The greater States, like Germany, may conceivably manage somehow to find
-a _modus vivendi_. A self-sufficing State may perhaps be developed (a
-fact which will enable Germany at one and the same time to escape the
-payment of reparations and to defy future blockades). But that will mean
-embittered nationalism. The sense of exclusion and resentment will
-remain.
-
-The need of Germany for outside raw materials and food may, as the
-result of this effort to become self-sufficing, prove less than the
-above considerations might suggest. But unhappily, assumed need can be
-as patent a motive in international politics as real need. Our recent
-acquiescence in the independence of Egypt would imply that our need for
-persistent occupation was not as great as we supposed. Yet the desire to
-remain in Egypt helped to shape our foreign policy during a whole
-generation, and played no small part in the bargaining with France over
-Morocco which widened the gulf between ourselves and Germany.
-
-The preservation of the principle of nationality depends upon making it
-subject at least to some form of internationalism. If 'self-determination'
-means the right to condemn other peoples to death by starvation, then
-that principle cannot survive. The Balkanisation of Europe, turning it
-into a cauldron of rival 'absolute' nationalisms, does not mean safety
-for the principle of nationality, it means its ultimate destruction
-either by anarchy or by the autocratic domination of the great
-Powers. The problem is to reconcile national right and international
-obligation. That will mean a discipline of the national impulse, and
-of the instincts of domination which so readily attach themselves to
-it. The recognition of economic needs will certainly help towards such
-discipline. However 'materialistic' it may be to recognise the right of
-others to life, that recognition makes a sounder foundation for human
-society than do the instinctive impulses of mystic nationalism.
-
-Until we have managed somehow to create an economic code or comity which
-makes the sovereignty of each nationality subject to the general need of
-the whole body of organised society, this struggle, in which nationality
-is for ever threatened, will go on.
-
-The alternatives were very clearly stated on the other side of the
-Atlantic:--
-
-'The underlying assumption heretofore has been that a nation's security
-and prosperity rest chiefly upon its own strength and resources. Such an
-assumption has been used to justify statesmen in attempting, on the
-ground of the supreme need for national security, to increase their own
-nation's power and resources by insistence upon strategic frontiers,
-territory with raw material, outlets to the sea, even though that course
-does violence to the security and prosperity of others. Under any system
-in which adequate defence rests upon individual preponderance of power,
-the security of one must involve the insecurity of another, and must
-inevitably give rise to covert or overt competitions for power and
-territory, dangerous to peace and destructive to justice.
-
-'Under such a system of competitive as opposed to co-operative
-nationalism, the smaller nationalities can never be really secure.
-International commitments of some kind there must be. The price of
-secure nationality is some degree of internationalism.
-
-'The problem is to modify the conditions that lead to war. It will be
-quite inadequate to establish courts of arbitration or of law if they
-have to arbitrate or judge on the basis of the old laws and practices.
-These have proved insufficient.
-
-'It is obvious that any plan ensuring national security and equality of
-opportunity will involve a limitation of national sovereignty. States
-possessing ports that are the natural outlet of a hinterland occupied by
-another people, will perhaps regard it as an intolerable invasion of
-their independence if their sovereignty over those ports is not absolute
-but limited by the obligation to permit of their use by a foreign and
-possibly rival people on equal terms. States possessing territories in
-Africa or Asia inhabited by populations in a backward state of
-development, have generally heretofore looked for privileged and
-preferential treatment of their own industry and commerce in those
-territories. Great interests will be challenged, some sacrifice of
-national pride demanded, and the hostility of political factions in some
-countries will be aroused.
-
-'Yet if, after the War, States are to be shut out from the sea; if
-rapidly expanding populations find themselves excluded from raw
-materials indispensable to their prosperity; if the privileges and
-preferences enjoyed by States with overseas territories place the less
-powerful States at a disadvantage, we shall have re-established potent
-motives for that competition for political power which, in the past, has
-been so large an element in the causation of war and the subjugation of
-weaker peoples. The ideal of the security of all nations and "equality
-of opportunity" will have failed of realisation.'[34]
-
-
-_The Balance of Power and Defence of Law and Nationality._
-
-'Why were you so whole-soully for this war?' asked the interviewer of Mr
-Lloyd George.
-
-'Belgium,' was the reply.
-
-The Prime Minister of the morrow continued:--
-
-     'The Saturday after war had actually been declared on the Continent
-     (Saturday, 1st August), a poll of the electors of Great Britain
-     would have shown ninety-five per cent. against embroiling this
-     country in hostilities. Powerful city financiers whom it was my
-     duty to interview this Saturday on the financial situation, ended
-     the conference with an earnest hope that Britain would keep out of
-     it. A poll on the following Tuesday would have resulted in a vote
-     of ninety-nine per cent. in favour of war.
-
-     'What had happened in the meantime? The revolution in public
-     sentiment was attributable entirely to an attack made by Germany on
-     a small and unprotected country, which had done her no wrong, and
-     what Britain was not prepared to do for interests political and
-     commercial, she readily risked to help the weak and helpless. Our
-     honour as a nation is involved in this war, because we are bound in
-     an honourable obligation to defend the independence, the liberty,
-     the integrity of a small neighbour that has lived peaceably; but
-     she could not have compelled us, being weak. The man who declined
-     to discharge his debt because his creditor is too poor to enforce
-     it, is a blackguard.'
-
-A little later, in the same interview, Mr Lloyd George, after allusion
-to German misrepresentations, said:--
-
-     'But this I know is true--after the guarantee given that the German
-     fleet would not attack the coast of France or annex any French
-     territory, _I_ would not have been party to a declaration of war,
-     had Belgium not been invaded, and I think I can say the same thing
-     for most, if not all, of my colleagues. If Germany had been wise,
-     she would not have set foot on Belgian soil. The Liberal Government
-     then would not have intervened. Germany made a grave mistake.'[35]
-
-This interview compels several very important conclusions. One, perhaps
-the most important--and the most hopeful--is profoundly creditable to
-English popular instinct and not so creditable to Mr Lloyd George.
-
-If Mr Lloyd George is speaking the truth (it is difficult to find just
-the phrase which shall express one's meaning and be Parliamentary), if
-he believes it would have been entirely safe for Great Britain to have
-kept out of the War provided only that the invasion of Belgium could
-have been prevented, then indeed is the account against the Cabinet, of
-which he was then a member and (after modifications in it) was shortly
-to become the head, a heavy one. I shall not pursue here the inquiry
-whether in point of simple political fact, Belgium was the sole cause of
-our entrance into the War, because I don't suppose anybody believes it.
-But--and here Mr Lloyd George almost certainly does speak the truth--the
-English people gave their whole-souled support to the war because they
-believed it to be for a cause of which Belgium was the shining example
-and symbol: the right of the small nation to the same consideration as
-the great. That objective may not have been the main inspiration of the
-Governments: it was the main moral inspiration of the British people,
-the sentiment which the Government exploited, and to which it mainly
-appealed.
-
-'The purpose of the Allies in this War,' said Mr Asquith, 'is to pave
-the way for an international system which will secure the principle of
-equal rights for all civilised States ... to render secure the principle
-that international problems must be handled by free people and that
-their settlement shall no longer be hampered and swayed by the
-overmastering dictation of a Government controlled by a military
-caste.' We should not sheathe the sword 'until the rights of the smaller
-nationalities of Europe are placed upon an unassailable foundation.'
-Professor Headlam (an ardent upholder of the Balance of Power, by the
-way), in a book that is characteristic of the early war literature, says
-the cardinal principles for which the War was fought were two: first,
-that Europe is, and should remain, divided between independent national
-States, and, second, that subject to the condition that it did not
-threaten or interfere with the security of other States, each country
-should have full and complete control over its own affairs.
-
-How far has our victory achieved that object? Is the policy which our
-power supported before the War--and still supports--compatible with it?
-Does it help to strengthen the national security of Belgium, and other
-weak States like Yugo-Slavia, Poland, Albania, Finland, the Russian
-Border States, China?
-
-It is here suggested, first, that our commitments under the Balance of
-Power policy which we had espoused[36] deprived our national force of
-any preventive effectiveness whatever in so far as the invasion of
-Belgium was concerned, and secondly, that our post-war policy, which is
-also in fact a Balance of Power policy is betraying in like fashion the
-cause of the small State.
-
-It is further suggested that the very nature of the operation of the
-Balance of Power policy sets up in practice a conflict of obligation: if
-our power is pledged to the support of one particular group, like the
-Franco-Russian group of 1914, it cannot also be pledged to the support,
-honestly and impartially, of a general principle of European law.
-
-We were drawn into the War, Mr Lloyd George tells us, to vindicate the
-integrity of Belgium. Very good. We know what happened in the
-negotiations. Germany wanted very much to know what would induce us to
-keep out of the War. Would we keep out of the War if Germany refrained
-from crossing the Belgian frontier? Such an assurance, giving Germany
-the strongest material reasons for not invading Belgium, converting a
-military reason (the only reason, we are told, that Germany would listen
-to) for that offence into an immensely powerful military reason against
-it, could not be given. In order to be able to maintain the Balance of
-Power against Germany we must 'keep our hands free.'
-
-It is not a question here of Germany's trustworthiness, but of using her
-sense of self-interest to secure our object of the protection of
-Belgium. The party in the German councils opposed to the invasion would
-say: 'If you invade Belgium you will have to meet the hostility of Great
-Britain. If you don't, you will escape that hostility.' To which the
-general staff was able to reply: 'Britain's Balance of Power policy
-means that you will have to meet the enmity of Britain in any case. In
-terms of expediency, it does not matter whether you go through Belgium
-or not.'
-
-The fact that the principle of the 'Balance' compelled us to support
-France, whether Germany respected the Treaty of 1839 or not, deprived
-our power of any value as a restraint upon German military designs
-against Belgium. There was, in fact, a conflict of obligations: the
-obligations to the Balance of Power rendered that to the support of the
-Treaty of no avail in terms of protection. If the object of force is to
-compel observance of law on the part of those who will not observe it
-otherwise, that object is defeated by the entanglements of the Balance
-of Power.
-
-Sir Edward Grey's account of that stage of the negotiations at which the
-question of Belgium was raised, is quite clear and simple. The German
-Ambassador asked him 'whether, if Germany gave a promise not to violate
-Belgian neutrality, we would engage to remain neutral.' 'I replied,'
-writes Sir Edward, 'that I could not say that; our hands were still
-free, and we were considering what our attitude should be. I did not
-think that we could give a promise of neutrality on that condition
-alone. The Ambassador pressed me as to whether I could not formulate
-conditions on which we would remain neutral. He even suggested that the
-integrity of France and her Colonies might be guaranteed. I said that I
-felt obliged to refuse definitely any promise to remain neutral on
-similar terms, and I could only say that we must keep our hands free.'
-
-'If language means anything,' comments Lord Loreburn,[37] 'this means
-that whereas Mr Gladstone bound this country to war in order to
-safeguard Belgian neutrality, Sir Edward would not even bind this
-country to neutrality to save Belgium. He may have been right, but it
-was not for the sake of Belgian interests that he refused.'
-
-Compare our experience, and the attitude of Sir Edward Grey in 1914,
-when we were concerned to maintain the Balance of Power, with our
-experience and Mr Gladstone's behaviour when precisely the same problem
-of protecting Belgium was raised in 1870. In these circumstances Mr
-Gladstone proposed both to France and to Prussia a treaty by which Great
-Britain undertook that, if either of the belligerents should in the
-course of that war violate the neutrality of Belgium, Great Britain
-would co-operate with the other belligerent in defence of the same,
-'employing for that purpose her naval and military forces to ensure its
-observance.' In this way both France and Germany knew and the whole
-world knew, that invasion of Belgium meant war with Great Britain.
-Whichever belligerent violated the neutrality must reckon with the
-consequences. Both France and Prussia signed that Treaty. Belgium was
-saved.
-
-Lord Loreborn (_How the War Came_) says of the incident:--
-
-     'This policy, which proved a complete success in 1870, indicated
-     the way in which British power could effectively protect Belgium
-     against an unscrupulous neighbour. But then it is a policy which
-     cannot be adopted unless this country is itself prepared to make
-     war against either of the belligerents which shall molest Belgium.
-     For the inducement to each of such belligerents is the knowledge
-     that he will have Great Britain as an enemy if he invades Belgium,
-     and as an Ally if his enemy attacks him through Belgian territory.
-     And that cannot be a security unless Great Britain keeps herself
-     free to give armed assistance to either should the other violate
-     the Treaty. The whole leverage would obviously disappear if we took
-     sides in the war on other grounds.'[38]
-
-This, then, is an illustration of the truth above insisted upon: to
-employ our force for the maintenance of the Balance of Power is to
-deprive it of the necessary impartiality for the maintenance of Right.
-
-Much more clear even than in the case of Belgium was the conflict in
-certain other cases between the claims of the Balance of Power and our
-obligation to place 'the rights of the smaller nationalities of Europe
-upon an unassailable foundation' which Mr Asquith proclaimed as the
-object of the War.
-
-The archetype of suppressed nationality was Poland; a nation with an
-ancient culture, a passionate and romantic attachment to its ancient
-traditions, which had simply been wiped off the map. If ever there was a
-case of nation-murder it was this. And one of the culprits--perhaps the
-chief culprit--was Russia. To-day the Allies, notably France, stand as
-the champions of Polish nationality. But as late as 1917, as part of
-that kind of bargain which inevitably marks the old type of diplomatic
-Alliance, France was agreeing to hand over Poland, helpless, to her old
-jailer, the Czarist Government. In March, 1916, the Russian Ambassador
-in Paris was instructed that, at the then impending diplomatic
-conference[39]
-
-     'It is above all necessary to demand that the Polish question
-     should be excluded from the subjects of international negotiation,
-     and that all attempts to place Poland's future under the guarantee
-     and control of the Powers should be prevented.'
-
-On February 12th, 1917, the Russian Foreign Minister informed the
-Russian Ambassador that M. Doumergue (French Ambassador in Petrograd)
-had told the Czar of France's wish to get Alsace-Lorraine at the end of
-the War, and also 'a special position in the Saar Valley, and to bring
-about the detachment from Germany of the territories west of the Rhine
-and their reorganisation in such a way that in future the Rhine may form
-a permanent strategic obstacle to any German advance.' The Czar was
-pleased to express his approval in principle of this proposal.
-Accordingly the Russian Foreign Minister expressed his wish that an
-Agreement by exchange of Notes should take place on this subject, and
-desired that if Russia agreed to the unrestricted right of France and
-Britain to fix Germany's western frontiers, so Russia was to have an
-assurance of freedom of action in fixing Germany's future frontier on
-the east. (This means the Russian western frontier.)[40]
-
-Or take the case of Serbia, the oppressed nationality whose struggle for
-freedom against Austria was the immediate cause of the War. It was
-because Russia would not permit Austria to do with reference to Serbia,
-what Russia claimed the right to do with reference to Poland, that the
-latter made of the Austrian policy a _casus belli_.
-
-Very well. We stood at least for the vindication of Serbian nationality.
-But the 'Balance' demanded that we should win Italy to our side of the
-scale. She had to be paid. So on April 20th, 1915, without informing
-Serbia, Sir Edward Grey signed a Treaty (the last article of which
-stipulated that it should be kept secret) giving to Italy the whole of
-Dalmatia, in its present extent, together with the islands north and
-west of the Dalmatian coast and Istria as far as the Quarnero and the
-Istrian Islands. That Treaty placed under Italian rule whole populations
-of Southern Slavs, creating inevitably a Southern Slav irredentism, and
-put the Yugo-Slavia, that we professed to be creating, under the same
-kind of economic disability which it had suffered from the Austrian
-Empire. One is not astonished to find Signor Salandra describing the
-principles which should guide his policy as 'a freedom from all
-preoccupations and prejudices, and from every sentiment except that of
-"Sacred egoism" (_sacro egoismo_) for Italy.'
-
-To-day, it need hardly be said, there is bitter hatred between our
-Serbian Ally and our Italian Ally, and most patriotic Yugo-Slavs regard
-war with Italy one day as inevitable.[41] Yet, assuredly, Sir Edward
-Grey is not to be blamed. If allegiance to the Balance of Power was to
-come first, allegiance to any principle, of nationality or of anything
-else, must come second.
-
-The moral implications of this political method received another
-illustration in the case of the Rumanian Treaty. Its nature is indicated
-in the Report of General Polivanov, amongst the papers published at
-Petrograd and dated 7th-20th November, 1916. It explains how Rumania was
-at first a neutral, but shifting between different inclinations--a wish
-not to come in too late for the partition of Austria-Hungary, and a wish
-to earn as much as possible at the expense of the belligerents. At
-first, according to this Report, she favoured our enemies and had
-obtained very favourable commercial agreements with Germany and
-Austria-Hungary. Then in 1916, on the Russian successes under Brusilov,
-she inclined to the Entente Powers. The Russian Chief of the Staff
-thought Rumanian neutrality preferable to her intervention, but later on
-General Alexeiev adopted the view of the Allies, 'who looked upon
-Rumania's entry as a decisive blow for Austria-Hungary and as the
-nearing of the War's end.' So in August, 1916, an agreement was signed
-with Rumania (by whom it was signed is not stated), assigning to her
-Bukovina and all Transylvania. 'The events which followed,' says the
-report, 'showed how greatly our Allies were mistaken and how they
-overvalued Rumania's entry.' In fact, Rumania was in a brief time
-utterly overthrown. And then Polivanov points out that the collapse of
-Rumania's plans as a Great Power 'is not particularly opposed to
-Russia's interests.'
-
-One might follow up this record and see how far the method of the
-Balance has protected the small and weak nation in the case of Albania,
-whose partition was arranged for in April, 1915, under the Treaty of
-London; in the case of Macedonia and the Bulgarian Macedonians; in the
-case of Western Thrace, of the Serbian Banat, of the Bulgar Dobrudja, of
-the Southern Tyrol, of German Bohemia, of Shantung--of still further
-cases in which we were compelled to change or modify or betray the cause
-for which we entered the War in order to maintain the preponderance of
-power by which we could achieve military success.
-
-The moral paralysis exemplified in this story is already infecting our
-nascent efforts at creating a society of nations--witness the relation
-of the League with Poland. No one in 1920 justified the Polish claims
-made against Russia. Our own communications to Russia described them as
-'imperialistic.' The Prime Minister condemned them in unmeasured terms.
-Poland was a member of the League. Her supplies of arms and ammunition,
-military stores, credit, were obtained by the grace of the chief members
-of the League. The only port by which arms could enter Poland was a city
-under the special control of the League. An appeal was made to the
-League to take steps to prevent the Polish adventure. Lord Robert Cecil
-advocated the course with particular urgency. The Soviet Government
-itself, while Poland was preparing, appealed to the chief constitutional
-governments of the League for some preventive action. Why was none
-taken? Because the Balance of Power demanded that we should 'stand by
-France,' and Polish Imperialism was part of the policy quite overtly and
-deliberately laid down by M. Clemenceau, who, with a candour entirely
-admirable, expressed his preference for the old system of alliances as
-against the newfangled Society of Nations. We could not restrain Poland
-and at the same time fulfil our Alliance obligations to France, who was
-supporting the Polish policy.[42]
-
-By reason of the grip of this system we supported (while proclaiming the
-sacredness of the cause of oppressed nationalities) or acquiesced in the
-policy of Czarist Russia against Poland, and incidentally Finland; we
-supported Poland against republican Russia; we encouraged the creation
-of small border States as means of fighting Soviet Russia, while we
-aided Koltchak and Denikin, who would undoubtedly if successful have
-suppressed the border States. We supported the Southern Slavs against
-Austria when we desired to destroy the latter; we supported Italy (in
-secret treaties) against the Southern Slavs when we desired the help of
-the former. Violations and repressions of nationality which, when
-committed by the enemy States, we declared should excite the deathless
-resistance of all free men and call down the punishment of Heaven, we
-acquiesce in and are silent about when committed by our Allies.
-
-This was the Fight for Right, the war to vindicate the moral law in the
-relations of States.
-
-The political necessities of the Balance of Power have prevented the
-country from pledging its power, untrammelled, to the maintenance of
-Right. The two objects are in theory and practice incompatible. The
-Balance of Power is in fact an assertion of the principle of
-_Macht-Politik_, of the principle that Might makes Right.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-MILITARY PREDOMINANCE--AND INSECURITY
-
-
-The War revealed this: However great the military power of a State, as
-in the case of France; however great its territorial extent, as in the
-case of the British Empire; or its economic resources and geographical
-isolation as in the case of the United States, the conditions of the
-present international order compel that State to resort to Alliance as
-an indispensable part of its military defence. And the peace reveals
-this: that no Alliance can long resist the disruptive forces of
-nationalist psychology. So rapid indeed has been the disintegration of
-the Alliance that fought this War, that, from this one cause, the power
-indispensable for carrying out the Treaty imposed upon the enemy has on
-the morrow of victory already disappeared.
-
-So much became patent in the year that followed the signing of the
-Treaty. The fact bears of course fundamentally upon the question of the
-use of political power for those economic ends discussed in the
-preceding pages. If the economic policy of the Treaty of Versailles is
-to be carried out, it will in any case demand a preponderance of power
-so immense and secure that the complete political solidarity of the
-Alliance which fought the War must be assumed. It cannot be assumed.
-That Alliance has in fact already gone to pieces; and with it the
-unquestioned preponderance of power.
-
-The fact bears not only upon the use of power for the purpose of
-carrying an economic policy--or some moral end, like the defence of
-Nationality--into effect. The disruptive influence of the Nationalisms
-of which alliances are composed raises the question of how far a
-military preponderance resting on a National foundation can even give us
-political security.
-
-If the moral factors of nationality are, as we have seen, an
-indispensable part of the study of international economics, so must
-those same factors be considered as an indispensable part of the problem
-of the power to be exercised by an alliance.
-
-During the War there was an extraordinary neglect of this simple truth.
-It seemed to occur to no one that the intensification of the psychology
-of nationalism--not only among the lesser States but in France and
-America and England--ran the risk of rendering the Alliance powerless
-after its victory. Yet that is what has happened.
-
-The power of an Alliance (again we are dealing with things that are
-obvious but neglected) does not depend upon the sum of its material
-forces--navies, armies, artillery. It depends upon being able to
-assemble those things to a common purpose; in other words, upon policy
-fit to direct the instrument. If the policy, or certain moral elements
-within it, are such that one member of the Alliance is likely to turn
-his arms against the others, the extent of _his_ armament does not add
-to the strength of the Alliance. It was with ammunition furnished by
-Britain and France that Russia in 1919 and 1920 destroyed British and
-French troops. The present building of an enormous navy by America is
-not accepted in Britain as necessarily adding to the security of the
-British Empire.
-
-It is worth while to note how utterly fallacious are certain almost
-universal assumptions concerning the relation of war psychology to the
-problem of alliance solidarity. An English visitor to the United States
-(or an American visitor to England) during the years 1917-1918 was apt
-to be deluged by a flood of rhetoric to this effect: The blood shed on
-the same battle-fields, the suffering shared in common in the same
-common cause, would unite and cement as nothing had ever yet united the
-two great branches of the English-speaking race, destined by
-Providence....
-
-But the same visitor moving in the same circle less than two years later
-found that this eternal cement of friendship had already lost its
-potency. Never, perhaps, for generations were Anglo-American relations
-so bad as they had become within a score or so of months of the time
-that Englishmen and Americans were dying side by side on the
-battle-field. At the beginning of 1921, in the United States, it was
-easier, on a public platform, to defend Germany than to present a
-defence of English policy in Ireland or in India. And at that period one
-might hear commonly enough in England, in trams and railway carriages, a
-repetition of the catch phrase, 'America next.' If certain popular
-assumptions as to war psychology were right, these things would be
-impossible.
-
-Yet, as a matter of fact, the psychological phenomenon is true to type.
-It was not an accident that the internationalist America of 1915, of
-'Peace without Victory,' should by 1918 have become more fiercely
-insistent upon absolute victory and unconditional surrender than any
-other of the belligerents, whose emotions had found some outlet during
-three years of war before America had begun. The complete reversal of
-the 'Peace without Victory' attitude was demanded--cultivated,
-deliberately produced--as a necessary part of war morale. But these
-emotions of coercion and domination cannot be intensively cultivated and
-then turned off as by a tap. They made America fiercely nationalist,
-with necessarily a temperamental distaste for the internationalism of Mr
-Wilson. And when a mere year of war left the emotional hungers
-unsatisfied, they turned unconsciously to other satisfactions. Twenty
-million Americans of Irish descent or association, among others,
-utilised the opportunity.
-
-One feature--perhaps the very largest feature of all--of war morale, had
-been the exploitation of the German atrocities. The burning of Louvain,
-and other reprisals upon the Belgian civilian population, meant
-necessarily a special wickedness on the part of a definite entity, known
-as 'Germany,' that had to be crushed, punished, beaten, wiped out. There
-were no distinctions. The plea that all were not equally guilty excited
-the fierce anger reserved for all such 'pacifist' and pro-German pleas.
-A German woman had laughed at a wounded American: all German women were
-monsters. 'No good German but a dead German.' It was in the German blood
-and grey matter. The elaborate stories--illustrated--of Germans sticking
-bayonets into Belgian children produced a thesis which was beyond and
-above reason or explanation: for that atrocity, 'Germany'--seventy
-million people, ignorant peasants, driven workmen, the babies, the
-invalids, the old women gathering sticks in the forest, the children
-trooping to school--all were guilty. To state the thing in black and
-white sounds like a monstrous travesty. But it is not a travesty. It is
-the thesis we, too, maintained; but in America it had, in the American
-way, an over simplification and an extra emphasis.
-
-And then after the War an historical enemy of America's does precisely
-the same thing. In the story of Amritsar and the Irish reprisals it is
-the Indian and Sinn Fein version only which is told; just as during the
-War we got nothing but the anti-German version of the burning of
-Louvain, or reprisals upon civilians. Why should we expect that the
-result should be greatly different upon American opinion? Four hundred
-unarmed and hopeless people, women and children as well as men, are mown
-down by machine-guns. Or, in the Irish reprisals, a farmer is shot in
-the presence of his wife and children. The Government defends the
-soldiers. 'Britain' has done this thing: forty-five millions of people,
-of infinitely varying degrees of responsibility, many opposing it, many
-ignorant of it, almost all entirely helpless. To represent them as
-inhuman monsters because of these atrocities is an infinitely
-mischievous falsehood. But it is made possible by a theory, which in the
-case of Germany we maintained for years as essentially true. And now it
-is doing as between Britain and America what a similar falsehood did as
-between Germany and England, and will go on doing so long as Nationalism
-includes conceptions of collective responsibility which fly in the face
-of common sense and truth. If the resultant hostilities can operate as
-between two national groups like the British and the American, what
-groups can be free of them?
-
-It is a little difficult now, two years after the end of the War, with
-the world in its present turmoil, to realise that we really did expect
-the defeat of Germany to inaugurate an era of peace and security, of
-reduction of armaments, the virtual end of war; and believed that it was
-German militarism, 'that trampling, drilling foolery in the heart of
-Europe, that has arrested civilisation and darkened the hopes of mankind
-for forty years,'[43] as Mr Wells wrote in _The War that will End War_,
-which accounted for nearly all the other militarisms, and that after its
-destruction we could anticipate 'the end of the armament phase of
-European history.' For, explained Mr Wells, 'France, Italy, England, and
-all the smaller Powers of Europe are now pacific countries; Russia,
-after this huge War, will be too exhausted for further adventure.'[44]
-
-'When will peace come?' asked Professor Headlam, and answered that
-
-     'It will come when Germany has learnt the lesson of the War, when
-     it has learnt, as every other nation has had to learn, that the
-     voice of Europe cannot be defied with impunity.... Men talk about
-     the terms of peace. They matter little. With a Germany victorious
-     no terms could secure the future of Europe, with a Germany
-     defeated, no artificial securities will be wanted, for there will
-     be a stronger security in the consciousness of defeat.'[45]
-
-There were to be no limits to the political or economic rearrangements
-which victory would enable us to effect. Very authoritative military
-critics like Mr Hilaire Belloc became quite angry and contemptuous at
-the suggestion that the defeat of the enemy would not enable us to
-rearrange Europe at our will. The doctrine that unlimited power was
-inherent in victory was thus stated by Mr Belloc:--
-
-     'It has been well said that the most straightforward and obvious
-     conclusions on the largest lines of military policy are those of
-     which it is most difficult to convince a general audience; and we
-     find in this matter a singular miscalculation running through the
-     attitude of many Western publicists. They speak as though, whatever
-     might happen in the West, the Alliance, which is fighting for
-     European civilisation, the Western Allies and the United States,
-     could not now affect the destinies of Eastern Europe....
-
-     Such an attitude is, upon the simplest principles of military
-     science, a grotesque error.... If we are victorious ... the
-     destruction of the enemy's military power gives us as full an
-     opportunity for deciding the fate of Eastern Europe as it does for
-     deciding the fate of Western Europe. Victory gained by the Allies
-     will decide the fate of all Europe, and, for that matter, of the
-     whole world. It will open the Baltic and the Black Sea. It will
-     leave us masters with the power to dictate in what fashion the new
-     boundaries shall be arranged, how the entries to the Eastern
-     markets shall be kept open, garrisoned and guaranteed....
-
-     Wherever they are defeated, whether upon the line they now hold or
-     upon other lines, their defeat and our victory will leave us with
-     complete power. If that task be beyond our strength, then
-     civilisation has suffered defeat, and there is the end of it.'
-
-German power was to be destroyed as the condition of saving
-civilisation. Mr Belloc wrote:--
-
-     'If by some negotiation (involving of course the evacuation of the
-     occupied districts in the West) the enemy remains undefeated,
-     civilised Europe has lost the war and Prussia has won it.'[46]
-
-Such was the simple and popular thesis. Germany, criminal and barbarian,
-challenged Europe, civilised and law-abiding. Civilisation can only
-assert itself by the punishment of Germany and save itself by the
-destruction of German power. Once the German military power is
-destroyed, Europe can do with Germany what it will.
-
-I suggest that the experience of the last two years, and our own present
-policy, constitute an admission or demonstration, first, that the moral
-assumption of this thesis--that the menace of German power was due to
-some special wickedness on the part of the German nation not shared by
-other peoples in any degree--is false; and, secondly, that the
-destruction of Germany's military force gives to Europe no such power to
-control Germany.
-
-Our power over Germany becomes every day less:
-
-First, by the break-up of the Alliance. The 'sacred egoisms' which
-produced the War are now disrupting the Allies. The most potentially
-powerful European member of the Alliance or Association--Russia--has
-become an enemy; the most powerful member of all, America, has withdrawn
-from co-operation; Italy is in conflict with one Ally, Japan with
-another.
-
-Secondly, by the more extended Balkanisation of Europe. The States
-utilised by (for instance) France as the instruments of Allied policy
-(Poland, Hungary, Ukrainia, Rumania, Czecho-Slovakia) are liable to
-quarrel among themselves. The groups rendered hostile to Allied
-policy--Germany, Russia, China--are much larger, and might well once
-more become cohesive units. The Nationalism which is a factor of Allied
-disintegration may nevertheless work for the consolidation of the groups
-opposed to us.
-
-Thirdly, by the economic disorganisation of Europe (resulting mainly
-from the desire to weaken the enemy), which deprives the Alliance of
-economic resources sufficient for a military task like that of the
-conquest of Russia or the occupation of Germany.
-
-Fourthly, by the social unrest within each country (itself due in part
-to the economic disorganisation, in part to the introduction of the
-psychology of jingoism into the domain of industrial strife):
-Bolshevism. A long war of intervention in Russia by the Alliance would
-have broken down under the strain of internal unrest in Allied
-countries.
-
-The Alliance thus succumbs to the clash of Nationalisms and the clash of
-classes.
-
-These moral factors render the purpose which will be given to
-accumulated military force--'the direction in which the guns will
-shoot'--so uncertain that the amount of material power available is no
-indication of the degree of security attained.
-
-If it were true, as we argued so universally before and during the War,
-that German power was the final cause of the armament rivalry in Europe,
-then the disappearance of that power should mark, as so many prophesied
-it would mark, the end of the 'armament era.'[47] Has it done so? Or
-does any one to-day seriously argue that the increase of armament
-expenditure over the pre-war period is in some mystic way due to
-Prussian militarism?
-
-Let us turn to a _Times_ leader in the summer of 1920:--
-
-     'To-day the condition of Europe and of a large portion of the world
-     is scarcely less critical than it was six years ago. Within a few
-     days, or at most a few weeks, we may know whether the Peace Treaty
-     signed at Versailles will possess effective validity. The
-     independent existence of Poland, which is a keystone of the
-     reorganisation of Europe contemplated by the Treaty, is in grave
-     peril; and with it, though perhaps not in the manner currently
-     imagined in Germany, is jeopardised the present situation of
-     Germany herself.
-
-... There is undoubtedly a widespread plot against Western
-     civilisation as we know it, and probably against British liberal
-     institutions as a principal mainstay of that civilisation. Yet if
-     our institutions, and Western civilisation with them, are to
-     withstand the present onslaught, they must be defended.... We never
-     doubted the staunchness and vigour of England six years ago, and we
-     doubt them as little to-day.'[48]
-
-And so we must have even larger armaments than ever. Field-Marshal Earl
-Haig and Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson in England, Marshal Foch in
-France, General Leonard Wood in America, all urge that it will be
-indispensable to maintain our armaments at more than the pre-war scale.
-The ink of the Armistice was barely dry before the _Daily Mail_
-published a long interview with Marshal Foch[49] in the course of which
-the Generalissimo enlarged on the 'inevitability' of war in the future
-and the need of being 'prepared for it.' Lord Haig, in his Rectorial
-Address at St Andrews (May 14th, 1919) followed with the plea that as
-'the seeds of future conflict are to be found in every quarter, only
-waiting the right condition, moral, economic, political, to burst once
-more into activity,' every man in the country must immediately be
-trained for war. The _Mail_, supporting his plea, said:--
-
-     'We all desire peace, but we cannot, even in the hour of complete
-     victory, disregard the injunction uttered by our first soldier,
-     that "only by adequate preparation for war can peace in every way
-     be guaranteed."
-
-     '"A strong citizen army on strong territorial lines," is the advice
-     Sir Douglas Haig urges on the country. A system providing twelve
-     months' military training for every man in the country should be
-     seriously thought of.... Morally and physically the War has shown
-     us that the effect of discipline upon the youths of the country is
-     an asset beyond calculation.'
-
-So that the victory which was to end the 'trampling and drilling
-foolery' is made a plea for the institution of permanent conscription in
-England, where, before the victory, it did not exist.
-
-The admission involved in this recommendation, the admission that
-destruction of German power has failed to give us security, is as
-complete as it well could be.
-
-If this was merely the exuberant zeal of professional soldiers, we might
-perhaps disregard these declarations. But the conviction of the soldiers
-is reflected in the policy of the Government. At a time when the
-financial difficulties of all the Allied countries are admittedly
-enormous, when the bankruptcy of some is a contingency freely discussed,
-and when the need of economy is the refrain everywhere, there is not an
-Allied State which is not to-day spending more upon military and naval
-preparations than it was spending before the destruction of the German
-power began. America is preparing to build a bigger fleet than she has
-ever had in her history[50]--a larger fleet than the German armada,
-which was for most Englishmen perhaps the decisive demonstration of
-Germany's hostile intent. Britain on her side has at present a larger
-naval budget than that of the year which preceded the War; while for the
-new war instrument of aviation she has a building programme more costly
-than the shipbuilding programmes of pre-war time. France is to-day
-spending more on her army than before the War; spending, indeed, upon it
-now a sum larger than that which she spent upon the whole of her
-Government when German militarism was undestroyed.
-
-Despite all this power possessed by the members of the Alliance, the
-predominant note in current political criticism is that Germany is
-evading the execution of the Treaty of Versailles, that in the payment
-of the indemnity, the punishment of military criminals, and disarmament,
-the Treaty is a dead letter, and the Allies are powerless. As the
-_Times_ reminds us, the very keystone of the Treaty, in the independence
-of Poland, trembles.
-
-It is not difficult to recall the fashion in which we thought and wrote
-of the German menace before and during the War. The following from _The
-New Europe_ (which had taken as its device 'La Victoire Integrale') will
-be recognised as typical:--
-
-     'It is of vital importance to us to understand, not only Germany's
-     aims, but the process by which she hopes to carry them through. If
-     Germany wins, she will not rest content with this victory. Her next
-     object will be to prepare for further victories both in Asia and in
-     Central and Western Europe.
-
-     'Those who still cherish the belief that Prussia is pacifist show a
-     profound misunderstanding of her psychology.... On this point the
-     Junkers have been frank: those who have not been frank are the
-     wiseacres who try to persuade us that we can moderate their
-     attitude by making peace with them. If they would only pay a
-     little more attention to the Junkers' avowed objects, and a little
-     less attention to their own theories about those objects, they
-     would be more useful guides to public opinion in this country,
-     which finds itself hopelessly at sea on the subject of Prussianism.
-
-     'What then are Germany's objects? What is likely to be her view of
-     the general situation in Europe at the present moment?... Whatever
-     modifications she may have introduced into her immediate programme,
-     she still clings to her desire to overthrow our present
-     civilisation in Europe, and to introduce her own on the ruins of
-     the old order....
-
-     'Buoyed up by recent successes ... her offers of peace will become
-     more insistent and more difficult to refuse. Influences will
-     clamour for the resumption of peace on economic and financial
-     grounds.... We venture to say that it will be very difficult for
-     any Government to resist this pressure, and, _unless the danger of
-     coming to terms with Germany is very clearly and strongly put
-     before the public, we may find ourselves caught in the snares that
-     Germany has for a long time past been laying for us_.
-
-... 'We shall be told that once peace is concluded the Junkers will
-     become moderate, and all those who wish to believe this will
-     readily accept it without further question.
-
-     'But, while we in our innocence may be priding ourselves on the
-     conclusion of peace to Germany it will not be a peace, but a
-     "respite." ... This "respite" will be exceedingly useful to Germany
-     not only for propaganda purposes, but in order to replenish her
-     exhausted resources necessary for future aggression. Meanwhile
-     German activities in Asia and Ireland are likely to continue
-     unabated until the maximum inconvenience to England has been
-     produced.'
-
-If the reader will carry his mind back a couple of years, he will recall
-having read numberless articles similar to the above, concerning the
-duty of annihilating the power of Germany.
-
-Well, will the reader note that _the above does not refer to Germany at
-all, but to Russia_? I have perpetrated a little forgery for his
-enlightenment. In order to bring home the rapidity with which a change
-of roles can be accomplished, an article warning us against any peace
-with _Russia_, appearing in the _New Europe_ of January 8th, 1920, has
-been reproduced word for word, except that 'Russia' or 'Lenin' has been
-changed to 'Germany' or 'the Junkers,' as the case may be.
-
-Now let us see what this writer has to say as to the German power
-to-day?
-
-Well, he says that the security of civilisation now depends upon the
-restoration, in part at least, of that German power, for the destruction
-of which the world gave twenty million lives. The danger to civilisation
-now is mainly 'the breach between Germany and the West, and the
-rivalries of nationalism.' Lenin, plotting our destruction, relies
-mainly on that:--
-
-     'Above all we may be sure that his attention is concentrated on
-     England and Germany. So long as Germany remains aloof and feelings
-     of bitterness against the Allies are allowed to grow still more
-     acute, Lenin can rub his hands with glee; what he fears more than
-     anything is the first sign that the sores caused by five years of
-     war are being healed, and that England, France, and Germany are
-     preparing to treat one another as neighbours, who have each their
-     several parts to play in the restoration of normal economic
-     conditions in Europe.'
-
-As to the policy of preventing Germany's economic restoration for fear
-that she should once more possess the raw material of military power,
-this writer declares that it is precisely that Carthaginian policy
-(embodied in the Treaty of Versailles) which Lenin would most of all
-desire:--
-
-     'As a trained economist we may be sure that he looks first and
-     foremost at the widespread economic chaos. We can imagine his
-     chuckle of satisfaction when he sees the European exchanges getting
-     steadily worse and national antagonisms growing more acute.
-     Disputes about territorial questions are to him so much grist to
-     the Bolshevik mill, as they all tend to obscure the fundamental
-     question of the economic reconstruction of Europe, without which no
-     country in Europe can consider itself safe from Bolshevism.
-
-     'He must realise to the full the lamentable condition of the
-     finances of the new States in Central and South-east Europe.'
-
-In putting forward these views, The _New Europe_ is by no means alone.
-Already in January, 1920, Mr J. L. Garvin had declared what indeed was
-obvious, that it was out of the question to expect to build a new Europe
-on the simultaneous hostility of Germany _and_ Russia.
-
-     'Let us face the main fact. If there is to be no peace with the
-     Bolshevists _there must be an altogether different understanding
-     with Germany.... For any sure and solid barrier against the
-     external consequences of Bolshevism Germany is essential._'
-
-Barely six months later Mr Winston Churchill, Secretary of State for War
-in the British Cabinet, chooses the _Evening News_, probably the
-arch-Hun-Hater of all the English Press, to open out the new policy of
-Alliance with Germany against Russia. He says:--
-
-     'It will be open to the Germans ... by a supreme effort of
-     sobriety, of firmness, of self-restraint, and of
-     courage--undertaken, as most great exploits have to be, under
-     conditions of peculiar difficulty and discouragement--to build a
-     dyke of peaceful, lawful, patient strength and virtue against the
-     flood of red barbarism flowing from the East, and thus safeguard
-     their own interests and the interests of their principle
-     antagonists in the West.
-
-     'If the Germans were able to render such a service, not by
-     vainglorious military adventure or with ulterior motives, they
-     would unquestionably have taken a giant step upon that path of
-     self-redemption which would lead them surely and swiftly as the
-     years pass by to their own great place in the councils of
-     Christendom, and would have rendered easier the sincere
-     co-operation between Britain, France, and Germany, on which the
-     very salvation of Europe depends.'
-
-So the salvation of Europe depends upon our co-operation with Germany,
-upon a German dyke of 'patient strength.'[51]
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-One wonders why we devoted quite so many lives and so much agony to
-knocking Germany out; and why we furnished quite so much treasure to the
-military equipment of the very Muscovite 'barbarians' who now threaten
-to overflow it.
-
-One wonders also, why, if 'the very salvation of Europe' in July, 1920,
-depends upon sincere co-operation of the Entente with Germany, those
-Allies were a year earlier exacting by force her signature to a Treaty
-which not even its authors pretended was compatible with German
-reconciliation.
-
-If the Germans are to fulfil the role Mr Churchill assigns to them, then
-obviously the Treaty of Versailles must be torn up. If they are to be
-the 'dyke' protecting Western civilisation against the Red military
-flood, it must, according to the Churchillian philosophy, be a military
-dyke: the disarmament clauses must be abolished, as must the other
-clauses--particularly the economic ones--which would make of any people
-suffering from them the bitter enemy of the people that imposed them.
-Our Press is just now full of stories of secret Treaties between Germany
-and Russia against France and England. Whether the stories are true or
-not, it is certain that the effect of the Treaty of Versailles and the
-Allied policy to Russia will be to create a Russo-German understanding.
-And Mr Churchill (phase 1920) has undoubtedly indicated the
-alternatives. If you are going to fight Russia to the death, then you
-must make friends with Germany; if you are going to maintain the Treaty
-of Versailles, then you must make friends with Russia. You must 'trust'
-either the Boche or the Bolshevist.
-
-Popular feeling at this moment (or rather the type of feeling envisaged
-by the Northcliffe Press) won't do either. Boche and Bolshevist alike
-are 'vermin' to be utterly crushed, and any policy implying co-operation
-with either is ruled out. 'Force ... force to the uttermost' against
-both is demanded by the _Times_, the _Daily Mail_, and the various
-evening, weekly, or monthly editions thereof.
-
-Very well. Let us examine the proposal to 'hold down' by force both
-Russia and Germany. Beyond Russia there is Asia, particularly India. The
-_New Europe_ writer reminds us:--
-
-     ' ... If England cannot be subdued by a direct attack, she is, at
-     any rate, vulnerable in Asia, and it is here that Lenin is
-     preparing to deliver his real propaganda offensive. During the last
-     few months more and more attention has been paid to Asiatic
-     propaganda, and this will not be abandoned, no matter what
-     temporary arrangements the Soviet Government may attempt to make
-     with Western Europe. It is here, and here only, that England can be
-     wounded, so that she may be counted out of the forth-coming
-     revolutionary struggle in Europe that Lenin is preparing to engage
-     in at a later date....
-
-     'We should find ourselves so much occupied in maintaining order in
-     Asia that we should have little time or energy left for interfering
-     in Europe.'
-
-As a matter of fact, we know how great are the forces that can be
-absorbed[52] when the territory for subjection stretches from Archangel
-to the Deccan--through Syria, Arabia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia,
-Afghanistan. Our experience in Archangel, Murmansk, Vladivostock, and
-with Koltchak, Denikin, and Wrangel shows that the military method must
-be thorough or it will fail. It is no good hoping that a supply of
-surplus ammunition to a counter-revolutionary general will subdue a
-country like Russia. The only safe and thorough-going plan is complete
-occupation--or a very extended occupation--of both countries. M.
-Clemenceau definitely favoured this course, as did nearly all the
-military-minded groups in England and America, when the Russian policy
-was discussed at the end of 1918 and early in 1919.
-
-Why was that policy not carried out?
-
-The history of the thing is clear enough. That policy would have called
-upon the resources in men and material of the whole of the Alliance, not
-merely those of the Big Four, but of Poland, Czecho-Slovakia,
-Yugo-Slavia, Italy, Greece, and Japan as well. The 'March to Berlin and
-Moscow' which so many, even in England and America, were demanding at
-the time of the Armistice would not have been the march of British
-Grenadiers; nor the succeeding occupation one like that of Egypt or
-India. Operations on that scale would have brought in sooner or later
-(indeed, much smaller operations have already brought in) the forces of
-nations in bitter conflict the one with the other. We know what the
-occupation of Ireland by British troops has meant. Imagine an Ireland
-multiplied many times, occupied not only by British but by 'Allied'
-troops--British side by side with Senegalese negroes, Italians with
-Yugo-Slavs, Poles with Czecho-Slovaks and White Russians, Americans with
-Japanese. Remember, moreover, how far the disintegration of the Alliance
-had already advanced. The European member of the Alliance greatest in
-its potential resources, human and material, was of course the very
-country against which it was now proposed to act; the 'steamroller' had
-now to be destroyed ... by the Allies. America, the member of the
-Alliance, which, at the time of the Armistice, represented the greatest
-unit of actual material force, had withdrawn into a nationalist
-isolation from, and even hostility to, the European Allies. Japan was
-pursuing a line of policy which rendered increasingly difficult the
-active co-operation of certain of the Western democracies with her; her
-policy had already involved her in declared and open hostility to the
-other Asiatic element of the Alliance, China. Italy was in a state of
-bitter hostility to the nationality--Greater Serbia--whose defence was
-the immediate occasion of the War, and was soon to mark her feeling
-towards the peace by returning to power the Minister who had opposed
-Italy's entrance into the War; a situation which we shall best
-understand if we imagine a 'pro-German' (say, for instance, Lord Morley,
-or Mr Ramsay MacDonald, or Mr Philip Snowden) being made Prime Minister
-of England. What may be termed the minor Allies, Yugo-Slavia,
-Czecho-Slovakia, Rumania, Greece, Poland, the lesser Border States, the
-Arab kingdom that we erected, were drifting towards the entangling
-conflicts which have since broken out. Already, at a time when the Quai
-d'Orsay and Carmelite House were both clamouring for what must have
-meant in practice the occupation of both Germany and Russia, the
-Alliance had in fact disintegrated, and some of its main elements were
-in bitter conflict. The picture of a solid alliance of pacific and
-liberal democracies standing for the maintenance of an orderly European
-freedom against German attacks had completely faded away. Of the Grand
-Alliance of twenty-four States as a combination of power pledged to a
-common purpose, there remained just France and England--and their
-relations, too, were becoming daily worse; in fundamental disagreement
-over Poland, Turkey, Syria, the Balkan States, Austria, and Germany
-itself, its indemnities, and its economic treatment generally. Was this
-the instrument for the conquest of half a world?
-
-But the political disintegration of the Alliance was not the only
-obstacle to a thorough-going application of military force to the
-problem of Germany and Russia.
-
-By the very terms of the theory of security by preponderant power,
-Germany had to be weakened economically, for her subjugation could never
-be secure if she were permitted to maintain an elaborate, nationally
-organised economic machinery, which not only gives immense powers of
-production, capable without great difficulty of being transformed to the
-production of military material, but which, through the organisation of
-foreign trade, gives influence in countries like Russia, the Balkans,
-the Near and Far East.
-
-So part of the policy of Versailles, reflected in the clauses of the
-Treaty already dealt with, was to check the economic recovery of Germany
-and more particularly to prevent economic co-operation between that
-country and Russia. That Russia should become a 'German Colony' was a
-nightmare that haunted the minds of the French peace-makers.[53]
-
-But, as we have already seen, to prevent the economic co-operation of
-Germany and Russia meant the perpetuation of the economic paralysis of
-Europe. Combined with the maintenance of the blockade it would
-certainly have meant utter and perhaps irretrievable collapse.
-
-Perhaps the Allies at the beginning of 1919 were in no mood to be
-greatly disturbed by the prospect. But they soon learned that it had a
-very close bearing both on the aims which they had set before themselves
-in the Treaty and, indeed, on the very problem of maintaining military
-predominance.
-
-In theory, of course, an army of occupation should live on the occupied
-country. But it soon became evident that it was quite out of the
-question to collect even the cost of the armies for the limited
-occupation of the Rhine territories from a country whose industrial life
-was paralysed by blockade. Moreover, the costs of the German occupation
-were very sensibly increased by the fact of the Russian blockade.
-Deprived of Russian wheat and other products, the cost of living in
-Western Europe was steadily rising, the social unrest was in consequence
-increasing, and it was vitally necessary, if something like the old
-European life was to be restored, that production should be restarted as
-rapidly as possible. We found that a blockade of Russia which cut off
-Russian foodstuffs from Western Europe, was also a blockade of
-ourselves. But the blockade, as we have seen, was not the only economic
-device used as a part of military pressure: the old economic nerves
-between Germany and her neighbours had been cut out and the creeping
-paralysis of Europe was spreading in every direction. There was not a
-belligerent State on the Continent of Europe that was solvent in the
-strict sense of the term--able, that is, to discharge its obligations in
-the gold money in which it had contracted them. All had resorted to the
-shifts of paper--fictitious--money, and the debacle of the exchanges was
-already setting in. Whence were to come the costs of the forces and
-armies of occupation necessitated by the policy of complete conquest of
-Russia and Germany at the same time?
-
-When, therefore (according to a story current at the time), President
-Wilson, following the announcement that France stood for the military
-coercion of Russia, asked each Ally in turn how many troops and how much
-of the cost it would provide, each replied: 'None.' It was patent,
-indeed, that the resources of an economically paralysed Western Europe
-were not adequate to this enterprise. A half-way course was adopted.
-Britain supplied certain counter-revolutionary generals with a very
-considerable quantity of surplus stores, and a few military missions;
-France adopted the policy of using satellite States--Poland, Rumania,
-and even Hungary--as her tools. The result we know.
-
-Meantime, the economic and financial situation at home (in France and
-Italy) was becoming desperate. France needed coal, building material,
-money. None of these things could be obtained from a blockaded,
-starving, and restless Germany. One day, doubtless, Germany will be able
-to pay for the armies of occupation; but it will be a Germany whose
-workers are fed and clothed and warmed, whose railways have adequate
-rolling stock, whose fields are not destitute of machines, and factories
-of coal and the raw materials of production. In other words, it will be
-a strong and organised Germany, and, if occupied by alien troops, most
-certainly a nationalist and hostile Germany, dangerous and difficult to
-watch, however much disarmed.
-
-But there was a further force which the Allied Governments found
-themselves compelled to take into consideration in settling their
-military policy at the time of the Armistice. In addition to the
-economic and financial difficulties which compelled them to refrain from
-large scale operations in Russia and perhaps in Germany; in addition to
-the clash of rival nationalisms among the Allies, which was already
-introducing such serious rifts into the Alliance, there was a further
-element of weakness--revolutionary unrest, the 'Bolshevik' fever.
-
-In December, 1918, the British Government was confronted by the refusal
-of soldiers at Dover, who believed that they were being sent to Russia,
-to embark. A month or two later the French Government was faced by a
-naval mutiny at Odessa. American soldiers in Siberia refused to go into
-action against the Russians. Still later, in Italy, the workers enforced
-their decision not to handle munitions for Russia, by widespread
-strikes. Whether the attempt to obtain troops in very large quantities
-for a Russian war, involving casualties and sacrifices on a considerable
-scale, would have meant at the beginning of 1919 military revolts, or
-Communist, Spartacist, or Bolshevik revolutionary movements, or not, the
-Governments were evidently not prepared to face the issue.
-
-We have seen, therefore, that the blockade and the economic weakening of
-our enemy are two-edged weapons, only of effective use within very
-definite limits; that these limits in turn condition in some degree the
-employment of more purely military instruments like the occupation of
-hostile territory; and indeed condition the provision of the
-instruments.
-
-The power basis of the Alliance, such as it is, has been, since the
-Armistice, the naval power of England, exercised through the blockades,
-and the military force of France exercised mainly through the management
-of satellite armies. The British method has involved the greater
-immediate cruelty (perhaps a greater extent and degree of suffering
-imposed upon the weak and helpless than any coercive device yet
-discovered by man) though the French has involved a more direct negation
-of the aims for which the War was fought. French policy aims quite
-frankly at the re-imposition of France's military hegemony of the
-Continent. That aim will not be readily surrendered.
-
-Owing to the division in Socialist and Labour ranks, to the growing fear
-and dislike of 'confiscatory' legislation, by a peasant population and a
-large _petit rentier_ class, conservative elements are bound to be
-predominant in France for a long time. Those elements are frankly
-sceptical of any League of Nations device. A League of Nations would
-rob them of what in the Chamber of Deputies a Nationalist called 'the
-Right of Victory.' But the alternative to a League as a means of
-security is military predominance, and France has bent her energies
-since the Armistice to securing it. To-day, the military predominance of
-France on the Continent is vastly greater than that of Germany ever was.
-Her chief antagonist is not only disarmed--forbidden to manufacture
-heavy artillery, tanks or fighting aircraft--but as we have seen, is
-crippled in economic life by the loss of nearly all his iron and much of
-his coal. France not only retains her armament, but is to-day spending
-more upon it than before the War. The expenditure for the army in 1920
-amounted to 5000 millions of francs, whereas in 1914 it was only 1200
-millions. Translate this expenditure even with due regard to the changed
-price level into terms of policy, and it means, _inter alia_, that the
-Russo-Polish war and Feisal's deposition in Syria are burdens beyond her
-capacity. And this is only the beginning. Within a few months France has
-revived the full flower of the Napoleonic tradition so far as the use of
-satellite military States is concerned. Poland is only one of many
-instruments now being industriously fashioned by the artisans of the
-French military renaissance. In the Ukraine, in Hungary, in
-Czecho-Slovakia, in Rumania, in Yugo-Slavia; in Syria, Greece, Turkey,
-and Africa, French military and financial organisers are at work.
-
-M. Clemenceau, in one of his statements to the Chamber[54] on France's
-future policy, outlined the method:--
-
-     'We have said that we would create a system of barbed wire. There
-     are places where it will have to be guarded to prevent Germany from
-     passing. There are peoples like the Poles, of whom I spoke just
-     now, who are fighting against the Soviets, who are resisting, who
-     are in the van of civilisation. Well, we have decided ... to be
-     the Allies of any people attacked by the Bolsheviks. I have spoken
-     of the Poles, of the help that we shall certainly get from them in
-     case of necessity. Well, they are fighting at this moment against
-     the Bolsheviks, and if they are not equal to the task--but they
-     will be equal to it--the help which we shall be able to give them
-     in different ways, and which we are actually giving them,
-     particularly in the form of military supplies and uniforms--that
-     help will be continued. There is a Polish army, of which the
-     greater part has been organised and instructed by French
-     officers.... The Polish army must now be composed of from 450,000
-     to 500,000 men. If you look on the map at the geographical
-     situation of this military force, you will think that it is
-     interesting from every point of view. There is a Czecho-Slovak
-     army, which already numbers nearly 150,000 men, well equipped, well
-     armed, and capable of sustaining all the tasks of war. Here is
-     another factor on which we can count. But I count on many other
-     elements. I count on Rumania.'
-
-Since then Hungary has been added, part of the Hungarian plan being the
-domination of Austria by Hungary, and, later, possibly the restoration
-of an Austrian Monarchy, which might help to detach monarchical and
-clerical Bavaria from Republican Germany.[55] This is the revival of the
-old French policy of preventing the unification of the German
-people.[56] It is that aspiration which largely explains recent French
-sympathy for Clericalism and Monarchism and the reversal of the policy
-heretofore pursued by the Third Republic towards the Vatican.
-
-The systematic arming of African negroes reveals something of Napoleon's
-leaning towards the military exploitation of servile races. We are
-probably only at the beginning of the arming of Africa's black millions.
-They are, of course, an extremely convenient military material. French
-or British soldiers might have scruples against service in a war upon a
-Workers' Republic. Cannibals from the African forest 'conscribed' for
-service in Europe are not likely to have political or social scruples of
-that kind. To bring some hundreds of thousands of these Africans to
-Europe, to train them systematically to the use of European arms; to
-teach them that the European is conquerable; to put them in the position
-of victors over a vanquished European people--here indeed are
-possibilities. With Senegalese negroes having their quarters in Goethe's
-house, and placed, if not in authority, at least as the instruments of
-authority over the population of a European university city; and with
-the Japanese imposing their rule upon great stretches of what was
-yesterday a European Empire (and our Ally) a new page may well have
-opened for Europe.
-
-But just consider the chances of stability for power based on the
-assumption of continued co-operation of a number of 'intense'
-nationalisms, each animated by its sacred egoisms. France has turned to
-this policy as a substitute for the alliance of two or three great
-States, which national feeling and conflicting interests have driven
-apart. Is this collection of mushroom republics to possess a stability
-to which the Entente could not attain?
-
-One looks over the list. We have, it is true, after a century, the
-re-birth of Poland, a great and impressive case of the vindication of
-national right. But Poland, yesterday the victim of the imperialist
-oppressor, has, herself, almost in a few hours, as it were, acquired an
-imperialism of her own. The Pole assures us that his nationality can
-only be secure if he is given dominion over territories with largely
-non-Polish populations; if, that is, some fifteen millions of Ruthenes,
-Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Russians, are deprived of a separate national
-existence. Italy, it is true, is now fully redeemed; but that redemption
-involves the 'irredentism' of large numbers of German Tyrolese,
-Yugo-Slavs, and Greeks. The new Austria is forbidden to federate with
-the main branch of the race to which her people belong--though
-federation alone can save them from physical extinction. The
-Czecho-Slovak nation is now achieved, but only at the expense of a
-German unredeemed population larger numerically than that of
-Alsace-Lorraine. And Slovaks and Czechs already quarrel--many foresee
-the day when the freed State will face its own rebels. The Slovenes and
-Croats and the Serbs do not yet make a 'nationality,' and threaten to
-fight one another as readily as they would fight the Bulgarians they
-have annexed in Bulgarian Macedonia. Rumania has marked her redemption
-by the inclusion of considerable Hungarian, Bulgarian, and Serbian
-'irredentisms' within her new borders. Finland, which with Poland
-typified for so long the undying struggle for national right, is to-day
-determined to coerce the Swedes on the Aaland Islands and the Russians
-on the Carelian Territory. Greek rule of Turks has already involved
-retaliatory, punitive, or defensive measures which have needed Blue Book
-explanation. Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaidjan have not yet acquired
-their subject nationalities.
-
-The prospect of peace and security for these nationalities may be
-gathered in some measure by an enumeration of the wars which have
-actually broken out since the Peace Conference met in Paris, for the
-appeasement of Europe. The Poles have fought in turn, the
-Czecho-Slovaks, the Ukrainians, the Lithuanians, and the Russians. The
-Ukrainians have fought the Russians and the Hungarians. The Finns have
-fought the Russians, as have also the Esthonians and the Letts. The
-Esthonians and Letts have also fought the Baltic Germans. The Rumanians
-have fought Hungary. The Greeks have fought the Bulgarians and are at
-present in 'full dress' war with the Turks. The Italians have fought the
-Albanians, and the Turks in Asia Minor. The French have been fighting
-the Arabs in Syria and the Turks in Cilicia. The various British
-expeditions or missions, naval or military, in Archangel, Murmansk, the
-Baltic, the Crimea, Persia, Siberia, Turkestan, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor,
-the Soudan, or in aid of Koltchak, Denikin, Yudenitch, or Wrangel, are
-not included in this list as not arising in a strict sense perhaps out
-of nationality problems.
-
-Let us face what all this means in the alignment of power in the world.
-The Europe of the Grand Alliance is a Europe of many nationalities:
-British, French, Italian, Rumanian, Polish, Czecho-Slovak, Yugo-Slav,
-Greek, Belgian, Magyar, to say nothing of the others. None of these
-States exceeds greatly forty millions of people, and the populations of
-most are very much less. But the rival group of Germany and Russia,
-making between them over two hundred millions, comprises just two great
-States. And contiguous to them, united by the ties of common hatreds,
-lie the Mahomedan world and China. Prusso-Slavdom (combining racial
-elements having common qualities of amenity to autocratic discipline)
-might conceivably give a lead to Chinese and other Asiatic millions,
-brought to hate the West. The opposing group is a Balkanised Europe of
-irreconcilable national rivalries, incapable, because of those
-rivalries, of any prolonged common action, and taking a religious pride
-in the fact of this incapacity to agree. Its moral leaders, or many of
-them, certainly its powerful and popular instrument of education, the
-Press, encourage this pugnacity, regarding any effort towards its
-restraint or discipline as political atheism; deepening the tradition
-which would make 'intense' nationalism a noble, virile, and inspiring
-attitude, and internationalism something emasculate and despicable.
-
-We talk of the need of 'protecting European civilisation' from hostile
-domination, German or Russian. It is a danger. Other great civilisations
-have found themselves dominated by alien power. Seeley has sketched for
-us the process by which a vast country with two or three hundred million
-souls, not savage or uncivilised but with a civilisation, though
-descending along a different stream of tradition, as real and ancient as
-our own, came to be utterly conquered and subdued by a people, numbering
-less than twelve millions, living on the other side of the world. It
-reversed the teaching of history which had shown again and again that it
-was impossible really to conquer an intelligent people alien in
-tradition from its invaders. The whole power of Spain could not in
-eighty years conquer the Dutch provinces with their petty population.
-The Swiss could not be conquered. At the very time when the conquest of
-India's hundreds of millions was under way, the English showed
-themselves wholly unable to reduce to obedience three millions of their
-own race in America. What was the explanation? The Inherent Superiority
-of the Anglo-Saxon Stock?
-
-For long we were content to draw such a flattering conclusion and leave
-it at that, until Seeley pointed out the uncomfortable fact that the
-great bulk of the forces used in the conquest of India were not British
-at all. They were Indian. India was conquered for Great Britain by the
-natives of India.
-
-     'The nations of India (says Seeley) have been conquered by an army
-     of which, on the average, about a fifth part was English. India can
-     hardly be said to have been conquered at all by foreigners; she was
-     rather conquered by herself. If we were justified, which we are
-     not, in personifying India as we personify France or England, we
-     could not describe her as overwhelmed by a foreign enemy; we should
-     rather have to say that she elected to put an end to anarchy by
-     submitting to a single government, even though that government were
-     in the hands of foreigners.'[57]
-
-In other words, India is an English possession because the peoples of
-India were incapable of cohesion, the nations of India incapable of
-internationalism.
-
-The peoples of India include some of the best fighting stock in the
-world. But they fought one another: the pugnacity and material power
-they personified was the force used by their conquerors for their
-subjection.
-
-I will venture to quote what I wrote some years ago touching Seeley's
-moral:--
-
-     'Our successful defeat of tyranny depends upon such a development
-     of the sense of patriotism among the democratic nations that it
-     will attach itself rather to the conception of the unity of all
-     free co-operative societies, than to the mere geographical and
-     racial divisions; a development that will enable it to organise
-     itself as a cohesive power for the defence of that ideal, by the
-     use of all the forces, moral and material, which it wields.
-
-'That unity is impossible on the basis of the old policies, the European
-statecraft of the past. For that assumes a condition of the world in
-which each State must look for its national security to its own isolated
-strength; and such assumption compels each member, as a measure of
-national self-preservation, and so justifiably, to take precaution
-against drifting into a position of inferior power, compels it, that is,
-to enter into a competition for the sources of strength--territory and
-strategic position. Such a condition will inevitably, in the case of any
-considerable alliance, produce a situation in which some of its members
-will be brought into conflict by claims for the same territory. In the
-end, that will inevitably disrupt the Alliance.
-
-'The price of the preservation of nationality is a workable
-internationalism. If this latter is not possible then the smaller
-nationalities are doomed. Thus, though internationalism may not be in
-the case of every member of the Alliance the object of war, it is the
-condition of its success.'
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-PATRIOTISM AND POWER IN WAR AND PEACE
-
-
-In the preceding chapter attention has been called to a phenomenon which
-is nothing short of a 'moral miracle' if our ordinary reading of war
-psychology is correct. The phenomenon in question is the very definite
-and sudden worsening of Anglo-American relations, following upon common
-suffering on the same battle-fields, our soldiers fighting side by side;
-an experience which we commonly assume should weld friendship as nothing
-else could.[58]
-
-This miracle has its replica within the nation itself: intense
-industrial strife, class warfare, revolution, embittered rivalries,
-following upon a war which in its early days our moralists almost to a
-man declared at least to have this great consolation, that it achieved
-the moral unity of the nation. Pastor and poet, statesman and professor
-alike rejoiced in this spiritual consolidation which dangers faced in
-common had brought about. Never again was the nation to be riven by the
-old differences. None was now for party and all were for the State. We
-had achieved the '_union sacree_' ... 'duke's son, cook's son.' On this
-ground alone many a bishop has found (in war time) the moral
-justification of war.[59]
-
-Now no one can pretend that this sacred union has really survived the
-War. The extraordinary contrast between the disunity with which we
-finish war and the unity with which we begin it, is a disturbing thought
-when we recollect that the country cannot always be at war, if only
-because peace is necessary as a preparation for war, for the creation of
-things for war to destroy. It becomes still more disturbing when we add
-to this post-war change another even more remarkable, which will be
-dealt with presently: the objects for which at the beginning of a war we
-are ready to die--ideals like democracy, freedom from military
-regimentation and the suppression of military terrorism, the rights of
-small nations--are things about which at the end of the War we are
-utterly indifferent. It would seem either that these are not the things
-that really stirred us--that our feelings had some other unsuspected
-origin--or that war has destroyed our feeling for them.
-
-Note this juxtaposition of events. We have had in Europe millions of men
-in every belligerent country showing unfathomable capacity for
-disinterested service. Millions of youngsters--just ordinary folk--gave
-the final and greatest sacrifice without hesitation and without
-question. They faced agony, hardship, death, with no hope or promise of
-reward save that of duty discharged. And, very rightly, we acclaim them
-as heroes. They have shown without any sort of doubt that they are
-ready to die for their country's cause or for some even greater
-cause--human freedom, the rights of a small nation, democracy, or the
-principle of nationality, or to resist a barbarous morality which can
-tolerate the making of unprovoked war for a monarchy's ambition or the
-greed of an autocratic clique.
-
-And, indeed, whatever our final conclusion, the spectacle of vast
-sacrifices so readily made is, in its ultimate meaning one of infinite
-inspiration and hope. But the War's immediate sequel puts certain
-questions to us that we cannot shirk. For note what follows.
-
-After some years the men who could thus sacrifice themselves, return
-home--to Italy, or France, or Britain--and exchange khaki for the
-miner's overall or the railway worker's uniform. And it would then seem
-that at that moment their attitude to their country and their country's
-attitude to them undergo a wonderful change. They are ready--so at least
-we are told by a Press which for five years had spoken of them daily as
-heroes, saints, and gentlemen--through their miners' or railway Unions
-to make war upon, instead of for, that community which yesterday they
-served so devotedly. Within a few months of the close of this War which
-was to unify the nation as it had never been unified before (the story
-is the same whichever belligerent you may choose) there appear divisions
-and fissures, disruptions and revolutions, more disturbing than have
-been revealed for generations.
-
-Our extreme nervousness about the danger of Bolshevist propaganda shows
-that we believe that these men, yesterday ready to die for their
-country, are now capable of exposing it to every sort of horror.
-
-Or take another aspect of it. During the War fashionable ladies by
-thousands willingly got up at six in the morning to scrub canteen floors
-or serve coffee, in order to add to the comfort of their working-class
-countrymen--in khaki. They did this, one assumes, from the love of
-countrymen who risked their lives and suffered hardship in the
-execution of duty. It sounds satisfactory until the same countryman
-ceases fighting and turns to extremely hard and hazardous duties like
-mining, or fishing in winter-time in the North Sea. The ladies will no
-longer scrub floors or knit socks for him. They lose all real interest
-in him. But if it was done originally from 'love of fellow-countrymen,'
-why this cessation of interest? He is the same man. Into the psychology
-of that we shall inquire a little more fully later. The phenomenon is
-explained here in the conviction that its cause throws light upon the
-other phenomenon equally remarkable, namely, that victory reveals a most
-astonishing post-war indifference to those moral and ideal ends for
-which we believed we were fighting. Is it that they never were our real
-aims at all, or that war has wrought a change in our nature with
-reference to them?
-
-The importance of knowing what really moves us is obvious enough. If our
-potential power is to stand for the protection of any principle--nationality
-or democracy--that object must represent a real purpose, not a
-convenient clothing for a quite different purpose. The determination
-to defend nationality can only be permanent if our feeling for it
-is sufficiently deep and sincere to survive in the competition of
-other moral 'wishes.' Where has the War, and the complex of desires
-it developed, left our moral values? And, if there has been a
-re-valuation, why?
-
-The Allied world saw clearly that the German doctrine--the right of a
-powerful State to deny national independence to a smaller State, merely
-because its own self-preservation demanded it--was something which
-menaced nationality and right. The whole system by which, as in Prussia,
-the right of the people to challenge the political doctrines of the
-Government was denied (as by a rigorous control of press and education),
-was seen to be incompatible with the principles upon which free
-government in the West has been established. All this had to be
-destroyed in order that the world might be made 'safe for democracy.'
-The trenches in Flanders became 'the frontiers of freedom.' To uphold
-the rights of small nations, freedom of speech and press, to punish
-military terror, to establish an international order based on right as
-against might--these were things for which free men everywhere should
-gladly die. They did die, in millions. Nowhere so much, perhaps, as in
-America were these ideals the inspiration which brought that country
-into the War. She had nothing to gain territorially or materially. If
-ever the motive to war was an ideal motive, America's was.
-
-Then comes the Peace. And the America which had discarded her tradition
-of isolation to send two million soldiers on the European continent, 'at
-the call of the small nation,' was asked to co-operate with others in
-assuring the future security of Belgium, in protecting the small States
-by the creation of some international order (the only way in which they
-ever can be effectively protected); to do it in another form for a small
-nation that has suffered even more tragically than Belgium, Armenia;
-definitely to organise in peace that cause for which she went to war.
-And then a curious discovery is made. A cause which can excite immense
-passion when it is associated with war, is simply a subject for boredom
-when it becomes a problem of peace-time organisation. America will give
-lavishly of the blood of her sons to fight for the small nations; she
-will not be bothered with mandates or treaties in order to make it
-unnecessary to fight for them. It is not a question whether the
-particular League of Nations established at Paris was a good one. The
-post-war temper of America is that she does not want to be bothered with
-Europe at all: talk about its security makes the American public of 1920
-irritable and angry. Yet millions were ready to die for freedom in
-Europe two years ago! A thing to die for in 1918 is a thing to yawn
-over, or to be irritable about, when the war is done.
-
-Is America alone in this change of feeling about the small State?
-Recall all that we wrote and talked about the sacredness of the rights
-of small nations--and still in certain cases talk and write. There is
-Poland. It is one of the nations whose rights are sacred--to-day. But in
-1915 we acquiesced in an arrangement by which Poland was to be
-delivered, bound hand and foot, at the end of the war, to its worst and
-bitterest enemy, Czarist Russia. The Alliance (through France, to-day
-the 'protector of Poland') undertook not to raise any objection to any
-policy that the Czar's Government might inaugurate in Poland. It was to
-have a free hand. A secret treaty, it will be urged, about which the
-public knew nothing? We were fighting to liberate the world from
-diplomatic autocracies using their peoples for unknown and unavowed
-purposes. But the fact that we were delivering over Poland to the
-mercies of a Czarist Government was not secret. Every educated man knew
-what Russian policy under the Czarist Government would be, must be, in
-Poland. Was the Russian record with reference to Poland such that the
-unhampered discretion of the Czarist Government was deemed sufficient
-guarantee of Polish independence? Did we honestly think that Russia had
-proved herself more liberal in the treatment of the Poles than Austria,
-whose Government we were destroying? The implication, of course, flew in
-the face of known facts: Austrian rule over the Poles, which we proposed
-to destroy, had proved itself immeasurably more tolerant than the
-Russian rule which we proposed to re-enforce and render more secure.
-
-And there were Finland and the Border States. If Russia had remained in
-the War, 'loyal to the cause of democracy and the rights of small
-nations,' there would have been no independent Poland, or Finland, or
-Esthonia, or Georgia; and the refusal of our Ally to recognise their
-independence would not have disturbed us in the least.
-
-Again, there was Serbia, on behalf of whose 'redemption' in a sense, the
-War began. An integral part of that 'redemption' was the inclusion of
-the Dalmatian coast in Serbia--the means of access of the new Southern
-Slav State to the sea. Italy, for naval reasons, desired possession of
-that coast, and, without informing Serbia, we undertook to see that
-Italy should get it. (Italy, by the way, also entered the War on behalf
-of the principle of Nationality.)[60]
-
-It is not to be supposed, however, that the small State itself, however
-it may declaim about 'liberty or death,' has, when the opportunity to
-assert power presents itself, any greater regard for the rights of
-nationality--in other people. Take Poland. For a hundred and fifty years
-Poland has called upon Heaven to witness the monstrous wickedness of
-denying to a people its right to self-determination; of forcing a people
-under alien rule. After a hundred and fifty years of the martyrdom of
-alien rule, Poland acquires its freedom. That freedom is not a year old
-before Poland itself becomes in temper as imperialistic as any State in
-Europe. It may be bankrupt, racked with typhus and famine, split by
-bitter factional quarrels, but the one thing upon which all Poles will
-unite is in the demand for dominion over some fifteen millions of
-people, not merely non-Polish, but bitterly anti-Polish. Although Poland
-is perhaps the worst case, all the new small States show a similar
-disposition: Czecho-Slovakia, Yugoslavia, Rumania, Finland, Greece, have
-all now their own imperialism, limited only, apparently, by the extent
-of their power. All these people have fought for the right to national
-independence; there is not one that is not denying the right to national
-independence. If every Britain has its Ireland, every Ireland has its
-Ulster.
-
-But is this belief in Nationality at all? What should we have thought of
-a Southerner of the old Slave States fulminating against the crime of
-slavery? Should we have thought his position any more logical if he had
-explained that he was opposed to slavery because he did not want to
-become a slave? The test of his sincerity would have been, not the
-conduct he exacted of others, but the conduct he proposed to follow
-towards others. 'One is a Nationalist,' says Professor Corradini, one of
-the prophets of Italian _sacro egoismo_, 'while waiting to be able to
-become an Imperialist.' He prophesies that in twenty years 'all Italy
-will be Imperialist.'[61]
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The last thing intended here is any excuse of German violence by a
-futile _tu quoque_. But what it is important to know, if we are to
-understand the real motives of our conduct--and unless we do, we cannot
-really know where our conduct is leading us, where we are going--is
-whether we really cared about the 'moral aims of war,' the things for
-which we thought we were willing to die. Were we not as a matter of fact
-fighting--and dying--for something else?
-
-Test the nature of our feelings by what was after all perhaps the most
-dramatised situation in the whole drama: the fact that in the Western
-world a single man, or a little junta of military chiefs, could by a
-word send nations into war, millions to their death; and--worse still in
-a sense--that those millions would accept the fact of thus being made
-helpless pawns, and with appalling docility, without question, kill and
-be killed for reasons they did not even know. It must be made impossible
-ever again for half a dozen Generals or Cabinet Ministers thus to play
-with nations and men and women as with pawns.
-
-The War is at last over. And in Eastern Europe, the most corrupt, as it
-was one of the potentially most powerful of all the military
-autocracies--that of the Czar--has either gone to pieces from its own
-rottenness, or been destroyed by the spontaneous uprising of the people.
-Bold experiments, in entirely new social and economic methods, are
-attempted in this great community which may have so much to teach the
-Western world, experiments which challenge not only old political
-institutions, but old economic ones as well. But the men who were the
-Czar's Ministers are still in Paris and London, in close but secret
-confabulation with Allied Governments.
-
-And one morning we find that we are at war with the first Workers'
-Republic of the world, the first really to try a great social
-experiment. There had been no declaration, no explanation. President
-Wilson had, indeed, said that nothing would induce the Allies to
-intervene. Their behaviour on that point would be the 'acid test' of
-sincerity. But in Archangel, Murmansk, Vladivostock, the Crimea, on the
-Polish border, on the shores of the Caspian, our soldiers were killing
-Russians, or organising their killing; our ships sank Russian ships and
-bombarded Russian cities. We found that we were supporting the Royalist
-parties--military leaders who did not hide in the least their intention
-to restore the monarchy. But again, there is no explanation. But
-somewhere, for some purpose undefined, killing has been proclaimed. And
-we kill--and blockade and starve.
-
-The killing and blockading are not the important facts. Whatever may be
-behind the Russian business, the most disturbing portent is the fact
-which no one challenges and which indeed is most generally offered as a
-sort of defence. It is this: Nobody knows what the policy of the
-Government in Russia is, or was. It is commonly said they had no policy.
-Certainly it was changeable. That means that the Government does not
-need to give an explanation in order to start upon a war which may
-affect the whole future form of Western society. They did not have to
-explain because nobody particularly cared. Commands for youths to die in
-wars of unknown purpose do not strike us as monstrous when the commands
-are given by our own Governments--Governments which notoriously we do
-not trouble to control. Public opinion as a whole did not have any
-intense feeling about the Russian war, and not the slightest as to
-whether we used poison gas, or bombarded Russian cathedrals, or killed
-Russian civilians. We did not want it to be expensive, and Mr Churchill
-promised that if it cost too much he would drop it. He admitted finally
-that it was unnecessary by dropping it. But it was not important enough
-for him to resign over. And as for bringing anybody to trial for it, or
-upsetting the monarchy....[62]
-
-There is another aspect of our feeling about the Prussian tendencies and
-temper, to rid the world of which we waged the War.
-
-All America (or Britain, for that matter: America is only a striking and
-so a convenient example) knew that the Bismarckian persecution of the
-Socialists, the imprisonment of Bebel, of Liebknecht, the prosecution of
-newspapers for anti-militarist doctrines, the rigid control of
-education, by the Government, were just the natural prelude to what
-ended in Louvain and Aerschot, to the shooting down of the civilians of
-an invaded country. Again, that was why Prussia had to be destroyed in
-the interest of human freedom and the safety of democracy. The
-newspapers, the professors, the churches, were telling us all this
-endlessly for five years. Within a year of the end of the War, America
-is engaged in an anti-Socialist campaign more sweeping, more ruthless,
-by any test which you care to apply--the numbers arrested, the severity
-of the sentences imposed, the nature of the offences alleged--than
-anything ever attempted by Bismarck or the Kaiser. Old men of seventy
-(one selected by the Socialist party as Presidential Candidate), young
-girls, college students, are sent to prison with sentences of ten,
-fifteen, or twenty years. The elected members of State Legislatures are
-not allowed to sit, on the ground of their Socialist opinions. There are
-deportations in whole shiploads. If one takes the Espionage Act and
-compares it with any equivalent German legislation (the tests applied to
-school teachers or the refusal of mailing privileges to Socialist
-papers), one finds that the general principle of control of political
-opinion by the Government, and the limitations imposed upon freedom of
-discussion, and the Press, are certainly pushed further by the post-war
-America than they were by the pre-war Germany--the Germany that had to
-be destroyed for the precise reason that the principle of government by
-free discussion was more valuable than life itself.
-
-And as to military terrorism. Americans can see--scores of American
-papers are saying it every day--that the things defended by the British
-Government in Ireland are indistinguishable from what brought upon
-Germany the wrath of Allied mankind. But they do not even know and
-certainly would not care if they did know, that American marines in
-Hayti--a little independent State that might one day become the hope and
-symbol of a subject nationality, an unredeemed race that has suffered
-and does suffer more at American hands than Pole or Alsatian ever
-suffered at German hands--have killed ten times as many Haytians as the
-Black and Tans have killed Irish. Nor for that matter do Americans know
-that every week there takes place in their own country--as there has
-taken place week after week in the years of peace for half a
-century--atrocities more ferocious than any which are alleged against
-even the British or the German. Neither of the latter burn alive,
-weekly, untried fellow-countrymen with a regularity that makes the thing
-an institution.
-
-If indeed it was the militarism, the terrorism, the crude assertion of
-power, the repressions of freedom, which made us hate the German, why
-are we relatively indifferent when all those evils raise their heads,
-not far away, among a people for whom after all we are not responsible,
-but at home, near to us, where we have some measure of responsibility?
-
-For indifferent in some measure to those near-by evils we all are.
-
-The hundred million people who make up America include as many kindly,
-humane, and decent folk as any other hundred million anywhere in the
-world. They have a habit of carrying through extraordinary and unusual
-measures--like Prohibition. Yet nothing effective has been done about
-lynching, for which the world holds them responsible, any more than we
-have done anything effective about Ireland, for which the world holds us
-responsible. Their evil may one day land them in a desperate 'subject
-nationality' problem, just as our Irish problem lands us in political
-difficulty the world over. Yet neither they nor we can manage to achieve
-one-tenth of the emotional interest in our own atrocity or oppression,
-which we managed in a few weeks to achieve in war-time over the German
-barbarities in Belgium. If we could--if every schoolboy and maid-servant
-felt as strongly over Balbriggan or Amritsar as they felt over the
-_Lusitania_ and Louvain--our problem would be solved; whereas the action
-and policy which arose out of our feeling about Louvain did not solve
-the evil of military terrorism. It merely made it nearly universal.
-
-It brings us back to the original question. Is it mainly, or at all, the
-cruelty or the danger of oppression which moves us, which is at the
-bottom of our flaming indignation over the crimes of the enemy?
-
-We believed that we were fighting because of a passionate feeling for
-self-rule; for freedom of discussion, of respect for the rights of
-others, particularly the weak; the hatred of the mere pride of power out
-of which oppression grows; of the regimentation of minds which is its
-instrument. But after the War we find that in truth we have no
-particular feeling about the things we fought to make impossible. We
-rather welcome them, if they are a means of harassing people that we do
-not happen to like. We get the monstrous paradox that the very
-tendencies which it was the object of the War to check, are the very
-tendencies that have acquired an elusive power in our own
-country--possibly as the direct result of the War!
-
-Perhaps if we examine in some detail the process of the break-up after
-war, within the nation, of the unity which marked it during war, we may
-get some explanation of the other change just indicated.
-
-The unity on which we congratulated ourselves was for a time a fact. But
-just as certainly the patriotism which prompted the duchess to scrub
-floors was not simply love of her countrymen, or it would not suddenly
-cease when the war came to an end. The self-same man who in khaki was a
-hero to be taken for drives in the duchess's motor-car, became as
-workman--a member of some striking union, say--an object of hostility
-and dislike. The psychology revealed here has a still more curious
-manifestation.
-
-When in war-time we read of the duke's son and the cook's son peeling
-potatoes into the same tub, we regard this aspect of the working of
-conscription as something in itself fine and admirable, a real national
-comradeship in common tasks at last. Colonel Roosevelt orates; our
-picture papers give us photographs; the country thrills to this note of
-democracy. But when we learn that for the constructive purposes of
-peace--for street-cleaning--the Soviet Government has introduced
-precisely this method and compelled the sons of Grand Dukes to shovel
-snow beside common workmen, the same papers give the picture as an
-example of the intolerable tyranny of socialism, as a warning of what
-may happen in England if the revolutionists are listened to. That for
-years that very thing _had_ been happening in England for the purposes
-of war, that we were extremely proud of it, and had lauded it as
-wholesome discipline and a thing which made conscription fine and
-democratic, is something that we are unable even to perceive, so strong
-and yet so subtle are the unconscious factors of opinion. This peculiar
-psychological twist explains, of course, several things: why we are all
-socialists for the purposes of war, and why socialism can then give
-results which nothing else could give; why we cannot apply the same
-methods successfully to peace; and why the economic miracles possible in
-war are not possible in peace. And the outcome is that forces,
-originally social and unifying, are at present factors only of
-disruption and destruction, not merely internationally, but, as we shall
-see presently, nationally as well.
-
-When the accomplishment of certain things--the production of shells, the
-assembling of certain forces, the carriage of cargoes--became a matter
-of life and death, we did not argue about nationalisation or socialism;
-we put it into effect, and it worked. There existed for war a will which
-found a way round all the difficulties of credit adjustment,
-distribution, adequate wages, unemployment, incapacitation. We could
-take over the country's railways and mines, control its trade, ration
-its bread, and decide without much discussion that those things were
-indispensable for its purposes. But we can do none of these things for
-the upbuilding of the country in peace time. The measures to which we
-turn when we feel that the country must produce or perish, are precisely
-the measures which, when the war is over, we declare are the least
-likely to get anything done at all. We could make munitions; we cannot
-make houses. We could clothe and feed our soldiers and satisfy all their
-material wants; we cannot do that for the workers. Unemployment in
-war-time was practically unknown; the problem of unemployment in peace
-time seems beyond us. Millions go unclothed; thousands of workers who
-could make clothes are without employment. One speaks of the sufferings
-of the army of poverty as though they were dispensations of heaven. We
-did not speak thus of the needs of soldiers in war-time. If soldiers
-wanted uniforms and wool was obtainable, weavers did not go unemployed.
-Then there existed a will and common purpose. That will and common
-purpose the patriotism of peace-time cannot give us.
-
-Yet, again, we cannot always be at war. Women must have time and
-opportunity to bear and to bring up children, and men to build up a
-country-side, if only in order to have men for war to slay and things
-for war to destroy. Patriotism fails as a social cement within the
-nation at peace, it fails as a stimulus to its constructive tasks; and
-as between nations, we know it acts as a violent irritant and disruptive
-force.
-
-We need not question the genuineness of the emotion which moves our
-duchess when she knits socks for the dear boys in the trenches--or when
-she fulminates against the same dear boys as working men when they come
-home. As soldiers she loved them because her hatred of Germans--that
-atrocious, hostile 'herd'--was deep and genuine. She felt like killing
-Germans herself. Consequently, to those who risked their lives to fulfil
-this wish of hers, her affections went out readily enough. But why
-should she feel any particular affection for men who mine coal, or
-couple railway trucks, or catch fish in the North Sea? Dangerous as are
-those tasks, they are not visibly and intimately related to her own
-fierce emotions. The men performing them are just workpeople, the
-relation of whose labour to her own life is not, perhaps, always very
-clear. The suggestion that she should scrub floors or knit socks for
-_them_ would appear to her as merely silly or offensive.
-
-But unfortunately the story does not end there. During these years of
-war her very genuine emotions of hate were fed and nourished by war
-propaganda; her emotional hunger was satisfied in some measure by the
-daily tale of victories over the enemy. She had, as it were, ten
-thousand Germans for breakfast every morning. And when the War stopped,
-certainly something went out of her life. No one would pretend that
-these flaming passions of five years went for so little in her emotional
-experience that they could just be dropped from one day to another
-without something going unsatisfied.
-
-And then she cannot get coal; her projected journey to the Riviera is
-delayed by a railway strike; she has troubles with servants; faces a
-preposterous super-tax and death duties; an historical country seat can
-no longer be maintained and old associations must be broken up; Labour
-threatens revolution--or her morning paper says it does; Labour leaders
-say grossly unfair things about dukes. Here, indeed, is a new hostility,
-a new enemy tribe, on which the emotions cultivated so assiduously
-during five years, but hungry and unfed since the War, can once more
-feed and find some satisfaction. The Bolshevist, or the Labour agitator,
-takes the place of the Hun; the elements of enmity and disruption are
-already present.
-
-And something similar takes place with the miner, or labour man, in
-reference to the duchess and what she stands for. For him also the main
-problem of life had resolved itself during the War into something simple
-and emotional; an enemy to be fought and overcome. Not a puzzling
-intellectual difficulty, with all the hesitations and uncertainties of
-intellectual decision dependent upon sustained mental effort. The
-rights and wrongs were settled for him; right was our side, wrong the
-enemy's. What we had to do was to crush him. That done, it would be a
-better world, his country 'a land fit for heroes to live in.'
-
-On return from the War he does not find quite that. He can, for
-instance, get no house fit to live in at all. High prices, precarious
-employment. What is wrong? There are fifty theories, all puzzling. As to
-housing, he is sometimes told it is his own fault; the building unions
-won't permit dilution. When the 'high-brows' are all at sixes and
-sevens, what is a man to think? But it is suggested to him that behind
-all this is one enemy: the Capitalist. His papers have a picture of him:
-very like the Hun. Now here is something emotionally familiar. For years
-he has learned to hate and fight, to embody all problems in the one
-problem of fighting some definite--preferably personified--enemy. Smash
-him; get him by the throat, and then all these brain-racking puzzles
-will clear themselves up. Our side, our class, our tribe, will then be
-on top, and there will be no real solution until it is. To this respond
-all the emotions, the whole state of feeling which years of war have
-cultivated. Once more the problem of life is simple; one of power,
-domination, the fight for mastery; loyalty to our side, our lot, 'right
-or wrong.' Workers to be masters, workers who have been shoved and
-ordered about, to do the shoving and the ordering. Dictatorship of the
-proletariat. The headaches disappear and one can live emotionally free
-once more.
-
-There are 'high-brows' who will even philosophise the thing for him, and
-explain that only the psychology of war and violence will give the
-emotional drive to get anything done; that only by the myths which mark
-patriotism can real social change be made. Just as for the hate which
-keeps war going, the enemy State must be a single 'person,' a
-collectivity in which any one German can be killed as vengeance or
-reprisal for any other,[63] so 'the capitalist class' must be a
-personality, if class hatred is to be kept alive in such a way as to
-bring the class war to victory.
-
-But that theory overlooks the fact that just as the nationalism which
-makes war also destroys the Alliances by which victory can be made
-effective, so the transfer of the psychology of Nationalism to the
-industrial field has the same effect of Balkanisation. We get in both
-areas, not the definite triumph of a cohesive group putting into
-operation a clear-cut and understandable programme or policy, but the
-chaotic conflict of an infinite number of groups unable to co-operate
-effectively for any programme.
-
-If the hostilities which react to the Syndicalistic appeal were confined
-to the Capitalist, there might be something to be said for it from the
-point of view of the Labour movement. But forces so purely instinctive,
-by their very nature repelling the restraint of self-imposed discipline
-by intelligent foresight of consequences, cannot be the servant of an
-intelligent purpose, they become its master. The hostility becomes more
-important than the purpose. To the industrial Jingo, as to the
-nationalist Jingo, all foreigners are potential enemies. The hostile
-tribe or herd may be constituted by very small differences; slight
-variations of occupation, interest, race, speech, and--most potently of
-all perhaps--dogma or belief. Heresy-hunting is, of course, one
-manifestation of tribal animosity; and a heretic is the person who has
-the insufferable impudence to disagree with us.
-
-So the Sorelian philosophy of violence and instinctive pugnacity gives
-us, not the effective drive of a whole movement against the present
-social order (for that would require order, discipline, self-control,
-tolerance, and toleration); it gives us the tendency to an infinite
-splitting of the Labour movement. No sooner does the Left of some party
-break off and found a new party than it is immediately confronted by its
-own 'Leftism.' And your dogmatist hates the dissenting member of his own
-sect more fiercely than the rival sect; your Communist some rival
-Communism more bitterly than the Capitalist. Already the Labour movement
-is crossed by the hostilities of Communist against Socialist, the Second
-International against the Third, the Third against the Fourth; Trades
-Unionism by the hostility of skilled against unskilled, and in much of
-Europe there is also the conflict of town against country.
-
-This tendency has happily not yet gone far in England; but here, as
-elsewhere, it represents the one great danger, the tendency to be
-watched. And it is a tendency that has its moral and psychological roots
-in the same forces which have given us the chaos in the international
-field: The deep human lust for coercion, domination; the irksomeness of
-toleration, thought, self-discipline.
-
-The final difficulty in social and political discussion is, of course,
-the fact that the ultimate values--what is the highest good, what is the
-worst evil--cannot usually be argued about at all; you accept them, you
-see that they are good or bad as the case may be, or you don't.
-
-Yet we cannot organise a society save on the basis of some sort of
-agreement concerning these least common denominators; the final argument
-for the view that Western Europe had to destroy German Prussianism was
-that the system challenged certain ultimate moral values common to
-Western society. On the morrow of the sinking of the _Lusitania_ an
-American writer pointed out that if the cold-blooded slaughter of
-innocent women and children were accepted as a normal incident of war,
-like any other, the whole moral standards of the West would then
-definitely be placed on another plane. That elusive but immeasurably
-important moral sense, which gives a society sufficient community of aim
-to make common action possible, would have been radically altered. The
-ancient world--highly civilised and cultured as much of it was--had a
-_Sittlichkeit_ which made the chattel-slavery of the greater part of the
-human race an entirely normal--and, as they thought, inevitable--condition
-of things. It was accepted by the slaves themselves, and it was this
-acquiescence in the arrangement by both parties to it which mainly
-accounted for its continuance through a very long period of a very high
-civilisation. The position of women illustrates the same thing. There
-are to-day highly developed civilisations in which a man of education
-buys a wife, or several, as in the West he would buy a racehorse. And
-the wife, or wives, accept that situation; there can be no change in
-that particular matter until certain quite 'unarguable' moral values
-have altered in the minds of those concerned.
-
-The American writer raised, therefore, an extremely important question
-in relation to the War. Has its total outcome affected certain values of
-the fundamental kind just indicated? What has been its effect upon
-social impulses? Has it any direct relation to certain moral tendencies
-that have succeeded it?
-
-Perhaps the War is now old enough to enable us to face a few quite
-undeniable facts with some measure of detachment.
-
-When the Germans bombarded Scarborough early in the War, there was such
-a hurricane of moralisation that one rejoiced that this War would not be
-marked on our side, at least, by the bombardment of open cities. But
-when our Press began to print reports of French bombs falling on circus
-tents full of children, scores being killed, there was simply no protest
-at all. And one of the humours of the situation was that after more than
-a year, in which scores of such reports had appeared in the Press, some
-journalistic genius began an agitation on behalf of 'reprisals' for air
-raids.[64]
-
-At a time when it seemed doubtful whether the Germans would sign the
-Treaty or not, and just what would be the form of the Hungarian
-Government, the _Evening News_ printed the following editorial:--
-
-     'It might take weeks or months to bring the Hungarian Bolshevists
-     and recalcitrant Germans to book by extensive operations with
-     large forces. It might take but a few days to bring them to reason
-     by adequate use of aircraft.
-
-     'Allied airmen could reach Buda-pest in a few hours, and teach its
-     inhabitants such a lesson that Bolshevism would lose its
-     attractions for them.
-
-     'Strong Allied aerodromes on the Rhine and in Poland, well equipped
-     with the best machines and pilots, could quickly persuade the
-     inhabitants of the large German cities of the folly of having
-     refused to sign the peace.
-
-     'Those considerations are elementary. For that reason they may be
-     overlooked. They are "milk for babes."'[65]
-
-Now the prevailing thesis of the British, and particularly the
-Northcliffe Press, in reference to Bolshevism, was that it is a form of
-tyranny imposed by a cruel minority upon a helpless people. The proposal
-amounts, therefore, either to killing civilians for a form of Government
-which they cannot possibly help, or to an admission that Bolshevism has
-the support of the populace, and that as the outcome of our war for
-democracy we should refuse them the right to choose the government they
-prefer.
-
-When the Germans bombarded Scarborough and dropped bombs on London, the
-Northcliffe Press called Heaven to witness (_a_) that only fiends in
-human form could make war on helpless civilian populations, women, and
-children; (_b_) that not only were the Huns dastardly baby-killers for
-making war in that fashion, but were bad psychologists as well, because
-our anger at such unheard-of devilries would only render our resistance
-more unconquerable than ever; and (_c_) that no consideration whatever
-would induce English soldiers to blow women and children to pulp--unless
-it were as a reprisal. Well, Lord Northcliffe proposed to _commence_ a
-war against Hungarians (as it had already been commenced against the
-Russians) by such a wholesale massacre of the civil population that a
-Government, which he tells us is imposed upon them against their will,
-may 'lose its attractions.' This would be, of course, the second edition
-of the war waged to destroy militarist modes of thought, to establish
-the reign of righteousness and the protection of the defenceless and the
-weak.
-
-The _Evening News_ is the paper, by the way, whose wrath became violent
-when it learned that some Quakers and others were attempting to make
-some provision for the children of interned Austrians and Germans. Those
-guilty of such 'un-English' conduct as a little mercy and pity extended
-to helpless children, were hounded in headlines day after day as
-'Hun-coddlers,' traitors 'attempting to placate the Hun tiger by bits of
-cake to its cubs'; and when the War is all over--a year after all the
-fighting is stopped--a vicar of the English Church opposes, with
-indignation, the suggestion that his parish should be contaminated by
-'enemy' children brought from the famine area to save them from
-death.[66]
-
-On March 3, 1919, Mr Winston Churchill stated in the House of Commons,
-speaking of the blockade:--
-
-     ' ... This weapon of starvation falls mainly upon the women and
-     children, upon the old and the weak and the poor, after all the
-     fighting has stopped.'
-
-One might take this as a prelude to a change of policy. Not at all: he
-added that we were 'enforcing the blockade with rigour' and would
-continue to do so.
-
-Mr Churchill's indication as to how the blockade acts is important. We
-spoke of it as 'punishment' for Germany's crimes, or Bolshevist
-infamies, as the case may be. But it did not punish 'Germany' or the
-Bolshevists.[67] Its penalties are in a peculiar degree unevenly
-distributed. The country districts escape almost entirely, the peasants
-can feed themselves. It falls on the cities. But even in the cities the
-very wealthy and the official classes can as a rule escape. Virtually
-its whole weight--as Mr Churchill implies--falls upon the urban poor,
-and particularly the urban child population, the old, the invalids, the
-sick. Whoever may be the parties responsible for the War, these are
-guiltless. But it is these we punish.
-
-Very soon after the Armistice there was ample evidence available as to
-the effect of the blockade, both in Russia and in Central Europe.
-Officers of our Army of Occupation reported that their men 'could not
-stand' the spectacle of the suffering around them. Organisations like
-the 'Save the Children Fund' devoted huge advertisements to
-familiarising the public with the facts. Considerable sums for relief
-were raised--but the blockade was maintained. There was no connection
-between the two things--our foreign policy and the famine in Europe--in
-the public mind. It developed a sort of moral shock absorber. Facts did
-not reach it or disturb its serenity.
-
-This was revealed in a curious way at the time of the signature of the
-Treaty. At the gathering of the representatives, the German delegate
-spoke sitting down. It turned out afterwards that he was so ill and
-distraught, that he dared not trust himself to stand up. Every paper was
-full of the incident, as also of the fact that the paper-cutter in front
-of him on the table was found afterwards to be broken; that he placed
-his gloves upon his copy of the Treaty; and that he had thrown away his
-cigarette on entering the room. These were the offences which prompted
-the _Daily Mail_ to say: 'After this no one will treat the Huns as
-civilised or repentant.' Almost the entire Press rang with the story of
-'Rantzau's insult.' But not one paper, so far as I could discover, paid
-any attention to what Rantzau had said. He said:--
-
-     'I do not want to answer by reproaches to reproaches.... Crimes in
-     war may not be excusable, but they are committed in the struggle
-     for victory and in the defence of national existence, and passions
-     are aroused which make the conscience of peoples blunt. The
-     hundreds of thousands of non-combatants who have perished since
-     November 11 by reason of the blockade, were killed with cold
-     deliberation, after our adversaries had conquered and victory had
-     been assured them. Think of that when you speak of guilt and
-     punishment.'
-
-No one seems to have noticed this trifle in presence of the heinousness
-of the cigarette, the gloves, and the other crimes. Yet this was an
-insult indeed. If true, it shamefully disgraces England--if England is
-responsible. The public presumably simply did not care whether it was
-true or not.
-
-A few months after the Armistice I wrote as follows:--
-
-     'When the Germans sank the _Lusitania_ and slew several hundred
-     women and children, _we_ knew--at least we thought we knew--that
-     that was the kind of thing which Englishmen could not do. In all
-     the hates and stupidities, the dirt and heartbreaks of the war,
-     there was just this light on the horizon: that there were certain
-     things to which we at least could never fall, in the name of
-     victory or patriotism, or any other of the deadly masked words that
-     are "the unjust stewards of men's ideas."
-
-     'And then we did it. We, too, sank _Lusitanias_. We, too, for some
-     cold political end, plunged the unarmed, the weak, the helpless,
-     the children, the suffering women, to agonising death and torture.
-     Without a tremor. Not alone in the bombing of cities, which we did
-     so much better than the enemy. For this we had the usual excuse. It
-     was war.
-
-     'But after the War, when the fighting was finished, the enemy was
-     disarmed, his submarines surrendered, his aeroplanes destroyed, his
-     soldiers dispersed; months afterwards, we kept a weapon which was
-     for use first and mainly against the children, the weak, the sick,
-     the old, the women, the mothers, the decrepit: starvation and
-     disease. Our papers told us--our patriotic papers--how well it was
-     succeeding. Correspondents wrote complacently, sometimes
-     exultingly, of how thin and pinched were all the children, even
-     those well into teens; how stunted, how defective, the next
-     generation would be; and how the younger children, those of seven
-     and eight, looked like children of three and four; and how those
-     beneath this age simply did not live. Either they were born dead,
-     or if they were born alive--what was there to give them? Milk? An
-     unheard-of luxury. And nothing to wrap them in; even in hospitals
-     the new-born children were wrapped in newspapers, the lucky ones in
-     bits of sacking. The mothers were most fortunate when the children
-     were born dead. In an insane asylum a mother wails: "If only I did
-     not hear the cry of the children for food all day long, all day
-     long!" To "bring Germany to reason" we had, you see, to drive
-     mothers out of their reason.
-
-     '"It would have been more merciful," said Bob Smillie, "to turn the
-     machine-guns on those children." Put this question to yourself,
-     patriot Englishmen: "Was the sinking of the _Lusitania_ as cruel,
-     as prolonged, as mean, as merciless a death as this?" And we--you
-     and I--do it every day, every night.
-
-     'Here is the _Times_ of May 21, half a year after the cessation of
-     war, telling the Germans that they do not know how much more severe
-     we can still make the "domestic results" of starvation, if we
-     really put our mind to it. To the blockade we shall add the
-     "horrors of invasion." The invasion of a country already disarmed
-     is to be marked--when we do it--by horror.
-
-     'But the purpose! That justifies it! What purpose? To obtain the
-     signature to the Treaty of Peace. Many Englishmen--not Pacifists,
-     not sentimentalists, not conscientious objectors, or other vermin
-     of that kind, but Bishops, Judges, Members of the House of Lords,
-     great public educators. Tory editors--have declared that this
-     Treaty is a monstrous injustice. Some Englishmen at least think so.
-     But if the Germans say so, that becomes a crime which we shall know
-     how to punish. "The enemy have been reminded already" says the
-     _Times_, proud organ of British respectability, of Conservatism, of
-     distinguished editors and ennobled proprietors, "that the machinery
-     of the blockade can again be put into force at a few hours' notice
-... the intention of the Allies to take military action if
-     necessary.... Rejection of the Peace terms now offered them, will
-     assuredly lead to fresh chastisement."
-
-     'But will not Mr Lloyd George be able to bring back _signatures_?
-     Will he not have made Peace--permanent Peace? Shall we not have
-     destroyed this Prussian philosophy of frightfulness, force, and
-     hate? Shall we not have proved to the world that a State without
-     military power can trust to the good faith and humanity of its
-     neighbours? Can we not, then, celebrate victory with light hearts,
-     honour our dead and glorify our arms? Have we not served faithfully
-     those ideals of right and justice, mercy and chivalry, for which a
-     whole generation of youth went through hell and gave their lives?'
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-THE ALTERNATIVE RISKS OF STATUS AND CONTRACT
-
-
-The facts of the present situation in Europe, so far sketched, reveal
-broadly this spectacle: everywhere the failure of national power to
-indispensable ends, sustenance, political security, nationality, right;
-everywhere a fierce struggle for national power.
-
-Germany, which successfully fed her expanding population by a system
-which did not rest upon national power, wrecked that system in order to
-attempt one which all experience showed could not succeed. The Allied
-world pilloried both the folly and the wickedness of such a statecraft;
-and at the peace proceeded to imitate it in every particular. The faith
-in the complete efficacy of preponderant power which the economic and
-other demands of the Treaty of Versailles and the policy towards Russia
-reveal, is already seen to be groundless (for the demands, in fact, are
-being abandoned). There is in that document an element of _naivete_, and
-in the subsequent policy a cruelty which will be the amazement of
-history--if our race remains capable of history.
-
-Yet the men who made the Treaty, and accelerated the famine and break-up
-of half a world, including those, like M. Tardieu, who still demand a
-ruined Germany and an indemnity-paying one, were the ablest statesmen of
-Europe, experienced, realist, and certainly not morally monsters. They
-were probably no worse morally, and certainly more practical, than the
-passionate democracies, American and European, who encouraged all the
-destructive elements of policy and were hostile to all that was
-recuperative and healing.
-
-It is perfectly true--and this truth is essential to the thesis here
-discussed--that the statesmen at Versailles were neither fools or
-villains. Neither were the Cardinals and the Princes of the Church, who
-for five hundred years, more or less, attempted to use physical coercion
-for the purpose of suppressing religious error. There is, of course an
-immeasurably stronger case for the Inquisition as an instrument of
-social order than there is for the use of competing national military
-power as the basis of modern European society. And the stronger case for
-the Inquisition as an instrument of social by a modern statesman when he
-goes to war. It was less. The inquisitor, in burning and torturing the
-heretic, passionately believed that he obeyed the voice of God, as the
-modern statesman believes that he is justified by the highest dictates
-of patriotism. We are now able to see that the Inquisitor was wrong, his
-judgment twisted by some overpowering prepossession: Is some similar
-prepossession distorting vision and political wisdom in modern
-statecraft? And if so, what is the nature of this prepossession?
-
-As an essay towards the understanding of its nature, the following
-suggestions are put forward:--
-
-     The assertion of national power, domination, is always in line with
-     popular feeling. And in crises--like that of the settlement with
-     Germany--popular feeling dictates policy.
-
-     The feelings associated with coercive domination evidently lie near
-     the surface of our natures and are easily excited. To attain our
-     end by mere coercion instead of bargain or agreement, is the method
-     in conduct which, in the order of experiments, our race generally
-     tries first, not only in economics (as by slavery) but in sex, in
-     securing acquiescence to our religious beliefs, and in most other
-     relationships. Coercion is not only the response to an instinct; it
-     relieves us of the trouble and uncertainties of intellectual
-     decision as to what is equitable in a bargain.
-
-     To restrain the combative instinct sufficiently to realise the need
-     of co-operation, demands a social discipline which the prevailing
-     political traditions and moralities of Nationalism and Patriotism
-     not only do not furnish, but directly discourage.
-
-     But when some vital need becomes obvious and we find that force
-     simply cannot fulfil it, we then try other methods, and manage to
-     restrain our impulse sufficiently to do so. If we simply must have
-     a man's help, and we find we cannot force him to give it, we then
-     offer him inducements, bargain, enter a contract, even though it
-     limits our independence.
-
-     Stable international co-operation cannot come in any other way. Not
-     until we realise the failure of national coercive power for
-     indispensable ends (like the food of our people) shall we cease to
-     idealise power and to put our most intense political emotions (like
-     those of patriotism) behind it. Our traditions will buttress and
-     'rationalise' the instinct to power until we see that it is
-     mischievous. We shall then begin to discredit it and create new
-     traditions.
-
-An American sociologist (Professor Giddings of Columbia University) has
-written thus:--
-
-     'So long as we can confidently act, we do not argue; but when we
-     face conditions abounding in uncertainty, or when we are confronted
-     by alternative possibilities, we first hesitate, then feel our way,
-     then guess, and at length venture to reason. Reasoning,
-     accordingly, is that action of the mind to which we resort when the
-     possibilities before us and about us are distributed substantially
-     according to the law of chance occurrence, or, as the mathematician
-     would say, in accordance with "the normal curve" of random
-     frequency. The moment the curve is obviously skewed, we decide; if
-     it is obviously skewed from the beginning, by authority, or
-     coercion, our reasoning is futile or imperfect. So, in the State,
-     if any interest or coalition of interests is dominant, and can act
-     promptly, it rules by absolutist methods. Whether it is benevolent
-     or cruel, it wastes neither time nor resources upon government by
-     discussion; but if interests are innumerable, and so distributed as
-     to offset one another, and if no great bias or overweighting
-     anywhere appears, government by discussion inevitably arises. The
-     interests can get together only if they talk. If power shall be
-     able to dictate, it will also rule, and the appeal to reason will
-     be vain.'
-
-This means that a realisation of interdependence--even though it be
-subconscious--is the basis of the social sense, the feeling and
-tradition which make possible a democratic society, in which freedom is
-voluntarily limited for the purpose of preserving any freedom at all.
-
-It indicates also the relation of certain economic truths to the
-impulses and instincts that underlie international conflict. We shall
-excuse or justify or fail to restrain those instincts, unless and until
-we see that their indulgence stands in the way of the things which we
-need and must have if society is to live. We shall then discredit them
-as anti-social, as we have discredited religious fanaticism, and build
-up a controlling _Sittlichkeit_.
-
-The statement of Professor Giddings, quoted above, leaves out certain
-psychological facts which the present writer in an earlier work has
-attempted to indicate. He, therefore, makes no apology for reproducing a
-somewhat long passage bearing on the case before us:--
-
-     'The element in man which makes him capable, however feebly, of
-     choice in the matter of conduct, the one fact distinguishing him
-     from that vast multitude of living things which act unreflectingly,
-     instinctively (in the proper and scientific sense of the word), as
-     the mere physical reaction to external prompting, is something not
-     deeply rooted, since it is the latest addition of all to our
-     nature. The really deeply rooted motives of conduct, those having
-     by far the greatest biological momentum, are naturally the
-     "motives" of the plant and the animal, the kind that marks in the
-     main the acts of all living things save man, the unreflecting
-     motives, those containing no element of ratiocination and free
-     volition, that almost mechanical reaction to external forces which
-     draw the leaves towards the sun-rays and makes the tiger tear its
-     living food limb from limb.
-
-     'To make plain what that really means in human conduct, we must
-     recall the character of that process by which man turns the forces
-     of nature to his service instead of allowing them to overwhelm him.
-     Its essence is a union of individual forces against the common
-     enemy, the forces of nature. Where men in isolated action would
-     have been powerless, and would have been destroyed, union,
-     association, co-operation, enabled them to survive. Survival was
-     contingent upon the cessation of struggle between them, and the
-     substitution therefor of common action. Now, the process both in
-     the beginning and in the subsequent development of this device of
-     co-operation is important. It was born of a failure of force. If
-     the isolated force had sufficed, the union of force would not have
-     been resorted to. But such union is not a mere mechanical
-     multiplication of blind energies; it is a combination involving
-     will, intelligence. If mere multiplication of physical energy had
-     determined the result of man's struggles, he would have been
-     destroyed or be the helpless slave of the animals of which he makes
-     his food. He has overcome them as he has overcome the flood and the
-     storm--by quite another order of action. Intelligence only emerges
-     where physical force is ineffective.
-
-     'There is an almost mechanical process by which, as the complexity
-     of co-operation grows, the element of physical compulsion declines
-     in effectiveness, and is replaced by agreement based on mutual
-     recognition of advantage. There is through every step of this
-     development the same phenomenon: intelligence and agreement only
-     emerge as force becomes ineffective. The early (and purely
-     illustrative) slave-owner who spent his days seeing that his slave
-     did not run away, and compelling him to work, realised the economic
-     defect of the arrangement: most of the effort, physical and
-     intellectual, of the slave was devoted to trying to escape; that of
-     the owner, trying to prevent him. The force of the one,
-     intellectual or physical, cancelled the force of the other, and the
-     energies of both were lost so far as productive value was
-     concerned, and the needed task, the building of the shelter or the
-     catching of the fish, was not done, or badly done, and both went
-     short of food and shelter. But from the moment that they struck a
-     bargain as to the division of labour and of spoils, and adhered to
-     it, the full energies of both were liberated for direct production,
-     and the economic effectiveness of the arrangement was not merely
-     doubled, but probably multiplied many times. But this substitution
-     of free agreement for coercion, with all that it implied of
-     contract, of "what is fair," and all that followed of mutual
-     reliance in the fulfilment of the agreement, was _based upon mutual
-     recognition of advantage_. Now, that recognition, without which the
-     arrangement could not exist at all, required, relatively, a
-     considerable mental effort, _due in the first instance to the
-     failure of force_. If the slave-owner had had more effective means
-     of physical coercion, and had been able to subdue his slave, he
-     would not have bothered about agreement, and this embryo of human
-     society and justice would not have been brought into being. And in
-     history its development has never been constant, but marked by the
-     same rise and fall of the two orders of motive; as soon as one
-     party or the other obtained such preponderance of strength as
-     promised to be effective, he showed a tendency to drop free
-     agreement and use force; this, of course, immediately provoked the
-     resistance of the other, with a lesser or greater reversion to the
-     earlier profitless condition.
-
-     'This perpetual tendency to abandon the social arrangement and
-     resort to physical coercion is, of course, easily explainable by
-     the biological fact just touched on. To realise at each turn and
-     permutation of the division of labour that the social arrangement
-     was, after all, the best demanded on the part of the two characters
-     in our sketch, not merely control of instinctive actions, but a
-     relatively large ratiocinative effort for which the biological
-     history of early man had not fitted him. The physical act of
-     compulsion only required a stone axe and a quickness of purely
-     physical movement for which his biological history had afforded
-     infinitely long training. The more mentally-motived action, that of
-     social conduct, demanding reflection as to its effect on others,
-     and the effect of that reaction upon our own position and a
-     conscious control of physical acts, is of modern growth; it is but
-     skin-deep; its biological momentum is feeble. Yet on that feeble
-     structure has been built all civilisation.
-
-     'When we remember this--how frail are the ultimate foundations of
-     our fortress, how much those spiritual elements which alone can
-     give us human society are outnumbered by the pre-human elements--is
-     it surprising that those pre-social promptings of which
-     civilisation represents the conquest, occasionally overwhelm man,
-     break up the solidarity of his army, and push him back a stage or
-     two nearer to the brute condition from which he came? That even at
-     this moment he is groping blindly as to the method of distributing
-     in the order of his most vital needs the wealth he is able to wring
-     from the earth; that some of his most fundamental social and
-     political conceptions--those, among others, with which we are now
-     dealing--have little relation to real facts; that his animosities
-     and hatreds are as purposeless and meaningless as his enthusiasms
-     and his sacrifices; that emotion and effort which quantitatively
-     would suffice amply for the greater tasks before him, for the
-     firmer establishment of justice and well-being, for the cleaning up
-     of all the festering areas of moral savagery that remain, are as a
-     simple matter of fact turned to those purposes hardly at all, but
-     to objects which, to the degree to which they succeed, merely
-     stultify each other?
-
-     'Now, this fact, the fact that civilisation is but skin-deep and
-     that man is so largely the unreflecting brute, is not denied by
-     pro-military critics. On the contrary they appeal to it as the
-     first and last justification of their policy. "All your talk will
-     never get over human nature; men are not guided by logic; passion
-     is bound to get the upper hand," and such phrases, are a sort of
-     Greek chorus supplied by the military party to the whole of this
-     discussion.
-
-     'Nor do the militarist advocates deny that these unreflecting
-     elements are anti-social; again, it is part of their case that,
-     unless they are held in check by the "iron hand," they will
-     submerge society in a welter of savagery. Nor do they deny--it is
-     hardly possible to do so--that the most important securities which
-     we enjoy, the possibility of living in mutual respect of right
-     because we have achieved some understanding of right; all that
-     distinguishes modern Europe from the Europe of (among other things)
-     religious wars and St. Bartholomew massacres, and distinguishes
-     British political methods from those Turkey or Venezuela, are due
-     to the development of moral forces (since physical force is most
-     resorted to in the less desirable age and area), and particularly
-     to the general recognition that you cannot solve religious and
-     political problems by submitting them to the irrelevant hazard of
-     physical force.
-
-     'We have got thus far, then: both parties to the discussion are
-     agreed as to the fundamental fact that civilisation is based upon
-     moral and intellectual elements in constant danger of being
-     overwhelmed by more deeply-rooted anti-social elements. The plain
-     facts of history past and present are there to show that where
-     those moral elements are absent the mere fact of the possession of
-     arms only adds to the destructiveness of the resulting welter.
-
-     'Yet all attempts to secure our safety by other than military means
-     are not merely regarded with indifference; they are more generally
-     treated either with a truly ferocious contempt or with definite
-     condemnation.
-
-     'This apparently on two grounds: first, that nothing that we can do
-     will affect the conduct of other nations; secondly, that, in the
-     development of those moral forces which do undoubtedly give us
-     security, government action--which political effort has in
-     view--can play no part.
-
-     'Both assumptions are, of course, groundless. The first implies not
-     only that our own conduct and our own ideas need no examination,
-     but that ideas current in one country have no reaction on those of
-     another, and that the political action of one State does not affect
-     that of others. "The way to be sure of peace is to be so much
-     stronger than your enemy that he will not dare to attack you," is
-     the type of accepted and much-applauded "axioms" the unfortunate
-     corollary of which is (since both parties can adopt the rule) that
-     peace will only be finally achieved when each is stronger than the
-     other.
-
-     'So thought and acted the man with the stone axe in our
-     illustration, and in both cases the psychological motive is the
-     same: the long-inherited impulse to isolated action, to the
-     solution of a difficulty by some simple form of physical movement;
-     the tendency to break through the more lately acquired habit of
-     action based on social compact and on the mental realisation of its
-     advantage. It is the reaction against intellectual effort and
-     responsible control of instinct, a form of natural protest very
-     common in children and in adults not brought under the influence of
-     social discipline.
-
-     'The same general characteristics are as recognisable in militarist
-     politics within the nation as in the international field. It is not
-     by accident that Prussian and Bismarckian conceptions in foreign
-     policy are invariably accompanied by autocratic conceptions in
-     internal affairs. Both are founded upon a belief in force as the
-     ultimate determinant in human conduct; a disbelief in the things of
-     the mind as factors of social control, a disbelief in moral forces
-     that cannot be expressed in "blood and iron." The impatience shown
-     by the militarist the world over at government by discussion, his
-     desire to "shut up the talking shops" and to govern autocratically,
-     are but expressions of the same temper and attitude.
-
-     'The forms which Governments have taken and the general method of
-     social management, are in large part the result of its influence.
-     Most Governments are to-day framed far more as instruments for the
-     exercise of physical force than as instruments of social
-     management.
-
-     'The militarist does not allow that man has free will in the matter
-     of his conduct at all; he insists that mechanical forces on the one
-     side or the other alone determine which of two given courses shall
-     be taken; the ideas which either hold, the role of intelligent
-     volition, apart from their influence in the manipulation of
-     physical force, play no real part in human society. "Prussianism,"
-     Bismarckian "blood and iron," are merely political expressions of
-     this belief in the social field--the belief that force alone can
-     decide things; that it is not man's business to question authority
-     in politics or authority in the form of inevitability in nature. It
-     is not a question of who is right, but of who is stronger. "Fight
-     it out, and right will be on the side of the victor"--on the side,
-     that is, of the heaviest metal or the heaviest muscle, or, perhaps,
-     on that of the one who has the sun at his back, or some other
-     advantage of external nature. The blind material things--not the
-     seeing mind and the soul of man--are the ultimate sanction of human
-     society.
-
-     'Such a doctrine, of course, is not only profoundly anti-social, it
-     is anti-human--fatal not merely to better international relations,
-     but, in the end, to the degree to which it influences human conduct
-     at all, to all those large freedoms which man has so painfully won.
-
-     'This philosophy makes of man's acts, not something into which
-     there enters the element of moral responsibility and free volition,
-     something apart from and above the mere mechanical force of
-     external nature, but it makes man himself a helpless slave; it
-     implies that his moral efforts and the efforts of his mind and
-     understanding are of no worth--that he is no more the master of his
-     conduct than the tiger of his, or the grass and the trees of
-     theirs, and no more responsible.
-
-     'To this philosophy the "civilist" may oppose another: that in man
-     there is that which sets him apart from the plants and the animals,
-     which gives him control of and responsibility for his social acts,
-     which makes him the master of his social destiny if he but will it;
-     that by virtue of the forces of his mind he may go forward to the
-     completer conquest, not merely of nature, but of himself, and
-     thereby, and by that alone, redeem human association from the evils
-     that now burden it.'
-
-
-_From Balance to Community of Power_
-
-Does the foregoing imply that force or compulsion has no place in human
-society? Not the least in the world. The conclusions so far drawn might
-be summarised, and certain remaining ones suggested, thus:--
-
-     Coercion has its place in human society, and the considerations
-     here urged do not imply any sweeping theory of non-resistance. They
-     are limited to the attempt to show that the effectiveness of
-     political power depends upon certain moral elements usually utterly
-     neglected in international politics, and particularly that
-     instincts inseparable from Nationalism as now cultivated and
-     buttressed by prevailing political morality, must condemn political
-     power to futility. Two broad principles of policy are available:
-     that looking towards isolated national power, or that looking
-     towards common power behind a common purpose. The second may fail;
-     it has risks. But the first is bound to fail. The fact would be
-     self-evident but for the push of certain instincts warping our
-     judgment in favour of the first. If mankind decides that it can do
-     better than the first policy, it will do better. If it decides that
-     it cannot, that decision will itself make failure inevitable. Our
-     whole social salvation depends upon making the right choice.
-
-In an earlier chapter certain stultifications of the Balance of Power as
-applied to the international situation were dealt with. It was there
-pointed out that if you could get such a thing as a real Balance, that
-would certainly be a situation tempting the hot-heads of both sides to a
-trial of strength. An obvious preponderance of power on one side might
-check the temper of the other. A 'balance' would assuredly act as no
-check. But preponderance has an even worse result.
-
-How in practical politics are we to say when a group has become
-preponderantly powerful? We know to our cost that military power is
-extremely difficult of precise estimate. It cannot be weighed and
-balanced exactly. In political practice, therefore, the Balance of Power
-means a rivalry of power, because each to be on the safe side wants to
-be just a bit stronger than the other. The competition creates of itself
-the very condition it sets out to prevent.
-
-The defect of principle here is not the employment of force. It is the
-refusal to put force behind a law which may demand our allegiance. The
-defect lies in the attempt to make ourselves and our own interests by
-virtue of preponderant power superior to law.
-
-The feature which stood condemned in the old order was not the
-possession by States of coercive power. Coercion is an element in every
-good society that we have heretofore known. The evil of the old order
-was that in case of States the Power was anti-social; that it was not
-pledged to the service of some code or rule designed for mutual
-protection, but was the irresponsible possession of each individual,
-maintained for the express purpose of enabling him to enforce his own
-views of his own rights, to be judge and executioner in his own case,
-when his view came into collision with that of others. The old effort
-meant in reality the attempt on the part of a group of States to
-maintain in their own favour a preponderance of force of undefined and
-unlimited purpose. Any opposing group that found itself in a position of
-manifest inferiority had in fact to submit in international affairs to
-the decision of the possessor of preponderant power for the time being.
-It might be used benevolently; in that case the weaker obtained his
-rights as a gift from the stronger. But so long as the possession of
-power was unaccompanied by any defined obligation, there could be no
-democracy of States, no Society of Nations. To destroy the power of the
-preponderant group meant merely to transpose the situation. The security
-of one meant always the insecurity of the other.
-
-The Balance of Power in fact adopts the fundamental premise of the
-'might makes right' principle, because it regards power as the ultimate
-fact in politics; whereas the ultimate fact is the purpose for which the
-power will be used. Obviously you don't want a Balance of Power between
-justice and injustice, law and crime; between anarchy and order. You
-want a preponderance of power on the side of justice, of law and of
-order.
-
-We approach here one of the commonest and most disastrous confusions
-touching the employment of force in human society, particularly in the
-Society of Nations.
-
-It is easy enough to make play with the absurdities and contradictions
-of the _si vis pacem para bellum_ of our militarists. And the hoary
-falsehood does indeed involve a flouting of all experience, an
-intellectual astigmatism that almost makes one despair. But what is the
-practical alternative?
-
-The anti-militarist who disparages our reliance upon 'force' is almost
-as remote from reality, for all society as we know it in practice, or
-have ever known it, does rely a great deal upon the instrument of
-'force,' upon restraint and coercion.
-
-We have seen where the competition in arming among European nations has
-led us. But it may be argued: suppose you were greatly to reduce all
-round, cut in half, say, the military equipment of Europe, would the
-power for mutual destruction be sensibly reduced, the security of Europe
-sensibly greater? 'Adequacy' and 'destructiveness' of armament are
-strictly relative terms. A country with a couple of battleships has
-overwhelming naval armament if its opponent has none. A dozen
-machine-guns or a score of rifles against thousands of unarmed people
-may be more destructive of life than a hundred times that quantity of
-material facing forces similarly armed. (Fifty rifles at Amritsar
-accounted for two thousand killed and wounded, without a single casualty
-on the side of the troops.) Wars once started, instruments of
-destruction can be rapidly improvised, as we know. And this will be
-truer still when we have progressed from poison gas to disease germs, as
-we almost certainly shall.
-
-The first confusion is this:--
-
-The issue is made to appear as between the 'spiritual' and the
-'material'; as between material force, battleships, guns, armies on the
-one side as one method, and 'spiritual' factors, persuasion, moral
-goodness on the other side, as the contrary method. 'Force v. Faith,' as
-some evangelical writer has put it. The debate between the Nationalist
-and the Internationalist is usually vitiated at the outset by an
-assumption which, though generally common to the two parties, is not
-only unproven, but flatly contrary to the weight of evidence. The
-assumption is that the military Nationalist, basing his policy upon
-material force--a preponderant navy, a great army, superior
-artillery--can dispense with the element of trust, contract, treaty.
-
-Now to state the issue in that way creates a gross confusion, and the
-assumption just indicated is quite unjustifiable. The militarist quite
-as much as the anti-militarist, the nationalist quite as much as the
-internationalist, has to depend upon a moral factor, 'a contract,' the
-force of tradition, and of morality. Force cannot operate at all in
-human affairs without a decision of the human mind and will. Guns do not
-get pointed and go off without a mind behind them, and as already
-insisted, the direction in which the gun shoots is determined by the
-mind which must be reached by a form of moral suasion, discipline, or
-tradition; the mind behind the gun will be influenced by patriotism in
-one case, or by a will to rebellion and mutiny, prompted by another
-tradition or persuasion, in another. And obviously the moral decision,
-in the circumstances with which we are dealing, goes much deeper and
-further back. The building of battleships, or the forming of armies, the
-long preparation which is really behind the material factor, implies a
-great deal of 'faith.' These armies and navies could never have been
-brought into existence and be manoeuvred without vast stores of faith
-and tradition. Whether the army serves the nation, as in Britain or
-France, or dominates it as in a Spanish-American Republic (or in a
-somewhat different sense in Prussia), depends on a moral factor: the
-nature of the tradition which inspires the people from whom the army is
-drawn. Whether the army obeys its officers or shoots them is determined
-by moral not material factors, for the officers have not a preponderance
-of physical force over the men. You cannot form a pirate crew without a
-moral factor: the agreement not to use force against one another, but to
-act in consort and combine it against the prey. Whether the military
-material we and France supplied Russia, and the armies France helped to
-train, are employed against us or the Germans, depends upon certain
-moral and political factors inside Russia, certain ideas formed in the
-minds of certain men. It is not a situation of Ideas against Guns, but
-of ideas using guns. The confusion involves a curious distortion in our
-reading of the history of the struggle against privilege and tyranny.
-
-Usually when we speak of the past struggles of the people against
-tyranny, we have in our minds a picture of the great mass held down by
-the superior physical force of the tyrant. But such a picture is, of
-course, quite absurd. For the physical force which held down the people
-was that which they themselves supplied. The tyrant had no physical
-force save that with which his victims furnished him. In this struggle
-of 'People _v._ Tyrant,' obviously the weight of physical force was on
-the side of the people. This was as true of the slave States of
-antiquity as it is of the modern autocracies. Obviously the free
-minority--the five or ten or fifteen per cent.--of Rome or Egypt, or the
-governing orders of Prussia or Russia, did not impose their will upon
-the remainder by virtue of superior physical force, the sheer weight of
-numbers, of sinew and muscle. If the tyranny of the minority had
-depended upon its own physical power, it could not have lasted a day.
-The physical force which the minority used was the physical force of the
-majority. The people were oppressed by an instrument which they
-themselves furnished.
-
-In that picture, therefore, which we make of the mass of mankind
-struggling against the 'force' of tyranny, we must remember that the
-force against which they struggled was not in the last analysis physical
-force at all; it was their own weight from which they desired to be
-liberated.
-
-Do we realise all that this means? It means that tyranny has been
-imposed, as freedom has been won: through the Mind.
-
-The small minority imposes itself and can only impose itself by getting
-first at the mind of the majority--the people--in one form or another:
-by controlling it through keeping knowledge from it, as in so much of
-antiquity, or by controlling the knowledge itself, as in Germany. It is
-because the minds of the masses have failed them that they have been
-enslaved. Without that intellectual failure of the masses, tyranny could
-have found no force wherewith to impose its burdens.
-
-This confusion as to the relation of 'force' to the moral factor is of
-all confusions most worth while clearing up: and for that purpose we may
-descend to homely illustrations.
-
-You have a disorderly society, a frontier mining camp, every man armed,
-every man threatened by the arms of his neighbour and every man in
-danger. What is the first need in restoring order? More force--more
-revolvers and bowie knives? No; every man is fully armed already. If
-there exists in this disorder the germ of order some attempt will be
-made to move towards the creation of a police. But what is the
-indispensable prerequisite for the success of such an effort? It is the
-capacity for a nucleus of the community to act in common, to agree
-together to make the beginnings of a community. And unless that nucleus
-can achieve agreement--a moral and intellectual problem--there can be no
-police force. But be it noted well, this first prerequisite--the
-agreement among a few members necessary to create the first Vigilance
-Committee--is not force; it is a decision of certain minds determining
-how force shall be used, how combined. Even when you have got as far as
-the police, this device of social protection will entirely break down
-unless the police itself can be trusted to obey the constituted
-authority, and the constituted authority itself to abide by the law. If
-the police represents a mere preponderance of power, using that power to
-create a privileged position for itself or for its employers--setting
-itself, that is, against the community--you will sooner or later get
-resistance which will ultimately neutralise that power and produce a
-mere paralysis so far as any social purpose is concerned. The existence
-of the police depends upon general agreement not to use force except as
-the instrument of the social will, the law to which all are party. This
-social will may not exist; the members of the vigilance committee or
-town council or other body may themselves use their revolvers and knives
-each against the other. Very well, in that case you will get no police.
-'Force' will not remedy it. Who is to use the force if no one man can
-agree with the other? All along the line here we find ourselves,
-whatever our predisposition to trust only 'force,' thrown back upon a
-moral factor, compelled to rely upon contract, an agreement, before we
-can use force at all.
-
-It will be noted incidentally that effective social force does not rest
-upon a Balance of Power: society does not need a Balance of Power as
-between the law and crime; it wants a preponderance of power on the
-side of the law. One does not want a Balance of Power between rival
-parties in the State. One wants a preponderance of power on behalf of a
-certain fundamental code upon which all parties, or an immense majority
-of parties, will be agreed. As against the Balance of Power we need a
-Community of Power--to use Mr. Wilson's phrase--on the side of a purpose
-or code of which the contributors to the power are aware.
-
-One may read in learned and pretentious political works that the
-ultimate basis of a State is force--the army--which is the means by
-which the State's authority is maintained. But who compels the army to
-carry out the State's orders rather than its own will or the personal
-will of its commander? _Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?_ The following
-passage from an address delivered by the present writer in America may
-perhaps help to make the point clear:--
-
-     'When, after the counting of the votes, you ask Mr Wilson to step
-     down from the President's chair, how do you know he will get down?
-     I repeat, How do you know he will get down? You think that a
-     foolish and fantastic question? But, in a great many interesting
-     American republics, Mexico, Venezuela, or Hayti, he would not get
-     down! You say, "Oh, the army would turn him out." I beg your
-     pardon. It is Mr Wilson who commands the army; it is not the army
-     that commands Mr Wilson. Again, in many American republics a
-     President who can depend on his army, when asked to get out of the
-     Presidency, would reply almost as a matter of course, "Why should I
-     get down when I have an army that stands by me?"
-
-     'How do we know that Mr Wilson, able, we will assume, to count on
-     his army, or, if you prefer, some President particularly popular
-     with the army, will not do that? Is it physical force which
-     prevents it? If so, whose? You may say: "If he did that, he knows
-     that the country would raise an army of rebellion to turn him out."
-     Well, suppose it did? You raise this army, as they would in
-     Mexico, or Venezuela, and the army turns him out. And your man gets
-     into the Presidential chair, and then, when you think he has stolen
-     enough, you vote _him_ down. He would do precisely the same thing.
-     He would say: "My dear people, as very great philosophers tell you,
-     the State is Force, and as a great French monarch once said. 'I am
-     the State.' _J'y suis, j'y reste._". And then you would have to get
-     another army of rebellion to turn _him_ out--just as they do in
-     Mexico, Venezuela, Hayti, or Honduras.'
-
-There, then, is the crux of the matter. Every constitution at times
-breaks down. But if that fact were a conclusive argument for the
-anarchical arming of each man against the other as preferable to a
-police enforcing law, there could be no human society. The object of
-constitutional machinery for change is to make civil war unnecessary.
-
-There will be no advance save through an improved tradition. Perhaps it
-will be impossible to improve the tradition. Very well, then the old
-order, whether among the nations of Europe or the political parties of
-Venezuela, will remain unchanged. More 'force,' more soldiers, will not
-do it. The disturbed areas of Spanish-America each show a greater number
-of soldiers to population than States like Massachusetts or Ohio. So in
-the international solution. What would it have availed if Britain had
-quadrupled the quantity of rifles to Koltchak's peasant soldiers so long
-as his land policy caused them to turn their rifles against his
-Government? Or for France to have multiplied many times the loans made
-to the Ukraine, if at the same time the loans made to Poland so fed
-Polish nationalism that the Ukrainians preferred making common cause
-with the Bolsheviks to becoming satellites of an Imperialist Poland? Do
-we add to the 'force' of the Alliance by increasing the military power
-of Serbia, if that fact provokes her to challenge Italy? Do we
-strengthen it by increasing at one and the same time the military forces
-of two States--say Poland and Czecho-Slovakia--if the nationalism which
-we nurse leads finally to those two States turning their forces one
-against the other? Unless we know the policy (again a thing of the mind,
-of opinion) which will determine the use to which guns will be put, it
-does not increase our security--it may diminish it--to add more guns.
-
-
-_The Alternative Risks_
-
-We see, therefore, that the alternatives are not in fact a choice
-between 'material' and 'spiritual' means. The material can only operate,
-whether for our defence or against us, by virtue of a spiritual thing,
-the will. 'The direction in which the gun will shoot'--a rather
-important point in its effectiveness as a defensive weapon--depends not
-on the gun but on the mind of the man using it, the moral factor. The
-two cannot be separated.
-
-It is untrue to say that the knife is a magic instrument, saving the
-cancer patient's life: it is the mind of the surgeon using the material
-thing in a certain way which saves the patient's life. A child or savage
-who, failing to realise the part played by the invisible element of the
-surgeon's mind, should deem that a knife of a particular pattern used
-'boldly' could be depended upon to cure cancer, would merely, of course
-commit manslaughter.
-
-It is foolish to talk of an absolute guarantee of security by force, as
-of guarantee of success in surgical operations by perfection of knives.
-In both cases we are dealing with instruments, indispensable, but not of
-themselves enough. The mind behind the instrument, technical in one
-case, social in the other, may in both cases fail; then we must improve
-it. Merely to go on sharpening the knife, to go on applying, for
-instance, to the international problem more 'force,' in the way it has
-been applied in the past, can only give us in intenser degree the
-present results.
-
-Yet the truth here indicated is perpetually being disregarded,
-particularly by those who pique themselves on being 'practical.' In the
-choice of risks by men of the world and realist statesmen the choice
-which inevitably leads to destruction is for ever being made on grounds
-of safety; the choice which leads at least in the direction of security
-is for ever being rejected on the grounds of its danger.
-
-Why is this? The choice is instinctive assuredly; it is not the result
-of 'hard-headed calculation' though it often professes to be. We speak
-of it as the 'protective' instinct. But it is a protective instinct
-which obviously destroys us.
-
-I am suggesting here that, at the bottom of the choice in favour of the
-Balance of Power or preponderance as a political method, is neither the
-desire for safety nor the desire to place 'might behind right,' but the
-desire for domination, the instinct of self-assertion, the anti-social
-wish to be judge in our own case; and further, that the way out of the
-difficulty is to discipline this instinct by a better social tradition.
-To do that we must discredit the old tradition--create a different
-feeling about it; to which end it is indispensable to face frankly the
-nature of its moral origins; to look its motives in the face.[68]
-
-It is extremely suggestive in this connection that the 'realist'
-politician, the 'hard-headed practical man,' disdainful of Sunday School
-standards,' in his defence of national necessity, is quite ready to be
-contemptuous of national safety and interest when these latter point
-plainly to a policy of international agreement as against domination.
-Agreement is then rejected as pusillanimous, and consideration for
-national interest as placing 'pocket before patriotism.' We are then
-reminded, even by the most realist of nationalists, that nations live
-for higher things than 'profit' or even safety. 'Internationalism,' says
-Colonel Roosevelt, 'inevitably emasculates its sincere votaries,' and
-'every civilisation worth calling such' must be based 'on a spirit of
-intense nationalism.' For Colonel Roosevelt or General Wood in America
-as for Mr Kipling, or Mr Chesterton, or Mr Churchill, or Lord
-Northciffe, or Mr Bottomley, and a vast host of poets, professors,
-editors, historians, bishops, publicists of all sorts in England and
-France, 'Internationalist' and 'Pacifist' are akin to political atheist.
-A moral consideration now replaces the 'realist.' The metamorphosis is
-only intelligible on the assumption here suggested that both
-explanations or justifications are a rationalisation of the impulse to
-power and domination.
-
-Our political, quite as much as our social, conduct is in the main the
-result of motives that are mainly unconscious instinct, habit,
-unquestioned tradition. So long as we find the result satisfactory, well
-and good. But when the result of following instinct is disaster, we
-realise that the time has come to 'get outside ourselves,' to test our
-instincts by their social result. We have then to see whether the
-'reasons' we have given for our conduct are really its motives. That
-examination is the first step to rendering the unconscious motive
-conscious. In considering, for instance, the two methods indicated in
-this chapter, we say, in 'rationalising' our decision, that we chose the
-lesser of two risks. I am suggesting that in the choice of the method of
-the Balance of Power our real motive was not desire to achieve security,
-but domination. It is just because our motives are not mainly
-intellectual but 'instinctive' that the desire for domination is so
-likely to have played the determining role: for few instincts and
-innate desires are stronger than that which pushes to 'self-affirmation'--the
-assertion of preponderant force.
-
-We have indeed seen that the Balance of Power means in practice the
-determination to secure a preponderance of power. What is a 'Balance?'
-The two sides will not agree on that, and each to be sure will want it
-tilted in its favour. We decline to place ourselves within the power of
-another who may differ from us as to our right. We demand to be
-stronger, in order that we may be judge in our own case. This means that
-we shall resist the claim of others to exactly the same thing.
-
-The alternative is partnership. It means trust. But we have seen that
-the exercise of any form of force, other than that which one single
-individual can wield, must involve an element of 'trust.' The soldiers
-must be trusted to obey the officers, since the former have by far the
-preponderance of force; the officers must be trusted to obey the
-constitution instead of challenging it; the police must be trusted to
-obey the authorities; the Cabinet must be trusted to obey the electoral
-decision; the members of an alliance to work together instead of against
-one another, and so on. Yet the assumption of the 'Power Politician' is
-that the method which has succeeded (notably within the State) is the
-'idealistic' but essentially unpractical method in which security and
-advantage are sacrificed to Utopian experiment; while the method of
-competitive armament, however distressing it may be to the Sunday
-Schools, is the one that gives us real security. 'The way to be sure of
-preserving peace,' says Mr Churchill, 'is to be so much stronger than
-your enemy that he won't dare to attack you.' In other words it is
-obvious that the way for two people to keep the peace is for each to be
-stronger than the other.
-
-'You may have made your front door secure' says Marshal Foch, arguing
-for the Rhine frontier, 'but you may as well make sure by having a good
-high garden wall as well.'
-
-'Make sure,' that is the note--_si vis pacem_.... And he can be sure
-that 'the average practical man,' who prides himself on 'knowing human
-nature' and 'distrusting theories' will respond to the appeal. Every
-club smoking room will decide that 'the simple soldier' knows his
-business and has judged human forces aright.
-
-Yet of course the simple truth is that the 'hard-headed soldier' has
-chosen the one ground upon which all experience, all the facts, are
-against him. Then how is he able to 'get away with it'--to ride off
-leaving at least the impression of being a sternly practical
-unsentimental man of the world by virtue of having propounded an
-aphorism which all practical experience condemns? Here is Mr Churchill.
-He is talking to hard-headed Lancashire manufacturers. He desires to
-show that he too is no theorist, that he also can be hard-headed and
-practical. And he--who really does know the mind of the 'hard-headed
-business man'--is perfectly aware that the best road to those hard heads
-is to propound an arrant absurdity, to base a proposed line of policy on
-the assumption of a physical impossibility, to follow a will-o'-the-wisp
-which in all recorded history has led men into a bog.
-
-They applaud Mr Churchill, not because he has put before them a cold
-calculation of relative risk in the matter of maintaining peace, an
-indication, where, on the whole, the balance of safety lies; Mr
-Churchill, of course, knows perfectly well that, while professing to do
-that, he has been doing nothing of the sort. He has, in reality, been
-appealing to a sentiment, the emotion which is strongest and steadiest
-in the 'hard-faced men' who have elbowed their way to the top in a
-competitive society. He has 'rationalised' that competitive sentiment of
-domination by putting forward a 'reason' which can be avowed to them and
-to others.
-
-Colonel Roosevelt managed to inject into his reasons for predominance a
-moral strenuousness which Mr Churchill does not achieve.
-
-The following is a passage from one of the last important speeches made
-by Colonel Roosevelt--twice President of the United States and one of
-the out-standing figures in the world in his generation:--
-
-     'Friends, be on your guard against the apostles of weakness and
-     folly when peace comes. They will tell you that this is the last
-     great war. They will tell you that they can make paper treaties and
-     agreements and guarantees by which brutal and unscrupulous men will
-     have their souls so softened that weak and timid men won't have
-     anything to fear and that brave and honest men won't have to
-     prepare to defend themselves.
-
-     'Well, we have seen that all such treaties are worth less than
-     scraps of paper when it becomes to the interests of powerful and
-     ruthless militarist nations to disregard them.... After this War is
-     over, these foolish pacifist creatures will again raise their
-     piping voices against preparedness and in favour of patent devices
-     for maintaining peace without effort. Let us enter into every
-     reasonable agreement which bids fair to minimise the chances of war
-     and to circumscribe its area.... But let us remember it is a
-     hundred times more important for us to prepare our strength for our
-     own defence than to enter any of these peace treaties, and that if
-     we thus prepare our strength for our own defence we shall minimise
-     the chances of war as no paper treaties can possibly minimise them;
-     and we shall thus make our views effective for peace and justice in
-     the world at large as in no other way can they be made
-     effective.'[69]
-
-Let us dispose of one or two of the more devastating confusions in the
-foregoing.
-
-First there is the everlasting muddle as to the internationalist
-attitude towards the likelihood of war. To Colonel Roosevelt one is an
-internationalist or 'pacifist' because one thinks war will not take
-place. Whereas probably the strongest motive of internationalism is the
-conviction that without it war is inevitable, that in a world of rival
-nationalisms war cannot be avoided. If those who hate war believe that
-the present order will without effort give them peace, why in the name
-of all the abuse which their advocacy brings on their heads should they
-bother further about the matter?
-
-Secondly, internationalism is assumed to be the _alternative_ to the
-employment of force or power of arms, whereas it is the organisation of
-force, of power (latent or positive) to a common--an international--end.
-
-Our incurable habit of giving to homely but perfectly healthy and
-justifiable reasons of conduct a high faluting romanticism sometimes
-does morality a very ill service. When in political situations--as in
-the making of a Peace Treaty--a nation is confronted by the general
-alternative we are now discussing, the grounds of opposition to a
-co-operative or 'Liberal' or 'generous' settlement are almost always
-these: 'Generosity' is lost upon a people as crafty and treacherous as
-the enemy; he mistakes generosity for weakness; he will take advantage
-of it; his nature won't be softened by mild treatment; he understands
-nothing but force.
-
-The assumption is that the liberal policy is based upon an appeal to the
-better side of the enemy; upon arousing his nobler nature. And such an
-assumption concerning the Hun or the Bolshevik, for instance (or at an
-earlier date, the Boer or the Frenchman), causes the very gorge of the
-Roosevelt-Bottomley patriot to rise in protest. He simply does not
-believe in the effective operation of so remote a motive.
-
-But the real ground of defence for the liberal policy is not the
-existence of an abnormal if heretofore successfully disguised nobility
-on the part of the enemy, but of his very human if not very noble fears
-which, from our point of view, it is extremely important not to arouse
-or justify. If our 'punishment' of him creates in his mind the
-conviction that we are certain to use our power for commercial
-advantage, or that in any case our power is a positive danger to him,
-he _will_ use his recovered economic strength for the purpose of
-resisting it; and we should face a fact so dangerous and costly to us.
-
-To take cognisance of this fact, and to shape our policy accordingly is
-not to attribute to the enemy any particular nobility of motive. But
-almost always when that policy is attacked, it is attacked on the ground
-of its 'Sunday School' assumption of the accessibility of the enemy to
-gratitude or 'softening' in Colonel Roosevelt's phrase.
-
-We reach in the final analysis of the interplay of motive a very clear
-political pragmatism. Either policy will justify itself, and by the way
-it works out in practice, prove that it is right.
-
-Here is a statesman--Italian, say--who takes the 'realist' view, and
-comes to a Peace Conference which may settle for centuries the position
-of his country in the world--its strength, its capacity for defending
-itself, the extent of its resources. In the world as he knows it, a
-country has one thing, and one thing only, upon which it can depend for
-its national security and the defence of its due rights; and that thing
-is its own strength. Italy's adequate defence must include the naval
-command of the Adriatic and a strategic position in the Tyrol. This
-means deep harbours on the Dalmatian coast and the inclusion in the
-Tyrol of a very considerable non-Italian population. To take them may,
-it is true, not only violate the principle of nationality but shut off
-the new Yugo-Slav nation from access to the sea and exchange one
-irredentism for another. But what can the 'realist' Italian statesman,
-whose first duty is to his own country do? He is sorry, but his own
-nationality and its due protection are concerned; and the Italian nation
-will be insecure without those frontiers and those harbours.
-Self-preservation is the law of life for nations as for other living
-things. You have, unfortunately, a condition in which the security of
-one means the insecurity of another, and if a statesman in these
-circumstances has to choose which of the two is to be secure, he must
-choose his own country.
-
-Some day, of course, there may come into being a League of Nations so
-effective that nations can really look to it for their safety. Meantime
-they must look to themselves. But, unfortunately, for each nation to
-take these steps about strategic frontiers means not only killing the
-possibility of an effective League: it means, sooner or later, killing
-the military alliance which is the alternative. If one Alsace-Lorraine
-could poison European politics in the way it did, what is going to be
-the effect ultimately of the round dozen that we have created under the
-treaty? The history of Britain in reference to Arab and Egyptian
-Nationality; of France in relation to Poland and other Russian border
-States; of all the Allies in reference to Japanese ambitions in China
-and Siberia, reveals what is, fundamentally, a precisely similar
-dilemma.
-
-When the statesmen--Italian or other--insist upon strategic frontiers
-and territories containing raw materials, on the ground that a nation
-must look to itself because we live in a world in which international
-arrangements cannot be depended on, they can be quite certain that the
-reason they give is a sound one: because their own action will make it
-so: their action creates the very conditions to which they appeal as the
-reason for it. Their decision, with the popular impulse of sacred egoism
-which supports it, does something more than repudiate Mr Wilson's
-principles; it is the beginning of the disruption of the Alliance upon
-which their countries have depended. The case is put in a manifesto
-issued a year or two ago by a number of eminent Americans from which we
-have already quoted in Chapter III.
-
-It says:--
-
-     'If, as in the past, nations must look for their future security
-     chiefly to their own strength and resources, then inevitably, in
-     the name of the needs of national defence, there will be claims for
-     strategic frontiers and territories with raw material which do
-     violence to the principle of nationality. Afterwards those who
-     suffer from such violations would be opposed to the League of
-     Nations, because it would consecrate the injustice of which they
-     would be the victims. A refusal to trust to the League of Nations,
-     and a demand for "material" guarantees for future safety, will set
-     up that very distrust which will afterwards be appealed to as
-     justification for regarding the League as impracticable because it
-     inspires no general confidence. A bold "Act of Political Faith" in
-     the League will justify itself by making the League a success; but,
-     equally, lack of faith will justify itself by ruining the League.'
-
-That is why, when in the past the realist statesman has sometimes
-objected that he does not believe in internationalism because it is not
-practical, I have replied that it is not practical because he does not
-believe in it.
-
-The prerequisite to the creation of a society is the Social Will. And
-herein lies the difficulty of making any comparative estimate of the
-respective risks of the alternative courses. We admit that if the
-nations would sink their sacred egoisms and pledge their power to mutual
-and common protection, the risk of such a course would disappear. We get
-the paradox that there is no risk if we all take the risk. But each
-refuses to begin. William James has illustrated the position:--
-
-     'I am climbing the Alps, and have had the ill luck to work myself
-     into a position from which the only escape is by a terrible leap.
-     Being without similar experience, I have no evidence of my ability
-     to perform it successfully; but hope and confidence in myself make
-     me sure that I shall not miss my aim, and nerve my feet to execute
-     what, without those subjective emotions, would have been
-     impossible.
-
-     'But suppose that, on the contrary, the emotions ... of mistrust
-     predominate.... Why, then, I shall hesitate so long that at last,
-     exhausted and trembling, and launching myself in a moment of
-     despair, I miss my foothold and roll into the abyss. In this case,
-     and it is one of an immense class, the part of wisdom is to believe
-     what one desires; for the belief is one of the indispensable,
-     preliminary conditions of the realisation of its object. There are
-     cases where faith creates its own justification. Believe, and you
-     shall be right, for you shall save yourself; doubt, and you shall
-     again be right, for you shall perish.'
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-THE SPIRITUAL ROOTS OF THE SETTLEMENT
-
-
-_'Human Nature is always what it is'_
-
-'You may argue as much as you like. All the logic chopping will never
-get over the fact that human nature is always what it is. Nations will
-always fight.... always retaliate at victory.'
-
-If that be true, and our pugnacities, and hates, and instincts
-generally, are uncontrollable, and they dictate conduct, no more is to
-be said. We are the helpless victims of outside forces, and may as well
-surrender, without further discussion, or political agitation, or
-propaganda. For if those appeals to our minds can neither determine the
-direction nor modify the manifestation of our innate instincts, nor
-influence conduct, one rather wonders at our persistence in them.
-
-Why so many of us find an obvious satisfaction in this fatalism, so
-patently want it to be true, and resort to it in such convenient
-disregard of the facts, has been in some measure indicated in the
-preceding chapter. At bottom it comes to this: that it relieves us of so
-much trouble and responsibility; the life of instinct and emotion is so
-easily flowing a thing, and that of social restraints and rationalised
-decisions so cold and dry and barren.
-
-At least that is the alternative as many of us see it. And if the only
-alternative to an impulse spending itself in hostilities and hatreds
-destructive of social cohesion, were the sheer restraint of impulse by
-calculation and reason; if our choice were truly between chaos,
-anarchy, and the perpetual repression of all spontaneous and vigorous
-impulse--then the choice of a fatalistic refusal to reason would be
-justifiable.
-
-But happily that is not the alternative. The function of reason and
-discipline is not to repress instinct and impulse, but to turn those
-forces into directions in which they may have free play without
-disaster. The function of the compass is not to check the power of the
-ship's engines; it is to indicate a direction in which the power can be
-given full play, because the danger of running on to the rocks has been
-obviated.
-
-Let us first get the mere facts straight--facts as they have worked out
-in the War and the Peace.
-
-It is not true that the directions taken by our instincts cannot in any
-way be determined by our intelligence. 'A man's impulses are not fixed
-from the beginning by his native disposition: within certain limits they
-are profoundly modified by his circumstances and way of life.'[70] What
-we regard as the 'instinctive' part of our character is, again, within
-large limits very malleable: by beliefs, by social circumstances, by
-institutions, and above all by the suggestibility of tradition, the work
-is often of individual minds.
-
-It is not so much the _character_ of our impulsive and instinctive life
-that is changed by these influences, as the direction. The elements of
-human nature may remain unchangeable, but the manifestations resulting
-from the changing combinations may be infinitely various as are the
-forms of matter which result from changing combinations of the same
-primary elements.
-
-It is not a choice between a life of impulse and emotion on the one
-side, and wearisome repressions on the other. The perception that
-certain needs are vital will cause us to use our emotional energy for
-one purpose instead of another. And just because the traditions that
-have grouped around nationalism turn our combativeness into the
-direction of war, the energy brought into play by that impulse is not
-available for the creativeness of peace. Having become habituated to a
-certain reagent--the stimulus of some personal or visible enemy--energy
-fails to react to a stimulus which, with a different way of life, would
-have sufficed. Because we must have gin to summon up our energy, that is
-no proof that energy is impossible without it. It is hardly for an
-inebriate to laud the life of instinct and impulse. For the time being
-that is not the attitude and tendency that most needs encouragement.
-
-As to the fact that the instinctive and impulsive part of our behaviour
-is dirigible and malleable by tradition and discussion, that is not only
-admitted, but it is apt to be over-emphasised--by those who insist upon
-the 'unchangeability of human nature.' The importance which we attached
-to the repression of pacifist and defeatist propaganda during the War,
-and of Bolshevist agitation after the War, proves that we believe these
-feelings, that we allege to be unchangeable, can be changed too easily
-and readily by the influence of ideas, even wrong ones.
-
-The type of feeling which gave us the Treaty was in a large degree a
-manufactured feeling, in the sense that it was the result of opinion,
-formed day by day by a selection only of the facts. For this manufacture
-of opinion, we consciously created a very elaborate machinery, both of
-propaganda and of control of news. But that organisation of public
-opinion, justifiable in itself perhaps as a war measure, was not guided
-(as the result shows) by an understanding of what the political ends,
-which, in the early days of the War, we declared to be ours, would need
-in the way of psychology. Our machinery developed a psychology which
-made our higher political aims quite impossible of realisation.
-
-Public opinion, 'human nature,' would have been more manageable, its
-'instincts' would have been sounder, and we should have had a Europe
-less in disintegration, if we had told as far as possible that part of
-the truth which our public bodies (State, Church, Press, the School)
-were largely occupied in hiding. But the opinion which dictated the
-policy of repression is itself the result of refusing to face the truth.
-To tell the truth is the remedy here suggested.
-
-
-_The Paradox of the Peace_
-
-The supreme paradox of the Peace is this:--
-
-We went into the War with certain very definitely proclaimed principles,
-which we declared to be more valuable than the lives of the men that were
-sacrificed in their defence. We were completely victorious, and went into
-the Conference with full power, so far as enemy resistance was concerned,
-to put those principles into effect.[71] We did not use the victory which
-our young men had given us to that end, but for enforcing a policy which
-was in flat contradiction to the principles we had originally proclaimed.
-
-In some respects the spectacle is the most astounding of all history. It
-is literally true to say that millions of young soldiers gladly gave
-their lives for ideals to which the survivors, when they had the power
-to realise them (again so far as physical force can give us power,)
-showed complete indifference, sometimes a contemptuous hostility.
-
-It was not merely an act of the statesmen. The worst features of the
-Treaty were imposed by popular feeling--put into the Treaty by statesmen
-who did not believe in them, and only included them in order to satisfy
-public opinion. The policy of President Wilson failed in part because of
-the humane and internationalist opinion of the America of 1916 had
-become the fiercely chauvinist and coercive opinion of 1919, repudiating
-the President's efforts.
-
-Part of the story of these transformations has been told in the
-preceding pages. Let us summarise the story as a whole.
-
-We saw at the beginning of the War a real feeling for the right of
-peoples to choose their own form of government, for the principle of
-nationality. At the end of the War we deny that right in half a score of
-cases,[72] where it suits our momentary political or military interest.
-The very justification of 'necessity,' which shocks our conscience when
-put forward by the enemy, is the one we invoke callously at the
-peace--or before it, as when we agree to allow Czarist Russia to do what
-she will with Poland, and Italy with Serbia. Having sacrificed the small
-State to Russia in 1916, we are prepared to sacrifice Russia to the
-small State in 1919, by encouraging the formation of border
-independencies, which, if complete independencies, must throttle Russia,
-and which no 'White' Russian would accept. While encouraging the lesser
-States to make war on Russia, we subsidise White Russian military
-leaders who will certainly destroy the small States if successful. We
-entered the War for the destruction of militarism, and to make
-disarmament possible, declaring that German arms were the cause of our
-arms; and having destroyed German arms, we make ours greater than they
-were before the War, and introduce such new elements as the systematic
-arming of African savages for European warfare. We fought to make the
-secret bringing about of war by military or diplomatic cliques
-impossible, and after the Armistice the decision to wage war on the
-Russian Republic is made without even public knowledge, in opposition to
-sections in the Cabinets concerned, by cliques of whose composition the
-public is completely ignorant.[73] The invasion of Russia from the
-north, south, east, and west, by European, Asiatic, and negro troops, is
-made without a declaration of war, after a solemn statement by the chief
-spokesman of the Allies that there should be no invasion. Having
-declared, during the War, on a score of occasions, that we were not
-fighting against any right or interest of the German people[74]--or the
-German people at all--because we realised that only by ensuring that
-right and interest ourselves could we turn Germany from the ways of the
-past, at the peace we impose conditions which make it impossible for the
-German people even adequately to feed their population, and leave them
-no recourse but the recreation of their power. Having promised at the
-Armistice not to use our power for the purpose of preventing the due
-feeding of Germany, we continue for months a blockade which, even by the
-testimony of our own officials, creates famine conditions and literally
-kills very many of the children.
-
-At the beginning of the War, our statesmen, if not our public, had some
-rudimentary sense of the economic unity of mankind, of our need of one
-another's work, and the idea of blockading half a world in time of dire
-scarcity would have appalled them. Yet at the Armistice it was done so
-light-heartedly that, having at last abandoned it, they have never even
-explained what they proposed to accomplish by it, for, says Mr Maynard
-Keynes. 'It is an extraordinary fact that the fundamental economic
-problem of a Europe starving and disintegrating before their eyes, was
-the one question in which it was impossible to arouse the interest of
-the Four.'[75] At the beginning of the War we invoked high heaven to
-witness the danger and anomaly of autocratic government in our day. We
-were fighting for Parliamentary institutions, 'open Covenants openly
-arrived at.' After victory, we leave the real settlement of Europe to be
-made by two or three Prime Ministers, rendering no account of their
-secret deliberations and discussions to any Parliament until, in
-practice, it is too late to alter them. At the beginning of the War we
-were profoundly moved by the wickedness of military terrorism; at its
-close we employ it--whether by means of starvation, blockade, armed
-negro savages in German cities, reprisals in Ireland, or the ruthless
-slaughter of unarmed civilians in India--without creating any strong
-revulsion of feeling at home. At the beginning of the War we realised
-that the governmental organisation of hatred with the prostitution of
-art to 'hymns of hate' was vile and despicable. We copied that
-governmental organisation of hatred, and famous English authors duly
-produce _our_ hymns of hate.[76] We felt at the beginning that all human
-freedom was menaced by the German theory of the State as the master of
-man and not as his instrument, with all that means of political
-inquisition and repression. When some of its worst features are applied
-at home, we are so indifferent to the fact that we do not even recognise
-that the thing against which we fought has been imposed upon
-ourselves.[77]
-
-Many will dissent from this indictment. Yet its most important item--our
-indifference to the very evils against which we fought--is something
-upon which practically all witnesses testifying to the state of public
-opinion to-day agree. It is a commonplace of current discussion of
-present-day feeling. Take one or two at random, Sir Philip Gibbs and Mr.
-Sisley Huddleston, both English journalists. (I choose journalists
-because it is their business to know the nature of the public mind and
-spirit.) Speaking of the wholesale starvation, unimaginable misery, from
-the Baltic to the Black Sea, Mr. Huddleston writes:--
-
-     'We read these things. They make not the smallest impression on us.
-     Why? How is it that we are not horrified and do not resolve that
-     not for a single day shall any preventable evil exist? How is it,
-     that, on the contrary, for two years we have been cheerfully
-     engaged in intensifying the sum of human suffering? Why are we so
-     heedless? Why are we so callous? Why do we allow to be committed,
-     in our name, a thousand atrocities, and to be written, in our name
-     and for our delectation, a million vile words which reveal the most
-     amazing lack either of feeling or of common sense?
-
-     'There have been crimes perpetrated by the politicians--by all the
-     politicians--which no condemnation could fitly characterise. But
-     the peoples must be blamed. The peoples support the war-making
-     politicians. It is my business to follow the course of events day
-     by day, and it is sometimes difficult to stand back and take a
-     general view. Whenever I do so, I am appalled at the blundering or
-     the wickedness of the leaders of the world. Without party
-     prejudices or personal predilections, an impartial observer, I
-     cannot conceive how it is possible to be always blind to the truth,
-     the glaring truth, that since the Armistice we have never sought to
-     make peace, but have sought only some pretext and method for
-     prolonging the War.
-
-     'Hate exudes from every journal in speaking of certain peoples--a
-     weary hate, a conventional hate, a hate which is always whipping
-     itself into a passion. It is, perhaps, more strictly, apathy
-     masquerading as hate--which is worst of all. The people are
-     _blase_: they seek only bread and circuses for themselves. They
-     regard no bread for others as a rather boring circus for
-     themselves.'
-
-Mr. Huddleston was present throughout most of the Conference. This is
-his verdict:--
-
-     ' ... Cynicism soon became naked. In the East all pretence of
-     righteousness was abandoned. Every successive Treaty was more
-     frankly the expression of shameful appetites. There was no pretence
-     of conscience in politics. Force rules without disguise. What was
-     still more amazing was the way in which strife was stirred up
-     gratuitously. What advantage was it, even for a moment, to any one
-     to foment civil war in Russia, to send against the unhappy,
-     famine-stricken country army after army? The result was so
-     obviously to consolidate the Bolshevist Government around which
-     were obliged to rally all Russians who had the spirit of
-     nationality. It seemed as if everywhere we were plotting our own
-     ruin and hastening our own end. A strange dementia seized our
-     rulers, who thought peace, replenishment of empty larders, the
-     fraternisation of sorely tired nations, ignoble and delusive
-     objects. It appeared that war was for evermore to be humanity's
-     fate.
-
-     'Time after time I saw excellent opportunities of universal peace
-     deliberately rejected. There was somebody to wreck every Prinkipo,
-     every Spa. It was almost with dismay that all Europeans who had
-     kept their intelligence unclouded saw the frustration of peace, and
-     heard the peoples applaud the men who frustrated peace. I care not
-     whether they still enjoy esteem: history will judge them harshly
-     and will judge harshly the turbulence which men plumed themselves
-     on creating two years after the War.'
-
-As to the future:--
-
-     'If it is certain that France must force another fight with Germany
-     in a short span of years, if she pursues her present policy of
-     implacable antagonism; if it is certain that England is already
-     carefully seeking the European equilibrium, and that a responsible
-     minister has already written of the possibility of a military
-     accord with Germany; if there has been seen, owing to the foolish
-     belief of the Allies in force--a belief which increases in inverse
-     ratio to the Allied possession of effective force--the re-birth of
-     Russian militarism, as there will assuredly be seen the re-birth of
-     German militarism; if there are quarrels between Greece and Italy,
-     between Italy and the Jugo-Slavs, between Hungary and Austria,
-     between every tiny nation and its neighbour, even between England
-     and France, it is because, when war has once been invoked, it
-     cannot easily be exorcised. It will linger long in Europe: the
-     straw will smoulder and at any moment may break into flame....
-
-     'This is not lurid imagining: it is as logical as a piece of
-     Euclidean reasoning. Only by a violent effort to change our fashion
-     of seeing things can it be averted. War-making is now a habit.'
-
-And as to the outcome on the mind of the people:--
-
-     'The war has killed elasticity of mind, independence of judgment,
-     and liberty of expression. We think not so much of the truth as of
-     conforming to the tacitly accepted fiction of the hour.[78]
-
-Sir Philip Gibbs renders on the whole a similar verdict. He says:--
-
-     'The people of all countries were deeply involved in the general
-     blood-guiltiness of Europe. They made no passionate appeal in the
-     name of Christ or in the name of humanity for the cessation of the
-     slaughter of boys and the suicide of nations, and for a
-     reconciliation of peoples upon terms of some more reasonable
-     argument than that of high explosives. Peace proposals from the
-     Pope, from Germany, from Austria, were rejected with fierce
-     denunciation, most passionate scorn, as "peace plots" and "peace
-     traps," not without the terrible logic of the vicious circle,
-     because indeed, there was no sincerity of renunciation in some of
-     those offers of peace, and the Powers opposite to us were simply
-     trying our strength and our weakness in order to make their own
-     kind of peace, which should be that of conquest. The gamblers,
-     playing the game of "poker," with crowns and armies as their
-     stakes, were upheld generally by the peoples, who would not abate
-     one point of pride, one fraction of hate, one claim of vengeance,
-     though all Europe should fall in ruin, and the last legions of boys
-     be massacred. There was no call from people to people across the
-     frontiers of hostility. "Let us end this homicidal mania. Let us
-     get back to sanity and save our younger sons. Let us hand over to
-     justice those who will continue the slaughter of our youth!" There
-     was no forgiveness, no generous instinct, no large-hearted common
-     sense in any combatant nation of Europe. Like wolves they had their
-     teeth in one another's throats, and would not let go, though all
-     bloody and exhausted, until one should fall at the last gasp, to be
-     mangled by the others. Yet in each nation, even in Germany, there
-     were men and women who saw the folly of the war and the crime of
-     it, and desired to end it by some act of renunciation and
-     repentance, and by some uplifting of the people's spirit to vault
-     the frontiers of hatred and the barbed wire which hedged in
-     patriotism. Some of them were put in prison. Most of them saw the
-     impossibility of counteracting the forces of insanity which had
-     made the world mad, and kept silent, hiding their thoughts and
-     brooding over them. The leaders of the nations continued to use
-     mob-passion as their argument and justification, excited it anew
-     when its fires burned low, focussed it upon definite objectives,
-     and gave it a sense of righteousness by the high-sounding
-     watchwords of liberty, justice, honour, and retribution. Each side
-     proclaimed Christ as its captain, and invoked the blessing and aid
-     of the God of Christendom, though Germans were allied with Turks,
-     and France was full of black and yellow men. The German people did
-     not try to avert their ruin by denouncing the criminal acts of
-     their War Lords nor by deploring the cruelties they had committed.
-     The Allies did not help them to do so, because of their lust for
-     bloody vengeance and their desire for the spoils of victory. The
-     peoples shared the blame of their rulers because they were not
-     nobler than their rulers. They cannot now plead ignorance or
-     betrayal by false ideals which duped them, because character does
-     not depend on knowledge, and it was the character of European
-     peoples which failed in the crisis of the world's fate, so that
-     they followed the call-back of the beast in the jungle rather than
-     the voice of the Crucified One whom they pretended to adore.'
-
-And perhaps most important of all (though the clergy here just stand for
-the complacent mob mind; they were no worse than the laity), this:--
-
-     'I think the clergy of all nations, apart from a heroic and saintly
-     few, subordinated their faith, which is a gospel of charity, to
-     national limitations. They were patriots before they were priests,
-     and their patriotism was sometimes as limited, as narrow, as
-     fierce, and as blood-thirsty as that of the people who looked to
-     them for truth and light. They were often fiercer, narrower, and
-     more desirous of vengeance than the soldiers who fought, because it
-     is now a known truth that the soldiers, German and Austrian, French
-     and Italian and British, were sick of the unending slaughter long
-     before the ending of the war, and would have made a peace more fair
-     than that which now prevails if it had been put to the common vote
-     in the trenches; whereas the Archbishop of Canterbury, the
-     Archbishop of Cologne, and the clergy who spoke from many pulpits
-     in many nations under the Cross of Christ, still stoked up the
-     fires of hate and urged the armies to go on fighting "in the cause
-     of Justice," "for the defence of the Fatherland," "for Christian
-     righteousness," to the bitter end. Those words are painful to
-     write, but as I am writing this book for truth's sake, at all cost,
-     I let them stand.'[79]
-
-
-_From Passion to Indifference: the Result of Drift_
-
-A common attitude just now is something like this:--
-
-'With the bitter memory of all that the Allies had suffered strong upon
-them, it is not astonishing that at the moment of victory an attitude of
-judicial impartiality proved too much to ask of human nature. The real
-terms will depend upon the fashion in which the formal terms are
-enforced. Much of the letter of the Treaty--trial of the Kaiser,
-etc.--has already disappeared. It is an intolerable priggishness to rake
-up this very excusable debauch just as we are returning to sobriety.'
-
-And that would be true, if, indeed, we had learned the lesson, and were
-adopting a new policy. But we are not. We have merely in some measure
-exchanged passion for lassitude and indifference. Later on we shall
-plead that the lassitude was as 'inevitable' as the passion. On such a
-line of reasoning, it is no good reacting by a perception of
-consequences against a mood of the moment. That is bad psychology and
-disastrous politics. To realise what 'temperamental politics' have
-already involved us in, is the first step towards turning our present
-drift into a more consciously directed progress.
-
-Note where the drift has already carried us with reference to the
-problem of the new Germany which it was our declared object to create.
-There were weeks following the Armistice in Germany, when a faithful
-adherence to the spirit of the declarations made by the Allies during
-the War would have brought about the utter moral collapse of the
-Prussianism we had fought to destroy. The Prussian had said to the
-people: 'Only Germany's military power has stood between her and
-humiliating ruin. The Allies victorious will use their victory to
-deprive Germany of her vital rights.' Again and again had the Allies
-denied this, and Germany, especially young Germany, watched to see which
-should prove right. A blockade, falling mainly, as Mr Churchill
-complacently pointed out (months after an armistice whose terms had
-included a promise to take into consideration the food needs of Germany)
-upon the feeble, the helpless, the children, answered that question for
-millions in Germany. Her schools and universities teem with hundreds of
-thousands stricken in their health, to whom the words 'never again' mean
-that never more will they put their trust in the 'naive innocence' of
-an internationalism that could so betray them.
-
-The militarism which morally was at so low an ebb at the Armistice, has
-been rehabilitated by such things as the blockade and its effects, the
-terms of the Treaty, and by minor but dramatic features like the
-retention of German prisoners long after Allied prisoners had returned
-home, and the occupation of German university town by African negroes.
-So that to-day a League of Nations offered by the Allies would probably
-be regarded with a contemptuous scepticism--somewhat similar to that
-with which America now regards the political beatitudes which it
-applauded in 1916-17.
-
-We are in fact modifying the Treaty. But those modifications will not
-meet the present situation, though they might well have met the
-situation in 1918. If we had done then what we are prepared to do _now_,
-Europe would have been set on the right road.
-
-Suppose the Allies had said in December, 1918 (as they are in effect
-being brought to say in 1920): 'We are not going to play into the hands
-of your militarists by demanding the surrender of the Kaiser or the
-punishment of the war criminals, vile as we believe their offences to
-be. We are not going to stimulate your waning nationalism by demanding
-an acknowledgment of your sole guilt. Nor are we going to ruin your
-industry or shatter your credit. On the contrary, we will start by
-making you a loan, facilitating your purchases of food and raw
-materials, and we will admit you into the League of Nations.'
-
-We are coming to that. If it could have been our policy early instead of
-late, how different this story would have been.
-
-And the tragedy is this: To do it late is to cause it to lose its
-effectiveness, for the situation changes. The measures which would have
-been adequate in 1918 are inadequate in 1920. It is the story of Home
-Rule. In the eighties Ireland would have accepted Gladstonian Home Rule
-as a basis at least of co-operation. English and Ulster opinion was not
-ready even for Home Rule. Forty years later it had reconciled itself to
-Home Rule. But by the time Britain was ready for the remedy, the
-situation had got quite beyond it. It now demanded something for which
-slow-moving opinion was unprepared. So with a League of Nations. The
-plan now supported by Conservatives would, as Lord Grey has avowed, have
-assuredly prevented this War if adopted in place of the mere Arbitration
-plans of the Hague Conference. At that date the present League of
-Nations Covenant would have been adequate to the situation. But some of
-the self-same Conservatives who now talk the language of
-internationalism--even in economic terms--poured contumely and scorn
-upon those of us who used it a decade or two since. And now, it is to be
-feared, the Government for which they are ready will certainly be
-inadequate to the situation which we face.
-
-
-_'An evil idealism and self-sacrificing hates.'_
-
-'The cause of this insanity,' says Sir Philip Gibbs, 'is the failure of
-idealism.' Others write in much the same strain that selfishness and
-materialism have reconquered the world. But this does not get us very
-far. By what moral alchemy was this vast outpouring of unselfishness,
-which sent millions to their death as to a feast (for men cannot die for
-selfish motives, unless more certain of their heavenly reward than we in
-the Western world are in the habit of being) turned into selfishness;
-their high ideals into low desires--if that is what has happened? Can it
-be a selfishness which ruins and starves us all? Is it selfishness on
-the part of the French which causes them to adopt towards Germany a
-policy of vengeance that prevents them receiving the Reparations that
-they so sorely need? Is it not indeed what one of their writers had
-called a 'holy hate,' instinctive, intuitive, purged of all calculation
-of advantage or disadvantage? Would not selfishness--enlightened
-selfishness--have given us not only a sounder Europe in the material
-sense, but a more humane Europe, with its hostilities softened by the
-very fact of contact and co-operation, and the very obviousness of our
-need for one another? The last thing desired here is to raise the old
-never-ending question of egoism versus altruism. All that is desired is
-to point out that a mere appeal to feeling, to a 'sense of
-righteousness' and idealism, is not enough. We have an illimitable
-capacity for sublimating our own motives, and of convincing ourselves
-completely, passionately, that our evil is good. And the greater our
-fear that intellectual inquiry, some sceptical rationalism, might shake
-the certitude of our righteousness, the greater the passion with which
-we shall stand by the guide of 'instinct and intuition.' Can there not
-be a destructive idealism as well as a social one? What of the Holy
-Wars? What of the Prussian who, after all, had his ideal, as the
-Bolshevist has his? What of all fanatics ready to die for their
-idealism?
-
-It is never the things that are obviously and patently evil that
-constitute the real menace to mankind. If Prussian nationalism had been
-nothing but gross lust and cruelty and oppression, as we managed to
-persuade ourselves during the War that it was, it would never have
-menaced the world. It did that because it could rally to its end great
-enthusiasms; because men were ready to die for it. Then it threatened
-us. Only those things which have some element of good are dangerous.
-
-A Treaty of the character of that Versailles would never have been
-possible if men had not been able to justify it to themselves on the
-ground of its punitive justice. The greeds expressed in the annexation
-of alien territory, and the violation of the principle of nationality,
-would never have been possible but for the plea of the sacred egoism of
-patriotism; our country before the enemy's, our country right or wrong.
-The assertion of sheer immoralism embodied in this last slogan can be
-made into the garments of righteousness if only our idealism is
-instinctive enough.
-
-Some of the worst crimes against justice have been due to the very
-fierceness of our passion for righteousness--a passion so fierce that it
-becomes undiscriminating and unseeing. It was the passion for what men
-believed to be religious truth which gave us the Inquisition and the
-religious wars; it was the passion for patriotism which made France for
-so many years, to the astonishment of the world, refuse justice to
-Dreyfus; it is a righteous loathing for negro crime which has made
-lynching possible for half a century in the United States, and which
-prevents the development of an opinion which will insist on its
-suppression. It is 'the just anger that makes men unjust.' The righteous
-passion that insists on a criminal's dying for some foul crime, is the
-very thing which prevents our seeing that the crime was not committed by
-him at all.
-
-It was something akin to this that made the Treaty of Versailles
-possible. That is why merely to appeal to idealism and feeling will
-fail, unless the defect of vision which makes evil appear good is
-corrected. It is not the feeling which is at fault; it is the defective
-vision causing feeling to be misused, as in the case of our feeling
-against the man accused on what seem to us good grounds, of a detestable
-offence. He is loathsome to our sight, because the crime is loathsome.
-But when some one else confesses to the crime, our feeling against the
-innocent man disappears. The direction it took, the object upon which it
-settled, was due to a misconception.
-
-Obviously that error may occur in politics. Equally certainly something
-worse may happen. With some real doubt in our mind whether this man is
-the criminal, we may yet, in the absence of any other culprit, stifle
-that doubt because of our anger, and our vague desire to have some
-victim suffer for so vile a crime. Feeling will be at fault, in such a
-case, as well as vision. And this thing happens, as many a lynching
-testifies. ('The innocence of Dreyfus would be a crime,' said a famous
-anti-Dreyfusard.) Both defects may have played their part in the tragedy
-of Versailles. In making our appeal to idealism, we assume that it is
-there, somewhere, to be aroused on behalf of justice; we must assume,
-consequently, that if it has not been aroused, or has attached itself to
-wrong purposes, it is because it has not seen where justice lay.
-
-Our only protection against these miscarriages, by which our passion is
-borne into the wrong channel, against the innocent while the guilty
-escape, is to keep our minds open to all the facts, all the truth. But
-this principle, which we have proclaimed as the very foundation stone of
-our democratic faith, was the first to go when we began the War. The
-idea that in war time, most particularly, a democracy needs to know the
-enemy's, or the Pacifist, or even the internationalist and liberal case,
-would have been regarded as a bad joke. Yet the failure to do just that
-thing inevitably created a conviction that all the wrong was on one side
-and all the right on the other, and that the problem of the settlement
-was mainly a problem of ruthless punishment. One of that temper may have
-come the errors of the Treaty and the miseries that have flowed from
-them. It was the virtual suppression of free debate on the purposes and
-aims of the War and their realisation that delivered public opinion into
-the keeping of the extremest Jingoes when we came to make the peace.
-
-
-_We create the temper that destroys us_
-
-Behind the war-time attitude of the belligerents, when they suppressed
-whatever news might tell in favour of the enemy, was the conviction that
-if we could really understand the enemy's position we should not want to
-fight him. That is probably true. Let us assume that, and assume
-consequently the need for control of news and discussion. If we are to
-come to the control by governments of political belief, as we once
-attempted control by ecclesiastical authority of religious belief, let
-us face the fact, and drop pretence about freedom of discussion, and see
-that the organisation of opinion is honest and efficient. There is a
-great deal to be said for the suppression of freedom of discussion. Some
-of the greatest minds in the world have refused to accept it as a
-working principle of society. Theirs is a perfectly arguable, extremely
-strong and thoroughly honest case.[80] But virtually to subpress the
-free dissemination of facts, as we have done not only during, but after
-the War, and at the same time to go on with our talk about free speech,
-free Press, free discussion, free democracy is merely to add to the
-insincerities and falsehoods, which can only end by making society
-unworkable. We not only disbelieve in free discussion in the really
-vital crises; we disbelieve in truth. That is one fact. There is another
-related to it. If we frankly admitted that public opinion has to be
-'managed,' organised, shaped, we should demand that it be done
-efficiently with a view to the achievement of conscious ends, which we
-should place before ourselves. What happened during the War was that
-everybody, including the governments who ought to have been free from
-the domination of the myths they were engaged in creating, lost sight of
-the ultimate purposes of the War, and of the fact that they were
-creating forces which would make the attainment of those ends
-impossible; rob victory, that is, of its effectiveness.
-
-Note how the process works. We say when war is declared: 'A truce to
-discussion. The time is for action, not words.' But the truce is a
-fiction. It means, not that talk and propaganda shall cease, only that
-all liberal contribution to it must cease. The _Daily News_ suspends its
-internationalism, but the _Daily Mail_ is more fiercely Chauvinist than
-ever. We must not debate terms. But Mr Bottomley debates them every
-week, on the text that Germans are to be exterminated like vermin. What
-results? The natural defenders of a policy even as liberal as that of an
-Edward Grey are silenced. The function of the liberal Press is
-suspended. The only really articulate voices on policy are the voices of
-Lord Northcliffe and Mr Bottomley. On such subjects as foreign policy
-those gentlemen do not ordinarily embrace all wisdom; there is something
-to be said in criticism of their views. But in the matter of the future
-settlement of Europe, to have criticised those views during the War
-would have exposed the critic to the charge of pro-Germanism. So
-Chauvinism had it all its own way. For months and years the country
-heard one view of policy only. The early policy of silence did really
-impose a certain silence upon the _Daily News_ or the _Manchester
-Guardian_; none whatever upon the _Times_ or the _Daily Mail_. None of
-us can, day after day, be under the influence of such a process without
-being affected by it.[81] The British public were affected by it. Sir
-Edward Grey's policy began to appear weak, anaemic, pro-German. And in
-the end he and his colleagues disappeared, partly, at least, as the
-result of the very policy of 'leaving it to the Government' upon which
-they had insisted at the beginning of the War. And the very group which,
-in 1914, was most insistent that there should be no criticism of
-Asquith, or McKenna, or Grey, were the very group whose criticisms
-turned those leaders out of office! While in 1914 it was accepted as
-proof of treason to say a word in criticism of (say) Grey, by 1916 it
-had almost become evidence of treason to say a word for him ... and that
-while he was still in office!
-
-The history of America's attitude towards the War displays a similar
-line of development. We are apt to forget that the League of Nations
-idea entered the realm of practical politics as the result of a great
-spontaneous popular movement in America in 1916, as powerful and
-striking as any since the movement against chattel-slavery. A year of
-war morale resulted, as has already been noted, in a complete reversal
-of attitude. America became the opponent and Britain the protagonist of
-the League of Nations.
-
-In passing, one of the astonishing things is that statesmen, compelled
-by the conditions of their profession to work with the raw material of
-public opinion, seem blind to the fact that the total effect of the
-forces which they set in motion will be to transform opinion and render
-it intractable. American advisers of President Wilson scouted the idea,
-when it was suggested to them early in the War, that the growth of the
-War temper would make it difficult for the President to carry out his
-policy.[82] A score of times the present writer has heard it said by
-Americans who ought to have known better, that the public did not care
-what the foreign policy of the country was, and that the President could
-carry out any policy that he liked. At that particular moment it was
-true, but quite obviously there was growing up at the time, as the
-direct result of war propaganda, a fierce Chauvinism, which should have
-made it plain to any one who observed its momentum, that the notion of
-President Wilson's policy being put into execution after victory was
-simply preposterous.
-
-Mr Asquith's Government was thus largely responsible for creating a
-balance of force in public opinion (as we shall see presently) which was
-responsible for its collapse. Mr Lloyd George has himself sanctioned a
-jingoism which, if useful temporarily, becomes later an insuperable
-obstacle to the putting into force of workable policies. For while
-Versailles could do what it liked in matters that did not touch the
-popular passion of the moment, in the matters that did, the statesmen
-were the victims of the temper they had done so much to create. There
-was a story current in Paris at the time of the Conference: 'You can't
-really expect to get an indemnity of ten thousand millions, so what is
-the good of putting it in the Treaty,' an expert is said to have
-remarked. 'My dear fellow,' said the Prime Minister, 'if the election
-had gone on another fortnight, it would have been fifty thousand
-millions.' But the insertion of these mythical millions into the Treaty
-has not been a joke; it has been an enormous obstacle to the
-reconstruction of Europe. It was just because public opinion was not
-ready to face facts in time, that the right thing had to be done at the
-wrong time, when perhaps it was too late. The effect on French policy
-has been still more important. It is the illusions concerning
-illimitable indemnities--directly fostered by the Governments in the
-early days of the Armistice--still dominating French public opinion,
-which more than anything else, perhaps, explains an attitude on the part
-of the French Government that has come near to smashing Europe.
-
-Even minds extraordinarily brilliant, as a rule, miscalculated the
-weight of this factor of public passion stimulated by the hates of war,
-and the deliberate exploitation of it for purposes of 'war morale' and
-propaganda. Thus Mr Wells,[83] writing even after two years of war,
-predicted that if the Germans were to make a revolution and overthrow
-the Kaiser, the Allies would 'tumble over each other' to offer Germany
-generous terms. What is worse is that British propaganda in enemy
-countries seems to have been based very largely on this assumption.[84]
-It constituted an elaboration of the offers implicit in Mr Wilson's
-speeches, that once Germany was democratised there should be, in Mr
-Wilson's words, 'no reprisal upon the German people, who have themselves
-suffered all things in this War which they did not choose.' The
-statement made by the German rulers that Germany was fighting against a
-harsh and destructive fate at the hands of the victors, was, President
-Wilson said, 'wantonly false.' 'No one is threatening the peaceful
-enterprise of the German Empire.' Our propaganda in Germany seems to
-have been an expansion of this text, while the negotiations which
-preceded the Armistice morally bound us to a 'Fourteen Points peace'
-(less the British reservation touching the Freedom of the Seas). The
-economic terms of the Peace Treaty, the meaning of which has been so
-illuminatingly explained by the representative of the British Treasury
-at the Conference, give the measure of our respect for that obligation
-of honour, once we had the Germans at our mercy.[85]
-
-
-_Fundamental Falsehoods and their Outcome_
-
-We witnessed both in England and America very great changes in the
-dynamics of opinion. Not only was one type of public man being brought
-forward and another thrust into the background, but one group of
-emotions and of motives of public policy were being developed and
-another group atrophied. The use of the word 'opinion,' with its
-implication of a rationalised process of intellectual decision, may be
-misleading. 'Public opinion' is here used as the sum of the forces which
-become articulate in a country, and which a government is compelled not
-necessarily to obey, but to take into account. (A government may
-bamboozle it or dodge it, but it cannot openly oppose it.)
-
-And when reference is made to the force of ideas--Nationalist or
-Socialist or Revolutionary--a power which we all admit by our panic
-fears of defeatist or Red Propaganda, it is necessary to keep in mind
-the kind of force that is meant. One speaks of Communist or Socialist,
-Pacifist or Patriotic ideas gaining influence, or creating a ferment.
-The idea of Communism, for instance, has obviously played some part in
-the vast upheavals that have followed the War.[86] But in a world where
-the great majority are still condemned to intense physical labour in
-order to live at all, where peoples as a whole are overworked, harassed,
-pre-occupied, it is impossible that ideas like those of Karl Marx
-should be subjected to elaborate intellectual analysis. Rather is it
-_an_ idea--of the common ownership of wealth or its equal distribution,
-of poverty being the fault of a definite class of the corporate body--an
-idea which fits into a mood produced largely by the prevailing
-conditions of life, which thus becomes the predominating factor of the
-new public opinion. Now foreign policy is certainly influenced, and in
-some great crises determined, by public opinion. But that opinion is not
-the resultant of a series of intellectual analyses of problems of Balkan
-nationalities or of Eastern frontiers; that is an obvious impossibility
-for a busy headline-reading public, hard at work all day and thirsty for
-relaxation and entertainment at night. The public opinion which makes
-itself felt in Foreign Policy--which, when war is in the balance after a
-longish period of peace, gives the preponderance of power to the most
-Chauvinistic elements; which, at the end of a war and on the eve of
-Treaty-making, as in the December 1918 election, insists upon a
-rigorously punitive peace--this opinion is the result of a few
-predominant 'sovereign ideas' or conceptions giving a direction to
-certain feelings.
-
-Take one such sovereign idea, that of the enemy nation as a person: the
-conception of it as a completely responsible corporate body. Some
-offence is committed by a German: 'Germany' did it, Germany including
-all Germans. To punish any German is to inflict satisfactory punishment
-for the offence, to avenge it. The idea, when we examine it, is found to
-be extremely abstract, with but the faintest relation to human
-realities. 'They drowned my brother,' said an Allied airman, when asked
-his feelings on a reprisal bombing raid over German cities. Thus,
-because a sailor from Hamburg drowns an Englishman in the North Sea, an
-old woman in a garret in Freiburg, or some children, who have but dimly
-heard of the war, and could not even remotely be held responsible for
-it, or have prevented it, are killed with a clear conscience because
-they are German. We cannot understand the Chinese, who punish one member
-of a family for another's fault, yet that is very much more rational
-than the conception which we accept as the most natural thing in the
-world. It is never questioned, indeed, until it is applied to ourselves.
-When the acts of British troops in Ireland or India, having an
-extraordinary resemblance to German acts in Belgium, are taken by
-certain American newspapers as showing that 'Britain,' (_i.e._ British
-people) is a bloodthirsty monster who delights in the killing of unarmed
-priests or peasants, we know that somehow the foreign critic has got it
-all wrong. We should realise that for some Irishman or Indian to
-dismember a charwoman or decapitate a little girl in Somersetshire,
-because of the crime of some Black and Tan in Cork, or English General
-at Amritsar, would be unadulterated savagery, a sort of dementia. In any
-case the poor folk in Somerset were not responsible; millions of English
-folk are not. They are only dimly aware of what goes on in India or
-Ireland, and are not really able in all matters, by any means, to
-control their government--any more than the Americans are able to
-control theirs.
-
-Yet the idea of responsibility attaching to a whole group, as
-justification for retaliation, is a very ancient idea, savage, almost
-animal in its origin. And anything can make a collectivity. To one small
-religious sect in a village it is a rival sect who are the enemies of
-the human race; in the mind of the tortured negro in the Congo any man,
-woman, or child of the white world could fairly be punished for the
-pains that he has suffered.[87] The conception has doubtless arisen out
-of something protective, some instinct useful, indispensable to the
-race; as have so many of the instincts which, applied unadapted to
-altered conditions, become socially destructive.
-
-Here then is evidence of a great danger, which can, in some measure, be
-avoided on one condition: that the truth about the enemy collectively is
-told in such a way as to be a reminder to us not to slip into injustices
-that, barbarous in themselves, drag us back into barbarism.
-
-But note how all the machinery of Press control and war-time colleges of
-propaganda prepared the public mind for the extremely difficult task of
-the settlement and Treaty-making that lay before it. (It was a task in
-which everything indicated that, unless great care were taken, public
-judgment would be so swamped in passion that a workable peace would be
-impossible.) The more tribal and barbaric aspect of the conception of
-collective responsibility was fortified by the intensive and deliberate
-exploitation of atrocities during the years of the War. The atrocities
-were not just an incident of war-time news: the principal emotions of
-the struggle came to centre around them. Millions whom the obscure
-political debate behind the conflict left entirely cold, were profoundly
-moved by these stories of cruelty and barbarity. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
-was among those who urged their systematic exploitation on that ground,
-in a Christmas communication to the _Times_.[88] With reference to
-stories of German cruelty, he said:--
-
-     'Hate has its uses in war, as the Germans have long discovered. It
-     steels the mind and sets the resolution as no other emotion can do.
-     So much do they feel this that Germans are constrained to invent
-     all sorts of reasons for hatred against us, who have, in truth,
-     never injured them in any way save that history and geography both
-     place us before them and their ambitions. To nourish hatred they
-     invent every lie against us, and so they attain a certain national
-     solidity....
-
-     'The bestiality of the German nation has given us a driving power
-     which we are not using, and which would be very valuable in this
-     stage of the war. Scatter the facts. Put them in red-hot fashion.
-     Do not preach to the solid south, who need no conversion, but
-     spread the propaganda wherever there are signs of any intrigue--on
-     the Tyne, the Clyde, in the Midlands, above all in Ireland, and
-     French Canada. Let us pay no attention to platitudinous Bishops or
-     gloomy Deans or any other superior people, who preach against
-     retaliation or whole-hearted warfare. We have to win, and we can
-     only win by keeping up the spirit of resolution of our own people.'
-
-Particularly does Sir Arthur Conan Doyle urge that the munition
-workers--who were, it will be remembered, largely woman--be stimulated
-by accounts of atrocities:
-
-     'The munition workers have many small vexations to endure, and
-     their nerves get sadly frayed. They need strong elemental emotions
-     to carry them on. Let pictures be made of this and other incidents.
-     Let them be hung in every shop. Let them be distributed thickly in
-     the Sinn Fein districts of Ireland, and in the hot-beds of
-     Socialism and Pacifism in England and Scotland. The Irishman has
-     always been of a most chivalrous nature.'
-
-It is possible that Sinn Fein has now taken to heart this counsel as to
-the use that may be made of cruelties committed by the enemy in war.
-
-Now there is no reason to doubt the truth of atrocities, whether they
-concern the horrible ill-treatment of prisoners in war-time of which Sir
-Arthur Conan Doyle writes, or the burning alive of negro women in peace
-time in Texas and Alabama, or the flogging of women in India, or
-reprisals by British soldiers in Ireland, or by Red Russians against
-White and White against Red. Every story may be true. And if each side
-told the whole truth, instead of a part of it, these atrocities would
-help us towards an understanding of this complex nature of ours. But we
-never do tell the whole truth. Always in war-time does each side leave
-out two things essential to the truth: the good done by the enemy and
-the evil done by ourselves. If that elementary condition of truth were
-fulfilled, these pictures of cruelty, bestiality, obscenity, rape,
-sadism, sheer ferocity, might possibly tell us this: 'There is the
-primeval tiger in us; man's history--and especially the history of his
-wars--is full of these warnings of the depths to which he can descend.
-Those ten thousand men and women of pure English stock gloating over the
-helpless prisoners whom they are slowly roasting alive, are not normally
-savages.[89] Most of them are kindly and decent folk. These stories of
-the September massacres of the Terror no more prove French nature to be
-depraved than the history of the Inquisition, or of Ireland or India,
-proves Spanish or British nature to be depraved.'
-
-But the truth is never so told. It was not so told during the War. Day
-after day, month after month, we got these selected stories. In the
-Press, in the cinemas, in Church services, they were related to us. The
-message the atrocity carried was not: here is a picture of what human
-nature is capable of; let us be on our guard that nothing similar marks
-our history. That was neither the intention nor the result of
-propaganda. It said in effect and was intended to say:--
-
-'This lecherous brute abusing a woman is a picture of Germany. All
-Germans are like that; and no people but Germans are like that. That
-sort of thing never happens in other armies; cruelty, vengeance, and
-blood-lust are unknown in the Allied forces. That is why we are at war.
-Remember this at the peace table.'
-
-That falsehood was conveyed by what the Press and the cinema
-systematically left out. While they told us of every vile thing done by
-the enemy, they told us of not one act of kindness or mercy among all
-those hundred million during the years of war.
-
-The suppression of everything good of the enemy was paralleled by the
-suppression of everything evil done by our side. You may search Press
-and cinemas in vain for one single story of brutality committed by
-Serbian, Rumanian, Greek, Italian, French, or Russian--until the last in
-time became an enemy. Then suddenly our papers were full of Russian
-atrocities. At first these were Bolshevik atrocities only, and of the
-'White' troops we heard no evil. Then when later the self-same Russian
-troops that had fought on our side during the War fought Poland, our
-papers were full of the atrocities inflicted on Poles.
-
-By the daily presentation during years of a picture which makes the
-enemy so entirely bad as not to be human at all, and ourselves entirely
-good, the whole nature of the problem is changed. Admit these premises,
-and policies like those proposed by Mr Wells become sheer rubbish. They
-are based on the assumption that Germans are accessible to ordinary
-human influences like other human beings. But every day for years we
-have been denying that premise. If the daily presentation of the facts
-is a true presentation, the _New York Tribune_ is right:--
-
-     'We shall not get permanent peace by treating the Hun as if he were
-     not a Hun. One might just as well attempt to cure a man-eating
-     tiger of his hankering for human flesh by soft words as to break
-     the German of his historic habits by equally futile kind words. The
-     way to treat a German, while Germans follow their present methods,
-     is as a common peril to all civilised mankind. Since the German
-     employs the method of the wild beast he must be treated as beyond
-     the appeal of generous or kind methods. When one is generous to a
-     German, he plans to take advantage of that generosity to rob or
-     murder; this is his international history, never more
-     conspicuously illustrated than here in America. Kindness he
-     interprets as fear, regard for international law as proof of
-     decadence; agitation for disarmament has been for him the final
-     evidence of the degeneracy of his neighbours.'[90]
-
-That conclusion is inevitable if the facts are really as presented by
-the _Daily Mail_ for four years. The problem of peace in that case is
-not one of finding a means of dealing, by the discipline of a common
-code or tradition, with common shortcomings--violences, hates,
-cupidities, blindnesses. The problem is not of that nature at all. We
-don't have these defects; they are German defects. For five years we
-have indoctrinated the people with a case, which if true, renders only
-one policy in Europe admissible; either the ruthless extermination of
-these monsters, who are not human beings at all; or their permanent
-subjugation, the conversion of Germany into a sort of world lunatic
-asylum.
-
-When therefore the big public, whether in America or France or Britain,
-simply will not hear (in 1919) of any League of Nations that shall ever
-include Germany they are right--if we have been telling them the truth.
-
-Was it necessary thus to 'organise' hate for the purposes of war?
-Violent partisanship would assuredly assert itself in war-time without
-such stimulus. And if we saw more clearly the relationship of these
-instincts and emotions to the formation of policy, we should organise,
-not their development, but their restraint and discipline, or, that
-being impossible in sufficient degree (which it may be), organise their
-re-direction to less anti-social ends.
-
-As it was, it ended by making the war entered upon sincerely, so far as
-public feeling was concerned, for a principle or policy, simply a war
-for no purpose beyond victory--and finally for domination at the price
-of its original purpose. For one who is attracted to the purpose, a
-thousand are attracted to the war--the simple success of 'our side.'
-Partisanship as a motive is animal in its deep, remote innateness.
-Little boys and girls at the time of the University boat race will
-choose the Oxford or the Cambridge colours, and from that moment
-passionately desire the victory of 'their' side. They may not know what
-Oxford is, or what a University is, or what a boat race is: it does not
-in the least detract from the violence of their partisanship. You get
-therefore a very simple mathematical explanation of the increasing
-subservience of the War's purpose to the simple purpose of victory and
-domination for itself. Every child can understand and feel for the
-latter, very few adults for the former.
-
-This competitive feeling, looking to victory, domination, is feeding the
-whole time the appetite for power. These instincts, and the clamant
-appetite for domination and coercion are whetted to the utmost and then
-re-inforced by a moral indignation, which justifies the impulse to
-retaliation on the ground of punitive justice for inhuman horrors. We
-propose to establish with this outlaw a relationship of contract! To
-bargain with him about our respective rights! In the most favourable
-circumstances it demands a very definite effort of discipline to impose
-upon ourselves hampering restrictions in the shape of undertakings to
-another Power, when we believe that we are in a position to impose our
-will. But to suggest imposing upon ourselves the restrictions of such a
-relationship with an enemy of the human race.... The astonishing thing
-is that those who acquiesced in this deliberate cultivation of the
-emotions and instincts inseparable from violent partisanship, should
-ever have expected a policy of impartial justice to come out of that
-state of mind. They were asking for psychological miracles.
-
-That the propaganda was in large part conscious and directed was proved
-by the ease with which the flood of atrocity stories could suddenly be
-switched over from Germans to Russians. During the time that the Russian
-armies were fighting on our side, there was not a single story in our
-Press of Russian barbarity. But when the same armies, under the same
-officers, are fighting against the Poles, atrocities even more ingenious
-and villainous than those of the Germans in Belgium suddenly
-characterise the conduct of the Russian troops. The atrocities are
-transposed with an ease equal to that with which we transfer our
-loyalties.[91] When Pilsudski's troops fought against Russia, all the
-atrocities were committed by them, and of the Russian troops we heard
-nothing but heroism. When Brusiloff fights under Bolshevik command our
-papers print long Polish accounts of the Russian barbarities.
-
-We have seen that behind the conception of the enemy as a single person
-is a falsehood: it is obvious that seventy millions of men, women, and
-children, of infinitely varying degrees of responsibility, are not a
-single person. The falsehood may be, in some degree, an unwitting one, a
-primitive myth that we have inherited from tribal forbears. But if that
-is so, we should control our news with a view to minimizing the dangers
-of mythical fallacies, bequeathed to us by a barbaric past. If it is
-necessary to use them for the purposes of war morale, we should drop
-them when the war is over, and pass round the word, to the Churches for
-instance, that on the signing of an armistice the moratorium of the
-Sermon on the Mount comes to an end. As it is, two years after the
-Armistice, an English Vicar tells his congregation that to bring
-Austrian children to English, to save them from death by famine, is an
-unpatriotic and seditious act.
-
-Note where the fundamental dishonesties of our propaganda lead us in the
-matter of policy, in what we declared to be one of the main objects of
-the War: the erection of Europe upon a basis of nationality. Our whole
-campaign implied that the problem resolved itself into the destruction
-of one great Power, who denied that principle, as against the Allies,
-who were ready to grant it. How near that came to the truth, the round
-score of 'unredeemed' nationalities deliberately created by the Allies
-in the Treaties sufficiently testifies. If we had avowed the facts, that
-a Europe of completely independent nationalities is not possible, that
-great populations will not be shut off from the sea, or recognise
-independent nationalities to the extent of risking economic or political
-strangulation, we should then necessarily have gone on to devise the
-limitations and obligations which all must accept and the rights which
-all must accord. We should have been fighting for a body of principles
-as the basis of a real association of States. The truth, or some measure
-of it, would have prepared us all for that limitation of independence
-without which no nationality can be secure. The falsehood that Germany
-alone stood in the way of the recognition of nationality, made a treaty
-really based on that principle (namely, upon all of us consenting to
-limit our independence) impossible of acceptance by our own opinion. And
-one falsehood leads to another. Because we refused to be sincere about
-the inducements which we held out in turn to Italy, Bulgaria, Rumania,
-Greece, we staggered blindly into the alternative betrayal first of one
-party, then of another. Just as we were faithless to the principle of
-nationality when we acquiesced in the Russian attitude towards Finland
-and Poland, and the Italian towards Serbia, so later we were to prove
-faithless to the principle of the Great State when we supported the
-Border Nationalities in their secession from Russia. We have encouraged
-and helped States like Ukrainia, Azerbaidjan. But we have been just as
-ready to stand for 'Great Russia,' if Koltchak appeared to be winning,
-knowing perfectly well that we cannot be loyal to both causes.
-
-Our defence is apparent enough. It is fairly illustrated in the case of
-Italy. If Italy had not come into the war, Serbia's prospect of any
-redemption at all would have been hopeless; we were doing the best we
-could for Serbia.[92]
-
-Assuredly--but we happened to be doing it by false pretences, sham
-heroics, immeasurable hypocrisy. And the final effect was to be the
-defeat of the aims for which we were fighting. If our primary aims had
-been those we proclaimed, we could no more have violated the principle
-of nationality to gain an ally, than we could have ceded the Isle of
-Wight to Germany, and the intellectual rectitude which would have
-enabled us to see that, would also have enabled us to see the necessity
-of the conditions on which alone a society of nations is possible.
-
-The indispensable step to rendering controllable those passions now
-'uncontrollable' and disrupting Europe, is to tell the truth about the
-things by which we excuse them. Again, our fundamental nature may not
-change, any more than it would if we honestly investigated the evidence
-proving the innocence of the man, whose execution we demand, of the
-crime which is the cause of our hatred. That investigation would be an
-effort of the mind; the result of it would be a change in the direction
-of our feelings. The facts which it is necessary to face are not
-abstruse or difficult. They are self-evident to the simplest mind. The
-fact that the 'person' whose punishment we demand in the case of the
-enemy is not a person at all, either bad or good, but millions of
-different persons of varying degrees of badness and goodness, many of
-them--millions--without any responsibility at all for the crime that
-angers us, this fact, if faced, would alter the nature of our feelings.
-We should see that we were confronted by a case of mistaken identity.
-Perhaps we do not face this evidence because we treasure our hate. If
-there were not a 'person' our hate could have no meaning; we could not
-hate an 'administrative area,' nor is there much satisfaction in
-humiliating it and dominating it. We can desire to dominate and
-humiliate a person, and are often ready to pay a high price for the
-pleasure. If we ceased to think of national States as persons, we might
-cease to think of them as conflicting interests, in competition with one
-another, and begin to think of them instead as associations within a
-great association.
-
-Take another very simple truth that we will not face: that our arms do,
-and must do, the things that raise our passions when done by the enemy.
-Our blockades and bombardments also kill old women and children. Our
-soldiers, too, the gallant lads who mount our aeroplanes, the sailors
-who man our blockades, are baby-killers. They must be; they cannot help
-it if they are to bomb or blockade at all. Yet we never do admit this
-obvious fact. We erect a sheer falsehood, and then protect ourselves
-against admitting it by being so 'noble' about it that we refuse to
-discuss it. We simply declare that in no circumstances could England, or
-English soldiers, ever make war upon women and children, or even be
-unchivalrous to them. That is a moral premise beyond or behind which
-patriotism will not permit our minds to go. If the 'nobility' of
-attitude had any relation to our real conduct, one would rejoice. When,
-during the armistice negotiations, the Germans exacted that they should
-be permitted means, after the surrender of their fleet, of feeding their
-people, a New York paper declared the condition an insult to the Allies.
-'The Germans are prisoners,' it said, 'and the Allies do not starve
-prisoners.' But one discovers a few weeks later that these noble
-gestures are quite compatible with the maintenance of the blockade, on
-the ground that Germans for their sins ought to be starved. We then
-become the agents of Providence in punitive justice.
-
-When the late Lord Fisher[93] came out squarely and publicly in defence
-of the killing of women and children (in the submarine sinking) as a
-necessary part of war, there seemed a chance for intellectual honesty in
-the matter; for a real examination of the principles of our conduct. If
-we faced the facts in this honest sailor-like fashion there was some
-hope either that we should refuse to descend to reprisals by
-disembowelling little girls; or, if it should appear that such things
-are inseparable from war, that it would help to get a new feeling about
-war. But Lord Fisher complains that the Editor of the paper to which he
-sent his letter suppressed it from the later editions of his paper for
-fear it should shock the public. Shock!
-
-You see, _our_ shells falling on schools and circuses don't disembowel
-little girls; our blockades don't starve them. Everybody knows that
-British shells and British blockades would not do such things. When
-Britain blockades, pestilence and hunger and torture are not suffering;
-a dying child is not a dying child. Patriotism draws a shutter over our
-eyes and ears.
-
-When this degree of self-deception is possible, there is no infamy of
-which a kindly, humane, and emotionally moral people may not prove
-themselves capable; no moral contradiction or absurdity which mankind
-may not approve. Anything may become right, anything may become wrong.
-
-The evil is not only in its resultant inhumanities. It lies much more in
-the fact that this development of moral blinkers deprives us of the
-capacity to see where we are going, and what we are crushing underfoot;
-and that may well end by our walking over the precipice.
-
-During the War, we formed judgments of the German character which
-literally make it sub-human. For our praise of the French (during the
-same period) language failed us. Yet less than twenty years ago the
-roles were reversed.[94] The French were the mad dogs, and the Germans
-of our community of blood.
-
-The refusal to face the plain facts of life, a refusal made on grounds
-which we persuade ourselves are extremely noble, but which in fact
-result too often in simple falsehood and distortion, is revealed by the
-common pre-war attitude to the economic situation dealt with in this
-book. The present writer took the ground before the War that much of the
-dense population of modern Europe could not support itself save by
-virtue of an economic internationalism which political ideas (ideas
-which war would intensify) were tending to make impossible. Now it is
-obvious that before there can be a spiritual life, there must be a
-fairly adequate physical one. If life is a savage and greedy scramble
-over the means of sheer physical sustenance, there cannot be much in it
-that is noble and inspiring. The point of the argument was, as already
-mentioned, not that the economic pre-occupation _should_ occupy the
-whole of life, but that it _will_ if it is simply disregarded; the way
-to reduce the economic pre-occupation is to solve the economic problem.
-Yet these plain and undeniable truths were somehow twisted into the
-proposition that men went to war because they believed it 'paid,' in the
-stockbroking sense, and that if they saw it did not 'pay' they would not
-go to war. The task of attempting to find the conditions in which it
-will be possible for men to live at all with decent regard for their
-fellows, without drifting into cannibalistic struggles for sustenance
-one against another, is made to appear something sordid, a 'usurer's
-gospel.' And on that ground, very largely, the 'economics' of
-international policy were neglected. We are still facing the facts. Self
-deception has become habitual.
-
-President Wilson failed to carry through the policy he had proclaimed,
-as greater men have failed in similar moral circumstances. The failure
-need not have been disastrous to the cause which he had espoused. It
-might have marked merely a step towards ultimate success, if he had
-admitted the failure. Had he said in effect: 'Reaction has won this
-battle; we have been guilty of errors and shortcomings, but we shall
-maintain the fight, and avoid such errors in future,' he would have
-created for the generation which followed a clear-cut issue. Whatever
-there was of courage and sincerity of purpose in the idealism he had
-created earlier in the War, would have rallied to his support. Just
-because such a declaration would have created an issue dividing men
-sharply and even bitterly, it would have united each side strongly; men
-would have had the two paths clearly and distinctly before their eyes,
-and though forced for the time along that of reaction, they would have
-known the direction in which they were travelling. Again and again
-victory has come out of defeat; again and again defeat has nerved men to
-greater effort.
-
-But when defeat is represented as victory by the trusted leader, there
-follows the subtlest and most paralysing form of confusion and doubt.
-Men no longer know who are the friends and who the enemies of the things
-they care for. When callous cruelty is called righteous, and cynical
-deception justice, men begin to lose their capacity to distinguish the
-one from the other, and to change sides without consciousness of their
-treason.
-
-In the field of social relationship, the better management by men of
-their society, a sincere facing of the simple truths of life, right
-conclusions from facts that are of universal knowledge, are of
-immeasurably greater importance than erudition. Indeed we see that again
-and again learning obscures in this field the simpler truths. The
-Germany that had grown up before the War is a case in point. Vast
-learning, meticulous care over infinite detail, had become the mark of
-German scholarship. But all the learning of the professors did not
-prevent a gross misreading of what, to the rest of the world, seemed all
-but self-evident--simple truths which perhaps would have been clearer if
-the learning had been less, used as it was to buttress the lusts of
-domination and power.
-
-The main errors of the Treaty (which, remember, was the work of the
-greatest diplomatic experts in Europe) reveal something similar. If the
-punitive element--which is still applauded--defeats finally the aims
-alike of justice, our own security, appeasement, disarmament, and sets
-up moral forces that will render our New World even more ferociously
-cruel and hopeless than the Old, it will not be because we were ignorant
-of the fact that 'Germany'--or 'Austria' or 'Russia'--is not a person
-that can be held responsible and punished in this simple fashion. It did
-not require an expert knowledge of economics to realise that a ruined
-Germany could not pay vast indemnities. Yet sometimes very learned men
-were possessed by these fallacies. It is not learning that is needed to
-penetrate them. A wisdom founded simply on the sincere facing of
-self-evident facts would have saved European opinion from its most
-mischievous excesses. This ignorance of the learned may perhaps be
-related to another phenomenon; a great increase in our understanding of
-inert matter, unaccompanied by any corresponding increase in our
-understanding of human conduct. This latter understanding demands a
-temperamental self-control and detachment, which mere technical
-knowledge does not ask. Although in technical science we have made such
-advances as would cause the Athenians, say, to look on us as gods, we
-show no corresponding advance upon them, or upon the Hebrew prophets for
-that matter, in the understanding of conduct and its motives. And the
-spectacle of Germany--of the modern world, indeed--so efficient in the
-management of matter, so clumsy in the understanding of the essentials
-of human relationship, reminds us once more of the futility of mere
-technical knowledge, unless accompanied by a better moral understanding.
-For without the latter we are unable to use the improvement in technique
-(as Europe is unable to use it to-day) for indispensable human ends. Or
-worse still, technical knowledge, in the absence of wisdom and
-discipline, merely gives us more efficient weapons of collective
-suicide. Butler's fantasy of the machines which men have made acquiring
-a mind of their own, and then rounding upon their masters and
-destroying them, has very nearly come true. If some new force, like the
-release of atomic energy, had been discovered during this war, and
-applied (as Mr Wells has imagined it being applied) to bombs that would
-go on exploding without cessation for a week or two, we know that
-passions ran so high that both sides would have used them, as both sides
-in the next war will use super-poison gas and disease germs. Not only
-the destruction, therefore, but the passion and the ruthlessness, the
-fears and hates, the universal pre-emption of wealth for 'defence'
-perpetually translating itself into preventive offence, would have
-grown. Man's society would assuredly have been destroyed by the
-instruments that he himself had made, and Butler's fantasy would have
-come true.
-
-It is coming true to-day. What starves Europe is not lack of technical
-knowledge; there is more technical knowledge than when Europe could feed
-itself. If we could combine our forces to effective co-operation, the
-Malthusian dragon could be kept at bay. It is the group of ideas which
-underlie the process of Balkanisation that stand in the way of turning
-our combined forces against Nature instead of against one another.
-
-We have gone wrong mainly in certain of the simpler and broader issues
-of human relationship, and this book has attempted to disentangle from
-the complex mass of facts in the international situation, those
-'sovereign ideas' which constitute in crises the basic factors of public
-action and opinion. In so doing there may have been some
-over-simplification. That will not greatly matter, if the result is some
-re-examination and clarification of the predominant beliefs that have
-been analysed. 'Truth comes out of error more easily than out of
-confusion,' as Bacon warned us. It is easier to correct a working
-hypothesis of society, which is wrong in some detail, than to achieve
-wise conduct in society without any social principle. If social or
-political phenomena are for us first an unexplained tangle of forces,
-and we live morally from hand to mouth, by opinions which have no
-guiding principle, our emotions will be at the mercy first of one
-isolated fact or incident, and then of another.
-
-A certain parallel has more than once been suggested in these pages.
-European society is to-day threatened with disintegration as the result
-of ideas and emotions that have collected round Patriotism. A century or
-two since it was threatened by ideas and passions which gathered round
-religious dogma. By what process did we arrive at religious toleration
-as a social principle? That question has been suggested because to
-answer it may throw some light on our present problem of rendering
-Patriotism a social instead of an anti-social force.
-
-If to-day, for the most part, in Europe and America one sect can live
-beside another in peace, where a century or two ago there would have
-been fierce hatreds, wars, massacres, and burnings, it is not because
-the modern population is more learned in theology (it is probably less
-so), but rather conversely, because theological theory gave place to lay
-judgment in the ordinary facts of life.
-
-If we have a vast change in the general ideas of Europe in the religious
-sphere, in the attitude of men to dogma, in the importance which they
-attach to it, in their feeling about it; a change which for good or evil
-is a vast one in its consequences, a moral and intellectual revulsion
-which has swept away one great difficulty of human relationship and
-transformed society; it is because the laity have brought the discussion
-back to principles so broad and fundamental that the data became the
-facts of human life and experience--data with which the common man is as
-familiar as the scholar. Of the present-day millions for whom certain
-beliefs of the older theologians would be morally monstrous, how many
-have been influenced by elaborate study concerning the validity of this
-or that text? The texts simply do not weigh with them, though for
-centuries they were the only things that counted. What do weigh with
-them are profounder and simpler things--a sense of justice,
-compassion--things which would equally have led the man of the sixteenth
-century to question the texts and the premises of the Church, if
-discussion had been free. It is because it was not free that the social
-instinct of the mass, the general capacity to order their relations so
-as to make it possible for them to live together, became distorted and
-vitiated. And the wars of religion resulted. To correct this vitiation,
-to abolish these disastrous hates and misconceptions, elaborate learning
-was not needed. Indeed, it was largely elaborate learning which had
-occasioned them. The judges who burned women alive for witchcraft, or
-inquisitors who sanctioned that punishment for heresy, had vast and
-terrible stores of learning. _What was needed was that these learned
-folk should question their premises in the light of facts of common
-knowledge._ It is by so doing that their errors are patent to the quite
-unlearned of our time. No layman was equipped to pass judgment on the
-historical reasons which might support the credibility of this or that
-miracle, or the intricate arguments which might justify this or that
-point of dogma. But the layman was as well equipped, indeed, he was
-better equipped than the schoolman, to question whether God would ever
-torture men everlastingly for the expression of honest belief; the
-observer of daily occurrences, to say nothing of the physicist, was as
-able as the theologian to question whether a readiness to believe
-without evidence is a virtue at all. Questions of the damnation of
-infants, eternal torment, were settled not by the men equipped with
-historical and ecclesiastical scholarship, but by the average man, going
-back to the broad truths, to first principles, asking very simple
-questions, the answer to which depended not upon the validity of texts,
-but upon correct reasoning concerning facts which are accessible to all;
-upon our general sense of life as a whole, and our more elementary
-institutions of justice and mercy; reasoning and intuitions which the
-learning of the expert often distorts.
-
-Exactly the service which extricated us from the intellectual and moral
-confusion that resulted in such catastrophes in the field of religion,
-is needed in the field of politics. From certain learned folk--writers,
-poets, professors (German and other), journalists, historians, and
-rulers--the public have taken a group of ideas concerning Patriotism,
-Nationalism, Imperialism, the nature of our obligation to the State, and
-so on, ideas which may be right or wrong, but which we are all agreed,
-will have to be very much changed if men are ever to live together in
-peace and freedom; just as certain notions concerning the institution of
-private property will have to be changed if the mass of men are to live
-in plenty.
-
-It is a commonplace of militarist argument that so long as men feel as
-they do about their Fatherland, about patriotism and nationalism,
-internationalism will be an impossibility. If that is true--and I think
-it is--peace and freedom and welfare will wait until those large issues
-have been raised in men's minds with sufficient vividness to bring about
-a change of idea and so a change of feeling with reference to them.
-
-It is unlikely, to say the least, that the mass of Englishmen or
-Frenchmen will ever be in possession of detailed knowledge sufficient to
-equip them to pass judgment on the various rival solutions of the
-complex problems that face us, say, in the Balkans. And yet it was
-immediately out of a problem of Balkan politics that the War arose, and
-future wars may well arise out of those same problems if they are
-settled as badly in the future as in the past.
-
-The situation would indeed be hopeless if the nature of human
-relationship depended upon the possession by the people as a whole of
-expert knowledge in complex questions of that kind. But happily the
-Sarajevo murders would never have developed into a war involving twenty
-nations but for the fact that there had been cultivated in Europe
-suspicions, hatreds, insane passions, and cupidities, due largely to
-false conceptions (though in part also themselves prompting the false
-conceptions) of a few simple facts in political relationship;
-conceptions concerning the necessary rivalry of nations, the idea that
-what one nation gains another loses, that States are doomed by a fate
-over which they have no control to struggle together for the space and
-opportunities of a limited world. But for the atmosphere that these
-ideas create (as false theological notions once created a similar
-atmosphere between rival religious groups) most of these at present
-difficult and insoluble problems of nationality and frontiers and
-government, would have solved themselves.
-
-The ideas which feed and inflame these passions of rivalry, hostility,
-fear, hate, will be modified, if at all, by raising in the mind of the
-European some such simple elementary questions as were raised when he
-began to modify his feeling about the man of rival religious belief. The
-Political Reformation in Europe will come by questioning, for instance,
-the whole philosophy of patriotism, the morality or the validity, in
-terms of human well-being, of a principle like that of 'my country,
-right or wrong';[95] by questioning whether a people really benefit by
-enlarging the frontiers of their State; whether 'greatness' in a nation
-particularly matters; whether the man of the small State is not in all
-the great human values the equal of the man of the great Empire; whether
-the real problems of life are greatly affected by the colour of the
-flag; whether we have not loyalties to other things as well as to our
-State; whether we do not in our demand for national sovereignty ignore
-international obligation without which the nations can have neither
-security nor freedom; whether we should not refuse to kill or horribly
-mutilate a man merely because we differ from him in politics. And with
-those, if the emergence from chattel-slavery is to be complemented by
-the emergence from wage slavery, must be put similarly fundamental
-questions touching problems like that of private property and the
-relation of social freedom thereto; we must ask why, if it is rightly
-demanded of the citizen that his life shall be forfeit to the safety of
-the State, his surplus money, property, shall not be forfeit to its
-welfare.
-
-To very many, these questions will seem a kind of blasphemy, and they
-will regard those who utter them as the subjects of a loathsome
-perversion. In just that way the orthodox of old regarded the heretic
-and his blasphemies. And yet the solution of the difficulties of our
-time, this problem of learning to live together without mutual homicide
-and military slavery, depends upon those blasphemies being uttered.
-Because it is only in some such way that the premises of the differences
-which divide us, the realities which underlie them, will receive
-attention. It is not that the implied answer is necessarily the truth--I
-am not concerned now for a moment to urge that it is--but that until the
-problem is pushed back in our minds to these great yet simple issues,
-the will, temper, general ideas of Europe on this subject will remain
-unchanged. And if _they_ remain unchanged so will its conduct and
-condition.
-
-The tradition of nationalism and patriotism, around which have gathered
-our chief political loyalties and instincts, has become in the actual
-conditions of the world an anti-social and disruptive force. Although we
-realize perhaps that a society of nations of some kind there must be,
-each unit proclaims proudly its anti-social slogan of sacred egoisms and
-defiant immoralism; its espousal of country as against right.[96]
-
-The danger--and the difficulty--resides largely in the fact that the
-instincts of gregariousness and group solidarity, which prompt the
-attitude of 'my country right or wrong,' are not in themselves evil:
-both gregariousness and pugnacity are indispensable to society.
-Nationality is a very precious manifestation of the instincts by which
-alone men can become socially conscious and act in some corporate
-capacity. The identification of 'self' with society, which patriotism
-accomplishes within certain limits, the sacrifice of self for the
-community which it inspires--even though only when fighting other
-patriotisms--are moral achievements of infinite hope.
-
-The Catharian heresy that Jehovah of the Old Testament is in reality
-Satan masquerading as God has this pregnant suggestion; if the Father of
-Evil ever does destroy us, we may be sure that he will come, not
-proclaiming himself evil, but proclaiming himself good, the very Voice
-of God. And that is the danger with patriotism and the instincts that
-gather round it. If the instincts of nationalism were simply evil, they
-would constitute no real danger. It is the good in them that has made
-them the instrument of the immeasurable devastation which they
-accomplish.
-
-That Patriotism does indeed transcend all morality, all religious
-sanctions as we have heretofore known them, can be put to a very simple
-test. Let an Englishman, recalling, if he can, his temper during the
-War, ask himself this question: Is there anything, anything whatsoever,
-that he would have refused to do, if the refusal had meant the triumph
-of Germany and the defeat of England? In his heart he knows that he
-would have justified any act if the safety of his country had hung upon
-it.
-
-Other patriotisms have like justifications. Yet would defeat,
-submission, even to Germany, involve worse acts than those we have felt
-compelled to commit during the War and since--in the work of making our
-power secure? Did the German ask of the Alsatian or the Pole worse than
-we have been compelled to ask of our own soldiers in Russia, India, or
-Ireland?
-
-The old struggle for power goes on. For the purpose of that struggle we
-are prepared to transform our society in any way that it may demand. For
-the purposes of the war for power we will accept anything that the
-strength of the enemy imposes: we will be socialist, autocratic,
-democratic, or communist; we will conscribe the bodies, souls, wealth of
-our people; we will proscribe, as we do, the Christian doctrine, and
-all mercy and humanity; we will organise falsehood and deceit, and call
-it statecraft and strategy; lie for the purpose of inflaming hate, and
-rejoice at the effectiveness of our propaganda; we will torture helpless
-millions by pestilence and famine--as we have done--and look on unmoved;
-our priests, in the name of Christ, will reprove misplaced pity, and
-call for the further punishment of the wicked, still greater efforts in
-the Fight for Right. We shall not care what transformations take place
-in our society or our natures; or what happens to the human spirit.
-Obediently, at the behest of the enemy--because, that is, his power
-demands that conduct of us--shall we do all those things, or anything,
-save only one: we will not negotiate or make a contract with him. _That_
-would limit our 'independence'; by which we mean that his submission to
-our mastery would be less complete.
-
-We can do acts of infinite cruelty; disregard all accepted morality; but
-we cannot allow the enemy to escape the admission of defeat.
-
-If we are to correct the evils of the older tradition, and build up one
-which will restore to men the art of living together, we must honestly
-face the fact that the older tradition has failed. So long as the old
-loyalties and patriotisms, tempting us with power and dominion, calling
-to the deep hunger excited by those things, and using the banners of
-righteousness and justice, seem to offer security, and a society which,
-if not ideal, is at least workable, we certainly shall not pay the price
-which all profound change of habit demands. We have seen that as a fact
-of his history man only abandons power and force over others when it
-fails. At present, almost everywhere, we refuse to face the failure of
-the old forms of political power. We don't believe that we need the
-co-operation of the foreigner, or we believe that we can coerce him.
-
-Little attention has been given here to the machinery of
-internationalism--League of Nations, Courts of Arbitration, Disarmament.
-This is not because machinery is unimportant. But if we possessed the
-Will, if we were ready each to pay his contribution in some sacrifice of
-his independence, of his opportunity of domination, the difficulties of
-machinery would largely disappear. The story of America's essay in
-internationalism has warned us of the real difficulty. Courts of
-Arbitration, Leagues of Nations, were devices to which American opinion
-readily enough agreed; too readily. For the event showed that the old
-conceptions were not changed. They had only been disregarded. No
-machinery of internationalism can work so long as the impulses and
-prepossessions of irresponsible nationalism retain their power. The test
-we must apply to our sincerity is our answer to the question:--What
-price, in terms of national independence, are we prepared to pay for a
-world law? What, in fact, _is_ the price that is asked of us? To this
-last question, the pages that precede, and to some extent those that
-follow, have attempted to supply an answer. We should gain many times in
-freedom and independence the contribution in those things that we made.
-
-Perhaps we may be driven by hunger--the actual need of our children for
-bread--to forsake a method which cannot give them bread or freedom, in
-favour of one that can. But, for the failure of power to act as a
-deterrent upon our desire for it, we must perceive the failure. Our
-angers and hatreds obscure that failure, or render us indifferent to it.
-Hunger does not necessarily help the understanding; it may bemuse it by
-passion and resentment. We may in our passion wreck civilisation as a
-passionate man in his anger will injure those he loves. Yet, well fed,
-we may refuse to concern ourselves with problems of the morrow. The
-mechanical motive will no longer suffice. In the simpler, more animal
-forms of society, the instinct of each moment, with no thought of
-ultimate consequence, may be enough. But the Society which man has built
-up can only go forward or be preserved as it began: by virtue of
-something which is more than instinct. On man is cast the obligation to
-be intelligent; the responsibility of will; the burden of thought.
-
-If some of us have felt that, beyond all other evils which translate
-themselves into public policy, those with which these pages deal
-constitute the greatest, it is not because war means the loss of life,
-the killing of men. Many of our noblest activities do that. There are so
-many of us that it is no great disaster that a few should die. It is not
-because war means suffering. Suffering endured for a conscious and
-clearly conceived human purpose is redeemed by hope of real achievement;
-it may be a glad sacrifice for some worthy end. But if we have
-floundered hopelessly into a bog because we have forgotten our end and
-purpose in the heat of futile passion, the consolation which we may
-gather from the willingness with which men die in the bog should not
-stand in the way of our determination to rediscover our destination and
-create afresh our purpose. These pages have been concerned very little
-with the loss of life, the suffering of the last seven years. What they
-have dealt with mainly is the fact that the War has left us a less
-workable society, has been marked by an increase in the forces of chaos
-and disintegration. That is the ultimate indictment of this War as of
-all wars: the attitude towards life, the ideas and motive forces out of
-which it grows, and which it fosters, makes men less able to live
-together, their society less workable, and must end by making free
-society impossible. War not only arises out of the failure of human
-wisdom, from the defect of that intelligence by which alone we can
-successfully fight the forces of nature; it perpetuates that failure and
-worsens it. For only by a passion which keeps thought at bay can the
-'morale' of war be maintained. The very justification which we advance
-for our war-time censorships and propaganda, our suspension of free
-speech and discussion, is that if we gave full value to the enemy's
-case, saw him as he really is, blundering, foolish, largely helpless
-like ourselves; saw the defects of our own and our Allies' policy, saw
-what our own acts in war really involved and how nearly they resembled
-those which aroused our anger when done by the enemy, if we saw all
-this and kept our heads, we should abandon war. A thousand times it has
-been explained that in an impartial mood we cannot carry on war; that
-unless the people come to feel that all the right is on our side and all
-the wrong on the enemy's, morale will fail. The most righteous war can
-only be kept going by falsehood. The end of that falsehood is that our
-mind collapses. And although the mind, thought, judgment, are not
-all-sufficient for man's salvation, it is impossible without them.
-Behind all other explanations of Europe's creeping paralysis is the
-blindness of the millions, their inability to see the effects of their
-demands and policy, to see where they are going.
-
-Only a keener feeling for truth will enable them to see. About
-indifferent things--about the dead matter that we handle in our
-science--we can be honest, impartial, true. That is why we succeed in
-dealing with matter. But about the things we care for--which are
-ourselves--our desires and lusts, our patriotisms and hates, we find a
-harder test of thinking straight and truly. Yet there is the greater
-need; only by that rectitude shall we be saved. There is no refuge but
-in truth.
-
-
-
-
-ADDENDUM
-
-THE ARGUMENT OF _THE GREAT ILLUSION_
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-THE 'IMPOSSIBILITY OF WAR' MYTH
-
-
-It will illustrate certain difficulties which have marked--and mark--the
-presentation of the argument of this book, if the reader will consider
-for a few minutes the justice of certain charges which have been brought
-against _The Great Illusion_. Perhaps the commonest is that it argued
-that 'war had become impossible.' The truth of that charge at least can
-very easily be tested. The first page of that book, the preface,
-referring to the thesis it proposed to set out, has these words: 'the
-argument is _not_ that war is impossible, but that it is futile.' The
-next page but one describes what the author believes to be the main
-forces at work in international politics: a fierce struggle for
-preponderant power 'based on the universal assumption that a nation, in
-order to find outlets for expanding population and increasing industry,
-or simply to ensure the best conditions possible for its people, is
-necessarily pushed to territorial expansion and the exercise of
-political force against others ... that nations being competing units,
-advantage, in the last resort, goes to the possessor of preponderant
-military force, the weaker going to the wall, as in the other forms of
-the struggle for life.' A whole chapter is devoted to the evidence which
-goes to show that this aggressive and warlike philosophy was indeed the
-great actuating force in European politics. The first two paragraphs of
-the first chapter forecast the likelihood of an Anglo-German explosion;
-that chapter goes on to declare that the pacifist effort then current
-was evidently making no headway at all against the tendencies towards
-rivalry and conflict. In the third chapter the ideas underlying those
-tendencies are described as 'so profoundly mischievous,' and so
-'desperately dangerous,' as to threaten civilisation itself. A chapter
-is devoted to showing that the fallacy and folly of those all but
-universal ideas was no guarantee at all that the nations would not act
-upon them. (Particularly is the author insistent on the fact that the
-futility of war will never in itself suffice to stop war. The folly of a
-given course of action will only be a deterrent to the degree to which
-men realise its folly. That was why the book was written.) A warning is
-uttered against any reliance upon the Hague Conferences, which, it is
-explained at length, are likely to be quite ineffective against the
-momentum of the motives of aggression. A warning is uttered towards the
-close of the book against any reduction of British armaments,
-accompanied, however, by the warning that mere increase of armaments
-unaccompanied by change of policy, a Political Reformation in the
-direction of internationalism, will provoke the very catastrophe it is
-their object to avoid; only by that change of policy could we take a
-real step towards peace 'instead of _a step towards war, to which the
-mere piling up of armaments, unchecked by any other factor, must in the
-end inevitably lead_.'[97]
-
-The last paragraph of the book asks the reader which of two courses we
-are to follow: a determined effort towards placing European policy on a
-new basis, or a drift along the current of old instincts and ideas, a
-course which would condemn us to the waste of mountains of treasure and
-the spilling of oceans of blood.
-
-Yet, it is probably true to say that, of the casual newspaper references
-(as distinct from reviews) made during the last ten years to the book
-just described, four out of five are to the effect that its author said
-'war was impossible because it did not pay.'
-
-The following are some passages referred to in the above summary:--
-
-     'Not the facts, but men's opinions about the facts is what matters.
-     This is because men's conduct is determined, not necessarily by the
-     right conclusion from facts, but the conclusion they believe to be
-     right.... As long as Europe is dominated by the old beliefs, those
-     beliefs will have virtually the same effect in politics as though
-     they were intrinsically sound.'--(p. 327.)
-
-     'It is evident that so long as the misconception we are dealing
-     with is all but universal in Europe, so long as the nations believe
-     that in some way the military and political subjugation of others
-     will bring with it a tangible material advantage to the conqueror,
-     we all do, in fact, stand in danger from such aggression. Not his
-     interest, but what he deems to be his interest, will furnish the
-     real motive of our prospective enemy's action. And as the illusion
-     with which we are dealing does, indeed, dominate all those minds
-     most active in European politics, we must, while this remains the
-     case, regard an aggression, even such as that which Mr Harrison
-     foresees, as within the bounds of practical politics.... On this
-     ground alone I deem that we or any other nation are justified in
-     taking means of self-defence to prevent such aggression. This is
-     not, therefore, a plea for disarmament irrespective of the action
-     of other nations. So long as current political philosophy in Europe
-     remains what it is, I would not urge the reduction of our war
-     budget by a single sovereign.'--(p. 329.)
-
-     'The need for defence arises from the existence of a motive for
-     attack.... That motive is, consequently, part of the problem of
-     defence.... Since as between the European peoples we are dealing
-     with in this matter, one party is as able in the long run to pile
-     up armaments as the other, we cannot get nearer to solution by
-     armaments alone; we must get at the original provoking cause--the
-     motive making for aggression.... If that motive results from a
-     true judgment of the facts; if the determining factor in a nation's
-     well-being and progress is really its power to obtain by force
-     advantage over others, the present situation of armament rivalry
-     tempered by war is a natural and inevitable one.... If, however,
-     the view is a false one, our progress towards solution will be
-     marked by the extent to which the error becomes generally
-     recognised in European public opinion.'--(p. 337.)
-
-     'In this matter it seems fatally easy to secure either one of two
-     kinds of action: that of the "practical man" who limits his
-     energies to securing a policy which will perfect the machinery of
-     war and disregard anything else; or that of the Pacifist, who,
-     persuaded of the brutality or immorality of war, is apt to
-     deprecate effort directed at self-defence. What is needed is the
-     type of activity which will include both halves of the problem:
-     provision for education, for a Political Reformation in this
-     matter, _as well as_ such means of defence as will meantime
-     counterbalance the existing impulse to aggression. To concentrate
-     on either half to the exclusion of the other half is to render the
-     whole problem insoluble.'--(p. 330.)
-
-     'Never has the contest of armament been so keen as when Europe
-     began to indulge in Peace Conferences. Speaking roughly and
-     generally, the era of great armament expansion dates from the first
-     Hague Conference. The reader who has appreciated the emphasis laid
-     in the preceding pages on working through the reform of ideas will
-     not feel much astonishment at the failure of efforts such as these.
-     The Hague Conferences represented an attempt, not to work through
-     the reform of ideas, but to modify by mechanical means the
-     political machinery of Europe, without reference to the ideas which
-     had brought it into existence.
-
-     'Arbitration treaties, Hague Conferences, International Federation,
-     involve a new conception of relationship between nations. But the
-     ideals--political, economical, and social--on which the old
-     conceptions are based, our terminology, our political literature,
-     our old habits of thought, diplomatic inertia, which all combine to
-     perpetuate the old notions, have been left serenely undisturbed.
-     And surprise is expressed that such schemes do not succeed.'--(p.
-     350.)
-
-Very soon after the appearance of the book, I find I am shouting myself
-hoarse in the Press against this monstrous 'impossibility of war'
-foolishness. An article in the _Daily Mail_ of September 15th, 1911,
-begins thus:--
-
-     ' ... One learns, with some surprise, that the very simple facts to
-     which I have now for some years been trying to draw the attention
-     they deserve, teach that:--
-
-     1. War is now impossible.
-
-     2. War would ruin both the victor and the vanquished.
-
-     3. War would leave the victor worse off than the vanquished.
-
-     'May I say with every possible emphasis that nothing I have ever
-     written justifies any one of these conclusions.
-
-     'I have always, on the contrary, urged that:--
-
-     (1) War is, unhappily, quite possible, and, in the prevailing
-     condition of ignorance concerning certain elementary
-     politico-economic facts, even likely.
-
-     (2) There is nothing to justify the conclusion that war would
-     "ruin" both victor and vanquished. Indeed, I do not quite know what
-     the "ruin" of a nation means.
-
-     (3) While in the past the vanquished has often profited more by
-     defeat than he could possibly have done by victory, it is no
-     necessary result, and we are safest in assuming that the vanquished
-     will suffer most.'
-
-Nearly two years later I find myself still engaged in the same task.
-Here is a letter to the _Saturday Review_ (March 8th, 1913):--
-
-     'You are good enough to say that I am "one of the very few
-     advocates of peace at any price who is not altogether an ass." And
-     yet you also state that I have been on a mission "to persuade the
-     German people that war in the twentieth century is impossible." If
-     I had ever tried to teach anybody such sorry rubbish I should be
-     altogether an unmitigated ass. I have never, of course, nor so far
-     as I am aware, has any one ever said that war was impossible.
-     Personally, not only do I regard war as possible, but extremely
-     likely. What I have been preaching in Germany is that it is
-     impossible for Germany to benefit by war, especially a war against
-     us; and that, of course, is quite a different matter.'
-
-It is true that if the argument of the book as a whole pointed to the
-conclusion that war was 'impossible,' it would be beside the point to
-quote passages repudiating that conclusion. They might merely prove the
-inconsequence of the author's thought. But the book, and the whole
-effort of which it was a part, would have had no _raison d'etre_ if the
-author had believed war unlikely or impossible. It was a systematic
-attack on certain political ideas which the author declared were
-dominant in international politics. If he had supposed those powerful
-ideas were making _not_ for war, but for peace, why as a pacifist should
-he be at such pains to change them? And if he thought those
-war-provoking ideas which he attacked were not likely to be put into
-effect, why, in that case either, should he bother at all? Why, for that
-matter, should a man who thought war impossible engage in not too
-popular propaganda against war--against something which could not occur?
-
-A moment's real reflection on the part of those responsible for this
-description of _The Great Illusion_, should have convinced them that it
-could not be a true one.
-
-I have taken the trouble to go through some of the more serious
-criticisms of the book to see whether this extraordinary confusion was
-created in the mind of those who actually read the book instead of
-reading about it. So far as I know, not a single serious critic has come
-to a conclusion that agrees with the 'popular' verdict. Several going to
-the book after the War, seem to express surprise at the absence of any
-such conclusion. Professor Lindsay writes:--
-
-     'Let us begin by disposing of one obvious criticism of the
-     doctrines of _The Great Illusion_ which the out-break of war has
-     suggested. Mr Angell never contended that war was impossible,
-     though he did contend that it must always be futile. He insisted
-     that the futility of war would not make war impossible or armament
-     unnecessary until all nations recognised its futility. So long as
-     men held that nations could advance their interests by war, so long
-     war would last. His moral was that we should fight militarism,
-     whether in Germany or in our own country, as one ought to fight an
-     idea with better ideas. He further pointed out that though it is
-     pleasanter to attack the wrong ideals held by foreigners, it is
-     more effective to attack the wrong ideals held in our own
-     country.... The pacifist hope was that the outbreak of a European
-     war, which was recognised as quite possible, might be delayed
-     until, with the progress of pacifist doctrine, war became
-     impossible. That hope has been tragically frustrated, but if the
-     doctrines of pacifism are convincing and irrefutable, it was not in
-     itself a vain hope. Time was the only thing it asked of fortune,
-     and time was denied it.'
-
-Another post-war critic--on the other side of the Atlantic--writes:--
-
-     'Mr. Angell has received too much solace from the unwisdom of his
-     critics. Those who have denounced him most vehemently are those who
-     patently have not read his books. For example, he cannot properly
-     be classed, as frequently asserted in recent months, as one of
-     those Utopian pacifists who went about proclaiming war impossible.
-     A number of passages in _The Great Illusion_ show him fully alive
-     to the danger of the present collapse; indeed, from the narrower
-     view of politics his book was one of the several fruitless attempts
-     to check that growing estrangement between England and Germany
-     whose sinister menace far-sighted men discerned. Even less
-     justifiable are the flippant sneers which discard his argument as
-     mercenary or sordid. Mr Angell has never taken an "account book" or
-     "breeches pocket" view of war. He inveighs against what he terms
-     its political and moral futilities as earnestly as against its
-     economic futility.'
-
-It may be said that there must be some cause for so persistent a
-misrepresentation. There is. Its cause is that obstinate and deep-seated
-fatalism which is so large a part of the prevailing attitude to war and
-against which the book under consideration was a protest. Take it as an
-axiom that war comes upon us as an outside force, like the rain or the
-earthquake, and not as something that we can influence, and a man who
-'does not believe in war,' must be a person who believes that war is not
-coming;[98] that men are naturally peaceable. To be a Pacifist because
-one believes that the danger of war is very great indeed, or because one
-believes men to be naturally extremely prone to war, is a position
-incomprehensible until we have rid our minds of the fatalism which
-regards war as an 'inevitable' result of uncontrollable forces.
-
-What is a writer to do, however, in the face of persistent
-misrepresentation such as this? If he were a manufacturer of soap and
-some one said his soap was underweight, or he were a grocer and some one
-said his sugar was half sand, he could of course obtain enormous
-damages. But a mere writer, having given some years of his life to the
-study of the most important problem of his time, is quite helpless when
-a tired headline writer, or a journalist indulging his resentment, or
-what he thinks is likely to be the resentment of his readers, describes
-a book as proclaiming one thing when as a matter of simple fact it
-proclaims the exact contrary.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-So much for myth or misrepresentation No. 1. We come to a second,
-namely, that _The Great Illusion_ is an appeal to avarice; that it urges
-men not to defend their country 'because to do so does not pay;' that it
-would have us place 'pocket before patriotism,' a view reflected in
-Benjamin Kidd's last book, pages of which are devoted to the
-condemnation of the 'degeneracy and futility' of resting the cause of
-peace on no higher ground than that it is 'a great illusion to believe
-that a national policy founded on war can be a profitable policy for any
-people in the long run.'[99] He quotes approvingly Sir William Robertson
-Nicoll for denouncing those who condemn war because 'it would postpone
-the blessed hour of tranquil money getting.'[100] As a means of
-obscuring truths which it is important to realise, of creating by
-misrepresentation a moral repulsion to a thesis, and thus depriving it
-of consideration, this second line of attack is even more important than
-the first.
-
-To say of a book that it prophesied 'the impossibility of war,' is to
-imply that it is mere silly rubbish, and its author a fool. Sir William
-Robertson Nicoll's phrase would of course imply that its doctrine was
-morally contemptible.
-
-The reader must judge, after considering dispassionately what follows,
-whether this second description is any truer than the first.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-'ECONOMIC' AND 'MORAL' MOTIVES IN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
-
-
-_The Great Illusion_ dealt--among other factors of international
-conflict--with the means by which the population of the world is driven
-to support itself; and studied the effect of those efforts to find
-sustenance upon the relations of States. It therefore dealt with
-economics.
-
-On the strength of this, certain critics (like some of those quoted in
-the last chapter) who cannot possibly have read the book thoroughly,
-seem to have argued: If this book about war deals with 'economics,' it
-must deal with money and profits. To bring money and profits into a
-discussion of war is to imply that men fight for money, and won't fight
-if they don't get money from it; that war does not 'pay.' This is wicked
-and horrible. Let us denounce the writer for a shallow Hedonist and
-money-grubber....
-
-As a matter of simple fact, as we shall see presently, the book was
-largely an attempt to show that the economic argument usually adduced
-for a particularly ruthless form of national selfishness was not a sound
-argument; that the commonly invoked justification for a selfish
-immoralism in Foreign Policy was a fallacy, an illusion. Yet the critics
-somehow managed to turn what was in fact an argument against national
-egoism into an argument for selfishness.
-
-What was the political belief and the attitude towards life which _The
-Great Illusion_ challenged? And what was the counter principle which it
-advocated as a substitute therefore?
-
-It challenged the theory that the vital interests of nations are
-conflicting, and that war is part of the inevitable struggle for life
-among them; the view that, in order to feed itself, a nation with an
-expanding population must conquer territory and so deprive others of the
-means of subsistence; the view that war is the 'struggle for
-bread.'[101] In other words, it challenged the economic excuse or
-justification for the 'sacred egoism' which is so largely the basis of
-the nationalist political philosophy, an excuse, which, as we shall see,
-the nationalist invokes if not to deny the moral law in the
-international field, at least to put the morality governing the
-relations of States on a very different plane from that which governs
-the relations of individuals. As against this doctrine _The Great
-Illusion_ advanced the proposition, among others, that the economic or
-biological assumption on which it is based is false; that the policy of
-political power which results from this assumption is economically
-unworkable, its benefits an illusion; that the amount of sustenance
-provided by the earth is not a fixed quantity so that what one nation
-can seize another loses, but is an expanding quantity, its amount
-depending mainly upon the efficiency with which men co-operate in their
-exploitation of Nature. As already pointed out, a hundred thousand Red
-Indians starved in a country where a hundred million modern Americans
-have abundance. The need for co-operation, and the faith on which alone
-it can be maintained, being indispensable to our common welfare, the
-violation of the social compact, international obligation, will be
-visited with penalties just as surely as are violations of the moral law
-in relations between individuals. The economic factor is not the sole or
-the largest element in human relations, but it is the one which occupies
-the largest place in public law and policy. (Of two contestants, each
-can retain his religion or literary preferences without depriving the
-other of like possessions; they cannot both retain the same piece of
-material property.) The economic problem is vital in the sense of
-dealing with the means by which we maintain life; and it is invoked as
-justification for the political immoralism of States. Until the
-confusions concerning it are cleared up, it will serve little purpose to
-analyse the other elements of conflict.
-
-What justifies the assumption that the predatory egotism, sacred or
-profane, here implied, was an indispensable part of the pre-war
-political philosophy, explaining the great part of policy in the
-international field?[102]
-
-First the facts: the whole history of international conflict in the
-decade or two which preceded the War; and the terms of the Treaty of
-Versailles. If you would find out the nature of a people's (or a
-statesman's) political morality, note their conduct when they have
-complete power to carry their desires into effect. The terms of peace,
-and the relations of the Allies with Russia, show a deliberate and
-avowed pre-occupation with sources of oil, iron, coal; with indemnities,
-investments, old debts; with Colonies, markets; the elimination of
-commercial rivals--with all these things to a degree very much greater
-and in a fashion much more direct than was assumed in _The Great
-Illusion_.
-
-But the tendency had been evident in the conflicts which preceded the
-War. These conflicts, in so far as the Great Powers were concerned, had
-been in practically every case over territory, or roads to territory;
-over Madagascar, Egypt, Morocco, Korea, Mongolia; 'warm water' ports,
-the division of Africa, the partitioning of China, loans thereto and
-concessions therein; the Persian Gulf, the Bagdad Railway, the Panama
-Canal. Where the principle of nationality was denied by any Great Power
-it was generally because to recognise it might block access to the sea
-or raw materials, throw a barrier across the road to undeveloped
-territory.
-
-There was no denial of this by those who treated of public affairs. Mr
-Lloyd George declared that England would be quite ready to go to war
-rather than have the Morocco question settled without reference to her.
-Famous writers like Mahan did not balk at conclusions like this:--
-
-     'It is the great amount of unexploited raw material in territories
-     politically backward, and now imperfectly possessed by the nominal
-     owners, which at the present moment constitutes the temptation and
-     the impulse to war of European States.'[103]
-
-Nor to justify them thus:--
-
-     'More and more Germany needs the assured importation of raw
-     materials, and, where possible, control of regions productive of
-     such materials. More and more she requires assured markets, and
-     security as to the importation of food, since less and less
-     comparatively is produced within her own borders for her rapidly
-     increasing population. This all means security at sea.... Yet the
-     supremacy of Great Britain in European seas means a perpetually
-     latent control of German commerce.... The world has long been
-     accustomed to the idea of a predominant naval power, coupling it
-     accurately with the name of Great Britain: and it has been noted
-     that such power, when achieved, is commonly found associated with
-     commercial and industrial pre-eminence, the struggle for which is
-     now in progress between Great Britain and Germany. Such
-     pre-eminence forces a nation to seek markets, and, where possible,
-     to control them to its own advantage by preponderant force, the
-     ultimate expression of which is possession.... From this flow two
-     results: the attempt to possess, and the organisation of force by
-     which to maintain possession already achieved.... This statement is
-     simply a specific formulation of the general necessity stated;
-     itself an inevitable link in a chain of logical sequence: industry,
-     markets, control, navy, bases....[104]
-
-Mr Spenser Wilkinson, of a corresponding English school, is just as
-definite:--
-
-     'The effect of growth is an expansion and an increase of power. It
-     necessarily affects the environment of the growing organisms; it
-     interferes with the _status quo_. Existing rights and interests are
-     disturbed by the fact of growth, which is itself a change. The
-     growing community finds itself hedged in by previously existing and
-     surviving conditions, and fettered by prescriptive rights. There
-     is, therefore, an exertion of force to overcome resistance. No
-     process of law or of arbitration can deal with this phenomenon,
-     because any tribunal administering a system of right or law must
-     base its decision upon the tradition of the past which has become
-     unsuited to the new conditions that have arisen. The growing State
-     is necessarily expansive or aggressive.'[105]
-
-Even more decisive as a definite philosophy are the propositions of Mr
-Petre, who, writing on 'The Mandate of Humanity,' says:--
-
-     'The conscience of a State cannot, therefore, be as delicate, as
-     disinterested, as altruistic, as that of the noblest individuals.
-     The State exists primarily for its own people and only secondarily
-     for the rest of the world. Hence, given a dispute in which it feels
-     its rights and welfare to be at stake, it may, however erroneously,
-     set aside its moral obligations to international society in favour
-     of its obligations to the people for whom it exists.
-
-     'But no righteous conscience, it may be said, could give its
-     verdict against a solemn pledge taken and reciprocated; no
-     righteous conscience could, in a society of nations, declare
-     against the ends of that society. Indeed I think it could, and
-     sometimes would, if its sense of justice were outraged, if its duty
-     to those who were bone of its bone and flesh of its flesh came into
-     conflict with its duty to those who were not directly belonging to
-     it....
-
-     'The mechanism of a State exists mainly for its own preservation,
-     and cannot be turned against this, its legitimate end. The
-     conscience of a State will not traverse this main condition, and to
-     weaken its conscience is to weaken its life....
-
-     'The strong will not give way to the weak; the one who thinks
-     himself in the right will not yield to those whom he believes to be
-     in the wrong; the living generations will not be restrained by the
-     promises to a dead one; nature will not be controlled by
-     conventions.'[106]
-
-It is the last note that gives the key to popular feeling about the
-scramble for territory. In _The Great Illusion_ whole pages of popular
-writing are quoted to show that the conception of the struggle as in
-truth the struggle for survival had firmly planted itself in the popular
-consciousness. One of the critics who is so severe upon the present
-writer for trying to undermine the economic foundation of that popular
-creed, Benjamin Kidd, himself testifies to the depth and sweep of this
-pseudo-Darwinism (he seems to think indeed that it is true Darwinism,
-which it is not, as Darwin himself pointed out). He declares that 'there
-is no precedent in the history of the human mind to compare with the
-saturnalia of the Western intellect' which followed the popularisation
-of what he regards as Darwin's case and I would regard as a distortion
-of it. Kidd says it 'touched the profoundest depth of the psychology of
-the West.' 'Everywhere throughout civilisation an almost inconceivable
-influence was given to the doctrine of the law of biological necessity
-in books of statecraft and war-craft, of expanding military empires.'
-'Struggle for life,' 'a biological necessity,' 'survival of the fit,'
-had passed into popular use and had come to buttress popular feeling
-about the inevitability of war and its ultimate justification and the
-uselessness of organising the natives save on a basis of conflict.
-
-We are now in a position to see the respective moral positions of the
-two protagonists.
-
-The advocate of Political Theory No. 1, which an overwhelming
-preponderance of evidence shows to be the prevailing theory, says:--You
-Pacifists are asking us to commit national suicide; to sacrifice future
-generations to your political ideals. Now, as voters or statesmen we are
-trustees, we act for others. Sacrifice, suicide even, on behalf of an
-ideal, may be justified when we are sacrificing ourselves. But we cannot
-sacrifice others, our wards. Our first duty is to our own nation, our
-own children; to their national security and future welfare. It is
-regrettable if, by the conquests, wars, blockades, rendered necessary by
-those objects other people starve, and lose their national freedom and
-see their children die; but that is the hard necessity of life in a hard
-world.
-
-Advocate of Political Theory No. 2 says:--I deny that the excuse of
-justification which you give for your cruelty to others is a valid
-excuse or justification. Pacifism does not ask you to sacrifice your
-people, to betray the interest of your wards. You will serve their
-interests best by the policy we advocate. Your children will not be more
-assured of their sustenance by these conquests that attempt to render
-the feeding of foreign children more difficult; yours will be less
-secure. By co-operating with those others instead of using your
-energies against them, the resultant wealth....
-
-Advocate No. 1:--Wealth! Interest! You introduce your wretched economic
-calculations of interest into a question of Patriotism. You have the
-soul of a bagman concerned only to restore 'the blessed hour of tranquil
-money-getting,' and Sir William Robertson Nicoll shall denounce you in
-the _British Weekly_!
-
-And the discussion usually ends with this moral flourish and gestures of
-melodramatic indignation.
-
-But are they honest gestures? Here are the upholders of a certain
-position who say:--'In certain circumstances as when you are in a
-position of trustee, the only moral course, the only right course, is to
-be guided by the interests of your ward. Your duty then demands a
-calculation of advantage. You may not be generous at your ward's
-expense. This is the justification of the "sacred egoism" of the poet.'
-
-If in that case a critic says: 'Very well. Let us consider what will be
-the best interests of your ward,' is it really open to the first party
-to explain in a paroxysm of moral indignation: 'You are making a
-shameful and disgraceful appeal to selfishness and avarice?'
-
-This is not an attempt to answer one set of critics by quoting another
-set. The self-same people take those two attitudes. I have quoted above
-a passage of Admiral Mahan's in which he declares that nations can never
-be expected to act from any other motive than that of interest (a
-generalisation, by the way, from which I should most emphatically
-dissent). He goes on to declare that Governments 'must put first the
-rival interests of their own wards ... their own people,' and are thus
-pushed to the acquisition of markets by means of military predominance.
-
-Very well. _The Great Illusion_ argued some of Admiral Mahan's
-propositions in terms of interest and advantage. And then, when he
-desired to demolish that argument, he did not hesitate in a long
-article in the _North American Review_ to write as follows:--
-
-     'The purpose of armaments, in the minds of those maintaining them,
-     is not primarily an economical advantage, in the sense of depriving
-     a neighbour State of its own, or fear of such consequences to
-     itself through the deliberate aggression of a rival having that
-     particular end in view.... The fundamental proposition of the book
-     is a mistake. Nations are under no illusion as to the
-     unprofitableness of war in itself.... The entire conception of the
-     work is itself an illusion, based upon a profound misreading of
-     human action. To regard the world as governed by self-interest only
-     is to live in a non-existent world, an ideal world, a world
-     possessed by an idea much less worthy than those which mankind, to
-     do it bare justice, persistently entertains.'[107]
-
-Admiral Mahan was a writer of very great and deserved reputation, in the
-very first rank of those dealing with the relations of power to national
-politics, certainly incapable of any conscious dishonesty of opinion.
-Yet, as we have seen, his opinion on the most important fact of all
-about war--its ultimate purpose, and the reasons which justify it or
-provoke it--swings violently in absolute self-contradiction. And the
-flat contradiction here revealed shows--and this surely is the moral of
-such an incident--that he could never have put to himself detachedly,
-coldly, impartially the question: 'What do I really believe about the
-motives of nations in War? To what do the facts as a whole really
-point?' Had he done so, it might have been revealed to him that what
-really determined his opinion about the causes of war was a desire to
-justify the great profession of arms, to one side of which he had
-devoted his life and given years of earnest labour and study; to defend
-from some imputation of futility one of the most ancient of man's
-activities that calls for some at least of the sublimest of human
-qualities. If a widened idealism clearly discredited that ancient
-institution, he was prepared to show that an ineradicable conflict of
-national interests rendered it inevitable. If it was shown that war was
-irrelevant to those conflicts, or ineffective as a means of protecting
-the interests concerned, he was prepared to show that the motives
-pushing to war were not those of interest at all.
-
-It may be said that none the less the thesis under discussion
-substitutes one selfish argument for another; tries by appealing to
-self-interest (the self-interest of a group or nation) to turn
-selfishness from a destructive result to a more social result. Its basis
-is self. Even that is not really true. For, first, that argument ignores
-the question of trusteeship; and, secondly, it involves a confusion
-between the motive of a given policy and the criterion by which its
-goodness or badness shall be tested.
-
-How is one to deal with the claim of the 'mystic nationalist' (he exists
-abundantly even outside the Balkans) that the subjugation of some
-neighbouring nationalism is demanded by honour; that only the great
-State can be the really good State; that power--'majesty,' as the
-Oriental would say--is a thing good in itself?[108] There are ultimate
-questions as to what is good and what is bad that no argument can
-answer; ultimate values which cannot be discussed. But one can reduce
-those unarguable values to a minimum by appealing to certain social
-needs. A State which has plenty of food may not be a good State; but a
-State which cannot feed its population cannot be a good State, for in
-that case the citizens will be hungry, greedy, and violent.
-
-In other words, certain social needs and certain social utilities--which
-we can all recognise as indispensables--furnish a ground of agreement
-for the common action without which no society can be established. And
-the need for such a criterion becomes more manifest as we learn more of
-the wonderful fashion in which we sublimate our motives. A country
-refuses to submit its dispute to arbitration, because its 'honour' is
-involved. Many books have been written to try and find out precisely
-what honour of this kind is. One of the best of them has decided that it
-is anything which a country cares to make it. It is never the presence
-of coal, or iron, or oil, which makes it imperative to retain a given
-territory: it is honour (as Italy's Foreign Minister explained when
-Italy went to war for the conquest of Tripoli). Unfortunately, rival
-States have also impulses of honour which compel them to claim the same
-undeveloped territory. Nothing can prove--or disprove--that honour, in
-such circumstances, is invoked by each or either of the parties
-concerned to make a piece of acquisitiveness or megalomania appear as
-fine to himself as possible: that, just because he has a lurking
-suspicion that all is not well with the operation, he seeks to justify
-it to himself with fine words that have a very vague content. But on
-this basis there can be no agreement. If, however, one shifts the
-discussion to the question of what is best for the social welfare of
-both, one can get a _modus vivendi_. For each to admit that he has no
-right so to use his power as to deprive the other of means of life,
-would be the beginning of a code which could be tested. Each might
-conceivably have that right to deprive the other of means of livelihood,
-if it were a choice between the lives of his own people or others.
-
-The economic fact is the test of the ethical claim: if it really be true
-that we must withhold sources of food from others because otherwise our
-own would starve, there is some ethical justification for such use of
-our power. If such is not the fact, the whole moral issue is changed,
-and with it, to the degree to which it is mutually realised, the social
-outlook and attitude. The knowledge of interdependence is part, at
-least, of an attitude which makes the 'social sense'--the sense that one
-kind of arrangement is fair and workable, and another is not. To bring
-home the fact of this interdependence is not simply an appeal to
-selfishness: it is to reveal a method by which an apparently
-irreconcilable conflict of vital needs can be reconciled. The sense of
-interdependence, of the need of one for another, is part of the
-foundation of the very difficult art of living together.
-
-Much mischief arises from the misunderstanding of the term 'economic
-motive.' Let us examine some further examples of this. One is a common
-confusion of terms: an economic motive may be the reverse of selfish.
-The long sustained efforts of parents to provide fittingly for their
-children--efforts continued, it may be, through half a lifetime--are
-certainly economic. Just as certainly they are not selfish in any exact
-sense of the term. Yet something like this confusion seems to overlie
-the discussion of economics in connection with war.
-
-Speaking broadly, I do not believe that men ever go to war from a cold
-calculation of advantage or profit. I never have believed it. It seems
-to me an obvious and childish misreading of human psychology. I cannot
-see how it is possible to imagine a man laying down his life on the
-battle-field for personal gain. Nations do not fight for their money or
-interests, they fight for their rights, or what they believe to be their
-rights. The very gallant men who triumphed at Bull Run or
-Chancellorsville were not fighting for the profits on slave-labour: they
-were fighting for what they believed to be their independence: the
-rights, as they would have said, to self-government or, as we should now
-say, of self-determination. Yet it was a conflict which arose out of
-slave labour: an economic question. Now the most elementary of all
-rights, in the sense of the first right which a people will claim, is
-the right to existence--the right of a population to bread and a decent
-livelihood.[109] For that nations certainly will fight. Yet, as we see,
-it is a right which arises out of an economic need or conflict. We have
-seen how it works as a factor in our own foreign policy: as a compelling
-motive for the command of the sea. We believe that the feeding of these
-islands depends upon it: that if we lost it our children might die in
-the streets and the lack of food compel us to an ignominious surrender.
-It is this relation of vital food supply to preponderant sea power which
-has caused us to tolerate no challenge to the latter. We know the part
-which the growth of the German Navy played in shaping Anglo-Continental
-relations before the War; the part which any challenge to our naval
-preponderance has always played in determining our foreign policy. The
-command of the sea, with all that that means in the way of having built
-up a tradition, a battle-cry in politics, has certainly bound up with it
-this life and death fact of feeding our population. That is to say it is
-an economic need. Yet the determination of some millions of Englishmen
-to fight for this right to life, to die rather than see the daily bread
-of their people in jeopardy, would be adequately described by some
-phrase about Englishmen going to war because it 'paid.' It would be a
-silly or dishonest gibe. Yet that is precisely the kind of gibe that I
-have had to face these fifteen years in attempting to disentangle the
-forces and motives underlying international conflict.
-
-What picture is summoned to our minds by the word 'economics' in
-relation to war? To the critics whose indignation is so excited at the
-introduction of the subject at all into the discussion of war--and they
-include, unhappily, some of the great names of English literature--'economic'
-seems to carry no picture but that of an obese Semitic stockbroker, in
-quaking fear for his profits. This view cannot be said to imply either
-much imagination or much sense of reality. For among the stockbrokers,
-the usurers, those closest to financial manipulation and in touch with
-financial changes, are to be found some groups numerically small, who
-are more likely to gain than to lose by war; and the present writer has
-never suggested the contrary.
-
-But the 'economic futility' of war expresses itself otherwise: in half a
-Continent unable to feed or clothe or warm itself; millions rendered
-neurotic, abnormal, hysterical by malnutrition, disease, and anxiety;
-millions rendered greedy, selfish, and violent by the constant strain of
-hunger; resulting in 'social unrest' that threatens more and more to
-become sheer chaos and confusion: the dissolution and disintegration of
-society. Everywhere, in the cities, are the children who cry and who are
-not fed, who raise shrunken arms to our statesmen who talk with
-pride[110] of their stern measures of 'rigorous' blockade. Rickety and
-dying children, and undying hate for us, their murderers, in the hearts
-of their mothers--these are the human realities of the 'economics of
-war.'
-
-The desire to prevent these things, to bring about an order that would
-render possible both patriotism and mercy, would save us from the
-dreadful dilemma of feeding our own children only by the torture and
-death of others equally innocent--the effort to this end is represented
-as a mere appeal to selfishness and avarice, something mean and ignoble,
-a degradation of human motive.
-
-'These theoretical dilemmas do not state accurately the real conditions
-of politics,' the reader may object. 'No one proposes to inflict famine
-as a means of enforcing our policy' ... 'England does not make war on
-women and children.'
-
-Not one man or woman in a million, English or other, would wittingly
-inflict the suffering of starvation upon a single child, if the child
-were visible to his eyes, present in his mind, and if the simple human
-fact were not obscured by the much more complex and artificial facts
-that have gathered round our conceptions of patriotism. The heaviest
-indictment of the military-nationalist philosophy we are discussing is
-that it manages successfully to cover up human realities by dehumanising
-abstractions. From the moment that the child becomes a part of that
-abstraction--'Russia,' 'Austria,' 'Germany'--it loses its human
-identity, and becomes merely an impersonal part of the political problem
-of the struggle of our nation with others. The inverted moral alchemy,
-by which the golden instinct that we associate with so much of direct
-human contact is transformed into the leaden cruelty of nationalist hate
-and high statecraft, has been dealt with at the close of Part I. When in
-tones of moral indignation it is declared that Englishmen 'do not make
-war on women and children,' we must face the truth and say that
-Englishmen, like all peoples, do make such war.
-
-An action in public policy--the proclamation of the blockade, or the
-confiscation of so much tonnage, or the cession of territory, or the
-refusal of a loan--these things are remote and vague; not only is the
-relation between results and causes remote and sometimes difficult to
-establish, but the results themselves are invisible and far away. And
-when the results of a policy are remote, and can be slurred over in our
-minds, we are perfectly ready to apply, logically and ruthlessly, the
-most ferocious of political theories. It is of supreme importance then
-what those theories happen to be. When the issue of war and peace hangs
-in the balance, the beam may well be kicked one way or the other by our
-general political philosophy, these somewhat vague and hazy notions
-about life being a struggle, and nature red of tooth and claw, about
-wars being part of the cosmic process, sanctioned by professors and
-bishops and writers. It may well be these vague notions that lead us to
-acquiesce in the blockade or the newest war. The typhus or the rickets
-do not kill or maim any the less because we do not in our minds connect
-those results with the political abstractions that we bandy about so
-lightly. And we touch there the greatest service which a more 'economic'
-treatment of European problems may perform. If the Treaty of Versailles
-had been more economic it would also have been a more humane and human
-document. If there had been more of Mr Keynes and less of M. Clemenceau,
-there would have been not only more food in the world, but more
-kindliness; not only less famine, but less hate; not only more life, but
-a better way of life; those living would have been nearer to
-understanding and discarding the way of death.
-
-Let us summarise the points so far made with reference to the 'economic'
-motive.
-
-We need not accept any hard and fast (and in the view of the present
-writer, unsound) doctrine of economic determinism, in order to admit the
-truth of the following:--
-
-1. Until economic difficulties are so far solved as to give the mass of
-the people the means of secure and tolerable physical existence,
-economic considerations and motives will tend to exclude all others. The
-way to give the spiritual a fair chance with ordinary men and women is
-not to be magnificently superior to their economic difficulties, but to
-find a solution for them. Until the economic dilemma is solved, no
-solution of moral difficulties will be adequate. If you want to get rid
-of the economic preoccupation, you must solve the worst of the economic
-problem.
-
-2. In the same way the solution of the economic conflict between nations
-will not of itself suffice to establish peace; but no peace is possible
-until that conflict is solved. That makes it of sufficient importance.
-
-3. The 'economic' problem involved in international politics the use of
-political power for economic ends--is also one of Right, including the
-most elemental of all rights, that to exist.
-
-4. The answer which we give to that question of Right will depend upon
-our answer to the actual query of _The Great Illusion_: must a country
-of expanding population expand its territory or trade by means of its
-political power, in order to live? Is the political struggle for
-territory a struggle for bread?
-
-5. If we take the view that the truth is contained in neither an
-unqualified affirmative nor an unqualified negative, then all the more
-is it necessary that the interdependence of peoples, the necessity for a
-truly international economy, should become a commonplace. A wider
-realisation of those facts would help to create that pre-disposition
-necessary for a belief in the workability of voluntary co-operation, a
-belief which must precede any successful attempt to make such
-co-operation the basis of an international order.
-
-6. The economic argument of _The Great Illusion_, if valid, destroys the
-pseudo-scientific justification for political immoralism, the doctrine
-of State necessity, which has marked so much of classical statecraft.
-
-7. The main defects of the Treaty of Versailles are due to the pressure
-of a public opinion obsessed by just those ideas of nations as persons,
-of conflicting interests, which _The Great Illusion_ attempted to
-destroy. If the Treaty had been inspired by the ideas of interdependence
-of interest, it would have been not only more in the interests of the
-Allies, but morally sounder, providing a better ethical basis for future
-peace.
-
-8. To go on ignoring the economic unity and interdependence of Europe,
-to refuse to subject nationalist pugnacities to that needed unity
-because 'economics' are sordid, is to refuse to face the needs of human
-life, and the forces that shape it. Such an attitude, while professing
-moral elevation, involves a denial of the right of others to live. Its
-worst defect, perhaps, is that its heroics are fatal to intellectual
-rectitude, to truth. No society built upon such foundations can stand.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-THE GREAT ILLUSION ARGUMENT
-
-
-The preceding chapters have dealt rather with misconceptions concerning
-_The Great Illusion_ than with its positive propositions. What, outlined
-as briefly as possible, was its central argument?
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-That argument was an elaboration of these propositions: Military
-preponderance, conquest, as a means to man's most elemental
-needs--bread, sustenance--is futile, because the processes (exchange,
-division of labour) to which the dense populations of modern Western
-society are compelled to resort, cannot be exacted by military coercion;
-they can only operate as the result of a large measure of voluntary
-acquiescence by the parties concerned. A realisation of this truth is
-indispensable for the restraint of the instinctive pugnacities that
-hamper human relationship, particularly where nationalism enters.[111]
-The competition for power so stimulates those pugnacities and fears,
-that isolated national power cannot ensure a nation's political security
-or independence. Political security and economic well-being can only be
-ensured by international co-operation. This must be economic as well as
-political, be directed, that is, not only at pooling military forces for
-the purpose of restraining aggression, but at the maintenance of some
-economic code which will ensure for all nations, whether militarily
-powerful or not, fair economic opportunity and means of subsistence.
-
-It was, in other words, an attempt to clear the road to a more workable
-international policy by undermining the main conceptions and
-prepossessions inimical to an international order.[112] It did not
-elaborate machinery, but the facts it dealt with point clearly to
-certain conclusions on that head.
-
-While arguing that prevailing beliefs (false beliefs for the most part)
-and feelings (largely directed by the false beliefs) were the
-determining factors in international politics, the author challenged the
-prevailing assumption of the unchangeability of those ideas and
-feelings, particularly the proposition that war between human groups
-arises out of instincts and emotions incapable of modification or
-control or re-direction by conscious effort. The author placed equal
-emphasis on both parts of the proposition--that dealing with the alleged
-immutability of human pugnacity and ideas, and that which challenged the
-representation of war as an inevitable struggle for physical
-sustenance--if only because no exposure of the biological fallacy would
-be other than futile if the former proposition were true.[113]
-
-If conduct in these matters is the automatic reaction to uncontrollable
-instinct and is not affected by ideas, or if ideas themselves are the
-mere reflection of that instinct, obviously it is no use attempting
-demonstrations of futility, economic or other. The more we demonstrate
-the intensity of our inherent pugnacity and irrationalism, the more do
-we in fact demonstrate the need for the conscious control of those
-instincts. The alternative conclusion is fatalism: an admission not only
-that our ship is not under control, but that we have given up the task
-of getting it under control. We have surrendered our freedom.
-
-Moreover, our record shows that the direction taken by our
-pugnacities--their objective--is in fact largely determined by
-traditions and ideas which are in part at least the sum of conscious
-intellectual effort. The history of religious persecution--its wars,
-inquisitions, repressions--shows a great change (which we must admit as
-a fact, whether we regard it as good or bad) not only of idea but of
-feeling.[114] The book rejected instinct as sufficient guide and urged
-the need of discipline by intelligent foresight of consequence.
-
-To examine our subconscious or unconscious motives of conduct is the
-first step to making them conscious and modifying them.
-
-This does not imply that instincts--whether of pugnacity or other--can
-readily be repressed by a mere effort of will. But their direction, the
-object upon which they expend themselves, will depend upon our
-interpretation of facts. If we interpret the hailstorm or the curdled
-milk in one way, our fear and hatred of the witch is intense; the same
-facts interpreted another way make the witch an object of another
-emotion, pity.
-
-Reason may be a very small part of the apparatus of human conduct
-compared with the part played by the unconscious and subconscious, the
-instinctive and the emotional. The power of a ship's compass is very
-small indeed compared with the power developed by the engines. But the
-greater the power of the engines, the greater will be the disaster if
-the relatively tiny compass is deflected and causes the ship to be
-driven on to the rocks. The illustration indicates, not exactly but with
-sufficient truth, the relationship of 'reason' to 'instinct.'
-
-The instincts that push to self-assertion, to the acquisition of
-preponderant power, are so strong that we shall only abandon that method
-as the result of perceiving its futility. Co-operation, which means a
-relationship of partnership and give and take, will not succeed till
-force has failed.
-
-The futility of power as a means to our most fundamental and social ends
-is due mainly to two facts, one mechanical, and the other moral. The
-mechanical fact is that if we really need another, our power over him
-has very definite limits. Our dependence on him gives him a weapon
-against us. The moral fact is that in demanding a position of
-domination, we ask something to which we should not accede if it were
-asked of us: the claim does not stand the test of the categorical
-imperative. If we need another's labour, we cannot kill him; if his
-custom, we cannot forbid him to earn money. If his labour is to be
-effective, we must give him tools, knowledge; and these things can be
-used to resist our exactions. To the degree to which he is powerful for
-service he is powerful for resistance. A nation wealthy as a customer
-will also be ubiquitous as a competitor.
-
-The factors which have operated to make physical compulsion (slavery) as
-a means of obtaining service less economical than service for reward,
-operate just as effectively between nations. The employment of military
-force for economic ends is an attempt to apply indirectly the principle
-of chattel-slavery to groups; and involves the same disadvantages.[115]
-
-In so far as coercion represents a means of securing a wider and more
-effective social co-operation as against a narrower social co-operation,
-or more anarchic condition, it is likely to be successful and to justify
-itself socially. The imposition of Western government upon backward
-peoples approximates to the role of police; the struggles between the
-armed forces of rival Western Powers do not. The function of a police
-force is the exact contrary to that of armies competing with one
-another.[116]
-
-The demonstration of the futility of conquest rested mainly on these
-facts. After conquest the conquered people cannot be killed. They
-cannot be allowed to starve. Pressure of population on means of
-subsistence has not been reduced, but probably increased, since the
-number of mouths to fill eliminated by the casualty lists is not
-equivalent to the reduced production occasioned by war. To impose by
-force (e.g. exclusion from raw materials) a lower standard of living,
-creates (_a_) resistance which involves costs of coercion (generally in
-military establishments, but also in the political difficulties in which
-the coercion of hostile peoples--as in Alsace-Lorraine and
-Ireland--generally involves their conqueror), costs which must be
-deducted from the economic advantage of the conquest; and (_b_) loss of
-markets which may be indispensable to countries (like Britain) whose
-prosperity depends upon an international division of labour. A
-population that lives by exchanging its coal and iron for (say) food,
-does not profit by reducing the productivity of subject peoples engaged
-in food production.
-
-In _The Great Illusion_ the case was put as follows:--
-
-     'When we conquer a nation in these days, we do not exterminate it:
-     we leave it where it was. When we "overcome" the servile races, far
-     from eliminating them, we give them added chances of life by
-     introducing order, etc., so that the lower human quality tends to
-     be perpetuated by conquest by the higher. If ever it happens that
-     the Asiatic races challenge the white in the industrial or military
-     field, it will be in large part thanks to the work of race
-     conservation, which has been the result of England's conquest in
-     India, Egypt, and Asia generally.'--(pp. 191-192.)
-
-     'When the division of labour was so little developed that every
-     homestead produced all that it needed, it mattered nothing if part
-     of the community was cut off from the world for weeks and months at
-     a time. All the neighbours of a village or homestead might be slain
-     or harassed, and no inconvenience resulted. But if to-day an
-     English county is by a general railroad strike cut off for so much
-     as forty-eight hours from the rest of the economic organism, we
-     know that whole sections of its population are threatened with
-     famine. If in the time of the Danes England could by some magic
-     have killed all foreigners, she would presumably have been the
-     better off. If she could do the same thing to-day half her
-     population would starve to death. If on one side of the frontier a
-     community is, say, wheat-producing, and on the other
-     coal-producing, each is dependent for its very existence on the
-     fact of the other being able to carry on its labour. The miner
-     cannot in a week set to and grow a crop of wheat; the farmer must
-     wait for his wheat to grow, and must meantime feed his family and
-     dependents. The exchange involved here must go on, and each party
-     have fair expectation that he will in due course be able to reap
-     the fruits of his labour, or both starve; and that exchange, that
-     expectation, is merely the expression in its simplest form of
-     commerce and credit; and the interdependence here indicated has, by
-     the countless developments of rapid communication, reached such a
-     condition of complexity that the interference with any given
-     operation affects not merely the parties directly involved, but
-     numberless others having at first sight no connection therewith.
-
-     'The vital interdependence here indicated, cutting athwart
-     frontiers, is largely the work of the last forty years; and it has,
-     during that time, so developed as to have set up a financial
-     interdependence of the capitals of the world, so complex that
-     disturbance in New York involves financial and commercial
-     disturbance in London, and, if sufficiently grave, compels
-     financiers of London to co-operate with those of New York to put an
-     end to the crisis, not as a matter of altruism, but as a matter of
-     commercial self-protection. The complexity of modern finance makes
-     New York dependent on London, London upon Paris, Paris upon Berlin,
-     to a greater degree than has ever yet been the case in history.
-     This interdependence is the result of the daily use of those
-     contrivances of civilisation which date from yesterday--the rapid
-     post, the instantaneous dissemination of financial and commercial
-     information by means of telegraphy, and generally the incredible
-     progress of rapidity in communication which has put the half-dozen
-     chief capitals of Christendom in closer contact financially, and
-     has rendered them more dependent the one upon the other than were
-     the chief cities of Great Britain less than a hundred years
-     ago.--(pp. 49-50.)
-
-     'Credit is merely an extension of the use of money, and we can no
-     more shake off the domination of the one than we can of the other.
-     We have seen that the bloodiest despot is himself the slave of
-     money, in the sense that he is compelled to employ it. In the same
-     way no physical force can in the modern world set at naught the
-     force of credit. It is no more possible for a great people of the
-     modern world to live without credit than without money, of which it
-     is a part.... The wealth of the world is not represented by a fixed
-     amount of gold or money now in the possession of one Power, and now
-     in the possession of another, but depends on all the unchecked
-     multiple activities of a community for the time being. Check that
-     activity, whether by imposing tribute, or disadvantageous
-     commercial conditions, or an unwelcome administration which sets up
-     sterile political agitation, and you get less wealth--less wealth
-     for the conqueror, as well as less for the conquered. The broadest
-     statement of the case is that all experience--especially the
-     experience indicated in the last chapter--shows that in trade by
-     free consent carrying mutual benefit we get larger results for
-     effort expended than in the exercise of physical force which
-     attempts to exact advantage for one party at the expense of the
-     other.'--(pp. 270-272.)
-
-In elaboration of this general thesis it is pointed out that the
-processes of exchange have become too complex for direct barter, and can
-only take place by virtue of credit; and it is by the credit system, the
-'sensory nerve' of the economic organism, that the self-injurious
-results of economic war are first shown. If, after a victorious war, we
-allow enemy industry and international trade to go on much as before,
-then obviously our victory will have had very little effect on the
-fundamental economic situation. If, on the other hand, we attempt for
-political or other reasons to destroy our enemy's industry and trade, to
-keep him from the necessary materials of it, we should undermine our own
-credit by diminishing the exchange value of much of our own real wealth.
-For this reason it is 'a great illusion' to suppose that by the
-political annexation of colonies, territories with iron-mines,
-coal-mines, we enrich ourselves by the amount of wealth their
-exploitation represents.[117]
-
-The large place which such devices as an international credit system
-must take in our international economy, adds enormously to the
-difficulty of securing any 'spoils of victory' in the shape of
-indemnity. A large indemnity is not impossible, but the only condition
-on which it can be made possible--a large foreign trade by the defeated
-people--is not one that will be readily accepted by the victorious
-nation. Yet the dilemma is absolute: the enemy must do a big foreign
-trade (or deliver in lieu of money large quantities of goods) which will
-compete with home production, or he can pay no big indemnity--nothing
-commensurate with the cost of modern war.
-
-Since we are physically dependent on co-operation with foreigners, it
-is obvious that the frontiers of the national State are not co-terminous
-with the frontiers of our society. Human association cuts athwart
-frontiers. The recognition of the fact would help to break down that
-conception of nations as personalities which plays so large a part in
-international hatred. The desire to punish this or that 'nation' could
-not long survive if we had in mind, not the abstraction, but the babies,
-the little girls, old men, in no way responsible for the offences that
-excited our passions, whom we treated in our minds as a single
-individual.[118]
-
-As a means of vindicating a moral, social, religious, or cultural
-ideal--as of freedom or democracy--war between States, and still more
-between Alliances, must be largely ineffective for two main reasons.
-First, because the State and the moral unit do not coincide. France or
-the British Empire could not stand as a unit for Protestanism as opposed
-to Catholicism, Christianity as opposed to Mohammedanism, or
-Individualism as opposed to Socialism, or Parliamentary Government as
-opposed to Bureaucratic Autocracy, or even for European ascendancy as
-against Coloured Races. For both Empires include large coloured
-elements; the British Empire is more Mohammedan than Christian, has
-larger areas under autocratic than under Parliamentary government; has
-powerful parties increasingly Socialistic. The State power in both cases
-is being used, not to suppress, but to give actual vitality to the
-non-Christian or non-European or coloured elements that it has
-conquered. The second great reason why it is futile to attempt to use
-the military power of States for ends such as freedom and democracy, is
-that the instincts to which it is compelled to appeal, the spirit it
-must cultivate and the methods it is compelled increasingly to employ,
-are themselves inimical to the sentiment upon which freedom must rest.
-Nations that have won their freedom as the result of military victory,
-usually employ that victory to suppress the freedom of others. To rest
-our freedom upon a permanent basis of nationalist military power, is
-equivalent to seeking security from the moral dangers of Prussianism by
-organising our States on the Prussian model.
-
-Our real struggle is with nature: internecine struggles between men
-lessen the effectiveness of the human army. A Continent which supported
-precariously, with recurrent famine, a few hundred thousand savages
-fighting endlessly between themselves, can support, abundantly a hundred
-million whites who can manage to maintain peace among themselves and
-fight nature.
-
-Nature here includes human nature. Just as we turn the destructive
-forces of external nature from our hurt to our service, not by their
-unintelligent defiance, but by utilising them through a knowledge of
-their qualities, so can the irrepressible but not 'undirectable' forces
-of instinct, emotion, sentiment, be turned by intelligence to the
-service of our greatest and most permanent needs.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-ARGUMENTS NOW OUT OF DATE
-
-
-For the purposes of simplicity and brevity the main argument of _The
-Great Illusion_ assumed the relative permanence of the institution of
-private property in Western society, and the persistence of the tendency
-of victorious belligerents to respect it, a tendency which had steadily
-grown in strength for five hundred years. The book assumed that the
-conqueror would do in the future what he has done to a steadily
-increasing degree in the past, especially as the reasons for such
-policy, in terms of self-interest, have so greatly grown in force during
-the last generation or two. To have argued its case in terms of
-non-existent and hypothetical conditions which might not exist for
-generations or centuries, would have involved hopelessly bewildering
-complications. And the decisive reason for not adding this complication
-was the fact that _though it would vary the form of the argument, it
-would not effect the final conclusion_.
-
-As already explained in the first part of this book (Chapter II) this
-war has marked a revolution in the position of private property and the
-relation of the citizen to the State. The Treaty of Versailles departs
-radically from the general principles adhered to, for instance, in the
-Treaty of Frankfurt; the position of German traders and that of the
-property of German citizens does not at all to-day resemble the position
-in which the Treaty of Frankfurt left the French trader and French
-private property.
-
-The fact of the difference has already been entered into at some length.
-It remains to see how the change affects the general argument adopted in
-_The Great Illusion_.
-
-It does not affect its final conclusions. The argument ran: A conqueror
-cannot profit by 'loot' in the shape of confiscations, tributes,
-indemnities, which paralyse the economic life of the defeated enemy.
-They are economically futile. They are unlikely to be attempted, but if
-they are attempted they will still be futile.[119]
-
-Events have confirmed that conclusion, though not the expectation that
-the enemy's economic life would be left undisturbed. We have started a
-policy which does injure the economic life of the enemy. The more it
-injures him, the less it pays us. And we are abandoning it as rapidly as
-nationalist hostilities will permit us. In so far as pre-war conditions
-pointed to the need of a definitely organised international economic
-code, the situation created by the Treaty has only made the need more
-visible and imperative. For, as already explained in the first Part, the
-old understandings enabled industry to be built up on an international
-basis; the Treaty of Versailles and its confiscations, prohibitions,
-controls, have destroyed those foundations. Had that instrument treated
-German trade and industry as the Germans treated French in 1871 we might
-have seen a recovery of German economic life relatively as rapid as that
-which took place in France during the ten years which followed her
-defeat. We should not to-day be faced by thirty or forty millions in
-Central and Eastern Europe without secure means of livelihood.
-
-The present writer confesses most frankly--and the critics of _The Great
-Illusion_ are hereby presented with all that they can make of the
-admission--that he did not expect a European conqueror, least of all
-Allied conquerors, to use their victory for enforcing a policy having
-these results. He believed that elementary considerations of
-self-interest, the duty of statesmen to consider the needs of their own
-countries just emerging from war, would stand in the way of a policy of
-this kind. On the other hand, he was under no illusions as to what would
-result if they did attempt to enforce that policy. Dealing with the
-damage that a conqueror might inflict, the book says that such things as
-the utter destruction of the enemy's trade
-
-     could only be inflicted by an invader as a means of punishment
-     costly to himself, or as the result of an unselfish and expensive
-     desire to inflict misery for the mere joy of inflicting it. In this
-     self-seeking world it is not practical to assume the existence of
-     an inverted altruism of this kind.--(p. 29.)
-
-Because of the 'interdependence of our credit-built finance and
-industry'
-
-     the confiscation by an invader of private property, whether stocks,
-     shares, ships, mines, or anything more valuable than jewellery or
-     furniture--anything, in short, which is bound up with the economic
-     life of the people--would so react upon the finance of the
-     invader's country as to make the damage to the invader resulting
-     from the confiscation exceed in value the property confiscated--(p.
-     29).
-
-     Speaking broadly and generally, the conqueror in our day has before
-     him two alternatives: to leave things alone, and in order to do
-     that he need not have left his shores; or to interfere by
-     confiscation in some form, in which case he dries up the source of
-     the profit which tempted him--(p. 59).
-
-All the suggestions made as to the economic futility of such a
-course--including the failure to secure an indemnity--have been
-justified.[120]
-
-In dealing with the indemnity problem the book did forecast the
-likelihood of special trading and manufacturing interests within the
-conquering nation opposing the only condition upon which a very large
-indemnity would be possible--that condition being either the creation of
-a large foreign trade by the enemy or the receipt of payment in kind, in
-goods which would compete with home production. But the author certainly
-did not think it likely that England and France would impose conditions
-so rapidly destructive of the enemy's economic life that they--the
-conquerors--would, for their own economic preservation, be compelled to
-make loans to the defeated enemy.
-
-Let us note the phase of the argument that the procedure adopted renders
-out of date. A good deal of _The Great Illusion_ was devoted to showing
-that Germany had no need to expand territorially; that her desire for
-overseas colonies was sentimental, and had little relation to the
-problem of providing for her population. At the beginning of 1914 that
-was certainly true. It is not true to-day. The process by which she
-supported her excess population before the War will, to put it at its
-lowest, be rendered extremely difficult of maintenance as the result of
-allied action. The point, however, is that we are not benefiting by
-this paralysis of German industry. We are suffering very greatly from
-it: suffering so much that we can be neither politically nor
-economically secure until this condition is brought to an end. There can
-be no peace in Europe, and consequently no safety for us or France, so
-long as we attempt by power to maintain a policy which denies to
-millions in the midst of our civilisation the possibility of earning
-their living. In so far as the new conditions create difficulties which
-did not originally exist, our victory does but the more glaringly
-demonstrate the economic futility of our policy towards the vanquished.
-
-An argument much used in _The Great Illusion_ as disproving the claims
-made for conquest was the position of the population of small States.
-'Very well,' may say the critic, 'Germany is now in the position of a
-small State. But you talk about her being ruined!'
-
-In the conditions of 1914, the small State argument was entirely valid
-(incidentally the Allied Governments argue that it still holds).[121] It
-does not hold to-day. In the conditions of 1920 at any rate, the small
-State is, like Germany, economically at the mercy of British sea power
-or the favoritism of the French Foreign Office, to a degree that was
-unknown before the War. How is the situation to develop? Is the Dutch or
-Swedish or Austrian industrial city permanently to be dependent upon the
-good graces of some foreign official sitting in Whitehall or the Quai
-d'Orsay? At present, if an industrialist in such a city wishes to import
-coal or to ship a cargo to one of the new Baltic States, he may be
-prevented owing to political arrangements between France and England. If
-that is to be the permanent situation of the non-Entente world, then
-peace will become less and less secure, and all our talk of having
-fought for the rights of the small and weak will be a farce. The
-friction, the irritation, and sense of grievance will prolong the unrest
-and uncertainty, and the resultant decline in the productivity of
-Europe will render our own economic problems the more acute. The power
-by which we thus arrogate to ourselves the economic dictatorship of
-Europe will ultimately be challenged.
-
-Can we revert to the condition of things which, by virtue of certain
-economic freedoms that were respected, placed the trader or
-industrialist of a small State pretty much on an equality, in most
-things, with the trader of the Great State? Or shall we go forward to a
-recognised international economic system, in which the small States will
-have their rights secured by a definite code?
-
-Reversion to the old individualist 'trans-nationalism' or an
-internationalism without considerable administrative machinery--seems
-now impossible. The old system is destroyed at its sources within each
-State. The only available course now is, recognising the fact of an
-immense growth in the governmental control or regulation of foreign
-trade, to devise definite codes or agreements to meet the case. If the
-obtaining of necessary raw materials by all the States other than France
-and England is to be the subject of wrangles between officials, each
-case to be treated on its merits, we shall have a much worse anarchy
-than before the War. A condition in which two or three powers can lay
-down the law for the world will indeed be an anti-climax.
-
-We may never learn the lesson; the old futile struggles may go on
-indefinitely. But if we do put our intelligences to the situation it
-will call for a method of treatment somewhat different from that which
-pre-war conditions required.
-
-For the purposes of the War, in the various Inter-Allied bodies for the
-apportionment of shipping and raw material, we had the beginnings of an
-economic League of Nations, an economic World Government. Those bodies
-might have been made democratic, and enlarged to include neutral
-interests, and maintained for the period of Reconstruction (which might
-in any case have been regarded as a phase properly subject to war
-treatment in these matters). But these international organisations were
-allowed to fall to pieces on the removal of the common enmity which held
-the European Allies and America together.
-
-The disappearance of these bodies does not mean the disappearance of
-'controls,' but the controls will now be exercised in considerable part
-through vast private Capitalist Trusts dealing with oil, meat, and
-shipping. Nor will the interference of government be abolished. If it is
-considered desirable to ensure to some group a monopoly of phosphates,
-or palm nuts, the aid of governments will be invoked for the purpose.
-But in this case the government will exercise its powers not as the
-result of a publicly avowed and agreed principle, but illicitly,
-hypocritically.
-
-While professing to exercise a 'mandate' for mankind, a government will
-in fact be using its authority to protect special interests. In other
-words we shall get a form of internationalism in which the international
-capitalist Trust will control the Government instead of the Government's
-controlling the Trust.
-
-The fact that this was happening more and more before the War was one
-reason why the old individualist order has broken down. More and more
-the professed position and function of the State was not its real
-position and function. The amount of industry and trade dependent upon
-governmental intervention (enterprises of the Chinese Loan and Bagdad
-Railway type) before the War was small compared with the quantity that
-owed nothing to governmental protection. But the illicit pressure
-exercised upon governments by those interested in the exploitation of
-backward countries was out of proportion to the public importance of
-their interests.
-
-It was this failure of democratic control of 'big business' by the
-pre-war democracies which helped to break down the old individualism.
-While private capital was apparently gaining control over the democratic
-forces, moulding the policy of democratic governments, it was in fact
-digging its own grave. If political democracy in this respect had been
-equal to its task, or if the captains of industry had shown a greater
-scruple or discernment in their use of political power, the
-individualist order might have given us a workable civilisation; or its
-end might have been less painful.
-
-_The Great Illusion_ did not assume its impending demise. Democracy had
-not yet organised socialistic controls within the nation. To have
-assumed that the world of nationalisms would face socialistic regulation
-and control as between States, would have implied an agility on the part
-of the public imagination which it does not in fact possess. An
-international policy on these lines would have been unintelligible and
-preposterous. It is only because the situation which has followed
-victory is so desperate, so much worse than anything _The Great
-Illusion_ forecast, that we have been brought to face these remedies
-to-day.
-
-Before the War, the line of advance, internationally, was not by
-elaborate regulation. We had seen a congeries of States like those of
-the British Empire maintain not only peace but a sort of informal
-Federation, without limitation in any formal way of the national freedom
-of any one of them. Each could impose tariffs against the mother
-country, exclude citizens of the Empire, recognise no common defined
-law. The British Empire seemed to forecast a type of international
-Association which could secure peace without the restraints or
-restrictions of a central authority in anything but the most shadowy
-form. If the merely moral understanding which held it together and
-enabled co-operation in a crisis could have been extended to the United
-States; if the principle of 'self-determination' that had been applied
-to the white portion of the Empire were gradually extended to the
-Asiatic; if a bargain had been made with Germany and France as to the
-open door, and equality of access to undeveloped territory made a matter
-of defined agreement, we should have possessed the nucleus of a world
-organisation giving the widest possible scope for independent national
-development. But world federation on such lines depended above all, of
-course, upon the development of a certain 'spirit,' a guiding temper, to
-do for nations of different origin what had already been done for
-nations of a largely common origin (though Britain has many different
-stocks--English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, and, overseas, Dutch and French
-as well). But the spirit was not there. The whole tradition in the
-international field was one of domination, competition, rivalry,
-conflicting interest, 'Struggle for life.'
-
-The possibility of such a free international life has disappeared with
-the disappearance of the _laisser-faire_ ideal in national organisation.
-We shall perforce be much more concerned now with the machinery of
-control in both spheres as the only alternative to an anarchy more
-devastating than that which existed before the War. For all the reasons
-which point to that conclusion the reader is referred once more to the
-second chapter of the first part of this book.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-THE ARGUMENT AS AN ATTACK ON THE STATE
-
-
-There was not before the War, and there has not been since, any serious
-challenge to the economic argument of _The Great Illusion_. Criticism
-(which curiously enough does not seem to have included the point dealt
-with in the preceding Chapter) seems to have centred rather upon the
-irrelevance of economic considerations to the problem of war--the
-problem, that is, of creating an international society. The answer to
-that is, of course, both explicit and implicit in much of what precedes.
-
-The most serious criticism has been directed to one specific point. It
-is made notably both by Professor Spenser Wilkinson[122] and Professor
-Lindsay,[123] and as it is relevant to the existing situation and to
-much of the argument of the present book, it is worth dealing with.
-
-The criticism is based on the alleged disparagement of the State implied
-in the general attitude of the book. Professor Lindsay (whose article,
-by the way, although hostile and misapprehending the spirit of the book,
-is a model of fair, sincere, and useful criticism) describes the work
-under criticism largely as an attack on the conception of 'the State as
-a person.' He says in effect that the present author argues thus:--
-
-     'The only proper thing to consider is the interest or the happiness
-     of individuals. If a political action conduces to the interests of
-     individuals, it must be right; if it conflicts with these interests
-     it must be wrong.'
-
-Professor Lindsay continues:--
-
-     'Now if pacifism really implied such a view of the relation of the
-     State and the individual, and of the part played by self-interest
-     in life, its appeal has little moral force behind it....
-
-     'Mr. Angell seems to hold that not only is the national State being
-     superseded, but that the supersession is to be welcomed. The
-     economic forces which are destroying the State will do all the
-     State has done to bind men together, and more.'
-
-As a matter of fact Professor Lindsay has himself answered his own
-criticism. For he goes on:--
-
-     'The argument of _The Great Illusion_ is largely based on the
-     public part played by the organisation of credit. Mr Angell has
-     been the first to notice the great significance of its activity. It
-     has misled him, however, into thinking that it presaged a
-     supersession of political by economic control.... The facts are,
-     not that political forces are being superseded by economic, but
-     that the new industrial situation has called into being new
-     political organisations.... To co-ordinate their activities ...
-     will be impossible if the spirit of exclusive nationalism and
-     distrust of foreigners wins the day; it will be equally impossible
-     if the strength of our existing centres of patriotism and public
-     spirit are destroyed.'
-
-Very well. We had here in the pre-war period two dangers, either of
-which in Professor Lindsay's view would make the preservation of
-civilisation impossible: one danger was that men would over-emphasise
-their narrower patriotism and surrender themselves to the pugnacities
-of exclusive nationalism and distrust of foreigners, forgetting that the
-spiritual life of densely packed societies can only be rendered possible
-by certain widespread economic co-operations, contracts; the other
-danger was that we should under-emphasise each our own nationalism and
-give too much importance to the wider international organisation of
-mankind.
-
-Into which danger have we run as a matter of simple fact? Which tendency
-is it that is acting as the present disruptive force in Europe? Has
-opinion and statesmanship--as expressed in the Treaty, for
-instance--given too much or too little attention to the interdependence
-of the world, and the internationally economic foundations of our
-civilisation?
-
-We have seen Europe smashed by neglecting the truths which _The Great
-Illusion_ stressed, perhaps over-stressed, and by surrendering to the
-exclusive nationalism which that book attacked. The book was based on
-the anticipation that Europe would be very much more likely to come to
-grief through over-stressing exclusive nationalism and neglecting its
-economic interdependence, than through the decay of the narrower
-patriotism.
-
-If the book had been written _in vacuo_, without reference to impending
-events, the emphasis might have been different.[124]
-
-But in criticising the emphasis that is thrown upon the welfare of the
-individual, Professor Lindsay would seem to be guilty of confusing the
-_test_ of good political conduct with the _motive_. Certainly _The Great
-Illusion_ did not disparage the need of loyalty to the social group--to
-the other members of the partnership. That need is the burden of most
-that has been written in the preceding pages when dealing with the facts
-of interdependence. An individual who can see only his own interest does
-not see even that; for such interest is dependent on others. (These
-arguments of egoism versus altruism are always circular.) But it
-insisted upon two facts which modern Europe seemed in very great danger
-of forgetting. The first was that the Nation-State was not the social
-group, not co-terminous with the whole of Society, only a very
-arbitrarily chosen part of it; and the second was that the _test_ of the
-'good State' was the welfare of the citizens who composed it. How
-otherwise shall we settle the adjustment between national right and
-international obligation, answer the old and inevitable question, 'What
-is the _Good_ State?' The only intelligible answer is: the State which
-produces good men, subserves their welfare. A State which did not
-subserve the welfare of its citizens, that produced men morally,
-intellectually, physically poor and feeble, could not be a good State. A
-State is tested by the degree to which it serves individuals.
-
-Now the fact of forgetting the first truth, that the Nation-State is not
-the whole of Society but only a part, and that we have obligations to
-the other part, led to a distortion of the second. The Hegelianism which
-denied any obligation above or beyond that of the Nation-State sets up a
-conflict of sovereignties, a competition of power, stimulating the
-instinct of domination, making indeed the power and position of the
-State with reference to rival States the main end of politics. The
-welfare of men is forgotten. The fact that the State is made for man,
-not man for the State, is obscured. It was certainly forgotten or
-distorted by the later political philosophers of Prussia. The oversight
-gave us Prussianism and Imperialism, the ideal of political power as an
-end in itself, against which _The Great Illusion_ was a protest. The
-Imperialism, not alone in Prussia, takes small account of the quality of
-individual life, under the flag. The one thing to be sought is that the
-flag should be triumphant, be flown over vast territories, inspire fear
-in foreigners, and be an emblem of 'glory.' There is a discernible
-distinction of aim and purpose between the Patriot, Jingo, Chauvinist,
-and the citizen of the type interested in such things as social reform.
-The military Patriot the world over does not attempt to hide his
-contempt for efforts at the social betterment of his countryman. That is
-'parish pump.' Mr Maxse or Mr Kipling is keenly interested in England,
-but not in the betterment of Englishmen; indeed, both are in the habit
-of abusing Englishmen very heartily, unless they happen to be soldiers.
-In other words, the real end of politics is forgotten. It is not only
-that the means have become the end, but that one element of the means,
-power, has become the end.
-
-The point I desired to emphasise was that unless we keep before
-ourselves the welfare of the individual as the _test_ of politics (not
-necessarily the motive of each individual for himself) we constantly
-forget the purpose and aim of politics, and patriotism becomes not the
-love of one's fellow countrymen and their welfare, but the love of power
-expressed by that larger 'ego' which is one's group. 'Mystic
-Nationalism' comes to mean something entirely divorced from any
-attribute of individual life. The 'Nation' becomes an abstraction apart
-from the life of the individual.
-
-There is a further consideration. The fact that the Nation-State is not
-co-terminous with Society is shown by its vital need of others; it
-cannot live by itself; it must co-operate with others; consequently it
-has obligations to those others. The demonstration of that fact involves
-an appeal to 'interest,' to welfare. The most visible and vital
-co-operation outside the limits of the Nation-State is the economic; it
-gives rise to the most definite, as to the most fundamental
-obligation--the obligation to accord to others the right to existence.
-It is out of the common economic need that the actual structure of some
-mutual arrangement, some social code, will arise, has indeed arisen.
-This makes the beginning of the first visible structure of a world
-society. And from these homely beginnings will come, if at all, a more
-vivid sense of the wider society. And the 'economic' interest, as
-distinct from the temperamental interest of domination, has at least
-this social advantage. Welfare is a thing that in society may well grow
-the more it is divided: the better my countrymen the richer is my life
-likely to become. Domination has not this quality: it is mutually
-exclusive. We cannot all be masters. If any country is to dominate,
-somebody or some one else's country must be dominated; if the one is to
-be the Superior Race, some other must be inferior. And the inferior
-sooner or later objects, and from that resistance comes the
-disintegration that now menaces us.
-
-It is perfectly true that we cannot create the kind of State which will
-best subserve the interests of its citizens unless each is ready to give
-allegiance to it, irrespective of his immediate personal 'interest.'
-(The word is put in inverted commas because in most men not compelled by
-bad economic circumstances to fight fiercely for daily bread, sheer
-physical sustenance, the satisfaction of a social and creative instinct
-is a very real 'interest,' and would, in a well-organised society, be as
-spontaneous as interest in sport or social ostentation.) The State must
-be an idea, an abstraction, capable of inspiring loyalty, embodying the
-sense of interdependence. But the circumstances of the independent
-modern national State, in frequent and unavoidable contact with other
-similar States, are such as to stimulate not mainly the motives of
-social cohesion, but those instincts of domination which become
-anti-social and disruptive. The nationalist stands condemned not because
-he asks allegiance or loyalty to the social group, but first, because he
-asks absolute allegiance to something which is not the social group but
-only part of it, and secondly, because that exclusive loyalty gives rise
-to disruptive pugnacities, injurious to all.
-
-In pointing out the inadequacy of the unitary political Nation-State as
-the embodiment of final sovereignty, an inadequacy due to precisely the
-development of such organisations as Labour, the present writer merely
-anticipated the drift of much political writing of the last ten years on
-the problem of State sovereignty; as also the main drift of
-events.[125]
-
-If Mr Lindsay finds the very mild suggestions in _The Great Illusion_
-touching the necessary qualification of the sovereignty of the
-Nation-State subversive, one wonders what his feelings are on reading,
-say, Mr Cole, who in a recent book (_Social Theory_) leaves the
-Political State so attenuated that one questions whether what is left is
-not just ghost. At the best the State is just one collateral association
-among others.
-
-The sheer mechanical necessities of administration of an industrial
-society, so immeasurably more complex than the simple agricultural
-society which gave us the unitary political State, seem to be pushing us
-towards a divided or manifold sovereignty. If we are to carry over from
-the National State into the new form of the State--as we seem now in
-danger of doing--the attitude of mind which demands domination for 'our'
-group, the pugnacities, suspicions, and hostilities characteristic of
-nationalist temper, we may find the more complex society beyond our
-social capacity. I agree that we want a common political loyalty, that
-mere obedience to the momentary interest of our group will not give it;
-but neither will the temper of patriotism as we have seen it manifested
-in the European national State. The loyalty to some common code will
-probably only come through a sense of its social need. (It is on the
-ground of its social need that Mr Lindsay defends the political State.)
-At present we have little sense of that need, because we have (as
-Versailles proved) a belief in the effectiveness of our own power to
-exact the services we may require. The rival social or industrial groups
-have a like belief. Only a real sense of interdependence can undermine
-that belief; and it must be a visible, economic interdependence.
-
-A social sense may be described as an instinctive feeling for 'what will
-work.' We are only yet at the beginning of the study of human motive. So
-much is subconscious that we are certainly apt to ascribe to one motive
-conduct which in fact is due to another. And among the neglected motives
-of conduct is perhaps a certain sense of art--a sense, in this
-connection, of the difficult 'art of living together.' It is probably
-true that what some, at least, find so revolting in some of the
-manifestations of nationalism, chauvinism, is that they violently
-challenge the whole sense of what will work, to say nothing of the
-rights of others. 'If every one took that line, nobody could live.' In a
-social sense this is gross and offensive. It has an effect on one like
-the manners of a cad. It is that sort of motive, perhaps, more than any
-calculation of 'interest,' which may one day cause a revulsion against
-Balkanisation. But to that motive some informed sense of interdependence
-is indispensable.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-VINDICATION BY EVENTS
-
-
-If the question merely concerned the past, if it were only a matter of
-proving that this or that 'School of thought' was right, this
-re-examination of arguments put forward before the War would be a
-sterile business enough. But it concerns the present and the future;
-bears directly and pertinently upon the reasons which have led us into
-the existing chaos; and the means by which we might hope to emerge. As
-much to-day as before the War (and far more obviously) is it true that
-upon the reply to the questions raised in this discussion depends the
-continuance of our civilisation. Our society is still racked by a fierce
-struggle for political power, our populations still demand the method of
-coercion, still refuse to face the facts of interdependence, still
-insist clamorously upon a policy which denies those facts.
-
-The propositions we are here discussing were not, it is well to recall,
-merely to the effect that 'war does not pay,' but that the ideas and
-impulses out of which it grows, and which underlay--and still
-underlie--European politics, give us an unworkable society; and that
-unless they can be corrected they will increasingly involve social
-collapse and disintegration.
-
-That conclusion was opposed, as we have seen, on two main grounds. One
-was that the desire for conquest and extension of territory did not
-enter appreciably into the causes of war, 'since no one really believed
-that victory could advantage them.' The other ground of objection, in
-contradistinction, was that the economic advantages of conquest or
-military predominance were so great and so obvious that to deny them was
-mere paradox-mongering.
-
-The validity of both criticisms has been very thoroughly tested in the
-period that has followed the Armistice. Whether it be true or not that
-the competition for territory, the belief that predominant power could
-be turned to economic account, entered into the causes of the War, that
-competition and belief have certainly entered into the settlement and
-must be reckoned among the causes of the next war. The proposition that
-the economic advantages of conquest and coercion are illusory is hardly
-to-day a paradox, however much policy may still ignore the facts.
-
-The outstanding facts of the present situation most worth our attention
-in this connection are these: Military predominance, successful war,
-evidently offer no solution either of specifically international or of
-our common social and economic problems. The political disintegration
-going on over wide areas in Europe is undoubtedly related very
-intimately to economic conditions: actual lack of food, the struggle for
-ever-increasing wages and better conditions. Our attempted remedies--our
-conferences for dealing with international credit, the suggestion of an
-international loan, the loans actually made to the enemy--are a
-confession of the international character of that problem. All this
-shows that the economic question, alike nationally and internationally,
-is not, it is true, something that ought to occupy all the energies of
-men, but something that will, unless dealt with adequately; is a
-question that simply cannot be swept aside with magnificent gestures.
-Finally, the nature of the settlement actually made by the victor, its
-characteristic defects, the failure to realise adequately the victor's
-dependence on the economic life of the vanquished, show clearly enough
-that, even in the free democracies, orthodox statecraft did indeed
-suffer from the misconception which _The Great Illusion_ attributed to
-it.
-
-What do we see to-day in Europe? Our preponderant military
-power--overwhelming, irresistible, unquestioned--is impotent to secure
-the most elementary forms of wealth needed by our people: fuel, food,
-shelter. France, who in the forty years of her 'defeat' had the soundest
-finances in Europe, is, as a victor over the greatest industrial nation
-in Europe, all but bankrupt. (The franc has fallen to a discount of over
-seventy per cent.) All the recurrent threats of extended military
-occupation fail to secure reparations and indemnities, the restoration
-of credit, exchange, of general confidence and security.
-
-And just as we are finding that the things necessary for the life of our
-peoples cannot be secured by military force exercised against foreign
-nations or a beaten enemy, so are we finding that the same method of
-force within the limits of the nation used by one group as against
-another, fails equally. The temper or attitude towards life which leads
-us to attempt to achieve our end by the forcible imposition of our will
-upon others, by dictatorship, and to reject agreement, has produced in
-some degree everywhere revolt and rebellion on the one side, and
-repression on the other; or a general disruption and the breakdown of
-the co-operative processes by which mankind lives. All the raw materials
-of wealth are here on the earth as they were ten years ago. Yet Europe
-either starves or slips into social chaos, because of the economic
-difficulty.
-
-In the way of the necessary co-operation stands the Balkanisation of
-Europe. Why are we Balkanised rather than Federalised? Why do Balkan and
-other border States fight fiercely over this coalfield or that harbour?
-Why does France still oppose trade with Russia, and plot for the control
-of an enlarged Poland or a reactionary Hungary? Why does America now
-wash her hands of the whole muddle in Europe?
-
-Because everywhere the statesmen and the public believe that if only
-the power of their State were great enough, they could be independent of
-rival States, achieve political and economic security and dispense with
-agreements and obligations.
-
-If they had any vivid sense of the vast dangers to which reliance upon
-isolated power exposed any State, however great; if they had realised
-how the prosperity and social peace of their own States depended upon
-the reconciliation and well-being of the vanquished, the Treaty would
-have been a very different document, peace would long since have been
-established with Russia, and the moral foundations of co-operation would
-be present.
-
-By every road that presented itself, _The Great Illusion_ attempted to
-reveal the vital interdependence of peoples--within and without the
-State--and, as a corollary to that interdependence, the very strict
-limits of the force that can be exercised against any one whose life,
-and daily--and willing--labour is necessary to us. It was not merely the
-absence of these ideas but the very active presence of the directly
-contrary ideas of rival and conflicting interest, which explained the
-drift that the present writer thought--and said so often--would, unless
-checked, lead Western civilisation to a vast orgy of physical
-self-destruction and moral violence and chaos.
-
-The economic conditions which constitute one part of the vindication of
-_The Great Illusion_ are of course those described in the first part of
-this book, particularly in the first chapter. All that need be added
-here are a few suggestions as to the relationship between those
-conditions and the propositions we are concerned to verify.
-
-As bearing upon the truth of those propositions, we cannot neglect the
-condition of Germany.
-
-If ever national military power, the sheer efficiency of the military
-instrument, could ensure a nation's political and economic security,
-Germany should have been secure. It was not any lack of the 'impulse to
-defence,' of the 'manly and virile qualities' so beloved of the
-militarist, no tendency to 'softness,' no 'emasculating
-internationalism' which betrayed her. She fell because she failed to
-realise that she too, for all her power, had need of a co-operation
-throughout the world, which her force could not compel; and that she
-must secure a certain moral co-operation in her purposes or be defeated.
-She failed, not for lack of 'intense nationalism,' but by reason of it,
-because the policy which guided the employment of her military
-instrument had in it too small a regard for the moral factors in the
-world at large, which might set in motion material forces against her.
-
-It is hardly possible to doubt that the easy victories of 1871 marked
-the point at which the German spirit took the wrong turning, and
-rendered her statesmen incapable of seeing the forces which were massing
-for her destruction. The presence in 1919 of German delegates at
-Versailles in the capacity of vanquished can only be adequately
-explained by recalling the presence there of German statesmen as victors
-in 1871. It took forty years for some of the moral fruits of victory to
-manifest themselves in the German spirit.
-
-But the very severity of the present German lot is one that lends itself
-to sophistry. It will be argued: 'You say that preponderant military
-power, victory, is ineffective to economic ends. Well, look at the
-difference between ourselves and Germany. The victors, though they may
-not flourish, are at least better off than the vanquished. If we are
-lean, they starve. Our military power is not economically futile.'
-
-If to bring about hardship to ourselves in order that some one else may
-suffer still greater hardship is an economic gain, then it is untrue to
-say that conquest is economically futile. But I had assumed that
-advantage or utility was to be measured by the good to us, not by the
-harm done to others at our cost. We are arguing for the moment the
-economic, and not the ethical aspect of the thing. Keep for a moment to
-those terms. If you were told that an enterprise was going to be
-extremely profitable and you lost half your fortune in it, you would
-certainly regard as curious the logic of the reply, that after all you
-_had_ gained, because others in the same enterprise had lost everything.
-
-We are considering in effect whether the facts show that nations must,
-in order to provide bread for their people, defeat in war competing
-nations who otherwise would secure it. But that economic case for the
-'biological inevitability' of war is destroyed if it is true that, after
-having beaten the rival nation, we find that we have less bread than
-before; that the future security of our food is less; and that out of
-our own diminished store we have to feed a defeated enemy who, before
-his defeat, managed to feed himself, and helped to feed us as well.
-
-And that is precisely what the present facts reveal.
-
-Reference has already been made to the position of France. In the forty
-years of her defeat France was the banker of Europe. She exacted tribute
-in the form of dividends and interest upon investments from Russia, the
-Near East, Germany herself; exacted it in a form which suited the
-peculiar genius of her people and added to the security of her social
-life. She was Germany's creditor, and managed to secure from her
-conqueror of 1871 the prompt payment of the debts owing to her. When
-France was not in a position to compel anything whatsoever from Germany
-by military force, the financial claims of Frenchmen upon Germany were
-readily discountable in any market of the world. To-day, the financial
-claims on Germany, made by a France which is militarily all-powerful,
-simply cannot be discounted anywhere. The indemnity vouchers, whatever
-may be the military predominance behind them, are simply not negotiable
-instruments so long as they depend upon present policy. They are a form
-of paper which no banker would dream of discounting on their commercial
-merits.
-
-To-day France stands as the conquerer of the richest ore-fields in the
-world, of territory which is geographically the industrial centre of
-Europe; of a vast Empire in Africa and Asia; in a position of
-predominance in Poland, Hungary, and Rumania. She has acquired through
-the Reparations Commission such power over the enemy countries as to
-reduce them almost to the economic position of an Asiatic or African
-colony. If ever wealth could be conquered, France has conquered it. If
-political power could really be turned to economic account, France ought
-to-day to be rich beyond any nation in history. Never was there such an
-opportunity of turning military power into wealth.
-
-Then why is she bankrupt? Why is France faced by economic and financial
-difficulties so acute that the situation seems inextricable save by
-social revolution, a social reconstruction, that is, involving new
-principles of taxation, directly aiming at the re-distribution of
-wealth, a re-distribution resisted by the property-owning classes.
-These, like other classes, have since the Armistice been so persistently
-fed upon the fable of making the Boche pay, that the government is
-unable to induce them to face reality.[126]
-
-With a public debt of 233,729 million of francs (about L9,300,000,000,
-at the pre-war rate of exchange); with the permanent problem of a
-declining population accentuated by the loss of millions of men killed
-and wounded in the war, and complicated by the importation of coloured
-labour; with the exchange value of the franc reduced to sixty in terms
-of the British pound, and to fifteen in terms of the American
-dollar,[127] the position of victorious France in the hour of her
-complete military predominance over Europe seems wellnigh desperate.
-
-She could of course secure very considerable alleviation of her present
-difficulties if she would consent to the only condition upon which
-Germany could make a considerable contribution to Reparations; the
-restoration of German industry. But to that one indispensable condition
-of indemnity or reparation France will not consent, because the French
-feel that a flourishing Germany would be a Germany dangerous to the
-security of France.
-
-In this condition one may recall a part of _The Great Illusion_ case
-which, more than any other of the 'preposterous propositions,' excited
-derision and scepticism before the War. That was the part dealing with
-the difficulties of securing an indemnity. In a chapter (of the early
-1910 Edition) entitled _The Indemnity Futility_, occurred these
-passages:--
-
-     'The difficulty in the case of a large indemnity is not so much the
-     payment by the vanquished as the receiving by the victor ...
-
-     'When a nation receives an indemnity of a large amount of gold, one
-     or two things happens: either the money is exchanged for real
-     wealth with other nations, in which case the greatly increased
-     imports compete directly with the home producers, or the money is
-     kept within the frontiers and is not exchanged for real wealth from
-     abroad, and prices inevitably rise.... The rise in price of home
-     commodities hampers the nation receiving the indemnity in selling
-     those commodities in the neutral markets of the world, especially
-     as the loss of so large a sum by the vanquished nation has just the
-     reverse effect of cheapening prices and therefore, enabling that
-     nation to compete on better terms with the conqueror in neutral
-     markets.'--(p. 76.)
-
-The effect of the payment of the French indemnity of 1872 upon German
-industry was analysed at length.
-
-This chapter was criticised by economists in Britain, France, and
-America. I do not think that a single economist of note admitted the
-slightest validity in this argument. Several accused the author of
-adopting protectionist fallacies in an attempt to 'make out a case.' It
-happens that he is a convinced Free Trader. But he is also aware that it
-is quite impracticable to dissociate national psychology from
-international commercial problems. Remembering what popular feeling
-about the expansion of enemy trade must be on the morrow of war, he
-asked the reader to imagine vast imports of enemy goods as the means of
-paying an indemnity, and went on:--
-
-     'Do we not know that there would be such a howl about the ruin of
-     home industry that no Government could stand the clamour for a
-     week?... That this influx of goods for nothing would be represented
-     as a deep-laid plot on the part of foreign nations to ruin the home
-     trade, and that the citizens would rise in their wrath to prevent
-     the accomplishment of such a plot? Is not this very operation by
-     which foreign nations tax themselves to send abroad goods, not for
-     nothing (that would be a crime at present unthinkable), but at
-     below cost, the offence to which we have given the name of
-     "dumping"? When it is carried very far, as in the case of sugar,
-     even Free Trade nations like Great Britain join International
-     Conferences to prevent these gifts being made!...'
-
-The fact that not one single economist, so far as I know, would at the
-time admit the validity of these arguments, is worth consideration. Very
-learned men may sometimes be led astray by keeping their learning in
-watertight compartments, 'economics' in one compartment and 'politics'
-or political psychology in another. The politicians seemed to misread
-the economies and the economists the politics.
-
-What are the post-war facts in this connection? We may get them
-summarised on the one hand by the Prime Minister of Great Britain and on
-the other by the expert adviser of the British Delegation to the Peace
-Conference.
-
-Mr Lloyd George, speaking two years after the Armistice, and after
-prolonged and exhaustive debates on this problem, says:--
-
-     'What I have put forward is an expression of the views of all the
-     experts.... Every one wants gold, which Germany has not got, and
-     they will not take German goods. Nations can only pay debts by
-     gold, goods, services, or bills of exchange on nations which are
-     its debtors.[128]
-
-     'The real difficulty ... is due to the difficulty of securing
-     payment outside the limits of Germany. Germany could pay--pay
-     easily--inside her own boundary, but she could not export her
-     forests, railways, or land across her own frontiers and make them
-     over to the Allies. Take the railways, for example. Suppose the
-     Allies took possession of them and doubled the charges; they would
-     be paid in paper marks which would be valueless directly they
-     crossed the frontier.
-
-     'The only way Germany could pay was by way of exports--that is by
-     difference between German imports and exports. If, however, German
-     imports were too much restricted, the Germans would be unable to
-     obtain food and raw materials necessary for their manufactures.
-     Some of Germany's principal markets--Russia and Central
-     Europe--were no longer purchasers, and if she exported too much to
-     the Allies, it meant the ruin of their industry and lack of
-     employment for their people. Even in the case of neutrals it was
-     only possible generally to increase German exports by depriving our
-     traders of their markets.'[129]
-
-There is not a line here that is not a paraphrase of the chapter in the
-early edition of _The Great Illusion_.
-
-The following is the comment of Mr Maynard Keynes, ex-Advisor to the
-British Treasury, on the claims put forward after the Paris Conference
-of January 1921:--
-
-     'It would be easy to point out how, if Germany could compass the
-     vast export trade which the Paris proposals contemplate, it could
-     only be by ousting some of the staple trades of Great Britain from
-     the markets of the world. Exports of what commodities, we may ask,
-     in addition to her present exports, is Germany going to find a
-     market for in 1922--to look no farther ahead--which will enable her
-     to make the payment of between L150,000,000 and L200,000,000
-     including the export proportion which will be due from her in that
-     year? Germany's five principal exports before the War were iron,
-     steel, and machinery, coal and coke, woollen goods and cotton
-     goods. Which of these trades does Paris think she is going to
-     develop on a hitherto unprecedented scale? Or if not these, what
-     others? And how is she going to finance the import of raw materials
-     which, except in the case of coal and coke, are a prior necessity
-     to manufacture, if the proceeds of the goods when made will not be
-     available to repay the credits? I ask these questions in respect of
-     the year 1922 because many people may erroneously believe that
-     while the proposed settlement is necessarily of a problematic
-     character for the later years--only time can show--it makes some
-     sort of a start possible. These questions are serious and
-     practical, and they deserve to be answered. If the Paris proposals
-     are more than wind, they mean a vast re-organisation of the
-     channels of international trade. If anything remotely like them is
-     really intended to happen, the reactions on the trade and industry
-     of this country are incalculable. It is an outrage that they should
-     be dealt with by the methods of the poker party of which news comes
-     from Paris.'[130]
-
-If the expert economists failed to admit the validity of _The Great
-Illusion_ argument fifteen years ago, the general public has barely a
-glimmering of it to-day. It is true that our miners realise that vast
-deliveries of coal for nothing by Germany disorganise our coal export
-trade. British shipbuilding has been disastrously affected by the Treaty
-clauses touching the surrender of German tonnage--so much so that the
-Government have now recommended the abandonment of these clauses, which
-were among the most stringent and popular in the whole Treaty. The
-French Government has flatly refused to accept German machinery to
-replace that destroyed by the German armies, while French labour refuses
-to allow German labour, in any quantity, to operate in the devastated
-regions. Thus coal, ships, machinery, manufactures, labour, as means of
-payment, have either already created great economic havoc or have been
-rejected because they might. Yet our papers continue to shout that
-'Germany can pay,' implying that failure to do so is merely a matter of
-her will. Of course she can pay--if we let her. Payment means increasing
-German foreign trade. Suppose, then, we put the question 'Can German
-Foreign Trade be increased?' Obviously it can. It depends mainly on us.
-To put the question in its truer form shows that the problem is much
-more a matter of our will than of Germany's. Incidentally, of course,
-German diplomacy has been as stupid as our own. If the German
-representatives had said, in effect: 'It is common ground that we can
-pay only in commodities. If you will indicate the kind and quantity of
-goods we shall deliver, and will facilitate the import into Germany of,
-and the payment for, the necessary food and raw material, we will
-accept--on that condition--even your figures of reparation.' The Allies,
-of course, could not have given the necessary undertaking, and the real
-nature of the problem would have stood revealed.[131]
-
-The review of the situation of France given in the preceding pages will
-certainly be criticised on the ground that it gives altogether too great
-weight to the temporary embarrassment, and leaves out the advantages
-which future generations of Frenchmen will reap.
-
-Now, whatever the future may have in store, it will certainly have for
-France the task of defending her conquests if she either withholds their
-product (particularly iron) from the peoples of Central Europe who need
-them, or if she makes of their possession a means of exacting a tribute
-which they feel to be burdensome and unjust. Again we are faced by the
-same dilemma; if Germany gets the iron, her population goes on
-expanding and her potential power of resistance goes on increasing. Thus
-France's burden of defence would grow steadily greater, while her
-population remained constant or declined. This difficulty of French
-deficiency in human raw material is not a remote contingency; it is an
-actual difficulty of to-day, which France is trying to meet in part by
-the arming of the negro population of her African colonies, and in part
-by the device of satellite militarisms, as in Poland. But the
-precariousness of such methods is already apparent.
-
-The arming of the African negro carries its appalling possibilities on
-its face. Its development cannot possibly avoid the gravest complication
-of the industrial problem. It is the Servile State in its most sinister
-form; and unless Europe is itself ready for slavery it will stop this
-reintroduction of slavery for the purposes of militarism.
-
-The other device has also its self-defeating element. To support an
-imperialist Poland means a hostile Russia; yet Poland, wedged in between
-a hostile Slav mass on the one side and a hostile Teutonic one on the
-other, herself compounded of Russian, German, Austrian, Lithuanian,
-Ukrainian, and Jewish elements, ruled largely by a landowning
-aristocracy when the countries on both sides have managed to transfer
-the great estates to the peasants, is as likely, in these days, to be a
-military liability as a military asset.
-
-These things are not irrelevant to the problem of turning military power
-to economic account: they are of the very essence of the problem.
-
-Not less so is this consideration: If France should for political
-reasons persist in a policy which means a progressive reduction in the
-productivity of Europe, that policy would be at its very roots directly
-contrary to the vital interests of England. The foregoing pages have
-explained why the increasing population of these islands, that live by
-selling coal or its products, are dependent upon the high productivity
-of the outside world. France is self-supporting and has no such
-pre-occupation. Already the divergence is seen in the case of the
-Russian policy. Britain direly needs the wheat of Russia to reduce the
-cost of living--or improve the value of what she has to sell, which is
-very nearly the same thing. France does not need Russian foodstuffs, and
-in terms of narrow self-interest (cutting her losses in Czarist bonds)
-can afford to be indifferent to the devastation of Russia. As soon as
-this divergence reaches a certain degree, rupture becomes inevitable.
-
-The mainspring of French policy during the last two years has been
-fear--fear of the economic revival of Germany which might be the
-beginning of a military revival. The measures necessary to check German
-economic revival inevitably increase German resentment, which is taken
-as proof of the need for increasingly severe measures of repression.
-Those measures are tending already to deprive France of her most
-powerful military Allies. That fact still further increases the burden
-that will be thrown upon her. Such burdens must inevitably make very
-large deductions from the 'profits' of her new conquests.
-
-Note in view of these circumstances some further difficulties of turning
-those conquests to account. Take the iron mines of Lorraine.[132] France
-has now within her borders what is, as already noted, the geographical
-centre of Continental industry. How shall she turn that fact to account?
-
-For the iron to become wealth at all, for France to become the actual
-centre of European industry, there must be a European industry: the
-railroads and factories and steamship lines as consumers of the iron
-must once more operate. To do that they in their turn must have _their_
-market in the shape of active consumption on the part of the millions of
-Europe. In other words the Continent must be economically restored. But
-that it cannot be while Germany is economically paralysed. Germany's
-industry is the very keystone of the European industry and
-agriculture--whether in Russia, Poland, the Balkans, or the Near
-East--which is the indispensable market of the French iron.[133] Even if
-we could imagine such a thing as a reconstruction of Europe on lines
-that would in some wonderful way put seventy or eighty million Germans
-into a secondary place--involving as it would vast redistributions of
-population--the process obviously would take years or generations.
-Meantime Europe goes to pieces. 'Men will not always die quietly' as Mr
-Keynes puts it. What is to become of French credit while France is
-suppressing Bolshevik upheavals in Poland or Hungary caused by the
-starvation of cities through the new economic readjustments? Europe
-famishes now for want of credit. But credit implies a certain dependence
-upon the steady course of future events, some assurance, for instance,
-that this particular railway line to which advances are made will not
-find itself, in a year or two's time, deprived of its traffic in the
-interest of economic rearrangements resulting from an attempt to re-draw
-the economic map of Europe. Nor can such re-drawing disregard the
-present. It is no good telling peasants who have not ploughs or reapers
-or who cannot get fertilisers because their railroad has no locomotives,
-that a new line running on their side of the new frontier will be built
-ten or fifteen years hence. You cannot stop the patients breathing 'for
-just a few hours' while experiments are made with vital organs. The
-operation must adapt itself to the fact that all the time he must
-breathe. And to the degree to which we attempt violently to re-direct
-the economic currents, does the security upon which our credit depends
-decline.[134]
-
-There are other considerations. A French journalist asks plaintively:
-'If we want the coal why don't we go in and take it'--by the occupation
-of the Ruhr. The implication is that France could get the coal for
-nothing. Well, France has taken over the Saar Valley. By no means does
-she get the coal for nothing. The miners have to be paid. France tried
-paying them at an especially low rate. The production fell off; the
-miners were discontented and underfed. They had to be paid more. Even so
-the Saar has been 'very restless' under French control, and the last
-word, as we know, will rest with the men. Miners who feel they are
-working for the enemy of their fatherland are not going to give a high
-production. It is a long exploded illusion that slave labour--labour
-under physical compulsion--is a productive form of labour. Its output
-invariably is small. So assuredly France does not get this coal for
-nothing. And from the difference between the price which it costs her as
-owner of the mines and administrator of their workers, and that which
-she would pay if she had to buy the coal from the original owners and
-administrators (if there is a difference on the credit side at all) has
-to be deducted the ultimate cost of defence and of the political
-complications that that has involved. Precise figures are obviously not
-available; but it is equally obvious that the profit of seizure is
-microscopic.
-
-Always does the fundamental dilemma remain. France will need above all,
-if she is to profit by these raw materials of European industry,
-markets, and again markets. But markets mean that the iron which has
-been captured must be returned to the nation from which it was taken, on
-conditions economically advantageous to that nation. A central Europe
-that is consuming large quantities of metallurgical products is a
-Central Europe growing in wealth and power and potentially dangerous
-unless reconciled. And reconciliation will include economic justice,
-access to the very 'property' that has been seized.
-
-The foregoing is not now, as it was when the present author wrote in
-similar terms a decade since, mere speculation or hypothesis. Our
-present difficulties with reference to the indemnity or reparations, the
-fall in the exchanges, or the supply of coal, are precisely of the order
-just indicated. The conqueror is caught in the grip of just those
-difficulties in turning conquest to economic account upon which _The
-Great Illusion_ so repeatedly insisted.
-
-The part played by credit--as the sensory nerve of the economic
-organism--has, despite the appearances to the contrary in the early part
-of the War, confirmed those propositions that dealt with it. Credit--as
-the extension of the use of money--is society's bookkeeping. The
-debauchery of the currencies means of course juggling with the promises
-to pay. The general relation of credit to a certain dependability upon
-the future has already been dealt with.[135] The object here is to call
-attention to the present admissions that the maintenance or re-creation
-of credit is in very truth an indispensable element in the recovery of
-Europe. Those admissions consist in the steps that are being taken
-internationally, the emphasis which the governments themselves are
-laying upon this factor. Yet ten years ago the 'diplomatic expert'
-positively resented the introduction of such a subject into the
-discussion of foreign affairs at all. Serious consideration of the
-subject was generally dismissed by the orthodox authority on
-international politics with some contemptuous reference to 'cosmopolitan
-usury.'
-
-Even now we seize every opportunity of disguising the truth to
-ourselves. In the midst of the chaos we may sometimes see flamboyant
-statements that England at any rate is greater and richer than before.
-(It is a statement, indeed, very apt to come from our European
-co-belligerents, worse off than ourselves.) It is true, of course, that
-we have extended our Empire; that we have to-day the same materials of
-wealth as--or more than--we had before the War; that we have improved
-technical knowledge. But we are learning that to turn all this to
-account there must be not only at home, but abroad, a widespread
-capacity for orderly co-operation; the diffusion throughout the world of
-a certain moral quality. And the war, for the time being, at least, has
-very greatly diminished that quality. Because Welsh miners have absorbed
-certain ideas and developed a certain temperament, the wealth of many
-millions who are not miners declines. The idea of a self-sufficing
-Empire that can disregard the chaos of the outside world recedes
-steadily into the background when we see the infection of certain ideas
-beginning the work of disintegration within the Empire. Our control over
-Egypt has almost vanished; that over India is endangered; our relations
-with Ireland affect those with America and even with some of our white
-colonies. Our Empire, too, depends upon the prevalence of certain
-ideas.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-COULD THE WAR HAVE BEEN PREVENTED?
-
-
-'But the real irrelevance of all this discussion,' it will be said, 'is
-that however complete our recognition of these truths might have been,
-that recognition would not have affected Germany's action. We did not
-want territory, or colonies, or mines, or oil-wells, or phosphate
-islands, or railway concessions. We fought simply to resist aggression.
-The alternatives for us were sheer submission to aggression, or war, a
-war of self-defence.'
-
-Let us see. Our danger came from Germany's aggressiveness. What made her
-more aggressive than other nations, than those who later became our
-Allies--Russia, Rumania, Italy, Japan, France? Sheer original sin, apart
-from political or economic circumstance?
-
-Now it was an extraordinary thing that those who were most clamant about
-the danger were for the most part quite ready to admit--even to urge and
-emphasise as part of their case--that Germany's aggression was _not_ due
-to inherent wickedness, but that any nation placed in her position would
-behave in just about the same way. That, indeed, was the view of very
-many pre-eminent before the War in their warnings of the German peril,
-of among others, Lord Roberts, Admiral Mahan, Mr Frederic Harrison, Mr
-Blatchford, Professor Wilkinson.
-
-Let us recall, for instance, Mr Harrison's case for German
-aggression--Germany's 'poor access to the sea and its expanding
-population':--
-
-     'A mighty nation of 65,000,000, with such superb resources both for
-     peace and war, and such overweening pride in its own superiority
-     and might, finds itself closed up in a ring-fence too narrow for
-     its fecundity as for its pretensions, constructed more by history,
-     geography, and circumstances than by design--a fence maintained by
-     the fears rather than the hostility of its weaker neighbours. That
-     is the rumbling subterranean volcano on which the European State
-     system rests.
-
-     'It is inevitable but that a nation with the magnificent resources
-     of the German, hemmed in a territory so inadequate to their needs
-     and pretensions, and dominated by a soldier, bureaucratic, and
-     literary caste, all deeply imbued with the Bismarckian doctrine,
-     should thirst to extend their dominions, and their power at any
-     sacrifice--of life, of wealth, and of justice. One must take facts
-     as they are, and it is idle to be blind to facts, or to rail
-     against them. It is as silly to gloss over manifest perils as it is
-     to preach moralities about them.... England, Europe, civilisation,
-     is in imminent peril from German expansion.'[136]
-
-Very well. We are to drop preaching moralities and look at the facts.
-Would successful war by us remove the economic and political causes
-which were part at least of the explanation of German aggression? Would
-her need for expansion become less? The preceding pages answer that
-question. Successful war by us would not dispose of the pressure of
-German population.
-
-If the German menace was due in part at least to such causes as 'poor
-access to the sea,' the absence of any assurance as to future provision
-for an expanding population, what measures were proposed for the removal
-of those causes?
-
-None whatever. Not only so, but any effort towards a frank facing of the
-economic difficulty was resisted by the very people who had previously
-urged the economic factors of the conflict, as a 'sordid' interpretation
-of that conflict. We have seen what happened, for instance, in the case
-of Admiral Mahan. He urged that the competition for undeveloped
-territory and raw materials lay behind the political struggle. So be it;
-replies some one; let us see whether we cannot remove that economic
-cause of conflict, whether indeed there is any real economic conflict at
-all. And the Admiral then retorts that economics have nothing to do with
-it. To Mr Frederic Harrison '_The Great Illusion_ policy is childish and
-mischievous rubbish.' What was that policy? To deny the existence of the
-German or other aggressiveness? The whole policy was prompted by the
-very fact of that danger. Did the policy suggest that we should simply
-yield to German political pretensions? Again, as we have seen, such a
-course was rejected with every possible emphasis. The one outstanding
-implication of the policy was that while arming we must find a basis of
-co-operation by which both peoples could live.
-
-In any serious effort to that end, one overpowering question had to be
-answered by Englishmen who felt some responsibility for the welfare of
-their people. Would that co-operation, giving security to others, demand
-the sacrifice of the interest or welfare of their own people? _The Great
-Illusion_ replied, No, and set forth the reasons for that reply. And the
-setting-forth of those reasons made the book an 'appeal to avarice
-against patriotism,' an attempt 'to restore the blessed hour of money
-getting.' Eminent Nonconformist divines and patriotic stockbrokers
-joined hands in condemning the appalling sordidness of the demonstration
-which might have led to a removal of the economic causes of
-international quarrel.
-
-It is not true to say that in the decade preceding Armageddon the
-alternatives to fighting Germany were exhausted, and that nothing was
-left but war or submission. We simply had not tried the remedy of
-removing the economic excuse for aggression. The fact that Germany did
-face these difficulties and much future uncertainty was indeed urged by
-those of the school of Mr Harrison and Lord Roberts as a conclusive
-argument against the possibility of peace or any form of agreement with
-her. The idea that agreement should reach to such fundamental things as
-the means of subsistence seemed to involve such an invasion of
-sovereignty as not even to be imaginable.
-
-To show that such an agreement would not ask a sacrifice of vital
-national interest, that indeed the economic advantages which could be
-exacted by military preponderance were exceedingly small or
-non-existent, seemed the first indispensable step towards bringing some
-international code of economic right within the area of practical
-politics, of giving it any chance of acceptance by public opinion. Yet
-the effort towards that was disparaged and derided as 'materialistic.'
-
-One hoped at least that this disparagement of material interest as a
-motive in international politics might give us a peace settlement which
-would be free from it. But economic interest which is 'sordid' when
-appealed to as a means of preserving the peace, becomes a sacred egoism
-when invoked on behalf of a policy which makes war almost inevitable.
-
-Why did it create such bitter resentment before the War to suggest that
-we should discuss the economic grounds of international conflict--why
-before the War were many writers who now demand that discussion so angry
-at it being suggested? Among the very hostile critics of _The Great
-Illusion_--hostile mainly on the ground that it misread the motive
-forces in international politics--was Mr J. L. Garvin. Yet his own first
-post-war book is entitled: _The Economic Foundations of Peace_, and its
-first Chapter Summary begins thus:--
-
-     'A primary war, largely about food and raw materials: inseparable
-     connection of the politics and economics of the peace.'
-
-And his first paragraph contains the following:--
-
-     'The war with many names was in one main aspect a war about food
-     supply and raw materials. To this extent it was Germany's fight to
-     escape from the economic position of interdependence without
-     security into which she had insensibly fallen--to obtain for
-     herself independent control of an ample share in the world's
-     supplies of primary resources. The war meant much else, but it
-     meant this as well and this was a vital factor in its causes.'
-
-His second chapter is thus summarised:--
-
-     'Former international conditions transformed by the revolution in
-     transport and telegraphic intelligence; great nations lose their
-     former self-sufficient basis: growth of interdependence between
-     peoples and continents.... Germany without sea power follows
-     Britain's economic example; interdependence without security:
-     national necessities and cosmopolitan speculation: an Armageddon
-     unavoidable.'
-
-Lord Grey has said that if there had existed in 1914 a League of Nations
-as tentative even as that embodied in the Covenant, Armageddon could in
-any case have been delayed, and delay might well have meant prevention.
-We know now that if war had been delayed the mere march of events would
-have altered the situation. It is unlikely that a Russian revolution of
-one kind or another could have been prevented even if there had been no
-war; and a change in the character of the Russian government might well
-have terminated on the one side the Serbian agitation against Austria,
-and on the other the genuine fear of German democrats concerning
-Russia's imperialist ambitions. The death of the old Austrian emperor
-was another factor that might have made for peace.[137]
-
-Assume, in addition to such factors, that Britain had been prepared to
-recognise Germany's economic needs and difficulties, as Mr Garvin now
-urges we should recognise them. Whether even this would have prevented
-war, no man can say. But we can say--and it is implicit in the economic
-case now so commonly urged as to the need of Germany for economic
-security--that since we did not give her that security we did not do all
-that we might have done to remove the causes of war. 'Here in the
-struggle for primary raw materials' says Mr Garvin in effect over the
-six hundred pages more or less of his book, 'are causes of war that must
-be dealt with if we are to have peace.' If then, in the years that
-preceded Armageddon, the world had wanted to avoid that orgy, and had
-had the necessary wisdom, these are things with which it would have
-occupied itself.
-
-Yet when the attempt was made to draw the attention of the world to just
-those factors, publicists even as sincere and able as Mr Garvin
-disparaged it; and very many misrepresented it by silly distortion. It
-is easy now to see where that pre-war attempt to work towards some
-solution was most defective: if greater emphasis had been given to some
-definite scheme for assuring Germany's necessary access to resources,
-the real issue might have been made plainer. A fair implication of _The
-Great Illusion_ was that as Britain had no real interest in thwarting
-German expansion, the best hope for the future lay in an increasingly
-clear demonstration of the fact of community of interest. The more valid
-conclusion would have been that the absence of conflict in vital
-interests should have been seized upon as affording an opportunity for
-concluding definite conventions and obligations which would assuage
-fears on both sides. But criticism, instead of bringing out this defect,
-directed itself, for the most part, to an attempt to show that the
-economic fears or facts had nothing to do with the conflict. Had
-criticism consisted in taking up the problem where _The Great Illusion_
-left it, much more might have been done--perhaps sufficient--to make
-Armageddon unnecessary.[138]
-
-The importance of the phenomenon we have just touched upon--the
-disparagement before war of truths we are compelled to face after
-war--lies in its revelation of subconscious or unconscious motive. There
-grows up after some years of peace in every nation possessing military
-and naval traditions and a habit of dominion, a real desire for
-domination, perhaps even for war itself; the opportunity that it affords
-for the assertion of collective power; the mysterious dramatic impulse
-to 'stop the cackle with a blow; strike, and strike home.'
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-For the moment we are at the ebb of that feeling and another is
-beginning perhaps to flow. The results are showing in our policy. We
-find in what would have been ten years ago very strange places for such
-things, attacks upon the government for its policy of 'reckless
-militarism' in Mesopotamia or Persia. Although public opinion did not
-manage to impose a policy of peace with Russia, it did at least make
-open and declared war impossible, and all the efforts of the Northcliffe
-Press to inflame passion by stories of Bolshevist atrocities fell
-completely flat. For thirty years it has been a crime of _lese patrie_
-to mention the fact that we have given solemn and repeated pledges for
-the evacuation of Egypt. And indeed to secure a free hand in Egypt we
-were ready to acquiesce in the French evasion of international
-obligations in Morocco, a policy which played no small part in widening
-the gulf between ourselves and Germany. Yet the political position on
-behalf of which ten years ago these risks were taken is to-day
-surrendered with barely a protest. A policy of almost unqualified
-'scuttle' which no Cabinet could have faced a decade since, to-day
-causes scarcely a ripple. And as to the Treaty, certain clauses therein,
-around which centred less than two years ago a true dementia--the trial
-of the Kaiser in London, the trial of war prisoners--we have simply
-forgotten all about.
-
-It is certain that sheer exhaustion of the emotions associated with war
-explains a good deal. But Turks, Poles, Arabs, Russians, who have
-suffered war much longer, still fight. The policy of the loan to
-Germany, the independence of Egypt, the evacuation of Mesopotamia, the
-refusal to attempt the removal of the Bolshevist 'menace to freedom and
-civilisation' by military means, are explained in part at least by a
-growing recognition of both the political and the economic futility of
-the military means, and the absolute need of replacing or supplementing
-the military method by an increasing measure of agreement and
-co-operation. The order of events has been such as to induce an
-interpretation, bring home a conviction, which has influenced policy.
-But the strength and permanence of the conviction will depend upon the
-degree of intelligence with which the interpretation is made. Discussion
-is indispensable and that justifies this re-examination of the
-suggestions made in _The Great Illusion_.
-
-In so far as it is mere emotional exhaustion which we are now feeling,
-and not the beginning of a new tradition and new attitude in which
-intelligence, however dimly, has its part, it has in it little hope. For
-inertia has its dangers as grave as those of unseeing passion. In the
-one case the ship is driven helplessly by a gale on to the rocks, in the
-other it drifts just as helplessly into the whirlpool. A consciousness
-of direction, a desire at least to be master of our fate and to make the
-effort of thought to that end, is the indispensable condition of
-freedom, salvation. That is the first and last justification for the
-discussion we have just summarised.
-
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[1] But British policy can hardly be called less contradictory. A year
-after the enactment of a Treaty which quite avowedly was framed for the
-purpose of checking the development of German trade, we find the
-unemployment crisis producing on the part of the _New Statesman_ the
-following comment:--
-
-'It must be admitted, however, that the present wave of depression and
-unemployment is far more an international than a national problem. The
-abolition of "casual labour" and the adoption of a system of "industrial
-maintenance" would appreciably affect it. The international aspect of
-the question has always been important, but never so overwhelmingly
-important as it is to-day.
-
-'The present great depression, however, is not normal. It is due in the
-main to the breakdown of credit and the demoralisation of the
-"exchanges" throughout Europe. France cannot buy locomotives in England
-if she has to pay 60 francs to the pound sterling. Germany, with an
-exchange of 260 (instead of the pre-war 20) marks to the pound, can buy
-scarcely anything. Russia, for other reasons cannot buy at all. And even
-neutral countries like Sweden and Denmark, which made much money out of
-the war and whose "exchanges" are fairly normal, are financially almost
-_hors de combat_, owing presumably to the ruin of Germany. There appears
-to be no remedy for this position save the economic rehabilitation of
-Central Europe.
-
-'As long as German workmen are unable to exercise their full productive
-capacity, English workmen will be unemployed. That, at present, is the
-root of the problem. For the last two years we, as an industrial nation,
-have been cutting off our nose to spite our face. In so far as we ruin
-Germany we are ruining ourselves; and in so far as we refuse to trade
-with revolutionary Russia we are increasing the likelihood of violent
-upheavals in Great Britain. Sooner or later we shall have to scrap every
-Treaty that has been signed and begin again the creation of the New
-Europe on the basis of universal co-operation and mutual aid. Where we
-have demanded indemnities we must offer loans.
-
-'A system of international credit--founded necessarily on British
-credit--is as great a necessity for ourselves as it is for Central
-Europe. We must finance our customers or lose them and share their ruin,
-sinking deeper every month into the morass of doles and relief works.
-That is the main lesson of the present crisis.'--(Jan. 1st, 1921.)
-
-[2] Out of a population of 45,000,000 our home-grown wheat suffices for
-only about 12,500,000, on the basis of the 1919-20 crop. Sir Henry Rew,
-_Food Supplies in Peace and War_, says: 'On the basis of our present
-population ... we should still need to import 78 per cent. of our
-requirements.' (p. 165). Before the War, according to the same
-authority, home produce supplied 48 per cent. in food value of the total
-consumption, but the table on which this figure is based does not
-include sugar, tea, coffee, or cocoa.
-
-[3] The growing power of the food-producing area and its determination
-to be independent as far as possible of the industrial centre, is a fact
-too often neglected in considering the revolutionary movements of
-Europe. The war of the classes almost everywhere is crossed by another
-war, that between cities and country. The land-owning countryman,
-whether peasant or noble, tends to become conservative, clerical,
-anti-socialist (and anti-social) in his politics and outlook.
-
-[4] 'The Economic Consequences of the Peace,' pp. 275-277.
-
-[5] _Manchester Guardian_, Weekly Edition, February 6th., 1920.
-
-[6] _Daily News_, June 28th., 1920.
-
-[7] Sir William Goode, British Director of Relief, has said, (_Times_
-Dec. 6th., 1919):--
-
-'I have myself recently returned from Vienna. I feel as if I had spent
-ten days in the cell of a condemned murderer who has given up all hope
-of reprieve. I stayed at the best hotel, but I saw no milk and no eggs
-the whole time I was there. In the bitter, cold hall of the hotel, once
-the gayest rendezvous in Europe, the visitors huddled together in the
-gloom of one light where there used to be forty. They were more like
-shadows of the Embankment than representatives of the rich. Vienna's
-world-famous Opera House is packed every afternoon. Why? Women and men
-go there in order to keep themselves warm, and because they have no work
-to do.'
-
-He went on:--
-
-'First aid was to hasten peace. Political difficulties combined with
-decreased production, demoralisation of railway traffic, to say nothing
-of actual shortages of coal, food, and finance, had practically
-paralysed industrial and commercial activity. The bold liberation or
-creation of areas, without simultaneous steps to reorganise economic
-life, had so far proved to be a dangerous experiment. Professor Masaryk,
-the able President of Czecho-Slovakia, put the case in a nutshell when
-he said: "It is a question of the export of merchandise or of
-population."'
-
-[8] The figures for 1913 are:--
-
-  Imports.         From British Possessions      L192,000,000.
-                   From Foreign Countries        L577,000,000.
-  Exports.         To British Possessions        L195,000,000.
-                   To Foreign Countries          L330,000,000.
-  Re-exports.      To British Possessions         L14,000,000.
-                   To Foreign Countries           L96,000,000.
-
-
-[9] The question is dealt with more fully in the last chapter of the
-'Addendum' to this book. The chapter of 'The Great Illusion' dealing
-with the indemnity says: 'The difficulty in the case of a large
-indemnity is not so much the payment by the vanquished as the receiving
-by the victor.' (p. 76, 1910 Edition.) Mr Lloyd George (Jan. 28th.,
-1921) says: 'The real difficulty is in securing payment outside the
-limits of Germany.... The only way Germany can pay is by exports--the
-difference between German imports and exports.... If she exports too
-much for the Allies it means the ruin of their industry.'
-
-Thus the main problem of an indemnity is to secure wealth in exportable
-form which will not disorganise the victor's trade. Yet so obscured does
-the plainest fact become in the murky atmosphere of war time that in
-many of the elaborate studies emanating from Westminster and Paris, as
-to 'What Germany can pay' this phase of the problem is not even touched
-upon. We get calculations as to Germany's total wealth in railroads,
-public buildings, houses, as though these things could be picked up and
-transported to France or Belgium. We are told that the Allies should
-collect the revenues of the railroads; the _Daily Mail_ wants us to
-'take' the income of Herr Stinnes, all without a word as to the form in
-which this wealth is to _leave Germany_. Are we prepared to take the
-things made in the factories of Herr Stinnes or other Germans? If not,
-what do we propose that Germany shall give? Paper marks increased in
-quantity until they reach just the value of the paper they are printed
-on? Even to secure coal, we must, as we have seen, give in return food.
-
-If the crux of the situation were really understood by the memorialists
-who want Germany's pockets searched, their studies would be devoted
-_not_ to showing what Germany might produce under favourable
-circumstances, which her past has shown to be very great indeed, but
-what degree of competitive German production Allied industrialists will
-themselves be ready to face.
-
-"Big business" in England is already strongly averse to the payment of
-an indemnity, as any conversation in the City or with industrialists
-readily reveals. Yet it was the suggestion of what has actually taken
-place which excited the derision of critics a few years ago. Obviously
-the feasibility of an indemnity is much more a matter of our will than
-of Germany's, for it depends on what shall be the size of Germany's
-foreign trade. Clearly we can expand that if we want to. We might give
-her a preference!
-
-[10] 'What Happened to Europe.'
-
-[11] _Times_, July 3rd., 1920.
-
-[12] The proposal respecting Austria was a loan of 50 millions in
-instalments of five years.
-
-[13] Mr Hoover seems to suggest that their repayment should never take
-place. To a meeting of Bankers he says:--
-
-'Even if we extend these credits and if upon Europe's recovery we then
-attempt to exact the payment of these sums by import of commodities, we
-shall have introduced a competition with our own industries that cannot
-be turned back by any tariff wall.... I believe that we have to-day an
-equipment and a skill in production that yield us a surplus of
-commodities for export beyond any compensation we can usefully take by
-way of imported commodities.... Gold and remittances and services cannot
-cover this gulf in our trade balance.... To me there is only one remedy,
-and that is by the systematic permanent investment of our surplus
-production in reproductive works abroad. We thus reduce the return we
-must receive to a return of interest and profit.'
-
-A writer in the _New Republic_ (Dec. 29th., 1920.) who quotes this says
-pertinently enough:--
-
-'Mr Hoover disposes of the principal of our foreign loans. The debtors
-cannot return it and we cannot afford to receive it back. But the
-interest and profit which he says we may receive--that will have to be
-paid in commodities, as the principal would be if it were paid at all.
-What shall we do when the volume of foreign commodities received in
-payment of interest and profit becomes very large and our industries cry
-for protection?'
-
-[14] The present writer declines to join in the condemnation of British
-miners for reduced output. In an ultimate sense (which is no part of the
-present discussion) the decline in effort of the miner is perhaps
-justified. But the facts are none the less striking as showing how great
-the difference of output can be. Figures given by Sir John Cadman,
-President of the Institute of Mining Engineers a short time ago (and
-quoted in the _Fortnightly Review_ for Oct. 1920.), show that in 1916
-the coal production per person employed in the United Kingdom was 263
-tons, as against 731 tons in the United States. In 1918 the former
-amounted to 236 tons, and during 1919 it sank to 1971/2 tons. In 1913 the
-coal produced per man per day in this country was 0.98 tons, and in
-America it was 3.91 tons for bituminous coal and 2.19 tons for
-anthracite. In 1918 the British output figure was 0.80 tons, and the
-American 3.77 tons for bituminous coal and 2.27 for anthracite. Measured
-by their daily output, a single American miner does just as much work as
-do five Englishmen.
-
-The inferiority in production is, of course, 'to some considerable
-extent' due to the fact that the most easily workable deposits in
-England are becoming exhausted, while the United States can most easily
-draw on their most prolific and most easily workable sites....
-
-It is the fact that in our new and favourable coalfields, such as the
-South Yorkshire area, the men working under the most favourable modern
-conditions and in new mines where the face is near the shaft, do not
-obtain as much coal per man employed, as that got by the miners in the
-country generally under the conditions appertaining forty and fifty
-years ago.
-
-[15] Mr J. M. Keynes, 'The Economic Consequences of the Peace,' p. 211,
-says:--'It is an extraordinary fact that the fundamental economic
-problem of a Europe starving and disintegrating before their eyes, was
-the one question in which it was impossible to arouse the interest of
-the Four.'
-
-[16] Incidentally we see nations not yet brought under capitalist
-organisation (e.g. the peasant nations of the Balkans) equally subject
-to the hostilities we are discussing.
-
-Bertrand Russell writes (_New Republic_, September 15th., 1920):--'No
-doubt commercial rivalry between England and Germany had a great deal to
-do with causing the war, but rivalry is a different thing from
-profit-seeking. Probably by combination, English and German capitalists
-could have made more than they did out of rivalry, but the rivalry was
-instinctive, and its economic form was accidental. The capitalists were
-in the grip of nationalist instinct as much as their proletarian
-'dupes.' In both classes some have gained by the war, but the universal
-will to war was not produced by the hope of gain. It was produced by a
-different set of instincts, one which Marxian psychology fails to
-recognise adequately....
-
-Men desire power, they desire satisfaction for their pride and their
-self-respect. They desire victory over their rivals so profoundly that
-they will invent a rivalry for the unconscious purpose of making a
-victory possible. All these motives cut across the pure economic motive
-in ways that are practically important.
-
-There is need of a treatment of political motives by the methods of
-psycho-analysis. In politics, as in private life, men invent myths to
-rationalise their conduct. If a man thinks that the only reasonable
-motive in politics is economic self-advancement, he will persuade
-himself that the things he wishes to do will make him rich. When he
-wants to fight the Germans, he tells himself that their competition is
-ruining his trade. If, on the other hand, he is an 'idealist,' who holds
-that his politics should aim at the advancement of the human race, he
-will tell himself that the crimes of the Germans demand their
-humiliation. The Marxian sees through this latter camouflage, but not
-through the former.
-
-[17] 'If the Englishman sells goods in Turkey or Argentina, he is taking
-trade from the German, and if the German sells goods in either of these
-countries--or any other country, come to that--he is taking trade from
-the Englishman; and the well-being of every inhabitant of the great
-manufacturing towns, such as London, Paris, or Berlin, is bound up in
-the power of the capitalist to sell his wares; and the production of
-manufactured articles has outstripped the natural increase of demand by
-67 per cent., therefore new markets must be found for these wares or the
-existing ones be "forced"; hence the rush for colonies and feverish
-trade competition between the great manufacturing countries. And the
-production of manufactured goods is still increasing, and the great
-cities must sell their wares or starve. Now we understand what trade
-rivalry really is. It resolves itself, in fact, into the struggle for
-bread.' (A Rifleman: '_Struggle for Bread._' p. 54.)
-
-[18] Mr J. M. Keynes, _The Economic Consequences of the Peace_, says: 'I
-do not put the money value of the actual _physical_ loss to Belgian
-property by destruction and loot above L150,000,000 as a _maximum_, and
-while I hesitate to put yet lower an estimate which differs so widely
-from those generally current, I shall be surprised if it proves possible
-to substantiate claims even to this amount.... While the French claims
-are immensely greater, here too, there has been excessive exaggeration,
-as responsible French statisticians have themselves pointed out. Not
-above 10 per cent. of the area of France was effectively occupied by the
-enemy, and not above 4 per cent. lay within the area of substantial
-devastation.... In short, it will be difficult to establish a bill
-exceeding L500,000,000 for _physical and material_ damage in the
-occupied and devastated areas of Northern France.' (pp. 114-117.)
-
-[19] _The Foundations of International Policy_ pp. xxiii-xxiv.
-
-It is true, of course, that Governments were for their armies and navies
-and public departments considerable purchasers in the international
-market. But the general truth of the distinction here made is
-unaffected. The difference in degree, in this respect, between the
-pre-war and post-war state in so great as to make a difference of kind.
-The dominant motive for State action has been changed.
-
-[20] See Addendum and also the authors' _War and the Workers_. (National
-Labour Press). pp. 29-50.
-
-[21] Note of May 22, 1919.
-
-[22] Speech of September 5, 1919. From report in Philadelphia Public
-Ledger, Sept 6.
-
-[23] In German East Africa we have a case in which practically the whole
-of the property in land was confiscated. The whole European population
-were evicted from the farms and plantations--many, of course,
-representing the labour of a lifetime--and deported. A visitor to the
-colony describes it as an empty shell, its productivity enormously
-reduced. In contradistinction, however, one welcomes General Smuts's
-statement in the Union House of Assembly in regard to the Government's
-intentions as to German property. He declared that the balance of nine
-millions in the hands of the Custodian after claims for damages had been
-recovered, would not be paid to the Reparations Commission, as this
-would practically mean confiscation. The Government would take the nine
-millions, plus interest, as a loan to South Africa for thirty years at
-four per cent. While under the Peace Treaty they had the right to
-confiscate all private property in South-West Africa, they did not
-intend to avail themselves of those rights. They would leave private
-property alone. As to the concessions, if the titles to these were
-proved, they would also be left untouched. The statement of the South
-African Government's intentions, which are the most generous of any
-country in the world, was received with repeated cheers from all
-sections of the House.
-
-[24] Since the above lines were written the following important
-announcement has appeared (according to _The Times_ of October 26th.,
-1920.) in the _Board of Trade Journal_ of October 21st.:--
-
-'H. M. Government have informed the German Government that they do not
-intend to exercise their rights under paragraph 18 of Annex II to Part
-VIII of the Treaty of Versailles, to seize the property of German
-nationals in this country in case of voluntary default by Germany. This
-applies to German property in the United Kingdom or under United Kingdom
-control, whether in the form of bank balances, or in that of goods in
-British bottoms, or of goods sent to this country for sale.
-
-'It has already been announced that German property, rights, and
-interests acquired since the publication of the General Licence
-permitting the resumption of trade with Germany (i.e. since July 12th.,
-1919), are not liable to retention under Art. 297 of the Peace Treaty,
-which gives the Allied and Associated Powers the right to liquidate all
-German property, rights, and interests within their territories at the
-date of the coming into force of the Treaty.'
-
-This announcement has called forth strong protests from France and from
-some quarters in this country, to which the British Government has
-rejoined by a semi-official statement that the concession has been made
-solely on account of British commercial interests. The incident
-illustrates the difficulty of waiving even permissive powers under the
-Treaty, although the exercise of those powers would obviously injure
-British traders. Moreover, the Reparations (Recovery) Act, passed in
-March 1921, appears to be inconsistent with the above announcement.
-
-[25] A point that seems to have been overlooked is the effect of this
-Treaty on the arrangements which may follow changes in the political
-status of, say, Egypt or India or Ireland. If some George Washington of
-the future were to apply the principles of the Treaty to British
-property, the effects might be far-reaching.
-
-A _Quarterly Review_ critic (April 1920) says of these clauses of the
-Treaty (particularly Article 297b.):--
-
-'We are justified in regarding this policy with the utmost apprehension,
-not only because of its injustice, but also because it is likely to form
-precedents of a most mischievous character in the future. If, it will be
-said, the Allied Governments ended their great war for justice and right
-by confiscating private property and ruining those unfortunate
-individuals who happened to have investments outside their own country,
-how can private wealth at home complain if a Labour Government proposes
-to confiscate private property in any business which it thinks suitable
-for "nationalisation"? Under another provision the Reparations
-Commission is actually allowed to demand the surrender of German
-properties and German enterprises in _neutral_ countries. This will be
-found in Article 235, which "introduces a quite novel principle in the
-collection of indemnities."'
-
-[26] See quotations in Addendum.
-
-[27] Cmd. 280 (1919), p. 15.
-
-[28] The dilemma is not, of course, as absolute, as this query would
-suggest. What I am trying to make perfectly clear here is the _kind_ of
-problem that faces us rather than the precise degree of its difficulty.
-My own view is that after much suffering especially to the children, and
-the reduction during a generation or two, perhaps, of the physical
-standard of the race, the German population will find a way round the
-sustenance difficulty. For one thing, France needs German coke quite as
-badly as Germany needs French ore, and this common need may be made the
-basis of a bargain. But though Germany may be able to surmount the
-difficulties created for her by her victors, it is those difficulties
-which will constitute her grievance, and will present precisely the
-kind, if not the degree, of injustice here indicated.
-
-[29] One very commonly sees the statement that France had no adequate
-resources in iron ore before the War. This is an entire mistake, as the
-Report of the Commission appointed by the Minister of Munitions to visit
-Lorraine (issued July, 1919), points out (p. 11.):--'Before the War the
-resources of Germany of iron ore were 3,600,000,000 tons and those of
-France 3,300,000,000.' What gave Germany the advantage was the
-possession not of greater ore resources than France, but of coal
-suitable for furnace coke, and this superiority in coal will still
-remain even after the Treaty, although the paralysis of transport and
-other indispensable factors may render the superiority valueless. The
-report just quoted says:--'It is true that Germany will want iron ore
-from Lorraine (in 1913 she took 14,000,000 tons from Briey and
-18,500,000 tons from Lorraine), but she will not be so entirely
-dependent upon this one source of supply as the Lorraine works will be
-upon Germany for coke, unless some means are provided to enable Lorraine
-to obtain coke from elsewhere, or to produce her own needs from Saar
-coal and imported coking coal.' The whole report seems to indicate that
-the _mise en valeur_ of France's new 'property' depends upon supplies of
-German coal--to say nothing of the needs of a German market and the
-markets depending on that market. As it is, the Lorraine steel works are
-producing nothing like their full output because of the inability of
-Germany to supply furnace coke, owing largely to the Westphalian labour
-troubles and transport disorganisation. Whether political passion will
-so far subside as to enable the two countries to come to a bargain in
-the matter of exchange of ore or basic pig-iron for furnace coke,
-remains to be seen. In any case one may say that the ore-fields of
-Lorraine will only be of value to France provided that much of their
-product is returned to Germany and used for the purpose of giving value
-to German coal.
-
-[30] From the summary of a series of lectures on the _Biology of Death_,
-as reported in the _Boston Herald_ of December 19th., 1920.
-
-[31] A recent book on the subject, summing up the various
-recommendations made in France up to 1918 for increasing the birth-rate
-is _La Natalite: ses Lois Economiques et Psychologiques_, by Gaston
-Rageot.
-
-The present writer remembers being present ten years before the War at a
-Conference at the Sorbonne on this subject. One of the lecturers
-summarised all the various plans that had been tried to increase the
-birth-rate. 'They have all failed,' he concluded, 'and I doubt if
-anything remains to be done.' And one of the savants present added:
-'Except to applaud.'
-
-[32] Mr William Harbutt Dawson gives the figures as follows:--
-
-'The decline in the birth-rate was found to have become a settled factor
-in the population question.... The birth-rate for the whole Empire
-reached the maximum figure in 1876, when it stood at 41.0 per 1000 of
-the population.... Since 1876 the movement has been steadily downward,
-with the slightest possible break at the beginning of the 'nineties....
-Since 1900 the rate has decreased as follows:--
-
-  1900      35.6 per 1000.
-  1901      35.7 per   "
-  1902      35.1 per   "
-  1903      33.9 per   "
-  1904      34.1 per 1000.
-  1905      33.0 per   "
-  1906      33.1 per   "
-
-(_The Evolution of Modern Germany._ p. 309)
-
-[33] Conversely it may be said that the economic position of the border
-States becomes impossible unless the greater States are orderly. In
-regard to Poland, Mr Keynes remarks: 'Unless her great neighbours are
-prosperous and orderly, Poland is an economic impossibility, with no
-industry but Jew-baiting.'
-
-Sir William Goode (the British Director of Relief) states that he found
-'everywhere never-ending vicious circles of political paradox and
-economic complication, with consequent paralysis of national life and
-industry. The new States of repartitioned Europe seem not only incapable
-of maintaining their own economic life, but also either unable or
-unwilling to help their neighbours.' (Cmd. 521 (1920), p. 6.)
-
-[34] From a manifesto signed by a large number of American
-intellectuals, business men, and Labour Leaders ('League of Free Nations
-Association') on the eve of President Wilson's departure for Paris.
-
-[35] Interview published by _Pearson's Magazine_, March, 1915.
-
-[36] _Times_, March 8, 1915. 'Our honour and interest must have
-compelled us to join France and Russia even if Germany had scrupulously
-respected the rights of her small neighbours and had sought to hack her
-way through the Eastern fortresses. The German Chancellor has insisted
-more than once upon this truth. He has fancied apparently that he was
-making an argumentative point against us by establishing it. That, like
-so much more, only shows his complete misunderstanding of our attitude
-and our character.... We reverted to our historical policy of the
-Balance of Power.'
-
-The _Times_ maintains the same position five years later (July 31st,
-1920): 'It needed more than two years of actual warfare to render the
-British people wholly conscious that they were fighting not a quixotic
-fight for Belgium and France, but a desperate battle for their own
-existence.'
-
-[37] _How the War Came_, p. 238.
-
-[38] Lord Loreburn adds:--
-
-'But Sir Edward Grey in 1914 did not and could not offer similar
-Treaties to France and Germany because our relations with France and the
-conduct of Germany were such, that for us to join Germany in any event
-was unthinkable. And he did not proclaim our neutrality because our
-relations with France, as described in his own speech, were such that he
-could not in honour refuse to join France in the war. Therefore the
-example of 1870 could not be followed in 1914, and Belgium was not saved
-but destroyed.'
-
-[39] See the Documents published by the Russian Government in November,
-1917.
-
-[40] It is not clear whether the undertaking to Russia was actually
-given. Lord R. Cecil in the House of Commons on July 24th, 1917, said:
-'It will be for this country to back up the French in what they desire.
-I will not go through all the others of our Allies--there are a good
-many of them--but the principle (to stand by our Allies) will be equally
-there in the case of all and particularly in the case of Serbia.'
-
-[41] Since these lines were written, there has been a change of
-government and of policy in Italy. An agreement has been reached with
-Yugo-Slavia, which appears to satisfy the moderate elements in both
-countries.
-
-[42] Lord Curzon (May 17th, 1920) wrote that he did not see how we could
-invoke the League to restrain Poland. The Poles, he added, must choose
-war or peace on their own responsibility. Mr Lloyd George (June 19th,
-1920) declared that 'the League of Nations could not intervene in
-Poland.'
-
-[43] _The War that will End War_, p. 14.
-
-[44] _Ibid._, p. 19.
-
-[45] _The Issue_, p. 37-39.
-
-[46] _Land and Water_, February 21st, 1918.
-
-[47] Even as late as January 13th, 1920, Mr H. W. Wilson of the _Daily
-Mail_ writes that if the disarmament of Germany is carried out 'the real
-cause of swollen armaments in Europe will vanish.'
-
-On May 18th, 1920, Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson (_Morning Post_, May
-19th) declares himself thus:--
-
-'We were told that after this last war we were to have peace. We have
-not; there are something between twenty and thirty bloody wars going on
-at the present moment. We were told that the great war was to end war.
-It did not; it could not. We have a very difficult time ahead, whether
-on the sea, in the air, or on the land.' He wanted them to take away the
-warning from a fellow soldier that their country and their Empire both
-wanted them to-day as much as ever they had, and if they were as proud
-of belonging to the British Empire as he was they would do their best,
-in whatever capacity they served, to qualify themselves for the times
-that were coming.
-
-[48] July 31st, 1920.
-
-[49] April 19th, 1919.
-
-[50] A Reuter Despatch dated August 31st, 1920, says:--
-
-'Speaking to-day at Charleston (West Virginia) Mr Daniels, U. S. Naval
-Secretary, said: "We are building enormous docks and are constructing 18
-dreadnoughts and battle cruisers, with a dozen other powerful ships
-which in effective fighting power will give our navy world primacy."'
-
-[51] We are once more back to the Carlylean 'deep, patient ... virtuous
-... Germany.'
-
-[52] Sir Henry Wilson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, in a
-memorandum dated December 1st, 1919, which appears in a Blue Book on
-'the Evacuation of North Russia, 1919,' says:--'There is one great
-lesson to be learned from the history of the campaign.... It is that
-once a military force is involved in operations on land it is almost
-impossible to limit the magnitude of its commitments.'
-
-[53] And Russo-German co-operation is of course precisely what French
-policy must create. Says an American critic:--
-
-'France certainly carries a big stick, but she does not speak softly;
-she takes her own part, but she seems to fear neither God nor the
-revulsion of man. Yet she has reason to fear. Suppose she succeeds for a
-while in reducing Germany to servitude and Russia to a dictatorship of
-the Right, in securing her own dominion on the Continent as overlord by
-the petty States of Europe. What then? What can be the consequence of a
-common hostility of the Teutonic and Slavonic peoples, except in the end
-common action on their part to throw off an intolerable yoke? The
-nightmare of a militant Russo-German alliance becomes daily a more
-sinister prophecy, as France teaches the people of Europe that force
-alone is the solvent. France has only to convince all of Germany that
-the Treaty of Versailles will be enforced in all its rigour, which means
-occupation of the Ruhr and the loss of Silesia, to destroy the final
-resistance of those Germans who look to the West rather than to the East
-for salvation. Let it be known that the barrier of the Rhine is all
-bayonet and threat, and western-minded Germany must go down before the
-easterners, Communist or Junker. It will not matter greatly which.'
-(_New Republic_, Sept. 15th, 1920).
-
-[54] December 23rd, 1919.
-
-[55] _The Times_ of September 4th, 1920 reproduces an article from the
-Matin, on M. Millerand's policy with regard to small States. M.
-Millerand's aim was that economic aid should go hand in hand with French
-military protection. With this policy in view, a number of large
-businesses recently passed under French control, including the Skoda
-factory in Czecho-Slovakia, big works at Kattowitz in Upper Silesia, the
-firm of Huta-Bankowa in Poland, railway factories in Rumania, and
-certain river systems and ports in Yugo-Slavia. In return for assistance
-to Admiral Horthy, an agreement was signed whereby France obtained
-control of the Hungarian State Railways, of the Credit Bank, the
-Hungarian river system and the port of Buda-pest. Other reports state
-that France has secured 85 per cent. of the oil-fields of Poland, in
-return for her help at the time of the threat to Warsaw. As the majority
-of shares in the Polish Oil Company 'Galicia,' which have been in
-British hands until recently, have been bought up by a French Company,
-the 'Franco-Polonaise,' France now holds an important weapon of
-international policy.
-
-[56] The present writer would like to enter a warning here that nothing
-in this chapter implies that we should disregard France's very
-legitimate fears of a revived militarist Germany. The implication is
-that she is going the right way about to create the very dangers that
-terrify her. If this were the place to discuss alternative policies, I
-should certainly go on to urge that England--and America--should make it
-plain to France that they are prepared to pledge their power to her
-defence. More than that, both countries should offer to forgo the debts
-owing to them by France on condition of French adhesion to more workable
-European arrangements. The last thing to be desired is a rupture, or a
-mere change of roles: France to become once more the 'enemy' and Germany
-once more the 'Ally.' That outcome would merely duplicate the weary
-story of the past.
-
-[57] _The Expansion of England_, p. 202.
-
-[58] The assumption marks even post-war rhetoric. M. Millerand's message
-to the Senate and Chamber upon his election as President of the Republic
-says: 'True to the Alliances for ever cemented by blood shed in common,'
-France will strictly enforce the Treaty of Versailles, 'a new charter of
-Europe and the World.' (_Times_, Sept. 27th, 1920). The passage is
-typical of the moral fact dealt with in this chapter. M. Millerand
-knows, his hearers know, that the war Alliance 'for ever cemented by
-blood shed in common,' has already ceased to exist. But the admission of
-this patent fact would be fatal to the 'blood' heroics.
-
-[59] Dr L. P. Jacks, Editor of _The Hibbert Journal_, tells us that
-before the War the English nation, regarded from the moral point of
-view, was a scene of 'indescribable confusion; a moral chaos.' But there
-has come to it 'the peace of mind that comes to every man who, after
-tossing about among uncertainties, finds at last a mission, a cause to
-which he can devote himself.' For this reason, he says, the War has
-actually made the English people happier than they were before:
-'brighter, more cheerful. The Englishman worries less about himself....
-The tone and substance of conversation are better.... There is more
-health in our souls and perhaps in our bodies.' And he tells how the War
-cured a friend of insomnia. (_The Peacefulness of Being at War_, _New
-Republic_, September 11, 1915).
-
-[60] The facts of both the Russian and the Italian bargains are dealt
-with in more detail in Chap. III.
-
-[61] Quoted by Mr T. L. Stoddard in an article on Italian Nationalism,
-in the _Forum_, Sept. 1915. One may hope that the outcome of the War has
-modified the tendencies in Italy of which he treats. But the quotations
-he makes from Italian Nationalist writers put Treitschke and Bernhardi
-in the shade. Here are some. Corradini says: 'Italy must become once
-more the first nation in the world.' Rocco: 'It is said that all the
-other territories are occupied. But strong nations, or nations on the
-path of progress, conquer.... territories occupied by nations in
-decadence.' Luigi Villari rejoices that the cobwebs of mean-spirited
-Pacifism have been swept away. Italians are beginning to feel, in
-whatever part of the world they may happen to be, something of the pride
-of Roman citizens.' Scipione Sighele writes: 'War must be loved for
-itself.... To say "War is the most horrible of evils," to talk of war as
-"an unhappy necessity," to declare that we should "never attack but
-always know how to defend ourselves," to say these things is as
-dangerous as to make out-and-out Pacifist and anti-militarist speeches.
-It is creating for the future a conflict of duties: duties towards
-humanity, duties towards the Fatherland.' Corradini explains the
-programme of the Nationalists: 'All our efforts will tend towards making
-the Italians a warlike race. We will give it a new will; we will instil
-into it the appetite for power, the need of mighty hopes. We will create
-a religion--the religion of the Fatherland victorious over the other
-nations.'
-
-I am indebted to Mr Stoddard for the translations; but they read quite
-'true to type.'
-
-[62] It is true that the Labour Party, alone of all the parties, did
-take action, happily effective, against the Russian adventure--after it
-had gone on in intermittent form for two years. But the above paragraphs
-refer particularly to the period which immediately succeeded the War,
-and to a general temper which was unfortunately a fact despite Labour
-action.
-
-[63] Mr Hartley Manners, the playwright, who produced during the War a
-book entitled _Hate with a Will to Victory_, writes thus:--
-
-'And in voicing our doctrine of Hate let us not forget that the German
-people were, and are still, solidly behind him (the Kaiser) in
-everything he does.' ...
-
-'The German people are actively and passively with their Government to
-the last man and the last mark. No people receive their faith and their
-rules of conduct more fatuously from their rulers than do the German
-people. Fronting the world they stand as one with their beloved Kaiser.
-He who builds on a revolution in Germany as a possible ending of the
-war, knows not what he says. They will follow through any degradation of
-the body, through any torture of spirit, the tyrants they have been
-taught from infancy to regard as their Supreme Masters of body and
-soul.' ...
-
-And here is his picture of 'the German':--
-
-... 'a slave from birth, with no rights as a free man, owing allegiance
-to a militaristic Government to whom he looks for his very life; crushed
-by taxation to keep up the military machine; ill-nourished, ignorant,
-prone to crime in greater measure than the peasants of any other
-country--as the German statistics of crime show--a degraded peasant, a
-wretched future, and a loathesome past--these are the inheritances to
-which the German peasant is born. What type of nature can develop in
-such conditions? But one--the _brute_. And the four years' commerce of
-this War has shown the German from prince to peasant as offspring of the
-one family--the _brute_ family.' ...
-
-[64] The following--which appeared in _The Times_ of April 17, 1915--is
-merely a type of at least thirty or forty similar reports published by
-the German Army Headquarters: 'In yesterday's clear weather the airmen
-were very active. Enemy airmen bombarded places behind our positions.
-Freiburg was again visited, and several civilians, the majority being
-children, were killed and wounded.' A few days later the Paris _Temps_
-(April 22, 1915) reproduced the German accounts of French air-raids
-where bombs were dropped on Kandern, Loerrach, Mulheim, Habsheim,
-Wiesenthal, Tublingen, Mannheim. These raids were carried out by squads
-of airmen, and the bombs were thrown particularly at railway stations
-and factories. Previous to this, British and French airmen had been
-particularly active in Belgium, dropping bombs on Zeebrugge, Bruges,
-Middlekirke, and other towns. One German official report tells how a
-bomb fell on to a loaded street car, killing many women and children.
-Another (dated September 7, 1915) contains the following: 'In the course
-of an enemy aeroplane attack on Lichtervelde, north of Roulers in
-Flanders, seven Belgian inhabitants were killed and two injured.' A
-despatch from Zurich, dated Sept. 24, 1915, says: 'At yesterday's
-meeting of the Stuttgart City Council, the Mayor and Councillors
-protested vigorously against the recent French raid upon an undefended
-city. Burgomaster Lautenschlager asserted that an enemy that attacked
-harmless civilians was fighting a lost cause.'
-
-[65] March 27th, 1919.
-
-[66] In Drinkwater's play, _Abraham Lincoln_, the fire-eating wife of
-the war-profiteer, who had been violently abusing an old Quaker lady, is
-thus addressed by Lincoln:--
-
-'I don't agree with her, but I honour her. She's wrong, but she is
-noble. You've told me what you think. I don't agree with you, and I'm
-ashamed of you and your like. You, who have sacrificed nothing babble
-about destroying the South while other people conquer it. I accepted
-this war with a sick heart, and I've a heart that's near to breaking
-every day. I accepted it in the name of humanity, and just and merciful
-dealing, and the hope of love and charity on earth. And you come to me,
-talking of revenge and destruction, and malice, and enduring hate. These
-gentle people are mistaken, but they are mistaken cleanly, and in a
-great name. It is you that dishonour the cause for which we stand--it is
-you who would make it a mean and little thing....'
-
-[67] The official record of the Meeting of the Council of Ten on January
-16, 1919, as furnished to the Foreign Relations Committee of the
-American Senate, reports Mr Lloyd George as saying:--
-
-'The mere idea of crushing Bolshevism by military force is pure
-madness....
-
-'The Russian blockade would be a "death cordon," condemning women and
-children to starvation, a policy which, as humane people, those present
-could not consider.'
-
-[68] While attempting in this chapter to reveal the essential difference
-of the two methods open to us, it is hardly necessary to say that in the
-complexities and cross-currents of human society practical policy can
-rarely be guided by a single absolute principle. Reference has been made
-to the putting of the pooled force of the nations behind a principle or
-law as the alternative of each attempting to use his own for enforcing
-his own view. The writer does not suppose for an instant that it is
-possible immediately to draw up a complete Federal Code of Law for
-Europe, to create a well-defined European constitution and then raise a
-European army to defend it, or body of police to enforce it. He is
-probably the last person in the world likely to believe the political
-ideas of the European capable of such an agile adaptation.
-
-[69] Delivered at Portland, Maine, on March 28th, 1918; reported in _New
-York Times_, March 29th.
-
-[70] Bertrand Russell: _Principles of Social Reconstruction._
-
-Mr. Trotter in _Instincts of the Herd in War and Peace_, says:--
-
-'We see one instinct producing manifestations directly hostile to each
-other--prompting to ever-advancing developments of altruism while it
-necessarily leads to any new product of advance being attacked. It
-shows, moreover ... that a gregarious species rapidly developing a
-complex society can be saved from inextricable confusion only by the
-appearance of reason and the application of it to life. (p. 46.)
-
-... 'The conscious direction of man's destiny is plainly indicated by
-Nature as the only mechanism by which the social life of so complex an
-animal can be guaranteed against disaster and brought to yield its full
-possibilities, (p. 162.)
-
-... 'Such a directing intelligence or group of intelligences would take
-into account before all things the biological character of man.... It
-would discover when natural inclinations in man must be indulged, and
-would make them respectable, what inclinations in him must be controlled
-for the advantage of the species, and make them insignificant.' (p.
-162-3.)
-
-[71] The opening sentence of a five volume _History of the Peace
-Conference of Paris_, edited by H. W. V. Temperley, and published under
-the auspices of the Institute of International Affairs, is as follows:--
-
-'The war was a conflict between the principles of freedom and of
-autocracy, between the principles of moral influence and of material
-force, of government by consent and of government by compulsion.'
-
-[72] Foremost as examples stand out the claims of German Austria to
-federate with Germany; the German population of the Southern Tyrol with
-Austria; the Bohemian Germans with Austria; the Transylvanian Magyars
-with Hungary; the Bulgarians of Macedonia, the Bulgarians of the
-Dobrudja, and the Bulgarians of Western Thrace with Bulgaria; the Serbs
-of the Serbian Banat with Yugo-Slavia; the Lithuanians and Ukrainians
-for freedom from Polish dominion.
-
-[73] We know now (see the interview with M. Paderewski in the _New York
-World_) that we compelled Poland to remain at war when she wanted to
-make peace. It has never been fully explained why the Prinkipo peace
-policy urged by Mr Lloyd George as early as December 1918 was defeated,
-and why instead we furnished munitions, tanks, aeroplanes, poison gas,
-military missions and subsidies in turn to Koltchak, Denikin, Yudenitch,
-Wrangel, and Poland. We prolonged the blockade--which in the early
-phases forbade Germany that was starving to catch fish in the Baltic,
-and stopped medicine and hospital supplies to the Russians--for fear,
-apparently, of the very thing which might have helped to save Europe,
-the economic co-operation of Russia and Central Europe.
-
-[74] 'We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling
-towards them but one of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon their
-impulse that their government acted in entering this war.' ... 'We are
-glad ... to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world, and for the
-liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included: for the rights
-of nations great and small ... to choose their way of life.' (President
-Wilson, Address to Congress, April 2nd, 1917).
-
-[75] _The Economic Consequences of the Peace_, p. 211.
-
-[76] See quotations from Sir A. Conan Doyle, later in this Chapter.
-
-[77] See, e.g., the facts as to the repression of Socialism in America,
-Chapter V.
-
-[78] _The Atlantic Monthly_, November 1920.
-
-[79] _Realities of War_, pp. 426-7, 441.
-
-[80] Is it necessary to say that the present writer does not accept it?
-
-[81] The argument is not invalidated in the least by sporadic instances
-of liberal activity here--an isolated article or two. For iteration is
-the essence of propaganda as an opinion forming factor.
-
-[82] In an article in the _North American Review_, just before America's
-entrance into the War, I attempted to indicate the danger by making one
-character in an imaginary symposium say: 'One talks of "Wilson's
-programme," "Wilson's policy." There will be only one programme and one
-policy possible as soon as the first American soldier sets foot on
-European soil: Victory. Bottomley and Maxse will be milk and water to
-what we shall see America producing. We shall have a settlement so
-monstrous that Germany will offer any price to Russia and Japan for
-their future help.... America's part in the War will absorb about all
-the attention and interest that busy people can give to public affairs.
-They will forget about these international arrangements concerning the
-sea, the League of Peace--the things for which the country entered the
-War. In fact if Wilson so much as tries to remind them of the objects of
-the War he will be accused of pro-Germanism, and you will have their
-ginger Press demanding that the "old gang" be "combed out."'
-
-[83] 'If we take the extremist 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.' (_What is
-coming?_ p. 198).
-
-[84] See the memoranda published in _The Secrets of Crewe House_.
-
-[85] Mr Keynes is not alone in declaring that the Treaty makes of our
-armistice engagements a 'scrap of paper.' _The Round Table_, in an
-article which aims at justifying the Treaty as a whole, says: 'Opinions
-may differ as to the actual letter of the engagements which we made at
-the Armistice, but the spirit of them is undoubtedly strained in some of
-the detailed provisions of the peace. There is some honest ground for
-the feeling manifested in Germany that the terms on which she laid down
-her arms have not been observed in all respects.'
-
-A very unwilling witness to our obligations is Mr Leo Maxse, who writes
-(_National Review_, February, 1921):--
-
-'Thanks to the American revelations we are in a better position to
-appreciate the trickery and treachery of the pre-Armistice negotiations,
-as well as the hideous imposture of the Paris Peace Conference, which,
-we now learn for the first time, was governed by the self-denying
-ordinance of the previous November, when, unbeknown to the countries
-betrayed, the Fourteen Points had been inextricably woven into the
-Armistice. Thus was John Bull effectively 'dished' of every farthing of
-his war costs.'
-
-As a fact, of course, the self-denying ordinance was not 'unbeknown to
-the countries betrayed.' The Fourteen Points commitment was quite open;
-the European Allies could have repudiated them, as, on one point,
-Britain did.
-
-[86] A quite considerable school, who presumably intend to be taken
-seriously, would have us believe that the French Revolution, the Russian
-Revolution, the English Trade Union Movement are all the work of a small
-secret Jewish Club or Junta--their work, that is, in the sense that but
-for them the Revolutions or Revolutionary movements would not have taken
-place. These arguments are usually brought by 'intense nationalists' who
-also believe that sentiments like nationalism are so deeply rooted that
-mere ideas or theories can never alter them.
-
-[87] An American playwright has indicated amusingly with what ingenuity
-we can create a 'collectivity.' One of the characters in the play
-applies for a chauffeur's job. A few questions reveal the fact that he
-does not know anything about it. 'Why does he want to be a chauffeur?'
-'Well, I'll tell you, boss. Last year I got knocked down by an
-automobile and badly hurt. And I made up my mind that when I came out of
-the hospital I'd get a bit of my own back. Get even by knocking over a
-few guys, see?' A policy of 'reprisals,' in fact.
-
-[88] December 26th, 1917.
-
-[89] A thing which happens about once a week in the United States.
-
-[90] October 16th, 1917.
-
-[91] The amazing rapidity with which we can change sides and causes, and
-the enemy become the Ally, and the Ally the enemy, in the course of a
-few weeks, approaches the burlesque.
-
-At the head of the Polish armies is Marshal Pilsudski, who fought under
-Austro-German command, against Russia. His ally is the Ukrainian
-adventurer, General Petlura, who first made a separate peace at
-Brest-Litovsk, and contracted there to let the German armies into the
-Ukraine, and to deliver up to them its stores of grain. These in May
-1920 were the friends of the Allies. The Polish Finance Minister at the
-time we were aiding Poland was Baron Bilinski, a gentleman who filled
-the same post in the Austrian Cabinet which let loose the world war,
-insisted hotly on the ultimatum to Serbia, helped to ruin the finances
-of the Hapsburg dominions by war, and then after the collapse repeated
-the same operation in Poland. On the other side the command has passed,
-it is said, to the dashing General Brusiloff, who again and again saved
-the Eastern front from Austrian and German offensives. He is now the
-'enemy' and his opponents our 'Allies.' They are fighting to tear the
-Ukraine, which means all South Russia, away from the Russian State. The
-preceding year we spent millions to achieve the opposite result. The
-French sent their troops to Odessa, and we gave our tanks to Denikin, in
-order to enable him to recover this region for Imperial Russia.
-
-[92] The Russian case is less evident. But only the moral inertia
-following on a long war could have made our Russian record possible.
-
-[93] He complained that I had 'publicly reproved him' for supporting
-severity in warfare. He was mistaken. As he really did believe in the
-effectiveness of terrorism, he did a very real service by standing
-publicly for his conviction.
-
-[94] Here is what the _Times_ of December 10th, 1870, has to say about
-France and Germany respectively, and on the Alsace-Lorraine question:--
-
-'We must say with all frankness that France has never shown herself so
-senseless, so pitiful, so worthy of contempt and reprobation, as at the
-present moment, when she obstinately declines to look facts in the face,
-and refuses to accept the misfortune her own conduct has brought upon
-her. A France broken up in utter anarchy, Ministers who have no
-recognised chief, who rise from the dust in their air balloons, and who
-carry with them for ballast shameful and manifest lies and proclamations
-of victories that exist only in their imagination, a Government which is
-sustained by lies and imposture, and chooses rather to continue and
-increase the waste of lives than to resign its own dictatorship and its
-wonderful Utopia of a republic; that is the spectacle which France
-presents to-day. It is hard to say whether any nation ever before
-burdened itself with such a load of shame. The quantity of lies which
-France officially and unofficially has been manufacturing for us in the
-full knowledge that they are lies, is something frightful and absolutely
-unprecedented. Perhaps it is not much after all in comparison with the
-immeasurable heaps of delusions and unconscious lies which have so long
-been in circulation among the French. Their men of genius who are
-recognised as such in all departments of literature are apparently of
-opinion that France outshines other nations in a superhuman wisdom, that
-she is the new Zion of the whole world, and that the literary
-productions of the French, for the last fifty years, however insipid,
-unhealthy, and often indeed devilish, contain a real gospel, rich in
-blessing for all the children of men.
-
-We believe that Bismarck will take as much of Alsace-Lorraine, too, as
-he chooses, and that it will be the better for him, the better for us,
-the better for all the world but France, and the better in the long run
-for France herself. Through large and quiet measures, Count von Bismarck
-is aiming with eminent ability at a single object; the well-being of
-Germany and of the world, of the large-hearted, peace-loving,
-enlightened, and honest people of Germany growing into one nation; and
-if Germany becomes mistress of the Continent in place of France, which
-is light-hearted, ambitious, quarrelsome, and over-excitable, it will be
-the most momentous event of the present day, and all the world must hope
-that it will soon come about.'
-
-[95] We realise without difficulty that no society could be formed by
-individuals each of whom had been taught to base his conduct on adages
-such as these: 'Myself alone'; 'myself before anybody else'; 'my ego is
-sacred'; 'myself over all'; 'myself right or wrong.' Yet those are the
-slogans of Patriotism the world over and are regarded as noble and
-inspiring, shouted with a moral and approving thrill.
-
-[96] However mischievous some of the manifestations of Nationalism may
-prove, the worst possible method of dealing with it is by the forcible
-repression of any of its claims which can be granted with due regard to
-the general interest. To give Nationalism full play, as far as possible,
-is the best means of attenuating its worst features and preventing its
-worst developments. This, after all, is the line of conduct which we
-adopt to certain religious beliefs which we may regard as dangerous
-superstitions. Although the belief may have dangers, the social dangers
-involved in forcible repression would be greater still.
-
-[97] _The Great Illusion_, p. 326
-
-[98] 'The Pacifists lie when they tell us that the danger of war is
-over.' General Leonard Wood.
-
-[99] _The Science of Power_, p. 14.
-
-[100] Ibid, p. 144.
-
-[101] See quotations, Part I, Chapters I and III.
-
-[102] The validity of this assumption still holds even though we take
-the view that the defence of war as an inevitable struggle for bread is
-merely a rationalisation (using that word in the technical sense of the
-psychologists) of impulse or instinct, merely, that is, an attempt to
-find a 'reason' for conduct the real explanation of which is the
-subconscious promptings of pugnacities or hostilities, the craving of
-our nature for certain kinds of action. If we could not justify our
-behaviour in terms of self-preservation, it would stand so plainly
-condemned ethically and socially that discipline of instinct--as in the
-case of sex instinct--would obviously be called for and enforced. In
-either case, the road to better behaviour is by a clearer revelation of
-the social mischief of the predominant policy.
-
-[103] Rear-Admiral A. T. Mahan: _Force in International Relations_.
-
-[104] _The Interest of America in International Conditions_, by
-Rear-Admiral A. T. Mahan, pp. 47-87.
-
-[105] _Government and the War_, p. 62.
-
-[106] _State Morality and a League of Nations_, pp 83-85.
-
-[107] _North American Review_, March 1912.
-
-[108] Admiral Mahan himself makes precisely this appeal:--
-
-'That extension of national authority over alien communities, which is
-the dominant note in the world politics of to-day, dignifies and
-enlarges each State and each citizen that enters its fold.... Sentiment,
-imagination, aspiration, the satisfaction of the rational and moral
-faculties in some object better than bread alone, all must find a part
-in a worthy motive. Like individuals, nations and empires have souls as
-well as bodies. Great and beneficent achievement ministers to worthier
-contentment than the filling of the pocket.'
-
-[109] It is not necessary to enter exhaustively into the difficult
-problem of 'natural right.' It suffices for the purpose of this argument
-that the claim of others to life will certainly be made and that we can
-only refuse it at a cost which diminishes our own chances of survival.
-
-[110] See Mr Churchill's declaration, quoted Part I Chapter V.
-
-[111] Mr J. L. Garvin, who was among those who bitterly criticised this
-thesis on account of its 'sordidness,' now writes: 'Armageddon might
-become almost as frequent as General Elections if belligerency were not
-restrained by sheer dread of the consequences in an age of economic
-interdependence when even victory has ceased to pay.'
-
-(Quoted in _Westminster Gazette_, Jan. 24, 1921.)
-
-[112] The introductory synopsis reads:--
-
-What are the fundamental motives that explain the present rivalry of
-armaments in Europe, notably the Anglo-German? Each nation pleads the
-need for defence; but this implies that some one is likely to attack,
-and has therefore a presumed interest in so doing. What are the motives
-which each State thus fears its neighbours may obey?
-
-They are based on the universal assumption that a nation, in order to
-find outlets for expanding population and increasing industry, or simply
-to ensure the best conditions possible for its people, is necessarily
-pushed to territorial expansion and the exercise of political force
-against others (German naval competition is assumed to be the expression
-of the growing need of an expanding population for a larger place in the
-world, a need which will find a realisation in the conquest of English
-Colonies or trade, unless these were defended); it is assumed,
-therefore, that a nation's relative prosperity is broadly determined by
-its political power; that nations being competing units, advantage, in
-the last resort, goes to the possessor of preponderant military force,
-the weaker going to the wall, as in the other forms of the struggle for
-life.
-
-The author challenges this whole doctrine.
-
-[113] See chapters _The Psychological Case for Peace_, _Unchanging Human
-Nature_, and _Is the Political Reformation Possible?_
-
-'Not the facts, but men's opinions about the facts, is what matters.
-Men's conduct is determined, not necessarily by the right conclusion
-from facts, but the conclusion they believe to be right.'
-
-In another pre-war book of the present writer (_The Foundations of
-International Polity_) the same view is developed, particularly in the
-passage which has been reproduced in Chapter VI of this book, 'The
-Alternative Risks of Status and Contract.'
-
-[114] The cessation of religious war indicates the greatest outstanding
-fact in the history of civilised mankind during the last thousand years,
-which is this: that all civilised Governments have abandoned their claim
-to dictate the belief of their subjects. For very long that was a right
-tenaciously held, and it was held on grounds for which there is an
-immense deal to be said. It was held that as belief is an integral part
-of conduct, that as conduct springs from belief, and the purpose of the
-State is to ensure such conduct as will enable us to go about our
-business in safety, it was obviously the duty of the State to protect
-those beliefs, the abandonment of which seemed to undermine the
-foundations of conduct. I do not believe that this case has ever been
-completely answered.... Men of profound thought and profound learning
-to-day defend it, and personally I have found it very difficult to make
-a clear and simple case for the defence of the principle on which every
-civilised Government in the world is to-day founded. How do you account
-for this--that a principle which I do not believe one man in a million
-could defend from all objections has become the dominating rule of
-civilised government throughout the world?
-
-'Well, that once universal policy has been abandoned, not because every
-argument, or even perhaps most of the arguments, which led to it, have
-been answered, but because the fundamental one has. The conception on
-which it rested has been shown to be, not in every detail, but in the
-essentials at least, an illusion, a _mis_conception.
-
-'The world of religious wars and of the Inquisition was a world which
-had a quite definite conception of the relation of authority to
-religious belief and to truth--as that authority was the source of
-truth; that truth could be, and should be, protected by force; that
-Catholics who did not resent an insult offered to their faith (like the
-failure of a Huguenot to salute a passing religious procession) were
-renegade.
-
-'Now, what broke down this conception was a growing realisation that
-authority, force, was irrelevant to the issues of truth (a party of
-heretics triumphed by virtue of some physical accident, as that they
-occupied a mountain region); that it was ineffective, and that the
-essence of truth was something outside the scope of physical conflict.
-As the realisation of this grew, the conflicts declined.'--_Foundations
-of International Polity_, p. 214.
-
-[115] An attempt is made, in _The Great Illusion_, to sketch the process
-which lies behind the progressive substitution of bargain for coercion
-(The Economic Interpretation of the History of Development 'From Status
-to Contract') on pages 187-192, and further developed in a chapter 'the
-Diminishing Factor of Physical Force' (p. 257).
-
-[116] 'When we learn that London, instead of using its police for the
-running in of burglars and "drunks," is using them to lead an attack on
-Birmingham for the purpose of capturing that city as part of a policy of
-"municipal expansion," or "Civic Imperialism," or "Pan-Londonism," or
-what not; or is using its force to repel an attack by the Birmingham
-police acting as the result of a similar policy on the part of the
-Birmingham patriots--when that happens you can safely approximate a
-police force to a European army. But until it does, it is quite evident
-that the two--the army and the police force--have in reality
-diametrically opposed roles. The police exist as an instrument of social
-co-operation; the armies as the natural outcome of the quaint illusion
-that though one city could never enrich itself by "capturing" or
-"subjugating" another, in some wonderful (and unexplained) way one
-country can enrich itself by capturing or subjugating another....
-
-'France has benefited by the conquest of Algeria, England by that of
-India, because in each case the arms were employed not, properly
-speaking, for conquest, but for police purposes, for the establishment
-and maintenance of order; and, so far as they filled that role, their
-role was a useful one....
-
-'Germany has no need to maintain order in England, nor England in
-Germany, and the latent struggle, therefore, between these two countries
-is futile....
-
-'It is one of the humours of the whole Anglo-German conflict that so
-much has the British public been concerned with the myths and bogeys of
-the matter, that it seems calmly to have ignored the realities. While
-even the wildest Pan-German does not cast his eyes in the direction of
-Canada, he does cast them in the direction of Asia Minor; and the
-political activities of Germany may centre on that area for precisely
-the reasons which result from the distinction between policing and
-conquest which I have drawn. German industry is coming to have a
-dominating situation in the Near East, and as those interests--her
-markets and investments--increase, the necessity for better order in,
-and the better organisation of, such territories, increases in
-corresponding degree. Germany may need to police Asia Minor.' (_The
-Great Illusion_, pp. 131-2-3.)
-
-[117] 'If a great country benefits every time it annexes a province, and
-her people are the richer for the widened territory, the small nations
-ought to be immeasurably poorer than the great; instead of which, by
-every test which you like to apply--public credit, amounts in savings
-banks, standard of living, social progress, general well-being--citizens
-of small States are, other things being equal, as well off as, or better
-off than, the citizens of great. The citizens of countries like Holland,
-Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, are, by every possible test, just as
-well off as the citizens of countries like Germany, Austria, or Russia.
-These are the facts which are so much more potent than any theory. If it
-were true that a country benefited by the acquisition of territory, and
-widened territory meant general well-being, why do the facts so
-eternally deny it? There is something wrong with the theory.' (_The
-Great Illusion_, p. 44).
-
-[118] See Chapters of _The Great Illusion_, _The State as a Person_, and
-_A False Analogy and its Consequences_.
-
-[119] In the synopsis of the book the point is put thus: 'If credit and
-commercial contract are tampered with an attempt at confiscation, the
-credit-dependent wealth is undermined, and its collapse involves that of
-the conqueror; so that if conquest is not to be self-injurious it must
-respect the enemy's property, in which case it becomes economically
-futile.'
-
-[120] 'We need markets. What is a market? "A place where things are
-sold." That is only half the truth. It is a place where things are
-bought and sold, and one operation is impossible without the other, and
-the notion that one nation can sell for ever and never buy is simply the
-theory of perpetual motion applied to economics; and international trade
-can no more be based upon perpetual motion than can engineering. As
-between economically highly-organised nations a customer must also be a
-competitor, a fact which bayonets cannot alter. To the extent to which
-they destroy him as a competitor, they destroy him, speaking generally
-and largely, as a customer.... This is the paradox, the futility of
-conquest--the great illusion which the history of our own empire so well
-illustrates. We "own" our empire by allowing its component parts to
-develop themselves in their own way, and in view of their own ends, and
-all the empires which have pursued any other policy have only ended by
-impoverishing their own populations and falling to pieces.' (p. 75).
-
-[121] See Part I, Chapter II.
-
-[122] _Government and the War_, pp. 52-59.
-
-[123] _The Political Theory of Mr Norman Angell_, by Professor A. D.
-Lindsay, _The Political Quarterly_, December 1914.
-
-[124] In order that the reader may grasp more clearly Mr Lindsay's
-point, here are some longer passages in which he elaborates it:--
-
-'If all nations really recognised the truth of Mr Angell's arguments,
-that they all had common interests which war destroyed, and that
-therefore war was an evil for victors as well as for vanquished, the
-European situation would be less dangerous, but were every one in the
-world as wisely concerned with their own interests as Mr Angell would
-have men to be, if they were nevertheless bound by no political ties,
-the situation would be infinitely more dangerous than it is. For
-unchecked competition, as Hobbes showed long ago, leads straight to war
-however rational men are. The only escape from its dangers is by
-submitting it to some political control. And for that reason the growth
-of economic relations at the expense of political, which Mr Angell
-heralds with such enthusiasm, is the greatest peril of modern times.
-
-'If men are to avoid the danger that, in competing with one another in
-the small but immediate matters where their interests diverge, they may
-overreach themselves and bring about their mutual ruin, two things are
-essential, one moral or emotional, the other practical. It is not enough
-that men should recognise that what they do affects other men, and vice
-versa. They must care for how their actions affect other men, not only
-for how they may react on themselves. They must, that is, love their
-neighbours. They must further agree with one another in caring for
-certain ways of action quite irrespective of how such ways of action
-affect their personal interests. They must, that is, be not only
-economic but moral men. Secondly, recognising that the range of their
-personal sympathies with other men is more restricted than their
-interdependence, and that in the excitement of competition all else is
-apt to be neglected, they must depute certain persons to stand out of
-the competitive struggle and look after just those vital common
-interests and greater issues which the contending parties are apt to
-neglect. These men will represent the common interests of all, their
-common ideals and their mutual sympathies; they will give to men's
-concern for these common ends a focus which will enable them to resist
-the pull of divergent interests and round their actions will gather the
-authority which these common ends inspire....
-
-' ... Such propositions are of course elementary. It is, however,
-important to observe that economic relations are in this most
-distinguished from political relations, that men can enter into economic
-relations without having any real purpose in common. For the money which
-they gain by their co-operation may represent power to carry out the
-most diverse and conflicting purposes....
-
-' ... Politics implies mutual confidence and respect and a certain
-measure of agreement in ideals. The consequence is that co-operation for
-economic is infinitely easier than for political purposes and spreads
-much more rapidly. Hence it easily overruns any political boundaries,
-and by doing so has produced the modern situation which Mr Angell has
-described.'
-
-[125] I have in mind, of course, the writings of Cole, Laski, Figgis,
-and Webb. In _A Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth of Great
-Britain_, Mr Webb writes:--
-
-'Whilst metaphysical philosophers had been debating what was the nature
-of the State--by which they always meant the sovereign Political
-State--the sovereignty, and even the moral authority of the State
-itself, in the sense of the political government, were being silently
-and almost unwittingly undermined by the growth of new forms of
-Democracy.' (p. xv.)
-
-In _Social Theory_, Mr Cole, speaking of the necessary co-ordination of
-the new forms of association, writes:--
-
-'To entrust the State with the function of co-ordination would be to
-entrust it in many cases with the task of arbitrating between itself and
-some other functional association, say a church or a trade union.' There
-must be a co-ordinating body, but it 'must be not any single
-association, but a combination of associations, a federal body in which
-some or all of the various functional associations are linked together.'
-(pp. 101 and 134.) A reviewer summarises Mr Cole as saying: 'I do not
-want any single supreme authority. It is the sovereignty of the State
-that I object to, as fatal to liberty. For single sovereignty I
-substitute a federal union of functions, and I see the guarantee of
-personal freedom in the severalty which prevents any one of them from
-undue encroachments.'
-
-[126] The British Treasury has issued statements showing that the French
-people at the end of last year were paying L2. 7s., and the British
-people L15. 3s. per head in direct taxation. The French tax is
-calculated at 3.5. per cent. on large incomes, whereas similar incomes
-in Great Britain would pay at least 25 per cent. This does not mean that
-the burden of taxes on the poor in France is small. Both the working and
-middle classes have been very hard hit by indirect taxes and by the rise
-in prices, which is greater in France than in England.
-
-The point is that in France the taxation is mainly indirect, this
-falling most heavily upon the poor; while in England it is much more
-largely direct.
-
-The French consumers are much more heavily taxed than the British, but
-the protective taxes of France bring in comparatively little revenue,
-while they raise the price of living and force the French Government and
-the French local authorities to spend larger and larger amounts on
-salaries and wages.
-
-The Budget for the year 1920 is made the occasion for an illuminating
-review of France's financial position by the reporter of the Finance
-Commission, M. Paul Doumar.
-
-The expenditure due to the War until the present date amounts roughly to
-233,000 million francs (equivalent, at the normal rate of exchange, to
-L9,320,000,000) whereof the sum of 43,000 million francs has been met
-out of revenue, leaving a deficit of 190 billions.
-
-This huge sum has been borrowed in various ways--26 billions from the
-Bank of France, 35 billions from abroad, 46 billions in Treasury notes,
-and 72 billions in regular loans. The total public debt on July 1 is put
-at 233,729 millions, reckoning foreign loans on the basis of exchange at
-par.
-
-M. Doumer declares that so long as this debt weighs on the State, the
-financial situation must remain precarious and its credit mediocre.
-
-[127] January, 1921.
-
-[128] An authorised interview published by the daily papers of January
-28th, 1921.
-
-M. Briand, the French Premier, in explaining what he and Mr Lloyd George
-arranged at Paris to the Chamber and Senate on February 3rd, remarked:--
-
-'We must not lose sight of the fact that in order to pay us Germany must
-every year create wealth abroad for herself by developing her exports
-and reducing her imports to strictly necessary things. She can only do
-that to the detriment of the commerce and industry of the Allies. That
-is a strange and regrettable consequence of facts. The placing of an
-annuity on her exports, payable in foreign values, will, however,
-correct as much as possible this paradoxical situation.'
-
-[129] Version appearing in the _Times_ of January 28th, 1921.
-
-[130] _The Manchester Guardian_, Jan 31st, 1921.
-
-[131] Mr John Foster Dulles, who was a member of the American delegation
-at the Peace Conference, has, in an article in _The New Republic_ for
-March 30th, 1921, outlined the facts concerning the problem of payment
-more completely than I have yet seen it done. The facts he reveals
-constitute a complete and overwhelming vindication of the case as stated
-in the first edition of _The Great Illusion_.
-
-[132] As the Lorraine ores are of a kind that demand much less than
-their own weight of coal for smelting, it is more economic to bring the
-coal to the ore than vice versa. It was for political and military
-reasons that the German State encouraged the placing of some of the
-great furnaces on the right instead of the left bank of the Rhine.
-
-[133] It is worth while to recall here a passage from _The Economic
-Consequences of the Peace_, by Mr J. M. Keynes, quoted in Chapter I. of
-this book.
-
-[134] There is one aspect of the possible success of France which is
-certainly worth consideration. France has now in her possession the
-greatest iron ore fields in Europe. Assume that she is so far successful
-in her policy of military coercion that she succeeds in securing vast
-quantities of coal and coke for nothing. French industry then secures a
-very marked advantage--and an artificial and 'uneconomic' one--over
-British industry, in the conversion of raw materials into finished
-products. The present export by France of coal which she gets for
-nothing to Dutch and other markets heretofore supplied by Britain might
-be followed by the 'dumping' of steel and iron products on terms which
-British industry could not meet. This, of course, is on the hypothesis
-of success in obtaining 'coal for nothing,' which the present writer
-regards as extremely unlikely for the reasons here given. But it should
-be noted that the failure of French effort in this matter will be from
-causes just as disastrous for British prosperity as French success would
-be.
-
-[135] See Part I, Chapter I.
-
-[136] _English Review_, January 1913.
-
-Lord Roberts, in his 'Message to the Nation,' declared that Germany's
-refusal to accept the world's _status quo_ was 'as statesmanlike as it
-is unanswerable.' He said further:--
-
-'How was this Empire of Britain founded? War founded this Empire--war
-and conquest! When we, therefore, masters by war of one-third of the
-habitable globe, when _we_ propose to Germany to disarm, to curtail her
-navy or diminish her army, Germany naturally refuses; and pointing, not
-without justice, to the road by which England, sword in hand, has
-climbed to her unmatched eminence, declares openly, or in the veiled
-language of diplomacy, that by the same path, if by no other, Germany is
-determined also to ascend! Who amongst us, knowing the past of this
-nation, and the past of all nations and cities that have ever added the
-lustre of their name to human annals, can accuse Germany or regard the
-utterance of one of her greatest a year and a half ago, (or of General
-Bernhardi three months ago) with any feelings except those of respect?'
-(pp. 8-9.)
-
-[137] Lord Loreburn says: 'The whole train of causes which brought about
-the tragedy of August 1914 would have been dissolved by a Russian
-revolution.... We could have come to terms with Germany as regards Asia
-Minor: Nor could the Alsace-Lorraine difficulty have produced trouble.
-No one will pretend that France would have been aggressive when deprived
-of Russian support considering that she was devoted to peace even when
-she had that support. Had the Russian revolution come, war would not
-have come.' (_How the War Came_, p. 278.)
-
-[138] Mr Walter Lippmann did tackle the problem in much the way I have
-in mind in _The Stakes of Diplomacy_. That book is critical of my own
-point of view. But if books like that had been directed at _The Great
-Illusion_, we might have made headway. As it is, of course, Mr
-Lippmann's book has been useful in suggesting most that is good in the
-mandate system of the League of Nations.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
-
-wth Great Britain=> with Great Britain {pg xvii}
-
-his colleages=> his colleagues {pg 38}
-
-retore devastated districts=> restore devastated districts {pg 39}
-
-aquiescence=> acquiescence {pg 45}
-
-indispensible=> indispensable {pg 46}
-
-the Lorrarine work=> the Lorraine work {pg 86}
-
-rcently passed=> recently passed {pg 135}
-
-Allied aerodomes on the Rhine=> Allied aerodromes on the Rhine {pg 163}
-
-the sublest=> the subtlest {pg 239}
-
-the enemy's propetry=> the enemy's property {pg 294}
-
-a monoply=> a monopoly {pg 299}
-
-goverments=> governments {pg 299}
-
-econmic=> economic {pg 303}
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
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diff --git a/43598.zip b/43598.zip
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Fruits of Victory, by Norman Angell
-
-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/license
-
-
-Title: The Fruits of Victory
-       A Sequel to The Great Illusion
-
-Author: Norman Angell
-
-Release Date: August 29, 2013 [EBook #43598]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FRUITS OF VICTORY ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by David Edwards, Chuck Greif and the Online
-Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
-file was produced from images generously made available
-by The Internet Archive)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-                         THE FRUITS OF VICTORY
-
-
-
-
-                    "THE GREAT ILLUSION" CONTROVERSY
-
-
-     'Mr. Angell's pamphlet was a work as unimposing in form as it was
-     daring in expression. For a time nothing was heard of it in public,
-     but many of us will remember the curious way in which ... "Norman
-     Angellism" suddenly became one of the principal topics of
-     discussion amongst politicians and journalists all over Europe.
-     Naturally at first it was the apparently extravagant and
-     paradoxical elements that were fastened upon most--that the whole
-     theory of the commercial basis of war was wrong, that no modern war
-     could make a profit for the victors, and that--most astonishing
-     thing of all--a successful war might leave the conquerors who
-     received the indemnity relatively worse off than the conquered who
-     raid it. People who had been brought up in the acceptance of the
-     idea that a war between nations was analogous to the struggle of
-     two errand boys for an apple, and that victory inevitably meant
-     economic gain, were amazed into curiosity. Men who had never
-     examined a Pacifist argument before read Mr. Angell's book. Perhaps
-     they thought that his doctrines sounded so extraordinarily like
-     nonsense that there really must be some sense in them or nobody
-     would have dared to propound them.'--_The New Stateman_, October
-     11, 1913.
-
-     'The fundamental proposition of the book is a mistake.... And the
-     proposition that the extension of national territory--that is the
-     bringing of a large amount of property under a single
-     administration--is not to the financial advantage of a nation
-     appears to me as illusory as to maintain that business on a small
-     capital is as profitable as on a large.... The armaments of
-     European States now are not so much for protection against conquest
-     as to secure to themselves the utmost possible share of the
-     unexploited or imperfectly exploited regions of the world.'--The
-     late ADMIRAL MAHAN.
-
-     'I have long ago described the policy of _The Great Illusion_ ...
-     not only as a childish absurdity but a mischievous and immoral
-     sophism.'--MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.
-
-     'Among the mass of printed books there are a few that may be
-     counted as acts, not books. _The Control Social_ was indisputably
-     one; and I venture to suggest to you that _The Great Illusion_ is
-     another. The thesis of Galileo was not more diametrically opposed
-     to current ideas than those of Norman Angell. Yet it had in the end
-     a certain measure of success.'--VISCOUNT ESHER.
-
-     'When all criticisms are spent, it remains to express a debt of
-     gratitude to Mr. Angell. He belongs to the cause of
-     internationalism--the greatest of all the causes to which a man can
-     set his hands in these days. The cause will not triumph by
-     economics. But it cannot reject any ally. And if the economic
-     appeal is not final, it has its weight. "We shall perish of
-     hunger," it has been said, "in order to have success in murder." To
-     those who have ears for that saying, it cannot be said too
-     often.'--_Political Thought in England, from Herbert Spencer to the
-     Present Day_, by ERNEST BARKER.
-
-     'A wealth of closely reasoned argument which makes the book one of
-     the most damaging indictments that have yet appeared of the
-     principles governing the relation of civilized nations to one
-     another.'--_The Quarterly Review._
-
-     'Ranks its author with Cobden amongst the greatest of our
-     pamphleteers, perhaps the greatest since Swift.'--_The Nation._
-
-     'No book has attracted wider attention or has done more to
-     stimulate thought in the present century than _The Great
-     Illusion_.'--_The Daily Mail._
-
-     'One of the most brilliant contributions to the literature of
-     international relations which has appeared for a very long
-     time.'--_Journal of the Institute of Bankers._
-
-     'After five and a half years in the wilderness, Mr. Norman Angell
-     has come back.... His book provoked one of the great controversies
-     of this generation.... To-day, Mr. Angell, whether he likes it or
-     not, is a prophet whose prophesies have come true.... It is hardly
-     possible to open a current newspaper without the eye lighting on
-     some fresh vindication of the once despised and rejected doctrine
-     of Norman Angellism.'--_The Daily News_, February 25, 1920.
-
-
-
-
-                                  THE
-                           FRUITS OF VICTORY
-
-                              A SEQUEL TO
-                          "THE GREAT ILLUSION"
-
-                                   BY
-                             NORMAN ANGELL
-
-                        [Illustration: colophon]
-
-                                NEW YORK
-
-                            THE CENTURY CO.
-
-                                  1921
-
-
-
-
-   _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
-
-      PATRIOTISM UNDER THREE FLAGS
-      THE GREAT ILLUSION
-      THE FOUNDATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL POLITY
-      WHY FREEDOM MATTERS
-      WAR AND THE WORKER
-      AMERICA AND THE WORLD STATE (AMERICA)
-      PRUSSIANISM AND ITS DESTRUCTION
-      THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY (AMERICA)
-      WAR AIMS
-      DANGERS OF HALF-PREPAREDNESS (AMERICA)
-      POLITICAL CONDITIONS OF ALLIED SUCCESS (AMERICA)
-      THE BRITISH REVOLUTION AND THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY (AMERICA)
-      THE PEACE TREATY AND THE ECONOMIC CHAOS
-
-
-                          Copyright, 1921, by
-                            THE CENTURY CO.
-
-                       _Printed in the U. S. A._
-
-
-
-
-                                To H. S.
-
-
-
-
-INTRODUCTION TO THE AMERICAN EDITION
-
-
-The case which is argued in these pages includes the examination of
-certain concrete matters which very obviously and directly touch
-important American interests--American foreign trade and investments,
-the exchanges, immigration, armaments, taxation, industrial unrest and
-the effect of these on social and political organisation. Yet the
-greatest American interest here discussed is not any one of those
-particular issues, or even the sum of them, but certain underlying
-forces which more than anything else, perhaps, influence all of them.
-The American reader will have missed the main bearing of the argument
-elaborated in these pages unless that point can be made clear.
-
-Let us take a few of the concrete issues just mentioned. The opening
-chapter deals with the motives which may push Great Britain still to
-struggle for the retention of predominant power at sea. The force of
-those motives is obviously destined to be an important factor in
-American politics, in determining, for instance, the amount of American
-taxation. It bears upon the decisions which American voters and American
-statesmen will be called upon to make in American elections within the
-next few years. Or take another aspect of the same question: the
-peculiar position of Great Britain in the matter of her dependence upon
-foreign food. This is shown to be typical of a condition common to very
-much of the population of Europe, and brings us to the problem of the
-pressure of population in the older civilisations upon the means of
-subsistence. That "biological pressure" is certain, in some
-circumstances, to raise for America questions of immigration, of
-relations generally with foreign countries, of defence, which American
-statesmanship will have to take into account in the form of definite
-legislation that will go on to American Statute books. Or, take the
-general problem of the economic reconstruction of Europe, with which the
-book is so largely occupied. That happens to bear, not merely on the
-expansion of American trade, the creation of new markets, that is, and
-on the recovery of American debts, but upon the preservation of markets
-for cotton, wheat, meat and other products, to which large American
-communities have in the past looked, and do still look, for their
-prosperity and even for their solvency. Again, dealing with the manner
-in which the War has affected the economic organisation of the European
-society, the writer has been led to describe the process by which
-preparation for modern war has come to mean, to an increasing degree,
-control by the government of the national resources as a whole, thus
-setting up strong tendencies towards a form of State Socialism. To
-America, herself facing a more far-reaching organisation of the national
-resources for military purposes than she has known in the past, the
-analysis of such a process is certainly of very direct concern. Not less
-so is the story of the relation of revolutionary forces in the
-industrial struggle--"Bolshevism"--to the tendencies so initiated or
-stimulated.
-
-One could go on expanding this theme indefinitely, and write a whole
-book about America's concern in these things. But surely in these days
-it would be a book of platitudes, elaborately pointing out the obvious.
-Yet an American critic of these pages in their European form warns me
-that I must be careful to show their interest for American readers.
-
-Their main interest for the American is not in the kind of relationship
-just indicated, very considerable and immediate as that happens to be.
-Their chief interest is in this: they attempt an analysis of the
-ultimate forces of policies in Western society; of the interrelation of
-fundamental economic needs and of predominant political ideas--public
-opinion, with its constituent elements of "human nature," social--or
-anti-social--instinct, the tradition of Patriotism and Nationalism, the
-mechanism of the modern Press. It is suggested in these pages that some
-of the main factors of political action, the dominant motives of
-political conduct, are still grossly neglected by "practical statesmen";
-and that the statesmen still treat as remote and irrelevant certain
-moral forces which recent events have shown to have very great and
-immediate practical importance. (A number of cases are discussed in
-which practical and realist European statesmen have seen their plans
-touching the stability of alliances, the creation of international
-credit, the issuing of international loans, indemnities, a "new world"
-generally, all this frustrated because in drawing them up they ignored
-the invisible but final factor of public feeling and temper, which the
-whole time they were modifying or creating, thus unconsciously
-undermining the edifices they were so painfully creating. Time and again
-in the last few years practical men of affairs in Europe have found
-themselves the helpless victims of a state of feeling or opinion which
-they so little understood that they had often themselves unknowingly
-created it.)
-
-In such hard realities as the exaction of an indemnity, we see
-governments forced to policies which can only make their task more
-difficult, but which they are compelled to adopt in order to placate
-electoral opinion, or to repel an opposition which would exploit some
-prevailing prejudice or emotion.
-
-To understand the nature of forces which must determine America's main
-domestic and foreign policies--as they have determined those of Western
-Society in Europe during the last generation--is surely an "American
-interest"; though indeed, in neglecting the significance of those
-"hidden currents flowing continually beneath the surface of political
-history," American students of politics would be following much
-European precedent. Although public opinion and feeling are the raw
-material with which statesmen deal, it is still considered irrelevant
-and academic to study the constituent elements of that raw material.
-
-Americans are sufficiently detached from Europe to see that in the way
-of a better unification of that Continent for the purposes of its own
-economic and moral restoration stand disruptive forces of
-"Balkanisation," a development of the spirit of Nationalism which the
-statesmen for years have encouraged and exploited. The American of
-to-day speaks of the Balkanisation of Europe just as the Englishman of
-two or three years ago spoke of the Balkanisation of the Continent, of
-the wrangles of Poles, Czecho-Slovaks, Hungarians, Rumanians, Italians,
-Jugo-Slavs. And the attitude of both Englishman and American are alike
-in this: to the Englishman, watching the squabbles of all the little new
-States and the breaking out of all the little new wars, there seemed at
-work in that spectacle forces so suicidal that they could never in any
-degree touch his own political problems; the American to-day, watching
-British policy in Ireland or French policy towards Germany, feels that
-in such conflict are moral forces that could never produce similar
-paralysis in American policy. "Why," asks the confident American, "does
-England bring such unnecessary trouble upon herself by her military
-conduct in Ireland? Why does France keep three-fourths of a Continent
-still in ferment, making reparations more and more remote"? Americans
-have a very strong feeling that they could not be guilty of the Irish
-mess, or of prolonging the confusion which threatens to bring Europe's
-civilisation to utter collapse. How comes it that the English people, so
-genuinely and so sincerely horrified at the thought of what a Bissing
-could do in Belgium, unable to understand how the German people could
-tolerate a government guilty of such things, somehow find that their own
-British Government is doing very similar things in Cork and Balbriggan;
-and finding it, simply acquiesce? To the American the indefensibility of
-British conduct is plain. "America could never be guilty of it." To the
-Englishman just now, the indefensibility of French conduct is plain. The
-policy which France is following is seen to be suicidal from the point
-of view of French interests. The Englishman is sure that "English
-political sense" would never tolerate it in an English government.
-
-The situation suggests this question: would Americans deny that England
-in the past has shown very great political genius, or that the French
-people are alert, open-minded, "realist," intelligent? Recalling what
-England has done in the way of the establishment of great free
-communities, the flexibility and "practicalness" of her imperial policy,
-what France has contributed to democracy and European organisation, can
-we explain the present difficulties of Europe by the absence, on the
-part of Englishmen or Frenchmen, or other Europeans, of a political
-intelligence granted only so far in the world's history to Americans? In
-other words, do Americans seriously argue that the moral forces which
-have wrought such havoc in the foreign policy of European States could
-never threaten the foreign policy of America? Does the American plead
-that the circumstances which warp an Englishman's or Frenchman's
-judgment could never warp an American's? Or that he could never find
-himself in similar circumstances? As a matter of fact, of course, that
-is precisely what the American--like the Englishman or Frenchman or
-Italian in an analogous case--does plead. To have suggested five years
-ago to an Englishman that his own generals in India or Ireland would
-copy Bissing, would have been deemed too preposterous even for anger:
-but then equally, to Americans, supporting in their millions in 1916 the
-League to Enforce Peace, would the idea have seemed preposterous that a
-few years later America, having the power to take the lead in a Peace
-League, would refuse to do so, and would herself be demanding, as the
-result of participation in a war to end war, greater armament than
-ever--as protection against Great Britain.
-
-I suggest that if an English government can be led to sanction and
-defend in Ireland the identical things which shocked the world when
-committed in Belgium by Germans, if France to-day threatens Europe with
-a military hegemony not less mischievous than that which America
-determined to destroy, the causes of those things must be sought, not in
-the special wickedness of this or that nation, but in forces which may
-operate among any people.
-
-One peculiarity of the prevailing political mind stands out. It is
-evident that a sensible, humane and intelligent people, even with
-historical political sense, can quite often fail to realise how one step
-of policy, taken willingly, must lead to the taking of other steps which
-they detest. If Mr. Lloyd George is supporting France, if the French
-Government is proclaiming policies which it knows to be disastrous, but
-which any French Government must offer to its people or perish, it is
-because somewhere in the past there have been set in motion forces the
-outcome of which was not realised. And if the outcome was not realised,
-although, looking back, or looking at the situation from the distance of
-America from Europe, the inevitability of the result seems plain enough,
-I suggest that it is because judgment becomes warped as the result of
-certain feelings or predominant ideas; and that it will be impossible
-wisely to guide political conduct without some understanding of the
-nature of those feelings and ideas, and unless we realise with some
-humility and honesty that all nations alike are subject to these
-weaknesses.
-
-We all of us clamantly and absolutely deny this plain fact when it is
-suggested that it also applies to our own people. What would have
-happened to the publicist who, during the War, should have urged:
-"Complete and overwhelming victory will be bad, because we shall misuse
-it?" Yet all the victories of history would have been ground for such a
-warning. Universal experience was not merely flouted by the
-uninstructed. One of the curiosities of war literature is the fashion in
-which the most brilliant minds, not alone in politics, but in literature
-and social science, simply disregard this obvious truth. We each knew
-"our" people--British, French, Italian, American--to be good people:
-kindly, idealistic, just. Give them the power to do the Right--to do
-justice, to respect the rights of others, to keep the peace--and it will
-be done. That is why we wanted "unconditional surrender" of the Germans,
-and indignantly rejected a negotiated peace. It was admitted, of course,
-that injustice at the settlement would fail to give us the world we
-fought for. It was preposterous to suppose that we, the defenders of
-freedom and democracy, arbitration, self-determination,--America,
-Britain, France, Japan, Russia, Italy, Rumania--should not do exact and
-complete justice. So convinced, indeed, were we of this that we may
-search in vain the works of all the Allied writers to whom any attention
-was paid, for any warning whatsoever of the one danger which, in fact,
-wrecked the settlement, threw the world back into its oldest
-difficulties, left it fundamentally just where it was, reduced the War
-to futility. The one condition of justice--that the aggrieved party
-should not be in the position of imposing his unrestrained will--, the
-one truth which, for the world's welfare, it was most important to
-proclaim, was the one which it was black heresy and blasphemy to utter,
-and which, to do them justice, the moral and intellectual guides of the
-nations never did utter.
-
-It is precisely the truth which Americans to-day are refusing to face.
-We all admit that, "human nature being what it is," preponderance of
-power, irresponsible power, is something which no nation (but our own)
-can be trusted to use wisely or with justice. The backbone of American
-policy shall therefore be an effort to retain preponderance of power. If
-this be secured, little else matters. True, the American advocate of
-isolation to-day says: "We are not concerned with Europe. We ask only
-to be let alone. Our preponderance of power, naval or other, threatens
-no-one. It is purely defensive." Yet the truth is that the demand for
-preponderance of armaments itself involves a denial of right. Let us see
-why.
-
-No one denies that the desire to possess a definitely preponderant navy
-is related, at least in some degree, to such things as, shall we say,
-the dispute over the Panama tolls. A growing number feel and claim that
-that is a purely American dispute. To subject it to arbitral decision,
-in which necessarily Europeans would have a preponderance, would be to
-give away the American case beforehand. With unquestioned naval
-preponderance over any probable combination of rivals, America is in a
-position to enforce compliance with what she believes to be her just
-rights. At this moment a preponderant navy is being urged on precisely
-those grounds. In other words, the demand is that in a dispute to which
-she is a party she shall be judge, and able to impose her own judgement.
-That is to say, she demands from others the acceptance of a position
-which she would not herself accept. There is nothing at all unusual in
-the demand. It is the feeling which colours the whole attitude of
-combative nationalism. But it none the less means that "adequate
-defence" on this basis inevitably implies a moral aggression--a demand
-upon others which, if made by others upon ourselves, we should resist to
-the death.
-
-It is not here merely or mainly the question of a right: American
-foreign policy has before it much the same alternatives with reference
-to the world as a whole, as were presented to Great Britain with
-reference to the Continent in the generation which preceded the War. Her
-"splendid isolation" was defended on grounds which very closely resemble
-those now put forward by America as the basis of the same policy.
-Isolation meant, of course, preponderance of power, and when she
-declared her intention to use that power only on behalf of even-handed
-justice, she not only meant it, but carried out the intention, at least
-to an extent that no other nation has done. She accorded a degree of
-equality in economic treatment which is without parallel. One thing only
-led her to depart from justice: that was the need of maintaining the
-supremacy. For this she allowed herself to become involved in certain
-exceedingly entangling Alliances. Indeed, Great Britain found that at no
-period of her history were her domestic politics so much dominated by
-the foreign situation as when she was proclaiming to the world her
-splendid isolation from foreign entanglements. It is as certain, of
-course, that American "isolation" would mean that the taxation of Gopher
-Prairie would be settled in Tokio; and that tens of thousands of
-American youth would be sentenced to death by unknown elderly gentlemen
-in a European Cabinet meeting. If the American retorts that his country
-is in a fundamentally different position, because Great Britain
-possesses an Empire and America does not, that only proves how very much
-current ideas in politics fail to take cognizance of the facts. The
-United States to-day has in the problem of the Philippines, their
-protection and their trade, and the bearing of those things upon
-Japanese policy; in Hayti and the West Indies, and their bearing upon
-America's subject nationality problem of the negro; in Mexico, which is
-likely to provide America with its Irish problem; in the Panama Canal
-tolls question and its relation to the development of a mercantile
-marine and naval competition with Great Britain, in these things alone,
-to mention no others, subjects of conflict, involving defence of
-American interests, out of which will arise entanglements not differing
-greatly in kind from the foreign questions which dominated British
-domestic policy during the period of British isolation.
-
-Now, what America will do about these things will not depend upon highly
-rationalised decisions, reached by a hundred million independent
-thinkers investigating the facts concerning the Panama Treaty, the
-respective merits of alternative alliance combinations, or the real
-nature of negro grievances. American policy will be determined by the
-same character of force as has determined British policy in Ireland or
-India, in Morocco or Egypt, French policy in Germany or in Poland, or
-Italian policy in the Adriatic. The "way of thinking" which is applied
-to the decisions of the American democracy has behind it the same kind
-of moral and intellectual force that we find in the society of Western
-Europe as a whole. Behind the American public mind lie practically the
-same economic system based on private property, the same kind of
-political democracy, the same character of scholastic training, the same
-conceptions of nationalism, roughly the same social and moral values. If
-we find certain sovereign ideas determining the course of British or
-French or Italian policy, giving us certain results, we may be sure that
-the same ideas will, in the case of America, give us very much the same
-results.
-
-When Britain spoke of "splendid isolation," she meant what America means
-by the term to-day, namely, a position by virtue of which, when it came
-to a conflict of policy between herself and others, she should possess
-preponderant power, so that she could impose her own view of her own
-rights, be judge and executioner in her own case. To have suggested to
-an Englishman twenty years ago that the real danger to the security of
-his country lay in the attitude of mind dominant among Englishmen
-themselves, that the fundamental defect of English policy was that it
-asked of others something which Englishmen would never accord if asked
-by others of them, and that such a policy was particularly inimical in
-the long run to Great Britain, in that her population lived by processes
-which dominant power could not, in the last resort, exact--such a line
-of argument would have been, and indeed was, regarded as too remote from
-practical affairs to be worth the attention of practical politicians. A
-discussion of the Japanese Alliance, the relations with Russia, the size
-of foreign fleets, the Bagdad railway, would have been regarded as
-entirely practical and relevant. These things were the "facts" of
-politics. It was not regarded as relevant to the practical issues to
-examine the role of certain general ideas and traditions which had grown
-up in England in determining the form of British policy. The growth of a
-crude philosophy of militarism, based on a social pseudo-Darwinism, the
-popularity of Kipling and Roberts, the jingoism of the Northcliffe
-Press--these things might be regarded as items in the study of social
-psychology; they were not regarded as matters for the practical
-statesman. "What would you have us do about them, anyway?"
-
-It has happened to the present writer, in addressing American students,
-to lay stress upon the r�le of certain dominant ideas in determining
-policy (upon the idea, say, of the State as a person, upon the
-conception of States as necessarily rival entities), and afterwards to
-get questions in this wise: "Your lecture seems to imply an
-internationalist policy. What is your plan? What ought we to do? Should
-we make a naval alliance, with Great Britain, or form a new League of
-Nations, or denounce Article X, or ...?" I have replied: "The first
-thing to do is to change your ideas and moral values; or to get to know
-them better. That is the most practical and immediate platform, because
-all others depend on it. We all profess great love of peace and justice.
-What will you pay for it, in terms of national sovereignty? What degree
-of sovereignty will you surrender as your contribution to a new order?
-If your real feeling is for domination, then the only effect of writing
-constitutions of the League of Nations will be to render international
-organisation more remote than ever, by showing how utterly incompatible
-it is with prevailing moral values."
-
-But such a reply is usually regarded as hopelessly "unpractical." There
-is no indication of something to be "done"--a platform to be defended or
-a law to be passed. To change fundamental opinions and redirect desires
-is not apparently to "do" anything at all. Yet until that invisible
-thing is done our Covenants and Leagues will be as futile as have been
-the numberless similar plans of the past, "concerning which," as one
-seventeenth century critic wrote, "I know no single imperfection save
-this: That by no possibility would any Prince or people be brought to
-abide by them." It was, I believe, regarded as a triumph of practical
-organisation to have obtained nation-wide support for the 'League to
-Enforce Peace' proposal, "without raising controversial matters at
-all"--leaving untouched, that is, the underlying ideas of patriotism, of
-national right and international obligation, the prevailing moral and
-political values, in fact. The subsequent history of America's relation
-to the world's effort to create a League of Nations is sufficient
-commentary as to whether it is "practical" to devise plans and
-constitutions without reference to a prevailing attitude of mind.
-
-America has before her certain definite problems of foreign
-policy--Japanese immigration into the United States and the Philippines;
-concessions granted to foreigners in Mexico; the question of disorder in
-that country; the relations with Hayti (which will bear on the question
-of America's subject nationality, the negro); the exemption of American
-ships from tolls in the Panama Canal; the exclusion of foreign shipping
-from "coastwise" trade with the Philippines. It would be possible to
-draw up plans of settlement with regard to each item which would be
-equitable. But the development of foreign policy (which, more than any
-other department of politics, will fix the quality of American society
-in the future) will not depend upon the more or less equitable
-settlement of those specific questions. The specific differences between
-England and Germany before the War were less serious than those between
-England and America--and were nearly all settled when war broke out.
-Whether an issue like Japanese immigration or the Panama tolls leads to
-war will not depend upon its intrinsic importance, or whether Britain or
-Japan or America make acceptable proposals on the subject. Mr
-ex-Secretary Daniels has just told us that the assertion of the right
-to establish a cable station on the Island of Yap is good ground for
-risking war. The specific issues about which nations fight are so little
-the real cause of the fight that they are generally completely forgotten
-when it comes to making the peace. The future of submarine warfare was
-not mentioned at Versailles. Given a certain state of mind, a difference
-about cables on the Island of Yap is quite sufficient to make war
-inevitable. We should probably regard it as a matter of national honour,
-concerning which there must be no argument. Another mood, and it would
-be impossible to get the faintest ripple of interest in the subject.
-
-It was not British passion for Serbian nationality which brought Britain
-to the side of Russia in 1914. It was the fear of German power and what
-might be done with it, a fear wrought to frenzy pitch by a long
-indoctrination concerning German wickedness and aggression. Passion for
-the subjugation of Germany persisted long after there was any ground of
-fear of what German power might accomplish. If America fights Japan, it
-will not be over cables on Yap; it will be from fear of Japanese power,
-the previous stimulation of latent hatreds for the strange and foreign.
-And if the United States goes to war over Panama Canal tolls, it will
-not be because the millions who will get excited over that question have
-examined the matter, or possess ships or shares in ships that will
-profit by the exemption; it will be because all America has read of
-Irish atrocities which recall school-day histories of British atrocities
-in the American Colonies; because the "person," Britain, has become a
-hateful and hostile person, and must be punished and coerced.
-
-War either with Japan or Britain or both is, of course, quite within the
-region of possibility. It is merely an evasion of the trouble which
-facing reality always involves, to say that war between Britain and
-America is "unthinkable." If any war, as we have known it these last ten
-years, is thinkable, war between nations that have already fought two
-wars is obviously not unthinkable. And those who can recall at all
-vividly the forces which marked the growth of the conflict between
-Britain and Germany will see just those forces beginning to colour the
-relations of Britain and America. Among those forces none is more
-notable than this: a disturbing tendency to stop short at the ultimate
-questions, a failure to face the basic causes of divergence. Among
-people of good will there is a tendency to say: "Don't let's talk about
-it. Be discreet. Let us assume we are good friends and we shall be. Let
-us exchange visits." In just such a way, even within a few weeks of war,
-did people of good will in England and Germany decide not to talk of
-their differences, to be discreet, to exchange visits. But the men of
-ill will talked--talked of the wrong things--and sowed their deadly
-poison.
-
-These pages suggest why neither side in the Anglo-German conflict came
-down to realities before the War. To have come to fundamentals would
-have revealed the fact to both parties that any real settlement would
-have asked things which neither would grant. Really to have secured
-Germany's future economic security would have meant putting her access
-to the resources of India and Africa upon a basis of Treaty, of
-contract. That was for Britain the end of Empire, as Imperialists
-understood it. To have secured in exchange the end of "marching and
-drilling" would have been the end of military glory for Prussia. For
-both it would have meant the surrender of certain dominations, a
-recasting of patriotic ideals, a revolution of ideas.
-
-Whether Britain and America are to fight may very well depend upon this:
-whether the blinder and more unconscious motives rooted in traditional
-patriotisms, and the impulse to the assertion of power, will work their
-evil before the development of ideas has brought home to us a clearer
-vision of the abyss into which we fall; before we have modified, in
-other words, our tradition of patriotism, our political moralities, our
-standard of values. Without that more fundamental change no scheme of
-settlement of specific differences, no platforms, Covenants,
-Constitution can avail, or have any chance of acceptance or success.
-
-As a contribution to that change of ideas and of values these pages are
-offered.
-
-
-SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT
-
-The central conclusion suggested by the following analysis of the events
-of the past few years is that, underlying the disruptive processes so
-evidently at work--especially in the international field--is the
-deep-rooted instinct to the assertion of domination, preponderant power.
-This impulse sanctioned and strengthened by prevailing traditions of
-'mystic' patriotism, has been unguided and unchecked by any adequate
-realisation either of its anti-social quality, the destructiveness
-inseparable from its operation, or its ineffectiveness to ends
-indispensable to civilisation.
-
-The psychological roots of the impulse are so deep that we shall
-continue to yield to it until we realise more fully its danger and
-inadequacy to certain vital ends like sustenance for our people, and
-come to see that if civilisation is to be carried on we must turn to
-other motives. We may then develop a new political tradition, which will
-'discipline' instinct, as the tradition of toleration disciplined
-religious fanaticism when that passion threatened to shatter European
-society.
-
-Herein lies the importance of demonstrating the economic futility of
-military power. While it may be true that conscious economic motives
-enter very little into the struggle of nations, and are a very small
-part of the passions of patriotism and nationalism, it is by a
-realisation of the economic truth regarding the indispensable condition
-of adequate life, that those passions will be checked, or redirected and
-civilised.
-
-This does not mean that economic considerations should dominate life,
-but rather the contrary--that those considerations will dominate it if
-the economic truth is neglected. A people that starves is a people
-thinking only of material things--food. The way to dispose of economic
-pre-occupations is to solve the economic problem.
-
-The bearing of this argument is that developed by the present writer in
-a previous book, _The Great Illusion_, and the extent to which it has
-been vindicated by events, is shown in the Addendum.
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
-
-CHAPTER                                                             PAGE
-
-  I OUR DAILY BREAD                                                    3
-
- II THE OLD ECONOMY AND THE POST-WAR STATE                            61
-
-III NATIONALITY, ECONOMICS, AND THE ASSERTION OF
-RIGHT                                                                 81
-
- IV MILITARY PREDOMINANCE--AND INSECURITY                            112
-
-  V PATRIOTISM AND POWER IN WAR AND PEACE: THE
-SOCIAL OUTCOME                                                       142
-
- VI THE ALTERNATIVE RISKS OF STATUS AND CONTRACT                     169
-
-VII THE SPIRITUAL ROOTS OF THE SETTLEMENT                            199
-
-    ADDENDUM: SOME NOTES ON 'THE GREAT ILLUSION'
-    AND ITS PRESENT RELEVANCE                                        253
-
-    I. The 'Impossibility of War' Myth. II. 'Economic'
-    and 'Moral' Motives in International Affairs. III. The
-    'Great Illusion' Argument. IV. Arguments now out of
-    date. V. The Argument as an attack on the State.
-    VI. Vindication by Events. VII. Could the War have
-    been prevented?
-
-
-
-
-SYNOPSIS
-
-
-CHAPTER I (pp. 3-60)
-
-OUR DAILY BREAD
-
-An examination of the present conditions in Europe shows that much of
-its dense population (particularly that of these islands) cannot live at
-a standard necessary for civilisation (leisure, social peace, individual
-freedom) except by certain co-operative processes which must be carried
-on largely across frontiers. (The prosperity of Britain depends on the
-production by foreigners of a surplus of food and raw material above
-their own needs.) The present distress is not mainly the result of the
-physical destruction of war (famine or shortage is worst, as in the
-Austrian and German and Russian areas, where there has been no
-destruction). The Continent as a whole has the same soil and natural
-resources and technical knowledge as when it fed its populations. The
-causes of its present failure at self-support are moral: economic
-paralysis following political disintegration, 'Balkanisation'; that, in
-its turn, due to certain passions and prepossessions.
-
-A corresponding phenomenon is revealed within each national society: a
-decline of production due to certain moral disorders, mainly in the
-political field; to 'unrest,' a greater cleavage between groups,
-rendering the indispensable co-operation less effective.
-
-The necessary co-operation, whether as between nations or groups within
-each nation, cannot be compelled by physical coercion, though disruptive
-forces inseparable from the use of coercion can paralyse co-operation.
-Allied preponderance of power over Germany does not suffice to obtain
-indemnities, or even coal in the quantities demanded by the Treaty. The
-output of the workers in Great Britain would not necessarily be improved
-by adding to the army or police force. As interdependence increases, the
-limits of coercion are narrowed. Enemies that are to pay large
-indemnities must be permitted actively to develop their economic life
-and power; they are then so potentially strong that enforcement of the
-demands becomes correspondingly expensive and uncertain. Knowledge and
-organisation acquired by workers for the purposes of their labour can be
-used to resist oppression. Railwaymen or miners driven to work by force
-would still find means of resistance. A proletarian dictatorship cannot
-coerce the production of food by an unwilling peasantry. The processes
-by which wealth is produced have, by increasing complexity, become of a
-kind which can only be maintained if there be present a large measure of
-voluntary acquiescence, which means, in its turn, confidence. The need
-for that is only made the more imperative by the conditions which have
-followed the virtual suspension of the gold standard in all the
-belligerent States of Europe, the collapse of the exchanges and other
-manifestations of instability of the currencies.
-
-European statesmanship, as revealed in the Treaty of Versailles, and in
-the conduct of international affairs since the Armistice, has recognised
-neither the fact of interdependence--the need for the economic unity of
-Europe--nor the futility of attempted coercion. Certain political ideas
-and passions give us an unworkable Europe. What is their nature? How
-have they arisen? How can they be corrected? These questions are part of
-the problem of sustenance; which is the first indispensable of
-civilisation.
-
-
-CHAPTER II (pp. 61-80)
-
-THE OLD ECONOMY AND THE POST-WAR STATE
-
-The trans-national processes which enabled Europe to support itself
-before the War were based mainly on private exchanges prompted by the
-expectation of individual advantage. They were not dependent upon
-political power. (The fifteen millions for whom German soil could not
-provide lived by trade with countries over which Germany had no
-political control, as a similar number of British live by similar
-non-political means.)
-
-The old individualist economy has been largely destroyed by the State
-Socialism introduced for war purposes: the nation, taking over
-individual enterprise, became trader and manufacturer in increasing
-degree. The economic clauses of the Treaty, if enforced, must prolong
-this tendency, rendering a large measure of such Socialism permanent.
-
-The change may be desirable. But if co-operation must in future be less
-as between individuals for private advantage, and much more as between
-_nations_, governments acting in an economic capacity, the political
-emotions of nationalisation will play a much larger role in the economic
-processes of Europe. If to Nationalist hostilities as we have known them
-in the past is to be added the commercial rivalry of nations now
-converted into traders and capitalists, we are likely to have not a less
-but a more quarrelsome world, unless the fact of interdependence is much
-more vividly realised than in the past.
-
-
-CHAPTER III (pp. 81-111)
-
-NATIONALITY, ECONOMICS, AND THE ASSERTION OF RIGHT
-
-
-The change noted in the preceding chapter raises a profound question of
-Right--Have we the right to use our power to deny to others the means of
-life? By our political power we _can_ create a Europe which, while not
-assuring advantage to the victor, deprives the vanquished of means of
-existence. The loss of both ore and coal by the Central Powers might
-well make it impossible for their future populations to find food. What
-are they to do? Starve? To disclaim responsibility is to claim that we
-are entitled to use our power to deny them life.
-
-This 'right' to starve foreigners can only be invoked by invoking the
-conception of nationalism--'Our nation first.' But the policy of placing
-life itself upon a foundation of preponderant force, instead of mutually
-advantageous co-operation, compels statesmen perpetually to betray the
-principle of nationality; not only directly, (as in the case of the
-annexation of territory, economically necessary, but containing peoples
-of alien nationality,) but indirectly; for the resistance which our
-policy (of denying means of subsistence to others) provokes, makes
-preponderance of power the condition of survival. All else must give way
-to that need.
-
-Might cannot be pledged to Right in these conditions. If our power is
-pledged to Allies for the purpose of the Balance (which means, in fact,
-preponderance), it cannot be used against them to enforce respect for
-(say) nationality. To turn against Allies would break the Balance. To
-maintain the Balance of Power we are compelled to disregard the moral
-merits of an Ally's policy (as in the case of the promise to the Czar's
-government not to demand the independence of Poland). The maintenance of
-a Balance (_i.e._ preponderance) is incompatible with the maintenance of
-Right. There is a conflict of obligation.
-
-
-CHAPTER IV (pp. 112-141)
-
-MILITARY PREDOMINANCE--AND INSECURITY
-
-The moral questions raised in the preceding chapter have a direct
-bearing on the effectiveness of military power based on the National
-unit, or a group of National units, such as an Alliance. Military
-preponderance of the smaller Western National units over large and
-potentially powerful groups, like the German or the Russian, must
-necessitate stable and prolonged co-operation. But, as the present
-condition of the Alliance which fought the War shows, the rivalries
-inseparable from the fears and resentments of 'instinctive' nationalism,
-make that prolonged co-operation impossible. The qualities of
-Nationalism which stand in the way of Internationalism stand also in the
-way of stable alliances (which are a form of Internationalism) and make
-them extremely unstable foundations of power.
-
-The difficulties encountered by the Allies in taking combined action in
-Russia show that to this fundamental instability due to the moral nature
-of Nationalism, must be added, as causes of military paralysis, the
-economic disruption which reduces the available material resources, and
-the social unrest (largely the result of the economic difficulties)
-which undermines the cohesion even of the national unit.
-
-These forces render military predominance based on the temporary
-co-operation of units still preserving the Nationalist outlook extremely
-precarious and unreliable.
-
-
-CHAPTER V (pp. 142-168)
-
-PATRIOTISM AND POWER IN WAR AND PEACE: THE SOCIAL OUTCOME
-
-The greatest and most obvious present need of Europe, for the salvation
-of its civilisation, is unity and co-operation. Yet the predominant
-forces of its politics push to conflict and disunity. If it is the
-calculating selfishness of 'realist' statesmen that thus produces
-impoverishment and bankruptcy, the calculation would seem to be
-defective. The Balkanisation of Europe obviously springs, however, from
-sources belonging to our patriotisms, which are mainly uncalculating
-and instinctive, 'mystic' impulses and passions. Can we safely give
-these instinctive pugnacities full play?
-
-One side of patriotism--gregariousness, 'herd instinct'--has a socially
-protective origin, and is probably in some form indispensable. But
-coupled with uncontrolled pugnacity, tribal gregariousness grows into
-violent partisanship as against other groups, and greatly strengthens
-the instinct to coercion, the desire to impose our power.
-
-In war-time, pugnacity, partisanship, coerciveness can find full
-satisfaction in the fight against the enemy. But when the war is over,
-these instincts, which have become so highly developed, still seek
-satisfaction. They may find it in two ways: in conflict between Allies,
-or in strife between groups within the nation.
-
-We may here find an explanation of what seems otherwise a moral enigma:
-that just _after a war_, universally lauded as a means of national
-unity, 'bringing all classes together,' the country is distraught by
-bitter social chaos, amounting to revolutionary menace; and that after
-the war which was to wipe out at last all the old differences which
-divided the Allies, their relations are worse than before the War (as in
-the case of Britain and America and Britain and France).
-
-Why should the fashionable lady, capable of sincere self-sacrifice
-(scrubbing hospital floors and tending canteens) for her countrymen when
-they are soldiers, become completely indifferent to the same countrymen
-when they have returned to civil life (often dangerous and hard, as in
-mining and fishing)? In the latter case there is no common enmity
-uniting duchess and miner.
-
-Another enigma may be solved in the same way: why military terrorism,
-unprovoked war, secret diplomacy, autocratic tyranny, violation of
-nationality, which genuinely appal us when committed by the enemy, leave
-us unmoved when political necessity' provokes very similar conduct on
-our part; why the ideals for which we went to war become matters of
-indifference to us when we have achieved victory. Gregariousness, which
-has become intense partisanship, makes right that which our side does or
-desires; wrong that which the other side does.
-
-This is fatal, not merely to justice, but to sincerity, to intellectual
-rectitude, to the capacity to see the truth objectively. It explains why
-we can, at the end of a war, excuse or espouse the very policies which
-the war was waged to make impossible.
-
-
-CHAPTER VI (pp. 169-198)
-
-THE ALTERNATIVE RISKS OF STATUS AND CONTRACT
-
-Instinct, being co-terminous with all animal life, is a motive of
-conduct immeasurably older and more deeply rooted than reasoning based
-on experience. So long as the instinctive, 'natural' action succeeds, or
-appears to succeed in its object, we do not trouble to examine the
-results of instinct or to reason. Only failure causes us to do that.
-
-We have seen that the pugnacities, gregariousness, group partisanship
-embodied in patriotism, give a strong emotional push to domination, the
-assertion of our power over others as a means of settling our relations
-with them. Physical coercion marks all the early methods in politics (as
-in autocracy and feudalism), in economics (as in slavery), and even in
-the relations of the sexes.
-
-But we try other methods (and manage to restrain our impulse
-sufficiently) when we really discover that force won't work. When we
-find we cannot coerce a man but still need his service, we offer him
-inducements, bargain with him, enter a contract. This is the result of
-realising that we really need him, and cannot compel him. That is the
-history of the development from status to contract.
-
-Stable international co-operation cannot come in any other way. Not
-until we realise the failure of national coercive power for
-indispensable ends (like the food of our people) shall we cease to
-idealise power and to put our intensest political emotions, like those
-of patriotism, behind it.
-
-The alternative to preponderance is partnership of power. Both may imply
-the employment of force (as in policing), but the latter makes force the
-instrument of a conscious social purpose, offering to the rival that
-challenges the force (as in the case of the individual criminal within
-the nation) the same rights as those claimed by the users of force.
-Force as employed by competitive nationalism does not do this. It says
-'You or me,' not 'You and me.' The method of social co-operation may
-fail temporarily; but it has the perpetual opportunity of success. It
-succeeds the moment that the two parties both accept it. But the other
-method is bound to fail; the two parties cannot both accept it. Both
-cannot be masters. Both can be partners.
-
-The failure of preponderant power on a nationalist basis for
-indispensable ends would be self-evident but for the push of the
-instincts which warp our judgment.
-
-Yet faith in the social method is the condition of its success. It is a
-choice of risks. We distrust and arm. Others, then, are entitled also to
-distrust; their arming is our justification for distrusting them. The
-policy of suspicion justifies itself. To allay suspicion we must accept
-the risk of trust. That, too, will justify itself.
-
-Man's future depends on making the better choice, for either the
-distrust or the faith will justify itself. His judgment will not be fit
-to make that choice if it is warped by the passions of pugnacity and
-hate that we have cultivated as part of the apparatus of war.
-
-
-CHAPTER VII (pp. 199-251)
-
-THE SPIRITUAL ROOTS OF THE SETTLEMENT
-
-If our instinctive pugnacities and hates are uncontrollable, and they
-dictate conduct, no more is to be said. We are the helpless victims of
-outside forces, and may as well surrender. But many who urge this most
-insistently in the case of our patriotic pugnacities obviously do not
-believe it: their demands for the suppression of 'defeatist' propaganda
-during the War, their support of war-time propaganda for the maintenance
-of morale, their present fears of the 'deadly infection' of Bolshevist
-ideas, indicate, on the contrary, a very real belief that feelings can
-be subject to an extremely rapid modification or redirection. In human
-society mere instinct has always been modified or directed in some
-measure by taboos, traditions, conventions, constituting a social
-discipline. The character of that discipline is largely determined by
-some sense of social need, developed as the result of the suggestion of
-transmitted ideas, discussions, intellectual ferment.
-
-The feeling which made the Treaty inevitable was the result of a partly
-unconscious but also partly conscious propaganda of war half-truths,
-built up on a sub-structure of deeply rooted nationalist conceptions.
-The systematic exploitation of German atrocities, and the systematic
-suppression of similar Allied offences, the systematic suppression of
-every good deed done by our enemy, constituted a monstrous half-truth.
-It had the effect of fortifying the conception of the enemy people as a
-single person; its complete collective responsibility. Any one of
-them--child, woman, invalid--could properly be punished (by famine, say)
-for any other's guilt. Peace became a problem of repressing or
-destroying this entirely bad person by a combination of nations entirely
-good.
-
-This falsified the nature of the problem, gave free rein to natural and
-instinctive retaliations, obscured the simplest human realities, and
-rendered possible ferocious cruelty on the part of the Allies. There
-would have been in any case a strong tendency to ignore even the facts
-which in Allied interest should have been considered. In the best
-circumstances it would have been extremely difficult to put through a
-Wilsonian (type 1918) policy, involving restraint of the sacred
-egoisms, the impulsive retaliations, the desire for dominion inherent
-in 'intense' nationalisms. The efficiency of the machinery by which the
-Governments for the purpose of war formed the mind of the nation, made
-it out of the question.
-
-If ever the passions which gather around the patriotisms disrupting and
-Balkanising Europe are to be disciplined or directed by a better social
-tradition, we must face without pretence or self-deception the results
-which show the real nature of the older political moralities. We must
-tell truths that disturb strong prejudices.
-
-
-
-
-
-THE FRUITS OF VICTORY
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-OUR DAILY BREAD
-
-
-I
-
-_The relation of certain economic facts to Britain's independence and
-Social Peace_
-
-Political instinct in England, particularly in the shaping of naval
-policy, has always recognised the intimate relation which must exist
-between an uninterrupted flow of food to these shores and the
-preservation of national independence. An enemy in a position to stop
-that flow would enjoy not merely an economic but a political power over
-us--the power to starve us into ignominious submission to his will.
-
-The fact has, of course, for generations been the main argument for
-Britain's right to maintain unquestioned command of the sea. In the
-discussions before the War concerning the German challenge to our naval
-power, it was again and again pointed out that Britain's position was
-very special: what is a matter of life and death for her had no
-equivalent importance for other powers. And it was when the Kaiser
-announced that Germany's future was upon the sea that British fear
-became acute! The instinct of self-preservation became aroused by the
-thought of the possible possession in hostile hands of an instrument
-that could sever vital arteries.
-
-The fact shows how impossible it is to divide off into watertight
-compartments the 'economic' from the political or moral. To preserve the
-capacity to feed our people, to see that our children shall have milk,
-is certainly an economic affair--a commercial one even. But it is an
-indispensable condition also of the defence of our country, of the
-preservation of our national freedom. The ultimate end behind the
-determination to preserve a preponderant navy may be purely nationalist
-or moral; the means is the maintenance of a certain economic situation.
-
-Indeed the task of ensuring the daily bread of the people touches moral
-and social issues nearer and more intimate even than the preservation of
-our national independence. The inexorable rise in the cost of living,
-the unemployment and loss and insecurity which accompany a rapid fall in
-prices, are probably the predominating factors in a social unrest which
-may end in transforming the whole texture of Western society. The worker
-finds his increased wage continually nullified by increase of price. Out
-of this situation arises an exasperation which, naturally enough, with
-peoples habituated by five years of war to violence and emotional
-mass-judgments, finds expression, not necessarily in organised
-revolution--that implies, after all, a plan of programme, a hope of a
-new order--but rather in sullen resentment; declining production, the
-menace of general chaos. However restricted the resources of a country
-may have become, there will always be some people under a r�gime of
-private capital and individual enterprise who will have more than a mere
-sufficiency, whose means will reach to luxury and even ostentation. They
-may be few in number; the amount of waste their luxury represents may in
-comparison with the total resources be unimportant. But their existence
-will suffice to give colour to the charge of profiteering and
-exploitation and to render still more acute the sullen discontent, and
-finally perhaps the tendency to violence.
-
-It is in such a situation that the price of a few prime
-necessaries--bread, coal, milk, sugar, clothing--becomes a social,
-political, and moral fact of the first importance. A two-shilling loaf
-may well be a social and political portent.
-
-In the week preceding the writing of these lines five cabinets have
-fallen in Europe. The least common denominator in the cause is the
-grinding poverty which is common to the peoples they ruled. In two cases
-the governments fell avowedly over the question of bread, maintained by
-subsidy at a fraction of its commercial cost. Everywhere the social
-atmosphere, the temper of the workers, responds to stimulus of that
-kind.
-
-When we reach the stage at which mothers are forced to see their
-children slowly die for lack of milk and bread, or the decencies of life
-are lost in a sordid scramble for sheer physical existence, then the
-economic problem becomes the gravest moral problem. The two are merged.
-
-The obvious truth that, if economic preoccupations are not to dominate
-the minds and absorb the energies of men to the exclusion of less
-material things, then the fundamental economic needs must be satisfied;
-the fact, that though the foundations are certainly not the whole
-building, civilisation does rest upon foundations of food, shelter,
-fuel, and that if it is to be stable they must be sound--these things
-have been rendered commonplace by events since the Armistice. But before
-the War they were not commonplaces. The suggestion that the economic
-results of war were worth considering was quite commonly rejected as
-'offensive,' implying that men went to war for 'profit.' Nations in
-going to war, we were told, were lifted beyond the region of
-'economics.' The conception that the neglect of the economics of war
-might mean--as it has meant--the slow torture of tens of millions of
-children and the disintegration of whole civilisations, and that if
-those who professed to be the trustees of their fellows were not
-considering these things they ought to be--this was, very curiously as
-it now seems to us at this date, regarded as sordid and material. We now
-see that the things of the spirit depend upon the solution of these
-material problems.
-
-The one fact which stood out clear above all others after the Armistice
-was the actual shortage of goods at a time when millions were literally
-dying of hunger. The decline of productivity was obvious. It was due in
-part to diversion of energies to the task of war, to the destruction of
-materials, failure in many cases to maintain plant (factories, railways,
-roads, housing); to a varying degree of industrial and commercial
-demoralisation arising out of the War and, later, out of the struggle
-for political rearrangements both within States and as between States;
-to the shortening of the hours of labour; to the dislocation, first of
-mobilisation, and then of demobilisation; to relaxation of effort as
-reaction from the special strain of war; to the demoralisation of credit
-owing to war-time financial shifts. We had all these factors of reduced
-productivity on the one side, and on the other a generally increased
-habit and standard of expenditure, due in part to a stimulation of
-spending power owing to the inflation of the currency and in part to the
-recklessness which usually follows war; and above all an increasingly
-insistent demand on the part of the worker everywhere in Europe for a
-higher general standard of living, that is to say, not only a larger
-share of the diminished product of his labour, but a larger absolute
-amount drawn from a diminished total.
-
-This created an economic _impasse_--the familiar 'vicious circle.' The
-decline in the purchasing power of money and the rise in the rate of
-interest set up demands for compensating increases both of wages and of
-profits, which increases in turn added to the cost of production, to
-prices. And so on _da capo_. As the first and last remedy for this
-condition one thing was urged, to the exclusion of almost all
-else--increased production. The King, the Cabinet, economists, Trades
-Union leaders, the newspapers, the Churches, all agreed upon that one
-solution. Until well into the autumn of 1920 all were enjoining upon the
-workers their duty of an ever-increasing output.
-
-By the end of that year, workers, who had on numberless occasions been
-told that their one salvation was to increase their output, and who had
-been upbraided in no mild terms because of their tendency to diminish
-output, were being discharged in their hundreds of thousands because
-there was a paralysing over-production and glut! Half a world was
-famished and unclothed, but vast stores of British goods were rotting
-and multitudes of workers unemployed. America revealed the same
-phenomena. After stories of the fabulous wealth which had come to her as
-the result of the War and the destruction of her commercial competitors,
-we find, in the winter of 1920-21 that over great areas in the South and
-West her farmers are near to bankruptcy because their cotton and wheat
-are unsaleable at prices that are remunerative, and her industrial
-unemployment problem as acute as it has been in a generation. So bad is
-it, indeed, that the Labour Unions are unable to resist the Open Shop
-campaign forced upon them by the employers, a campaign menacing the
-gains in labour organisation that it has taken more than a generation to
-make. America's commercial competitors being now satisfactorily disposed
-of by the War, and 'the economic conquest of the world' being now open
-to that country, we find the agricultural interests (particularly cotton
-and wheat) demanding government aid for the purpose of putting these
-aforesaid competitors once more on their feet (by loan) in order that
-they may buy American products. But the loans can only be repaid and the
-products paid for in goods. This, of course, constitutes, in terms of
-nationalist economics, a 'menace.' So the same Congress which receives
-demands for government credits to European countries, also receives
-demands for the enactment of Protectionist legislation, which will
-effectually prevent the European creditors from repaying the loans or
-paying for the purchases. The spectacle is a measure of the chaos in our
-thinking on international economics.[1]
-
-But the fact we are for the moment mainly concerned with is this: on the
-one side millions perishing for lack of corn or cotton; on the other
-corn and cotton in such abundance that they are burned, and their
-producers face bankruptcy.
-
-Obviously therefore it is not merely a question of production, but of
-production adjusted to consumption, and vice versa; of proper
-distribution of purchasing power, and a network of processes which must
-be in increasing degree consciously controlled. We should never have
-supposed that mere production would suffice, if there did not
-perpetually slip from our minds the very elementary truth that in a
-world where division of labour exists wealth is not a material but a
-material plus a process--a process of exchange. Our minds are still
-dominated by the medi�val aspect of wealth as a 'possession' of static
-material such as land, not as part of a flow. It is that oversight which
-probably produced the War; it certainly produced certain clauses of the
-Treaty. The wealth of England is not coal, because if we could not
-exchange it (or the manufactures and services based on it) for other
-things--mainly food--it certainly would not even feed our population.
-And the process by which coal becomes bread is only possible by virtue
-of certain adjustments, which can only be made if there be present such
-things as a measure of political security, stability of conditions
-enabling us to know that crops can be gathered, transported and sold for
-money of stable value; if there be in other words the indispensable
-element of contract, confidence, rendering possible the indispensable
-device of credit. And as the self-sufficing economic unit--quite
-obviously in the case of England, less obviously but hardly less
-certainly in other notable cases--cannot be the national unit, the field
-of the contract--the necessary stability of credit, that is--must be, if
-not international, then trans-national. All of which is extremely
-elementary; and almost entirely overlooked by our statesmanship, as
-reflected in the Settlement and in the conduct of policy since the
-Armistice.
-
-
-2
-
-     _Britain's dependence on the production by foreigners of a surplus
-     of food and raw materials beyond their own needs_
-
-The matter may be clarified if we summarise what precedes, and much of
-what follows, in this proposition:--
-
-     The present conditions in Europe show that much of its dense
-     population (notably the population of these islands) can only live
-     at a standard necessary for civilisation (leisure, social peace,
-     individual freedom) by means of certain co-operative processes,
-     which must be carried on largely across frontiers. The mere
-     physical existence of much of the population of Britain is
-     dependent upon the production by foreigners of a surplus of food
-     and raw materials beyond their own needs.
-
-     The processes of production have become of the complex kind which
-     cannot be compelled by preponderant power, exacted by physical
-     coercion.
-
-     But the attempt at such coercion, the inevitable results of a
-     policy aimed at securing predominant power, provoking resistance
-     and friction, can and does paralyse the necessary processes, and by
-     so doing is undermining the economic foundations of British life.
-
-What are the facts supporting the foregoing proposition?
-
-Many whose instincts of national protection would become immediately
-alert at the possibility of a naval blockade of these islands, remain
-indifferent to the possibility of a blockade arising in another but
-every bit as effective a fashion.
-
-That is through the failure of the food and raw material, upon which our
-populations and our industries depend, to be produced at all owing to
-the progressive social disintegration which seems to be going on over
-the greater part of the world. To the degree to which it is true to say
-that Britain's life is dependent upon her fleet, it is true to say that
-it is dependent upon the production by foreigners of a surplus above
-their own needs of food and raw material. This is the most fundamental
-fact in the economic situation of Britain: a large portion of her
-population are fed by the exchange of coal, or services and manufactures
-based on coal, for the surplus production, mainly food and raw material,
-of peoples living overseas.[2] Whether the failure of food to reach us
-were due to the sinking of our ships at sea or the failure of those
-ships to obtain cargoes at the port of embarkation the result in the end
-would be the same. Indeed, the latter method, if complete, would be the
-more serious as an armistice or surrender would not bring relief.
-
-The hypothesis has been put in an extreme form in order to depict the
-situation as vividly as possible. But such a condition as the complete
-failure of the foreigner's surplus does not seem to-day so preposterous
-as it might have done five years ago. For that surplus has shrunk
-enormously and great areas that once contributed to feeding us can do so
-no longer. Those areas already include Russia, Siberia, the Balkans, and
-a large part of the Near and Far East. What we are practically concerned
-with, of course, is not the immediate disappearance of that surplus on
-which our industries depend, but the degree to which its reduction
-increases for us the cost of food, and so intensifies all the social
-problems that arise out of an increasing cost of living. Let the
-standard alike of consumption and production of our overseas white
-customers decline to the standard of India and China, and our foreign
-trade would correspondingly decrease; the decline in the world's
-production of food would mean that much less for us; it would reduce the
-volume of our trade, or in terms of our own products, cost that much
-more; this in turn would increase the cost of our manufactures, create
-an economic situation which one could describe with infinite technical
-complexity, but which, however technical and complex that description
-were made, would finally come to this--that our own toil would become
-less productive.
-
-That is a relatively new situation. In the youth of men now living,
-these islands with their twenty-five or thirty million population were,
-so far as vital needs are concerned, self-sufficing. What will be the
-situation when the children now growing up in our homes become members
-of a British population which may number fifty, sixty, or seventy
-millions? (Germany's population, which, at the outbreak of war, was
-nearly seventy millions, was in 1870 a good deal less than the present
-population of Great Britain.)
-
-Moreover, the problem is affected by what is perhaps the most important
-economic change in the world since the industrial revolution, namely the
-alteration in the ratio of the exchange value of manufactures and
-food--the shift over of advantage in exchange from the side of the
-industrialist and manufacturer to the side of the producer of food.
-
-Until the last years of the nineteenth century the world was a place in
-which it was relatively easy to produce food, and nearly the whole of
-its population was doing it. In North and South America, in Russia,
-Siberia, China, India, the universal occupation was agriculture, carried
-on largely (save in the case of China and India) upon new soil, its
-first fertility as yet unexhausted. A tiny minority of the world's
-population only was engaged in industry in the modern sense: in
-producing things in factories by machinery, in making iron and steel.
-Only in Great Britain, in Northern Germany, in a few districts in the
-United States, had large-scale industry been systematically developed.
-It is easy to see, therefore, what immense advantage in exchange the
-industrialist had. What he had for sale was relatively scarce; what the
-agriculturist had for sale was produced the world over and was, _in
-terms of manufactures_, extremely cheap. It was the economic paradox of
-the time that in countries like America, South and North, the
-farmer--the producer of food--was naturally visualised as a
-poverty-stricken individual--a 'hayseed' dressed in cotton jeans,
-without the conveniences and amenities of civilisation, while it was in
-the few industrial centres that the vast wealth was being piled up. But
-as the new land in North America and Argentina and Siberia became
-occupied and its first fertility exhausted, as the migration from the
-land to the towns set in, it became possible with the spread of
-technical training throughout the world, with the wider distribution of
-mechanical power and the development of transport, for every country in
-some measure to engage in manufacture, and the older industrial centres
-lost some of their monopoly advantage in dealing with the food producer.
-In Cobden's day it was almost true to say that England spun cotton for
-the world. To-day cotton is spun where cotton is grown; in India, in the
-Southern States of America, in China.
-
-This is a condition which (as the pages which follow reveal in greater
-detail) the intensification of nationalism and its hostility to
-international arrangement will render very much more acute. The
-patriotism of the future China or Argentina--or India and Australia, for
-that matter--may demand the home production of goods now bought in (say)
-England. It may not in economic terms benefit the populations who thus
-insist upon a complete national economy. But 'defence is more than
-opulence.' The very insecurity which the absence of a definitely
-organised international order involves will be invoked as justifying the
-attempt at economic self-sufficiency. Nationalism creates the situation
-to which it points as justification for its policy: it makes the very
-real dangers that it fears. And as Nationalism thus breaks up the
-efficient transnational division of labour and diminishes total
-productivity, the resultant pressure of population or diminished means
-of subsistence will push to keener rivalry for the conquest of
-territory. The circle can become exceedingly vicious--so vicious,
-indeed, that we may finally go back to the self-sufficing village
-community; a Europe sparsely populated if the resultant clerical
-influence is unable to check prudence in the matter of the birth-rate,
-densely populated to a Chinese or Indian degree if the birth-rate is
-uncontrolled.
-
-The economic chaos and social disintegration which have stricken so
-much of the world have brought a sharp reminder of the primary, the
-elemental place of food in the catalogue of man's needs, and the
-relative ease and rapidity with which most else can be jettisoned in our
-complex civilisation, provided only that the stomach can be filled.
-
-Before the War the towns of Europe were the luxurious and opulent
-centres; the rural districts were comparatively poor. To-day it is the
-cities of the Continent that are half-starved or famine-stricken, while
-the farms are well-fed and relatively opulent. In Russia, Poland,
-Hungary, Germany, Austria, the cities perish, but the peasants for the
-most part have a sufficiency. The cities are finding that with the
-breakdown of the old stability--of the transport and credit systems
-particularly--they cannot obtain food from the farmers. This process
-which we now see at work on the Continent is in fact the reversal of our
-historical development.
-
-As money acquired a stable value and transport and communication became
-easy and cheap, the manor ceased to be self-contained, to weave its own
-clothes and make its own implements. But the Russian peasants are
-proving to-day that if the railroads break down, and the paper money
-loses its value, the farm can become once more self-sufficing. Better to
-thresh the wheat with a flail, to weave clothes from the wool, than to
-exchange wheat and wool for a money that will buy neither cloth nor
-threshing machinery. But a country-side that weaves its own cloth and
-threshes its grain by hand is one that has little surplus of food for
-great cities--as Vienna, Buda-Pest, Moscow, and Petrograd have already
-discovered.
-
-If England is destined in truth to remain the workshop of that world
-which produces the food and raw material, then she has indeed a very
-direct interest in the maintenance of all those processes upon which the
-pre-war exchange between farm and factory, city and country,
-depended.[3]
-
-The 'farm' upon which the 'factory' of Great Britain depends is the
-food-producing world as a whole. It does not suffice that the overseas
-world should merely support itself as it did, say, in the tenth century,
-but it must be induced by hope of advantage to exchange a surplus for
-those things which we can deliver to it more economically than it can
-make them for itself. Because the necessary social and political
-stability, with its material super-structure of transport and credit,
-operating trans-nationally, has broken down, much of Europe is returning
-to its earlier simple life of unco-ordinated production, and its total
-fertility is being very greatly reduced. The consequent reaction of a
-diminished food supply for ourselves is already being felt.
-
-
-3
-
-_The 'Prosperity' of Paper Money_
-
-It will be said: Does not the unquestioned rise in the standard of
-wages, despite all the talk of debt, expenditure, unbalanced budgets,
-public bankruptcy, disprove any theory of a vital connection between a
-stable Europe and our own prosperity? Indeed, has not the experience of
-the War discredited much of the theory of the interdependence of
-nations?
-
-The first few years of the War did, indeed, seem to discredit it, to
-show that this interdependence was not so vital as had been supposed.
-Germany seemed for a long time really to be self-supporting, to manage
-without contact with other peoples. It seemed possible to re-direct the
-channels of trade with relative ease. It really appeared for a time that
-the powers of the Governments could modify fundamentally the normal
-process of credit almost at will, which would have been about equivalent
-to the discovery of perpetual motion! Not only was private credit
-maintained by governmental assistance, but exchanges were successfully
-'pegged'; collapse could be prevented apparently with ease. Industry
-itself showed a similar elasticity. In this country it seemed possible
-to withdraw five or six million men from actual production, and so
-organise the remainder as to enable them to produce enough not only to
-maintain themselves, but the country at large and the army, in food,
-clothing and other necessaries. And this was accomplished at a standard
-of living above rather than below that which obtained when the country
-was at peace, and when the six or seven or eight millions engaged in war
-or its maintenance were engaged in the production of consumable wealth.
-It seemed an economic miracle that with these millions withdrawn from
-production, though remaining consumers, the total industrial output
-should be very little less than it was before the War.
-
-But we are beginning to see how this miracle was performed, and also
-what is the truth as to the self-sufficiency of the great nations. As
-late as the early summer of 1918, when, even after four years of the
-exhausting drain of war, well-fed German armies were still advancing and
-gaining victories, and German guns were bombarding Paris (for the first
-time in the War), the edifice of German self-sufficiency seemed to be
-sound. But this apparently stalwart economic structure crumbled in a few
-months into utter ruins and the German population was starving and
-freezing, without adequate food, fuel, clothing. England has in large
-measure escaped this result just because her contacts with the rest of
-the world have been maintained while Germany's have not. These latter
-were not even re-established at the Armistice; in many respects her
-economic isolation was more complete after the War than during it.
-Moreover, because our contacts with the rest of the world are
-maintained by shipping, a very great flexibility is given to our
-extra-national economic relationships. Our lines of communication can be
-switched from one side of the world to the other instantly, whereas a
-country whose approaches are by railroads may find its communications
-embarrassed for a generation if new frontiers render the old lines
-inapplicable to the new political conditions.
-
-In the first year or so following the Armistice there was a curious
-contradiction in the prevailing attitude towards the economic situation
-at home. The newspapers were full of headlines about the Road to Ruin
-and National Bankruptcy; the Government plainly was unable to make both
-ends meet; the financial world was immensely relieved when America
-postponed the payments of debts to her; we were pathetically appealing
-to her to come and save us; the British sovereign, which for generations
-has been a standard of value for the world and the symbol of security,
-dropped to a discount of 20 per cent, in terms of the dollar; our
-Continental creditors were even worse off; the French could only pay us
-in a depreciated paper currency, the value of which in terms of the
-dollar varied between a third and a fourth of what it was before the
-War; the lira was cheaper still. Yet side by side with this we had
-stories of a trade boom (especially in textiles and cotton), so great
-that merchants and manufacturers refused to go to their offices, in
-order to dodge the flood of orders so vastly in excess of what they
-could fulfil. Side by side with depreciated paper currency, with public
-debts so crippling that the Government could only balance its budget by
-loans which were not successful when floated, the amusement trades
-flourished as never before. Theatre, music hall, and cinematograph
-receipts beat all records. There was a greater demand for motor-cars
-than the trade could supply. The Riviera was fuller than it had ever
-been before. The working class itself was competing with others for the
-purchase of luxuries which in the past that class never knew. And while
-the financial situation made it impossible, apparently, to find capital
-for building houses to live in, ample capital was forthcoming wherewith
-to build cinema palaces. We heard and read of famine almost at our
-doors, and saw great prosperity around us; read daily of impending
-bankruptcy--and of high profits and lavish spending; of world-wide
-unrest and revolution--and higher wages than the workers had ever known.
-
-Complex and contradictory as the facts seemed, the difficulty of a true
-estimate was rendered greater by the position in which European
-Governments found themselves placed. These Governments were faced by the
-necessity of maintaining credit and confidence at almost any cost. They
-must not, therefore, throw too great an emphasis upon the dark features.
-Yet the need for economy and production was declared to be as great as
-it was during the war. To create a mood of seriousness and sober
-resolution adequate to the situation would involve stressing facts
-which, in their efforts to obtain loans, internal or external, and to
-maintain credit, governments were compelled to minimise.
-
-Then, of course, the facts were obscured mainly by the purchasing power
-created by the manufacture of credit and paper money. Some light is
-thrown upon this ambiguous situation by a fact which is now so
-manifest--that this juxtaposition of growing indebtedness and lavish
-spending, high wages, high profits, active trade, and a rising standard
-of living, were all things that marked the condition of Germany in the
-first few years of the War. Industrial concerns showed profits such as
-they had never shown before; wages steadily rose; and money was
-plentiful. But the profits were made and the wages were paid in a money
-that continually declined in value--as ours is declining. The higher
-consumption drew upon sources that were steadily being depleted--as ours
-are being depleted. The production was in certain cases maintained by
-very uneconomic methods: as by working only the best seams in the coal
-mines, by devoting no effort to the proper upkeep of plant (locomotives
-on the railway which ordinarily would go into the repair shop every six
-weeks were kept running somehow during the whole course of the War). In
-this sense the people were 'living upon capital'--devoting, that is, to
-the needs of current consumption energy which should have been devoted
-to ensuring future production. In another way, they were converting into
-income what is normally a source of capital. An increase in profits or
-wages, which ordinarily would have provided a margin, over and above
-current expenditure, out of which capital for new plant, etc., could
-have been drawn, was rapidly nullified by a corresponding increase in
-prices. Loans for the purpose even of capital expenditure involved an
-inflation of currency which still further increased prices, thus
-diminishing the value of the capital so provided, necessitating the
-issue of further loans which had the same effect. And so the vicious
-circle was narrowed. Even after four years of this kind of thing the
-edifice had in many respects the outward appearances of prosperity. As
-late as April, 1918, the German organisation, as we have noted, was
-still capable of maintaining a military machine which could not only
-hold its own but compel the retirement of the combined forces of France,
-Britain, America, and minor Allies. But once the underlying process of
-disintegration became apparent, the whole structure went to pieces.
-
-It is that unnoticed process of disintegration, preceding the final
-collapse, which should interest us. For the general method employed by
-Germany for meeting the consumption of war and disguising the growing
-scarcity is in many respects the method her neighbours adopted for
-meeting the consumption of a new standard of life on the basis of less
-total wealth--a standard which, on the part of the workers, means both
-shorter hours and a larger share of their produce, and on the part of
-other classes a larger share of the more expensive luxuries. Like the
-Germans of 1914-18, we are drawing for current consumption upon the fund
-which, in a more healthy situation, would go to provide for renewal of
-plant and provision of new capital. To 'eat the seed corn' may give an
-appearance of present plenty at the cost of starvation later.
-
-It is extremely unlikely that there will ever be in England the sudden
-catastrophic economic collapse which we have witnessed in Russia,
-Germany, Austria, and Central Europe generally. But we shall none the
-less be concerned. As the increased wages gained by strikes lose with
-increasing rapidity their value in purchasing power, thus wiping out the
-effect of the industrial 'victory,' irritation among the workers will
-grow. On minds so prepared the Continental experiments in social
-reconstruction--prompted by conditions immeasurably more acute--will act
-with the force of hypnotic suggestion. Our Government may attempt to
-cope with these movements by repression or political devices. Tempers
-will be too bad and patience too short to give the sound solutions a
-real chance. And an economic situation, not in itself inherently
-desperate, may get steadily worse because of the loss of social
-discipline and of political insight, the failure to realise past
-expectations, the continuance of military burdens created by external
-political chaos.
-
-
-4
-
-_The European disintegration: Britain's concern._
-
-What has actually happened in so much of Europe around us ought
-certainly to prevent any too complacent sense of security. In the midst
-of this old civilisation are (in Mr. Hoover's calculation) some hundred
-million folk, who before the War managed to support themselves in fair
-comfort but are now unable to be truly self-supporting. Yet they live
-upon the same soil and in the presence of the same natural resources as
-before the War. Their inability to use that soil and those materials is
-not due to the mere physical destruction of war, for the famine is worst
-where there has been no physical destruction at all. It is not a lack
-of labour, for millions are unemployed, seeking work. Nor is it lack of
-technical or scientific knowledge, upon which (very erroneously) we are
-apt to look as the one sufficient factor of civilisation; for our
-technical knowledge in the management of matter is greater even than
-before the War.
-
-What then is the reason why these millions starve in the midst of
-potential plenty? It is that they have lost, from certain moral causes
-examined later in these pages, the capacity to co-ordinate their labour
-sufficiently to carry on the processes by which alone labour and
-knowledge can be applied to an exploitation of nature sufficiently
-complete to support our dense modern populations.
-
-The fact that wealth is not to-day a material which can be taken, but a
-process which can only be maintained by virtue of certain moral factors,
-marks a change in human relationship, the significance of which still
-seems to escape us.
-
-The manor, or even the eighteenth century village, was roughly a
-self-sufficing unit. It mattered little to that unit what became of the
-outside world. The manor or village was independent; its people could be
-cut off from the outside world, could ravage the near parts of it and
-remain unaffected. But when the development of communication and the
-discovery of steam turns the agricultural community into coal miners,
-these are no longer indifferent to the condition of the outside world.
-Cut them off from the agriculturalists who take their coal or
-manufactures, or let these latter be unable to carry on their calling,
-and the miner starves. He cannot eat his coal. He is no longed
-independent. His life hangs upon certain activities of others. Where his
-forebears could have raided and ravaged with no particular hurt to
-themselves, the miner cannot. He is dependent upon those others and has
-given them hostages. He is no longer 'independent,' however clamorously
-in his Nationalist oratory he may use that word. He has been forced into
-a relation of partnership. And how very small is the effectiveness of
-any physical coercion he can apply, in order to exact the services by
-which he lives, we shall see presently.
-
-This situation of interdependence is of course felt much more acutely by
-some countries than others--much more by England, for instance, than by
-France. France in the matter of essential foodstuffs can be nearly
-self-supporting, England cannot. For England, an outside world of fairly
-high production is a matter of life and death; the economic
-consideration must in this sense take precedence of others. In the case
-of France considerations of political security are apt to take
-precedence of economic considerations. France can weaken her neighbours
-vitally without being brought to starvation. She can purchase security
-at the cost of mere loss of profits on foreign trade by the economic
-destruction of, say, Central Europe. The same policy would for Britain
-in the long run spell starvation. And it is this fundamental difference
-of economic situation which is at the bottom of much of the divergence
-of policy between Britain and France which has recently become so acute.
-
-This is the more evident when we examine recent changes of detail in
-this general situation special to England. Before the War a very large
-proportion of our food and raw material was supplied by the United
-States. But our economic relationship with that country has been changed
-as the result of the War. Previous to 1914 we were the creditor and
-America the debtor nation. She was obliged to transmit to us large sums
-in interest on investments of British capital. These annual payments
-were in fact made in the form of food and raw materials, for which, in a
-national sense, we did not have to give goods or services in return. We
-are now less in the position of creditor, more in that of debtor.
-America does not have to transmit to us. Whereas, originally, we did an
-immense proportion of America's carrying trade, because she had no
-ocean-going mercantile marine, she has begun to do her own carrying.
-Further, the pressure of her population upon her food resources is
-rapidly growing. The law diminishing returns is in some instances
-beginning to apply to the production of food, which in the past has been
-plentiful without fertilisers and under a very wasteful and simple
-system. And in America, as elsewhere, the standard of consumption, owing
-to a great increase of the wage standard, has grown, while the standard
-of production has not always correspondingly increased.
-
-The practical effect of this is to throw England into greater dependence
-upon certain new sources of food--or trade, which in the end is the same
-thing. The position becomes clearer if we reflect that our dependence
-becomes more acute with every increase of our population. Our children
-now at school may be faced by the problem of finding food for a
-population of sixty or seventy millions on these islands. A high
-agricultural productivity on the part of countries like Russia and
-Siberia and the Balkans might well be then a life and death matter.
-
-Now the European famine has taught us a good deal about the necessary
-conditions of high agricultural productivity. The co-operation of
-manufactures--of railways for taking crops out and fertilisers in, of
-machinery, tools, wagons, clothing--is one of them. That manufacturing
-itself must be done by division of labour is another: the country or
-area that is fitted to supply textiles or cream separators is not
-necessarily fitted to supply steel rails: yet until the latter are
-supplied the former cannot be obtained. Often productivity is paralysed
-simply because transport has broken down owing to lack of rolling stock,
-or coal, or lubricants, or spare parts for locomotives; or because a
-debased currency makes it impossible to secure food from peasants, who
-will not surrender it in return for paper that has no value--the
-manufactures which might ultimately give it value being paralysed. The
-lack of confidence in the maintenance of the value of paper money, for
-instance, is rapidly diminishing the food productivity of the soil;
-peasants will not toil to produce food which they cannot exchange,
-through the medium of money, for the things which they need--clothing,
-implements, and so on. This diminishing productivity is further
-aggravated by the impossibility of obtaining fertilisers (some of which
-are industrial products, and all of which require transport), machines,
-tools, etc. The food producing capacity of Europe cannot be maintained
-without the full co-operation of the non-agricultural industries--transport,
-manufactures, coal mining, sound banking--and the maintenance of
-political order. Nothing but the restoration of all the economic
-processes of Europe as a whole can prevent a declining productivity
-that must intensify social and political disorder, of which we may
-merely have seen the beginning.
-
-But if this interdependence of factory and farm in the production of
-food is indisputable, though generally ignored, it involves a further
-fact just as indisputable, and even more completely ignored. And the
-further fact is that the manufacturing and the farming, neither of which
-can go on without the other, may well be situated in different States.
-Vienna starves largely because the coal needed for its factories is now
-situated in a foreign State--Czecho-Slovakia--which, partly from
-political motives perhaps, fails to deliver it. Great food producing
-areas in the Balkans and Russia are dependent for their tools and
-machinery, for the stability of the money without which the food will
-not be produced, upon the industries of Germany. Those industries are
-destroyed, the markets have disappeared, and with them the incentive to
-production. The railroads of what ought to be food producing States are
-disorganized from lack of rolling stock, due to the same paralysis of
-German industry; and so the food production is diminished. Tens of
-millions of acres outside Germany, whose food the world sorely needs,
-have been rendered barren by the industrial paralysis of the Central
-Empires which the economic terms of the Treaty render inevitable.
-
-Speaking of the need of Russian agriculture for German industry, Mr.
-Maynard Keynes, who has worked out the statistics revealing the relative
-position of Germany to the rest of Europe, writes:--
-
-'It is impossible geographically and for many other reasons for
-Englishmen, Frenchmen, or Americans to undertake it--we have neither the
-incentive nor the means for doing the work on a sufficient scale.
-Germany, on the other hand, has the experience, the incentive, and to a
-large extent, the materials for furnishing the Russian peasant with the
-goods of which he has been starved for the past five years, for
-reorganising the business of transport and collection, and so for
-bringing into the world's pool, for the common advantage, the supplies
-from which we are now disastrously cut off.... If we oppose in detail
-every means by which Germany or Russia can recover their material
-well-being, because we feel a national, racial, or political hatred for
-their populations or their governments, we must be prepared to face the
-consequences of such feelings. Even if there is no moral solidarity
-between the newly-related races of Europe, there is an economic
-solidarity which we cannot disregard. Even now, the world markets are
-one. If we do not allow Germany to exchange products with Russia and so
-feed herself, she must inevitably compete with us for the produce of the
-New World. The more successful we are in snapping economic relations
-between Germany and Russia, the more we shall depress the level of our
-own economic standards and increase the gravity of our own domestic
-problems.'[4]
-
-It is not merely the productivity of Russia which is involved. Round
-Germany as a central support the rest of the European economic system
-grouped itself, and upon the prosperity and enterprise of Germany the
-prosperity of the rest of the Continent mainly depended. Germany was the
-best customer of Russia, Norway, Poland, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy,
-and Austria-Hungary; she was the second best customer of Great Britain,
-Sweden, and Denmark; and the third best customer of France. She was the
-largest source of supply to Russia, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Poland,
-Switzerland, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria; and the
-second largest source of supply to Great Britain, Belgium, and France.
-Britain sent more experts to Germany than to any other country in the
-world except India, and bought more from her than any other country in
-the world except the United States. There was no European country except
-those west of Germany which did not do more than a quarter of their
-total trade with her; and in the case of Russia, Austria-Hungary, and
-Poland, the proportion was far greater. To retard or prevent the
-economic restoration of Germany means retarding the economic
-reconstruction of Europe.
-
-This gives us a hint of the deep causes underlying the present
-divergence of French and British policy with reference to the economic
-reconstruction of Russia and Central Europe. A Britain of sixty or
-seventy millions faced by the situation with reference to America that
-has just been touched upon, might well find that the development of the
-resources of Russia, Siberia, and the Near East--even at the cost of
-dividing the profits thereof in terms of industrial development with
-Germany, each supplying that for which it was best suited--was the
-essential condition of food and social peace. France has no such
-pre-occupation. Her concern is political: the maintenance of a military
-predominance on which she believes her political security to depend, an
-object that might well be facilitated by the political disintegration of
-Europe even though it involved its economic disintegration.
-
-That brings us to the political factor in the decline in productivity.
-From it we may learn something of the moral factor, which is the
-ultimate condition of any co-operation whatsoever.
-
-The relationship of the political to the economic situation is
-illustrated most vividly, perhaps, in the case of Austria. Mr. Hoover,
-in testimony given to a United States Senate Committee, has declared
-bluntly that it is no use talking of loans to Austria which imply future
-security, if the present political status is to be maintained, because
-that status has rendered the old economic activities impossible.
-Speaking before the Committee, he said:--
-
-     'The political situation in Austria I hesitate to discuss, but it
-     is the cause of the trouble. Austria has now no hope of being
-     anything more than a perpetual poorhouse, because all her lands
-     that produce food have been taken from her. This, I will say, was
-     done without American inspiration. If this political situation
-     continues, and Austria is made a perpetual mendicant, the United
-     States should not provide the charity. We should make the loan
-     suggested with full notice that those who undertake to continue
-     Austria's present status must pay the bill. Present Austria faces
-     three alternatives--death, migration, or a complete industrial
-     diversion and re-organization. Her economic rehabilitation seems
-     impossible after the way she was broken up at the Peace Conference.
-     Her present territory will produce only enough food for three
-     months, and she has now no factories which might produce products
-     to be exchanged for food.'[5]
-
-To realise what can really be accomplished by statesmanship that has a
-soul above such trifles as food and fuel, when it sets its hand to
-map-drawing, one should attempt to visualise the state of Vienna to-day.
-Mr A. G. Gardiner, the English journalist, has sketched it thus:--
-
-     'To conceive its situation one must imagine London suddenly cut off
-     from all the sources of its life, no access to the sea, frontiers
-     of hostile Powers all round it, every coalfield of Yorkshire or
-     South Wales or Scotland in foreign hands, no citizen able to travel
-     to Birmingham or Manchester without a passport, the mills it had
-     financed in Lancashire taken from it, no coal to burn, no food to
-     eat, and--with its shilling down in value to a farthing--no money
-     to buy raw materials for its labour, industry at a standstill,
-     hundreds of thousands living (or dying) on charity, nothing
-     prospering except the vile exploiters of misery, the traffickers in
-     food, the traffickers in vice. That is the Vienna which the peace
-     criminals have made.
-
-     'Vienna was the financial and administrative centre of fifty
-     million of people. It financed textile factories, paper
-     manufacturing, machine works, beet growing, and scores of other
-     industries in German Bohemia. It owned coal mines at Teschen. It
-     drew its food from Hungary. From every quarter of the Empire there
-     came to Vienna the half-manufactured products of the provinces for
-     the finishing processes, tailoring, dyeing, glass-working, in which
-     a vast population found employment.
-
-     'Suddenly all this elaborate structure of economic life was swept
-     away. Vienna, instead of being the vital centre of fifty millions
-     of people, finds itself a derelict city with a province of six
-     millions. It is cut off from its coal supplies, from its food
-     supplies, from its factories, from everything that means existence.
-     It is enveloped by tariff walls.'
-
-The writer goes on to explain that the evils are not limited to Austria.
-In this unhappy Balkanised Society that the peace has created at the
-heart of Europe, every State is at issue with its neighbours: the Czechs
-with the Poles, the Hungarians with the Czechs, the Rumanians with the
-Hungarians, and all with Austria. The whole Empire is parcelled out into
-quarrelling factions, with their rival tariffs, their passports and
-their animosities. All free intercourse has stopped, all free
-interchange of commodities has ceased. Each starves the other and is
-starved by the other. 'I met a banker travelling from Buda-Pest to
-Berlin by Vienna and Bavaria. I asked him why he went so far out of his
-way to get to his goal, and he replied that it was easier to do that
-than to get through the barbed-wire entanglements of Czecho-Slovakia.
-There is great hunger in Bohemia, and it is due largely to the same
-all-embracing cause. Formerly the Czech peasants used to go to Hungary
-to gather the harvest and returned with corn as part payment. Now
-intercourse has stopped, the Hungarian cornfields are without the
-necessary labour, and the Czech peasant starves at home, or is fed by
-the American Relief Fund. "One year of peace," said Herr Renner, the
-Chancellor, to me, "has wrought more ruin than five years of war."'
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Mr Gardiner's final verdict[6] does not in essence differ from that of
-Mr Hoover:--
-
-     'It is the levity of mind which has plunged this great city into
-     ruin that is inexplicable. The political dismemberment of Austria
-     might be forgiven. That was repeatedly declared by the Allies not
-     to be an object of the War; but the policy of the French, backed by
-     the industrious propaganda of a mischievous newspaper group in this
-     country, triumphed and the promise was dishonoured. Austria-Hungary
-     was broken into political fragments. That might be defended as a
-     political necessity. But the economic dismemberment was as
-     gratuitous as it was deadly. It could have been provided against if
-     ordinary foresight had been employed. Austria-Hungary was an
-     economic unit, a single texture of the commercial, industrial, and
-     financial interests.'[7]
-
-We have talked readily enough in the past of this or that being a
-'menace to civilisation.' The phrase has been applied indifferently to a
-host of things from Prussian Militarism to the tango. No particular
-meaning was attached to the phrase, and we did not believe that the
-material security of our civilisation--the delivery of the letters and
-the milk in the morning, and the regular running of the 'Tubes'--would
-ever be endangered in our times.
-
-But this is what has happened in a few months. We have seen one of the
-greatest and most brilliant capitals of Europe, a city completely
-untouched by the physical devastation of war, endowed beyond most with
-the equipment of modern technical learning and industry, with some of
-the greatest factories, medical schools and hospitals of our times,
-unable to save its children from death by simple starvation--unable,
-with all that equipment, to provide them each with a little milk and a
-few ounces of flour every day.
-
-
-5
-
-_The Limits of Political Control_
-
-It is sometimes suggested that as political factors (particularly the
-drawing of frontiers) entered to some extent at least into the present
-distribution of population, political forces can re-distribute that
-population. But re-distribution would mean in fact killing.
-
-So to re-direct the vast currents of European industry as to involve a
-great re-distribution of the population would demand a period of time
-so great that during the necessary stoppage of the economic process most
-of the population concerned would be dead--even if we could imagine
-sufficient stability to permit of these vast changes taking place
-according to the na�ve and what we now know to be fantastic, programme
-of our Treaties. And since the political forces--as we shall see--are
-extremely unstable, the new distribution would presumably again one day
-undergo a similarly murderous modification.
-
-That brings us to the question suggested in the proposition set out some
-pages back, how far preponderant political power can ensure or compel
-those processes by which a population in the position of that of these
-islands lives.
-
-For, as against much of the foregoing, it is sometimes urged that
-Britain's concern in the Continental chaos is not really vital, because
-while the British Isles cannot be self-sufficing, the British Empire can
-be.
-
-During the War a very bold attempt was made to devise a scheme by which
-political power should be used to force the economic development of the
-world into certain national channels, a scheme whereby the military
-power of the dominant group should be so used as to ensure it a
-permanent preponderance of economic resources. The plan is supposed to
-have emanated from Mr Hughes, the Prime Minister of Australia, and the
-Allies (during Mr Asquith's Premiership incidentally) met in Paris for
-its consideration. Mr Hughes's idea seems to have been to organise the
-world into economic categories: the British Empire first in order of
-mutual preference, the Allies next, the neutrals next, and the enemy
-States last of all. Russia was, of course, included among the Allies,
-America among the neutrals, the States then Austria-Hungary among the
-enemies.
-
-One has only to imagine some such scheme having been voted and put into
-operation, and the modifications which political changes would to-day
-compel, to get an idea of merely the first of the difficulties of using
-political and military power, with a basis of separate and competing
-nationalisms, for economic purposes. The very nature of military
-nationalism makes surrender of competition in favour of long continued
-co-operation for common purposes, a moral impossibility. The foundations
-of the power are unstable, the wills which determine its use
-contradictory.
-
-Yet military power must rest upon Alliance. Even the British Empire
-found that its defence needed Allies. And if the British Empire is to be
-self-sufficing, its trade canalised into channels drawn along certain
-political lines, the preferences and prohibitions will create many
-animosities. Are we to sacrifice our self-sufficiency for the sake of
-American and French friendship, or risk losing the friendship by
-preferences designed to ensure self-sufficiency? Yet to the extent that
-our trade is with countries like North and South America we cannot
-exercise on its behalf even the shadow of military coercion.
-
-But that is only the beginning of the difficulty.
-
-A suggestive fact is that ever since the population of these islands
-became dependent upon overseas trade, that trade has been not mainly
-with the Empire but with foreigners. It is to-day.[8] And if one
-reflects for a moment upon the present political relationship of the
-Imperial Government to Ireland, Egypt, India, South Africa, and the
-tariff and immigration legislation that has marked the economic history
-of Australia and Canada during the last twenty years, one will get some
-idea of the difficulty which surrounds the employment of political power
-for the shaping of an economic policy to subserve any large and
-long-continued political end.
-
-The difficulties of an imperial policy in this respect do not differ
-much in character from the difficulties encountered in Paris. The
-British Empire, too, has its problems of 'Balkanisation,' problems that
-have arisen also from the anti-social element of 'absolute' nationalism.
-The present Nationalist fermentation within the Empire reveals very
-practical limits to the use of political power. We cannot compel the
-purchase of British goods by Egyptian, Indian, or Irish Nationalists.
-Moreover, an Indian or Egyptian boycott or Irish agitation, may well
-deprive political domination of any possibility of economic advantage.
-The readiness with which British opinion has accepted very large steps
-towards the independence and evacuation of Egypt after having fiercely
-resisted such a policy for a generation, would seem to suggest that some
-part of the truth in this matter is receiving general recognition. It is
-hardly less noteworthy that popular newspapers--that one could not have
-imagined taking such a view at the time, say, of the Boer war--now
-strenuously oppose further commitments in Mesopotamia and Persia--and do
-so on financial grounds. And even where the relations of the Imperial
-Government with States like Canada or Australia are of the most cordial
-kind, the impotence of political power for exacting economic advantage
-has become an axiom of imperial statecraft. The day that the Government
-in London proposed to set in motion its army or navy for the purpose of
-compelling Canada or Australia to cease the manufacture of cotton or
-steel in order to give England a market, would be the day, as we are all
-aware, of another Declaration of Independence. Any preference would be
-the result of consent, agreement, debate, contract: not of coercion.
-
-But the most striking demonstration yet afforded in history of the
-limits placed by modern industrial conditions upon the economic
-effectiveness of political power is afforded by the story of the attempt
-to secure reparations, indemnity, and even coal from Germany, and the
-attempt of the victors, like France, to repair the disastrous financial
-situation which has followed war by the military seizure of the wealth
-of a beaten enemy. That story is instructive both by reason of the light
-which it throws upon the facts as to the economic value of military
-power, and upon the attitude of public and statesmen towards these
-facts.
-
-When, some fifteen years ago, it was suggested that, given the
-conditions of modern trade and industry, a victor would not in practice
-be able to turn his military preponderance to economic account even in
-such a relatively simple matter as the payment of an indemnity, the
-suggestion was met with all but universal derision. European economists
-of international reputation implied that an author who could make a
-suggestion of that kind was just playing with paradox for the purpose of
-notoriety. And as for newspaper criticism--it revealed the fact that in
-the minds of the critics it was as simple a matter for an army to 'take'
-a nation's wealth once military victory had been achieved, as it would
-be for a big schoolboy to take an apple from a little one.
-
-Incidentally, the history of the indemnity negotiations illuminates
-extraordinarily the truth upon which the present writer happens so often
-to have insisted, namely, that in dealing with the economics of
-nationalism, one cannot dissociate from the problem the moral facts
-which make the nationalism--without which there would be no
-nationalisms, and therefore no 'international' economics.
-
-A book by the present author published some fifteen years ago has a
-chapter entitled 'The Indemnity Futility.' In the first edition the main
-emphasis of the chapter was thrown on this suggestion: on the morrow of
-a great war the victor would be in no temper to see the foreign trade of
-his beaten enemy expand by leaps and bounds, yet by no other means than
-by an immense foreign trade could a nation pay an indemnity commensurate
-with the vast expenditure of modern war. The idea that it would be paid
-in 'money,' which by some economic witchcraft should not involve the
-export of goods, was declared to be a gross and ignorant fallacy. The
-traders of the victorious nation would have to face a greatly sharpened
-competition from the beaten nation; or the victor would have to go
-without any very considerable indemnity. The chapter takes the ground
-that an indemnity is not in terms of theoretical economics an
-impossibility: it merely indicates the indispensable condition of
-securing it--the revival of the enemy's economic strength--and suggests
-that this would present for the victorious nation, not only a practical
-difficulty of internal politics (the pressure of Protectionist groups)
-but a grave political difficulty arising out of the theory upon which
-defence by preponderant isolated national power is based. A country
-possessing the economic strength to pay a vast indemnity is of potential
-military strength. And this is a risk your nationalists will not accept.
-
-Even friendly Free Trade critics shook their heads at this and implied
-that the argument was a reversion to Protectionist illusions for the
-purpose of making a case. That misunderstanding (for the argument does
-not involve acceptance of Protectionist premises) seemed so general that
-in subsequent editions of the book this particular passage was
-deleted.[9]
-
-It is not necessary now to labour the point, in view of all that has
-happened in Paris. The dilemma suggested fifteen years ago is precisely
-the dilemma which confronted the makers of the Peace Treaty; it is,
-indeed, precisely the dilemma which confronts us to-day.
-
-It applies not only to the Indemnity, Reparations, but to our entire
-policy, to larger aspects of our relations with the enemy. Hence the
-paralysis which results from the two mutually exclusive aims of the
-Treaty of Versailles: the desire on the one hand to reduce the enemy's
-strength by checking his economic vitality--and on the other to restore
-the general productivity of Europe, to which the economic life of the
-enemy is indispensable.
-
-France found herself, at the end of the War, in a desperate financial
-position and in dire need of all the help which could come from the
-enemy towards the restoration of her devastated districts. She presented
-demands for reparation running to vast, unprecedented sums. So be it.
-Germany then was to be permitted to return to active and productive
-work, to be permitted to have the iron and the other raw materials
-necessary for the production of the agricultural machinery, the building
-material and other sorts of goods France needed. Not the least in the
-world! Germany was to produce this great mass of wealth, but her
-factories were to remain closed, her rolling stock was to be taken from
-her, she was to have neither food nor raw materials. This is not some
-malicious travesty of the attitude which prevailed at the time that the
-Treaty was made. It was, and to a large extent still is, the position
-taken by many French publicists as well as by some in England. Mr.
-Vanderlip, the American banker, describes in his book[10] the attitude
-which he found in Paris during the Conference in these words: 'The
-French burn to milk the cow but insist first that its throat must be
-cut.'
-
-Despite the lessons of the year which followed the signing of the
-Treaty, one may doubt whether even now the nature of wealth and 'money'
-has come home to the Chauvinists of the Entente countries. The demand
-that we should at one and the same time forbid Germany to sell so much
-as a pen-knife in the markets of the world and yet compel her to pay us
-a tribute which could only be paid by virtue of a foreign trade greater
-than any which she has been able to maintain in the past--these mutually
-exclusive demands are still made in our own Parliament and Press.
-
-How powerfully the Nationalist fears operate to obscure the plain
-alternatives is revealed in a letter of M. Andr� Tardieu, written more
-than eighteen months after the Armistice.
-
-M. Tardieu, who was M. Clemenceau's political lieutenant in the framing
-of the Treaty, and one of the principal inspirers of the French policy,
-writing in July, 1920, long after the condition of Europe and the
-Continent's economic dependence on Germany had become visible, 'warns'
-us of the 'danger' that Germany may recover unless the Treaty is applied
-in all its rigour! He says:--
-
-     'Remember your own history and remember what the _rat de terre de
-     cousin_ which Great Britain regarded with such disdain after the
-     Treaty of Frankfurt became in less than forty years. We shall see
-     Germany recover economically, profiting by the ruins she has made
-     in other countries, with a rapidity which will astonish the world.
-     When that day arrives, if we have given way at Spa to the madness
-     of letting her off part of the debt that was born of her crime, no
-     courses will be too strong for the Governments which allowed
-     themselves to be duped. M. Clemenceau always said to British and
-     American statesmen: "We of France understand Germany better than
-     you." M. Clemenceau was right, and in bringing his colleagues round
-     to his point of view he did good work for the welfare of humanity.
-     If the work of last year is to be undone, the world will be
-     delivered up to the economic hegemony of Germany before twenty-five
-     years have passed. There could be no better proof than the recent
-     despatches of _The Times_ correspondent in Germany, which bear
-     witness to the fever of production which consumes Herr Stinnes and
-     his like. Such evidence is stronger than the biased statistics of
-     Mr Keynes. Those who refuse to take it into account will be the
-     criminals in the eyes of their respective countries.'[11]
-
-Note M. Tardieu's argument. He fears the restoration of Germany
-industry, _unless_ we make her pay the whole indemnity. That is to say,
-in other words, if we compel Germany to produce during the next
-twenty-five years something like ten thousand millions worth of wealth
-_over and above her own needs_, involving as it must a far greater
-output from her factories, mines, shipyards, laboratories, a far greater
-development of her railways, ports, canals, a far greater efficiency and
-capacity in her workers than has ever been known in the past, if that
-takes place as it must if we are to get an indemnity on the French
-scale, why, in that case, there will be no risk of Germany's making too
-great an economic recovery!
-
-The English Press is not much better. It was in December, 1918, that
-Professor Starling presented to the British Government his report
-showing that unless Germany had more food she would be utterly unable to
-pay any large indemnity to aid in reparations to France. Fully eighteen
-months later we find the _Daily Mail_ (June 18, 1920) rampaging and
-shouting itself hoarse at the monstrous discovery that the Government
-have permitted Germans to purchase wheat! Yet the _Mail_ has been
-foremost in insisting upon France's dire need for a German indemnity in
-order to restore devastated districts. If the _Mail_ is really
-representative of John Bull, then that person is at present in the
-position of a farmer who at seed-time is made violently angry at the
-suggestion that grain should be taken for the purpose of sowing the
-land, and shouts that it is a wicked proposal to take food from the
-mouths of his children. Although the Northcliffe Press has itself
-published page advertisements (from the Save the Children Fund)
-describing the incredible and appalling conditions in Europe, the _Daily
-Mail_ shouts in its leading article: 'Is British Food to go to the
-Boches?' The thing is in the best war style. 'Is there any reason why
-the Briton should be starved to feed the German?' asks the _Mail_. And
-there follows, of course, the usual invective about the submarines, war
-criminals, the sinking of hospital ships, and the approval by the whole
-German people of all these crimes.
-
-We get here, as at every turn and twist of our policy, not any
-recognition of interdependence, but a complete repudiation of that idea,
-and an assumption, instead, of a conflict of interest. If the children
-of Vienna or Berlin are to be fed, then it is assumed that it must be at
-the expense of the children of Paris and London. The wealth of the world
-is conceived as a fixed quantity, unaffected by any process of
-co-operation between the peoples sharing the world. The idea is, of
-course, an utter fallacy. French or Belgian children will have more, not
-less, if we take measures to avoid European conditions in which the
-children of Vienna are left to die. If, during the winter of 1919-1920,
-French children died from sickness due to lack of fuel, it was because
-the German coal was not delivered, and the German coal was not delivered
-because, among other things, of general disorganization of transport, of
-lack of rolling stock, of underfeeding of the miners, of collapse of the
-currency, political unrest, uncertainty of the future.
-
-It is one of the contradictions of the whole situation that France
-herself gives intermittent recognition to the fact of this
-interdependence. When, at Spa, it became evident that coal simply could
-not be delivered in the quantities demanded unless Germany had some
-means of buying imported food, France consented to what was in fact a
-loan to Germany (to the immense mystification of certain journalistic
-critics in Paris). One is prompted to ask what those who, before the War
-so scornfully treated the present writer for throwing doubts upon the
-feasibility of a post-war indemnity, would have said had he predicted
-that on the morrow of victory, the victor, instead of collecting a vast
-indemnity would from the simplest motives of self-protection, out of his
-own direly depleted store of capital, be advancing money to the
-vanquished.[12]
-
-The same inconsistency runs through much of our post-war behaviour. The
-famine in Central Europe has become so appalling that very great sums
-are collected in Britain and America for its relief. Yet the reduced
-productivity out of which the famine has arisen was quite obviously
-deliberately designed, and most elaborately planned by the economic
-provisions of the Treaty and by the blockades prolonged after the
-Armistice, for months in the case of Germany and years in the case of
-Russia. And at the very time that advertisements were appearing in the
-_Daily Mail_ for 'Help to Starving Europe,' and only a few weeks before
-France consented to advance money for the purpose of feeding Germany,
-that paper was working up 'anti-Hun stunts' for the purpose of using
-our power to prevent any food whatsoever going to Boches. It is also a
-duplication of the American phenomenon already touched upon: One Bill
-before Congress for the loaning of American money to Europe in order
-that cotton and wheat may find a market: another Bill before the same
-Congress designed, by a stiffly increased tariff, to keep out European
-goods so that the loans can never be repaid.[13]
-
-The experience of France in the attempt to exact coal by the use of
-military pressure throws a good deal of light upon what is really
-annexed when a victor takes over territory containing, say, coal; as
-also upon the question of getting the coal when it has been annexed. 'If
-we need coal,' wrote a Paris journalist plaintively during the Spa
-Conference, 'why in heaven's name don't we go and take it.' The
-implication being that it could be 'taken' without payment, for nothing.
-But even if France were to occupy the Ruhr and to administer the mines,
-the plant would have to be put in order, rolling stock provided,
-railroads restored, and, as France has already learned, miners fed and
-clothed and housed. But that costs money--to be paid as part of the cost
-of the coal. If Germany is compelled to provide those things--mining
-machinery, rolling stock, rails, miners' houses and clothing and
-food--we are confronted with pretty much the same dilemma as we
-encounter in compelling the payment of an indemnity. A Germany that can
-buy foreign food is a Germany of restored credit; a Germany that can
-furnish rolling stock, rails, mining machinery, clothing and housing for
-miners, is a Germany restored to general economic health--and
-potentially powerful. That Germany France fears to create. And even
-though we resort to a military occupation, using forced labour
-militarily controlled, we are faced by the need of all the things that
-must still enter in the getting of the coal, from miners' food and
-houses to plant and steel rails. Their cost must be charged against the
-coal obtained. And the amount of coal obtained in return for a given
-outlay will depend very largely, as we know in England to our cost, upon
-the willingness of the miner himself. Even the measure of resistance
-provoked in British miners by disputes about workers' control and
-Nationalisation, has meant a great falling off in output. But at least
-they are working for their own countrymen. What would be their output if
-they felt they were working for an enemy, and that every ton they mined
-might merely result in increasing the ultimate demands which that enemy
-would make upon their country? Should we get even eighty per cent, of
-the pre-war output or anything like it?[14] Yet that diminished output
-would have to stand the cost of all the permanent charges aforesaid.
-Would the cost of the coal to France, under some scheme of forced
-labour, be in the end less than if she were to buy it in the ordinary
-commercial way from German mines, as she did before the War? This latter
-method would almost certainly be in economic terms more advantageous.
-Where is the economic advantage of the military method? This, of course,
-is only the re-discovery of the old truth that forced or slave labour is
-more costly than paid labour.
-
-The ultimate explanation of the higher cost of slave labour is the
-ultimate explanation of the difficulty of using political power for
-economic ends, of basing our economic security upon military
-predominance. Here is France, with her old enemy helpless and prostrate.
-She needs his work for reparations, for indemnities, for coal. To
-perform that work the prostrate enemy must get upon his feet. If he
-does, France fears that he will knock her down. From that fear arise
-contradictory policies, self-stultifying courses. If she overcomes her
-fear sufficiently to allow the enemy to produce a certain amount of
-wealth for her, it is extremely likely that more than the amount of that
-wealth will have to be spent in protecting herself against the danger of
-the enemy's recovered vitality. Even when wars were less expensive than
-they are, indemnities were soon absorbed in the increase of armament
-necessitated by the Treaties which exacted the indemnities.
-
-Again, this is a very ancient story. The victor on the Egyptian vase has
-his captured enemy on the end of a rope. We say that one is free, the
-other bond. But as Spencer has shown us, both are bond. The victor is
-tied to the vanquished: if he should let go the prisoner would escape.
-The victor spends his time seeing that the prisoner does not escape; the
-prisoner his time and energy trying to escape. The combined efforts in
-consequence are not turned to the production of wealth; they are
-'cancelled out' by being turned one against another. Both may come near
-to starvation in that condition if much labour is needed to produce
-food. Only if they strike a bargain and co-operate will they be in the
-position each to turn his energy to the best economic account.
-
-But though the story is ancient, men have not yet read it. These pages
-are an attempt to show why it has not been read.
-
-Let us summarise the conclusions so far reached, namely:--
-
-     That predominant political and military power is important to exact
-     wealth is shown by the inability of the Allies to turn their power
-     to really profitable account; notably by the failure of France to
-     alleviate her financial distress by adequate reparations--even
-     adequate quantities of coal--from Germany; and by the failure of
-     the Allied statesmen as a whole, wielding a concentration of power
-     greater perhaps than any known in history to arrest an economic
-     disintegration, which is not only the cause of famine and vast
-     suffering, but is a menace to Allied interest, particularly to the
-     economic security of Britain.
-
-     The causes of this impotence are both mechanical and moral. If
-     another is to render active service in the production of wealth for
-     us--particularly services of any technical complexity in industry,
-     finance, commerce--he must have strength for that activity,
-     knowledge, and the instruments. But all those things can be turned
-     against us as means of resistance to our coercion. To the degree
-     to which we make him strong for our service we make him strong for
-     resistance to our will. As resistance increases we are compelled to
-     use an increasing proportion of what we obtain from him in
-     protecting ourselves against him. Energies cancel each other,
-     indemnities must be used in preparation for the next war. Only
-     voluntary co-operation can save this waste and create an effective
-     combination for the production of wealth that can be utilised for
-     the preservation of life.
-
-
-6
-
-_The Ultimate Moral Factor_
-
-The problem is not merely one of foreign politics or international
-relationship. The passions which obscure the real nature of the process
-by which men live are present in the industrial struggle also,
-and--especially in the case of communities situated as is the
-British--make of the national and international order one problem.
-
-It is here suggested that:--
-
-     Into the processes which maintain life within the nation an
-     increasing measure of consent and acquiescence by all parties must
-     enter: physical coercion becomes increasingly impotent to ensure
-     them. The problem of declining production by (_inter alios_)
-     miners, cannot be solved by increasing the army or police. The
-     dictatorship of the proletariat fails before the problem of
-     exacting big crops by the coercion of the peasant or countryman. It
-     would fail still more disastrously before the problem of obtaining
-     food or raw materials from foreigners (without which the British
-     could not live) in the absence of a money of stable value.
-
-One of the most suggestive facts of the post-war situation is that
-European civilization almost breaks down before one of the simplest of
-its mechanical problems: that of 'moving some stones from where they
-are not needed to the places where they are needed,' in other words
-before the problem of mining and distributing coal. Millions of children
-have died in agony in France during this last year or two because there
-was no coal to transport the food, to warm the buildings. Coal is the
-first need of our massed populations. Its absence means collapse of
-everything--of transport, of the getting of food to the towns, of
-furnishing the machinery and fertilisers by which food can be produced
-in sufficient quantity. It is warmth, it is clothing, it is light, it is
-the daily newspaper, it is water, it is communication. All our
-elaboration of knowledge and science fails in the presence of this
-problem of 'taking some stones from one heap and putting them on
-another.' The coal famine is a microcosm of the world's present failure.
-
-But if all those things--and spiritual things also are involved because
-the absence of material well-being means widespread moral evils--depend
-upon coal, the getting of the coal itself is dependent upon them. We
-have touched upon the importance of the one element of sheer goodwill on
-the part of the miners as a factor in the production of coal; upon the
-hopelessness of making good its absence by physical coercion. But we
-have also seen that just as the attempted use of coercion in the
-international field, though ineffective to exact necessary service or
-exchange, can and does produce paralysis of the indispensable processes,
-so the 'power' which the position of the miner gives him is a power of
-paralysis only.
-
-A later chapter shows that the instinct of industrial groups to solve
-their difficulties by simple coercion, the sheer assertion of power, is
-very closely related to the psychology of nationalism, so disruptive in
-the international field. Bolshevism, in the sense of belief in the
-effectiveness of coercion, represents the transfer of jingoism to the
-industrial struggle. It involves the same fallacies. A mining strike can
-bring the industrial machine to a full stop; to set that machine to work
-for the feeding of the population--which involves the co-ordination of
-a vast number of industries, the purchase of food and raw material from
-foreigners, who will only surrender it in return for promises to pay
-which they believe will be fulfilled--means not only technical
-knowledge, it means also the presence of a certain predisposition to
-co-operation. This Balkanised Europe which cannot feed itself has all
-the technical knowledge that it ever had. But its natural units are
-dominated by a certain temper which make impossible the co-operations by
-which alone the knowledge can be applied to the available natural
-resources.
-
-It is also suggestive that the virtual abandonment of the gold standard
-is playing much the same r�le (rendering visible the inefficiency of
-coercion) in the struggle between the industrial that it is between the
-national groups. A union strikes for higher wages and is successful. The
-increase is granted--and is paid in paper money.
-
-When wages were paid in gold an advance in wages, gained as the result
-of strike or agitation, represented, temporarily at least, a real
-victory for the workers. Prices might ultimately rise and wipe out the
-advantage, but with a gold currency price movements have nothing like
-the rapidity and range which is the case when unlimited paper money can
-be printed. An advance in wages paid in paper may mean nothing more than
-a mere readjustment of symbols. The advance, in other words, can be
-cancelled by 'a morning's work of the inflationist' as a currency expert
-has put it. The workers in these conditions can never know whether that
-which they are granted with the right hand of increased wages will not
-be taken away by the left hand of inflation.
-
-In order to be certain that they are not simply tricked, the workers
-must be in a position to control the conditions which determine the
-value of currency. But again, that means the co-ordination of the most
-complex economic processes, processes which can only be ensured by
-bargaining with other groups and with foreign countries.
-
-This problem would still present itself as acutely on the morrow of the
-establishment of a British Soviet Republic as it presents itself to-day.
-If the British Soviets could not buy food and raw materials in twenty
-different centres throughout the world they could not feed the people.
-We should be blockaded, not by ships, but by the worthlessness of our
-money. Russia, which needs only an infinitesimal proportion relatively
-of foreign imports has gold and the thing of absolutely universal need,
-food. We have no gold--only things which a world fast disintegrating
-into isolated peasantries is learning somehow to do without.
-
-Before blaming the lack of 'social sense' on the part of striking miners
-or railwaymen let us recall the fact that the temper and attitude to
-life and the social difficulties which lie at the bottom of the
-Syndicalist philosophy have been deliberately cultivated by Government,
-Press, and Church, during five years for the purposes of war; and that
-the selected ruling order have shown the same limitation of vision in
-not one whit less degree.
-
-Think what Versailles actually did and what it might have done.
-
-Here when the Conference met, was a Europe on the edge of famine--some
-of it over the edge. Every country in the world, including the
-wealthiest and most powerful, like America, was faced with social
-maladjustment in one form or another. In America it was an
-inconvenience, but in the cities of a whole continent--in Russia,
-Poland, Germany, Austria--it was shortly to mean ill-health, hunger,
-misery, and agony to millions of children and their mothers. Terms of
-the study like 'the interruption of economic processes' were to be
-translated into such human terms as infantile cholera, tuberculosis,
-typhus, hunger-oedema. These, as events proved, were to undermine the
-social sanity of half a world.
-
-The acutest statesmen that Europe can produce, endowed with the most
-autocratic power, proceed to grapple with the situation. In what way do
-they apply that power to the problem of production and distribution, of
-adding to the world's total stock of goods, which nearly every
-government in the world was in a few weeks to be proclaiming as
-humanity's first need, the first condition of reconstruction and
-regeneration?
-
-The Treaty and the policy pursued since the Armistice towards Russia
-tell us plainly enough. Not only do the political arrangements of the
-Treaty, as we have seen, ignore the needs of maintaining the machinery
-of production in Europe[15] but they positively discourage and in many
-cases are obviously framed to prevent, production over very large areas.
-
-The Treaty, as some one has said, deprived Germany of both the means and
-the motive of production. No adequate provision was made for enabling
-the import of food and raw materials, without which Germany could not
-get to work on the scale demanded by the indemnity claims; and the
-motive for industry was undermined by leaving the indemnity claims
-indeterminate.
-
-The victor's passion, as we have seen, blinded him to the indispensable
-condition of the very demands which he was making. Europe was unable
-temperamentally to reconcile itself to the conditions of that increased
-productivity, by which alone it was to be saved. It is this element in
-the situation--its domination, that is, by an uncalculating popular
-passion poured out lavishly in support of self-destructive
-policies--which prompts one to doubt whether these disruptive forces
-find their roots merely in the capitalist organization of society: still
-less whether they are due to the conscious machinations of a small group
-of capitalists. No considerable section of capitalism any where has any
-interest in the degree of paralysis that has been produced. Capitalism
-may have overreached itself by stimulating nationalist hostilities until
-they have got beyond control. Even so, it is the unseeing popular
-passion that furnishes the capitalist with his arm, and is the factor of
-greatest danger.
-
-Examine for a moment the economic manifestation of international
-hostilities. There has just begun in the United States a clamorous
-campaign for the denunciation of the Panama Treaty which places British
-ships on an equality with American. American ships must be exempt from
-the tolls. 'Don't we own the Canal?' ask the leaders of this campaign.
-There is widespread response to it. But of the millions of Americans who
-will become perhaps passionately angry over that matter and extremely
-anti-British, how many have any shares in any ships that can possibly
-benefit by the denunciation of the Treaty? Not one in a thousand. It is
-not an economic motive operating at all.
-
-Capitalism--the management of modern industry by a small economic
-autocracy of owners of private capital--has certainly a part in the
-conflicts that produce war. But that part does not arise from the direct
-interest that the capitalists of one nation as a whole have in the
-destruction of the trade or industry of another. Such a conclusion
-ignores the most elementary facts in the modern organisation of
-industry. And it is certainly not true to say that British capitalists,
-as a distinct group, were more disposed than the public as a whole to
-insist upon the Carthaginian features of the Treaty. Everything points
-rather to the exact contrary. Public opinion as reflected, for instance,
-by the December, 1918, election, was more ferociously anti-German than
-capitalists are likely to have been. It is certainly not too much to say
-that if the Treaty had been made by a group of British--or
-French--bankers, merchants, shipowners, insurance men, and
-industrialists, liberated from all fear of popular resentment, the
-economic life of Central Europe would not have been crushed as it has
-been.
-
-Assuredly, such a gathering of capitalists would have included groups
-having direct interest in the destruction of German competition. But it
-would also have included others having an interest in the restoration of
-the German market and German credit, and one influence would in some
-measure have cancelled the other.
-
-As a simple fact we know that not all British capitalists, still less
-British financiers, _are_ interested in the destruction of German
-prosperity. Central Europe was one of the very greatest markets
-available for British industry, and the recovery of that market may
-constitute for a very large number of manufacturers, merchants,
-shippers, insurance companies, and bankers, a source of immense
-potential profit. It is a perfectly arguable proposition, to put it at
-the very lowest, that British 'capitalism' has, as a whole, more to gain
-from a productive and stable Europe than from a starving and unstable
-one. There is no reason whatever to doubt the genuineness of the
-internationalism that we associate with the Manchester School of
-Capitalist Economics.
-
-But in political nationalism as a force there are no such cross currents
-cancelling out the hostility of one nation to another. Economically,
-Britain is not one entity and Germany another. But as a sentimental
-concept, each may perfectly well be an entity; and in the imagination of
-John Citizen, in his political capacity, voting on the eve of the Peace
-Conference, Britain is a triumphant and heroic 'person,' while Germany
-is an evil and cruel 'person,' who must be punished, and whose pockets
-must be searched. John has neither the time nor has he felt the need,
-for a scientific attitude in politics. But when it is no longer a
-question of giving his vote, but of earning his income, of succeeding as
-a merchant or shipowner in an uncertain future, he will be thoroughly
-scientific. When it comes to carrying cargoes or selling cotton goods,
-he can face facts. And, in the past at least, he knows that he has not
-sold those materials to a wicked person called 'Germany,' but to a
-quite decent and human trader called Schmidt.
-
-What I am suggesting here is that for an explanation of the passions
-which have given us the Treaty of Versailles we must look much more to
-rival nationalisms than to rival capitalisms; not to hatreds that are
-the outgrowth of a real conflict of interests, but to certain
-nationalist conceptions, 'myths,' as Sorel has it. To these conceptions
-economic hostilities may assuredly attach themselves. At the height of
-the war-hatred of things German, a shopkeeper who had the temerity to
-expose German post cards or prints for sale would have risked the
-sacking of his shop. The sackers would not have been persons engaged in
-the post card producing trade. Their motive would have been patriotic.
-If their feelings lasted over the war, they would vote against the
-admission of German post cards. They would not be moved by economic,
-still less by capitalistic motives. These motives do enter, as we shall
-see presently, into the problems raised by the present condition of
-Europe. But it is important to see at what point and in what way. The
-point for the moment--and it has immense practical importance--is that
-the Treaty of Versailles and its economic consequences should be
-attributed less to capitalism (bad as that has come to be in its total
-results) than to the pressure of a public opinion that had crystallised
-round nationalist conceptions.[16]
-
-Here, at the end of 1920, is the British Press still clamouring for the
-exclusion of German toys. Such an agitation presumably pleases the
-millions of readers. They are certainly not toymakers or sellers; they
-have no commercial interest in the matter save that 'their toys will
-cost them more' if the agitation succeeds. They are actuated by
-nationalist hostility.
-
-If Germany is not to be allowed to sell even toys, there will be very
-few things indeed that she can sell. We are to go on with the policy of
-throttling Europe in order that a nation whose industrial activity is
-indispensable to Europe shall not become strong. We do not see, it is
-true, the relation between the economic revival of Europe and the
-industrial recuperation of Germany; we do not see it because we can be
-made to feel anger at the idea of German toys for British children so
-much more readily than we can be made to see the causes which deprive
-French children of warmth in their schoolrooms. European society seems
-to be in the position of an ill-disciplined child that cannot bring
-itself to swallow the medicine that would relieve it of its pain. The
-passions which have been cultivated in five years of war must be
-indulged, whatever the ultimate cost to ourselves. The judgment of such
-a society is swamped in those passions.
-
-The restoration of much of Europe will involve many vast and complex
-problems of reconstruction. But here, in the alternatives presented by
-the payment of a German indemnity, for instance, is a very simple issue:
-if Germany is to pay, she must produce goods, that is, she must be
-economically restored; if we fear her economic restoration, then we
-cannot obtain the execution of the reparation clauses of the Treaty. But
-that simple issue one of the greatest figures of the Conference cannot
-face. He has not, eighteen months after the Treaty, emerged from the
-most elementary confusion concerning it. If the psychology of
-Nationalism renders so simple a problem insoluble, what will be its
-effect upon the problem of Europe as a whole?
-
-Again, it may be that shipowners are behind the American agitation and
-toy manufacturers behind the British. A Coffin Trust might intrigue
-against measures to prevent a repetition of the influenza epidemic. But
-what should we say of the fitness for self-government of a people that
-should lend itself by millions to such an intrigue of Coffin-makers,
-showing as the result of its propaganda a fierce hostility to
-sanitation? We should conclude that it deserved to die. If Europe went
-to war as the result of the intrigues of a dozen capitalists, its
-civilisation is not worth saving; it cannot be saved, for as soon as the
-capitalists were removed, its inherent helplessness would place it at
-the mercy of some other form of exploitation.
-
-Its only hope lies in a capacity for self-management, self-rule, which
-means self-control. But a few financial intriguers, we are told, have
-only to pronounce certain words, 'fatherland above all,' 'national
-honour,' put about a few stories of atrocities, clamour for revenge, for
-the millions to lose all self-control, to become completely blind as to
-where they are going, what they are doing, to lose all sense of the
-ultimate consequences of their acts.
-
-The gravest fact in the history of the last ten years is not the fact of
-war; it is the temper of mind, the blindness of conduct on the part of
-the millions, which alone, ultimately, explains our policies. The
-suffering and cost of war may well be the best choice of evils, like the
-suffering and cost of surgery, or the burdens we assume for a clearly
-conceived moral end. But what we have seen in recent history is not a
-deliberate choice of ends with a consciousness of moral and material
-cost. We see a whole nation demanding fiercely in one breath certain
-things, and in the next just as angrily demanding other things which
-make compliance with the first impossible; a whole nation or a whole
-continent given over to an orgy of hate, retaliation, the indulgence of
-self-destructive passions. And this collapse of the human mind does but
-become the more appalling if we accept the explanation that 'wars are
-caused by capitalism' or 'Junkerthum'; if we believe that six Jew
-financiers sitting in a room can thus turn millions into something
-resembling madmen. No indictment of human reason could be more severe.
-
-To assume that millions will, without any real knowledge of why they do
-it or of the purpose behind the behests they obey, not only take the
-lives of others and give their own, but turn first in one direction and
-then in another the flood of their deepest passions of hate and
-vengeance, just as a little group of mean little men, manipulating mean
-little interests, may direct, is to argue a moral helplessness and
-shameful docility on the part of those millions which would deprive the
-future of all hope of self-government. And to assume that they are _not_
-unknowing as to the alleged cause--that would bring us to moral
-phantasmagoria.
-
-We shall get nearer to the heart of our problem if, instead of asking
-perpetually '_Who_ caused the War?' and indicting 'Capitalists' or
-'Junkers,' we ask the question: 'What is the cause of that state of mind
-and temper in the millions which made them on the one side welcome war
-(as we allege of the German millions), or on the other side makes them
-acclaim, or impose, blockades, famines,' 'punitive' 'Treaties of
-Peace?'
-
-Obviously 'selfishness' is not operating so far as the mass is
-concerned, except of course in the sense that a yielding to the passion
-of hate is self-indulgence. Selfishness, in the sense of care for social
-security and well-being, might save the structure of European society.
-It would bring the famine to an end. But we have what a French writer
-has called a 'holy and unselfish hate.' Balkan peasants prefer to burn
-their wheat rather than send it to the famished city across the river.
-Popular English newspapers agitate against a German trade which is the
-only hope of necessitous Allies obtaining any considerable reparation
-from Germany. A society in which each member is more desirous of hurting
-his neighbour than of promoting his own welfare, is one in which the
-aggregate will to destruction is more powerful than the will to
-preservation.
-
-The history of these last years shows with painful clarity that as
-between groups of men hostilities and hates are aroused very much more
-easily than any emotion of comradeship. And the hate is a hungrier and
-more persistent emotion than the comradeship. The much proclaimed
-fellowship of the Allies, 'cemented by the blood shed on the field,'
-vanished rapidly. But hate remained and found expression in the social
-struggle, in fierce repressions, in bickerings, fears, and rancours
-between those who yesterday fought side by side. Yet the price of
-survival is, as we have seen, an ever closer cohesion and social
-co-operation.
-
-And while it is undoubtedly true that the 'hunger of hate'--the actual
-desire to have something to hate--may so warp our judgment as to make us
-see a conflict of interest where none exists, it is also true that a
-sense of conflict of vital interest is a great feeder of hate. And that
-sense of conflict may well become keener as the problem of man's
-struggle for sustenance on the earth becomes more acute, as his numbers
-increase and the pressure upon that sustenance becomes greater.
-
-Once more, as millions of children are born at our very doors into a
-world that cannot feed them, condemned, if they live at all, to form a
-race that will be defective, stunted, unhealthy, abnormal, this question
-which Malthus very rightly taught our grandfathers to regard as the
-final and ultimate question of their Political Economy, comes
-dramatically into the foreground. How can the earth, which is limited,
-find food for an increase of population which is unlimited?
-
-The haunting anxieties which lie behind the failure to find a conclusive
-answer to that question, probably affect political decisions and deepen
-hostilities and animosities even where the reason is ill-formulated or
-unconscious. Some of us, perhaps, fear to face the question lest we be
-confronted with morally terrifying alternatives. Let posterity decide
-its own problems. But such fears, and the motives prompted by them, do
-not disappear by our refusal to face them. Though hidden, they still
-live, and under various moral disguises influence our conduct.
-
-Certainly the fears inspired by the Malthusian theory and the facts upon
-which it is based, have affected our attitude to war; affected the
-feeling of very many for whom war is not avowedly, as it is openly and
-avowedly to some of its students, 'the Struggle for Bread.'[17]
-
-_The Great Illusion_ was an attempt frankly to face this ultimate
-question of the bearing of war upon man's struggle for survival. It took
-the ground that the victory of one nation over another, however
-complete, does not solve the problem; it makes it worse in that the
-conditions and instincts which war accentuates express themselves in
-nationalist and racial rivalries, create divisions that embarrass and
-sometimes make impossible the widespread co-operation by which alone man
-can effectively exploit nature.
-
-That demonstration as a whole belongs to the pages that follow. But
-bearing upon the narrower question of war in relation to the world's
-good, this much is certain:--
-
-If the object of the combatants in the War was to make sure of their
-food, then indeed is the result in striking contrast with that
-intention, for food is assuredly more insecure than ever alike for
-victor and vanquished. They differ only in the degree of insecurity. The
-War, the passions which it has nurtured, the political arrangements
-which those passions have dictated, have given us a Europe immeasurably
-less able to meet its sustenance problem than it was before. So much
-less able that millions, who before the War could well support
-themselves by their own labour, are now unable so to do and have to be
-fed by drawing upon the slender stocks of their conquerors--stocks very
-much less than when some at least of those conquerors were in the
-position of defeated peoples.
-
-This is not the effect of the material destruction of war, of the mere
-battering down of houses and bridges and factories by the soldier.
-
-The physical devastation, heart-breaking as the spectacle of it is, is
-not the difficult part of the problem, nor quantitatively the most
-important.[18] It is not the devastated districts that are suffering
-from famine, nor their losses which appreciably diminish the world
-supply of food. It is in cities in which not a house has been destroyed,
-in which, indeed, every wheel in every factory is still intact, that the
-population dies of hunger, and the children have to be fed by our
-charity. It is the fields over which not a single soldier has tramped
-that are condemned to sterility because those factories are idle, while
-the factories are condemned to idleness because the fields are sterile.
-
-The real 'economic argument' against war does not consist in the
-presentation of a balance sheet showing so much cost and destruction and
-so much gain. The real argument consists in the fact that war, and still
-more the ideas out of which it arises, produce ultimately an unworkable
-society. The physical destruction and perhaps the cost are greatly
-exaggerated. It is perhaps true that in the material foundations of
-wealth Britain is as well off to-day as before the War. It is not from
-lack of technical knowledge that the economic machine works with such
-friction: that has been considerably increased by the War. It is not
-from lack of idealism and unselfishness. There has been during the last
-five years such an outpouring of devoted unselfishness--the very hates
-have been unselfish--as history cannot equal. Millions have given their
-lives for the contrary ideals in which they believed. It is sometimes
-the ideals for which men die that make impossible their life and work
-together.
-
-The real 'economic argument,' supported by the experience of our
-victory, is that the ideas which produce war--the fears out of which it
-grows and the passions which it feeds--produce a state of mind that
-ultimately renders impossible the co-operation by which alone wealth can
-be produced and life maintained. The use of our power or our knowledge
-for the purpose of subduing Nature to our service depends upon the
-prevalence of certain ideas, ideas which underlie the 'art of living
-together.' They are something apart from mere technical knowledge which
-war, as in Germany, may increase, but which can never be a substitute
-for this 'art of living together.' (The arms, indeed, may be the
-instruments of anarchy, as in so much of Europe to-day).
-
-The War has left us a defective or perverted social sense, with a group
-of instincts and moralities that are disintegrating Western society, and
-will, unless checked, destroy it.
-
-These forces, like the 'ultimate art' which they have so nearly
-destroyed, are part of the problem of economics. For they render a
-production of wealth adequate to welfare impossible. How have they
-arisen? How can they be corrected? These questions will form an integral
-part of the problems here dealt with.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-THE OLD ECONOMY AND THE POST-WAR STATE
-
-
-This chapter suggests the following:--
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The trans-national processes which enabled Europe to support itself
-before the War, were based mainly on private exchanges prompted by the
-expectation of individual advantage. They were not dependent upon
-political power. (The fifteen millions for whom German soil could not
-provide, lived by trade with countries over which Germany had no
-political control, as a similar number of British live by similar
-non-political means.)
-
-The old individualist economy has been largely destroyed by the State
-Socialism introduced for war purposes; the Nation, taking over
-individual enterprise, became trader and manufacturer in increasing
-degree. The economic clauses of the Treaty, if enforced, must prolong
-this tendency, rendering a large measure of such Socialism permanent.
-
-The change may be desirable. But if co-operation must in future be less
-as between individuals for private advantage, and much more as between
-_nations_, Governments acting in an economic capacity, the political
-emotions of nationalism will play a much larger r�le in the economic
-processes of Europe. If to Nationalist hostilities as we have known them
-in the past, is to be added the commercial rivalry of nations now
-converted into traders and capitalists, we are likely to have not a less
-but more quarrelsome world, unless the fact of interdependence is much
-more vividly realised than in the past.
-
-The facts of the preceding chapter touching the economic chaos in
-Europe, the famine, the debauchery of the currencies, the collapse of
-credit, the failure to secure indemnities, and particularly the remedies
-of an international kind to which we are now being forced, all confirm
-what had indeed become pretty evident before the War, namely, that much
-of Europe lives by virtue of an international, or, more correctly, a
-transnational economy. That is to say, there are large populations that
-cannot live at much above a coolie standard unless there is a
-considerable measure of economic co-operation across frontiers. The
-industrial countries, like Britain and Germany, can support their
-populations only by exchanging their special products and
-services--particularly coal, iron, manufactures, ocean carriage--for
-food and raw materials; while more agricultural countries like Italy and
-even Russia, can maintain their full food-producing capacity only by an
-apparatus of railways, agricultural machinery, imported coal and
-fertilisers, to which the industry of the manufacturing area is
-indispensable.
-
-That necessary international co-operation had, as a matter of fact, been
-largely developed before the War. The cheapening of transport, the
-improvement of communication, had pushed the international division of
-labour very far indeed. The material in a single bale of clothes would
-travel half round the world several times, and receive the labour of
-half a dozen nationalities, before finally reaching its consumer. But
-there was this very significant fact about the whole process;
-Governments had very little to do with it, and the process did not rest
-upon any clearly defined body of commercial right, defined in a regular
-code or law. One of the greatest of all British industries, cotton
-spinning, depended upon access to raw material under the complete
-control of a foreign State, America. (The blockade of the South in the
-War of Secession proved how absolute was the dependence of a main
-British industry upon the political decisions of a foreign Government).
-The mass of contradictory uncertainties relating to rights of neutral
-trade in war-time, known as International Law, furnished no basis of
-security at all. It did not even pretend to touch the source--the right
-of access to the material itself.
-
-That right, and the international economy that had become so
-indispensable to the maintenance of so much of the population of Western
-Europe, rested upon the expectation that the private owner of raw
-materials--the grower of wheat or cotton, or the owner of iron ore or
-coal-mines--would continue to desire to sell those things, would always,
-indeed, be compelled so to do, in order to turn them to account. The
-main aim of the Industrial Era was markets--to sell things. One heard of
-'economic invasions' before the War. This did not mean that the invader
-took things, but that he brought them--for sale. The modern industrial
-nation did not fear the loss of commodities. What it feared was their
-receipt. And the aid of Governments was mainly invoked, not for the
-purpose of preventing things leaving the country, but for the purpose of
-putting obstacles in the way of foreigners bringing commodities into the
-country. Nearly every country had 'Protection' against foreign goods.
-Very rarely did we find countries fearing to lose their goods and
-putting on export duties. Incidentally such duties are forbidden by the
-American Constitution.
-
-Before the War it would have seemed a work of supererogation to frame
-international regulations to protect the right to buy: all were
-searching for buyers. In an economic world which revolved on the
-expectation of individual profit, the competition for profit kept open
-the resources of the world.
-
-Under that system it did not matter much, economically, what political
-administration--provided always that it was an orderly one--covered the
-area in which raw materials were found, or even controlled ports and
-access to the sea. It was in no way indispensable to British industry
-that its most necessary raw material--cotton, say--should be under its
-own control. That industry had developed while the sources of the
-material were in a foreign State. Lancashire did not need to 'own'
-Louisiana. If England had 'owned' Louisiana, British cotton-spinners
-would still have had to pay for the cotton as before. When a writer
-declared before the War that Germany dreamed of the conquest of Canada
-because she needed its wheat wherewith to feed her people, he certainly
-overlooked the fact that Germany could have had the wheat of Canada on
-the same conditions as the British who 'owned' the country--and who
-certainly could not get it without paying for it.
-
-It was true before the War to write:--
-
-     'Co-operation between nations has become essential for the very
-     life of their peoples. But that co-operation does not take place as
-     between States at all. A trading corporation called "Britain" does
-     not buy cotton from another corporation called "America." A
-     manufacturer in Manchester strikes a bargain with a merchant in
-     Louisiana in order to keep a bargain with a dyer in Germany, and
-     three, or a much larger number of parties, enter into virtual, or
-     perhaps actual, contract, and form a mutually dependent economic
-     community (numbering, it may be, with the work-people in the group
-     of industries involved, some millions of individuals)--an economic
-     entity so far as one can exist which does not include all organised
-     society. The special interests of such a community may become
-     hostile to those of another community, but it will almost certainly
-     not be a "national" one, but one of a like nature, say a shipping
-     ring or groups of international bankers or Stock Exchange
-     speculators. The frontiers of such communities do not coincide with
-     the areas in which operate the functions of the State. How could a
-     State, say Britain, act on behalf of an economic entity such as
-     that just indicated? By pressure against America or Germany? But
-     the community against which the British manufacturer in this case
-     wants pressure exercised is not "America" or "Germany"--both want
-     it exercised against the shipping ring or the speculators or the
-     bankers who in part are British. If Britain injures America or
-     Germany as a whole, she injures necessarily the economic entity
-     which it was her object to protect.'[19]
-
-This line of reasoning is no longer valid, for it was based upon a
-system of economic individualism, upon a distinction between the
-functions proper to the State and those proper to the citizen. This
-individualist system has been profoundly transformed in the direction of
-national control by the measures adopted everywhere for the purposes of
-war; a transformation that the confiscatory clauses of the Treaty and
-the arrangements for the payment of the indemnity help to render
-permanent. While the old understanding or convention has been
-destroyed--or its disappearance very greatly accelerated--by the Allies,
-no new one has so far been established to take its place. To that fact
-we must ascribe much of the economic paralysis that has come upon the
-world.
-
-I am aware, of course, that the passage I have quoted did not tell the
-whole story; that already before the War the power of the political
-State was being more and more used by 'big business'; that in China,
-Mexico, Central America, the Near East, Morocco, Persia, Mesopotamia,
-wherever there was undeveloped _and disorderly_ territory, private
-enterprise was exercising pressure upon the State to use its power to
-ensure sources of raw material or areas for the investment of capital.
-That phase of the question is dealt with at greater length
-elsewhere.[20] But the actual (whatever the potential) economic
-importance of the territory about which the nations quarrelled was as
-yet, in 1914, small; the part taken by Governments in the control and
-direction of international trade was negligible. Europe lived by
-processes that went on without serious obstacle across frontiers. Little
-States, for instance, without Colonies (Scandinavia, Switzerland) not
-only maintained a standard of living for their people quite as high as
-that in the great States, but maintained it moreover by virtue of a
-foreign trade relatively as considerable. And the forces which preserved
-the international understanding by which that trade was carried on were
-obviously great.
-
-It was not true, before the War, to say that Germany had to expand her
-frontiers to feed her population. It is true that with her, as with us,
-her soil did not produce the food needed for the populations living on
-it; as with us, about fifteen millions were being fed by means of trade
-with territories which politically she did not 'own,' and did not need
-to 'own'--with Russia, with South America, with Asia, with our own
-Colonies. Like us Germany was turning her coal and iron into bread. The
-process could have gone on almost indefinitely, so long as the coal and
-iron lasted, as the tendency to territorial division of labour was being
-intensified by the development of transport and invention. (The pressure
-of the population on the food resources of these islands was possibly
-greater under the Heptarchy than at present, when they support
-forty-five millions.) Under the old economic order conquest meant, not a
-transfer of wealth from one set of persons to another--for the soil of
-Alsace, for instance, remained in the hands of those who had owned it
-under France--but a change of administration. The change may have been
-as unwarrantable and oppressive as you will, but it did not involve
-economic strangulation of the conquered peoples or any very fundamental
-economic change at all. French economic life did not wither as the
-result of the changes of frontier in 1872, and French factories were not
-shut off from raw material, French cities were not stricken with
-starvation as the result of France's defeat. Her economic and financial
-recovery was extraordinarily rapid; her financial position a year or two
-after the War was sounder than that of Germany. It seemed, therefore,
-that if Germany, of all nations, and Bismarck, of all statesmen, could
-thus respect the convention which after war secured the immunity of
-private trade and property, it must indeed be deeply rooted in
-international comity.
-
-Indeed, the 'trans-national' economic activities of individuals, which
-had ensued so widespread an international economy, and the principle of
-the immunity of private property from seizure after conquest, had become
-so firmly rooted in international relationship as to survive all the
-changes of war and conquest. They were based on a principle that had
-received recognition in English Treaties dating back to the time of
-Magna Carta, and that had gradually become a convention of international
-relationship.
-
-At Versailles the Germans pointed out that their country was certainly
-not left with resources to feed its population. The Allies replied to
-that, not by denying the fact--to which their own advisers, like Mr
-Hoover, have indeed pointedly called attention--but as follows:--
-
-     'It would appear to be a fundamental fallacy that the political
-     control of a country is essential in order to procure a reasonable
-     share of its products. Such a proposal finds no foundation in
-     economic law or history.'[21]
-
-In making their reply the Allies seemed momentarily to have overlooked
-one fact--their own handiwork in the Treaty.
-
-Before the War it would have been a true reply. But the Allies have
-transformed what were, before the War, dangerous fallacies into
-monstrous truths.
-
-President Wilson has described the position of Germany under the Treaty
-in these terms:--
-
-     'The Treaty of Peace sets up a great Commission, known as the
-     Reparations Commission.... That Reparation Commission can
-     determine the currents of trade, the conditions of credit, of
-     international credit; it can determine how much Germany is going to
-     buy, where it is going to buy, and how it is going to pay for
-     it.'[22]
-
-In other words, it is no longer open to Germany, as the result of
-guarantees of free movement accorded to individual traders, to carry on
-that process by which before the War she supported herself. Individual
-Germans cannot now, as heretofore, get raw materials by dealing with
-foreign individuals, without reference to their nationality. Germans are
-now, in fact, placed in the position of having to deal through their
-State, which in turn deals with other States. To buy wheat or iron, they
-cannot as heretofore go to individuals, to the grower or mine-owner, and
-offer a price; the thing has to be done through Governments. We have
-come much nearer to a condition in which the States do indeed 'own'
-(they certainly control) their raw material.
-
-The most striking instance is that of access to the Lorraine iron, which
-before the War furnished three-fourths of the raw material of Germany's
-basic industry. Under the individualist system, in which 'the buyer is
-king' in which efforts were mainly directed to finding markets, no
-obstacle was placed on the export of iron (except, indeed, the obstacle
-to the acquisition by French citizens of Lorraine iron set up by the
-French Government in the imposition of tariffs). But under the new
-order, with the French State assuming such enormously increased economic
-functions, the destination of the iron will be determined by political
-considerations. And 'political considerations,' in an order of
-international society in which the security of the nation depends, not
-upon the collective strength of the whole society, but upon its relative
-strength as against rival units, mean the deliberate weakening of
-rivals. Thus, no longer will the desire of private owners to find a
-market for their wares be a guarantee of the free access of citizens in
-other States to those materials. In place of a play of factors which
-did, however clumsily, ensure in practice general access to raw
-materials, we have a new order of motives; the deliberate desire of
-States, competing in power, owning great sources of raw material, to
-deprive rival States of the use of them.
-
-That the refusal of access will not add to the welfare of the people of
-the State that so owns these materials, that, indeed, it will inevitably
-lower the standard of living in all States alike, is certainly true. But
-so long as there is no real international society organised on the basis
-of collective strength and co-operation, the motive of security will
-override considerations of welfare. The condition of international
-anarchy makes true what otherwise need not be true, that the vital
-interests of nations are conflicting.
-
-Parenthetically, it is necessary to say this: the time may have come for
-the destruction of the older order. If the individualist order was that
-which gave us Armageddon, and still more, the type of mind which
-Armageddon and the succeeding 'peace' revealed, then the present writer,
-for one, sheds no tears over its destruction. In any case, a discussion
-of the intrinsic merits, social and moral, of socialism and
-individualism respectively, would to-day be quite academic. For those
-who profess to stand for individualism are the most active agents of its
-destruction. The Conservative Nationalists, who oppose the socialisation
-of wealth and yet advocate the conscription of life; oppose
-Nationalisation, yet demand the utmost military preparedness in an age
-when effective preparation for war means the mobilisation particularly
-of the nation's industrial resources; resent the growing authority of
-the State, yet insist that the power of the National State shall be such
-as to give it everywhere domination; do, indeed, demand omelets without
-eggs, and bricks not only without straw but without clay.
-
-A Europe of competing military nationalisms means a Europe in which the
-individual and all his activities must more and more be merged in his
-State for the purpose of that competition. The process is necessarily
-one of progressively intense socialisation; and the war measures carried
-it to very great lengths indeed. Moreover, the point to which our
-attention just now should be directed, is the difference which
-distinguishes the process of change within the State from that which
-marks the change in the international field. Within the State the old
-method is automatically replaced by the new (indeed nationalisation is
-mostly the means by which the old individualism is brought to an end);
-between nations, on the other hand, no organised socialistic
-internationalism replaces the old method which is destroyed. The world
-is left without any settled international economy.
-
-Let us note the process of destruction of the old economy.
-
-In July, 1914, the advocacy of economic nationalisation or Socialism
-would have been met with elaborate arguments from perhaps nine average
-Englishmen out of ten, to the effect that control or management of
-industries and services by the Government was impossible, by reason of
-the sheer inefficiency which marks Governmental work. Then comes the
-War, and an efficient railway service and the co-ordination of industry
-and finance to national ends becomes a matter of life and death. In this
-grave emergency, what policy does this same average Englishman, who has
-argued so elaborately against State control, and the possibility of
-governments ever administering public services, pursue? Almost as a
-matter of course, as the one thing to be done, he clamours for the
-railways and other public services to be taken over by the Government,
-and for the State to control the industry, trade, and finance of the
-country.
-
-Now it may well be that the Socialist would deny that the system which
-obtained during the War was Socialism, and would say that it came nearer
-to being State Capitalism than State Socialism; the individualist may
-argue that the methods would never be tolerated as a normal method of
-national life. But when all allowances are made the fact remains that
-when our need was greatest we resorted to the very system which we had
-always declared to be the worst from the point of view of efficiency. As
-Sir Leo Chiozza Money, in sketching the history of this change, which he
-has called 'The Triumph of Nationalisation,' says: 'The nation won
-through the unprecedented economic difficulties of the greatest War in
-history by methods which it had despised. National organisation
-triumphed in a land where it had been denied.' In this sense the England
-of 1914-1920 was a Socialist England; and it was a Socialist England by
-common consent.
-
-This fact has an effect on the moral outlook not generally realised.
-
-For very many, as the War went on and increasing sacrifices of life and
-youth were demanded, new light was thrown upon the relations of the
-individual to the State. A whole generation of young Englishmen were
-suddenly confronted with the fact that their lives did not belong to
-themselves, that each owed his life to the State. But if each must give,
-or at least risk, everything that he possessed, even life itself, were
-others giving or risking what they possessed? Here was new light on the
-institution of private property. If the life of each belongs to the
-community, then assuredly does his property. The Communist State which
-says to the citizen, 'You must work and surrender your private property
-or you will have no vote,' asks, after all, somewhat less than the
-_bourgeois_ Military State which says to the conscript, 'Fight and give
-your person to the State or we will kill you.' For great masses of the
-British working-classes conscription has answered the ethical problem
-involved in the confiscation of capital. The Eighth Commandment no
-longer stands in the way, as it stood so long in the case of a people
-still religiously minded and still feeling the weight of Puritan
-tradition.
-
-Moreover, the War showed that the communal organisation of industry
-could be made to work. It could 'deliver the goods' if those goods
-were, say, munitions. And if it could work for the purposes of war, why
-not for those of peace? The War showed that by co-ordinated and
-centralised action the whole economic structure can without disaster be
-altered to a degree that before the War no economist would have supposed
-possible. We witnessed the economic miracle mentioned in the last
-chapter, but worth recalling here. Suppose before the War you had
-collected into one room all the great capitalist economists in England,
-and had said to them: 'During the next few years you will withdraw from
-normal production five or six millions of the best workers. The mere
-residue of the workers will be able to feed, clothe, and generally
-maintain those five or six millions, themselves, and the country at
-large, at a standard of living on the whole as high, if not higher, than
-that to which the people were accustomed before those five or six
-million workers were withdrawn.' If you had said that to those
-capitalist economists, there would not have been one who would have
-admitted the possibility of the thing, or regarded the forecast as
-anything but rubbish.
-
-Yet that economic miracle has been performed, and it has been performed
-thanks to Nationalisation and Socialism, and could not have been
-performed otherwise.
-
-However, one may qualify in certain points this summary of the
-outstanding economic facts of the War, it is impossible to exaggerate
-the extent to which the revelation of economic possibilities has
-influenced working-class opinion.
-
-To the effect of this on the minds of the more intelligent workers, we
-have to add another psychological effect, a certain recklessness,
-inseparable from the conditions of war, reflected in the workers'
-attitude towards social reform.
-
-Perhaps a further factor in the tendency towards Communism is the
-habituation to confiscation which currency inflation involves. Under the
-influence of war contrivances States have learned to pay their debts in
-paper not equivalent in value to the gold in which the loan was made:
-whole classes of bondholders have thus been deprived of anything from
-one-half to two-thirds of the value of their property. It is
-confiscation in its most indiscriminate and sometimes most cruel form.
-_Bourgeois_ society has accepted it. A socialistic society of to-morrow
-may be tempted to find funds for its social experiments in somewhat the
-same way.
-
-Whatever weight we may attach to some of these factors, this much is
-certain: not only war, but preparation for war, means, to a much greater
-degree than it has ever meant before, mobilisation of the whole
-resources of the country--men, women, industry. This form of
-'nationalisation' cannot go on for years and not affect the permanent
-form of the society subjected to it. It has affected it very deeply. It
-has involved a change in the position of private property and individual
-enterprise that since the War has created a new cleavage in the West.
-The future of private property which was before the War a theoretical
-speculation, has become within a year or two, and especially, perhaps,
-since the Bolshevist Revolution in Russia, a dominating issue in
-European social and political development. It has subjected European
-society to a new strain. The wearing down of the distinction between the
-citizen and the State, and the inroads upon the sacro-sanctity of
-private property and individual enterprise, make each citizen much more
-dependent upon his State, much more a part of it. Control of foreign
-trade so largely by the State has made international trade less a matter
-of processes maintained by individuals who disregarded their
-nationality, and more a matter of arrangement between States, in which
-the non-political individual activity tends to disappear. We have here a
-group of forces which has achieved a revolution, a revolution in the
-relationship of the individual European to the European State, and of
-the States to one another.
-
-The socialising and communist tendencies set up by measures of
-industrial mobilisation for the purposes of the War, have been carried
-forward in another sphere by the economic terms of the Treaty of
-Versailles. These latter, if even partly carried into effect, will mean
-in very large degree the compulsory socialisation, even communisation,
-of the enemy States. Not only the country's foreign trade, but much of
-its internal industry must be taken out of the hands of private traders
-or manufacturers. The provisions of the Treaty assuredly help to destroy
-the process upon which the old economic order in Europe rested.
-
-Let the reader ask himself what is likely to be the influence upon the
-institution of private property and private commerce of a Treaty
-world-wide in its operation, which will take a generation to carry out,
-which may well be used as a precedent for future settlements between
-States (settlements which may include very great politico-economic
-changes in the position of Egypt, Ireland, and India), and of which the
-chief economic provisions are as follows:--
-
-     'It deprives Germany of nearly the whole of her overseas marine. It
-     banishes German sovereignty and economic influence from all her
-     overseas possessions, and sequestrates the private property of
-     Germans in those places, in Alsace-Lorraine, and in all countries
-     within Allied jurisdiction. It puts at the disposal of the Allies
-     all German financial rights and interests, both in the countries of
-     her former Allies and in the States and territories which have been
-     formed out of them. It gives the Reparations Commission power to
-     put its finger on any great business or property in Germany and to
-     demand its surrender. Outside her own frontiers Germany can be
-     stripped of everything she possesses, and inside them, until an
-     impossible indemnity has been paid to the last farthing, she can
-     truly call nothing her own.
-
-     'The Treaty inflicts on an Empire built up on coal and iron the
-     loss of about one-third cf her coal supplies, with such a heavy
-     drain on the scanty remainder as to leave her with an annual supply
-     of only 60 million tons, as against the pre-war production of over
-     190 million tons, and the loss of over three-quarters of her iron
-     ore. It deprives her of all effective control over her own system
-     of transport; it takes the river system of Germany out of German
-     hands, so that on every International Committee dealing with German
-     waters, Germans are placed in a clear minority. It is as though the
-     Powers of Central Europe were placed in a majority on the Thames
-     Conservancy or the Port of London Authority. Finally, it forces
-     Germany for a period of years to concede "most favoured nation"
-     treatment to the Allies, while she receives no such reciprocal
-     favour in return.'
-
-This wholesale confiscation of private property[23] is to take place
-without the Allies affording any compensation to the individuals
-expropriated, and the proceeds will be employed, first, to meet private
-debts due to Allied nationals from any German nationals, and, second, to
-meet claims due from Austrian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, or Turkish
-nationals. Any balance may either be returned by the liquidating power
-direct to Germany, or retained by them. If retained, the proceeds must
-be transferred to the Reparations Commission for Germany's credit in
-the Reparations account. Note, moreover, how the identification of a
-citizen with his State is carried forward by the discrimination made
-against Germans in overseas trade. Heretofore there were whole spheres
-of international trade and industrial activity in which the individual's
-nationality mattered very little. It was a point in favour of individual
-effort, and, incidentally, of international peace. Under the Treaty,
-whereas the property of Allied nationals within German jurisdiction
-reverts to Allied ownership on the conclusion of peace, the property of
-Germans within Allied jurisdiction is to be retained and liquidated as
-described above, with the result that the whole of German property over
-a large part of the world can be expropriated, and the large properties
-now within the custody of Public Trustees and similar officials in the
-Allied countries may be retained permanently. In the second place, such
-German assets are chargeable, not only with the liabilities of Germans,
-but also, if they run to it, with 'payment of the amounts due in respect
-of claims by the nationals of such Allied or Associated Power with
-regard to their property, rights, and interests in the territory of
-other Enemy Powers,' as, for example, Turkey, Bulgaria, and Austria.
-This is a remarkable provision, which is naturally non-reciprocal. In
-the third place, any final balance due to Germany on private account
-need not be paid over, but can be held against the various liabilities
-of the German Government.[24] The effective operation of these articles
-is guaranteed by the delivery of deeds, titles, and information.
-
-It will be noted how completely the Treaty returns to the Tribal
-conception of a collective responsibility, and how it wipes away the
-distinction heretofore made in International Law, between the civilian
-citizen and the belligerent Government. An Austrian who has lived and
-worked in England or China or Egypt all his life, and is married to an
-English woman and has children who do not speak a word of German, who is
-no more responsible for the invasion of Belgium than an Icelander or a
-Chinaman, finds that the savings of his lifetime left here in the faith
-of British security, are confiscated under the Treaty in order to
-satisfy the claims of France or Japan. And, be it noted, whenever
-attention is directed to what the defenders of the Treaty like to call
-its 'sternness' (as when it deprives Englishborn women and their
-children of their property) we are invited to repress our misgiving on
-that score in order to contemplate the beauty of its 'justice,' and to
-admire the inexorable accuracy with which reward and punishment are
-distributed. It is the standing retort to critics of the Treaty: they
-forget its 'justice.'[25]
-
-How far this new tendency is likely to go towards a reassertion of the
-false doctrine of the complete submergence of the individual in the
-State, the erection of the 'God-State' which at the beginning we
-declared to be the main moral cause of the War and set out to destroy,
-will be discussed later. The point for the moment is that the
-enforcement of this part of the Treaty, like other parts, will go to
-swell communistic tendencies. It will be the business of the German
-State to maintain the miners who are to deliver the coal under the
-Treaty, the workers in the shipyards who are to deliver the yearly toll
-of ships. The intricate and elaborate arrangements for 'searching
-Germany's pockets' for the purpose of the indemnity mean the very
-strictest Governmental control of private trade in Germany, in many
-spheres its virtual abolition. All must be done through the Government
-in order that the conditions of the Treaty may be fulfilled. Foreign
-trade will be no longer the individual enterprise of private citizens.
-It will, by the order of the Allies, be a rigidly controlled
-Governmental function, as President Wilson reminded us in the passage
-quoted above.
-
-To a lesser degree the same will be true of the countries receiving the
-indemnity. Mr. Lloyd George promises that it will not be paid in cheap
-goods, or in such a way as to damage home industries. But it must be
-paid in some goods: ships, dyes, or (as some suggest) raw materials.
-Their distribution to private industry, the price that these industries
-shall pay, must be arranged by the receiving Government. This inevitably
-means a prolongation of the State's intervention in the processes of
-private trade and industry. Nor is it merely the disposal of the
-indemnity in kind which will compel each Allied Government to continue
-to intervene in the trade and industry of its citizens. The fact that
-the Reparations Commission is, in effect, to allocate the amount of ore,
-cotton, shipping, Germany is to get, to distribute the ships and coal
-which she may deliver, means the establishment of something resembling
-international rationing. The Governments will, in increasing degree,
-determine the amount and direction of trade.
-
-The more thoroughly we 'make Germany pay,' the more State-controlled do
-we compel her (and only to a lesser extent ourselves) to become. We
-should probably regard a standard of life in Germany very definitely
-below that of the rest of Western Europe, as poetic justice. But it
-would inevitably set up forces, both psychological and economic, that
-make not only for State-control--either State Socialism or State
-Capitalism--but for Communism.
-
-Suppose we did our work so thoroughly that we took absolutely all
-Germany could produce over and above what was necessary for the
-maintenance of the physical efficiency of her population. That would
-compel her to organise herself increasingly on the basis of equality of
-income: no one, that is, going above the line of physical efficiency and
-no one falling below it.
-
-Thus, while British, French, and American anti-socialists are declaring
-that the principle enunciated by the Russian Government, that all trade
-must be through the Soviet, is one which will prove most mischievous in
-its example, it is precisely that principle which increasingly, if the
-Treaty is enforced, they will in fact impose upon a great country,
-highly organised, of great bureaucratic efficiency, far more likely by
-its training and character to make the principle a success.
-
-This tendency may be in the right direction or the wrong one. The point
-is that no provision has been made to meet the condition which the
-change creates. The old system permitted the world to work under
-well-defined principles. The new regimen, because it has not provided
-for the consequences of the changes it has provoked, condemns a great
-part of Europe to economic paralysis which must end in bitter anarchic
-struggles unless the crisis is anticipated by constructive
-statesmanship.
-
-Meantime the continued coercion of Germany will demand on the part of
-the Western democracies a permanent maintenance of the machine of war,
-and so a perpetuation of the tendency, in the way already described,
-towards a militarised Nationalisation.
-
-The resultant 'Socialism' will assuredly not be of the type that most
-Socialists (among whom, incidentally, the present writer counts himself)
-would welcome. But it will not necessarily be for that reason any less
-fatal to the workable transnational individualism.
-
-Moreover, military nationalisation presupposes international conflict,
-if not perpetually recurrent war; presupposes, that is, first, an
-inability to organise a stable international economy indispensable to a
-full life for Europe's population; and, secondly, an increasing
-destructiveness in warfare--self-destruction in terms of European
-Society as a whole. 'Efficiency' in such a society would be efficiency
-in suicide.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-NATIONALITY, ECONOMICS, AND THE ASSERTION OF RIGHT
-
-
-The change noted in the preceding chapter raises certain profound
-questions of Right. These may be indicated as follows:--
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-By our political power we _can_ create a Europe which, while not
-assuring advantage to the victor, deprives the vanquished of means of
-existence. The loss of both ore and coal by the Central Powers might
-well make it impossible for their future populations to find food. What
-are they to do? Starve? To disclaim responsibility is to claim that we
-are entitled to use our power to deny them life.
-
-This 'right' to starve foreigners can only be invoked by invoking the
-concept of nationalism. 'Our nation first.' But the policy of placing
-life itself upon a foundation of preponderant force instead of mutually
-advantageous co-operation, compels statesmen perpetually to betray the
-principle of nationality; not only directly (as in the case of the
-annexation of territory, economically necessary, but containing peoples
-of alien nationality), but indirectly; for the resistance which our
-policy (of denying means of subsistence to others) provokes, makes
-preponderance of power the condition of survival. All else must give way
-to that need.
-
-Might cannot be pledged to Right in these conditions. If our power is
-pledged to Allies for the purposes of the Balance (which means, in fact,
-preponderance), it cannot be used against them to enforce respect for
-(say) nationality. To turn against Allies would break the Balance. To
-maintain the Balance of Power we are compelled to disregard the moral
-merits of an Ally's policy (as in the case of the promise to the Czar's
-Government not to demand the independence of Poland). The maintenance of
-a Balance (_i.e._ preponderance) is incompatible with the maintenance of
-Right. There is a conflict of obligation.
-
-Before the War, a writer in the _National Review_, desiring to show the
-impossibility of obviating war by any international agreement, took the
-example of the conflict with Germany and put the case as follows:--
-
-     'Germany _must_ go to war. Every year an extra million babies are
-     crying out for more room, and as the expansion of Germany by
-     peaceful means seems impossible, Germany can only provide for those
-     babies at the cost of potential foes.
-
-     'This ... it cannot be too often repeated, is not mere envious
-     greed, but stern necessity. The same struggle for life and space
-     which more than a thousand years ago drove one Teutonic wave after
-     another across the Rhine and the Alps, is now once more a great
-     compelling force.... This aspect of the case may be all very sad
-     and very wicked, but it is true.... Herein lies the ceaseless and
-     ruinous struggle for armaments, and herein for France lies the dire
-     necessity of linking her foreign policy with that of powerful
-     allies.'
-
-'And so,' adds the writer, 'it is impossible and absurd to accept the
-theory of Mr. Norman Angell.'
-
-Now that theory was, not that Germany and others would not fight--I was
-very insistent indeed that[26] unless there was a change in European
-policy they would--but that war, however it might end, would not solve
-the question. And that conclusion at least, whatever may be the case
-with others, is proved true.
-
-For we have had war; we have beaten Germany; and those million babies
-still confront us. The German population and its tendency to increase is
-still there. What are we going to do about it? The War has killed two
-million out of about seventy million Germans; it killed very few of the
-women. The subsequent privations of the blockade certainly disposed of
-some of the weaker among both women and children. The rate of increase
-may in the immediate future be less. It was declining before the War as
-the country became more prosperous, following in this what seems to be a
-well-established rule: the higher the standard of civilisation the more
-does the birth-rate decline. But if the country is to become extremely
-frugal and more agricultural, this tendency to decline is likely to be
-checked. In any case the number of mouths to be fed will not have been
-decreased by war to the same extent that the resources by which they
-might have been fed have been decreased.
-
-What do we propose to Germany, now that we have beaten her, as the means
-of dealing with those million babies? Professor Starling, in a report to
-the British Government,[27] suggests emigration:--
-
-     'Before the War Germany produced 85 per cent. of the total food
-     consumed by her inhabitants. This large production was only
-     possible by high cultivation, and by the plentiful use of manure
-     and imported feeding stuffs, means for the purchase of these being
-     furnished by the profits of industry.... The loss to Germany of 40
-     per cent. of its former coal output must diminish the number of
-     workers who can be maintained. The great increase in German
-     population during the last twenty-five years was rendered possible
-     only by exploiting the agricultural possibilities of the soil to
-     the greatest possible extent, and this in its turn depended on the
-     industrial development of the country. The reduction by 20 per
-     cent. in the productive area of the country, and the 40 per cent.
-     diminution in the chief raw material for the creation of wealth,
-     renders the country at present over-populated, and it seems
-     probable that within the next few years many million (according to
-     some estimates as many as fifteen million) workers and their
-     families will be obliged to emigrate, since there will be neither
-     work nor food for them to be obtained from the reduced industries
-     of the country.'
-
-But emigration where? Into Russia? The influence of Germans in Russia
-was very great even before the War. Certain French writers warn us
-frantically against the vast danger of Russia's becoming a German colony
-unless a cordon of border States, militarily strong, is created for the
-purpose of keeping the two countries apart. But we should certainly get
-a Germanisation of Russia from the inside if five or ten or fifteen
-million Germans were dispersed therein and the country became a
-permanent reservoir for those annual million babies.
-
-And if not Russia, where? Imagine a migration of ten or fifteen million
-Huns throughout the world--a dispersion before which that of the Jews
-and of the Irish would pale. We know how the migration from an Ireland
-of eight millions that could not feed itself has reacted upon our
-politics and our relations with America. What sort of foreign problems
-are we going to bequeath to our children if our policy forces a great
-German migration into Russia, or the Balkans, or Turkey?
-
-This insistent fact of a million more or less of little Huns being born
-into the world every year remains. Shall we suggest to Germany that she
-must deal with this problem as the thrifty householder deals with the
-too frequent progeny of the family cat?
-
-Or shall we do just nothing, and say that it is not our affair; that as
-we have the power over the iron of Lorraine and Morocco, over the
-resources of Africa and Asia, over the ocean highways of the world, we
-are going to see that that power, naval and military, is used to ensure
-abundance for ourselves and our friends; that as for others, since they
-have not the power, they may starve? _Vae victis_ indeed![28]
-
-Just note what is involved. This war was fought to destroy the doctrine
-that might is right. Our power, we say, gives us access to the wealth of
-the world; others shall be excluded. Then we are using our power to deny
-to some millions the most elemental of all rights, the right to
-existence. By the economic use of our military power (assuming that
-military power is as effective as we claim) we compel some millions to
-choose between war and penury or starvation; we give to war, in their
-case, the justification that it is on behalf of the bread of their
-children, their livelihood.
-
-Let us compare France's position. Unlike the German, the French
-population has hardly increased at all in recent generations. In the
-years immediately preceding the War, indeed, it showed a definite
-decline, a tendency naturally more marked since the War. This low
-birth-rate has greatly concerned French statesmen, and remedies have
-been endlessly discussed, with no result. The causes are evidently very
-deep-rooted indeed. The soil which has been inherited by this declining
-population is among the richest and most varied in the world, producing
-in the form of wines, brandies, and certain other luxuries, results
-which can be duplicated nowhere else. It stretches almost into the
-sub-tropics. In addition, the nation possesses a vast colonial
-empire--in Algeria, Tunis, Morocco (which include some of the greatest
-food-growing areas in the world), Madagascar, Equatorial Africa,
-Cochin-China; an empire managed, by the way, on strongly protectionist
-principles.
-
-We have thus on the one side a people of forty millions with no tendency
-to increase, mainly not industrial (because not needing to be),
-possessing undeveloped areas capable, in their food and mineral
-resources (home and colonial), of supporting a population very many
-times its size. On the other hand is a neighbouring group, very much
-larger, and rapidly increasing, occupying a poorer and smaller
-territory. It is unable to subsist at modern standards on that territory
-without a highly-developed industry. The essential raw materials have
-passed into the hands of the smaller group. The latter on grounds of
-self-defence, fearing to be outnumbered, may withhold those materials
-from the larger group; and its right so to do is to be unquestioned.
-
-Does any one really believe that Western Society could remain stable,
-resting on moral foundations of this kind? Can one disregard primary
-economic need in considering the problem of preserving the Europe of
-'free and independent national states' of Mr. Asquith's phrase?[29]
-
-If things are left where this Treaty leaves them, then the militarist
-theories which before were fallacies will have become true. We can no
-longer say that peoples as distinct from imperialist parties have no
-interest in conquest. In this new world of to-morrow--this 'better and
-more stable world'--the interests of peoples themselves will be in
-deadly conflict. For an expanding people it will be a choice between
-robbery of neighbours' territory and starvation. Re-conquest of Lorraine
-will become for the Germans not a matter of hurt pride or sentiment, but
-a matter of actual food need, a need which will not, like hurt pride,
-diminish with the lapse of time, but increase with the growth of the
-population. On the side of war, then, truly we shall find 'the human
-stomach and the human womb.'
-
-The change is a deeper reversion than we seem to realise. Even under
-feudalism the means of subsistence of the people, the land they
-cultivated, remained as before. Only the lords were changed--and one
-lord was very like another. But where, under modern industrial economy,
-titles to property in indispensable raw materials can be cancelled by a
-conqueror and become the State property of the conquering nation, which
-enforces the right to distribute them as it pleases, whole populations
-may find themselves deprived of the actual means of supporting
-themselves on the territory that they occupy.
-
-We shall have set up a disruptive ferment working with all the force of
-the economic needs of 50 or 100 million virile folk to bring about once
-more some vast explosion. Europe will once more be living on a volcano,
-knowing no remedy save futile efforts to 'sit on the lid.'
-
-The beginnings of the attempt are already visible. Colonel Repington
-points out that owing to the break up of Russia and Austria, and the
-substitution for these two powerful States of a large number of small,
-independent ones likely to quarrel among themselves, Germany will be the
-largest and most cohesive of all the European Continental nations,
-relatively stronger than she was before the War. He demands in
-consequence, that not only France, but Holland and Belgium, be extended
-to the Rhine, which must become the strategic frontier of civilisation
-against barbarism. He says there can be no sort of security otherwise.
-He even reminds us that it was Rome's plan. (He does not remind us that
-if it had notably succeeded then we should hardly be trying it again two
-thousand years later.) The plan gives us, in fact, this prospect: the
-largest and most unified racial block in Europe will find itself
-surrounded by a number of lesser States, containing German minorities,
-and possessing materials indispensable to Germany's economic life, to
-which she is refused peaceful access in order that she may not become
-strong enough to obtain access by force; an attempt which she will be
-compelled to make because peaceful access is denied to her. Our measures
-create resistance; that resistance calls forth more extreme measures;
-those measures further resistance, and so on. We are in the thick once
-more of Balance of Power, strategic frontiers, every element of the old
-stultifying statecraft against which all the Allies--before the
-Armistice--made flaming protest.
-
-And when this conflict of rights--each fighting as he believes for the
-right to life--has blazed up into passions that transcend all thought of
-gain or advantage, we shall be asked somewhat contemptuously what
-purpose it serves to discuss so cold a thing as 'economics' in the midst
-of this welter.
-
-It won't serve any purpose. But the discussion of economics before it
-had become a matter for passion might have prevented the conflict.
-
-The situation has this complication--and irony: Increasing prosperity, a
-higher standard of living, sets up a tendency prudentially to check
-increase of population. France, and in hardly less degree even new and
-sparsely populated countries like Australia, have for long shown a
-tendency to a decline of the rate of increase. In France, indeed, as has
-already been mentioned, an absolute decrease had set in before the War.
-But as soon as this tendency becomes apparent, the same nationalist who
-invokes the menace of over-population as the justification for war, also
-invokes nationalism to reverse the tendency which would solve the
-over-population problem. This is part of the mystic nature of the
-nationalist impulse. Colonel Roosevelt is not the only warlike
-nationalist who has exhausted the resources of invective to condemn
-'race suicide' and to enjoin the patriotic duty of large families.
-
-We may gather some idea of the morasses into which the conception of
-nationalism and its 'mystic impulses' may lead us when applied to the
-population problem by examining some current discussions of it. Dr
-Raymond Pearl, of John Hopkins University, summarises certain of his
-conclusions thus:--
-
-     'There are two ways which have been thought of and practised, by
-     which a nation may attempt to solve its problem of population after
-     it has become very pressing and after the effects of internal
-     industrial development and its creation of wealth have been
-     exhausted. These are respectively the methods of France and
-     Germany. By consciously controlled methods, France endeavoured, and
-     on the whole succeeded, in keeping her birth-rate at just such a
-     delicate balance with the death-rate as to make the population
-     nearly stationary. Then any industrial developments simply
-     operated to raise the standard of living of those fortunate enough
-     to be born. France's condition, social economy, and political, in
-     1914 represented, I think, the results of about the maximum
-     efficiency of what may be called the birth-control method of
-     meeting the problem of population.
-
-     'Germany deliberately chose the other plan of meeting the problem
-     of population. In fewest words the scheme was, when your population
-     pressed too hard upon subsistence, and you had fully liquidated the
-     industrial development asset, to go out and conquer some one,
-     preferably a people operating under the birth-control population
-     plan, and forcibly take his land for your people. To facilitate
-     this operation a high birth-rate is made a matter of sustained
-     propaganda, and in every other possible way encouraged. An
-     abundance of cannon fodder is essential to the success of the
-     scheme.'[30]
-
-A word or two as to the facts alleged in the foregoing. We are told that
-the two nations not only followed respectively two different methods,
-but that it was in each case a deliberate national choice, supported by
-organised propaganda. 'By consciously controlled methods, France,' we
-are told, 'endeavoured' to keep her birth-rate down. The fact is, of
-course, that all the conscious endeavours of 'France,' if by France is
-meant the Government, the Church, the learned bodies, were in the
-exactly contrary direction. Not only organised propaganda, but most
-elaborate legislation, aiming through taxation at giving a preference to
-large families, has for a generation been industriously urging an
-increase in the French population. It has notoriously been a standing
-dish in the menu of the reformers and uplifters of nearly every
-political party. What we obviously have in the case of France is not a
-decision made by the nation as a corporate body and the Government
-representing it, but a tendency which their deliberate decision, as
-represented by propaganda and legislation, has been unable to check.[31]
-
-In discussing the merits of the two plans, Dr Pearl goes on:--
-
-     'Now the morals of the two plans are not at issue here. Both are
-     regarded, on different grounds to be sure, as highly immoral by
-     many people. Here we are concerned only with actualities. There can
-     be no doubt that in general and in the long run the German plan is
-     bound to win over the birth-control plan, if the issue is joined
-     between the two and only the two, and its resolution is military in
-     character.... So long as there are on the earth aggressively-minded
-     peoples who from choice deliberately maintain a high birth-rate, no
-     people can afford to put the French solution of the population
-     problem into operation unless they are prepared to give up,
-     practically at the asking, both their national integrity and their
-     land.'
-
-Let us assume, therefore, that France adopts the high birth-rate plan.
-She, too, will then be compelled, if the plan has worked out
-successfully, 'to get out and conquer some one.' But that some one will
-also, for the same reasons, have been following the plan of high
-birth-rate. What is then to happen? A competition in fecundity as a
-solution of the excess population problem seems inadequate. Yet it is
-inevitably prompted by the nationalist impulse.
-
-Happily the general rise in the standard of life itself furnishes a
-solution. As we have seen, the birth-rate is, within certain limits, in
-inverse ratio to a people's prosperity. But again, nationalism, by
-preventing the economic unification of Europe, may well stand in the way
-of that solution also. It checks the tendencies which would solve the
-problem.
-
-A fall in the birth-rate, as a concomitant of a rising standard of
-living, was beginning to be revealed in Germany also before the War.[32]
-If now, under the new order, German industrialism is checked and we get
-an agricultural population compelled by circumstances to a standard of
-life not higher than that of the Russian _moujik_, we may perhaps also
-be faced by a revival of high fertility in mystic disregard of the
-material means available for the support of the population.
-
-There is a further point.
-
-Those who have dealt with the world's food resources point out that
-there are great sources of food still undeveloped. But the difficulties
-do not arise from a total shortage. They arise from a mal-distribution
-of population, coupled with the fact that as between nations the Ten
-Commandments--particularly the eighth--do not run. By the code of
-nationalism we have no obligation towards starving foreigners. A nation
-may seize territory which it does not need, and exclude from it those
-who direly need its resources. While we insist that internationalism is
-political atheism, and that the only doctrine fit for red-blooded people
-is what Colonel Roosevelt called 'intense Nationalism,' intense
-nationalism means, in economic practice, the attempt, even at some
-cost, to render the political unit also the economic unit, and as far as
-possible self-sufficing.
-
-It serves little purpose, therefore, to point out that one or two States
-in South America can produce food for half the world, if we also create
-a political tradition which leads the patriotic South American to insist
-upon having his own manufactures, even at cost to himself, so that he
-will not need ours. He will achieve that result at the cost of
-diminishing his production of food. Both he and the Englishman will be
-poorer, but according to the standard of the intense nationalist, the
-result should be a good one, though it may confront many of us with
-starvation, just as the intense nationalism of the various nations of
-Eastern and South-Eastern Europe actually results in famine on soil
-fully capable, before the War, of supporting the population, and capable
-of supporting still greater populations if natural resources are used to
-the best advantage. It is political passions, anti-social doctrines, and
-the muddle, confusion, and hostility that go therewith which are the
-real cause of the scarcity.
-
-And that may forecast the position of Europe as a whole to-morrow: we
-may suffer starvation for the patriotic joy of seeing foreigners--Boche
-or Bolshevist--suffer in still greater degree.
-
-Given the nationalist conception of a world divided into completely
-distinct groups of separate corporate bodies, entities so different that
-the binding social ties between them (laws, in fact) are impossible of
-maintenance, there must inevitably grow up pugnacities and rivalries,
-creating a general sense of conflict that will render immeasurably
-difficult the necessary co-operation between the peoples, the kind of
-co-operation which the Treaty of Versailles has, in so large degree,
-deliberately destroyed. Whether the hostility comes, in the first
-instance, from the 'herd,' or tribal, instinct, and develops into a
-sense of economic hostility, or whether the hostility arises from the
-conviction that there exists a conflict of interest, the result is
-pretty much the same. I happen to have put the case elsewhere in these
-terms:--
-
-If it be true that since the world is of limited space, we must fight
-one another for it, that if our children are to be fed others must
-starve, then agreement between peoples will be for ever impossible.
-Nations will certainly not commit suicide for the sake of peace. If this
-is really the relationship of two great nations, they are, of course, in
-the position of two cannibals, one of whom says to the other: 'Either I
-have got to eat you, or you have got to eat me. Let's come to a friendly
-agreement about it.' They won't come to a friendly agreement about it.
-They will fight. And my point is that not only would they fight if it
-really were true that the one had to kill and eat the other, but they
-would fight as long as they believed it to be true. It might be that
-there was ample food within their reach--out of their reach, say, so
-long as each acted alone, but within their reach if one would stand on
-the shoulders of the other ('this is an allegory'), and so get the fat
-cocoa-nuts on the higher branches. But they would, nevertheless, be
-cannibals so long as each believed that the flesh of the other was the
-only source of food. It would be that mistake, not the necessary fact,
-which would provoke them to fight.
-
-When we learn that one Balkan State refuses to another a necessary raw
-material, or access over a railroad, because it prefers the suffering of
-that neighbour to its own welfare, we are shocked and talk about
-primitive and barbarous passions. But are we ourselves--Britain or
-France--in better state? The whole story of the negotiations about the
-indemnity and the restoration of Europe shows that we are not. Quite
-soon after the Armistice the expert advisers of the British Government
-urged the necessity, for the economic safety of the Allies themselves,
-of helping in the restoration of Germany. But they also admitted that it
-was quite hopeless to go to Parliament with any proposal to help
-Germany. And even when one gets a stage further and there is general
-admission 'in the abstract' that if France is to secure reparations,
-Germany must be fed and permitted to work, the sentiment of hostility
-stands in the way of any specific measure.
-
-We are faced with certain traditions and moralities, involving a
-psychology which, gathering round words like 'patriotism,' deprives us
-of the emotional restraint and moral discipline necessary to carry
-through the measures which intellectually we recognise to be
-indispensable to our country's welfare.
-
-We thus see why it is impossible to speak of international economics
-without predicating the nation as a concept. In the economic problems of
-nations or States, one is necessarily dealing not only with economic
-facts, but with political facts: a political entity in its economic
-relations (before the War inconsiderable, but since the War very great);
-group consciousness; the interests, or what is sometimes as important,
-the supposed interests of this group or area as distinct from that; the
-moral phenomena of nationalism--group preferences or prejudices, herd
-instinct, tribal hostility. All this is part of the economic problem in
-international politics. Protection, for instance, is only in part a
-problem of economics; it is also a problem of political preferences: the
-manufacturer who is content to face the competition of his own
-countrymen, objects to facing that of foreigners. Political conceptions
-are part of the economic problem when dealing with nations, just as
-primary economic need must be taken into account as part of the cause of
-the conflict of nationalisms.
-
-One very commonly hears the argument: 'What is the good of discussing
-economic forces in relation to the conflict of Europe when our
-participation, for instance, in the War, was in no way prompted by
-economic considerations?'
-
-Our motive may not have been economic, yet the cause of the War may very
-well have been mainly economic. The sentiment of nationality may be a
-stronger motive in European politics than any other. The chief menace
-to nationality may none the less be economic need.
-
-While it may be perfectly true that Belgians, Serbs, Poles, Bohemians,
-fought from motives of nationality, it may also be true that the wars
-which they were compelled to fight had an economic cause.
-
-If the desire of Germany or Austria for undeveloped territory had
-anything to do with that thrust towards the Near East in the way of
-which stood Serbian nationality, then economic causes _had_ something to
-do with compelling Serbia and Belgium to fight for their nationality.
-Owing to the pressure of the economic need or greed of others, we are
-still concerned with economic forces, though we may be actuated only by
-the purest nationalism: the economic pressure of others is obviously
-part of the problem of our national defence. And if one examines in turn
-the chief problems of nationality, one finds in almost every case that
-any aggression by which it may be menaced is prompted by the need, or
-assumed need, of other nations for mines, ports, access to the sea (warm
-water or other), or for strategic frontiers to defend those things.
-
-Why should the desire of one people to rule itself, to be free, be
-thwarted by another making exactly the same demands? In the case of the
-Germans we ascribe it to some special and evil lust peculiar to their
-race and training. But the Peace has revealed to us that it exists in
-every people, every one.
-
-A glance at the map enables us to realise readily enough why a given
-State may resist the 'complete independence' of a neighbouring
-territory.
-
-Here, on the borders of Russia, for instance, are a number of small
-States in a position to block the access of the population of Russia to
-the sea; in a position, indeed, by their control of certain essential
-raw materials, to hold up the development of a hundred million people,
-very much as the robber barons of the Rhine held up the commerce of that
-waterway. No powerful Russia, Bolshevik or Czarist, will permanently
-recognise the absolute right of a little State, at will (at the
-bidding, perhaps, of some military dictator, who in South American
-fashion may have seized its Government), to block her access to the
-'highways of the world.' 'Sovereignty and independence'--absolute
-sovereignty over its own territory, that is--may well include the
-'right' to make the existence of others intolerable. Ought any nation to
-have such a right? Like questions are raised in the case of the States
-that once were Austria. They have achieved their complete freedom and
-independence. Some of the results are dealt with in the first chapter.
-In some cases the new States are using their 'freedom, sovereignty, and
-independence' for the purpose of worsening a condition of famine and
-economic paralysis that spells indescribable suffering for millions of
-completely innocent folk.[33]
-
-So far, the new Europe is economically less competent than the old. The
-old Austrian grouping, for instance, made possible a stable and orderly
-life for fifty million people. A Mittel Europa, with its Berlin-Bagdad
-designs, would, whatever its dangers otherwise, have given us a vastly
-greater area of co-ordinated production, an area approaching that of the
-United States; it would have ensured the effective co-operation of
-populations greatly in excess of those of the United States. Whatever
-else might have happened, there would have been no destruction by famine
-of the populations concerned if some such plan of organised production
-had materialised. The old Austria at least ensured for the children
-physical health and education, for the peasants work in their fields, in
-security; and although denial of full national rights was doubtless an
-evil thing, it still left free a vast field of human activities--those
-of the family, of productive labour, of religion, music, art, love,
-laughter.
-
-A Europe of small 'absolute' nationalisms threatens to make these things
-impossible. We have no standard, unhappily, by which we can appraise the
-moral loss and gain in the exchange of the European life of July, 1914,
-for that which Europe now faces and is likely to face in the coming
-years. But if we cannot measure or weigh the moral value of absolute
-nationalism, the present situation does enable us to judge in some
-measure the degree of security achieved for the principle of
-nationality, and to what extent it may be menaced by the economic needs
-of the millions of Europe. And one is impelled to ask whether
-nationality is not threatened by a danger far greater than any it had to
-meet in the old Europe, in the anarchy and chaos that nationalism itself
-is at present producing.
-
-The greater States, like Germany, may conceivably manage somehow to find
-a _modus vivendi_. A self-sufficing State may perhaps be developed (a
-fact which will enable Germany at one and the same time to escape the
-payment of reparations and to defy future blockades). But that will mean
-embittered nationalism. The sense of exclusion and resentment will
-remain.
-
-The need of Germany for outside raw materials and food may, as the
-result of this effort to become self-sufficing, prove less than the
-above considerations might suggest. But unhappily, assumed need can be
-as patent a motive in international politics as real need. Our recent
-acquiescence in the independence of Egypt would imply that our need for
-persistent occupation was not as great as we supposed. Yet the desire to
-remain in Egypt helped to shape our foreign policy during a whole
-generation, and played no small part in the bargaining with France over
-Morocco which widened the gulf between ourselves and Germany.
-
-The preservation of the principle of nationality depends upon making it
-subject at least to some form of internationalism. If 'self-determination'
-means the right to condemn other peoples to death by starvation, then
-that principle cannot survive. The Balkanisation of Europe, turning it
-into a cauldron of rival 'absolute' nationalisms, does not mean safety
-for the principle of nationality, it means its ultimate destruction
-either by anarchy or by the autocratic domination of the great
-Powers. The problem is to reconcile national right and international
-obligation. That will mean a discipline of the national impulse, and
-of the instincts of domination which so readily attach themselves to
-it. The recognition of economic needs will certainly help towards such
-discipline. However 'materialistic' it may be to recognise the right of
-others to life, that recognition makes a sounder foundation for human
-society than do the instinctive impulses of mystic nationalism.
-
-Until we have managed somehow to create an economic code or comity which
-makes the sovereignty of each nationality subject to the general need of
-the whole body of organised society, this struggle, in which nationality
-is for ever threatened, will go on.
-
-The alternatives were very clearly stated on the other side of the
-Atlantic:--
-
-'The underlying assumption heretofore has been that a nation's security
-and prosperity rest chiefly upon its own strength and resources. Such an
-assumption has been used to justify statesmen in attempting, on the
-ground of the supreme need for national security, to increase their own
-nation's power and resources by insistence upon strategic frontiers,
-territory with raw material, outlets to the sea, even though that course
-does violence to the security and prosperity of others. Under any system
-in which adequate defence rests upon individual preponderance of power,
-the security of one must involve the insecurity of another, and must
-inevitably give rise to covert or overt competitions for power and
-territory, dangerous to peace and destructive to justice.
-
-'Under such a system of competitive as opposed to co-operative
-nationalism, the smaller nationalities can never be really secure.
-International commitments of some kind there must be. The price of
-secure nationality is some degree of internationalism.
-
-'The problem is to modify the conditions that lead to war. It will be
-quite inadequate to establish courts of arbitration or of law if they
-have to arbitrate or judge on the basis of the old laws and practices.
-These have proved insufficient.
-
-'It is obvious that any plan ensuring national security and equality of
-opportunity will involve a limitation of national sovereignty. States
-possessing ports that are the natural outlet of a hinterland occupied by
-another people, will perhaps regard it as an intolerable invasion of
-their independence if their sovereignty over those ports is not absolute
-but limited by the obligation to permit of their use by a foreign and
-possibly rival people on equal terms. States possessing territories in
-Africa or Asia inhabited by populations in a backward state of
-development, have generally heretofore looked for privileged and
-preferential treatment of their own industry and commerce in those
-territories. Great interests will be challenged, some sacrifice of
-national pride demanded, and the hostility of political factions in some
-countries will be aroused.
-
-'Yet if, after the War, States are to be shut out from the sea; if
-rapidly expanding populations find themselves excluded from raw
-materials indispensable to their prosperity; if the privileges and
-preferences enjoyed by States with overseas territories place the less
-powerful States at a disadvantage, we shall have re-established potent
-motives for that competition for political power which, in the past, has
-been so large an element in the causation of war and the subjugation of
-weaker peoples. The ideal of the security of all nations and "equality
-of opportunity" will have failed of realisation.'[34]
-
-
-_The Balance of Power and Defence of Law and Nationality._
-
-'Why were you so whole-soully for this war?' asked the interviewer of Mr
-Lloyd George.
-
-'Belgium,' was the reply.
-
-The Prime Minister of the morrow continued:--
-
-     'The Saturday after war had actually been declared on the Continent
-     (Saturday, 1st August), a poll of the electors of Great Britain
-     would have shown ninety-five per cent. against embroiling this
-     country in hostilities. Powerful city financiers whom it was my
-     duty to interview this Saturday on the financial situation, ended
-     the conference with an earnest hope that Britain would keep out of
-     it. A poll on the following Tuesday would have resulted in a vote
-     of ninety-nine per cent. in favour of war.
-
-     'What had happened in the meantime? The revolution in public
-     sentiment was attributable entirely to an attack made by Germany on
-     a small and unprotected country, which had done her no wrong, and
-     what Britain was not prepared to do for interests political and
-     commercial, she readily risked to help the weak and helpless. Our
-     honour as a nation is involved in this war, because we are bound in
-     an honourable obligation to defend the independence, the liberty,
-     the integrity of a small neighbour that has lived peaceably; but
-     she could not have compelled us, being weak. The man who declined
-     to discharge his debt because his creditor is too poor to enforce
-     it, is a blackguard.'
-
-A little later, in the same interview, Mr Lloyd George, after allusion
-to German misrepresentations, said:--
-
-     'But this I know is true--after the guarantee given that the German
-     fleet would not attack the coast of France or annex any French
-     territory, _I_ would not have been party to a declaration of war,
-     had Belgium not been invaded, and I think I can say the same thing
-     for most, if not all, of my colleagues. If Germany had been wise,
-     she would not have set foot on Belgian soil. The Liberal Government
-     then would not have intervened. Germany made a grave mistake.'[35]
-
-This interview compels several very important conclusions. One, perhaps
-the most important--and the most hopeful--is profoundly creditable to
-English popular instinct and not so creditable to Mr Lloyd George.
-
-If Mr Lloyd George is speaking the truth (it is difficult to find just
-the phrase which shall express one's meaning and be Parliamentary), if
-he believes it would have been entirely safe for Great Britain to have
-kept out of the War provided only that the invasion of Belgium could
-have been prevented, then indeed is the account against the Cabinet, of
-which he was then a member and (after modifications in it) was shortly
-to become the head, a heavy one. I shall not pursue here the inquiry
-whether in point of simple political fact, Belgium was the sole cause of
-our entrance into the War, because I don't suppose anybody believes it.
-But--and here Mr Lloyd George almost certainly does speak the truth--the
-English people gave their whole-souled support to the war because they
-believed it to be for a cause of which Belgium was the shining example
-and symbol: the right of the small nation to the same consideration as
-the great. That objective may not have been the main inspiration of the
-Governments: it was the main moral inspiration of the British people,
-the sentiment which the Government exploited, and to which it mainly
-appealed.
-
-'The purpose of the Allies in this War,' said Mr Asquith, 'is to pave
-the way for an international system which will secure the principle of
-equal rights for all civilised States ... to render secure the principle
-that international problems must be handled by free people and that
-their settlement shall no longer be hampered and swayed by the
-overmastering dictation of a Government controlled by a military
-caste.' We should not sheathe the sword 'until the rights of the smaller
-nationalities of Europe are placed upon an unassailable foundation.'
-Professor Headlam (an ardent upholder of the Balance of Power, by the
-way), in a book that is characteristic of the early war literature, says
-the cardinal principles for which the War was fought were two: first,
-that Europe is, and should remain, divided between independent national
-States, and, second, that subject to the condition that it did not
-threaten or interfere with the security of other States, each country
-should have full and complete control over its own affairs.
-
-How far has our victory achieved that object? Is the policy which our
-power supported before the War--and still supports--compatible with it?
-Does it help to strengthen the national security of Belgium, and other
-weak States like Yugo-Slavia, Poland, Albania, Finland, the Russian
-Border States, China?
-
-It is here suggested, first, that our commitments under the Balance of
-Power policy which we had espoused[36] deprived our national force of
-any preventive effectiveness whatever in so far as the invasion of
-Belgium was concerned, and secondly, that our post-war policy, which is
-also in fact a Balance of Power policy is betraying in like fashion the
-cause of the small State.
-
-It is further suggested that the very nature of the operation of the
-Balance of Power policy sets up in practice a conflict of obligation: if
-our power is pledged to the support of one particular group, like the
-Franco-Russian group of 1914, it cannot also be pledged to the support,
-honestly and impartially, of a general principle of European law.
-
-We were drawn into the War, Mr Lloyd George tells us, to vindicate the
-integrity of Belgium. Very good. We know what happened in the
-negotiations. Germany wanted very much to know what would induce us to
-keep out of the War. Would we keep out of the War if Germany refrained
-from crossing the Belgian frontier? Such an assurance, giving Germany
-the strongest material reasons for not invading Belgium, converting a
-military reason (the only reason, we are told, that Germany would listen
-to) for that offence into an immensely powerful military reason against
-it, could not be given. In order to be able to maintain the Balance of
-Power against Germany we must 'keep our hands free.'
-
-It is not a question here of Germany's trustworthiness, but of using her
-sense of self-interest to secure our object of the protection of
-Belgium. The party in the German councils opposed to the invasion would
-say: 'If you invade Belgium you will have to meet the hostility of Great
-Britain. If you don't, you will escape that hostility.' To which the
-general staff was able to reply: 'Britain's Balance of Power policy
-means that you will have to meet the enmity of Britain in any case. In
-terms of expediency, it does not matter whether you go through Belgium
-or not.'
-
-The fact that the principle of the 'Balance' compelled us to support
-France, whether Germany respected the Treaty of 1839 or not, deprived
-our power of any value as a restraint upon German military designs
-against Belgium. There was, in fact, a conflict of obligations: the
-obligations to the Balance of Power rendered that to the support of the
-Treaty of no avail in terms of protection. If the object of force is to
-compel observance of law on the part of those who will not observe it
-otherwise, that object is defeated by the entanglements of the Balance
-of Power.
-
-Sir Edward Grey's account of that stage of the negotiations at which the
-question of Belgium was raised, is quite clear and simple. The German
-Ambassador asked him 'whether, if Germany gave a promise not to violate
-Belgian neutrality, we would engage to remain neutral.' 'I replied,'
-writes Sir Edward, 'that I could not say that; our hands were still
-free, and we were considering what our attitude should be. I did not
-think that we could give a promise of neutrality on that condition
-alone. The Ambassador pressed me as to whether I could not formulate
-conditions on which we would remain neutral. He even suggested that the
-integrity of France and her Colonies might be guaranteed. I said that I
-felt obliged to refuse definitely any promise to remain neutral on
-similar terms, and I could only say that we must keep our hands free.'
-
-'If language means anything,' comments Lord Loreburn,[37] 'this means
-that whereas Mr Gladstone bound this country to war in order to
-safeguard Belgian neutrality, Sir Edward would not even bind this
-country to neutrality to save Belgium. He may have been right, but it
-was not for the sake of Belgian interests that he refused.'
-
-Compare our experience, and the attitude of Sir Edward Grey in 1914,
-when we were concerned to maintain the Balance of Power, with our
-experience and Mr Gladstone's behaviour when precisely the same problem
-of protecting Belgium was raised in 1870. In these circumstances Mr
-Gladstone proposed both to France and to Prussia a treaty by which Great
-Britain undertook that, if either of the belligerents should in the
-course of that war violate the neutrality of Belgium, Great Britain
-would co-operate with the other belligerent in defence of the same,
-'employing for that purpose her naval and military forces to ensure its
-observance.' In this way both France and Germany knew and the whole
-world knew, that invasion of Belgium meant war with Great Britain.
-Whichever belligerent violated the neutrality must reckon with the
-consequences. Both France and Prussia signed that Treaty. Belgium was
-saved.
-
-Lord Loreborn (_How the War Came_) says of the incident:--
-
-     'This policy, which proved a complete success in 1870, indicated
-     the way in which British power could effectively protect Belgium
-     against an unscrupulous neighbour. But then it is a policy which
-     cannot be adopted unless this country is itself prepared to make
-     war against either of the belligerents which shall molest Belgium.
-     For the inducement to each of such belligerents is the knowledge
-     that he will have Great Britain as an enemy if he invades Belgium,
-     and as an Ally if his enemy attacks him through Belgian territory.
-     And that cannot be a security unless Great Britain keeps herself
-     free to give armed assistance to either should the other violate
-     the Treaty. The whole leverage would obviously disappear if we took
-     sides in the war on other grounds.'[38]
-
-This, then, is an illustration of the truth above insisted upon: to
-employ our force for the maintenance of the Balance of Power is to
-deprive it of the necessary impartiality for the maintenance of Right.
-
-Much more clear even than in the case of Belgium was the conflict in
-certain other cases between the claims of the Balance of Power and our
-obligation to place 'the rights of the smaller nationalities of Europe
-upon an unassailable foundation' which Mr Asquith proclaimed as the
-object of the War.
-
-The archetype of suppressed nationality was Poland; a nation with an
-ancient culture, a passionate and romantic attachment to its ancient
-traditions, which had simply been wiped off the map. If ever there was a
-case of nation-murder it was this. And one of the culprits--perhaps the
-chief culprit--was Russia. To-day the Allies, notably France, stand as
-the champions of Polish nationality. But as late as 1917, as part of
-that kind of bargain which inevitably marks the old type of diplomatic
-Alliance, France was agreeing to hand over Poland, helpless, to her old
-jailer, the Czarist Government. In March, 1916, the Russian Ambassador
-in Paris was instructed that, at the then impending diplomatic
-conference[39]
-
-     'It is above all necessary to demand that the Polish question
-     should be excluded from the subjects of international negotiation,
-     and that all attempts to place Poland's future under the guarantee
-     and control of the Powers should be prevented.'
-
-On February 12th, 1917, the Russian Foreign Minister informed the
-Russian Ambassador that M. Doumergue (French Ambassador in Petrograd)
-had told the Czar of France's wish to get Alsace-Lorraine at the end of
-the War, and also 'a special position in the Saar Valley, and to bring
-about the detachment from Germany of the territories west of the Rhine
-and their reorganisation in such a way that in future the Rhine may form
-a permanent strategic obstacle to any German advance.' The Czar was
-pleased to express his approval in principle of this proposal.
-Accordingly the Russian Foreign Minister expressed his wish that an
-Agreement by exchange of Notes should take place on this subject, and
-desired that if Russia agreed to the unrestricted right of France and
-Britain to fix Germany's western frontiers, so Russia was to have an
-assurance of freedom of action in fixing Germany's future frontier on
-the east. (This means the Russian western frontier.)[40]
-
-Or take the case of Serbia, the oppressed nationality whose struggle for
-freedom against Austria was the immediate cause of the War. It was
-because Russia would not permit Austria to do with reference to Serbia,
-what Russia claimed the right to do with reference to Poland, that the
-latter made of the Austrian policy a _casus belli_.
-
-Very well. We stood at least for the vindication of Serbian nationality.
-But the 'Balance' demanded that we should win Italy to our side of the
-scale. She had to be paid. So on April 20th, 1915, without informing
-Serbia, Sir Edward Grey signed a Treaty (the last article of which
-stipulated that it should be kept secret) giving to Italy the whole of
-Dalmatia, in its present extent, together with the islands north and
-west of the Dalmatian coast and Istria as far as the Quarnero and the
-Istrian Islands. That Treaty placed under Italian rule whole populations
-of Southern Slavs, creating inevitably a Southern Slav irredentism, and
-put the Yugo-Slavia, that we professed to be creating, under the same
-kind of economic disability which it had suffered from the Austrian
-Empire. One is not astonished to find Signor Salandra describing the
-principles which should guide his policy as 'a freedom from all
-preoccupations and prejudices, and from every sentiment except that of
-"Sacred egoism" (_sacro egoismo_) for Italy.'
-
-To-day, it need hardly be said, there is bitter hatred between our
-Serbian Ally and our Italian Ally, and most patriotic Yugo-Slavs regard
-war with Italy one day as inevitable.[41] Yet, assuredly, Sir Edward
-Grey is not to be blamed. If allegiance to the Balance of Power was to
-come first, allegiance to any principle, of nationality or of anything
-else, must come second.
-
-The moral implications of this political method received another
-illustration in the case of the Rumanian Treaty. Its nature is indicated
-in the Report of General Polivanov, amongst the papers published at
-Petrograd and dated 7th-20th November, 1916. It explains how Rumania was
-at first a neutral, but shifting between different inclinations--a wish
-not to come in too late for the partition of Austria-Hungary, and a wish
-to earn as much as possible at the expense of the belligerents. At
-first, according to this Report, she favoured our enemies and had
-obtained very favourable commercial agreements with Germany and
-Austria-Hungary. Then in 1916, on the Russian successes under Brusilov,
-she inclined to the Entente Powers. The Russian Chief of the Staff
-thought Rumanian neutrality preferable to her intervention, but later on
-General Alexeiev adopted the view of the Allies, 'who looked upon
-Rumania's entry as a decisive blow for Austria-Hungary and as the
-nearing of the War's end.' So in August, 1916, an agreement was signed
-with Rumania (by whom it was signed is not stated), assigning to her
-Bukovina and all Transylvania. 'The events which followed,' says the
-report, 'showed how greatly our Allies were mistaken and how they
-overvalued Rumania's entry.' In fact, Rumania was in a brief time
-utterly overthrown. And then Polivanov points out that the collapse of
-Rumania's plans as a Great Power 'is not particularly opposed to
-Russia's interests.'
-
-One might follow up this record and see how far the method of the
-Balance has protected the small and weak nation in the case of Albania,
-whose partition was arranged for in April, 1915, under the Treaty of
-London; in the case of Macedonia and the Bulgarian Macedonians; in the
-case of Western Thrace, of the Serbian Banat, of the Bulgar Dobrudja, of
-the Southern Tyrol, of German Bohemia, of Shantung--of still further
-cases in which we were compelled to change or modify or betray the cause
-for which we entered the War in order to maintain the preponderance of
-power by which we could achieve military success.
-
-The moral paralysis exemplified in this story is already infecting our
-nascent efforts at creating a society of nations--witness the relation
-of the League with Poland. No one in 1920 justified the Polish claims
-made against Russia. Our own communications to Russia described them as
-'imperialistic.' The Prime Minister condemned them in unmeasured terms.
-Poland was a member of the League. Her supplies of arms and ammunition,
-military stores, credit, were obtained by the grace of the chief members
-of the League. The only port by which arms could enter Poland was a city
-under the special control of the League. An appeal was made to the
-League to take steps to prevent the Polish adventure. Lord Robert Cecil
-advocated the course with particular urgency. The Soviet Government
-itself, while Poland was preparing, appealed to the chief constitutional
-governments of the League for some preventive action. Why was none
-taken? Because the Balance of Power demanded that we should 'stand by
-France,' and Polish Imperialism was part of the policy quite overtly and
-deliberately laid down by M. Clemenceau, who, with a candour entirely
-admirable, expressed his preference for the old system of alliances as
-against the newfangled Society of Nations. We could not restrain Poland
-and at the same time fulfil our Alliance obligations to France, who was
-supporting the Polish policy.[42]
-
-By reason of the grip of this system we supported (while proclaiming the
-sacredness of the cause of oppressed nationalities) or acquiesced in the
-policy of Czarist Russia against Poland, and incidentally Finland; we
-supported Poland against republican Russia; we encouraged the creation
-of small border States as means of fighting Soviet Russia, while we
-aided Koltchak and Denikin, who would undoubtedly if successful have
-suppressed the border States. We supported the Southern Slavs against
-Austria when we desired to destroy the latter; we supported Italy (in
-secret treaties) against the Southern Slavs when we desired the help of
-the former. Violations and repressions of nationality which, when
-committed by the enemy States, we declared should excite the deathless
-resistance of all free men and call down the punishment of Heaven, we
-acquiesce in and are silent about when committed by our Allies.
-
-This was the Fight for Right, the war to vindicate the moral law in the
-relations of States.
-
-The political necessities of the Balance of Power have prevented the
-country from pledging its power, untrammelled, to the maintenance of
-Right. The two objects are in theory and practice incompatible. The
-Balance of Power is in fact an assertion of the principle of
-_Macht-Politik_, of the principle that Might makes Right.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-MILITARY PREDOMINANCE--AND INSECURITY
-
-
-The War revealed this: However great the military power of a State, as
-in the case of France; however great its territorial extent, as in the
-case of the British Empire; or its economic resources and geographical
-isolation as in the case of the United States, the conditions of the
-present international order compel that State to resort to Alliance as
-an indispensable part of its military defence. And the peace reveals
-this: that no Alliance can long resist the disruptive forces of
-nationalist psychology. So rapid indeed has been the disintegration of
-the Alliance that fought this War, that, from this one cause, the power
-indispensable for carrying out the Treaty imposed upon the enemy has on
-the morrow of victory already disappeared.
-
-So much became patent in the year that followed the signing of the
-Treaty. The fact bears of course fundamentally upon the question of the
-use of political power for those economic ends discussed in the
-preceding pages. If the economic policy of the Treaty of Versailles is
-to be carried out, it will in any case demand a preponderance of power
-so immense and secure that the complete political solidarity of the
-Alliance which fought the War must be assumed. It cannot be assumed.
-That Alliance has in fact already gone to pieces; and with it the
-unquestioned preponderance of power.
-
-The fact bears not only upon the use of power for the purpose of
-carrying an economic policy--or some moral end, like the defence of
-Nationality--into effect. The disruptive influence of the Nationalisms
-of which alliances are composed raises the question of how far a
-military preponderance resting on a National foundation can even give us
-political security.
-
-If the moral factors of nationality are, as we have seen, an
-indispensable part of the study of international economics, so must
-those same factors be considered as an indispensable part of the problem
-of the power to be exercised by an alliance.
-
-During the War there was an extraordinary neglect of this simple truth.
-It seemed to occur to no one that the intensification of the psychology
-of nationalism--not only among the lesser States but in France and
-America and England--ran the risk of rendering the Alliance powerless
-after its victory. Yet that is what has happened.
-
-The power of an Alliance (again we are dealing with things that are
-obvious but neglected) does not depend upon the sum of its material
-forces--navies, armies, artillery. It depends upon being able to
-assemble those things to a common purpose; in other words, upon policy
-fit to direct the instrument. If the policy, or certain moral elements
-within it, are such that one member of the Alliance is likely to turn
-his arms against the others, the extent of _his_ armament does not add
-to the strength of the Alliance. It was with ammunition furnished by
-Britain and France that Russia in 1919 and 1920 destroyed British and
-French troops. The present building of an enormous navy by America is
-not accepted in Britain as necessarily adding to the security of the
-British Empire.
-
-It is worth while to note how utterly fallacious are certain almost
-universal assumptions concerning the relation of war psychology to the
-problem of alliance solidarity. An English visitor to the United States
-(or an American visitor to England) during the years 1917-1918 was apt
-to be deluged by a flood of rhetoric to this effect: The blood shed on
-the same battle-fields, the suffering shared in common in the same
-common cause, would unite and cement as nothing had ever yet united the
-two great branches of the English-speaking race, destined by
-Providence....
-
-But the same visitor moving in the same circle less than two years later
-found that this eternal cement of friendship had already lost its
-potency. Never, perhaps, for generations were Anglo-American relations
-so bad as they had become within a score or so of months of the time
-that Englishmen and Americans were dying side by side on the
-battle-field. At the beginning of 1921, in the United States, it was
-easier, on a public platform, to defend Germany than to present a
-defence of English policy in Ireland or in India. And at that period one
-might hear commonly enough in England, in trams and railway carriages, a
-repetition of the catch phrase, 'America next.' If certain popular
-assumptions as to war psychology were right, these things would be
-impossible.
-
-Yet, as a matter of fact, the psychological phenomenon is true to type.
-It was not an accident that the internationalist America of 1915, of
-'Peace without Victory,' should by 1918 have become more fiercely
-insistent upon absolute victory and unconditional surrender than any
-other of the belligerents, whose emotions had found some outlet during
-three years of war before America had begun. The complete reversal of
-the 'Peace without Victory' attitude was demanded--cultivated,
-deliberately produced--as a necessary part of war morale. But these
-emotions of coercion and domination cannot be intensively cultivated and
-then turned off as by a tap. They made America fiercely nationalist,
-with necessarily a temperamental distaste for the internationalism of Mr
-Wilson. And when a mere year of war left the emotional hungers
-unsatisfied, they turned unconsciously to other satisfactions. Twenty
-million Americans of Irish descent or association, among others,
-utilised the opportunity.
-
-One feature--perhaps the very largest feature of all--of war morale, had
-been the exploitation of the German atrocities. The burning of Louvain,
-and other reprisals upon the Belgian civilian population, meant
-necessarily a special wickedness on the part of a definite entity, known
-as 'Germany,' that had to be crushed, punished, beaten, wiped out. There
-were no distinctions. The plea that all were not equally guilty excited
-the fierce anger reserved for all such 'pacifist' and pro-German pleas.
-A German woman had laughed at a wounded American: all German women were
-monsters. 'No good German but a dead German.' It was in the German blood
-and grey matter. The elaborate stories--illustrated--of Germans sticking
-bayonets into Belgian children produced a thesis which was beyond and
-above reason or explanation: for that atrocity, 'Germany'--seventy
-million people, ignorant peasants, driven workmen, the babies, the
-invalids, the old women gathering sticks in the forest, the children
-trooping to school--all were guilty. To state the thing in black and
-white sounds like a monstrous travesty. But it is not a travesty. It is
-the thesis we, too, maintained; but in America it had, in the American
-way, an over simplification and an extra emphasis.
-
-And then after the War an historical enemy of America's does precisely
-the same thing. In the story of Amritsar and the Irish reprisals it is
-the Indian and Sinn Fein version only which is told; just as during the
-War we got nothing but the anti-German version of the burning of
-Louvain, or reprisals upon civilians. Why should we expect that the
-result should be greatly different upon American opinion? Four hundred
-unarmed and hopeless people, women and children as well as men, are mown
-down by machine-guns. Or, in the Irish reprisals, a farmer is shot in
-the presence of his wife and children. The Government defends the
-soldiers. 'Britain' has done this thing: forty-five millions of people,
-of infinitely varying degrees of responsibility, many opposing it, many
-ignorant of it, almost all entirely helpless. To represent them as
-inhuman monsters because of these atrocities is an infinitely
-mischievous falsehood. But it is made possible by a theory, which in the
-case of Germany we maintained for years as essentially true. And now it
-is doing as between Britain and America what a similar falsehood did as
-between Germany and England, and will go on doing so long as Nationalism
-includes conceptions of collective responsibility which fly in the face
-of common sense and truth. If the resultant hostilities can operate as
-between two national groups like the British and the American, what
-groups can be free of them?
-
-It is a little difficult now, two years after the end of the War, with
-the world in its present turmoil, to realise that we really did expect
-the defeat of Germany to inaugurate an era of peace and security, of
-reduction of armaments, the virtual end of war; and believed that it was
-German militarism, 'that trampling, drilling foolery in the heart of
-Europe, that has arrested civilisation and darkened the hopes of mankind
-for forty years,'[43] as Mr Wells wrote in _The War that will End War_,
-which accounted for nearly all the other militarisms, and that after its
-destruction we could anticipate 'the end of the armament phase of
-European history.' For, explained Mr Wells, 'France, Italy, England, and
-all the smaller Powers of Europe are now pacific countries; Russia,
-after this huge War, will be too exhausted for further adventure.'[44]
-
-'When will peace come?' asked Professor Headlam, and answered that
-
-     'It will come when Germany has learnt the lesson of the War, when
-     it has learnt, as every other nation has had to learn, that the
-     voice of Europe cannot be defied with impunity.... Men talk about
-     the terms of peace. They matter little. With a Germany victorious
-     no terms could secure the future of Europe, with a Germany
-     defeated, no artificial securities will be wanted, for there will
-     be a stronger security in the consciousness of defeat.'[45]
-
-There were to be no limits to the political or economic rearrangements
-which victory would enable us to effect. Very authoritative military
-critics like Mr Hilaire Belloc became quite angry and contemptuous at
-the suggestion that the defeat of the enemy would not enable us to
-rearrange Europe at our will. The doctrine that unlimited power was
-inherent in victory was thus stated by Mr Belloc:--
-
-     'It has been well said that the most straightforward and obvious
-     conclusions on the largest lines of military policy are those of
-     which it is most difficult to convince a general audience; and we
-     find in this matter a singular miscalculation running through the
-     attitude of many Western publicists. They speak as though, whatever
-     might happen in the West, the Alliance, which is fighting for
-     European civilisation, the Western Allies and the United States,
-     could not now affect the destinies of Eastern Europe....
-
-     Such an attitude is, upon the simplest principles of military
-     science, a grotesque error.... If we are victorious ... the
-     destruction of the enemy's military power gives us as full an
-     opportunity for deciding the fate of Eastern Europe as it does for
-     deciding the fate of Western Europe. Victory gained by the Allies
-     will decide the fate of all Europe, and, for that matter, of the
-     whole world. It will open the Baltic and the Black Sea. It will
-     leave us masters with the power to dictate in what fashion the new
-     boundaries shall be arranged, how the entries to the Eastern
-     markets shall be kept open, garrisoned and guaranteed....
-
-     Wherever they are defeated, whether upon the line they now hold or
-     upon other lines, their defeat and our victory will leave us with
-     complete power. If that task be beyond our strength, then
-     civilisation has suffered defeat, and there is the end of it.'
-
-German power was to be destroyed as the condition of saving
-civilisation. Mr Belloc wrote:--
-
-     'If by some negotiation (involving of course the evacuation of the
-     occupied districts in the West) the enemy remains undefeated,
-     civilised Europe has lost the war and Prussia has won it.'[46]
-
-Such was the simple and popular thesis. Germany, criminal and barbarian,
-challenged Europe, civilised and law-abiding. Civilisation can only
-assert itself by the punishment of Germany and save itself by the
-destruction of German power. Once the German military power is
-destroyed, Europe can do with Germany what it will.
-
-I suggest that the experience of the last two years, and our own present
-policy, constitute an admission or demonstration, first, that the moral
-assumption of this thesis--that the menace of German power was due to
-some special wickedness on the part of the German nation not shared by
-other peoples in any degree--is false; and, secondly, that the
-destruction of Germany's military force gives to Europe no such power to
-control Germany.
-
-Our power over Germany becomes every day less:
-
-First, by the break-up of the Alliance. The 'sacred egoisms' which
-produced the War are now disrupting the Allies. The most potentially
-powerful European member of the Alliance or Association--Russia--has
-become an enemy; the most powerful member of all, America, has withdrawn
-from co-operation; Italy is in conflict with one Ally, Japan with
-another.
-
-Secondly, by the more extended Balkanisation of Europe. The States
-utilised by (for instance) France as the instruments of Allied policy
-(Poland, Hungary, Ukrainia, Rumania, Czecho-Slovakia) are liable to
-quarrel among themselves. The groups rendered hostile to Allied
-policy--Germany, Russia, China--are much larger, and might well once
-more become cohesive units. The Nationalism which is a factor of Allied
-disintegration may nevertheless work for the consolidation of the groups
-opposed to us.
-
-Thirdly, by the economic disorganisation of Europe (resulting mainly
-from the desire to weaken the enemy), which deprives the Alliance of
-economic resources sufficient for a military task like that of the
-conquest of Russia or the occupation of Germany.
-
-Fourthly, by the social unrest within each country (itself due in part
-to the economic disorganisation, in part to the introduction of the
-psychology of jingoism into the domain of industrial strife):
-Bolshevism. A long war of intervention in Russia by the Alliance would
-have broken down under the strain of internal unrest in Allied
-countries.
-
-The Alliance thus succumbs to the clash of Nationalisms and the clash of
-classes.
-
-These moral factors render the purpose which will be given to
-accumulated military force--'the direction in which the guns will
-shoot'--so uncertain that the amount of material power available is no
-indication of the degree of security attained.
-
-If it were true, as we argued so universally before and during the War,
-that German power was the final cause of the armament rivalry in Europe,
-then the disappearance of that power should mark, as so many prophesied
-it would mark, the end of the 'armament era.'[47] Has it done so? Or
-does any one to-day seriously argue that the increase of armament
-expenditure over the pre-war period is in some mystic way due to
-Prussian militarism?
-
-Let us turn to a _Times_ leader in the summer of 1920:--
-
-     'To-day the condition of Europe and of a large portion of the world
-     is scarcely less critical than it was six years ago. Within a few
-     days, or at most a few weeks, we may know whether the Peace Treaty
-     signed at Versailles will possess effective validity. The
-     independent existence of Poland, which is a keystone of the
-     reorganisation of Europe contemplated by the Treaty, is in grave
-     peril; and with it, though perhaps not in the manner currently
-     imagined in Germany, is jeopardised the present situation of
-     Germany herself.
-
-... There is undoubtedly a widespread plot against Western
-     civilisation as we know it, and probably against British liberal
-     institutions as a principal mainstay of that civilisation. Yet if
-     our institutions, and Western civilisation with them, are to
-     withstand the present onslaught, they must be defended.... We never
-     doubted the staunchness and vigour of England six years ago, and we
-     doubt them as little to-day.'[48]
-
-And so we must have even larger armaments than ever. Field-Marshal Earl
-Haig and Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson in England, Marshal Foch in
-France, General Leonard Wood in America, all urge that it will be
-indispensable to maintain our armaments at more than the pre-war scale.
-The ink of the Armistice was barely dry before the _Daily Mail_
-published a long interview with Marshal Foch[49] in the course of which
-the Generalissimo enlarged on the 'inevitability' of war in the future
-and the need of being 'prepared for it.' Lord Haig, in his Rectorial
-Address at St Andrews (May 14th, 1919) followed with the plea that as
-'the seeds of future conflict are to be found in every quarter, only
-waiting the right condition, moral, economic, political, to burst once
-more into activity,' every man in the country must immediately be
-trained for war. The _Mail_, supporting his plea, said:--
-
-     'We all desire peace, but we cannot, even in the hour of complete
-     victory, disregard the injunction uttered by our first soldier,
-     that "only by adequate preparation for war can peace in every way
-     be guaranteed."
-
-     '"A strong citizen army on strong territorial lines," is the advice
-     Sir Douglas Haig urges on the country. A system providing twelve
-     months' military training for every man in the country should be
-     seriously thought of.... Morally and physically the War has shown
-     us that the effect of discipline upon the youths of the country is
-     an asset beyond calculation.'
-
-So that the victory which was to end the 'trampling and drilling
-foolery' is made a plea for the institution of permanent conscription in
-England, where, before the victory, it did not exist.
-
-The admission involved in this recommendation, the admission that
-destruction of German power has failed to give us security, is as
-complete as it well could be.
-
-If this was merely the exuberant zeal of professional soldiers, we might
-perhaps disregard these declarations. But the conviction of the soldiers
-is reflected in the policy of the Government. At a time when the
-financial difficulties of all the Allied countries are admittedly
-enormous, when the bankruptcy of some is a contingency freely discussed,
-and when the need of economy is the refrain everywhere, there is not an
-Allied State which is not to-day spending more upon military and naval
-preparations than it was spending before the destruction of the German
-power began. America is preparing to build a bigger fleet than she has
-ever had in her history[50]--a larger fleet than the German armada,
-which was for most Englishmen perhaps the decisive demonstration of
-Germany's hostile intent. Britain on her side has at present a larger
-naval budget than that of the year which preceded the War; while for the
-new war instrument of aviation she has a building programme more costly
-than the shipbuilding programmes of pre-war time. France is to-day
-spending more on her army than before the War; spending, indeed, upon it
-now a sum larger than that which she spent upon the whole of her
-Government when German militarism was undestroyed.
-
-Despite all this power possessed by the members of the Alliance, the
-predominant note in current political criticism is that Germany is
-evading the execution of the Treaty of Versailles, that in the payment
-of the indemnity, the punishment of military criminals, and disarmament,
-the Treaty is a dead letter, and the Allies are powerless. As the
-_Times_ reminds us, the very keystone of the Treaty, in the independence
-of Poland, trembles.
-
-It is not difficult to recall the fashion in which we thought and wrote
-of the German menace before and during the War. The following from _The
-New Europe_ (which had taken as its device 'La Victoire Int�grale') will
-be recognised as typical:--
-
-     'It is of vital importance to us to understand, not only Germany's
-     aims, but the process by which she hopes to carry them through. If
-     Germany wins, she will not rest content with this victory. Her next
-     object will be to prepare for further victories both in Asia and in
-     Central and Western Europe.
-
-     'Those who still cherish the belief that Prussia is pacifist show a
-     profound misunderstanding of her psychology.... On this point the
-     Junkers have been frank: those who have not been frank are the
-     wiseacres who try to persuade us that we can moderate their
-     attitude by making peace with them. If they would only pay a
-     little more attention to the Junkers' avowed objects, and a little
-     less attention to their own theories about those objects, they
-     would be more useful guides to public opinion in this country,
-     which finds itself hopelessly at sea on the subject of Prussianism.
-
-     'What then are Germany's objects? What is likely to be her view of
-     the general situation in Europe at the present moment?... Whatever
-     modifications she may have introduced into her immediate programme,
-     she still clings to her desire to overthrow our present
-     civilisation in Europe, and to introduce her own on the ruins of
-     the old order....
-
-     'Buoyed up by recent successes ... her offers of peace will become
-     more insistent and more difficult to refuse. Influences will
-     clamour for the resumption of peace on economic and financial
-     grounds.... We venture to say that it will be very difficult for
-     any Government to resist this pressure, and, _unless the danger of
-     coming to terms with Germany is very clearly and strongly put
-     before the public, we may find ourselves caught in the snares that
-     Germany has for a long time past been laying for us_.
-
-... 'We shall be told that once peace is concluded the Junkers will
-     become moderate, and all those who wish to believe this will
-     readily accept it without further question.
-
-     'But, while we in our innocence may be priding ourselves on the
-     conclusion of peace to Germany it will not be a peace, but a
-     "respite." ... This "respite" will be exceedingly useful to Germany
-     not only for propaganda purposes, but in order to replenish her
-     exhausted resources necessary for future aggression. Meanwhile
-     German activities in Asia and Ireland are likely to continue
-     unabated until the maximum inconvenience to England has been
-     produced.'
-
-If the reader will carry his mind back a couple of years, he will recall
-having read numberless articles similar to the above, concerning the
-duty of annihilating the power of Germany.
-
-Well, will the reader note that _the above does not refer to Germany at
-all, but to Russia_? I have perpetrated a little forgery for his
-enlightenment. In order to bring home the rapidity with which a change
-of roles can be accomplished, an article warning us against any peace
-with _Russia_, appearing in the _New Europe_ of January 8th, 1920, has
-been reproduced word for word, except that 'Russia' or 'Lenin' has been
-changed to 'Germany' or 'the Junkers,' as the case may be.
-
-Now let us see what this writer has to say as to the German power
-to-day?
-
-Well, he says that the security of civilisation now depends upon the
-restoration, in part at least, of that German power, for the destruction
-of which the world gave twenty million lives. The danger to civilisation
-now is mainly 'the breach between Germany and the West, and the
-rivalries of nationalism.' Lenin, plotting our destruction, relies
-mainly on that:--
-
-     'Above all we may be sure that his attention is concentrated on
-     England and Germany. So long as Germany remains aloof and feelings
-     of bitterness against the Allies are allowed to grow still more
-     acute, Lenin can rub his hands with glee; what he fears more than
-     anything is the first sign that the sores caused by five years of
-     war are being healed, and that England, France, and Germany are
-     preparing to treat one another as neighbours, who have each their
-     several parts to play in the restoration of normal economic
-     conditions in Europe.'
-
-As to the policy of preventing Germany's economic restoration for fear
-that she should once more possess the raw material of military power,
-this writer declares that it is precisely that Carthaginian policy
-(embodied in the Treaty of Versailles) which Lenin would most of all
-desire:--
-
-     'As a trained economist we may be sure that he looks first and
-     foremost at the widespread economic chaos. We can imagine his
-     chuckle of satisfaction when he sees the European exchanges getting
-     steadily worse and national antagonisms growing more acute.
-     Disputes about territorial questions are to him so much grist to
-     the Bolshevik mill, as they all tend to obscure the fundamental
-     question of the economic reconstruction of Europe, without which no
-     country in Europe can consider itself safe from Bolshevism.
-
-     'He must realise to the full the lamentable condition of the
-     finances of the new States in Central and South-east Europe.'
-
-In putting forward these views, The _New Europe_ is by no means alone.
-Already in January, 1920, Mr J. L. Garvin had declared what indeed was
-obvious, that it was out of the question to expect to build a new Europe
-on the simultaneous hostility of Germany _and_ Russia.
-
-     'Let us face the main fact. If there is to be no peace with the
-     Bolshevists _there must be an altogether different understanding
-     with Germany.... For any sure and solid barrier against the
-     external consequences of Bolshevism Germany is essential._'
-
-Barely six months later Mr Winston Churchill, Secretary of State for War
-in the British Cabinet, chooses the _Evening News_, probably the
-arch-Hun-Hater of all the English Press, to open out the new policy of
-Alliance with Germany against Russia. He says:--
-
-     'It will be open to the Germans ... by a supreme effort of
-     sobriety, of firmness, of self-restraint, and of
-     courage--undertaken, as most great exploits have to be, under
-     conditions of peculiar difficulty and discouragement--to build a
-     dyke of peaceful, lawful, patient strength and virtue against the
-     flood of red barbarism flowing from the East, and thus safeguard
-     their own interests and the interests of their principle
-     antagonists in the West.
-
-     'If the Germans were able to render such a service, not by
-     vainglorious military adventure or with ulterior motives, they
-     would unquestionably have taken a giant step upon that path of
-     self-redemption which would lead them surely and swiftly as the
-     years pass by to their own great place in the councils of
-     Christendom, and would have rendered easier the sincere
-     co-operation between Britain, France, and Germany, on which the
-     very salvation of Europe depends.'
-
-So the salvation of Europe depends upon our co-operation with Germany,
-upon a German dyke of 'patient strength.'[51]
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-One wonders why we devoted quite so many lives and so much agony to
-knocking Germany out; and why we furnished quite so much treasure to the
-military equipment of the very Muscovite 'barbarians' who now threaten
-to overflow it.
-
-One wonders also, why, if 'the very salvation of Europe' in July, 1920,
-depends upon sincere co-operation of the Entente with Germany, those
-Allies were a year earlier exacting by force her signature to a Treaty
-which not even its authors pretended was compatible with German
-reconciliation.
-
-If the Germans are to fulfil the role Mr Churchill assigns to them, then
-obviously the Treaty of Versailles must be torn up. If they are to be
-the 'dyke' protecting Western civilisation against the Red military
-flood, it must, according to the Churchillian philosophy, be a military
-dyke: the disarmament clauses must be abolished, as must the other
-clauses--particularly the economic ones--which would make of any people
-suffering from them the bitter enemy of the people that imposed them.
-Our Press is just now full of stories of secret Treaties between Germany
-and Russia against France and England. Whether the stories are true or
-not, it is certain that the effect of the Treaty of Versailles and the
-Allied policy to Russia will be to create a Russo-German understanding.
-And Mr Churchill (phase 1920) has undoubtedly indicated the
-alternatives. If you are going to fight Russia to the death, then you
-must make friends with Germany; if you are going to maintain the Treaty
-of Versailles, then you must make friends with Russia. You must 'trust'
-either the Boche or the Bolshevist.
-
-Popular feeling at this moment (or rather the type of feeling envisaged
-by the Northcliffe Press) won't do either. Boche and Bolshevist alike
-are 'vermin' to be utterly crushed, and any policy implying co-operation
-with either is ruled out. 'Force ... force to the uttermost' against
-both is demanded by the _Times_, the _Daily Mail_, and the various
-evening, weekly, or monthly editions thereof.
-
-Very well. Let us examine the proposal to 'hold down' by force both
-Russia and Germany. Beyond Russia there is Asia, particularly India. The
-_New Europe_ writer reminds us:--
-
-     ' ... If England cannot be subdued by a direct attack, she is, at
-     any rate, vulnerable in Asia, and it is here that Lenin is
-     preparing to deliver his real propaganda offensive. During the last
-     few months more and more attention has been paid to Asiatic
-     propaganda, and this will not be abandoned, no matter what
-     temporary arrangements the Soviet Government may attempt to make
-     with Western Europe. It is here, and here only, that England can be
-     wounded, so that she may be counted out of the forth-coming
-     revolutionary struggle in Europe that Lenin is preparing to engage
-     in at a later date....
-
-     'We should find ourselves so much occupied in maintaining order in
-     Asia that we should have little time or energy left for interfering
-     in Europe.'
-
-As a matter of fact, we know how great are the forces that can be
-absorbed[52] when the territory for subjection stretches from Archangel
-to the Deccan--through Syria, Arabia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia,
-Afghanistan. Our experience in Archangel, Murmansk, Vladivostock, and
-with Koltchak, Denikin, and Wrangel shows that the military method must
-be thorough or it will fail. It is no good hoping that a supply of
-surplus ammunition to a counter-revolutionary general will subdue a
-country like Russia. The only safe and thorough-going plan is complete
-occupation--or a very extended occupation--of both countries. M.
-Clemenceau definitely favoured this course, as did nearly all the
-military-minded groups in England and America, when the Russian policy
-was discussed at the end of 1918 and early in 1919.
-
-Why was that policy not carried out?
-
-The history of the thing is clear enough. That policy would have called
-upon the resources in men and material of the whole of the Alliance, not
-merely those of the Big Four, but of Poland, Czecho-Slovakia,
-Yugo-Slavia, Italy, Greece, and Japan as well. The 'March to Berlin and
-Moscow' which so many, even in England and America, were demanding at
-the time of the Armistice would not have been the march of British
-Grenadiers; nor the succeeding occupation one like that of Egypt or
-India. Operations on that scale would have brought in sooner or later
-(indeed, much smaller operations have already brought in) the forces of
-nations in bitter conflict the one with the other. We know what the
-occupation of Ireland by British troops has meant. Imagine an Ireland
-multiplied many times, occupied not only by British but by 'Allied'
-troops--British side by side with Senegalese negroes, Italians with
-Yugo-Slavs, Poles with Czecho-Slovaks and White Russians, Americans with
-Japanese. Remember, moreover, how far the disintegration of the Alliance
-had already advanced. The European member of the Alliance greatest in
-its potential resources, human and material, was of course the very
-country against which it was now proposed to act; the 'steamroller' had
-now to be destroyed ... by the Allies. America, the member of the
-Alliance, which, at the time of the Armistice, represented the greatest
-unit of actual material force, had withdrawn into a nationalist
-isolation from, and even hostility to, the European Allies. Japan was
-pursuing a line of policy which rendered increasingly difficult the
-active co-operation of certain of the Western democracies with her; her
-policy had already involved her in declared and open hostility to the
-other Asiatic element of the Alliance, China. Italy was in a state of
-bitter hostility to the nationality--Greater Serbia--whose defence was
-the immediate occasion of the War, and was soon to mark her feeling
-towards the peace by returning to power the Minister who had opposed
-Italy's entrance into the War; a situation which we shall best
-understand if we imagine a 'pro-German' (say, for instance, Lord Morley,
-or Mr Ramsay MacDonald, or Mr Philip Snowden) being made Prime Minister
-of England. What may be termed the minor Allies, Yugo-Slavia,
-Czecho-Slovakia, Rumania, Greece, Poland, the lesser Border States, the
-Arab kingdom that we erected, were drifting towards the entangling
-conflicts which have since broken out. Already, at a time when the Quai
-d'Orsay and Carmelite House were both clamouring for what must have
-meant in practice the occupation of both Germany and Russia, the
-Alliance had in fact disintegrated, and some of its main elements were
-in bitter conflict. The picture of a solid alliance of pacific and
-liberal democracies standing for the maintenance of an orderly European
-freedom against German attacks had completely faded away. Of the Grand
-Alliance of twenty-four States as a combination of power pledged to a
-common purpose, there remained just France and England--and their
-relations, too, were becoming daily worse; in fundamental disagreement
-over Poland, Turkey, Syria, the Balkan States, Austria, and Germany
-itself, its indemnities, and its economic treatment generally. Was this
-the instrument for the conquest of half a world?
-
-But the political disintegration of the Alliance was not the only
-obstacle to a thorough-going application of military force to the
-problem of Germany and Russia.
-
-By the very terms of the theory of security by preponderant power,
-Germany had to be weakened economically, for her subjugation could never
-be secure if she were permitted to maintain an elaborate, nationally
-organised economic machinery, which not only gives immense powers of
-production, capable without great difficulty of being transformed to the
-production of military material, but which, through the organisation of
-foreign trade, gives influence in countries like Russia, the Balkans,
-the Near and Far East.
-
-So part of the policy of Versailles, reflected in the clauses of the
-Treaty already dealt with, was to check the economic recovery of Germany
-and more particularly to prevent economic co-operation between that
-country and Russia. That Russia should become a 'German Colony' was a
-nightmare that haunted the minds of the French peace-makers.[53]
-
-But, as we have already seen, to prevent the economic co-operation of
-Germany and Russia meant the perpetuation of the economic paralysis of
-Europe. Combined with the maintenance of the blockade it would
-certainly have meant utter and perhaps irretrievable collapse.
-
-Perhaps the Allies at the beginning of 1919 were in no mood to be
-greatly disturbed by the prospect. But they soon learned that it had a
-very close bearing both on the aims which they had set before themselves
-in the Treaty and, indeed, on the very problem of maintaining military
-predominance.
-
-In theory, of course, an army of occupation should live on the occupied
-country. But it soon became evident that it was quite out of the
-question to collect even the cost of the armies for the limited
-occupation of the Rhine territories from a country whose industrial life
-was paralysed by blockade. Moreover, the costs of the German occupation
-were very sensibly increased by the fact of the Russian blockade.
-Deprived of Russian wheat and other products, the cost of living in
-Western Europe was steadily rising, the social unrest was in consequence
-increasing, and it was vitally necessary, if something like the old
-European life was to be restored, that production should be restarted as
-rapidly as possible. We found that a blockade of Russia which cut off
-Russian foodstuffs from Western Europe, was also a blockade of
-ourselves. But the blockade, as we have seen, was not the only economic
-device used as a part of military pressure: the old economic nerves
-between Germany and her neighbours had been cut out and the creeping
-paralysis of Europe was spreading in every direction. There was not a
-belligerent State on the Continent of Europe that was solvent in the
-strict sense of the term--able, that is, to discharge its obligations in
-the gold money in which it had contracted them. All had resorted to the
-shifts of paper--fictitious--money, and the debacle of the exchanges was
-already setting in. Whence were to come the costs of the forces and
-armies of occupation necessitated by the policy of complete conquest of
-Russia and Germany at the same time?
-
-When, therefore (according to a story current at the time), President
-Wilson, following the announcement that France stood for the military
-coercion of Russia, asked each Ally in turn how many troops and how much
-of the cost it would provide, each replied: 'None.' It was patent,
-indeed, that the resources of an economically paralysed Western Europe
-were not adequate to this enterprise. A half-way course was adopted.
-Britain supplied certain counter-revolutionary generals with a very
-considerable quantity of surplus stores, and a few military missions;
-France adopted the policy of using satellite States--Poland, Rumania,
-and even Hungary--as her tools. The result we know.
-
-Meantime, the economic and financial situation at home (in France and
-Italy) was becoming desperate. France needed coal, building material,
-money. None of these things could be obtained from a blockaded,
-starving, and restless Germany. One day, doubtless, Germany will be able
-to pay for the armies of occupation; but it will be a Germany whose
-workers are fed and clothed and warmed, whose railways have adequate
-rolling stock, whose fields are not destitute of machines, and factories
-of coal and the raw materials of production. In other words, it will be
-a strong and organised Germany, and, if occupied by alien troops, most
-certainly a nationalist and hostile Germany, dangerous and difficult to
-watch, however much disarmed.
-
-But there was a further force which the Allied Governments found
-themselves compelled to take into consideration in settling their
-military policy at the time of the Armistice. In addition to the
-economic and financial difficulties which compelled them to refrain from
-large scale operations in Russia and perhaps in Germany; in addition to
-the clash of rival nationalisms among the Allies, which was already
-introducing such serious rifts into the Alliance, there was a further
-element of weakness--revolutionary unrest, the 'Bolshevik' fever.
-
-In December, 1918, the British Government was confronted by the refusal
-of soldiers at Dover, who believed that they were being sent to Russia,
-to embark. A month or two later the French Government was faced by a
-naval mutiny at Odessa. American soldiers in Siberia refused to go into
-action against the Russians. Still later, in Italy, the workers enforced
-their decision not to handle munitions for Russia, by widespread
-strikes. Whether the attempt to obtain troops in very large quantities
-for a Russian war, involving casualties and sacrifices on a considerable
-scale, would have meant at the beginning of 1919 military revolts, or
-Communist, Spartacist, or Bolshevik revolutionary movements, or not, the
-Governments were evidently not prepared to face the issue.
-
-We have seen, therefore, that the blockade and the economic weakening of
-our enemy are two-edged weapons, only of effective use within very
-definite limits; that these limits in turn condition in some degree the
-employment of more purely military instruments like the occupation of
-hostile territory; and indeed condition the provision of the
-instruments.
-
-The power basis of the Alliance, such as it is, has been, since the
-Armistice, the naval power of England, exercised through the blockades,
-and the military force of France exercised mainly through the management
-of satellite armies. The British method has involved the greater
-immediate cruelty (perhaps a greater extent and degree of suffering
-imposed upon the weak and helpless than any coercive device yet
-discovered by man) though the French has involved a more direct negation
-of the aims for which the War was fought. French policy aims quite
-frankly at the re-imposition of France's military hegemony of the
-Continent. That aim will not be readily surrendered.
-
-Owing to the division in Socialist and Labour ranks, to the growing fear
-and dislike of 'confiscatory' legislation, by a peasant population and a
-large _petit rentier_ class, conservative elements are bound to be
-predominant in France for a long time. Those elements are frankly
-sceptical of any League of Nations device. A League of Nations would
-rob them of what in the Chamber of Deputies a Nationalist called 'the
-Right of Victory.' But the alternative to a League as a means of
-security is military predominance, and France has bent her energies
-since the Armistice to securing it. To-day, the military predominance of
-France on the Continent is vastly greater than that of Germany ever was.
-Her chief antagonist is not only disarmed--forbidden to manufacture
-heavy artillery, tanks or fighting aircraft--but as we have seen, is
-crippled in economic life by the loss of nearly all his iron and much of
-his coal. France not only retains her armament, but is to-day spending
-more upon it than before the War. The expenditure for the army in 1920
-amounted to 5000 millions of francs, whereas in 1914 it was only 1200
-millions. Translate this expenditure even with due regard to the changed
-price level into terms of policy, and it means, _inter alia_, that the
-Russo-Polish war and Feisal's deposition in Syria are burdens beyond her
-capacity. And this is only the beginning. Within a few months France has
-revived the full flower of the Napoleonic tradition so far as the use of
-satellite military States is concerned. Poland is only one of many
-instruments now being industriously fashioned by the artisans of the
-French military renaissance. In the Ukraine, in Hungary, in
-Czecho-Slovakia, in Rumania, in Yugo-Slavia; in Syria, Greece, Turkey,
-and Africa, French military and financial organisers are at work.
-
-M. Clemenceau, in one of his statements to the Chamber[54] on France's
-future policy, outlined the method:--
-
-     'We have said that we would create a system of barbed wire. There
-     are places where it will have to be guarded to prevent Germany from
-     passing. There are peoples like the Poles, of whom I spoke just
-     now, who are fighting against the Soviets, who are resisting, who
-     are in the van of civilisation. Well, we have decided ... to be
-     the Allies of any people attacked by the Bolsheviks. I have spoken
-     of the Poles, of the help that we shall certainly get from them in
-     case of necessity. Well, they are fighting at this moment against
-     the Bolsheviks, and if they are not equal to the task--but they
-     will be equal to it--the help which we shall be able to give them
-     in different ways, and which we are actually giving them,
-     particularly in the form of military supplies and uniforms--that
-     help will be continued. There is a Polish army, of which the
-     greater part has been organised and instructed by French
-     officers.... The Polish army must now be composed of from 450,000
-     to 500,000 men. If you look on the map at the geographical
-     situation of this military force, you will think that it is
-     interesting from every point of view. There is a Czecho-Slovak
-     army, which already numbers nearly 150,000 men, well equipped, well
-     armed, and capable of sustaining all the tasks of war. Here is
-     another factor on which we can count. But I count on many other
-     elements. I count on Rumania.'
-
-Since then Hungary has been added, part of the Hungarian plan being the
-domination of Austria by Hungary, and, later, possibly the restoration
-of an Austrian Monarchy, which might help to detach monarchical and
-clerical Bavaria from Republican Germany.[55] This is the revival of the
-old French policy of preventing the unification of the German
-people.[56] It is that aspiration which largely explains recent French
-sympathy for Clericalism and Monarchism and the reversal of the policy
-heretofore pursued by the Third Republic towards the Vatican.
-
-The systematic arming of African negroes reveals something of Napoleon's
-leaning towards the military exploitation of servile races. We are
-probably only at the beginning of the arming of Africa's black millions.
-They are, of course, an extremely convenient military material. French
-or British soldiers might have scruples against service in a war upon a
-Workers' Republic. Cannibals from the African forest 'conscribed' for
-service in Europe are not likely to have political or social scruples of
-that kind. To bring some hundreds of thousands of these Africans to
-Europe, to train them systematically to the use of European arms; to
-teach them that the European is conquerable; to put them in the position
-of victors over a vanquished European people--here indeed are
-possibilities. With Senegalese negroes having their quarters in Goethe's
-house, and placed, if not in authority, at least as the instruments of
-authority over the population of a European university city; and with
-the Japanese imposing their rule upon great stretches of what was
-yesterday a European Empire (and our Ally) a new page may well have
-opened for Europe.
-
-But just consider the chances of stability for power based on the
-assumption of continued co-operation of a number of 'intense'
-nationalisms, each animated by its sacred egoisms. France has turned to
-this policy as a substitute for the alliance of two or three great
-States, which national feeling and conflicting interests have driven
-apart. Is this collection of mushroom republics to possess a stability
-to which the Entente could not attain?
-
-One looks over the list. We have, it is true, after a century, the
-re-birth of Poland, a great and impressive case of the vindication of
-national right. But Poland, yesterday the victim of the imperialist
-oppressor, has, herself, almost in a few hours, as it were, acquired an
-imperialism of her own. The Pole assures us that his nationality can
-only be secure if he is given dominion over territories with largely
-non-Polish populations; if, that is, some fifteen millions of Ruthenes,
-Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Russians, are deprived of a separate national
-existence. Italy, it is true, is now fully redeemed; but that redemption
-involves the 'irredentism' of large numbers of German Tyrolese,
-Yugo-Slavs, and Greeks. The new Austria is forbidden to federate with
-the main branch of the race to which her people belong--though
-federation alone can save them from physical extinction. The
-Czecho-Slovak nation is now achieved, but only at the expense of a
-German unredeemed population larger numerically than that of
-Alsace-Lorraine. And Slovaks and Czechs already quarrel--many foresee
-the day when the freed State will face its own rebels. The Slovenes and
-Croats and the Serbs do not yet make a 'nationality,' and threaten to
-fight one another as readily as they would fight the Bulgarians they
-have annexed in Bulgarian Macedonia. Rumania has marked her redemption
-by the inclusion of considerable Hungarian, Bulgarian, and Serbian
-'irredentisms' within her new borders. Finland, which with Poland
-typified for so long the undying struggle for national right, is to-day
-determined to coerce the Swedes on the Aaland Islands and the Russians
-on the Carelian Territory. Greek rule of Turks has already involved
-retaliatory, punitive, or defensive measures which have needed Blue Book
-explanation. Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaidjan have not yet acquired
-their subject nationalities.
-
-The prospect of peace and security for these nationalities may be
-gathered in some measure by an enumeration of the wars which have
-actually broken out since the Peace Conference met in Paris, for the
-appeasement of Europe. The Poles have fought in turn, the
-Czecho-Slovaks, the Ukrainians, the Lithuanians, and the Russians. The
-Ukrainians have fought the Russians and the Hungarians. The Finns have
-fought the Russians, as have also the Esthonians and the Letts. The
-Esthonians and Letts have also fought the Baltic Germans. The Rumanians
-have fought Hungary. The Greeks have fought the Bulgarians and are at
-present in 'full dress' war with the Turks. The Italians have fought the
-Albanians, and the Turks in Asia Minor. The French have been fighting
-the Arabs in Syria and the Turks in Cilicia. The various British
-expeditions or missions, naval or military, in Archangel, Murmansk, the
-Baltic, the Crimea, Persia, Siberia, Turkestan, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor,
-the Soudan, or in aid of Koltchak, Denikin, Yudenitch, or Wrangel, are
-not included in this list as not arising in a strict sense perhaps out
-of nationality problems.
-
-Let us face what all this means in the alignment of power in the world.
-The Europe of the Grand Alliance is a Europe of many nationalities:
-British, French, Italian, Rumanian, Polish, Czecho-Slovak, Yugo-Slav,
-Greek, Belgian, Magyar, to say nothing of the others. None of these
-States exceeds greatly forty millions of people, and the populations of
-most are very much less. But the rival group of Germany and Russia,
-making between them over two hundred millions, comprises just two great
-States. And contiguous to them, united by the ties of common hatreds,
-lie the Mahomedan world and China. Prusso-Slavdom (combining racial
-elements having common qualities of amenity to autocratic discipline)
-might conceivably give a lead to Chinese and other Asiatic millions,
-brought to hate the West. The opposing group is a Balkanised Europe of
-irreconcilable national rivalries, incapable, because of those
-rivalries, of any prolonged common action, and taking a religious pride
-in the fact of this incapacity to agree. Its moral leaders, or many of
-them, certainly its powerful and popular instrument of education, the
-Press, encourage this pugnacity, regarding any effort towards its
-restraint or discipline as political atheism; deepening the tradition
-which would make 'intense' nationalism a noble, virile, and inspiring
-attitude, and internationalism something emasculate and despicable.
-
-We talk of the need of 'protecting European civilisation' from hostile
-domination, German or Russian. It is a danger. Other great civilisations
-have found themselves dominated by alien power. Seeley has sketched for
-us the process by which a vast country with two or three hundred million
-souls, not savage or uncivilised but with a civilisation, though
-descending along a different stream of tradition, as real and ancient as
-our own, came to be utterly conquered and subdued by a people, numbering
-less than twelve millions, living on the other side of the world. It
-reversed the teaching of history which had shown again and again that it
-was impossible really to conquer an intelligent people alien in
-tradition from its invaders. The whole power of Spain could not in
-eighty years conquer the Dutch provinces with their petty population.
-The Swiss could not be conquered. At the very time when the conquest of
-India's hundreds of millions was under way, the English showed
-themselves wholly unable to reduce to obedience three millions of their
-own race in America. What was the explanation? The Inherent Superiority
-of the Anglo-Saxon Stock?
-
-For long we were content to draw such a flattering conclusion and leave
-it at that, until Seeley pointed out the uncomfortable fact that the
-great bulk of the forces used in the conquest of India were not British
-at all. They were Indian. India was conquered for Great Britain by the
-natives of India.
-
-     'The nations of India (says Seeley) have been conquered by an army
-     of which, on the average, about a fifth part was English. India can
-     hardly be said to have been conquered at all by foreigners; she was
-     rather conquered by herself. If we were justified, which we are
-     not, in personifying India as we personify France or England, we
-     could not describe her as overwhelmed by a foreign enemy; we should
-     rather have to say that she elected to put an end to anarchy by
-     submitting to a single government, even though that government were
-     in the hands of foreigners.'[57]
-
-In other words, India is an English possession because the peoples of
-India were incapable of cohesion, the nations of India incapable of
-internationalism.
-
-The peoples of India include some of the best fighting stock in the
-world. But they fought one another: the pugnacity and material power
-they personified was the force used by their conquerors for their
-subjection.
-
-I will venture to quote what I wrote some years ago touching Seeley's
-moral:--
-
-     'Our successful defeat of tyranny depends upon such a development
-     of the sense of patriotism among the democratic nations that it
-     will attach itself rather to the conception of the unity of all
-     free co-operative societies, than to the mere geographical and
-     racial divisions; a development that will enable it to organise
-     itself as a cohesive power for the defence of that ideal, by the
-     use of all the forces, moral and material, which it wields.
-
-'That unity is impossible on the basis of the old policies, the European
-statecraft of the past. For that assumes a condition of the world in
-which each State must look for its national security to its own isolated
-strength; and such assumption compels each member, as a measure of
-national self-preservation, and so justifiably, to take precaution
-against drifting into a position of inferior power, compels it, that is,
-to enter into a competition for the sources of strength--territory and
-strategic position. Such a condition will inevitably, in the case of any
-considerable alliance, produce a situation in which some of its members
-will be brought into conflict by claims for the same territory. In the
-end, that will inevitably disrupt the Alliance.
-
-'The price of the preservation of nationality is a workable
-internationalism. If this latter is not possible then the smaller
-nationalities are doomed. Thus, though internationalism may not be in
-the case of every member of the Alliance the object of war, it is the
-condition of its success.'
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-PATRIOTISM AND POWER IN WAR AND PEACE
-
-
-In the preceding chapter attention has been called to a phenomenon which
-is nothing short of a 'moral miracle' if our ordinary reading of war
-psychology is correct. The phenomenon in question is the very definite
-and sudden worsening of Anglo-American relations, following upon common
-suffering on the same battle-fields, our soldiers fighting side by side;
-an experience which we commonly assume should weld friendship as nothing
-else could.[58]
-
-This miracle has its replica within the nation itself: intense
-industrial strife, class warfare, revolution, embittered rivalries,
-following upon a war which in its early days our moralists almost to a
-man declared at least to have this great consolation, that it achieved
-the moral unity of the nation. Pastor and poet, statesman and professor
-alike rejoiced in this spiritual consolidation which dangers faced in
-common had brought about. Never again was the nation to be riven by the
-old differences. None was now for party and all were for the State. We
-had achieved the '_union sacr�e_' ... 'duke's son, cook's son.' On this
-ground alone many a bishop has found (in war time) the moral
-justification of war.[59]
-
-Now no one can pretend that this sacred union has really survived the
-War. The extraordinary contrast between the disunity with which we
-finish war and the unity with which we begin it, is a disturbing thought
-when we recollect that the country cannot always be at war, if only
-because peace is necessary as a preparation for war, for the creation of
-things for war to destroy. It becomes still more disturbing when we add
-to this post-war change another even more remarkable, which will be
-dealt with presently: the objects for which at the beginning of a war we
-are ready to die--ideals like democracy, freedom from military
-regimentation and the suppression of military terrorism, the rights of
-small nations--are things about which at the end of the War we are
-utterly indifferent. It would seem either that these are not the things
-that really stirred us--that our feelings had some other unsuspected
-origin--or that war has destroyed our feeling for them.
-
-Note this juxtaposition of events. We have had in Europe millions of men
-in every belligerent country showing unfathomable capacity for
-disinterested service. Millions of youngsters--just ordinary folk--gave
-the final and greatest sacrifice without hesitation and without
-question. They faced agony, hardship, death, with no hope or promise of
-reward save that of duty discharged. And, very rightly, we acclaim them
-as heroes. They have shown without any sort of doubt that they are
-ready to die for their country's cause or for some even greater
-cause--human freedom, the rights of a small nation, democracy, or the
-principle of nationality, or to resist a barbarous morality which can
-tolerate the making of unprovoked war for a monarchy's ambition or the
-greed of an autocratic clique.
-
-And, indeed, whatever our final conclusion, the spectacle of vast
-sacrifices so readily made is, in its ultimate meaning one of infinite
-inspiration and hope. But the War's immediate sequel puts certain
-questions to us that we cannot shirk. For note what follows.
-
-After some years the men who could thus sacrifice themselves, return
-home--to Italy, or France, or Britain--and exchange khaki for the
-miner's overall or the railway worker's uniform. And it would then seem
-that at that moment their attitude to their country and their country's
-attitude to them undergo a wonderful change. They are ready--so at least
-we are told by a Press which for five years had spoken of them daily as
-heroes, saints, and gentlemen--through their miners' or railway Unions
-to make war upon, instead of for, that community which yesterday they
-served so devotedly. Within a few months of the close of this War which
-was to unify the nation as it had never been unified before (the story
-is the same whichever belligerent you may choose) there appear divisions
-and fissures, disruptions and revolutions, more disturbing than have
-been revealed for generations.
-
-Our extreme nervousness about the danger of Bolshevist propaganda shows
-that we believe that these men, yesterday ready to die for their
-country, are now capable of exposing it to every sort of horror.
-
-Or take another aspect of it. During the War fashionable ladies by
-thousands willingly got up at six in the morning to scrub canteen floors
-or serve coffee, in order to add to the comfort of their working-class
-countrymen--in khaki. They did this, one assumes, from the love of
-countrymen who risked their lives and suffered hardship in the
-execution of duty. It sounds satisfactory until the same countryman
-ceases fighting and turns to extremely hard and hazardous duties like
-mining, or fishing in winter-time in the North Sea. The ladies will no
-longer scrub floors or knit socks for him. They lose all real interest
-in him. But if it was done originally from 'love of fellow-countrymen,'
-why this cessation of interest? He is the same man. Into the psychology
-of that we shall inquire a little more fully later. The phenomenon is
-explained here in the conviction that its cause throws light upon the
-other phenomenon equally remarkable, namely, that victory reveals a most
-astonishing post-war indifference to those moral and ideal ends for
-which we believed we were fighting. Is it that they never were our real
-aims at all, or that war has wrought a change in our nature with
-reference to them?
-
-The importance of knowing what really moves us is obvious enough. If our
-potential power is to stand for the protection of any principle--nationality
-or democracy--that object must represent a real purpose, not a
-convenient clothing for a quite different purpose. The determination
-to defend nationality can only be permanent if our feeling for it
-is sufficiently deep and sincere to survive in the competition of
-other moral 'wishes.' Where has the War, and the complex of desires
-it developed, left our moral values? And, if there has been a
-re-valuation, why?
-
-The Allied world saw clearly that the German doctrine--the right of a
-powerful State to deny national independence to a smaller State, merely
-because its own self-preservation demanded it--was something which
-menaced nationality and right. The whole system by which, as in Prussia,
-the right of the people to challenge the political doctrines of the
-Government was denied (as by a rigorous control of press and education),
-was seen to be incompatible with the principles upon which free
-government in the West has been established. All this had to be
-destroyed in order that the world might be made 'safe for democracy.'
-The trenches in Flanders became 'the frontiers of freedom.' To uphold
-the rights of small nations, freedom of speech and press, to punish
-military terror, to establish an international order based on right as
-against might--these were things for which free men everywhere should
-gladly die. They did die, in millions. Nowhere so much, perhaps, as in
-America were these ideals the inspiration which brought that country
-into the War. She had nothing to gain territorially or materially. If
-ever the motive to war was an ideal motive, America's was.
-
-Then comes the Peace. And the America which had discarded her tradition
-of isolation to send two million soldiers on the European continent, 'at
-the call of the small nation,' was asked to co-operate with others in
-assuring the future security of Belgium, in protecting the small States
-by the creation of some international order (the only way in which they
-ever can be effectively protected); to do it in another form for a small
-nation that has suffered even more tragically than Belgium, Armenia;
-definitely to organise in peace that cause for which she went to war.
-And then a curious discovery is made. A cause which can excite immense
-passion when it is associated with war, is simply a subject for boredom
-when it becomes a problem of peace-time organisation. America will give
-lavishly of the blood of her sons to fight for the small nations; she
-will not be bothered with mandates or treaties in order to make it
-unnecessary to fight for them. It is not a question whether the
-particular League of Nations established at Paris was a good one. The
-post-war temper of America is that she does not want to be bothered with
-Europe at all: talk about its security makes the American public of 1920
-irritable and angry. Yet millions were ready to die for freedom in
-Europe two years ago! A thing to die for in 1918 is a thing to yawn
-over, or to be irritable about, when the war is done.
-
-Is America alone in this change of feeling about the small State?
-Recall all that we wrote and talked about the sacredness of the rights
-of small nations--and still in certain cases talk and write. There is
-Poland. It is one of the nations whose rights are sacred--to-day. But in
-1915 we acquiesced in an arrangement by which Poland was to be
-delivered, bound hand and foot, at the end of the war, to its worst and
-bitterest enemy, Czarist Russia. The Alliance (through France, to-day
-the 'protector of Poland') undertook not to raise any objection to any
-policy that the Czar's Government might inaugurate in Poland. It was to
-have a free hand. A secret treaty, it will be urged, about which the
-public knew nothing? We were fighting to liberate the world from
-diplomatic autocracies using their peoples for unknown and unavowed
-purposes. But the fact that we were delivering over Poland to the
-mercies of a Czarist Government was not secret. Every educated man knew
-what Russian policy under the Czarist Government would be, must be, in
-Poland. Was the Russian record with reference to Poland such that the
-unhampered discretion of the Czarist Government was deemed sufficient
-guarantee of Polish independence? Did we honestly think that Russia had
-proved herself more liberal in the treatment of the Poles than Austria,
-whose Government we were destroying? The implication, of course, flew in
-the face of known facts: Austrian rule over the Poles, which we proposed
-to destroy, had proved itself immeasurably more tolerant than the
-Russian rule which we proposed to re-enforce and render more secure.
-
-And there were Finland and the Border States. If Russia had remained in
-the War, 'loyal to the cause of democracy and the rights of small
-nations,' there would have been no independent Poland, or Finland, or
-Esthonia, or Georgia; and the refusal of our Ally to recognise their
-independence would not have disturbed us in the least.
-
-Again, there was Serbia, on behalf of whose 'redemption' in a sense, the
-War began. An integral part of that 'redemption' was the inclusion of
-the Dalmatian coast in Serbia--the means of access of the new Southern
-Slav State to the sea. Italy, for naval reasons, desired possession of
-that coast, and, without informing Serbia, we undertook to see that
-Italy should get it. (Italy, by the way, also entered the War on behalf
-of the principle of Nationality.)[60]
-
-It is not to be supposed, however, that the small State itself, however
-it may declaim about 'liberty or death,' has, when the opportunity to
-assert power presents itself, any greater regard for the rights of
-nationality--in other people. Take Poland. For a hundred and fifty years
-Poland has called upon Heaven to witness the monstrous wickedness of
-denying to a people its right to self-determination; of forcing a people
-under alien rule. After a hundred and fifty years of the martyrdom of
-alien rule, Poland acquires its freedom. That freedom is not a year old
-before Poland itself becomes in temper as imperialistic as any State in
-Europe. It may be bankrupt, racked with typhus and famine, split by
-bitter factional quarrels, but the one thing upon which all Poles will
-unite is in the demand for dominion over some fifteen millions of
-people, not merely non-Polish, but bitterly anti-Polish. Although Poland
-is perhaps the worst case, all the new small States show a similar
-disposition: Czecho-Slovakia, Yugoslavia, Rumania, Finland, Greece, have
-all now their own imperialism, limited only, apparently, by the extent
-of their power. All these people have fought for the right to national
-independence; there is not one that is not denying the right to national
-independence. If every Britain has its Ireland, every Ireland has its
-Ulster.
-
-But is this belief in Nationality at all? What should we have thought of
-a Southerner of the old Slave States fulminating against the crime of
-slavery? Should we have thought his position any more logical if he had
-explained that he was opposed to slavery because he did not want to
-become a slave? The test of his sincerity would have been, not the
-conduct he exacted of others, but the conduct he proposed to follow
-towards others. 'One is a Nationalist,' says Professor Corradini, one of
-the prophets of Italian _sacro egoismo_, 'while waiting to be able to
-become an Imperialist.' He prophesies that in twenty years 'all Italy
-will be Imperialist.'[61]
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The last thing intended here is any excuse of German violence by a
-futile _tu quoque_. But what it is important to know, if we are to
-understand the real motives of our conduct--and unless we do, we cannot
-really know where our conduct is leading us, where we are going--is
-whether we really cared about the 'moral aims of war,' the things for
-which we thought we were willing to die. Were we not as a matter of fact
-fighting--and dying--for something else?
-
-Test the nature of our feelings by what was after all perhaps the most
-dramatised situation in the whole drama: the fact that in the Western
-world a single man, or a little junta of military chiefs, could by a
-word send nations into war, millions to their death; and--worse still in
-a sense--that those millions would accept the fact of thus being made
-helpless pawns, and with appalling docility, without question, kill and
-be killed for reasons they did not even know. It must be made impossible
-ever again for half a dozen Generals or Cabinet Ministers thus to play
-with nations and men and women as with pawns.
-
-The War is at last over. And in Eastern Europe, the most corrupt, as it
-was one of the potentially most powerful of all the military
-autocracies--that of the Czar--has either gone to pieces from its own
-rottenness, or been destroyed by the spontaneous uprising of the people.
-Bold experiments, in entirely new social and economic methods, are
-attempted in this great community which may have so much to teach the
-Western world, experiments which challenge not only old political
-institutions, but old economic ones as well. But the men who were the
-Czar's Ministers are still in Paris and London, in close but secret
-confabulation with Allied Governments.
-
-And one morning we find that we are at war with the first Workers'
-Republic of the world, the first really to try a great social
-experiment. There had been no declaration, no explanation. President
-Wilson had, indeed, said that nothing would induce the Allies to
-intervene. Their behaviour on that point would be the 'acid test' of
-sincerity. But in Archangel, Murmansk, Vladivostock, the Crimea, on the
-Polish border, on the shores of the Caspian, our soldiers were killing
-Russians, or organising their killing; our ships sank Russian ships and
-bombarded Russian cities. We found that we were supporting the Royalist
-parties--military leaders who did not hide in the least their intention
-to restore the monarchy. But again, there is no explanation. But
-somewhere, for some purpose undefined, killing has been proclaimed. And
-we kill--and blockade and starve.
-
-The killing and blockading are not the important facts. Whatever may be
-behind the Russian business, the most disturbing portent is the fact
-which no one challenges and which indeed is most generally offered as a
-sort of defence. It is this: Nobody knows what the policy of the
-Government in Russia is, or was. It is commonly said they had no policy.
-Certainly it was changeable. That means that the Government does not
-need to give an explanation in order to start upon a war which may
-affect the whole future form of Western society. They did not have to
-explain because nobody particularly cared. Commands for youths to die in
-wars of unknown purpose do not strike us as monstrous when the commands
-are given by our own Governments--Governments which notoriously we do
-not trouble to control. Public opinion as a whole did not have any
-intense feeling about the Russian war, and not the slightest as to
-whether we used poison gas, or bombarded Russian cathedrals, or killed
-Russian civilians. We did not want it to be expensive, and Mr Churchill
-promised that if it cost too much he would drop it. He admitted finally
-that it was unnecessary by dropping it. But it was not important enough
-for him to resign over. And as for bringing anybody to trial for it, or
-upsetting the monarchy....[62]
-
-There is another aspect of our feeling about the Prussian tendencies and
-temper, to rid the world of which we waged the War.
-
-All America (or Britain, for that matter: America is only a striking and
-so a convenient example) knew that the Bismarckian persecution of the
-Socialists, the imprisonment of Bebel, of Liebknecht, the prosecution of
-newspapers for anti-militarist doctrines, the rigid control of
-education, by the Government, were just the natural prelude to what
-ended in Louvain and Aerschot, to the shooting down of the civilians of
-an invaded country. Again, that was why Prussia had to be destroyed in
-the interest of human freedom and the safety of democracy. The
-newspapers, the professors, the churches, were telling us all this
-endlessly for five years. Within a year of the end of the War, America
-is engaged in an anti-Socialist campaign more sweeping, more ruthless,
-by any test which you care to apply--the numbers arrested, the severity
-of the sentences imposed, the nature of the offences alleged--than
-anything ever attempted by Bismarck or the Kaiser. Old men of seventy
-(one selected by the Socialist party as Presidential Candidate), young
-girls, college students, are sent to prison with sentences of ten,
-fifteen, or twenty years. The elected members of State Legislatures are
-not allowed to sit, on the ground of their Socialist opinions. There are
-deportations in whole shiploads. If one takes the Espionage Act and
-compares it with any equivalent German legislation (the tests applied to
-school teachers or the refusal of mailing privileges to Socialist
-papers), one finds that the general principle of control of political
-opinion by the Government, and the limitations imposed upon freedom of
-discussion, and the Press, are certainly pushed further by the post-war
-America than they were by the pre-war Germany--the Germany that had to
-be destroyed for the precise reason that the principle of government by
-free discussion was more valuable than life itself.
-
-And as to military terrorism. Americans can see--scores of American
-papers are saying it every day--that the things defended by the British
-Government in Ireland are indistinguishable from what brought upon
-Germany the wrath of Allied mankind. But they do not even know and
-certainly would not care if they did know, that American marines in
-Hayti--a little independent State that might one day become the hope and
-symbol of a subject nationality, an unredeemed race that has suffered
-and does suffer more at American hands than Pole or Alsatian ever
-suffered at German hands--have killed ten times as many Haytians as the
-Black and Tans have killed Irish. Nor for that matter do Americans know
-that every week there takes place in their own country--as there has
-taken place week after week in the years of peace for half a
-century--atrocities more ferocious than any which are alleged against
-even the British or the German. Neither of the latter burn alive,
-weekly, untried fellow-countrymen with a regularity that makes the thing
-an institution.
-
-If indeed it was the militarism, the terrorism, the crude assertion of
-power, the repressions of freedom, which made us hate the German, why
-are we relatively indifferent when all those evils raise their heads,
-not far away, among a people for whom after all we are not responsible,
-but at home, near to us, where we have some measure of responsibility?
-
-For indifferent in some measure to those near-by evils we all are.
-
-The hundred million people who make up America include as many kindly,
-humane, and decent folk as any other hundred million anywhere in the
-world. They have a habit of carrying through extraordinary and unusual
-measures--like Prohibition. Yet nothing effective has been done about
-lynching, for which the world holds them responsible, any more than we
-have done anything effective about Ireland, for which the world holds us
-responsible. Their evil may one day land them in a desperate 'subject
-nationality' problem, just as our Irish problem lands us in political
-difficulty the world over. Yet neither they nor we can manage to achieve
-one-tenth of the emotional interest in our own atrocity or oppression,
-which we managed in a few weeks to achieve in war-time over the German
-barbarities in Belgium. If we could--if every schoolboy and maid-servant
-felt as strongly over Balbriggan or Amritsar as they felt over the
-_Lusitania_ and Louvain--our problem would be solved; whereas the action
-and policy which arose out of our feeling about Louvain did not solve
-the evil of military terrorism. It merely made it nearly universal.
-
-It brings us back to the original question. Is it mainly, or at all, the
-cruelty or the danger of oppression which moves us, which is at the
-bottom of our flaming indignation over the crimes of the enemy?
-
-We believed that we were fighting because of a passionate feeling for
-self-rule; for freedom of discussion, of respect for the rights of
-others, particularly the weak; the hatred of the mere pride of power out
-of which oppression grows; of the regimentation of minds which is its
-instrument. But after the War we find that in truth we have no
-particular feeling about the things we fought to make impossible. We
-rather welcome them, if they are a means of harassing people that we do
-not happen to like. We get the monstrous paradox that the very
-tendencies which it was the object of the War to check, are the very
-tendencies that have acquired an elusive power in our own
-country--possibly as the direct result of the War!
-
-Perhaps if we examine in some detail the process of the break-up after
-war, within the nation, of the unity which marked it during war, we may
-get some explanation of the other change just indicated.
-
-The unity on which we congratulated ourselves was for a time a fact. But
-just as certainly the patriotism which prompted the duchess to scrub
-floors was not simply love of her countrymen, or it would not suddenly
-cease when the war came to an end. The self-same man who in khaki was a
-hero to be taken for drives in the duchess's motor-car, became as
-workman--a member of some striking union, say--an object of hostility
-and dislike. The psychology revealed here has a still more curious
-manifestation.
-
-When in war-time we read of the duke's son and the cook's son peeling
-potatoes into the same tub, we regard this aspect of the working of
-conscription as something in itself fine and admirable, a real national
-comradeship in common tasks at last. Colonel Roosevelt orates; our
-picture papers give us photographs; the country thrills to this note of
-democracy. But when we learn that for the constructive purposes of
-peace--for street-cleaning--the Soviet Government has introduced
-precisely this method and compelled the sons of Grand Dukes to shovel
-snow beside common workmen, the same papers give the picture as an
-example of the intolerable tyranny of socialism, as a warning of what
-may happen in England if the revolutionists are listened to. That for
-years that very thing _had_ been happening in England for the purposes
-of war, that we were extremely proud of it, and had lauded it as
-wholesome discipline and a thing which made conscription fine and
-democratic, is something that we are unable even to perceive, so strong
-and yet so subtle are the unconscious factors of opinion. This peculiar
-psychological twist explains, of course, several things: why we are all
-socialists for the purposes of war, and why socialism can then give
-results which nothing else could give; why we cannot apply the same
-methods successfully to peace; and why the economic miracles possible in
-war are not possible in peace. And the outcome is that forces,
-originally social and unifying, are at present factors only of
-disruption and destruction, not merely internationally, but, as we shall
-see presently, nationally as well.
-
-When the accomplishment of certain things--the production of shells, the
-assembling of certain forces, the carriage of cargoes--became a matter
-of life and death, we did not argue about nationalisation or socialism;
-we put it into effect, and it worked. There existed for war a will which
-found a way round all the difficulties of credit adjustment,
-distribution, adequate wages, unemployment, incapacitation. We could
-take over the country's railways and mines, control its trade, ration
-its bread, and decide without much discussion that those things were
-indispensable for its purposes. But we can do none of these things for
-the upbuilding of the country in peace time. The measures to which we
-turn when we feel that the country must produce or perish, are precisely
-the measures which, when the war is over, we declare are the least
-likely to get anything done at all. We could make munitions; we cannot
-make houses. We could clothe and feed our soldiers and satisfy all their
-material wants; we cannot do that for the workers. Unemployment in
-war-time was practically unknown; the problem of unemployment in peace
-time seems beyond us. Millions go unclothed; thousands of workers who
-could make clothes are without employment. One speaks of the sufferings
-of the army of poverty as though they were dispensations of heaven. We
-did not speak thus of the needs of soldiers in war-time. If soldiers
-wanted uniforms and wool was obtainable, weavers did not go unemployed.
-Then there existed a will and common purpose. That will and common
-purpose the patriotism of peace-time cannot give us.
-
-Yet, again, we cannot always be at war. Women must have time and
-opportunity to bear and to bring up children, and men to build up a
-country-side, if only in order to have men for war to slay and things
-for war to destroy. Patriotism fails as a social cement within the
-nation at peace, it fails as a stimulus to its constructive tasks; and
-as between nations, we know it acts as a violent irritant and disruptive
-force.
-
-We need not question the genuineness of the emotion which moves our
-duchess when she knits socks for the dear boys in the trenches--or when
-she fulminates against the same dear boys as working men when they come
-home. As soldiers she loved them because her hatred of Germans--that
-atrocious, hostile 'herd'--was deep and genuine. She felt like killing
-Germans herself. Consequently, to those who risked their lives to fulfil
-this wish of hers, her affections went out readily enough. But why
-should she feel any particular affection for men who mine coal, or
-couple railway trucks, or catch fish in the North Sea? Dangerous as are
-those tasks, they are not visibly and intimately related to her own
-fierce emotions. The men performing them are just workpeople, the
-relation of whose labour to her own life is not, perhaps, always very
-clear. The suggestion that she should scrub floors or knit socks for
-_them_ would appear to her as merely silly or offensive.
-
-But unfortunately the story does not end there. During these years of
-war her very genuine emotions of hate were fed and nourished by war
-propaganda; her emotional hunger was satisfied in some measure by the
-daily tale of victories over the enemy. She had, as it were, ten
-thousand Germans for breakfast every morning. And when the War stopped,
-certainly something went out of her life. No one would pretend that
-these flaming passions of five years went for so little in her emotional
-experience that they could just be dropped from one day to another
-without something going unsatisfied.
-
-And then she cannot get coal; her projected journey to the Riviera is
-delayed by a railway strike; she has troubles with servants; faces a
-preposterous super-tax and death duties; an historical country seat can
-no longer be maintained and old associations must be broken up; Labour
-threatens revolution--or her morning paper says it does; Labour leaders
-say grossly unfair things about dukes. Here, indeed, is a new hostility,
-a new enemy tribe, on which the emotions cultivated so assiduously
-during five years, but hungry and unfed since the War, can once more
-feed and find some satisfaction. The Bolshevist, or the Labour agitator,
-takes the place of the Hun; the elements of enmity and disruption are
-already present.
-
-And something similar takes place with the miner, or labour man, in
-reference to the duchess and what she stands for. For him also the main
-problem of life had resolved itself during the War into something simple
-and emotional; an enemy to be fought and overcome. Not a puzzling
-intellectual difficulty, with all the hesitations and uncertainties of
-intellectual decision dependent upon sustained mental effort. The
-rights and wrongs were settled for him; right was our side, wrong the
-enemy's. What we had to do was to crush him. That done, it would be a
-better world, his country 'a land fit for heroes to live in.'
-
-On return from the War he does not find quite that. He can, for
-instance, get no house fit to live in at all. High prices, precarious
-employment. What is wrong? There are fifty theories, all puzzling. As to
-housing, he is sometimes told it is his own fault; the building unions
-won't permit dilution. When the 'high-brows' are all at sixes and
-sevens, what is a man to think? But it is suggested to him that behind
-all this is one enemy: the Capitalist. His papers have a picture of him:
-very like the Hun. Now here is something emotionally familiar. For years
-he has learned to hate and fight, to embody all problems in the one
-problem of fighting some definite--preferably personified--enemy. Smash
-him; get him by the throat, and then all these brain-racking puzzles
-will clear themselves up. Our side, our class, our tribe, will then be
-on top, and there will be no real solution until it is. To this respond
-all the emotions, the whole state of feeling which years of war have
-cultivated. Once more the problem of life is simple; one of power,
-domination, the fight for mastery; loyalty to our side, our lot, 'right
-or wrong.' Workers to be masters, workers who have been shoved and
-ordered about, to do the shoving and the ordering. Dictatorship of the
-proletariat. The headaches disappear and one can live emotionally free
-once more.
-
-There are 'high-brows' who will even philosophise the thing for him, and
-explain that only the psychology of war and violence will give the
-emotional drive to get anything done; that only by the myths which mark
-patriotism can real social change be made. Just as for the hate which
-keeps war going, the enemy State must be a single 'person,' a
-collectivity in which any one German can be killed as vengeance or
-reprisal for any other,[63] so 'the capitalist class' must be a
-personality, if class hatred is to be kept alive in such a way as to
-bring the class war to victory.
-
-But that theory overlooks the fact that just as the nationalism which
-makes war also destroys the Alliances by which victory can be made
-effective, so the transfer of the psychology of Nationalism to the
-industrial field has the same effect of Balkanisation. We get in both
-areas, not the definite triumph of a cohesive group putting into
-operation a clear-cut and understandable programme or policy, but the
-chaotic conflict of an infinite number of groups unable to co-operate
-effectively for any programme.
-
-If the hostilities which react to the Syndicalistic appeal were confined
-to the Capitalist, there might be something to be said for it from the
-point of view of the Labour movement. But forces so purely instinctive,
-by their very nature repelling the restraint of self-imposed discipline
-by intelligent foresight of consequences, cannot be the servant of an
-intelligent purpose, they become its master. The hostility becomes more
-important than the purpose. To the industrial Jingo, as to the
-nationalist Jingo, all foreigners are potential enemies. The hostile
-tribe or herd may be constituted by very small differences; slight
-variations of occupation, interest, race, speech, and--most potently of
-all perhaps--dogma or belief. Heresy-hunting is, of course, one
-manifestation of tribal animosity; and a heretic is the person who has
-the insufferable impudence to disagree with us.
-
-So the Sorelian philosophy of violence and instinctive pugnacity gives
-us, not the effective drive of a whole movement against the present
-social order (for that would require order, discipline, self-control,
-tolerance, and toleration); it gives us the tendency to an infinite
-splitting of the Labour movement. No sooner does the Left of some party
-break off and found a new party than it is immediately confronted by its
-own 'Leftism.' And your dogmatist hates the dissenting member of his own
-sect more fiercely than the rival sect; your Communist some rival
-Communism more bitterly than the Capitalist. Already the Labour movement
-is crossed by the hostilities of Communist against Socialist, the Second
-International against the Third, the Third against the Fourth; Trades
-Unionism by the hostility of skilled against unskilled, and in much of
-Europe there is also the conflict of town against country.
-
-This tendency has happily not yet gone far in England; but here, as
-elsewhere, it represents the one great danger, the tendency to be
-watched. And it is a tendency that has its moral and psychological roots
-in the same forces which have given us the chaos in the international
-field: The deep human lust for coercion, domination; the irksomeness of
-toleration, thought, self-discipline.
-
-The final difficulty in social and political discussion is, of course,
-the fact that the ultimate values--what is the highest good, what is the
-worst evil--cannot usually be argued about at all; you accept them, you
-see that they are good or bad as the case may be, or you don't.
-
-Yet we cannot organise a society save on the basis of some sort of
-agreement concerning these least common denominators; the final argument
-for the view that Western Europe had to destroy German Prussianism was
-that the system challenged certain ultimate moral values common to
-Western society. On the morrow of the sinking of the _Lusitania_ an
-American writer pointed out that if the cold-blooded slaughter of
-innocent women and children were accepted as a normal incident of war,
-like any other, the whole moral standards of the West would then
-definitely be placed on another plane. That elusive but immeasurably
-important moral sense, which gives a society sufficient community of aim
-to make common action possible, would have been radically altered. The
-ancient world--highly civilised and cultured as much of it was--had a
-_Sittlichkeit_ which made the chattel-slavery of the greater part of the
-human race an entirely normal--and, as they thought, inevitable--condition
-of things. It was accepted by the slaves themselves, and it was this
-acquiescence in the arrangement by both parties to it which mainly
-accounted for its continuance through a very long period of a very high
-civilisation. The position of women illustrates the same thing. There
-are to-day highly developed civilisations in which a man of education
-buys a wife, or several, as in the West he would buy a racehorse. And
-the wife, or wives, accept that situation; there can be no change in
-that particular matter until certain quite 'unarguable' moral values
-have altered in the minds of those concerned.
-
-The American writer raised, therefore, an extremely important question
-in relation to the War. Has its total outcome affected certain values of
-the fundamental kind just indicated? What has been its effect upon
-social impulses? Has it any direct relation to certain moral tendencies
-that have succeeded it?
-
-Perhaps the War is now old enough to enable us to face a few quite
-undeniable facts with some measure of detachment.
-
-When the Germans bombarded Scarborough early in the War, there was such
-a hurricane of moralisation that one rejoiced that this War would not be
-marked on our side, at least, by the bombardment of open cities. But
-when our Press began to print reports of French bombs falling on circus
-tents full of children, scores being killed, there was simply no protest
-at all. And one of the humours of the situation was that after more than
-a year, in which scores of such reports had appeared in the Press, some
-journalistic genius began an agitation on behalf of 'reprisals' for air
-raids.[64]
-
-At a time when it seemed doubtful whether the Germans would sign the
-Treaty or not, and just what would be the form of the Hungarian
-Government, the _Evening News_ printed the following editorial:--
-
-     'It might take weeks or months to bring the Hungarian Bolshevists
-     and recalcitrant Germans to book by extensive operations with
-     large forces. It might take but a few days to bring them to reason
-     by adequate use of aircraft.
-
-     'Allied airmen could reach Buda-pest in a few hours, and teach its
-     inhabitants such a lesson that Bolshevism would lose its
-     attractions for them.
-
-     'Strong Allied aerodromes on the Rhine and in Poland, well equipped
-     with the best machines and pilots, could quickly persuade the
-     inhabitants of the large German cities of the folly of having
-     refused to sign the peace.
-
-     'Those considerations are elementary. For that reason they may be
-     overlooked. They are "milk for babes."'[65]
-
-Now the prevailing thesis of the British, and particularly the
-Northcliffe Press, in reference to Bolshevism, was that it is a form of
-tyranny imposed by a cruel minority upon a helpless people. The proposal
-amounts, therefore, either to killing civilians for a form of Government
-which they cannot possibly help, or to an admission that Bolshevism has
-the support of the populace, and that as the outcome of our war for
-democracy we should refuse them the right to choose the government they
-prefer.
-
-When the Germans bombarded Scarborough and dropped bombs on London, the
-Northcliffe Press called Heaven to witness (_a_) that only fiends in
-human form could make war on helpless civilian populations, women, and
-children; (_b_) that not only were the Huns dastardly baby-killers for
-making war in that fashion, but were bad psychologists as well, because
-our anger at such unheard-of devilries would only render our resistance
-more unconquerable than ever; and (_c_) that no consideration whatever
-would induce English soldiers to blow women and children to pulp--unless
-it were as a reprisal. Well, Lord Northcliffe proposed to _commence_ a
-war against Hungarians (as it had already been commenced against the
-Russians) by such a wholesale massacre of the civil population that a
-Government, which he tells us is imposed upon them against their will,
-may 'lose its attractions.' This would be, of course, the second edition
-of the war waged to destroy militarist modes of thought, to establish
-the reign of righteousness and the protection of the defenceless and the
-weak.
-
-The _Evening News_ is the paper, by the way, whose wrath became violent
-when it learned that some Quakers and others were attempting to make
-some provision for the children of interned Austrians and Germans. Those
-guilty of such 'un-English' conduct as a little mercy and pity extended
-to helpless children, were hounded in headlines day after day as
-'Hun-coddlers,' traitors 'attempting to placate the Hun tiger by bits of
-cake to its cubs'; and when the War is all over--a year after all the
-fighting is stopped--a vicar of the English Church opposes, with
-indignation, the suggestion that his parish should be contaminated by
-'enemy' children brought from the famine area to save them from
-death.[66]
-
-On March 3, 1919, Mr Winston Churchill stated in the House of Commons,
-speaking of the blockade:--
-
-     ' ... This weapon of starvation falls mainly upon the women and
-     children, upon the old and the weak and the poor, after all the
-     fighting has stopped.'
-
-One might take this as a prelude to a change of policy. Not at all: he
-added that we were 'enforcing the blockade with rigour' and would
-continue to do so.
-
-Mr Churchill's indication as to how the blockade acts is important. We
-spoke of it as 'punishment' for Germany's crimes, or Bolshevist
-infamies, as the case may be. But it did not punish 'Germany' or the
-Bolshevists.[67] Its penalties are in a peculiar degree unevenly
-distributed. The country districts escape almost entirely, the peasants
-can feed themselves. It falls on the cities. But even in the cities the
-very wealthy and the official classes can as a rule escape. Virtually
-its whole weight--as Mr Churchill implies--falls upon the urban poor,
-and particularly the urban child population, the old, the invalids, the
-sick. Whoever may be the parties responsible for the War, these are
-guiltless. But it is these we punish.
-
-Very soon after the Armistice there was ample evidence available as to
-the effect of the blockade, both in Russia and in Central Europe.
-Officers of our Army of Occupation reported that their men 'could not
-stand' the spectacle of the suffering around them. Organisations like
-the 'Save the Children Fund' devoted huge advertisements to
-familiarising the public with the facts. Considerable sums for relief
-were raised--but the blockade was maintained. There was no connection
-between the two things--our foreign policy and the famine in Europe--in
-the public mind. It developed a sort of moral shock absorber. Facts did
-not reach it or disturb its serenity.
-
-This was revealed in a curious way at the time of the signature of the
-Treaty. At the gathering of the representatives, the German delegate
-spoke sitting down. It turned out afterwards that he was so ill and
-distraught, that he dared not trust himself to stand up. Every paper was
-full of the incident, as also of the fact that the paper-cutter in front
-of him on the table was found afterwards to be broken; that he placed
-his gloves upon his copy of the Treaty; and that he had thrown away his
-cigarette on entering the room. These were the offences which prompted
-the _Daily Mail_ to say: 'After this no one will treat the Huns as
-civilised or repentant.' Almost the entire Press rang with the story of
-'Rantzau's insult.' But not one paper, so far as I could discover, paid
-any attention to what Rantzau had said. He said:--
-
-     'I do not want to answer by reproaches to reproaches.... Crimes in
-     war may not be excusable, but they are committed in the struggle
-     for victory and in the defence of national existence, and passions
-     are aroused which make the conscience of peoples blunt. The
-     hundreds of thousands of non-combatants who have perished since
-     November 11 by reason of the blockade, were killed with cold
-     deliberation, after our adversaries had conquered and victory had
-     been assured them. Think of that when you speak of guilt and
-     punishment.'
-
-No one seems to have noticed this trifle in presence of the heinousness
-of the cigarette, the gloves, and the other crimes. Yet this was an
-insult indeed. If true, it shamefully disgraces England--if England is
-responsible. The public presumably simply did not care whether it was
-true or not.
-
-A few months after the Armistice I wrote as follows:--
-
-     'When the Germans sank the _Lusitania_ and slew several hundred
-     women and children, _we_ knew--at least we thought we knew--that
-     that was the kind of thing which Englishmen could not do. In all
-     the hates and stupidities, the dirt and heartbreaks of the war,
-     there was just this light on the horizon: that there were certain
-     things to which we at least could never fall, in the name of
-     victory or patriotism, or any other of the deadly masked words that
-     are "the unjust stewards of men's ideas."
-
-     'And then we did it. We, too, sank _Lusitanias_. We, too, for some
-     cold political end, plunged the unarmed, the weak, the helpless,
-     the children, the suffering women, to agonising death and torture.
-     Without a tremor. Not alone in the bombing of cities, which we did
-     so much better than the enemy. For this we had the usual excuse. It
-     was war.
-
-     'But after the War, when the fighting was finished, the enemy was
-     disarmed, his submarines surrendered, his aeroplanes destroyed, his
-     soldiers dispersed; months afterwards, we kept a weapon which was
-     for use first and mainly against the children, the weak, the sick,
-     the old, the women, the mothers, the decrepit: starvation and
-     disease. Our papers told us--our patriotic papers--how well it was
-     succeeding. Correspondents wrote complacently, sometimes
-     exultingly, of how thin and pinched were all the children, even
-     those well into teens; how stunted, how defective, the next
-     generation would be; and how the younger children, those of seven
-     and eight, looked like children of three and four; and how those
-     beneath this age simply did not live. Either they were born dead,
-     or if they were born alive--what was there to give them? Milk? An
-     unheard-of luxury. And nothing to wrap them in; even in hospitals
-     the new-born children were wrapped in newspapers, the lucky ones in
-     bits of sacking. The mothers were most fortunate when the children
-     were born dead. In an insane asylum a mother wails: "If only I did
-     not hear the cry of the children for food all day long, all day
-     long!" To "bring Germany to reason" we had, you see, to drive
-     mothers out of their reason.
-
-     '"It would have been more merciful," said Bob Smillie, "to turn the
-     machine-guns on those children." Put this question to yourself,
-     patriot Englishmen: "Was the sinking of the _Lusitania_ as cruel,
-     as prolonged, as mean, as merciless a death as this?" And we--you
-     and I--do it every day, every night.
-
-     'Here is the _Times_ of May 21, half a year after the cessation of
-     war, telling the Germans that they do not know how much more severe
-     we can still make the "domestic results" of starvation, if we
-     really put our mind to it. To the blockade we shall add the
-     "horrors of invasion." The invasion of a country already disarmed
-     is to be marked--when we do it--by horror.
-
-     'But the purpose! That justifies it! What purpose? To obtain the
-     signature to the Treaty of Peace. Many Englishmen--not Pacifists,
-     not sentimentalists, not conscientious objectors, or other vermin
-     of that kind, but Bishops, Judges, Members of the House of Lords,
-     great public educators. Tory editors--have declared that this
-     Treaty is a monstrous injustice. Some Englishmen at least think so.
-     But if the Germans say so, that becomes a crime which we shall know
-     how to punish. "The enemy have been reminded already" says the
-     _Times_, proud organ of British respectability, of Conservatism, of
-     distinguished editors and ennobled proprietors, "that the machinery
-     of the blockade can again be put into force at a few hours' notice
-... the intention of the Allies to take military action if
-     necessary.... Rejection of the Peace terms now offered them, will
-     assuredly lead to fresh chastisement."
-
-     'But will not Mr Lloyd George be able to bring back _signatures_?
-     Will he not have made Peace--permanent Peace? Shall we not have
-     destroyed this Prussian philosophy of frightfulness, force, and
-     hate? Shall we not have proved to the world that a State without
-     military power can trust to the good faith and humanity of its
-     neighbours? Can we not, then, celebrate victory with light hearts,
-     honour our dead and glorify our arms? Have we not served faithfully
-     those ideals of right and justice, mercy and chivalry, for which a
-     whole generation of youth went through hell and gave their lives?'
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-THE ALTERNATIVE RISKS OF STATUS AND CONTRACT
-
-
-The facts of the present situation in Europe, so far sketched, reveal
-broadly this spectacle: everywhere the failure of national power to
-indispensable ends, sustenance, political security, nationality, right;
-everywhere a fierce struggle for national power.
-
-Germany, which successfully fed her expanding population by a system
-which did not rest upon national power, wrecked that system in order to
-attempt one which all experience showed could not succeed. The Allied
-world pilloried both the folly and the wickedness of such a statecraft;
-and at the peace proceeded to imitate it in every particular. The faith
-in the complete efficacy of preponderant power which the economic and
-other demands of the Treaty of Versailles and the policy towards Russia
-reveal, is already seen to be groundless (for the demands, in fact, are
-being abandoned). There is in that document an element of _na�vet�_, and
-in the subsequent policy a cruelty which will be the amazement of
-history--if our race remains capable of history.
-
-Yet the men who made the Treaty, and accelerated the famine and break-up
-of half a world, including those, like M. Tardieu, who still demand a
-ruined Germany and an indemnity-paying one, were the ablest statesmen of
-Europe, experienced, realist, and certainly not morally monsters. They
-were probably no worse morally, and certainly more practical, than the
-passionate democracies, American and European, who encouraged all the
-destructive elements of policy and were hostile to all that was
-recuperative and healing.
-
-It is perfectly true--and this truth is essential to the thesis here
-discussed--that the statesmen at Versailles were neither fools or
-villains. Neither were the Cardinals and the Princes of the Church, who
-for five hundred years, more or less, attempted to use physical coercion
-for the purpose of suppressing religious error. There is, of course an
-immeasurably stronger case for the Inquisition as an instrument of
-social order than there is for the use of competing national military
-power as the basis of modern European society. And the stronger case for
-the Inquisition as an instrument of social by a modern statesman when he
-goes to war. It was less. The inquisitor, in burning and torturing the
-heretic, passionately believed that he obeyed the voice of God, as the
-modern statesman believes that he is justified by the highest dictates
-of patriotism. We are now able to see that the Inquisitor was wrong, his
-judgment twisted by some overpowering prepossession: Is some similar
-prepossession distorting vision and political wisdom in modern
-statecraft? And if so, what is the nature of this prepossession?
-
-As an essay towards the understanding of its nature, the following
-suggestions are put forward:--
-
-     The assertion of national power, domination, is always in line with
-     popular feeling. And in crises--like that of the settlement with
-     Germany--popular feeling dictates policy.
-
-     The feelings associated with coercive domination evidently lie near
-     the surface of our natures and are easily excited. To attain our
-     end by mere coercion instead of bargain or agreement, is the method
-     in conduct which, in the order of experiments, our race generally
-     tries first, not only in economics (as by slavery) but in sex, in
-     securing acquiescence to our religious beliefs, and in most other
-     relationships. Coercion is not only the response to an instinct; it
-     relieves us of the trouble and uncertainties of intellectual
-     decision as to what is equitable in a bargain.
-
-     To restrain the combative instinct sufficiently to realise the need
-     of co-operation, demands a social discipline which the prevailing
-     political traditions and moralities of Nationalism and Patriotism
-     not only do not furnish, but directly discourage.
-
-     But when some vital need becomes obvious and we find that force
-     simply cannot fulfil it, we then try other methods, and manage to
-     restrain our impulse sufficiently to do so. If we simply must have
-     a man's help, and we find we cannot force him to give it, we then
-     offer him inducements, bargain, enter a contract, even though it
-     limits our independence.
-
-     Stable international co-operation cannot come in any other way. Not
-     until we realise the failure of national coercive power for
-     indispensable ends (like the food of our people) shall we cease to
-     idealise power and to put our most intense political emotions (like
-     those of patriotism) behind it. Our traditions will buttress and
-     'rationalise' the instinct to power until we see that it is
-     mischievous. We shall then begin to discredit it and create new
-     traditions.
-
-An American sociologist (Professor Giddings of Columbia University) has
-written thus:--
-
-     'So long as we can confidently act, we do not argue; but when we
-     face conditions abounding in uncertainty, or when we are confronted
-     by alternative possibilities, we first hesitate, then feel our way,
-     then guess, and at length venture to reason. Reasoning,
-     accordingly, is that action of the mind to which we resort when the
-     possibilities before us and about us are distributed substantially
-     according to the law of chance occurrence, or, as the mathematician
-     would say, in accordance with "the normal curve" of random
-     frequency. The moment the curve is obviously skewed, we decide; if
-     it is obviously skewed from the beginning, by authority, or
-     coercion, our reasoning is futile or imperfect. So, in the State,
-     if any interest or coalition of interests is dominant, and can act
-     promptly, it rules by absolutist methods. Whether it is benevolent
-     or cruel, it wastes neither time nor resources upon government by
-     discussion; but if interests are innumerable, and so distributed as
-     to offset one another, and if no great bias or overweighting
-     anywhere appears, government by discussion inevitably arises. The
-     interests can get together only if they talk. If power shall be
-     able to dictate, it will also rule, and the appeal to reason will
-     be vain.'
-
-This means that a realisation of interdependence--even though it be
-subconscious--is the basis of the social sense, the feeling and
-tradition which make possible a democratic society, in which freedom is
-voluntarily limited for the purpose of preserving any freedom at all.
-
-It indicates also the relation of certain economic truths to the
-impulses and instincts that underlie international conflict. We shall
-excuse or justify or fail to restrain those instincts, unless and until
-we see that their indulgence stands in the way of the things which we
-need and must have if society is to live. We shall then discredit them
-as anti-social, as we have discredited religious fanaticism, and build
-up a controlling _Sittlichkeit_.
-
-The statement of Professor Giddings, quoted above, leaves out certain
-psychological facts which the present writer in an earlier work has
-attempted to indicate. He, therefore, makes no apology for reproducing a
-somewhat long passage bearing on the case before us:--
-
-     'The element in man which makes him capable, however feebly, of
-     choice in the matter of conduct, the one fact distinguishing him
-     from that vast multitude of living things which act unreflectingly,
-     instinctively (in the proper and scientific sense of the word), as
-     the mere physical reaction to external prompting, is something not
-     deeply rooted, since it is the latest addition of all to our
-     nature. The really deeply rooted motives of conduct, those having
-     by far the greatest biological momentum, are naturally the
-     "motives" of the plant and the animal, the kind that marks in the
-     main the acts of all living things save man, the unreflecting
-     motives, those containing no element of ratiocination and free
-     volition, that almost mechanical reaction to external forces which
-     draw the leaves towards the sun-rays and makes the tiger tear its
-     living food limb from limb.
-
-     'To make plain what that really means in human conduct, we must
-     recall the character of that process by which man turns the forces
-     of nature to his service instead of allowing them to overwhelm him.
-     Its essence is a union of individual forces against the common
-     enemy, the forces of nature. Where men in isolated action would
-     have been powerless, and would have been destroyed, union,
-     association, co-operation, enabled them to survive. Survival was
-     contingent upon the cessation of struggle between them, and the
-     substitution therefor of common action. Now, the process both in
-     the beginning and in the subsequent development of this device of
-     co-operation is important. It was born of a failure of force. If
-     the isolated force had sufficed, the union of force would not have
-     been resorted to. But such union is not a mere mechanical
-     multiplication of blind energies; it is a combination involving
-     will, intelligence. If mere multiplication of physical energy had
-     determined the result of man's struggles, he would have been
-     destroyed or be the helpless slave of the animals of which he makes
-     his food. He has overcome them as he has overcome the flood and the
-     storm--by quite another order of action. Intelligence only emerges
-     where physical force is ineffective.
-
-     'There is an almost mechanical process by which, as the complexity
-     of co-operation grows, the element of physical compulsion declines
-     in effectiveness, and is replaced by agreement based on mutual
-     recognition of advantage. There is through every step of this
-     development the same phenomenon: intelligence and agreement only
-     emerge as force becomes ineffective. The early (and purely
-     illustrative) slave-owner who spent his days seeing that his slave
-     did not run away, and compelling him to work, realised the economic
-     defect of the arrangement: most of the effort, physical and
-     intellectual, of the slave was devoted to trying to escape; that of
-     the owner, trying to prevent him. The force of the one,
-     intellectual or physical, cancelled the force of the other, and the
-     energies of both were lost so far as productive value was
-     concerned, and the needed task, the building of the shelter or the
-     catching of the fish, was not done, or badly done, and both went
-     short of food and shelter. But from the moment that they struck a
-     bargain as to the division of labour and of spoils, and adhered to
-     it, the full energies of both were liberated for direct production,
-     and the economic effectiveness of the arrangement was not merely
-     doubled, but probably multiplied many times. But this substitution
-     of free agreement for coercion, with all that it implied of
-     contract, of "what is fair," and all that followed of mutual
-     reliance in the fulfilment of the agreement, was _based upon mutual
-     recognition of advantage_. Now, that recognition, without which the
-     arrangement could not exist at all, required, relatively, a
-     considerable mental effort, _due in the first instance to the
-     failure of force_. If the slave-owner had had more effective means
-     of physical coercion, and had been able to subdue his slave, he
-     would not have bothered about agreement, and this embryo of human
-     society and justice would not have been brought into being. And in
-     history its development has never been constant, but marked by the
-     same rise and fall of the two orders of motive; as soon as one
-     party or the other obtained such preponderance of strength as
-     promised to be effective, he showed a tendency to drop free
-     agreement and use force; this, of course, immediately provoked the
-     resistance of the other, with a lesser or greater reversion to the
-     earlier profitless condition.
-
-     'This perpetual tendency to abandon the social arrangement and
-     resort to physical coercion is, of course, easily explainable by
-     the biological fact just touched on. To realise at each turn and
-     permutation of the division of labour that the social arrangement
-     was, after all, the best demanded on the part of the two characters
-     in our sketch, not merely control of instinctive actions, but a
-     relatively large ratiocinative effort for which the biological
-     history of early man had not fitted him. The physical act of
-     compulsion only required a stone axe and a quickness of purely
-     physical movement for which his biological history had afforded
-     infinitely long training. The more mentally-motived action, that of
-     social conduct, demanding reflection as to its effect on others,
-     and the effect of that reaction upon our own position and a
-     conscious control of physical acts, is of modern growth; it is but
-     skin-deep; its biological momentum is feeble. Yet on that feeble
-     structure has been built all civilisation.
-
-     'When we remember this--how frail are the ultimate foundations of
-     our fortress, how much those spiritual elements which alone can
-     give us human society are outnumbered by the pre-human elements--is
-     it surprising that those pre-social promptings of which
-     civilisation represents the conquest, occasionally overwhelm man,
-     break up the solidarity of his army, and push him back a stage or
-     two nearer to the brute condition from which he came? That even at
-     this moment he is groping blindly as to the method of distributing
-     in the order of his most vital needs the wealth he is able to wring
-     from the earth; that some of his most fundamental social and
-     political conceptions--those, among others, with which we are now
-     dealing--have little relation to real facts; that his animosities
-     and hatreds are as purposeless and meaningless as his enthusiasms
-     and his sacrifices; that emotion and effort which quantitatively
-     would suffice amply for the greater tasks before him, for the
-     firmer establishment of justice and well-being, for the cleaning up
-     of all the festering areas of moral savagery that remain, are as a
-     simple matter of fact turned to those purposes hardly at all, but
-     to objects which, to the degree to which they succeed, merely
-     stultify each other?
-
-     'Now, this fact, the fact that civilisation is but skin-deep and
-     that man is so largely the unreflecting brute, is not denied by
-     pro-military critics. On the contrary they appeal to it as the
-     first and last justification of their policy. "All your talk will
-     never get over human nature; men are not guided by logic; passion
-     is bound to get the upper hand," and such phrases, are a sort of
-     Greek chorus supplied by the military party to the whole of this
-     discussion.
-
-     'Nor do the militarist advocates deny that these unreflecting
-     elements are anti-social; again, it is part of their case that,
-     unless they are held in check by the "iron hand," they will
-     submerge society in a welter of savagery. Nor do they deny--it is
-     hardly possible to do so--that the most important securities which
-     we enjoy, the possibility of living in mutual respect of right
-     because we have achieved some understanding of right; all that
-     distinguishes modern Europe from the Europe of (among other things)
-     religious wars and St. Bartholomew massacres, and distinguishes
-     British political methods from those Turkey or Venezuela, are due
-     to the development of moral forces (since physical force is most
-     resorted to in the less desirable age and area), and particularly
-     to the general recognition that you cannot solve religious and
-     political problems by submitting them to the irrelevant hazard of
-     physical force.
-
-     'We have got thus far, then: both parties to the discussion are
-     agreed as to the fundamental fact that civilisation is based upon
-     moral and intellectual elements in constant danger of being
-     overwhelmed by more deeply-rooted anti-social elements. The plain
-     facts of history past and present are there to show that where
-     those moral elements are absent the mere fact of the possession of
-     arms only adds to the destructiveness of the resulting welter.
-
-     'Yet all attempts to secure our safety by other than military means
-     are not merely regarded with indifference; they are more generally
-     treated either with a truly ferocious contempt or with definite
-     condemnation.
-
-     'This apparently on two grounds: first, that nothing that we can do
-     will affect the conduct of other nations; secondly, that, in the
-     development of those moral forces which do undoubtedly give us
-     security, government action--which political effort has in
-     view--can play no part.
-
-     'Both assumptions are, of course, groundless. The first implies not
-     only that our own conduct and our own ideas need no examination,
-     but that ideas current in one country have no reaction on those of
-     another, and that the political action of one State does not affect
-     that of others. "The way to be sure of peace is to be so much
-     stronger than your enemy that he will not dare to attack you," is
-     the type of accepted and much-applauded "axioms" the unfortunate
-     corollary of which is (since both parties can adopt the rule) that
-     peace will only be finally achieved when each is stronger than the
-     other.
-
-     'So thought and acted the man with the stone axe in our
-     illustration, and in both cases the psychological motive is the
-     same: the long-inherited impulse to isolated action, to the
-     solution of a difficulty by some simple form of physical movement;
-     the tendency to break through the more lately acquired habit of
-     action based on social compact and on the mental realisation of its
-     advantage. It is the reaction against intellectual effort and
-     responsible control of instinct, a form of natural protest very
-     common in children and in adults not brought under the influence of
-     social discipline.
-
-     'The same general characteristics are as recognisable in militarist
-     politics within the nation as in the international field. It is not
-     by accident that Prussian and Bismarckian conceptions in foreign
-     policy are invariably accompanied by autocratic conceptions in
-     internal affairs. Both are founded upon a belief in force as the
-     ultimate determinant in human conduct; a disbelief in the things of
-     the mind as factors of social control, a disbelief in moral forces
-     that cannot be expressed in "blood and iron." The impatience shown
-     by the militarist the world over at government by discussion, his
-     desire to "shut up the talking shops" and to govern autocratically,
-     are but expressions of the same temper and attitude.
-
-     'The forms which Governments have taken and the general method of
-     social management, are in large part the result of its influence.
-     Most Governments are to-day framed far more as instruments for the
-     exercise of physical force than as instruments of social
-     management.
-
-     'The militarist does not allow that man has free will in the matter
-     of his conduct at all; he insists that mechanical forces on the one
-     side or the other alone determine which of two given courses shall
-     be taken; the ideas which either hold, the r�le of intelligent
-     volition, apart from their influence in the manipulation of
-     physical force, play no real part in human society. "Prussianism,"
-     Bismarckian "blood and iron," are merely political expressions of
-     this belief in the social field--the belief that force alone can
-     decide things; that it is not man's business to question authority
-     in politics or authority in the form of inevitability in nature. It
-     is not a question of who is right, but of who is stronger. "Fight
-     it out, and right will be on the side of the victor"--on the side,
-     that is, of the heaviest metal or the heaviest muscle, or, perhaps,
-     on that of the one who has the sun at his back, or some other
-     advantage of external nature. The blind material things--not the
-     seeing mind and the soul of man--are the ultimate sanction of human
-     society.
-
-     'Such a doctrine, of course, is not only profoundly anti-social, it
-     is anti-human--fatal not merely to better international relations,
-     but, in the end, to the degree to which it influences human conduct
-     at all, to all those large freedoms which man has so painfully won.
-
-     'This philosophy makes of man's acts, not something into which
-     there enters the element of moral responsibility and free volition,
-     something apart from and above the mere mechanical force of
-     external nature, but it makes man himself a helpless slave; it
-     implies that his moral efforts and the efforts of his mind and
-     understanding are of no worth--that he is no more the master of his
-     conduct than the tiger of his, or the grass and the trees of
-     theirs, and no more responsible.
-
-     'To this philosophy the "civilist" may oppose another: that in man
-     there is that which sets him apart from the plants and the animals,
-     which gives him control of and responsibility for his social acts,
-     which makes him the master of his social destiny if he but will it;
-     that by virtue of the forces of his mind he may go forward to the
-     completer conquest, not merely of nature, but of himself, and
-     thereby, and by that alone, redeem human association from the evils
-     that now burden it.'
-
-
-_From Balance to Community of Power_
-
-Does the foregoing imply that force or compulsion has no place in human
-society? Not the least in the world. The conclusions so far drawn might
-be summarised, and certain remaining ones suggested, thus:--
-
-     Coercion has its place in human society, and the considerations
-     here urged do not imply any sweeping theory of non-resistance. They
-     are limited to the attempt to show that the effectiveness of
-     political power depends upon certain moral elements usually utterly
-     neglected in international politics, and particularly that
-     instincts inseparable from Nationalism as now cultivated and
-     buttressed by prevailing political morality, must condemn political
-     power to futility. Two broad principles of policy are available:
-     that looking towards isolated national power, or that looking
-     towards common power behind a common purpose. The second may fail;
-     it has risks. But the first is bound to fail. The fact would be
-     self-evident but for the push of certain instincts warping our
-     judgment in favour of the first. If mankind decides that it can do
-     better than the first policy, it will do better. If it decides that
-     it cannot, that decision will itself make failure inevitable. Our
-     whole social salvation depends upon making the right choice.
-
-In an earlier chapter certain stultifications of the Balance of Power as
-applied to the international situation were dealt with. It was there
-pointed out that if you could get such a thing as a real Balance, that
-would certainly be a situation tempting the hot-heads of both sides to a
-trial of strength. An obvious preponderance of power on one side might
-check the temper of the other. A 'balance' would assuredly act as no
-check. But preponderance has an even worse result.
-
-How in practical politics are we to say when a group has become
-preponderantly powerful? We know to our cost that military power is
-extremely difficult of precise estimate. It cannot be weighed and
-balanced exactly. In political practice, therefore, the Balance of Power
-means a rivalry of power, because each to be on the safe side wants to
-be just a bit stronger than the other. The competition creates of itself
-the very condition it sets out to prevent.
-
-The defect of principle here is not the employment of force. It is the
-refusal to put force behind a law which may demand our allegiance. The
-defect lies in the attempt to make ourselves and our own interests by
-virtue of preponderant power superior to law.
-
-The feature which stood condemned in the old order was not the
-possession by States of coercive power. Coercion is an element in every
-good society that we have heretofore known. The evil of the old order
-was that in case of States the Power was anti-social; that it was not
-pledged to the service of some code or rule designed for mutual
-protection, but was the irresponsible possession of each individual,
-maintained for the express purpose of enabling him to enforce his own
-views of his own rights, to be judge and executioner in his own case,
-when his view came into collision with that of others. The old effort
-meant in reality the attempt on the part of a group of States to
-maintain in their own favour a preponderance of force of undefined and
-unlimited purpose. Any opposing group that found itself in a position of
-manifest inferiority had in fact to submit in international affairs to
-the decision of the possessor of preponderant power for the time being.
-It might be used benevolently; in that case the weaker obtained his
-rights as a gift from the stronger. But so long as the possession of
-power was unaccompanied by any defined obligation, there could be no
-democracy of States, no Society of Nations. To destroy the power of the
-preponderant group meant merely to transpose the situation. The security
-of one meant always the insecurity of the other.
-
-The Balance of Power in fact adopts the fundamental premise of the
-'might makes right' principle, because it regards power as the ultimate
-fact in politics; whereas the ultimate fact is the purpose for which the
-power will be used. Obviously you don't want a Balance of Power between
-justice and injustice, law and crime; between anarchy and order. You
-want a preponderance of power on the side of justice, of law and of
-order.
-
-We approach here one of the commonest and most disastrous confusions
-touching the employment of force in human society, particularly in the
-Society of Nations.
-
-It is easy enough to make play with the absurdities and contradictions
-of the _si vis pacem para bellum_ of our militarists. And the hoary
-falsehood does indeed involve a flouting of all experience, an
-intellectual astigmatism that almost makes one despair. But what is the
-practical alternative?
-
-The anti-militarist who disparages our reliance upon 'force' is almost
-as remote from reality, for all society as we know it in practice, or
-have ever known it, does rely a great deal upon the instrument of
-'force,' upon restraint and coercion.
-
-We have seen where the competition in arming among European nations has
-led us. But it may be argued: suppose you were greatly to reduce all
-round, cut in half, say, the military equipment of Europe, would the
-power for mutual destruction be sensibly reduced, the security of Europe
-sensibly greater? 'Adequacy' and 'destructiveness' of armament are
-strictly relative terms. A country with a couple of battleships has
-overwhelming naval armament if its opponent has none. A dozen
-machine-guns or a score of rifles against thousands of unarmed people
-may be more destructive of life than a hundred times that quantity of
-material facing forces similarly armed. (Fifty rifles at Amritsar
-accounted for two thousand killed and wounded, without a single casualty
-on the side of the troops.) Wars once started, instruments of
-destruction can be rapidly improvised, as we know. And this will be
-truer still when we have progressed from poison gas to disease germs, as
-we almost certainly shall.
-
-The first confusion is this:--
-
-The issue is made to appear as between the 'spiritual' and the
-'material'; as between material force, battleships, guns, armies on the
-one side as one method, and 'spiritual' factors, persuasion, moral
-goodness on the other side, as the contrary method. 'Force v. Faith,' as
-some evangelical writer has put it. The debate between the Nationalist
-and the Internationalist is usually vitiated at the outset by an
-assumption which, though generally common to the two parties, is not
-only unproven, but flatly contrary to the weight of evidence. The
-assumption is that the military Nationalist, basing his policy upon
-material force--a preponderant navy, a great army, superior
-artillery--can dispense with the element of trust, contract, treaty.
-
-Now to state the issue in that way creates a gross confusion, and the
-assumption just indicated is quite unjustifiable. The militarist quite
-as much as the anti-militarist, the nationalist quite as much as the
-internationalist, has to depend upon a moral factor, 'a contract,' the
-force of tradition, and of morality. Force cannot operate at all in
-human affairs without a decision of the human mind and will. Guns do not
-get pointed and go off without a mind behind them, and as already
-insisted, the direction in which the gun shoots is determined by the
-mind which must be reached by a form of moral suasion, discipline, or
-tradition; the mind behind the gun will be influenced by patriotism in
-one case, or by a will to rebellion and mutiny, prompted by another
-tradition or persuasion, in another. And obviously the moral decision,
-in the circumstances with which we are dealing, goes much deeper and
-further back. The building of battleships, or the forming of armies, the
-long preparation which is really behind the material factor, implies a
-great deal of 'faith.' These armies and navies could never have been
-brought into existence and be manoeuvred without vast stores of faith
-and tradition. Whether the army serves the nation, as in Britain or
-France, or dominates it as in a Spanish-American Republic (or in a
-somewhat different sense in Prussia), depends on a moral factor: the
-nature of the tradition which inspires the people from whom the army is
-drawn. Whether the army obeys its officers or shoots them is determined
-by moral not material factors, for the officers have not a preponderance
-of physical force over the men. You cannot form a pirate crew without a
-moral factor: the agreement not to use force against one another, but to
-act in consort and combine it against the prey. Whether the military
-material we and France supplied Russia, and the armies France helped to
-train, are employed against us or the Germans, depends upon certain
-moral and political factors inside Russia, certain ideas formed in the
-minds of certain men. It is not a situation of Ideas against Guns, but
-of ideas using guns. The confusion involves a curious distortion in our
-reading of the history of the struggle against privilege and tyranny.
-
-Usually when we speak of the past struggles of the people against
-tyranny, we have in our minds a picture of the great mass held down by
-the superior physical force of the tyrant. But such a picture is, of
-course, quite absurd. For the physical force which held down the people
-was that which they themselves supplied. The tyrant had no physical
-force save that with which his victims furnished him. In this struggle
-of 'People _v._ Tyrant,' obviously the weight of physical force was on
-the side of the people. This was as true of the slave States of
-antiquity as it is of the modern autocracies. Obviously the free
-minority--the five or ten or fifteen per cent.--of Rome or Egypt, or the
-governing orders of Prussia or Russia, did not impose their will upon
-the remainder by virtue of superior physical force, the sheer weight of
-numbers, of sinew and muscle. If the tyranny of the minority had
-depended upon its own physical power, it could not have lasted a day.
-The physical force which the minority used was the physical force of the
-majority. The people were oppressed by an instrument which they
-themselves furnished.
-
-In that picture, therefore, which we make of the mass of mankind
-struggling against the 'force' of tyranny, we must remember that the
-force against which they struggled was not in the last analysis physical
-force at all; it was their own weight from which they desired to be
-liberated.
-
-Do we realise all that this means? It means that tyranny has been
-imposed, as freedom has been won: through the Mind.
-
-The small minority imposes itself and can only impose itself by getting
-first at the mind of the majority--the people--in one form or another:
-by controlling it through keeping knowledge from it, as in so much of
-antiquity, or by controlling the knowledge itself, as in Germany. It is
-because the minds of the masses have failed them that they have been
-enslaved. Without that intellectual failure of the masses, tyranny could
-have found no force wherewith to impose its burdens.
-
-This confusion as to the relation of 'force' to the moral factor is of
-all confusions most worth while clearing up: and for that purpose we may
-descend to homely illustrations.
-
-You have a disorderly society, a frontier mining camp, every man armed,
-every man threatened by the arms of his neighbour and every man in
-danger. What is the first need in restoring order? More force--more
-revolvers and bowie knives? No; every man is fully armed already. If
-there exists in this disorder the germ of order some attempt will be
-made to move towards the creation of a police. But what is the
-indispensable prerequisite for the success of such an effort? It is the
-capacity for a nucleus of the community to act in common, to agree
-together to make the beginnings of a community. And unless that nucleus
-can achieve agreement--a moral and intellectual problem--there can be no
-police force. But be it noted well, this first prerequisite--the
-agreement among a few members necessary to create the first Vigilance
-Committee--is not force; it is a decision of certain minds determining
-how force shall be used, how combined. Even when you have got as far as
-the police, this device of social protection will entirely break down
-unless the police itself can be trusted to obey the constituted
-authority, and the constituted authority itself to abide by the law. If
-the police represents a mere preponderance of power, using that power to
-create a privileged position for itself or for its employers--setting
-itself, that is, against the community--you will sooner or later get
-resistance which will ultimately neutralise that power and produce a
-mere paralysis so far as any social purpose is concerned. The existence
-of the police depends upon general agreement not to use force except as
-the instrument of the social will, the law to which all are party. This
-social will may not exist; the members of the vigilance committee or
-town council or other body may themselves use their revolvers and knives
-each against the other. Very well, in that case you will get no police.
-'Force' will not remedy it. Who is to use the force if no one man can
-agree with the other? All along the line here we find ourselves,
-whatever our predisposition to trust only 'force,' thrown back upon a
-moral factor, compelled to rely upon contract, an agreement, before we
-can use force at all.
-
-It will be noted incidentally that effective social force does not rest
-upon a Balance of Power: society does not need a Balance of Power as
-between the law and crime; it wants a preponderance of power on the
-side of the law. One does not want a Balance of Power between rival
-parties in the State. One wants a preponderance of power on behalf of a
-certain fundamental code upon which all parties, or an immense majority
-of parties, will be agreed. As against the Balance of Power we need a
-Community of Power--to use Mr. Wilson's phrase--on the side of a purpose
-or code of which the contributors to the power are aware.
-
-One may read in learned and pretentious political works that the
-ultimate basis of a State is force--the army--which is the means by
-which the State's authority is maintained. But who compels the army to
-carry out the State's orders rather than its own will or the personal
-will of its commander? _Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?_ The following
-passage from an address delivered by the present writer in America may
-perhaps help to make the point clear:--
-
-     'When, after the counting of the votes, you ask Mr Wilson to step
-     down from the President's chair, how do you know he will get down?
-     I repeat, How do you know he will get down? You think that a
-     foolish and fantastic question? But, in a great many interesting
-     American republics, Mexico, Venezuela, or Hayti, he would not get
-     down! You say, "Oh, the army would turn him out." I beg your
-     pardon. It is Mr Wilson who commands the army; it is not the army
-     that commands Mr Wilson. Again, in many American republics a
-     President who can depend on his army, when asked to get out of the
-     Presidency, would reply almost as a matter of course, "Why should I
-     get down when I have an army that stands by me?"
-
-     'How do we know that Mr Wilson, able, we will assume, to count on
-     his army, or, if you prefer, some President particularly popular
-     with the army, will not do that? Is it physical force which
-     prevents it? If so, whose? You may say: "If he did that, he knows
-     that the country would raise an army of rebellion to turn him out."
-     Well, suppose it did? You raise this army, as they would in
-     Mexico, or Venezuela, and the army turns him out. And your man gets
-     into the Presidential chair, and then, when you think he has stolen
-     enough, you vote _him_ down. He would do precisely the same thing.
-     He would say: "My dear people, as very great philosophers tell you,
-     the State is Force, and as a great French monarch once said. 'I am
-     the State.' _J'y suis, j'y reste._". And then you would have to get
-     another army of rebellion to turn _him_ out--just as they do in
-     Mexico, Venezuela, Hayti, or Honduras.'
-
-There, then, is the crux of the matter. Every constitution at times
-breaks down. But if that fact were a conclusive argument for the
-anarchical arming of each man against the other as preferable to a
-police enforcing law, there could be no human society. The object of
-constitutional machinery for change is to make civil war unnecessary.
-
-There will be no advance save through an improved tradition. Perhaps it
-will be impossible to improve the tradition. Very well, then the old
-order, whether among the nations of Europe or the political parties of
-Venezuela, will remain unchanged. More 'force,' more soldiers, will not
-do it. The disturbed areas of Spanish-America each show a greater number
-of soldiers to population than States like Massachusetts or Ohio. So in
-the international solution. What would it have availed if Britain had
-quadrupled the quantity of rifles to Koltchak's peasant soldiers so long
-as his land policy caused them to turn their rifles against his
-Government? Or for France to have multiplied many times the loans made
-to the Ukraine, if at the same time the loans made to Poland so fed
-Polish nationalism that the Ukrainians preferred making common cause
-with the Bolsheviks to becoming satellites of an Imperialist Poland? Do
-we add to the 'force' of the Alliance by increasing the military power
-of Serbia, if that fact provokes her to challenge Italy? Do we
-strengthen it by increasing at one and the same time the military forces
-of two States--say Poland and Czecho-Slovakia--if the nationalism which
-we nurse leads finally to those two States turning their forces one
-against the other? Unless we know the policy (again a thing of the mind,
-of opinion) which will determine the use to which guns will be put, it
-does not increase our security--it may diminish it--to add more guns.
-
-
-_The Alternative Risks_
-
-We see, therefore, that the alternatives are not in fact a choice
-between 'material' and 'spiritual' means. The material can only operate,
-whether for our defence or against us, by virtue of a spiritual thing,
-the will. 'The direction in which the gun will shoot'--a rather
-important point in its effectiveness as a defensive weapon--depends not
-on the gun but on the mind of the man using it, the moral factor. The
-two cannot be separated.
-
-It is untrue to say that the knife is a magic instrument, saving the
-cancer patient's life: it is the mind of the surgeon using the material
-thing in a certain way which saves the patient's life. A child or savage
-who, failing to realise the part played by the invisible element of the
-surgeon's mind, should deem that a knife of a particular pattern used
-'boldly' could be depended upon to cure cancer, would merely, of course
-commit manslaughter.
-
-It is foolish to talk of an absolute guarantee of security by force, as
-of guarantee of success in surgical operations by perfection of knives.
-In both cases we are dealing with instruments, indispensable, but not of
-themselves enough. The mind behind the instrument, technical in one
-case, social in the other, may in both cases fail; then we must improve
-it. Merely to go on sharpening the knife, to go on applying, for
-instance, to the international problem more 'force,' in the way it has
-been applied in the past, can only give us in intenser degree the
-present results.
-
-Yet the truth here indicated is perpetually being disregarded,
-particularly by those who pique themselves on being 'practical.' In the
-choice of risks by men of the world and realist statesmen the choice
-which inevitably leads to destruction is for ever being made on grounds
-of safety; the choice which leads at least in the direction of security
-is for ever being rejected on the grounds of its danger.
-
-Why is this? The choice is instinctive assuredly; it is not the result
-of 'hard-headed calculation' though it often professes to be. We speak
-of it as the 'protective' instinct. But it is a protective instinct
-which obviously destroys us.
-
-I am suggesting here that, at the bottom of the choice in favour of the
-Balance of Power or preponderance as a political method, is neither the
-desire for safety nor the desire to place 'might behind right,' but the
-desire for domination, the instinct of self-assertion, the anti-social
-wish to be judge in our own case; and further, that the way out of the
-difficulty is to discipline this instinct by a better social tradition.
-To do that we must discredit the old tradition--create a different
-feeling about it; to which end it is indispensable to face frankly the
-nature of its moral origins; to look its motives in the face.[68]
-
-It is extremely suggestive in this connection that the 'realist'
-politician, the 'hard-headed practical man,' disdainful of Sunday School
-standards,' in his defence of national necessity, is quite ready to be
-contemptuous of national safety and interest when these latter point
-plainly to a policy of international agreement as against domination.
-Agreement is then rejected as pusillanimous, and consideration for
-national interest as placing 'pocket before patriotism.' We are then
-reminded, even by the most realist of nationalists, that nations live
-for higher things than 'profit' or even safety. 'Internationalism,' says
-Colonel Roosevelt, 'inevitably emasculates its sincere votaries,' and
-'every civilisation worth calling such' must be based 'on a spirit of
-intense nationalism.' For Colonel Roosevelt or General Wood in America
-as for Mr Kipling, or Mr Chesterton, or Mr Churchill, or Lord
-Northciffe, or Mr Bottomley, and a vast host of poets, professors,
-editors, historians, bishops, publicists of all sorts in England and
-France, 'Internationalist' and 'Pacifist' are akin to political atheist.
-A moral consideration now replaces the 'realist.' The metamorphosis is
-only intelligible on the assumption here suggested that both
-explanations or justifications are a rationalisation of the impulse to
-power and domination.
-
-Our political, quite as much as our social, conduct is in the main the
-result of motives that are mainly unconscious instinct, habit,
-unquestioned tradition. So long as we find the result satisfactory, well
-and good. But when the result of following instinct is disaster, we
-realise that the time has come to 'get outside ourselves,' to test our
-instincts by their social result. We have then to see whether the
-'reasons' we have given for our conduct are really its motives. That
-examination is the first step to rendering the unconscious motive
-conscious. In considering, for instance, the two methods indicated in
-this chapter, we say, in 'rationalising' our decision, that we chose the
-lesser of two risks. I am suggesting that in the choice of the method of
-the Balance of Power our real motive was not desire to achieve security,
-but domination. It is just because our motives are not mainly
-intellectual but 'instinctive' that the desire for domination is so
-likely to have played the determining role: for few instincts and
-innate desires are stronger than that which pushes to 'self-affirmation'--the
-assertion of preponderant force.
-
-We have indeed seen that the Balance of Power means in practice the
-determination to secure a preponderance of power. What is a 'Balance?'
-The two sides will not agree on that, and each to be sure will want it
-tilted in its favour. We decline to place ourselves within the power of
-another who may differ from us as to our right. We demand to be
-stronger, in order that we may be judge in our own case. This means that
-we shall resist the claim of others to exactly the same thing.
-
-The alternative is partnership. It means trust. But we have seen that
-the exercise of any form of force, other than that which one single
-individual can wield, must involve an element of 'trust.' The soldiers
-must be trusted to obey the officers, since the former have by far the
-preponderance of force; the officers must be trusted to obey the
-constitution instead of challenging it; the police must be trusted to
-obey the authorities; the Cabinet must be trusted to obey the electoral
-decision; the members of an alliance to work together instead of against
-one another, and so on. Yet the assumption of the 'Power Politician' is
-that the method which has succeeded (notably within the State) is the
-'idealistic' but essentially unpractical method in which security and
-advantage are sacrificed to Utopian experiment; while the method of
-competitive armament, however distressing it may be to the Sunday
-Schools, is the one that gives us real security. 'The way to be sure of
-preserving peace,' says Mr Churchill, 'is to be so much stronger than
-your enemy that he won't dare to attack you.' In other words it is
-obvious that the way for two people to keep the peace is for each to be
-stronger than the other.
-
-'You may have made your front door secure' says Marshal Foch, arguing
-for the Rhine frontier, 'but you may as well make sure by having a good
-high garden wall as well.'
-
-'Make sure,' that is the note--_si vis pacem_.... And he can be sure
-that 'the average practical man,' who prides himself on 'knowing human
-nature' and 'distrusting theories' will respond to the appeal. Every
-club smoking room will decide that 'the simple soldier' knows his
-business and has judged human forces aright.
-
-Yet of course the simple truth is that the 'hard-headed soldier' has
-chosen the one ground upon which all experience, all the facts, are
-against him. Then how is he able to 'get away with it'--to ride off
-leaving at least the impression of being a sternly practical
-unsentimental man of the world by virtue of having propounded an
-aphorism which all practical experience condemns? Here is Mr Churchill.
-He is talking to hard-headed Lancashire manufacturers. He desires to
-show that he too is no theorist, that he also can be hard-headed and
-practical. And he--who really does know the mind of the 'hard-headed
-business man'--is perfectly aware that the best road to those hard heads
-is to propound an arrant absurdity, to base a proposed line of policy on
-the assumption of a physical impossibility, to follow a will-o'-the-wisp
-which in all recorded history has led men into a bog.
-
-They applaud Mr Churchill, not because he has put before them a cold
-calculation of relative risk in the matter of maintaining peace, an
-indication, where, on the whole, the balance of safety lies; Mr
-Churchill, of course, knows perfectly well that, while professing to do
-that, he has been doing nothing of the sort. He has, in reality, been
-appealing to a sentiment, the emotion which is strongest and steadiest
-in the 'hard-faced men' who have elbowed their way to the top in a
-competitive society. He has 'rationalised' that competitive sentiment of
-domination by putting forward a 'reason' which can be avowed to them and
-to others.
-
-Colonel Roosevelt managed to inject into his reasons for predominance a
-moral strenuousness which Mr Churchill does not achieve.
-
-The following is a passage from one of the last important speeches made
-by Colonel Roosevelt--twice President of the United States and one of
-the out-standing figures in the world in his generation:--
-
-     'Friends, be on your guard against the apostles of weakness and
-     folly when peace comes. They will tell you that this is the last
-     great war. They will tell you that they can make paper treaties and
-     agreements and guarantees by which brutal and unscrupulous men will
-     have their souls so softened that weak and timid men won't have
-     anything to fear and that brave and honest men won't have to
-     prepare to defend themselves.
-
-     'Well, we have seen that all such treaties are worth less than
-     scraps of paper when it becomes to the interests of powerful and
-     ruthless militarist nations to disregard them.... After this War is
-     over, these foolish pacifist creatures will again raise their
-     piping voices against preparedness and in favour of patent devices
-     for maintaining peace without effort. Let us enter into every
-     reasonable agreement which bids fair to minimise the chances of war
-     and to circumscribe its area.... But let us remember it is a
-     hundred times more important for us to prepare our strength for our
-     own defence than to enter any of these peace treaties, and that if
-     we thus prepare our strength for our own defence we shall minimise
-     the chances of war as no paper treaties can possibly minimise them;
-     and we shall thus make our views effective for peace and justice in
-     the world at large as in no other way can they be made
-     effective.'[69]
-
-Let us dispose of one or two of the more devastating confusions in the
-foregoing.
-
-First there is the everlasting muddle as to the internationalist
-attitude towards the likelihood of war. To Colonel Roosevelt one is an
-internationalist or 'pacifist' because one thinks war will not take
-place. Whereas probably the strongest motive of internationalism is the
-conviction that without it war is inevitable, that in a world of rival
-nationalisms war cannot be avoided. If those who hate war believe that
-the present order will without effort give them peace, why in the name
-of all the abuse which their advocacy brings on their heads should they
-bother further about the matter?
-
-Secondly, internationalism is assumed to be the _alternative_ to the
-employment of force or power of arms, whereas it is the organisation of
-force, of power (latent or positive) to a common--an international--end.
-
-Our incurable habit of giving to homely but perfectly healthy and
-justifiable reasons of conduct a high faluting romanticism sometimes
-does morality a very ill service. When in political situations--as in
-the making of a Peace Treaty--a nation is confronted by the general
-alternative we are now discussing, the grounds of opposition to a
-co-operative or 'Liberal' or 'generous' settlement are almost always
-these: 'Generosity' is lost upon a people as crafty and treacherous as
-the enemy; he mistakes generosity for weakness; he will take advantage
-of it; his nature won't be softened by mild treatment; he understands
-nothing but force.
-
-The assumption is that the liberal policy is based upon an appeal to the
-better side of the enemy; upon arousing his nobler nature. And such an
-assumption concerning the Hun or the Bolshevik, for instance (or at an
-earlier date, the Boer or the Frenchman), causes the very gorge of the
-Roosevelt-Bottomley patriot to rise in protest. He simply does not
-believe in the effective operation of so remote a motive.
-
-But the real ground of defence for the liberal policy is not the
-existence of an abnormal if heretofore successfully disguised nobility
-on the part of the enemy, but of his very human if not very noble fears
-which, from our point of view, it is extremely important not to arouse
-or justify. If our 'punishment' of him creates in his mind the
-conviction that we are certain to use our power for commercial
-advantage, or that in any case our power is a positive danger to him,
-he _will_ use his recovered economic strength for the purpose of
-resisting it; and we should face a fact so dangerous and costly to us.
-
-To take cognisance of this fact, and to shape our policy accordingly is
-not to attribute to the enemy any particular nobility of motive. But
-almost always when that policy is attacked, it is attacked on the ground
-of its 'Sunday School' assumption of the accessibility of the enemy to
-gratitude or 'softening' in Colonel Roosevelt's phrase.
-
-We reach in the final analysis of the interplay of motive a very clear
-political pragmatism. Either policy will justify itself, and by the way
-it works out in practice, prove that it is right.
-
-Here is a statesman--Italian, say--who takes the 'realist' view, and
-comes to a Peace Conference which may settle for centuries the position
-of his country in the world--its strength, its capacity for defending
-itself, the extent of its resources. In the world as he knows it, a
-country has one thing, and one thing only, upon which it can depend for
-its national security and the defence of its due rights; and that thing
-is its own strength. Italy's adequate defence must include the naval
-command of the Adriatic and a strategic position in the Tyrol. This
-means deep harbours on the Dalmatian coast and the inclusion in the
-Tyrol of a very considerable non-Italian population. To take them may,
-it is true, not only violate the principle of nationality but shut off
-the new Yugo-Slav nation from access to the sea and exchange one
-irredentism for another. But what can the 'realist' Italian statesman,
-whose first duty is to his own country do? He is sorry, but his own
-nationality and its due protection are concerned; and the Italian nation
-will be insecure without those frontiers and those harbours.
-Self-preservation is the law of life for nations as for other living
-things. You have, unfortunately, a condition in which the security of
-one means the insecurity of another, and if a statesman in these
-circumstances has to choose which of the two is to be secure, he must
-choose his own country.
-
-Some day, of course, there may come into being a League of Nations so
-effective that nations can really look to it for their safety. Meantime
-they must look to themselves. But, unfortunately, for each nation to
-take these steps about strategic frontiers means not only killing the
-possibility of an effective League: it means, sooner or later, killing
-the military alliance which is the alternative. If one Alsace-Lorraine
-could poison European politics in the way it did, what is going to be
-the effect ultimately of the round dozen that we have created under the
-treaty? The history of Britain in reference to Arab and Egyptian
-Nationality; of France in relation to Poland and other Russian border
-States; of all the Allies in reference to Japanese ambitions in China
-and Siberia, reveals what is, fundamentally, a precisely similar
-dilemma.
-
-When the statesmen--Italian or other--insist upon strategic frontiers
-and territories containing raw materials, on the ground that a nation
-must look to itself because we live in a world in which international
-arrangements cannot be depended on, they can be quite certain that the
-reason they give is a sound one: because their own action will make it
-so: their action creates the very conditions to which they appeal as the
-reason for it. Their decision, with the popular impulse of sacred egoism
-which supports it, does something more than repudiate Mr Wilson's
-principles; it is the beginning of the disruption of the Alliance upon
-which their countries have depended. The case is put in a manifesto
-issued a year or two ago by a number of eminent Americans from which we
-have already quoted in Chapter III.
-
-It says:--
-
-     'If, as in the past, nations must look for their future security
-     chiefly to their own strength and resources, then inevitably, in
-     the name of the needs of national defence, there will be claims for
-     strategic frontiers and territories with raw material which do
-     violence to the principle of nationality. Afterwards those who
-     suffer from such violations would be opposed to the League of
-     Nations, because it would consecrate the injustice of which they
-     would be the victims. A refusal to trust to the League of Nations,
-     and a demand for "material" guarantees for future safety, will set
-     up that very distrust which will afterwards be appealed to as
-     justification for regarding the League as impracticable because it
-     inspires no general confidence. A bold "Act of Political Faith" in
-     the League will justify itself by making the League a success; but,
-     equally, lack of faith will justify itself by ruining the League.'
-
-That is why, when in the past the realist statesman has sometimes
-objected that he does not believe in internationalism because it is not
-practical, I have replied that it is not practical because he does not
-believe in it.
-
-The prerequisite to the creation of a society is the Social Will. And
-herein lies the difficulty of making any comparative estimate of the
-respective risks of the alternative courses. We admit that if the
-nations would sink their sacred egoisms and pledge their power to mutual
-and common protection, the risk of such a course would disappear. We get
-the paradox that there is no risk if we all take the risk. But each
-refuses to begin. William James has illustrated the position:--
-
-     'I am climbing the Alps, and have had the ill luck to work myself
-     into a position from which the only escape is by a terrible leap.
-     Being without similar experience, I have no evidence of my ability
-     to perform it successfully; but hope and confidence in myself make
-     me sure that I shall not miss my aim, and nerve my feet to execute
-     what, without those subjective emotions, would have been
-     impossible.
-
-     'But suppose that, on the contrary, the emotions ... of mistrust
-     predominate.... Why, then, I shall hesitate so long that at last,
-     exhausted and trembling, and launching myself in a moment of
-     despair, I miss my foothold and roll into the abyss. In this case,
-     and it is one of an immense class, the part of wisdom is to believe
-     what one desires; for the belief is one of the indispensable,
-     preliminary conditions of the realisation of its object. There are
-     cases where faith creates its own justification. Believe, and you
-     shall be right, for you shall save yourself; doubt, and you shall
-     again be right, for you shall perish.'
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-THE SPIRITUAL ROOTS OF THE SETTLEMENT
-
-
-_'Human Nature is always what it is'_
-
-'You may argue as much as you like. All the logic chopping will never
-get over the fact that human nature is always what it is. Nations will
-always fight.... always retaliate at victory.'
-
-If that be true, and our pugnacities, and hates, and instincts
-generally, are uncontrollable, and they dictate conduct, no more is to
-be said. We are the helpless victims of outside forces, and may as well
-surrender, without further discussion, or political agitation, or
-propaganda. For if those appeals to our minds can neither determine the
-direction nor modify the manifestation of our innate instincts, nor
-influence conduct, one rather wonders at our persistence in them.
-
-Why so many of us find an obvious satisfaction in this fatalism, so
-patently want it to be true, and resort to it in such convenient
-disregard of the facts, has been in some measure indicated in the
-preceding chapter. At bottom it comes to this: that it relieves us of so
-much trouble and responsibility; the life of instinct and emotion is so
-easily flowing a thing, and that of social restraints and rationalised
-decisions so cold and dry and barren.
-
-At least that is the alternative as many of us see it. And if the only
-alternative to an impulse spending itself in hostilities and hatreds
-destructive of social cohesion, were the sheer restraint of impulse by
-calculation and reason; if our choice were truly between chaos,
-anarchy, and the perpetual repression of all spontaneous and vigorous
-impulse--then the choice of a fatalistic refusal to reason would be
-justifiable.
-
-But happily that is not the alternative. The function of reason and
-discipline is not to repress instinct and impulse, but to turn those
-forces into directions in which they may have free play without
-disaster. The function of the compass is not to check the power of the
-ship's engines; it is to indicate a direction in which the power can be
-given full play, because the danger of running on to the rocks has been
-obviated.
-
-Let us first get the mere facts straight--facts as they have worked out
-in the War and the Peace.
-
-It is not true that the directions taken by our instincts cannot in any
-way be determined by our intelligence. 'A man's impulses are not fixed
-from the beginning by his native disposition: within certain limits they
-are profoundly modified by his circumstances and way of life.'[70] What
-we regard as the 'instinctive' part of our character is, again, within
-large limits very malleable: by beliefs, by social circumstances, by
-institutions, and above all by the suggestibility of tradition, the work
-is often of individual minds.
-
-It is not so much the _character_ of our impulsive and instinctive life
-that is changed by these influences, as the direction. The elements of
-human nature may remain unchangeable, but the manifestations resulting
-from the changing combinations may be infinitely various as are the
-forms of matter which result from changing combinations of the same
-primary elements.
-
-It is not a choice between a life of impulse and emotion on the one
-side, and wearisome repressions on the other. The perception that
-certain needs are vital will cause us to use our emotional energy for
-one purpose instead of another. And just because the traditions that
-have grouped around nationalism turn our combativeness into the
-direction of war, the energy brought into play by that impulse is not
-available for the creativeness of peace. Having become habituated to a
-certain reagent--the stimulus of some personal or visible enemy--energy
-fails to react to a stimulus which, with a different way of life, would
-have sufficed. Because we must have gin to summon up our energy, that is
-no proof that energy is impossible without it. It is hardly for an
-inebriate to laud the life of instinct and impulse. For the time being
-that is not the attitude and tendency that most needs encouragement.
-
-As to the fact that the instinctive and impulsive part of our behaviour
-is dirigible and malleable by tradition and discussion, that is not only
-admitted, but it is apt to be over-emphasised--by those who insist upon
-the 'unchangeability of human nature.' The importance which we attached
-to the repression of pacifist and defeatist propaganda during the War,
-and of Bolshevist agitation after the War, proves that we believe these
-feelings, that we allege to be unchangeable, can be changed too easily
-and readily by the influence of ideas, even wrong ones.
-
-The type of feeling which gave us the Treaty was in a large degree a
-manufactured feeling, in the sense that it was the result of opinion,
-formed day by day by a selection only of the facts. For this manufacture
-of opinion, we consciously created a very elaborate machinery, both of
-propaganda and of control of news. But that organisation of public
-opinion, justifiable in itself perhaps as a war measure, was not guided
-(as the result shows) by an understanding of what the political ends,
-which, in the early days of the War, we declared to be ours, would need
-in the way of psychology. Our machinery developed a psychology which
-made our higher political aims quite impossible of realisation.
-
-Public opinion, 'human nature,' would have been more manageable, its
-'instincts' would have been sounder, and we should have had a Europe
-less in disintegration, if we had told as far as possible that part of
-the truth which our public bodies (State, Church, Press, the School)
-were largely occupied in hiding. But the opinion which dictated the
-policy of repression is itself the result of refusing to face the truth.
-To tell the truth is the remedy here suggested.
-
-
-_The Paradox of the Peace_
-
-The supreme paradox of the Peace is this:--
-
-We went into the War with certain very definitely proclaimed principles,
-which we declared to be more valuable than the lives of the men that were
-sacrificed in their defence. We were completely victorious, and went into
-the Conference with full power, so far as enemy resistance was concerned,
-to put those principles into effect.[71] We did not use the victory which
-our young men had given us to that end, but for enforcing a policy which
-was in flat contradiction to the principles we had originally proclaimed.
-
-In some respects the spectacle is the most astounding of all history. It
-is literally true to say that millions of young soldiers gladly gave
-their lives for ideals to which the survivors, when they had the power
-to realise them (again so far as physical force can give us power,)
-showed complete indifference, sometimes a contemptuous hostility.
-
-It was not merely an act of the statesmen. The worst features of the
-Treaty were imposed by popular feeling--put into the Treaty by statesmen
-who did not believe in them, and only included them in order to satisfy
-public opinion. The policy of President Wilson failed in part because of
-the humane and internationalist opinion of the America of 1916 had
-become the fiercely chauvinist and coercive opinion of 1919, repudiating
-the President's efforts.
-
-Part of the story of these transformations has been told in the
-preceding pages. Let us summarise the story as a whole.
-
-We saw at the beginning of the War a real feeling for the right of
-peoples to choose their own form of government, for the principle of
-nationality. At the end of the War we deny that right in half a score of
-cases,[72] where it suits our momentary political or military interest.
-The very justification of 'necessity,' which shocks our conscience when
-put forward by the enemy, is the one we invoke callously at the
-peace--or before it, as when we agree to allow Czarist Russia to do what
-she will with Poland, and Italy with Serbia. Having sacrificed the small
-State to Russia in 1916, we are prepared to sacrifice Russia to the
-small State in 1919, by encouraging the formation of border
-independencies, which, if complete independencies, must throttle Russia,
-and which no 'White' Russian would accept. While encouraging the lesser
-States to make war on Russia, we subsidise White Russian military
-leaders who will certainly destroy the small States if successful. We
-entered the War for the destruction of militarism, and to make
-disarmament possible, declaring that German arms were the cause of our
-arms; and having destroyed German arms, we make ours greater than they
-were before the War, and introduce such new elements as the systematic
-arming of African savages for European warfare. We fought to make the
-secret bringing about of war by military or diplomatic cliques
-impossible, and after the Armistice the decision to wage war on the
-Russian Republic is made without even public knowledge, in opposition to
-sections in the Cabinets concerned, by cliques of whose composition the
-public is completely ignorant.[73] The invasion of Russia from the
-north, south, east, and west, by European, Asiatic, and negro troops, is
-made without a declaration of war, after a solemn statement by the chief
-spokesman of the Allies that there should be no invasion. Having
-declared, during the War, on a score of occasions, that we were not
-fighting against any right or interest of the German people[74]--or the
-German people at all--because we realised that only by ensuring that
-right and interest ourselves could we turn Germany from the ways of the
-past, at the peace we impose conditions which make it impossible for the
-German people even adequately to feed their population, and leave them
-no recourse but the recreation of their power. Having promised at the
-Armistice not to use our power for the purpose of preventing the due
-feeding of Germany, we continue for months a blockade which, even by the
-testimony of our own officials, creates famine conditions and literally
-kills very many of the children.
-
-At the beginning of the War, our statesmen, if not our public, had some
-rudimentary sense of the economic unity of mankind, of our need of one
-another's work, and the idea of blockading half a world in time of dire
-scarcity would have appalled them. Yet at the Armistice it was done so
-light-heartedly that, having at last abandoned it, they have never even
-explained what they proposed to accomplish by it, for, says Mr Maynard
-Keynes. 'It is an extraordinary fact that the fundamental economic
-problem of a Europe starving and disintegrating before their eyes, was
-the one question in which it was impossible to arouse the interest of
-the Four.'[75] At the beginning of the War we invoked high heaven to
-witness the danger and anomaly of autocratic government in our day. We
-were fighting for Parliamentary institutions, 'open Covenants openly
-arrived at.' After victory, we leave the real settlement of Europe to be
-made by two or three Prime Ministers, rendering no account of their
-secret deliberations and discussions to any Parliament until, in
-practice, it is too late to alter them. At the beginning of the War we
-were profoundly moved by the wickedness of military terrorism; at its
-close we employ it--whether by means of starvation, blockade, armed
-negro savages in German cities, reprisals in Ireland, or the ruthless
-slaughter of unarmed civilians in India--without creating any strong
-revulsion of feeling at home. At the beginning of the War we realised
-that the governmental organisation of hatred with the prostitution of
-art to 'hymns of hate' was vile and despicable. We copied that
-governmental organisation of hatred, and famous English authors duly
-produce _our_ hymns of hate.[76] We felt at the beginning that all human
-freedom was menaced by the German theory of the State as the master of
-man and not as his instrument, with all that means of political
-inquisition and repression. When some of its worst features are applied
-at home, we are so indifferent to the fact that we do not even recognise
-that the thing against which we fought has been imposed upon
-ourselves.[77]
-
-Many will dissent from this indictment. Yet its most important item--our
-indifference to the very evils against which we fought--is something
-upon which practically all witnesses testifying to the state of public
-opinion to-day agree. It is a commonplace of current discussion of
-present-day feeling. Take one or two at random, Sir Philip Gibbs and Mr.
-Sisley Huddleston, both English journalists. (I choose journalists
-because it is their business to know the nature of the public mind and
-spirit.) Speaking of the wholesale starvation, unimaginable misery, from
-the Baltic to the Black Sea, Mr. Huddleston writes:--
-
-     'We read these things. They make not the smallest impression on us.
-     Why? How is it that we are not horrified and do not resolve that
-     not for a single day shall any preventable evil exist? How is it,
-     that, on the contrary, for two years we have been cheerfully
-     engaged in intensifying the sum of human suffering? Why are we so
-     heedless? Why are we so callous? Why do we allow to be committed,
-     in our name, a thousand atrocities, and to be written, in our name
-     and for our delectation, a million vile words which reveal the most
-     amazing lack either of feeling or of common sense?
-
-     'There have been crimes perpetrated by the politicians--by all the
-     politicians--which no condemnation could fitly characterise. But
-     the peoples must be blamed. The peoples support the war-making
-     politicians. It is my business to follow the course of events day
-     by day, and it is sometimes difficult to stand back and take a
-     general view. Whenever I do so, I am appalled at the blundering or
-     the wickedness of the leaders of the world. Without party
-     prejudices or personal predilections, an impartial observer, I
-     cannot conceive how it is possible to be always blind to the truth,
-     the glaring truth, that since the Armistice we have never sought to
-     make peace, but have sought only some pretext and method for
-     prolonging the War.
-
-     'Hate exudes from every journal in speaking of certain peoples--a
-     weary hate, a conventional hate, a hate which is always whipping
-     itself into a passion. It is, perhaps, more strictly, apathy
-     masquerading as hate--which is worst of all. The people are
-     _blas�_: they seek only bread and circuses for themselves. They
-     regard no bread for others as a rather boring circus for
-     themselves.'
-
-Mr. Huddleston was present throughout most of the Conference. This is
-his verdict:--
-
-     ' ... Cynicism soon became naked. In the East all pretence of
-     righteousness was abandoned. Every successive Treaty was more
-     frankly the expression of shameful appetites. There was no pretence
-     of conscience in politics. Force rules without disguise. What was
-     still more amazing was the way in which strife was stirred up
-     gratuitously. What advantage was it, even for a moment, to any one
-     to foment civil war in Russia, to send against the unhappy,
-     famine-stricken country army after army? The result was so
-     obviously to consolidate the Bolshevist Government around which
-     were obliged to rally all Russians who had the spirit of
-     nationality. It seemed as if everywhere we were plotting our own
-     ruin and hastening our own end. A strange dementia seized our
-     rulers, who thought peace, replenishment of empty larders, the
-     fraternisation of sorely tired nations, ignoble and delusive
-     objects. It appeared that war was for evermore to be humanity's
-     fate.
-
-     'Time after time I saw excellent opportunities of universal peace
-     deliberately rejected. There was somebody to wreck every Prinkipo,
-     every Spa. It was almost with dismay that all Europeans who had
-     kept their intelligence unclouded saw the frustration of peace, and
-     heard the peoples applaud the men who frustrated peace. I care not
-     whether they still enjoy esteem: history will judge them harshly
-     and will judge harshly the turbulence which men plumed themselves
-     on creating two years after the War.'
-
-As to the future:--
-
-     'If it is certain that France must force another fight with Germany
-     in a short span of years, if she pursues her present policy of
-     implacable antagonism; if it is certain that England is already
-     carefully seeking the European equilibrium, and that a responsible
-     minister has already written of the possibility of a military
-     accord with Germany; if there has been seen, owing to the foolish
-     belief of the Allies in force--a belief which increases in inverse
-     ratio to the Allied possession of effective force--the re-birth of
-     Russian militarism, as there will assuredly be seen the re-birth of
-     German militarism; if there are quarrels between Greece and Italy,
-     between Italy and the Jugo-Slavs, between Hungary and Austria,
-     between every tiny nation and its neighbour, even between England
-     and France, it is because, when war has once been invoked, it
-     cannot easily be exorcised. It will linger long in Europe: the
-     straw will smoulder and at any moment may break into flame....
-
-     'This is not lurid imagining: it is as logical as a piece of
-     Euclidean reasoning. Only by a violent effort to change our fashion
-     of seeing things can it be averted. War-making is now a habit.'
-
-And as to the outcome on the mind of the people:--
-
-     'The war has killed elasticity of mind, independence of judgment,
-     and liberty of expression. We think not so much of the truth as of
-     conforming to the tacitly accepted fiction of the hour.[78]
-
-Sir Philip Gibbs renders on the whole a similar verdict. He says:--
-
-     'The people of all countries were deeply involved in the general
-     blood-guiltiness of Europe. They made no passionate appeal in the
-     name of Christ or in the name of humanity for the cessation of the
-     slaughter of boys and the suicide of nations, and for a
-     reconciliation of peoples upon terms of some more reasonable
-     argument than that of high explosives. Peace proposals from the
-     Pope, from Germany, from Austria, were rejected with fierce
-     denunciation, most passionate scorn, as "peace plots" and "peace
-     traps," not without the terrible logic of the vicious circle,
-     because indeed, there was no sincerity of renunciation in some of
-     those offers of peace, and the Powers opposite to us were simply
-     trying our strength and our weakness in order to make their own
-     kind of peace, which should be that of conquest. The gamblers,
-     playing the game of "poker," with crowns and armies as their
-     stakes, were upheld generally by the peoples, who would not abate
-     one point of pride, one fraction of hate, one claim of vengeance,
-     though all Europe should fall in ruin, and the last legions of boys
-     be massacred. There was no call from people to people across the
-     frontiers of hostility. "Let us end this homicidal mania. Let us
-     get back to sanity and save our younger sons. Let us hand over to
-     justice those who will continue the slaughter of our youth!" There
-     was no forgiveness, no generous instinct, no large-hearted common
-     sense in any combatant nation of Europe. Like wolves they had their
-     teeth in one another's throats, and would not let go, though all
-     bloody and exhausted, until one should fall at the last gasp, to be
-     mangled by the others. Yet in each nation, even in Germany, there
-     were men and women who saw the folly of the war and the crime of
-     it, and desired to end it by some act of renunciation and
-     repentance, and by some uplifting of the people's spirit to vault
-     the frontiers of hatred and the barbed wire which hedged in
-     patriotism. Some of them were put in prison. Most of them saw the
-     impossibility of counteracting the forces of insanity which had
-     made the world mad, and kept silent, hiding their thoughts and
-     brooding over them. The leaders of the nations continued to use
-     mob-passion as their argument and justification, excited it anew
-     when its fires burned low, focussed it upon definite objectives,
-     and gave it a sense of righteousness by the high-sounding
-     watchwords of liberty, justice, honour, and retribution. Each side
-     proclaimed Christ as its captain, and invoked the blessing and aid
-     of the God of Christendom, though Germans were allied with Turks,
-     and France was full of black and yellow men. The German people did
-     not try to avert their ruin by denouncing the criminal acts of
-     their War Lords nor by deploring the cruelties they had committed.
-     The Allies did not help them to do so, because of their lust for
-     bloody vengeance and their desire for the spoils of victory. The
-     peoples shared the blame of their rulers because they were not
-     nobler than their rulers. They cannot now plead ignorance or
-     betrayal by false ideals which duped them, because character does
-     not depend on knowledge, and it was the character of European
-     peoples which failed in the crisis of the world's fate, so that
-     they followed the call-back of the beast in the jungle rather than
-     the voice of the Crucified One whom they pretended to adore.'
-
-And perhaps most important of all (though the clergy here just stand for
-the complacent mob mind; they were no worse than the laity), this:--
-
-     'I think the clergy of all nations, apart from a heroic and saintly
-     few, subordinated their faith, which is a gospel of charity, to
-     national limitations. They were patriots before they were priests,
-     and their patriotism was sometimes as limited, as narrow, as
-     fierce, and as blood-thirsty as that of the people who looked to
-     them for truth and light. They were often fiercer, narrower, and
-     more desirous of vengeance than the soldiers who fought, because it
-     is now a known truth that the soldiers, German and Austrian, French
-     and Italian and British, were sick of the unending slaughter long
-     before the ending of the war, and would have made a peace more fair
-     than that which now prevails if it had been put to the common vote
-     in the trenches; whereas the Archbishop of Canterbury, the
-     Archbishop of Cologne, and the clergy who spoke from many pulpits
-     in many nations under the Cross of Christ, still stoked up the
-     fires of hate and urged the armies to go on fighting "in the cause
-     of Justice," "for the defence of the Fatherland," "for Christian
-     righteousness," to the bitter end. Those words are painful to
-     write, but as I am writing this book for truth's sake, at all cost,
-     I let them stand.'[79]
-
-
-_From Passion to Indifference: the Result of Drift_
-
-A common attitude just now is something like this:--
-
-'With the bitter memory of all that the Allies had suffered strong upon
-them, it is not astonishing that at the moment of victory an attitude of
-judicial impartiality proved too much to ask of human nature. The real
-terms will depend upon the fashion in which the formal terms are
-enforced. Much of the letter of the Treaty--trial of the Kaiser,
-etc.--has already disappeared. It is an intolerable priggishness to rake
-up this very excusable debauch just as we are returning to sobriety.'
-
-And that would be true, if, indeed, we had learned the lesson, and were
-adopting a new policy. But we are not. We have merely in some measure
-exchanged passion for lassitude and indifference. Later on we shall
-plead that the lassitude was as 'inevitable' as the passion. On such a
-line of reasoning, it is no good reacting by a perception of
-consequences against a mood of the moment. That is bad psychology and
-disastrous politics. To realise what 'temperamental politics' have
-already involved us in, is the first step towards turning our present
-drift into a more consciously directed progress.
-
-Note where the drift has already carried us with reference to the
-problem of the new Germany which it was our declared object to create.
-There were weeks following the Armistice in Germany, when a faithful
-adherence to the spirit of the declarations made by the Allies during
-the War would have brought about the utter moral collapse of the
-Prussianism we had fought to destroy. The Prussian had said to the
-people: 'Only Germany's military power has stood between her and
-humiliating ruin. The Allies victorious will use their victory to
-deprive Germany of her vital rights.' Again and again had the Allies
-denied this, and Germany, especially young Germany, watched to see which
-should prove right. A blockade, falling mainly, as Mr Churchill
-complacently pointed out (months after an armistice whose terms had
-included a promise to take into consideration the food needs of Germany)
-upon the feeble, the helpless, the children, answered that question for
-millions in Germany. Her schools and universities teem with hundreds of
-thousands stricken in their health, to whom the words 'never again' mean
-that never more will they put their trust in the 'na�ve innocence' of
-an internationalism that could so betray them.
-
-The militarism which morally was at so low an ebb at the Armistice, has
-been rehabilitated by such things as the blockade and its effects, the
-terms of the Treaty, and by minor but dramatic features like the
-retention of German prisoners long after Allied prisoners had returned
-home, and the occupation of German university town by African negroes.
-So that to-day a League of Nations offered by the Allies would probably
-be regarded with a contemptuous scepticism--somewhat similar to that
-with which America now regards the political beatitudes which it
-applauded in 1916-17.
-
-We are in fact modifying the Treaty. But those modifications will not
-meet the present situation, though they might well have met the
-situation in 1918. If we had done then what we are prepared to do _now_,
-Europe would have been set on the right road.
-
-Suppose the Allies had said in December, 1918 (as they are in effect
-being brought to say in 1920): 'We are not going to play into the hands
-of your militarists by demanding the surrender of the Kaiser or the
-punishment of the war criminals, vile as we believe their offences to
-be. We are not going to stimulate your waning nationalism by demanding
-an acknowledgment of your sole guilt. Nor are we going to ruin your
-industry or shatter your credit. On the contrary, we will start by
-making you a loan, facilitating your purchases of food and raw
-materials, and we will admit you into the League of Nations.'
-
-We are coming to that. If it could have been our policy early instead of
-late, how different this story would have been.
-
-And the tragedy is this: To do it late is to cause it to lose its
-effectiveness, for the situation changes. The measures which would have
-been adequate in 1918 are inadequate in 1920. It is the story of Home
-Rule. In the eighties Ireland would have accepted Gladstonian Home Rule
-as a basis at least of co-operation. English and Ulster opinion was not
-ready even for Home Rule. Forty years later it had reconciled itself to
-Home Rule. But by the time Britain was ready for the remedy, the
-situation had got quite beyond it. It now demanded something for which
-slow-moving opinion was unprepared. So with a League of Nations. The
-plan now supported by Conservatives would, as Lord Grey has avowed, have
-assuredly prevented this War if adopted in place of the mere Arbitration
-plans of the Hague Conference. At that date the present League of
-Nations Covenant would have been adequate to the situation. But some of
-the self-same Conservatives who now talk the language of
-internationalism--even in economic terms--poured contumely and scorn
-upon those of us who used it a decade or two since. And now, it is to be
-feared, the Government for which they are ready will certainly be
-inadequate to the situation which we face.
-
-
-_'An evil idealism and self-sacrificing hates.'_
-
-'The cause of this insanity,' says Sir Philip Gibbs, 'is the failure of
-idealism.' Others write in much the same strain that selfishness and
-materialism have reconquered the world. But this does not get us very
-far. By what moral alchemy was this vast outpouring of unselfishness,
-which sent millions to their death as to a feast (for men cannot die for
-selfish motives, unless more certain of their heavenly reward than we in
-the Western world are in the habit of being) turned into selfishness;
-their high ideals into low desires--if that is what has happened? Can it
-be a selfishness which ruins and starves us all? Is it selfishness on
-the part of the French which causes them to adopt towards Germany a
-policy of vengeance that prevents them receiving the Reparations that
-they so sorely need? Is it not indeed what one of their writers had
-called a 'holy hate,' instinctive, intuitive, purged of all calculation
-of advantage or disadvantage? Would not selfishness--enlightened
-selfishness--have given us not only a sounder Europe in the material
-sense, but a more humane Europe, with its hostilities softened by the
-very fact of contact and co-operation, and the very obviousness of our
-need for one another? The last thing desired here is to raise the old
-never-ending question of egoism versus altruism. All that is desired is
-to point out that a mere appeal to feeling, to a 'sense of
-righteousness' and idealism, is not enough. We have an illimitable
-capacity for sublimating our own motives, and of convincing ourselves
-completely, passionately, that our evil is good. And the greater our
-fear that intellectual inquiry, some sceptical rationalism, might shake
-the certitude of our righteousness, the greater the passion with which
-we shall stand by the guide of 'instinct and intuition.' Can there not
-be a destructive idealism as well as a social one? What of the Holy
-Wars? What of the Prussian who, after all, had his ideal, as the
-Bolshevist has his? What of all fanatics ready to die for their
-idealism?
-
-It is never the things that are obviously and patently evil that
-constitute the real menace to mankind. If Prussian nationalism had been
-nothing but gross lust and cruelty and oppression, as we managed to
-persuade ourselves during the War that it was, it would never have
-menaced the world. It did that because it could rally to its end great
-enthusiasms; because men were ready to die for it. Then it threatened
-us. Only those things which have some element of good are dangerous.
-
-A Treaty of the character of that Versailles would never have been
-possible if men had not been able to justify it to themselves on the
-ground of its punitive justice. The greeds expressed in the annexation
-of alien territory, and the violation of the principle of nationality,
-would never have been possible but for the plea of the sacred egoism of
-patriotism; our country before the enemy's, our country right or wrong.
-The assertion of sheer immoralism embodied in this last slogan can be
-made into the garments of righteousness if only our idealism is
-instinctive enough.
-
-Some of the worst crimes against justice have been due to the very
-fierceness of our passion for righteousness--a passion so fierce that it
-becomes undiscriminating and unseeing. It was the passion for what men
-believed to be religious truth which gave us the Inquisition and the
-religious wars; it was the passion for patriotism which made France for
-so many years, to the astonishment of the world, refuse justice to
-Dreyfus; it is a righteous loathing for negro crime which has made
-lynching possible for half a century in the United States, and which
-prevents the development of an opinion which will insist on its
-suppression. It is 'the just anger that makes men unjust.' The righteous
-passion that insists on a criminal's dying for some foul crime, is the
-very thing which prevents our seeing that the crime was not committed by
-him at all.
-
-It was something akin to this that made the Treaty of Versailles
-possible. That is why merely to appeal to idealism and feeling will
-fail, unless the defect of vision which makes evil appear good is
-corrected. It is not the feeling which is at fault; it is the defective
-vision causing feeling to be misused, as in the case of our feeling
-against the man accused on what seem to us good grounds, of a detestable
-offence. He is loathsome to our sight, because the crime is loathsome.
-But when some one else confesses to the crime, our feeling against the
-innocent man disappears. The direction it took, the object upon which it
-settled, was due to a misconception.
-
-Obviously that error may occur in politics. Equally certainly something
-worse may happen. With some real doubt in our mind whether this man is
-the criminal, we may yet, in the absence of any other culprit, stifle
-that doubt because of our anger, and our vague desire to have some
-victim suffer for so vile a crime. Feeling will be at fault, in such a
-case, as well as vision. And this thing happens, as many a lynching
-testifies. ('The innocence of Dreyfus would be a crime,' said a famous
-anti-Dreyfusard.) Both defects may have played their part in the tragedy
-of Versailles. In making our appeal to idealism, we assume that it is
-there, somewhere, to be aroused on behalf of justice; we must assume,
-consequently, that if it has not been aroused, or has attached itself to
-wrong purposes, it is because it has not seen where justice lay.
-
-Our only protection against these miscarriages, by which our passion is
-borne into the wrong channel, against the innocent while the guilty
-escape, is to keep our minds open to all the facts, all the truth. But
-this principle, which we have proclaimed as the very foundation stone of
-our democratic faith, was the first to go when we began the War. The
-idea that in war time, most particularly, a democracy needs to know the
-enemy's, or the Pacifist, or even the internationalist and liberal case,
-would have been regarded as a bad joke. Yet the failure to do just that
-thing inevitably created a conviction that all the wrong was on one side
-and all the right on the other, and that the problem of the settlement
-was mainly a problem of ruthless punishment. One of that temper may have
-come the errors of the Treaty and the miseries that have flowed from
-them. It was the virtual suppression of free debate on the purposes and
-aims of the War and their realisation that delivered public opinion into
-the keeping of the extremest Jingoes when we came to make the peace.
-
-
-_We create the temper that destroys us_
-
-Behind the war-time attitude of the belligerents, when they suppressed
-whatever news might tell in favour of the enemy, was the conviction that
-if we could really understand the enemy's position we should not want to
-fight him. That is probably true. Let us assume that, and assume
-consequently the need for control of news and discussion. If we are to
-come to the control by governments of political belief, as we once
-attempted control by ecclesiastical authority of religious belief, let
-us face the fact, and drop pretence about freedom of discussion, and see
-that the organisation of opinion is honest and efficient. There is a
-great deal to be said for the suppression of freedom of discussion. Some
-of the greatest minds in the world have refused to accept it as a
-working principle of society. Theirs is a perfectly arguable, extremely
-strong and thoroughly honest case.[80] But virtually to subpress the
-free dissemination of facts, as we have done not only during, but after
-the War, and at the same time to go on with our talk about free speech,
-free Press, free discussion, free democracy is merely to add to the
-insincerities and falsehoods, which can only end by making society
-unworkable. We not only disbelieve in free discussion in the really
-vital crises; we disbelieve in truth. That is one fact. There is another
-related to it. If we frankly admitted that public opinion has to be
-'managed,' organised, shaped, we should demand that it be done
-efficiently with a view to the achievement of conscious ends, which we
-should place before ourselves. What happened during the War was that
-everybody, including the governments who ought to have been free from
-the domination of the myths they were engaged in creating, lost sight of
-the ultimate purposes of the War, and of the fact that they were
-creating forces which would make the attainment of those ends
-impossible; rob victory, that is, of its effectiveness.
-
-Note how the process works. We say when war is declared: 'A truce to
-discussion. The time is for action, not words.' But the truce is a
-fiction. It means, not that talk and propaganda shall cease, only that
-all liberal contribution to it must cease. The _Daily News_ suspends its
-internationalism, but the _Daily Mail_ is more fiercely Chauvinist than
-ever. We must not debate terms. But Mr Bottomley debates them every
-week, on the text that Germans are to be exterminated like vermin. What
-results? The natural defenders of a policy even as liberal as that of an
-Edward Grey are silenced. The function of the liberal Press is
-suspended. The only really articulate voices on policy are the voices of
-Lord Northcliffe and Mr Bottomley. On such subjects as foreign policy
-those gentlemen do not ordinarily embrace all wisdom; there is something
-to be said in criticism of their views. But in the matter of the future
-settlement of Europe, to have criticised those views during the War
-would have exposed the critic to the charge of pro-Germanism. So
-Chauvinism had it all its own way. For months and years the country
-heard one view of policy only. The early policy of silence did really
-impose a certain silence upon the _Daily News_ or the _Manchester
-Guardian_; none whatever upon the _Times_ or the _Daily Mail_. None of
-us can, day after day, be under the influence of such a process without
-being affected by it.[81] The British public were affected by it. Sir
-Edward Grey's policy began to appear weak, an�mic, pro-German. And in
-the end he and his colleagues disappeared, partly, at least, as the
-result of the very policy of 'leaving it to the Government' upon which
-they had insisted at the beginning of the War. And the very group which,
-in 1914, was most insistent that there should be no criticism of
-Asquith, or McKenna, or Grey, were the very group whose criticisms
-turned those leaders out of office! While in 1914 it was accepted as
-proof of treason to say a word in criticism of (say) Grey, by 1916 it
-had almost become evidence of treason to say a word for him ... and that
-while he was still in office!
-
-The history of America's attitude towards the War displays a similar
-line of development. We are apt to forget that the League of Nations
-idea entered the realm of practical politics as the result of a great
-spontaneous popular movement in America in 1916, as powerful and
-striking as any since the movement against chattel-slavery. A year of
-war morale resulted, as has already been noted, in a complete reversal
-of attitude. America became the opponent and Britain the protagonist of
-the League of Nations.
-
-In passing, one of the astonishing things is that statesmen, compelled
-by the conditions of their profession to work with the raw material of
-public opinion, seem blind to the fact that the total effect of the
-forces which they set in motion will be to transform opinion and render
-it intractable. American advisers of President Wilson scouted the idea,
-when it was suggested to them early in the War, that the growth of the
-War temper would make it difficult for the President to carry out his
-policy.[82] A score of times the present writer has heard it said by
-Americans who ought to have known better, that the public did not care
-what the foreign policy of the country was, and that the President could
-carry out any policy that he liked. At that particular moment it was
-true, but quite obviously there was growing up at the time, as the
-direct result of war propaganda, a fierce Chauvinism, which should have
-made it plain to any one who observed its momentum, that the notion of
-President Wilson's policy being put into execution after victory was
-simply preposterous.
-
-Mr Asquith's Government was thus largely responsible for creating a
-balance of force in public opinion (as we shall see presently) which was
-responsible for its collapse. Mr Lloyd George has himself sanctioned a
-jingoism which, if useful temporarily, becomes later an insuperable
-obstacle to the putting into force of workable policies. For while
-Versailles could do what it liked in matters that did not touch the
-popular passion of the moment, in the matters that did, the statesmen
-were the victims of the temper they had done so much to create. There
-was a story current in Paris at the time of the Conference: 'You can't
-really expect to get an indemnity of ten thousand millions, so what is
-the good of putting it in the Treaty,' an expert is said to have
-remarked. 'My dear fellow,' said the Prime Minister, 'if the election
-had gone on another fortnight, it would have been fifty thousand
-millions.' But the insertion of these mythical millions into the Treaty
-has not been a joke; it has been an enormous obstacle to the
-reconstruction of Europe. It was just because public opinion was not
-ready to face facts in time, that the right thing had to be done at the
-wrong time, when perhaps it was too late. The effect on French policy
-has been still more important. It is the illusions concerning
-illimitable indemnities--directly fostered by the Governments in the
-early days of the Armistice--still dominating French public opinion,
-which more than anything else, perhaps, explains an attitude on the part
-of the French Government that has come near to smashing Europe.
-
-Even minds extraordinarily brilliant, as a rule, miscalculated the
-weight of this factor of public passion stimulated by the hates of war,
-and the deliberate exploitation of it for purposes of 'war morale' and
-propaganda. Thus Mr Wells,[83] writing even after two years of war,
-predicted that if the Germans were to make a revolution and overthrow
-the Kaiser, the Allies would 'tumble over each other' to offer Germany
-generous terms. What is worse is that British propaganda in enemy
-countries seems to have been based very largely on this assumption.[84]
-It constituted an elaboration of the offers implicit in Mr Wilson's
-speeches, that once Germany was democratised there should be, in Mr
-Wilson's words, 'no reprisal upon the German people, who have themselves
-suffered all things in this War which they did not choose.' The
-statement made by the German rulers that Germany was fighting against a
-harsh and destructive fate at the hands of the victors, was, President
-Wilson said, 'wantonly false.' 'No one is threatening the peaceful
-enterprise of the German Empire.' Our propaganda in Germany seems to
-have been an expansion of this text, while the negotiations which
-preceded the Armistice morally bound us to a 'Fourteen Points peace'
-(less the British reservation touching the Freedom of the Seas). The
-economic terms of the Peace Treaty, the meaning of which has been so
-illuminatingly explained by the representative of the British Treasury
-at the Conference, give the measure of our respect for that obligation
-of honour, once we had the Germans at our mercy.[85]
-
-
-_Fundamental Falsehoods and their Outcome_
-
-We witnessed both in England and America very great changes in the
-dynamics of opinion. Not only was one type of public man being brought
-forward and another thrust into the background, but one group of
-emotions and of motives of public policy were being developed and
-another group atrophied. The use of the word 'opinion,' with its
-implication of a rationalised process of intellectual decision, may be
-misleading. 'Public opinion' is here used as the sum of the forces which
-become articulate in a country, and which a government is compelled not
-necessarily to obey, but to take into account. (A government may
-bamboozle it or dodge it, but it cannot openly oppose it.)
-
-And when reference is made to the force of ideas--Nationalist or
-Socialist or Revolutionary--a power which we all admit by our panic
-fears of defeatist or Red Propaganda, it is necessary to keep in mind
-the kind of force that is meant. One speaks of Communist or Socialist,
-Pacifist or Patriotic ideas gaining influence, or creating a ferment.
-The idea of Communism, for instance, has obviously played some part in
-the vast upheavals that have followed the War.[86] But in a world where
-the great majority are still condemned to intense physical labour in
-order to live at all, where peoples as a whole are overworked, harassed,
-pre-occupied, it is impossible that ideas like those of Karl Marx
-should be subjected to elaborate intellectual analysis. Rather is it
-_an_ idea--of the common ownership of wealth or its equal distribution,
-of poverty being the fault of a definite class of the corporate body--an
-idea which fits into a mood produced largely by the prevailing
-conditions of life, which thus becomes the predominating factor of the
-new public opinion. Now foreign policy is certainly influenced, and in
-some great crises determined, by public opinion. But that opinion is not
-the resultant of a series of intellectual analyses of problems of Balkan
-nationalities or of Eastern frontiers; that is an obvious impossibility
-for a busy headline-reading public, hard at work all day and thirsty for
-relaxation and entertainment at night. The public opinion which makes
-itself felt in Foreign Policy--which, when war is in the balance after a
-longish period of peace, gives the preponderance of power to the most
-Chauvinistic elements; which, at the end of a war and on the eve of
-Treaty-making, as in the December 1918 election, insists upon a
-rigorously punitive peace--this opinion is the result of a few
-predominant 'sovereign ideas' or conceptions giving a direction to
-certain feelings.
-
-Take one such sovereign idea, that of the enemy nation as a person: the
-conception of it as a completely responsible corporate body. Some
-offence is committed by a German: 'Germany' did it, Germany including
-all Germans. To punish any German is to inflict satisfactory punishment
-for the offence, to avenge it. The idea, when we examine it, is found to
-be extremely abstract, with but the faintest relation to human
-realities. 'They drowned my brother,' said an Allied airman, when asked
-his feelings on a reprisal bombing raid over German cities. Thus,
-because a sailor from Hamburg drowns an Englishman in the North Sea, an
-old woman in a garret in Freiburg, or some children, who have but dimly
-heard of the war, and could not even remotely be held responsible for
-it, or have prevented it, are killed with a clear conscience because
-they are German. We cannot understand the Chinese, who punish one member
-of a family for another's fault, yet that is very much more rational
-than the conception which we accept as the most natural thing in the
-world. It is never questioned, indeed, until it is applied to ourselves.
-When the acts of British troops in Ireland or India, having an
-extraordinary resemblance to German acts in Belgium, are taken by
-certain American newspapers as showing that 'Britain,' (_i.e._ British
-people) is a bloodthirsty monster who delights in the killing of unarmed
-priests or peasants, we know that somehow the foreign critic has got it
-all wrong. We should realise that for some Irishman or Indian to
-dismember a charwoman or decapitate a little girl in Somersetshire,
-because of the crime of some Black and Tan in Cork, or English General
-at Amritsar, would be unadulterated savagery, a sort of dementia. In any
-case the poor folk in Somerset were not responsible; millions of English
-folk are not. They are only dimly aware of what goes on in India or
-Ireland, and are not really able in all matters, by any means, to
-control their government--any more than the Americans are able to
-control theirs.
-
-Yet the idea of responsibility attaching to a whole group, as
-justification for retaliation, is a very ancient idea, savage, almost
-animal in its origin. And anything can make a collectivity. To one small
-religious sect in a village it is a rival sect who are the enemies of
-the human race; in the mind of the tortured negro in the Congo any man,
-woman, or child of the white world could fairly be punished for the
-pains that he has suffered.[87] The conception has doubtless arisen out
-of something protective, some instinct useful, indispensable to the
-race; as have so many of the instincts which, applied unadapted to
-altered conditions, become socially destructive.
-
-Here then is evidence of a great danger, which can, in some measure, be
-avoided on one condition: that the truth about the enemy collectively is
-told in such a way as to be a reminder to us not to slip into injustices
-that, barbarous in themselves, drag us back into barbarism.
-
-But note how all the machinery of Press control and war-time colleges of
-propaganda prepared the public mind for the extremely difficult task of
-the settlement and Treaty-making that lay before it. (It was a task in
-which everything indicated that, unless great care were taken, public
-judgment would be so swamped in passion that a workable peace would be
-impossible.) The more tribal and barbaric aspect of the conception of
-collective responsibility was fortified by the intensive and deliberate
-exploitation of atrocities during the years of the War. The atrocities
-were not just an incident of war-time news: the principal emotions of
-the struggle came to centre around them. Millions whom the obscure
-political debate behind the conflict left entirely cold, were profoundly
-moved by these stories of cruelty and barbarity. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
-was among those who urged their systematic exploitation on that ground,
-in a Christmas communication to the _Times_.[88] With reference to
-stories of German cruelty, he said:--
-
-     'Hate has its uses in war, as the Germans have long discovered. It
-     steels the mind and sets the resolution as no other emotion can do.
-     So much do they feel this that Germans are constrained to invent
-     all sorts of reasons for hatred against us, who have, in truth,
-     never injured them in any way save that history and geography both
-     place us before them and their ambitions. To nourish hatred they
-     invent every lie against us, and so they attain a certain national
-     solidity....
-
-     'The bestiality of the German nation has given us a driving power
-     which we are not using, and which would be very valuable in this
-     stage of the war. Scatter the facts. Put them in red-hot fashion.
-     Do not preach to the solid south, who need no conversion, but
-     spread the propaganda wherever there are signs of any intrigue--on
-     the Tyne, the Clyde, in the Midlands, above all in Ireland, and
-     French Canada. Let us pay no attention to platitudinous Bishops or
-     gloomy Deans or any other superior people, who preach against
-     retaliation or whole-hearted warfare. We have to win, and we can
-     only win by keeping up the spirit of resolution of our own people.'
-
-Particularly does Sir Arthur Conan Doyle urge that the munition
-workers--who were, it will be remembered, largely woman--be stimulated
-by accounts of atrocities:
-
-     'The munition workers have many small vexations to endure, and
-     their nerves get sadly frayed. They need strong elemental emotions
-     to carry them on. Let pictures be made of this and other incidents.
-     Let them be hung in every shop. Let them be distributed thickly in
-     the Sinn Fein districts of Ireland, and in the hot-beds of
-     Socialism and Pacifism in England and Scotland. The Irishman has
-     always been of a most chivalrous nature.'
-
-It is possible that Sinn Fein has now taken to heart this counsel as to
-the use that may be made of cruelties committed by the enemy in war.
-
-Now there is no reason to doubt the truth of atrocities, whether they
-concern the horrible ill-treatment of prisoners in war-time of which Sir
-Arthur Conan Doyle writes, or the burning alive of negro women in peace
-time in Texas and Alabama, or the flogging of women in India, or
-reprisals by British soldiers in Ireland, or by Red Russians against
-White and White against Red. Every story may be true. And if each side
-told the whole truth, instead of a part of it, these atrocities would
-help us towards an understanding of this complex nature of ours. But we
-never do tell the whole truth. Always in war-time does each side leave
-out two things essential to the truth: the good done by the enemy and
-the evil done by ourselves. If that elementary condition of truth were
-fulfilled, these pictures of cruelty, bestiality, obscenity, rape,
-sadism, sheer ferocity, might possibly tell us this: 'There is the
-primeval tiger in us; man's history--and especially the history of his
-wars--is full of these warnings of the depths to which he can descend.
-Those ten thousand men and women of pure English stock gloating over the
-helpless prisoners whom they are slowly roasting alive, are not normally
-savages.[89] Most of them are kindly and decent folk. These stories of
-the September massacres of the Terror no more prove French nature to be
-depraved than the history of the Inquisition, or of Ireland or India,
-proves Spanish or British nature to be depraved.'
-
-But the truth is never so told. It was not so told during the War. Day
-after day, month after month, we got these selected stories. In the
-Press, in the cinemas, in Church services, they were related to us. The
-message the atrocity carried was not: here is a picture of what human
-nature is capable of; let us be on our guard that nothing similar marks
-our history. That was neither the intention nor the result of
-propaganda. It said in effect and was intended to say:--
-
-'This lecherous brute abusing a woman is a picture of Germany. All
-Germans are like that; and no people but Germans are like that. That
-sort of thing never happens in other armies; cruelty, vengeance, and
-blood-lust are unknown in the Allied forces. That is why we are at war.
-Remember this at the peace table.'
-
-That falsehood was conveyed by what the Press and the cinema
-systematically left out. While they told us of every vile thing done by
-the enemy, they told us of not one act of kindness or mercy among all
-those hundred million during the years of war.
-
-The suppression of everything good of the enemy was paralleled by the
-suppression of everything evil done by our side. You may search Press
-and cinemas in vain for one single story of brutality committed by
-Serbian, Rumanian, Greek, Italian, French, or Russian--until the last in
-time became an enemy. Then suddenly our papers were full of Russian
-atrocities. At first these were Bolshevik atrocities only, and of the
-'White' troops we heard no evil. Then when later the self-same Russian
-troops that had fought on our side during the War fought Poland, our
-papers were full of the atrocities inflicted on Poles.
-
-By the daily presentation during years of a picture which makes the
-enemy so entirely bad as not to be human at all, and ourselves entirely
-good, the whole nature of the problem is changed. Admit these premises,
-and policies like those proposed by Mr Wells become sheer rubbish. They
-are based on the assumption that Germans are accessible to ordinary
-human influences like other human beings. But every day for years we
-have been denying that premise. If the daily presentation of the facts
-is a true presentation, the _New York Tribune_ is right:--
-
-     'We shall not get permanent peace by treating the Hun as if he were
-     not a Hun. One might just as well attempt to cure a man-eating
-     tiger of his hankering for human flesh by soft words as to break
-     the German of his historic habits by equally futile kind words. The
-     way to treat a German, while Germans follow their present methods,
-     is as a common peril to all civilised mankind. Since the German
-     employs the method of the wild beast he must be treated as beyond
-     the appeal of generous or kind methods. When one is generous to a
-     German, he plans to take advantage of that generosity to rob or
-     murder; this is his international history, never more
-     conspicuously illustrated than here in America. Kindness he
-     interprets as fear, regard for international law as proof of
-     decadence; agitation for disarmament has been for him the final
-     evidence of the degeneracy of his neighbours.'[90]
-
-That conclusion is inevitable if the facts are really as presented by
-the _Daily Mail_ for four years. The problem of peace in that case is
-not one of finding a means of dealing, by the discipline of a common
-code or tradition, with common shortcomings--violences, hates,
-cupidities, blindnesses. The problem is not of that nature at all. We
-don't have these defects; they are German defects. For five years we
-have indoctrinated the people with a case, which if true, renders only
-one policy in Europe admissible; either the ruthless extermination of
-these monsters, who are not human beings at all; or their permanent
-subjugation, the conversion of Germany into a sort of world lunatic
-asylum.
-
-When therefore the big public, whether in America or France or Britain,
-simply will not hear (in 1919) of any League of Nations that shall ever
-include Germany they are right--if we have been telling them the truth.
-
-Was it necessary thus to 'organise' hate for the purposes of war?
-Violent partisanship would assuredly assert itself in war-time without
-such stimulus. And if we saw more clearly the relationship of these
-instincts and emotions to the formation of policy, we should organise,
-not their development, but their restraint and discipline, or, that
-being impossible in sufficient degree (which it may be), organise their
-re-direction to less anti-social ends.
-
-As it was, it ended by making the war entered upon sincerely, so far as
-public feeling was concerned, for a principle or policy, simply a war
-for no purpose beyond victory--and finally for domination at the price
-of its original purpose. For one who is attracted to the purpose, a
-thousand are attracted to the war--the simple success of 'our side.'
-Partisanship as a motive is animal in its deep, remote innateness.
-Little boys and girls at the time of the University boat race will
-choose the Oxford or the Cambridge colours, and from that moment
-passionately desire the victory of 'their' side. They may not know what
-Oxford is, or what a University is, or what a boat race is: it does not
-in the least detract from the violence of their partisanship. You get
-therefore a very simple mathematical explanation of the increasing
-subservience of the War's purpose to the simple purpose of victory and
-domination for itself. Every child can understand and feel for the
-latter, very few adults for the former.
-
-This competitive feeling, looking to victory, domination, is feeding the
-whole time the appetite for power. These instincts, and the clamant
-appetite for domination and coercion are whetted to the utmost and then
-re-inforced by a moral indignation, which justifies the impulse to
-retaliation on the ground of punitive justice for inhuman horrors. We
-propose to establish with this outlaw a relationship of contract! To
-bargain with him about our respective rights! In the most favourable
-circumstances it demands a very definite effort of discipline to impose
-upon ourselves hampering restrictions in the shape of undertakings to
-another Power, when we believe that we are in a position to impose our
-will. But to suggest imposing upon ourselves the restrictions of such a
-relationship with an enemy of the human race.... The astonishing thing
-is that those who acquiesced in this deliberate cultivation of the
-emotions and instincts inseparable from violent partisanship, should
-ever have expected a policy of impartial justice to come out of that
-state of mind. They were asking for psychological miracles.
-
-That the propaganda was in large part conscious and directed was proved
-by the ease with which the flood of atrocity stories could suddenly be
-switched over from Germans to Russians. During the time that the Russian
-armies were fighting on our side, there was not a single story in our
-Press of Russian barbarity. But when the same armies, under the same
-officers, are fighting against the Poles, atrocities even more ingenious
-and villainous than those of the Germans in Belgium suddenly
-characterise the conduct of the Russian troops. The atrocities are
-transposed with an ease equal to that with which we transfer our
-loyalties.[91] When Pilsudski's troops fought against Russia, all the
-atrocities were committed by them, and of the Russian troops we heard
-nothing but heroism. When Brusiloff fights under Bolshevik command our
-papers print long Polish accounts of the Russian barbarities.
-
-We have seen that behind the conception of the enemy as a single person
-is a falsehood: it is obvious that seventy millions of men, women, and
-children, of infinitely varying degrees of responsibility, are not a
-single person. The falsehood may be, in some degree, an unwitting one, a
-primitive myth that we have inherited from tribal forbears. But if that
-is so, we should control our news with a view to minimizing the dangers
-of mythical fallacies, bequeathed to us by a barbaric past. If it is
-necessary to use them for the purposes of war morale, we should drop
-them when the war is over, and pass round the word, to the Churches for
-instance, that on the signing of an armistice the moratorium of the
-Sermon on the Mount comes to an end. As it is, two years after the
-Armistice, an English Vicar tells his congregation that to bring
-Austrian children to English, to save them from death by famine, is an
-unpatriotic and seditious act.
-
-Note where the fundamental dishonesties of our propaganda lead us in the
-matter of policy, in what we declared to be one of the main objects of
-the War: the erection of Europe upon a basis of nationality. Our whole
-campaign implied that the problem resolved itself into the destruction
-of one great Power, who denied that principle, as against the Allies,
-who were ready to grant it. How near that came to the truth, the round
-score of 'unredeemed' nationalities deliberately created by the Allies
-in the Treaties sufficiently testifies. If we had avowed the facts, that
-a Europe of completely independent nationalities is not possible, that
-great populations will not be shut off from the sea, or recognise
-independent nationalities to the extent of risking economic or political
-strangulation, we should then necessarily have gone on to devise the
-limitations and obligations which all must accept and the rights which
-all must accord. We should have been fighting for a body of principles
-as the basis of a real association of States. The truth, or some measure
-of it, would have prepared us all for that limitation of independence
-without which no nationality can be secure. The falsehood that Germany
-alone stood in the way of the recognition of nationality, made a treaty
-really based on that principle (namely, upon all of us consenting to
-limit our independence) impossible of acceptance by our own opinion. And
-one falsehood leads to another. Because we refused to be sincere about
-the inducements which we held out in turn to Italy, Bulgaria, Rumania,
-Greece, we staggered blindly into the alternative betrayal first of one
-party, then of another. Just as we were faithless to the principle of
-nationality when we acquiesced in the Russian attitude towards Finland
-and Poland, and the Italian towards Serbia, so later we were to prove
-faithless to the principle of the Great State when we supported the
-Border Nationalities in their secession from Russia. We have encouraged
-and helped States like Ukrainia, Azerbaidjan. But we have been just as
-ready to stand for 'Great Russia,' if Koltchak appeared to be winning,
-knowing perfectly well that we cannot be loyal to both causes.
-
-Our defence is apparent enough. It is fairly illustrated in the case of
-Italy. If Italy had not come into the war, Serbia's prospect of any
-redemption at all would have been hopeless; we were doing the best we
-could for Serbia.[92]
-
-Assuredly--but we happened to be doing it by false pretences, sham
-heroics, immeasurable hypocrisy. And the final effect was to be the
-defeat of the aims for which we were fighting. If our primary aims had
-been those we proclaimed, we could no more have violated the principle
-of nationality to gain an ally, than we could have ceded the Isle of
-Wight to Germany, and the intellectual rectitude which would have
-enabled us to see that, would also have enabled us to see the necessity
-of the conditions on which alone a society of nations is possible.
-
-The indispensable step to rendering controllable those passions now
-'uncontrollable' and disrupting Europe, is to tell the truth about the
-things by which we excuse them. Again, our fundamental nature may not
-change, any more than it would if we honestly investigated the evidence
-proving the innocence of the man, whose execution we demand, of the
-crime which is the cause of our hatred. That investigation would be an
-effort of the mind; the result of it would be a change in the direction
-of our feelings. The facts which it is necessary to face are not
-abstruse or difficult. They are self-evident to the simplest mind. The
-fact that the 'person' whose punishment we demand in the case of the
-enemy is not a person at all, either bad or good, but millions of
-different persons of varying degrees of badness and goodness, many of
-them--millions--without any responsibility at all for the crime that
-angers us, this fact, if faced, would alter the nature of our feelings.
-We should see that we were confronted by a case of mistaken identity.
-Perhaps we do not face this evidence because we treasure our hate. If
-there were not a 'person' our hate could have no meaning; we could not
-hate an 'administrative area,' nor is there much satisfaction in
-humiliating it and dominating it. We can desire to dominate and
-humiliate a person, and are often ready to pay a high price for the
-pleasure. If we ceased to think of national States as persons, we might
-cease to think of them as conflicting interests, in competition with one
-another, and begin to think of them instead as associations within a
-great association.
-
-Take another very simple truth that we will not face: that our arms do,
-and must do, the things that raise our passions when done by the enemy.
-Our blockades and bombardments also kill old women and children. Our
-soldiers, too, the gallant lads who mount our aeroplanes, the sailors
-who man our blockades, are baby-killers. They must be; they cannot help
-it if they are to bomb or blockade at all. Yet we never do admit this
-obvious fact. We erect a sheer falsehood, and then protect ourselves
-against admitting it by being so 'noble' about it that we refuse to
-discuss it. We simply declare that in no circumstances could England, or
-English soldiers, ever make war upon women and children, or even be
-unchivalrous to them. That is a moral premise beyond or behind which
-patriotism will not permit our minds to go. If the 'nobility' of
-attitude had any relation to our real conduct, one would rejoice. When,
-during the armistice negotiations, the Germans exacted that they should
-be permitted means, after the surrender of their fleet, of feeding their
-people, a New York paper declared the condition an insult to the Allies.
-'The Germans are prisoners,' it said, 'and the Allies do not starve
-prisoners.' But one discovers a few weeks later that these noble
-gestures are quite compatible with the maintenance of the blockade, on
-the ground that Germans for their sins ought to be starved. We then
-become the agents of Providence in punitive justice.
-
-When the late Lord Fisher[93] came out squarely and publicly in defence
-of the killing of women and children (in the submarine sinking) as a
-necessary part of war, there seemed a chance for intellectual honesty in
-the matter; for a real examination of the principles of our conduct. If
-we faced the facts in this honest sailor-like fashion there was some
-hope either that we should refuse to descend to reprisals by
-disembowelling little girls; or, if it should appear that such things
-are inseparable from war, that it would help to get a new feeling about
-war. But Lord Fisher complains that the Editor of the paper to which he
-sent his letter suppressed it from the later editions of his paper for
-fear it should shock the public. Shock!
-
-You see, _our_ shells falling on schools and circuses don't disembowel
-little girls; our blockades don't starve them. Everybody knows that
-British shells and British blockades would not do such things. When
-Britain blockades, pestilence and hunger and torture are not suffering;
-a dying child is not a dying child. Patriotism draws a shutter over our
-eyes and ears.
-
-When this degree of self-deception is possible, there is no infamy of
-which a kindly, humane, and emotionally moral people may not prove
-themselves capable; no moral contradiction or absurdity which mankind
-may not approve. Anything may become right, anything may become wrong.
-
-The evil is not only in its resultant inhumanities. It lies much more in
-the fact that this development of moral blinkers deprives us of the
-capacity to see where we are going, and what we are crushing underfoot;
-and that may well end by our walking over the precipice.
-
-During the War, we formed judgments of the German character which
-literally make it sub-human. For our praise of the French (during the
-same period) language failed us. Yet less than twenty years ago the
-r�les were reversed.[94] The French were the mad dogs, and the Germans
-of our community of blood.
-
-The refusal to face the plain facts of life, a refusal made on grounds
-which we persuade ourselves are extremely noble, but which in fact
-result too often in simple falsehood and distortion, is revealed by the
-common pre-war attitude to the economic situation dealt with in this
-book. The present writer took the ground before the War that much of the
-dense population of modern Europe could not support itself save by
-virtue of an economic internationalism which political ideas (ideas
-which war would intensify) were tending to make impossible. Now it is
-obvious that before there can be a spiritual life, there must be a
-fairly adequate physical one. If life is a savage and greedy scramble
-over the means of sheer physical sustenance, there cannot be much in it
-that is noble and inspiring. The point of the argument was, as already
-mentioned, not that the economic pre-occupation _should_ occupy the
-whole of life, but that it _will_ if it is simply disregarded; the way
-to reduce the economic pre-occupation is to solve the economic problem.
-Yet these plain and undeniable truths were somehow twisted into the
-proposition that men went to war because they believed it 'paid,' in the
-stockbroking sense, and that if they saw it did not 'pay' they would not
-go to war. The task of attempting to find the conditions in which it
-will be possible for men to live at all with decent regard for their
-fellows, without drifting into cannibalistic struggles for sustenance
-one against another, is made to appear something sordid, a 'usurer's
-gospel.' And on that ground, very largely, the 'economics' of
-international policy were neglected. We are still facing the facts. Self
-deception has become habitual.
-
-President Wilson failed to carry through the policy he had proclaimed,
-as greater men have failed in similar moral circumstances. The failure
-need not have been disastrous to the cause which he had espoused. It
-might have marked merely a step towards ultimate success, if he had
-admitted the failure. Had he said in effect: 'Reaction has won this
-battle; we have been guilty of errors and shortcomings, but we shall
-maintain the fight, and avoid such errors in future,' he would have
-created for the generation which followed a clear-cut issue. Whatever
-there was of courage and sincerity of purpose in the idealism he had
-created earlier in the War, would have rallied to his support. Just
-because such a declaration would have created an issue dividing men
-sharply and even bitterly, it would have united each side strongly; men
-would have had the two paths clearly and distinctly before their eyes,
-and though forced for the time along that of reaction, they would have
-known the direction in which they were travelling. Again and again
-victory has come out of defeat; again and again defeat has nerved men to
-greater effort.
-
-But when defeat is represented as victory by the trusted leader, there
-follows the subtlest and most paralysing form of confusion and doubt.
-Men no longer know who are the friends and who the enemies of the things
-they care for. When callous cruelty is called righteous, and cynical
-deception justice, men begin to lose their capacity to distinguish the
-one from the other, and to change sides without consciousness of their
-treason.
-
-In the field of social relationship, the better management by men of
-their society, a sincere facing of the simple truths of life, right
-conclusions from facts that are of universal knowledge, are of
-immeasurably greater importance than erudition. Indeed we see that again
-and again learning obscures in this field the simpler truths. The
-Germany that had grown up before the War is a case in point. Vast
-learning, meticulous care over infinite detail, had become the mark of
-German scholarship. But all the learning of the professors did not
-prevent a gross misreading of what, to the rest of the world, seemed all
-but self-evident--simple truths which perhaps would have been clearer if
-the learning had been less, used as it was to buttress the lusts of
-domination and power.
-
-The main errors of the Treaty (which, remember, was the work of the
-greatest diplomatic experts in Europe) reveal something similar. If the
-punitive element--which is still applauded--defeats finally the aims
-alike of justice, our own security, appeasement, disarmament, and sets
-up moral forces that will render our New World even more ferociously
-cruel and hopeless than the Old, it will not be because we were ignorant
-of the fact that 'Germany'--or 'Austria' or 'Russia'--is not a person
-that can be held responsible and punished in this simple fashion. It did
-not require an expert knowledge of economics to realise that a ruined
-Germany could not pay vast indemnities. Yet sometimes very learned men
-were possessed by these fallacies. It is not learning that is needed to
-penetrate them. A wisdom founded simply on the sincere facing of
-self-evident facts would have saved European opinion from its most
-mischievous excesses. This ignorance of the learned may perhaps be
-related to another phenomenon; a great increase in our understanding of
-inert matter, unaccompanied by any corresponding increase in our
-understanding of human conduct. This latter understanding demands a
-temperamental self-control and detachment, which mere technical
-knowledge does not ask. Although in technical science we have made such
-advances as would cause the Athenians, say, to look on us as gods, we
-show no corresponding advance upon them, or upon the Hebrew prophets for
-that matter, in the understanding of conduct and its motives. And the
-spectacle of Germany--of the modern world, indeed--so efficient in the
-management of matter, so clumsy in the understanding of the essentials
-of human relationship, reminds us once more of the futility of mere
-technical knowledge, unless accompanied by a better moral understanding.
-For without the latter we are unable to use the improvement in technique
-(as Europe is unable to use it to-day) for indispensable human ends. Or
-worse still, technical knowledge, in the absence of wisdom and
-discipline, merely gives us more efficient weapons of collective
-suicide. Butler's fantasy of the machines which men have made acquiring
-a mind of their own, and then rounding upon their masters and
-destroying them, has very nearly come true. If some new force, like the
-release of atomic energy, had been discovered during this war, and
-applied (as Mr Wells has imagined it being applied) to bombs that would
-go on exploding without cessation for a week or two, we know that
-passions ran so high that both sides would have used them, as both sides
-in the next war will use super-poison gas and disease germs. Not only
-the destruction, therefore, but the passion and the ruthlessness, the
-fears and hates, the universal pre-emption of wealth for 'defence'
-perpetually translating itself into preventive offence, would have
-grown. Man's society would assuredly have been destroyed by the
-instruments that he himself had made, and Butler's fantasy would have
-come true.
-
-It is coming true to-day. What starves Europe is not lack of technical
-knowledge; there is more technical knowledge than when Europe could feed
-itself. If we could combine our forces to effective co-operation, the
-Malthusian dragon could be kept at bay. It is the group of ideas which
-underlie the process of Balkanisation that stand in the way of turning
-our combined forces against Nature instead of against one another.
-
-We have gone wrong mainly in certain of the simpler and broader issues
-of human relationship, and this book has attempted to disentangle from
-the complex mass of facts in the international situation, those
-'sovereign ideas' which constitute in crises the basic factors of public
-action and opinion. In so doing there may have been some
-over-simplification. That will not greatly matter, if the result is some
-re-examination and clarification of the predominant beliefs that have
-been analysed. 'Truth comes out of error more easily than out of
-confusion,' as Bacon warned us. It is easier to correct a working
-hypothesis of society, which is wrong in some detail, than to achieve
-wise conduct in society without any social principle. If social or
-political phenomena are for us first an unexplained tangle of forces,
-and we live morally from hand to mouth, by opinions which have no
-guiding principle, our emotions will be at the mercy first of one
-isolated fact or incident, and then of another.
-
-A certain parallel has more than once been suggested in these pages.
-European society is to-day threatened with disintegration as the result
-of ideas and emotions that have collected round Patriotism. A century or
-two since it was threatened by ideas and passions which gathered round
-religious dogma. By what process did we arrive at religious toleration
-as a social principle? That question has been suggested because to
-answer it may throw some light on our present problem of rendering
-Patriotism a social instead of an anti-social force.
-
-If to-day, for the most part, in Europe and America one sect can live
-beside another in peace, where a century or two ago there would have
-been fierce hatreds, wars, massacres, and burnings, it is not because
-the modern population is more learned in theology (it is probably less
-so), but rather conversely, because theological theory gave place to lay
-judgment in the ordinary facts of life.
-
-If we have a vast change in the general ideas of Europe in the religious
-sphere, in the attitude of men to dogma, in the importance which they
-attach to it, in their feeling about it; a change which for good or evil
-is a vast one in its consequences, a moral and intellectual revulsion
-which has swept away one great difficulty of human relationship and
-transformed society; it is because the laity have brought the discussion
-back to principles so broad and fundamental that the data became the
-facts of human life and experience--data with which the common man is as
-familiar as the scholar. Of the present-day millions for whom certain
-beliefs of the older theologians would be morally monstrous, how many
-have been influenced by elaborate study concerning the validity of this
-or that text? The texts simply do not weigh with them, though for
-centuries they were the only things that counted. What do weigh with
-them are profounder and simpler things--a sense of justice,
-compassion--things which would equally have led the man of the sixteenth
-century to question the texts and the premises of the Church, if
-discussion had been free. It is because it was not free that the social
-instinct of the mass, the general capacity to order their relations so
-as to make it possible for them to live together, became distorted and
-vitiated. And the wars of religion resulted. To correct this vitiation,
-to abolish these disastrous hates and misconceptions, elaborate learning
-was not needed. Indeed, it was largely elaborate learning which had
-occasioned them. The judges who burned women alive for witchcraft, or
-inquisitors who sanctioned that punishment for heresy, had vast and
-terrible stores of learning. _What was needed was that these learned
-folk should question their premises in the light of facts of common
-knowledge._ It is by so doing that their errors are patent to the quite
-unlearned of our time. No layman was equipped to pass judgment on the
-historical reasons which might support the credibility of this or that
-miracle, or the intricate arguments which might justify this or that
-point of dogma. But the layman was as well equipped, indeed, he was
-better equipped than the schoolman, to question whether God would ever
-torture men everlastingly for the expression of honest belief; the
-observer of daily occurrences, to say nothing of the physicist, was as
-able as the theologian to question whether a readiness to believe
-without evidence is a virtue at all. Questions of the damnation of
-infants, eternal torment, were settled not by the men equipped with
-historical and ecclesiastical scholarship, but by the average man, going
-back to the broad truths, to first principles, asking very simple
-questions, the answer to which depended not upon the validity of texts,
-but upon correct reasoning concerning facts which are accessible to all;
-upon our general sense of life as a whole, and our more elementary
-institutions of justice and mercy; reasoning and intuitions which the
-learning of the expert often distorts.
-
-Exactly the service which extricated us from the intellectual and moral
-confusion that resulted in such catastrophes in the field of religion,
-is needed in the field of politics. From certain learned folk--writers,
-poets, professors (German and other), journalists, historians, and
-rulers--the public have taken a group of ideas concerning Patriotism,
-Nationalism, Imperialism, the nature of our obligation to the State, and
-so on, ideas which may be right or wrong, but which we are all agreed,
-will have to be very much changed if men are ever to live together in
-peace and freedom; just as certain notions concerning the institution of
-private property will have to be changed if the mass of men are to live
-in plenty.
-
-It is a commonplace of militarist argument that so long as men feel as
-they do about their Fatherland, about patriotism and nationalism,
-internationalism will be an impossibility. If that is true--and I think
-it is--peace and freedom and welfare will wait until those large issues
-have been raised in men's minds with sufficient vividness to bring about
-a change of idea and so a change of feeling with reference to them.
-
-It is unlikely, to say the least, that the mass of Englishmen or
-Frenchmen will ever be in possession of detailed knowledge sufficient to
-equip them to pass judgment on the various rival solutions of the
-complex problems that face us, say, in the Balkans. And yet it was
-immediately out of a problem of Balkan politics that the War arose, and
-future wars may well arise out of those same problems if they are
-settled as badly in the future as in the past.
-
-The situation would indeed be hopeless if the nature of human
-relationship depended upon the possession by the people as a whole of
-expert knowledge in complex questions of that kind. But happily the
-Sarajevo murders would never have developed into a war involving twenty
-nations but for the fact that there had been cultivated in Europe
-suspicions, hatreds, insane passions, and cupidities, due largely to
-false conceptions (though in part also themselves prompting the false
-conceptions) of a few simple facts in political relationship;
-conceptions concerning the necessary rivalry of nations, the idea that
-what one nation gains another loses, that States are doomed by a fate
-over which they have no control to struggle together for the space and
-opportunities of a limited world. But for the atmosphere that these
-ideas create (as false theological notions once created a similar
-atmosphere between rival religious groups) most of these at present
-difficult and insoluble problems of nationality and frontiers and
-government, would have solved themselves.
-
-The ideas which feed and inflame these passions of rivalry, hostility,
-fear, hate, will be modified, if at all, by raising in the mind of the
-European some such simple elementary questions as were raised when he
-began to modify his feeling about the man of rival religious belief. The
-Political Reformation in Europe will come by questioning, for instance,
-the whole philosophy of patriotism, the morality or the validity, in
-terms of human well-being, of a principle like that of 'my country,
-right or wrong';[95] by questioning whether a people really benefit by
-enlarging the frontiers of their State; whether 'greatness' in a nation
-particularly matters; whether the man of the small State is not in all
-the great human values the equal of the man of the great Empire; whether
-the real problems of life are greatly affected by the colour of the
-flag; whether we have not loyalties to other things as well as to our
-State; whether we do not in our demand for national sovereignty ignore
-international obligation without which the nations can have neither
-security nor freedom; whether we should not refuse to kill or horribly
-mutilate a man merely because we differ from him in politics. And with
-those, if the emergence from chattel-slavery is to be complemented by
-the emergence from wage slavery, must be put similarly fundamental
-questions touching problems like that of private property and the
-relation of social freedom thereto; we must ask why, if it is rightly
-demanded of the citizen that his life shall be forfeit to the safety of
-the State, his surplus money, property, shall not be forfeit to its
-welfare.
-
-To very many, these questions will seem a kind of blasphemy, and they
-will regard those who utter them as the subjects of a loathsome
-perversion. In just that way the orthodox of old regarded the heretic
-and his blasphemies. And yet the solution of the difficulties of our
-time, this problem of learning to live together without mutual homicide
-and military slavery, depends upon those blasphemies being uttered.
-Because it is only in some such way that the premises of the differences
-which divide us, the realities which underlie them, will receive
-attention. It is not that the implied answer is necessarily the truth--I
-am not concerned now for a moment to urge that it is--but that until the
-problem is pushed back in our minds to these great yet simple issues,
-the will, temper, general ideas of Europe on this subject will remain
-unchanged. And if _they_ remain unchanged so will its conduct and
-condition.
-
-The tradition of nationalism and patriotism, around which have gathered
-our chief political loyalties and instincts, has become in the actual
-conditions of the world an anti-social and disruptive force. Although we
-realize perhaps that a society of nations of some kind there must be,
-each unit proclaims proudly its anti-social slogan of sacred egoisms and
-defiant immoralism; its espousal of country as against right.[96]
-
-The danger--and the difficulty--resides largely in the fact that the
-instincts of gregariousness and group solidarity, which prompt the
-attitude of 'my country right or wrong,' are not in themselves evil:
-both gregariousness and pugnacity are indispensable to society.
-Nationality is a very precious manifestation of the instincts by which
-alone men can become socially conscious and act in some corporate
-capacity. The identification of 'self' with society, which patriotism
-accomplishes within certain limits, the sacrifice of self for the
-community which it inspires--even though only when fighting other
-patriotisms--are moral achievements of infinite hope.
-
-The Catharian heresy that Jehovah of the Old Testament is in reality
-Satan masquerading as God has this pregnant suggestion; if the Father of
-Evil ever does destroy us, we may be sure that he will come, not
-proclaiming himself evil, but proclaiming himself good, the very Voice
-of God. And that is the danger with patriotism and the instincts that
-gather round it. If the instincts of nationalism were simply evil, they
-would constitute no real danger. It is the good in them that has made
-them the instrument of the immeasurable devastation which they
-accomplish.
-
-That Patriotism does indeed transcend all morality, all religious
-sanctions as we have heretofore known them, can be put to a very simple
-test. Let an Englishman, recalling, if he can, his temper during the
-War, ask himself this question: Is there anything, anything whatsoever,
-that he would have refused to do, if the refusal had meant the triumph
-of Germany and the defeat of England? In his heart he knows that he
-would have justified any act if the safety of his country had hung upon
-it.
-
-Other patriotisms have like justifications. Yet would defeat,
-submission, even to Germany, involve worse acts than those we have felt
-compelled to commit during the War and since--in the work of making our
-power secure? Did the German ask of the Alsatian or the Pole worse than
-we have been compelled to ask of our own soldiers in Russia, India, or
-Ireland?
-
-The old struggle for power goes on. For the purpose of that struggle we
-are prepared to transform our society in any way that it may demand. For
-the purposes of the war for power we will accept anything that the
-strength of the enemy imposes: we will be socialist, autocratic,
-democratic, or communist; we will conscribe the bodies, souls, wealth of
-our people; we will proscribe, as we do, the Christian doctrine, and
-all mercy and humanity; we will organise falsehood and deceit, and call
-it statecraft and strategy; lie for the purpose of inflaming hate, and
-rejoice at the effectiveness of our propaganda; we will torture helpless
-millions by pestilence and famine--as we have done--and look on unmoved;
-our priests, in the name of Christ, will reprove misplaced pity, and
-call for the further punishment of the wicked, still greater efforts in
-the Fight for Right. We shall not care what transformations take place
-in our society or our natures; or what happens to the human spirit.
-Obediently, at the behest of the enemy--because, that is, his power
-demands that conduct of us--shall we do all those things, or anything,
-save only one: we will not negotiate or make a contract with him. _That_
-would limit our 'independence'; by which we mean that his submission to
-our mastery would be less complete.
-
-We can do acts of infinite cruelty; disregard all accepted morality; but
-we cannot allow the enemy to escape the admission of defeat.
-
-If we are to correct the evils of the older tradition, and build up one
-which will restore to men the art of living together, we must honestly
-face the fact that the older tradition has failed. So long as the old
-loyalties and patriotisms, tempting us with power and dominion, calling
-to the deep hunger excited by those things, and using the banners of
-righteousness and justice, seem to offer security, and a society which,
-if not ideal, is at least workable, we certainly shall not pay the price
-which all profound change of habit demands. We have seen that as a fact
-of his history man only abandons power and force over others when it
-fails. At present, almost everywhere, we refuse to face the failure of
-the old forms of political power. We don't believe that we need the
-co-operation of the foreigner, or we believe that we can coerce him.
-
-Little attention has been given here to the machinery of
-internationalism--League of Nations, Courts of Arbitration, Disarmament.
-This is not because machinery is unimportant. But if we possessed the
-Will, if we were ready each to pay his contribution in some sacrifice of
-his independence, of his opportunity of domination, the difficulties of
-machinery would largely disappear. The story of America's essay in
-internationalism has warned us of the real difficulty. Courts of
-Arbitration, Leagues of Nations, were devices to which American opinion
-readily enough agreed; too readily. For the event showed that the old
-conceptions were not changed. They had only been disregarded. No
-machinery of internationalism can work so long as the impulses and
-prepossessions of irresponsible nationalism retain their power. The test
-we must apply to our sincerity is our answer to the question:--What
-price, in terms of national independence, are we prepared to pay for a
-world law? What, in fact, _is_ the price that is asked of us? To this
-last question, the pages that precede, and to some extent those that
-follow, have attempted to supply an answer. We should gain many times in
-freedom and independence the contribution in those things that we made.
-
-Perhaps we may be driven by hunger--the actual need of our children for
-bread--to forsake a method which cannot give them bread or freedom, in
-favour of one that can. But, for the failure of power to act as a
-deterrent upon our desire for it, we must perceive the failure. Our
-angers and hatreds obscure that failure, or render us indifferent to it.
-Hunger does not necessarily help the understanding; it may bemuse it by
-passion and resentment. We may in our passion wreck civilisation as a
-passionate man in his anger will injure those he loves. Yet, well fed,
-we may refuse to concern ourselves with problems of the morrow. The
-mechanical motive will no longer suffice. In the simpler, more animal
-forms of society, the instinct of each moment, with no thought of
-ultimate consequence, may be enough. But the Society which man has built
-up can only go forward or be preserved as it began: by virtue of
-something which is more than instinct. On man is cast the obligation to
-be intelligent; the responsibility of will; the burden of thought.
-
-If some of us have felt that, beyond all other evils which translate
-themselves into public policy, those with which these pages deal
-constitute the greatest, it is not because war means the loss of life,
-the killing of men. Many of our noblest activities do that. There are so
-many of us that it is no great disaster that a few should die. It is not
-because war means suffering. Suffering endured for a conscious and
-clearly conceived human purpose is redeemed by hope of real achievement;
-it may be a glad sacrifice for some worthy end. But if we have
-floundered hopelessly into a bog because we have forgotten our end and
-purpose in the heat of futile passion, the consolation which we may
-gather from the willingness with which men die in the bog should not
-stand in the way of our determination to rediscover our destination and
-create afresh our purpose. These pages have been concerned very little
-with the loss of life, the suffering of the last seven years. What they
-have dealt with mainly is the fact that the War has left us a less
-workable society, has been marked by an increase in the forces of chaos
-and disintegration. That is the ultimate indictment of this War as of
-all wars: the attitude towards life, the ideas and motive forces out of
-which it grows, and which it fosters, makes men less able to live
-together, their society less workable, and must end by making free
-society impossible. War not only arises out of the failure of human
-wisdom, from the defect of that intelligence by which alone we can
-successfully fight the forces of nature; it perpetuates that failure and
-worsens it. For only by a passion which keeps thought at bay can the
-'morale' of war be maintained. The very justification which we advance
-for our war-time censorships and propaganda, our suspension of free
-speech and discussion, is that if we gave full value to the enemy's
-case, saw him as he really is, blundering, foolish, largely helpless
-like ourselves; saw the defects of our own and our Allies' policy, saw
-what our own acts in war really involved and how nearly they resembled
-those which aroused our anger when done by the enemy, if we saw all
-this and kept our heads, we should abandon war. A thousand times it has
-been explained that in an impartial mood we cannot carry on war; that
-unless the people come to feel that all the right is on our side and all
-the wrong on the enemy's, morale will fail. The most righteous war can
-only be kept going by falsehood. The end of that falsehood is that our
-mind collapses. And although the mind, thought, judgment, are not
-all-sufficient for man's salvation, it is impossible without them.
-Behind all other explanations of Europe's creeping paralysis is the
-blindness of the millions, their inability to see the effects of their
-demands and policy, to see where they are going.
-
-Only a keener feeling for truth will enable them to see. About
-indifferent things--about the dead matter that we handle in our
-science--we can be honest, impartial, true. That is why we succeed in
-dealing with matter. But about the things we care for--which are
-ourselves--our desires and lusts, our patriotisms and hates, we find a
-harder test of thinking straight and truly. Yet there is the greater
-need; only by that rectitude shall we be saved. There is no refuge but
-in truth.
-
-
-
-
-ADDENDUM
-
-THE ARGUMENT OF _THE GREAT ILLUSION_
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-THE 'IMPOSSIBILITY OF WAR' MYTH
-
-
-It will illustrate certain difficulties which have marked--and mark--the
-presentation of the argument of this book, if the reader will consider
-for a few minutes the justice of certain charges which have been brought
-against _The Great Illusion_. Perhaps the commonest is that it argued
-that 'war had become impossible.' The truth of that charge at least can
-very easily be tested. The first page of that book, the preface,
-referring to the thesis it proposed to set out, has these words: 'the
-argument is _not_ that war is impossible, but that it is futile.' The
-next page but one describes what the author believes to be the main
-forces at work in international politics: a fierce struggle for
-preponderant power 'based on the universal assumption that a nation, in
-order to find outlets for expanding population and increasing industry,
-or simply to ensure the best conditions possible for its people, is
-necessarily pushed to territorial expansion and the exercise of
-political force against others ... that nations being competing units,
-advantage, in the last resort, goes to the possessor of preponderant
-military force, the weaker going to the wall, as in the other forms of
-the struggle for life.' A whole chapter is devoted to the evidence which
-goes to show that this aggressive and warlike philosophy was indeed the
-great actuating force in European politics. The first two paragraphs of
-the first chapter forecast the likelihood of an Anglo-German explosion;
-that chapter goes on to declare that the pacifist effort then current
-was evidently making no headway at all against the tendencies towards
-rivalry and conflict. In the third chapter the ideas underlying those
-tendencies are described as 'so profoundly mischievous,' and so
-'desperately dangerous,' as to threaten civilisation itself. A chapter
-is devoted to showing that the fallacy and folly of those all but
-universal ideas was no guarantee at all that the nations would not act
-upon them. (Particularly is the author insistent on the fact that the
-futility of war will never in itself suffice to stop war. The folly of a
-given course of action will only be a deterrent to the degree to which
-men realise its folly. That was why the book was written.) A warning is
-uttered against any reliance upon the Hague Conferences, which, it is
-explained at length, are likely to be quite ineffective against the
-momentum of the motives of aggression. A warning is uttered towards the
-close of the book against any reduction of British armaments,
-accompanied, however, by the warning that mere increase of armaments
-unaccompanied by change of policy, a Political Reformation in the
-direction of internationalism, will provoke the very catastrophe it is
-their object to avoid; only by that change of policy could we take a
-real step towards peace 'instead of _a step towards war, to which the
-mere piling up of armaments, unchecked by any other factor, must in the
-end inevitably lead_.'[97]
-
-The last paragraph of the book asks the reader which of two courses we
-are to follow: a determined effort towards placing European policy on a
-new basis, or a drift along the current of old instincts and ideas, a
-course which would condemn us to the waste of mountains of treasure and
-the spilling of oceans of blood.
-
-Yet, it is probably true to say that, of the casual newspaper references
-(as distinct from reviews) made during the last ten years to the book
-just described, four out of five are to the effect that its author said
-'war was impossible because it did not pay.'
-
-The following are some passages referred to in the above summary:--
-
-     'Not the facts, but men's opinions about the facts is what matters.
-     This is because men's conduct is determined, not necessarily by the
-     right conclusion from facts, but the conclusion they believe to be
-     right.... As long as Europe is dominated by the old beliefs, those
-     beliefs will have virtually the same effect in politics as though
-     they were intrinsically sound.'--(p. 327.)
-
-     'It is evident that so long as the misconception we are dealing
-     with is all but universal in Europe, so long as the nations believe
-     that in some way the military and political subjugation of others
-     will bring with it a tangible material advantage to the conqueror,
-     we all do, in fact, stand in danger from such aggression. Not his
-     interest, but what he deems to be his interest, will furnish the
-     real motive of our prospective enemy's action. And as the illusion
-     with which we are dealing does, indeed, dominate all those minds
-     most active in European politics, we must, while this remains the
-     case, regard an aggression, even such as that which Mr Harrison
-     foresees, as within the bounds of practical politics.... On this
-     ground alone I deem that we or any other nation are justified in
-     taking means of self-defence to prevent such aggression. This is
-     not, therefore, a plea for disarmament irrespective of the action
-     of other nations. So long as current political philosophy in Europe
-     remains what it is, I would not urge the reduction of our war
-     budget by a single sovereign.'--(p. 329.)
-
-     'The need for defence arises from the existence of a motive for
-     attack.... That motive is, consequently, part of the problem of
-     defence.... Since as between the European peoples we are dealing
-     with in this matter, one party is as able in the long run to pile
-     up armaments as the other, we cannot get nearer to solution by
-     armaments alone; we must get at the original provoking cause--the
-     motive making for aggression.... If that motive results from a
-     true judgment of the facts; if the determining factor in a nation's
-     well-being and progress is really its power to obtain by force
-     advantage over others, the present situation of armament rivalry
-     tempered by war is a natural and inevitable one.... If, however,
-     the view is a false one, our progress towards solution will be
-     marked by the extent to which the error becomes generally
-     recognised in European public opinion.'--(p. 337.)
-
-     'In this matter it seems fatally easy to secure either one of two
-     kinds of action: that of the "practical man" who limits his
-     energies to securing a policy which will perfect the machinery of
-     war and disregard anything else; or that of the Pacifist, who,
-     persuaded of the brutality or immorality of war, is apt to
-     deprecate effort directed at self-defence. What is needed is the
-     type of activity which will include both halves of the problem:
-     provision for education, for a Political Reformation in this
-     matter, _as well as_ such means of defence as will meantime
-     counterbalance the existing impulse to aggression. To concentrate
-     on either half to the exclusion of the other half is to render the
-     whole problem insoluble.'--(p. 330.)
-
-     'Never has the contest of armament been so keen as when Europe
-     began to indulge in Peace Conferences. Speaking roughly and
-     generally, the era of great armament expansion dates from the first
-     Hague Conference. The reader who has appreciated the emphasis laid
-     in the preceding pages on working through the reform of ideas will
-     not feel much astonishment at the failure of efforts such as these.
-     The Hague Conferences represented an attempt, not to work through
-     the reform of ideas, but to modify by mechanical means the
-     political machinery of Europe, without reference to the ideas which
-     had brought it into existence.
-
-     'Arbitration treaties, Hague Conferences, International Federation,
-     involve a new conception of relationship between nations. But the
-     ideals--political, economical, and social--on which the old
-     conceptions are based, our terminology, our political literature,
-     our old habits of thought, diplomatic inertia, which all combine to
-     perpetuate the old notions, have been left serenely undisturbed.
-     And surprise is expressed that such schemes do not succeed.'--(p.
-     350.)
-
-Very soon after the appearance of the book, I find I am shouting myself
-hoarse in the Press against this monstrous 'impossibility of war'
-foolishness. An article in the _Daily Mail_ of September 15th, 1911,
-begins thus:--
-
-     ' ... One learns, with some surprise, that the very simple facts to
-     which I have now for some years been trying to draw the attention
-     they deserve, teach that:--
-
-     1. War is now impossible.
-
-     2. War would ruin both the victor and the vanquished.
-
-     3. War would leave the victor worse off than the vanquished.
-
-     'May I say with every possible emphasis that nothing I have ever
-     written justifies any one of these conclusions.
-
-     'I have always, on the contrary, urged that:--
-
-     (1) War is, unhappily, quite possible, and, in the prevailing
-     condition of ignorance concerning certain elementary
-     politico-economic facts, even likely.
-
-     (2) There is nothing to justify the conclusion that war would
-     "ruin" both victor and vanquished. Indeed, I do not quite know what
-     the "ruin" of a nation means.
-
-     (3) While in the past the vanquished has often profited more by
-     defeat than he could possibly have done by victory, it is no
-     necessary result, and we are safest in assuming that the vanquished
-     will suffer most.'
-
-Nearly two years later I find myself still engaged in the same task.
-Here is a letter to the _Saturday Review_ (March 8th, 1913):--
-
-     'You are good enough to say that I am "one of the very few
-     advocates of peace at any price who is not altogether an ass." And
-     yet you also state that I have been on a mission "to persuade the
-     German people that war in the twentieth century is impossible." If
-     I had ever tried to teach anybody such sorry rubbish I should be
-     altogether an unmitigated ass. I have never, of course, nor so far
-     as I am aware, has any one ever said that war was impossible.
-     Personally, not only do I regard war as possible, but extremely
-     likely. What I have been preaching in Germany is that it is
-     impossible for Germany to benefit by war, especially a war against
-     us; and that, of course, is quite a different matter.'
-
-It is true that if the argument of the book as a whole pointed to the
-conclusion that war was 'impossible,' it would be beside the point to
-quote passages repudiating that conclusion. They might merely prove the
-inconsequence of the author's thought. But the book, and the whole
-effort of which it was a part, would have had no _raison d'�tre_ if the
-author had believed war unlikely or impossible. It was a systematic
-attack on certain political ideas which the author declared were
-dominant in international politics. If he had supposed those powerful
-ideas were making _not_ for war, but for peace, why as a pacifist should
-he be at such pains to change them? And if he thought those
-war-provoking ideas which he attacked were not likely to be put into
-effect, why, in that case either, should he bother at all? Why, for that
-matter, should a man who thought war impossible engage in not too
-popular propaganda against war--against something which could not occur?
-
-A moment's real reflection on the part of those responsible for this
-description of _The Great Illusion_, should have convinced them that it
-could not be a true one.
-
-I have taken the trouble to go through some of the more serious
-criticisms of the book to see whether this extraordinary confusion was
-created in the mind of those who actually read the book instead of
-reading about it. So far as I know, not a single serious critic has come
-to a conclusion that agrees with the 'popular' verdict. Several going to
-the book after the War, seem to express surprise at the absence of any
-such conclusion. Professor Lindsay writes:--
-
-     'Let us begin by disposing of one obvious criticism of the
-     doctrines of _The Great Illusion_ which the out-break of war has
-     suggested. Mr Angell never contended that war was impossible,
-     though he did contend that it must always be futile. He insisted
-     that the futility of war would not make war impossible or armament
-     unnecessary until all nations recognised its futility. So long as
-     men held that nations could advance their interests by war, so long
-     war would last. His moral was that we should fight militarism,
-     whether in Germany or in our own country, as one ought to fight an
-     idea with better ideas. He further pointed out that though it is
-     pleasanter to attack the wrong ideals held by foreigners, it is
-     more effective to attack the wrong ideals held in our own
-     country.... The pacifist hope was that the outbreak of a European
-     war, which was recognised as quite possible, might be delayed
-     until, with the progress of pacifist doctrine, war became
-     impossible. That hope has been tragically frustrated, but if the
-     doctrines of pacifism are convincing and irrefutable, it was not in
-     itself a vain hope. Time was the only thing it asked of fortune,
-     and time was denied it.'
-
-Another post-war critic--on the other side of the Atlantic--writes:--
-
-     'Mr. Angell has received too much solace from the unwisdom of his
-     critics. Those who have denounced him most vehemently are those who
-     patently have not read his books. For example, he cannot properly
-     be classed, as frequently asserted in recent months, as one of
-     those Utopian pacifists who went about proclaiming war impossible.
-     A number of passages in _The Great Illusion_ show him fully alive
-     to the danger of the present collapse; indeed, from the narrower
-     view of politics his book was one of the several fruitless attempts
-     to check that growing estrangement between England and Germany
-     whose sinister menace far-sighted men discerned. Even less
-     justifiable are the flippant sneers which discard his argument as
-     mercenary or sordid. Mr Angell has never taken an "account book" or
-     "breeches pocket" view of war. He inveighs against what he terms
-     its political and moral futilities as earnestly as against its
-     economic futility.'
-
-It may be said that there must be some cause for so persistent a
-misrepresentation. There is. Its cause is that obstinate and deep-seated
-fatalism which is so large a part of the prevailing attitude to war and
-against which the book under consideration was a protest. Take it as an
-axiom that war comes upon us as an outside force, like the rain or the
-earthquake, and not as something that we can influence, and a man who
-'does not believe in war,' must be a person who believes that war is not
-coming;[98] that men are naturally peaceable. To be a Pacifist because
-one believes that the danger of war is very great indeed, or because one
-believes men to be naturally extremely prone to war, is a position
-incomprehensible until we have rid our minds of the fatalism which
-regards war as an 'inevitable' result of uncontrollable forces.
-
-What is a writer to do, however, in the face of persistent
-misrepresentation such as this? If he were a manufacturer of soap and
-some one said his soap was underweight, or he were a grocer and some one
-said his sugar was half sand, he could of course obtain enormous
-damages. But a mere writer, having given some years of his life to the
-study of the most important problem of his time, is quite helpless when
-a tired headline writer, or a journalist indulging his resentment, or
-what he thinks is likely to be the resentment of his readers, describes
-a book as proclaiming one thing when as a matter of simple fact it
-proclaims the exact contrary.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-So much for myth or misrepresentation No. 1. We come to a second,
-namely, that _The Great Illusion_ is an appeal to avarice; that it urges
-men not to defend their country 'because to do so does not pay;' that it
-would have us place 'pocket before patriotism,' a view reflected in
-Benjamin Kidd's last book, pages of which are devoted to the
-condemnation of the 'degeneracy and futility' of resting the cause of
-peace on no higher ground than that it is 'a great illusion to believe
-that a national policy founded on war can be a profitable policy for any
-people in the long run.'[99] He quotes approvingly Sir William Robertson
-Nicoll for denouncing those who condemn war because 'it would postpone
-the blessed hour of tranquil money getting.'[100] As a means of
-obscuring truths which it is important to realise, of creating by
-misrepresentation a moral repulsion to a thesis, and thus depriving it
-of consideration, this second line of attack is even more important than
-the first.
-
-To say of a book that it prophesied 'the impossibility of war,' is to
-imply that it is mere silly rubbish, and its author a fool. Sir William
-Robertson Nicoll's phrase would of course imply that its doctrine was
-morally contemptible.
-
-The reader must judge, after considering dispassionately what follows,
-whether this second description is any truer than the first.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-'ECONOMIC' AND 'MORAL' MOTIVES IN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
-
-
-_The Great Illusion_ dealt--among other factors of international
-conflict--with the means by which the population of the world is driven
-to support itself; and studied the effect of those efforts to find
-sustenance upon the relations of States. It therefore dealt with
-economics.
-
-On the strength of this, certain critics (like some of those quoted in
-the last chapter) who cannot possibly have read the book thoroughly,
-seem to have argued: If this book about war deals with 'economics,' it
-must deal with money and profits. To bring money and profits into a
-discussion of war is to imply that men fight for money, and won't fight
-if they don't get money from it; that war does not 'pay.' This is wicked
-and horrible. Let us denounce the writer for a shallow Hedonist and
-money-grubber....
-
-As a matter of simple fact, as we shall see presently, the book was
-largely an attempt to show that the economic argument usually adduced
-for a particularly ruthless form of national selfishness was not a sound
-argument; that the commonly invoked justification for a selfish
-immoralism in Foreign Policy was a fallacy, an illusion. Yet the critics
-somehow managed to turn what was in fact an argument against national
-egoism into an argument for selfishness.
-
-What was the political belief and the attitude towards life which _The
-Great Illusion_ challenged? And what was the counter principle which it
-advocated as a substitute therefore?
-
-It challenged the theory that the vital interests of nations are
-conflicting, and that war is part of the inevitable struggle for life
-among them; the view that, in order to feed itself, a nation with an
-expanding population must conquer territory and so deprive others of the
-means of subsistence; the view that war is the 'struggle for
-bread.'[101] In other words, it challenged the economic excuse or
-justification for the 'sacred egoism' which is so largely the basis of
-the nationalist political philosophy, an excuse, which, as we shall see,
-the nationalist invokes if not to deny the moral law in the
-international field, at least to put the morality governing the
-relations of States on a very different plane from that which governs
-the relations of individuals. As against this doctrine _The Great
-Illusion_ advanced the proposition, among others, that the economic or
-biological assumption on which it is based is false; that the policy of
-political power which results from this assumption is economically
-unworkable, its benefits an illusion; that the amount of sustenance
-provided by the earth is not a fixed quantity so that what one nation
-can seize another loses, but is an expanding quantity, its amount
-depending mainly upon the efficiency with which men co-operate in their
-exploitation of Nature. As already pointed out, a hundred thousand Red
-Indians starved in a country where a hundred million modern Americans
-have abundance. The need for co-operation, and the faith on which alone
-it can be maintained, being indispensable to our common welfare, the
-violation of the social compact, international obligation, will be
-visited with penalties just as surely as are violations of the moral law
-in relations between individuals. The economic factor is not the sole or
-the largest element in human relations, but it is the one which occupies
-the largest place in public law and policy. (Of two contestants, each
-can retain his religion or literary preferences without depriving the
-other of like possessions; they cannot both retain the same piece of
-material property.) The economic problem is vital in the sense of
-dealing with the means by which we maintain life; and it is invoked as
-justification for the political immoralism of States. Until the
-confusions concerning it are cleared up, it will serve little purpose to
-analyse the other elements of conflict.
-
-What justifies the assumption that the predatory egotism, sacred or
-profane, here implied, was an indispensable part of the pre-war
-political philosophy, explaining the great part of policy in the
-international field?[102]
-
-First the facts: the whole history of international conflict in the
-decade or two which preceded the War; and the terms of the Treaty of
-Versailles. If you would find out the nature of a people's (or a
-statesman's) political morality, note their conduct when they have
-complete power to carry their desires into effect. The terms of peace,
-and the relations of the Allies with Russia, show a deliberate and
-avowed pre-occupation with sources of oil, iron, coal; with indemnities,
-investments, old debts; with Colonies, markets; the elimination of
-commercial rivals--with all these things to a degree very much greater
-and in a fashion much more direct than was assumed in _The Great
-Illusion_.
-
-But the tendency had been evident in the conflicts which preceded the
-War. These conflicts, in so far as the Great Powers were concerned, had
-been in practically every case over territory, or roads to territory;
-over Madagascar, Egypt, Morocco, Korea, Mongolia; 'warm water' ports,
-the division of Africa, the partitioning of China, loans thereto and
-concessions therein; the Persian Gulf, the Bagdad Railway, the Panama
-Canal. Where the principle of nationality was denied by any Great Power
-it was generally because to recognise it might block access to the sea
-or raw materials, throw a barrier across the road to undeveloped
-territory.
-
-There was no denial of this by those who treated of public affairs. Mr
-Lloyd George declared that England would be quite ready to go to war
-rather than have the Morocco question settled without reference to her.
-Famous writers like Mahan did not balk at conclusions like this:--
-
-     'It is the great amount of unexploited raw material in territories
-     politically backward, and now imperfectly possessed by the nominal
-     owners, which at the present moment constitutes the temptation and
-     the impulse to war of European States.'[103]
-
-Nor to justify them thus:--
-
-     'More and more Germany needs the assured importation of raw
-     materials, and, where possible, control of regions productive of
-     such materials. More and more she requires assured markets, and
-     security as to the importation of food, since less and less
-     comparatively is produced within her own borders for her rapidly
-     increasing population. This all means security at sea.... Yet the
-     supremacy of Great Britain in European seas means a perpetually
-     latent control of German commerce.... The world has long been
-     accustomed to the idea of a predominant naval power, coupling it
-     accurately with the name of Great Britain: and it has been noted
-     that such power, when achieved, is commonly found associated with
-     commercial and industrial pre-eminence, the struggle for which is
-     now in progress between Great Britain and Germany. Such
-     pre-eminence forces a nation to seek markets, and, where possible,
-     to control them to its own advantage by preponderant force, the
-     ultimate expression of which is possession.... From this flow two
-     results: the attempt to possess, and the organisation of force by
-     which to maintain possession already achieved.... This statement is
-     simply a specific formulation of the general necessity stated;
-     itself an inevitable link in a chain of logical sequence: industry,
-     markets, control, navy, bases....[104]
-
-Mr Spenser Wilkinson, of a corresponding English school, is just as
-definite:--
-
-     'The effect of growth is an expansion and an increase of power. It
-     necessarily affects the environment of the growing organisms; it
-     interferes with the _status quo_. Existing rights and interests are
-     disturbed by the fact of growth, which is itself a change. The
-     growing community finds itself hedged in by previously existing and
-     surviving conditions, and fettered by prescriptive rights. There
-     is, therefore, an exertion of force to overcome resistance. No
-     process of law or of arbitration can deal with this phenomenon,
-     because any tribunal administering a system of right or law must
-     base its decision upon the tradition of the past which has become
-     unsuited to the new conditions that have arisen. The growing State
-     is necessarily expansive or aggressive.'[105]
-
-Even more decisive as a definite philosophy are the propositions of Mr
-Petre, who, writing on 'The Mandate of Humanity,' says:--
-
-     'The conscience of a State cannot, therefore, be as delicate, as
-     disinterested, as altruistic, as that of the noblest individuals.
-     The State exists primarily for its own people and only secondarily
-     for the rest of the world. Hence, given a dispute in which it feels
-     its rights and welfare to be at stake, it may, however erroneously,
-     set aside its moral obligations to international society in favour
-     of its obligations to the people for whom it exists.
-
-     'But no righteous conscience, it may be said, could give its
-     verdict against a solemn pledge taken and reciprocated; no
-     righteous conscience could, in a society of nations, declare
-     against the ends of that society. Indeed I think it could, and
-     sometimes would, if its sense of justice were outraged, if its duty
-     to those who were bone of its bone and flesh of its flesh came into
-     conflict with its duty to those who were not directly belonging to
-     it....
-
-     'The mechanism of a State exists mainly for its own preservation,
-     and cannot be turned against this, its legitimate end. The
-     conscience of a State will not traverse this main condition, and to
-     weaken its conscience is to weaken its life....
-
-     'The strong will not give way to the weak; the one who thinks
-     himself in the right will not yield to those whom he believes to be
-     in the wrong; the living generations will not be restrained by the
-     promises to a dead one; nature will not be controlled by
-     conventions.'[106]
-
-It is the last note that gives the key to popular feeling about the
-scramble for territory. In _The Great Illusion_ whole pages of popular
-writing are quoted to show that the conception of the struggle as in
-truth the struggle for survival had firmly planted itself in the popular
-consciousness. One of the critics who is so severe upon the present
-writer for trying to undermine the economic foundation of that popular
-creed, Benjamin Kidd, himself testifies to the depth and sweep of this
-pseudo-Darwinism (he seems to think indeed that it is true Darwinism,
-which it is not, as Darwin himself pointed out). He declares that 'there
-is no precedent in the history of the human mind to compare with the
-saturnalia of the Western intellect' which followed the popularisation
-of what he regards as Darwin's case and I would regard as a distortion
-of it. Kidd says it 'touched the profoundest depth of the psychology of
-the West.' 'Everywhere throughout civilisation an almost inconceivable
-influence was given to the doctrine of the law of biological necessity
-in books of statecraft and war-craft, of expanding military empires.'
-'Struggle for life,' 'a biological necessity,' 'survival of the fit,'
-had passed into popular use and had come to buttress popular feeling
-about the inevitability of war and its ultimate justification and the
-uselessness of organising the natives save on a basis of conflict.
-
-We are now in a position to see the respective moral positions of the
-two protagonists.
-
-The advocate of Political Theory No. 1, which an overwhelming
-preponderance of evidence shows to be the prevailing theory, says:--You
-Pacifists are asking us to commit national suicide; to sacrifice future
-generations to your political ideals. Now, as voters or statesmen we are
-trustees, we act for others. Sacrifice, suicide even, on behalf of an
-ideal, may be justified when we are sacrificing ourselves. But we cannot
-sacrifice others, our wards. Our first duty is to our own nation, our
-own children; to their national security and future welfare. It is
-regrettable if, by the conquests, wars, blockades, rendered necessary by
-those objects other people starve, and lose their national freedom and
-see their children die; but that is the hard necessity of life in a hard
-world.
-
-Advocate of Political Theory No. 2 says:--I deny that the excuse of
-justification which you give for your cruelty to others is a valid
-excuse or justification. Pacifism does not ask you to sacrifice your
-people, to betray the interest of your wards. You will serve their
-interests best by the policy we advocate. Your children will not be more
-assured of their sustenance by these conquests that attempt to render
-the feeding of foreign children more difficult; yours will be less
-secure. By co-operating with those others instead of using your
-energies against them, the resultant wealth....
-
-Advocate No. 1:--Wealth! Interest! You introduce your wretched economic
-calculations of interest into a question of Patriotism. You have the
-soul of a bagman concerned only to restore 'the blessed hour of tranquil
-money-getting,' and Sir William Robertson Nicoll shall denounce you in
-the _British Weekly_!
-
-And the discussion usually ends with this moral flourish and gestures of
-melodramatic indignation.
-
-But are they honest gestures? Here are the upholders of a certain
-position who say:--'In certain circumstances as when you are in a
-position of trustee, the only moral course, the only right course, is to
-be guided by the interests of your ward. Your duty then demands a
-calculation of advantage. You may not be generous at your ward's
-expense. This is the justification of the "sacred egoism" of the poet.'
-
-If in that case a critic says: 'Very well. Let us consider what will be
-the best interests of your ward,' is it really open to the first party
-to explain in a paroxysm of moral indignation: 'You are making a
-shameful and disgraceful appeal to selfishness and avarice?'
-
-This is not an attempt to answer one set of critics by quoting another
-set. The self-same people take those two attitudes. I have quoted above
-a passage of Admiral Mahan's in which he declares that nations can never
-be expected to act from any other motive than that of interest (a
-generalisation, by the way, from which I should most emphatically
-dissent). He goes on to declare that Governments 'must put first the
-rival interests of their own wards ... their own people,' and are thus
-pushed to the acquisition of markets by means of military predominance.
-
-Very well. _The Great Illusion_ argued some of Admiral Mahan's
-propositions in terms of interest and advantage. And then, when he
-desired to demolish that argument, he did not hesitate in a long
-article in the _North American Review_ to write as follows:--
-
-     'The purpose of armaments, in the minds of those maintaining them,
-     is not primarily an economical advantage, in the sense of depriving
-     a neighbour State of its own, or fear of such consequences to
-     itself through the deliberate aggression of a rival having that
-     particular end in view.... The fundamental proposition of the book
-     is a mistake. Nations are under no illusion as to the
-     unprofitableness of war in itself.... The entire conception of the
-     work is itself an illusion, based upon a profound misreading of
-     human action. To regard the world as governed by self-interest only
-     is to live in a non-existent world, an ideal world, a world
-     possessed by an idea much less worthy than those which mankind, to
-     do it bare justice, persistently entertains.'[107]
-
-Admiral Mahan was a writer of very great and deserved reputation, in the
-very first rank of those dealing with the relations of power to national
-politics, certainly incapable of any conscious dishonesty of opinion.
-Yet, as we have seen, his opinion on the most important fact of all
-about war--its ultimate purpose, and the reasons which justify it or
-provoke it--swings violently in absolute self-contradiction. And the
-flat contradiction here revealed shows--and this surely is the moral of
-such an incident--that he could never have put to himself detachedly,
-coldly, impartially the question: 'What do I really believe about the
-motives of nations in War? To what do the facts as a whole really
-point?' Had he done so, it might have been revealed to him that what
-really determined his opinion about the causes of war was a desire to
-justify the great profession of arms, to one side of which he had
-devoted his life and given years of earnest labour and study; to defend
-from some imputation of futility one of the most ancient of man's
-activities that calls for some at least of the sublimest of human
-qualities. If a widened idealism clearly discredited that ancient
-institution, he was prepared to show that an ineradicable conflict of
-national interests rendered it inevitable. If it was shown that war was
-irrelevant to those conflicts, or ineffective as a means of protecting
-the interests concerned, he was prepared to show that the motives
-pushing to war were not those of interest at all.
-
-It may be said that none the less the thesis under discussion
-substitutes one selfish argument for another; tries by appealing to
-self-interest (the self-interest of a group or nation) to turn
-selfishness from a destructive result to a more social result. Its basis
-is self. Even that is not really true. For, first, that argument ignores
-the question of trusteeship; and, secondly, it involves a confusion
-between the motive of a given policy and the criterion by which its
-goodness or badness shall be tested.
-
-How is one to deal with the claim of the 'mystic nationalist' (he exists
-abundantly even outside the Balkans) that the subjugation of some
-neighbouring nationalism is demanded by honour; that only the great
-State can be the really good State; that power--'majesty,' as the
-Oriental would say--is a thing good in itself?[108] There are ultimate
-questions as to what is good and what is bad that no argument can
-answer; ultimate values which cannot be discussed. But one can reduce
-those unarguable values to a minimum by appealing to certain social
-needs. A State which has plenty of food may not be a good State; but a
-State which cannot feed its population cannot be a good State, for in
-that case the citizens will be hungry, greedy, and violent.
-
-In other words, certain social needs and certain social utilities--which
-we can all recognise as indispensables--furnish a ground of agreement
-for the common action without which no society can be established. And
-the need for such a criterion becomes more manifest as we learn more of
-the wonderful fashion in which we sublimate our motives. A country
-refuses to submit its dispute to arbitration, because its 'honour' is
-involved. Many books have been written to try and find out precisely
-what honour of this kind is. One of the best of them has decided that it
-is anything which a country cares to make it. It is never the presence
-of coal, or iron, or oil, which makes it imperative to retain a given
-territory: it is honour (as Italy's Foreign Minister explained when
-Italy went to war for the conquest of Tripoli). Unfortunately, rival
-States have also impulses of honour which compel them to claim the same
-undeveloped territory. Nothing can prove--or disprove--that honour, in
-such circumstances, is invoked by each or either of the parties
-concerned to make a piece of acquisitiveness or megalomania appear as
-fine to himself as possible: that, just because he has a lurking
-suspicion that all is not well with the operation, he seeks to justify
-it to himself with fine words that have a very vague content. But on
-this basis there can be no agreement. If, however, one shifts the
-discussion to the question of what is best for the social welfare of
-both, one can get a _modus vivendi_. For each to admit that he has no
-right so to use his power as to deprive the other of means of life,
-would be the beginning of a code which could be tested. Each might
-conceivably have that right to deprive the other of means of livelihood,
-if it were a choice between the lives of his own people or others.
-
-The economic fact is the test of the ethical claim: if it really be true
-that we must withhold sources of food from others because otherwise our
-own would starve, there is some ethical justification for such use of
-our power. If such is not the fact, the whole moral issue is changed,
-and with it, to the degree to which it is mutually realised, the social
-outlook and attitude. The knowledge of interdependence is part, at
-least, of an attitude which makes the 'social sense'--the sense that one
-kind of arrangement is fair and workable, and another is not. To bring
-home the fact of this interdependence is not simply an appeal to
-selfishness: it is to reveal a method by which an apparently
-irreconcilable conflict of vital needs can be reconciled. The sense of
-interdependence, of the need of one for another, is part of the
-foundation of the very difficult art of living together.
-
-Much mischief arises from the misunderstanding of the term 'economic
-motive.' Let us examine some further examples of this. One is a common
-confusion of terms: an economic motive may be the reverse of selfish.
-The long sustained efforts of parents to provide fittingly for their
-children--efforts continued, it may be, through half a lifetime--are
-certainly economic. Just as certainly they are not selfish in any exact
-sense of the term. Yet something like this confusion seems to overlie
-the discussion of economics in connection with war.
-
-Speaking broadly, I do not believe that men ever go to war from a cold
-calculation of advantage or profit. I never have believed it. It seems
-to me an obvious and childish misreading of human psychology. I cannot
-see how it is possible to imagine a man laying down his life on the
-battle-field for personal gain. Nations do not fight for their money or
-interests, they fight for their rights, or what they believe to be their
-rights. The very gallant men who triumphed at Bull Run or
-Chancellorsville were not fighting for the profits on slave-labour: they
-were fighting for what they believed to be their independence: the
-rights, as they would have said, to self-government or, as we should now
-say, of self-determination. Yet it was a conflict which arose out of
-slave labour: an economic question. Now the most elementary of all
-rights, in the sense of the first right which a people will claim, is
-the right to existence--the right of a population to bread and a decent
-livelihood.[109] For that nations certainly will fight. Yet, as we see,
-it is a right which arises out of an economic need or conflict. We have
-seen how it works as a factor in our own foreign policy: as a compelling
-motive for the command of the sea. We believe that the feeding of these
-islands depends upon it: that if we lost it our children might die in
-the streets and the lack of food compel us to an ignominious surrender.
-It is this relation of vital food supply to preponderant sea power which
-has caused us to tolerate no challenge to the latter. We know the part
-which the growth of the German Navy played in shaping Anglo-Continental
-relations before the War; the part which any challenge to our naval
-preponderance has always played in determining our foreign policy. The
-command of the sea, with all that that means in the way of having built
-up a tradition, a battle-cry in politics, has certainly bound up with it
-this life and death fact of feeding our population. That is to say it is
-an economic need. Yet the determination of some millions of Englishmen
-to fight for this right to life, to die rather than see the daily bread
-of their people in jeopardy, would be adequately described by some
-phrase about Englishmen going to war because it 'paid.' It would be a
-silly or dishonest gibe. Yet that is precisely the kind of gibe that I
-have had to face these fifteen years in attempting to disentangle the
-forces and motives underlying international conflict.
-
-What picture is summoned to our minds by the word 'economics' in
-relation to war? To the critics whose indignation is so excited at the
-introduction of the subject at all into the discussion of war--and they
-include, unhappily, some of the great names of English literature--'economic'
-seems to carry no picture but that of an obese Semitic stockbroker, in
-quaking fear for his profits. This view cannot be said to imply either
-much imagination or much sense of reality. For among the stockbrokers,
-the usurers, those closest to financial manipulation and in touch with
-financial changes, are to be found some groups numerically small, who
-are more likely to gain than to lose by war; and the present writer has
-never suggested the contrary.
-
-But the 'economic futility' of war expresses itself otherwise: in half a
-Continent unable to feed or clothe or warm itself; millions rendered
-neurotic, abnormal, hysterical by malnutrition, disease, and anxiety;
-millions rendered greedy, selfish, and violent by the constant strain of
-hunger; resulting in 'social unrest' that threatens more and more to
-become sheer chaos and confusion: the dissolution and disintegration of
-society. Everywhere, in the cities, are the children who cry and who are
-not fed, who raise shrunken arms to our statesmen who talk with
-pride[110] of their stern measures of 'rigorous' blockade. Rickety and
-dying children, and undying hate for us, their murderers, in the hearts
-of their mothers--these are the human realities of the 'economics of
-war.'
-
-The desire to prevent these things, to bring about an order that would
-render possible both patriotism and mercy, would save us from the
-dreadful dilemma of feeding our own children only by the torture and
-death of others equally innocent--the effort to this end is represented
-as a mere appeal to selfishness and avarice, something mean and ignoble,
-a degradation of human motive.
-
-'These theoretical dilemmas do not state accurately the real conditions
-of politics,' the reader may object. 'No one proposes to inflict famine
-as a means of enforcing our policy' ... 'England does not make war on
-women and children.'
-
-Not one man or woman in a million, English or other, would wittingly
-inflict the suffering of starvation upon a single child, if the child
-were visible to his eyes, present in his mind, and if the simple human
-fact were not obscured by the much more complex and artificial facts
-that have gathered round our conceptions of patriotism. The heaviest
-indictment of the military-nationalist philosophy we are discussing is
-that it manages successfully to cover up human realities by dehumanising
-abstractions. From the moment that the child becomes a part of that
-abstraction--'Russia,' 'Austria,' 'Germany'--it loses its human
-identity, and becomes merely an impersonal part of the political problem
-of the struggle of our nation with others. The inverted moral alchemy,
-by which the golden instinct that we associate with so much of direct
-human contact is transformed into the leaden cruelty of nationalist hate
-and high statecraft, has been dealt with at the close of Part I. When in
-tones of moral indignation it is declared that Englishmen 'do not make
-war on women and children,' we must face the truth and say that
-Englishmen, like all peoples, do make such war.
-
-An action in public policy--the proclamation of the blockade, or the
-confiscation of so much tonnage, or the cession of territory, or the
-refusal of a loan--these things are remote and vague; not only is the
-relation between results and causes remote and sometimes difficult to
-establish, but the results themselves are invisible and far away. And
-when the results of a policy are remote, and can be slurred over in our
-minds, we are perfectly ready to apply, logically and ruthlessly, the
-most ferocious of political theories. It is of supreme importance then
-what those theories happen to be. When the issue of war and peace hangs
-in the balance, the beam may well be kicked one way or the other by our
-general political philosophy, these somewhat vague and hazy notions
-about life being a struggle, and nature red of tooth and claw, about
-wars being part of the cosmic process, sanctioned by professors and
-bishops and writers. It may well be these vague notions that lead us to
-acquiesce in the blockade or the newest war. The typhus or the rickets
-do not kill or maim any the less because we do not in our minds connect
-those results with the political abstractions that we bandy about so
-lightly. And we touch there the greatest service which a more 'economic'
-treatment of European problems may perform. If the Treaty of Versailles
-had been more economic it would also have been a more humane and human
-document. If there had been more of Mr Keynes and less of M. Clemenceau,
-there would have been not only more food in the world, but more
-kindliness; not only less famine, but less hate; not only more life, but
-a better way of life; those living would have been nearer to
-understanding and discarding the way of death.
-
-Let us summarise the points so far made with reference to the 'economic'
-motive.
-
-We need not accept any hard and fast (and in the view of the present
-writer, unsound) doctrine of economic determinism, in order to admit the
-truth of the following:--
-
-1. Until economic difficulties are so far solved as to give the mass of
-the people the means of secure and tolerable physical existence,
-economic considerations and motives will tend to exclude all others. The
-way to give the spiritual a fair chance with ordinary men and women is
-not to be magnificently superior to their economic difficulties, but to
-find a solution for them. Until the economic dilemma is solved, no
-solution of moral difficulties will be adequate. If you want to get rid
-of the economic preoccupation, you must solve the worst of the economic
-problem.
-
-2. In the same way the solution of the economic conflict between nations
-will not of itself suffice to establish peace; but no peace is possible
-until that conflict is solved. That makes it of sufficient importance.
-
-3. The 'economic' problem involved in international politics the use of
-political power for economic ends--is also one of Right, including the
-most elemental of all rights, that to exist.
-
-4. The answer which we give to that question of Right will depend upon
-our answer to the actual query of _The Great Illusion_: must a country
-of expanding population expand its territory or trade by means of its
-political power, in order to live? Is the political struggle for
-territory a struggle for bread?
-
-5. If we take the view that the truth is contained in neither an
-unqualified affirmative nor an unqualified negative, then all the more
-is it necessary that the interdependence of peoples, the necessity for a
-truly international economy, should become a commonplace. A wider
-realisation of those facts would help to create that pre-disposition
-necessary for a belief in the workability of voluntary co-operation, a
-belief which must precede any successful attempt to make such
-co-operation the basis of an international order.
-
-6. The economic argument of _The Great Illusion_, if valid, destroys the
-pseudo-scientific justification for political immoralism, the doctrine
-of State necessity, which has marked so much of classical statecraft.
-
-7. The main defects of the Treaty of Versailles are due to the pressure
-of a public opinion obsessed by just those ideas of nations as persons,
-of conflicting interests, which _The Great Illusion_ attempted to
-destroy. If the Treaty had been inspired by the ideas of interdependence
-of interest, it would have been not only more in the interests of the
-Allies, but morally sounder, providing a better ethical basis for future
-peace.
-
-8. To go on ignoring the economic unity and interdependence of Europe,
-to refuse to subject nationalist pugnacities to that needed unity
-because 'economics' are sordid, is to refuse to face the needs of human
-life, and the forces that shape it. Such an attitude, while professing
-moral elevation, involves a denial of the right of others to live. Its
-worst defect, perhaps, is that its heroics are fatal to intellectual
-rectitude, to truth. No society built upon such foundations can stand.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-THE GREAT ILLUSION ARGUMENT
-
-
-The preceding chapters have dealt rather with misconceptions concerning
-_The Great Illusion_ than with its positive propositions. What, outlined
-as briefly as possible, was its central argument?
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-That argument was an elaboration of these propositions: Military
-preponderance, conquest, as a means to man's most elemental
-needs--bread, sustenance--is futile, because the processes (exchange,
-division of labour) to which the dense populations of modern Western
-society are compelled to resort, cannot be exacted by military coercion;
-they can only operate as the result of a large measure of voluntary
-acquiescence by the parties concerned. A realisation of this truth is
-indispensable for the restraint of the instinctive pugnacities that
-hamper human relationship, particularly where nationalism enters.[111]
-The competition for power so stimulates those pugnacities and fears,
-that isolated national power cannot ensure a nation's political security
-or independence. Political security and economic well-being can only be
-ensured by international co-operation. This must be economic as well as
-political, be directed, that is, not only at pooling military forces for
-the purpose of restraining aggression, but at the maintenance of some
-economic code which will ensure for all nations, whether militarily
-powerful or not, fair economic opportunity and means of subsistence.
-
-It was, in other words, an attempt to clear the road to a more workable
-international policy by undermining the main conceptions and
-prepossessions inimical to an international order.[112] It did not
-elaborate machinery, but the facts it dealt with point clearly to
-certain conclusions on that head.
-
-While arguing that prevailing beliefs (false beliefs for the most part)
-and feelings (largely directed by the false beliefs) were the
-determining factors in international politics, the author challenged the
-prevailing assumption of the unchangeability of those ideas and
-feelings, particularly the proposition that war between human groups
-arises out of instincts and emotions incapable of modification or
-control or re-direction by conscious effort. The author placed equal
-emphasis on both parts of the proposition--that dealing with the alleged
-immutability of human pugnacity and ideas, and that which challenged the
-representation of war as an inevitable struggle for physical
-sustenance--if only because no exposure of the biological fallacy would
-be other than futile if the former proposition were true.[113]
-
-If conduct in these matters is the automatic reaction to uncontrollable
-instinct and is not affected by ideas, or if ideas themselves are the
-mere reflection of that instinct, obviously it is no use attempting
-demonstrations of futility, economic or other. The more we demonstrate
-the intensity of our inherent pugnacity and irrationalism, the more do
-we in fact demonstrate the need for the conscious control of those
-instincts. The alternative conclusion is fatalism: an admission not only
-that our ship is not under control, but that we have given up the task
-of getting it under control. We have surrendered our freedom.
-
-Moreover, our record shows that the direction taken by our
-pugnacities--their objective--is in fact largely determined by
-traditions and ideas which are in part at least the sum of conscious
-intellectual effort. The history of religious persecution--its wars,
-inquisitions, repressions--shows a great change (which we must admit as
-a fact, whether we regard it as good or bad) not only of idea but of
-feeling.[114] The book rejected instinct as sufficient guide and urged
-the need of discipline by intelligent foresight of consequence.
-
-To examine our subconscious or unconscious motives of conduct is the
-first step to making them conscious and modifying them.
-
-This does not imply that instincts--whether of pugnacity or other--can
-readily be repressed by a mere effort of will. But their direction, the
-object upon which they expend themselves, will depend upon our
-interpretation of facts. If we interpret the hailstorm or the curdled
-milk in one way, our fear and hatred of the witch is intense; the same
-facts interpreted another way make the witch an object of another
-emotion, pity.
-
-Reason may be a very small part of the apparatus of human conduct
-compared with the part played by the unconscious and subconscious, the
-instinctive and the emotional. The power of a ship's compass is very
-small indeed compared with the power developed by the engines. But the
-greater the power of the engines, the greater will be the disaster if
-the relatively tiny compass is deflected and causes the ship to be
-driven on to the rocks. The illustration indicates, not exactly but with
-sufficient truth, the relationship of 'reason' to 'instinct.'
-
-The instincts that push to self-assertion, to the acquisition of
-preponderant power, are so strong that we shall only abandon that method
-as the result of perceiving its futility. Co-operation, which means a
-relationship of partnership and give and take, will not succeed till
-force has failed.
-
-The futility of power as a means to our most fundamental and social ends
-is due mainly to two facts, one mechanical, and the other moral. The
-mechanical fact is that if we really need another, our power over him
-has very definite limits. Our dependence on him gives him a weapon
-against us. The moral fact is that in demanding a position of
-domination, we ask something to which we should not accede if it were
-asked of us: the claim does not stand the test of the categorical
-imperative. If we need another's labour, we cannot kill him; if his
-custom, we cannot forbid him to earn money. If his labour is to be
-effective, we must give him tools, knowledge; and these things can be
-used to resist our exactions. To the degree to which he is powerful for
-service he is powerful for resistance. A nation wealthy as a customer
-will also be ubiquitous as a competitor.
-
-The factors which have operated to make physical compulsion (slavery) as
-a means of obtaining service less economical than service for reward,
-operate just as effectively between nations. The employment of military
-force for economic ends is an attempt to apply indirectly the principle
-of chattel-slavery to groups; and involves the same disadvantages.[115]
-
-In so far as coercion represents a means of securing a wider and more
-effective social co-operation as against a narrower social co-operation,
-or more anarchic condition, it is likely to be successful and to justify
-itself socially. The imposition of Western government upon backward
-peoples approximates to the role of police; the struggles between the
-armed forces of rival Western Powers do not. The function of a police
-force is the exact contrary to that of armies competing with one
-another.[116]
-
-The demonstration of the futility of conquest rested mainly on these
-facts. After conquest the conquered people cannot be killed. They
-cannot be allowed to starve. Pressure of population on means of
-subsistence has not been reduced, but probably increased, since the
-number of mouths to fill eliminated by the casualty lists is not
-equivalent to the reduced production occasioned by war. To impose by
-force (e.g. exclusion from raw materials) a lower standard of living,
-creates (_a_) resistance which involves costs of coercion (generally in
-military establishments, but also in the political difficulties in which
-the coercion of hostile peoples--as in Alsace-Lorraine and
-Ireland--generally involves their conqueror), costs which must be
-deducted from the economic advantage of the conquest; and (_b_) loss of
-markets which may be indispensable to countries (like Britain) whose
-prosperity depends upon an international division of labour. A
-population that lives by exchanging its coal and iron for (say) food,
-does not profit by reducing the productivity of subject peoples engaged
-in food production.
-
-In _The Great Illusion_ the case was put as follows:--
-
-     'When we conquer a nation in these days, we do not exterminate it:
-     we leave it where it was. When we "overcome" the servile races, far
-     from eliminating them, we give them added chances of life by
-     introducing order, etc., so that the lower human quality tends to
-     be perpetuated by conquest by the higher. If ever it happens that
-     the Asiatic races challenge the white in the industrial or military
-     field, it will be in large part thanks to the work of race
-     conservation, which has been the result of England's conquest in
-     India, Egypt, and Asia generally.'--(pp. 191-192.)
-
-     'When the division of labour was so little developed that every
-     homestead produced all that it needed, it mattered nothing if part
-     of the community was cut off from the world for weeks and months at
-     a time. All the neighbours of a village or homestead might be slain
-     or harassed, and no inconvenience resulted. But if to-day an
-     English county is by a general railroad strike cut off for so much
-     as forty-eight hours from the rest of the economic organism, we
-     know that whole sections of its population are threatened with
-     famine. If in the time of the Danes England could by some magic
-     have killed all foreigners, she would presumably have been the
-     better off. If she could do the same thing to-day half her
-     population would starve to death. If on one side of the frontier a
-     community is, say, wheat-producing, and on the other
-     coal-producing, each is dependent for its very existence on the
-     fact of the other being able to carry on its labour. The miner
-     cannot in a week set to and grow a crop of wheat; the farmer must
-     wait for his wheat to grow, and must meantime feed his family and
-     dependents. The exchange involved here must go on, and each party
-     have fair expectation that he will in due course be able to reap
-     the fruits of his labour, or both starve; and that exchange, that
-     expectation, is merely the expression in its simplest form of
-     commerce and credit; and the interdependence here indicated has, by
-     the countless developments of rapid communication, reached such a
-     condition of complexity that the interference with any given
-     operation affects not merely the parties directly involved, but
-     numberless others having at first sight no connection therewith.
-
-     'The vital interdependence here indicated, cutting athwart
-     frontiers, is largely the work of the last forty years; and it has,
-     during that time, so developed as to have set up a financial
-     interdependence of the capitals of the world, so complex that
-     disturbance in New York involves financial and commercial
-     disturbance in London, and, if sufficiently grave, compels
-     financiers of London to co-operate with those of New York to put an
-     end to the crisis, not as a matter of altruism, but as a matter of
-     commercial self-protection. The complexity of modern finance makes
-     New York dependent on London, London upon Paris, Paris upon Berlin,
-     to a greater degree than has ever yet been the case in history.
-     This interdependence is the result of the daily use of those
-     contrivances of civilisation which date from yesterday--the rapid
-     post, the instantaneous dissemination of financial and commercial
-     information by means of telegraphy, and generally the incredible
-     progress of rapidity in communication which has put the half-dozen
-     chief capitals of Christendom in closer contact financially, and
-     has rendered them more dependent the one upon the other than were
-     the chief cities of Great Britain less than a hundred years
-     ago.--(pp. 49-50.)
-
-     'Credit is merely an extension of the use of money, and we can no
-     more shake off the domination of the one than we can of the other.
-     We have seen that the bloodiest despot is himself the slave of
-     money, in the sense that he is compelled to employ it. In the same
-     way no physical force can in the modern world set at naught the
-     force of credit. It is no more possible for a great people of the
-     modern world to live without credit than without money, of which it
-     is a part.... The wealth of the world is not represented by a fixed
-     amount of gold or money now in the possession of one Power, and now
-     in the possession of another, but depends on all the unchecked
-     multiple activities of a community for the time being. Check that
-     activity, whether by imposing tribute, or disadvantageous
-     commercial conditions, or an unwelcome administration which sets up
-     sterile political agitation, and you get less wealth--less wealth
-     for the conqueror, as well as less for the conquered. The broadest
-     statement of the case is that all experience--especially the
-     experience indicated in the last chapter--shows that in trade by
-     free consent carrying mutual benefit we get larger results for
-     effort expended than in the exercise of physical force which
-     attempts to exact advantage for one party at the expense of the
-     other.'--(pp. 270-272.)
-
-In elaboration of this general thesis it is pointed out that the
-processes of exchange have become too complex for direct barter, and can
-only take place by virtue of credit; and it is by the credit system, the
-'sensory nerve' of the economic organism, that the self-injurious
-results of economic war are first shown. If, after a victorious war, we
-allow enemy industry and international trade to go on much as before,
-then obviously our victory will have had very little effect on the
-fundamental economic situation. If, on the other hand, we attempt for
-political or other reasons to destroy our enemy's industry and trade, to
-keep him from the necessary materials of it, we should undermine our own
-credit by diminishing the exchange value of much of our own real wealth.
-For this reason it is 'a great illusion' to suppose that by the
-political annexation of colonies, territories with iron-mines,
-coal-mines, we enrich ourselves by the amount of wealth their
-exploitation represents.[117]
-
-The large place which such devices as an international credit system
-must take in our international economy, adds enormously to the
-difficulty of securing any 'spoils of victory' in the shape of
-indemnity. A large indemnity is not impossible, but the only condition
-on which it can be made possible--a large foreign trade by the defeated
-people--is not one that will be readily accepted by the victorious
-nation. Yet the dilemma is absolute: the enemy must do a big foreign
-trade (or deliver in lieu of money large quantities of goods) which will
-compete with home production, or he can pay no big indemnity--nothing
-commensurate with the cost of modern war.
-
-Since we are physically dependent on co-operation with foreigners, it
-is obvious that the frontiers of the national State are not co-terminous
-with the frontiers of our society. Human association cuts athwart
-frontiers. The recognition of the fact would help to break down that
-conception of nations as personalities which plays so large a part in
-international hatred. The desire to punish this or that 'nation' could
-not long survive if we had in mind, not the abstraction, but the babies,
-the little girls, old men, in no way responsible for the offences that
-excited our passions, whom we treated in our minds as a single
-individual.[118]
-
-As a means of vindicating a moral, social, religious, or cultural
-ideal--as of freedom or democracy--war between States, and still more
-between Alliances, must be largely ineffective for two main reasons.
-First, because the State and the moral unit do not coincide. France or
-the British Empire could not stand as a unit for Protestanism as opposed
-to Catholicism, Christianity as opposed to Mohammedanism, or
-Individualism as opposed to Socialism, or Parliamentary Government as
-opposed to Bureaucratic Autocracy, or even for European ascendancy as
-against Coloured Races. For both Empires include large coloured
-elements; the British Empire is more Mohammedan than Christian, has
-larger areas under autocratic than under Parliamentary government; has
-powerful parties increasingly Socialistic. The State power in both cases
-is being used, not to suppress, but to give actual vitality to the
-non-Christian or non-European or coloured elements that it has
-conquered. The second great reason why it is futile to attempt to use
-the military power of States for ends such as freedom and democracy, is
-that the instincts to which it is compelled to appeal, the spirit it
-must cultivate and the methods it is compelled increasingly to employ,
-are themselves inimical to the sentiment upon which freedom must rest.
-Nations that have won their freedom as the result of military victory,
-usually employ that victory to suppress the freedom of others. To rest
-our freedom upon a permanent basis of nationalist military power, is
-equivalent to seeking security from the moral dangers of Prussianism by
-organising our States on the Prussian model.
-
-Our real struggle is with nature: internecine struggles between men
-lessen the effectiveness of the human army. A Continent which supported
-precariously, with recurrent famine, a few hundred thousand savages
-fighting endlessly between themselves, can support, abundantly a hundred
-million whites who can manage to maintain peace among themselves and
-fight nature.
-
-Nature here includes human nature. Just as we turn the destructive
-forces of external nature from our hurt to our service, not by their
-unintelligent defiance, but by utilising them through a knowledge of
-their qualities, so can the irrepressible but not 'undirectable' forces
-of instinct, emotion, sentiment, be turned by intelligence to the
-service of our greatest and most permanent needs.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-ARGUMENTS NOW OUT OF DATE
-
-
-For the purposes of simplicity and brevity the main argument of _The
-Great Illusion_ assumed the relative permanence of the institution of
-private property in Western society, and the persistence of the tendency
-of victorious belligerents to respect it, a tendency which had steadily
-grown in strength for five hundred years. The book assumed that the
-conqueror would do in the future what he has done to a steadily
-increasing degree in the past, especially as the reasons for such
-policy, in terms of self-interest, have so greatly grown in force during
-the last generation or two. To have argued its case in terms of
-non-existent and hypothetical conditions which might not exist for
-generations or centuries, would have involved hopelessly bewildering
-complications. And the decisive reason for not adding this complication
-was the fact that _though it would vary the form of the argument, it
-would not effect the final conclusion_.
-
-As already explained in the first part of this book (Chapter II) this
-war has marked a revolution in the position of private property and the
-relation of the citizen to the State. The Treaty of Versailles departs
-radically from the general principles adhered to, for instance, in the
-Treaty of Frankfurt; the position of German traders and that of the
-property of German citizens does not at all to-day resemble the position
-in which the Treaty of Frankfurt left the French trader and French
-private property.
-
-The fact of the difference has already been entered into at some length.
-It remains to see how the change affects the general argument adopted in
-_The Great Illusion_.
-
-It does not affect its final conclusions. The argument ran: A conqueror
-cannot profit by 'loot' in the shape of confiscations, tributes,
-indemnities, which paralyse the economic life of the defeated enemy.
-They are economically futile. They are unlikely to be attempted, but if
-they are attempted they will still be futile.[119]
-
-Events have confirmed that conclusion, though not the expectation that
-the enemy's economic life would be left undisturbed. We have started a
-policy which does injure the economic life of the enemy. The more it
-injures him, the less it pays us. And we are abandoning it as rapidly as
-nationalist hostilities will permit us. In so far as pre-war conditions
-pointed to the need of a definitely organised international economic
-code, the situation created by the Treaty has only made the need more
-visible and imperative. For, as already explained in the first Part, the
-old understandings enabled industry to be built up on an international
-basis; the Treaty of Versailles and its confiscations, prohibitions,
-controls, have destroyed those foundations. Had that instrument treated
-German trade and industry as the Germans treated French in 1871 we might
-have seen a recovery of German economic life relatively as rapid as that
-which took place in France during the ten years which followed her
-defeat. We should not to-day be faced by thirty or forty millions in
-Central and Eastern Europe without secure means of livelihood.
-
-The present writer confesses most frankly--and the critics of _The Great
-Illusion_ are hereby presented with all that they can make of the
-admission--that he did not expect a European conqueror, least of all
-Allied conquerors, to use their victory for enforcing a policy having
-these results. He believed that elementary considerations of
-self-interest, the duty of statesmen to consider the needs of their own
-countries just emerging from war, would stand in the way of a policy of
-this kind. On the other hand, he was under no illusions as to what would
-result if they did attempt to enforce that policy. Dealing with the
-damage that a conqueror might inflict, the book says that such things as
-the utter destruction of the enemy's trade
-
-     could only be inflicted by an invader as a means of punishment
-     costly to himself, or as the result of an unselfish and expensive
-     desire to inflict misery for the mere joy of inflicting it. In this
-     self-seeking world it is not practical to assume the existence of
-     an inverted altruism of this kind.--(p. 29.)
-
-Because of the 'interdependence of our credit-built finance and
-industry'
-
-     the confiscation by an invader of private property, whether stocks,
-     shares, ships, mines, or anything more valuable than jewellery or
-     furniture--anything, in short, which is bound up with the economic
-     life of the people--would so react upon the finance of the
-     invader's country as to make the damage to the invader resulting
-     from the confiscation exceed in value the property confiscated--(p.
-     29).
-
-     Speaking broadly and generally, the conqueror in our day has before
-     him two alternatives: to leave things alone, and in order to do
-     that he need not have left his shores; or to interfere by
-     confiscation in some form, in which case he dries up the source of
-     the profit which tempted him--(p. 59).
-
-All the suggestions made as to the economic futility of such a
-course--including the failure to secure an indemnity--have been
-justified.[120]
-
-In dealing with the indemnity problem the book did forecast the
-likelihood of special trading and manufacturing interests within the
-conquering nation opposing the only condition upon which a very large
-indemnity would be possible--that condition being either the creation of
-a large foreign trade by the enemy or the receipt of payment in kind, in
-goods which would compete with home production. But the author certainly
-did not think it likely that England and France would impose conditions
-so rapidly destructive of the enemy's economic life that they--the
-conquerors--would, for their own economic preservation, be compelled to
-make loans to the defeated enemy.
-
-Let us note the phase of the argument that the procedure adopted renders
-out of date. A good deal of _The Great Illusion_ was devoted to showing
-that Germany had no need to expand territorially; that her desire for
-overseas colonies was sentimental, and had little relation to the
-problem of providing for her population. At the beginning of 1914 that
-was certainly true. It is not true to-day. The process by which she
-supported her excess population before the War will, to put it at its
-lowest, be rendered extremely difficult of maintenance as the result of
-allied action. The point, however, is that we are not benefiting by
-this paralysis of German industry. We are suffering very greatly from
-it: suffering so much that we can be neither politically nor
-economically secure until this condition is brought to an end. There can
-be no peace in Europe, and consequently no safety for us or France, so
-long as we attempt by power to maintain a policy which denies to
-millions in the midst of our civilisation the possibility of earning
-their living. In so far as the new conditions create difficulties which
-did not originally exist, our victory does but the more glaringly
-demonstrate the economic futility of our policy towards the vanquished.
-
-An argument much used in _The Great Illusion_ as disproving the claims
-made for conquest was the position of the population of small States.
-'Very well,' may say the critic, 'Germany is now in the position of a
-small State. But you talk about her being ruined!'
-
-In the conditions of 1914, the small State argument was entirely valid
-(incidentally the Allied Governments argue that it still holds).[121] It
-does not hold to-day. In the conditions of 1920 at any rate, the small
-State is, like Germany, economically at the mercy of British sea power
-or the favoritism of the French Foreign Office, to a degree that was
-unknown before the War. How is the situation to develop? Is the Dutch or
-Swedish or Austrian industrial city permanently to be dependent upon the
-good graces of some foreign official sitting in Whitehall or the Quai
-d'Orsay? At present, if an industrialist in such a city wishes to import
-coal or to ship a cargo to one of the new Baltic States, he may be
-prevented owing to political arrangements between France and England. If
-that is to be the permanent situation of the non-Entente world, then
-peace will become less and less secure, and all our talk of having
-fought for the rights of the small and weak will be a farce. The
-friction, the irritation, and sense of grievance will prolong the unrest
-and uncertainty, and the resultant decline in the productivity of
-Europe will render our own economic problems the more acute. The power
-by which we thus arrogate to ourselves the economic dictatorship of
-Europe will ultimately be challenged.
-
-Can we revert to the condition of things which, by virtue of certain
-economic freedoms that were respected, placed the trader or
-industrialist of a small State pretty much on an equality, in most
-things, with the trader of the Great State? Or shall we go forward to a
-recognised international economic system, in which the small States will
-have their rights secured by a definite code?
-
-Reversion to the old individualist 'trans-nationalism' or an
-internationalism without considerable administrative machinery--seems
-now impossible. The old system is destroyed at its sources within each
-State. The only available course now is, recognising the fact of an
-immense growth in the governmental control or regulation of foreign
-trade, to devise definite codes or agreements to meet the case. If the
-obtaining of necessary raw materials by all the States other than France
-and England is to be the subject of wrangles between officials, each
-case to be treated on its merits, we shall have a much worse anarchy
-than before the War. A condition in which two or three powers can lay
-down the law for the world will indeed be an anti-climax.
-
-We may never learn the lesson; the old futile struggles may go on
-indefinitely. But if we do put our intelligences to the situation it
-will call for a method of treatment somewhat different from that which
-pre-war conditions required.
-
-For the purposes of the War, in the various Inter-Allied bodies for the
-apportionment of shipping and raw material, we had the beginnings of an
-economic League of Nations, an economic World Government. Those bodies
-might have been made democratic, and enlarged to include neutral
-interests, and maintained for the period of Reconstruction (which might
-in any case have been regarded as a phase properly subject to war
-treatment in these matters). But these international organisations were
-allowed to fall to pieces on the removal of the common enmity which held
-the European Allies and America together.
-
-The disappearance of these bodies does not mean the disappearance of
-'controls,' but the controls will now be exercised in considerable part
-through vast private Capitalist Trusts dealing with oil, meat, and
-shipping. Nor will the interference of government be abolished. If it is
-considered desirable to ensure to some group a monopoly of phosphates,
-or palm nuts, the aid of governments will be invoked for the purpose.
-But in this case the government will exercise its powers not as the
-result of a publicly avowed and agreed principle, but illicitly,
-hypocritically.
-
-While professing to exercise a 'mandate' for mankind, a government will
-in fact be using its authority to protect special interests. In other
-words we shall get a form of internationalism in which the international
-capitalist Trust will control the Government instead of the Government's
-controlling the Trust.
-
-The fact that this was happening more and more before the War was one
-reason why the old individualist order has broken down. More and more
-the professed position and function of the State was not its real
-position and function. The amount of industry and trade dependent upon
-governmental intervention (enterprises of the Chinese Loan and Bagdad
-Railway type) before the War was small compared with the quantity that
-owed nothing to governmental protection. But the illicit pressure
-exercised upon governments by those interested in the exploitation of
-backward countries was out of proportion to the public importance of
-their interests.
-
-It was this failure of democratic control of 'big business' by the
-pre-war democracies which helped to break down the old individualism.
-While private capital was apparently gaining control over the democratic
-forces, moulding the policy of democratic governments, it was in fact
-digging its own grave. If political democracy in this respect had been
-equal to its task, or if the captains of industry had shown a greater
-scruple or discernment in their use of political power, the
-individualist order might have given us a workable civilisation; or its
-end might have been less painful.
-
-_The Great Illusion_ did not assume its impending demise. Democracy had
-not yet organised socialistic controls within the nation. To have
-assumed that the world of nationalisms would face socialistic regulation
-and control as between States, would have implied an agility on the part
-of the public imagination which it does not in fact possess. An
-international policy on these lines would have been unintelligible and
-preposterous. It is only because the situation which has followed
-victory is so desperate, so much worse than anything _The Great
-Illusion_ forecast, that we have been brought to face these remedies
-to-day.
-
-Before the War, the line of advance, internationally, was not by
-elaborate regulation. We had seen a congeries of States like those of
-the British Empire maintain not only peace but a sort of informal
-Federation, without limitation in any formal way of the national freedom
-of any one of them. Each could impose tariffs against the mother
-country, exclude citizens of the Empire, recognise no common defined
-law. The British Empire seemed to forecast a type of international
-Association which could secure peace without the restraints or
-restrictions of a central authority in anything but the most shadowy
-form. If the merely moral understanding which held it together and
-enabled co-operation in a crisis could have been extended to the United
-States; if the principle of 'self-determination' that had been applied
-to the white portion of the Empire were gradually extended to the
-Asiatic; if a bargain had been made with Germany and France as to the
-open door, and equality of access to undeveloped territory made a matter
-of defined agreement, we should have possessed the nucleus of a world
-organisation giving the widest possible scope for independent national
-development. But world federation on such lines depended above all, of
-course, upon the development of a certain 'spirit,' a guiding temper, to
-do for nations of different origin what had already been done for
-nations of a largely common origin (though Britain has many different
-stocks--English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, and, overseas, Dutch and French
-as well). But the spirit was not there. The whole tradition in the
-international field was one of domination, competition, rivalry,
-conflicting interest, 'Struggle for life.'
-
-The possibility of such a free international life has disappeared with
-the disappearance of the _laisser-faire_ ideal in national organisation.
-We shall perforce be much more concerned now with the machinery of
-control in both spheres as the only alternative to an anarchy more
-devastating than that which existed before the War. For all the reasons
-which point to that conclusion the reader is referred once more to the
-second chapter of the first part of this book.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-THE ARGUMENT AS AN ATTACK ON THE STATE
-
-
-There was not before the War, and there has not been since, any serious
-challenge to the economic argument of _The Great Illusion_. Criticism
-(which curiously enough does not seem to have included the point dealt
-with in the preceding Chapter) seems to have centred rather upon the
-irrelevance of economic considerations to the problem of war--the
-problem, that is, of creating an international society. The answer to
-that is, of course, both explicit and implicit in much of what precedes.
-
-The most serious criticism has been directed to one specific point. It
-is made notably both by Professor Spenser Wilkinson[122] and Professor
-Lindsay,[123] and as it is relevant to the existing situation and to
-much of the argument of the present book, it is worth dealing with.
-
-The criticism is based on the alleged disparagement of the State implied
-in the general attitude of the book. Professor Lindsay (whose article,
-by the way, although hostile and misapprehending the spirit of the book,
-is a model of fair, sincere, and useful criticism) describes the work
-under criticism largely as an attack on the conception of 'the State as
-a person.' He says in effect that the present author argues thus:--
-
-     'The only proper thing to consider is the interest or the happiness
-     of individuals. If a political action conduces to the interests of
-     individuals, it must be right; if it conflicts with these interests
-     it must be wrong.'
-
-Professor Lindsay continues:--
-
-     'Now if pacifism really implied such a view of the relation of the
-     State and the individual, and of the part played by self-interest
-     in life, its appeal has little moral force behind it....
-
-     'Mr. Angell seems to hold that not only is the national State being
-     superseded, but that the supersession is to be welcomed. The
-     economic forces which are destroying the State will do all the
-     State has done to bind men together, and more.'
-
-As a matter of fact Professor Lindsay has himself answered his own
-criticism. For he goes on:--
-
-     'The argument of _The Great Illusion_ is largely based on the
-     public part played by the organisation of credit. Mr Angell has
-     been the first to notice the great significance of its activity. It
-     has misled him, however, into thinking that it presaged a
-     supersession of political by economic control.... The facts are,
-     not that political forces are being superseded by economic, but
-     that the new industrial situation has called into being new
-     political organisations.... To co-ordinate their activities ...
-     will be impossible if the spirit of exclusive nationalism and
-     distrust of foreigners wins the day; it will be equally impossible
-     if the strength of our existing centres of patriotism and public
-     spirit are destroyed.'
-
-Very well. We had here in the pre-war period two dangers, either of
-which in Professor Lindsay's view would make the preservation of
-civilisation impossible: one danger was that men would over-emphasise
-their narrower patriotism and surrender themselves to the pugnacities
-of exclusive nationalism and distrust of foreigners, forgetting that the
-spiritual life of densely packed societies can only be rendered possible
-by certain widespread economic co-operations, contracts; the other
-danger was that we should under-emphasise each our own nationalism and
-give too much importance to the wider international organisation of
-mankind.
-
-Into which danger have we run as a matter of simple fact? Which tendency
-is it that is acting as the present disruptive force in Europe? Has
-opinion and statesmanship--as expressed in the Treaty, for
-instance--given too much or too little attention to the interdependence
-of the world, and the internationally economic foundations of our
-civilisation?
-
-We have seen Europe smashed by neglecting the truths which _The Great
-Illusion_ stressed, perhaps over-stressed, and by surrendering to the
-exclusive nationalism which that book attacked. The book was based on
-the anticipation that Europe would be very much more likely to come to
-grief through over-stressing exclusive nationalism and neglecting its
-economic interdependence, than through the decay of the narrower
-patriotism.
-
-If the book had been written _in vacuo_, without reference to impending
-events, the emphasis might have been different.[124]
-
-But in criticising the emphasis that is thrown upon the welfare of the
-individual, Professor Lindsay would seem to be guilty of confusing the
-_test_ of good political conduct with the _motive_. Certainly _The Great
-Illusion_ did not disparage the need of loyalty to the social group--to
-the other members of the partnership. That need is the burden of most
-that has been written in the preceding pages when dealing with the facts
-of interdependence. An individual who can see only his own interest does
-not see even that; for such interest is dependent on others. (These
-arguments of egoism versus altruism are always circular.) But it
-insisted upon two facts which modern Europe seemed in very great danger
-of forgetting. The first was that the Nation-State was not the social
-group, not co-terminous with the whole of Society, only a very
-arbitrarily chosen part of it; and the second was that the _test_ of the
-'good State' was the welfare of the citizens who composed it. How
-otherwise shall we settle the adjustment between national right and
-international obligation, answer the old and inevitable question, 'What
-is the _Good_ State?' The only intelligible answer is: the State which
-produces good men, subserves their welfare. A State which did not
-subserve the welfare of its citizens, that produced men morally,
-intellectually, physically poor and feeble, could not be a good State. A
-State is tested by the degree to which it serves individuals.
-
-Now the fact of forgetting the first truth, that the Nation-State is not
-the whole of Society but only a part, and that we have obligations to
-the other part, led to a distortion of the second. The Hegelianism which
-denied any obligation above or beyond that of the Nation-State sets up a
-conflict of sovereignties, a competition of power, stimulating the
-instinct of domination, making indeed the power and position of the
-State with reference to rival States the main end of politics. The
-welfare of men is forgotten. The fact that the State is made for man,
-not man for the State, is obscured. It was certainly forgotten or
-distorted by the later political philosophers of Prussia. The oversight
-gave us Prussianism and Imperialism, the ideal of political power as an
-end in itself, against which _The Great Illusion_ was a protest. The
-Imperialism, not alone in Prussia, takes small account of the quality of
-individual life, under the flag. The one thing to be sought is that the
-flag should be triumphant, be flown over vast territories, inspire fear
-in foreigners, and be an emblem of 'glory.' There is a discernible
-distinction of aim and purpose between the Patriot, Jingo, Chauvinist,
-and the citizen of the type interested in such things as social reform.
-The military Patriot the world over does not attempt to hide his
-contempt for efforts at the social betterment of his countryman. That is
-'parish pump.' Mr Maxse or Mr Kipling is keenly interested in England,
-but not in the betterment of Englishmen; indeed, both are in the habit
-of abusing Englishmen very heartily, unless they happen to be soldiers.
-In other words, the real end of politics is forgotten. It is not only
-that the means have become the end, but that one element of the means,
-power, has become the end.
-
-The point I desired to emphasise was that unless we keep before
-ourselves the welfare of the individual as the _test_ of politics (not
-necessarily the motive of each individual for himself) we constantly
-forget the purpose and aim of politics, and patriotism becomes not the
-love of one's fellow countrymen and their welfare, but the love of power
-expressed by that larger 'ego' which is one's group. 'Mystic
-Nationalism' comes to mean something entirely divorced from any
-attribute of individual life. The 'Nation' becomes an abstraction apart
-from the life of the individual.
-
-There is a further consideration. The fact that the Nation-State is not
-co-terminous with Society is shown by its vital need of others; it
-cannot live by itself; it must co-operate with others; consequently it
-has obligations to those others. The demonstration of that fact involves
-an appeal to 'interest,' to welfare. The most visible and vital
-co-operation outside the limits of the Nation-State is the economic; it
-gives rise to the most definite, as to the most fundamental
-obligation--the obligation to accord to others the right to existence.
-It is out of the common economic need that the actual structure of some
-mutual arrangement, some social code, will arise, has indeed arisen.
-This makes the beginning of the first visible structure of a world
-society. And from these homely beginnings will come, if at all, a more
-vivid sense of the wider society. And the 'economic' interest, as
-distinct from the temperamental interest of domination, has at least
-this social advantage. Welfare is a thing that in society may well grow
-the more it is divided: the better my countrymen the richer is my life
-likely to become. Domination has not this quality: it is mutually
-exclusive. We cannot all be masters. If any country is to dominate,
-somebody or some one else's country must be dominated; if the one is to
-be the Superior Race, some other must be inferior. And the inferior
-sooner or later objects, and from that resistance comes the
-disintegration that now menaces us.
-
-It is perfectly true that we cannot create the kind of State which will
-best subserve the interests of its citizens unless each is ready to give
-allegiance to it, irrespective of his immediate personal 'interest.'
-(The word is put in inverted commas because in most men not compelled by
-bad economic circumstances to fight fiercely for daily bread, sheer
-physical sustenance, the satisfaction of a social and creative instinct
-is a very real 'interest,' and would, in a well-organised society, be as
-spontaneous as interest in sport or social ostentation.) The State must
-be an idea, an abstraction, capable of inspiring loyalty, embodying the
-sense of interdependence. But the circumstances of the independent
-modern national State, in frequent and unavoidable contact with other
-similar States, are such as to stimulate not mainly the motives of
-social cohesion, but those instincts of domination which become
-anti-social and disruptive. The nationalist stands condemned not because
-he asks allegiance or loyalty to the social group, but first, because he
-asks absolute allegiance to something which is not the social group but
-only part of it, and secondly, because that exclusive loyalty gives rise
-to disruptive pugnacities, injurious to all.
-
-In pointing out the inadequacy of the unitary political Nation-State as
-the embodiment of final sovereignty, an inadequacy due to precisely the
-development of such organisations as Labour, the present writer merely
-anticipated the drift of much political writing of the last ten years on
-the problem of State sovereignty; as also the main drift of
-events.[125]
-
-If Mr Lindsay finds the very mild suggestions in _The Great Illusion_
-touching the necessary qualification of the sovereignty of the
-Nation-State subversive, one wonders what his feelings are on reading,
-say, Mr Cole, who in a recent book (_Social Theory_) leaves the
-Political State so attenuated that one questions whether what is left is
-not just ghost. At the best the State is just one collateral association
-among others.
-
-The sheer mechanical necessities of administration of an industrial
-society, so immeasurably more complex than the simple agricultural
-society which gave us the unitary political State, seem to be pushing us
-towards a divided or manifold sovereignty. If we are to carry over from
-the National State into the new form of the State--as we seem now in
-danger of doing--the attitude of mind which demands domination for 'our'
-group, the pugnacities, suspicions, and hostilities characteristic of
-nationalist temper, we may find the more complex society beyond our
-social capacity. I agree that we want a common political loyalty, that
-mere obedience to the momentary interest of our group will not give it;
-but neither will the temper of patriotism as we have seen it manifested
-in the European national State. The loyalty to some common code will
-probably only come through a sense of its social need. (It is on the
-ground of its social need that Mr Lindsay defends the political State.)
-At present we have little sense of that need, because we have (as
-Versailles proved) a belief in the effectiveness of our own power to
-exact the services we may require. The rival social or industrial groups
-have a like belief. Only a real sense of interdependence can undermine
-that belief; and it must be a visible, economic interdependence.
-
-A social sense may be described as an instinctive feeling for 'what will
-work.' We are only yet at the beginning of the study of human motive. So
-much is subconscious that we are certainly apt to ascribe to one motive
-conduct which in fact is due to another. And among the neglected motives
-of conduct is perhaps a certain sense of art--a sense, in this
-connection, of the difficult 'art of living together.' It is probably
-true that what some, at least, find so revolting in some of the
-manifestations of nationalism, chauvinism, is that they violently
-challenge the whole sense of what will work, to say nothing of the
-rights of others. 'If every one took that line, nobody could live.' In a
-social sense this is gross and offensive. It has an effect on one like
-the manners of a cad. It is that sort of motive, perhaps, more than any
-calculation of 'interest,' which may one day cause a revulsion against
-Balkanisation. But to that motive some informed sense of interdependence
-is indispensable.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-VINDICATION BY EVENTS
-
-
-If the question merely concerned the past, if it were only a matter of
-proving that this or that 'School of thought' was right, this
-re-examination of arguments put forward before the War would be a
-sterile business enough. But it concerns the present and the future;
-bears directly and pertinently upon the reasons which have led us into
-the existing chaos; and the means by which we might hope to emerge. As
-much to-day as before the War (and far more obviously) is it true that
-upon the reply to the questions raised in this discussion depends the
-continuance of our civilisation. Our society is still racked by a fierce
-struggle for political power, our populations still demand the method of
-coercion, still refuse to face the facts of interdependence, still
-insist clamorously upon a policy which denies those facts.
-
-The propositions we are here discussing were not, it is well to recall,
-merely to the effect that 'war does not pay,' but that the ideas and
-impulses out of which it grows, and which underlay--and still
-underlie--European politics, give us an unworkable society; and that
-unless they can be corrected they will increasingly involve social
-collapse and disintegration.
-
-That conclusion was opposed, as we have seen, on two main grounds. One
-was that the desire for conquest and extension of territory did not
-enter appreciably into the causes of war, 'since no one really believed
-that victory could advantage them.' The other ground of objection, in
-contradistinction, was that the economic advantages of conquest or
-military predominance were so great and so obvious that to deny them was
-mere paradox-mongering.
-
-The validity of both criticisms has been very thoroughly tested in the
-period that has followed the Armistice. Whether it be true or not that
-the competition for territory, the belief that predominant power could
-be turned to economic account, entered into the causes of the War, that
-competition and belief have certainly entered into the settlement and
-must be reckoned among the causes of the next war. The proposition that
-the economic advantages of conquest and coercion are illusory is hardly
-to-day a paradox, however much policy may still ignore the facts.
-
-The outstanding facts of the present situation most worth our attention
-in this connection are these: Military predominance, successful war,
-evidently offer no solution either of specifically international or of
-our common social and economic problems. The political disintegration
-going on over wide areas in Europe is undoubtedly related very
-intimately to economic conditions: actual lack of food, the struggle for
-ever-increasing wages and better conditions. Our attempted remedies--our
-conferences for dealing with international credit, the suggestion of an
-international loan, the loans actually made to the enemy--are a
-confession of the international character of that problem. All this
-shows that the economic question, alike nationally and internationally,
-is not, it is true, something that ought to occupy all the energies of
-men, but something that will, unless dealt with adequately; is a
-question that simply cannot be swept aside with magnificent gestures.
-Finally, the nature of the settlement actually made by the victor, its
-characteristic defects, the failure to realise adequately the victor's
-dependence on the economic life of the vanquished, show clearly enough
-that, even in the free democracies, orthodox statecraft did indeed
-suffer from the misconception which _The Great Illusion_ attributed to
-it.
-
-What do we see to-day in Europe? Our preponderant military
-power--overwhelming, irresistible, unquestioned--is impotent to secure
-the most elementary forms of wealth needed by our people: fuel, food,
-shelter. France, who in the forty years of her 'defeat' had the soundest
-finances in Europe, is, as a victor over the greatest industrial nation
-in Europe, all but bankrupt. (The franc has fallen to a discount of over
-seventy per cent.) All the recurrent threats of extended military
-occupation fail to secure reparations and indemnities, the restoration
-of credit, exchange, of general confidence and security.
-
-And just as we are finding that the things necessary for the life of our
-peoples cannot be secured by military force exercised against foreign
-nations or a beaten enemy, so are we finding that the same method of
-force within the limits of the nation used by one group as against
-another, fails equally. The temper or attitude towards life which leads
-us to attempt to achieve our end by the forcible imposition of our will
-upon others, by dictatorship, and to reject agreement, has produced in
-some degree everywhere revolt and rebellion on the one side, and
-repression on the other; or a general disruption and the breakdown of
-the co-operative processes by which mankind lives. All the raw materials
-of wealth are here on the earth as they were ten years ago. Yet Europe
-either starves or slips into social chaos, because of the economic
-difficulty.
-
-In the way of the necessary co-operation stands the Balkanisation of
-Europe. Why are we Balkanised rather than Federalised? Why do Balkan and
-other border States fight fiercely over this coalfield or that harbour?
-Why does France still oppose trade with Russia, and plot for the control
-of an enlarged Poland or a reactionary Hungary? Why does America now
-wash her hands of the whole muddle in Europe?
-
-Because everywhere the statesmen and the public believe that if only
-the power of their State were great enough, they could be independent of
-rival States, achieve political and economic security and dispense with
-agreements and obligations.
-
-If they had any vivid sense of the vast dangers to which reliance upon
-isolated power exposed any State, however great; if they had realised
-how the prosperity and social peace of their own States depended upon
-the reconciliation and well-being of the vanquished, the Treaty would
-have been a very different document, peace would long since have been
-established with Russia, and the moral foundations of co-operation would
-be present.
-
-By every road that presented itself, _The Great Illusion_ attempted to
-reveal the vital interdependence of peoples--within and without the
-State--and, as a corollary to that interdependence, the very strict
-limits of the force that can be exercised against any one whose life,
-and daily--and willing--labour is necessary to us. It was not merely the
-absence of these ideas but the very active presence of the directly
-contrary ideas of rival and conflicting interest, which explained the
-drift that the present writer thought--and said so often--would, unless
-checked, lead Western civilisation to a vast orgy of physical
-self-destruction and moral violence and chaos.
-
-The economic conditions which constitute one part of the vindication of
-_The Great Illusion_ are of course those described in the first part of
-this book, particularly in the first chapter. All that need be added
-here are a few suggestions as to the relationship between those
-conditions and the propositions we are concerned to verify.
-
-As bearing upon the truth of those propositions, we cannot neglect the
-condition of Germany.
-
-If ever national military power, the sheer efficiency of the military
-instrument, could ensure a nation's political and economic security,
-Germany should have been secure. It was not any lack of the 'impulse to
-defence,' of the 'manly and virile qualities' so beloved of the
-militarist, no tendency to 'softness,' no 'emasculating
-internationalism' which betrayed her. She fell because she failed to
-realise that she too, for all her power, had need of a co-operation
-throughout the world, which her force could not compel; and that she
-must secure a certain moral co-operation in her purposes or be defeated.
-She failed, not for lack of 'intense nationalism,' but by reason of it,
-because the policy which guided the employment of her military
-instrument had in it too small a regard for the moral factors in the
-world at large, which might set in motion material forces against her.
-
-It is hardly possible to doubt that the easy victories of 1871 marked
-the point at which the German spirit took the wrong turning, and
-rendered her statesmen incapable of seeing the forces which were massing
-for her destruction. The presence in 1919 of German delegates at
-Versailles in the capacity of vanquished can only be adequately
-explained by recalling the presence there of German statesmen as victors
-in 1871. It took forty years for some of the moral fruits of victory to
-manifest themselves in the German spirit.
-
-But the very severity of the present German lot is one that lends itself
-to sophistry. It will be argued: 'You say that preponderant military
-power, victory, is ineffective to economic ends. Well, look at the
-difference between ourselves and Germany. The victors, though they may
-not flourish, are at least better off than the vanquished. If we are
-lean, they starve. Our military power is not economically futile.'
-
-If to bring about hardship to ourselves in order that some one else may
-suffer still greater hardship is an economic gain, then it is untrue to
-say that conquest is economically futile. But I had assumed that
-advantage or utility was to be measured by the good to us, not by the
-harm done to others at our cost. We are arguing for the moment the
-economic, and not the ethical aspect of the thing. Keep for a moment to
-those terms. If you were told that an enterprise was going to be
-extremely profitable and you lost half your fortune in it, you would
-certainly regard as curious the logic of the reply, that after all you
-_had_ gained, because others in the same enterprise had lost everything.
-
-We are considering in effect whether the facts show that nations must,
-in order to provide bread for their people, defeat in war competing
-nations who otherwise would secure it. But that economic case for the
-'biological inevitability' of war is destroyed if it is true that, after
-having beaten the rival nation, we find that we have less bread than
-before; that the future security of our food is less; and that out of
-our own diminished store we have to feed a defeated enemy who, before
-his defeat, managed to feed himself, and helped to feed us as well.
-
-And that is precisely what the present facts reveal.
-
-Reference has already been made to the position of France. In the forty
-years of her defeat France was the banker of Europe. She exacted tribute
-in the form of dividends and interest upon investments from Russia, the
-Near East, Germany herself; exacted it in a form which suited the
-peculiar genius of her people and added to the security of her social
-life. She was Germany's creditor, and managed to secure from her
-conqueror of 1871 the prompt payment of the debts owing to her. When
-France was not in a position to compel anything whatsoever from Germany
-by military force, the financial claims of Frenchmen upon Germany were
-readily discountable in any market of the world. To-day, the financial
-claims on Germany, made by a France which is militarily all-powerful,
-simply cannot be discounted anywhere. The indemnity vouchers, whatever
-may be the military predominance behind them, are simply not negotiable
-instruments so long as they depend upon present policy. They are a form
-of paper which no banker would dream of discounting on their commercial
-merits.
-
-To-day France stands as the conquerer of the richest ore-fields in the
-world, of territory which is geographically the industrial centre of
-Europe; of a vast Empire in Africa and Asia; in a position of
-predominance in Poland, Hungary, and Rumania. She has acquired through
-the Reparations Commission such power over the enemy countries as to
-reduce them almost to the economic position of an Asiatic or African
-colony. If ever wealth could be conquered, France has conquered it. If
-political power could really be turned to economic account, France ought
-to-day to be rich beyond any nation in history. Never was there such an
-opportunity of turning military power into wealth.
-
-Then why is she bankrupt? Why is France faced by economic and financial
-difficulties so acute that the situation seems inextricable save by
-social revolution, a social reconstruction, that is, involving new
-principles of taxation, directly aiming at the re-distribution of
-wealth, a re-distribution resisted by the property-owning classes.
-These, like other classes, have since the Armistice been so persistently
-fed upon the fable of making the Boche pay, that the government is
-unable to induce them to face reality.[126]
-
-With a public debt of 233,729 million of francs (about �9,300,000,000,
-at the pre-war rate of exchange); with the permanent problem of a
-declining population accentuated by the loss of millions of men killed
-and wounded in the war, and complicated by the importation of coloured
-labour; with the exchange value of the franc reduced to sixty in terms
-of the British pound, and to fifteen in terms of the American
-dollar,[127] the position of victorious France in the hour of her
-complete military predominance over Europe seems wellnigh desperate.
-
-She could of course secure very considerable alleviation of her present
-difficulties if she would consent to the only condition upon which
-Germany could make a considerable contribution to Reparations; the
-restoration of German industry. But to that one indispensable condition
-of indemnity or reparation France will not consent, because the French
-feel that a flourishing Germany would be a Germany dangerous to the
-security of France.
-
-In this condition one may recall a part of _The Great Illusion_ case
-which, more than any other of the 'preposterous propositions,' excited
-derision and scepticism before the War. That was the part dealing with
-the difficulties of securing an indemnity. In a chapter (of the early
-1910 Edition) entitled _The Indemnity Futility_, occurred these
-passages:--
-
-     'The difficulty in the case of a large indemnity is not so much the
-     payment by the vanquished as the receiving by the victor ...
-
-     'When a nation receives an indemnity of a large amount of gold, one
-     or two things happens: either the money is exchanged for real
-     wealth with other nations, in which case the greatly increased
-     imports compete directly with the home producers, or the money is
-     kept within the frontiers and is not exchanged for real wealth from
-     abroad, and prices inevitably rise.... The rise in price of home
-     commodities hampers the nation receiving the indemnity in selling
-     those commodities in the neutral markets of the world, especially
-     as the loss of so large a sum by the vanquished nation has just the
-     reverse effect of cheapening prices and therefore, enabling that
-     nation to compete on better terms with the conqueror in neutral
-     markets.'--(p. 76.)
-
-The effect of the payment of the French indemnity of 1872 upon German
-industry was analysed at length.
-
-This chapter was criticised by economists in Britain, France, and
-America. I do not think that a single economist of note admitted the
-slightest validity in this argument. Several accused the author of
-adopting protectionist fallacies in an attempt to 'make out a case.' It
-happens that he is a convinced Free Trader. But he is also aware that it
-is quite impracticable to dissociate national psychology from
-international commercial problems. Remembering what popular feeling
-about the expansion of enemy trade must be on the morrow of war, he
-asked the reader to imagine vast imports of enemy goods as the means of
-paying an indemnity, and went on:--
-
-     'Do we not know that there would be such a howl about the ruin of
-     home industry that no Government could stand the clamour for a
-     week?... That this influx of goods for nothing would be represented
-     as a deep-laid plot on the part of foreign nations to ruin the home
-     trade, and that the citizens would rise in their wrath to prevent
-     the accomplishment of such a plot? Is not this very operation by
-     which foreign nations tax themselves to send abroad goods, not for
-     nothing (that would be a crime at present unthinkable), but at
-     below cost, the offence to which we have given the name of
-     "dumping"? When it is carried very far, as in the case of sugar,
-     even Free Trade nations like Great Britain join International
-     Conferences to prevent these gifts being made!...'
-
-The fact that not one single economist, so far as I know, would at the
-time admit the validity of these arguments, is worth consideration. Very
-learned men may sometimes be led astray by keeping their learning in
-watertight compartments, 'economics' in one compartment and 'politics'
-or political psychology in another. The politicians seemed to misread
-the economies and the economists the politics.
-
-What are the post-war facts in this connection? We may get them
-summarised on the one hand by the Prime Minister of Great Britain and on
-the other by the expert adviser of the British Delegation to the Peace
-Conference.
-
-Mr Lloyd George, speaking two years after the Armistice, and after
-prolonged and exhaustive debates on this problem, says:--
-
-     'What I have put forward is an expression of the views of all the
-     experts.... Every one wants gold, which Germany has not got, and
-     they will not take German goods. Nations can only pay debts by
-     gold, goods, services, or bills of exchange on nations which are
-     its debtors.[128]
-
-     'The real difficulty ... is due to the difficulty of securing
-     payment outside the limits of Germany. Germany could pay--pay
-     easily--inside her own boundary, but she could not export her
-     forests, railways, or land across her own frontiers and make them
-     over to the Allies. Take the railways, for example. Suppose the
-     Allies took possession of them and doubled the charges; they would
-     be paid in paper marks which would be valueless directly they
-     crossed the frontier.
-
-     'The only way Germany could pay was by way of exports--that is by
-     difference between German imports and exports. If, however, German
-     imports were too much restricted, the Germans would be unable to
-     obtain food and raw materials necessary for their manufactures.
-     Some of Germany's principal markets--Russia and Central
-     Europe--were no longer purchasers, and if she exported too much to
-     the Allies, it meant the ruin of their industry and lack of
-     employment for their people. Even in the case of neutrals it was
-     only possible generally to increase German exports by depriving our
-     traders of their markets.'[129]
-
-There is not a line here that is not a paraphrase of the chapter in the
-early edition of _The Great Illusion_.
-
-The following is the comment of Mr Maynard Keynes, ex-Advisor to the
-British Treasury, on the claims put forward after the Paris Conference
-of January 1921:--
-
-     'It would be easy to point out how, if Germany could compass the
-     vast export trade which the Paris proposals contemplate, it could
-     only be by ousting some of the staple trades of Great Britain from
-     the markets of the world. Exports of what commodities, we may ask,
-     in addition to her present exports, is Germany going to find a
-     market for in 1922--to look no farther ahead--which will enable her
-     to make the payment of between �150,000,000 and �200,000,000
-     including the export proportion which will be due from her in that
-     year? Germany's five principal exports before the War were iron,
-     steel, and machinery, coal and coke, woollen goods and cotton
-     goods. Which of these trades does Paris think she is going to
-     develop on a hitherto unprecedented scale? Or if not these, what
-     others? And how is she going to finance the import of raw materials
-     which, except in the case of coal and coke, are a prior necessity
-     to manufacture, if the proceeds of the goods when made will not be
-     available to repay the credits? I ask these questions in respect of
-     the year 1922 because many people may erroneously believe that
-     while the proposed settlement is necessarily of a problematic
-     character for the later years--only time can show--it makes some
-     sort of a start possible. These questions are serious and
-     practical, and they deserve to be answered. If the Paris proposals
-     are more than wind, they mean a vast re-organisation of the
-     channels of international trade. If anything remotely like them is
-     really intended to happen, the reactions on the trade and industry
-     of this country are incalculable. It is an outrage that they should
-     be dealt with by the methods of the poker party of which news comes
-     from Paris.'[130]
-
-If the expert economists failed to admit the validity of _The Great
-Illusion_ argument fifteen years ago, the general public has barely a
-glimmering of it to-day. It is true that our miners realise that vast
-deliveries of coal for nothing by Germany disorganise our coal export
-trade. British shipbuilding has been disastrously affected by the Treaty
-clauses touching the surrender of German tonnage--so much so that the
-Government have now recommended the abandonment of these clauses, which
-were among the most stringent and popular in the whole Treaty. The
-French Government has flatly refused to accept German machinery to
-replace that destroyed by the German armies, while French labour refuses
-to allow German labour, in any quantity, to operate in the devastated
-regions. Thus coal, ships, machinery, manufactures, labour, as means of
-payment, have either already created great economic havoc or have been
-rejected because they might. Yet our papers continue to shout that
-'Germany can pay,' implying that failure to do so is merely a matter of
-her will. Of course she can pay--if we let her. Payment means increasing
-German foreign trade. Suppose, then, we put the question 'Can German
-Foreign Trade be increased?' Obviously it can. It depends mainly on us.
-To put the question in its truer form shows that the problem is much
-more a matter of our will than of Germany's. Incidentally, of course,
-German diplomacy has been as stupid as our own. If the German
-representatives had said, in effect: 'It is common ground that we can
-pay only in commodities. If you will indicate the kind and quantity of
-goods we shall deliver, and will facilitate the import into Germany of,
-and the payment for, the necessary food and raw material, we will
-accept--on that condition--even your figures of reparation.' The Allies,
-of course, could not have given the necessary undertaking, and the real
-nature of the problem would have stood revealed.[131]
-
-The review of the situation of France given in the preceding pages will
-certainly be criticised on the ground that it gives altogether too great
-weight to the temporary embarrassment, and leaves out the advantages
-which future generations of Frenchmen will reap.
-
-Now, whatever the future may have in store, it will certainly have for
-France the task of defending her conquests if she either withholds their
-product (particularly iron) from the peoples of Central Europe who need
-them, or if she makes of their possession a means of exacting a tribute
-which they feel to be burdensome and unjust. Again we are faced by the
-same dilemma; if Germany gets the iron, her population goes on
-expanding and her potential power of resistance goes on increasing. Thus
-France's burden of defence would grow steadily greater, while her
-population remained constant or declined. This difficulty of French
-deficiency in human raw material is not a remote contingency; it is an
-actual difficulty of to-day, which France is trying to meet in part by
-the arming of the negro population of her African colonies, and in part
-by the device of satellite militarisms, as in Poland. But the
-precariousness of such methods is already apparent.
-
-The arming of the African negro carries its appalling possibilities on
-its face. Its development cannot possibly avoid the gravest complication
-of the industrial problem. It is the Servile State in its most sinister
-form; and unless Europe is itself ready for slavery it will stop this
-reintroduction of slavery for the purposes of militarism.
-
-The other device has also its self-defeating element. To support an
-imperialist Poland means a hostile Russia; yet Poland, wedged in between
-a hostile Slav mass on the one side and a hostile Teutonic one on the
-other, herself compounded of Russian, German, Austrian, Lithuanian,
-Ukrainian, and Jewish elements, ruled largely by a landowning
-aristocracy when the countries on both sides have managed to transfer
-the great estates to the peasants, is as likely, in these days, to be a
-military liability as a military asset.
-
-These things are not irrelevant to the problem of turning military power
-to economic account: they are of the very essence of the problem.
-
-Not less so is this consideration: If France should for political
-reasons persist in a policy which means a progressive reduction in the
-productivity of Europe, that policy would be at its very roots directly
-contrary to the vital interests of England. The foregoing pages have
-explained why the increasing population of these islands, that live by
-selling coal or its products, are dependent upon the high productivity
-of the outside world. France is self-supporting and has no such
-pre-occupation. Already the divergence is seen in the case of the
-Russian policy. Britain direly needs the wheat of Russia to reduce the
-cost of living--or improve the value of what she has to sell, which is
-very nearly the same thing. France does not need Russian foodstuffs, and
-in terms of narrow self-interest (cutting her losses in Czarist bonds)
-can afford to be indifferent to the devastation of Russia. As soon as
-this divergence reaches a certain degree, rupture becomes inevitable.
-
-The mainspring of French policy during the last two years has been
-fear--fear of the economic revival of Germany which might be the
-beginning of a military revival. The measures necessary to check German
-economic revival inevitably increase German resentment, which is taken
-as proof of the need for increasingly severe measures of repression.
-Those measures are tending already to deprive France of her most
-powerful military Allies. That fact still further increases the burden
-that will be thrown upon her. Such burdens must inevitably make very
-large deductions from the 'profits' of her new conquests.
-
-Note in view of these circumstances some further difficulties of turning
-those conquests to account. Take the iron mines of Lorraine.[132] France
-has now within her borders what is, as already noted, the geographical
-centre of Continental industry. How shall she turn that fact to account?
-
-For the iron to become wealth at all, for France to become the actual
-centre of European industry, there must be a European industry: the
-railroads and factories and steamship lines as consumers of the iron
-must once more operate. To do that they in their turn must have _their_
-market in the shape of active consumption on the part of the millions of
-Europe. In other words the Continent must be economically restored. But
-that it cannot be while Germany is economically paralysed. Germany's
-industry is the very keystone of the European industry and
-agriculture--whether in Russia, Poland, the Balkans, or the Near
-East--which is the indispensable market of the French iron.[133] Even if
-we could imagine such a thing as a reconstruction of Europe on lines
-that would in some wonderful way put seventy or eighty million Germans
-into a secondary place--involving as it would vast redistributions of
-population--the process obviously would take years or generations.
-Meantime Europe goes to pieces. 'Men will not always die quietly' as Mr
-Keynes puts it. What is to become of French credit while France is
-suppressing Bolshevik upheavals in Poland or Hungary caused by the
-starvation of cities through the new economic readjustments? Europe
-famishes now for want of credit. But credit implies a certain dependence
-upon the steady course of future events, some assurance, for instance,
-that this particular railway line to which advances are made will not
-find itself, in a year or two's time, deprived of its traffic in the
-interest of economic rearrangements resulting from an attempt to re-draw
-the economic map of Europe. Nor can such re-drawing disregard the
-present. It is no good telling peasants who have not ploughs or reapers
-or who cannot get fertilisers because their railroad has no locomotives,
-that a new line running on their side of the new frontier will be built
-ten or fifteen years hence. You cannot stop the patients breathing 'for
-just a few hours' while experiments are made with vital organs. The
-operation must adapt itself to the fact that all the time he must
-breathe. And to the degree to which we attempt violently to re-direct
-the economic currents, does the security upon which our credit depends
-decline.[134]
-
-There are other considerations. A French journalist asks plaintively:
-'If we want the coal why don't we go in and take it'--by the occupation
-of the Ruhr. The implication is that France could get the coal for
-nothing. Well, France has taken over the Saar Valley. By no means does
-she get the coal for nothing. The miners have to be paid. France tried
-paying them at an especially low rate. The production fell off; the
-miners were discontented and underfed. They had to be paid more. Even so
-the Saar has been 'very restless' under French control, and the last
-word, as we know, will rest with the men. Miners who feel they are
-working for the enemy of their fatherland are not going to give a high
-production. It is a long exploded illusion that slave labour--labour
-under physical compulsion--is a productive form of labour. Its output
-invariably is small. So assuredly France does not get this coal for
-nothing. And from the difference between the price which it costs her as
-owner of the mines and administrator of their workers, and that which
-she would pay if she had to buy the coal from the original owners and
-administrators (if there is a difference on the credit side at all) has
-to be deducted the ultimate cost of defence and of the political
-complications that that has involved. Precise figures are obviously not
-available; but it is equally obvious that the profit of seizure is
-microscopic.
-
-Always does the fundamental dilemma remain. France will need above all,
-if she is to profit by these raw materials of European industry,
-markets, and again markets. But markets mean that the iron which has
-been captured must be returned to the nation from which it was taken, on
-conditions economically advantageous to that nation. A central Europe
-that is consuming large quantities of metallurgical products is a
-Central Europe growing in wealth and power and potentially dangerous
-unless reconciled. And reconciliation will include economic justice,
-access to the very 'property' that has been seized.
-
-The foregoing is not now, as it was when the present author wrote in
-similar terms a decade since, mere speculation or hypothesis. Our
-present difficulties with reference to the indemnity or reparations, the
-fall in the exchanges, or the supply of coal, are precisely of the order
-just indicated. The conqueror is caught in the grip of just those
-difficulties in turning conquest to economic account upon which _The
-Great Illusion_ so repeatedly insisted.
-
-The part played by credit--as the sensory nerve of the economic
-organism--has, despite the appearances to the contrary in the early part
-of the War, confirmed those propositions that dealt with it. Credit--as
-the extension of the use of money--is society's bookkeeping. The
-debauchery of the currencies means of course juggling with the promises
-to pay. The general relation of credit to a certain dependability upon
-the future has already been dealt with.[135] The object here is to call
-attention to the present admissions that the maintenance or re-creation
-of credit is in very truth an indispensable element in the recovery of
-Europe. Those admissions consist in the steps that are being taken
-internationally, the emphasis which the governments themselves are
-laying upon this factor. Yet ten years ago the 'diplomatic expert'
-positively resented the introduction of such a subject into the
-discussion of foreign affairs at all. Serious consideration of the
-subject was generally dismissed by the orthodox authority on
-international politics with some contemptuous reference to 'cosmopolitan
-usury.'
-
-Even now we seize every opportunity of disguising the truth to
-ourselves. In the midst of the chaos we may sometimes see flamboyant
-statements that England at any rate is greater and richer than before.
-(It is a statement, indeed, very apt to come from our European
-co-belligerents, worse off than ourselves.) It is true, of course, that
-we have extended our Empire; that we have to-day the same materials of
-wealth as--or more than--we had before the War; that we have improved
-technical knowledge. But we are learning that to turn all this to
-account there must be not only at home, but abroad, a widespread
-capacity for orderly co-operation; the diffusion throughout the world of
-a certain moral quality. And the war, for the time being, at least, has
-very greatly diminished that quality. Because Welsh miners have absorbed
-certain ideas and developed a certain temperament, the wealth of many
-millions who are not miners declines. The idea of a self-sufficing
-Empire that can disregard the chaos of the outside world recedes
-steadily into the background when we see the infection of certain ideas
-beginning the work of disintegration within the Empire. Our control over
-Egypt has almost vanished; that over India is endangered; our relations
-with Ireland affect those with America and even with some of our white
-colonies. Our Empire, too, depends upon the prevalence of certain
-ideas.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-COULD THE WAR HAVE BEEN PREVENTED?
-
-
-'But the real irrelevance of all this discussion,' it will be said, 'is
-that however complete our recognition of these truths might have been,
-that recognition would not have affected Germany's action. We did not
-want territory, or colonies, or mines, or oil-wells, or phosphate
-islands, or railway concessions. We fought simply to resist aggression.
-The alternatives for us were sheer submission to aggression, or war, a
-war of self-defence.'
-
-Let us see. Our danger came from Germany's aggressiveness. What made her
-more aggressive than other nations, than those who later became our
-Allies--Russia, Rumania, Italy, Japan, France? Sheer original sin, apart
-from political or economic circumstance?
-
-Now it was an extraordinary thing that those who were most clamant about
-the danger were for the most part quite ready to admit--even to urge and
-emphasise as part of their case--that Germany's aggression was _not_ due
-to inherent wickedness, but that any nation placed in her position would
-behave in just about the same way. That, indeed, was the view of very
-many pre-eminent before the War in their warnings of the German peril,
-of among others, Lord Roberts, Admiral Mahan, Mr Frederic Harrison, Mr
-Blatchford, Professor Wilkinson.
-
-Let us recall, for instance, Mr Harrison's case for German
-aggression--Germany's 'poor access to the sea and its expanding
-population':--
-
-     'A mighty nation of 65,000,000, with such superb resources both for
-     peace and war, and such overweening pride in its own superiority
-     and might, finds itself closed up in a ring-fence too narrow for
-     its fecundity as for its pretensions, constructed more by history,
-     geography, and circumstances than by design--a fence maintained by
-     the fears rather than the hostility of its weaker neighbours. That
-     is the rumbling subterranean volcano on which the European State
-     system rests.
-
-     'It is inevitable but that a nation with the magnificent resources
-     of the German, hemmed in a territory so inadequate to their needs
-     and pretensions, and dominated by a soldier, bureaucratic, and
-     literary caste, all deeply imbued with the Bismarckian doctrine,
-     should thirst to extend their dominions, and their power at any
-     sacrifice--of life, of wealth, and of justice. One must take facts
-     as they are, and it is idle to be blind to facts, or to rail
-     against them. It is as silly to gloss over manifest perils as it is
-     to preach moralities about them.... England, Europe, civilisation,
-     is in imminent peril from German expansion.'[136]
-
-Very well. We are to drop preaching moralities and look at the facts.
-Would successful war by us remove the economic and political causes
-which were part at least of the explanation of German aggression? Would
-her need for expansion become less? The preceding pages answer that
-question. Successful war by us would not dispose of the pressure of
-German population.
-
-If the German menace was due in part at least to such causes as 'poor
-access to the sea,' the absence of any assurance as to future provision
-for an expanding population, what measures were proposed for the removal
-of those causes?
-
-None whatever. Not only so, but any effort towards a frank facing of the
-economic difficulty was resisted by the very people who had previously
-urged the economic factors of the conflict, as a 'sordid' interpretation
-of that conflict. We have seen what happened, for instance, in the case
-of Admiral Mahan. He urged that the competition for undeveloped
-territory and raw materials lay behind the political struggle. So be it;
-replies some one; let us see whether we cannot remove that economic
-cause of conflict, whether indeed there is any real economic conflict at
-all. And the Admiral then retorts that economics have nothing to do with
-it. To Mr Frederic Harrison '_The Great Illusion_ policy is childish and
-mischievous rubbish.' What was that policy? To deny the existence of the
-German or other aggressiveness? The whole policy was prompted by the
-very fact of that danger. Did the policy suggest that we should simply
-yield to German political pretensions? Again, as we have seen, such a
-course was rejected with every possible emphasis. The one outstanding
-implication of the policy was that while arming we must find a basis of
-co-operation by which both peoples could live.
-
-In any serious effort to that end, one overpowering question had to be
-answered by Englishmen who felt some responsibility for the welfare of
-their people. Would that co-operation, giving security to others, demand
-the sacrifice of the interest or welfare of their own people? _The Great
-Illusion_ replied, No, and set forth the reasons for that reply. And the
-setting-forth of those reasons made the book an 'appeal to avarice
-against patriotism,' an attempt 'to restore the blessed hour of money
-getting.' Eminent Nonconformist divines and patriotic stockbrokers
-joined hands in condemning the appalling sordidness of the demonstration
-which might have led to a removal of the economic causes of
-international quarrel.
-
-It is not true to say that in the decade preceding Armageddon the
-alternatives to fighting Germany were exhausted, and that nothing was
-left but war or submission. We simply had not tried the remedy of
-removing the economic excuse for aggression. The fact that Germany did
-face these difficulties and much future uncertainty was indeed urged by
-those of the school of Mr Harrison and Lord Roberts as a conclusive
-argument against the possibility of peace or any form of agreement with
-her. The idea that agreement should reach to such fundamental things as
-the means of subsistence seemed to involve such an invasion of
-sovereignty as not even to be imaginable.
-
-To show that such an agreement would not ask a sacrifice of vital
-national interest, that indeed the economic advantages which could be
-exacted by military preponderance were exceedingly small or
-non-existent, seemed the first indispensable step towards bringing some
-international code of economic right within the area of practical
-politics, of giving it any chance of acceptance by public opinion. Yet
-the effort towards that was disparaged and derided as 'materialistic.'
-
-One hoped at least that this disparagement of material interest as a
-motive in international politics might give us a peace settlement which
-would be free from it. But economic interest which is 'sordid' when
-appealed to as a means of preserving the peace, becomes a sacred egoism
-when invoked on behalf of a policy which makes war almost inevitable.
-
-Why did it create such bitter resentment before the War to suggest that
-we should discuss the economic grounds of international conflict--why
-before the War were many writers who now demand that discussion so angry
-at it being suggested? Among the very hostile critics of _The Great
-Illusion_--hostile mainly on the ground that it misread the motive
-forces in international politics--was Mr J. L. Garvin. Yet his own first
-post-war book is entitled: _The Economic Foundations of Peace_, and its
-first Chapter Summary begins thus:--
-
-     'A primary war, largely about food and raw materials: inseparable
-     connection of the politics and economics of the peace.'
-
-And his first paragraph contains the following:--
-
-     'The war with many names was in one main aspect a war about food
-     supply and raw materials. To this extent it was Germany's fight to
-     escape from the economic position of interdependence without
-     security into which she had insensibly fallen--to obtain for
-     herself independent control of an ample share in the world's
-     supplies of primary resources. The war meant much else, but it
-     meant this as well and this was a vital factor in its causes.'
-
-His second chapter is thus summarised:--
-
-     'Former international conditions transformed by the revolution in
-     transport and telegraphic intelligence; great nations lose their
-     former self-sufficient basis: growth of interdependence between
-     peoples and continents.... Germany without sea power follows
-     Britain's economic example; interdependence without security:
-     national necessities and cosmopolitan speculation: an Armageddon
-     unavoidable.'
-
-Lord Grey has said that if there had existed in 1914 a League of Nations
-as tentative even as that embodied in the Covenant, Armageddon could in
-any case have been delayed, and delay might well have meant prevention.
-We know now that if war had been delayed the mere march of events would
-have altered the situation. It is unlikely that a Russian revolution of
-one kind or another could have been prevented even if there had been no
-war; and a change in the character of the Russian government might well
-have terminated on the one side the Serbian agitation against Austria,
-and on the other the genuine fear of German democrats concerning
-Russia's imperialist ambitions. The death of the old Austrian emperor
-was another factor that might have made for peace.[137]
-
-Assume, in addition to such factors, that Britain had been prepared to
-recognise Germany's economic needs and difficulties, as Mr Garvin now
-urges we should recognise them. Whether even this would have prevented
-war, no man can say. But we can say--and it is implicit in the economic
-case now so commonly urged as to the need of Germany for economic
-security--that since we did not give her that security we did not do all
-that we might have done to remove the causes of war. 'Here in the
-struggle for primary raw materials' says Mr Garvin in effect over the
-six hundred pages more or less of his book, 'are causes of war that must
-be dealt with if we are to have peace.' If then, in the years that
-preceded Armageddon, the world had wanted to avoid that orgy, and had
-had the necessary wisdom, these are things with which it would have
-occupied itself.
-
-Yet when the attempt was made to draw the attention of the world to just
-those factors, publicists even as sincere and able as Mr Garvin
-disparaged it; and very many misrepresented it by silly distortion. It
-is easy now to see where that pre-war attempt to work towards some
-solution was most defective: if greater emphasis had been given to some
-definite scheme for assuring Germany's necessary access to resources,
-the real issue might have been made plainer. A fair implication of _The
-Great Illusion_ was that as Britain had no real interest in thwarting
-German expansion, the best hope for the future lay in an increasingly
-clear demonstration of the fact of community of interest. The more valid
-conclusion would have been that the absence of conflict in vital
-interests should have been seized upon as affording an opportunity for
-concluding definite conventions and obligations which would assuage
-fears on both sides. But criticism, instead of bringing out this defect,
-directed itself, for the most part, to an attempt to show that the
-economic fears or facts had nothing to do with the conflict. Had
-criticism consisted in taking up the problem where _The Great Illusion_
-left it, much more might have been done--perhaps sufficient--to make
-Armageddon unnecessary.[138]
-
-The importance of the phenomenon we have just touched upon--the
-disparagement before war of truths we are compelled to face after
-war--lies in its revelation of subconscious or unconscious motive. There
-grows up after some years of peace in every nation possessing military
-and naval traditions and a habit of dominion, a real desire for
-domination, perhaps even for war itself; the opportunity that it affords
-for the assertion of collective power; the mysterious dramatic impulse
-to 'stop the cackle with a blow; strike, and strike home.'
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-For the moment we are at the ebb of that feeling and another is
-beginning perhaps to flow. The results are showing in our policy. We
-find in what would have been ten years ago very strange places for such
-things, attacks upon the government for its policy of 'reckless
-militarism' in Mesopotamia or Persia. Although public opinion did not
-manage to impose a policy of peace with Russia, it did at least make
-open and declared war impossible, and all the efforts of the Northcliffe
-Press to inflame passion by stories of Bolshevist atrocities fell
-completely flat. For thirty years it has been a crime of _l�se patrie_
-to mention the fact that we have given solemn and repeated pledges for
-the evacuation of Egypt. And indeed to secure a free hand in Egypt we
-were ready to acquiesce in the French evasion of international
-obligations in Morocco, a policy which played no small part in widening
-the gulf between ourselves and Germany. Yet the political position on
-behalf of which ten years ago these risks were taken is to-day
-surrendered with barely a protest. A policy of almost unqualified
-'scuttle' which no Cabinet could have faced a decade since, to-day
-causes scarcely a ripple. And as to the Treaty, certain clauses therein,
-around which centred less than two years ago a true dementia--the trial
-of the Kaiser in London, the trial of war prisoners--we have simply
-forgotten all about.
-
-It is certain that sheer exhaustion of the emotions associated with war
-explains a good deal. But Turks, Poles, Arabs, Russians, who have
-suffered war much longer, still fight. The policy of the loan to
-Germany, the independence of Egypt, the evacuation of Mesopotamia, the
-refusal to attempt the removal of the Bolshevist 'menace to freedom and
-civilisation' by military means, are explained in part at least by a
-growing recognition of both the political and the economic futility of
-the military means, and the absolute need of replacing or supplementing
-the military method by an increasing measure of agreement and
-co-operation. The order of events has been such as to induce an
-interpretation, bring home a conviction, which has influenced policy.
-But the strength and permanence of the conviction will depend upon the
-degree of intelligence with which the interpretation is made. Discussion
-is indispensable and that justifies this re-examination of the
-suggestions made in _The Great Illusion_.
-
-In so far as it is mere emotional exhaustion which we are now feeling,
-and not the beginning of a new tradition and new attitude in which
-intelligence, however dimly, has its part, it has in it little hope. For
-inertia has its dangers as grave as those of unseeing passion. In the
-one case the ship is driven helplessly by a gale on to the rocks, in the
-other it drifts just as helplessly into the whirlpool. A consciousness
-of direction, a desire at least to be master of our fate and to make the
-effort of thought to that end, is the indispensable condition of
-freedom, salvation. That is the first and last justification for the
-discussion we have just summarised.
-
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[1] But British policy can hardly be called less contradictory. A year
-after the enactment of a Treaty which quite avowedly was framed for the
-purpose of checking the development of German trade, we find the
-unemployment crisis producing on the part of the _New Statesman_ the
-following comment:--
-
-'It must be admitted, however, that the present wave of depression and
-unemployment is far more an international than a national problem. The
-abolition of "casual labour" and the adoption of a system of "industrial
-maintenance" would appreciably affect it. The international aspect of
-the question has always been important, but never so overwhelmingly
-important as it is to-day.
-
-'The present great depression, however, is not normal. It is due in the
-main to the breakdown of credit and the demoralisation of the
-"exchanges" throughout Europe. France cannot buy locomotives in England
-if she has to pay 60 francs to the pound sterling. Germany, with an
-exchange of 260 (instead of the pre-war 20) marks to the pound, can buy
-scarcely anything. Russia, for other reasons cannot buy at all. And even
-neutral countries like Sweden and Denmark, which made much money out of
-the war and whose "exchanges" are fairly normal, are financially almost
-_hors de combat_, owing presumably to the ruin of Germany. There appears
-to be no remedy for this position save the economic rehabilitation of
-Central Europe.
-
-'As long as German workmen are unable to exercise their full productive
-capacity, English workmen will be unemployed. That, at present, is the
-root of the problem. For the last two years we, as an industrial nation,
-have been cutting off our nose to spite our face. In so far as we ruin
-Germany we are ruining ourselves; and in so far as we refuse to trade
-with revolutionary Russia we are increasing the likelihood of violent
-upheavals in Great Britain. Sooner or later we shall have to scrap every
-Treaty that has been signed and begin again the creation of the New
-Europe on the basis of universal co-operation and mutual aid. Where we
-have demanded indemnities we must offer loans.
-
-'A system of international credit--founded necessarily on British
-credit--is as great a necessity for ourselves as it is for Central
-Europe. We must finance our customers or lose them and share their ruin,
-sinking deeper every month into the morass of doles and relief works.
-That is the main lesson of the present crisis.'--(Jan. 1st, 1921.)
-
-[2] Out of a population of 45,000,000 our home-grown wheat suffices for
-only about 12,500,000, on the basis of the 1919-20 crop. Sir Henry Rew,
-_Food Supplies in Peace and War_, says: 'On the basis of our present
-population ... we should still need to import 78 per cent. of our
-requirements.' (p. 165). Before the War, according to the same
-authority, home produce supplied 48 per cent. in food value of the total
-consumption, but the table on which this figure is based does not
-include sugar, tea, coffee, or cocoa.
-
-[3] The growing power of the food-producing area and its determination
-to be independent as far as possible of the industrial centre, is a fact
-too often neglected in considering the revolutionary movements of
-Europe. The war of the classes almost everywhere is crossed by another
-war, that between cities and country. The land-owning countryman,
-whether peasant or noble, tends to become conservative, clerical,
-anti-socialist (and anti-social) in his politics and outlook.
-
-[4] 'The Economic Consequences of the Peace,' pp. 275-277.
-
-[5] _Manchester Guardian_, Weekly Edition, February 6th., 1920.
-
-[6] _Daily News_, June 28th., 1920.
-
-[7] Sir William Goode, British Director of Relief, has said, (_Times_
-Dec. 6th., 1919):--
-
-'I have myself recently returned from Vienna. I feel as if I had spent
-ten days in the cell of a condemned murderer who has given up all hope
-of reprieve. I stayed at the best hotel, but I saw no milk and no eggs
-the whole time I was there. In the bitter, cold hall of the hotel, once
-the gayest rendezvous in Europe, the visitors huddled together in the
-gloom of one light where there used to be forty. They were more like
-shadows of the Embankment than representatives of the rich. Vienna's
-world-famous Opera House is packed every afternoon. Why? Women and men
-go there in order to keep themselves warm, and because they have no work
-to do.'
-
-He went on:--
-
-'First aid was to hasten peace. Political difficulties combined with
-decreased production, demoralisation of railway traffic, to say nothing
-of actual shortages of coal, food, and finance, had practically
-paralysed industrial and commercial activity. The bold liberation or
-creation of areas, without simultaneous steps to reorganise economic
-life, had so far proved to be a dangerous experiment. Professor Masaryk,
-the able President of Czecho-Slovakia, put the case in a nutshell when
-he said: "It is a question of the export of merchandise or of
-population."'
-
-[8] The figures for 1913 are:--
-
-  Imports.         From British Possessions      �192,000,000.
-                   From Foreign Countries        �577,000,000.
-  Exports.         To British Possessions        �195,000,000.
-                   To Foreign Countries          �330,000,000.
-  Re-exports.      To British Possessions         �14,000,000.
-                   To Foreign Countries           �96,000,000.
-
-
-[9] The question is dealt with more fully in the last chapter of the
-'Addendum' to this book. The chapter of 'The Great Illusion' dealing
-with the indemnity says: 'The difficulty in the case of a large
-indemnity is not so much the payment by the vanquished as the receiving
-by the victor.' (p. 76, 1910 Edition.) Mr Lloyd George (Jan. 28th.,
-1921) says: 'The real difficulty is in securing payment outside the
-limits of Germany.... The only way Germany can pay is by exports--the
-difference between German imports and exports.... If she exports too
-much for the Allies it means the ruin of their industry.'
-
-Thus the main problem of an indemnity is to secure wealth in exportable
-form which will not disorganise the victor's trade. Yet so obscured does
-the plainest fact become in the murky atmosphere of war time that in
-many of the elaborate studies emanating from Westminster and Paris, as
-to 'What Germany can pay' this phase of the problem is not even touched
-upon. We get calculations as to Germany's total wealth in railroads,
-public buildings, houses, as though these things could be picked up and
-transported to France or Belgium. We are told that the Allies should
-collect the revenues of the railroads; the _Daily Mail_ wants us to
-'take' the income of Herr Stinnes, all without a word as to the form in
-which this wealth is to _leave Germany_. Are we prepared to take the
-things made in the factories of Herr Stinnes or other Germans? If not,
-what do we propose that Germany shall give? Paper marks increased in
-quantity until they reach just the value of the paper they are printed
-on? Even to secure coal, we must, as we have seen, give in return food.
-
-If the crux of the situation were really understood by the memorialists
-who want Germany's pockets searched, their studies would be devoted
-_not_ to showing what Germany might produce under favourable
-circumstances, which her past has shown to be very great indeed, but
-what degree of competitive German production Allied industrialists will
-themselves be ready to face.
-
-"Big business" in England is already strongly averse to the payment of
-an indemnity, as any conversation in the City or with industrialists
-readily reveals. Yet it was the suggestion of what has actually taken
-place which excited the derision of critics a few years ago. Obviously
-the feasibility of an indemnity is much more a matter of our will than
-of Germany's, for it depends on what shall be the size of Germany's
-foreign trade. Clearly we can expand that if we want to. We might give
-her a preference!
-
-[10] 'What Happened to Europe.'
-
-[11] _Times_, July 3rd., 1920.
-
-[12] The proposal respecting Austria was a loan of 50 millions in
-instalments of five years.
-
-[13] Mr Hoover seems to suggest that their repayment should never take
-place. To a meeting of Bankers he says:--
-
-'Even if we extend these credits and if upon Europe's recovery we then
-attempt to exact the payment of these sums by import of commodities, we
-shall have introduced a competition with our own industries that cannot
-be turned back by any tariff wall.... I believe that we have to-day an
-equipment and a skill in production that yield us a surplus of
-commodities for export beyond any compensation we can usefully take by
-way of imported commodities.... Gold and remittances and services cannot
-cover this gulf in our trade balance.... To me there is only one remedy,
-and that is by the systematic permanent investment of our surplus
-production in reproductive works abroad. We thus reduce the return we
-must receive to a return of interest and profit.'
-
-A writer in the _New Republic_ (Dec. 29th., 1920.) who quotes this says
-pertinently enough:--
-
-'Mr Hoover disposes of the principal of our foreign loans. The debtors
-cannot return it and we cannot afford to receive it back. But the
-interest and profit which he says we may receive--that will have to be
-paid in commodities, as the principal would be if it were paid at all.
-What shall we do when the volume of foreign commodities received in
-payment of interest and profit becomes very large and our industries cry
-for protection?'
-
-[14] The present writer declines to join in the condemnation of British
-miners for reduced output. In an ultimate sense (which is no part of the
-present discussion) the decline in effort of the miner is perhaps
-justified. But the facts are none the less striking as showing how great
-the difference of output can be. Figures given by Sir John Cadman,
-President of the Institute of Mining Engineers a short time ago (and
-quoted in the _Fortnightly Review_ for Oct. 1920.), show that in 1916
-the coal production per person employed in the United Kingdom was 263
-tons, as against 731 tons in the United States. In 1918 the former
-amounted to 236 tons, and during 1919 it sank to 197� tons. In 1913 the
-coal produced per man per day in this country was 0.98 tons, and in
-America it was 3.91 tons for bituminous coal and 2.19 tons for
-anthracite. In 1918 the British output figure was 0.80 tons, and the
-American 3.77 tons for bituminous coal and 2.27 for anthracite. Measured
-by their daily output, a single American miner does just as much work as
-do five Englishmen.
-
-The inferiority in production is, of course, 'to some considerable
-extent' due to the fact that the most easily workable deposits in
-England are becoming exhausted, while the United States can most easily
-draw on their most prolific and most easily workable sites....
-
-It is the fact that in our new and favourable coalfields, such as the
-South Yorkshire area, the men working under the most favourable modern
-conditions and in new mines where the face is near the shaft, do not
-obtain as much coal per man employed, as that got by the miners in the
-country generally under the conditions appertaining forty and fifty
-years ago.
-
-[15] Mr J. M. Keynes, 'The Economic Consequences of the Peace,' p. 211,
-says:--'It is an extraordinary fact that the fundamental economic
-problem of a Europe starving and disintegrating before their eyes, was
-the one question in which it was impossible to arouse the interest of
-the Four.'
-
-[16] Incidentally we see nations not yet brought under capitalist
-organisation (e.g. the peasant nations of the Balkans) equally subject
-to the hostilities we are discussing.
-
-Bertrand Russell writes (_New Republic_, September 15th., 1920):--'No
-doubt commercial rivalry between England and Germany had a great deal to
-do with causing the war, but rivalry is a different thing from
-profit-seeking. Probably by combination, English and German capitalists
-could have made more than they did out of rivalry, but the rivalry was
-instinctive, and its economic form was accidental. The capitalists were
-in the grip of nationalist instinct as much as their proletarian
-'dupes.' In both classes some have gained by the war, but the universal
-will to war was not produced by the hope of gain. It was produced by a
-different set of instincts, one which Marxian psychology fails to
-recognise adequately....
-
-Men desire power, they desire satisfaction for their pride and their
-self-respect. They desire victory over their rivals so profoundly that
-they will invent a rivalry for the unconscious purpose of making a
-victory possible. All these motives cut across the pure economic motive
-in ways that are practically important.
-
-There is need of a treatment of political motives by the methods of
-psycho-analysis. In politics, as in private life, men invent myths to
-rationalise their conduct. If a man thinks that the only reasonable
-motive in politics is economic self-advancement, he will persuade
-himself that the things he wishes to do will make him rich. When he
-wants to fight the Germans, he tells himself that their competition is
-ruining his trade. If, on the other hand, he is an 'idealist,' who holds
-that his politics should aim at the advancement of the human race, he
-will tell himself that the crimes of the Germans demand their
-humiliation. The Marxian sees through this latter camouflage, but not
-through the former.
-
-[17] 'If the Englishman sells goods in Turkey or Argentina, he is taking
-trade from the German, and if the German sells goods in either of these
-countries--or any other country, come to that--he is taking trade from
-the Englishman; and the well-being of every inhabitant of the great
-manufacturing towns, such as London, Paris, or Berlin, is bound up in
-the power of the capitalist to sell his wares; and the production of
-manufactured articles has outstripped the natural increase of demand by
-67 per cent., therefore new markets must be found for these wares or the
-existing ones be "forced"; hence the rush for colonies and feverish
-trade competition between the great manufacturing countries. And the
-production of manufactured goods is still increasing, and the great
-cities must sell their wares or starve. Now we understand what trade
-rivalry really is. It resolves itself, in fact, into the struggle for
-bread.' (A Rifleman: '_Struggle for Bread._' p. 54.)
-
-[18] Mr J. M. Keynes, _The Economic Consequences of the Peace_, says: 'I
-do not put the money value of the actual _physical_ loss to Belgian
-property by destruction and loot above �150,000,000 as a _maximum_, and
-while I hesitate to put yet lower an estimate which differs so widely
-from those generally current, I shall be surprised if it proves possible
-to substantiate claims even to this amount.... While the French claims
-are immensely greater, here too, there has been excessive exaggeration,
-as responsible French statisticians have themselves pointed out. Not
-above 10 per cent. of the area of France was effectively occupied by the
-enemy, and not above 4 per cent. lay within the area of substantial
-devastation.... In short, it will be difficult to establish a bill
-exceeding �500,000,000 for _physical and material_ damage in the
-occupied and devastated areas of Northern France.' (pp. 114-117.)
-
-[19] _The Foundations of International Policy_ pp. xxiii-xxiv.
-
-It is true, of course, that Governments were for their armies and navies
-and public departments considerable purchasers in the international
-market. But the general truth of the distinction here made is
-unaffected. The difference in degree, in this respect, between the
-pre-war and post-war state in so great as to make a difference of kind.
-The dominant motive for State action has been changed.
-
-[20] See Addendum and also the authors' _War and the Workers_. (National
-Labour Press). pp. 29-50.
-
-[21] Note of May 22, 1919.
-
-[22] Speech of September 5, 1919. From report in Philadelphia Public
-Ledger, Sept 6.
-
-[23] In German East Africa we have a case in which practically the whole
-of the property in land was confiscated. The whole European population
-were evicted from the farms and plantations--many, of course,
-representing the labour of a lifetime--and deported. A visitor to the
-colony describes it as an empty shell, its productivity enormously
-reduced. In contradistinction, however, one welcomes General Smuts's
-statement in the Union House of Assembly in regard to the Government's
-intentions as to German property. He declared that the balance of nine
-millions in the hands of the Custodian after claims for damages had been
-recovered, would not be paid to the Reparations Commission, as this
-would practically mean confiscation. The Government would take the nine
-millions, plus interest, as a loan to South Africa for thirty years at
-four per cent. While under the Peace Treaty they had the right to
-confiscate all private property in South-West Africa, they did not
-intend to avail themselves of those rights. They would leave private
-property alone. As to the concessions, if the titles to these were
-proved, they would also be left untouched. The statement of the South
-African Government's intentions, which are the most generous of any
-country in the world, was received with repeated cheers from all
-sections of the House.
-
-[24] Since the above lines were written the following important
-announcement has appeared (according to _The Times_ of October 26th.,
-1920.) in the _Board of Trade Journal_ of October 21st.:--
-
-'H. M. Government have informed the German Government that they do not
-intend to exercise their rights under paragraph 18 of Annex II to Part
-VIII of the Treaty of Versailles, to seize the property of German
-nationals in this country in case of voluntary default by Germany. This
-applies to German property in the United Kingdom or under United Kingdom
-control, whether in the form of bank balances, or in that of goods in
-British bottoms, or of goods sent to this country for sale.
-
-'It has already been announced that German property, rights, and
-interests acquired since the publication of the General Licence
-permitting the resumption of trade with Germany (i.e. since July 12th.,
-1919), are not liable to retention under Art. 297 of the Peace Treaty,
-which gives the Allied and Associated Powers the right to liquidate all
-German property, rights, and interests within their territories at the
-date of the coming into force of the Treaty.'
-
-This announcement has called forth strong protests from France and from
-some quarters in this country, to which the British Government has
-rejoined by a semi-official statement that the concession has been made
-solely on account of British commercial interests. The incident
-illustrates the difficulty of waiving even permissive powers under the
-Treaty, although the exercise of those powers would obviously injure
-British traders. Moreover, the Reparations (Recovery) Act, passed in
-March 1921, appears to be inconsistent with the above announcement.
-
-[25] A point that seems to have been overlooked is the effect of this
-Treaty on the arrangements which may follow changes in the political
-status of, say, Egypt or India or Ireland. If some George Washington of
-the future were to apply the principles of the Treaty to British
-property, the effects might be far-reaching.
-
-A _Quarterly Review_ critic (April 1920) says of these clauses of the
-Treaty (particularly Article 297b.):--
-
-'We are justified in regarding this policy with the utmost apprehension,
-not only because of its injustice, but also because it is likely to form
-precedents of a most mischievous character in the future. If, it will be
-said, the Allied Governments ended their great war for justice and right
-by confiscating private property and ruining those unfortunate
-individuals who happened to have investments outside their own country,
-how can private wealth at home complain if a Labour Government proposes
-to confiscate private property in any business which it thinks suitable
-for "nationalisation"? Under another provision the Reparations
-Commission is actually allowed to demand the surrender of German
-properties and German enterprises in _neutral_ countries. This will be
-found in Article 235, which "introduces a quite novel principle in the
-collection of indemnities."'
-
-[26] See quotations in Addendum.
-
-[27] Cmd. 280 (1919), p. 15.
-
-[28] The dilemma is not, of course, as absolute, as this query would
-suggest. What I am trying to make perfectly clear here is the _kind_ of
-problem that faces us rather than the precise degree of its difficulty.
-My own view is that after much suffering especially to the children, and
-the reduction during a generation or two, perhaps, of the physical
-standard of the race, the German population will find a way round the
-sustenance difficulty. For one thing, France needs German coke quite as
-badly as Germany needs French ore, and this common need may be made the
-basis of a bargain. But though Germany may be able to surmount the
-difficulties created for her by her victors, it is those difficulties
-which will constitute her grievance, and will present precisely the
-kind, if not the degree, of injustice here indicated.
-
-[29] One very commonly sees the statement that France had no adequate
-resources in iron ore before the War. This is an entire mistake, as the
-Report of the Commission appointed by the Minister of Munitions to visit
-Lorraine (issued July, 1919), points out (p. 11.):--'Before the War the
-resources of Germany of iron ore were 3,600,000,000 tons and those of
-France 3,300,000,000.' What gave Germany the advantage was the
-possession not of greater ore resources than France, but of coal
-suitable for furnace coke, and this superiority in coal will still
-remain even after the Treaty, although the paralysis of transport and
-other indispensable factors may render the superiority valueless. The
-report just quoted says:--'It is true that Germany will want iron ore
-from Lorraine (in 1913 she took 14,000,000 tons from Briey and
-18,500,000 tons from Lorraine), but she will not be so entirely
-dependent upon this one source of supply as the Lorraine works will be
-upon Germany for coke, unless some means are provided to enable Lorraine
-to obtain coke from elsewhere, or to produce her own needs from Saar
-coal and imported coking coal.' The whole report seems to indicate that
-the _mise en valeur_ of France's new 'property' depends upon supplies of
-German coal--to say nothing of the needs of a German market and the
-markets depending on that market. As it is, the Lorraine steel works are
-producing nothing like their full output because of the inability of
-Germany to supply furnace coke, owing largely to the Westphalian labour
-troubles and transport disorganisation. Whether political passion will
-so far subside as to enable the two countries to come to a bargain in
-the matter of exchange of ore or basic pig-iron for furnace coke,
-remains to be seen. In any case one may say that the ore-fields of
-Lorraine will only be of value to France provided that much of their
-product is returned to Germany and used for the purpose of giving value
-to German coal.
-
-[30] From the summary of a series of lectures on the _Biology of Death_,
-as reported in the _Boston Herald_ of December 19th., 1920.
-
-[31] A recent book on the subject, summing up the various
-recommendations made in France up to 1918 for increasing the birth-rate
-is _La Natalit�: ses Lois Economiques et Psychologiques_, by Gaston
-Rageot.
-
-The present writer remembers being present ten years before the War at a
-Conference at the Sorbonne on this subject. One of the lecturers
-summarised all the various plans that had been tried to increase the
-birth-rate. 'They have all failed,' he concluded, 'and I doubt if
-anything remains to be done.' And one of the savants present added:
-'Except to applaud.'
-
-[32] Mr William Harbutt Dawson gives the figures as follows:--
-
-'The decline in the birth-rate was found to have become a settled factor
-in the population question.... The birth-rate for the whole Empire
-reached the maximum figure in 1876, when it stood at 41.0 per 1000 of
-the population.... Since 1876 the movement has been steadily downward,
-with the slightest possible break at the beginning of the 'nineties....
-Since 1900 the rate has decreased as follows:--
-
-  1900      35.6 per 1000.
-  1901      35.7 per   "
-  1902      35.1 per   "
-  1903      33.9 per   "
-  1904      34.1 per 1000.
-  1905      33.0 per   "
-  1906      33.1 per   "
-
-(_The Evolution of Modern Germany._ p. 309)
-
-[33] Conversely it may be said that the economic position of the border
-States becomes impossible unless the greater States are orderly. In
-regard to Poland, Mr Keynes remarks: 'Unless her great neighbours are
-prosperous and orderly, Poland is an economic impossibility, with no
-industry but Jew-baiting.'
-
-Sir William Goode (the British Director of Relief) states that he found
-'everywhere never-ending vicious circles of political paradox and
-economic complication, with consequent paralysis of national life and
-industry. The new States of repartitioned Europe seem not only incapable
-of maintaining their own economic life, but also either unable or
-unwilling to help their neighbours.' (Cmd. 521 (1920), p. 6.)
-
-[34] From a manifesto signed by a large number of American
-intellectuals, business men, and Labour Leaders ('League of Free Nations
-Association') on the eve of President Wilson's departure for Paris.
-
-[35] Interview published by _Pearson's Magazine_, March, 1915.
-
-[36] _Times_, March 8, 1915. 'Our honour and interest must have
-compelled us to join France and Russia even if Germany had scrupulously
-respected the rights of her small neighbours and had sought to hack her
-way through the Eastern fortresses. The German Chancellor has insisted
-more than once upon this truth. He has fancied apparently that he was
-making an argumentative point against us by establishing it. That, like
-so much more, only shows his complete misunderstanding of our attitude
-and our character.... We reverted to our historical policy of the
-Balance of Power.'
-
-The _Times_ maintains the same position five years later (July 31st,
-1920): 'It needed more than two years of actual warfare to render the
-British people wholly conscious that they were fighting not a quixotic
-fight for Belgium and France, but a desperate battle for their own
-existence.'
-
-[37] _How the War Came_, p. 238.
-
-[38] Lord Loreburn adds:--
-
-'But Sir Edward Grey in 1914 did not and could not offer similar
-Treaties to France and Germany because our relations with France and the
-conduct of Germany were such, that for us to join Germany in any event
-was unthinkable. And he did not proclaim our neutrality because our
-relations with France, as described in his own speech, were such that he
-could not in honour refuse to join France in the war. Therefore the
-example of 1870 could not be followed in 1914, and Belgium was not saved
-but destroyed.'
-
-[39] See the Documents published by the Russian Government in November,
-1917.
-
-[40] It is not clear whether the undertaking to Russia was actually
-given. Lord R. Cecil in the House of Commons on July 24th, 1917, said:
-'It will be for this country to back up the French in what they desire.
-I will not go through all the others of our Allies--there are a good
-many of them--but the principle (to stand by our Allies) will be equally
-there in the case of all and particularly in the case of Serbia.'
-
-[41] Since these lines were written, there has been a change of
-government and of policy in Italy. An agreement has been reached with
-Yugo-Slavia, which appears to satisfy the moderate elements in both
-countries.
-
-[42] Lord Curzon (May 17th, 1920) wrote that he did not see how we could
-invoke the League to restrain Poland. The Poles, he added, must choose
-war or peace on their own responsibility. Mr Lloyd George (June 19th,
-1920) declared that 'the League of Nations could not intervene in
-Poland.'
-
-[43] _The War that will End War_, p. 14.
-
-[44] _Ibid._, p. 19.
-
-[45] _The Issue_, p. 37-39.
-
-[46] _Land and Water_, February 21st, 1918.
-
-[47] Even as late as January 13th, 1920, Mr H. W. Wilson of the _Daily
-Mail_ writes that if the disarmament of Germany is carried out 'the real
-cause of swollen armaments in Europe will vanish.'
-
-On May 18th, 1920, Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson (_Morning Post_, May
-19th) declares himself thus:--
-
-'We were told that after this last war we were to have peace. We have
-not; there are something between twenty and thirty bloody wars going on
-at the present moment. We were told that the great war was to end war.
-It did not; it could not. We have a very difficult time ahead, whether
-on the sea, in the air, or on the land.' He wanted them to take away the
-warning from a fellow soldier that their country and their Empire both
-wanted them to-day as much as ever they had, and if they were as proud
-of belonging to the British Empire as he was they would do their best,
-in whatever capacity they served, to qualify themselves for the times
-that were coming.
-
-[48] July 31st, 1920.
-
-[49] April 19th, 1919.
-
-[50] A Reuter Despatch dated August 31st, 1920, says:--
-
-'Speaking to-day at Charleston (West Virginia) Mr Daniels, U. S. Naval
-Secretary, said: "We are building enormous docks and are constructing 18
-dreadnoughts and battle cruisers, with a dozen other powerful ships
-which in effective fighting power will give our navy world primacy."'
-
-[51] We are once more back to the Carlylean 'deep, patient ... virtuous
-... Germany.'
-
-[52] Sir Henry Wilson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, in a
-memorandum dated December 1st, 1919, which appears in a Blue Book on
-'the Evacuation of North Russia, 1919,' says:--'There is one great
-lesson to be learned from the history of the campaign.... It is that
-once a military force is involved in operations on land it is almost
-impossible to limit the magnitude of its commitments.'
-
-[53] And Russo-German co-operation is of course precisely what French
-policy must create. Says an American critic:--
-
-'France certainly carries a big stick, but she does not speak softly;
-she takes her own part, but she seems to fear neither God nor the
-revulsion of man. Yet she has reason to fear. Suppose she succeeds for a
-while in reducing Germany to servitude and Russia to a dictatorship of
-the Right, in securing her own dominion on the Continent as overlord by
-the petty States of Europe. What then? What can be the consequence of a
-common hostility of the Teutonic and Slavonic peoples, except in the end
-common action on their part to throw off an intolerable yoke? The
-nightmare of a militant Russo-German alliance becomes daily a more
-sinister prophecy, as France teaches the people of Europe that force
-alone is the solvent. France has only to convince all of Germany that
-the Treaty of Versailles will be enforced in all its rigour, which means
-occupation of the Ruhr and the loss of Silesia, to destroy the final
-resistance of those Germans who look to the West rather than to the East
-for salvation. Let it be known that the barrier of the Rhine is all
-bayonet and threat, and western-minded Germany must go down before the
-easterners, Communist or Junker. It will not matter greatly which.'
-(_New Republic_, Sept. 15th, 1920).
-
-[54] December 23rd, 1919.
-
-[55] _The Times_ of September 4th, 1920 reproduces an article from the
-Matin, on M. Millerand's policy with regard to small States. M.
-Millerand's aim was that economic aid should go hand in hand with French
-military protection. With this policy in view, a number of large
-businesses recently passed under French control, including the Skoda
-factory in Czecho-Slovakia, big works at Kattowitz in Upper Silesia, the
-firm of Huta-Bankowa in Poland, railway factories in Rumania, and
-certain river systems and ports in Yugo-Slavia. In return for assistance
-to Admiral Horthy, an agreement was signed whereby France obtained
-control of the Hungarian State Railways, of the Credit Bank, the
-Hungarian river system and the port of Buda-pest. Other reports state
-that France has secured 85 per cent. of the oil-fields of Poland, in
-return for her help at the time of the threat to Warsaw. As the majority
-of shares in the Polish Oil Company 'Galicia,' which have been in
-British hands until recently, have been bought up by a French Company,
-the 'Franco-Polonaise,' France now holds an important weapon of
-international policy.
-
-[56] The present writer would like to enter a warning here that nothing
-in this chapter implies that we should disregard France's very
-legitimate fears of a revived militarist Germany. The implication is
-that she is going the right way about to create the very dangers that
-terrify her. If this were the place to discuss alternative policies, I
-should certainly go on to urge that England--and America--should make it
-plain to France that they are prepared to pledge their power to her
-defence. More than that, both countries should offer to forgo the debts
-owing to them by France on condition of French adhesion to more workable
-European arrangements. The last thing to be desired is a rupture, or a
-mere change of r�les: France to become once more the 'enemy' and Germany
-once more the 'Ally.' That outcome would merely duplicate the weary
-story of the past.
-
-[57] _The Expansion of England_, p. 202.
-
-[58] The assumption marks even post-war rhetoric. M. Millerand's message
-to the Senate and Chamber upon his election as President of the Republic
-says: 'True to the Alliances for ever cemented by blood shed in common,'
-France will strictly enforce the Treaty of Versailles, 'a new charter of
-Europe and the World.' (_Times_, Sept. 27th, 1920). The passage is
-typical of the moral fact dealt with in this chapter. M. Millerand
-knows, his hearers know, that the war Alliance 'for ever cemented by
-blood shed in common,' has already ceased to exist. But the admission of
-this patent fact would be fatal to the 'blood' heroics.
-
-[59] Dr L. P. Jacks, Editor of _The Hibbert Journal_, tells us that
-before the War the English nation, regarded from the moral point of
-view, was a scene of 'indescribable confusion; a moral chaos.' But there
-has come to it 'the peace of mind that comes to every man who, after
-tossing about among uncertainties, finds at last a mission, a cause to
-which he can devote himself.' For this reason, he says, the War has
-actually made the English people happier than they were before:
-'brighter, more cheerful. The Englishman worries less about himself....
-The tone and substance of conversation are better.... There is more
-health in our souls and perhaps in our bodies.' And he tells how the War
-cured a friend of insomnia. (_The Peacefulness of Being at War_, _New
-Republic_, September 11, 1915).
-
-[60] The facts of both the Russian and the Italian bargains are dealt
-with in more detail in Chap. III.
-
-[61] Quoted by Mr T. L. Stoddard in an article on Italian Nationalism,
-in the _Forum_, Sept. 1915. One may hope that the outcome of the War has
-modified the tendencies in Italy of which he treats. But the quotations
-he makes from Italian Nationalist writers put Treitschke and Bernhardi
-in the shade. Here are some. Corradini says: 'Italy must become once
-more the first nation in the world.' Rocco: 'It is said that all the
-other territories are occupied. But strong nations, or nations on the
-path of progress, conquer.... territories occupied by nations in
-decadence.' Luigi Villari rejoices that the cobwebs of mean-spirited
-Pacifism have been swept away. Italians are beginning to feel, in
-whatever part of the world they may happen to be, something of the pride
-of Roman citizens.' Scipione Sighele writes: 'War must be loved for
-itself.... To say "War is the most horrible of evils," to talk of war as
-"an unhappy necessity," to declare that we should "never attack but
-always know how to defend ourselves," to say these things is as
-dangerous as to make out-and-out Pacifist and anti-militarist speeches.
-It is creating for the future a conflict of duties: duties towards
-humanity, duties towards the Fatherland.' Corradini explains the
-programme of the Nationalists: 'All our efforts will tend towards making
-the Italians a warlike race. We will give it a new will; we will instil
-into it the appetite for power, the need of mighty hopes. We will create
-a religion--the religion of the Fatherland victorious over the other
-nations.'
-
-I am indebted to Mr Stoddard for the translations; but they read quite
-'true to type.'
-
-[62] It is true that the Labour Party, alone of all the parties, did
-take action, happily effective, against the Russian adventure--after it
-had gone on in intermittent form for two years. But the above paragraphs
-refer particularly to the period which immediately succeeded the War,
-and to a general temper which was unfortunately a fact despite Labour
-action.
-
-[63] Mr Hartley Manners, the playwright, who produced during the War a
-book entitled _Hate with a Will to Victory_, writes thus:--
-
-'And in voicing our doctrine of Hate let us not forget that the German
-people were, and are still, solidly behind him (the Kaiser) in
-everything he does.' ...
-
-'The German people are actively and passively with their Government to
-the last man and the last mark. No people receive their faith and their
-rules of conduct more fatuously from their rulers than do the German
-people. Fronting the world they stand as one with their beloved Kaiser.
-He who builds on a revolution in Germany as a possible ending of the
-war, knows not what he says. They will follow through any degradation of
-the body, through any torture of spirit, the tyrants they have been
-taught from infancy to regard as their Supreme Masters of body and
-soul.' ...
-
-And here is his picture of 'the German':--
-
-... 'a slave from birth, with no rights as a free man, owing allegiance
-to a militaristic Government to whom he looks for his very life; crushed
-by taxation to keep up the military machine; ill-nourished, ignorant,
-prone to crime in greater measure than the peasants of any other
-country--as the German statistics of crime show--a degraded peasant, a
-wretched future, and a loathesome past--these are the inheritances to
-which the German peasant is born. What type of nature can develop in
-such conditions? But one--the _brute_. And the four years' commerce of
-this War has shown the German from prince to peasant as offspring of the
-one family--the _brute_ family.' ...
-
-[64] The following--which appeared in _The Times_ of April 17, 1915--is
-merely a type of at least thirty or forty similar reports published by
-the German Army Headquarters: 'In yesterday's clear weather the airmen
-were very active. Enemy airmen bombarded places behind our positions.
-Freiburg was again visited, and several civilians, the majority being
-children, were killed and wounded.' A few days later the Paris _Temps_
-(April 22, 1915) reproduced the German accounts of French air-raids
-where bombs were dropped on Kandern, Loerrach, Mulheim, Habsheim,
-Wiesenthal, T�blingen, Mannheim. These raids were carried out by squads
-of airmen, and the bombs were thrown particularly at railway stations
-and factories. Previous to this, British and French airmen had been
-particularly active in Belgium, dropping bombs on Zeebrugge, Bruges,
-Middlekirke, and other towns. One German official report tells how a
-bomb fell on to a loaded street car, killing many women and children.
-Another (dated September 7, 1915) contains the following: 'In the course
-of an enemy aeroplane attack on Lichtervelde, north of Roulers in
-Flanders, seven Belgian inhabitants were killed and two injured.' A
-despatch from Z�rich, dated Sept. 24, 1915, says: 'At yesterday's
-meeting of the Stuttgart City Council, the Mayor and Councillors
-protested vigorously against the recent French raid upon an undefended
-city. Burgomaster Lautenschlager asserted that an enemy that attacked
-harmless civilians was fighting a lost cause.'
-
-[65] March 27th, 1919.
-
-[66] In Drinkwater's play, _Abraham Lincoln_, the fire-eating wife of
-the war-profiteer, who had been violently abusing an old Quaker lady, is
-thus addressed by Lincoln:--
-
-'I don't agree with her, but I honour her. She's wrong, but she is
-noble. You've told me what you think. I don't agree with you, and I'm
-ashamed of you and your like. You, who have sacrificed nothing babble
-about destroying the South while other people conquer it. I accepted
-this war with a sick heart, and I've a heart that's near to breaking
-every day. I accepted it in the name of humanity, and just and merciful
-dealing, and the hope of love and charity on earth. And you come to me,
-talking of revenge and destruction, and malice, and enduring hate. These
-gentle people are mistaken, but they are mistaken cleanly, and in a
-great name. It is you that dishonour the cause for which we stand--it is
-you who would make it a mean and little thing....'
-
-[67] The official record of the Meeting of the Council of Ten on January
-16, 1919, as furnished to the Foreign Relations Committee of the
-American Senate, reports Mr Lloyd George as saying:--
-
-'The mere idea of crushing Bolshevism by military force is pure
-madness....
-
-'The Russian blockade would be a "death cordon," condemning women and
-children to starvation, a policy which, as humane people, those present
-could not consider.'
-
-[68] While attempting in this chapter to reveal the essential difference
-of the two methods open to us, it is hardly necessary to say that in the
-complexities and cross-currents of human society practical policy can
-rarely be guided by a single absolute principle. Reference has been made
-to the putting of the pooled force of the nations behind a principle or
-law as the alternative of each attempting to use his own for enforcing
-his own view. The writer does not suppose for an instant that it is
-possible immediately to draw up a complete Federal Code of Law for
-Europe, to create a well-defined European constitution and then raise a
-European army to defend it, or body of police to enforce it. He is
-probably the last person in the world likely to believe the political
-ideas of the European capable of such an agile adaptation.
-
-[69] Delivered at Portland, Maine, on March 28th, 1918; reported in _New
-York Times_, March 29th.
-
-[70] Bertrand Russell: _Principles of Social Reconstruction._
-
-Mr. Trotter in _Instincts of the Herd in War and Peace_, says:--
-
-'We see one instinct producing manifestations directly hostile to each
-other--prompting to ever-advancing developments of altruism while it
-necessarily leads to any new product of advance being attacked. It
-shows, moreover ... that a gregarious species rapidly developing a
-complex society can be saved from inextricable confusion only by the
-appearance of reason and the application of it to life. (p. 46.)
-
-... 'The conscious direction of man's destiny is plainly indicated by
-Nature as the only mechanism by which the social life of so complex an
-animal can be guaranteed against disaster and brought to yield its full
-possibilities, (p. 162.)
-
-... 'Such a directing intelligence or group of intelligences would take
-into account before all things the biological character of man.... It
-would discover when natural inclinations in man must be indulged, and
-would make them respectable, what inclinations in him must be controlled
-for the advantage of the species, and make them insignificant.' (p.
-162-3.)
-
-[71] The opening sentence of a five volume _History of the Peace
-Conference of Paris_, edited by H. W. V. Temperley, and published under
-the auspices of the Institute of International Affairs, is as follows:--
-
-'The war was a conflict between the principles of freedom and of
-autocracy, between the principles of moral influence and of material
-force, of government by consent and of government by compulsion.'
-
-[72] Foremost as examples stand out the claims of German Austria to
-federate with Germany; the German population of the Southern Tyrol with
-Austria; the Bohemian Germans with Austria; the Transylvanian Magyars
-with Hungary; the Bulgarians of Macedonia, the Bulgarians of the
-Dobrudja, and the Bulgarians of Western Thrace with Bulgaria; the Serbs
-of the Serbian Banat with Yugo-Slavia; the Lithuanians and Ukrainians
-for freedom from Polish dominion.
-
-[73] We know now (see the interview with M. Paderewski in the _New York
-World_) that we compelled Poland to remain at war when she wanted to
-make peace. It has never been fully explained why the Prinkipo peace
-policy urged by Mr Lloyd George as early as December 1918 was defeated,
-and why instead we furnished munitions, tanks, aeroplanes, poison gas,
-military missions and subsidies in turn to Koltchak, Denikin, Yudenitch,
-Wrangel, and Poland. We prolonged the blockade--which in the early
-phases forbade Germany that was starving to catch fish in the Baltic,
-and stopped medicine and hospital supplies to the Russians--for fear,
-apparently, of the very thing which might have helped to save Europe,
-the economic co-operation of Russia and Central Europe.
-
-[74] 'We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling
-towards them but one of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon their
-impulse that their government acted in entering this war.' ... 'We are
-glad ... to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world, and for the
-liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included: for the rights
-of nations great and small ... to choose their way of life.' (President
-Wilson, Address to Congress, April 2nd, 1917).
-
-[75] _The Economic Consequences of the Peace_, p. 211.
-
-[76] See quotations from Sir A. Conan Doyle, later in this Chapter.
-
-[77] See, e.g., the facts as to the repression of Socialism in America,
-Chapter V.
-
-[78] _The Atlantic Monthly_, November 1920.
-
-[79] _Realities of War_, pp. 426-7, 441.
-
-[80] Is it necessary to say that the present writer does not accept it?
-
-[81] The argument is not invalidated in the least by sporadic instances
-of liberal activity here--an isolated article or two. For iteration is
-the essence of propaganda as an opinion forming factor.
-
-[82] In an article in the _North American Review_, just before America's
-entrance into the War, I attempted to indicate the danger by making one
-character in an imaginary symposium say: 'One talks of "Wilson's
-programme," "Wilson's policy." There will be only one programme and one
-policy possible as soon as the first American soldier sets foot on
-European soil: Victory. Bottomley and Maxse will be milk and water to
-what we shall see America producing. We shall have a settlement so
-monstrous that Germany will offer any price to Russia and Japan for
-their future help.... America's part in the War will absorb about all
-the attention and interest that busy people can give to public affairs.
-They will forget about these international arrangements concerning the
-sea, the League of Peace--the things for which the country entered the
-War. In fact if Wilson so much as tries to remind them of the objects of
-the War he will be accused of pro-Germanism, and you will have their
-ginger Press demanding that the "old gang" be "combed out."'
-
-[83] 'If we take the extremist 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.' (_What is
-coming?_ p. 198).
-
-[84] See the memoranda published in _The Secrets of Crewe House_.
-
-[85] Mr Keynes is not alone in declaring that the Treaty makes of our
-armistice engagements a 'scrap of paper.' _The Round Table_, in an
-article which aims at justifying the Treaty as a whole, says: 'Opinions
-may differ as to the actual letter of the engagements which we made at
-the Armistice, but the spirit of them is undoubtedly strained in some of
-the detailed provisions of the peace. There is some honest ground for
-the feeling manifested in Germany that the terms on which she laid down
-her arms have not been observed in all respects.'
-
-A very unwilling witness to our obligations is Mr Leo Maxse, who writes
-(_National Review_, February, 1921):--
-
-'Thanks to the American revelations we are in a better position to
-appreciate the trickery and treachery of the pre-Armistice negotiations,
-as well as the hideous imposture of the Paris Peace Conference, which,
-we now learn for the first time, was governed by the self-denying
-ordinance of the previous November, when, unbeknown to the countries
-betrayed, the Fourteen Points had been inextricably woven into the
-Armistice. Thus was John Bull effectively 'dished' of every farthing of
-his war costs.'
-
-As a fact, of course, the self-denying ordinance was not 'unbeknown to
-the countries betrayed.' The Fourteen Points commitment was quite open;
-the European Allies could have repudiated them, as, on one point,
-Britain did.
-
-[86] A quite considerable school, who presumably intend to be taken
-seriously, would have us believe that the French Revolution, the Russian
-Revolution, the English Trade Union Movement are all the work of a small
-secret Jewish Club or Junta--their work, that is, in the sense that but
-for them the Revolutions or Revolutionary movements would not have taken
-place. These arguments are usually brought by 'intense nationalists' who
-also believe that sentiments like nationalism are so deeply rooted that
-mere ideas or theories can never alter them.
-
-[87] An American playwright has indicated amusingly with what ingenuity
-we can create a 'collectivity.' One of the characters in the play
-applies for a chauffeur's job. A few questions reveal the fact that he
-does not know anything about it. 'Why does he want to be a chauffeur?'
-'Well, I'll tell you, boss. Last year I got knocked down by an
-automobile and badly hurt. And I made up my mind that when I came out of
-the hospital I'd get a bit of my own back. Get even by knocking over a
-few guys, see?' A policy of 'reprisals,' in fact.
-
-[88] December 26th, 1917.
-
-[89] A thing which happens about once a week in the United States.
-
-[90] October 16th, 1917.
-
-[91] The amazing rapidity with which we can change sides and causes, and
-the enemy become the Ally, and the Ally the enemy, in the course of a
-few weeks, approaches the burlesque.
-
-At the head of the Polish armies is Marshal Pilsudski, who fought under
-Austro-German command, against Russia. His ally is the Ukrainian
-adventurer, General Petlura, who first made a separate peace at
-Brest-Litovsk, and contracted there to let the German armies into the
-Ukraine, and to deliver up to them its stores of grain. These in May
-1920 were the friends of the Allies. The Polish Finance Minister at the
-time we were aiding Poland was Baron Bilinski, a gentleman who filled
-the same post in the Austrian Cabinet which let loose the world war,
-insisted hotly on the ultimatum to Serbia, helped to ruin the finances
-of the Hapsburg dominions by war, and then after the collapse repeated
-the same operation in Poland. On the other side the command has passed,
-it is said, to the dashing General Brusiloff, who again and again saved
-the Eastern front from Austrian and German offensives. He is now the
-'enemy' and his opponents our 'Allies.' They are fighting to tear the
-Ukraine, which means all South Russia, away from the Russian State. The
-preceding year we spent millions to achieve the opposite result. The
-French sent their troops to Odessa, and we gave our tanks to Denikin, in
-order to enable him to recover this region for Imperial Russia.
-
-[92] The Russian case is less evident. But only the moral inertia
-following on a long war could have made our Russian record possible.
-
-[93] He complained that I had 'publicly reproved him' for supporting
-severity in warfare. He was mistaken. As he really did believe in the
-effectiveness of terrorism, he did a very real service by standing
-publicly for his conviction.
-
-[94] Here is what the _Times_ of December 10th, 1870, has to say about
-France and Germany respectively, and on the Alsace-Lorraine question:--
-
-'We must say with all frankness that France has never shown herself so
-senseless, so pitiful, so worthy of contempt and reprobation, as at the
-present moment, when she obstinately declines to look facts in the face,
-and refuses to accept the misfortune her own conduct has brought upon
-her. A France broken up in utter anarchy, Ministers who have no
-recognised chief, who rise from the dust in their air balloons, and who
-carry with them for ballast shameful and manifest lies and proclamations
-of victories that exist only in their imagination, a Government which is
-sustained by lies and imposture, and chooses rather to continue and
-increase the waste of lives than to resign its own dictatorship and its
-wonderful Utopia of a republic; that is the spectacle which France
-presents to-day. It is hard to say whether any nation ever before
-burdened itself with such a load of shame. The quantity of lies which
-France officially and unofficially has been manufacturing for us in the
-full knowledge that they are lies, is something frightful and absolutely
-unprecedented. Perhaps it is not much after all in comparison with the
-immeasurable heaps of delusions and unconscious lies which have so long
-been in circulation among the French. Their men of genius who are
-recognised as such in all departments of literature are apparently of
-opinion that France outshines other nations in a superhuman wisdom, that
-she is the new Zion of the whole world, and that the literary
-productions of the French, for the last fifty years, however insipid,
-unhealthy, and often indeed devilish, contain a real gospel, rich in
-blessing for all the children of men.
-
-We believe that Bismarck will take as much of Alsace-Lorraine, too, as
-he chooses, and that it will be the better for him, the better for us,
-the better for all the world but France, and the better in the long run
-for France herself. Through large and quiet measures, Count von Bismarck
-is aiming with eminent ability at a single object; the well-being of
-Germany and of the world, of the large-hearted, peace-loving,
-enlightened, and honest people of Germany growing into one nation; and
-if Germany becomes mistress of the Continent in place of France, which
-is light-hearted, ambitious, quarrelsome, and over-excitable, it will be
-the most momentous event of the present day, and all the world must hope
-that it will soon come about.'
-
-[95] We realise without difficulty that no society could be formed by
-individuals each of whom had been taught to base his conduct on adages
-such as these: 'Myself alone'; 'myself before anybody else'; 'my ego is
-sacred'; 'myself over all'; 'myself right or wrong.' Yet those are the
-slogans of Patriotism the world over and are regarded as noble and
-inspiring, shouted with a moral and approving thrill.
-
-[96] However mischievous some of the manifestations of Nationalism may
-prove, the worst possible method of dealing with it is by the forcible
-repression of any of its claims which can be granted with due regard to
-the general interest. To give Nationalism full play, as far as possible,
-is the best means of attenuating its worst features and preventing its
-worst developments. This, after all, is the line of conduct which we
-adopt to certain religious beliefs which we may regard as dangerous
-superstitions. Although the belief may have dangers, the social dangers
-involved in forcible repression would be greater still.
-
-[97] _The Great Illusion_, p. 326
-
-[98] 'The Pacifists lie when they tell us that the danger of war is
-over.' General Leonard Wood.
-
-[99] _The Science of Power_, p. 14.
-
-[100] Ibid, p. 144.
-
-[101] See quotations, Part I, Chapters I and III.
-
-[102] The validity of this assumption still holds even though we take
-the view that the defence of war as an inevitable struggle for bread is
-merely a rationalisation (using that word in the technical sense of the
-psychologists) of impulse or instinct, merely, that is, an attempt to
-find a 'reason' for conduct the real explanation of which is the
-subconscious promptings of pugnacities or hostilities, the craving of
-our nature for certain kinds of action. If we could not justify our
-behaviour in terms of self-preservation, it would stand so plainly
-condemned ethically and socially that discipline of instinct--as in the
-case of sex instinct--would obviously be called for and enforced. In
-either case, the road to better behaviour is by a clearer revelation of
-the social mischief of the predominant policy.
-
-[103] Rear-Admiral A. T. Mahan: _Force in International Relations_.
-
-[104] _The Interest of America in International Conditions_, by
-Rear-Admiral A. T. Mahan, pp. 47-87.
-
-[105] _Government and the War_, p. 62.
-
-[106] _State Morality and a League of Nations_, pp 83-85.
-
-[107] _North American Review_, March 1912.
-
-[108] Admiral Mahan himself makes precisely this appeal:--
-
-'That extension of national authority over alien communities, which is
-the dominant note in the world politics of to-day, dignifies and
-enlarges each State and each citizen that enters its fold.... Sentiment,
-imagination, aspiration, the satisfaction of the rational and moral
-faculties in some object better than bread alone, all must find a part
-in a worthy motive. Like individuals, nations and empires have souls as
-well as bodies. Great and beneficent achievement ministers to worthier
-contentment than the filling of the pocket.'
-
-[109] It is not necessary to enter exhaustively into the difficult
-problem of 'natural right.' It suffices for the purpose of this argument
-that the claim of others to life will certainly be made and that we can
-only refuse it at a cost which diminishes our own chances of survival.
-
-[110] See Mr Churchill's declaration, quoted Part I Chapter V.
-
-[111] Mr J. L. Garvin, who was among those who bitterly criticised this
-thesis on account of its 'sordidness,' now writes: 'Armageddon might
-become almost as frequent as General Elections if belligerency were not
-restrained by sheer dread of the consequences in an age of economic
-interdependence when even victory has ceased to pay.'
-
-(Quoted in _Westminster Gazette_, Jan. 24, 1921.)
-
-[112] The introductory synopsis reads:--
-
-What are the fundamental motives that explain the present rivalry of
-armaments in Europe, notably the Anglo-German? Each nation pleads the
-need for defence; but this implies that some one is likely to attack,
-and has therefore a presumed interest in so doing. What are the motives
-which each State thus fears its neighbours may obey?
-
-They are based on the universal assumption that a nation, in order to
-find outlets for expanding population and increasing industry, or simply
-to ensure the best conditions possible for its people, is necessarily
-pushed to territorial expansion and the exercise of political force
-against others (German naval competition is assumed to be the expression
-of the growing need of an expanding population for a larger place in the
-world, a need which will find a realisation in the conquest of English
-Colonies or trade, unless these were defended); it is assumed,
-therefore, that a nation's relative prosperity is broadly determined by
-its political power; that nations being competing units, advantage, in
-the last resort, goes to the possessor of preponderant military force,
-the weaker going to the wall, as in the other forms of the struggle for
-life.
-
-The author challenges this whole doctrine.
-
-[113] See chapters _The Psychological Case for Peace_, _Unchanging Human
-Nature_, and _Is the Political Reformation Possible?_
-
-'Not the facts, but men's opinions about the facts, is what matters.
-Men's conduct is determined, not necessarily by the right conclusion
-from facts, but the conclusion they believe to be right.'
-
-In another pre-war book of the present writer (_The Foundations of
-International Polity_) the same view is developed, particularly in the
-passage which has been reproduced in Chapter VI of this book, 'The
-Alternative Risks of Status and Contract.'
-
-[114] The cessation of religious war indicates the greatest outstanding
-fact in the history of civilised mankind during the last thousand years,
-which is this: that all civilised Governments have abandoned their claim
-to dictate the belief of their subjects. For very long that was a right
-tenaciously held, and it was held on grounds for which there is an
-immense deal to be said. It was held that as belief is an integral part
-of conduct, that as conduct springs from belief, and the purpose of the
-State is to ensure such conduct as will enable us to go about our
-business in safety, it was obviously the duty of the State to protect
-those beliefs, the abandonment of which seemed to undermine the
-foundations of conduct. I do not believe that this case has ever been
-completely answered.... Men of profound thought and profound learning
-to-day defend it, and personally I have found it very difficult to make
-a clear and simple case for the defence of the principle on which every
-civilised Government in the world is to-day founded. How do you account
-for this--that a principle which I do not believe one man in a million
-could defend from all objections has become the dominating rule of
-civilised government throughout the world?
-
-'Well, that once universal policy has been abandoned, not because every
-argument, or even perhaps most of the arguments, which led to it, have
-been answered, but because the fundamental one has. The conception on
-which it rested has been shown to be, not in every detail, but in the
-essentials at least, an illusion, a _mis_conception.
-
-'The world of religious wars and of the Inquisition was a world which
-had a quite definite conception of the relation of authority to
-religious belief and to truth--as that authority was the source of
-truth; that truth could be, and should be, protected by force; that
-Catholics who did not resent an insult offered to their faith (like the
-failure of a Huguenot to salute a passing religious procession) were
-renegade.
-
-'Now, what broke down this conception was a growing realisation that
-authority, force, was irrelevant to the issues of truth (a party of
-heretics triumphed by virtue of some physical accident, as that they
-occupied a mountain region); that it was ineffective, and that the
-essence of truth was something outside the scope of physical conflict.
-As the realisation of this grew, the conflicts declined.'--_Foundations
-of International Polity_, p. 214.
-
-[115] An attempt is made, in _The Great Illusion_, to sketch the process
-which lies behind the progressive substitution of bargain for coercion
-(The Economic Interpretation of the History of Development 'From Status
-to Contract') on pages 187-192, and further developed in a chapter 'the
-Diminishing Factor of Physical Force' (p. 257).
-
-[116] 'When we learn that London, instead of using its police for the
-running in of burglars and "drunks," is using them to lead an attack on
-Birmingham for the purpose of capturing that city as part of a policy of
-"municipal expansion," or "Civic Imperialism," or "Pan-Londonism," or
-what not; or is using its force to repel an attack by the Birmingham
-police acting as the result of a similar policy on the part of the
-Birmingham patriots--when that happens you can safely approximate a
-police force to a European army. But until it does, it is quite evident
-that the two--the army and the police force--have in reality
-diametrically opposed roles. The police exist as an instrument of social
-co-operation; the armies as the natural outcome of the quaint illusion
-that though one city could never enrich itself by "capturing" or
-"subjugating" another, in some wonderful (and unexplained) way one
-country can enrich itself by capturing or subjugating another....
-
-'France has benefited by the conquest of Algeria, England by that of
-India, because in each case the arms were employed not, properly
-speaking, for conquest, but for police purposes, for the establishment
-and maintenance of order; and, so far as they filled that role, their
-role was a useful one....
-
-'Germany has no need to maintain order in England, nor England in
-Germany, and the latent struggle, therefore, between these two countries
-is futile....
-
-'It is one of the humours of the whole Anglo-German conflict that so
-much has the British public been concerned with the myths and bogeys of
-the matter, that it seems calmly to have ignored the realities. While
-even the wildest Pan-German does not cast his eyes in the direction of
-Canada, he does cast them in the direction of Asia Minor; and the
-political activities of Germany may centre on that area for precisely
-the reasons which result from the distinction between policing and
-conquest which I have drawn. German industry is coming to have a
-dominating situation in the Near East, and as those interests--her
-markets and investments--increase, the necessity for better order in,
-and the better organisation of, such territories, increases in
-corresponding degree. Germany may need to police Asia Minor.' (_The
-Great Illusion_, pp. 131-2-3.)
-
-[117] 'If a great country benefits every time it annexes a province, and
-her people are the richer for the widened territory, the small nations
-ought to be immeasurably poorer than the great; instead of which, by
-every test which you like to apply--public credit, amounts in savings
-banks, standard of living, social progress, general well-being--citizens
-of small States are, other things being equal, as well off as, or better
-off than, the citizens of great. The citizens of countries like Holland,
-Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, are, by every possible test, just as
-well off as the citizens of countries like Germany, Austria, or Russia.
-These are the facts which are so much more potent than any theory. If it
-were true that a country benefited by the acquisition of territory, and
-widened territory meant general well-being, why do the facts so
-eternally deny it? There is something wrong with the theory.' (_The
-Great Illusion_, p. 44).
-
-[118] See Chapters of _The Great Illusion_, _The State as a Person_, and
-_A False Analogy and its Consequences_.
-
-[119] In the synopsis of the book the point is put thus: 'If credit and
-commercial contract are tampered with an attempt at confiscation, the
-credit-dependent wealth is undermined, and its collapse involves that of
-the conqueror; so that if conquest is not to be self-injurious it must
-respect the enemy's property, in which case it becomes economically
-futile.'
-
-[120] 'We need markets. What is a market? "A place where things are
-sold." That is only half the truth. It is a place where things are
-bought and sold, and one operation is impossible without the other, and
-the notion that one nation can sell for ever and never buy is simply the
-theory of perpetual motion applied to economics; and international trade
-can no more be based upon perpetual motion than can engineering. As
-between economically highly-organised nations a customer must also be a
-competitor, a fact which bayonets cannot alter. To the extent to which
-they destroy him as a competitor, they destroy him, speaking generally
-and largely, as a customer.... This is the paradox, the futility of
-conquest--the great illusion which the history of our own empire so well
-illustrates. We "own" our empire by allowing its component parts to
-develop themselves in their own way, and in view of their own ends, and
-all the empires which have pursued any other policy have only ended by
-impoverishing their own populations and falling to pieces.' (p. 75).
-
-[121] See Part I, Chapter II.
-
-[122] _Government and the War_, pp. 52-59.
-
-[123] _The Political Theory of Mr Norman Angell_, by Professor A. D.
-Lindsay, _The Political Quarterly_, December 1914.
-
-[124] In order that the reader may grasp more clearly Mr Lindsay's
-point, here are some longer passages in which he elaborates it:--
-
-'If all nations really recognised the truth of Mr Angell's arguments,
-that they all had common interests which war destroyed, and that
-therefore war was an evil for victors as well as for vanquished, the
-European situation would be less dangerous, but were every one in the
-world as wisely concerned with their own interests as Mr Angell would
-have men to be, if they were nevertheless bound by no political ties,
-the situation would be infinitely more dangerous than it is. For
-unchecked competition, as Hobbes showed long ago, leads straight to war
-however rational men are. The only escape from its dangers is by
-submitting it to some political control. And for that reason the growth
-of economic relations at the expense of political, which Mr Angell
-heralds with such enthusiasm, is the greatest peril of modern times.
-
-'If men are to avoid the danger that, in competing with one another in
-the small but immediate matters where their interests diverge, they may
-overreach themselves and bring about their mutual ruin, two things are
-essential, one moral or emotional, the other practical. It is not enough
-that men should recognise that what they do affects other men, and vice
-versa. They must care for how their actions affect other men, not only
-for how they may react on themselves. They must, that is, love their
-neighbours. They must further agree with one another in caring for
-certain ways of action quite irrespective of how such ways of action
-affect their personal interests. They must, that is, be not only
-economic but moral men. Secondly, recognising that the range of their
-personal sympathies with other men is more restricted than their
-interdependence, and that in the excitement of competition all else is
-apt to be neglected, they must depute certain persons to stand out of
-the competitive struggle and look after just those vital common
-interests and greater issues which the contending parties are apt to
-neglect. These men will represent the common interests of all, their
-common ideals and their mutual sympathies; they will give to men's
-concern for these common ends a focus which will enable them to resist
-the pull of divergent interests and round their actions will gather the
-authority which these common ends inspire....
-
-' ... Such propositions are of course elementary. It is, however,
-important to observe that economic relations are in this most
-distinguished from political relations, that men can enter into economic
-relations without having any real purpose in common. For the money which
-they gain by their co-operation may represent power to carry out the
-most diverse and conflicting purposes....
-
-' ... Politics implies mutual confidence and respect and a certain
-measure of agreement in ideals. The consequence is that co-operation for
-economic is infinitely easier than for political purposes and spreads
-much more rapidly. Hence it easily overruns any political boundaries,
-and by doing so has produced the modern situation which Mr Angell has
-described.'
-
-[125] I have in mind, of course, the writings of Cole, Laski, Figgis,
-and Webb. In _A Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth of Great
-Britain_, Mr Webb writes:--
-
-'Whilst metaphysical philosophers had been debating what was the nature
-of the State--by which they always meant the sovereign Political
-State--the sovereignty, and even the moral authority of the State
-itself, in the sense of the political government, were being silently
-and almost unwittingly undermined by the growth of new forms of
-Democracy.' (p. xv.)
-
-In _Social Theory_, Mr Cole, speaking of the necessary co-ordination of
-the new forms of association, writes:--
-
-'To entrust the State with the function of co-ordination would be to
-entrust it in many cases with the task of arbitrating between itself and
-some other functional association, say a church or a trade union.' There
-must be a co-ordinating body, but it 'must be not any single
-association, but a combination of associations, a federal body in which
-some or all of the various functional associations are linked together.'
-(pp. 101 and 134.) A reviewer summarises Mr Cole as saying: 'I do not
-want any single supreme authority. It is the sovereignty of the State
-that I object to, as fatal to liberty. For single sovereignty I
-substitute a federal union of functions, and I see the guarantee of
-personal freedom in the severalty which prevents any one of them from
-undue encroachments.'
-
-[126] The British Treasury has issued statements showing that the French
-people at the end of last year were paying �2. 7s., and the British
-people �15. 3s. per head in direct taxation. The French tax is
-calculated at 3.5. per cent. on large incomes, whereas similar incomes
-in Great Britain would pay at least 25 per cent. This does not mean that
-the burden of taxes on the poor in France is small. Both the working and
-middle classes have been very hard hit by indirect taxes and by the rise
-in prices, which is greater in France than in England.
-
-The point is that in France the taxation is mainly indirect, this
-falling most heavily upon the poor; while in England it is much more
-largely direct.
-
-The French consumers are much more heavily taxed than the British, but
-the protective taxes of France bring in comparatively little revenue,
-while they raise the price of living and force the French Government and
-the French local authorities to spend larger and larger amounts on
-salaries and wages.
-
-The Budget for the year 1920 is made the occasion for an illuminating
-review of France's financial position by the reporter of the Finance
-Commission, M. Paul Doumar.
-
-The expenditure due to the War until the present date amounts roughly to
-233,000 million francs (equivalent, at the normal rate of exchange, to
-�9,320,000,000) whereof the sum of 43,000 million francs has been met
-out of revenue, leaving a deficit of 190 billions.
-
-This huge sum has been borrowed in various ways--26 billions from the
-Bank of France, 35 billions from abroad, 46 billions in Treasury notes,
-and 72 billions in regular loans. The total public debt on July 1 is put
-at 233,729 millions, reckoning foreign loans on the basis of exchange at
-par.
-
-M. Doumer declares that so long as this debt weighs on the State, the
-financial situation must remain precarious and its credit mediocre.
-
-[127] January, 1921.
-
-[128] An authorised interview published by the daily papers of January
-28th, 1921.
-
-M. Briand, the French Premier, in explaining what he and Mr Lloyd George
-arranged at Paris to the Chamber and Senate on February 3rd, remarked:--
-
-'We must not lose sight of the fact that in order to pay us Germany must
-every year create wealth abroad for herself by developing her exports
-and reducing her imports to strictly necessary things. She can only do
-that to the detriment of the commerce and industry of the Allies. That
-is a strange and regrettable consequence of facts. The placing of an
-annuity on her exports, payable in foreign values, will, however,
-correct as much as possible this paradoxical situation.'
-
-[129] Version appearing in the _Times_ of January 28th, 1921.
-
-[130] _The Manchester Guardian_, Jan 31st, 1921.
-
-[131] Mr John Foster Dulles, who was a member of the American delegation
-at the Peace Conference, has, in an article in _The New Republic_ for
-March 30th, 1921, outlined the facts concerning the problem of payment
-more completely than I have yet seen it done. The facts he reveals
-constitute a complete and overwhelming vindication of the case as stated
-in the first edition of _The Great Illusion_.
-
-[132] As the Lorraine ores are of a kind that demand much less than
-their own weight of coal for smelting, it is more economic to bring the
-coal to the ore than vice versa. It was for political and military
-reasons that the German State encouraged the placing of some of the
-great furnaces on the right instead of the left bank of the Rhine.
-
-[133] It is worth while to recall here a passage from _The Economic
-Consequences of the Peace_, by Mr J. M. Keynes, quoted in Chapter I. of
-this book.
-
-[134] There is one aspect of the possible success of France which is
-certainly worth consideration. France has now in her possession the
-greatest iron ore fields in Europe. Assume that she is so far successful
-in her policy of military coercion that she succeeds in securing vast
-quantities of coal and coke for nothing. French industry then secures a
-very marked advantage--and an artificial and 'uneconomic' one--over
-British industry, in the conversion of raw materials into finished
-products. The present export by France of coal which she gets for
-nothing to Dutch and other markets heretofore supplied by Britain might
-be followed by the 'dumping' of steel and iron products on terms which
-British industry could not meet. This, of course, is on the hypothesis
-of success in obtaining 'coal for nothing,' which the present writer
-regards as extremely unlikely for the reasons here given. But it should
-be noted that the failure of French effort in this matter will be from
-causes just as disastrous for British prosperity as French success would
-be.
-
-[135] See Part I, Chapter I.
-
-[136] _English Review_, January 1913.
-
-Lord Roberts, in his 'Message to the Nation,' declared that Germany's
-refusal to accept the world's _status quo_ was 'as statesmanlike as it
-is unanswerable.' He said further:--
-
-'How was this Empire of Britain founded? War founded this Empire--war
-and conquest! When we, therefore, masters by war of one-third of the
-habitable globe, when _we_ propose to Germany to disarm, to curtail her
-navy or diminish her army, Germany naturally refuses; and pointing, not
-without justice, to the road by which England, sword in hand, has
-climbed to her unmatched eminence, declares openly, or in the veiled
-language of diplomacy, that by the same path, if by no other, Germany is
-determined also to ascend! Who amongst us, knowing the past of this
-nation, and the past of all nations and cities that have ever added the
-lustre of their name to human annals, can accuse Germany or regard the
-utterance of one of her greatest a year and a half ago, (or of General
-Bernhardi three months ago) with any feelings except those of respect?'
-(pp. 8-9.)
-
-[137] Lord Loreburn says: 'The whole train of causes which brought about
-the tragedy of August 1914 would have been dissolved by a Russian
-revolution.... We could have come to terms with Germany as regards Asia
-Minor: Nor could the Alsace-Lorraine difficulty have produced trouble.
-No one will pretend that France would have been aggressive when deprived
-of Russian support considering that she was devoted to peace even when
-she had that support. Had the Russian revolution come, war would not
-have come.' (_How the War Came_, p. 278.)
-
-[138] Mr Walter Lippmann did tackle the problem in much the way I have
-in mind in _The Stakes of Diplomacy_. That book is critical of my own
-point of view. But if books like that had been directed at _The Great
-Illusion_, we might have made headway. As it is, of course, Mr
-Lippmann's book has been useful in suggesting most that is good in the
-mandate system of the League of Nations.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
-
-wth Great Britain=> with Great Britain {pg xvii}
-
-his colleages=> his colleagues {pg 38}
-
-retore devastated districts=> restore devastated districts {pg 39}
-
-aquiescence=> acquiescence {pg 45}
-
-indispensible=> indispensable {pg 46}
-
-the Lorrarine work=> the Lorraine work {pg 86}
-
-rcently passed=> recently passed {pg 135}
-
-Allied aerodomes on the Rhine=> Allied aerodromes on the Rhine {pg 163}
-
-the sublest=> the subtlest {pg 239}
-
-the enemy's propetry=> the enemy's property {pg 294}
-
-a monoply=> a monopoly {pg 299}
-
-goverments=> governments {pg 299}
-
-econmic=> economic {pg 303}
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Fruits of Victory, by Norman Angell
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-
-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Fruits of Victory, by Norman Angell
-
-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/license
-
-
-Title: The Fruits of Victory
-       A Sequel to The Great Illusion
-
-Author: Norman Angell
-
-Release Date: August 29, 2013 [EBook #43598]
-
-Language: English
-
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-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FRUITS OF VICTORY ***
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-
-</pre>
-
-<hr class="full" />
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""
-style="border: 2px black solid;text-align:center;margin:auto auto;max-width:50%;
-padding:1%;">
-<tr><td>Every attempt has been made to replicate the original as printed.<br />
-Some typographical errors have been corrected; <a href="#transcrib">a <b>list</b> follows the text</a>.<br />
-The <a href="#FOOTNOTES"><b>footnotes</b></a> follow the text.<br />
-<a href="#CONTENTS"><b>Table of Contents</b></a><br />
-(etext transcriber's note)</td></tr>
-</table>
-
-<p class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="307" height="500" alt="bookcover" title="bookcover" />
-</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_i" id="page_i"></a>{i}</span></p>
-
-<p class="cb">THE FRUITS OF VICTORY</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_ii" id="page_ii"></a>{ii}</span></p>
-
-<h3>“THE &nbsp; GREAT &nbsp; ILLUSION”<br />
-CONTROVERSY</h3>
-
-<div class="blockquot1"><p>‘Mr. Angell’s pamphlet was a work as unimposing in form as it was
-daring in expression. For a time nothing was heard of it in public,
-but many of us will remember the curious way in which ... “Norman
-Angellism” suddenly became one of the principal topics of
-discussion amongst politicians and journalists all over Europe.
-Naturally at first it was the apparently extravagant and
-paradoxical elements that were fastened upon most&mdash;that the whole
-theory of the commercial basis of war was wrong, that no modern war
-could make a profit for the victors, and that&mdash;most astonishing
-thing of all&mdash;a successful war might leave the conquerors who
-received the indemnity relatively worse off than the conquered who
-raid it. People who had been brought up in the acceptance of the
-idea that a war between nations was analogous to the struggle of
-two errand boys for an apple, and that victory inevitably meant
-economic gain, were amazed into curiosity. Men who had never
-examined a Pacifist argument before read Mr. Angell’s book. Perhaps
-they thought that his doctrines sounded so extraordinarily like
-nonsense that there really must be some sense in them or nobody
-would have dared to propound them.’&mdash;<i>The New Stateman</i>, October
-11, 1913.</p>
-
-<p>‘The fundamental proposition of the book is a mistake.... And the
-proposition that the extension of national territory&mdash;that is the
-bringing of a large amount of property under a single
-administration&mdash;is not to the financial advantage of a nation
-appears to me as illusory as to maintain that business on a small
-capital is as profitable as on a large.... The armaments of
-European States now are not so much for protection against conquest
-as to secure to themselves the utmost possible share of the
-unexploited or imperfectly exploited regions of the world.’&mdash;The
-late <span class="smcap">Admiral Mahan</span>.</p>
-
-<p>‘I have long ago described the policy of <i>The Great Illusion</i> ...
-not only as a childish absurdity but a mischievous and immoral
-sophism.’&mdash;<span class="smcap">Mr. Frederic Harrison.</span></p>
-
-<p>‘Among the mass of printed books there are a few that may be
-counted as acts, not books. <i>The Control Social</i> was indisputably
-one; and I venture to suggest to you that <i>The Great Illusion</i> is
-another. The thesis of Galileo was not more diametrically opposed
-to current ideas than those of Norman Angell. Yet it had in the end
-a certain measure of success.’&mdash;<span class="smcap">Viscount Esher.</span></p>
-
-<p>‘When all criticisms are spent, it remains to express a debt of
-gratitude to Mr. Angell. He belongs to the cause of
-internationalism&mdash;the greatest of all the causes to which a man can
-set his hands in these days. The cause will not triumph by
-economics. But it cannot reject any ally. And if the economic
-appeal is not final, it has its weight. “We shall perish of
-hunger,” it has been said, “in order to have success in murder.” To
-those who have ears for that saying, it cannot be said too
-often.’&mdash;<i>Political Thought in England, from Herbert Spencer to the
-Present Day</i>, by <span class="smcap">Ernest Barker</span>.</p>
-
-<p>‘A wealth of closely reasoned argument which makes the book one of
-the most damaging indictments that have yet appeared of the
-principles governing the relation of civilized nations to one
-another.’&mdash;<i>The Quarterly Review.</i></p>
-
-<p>‘Ranks its author with Cobden amongst the greatest of our
-pamphleteers, perhaps the greatest since Swift.’&mdash;<i>The Nation.</i></p>
-
-<p>‘No book has attracted wider attention or has done more to
-stimulate thought in the present century than <i>The Great
-Illusion</i>.’&mdash;<i>The Daily Mail.</i></p>
-
-<p>‘One of the most brilliant contributions to the literature of
-international relations which has appeared for a very long
-time.’&mdash;<i>Journal of the Institute of Bankers.</i></p>
-
-<p>‘After five and a half years in the wilderness, Mr. Norman Angell
-has come back.... His book provoked one of the great controversies
-of this generation.... To-day, Mr. Angell, whether he likes it or
-not, is a prophet whose prophesies have come true.... It is hardly
-possible to open a current newspaper without the eye lighting on
-some fresh vindication of the once despised and rejected doctrine
-of Norman Angellism.’&mdash;<i>The Daily News</i>, February 25, 1920.</p></div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_iii" id="page_iii"></a>{iii}</span></p>
-
-<h1>THE<br />
-FRUITS &nbsp; OF &nbsp; VICTORY</h1>
-
-<p class="cb">A SEQUEL TO<br />
-“THE GREAT ILLUSION”<br />
-<br /><br />
-BY<br />
-NORMAN ANGELL<br />
-<br /><br />
-<img src="images/colophon.jpg" width="75" height="75" alt="colophon" title="colophon" />
-<br /><br />
-NEW YORK<br />
-THE CENTURY CO.<br />
-1921</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<ul>
-<li><i>BY THE SAME AUTHOR</i>
-<ul>
-<li>PATRIOTISM UNDER THREE FLAGS</li>
-<li>THE GREAT ILLUSION</li>
-<li>THE FOUNDATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL POLITY</li>
-<li>WHY FREEDOM MATTERS</li>
-<li>WAR AND THE WORKER</li>
-<li>AMERICA AND THE WORLD STATE (AMERICA)</li>
-<li>PRUSSIANISM AND ITS DESTRUCTION</li>
-<li>THE WORLD’S HIGHWAY (AMERICA)</li>
-<li>WAR AIMS</li>
-<li>DANGERS OF HALF-PREPAREDNESS (AMERICA)</li>
-<li>POLITICAL CONDITIONS OF ALLIED SUCCESS (AMERICA)</li>
-<li>THE BRITISH REVOLUTION AND THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY (AMERICA)</li>
-<li>THE PEACE TREATY AND THE ECONOMIC CHAOS</li>
-
-</ul></li>
-</ul>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p class="c"><small>
-Copyright, 1921, by<br />
-<span class="smcap">The Century Co.</span><br />
-<br />
-<i>Printed in the U. S. A.</i></small></p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_v" id="page_v"></a>{v}</span>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p class="cb">To H. S.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_vi" id="page_vi"></a>{vi}</span>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_vii" id="page_vii"></a>{vii}</span></p>
-
-<h2><a name="INTRODUCTION_TO_THE_AMERICAN_EDITION" id="INTRODUCTION_TO_THE_AMERICAN_EDITION"></a>INTRODUCTION TO THE AMERICAN EDITION</h2>
-
-<p class="nind">T<small>HE</small> case which is argued in these pages includes the examination of
-certain concrete matters which very obviously and directly touch
-important American interests&mdash;American foreign trade and investments,
-the exchanges, immigration, armaments, taxation, industrial unrest and
-the effect of these on social and political organisation. Yet the
-greatest American interest here discussed is not any one of those
-particular issues, or even the sum of them, but certain underlying
-forces which more than anything else, perhaps, influence all of them.
-The American reader will have missed the main bearing of the argument
-elaborated in these pages unless that point can be made clear.</p>
-
-<p>Let us take a few of the concrete issues just mentioned. The opening
-chapter deals with the motives which may push Great Britain still to
-struggle for the retention of predominant power at sea. The force of
-those motives is obviously destined to be an important factor in
-American politics, in determining, for instance, the amount of American
-taxation. It bears upon the decisions which American voters and American
-statesmen will be called upon to make in American elections within the
-next few years. Or take another aspect of the same question: the
-peculiar position of Great Britain in the matter of her dependence upon
-foreign food. This is shown to be typical of a condition common to very
-much of the population of Europe, and brings us to the problem of the
-pressure of population in the older civilisations upon the[Pg ] means of
-subsistence. That “biological pressure” is certain, in some
-circumstances, to raise for America questions of immigration, of
-relations generally with foreign countries, of defence, which American
-statesmanship will have to take into account in the form of definite
-legislation that will go on to American Statute books. Or, take the
-general problem of the economic reconstruction of Europe, with which the
-book is so largely occupied. That happens to bear, not merely on the
-expansion of American trade, the creation of new markets, that is, and
-on the recovery of American debts, but upon the preservation of markets
-for cotton, wheat, meat and other products, to which large American
-communities have in the past looked, and do still look, for their
-prosperity and even for their solvency. Again, dealing with the manner
-in which the War has affected the economic organisation of the European
-society, the writer has been led to describe the process by which
-preparation for modern war has come to mean, to an increasing degree,
-control by the government of the national resources as a whole, thus
-setting up strong tendencies towards a form of State Socialism. To
-America, herself facing a more far-reaching organisation of the national
-resources for military purposes than she has known in the past, the
-analysis of such a process is certainly of very direct concern. Not less
-so is the story of the relation of revolutionary forces in the
-industrial struggle&mdash;“Bolshevism”&mdash;-to the tendencies so initiated or
-stimulated.</p>
-
-<p>One could go on expanding this theme indefinitely, and write a whole
-book about America’s concern in these things. But surely in these days
-it would be a book of platitudes, elaborately pointing out the obvious.
-Yet an American critic of these pages in their European form warns me
-that I must be careful to show their interest for American readers.</p>
-
-<p>Their main interest for the American is not in the kind of relationship
-just indicated, very considerable and immediate as that happens to be.
-Their chief interest is in this: they[Pg ] attempt an analysis of the
-ultimate forces of policies in Western society; of the interrelation of
-fundamental economic needs and of predominant political ideas&mdash;public
-opinion, with its constituent elements of “human nature,” social&mdash;or
-anti-social&mdash;instinct, the tradition of Patriotism and Nationalism, the
-mechanism of the modern Press. It is suggested in these pages that some
-of the main factors of political action, the dominant motives of
-political conduct, are still grossly neglected by “practical statesmen”;
-and that the statesmen still treat as remote and irrelevant certain
-moral forces which recent events have shown to have very great and
-immediate practical importance. (A number of cases are discussed in
-which practical and realist European statesmen have seen their plans
-touching the stability of alliances, the creation of international
-credit, the issuing of international loans, indemnities, a “new world”
-generally, all this frustrated because in drawing them up they ignored
-the invisible but final factor of public feeling and temper, which the
-whole time they were modifying or creating, thus unconsciously
-undermining the edifices they were so painfully creating. Time and again
-in the last few years practical men of affairs in Europe have found
-themselves the helpless victims of a state of feeling or opinion which
-they so little understood that they had often themselves unknowingly
-created it.)</p>
-
-<p>In such hard realities as the exaction of an indemnity, we see
-governments forced to policies which can only make their task more
-difficult, but which they are compelled to adopt in order to placate
-electoral opinion, or to repel an opposition which would exploit some
-prevailing prejudice or emotion.</p>
-
-<p>To understand the nature of forces which must determine America’s main
-domestic and foreign policies&mdash;as they have determined those of Western
-Society in Europe during the last generation&mdash;is surely an “American
-interest”; though indeed, in neglecting the significance of those
-“hidden currents flowing continually beneath the surface of political
-history,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_x" id="page_x"></a>{x}</span>” American students of politics would be following much
-European precedent. Although public opinion and feeling are the raw
-material with which statesmen deal, it is still considered irrelevant
-and academic to study the constituent elements of that raw material.</p>
-
-<p>Americans are sufficiently detached from Europe to see that in the way
-of a better unification of that Continent for the purposes of its own
-economic and moral restoration stand disruptive forces of
-“Balkanisation,” a development of the spirit of Nationalism which the
-statesmen for years have encouraged and exploited. The American of
-to-day speaks of the Balkanisation of Europe just as the Englishman of
-two or three years ago spoke of the Balkanisation of the Continent, of
-the wrangles of Poles, Czecho-Slovaks, Hungarians, Rumanians, Italians,
-Jugo-Slavs. And the attitude of both Englishman and American are alike
-in this: to the Englishman, watching the squabbles of all the little new
-States and the breaking out of all the little new wars, there seemed at
-work in that spectacle forces so suicidal that they could never in any
-degree touch his own political problems; the American to-day, watching
-British policy in Ireland or French policy towards Germany, feels that
-in such conflict are moral forces that could never produce similar
-paralysis in American policy. “Why,” asks the confident American, “does
-England bring such unnecessary trouble upon herself by her military
-conduct in Ireland? Why does France keep three-fourths of a Continent
-still in ferment, making reparations more and more remote”? Americans
-have a very strong feeling that they could not be guilty of the Irish
-mess, or of prolonging the confusion which threatens to bring Europe’s
-civilisation to utter collapse. How comes it that the English people, so
-genuinely and so sincerely horrified at the thought of what a Bissing
-could do in Belgium, unable to understand how the German people could
-tolerate a government guilty of such things, somehow find that their own
-British Government is<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_xi" id="page_xi"></a>{xi}</span> doing very similar things in Cork and Balbriggan;
-and finding it, simply acquiesce? To the American the indefensibility of
-British conduct is plain. “America could never be guilty of it.” To the
-Englishman just now, the indefensibility of French conduct is plain. The
-policy which France is following is seen to be suicidal from the point
-of view of French interests. The Englishman is sure that “English
-political sense” would never tolerate it in an English government.</p>
-
-<p>The situation suggests this question: would Americans deny that England
-in the past has shown very great political genius, or that the French
-people are alert, open-minded, “realist,” intelligent? Recalling what
-England has done in the way of the establishment of great free
-communities, the flexibility and “practicalness” of her imperial policy,
-what France has contributed to democracy and European organisation, can
-we explain the present difficulties of Europe by the absence, on the
-part of Englishmen or Frenchmen, or other Europeans, of a political
-intelligence granted only so far in the world’s history to Americans? In
-other words, do Americans seriously argue that the moral forces which
-have wrought such havoc in the foreign policy of European States could
-never threaten the foreign policy of America? Does the American plead
-that the circumstances which warp an Englishman’s or Frenchman’s
-judgment could never warp an American’s? Or that he could never find
-himself in similar circumstances? As a matter of fact, of course, that
-is precisely what the American&mdash;like the Englishman or Frenchman or
-Italian in an analogous case&mdash;does plead. To have suggested five years
-ago to an Englishman that his own generals in India or Ireland would
-copy Bissing, would have been deemed too preposterous even for anger:
-but then equally, to Americans, supporting in their millions in 1916 the
-League to Enforce Peace, would the idea have seemed preposterous that a
-few years later America, having the power to take the lead in a Peace
-League, would refuse to do so, and would herself be demanding, as the
-result<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_xii" id="page_xii"></a>{xii}</span> of participation in a war to end war, greater armament than
-ever&mdash;as protection against Great Britain.</p>
-
-<p>I suggest that if an English government can be led to sanction and
-defend in Ireland the identical things which shocked the world when
-committed in Belgium by Germans, if France to-day threatens Europe with
-a military hegemony not less mischievous than that which America
-determined to destroy, the causes of those things must be sought, not in
-the special wickedness of this or that nation, but in forces which may
-operate among any people.</p>
-
-<p>One peculiarity of the prevailing political mind stands out. It is
-evident that a sensible, humane and intelligent people, even with
-historical political sense, can quite often fail to realise how one step
-of policy, taken willingly, must lead to the taking of other steps which
-they detest. If Mr. Lloyd George is supporting France, if the French
-Government is proclaiming policies which it knows to be disastrous, but
-which any French Government must offer to its people or perish, it is
-because somewhere in the past there have been set in motion forces the
-outcome of which was not realised. And if the outcome was not realised,
-although, looking back, or looking at the situation from the distance of
-America from Europe, the inevitability of the result seems plain enough,
-I suggest that it is because judgment becomes warped as the result of
-certain feelings or predominant ideas; and that it will be impossible
-wisely to guide political conduct without some understanding of the
-nature of those feelings and ideas, and unless we realise with some
-humility and honesty that all nations alike are subject to these
-weaknesses.</p>
-
-<p>We all of us clamantly and absolutely deny this plain fact when it is
-suggested that it also applies to our own people. What would have
-happened to the publicist who, during the War, should have urged:
-“Complete and overwhelming victory will be bad, because we shall misuse
-it?” Yet all the victories of history would have been ground for such a
-warning.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_xiii" id="page_xiii"></a>{xiii}</span> Universal experience was not merely flouted by the
-uninstructed. One of the curiosities of war literature is the fashion in
-which the most brilliant minds, not alone in politics, but in literature
-and social science, simply disregard this obvious truth. We each knew
-“our” people&mdash;British, French, Italian, American&mdash;to be good people:
-kindly, idealistic, just. Give them the power to do the Right&mdash;to do
-justice, to respect the rights of others, to keep the peace&mdash;and it will
-be done. That is why we wanted “unconditional surrender” of the Germans,
-and indignantly rejected a negotiated peace. It was admitted, of course,
-that injustice at the settlement would fail to give us the world we
-fought for. It was preposterous to suppose that we, the defenders of
-freedom and democracy, arbitration, self-determination,&mdash;America,
-Britain, France, Japan, Russia, Italy, Rumania&mdash;should not do exact and
-complete justice. So convinced, indeed, were we of this that we may
-search in vain the works of all the Allied writers to whom any attention
-was paid, for any warning whatsoever of the one danger which, in fact,
-wrecked the settlement, threw the world back into its oldest
-difficulties, left it fundamentally just where it was, reduced the War
-to futility. The one condition of justice&mdash;that the aggrieved party
-should not be in the position of imposing his unrestrained will&mdash;, the
-one truth which, for the world’s welfare, it was most important to
-proclaim, was the one which it was black heresy and blasphemy to utter,
-and which, to do them justice, the moral and intellectual guides of the
-nations never did utter.</p>
-
-<p>It is precisely the truth which Americans to-day are refusing to face.
-We all admit that, “human nature being what it is,” preponderance of
-power, irresponsible power, is something which no nation (but our own)
-can be trusted to use wisely or with justice. The backbone of American
-policy shall therefore be an effort to retain preponderance of power. If
-this be secured, little else matters. True, the American advocate of
-isolation to-day says: “We are not concerned with Europe.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_xiv" id="page_xiv"></a>{xiv}</span> We ask only
-to be let alone. Our preponderance of power, naval or other, threatens
-no-one. It is purely defensive.” Yet the truth is that the demand for
-preponderance of armaments itself involves a denial of right. Let us see
-why.</p>
-
-<p>No one denies that the desire to possess a definitely preponderant navy
-is related, at least in some degree, to such things as, shall we say,
-the dispute over the Panama tolls. A growing number feel and claim that
-that is a purely American dispute. To subject it to arbitral decision,
-in which necessarily Europeans would have a preponderance, would be to
-give away the American case beforehand. With unquestioned naval
-preponderance over any probable combination of rivals, America is in a
-position to enforce compliance with what she believes to be her just
-rights. At this moment a preponderant navy is being urged on precisely
-those grounds. In other words, the demand is that in a dispute to which
-she is a party she shall be judge, and able to impose her own judgement.
-That is to say, she demands from others the acceptance of a position
-which she would not herself accept. There is nothing at all unusual in
-the demand. It is the feeling which colours the whole attitude of
-combative nationalism. But it none the less means that “adequate
-defence” on this basis inevitably implies a moral aggression&mdash;a demand
-upon others which, if made by others upon ourselves, we should resist to
-the death.</p>
-
-<p>It is not here merely or mainly the question of a right: American
-foreign policy has before it much the same alternatives with reference
-to the world as a whole, as were presented to Great Britain with
-reference to the Continent in the generation which preceded the War. Her
-“splendid isolation” was defended on grounds which very closely resemble
-those now put forward by America as the basis of the same policy.
-Isolation meant, of course, preponderance of power, and when she
-declared her intention to use that power only on behalf of even-handed
-justice, she not only meant it, but carried out the intention, at least
-to an extent that no other nation has<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_xv" id="page_xv"></a>{xv}</span> done. She accorded a degree of
-equality in economic treatment which is without parallel. One thing only
-led her to depart from justice: that was the need of maintaining the
-supremacy. For this she allowed herself to become involved in certain
-exceedingly entangling Alliances. Indeed, Great Britain found that at no
-period of her history were her domestic politics so much dominated by
-the foreign situation as when she was proclaiming to the world her
-splendid isolation from foreign entanglements. It is as certain, of
-course, that American “isolation” would mean that the taxation of Gopher
-Prairie would be settled in Tokio; and that tens of thousands of
-American youth would be sentenced to death by unknown elderly gentlemen
-in a European Cabinet meeting. If the American retorts that his country
-is in a fundamentally different position, because Great Britain
-possesses an Empire and America does not, that only proves how very much
-current ideas in politics fail to take cognizance of the facts. The
-United States to-day has in the problem of the Philippines, their
-protection and their trade, and the bearing of those things upon
-Japanese policy; in Hayti and the West Indies, and their bearing upon
-America’s subject nationality problem of the negro; in Mexico, which is
-likely to provide America with its Irish problem; in the Panama Canal
-tolls question and its relation to the development of a mercantile
-marine and naval competition with Great Britain, in these things alone,
-to mention no others, subjects of conflict, involving defence of
-American interests, out of which will arise entanglements not differing
-greatly in kind from the foreign questions which dominated British
-domestic policy during the period of British isolation.</p>
-
-<p>Now, what America will do about these things will not depend upon highly
-rationalised decisions, reached by a hundred million independent
-thinkers investigating the facts concerning the Panama Treaty, the
-respective merits of alternative alliance combinations, or the real
-nature of negro grievances.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_xvi" id="page_xvi"></a>{xvi}</span> American policy will be determined by the
-same character of force as has determined British policy in Ireland or
-India, in Morocco or Egypt, French policy in Germany or in Poland, or
-Italian policy in the Adriatic. The “way of thinking” which is applied
-to the decisions of the American democracy has behind it the same kind
-of moral and intellectual force that we find in the society of Western
-Europe as a whole. Behind the American public mind lie practically the
-same economic system based on private property, the same kind of
-political democracy, the same character of scholastic training, the same
-conceptions of nationalism, roughly the same social and moral values. If
-we find certain sovereign ideas determining the course of British or
-French or Italian policy, giving us certain results, we may be sure that
-the same ideas will, in the case of America, give us very much the same
-results.</p>
-
-<p>When Britain spoke of “splendid isolation,” she meant what America means
-by the term to-day, namely, a position by virtue of which, when it came
-to a conflict of policy between herself and others, she should possess
-preponderant power, so that she could impose her own view of her own
-rights, be judge and executioner in her own case. To have suggested to
-an Englishman twenty years ago that the real danger to the security of
-his country lay in the attitude of mind dominant among Englishmen
-themselves, that the fundamental defect of English policy was that it
-asked of others something which Englishmen would never accord if asked
-by others of them, and that such a policy was particularly inimical in
-the long run to Great Britain, in that her population lived by processes
-which dominant power could not, in the last resort, exact&mdash;such a line
-of argument would have been, and indeed was, regarded as too remote from
-practical affairs to be worth the attention of practical politicians. A
-discussion of the Japanese Alliance, the relations with Russia, the size
-of foreign fleets, the Bagdad railway, would have been regarded as
-entirely practical and relevant. These things were the “facts” of
-politics. It was<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_xvii" id="page_xvii"></a>{xvii}</span> not regarded as relevant to the practical issues to
-examine the role of certain general ideas and traditions which had grown
-up in England in determining the form of British policy. The growth of a
-crude philosophy of militarism, based on a social pseudo-Darwinism, the
-popularity of Kipling and Roberts, the jingoism of the Northcliffe
-Press&mdash;these things might be regarded as items in the study of social
-psychology; they were not regarded as matters for the practical
-statesman. “What would you have us do about them, anyway?”</p>
-
-<p>It has happened to the present writer, in addressing American students,
-to lay stress upon the rôle of certain dominant ideas in determining
-policy (upon the idea, say, of the State as a person, upon the
-conception of States as necessarily rival entities), and afterwards to
-get questions in this wise: “Your lecture seems to imply an
-internationalist policy. What is your plan? What ought we to do? Should
-we make a naval alliance, with Great Britain, or form a new League of
-Nations, or denounce Article X, or ...?” I have replied: “The first
-thing to do is to change your ideas and moral values; or to get to know
-them better. That is the most practical and immediate platform, because
-all others depend on it. We all profess great love of peace and justice.
-What will you pay for it, in terms of national sovereignty? What degree
-of sovereignty will you surrender as your contribution to a new order?
-If your real feeling is for domination, then the only effect of writing
-constitutions of the League of Nations will be to render international
-organisation more remote than ever, by showing how utterly incompatible
-it is with prevailing moral values.”</p>
-
-<p>But such a reply is usually regarded as hopelessly “unpractical.” There
-is no indication of something to be “done”&mdash;a platform to be defended or
-a law to be passed. To change fundamental opinions and redirect desires
-is not apparently to “do” anything at all. Yet until that invisible
-thing is done<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_xviii" id="page_xviii"></a>{xviii}</span> our Covenants and Leagues will be as futile as have been
-the numberless similar plans of the past, “concerning which,” as one
-seventeenth century critic wrote, “I know no single imperfection save
-this: That by no possibility would any Prince or people be brought to
-abide by them.” It was, I believe, regarded as a triumph of practical
-organisation to have obtained nation-wide support for the ‘League to
-Enforce Peace’ proposal, “without raising controversial matters at
-all”&mdash;leaving untouched, that is, the underlying ideas of patriotism, of
-national right and international obligation, the prevailing moral and
-political values, in fact. The subsequent history of America’s relation
-to the world’s effort to create a League of Nations is sufficient
-commentary as to whether it is “practical” to devise plans and
-constitutions without reference to a prevailing attitude of mind.</p>
-
-<p>America has before her certain definite problems of foreign
-policy&mdash;Japanese immigration into the United States and the Philippines;
-concessions granted to foreigners in Mexico; the question of disorder in
-that country; the relations with Hayti (which will bear on the question
-of America’s subject nationality, the negro); the exemption of American
-ships from tolls in the Panama Canal; the exclusion of foreign shipping
-from “coastwise” trade with the Philippines. It would be possible to
-draw up plans of settlement with regard to each item which would be
-equitable. But the development of foreign policy (which, more than any
-other department of politics, will fix the quality of American society
-in the future) will not depend upon the more or less equitable
-settlement of those specific questions. The specific differences between
-England and Germany before the War were less serious than those between
-England and America&mdash;and were nearly all settled when war broke out.
-Whether an issue like Japanese immigration or the Panama tolls leads to
-war will not depend upon its intrinsic importance, or whether Britain or
-Japan or America make acceptable proposals on the subject. Mr
-ex-Secretary<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_xix" id="page_xix"></a>{xix}</span> Daniels has just told us that the assertion of the right
-to establish a cable station on the Island of Yap is good ground for
-risking war. The specific issues about which nations fight are so little
-the real cause of the fight that they are generally completely forgotten
-when it comes to making the peace. The future of submarine warfare was
-not mentioned at Versailles. Given a certain state of mind, a difference
-about cables on the Island of Yap is quite sufficient to make war
-inevitable. We should probably regard it as a matter of national honour,
-concerning which there must be no argument. Another mood, and it would
-be impossible to get the faintest ripple of interest in the subject.</p>
-
-<p>It was not British passion for Serbian nationality which brought Britain
-to the side of Russia in 1914. It was the fear of German power and what
-might be done with it, a fear wrought to frenzy pitch by a long
-indoctrination concerning German wickedness and aggression. Passion for
-the subjugation of Germany persisted long after there was any ground of
-fear of what German power might accomplish. If America fights Japan, it
-will not be over cables on Yap; it will be from fear of Japanese power,
-the previous stimulation of latent hatreds for the strange and foreign.
-And if the United States goes to war over Panama Canal tolls, it will
-not be because the millions who will get excited over that question have
-examined the matter, or possess ships or shares in ships that will
-profit by the exemption; it will be because all America has read of
-Irish atrocities which recall school-day histories of British atrocities
-in the American Colonies; because the “person,” Britain, has become a
-hateful and hostile person, and must be punished and coerced.</p>
-
-<p>War either with Japan or Britain or both is, of course, quite within the
-region of possibility. It is merely an evasion of the trouble which
-facing reality always involves, to say that war between Britain and
-America is “unthinkable.” If any war, as we have known it these last ten
-years, is thinkable,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_xx" id="page_xx"></a>{xx}</span> war between nations that have already fought two
-wars is obviously not unthinkable. And those who can recall at all
-vividly the forces which marked the growth of the conflict between
-Britain and Germany will see just those forces beginning to colour the
-relations of Britain and America. Among those forces none is more
-notable than this: a disturbing tendency to stop short at the ultimate
-questions, a failure to face the basic causes of divergence. Among
-people of good will there is a tendency to say: “Don’t let’s talk about
-it. Be discreet. Let us assume we are good friends and we shall be. Let
-us exchange visits.” In just such a way, even within a few weeks of war,
-did people of good will in England and Germany decide not to talk of
-their differences, to be discreet, to exchange visits. But the men of
-ill will talked&mdash;talked of the wrong things&mdash;and sowed their deadly
-poison.</p>
-
-<p>These pages suggest why neither side in the Anglo-German conflict came
-down to realities before the War. To have come to fundamentals would
-have revealed the fact to both parties that any real settlement would
-have asked things which neither would grant. Really to have secured
-Germany’s future economic security would have meant putting her access
-to the resources of India and Africa upon a basis of Treaty, of
-contract. That was for Britain the end of Empire, as Imperialists
-understood it. To have secured in exchange the end of “marching and
-drilling” would have been the end of military glory for Prussia. For
-both it would have meant the surrender of certain dominations, a
-recasting of patriotic ideals, a revolution of ideas.</p>
-
-<p>Whether Britain and America are to fight may very well depend upon this:
-whether the blinder and more unconscious motives rooted in traditional
-patriotisms, and the impulse to the assertion of power, will work their
-evil before the development of ideas has brought home to us a clearer
-vision of the abyss into which we fall; before we have modified, in
-other words, our tradition of patriotism, our political moralities, our<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_xxi" id="page_xxi"></a>{xxi}</span>
-standard of values. Without that more fundamental change no scheme of
-settlement of specific differences, no platforms, Covenants,
-Constitution can avail, or have any chance of acceptance or success.</p>
-
-<p>As a contribution to that change of ideas and of values these pages are
-offered.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_xxii" id="page_xxii"></a>{xxii}</span></p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_xxiii" id="page_xxiii"></a>{xxiii}</span></p>
-
-<h3>SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT</h3>
-
-<p class="nind">T<small>HE</small> central conclusion suggested by the following analysis of the events
-of the past few years is that, underlying the disruptive processes so
-evidently at work&mdash;especially in the international field&mdash;is the
-deep-rooted instinct to the assertion of domination, preponderant power.
-This impulse sanctioned and strengthened by prevailing traditions of
-‘mystic’ patriotism, has been unguided and unchecked by any adequate
-realisation either of its anti-social quality, the destructiveness
-inseparable from its operation, or its ineffectiveness to ends
-indispensable to civilisation.</p>
-
-<p>The psychological roots of the impulse are so deep that we shall
-continue to yield to it until we realise more fully its danger and
-inadequacy to certain vital ends like sustenance for our people, and
-come to see that if civilisation is to be carried on we must turn to
-other motives. We may then develop a new political tradition, which will
-‘discipline’ instinct, as the tradition of toleration disciplined
-religious fanaticism when that passion threatened to shatter European
-society.</p>
-
-<p>Herein lies the importance of demonstrating the economic futility of
-military power. While it may be true that conscious economic motives
-enter very little into the struggle of nations, and are a very small
-part of the passions of patriotism and nationalism, it is by a
-realisation of the economic truth regarding the indispensable condition
-of adequate life, that those passions will be checked, or redirected and
-civilised.</p>
-
-<p>This does not mean that economic considerations should<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_xxiv" id="page_xxiv"></a>{xxiv}</span> dominate life,
-but rather the contrary&mdash;that those considerations will dominate it if
-the economic truth is neglected. A people that starves is a people
-thinking only of material things&mdash;food. The way to dispose of economic
-pre-occupations is to solve the economic problem.</p>
-
-<p>The bearing of this argument is that developed by the present writer in
-a previous book, <i>The Great Illusion</i>, and the extent to which it has
-been vindicated by events, is shown in the Addendum.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_xxv" id="page_xxv"></a>{xxv}</span></p>
-
-<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary=""
-style="font-size:90%;border:none;margin:auto auto;max-width:80%;">
-<tr><td><small>CHAPTER</small></td><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">I</a></td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_I"> OUR DAILY BREAD </a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_003">3</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">II</a></td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_II"> THE OLD ECONOMY AND THE POST-WAR STATE</a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_061">61</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">III</a></td><td> <a href="#CHAPTER_III">NATIONALITY, ECONOMICS, AND THE ASSERTION OF<br />
-RIGHT</a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_081">81</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">IV</a></td><td> <a href="#CHAPTER_IV">MILITARY PREDOMINANCE&mdash;AND INSECURITY</a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_112">112</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">V</a></td><td> <a href="#CHAPTER_V">PATRIOTISM AND POWER IN WAR AND PEACE: THE<br />
-SOCIAL OUTCOME</a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_142">142</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">VI</a></td><td> <a href="#CHAPTER_VI">THE ALTERNATIVE RISKS OF STATUS AND CONTRACT</a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_169">169</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">VII</a></td><td> <a href="#CHAPTER_VII">THE SPIRITUAL ROOTS OF THE SETTLEMENT</a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_199">199</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td></td><td><a href="#ADDENDUM">ADDENDUM</a>: SOME NOTES ON ‘THE GREAT ILLUSION’
-AND ITS PRESENT RELEVANCE</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_253">253</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td></td><td><a href="#ADD-I">I</a>. The ‘Impossibility of War’ Myth. <a href="#ADD-II">II</a>. ‘Economic’
-and ‘Moral’ Motives in International Affairs. <a href="#ADD-III">III</a>. The
-‘Great Illusion’ Argument. <a href="#ADD-IV">IV</a>. Arguments now out of
-date. <a href="#ADD-V">V</a>. The Argument as an attack on the State.
-<a href="#ADD-VI">VI</a>. Vindication by Events. <a href="#ADD-VII">VII</a>. Could the War have
-been prevented?</td></tr>
-</table>
-
-<h2><a name="SYNOPSIS" id="SYNOPSIS"></a>SYNOPSIS</h2>
-
-<h3>CHAPTER I (pp. 3-60)<br /><br />
-<small>OUR DAILY BREAD</small></h3>
-
-<p class="nind">A<small>N</small> examination of the present conditions in Europe shows that much of
-its dense population (particularly that of these islands) cannot live at
-a standard necessary for civilisation (leisure, social peace, individual
-freedom) except by certain co-operative processes which must be carried
-on largely across frontiers. (The prosperity of Britain depends on the
-production by foreigners of a surplus of food and raw material above
-their own needs.) The present distress is not mainly the result of the
-physical destruction of war (famine or shortage is worst, as in the
-Austrian and German and Russian areas, where there has been no
-destruction). The Continent as a whole has the same soil and natural
-resources and technical knowledge as when it fed its populations. The
-causes of its present failure at self-support are moral: economic
-paralysis following political disintegration, ‘Balkanisation’; that, in
-its turn, due to certain passions and prepossessions.</p>
-
-<p>A corresponding phenomenon is revealed within each national society: a
-decline of production due to certain moral disorders, mainly in the
-political field; to ‘unrest,’ a greater cleavage between groups,
-rendering the indispensable co-operation less effective.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_xxvii" id="page_xxvii"></a>{xxvii}</span></p>
-
-<p>The necessary co-operation, whether as between nations or groups within
-each nation, cannot be compelled by physical coercion, though disruptive
-forces inseparable from the use of coercion can paralyse co-operation.
-Allied preponderance of power over Germany does not suffice to obtain
-indemnities, or even coal in the quantities demanded by the Treaty. The
-output of the workers in Great Britain would not necessarily be improved
-by adding to the army or police force. As interdependence increases, the
-limits of coercion are narrowed. Enemies that are to pay large
-indemnities must be permitted actively to develop their economic life
-and power; they are then so potentially strong that enforcement of the
-demands becomes correspondingly expensive and uncertain. Knowledge and
-organisation acquired by workers for the purposes of their labour can be
-used to resist oppression. Railwaymen or miners driven to work by force
-would still find means of resistance. A proletarian dictatorship cannot
-coerce the production of food by an unwilling peasantry. The processes
-by which wealth is produced have, by increasing complexity, become of a
-kind which can only be maintained if there be present a large measure of
-voluntary acquiescence, which means, in its turn, confidence. The need
-for that is only made the more imperative by the conditions which have
-followed the virtual suspension of the gold standard in all the
-belligerent States of Europe, the collapse of the exchanges and other
-manifestations of instability of the currencies.</p>
-
-<p>European statesmanship, as revealed in the Treaty of Versailles, and in
-the conduct of international affairs since the Armistice, has recognised
-neither the fact of interdependence&mdash;the need for the economic unity of
-Europe&mdash;nor the futility of attempted coercion. Certain political ideas
-and passions give us an unworkable Europe. What is their nature? How
-have they arisen? How can they be corrected? These questions are part of
-the problem of sustenance; which is the first indispensable of
-civilisation.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_xxviii" id="page_xxviii"></a>{xxviii}</span></p>
-
-<h3>CHAPTER II (pp. 61-80)<br /><br />
-<small>THE OLD ECONOMY AND THE POST-WAR STATE</small></h3>
-
-<p class="nind">T<small>HE</small> trans-national processes which enabled Europe to support itself
-before the War were based mainly on private exchanges prompted by the
-expectation of individual advantage. They were not dependent upon
-political power. (The fifteen millions for whom German soil could not
-provide lived by trade with countries over which Germany had no
-political control, as a similar number of British live by similar
-non-political means.)</p>
-
-<p>The old individualist economy has been largely destroyed by the State
-Socialism introduced for war purposes: the nation, taking over
-individual enterprise, became trader and manufacturer in increasing
-degree. The economic clauses of the Treaty, if enforced, must prolong
-this tendency, rendering a large measure of such Socialism permanent.</p>
-
-<p>The change may be desirable. But if co-operation must in future be less
-as between individuals for private advantage, and much more as between
-<i>nations</i>, governments acting in an economic capacity, the political
-emotions of nationalisation will play a much larger role in the economic
-processes of Europe. If to Nationalist hostilities as we have known them
-in the past is to be added the commercial rivalry of nations now
-converted into traders and capitalists, we are likely to have not a less
-but a more quarrelsome world, unless the fact of interdependence is much
-more vividly realised than in the past.</p>
-
-<h3>CHAPTER III (pp. 81-111)<br /><br />
-<small>NATIONALITY, ECONOMICS, AND THE ASSERTION OF RIGHT</small></h3>
-
-<p class="nind">T<small>HE</small> change noted in the preceding chapter raises a profound question of
-Right&mdash;Have we the right to use our power to deny to others the means of
-life? By our political power we <i>can</i> create a Europe which, while not
-assuring advantage to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_xxix" id="page_xxix"></a>{xxix}</span> victor, deprives the vanquished of means of
-existence. The loss of both ore and coal by the Central Powers might
-well make it impossible for their future populations to find food. What
-are they to do? Starve? To disclaim responsibility is to claim that we
-are entitled to use our power to deny them life.</p>
-
-<p>This ‘right’ to starve foreigners can only be invoked by invoking the
-conception of nationalism&mdash;‘Our nation first.’ But the policy of placing
-life itself upon a foundation of preponderant force, instead of mutually
-advantageous co-operation, compels statesmen perpetually to betray the
-principle of nationality; not only directly, (as in the case of the
-annexation of territory, economically necessary, but containing peoples
-of alien nationality,) but indirectly; for the resistance which our
-policy (of denying means of subsistence to others) provokes, makes
-preponderance of power the condition of survival. All else must give way
-to that need.</p>
-
-<p>Might cannot be pledged to Right in these conditions. If our power is
-pledged to Allies for the purpose of the Balance (which means, in fact,
-preponderance), it cannot be used against them to enforce respect for
-(say) nationality. To turn against Allies would break the Balance. To
-maintain the Balance of Power we are compelled to disregard the moral
-merits of an Ally’s policy (as in the case of the promise to the Czar’s
-government not to demand the independence of Poland). The maintenance of
-a Balance (<i>i.e.</i> preponderance) is incompatible with the maintenance of
-Right. There is a conflict of obligation.</p>
-
-<h3>CHAPTER IV (pp. 112-141)<br /><br />
-<small>MILITARY PREDOMINANCE&mdash;AND INSECURITY</small></h3>
-
-<p class="nind">T<small>HE</small> moral questions raised in the preceding chapter have a direct
-bearing on the effectiveness of military power based<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_xxx" id="page_xxx"></a>{xxx}</span> on the National
-unit, or a group of National units, such as an Alliance. Military
-preponderance of the smaller Western National units over large and
-potentially powerful groups, like the German or the Russian, must
-necessitate stable and prolonged co-operation. But, as the present
-condition of the Alliance which fought the War shows, the rivalries
-inseparable from the fears and resentments of ‘instinctive’ nationalism,
-make that prolonged co-operation impossible. The qualities of
-Nationalism which stand in the way of Internationalism stand also in the
-way of stable alliances (which are a form of Internationalism) and make
-them extremely unstable foundations of power.</p>
-
-<p>The difficulties encountered by the Allies in taking combined action in
-Russia show that to this fundamental instability due to the moral nature
-of Nationalism, must be added, as causes of military paralysis, the
-economic disruption which reduces the available material resources, and
-the social unrest (largely the result of the economic difficulties)
-which undermines the cohesion even of the national unit.</p>
-
-<p>These forces render military predominance based on the temporary
-co-operation of units still preserving the Nationalist outlook extremely
-precarious and unreliable.</p>
-
-<h3>CHAPTER V (pp. 142-168)<br /><br />
-<small>PATRIOTISM AND POWER IN WAR AND PEACE: THE SOCIAL OUTCOME</small></h3>
-
-<p class="nind">T<small>HE</small> greatest and most obvious present need of Europe, for the salvation
-of its civilisation, is unity and co-operation. Yet the predominant
-forces of its politics push to conflict and disunity. If it is the
-calculating selfishness of ‘realist’ statesmen that thus produces
-impoverishment and bankruptcy, the calculation would seem to be
-defective. The Balkanisation of Europe obviously springs, however, from
-sources belonging to our patriotisms, which are mainly uncalculating
-and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_xxxi" id="page_xxxi"></a>{xxxi}</span> instinctive, ‘mystic’ impulses and passions. Can we safely give
-these instinctive pugnacities full play?</p>
-
-<p>One side of patriotism&mdash;gregariousness, ‘herd instinct’&mdash;has a socially
-protective origin, and is probably in some form indispensable. But
-coupled with uncontrolled pugnacity, tribal gregariousness grows into
-violent partisanship as against other groups, and greatly strengthens
-the instinct to coercion, the desire to impose our power.</p>
-
-<p>In war-time, pugnacity, partisanship, coerciveness can find full
-satisfaction in the fight against the enemy. But when the war is over,
-these instincts, which have become so highly developed, still seek
-satisfaction. They may find it in two ways: in conflict between Allies,
-or in strife between groups within the nation.</p>
-
-<p>We may here find an explanation of what seems otherwise a moral enigma:
-that just <i>after a war</i>, universally lauded as a means of national
-unity, ‘bringing all classes together,’ the country is distraught by
-bitter social chaos, amounting to revolutionary menace; and that after
-the war which was to wipe out at last all the old differences which
-divided the Allies, their relations are worse than before the War (as in
-the case of Britain and America and Britain and France).</p>
-
-<p>Why should the fashionable lady, capable of sincere self-sacrifice
-(scrubbing hospital floors and tending canteens) for her countrymen when
-they are soldiers, become completely indifferent to the same countrymen
-when they have returned to civil life (often dangerous and hard, as in
-mining and fishing)? In the latter case there is no common enmity
-uniting duchess and miner.</p>
-
-<p>Another enigma may be solved in the same way: why military terrorism,
-unprovoked war, secret diplomacy, autocratic tyranny, violation of
-nationality, which genuinely appal us when committed by the enemy, leave
-us unmoved when political necessity’ provokes very similar conduct on
-our part; why the ideals for which we went to war become matters of
-indifference<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_xxxii" id="page_xxxii"></a>{xxxii}</span> to us when we have achieved victory. Gregariousness, which
-has become intense partisanship, makes right that which our side does or
-desires; wrong that which the other side does.</p>
-
-<p>This is fatal, not merely to justice, but to sincerity, to intellectual
-rectitude, to the capacity to see the truth objectively. It explains why
-we can, at the end of a war, excuse or espouse the very policies which
-the war was waged to make impossible.</p>
-
-<h3>CHAPTER VI (pp. 169-198)<br /><br />
-<small>THE ALTERNATIVE RISKS OF STATUS AND CONTRACT</small></h3>
-
-<p class="nind">I<small>NSTINCT</small>, being co-terminous with all animal life, is a motive of
-conduct immeasurably older and more deeply rooted than reasoning based
-on experience. So long as the instinctive, ‘natural’ action succeeds, or
-appears to succeed in its object, we do not trouble to examine the
-results of instinct or to reason. Only failure causes us to do that.</p>
-
-<p>We have seen that the pugnacities, gregariousness, group partisanship
-embodied in patriotism, give a strong emotional push to domination, the
-assertion of our power over others as a means of settling our relations
-with them. Physical coercion marks all the early methods in politics (as
-in autocracy and feudalism), in economics (as in slavery), and even in
-the relations of the sexes.</p>
-
-<p>But we try other methods (and manage to restrain our impulse
-sufficiently) when we really discover that force won’t work. When we
-find we cannot coerce a man but still need his service, we offer him
-inducements, bargain with him, enter a contract. This is the result of
-realising that we really need him, and cannot compel him. That is the
-history of the development from status to contract.</p>
-
-<p>Stable international co-operation cannot come in any other way. Not
-until we realise the failure of national coercive power for
-indispensable ends (like the food of our people)<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_xxxiii" id="page_xxxiii"></a>{xxxiii}</span> shall we cease to
-idealise power and to put our intensest political emotions, like those
-of patriotism, behind it.</p>
-
-<p>The alternative to preponderance is partnership of power. Both may imply
-the employment of force (as in policing), but the latter makes force the
-instrument of a conscious social purpose, offering to the rival that
-challenges the force (as in the case of the individual criminal within
-the nation) the same rights as those claimed by the users of force.
-Force as employed by competitive nationalism does not do this. It says
-‘You or me,’ not ‘You and me.’ The method of social co-operation may
-fail temporarily; but it has the perpetual opportunity of success. It
-succeeds the moment that the two parties both accept it. But the other
-method is bound to fail; the two parties cannot both accept it. Both
-cannot be masters. Both can be partners.</p>
-
-<p>The failure of preponderant power on a nationalist basis for
-indispensable ends would be self-evident but for the push of the
-instincts which warp our judgment.</p>
-
-<p>Yet faith in the social method is the condition of its success. It is a
-choice of risks. We distrust and arm. Others, then, are entitled also to
-distrust; their arming is our justification for distrusting them. The
-policy of suspicion justifies itself. To allay suspicion we must accept
-the risk of trust. That, too, will justify itself.</p>
-
-<p>Man’s future depends on making the better choice, for either the
-distrust or the faith will justify itself. His judgment will not be fit
-to make that choice if it is warped by the passions of pugnacity and
-hate that we have cultivated as part of the apparatus of war.</p>
-
-<h3>CHAPTER VII (pp. 199-251)<br /><br />
-<small>THE SPIRITUAL ROOTS OF THE SETTLEMENT</small></h3>
-
-<p class="nind">I<small>F</small> our instinctive pugnacities and hates are uncontrollable, and they
-dictate conduct, no more is to be said. We are the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_xxxiv" id="page_xxxiv"></a>{xxxiv}</span> helpless victims of
-outside forces, and may as well surrender. But many who urge this most
-insistently in the case of our patriotic pugnacities obviously do not
-believe it: their demands for the suppression of ‘defeatist’ propaganda
-during the War, their support of war-time propaganda for the maintenance
-of morale, their present fears of the ‘deadly infection’ of Bolshevist
-ideas, indicate, on the contrary, a very real belief that feelings can
-be subject to an extremely rapid modification or redirection. In human
-society mere instinct has always been modified or directed in some
-measure by taboos, traditions, conventions, constituting a social
-discipline. The character of that discipline is largely determined by
-some sense of social need, developed as the result of the suggestion of
-transmitted ideas, discussions, intellectual ferment.</p>
-
-<p>The feeling which made the Treaty inevitable was the result of a partly
-unconscious but also partly conscious propaganda of war half-truths,
-built up on a sub-structure of deeply rooted nationalist conceptions.
-The systematic exploitation of German atrocities, and the systematic
-suppression of similar Allied offences, the systematic suppression of
-every good deed done by our enemy, constituted a monstrous half-truth.
-It had the effect of fortifying the conception of the enemy people as a
-single person; its complete collective responsibility. Any one of
-them&mdash;child, woman, invalid&mdash;could properly be punished (by famine, say)
-for any other’s guilt. Peace became a problem of repressing or
-destroying this entirely bad person by a combination of nations entirely
-good.</p>
-
-<p>This falsified the nature of the problem, gave free rein to natural and
-instinctive retaliations, obscured the simplest human realities, and
-rendered possible ferocious cruelty on the part of the Allies. There
-would have been in any case a strong tendency to ignore even the facts
-which in Allied interest should have been considered. In the best
-circumstances it would have been extremely difficult to put through a
-Wilsonian (type 1918) policy, involving restraint of the sacred
-egoisms,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_xxxv" id="page_xxxv"></a>{xxxv}</span> the impulsive retaliations, the desire for dominion inherent
-in ‘intense’ nationalisms. The efficiency of the machinery by which the
-Governments for the purpose of war formed the mind of the nation, made
-it out of the question.</p>
-
-<p>If ever the passions which gather around the patriotisms disrupting and
-Balkanising Europe are to be disciplined or directed by a better social
-tradition, we must face without pretence or self-deception the results
-which show the real nature of the older political moralities. We must
-tell truths that disturb strong prejudices.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_xxxvi" id="page_xxxvi"></a>{xxxvi}</span></p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p class="cb"><big>THE &nbsp; FRUITS &nbsp; OF &nbsp; VICTORY</big></p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_001" id="page_001"></a>{1}</span>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_002" id="page_002"></a>{2}</span>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_003" id="page_003"></a>{3}</span>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I<br /><br />
-<small>OUR DAILY BREAD</small></h2>
-
-<h3>I<br /><br />
-<i>The relation of certain economic facts to Britain’s independence and
-Social Peace</i></h3>
-
-<p class="nind">P<small>OLITICAL</small> instinct in England, particularly in the shaping of naval
-policy, has always recognised the intimate relation which must exist
-between an uninterrupted flow of food to these shores and the
-preservation of national independence. An enemy in a position to stop
-that flow would enjoy not merely an economic but a political power over
-us&mdash;the power to starve us into ignominious submission to his will.</p>
-
-<p>The fact has, of course, for generations been the main argument for
-Britain’s right to maintain unquestioned command of the sea. In the
-discussions before the War concerning the German challenge to our naval
-power, it was again and again pointed out that Britain’s position was
-very special: what is a matter of life and death for her had no
-equivalent importance for other powers. And it was when the Kaiser
-announced that Germany’s future was upon the sea that British fear
-became acute! The instinct of self-preservation became aroused by the
-thought of the possible possession in hostile hands of an instrument
-that could sever vital arteries.</p>
-
-<p>The fact shows how impossible it is to divide off into <span class="pagenum"><a name="page_004" id="page_004"></a>{4}</span>watertight
-compartments the ‘economic’ from the political or moral. To preserve the
-capacity to feed our people, to see that our children shall have milk,
-is certainly an economic affair&mdash;a commercial one even. But it is an
-indispensable condition also of the defence of our country, of the
-preservation of our national freedom. The ultimate end behind the
-determination to preserve a preponderant navy may be purely nationalist
-or moral; the means is the maintenance of a certain economic situation.</p>
-
-<p>Indeed the task of ensuring the daily bread of the people touches moral
-and social issues nearer and more intimate even than the preservation of
-our national independence. The inexorable rise in the cost of living,
-the unemployment and loss and insecurity which accompany a rapid fall in
-prices, are probably the predominating factors in a social unrest which
-may end in transforming the whole texture of Western society. The worker
-finds his increased wage continually nullified by increase of price. Out
-of this situation arises an exasperation which, naturally enough, with
-peoples habituated by five years of war to violence and emotional
-mass-judgments, finds expression, not necessarily in organised
-revolution&mdash;that implies, after all, a plan of programme, a hope of a
-new order&mdash;but rather in sullen resentment; declining production, the
-menace of general chaos. However restricted the resources of a country
-may have become, there will always be some people under a régime of
-private capital and individual enterprise who will have more than a mere
-sufficiency, whose means will reach to luxury and even ostentation. They
-may be few in number; the amount of waste their luxury represents may in
-comparison with the total resources be unimportant. But their existence
-will suffice to give colour to the charge of profiteering and
-exploitation and to render still more acute the sullen discontent, and
-finally perhaps the tendency to violence.</p>
-
-<p>It is in such a situation that the price of a few prime
-necessaries&mdash;bread, coal, milk, sugar, clothing&mdash;becomes a social,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_005" id="page_005"></a>{5}</span>
-political, and moral fact of the first importance. A two-shilling loaf
-may well be a social and political portent.</p>
-
-<p>In the week preceding the writing of these lines five cabinets have
-fallen in Europe. The least common denominator in the cause is the
-grinding poverty which is common to the peoples they ruled. In two cases
-the governments fell avowedly over the question of bread, maintained by
-subsidy at a fraction of its commercial cost. Everywhere the social
-atmosphere, the temper of the workers, responds to stimulus of that
-kind.</p>
-
-<p>When we reach the stage at which mothers are forced to see their
-children slowly die for lack of milk and bread, or the decencies of life
-are lost in a sordid scramble for sheer physical existence, then the
-economic problem becomes the gravest moral problem. The two are merged.</p>
-
-<p>The obvious truth that, if economic preoccupations are not to dominate
-the minds and absorb the energies of men to the exclusion of less
-material things, then the fundamental economic needs must be satisfied;
-the fact, that though the foundations are certainly not the whole
-building, civilisation does rest upon foundations of food, shelter,
-fuel, and that if it is to be stable they must be sound&mdash;these things
-have been rendered commonplace by events since the Armistice. But before
-the War they were not commonplaces. The suggestion that the economic
-results of war were worth considering was quite commonly rejected as
-‘offensive,’ implying that men went to war for ‘profit.’ Nations in
-going to war, we were told, were lifted beyond the region of
-‘economics.’ The conception that the neglect of the economics of war
-might mean&mdash;as it has meant&mdash;the slow torture of tens of millions of
-children and the disintegration of whole civilisations, and that if
-those who professed to be the trustees of their fellows were not
-considering these things they ought to be&mdash;this was, very curiously as
-it now seems to us at this date, regarded as sordid and material. We now
-see that the things of the spirit depend upon the solution of these
-material problems.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_006" id="page_006"></a>{6}</span></p>
-
-<p>The one fact which stood out clear above all others after the Armistice
-was the actual shortage of goods at a time when millions were literally
-dying of hunger. The decline of productivity was obvious. It was due in
-part to diversion of energies to the task of war, to the destruction of
-materials, failure in many cases to maintain plant (factories, railways,
-roads, housing); to a varying degree of industrial and commercial
-demoralisation arising out of the War and, later, out of the struggle
-for political rearrangements both within States and as between States;
-to the shortening of the hours of labour; to the dislocation, first of
-mobilisation, and then of demobilisation; to relaxation of effort as
-reaction from the special strain of war; to the demoralisation of credit
-owing to war-time financial shifts. We had all these factors of reduced
-productivity on the one side, and on the other a generally increased
-habit and standard of expenditure, due in part to a stimulation of
-spending power owing to the inflation of the currency and in part to the
-recklessness which usually follows war; and above all an increasingly
-insistent demand on the part of the worker everywhere in Europe for a
-higher general standard of living, that is to say, not only a larger
-share of the diminished product of his labour, but a larger absolute
-amount drawn from a diminished total.</p>
-
-<p>This created an economic <i>impasse</i>&mdash;the familiar ‘vicious circle.’ The
-decline in the purchasing power of money and the rise in the rate of
-interest set up demands for compensating increases both of wages and of
-profits, which increases in turn added to the cost of production, to
-prices. And so on <i>da capo</i>. As the first and last remedy for this
-condition one thing was urged, to the exclusion of almost all
-else&mdash;increased production. The King, the Cabinet, economists, Trades
-Union leaders, the newspapers, the Churches, all agreed upon that one
-solution. Until well into the autumn of 1920 all were enjoining upon the
-workers their duty of an ever-increasing output.</p>
-
-<p>By the end of that year, workers, who had on numberless occasions been
-told that their one salvation was to increase<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_007" id="page_007"></a>{7}</span> their output, and who had
-been upbraided in no mild terms because of their tendency to diminish
-output, were being discharged in their hundreds of thousands because
-there was a paralysing over-production and glut! Half a world was
-famished and unclothed, but vast stores of British goods were rotting
-and multitudes of workers unemployed. America revealed the same
-phenomena. After stories of the fabulous wealth which had come to her as
-the result of the War and the destruction of her commercial competitors,
-we find, in the winter of 1920-21 that over great areas in the South and
-West her farmers are near to bankruptcy because their cotton and wheat
-are unsaleable at prices that are remunerative, and her industrial
-unemployment problem as acute as it has been in a generation. So bad is
-it, indeed, that the Labour Unions are unable to resist the Open Shop
-campaign forced upon them by the employers, a campaign menacing the
-gains in labour organisation that it has taken more than a generation to
-make. America’s commercial competitors being now satisfactorily disposed
-of by the War, and ‘the economic conquest of the world’ being now open
-to that country, we find the agricultural interests (particularly cotton
-and wheat) demanding government aid for the purpose of putting these
-aforesaid competitors once more on their feet (by loan) in order that
-they may buy American products. But the loans can only be repaid and the
-products paid for in goods. This, of course, constitutes, in terms of
-nationalist economics, a ‘menace.’ So the same Congress which receives
-demands for government credits to European countries, also receives
-demands for the enactment of Protectionist legislation, which will
-effectually prevent the European creditors from repaying the loans or
-paying for the purchases. The spectacle is a measure of the chaos in our
-thinking on international economics.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_008" id="page_008"></a>{8}</span></p>
-
-<p>But the fact we are for the moment mainly concerned with is this: on the
-one side millions perishing for lack of corn or cotton; on the other
-corn and cotton in such abundance that they are burned, and their
-producers face bankruptcy.</p>
-
-<p>Obviously therefore it is not merely a question of production, but of
-production adjusted to consumption, and vice versa; of proper
-distribution of purchasing power, and a network of processes which must
-be in increasing degree consciously controlled. We should never have
-supposed that mere production would suffice, if there did not
-perpetually slip from our minds the very elementary truth that in a
-world where division of labour exists wealth is not a material but a
-material plus a<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_009" id="page_009"></a>{9}</span> process&mdash;a process of exchange. Our minds are still
-dominated by the mediæval aspect of wealth as a ‘possession’ of static
-material such as land, not as part of a flow. It is that oversight which
-probably produced the War; it certainly produced certain clauses of the
-Treaty. The wealth of England is not coal, because if we could not
-exchange it (or the manufactures and services based on it) for other
-things&mdash;mainly food&mdash;it certainly would not even feed our population.
-And the process by which coal becomes bread is only possible by virtue
-of certain adjustments, which can only be made if there be present such
-things as a measure of political security, stability of conditions
-enabling us to know that crops can be gathered, transported and sold for
-money of stable value; if there be in other words the indispensable
-element of contract, confidence, rendering possible the indispensable
-device of credit. And as the self-sufficing economic unit&mdash;quite
-obviously in the case of England, less obviously but hardly less
-certainly in other notable cases&mdash;cannot be the national unit, the field
-of the contract&mdash;the necessary stability of credit, that is&mdash;must be, if
-not international, then trans-national. All of which is extremely
-elementary; and almost entirely overlooked by our statesmanship, as
-reflected in the Settlement and in the conduct of policy since the
-Armistice.</p>
-
-<h3>2</h3>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang"><i>Britain’s dependence on the production by foreigners of a surplus
-of food and raw materials beyond their own needs</i></p></div>
-
-<p>The matter may be clarified if we summarise what precedes, and much of
-what follows, in this proposition:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>The present conditions in Europe show that much of its dense
-population (notably the population of these islands) can<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_010" id="page_010"></a>{10}</span> only live
-at a standard necessary for civilisation (leisure, social peace,
-individual freedom) by means of certain co-operative processes,
-which must be carried on largely across frontiers. The mere
-physical existence of much of the population of Britain is
-dependent upon the production by foreigners of a surplus of food
-and raw materials beyond their own needs.</p>
-
-<p>The processes of production have become of the complex kind which
-cannot be compelled by preponderant power, exacted by physical
-coercion.</p>
-
-<p>But the attempt at such coercion, the inevitable results of a
-policy aimed at securing predominant power, provoking resistance
-and friction, can and does paralyse the necessary processes, and by
-so doing is undermining the economic foundations of British life.</p></div>
-
-<p>What are the facts supporting the foregoing proposition?</p>
-
-<p>Many whose instincts of national protection would become immediately
-alert at the possibility of a naval blockade of these islands, remain
-indifferent to the possibility of a blockade arising in another but
-every bit as effective a fashion.</p>
-
-<p>That is through the failure of the food and raw material, upon which our
-populations and our industries depend, to be produced at all owing to
-the progressive social disintegration which seems to be going on over
-the greater part of the world. To the degree to which it is true to say
-that Britain’s life is dependent upon her fleet, it is true to say that
-it is dependent upon the production by foreigners of a surplus above
-their own needs of food and raw material. This is the most fundamental
-fact in the economic situation of Britain: a large portion of her
-population are fed by the exchange of coal, or services and manufactures
-based on coal, for the surplus production, mainly food and raw material,
-of peoples living overseas.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> Whether<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_011" id="page_011"></a>{11}</span> the failure of food to reach us
-were due to the sinking of our ships at sea or the failure of those
-ships to obtain cargoes at the port of embarkation the result in the end
-would be the same. Indeed, the latter method, if complete, would be the
-more serious as an armistice or surrender would not bring relief.</p>
-
-<p>The hypothesis has been put in an extreme form in order to depict the
-situation as vividly as possible. But such a condition as the complete
-failure of the foreigner’s surplus does not seem to-day so preposterous
-as it might have done five years ago. For that surplus has shrunk
-enormously and great areas that once contributed to feeding us can do so
-no longer. Those areas already include Russia, Siberia, the Balkans, and
-a large part of the Near and Far East. What we are practically concerned
-with, of course, is not the immediate disappearance of that surplus on
-which our industries depend, but the degree to which its reduction
-increases for us the cost of food, and so intensifies all the social
-problems that arise out of an increasing cost of living. Let the
-standard alike of consumption and production of our overseas white
-customers decline to the standard of India and China, and our foreign
-trade would correspondingly decrease; the decline in the world’s
-production of food would mean that much less for us; it would reduce the
-volume of our trade, or in terms of our own products, cost that much
-more; this in turn would increase the cost of our manufactures, create
-an economic situation which one could describe with infinite technical
-complexity, but which, however technical and complex that description
-were made, would finally come to this&mdash;that our own toil would become
-less productive.</p>
-
-<p>That is a relatively new situation. In the youth of men now living,
-these islands with their twenty-five or thirty million<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_012" id="page_012"></a>{12}</span> population were,
-so far as vital needs are concerned, self-sufficing. What will be the
-situation when the children now growing up in our homes become members
-of a British population which may number fifty, sixty, or seventy
-millions? (Germany’s population, which, at the outbreak of war, was
-nearly seventy millions, was in 1870 a good deal less than the present
-population of Great Britain.)</p>
-
-<p>Moreover, the problem is affected by what is perhaps the most important
-economic change in the world since the industrial revolution, namely the
-alteration in the ratio of the exchange value of manufactures and
-food&mdash;the shift over of advantage in exchange from the side of the
-industrialist and manufacturer to the side of the producer of food.</p>
-
-<p>Until the last years of the nineteenth century the world was a place in
-which it was relatively easy to produce food, and nearly the whole of
-its population was doing it. In North and South America, in Russia,
-Siberia, China, India, the universal occupation was agriculture, carried
-on largely (save in the case of China and India) upon new soil, its
-first fertility as yet unexhausted. A tiny minority of the world’s
-population only was engaged in industry in the modern sense: in
-producing things in factories by machinery, in making iron and steel.
-Only in Great Britain, in Northern Germany, in a few districts in the
-United States, had large-scale industry been systematically developed.
-It is easy to see, therefore, what immense advantage in exchange the
-industrialist had. What he had for sale was relatively scarce; what the
-agriculturist had for sale was produced the world over and was, <i>in
-terms of manufactures</i>, extremely cheap. It was the economic paradox of
-the time that in countries like America, South and North, the
-farmer&mdash;the producer of food&mdash;was naturally visualised as a
-poverty-stricken individual&mdash;a ‘hayseed’ dressed in cotton jeans,
-without the conveniences and amenities of civilisation, while it was in
-the few industrial centres that the vast wealth was being piled up. But
-as the new land in North America and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_013" id="page_013"></a>{13}</span> Argentina and Siberia became
-occupied and its first fertility exhausted, as the migration from the
-land to the towns set in, it became possible with the spread of
-technical training throughout the world, with the wider distribution of
-mechanical power and the development of transport, for every country in
-some measure to engage in manufacture, and the older industrial centres
-lost some of their monopoly advantage in dealing with the food producer.
-In Cobden’s day it was almost true to say that England spun cotton for
-the world. To-day cotton is spun where cotton is grown; in India, in the
-Southern States of America, in China.</p>
-
-<p>This is a condition which (as the pages which follow reveal in greater
-detail) the intensification of nationalism and its hostility to
-international arrangement will render very much more acute. The
-patriotism of the future China or Argentina&mdash;or India and Australia, for
-that matter&mdash;may demand the home production of goods now bought in (say)
-England. It may not in economic terms benefit the populations who thus
-insist upon a complete national economy. But ‘defence is more than
-opulence.’ The very insecurity which the absence of a definitely
-organised international order involves will be invoked as justifying the
-attempt at economic self-sufficiency. Nationalism creates the situation
-to which it points as justification for its policy: it makes the very
-real dangers that it fears. And as Nationalism thus breaks up the
-efficient transnational division of labour and diminishes total
-productivity, the resultant pressure of population or diminished means
-of subsistence will push to keener rivalry for the conquest of
-territory. The circle can become exceedingly vicious&mdash;so vicious,
-indeed, that we may finally go back to the self-sufficing village
-community; a Europe sparsely populated if the resultant clerical
-influence is unable to check prudence in the matter of the birth-rate,
-densely populated to a Chinese or Indian degree if the birth-rate is
-uncontrolled.</p>
-
-<p>The economic chaos and social disintegration which have<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_014" id="page_014"></a>{14}</span> stricken so
-much of the world have brought a sharp reminder of the primary, the
-elemental place of food in the catalogue of man’s needs, and the
-relative ease and rapidity with which most else can be jettisoned in our
-complex civilisation, provided only that the stomach can be filled.</p>
-
-<p>Before the War the towns of Europe were the luxurious and opulent
-centres; the rural districts were comparatively poor. To-day it is the
-cities of the Continent that are half-starved or famine-stricken, while
-the farms are well-fed and relatively opulent. In Russia, Poland,
-Hungary, Germany, Austria, the cities perish, but the peasants for the
-most part have a sufficiency. The cities are finding that with the
-breakdown of the old stability&mdash;of the transport and credit systems
-particularly&mdash;they cannot obtain food from the farmers. This process
-which we now see at work on the Continent is in fact the reversal of our
-historical development.</p>
-
-<p>As money acquired a stable value and transport and communication became
-easy and cheap, the manor ceased to be self-contained, to weave its own
-clothes and make its own implements. But the Russian peasants are
-proving to-day that if the railroads break down, and the paper money
-loses its value, the farm can become once more self-sufficing. Better to
-thresh the wheat with a flail, to weave clothes from the wool, than to
-exchange wheat and wool for a money that will buy neither cloth nor
-threshing machinery. But a country-side that weaves its own cloth and
-threshes its grain by hand is one that has little surplus of food for
-great cities&mdash;as Vienna, Buda-Pest, Moscow, and Petrograd have already
-discovered.</p>
-
-<p>If England is destined in truth to remain the workshop of that world
-which produces the food and raw material, then she has indeed a very
-direct interest in the maintenance of all those processes upon which the
-pre-war exchange between farm and factory, city and country,
-depended.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_015" id="page_015"></a>{15}</span></p>
-
-<p>The ‘farm’ upon which the ‘factory’ of Great Britain depends is the
-food-producing world as a whole. It does not suffice that the overseas
-world should merely support itself as it did, say, in the tenth century,
-but it must be induced by hope of advantage to exchange a surplus for
-those things which we can deliver to it more economically than it can
-make them for itself. Because the necessary social and political
-stability, with its material super-structure of transport and credit,
-operating trans-nationally, has broken down, much of Europe is returning
-to its earlier simple life of unco-ordinated production, and its total
-fertility is being very greatly reduced. The consequent reaction of a
-diminished food supply for ourselves is already being felt.</p>
-
-<h3>3<br /><br />
-<i>The ‘Prosperity’ of Paper Money</i></h3>
-
-<p>It will be said: Does not the unquestioned rise in the standard of
-wages, despite all the talk of debt, expenditure, unbalanced budgets,
-public bankruptcy, disprove any theory of a vital connection between a
-stable Europe and our own prosperity? Indeed, has not the experience of
-the War discredited much of the theory of the interdependence of
-nations?</p>
-
-<p>The first few years of the War did, indeed, seem to discredit it, to
-show that this interdependence was not so vital as had been supposed.
-Germany seemed for a long time really to be self-supporting, to manage
-without contact with other peoples. It seemed possible to re-direct the
-channels of trade with relative ease. It really appeared for a time that
-the powers of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_016" id="page_016"></a>{16}</span> Governments could modify fundamentally the normal
-process of credit almost at will, which would have been about equivalent
-to the discovery of perpetual motion! Not only was private credit
-maintained by governmental assistance, but exchanges were successfully
-‘pegged’; collapse could be prevented apparently with ease. Industry
-itself showed a similar elasticity. In this country it seemed possible
-to withdraw five or six million men from actual production, and so
-organise the remainder as to enable them to produce enough not only to
-maintain themselves, but the country at large and the army, in food,
-clothing and other necessaries. And this was accomplished at a standard
-of living above rather than below that which obtained when the country
-was at peace, and when the six or seven or eight millions engaged in war
-or its maintenance were engaged in the production of consumable wealth.
-It seemed an economic miracle that with these millions withdrawn from
-production, though remaining consumers, the total industrial output
-should be very little less than it was before the War.</p>
-
-<p>But we are beginning to see how this miracle was performed, and also
-what is the truth as to the self-sufficiency of the great nations. As
-late as the early summer of 1918, when, even after four years of the
-exhausting drain of war, well-fed German armies were still advancing and
-gaining victories, and German guns were bombarding Paris (for the first
-time in the War), the edifice of German self-sufficiency seemed to be
-sound. But this apparently stalwart economic structure crumbled in a few
-months into utter ruins and the German population was starving and
-freezing, without adequate food, fuel, clothing. England has in large
-measure escaped this result just because her contacts with the rest of
-the world have been maintained while Germany’s have not. These latter
-were not even re-established at the Armistice; in many respects her
-economic isolation was more complete after the War than during it.
-Moreover, because our contacts with the rest of the world are<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_017" id="page_017"></a>{17}</span>
-maintained by shipping, a very great flexibility is given to our
-extra-national economic relationships. Our lines of communication can be
-switched from one side of the world to the other instantly, whereas a
-country whose approaches are by railroads may find its communications
-embarrassed for a generation if new frontiers render the old lines
-inapplicable to the new political conditions.</p>
-
-<p>In the first year or so following the Armistice there was a curious
-contradiction in the prevailing attitude towards the economic situation
-at home. The newspapers were full of headlines about the Road to Ruin
-and National Bankruptcy; the Government plainly was unable to make both
-ends meet; the financial world was immensely relieved when America
-postponed the payments of debts to her; we were pathetically appealing
-to her to come and save us; the British sovereign, which for generations
-has been a standard of value for the world and the symbol of security,
-dropped to a discount of 20 per cent, in terms of the dollar; our
-Continental creditors were even worse off; the French could only pay us
-in a depreciated paper currency, the value of which in terms of the
-dollar varied between a third and a fourth of what it was before the
-War; the lira was cheaper still. Yet side by side with this we had
-stories of a trade boom (especially in textiles and cotton), so great
-that merchants and manufacturers refused to go to their offices, in
-order to dodge the flood of orders so vastly in excess of what they
-could fulfil. Side by side with depreciated paper currency, with public
-debts so crippling that the Government could only balance its budget by
-loans which were not successful when floated, the amusement trades
-flourished as never before. Theatre, music hall, and cinematograph
-receipts beat all records. There was a greater demand for motor-cars
-than the trade could supply. The Riviera was fuller than it had ever
-been before. The working class itself was competing with others for the
-purchase of luxuries which in the past that class never knew. And while
-the financial situation made<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_018" id="page_018"></a>{18}</span> it impossible, apparently, to find capital
-for building houses to live in, ample capital was forthcoming wherewith
-to build cinema palaces. We heard and read of famine almost at our
-doors, and saw great prosperity around us; read daily of impending
-bankruptcy&mdash;and of high profits and lavish spending; of world-wide
-unrest and revolution&mdash;and higher wages than the workers had ever known.</p>
-
-<p>Complex and contradictory as the facts seemed, the difficulty of a true
-estimate was rendered greater by the position in which European
-Governments found themselves placed. These Governments were faced by the
-necessity of maintaining credit and confidence at almost any cost. They
-must not, therefore, throw too great an emphasis upon the dark features.
-Yet the need for economy and production was declared to be as great as
-it was during the war. To create a mood of seriousness and sober
-resolution adequate to the situation would involve stressing facts
-which, in their efforts to obtain loans, internal or external, and to
-maintain credit, governments were compelled to minimise.</p>
-
-<p>Then, of course, the facts were obscured mainly by the purchasing power
-created by the manufacture of credit and paper money. Some light is
-thrown upon this ambiguous situation by a fact which is now so
-manifest&mdash;that this juxtaposition of growing indebtedness and lavish
-spending, high wages, high profits, active trade, and a rising standard
-of living, were all things that marked the condition of Germany in the
-first few years of the War. Industrial concerns showed profits such as
-they had never shown before; wages steadily rose; and money was
-plentiful. But the profits were made and the wages were paid in a money
-that continually declined in value&mdash;as ours is declining. The higher
-consumption drew upon sources that were steadily being depleted&mdash;as ours
-are being depleted. The production was in certain cases maintained by
-very uneconomic methods: as by working only the best seams in the coal
-mines, by devoting no effort to the proper upkeep of plant<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_019" id="page_019"></a>{19}</span> (locomotives
-on the railway which ordinarily would go into the repair shop every six
-weeks were kept running somehow during the whole course of the War). In
-this sense the people were ‘living upon capital’&mdash;devoting, that is, to
-the needs of current consumption energy which should have been devoted
-to ensuring future production. In another way, they were converting into
-income what is normally a source of capital. An increase in profits or
-wages, which ordinarily would have provided a margin, over and above
-current expenditure, out of which capital for new plant, etc., could
-have been drawn, was rapidly nullified by a corresponding increase in
-prices. Loans for the purpose even of capital expenditure involved an
-inflation of currency which still further increased prices, thus
-diminishing the value of the capital so provided, necessitating the
-issue of further loans which had the same effect. And so the vicious
-circle was narrowed. Even after four years of this kind of thing the
-edifice had in many respects the outward appearances of prosperity. As
-late as April, 1918, the German organisation, as we have noted, was
-still capable of maintaining a military machine which could not only
-hold its own but compel the retirement of the combined forces of France,
-Britain, America, and minor Allies. But once the underlying process of
-disintegration became apparent, the whole structure went to pieces.</p>
-
-<p>It is that unnoticed process of disintegration, preceding the final
-collapse, which should interest us. For the general method employed by
-Germany for meeting the consumption of war and disguising the growing
-scarcity is in many respects the method her neighbours adopted for
-meeting the consumption of a new standard of life on the basis of less
-total wealth&mdash;a standard which, on the part of the workers, means both
-shorter hours and a larger share of their produce, and on the part of
-other classes a larger share of the more expensive luxuries. Like the
-Germans of 1914-18, we are drawing for current consumption upon the fund
-which, in a more<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_020" id="page_020"></a>{20}</span> healthy situation, would go to provide for renewal of
-plant and provision of new capital. To ‘eat the seed corn’ may give an
-appearance of present plenty at the cost of starvation later.</p>
-
-<p>It is extremely unlikely that there will ever be in England the sudden
-catastrophic economic collapse which we have witnessed in Russia,
-Germany, Austria, and Central Europe generally. But we shall none the
-less be concerned. As the increased wages gained by strikes lose with
-increasing rapidity their value in purchasing power, thus wiping out the
-effect of the industrial ‘victory,’ irritation among the workers will
-grow. On minds so prepared the Continental experiments in social
-reconstruction&mdash;prompted by conditions immeasurably more acute&mdash;will act
-with the force of hypnotic suggestion. Our Government may attempt to
-cope with these movements by repression or political devices. Tempers
-will be too bad and patience too short to give the sound solutions a
-real chance. And an economic situation, not in itself inherently
-desperate, may get steadily worse because of the loss of social
-discipline and of political insight, the failure to realise past
-expectations, the continuance of military burdens created by external
-political chaos.</p>
-
-<h3>4<br /><br />
-<i>The European disintegration: Britain’s concern.</i></h3>
-
-<p>What has actually happened in so much of Europe around us ought
-certainly to prevent any too complacent sense of security. In the midst
-of this old civilisation are (in Mr. Hoover’s calculation) some hundred
-million folk, who before the War managed to support themselves in fair
-comfort but are now unable to be truly self-supporting. Yet they live
-upon the same soil and in the presence of the same natural resources as
-before the War. Their inability to use that soil and those materials is
-not due to the mere physical destruction of war, for the famine is worst
-where there has been no physical destruction<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_021" id="page_021"></a>{21}</span> at all. It is not a lack
-of labour, for millions are unemployed, seeking work. Nor is it lack of
-technical or scientific knowledge, upon which (very erroneously) we are
-apt to look as the one sufficient factor of civilisation; for our
-technical knowledge in the management of matter is greater even than
-before the War.</p>
-
-<p>What then is the reason why these millions starve in the midst of
-potential plenty? It is that they have lost, from certain moral causes
-examined later in these pages, the capacity to co-ordinate their labour
-sufficiently to carry on the processes by which alone labour and
-knowledge can be applied to an exploitation of nature sufficiently
-complete to support our dense modern populations.</p>
-
-<p>The fact that wealth is not to-day a material which can be taken, but a
-process which can only be maintained by virtue of certain moral factors,
-marks a change in human relationship, the significance of which still
-seems to escape us.</p>
-
-<p>The manor, or even the eighteenth century village, was roughly a
-self-sufficing unit. It mattered little to that unit what became of the
-outside world. The manor or village was independent; its people could be
-cut off from the outside world, could ravage the near parts of it and
-remain unaffected. But when the development of communication and the
-discovery of steam turns the agricultural community into coal miners,
-these are no longer indifferent to the condition of the outside world.
-Cut them off from the agriculturalists who take their coal or
-manufactures, or let these latter be unable to carry on their calling,
-and the miner starves. He cannot eat his coal. He is no longed
-independent. His life hangs upon certain activities of others. Where his
-forebears could have raided and ravaged with no particular hurt to
-themselves, the miner cannot. He is dependent upon those others and has
-given them hostages. He is no longer ‘independent,’ however clamorously
-in his Nationalist oratory he may use that word. He has been forced into
-a relation of partnership. And how very small is the effectiveness<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_022" id="page_022"></a>{22}</span> of
-any physical coercion he can apply, in order to exact the services by
-which he lives, we shall see presently.</p>
-
-<p>This situation of interdependence is of course felt much more acutely by
-some countries than others&mdash;much more by England, for instance, than by
-France. France in the matter of essential foodstuffs can be nearly
-self-supporting, England cannot. For England, an outside world of fairly
-high production is a matter of life and death; the economic
-consideration must in this sense take precedence of others. In the case
-of France considerations of political security are apt to take
-precedence of economic considerations. France can weaken her neighbours
-vitally without being brought to starvation. She can purchase security
-at the cost of mere loss of profits on foreign trade by the economic
-destruction of, say, Central Europe. The same policy would for Britain
-in the long run spell starvation. And it is this fundamental difference
-of economic situation which is at the bottom of much of the divergence
-of policy between Britain and France which has recently become so acute.</p>
-
-<p>This is the more evident when we examine recent changes of detail in
-this general situation special to England. Before the War a very large
-proportion of our food and raw material was supplied by the United
-States. But our economic relationship with that country has been changed
-as the result of the War. Previous to 1914 we were the creditor and
-America the debtor nation. She was obliged to transmit to us large sums
-in interest on investments of British capital. These annual payments
-were in fact made in the form of food and raw materials, for which, in a
-national sense, we did not have to give goods or services in return. We
-are now less in the position of creditor, more in that of debtor.
-America does not have to transmit to us. Whereas, originally, we did an
-immense proportion of America’s carrying trade, because she had no
-ocean-going mercantile marine, she has begun to do her own carrying.
-Further, the pressure of her population upon her food resources is
-rapidly growing. The law diminishing<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_023" id="page_023"></a>{23}</span> returns is in some instances
-beginning to apply to the production of food, which in the past has been
-plentiful without fertilisers and under a very wasteful and simple
-system. And in America, as elsewhere, the standard of consumption, owing
-to a great increase of the wage standard, has grown, while the standard
-of production has not always correspondingly increased.</p>
-
-<p>The practical effect of this is to throw England into greater dependence
-upon certain new sources of food&mdash;or trade, which in the end is the same
-thing. The position becomes clearer if we reflect that our dependence
-becomes more acute with every increase of our population. Our children
-now at school may be faced by the problem of finding food for a
-population of sixty or seventy millions on these islands. A high
-agricultural productivity on the part of countries like Russia and
-Siberia and the Balkans might well be then a life and death matter.</p>
-
-<p>Now the European famine has taught us a good deal about the necessary
-conditions of high agricultural productivity. The co-operation of
-manufactures&mdash;of railways for taking crops out and fertilisers in, of
-machinery, tools, wagons, clothing&mdash;is one of them. That manufacturing
-itself must be done by division of labour is another: the country or
-area that is fitted to supply textiles or cream separators is not
-necessarily fitted to supply steel rails: yet until the latter are
-supplied the former cannot be obtained. Often productivity is paralysed
-simply because transport has broken down owing to lack of rolling stock,
-or coal, or lubricants, or spare parts for locomotives; or because a
-debased currency makes it impossible to secure food from peasants, who
-will not surrender it in return for paper that has no value&mdash;the
-manufactures which might ultimately give it value being paralysed. The
-lack of confidence in the maintenance of the value of paper money, for
-instance, is rapidly diminishing the food productivity of the soil;
-peasants will not toil to produce food which they cannot exchange,
-through the medium of money, for the things which they need&mdash;clothing,
-implements, and so on. This diminishing productivity<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_024" id="page_024"></a>{24}</span> is further
-aggravated by the impossibility of obtaining fertilisers (some of which
-are industrial products, and all of which require transport), machines,
-tools, etc. The food producing capacity of Europe cannot be maintained
-without the full co-operation of the non-agricultural
-industries&mdash;transport, manufactures, coal mining, sound banking&mdash;and the
-maintenance of political order. Nothing but the restoration of all the
-economic processes of Europe as a whole can prevent a declining
-productivity that must intensify social and political disorder, of which
-we may merely have seen the beginning.</p>
-
-<p>But if this interdependence of factory and farm in the production of
-food is indisputable, though generally ignored, it involves a further
-fact just as indisputable, and even more completely ignored. And the
-further fact is that the manufacturing and the farming, neither of which
-can go on without the other, may well be situated in different States.
-Vienna starves largely because the coal needed for its factories is now
-situated in a foreign State&mdash;Czecho-Slovakia&mdash;which, partly from
-political motives perhaps, fails to deliver it. Great food producing
-areas in the Balkans and Russia are dependent for their tools and
-machinery, for the stability of the money without which the food will
-not be produced, upon the industries of Germany. Those industries are
-destroyed, the markets have disappeared, and with them the incentive to
-production. The railroads of what ought to be food producing States are
-disorganized from lack of rolling stock, due to the same paralysis of
-German industry; and so the food production is diminished. Tens of
-millions of acres outside Germany, whose food the world sorely needs,
-have been rendered barren by the industrial paralysis of the Central
-Empires which the economic terms of the Treaty render inevitable.</p>
-
-<p>Speaking of the need of Russian agriculture for German industry, Mr.
-Maynard Keynes, who has worked out the statistics revealing the relative
-position of Germany to the rest of Europe, writes:&mdash;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_025" id="page_025"></a>{25}</span></p>
-
-<p>‘It is impossible geographically and for many other reasons for
-Englishmen, Frenchmen, or Americans to undertake it&mdash;we have neither the
-incentive nor the means for doing the work on a sufficient scale.
-Germany, on the other hand, has the experience, the incentive, and to a
-large extent, the materials for furnishing the Russian peasant with the
-goods of which he has been starved for the past five years, for
-reorganising the business of transport and collection, and so for
-bringing into the world’s pool, for the common advantage, the supplies
-from which we are now disastrously cut off.... If we oppose in detail
-every means by which Germany or Russia can recover their material
-well-being, because we feel a national, racial, or political hatred for
-their populations or their governments, we must be prepared to face the
-consequences of such feelings. Even if there is no moral solidarity
-between the newly-related races of Europe, there is an economic
-solidarity which we cannot disregard. Even now, the world markets are
-one. If we do not allow Germany to exchange products with Russia and so
-feed herself, she must inevitably compete with us for the produce of the
-New World. The more successful we are in snapping economic relations
-between Germany and Russia, the more we shall depress the level of our
-own economic standards and increase the gravity of our own domestic
-problems.’<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p>
-
-<p>It is not merely the productivity of Russia which is involved. Round
-Germany as a central support the rest of the European economic system
-grouped itself, and upon the prosperity and enterprise of Germany the
-prosperity of the rest of the Continent mainly depended. Germany was the
-best customer of Russia, Norway, Poland, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy,
-and Austria-Hungary; she was the second best customer of Great Britain,
-Sweden, and Denmark; and the third best customer of France. She was the
-largest source of supply to Russia, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Poland,
-Switzerland, Italy,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_026" id="page_026"></a>{26}</span> Austria-Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria; and the
-second largest source of supply to Great Britain, Belgium, and France.
-Britain sent more experts to Germany than to any other country in the
-world except India, and bought more from her than any other country in
-the world except the United States. There was no European country except
-those west of Germany which did not do more than a quarter of their
-total trade with her; and in the case of Russia, Austria-Hungary, and
-Poland, the proportion was far greater. To retard or prevent the
-economic restoration of Germany means retarding the economic
-reconstruction of Europe.</p>
-
-<p>This gives us a hint of the deep causes underlying the present
-divergence of French and British policy with reference to the economic
-reconstruction of Russia and Central Europe. A Britain of sixty or
-seventy millions faced by the situation with reference to America that
-has just been touched upon, might well find that the development of the
-resources of Russia, Siberia, and the Near East&mdash;even at the cost of
-dividing the profits thereof in terms of industrial development with
-Germany, each supplying that for which it was best suited&mdash;was the
-essential condition of food and social peace. France has no such
-pre-occupation. Her concern is political: the maintenance of a military
-predominance on which she believes her political security to depend, an
-object that might well be facilitated by the political disintegration of
-Europe even though it involved its economic disintegration.</p>
-
-<p>That brings us to the political factor in the decline in productivity.
-From it we may learn something of the moral factor, which is the
-ultimate condition of any co-operation whatsoever.</p>
-
-<p>The relationship of the political to the economic situation is
-illustrated most vividly, perhaps, in the case of Austria. Mr. Hoover,
-in testimony given to a United States Senate Committee, has declared
-bluntly that it is no use talking of loans to Austria which imply future
-security, if the present<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_027" id="page_027"></a>{27}</span> political status is to be maintained, because
-that status has rendered the old economic activities impossible.
-Speaking before the Committee, he said:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘The political situation in Austria I hesitate to discuss, but it
-is the cause of the trouble. Austria has now no hope of being
-anything more than a perpetual poorhouse, because all her lands
-that produce food have been taken from her. This, I will say, was
-done without American inspiration. If this political situation
-continues, and Austria is made a perpetual mendicant, the United
-States should not provide the charity. We should make the loan
-suggested with full notice that those who undertake to continue
-Austria’s present status must pay the bill. Present Austria faces
-three alternatives&mdash;death, migration, or a complete industrial
-diversion and re-organization. Her economic rehabilitation seems
-impossible after the way she was broken up at the Peace Conference.
-Her present territory will produce only enough food for three
-months, and she has now no factories which might produce products
-to be exchanged for food.’<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p></div>
-
-<p>To realise what can really be accomplished by statesmanship that has a
-soul above such trifles as food and fuel, when it sets its hand to
-map-drawing, one should attempt to visualise the state of Vienna to-day.
-Mr A. G. Gardiner, the English journalist, has sketched it thus:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘To conceive its situation one must imagine London suddenly cut off
-from all the sources of its life, no access to the sea, frontiers
-of hostile Powers all round it, every coalfield of Yorkshire or
-South Wales or Scotland in foreign hands, no citizen able to travel
-to Birmingham or Manchester without a passport, the mills it had
-financed in Lancashire taken from it, no coal to burn, no food to
-eat, and&mdash;with its shilling down<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_028" id="page_028"></a>{28}</span> in value to a farthing&mdash;no money
-to buy raw materials for its labour, industry at a standstill,
-hundreds of thousands living (or dying) on charity, nothing
-prospering except the vile exploiters of misery, the traffickers in
-food, the traffickers in vice. That is the Vienna which the peace
-criminals have made.</p>
-
-<p>‘Vienna was the financial and administrative centre of fifty
-million of people. It financed textile factories, paper
-manufacturing, machine works, beet growing, and scores of other
-industries in German Bohemia. It owned coal mines at Teschen. It
-drew its food from Hungary. From every quarter of the Empire there
-came to Vienna the half-manufactured products of the provinces for
-the finishing processes, tailoring, dyeing, glass-working, in which
-a vast population found employment.</p>
-
-<p>‘Suddenly all this elaborate structure of economic life was swept
-away. Vienna, instead of being the vital centre of fifty millions
-of people, finds itself a derelict city with a province of six
-millions. It is cut off from its coal supplies, from its food
-supplies, from its factories, from everything that means existence.
-It is enveloped by tariff walls.’</p></div>
-
-<p>The writer goes on to explain that the evils are not limited to Austria.
-In this unhappy Balkanised Society that the peace has created at the
-heart of Europe, every State is at issue with its neighbours: the Czechs
-with the Poles, the Hungarians with the Czechs, the Rumanians with the
-Hungarians, and all with Austria. The whole Empire is parcelled out into
-quarrelling factions, with their rival tariffs, their passports and
-their animosities. All free intercourse has stopped, all free
-interchange of commodities has ceased. Each starves the other and is
-starved by the other. ‘I met a banker travelling from Buda-Pest to
-Berlin by Vienna and Bavaria. I asked him why he went so far out of his
-way to get to his goal, and he replied that it was easier to do that
-than to get through the barbed-wire entanglements of Czecho-Slovakia.
-There is great hunger<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_029" id="page_029"></a>{29}</span> in Bohemia, and it is due largely to the same
-all-embracing cause. Formerly the Czech peasants used to go to Hungary
-to gather the harvest and returned with corn as part payment. Now
-intercourse has stopped, the Hungarian cornfields are without the
-necessary labour, and the Czech peasant starves at home, or is fed by
-the American Relief Fund. “One year of peace,” said Herr Renner, the
-Chancellor, to me, “has wrought more ruin than five years of war.”’</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>Mr Gardiner’s final verdict<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> does not in essence differ from that of
-Mr Hoover:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘It is the levity of mind which has plunged this great city into
-ruin that is inexplicable. The political dismemberment of Austria
-might be forgiven. That was repeatedly declared by the Allies not
-to be an object of the War; but the policy of the French, backed by
-the industrious propaganda of a mischievous newspaper group in this
-country, triumphed and the promise was dishonoured. Austria-Hungary
-was broken into political fragments. That might be defended as a
-political necessity. But the economic dismemberment was as
-gratuitous as it was deadly. It could have been provided against if
-ordinary foresight had been employed. Austria-Hungary was an
-economic unit, a single texture of the commercial, industrial, and
-financial interests.’<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></p></div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_030" id="page_030"></a>{30}</span></p>
-
-<p>We have talked readily enough in the past of this or that being a
-‘menace to civilisation.’ The phrase has been applied indifferently to a
-host of things from Prussian Militarism to the tango. No particular
-meaning was attached to the phrase, and we did not believe that the
-material security of our civilisation&mdash;the delivery of the letters and
-the milk in the morning, and the regular running of the ‘Tubes’&mdash;would
-ever be endangered in our times.</p>
-
-<p>But this is what has happened in a few months. We have seen one of the
-greatest and most brilliant capitals of Europe, a city completely
-untouched by the physical devastation of war, endowed beyond most with
-the equipment of modern technical learning and industry, with some of
-the greatest factories, medical schools and hospitals of our times,
-unable to save its children from death by simple starvation&mdash;unable,
-with all that equipment, to provide them each with a little milk and a
-few ounces of flour every day.</p>
-
-<h3>5<br /><br />
-<i>The Limits of Political Control</i></h3>
-
-<p>It is sometimes suggested that as political factors (particularly the
-drawing of frontiers) entered to some extent at least into the present
-distribution of population, political forces can re-distribute that
-population. But re-distribution would mean in fact killing.</p>
-
-<p>So to re-direct the vast currents of European industry as to involve a
-great re-distribution of the population would demand<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_031" id="page_031"></a>{31}</span> a period of time
-so great that during the necessary stoppage of the economic process most
-of the population concerned would be dead&mdash;even if we could imagine
-sufficient stability to permit of these vast changes taking place
-according to the naïve and what we now know to be fantastic, programme
-of our Treaties. And since the political forces&mdash;as we shall see&mdash;are
-extremely unstable, the new distribution would presumably again one day
-undergo a similarly murderous modification.</p>
-
-<p>That brings us to the question suggested in the proposition set out some
-pages back, how far preponderant political power can ensure or compel
-those processes by which a population in the position of that of these
-islands lives.</p>
-
-<p>For, as against much of the foregoing, it is sometimes urged that
-Britain’s concern in the Continental chaos is not really vital, because
-while the British Isles cannot be self-sufficing, the British Empire can
-be.</p>
-
-<p>During the War a very bold attempt was made to devise a scheme by which
-political power should be used to force the economic development of the
-world into certain national channels, a scheme whereby the military
-power of the dominant group should be so used as to ensure it a
-permanent preponderance of economic resources. The plan is supposed to
-have emanated from Mr Hughes, the Prime Minister of Australia, and the
-Allies (during Mr Asquith’s Premiership incidentally) met in Paris for
-its consideration. Mr Hughes’s idea seems to have been to organise the
-world into economic categories: the British Empire first in order of
-mutual preference, the Allies next, the neutrals next, and the enemy
-States last of all. Russia was, of course, included among the Allies,
-America among the neutrals, the States then Austria-Hungary among the
-enemies.</p>
-
-<p>One has only to imagine some such scheme having been voted and put into
-operation, and the modifications which political changes would to-day
-compel, to get an idea of merely the first of the difficulties of using
-political and military power, with a basis of separate and competing
-nationalisms, for<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_032" id="page_032"></a>{32}</span> economic purposes. The very nature of military
-nationalism makes surrender of competition in favour of long continued
-co-operation for common purposes, a moral impossibility. The foundations
-of the power are unstable, the wills which determine its use
-contradictory.</p>
-
-<p>Yet military power must rest upon Alliance. Even the British Empire
-found that its defence needed Allies. And if the British Empire is to be
-self-sufficing, its trade canalised into channels drawn along certain
-political lines, the preferences and prohibitions will create many
-animosities. Are we to sacrifice our self-sufficiency for the sake of
-American and French friendship, or risk losing the friendship by
-preferences designed to ensure self-sufficiency? Yet to the extent that
-our trade is with countries like North and South America we cannot
-exercise on its behalf even the shadow of military coercion.</p>
-
-<p>But that is only the beginning of the difficulty.</p>
-
-<p>A suggestive fact is that ever since the population of these islands
-became dependent upon overseas trade, that trade has been not mainly
-with the Empire but with foreigners. It is to-day.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> And if one
-reflects for a moment upon the present political relationship of the
-Imperial Government to Ireland, Egypt, India, South Africa, and the
-tariff and immigration legislation that has marked the economic history
-of Australia and Canada during the last twenty years, one will get some
-idea of the difficulty which surrounds the employment of political power
-for the shaping of an economic policy to subserve any large and
-long-continued political end.</p>
-
-<p>The difficulties of an imperial policy in this respect do not differ
-much in character from the difficulties encountered in Paris. The
-British Empire, too, has its problems of ‘Balkanisation,’<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_033" id="page_033"></a>{33}</span> problems that
-have arisen also from the anti-social element of ‘absolute’ nationalism.
-The present Nationalist fermentation within the Empire reveals very
-practical limits to the use of political power. We cannot compel the
-purchase of British goods by Egyptian, Indian, or Irish Nationalists.
-Moreover, an Indian or Egyptian boycott or Irish agitation, may well
-deprive political domination of any possibility of economic advantage.
-The readiness with which British opinion has accepted very large steps
-towards the independence and evacuation of Egypt after having fiercely
-resisted such a policy for a generation, would seem to suggest that some
-part of the truth in this matter is receiving general recognition. It is
-hardly less noteworthy that popular newspapers&mdash;that one could not have
-imagined taking such a view at the time, say, of the Boer war&mdash;now
-strenuously oppose further commitments in Mesopotamia and Persia&mdash;and do
-so on financial grounds. And even where the relations of the Imperial
-Government with States like Canada or Australia are of the most cordial
-kind, the impotence of political power for exacting economic advantage
-has become an axiom of imperial statecraft. The day that the Government
-in London proposed to set in motion its army or navy for the purpose of
-compelling Canada or Australia to cease the manufacture of cotton or
-steel in order to give England a market, would be the day, as we are all
-aware, of another Declaration of Independence. Any preference would be
-the result of consent, agreement, debate, contract: not of coercion.</p>
-
-<p>But the most striking demonstration yet afforded in history of the
-limits placed by modern industrial conditions upon the economic
-effectiveness of political power is afforded by the story of the attempt
-to secure reparations, indemnity, and even coal from Germany, and the
-attempt of the victors, like France, to repair the disastrous financial
-situation which has followed war by the military seizure of the wealth
-of a beaten enemy. That story is instructive both by reason of the light
-which it<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_034" id="page_034"></a>{34}</span> throws upon the facts as to the economic value of military
-power, and upon the attitude of public and statesmen towards these
-facts.</p>
-
-<p>When, some fifteen years ago, it was suggested that, given the
-conditions of modern trade and industry, a victor would not in practice
-be able to turn his military preponderance to economic account even in
-such a relatively simple matter as the payment of an indemnity, the
-suggestion was met with all but universal derision. European economists
-of international reputation implied that an author who could make a
-suggestion of that kind was just playing with paradox for the purpose of
-notoriety. And as for newspaper criticism&mdash;it revealed the fact that in
-the minds of the critics it was as simple a matter for an army to ‘take’
-a nation’s wealth once military victory had been achieved, as it would
-be for a big schoolboy to take an apple from a little one.</p>
-
-<p>Incidentally, the history of the indemnity negotiations illuminates
-extraordinarily the truth upon which the present writer happens so often
-to have insisted, namely, that in dealing with the economics of
-nationalism, one cannot dissociate from the problem the moral facts
-which make the nationalism&mdash;without which there would be no
-nationalisms, and therefore no ‘international’ economics.</p>
-
-<p>A book by the present author published some fifteen years ago has a
-chapter entitled ‘The Indemnity Futility.’ In the first edition the main
-emphasis of the chapter was thrown on this suggestion: on the morrow of
-a great war the victor would be in no temper to see the foreign trade of
-his beaten enemy expand by leaps and bounds, yet by no other means than
-by an immense foreign trade could a nation pay an indemnity commensurate
-with the vast expenditure of modern war. The idea that it would be paid
-in ‘money,’ which by some economic witchcraft should not involve the
-export of goods, was declared to be a gross and ignorant fallacy. The
-traders of the victorious nation would have to face a greatly sharpened
-competition<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_035" id="page_035"></a>{35}</span> from the beaten nation; or the victor would have to go
-without any very considerable indemnity. The chapter takes the ground
-that an indemnity is not in terms of theoretical economics an
-impossibility: it merely indicates the indispensable condition of
-securing it&mdash;the revival of the enemy’s economic strength&mdash;and suggests
-that this would present for the victorious nation, not only a practical
-difficulty of internal politics (the pressure of Protectionist groups)
-but a grave political difficulty arising out of the theory upon which
-defence by preponderant isolated national power is based. A country
-possessing the economic strength to pay a vast indemnity is of potential
-military strength. And this is a risk your nationalists will not accept.</p>
-
-<p>Even friendly Free Trade critics shook their heads at this and implied
-that the argument was a reversion to Protectionist illusions for the
-purpose of making a case. That misunderstanding (for the argument does
-not involve acceptance of Protectionist premises) seemed so general that
-in subsequent editions of the book this particular passage was
-deleted.<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_036" id="page_036"></a>{36}</span></p>
-
-<p>It is not necessary now to labour the point, in view of all that has
-happened in Paris. The dilemma suggested fifteen years ago is precisely
-the dilemma which confronted the makers of the Peace Treaty; it is,
-indeed, precisely the dilemma which confronts us to-day.</p>
-
-<p>It applies not only to the Indemnity, Reparations, but to our entire
-policy, to larger aspects of our relations with the enemy. Hence the
-paralysis which results from the two mutually exclusive aims of the
-Treaty of Versailles: the desire on the one hand to reduce the enemy’s
-strength by checking his economic vitality&mdash;and on the other to restore
-the general productivity of Europe, to which the economic life of the
-enemy is indispensable.</p>
-
-<p>France found herself, at the end of the War, in a desperate financial
-position and in dire need of all the help which could come from the
-enemy towards the restoration of her devastated districts. She presented
-demands for reparation running to vast, unprecedented sums. So be it.
-Germany then was to be permitted to return to active and productive
-work, to be permitted to have the iron and the other raw materials
-necessary for the production of the agricultural machinery, the building
-material and other sorts of goods France needed. Not the least in the
-world! Germany was to produce this<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_037" id="page_037"></a>{37}</span> great mass of wealth, but her
-factories were to remain closed, her rolling stock was to be taken from
-her, she was to have neither food nor raw materials. This is not some
-malicious travesty of the attitude which prevailed at the time that the
-Treaty was made. It was, and to a large extent still is, the position
-taken by many French publicists as well as by some in England. Mr.
-Vanderlip, the American banker, describes in his book<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> the attitude
-which he found in Paris during the Conference in these words: ‘The
-French burn to milk the cow but insist first that its throat must be
-cut.’</p>
-
-<p>Despite the lessons of the year which followed the signing of the
-Treaty, one may doubt whether even now the nature of wealth and ‘money’
-has come home to the Chauvinists of the Entente countries. The demand
-that we should at one and the same time forbid Germany to sell so much
-as a pen-knife in the markets of the world and yet compel her to pay us
-a tribute which could only be paid by virtue of a foreign trade greater
-than any which she has been able to maintain in the past&mdash;these mutually
-exclusive demands are still made in our own Parliament and Press.</p>
-
-<p>How powerfully the Nationalist fears operate to obscure the plain
-alternatives is revealed in a letter of M. André Tardieu, written more
-than eighteen months after the Armistice.</p>
-
-<p>M. Tardieu, who was M. Clemenceau’s political lieutenant in the framing
-of the Treaty, and one of the principal inspirers of the French policy,
-writing in July, 1920, long after the condition of Europe and the
-Continent’s economic dependence on Germany had become visible, ‘warns’
-us of the ‘danger’ that Germany may recover unless the Treaty is applied
-in all its rigour! He says:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘Remember your own history and remember what the <i>rat de terre de
-cousin</i> which Great Britain regarded with such<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_038" id="page_038"></a>{38}</span> disdain after the
-Treaty of Frankfurt became in less than forty years. We shall see
-Germany recover economically, profiting by the ruins she has made
-in other countries, with a rapidity which will astonish the world.
-When that day arrives, if we have given way at Spa to the madness
-of letting her off part of the debt that was born of her crime, no
-courses will be too strong for the Governments which allowed
-themselves to be duped. M. Clemenceau always said to British and
-American statesmen: “We of France understand Germany better than
-you.” M. Clemenceau was right, and in bringing his colleagues round
-to his point of view he did good work for the welfare of humanity.
-If the work of last year is to be undone, the world will be
-delivered up to the economic hegemony of Germany before twenty-five
-years have passed. There could be no better proof than the recent
-despatches of <i>The Times</i> correspondent in Germany, which bear
-witness to the fever of production which consumes Herr Stinnes and
-his like. Such evidence is stronger than the biased statistics of
-Mr Keynes. Those who refuse to take it into account will be the
-criminals in the eyes of their respective countries.’<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></p></div>
-
-<p>Note M. Tardieu’s argument. He fears the restoration of Germany
-industry, <i>unless</i> we make her pay the whole indemnity. That is to say,
-in other words, if we compel Germany to produce during the next
-twenty-five years something like ten thousand millions worth of wealth
-<i>over and above her own needs</i>, involving as it must a far greater
-output from her factories, mines, shipyards, laboratories, a far greater
-development of her railways, ports, canals, a far greater efficiency and
-capacity in her workers than has ever been known in the past, if that
-takes place as it must if we are to get an indemnity on the French
-scale, why, in that case, there will be no risk of Germany’s making too
-great an economic recovery!</p>
-
-<p>The English Press is not much better. It was in December,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_039" id="page_039"></a>{39}</span> 1918, that
-Professor Starling presented to the British Government his report
-showing that unless Germany had more food she would be utterly unable to
-pay any large indemnity to aid in reparations to France. Fully eighteen
-months later we find the <i>Daily Mail</i> (June 18, 1920) rampaging and
-shouting itself hoarse at the monstrous discovery that the Government
-have permitted Germans to purchase wheat! Yet the <i>Mail</i> has been
-foremost in insisting upon France’s dire need for a German indemnity in
-order to restore devastated districts. If the <i>Mail</i> is really
-representative of John Bull, then that person is at present in the
-position of a farmer who at seed-time is made violently angry at the
-suggestion that grain should be taken for the purpose of sowing the
-land, and shouts that it is a wicked proposal to take food from the
-mouths of his children. Although the Northcliffe Press has itself
-published page advertisements (from the Save the Children Fund)
-describing the incredible and appalling conditions in Europe, the <i>Daily
-Mail</i> shouts in its leading article: ‘Is British Food to go to the
-Boches?’ The thing is in the best war style. ‘Is there any reason why
-the Briton should be starved to feed the German?’ asks the <i>Mail</i>. And
-there follows, of course, the usual invective about the submarines, war
-criminals, the sinking of hospital ships, and the approval by the whole
-German people of all these crimes.</p>
-
-<p>We get here, as at every turn and twist of our policy, not any
-recognition of interdependence, but a complete repudiation of that idea,
-and an assumption, instead, of a conflict of interest. If the children
-of Vienna or Berlin are to be fed, then it is assumed that it must be at
-the expense of the children of Paris and London. The wealth of the world
-is conceived as a fixed quantity, unaffected by any process of
-co-operation between the peoples sharing the world. The idea is, of
-course, an utter fallacy. French or Belgian children will have more, not
-less, if we take measures to avoid European conditions in which the
-children of Vienna are left to die. If, during<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_040" id="page_040"></a>{40}</span> the winter of 1919-1920,
-French children died from sickness due to lack of fuel, it was because
-the German coal was not delivered, and the German coal was not delivered
-because, among other things, of general disorganization of transport, of
-lack of rolling stock, of underfeeding of the miners, of collapse of the
-currency, political unrest, uncertainty of the future.</p>
-
-<p>It is one of the contradictions of the whole situation that France
-herself gives intermittent recognition to the fact of this
-interdependence. When, at Spa, it became evident that coal simply could
-not be delivered in the quantities demanded unless Germany had some
-means of buying imported food, France consented to what was in fact a
-loan to Germany (to the immense mystification of certain journalistic
-critics in Paris). One is prompted to ask what those who, before the War
-so scornfully treated the present writer for throwing doubts upon the
-feasibility of a post-war indemnity, would have said had he predicted
-that on the morrow of victory, the victor, instead of collecting a vast
-indemnity would from the simplest motives of self-protection, out of his
-own direly depleted store of capital, be advancing money to the
-vanquished.<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a></p>
-
-<p>The same inconsistency runs through much of our post-war behaviour. The
-famine in Central Europe has become so appalling that very great sums
-are collected in Britain and America for its relief. Yet the reduced
-productivity out of which the famine has arisen was quite obviously
-deliberately designed, and most elaborately planned by the economic
-provisions of the Treaty and by the blockades prolonged after the
-Armistice, for months in the case of Germany and years in the case of
-Russia. And at the very time that advertisements were appearing in the
-<i>Daily Mail</i> for ‘Help to Starving Europe,’ and only a few weeks before
-France consented to advance money for the purpose of feeding Germany,
-that paper was<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_041" id="page_041"></a>{41}</span> working up ‘anti-Hun stunts’ for the purpose of using
-our power to prevent any food whatsoever going to Boches. It is also a
-duplication of the American phenomenon already touched upon: One Bill
-before Congress for the loaning of American money to Europe in order
-that cotton and wheat may find a market: another Bill before the same
-Congress designed, by a stiffly increased tariff, to keep out European
-goods so that the loans can never be repaid.<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p>
-
-<p>The experience of France in the attempt to exact coal by the use of
-military pressure throws a good deal of light upon what is really
-annexed when a victor takes over territory containing, say, coal; as
-also upon the question of getting the coal when it has been annexed. ‘If
-we need coal,’ wrote a Paris journalist plaintively during the Spa
-Conference, ‘why in heaven’s name don’t we go and take it.’ The
-implication being that it could be ‘taken’ without payment, for nothing.
-But even if France were to occupy the Ruhr and to administer the mines,
-the plant would have to be put in order, rolling stock provided,
-railroads restored, and, as France has already<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_042" id="page_042"></a>{42}</span> learned, miners fed and
-clothed and housed. But that costs money&mdash;to be paid as part of the cost
-of the coal. If Germany is compelled to provide those things&mdash;mining
-machinery, rolling stock, rails, miners’ houses and clothing and
-food&mdash;we are confronted with pretty much the same dilemma as we
-encounter in compelling the payment of an indemnity. A Germany that can
-buy foreign food is a Germany of restored credit; a Germany that can
-furnish rolling stock, rails, mining machinery, clothing and housing for
-miners, is a Germany restored to general economic health&mdash;and
-potentially powerful. That Germany France fears to create. And even
-though we resort to a military occupation, using forced labour
-militarily controlled, we are faced by the need of all the things that
-must still enter in the getting of the coal, from miners’ food and
-houses to plant and steel rails. Their cost must be charged against the
-coal obtained. And the amount of coal obtained in return for a given
-outlay will depend very largely, as we know in England to our cost, upon
-the willingness of the miner himself. Even the measure of resistance
-provoked in British miners by disputes about workers’ control and
-Nationalisation, has meant a great falling off in output. But at least
-they are working for their own countrymen. What would be their output if
-they felt they were working for an enemy, and that every ton they mined
-might merely result in increasing the ultimate demands which that enemy
-would make upon their country? Should we get even eighty per cent, of
-the pre-war output or anything like it?<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> Yet that diminished output<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_043" id="page_043"></a>{43}</span>
-would have to stand the cost of all the permanent charges aforesaid.
-Would the cost of the coal to France, under some scheme of forced
-labour, be in the end less than if she were to buy it in the ordinary
-commercial way from German mines, as she did before the War? This latter
-method would almost certainly be in economic terms more advantageous.
-Where is the economic advantage of the military method? This, of course,
-is only the re-discovery of the old truth that forced or slave labour is
-more costly than paid labour.</p>
-
-<p>The ultimate explanation of the higher cost of slave labour is the
-ultimate explanation of the difficulty of using political power for
-economic ends, of basing our economic security upon military
-predominance. Here is France, with her old enemy helpless and prostrate.
-She needs his work for reparations, for indemnities, for coal. To
-perform that work the prostrate enemy must get upon his feet. If he
-does, France fears that he will knock her down. From that fear arise
-contradictory policies, self-stultifying courses. If she overcomes her
-fear sufficiently to allow the enemy to produce a certain amount of
-wealth for her, it is extremely likely that more than the amount of that
-wealth will have to be spent in protecting herself against the danger of
-the enemy’s recovered vitality. Even when wars were less expensive than
-they are,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_044" id="page_044"></a>{44}</span> indemnities were soon absorbed in the increase of armament
-necessitated by the Treaties which exacted the indemnities.</p>
-
-<p>Again, this is a very ancient story. The victor on the Egyptian vase has
-his captured enemy on the end of a rope. We say that one is free, the
-other bond. But as Spencer has shown us, both are bond. The victor is
-tied to the vanquished: if he should let go the prisoner would escape.
-The victor spends his time seeing that the prisoner does not escape; the
-prisoner his time and energy trying to escape. The combined efforts in
-consequence are not turned to the production of wealth; they are
-‘cancelled out’ by being turned one against another. Both may come near
-to starvation in that condition if much labour is needed to produce
-food. Only if they strike a bargain and co-operate will they be in the
-position each to turn his energy to the best economic account.</p>
-
-<p>But though the story is ancient, men have not yet read it. These pages
-are an attempt to show why it has not been read.</p>
-
-<p>Let us summarise the conclusions so far reached, namely:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>That predominant political and military power is important to exact
-wealth is shown by the inability of the Allies to turn their power
-to really profitable account; notably by the failure of France to
-alleviate her financial distress by adequate reparations&mdash;even
-adequate quantities of coal&mdash;from Germany; and by the failure of
-the Allied statesmen as a whole, wielding a concentration of power
-greater perhaps than any known in history to arrest an economic
-disintegration, which is not only the cause of famine and vast
-suffering, but is a menace to Allied interest, particularly to the
-economic security of Britain.</p>
-
-<p>The causes of this impotence are both mechanical and moral. If
-another is to render active service in the production of wealth for
-us&mdash;particularly services of any technical complexity in industry,
-finance, commerce&mdash;he must have strength for that activity,
-knowledge, and the instruments. But all those things can be turned
-against us as means of resistance to our coercion.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_045" id="page_045"></a>{45}</span> To the degree
-to which we make him strong for our service we make him strong for
-resistance to our will. As resistance increases we are compelled to
-use an increasing proportion of what we obtain from him in
-protecting ourselves against him. Energies cancel each other,
-indemnities must be used in preparation for the next war. Only
-voluntary co-operation can save this waste and create an effective
-combination for the production of wealth that can be utilised for
-the preservation of life.</p></div>
-
-<h3>6<br /><br />
-<i>The Ultimate Moral Factor</i></h3>
-
-<p>The problem is not merely one of foreign politics or international
-relationship. The passions which obscure the real nature of the process
-by which men live are present in the industrial struggle also,
-and&mdash;especially in the case of communities situated as is the
-British&mdash;make of the national and international order one problem.</p>
-
-<p>It is here suggested that:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>Into the processes which maintain life within the nation an
-increasing measure of consent and acquiescence by all parties must
-enter: physical coercion becomes increasingly impotent to ensure
-them. The problem of declining production by (<i>inter alios</i>)
-miners, cannot be solved by increasing the army or police. The
-dictatorship of the proletariat fails before the problem of
-exacting big crops by the coercion of the peasant or countryman. It
-would fail still more disastrously before the problem of obtaining
-food or raw materials from foreigners (without which the British
-could not live) in the absence of a money of stable value.</p></div>
-
-<p>One of the most suggestive facts of the post-war situation is that
-European civilization almost breaks down before one of the simplest of
-its mechanical problems: that of ‘moving<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_046" id="page_046"></a>{46}</span> some stones from where they
-are not needed to the places where they are needed,’ in other words
-before the problem of mining and distributing coal. Millions of children
-have died in agony in France during this last year or two because there
-was no coal to transport the food, to warm the buildings. Coal is the
-first need of our massed populations. Its absence means collapse of
-everything&mdash;of transport, of the getting of food to the towns, of
-furnishing the machinery and fertilisers by which food can be produced
-in sufficient quantity. It is warmth, it is clothing, it is light, it is
-the daily newspaper, it is water, it is communication. All our
-elaboration of knowledge and science fails in the presence of this
-problem of ‘taking some stones from one heap and putting them on
-another.’ The coal famine is a microcosm of the world’s present failure.</p>
-
-<p>But if all those things&mdash;and spiritual things also are involved because
-the absence of material well-being means widespread moral evils&mdash;depend
-upon coal, the getting of the coal itself is dependent upon them. We
-have touched upon the importance of the one element of sheer goodwill on
-the part of the miners as a factor in the production of coal; upon the
-hopelessness of making good its absence by physical coercion. But we
-have also seen that just as the attempted use of coercion in the
-international field, though ineffective to exact necessary service or
-exchange, can and does produce paralysis of the indispensable processes,
-so the ‘power’ which the position of the miner gives him is a power of
-paralysis only.</p>
-
-<p>A later chapter shows that the instinct of industrial groups to solve
-their difficulties by simple coercion, the sheer assertion of power, is
-very closely related to the psychology of nationalism, so disruptive in
-the international field. Bolshevism, in the sense of belief in the
-effectiveness of coercion, represents the transfer of jingoism to the
-industrial struggle. It involves the same fallacies. A mining strike can
-bring the industrial machine to a full stop; to set that machine to work
-for the feeding of the population&mdash;which involves the co-ordination<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_047" id="page_047"></a>{47}</span> of
-a vast number of industries, the purchase of food and raw material from
-foreigners, who will only surrender it in return for promises to pay
-which they believe will be fulfilled&mdash;means not only technical
-knowledge, it means also the presence of a certain predisposition to
-co-operation. This Balkanised Europe which cannot feed itself has all
-the technical knowledge that it ever had. But its natural units are
-dominated by a certain temper which make impossible the co-operations by
-which alone the knowledge can be applied to the available natural
-resources.</p>
-
-<p>It is also suggestive that the virtual abandonment of the gold standard
-is playing much the same rôle (rendering visible the inefficiency of
-coercion) in the struggle between the industrial that it is between the
-national groups. A union strikes for higher wages and is successful. The
-increase is granted&mdash;and is paid in paper money.</p>
-
-<p>When wages were paid in gold an advance in wages, gained as the result
-of strike or agitation, represented, temporarily at least, a real
-victory for the workers. Prices might ultimately rise and wipe out the
-advantage, but with a gold currency price movements have nothing like
-the rapidity and range which is the case when unlimited paper money can
-be printed. An advance in wages paid in paper may mean nothing more than
-a mere readjustment of symbols. The advance, in other words, can be
-cancelled by ‘a morning’s work of the inflationist’ as a currency expert
-has put it. The workers in these conditions can never know whether that
-which they are granted with the right hand of increased wages will not
-be taken away by the left hand of inflation.</p>
-
-<p>In order to be certain that they are not simply tricked, the workers
-must be in a position to control the conditions which determine the
-value of currency. But again, that means the co-ordination of the most
-complex economic processes, processes which can only be ensured by
-bargaining with other groups and with foreign countries.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_048" id="page_048"></a>{48}</span></p>
-
-<p>This problem would still present itself as acutely on the morrow of the
-establishment of a British Soviet Republic as it presents itself to-day.
-If the British Soviets could not buy food and raw materials in twenty
-different centres throughout the world they could not feed the people.
-We should be blockaded, not by ships, but by the worthlessness of our
-money. Russia, which needs only an infinitesimal proportion relatively
-of foreign imports has gold and the thing of absolutely universal need,
-food. We have no gold&mdash;only things which a world fast disintegrating
-into isolated peasantries is learning somehow to do without.</p>
-
-<p>Before blaming the lack of ‘social sense’ on the part of striking miners
-or railwaymen let us recall the fact that the temper and attitude to
-life and the social difficulties which lie at the bottom of the
-Syndicalist philosophy have been deliberately cultivated by Government,
-Press, and Church, during five years for the purposes of war; and that
-the selected ruling order have shown the same limitation of vision in
-not one whit less degree.</p>
-
-<p>Think what Versailles actually did and what it might have done.</p>
-
-<p>Here when the Conference met, was a Europe on the edge of famine&mdash;some
-of it over the edge. Every country in the world, including the
-wealthiest and most powerful, like America, was faced with social
-maladjustment in one form or another. In America it was an
-inconvenience, but in the cities of a whole continent&mdash;in Russia,
-Poland, Germany, Austria&mdash;it was shortly to mean ill-health, hunger,
-misery, and agony to millions of children and their mothers. Terms of
-the study like ‘the interruption of economic processes’ were to be
-translated into such human terms as infantile cholera, tuberculosis,
-typhus, hunger-œdema. These, as events proved, were to undermine the
-social sanity of half a world.</p>
-
-<p>The acutest statesmen that Europe can produce, endowed with the most
-autocratic power, proceed to grapple with the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_049" id="page_049"></a>{49}</span> situation. In what way do
-they apply that power to the problem of production and distribution, of
-adding to the world’s total stock of goods, which nearly every
-government in the world was in a few weeks to be proclaiming as
-humanity’s first need, the first condition of reconstruction and
-regeneration?</p>
-
-<p>The Treaty and the policy pursued since the Armistice towards Russia
-tell us plainly enough. Not only do the political arrangements of the
-Treaty, as we have seen, ignore the needs of maintaining the machinery
-of production in Europe<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> but they positively discourage and in many
-cases are obviously framed to prevent, production over very large areas.</p>
-
-<p>The Treaty, as some one has said, deprived Germany of both the means and
-the motive of production. No adequate provision was made for enabling
-the import of food and raw materials, without which Germany could not
-get to work on the scale demanded by the indemnity claims; and the
-motive for industry was undermined by leaving the indemnity claims
-indeterminate.</p>
-
-<p>The victor’s passion, as we have seen, blinded him to the indispensable
-condition of the very demands which he was making. Europe was unable
-temperamentally to reconcile itself to the conditions of that increased
-productivity, by which alone it was to be saved. It is this element in
-the situation&mdash;its domination, that is, by an uncalculating popular
-passion poured out lavishly in support of self-destructive
-policies&mdash;which prompts one to doubt whether these disruptive forces
-find their roots merely in the capitalist organization of society: still
-less whether they are due to the conscious machinations of a small group
-of capitalists. No considerable section of capitalism any where has any
-interest in the degree of paralysis<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_050" id="page_050"></a>{50}</span> that has been produced. Capitalism
-may have overreached itself by stimulating nationalist hostilities until
-they have got beyond control. Even so, it is the unseeing popular
-passion that furnishes the capitalist with his arm, and is the factor of
-greatest danger.</p>
-
-<p>Examine for a moment the economic manifestation of international
-hostilities. There has just begun in the United States a clamorous
-campaign for the denunciation of the Panama Treaty which places British
-ships on an equality with American. American ships must be exempt from
-the tolls. ‘Don’t we own the Canal?’ ask the leaders of this campaign.
-There is widespread response to it. But of the millions of Americans who
-will become perhaps passionately angry over that matter and extremely
-anti-British, how many have any shares in any ships that can possibly
-benefit by the denunciation of the Treaty? Not one in a thousand. It is
-not an economic motive operating at all.</p>
-
-<p>Capitalism&mdash;the management of modern industry by a small economic
-autocracy of owners of private capital&mdash;has certainly a part in the
-conflicts that produce war. But that part does not arise from the direct
-interest that the capitalists of one nation as a whole have in the
-destruction of the trade or industry of another. Such a conclusion
-ignores the most elementary facts in the modern organisation of
-industry. And it is certainly not true to say that British capitalists,
-as a distinct group, were more disposed than the public as a whole to
-insist upon the Carthaginian features of the Treaty. Everything points
-rather to the exact contrary. Public opinion as reflected, for instance,
-by the December, 1918, election, was more ferociously anti-German than
-capitalists are likely to have been. It is certainly not too much to say
-that if the Treaty had been made by a group of British&mdash;or
-French&mdash;bankers, merchants, shipowners, insurance men, and
-industrialists, liberated from all fear of popular resentment, the
-economic life of Central Europe would not have been crushed as it has
-been.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_051" id="page_051"></a>{51}</span></p>
-
-<p>Assuredly, such a gathering of capitalists would have included groups
-having direct interest in the destruction of German competition. But it
-would also have included others having an interest in the restoration of
-the German market and German credit, and one influence would in some
-measure have cancelled the other.</p>
-
-<p>As a simple fact we know that not all British capitalists, still less
-British financiers, <i>are</i> interested in the destruction of German
-prosperity. Central Europe was one of the very greatest markets
-available for British industry, and the recovery of that market may
-constitute for a very large number of manufacturers, merchants,
-shippers, insurance companies, and bankers, a source of immense
-potential profit. It is a perfectly arguable proposition, to put it at
-the very lowest, that British ‘capitalism’ has, as a whole, more to gain
-from a productive and stable Europe than from a starving and unstable
-one. There is no reason whatever to doubt the genuineness of the
-internationalism that we associate with the Manchester School of
-Capitalist Economics.</p>
-
-<p>But in political nationalism as a force there are no such cross currents
-cancelling out the hostility of one nation to another. Economically,
-Britain is not one entity and Germany another. But as a sentimental
-concept, each may perfectly well be an entity; and in the imagination of
-John Citizen, in his political capacity, voting on the eve of the Peace
-Conference, Britain is a triumphant and heroic ‘person,’ while Germany
-is an evil and cruel ‘person,’ who must be punished, and whose pockets
-must be searched. John has neither the time nor has he felt the need,
-for a scientific attitude in politics. But when it is no longer a
-question of giving his vote, but of earning his income, of succeeding as
-a merchant or shipowner in an uncertain future, he will be thoroughly
-scientific. When it comes to carrying cargoes or selling cotton goods,
-he can face facts. And, in the past at least, he knows that he has not
-sold those materials to a wicked person called<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_052" id="page_052"></a>{52}</span> ‘Germany,’ but to a
-quite decent and human trader called Schmidt.</p>
-
-<p>What I am suggesting here is that for an explanation of the passions
-which have given us the Treaty of Versailles we must look much more to
-rival nationalisms than to rival capitalisms; not to hatreds that are
-the outgrowth of a real conflict of interests, but to certain
-nationalist conceptions, ‘myths,’ as Sorel has it. To these conceptions
-economic hostilities may assuredly attach themselves. At the height of
-the war-hatred of things German, a shopkeeper who had the temerity to
-expose German post cards or prints for sale would have risked the
-sacking of his shop. The sackers would not have been persons engaged in
-the post card producing trade. Their motive would have been patriotic.
-If their feelings lasted over the war, they would vote against the
-admission of German post cards. They would not be moved by economic,
-still less by capitalistic motives. These motives do enter, as we shall
-see presently, into the problems raised by the present condition of
-Europe. But it is important to see at what point and in what way. The
-point for the moment&mdash;and it has immense practical importance&mdash;is that
-the Treaty of Versailles and its economic consequences should be
-attributed less to capitalism (bad as that has come to be in its total
-results) than to the pressure of a public opinion that had crystallised
-round nationalist conceptions.<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_053" id="page_053"></a>{53}</span></p>
-
-<p>Here, at the end of 1920, is the British Press still clamouring for the
-exclusion of German toys. Such an agitation presumably pleases the
-millions of readers. They are certainly not toymakers or sellers; they
-have no commercial interest in the matter save that ‘their toys will
-cost them more’ if the agitation succeeds. They are actuated by
-nationalist hostility.</p>
-
-<p>If Germany is not to be allowed to sell even toys, there will be very
-few things indeed that she can sell. We are to go on with the policy of
-throttling Europe in order that a nation whose industrial activity is
-indispensable to Europe shall not become strong. We do not see, it is
-true, the relation between the economic revival of Europe and the
-industrial recuperation of Germany; we do not see it because we can be
-made to feel anger at the idea of German toys for British children so
-much more readily than we can be made to see the causes which deprive
-French children of warmth in their schoolrooms. European society seems
-to be in the position of an ill-disciplined child that cannot bring
-itself to swallow the medicine that would relieve it of its pain. The
-passions which have been cultivated in five years of war must be
-indulged, whatever the ultimate cost to ourselves. The judgment of such
-a society is swamped in those passions.</p>
-
-<p>The restoration of much of Europe will involve many vast<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_054" id="page_054"></a>{54}</span> and complex
-problems of reconstruction. But here, in the alternatives presented by
-the payment of a German indemnity, for instance, is a very simple issue:
-if Germany is to pay, she must produce goods, that is, she must be
-economically restored; if we fear her economic restoration, then we
-cannot obtain the execution of the reparation clauses of the Treaty. But
-that simple issue one of the greatest figures of the Conference cannot
-face. He has not, eighteen months after the Treaty, emerged from the
-most elementary confusion concerning it. If the psychology of
-Nationalism renders so simple a problem insoluble, what will be its
-effect upon the problem of Europe as a whole?</p>
-
-<p>Again, it may be that shipowners are behind the American agitation and
-toy manufacturers behind the British. A Coffin Trust might intrigue
-against measures to prevent a repetition of the influenza epidemic. But
-what should we say of the fitness for self-government of a people that
-should lend itself by millions to such an intrigue of Coffin-makers,
-showing as the result of its propaganda a fierce hostility to
-sanitation? We should conclude that it deserved to die. If Europe went
-to war as the result of the intrigues of a dozen capitalists, its
-civilisation is not worth saving; it cannot be saved, for as soon as the
-capitalists were removed, its inherent helplessness would place it at
-the mercy of some other form of exploitation.</p>
-
-<p>Its only hope lies in a capacity for self-management, self-rule, which
-means self-control. But a few financial intriguers, we are told, have
-only to pronounce certain words, ‘fatherland above all,’ ‘national
-honour,’ put about a few stories of atrocities, clamour for revenge, for
-the millions to lose all self-control, to become completely blind as to
-where they are going, what they are doing, to lose all sense of the
-ultimate consequences of their acts.</p>
-
-<p>The gravest fact in the history of the last ten years is not the fact of
-war; it is the temper of mind, the blindness of conduct<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_055" id="page_055"></a>{55}</span> on the part of
-the millions, which alone, ultimately, explains our policies. The
-suffering and cost of war may well be the best choice of evils, like the
-suffering and cost of surgery, or the burdens we assume for a clearly
-conceived moral end. But what we have seen in recent history is not a
-deliberate choice of ends with a consciousness of moral and material
-cost. We see a whole nation demanding fiercely in one breath certain
-things, and in the next just as angrily demanding other things which
-make compliance with the first impossible; a whole nation or a whole
-continent given over to an orgy of hate, retaliation, the indulgence of
-self-destructive passions. And this collapse of the human mind does but
-become the more appalling if we accept the explanation that ‘wars are
-caused by capitalism’ or ‘Junkerthum’; if we believe that six Jew
-financiers sitting in a room can thus turn millions into something
-resembling madmen. No indictment of human reason could be more severe.</p>
-
-<p>To assume that millions will, without any real knowledge of why they do
-it or of the purpose behind the behests they obey, not only take the
-lives of others and give their own, but turn first in one direction and
-then in another the flood of their deepest passions of hate and
-vengeance, just as a little group of mean little men, manipulating mean
-little interests, may direct, is to argue a moral helplessness and
-shameful docility on the part of those millions which would deprive the
-future of all hope of self-government. And to assume that they are <i>not</i>
-unknowing as to the alleged cause&mdash;that would bring us to moral
-phantasmagoria.</p>
-
-<p>We shall get nearer to the heart of our problem if, instead of asking
-perpetually ‘<i>Who</i> caused the War?’ and indicting ‘Capitalists’ or
-‘Junkers,’ we ask the question: ‘What is the cause of that state of mind
-and temper in the millions which made them on the one side welcome war
-(as we allege of the German millions), or on the other side makes them
-acclaim, or impose, blockades, famines,’ ‘punitive’ ‘Treaties of
-Peace?<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_056" id="page_056"></a>{56}</span>’</p>
-
-<p>Obviously ‘selfishness’ is not operating so far as the mass is
-concerned, except of course in the sense that a yielding to the passion
-of hate is self-indulgence. Selfishness, in the sense of care for social
-security and well-being, might save the structure of European society.
-It would bring the famine to an end. But we have what a French writer
-has called a ‘holy and unselfish hate.’ Balkan peasants prefer to burn
-their wheat rather than send it to the famished city across the river.
-Popular English newspapers agitate against a German trade which is the
-only hope of necessitous Allies obtaining any considerable reparation
-from Germany. A society in which each member is more desirous of hurting
-his neighbour than of promoting his own welfare, is one in which the
-aggregate will to destruction is more powerful than the will to
-preservation.</p>
-
-<p>The history of these last years shows with painful clarity that as
-between groups of men hostilities and hates are aroused very much more
-easily than any emotion of comradeship. And the hate is a hungrier and
-more persistent emotion than the comradeship. The much proclaimed
-fellowship of the Allies, ‘cemented by the blood shed on the field,’
-vanished rapidly. But hate remained and found expression in the social
-struggle, in fierce repressions, in bickerings, fears, and rancours
-between those who yesterday fought side by side. Yet the price of
-survival is, as we have seen, an ever closer cohesion and social
-co-operation.</p>
-
-<p>And while it is undoubtedly true that the ‘hunger of hate’&mdash;the actual
-desire to have something to hate&mdash;may so warp our judgment as to make us
-see a conflict of interest where none exists, it is also true that a
-sense of conflict of vital interest is a great feeder of hate. And that
-sense of conflict may well become keener as the problem of man’s
-struggle for sustenance on the earth becomes more acute, as his numbers
-increase and the pressure upon that sustenance becomes greater.</p>
-
-<p>Once more, as millions of children are born at our very<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_057" id="page_057"></a>{57}</span> doors into a
-world that cannot feed them, condemned, if they live at all, to form a
-race that will be defective, stunted, unhealthy, abnormal, this question
-which Malthus very rightly taught our grandfathers to regard as the
-final and ultimate question of their Political Economy, comes
-dramatically into the foreground. How can the earth, which is limited,
-find food for an increase of population which is unlimited?</p>
-
-<p>The haunting anxieties which lie behind the failure to find a conclusive
-answer to that question, probably affect political decisions and deepen
-hostilities and animosities even where the reason is ill-formulated or
-unconscious. Some of us, perhaps, fear to face the question lest we be
-confronted with morally terrifying alternatives. Let posterity decide
-its own problems. But such fears, and the motives prompted by them, do
-not disappear by our refusal to face them. Though hidden, they still
-live, and under various moral disguises influence our conduct.</p>
-
-<p>Certainly the fears inspired by the Malthusian theory and the facts upon
-which it is based, have affected our attitude to war; affected the
-feeling of very many for whom war is not avowedly, as it is openly and
-avowedly to some of its students, ‘the Struggle for Bread.’<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></p>
-
-<p><i>The Great Illusion</i> was an attempt frankly to face this ultimate
-question of the bearing of war upon man’s struggle for survival. It took
-the ground that the victory of one nation<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_058" id="page_058"></a>{58}</span> over another, however
-complete, does not solve the problem; it makes it worse in that the
-conditions and instincts which war accentuates express themselves in
-nationalist and racial rivalries, create divisions that embarrass and
-sometimes make impossible the widespread co-operation by which alone man
-can effectively exploit nature.</p>
-
-<p>That demonstration as a whole belongs to the pages that follow. But
-bearing upon the narrower question of war in relation to the world’s
-good, this much is certain:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>If the object of the combatants in the War was to make sure of their
-food, then indeed is the result in striking contrast with that
-intention, for food is assuredly more insecure than ever alike for
-victor and vanquished. They differ only in the degree of insecurity. The
-War, the passions which it has nurtured, the political arrangements
-which those passions have dictated, have given us a Europe immeasurably
-less able to meet its sustenance problem than it was before. So much
-less able that millions, who before the War could well support
-themselves by their own labour, are now unable so to do and have to be
-fed by drawing upon the slender stocks of their conquerors&mdash;stocks very
-much less than when some at least of those conquerors were in the
-position of defeated peoples.</p>
-
-<p>This is not the effect of the material destruction of war, of the mere
-battering down of houses and bridges and factories by the soldier.</p>
-
-<p>The physical devastation, heart-breaking as the spectacle of it is, is
-not the difficult part of the problem, nor quantitatively the most
-important.<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> It is not the devastated districts that are<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_059" id="page_059"></a>{59}</span> suffering
-from famine, nor their losses which appreciably diminish the world
-supply of food. It is in cities in which not a house has been destroyed,
-in which, indeed, every wheel in every factory is still intact, that the
-population dies of hunger, and the children have to be fed by our
-charity. It is the fields over which not a single soldier has tramped
-that are condemned to sterility because those factories are idle, while
-the factories are condemned to idleness because the fields are sterile.</p>
-
-<p>The real ‘economic argument’ against war does not consist in the
-presentation of a balance sheet showing so much cost and destruction and
-so much gain. The real argument consists in the fact that war, and still
-more the ideas out of which it arises, produce ultimately an unworkable
-society. The physical destruction and perhaps the cost are greatly
-exaggerated. It is perhaps true that in the material foundations of
-wealth Britain is as well off to-day as before the War. It is not from
-lack of technical knowledge that the economic machine works with such
-friction: that has been considerably increased by the War. It is not
-from lack of idealism and unselfishness. There has been during the last
-five years such an outpouring of devoted unselfishness&mdash;the very hates
-have been unselfish&mdash;as history cannot equal. Millions have given their
-lives for the contrary ideals in which they believed. It is sometimes
-the ideals for which men die that make impossible their life and work
-together.</p>
-
-<p>The real ‘economic argument,’ supported by the experience of our
-victory, is that the ideas which produce war&mdash;the fears out of which it
-grows and the passions which it feeds&mdash;produce a state of mind that
-ultimately renders impossible the co-operation by which alone wealth can
-be produced and life maintained. The use of our power or our knowledge
-for the purpose of subduing Nature to our service depends upon the
-prevalence<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_060" id="page_060"></a>{60}</span> of certain ideas, ideas which underlie the ‘art of living
-together.’ They are something apart from mere technical knowledge which
-war, as in Germany, may increase, but which can never be a substitute
-for this ‘art of living together.’ (The arms, indeed, may be the
-instruments of anarchy, as in so much of Europe to-day).</p>
-
-<p>The War has left us a defective or perverted social sense, with a group
-of instincts and moralities that are disintegrating Western society, and
-will, unless checked, destroy it.</p>
-
-<p>These forces, like the ‘ultimate art’ which they have so nearly
-destroyed, are part of the problem of economics. For they render a
-production of wealth adequate to welfare impossible. How have they
-arisen? How can they be corrected? These questions will form an integral
-part of the problems here dealt with.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_061" id="page_061"></a>{61}</span></p>
-
-<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II<br /><br />
-<small>THE OLD ECONOMY AND THE POST-WAR STATE</small></h2>
-
-<p class="nind">T<small>HIS</small> chapter suggests the following:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>The trans-national processes which enabled Europe to support itself
-before the War, were based mainly on private exchanges prompted by the
-expectation of individual advantage. They were not dependent upon
-political power. (The fifteen millions for whom German soil could not
-provide, lived by trade with countries over which Germany had no
-political control, as a similar number of British live by similar
-non-political means.)</p>
-
-<p>The old individualist economy has been largely destroyed by the State
-Socialism introduced for war purposes; the Nation, taking over
-individual enterprise, became trader and manufacturer in increasing
-degree. The economic clauses of the Treaty, if enforced, must prolong
-this tendency, rendering a large measure of such Socialism permanent.</p>
-
-<p>The change may be desirable. But if co-operation must in future be less
-as between individuals for private advantage, and much more as between
-<i>nations</i>, Governments acting in an economic capacity, the political
-emotions of nationalism will play a much larger rôle in the economic
-processes of Europe. If to Nationalist hostilities as we have known them
-in the past, is to be added the commercial rivalry of nations now
-converted into traders and capitalists, we are likely to have not a less
-but more quarrelsome world, unless the fact of interdependence is much
-more vividly realised than in the past.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_062" id="page_062"></a>{62}</span></p>
-
-<p>The facts of the preceding chapter touching the economic chaos in
-Europe, the famine, the debauchery of the currencies, the collapse of
-credit, the failure to secure indemnities, and particularly the remedies
-of an international kind to which we are now being forced, all confirm
-what had indeed become pretty evident before the War, namely, that much
-of Europe lives by virtue of an international, or, more correctly, a
-transnational economy. That is to say, there are large populations that
-cannot live at much above a coolie standard unless there is a
-considerable measure of economic co-operation across frontiers. The
-industrial countries, like Britain and Germany, can support their
-populations only by exchanging their special products and
-services&mdash;particularly coal, iron, manufactures, ocean carriage&mdash;for
-food and raw materials; while more agricultural countries like Italy and
-even Russia, can maintain their full food-producing capacity only by an
-apparatus of railways, agricultural machinery, imported coal and
-fertilisers, to which the industry of the manufacturing area is
-indispensable.</p>
-
-<p>That necessary international co-operation had, as a matter of fact, been
-largely developed before the War. The cheapening of transport, the
-improvement of communication, had pushed the international division of
-labour very far indeed. The material in a single bale of clothes would
-travel half round the world several times, and receive the labour of
-half a dozen nationalities, before finally reaching its consumer. But
-there was this very significant fact about the whole process;
-Governments had very little to do with it, and the process did not rest
-upon any clearly defined body of commercial right, defined in a regular
-code or law. One of the greatest of all British industries, cotton
-spinning, depended upon access to raw material under the complete
-control of a foreign State, America. (The blockade of the South in the
-War of Secession proved how absolute was the dependence of a main
-British industry upon the political decisions of a foreign Government).
-The mass of contradictory uncertainties relating to rights of neutral<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_063" id="page_063"></a>{63}</span>
-trade in war-time, known as International Law, furnished no basis of
-security at all. It did not even pretend to touch the source&mdash;the right
-of access to the material itself.</p>
-
-<p>That right, and the international economy that had become so
-indispensable to the maintenance of so much of the population of Western
-Europe, rested upon the expectation that the private owner of raw
-materials&mdash;the grower of wheat or cotton, or the owner of iron ore or
-coal-mines&mdash;would continue to desire to sell those things, would always,
-indeed, be compelled so to do, in order to turn them to account. The
-main aim of the Industrial Era was markets&mdash;to sell things. One heard of
-‘economic invasions’ before the War. This did not mean that the invader
-took things, but that he brought them&mdash;for sale. The modern industrial
-nation did not fear the loss of commodities. What it feared was their
-receipt. And the aid of Governments was mainly invoked, not for the
-purpose of preventing things leaving the country, but for the purpose of
-putting obstacles in the way of foreigners bringing commodities into the
-country. Nearly every country had ‘Protection’ against foreign goods.
-Very rarely did we find countries fearing to lose their goods and
-putting on export duties. Incidentally such duties are forbidden by the
-American Constitution.</p>
-
-<p>Before the War it would have seemed a work of supererogation to frame
-international regulations to protect the right to buy: all were
-searching for buyers. In an economic world which revolved on the
-expectation of individual profit, the competition for profit kept open
-the resources of the world.</p>
-
-<p>Under that system it did not matter much, economically, what political
-administration&mdash;provided always that it was an orderly one&mdash;covered the
-area in which raw materials were found, or even controlled ports and
-access to the sea. It was in no way indispensable to British industry
-that its most necessary raw material&mdash;cotton, say&mdash;should be under its
-own control. That industry had developed while the sources of the
-material were in a foreign State. Lancashire did not need to<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_064" id="page_064"></a>{64}</span> ‘own’
-Louisiana. If England had ‘owned’ Louisiana, British cotton-spinners
-would still have had to pay for the cotton as before. When a writer
-declared before the War that Germany dreamed of the conquest of Canada
-because she needed its wheat wherewith to feed her people, he certainly
-overlooked the fact that Germany could have had the wheat of Canada on
-the same conditions as the British who ‘owned’ the country&mdash;and who
-certainly could not get it without paying for it.</p>
-
-<p>It was true before the War to write:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘Co-operation between nations has become essential for the very
-life of their peoples. But that co-operation does not take place as
-between States at all. A trading corporation called “Britain” does
-not buy cotton from another corporation called “America.” A
-manufacturer in Manchester strikes a bargain with a merchant in
-Louisiana in order to keep a bargain with a dyer in Germany, and
-three, or a much larger number of parties, enter into virtual, or
-perhaps actual, contract, and form a mutually dependent economic
-community (numbering, it may be, with the work-people in the group
-of industries involved, some millions of individuals)&mdash;an economic
-entity so far as one can exist which does not include all organised
-society. The special interests of such a community may become
-hostile to those of another community, but it will almost certainly
-not be a “national” one, but one of a like nature, say a shipping
-ring or groups of international bankers or Stock Exchange
-speculators. The frontiers of such communities do not coincide with
-the areas in which operate the functions of the State. How could a
-State, say Britain, act on behalf of an economic entity such as
-that just indicated? By pressure against America or Germany? But
-the community against which the British manufacturer in this case
-wants pressure exercised is not “America” or “Germany”&mdash;both want
-it exercised against the shipping ring or the speculators or the
-bankers who in part are British. If Britain injures America or
-Germany as a whole,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_065" id="page_065"></a>{65}</span> she injures necessarily the economic entity
-which it was her object to protect.’<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a></p></div>
-
-<p>This line of reasoning is no longer valid, for it was based upon a
-system of economic individualism, upon a distinction between the
-functions proper to the State and those proper to the citizen. This
-individualist system has been profoundly transformed in the direction of
-national control by the measures adopted everywhere for the purposes of
-war; a transformation that the confiscatory clauses of the Treaty and
-the arrangements for the payment of the indemnity help to render
-permanent. While the old understanding or convention has been
-destroyed&mdash;or its disappearance very greatly accelerated&mdash;by the Allies,
-no new one has so far been established to take its place. To that fact
-we must ascribe much of the economic paralysis that has come upon the
-world.</p>
-
-<p>I am aware, of course, that the passage I have quoted did not tell the
-whole story; that already before the War the power of the political
-State was being more and more used by ‘big business’; that in China,
-Mexico, Central America, the Near East, Morocco, Persia, Mesopotamia,
-wherever there was undeveloped <i>and disorderly</i> territory, private
-enterprise was exercising pressure upon the State to use its power to
-ensure sources of raw material or areas for the investment of capital.
-That phase of the question is dealt with at greater length
-elsewhere.<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> But the actual (whatever the potential) economic
-importance of the territory about which the nations quarrelled was as
-yet, in 1914, small; the part taken by Governments in the control and
-direction of international trade was negligible. Europe<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_066" id="page_066"></a>{66}</span> lived by
-processes that went on without serious obstacle across frontiers. Little
-States, for instance, without Colonies (Scandinavia, Switzerland) not
-only maintained a standard of living for their people quite as high as
-that in the great States, but maintained it moreover by virtue of a
-foreign trade relatively as considerable. And the forces which preserved
-the international understanding by which that trade was carried on were
-obviously great.</p>
-
-<p>It was not true, before the War, to say that Germany had to expand her
-frontiers to feed her population. It is true that with her, as with us,
-her soil did not produce the food needed for the populations living on
-it; as with us, about fifteen millions were being fed by means of trade
-with territories which politically she did not ‘own,’ and did not need
-to ‘own’&mdash;with Russia, with South America, with Asia, with our own
-Colonies. Like us Germany was turning her coal and iron into bread. The
-process could have gone on almost indefinitely, so long as the coal and
-iron lasted, as the tendency to territorial division of labour was being
-intensified by the development of transport and invention. (The pressure
-of the population on the food resources of these islands was possibly
-greater under the Heptarchy than at present, when they support
-forty-five millions.) Under the old economic order conquest meant, not a
-transfer of wealth from one set of persons to another&mdash;for the soil of
-Alsace, for instance, remained in the hands of those who had owned it
-under France&mdash;but a change of administration. The change may have been
-as unwarrantable and oppressive as you will, but it did not involve
-economic strangulation of the conquered peoples or any very fundamental
-economic change at all. French economic life did not wither as the
-result of the changes of frontier in 1872, and French factories were not
-shut off from raw material, French cities were not stricken with
-starvation as the result of France’s defeat. Her economic and financial
-recovery was extraordinarily rapid; her financial position a year or two
-after the War was sounder<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_067" id="page_067"></a>{67}</span> than that of Germany. It seemed, therefore,
-that if Germany, of all nations, and Bismarck, of all statesmen, could
-thus respect the convention which after war secured the immunity of
-private trade and property, it must indeed be deeply rooted in
-international comity.</p>
-
-<p>Indeed, the ‘trans-national’ economic activities of individuals, which
-had ensued so widespread an international economy, and the principle of
-the immunity of private property from seizure after conquest, had become
-so firmly rooted in international relationship as to survive all the
-changes of war and conquest. They were based on a principle that had
-received recognition in English Treaties dating back to the time of
-Magna Carta, and that had gradually become a convention of international
-relationship.</p>
-
-<p>At Versailles the Germans pointed out that their country was certainly
-not left with resources to feed its population. The Allies replied to
-that, not by denying the fact&mdash;to which their own advisers, like Mr
-Hoover, have indeed pointedly called attention&mdash;but as follows:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘It would appear to be a fundamental fallacy that the political
-control of a country is essential in order to procure a reasonable
-share of its products. Such a proposal finds no foundation in
-economic law or history.’<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a></p></div>
-
-<p>In making their reply the Allies seemed momentarily to have overlooked
-one fact&mdash;their own handiwork in the Treaty.</p>
-
-<p>Before the War it would have been a true reply. But the Allies have
-transformed what were, before the War, dangerous fallacies into
-monstrous truths.</p>
-
-<p>President Wilson has described the position of Germany under the Treaty
-in these terms:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘The Treaty of Peace sets up a great Commission, known as the
-Reparations Commission.... That Reparation Commission<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_068" id="page_068"></a>{68}</span> can
-determine the currents of trade, the conditions of credit, of
-international credit; it can determine how much Germany is going to
-buy, where it is going to buy, and how it is going to pay for
-it.’<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a></p></div>
-
-<p>In other words, it is no longer open to Germany, as the result of
-guarantees of free movement accorded to individual traders, to carry on
-that process by which before the War she supported herself. Individual
-Germans cannot now, as heretofore, get raw materials by dealing with
-foreign individuals, without reference to their nationality. Germans are
-now, in fact, placed in the position of having to deal through their
-State, which in turn deals with other States. To buy wheat or iron, they
-cannot as heretofore go to individuals, to the grower or mine-owner, and
-offer a price; the thing has to be done through Governments. We have
-come much nearer to a condition in which the States do indeed ‘own’
-(they certainly control) their raw material.</p>
-
-<p>The most striking instance is that of access to the Lorraine iron, which
-before the War furnished three-fourths of the raw material of Germany’s
-basic industry. Under the individualist system, in which ‘the buyer is
-king’ in which efforts were mainly directed to finding markets, no
-obstacle was placed on the export of iron (except, indeed, the obstacle
-to the acquisition by French citizens of Lorraine iron set up by the
-French Government in the imposition of tariffs). But under the new
-order, with the French State assuming such enormously increased economic
-functions, the destination of the iron will be determined by political
-considerations. And ‘political considerations,’ in an order of
-international society in which the security of the nation depends, not
-upon the collective strength of the whole society, but upon its relative
-strength as against rival units, mean the deliberate weakening of
-rivals. Thus, no longer will the desire<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_069" id="page_069"></a>{69}</span> of private owners to find a
-market for their wares be a guarantee of the free access of citizens in
-other States to those materials. In place of a play of factors which
-did, however clumsily, ensure in practice general access to raw
-materials, we have a new order of motives; the deliberate desire of
-States, competing in power, owning great sources of raw material, to
-deprive rival States of the use of them.</p>
-
-<p>That the refusal of access will not add to the welfare of the people of
-the State that so owns these materials, that, indeed, it will inevitably
-lower the standard of living in all States alike, is certainly true. But
-so long as there is no real international society organised on the basis
-of collective strength and co-operation, the motive of security will
-override considerations of welfare. The condition of international
-anarchy makes true what otherwise need not be true, that the vital
-interests of nations are conflicting.</p>
-
-<p>Parenthetically, it is necessary to say this: the time may have come for
-the destruction of the older order. If the individualist order was that
-which gave us Armageddon, and still more, the type of mind which
-Armageddon and the succeeding ‘peace’ revealed, then the present writer,
-for one, sheds no tears over its destruction. In any case, a discussion
-of the intrinsic merits, social and moral, of socialism and
-individualism respectively, would to-day be quite academic. For those
-who profess to stand for individualism are the most active agents of its
-destruction. The Conservative Nationalists, who oppose the socialisation
-of wealth and yet advocate the conscription of life; oppose
-Nationalisation, yet demand the utmost military preparedness in an age
-when effective preparation for war means the mobilisation particularly
-of the nation’s industrial resources; resent the growing authority of
-the State, yet insist that the power of the National State shall be such
-as to give it everywhere domination; do, indeed, demand omelets without
-eggs, and bricks not only without straw but without clay.</p>
-
-<p>A Europe of competing military nationalisms means a<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_070" id="page_070"></a>{70}</span> Europe in which the
-individual and all his activities must more and more be merged in his
-State for the purpose of that competition. The process is necessarily
-one of progressively intense socialisation; and the war measures carried
-it to very great lengths indeed. Moreover, the point to which our
-attention just now should be directed, is the difference which
-distinguishes the process of change within the State from that which
-marks the change in the international field. Within the State the old
-method is automatically replaced by the new (indeed nationalisation is
-mostly the means by which the old individualism is brought to an end);
-between nations, on the other hand, no organised socialistic
-internationalism replaces the old method which is destroyed. The world
-is left without any settled international economy.</p>
-
-<p>Let us note the process of destruction of the old economy.</p>
-
-<p>In July, 1914, the advocacy of economic nationalisation or Socialism
-would have been met with elaborate arguments from perhaps nine average
-Englishmen out of ten, to the effect that control or management of
-industries and services by the Government was impossible, by reason of
-the sheer inefficiency which marks Governmental work. Then comes the
-War, and an efficient railway service and the co-ordination of industry
-and finance to national ends becomes a matter of life and death. In this
-grave emergency, what policy does this same average Englishman, who has
-argued so elaborately against State control, and the possibility of
-governments ever administering public services, pursue? Almost as a
-matter of course, as the one thing to be done, he clamours for the
-railways and other public services to be taken over by the Government,
-and for the State to control the industry, trade, and finance of the
-country.</p>
-
-<p>Now it may well be that the Socialist would deny that the system which
-obtained during the War was Socialism, and would say that it came nearer
-to being State Capitalism than State Socialism; the individualist may
-argue that the methods would never be tolerated as a normal method of
-national life.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_071" id="page_071"></a>{71}</span> But when all allowances are made the fact remains that
-when our need was greatest we resorted to the very system which we had
-always declared to be the worst from the point of view of efficiency. As
-Sir Leo Chiozza Money, in sketching the history of this change, which he
-has called ‘The Triumph of Nationalisation,’ says: ‘The nation won
-through the unprecedented economic difficulties of the greatest War in
-history by methods which it had despised. National organisation
-triumphed in a land where it had been denied.’ In this sense the England
-of 1914-1920 was a Socialist England; and it was a Socialist England by
-common consent.</p>
-
-<p>This fact has an effect on the moral outlook not generally realised.</p>
-
-<p>For very many, as the War went on and increasing sacrifices of life and
-youth were demanded, new light was thrown upon the relations of the
-individual to the State. A whole generation of young Englishmen were
-suddenly confronted with the fact that their lives did not belong to
-themselves, that each owed his life to the State. But if each must give,
-or at least risk, everything that he possessed, even life itself, were
-others giving or risking what they possessed? Here was new light on the
-institution of private property. If the life of each belongs to the
-community, then assuredly does his property. The Communist State which
-says to the citizen, ‘You must work and surrender your private property
-or you will have no vote,’ asks, after all, somewhat less than the
-<i>bourgeois</i> Military State which says to the conscript, ‘Fight and give
-your person to the State or we will kill you.’ For great masses of the
-British working-classes conscription has answered the ethical problem
-involved in the confiscation of capital. The Eighth Commandment no
-longer stands in the way, as it stood so long in the case of a people
-still religiously minded and still feeling the weight of Puritan
-tradition.</p>
-
-<p>Moreover, the War showed that the communal organisation of industry
-could be made to work. It could ‘deliver the goods<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_072" id="page_072"></a>{72}</span>’ if those goods
-were, say, munitions. And if it could work for the purposes of war, why
-not for those of peace? The War showed that by co-ordinated and
-centralised action the whole economic structure can without disaster be
-altered to a degree that before the War no economist would have supposed
-possible. We witnessed the economic miracle mentioned in the last
-chapter, but worth recalling here. Suppose before the War you had
-collected into one room all the great capitalist economists in England,
-and had said to them: ‘During the next few years you will withdraw from
-normal production five or six millions of the best workers. The mere
-residue of the workers will be able to feed, clothe, and generally
-maintain those five or six millions, themselves, and the country at
-large, at a standard of living on the whole as high, if not higher, than
-that to which the people were accustomed before those five or six
-million workers were withdrawn.’ If you had said that to those
-capitalist economists, there would not have been one who would have
-admitted the possibility of the thing, or regarded the forecast as
-anything but rubbish.</p>
-
-<p>Yet that economic miracle has been performed, and it has been performed
-thanks to Nationalisation and Socialism, and could not have been
-performed otherwise.</p>
-
-<p>However, one may qualify in certain points this summary of the
-outstanding economic facts of the War, it is impossible to exaggerate
-the extent to which the revelation of economic possibilities has
-influenced working-class opinion.</p>
-
-<p>To the effect of this on the minds of the more intelligent workers, we
-have to add another psychological effect, a certain recklessness,
-inseparable from the conditions of war, reflected in the workers’
-attitude towards social reform.</p>
-
-<p>Perhaps a further factor in the tendency towards Communism is the
-habituation to confiscation which currency inflation involves. Under the
-influence of war contrivances States have learned to pay their debts in
-paper not equivalent in value to the gold in which the loan was made:
-whole classes<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_073" id="page_073"></a>{73}</span> of bondholders have thus been deprived of anything from
-one-half to two-thirds of the value of their property. It is
-confiscation in its most indiscriminate and sometimes most cruel form.
-<i>Bourgeois</i> society has accepted it. A socialistic society of to-morrow
-may be tempted to find funds for its social experiments in somewhat the
-same way.</p>
-
-<p>Whatever weight we may attach to some of these factors, this much is
-certain: not only war, but preparation for war, means, to a much greater
-degree than it has ever meant before, mobilisation of the whole
-resources of the country&mdash;men, women, industry. This form of
-‘nationalisation’ cannot go on for years and not affect the permanent
-form of the society subjected to it. It has affected it very deeply. It
-has involved a change in the position of private property and individual
-enterprise that since the War has created a new cleavage in the West.
-The future of private property which was before the War a theoretical
-speculation, has become within a year or two, and especially, perhaps,
-since the Bolshevist Revolution in Russia, a dominating issue in
-European social and political development. It has subjected European
-society to a new strain. The wearing down of the distinction between the
-citizen and the State, and the inroads upon the sacro-sanctity of
-private property and individual enterprise, make each citizen much more
-dependent upon his State, much more a part of it. Control of foreign
-trade so largely by the State has made international trade less a matter
-of processes maintained by individuals who disregarded their
-nationality, and more a matter of arrangement between States, in which
-the non-political individual activity tends to disappear. We have here a
-group of forces which has achieved a revolution, a revolution in the
-relationship of the individual European to the European State, and of
-the States to one another.</p>
-
-<p>The socialising and communist tendencies set up by measures of
-industrial mobilisation for the purposes of the War, have been carried
-forward in another sphere by the economic<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_074" id="page_074"></a>{74}</span> terms of the Treaty of
-Versailles. These latter, if even partly carried into effect, will mean
-in very large degree the compulsory socialisation, even communisation,
-of the enemy States. Not only the country’s foreign trade, but much of
-its internal industry must be taken out of the hands of private traders
-or manufacturers. The provisions of the Treaty assuredly help to destroy
-the process upon which the old economic order in Europe rested.</p>
-
-<p>Let the reader ask himself what is likely to be the influence upon the
-institution of private property and private commerce of a Treaty
-world-wide in its operation, which will take a generation to carry out,
-which may well be used as a precedent for future settlements between
-States (settlements which may include very great politico-economic
-changes in the position of Egypt, Ireland, and India), and of which the
-chief economic provisions are as follows:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘It deprives Germany of nearly the whole of her overseas marine. It
-banishes German sovereignty and economic influence from all her
-overseas possessions, and sequestrates the private property of
-Germans in those places, in Alsace-Lorraine, and in all countries
-within Allied jurisdiction. It puts at the disposal of the Allies
-all German financial rights and interests, both in the countries of
-her former Allies and in the States and territories which have been
-formed out of them. It gives the Reparations Commission power to
-put its finger on any great business or property in Germany and to
-demand its surrender. Outside her own frontiers Germany can be
-stripped of everything she possesses, and inside them, until an
-impossible indemnity has been paid to the last farthing, she can
-truly call nothing her own.</p>
-
-<p>‘The Treaty inflicts on an Empire built up on coal and iron the
-loss of about one-third cf her coal supplies, with such a heavy
-drain on the scanty remainder as to leave her with an annual supply
-of only 60 million tons, as against the pre-war<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_075" id="page_075"></a>{75}</span> production of over
-190 million tons, and the loss of over three-quarters of her iron
-ore. It deprives her of all effective control over her own system
-of transport; it takes the river system of Germany out of German
-hands, so that on every International Committee dealing with German
-waters, Germans are placed in a clear minority. It is as though the
-Powers of Central Europe were placed in a majority on the Thames
-Conservancy or the Port of London Authority. Finally, it forces
-Germany for a period of years to concede “most favoured nation”
-treatment to the Allies, while she receives no such reciprocal
-favour in return.’</p></div>
-
-<p>This wholesale confiscation of private property<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> is to take place
-without the Allies affording any compensation to the individuals
-expropriated, and the proceeds will be employed, first, to meet private
-debts due to Allied nationals from any German nationals, and, second, to
-meet claims due from Austrian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, or Turkish
-nationals. Any balance may either be returned by the liquidating power
-direct to Germany, or retained by them. If retained, the proceeds must
-be transferred to the Reparations Commission for Germany<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_076" id="page_076"></a>{76}</span>’s credit in
-the Reparations account. Note, moreover, how the identification of a
-citizen with his State is carried forward by the discrimination made
-against Germans in overseas trade. Heretofore there were whole spheres
-of international trade and industrial activity in which the individual’s
-nationality mattered very little. It was a point in favour of individual
-effort, and, incidentally, of international peace. Under the Treaty,
-whereas the property of Allied nationals within German jurisdiction
-reverts to Allied ownership on the conclusion of peace, the property of
-Germans within Allied jurisdiction is to be retained and liquidated as
-described above, with the result that the whole of German property over
-a large part of the world can be expropriated, and the large properties
-now within the custody of Public Trustees and similar officials in the
-Allied countries may be retained permanently. In the second place, such
-German assets are chargeable, not only with the liabilities of Germans,
-but also, if they run to it, with ‘payment of the amounts due in respect
-of claims by the nationals of such Allied or Associated Power with
-regard to their property, rights, and interests in the territory of
-other Enemy Powers,’ as, for example, Turkey, Bulgaria, and Austria.
-This is a remarkable provision, which is naturally non-reciprocal. In
-the third place, any final balance due to Germany on private account
-need not be paid over, but can be held against the various liabilities
-of the German Government.<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> The effective operation of these articles
-is guaranteed by the delivery of deeds, titles, and information.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_077" id="page_077"></a>{77}</span></p>
-
-<p>It will be noted how completely the Treaty returns to the Tribal
-conception of a collective responsibility, and how it wipes away the
-distinction heretofore made in International Law, between the civilian
-citizen and the belligerent Government. An Austrian who has lived and
-worked in England or China or Egypt all his life, and is married to an
-English woman and has children who do not speak a word of German, who is
-no more responsible for the invasion of Belgium than an Icelander or a
-Chinaman, finds that the savings of his lifetime left here in the faith
-of British security, are confiscated under the Treaty in order to
-satisfy the claims of France or Japan. And, be it noted, whenever
-attention is directed to what the defenders of the Treaty like to call
-its ‘sternness’ (as when it deprives Englishborn women and their
-children of their property) we are invited to repress our misgiving on
-that score in order to contemplate the beauty of its ‘justice,’ and to
-admire the inexorable accuracy with which reward and punishment are
-distributed. It is the standing retort to critics of the Treaty: they
-forget its ‘justice.’<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_078" id="page_078"></a>{78}</span></p>
-
-<p>How far this new tendency is likely to go towards a reassertion of the
-false doctrine of the complete submergence of the individual in the
-State, the erection of the ‘God-State’ which at the beginning we
-declared to be the main moral cause of the War and set out to destroy,
-will be discussed later. The point for the moment is that the
-enforcement of this part of the Treaty, like other parts, will go to
-swell communistic tendencies. It will be the business of the German
-State to maintain the miners who are to deliver the coal under the
-Treaty, the workers in the shipyards who are to deliver the yearly toll
-of ships. The intricate and elaborate arrangements for ‘searching
-Germany’s pockets’ for the purpose of the indemnity mean the very
-strictest Governmental control of private trade in Germany, in many
-spheres its virtual abolition. All must be done through the Government
-in order that the conditions of the Treaty may be fulfilled. Foreign
-trade will be no longer the individual enterprise of private citizens.
-It will, by the order of the Allies, be a rigidly controlled
-Governmental function, as President Wilson reminded us in the passage
-quoted above.</p>
-
-<p>To a lesser degree the same will be true of the countries receiving the
-indemnity. Mr. Lloyd George promises that it will not be paid in cheap
-goods, or in such a way as to damage home industries. But it must be
-paid in some goods: ships, dyes, or (as some suggest) raw materials.
-Their distribution to private industry, the price that these industries<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_079" id="page_079"></a>{79}</span>
-shall pay, must be arranged by the receiving Government. This inevitably
-means a prolongation of the State’s intervention in the processes of
-private trade and industry. Nor is it merely the disposal of the
-indemnity in kind which will compel each Allied Government to continue
-to intervene in the trade and industry of its citizens. The fact that
-the Reparations Commission is, in effect, to allocate the amount of ore,
-cotton, shipping, Germany is to get, to distribute the ships and coal
-which she may deliver, means the establishment of something resembling
-international rationing. The Governments will, in increasing degree,
-determine the amount and direction of trade.</p>
-
-<p>The more thoroughly we ‘make Germany pay,’ the more State-controlled do
-we compel her (and only to a lesser extent ourselves) to become. We
-should probably regard a standard of life in Germany very definitely
-below that of the rest of Western Europe, as poetic justice. But it
-would inevitably set up forces, both psychological and economic, that
-make not only for State-control&mdash;either State Socialism or State
-Capitalism&mdash;but for Communism.</p>
-
-<p>Suppose we did our work so thoroughly that we took absolutely all
-Germany could produce over and above what was necessary for the
-maintenance of the physical efficiency of her population. That would
-compel her to organise herself increasingly on the basis of equality of
-income: no one, that is, going above the line of physical efficiency and
-no one falling below it.</p>
-
-<p>Thus, while British, French, and American anti-socialists are declaring
-that the principle enunciated by the Russian Government, that all trade
-must be through the Soviet, is one which will prove most mischievous in
-its example, it is precisely that principle which increasingly, if the
-Treaty is enforced, they will in fact impose upon a great country,
-highly organised, of great bureaucratic efficiency, far more likely by
-its training and character to make the principle a success.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_080" id="page_080"></a>{80}</span></p>
-
-<p>This tendency may be in the right direction or the wrong one. The point
-is that no provision has been made to meet the condition which the
-change creates. The old system permitted the world to work under
-well-defined principles. The new regimen, because it has not provided
-for the consequences of the changes it has provoked, condemns a great
-part of Europe to economic paralysis which must end in bitter anarchic
-struggles unless the crisis is anticipated by constructive
-statesmanship.</p>
-
-<p>Meantime the continued coercion of Germany will demand on the part of
-the Western democracies a permanent maintenance of the machine of war,
-and so a perpetuation of the tendency, in the way already described,
-towards a militarised Nationalisation.</p>
-
-<p>The resultant ‘Socialism’ will assuredly not be of the type that most
-Socialists (among whom, incidentally, the present writer counts himself)
-would welcome. But it will not necessarily be for that reason any less
-fatal to the workable transnational individualism.</p>
-
-<p>Moreover, military nationalisation presupposes international conflict,
-if not perpetually recurrent war; presupposes, that is, first, an
-inability to organise a stable international economy indispensable to a
-full life for Europe’s population; and, secondly, an increasing
-destructiveness in warfare&mdash;self-destruction in terms of European
-Society as a whole. ‘Efficiency’ in such a society would be efficiency
-in suicide.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_081" id="page_081"></a>{81}</span></p>
-
-<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III<br /><br />
-<small>NATIONALITY, ECONOMICS, AND THE ASSERTION OF RIGHT</small></h2>
-
-<p class="nind">T<small>HE</small> change noted in the preceding chapter raises certain profound
-questions of Right. These may be indicated as follows:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>By our political power we <i>can</i> create a Europe which, while not
-assuring advantage to the victor, deprives the vanquished of means of
-existence. The loss of both ore and coal by the Central Powers might
-well make it impossible for their future populations to find food. What
-are they to do? Starve? To disclaim responsibility is to claim that we
-are entitled to use our power to deny them life.</p>
-
-<p>This ‘right’ to starve foreigners can only be invoked by invoking the
-concept of nationalism. ‘Our nation first.’ But the policy of placing
-life itself upon a foundation of preponderant force instead of mutually
-advantageous co-operation, compels statesmen perpetually to betray the
-principle of nationality; not only directly (as in the case of the
-annexation of territory, economically necessary, but containing peoples
-of alien nationality), but indirectly; for the resistance which our
-policy (of denying means of subsistence to others) provokes, makes
-preponderance of power the condition of survival. All else must give way
-to that need.</p>
-
-<p>Might cannot be pledged to Right in these conditions. If our power is
-pledged to Allies for the purposes of the Balance (which means, in fact,
-preponderance), it cannot be used<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_082" id="page_082"></a>{82}</span> against them to enforce respect for
-(say) nationality. To turn against Allies would break the Balance. To
-maintain the Balance of Power we are compelled to disregard the moral
-merits of an Ally’s policy (as in the case of the promise to the Czar’s
-Government not to demand the independence of Poland). The maintenance of
-a Balance (<i>i.e.</i> preponderance) is incompatible with the maintenance of
-Right. There is a conflict of obligation.</p>
-
-<p>Before the War, a writer in the <i>National Review</i>, desiring to show the
-impossibility of obviating war by any international agreement, took the
-example of the conflict with Germany and put the case as follows:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘Germany <i>must</i> go to war. Every year an extra million babies are
-crying out for more room, and as the expansion of Germany by
-peaceful means seems impossible, Germany can only provide for those
-babies at the cost of potential foes.</p>
-
-<p>‘This ... it cannot be too often repeated, is not mere envious
-greed, but stern necessity. The same struggle for life and space
-which more than a thousand years ago drove one Teutonic wave after
-another across the Rhine and the Alps, is now once more a great
-compelling force.... This aspect of the case may be all very sad
-and very wicked, but it is true.... Herein lies the ceaseless and
-ruinous struggle for armaments, and herein for France lies the dire
-necessity of linking her foreign policy with that of powerful
-allies.’</p></div>
-
-<p>‘And so,’ adds the writer, ‘it is impossible and absurd to accept the
-theory of Mr. Norman Angell.’</p>
-
-<p>Now that theory was, not that Germany and others would not fight&mdash;I was
-very insistent indeed that<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> unless there was a change in European
-policy they would&mdash;but that war, however it might end, would not solve
-the question. And that conclusion<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_083" id="page_083"></a>{83}</span> at least, whatever may be the case
-with others, is proved true.</p>
-
-<p>For we have had war; we have beaten Germany; and those million babies
-still confront us. The German population and its tendency to increase is
-still there. What are we going to do about it? The War has killed two
-million out of about seventy million Germans; it killed very few of the
-women. The subsequent privations of the blockade certainly disposed of
-some of the weaker among both women and children. The rate of increase
-may in the immediate future be less. It was declining before the War as
-the country became more prosperous, following in this what seems to be a
-well-established rule: the higher the standard of civilisation the more
-does the birth-rate decline. But if the country is to become extremely
-frugal and more agricultural, this tendency to decline is likely to be
-checked. In any case the number of mouths to be fed will not have been
-decreased by war to the same extent that the resources by which they
-might have been fed have been decreased.</p>
-
-<p>What do we propose to Germany, now that we have beaten her, as the means
-of dealing with those million babies? Professor Starling, in a report to
-the British Government,<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> suggests emigration:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘Before the War Germany produced 85 per cent. of the total food
-consumed by her inhabitants. This large production was only
-possible by high cultivation, and by the plentiful use of manure
-and imported feeding stuffs, means for the purchase of these being
-furnished by the profits of industry.... The loss to Germany of 40
-per cent. of its former coal output must diminish the number of
-workers who can be maintained. The great increase in German
-population during the last twenty-five years was rendered possible
-only by exploiting the agricultural possibilities of the soil to
-the greatest<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_084" id="page_084"></a>{84}</span> possible extent, and this in its turn depended on the
-industrial development of the country. The reduction by 20 per
-cent. in the productive area of the country, and the 40 per cent.
-diminution in the chief raw material for the creation of wealth,
-renders the country at present over-populated, and it seems
-probable that within the next few years many million (according to
-some estimates as many as fifteen million) workers and their
-families will be obliged to emigrate, since there will be neither
-work nor food for them to be obtained from the reduced industries
-of the country.’</p></div>
-
-<p>But emigration where? Into Russia? The influence of Germans in Russia
-was very great even before the War. Certain French writers warn us
-frantically against the vast danger of Russia’s becoming a German colony
-unless a cordon of border States, militarily strong, is created for the
-purpose of keeping the two countries apart. But we should certainly get
-a Germanisation of Russia from the inside if five or ten or fifteen
-million Germans were dispersed therein and the country became a
-permanent reservoir for those annual million babies.</p>
-
-<p>And if not Russia, where? Imagine a migration of ten or fifteen million
-Huns throughout the world&mdash;a dispersion before which that of the Jews
-and of the Irish would pale. We know how the migration from an Ireland
-of eight millions that could not feed itself has reacted upon our
-politics and our relations with America. What sort of foreign problems
-are we going to bequeath to our children if our policy forces a great
-German migration into Russia, or the Balkans, or Turkey?</p>
-
-<p>This insistent fact of a million more or less of little Huns being born
-into the world every year remains. Shall we suggest to Germany that she
-must deal with this problem as the thrifty householder deals with the
-too frequent progeny of the family cat?<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_085" id="page_085"></a>{85}</span></p>
-
-<p>Or shall we do just nothing, and say that it is not our affair; that as
-we have the power over the iron of Lorraine and Morocco, over the
-resources of Africa and Asia, over the ocean highways of the world, we
-are going to see that that power, naval and military, is used to ensure
-abundance for ourselves and our friends; that as for others, since they
-have not the power, they may starve? <i>Vae victis</i> indeed!<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a></p>
-
-<p>Just note what is involved. This war was fought to destroy the doctrine
-that might is right. Our power, we say, gives us access to the wealth of
-the world; others shall be excluded. Then we are using our power to deny
-to some millions the most elemental of all rights, the right to
-existence. By the economic use of our military power (assuming that
-military power is as effective as we claim) we compel some millions to
-choose between war and penury or starvation; we give to war, in their
-case, the justification that it is on behalf of the bread of their
-children, their livelihood.</p>
-
-<p>Let us compare France’s position. Unlike the German, the French
-population has hardly increased at all in recent generations. In the
-years immediately preceding the War, indeed, it showed a definite
-decline, a tendency naturally more marked since the War. This low
-birth-rate has greatly concerned French statesmen, and remedies have
-been endlessly discussed, with no result. The causes are evidently very
-deep-rooted indeed. The soil which has been inherited by this declining
-population is among the richest and most varied in the world,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_086" id="page_086"></a>{86}</span> producing
-in the form of wines, brandies, and certain other luxuries, results
-which can be duplicated nowhere else. It stretches almost into the
-sub-tropics. In addition, the nation possesses a vast colonial
-empire&mdash;in Algeria, Tunis, Morocco (which include some of the greatest
-food-growing areas in the world), Madagascar, Equatorial Africa,
-Cochin-China; an empire managed, by the way, on strongly protectionist
-principles.</p>
-
-<p>We have thus on the one side a people of forty millions with no tendency
-to increase, mainly not industrial (because not needing to be),
-possessing undeveloped areas capable, in their food and mineral
-resources (home and colonial), of supporting a population very many
-times its size. On the other hand is a neighbouring group, very much
-larger, and rapidly increasing, occupying a poorer and smaller
-territory. It is unable to subsist at modern standards on that territory
-without a highly-developed industry. The essential raw materials have
-passed into the hands of the smaller group. The latter on grounds of
-self-defence, fearing to be outnumbered, may withhold those materials
-from the larger group; and its right so to do is to be unquestioned.</p>
-
-<p>Does any one really believe that Western Society could remain stable,
-resting on moral foundations of this kind? Can one disregard primary
-economic need in considering the problem of preserving the Europe of
-‘free and independent national states’ of Mr. Asquith’s phrase?<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_087" id="page_087"></a>{87}</span></p>
-
-<p>If things are left where this Treaty leaves them, then the militarist
-theories which before were fallacies will have become true. We can no
-longer say that peoples as distinct from imperialist parties have no
-interest in conquest. In this new world of to-morrow&mdash;this ‘better and
-more stable world’&mdash;the interests of peoples themselves will be in
-deadly conflict. For an expanding people it will be a choice between
-robbery of neighbours’ territory and starvation. Re-conquest of Lorraine
-will become for the Germans not a matter of hurt pride or sentiment, but
-a matter of actual food need, a need which will not, like hurt pride,
-diminish with the lapse of time, but increase with the growth of the
-population. On the side of war, then, truly we shall find ‘the human
-stomach and the human womb.’</p>
-
-<p>The change is a deeper reversion than we seem to realise. Even under
-feudalism the means of subsistence of the people, the land they
-cultivated, remained as before. Only the lords were changed&mdash;and one
-lord was very like another. But where, under modern industrial economy,
-titles to property in indispensable raw materials can be cancelled by a
-conqueror and become the State property of the conquering nation, which
-enforces the right to distribute them as it pleases, whole populations
-may find themselves deprived of the actual means of supporting
-themselves on the territory that they occupy.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_088" id="page_088"></a>{88}</span></p>
-
-<p>We shall have set up a disruptive ferment working with all the force of
-the economic needs of 50 or 100 million virile folk to bring about once
-more some vast explosion. Europe will once more be living on a volcano,
-knowing no remedy save futile efforts to ‘sit on the lid.’</p>
-
-<p>The beginnings of the attempt are already visible. Colonel Repington
-points out that owing to the break up of Russia and Austria, and the
-substitution for these two powerful States of a large number of small,
-independent ones likely to quarrel among themselves, Germany will be the
-largest and most cohesive of all the European Continental nations,
-relatively stronger than she was before the War. He demands in
-consequence, that not only France, but Holland and Belgium, be extended
-to the Rhine, which must become the strategic frontier of civilisation
-against barbarism. He says there can be no sort of security otherwise.
-He even reminds us that it was Rome’s plan. (He does not remind us that
-if it had notably succeeded then we should hardly be trying it again two
-thousand years later.) The plan gives us, in fact, this prospect: the
-largest and most unified racial block in Europe will find itself
-surrounded by a number of lesser States, containing German minorities,
-and possessing materials indispensable to Germany’s economic life, to
-which she is refused peaceful access in order that she may not become
-strong enough to obtain access by force; an attempt which she will be
-compelled to make because peaceful access is denied to her. Our measures
-create resistance; that resistance calls forth more extreme measures;
-those measures further resistance, and so on. We are in the thick once
-more of Balance of Power, strategic frontiers, every element of the old
-stultifying statecraft against which all the Allies&mdash;before the
-Armistice&mdash;made flaming protest.</p>
-
-<p>And when this conflict of rights&mdash;each fighting as he believes for the
-right to life&mdash;has blazed up into passions that transcend all thought of
-gain or advantage, we shall be asked<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_089" id="page_089"></a>{89}</span> somewhat contemptuously what
-purpose it serves to discuss so cold a thing as ‘economics’ in the midst
-of this welter.</p>
-
-<p>It won’t serve any purpose. But the discussion of economics before it
-had become a matter for passion might have prevented the conflict.</p>
-
-<p>The situation has this complication&mdash;and irony: Increasing prosperity, a
-higher standard of living, sets up a tendency prudentially to check
-increase of population. France, and in hardly less degree even new and
-sparsely populated countries like Australia, have for long shown a
-tendency to a decline of the rate of increase. In France, indeed, as has
-already been mentioned, an absolute decrease had set in before the War.
-But as soon as this tendency becomes apparent, the same nationalist who
-invokes the menace of over-population as the justification for war, also
-invokes nationalism to reverse the tendency which would solve the
-over-population problem. This is part of the mystic nature of the
-nationalist impulse. Colonel Roosevelt is not the only warlike
-nationalist who has exhausted the resources of invective to condemn
-‘race suicide’ and to enjoin the patriotic duty of large families.</p>
-
-<p>We may gather some idea of the morasses into which the conception of
-nationalism and its ‘mystic impulses’ may lead us when applied to the
-population problem by examining some current discussions of it. Dr
-Raymond Pearl, of John Hopkins University, summarises certain of his
-conclusions thus:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘There are two ways which have been thought of and practised, by
-which a nation may attempt to solve its problem of population after
-it has become very pressing and after the effects of internal
-industrial development and its creation of wealth have been
-exhausted. These are respectively the methods of France and
-Germany. By consciously controlled methods, France endeavoured, and
-on the whole succeeded, in keeping her birth-rate at just such a
-delicate balance with the death-rate as to make the population
-nearly stationary. Then any industrial<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_090" id="page_090"></a>{90}</span> developments simply
-operated to raise the standard of living of those fortunate enough
-to be born. France’s condition, social economy, and political, in
-1914 represented, I think, the results of about the maximum
-efficiency of what may be called the birth-control method of
-meeting the problem of population.</p>
-
-<p>‘Germany deliberately chose the other plan of meeting the problem
-of population. In fewest words the scheme was, when your population
-pressed too hard upon subsistence, and you had fully liquidated the
-industrial development asset, to go out and conquer some one,
-preferably a people operating under the birth-control population
-plan, and forcibly take his land for your people. To facilitate
-this operation a high birth-rate is made a matter of sustained
-propaganda, and in every other possible way encouraged. An
-abundance of cannon fodder is essential to the success of the
-scheme.’<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a></p></div>
-
-<p>A word or two as to the facts alleged in the foregoing. We are told that
-the two nations not only followed respectively two different methods,
-but that it was in each case a deliberate national choice, supported by
-organised propaganda. ‘By consciously controlled methods, France,’ we
-are told, ‘endeavoured’ to keep her birth-rate down. The fact is, of
-course, that all the conscious endeavours of ‘France,’ if by France is
-meant the Government, the Church, the learned bodies, were in the
-exactly contrary direction. Not only organised propaganda, but most
-elaborate legislation, aiming through taxation at giving a preference to
-large families, has for a generation been industriously urging an
-increase in the French population. It has notoriously been a standing
-dish in the menu of the reformers and uplifters of nearly every
-political party. What we obviously have in the case of France is not a
-decision made by the nation as a corporate body and the Government
-representing it, but a tendency which their deliberate<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_091" id="page_091"></a>{91}</span> decision, as
-represented by propaganda and legislation, has been unable to check.<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a></p>
-
-<p>In discussing the merits of the two plans, Dr Pearl goes on:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘Now the morals of the two plans are not at issue here. Both are
-regarded, on different grounds to be sure, as highly immoral by
-many people. Here we are concerned only with actualities. There can
-be no doubt that in general and in the long run the German plan is
-bound to win over the birth-control plan, if the issue is joined
-between the two and only the two, and its resolution is military in
-character.... So long as there are on the earth aggressively-minded
-peoples who from choice deliberately maintain a high birth-rate, no
-people can afford to put the French solution of the population
-problem into operation unless they are prepared to give up,
-practically at the asking, both their national integrity and their
-land.’</p></div>
-
-<p>Let us assume, therefore, that France adopts the high birth-rate plan.
-She, too, will then be compelled, if the plan has worked out
-successfully, ‘to get out and conquer some one.’ But that some one will
-also, for the same reasons, have been following the plan of high
-birth-rate. What is then to happen? A competition in fecundity as a
-solution of the excess population problem seems inadequate. Yet it is
-inevitably prompted by the nationalist impulse.</p>
-
-<p>Happily the general rise in the standard of life itself furnishes a
-solution. As we have seen, the birth-rate is, within certain limits, in
-inverse ratio to a people’s prosperity. But<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_092" id="page_092"></a>{92}</span> again, nationalism, by
-preventing the economic unification of Europe, may well stand in the way
-of that solution also. It checks the tendencies which would solve the
-problem.</p>
-
-<p>A fall in the birth-rate, as a concomitant of a rising standard of
-living, was beginning to be revealed in Germany also before the War.<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a>
-If now, under the new order, German industrialism is checked and we get
-an agricultural population compelled by circumstances to a standard of
-life not higher than that of the Russian <i>moujik</i>, we may perhaps also
-be faced by a revival of high fertility in mystic disregard of the
-material means available for the support of the population.</p>
-
-<p>There is a further point.</p>
-
-<p>Those who have dealt with the world’s food resources point out that
-there are great sources of food still undeveloped. But the difficulties
-do not arise from a total shortage. They arise from a mal-distribution
-of population, coupled with the fact that as between nations the Ten
-Commandments&mdash;particularly the eighth&mdash;do not run. By the code of
-nationalism we have no obligation towards starving foreigners. A nation
-may seize territory which it does not need, and exclude from it those
-who direly need its resources. While we insist that internationalism is
-political atheism, and that the only doctrine fit for red-blooded people
-is what Colonel Roosevelt called ‘intense Nationalism,’ intense
-nationalism means, in economic practice, the attempt,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_093" id="page_093"></a>{93}</span> even at some
-cost, to render the political unit also the economic unit, and as far as
-possible self-sufficing.</p>
-
-<p>It serves little purpose, therefore, to point out that one or two States
-in South America can produce food for half the world, if we also create
-a political tradition which leads the patriotic South American to insist
-upon having his own manufactures, even at cost to himself, so that he
-will not need ours. He will achieve that result at the cost of
-diminishing his production of food. Both he and the Englishman will be
-poorer, but according to the standard of the intense nationalist, the
-result should be a good one, though it may confront many of us with
-starvation, just as the intense nationalism of the various nations of
-Eastern and South-Eastern Europe actually results in famine on soil
-fully capable, before the War, of supporting the population, and capable
-of supporting still greater populations if natural resources are used to
-the best advantage. It is political passions, anti-social doctrines, and
-the muddle, confusion, and hostility that go therewith which are the
-real cause of the scarcity.</p>
-
-<p>And that may forecast the position of Europe as a whole to-morrow: we
-may suffer starvation for the patriotic joy of seeing foreigners&mdash;Boche
-or Bolshevist&mdash;suffer in still greater degree.</p>
-
-<p>Given the nationalist conception of a world divided into completely
-distinct groups of separate corporate bodies, entities so different that
-the binding social ties between them (laws, in fact) are impossible of
-maintenance, there must inevitably grow up pugnacities and rivalries,
-creating a general sense of conflict that will render immeasurably
-difficult the necessary co-operation between the peoples, the kind of
-co-operation which the Treaty of Versailles has, in so large degree,
-deliberately destroyed. Whether the hostility comes, in the first
-instance, from the ‘herd,’ or tribal, instinct, and develops into a
-sense of economic hostility, or whether the hostility arises from the
-conviction that there exists a conflict<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_094" id="page_094"></a>{94}</span> of interest, the result is
-pretty much the same. I happen to have put the case elsewhere in these
-terms:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>If it be true that since the world is of limited space, we must fight
-one another for it, that if our children are to be fed others must
-starve, then agreement between peoples will be for ever impossible.
-Nations will certainly not commit suicide for the sake of peace. If this
-is really the relationship of two great nations, they are, of course, in
-the position of two cannibals, one of whom says to the other: ‘Either I
-have got to eat you, or you have got to eat me. Let’s come to a friendly
-agreement about it.’ They won’t come to a friendly agreement about it.
-They will fight. And my point is that not only would they fight if it
-really were true that the one had to kill and eat the other, but they
-would fight as long as they believed it to be true. It might be that
-there was ample food within their reach&mdash;out of their reach, say, so
-long as each acted alone, but within their reach if one would stand on
-the shoulders of the other (‘this is an allegory’), and so get the fat
-cocoa-nuts on the higher branches. But they would, nevertheless, be
-cannibals so long as each believed that the flesh of the other was the
-only source of food. It would be that mistake, not the necessary fact,
-which would provoke them to fight.</p>
-
-<p>When we learn that one Balkan State refuses to another a necessary raw
-material, or access over a railroad, because it prefers the suffering of
-that neighbour to its own welfare, we are shocked and talk about
-primitive and barbarous passions. But are we ourselves&mdash;Britain or
-France&mdash;in better state? The whole story of the negotiations about the
-indemnity and the restoration of Europe shows that we are not. Quite
-soon after the Armistice the expert advisers of the British Government
-urged the necessity, for the economic safety of the Allies themselves,
-of helping in the restoration of Germany. But they also admitted that it
-was quite hopeless to go to Parliament with any proposal to help
-Germany. And even when one<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_095" id="page_095"></a>{95}</span> gets a stage further and there is general
-admission ‘in the abstract’ that if France is to secure reparations,
-Germany must be fed and permitted to work, the sentiment of hostility
-stands in the way of any specific measure.</p>
-
-<p>We are faced with certain traditions and moralities, involving a
-psychology which, gathering round words like ‘patriotism,’ deprives us
-of the emotional restraint and moral discipline necessary to carry
-through the measures which intellectually we recognise to be
-indispensable to our country’s welfare.</p>
-
-<p>We thus see why it is impossible to speak of international economics
-without predicating the nation as a concept. In the economic problems of
-nations or States, one is necessarily dealing not only with economic
-facts, but with political facts: a political entity in its economic
-relations (before the War inconsiderable, but since the War very great);
-group consciousness; the interests, or what is sometimes as important,
-the supposed interests of this group or area as distinct from that; the
-moral phenomena of nationalism&mdash;group preferences or prejudices, herd
-instinct, tribal hostility. All this is part of the economic problem in
-international politics. Protection, for instance, is only in part a
-problem of economics; it is also a problem of political preferences: the
-manufacturer who is content to face the competition of his own
-countrymen, objects to facing that of foreigners. Political conceptions
-are part of the economic problem when dealing with nations, just as
-primary economic need must be taken into account as part of the cause of
-the conflict of nationalisms.</p>
-
-<p>One very commonly hears the argument: ‘What is the good of discussing
-economic forces in relation to the conflict of Europe when our
-participation, for instance, in the War, was in no way prompted by
-economic considerations?’</p>
-
-<p>Our motive may not have been economic, yet the cause of the War may very
-well have been mainly economic. The sentiment of nationality may be a
-stronger motive in European politics<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_096" id="page_096"></a>{96}</span> than any other. The chief menace
-to nationality may none the less be economic need.</p>
-
-<p>While it may be perfectly true that Belgians, Serbs, Poles, Bohemians,
-fought from motives of nationality, it may also be true that the wars
-which they were compelled to fight had an economic cause.</p>
-
-<p>If the desire of Germany or Austria for undeveloped territory had
-anything to do with that thrust towards the Near East in the way of
-which stood Serbian nationality, then economic causes <i>had</i> something to
-do with compelling Serbia and Belgium to fight for their nationality.
-Owing to the pressure of the economic need or greed of others, we are
-still concerned with economic forces, though we may be actuated only by
-the purest nationalism: the economic pressure of others is obviously
-part of the problem of our national defence. And if one examines in turn
-the chief problems of nationality, one finds in almost every case that
-any aggression by which it may be menaced is prompted by the need, or
-assumed need, of other nations for mines, ports, access to the sea (warm
-water or other), or for strategic frontiers to defend those things.</p>
-
-<p>Why should the desire of one people to rule itself, to be free, be
-thwarted by another making exactly the same demands? In the case of the
-Germans we ascribe it to some special and evil lust peculiar to their
-race and training. But the Peace has revealed to us that it exists in
-every people, every one.</p>
-
-<p>A glance at the map enables us to realise readily enough why a given
-State may resist the ‘complete independence’ of a neighbouring
-territory.</p>
-
-<p>Here, on the borders of Russia, for instance, are a number of small
-States in a position to block the access of the population of Russia to
-the sea; in a position, indeed, by their control of certain essential
-raw materials, to hold up the development of a hundred million people,
-very much as the robber barons of the Rhine held up the commerce of that
-waterway. No powerful Russia, Bolshevik or Czarist, will permanently
-recognise<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_097" id="page_097"></a>{97}</span> the absolute right of a little State, at will (at the
-bidding, perhaps, of some military dictator, who in South American
-fashion may have seized its Government), to block her access to the
-‘highways of the world.’ ‘Sovereignty and independence’&mdash;absolute
-sovereignty over its own territory, that is&mdash;may well include the
-‘right’ to make the existence of others intolerable. Ought any nation to
-have such a right? Like questions are raised in the case of the States
-that once were Austria. They have achieved their complete freedom and
-independence. Some of the results are dealt with in the first chapter.
-In some cases the new States are using their ‘freedom, sovereignty, and
-independence’ for the purpose of worsening a condition of famine and
-economic paralysis that spells indescribable suffering for millions of
-completely innocent folk.<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a></p>
-
-<p>So far, the new Europe is economically less competent than the old. The
-old Austrian grouping, for instance, made possible a stable and orderly
-life for fifty million people. A Mittel Europa, with its Berlin-Bagdad
-designs, would, whatever its dangers otherwise, have given us a vastly
-greater area of co-ordinated production, an area approaching that of the
-United States; it would have ensured the effective co-operation of
-populations greatly in excess of those of the United States. Whatever
-else might have happened, there would have been no destruction by famine
-of the populations concerned if some such plan of organised production
-had materialised. The old Austria at least ensured for the children
-physical health and education, for the peasants work in their fields, in
-security; and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_098" id="page_098"></a>{98}</span> although denial of full national rights was doubtless an
-evil thing, it still left free a vast field of human activities&mdash;those
-of the family, of productive labour, of religion, music, art, love,
-laughter.</p>
-
-<p>A Europe of small ‘absolute’ nationalisms threatens to make these things
-impossible. We have no standard, unhappily, by which we can appraise the
-moral loss and gain in the exchange of the European life of July, 1914,
-for that which Europe now faces and is likely to face in the coming
-years. But if we cannot measure or weigh the moral value of absolute
-nationalism, the present situation does enable us to judge in some
-measure the degree of security achieved for the principle of
-nationality, and to what extent it may be menaced by the economic needs
-of the millions of Europe. And one is impelled to ask whether
-nationality is not threatened by a danger far greater than any it had to
-meet in the old Europe, in the anarchy and chaos that nationalism itself
-is at present producing.</p>
-
-<p>The greater States, like Germany, may conceivably manage somehow to find
-a <i>modus vivendi</i>. A self-sufficing State may perhaps be developed (a
-fact which will enable Germany at one and the same time to escape the
-payment of reparations and to defy future blockades). But that will mean
-embittered nationalism. The sense of exclusion and resentment will
-remain.</p>
-
-<p>The need of Germany for outside raw materials and food may, as the
-result of this effort to become self-sufficing, prove less than the
-above considerations might suggest. But unhappily, assumed need can be
-as patent a motive in international politics as real need. Our recent
-acquiescence in the independence of Egypt would imply that our need for
-persistent occupation was not as great as we supposed. Yet the desire to
-remain in Egypt helped to shape our foreign policy during a whole
-generation, and played no small part in the bargaining with France over
-Morocco which widened the gulf between ourselves and Germany.</p>
-
-<p>The preservation of the principle of nationality depends upon<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_099" id="page_099"></a>{99}</span> making it
-subject at least to some form of internationalism. If
-‘self-determination’ means the right to condemn other peoples to death
-by starvation, then that principle cannot survive. The Balkanisation of
-Europe, turning it into a cauldron of rival ‘absolute’ nationalisms,
-does not mean safety for the principle of nationality, it means its
-ultimate destruction either by anarchy or by the autocratic domination
-of the great Powers. The problem is to reconcile national right and
-international obligation. That will mean a discipline of the national
-impulse, and of the instincts of domination which so readily attach
-themselves to it. The recognition of economic needs will certainly help
-towards such discipline. However ‘materialistic’ it may be to recognise
-the right of others to life, that recognition makes a sounder foundation
-for human society than do the instinctive impulses of mystic
-nationalism.</p>
-
-<p>Until we have managed somehow to create an economic code or comity which
-makes the sovereignty of each nationality subject to the general need of
-the whole body of organised society, this struggle, in which nationality
-is for ever threatened, will go on.</p>
-
-<p>The alternatives were very clearly stated on the other side of the
-Atlantic:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>‘The underlying assumption heretofore has been that a nation’s security
-and prosperity rest chiefly upon its own strength and resources. Such an
-assumption has been used to justify statesmen in attempting, on the
-ground of the supreme need for national security, to increase their own
-nation’s power and resources by insistence upon strategic frontiers,
-territory with raw material, outlets to the sea, even though that course
-does violence to the security and prosperity of others. Under any system
-in which adequate defence rests upon individual preponderance of power,
-the security of one must involve the insecurity of another, and must
-inevitably give rise to covert or overt competitions for power and
-territory, dangerous to peace and destructive to justice.</p>
-
-<p>‘Under such a system of competitive as opposed to co-operative<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_100" id="page_100"></a>{100}</span>
-nationalism, the smaller nationalities can never be really secure.
-International commitments of some kind there must be. The price of
-secure nationality is some degree of internationalism.</p>
-
-<p>‘The problem is to modify the conditions that lead to war. It will be
-quite inadequate to establish courts of arbitration or of law if they
-have to arbitrate or judge on the basis of the old laws and practices.
-These have proved insufficient.</p>
-
-<p>‘It is obvious that any plan ensuring national security and equality of
-opportunity will involve a limitation of national sovereignty. States
-possessing ports that are the natural outlet of a hinterland occupied by
-another people, will perhaps regard it as an intolerable invasion of
-their independence if their sovereignty over those ports is not absolute
-but limited by the obligation to permit of their use by a foreign and
-possibly rival people on equal terms. States possessing territories in
-Africa or Asia inhabited by populations in a backward state of
-development, have generally heretofore looked for privileged and
-preferential treatment of their own industry and commerce in those
-territories. Great interests will be challenged, some sacrifice of
-national pride demanded, and the hostility of political factions in some
-countries will be aroused.</p>
-
-<p>‘Yet if, after the War, States are to be shut out from the sea; if
-rapidly expanding populations find themselves excluded from raw
-materials indispensable to their prosperity; if the privileges and
-preferences enjoyed by States with overseas territories place the less
-powerful States at a disadvantage, we shall have re-established potent
-motives for that competition for political power which, in the past, has
-been so large an element in the causation of war and the subjugation of
-weaker peoples. The ideal of the security of all nations and “equality
-of opportunity” will have failed of realisation.’<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_101" id="page_101"></a>{101}</span></p>
-
-<h3><i>The Balance of Power and Defence of Law and Nationality.</i></h3>
-
-<p>‘Why were you so whole-soully for this war?’ asked the interviewer of Mr
-Lloyd George.</p>
-
-<p>‘Belgium,’ was the reply.</p>
-
-<p>The Prime Minister of the morrow continued:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘The Saturday after war had actually been declared on the Continent
-(Saturday, 1st August), a poll of the electors of Great Britain
-would have shown ninety-five per cent. against embroiling this
-country in hostilities. Powerful city financiers whom it was my
-duty to interview this Saturday on the financial situation, ended
-the conference with an earnest hope that Britain would keep out of
-it. A poll on the following Tuesday would have resulted in a vote
-of ninety-nine per cent. in favour of war.</p>
-
-<p>‘What had happened in the meantime? The revolution in public
-sentiment was attributable entirely to an attack made by Germany on
-a small and unprotected country, which had done her no wrong, and
-what Britain was not prepared to do for interests political and
-commercial, she readily risked to help the weak and helpless. Our
-honour as a nation is involved in this war, because we are bound in
-an honourable obligation to defend the independence, the liberty,
-the integrity of a small neighbour that has lived peaceably; but
-she could not have compelled us, being weak. The man who declined
-to discharge his debt because his creditor is too poor to enforce
-it, is a blackguard.’</p></div>
-
-<p>A little later, in the same interview, Mr Lloyd George, after allusion
-to German misrepresentations, said:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘But this I know is true&mdash;after the guarantee given that the German
-fleet would not attack the coast of France or annex any French
-territory, <i>I</i> would not have been party to a declaration of war,
-had Belgium not been invaded, and I think I can say<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_102" id="page_102"></a>{102}</span> the same thing
-for most, if not all, of my colleagues. If Germany had been wise,
-she would not have set foot on Belgian soil. The Liberal Government
-then would not have intervened. Germany made a grave mistake.’<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a></p></div>
-
-<p>This interview compels several very important conclusions. One, perhaps
-the most important&mdash;and the most hopeful&mdash;is profoundly creditable to
-English popular instinct and not so creditable to Mr Lloyd George.</p>
-
-<p>If Mr Lloyd George is speaking the truth (it is difficult to find just
-the phrase which shall express one’s meaning and be Parliamentary), if
-he believes it would have been entirely safe for Great Britain to have
-kept out of the War provided only that the invasion of Belgium could
-have been prevented, then indeed is the account against the Cabinet, of
-which he was then a member and (after modifications in it) was shortly
-to become the head, a heavy one. I shall not pursue here the inquiry
-whether in point of simple political fact, Belgium was the sole cause of
-our entrance into the War, because I don’t suppose anybody believes it.
-But&mdash;and here Mr Lloyd George almost certainly does speak the truth&mdash;the
-English people gave their whole-souled support to the war because they
-believed it to be for a cause of which Belgium was the shining example
-and symbol: the right of the small nation to the same consideration as
-the great. That objective may not have been the main inspiration of the
-Governments: it was the main moral inspiration of the British people,
-the sentiment which the Government exploited, and to which it mainly
-appealed.</p>
-
-<p>‘The purpose of the Allies in this War,’ said Mr Asquith, ‘is to pave
-the way for an international system which will secure the principle of
-equal rights for all civilised States ... to render secure the principle
-that international problems must be handled by free people and that
-their settlement shall no longer be hampered and swayed by the
-overmastering dictation of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_103" id="page_103"></a>{103}</span> a Government controlled by a military
-caste.’ We should not sheathe the sword ‘until the rights of the smaller
-nationalities of Europe are placed upon an unassailable foundation.’
-Professor Headlam (an ardent upholder of the Balance of Power, by the
-way), in a book that is characteristic of the early war literature, says
-the cardinal principles for which the War was fought were two: first,
-that Europe is, and should remain, divided between independent national
-States, and, second, that subject to the condition that it did not
-threaten or interfere with the security of other States, each country
-should have full and complete control over its own affairs.</p>
-
-<p>How far has our victory achieved that object? Is the policy which our
-power supported before the War&mdash;and still supports&mdash;compatible with it?
-Does it help to strengthen the national security of Belgium, and other
-weak States like Yugo-Slavia, Poland, Albania, Finland, the Russian
-Border States, China?</p>
-
-<p>It is here suggested, first, that our commitments under the Balance of
-Power policy which we had espoused<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> deprived our national force of
-any preventive effectiveness whatever in so far as the invasion of
-Belgium was concerned, and secondly, that our post-war policy, which is
-also in fact a Balance of Power policy is betraying in like fashion the
-cause of the small State.</p>
-
-<p>It is further suggested that the very nature of the operation<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_104" id="page_104"></a>{104}</span> of the
-Balance of Power policy sets up in practice a conflict of obligation: if
-our power is pledged to the support of one particular group, like the
-Franco-Russian group of 1914, it cannot also be pledged to the support,
-honestly and impartially, of a general principle of European law.</p>
-
-<p>We were drawn into the War, Mr Lloyd George tells us, to vindicate the
-integrity of Belgium. Very good. We know what happened in the
-negotiations. Germany wanted very much to know what would induce us to
-keep out of the War. Would we keep out of the War if Germany refrained
-from crossing the Belgian frontier? Such an assurance, giving Germany
-the strongest material reasons for not invading Belgium, converting a
-military reason (the only reason, we are told, that Germany would listen
-to) for that offence into an immensely powerful military reason against
-it, could not be given. In order to be able to maintain the Balance of
-Power against Germany we must ‘keep our hands free.’</p>
-
-<p>It is not a question here of Germany’s trustworthiness, but of using her
-sense of self-interest to secure our object of the protection of
-Belgium. The party in the German councils opposed to the invasion would
-say: ‘If you invade Belgium you will have to meet the hostility of Great
-Britain. If you don’t, you will escape that hostility.’ To which the
-general staff was able to reply: ‘Britain’s Balance of Power policy
-means that you will have to meet the enmity of Britain in any case. In
-terms of expediency, it does not matter whether you go through Belgium
-or not.’</p>
-
-<p>The fact that the principle of the ‘Balance’ compelled us to support
-France, whether Germany respected the Treaty of 1839 or not, deprived
-our power of any value as a restraint upon German military designs
-against Belgium. There was, in fact, a conflict of obligations: the
-obligations to the Balance of Power rendered that to the support of the
-Treaty of no avail in terms of protection. If the object of force is to
-compel observance of law on the part of those who will not<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_105" id="page_105"></a>{105}</span> observe it
-otherwise, that object is defeated by the entanglements of the Balance
-of Power.</p>
-
-<p>Sir Edward Grey’s account of that stage of the negotiations at which the
-question of Belgium was raised, is quite clear and simple. The German
-Ambassador asked him ‘whether, if Germany gave a promise not to violate
-Belgian neutrality, we would engage to remain neutral.’ ‘I replied,’
-writes Sir Edward, ‘that I could not say that; our hands were still
-free, and we were considering what our attitude should be. I did not
-think that we could give a promise of neutrality on that condition
-alone. The Ambassador pressed me as to whether I could not formulate
-conditions on which we would remain neutral. He even suggested that the
-integrity of France and her Colonies might be guaranteed. I said that I
-felt obliged to refuse definitely any promise to remain neutral on
-similar terms, and I could only say that we must keep our hands free.’</p>
-
-<p>‘If language means anything,’ comments Lord Loreburn,<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a> ‘this means
-that whereas Mr Gladstone bound this country to war in order to
-safeguard Belgian neutrality, Sir Edward would not even bind this
-country to neutrality to save Belgium. He may have been right, but it
-was not for the sake of Belgian interests that he refused.’</p>
-
-<p>Compare our experience, and the attitude of Sir Edward Grey in 1914,
-when we were concerned to maintain the Balance of Power, with our
-experience and Mr Gladstone’s behaviour when precisely the same problem
-of protecting Belgium was raised in 1870. In these circumstances Mr
-Gladstone proposed both to France and to Prussia a treaty by which Great
-Britain undertook that, if either of the belligerents should in the
-course of that war violate the neutrality of Belgium, Great Britain
-would co-operate with the other belligerent in defence of the same,
-‘employing for that purpose her naval and military forces to ensure its
-observance.’ In<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_106" id="page_106"></a>{106}</span> this way both France and Germany knew and the whole
-world knew, that invasion of Belgium meant war with Great Britain.
-Whichever belligerent violated the neutrality must reckon with the
-consequences. Both France and Prussia signed that Treaty. Belgium was
-saved.</p>
-
-<p>Lord Loreborn (<i>How the War Came</i>) says of the incident:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘This policy, which proved a complete success in 1870, indicated
-the way in which British power could effectively protect Belgium
-against an unscrupulous neighbour. But then it is a policy which
-cannot be adopted unless this country is itself prepared to make
-war against either of the belligerents which shall molest Belgium.
-For the inducement to each of such belligerents is the knowledge
-that he will have Great Britain as an enemy if he invades Belgium,
-and as an Ally if his enemy attacks him through Belgian territory.
-And that cannot be a security unless Great Britain keeps herself
-free to give armed assistance to either should the other violate
-the Treaty. The whole leverage would obviously disappear if we took
-sides in the war on other grounds.’<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a></p></div>
-
-<p>This, then, is an illustration of the truth above insisted upon: to
-employ our force for the maintenance of the Balance of Power is to
-deprive it of the necessary impartiality for the maintenance of Right.</p>
-
-<p>Much more clear even than in the case of Belgium was the conflict in
-certain other cases between the claims of the Balance<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_107" id="page_107"></a>{107}</span> of Power and our
-obligation to place ‘the rights of the smaller nationalities of Europe
-upon an unassailable foundation’ which Mr Asquith proclaimed as the
-object of the War.</p>
-
-<p>The archetype of suppressed nationality was Poland; a nation with an
-ancient culture, a passionate and romantic attachment to its ancient
-traditions, which had simply been wiped off the map. If ever there was a
-case of nation-murder it was this. And one of the culprits&mdash;perhaps the
-chief culprit&mdash;was Russia. To-day the Allies, notably France, stand as
-the champions of Polish nationality. But as late as 1917, as part of
-that kind of bargain which inevitably marks the old type of diplomatic
-Alliance, France was agreeing to hand over Poland, helpless, to her old
-jailer, the Czarist Government. In March, 1916, the Russian Ambassador
-in Paris was instructed that, at the then impending diplomatic
-conference<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a></p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘It is above all necessary to demand that the Polish question
-should be excluded from the subjects of international negotiation,
-and that all attempts to place Poland’s future under the guarantee
-and control of the Powers should be prevented.’</p></div>
-
-<p>On February 12th, 1917, the Russian Foreign Minister informed the
-Russian Ambassador that M. Doumergue (French Ambassador in Petrograd)
-had told the Czar of France’s wish to get Alsace-Lorraine at the end of
-the War, and also ‘a special position in the Saar Valley, and to bring
-about the detachment from Germany of the territories west of the Rhine
-and their reorganisation in such a way that in future the Rhine may form
-a permanent strategic obstacle to any German advance.’ The Czar was
-pleased to express his approval in principle of this proposal.
-Accordingly the Russian Foreign Minister expressed his wish that an
-Agreement by exchange of Notes should take place on this subject,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_108" id="page_108"></a>{108}</span> and
-desired that if Russia agreed to the unrestricted right of France and
-Britain to fix Germany’s western frontiers, so Russia was to have an
-assurance of freedom of action in fixing Germany’s future frontier on
-the east. (This means the Russian western frontier.)<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a></p>
-
-<p>Or take the case of Serbia, the oppressed nationality whose struggle for
-freedom against Austria was the immediate cause of the War. It was
-because Russia would not permit Austria to do with reference to Serbia,
-what Russia claimed the right to do with reference to Poland, that the
-latter made of the Austrian policy a <i>casus belli</i>.</p>
-
-<p>Very well. We stood at least for the vindication of Serbian nationality.
-But the ‘Balance’ demanded that we should win Italy to our side of the
-scale. She had to be paid. So on April 20th, 1915, without informing
-Serbia, Sir Edward Grey signed a Treaty (the last article of which
-stipulated that it should be kept secret) giving to Italy the whole of
-Dalmatia, in its present extent, together with the islands north and
-west of the Dalmatian coast and Istria as far as the Quarnero and the
-Istrian Islands. That Treaty placed under Italian rule whole populations
-of Southern Slavs, creating inevitably a Southern Slav irredentism, and
-put the Yugo-Slavia, that we professed to be creating, under the same
-kind of economic disability which it had suffered from the Austrian
-Empire. One is not astonished to find Signor Salandra describing the
-principles which should guide his policy as ‘a freedom from all
-preoccupations and prejudices, and from every sentiment except that of
-“Sacred egoism” (<i>sacro egoismo</i>) for Italy.’</p>
-
-<p>To-day, it need hardly be said, there is bitter hatred between our
-Serbian Ally and our Italian Ally, and most patriotic<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_109" id="page_109"></a>{109}</span> Yugo-Slavs regard
-war with Italy one day as inevitable.<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a> Yet, assuredly, Sir Edward
-Grey is not to be blamed. If allegiance to the Balance of Power was to
-come first, allegiance to any principle, of nationality or of anything
-else, must come second.</p>
-
-<p>The moral implications of this political method received another
-illustration in the case of the Rumanian Treaty. Its nature is indicated
-in the Report of General Polivanov, amongst the papers published at
-Petrograd and dated 7th-20th November, 1916. It explains how Rumania was
-at first a neutral, but shifting between different inclinations&mdash;a wish
-not to come in too late for the partition of Austria-Hungary, and a wish
-to earn as much as possible at the expense of the belligerents. At
-first, according to this Report, she favoured our enemies and had
-obtained very favourable commercial agreements with Germany and
-Austria-Hungary. Then in 1916, on the Russian successes under Brusilov,
-she inclined to the Entente Powers. The Russian Chief of the Staff
-thought Rumanian neutrality preferable to her intervention, but later on
-General Alexeiev adopted the view of the Allies, ‘who looked upon
-Rumania’s entry as a decisive blow for Austria-Hungary and as the
-nearing of the War’s end.’ So in August, 1916, an agreement was signed
-with Rumania (by whom it was signed is not stated), assigning to her
-Bukovina and all Transylvania. ‘The events which followed,’ says the
-report, ‘showed how greatly our Allies were mistaken and how they
-overvalued Rumania’s entry.’ In fact, Rumania was in a brief time
-utterly overthrown. And then Polivanov points out that the collapse of
-Rumania’s plans as a Great Power ‘is not particularly opposed to
-Russia’s interests.’</p>
-
-<p>One might follow up this record and see how far the method of the
-Balance has protected the small and weak nation in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_110" id="page_110"></a>{110}</span> case of Albania,
-whose partition was arranged for in April, 1915, under the Treaty of
-London; in the case of Macedonia and the Bulgarian Macedonians; in the
-case of Western Thrace, of the Serbian Banat, of the Bulgar Dobrudja, of
-the Southern Tyrol, of German Bohemia, of Shantung&mdash;of still further
-cases in which we were compelled to change or modify or betray the cause
-for which we entered the War in order to maintain the preponderance of
-power by which we could achieve military success.</p>
-
-<p>The moral paralysis exemplified in this story is already infecting our
-nascent efforts at creating a society of nations&mdash;witness the relation
-of the League with Poland. No one in 1920 justified the Polish claims
-made against Russia. Our own communications to Russia described them as
-‘imperialistic.’ The Prime Minister condemned them in unmeasured terms.
-Poland was a member of the League. Her supplies of arms and ammunition,
-military stores, credit, were obtained by the grace of the chief members
-of the League. The only port by which arms could enter Poland was a city
-under the special control of the League. An appeal was made to the
-League to take steps to prevent the Polish adventure. Lord Robert Cecil
-advocated the course with particular urgency. The Soviet Government
-itself, while Poland was preparing, appealed to the chief constitutional
-governments of the League for some preventive action. Why was none
-taken? Because the Balance of Power demanded that we should ‘stand by
-France,’ and Polish Imperialism was part of the policy quite overtly and
-deliberately laid down by M. Clemenceau, who, with a candour entirely
-admirable, expressed his preference for the old system of alliances as
-against the newfangled Society of Nations. We could not restrain Poland
-and at the same time fulfil our Alliance obligations to France, who was
-supporting the Polish policy.<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_111" id="page_111"></a>{111}</span></p>
-
-<p>By reason of the grip of this system we supported (while proclaiming the
-sacredness of the cause of oppressed nationalities) or acquiesced in the
-policy of Czarist Russia against Poland, and incidentally Finland; we
-supported Poland against republican Russia; we encouraged the creation
-of small border States as means of fighting Soviet Russia, while we
-aided Koltchak and Denikin, who would undoubtedly if successful have
-suppressed the border States. We supported the Southern Slavs against
-Austria when we desired to destroy the latter; we supported Italy (in
-secret treaties) against the Southern Slavs when we desired the help of
-the former. Violations and repressions of nationality which, when
-committed by the enemy States, we declared should excite the deathless
-resistance of all free men and call down the punishment of Heaven, we
-acquiesce in and are silent about when committed by our Allies.</p>
-
-<p>This was the Fight for Right, the war to vindicate the moral law in the
-relations of States.</p>
-
-<p>The political necessities of the Balance of Power have prevented the
-country from pledging its power, untrammelled, to the maintenance of
-Right. The two objects are in theory and practice incompatible. The
-Balance of Power is in fact an assertion of the principle of
-<i>Macht-Politik</i>, of the principle that Might makes Right.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_112" id="page_112"></a>{112}</span></p>
-
-<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV<br /><br />
-<small>MILITARY PREDOMINANCE&mdash;AND INSECURITY</small></h2>
-
-<p class="nind">T<small>HE</small> War revealed this: However great the military power of a State, as
-in the case of France; however great its territorial extent, as in the
-case of the British Empire; or its economic resources and geographical
-isolation as in the case of the United States, the conditions of the
-present international order compel that State to resort to Alliance as
-an indispensable part of its military defence. And the peace reveals
-this: that no Alliance can long resist the disruptive forces of
-nationalist psychology. So rapid indeed has been the disintegration of
-the Alliance that fought this War, that, from this one cause, the power
-indispensable for carrying out the Treaty imposed upon the enemy has on
-the morrow of victory already disappeared.</p>
-
-<p>So much became patent in the year that followed the signing of the
-Treaty. The fact bears of course fundamentally upon the question of the
-use of political power for those economic ends discussed in the
-preceding pages. If the economic policy of the Treaty of Versailles is
-to be carried out, it will in any case demand a preponderance of power
-so immense and secure that the complete political solidarity of the
-Alliance which fought the War must be assumed. It cannot be assumed.
-That Alliance has in fact already gone to pieces; and with it the
-unquestioned preponderance of power.</p>
-
-<p>The fact bears not only upon the use of power for the purpose of
-carrying an economic policy&mdash;or some moral end, like the defence of
-Nationality&mdash;into effect. The disruptive<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_113" id="page_113"></a>{113}</span> influence of the Nationalisms
-of which alliances are composed raises the question of how far a
-military preponderance resting on a National foundation can even give us
-political security.</p>
-
-<p>If the moral factors of nationality are, as we have seen, an
-indispensable part of the study of international economics, so must
-those same factors be considered as an indispensable part of the problem
-of the power to be exercised by an alliance.</p>
-
-<p>During the War there was an extraordinary neglect of this simple truth.
-It seemed to occur to no one that the intensification of the psychology
-of nationalism&mdash;not only among the lesser States but in France and
-America and England&mdash;ran the risk of rendering the Alliance powerless
-after its victory. Yet that is what has happened.</p>
-
-<p>The power of an Alliance (again we are dealing with things that are
-obvious but neglected) does not depend upon the sum of its material
-forces&mdash;navies, armies, artillery. It depends upon being able to
-assemble those things to a common purpose; in other words, upon policy
-fit to direct the instrument. If the policy, or certain moral elements
-within it, are such that one member of the Alliance is likely to turn
-his arms against the others, the extent of <i>his</i> armament does not add
-to the strength of the Alliance. It was with ammunition furnished by
-Britain and France that Russia in 1919 and 1920 destroyed British and
-French troops. The present building of an enormous navy by America is
-not accepted in Britain as necessarily adding to the security of the
-British Empire.</p>
-
-<p>It is worth while to note how utterly fallacious are certain almost
-universal assumptions concerning the relation of war psychology to the
-problem of alliance solidarity. An English visitor to the United States
-(or an American visitor to England) during the years 1917-1918 was apt
-to be deluged by a flood of rhetoric to this effect: The blood shed on
-the same battle-fields, the suffering shared in common in the same
-common cause, would unite and cement as nothing had ever yet united<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_114" id="page_114"></a>{114}</span> the
-two great branches of the English-speaking race, destined by
-Providence....</p>
-
-<p>But the same visitor moving in the same circle less than two years later
-found that this eternal cement of friendship had already lost its
-potency. Never, perhaps, for generations were Anglo-American relations
-so bad as they had become within a score or so of months of the time
-that Englishmen and Americans were dying side by side on the
-battle-field. At the beginning of 1921, in the United States, it was
-easier, on a public platform, to defend Germany than to present a
-defence of English policy in Ireland or in India. And at that period one
-might hear commonly enough in England, in trams and railway carriages, a
-repetition of the catch phrase, ‘America next.’ If certain popular
-assumptions as to war psychology were right, these things would be
-impossible.</p>
-
-<p>Yet, as a matter of fact, the psychological phenomenon is true to type.
-It was not an accident that the internationalist America of 1915, of
-‘Peace without Victory,’ should by 1918 have become more fiercely
-insistent upon absolute victory and unconditional surrender than any
-other of the belligerents, whose emotions had found some outlet during
-three years of war before America had begun. The complete reversal of
-the ‘Peace without Victory’ attitude was demanded&mdash;cultivated,
-deliberately produced&mdash;as a necessary part of war morale. But these
-emotions of coercion and domination cannot be intensively cultivated and
-then turned off as by a tap. They made America fiercely nationalist,
-with necessarily a temperamental distaste for the internationalism of Mr
-Wilson. And when a mere year of war left the emotional hungers
-unsatisfied, they turned unconsciously to other satisfactions. Twenty
-million Americans of Irish descent or association, among others,
-utilised the opportunity.</p>
-
-<p>One feature&mdash;perhaps the very largest feature of all&mdash;of war morale, had
-been the exploitation of the German atrocities. The burning of Louvain,
-and other reprisals upon the Belgian<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_115" id="page_115"></a>{115}</span> civilian population, meant
-necessarily a special wickedness on the part of a definite entity, known
-as ‘Germany,’ that had to be crushed, punished, beaten, wiped out. There
-were no distinctions. The plea that all were not equally guilty excited
-the fierce anger reserved for all such ‘pacifist’ and pro-German pleas.
-A German woman had laughed at a wounded American: all German women were
-monsters. ‘No good German but a dead German.’ It was in the German blood
-and grey matter. The elaborate stories&mdash;illustrated&mdash;of Germans sticking
-bayonets into Belgian children produced a thesis which was beyond and
-above reason or explanation: for that atrocity, ‘Germany’&mdash;seventy
-million people, ignorant peasants, driven workmen, the babies, the
-invalids, the old women gathering sticks in the forest, the children
-trooping to school&mdash;all were guilty. To state the thing in black and
-white sounds like a monstrous travesty. But it is not a travesty. It is
-the thesis we, too, maintained; but in America it had, in the American
-way, an over simplification and an extra emphasis.</p>
-
-<p>And then after the War an historical enemy of America’s does precisely
-the same thing. In the story of Amritsar and the Irish reprisals it is
-the Indian and Sinn Fein version only which is told; just as during the
-War we got nothing but the anti-German version of the burning of
-Louvain, or reprisals upon civilians. Why should we expect that the
-result should be greatly different upon American opinion? Four hundred
-unarmed and hopeless people, women and children as well as men, are mown
-down by machine-guns. Or, in the Irish reprisals, a farmer is shot in
-the presence of his wife and children. The Government defends the
-soldiers. ‘Britain’ has done this thing: forty-five millions of people,
-of infinitely varying degrees of responsibility, many opposing it, many
-ignorant of it, almost all entirely helpless. To represent them as
-inhuman monsters because of these atrocities is an infinitely
-mischievous falsehood. But it is made possible by a theory, which in the
-case of Germany we maintained for years as essentially true.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_116" id="page_116"></a>{116}</span> And now it
-is doing as between Britain and America what a similar falsehood did as
-between Germany and England, and will go on doing so long as Nationalism
-includes conceptions of collective responsibility which fly in the face
-of common sense and truth. If the resultant hostilities can operate as
-between two national groups like the British and the American, what
-groups can be free of them?</p>
-
-<p>It is a little difficult now, two years after the end of the War, with
-the world in its present turmoil, to realise that we really did expect
-the defeat of Germany to inaugurate an era of peace and security, of
-reduction of armaments, the virtual end of war; and believed that it was
-German militarism, ‘that trampling, drilling foolery in the heart of
-Europe, that has arrested civilisation and darkened the hopes of mankind
-for forty years,’<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> as Mr Wells wrote in <i>The War that will End War</i>,
-which accounted for nearly all the other militarisms, and that after its
-destruction we could anticipate ‘the end of the armament phase of
-European history.’ For, explained Mr Wells, ‘France, Italy, England, and
-all the smaller Powers of Europe are now pacific countries; Russia,
-after this huge War, will be too exhausted for further adventure.’<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a></p>
-
-<p>‘When will peace come?’ asked Professor Headlam, and answered that</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘It will come when Germany has learnt the lesson of the War, when
-it has learnt, as every other nation has had to learn, that the
-voice of Europe cannot be defied with impunity.... Men talk about
-the terms of peace. They matter little. With a Germany victorious
-no terms could secure the future of Europe, with a Germany
-defeated, no artificial securities will be wanted, for there will
-be a stronger security in the consciousness of defeat.’<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a></p></div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_117" id="page_117"></a>{117}</span></p>
-
-<p>There were to be no limits to the political or economic rearrangements
-which victory would enable us to effect. Very authoritative military
-critics like Mr Hilaire Belloc became quite angry and contemptuous at
-the suggestion that the defeat of the enemy would not enable us to
-rearrange Europe at our will. The doctrine that unlimited power was
-inherent in victory was thus stated by Mr Belloc:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘It has been well said that the most straightforward and obvious
-conclusions on the largest lines of military policy are those of
-which it is most difficult to convince a general audience; and we
-find in this matter a singular miscalculation running through the
-attitude of many Western publicists. They speak as though, whatever
-might happen in the West, the Alliance, which is fighting for
-European civilisation, the Western Allies and the United States,
-could not now affect the destinies of Eastern Europe....</p>
-
-<p>Such an attitude is, upon the simplest principles of military
-science, a grotesque error.... If we are victorious ... the
-destruction of the enemy’s military power gives us as full an
-opportunity for deciding the fate of Eastern Europe as it does for
-deciding the fate of Western Europe. Victory gained by the Allies
-will decide the fate of all Europe, and, for that matter, of the
-whole world. It will open the Baltic and the Black Sea. It will
-leave us masters with the power to dictate in what fashion the new
-boundaries shall be arranged, how the entries to the Eastern
-markets shall be kept open, garrisoned and guaranteed....</p>
-
-<p>Wherever they are defeated, whether upon the line they now hold or
-upon other lines, their defeat and our victory will leave us with
-complete power. If that task be beyond our strength, then
-civilisation has suffered defeat, and there is the end of it.’</p></div>
-
-<p>German power was to be destroyed as the condition of saving
-civilisation. Mr Belloc wrote:&mdash;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_118" id="page_118"></a>{118}</span></p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘If by some negotiation (involving of course the evacuation of the
-occupied districts in the West) the enemy remains undefeated,
-civilised Europe has lost the war and Prussia has won it.’<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a></p></div>
-
-<p>Such was the simple and popular thesis. Germany, criminal and barbarian,
-challenged Europe, civilised and law-abiding. Civilisation can only
-assert itself by the punishment of Germany and save itself by the
-destruction of German power. Once the German military power is
-destroyed, Europe can do with Germany what it will.</p>
-
-<p>I suggest that the experience of the last two years, and our own present
-policy, constitute an admission or demonstration, first, that the moral
-assumption of this thesis&mdash;that the menace of German power was due to
-some special wickedness on the part of the German nation not shared by
-other peoples in any degree&mdash;is false; and, secondly, that the
-destruction of Germany’s military force gives to Europe no such power to
-control Germany.</p>
-
-<p>Our power over Germany becomes every day less:</p>
-
-<p>First, by the break-up of the Alliance. The ‘sacred egoisms’ which
-produced the War are now disrupting the Allies. The most potentially
-powerful European member of the Alliance or Association&mdash;Russia&mdash;has
-become an enemy; the most powerful member of all, America, has withdrawn
-from co-operation; Italy is in conflict with one Ally, Japan with
-another.</p>
-
-<p>Secondly, by the more extended Balkanisation of Europe. The States
-utilised by (for instance) France as the instruments of Allied policy
-(Poland, Hungary, Ukrainia, Rumania, Czecho-Slovakia) are liable to
-quarrel among themselves. The groups rendered hostile to Allied
-policy&mdash;Germany, Russia, China&mdash;are much larger, and might well once
-more become cohesive units. The Nationalism which is a factor of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_119" id="page_119"></a>{119}</span> Allied
-disintegration may nevertheless work for the consolidation of the groups
-opposed to us.</p>
-
-<p>Thirdly, by the economic disorganisation of Europe (resulting mainly
-from the desire to weaken the enemy), which deprives the Alliance of
-economic resources sufficient for a military task like that of the
-conquest of Russia or the occupation of Germany.</p>
-
-<p>Fourthly, by the social unrest within each country (itself due in part
-to the economic disorganisation, in part to the introduction of the
-psychology of jingoism into the domain of industrial strife):
-Bolshevism. A long war of intervention in Russia by the Alliance would
-have broken down under the strain of internal unrest in Allied
-countries.</p>
-
-<p>The Alliance thus succumbs to the clash of Nationalisms and the clash of
-classes.</p>
-
-<p>These moral factors render the purpose which will be given to
-accumulated military force&mdash;‘the direction in which the guns will
-shoot’&mdash;so uncertain that the amount of material power available is no
-indication of the degree of security attained.</p>
-
-<p>If it were true, as we argued so universally before and during the War,
-that German power was the final cause of the armament rivalry in Europe,
-then the disappearance of that power should mark, as so many prophesied
-it would mark, the end of the ‘armament era.’<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a> Has it done so? Or<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_120" id="page_120"></a>{120}</span>
-does any one to-day seriously argue that the increase of armament
-expenditure over the pre-war period is in some mystic way due to
-Prussian militarism?</p>
-
-<p>Let us turn to a <i>Times</i> leader in the summer of 1920:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘To-day the condition of Europe and of a large portion of the world
-is scarcely less critical than it was six years ago. Within a few
-days, or at most a few weeks, we may know whether the Peace Treaty
-signed at Versailles will possess effective validity. The
-independent existence of Poland, which is a keystone of the
-reorganisation of Europe contemplated by the Treaty, is in grave
-peril; and with it, though perhaps not in the manner currently
-imagined in Germany, is jeopardised the present situation of
-Germany herself.</p>
-
-<p>... There is undoubtedly a widespread plot against Western
-civilisation as we know it, and probably against British liberal
-institutions as a principal mainstay of that civilisation. Yet if
-our institutions, and Western civilisation with them, are to
-withstand the present onslaught, they must be defended.... We never
-doubted the staunchness and vigour of England six years ago, and we
-doubt them as little to-day.’<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a></p></div>
-
-<p>And so we must have even larger armaments than ever. Field-Marshal Earl
-Haig and Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson in England, Marshal Foch in
-France, General Leonard Wood in America, all urge that it will be
-indispensable to maintain our armaments at more than the pre-war scale.
-The ink of the Armistice was barely dry before the <i>Daily Mail</i>
-published a long interview with Marshal Foch<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a> in the course of which
-the Generalissimo enlarged on the ‘inevitability’ of war in the future
-and the need of being ‘prepared for it.’ Lord Haig, in his Rectorial
-Address at St Andrews (May 14th, 1919) followed with the plea that as
-‘the seeds of future conflict are to be found in every quarter, only
-waiting the right condition, moral, economic, political, to burst once
-more into<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_121" id="page_121"></a>{121}</span> activity,’ every man in the country must immediately be
-trained for war. The <i>Mail</i>, supporting his plea, said:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘We all desire peace, but we cannot, even in the hour of complete
-victory, disregard the injunction uttered by our first soldier,
-that “only by adequate preparation for war can peace in every way
-be guaranteed.”</p>
-
-<p>’“A strong citizen army on strong territorial lines,” is the advice
-Sir Douglas Haig urges on the country. A system providing twelve
-months’ military training for every man in the country should be
-seriously thought of.... Morally and physically the War has shown
-us that the effect of discipline upon the youths of the country is
-an asset beyond calculation.’</p></div>
-
-<p>So that the victory which was to end the ‘trampling and drilling
-foolery’ is made a plea for the institution of permanent conscription in
-England, where, before the victory, it did not exist.</p>
-
-<p>The admission involved in this recommendation, the admission that
-destruction of German power has failed to give us security, is as
-complete as it well could be.</p>
-
-<p>If this was merely the exuberant zeal of professional soldiers, we might
-perhaps disregard these declarations. But the conviction of the soldiers
-is reflected in the policy of the Government. At a time when the
-financial difficulties of all the Allied countries are admittedly
-enormous, when the bankruptcy of some is a contingency freely discussed,
-and when the need of economy is the refrain everywhere, there is not an
-Allied State which is not to-day spending more upon military and naval
-preparations than it was spending before the destruction of the German
-power began. America is preparing to build a bigger fleet than she has
-ever had in her history<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a>&mdash;a larger fleet than<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_122" id="page_122"></a>{122}</span> the German armada,
-which was for most Englishmen perhaps the decisive demonstration of
-Germany’s hostile intent. Britain on her side has at present a larger
-naval budget than that of the year which preceded the War; while for the
-new war instrument of aviation she has a building programme more costly
-than the shipbuilding programmes of pre-war time. France is to-day
-spending more on her army than before the War; spending, indeed, upon it
-now a sum larger than that which she spent upon the whole of her
-Government when German militarism was undestroyed.</p>
-
-<p>Despite all this power possessed by the members of the Alliance, the
-predominant note in current political criticism is that Germany is
-evading the execution of the Treaty of Versailles, that in the payment
-of the indemnity, the punishment of military criminals, and disarmament,
-the Treaty is a dead letter, and the Allies are powerless. As the
-<i>Times</i> reminds us, the very keystone of the Treaty, in the independence
-of Poland, trembles.</p>
-
-<p>It is not difficult to recall the fashion in which we thought and wrote
-of the German menace before and during the War. The following from <i>The
-New Europe</i> (which had taken as its device ‘La Victoire Intégrale’) will
-be recognised as typical:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘It is of vital importance to us to understand, not only Germany’s
-aims, but the process by which she hopes to carry them through. If
-Germany wins, she will not rest content with this victory. Her next
-object will be to prepare for further victories both in Asia and in
-Central and Western Europe.</p>
-
-<p>‘Those who still cherish the belief that Prussia is pacifist show a
-profound misunderstanding of her psychology.... On this point the
-Junkers have been frank: those who have not been frank are the
-wiseacres who try to persuade us that we can moderate their
-attitude by making peace with them.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_123" id="page_123"></a>{123}</span> If they would only pay a
-little more attention to the Junkers’ avowed objects, and a little
-less attention to their own theories about those objects, they
-would be more useful guides to public opinion in this country,
-which finds itself hopelessly at sea on the subject of Prussianism.</p>
-
-<p>‘What then are Germany’s objects? What is likely to be her view of
-the general situation in Europe at the present moment?... Whatever
-modifications she may have introduced into her immediate programme,
-she still clings to her desire to overthrow our present
-civilisation in Europe, and to introduce her own on the ruins of
-the old order....</p>
-
-<p>‘Buoyed up by recent successes ... her offers of peace will become
-more insistent and more difficult to refuse. Influences will
-clamour for the resumption of peace on economic and financial
-grounds.... We venture to say that it will be very difficult for
-any Government to resist this pressure, and, <i>unless the danger of
-coming to terms with Germany is very clearly and strongly put
-before the public, we may find ourselves caught in the snares that
-Germany has for a long time past been laying for us</i>.</p>
-
-<p>... ‘We shall be told that once peace is concluded the Junkers will
-become moderate, and all those who wish to believe this will
-readily accept it without further question.</p>
-
-<p>‘But, while we in our innocence may be priding ourselves on the
-conclusion of peace to Germany it will not be a peace, but a
-“respite.” ... This “respite” will be exceedingly useful to Germany
-not only for propaganda purposes, but in order to replenish her
-exhausted resources necessary for future aggression. Meanwhile
-German activities in Asia and Ireland are likely to continue
-unabated until the maximum inconvenience to England has been
-produced.’</p></div>
-
-<p>If the reader will carry his mind back a couple of years, he will recall
-having read numberless articles similar to the above, concerning the
-duty of annihilating the power of Germany.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_124" id="page_124"></a>{124}</span></p>
-
-<p>Well, will the reader note that <i>the above does not refer to Germany at
-all, but to Russia</i>? I have perpetrated a little forgery for his
-enlightenment. In order to bring home the rapidity with which a change
-of roles can be accomplished, an article warning us against any peace
-with <i>Russia</i>, appearing in the <i>New Europe</i> of January 8th, 1920, has
-been reproduced word for word, except that ‘Russia’ or ‘Lenin’ has been
-changed to ‘Germany’ or ‘the Junkers,’ as the case may be.</p>
-
-<p>Now let us see what this writer has to say as to the German power
-to-day?</p>
-
-<p>Well, he says that the security of civilisation now depends upon the
-restoration, in part at least, of that German power, for the destruction
-of which the world gave twenty million lives. The danger to civilisation
-now is mainly ‘the breach between Germany and the West, and the
-rivalries of nationalism.’ Lenin, plotting our destruction, relies
-mainly on that:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘Above all we may be sure that his attention is concentrated on
-England and Germany. So long as Germany remains aloof and feelings
-of bitterness against the Allies are allowed to grow still more
-acute, Lenin can rub his hands with glee; what he fears more than
-anything is the first sign that the sores caused by five years of
-war are being healed, and that England, France, and Germany are
-preparing to treat one another as neighbours, who have each their
-several parts to play in the restoration of normal economic
-conditions in Europe.’</p></div>
-
-<p>As to the policy of preventing Germany’s economic restoration for fear
-that she should once more possess the raw material of military power,
-this writer declares that it is precisely that Carthaginian policy
-(embodied in the Treaty of Versailles) which Lenin would most of all
-desire:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘As a trained economist we may be sure that he looks first and
-foremost at the widespread economic chaos. We can<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_125" id="page_125"></a>{125}</span> imagine his
-chuckle of satisfaction when he sees the European exchanges getting
-steadily worse and national antagonisms growing more acute.
-Disputes about territorial questions are to him so much grist to
-the Bolshevik mill, as they all tend to obscure the fundamental
-question of the economic reconstruction of Europe, without which no
-country in Europe can consider itself safe from Bolshevism.</p>
-
-<p>‘He must realise to the full the lamentable condition of the
-finances of the new States in Central and South-east Europe.’</p></div>
-
-<p>In putting forward these views, The <i>New Europe</i> is by no means alone.
-Already in January, 1920, Mr J. L. Garvin had declared what indeed was
-obvious, that it was out of the question to expect to build a new Europe
-on the simultaneous hostility of Germany <i>and</i> Russia.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘Let us face the main fact. If there is to be no peace with the
-Bolshevists <i>there must be an altogether different understanding
-with Germany.... For any sure and solid barrier against the
-external consequences of Bolshevism Germany is essential.</i>’</p></div>
-
-<p>Barely six months later Mr Winston Churchill, Secretary of State for War
-in the British Cabinet, chooses the <i>Evening News</i>, probably the
-arch-Hun-Hater of all the English Press, to open out the new policy of
-Alliance with Germany against Russia. He says:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘It will be open to the Germans ... by a supreme effort of
-sobriety, of firmness, of self-restraint, and of
-courage&mdash;undertaken, as most great exploits have to be, under
-conditions of peculiar difficulty and discouragement&mdash;to build a
-dyke of peaceful, lawful, patient strength and virtue against the
-flood of red barbarism flowing from the East, and thus safeguard
-their own interests and the interests of their principle
-antagonists in the West.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_126" id="page_126"></a>{126}</span></p>
-
-<p>‘If the Germans were able to render such a service, not by
-vainglorious military adventure or with ulterior motives, they
-would unquestionably have taken a giant step upon that path of
-self-redemption which would lead them surely and swiftly as the
-years pass by to their own great place in the councils of
-Christendom, and would have rendered easier the sincere
-co-operation between Britain, France, and Germany, on which the
-very salvation of Europe depends.’</p></div>
-
-<p>So the salvation of Europe depends upon our co-operation with Germany,
-upon a German dyke of ‘patient strength.’<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a></p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>One wonders why we devoted quite so many lives and so much agony to
-knocking Germany out; and why we furnished quite so much treasure to the
-military equipment of the very Muscovite ‘barbarians’ who now threaten
-to overflow it.</p>
-
-<p>One wonders also, why, if ‘the very salvation of Europe’ in July, 1920,
-depends upon sincere co-operation of the Entente with Germany, those
-Allies were a year earlier exacting by force her signature to a Treaty
-which not even its authors pretended was compatible with German
-reconciliation.</p>
-
-<p>If the Germans are to fulfil the role Mr Churchill assigns to them, then
-obviously the Treaty of Versailles must be torn up. If they are to be
-the ‘dyke’ protecting Western civilisation against the Red military
-flood, it must, according to the Churchillian philosophy, be a military
-dyke: the disarmament clauses must be abolished, as must the other
-clauses&mdash;particularly the economic ones&mdash;which would make of any people
-suffering from them the bitter enemy of the people that imposed them.
-Our Press is just now full of stories of secret Treaties between Germany
-and Russia against France and England. Whether the stories are true or
-not, it is certain that the effect of the Treaty of Versailles and the
-Allied policy to Russia will <span class="pagenum"><a name="page_127" id="page_127"></a>{127}</span>be to create a Russo-German understanding.
-And Mr Churchill (phase 1920) has undoubtedly indicated the
-alternatives. If you are going to fight Russia to the death, then you
-must make friends with Germany; if you are going to maintain the Treaty
-of Versailles, then you must make friends with Russia. You must ‘trust’
-either the Boche or the Bolshevist.</p>
-
-<p>Popular feeling at this moment (or rather the type of feeling envisaged
-by the Northcliffe Press) won’t do either. Boche and Bolshevist alike
-are ‘vermin’ to be utterly crushed, and any policy implying co-operation
-with either is ruled out. ‘Force ... force to the uttermost’ against
-both is demanded by the <i>Times</i>, the <i>Daily Mail</i>, and the various
-evening, weekly, or monthly editions thereof.</p>
-
-<p>Very well. Let us examine the proposal to ‘hold down’ by force both
-Russia and Germany. Beyond Russia there is Asia, particularly India. The
-<i>New Europe</i> writer reminds us:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>’ ... If England cannot be subdued by a direct attack, she is, at
-any rate, vulnerable in Asia, and it is here that Lenin is
-preparing to deliver his real propaganda offensive. During the last
-few months more and more attention has been paid to Asiatic
-propaganda, and this will not be abandoned, no matter what
-temporary arrangements the Soviet Government may attempt to make
-with Western Europe. It is here, and here only, that England can be
-wounded, so that she may be counted out of the forth-coming
-revolutionary struggle in Europe that Lenin is preparing to engage
-in at a later date....</p>
-
-<p>‘We should find ourselves so much occupied in maintaining order in
-Asia that we should have little time or energy left for interfering
-in Europe.’</p></div>
-
-<p>As a matter of fact, we know how great are the forces that can be
-absorbed<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a> when the territory for subjection stretches<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_128" id="page_128"></a>{128}</span> from Archangel
-to the Deccan&mdash;through Syria, Arabia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia,
-Afghanistan. Our experience in Archangel, Murmansk, Vladivostock, and
-with Koltchak, Denikin, and Wrangel shows that the military method must
-be thorough or it will fail. It is no good hoping that a supply of
-surplus ammunition to a counter-revolutionary general will subdue a
-country like Russia. The only safe and thorough-going plan is complete
-occupation&mdash;or a very extended occupation&mdash;of both countries. M.
-Clemenceau definitely favoured this course, as did nearly all the
-military-minded groups in England and America, when the Russian policy
-was discussed at the end of 1918 and early in 1919.</p>
-
-<p>Why was that policy not carried out?</p>
-
-<p>The history of the thing is clear enough. That policy would have called
-upon the resources in men and material of the whole of the Alliance, not
-merely those of the Big Four, but of Poland, Czecho-Slovakia,
-Yugo-Slavia, Italy, Greece, and Japan as well. The ‘March to Berlin and
-Moscow’ which so many, even in England and America, were demanding at
-the time of the Armistice would not have been the march of British
-Grenadiers; nor the succeeding occupation one like that of Egypt or
-India. Operations on that scale would have brought in sooner or later
-(indeed, much smaller operations have already brought in) the forces of
-nations in bitter conflict the one with the other. We know what the
-occupation of Ireland by British troops has meant. Imagine an Ireland
-multiplied many times, occupied not only by British but by ‘Allied’
-troops&mdash;British side by side with Senegalese negroes, Italians with
-Yugo-Slavs, Poles with Czecho-Slovaks and White Russians, Americans with
-Japanese. Remember, moreover, how far the disintegration of the Alliance
-had already advanced. The European member of the Alliance greatest in
-its potential resources, human and material, was of course the very
-country against which it was now proposed to act; <span class="pagenum"><a name="page_129" id="page_129"></a>{129}</span>the ‘steamroller’ had
-now to be destroyed ... by the Allies. America, the member of the
-Alliance, which, at the time of the Armistice, represented the greatest
-unit of actual material force, had withdrawn into a nationalist
-isolation from, and even hostility to, the European Allies. Japan was
-pursuing a line of policy which rendered increasingly difficult the
-active co-operation of certain of the Western democracies with her; her
-policy had already involved her in declared and open hostility to the
-other Asiatic element of the Alliance, China. Italy was in a state of
-bitter hostility to the nationality&mdash;Greater Serbia&mdash;whose defence was
-the immediate occasion of the War, and was soon to mark her feeling
-towards the peace by returning to power the Minister who had opposed
-Italy’s entrance into the War; a situation which we shall best
-understand if we imagine a ‘pro-German’ (say, for instance, Lord Morley,
-or Mr Ramsay MacDonald, or Mr Philip Snowden) being made Prime Minister
-of England. What may be termed the minor Allies, Yugo-Slavia,
-Czecho-Slovakia, Rumania, Greece, Poland, the lesser Border States, the
-Arab kingdom that we erected, were drifting towards the entangling
-conflicts which have since broken out. Already, at a time when the Quai
-d’Orsay and Carmelite House were both clamouring for what must have
-meant in practice the occupation of both Germany and Russia, the
-Alliance had in fact disintegrated, and some of its main elements were
-in bitter conflict. The picture of a solid alliance of pacific and
-liberal democracies standing for the maintenance of an orderly European
-freedom against German attacks had completely faded away. Of the Grand
-Alliance of twenty-four States as a combination of power pledged to a
-common purpose, there remained just France and England&mdash;and their
-relations, too, were becoming daily worse; in fundamental disagreement
-over Poland, Turkey, Syria, the Balkan States, Austria, and Germany
-itself, its indemnities, and its economic treatment generally. Was this
-the instrument for the conquest of half a world?</p>
-
-<p>But the political disintegration of the Alliance was not the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_130" id="page_130"></a>{130}</span> only
-obstacle to a thorough-going application of military force to the
-problem of Germany and Russia.</p>
-
-<p>By the very terms of the theory of security by preponderant power,
-Germany had to be weakened economically, for her subjugation could never
-be secure if she were permitted to maintain an elaborate, nationally
-organised economic machinery, which not only gives immense powers of
-production, capable without great difficulty of being transformed to the
-production of military material, but which, through the organisation of
-foreign trade, gives influence in countries like Russia, the Balkans,
-the Near and Far East.</p>
-
-<p>So part of the policy of Versailles, reflected in the clauses of the
-Treaty already dealt with, was to check the economic recovery of Germany
-and more particularly to prevent economic co-operation between that
-country and Russia. That Russia should become a ‘German Colony’ was a
-nightmare that haunted the minds of the French peace-makers.<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a></p>
-
-<p>But, as we have already seen, to prevent the economic co-operation of
-Germany and Russia meant the perpetuation of the economic paralysis of
-Europe. Combined with the maintenance<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_131" id="page_131"></a>{131}</span> of the blockade it would
-certainly have meant utter and perhaps irretrievable collapse.</p>
-
-<p>Perhaps the Allies at the beginning of 1919 were in no mood to be
-greatly disturbed by the prospect. But they soon learned that it had a
-very close bearing both on the aims which they had set before themselves
-in the Treaty and, indeed, on the very problem of maintaining military
-predominance.</p>
-
-<p>In theory, of course, an army of occupation should live on the occupied
-country. But it soon became evident that it was quite out of the
-question to collect even the cost of the armies for the limited
-occupation of the Rhine territories from a country whose industrial life
-was paralysed by blockade. Moreover, the costs of the German occupation
-were very sensibly increased by the fact of the Russian blockade.
-Deprived of Russian wheat and other products, the cost of living in
-Western Europe was steadily rising, the social unrest was in consequence
-increasing, and it was vitally necessary, if something like the old
-European life was to be restored, that production should be restarted as
-rapidly as possible. We found that a blockade of Russia which cut off
-Russian foodstuffs from Western Europe, was also a blockade of
-ourselves. But the blockade, as we have seen, was not the only economic
-device used as a part of military pressure: the old economic nerves
-between Germany and her neighbours had been cut out and the creeping
-paralysis of Europe was spreading in every direction. There was not a
-belligerent State on the Continent of Europe that was solvent in the
-strict sense of the term&mdash;able, that is, to discharge its obligations in
-the gold money in which it had contracted them. All had resorted to the
-shifts of paper&mdash;fictitious&mdash;money, and the debacle of the exchanges was
-already setting in. Whence were to come the costs of the forces and
-armies of occupation necessitated by the policy of complete conquest of
-Russia and Germany at the same time?</p>
-
-<p>When, therefore (according to a story current at the time),<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_132" id="page_132"></a>{132}</span> President
-Wilson, following the announcement that France stood for the military
-coercion of Russia, asked each Ally in turn how many troops and how much
-of the cost it would provide, each replied: ‘None.’ It was patent,
-indeed, that the resources of an economically paralysed Western Europe
-were not adequate to this enterprise. A half-way course was adopted.
-Britain supplied certain counter-revolutionary generals with a very
-considerable quantity of surplus stores, and a few military missions;
-France adopted the policy of using satellite States&mdash;Poland, Rumania,
-and even Hungary&mdash;as her tools. The result we know.</p>
-
-<p>Meantime, the economic and financial situation at home (in France and
-Italy) was becoming desperate. France needed coal, building material,
-money. None of these things could be obtained from a blockaded,
-starving, and restless Germany. One day, doubtless, Germany will be able
-to pay for the armies of occupation; but it will be a Germany whose
-workers are fed and clothed and warmed, whose railways have adequate
-rolling stock, whose fields are not destitute of machines, and factories
-of coal and the raw materials of production. In other words, it will be
-a strong and organised Germany, and, if occupied by alien troops, most
-certainly a nationalist and hostile Germany, dangerous and difficult to
-watch, however much disarmed.</p>
-
-<p>But there was a further force which the Allied Governments found
-themselves compelled to take into consideration in settling their
-military policy at the time of the Armistice. In addition to the
-economic and financial difficulties which compelled them to refrain from
-large scale operations in Russia and perhaps in Germany; in addition to
-the clash of rival nationalisms among the Allies, which was already
-introducing such serious rifts into the Alliance, there was a further
-element of weakness&mdash;revolutionary unrest, the ‘Bolshevik’ fever.</p>
-
-<p>In December, 1918, the British Government was confronted<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_133" id="page_133"></a>{133}</span> by the refusal
-of soldiers at Dover, who believed that they were being sent to Russia,
-to embark. A month or two later the French Government was faced by a
-naval mutiny at Odessa. American soldiers in Siberia refused to go into
-action against the Russians. Still later, in Italy, the workers enforced
-their decision not to handle munitions for Russia, by widespread
-strikes. Whether the attempt to obtain troops in very large quantities
-for a Russian war, involving casualties and sacrifices on a considerable
-scale, would have meant at the beginning of 1919 military revolts, or
-Communist, Spartacist, or Bolshevik revolutionary movements, or not, the
-Governments were evidently not prepared to face the issue.</p>
-
-<p>We have seen, therefore, that the blockade and the economic weakening of
-our enemy are two-edged weapons, only of effective use within very
-definite limits; that these limits in turn condition in some degree the
-employment of more purely military instruments like the occupation of
-hostile territory; and indeed condition the provision of the
-instruments.</p>
-
-<p>The power basis of the Alliance, such as it is, has been, since the
-Armistice, the naval power of England, exercised through the blockades,
-and the military force of France exercised mainly through the management
-of satellite armies. The British method has involved the greater
-immediate cruelty (perhaps a greater extent and degree of suffering
-imposed upon the weak and helpless than any coercive device yet
-discovered by man) though the French has involved a more direct negation
-of the aims for which the War was fought. French policy aims quite
-frankly at the re-imposition of France’s military hegemony of the
-Continent. That aim will not be readily surrendered.</p>
-
-<p>Owing to the division in Socialist and Labour ranks, to the growing fear
-and dislike of ‘confiscatory’ legislation, by a peasant population and a
-large <i>petit rentier</i> class, conservative elements are bound to be
-predominant in France for a long time. Those elements are frankly
-sceptical of any League<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_134" id="page_134"></a>{134}</span> of Nations device. A League of Nations would
-rob them of what in the Chamber of Deputies a Nationalist called ‘the
-Right of Victory.’ But the alternative to a League as a means of
-security is military predominance, and France has bent her energies
-since the Armistice to securing it. To-day, the military predominance of
-France on the Continent is vastly greater than that of Germany ever was.
-Her chief antagonist is not only disarmed&mdash;forbidden to manufacture
-heavy artillery, tanks or fighting aircraft&mdash;but as we have seen, is
-crippled in economic life by the loss of nearly all his iron and much of
-his coal. France not only retains her armament, but is to-day spending
-more upon it than before the War. The expenditure for the army in 1920
-amounted to 5000 millions of francs, whereas in 1914 it was only 1200
-millions. Translate this expenditure even with due regard to the changed
-price level into terms of policy, and it means, <i>inter alia</i>, that the
-Russo-Polish war and Feisal’s deposition in Syria are burdens beyond her
-capacity. And this is only the beginning. Within a few months France has
-revived the full flower of the Napoleonic tradition so far as the use of
-satellite military States is concerned. Poland is only one of many
-instruments now being industriously fashioned by the artisans of the
-French military renaissance. In the Ukraine, in Hungary, in
-Czecho-Slovakia, in Rumania, in Yugo-Slavia; in Syria, Greece, Turkey,
-and Africa, French military and financial organisers are at work.</p>
-
-<p>M. Clemenceau, in one of his statements to the Chamber<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a> on France’s
-future policy, outlined the method:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘We have said that we would create a system of barbed wire. There
-are places where it will have to be guarded to prevent Germany from
-passing. There are peoples like the Poles, of whom I spoke just
-now, who are fighting against the Soviets, who are resisting, who
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_135" id="page_135"></a>{135}</span>     are in the van of civilisation. Well, we have decided ... to be
-the Allies of any people attacked by the Bolsheviks. I have spoken
-of the Poles, of the help that we shall certainly get from them in
-case of necessity. Well, they are fighting at this moment against
-the Bolsheviks, and if they are not equal to the task&mdash;but they
-will be equal to it&mdash;the help which we shall be able to give them
-in different ways, and which we are actually giving them,
-particularly in the form of military supplies and uniforms&mdash;that
-help will be continued. There is a Polish army, of which the
-greater part has been organised and instructed by French
-officers.... The Polish army must now be composed of from 450,000
-to 500,000 men. If you look on the map at the geographical
-situation of this military force, you will think that it is
-interesting from every point of view. There is a Czecho-Slovak
-army, which already numbers nearly 150,000 men, well equipped, well
-armed, and capable of sustaining all the tasks of war. Here is
-another factor on which we can count. But I count on many other
-elements. I count on Rumania.’</p></div>
-
-<p>Since then Hungary has been added, part of the Hungarian plan being the
-domination of Austria by Hungary, and, later, possibly the restoration
-of an Austrian Monarchy, which might help to detach monarchical and
-clerical Bavaria from Republican Germany.<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a> This is the revival of the
-old French policy<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_136" id="page_136"></a>{136}</span> of preventing the unification of the German
-people.<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a> It is that aspiration which largely explains recent French
-sympathy for Clericalism and Monarchism and the reversal of the policy
-heretofore pursued by the Third Republic towards the Vatican.</p>
-
-<p>The systematic arming of African negroes reveals something of Napoleon’s
-leaning towards the military exploitation of servile races. We are
-probably only at the beginning of the arming of Africa’s black millions.
-They are, of course, an extremely convenient military material. French
-or British soldiers might have scruples against service in a war upon a
-Workers’ Republic. Cannibals from the African forest ‘conscribed’ for
-service in Europe are not likely to have political or social scruples of
-that kind. To bring some hundreds of thousands of these Africans to
-Europe, to train them systematically to the use of European arms; to
-teach them that the European is conquerable; to put them in the position
-of victors over a vanquished European people&mdash;here indeed are
-possibilities. With Senegalese negroes having their quarters in Goethe’s
-house, and placed, if not in authority, at least as the instruments of
-authority over the population of a European university city; and with
-the Japanese imposing their rule upon great stretches of what was
-yesterday a European Empire (and our Ally) a new page may well have
-opened for Europe.</p>
-
-<p>But just consider the chances of stability for power based on<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_137" id="page_137"></a>{137}</span> the
-assumption of continued co-operation of a number of ‘intense’
-nationalisms, each animated by its sacred egoisms. France has turned to
-this policy as a substitute for the alliance of two or three great
-States, which national feeling and conflicting interests have driven
-apart. Is this collection of mushroom republics to possess a stability
-to which the Entente could not attain?</p>
-
-<p>One looks over the list. We have, it is true, after a century, the
-re-birth of Poland, a great and impressive case of the vindication of
-national right. But Poland, yesterday the victim of the imperialist
-oppressor, has, herself, almost in a few hours, as it were, acquired an
-imperialism of her own. The Pole assures us that his nationality can
-only be secure if he is given dominion over territories with largely
-non-Polish populations; if, that is, some fifteen millions of Ruthenes,
-Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Russians, are deprived of a separate national
-existence. Italy, it is true, is now fully redeemed; but that redemption
-involves the ‘irredentism’ of large numbers of German Tyrolese,
-Yugo-Slavs, and Greeks. The new Austria is forbidden to federate with
-the main branch of the race to which her people belong&mdash;though
-federation alone can save them from physical extinction. The
-Czecho-Slovak nation is now achieved, but only at the expense of a
-German unredeemed population larger numerically than that of
-Alsace-Lorraine. And Slovaks and Czechs already quarrel&mdash;many foresee
-the day when the freed State will face its own rebels. The Slovenes and
-Croats and the Serbs do not yet make a ‘nationality,’ and threaten to
-fight one another as readily as they would fight the Bulgarians they
-have annexed in Bulgarian Macedonia. Rumania has marked her redemption
-by the inclusion of considerable Hungarian, Bulgarian, and Serbian
-‘irredentisms’ within her new borders. Finland, which with Poland
-typified for so long the undying struggle for national right, is to-day
-determined to coerce the Swedes on the Aaland Islands and the Russians
-on the Carelian Territory.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_138" id="page_138"></a>{138}</span> Greek rule of Turks has already involved
-retaliatory, punitive, or defensive measures which have needed Blue Book
-explanation. Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaidjan have not yet acquired
-their subject nationalities.</p>
-
-<p>The prospect of peace and security for these nationalities may be
-gathered in some measure by an enumeration of the wars which have
-actually broken out since the Peace Conference met in Paris, for the
-appeasement of Europe. The Poles have fought in turn, the
-Czecho-Slovaks, the Ukrainians, the Lithuanians, and the Russians. The
-Ukrainians have fought the Russians and the Hungarians. The Finns have
-fought the Russians, as have also the Esthonians and the Letts. The
-Esthonians and Letts have also fought the Baltic Germans. The Rumanians
-have fought Hungary. The Greeks have fought the Bulgarians and are at
-present in ‘full dress’ war with the Turks. The Italians have fought the
-Albanians, and the Turks in Asia Minor. The French have been fighting
-the Arabs in Syria and the Turks in Cilicia. The various British
-expeditions or missions, naval or military, in Archangel, Murmansk, the
-Baltic, the Crimea, Persia, Siberia, Turkestan, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor,
-the Soudan, or in aid of Koltchak, Denikin, Yudenitch, or Wrangel, are
-not included in this list as not arising in a strict sense perhaps out
-of nationality problems.</p>
-
-<p>Let us face what all this means in the alignment of power in the world.
-The Europe of the Grand Alliance is a Europe of many nationalities:
-British, French, Italian, Rumanian, Polish, Czecho-Slovak, Yugo-Slav,
-Greek, Belgian, Magyar, to say nothing of the others. None of these
-States exceeds greatly forty millions of people, and the populations of
-most are very much less. But the rival group of Germany and Russia,
-making between them over two hundred millions, comprises just two great
-States. And contiguous to them, united by the ties of common hatreds,
-lie the Mahomedan world and China. Prusso-Slavdom (combining racial
-elements<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_139" id="page_139"></a>{139}</span> having common qualities of amenity to autocratic discipline)
-might conceivably give a lead to Chinese and other Asiatic millions,
-brought to hate the West. The opposing group is a Balkanised Europe of
-irreconcilable national rivalries, incapable, because of those
-rivalries, of any prolonged common action, and taking a religious pride
-in the fact of this incapacity to agree. Its moral leaders, or many of
-them, certainly its powerful and popular instrument of education, the
-Press, encourage this pugnacity, regarding any effort towards its
-restraint or discipline as political atheism; deepening the tradition
-which would make ‘intense’ nationalism a noble, virile, and inspiring
-attitude, and internationalism something emasculate and despicable.</p>
-
-<p>We talk of the need of ‘protecting European civilisation’ from hostile
-domination, German or Russian. It is a danger. Other great civilisations
-have found themselves dominated by alien power. Seeley has sketched for
-us the process by which a vast country with two or three hundred million
-souls, not savage or uncivilised but with a civilisation, though
-descending along a different stream of tradition, as real and ancient as
-our own, came to be utterly conquered and subdued by a people, numbering
-less than twelve millions, living on the other side of the world. It
-reversed the teaching of history which had shown again and again that it
-was impossible really to conquer an intelligent people alien in
-tradition from its invaders. The whole power of Spain could not in
-eighty years conquer the Dutch provinces with their petty population.
-The Swiss could not be conquered. At the very time when the conquest of
-India’s hundreds of millions was under way, the English showed
-themselves wholly unable to reduce to obedience three millions of their
-own race in America. What was the explanation? The Inherent Superiority
-of the Anglo-Saxon Stock?</p>
-
-<p>For long we were content to draw such a flattering conclusion and leave
-it at that, until Seeley pointed out the uncomfortable<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_140" id="page_140"></a>{140}</span> fact that the
-great bulk of the forces used in the conquest of India were not British
-at all. They were Indian. India was conquered for Great Britain by the
-natives of India.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘The nations of India (says Seeley) have been conquered by an army
-of which, on the average, about a fifth part was English. India can
-hardly be said to have been conquered at all by foreigners; she was
-rather conquered by herself. If we were justified, which we are
-not, in personifying India as we personify France or England, we
-could not describe her as overwhelmed by a foreign enemy; we should
-rather have to say that she elected to put an end to anarchy by
-submitting to a single government, even though that government were
-in the hands of foreigners.’<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a></p></div>
-
-<p>In other words, India is an English possession because the peoples of
-India were incapable of cohesion, the nations of India incapable of
-internationalism.</p>
-
-<p>The peoples of India include some of the best fighting stock in the
-world. But they fought one another: the pugnacity and material power
-they personified was the force used by their conquerors for their
-subjection.</p>
-
-<p>I will venture to quote what I wrote some years ago touching Seeley’s
-moral:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘Our successful defeat of tyranny depends upon such a development
-of the sense of patriotism among the democratic nations that it
-will attach itself rather to the conception of the unity of all
-free co-operative societies, than to the mere geographical and
-racial divisions; a development that will enable it to organise
-itself as a cohesive power for the defence of that ideal, by the
-use of all the forces, moral and material, which it wields.</p></div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_141" id="page_141"></a>{141}</span></p>
-
-<p>‘That unity is impossible on the basis of the old policies, the European
-statecraft of the past. For that assumes a condition of the world in
-which each State must look for its national security to its own isolated
-strength; and such assumption compels each member, as a measure of
-national self-preservation, and so justifiably, to take precaution
-against drifting into a position of inferior power, compels it, that is,
-to enter into a competition for the sources of strength&mdash;territory and
-strategic position. Such a condition will inevitably, in the case of any
-considerable alliance, produce a situation in which some of its members
-will be brought into conflict by claims for the same territory. In the
-end, that will inevitably disrupt the Alliance.</p>
-
-<p>‘The price of the preservation of nationality is a workable
-internationalism. If this latter is not possible then the smaller
-nationalities are doomed. Thus, though internationalism may not be in
-the case of every member of the Alliance the object of war, it is the
-condition of its success.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_142" id="page_142"></a>{142}</span>’</p>
-
-<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V<br /><br />
-<small>PATRIOTISM AND POWER IN WAR AND PEACE</small></h2>
-
-<p class="nind">I<small>N</small> the preceding chapter attention has been called to a phenomenon which
-is nothing short of a ‘moral miracle’ if our ordinary reading of war
-psychology is correct. The phenomenon in question is the very definite
-and sudden worsening of Anglo-American relations, following upon common
-suffering on the same battle-fields, our soldiers fighting side by side;
-an experience which we commonly assume should weld friendship as nothing
-else could.<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a></p>
-
-<p>This miracle has its replica within the nation itself: intense
-industrial strife, class warfare, revolution, embittered rivalries,
-following upon a war which in its early days our moralists almost to a
-man declared at least to have this great consolation, that it achieved
-the moral unity of the nation. Pastor and poet, statesman and professor
-alike rejoiced in this spiritual consolidation which dangers faced in
-common had brought about. Never again was the nation to be riven by the
-old differences. None was now for party and all were for the <span class="pagenum"><a name="page_143" id="page_143"></a>{143}</span>State. We
-had achieved the ‘<i>union sacrée</i>’ ... ‘duke’s son, cook’s son.’ On this
-ground alone many a bishop has found (in war time) the moral
-justification of war.<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a></p>
-
-<p>Now no one can pretend that this sacred union has really survived the
-War. The extraordinary contrast between the disunity with which we
-finish war and the unity with which we begin it, is a disturbing thought
-when we recollect that the country cannot always be at war, if only
-because peace is necessary as a preparation for war, for the creation of
-things for war to destroy. It becomes still more disturbing when we add
-to this post-war change another even more remarkable, which will be
-dealt with presently: the objects for which at the beginning of a war we
-are ready to die&mdash;ideals like democracy, freedom from military
-regimentation and the suppression of military terrorism, the rights of
-small nations&mdash;are things about which at the end of the War we are
-utterly indifferent. It would seem either that these are not the things
-that really stirred us&mdash;that our feelings had some other unsuspected
-origin&mdash;or that war has destroyed our feeling for them.</p>
-
-<p>Note this juxtaposition of events. We have had in Europe millions of men
-in every belligerent country showing unfathomable capacity for
-disinterested service. Millions of youngsters&mdash;just ordinary folk&mdash;gave
-the final and greatest sacrifice without hesitation and without
-question. They faced agony, hardship, death, with no hope or promise of
-reward save that of duty discharged. And, very rightly, we acclaim them
-as heroes. They have shown without any sort of doubt<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_144" id="page_144"></a>{144}</span> that they are
-ready to die for their country’s cause or for some even greater
-cause&mdash;human freedom, the rights of a small nation, democracy, or the
-principle of nationality, or to resist a barbarous morality which can
-tolerate the making of unprovoked war for a monarchy’s ambition or the
-greed of an autocratic clique.</p>
-
-<p>And, indeed, whatever our final conclusion, the spectacle of vast
-sacrifices so readily made is, in its ultimate meaning one of infinite
-inspiration and hope. But the War’s immediate sequel puts certain
-questions to us that we cannot shirk. For note what follows.</p>
-
-<p>After some years the men who could thus sacrifice themselves, return
-home&mdash;to Italy, or France, or Britain&mdash;and exchange khaki for the
-miner’s overall or the railway worker’s uniform. And it would then seem
-that at that moment their attitude to their country and their country’s
-attitude to them undergo a wonderful change. They are ready&mdash;so at least
-we are told by a Press which for five years had spoken of them daily as
-heroes, saints, and gentlemen&mdash;through their miners’ or railway Unions
-to make war upon, instead of for, that community which yesterday they
-served so devotedly. Within a few months of the close of this War which
-was to unify the nation as it had never been unified before (the story
-is the same whichever belligerent you may choose) there appear divisions
-and fissures, disruptions and revolutions, more disturbing than have
-been revealed for generations.</p>
-
-<p>Our extreme nervousness about the danger of Bolshevist propaganda shows
-that we believe that these men, yesterday ready to die for their
-country, are now capable of exposing it to every sort of horror.</p>
-
-<p>Or take another aspect of it. During the War fashionable ladies by
-thousands willingly got up at six in the morning to scrub canteen floors
-or serve coffee, in order to add to the comfort of their working-class
-countrymen&mdash;in khaki. They did this, one assumes, from the love of
-countrymen who risked<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_145" id="page_145"></a>{145}</span> their lives and suffered hardship in the
-execution of duty. It sounds satisfactory until the same countryman
-ceases fighting and turns to extremely hard and hazardous duties like
-mining, or fishing in winter-time in the North Sea. The ladies will no
-longer scrub floors or knit socks for him. They lose all real interest
-in him. But if it was done originally from ‘love of fellow-countrymen,’
-why this cessation of interest? He is the same man. Into the psychology
-of that we shall inquire a little more fully later. The phenomenon is
-explained here in the conviction that its cause throws light upon the
-other phenomenon equally remarkable, namely, that victory reveals a most
-astonishing post-war indifference to those moral and ideal ends for
-which we believed we were fighting. Is it that they never were our real
-aims at all, or that war has wrought a change in our nature with
-reference to them?</p>
-
-<p>The importance of knowing what really moves us is obvious enough. If our
-potential power is to stand for the protection of any
-principle&mdash;nationality or democracy&mdash;that object must represent a real
-purpose, not a convenient clothing for a quite different purpose. The
-determination to defend nationality can only be permanent if our feeling
-for it is sufficiently deep and sincere to survive in the competition of
-other moral ‘wishes.’ Where has the War, and the complex of desires it
-developed, left our moral values? And, if there has been a re-valuation,
-why?</p>
-
-<p>The Allied world saw clearly that the German doctrine&mdash;the right of a
-powerful State to deny national independence to a smaller State, merely
-because its own self-preservation demanded it&mdash;was something which
-menaced nationality and right. The whole system by which, as in Prussia,
-the right of the people to challenge the political doctrines of the
-Government was denied (as by a rigorous control of press and education),
-was seen to be incompatible with the principles upon which free
-government in the West has been established. All this had to be
-destroyed in order that the world might be<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_146" id="page_146"></a>{146}</span> made ‘safe for democracy.’
-The trenches in Flanders became ‘the frontiers of freedom.’ To uphold
-the rights of small nations, freedom of speech and press, to punish
-military terror, to establish an international order based on right as
-against might&mdash;these were things for which free men everywhere should
-gladly die. They did die, in millions. Nowhere so much, perhaps, as in
-America were these ideals the inspiration which brought that country
-into the War. She had nothing to gain territorially or materially. If
-ever the motive to war was an ideal motive, America’s was.</p>
-
-<p>Then comes the Peace. And the America which had discarded her tradition
-of isolation to send two million soldiers on the European continent, ‘at
-the call of the small nation,’ was asked to co-operate with others in
-assuring the future security of Belgium, in protecting the small States
-by the creation of some international order (the only way in which they
-ever can be effectively protected); to do it in another form for a small
-nation that has suffered even more tragically than Belgium, Armenia;
-definitely to organise in peace that cause for which she went to war.
-And then a curious discovery is made. A cause which can excite immense
-passion when it is associated with war, is simply a subject for boredom
-when it becomes a problem of peace-time organisation. America will give
-lavishly of the blood of her sons to fight for the small nations; she
-will not be bothered with mandates or treaties in order to make it
-unnecessary to fight for them. It is not a question whether the
-particular League of Nations established at Paris was a good one. The
-post-war temper of America is that she does not want to be bothered with
-Europe at all: talk about its security makes the American public of 1920
-irritable and angry. Yet millions were ready to die for freedom in
-Europe two years ago! A thing to die for in 1918 is a thing to yawn
-over, or to be irritable about, when the war is done.</p>
-
-<p>Is America alone in this change of feeling about the small<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_147" id="page_147"></a>{147}</span> State?
-Recall all that we wrote and talked about the sacredness of the rights
-of small nations&mdash;and still in certain cases talk and write. There is
-Poland. It is one of the nations whose rights are sacred&mdash;to-day. But in
-1915 we acquiesced in an arrangement by which Poland was to be
-delivered, bound hand and foot, at the end of the war, to its worst and
-bitterest enemy, Czarist Russia. The Alliance (through France, to-day
-the ‘protector of Poland’) undertook not to raise any objection to any
-policy that the Czar’s Government might inaugurate in Poland. It was to
-have a free hand. A secret treaty, it will be urged, about which the
-public knew nothing? We were fighting to liberate the world from
-diplomatic autocracies using their peoples for unknown and unavowed
-purposes. But the fact that we were delivering over Poland to the
-mercies of a Czarist Government was not secret. Every educated man knew
-what Russian policy under the Czarist Government would be, must be, in
-Poland. Was the Russian record with reference to Poland such that the
-unhampered discretion of the Czarist Government was deemed sufficient
-guarantee of Polish independence? Did we honestly think that Russia had
-proved herself more liberal in the treatment of the Poles than Austria,
-whose Government we were destroying? The implication, of course, flew in
-the face of known facts: Austrian rule over the Poles, which we proposed
-to destroy, had proved itself immeasurably more tolerant than the
-Russian rule which we proposed to re-enforce and render more secure.</p>
-
-<p>And there were Finland and the Border States. If Russia had remained in
-the War, ‘loyal to the cause of democracy and the rights of small
-nations,’ there would have been no independent Poland, or Finland, or
-Esthonia, or Georgia; and the refusal of our Ally to recognise their
-independence would not have disturbed us in the least.</p>
-
-<p>Again, there was Serbia, on behalf of whose ‘redemption’ in a sense, the
-War began. An integral part of that ‘redemption<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_148" id="page_148"></a>{148}</span>’ was the inclusion of
-the Dalmatian coast in Serbia&mdash;the means of access of the new Southern
-Slav State to the sea. Italy, for naval reasons, desired possession of
-that coast, and, without informing Serbia, we undertook to see that
-Italy should get it. (Italy, by the way, also entered the War on behalf
-of the principle of Nationality.)<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id="FNanchor_60_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a></p>
-
-<p>It is not to be supposed, however, that the small State itself, however
-it may declaim about ‘liberty or death,’ has, when the opportunity to
-assert power presents itself, any greater regard for the rights of
-nationality&mdash;in other people. Take Poland. For a hundred and fifty years
-Poland has called upon Heaven to witness the monstrous wickedness of
-denying to a people its right to self-determination; of forcing a people
-under alien rule. After a hundred and fifty years of the martyrdom of
-alien rule, Poland acquires its freedom. That freedom is not a year old
-before Poland itself becomes in temper as imperialistic as any State in
-Europe. It may be bankrupt, racked with typhus and famine, split by
-bitter factional quarrels, but the one thing upon which all Poles will
-unite is in the demand for dominion over some fifteen millions of
-people, not merely non-Polish, but bitterly anti-Polish. Although Poland
-is perhaps the worst case, all the new small States show a similar
-disposition: Czecho-Slovakia, Yugoslavia, Rumania, Finland, Greece, have
-all now their own imperialism, limited only, apparently, by the extent
-of their power. All these people have fought for the right to national
-independence; there is not one that is not denying the right to national
-independence. If every Britain has its Ireland, every Ireland has its
-Ulster.</p>
-
-<p>But is this belief in Nationality at all? What should we have thought of
-a Southerner of the old Slave States fulminating against the crime of
-slavery? Should we have thought his position any more logical if he had
-explained that<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_149" id="page_149"></a>{149}</span> he was opposed to slavery because he did not want to
-become a slave? The test of his sincerity would have been, not the
-conduct he exacted of others, but the conduct he proposed to follow
-towards others. ‘One is a Nationalist,’ says Professor Corradini, one of
-the prophets of Italian <i>sacro egoismo</i>, ‘while waiting to be able to
-become an Imperialist.’ He prophesies that in twenty years ‘all Italy
-will be Imperialist.’<a name="FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a></p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>The last thing intended here is any excuse of German violence by a
-futile <i>tu quoque</i>. But what it is important to know, if we are to
-understand the real motives of our conduct&mdash;and unless we do, we cannot
-really know where our conduct is leading us, where we are going&mdash;is
-whether we really cared about the ‘moral aims of war,’ the things for
-which we thought we were willing to die. Were we not as a matter of fact
-fighting&mdash;and dying&mdash;for something else?</p>
-
-<p>Test the nature of our feelings by what was after all perhaps the most
-dramatised situation in the whole drama: the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_150" id="page_150"></a>{150}</span> fact that in the Western
-world a single man, or a little junta of military chiefs, could by a
-word send nations into war, millions to their death; and&mdash;worse still in
-a sense&mdash;that those millions would accept the fact of thus being made
-helpless pawns, and with appalling docility, without question, kill and
-be killed for reasons they did not even know. It must be made impossible
-ever again for half a dozen Generals or Cabinet Ministers thus to play
-with nations and men and women as with pawns.</p>
-
-<p>The War is at last over. And in Eastern Europe, the most corrupt, as it
-was one of the potentially most powerful of all the military
-autocracies&mdash;that of the Czar&mdash;has either gone to pieces from its own
-rottenness, or been destroyed by the spontaneous uprising of the people.
-Bold experiments, in entirely new social and economic methods, are
-attempted in this great community which may have so much to teach the
-Western world, experiments which challenge not only old political
-institutions, but old economic ones as well. But the men who were the
-Czar’s Ministers are still in Paris and London, in close but secret
-confabulation with Allied Governments.</p>
-
-<p>And one morning we find that we are at war with the first Workers’
-Republic of the world, the first really to try a great social
-experiment. There had been no declaration, no explanation. President
-Wilson had, indeed, said that nothing would induce the Allies to
-intervene. Their behaviour on that point would be the ‘acid test’ of
-sincerity. But in Archangel, Murmansk, Vladivostock, the Crimea, on the
-Polish border, on the shores of the Caspian, our soldiers were killing
-Russians, or organising their killing; our ships sank Russian ships and
-bombarded Russian cities. We found that we were supporting the Royalist
-parties&mdash;military leaders who did not hide in the least their intention
-to restore the monarchy. But again, there is no explanation. But
-somewhere, for some purpose undefined, killing has been proclaimed. And
-we kill&mdash;and blockade and starve.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_151" id="page_151"></a>{151}</span></p>
-
-<p>The killing and blockading are not the important facts. Whatever may be
-behind the Russian business, the most disturbing portent is the fact
-which no one challenges and which indeed is most generally offered as a
-sort of defence. It is this: Nobody knows what the policy of the
-Government in Russia is, or was. It is commonly said they had no policy.
-Certainly it was changeable. That means that the Government does not
-need to give an explanation in order to start upon a war which may
-affect the whole future form of Western society. They did not have to
-explain because nobody particularly cared. Commands for youths to die in
-wars of unknown purpose do not strike us as monstrous when the commands
-are given by our own Governments&mdash;Governments which notoriously we do
-not trouble to control. Public opinion as a whole did not have any
-intense feeling about the Russian war, and not the slightest as to
-whether we used poison gas, or bombarded Russian cathedrals, or killed
-Russian civilians. We did not want it to be expensive, and Mr Churchill
-promised that if it cost too much he would drop it. He admitted finally
-that it was unnecessary by dropping it. But it was not important enough
-for him to resign over. And as for bringing anybody to trial for it, or
-upsetting the monarchy....<a name="FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a></p>
-
-<p>There is another aspect of our feeling about the Prussian tendencies and
-temper, to rid the world of which we waged the War.</p>
-
-<p>All America (or Britain, for that matter: America is only a striking and
-so a convenient example) knew that the Bismarckian persecution of the
-Socialists, the imprisonment of Bebel, of Liebknecht, the prosecution of
-newspapers for anti-militarist doctrines, the rigid control of
-education, by the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_152" id="page_152"></a>{152}</span> Government, were just the natural prelude to what
-ended in Louvain and Aerschot, to the shooting down of the civilians of
-an invaded country. Again, that was why Prussia had to be destroyed in
-the interest of human freedom and the safety of democracy. The
-newspapers, the professors, the churches, were telling us all this
-endlessly for five years. Within a year of the end of the War, America
-is engaged in an anti-Socialist campaign more sweeping, more ruthless,
-by any test which you care to apply&mdash;the numbers arrested, the severity
-of the sentences imposed, the nature of the offences alleged&mdash;than
-anything ever attempted by Bismarck or the Kaiser. Old men of seventy
-(one selected by the Socialist party as Presidential Candidate), young
-girls, college students, are sent to prison with sentences of ten,
-fifteen, or twenty years. The elected members of State Legislatures are
-not allowed to sit, on the ground of their Socialist opinions. There are
-deportations in whole shiploads. If one takes the Espionage Act and
-compares it with any equivalent German legislation (the tests applied to
-school teachers or the refusal of mailing privileges to Socialist
-papers), one finds that the general principle of control of political
-opinion by the Government, and the limitations imposed upon freedom of
-discussion, and the Press, are certainly pushed further by the post-war
-America than they were by the pre-war Germany&mdash;the Germany that had to
-be destroyed for the precise reason that the principle of government by
-free discussion was more valuable than life itself.</p>
-
-<p>And as to military terrorism. Americans can see&mdash;scores of American
-papers are saying it every day&mdash;that the things defended by the British
-Government in Ireland are indistinguishable from what brought upon
-Germany the wrath of Allied mankind. But they do not even know and
-certainly would not care if they did know, that American marines in
-Hayti&mdash;a little independent State that might one day become the hope and
-symbol of a subject nationality, an unredeemed race that has suffered
-and does suffer more at American hands than Pole or<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_153" id="page_153"></a>{153}</span> Alsatian ever
-suffered at German hands&mdash;have killed ten times as many Haytians as the
-Black and Tans have killed Irish. Nor for that matter do Americans know
-that every week there takes place in their own country&mdash;as there has
-taken place week after week in the years of peace for half a
-century&mdash;atrocities more ferocious than any which are alleged against
-even the British or the German. Neither of the latter burn alive,
-weekly, untried fellow-countrymen with a regularity that makes the thing
-an institution.</p>
-
-<p>If indeed it was the militarism, the terrorism, the crude assertion of
-power, the repressions of freedom, which made us hate the German, why
-are we relatively indifferent when all those evils raise their heads,
-not far away, among a people for whom after all we are not responsible,
-but at home, near to us, where we have some measure of responsibility?</p>
-
-<p>For indifferent in some measure to those near-by evils we all are.</p>
-
-<p>The hundred million people who make up America include as many kindly,
-humane, and decent folk as any other hundred million anywhere in the
-world. They have a habit of carrying through extraordinary and unusual
-measures&mdash;like Prohibition. Yet nothing effective has been done about
-lynching, for which the world holds them responsible, any more than we
-have done anything effective about Ireland, for which the world holds us
-responsible. Their evil may one day land them in a desperate ‘subject
-nationality’ problem, just as our Irish problem lands us in political
-difficulty the world over. Yet neither they nor we can manage to achieve
-one-tenth of the emotional interest in our own atrocity or oppression,
-which we managed in a few weeks to achieve in war-time over the German
-barbarities in Belgium. If we could&mdash;if every schoolboy and maid-servant
-felt as strongly over Balbriggan or Amritsar as they felt over the
-<i>Lusitania</i> and Louvain&mdash;our problem would be solved; whereas the action
-and policy which arose out of our<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_154" id="page_154"></a>{154}</span> feeling about Louvain did not solve
-the evil of military terrorism. It merely made it nearly universal.</p>
-
-<p>It brings us back to the original question. Is it mainly, or at all, the
-cruelty or the danger of oppression which moves us, which is at the
-bottom of our flaming indignation over the crimes of the enemy?</p>
-
-<p>We believed that we were fighting because of a passionate feeling for
-self-rule; for freedom of discussion, of respect for the rights of
-others, particularly the weak; the hatred of the mere pride of power out
-of which oppression grows; of the regimentation of minds which is its
-instrument. But after the War we find that in truth we have no
-particular feeling about the things we fought to make impossible. We
-rather welcome them, if they are a means of harassing people that we do
-not happen to like. We get the monstrous paradox that the very
-tendencies which it was the object of the War to check, are the very
-tendencies that have acquired an elusive power in our own
-country&mdash;possibly as the direct result of the War!</p>
-
-<p>Perhaps if we examine in some detail the process of the break-up after
-war, within the nation, of the unity which marked it during war, we may
-get some explanation of the other change just indicated.</p>
-
-<p>The unity on which we congratulated ourselves was for a time a fact. But
-just as certainly the patriotism which prompted the duchess to scrub
-floors was not simply love of her countrymen, or it would not suddenly
-cease when the war came to an end. The self-same man who in khaki was a
-hero to be taken for drives in the duchess’s motor-car, became as
-workman&mdash;a member of some striking union, say&mdash;an object of hostility
-and dislike. The psychology revealed here has a still more curious
-manifestation.</p>
-
-<p>When in war-time we read of the duke’s son and the cook’s son peeling
-potatoes into the same tub, we regard this aspect of the working of
-conscription as something in itself fine and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_155" id="page_155"></a>{155}</span> admirable, a real national
-comradeship in common tasks at last. Colonel Roosevelt orates; our
-picture papers give us photographs; the country thrills to this note of
-democracy. But when we learn that for the constructive purposes of
-peace&mdash;for street-cleaning&mdash;the Soviet Government has introduced
-precisely this method and compelled the sons of Grand Dukes to shovel
-snow beside common workmen, the same papers give the picture as an
-example of the intolerable tyranny of socialism, as a warning of what
-may happen in England if the revolutionists are listened to. That for
-years that very thing <i>had</i> been happening in England for the purposes
-of war, that we were extremely proud of it, and had lauded it as
-wholesome discipline and a thing which made conscription fine and
-democratic, is something that we are unable even to perceive, so strong
-and yet so subtle are the unconscious factors of opinion. This peculiar
-psychological twist explains, of course, several things: why we are all
-socialists for the purposes of war, and why socialism can then give
-results which nothing else could give; why we cannot apply the same
-methods successfully to peace; and why the economic miracles possible in
-war are not possible in peace. And the outcome is that forces,
-originally social and unifying, are at present factors only of
-disruption and destruction, not merely internationally, but, as we shall
-see presently, nationally as well.</p>
-
-<p>When the accomplishment of certain things&mdash;the production of shells, the
-assembling of certain forces, the carriage of cargoes&mdash;became a matter
-of life and death, we did not argue about nationalisation or socialism;
-we put it into effect, and it worked. There existed for war a will which
-found a way round all the difficulties of credit adjustment,
-distribution, adequate wages, unemployment, incapacitation. We could
-take over the country’s railways and mines, control its trade, ration
-its bread, and decide without much discussion that those things were
-indispensable for its purposes. But we can do none of these things for
-the upbuilding of the country in peace time.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_156" id="page_156"></a>{156}</span> The measures to which we
-turn when we feel that the country must produce or perish, are precisely
-the measures which, when the war is over, we declare are the least
-likely to get anything done at all. We could make munitions; we cannot
-make houses. We could clothe and feed our soldiers and satisfy all their
-material wants; we cannot do that for the workers. Unemployment in
-war-time was practically unknown; the problem of unemployment in peace
-time seems beyond us. Millions go unclothed; thousands of workers who
-could make clothes are without employment. One speaks of the sufferings
-of the army of poverty as though they were dispensations of heaven. We
-did not speak thus of the needs of soldiers in war-time. If soldiers
-wanted uniforms and wool was obtainable, weavers did not go unemployed.
-Then there existed a will and common purpose. That will and common
-purpose the patriotism of peace-time cannot give us.</p>
-
-<p>Yet, again, we cannot always be at war. Women must have time and
-opportunity to bear and to bring up children, and men to build up a
-country-side, if only in order to have men for war to slay and things
-for war to destroy. Patriotism fails as a social cement within the
-nation at peace, it fails as a stimulus to its constructive tasks; and
-as between nations, we know it acts as a violent irritant and disruptive
-force.</p>
-
-<p>We need not question the genuineness of the emotion which moves our
-duchess when she knits socks for the dear boys in the trenches&mdash;or when
-she fulminates against the same dear boys as working men when they come
-home. As soldiers she loved them because her hatred of Germans&mdash;that
-atrocious, hostile ‘herd’&mdash;was deep and genuine. She felt like killing
-Germans herself. Consequently, to those who risked their lives to fulfil
-this wish of hers, her affections went out readily enough. But why
-should she feel any particular affection for men who mine coal, or
-couple railway trucks, or catch fish in the North Sea? Dangerous as are
-those tasks, they are not visibly and intimately related to her own
-fierce emotions. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_157" id="page_157"></a>{157}</span> men performing them are just workpeople, the
-relation of whose labour to her own life is not, perhaps, always very
-clear. The suggestion that she should scrub floors or knit socks for
-<i>them</i> would appear to her as merely silly or offensive.</p>
-
-<p>But unfortunately the story does not end there. During these years of
-war her very genuine emotions of hate were fed and nourished by war
-propaganda; her emotional hunger was satisfied in some measure by the
-daily tale of victories over the enemy. She had, as it were, ten
-thousand Germans for breakfast every morning. And when the War stopped,
-certainly something went out of her life. No one would pretend that
-these flaming passions of five years went for so little in her emotional
-experience that they could just be dropped from one day to another
-without something going unsatisfied.</p>
-
-<p>And then she cannot get coal; her projected journey to the Riviera is
-delayed by a railway strike; she has troubles with servants; faces a
-preposterous super-tax and death duties; an historical country seat can
-no longer be maintained and old associations must be broken up; Labour
-threatens revolution&mdash;or her morning paper says it does; Labour leaders
-say grossly unfair things about dukes. Here, indeed, is a new hostility,
-a new enemy tribe, on which the emotions cultivated so assiduously
-during five years, but hungry and unfed since the War, can once more
-feed and find some satisfaction. The Bolshevist, or the Labour agitator,
-takes the place of the Hun; the elements of enmity and disruption are
-already present.</p>
-
-<p>And something similar takes place with the miner, or labour man, in
-reference to the duchess and what she stands for. For him also the main
-problem of life had resolved itself during the War into something simple
-and emotional; an enemy to be fought and overcome. Not a puzzling
-intellectual difficulty, with all the hesitations and uncertainties of
-intellectual decision<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_158" id="page_158"></a>{158}</span> dependent upon sustained mental effort. The
-rights and wrongs were settled for him; right was our side, wrong the
-enemy’s. What we had to do was to crush him. That done, it would be a
-better world, his country ‘a land fit for heroes to live in.’</p>
-
-<p>On return from the War he does not find quite that. He can, for
-instance, get no house fit to live in at all. High prices, precarious
-employment. What is wrong? There are fifty theories, all puzzling. As to
-housing, he is sometimes told it is his own fault; the building unions
-won’t permit dilution. When the ‘high-brows’ are all at sixes and
-sevens, what is a man to think? But it is suggested to him that behind
-all this is one enemy: the Capitalist. His papers have a picture of him:
-very like the Hun. Now here is something emotionally familiar. For years
-he has learned to hate and fight, to embody all problems in the one
-problem of fighting some definite&mdash;preferably personified&mdash;enemy. Smash
-him; get him by the throat, and then all these brain-racking puzzles
-will clear themselves up. Our side, our class, our tribe, will then be
-on top, and there will be no real solution until it is. To this respond
-all the emotions, the whole state of feeling which years of war have
-cultivated. Once more the problem of life is simple; one of power,
-domination, the fight for mastery; loyalty to our side, our lot, ‘right
-or wrong.’ Workers to be masters, workers who have been shoved and
-ordered about, to do the shoving and the ordering. Dictatorship of the
-proletariat. The headaches disappear and one can live emotionally free
-once more.</p>
-
-<p>There are ‘high-brows’ who will even philosophise the thing for him, and
-explain that only the psychology of war and violence will give the
-emotional drive to get anything done; that only by the myths which mark
-patriotism can real social change be made. Just as for the hate which
-keeps war going, the enemy State must be a single ‘person,’ a
-collectivity in which any one German can be killed as vengeance or
-reprisal<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_159" id="page_159"></a>{159}</span> for any other,<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id="FNanchor_63_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a> so ‘the capitalist class’ must be a
-personality, if class hatred is to be kept alive in such a way as to
-bring the class war to victory.</p>
-
-<p>But that theory overlooks the fact that just as the nationalism which
-makes war also destroys the Alliances by which victory can be made
-effective, so the transfer of the psychology of Nationalism to the
-industrial field has the same effect of Balkanisation. We get in both
-areas, not the definite triumph of a cohesive group putting into
-operation a clear-cut and understandable programme or policy, but the
-chaotic conflict of an infinite number of groups unable to co-operate
-effectively for any programme.</p>
-
-<p>If the hostilities which react to the Syndicalistic appeal were confined
-to the Capitalist, there might be something to be said for it from the
-point of view of the Labour movement. But forces so purely instinctive,
-by their very nature repelling the restraint of self-imposed discipline
-by intelligent foresight of consequences, cannot be the servant of an
-intelligent purpose,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_160" id="page_160"></a>{160}</span> they become its master. The hostility becomes more
-important than the purpose. To the industrial Jingo, as to the
-nationalist Jingo, all foreigners are potential enemies. The hostile
-tribe or herd may be constituted by very small differences; slight
-variations of occupation, interest, race, speech, and&mdash;most potently of
-all perhaps&mdash;dogma or belief. Heresy-hunting is, of course, one
-manifestation of tribal animosity; and a heretic is the person who has
-the insufferable impudence to disagree with us.</p>
-
-<p>So the Sorelian philosophy of violence and instinctive pugnacity gives
-us, not the effective drive of a whole movement against the present
-social order (for that would require order, discipline, self-control,
-tolerance, and toleration); it gives us the tendency to an infinite
-splitting of the Labour movement. No sooner does the Left of some party
-break off and found a new party than it is immediately confronted by its
-own ‘Leftism.’ And your dogmatist hates the dissenting member of his own
-sect more fiercely than the rival sect; your Communist some rival
-Communism more bitterly than the Capitalist. Already the Labour movement
-is crossed by the hostilities of Communist against Socialist, the Second
-International against the Third, the Third against the Fourth; Trades
-Unionism by the hostility of skilled against unskilled, and in much of
-Europe there is also the conflict of town against country.</p>
-
-<p>This tendency has happily not yet gone far in England; but here, as
-elsewhere, it represents the one great danger, the tendency to be
-watched. And it is a tendency that has its moral and psychological roots
-in the same forces which have given us the chaos in the international
-field: The deep human lust for coercion, domination; the irksomeness of
-toleration, thought, self-discipline.</p>
-
-<p>The final difficulty in social and political discussion is, of course,
-the fact that the ultimate values&mdash;what is the highest good, what is the
-worst evil&mdash;cannot usually be argued about<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_161" id="page_161"></a>{161}</span> at all; you accept them, you
-see that they are good or bad as the case may be, or you don’t.</p>
-
-<p>Yet we cannot organise a society save on the basis of some sort of
-agreement concerning these least common denominators; the final argument
-for the view that Western Europe had to destroy German Prussianism was
-that the system challenged certain ultimate moral values common to
-Western society. On the morrow of the sinking of the <i>Lusitania</i> an
-American writer pointed out that if the cold-blooded slaughter of
-innocent women and children were accepted as a normal incident of war,
-like any other, the whole moral standards of the West would then
-definitely be placed on another plane. That elusive but immeasurably
-important moral sense, which gives a society sufficient community of aim
-to make common action possible, would have been radically altered. The
-ancient world&mdash;highly civilised and cultured as much of it was&mdash;had a
-<i>Sittlichkeit</i> which made the chattel-slavery of the greater part of the
-human race an entirely normal&mdash;and, as they thought,
-inevitable&mdash;condition of things. It was accepted by the slaves
-themselves, and it was this acquiescence in the arrangement by both
-parties to it which mainly accounted for its continuance through a very
-long period of a very high civilisation. The position of women
-illustrates the same thing. There are to-day highly developed
-civilisations in which a man of education buys a wife, or several, as in
-the West he would buy a racehorse. And the wife, or wives, accept that
-situation; there can be no change in that particular matter until
-certain quite ‘unarguable’ moral values have altered in the minds of
-those concerned.</p>
-
-<p>The American writer raised, therefore, an extremely important question
-in relation to the War. Has its total outcome affected certain values of
-the fundamental kind just indicated? What has been its effect upon
-social impulses? Has it any direct relation to certain moral tendencies
-that have succeeded it?<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_162" id="page_162"></a>{162}</span></p>
-
-<p>Perhaps the War is now old enough to enable us to face a few quite
-undeniable facts with some measure of detachment.</p>
-
-<p>When the Germans bombarded Scarborough early in the War, there was such
-a hurricane of moralisation that one rejoiced that this War would not be
-marked on our side, at least, by the bombardment of open cities. But
-when our Press began to print reports of French bombs falling on circus
-tents full of children, scores being killed, there was simply no protest
-at all. And one of the humours of the situation was that after more than
-a year, in which scores of such reports had appeared in the Press, some
-journalistic genius began an agitation on behalf of ‘reprisals’ for air
-raids.<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a></p>
-
-<p>At a time when it seemed doubtful whether the Germans would sign the
-Treaty or not, and just what would be the form of the Hungarian
-Government, the <i>Evening News</i> printed the following editorial:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘It might take weeks or months to bring the Hungarian Bolshevists
-and recalcitrant Germans to book by extensive<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_163" id="page_163"></a>{163}</span> operations with
-large forces. It might take but a few days to bring them to reason
-by adequate use of aircraft.</p>
-
-<p>‘Allied airmen could reach Buda-pest in a few hours, and teach its
-inhabitants such a lesson that Bolshevism would lose its
-attractions for them.</p>
-
-<p>‘Strong Allied aerodromes on the Rhine and in Poland, well equipped
-with the best machines and pilots, could quickly persuade the
-inhabitants of the large German cities of the folly of having
-refused to sign the peace.</p>
-
-<p>‘Those considerations are elementary. For that reason they may be
-overlooked. They are “milk for babes.”‘<a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a></p></div>
-
-<p>Now the prevailing thesis of the British, and particularly the
-Northcliffe Press, in reference to Bolshevism, was that it is a form of
-tyranny imposed by a cruel minority upon a helpless people. The proposal
-amounts, therefore, either to killing civilians for a form of Government
-which they cannot possibly help, or to an admission that Bolshevism has
-the support of the populace, and that as the outcome of our war for
-democracy we should refuse them the right to choose the government they
-prefer.</p>
-
-<p>When the Germans bombarded Scarborough and dropped bombs on London, the
-Northcliffe Press called Heaven to witness (<i>a</i>) that only fiends in
-human form could make war on helpless civilian populations, women, and
-children; (<i>b</i>) that not only were the Huns dastardly baby-killers for
-making war in that fashion, but were bad psychologists as well, because
-our anger at such unheard-of devilries would only render our resistance
-more unconquerable than ever; and (<i>c</i>) that no consideration whatever
-would induce English soldiers to blow women and children to pulp&mdash;unless
-it were as a reprisal. Well, Lord Northcliffe proposed to <i>commence</i> a
-war against Hungarians (as it had already been commenced against the
-Russians) by such a wholesale massacre of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_164" id="page_164"></a>{164}</span> civil population that a
-Government, which he tells us is imposed upon them against their will,
-may ‘lose its attractions.’ This would be, of course, the second edition
-of the war waged to destroy militarist modes of thought, to establish
-the reign of righteousness and the protection of the defenceless and the
-weak.</p>
-
-<p>The <i>Evening News</i> is the paper, by the way, whose wrath became violent
-when it learned that some Quakers and others were attempting to make
-some provision for the children of interned Austrians and Germans. Those
-guilty of such ‘un-English’ conduct as a little mercy and pity extended
-to helpless children, were hounded in headlines day after day as
-‘Hun-coddlers,’ traitors ‘attempting to placate the Hun tiger by bits of
-cake to its cubs’; and when the War is all over&mdash;a year after all the
-fighting is stopped&mdash;a vicar of the English Church opposes, with
-indignation, the suggestion that his parish should be contaminated by
-‘enemy’ children brought from the famine area to save them from
-death.<a name="FNanchor_66_66" id="FNanchor_66_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a></p>
-
-<p>On March 3, 1919, Mr Winston Churchill stated in the House of Commons,
-speaking of the blockade:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>’ ... This weapon of starvation falls mainly upon the women and
-children, upon the old and the weak and the poor, after all the
-fighting has stopped.’</p></div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_165" id="page_165"></a>{165}</span></p>
-
-<p>One might take this as a prelude to a change of policy. Not at all: he
-added that we were ‘enforcing the blockade with rigour’ and would
-continue to do so.</p>
-
-<p>Mr Churchill’s indication as to how the blockade acts is important. We
-spoke of it as ‘punishment’ for Germany’s crimes, or Bolshevist
-infamies, as the case may be. But it did not punish ‘Germany’ or the
-Bolshevists.<a name="FNanchor_67_67" id="FNanchor_67_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a> Its penalties are in a peculiar degree unevenly
-distributed. The country districts escape almost entirely, the peasants
-can feed themselves. It falls on the cities. But even in the cities the
-very wealthy and the official classes can as a rule escape. Virtually
-its whole weight&mdash;as Mr Churchill implies&mdash;falls upon the urban poor,
-and particularly the urban child population, the old, the invalids, the
-sick. Whoever may be the parties responsible for the War, these are
-guiltless. But it is these we punish.</p>
-
-<p>Very soon after the Armistice there was ample evidence available as to
-the effect of the blockade, both in Russia and in Central Europe.
-Officers of our Army of Occupation reported that their men ‘could not
-stand’ the spectacle of the suffering around them. Organisations like
-the ‘Save the Children Fund’ devoted huge advertisements to
-familiarising the public with the facts. Considerable sums for relief
-were raised&mdash;but the blockade was maintained. There was no connection
-between the two things&mdash;our foreign policy and the famine in Europe&mdash;in
-the public mind. It developed a sort of moral shock absorber. Facts did
-not reach it or disturb its serenity.</p>
-
-<p>This was revealed in a curious way at the time of the signature of the
-Treaty. At the gathering of the representatives,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_166" id="page_166"></a>{166}</span> the German delegate
-spoke sitting down. It turned out afterwards that he was so ill and
-distraught, that he dared not trust himself to stand up. Every paper was
-full of the incident, as also of the fact that the paper-cutter in front
-of him on the table was found afterwards to be broken; that he placed
-his gloves upon his copy of the Treaty; and that he had thrown away his
-cigarette on entering the room. These were the offences which prompted
-the <i>Daily Mail</i> to say: ‘After this no one will treat the Huns as
-civilised or repentant.’ Almost the entire Press rang with the story of
-‘Rantzau’s insult.’ But not one paper, so far as I could discover, paid
-any attention to what Rantzau had said. He said:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘I do not want to answer by reproaches to reproaches.... Crimes in
-war may not be excusable, but they are committed in the struggle
-for victory and in the defence of national existence, and passions
-are aroused which make the conscience of peoples blunt. The
-hundreds of thousands of non-combatants who have perished since
-November 11 by reason of the blockade, were killed with cold
-deliberation, after our adversaries had conquered and victory had
-been assured them. Think of that when you speak of guilt and
-punishment.’</p></div>
-
-<p>No one seems to have noticed this trifle in presence of the heinousness
-of the cigarette, the gloves, and the other crimes. Yet this was an
-insult indeed. If true, it shamefully disgraces England&mdash;if England is
-responsible. The public presumably simply did not care whether it was
-true or not.</p>
-
-<p>A few months after the Armistice I wrote as follows:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘When the Germans sank the <i>Lusitania</i> and slew several hundred
-women and children, <i>we</i> knew&mdash;at least we thought we knew&mdash;that
-that was the kind of thing which Englishmen could not do. In all
-the hates and stupidities, the dirt and heartbreaks of the war,
-there was just this light on the horizon:<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_167" id="page_167"></a>{167}</span> that there were certain
-things to which we at least could never fall, in the name of
-victory or patriotism, or any other of the deadly masked words that
-are “the unjust stewards of men’s ideas.”</p>
-
-<p>‘And then we did it. We, too, sank <i>Lusitanias</i>. We, too, for some
-cold political end, plunged the unarmed, the weak, the helpless,
-the children, the suffering women, to agonising death and torture.
-Without a tremor. Not alone in the bombing of cities, which we did
-so much better than the enemy. For this we had the usual excuse. It
-was war.</p>
-
-<p>‘But after the War, when the fighting was finished, the enemy was
-disarmed, his submarines surrendered, his aeroplanes destroyed, his
-soldiers dispersed; months afterwards, we kept a weapon which was
-for use first and mainly against the children, the weak, the sick,
-the old, the women, the mothers, the decrepit: starvation and
-disease. Our papers told us&mdash;our patriotic papers&mdash;how well it was
-succeeding. Correspondents wrote complacently, sometimes
-exultingly, of how thin and pinched were all the children, even
-those well into teens; how stunted, how defective, the next
-generation would be; and how the younger children, those of seven
-and eight, looked like children of three and four; and how those
-beneath this age simply did not live. Either they were born dead,
-or if they were born alive&mdash;what was there to give them? Milk? An
-unheard-of luxury. And nothing to wrap them in; even in hospitals
-the new-born children were wrapped in newspapers, the lucky ones in
-bits of sacking. The mothers were most fortunate when the children
-were born dead. In an insane asylum a mother wails: “If only I did
-not hear the cry of the children for food all day long, all day
-long!” To “bring Germany to reason” we had, you see, to drive
-mothers out of their reason.</p>
-
-<p>’“It would have been more merciful,” said Bob Smillie, “to turn the
-machine-guns on those children.” Put this question to yourself,
-patriot Englishmen: “Was the sinking of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_168" id="page_168"></a>{168}</span> <i>Lusitania</i> as cruel,
-as prolonged, as mean, as merciless a death as this?” And we&mdash;you
-and I&mdash;do it every day, every night.</p>
-
-<p>‘Here is the <i>Times</i> of May 21, half a year after the cessation of
-war, telling the Germans that they do not know how much more severe
-we can still make the “domestic results” of starvation, if we
-really put our mind to it. To the blockade we shall add the
-“horrors of invasion.” The invasion of a country already disarmed
-is to be marked&mdash;when we do it&mdash;by horror.</p>
-
-<p>‘But the purpose! That justifies it! What purpose? To obtain the
-signature to the Treaty of Peace. Many Englishmen&mdash;not Pacifists,
-not sentimentalists, not conscientious objectors, or other vermin
-of that kind, but Bishops, Judges, Members of the House of Lords,
-great public educators. Tory editors&mdash;have declared that this
-Treaty is a monstrous injustice. Some Englishmen at least think so.
-But if the Germans say so, that becomes a crime which we shall know
-how to punish. “The enemy have been reminded already” says the
-<i>Times</i>, proud organ of British respectability, of Conservatism, of
-distinguished editors and ennobled proprietors, “that the machinery
-of the blockade can again be put into force at a few hours’ notice
-... the intention of the Allies to take military action if
-necessary.... Rejection of the Peace terms now offered them, will
-assuredly lead to fresh chastisement.”</p>
-
-<p>‘But will not Mr Lloyd George be able to bring back <i>signatures</i>?
-Will he not have made Peace&mdash;permanent Peace? Shall we not have
-destroyed this Prussian philosophy of frightfulness, force, and
-hate? Shall we not have proved to the world that a State without
-military power can trust to the good faith and humanity of its
-neighbours? Can we not, then, celebrate victory with light hearts,
-honour our dead and glorify our arms? Have we not served faithfully
-those ideals of right and justice, mercy and chivalry, for which a
-whole generation of youth went through hell and gave their lives?’</p></div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_169" id="page_169"></a>{169}</span></p>
-
-<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI<br /><br />
-<small>THE ALTERNATIVE RISKS OF STATUS AND CONTRACT</small></h2>
-
-<p class="nind">T<small>HE</small> facts of the present situation in Europe, so far sketched, reveal
-broadly this spectacle: everywhere the failure of national power to
-indispensable ends, sustenance, political security, nationality, right;
-everywhere a fierce struggle for national power.</p>
-
-<p>Germany, which successfully fed her expanding population by a system
-which did not rest upon national power, wrecked that system in order to
-attempt one which all experience showed could not succeed. The Allied
-world pilloried both the folly and the wickedness of such a statecraft;
-and at the peace proceeded to imitate it in every particular. The faith
-in the complete efficacy of preponderant power which the economic and
-other demands of the Treaty of Versailles and the policy towards Russia
-reveal, is already seen to be groundless (for the demands, in fact, are
-being abandoned). There is in that document an element of <i>naïveté</i>, and
-in the subsequent policy a cruelty which will be the amazement of
-history&mdash;if our race remains capable of history.</p>
-
-<p>Yet the men who made the Treaty, and accelerated the famine and break-up
-of half a world, including those, like M. Tardieu, who still demand a
-ruined Germany and an indemnity-paying one, were the ablest statesmen of
-Europe, experienced, realist, and certainly not morally monsters. They
-were probably no worse morally, and certainly more practical, than the
-passionate democracies, American and European, who encouraged<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_170" id="page_170"></a>{170}</span> all the
-destructive elements of policy and were hostile to all that was
-recuperative and healing.</p>
-
-<p>It is perfectly true&mdash;and this truth is essential to the thesis here
-discussed&mdash;that the statesmen at Versailles were neither fools or
-villains. Neither were the Cardinals and the Princes of the Church, who
-for five hundred years, more or less, attempted to use physical coercion
-for the purpose of suppressing religious error. There is, of course an
-immeasurably stronger case for the Inquisition as an instrument of
-social order than there is for the use of competing national military
-power as the basis of modern European society. And the stronger case for
-the Inquisition as an instrument of social by a modern statesman when he
-goes to war. It was less. The inquisitor, in burning and torturing the
-heretic, passionately believed that he obeyed the voice of God, as the
-modern statesman believes that he is justified by the highest dictates
-of patriotism. We are now able to see that the Inquisitor was wrong, his
-judgment twisted by some overpowering prepossession: Is some similar
-prepossession distorting vision and political wisdom in modern
-statecraft? And if so, what is the nature of this prepossession?</p>
-
-<p>As an essay towards the understanding of its nature, the following
-suggestions are put forward:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>The assertion of national power, domination, is always in line with
-popular feeling. And in crises&mdash;like that of the settlement with
-Germany&mdash;popular feeling dictates policy.</p>
-
-<p>The feelings associated with coercive domination evidently lie near
-the surface of our natures and are easily excited. To attain our
-end by mere coercion instead of bargain or agreement, is the method
-in conduct which, in the order of experiments, our race generally
-tries first, not only in economics (as by slavery) but in sex, in
-securing acquiescence to our religious beliefs, and in most other
-relationships. Coercion is not only the response to an instinct; it
-relieves us of the trouble and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_171" id="page_171"></a>{171}</span> uncertainties of intellectual
-decision as to what is equitable in a bargain.</p>
-
-<p>To restrain the combative instinct sufficiently to realise the need
-of co-operation, demands a social discipline which the prevailing
-political traditions and moralities of Nationalism and Patriotism
-not only do not furnish, but directly discourage.</p>
-
-<p>But when some vital need becomes obvious and we find that force
-simply cannot fulfil it, we then try other methods, and manage to
-restrain our impulse sufficiently to do so. If we simply must have
-a man’s help, and we find we cannot force him to give it, we then
-offer him inducements, bargain, enter a contract, even though it
-limits our independence.</p>
-
-<p>Stable international co-operation cannot come in any other way. Not
-until we realise the failure of national coercive power for
-indispensable ends (like the food of our people) shall we cease to
-idealise power and to put our most intense political emotions (like
-those of patriotism) behind it. Our traditions will buttress and
-‘rationalise’ the instinct to power until we see that it is
-mischievous. We shall then begin to discredit it and create new
-traditions.</p></div>
-
-<p>An American sociologist (Professor Giddings of Columbia University) has
-written thus:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘So long as we can confidently act, we do not argue; but when we
-face conditions abounding in uncertainty, or when we are confronted
-by alternative possibilities, we first hesitate, then feel our way,
-then guess, and at length venture to reason. Reasoning,
-accordingly, is that action of the mind to which we resort when the
-possibilities before us and about us are distributed substantially
-according to the law of chance occurrence, or, as the mathematician
-would say, in accordance with “the normal curve” of random
-frequency. The moment the curve is obviously skewed, we decide; if
-it is obviously skewed from the beginning, by authority, or
-coercion, our reasoning<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_172" id="page_172"></a>{172}</span> is futile or imperfect. So, in the State,
-if any interest or coalition of interests is dominant, and can act
-promptly, it rules by absolutist methods. Whether it is benevolent
-or cruel, it wastes neither time nor resources upon government by
-discussion; but if interests are innumerable, and so distributed as
-to offset one another, and if no great bias or overweighting
-anywhere appears, government by discussion inevitably arises. The
-interests can get together only if they talk. If power shall be
-able to dictate, it will also rule, and the appeal to reason will
-be vain.’</p></div>
-
-<p>This means that a realisation of interdependence&mdash;even though it be
-subconscious&mdash;is the basis of the social sense, the feeling and
-tradition which make possible a democratic society, in which freedom is
-voluntarily limited for the purpose of preserving any freedom at all.</p>
-
-<p>It indicates also the relation of certain economic truths to the
-impulses and instincts that underlie international conflict. We shall
-excuse or justify or fail to restrain those instincts, unless and until
-we see that their indulgence stands in the way of the things which we
-need and must have if society is to live. We shall then discredit them
-as anti-social, as we have discredited religious fanaticism, and build
-up a controlling <i>Sittlichkeit</i>.</p>
-
-<p>The statement of Professor Giddings, quoted above, leaves out certain
-psychological facts which the present writer in an earlier work has
-attempted to indicate. He, therefore, makes no apology for reproducing a
-somewhat long passage bearing on the case before us:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘The element in man which makes him capable, however feebly, of
-choice in the matter of conduct, the one fact distinguishing him
-from that vast multitude of living things which act unreflectingly,
-instinctively (in the proper and scientific sense of the word), as
-the mere physical reaction to external prompting, is something not
-deeply rooted, since it is the latest<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_173" id="page_173"></a>{173}</span> addition of all to our
-nature. The really deeply rooted motives of conduct, those having
-by far the greatest biological momentum, are naturally the
-“motives” of the plant and the animal, the kind that marks in the
-main the acts of all living things save man, the unreflecting
-motives, those containing no element of ratiocination and free
-volition, that almost mechanical reaction to external forces which
-draw the leaves towards the sun-rays and makes the tiger tear its
-living food limb from limb.</p>
-
-<p>‘To make plain what that really means in human conduct, we must
-recall the character of that process by which man turns the forces
-of nature to his service instead of allowing them to overwhelm him.
-Its essence is a union of individual forces against the common
-enemy, the forces of nature. Where men in isolated action would
-have been powerless, and would have been destroyed, union,
-association, co-operation, enabled them to survive. Survival was
-contingent upon the cessation of struggle between them, and the
-substitution therefor of common action. Now, the process both in
-the beginning and in the subsequent development of this device of
-co-operation is important. It was born of a failure of force. If
-the isolated force had sufficed, the union of force would not have
-been resorted to. But such union is not a mere mechanical
-multiplication of blind energies; it is a combination involving
-will, intelligence. If mere multiplication of physical energy had
-determined the result of man’s struggles, he would have been
-destroyed or be the helpless slave of the animals of which he makes
-his food. He has overcome them as he has overcome the flood and the
-storm&mdash;by quite another order of action. Intelligence only emerges
-where physical force is ineffective.</p>
-
-<p>‘There is an almost mechanical process by which, as the complexity
-of co-operation grows, the element of physical compulsion declines
-in effectiveness, and is replaced by agreement based on mutual
-recognition of advantage. There is through every step of this
-development the same phenomenon: intelligence<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_174" id="page_174"></a>{174}</span> and agreement only
-emerge as force becomes ineffective. The early (and purely
-illustrative) slave-owner who spent his days seeing that his slave
-did not run away, and compelling him to work, realised the economic
-defect of the arrangement: most of the effort, physical and
-intellectual, of the slave was devoted to trying to escape; that of
-the owner, trying to prevent him. The force of the one,
-intellectual or physical, cancelled the force of the other, and the
-energies of both were lost so far as productive value was
-concerned, and the needed task, the building of the shelter or the
-catching of the fish, was not done, or badly done, and both went
-short of food and shelter. But from the moment that they struck a
-bargain as to the division of labour and of spoils, and adhered to
-it, the full energies of both were liberated for direct production,
-and the economic effectiveness of the arrangement was not merely
-doubled, but probably multiplied many times. But this substitution
-of free agreement for coercion, with all that it implied of
-contract, of “what is fair,” and all that followed of mutual
-reliance in the fulfilment of the agreement, was <i>based upon mutual
-recognition of advantage</i>. Now, that recognition, without which the
-arrangement could not exist at all, required, relatively, a
-considerable mental effort, <i>due in the first instance to the
-failure of force</i>. If the slave-owner had had more effective means
-of physical coercion, and had been able to subdue his slave, he
-would not have bothered about agreement, and this embryo of human
-society and justice would not have been brought into being. And in
-history its development has never been constant, but marked by the
-same rise and fall of the two orders of motive; as soon as one
-party or the other obtained such preponderance of strength as
-promised to be effective, he showed a tendency to drop free
-agreement and use force; this, of course, immediately provoked the
-resistance of the other, with a lesser or greater reversion to the
-earlier profitless condition.</p>
-
-<p>‘This perpetual tendency to abandon the social arrangement<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_175" id="page_175"></a>{175}</span> and
-resort to physical coercion is, of course, easily explainable by
-the biological fact just touched on. To realise at each turn and
-permutation of the division of labour that the social arrangement
-was, after all, the best demanded on the part of the two characters
-in our sketch, not merely control of instinctive actions, but a
-relatively large ratiocinative effort for which the biological
-history of early man had not fitted him. The physical act of
-compulsion only required a stone axe and a quickness of purely
-physical movement for which his biological history had afforded
-infinitely long training. The more mentally-motived action, that of
-social conduct, demanding reflection as to its effect on others,
-and the effect of that reaction upon our own position and a
-conscious control of physical acts, is of modern growth; it is but
-skin-deep; its biological momentum is feeble. Yet on that feeble
-structure has been built all civilisation.</p>
-
-<p>‘When we remember this&mdash;how frail are the ultimate foundations of
-our fortress, how much those spiritual elements which alone can
-give us human society are outnumbered by the pre-human elements&mdash;is
-it surprising that those pre-social promptings of which
-civilisation represents the conquest, occasionally overwhelm man,
-break up the solidarity of his army, and push him back a stage or
-two nearer to the brute condition from which he came? That even at
-this moment he is groping blindly as to the method of distributing
-in the order of his most vital needs the wealth he is able to wring
-from the earth; that some of his most fundamental social and
-political conceptions&mdash;those, among others, with which we are now
-dealing&mdash;have little relation to real facts; that his animosities
-and hatreds are as purposeless and meaningless as his enthusiasms
-and his sacrifices; that emotion and effort which quantitatively
-would suffice amply for the greater tasks before him, for the
-firmer establishment of justice and well-being, for the cleaning up
-of all the festering areas of moral savagery that remain, are as a
-simple matter of fact turned to those purposes hardly<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_176" id="page_176"></a>{176}</span> at all, but
-to objects which, to the degree to which they succeed, merely
-stultify each other?</p>
-
-<p>‘Now, this fact, the fact that civilisation is but skin-deep and
-that man is so largely the unreflecting brute, is not denied by
-pro-military critics. On the contrary they appeal to it as the
-first and last justification of their policy. “All your talk will
-never get over human nature; men are not guided by logic; passion
-is bound to get the upper hand,” and such phrases, are a sort of
-Greek chorus supplied by the military party to the whole of this
-discussion.</p>
-
-<p>‘Nor do the militarist advocates deny that these unreflecting
-elements are anti-social; again, it is part of their case that,
-unless they are held in check by the “iron hand,” they will
-submerge society in a welter of savagery. Nor do they deny&mdash;it is
-hardly possible to do so&mdash;that the most important securities which
-we enjoy, the possibility of living in mutual respect of right
-because we have achieved some understanding of right; all that
-distinguishes modern Europe from the Europe of (among other things)
-religious wars and St. Bartholomew massacres, and distinguishes
-British political methods from those Turkey or Venezuela, are due
-to the development of moral forces (since physical force is most
-resorted to in the less desirable age and area), and particularly
-to the general recognition that you cannot solve religious and
-political problems by submitting them to the irrelevant hazard of
-physical force.</p>
-
-<p>‘We have got thus far, then: both parties to the discussion are
-agreed as to the fundamental fact that civilisation is based upon
-moral and intellectual elements in constant danger of being
-overwhelmed by more deeply-rooted anti-social elements. The plain
-facts of history past and present are there to show that where
-those moral elements are absent the mere fact of the possession of
-arms only adds to the destructiveness of the resulting welter.</p>
-
-<p>‘Yet all attempts to secure our safety by other than military means
-are not merely regarded with indifference; they are more<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_177" id="page_177"></a>{177}</span> generally
-treated either with a truly ferocious contempt or with definite
-condemnation.</p>
-
-<p>‘This apparently on two grounds: first, that nothing that we can do
-will affect the conduct of other nations; secondly, that, in the
-development of those moral forces which do undoubtedly give us
-security, government action&mdash;which political effort has in
-view&mdash;can play no part.</p>
-
-<p>‘Both assumptions are, of course, groundless. The first implies not
-only that our own conduct and our own ideas need no examination,
-but that ideas current in one country have no reaction on those of
-another, and that the political action of one State does not affect
-that of others. “The way to be sure of peace is to be so much
-stronger than your enemy that he will not dare to attack you,” is
-the type of accepted and much-applauded “axioms” the unfortunate
-corollary of which is (since both parties can adopt the rule) that
-peace will only be finally achieved when each is stronger than the
-other.</p>
-
-<p>‘So thought and acted the man with the stone axe in our
-illustration, and in both cases the psychological motive is the
-same: the long-inherited impulse to isolated action, to the
-solution of a difficulty by some simple form of physical movement;
-the tendency to break through the more lately acquired habit of
-action based on social compact and on the mental realisation of its
-advantage. It is the reaction against intellectual effort and
-responsible control of instinct, a form of natural protest very
-common in children and in adults not brought under the influence of
-social discipline.</p>
-
-<p>‘The same general characteristics are as recognisable in militarist
-politics within the nation as in the international field. It is not
-by accident that Prussian and Bismarckian conceptions in foreign
-policy are invariably accompanied by autocratic conceptions in
-internal affairs. Both are founded upon a belief in force as the
-ultimate determinant in human conduct; a disbelief in the things of
-the mind as factors of social control, a disbelief in moral forces
-that cannot be expressed in “blood<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_178" id="page_178"></a>{178}</span> and iron.” The impatience shown
-by the militarist the world over at government by discussion, his
-desire to “shut up the talking shops” and to govern autocratically,
-are but expressions of the same temper and attitude.</p>
-
-<p>‘The forms which Governments have taken and the general method of
-social management, are in large part the result of its influence.
-Most Governments are to-day framed far more as instruments for the
-exercise of physical force than as instruments of social
-management.</p>
-
-<p>‘The militarist does not allow that man has free will in the matter
-of his conduct at all; he insists that mechanical forces on the one
-side or the other alone determine which of two given courses shall
-be taken; the ideas which either hold, the rôle of intelligent
-volition, apart from their influence in the manipulation of
-physical force, play no real part in human society. “Prussianism,”
-Bismarckian “blood and iron,” are merely political expressions of
-this belief in the social field&mdash;the belief that force alone can
-decide things; that it is not man’s business to question authority
-in politics or authority in the form of inevitability in nature. It
-is not a question of who is right, but of who is stronger. “Fight
-it out, and right will be on the side of the victor”&mdash;on the side,
-that is, of the heaviest metal or the heaviest muscle, or, perhaps,
-on that of the one who has the sun at his back, or some other
-advantage of external nature. The blind material things&mdash;not the
-seeing mind and the soul of man&mdash;are the ultimate sanction of human
-society.</p>
-
-<p>‘Such a doctrine, of course, is not only profoundly anti-social, it
-is anti-human&mdash;fatal not merely to better international relations,
-but, in the end, to the degree to which it influences human conduct
-at all, to all those large freedoms which man has so painfully won.</p>
-
-<p>‘This philosophy makes of man’s acts, not something into which
-there enters the element of moral responsibility and free volition,
-something apart from and above the mere mechanical force of
-external nature, but it makes man himself a helpless<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_179" id="page_179"></a>{179}</span> slave; it
-implies that his moral efforts and the efforts of his mind and
-understanding are of no worth&mdash;that he is no more the master of his
-conduct than the tiger of his, or the grass and the trees of
-theirs, and no more responsible.</p>
-
-<p>‘To this philosophy the “civilist” may oppose another: that in man
-there is that which sets him apart from the plants and the animals,
-which gives him control of and responsibility for his social acts,
-which makes him the master of his social destiny if he but will it;
-that by virtue of the forces of his mind he may go forward to the
-completer conquest, not merely of nature, but of himself, and
-thereby, and by that alone, redeem human association from the evils
-that now burden it.’</p></div>
-
-<h3><i>From Balance to Community of Power</i></h3>
-
-<p>Does the foregoing imply that force or compulsion has no place in human
-society? Not the least in the world. The conclusions so far drawn might
-be summarised, and certain remaining ones suggested, thus:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>Coercion has its place in human society, and the considerations
-here urged do not imply any sweeping theory of non-resistance. They
-are limited to the attempt to show that the effectiveness of
-political power depends upon certain moral elements usually utterly
-neglected in international politics, and particularly that
-instincts inseparable from Nationalism as now cultivated and
-buttressed by prevailing political morality, must condemn political
-power to futility. Two broad principles of policy are available:
-that looking towards isolated national power, or that looking
-towards common power behind a common purpose. The second may fail;
-it has risks. But the first is bound to fail. The fact would be
-self-evident but for the push of certain instincts warping our
-judgment in favour of the first. If mankind decides that it can do
-better than the first policy, it will do better. If it decides that
-it cannot, that<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_180" id="page_180"></a>{180}</span> decision will itself make failure inevitable. Our
-whole social salvation depends upon making the right choice.</p></div>
-
-<p>In an earlier chapter certain stultifications of the Balance of Power as
-applied to the international situation were dealt with. It was there
-pointed out that if you could get such a thing as a real Balance, that
-would certainly be a situation tempting the hot-heads of both sides to a
-trial of strength. An obvious preponderance of power on one side might
-check the temper of the other. A ‘balance’ would assuredly act as no
-check. But preponderance has an even worse result.</p>
-
-<p>How in practical politics are we to say when a group has become
-preponderantly powerful? We know to our cost that military power is
-extremely difficult of precise estimate. It cannot be weighed and
-balanced exactly. In political practice, therefore, the Balance of Power
-means a rivalry of power, because each to be on the safe side wants to
-be just a bit stronger than the other. The competition creates of itself
-the very condition it sets out to prevent.</p>
-
-<p>The defect of principle here is not the employment of force. It is the
-refusal to put force behind a law which may demand our allegiance. The
-defect lies in the attempt to make ourselves and our own interests by
-virtue of preponderant power superior to law.</p>
-
-<p>The feature which stood condemned in the old order was not the
-possession by States of coercive power. Coercion is an element in every
-good society that we have heretofore known. The evil of the old order
-was that in case of States the Power was anti-social; that it was not
-pledged to the service of some code or rule designed for mutual
-protection, but was the irresponsible possession of each individual,
-maintained for the express purpose of enabling him to enforce his own
-views of his own rights, to be judge and executioner in his own case,
-when his view came into collision with that of others. The old effort
-meant in reality the attempt on the part of a<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_181" id="page_181"></a>{181}</span> group of States to
-maintain in their own favour a preponderance of force of undefined and
-unlimited purpose. Any opposing group that found itself in a position of
-manifest inferiority had in fact to submit in international affairs to
-the decision of the possessor of preponderant power for the time being.
-It might be used benevolently; in that case the weaker obtained his
-rights as a gift from the stronger. But so long as the possession of
-power was unaccompanied by any defined obligation, there could be no
-democracy of States, no Society of Nations. To destroy the power of the
-preponderant group meant merely to transpose the situation. The security
-of one meant always the insecurity of the other.</p>
-
-<p>The Balance of Power in fact adopts the fundamental premise of the
-‘might makes right’ principle, because it regards power as the ultimate
-fact in politics; whereas the ultimate fact is the purpose for which the
-power will be used. Obviously you don’t want a Balance of Power between
-justice and injustice, law and crime; between anarchy and order. You
-want a preponderance of power on the side of justice, of law and of
-order.</p>
-
-<p>We approach here one of the commonest and most disastrous confusions
-touching the employment of force in human society, particularly in the
-Society of Nations.</p>
-
-<p>It is easy enough to make play with the absurdities and contradictions
-of the <i>si vis pacem para bellum</i> of our militarists. And the hoary
-falsehood does indeed involve a flouting of all experience, an
-intellectual astigmatism that almost makes one despair. But what is the
-practical alternative?</p>
-
-<p>The anti-militarist who disparages our reliance upon ‘force’ is almost
-as remote from reality, for all society as we know it in practice, or
-have ever known it, does rely a great deal upon the instrument of
-‘force,’ upon restraint and coercion.</p>
-
-<p>We have seen where the competition in arming among European nations has
-led us. But it may be argued: suppose you were greatly to reduce all
-round, cut in half, say, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_182" id="page_182"></a>{182}</span> military equipment of Europe, would the
-power for mutual destruction be sensibly reduced, the security of Europe
-sensibly greater? ‘Adequacy’ and ‘destructiveness’ of armament are
-strictly relative terms. A country with a couple of battleships has
-overwhelming naval armament if its opponent has none. A dozen
-machine-guns or a score of rifles against thousands of unarmed people
-may be more destructive of life than a hundred times that quantity of
-material facing forces similarly armed. (Fifty rifles at Amritsar
-accounted for two thousand killed and wounded, without a single casualty
-on the side of the troops.) Wars once started, instruments of
-destruction can be rapidly improvised, as we know. And this will be
-truer still when we have progressed from poison gas to disease germs, as
-we almost certainly shall.</p>
-
-<p>The first confusion is this:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>The issue is made to appear as between the ‘spiritual’ and the
-‘material’; as between material force, battleships, guns, armies on the
-one side as one method, and ‘spiritual’ factors, persuasion, moral
-goodness on the other side, as the contrary method. ‘Force v. Faith,’ as
-some evangelical writer has put it. The debate between the Nationalist
-and the Internationalist is usually vitiated at the outset by an
-assumption which, though generally common to the two parties, is not
-only unproven, but flatly contrary to the weight of evidence. The
-assumption is that the military Nationalist, basing his policy upon
-material force&mdash;a preponderant navy, a great army, superior
-artillery&mdash;can dispense with the element of trust, contract, treaty.</p>
-
-<p>Now to state the issue in that way creates a gross confusion, and the
-assumption just indicated is quite unjustifiable. The militarist quite
-as much as the anti-militarist, the nationalist quite as much as the
-internationalist, has to depend upon a moral factor, ‘a contract,’ the
-force of tradition, and of morality. Force cannot operate at all in
-human affairs without a decision of the human mind and will. Guns do not
-get pointed and go off without a mind behind them, and as already
-insisted,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_183" id="page_183"></a>{183}</span> the direction in which the gun shoots is determined by the
-mind which must be reached by a form of moral suasion, discipline, or
-tradition; the mind behind the gun will be influenced by patriotism in
-one case, or by a will to rebellion and mutiny, prompted by another
-tradition or persuasion, in another. And obviously the moral decision,
-in the circumstances with which we are dealing, goes much deeper and
-further back. The building of battleships, or the forming of armies, the
-long preparation which is really behind the material factor, implies a
-great deal of ‘faith.’ These armies and navies could never have been
-brought into existence and be manœuvred without vast stores of faith
-and tradition. Whether the army serves the nation, as in Britain or
-France, or dominates it as in a Spanish-American Republic (or in a
-somewhat different sense in Prussia), depends on a moral factor: the
-nature of the tradition which inspires the people from whom the army is
-drawn. Whether the army obeys its officers or shoots them is determined
-by moral not material factors, for the officers have not a preponderance
-of physical force over the men. You cannot form a pirate crew without a
-moral factor: the agreement not to use force against one another, but to
-act in consort and combine it against the prey. Whether the military
-material we and France supplied Russia, and the armies France helped to
-train, are employed against us or the Germans, depends upon certain
-moral and political factors inside Russia, certain ideas formed in the
-minds of certain men. It is not a situation of Ideas against Guns, but
-of ideas using guns. The confusion involves a curious distortion in our
-reading of the history of the struggle against privilege and tyranny.</p>
-
-<p>Usually when we speak of the past struggles of the people against
-tyranny, we have in our minds a picture of the great mass held down by
-the superior physical force of the tyrant. But such a picture is, of
-course, quite absurd. For the physical force which held down the people
-was that which they themselves supplied. The tyrant had no physical
-force save that<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_184" id="page_184"></a>{184}</span> with which his victims furnished him. In this struggle
-of ‘People <i>v.</i> Tyrant,’ obviously the weight of physical force was on
-the side of the people. This was as true of the slave States of
-antiquity as it is of the modern autocracies. Obviously the free
-minority&mdash;the five or ten or fifteen per cent.&mdash;of Rome or Egypt, or the
-governing orders of Prussia or Russia, did not impose their will upon
-the remainder by virtue of superior physical force, the sheer weight of
-numbers, of sinew and muscle. If the tyranny of the minority had
-depended upon its own physical power, it could not have lasted a day.
-The physical force which the minority used was the physical force of the
-majority. The people were oppressed by an instrument which they
-themselves furnished.</p>
-
-<p>In that picture, therefore, which we make of the mass of mankind
-struggling against the ‘force’ of tyranny, we must remember that the
-force against which they struggled was not in the last analysis physical
-force at all; it was their own weight from which they desired to be
-liberated.</p>
-
-<p>Do we realise all that this means? It means that tyranny has been
-imposed, as freedom has been won: through the Mind.</p>
-
-<p>The small minority imposes itself and can only impose itself by getting
-first at the mind of the majority&mdash;the people&mdash;in one form or another:
-by controlling it through keeping knowledge from it, as in so much of
-antiquity, or by controlling the knowledge itself, as in Germany. It is
-because the minds of the masses have failed them that they have been
-enslaved. Without that intellectual failure of the masses, tyranny could
-have found no force wherewith to impose its burdens.</p>
-
-<p>This confusion as to the relation of ‘force’ to the moral factor is of
-all confusions most worth while clearing up: and for that purpose we may
-descend to homely illustrations.</p>
-
-<p>You have a disorderly society, a frontier mining camp, every man armed,
-every man threatened by the arms of his neighbour and every man in
-danger. What is the first need in restoring order? More force&mdash;more
-revolvers and bowie knives? No;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_185" id="page_185"></a>{185}</span> every man is fully armed already. If
-there exists in this disorder the germ of order some attempt will be
-made to move towards the creation of a police. But what is the
-indispensable prerequisite for the success of such an effort? It is the
-capacity for a nucleus of the community to act in common, to agree
-together to make the beginnings of a community. And unless that nucleus
-can achieve agreement&mdash;a moral and intellectual problem&mdash;there can be no
-police force. But be it noted well, this first prerequisite&mdash;the
-agreement among a few members necessary to create the first Vigilance
-Committee&mdash;is not force; it is a decision of certain minds determining
-how force shall be used, how combined. Even when you have got as far as
-the police, this device of social protection will entirely break down
-unless the police itself can be trusted to obey the constituted
-authority, and the constituted authority itself to abide by the law. If
-the police represents a mere preponderance of power, using that power to
-create a privileged position for itself or for its employers&mdash;setting
-itself, that is, against the community&mdash;you will sooner or later get
-resistance which will ultimately neutralise that power and produce a
-mere paralysis so far as any social purpose is concerned. The existence
-of the police depends upon general agreement not to use force except as
-the instrument of the social will, the law to which all are party. This
-social will may not exist; the members of the vigilance committee or
-town council or other body may themselves use their revolvers and knives
-each against the other. Very well, in that case you will get no police.
-‘Force’ will not remedy it. Who is to use the force if no one man can
-agree with the other? All along the line here we find ourselves,
-whatever our predisposition to trust only ‘force,’ thrown back upon a
-moral factor, compelled to rely upon contract, an agreement, before we
-can use force at all.</p>
-
-<p>It will be noted incidentally that effective social force does not rest
-upon a Balance of Power: society does not need a Balance of Power as
-between the law and crime; it wants a<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_186" id="page_186"></a>{186}</span> preponderance of power on the
-side of the law. One does not want a Balance of Power between rival
-parties in the State. One wants a preponderance of power on behalf of a
-certain fundamental code upon which all parties, or an immense majority
-of parties, will be agreed. As against the Balance of Power we need a
-Community of Power&mdash;to use Mr. Wilson’s phrase&mdash;on the side of a purpose
-or code of which the contributors to the power are aware.</p>
-
-<p>One may read in learned and pretentious political works that the
-ultimate basis of a State is force&mdash;the army&mdash;which is the means by
-which the State’s authority is maintained. But who compels the army to
-carry out the State’s orders rather than its own will or the personal
-will of its commander? <i>Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?</i> The following
-passage from an address delivered by the present writer in America may
-perhaps help to make the point clear:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘When, after the counting of the votes, you ask Mr Wilson to step
-down from the President’s chair, how do you know he will get down?
-I repeat, How do you know he will get down? You think that a
-foolish and fantastic question? But, in a great many interesting
-American republics, Mexico, Venezuela, or Hayti, he would not get
-down! You say, “Oh, the army would turn him out.” I beg your
-pardon. It is Mr Wilson who commands the army; it is not the army
-that commands Mr Wilson. Again, in many American republics a
-President who can depend on his army, when asked to get out of the
-Presidency, would reply almost as a matter of course, “Why should I
-get down when I have an army that stands by me?”</p>
-
-<p>‘How do we know that Mr Wilson, able, we will assume, to count on
-his army, or, if you prefer, some President particularly popular
-with the army, will not do that? Is it physical force which
-prevents it? If so, whose? You may say: “If he did that, he knows
-that the country would raise an army of rebellion to turn him out.”
-Well, suppose it did? You raise<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_187" id="page_187"></a>{187}</span> this army, as they would in
-Mexico, or Venezuela, and the army turns him out. And your man gets
-into the Presidential chair, and then, when you think he has stolen
-enough, you vote <i>him</i> down. He would do precisely the same thing.
-He would say: “My dear people, as very great philosophers tell you,
-the State is Force, and as a great French monarch once said. ‘I am
-the State.’ <i>J’y suis, j’y reste.</i>”. And then you would have to get
-another army of rebellion to turn <i>him</i> out&mdash;just as they do in
-Mexico, Venezuela, Hayti, or Honduras.’</p></div>
-
-<p>There, then, is the crux of the matter. Every constitution at times
-breaks down. But if that fact were a conclusive argument for the
-anarchical arming of each man against the other as preferable to a
-police enforcing law, there could be no human society. The object of
-constitutional machinery for change is to make civil war unnecessary.</p>
-
-<p>There will be no advance save through an improved tradition. Perhaps it
-will be impossible to improve the tradition. Very well, then the old
-order, whether among the nations of Europe or the political parties of
-Venezuela, will remain unchanged. More ‘force,’ more soldiers, will not
-do it. The disturbed areas of Spanish-America each show a greater number
-of soldiers to population than States like Massachusetts or Ohio. So in
-the international solution. What would it have availed if Britain had
-quadrupled the quantity of rifles to Koltchak’s peasant soldiers so long
-as his land policy caused them to turn their rifles against his
-Government? Or for France to have multiplied many times the loans made
-to the Ukraine, if at the same time the loans made to Poland so fed
-Polish nationalism that the Ukrainians preferred making common cause
-with the Bolsheviks to becoming satellites of an Imperialist Poland? Do
-we add to the ‘force’ of the Alliance by increasing the military power
-of Serbia, if that fact provokes her to challenge Italy? Do we
-strengthen it by increasing at one and the same time the military forces
-of two States&mdash;say Poland<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_188" id="page_188"></a>{188}</span> and Czecho-Slovakia&mdash;if the nationalism which
-we nurse leads finally to those two States turning their forces one
-against the other? Unless we know the policy (again a thing of the mind,
-of opinion) which will determine the use to which guns will be put, it
-does not increase our security&mdash;it may diminish it&mdash;to add more guns.</p>
-
-<h3><i>The Alternative Risks</i></h3>
-
-<p>We see, therefore, that the alternatives are not in fact a choice
-between ‘material’ and ‘spiritual’ means. The material can only operate,
-whether for our defence or against us, by virtue of a spiritual thing,
-the will. ‘The direction in which the gun will shoot’&mdash;a rather
-important point in its effectiveness as a defensive weapon&mdash;depends not
-on the gun but on the mind of the man using it, the moral factor. The
-two cannot be separated.</p>
-
-<p>It is untrue to say that the knife is a magic instrument, saving the
-cancer patient’s life: it is the mind of the surgeon using the material
-thing in a certain way which saves the patient’s life. A child or savage
-who, failing to realise the part played by the invisible element of the
-surgeon’s mind, should deem that a knife of a particular pattern used
-‘boldly’ could be depended upon to cure cancer, would merely, of course
-commit manslaughter.</p>
-
-<p>It is foolish to talk of an absolute guarantee of security by force, as
-of guarantee of success in surgical operations by perfection of knives.
-In both cases we are dealing with instruments, indispensable, but not of
-themselves enough. The mind behind the instrument, technical in one
-case, social in the other, may in both cases fail; then we must improve
-it. Merely to go on sharpening the knife, to go on applying, for
-instance, to the international problem more ‘force,’ in the way it has
-been applied in the past, can only give us in intenser degree the
-present results.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_189" id="page_189"></a>{189}</span></p>
-
-<p>Yet the truth here indicated is perpetually being disregarded,
-particularly by those who pique themselves on being ‘practical.’ In the
-choice of risks by men of the world and realist statesmen the choice
-which inevitably leads to destruction is for ever being made on grounds
-of safety; the choice which leads at least in the direction of security
-is for ever being rejected on the grounds of its danger.</p>
-
-<p>Why is this? The choice is instinctive assuredly; it is not the result
-of ‘hard-headed calculation’ though it often professes to be. We speak
-of it as the ‘protective’ instinct. But it is a protective instinct
-which obviously destroys us.</p>
-
-<p>I am suggesting here that, at the bottom of the choice in favour of the
-Balance of Power or preponderance as a political method, is neither the
-desire for safety nor the desire to place ‘might behind right,’ but the
-desire for domination, the instinct of self-assertion, the anti-social
-wish to be judge in our own case; and further, that the way out of the
-difficulty is to discipline this instinct by a better social tradition.
-To do that we must discredit the old tradition&mdash;create a different
-feeling about it; to which end it is indispensable to face frankly the
-nature of its moral origins; to look its motives in the face.<a name="FNanchor_68_68" id="FNanchor_68_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a></p>
-
-<p>It is extremely suggestive in this connection that the ‘realist’
-politician, the ‘hard-headed practical man,’ disdainful of Sunday School
-standards,’ in his defence of national necessity, is quite ready to be
-contemptuous of national safety and interest<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_190" id="page_190"></a>{190}</span> when these latter point
-plainly to a policy of international agreement as against domination.
-Agreement is then rejected as pusillanimous, and consideration for
-national interest as placing ‘pocket before patriotism.’ We are then
-reminded, even by the most realist of nationalists, that nations live
-for higher things than ‘profit’ or even safety. ‘Internationalism,’ says
-Colonel Roosevelt, ‘inevitably emasculates its sincere votaries,’ and
-‘every civilisation worth calling such’ must be based ‘on a spirit of
-intense nationalism.’ For Colonel Roosevelt or General Wood in America
-as for Mr Kipling, or Mr Chesterton, or Mr Churchill, or Lord
-Northciffe, or Mr Bottomley, and a vast host of poets, professors,
-editors, historians, bishops, publicists of all sorts in England and
-France, ‘Internationalist’ and ‘Pacifist’ are akin to political atheist.
-A moral consideration now replaces the ‘realist.’ The metamorphosis is
-only intelligible on the assumption here suggested that both
-explanations or justifications are a rationalisation of the impulse to
-power and domination.</p>
-
-<p>Our political, quite as much as our social, conduct is in the main the
-result of motives that are mainly unconscious instinct, habit,
-unquestioned tradition. So long as we find the result satisfactory, well
-and good. But when the result of following instinct is disaster, we
-realise that the time has come to ‘get outside ourselves,’ to test our
-instincts by their social result. We have then to see whether the
-‘reasons’ we have given for our conduct are really its motives. That
-examination is the first step to rendering the unconscious motive
-conscious. In considering, for instance, the two methods indicated in
-this chapter, we say, in ‘rationalising’ our decision, that we chose the
-lesser of two risks. I am suggesting that in the choice of the method of
-the Balance of Power our real motive was not desire to achieve security,
-but domination. It is just because our motives are not mainly
-intellectual but ‘instinctive’ that the desire for domination is so
-likely to have played the determining role: for few instincts and
-innate<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_191" id="page_191"></a>{191}</span> desires are stronger than that which pushes to
-‘self-affirmation’&mdash;the assertion of preponderant force.</p>
-
-<p>We have indeed seen that the Balance of Power means in practice the
-determination to secure a preponderance of power. What is a ‘Balance?’
-The two sides will not agree on that, and each to be sure will want it
-tilted in its favour. We decline to place ourselves within the power of
-another who may differ from us as to our right. We demand to be
-stronger, in order that we may be judge in our own case. This means that
-we shall resist the claim of others to exactly the same thing.</p>
-
-<p>The alternative is partnership. It means trust. But we have seen that
-the exercise of any form of force, other than that which one single
-individual can wield, must involve an element of ‘trust.’ The soldiers
-must be trusted to obey the officers, since the former have by far the
-preponderance of force; the officers must be trusted to obey the
-constitution instead of challenging it; the police must be trusted to
-obey the authorities; the Cabinet must be trusted to obey the electoral
-decision; the members of an alliance to work together instead of against
-one another, and so on. Yet the assumption of the ‘Power Politician’ is
-that the method which has succeeded (notably within the State) is the
-‘idealistic’ but essentially unpractical method in which security and
-advantage are sacrificed to Utopian experiment; while the method of
-competitive armament, however distressing it may be to the Sunday
-Schools, is the one that gives us real security. ‘The way to be sure of
-preserving peace,’ says Mr Churchill, ‘is to be so much stronger than
-your enemy that he won’t dare to attack you.’ In other words it is
-obvious that the way for two people to keep the peace is for each to be
-stronger than the other.</p>
-
-<p>‘You may have made your front door secure’ says Marshal Foch, arguing
-for the Rhine frontier, ‘but you may as well make sure by having a good
-high garden wall as well.’</p>
-
-<p>‘Make sure,’ that is the note&mdash;<i>si vis pacem</i>.... And he can be sure
-that ‘the average practical man,’ who prides himself<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_192" id="page_192"></a>{192}</span> on ‘knowing human
-nature’ and ‘distrusting theories’ will respond to the appeal. Every
-club smoking room will decide that ‘the simple soldier’ knows his
-business and has judged human forces aright.</p>
-
-<p>Yet of course the simple truth is that the ‘hard-headed soldier’ has
-chosen the one ground upon which all experience, all the facts, are
-against him. Then how is he able to ‘get away with it’&mdash;to ride off
-leaving at least the impression of being a sternly practical
-unsentimental man of the world by virtue of having propounded an
-aphorism which all practical experience condemns? Here is Mr Churchill.
-He is talking to hard-headed Lancashire manufacturers. He desires to
-show that he too is no theorist, that he also can be hard-headed and
-practical. And he&mdash;who really does know the mind of the ‘hard-headed
-business man’&mdash;is perfectly aware that the best road to those hard heads
-is to propound an arrant absurdity, to base a proposed line of policy on
-the assumption of a physical impossibility, to follow a will-o’-the-wisp
-which in all recorded history has led men into a bog.</p>
-
-<p>They applaud Mr Churchill, not because he has put before them a cold
-calculation of relative risk in the matter of maintaining peace, an
-indication, where, on the whole, the balance of safety lies; Mr
-Churchill, of course, knows perfectly well that, while professing to do
-that, he has been doing nothing of the sort. He has, in reality, been
-appealing to a sentiment, the emotion which is strongest and steadiest
-in the ‘hard-faced men’ who have elbowed their way to the top in a
-competitive society. He has ‘rationalised’ that competitive sentiment of
-domination by putting forward a ‘reason’ which can be avowed to them and
-to others.</p>
-
-<p>Colonel Roosevelt managed to inject into his reasons for predominance a
-moral strenuousness which Mr Churchill does not achieve.</p>
-
-<p>The following is a passage from one of the last important speeches made
-by Colonel Roosevelt&mdash;twice President of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_193" id="page_193"></a>{193}</span> United States and one of
-the out-standing figures in the world in his generation:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘Friends, be on your guard against the apostles of weakness and
-folly when peace comes. They will tell you that this is the last
-great war. They will tell you that they can make paper treaties and
-agreements and guarantees by which brutal and unscrupulous men will
-have their souls so softened that weak and timid men won’t have
-anything to fear and that brave and honest men won’t have to
-prepare to defend themselves.</p>
-
-<p>‘Well, we have seen that all such treaties are worth less than
-scraps of paper when it becomes to the interests of powerful and
-ruthless militarist nations to disregard them.... After this War is
-over, these foolish pacifist creatures will again raise their
-piping voices against preparedness and in favour of patent devices
-for maintaining peace without effort. Let us enter into every
-reasonable agreement which bids fair to minimise the chances of war
-and to circumscribe its area.... But let us remember it is a
-hundred times more important for us to prepare our strength for our
-own defence than to enter any of these peace treaties, and that if
-we thus prepare our strength for our own defence we shall minimise
-the chances of war as no paper treaties can possibly minimise them;
-and we shall thus make our views effective for peace and justice in
-the world at large as in no other way can they be made
-effective.’<a name="FNanchor_69_69" id="FNanchor_69_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a></p></div>
-
-<p>Let us dispose of one or two of the more devastating confusions in the
-foregoing.</p>
-
-<p>First there is the everlasting muddle as to the internationalist
-attitude towards the likelihood of war. To Colonel Roosevelt one is an
-internationalist or ‘pacifist’ because one thinks war will not take
-place. Whereas probably the strongest motive<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_194" id="page_194"></a>{194}</span> of internationalism is the
-conviction that without it war is inevitable, that in a world of rival
-nationalisms war cannot be avoided. If those who hate war believe that
-the present order will without effort give them peace, why in the name
-of all the abuse which their advocacy brings on their heads should they
-bother further about the matter?</p>
-
-<p>Secondly, internationalism is assumed to be the <i>alternative</i> to the
-employment of force or power of arms, whereas it is the organisation of
-force, of power (latent or positive) to a common&mdash;an international&mdash;end.</p>
-
-<p>Our incurable habit of giving to homely but perfectly healthy and
-justifiable reasons of conduct a high faluting romanticism sometimes
-does morality a very ill service. When in political situations&mdash;as in
-the making of a Peace Treaty&mdash;a nation is confronted by the general
-alternative we are now discussing, the grounds of opposition to a
-co-operative or ‘Liberal’ or ‘generous’ settlement are almost always
-these: ‘Generosity’ is lost upon a people as crafty and treacherous as
-the enemy; he mistakes generosity for weakness; he will take advantage
-of it; his nature won’t be softened by mild treatment; he understands
-nothing but force.</p>
-
-<p>The assumption is that the liberal policy is based upon an appeal to the
-better side of the enemy; upon arousing his nobler nature. And such an
-assumption concerning the Hun or the Bolshevik, for instance (or at an
-earlier date, the Boer or the Frenchman), causes the very gorge of the
-Roosevelt-Bottomley patriot to rise in protest. He simply does not
-believe in the effective operation of so remote a motive.</p>
-
-<p>But the real ground of defence for the liberal policy is not the
-existence of an abnormal if heretofore successfully disguised nobility
-on the part of the enemy, but of his very human if not very noble fears
-which, from our point of view, it is extremely important not to arouse
-or justify. If our ‘punishment’ of him creates in his mind the
-conviction that we are certain to use our power for commercial
-advantage, or that in any case<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_195" id="page_195"></a>{195}</span> our power is a positive danger to him,
-he <i>will</i> use his recovered economic strength for the purpose of
-resisting it; and we should face a fact so dangerous and costly to us.</p>
-
-<p>To take cognisance of this fact, and to shape our policy accordingly is
-not to attribute to the enemy any particular nobility of motive. But
-almost always when that policy is attacked, it is attacked on the ground
-of its ‘Sunday School’ assumption of the accessibility of the enemy to
-gratitude or ‘softening’ in Colonel Roosevelt’s phrase.</p>
-
-<p>We reach in the final analysis of the interplay of motive a very clear
-political pragmatism. Either policy will justify itself, and by the way
-it works out in practice, prove that it is right.</p>
-
-<p>Here is a statesman&mdash;Italian, say&mdash;who takes the ‘realist’ view, and
-comes to a Peace Conference which may settle for centuries the position
-of his country in the world&mdash;its strength, its capacity for defending
-itself, the extent of its resources. In the world as he knows it, a
-country has one thing, and one thing only, upon which it can depend for
-its national security and the defence of its due rights; and that thing
-is its own strength. Italy’s adequate defence must include the naval
-command of the Adriatic and a strategic position in the Tyrol. This
-means deep harbours on the Dalmatian coast and the inclusion in the
-Tyrol of a very considerable non-Italian population. To take them may,
-it is true, not only violate the principle of nationality but shut off
-the new Yugo-Slav nation from access to the sea and exchange one
-irredentism for another. But what can the ‘realist’ Italian statesman,
-whose first duty is to his own country do? He is sorry, but his own
-nationality and its due protection are concerned; and the Italian nation
-will be insecure without those frontiers and those harbours.
-Self-preservation is the law of life for nations as for other living
-things. You have, unfortunately, a condition in which the security of
-one means the insecurity of another, and if a statesman in these
-circumstances has to choose which of the two is to be secure, he must
-choose his own country.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_196" id="page_196"></a>{196}</span></p>
-
-<p>Some day, of course, there may come into being a League of Nations so
-effective that nations can really look to it for their safety. Meantime
-they must look to themselves. But, unfortunately, for each nation to
-take these steps about strategic frontiers means not only killing the
-possibility of an effective League: it means, sooner or later, killing
-the military alliance which is the alternative. If one Alsace-Lorraine
-could poison European politics in the way it did, what is going to be
-the effect ultimately of the round dozen that we have created under the
-treaty? The history of Britain in reference to Arab and Egyptian
-Nationality; of France in relation to Poland and other Russian border
-States; of all the Allies in reference to Japanese ambitions in China
-and Siberia, reveals what is, fundamentally, a precisely similar
-dilemma.</p>
-
-<p>When the statesmen&mdash;Italian or other&mdash;insist upon strategic frontiers
-and territories containing raw materials, on the ground that a nation
-must look to itself because we live in a world in which international
-arrangements cannot be depended on, they can be quite certain that the
-reason they give is a sound one: because their own action will make it
-so: their action creates the very conditions to which they appeal as the
-reason for it. Their decision, with the popular impulse of sacred egoism
-which supports it, does something more than repudiate Mr Wilson’s
-principles; it is the beginning of the disruption of the Alliance upon
-which their countries have depended. The case is put in a manifesto
-issued a year or two ago by a number of eminent Americans from which we
-have already quoted in Chapter III.</p>
-
-<p>It says:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘If, as in the past, nations must look for their future security
-chiefly to their own strength and resources, then inevitably, in
-the name of the needs of national defence, there will be claims for
-strategic frontiers and territories with raw material which do
-violence to the principle of nationality. Afterwards those<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_197" id="page_197"></a>{197}</span> who
-suffer from such violations would be opposed to the League of
-Nations, because it would consecrate the injustice of which they
-would be the victims. A refusal to trust to the League of Nations,
-and a demand for “material” guarantees for future safety, will set
-up that very distrust which will afterwards be appealed to as
-justification for regarding the League as impracticable because it
-inspires no general confidence. A bold “Act of Political Faith” in
-the League will justify itself by making the League a success; but,
-equally, lack of faith will justify itself by ruining the League.’</p></div>
-
-<p>That is why, when in the past the realist statesman has sometimes
-objected that he does not believe in internationalism because it is not
-practical, I have replied that it is not practical because he does not
-believe in it.</p>
-
-<p>The prerequisite to the creation of a society is the Social Will. And
-herein lies the difficulty of making any comparative estimate of the
-respective risks of the alternative courses. We admit that if the
-nations would sink their sacred egoisms and pledge their power to mutual
-and common protection, the risk of such a course would disappear. We get
-the paradox that there is no risk if we all take the risk. But each
-refuses to begin. William James has illustrated the position:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘I am climbing the Alps, and have had the ill luck to work myself
-into a position from which the only escape is by a terrible leap.
-Being without similar experience, I have no evidence of my ability
-to perform it successfully; but hope and confidence in myself make
-me sure that I shall not miss my aim, and nerve my feet to execute
-what, without those subjective emotions, would have been
-impossible.</p>
-
-<p>‘But suppose that, on the contrary, the emotions ... of mistrust
-predominate.... Why, then, I shall hesitate so long that at last,
-exhausted and trembling, and launching myself in a moment of
-despair, I miss my foothold and roll into the abyss. In<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_198" id="page_198"></a>{198}</span> this case,
-and it is one of an immense class, the part of wisdom is to believe
-what one desires; for the belief is one of the indispensable,
-preliminary conditions of the realisation of its object. There are
-cases where faith creates its own justification. Believe, and you
-shall be right, for you shall save yourself; doubt, and you shall
-again be right, for you shall perish.’</p></div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_199" id="page_199"></a>{199}</span></p>
-
-<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII<br /><br />
-<small>THE SPIRITUAL ROOTS OF THE SETTLEMENT</small></h2>
-
-<p class="chead"><i>‘Human Nature is always what it is’</i></p>
-
-<p class="nind">‘Y<small>OU</small> may argue as much as you like. All the logic chopping will never
-get over the fact that human nature is always what it is. Nations will
-always fight.... always retaliate at victory.’</p>
-
-<p>If that be true, and our pugnacities, and hates, and instincts
-generally, are uncontrollable, and they dictate conduct, no more is to
-be said. We are the helpless victims of outside forces, and may as well
-surrender, without further discussion, or political agitation, or
-propaganda. For if those appeals to our minds can neither determine the
-direction nor modify the manifestation of our innate instincts, nor
-influence conduct, one rather wonders at our persistence in them.</p>
-
-<p>Why so many of us find an obvious satisfaction in this fatalism, so
-patently want it to be true, and resort to it in such convenient
-disregard of the facts, has been in some measure indicated in the
-preceding chapter. At bottom it comes to this: that it relieves us of so
-much trouble and responsibility; the life of instinct and emotion is so
-easily flowing a thing, and that of social restraints and rationalised
-decisions so cold and dry and barren.</p>
-
-<p>At least that is the alternative as many of us see it. And if the only
-alternative to an impulse spending itself in hostilities and hatreds
-destructive of social cohesion, were the sheer restraint of impulse by
-calculation and reason; if our choice were<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_200" id="page_200"></a>{200}</span> truly between chaos,
-anarchy, and the perpetual repression of all spontaneous and vigorous
-impulse&mdash;then the choice of a fatalistic refusal to reason would be
-justifiable.</p>
-
-<p>But happily that is not the alternative. The function of reason and
-discipline is not to repress instinct and impulse, but to turn those
-forces into directions in which they may have free play without
-disaster. The function of the compass is not to check the power of the
-ship’s engines; it is to indicate a direction in which the power can be
-given full play, because the danger of running on to the rocks has been
-obviated.</p>
-
-<p>Let us first get the mere facts straight&mdash;facts as they have worked out
-in the War and the Peace.</p>
-
-<p>It is not true that the directions taken by our instincts cannot in any
-way be determined by our intelligence. ‘A man’s impulses are not fixed
-from the beginning by his native disposition: within certain limits they
-are profoundly modified by his circumstances and way of life.’<a name="FNanchor_70_70" id="FNanchor_70_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a> What
-we regard as the ‘instinctive’ part of our character is, again, within
-large limits very malleable: by beliefs, by social circumstances, by
-institutions, and above all by the suggestibility of tradition, the work
-is often of individual minds.</p>
-
-<p>It is not so much the <i>character</i> of our impulsive and instinctive<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_201" id="page_201"></a>{201}</span> life
-that is changed by these influences, as the direction. The elements of
-human nature may remain unchangeable, but the manifestations resulting
-from the changing combinations may be infinitely various as are the
-forms of matter which result from changing combinations of the same
-primary elements.</p>
-
-<p>It is not a choice between a life of impulse and emotion on the one
-side, and wearisome repressions on the other. The perception that
-certain needs are vital will cause us to use our emotional energy for
-one purpose instead of another. And just because the traditions that
-have grouped around nationalism turn our combativeness into the
-direction of war, the energy brought into play by that impulse is not
-available for the creativeness of peace. Having become habituated to a
-certain reagent&mdash;the stimulus of some personal or visible enemy&mdash;energy
-fails to react to a stimulus which, with a different way of life, would
-have sufficed. Because we must have gin to summon up our energy, that is
-no proof that energy is impossible without it. It is hardly for an
-inebriate to laud the life of instinct and impulse. For the time being
-that is not the attitude and tendency that most needs encouragement.</p>
-
-<p>As to the fact that the instinctive and impulsive part of our behaviour
-is dirigible and malleable by tradition and discussion, that is not only
-admitted, but it is apt to be over-emphasised&mdash;by those who insist upon
-the ‘unchangeability of human nature.’ The importance which we attached
-to the repression of pacifist and defeatist propaganda during the War,
-and of Bolshevist agitation after the War, proves that we believe these
-feelings, that we allege to be unchangeable, can be changed too easily
-and readily by the influence of ideas, even wrong ones.</p>
-
-<p>The type of feeling which gave us the Treaty was in a large degree a
-manufactured feeling, in the sense that it was the result of opinion,
-formed day by day by a selection only of the facts. For this manufacture
-of opinion, we consciously created a very elaborate machinery, both of
-propaganda and of control of news. But that organisation of public
-opinion,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_202" id="page_202"></a>{202}</span> justifiable in itself perhaps as a war measure, was not guided
-(as the result shows) by an understanding of what the political ends,
-which, in the early days of the War, we declared to be ours, would need
-in the way of psychology. Our machinery developed a psychology which
-made our higher political aims quite impossible of realisation.</p>
-
-<p>Public opinion, ‘human nature,’ would have been more manageable, its
-‘instincts’ would have been sounder, and we should have had a Europe
-less in disintegration, if we had told as far as possible that part of
-the truth which our public bodies (State, Church, Press, the School)
-were largely occupied in hiding. But the opinion which dictated the
-policy of repression is itself the result of refusing to face the truth.
-To tell the truth is the remedy here suggested.</p>
-
-<h3><i>The Paradox of the Peace</i></h3>
-
-<p>The supreme paradox of the Peace is this:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>We went into the War with
-certain very definitely proclaimed principles, which we declared to be
-more valuable than the lives of the men that were sacrificed in their
-defence. We were completely victorious, and went into the Conference
-with full power, so far as enemy resistance was concerned, to put those
-principles into effect.<a name="FNanchor_71_71" id="FNanchor_71_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a> We did not use the victory which our young
-men had given us to that end, but for enforcing a policy which was in
-flat contradiction to the principles we had originally proclaimed.</p>
-
-<p>In some respects the spectacle is the most astounding of all history. It
-is literally true to say that millions of young soldiers gladly gave
-their lives for ideals to which the survivors,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_203" id="page_203"></a>{203}</span> when they had the power
-to realise them (again so far as physical force can give us power,)
-showed complete indifference, sometimes a contemptuous hostility.</p>
-
-<p>It was not merely an act of the statesmen. The worst features of the
-Treaty were imposed by popular feeling&mdash;put into the Treaty by statesmen
-who did not believe in them, and only included them in order to satisfy
-public opinion. The policy of President Wilson failed in part because of
-the humane and internationalist opinion of the America of 1916 had
-become the fiercely chauvinist and coercive opinion of 1919, repudiating
-the President’s efforts.</p>
-
-<p>Part of the story of these transformations has been told in the
-preceding pages. Let us summarise the story as a whole.</p>
-
-<p>We saw at the beginning of the War a real feeling for the right of
-peoples to choose their own form of government, for the principle of
-nationality. At the end of the War we deny that right in half a score of
-cases,<a name="FNanchor_72_72" id="FNanchor_72_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a> where it suits our momentary political or military interest.
-The very justification of ‘necessity,’ which shocks our conscience when
-put forward by the enemy, is the one we invoke callously at the
-peace&mdash;or before it, as when we agree to allow Czarist Russia to do what
-she will with Poland, and Italy with Serbia. Having sacrificed the small
-State to Russia in 1916, we are prepared to sacrifice Russia to the
-small State in 1919, by encouraging the formation of border
-independencies, which, if complete independencies, must throttle Russia,
-and which no ‘White’ Russian would accept. While encouraging the lesser
-States to make war on Russia, we subsidise White Russian military
-leaders who will certainly destroy the small States if successful. We
-entered<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_204" id="page_204"></a>{204}</span> the War for the destruction of militarism, and to make
-disarmament possible, declaring that German arms were the cause of our
-arms; and having destroyed German arms, we make ours greater than they
-were before the War, and introduce such new elements as the systematic
-arming of African savages for European warfare. We fought to make the
-secret bringing about of war by military or diplomatic cliques
-impossible, and after the Armistice the decision to wage war on the
-Russian Republic is made without even public knowledge, in opposition to
-sections in the Cabinets concerned, by cliques of whose composition the
-public is completely ignorant.<a name="FNanchor_73_73" id="FNanchor_73_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a> The invasion of Russia from the
-north, south, east, and west, by European, Asiatic, and negro troops, is
-made without a declaration of war, after a solemn statement by the chief
-spokesman of the Allies that there should be no invasion. Having
-declared, during the War, on a score of occasions, that we were not
-fighting against any right or interest of the German people<a name="FNanchor_74_74" id="FNanchor_74_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_74_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a>&mdash;or the
-German people at all&mdash;because we realised that only by ensuring that
-right and interest ourselves could we turn Germany from the ways of the
-past, at the peace we impose conditions which make it impossible for the
-German people<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_205" id="page_205"></a>{205}</span> even adequately to feed their population, and leave them
-no recourse but the recreation of their power. Having promised at the
-Armistice not to use our power for the purpose of preventing the due
-feeding of Germany, we continue for months a blockade which, even by the
-testimony of our own officials, creates famine conditions and literally
-kills very many of the children.</p>
-
-<p>At the beginning of the War, our statesmen, if not our public, had some
-rudimentary sense of the economic unity of mankind, of our need of one
-another’s work, and the idea of blockading half a world in time of dire
-scarcity would have appalled them. Yet at the Armistice it was done so
-light-heartedly that, having at last abandoned it, they have never even
-explained what they proposed to accomplish by it, for, says Mr Maynard
-Keynes. ‘It is an extraordinary fact that the fundamental economic
-problem of a Europe starving and disintegrating before their eyes, was
-the one question in which it was impossible to arouse the interest of
-the Four.’<a name="FNanchor_75_75" id="FNanchor_75_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_75_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a> At the beginning of the War we invoked high heaven to
-witness the danger and anomaly of autocratic government in our day. We
-were fighting for Parliamentary institutions, ‘open Covenants openly
-arrived at.’ After victory, we leave the real settlement of Europe to be
-made by two or three Prime Ministers, rendering no account of their
-secret deliberations and discussions to any Parliament until, in
-practice, it is too late to alter them. At the beginning of the War we
-were profoundly moved by the wickedness of military terrorism; at its
-close we employ it&mdash;whether by means of starvation, blockade, armed
-negro savages in German cities, reprisals in Ireland, or the ruthless
-slaughter of unarmed civilians in India&mdash;without creating any strong
-revulsion of feeling at home. At the beginning of the War we realised
-that the governmental organisation of hatred with the prostitution of
-art to ‘hymns of hate’ was vile and despicable. We copied that
-governmental organisation of hatred, and famous<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_206" id="page_206"></a>{206}</span> English authors duly
-produce <i>our</i> hymns of hate.<a name="FNanchor_76_76" id="FNanchor_76_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_76_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a> We felt at the beginning that all human
-freedom was menaced by the German theory of the State as the master of
-man and not as his instrument, with all that means of political
-inquisition and repression. When some of its worst features are applied
-at home, we are so indifferent to the fact that we do not even recognise
-that the thing against which we fought has been imposed upon
-ourselves.<a name="FNanchor_77_77" id="FNanchor_77_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_77_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a></p>
-
-<p>Many will dissent from this indictment. Yet its most important item&mdash;our
-indifference to the very evils against which we fought&mdash;is something
-upon which practically all witnesses testifying to the state of public
-opinion to-day agree. It is a commonplace of current discussion of
-present-day feeling. Take one or two at random, Sir Philip Gibbs and Mr.
-Sisley Huddleston, both English journalists. (I choose journalists
-because it is their business to know the nature of the public mind and
-spirit.) Speaking of the wholesale starvation, unimaginable misery, from
-the Baltic to the Black Sea, Mr. Huddleston writes:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘We read these things. They make not the smallest impression on us.
-Why? How is it that we are not horrified and do not resolve that
-not for a single day shall any preventable evil exist? How is it,
-that, on the contrary, for two years we have been cheerfully
-engaged in intensifying the sum of human suffering? Why are we so
-heedless? Why are we so callous? Why do we allow to be committed,
-in our name, a thousand atrocities, and to be written, in our name
-and for our delectation, a million vile words which reveal the most
-amazing lack either of feeling or of common sense?</p>
-
-<p>‘There have been crimes perpetrated by the politicians&mdash;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_207" id="page_207"></a>{207}</span>by all the
-politicians&mdash;which no condemnation could fitly characterise. But
-the peoples must be blamed. The peoples support the war-making
-politicians. It is my business to follow the course of events day
-by day, and it is sometimes difficult to stand back and take a
-general view. Whenever I do so, I am appalled at the blundering or
-the wickedness of the leaders of the world. Without party
-prejudices or personal predilections, an impartial observer, I
-cannot conceive how it is possible to be always blind to the truth,
-the glaring truth, that since the Armistice we have never sought to
-make peace, but have sought only some pretext and method for
-prolonging the War.</p>
-
-<p>‘Hate exudes from every journal in speaking of certain peoples&mdash;a
-weary hate, a conventional hate, a hate which is always whipping
-itself into a passion. It is, perhaps, more strictly, apathy
-masquerading as hate&mdash;which is worst of all. The people are
-<i>blasé</i>: they seek only bread and circuses for themselves. They
-regard no bread for others as a rather boring circus for
-themselves.’</p></div>
-
-<p>Mr. Huddleston was present throughout most of the Conference. This is
-his verdict:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>’ ... Cynicism soon became naked. In the East all pretence of
-righteousness was abandoned. Every successive Treaty was more
-frankly the expression of shameful appetites. There was no pretence
-of conscience in politics. Force rules without disguise. What was
-still more amazing was the way in which strife was stirred up
-gratuitously. What advantage was it, even for a moment, to any one
-to foment civil war in Russia, to send against the unhappy,
-famine-stricken country army after army? The result was so
-obviously to consolidate the Bolshevist Government around which
-were obliged to rally all Russians who had the spirit of
-nationality. It seemed as if everywhere we were plotting our<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_208" id="page_208"></a>{208}</span> own
-ruin and hastening our own end. A strange dementia seized our
-rulers, who thought peace, replenishment of empty larders, the
-fraternisation of sorely tired nations, ignoble and delusive
-objects. It appeared that war was for evermore to be humanity’s
-fate.</p>
-
-<p>‘Time after time I saw excellent opportunities of universal peace
-deliberately rejected. There was somebody to wreck every Prinkipo,
-every Spa. It was almost with dismay that all Europeans who had
-kept their intelligence unclouded saw the frustration of peace, and
-heard the peoples applaud the men who frustrated peace. I care not
-whether they still enjoy esteem: history will judge them harshly
-and will judge harshly the turbulence which men plumed themselves
-on creating two years after the War.’</p></div>
-
-<p>As to the future:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘If it is certain that France must force another fight with Germany
-in a short span of years, if she pursues her present policy of
-implacable antagonism; if it is certain that England is already
-carefully seeking the European equilibrium, and that a responsible
-minister has already written of the possibility of a military
-accord with Germany; if there has been seen, owing to the foolish
-belief of the Allies in force&mdash;a belief which increases in inverse
-ratio to the Allied possession of effective force&mdash;the re-birth of
-Russian militarism, as there will assuredly be seen the re-birth of
-German militarism; if there are quarrels between Greece and Italy,
-between Italy and the Jugo-Slavs, between Hungary and Austria,
-between every tiny nation and its neighbour, even between England
-and France, it is because, when war has once been invoked, it
-cannot easily be exorcised. It will linger long in Europe: the
-straw will smoulder and at any moment may break into flame....</p>
-
-<p>‘This is not lurid imagining: it is as logical as a piece of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_209" id="page_209"></a>{209}</span>
-Euclidean reasoning. Only by a violent effort to change our fashion
-of seeing things can it be averted. War-making is now a habit.’</p></div>
-
-<p>And as to the outcome on the mind of the people:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘The war has killed elasticity of mind, independence of judgment,
-and liberty of expression. We think not so much of the truth as of
-conforming to the tacitly accepted fiction of the hour.<a name="FNanchor_78_78" id="FNanchor_78_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_78_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a></p></div>
-
-<p>Sir Philip Gibbs renders on the whole a similar verdict. He says:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘The people of all countries were deeply involved in the general
-blood-guiltiness of Europe. They made no passionate appeal in the
-name of Christ or in the name of humanity for the cessation of the
-slaughter of boys and the suicide of nations, and for a
-reconciliation of peoples upon terms of some more reasonable
-argument than that of high explosives. Peace proposals from the
-Pope, from Germany, from Austria, were rejected with fierce
-denunciation, most passionate scorn, as “peace plots” and “peace
-traps,” not without the terrible logic of the vicious circle,
-because indeed, there was no sincerity of renunciation in some of
-those offers of peace, and the Powers opposite to us were simply
-trying our strength and our weakness in order to make their own
-kind of peace, which should be that of conquest. The gamblers,
-playing the game of “poker,” with crowns and armies as their
-stakes, were upheld generally by the peoples, who would not abate
-one point of pride, one fraction of hate, one claim of vengeance,
-though all Europe should fall in ruin, and the last legions of boys
-be massacred. There was no call from people to people across the
-frontiers of hostility. “Let us end this<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_210" id="page_210"></a>{210}</span> homicidal mania. Let us
-get back to sanity and save our younger sons. Let us hand over to
-justice those who will continue the slaughter of our youth!” There
-was no forgiveness, no generous instinct, no large-hearted common
-sense in any combatant nation of Europe. Like wolves they had their
-teeth in one another’s throats, and would not let go, though all
-bloody and exhausted, until one should fall at the last gasp, to be
-mangled by the others. Yet in each nation, even in Germany, there
-were men and women who saw the folly of the war and the crime of
-it, and desired to end it by some act of renunciation and
-repentance, and by some uplifting of the people’s spirit to vault
-the frontiers of hatred and the barbed wire which hedged in
-patriotism. Some of them were put in prison. Most of them saw the
-impossibility of counteracting the forces of insanity which had
-made the world mad, and kept silent, hiding their thoughts and
-brooding over them. The leaders of the nations continued to use
-mob-passion as their argument and justification, excited it anew
-when its fires burned low, focussed it upon definite objectives,
-and gave it a sense of righteousness by the high-sounding
-watchwords of liberty, justice, honour, and retribution. Each side
-proclaimed Christ as its captain, and invoked the blessing and aid
-of the God of Christendom, though Germans were allied with Turks,
-and France was full of black and yellow men. The German people did
-not try to avert their ruin by denouncing the criminal acts of
-their War Lords nor by deploring the cruelties they had committed.
-The Allies did not help them to do so, because of their lust for
-bloody vengeance and their desire for the spoils of victory. The
-peoples shared the blame of their rulers because they were not
-nobler than their rulers. They cannot now plead ignorance or
-betrayal by false ideals which duped them, because character does
-not depend on knowledge, and it was the character of European
-peoples which failed in the crisis of the world’s fate, so that
-they followed the call-back of the beast in the jungle<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_211" id="page_211"></a>{211}</span> rather than
-the voice of the Crucified One whom they pretended to adore.’</p></div>
-
-<p>And perhaps most important of all (though the clergy here just stand for
-the complacent mob mind; they were no worse than the laity), this:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘I think the clergy of all nations, apart from a heroic and saintly
-few, subordinated their faith, which is a gospel of charity, to
-national limitations. They were patriots before they were priests,
-and their patriotism was sometimes as limited, as narrow, as
-fierce, and as blood-thirsty as that of the people who looked to
-them for truth and light. They were often fiercer, narrower, and
-more desirous of vengeance than the soldiers who fought, because it
-is now a known truth that the soldiers, German and Austrian, French
-and Italian and British, were sick of the unending slaughter long
-before the ending of the war, and would have made a peace more fair
-than that which now prevails if it had been put to the common vote
-in the trenches; whereas the Archbishop of Canterbury, the
-Archbishop of Cologne, and the clergy who spoke from many pulpits
-in many nations under the Cross of Christ, still stoked up the
-fires of hate and urged the armies to go on fighting “in the cause
-of Justice,” “for the defence of the Fatherland,” “for Christian
-righteousness,” to the bitter end. Those words are painful to
-write, but as I am writing this book for truth’s sake, at all cost,
-I let them stand.’<a name="FNanchor_79_79" id="FNanchor_79_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_79_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a></p></div>
-
-<p><i>From Passion to Indifference: the Result of Drift</i></p>
-
-<p>A common attitude just now is something like this:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>‘With the bitter memory of all that the Allies had suffered strong upon
-them, it is not astonishing that at the moment of victory an attitude of
-judicial impartiality proved too much<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_212" id="page_212"></a>{212}</span> to ask of human nature. The real
-terms will depend upon the fashion in which the formal terms are
-enforced. Much of the letter of the Treaty&mdash;trial of the Kaiser,
-etc.&mdash;has already disappeared. It is an intolerable priggishness to rake
-up this very excusable debauch just as we are returning to sobriety.’</p>
-
-<p>And that would be true, if, indeed, we had learned the lesson, and were
-adopting a new policy. But we are not. We have merely in some measure
-exchanged passion for lassitude and indifference. Later on we shall
-plead that the lassitude was as ‘inevitable’ as the passion. On such a
-line of reasoning, it is no good reacting by a perception of
-consequences against a mood of the moment. That is bad psychology and
-disastrous politics. To realise what ‘temperamental politics’ have
-already involved us in, is the first step towards turning our present
-drift into a more consciously directed progress.</p>
-
-<p>Note where the drift has already carried us with reference to the
-problem of the new Germany which it was our declared object to create.
-There were weeks following the Armistice in Germany, when a faithful
-adherence to the spirit of the declarations made by the Allies during
-the War would have brought about the utter moral collapse of the
-Prussianism we had fought to destroy. The Prussian had said to the
-people: ‘Only Germany’s military power has stood between her and
-humiliating ruin. The Allies victorious will use their victory to
-deprive Germany of her vital rights.’ Again and again had the Allies
-denied this, and Germany, especially young Germany, watched to see which
-should prove right. A blockade, falling mainly, as Mr Churchill
-complacently pointed out (months after an armistice whose terms had
-included a promise to take into consideration the food needs of Germany)
-upon the feeble, the helpless, the children, answered that question for
-millions in Germany. Her schools and universities teem with hundreds of
-thousands stricken in their health, to whom the words ‘never again’ mean
-that never more will they put their<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_213" id="page_213"></a>{213}</span> trust in the ‘naïve innocence’ of
-an internationalism that could so betray them.</p>
-
-<p>The militarism which morally was at so low an ebb at the Armistice, has
-been rehabilitated by such things as the blockade and its effects, the
-terms of the Treaty, and by minor but dramatic features like the
-retention of German prisoners long after Allied prisoners had returned
-home, and the occupation of German university town by African negroes.
-So that to-day a League of Nations offered by the Allies would probably
-be regarded with a contemptuous scepticism&mdash;somewhat similar to that
-with which America now regards the political beatitudes which it
-applauded in 1916-17.</p>
-
-<p>We are in fact modifying the Treaty. But those modifications will not
-meet the present situation, though they might well have met the
-situation in 1918. If we had done then what we are prepared to do <i>now</i>,
-Europe would have been set on the right road.</p>
-
-<p>Suppose the Allies had said in December, 1918 (as they are in effect
-being brought to say in 1920): ‘We are not going to play into the hands
-of your militarists by demanding the surrender of the Kaiser or the
-punishment of the war criminals, vile as we believe their offences to
-be. We are not going to stimulate your waning nationalism by demanding
-an acknowledgment of your sole guilt. Nor are we going to ruin your
-industry or shatter your credit. On the contrary, we will start by
-making you a loan, facilitating your purchases of food and raw
-materials, and we will admit you into the League of Nations.’</p>
-
-<p>We are coming to that. If it could have been our policy early instead of
-late, how different this story would have been.</p>
-
-<p>And the tragedy is this: To do it late is to cause it to lose its
-effectiveness, for the situation changes. The measures which would have
-been adequate in 1918 are inadequate in 1920. It is the story of Home
-Rule. In the eighties Ireland would have accepted Gladstonian Home Rule
-as a basis at<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_214" id="page_214"></a>{214}</span> least of co-operation. English and Ulster opinion was not
-ready even for Home Rule. Forty years later it had reconciled itself to
-Home Rule. But by the time Britain was ready for the remedy, the
-situation had got quite beyond it. It now demanded something for which
-slow-moving opinion was unprepared. So with a League of Nations. The
-plan now supported by Conservatives would, as Lord Grey has avowed, have
-assuredly prevented this War if adopted in place of the mere Arbitration
-plans of the Hague Conference. At that date the present League of
-Nations Covenant would have been adequate to the situation. But some of
-the self-same Conservatives who now talk the language of
-internationalism&mdash;even in economic terms&mdash;poured contumely and scorn
-upon those of us who used it a decade or two since. And now, it is to be
-feared, the Government for which they are ready will certainly be
-inadequate to the situation which we face.</p>
-
-<h3><i>‘An evil idealism and self-sacrificing hates.’</i></h3>
-
-<p>‘The cause of this insanity,’ says Sir Philip Gibbs, ‘is the failure of
-idealism.’ Others write in much the same strain that selfishness and
-materialism have reconquered the world. But this does not get us very
-far. By what moral alchemy was this vast outpouring of unselfishness,
-which sent millions to their death as to a feast (for men cannot die for
-selfish motives, unless more certain of their heavenly reward than we in
-the Western world are in the habit of being) turned into selfishness;
-their high ideals into low desires&mdash;if that is what has happened? Can it
-be a selfishness which ruins and starves us all? Is it selfishness on
-the part of the French which causes them to adopt towards Germany a
-policy of vengeance that prevents them receiving the Reparations that
-they so sorely need? Is it not indeed what one of their writers had
-called a ‘holy hate,’ instinctive, intuitive, purged of all calculation
-of advantage or disadvantage? Would not selfishness<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_215" id="page_215"></a>{215}</span>&mdash;enlightened
-selfishness&mdash;have given us not only a sounder Europe in the material
-sense, but a more humane Europe, with its hostilities softened by the
-very fact of contact and co-operation, and the very obviousness of our
-need for one another? The last thing desired here is to raise the old
-never-ending question of egoism versus altruism. All that is desired is
-to point out that a mere appeal to feeling, to a ‘sense of
-righteousness’ and idealism, is not enough. We have an illimitable
-capacity for sublimating our own motives, and of convincing ourselves
-completely, passionately, that our evil is good. And the greater our
-fear that intellectual inquiry, some sceptical rationalism, might shake
-the certitude of our righteousness, the greater the passion with which
-we shall stand by the guide of ‘instinct and intuition.’ Can there not
-be a destructive idealism as well as a social one? What of the Holy
-Wars? What of the Prussian who, after all, had his ideal, as the
-Bolshevist has his? What of all fanatics ready to die for their
-idealism?</p>
-
-<p>It is never the things that are obviously and patently evil that
-constitute the real menace to mankind. If Prussian nationalism had been
-nothing but gross lust and cruelty and oppression, as we managed to
-persuade ourselves during the War that it was, it would never have
-menaced the world. It did that because it could rally to its end great
-enthusiasms; because men were ready to die for it. Then it threatened
-us. Only those things which have some element of good are dangerous.</p>
-
-<p>A Treaty of the character of that Versailles would never have been
-possible if men had not been able to justify it to themselves on the
-ground of its punitive justice. The greeds expressed in the annexation
-of alien territory, and the violation of the principle of nationality,
-would never have been possible but for the plea of the sacred egoism of
-patriotism; our country before the enemy’s, our country right or wrong.
-The assertion of sheer immoralism embodied in this last slogan<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_216" id="page_216"></a>{216}</span> can be
-made into the garments of righteousness if only our idealism is
-instinctive enough.</p>
-
-<p>Some of the worst crimes against justice have been due to the very
-fierceness of our passion for righteousness&mdash;a passion so fierce that it
-becomes undiscriminating and unseeing. It was the passion for what men
-believed to be religious truth which gave us the Inquisition and the
-religious wars; it was the passion for patriotism which made France for
-so many years, to the astonishment of the world, refuse justice to
-Dreyfus; it is a righteous loathing for negro crime which has made
-lynching possible for half a century in the United States, and which
-prevents the development of an opinion which will insist on its
-suppression. It is ‘the just anger that makes men unjust.’ The righteous
-passion that insists on a criminal’s dying for some foul crime, is the
-very thing which prevents our seeing that the crime was not committed by
-him at all.</p>
-
-<p>It was something akin to this that made the Treaty of Versailles
-possible. That is why merely to appeal to idealism and feeling will
-fail, unless the defect of vision which makes evil appear good is
-corrected. It is not the feeling which is at fault; it is the defective
-vision causing feeling to be misused, as in the case of our feeling
-against the man accused on what seem to us good grounds, of a detestable
-offence. He is loathsome to our sight, because the crime is loathsome.
-But when some one else confesses to the crime, our feeling against the
-innocent man disappears. The direction it took, the object upon which it
-settled, was due to a misconception.</p>
-
-<p>Obviously that error may occur in politics. Equally certainly something
-worse may happen. With some real doubt in our mind whether this man is
-the criminal, we may yet, in the absence of any other culprit, stifle
-that doubt because of our anger, and our vague desire to have some
-victim suffer for so vile a crime. Feeling will be at fault, in such a
-case, as well as vision. And this thing happens, as many a<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_217" id="page_217"></a>{217}</span> lynching
-testifies. (‘The innocence of Dreyfus would be a crime,’ said a famous
-anti-Dreyfusard.) Both defects may have played their part in the tragedy
-of Versailles. In making our appeal to idealism, we assume that it is
-there, somewhere, to be aroused on behalf of justice; we must assume,
-consequently, that if it has not been aroused, or has attached itself to
-wrong purposes, it is because it has not seen where justice lay.</p>
-
-<p>Our only protection against these miscarriages, by which our passion is
-borne into the wrong channel, against the innocent while the guilty
-escape, is to keep our minds open to all the facts, all the truth. But
-this principle, which we have proclaimed as the very foundation stone of
-our democratic faith, was the first to go when we began the War. The
-idea that in war time, most particularly, a democracy needs to know the
-enemy’s, or the Pacifist, or even the internationalist and liberal case,
-would have been regarded as a bad joke. Yet the failure to do just that
-thing inevitably created a conviction that all the wrong was on one side
-and all the right on the other, and that the problem of the settlement
-was mainly a problem of ruthless punishment. One of that temper may have
-come the errors of the Treaty and the miseries that have flowed from
-them. It was the virtual suppression of free debate on the purposes and
-aims of the War and their realisation that delivered public opinion into
-the keeping of the extremest Jingoes when we came to make the peace.</p>
-
-<h3><i>We create the temper that destroys us</i></h3>
-
-<p>Behind the war-time attitude of the belligerents, when they suppressed
-whatever news might tell in favour of the enemy, was the conviction that
-if we could really understand the enemy’s position we should not want to
-fight him. That is probably true. Let us assume that, and assume
-consequently the need for control of news and discussion. If we are to<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_218" id="page_218"></a>{218}</span>
-come to the control by governments of political belief, as we once
-attempted control by ecclesiastical authority of religious belief, let
-us face the fact, and drop pretence about freedom of discussion, and see
-that the organisation of opinion is honest and efficient. There is a
-great deal to be said for the suppression of freedom of discussion. Some
-of the greatest minds in the world have refused to accept it as a
-working principle of society. Theirs is a perfectly arguable, extremely
-strong and thoroughly honest case.<a name="FNanchor_80_80" id="FNanchor_80_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_80_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a> But virtually to subpress the
-free dissemination of facts, as we have done not only during, but after
-the War, and at the same time to go on with our talk about free speech,
-free Press, free discussion, free democracy is merely to add to the
-insincerities and falsehoods, which can only end by making society
-unworkable. We not only disbelieve in free discussion in the really
-vital crises; we disbelieve in truth. That is one fact. There is another
-related to it. If we frankly admitted that public opinion has to be
-‘managed,’ organised, shaped, we should demand that it be done
-efficiently with a view to the achievement of conscious ends, which we
-should place before ourselves. What happened during the War was that
-everybody, including the governments who ought to have been free from
-the domination of the myths they were engaged in creating, lost sight of
-the ultimate purposes of the War, and of the fact that they were
-creating forces which would make the attainment of those ends
-impossible; rob victory, that is, of its effectiveness.</p>
-
-<p>Note how the process works. We say when war is declared: ‘A truce to
-discussion. The time is for action, not words.’ But the truce is a
-fiction. It means, not that talk and propaganda shall cease, only that
-all liberal contribution to it must cease. The <i>Daily News</i> suspends its
-internationalism, but the <i>Daily Mail</i> is more fiercely Chauvinist than
-ever. We must not debate terms. But Mr Bottomley debates them every
-week, on the text that Germans are to be exterminated<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_219" id="page_219"></a>{219}</span> like vermin. What
-results? The natural defenders of a policy even as liberal as that of an
-Edward Grey are silenced. The function of the liberal Press is
-suspended. The only really articulate voices on policy are the voices of
-Lord Northcliffe and Mr Bottomley. On such subjects as foreign policy
-those gentlemen do not ordinarily embrace all wisdom; there is something
-to be said in criticism of their views. But in the matter of the future
-settlement of Europe, to have criticised those views during the War
-would have exposed the critic to the charge of pro-Germanism. So
-Chauvinism had it all its own way. For months and years the country
-heard one view of policy only. The early policy of silence did really
-impose a certain silence upon the <i>Daily News</i> or the <i>Manchester
-Guardian</i>; none whatever upon the <i>Times</i> or the <i>Daily Mail</i>. None of
-us can, day after day, be under the influence of such a process without
-being affected by it.<a name="FNanchor_81_81" id="FNanchor_81_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_81_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a> The British public were affected by it. Sir
-Edward Grey’s policy began to appear weak, anæmic, pro-German. And in
-the end he and his colleagues disappeared, partly, at least, as the
-result of the very policy of ‘leaving it to the Government’ upon which
-they had insisted at the beginning of the War. And the very group which,
-in 1914, was most insistent that there should be no criticism of
-Asquith, or McKenna, or Grey, were the very group whose criticisms
-turned those leaders out of office! While in 1914 it was accepted as
-proof of treason to say a word in criticism of (say) Grey, by 1916 it
-had almost become evidence of treason to say a word for him ... and that
-while he was still in office!</p>
-
-<p>The history of America’s attitude towards the War displays a similar
-line of development. We are apt to forget that the League of Nations
-idea entered the realm of practical politics as the result of a great
-spontaneous popular<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_220" id="page_220"></a>{220}</span> movement in America in 1916, as powerful and
-striking as any since the movement against chattel-slavery. A year of
-war morale resulted, as has already been noted, in a complete reversal
-of attitude. America became the opponent and Britain the protagonist of
-the League of Nations.</p>
-
-<p>In passing, one of the astonishing things is that statesmen, compelled
-by the conditions of their profession to work with the raw material of
-public opinion, seem blind to the fact that the total effect of the
-forces which they set in motion will be to transform opinion and render
-it intractable. American advisers of President Wilson scouted the idea,
-when it was suggested to them early in the War, that the growth of the
-War temper would make it difficult for the President to carry out his
-policy.<a name="FNanchor_82_82" id="FNanchor_82_82"></a><a href="#Footnote_82_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a> A score of times the present writer has heard it said by
-Americans who ought to have known better, that the public did not care
-what the foreign policy of the country was, and that the President could
-carry out any policy that he liked. At that particular moment it was
-true, but quite obviously there was growing up at the time, as the
-direct result of war propaganda, a fierce Chauvinism, which should have
-made it plain to any one who observed its momentum, that the notion of
-President Wilson’s policy being put into execution after victory was
-simply preposterous.</p>
-
-<p>Mr Asquith’s Government was thus largely responsible for<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_221" id="page_221"></a>{221}</span> creating a
-balance of force in public opinion (as we shall see presently) which was
-responsible for its collapse. Mr Lloyd George has himself sanctioned a
-jingoism which, if useful temporarily, becomes later an insuperable
-obstacle to the putting into force of workable policies. For while
-Versailles could do what it liked in matters that did not touch the
-popular passion of the moment, in the matters that did, the statesmen
-were the victims of the temper they had done so much to create. There
-was a story current in Paris at the time of the Conference: ‘You can’t
-really expect to get an indemnity of ten thousand millions, so what is
-the good of putting it in the Treaty,’ an expert is said to have
-remarked. ‘My dear fellow,’ said the Prime Minister, ‘if the election
-had gone on another fortnight, it would have been fifty thousand
-millions.’ But the insertion of these mythical millions into the Treaty
-has not been a joke; it has been an enormous obstacle to the
-reconstruction of Europe. It was just because public opinion was not
-ready to face facts in time, that the right thing had to be done at the
-wrong time, when perhaps it was too late. The effect on French policy
-has been still more important. It is the illusions concerning
-illimitable indemnities&mdash;directly fostered by the Governments in the
-early days of the Armistice&mdash;still dominating French public opinion,
-which more than anything else, perhaps, explains an attitude on the part
-of the French Government that has come near to smashing Europe.</p>
-
-<p>Even minds extraordinarily brilliant, as a rule, miscalculated the
-weight of this factor of public passion stimulated by the hates of war,
-and the deliberate exploitation of it for purposes of ‘war morale’ and
-propaganda. Thus Mr Wells,<a name="FNanchor_83_83" id="FNanchor_83_83"></a><a href="#Footnote_83_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_222" id="page_222"></a>{222}</span> writing even after two years of war,
-predicted that if the Germans were to make a revolution and overthrow
-the Kaiser, the Allies would ‘tumble over each other’ to offer Germany
-generous terms. What is worse is that British propaganda in enemy
-countries seems to have been based very largely on this assumption.<a name="FNanchor_84_84" id="FNanchor_84_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_84_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a>
-It constituted an elaboration of the offers implicit in Mr Wilson’s
-speeches, that once Germany was democratised there should be, in Mr
-Wilson’s words, ‘no reprisal upon the German people, who have themselves
-suffered all things in this War which they did not choose.’ The
-statement made by the German rulers that Germany was fighting against a
-harsh and destructive fate at the hands of the victors, was, President
-Wilson said, ‘wantonly false.’ ‘No one is threatening the peaceful
-enterprise of the German Empire.’ Our propaganda in Germany seems to
-have been an expansion of this text, while the negotiations which
-preceded the Armistice morally bound us to a ‘Fourteen Points peace’
-(less the British reservation touching the Freedom of the Seas). The
-economic terms of the Peace Treaty, the meaning of which has been so
-illuminatingly explained by the representative of the British Treasury
-at the Conference, give the measure of our respect for that obligation
-of honour, once we had the Germans at our mercy.<a name="FNanchor_85_85" id="FNanchor_85_85"></a><a href="#Footnote_85_85" class="fnanchor">[85]</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_223" id="page_223"></a>{223}</span></p>
-
-<h3><i>Fundamental Falsehoods and their Outcome</i></h3>
-
-<p>We witnessed both in England and America very great changes in the
-dynamics of opinion. Not only was one type of public man being brought
-forward and another thrust into the background, but one group of
-emotions and of motives of public policy were being developed and
-another group atrophied. The use of the word ‘opinion,’ with its
-implication of a rationalised process of intellectual decision, may be
-misleading. ‘Public opinion’ is here used as the sum of the forces which
-become articulate in a country, and which a government is compelled not
-necessarily to obey, but to take into account. (A government may
-bamboozle it or dodge it, but it cannot openly oppose it.)</p>
-
-<p>And when reference is made to the force of ideas&mdash;Nationalist or
-Socialist or Revolutionary&mdash;a power which we all admit by our panic
-fears of defeatist or Red Propaganda, it is necessary to keep in mind
-the kind of force that is meant. One speaks of Communist or Socialist,
-Pacifist or Patriotic ideas gaining influence, or creating a ferment.
-The idea of Communism, for instance, has obviously played some part in
-the vast upheavals that have followed the War.<a name="FNanchor_86_86" id="FNanchor_86_86"></a><a href="#Footnote_86_86" class="fnanchor">[86]</a> But in a world where
-the great majority are still condemned to intense physical labour in
-order to live at all, where peoples as a whole are overworked, harassed,
-pre-occupied, it is impossible<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_224" id="page_224"></a>{224}</span> that ideas like those of Karl Marx
-should be subjected to elaborate intellectual analysis. Rather is it
-<i>an</i> idea&mdash;of the common ownership of wealth or its equal distribution,
-of poverty being the fault of a definite class of the corporate body&mdash;an
-idea which fits into a mood produced largely by the prevailing
-conditions of life, which thus becomes the predominating factor of the
-new public opinion. Now foreign policy is certainly influenced, and in
-some great crises determined, by public opinion. But that opinion is not
-the resultant of a series of intellectual analyses of problems of Balkan
-nationalities or of Eastern frontiers; that is an obvious impossibility
-for a busy headline-reading public, hard at work all day and thirsty for
-relaxation and entertainment at night. The public opinion which makes
-itself felt in Foreign Policy&mdash;which, when war is in the balance after a
-longish period of peace, gives the preponderance of power to the most
-Chauvinistic elements; which, at the end of a war and on the eve of
-Treaty-making, as in the December 1918 election, insists upon a
-rigorously punitive peace&mdash;this opinion is the result of a few
-predominant ‘sovereign ideas’ or conceptions giving a direction to
-certain feelings.</p>
-
-<p>Take one such sovereign idea, that of the enemy nation as a person: the
-conception of it as a completely responsible corporate body. Some
-offence is committed by a German: ‘Germany’ did it, Germany including
-all Germans. To punish any German is to inflict satisfactory punishment
-for the offence, to avenge it. The idea, when we examine it, is found to
-be extremely abstract, with but the faintest relation to human
-realities. ‘They drowned my brother,’ said an Allied airman, when asked
-his feelings on a reprisal bombing raid over German cities. Thus,
-because a sailor from Hamburg drowns an Englishman in the North Sea, an
-old woman in a garret in Freiburg, or some children, who have but dimly
-heard of the war, and could not even remotely be held responsible for
-it, or have prevented it, are killed with a clear conscience<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_225" id="page_225"></a>{225}</span> because
-they are German. We cannot understand the Chinese, who punish one member
-of a family for another’s fault, yet that is very much more rational
-than the conception which we accept as the most natural thing in the
-world. It is never questioned, indeed, until it is applied to ourselves.
-When the acts of British troops in Ireland or India, having an
-extraordinary resemblance to German acts in Belgium, are taken by
-certain American newspapers as showing that ‘Britain,’ (<i>i.e.</i> British
-people) is a bloodthirsty monster who delights in the killing of unarmed
-priests or peasants, we know that somehow the foreign critic has got it
-all wrong. We should realise that for some Irishman or Indian to
-dismember a charwoman or decapitate a little girl in Somersetshire,
-because of the crime of some Black and Tan in Cork, or English General
-at Amritsar, would be unadulterated savagery, a sort of dementia. In any
-case the poor folk in Somerset were not responsible; millions of English
-folk are not. They are only dimly aware of what goes on in India or
-Ireland, and are not really able in all matters, by any means, to
-control their government&mdash;any more than the Americans are able to
-control theirs.</p>
-
-<p>Yet the idea of responsibility attaching to a whole group, as
-justification for retaliation, is a very ancient idea, savage, almost
-animal in its origin. And anything can make a collectivity. To one small
-religious sect in a village it is a rival sect who are the enemies of
-the human race; in the mind of the tortured negro in the Congo any man,
-woman, or child of the white world could fairly be punished for the
-pains that he has suffered.<a name="FNanchor_87_87" id="FNanchor_87_87"></a><a href="#Footnote_87_87" class="fnanchor">[87]</a> The conception has doubtless arisen out
-of something protective, some instinct useful, indispensable to<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_226" id="page_226"></a>{226}</span> the
-race; as have so many of the instincts which, applied unadapted to
-altered conditions, become socially destructive.</p>
-
-<p>Here then is evidence of a great danger, which can, in some measure, be
-avoided on one condition: that the truth about the enemy collectively is
-told in such a way as to be a reminder to us not to slip into injustices
-that, barbarous in themselves, drag us back into barbarism.</p>
-
-<p>But note how all the machinery of Press control and war-time colleges of
-propaganda prepared the public mind for the extremely difficult task of
-the settlement and Treaty-making that lay before it. (It was a task in
-which everything indicated that, unless great care were taken, public
-judgment would be so swamped in passion that a workable peace would be
-impossible.) The more tribal and barbaric aspect of the conception of
-collective responsibility was fortified by the intensive and deliberate
-exploitation of atrocities during the years of the War. The atrocities
-were not just an incident of war-time news: the principal emotions of
-the struggle came to centre around them. Millions whom the obscure
-political debate behind the conflict left entirely cold, were profoundly
-moved by these stories of cruelty and barbarity. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
-was among those who urged their systematic exploitation on that ground,
-in a Christmas communication to the <i>Times</i>.<a name="FNanchor_88_88" id="FNanchor_88_88"></a><a href="#Footnote_88_88" class="fnanchor">[88]</a> With reference to
-stories of German cruelty, he said:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘Hate has its uses in war, as the Germans have long discovered. It
-steels the mind and sets the resolution as no other emotion can do.
-So much do they feel this that Germans are constrained to invent
-all sorts of reasons for hatred against us, who have, in truth,
-never injured them in any way save that history and geography both
-place us before them and their ambitions. To nourish hatred they
-invent every lie against us, and so they attain a certain national
-solidity....<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_227" id="page_227"></a>{227}</span></p>
-
-<p>‘The bestiality of the German nation has given us a driving power
-which we are not using, and which would be very valuable in this
-stage of the war. Scatter the facts. Put them in red-hot fashion.
-Do not preach to the solid south, who need no conversion, but
-spread the propaganda wherever there are signs of any intrigue&mdash;on
-the Tyne, the Clyde, in the Midlands, above all in Ireland, and
-French Canada. Let us pay no attention to platitudinous Bishops or
-gloomy Deans or any other superior people, who preach against
-retaliation or whole-hearted warfare. We have to win, and we can
-only win by keeping up the spirit of resolution of our own people.’</p></div>
-
-<p>Particularly does Sir Arthur Conan Doyle urge that the munition
-workers&mdash;who were, it will be remembered, largely woman&mdash;be stimulated
-by accounts of atrocities:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘The munition workers have many small vexations to endure, and
-their nerves get sadly frayed. They need strong elemental emotions
-to carry them on. Let pictures be made of this and other incidents.
-Let them be hung in every shop. Let them be distributed thickly in
-the Sinn Fein districts of Ireland, and in the hot-beds of
-Socialism and Pacifism in England and Scotland. The Irishman has
-always been of a most chivalrous nature.’</p></div>
-
-<p>It is possible that Sinn Fein has now taken to heart this counsel as to
-the use that may be made of cruelties committed by the enemy in war.</p>
-
-<p>Now there is no reason to doubt the truth of atrocities, whether they
-concern the horrible ill-treatment of prisoners in war-time of which Sir
-Arthur Conan Doyle writes, or the burning alive of negro women in peace
-time in Texas and Alabama, or the flogging of women in India, or
-reprisals by British soldiers in Ireland, or by Red Russians against
-White and White against Red. Every story may be true. And if each side
-told the whole truth, instead of a part of it, these<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_228" id="page_228"></a>{228}</span> atrocities would
-help us towards an understanding of this complex nature of ours. But we
-never do tell the whole truth. Always in war-time does each side leave
-out two things essential to the truth: the good done by the enemy and
-the evil done by ourselves. If that elementary condition of truth were
-fulfilled, these pictures of cruelty, bestiality, obscenity, rape,
-sadism, sheer ferocity, might possibly tell us this: ‘There is the
-primeval tiger in us; man’s history&mdash;and especially the history of his
-wars&mdash;is full of these warnings of the depths to which he can descend.
-Those ten thousand men and women of pure English stock gloating over the
-helpless prisoners whom they are slowly roasting alive, are not normally
-savages.<a name="FNanchor_89_89" id="FNanchor_89_89"></a><a href="#Footnote_89_89" class="fnanchor">[89]</a> Most of them are kindly and decent folk. These stories of
-the September massacres of the Terror no more prove French nature to be
-depraved than the history of the Inquisition, or of Ireland or India,
-proves Spanish or British nature to be depraved.’</p>
-
-<p>But the truth is never so told. It was not so told during the War. Day
-after day, month after month, we got these selected stories. In the
-Press, in the cinemas, in Church services, they were related to us. The
-message the atrocity carried was not: here is a picture of what human
-nature is capable of; let us be on our guard that nothing similar marks
-our history. That was neither the intention nor the result of
-propaganda. It said in effect and was intended to say:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>‘This lecherous brute abusing a woman is a picture of Germany. All
-Germans are like that; and no people but Germans are like that. That
-sort of thing never happens in other armies; cruelty, vengeance, and
-blood-lust are unknown in the Allied forces. That is why we are at war.
-Remember this at the peace table.’</p>
-
-<p>That falsehood was conveyed by what the Press and the cinema
-systematically left out. While they told us of every vile thing done by
-the enemy, they told us of not one act of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_229" id="page_229"></a>{229}</span> kindness or mercy among all
-those hundred million during the years of war.</p>
-
-<p>The suppression of everything good of the enemy was paralleled by the
-suppression of everything evil done by our side. You may search Press
-and cinemas in vain for one single story of brutality committed by
-Serbian, Rumanian, Greek, Italian, French, or Russian&mdash;until the last in
-time became an enemy. Then suddenly our papers were full of Russian
-atrocities. At first these were Bolshevik atrocities only, and of the
-‘White’ troops we heard no evil. Then when later the self-same Russian
-troops that had fought on our side during the War fought Poland, our
-papers were full of the atrocities inflicted on Poles.</p>
-
-<p>By the daily presentation during years of a picture which makes the
-enemy so entirely bad as not to be human at all, and ourselves entirely
-good, the whole nature of the problem is changed. Admit these premises,
-and policies like those proposed by Mr Wells become sheer rubbish. They
-are based on the assumption that Germans are accessible to ordinary
-human influences like other human beings. But every day for years we
-have been denying that premise. If the daily presentation of the facts
-is a true presentation, the <i>New York Tribune</i> is right:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘We shall not get permanent peace by treating the Hun as if he were
-not a Hun. One might just as well attempt to cure a man-eating
-tiger of his hankering for human flesh by soft words as to break
-the German of his historic habits by equally futile kind words. The
-way to treat a German, while Germans follow their present methods,
-is as a common peril to all civilised mankind. Since the German
-employs the method of the wild beast he must be treated as beyond
-the appeal of generous or kind methods. When one is generous to a
-German, he plans to take advantage of that generosity to rob or
-murder; this is his international history, never more<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_230" id="page_230"></a>{230}</span>
-conspicuously illustrated than here in America. Kindness he
-interprets as fear, regard for international law as proof of
-decadence; agitation for disarmament has been for him the final
-evidence of the degeneracy of his neighbours.’<a name="FNanchor_90_90" id="FNanchor_90_90"></a><a href="#Footnote_90_90" class="fnanchor">[90]</a></p></div>
-
-<p>That conclusion is inevitable if the facts are really as presented by
-the <i>Daily Mail</i> for four years. The problem of peace in that case is
-not one of finding a means of dealing, by the discipline of a common
-code or tradition, with common shortcomings&mdash;violences, hates,
-cupidities, blindnesses. The problem is not of that nature at all. We
-don’t have these defects; they are German defects. For five years we
-have indoctrinated the people with a case, which if true, renders only
-one policy in Europe admissible; either the ruthless extermination of
-these monsters, who are not human beings at all; or their permanent
-subjugation, the conversion of Germany into a sort of world lunatic
-asylum.</p>
-
-<p>When therefore the big public, whether in America or France or Britain,
-simply will not hear (in 1919) of any League of Nations that shall ever
-include Germany they are right&mdash;if we have been telling them the truth.</p>
-
-<p>Was it necessary thus to ‘organise’ hate for the purposes of war?
-Violent partisanship would assuredly assert itself in war-time without
-such stimulus. And if we saw more clearly the relationship of these
-instincts and emotions to the formation of policy, we should organise,
-not their development, but their restraint and discipline, or, that
-being impossible in sufficient degree (which it may be), organise their
-re-direction to less anti-social ends.</p>
-
-<p>As it was, it ended by making the war entered upon sincerely, so far as
-public feeling was concerned, for a principle or policy, simply a war
-for no purpose beyond victory&mdash;and finally for domination at the price
-of its original purpose. For one who is attracted to the purpose, a
-thousand are attracted<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_231" id="page_231"></a>{231}</span> to the war&mdash;the simple success of ‘our side.’
-Partisanship as a motive is animal in its deep, remote innateness.
-Little boys and girls at the time of the University boat race will
-choose the Oxford or the Cambridge colours, and from that moment
-passionately desire the victory of ‘their’ side. They may not know what
-Oxford is, or what a University is, or what a boat race is: it does not
-in the least detract from the violence of their partisanship. You get
-therefore a very simple mathematical explanation of the increasing
-subservience of the War’s purpose to the simple purpose of victory and
-domination for itself. Every child can understand and feel for the
-latter, very few adults for the former.</p>
-
-<p>This competitive feeling, looking to victory, domination, is feeding the
-whole time the appetite for power. These instincts, and the clamant
-appetite for domination and coercion are whetted to the utmost and then
-re-inforced by a moral indignation, which justifies the impulse to
-retaliation on the ground of punitive justice for inhuman horrors. We
-propose to establish with this outlaw a relationship of contract! To
-bargain with him about our respective rights! In the most favourable
-circumstances it demands a very definite effort of discipline to impose
-upon ourselves hampering restrictions in the shape of undertakings to
-another Power, when we believe that we are in a position to impose our
-will. But to suggest imposing upon ourselves the restrictions of such a
-relationship with an enemy of the human race.... The astonishing thing
-is that those who acquiesced in this deliberate cultivation of the
-emotions and instincts inseparable from violent partisanship, should
-ever have expected a policy of impartial justice to come out of that
-state of mind. They were asking for psychological miracles.</p>
-
-<p>That the propaganda was in large part conscious and directed was proved
-by the ease with which the flood of atrocity stories could suddenly be
-switched over from Germans to Russians. During the time that the Russian
-armies were fighting on our<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_232" id="page_232"></a>{232}</span> side, there was not a single story in our
-Press of Russian barbarity. But when the same armies, under the same
-officers, are fighting against the Poles, atrocities even more ingenious
-and villainous than those of the Germans in Belgium suddenly
-characterise the conduct of the Russian troops. The atrocities are
-transposed with an ease equal to that with which we transfer our
-loyalties.<a name="FNanchor_91_91" id="FNanchor_91_91"></a><a href="#Footnote_91_91" class="fnanchor">[91]</a> When Pilsudski’s troops fought against Russia, all the
-atrocities were committed by them, and of the Russian troops we heard
-nothing but heroism. When Brusiloff fights under Bolshevik command our
-papers print long Polish accounts of the Russian barbarities.</p>
-
-<p>We have seen that behind the conception of the enemy as a single person
-is a falsehood: it is obvious that seventy millions of men, women, and
-children, of infinitely varying degrees of responsibility, are not a
-single person. The falsehood may be, in some degree, an unwitting one, a
-primitive myth that we have inherited from tribal forbears. But if that
-is so, we should control our news with a view to minimizing the dangers
-of mythical fallacies, bequeathed to us by a barbaric past. If it is
-necessary to use them for the purposes of war morale, we<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_233" id="page_233"></a>{233}</span> should drop
-them when the war is over, and pass round the word, to the Churches for
-instance, that on the signing of an armistice the moratorium of the
-Sermon on the Mount comes to an end. As it is, two years after the
-Armistice, an English Vicar tells his congregation that to bring
-Austrian children to English, to save them from death by famine, is an
-unpatriotic and seditious act.</p>
-
-<p>Note where the fundamental dishonesties of our propaganda lead us in the
-matter of policy, in what we declared to be one of the main objects of
-the War: the erection of Europe upon a basis of nationality. Our whole
-campaign implied that the problem resolved itself into the destruction
-of one great Power, who denied that principle, as against the Allies,
-who were ready to grant it. How near that came to the truth, the round
-score of ‘unredeemed’ nationalities deliberately created by the Allies
-in the Treaties sufficiently testifies. If we had avowed the facts, that
-a Europe of completely independent nationalities is not possible, that
-great populations will not be shut off from the sea, or recognise
-independent nationalities to the extent of risking economic or political
-strangulation, we should then necessarily have gone on to devise the
-limitations and obligations which all must accept and the rights which
-all must accord. We should have been fighting for a body of principles
-as the basis of a real association of States. The truth, or some measure
-of it, would have prepared us all for that limitation of independence
-without which no nationality can be secure. The falsehood that Germany
-alone stood in the way of the recognition of nationality, made a treaty
-really based on that principle (namely, upon all of us consenting to
-limit our independence) impossible of acceptance by our own opinion. And
-one falsehood leads to another. Because we refused to be sincere about
-the inducements which we held out in turn to Italy, Bulgaria, Rumania,
-Greece, we staggered blindly into the alternative betrayal first of one
-party, then of another. Just as we were faithless to the principle of
-nationality when<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_234" id="page_234"></a>{234}</span> we acquiesced in the Russian attitude towards Finland
-and Poland, and the Italian towards Serbia, so later we were to prove
-faithless to the principle of the Great State when we supported the
-Border Nationalities in their secession from Russia. We have encouraged
-and helped States like Ukrainia, Azerbaidjan. But we have been just as
-ready to stand for ‘Great Russia,’ if Koltchak appeared to be winning,
-knowing perfectly well that we cannot be loyal to both causes.</p>
-
-<p>Our defence is apparent enough. It is fairly illustrated in the case of
-Italy. If Italy had not come into the war, Serbia’s prospect of any
-redemption at all would have been hopeless; we were doing the best we
-could for Serbia.<a name="FNanchor_92_92" id="FNanchor_92_92"></a><a href="#Footnote_92_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a></p>
-
-<p>Assuredly&mdash;but we happened to be doing it by false pretences, sham
-heroics, immeasurable hypocrisy. And the final effect was to be the
-defeat of the aims for which we were fighting. If our primary aims had
-been those we proclaimed, we could no more have violated the principle
-of nationality to gain an ally, than we could have ceded the Isle of
-Wight to Germany, and the intellectual rectitude which would have
-enabled us to see that, would also have enabled us to see the necessity
-of the conditions on which alone a society of nations is possible.</p>
-
-<p>The indispensable step to rendering controllable those passions now
-‘uncontrollable’ and disrupting Europe, is to tell the truth about the
-things by which we excuse them. Again, our fundamental nature may not
-change, any more than it would if we honestly investigated the evidence
-proving the innocence of the man, whose execution we demand, of the
-crime which is the cause of our hatred. That investigation would be an
-effort of the mind; the result of it would be a change in the direction
-of our feelings. The facts which it is necessary to face are not
-abstruse or difficult. They are self-evident to the simplest mind. The
-fact that the ‘person’ whose<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_235" id="page_235"></a>{235}</span> punishment we demand in the case of the
-enemy is not a person at all, either bad or good, but millions of
-different persons of varying degrees of badness and goodness, many of
-them&mdash;millions&mdash;without any responsibility at all for the crime that
-angers us, this fact, if faced, would alter the nature of our feelings.
-We should see that we were confronted by a case of mistaken identity.
-Perhaps we do not face this evidence because we treasure our hate. If
-there were not a ‘person’ our hate could have no meaning; we could not
-hate an ‘administrative area,’ nor is there much satisfaction in
-humiliating it and dominating it. We can desire to dominate and
-humiliate a person, and are often ready to pay a high price for the
-pleasure. If we ceased to think of national States as persons, we might
-cease to think of them as conflicting interests, in competition with one
-another, and begin to think of them instead as associations within a
-great association.</p>
-
-<p>Take another very simple truth that we will not face: that our arms do,
-and must do, the things that raise our passions when done by the enemy.
-Our blockades and bombardments also kill old women and children. Our
-soldiers, too, the gallant lads who mount our aeroplanes, the sailors
-who man our blockades, are baby-killers. They must be; they cannot help
-it if they are to bomb or blockade at all. Yet we never do admit this
-obvious fact. We erect a sheer falsehood, and then protect ourselves
-against admitting it by being so ‘noble’ about it that we refuse to
-discuss it. We simply declare that in no circumstances could England, or
-English soldiers, ever make war upon women and children, or even be
-unchivalrous to them. That is a moral premise beyond or behind which
-patriotism will not permit our minds to go. If the ‘nobility’ of
-attitude had any relation to our real conduct, one would rejoice. When,
-during the armistice negotiations, the Germans exacted that they should
-be permitted means, after the surrender of their fleet, of feeding their
-people, a New York paper declared the condition an insult to the Allies.
-‘The Germans are prisoners,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_236" id="page_236"></a>{236}</span>’ it said, ‘and the Allies do not starve
-prisoners.’ But one discovers a few weeks later that these noble
-gestures are quite compatible with the maintenance of the blockade, on
-the ground that Germans for their sins ought to be starved. We then
-become the agents of Providence in punitive justice.</p>
-
-<p>When the late Lord Fisher<a name="FNanchor_93_93" id="FNanchor_93_93"></a><a href="#Footnote_93_93" class="fnanchor">[93]</a> came out squarely and publicly in defence
-of the killing of women and children (in the submarine sinking) as a
-necessary part of war, there seemed a chance for intellectual honesty in
-the matter; for a real examination of the principles of our conduct. If
-we faced the facts in this honest sailor-like fashion there was some
-hope either that we should refuse to descend to reprisals by
-disembowelling little girls; or, if it should appear that such things
-are inseparable from war, that it would help to get a new feeling about
-war. But Lord Fisher complains that the Editor of the paper to which he
-sent his letter suppressed it from the later editions of his paper for
-fear it should shock the public. Shock!</p>
-
-<p>You see, <i>our</i> shells falling on schools and circuses don’t disembowel
-little girls; our blockades don’t starve them. Everybody knows that
-British shells and British blockades would not do such things. When
-Britain blockades, pestilence and hunger and torture are not suffering;
-a dying child is not a dying child. Patriotism draws a shutter over our
-eyes and ears.</p>
-
-<p>When this degree of self-deception is possible, there is no infamy of
-which a kindly, humane, and emotionally moral people may not prove
-themselves capable; no moral contradiction or absurdity which mankind
-may not approve. Anything may become right, anything may become wrong.</p>
-
-<p>The evil is not only in its resultant inhumanities. It lies much more in
-the fact that this development of moral blinkers<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_237" id="page_237"></a>{237}</span> deprives us of the
-capacity to see where we are going, and what we are crushing underfoot;
-and that may well end by our walking over the precipice.</p>
-
-<p>During the War, we formed judgments of the German character which
-literally make it sub-human. For our praise of the French (during the
-same period) language failed us. Yet less than twenty years ago the
-rôles were reversed.<a name="FNanchor_94_94" id="FNanchor_94_94"></a><a href="#Footnote_94_94" class="fnanchor">[94]</a> The French were the mad dogs, and the Germans
-of our community of blood.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_238" id="page_238"></a>{238}</span></p>
-
-<p>The refusal to face the plain facts of life, a refusal made on grounds
-which we persuade ourselves are extremely noble, but which in fact
-result too often in simple falsehood and distortion, is revealed by the
-common pre-war attitude to the economic situation dealt with in this
-book. The present writer took the ground before the War that much of the
-dense population of modern Europe could not support itself save by
-virtue of an economic internationalism which political ideas (ideas
-which war would intensify) were tending to make impossible. Now it is
-obvious that before there can be a spiritual life, there must be a
-fairly adequate physical one. If life is a savage and greedy scramble
-over the means of sheer physical sustenance, there cannot be much in it
-that is noble and inspiring. The point of the argument was, as already
-mentioned, not that the economic pre-occupation <i>should</i> occupy the
-whole of life, but that it <i>will</i> if it is simply disregarded; the way
-to reduce the economic pre-occupation is to solve the economic problem.
-Yet these plain and undeniable truths were somehow twisted into the
-proposition that men went to war because they believed it ‘paid,’ in the
-stockbroking sense, and that if they saw it did not ‘pay’ they would not
-go to war. The task of attempting to find the conditions in which it
-will be possible for men to live at all with decent regard for their
-fellows, without drifting into cannibalistic struggles for sustenance
-one against another, is made to appear something sordid, a ‘usurer’s
-gospel.’ And on that ground, very largely, the ‘economics’ of
-international policy were neglected. We are still facing the facts. Self
-deception has become habitual.</p>
-
-<p>President Wilson failed to carry through the policy he had proclaimed,
-as greater men have failed in similar moral circumstances. The failure
-need not have been disastrous to the cause which he had espoused. It
-might have marked merely a step towards ultimate success, if he had
-admitted the failure. Had he said in effect: ‘Reaction has won this
-battle; we have been guilty of errors and shortcomings, but we shall
-maintain<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_239" id="page_239"></a>{239}</span> the fight, and avoid such errors in future,’ he would have
-created for the generation which followed a clear-cut issue. Whatever
-there was of courage and sincerity of purpose in the idealism he had
-created earlier in the War, would have rallied to his support. Just
-because such a declaration would have created an issue dividing men
-sharply and even bitterly, it would have united each side strongly; men
-would have had the two paths clearly and distinctly before their eyes,
-and though forced for the time along that of reaction, they would have
-known the direction in which they were travelling. Again and again
-victory has come out of defeat; again and again defeat has nerved men to
-greater effort.</p>
-
-<p>But when defeat is represented as victory by the trusted leader, there
-follows the subtlest and most paralysing form of confusion and doubt.
-Men no longer know who are the friends and who the enemies of the things
-they care for. When callous cruelty is called righteous, and cynical
-deception justice, men begin to lose their capacity to distinguish the
-one from the other, and to change sides without consciousness of their
-treason.</p>
-
-<p>In the field of social relationship, the better management by men of
-their society, a sincere facing of the simple truths of life, right
-conclusions from facts that are of universal knowledge, are of
-immeasurably greater importance than erudition. Indeed we see that again
-and again learning obscures in this field the simpler truths. The
-Germany that had grown up before the War is a case in point. Vast
-learning, meticulous care over infinite detail, had become the mark of
-German scholarship. But all the learning of the professors did not
-prevent a gross misreading of what, to the rest of the world, seemed all
-but self-evident&mdash;simple truths which perhaps would have been clearer if
-the learning had been less, used as it was to buttress the lusts of
-domination and power.</p>
-
-<p>The main errors of the Treaty (which, remember, was the work of the
-greatest diplomatic experts in Europe) reveal<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_240" id="page_240"></a>{240}</span> something similar. If the
-punitive element&mdash;which is still applauded&mdash;defeats finally the aims
-alike of justice, our own security, appeasement, disarmament, and sets
-up moral forces that will render our New World even more ferociously
-cruel and hopeless than the Old, it will not be because we were ignorant
-of the fact that ‘Germany’&mdash;or ‘Austria’ or ‘Russia’&mdash;is not a person
-that can be held responsible and punished in this simple fashion. It did
-not require an expert knowledge of economics to realise that a ruined
-Germany could not pay vast indemnities. Yet sometimes very learned men
-were possessed by these fallacies. It is not learning that is needed to
-penetrate them. A wisdom founded simply on the sincere facing of
-self-evident facts would have saved European opinion from its most
-mischievous excesses. This ignorance of the learned may perhaps be
-related to another phenomenon; a great increase in our understanding of
-inert matter, unaccompanied by any corresponding increase in our
-understanding of human conduct. This latter understanding demands a
-temperamental self-control and detachment, which mere technical
-knowledge does not ask. Although in technical science we have made such
-advances as would cause the Athenians, say, to look on us as gods, we
-show no corresponding advance upon them, or upon the Hebrew prophets for
-that matter, in the understanding of conduct and its motives. And the
-spectacle of Germany&mdash;of the modern world, indeed&mdash;so efficient in the
-management of matter, so clumsy in the understanding of the essentials
-of human relationship, reminds us once more of the futility of mere
-technical knowledge, unless accompanied by a better moral understanding.
-For without the latter we are unable to use the improvement in technique
-(as Europe is unable to use it to-day) for indispensable human ends. Or
-worse still, technical knowledge, in the absence of wisdom and
-discipline, merely gives us more efficient weapons of collective
-suicide. Butler’s fantasy of the machines which men have made acquiring
-a mind of their own, and then rounding upon<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_241" id="page_241"></a>{241}</span> their masters and
-destroying them, has very nearly come true. If some new force, like the
-release of atomic energy, had been discovered during this war, and
-applied (as Mr Wells has imagined it being applied) to bombs that would
-go on exploding without cessation for a week or two, we know that
-passions ran so high that both sides would have used them, as both sides
-in the next war will use super-poison gas and disease germs. Not only
-the destruction, therefore, but the passion and the ruthlessness, the
-fears and hates, the universal pre-emption of wealth for ‘defence’
-perpetually translating itself into preventive offence, would have
-grown. Man’s society would assuredly have been destroyed by the
-instruments that he himself had made, and Butler’s fantasy would have
-come true.</p>
-
-<p>It is coming true to-day. What starves Europe is not lack of technical
-knowledge; there is more technical knowledge than when Europe could feed
-itself. If we could combine our forces to effective co-operation, the
-Malthusian dragon could be kept at bay. It is the group of ideas which
-underlie the process of Balkanisation that stand in the way of turning
-our combined forces against Nature instead of against one another.</p>
-
-<p>We have gone wrong mainly in certain of the simpler and broader issues
-of human relationship, and this book has attempted to disentangle from
-the complex mass of facts in the international situation, those
-‘sovereign ideas’ which constitute in crises the basic factors of public
-action and opinion. In so doing there may have been some
-over-simplification. That will not greatly matter, if the result is some
-re-examination and clarification of the predominant beliefs that have
-been analysed. ‘Truth comes out of error more easily than out of
-confusion,’ as Bacon warned us. It is easier to correct a working
-hypothesis of society, which is wrong in some detail, than to achieve
-wise conduct in society without any social principle. If social or
-political phenomena are for us first an unexplained tangle of forces,
-and we live morally from hand to mouth, by opinions which have no
-guiding principle, our emotions will be at the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_242" id="page_242"></a>{242}</span> mercy first of one
-isolated fact or incident, and then of another.</p>
-
-<p>A certain parallel has more than once been suggested in these pages.
-European society is to-day threatened with disintegration as the result
-of ideas and emotions that have collected round Patriotism. A century or
-two since it was threatened by ideas and passions which gathered round
-religious dogma. By what process did we arrive at religious toleration
-as a social principle? That question has been suggested because to
-answer it may throw some light on our present problem of rendering
-Patriotism a social instead of an anti-social force.</p>
-
-<p>If to-day, for the most part, in Europe and America one sect can live
-beside another in peace, where a century or two ago there would have
-been fierce hatreds, wars, massacres, and burnings, it is not because
-the modern population is more learned in theology (it is probably less
-so), but rather conversely, because theological theory gave place to lay
-judgment in the ordinary facts of life.</p>
-
-<p>If we have a vast change in the general ideas of Europe in the religious
-sphere, in the attitude of men to dogma, in the importance which they
-attach to it, in their feeling about it; a change which for good or evil
-is a vast one in its consequences, a moral and intellectual revulsion
-which has swept away one great difficulty of human relationship and
-transformed society; it is because the laity have brought the discussion
-back to principles so broad and fundamental that the data became the
-facts of human life and experience&mdash;data with which the common man is as
-familiar as the scholar. Of the present-day millions for whom certain
-beliefs of the older theologians would be morally monstrous, how many
-have been influenced by elaborate study concerning the validity of this
-or that text? The texts simply do not weigh with them, though for
-centuries they were the only things that counted. What do weigh with
-them are profounder and simpler things&mdash;a sense of justice,
-compassion&mdash;things which would equally have led the man of the sixteenth
-century to question the texts and the premises of the Church,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_243" id="page_243"></a>{243}</span> if
-discussion had been free. It is because it was not free that the social
-instinct of the mass, the general capacity to order their relations so
-as to make it possible for them to live together, became distorted and
-vitiated. And the wars of religion resulted. To correct this vitiation,
-to abolish these disastrous hates and misconceptions, elaborate learning
-was not needed. Indeed, it was largely elaborate learning which had
-occasioned them. The judges who burned women alive for witchcraft, or
-inquisitors who sanctioned that punishment for heresy, had vast and
-terrible stores of learning. <i>What was needed was that these learned
-folk should question their premises in the light of facts of common
-knowledge.</i> It is by so doing that their errors are patent to the quite
-unlearned of our time. No layman was equipped to pass judgment on the
-historical reasons which might support the credibility of this or that
-miracle, or the intricate arguments which might justify this or that
-point of dogma. But the layman was as well equipped, indeed, he was
-better equipped than the schoolman, to question whether God would ever
-torture men everlastingly for the expression of honest belief; the
-observer of daily occurrences, to say nothing of the physicist, was as
-able as the theologian to question whether a readiness to believe
-without evidence is a virtue at all. Questions of the damnation of
-infants, eternal torment, were settled not by the men equipped with
-historical and ecclesiastical scholarship, but by the average man, going
-back to the broad truths, to first principles, asking very simple
-questions, the answer to which depended not upon the validity of texts,
-but upon correct reasoning concerning facts which are accessible to all;
-upon our general sense of life as a whole, and our more elementary
-institutions of justice and mercy; reasoning and intuitions which the
-learning of the expert often distorts.</p>
-
-<p>Exactly the service which extricated us from the intellectual and moral
-confusion that resulted in such catastrophes in the field of religion,
-is needed in the field of politics. From certain learned folk&mdash;writers,
-poets, professors (German and other),<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_244" id="page_244"></a>{244}</span> journalists, historians, and
-rulers&mdash;the public have taken a group of ideas concerning Patriotism,
-Nationalism, Imperialism, the nature of our obligation to the State, and
-so on, ideas which may be right or wrong, but which we are all agreed,
-will have to be very much changed if men are ever to live together in
-peace and freedom; just as certain notions concerning the institution of
-private property will have to be changed if the mass of men are to live
-in plenty.</p>
-
-<p>It is a commonplace of militarist argument that so long as men feel as
-they do about their Fatherland, about patriotism and nationalism,
-internationalism will be an impossibility. If that is true&mdash;and I think
-it is&mdash;peace and freedom and welfare will wait until those large issues
-have been raised in men’s minds with sufficient vividness to bring about
-a change of idea and so a change of feeling with reference to them.</p>
-
-<p>It is unlikely, to say the least, that the mass of Englishmen or
-Frenchmen will ever be in possession of detailed knowledge sufficient to
-equip them to pass judgment on the various rival solutions of the
-complex problems that face us, say, in the Balkans. And yet it was
-immediately out of a problem of Balkan politics that the War arose, and
-future wars may well arise out of those same problems if they are
-settled as badly in the future as in the past.</p>
-
-<p>The situation would indeed be hopeless if the nature of human
-relationship depended upon the possession by the people as a whole of
-expert knowledge in complex questions of that kind. But happily the
-Sarajevo murders would never have developed into a war involving twenty
-nations but for the fact that there had been cultivated in Europe
-suspicions, hatreds, insane passions, and cupidities, due largely to
-false conceptions (though in part also themselves prompting the false
-conceptions) of a few simple facts in political relationship;
-conceptions concerning the necessary rivalry of nations, the idea that
-what one nation gains another loses, that States are doomed by a fate
-over which they have no control to struggle together for the space and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_245" id="page_245"></a>{245}</span>
-opportunities of a limited world. But for the atmosphere that these
-ideas create (as false theological notions once created a similar
-atmosphere between rival religious groups) most of these at present
-difficult and insoluble problems of nationality and frontiers and
-government, would have solved themselves.</p>
-
-<p>The ideas which feed and inflame these passions of rivalry, hostility,
-fear, hate, will be modified, if at all, by raising in the mind of the
-European some such simple elementary questions as were raised when he
-began to modify his feeling about the man of rival religious belief. The
-Political Reformation in Europe will come by questioning, for instance,
-the whole philosophy of patriotism, the morality or the validity, in
-terms of human well-being, of a principle like that of ‘my country,
-right or wrong’;<a name="FNanchor_95_95" id="FNanchor_95_95"></a><a href="#Footnote_95_95" class="fnanchor">[95]</a> by questioning whether a people really benefit by
-enlarging the frontiers of their State; whether ‘greatness’ in a nation
-particularly matters; whether the man of the small State is not in all
-the great human values the equal of the man of the great Empire; whether
-the real problems of life are greatly affected by the colour of the
-flag; whether we have not loyalties to other things as well as to our
-State; whether we do not in our demand for national sovereignty ignore
-international obligation without which the nations can have neither
-security nor freedom; whether we should not refuse to kill or horribly
-mutilate a man merely because we differ from him in politics. And with
-those, if the emergence from chattel-slavery is to be complemented by
-the emergence from wage slavery, must be put similarly fundamental
-questions touching problems like that of private property and the
-relation of social freedom thereto; we must ask why, if it is rightly
-demanded of the citizen that his life shall be forfeit to the safety of
-the State, his surplus money, property, shall not be forfeit to its
-welfare.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_246" id="page_246"></a>{246}</span></p>
-
-<p>To very many, these questions will seem a kind of blasphemy, and they
-will regard those who utter them as the subjects of a loathsome
-perversion. In just that way the orthodox of old regarded the heretic
-and his blasphemies. And yet the solution of the difficulties of our
-time, this problem of learning to live together without mutual homicide
-and military slavery, depends upon those blasphemies being uttered.
-Because it is only in some such way that the premises of the differences
-which divide us, the realities which underlie them, will receive
-attention. It is not that the implied answer is necessarily the truth&mdash;I
-am not concerned now for a moment to urge that it is&mdash;but that until the
-problem is pushed back in our minds to these great yet simple issues,
-the will, temper, general ideas of Europe on this subject will remain
-unchanged. And if <i>they</i> remain unchanged so will its conduct and
-condition.</p>
-
-<p>The tradition of nationalism and patriotism, around which have gathered
-our chief political loyalties and instincts, has become in the actual
-conditions of the world an anti-social and disruptive force. Although we
-realize perhaps that a society of nations of some kind there must be,
-each unit proclaims proudly its anti-social slogan of sacred egoisms and
-defiant immoralism; its espousal of country as against right.<a name="FNanchor_96_96" id="FNanchor_96_96"></a><a href="#Footnote_96_96" class="fnanchor">[96]</a></p>
-
-<p>The danger&mdash;and the difficulty&mdash;resides largely in the fact that the
-instincts of gregariousness and group solidarity, which prompt the
-attitude of ‘my country right or wrong,’ are not in themselves evil:
-both gregariousness and pugnacity are indispensable to society.
-Nationality is a very precious manifestation of the instincts by which
-alone men can become socially<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_247" id="page_247"></a>{247}</span> conscious and act in some corporate
-capacity. The identification of ‘self’ with society, which patriotism
-accomplishes within certain limits, the sacrifice of self for the
-community which it inspires&mdash;even though only when fighting other
-patriotisms&mdash;are moral achievements of infinite hope.</p>
-
-<p>The Catharian heresy that Jehovah of the Old Testament is in reality
-Satan masquerading as God has this pregnant suggestion; if the Father of
-Evil ever does destroy us, we may be sure that he will come, not
-proclaiming himself evil, but proclaiming himself good, the very Voice
-of God. And that is the danger with patriotism and the instincts that
-gather round it. If the instincts of nationalism were simply evil, they
-would constitute no real danger. It is the good in them that has made
-them the instrument of the immeasurable devastation which they
-accomplish.</p>
-
-<p>That Patriotism does indeed transcend all morality, all religious
-sanctions as we have heretofore known them, can be put to a very simple
-test. Let an Englishman, recalling, if he can, his temper during the
-War, ask himself this question: Is there anything, anything whatsoever,
-that he would have refused to do, if the refusal had meant the triumph
-of Germany and the defeat of England? In his heart he knows that he
-would have justified any act if the safety of his country had hung upon
-it.</p>
-
-<p>Other patriotisms have like justifications. Yet would defeat,
-submission, even to Germany, involve worse acts than those we have felt
-compelled to commit during the War and since&mdash;in the work of making our
-power secure? Did the German ask of the Alsatian or the Pole worse than
-we have been compelled to ask of our own soldiers in Russia, India, or
-Ireland?</p>
-
-<p>The old struggle for power goes on. For the purpose of that struggle we
-are prepared to transform our society in any way that it may demand. For
-the purposes of the war for power we will accept anything that the
-strength of the enemy imposes: we will be socialist, autocratic,
-democratic, or communist; we will conscribe the bodies, souls, wealth of
-our people; we will<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_248" id="page_248"></a>{248}</span> proscribe, as we do, the Christian doctrine, and
-all mercy and humanity; we will organise falsehood and deceit, and call
-it statecraft and strategy; lie for the purpose of inflaming hate, and
-rejoice at the effectiveness of our propaganda; we will torture helpless
-millions by pestilence and famine&mdash;as we have done&mdash;and look on unmoved;
-our priests, in the name of Christ, will reprove misplaced pity, and
-call for the further punishment of the wicked, still greater efforts in
-the Fight for Right. We shall not care what transformations take place
-in our society or our natures; or what happens to the human spirit.
-Obediently, at the behest of the enemy&mdash;because, that is, his power
-demands that conduct of us&mdash;shall we do all those things, or anything,
-save only one: we will not negotiate or make a contract with him. <i>That</i>
-would limit our ‘independence’; by which we mean that his submission to
-our mastery would be less complete.</p>
-
-<p>We can do acts of infinite cruelty; disregard all accepted morality; but
-we cannot allow the enemy to escape the admission of defeat.</p>
-
-<p>If we are to correct the evils of the older tradition, and build up one
-which will restore to men the art of living together, we must honestly
-face the fact that the older tradition has failed. So long as the old
-loyalties and patriotisms, tempting us with power and dominion, calling
-to the deep hunger excited by those things, and using the banners of
-righteousness and justice, seem to offer security, and a society which,
-if not ideal, is at least workable, we certainly shall not pay the price
-which all profound change of habit demands. We have seen that as a fact
-of his history man only abandons power and force over others when it
-fails. At present, almost everywhere, we refuse to face the failure of
-the old forms of political power. We don’t believe that we need the
-co-operation of the foreigner, or we believe that we can coerce him.</p>
-
-<p>Little attention has been given here to the machinery of
-internationalism&mdash;League of Nations, Courts of Arbitration, Disarmament.
-This is not because machinery is unimportant.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_249" id="page_249"></a>{249}</span> But if we possessed the
-Will, if we were ready each to pay his contribution in some sacrifice of
-his independence, of his opportunity of domination, the difficulties of
-machinery would largely disappear. The story of America’s essay in
-internationalism has warned us of the real difficulty. Courts of
-Arbitration, Leagues of Nations, were devices to which American opinion
-readily enough agreed; too readily. For the event showed that the old
-conceptions were not changed. They had only been disregarded. No
-machinery of internationalism can work so long as the impulses and
-prepossessions of irresponsible nationalism retain their power. The test
-we must apply to our sincerity is our answer to the question:&mdash;What
-price, in terms of national independence, are we prepared to pay for a
-world law? What, in fact, <i>is</i> the price that is asked of us? To this
-last question, the pages that precede, and to some extent those that
-follow, have attempted to supply an answer. We should gain many times in
-freedom and independence the contribution in those things that we made.</p>
-
-<p>Perhaps we may be driven by hunger&mdash;the actual need of our children for
-bread&mdash;to forsake a method which cannot give them bread or freedom, in
-favour of one that can. But, for the failure of power to act as a
-deterrent upon our desire for it, we must perceive the failure. Our
-angers and hatreds obscure that failure, or render us indifferent to it.
-Hunger does not necessarily help the understanding; it may bemuse it by
-passion and resentment. We may in our passion wreck civilisation as a
-passionate man in his anger will injure those he loves. Yet, well fed,
-we may refuse to concern ourselves with problems of the morrow. The
-mechanical motive will no longer suffice. In the simpler, more animal
-forms of society, the instinct of each moment, with no thought of
-ultimate consequence, may be enough. But the Society which man has built
-up can only go forward or be preserved as it began: by virtue of
-something which is more than instinct. On man is cast the obligation to
-be intelligent; the responsibility of will; the burden of thought.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_250" id="page_250"></a>{250}</span></p>
-
-<p>If some of us have felt that, beyond all other evils which translate
-themselves into public policy, those with which these pages deal
-constitute the greatest, it is not because war means the loss of life,
-the killing of men. Many of our noblest activities do that. There are so
-many of us that it is no great disaster that a few should die. It is not
-because war means suffering. Suffering endured for a conscious and
-clearly conceived human purpose is redeemed by hope of real achievement;
-it may be a glad sacrifice for some worthy end. But if we have
-floundered hopelessly into a bog because we have forgotten our end and
-purpose in the heat of futile passion, the consolation which we may
-gather from the willingness with which men die in the bog should not
-stand in the way of our determination to rediscover our destination and
-create afresh our purpose. These pages have been concerned very little
-with the loss of life, the suffering of the last seven years. What they
-have dealt with mainly is the fact that the War has left us a less
-workable society, has been marked by an increase in the forces of chaos
-and disintegration. That is the ultimate indictment of this War as of
-all wars: the attitude towards life, the ideas and motive forces out of
-which it grows, and which it fosters, makes men less able to live
-together, their society less workable, and must end by making free
-society impossible. War not only arises out of the failure of human
-wisdom, from the defect of that intelligence by which alone we can
-successfully fight the forces of nature; it perpetuates that failure and
-worsens it. For only by a passion which keeps thought at bay can the
-‘morale’ of war be maintained. The very justification which we advance
-for our war-time censorships and propaganda, our suspension of free
-speech and discussion, is that if we gave full value to the enemy’s
-case, saw him as he really is, blundering, foolish, largely helpless
-like ourselves; saw the defects of our own and our Allies’ policy, saw
-what our own acts in war really involved and how nearly they resembled
-those which aroused our anger when done by the enemy, if we saw all
-this<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_251" id="page_251"></a>{251}</span> and kept our heads, we should abandon war. A thousand times it has
-been explained that in an impartial mood we cannot carry on war; that
-unless the people come to feel that all the right is on our side and all
-the wrong on the enemy’s, morale will fail. The most righteous war can
-only be kept going by falsehood. The end of that falsehood is that our
-mind collapses. And although the mind, thought, judgment, are not
-all-sufficient for man’s salvation, it is impossible without them.
-Behind all other explanations of Europe’s creeping paralysis is the
-blindness of the millions, their inability to see the effects of their
-demands and policy, to see where they are going.</p>
-
-<p>Only a keener feeling for truth will enable them to see. About
-indifferent things&mdash;about the dead matter that we handle in our
-science&mdash;we can be honest, impartial, true. That is why we succeed in
-dealing with matter. But about the things we care for&mdash;which are
-ourselves&mdash;our desires and lusts, our patriotisms and hates, we find a
-harder test of thinking straight and truly. Yet there is the greater
-need; only by that rectitude shall we be saved. There is no refuge but
-in truth.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_252" id="page_252"></a>{252}</span></p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_253" id="page_253"></a>{253}</span></p>
-
-<h2><a name="ADDENDUM" id="ADDENDUM"></a>ADDENDUM<br /><br />
-<small>THE ARGUMENT OF <i>THE GREAT ILLUSION</i></small></h2>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_254" id="page_254"></a>{254}</span></p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_255" id="page_255"></a>{255}</span></p>
-
-<h2><a name="ADD-I" id="ADD-I"></a>CHAPTER I<br /><br />
-<small>THE ‘IMPOSSIBILITY OF WAR’ MYTH</small></h2>
-
-<p class="nind">I<small>T</small> will illustrate certain difficulties which have marked&mdash;and mark&mdash;the
-presentation of the argument of this book, if the reader will consider
-for a few minutes the justice of certain charges which have been brought
-against <i>The Great Illusion</i>. Perhaps the commonest is that it argued
-that ‘war had become impossible.’ The truth of that charge at least can
-very easily be tested. The first page of that book, the preface,
-referring to the thesis it proposed to set out, has these words: ‘the
-argument is <i>not</i> that war is impossible, but that it is futile.’ The
-next page but one describes what the author believes to be the main
-forces at work in international politics: a fierce struggle for
-preponderant power ‘based on the universal assumption that a nation, in
-order to find outlets for expanding population and increasing industry,
-or simply to ensure the best conditions possible for its people, is
-necessarily pushed to territorial expansion and the exercise of
-political force against others ... that nations being competing units,
-advantage, in the last resort, goes to the possessor of preponderant
-military force, the weaker going to the wall, as in the other forms of
-the struggle for life.’ A whole chapter is devoted to the evidence which
-goes to show that this aggressive and warlike philosophy was indeed the
-great actuating force in European politics. The first two paragraphs of
-the first chapter forecast the likelihood of an Anglo-German explosion;
-that chapter goes on to declare that the pacifist effort then current
-was<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_256" id="page_256"></a>{256}</span> evidently making no headway at all against the tendencies towards
-rivalry and conflict. In the third chapter the ideas underlying those
-tendencies are described as ‘so profoundly mischievous,’ and so
-‘desperately dangerous,’ as to threaten civilisation itself. A chapter
-is devoted to showing that the fallacy and folly of those all but
-universal ideas was no guarantee at all that the nations would not act
-upon them. (Particularly is the author insistent on the fact that the
-futility of war will never in itself suffice to stop war. The folly of a
-given course of action will only be a deterrent to the degree to which
-men realise its folly. That was why the book was written.) A warning is
-uttered against any reliance upon the Hague Conferences, which, it is
-explained at length, are likely to be quite ineffective against the
-momentum of the motives of aggression. A warning is uttered towards the
-close of the book against any reduction of British armaments,
-accompanied, however, by the warning that mere increase of armaments
-unaccompanied by change of policy, a Political Reformation in the
-direction of internationalism, will provoke the very catastrophe it is
-their object to avoid; only by that change of policy could we take a
-real step towards peace ‘instead of <i>a step towards war, to which the
-mere piling up of armaments, unchecked by any other factor, must in the
-end inevitably lead</i>.’<a name="FNanchor_97_97" id="FNanchor_97_97"></a><a href="#Footnote_97_97" class="fnanchor">[97]</a></p>
-
-<p>The last paragraph of the book asks the reader which of two courses we
-are to follow: a determined effort towards placing European policy on a
-new basis, or a drift along the current of old instincts and ideas, a
-course which would condemn us to the waste of mountains of treasure and
-the spilling of oceans of blood.</p>
-
-<p>Yet, it is probably true to say that, of the casual newspaper references
-(as distinct from reviews) made during the last ten years to the book
-just described, four out of five are to the effect that its author said
-‘war was impossible because it did not pay.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_257" id="page_257"></a>{257}</span>’</p>
-
-<p>The following are some passages referred to in the above summary:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘Not the facts, but men’s opinions about the facts is what matters.
-This is because men’s conduct is determined, not necessarily by the
-right conclusion from facts, but the conclusion they believe to be
-right.... As long as Europe is dominated by the old beliefs, those
-beliefs will have virtually the same effect in politics as though
-they were intrinsically sound.’&mdash;(p. 327.)</p>
-
-<p>‘It is evident that so long as the misconception we are dealing
-with is all but universal in Europe, so long as the nations believe
-that in some way the military and political subjugation of others
-will bring with it a tangible material advantage to the conqueror,
-we all do, in fact, stand in danger from such aggression. Not his
-interest, but what he deems to be his interest, will furnish the
-real motive of our prospective enemy’s action. And as the illusion
-with which we are dealing does, indeed, dominate all those minds
-most active in European politics, we must, while this remains the
-case, regard an aggression, even such as that which Mr Harrison
-foresees, as within the bounds of practical politics.... On this
-ground alone I deem that we or any other nation are justified in
-taking means of self-defence to prevent such aggression. This is
-not, therefore, a plea for disarmament irrespective of the action
-of other nations. So long as current political philosophy in Europe
-remains what it is, I would not urge the reduction of our war
-budget by a single sovereign.’&mdash;(p. 329.)</p>
-
-<p>‘The need for defence arises from the existence of a motive for
-attack.... That motive is, consequently, part of the problem of
-defence.... Since as between the European peoples we are dealing
-with in this matter, one party is as able in the long run to pile
-up armaments as the other, we cannot get nearer to solution by
-armaments alone; we must get at the original provoking cause&mdash;the
-motive making for aggression....<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_258" id="page_258"></a>{258}</span> If that motive results from a
-true judgment of the facts; if the determining factor in a nation’s
-well-being and progress is really its power to obtain by force
-advantage over others, the present situation of armament rivalry
-tempered by war is a natural and inevitable one.... If, however,
-the view is a false one, our progress towards solution will be
-marked by the extent to which the error becomes generally
-recognised in European public opinion.’&mdash;(p. 337.)</p>
-
-<p>‘In this matter it seems fatally easy to secure either one of two
-kinds of action: that of the “practical man” who limits his
-energies to securing a policy which will perfect the machinery of
-war and disregard anything else; or that of the Pacifist, who,
-persuaded of the brutality or immorality of war, is apt to
-deprecate effort directed at self-defence. What is needed is the
-type of activity which will include both halves of the problem:
-provision for education, for a Political Reformation in this
-matter, <i>as well as</i> such means of defence as will meantime
-counterbalance the existing impulse to aggression. To concentrate
-on either half to the exclusion of the other half is to render the
-whole problem insoluble.’&mdash;(p. 330.)</p>
-
-<p>‘Never has the contest of armament been so keen as when Europe
-began to indulge in Peace Conferences. Speaking roughly and
-generally, the era of great armament expansion dates from the first
-Hague Conference. The reader who has appreciated the emphasis laid
-in the preceding pages on working through the reform of ideas will
-not feel much astonishment at the failure of efforts such as these.
-The Hague Conferences represented an attempt, not to work through
-the reform of ideas, but to modify by mechanical means the
-political machinery of Europe, without reference to the ideas which
-had brought it into existence.</p>
-
-<p>‘Arbitration treaties, Hague Conferences, International Federation,
-involve a new conception of relationship between nations. But the
-ideals&mdash;political, economical, and social&mdash;on which the old
-conceptions are based, our terminology, our<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_259" id="page_259"></a>{259}</span> political literature,
-our old habits of thought, diplomatic inertia, which all combine to
-perpetuate the old notions, have been left serenely undisturbed.
-And surprise is expressed that such schemes do not succeed.’&mdash;(p.
-350.)</p></div>
-
-<p>Very soon after the appearance of the book, I find I am shouting myself
-hoarse in the Press against this monstrous ‘impossibility of war’
-foolishness. An article in the <i>Daily Mail</i> of September 15th, 1911,
-begins thus:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>’ ... One learns, with some surprise, that the very simple facts to
-which I have now for some years been trying to draw the attention
-they deserve, teach that:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>1. War is now impossible.</p>
-
-<p>2. War would ruin both the victor and the vanquished.</p>
-
-<p>3. War would leave the victor worse off than the vanquished.</p>
-
-<p>‘May I say with every possible emphasis that nothing I have ever
-written justifies any one of these conclusions.</p>
-
-<p>‘I have always, on the contrary, urged that:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>(1) War is, unhappily, quite possible, and, in the prevailing
-condition of ignorance concerning certain elementary
-politico-economic facts, even likely.</p>
-
-<p>(2) There is nothing to justify the conclusion that war would
-“ruin” both victor and vanquished. Indeed, I do not quite know what
-the “ruin” of a nation means.</p>
-
-<p>(3) While in the past the vanquished has often profited more by
-defeat than he could possibly have done by victory, it is no
-necessary result, and we are safest in assuming that the vanquished
-will suffer most.’</p></div>
-
-<p>Nearly two years later I find myself still engaged in the same task.
-Here is a letter to the <i>Saturday Review</i> (March 8th, 1913):&mdash;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_260" id="page_260"></a>{260}</span></p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘You are good enough to say that I am “one of the very few
-advocates of peace at any price who is not altogether an ass.” And
-yet you also state that I have been on a mission “to persuade the
-German people that war in the twentieth century is impossible.” If
-I had ever tried to teach anybody such sorry rubbish I should be
-altogether an unmitigated ass. I have never, of course, nor so far
-as I am aware, has any one ever said that war was impossible.
-Personally, not only do I regard war as possible, but extremely
-likely. What I have been preaching in Germany is that it is
-impossible for Germany to benefit by war, especially a war against
-us; and that, of course, is quite a different matter.’</p></div>
-
-<p>It is true that if the argument of the book as a whole pointed to the
-conclusion that war was ‘impossible,’ it would be beside the point to
-quote passages repudiating that conclusion. They might merely prove the
-inconsequence of the author’s thought. But the book, and the whole
-effort of which it was a part, would have had no <i>raison d’être</i> if the
-author had believed war unlikely or impossible. It was a systematic
-attack on certain political ideas which the author declared were
-dominant in international politics. If he had supposed those powerful
-ideas were making <i>not</i> for war, but for peace, why as a pacifist should
-he be at such pains to change them? And if he thought those
-war-provoking ideas which he attacked were not likely to be put into
-effect, why, in that case either, should he bother at all? Why, for that
-matter, should a man who thought war impossible engage in not too
-popular propaganda against war&mdash;against something which could not occur?</p>
-
-<p>A moment’s real reflection on the part of those responsible for this
-description of <i>The Great Illusion</i>, should have convinced them that it
-could not be a true one.</p>
-
-<p>I have taken the trouble to go through some of the more serious
-criticisms of the book to see whether this extraordinary confusion was
-created in the mind of those who actually read<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_261" id="page_261"></a>{261}</span> the book instead of
-reading about it. So far as I know, not a single serious critic has come
-to a conclusion that agrees with the ‘popular’ verdict. Several going to
-the book after the War, seem to express surprise at the absence of any
-such conclusion. Professor Lindsay writes:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘Let us begin by disposing of one obvious criticism of the
-doctrines of <i>The Great Illusion</i> which the out-break of war has
-suggested. Mr Angell never contended that war was impossible,
-though he did contend that it must always be futile. He insisted
-that the futility of war would not make war impossible or armament
-unnecessary until all nations recognised its futility. So long as
-men held that nations could advance their interests by war, so long
-war would last. His moral was that we should fight militarism,
-whether in Germany or in our own country, as one ought to fight an
-idea with better ideas. He further pointed out that though it is
-pleasanter to attack the wrong ideals held by foreigners, it is
-more effective to attack the wrong ideals held in our own
-country.... The pacifist hope was that the outbreak of a European
-war, which was recognised as quite possible, might be delayed
-until, with the progress of pacifist doctrine, war became
-impossible. That hope has been tragically frustrated, but if the
-doctrines of pacifism are convincing and irrefutable, it was not in
-itself a vain hope. Time was the only thing it asked of fortune,
-and time was denied it.’</p></div>
-
-<p>Another post-war critic&mdash;on the other side of the Atlantic&mdash;writes:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘Mr. Angell has received too much solace from the unwisdom of his
-critics. Those who have denounced him most vehemently are those who
-patently have not read his books. For example, he cannot properly
-be classed, as frequently asserted in recent months, as one of
-those Utopian pacifists who went about<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_262" id="page_262"></a>{262}</span> proclaiming war impossible.
-A number of passages in <i>The Great Illusion</i> show him fully alive
-to the danger of the present collapse; indeed, from the narrower
-view of politics his book was one of the several fruitless attempts
-to check that growing estrangement between England and Germany
-whose sinister menace far-sighted men discerned. Even less
-justifiable are the flippant sneers which discard his argument as
-mercenary or sordid. Mr Angell has never taken an “account book” or
-“breeches pocket” view of war. He inveighs against what he terms
-its political and moral futilities as earnestly as against its
-economic futility.’</p></div>
-
-<p>It may be said that there must be some cause for so persistent a
-misrepresentation. There is. Its cause is that obstinate and deep-seated
-fatalism which is so large a part of the prevailing attitude to war and
-against which the book under consideration was a protest. Take it as an
-axiom that war comes upon us as an outside force, like the rain or the
-earthquake, and not as something that we can influence, and a man who
-‘does not believe in war,’ must be a person who believes that war is not
-coming;<a name="FNanchor_98_98" id="FNanchor_98_98"></a><a href="#Footnote_98_98" class="fnanchor">[98]</a> that men are naturally peaceable. To be a Pacifist because
-one believes that the danger of war is very great indeed, or because one
-believes men to be naturally extremely prone to war, is a position
-incomprehensible until we have rid our minds of the fatalism which
-regards war as an ‘inevitable’ result of uncontrollable forces.</p>
-
-<p>What is a writer to do, however, in the face of persistent
-misrepresentation such as this? If he were a manufacturer of soap and
-some one said his soap was underweight, or he were a grocer and some one
-said his sugar was half sand, he could of course obtain enormous
-damages. But a mere writer, having given some years of his life to the
-study of the most important problem of his time, is quite helpless when
-a tired<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_263" id="page_263"></a>{263}</span> headline writer, or a journalist indulging his resentment, or
-what he thinks is likely to be the resentment of his readers, describes
-a book as proclaiming one thing when as a matter of simple fact it
-proclaims the exact contrary.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>So much for myth or misrepresentation No. 1. We come to a second,
-namely, that <i>The Great Illusion</i> is an appeal to avarice; that it urges
-men not to defend their country ‘because to do so does not pay;’ that it
-would have us place ‘pocket before patriotism,’ a view reflected in
-Benjamin Kidd’s last book, pages of which are devoted to the
-condemnation of the ‘degeneracy and futility’ of resting the cause of
-peace on no higher ground than that it is ‘a great illusion to believe
-that a national policy founded on war can be a profitable policy for any
-people in the long run.’<a name="FNanchor_99_99" id="FNanchor_99_99"></a><a href="#Footnote_99_99" class="fnanchor">[99]</a> He quotes approvingly Sir William Robertson
-Nicoll for denouncing those who condemn war because ‘it would postpone
-the blessed hour of tranquil money getting.’<a name="FNanchor_100_100" id="FNanchor_100_100"></a><a href="#Footnote_100_100" class="fnanchor">[100]</a> As a means of
-obscuring truths which it is important to realise, of creating by
-misrepresentation a moral repulsion to a thesis, and thus depriving it
-of consideration, this second line of attack is even more important than
-the first.</p>
-
-<p>To say of a book that it prophesied ‘the impossibility of war,’ is to
-imply that it is mere silly rubbish, and its author a fool. Sir William
-Robertson Nicoll’s phrase would of course imply that its doctrine was
-morally contemptible.</p>
-
-<p>The reader must judge, after considering dispassionately what follows,
-whether this second description is any truer than the first.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_264" id="page_264"></a>{264}</span></p>
-
-<h2><a name="ADD-II" id="ADD-II"></a>CHAPTER II<br /><br />
-<small>‘ECONOMIC’ AND ‘MORAL’ MOTIVES IN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS</small></h2>
-
-<p class="nind"><i>The Great Illusion</i> dealt&mdash;among other factors of international
-conflict&mdash;with the means by which the population of the world is driven
-to support itself; and studied the effect of those efforts to find
-sustenance upon the relations of States. It therefore dealt with
-economics.</p>
-
-<p>On the strength of this, certain critics (like some of those quoted in
-the last chapter) who cannot possibly have read the book thoroughly,
-seem to have argued: If this book about war deals with ‘economics,’ it
-must deal with money and profits. To bring money and profits into a
-discussion of war is to imply that men fight for money, and won’t fight
-if they don’t get money from it; that war does not ‘pay.’ This is wicked
-and horrible. Let us denounce the writer for a shallow Hedonist and
-money-grubber....</p>
-
-<p>As a matter of simple fact, as we shall see presently, the book was
-largely an attempt to show that the economic argument usually adduced
-for a particularly ruthless form of national selfishness was not a sound
-argument; that the commonly invoked justification for a selfish
-immoralism in Foreign Policy was a fallacy, an illusion. Yet the critics
-somehow managed to turn what was in fact an argument against national
-egoism into an argument for selfishness.</p>
-
-<p>What was the political belief and the attitude towards life which <i>The
-Great Illusion</i> challenged? And what was the counter principle which it
-advocated as a substitute therefore?<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_265" id="page_265"></a>{265}</span></p>
-
-<p>It challenged the theory that the vital interests of nations are
-conflicting, and that war is part of the inevitable struggle for life
-among them; the view that, in order to feed itself, a nation with an
-expanding population must conquer territory and so deprive others of the
-means of subsistence; the view that war is the ‘struggle for
-bread.’<a name="FNanchor_101_101" id="FNanchor_101_101"></a><a href="#Footnote_101_101" class="fnanchor">[101]</a> In other words, it challenged the economic excuse or
-justification for the ‘sacred egoism’ which is so largely the basis of
-the nationalist political philosophy, an excuse, which, as we shall see,
-the nationalist invokes if not to deny the moral law in the
-international field, at least to put the morality governing the
-relations of States on a very different plane from that which governs
-the relations of individuals. As against this doctrine <i>The Great
-Illusion</i> advanced the proposition, among others, that the economic or
-biological assumption on which it is based is false; that the policy of
-political power which results from this assumption is economically
-unworkable, its benefits an illusion; that the amount of sustenance
-provided by the earth is not a fixed quantity so that what one nation
-can seize another loses, but is an expanding quantity, its amount
-depending mainly upon the efficiency with which men co-operate in their
-exploitation of Nature. As already pointed out, a hundred thousand Red
-Indians starved in a country where a hundred million modern Americans
-have abundance. The need for co-operation, and the faith on which alone
-it can be maintained, being indispensable to our common welfare, the
-violation of the social compact, international obligation, will be
-visited with penalties just as surely as are violations of the moral law
-in relations between individuals. The economic factor is not the sole or
-the largest element in human relations, but it is the one which occupies
-the largest place in public law and policy. (Of two contestants, each
-can retain his religion or literary preferences without depriving the
-other of like possessions; they cannot both retain the same piece of
-material property.) The economic<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_266" id="page_266"></a>{266}</span> problem is vital in the sense of
-dealing with the means by which we maintain life; and it is invoked as
-justification for the political immoralism of States. Until the
-confusions concerning it are cleared up, it will serve little purpose to
-analyse the other elements of conflict.</p>
-
-<p>What justifies the assumption that the predatory egotism, sacred or
-profane, here implied, was an indispensable part of the pre-war
-political philosophy, explaining the great part of policy in the
-international field?<a name="FNanchor_102_102" id="FNanchor_102_102"></a><a href="#Footnote_102_102" class="fnanchor">[102]</a></p>
-
-<p>First the facts: the whole history of international conflict in the
-decade or two which preceded the War; and the terms of the Treaty of
-Versailles. If you would find out the nature of a people’s (or a
-statesman’s) political morality, note their conduct when they have
-complete power to carry their desires into effect. The terms of peace,
-and the relations of the Allies with Russia, show a deliberate and
-avowed pre-occupation with sources of oil, iron, coal; with indemnities,
-investments, old debts; with Colonies, markets; the elimination of
-commercial rivals&mdash;with all these things to a degree very much greater
-and in a fashion much more direct than was assumed in <i>The Great
-Illusion</i>.</p>
-
-<p>But the tendency had been evident in the conflicts which preceded the
-War. These conflicts, in so far as the Great Powers were concerned, had
-been in practically every case over territory, or roads to territory;
-over Madagascar, Egypt, Morocco, Korea, Mongolia; ‘warm water’ ports,
-the division<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_267" id="page_267"></a>{267}</span> of Africa, the partitioning of China, loans thereto and
-concessions therein; the Persian Gulf, the Bagdad Railway, the Panama
-Canal. Where the principle of nationality was denied by any Great Power
-it was generally because to recognise it might block access to the sea
-or raw materials, throw a barrier across the road to undeveloped
-territory.</p>
-
-<p>There was no denial of this by those who treated of public affairs. Mr
-Lloyd George declared that England would be quite ready to go to war
-rather than have the Morocco question settled without reference to her.
-Famous writers like Mahan did not balk at conclusions like this:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘It is the great amount of unexploited raw material in territories
-politically backward, and now imperfectly possessed by the nominal
-owners, which at the present moment constitutes the temptation and
-the impulse to war of European States.’<a name="FNanchor_103_103" id="FNanchor_103_103"></a><a href="#Footnote_103_103" class="fnanchor">[103]</a></p></div>
-
-<p>Nor to justify them thus:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘More and more Germany needs the assured importation of raw
-materials, and, where possible, control of regions productive of
-such materials. More and more she requires assured markets, and
-security as to the importation of food, since less and less
-comparatively is produced within her own borders for her rapidly
-increasing population. This all means security at sea.... Yet the
-supremacy of Great Britain in European seas means a perpetually
-latent control of German commerce.... The world has long been
-accustomed to the idea of a predominant naval power, coupling it
-accurately with the name of Great Britain: and it has been noted
-that such power, when achieved, is commonly found associated with
-commercial and industrial pre-eminence, the struggle for which is
-now in progress between Great Britain and Germany.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_268" id="page_268"></a>{268}</span> Such
-pre-eminence forces a nation to seek markets, and, where possible,
-to control them to its own advantage by preponderant force, the
-ultimate expression of which is possession.... From this flow two
-results: the attempt to possess, and the organisation of force by
-which to maintain possession already achieved.... This statement is
-simply a specific formulation of the general necessity stated;
-itself an inevitable link in a chain of logical sequence: industry,
-markets, control, navy, bases....<a name="FNanchor_104_104" id="FNanchor_104_104"></a><a href="#Footnote_104_104" class="fnanchor">[104]</a></p></div>
-
-<p>Mr Spenser Wilkinson, of a corresponding English school, is just as
-definite:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘The effect of growth is an expansion and an increase of power. It
-necessarily affects the environment of the growing organisms; it
-interferes with the <i>status quo</i>. Existing rights and interests are
-disturbed by the fact of growth, which is itself a change. The
-growing community finds itself hedged in by previously existing and
-surviving conditions, and fettered by prescriptive rights. There
-is, therefore, an exertion of force to overcome resistance. No
-process of law or of arbitration can deal with this phenomenon,
-because any tribunal administering a system of right or law must
-base its decision upon the tradition of the past which has become
-unsuited to the new conditions that have arisen. The growing State
-is necessarily expansive or aggressive.’<a name="FNanchor_105_105" id="FNanchor_105_105"></a><a href="#Footnote_105_105" class="fnanchor">[105]</a></p></div>
-
-<p>Even more decisive as a definite philosophy are the propositions of Mr
-Petre, who, writing on ‘The Mandate of Humanity,’ says:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘The conscience of a State cannot, therefore, be as delicate, as
-disinterested, as altruistic, as that of the noblest individuals.
-The State exists primarily for its own people and only<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_269" id="page_269"></a>{269}</span> secondarily
-for the rest of the world. Hence, given a dispute in which it feels
-its rights and welfare to be at stake, it may, however erroneously,
-set aside its moral obligations to international society in favour
-of its obligations to the people for whom it exists.</p>
-
-<p>‘But no righteous conscience, it may be said, could give its
-verdict against a solemn pledge taken and reciprocated; no
-righteous conscience could, in a society of nations, declare
-against the ends of that society. Indeed I think it could, and
-sometimes would, if its sense of justice were outraged, if its duty
-to those who were bone of its bone and flesh of its flesh came into
-conflict with its duty to those who were not directly belonging to
-it....</p>
-
-<p>‘The mechanism of a State exists mainly for its own preservation,
-and cannot be turned against this, its legitimate end. The
-conscience of a State will not traverse this main condition, and to
-weaken its conscience is to weaken its life....</p>
-
-<p>‘The strong will not give way to the weak; the one who thinks
-himself in the right will not yield to those whom he believes to be
-in the wrong; the living generations will not be restrained by the
-promises to a dead one; nature will not be controlled by
-conventions.’<a name="FNanchor_106_106" id="FNanchor_106_106"></a><a href="#Footnote_106_106" class="fnanchor">[106]</a></p></div>
-
-<p>It is the last note that gives the key to popular feeling about the
-scramble for territory. In <i>The Great Illusion</i> whole pages of popular
-writing are quoted to show that the conception of the struggle as in
-truth the struggle for survival had firmly planted itself in the popular
-consciousness. One of the critics who is so severe upon the present
-writer for trying to undermine the economic foundation of that popular
-creed, Benjamin Kidd, himself testifies to the depth and sweep of this
-pseudo-Darwinism (he seems to think indeed that it is true Darwinism,
-which it is not, as Darwin himself pointed out). He declares that ‘there
-is no precedent in the history of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_270" id="page_270"></a>{270}</span> human mind to compare with the
-saturnalia of the Western intellect’ which followed the popularisation
-of what he regards as Darwin’s case and I would regard as a distortion
-of it. Kidd says it ‘touched the profoundest depth of the psychology of
-the West.’ ‘Everywhere throughout civilisation an almost inconceivable
-influence was given to the doctrine of the law of biological necessity
-in books of statecraft and war-craft, of expanding military empires.’
-‘Struggle for life,’ ‘a biological necessity,’ ‘survival of the fit,’
-had passed into popular use and had come to buttress popular feeling
-about the inevitability of war and its ultimate justification and the
-uselessness of organising the natives save on a basis of conflict.</p>
-
-<p>We are now in a position to see the respective moral positions of the
-two protagonists.</p>
-
-<p>The advocate of Political Theory No. 1, which an overwhelming
-preponderance of evidence shows to be the prevailing theory, says:&mdash;You
-Pacifists are asking us to commit national suicide; to sacrifice future
-generations to your political ideals. Now, as voters or statesmen we are
-trustees, we act for others. Sacrifice, suicide even, on behalf of an
-ideal, may be justified when we are sacrificing ourselves. But we cannot
-sacrifice others, our wards. Our first duty is to our own nation, our
-own children; to their national security and future welfare. It is
-regrettable if, by the conquests, wars, blockades, rendered necessary by
-those objects other people starve, and lose their national freedom and
-see their children die; but that is the hard necessity of life in a hard
-world.</p>
-
-<p>Advocate of Political Theory No. 2 says:&mdash;I deny that the excuse of
-justification which you give for your cruelty to others is a valid
-excuse or justification. Pacifism does not ask you to sacrifice your
-people, to betray the interest of your wards. You will serve their
-interests best by the policy we advocate. Your children will not be more
-assured of their sustenance by these conquests that attempt to render
-the feeding of foreign children more difficult; yours will be less
-secure.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_271" id="page_271"></a>{271}</span> By co-operating with those others instead of using your
-energies against them, the resultant wealth....</p>
-
-<p>Advocate No. 1:&mdash;Wealth! Interest! You introduce your wretched economic
-calculations of interest into a question of Patriotism. You have the
-soul of a bagman concerned only to restore ‘the blessed hour of tranquil
-money-getting,’ and Sir William Robertson Nicoll shall denounce you in
-the <i>British Weekly</i>!</p>
-
-<p>And the discussion usually ends with this moral flourish and gestures of
-melodramatic indignation.</p>
-
-<p>But are they honest gestures? Here are the upholders of a certain
-position who say:&mdash;‘In certain circumstances as when you are in a
-position of trustee, the only moral course, the only right course, is to
-be guided by the interests of your ward. Your duty then demands a
-calculation of advantage. You may not be generous at your ward’s
-expense. This is the justification of the “sacred egoism” of the poet.’</p>
-
-<p>If in that case a critic says: ‘Very well. Let us consider what will be
-the best interests of your ward,’ is it really open to the first party
-to explain in a paroxysm of moral indignation: ‘You are making a
-shameful and disgraceful appeal to selfishness and avarice?’</p>
-
-<p>This is not an attempt to answer one set of critics by quoting another
-set. The self-same people take those two attitudes. I have quoted above
-a passage of Admiral Mahan’s in which he declares that nations can never
-be expected to act from any other motive than that of interest (a
-generalisation, by the way, from which I should most emphatically
-dissent). He goes on to declare that Governments ‘must put first the
-rival interests of their own wards ... their own people,’ and are thus
-pushed to the acquisition of markets by means of military predominance.</p>
-
-<p>Very well. <i>The Great Illusion</i> argued some of Admiral Mahan’s
-propositions in terms of interest and advantage. And then, when he
-desired to demolish that argument, he did not<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_272" id="page_272"></a>{272}</span> hesitate in a long
-article in the <i>North American Review</i> to write as follows:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘The purpose of armaments, in the minds of those maintaining them,
-is not primarily an economical advantage, in the sense of depriving
-a neighbour State of its own, or fear of such consequences to
-itself through the deliberate aggression of a rival having that
-particular end in view.... The fundamental proposition of the book
-is a mistake. Nations are under no illusion as to the
-unprofitableness of war in itself.... The entire conception of the
-work is itself an illusion, based upon a profound misreading of
-human action. To regard the world as governed by self-interest only
-is to live in a non-existent world, an ideal world, a world
-possessed by an idea much less worthy than those which mankind, to
-do it bare justice, persistently entertains.’<a name="FNanchor_107_107" id="FNanchor_107_107"></a><a href="#Footnote_107_107" class="fnanchor">[107]</a></p></div>
-
-<p>Admiral Mahan was a writer of very great and deserved reputation, in the
-very first rank of those dealing with the relations of power to national
-politics, certainly incapable of any conscious dishonesty of opinion.
-Yet, as we have seen, his opinion on the most important fact of all
-about war&mdash;its ultimate purpose, and the reasons which justify it or
-provoke it&mdash;swings violently in absolute self-contradiction. And the
-flat contradiction here revealed shows&mdash;and this surely is the moral of
-such an incident&mdash;that he could never have put to himself detachedly,
-coldly, impartially the question: ‘What do I really believe about the
-motives of nations in War? To what do the facts as a whole really
-point?’ Had he done so, it might have been revealed to him that what
-really determined his opinion about the causes of war was a desire to
-justify the great profession of arms, to one side of which he had
-devoted his life and given years of earnest labour and study; to defend
-from some imputation of futility one of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_273" id="page_273"></a>{273}</span> most ancient of man’s
-activities that calls for some at least of the sublimest of human
-qualities. If a widened idealism clearly discredited that ancient
-institution, he was prepared to show that an ineradicable conflict of
-national interests rendered it inevitable. If it was shown that war was
-irrelevant to those conflicts, or ineffective as a means of protecting
-the interests concerned, he was prepared to show that the motives
-pushing to war were not those of interest at all.</p>
-
-<p>It may be said that none the less the thesis under discussion
-substitutes one selfish argument for another; tries by appealing to
-self-interest (the self-interest of a group or nation) to turn
-selfishness from a destructive result to a more social result. Its basis
-is self. Even that is not really true. For, first, that argument ignores
-the question of trusteeship; and, secondly, it involves a confusion
-between the motive of a given policy and the criterion by which its
-goodness or badness shall be tested.</p>
-
-<p>How is one to deal with the claim of the ‘mystic nationalist’ (he exists
-abundantly even outside the Balkans) that the subjugation of some
-neighbouring nationalism is demanded by honour; that only the great
-State can be the really good State; that power&mdash;‘majesty,’ as the
-Oriental would say&mdash;is a thing good in itself?<a name="FNanchor_108_108" id="FNanchor_108_108"></a><a href="#Footnote_108_108" class="fnanchor">[108]</a> There are ultimate
-questions as to what is good and what is bad that no argument can
-answer; ultimate values which cannot be discussed. But one can reduce
-those unarguable values to a minimum by appealing to certain social
-needs. A State which has plenty of food may not be a good State; but a
-State which cannot feed its population<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_274" id="page_274"></a>{274}</span> cannot be a good State, for in
-that case the citizens will be hungry, greedy, and violent.</p>
-
-<p>In other words, certain social needs and certain social utilities&mdash;which
-we can all recognise as indispensables&mdash;furnish a ground of agreement
-for the common action without which no society can be established. And
-the need for such a criterion becomes more manifest as we learn more of
-the wonderful fashion in which we sublimate our motives. A country
-refuses to submit its dispute to arbitration, because its ‘honour’ is
-involved. Many books have been written to try and find out precisely
-what honour of this kind is. One of the best of them has decided that it
-is anything which a country cares to make it. It is never the presence
-of coal, or iron, or oil, which makes it imperative to retain a given
-territory: it is honour (as Italy’s Foreign Minister explained when
-Italy went to war for the conquest of Tripoli). Unfortunately, rival
-States have also impulses of honour which compel them to claim the same
-undeveloped territory. Nothing can prove&mdash;or disprove&mdash;that honour, in
-such circumstances, is invoked by each or either of the parties
-concerned to make a piece of acquisitiveness or megalomania appear as
-fine to himself as possible: that, just because he has a lurking
-suspicion that all is not well with the operation, he seeks to justify
-it to himself with fine words that have a very vague content. But on
-this basis there can be no agreement. If, however, one shifts the
-discussion to the question of what is best for the social welfare of
-both, one can get a <i>modus vivendi</i>. For each to admit that he has no
-right so to use his power as to deprive the other of means of life,
-would be the beginning of a code which could be tested. Each might
-conceivably have that right to deprive the other of means of livelihood,
-if it were a choice between the lives of his own people or others.</p>
-
-<p>The economic fact is the test of the ethical claim: if it really be true
-that we must withhold sources of food from others because otherwise our
-own would starve, there is some ethical<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_275" id="page_275"></a>{275}</span> justification for such use of
-our power. If such is not the fact, the whole moral issue is changed,
-and with it, to the degree to which it is mutually realised, the social
-outlook and attitude. The knowledge of interdependence is part, at
-least, of an attitude which makes the ‘social sense’&mdash;the sense that one
-kind of arrangement is fair and workable, and another is not. To bring
-home the fact of this interdependence is not simply an appeal to
-selfishness: it is to reveal a method by which an apparently
-irreconcilable conflict of vital needs can be reconciled. The sense of
-interdependence, of the need of one for another, is part of the
-foundation of the very difficult art of living together.</p>
-
-<p>Much mischief arises from the misunderstanding of the term ‘economic
-motive.’ Let us examine some further examples of this. One is a common
-confusion of terms: an economic motive may be the reverse of selfish.
-The long sustained efforts of parents to provide fittingly for their
-children&mdash;efforts continued, it may be, through half a lifetime&mdash;are
-certainly economic. Just as certainly they are not selfish in any exact
-sense of the term. Yet something like this confusion seems to overlie
-the discussion of economics in connection with war.</p>
-
-<p>Speaking broadly, I do not believe that men ever go to war from a cold
-calculation of advantage or profit. I never have believed it. It seems
-to me an obvious and childish misreading of human psychology. I cannot
-see how it is possible to imagine a man laying down his life on the
-battle-field for personal gain. Nations do not fight for their money or
-interests, they fight for their rights, or what they believe to be their
-rights. The very gallant men who triumphed at Bull Run or
-Chancellorsville were not fighting for the profits on slave-labour: they
-were fighting for what they believed to be their independence: the
-rights, as they would have said, to self-government or, as we should now
-say, of self-determination. Yet it was a conflict which arose out of
-slave<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_276" id="page_276"></a>{276}</span> labour: an economic question. Now the most elementary of all
-rights, in the sense of the first right which a people will claim, is
-the right to existence&mdash;the right of a population to bread and a decent
-livelihood.<a name="FNanchor_109_109" id="FNanchor_109_109"></a><a href="#Footnote_109_109" class="fnanchor">[109]</a> For that nations certainly will fight. Yet, as we see,
-it is a right which arises out of an economic need or conflict. We have
-seen how it works as a factor in our own foreign policy: as a compelling
-motive for the command of the sea. We believe that the feeding of these
-islands depends upon it: that if we lost it our children might die in
-the streets and the lack of food compel us to an ignominious surrender.
-It is this relation of vital food supply to preponderant sea power which
-has caused us to tolerate no challenge to the latter. We know the part
-which the growth of the German Navy played in shaping Anglo-Continental
-relations before the War; the part which any challenge to our naval
-preponderance has always played in determining our foreign policy. The
-command of the sea, with all that that means in the way of having built
-up a tradition, a battle-cry in politics, has certainly bound up with it
-this life and death fact of feeding our population. That is to say it is
-an economic need. Yet the determination of some millions of Englishmen
-to fight for this right to life, to die rather than see the daily bread
-of their people in jeopardy, would be adequately described by some
-phrase about Englishmen going to war because it ‘paid.’ It would be a
-silly or dishonest gibe. Yet that is precisely the kind of gibe that I
-have had to face these fifteen years in attempting to disentangle the
-forces and motives underlying international conflict.</p>
-
-<p>What picture is summoned to our minds by the word ‘economics’ in
-relation to war? To the critics whose indignation is so excited at the
-introduction of the subject at all into the discussion of war&mdash;and they
-include, unhappily, some of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_277" id="page_277"></a>{277}</span> great names of English
-literature&mdash;‘economic’ seems to carry no picture but that of an obese
-Semitic stockbroker, in quaking fear for his profits. This view cannot
-be said to imply either much imagination or much sense of reality. For
-among the stockbrokers, the usurers, those closest to financial
-manipulation and in touch with financial changes, are to be found some
-groups numerically small, who are more likely to gain than to lose by
-war; and the present writer has never suggested the contrary.</p>
-
-<p>But the ‘economic futility’ of war expresses itself otherwise: in half a
-Continent unable to feed or clothe or warm itself; millions rendered
-neurotic, abnormal, hysterical by malnutrition, disease, and anxiety;
-millions rendered greedy, selfish, and violent by the constant strain of
-hunger; resulting in ‘social unrest’ that threatens more and more to
-become sheer chaos and confusion: the dissolution and disintegration of
-society. Everywhere, in the cities, are the children who cry and who are
-not fed, who raise shrunken arms to our statesmen who talk with
-pride<a name="FNanchor_110_110" id="FNanchor_110_110"></a><a href="#Footnote_110_110" class="fnanchor">[110]</a> of their stern measures of ‘rigorous’ blockade. Rickety and
-dying children, and undying hate for us, their murderers, in the hearts
-of their mothers&mdash;these are the human realities of the ‘economics of
-war.’</p>
-
-<p>The desire to prevent these things, to bring about an order that would
-render possible both patriotism and mercy, would save us from the
-dreadful dilemma of feeding our own children only by the torture and
-death of others equally innocent&mdash;the effort to this end is represented
-as a mere appeal to selfishness and avarice, something mean and ignoble,
-a degradation of human motive.</p>
-
-<p>‘These theoretical dilemmas do not state accurately the real conditions
-of politics,’ the reader may object. ‘No one proposes to inflict famine
-as a means of enforcing our policy’ ... ‘England does not make war on
-women and children.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_278" id="page_278"></a>{278}</span>’</p>
-
-<p>Not one man or woman in a million, English or other, would wittingly
-inflict the suffering of starvation upon a single child, if the child
-were visible to his eyes, present in his mind, and if the simple human
-fact were not obscured by the much more complex and artificial facts
-that have gathered round our conceptions of patriotism. The heaviest
-indictment of the military-nationalist philosophy we are discussing is
-that it manages successfully to cover up human realities by dehumanising
-abstractions. From the moment that the child becomes a part of that
-abstraction&mdash;‘Russia,’ ‘Austria,’ ‘Germany’&mdash;it loses its human
-identity, and becomes merely an impersonal part of the political problem
-of the struggle of our nation with others. The inverted moral alchemy,
-by which the golden instinct that we associate with so much of direct
-human contact is transformed into the leaden cruelty of nationalist hate
-and high statecraft, has been dealt with at the close of Part I. When in
-tones of moral indignation it is declared that Englishmen ‘do not make
-war on women and children,’ we must face the truth and say that
-Englishmen, like all peoples, do make such war.</p>
-
-<p>An action in public policy&mdash;the proclamation of the blockade, or the
-confiscation of so much tonnage, or the cession of territory, or the
-refusal of a loan&mdash;these things are remote and vague; not only is the
-relation between results and causes remote and sometimes difficult to
-establish, but the results themselves are invisible and far away. And
-when the results of a policy are remote, and can be slurred over in our
-minds, we are perfectly ready to apply, logically and ruthlessly, the
-most ferocious of political theories. It is of supreme importance then
-what those theories happen to be. When the issue of war and peace hangs
-in the balance, the beam may well be kicked one way or the other by our
-general political philosophy, these somewhat vague and hazy notions
-about life being a struggle, and nature red of tooth and claw, about
-wars being part of the cosmic process, sanctioned by professors and
-bishops and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_279" id="page_279"></a>{279}</span> writers. It may well be these vague notions that lead us to
-acquiesce in the blockade or the newest war. The typhus or the rickets
-do not kill or maim any the less because we do not in our minds connect
-those results with the political abstractions that we bandy about so
-lightly. And we touch there the greatest service which a more ‘economic’
-treatment of European problems may perform. If the Treaty of Versailles
-had been more economic it would also have been a more humane and human
-document. If there had been more of Mr Keynes and less of M. Clemenceau,
-there would have been not only more food in the world, but more
-kindliness; not only less famine, but less hate; not only more life, but
-a better way of life; those living would have been nearer to
-understanding and discarding the way of death.</p>
-
-<p>Let us summarise the points so far made with reference to the ‘economic’
-motive.</p>
-
-<p>We need not accept any hard and fast (and in the view of the present
-writer, unsound) doctrine of economic determinism, in order to admit the
-truth of the following:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>1. Until economic difficulties are so far solved as to give the mass of
-the people the means of secure and tolerable physical existence,
-economic considerations and motives will tend to exclude all others. The
-way to give the spiritual a fair chance with ordinary men and women is
-not to be magnificently superior to their economic difficulties, but to
-find a solution for them. Until the economic dilemma is solved, no
-solution of moral difficulties will be adequate. If you want to get rid
-of the economic preoccupation, you must solve the worst of the economic
-problem.</p>
-
-<p>2. In the same way the solution of the economic conflict between nations
-will not of itself suffice to establish peace; but no peace is possible
-until that conflict is solved. That makes it of sufficient importance.</p>
-
-<p>3. The ‘economic’ problem involved in international politics the use of
-political power for economic ends&mdash;is also one of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_280" id="page_280"></a>{280}</span> Right, including the
-most elemental of all rights, that to exist.</p>
-
-<p>4. The answer which we give to that question of Right will depend upon
-our answer to the actual query of <i>The Great Illusion</i>: must a country
-of expanding population expand its territory or trade by means of its
-political power, in order to live? Is the political struggle for
-territory a struggle for bread?</p>
-
-<p>5. If we take the view that the truth is contained in neither an
-unqualified affirmative nor an unqualified negative, then all the more
-is it necessary that the interdependence of peoples, the necessity for a
-truly international economy, should become a commonplace. A wider
-realisation of those facts would help to create that pre-disposition
-necessary for a belief in the workability of voluntary co-operation, a
-belief which must precede any successful attempt to make such
-co-operation the basis of an international order.</p>
-
-<p>6. The economic argument of <i>The Great Illusion</i>, if valid, destroys the
-pseudo-scientific justification for political immoralism, the doctrine
-of State necessity, which has marked so much of classical statecraft.</p>
-
-<p>7. The main defects of the Treaty of Versailles are due to the pressure
-of a public opinion obsessed by just those ideas of nations as persons,
-of conflicting interests, which <i>The Great Illusion</i> attempted to
-destroy. If the Treaty had been inspired by the ideas of interdependence
-of interest, it would have been not only more in the interests of the
-Allies, but morally sounder, providing a better ethical basis for future
-peace.</p>
-
-<p>8. To go on ignoring the economic unity and interdependence of Europe,
-to refuse to subject nationalist pugnacities to that needed unity
-because ‘economics’ are sordid, is to refuse to face the needs of human
-life, and the forces that shape it. Such an attitude, while professing
-moral elevation, involves a denial of the right of others to live. Its
-worst defect, perhaps, is that its heroics are fatal to intellectual
-rectitude, to truth. No society built upon such foundations can stand.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_281" id="page_281"></a>{281}</span></p>
-
-<h2><a name="ADD-III" id="ADD-III"></a>CHAPTER III<br /><br />
-<small>THE GREAT ILLUSION ARGUMENT</small></h2>
-
-<p class="nind">T<small>HE</small> preceding chapters have dealt rather with misconceptions concerning
-<i>The Great Illusion</i> than with its positive propositions. What, outlined
-as briefly as possible, was its central argument?</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>That argument was an elaboration of these propositions: Military
-preponderance, conquest, as a means to man’s most elemental
-needs&mdash;bread, sustenance&mdash;is futile, because the processes (exchange,
-division of labour) to which the dense populations of modern Western
-society are compelled to resort, cannot be exacted by military coercion;
-they can only operate as the result of a large measure of voluntary
-acquiescence by the parties concerned. A realisation of this truth is
-indispensable for the restraint of the instinctive pugnacities that
-hamper human relationship, particularly where nationalism enters.<a name="FNanchor_111_111" id="FNanchor_111_111"></a><a href="#Footnote_111_111" class="fnanchor">[111]</a>
-The competition for power so stimulates those pugnacities and fears,
-that isolated national power cannot ensure a nation’s political security
-or independence. Political security and economic well-being can only be
-ensured by international <span class="pagenum"><a name="page_282" id="page_282"></a>{282}</span>co-operation. This must be economic as well as
-political, be directed, that is, not only at pooling military forces for
-the purpose of restraining aggression, but at the maintenance of some
-economic code which will ensure for all nations, whether militarily
-powerful or not, fair economic opportunity and means of subsistence.</p>
-
-<p>It was, in other words, an attempt to clear the road to a more workable
-international policy by undermining the main conceptions and
-prepossessions inimical to an international order.<a name="FNanchor_112_112" id="FNanchor_112_112"></a><a href="#Footnote_112_112" class="fnanchor">[112]</a> It did not
-elaborate machinery, but the facts it dealt with point clearly to
-certain conclusions on that head.</p>
-
-<p>While arguing that prevailing beliefs (false beliefs for the most part)
-and feelings (largely directed by the false beliefs) were the
-determining factors in international politics, the author challenged the
-prevailing assumption of the unchangeability of those ideas and
-feelings, particularly the proposition that war between human groups
-arises out of instincts and emotions incapable of modification or
-control or re-direction by conscious effort. The author placed equal
-emphasis on both parts of the proposition&mdash;that dealing with the alleged
-immutability of human pugnacity and ideas, and that which challenged the
-representation of war as an inevitable struggle for physical<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_283" id="page_283"></a>{283}</span>
-sustenance&mdash;if only because no exposure of the biological fallacy would
-be other than futile if the former proposition were true.<a name="FNanchor_113_113" id="FNanchor_113_113"></a><a href="#Footnote_113_113" class="fnanchor">[113]</a></p>
-
-<p>If conduct in these matters is the automatic reaction to uncontrollable
-instinct and is not affected by ideas, or if ideas themselves are the
-mere reflection of that instinct, obviously it is no use attempting
-demonstrations of futility, economic or other. The more we demonstrate
-the intensity of our inherent pugnacity and irrationalism, the more do
-we in fact demonstrate the need for the conscious control of those
-instincts. The alternative conclusion is fatalism: an admission not only
-that our ship is not under control, but that we have given up the task
-of getting it under control. We have surrendered our freedom.</p>
-
-<p>Moreover, our record shows that the direction taken by our
-pugnacities&mdash;their objective&mdash;is in fact largely determined by
-traditions and ideas which are in part at least the sum of conscious
-intellectual effort. The history of religious persecution&mdash;its wars,
-inquisitions, repressions&mdash;shows a great change (which we must admit as
-a fact, whether we regard it as good or bad) not only of idea but of
-feeling.<a name="FNanchor_114_114" id="FNanchor_114_114"></a><a href="#Footnote_114_114" class="fnanchor">[114]</a> The book rejected<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_284" id="page_284"></a>{284}</span> instinct as sufficient guide and urged
-the need of discipline by intelligent foresight of consequence.</p>
-
-<p>To examine our subconscious or unconscious motives of conduct is the
-first step to making them conscious and modifying them.</p>
-
-<p>This does not imply that instincts&mdash;whether of pugnacity or other&mdash;can
-readily be repressed by a mere effort of will. But their direction, the
-object upon which they expend themselves, will depend upon our
-interpretation of facts. If we interpret the hailstorm or the curdled
-milk in one way, our fear and hatred of the witch is intense; the same
-facts interpreted another way make the witch an object of another
-emotion, pity.</p>
-
-<p>Reason may be a very small part of the apparatus of human conduct
-compared with the part played by the unconscious and subconscious, the
-instinctive and the emotional. The power of a ship’s compass is very
-small indeed compared with the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_285" id="page_285"></a>{285}</span> power developed by the engines. But the
-greater the power of the engines, the greater will be the disaster if
-the relatively tiny compass is deflected and causes the ship to be
-driven on to the rocks. The illustration indicates, not exactly but with
-sufficient truth, the relationship of ‘reason’ to ‘instinct.’</p>
-
-<p>The instincts that push to self-assertion, to the acquisition of
-preponderant power, are so strong that we shall only abandon that method
-as the result of perceiving its futility. Co-operation, which means a
-relationship of partnership and give and take, will not succeed till
-force has failed.</p>
-
-<p>The futility of power as a means to our most fundamental and social ends
-is due mainly to two facts, one mechanical, and the other moral. The
-mechanical fact is that if we really need another, our power over him
-has very definite limits. Our dependence on him gives him a weapon
-against us. The moral fact is that in demanding a position of
-domination, we ask something to which we should not accede if it were
-asked of us: the claim does not stand the test of the categorical
-imperative. If we need another’s labour, we cannot kill him; if his
-custom, we cannot forbid him to earn money. If his labour is to be
-effective, we must give him tools, knowledge; and these things can be
-used to resist our exactions. To the degree to which he is powerful for
-service he is powerful for resistance. A nation wealthy as a customer
-will also be ubiquitous as a competitor.</p>
-
-<p>The factors which have operated to make physical compulsion (slavery) as
-a means of obtaining service less economical than service for reward,
-operate just as effectively between nations. The employment of military
-force for economic ends is an attempt to apply indirectly the principle
-of chattel-slavery to groups; and involves the same disadvantages.<a name="FNanchor_115_115" id="FNanchor_115_115"></a><a href="#Footnote_115_115" class="fnanchor">[115]</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_286" id="page_286"></a>{286}</span></p>
-
-<p>In so far as coercion represents a means of securing a wider and more
-effective social co-operation as against a narrower social co-operation,
-or more anarchic condition, it is likely to be successful and to justify
-itself socially. The imposition of Western government upon backward
-peoples approximates to the role of police; the struggles between the
-armed forces of rival Western Powers do not. The function of a police
-force is the exact contrary to that of armies competing with one
-another.<a name="FNanchor_116_116" id="FNanchor_116_116"></a><a href="#Footnote_116_116" class="fnanchor">[116]</a></p>
-
-<p>The demonstration of the futility of conquest rested mainly on these
-facts. After conquest the conquered people cannot be<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_287" id="page_287"></a>{287}</span> killed. They
-cannot be allowed to starve. Pressure of population on means of
-subsistence has not been reduced, but probably increased, since the
-number of mouths to fill eliminated by the casualty lists is not
-equivalent to the reduced production occasioned by war. To impose by
-force (e.g. exclusion from raw materials) a lower standard of living,
-creates (<i>a</i>) resistance which involves costs of coercion (generally in
-military establishments, but also in the political difficulties in which
-the coercion of hostile peoples&mdash;as in Alsace-Lorraine and
-Ireland&mdash;generally involves their conqueror), costs which must be
-deducted from the economic advantage of the conquest; and (<i>b</i>) loss of
-markets which may be indispensable to countries (like Britain) whose
-prosperity depends upon an international division of labour. A
-population that lives by exchanging its coal and iron for (say) food,
-does not profit by reducing the productivity of subject peoples engaged
-in food production.</p>
-
-<p>In <i>The Great Illusion</i> the case was put as follows:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘When we conquer a nation in these days, we do not exterminate it:
-we leave it where it was. When we “overcome” the servile races, far
-from eliminating them, we give them added chances of life by
-introducing order, etc., so that the lower human quality tends to
-be perpetuated by conquest by the higher. If ever it happens that
-the Asiatic races challenge the white in the industrial or military
-field, it will be in large part thanks to the work of race
-conservation, which has been the result of England’s conquest in
-India, Egypt, and Asia generally.’&mdash;(pp. 191-192.)</p>
-
-<p>‘When the division of labour was so little developed that every
-homestead produced all that it needed, it mattered nothing if part
-of the community was cut off from the world for weeks and months at
-a time. All the neighbours of a village or homestead might be slain
-or harassed, and no inconvenience resulted. But if to-day an
-English county is by a general railroad strike cut off for so much
-as forty-eight hours from the rest of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_288" id="page_288"></a>{288}</span> economic organism, we
-know that whole sections of its population are threatened with
-famine. If in the time of the Danes England could by some magic
-have killed all foreigners, she would presumably have been the
-better off. If she could do the same thing to-day half her
-population would starve to death. If on one side of the frontier a
-community is, say, wheat-producing, and on the other
-coal-producing, each is dependent for its very existence on the
-fact of the other being able to carry on its labour. The miner
-cannot in a week set to and grow a crop of wheat; the farmer must
-wait for his wheat to grow, and must meantime feed his family and
-dependents. The exchange involved here must go on, and each party
-have fair expectation that he will in due course be able to reap
-the fruits of his labour, or both starve; and that exchange, that
-expectation, is merely the expression in its simplest form of
-commerce and credit; and the interdependence here indicated has, by
-the countless developments of rapid communication, reached such a
-condition of complexity that the interference with any given
-operation affects not merely the parties directly involved, but
-numberless others having at first sight no connection therewith.</p>
-
-<p>‘The vital interdependence here indicated, cutting athwart
-frontiers, is largely the work of the last forty years; and it has,
-during that time, so developed as to have set up a financial
-interdependence of the capitals of the world, so complex that
-disturbance in New York involves financial and commercial
-disturbance in London, and, if sufficiently grave, compels
-financiers of London to co-operate with those of New York to put an
-end to the crisis, not as a matter of altruism, but as a matter of
-commercial self-protection. The complexity of modern finance makes
-New York dependent on London, London upon Paris, Paris upon Berlin,
-to a greater degree than has ever yet been the case in history.
-This interdependence is the result of the daily use of those
-contrivances of civilisation which date from yesterday&mdash;the rapid
-post, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_289" id="page_289"></a>{289}</span> instantaneous dissemination of financial and commercial
-information by means of telegraphy, and generally the incredible
-progress of rapidity in communication which has put the half-dozen
-chief capitals of Christendom in closer contact financially, and
-has rendered them more dependent the one upon the other than were
-the chief cities of Great Britain less than a hundred years
-ago.&mdash;(pp. 49-50.)</p>
-
-<p>‘Credit is merely an extension of the use of money, and we can no
-more shake off the domination of the one than we can of the other.
-We have seen that the bloodiest despot is himself the slave of
-money, in the sense that he is compelled to employ it. In the same
-way no physical force can in the modern world set at naught the
-force of credit. It is no more possible for a great people of the
-modern world to live without credit than without money, of which it
-is a part.... The wealth of the world is not represented by a fixed
-amount of gold or money now in the possession of one Power, and now
-in the possession of another, but depends on all the unchecked
-multiple activities of a community for the time being. Check that
-activity, whether by imposing tribute, or disadvantageous
-commercial conditions, or an unwelcome administration which sets up
-sterile political agitation, and you get less wealth&mdash;less wealth
-for the conqueror, as well as less for the conquered. The broadest
-statement of the case is that all experience&mdash;especially the
-experience indicated in the last chapter&mdash;shows that in trade by
-free consent carrying mutual benefit we get larger results for
-effort expended than in the exercise of physical force which
-attempts to exact advantage for one party at the expense of the
-other.’&mdash;(pp. 270-272.)</p></div>
-
-<p>In elaboration of this general thesis it is pointed out that the
-processes of exchange have become too complex for direct barter, and can
-only take place by virtue of credit; and it is by the credit system, the
-‘sensory nerve’ of the economic organism,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_290" id="page_290"></a>{290}</span> that the self-injurious
-results of economic war are first shown. If, after a victorious war, we
-allow enemy industry and international trade to go on much as before,
-then obviously our victory will have had very little effect on the
-fundamental economic situation. If, on the other hand, we attempt for
-political or other reasons to destroy our enemy’s industry and trade, to
-keep him from the necessary materials of it, we should undermine our own
-credit by diminishing the exchange value of much of our own real wealth.
-For this reason it is ‘a great illusion’ to suppose that by the
-political annexation of colonies, territories with iron-mines,
-coal-mines, we enrich ourselves by the amount of wealth their
-exploitation represents.<a name="FNanchor_117_117" id="FNanchor_117_117"></a><a href="#Footnote_117_117" class="fnanchor">[117]</a></p>
-
-<p>The large place which such devices as an international credit system
-must take in our international economy, adds enormously to the
-difficulty of securing any ‘spoils of victory’ in the shape of
-indemnity. A large indemnity is not impossible, but the only condition
-on which it can be made possible&mdash;a large foreign trade by the defeated
-people&mdash;is not one that will be readily accepted by the victorious
-nation. Yet the dilemma is absolute: the enemy must do a big foreign
-trade (or deliver in lieu of money large quantities of goods) which will
-compete with home production, or he can pay no big indemnity&mdash;nothing
-commensurate with the cost of modern war.</p>
-
-<p>Since we are physically dependent on co-operation with<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_291" id="page_291"></a>{291}</span> foreigners, it
-is obvious that the frontiers of the national State are not co-terminous
-with the frontiers of our society. Human association cuts athwart
-frontiers. The recognition of the fact would help to break down that
-conception of nations as personalities which plays so large a part in
-international hatred. The desire to punish this or that ‘nation’ could
-not long survive if we had in mind, not the abstraction, but the babies,
-the little girls, old men, in no way responsible for the offences that
-excited our passions, whom we treated in our minds as a single
-individual.<a name="FNanchor_118_118" id="FNanchor_118_118"></a><a href="#Footnote_118_118" class="fnanchor">[118]</a></p>
-
-<p>As a means of vindicating a moral, social, religious, or cultural
-ideal&mdash;as of freedom or democracy&mdash;war between States, and still more
-between Alliances, must be largely ineffective for two main reasons.
-First, because the State and the moral unit do not coincide. France or
-the British Empire could not stand as a unit for Protestanism as opposed
-to Catholicism, Christianity as opposed to Mohammedanism, or
-Individualism as opposed to Socialism, or Parliamentary Government as
-opposed to Bureaucratic Autocracy, or even for European ascendancy as
-against Coloured Races. For both Empires include large coloured
-elements; the British Empire is more Mohammedan than Christian, has
-larger areas under autocratic than under Parliamentary government; has
-powerful parties increasingly Socialistic. The State power in both cases
-is being used, not to suppress, but to give actual vitality to the
-non-Christian or non-European or coloured elements that it has
-conquered. The second great reason why it is futile to attempt to use
-the military power of States for ends such as freedom and democracy, is
-that the instincts to which it is compelled to appeal, the spirit it
-must cultivate and the methods it is compelled increasingly to employ,
-are themselves inimical to the sentiment upon which freedom must rest.
-Nations that have won their freedom as the result of military<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_292" id="page_292"></a>{292}</span> victory,
-usually employ that victory to suppress the freedom of others. To rest
-our freedom upon a permanent basis of nationalist military power, is
-equivalent to seeking security from the moral dangers of Prussianism by
-organising our States on the Prussian model.</p>
-
-<p>Our real struggle is with nature: internecine struggles between men
-lessen the effectiveness of the human army. A Continent which supported
-precariously, with recurrent famine, a few hundred thousand savages
-fighting endlessly between themselves, can support, abundantly a hundred
-million whites who can manage to maintain peace among themselves and
-fight nature.</p>
-
-<p>Nature here includes human nature. Just as we turn the destructive
-forces of external nature from our hurt to our service, not by their
-unintelligent defiance, but by utilising them through a knowledge of
-their qualities, so can the irrepressible but not ‘undirectable’ forces
-of instinct, emotion, sentiment, be turned by intelligence to the
-service of our greatest and most permanent needs.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_293" id="page_293"></a>{293}</span></p>
-
-<h2><a name="ADD-IV" id="ADD-IV"></a>CHAPTER IV<br /><br />
-<small>ARGUMENTS NOW OUT OF DATE</small></h2>
-
-<p class="nind">F<small>OR</small> the purposes of simplicity and brevity the main argument of <i>The
-Great Illusion</i> assumed the relative permanence of the institution of
-private property in Western society, and the persistence of the tendency
-of victorious belligerents to respect it, a tendency which had steadily
-grown in strength for five hundred years. The book assumed that the
-conqueror would do in the future what he has done to a steadily
-increasing degree in the past, especially as the reasons for such
-policy, in terms of self-interest, have so greatly grown in force during
-the last generation or two. To have argued its case in terms of
-non-existent and hypothetical conditions which might not exist for
-generations or centuries, would have involved hopelessly bewildering
-complications. And the decisive reason for not adding this complication
-was the fact that <i>though it would vary the form of the argument, it
-would not effect the final conclusion</i>.</p>
-
-<p>As already explained in the first part of this book (Chapter II) this
-war has marked a revolution in the position of private property and the
-relation of the citizen to the State. The Treaty of Versailles departs
-radically from the general principles adhered to, for instance, in the
-Treaty of Frankfurt; the position of German traders and that of the
-property of German citizens does not at all to-day resemble the position
-in which the Treaty of Frankfurt left the French trader and French
-private property.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_294" id="page_294"></a>{294}</span></p>
-
-<p>The fact of the difference has already been entered into at some length.
-It remains to see how the change affects the general argument adopted in
-<i>The Great Illusion</i>.</p>
-
-<p>It does not affect its final conclusions. The argument ran: A conqueror
-cannot profit by ‘loot’ in the shape of confiscations, tributes,
-indemnities, which paralyse the economic life of the defeated enemy.
-They are economically futile. They are unlikely to be attempted, but if
-they are attempted they will still be futile.<a name="FNanchor_119_119" id="FNanchor_119_119"></a><a href="#Footnote_119_119" class="fnanchor">[119]</a></p>
-
-<p>Events have confirmed that conclusion, though not the expectation that
-the enemy’s economic life would be left undisturbed. We have started a
-policy which does injure the economic life of the enemy. The more it
-injures him, the less it pays us. And we are abandoning it as rapidly as
-nationalist hostilities will permit us. In so far as pre-war conditions
-pointed to the need of a definitely organised international economic
-code, the situation created by the Treaty has only made the need more
-visible and imperative. For, as already explained in the first Part, the
-old understandings enabled industry to be built up on an international
-basis; the Treaty of Versailles and its confiscations, prohibitions,
-controls, have destroyed those foundations. Had that instrument treated
-German trade and industry as the Germans treated French in 1871 we might
-have seen a recovery of German economic life relatively as rapid as that
-which took place in France during the ten years which followed her
-defeat. We should not to-day be faced by thirty or forty millions in
-Central and Eastern Europe without secure means of livelihood.</p>
-
-<p>The present writer confesses most frankly&mdash;and the critics of <i>The Great
-Illusion</i> are hereby presented with all that they<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_295" id="page_295"></a>{295}</span> can make of the
-admission&mdash;that he did not expect a European conqueror, least of all
-Allied conquerors, to use their victory for enforcing a policy having
-these results. He believed that elementary considerations of
-self-interest, the duty of statesmen to consider the needs of their own
-countries just emerging from war, would stand in the way of a policy of
-this kind. On the other hand, he was under no illusions as to what would
-result if they did attempt to enforce that policy. Dealing with the
-damage that a conqueror might inflict, the book says that such things as
-the utter destruction of the enemy’s trade</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p class="nind">could only be inflicted by an invader as a means of punishment
-costly to himself, or as the result of an unselfish and expensive
-desire to inflict misery for the mere joy of inflicting it. In this
-self-seeking world it is not practical to assume the existence of
-an inverted altruism of this kind.&mdash;(p. 29.)</p></div>
-
-<p>Because of the ‘interdependence of our credit-built finance and
-industry’</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p class="nind">the confiscation by an invader of private property, whether stocks,
-shares, ships, mines, or anything more valuable than jewellery or
-furniture&mdash;anything, in short, which is bound up with the economic
-life of the people&mdash;would so react upon the finance of the
-invader’s country as to make the damage to the invader resulting
-from the confiscation exceed in value the property confiscated&mdash;(p.
-29).</p>
-
-<p>Speaking broadly and generally, the conqueror in our day has before
-him two alternatives: to leave things alone, and in order to do
-that he need not have left his shores; or to interfere by
-confiscation in some form, in which case he dries up the source of
-the profit which tempted him&mdash;(p. 59).</p></div>
-
-<p>All the suggestions made as to the economic futility of such<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_296" id="page_296"></a>{296}</span> a
-course&mdash;including the failure to secure an indemnity&mdash;have been
-justified.<a name="FNanchor_120_120" id="FNanchor_120_120"></a><a href="#Footnote_120_120" class="fnanchor">[120]</a></p>
-
-<p>In dealing with the indemnity problem the book did forecast the
-likelihood of special trading and manufacturing interests within the
-conquering nation opposing the only condition upon which a very large
-indemnity would be possible&mdash;that condition being either the creation of
-a large foreign trade by the enemy or the receipt of payment in kind, in
-goods which would compete with home production. But the author certainly
-did not think it likely that England and France would impose conditions
-so rapidly destructive of the enemy’s economic life that they&mdash;the
-conquerors&mdash;would, for their own economic preservation, be compelled to
-make loans to the defeated enemy.</p>
-
-<p>Let us note the phase of the argument that the procedure adopted renders
-out of date. A good deal of <i>The Great Illusion</i> was devoted to showing
-that Germany had no need to expand territorially; that her desire for
-overseas colonies was sentimental, and had little relation to the
-problem of providing for her population. At the beginning of 1914 that
-was certainly true. It is not true to-day. The process by which she
-supported her excess population before the War will, to put it at its
-lowest, be rendered extremely difficult of maintenance as the result of
-allied action. The point, however, is that we<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_297" id="page_297"></a>{297}</span> are not benefiting by
-this paralysis of German industry. We are suffering very greatly from
-it: suffering so much that we can be neither politically nor
-economically secure until this condition is brought to an end. There can
-be no peace in Europe, and consequently no safety for us or France, so
-long as we attempt by power to maintain a policy which denies to
-millions in the midst of our civilisation the possibility of earning
-their living. In so far as the new conditions create difficulties which
-did not originally exist, our victory does but the more glaringly
-demonstrate the economic futility of our policy towards the vanquished.</p>
-
-<p>An argument much used in <i>The Great Illusion</i> as disproving the claims
-made for conquest was the position of the population of small States.
-‘Very well,’ may say the critic, ‘Germany is now in the position of a
-small State. But you talk about her being ruined!’</p>
-
-<p>In the conditions of 1914, the small State argument was entirely valid
-(incidentally the Allied Governments argue that it still holds).<a name="FNanchor_121_121" id="FNanchor_121_121"></a><a href="#Footnote_121_121" class="fnanchor">[121]</a> It
-does not hold to-day. In the conditions of 1920 at any rate, the small
-State is, like Germany, economically at the mercy of British sea power
-or the favoritism of the French Foreign Office, to a degree that was
-unknown before the War. How is the situation to develop? Is the Dutch or
-Swedish or Austrian industrial city permanently to be dependent upon the
-good graces of some foreign official sitting in Whitehall or the Quai
-d’Orsay? At present, if an industrialist in such a city wishes to import
-coal or to ship a cargo to one of the new Baltic States, he may be
-prevented owing to political arrangements between France and England. If
-that is to be the permanent situation of the non-Entente world, then
-peace will become less and less secure, and all our talk of having
-fought for the rights of the small and weak will be a farce. The
-friction, the irritation, and sense of grievance will prolong the unrest
-and uncertainty, and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_298" id="page_298"></a>{298}</span> resultant decline in the productivity of
-Europe will render our own economic problems the more acute. The power
-by which we thus arrogate to ourselves the economic dictatorship of
-Europe will ultimately be challenged.</p>
-
-<p>Can we revert to the condition of things which, by virtue of certain
-economic freedoms that were respected, placed the trader or
-industrialist of a small State pretty much on an equality, in most
-things, with the trader of the Great State? Or shall we go forward to a
-recognised international economic system, in which the small States will
-have their rights secured by a definite code?</p>
-
-<p>Reversion to the old individualist ‘trans-nationalism’ or an
-internationalism without considerable administrative machinery&mdash;seems
-now impossible. The old system is destroyed at its sources within each
-State. The only available course now is, recognising the fact of an
-immense growth in the governmental control or regulation of foreign
-trade, to devise definite codes or agreements to meet the case. If the
-obtaining of necessary raw materials by all the States other than France
-and England is to be the subject of wrangles between officials, each
-case to be treated on its merits, we shall have a much worse anarchy
-than before the War. A condition in which two or three powers can lay
-down the law for the world will indeed be an anti-climax.</p>
-
-<p>We may never learn the lesson; the old futile struggles may go on
-indefinitely. But if we do put our intelligences to the situation it
-will call for a method of treatment somewhat different from that which
-pre-war conditions required.</p>
-
-<p>For the purposes of the War, in the various Inter-Allied bodies for the
-apportionment of shipping and raw material, we had the beginnings of an
-economic League of Nations, an economic World Government. Those bodies
-might have been made democratic, and enlarged to include neutral
-interests, and maintained for the period of Reconstruction (which might
-in any case have been regarded as a phase properly subject<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_299" id="page_299"></a>{299}</span> to war
-treatment in these matters). But these international organisations were
-allowed to fall to pieces on the removal of the common enmity which held
-the European Allies and America together.</p>
-
-<p>The disappearance of these bodies does not mean the disappearance of
-‘controls,’ but the controls will now be exercised in considerable part
-through vast private Capitalist Trusts dealing with oil, meat, and
-shipping. Nor will the interference of government be abolished. If it is
-considered desirable to ensure to some group a monopoly of phosphates,
-or palm nuts, the aid of governments will be invoked for the purpose.
-But in this case the government will exercise its powers not as the
-result of a publicly avowed and agreed principle, but illicitly,
-hypocritically.</p>
-
-<p>While professing to exercise a ‘mandate’ for mankind, a government will
-in fact be using its authority to protect special interests. In other
-words we shall get a form of internationalism in which the international
-capitalist Trust will control the Government instead of the Government’s
-controlling the Trust.</p>
-
-<p>The fact that this was happening more and more before the War was one
-reason why the old individualist order has broken down. More and more
-the professed position and function of the State was not its real
-position and function. The amount of industry and trade dependent upon
-governmental intervention (enterprises of the Chinese Loan and Bagdad
-Railway type) before the War was small compared with the quantity that
-owed nothing to governmental protection. But the illicit pressure
-exercised upon governments by those interested in the exploitation of
-backward countries was out of proportion to the public importance of
-their interests.</p>
-
-<p>It was this failure of democratic control of ‘big business’ by the
-pre-war democracies which helped to break down the old individualism.
-While private capital was apparently gaining control over the democratic
-forces, moulding the policy<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_300" id="page_300"></a>{300}</span> of democratic governments, it was in fact
-digging its own grave. If political democracy in this respect had been
-equal to its task, or if the captains of industry had shown a greater
-scruple or discernment in their use of political power, the
-individualist order might have given us a workable civilisation; or its
-end might have been less painful.</p>
-
-<p><i>The Great Illusion</i> did not assume its impending demise. Democracy had
-not yet organised socialistic controls within the nation. To have
-assumed that the world of nationalisms would face socialistic regulation
-and control as between States, would have implied an agility on the part
-of the public imagination which it does not in fact possess. An
-international policy on these lines would have been unintelligible and
-preposterous. It is only because the situation which has followed
-victory is so desperate, so much worse than anything <i>The Great
-Illusion</i> forecast, that we have been brought to face these remedies
-to-day.</p>
-
-<p>Before the War, the line of advance, internationally, was not by
-elaborate regulation. We had seen a congeries of States like those of
-the British Empire maintain not only peace but a sort of informal
-Federation, without limitation in any formal way of the national freedom
-of any one of them. Each could impose tariffs against the mother
-country, exclude citizens of the Empire, recognise no common defined
-law. The British Empire seemed to forecast a type of international
-Association which could secure peace without the restraints or
-restrictions of a central authority in anything but the most shadowy
-form. If the merely moral understanding which held it together and
-enabled co-operation in a crisis could have been extended to the United
-States; if the principle of ‘self-determination’ that had been applied
-to the white portion of the Empire were gradually extended to the
-Asiatic; if a bargain had been made with Germany and France as to the
-open door, and equality of access to undeveloped territory made a matter
-of defined agreement, we should have possessed the nucleus of a world<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_301" id="page_301"></a>{301}</span>
-organisation giving the widest possible scope for independent national
-development. But world federation on such lines depended above all, of
-course, upon the development of a certain ‘spirit,’ a guiding temper, to
-do for nations of different origin what had already been done for
-nations of a largely common origin (though Britain has many different
-stocks&mdash;English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, and, overseas, Dutch and French
-as well). But the spirit was not there. The whole tradition in the
-international field was one of domination, competition, rivalry,
-conflicting interest, ‘Struggle for life.’</p>
-
-<p>The possibility of such a free international life has disappeared with
-the disappearance of the <i>laisser-faire</i> ideal in national organisation.
-We shall perforce be much more concerned now with the machinery of
-control in both spheres as the only alternative to an anarchy more
-devastating than that which existed before the War. For all the reasons
-which point to that conclusion the reader is referred once more to the
-second chapter of the first part of this book.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_302" id="page_302"></a>{302}</span></p>
-
-<h2><a name="ADD-V" id="ADD-V"></a>CHAPTER V<br /><br />
-<small>THE ARGUMENT AS AN ATTACK ON THE STATE</small></h2>
-
-<p class="nind">T<small>HERE</small> was not before the War, and there has not been since, any serious
-challenge to the economic argument of <i>The Great Illusion</i>. Criticism
-(which curiously enough does not seem to have included the point dealt
-with in the preceding Chapter) seems to have centred rather upon the
-irrelevance of economic considerations to the problem of war&mdash;the
-problem, that is, of creating an international society. The answer to
-that is, of course, both explicit and implicit in much of what precedes.</p>
-
-<p>The most serious criticism has been directed to one specific point. It
-is made notably both by Professor Spenser Wilkinson<a name="FNanchor_122_122" id="FNanchor_122_122"></a><a href="#Footnote_122_122" class="fnanchor">[122]</a> and Professor
-Lindsay,<a name="FNanchor_123_123" id="FNanchor_123_123"></a><a href="#Footnote_123_123" class="fnanchor">[123]</a> and as it is relevant to the existing situation and to
-much of the argument of the present book, it is worth dealing with.</p>
-
-<p>The criticism is based on the alleged disparagement of the State implied
-in the general attitude of the book. Professor Lindsay (whose article,
-by the way, although hostile and misapprehending the spirit of the book,
-is a model of fair, sincere, and useful criticism) describes the work
-under criticism largely as an attack on the conception of ‘the State as
-a person.’ He says in effect that the present author argues thus:&mdash;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_303" id="page_303"></a>{303}</span></p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘The only proper thing to consider is the interest or the happiness
-of individuals. If a political action conduces to the interests of
-individuals, it must be right; if it conflicts with these interests
-it must be wrong.’</p></div>
-
-<p>Professor Lindsay continues:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘Now if pacifism really implied such a view of the relation of the
-State and the individual, and of the part played by self-interest
-in life, its appeal has little moral force behind it....</p>
-
-<p>‘Mr. Angell seems to hold that not only is the national State being
-superseded, but that the supersession is to be welcomed. The
-economic forces which are destroying the State will do all the
-State has done to bind men together, and more.’</p></div>
-
-<p>As a matter of fact Professor Lindsay has himself answered his own
-criticism. For he goes on:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘The argument of <i>The Great Illusion</i> is largely based on the
-public part played by the organisation of credit. Mr Angell has
-been the first to notice the great significance of its activity. It
-has misled him, however, into thinking that it presaged a
-supersession of political by economic control.... The facts are,
-not that political forces are being superseded by economic, but
-that the new industrial situation has called into being new
-political organisations.... To co-ordinate their activities ...
-will be impossible if the spirit of exclusive nationalism and
-distrust of foreigners wins the day; it will be equally impossible
-if the strength of our existing centres of patriotism and public
-spirit are destroyed.’</p></div>
-
-<p>Very well. We had here in the pre-war period two dangers, either of
-which in Professor Lindsay’s view would make the preservation of
-civilisation impossible: one danger was that men would over-emphasise
-their narrower patriotism and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_304" id="page_304"></a>{304}</span> surrender themselves to the pugnacities
-of exclusive nationalism and distrust of foreigners, forgetting that the
-spiritual life of densely packed societies can only be rendered possible
-by certain widespread economic co-operations, contracts; the other
-danger was that we should under-emphasise each our own nationalism and
-give too much importance to the wider international organisation of
-mankind.</p>
-
-<p>Into which danger have we run as a matter of simple fact? Which tendency
-is it that is acting as the present disruptive force in Europe? Has
-opinion and statesmanship&mdash;as expressed in the Treaty, for
-instance&mdash;given too much or too little attention to the interdependence
-of the world, and the internationally economic foundations of our
-civilisation?</p>
-
-<p>We have seen Europe smashed by neglecting the truths which <i>The Great
-Illusion</i> stressed, perhaps over-stressed, and by surrendering to the
-exclusive nationalism which that book attacked. The book was based on
-the anticipation that Europe would be very much more likely to come to
-grief through over-stressing exclusive nationalism and neglecting its
-economic interdependence, than through the decay of the narrower
-patriotism.</p>
-
-<p>If the book had been written <i>in vacuo</i>, without reference to impending
-events, the emphasis might have been different.<a name="FNanchor_124_124" id="FNanchor_124_124"></a><a href="#Footnote_124_124" class="fnanchor">[124]</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_305" id="page_305"></a>{305}</span></p>
-
-<p>But in criticising the emphasis that is thrown upon the welfare of the
-individual, Professor Lindsay would seem to be guilty of confusing the
-<i>test</i> of good political conduct with the <i>motive</i>. Certainly <i>The Great
-Illusion</i> did not disparage the need of loyalty to the social group&mdash;to
-the other members of the partnership. That need is the burden of most
-that has been written in the preceding pages when dealing with the facts
-of interdependence. An individual who can see only his own interest does
-not see even that; for such interest is dependent on others. (These
-arguments of egoism versus altruism are always circular.) But it
-insisted upon two facts which modern Europe seemed in very great danger
-of forgetting. The first was that the Nation-State was not the social
-group, not co-terminous with the whole of Society,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_306" id="page_306"></a>{306}</span> only a very
-arbitrarily chosen part of it; and the second was that the <i>test</i> of the
-‘good State’ was the welfare of the citizens who composed it. How
-otherwise shall we settle the adjustment between national right and
-international obligation, answer the old and inevitable question, ‘What
-is the <i>Good</i> State?’ The only intelligible answer is: the State which
-produces good men, subserves their welfare. A State which did not
-subserve the welfare of its citizens, that produced men morally,
-intellectually, physically poor and feeble, could not be a good State. A
-State is tested by the degree to which it serves individuals.</p>
-
-<p>Now the fact of forgetting the first truth, that the Nation-State is not
-the whole of Society but only a part, and that we have obligations to
-the other part, led to a distortion of the second. The Hegelianism which
-denied any obligation above or beyond that of the Nation-State sets up a
-conflict of sovereignties, a competition of power, stimulating the
-instinct of domination, making indeed the power and position of the
-State with reference to rival States the main end of politics. The
-welfare of men is forgotten. The fact that the State is made for man,
-not man for the State, is obscured. It was certainly forgotten or
-distorted by the later political philosophers of Prussia. The oversight
-gave us Prussianism and Imperialism, the ideal of political power as an
-end in itself, against which <i>The Great Illusion</i> was a protest. The
-Imperialism, not alone in Prussia, takes small account of the quality of
-individual life, under the flag. The one thing to be sought is that the
-flag should be triumphant, be flown over vast territories, inspire fear
-in foreigners, and be an emblem of ‘glory.’ There is a discernible
-distinction of aim and purpose between the Patriot, Jingo, Chauvinist,
-and the citizen of the type interested in such things as social reform.
-The military Patriot the world over does not attempt to hide his
-contempt for efforts at the social betterment of his countryman. That is
-‘parish pump.’ Mr Maxse or Mr Kipling is keenly interested<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_307" id="page_307"></a>{307}</span> in England,
-but not in the betterment of Englishmen; indeed, both are in the habit
-of abusing Englishmen very heartily, unless they happen to be soldiers.
-In other words, the real end of politics is forgotten. It is not only
-that the means have become the end, but that one element of the means,
-power, has become the end.</p>
-
-<p>The point I desired to emphasise was that unless we keep before
-ourselves the welfare of the individual as the <i>test</i> of politics (not
-necessarily the motive of each individual for himself) we constantly
-forget the purpose and aim of politics, and patriotism becomes not the
-love of one’s fellow countrymen and their welfare, but the love of power
-expressed by that larger ‘ego’ which is one’s group. ‘Mystic
-Nationalism’ comes to mean something entirely divorced from any
-attribute of individual life. The ‘Nation’ becomes an abstraction apart
-from the life of the individual.</p>
-
-<p>There is a further consideration. The fact that the Nation-State is not
-co-terminous with Society is shown by its vital need of others; it
-cannot live by itself; it must co-operate with others; consequently it
-has obligations to those others. The demonstration of that fact involves
-an appeal to ‘interest,’ to welfare. The most visible and vital
-co-operation outside the limits of the Nation-State is the economic; it
-gives rise to the most definite, as to the most fundamental
-obligation&mdash;the obligation to accord to others the right to existence.
-It is out of the common economic need that the actual structure of some
-mutual arrangement, some social code, will arise, has indeed arisen.
-This makes the beginning of the first visible structure of a world
-society. And from these homely beginnings will come, if at all, a more
-vivid sense of the wider society. And the ‘economic’ interest, as
-distinct from the temperamental interest of domination, has at least
-this social advantage. Welfare is a thing that in society may well grow
-the more it is divided: the better my countrymen the richer is my life
-likely to become. Domination has not this quality: it is mutually
-exclusive. We<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_308" id="page_308"></a>{308}</span> cannot all be masters. If any country is to dominate,
-somebody or some one else’s country must be dominated; if the one is to
-be the Superior Race, some other must be inferior. And the inferior
-sooner or later objects, and from that resistance comes the
-disintegration that now menaces us.</p>
-
-<p>It is perfectly true that we cannot create the kind of State which will
-best subserve the interests of its citizens unless each is ready to give
-allegiance to it, irrespective of his immediate personal ‘interest.’
-(The word is put in inverted commas because in most men not compelled by
-bad economic circumstances to fight fiercely for daily bread, sheer
-physical sustenance, the satisfaction of a social and creative instinct
-is a very real ‘interest,’ and would, in a well-organised society, be as
-spontaneous as interest in sport or social ostentation.) The State must
-be an idea, an abstraction, capable of inspiring loyalty, embodying the
-sense of interdependence. But the circumstances of the independent
-modern national State, in frequent and unavoidable contact with other
-similar States, are such as to stimulate not mainly the motives of
-social cohesion, but those instincts of domination which become
-anti-social and disruptive. The nationalist stands condemned not because
-he asks allegiance or loyalty to the social group, but first, because he
-asks absolute allegiance to something which is not the social group but
-only part of it, and secondly, because that exclusive loyalty gives rise
-to disruptive pugnacities, injurious to all.</p>
-
-<p>In pointing out the inadequacy of the unitary political Nation-State as
-the embodiment of final sovereignty, an inadequacy due to precisely the
-development of such organisations as Labour, the present writer merely
-anticipated the drift of much political writing of the last ten years on
-the problem of State sovereignty; as also the main drift of
-events.<a name="FNanchor_125_125" id="FNanchor_125_125"></a><a href="#Footnote_125_125" class="fnanchor">[125]</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_309" id="page_309"></a>{309}</span></p>
-
-<p>If Mr Lindsay finds the very mild suggestions in <i>The Great Illusion</i>
-touching the necessary qualification of the sovereignty of the
-Nation-State subversive, one wonders what his feelings are on reading,
-say, Mr Cole, who in a recent book (<i>Social Theory</i>) leaves the
-Political State so attenuated that one questions whether what is left is
-not just ghost. At the best the State is just one collateral association
-among others.</p>
-
-<p>The sheer mechanical necessities of administration of an industrial
-society, so immeasurably more complex than the simple agricultural
-society which gave us the unitary political State, seem to be pushing us
-towards a divided or manifold sovereignty. If we are to carry over from
-the National State into the new form of the State&mdash;as we seem now in
-danger of doing&mdash;the attitude of mind which demands domination for ‘our’
-group, the pugnacities, suspicions, and hostilities characteristic of
-nationalist temper, we may find the more complex society beyond our
-social capacity. I agree that we want a common political loyalty, that
-mere obedience to the momentary interest of our group will not give it;
-but neither will the temper of patriotism as we have seen it manifested
-in the European national State. The loyalty to some common code will
-probably only come through a sense of its social<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_310" id="page_310"></a>{310}</span> need. (It is on the
-ground of its social need that Mr Lindsay defends the political State.)
-At present we have little sense of that need, because we have (as
-Versailles proved) a belief in the effectiveness of our own power to
-exact the services we may require. The rival social or industrial groups
-have a like belief. Only a real sense of interdependence can undermine
-that belief; and it must be a visible, economic interdependence.</p>
-
-<p>A social sense may be described as an instinctive feeling for ‘what will
-work.’ We are only yet at the beginning of the study of human motive. So
-much is subconscious that we are certainly apt to ascribe to one motive
-conduct which in fact is due to another. And among the neglected motives
-of conduct is perhaps a certain sense of art&mdash;a sense, in this
-connection, of the difficult ‘art of living together.’ It is probably
-true that what some, at least, find so revolting in some of the
-manifestations of nationalism, chauvinism, is that they violently
-challenge the whole sense of what will work, to say nothing of the
-rights of others. ‘If every one took that line, nobody could live.’ In a
-social sense this is gross and offensive. It has an effect on one like
-the manners of a cad. It is that sort of motive, perhaps, more than any
-calculation of ‘interest,’ which may one day cause a revulsion against
-Balkanisation. But to that motive some informed sense of interdependence
-is indispensable.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_311" id="page_311"></a>{311}</span></p>
-
-<h2><a name="ADD-VI" id="ADD-VI"></a>CHAPTER VI<br /><br />
-<small>VINDICATION BY EVENTS</small></h2>
-
-<p class="nind">I<small>F</small> the question merely concerned the past, if it were only a matter of
-proving that this or that ‘School of thought’ was right, this
-re-examination of arguments put forward before the War would be a
-sterile business enough. But it concerns the present and the future;
-bears directly and pertinently upon the reasons which have led us into
-the existing chaos; and the means by which we might hope to emerge. As
-much to-day as before the War (and far more obviously) is it true that
-upon the reply to the questions raised in this discussion depends the
-continuance of our civilisation. Our society is still racked by a fierce
-struggle for political power, our populations still demand the method of
-coercion, still refuse to face the facts of interdependence, still
-insist clamorously upon a policy which denies those facts.</p>
-
-<p>The propositions we are here discussing were not, it is well to recall,
-merely to the effect that ‘war does not pay,’ but that the ideas and
-impulses out of which it grows, and which underlay&mdash;and still
-underlie&mdash;European politics, give us an unworkable society; and that
-unless they can be corrected they will increasingly involve social
-collapse and disintegration.</p>
-
-<p>That conclusion was opposed, as we have seen, on two main grounds. One
-was that the desire for conquest and extension of territory did not
-enter appreciably into the causes of war,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_312" id="page_312"></a>{312}</span> ‘since no one really believed
-that victory could advantage them.’ The other ground of objection, in
-contradistinction, was that the economic advantages of conquest or
-military predominance were so great and so obvious that to deny them was
-mere paradox-mongering.</p>
-
-<p>The validity of both criticisms has been very thoroughly tested in the
-period that has followed the Armistice. Whether it be true or not that
-the competition for territory, the belief that predominant power could
-be turned to economic account, entered into the causes of the War, that
-competition and belief have certainly entered into the settlement and
-must be reckoned among the causes of the next war. The proposition that
-the economic advantages of conquest and coercion are illusory is hardly
-to-day a paradox, however much policy may still ignore the facts.</p>
-
-<p>The outstanding facts of the present situation most worth our attention
-in this connection are these: Military predominance, successful war,
-evidently offer no solution either of specifically international or of
-our common social and economic problems. The political disintegration
-going on over wide areas in Europe is undoubtedly related very
-intimately to economic conditions: actual lack of food, the struggle for
-ever-increasing wages and better conditions. Our attempted remedies&mdash;our
-conferences for dealing with international credit, the suggestion of an
-international loan, the loans actually made to the enemy&mdash;are a
-confession of the international character of that problem. All this
-shows that the economic question, alike nationally and internationally,
-is not, it is true, something that ought to occupy all the energies of
-men, but something that will, unless dealt with adequately; is a
-question that simply cannot be swept aside with magnificent gestures.
-Finally, the nature of the settlement actually made by the victor, its
-characteristic defects, the failure to realise adequately the victor’s
-dependence on the economic life of the vanquished, show clearly enough
-that, even in the free democracies, orthodox statecraft<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_313" id="page_313"></a>{313}</span> did indeed
-suffer from the misconception which <i>The Great Illusion</i> attributed to
-it.</p>
-
-<p>What do we see to-day in Europe? Our preponderant military
-power&mdash;overwhelming, irresistible, unquestioned&mdash;is impotent to secure
-the most elementary forms of wealth needed by our people: fuel, food,
-shelter. France, who in the forty years of her ‘defeat’ had the soundest
-finances in Europe, is, as a victor over the greatest industrial nation
-in Europe, all but bankrupt. (The franc has fallen to a discount of over
-seventy per cent.) All the recurrent threats of extended military
-occupation fail to secure reparations and indemnities, the restoration
-of credit, exchange, of general confidence and security.</p>
-
-<p>And just as we are finding that the things necessary for the life of our
-peoples cannot be secured by military force exercised against foreign
-nations or a beaten enemy, so are we finding that the same method of
-force within the limits of the nation used by one group as against
-another, fails equally. The temper or attitude towards life which leads
-us to attempt to achieve our end by the forcible imposition of our will
-upon others, by dictatorship, and to reject agreement, has produced in
-some degree everywhere revolt and rebellion on the one side, and
-repression on the other; or a general disruption and the breakdown of
-the co-operative processes by which mankind lives. All the raw materials
-of wealth are here on the earth as they were ten years ago. Yet Europe
-either starves or slips into social chaos, because of the economic
-difficulty.</p>
-
-<p>In the way of the necessary co-operation stands the Balkanisation of
-Europe. Why are we Balkanised rather than Federalised? Why do Balkan and
-other border States fight fiercely over this coalfield or that harbour?
-Why does France still oppose trade with Russia, and plot for the control
-of an enlarged Poland or a reactionary Hungary? Why does America now
-wash her hands of the whole muddle in Europe?</p>
-
-<p>Because everywhere the statesmen and the public believe that<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_314" id="page_314"></a>{314}</span> if only
-the power of their State were great enough, they could be independent of
-rival States, achieve political and economic security and dispense with
-agreements and obligations.</p>
-
-<p>If they had any vivid sense of the vast dangers to which reliance upon
-isolated power exposed any State, however great; if they had realised
-how the prosperity and social peace of their own States depended upon
-the reconciliation and well-being of the vanquished, the Treaty would
-have been a very different document, peace would long since have been
-established with Russia, and the moral foundations of co-operation would
-be present.</p>
-
-<p>By every road that presented itself, <i>The Great Illusion</i> attempted to
-reveal the vital interdependence of peoples&mdash;within and without the
-State&mdash;and, as a corollary to that interdependence, the very strict
-limits of the force that can be exercised against any one whose life,
-and daily&mdash;and willing&mdash;labour is necessary to us. It was not merely the
-absence of these ideas but the very active presence of the directly
-contrary ideas of rival and conflicting interest, which explained the
-drift that the present writer thought&mdash;and said so often&mdash;would, unless
-checked, lead Western civilisation to a vast orgy of physical
-self-destruction and moral violence and chaos.</p>
-
-<p>The economic conditions which constitute one part of the vindication of
-<i>The Great Illusion</i> are of course those described in the first part of
-this book, particularly in the first chapter. All that need be added
-here are a few suggestions as to the relationship between those
-conditions and the propositions we are concerned to verify.</p>
-
-<p>As bearing upon the truth of those propositions, we cannot neglect the
-condition of Germany.</p>
-
-<p>If ever national military power, the sheer efficiency of the military
-instrument, could ensure a nation’s political and economic security,
-Germany should have been secure. It was not any lack of the ‘impulse to
-defence,’ of the ‘manly and virile qualities’ so beloved of the
-militarist, no tendency to ‘softness,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_315" id="page_315"></a>{315}</span>’ no ‘emasculating
-internationalism’ which betrayed her. She fell because she failed to
-realise that she too, for all her power, had need of a co-operation
-throughout the world, which her force could not compel; and that she
-must secure a certain moral co-operation in her purposes or be defeated.
-She failed, not for lack of ‘intense nationalism,’ but by reason of it,
-because the policy which guided the employment of her military
-instrument had in it too small a regard for the moral factors in the
-world at large, which might set in motion material forces against her.</p>
-
-<p>It is hardly possible to doubt that the easy victories of 1871 marked
-the point at which the German spirit took the wrong turning, and
-rendered her statesmen incapable of seeing the forces which were massing
-for her destruction. The presence in 1919 of German delegates at
-Versailles in the capacity of vanquished can only be adequately
-explained by recalling the presence there of German statesmen as victors
-in 1871. It took forty years for some of the moral fruits of victory to
-manifest themselves in the German spirit.</p>
-
-<p>But the very severity of the present German lot is one that lends itself
-to sophistry. It will be argued: ‘You say that preponderant military
-power, victory, is ineffective to economic ends. Well, look at the
-difference between ourselves and Germany. The victors, though they may
-not flourish, are at least better off than the vanquished. If we are
-lean, they starve. Our military power is not economically futile.’</p>
-
-<p>If to bring about hardship to ourselves in order that some one else may
-suffer still greater hardship is an economic gain, then it is untrue to
-say that conquest is economically futile. But I had assumed that
-advantage or utility was to be measured by the good to us, not by the
-harm done to others at our cost. We are arguing for the moment the
-economic, and not the ethical aspect of the thing. Keep for a moment to
-those terms. If you were told that an enterprise was going to be
-extremely profitable and you lost half your fortune in it, you would
-certainly<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_316" id="page_316"></a>{316}</span> regard as curious the logic of the reply, that after all you
-<i>had</i> gained, because others in the same enterprise had lost everything.</p>
-
-<p>We are considering in effect whether the facts show that nations must,
-in order to provide bread for their people, defeat in war competing
-nations who otherwise would secure it. But that economic case for the
-‘biological inevitability’ of war is destroyed if it is true that, after
-having beaten the rival nation, we find that we have less bread than
-before; that the future security of our food is less; and that out of
-our own diminished store we have to feed a defeated enemy who, before
-his defeat, managed to feed himself, and helped to feed us as well.</p>
-
-<p>And that is precisely what the present facts reveal.</p>
-
-<p>Reference has already been made to the position of France. In the forty
-years of her defeat France was the banker of Europe. She exacted tribute
-in the form of dividends and interest upon investments from Russia, the
-Near East, Germany herself; exacted it in a form which suited the
-peculiar genius of her people and added to the security of her social
-life. She was Germany’s creditor, and managed to secure from her
-conqueror of 1871 the prompt payment of the debts owing to her. When
-France was not in a position to compel anything whatsoever from Germany
-by military force, the financial claims of Frenchmen upon Germany were
-readily discountable in any market of the world. To-day, the financial
-claims on Germany, made by a France which is militarily all-powerful,
-simply cannot be discounted anywhere. The indemnity vouchers, whatever
-may be the military predominance behind them, are simply not negotiable
-instruments so long as they depend upon present policy. They are a form
-of paper which no banker would dream of discounting on their commercial
-merits.</p>
-
-<p>To-day France stands as the conquerer of the richest ore-fields in the
-world, of territory which is geographically the industrial centre of
-Europe; of a vast Empire in Africa and Asia; in a position of
-predominance in Poland, Hungary,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_317" id="page_317"></a>{317}</span> and Rumania. She has acquired through
-the Reparations Commission such power over the enemy countries as to
-reduce them almost to the economic position of an Asiatic or African
-colony. If ever wealth could be conquered, France has conquered it. If
-political power could really be turned to economic account, France ought
-to-day to be rich beyond any nation in history. Never was there such an
-opportunity of turning military power into wealth.</p>
-
-<p>Then why is she bankrupt? Why is France faced by economic and financial
-difficulties so acute that the situation seems inextricable save by
-social revolution, a social reconstruction, that is, involving new
-principles of taxation, directly aiming at the re-distribution of
-wealth, a re-distribution resisted by the property-owning classes.
-These, like other classes, have since the Armistice been so persistently
-fed upon the fable of making the Boche pay, that the government is
-unable to induce them to face reality.<a name="FNanchor_126_126" id="FNanchor_126_126"></a><a href="#Footnote_126_126" class="fnanchor">[126]</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_318" id="page_318"></a>{318}</span></p>
-
-<p>With a public debt of 233,729 million of francs (about £9,300,000,000,
-at the pre-war rate of exchange); with the permanent problem of a
-declining population accentuated by the loss of millions of men killed
-and wounded in the war, and complicated by the importation of coloured
-labour; with the exchange value of the franc reduced to sixty in terms
-of the British pound, and to fifteen in terms of the American
-dollar,<a name="FNanchor_127_127" id="FNanchor_127_127"></a><a href="#Footnote_127_127" class="fnanchor">[127]</a> the position of victorious France in the hour of her
-complete military predominance over Europe seems wellnigh desperate.</p>
-
-<p>She could of course secure very considerable alleviation of her present
-difficulties if she would consent to the only condition upon which
-Germany could make a considerable contribution to Reparations; the
-restoration of German industry. But to that one indispensable condition
-of indemnity or reparation France will not consent, because the French
-feel that a flourishing Germany would be a Germany dangerous to the
-security of France.</p>
-
-<p>In this condition one may recall a part of <i>The Great Illusion</i> case
-which, more than any other of the ‘preposterous propositions,’ excited
-derision and scepticism before the War. That was the part dealing with
-the difficulties of securing an indemnity. In a chapter (of the early
-1910 Edition) entitled <i>The Indemnity Futility</i>, occurred these
-passages:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘The difficulty in the case of a large indemnity is not so much the
-payment by the vanquished as the receiving by the victor ...</p>
-
-<p>‘When a nation receives an indemnity of a large amount of gold, one
-or two things happens: either the money is exchanged for real
-wealth with other nations, in which case the greatly<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_319" id="page_319"></a>{319}</span> increased
-imports compete directly with the home producers, or the money is
-kept within the frontiers and is not exchanged for real wealth from
-abroad, and prices inevitably rise.... The rise in price of home
-commodities hampers the nation receiving the indemnity in selling
-those commodities in the neutral markets of the world, especially
-as the loss of so large a sum by the vanquished nation has just the
-reverse effect of cheapening prices and therefore, enabling that
-nation to compete on better terms with the conqueror in neutral
-markets.’&mdash;(p. 76.)</p></div>
-
-<p>The effect of the payment of the French indemnity of 1872 upon German
-industry was analysed at length.</p>
-
-<p>This chapter was criticised by economists in Britain, France, and
-America. I do not think that a single economist of note admitted the
-slightest validity in this argument. Several accused the author of
-adopting protectionist fallacies in an attempt to ‘make out a case.’ It
-happens that he is a convinced Free Trader. But he is also aware that it
-is quite impracticable to dissociate national psychology from
-international commercial problems. Remembering what popular feeling
-about the expansion of enemy trade must be on the morrow of war, he
-asked the reader to imagine vast imports of enemy goods as the means of
-paying an indemnity, and went on:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘Do we not know that there would be such a howl about the ruin of
-home industry that no Government could stand the clamour for a
-week?... That this influx of goods for nothing would be represented
-as a deep-laid plot on the part of foreign nations to ruin the home
-trade, and that the citizens would rise in their wrath to prevent
-the accomplishment of such a plot? Is not this very operation by
-which foreign nations tax themselves to send abroad goods, not for
-nothing (that would be a crime at present unthinkable), but at
-below cost, the offence to which we have given the name of
-“dumping”? When it is carried very far, as in the case of sugar,
-even Free Trade<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_320" id="page_320"></a>{320}</span> nations like Great Britain join International
-Conferences to prevent these gifts being made!...’</p></div>
-
-<p>The fact that not one single economist, so far as I know, would at the
-time admit the validity of these arguments, is worth consideration. Very
-learned men may sometimes be led astray by keeping their learning in
-watertight compartments, ‘economics’ in one compartment and ‘politics’
-or political psychology in another. The politicians seemed to misread
-the economies and the economists the politics.</p>
-
-<p>What are the post-war facts in this connection? We may get them
-summarised on the one hand by the Prime Minister of Great Britain and on
-the other by the expert adviser of the British Delegation to the Peace
-Conference.</p>
-
-<p>Mr Lloyd George, speaking two years after the Armistice, and after
-prolonged and exhaustive debates on this problem, says:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘What I have put forward is an expression of the views of all the
-experts.... Every one wants gold, which Germany has not got, and
-they will not take German goods. Nations can only pay debts by
-gold, goods, services, or bills of exchange on nations which are
-its debtors.<a name="FNanchor_128_128" id="FNanchor_128_128"></a><a href="#Footnote_128_128" class="fnanchor">[128]</a></p>
-
-<p>‘The real difficulty ... is due to the difficulty of securing
-payment outside the limits of Germany. Germany could pay&mdash;pay
-easily&mdash;inside her own boundary, but she could not export<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_321" id="page_321"></a>{321}</span> her
-forests, railways, or land across her own frontiers and make them
-over to the Allies. Take the railways, for example. Suppose the
-Allies took possession of them and doubled the charges; they would
-be paid in paper marks which would be valueless directly they
-crossed the frontier.</p>
-
-<p>‘The only way Germany could pay was by way of exports&mdash;that is by
-difference between German imports and exports. If, however, German
-imports were too much restricted, the Germans would be unable to
-obtain food and raw materials necessary for their manufactures.
-Some of Germany’s principal markets&mdash;Russia and Central
-Europe&mdash;were no longer purchasers, and if she exported too much to
-the Allies, it meant the ruin of their industry and lack of
-employment for their people. Even in the case of neutrals it was
-only possible generally to increase German exports by depriving our
-traders of their markets.’<a name="FNanchor_129_129" id="FNanchor_129_129"></a><a href="#Footnote_129_129" class="fnanchor">[129]</a></p></div>
-
-<p>There is not a line here that is not a paraphrase of the chapter in the
-early edition of <i>The Great Illusion</i>.</p>
-
-<p>The following is the comment of Mr Maynard Keynes, ex-Advisor to the
-British Treasury, on the claims put forward after the Paris Conference
-of January 1921:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘It would be easy to point out how, if Germany could compass the
-vast export trade which the Paris proposals contemplate, it could
-only be by ousting some of the staple trades of Great Britain from
-the markets of the world. Exports of what commodities, we may ask,
-in addition to her present exports, is Germany going to find a
-market for in 1922&mdash;to look no farther ahead&mdash;which will enable her
-to make the payment of between £150,000,000 and £200,000,000
-including the export proportion which will be due from her in that
-year? Germany’s five principal exports before the War were iron,
-steel, and machinery,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_322" id="page_322"></a>{322}</span> coal and coke, woollen goods and cotton
-goods. Which of these trades does Paris think she is going to
-develop on a hitherto unprecedented scale? Or if not these, what
-others? And how is she going to finance the import of raw materials
-which, except in the case of coal and coke, are a prior necessity
-to manufacture, if the proceeds of the goods when made will not be
-available to repay the credits? I ask these questions in respect of
-the year 1922 because many people may erroneously believe that
-while the proposed settlement is necessarily of a problematic
-character for the later years&mdash;only time can show&mdash;it makes some
-sort of a start possible. These questions are serious and
-practical, and they deserve to be answered. If the Paris proposals
-are more than wind, they mean a vast re-organisation of the
-channels of international trade. If anything remotely like them is
-really intended to happen, the reactions on the trade and industry
-of this country are incalculable. It is an outrage that they should
-be dealt with by the methods of the poker party of which news comes
-from Paris.’<a name="FNanchor_130_130" id="FNanchor_130_130"></a><a href="#Footnote_130_130" class="fnanchor">[130]</a></p></div>
-
-<p>If the expert economists failed to admit the validity of <i>The Great
-Illusion</i> argument fifteen years ago, the general public has barely a
-glimmering of it to-day. It is true that our miners realise that vast
-deliveries of coal for nothing by Germany disorganise our coal export
-trade. British shipbuilding has been disastrously affected by the Treaty
-clauses touching the surrender of German tonnage&mdash;so much so that the
-Government have now recommended the abandonment of these clauses, which
-were among the most stringent and popular in the whole Treaty. The
-French Government has flatly refused to accept German machinery to
-replace that destroyed by the German armies, while French labour refuses
-to allow German labour, in any quantity, to operate in the devastated
-regions. Thus coal, ships, machinery, manufactures, labour, as means of
-payment, have either already created great economic havoc or have<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_323" id="page_323"></a>{323}</span> been
-rejected because they might. Yet our papers continue to shout that
-‘Germany can pay,’ implying that failure to do so is merely a matter of
-her will. Of course she can pay&mdash;if we let her. Payment means increasing
-German foreign trade. Suppose, then, we put the question ‘Can German
-Foreign Trade be increased?’ Obviously it can. It depends mainly on us.
-To put the question in its truer form shows that the problem is much
-more a matter of our will than of Germany’s. Incidentally, of course,
-German diplomacy has been as stupid as our own. If the German
-representatives had said, in effect: ‘It is common ground that we can
-pay only in commodities. If you will indicate the kind and quantity of
-goods we shall deliver, and will facilitate the import into Germany of,
-and the payment for, the necessary food and raw material, we will
-accept&mdash;on that condition&mdash;even your figures of reparation.’ The Allies,
-of course, could not have given the necessary undertaking, and the real
-nature of the problem would have stood revealed.<a name="FNanchor_131_131" id="FNanchor_131_131"></a><a href="#Footnote_131_131" class="fnanchor">[131]</a></p>
-
-<p>The review of the situation of France given in the preceding pages will
-certainly be criticised on the ground that it gives altogether too great
-weight to the temporary embarrassment, and leaves out the advantages
-which future generations of Frenchmen will reap.</p>
-
-<p>Now, whatever the future may have in store, it will certainly have for
-France the task of defending her conquests if she either withholds their
-product (particularly iron) from the peoples of Central Europe who need
-them, or if she makes of their possession a means of exacting a tribute
-which they feel to be burdensome and unjust. Again we are faced by the
-same dilemma; if Germany gets the iron, her population goes on<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_324" id="page_324"></a>{324}</span>
-expanding and her potential power of resistance goes on increasing. Thus
-France’s burden of defence would grow steadily greater, while her
-population remained constant or declined. This difficulty of French
-deficiency in human raw material is not a remote contingency; it is an
-actual difficulty of to-day, which France is trying to meet in part by
-the arming of the negro population of her African colonies, and in part
-by the device of satellite militarisms, as in Poland. But the
-precariousness of such methods is already apparent.</p>
-
-<p>The arming of the African negro carries its appalling possibilities on
-its face. Its development cannot possibly avoid the gravest complication
-of the industrial problem. It is the Servile State in its most sinister
-form; and unless Europe is itself ready for slavery it will stop this
-reintroduction of slavery for the purposes of militarism.</p>
-
-<p>The other device has also its self-defeating element. To support an
-imperialist Poland means a hostile Russia; yet Poland, wedged in between
-a hostile Slav mass on the one side and a hostile Teutonic one on the
-other, herself compounded of Russian, German, Austrian, Lithuanian,
-Ukrainian, and Jewish elements, ruled largely by a landowning
-aristocracy when the countries on both sides have managed to transfer
-the great estates to the peasants, is as likely, in these days, to be a
-military liability as a military asset.</p>
-
-<p>These things are not irrelevant to the problem of turning military power
-to economic account: they are of the very essence of the problem.</p>
-
-<p>Not less so is this consideration: If France should for political
-reasons persist in a policy which means a progressive reduction in the
-productivity of Europe, that policy would be at its very roots directly
-contrary to the vital interests of England. The foregoing pages have
-explained why the increasing population of these islands, that live by
-selling coal or its products, are dependent upon the high productivity
-of the outside <span class="pagenum"><a name="page_325" id="page_325"></a>{325}</span>world. France is self-supporting and has no such
-pre-occupation. Already the divergence is seen in the case of the
-Russian policy. Britain direly needs the wheat of Russia to reduce the
-cost of living&mdash;or improve the value of what she has to sell, which is
-very nearly the same thing. France does not need Russian foodstuffs, and
-in terms of narrow self-interest (cutting her losses in Czarist bonds)
-can afford to be indifferent to the devastation of Russia. As soon as
-this divergence reaches a certain degree, rupture becomes inevitable.</p>
-
-<p>The mainspring of French policy during the last two years has been
-fear&mdash;fear of the economic revival of Germany which might be the
-beginning of a military revival. The measures necessary to check German
-economic revival inevitably increase German resentment, which is taken
-as proof of the need for increasingly severe measures of repression.
-Those measures are tending already to deprive France of her most
-powerful military Allies. That fact still further increases the burden
-that will be thrown upon her. Such burdens must inevitably make very
-large deductions from the ‘profits’ of her new conquests.</p>
-
-<p>Note in view of these circumstances some further difficulties of turning
-those conquests to account. Take the iron mines of Lorraine.<a name="FNanchor_132_132" id="FNanchor_132_132"></a><a href="#Footnote_132_132" class="fnanchor">[132]</a> France
-has now within her borders what is, as already noted, the geographical
-centre of Continental industry. How shall she turn that fact to account?</p>
-
-<p>For the iron to become wealth at all, for France to become the actual
-centre of European industry, there must be a European industry: the
-railroads and factories and steamship lines as consumers of the iron
-must once more operate. To do that they in their turn must have <i>their</i>
-market in the shape of active consumption on the part of the millions of
-Europe. In other words the Continent must be economically restored. But
-that<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_326" id="page_326"></a>{326}</span> it cannot be while Germany is economically paralysed. Germany’s
-industry is the very keystone of the European industry and
-agriculture&mdash;whether in Russia, Poland, the Balkans, or the Near
-East&mdash;which is the indispensable market of the French iron.<a name="FNanchor_133_133" id="FNanchor_133_133"></a><a href="#Footnote_133_133" class="fnanchor">[133]</a> Even if
-we could imagine such a thing as a reconstruction of Europe on lines
-that would in some wonderful way put seventy or eighty million Germans
-into a secondary place&mdash;involving as it would vast redistributions of
-population&mdash;the process obviously would take years or generations.
-Meantime Europe goes to pieces. ‘Men will not always die quietly’ as Mr
-Keynes puts it. What is to become of French credit while France is
-suppressing Bolshevik upheavals in Poland or Hungary caused by the
-starvation of cities through the new economic readjustments? Europe
-famishes now for want of credit. But credit implies a certain dependence
-upon the steady course of future events, some assurance, for instance,
-that this particular railway line to which advances are made will not
-find itself, in a year or two’s time, deprived of its traffic in the
-interest of economic rearrangements resulting from an attempt to re-draw
-the economic map of Europe. Nor can such re-drawing disregard the
-present. It is no good telling peasants who have not ploughs or reapers
-or who cannot get fertilisers because their railroad has no locomotives,
-that a new line running on their side of the new frontier will be built
-ten or fifteen years hence. You cannot stop the patients breathing ‘for
-just a few hours’ while experiments are made with vital organs. The
-operation must adapt itself to the fact that all the time he must
-breathe. And to the degree to which we attempt violently to re-direct
-the economic currents, does the security upon which our credit depends
-decline.<a name="FNanchor_134_134" id="FNanchor_134_134"></a><a href="#Footnote_134_134" class="fnanchor">[134]</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_327" id="page_327"></a>{327}</span></p>
-
-<p>There are other considerations. A French journalist asks plaintively:
-‘If we want the coal why don’t we go in and take it’&mdash;by the occupation
-of the Ruhr. The implication is that France could get the coal for
-nothing. Well, France has taken over the Saar Valley. By no means does
-she get the coal for nothing. The miners have to be paid. France tried
-paying them at an especially low rate. The production fell off; the
-miners were discontented and underfed. They had to be paid more. Even so
-the Saar has been ‘very restless’ under French control, and the last
-word, as we know, will rest with the men. Miners who feel they are
-working for the enemy of their fatherland are not going to give a high
-production. It is a long exploded illusion that slave labour&mdash;labour
-under physical compulsion&mdash;is a productive form of labour. Its output
-invariably is small. So assuredly France does not get this coal for
-nothing. And from the difference between the price which it costs her as
-owner of the mines and administrator of their workers, and that which
-she would pay if she had to buy the coal from the original owners and
-administrators (if there is a difference on the credit side at all) has
-to be deducted the ultimate cost of defence and of the political
-complications that that has involved. Precise figures are obviously not
-available; but it is equally obvious that the profit of seizure is
-microscopic.</p>
-
-<p>Always does the fundamental dilemma remain. France will need above all,
-if she is to profit by these raw materials of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_328" id="page_328"></a>{328}</span> European industry,
-markets, and again markets. But markets mean that the iron which has
-been captured must be returned to the nation from which it was taken, on
-conditions economically advantageous to that nation. A central Europe
-that is consuming large quantities of metallurgical products is a
-Central Europe growing in wealth and power and potentially dangerous
-unless reconciled. And reconciliation will include economic justice,
-access to the very ‘property’ that has been seized.</p>
-
-<p>The foregoing is not now, as it was when the present author wrote in
-similar terms a decade since, mere speculation or hypothesis. Our
-present difficulties with reference to the indemnity or reparations, the
-fall in the exchanges, or the supply of coal, are precisely of the order
-just indicated. The conqueror is caught in the grip of just those
-difficulties in turning conquest to economic account upon which <i>The
-Great Illusion</i> so repeatedly insisted.</p>
-
-<p>The part played by credit&mdash;as the sensory nerve of the economic
-organism&mdash;has, despite the appearances to the contrary in the early part
-of the War, confirmed those propositions that dealt with it. Credit&mdash;as
-the extension of the use of money&mdash;is society’s bookkeeping. The
-debauchery of the currencies means of course juggling with the promises
-to pay. The general relation of credit to a certain dependability upon
-the future has already been dealt with.<a name="FNanchor_135_135" id="FNanchor_135_135"></a><a href="#Footnote_135_135" class="fnanchor">[135]</a> The object here is to call
-attention to the present admissions that the maintenance or re-creation
-of credit is in very truth an indispensable element in the recovery of
-Europe. Those admissions consist in the steps that are being taken
-internationally, the emphasis which the governments themselves are
-laying upon this factor. Yet ten years ago the ‘diplomatic expert’
-positively resented the introduction of such a subject into the
-discussion of foreign affairs at all. Serious consideration of the
-subject was generally dismissed by the orthodox authority on
-international politics with some contemptuous reference to ‘cosmopolitan
-usury.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_329" id="page_329"></a>{329}</span>’</p>
-
-<p>Even now we seize every opportunity of disguising the truth to
-ourselves. In the midst of the chaos we may sometimes see flamboyant
-statements that England at any rate is greater and richer than before.
-(It is a statement, indeed, very apt to come from our European
-co-belligerents, worse off than ourselves.) It is true, of course, that
-we have extended our Empire; that we have to-day the same materials of
-wealth as&mdash;or more than&mdash;we had before the War; that we have improved
-technical knowledge. But we are learning that to turn all this to
-account there must be not only at home, but abroad, a widespread
-capacity for orderly co-operation; the diffusion throughout the world of
-a certain moral quality. And the war, for the time being, at least, has
-very greatly diminished that quality. Because Welsh miners have absorbed
-certain ideas and developed a certain temperament, the wealth of many
-millions who are not miners declines. The idea of a self-sufficing
-Empire that can disregard the chaos of the outside world recedes
-steadily into the background when we see the infection of certain ideas
-beginning the work of disintegration within the Empire. Our control over
-Egypt has almost vanished; that over India is endangered; our relations
-with Ireland affect those with America and even with some of our white
-colonies. Our Empire, too, depends upon the prevalence of certain
-ideas.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_330" id="page_330"></a>{330}</span></p>
-
-<h2><a name="ADD-VII" id="ADD-VII"></a>CHAPTER VII<br /><br />
-<small>COULD THE WAR HAVE BEEN PREVENTED?</small></h2>
-
-<p class="nind">‘B<small>UT</small> the real irrelevance of all this discussion,’ it will be said, ‘is
-that however complete our recognition of these truths might have been,
-that recognition would not have affected Germany’s action. We did not
-want territory, or colonies, or mines, or oil-wells, or phosphate
-islands, or railway concessions. We fought simply to resist aggression.
-The alternatives for us were sheer submission to aggression, or war, a
-war of self-defence.’</p>
-
-<p>Let us see. Our danger came from Germany’s aggressiveness. What made her
-more aggressive than other nations, than those who later became our
-Allies&mdash;Russia, Rumania, Italy, Japan, France? Sheer original sin, apart
-from political or economic circumstance?</p>
-
-<p>Now it was an extraordinary thing that those who were most clamant about
-the danger were for the most part quite ready to admit&mdash;even to urge and
-emphasise as part of their case&mdash;that Germany’s aggression was <i>not</i> due
-to inherent wickedness, but that any nation placed in her position would
-behave in just about the same way. That, indeed, was the view of very
-many pre-eminent before the War in their warnings of the German peril,
-of among others, Lord Roberts, Admiral Mahan, Mr Frederic Harrison, Mr
-Blatchford, Professor Wilkinson.</p>
-
-<p>Let us recall, for instance, Mr Harrison’s case for German
-aggression&mdash;Germany’s ‘poor access to the sea and its expanding
-population’:&mdash;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_331" id="page_331"></a>{331}</span></p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘A mighty nation of 65,000,000, with such superb resources both for
-peace and war, and such overweening pride in its own superiority
-and might, finds itself closed up in a ring-fence too narrow for
-its fecundity as for its pretensions, constructed more by history,
-geography, and circumstances than by design&mdash;a fence maintained by
-the fears rather than the hostility of its weaker neighbours. That
-is the rumbling subterranean volcano on which the European State
-system rests.</p>
-
-<p>‘It is inevitable but that a nation with the magnificent resources
-of the German, hemmed in a territory so inadequate to their needs
-and pretensions, and dominated by a soldier, bureaucratic, and
-literary caste, all deeply imbued with the Bismarckian doctrine,
-should thirst to extend their dominions, and their power at any
-sacrifice&mdash;of life, of wealth, and of justice. One must take facts
-as they are, and it is idle to be blind to facts, or to rail
-against them. It is as silly to gloss over manifest perils as it is
-to preach moralities about them.... England, Europe, civilisation,
-is in imminent peril from German expansion.’<a name="FNanchor_136_136" id="FNanchor_136_136"></a><a href="#Footnote_136_136" class="fnanchor">[136]</a></p></div>
-
-<p>Very well. We are to drop preaching moralities and look at the facts.
-Would successful war by us remove the economic and political causes
-which were part at least of the explanation<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_332" id="page_332"></a>{332}</span> of German aggression? Would
-her need for expansion become less? The preceding pages answer that
-question. Successful war by us would not dispose of the pressure of
-German population.</p>
-
-<p>If the German menace was due in part at least to such causes as ‘poor
-access to the sea,’ the absence of any assurance as to future provision
-for an expanding population, what measures were proposed for the removal
-of those causes?</p>
-
-<p>None whatever. Not only so, but any effort towards a frank facing of the
-economic difficulty was resisted by the very people who had previously
-urged the economic factors of the conflict, as a ‘sordid’ interpretation
-of that conflict. We have seen what happened, for instance, in the case
-of Admiral Mahan. He urged that the competition for undeveloped
-territory and raw materials lay behind the political struggle. So be it;
-replies some one; let us see whether we cannot remove that economic
-cause of conflict, whether indeed there is any real economic conflict at
-all. And the Admiral then retorts that economics have nothing to do with
-it. To Mr Frederic Harrison ‘<i>The Great Illusion</i> policy is childish and
-mischievous rubbish.’ What was that policy? To deny the existence of the
-German or other aggressiveness? The whole policy was prompted by the
-very fact of that danger. Did the policy suggest that we should simply
-yield to German political pretensions? Again, as we have seen, such a
-course was rejected with every possible emphasis. The one outstanding
-implication of the policy was that while arming we must find a basis of
-co-operation by which both peoples could live.</p>
-
-<p>In any serious effort to that end, one overpowering question had to be
-answered by Englishmen who felt some responsibility for the welfare of
-their people. Would that co-operation, giving security to others, demand
-the sacrifice of the interest or welfare of their own people? <i>The Great
-Illusion</i> replied, No, and set forth the reasons for that reply. And the
-setting-forth of those reasons made the book an ‘appeal to avarice
-against<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_333" id="page_333"></a>{333}</span> patriotism,’ an attempt ‘to restore the blessed hour of money
-getting.’ Eminent Nonconformist divines and patriotic stockbrokers
-joined hands in condemning the appalling sordidness of the demonstration
-which might have led to a removal of the economic causes of
-international quarrel.</p>
-
-<p>It is not true to say that in the decade preceding Armageddon the
-alternatives to fighting Germany were exhausted, and that nothing was
-left but war or submission. We simply had not tried the remedy of
-removing the economic excuse for aggression. The fact that Germany did
-face these difficulties and much future uncertainty was indeed urged by
-those of the school of Mr Harrison and Lord Roberts as a conclusive
-argument against the possibility of peace or any form of agreement with
-her. The idea that agreement should reach to such fundamental things as
-the means of subsistence seemed to involve such an invasion of
-sovereignty as not even to be imaginable.</p>
-
-<p>To show that such an agreement would not ask a sacrifice of vital
-national interest, that indeed the economic advantages which could be
-exacted by military preponderance were exceedingly small or
-non-existent, seemed the first indispensable step towards bringing some
-international code of economic right within the area of practical
-politics, of giving it any chance of acceptance by public opinion. Yet
-the effort towards that was disparaged and derided as ‘materialistic.’</p>
-
-<p>One hoped at least that this disparagement of material interest as a
-motive in international politics might give us a peace settlement which
-would be free from it. But economic interest which is ‘sordid’ when
-appealed to as a means of preserving the peace, becomes a sacred egoism
-when invoked on behalf of a policy which makes war almost inevitable.</p>
-
-<p>Why did it create such bitter resentment before the War to suggest that
-we should discuss the economic grounds of international conflict&mdash;why
-before the War were many writers who now demand that discussion so angry
-at it being suggested?<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_334" id="page_334"></a>{334}</span> Among the very hostile critics of <i>The Great
-Illusion</i>&mdash;hostile mainly on the ground that it misread the motive
-forces in international politics&mdash;was Mr J. L. Garvin. Yet his own first
-post-war book is entitled: <i>The Economic Foundations of Peace</i>, and its
-first Chapter Summary begins thus:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘A primary war, largely about food and raw materials: inseparable
-connection of the politics and economics of the peace.’</p></div>
-
-<p>And his first paragraph contains the following:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘The war with many names was in one main aspect a war about food
-supply and raw materials. To this extent it was Germany’s fight to
-escape from the economic position of interdependence without
-security into which she had insensibly fallen&mdash;to obtain for
-herself independent control of an ample share in the world’s
-supplies of primary resources. The war meant much else, but it
-meant this as well and this was a vital factor in its causes.’</p></div>
-
-<p>His second chapter is thus summarised:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>‘Former international conditions transformed by the revolution in
-transport and telegraphic intelligence; great nations lose their
-former self-sufficient basis: growth of interdependence between
-peoples and continents.... Germany without sea power follows
-Britain’s economic example; interdependence without security:
-national necessities and cosmopolitan speculation: an Armageddon
-unavoidable.’</p></div>
-
-<p>Lord Grey has said that if there had existed in 1914 a League of Nations
-as tentative even as that embodied in the Covenant, Armageddon could in
-any case have been delayed, and delay might well have meant prevention.
-We know now that if war had been delayed the mere march of events would<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_335" id="page_335"></a>{335}</span>
-have altered the situation. It is unlikely that a Russian revolution of
-one kind or another could have been prevented even if there had been no
-war; and a change in the character of the Russian government might well
-have terminated on the one side the Serbian agitation against Austria,
-and on the other the genuine fear of German democrats concerning
-Russia’s imperialist ambitions. The death of the old Austrian emperor
-was another factor that might have made for peace.<a name="FNanchor_137_137" id="FNanchor_137_137"></a><a href="#Footnote_137_137" class="fnanchor">[137]</a></p>
-
-<p>Assume, in addition to such factors, that Britain had been prepared to
-recognise Germany’s economic needs and difficulties, as Mr Garvin now
-urges we should recognise them. Whether even this would have prevented
-war, no man can say. But we can say&mdash;and it is implicit in the economic
-case now so commonly urged as to the need of Germany for economic
-security&mdash;that since we did not give her that security we did not do all
-that we might have done to remove the causes of war. ‘Here in the
-struggle for primary raw materials’ says Mr Garvin in effect over the
-six hundred pages more or less of his book, ‘are causes of war that must
-be dealt with if we are to have peace.’ If then, in the years that
-preceded Armageddon, the world had wanted to avoid that orgy, and had
-had the necessary wisdom, these are things with which it would have
-occupied itself.</p>
-
-<p>Yet when the attempt was made to draw the attention of the world to just
-those factors, publicists even as sincere and able as Mr Garvin
-disparaged it; and very many misrepresented it by silly distortion. It
-is easy now to see where that pre-war attempt to work towards some
-solution was most defective: if greater emphasis had been given to some
-definite scheme for<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_336" id="page_336"></a>{336}</span> assuring Germany’s necessary access to resources,
-the real issue might have been made plainer. A fair implication of <i>The
-Great Illusion</i> was that as Britain had no real interest in thwarting
-German expansion, the best hope for the future lay in an increasingly
-clear demonstration of the fact of community of interest. The more valid
-conclusion would have been that the absence of conflict in vital
-interests should have been seized upon as affording an opportunity for
-concluding definite conventions and obligations which would assuage
-fears on both sides. But criticism, instead of bringing out this defect,
-directed itself, for the most part, to an attempt to show that the
-economic fears or facts had nothing to do with the conflict. Had
-criticism consisted in taking up the problem where <i>The Great Illusion</i>
-left it, much more might have been done&mdash;perhaps sufficient&mdash;to make
-Armageddon unnecessary.<a name="FNanchor_138_138" id="FNanchor_138_138"></a><a href="#Footnote_138_138" class="fnanchor">[138]</a></p>
-
-<p>The importance of the phenomenon we have just touched upon&mdash;the
-disparagement before war of truths we are compelled to face after
-war&mdash;lies in its revelation of subconscious or unconscious motive. There
-grows up after some years of peace in every nation possessing military
-and naval traditions and a habit of dominion, a real desire for
-domination, perhaps even for war itself; the opportunity that it affords
-for the assertion of collective power; the mysterious dramatic impulse
-to ‘stop the cackle with a blow; strike, and strike home.’</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>For the moment we are at the ebb of that feeling and another is
-beginning perhaps to flow. The results are showing in our policy. We
-find in what would have been ten years ago very strange places for such
-things, attacks upon the government for its policy of ‘reckless
-militarism’ in Mesopotamia or Persia. Although<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_337" id="page_337"></a>{337}</span> public opinion did not
-manage to impose a policy of peace with Russia, it did at least make
-open and declared war impossible, and all the efforts of the Northcliffe
-Press to inflame passion by stories of Bolshevist atrocities fell
-completely flat. For thirty years it has been a crime of <i>lèse patrie</i>
-to mention the fact that we have given solemn and repeated pledges for
-the evacuation of Egypt. And indeed to secure a free hand in Egypt we
-were ready to acquiesce in the French evasion of international
-obligations in Morocco, a policy which played no small part in widening
-the gulf between ourselves and Germany. Yet the political position on
-behalf of which ten years ago these risks were taken is to-day
-surrendered with barely a protest. A policy of almost unqualified
-‘scuttle’ which no Cabinet could have faced a decade since, to-day
-causes scarcely a ripple. And as to the Treaty, certain clauses therein,
-around which centred less than two years ago a true dementia&mdash;the trial
-of the Kaiser in London, the trial of war prisoners&mdash;we have simply
-forgotten all about.</p>
-
-<p>It is certain that sheer exhaustion of the emotions associated with war
-explains a good deal. But Turks, Poles, Arabs, Russians, who have
-suffered war much longer, still fight. The policy of the loan to
-Germany, the independence of Egypt, the evacuation of Mesopotamia, the
-refusal to attempt the removal of the Bolshevist ‘menace to freedom and
-civilisation’ by military means, are explained in part at least by a
-growing recognition of both the political and the economic futility of
-the military means, and the absolute need of replacing or supplementing
-the military method by an increasing measure of agreement and
-co-operation. The order of events has been such as to induce an
-interpretation, bring home a conviction, which has influenced policy.
-But the strength and permanence of the conviction will depend upon the
-degree of intelligence with which the interpretation is made. Discussion
-is indispensable and that justifies this re-examination of the
-suggestions made in <i>The Great Illusion</i>.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_338" id="page_338"></a>{338}</span></p>
-
-<p>In so far as it is mere emotional exhaustion which we are now feeling,
-and not the beginning of a new tradition and new attitude in which
-intelligence, however dimly, has its part, it has in it little hope. For
-inertia has its dangers as grave as those of unseeing passion. In the
-one case the ship is driven helplessly by a gale on to the rocks, in the
-other it drifts just as helplessly into the whirlpool. A consciousness
-of direction, a desire at least to be master of our fate and to make the
-effort of thought to that end, is the indispensable condition of
-freedom, salvation. That is the first and last justification for the
-discussion we have just summarised.</p>
-
-<div class="footnotes"><h3><a name="FOOTNOTES" id="FOOTNOTES"></a>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> But British policy can hardly be called less contradictory.
-A year after the enactment of a Treaty which quite avowedly was framed
-for the purpose of checking the development of German trade, we find the
-unemployment crisis producing on the part of the <i>New Statesman</i> the
-following comment:&mdash;
-</p><p>
-‘It must be admitted, however, that the present wave of depression and
-unemployment is far more an international than a national problem. The
-abolition of “casual labour” and the adoption of a system of “industrial
-maintenance” would appreciably affect it. The international aspect of
-the question has always been important, but never so overwhelmingly
-important as it is to-day.
-</p><p>
-‘The present great depression, however, is not normal. It is due in the
-main to the breakdown of credit and the demoralisation of the
-“exchanges” throughout Europe. France cannot buy locomotives in England
-if she has to pay 60 francs to the pound sterling. Germany, with an
-exchange of 260 (instead of the pre-war 20) marks to the pound, can buy
-scarcely anything. Russia, for other reasons cannot buy at all. And even
-neutral countries like Sweden and Denmark, which made much money out of
-the war and whose “exchanges” are fairly normal, are financially almost
-<i>hors de combat</i>, owing presumably to the ruin of Germany. There appears
-to be no remedy for this position save the economic rehabilitation of
-Central Europe.
-</p><p>
-‘As long as German workmen are unable to exercise their full productive
-capacity, English workmen will be unemployed. That, at present, is the
-root of the problem. For the last two years we, as an industrial nation,
-have been cutting off our nose to spite our face. In so far as we ruin
-Germany we are ruining ourselves; and in so far as we refuse to trade
-with revolutionary Russia we are increasing the likelihood of violent
-upheavals in Great Britain. Sooner or later we shall have to scrap every
-Treaty that has been signed and begin again the creation of the New
-Europe on the basis of universal co-operation and mutual aid. Where we
-have demanded indemnities we must offer loans.
-</p><p>
-‘A system of international credit&mdash;founded necessarily on British
-credit&mdash;is as great a necessity for ourselves as it is for Central
-Europe. We must finance our customers or lose them and share their ruin,
-sinking deeper every month into the morass of doles and relief works.
-That is the main lesson of the present crisis.’&mdash;(Jan. 1st, 1921.)</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Out of a population of 45,000,000 our home-grown wheat
-suffices for only about 12,500,000, on the basis of the 1919-20 crop.
-Sir Henry Rew, <i>Food Supplies in Peace and War</i>, says: ‘On the basis of
-our present population ... we should still need to import 78 per cent.
-of our requirements.’ (p. 165). Before the War, according to the same
-authority, home produce supplied 48 per cent. in food value of the total
-consumption, but the table on which this figure is based does not
-include sugar, tea, coffee, or cocoa.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> The growing power of the food-producing area and its
-determination to be independent as far as possible of the industrial
-centre, is a fact too often neglected in considering the revolutionary
-movements of Europe. The war of the classes almost everywhere is crossed
-by another war, that between cities and country. The land-owning
-countryman, whether peasant or noble, tends to become conservative,
-clerical, anti-socialist (and anti-social) in his politics and outlook.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> ‘The Economic Consequences of the Peace,’ pp. 275-277.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> <i>Manchester Guardian</i>, Weekly Edition, February 6th.,
-1920.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> <i>Daily News</i>, June 28th., 1920.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Sir William Goode, British Director of Relief, has said,
-(<i>Times</i> Dec. 6th., 1919):&mdash;
-</p><p>
-‘I have myself recently returned from Vienna. I feel as if I had spent
-ten days in the cell of a condemned murderer who has given up all hope
-of reprieve. I stayed at the best hotel, but I saw no milk and no eggs
-the whole time I was there. In the bitter, cold hall of the hotel, once
-the gayest rendezvous in Europe, the visitors huddled together in the
-gloom of one light where there used to be forty. They were more like
-shadows of the Embankment than representatives of the rich. Vienna’s
-world-famous Opera House is packed every afternoon. Why? Women and men
-go there in order to keep themselves warm, and because they have no work
-to do.’
-</p><p>
-He went on:&mdash;
-</p><p>
-‘First aid was to hasten peace. Political difficulties combined with
-decreased production, demoralisation of railway traffic, to say nothing
-of actual shortages of coal, food, and finance, had practically
-paralysed industrial and commercial activity. The bold liberation or
-creation of areas, without simultaneous steps to reorganise economic
-life, had so far proved to be a dangerous experiment. Professor Masaryk,
-the able President of Czecho-Slovakia, put the case in a nutshell when
-he said: “It is a question of the export of merchandise or of
-population.”’</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> The figures for 1913 are:&mdash;
-</p>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="">
-<tr><td>Imports.</td><td>From British Possessions&nbsp; &nbsp; </td><td align="right">£192,000,000.</td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>From Foreign Countries</td><td align="right">£577,000,000.</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Exports.</td><td>To British Possessions</td><td align="right">£195,000,000.</td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>To Foreign Countries</td><td align="right">£330,000,000.</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Re-exports.&nbsp; &nbsp; </td><td>To British Possessions</td><td align="right">£14,000,000.</td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>To Foreign Countries</td><td align="right">£96,000,000.</td></tr>
-</table>
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> The question is dealt with more fully in the last chapter
-of the ‘Addendum’ to this book. The chapter of ‘The Great Illusion’
-dealing with the indemnity says: ‘The difficulty in the case of a large
-indemnity is not so much the payment by the vanquished as the receiving
-by the victor.’ (p. 76, 1910 Edition.) Mr Lloyd George (Jan. 28th.,
-1921) says: ‘The real difficulty is in securing payment outside the
-limits of Germany.... The only way Germany can pay is by exports&mdash;the
-difference between German imports and exports.... If she exports too
-much for the Allies it means the ruin of their industry.’
-</p><p>
-Thus the main problem of an indemnity is to secure wealth in exportable
-form which will not disorganise the victor’s trade. Yet so obscured does
-the plainest fact become in the murky atmosphere of war time that in
-many of the elaborate studies emanating from Westminster and Paris, as
-to ‘What Germany can pay’ this phase of the problem is not even touched
-upon. We get calculations as to Germany’s total wealth in railroads,
-public buildings, houses, as though these things could be picked up and
-transported to France or Belgium. We are told that the Allies should
-collect the revenues of the railroads; the <i>Daily Mail</i> wants us to
-‘take’ the income of Herr Stinnes, all without a word as to the form in
-which this wealth is to <i>leave Germany</i>. Are we prepared to take the
-things made in the factories of Herr Stinnes or other Germans? If not,
-what do we propose that Germany shall give? Paper marks increased in
-quantity until they reach just the value of the paper they are printed
-on? Even to secure coal, we must, as we have seen, give in return food.
-</p><p>
-If the crux of the situation were really understood by the memorialists
-who want Germany’s pockets searched, their studies would be devoted
-<i>not</i> to showing what Germany might produce under favourable
-circumstances, which her past has shown to be very great indeed, but
-what degree of competitive German production Allied industrialists will
-themselves be ready to face.
-</p><p>
-“Big business” in England is already strongly averse to the payment of
-an indemnity, as any conversation in the City or with industrialists
-readily reveals. Yet it was the suggestion of what has actually taken
-place which excited the derision of critics a few years ago. Obviously
-the feasibility of an indemnity is much more a matter of our will than
-of Germany’s, for it depends on what shall be the size of Germany’s
-foreign trade. Clearly we can expand that if we want to. We might give
-her a preference!</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> ‘What Happened to Europe.’</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> <i>Times</i>, July 3rd., 1920.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> The proposal respecting Austria was a loan of 50 millions
-in instalments of five years.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> Mr Hoover seems to suggest that their repayment should
-never take place. To a meeting of Bankers he says:&mdash;
-</p><p>
-‘Even if we extend these credits and if upon Europe’s recovery we then
-attempt to exact the payment of these sums by import of commodities, we
-shall have introduced a competition with our own industries that cannot
-be turned back by any tariff wall.... I believe that we have to-day an
-equipment and a skill in production that yield us a surplus of
-commodities for export beyond any compensation we can usefully take by
-way of imported commodities.... Gold and remittances and services cannot
-cover this gulf in our trade balance.... To me there is only one remedy,
-and that is by the systematic permanent investment of our surplus
-production in reproductive works abroad. We thus reduce the return we
-must receive to a return of interest and profit.’
-</p><p>
-A writer in the <i>New Republic</i> (Dec. 29th., 1920.) who quotes this says
-pertinently enough:&mdash;
-</p><p>
-‘Mr Hoover disposes of the principal of our foreign loans. The debtors
-cannot return it and we cannot afford to receive it back. But the
-interest and profit which he says we may receive&mdash;that will have to be
-paid in commodities, as the principal would be if it were paid at all.
-What shall we do when the volume of foreign commodities received in
-payment of interest and profit becomes very large and our industries cry
-for protection?’</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> The present writer declines to join in the condemnation of
-British miners for reduced output. In an ultimate sense (which is no
-part of the present discussion) the decline in effort of the miner is
-perhaps justified. But the facts are none the less striking as showing
-how great the difference of output can be. Figures given by Sir John
-Cadman, President of the Institute of Mining Engineers a short time ago
-(and quoted in the <i>Fortnightly Review</i> for Oct. 1920.), show that in
-1916 the coal production per person employed in the United Kingdom was
-263 tons, as against 731 tons in the United States. In 1918 the former
-amounted to 236 tons, and during 1919 it sank to 197½ tons. In 1913 the
-coal produced per man per day in this country was 0.98 tons, and in
-America it was 3.91 tons for bituminous coal and 2.19 tons for
-anthracite. In 1918 the British output figure was 0.80 tons, and the
-American 3.77 tons for bituminous coal and 2.27 for anthracite. Measured
-by their daily output, a single American miner does just as much work as
-do five Englishmen.
-</p><p>
-The inferiority in production is, of course, ‘to some considerable
-extent’ due to the fact that the most easily workable deposits in
-England are becoming exhausted, while the United States can most easily
-draw on their most prolific and most easily workable sites....
-</p><p>
-It is the fact that in our new and favourable coalfields, such as the
-South Yorkshire area, the men working under the most favourable modern
-conditions and in new mines where the face is near the shaft, do not
-obtain as much coal per man employed, as that got by the miners in the
-country generally under the conditions appertaining forty and fifty
-years ago.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> Mr J. M. Keynes, ‘The Economic Consequences of the Peace,’
-p. 211, says:&mdash;‘It is an extraordinary fact that the fundamental
-economic problem of a Europe starving and disintegrating before their
-eyes, was the one question in which it was impossible to arouse the
-interest of the Four.’</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> Incidentally we see nations not yet brought under
-capitalist organisation (e.g. the peasant nations of the Balkans)
-equally subject to the hostilities we are discussing.
-</p><p>
-Bertrand Russell writes (<i>New Republic</i>, September 15th., 1920):&mdash;‘No
-doubt commercial rivalry between England and Germany had a great deal to
-do with causing the war, but rivalry is a different thing from
-profit-seeking. Probably by combination, English and German capitalists
-could have made more than they did out of rivalry, but the rivalry was
-instinctive, and its economic form was accidental. The capitalists were
-in the grip of nationalist instinct as much as their proletarian
-‘dupes.’ In both classes some have gained by the war, but the universal
-will to war was not produced by the hope of gain. It was produced by a
-different set of instincts, one which Marxian psychology fails to
-recognise adequately....
-</p><p>
-Men desire power, they desire satisfaction for their pride and their
-self-respect. They desire victory over their rivals so profoundly that
-they will invent a rivalry for the unconscious purpose of making a
-victory possible. All these motives cut across the pure economic motive
-in ways that are practically important.
-</p><p>
-There is need of a treatment of political motives by the methods of
-psycho-analysis. In politics, as in private life, men invent myths to
-rationalise their conduct. If a man thinks that the only reasonable
-motive in politics is economic self-advancement, he will persuade
-himself that the things he wishes to do will make him rich. When he
-wants to fight the Germans, he tells himself that their competition is
-ruining his trade. If, on the other hand, he is an ‘idealist,’ who holds
-that his politics should aim at the advancement of the human race, he
-will tell himself that the crimes of the Germans demand their
-humiliation. The Marxian sees through this latter camouflage, but not
-through the former.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> ‘If the Englishman sells goods in Turkey or Argentina, he
-is taking trade from the German, and if the German sells goods in either
-of these countries&mdash;or any other country, come to that&mdash;he is taking
-trade from the Englishman; and the well-being of every inhabitant of the
-great manufacturing towns, such as London, Paris, or Berlin, is bound up
-in the power of the capitalist to sell his wares; and the production of
-manufactured articles has outstripped the natural increase of demand by
-67 per cent., therefore new markets must be found for these wares or the
-existing ones be “forced”; hence the rush for colonies and feverish
-trade competition between the great manufacturing countries. And the
-production of manufactured goods is still increasing, and the great
-cities must sell their wares or starve. Now we understand what trade
-rivalry really is. It resolves itself, in fact, into the struggle for
-bread.’ (A Rifleman: ‘<i>Struggle for Bread.</i>’ p. 54.)</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> Mr J. M. Keynes, <i>The Economic Consequences of the Peace</i>,
-says: ‘I do not put the money value of the actual <i>physical</i> loss to
-Belgian property by destruction and loot above £150,000,000 as a
-<i>maximum</i>, and while I hesitate to put yet lower an estimate which
-differs so widely from those generally current, I shall be surprised if
-it proves possible to substantiate claims even to this amount.... While
-the French claims are immensely greater, here too, there has been
-excessive exaggeration, as responsible French statisticians have
-themselves pointed out. Not above 10 per cent. of the area of France was
-effectively occupied by the enemy, and not above 4 per cent. lay within
-the area of substantial devastation.... In short, it will be difficult
-to establish a bill exceeding £500,000,000 for <i>physical and material</i>
-damage in the occupied and devastated areas of Northern France.’ (pp.
-114-117.)</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> <i>The Foundations of International Policy</i> pp. xxiii-xxiv.
-</p><p>
-It is true, of course, that Governments were for their armies and navies
-and public departments considerable purchasers in the international
-market. But the general truth of the distinction here made is
-unaffected. The difference in degree, in this respect, between the
-pre-war and post-war state in so great as to make a difference of kind.
-The dominant motive for State action has been changed.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> See Addendum and also the authors’ <i>War and the Workers</i>.
-(National Labour Press). pp. 29-50.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> Note of May 22, 1919.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> Speech of September 5, 1919. From report in Philadelphia
-Public Ledger, Sept 6.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> In German East Africa we have a case in which practically
-the whole of the property in land was confiscated. The whole European
-population were evicted from the farms and plantations&mdash;many, of course,
-representing the labour of a lifetime&mdash;and deported. A visitor to the
-colony describes it as an empty shell, its productivity enormously
-reduced. In contradistinction, however, one welcomes General Smuts’s
-statement in the Union House of Assembly in regard to the Government’s
-intentions as to German property. He declared that the balance of nine
-millions in the hands of the Custodian after claims for damages had been
-recovered, would not be paid to the Reparations Commission, as this
-would practically mean confiscation. The Government would take the nine
-millions, plus interest, as a loan to South Africa for thirty years at
-four per cent. While under the Peace Treaty they had the right to
-confiscate all private property in South-West Africa, they did not
-intend to avail themselves of those rights. They would leave private
-property alone. As to the concessions, if the titles to these were
-proved, they would also be left untouched. The statement of the South
-African Government’s intentions, which are the most generous of any
-country in the world, was received with repeated cheers from all
-sections of the House.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> Since the above lines were written the following important
-announcement has appeared (according to <i>The Times</i> of October 26th.,
-1920.) in the <i>Board of Trade Journal</i> of October 21st.:&mdash;
-</p><p>
-‘H. M. Government have informed the German Government that they do not
-intend to exercise their rights under paragraph 18 of Annex II to Part
-VIII of the Treaty of Versailles, to seize the property of German
-nationals in this country in case of voluntary default by Germany. This
-applies to German property in the United Kingdom or under United Kingdom
-control, whether in the form of bank balances, or in that of goods in
-British bottoms, or of goods sent to this country for sale.
-</p><p>
-‘It has already been announced that German property, rights, and
-interests acquired since the publication of the General Licence
-permitting the resumption of trade with Germany (i.e. since July 12th.,
-1919), are not liable to retention under Art. 297 of the Peace Treaty,
-which gives the Allied and Associated Powers the right to liquidate all
-German property, rights, and interests within their territories at the
-date of the coming into force of the Treaty.’
-</p><p>
-This announcement has called forth strong protests from France and from
-some quarters in this country, to which the British Government has
-rejoined by a semi-official statement that the concession has been made
-solely on account of British commercial interests. The incident
-illustrates the difficulty of waiving even permissive powers under the
-Treaty, although the exercise of those powers would obviously injure
-British traders. Moreover, the Reparations (Recovery) Act, passed in
-March 1921, appears to be inconsistent with the above announcement.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> A point that seems to have been overlooked is the effect
-of this Treaty on the arrangements which may follow changes in the
-political status of, say, Egypt or India or Ireland. If some George
-Washington of the future were to apply the principles of the Treaty to
-British property, the effects might be far-reaching.
-</p><p>
-A <i>Quarterly Review</i> critic (April 1920) says of these clauses of the
-Treaty (particularly Article 297b.):&mdash;
-</p><p>
-‘We are justified in regarding this policy with the utmost apprehension,
-not only because of its injustice, but also because it is likely to form
-precedents of a most mischievous character in the future. If, it will be
-said, the Allied Governments ended their great war for justice and right
-by confiscating private property and ruining those unfortunate
-individuals who happened to have investments outside their own country,
-how can private wealth at home complain if a Labour Government proposes
-to confiscate private property in any business which it thinks suitable
-for “nationalisation”? Under another provision the Reparations
-Commission is actually allowed to demand the surrender of German
-properties and German enterprises in <i>neutral</i> countries. This will be
-found in Article 235, which “introduces a quite novel principle in the
-collection of indemnities.”’</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> See quotations in Addendum.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> Cmd. 280 (1919), p. 15.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> The dilemma is not, of course, as absolute, as this query
-would suggest. What I am trying to make perfectly clear here is the
-<i>kind</i> of problem that faces us rather than the precise degree of its
-difficulty. My own view is that after much suffering especially to the
-children, and the reduction during a generation or two, perhaps, of the
-physical standard of the race, the German population will find a way
-round the sustenance difficulty. For one thing, France needs German coke
-quite as badly as Germany needs French ore, and this common need may be
-made the basis of a bargain. But though Germany may be able to surmount
-the difficulties created for her by her victors, it is those
-difficulties which will constitute her grievance, and will present
-precisely the kind, if not the degree, of injustice here indicated.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> One very commonly sees the statement that France had no
-adequate resources in iron ore before the War. This is an entire
-mistake, as the Report of the Commission appointed by the Minister of
-Munitions to visit Lorraine (issued July, 1919), points out (p.
-11.):&mdash;‘Before the War the resources of Germany of iron ore were
-3,600,000,000 tons and those of France 3,300,000,000.’ What gave Germany
-the advantage was the possession not of greater ore resources than
-France, but of coal suitable for furnace coke, and this superiority in
-coal will still remain even after the Treaty, although the paralysis of
-transport and other indispensable factors may render the superiority
-valueless. The report just quoted says:&mdash;‘It is true that Germany will
-want iron ore from Lorraine (in 1913 she took 14,000,000 tons from Briey
-and 18,500,000 tons from Lorraine), but she will not be so entirely
-dependent upon this one source of supply as the Lorraine works will be
-upon Germany for coke, unless some means are provided to enable Lorraine
-to obtain coke from elsewhere, or to produce her own needs from Saar
-coal and imported coking coal.’ The whole report seems to indicate that
-the <i>mise en valeur</i> of France’s new ‘property’ depends upon supplies of
-German coal&mdash;to say nothing of the needs of a German market and the
-markets depending on that market. As it is, the Lorraine steel works are
-producing nothing like their full output because of the inability of
-Germany to supply furnace coke, owing largely to the Westphalian labour
-troubles and transport disorganisation. Whether political passion will
-so far subside as to enable the two countries to come to a bargain in
-the matter of exchange of ore or basic pig-iron for furnace coke,
-remains to be seen. In any case one may say that the ore-fields of
-Lorraine will only be of value to France provided that much of their
-product is returned to Germany and used for the purpose of giving value
-to German coal.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> From the summary of a series of lectures on the <i>Biology
-of Death</i>, as reported in the <i>Boston Herald</i> of December 19th., 1920.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> A recent book on the subject, summing up the various
-recommendations made in France up to 1918 for increasing the birth-rate
-is <i>La Natalité: ses Lois Economiques et Psychologiques</i>, by Gaston
-Rageot.
-</p><p>
-The present writer remembers being present ten years before the War at a
-Conference at the Sorbonne on this subject. One of the lecturers
-summarised all the various plans that had been tried to increase the
-birth-rate. ‘They have all failed,’ he concluded, ‘and I doubt if
-anything remains to be done.’ And one of the savants present added:
-‘Except to applaud.’</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> Mr William Harbutt Dawson gives the figures as follows:&mdash;
-</p><p>
-‘The decline in the birth-rate was found to have become a settled factor
-in the population question.... The birth-rate for the whole Empire
-reached the maximum figure in 1876, when it stood at 41.0 per 1000 of
-the population.... Since 1876 the movement has been steadily downward,
-with the slightest possible break at the beginning of the ‘nineties....
-Since 1900 the rate has decreased as follows:&mdash;
-</p>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="">
-<tr><td align="left">1900&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; </td><td align="left">35.6 per</td><td align="center">&nbsp; &nbsp; 1000.</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="left">1901</td><td align="left">35.7 per</td><td align="center">&nbsp; &nbsp; “</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="left">1902</td><td align="left">35.1 per</td><td align="center">&nbsp; &nbsp; “</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="left">1903</td><td align="left">33.9 per</td><td align="center">&nbsp; &nbsp; “</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="left">1904</td><td align="left">34.1 per</td><td align="center">&nbsp; &nbsp; 1000.</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="left">1905</td><td align="left">33.0 per</td><td align="center">&nbsp; &nbsp; “</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="left">1906</td><td align="left">33.1 per</td><td align="center">&nbsp; &nbsp; “</td></tr>
-</table>
-
-<p class="c">(<i>The Evolution of Modern Germany.</i> p. 309)</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> Conversely it may be said that the economic position of
-the border States becomes impossible unless the greater States are
-orderly. In regard to Poland, Mr Keynes remarks: ‘Unless her great
-neighbours are prosperous and orderly, Poland is an economic
-impossibility, with no industry but Jew-baiting.’
-</p><p>
-Sir William Goode (the British Director of Relief) states that he found
-‘everywhere never-ending vicious circles of political paradox and
-economic complication, with consequent paralysis of national life and
-industry. The new States of repartitioned Europe seem not only incapable
-of maintaining their own economic life, but also either unable or
-unwilling to help their neighbours.’ (Cmd. 521 (1920), p. 6.)</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> From a manifesto signed by a large number of American
-intellectuals, business men, and Labour Leaders (‘League of Free Nations
-Association’) on the eve of President Wilson’s departure for Paris.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> Interview published by <i>Pearson’s Magazine</i>, March, 1915.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> <i>Times</i>, March 8, 1915. ‘Our honour and interest must have
-compelled us to join France and Russia even if Germany had scrupulously
-respected the rights of her small neighbours and had sought to hack her
-way through the Eastern fortresses. The German Chancellor has insisted
-more than once upon this truth. He has fancied apparently that he was
-making an argumentative point against us by establishing it. That, like
-so much more, only shows his complete misunderstanding of our attitude
-and our character.... We reverted to our historical policy of the
-Balance of Power.’
-</p><p>
-The <i>Times</i> maintains the same position five years later (July 31st,
-1920): ‘It needed more than two years of actual warfare to render the
-British people wholly conscious that they were fighting not a quixotic
-fight for Belgium and France, but a desperate battle for their own
-existence.’</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> <i>How the War Came</i>, p. 238.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> Lord Loreburn adds:&mdash;
-</p><p>
-‘But Sir Edward Grey in 1914 did not and could not offer similar
-Treaties to France and Germany because our relations with France and the
-conduct of Germany were such, that for us to join Germany in any event
-was unthinkable. And he did not proclaim our neutrality because our
-relations with France, as described in his own speech, were such that he
-could not in honour refuse to join France in the war. Therefore the
-example of 1870 could not be followed in 1914, and Belgium was not saved
-but destroyed.’</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> See the Documents published by the Russian Government in
-November, 1917.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> It is not clear whether the undertaking to Russia was
-actually given. Lord R. Cecil in the House of Commons on July 24th,
-1917, said: ‘It will be for this country to back up the French in what
-they desire. I will not go through all the others of our Allies&mdash;there
-are a good many of them&mdash;but the principle (to stand by our Allies) will
-be equally there in the case of all and particularly in the case of
-Serbia.’</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> Since these lines were written, there has been a change of
-government and of policy in Italy. An agreement has been reached with
-Yugo-Slavia, which appears to satisfy the moderate elements in both
-countries.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> Lord Curzon (May 17th, 1920) wrote that he did not see how
-we could invoke the League to restrain Poland. The Poles, he added, must
-choose war or peace on their own responsibility. Mr Lloyd George (June
-19th, 1920) declared that ‘the League of Nations could not intervene in
-Poland.’</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> <i>The War that will End War</i>, p. 14.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 19.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> <i>The Issue</i>, p. 37-39.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> <i>Land and Water</i>, February 21st, 1918.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> Even as late as January 13th, 1920, Mr H. W. Wilson of the
-<i>Daily Mail</i> writes that if the disarmament of Germany is carried out
-‘the real cause of swollen armaments in Europe will vanish.’
-</p><p>
-On May 18th, 1920, Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson (<i>Morning Post</i>, May
-19th) declares himself thus:&mdash;
-</p><p>
-‘We were told that after this last war we were to have peace. We have
-not; there are something between twenty and thirty bloody wars going on
-at the present moment. We were told that the great war was to end war.
-It did not; it could not. We have a very difficult time ahead, whether
-on the sea, in the air, or on the land.’ He wanted them to take away the
-warning from a fellow soldier that their country and their Empire both
-wanted them to-day as much as ever they had, and if they were as proud
-of belonging to the British Empire as he was they would do their best,
-in whatever capacity they served, to qualify themselves for the times
-that were coming.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> July 31st, 1920.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> April 19th, 1919.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> A Reuter Despatch dated August 31st, 1920, says:&mdash;
-</p><p>
-‘Speaking to-day at Charleston (West Virginia) Mr Daniels, U. S. Naval
-Secretary, said: “We are building enormous docks and are constructing 18
-dreadnoughts and battle cruisers, with a dozen other powerful ships
-which in effective fighting power will give our navy world primacy.”’</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> We are once more back to the Carlylean ‘deep, patient ...
-virtuous ... Germany.’</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> Sir Henry Wilson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, in
-a memorandum dated December 1st, 1919, which appears in a Blue Book on
-‘the Evacuation of North Russia, 1919,’ says:&mdash;‘There is one great
-lesson to be learned from the history of the campaign.... It is that
-once a military force is involved in operations on land it is almost
-impossible to limit the magnitude of its commitments.’</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> And Russo-German co-operation is of course precisely what
-French policy must create. Says an American critic:&mdash;
-</p><p>
-‘France certainly carries a big stick, but she does not speak softly;
-she takes her own part, but she seems to fear neither God nor the
-revulsion of man. Yet she has reason to fear. Suppose she succeeds for a
-while in reducing Germany to servitude and Russia to a dictatorship of
-the Right, in securing her own dominion on the Continent as overlord by
-the petty States of Europe. What then? What can be the consequence of a
-common hostility of the Teutonic and Slavonic peoples, except in the end
-common action on their part to throw off an intolerable yoke? The
-nightmare of a militant Russo-German alliance becomes daily a more
-sinister prophecy, as France teaches the people of Europe that force
-alone is the solvent. France has only to convince all of Germany that
-the Treaty of Versailles will be enforced in all its rigour, which means
-occupation of the Ruhr and the loss of Silesia, to destroy the final
-resistance of those Germans who look to the West rather than to the East
-for salvation. Let it be known that the barrier of the Rhine is all
-bayonet and threat, and western-minded Germany must go down before the
-easterners, Communist or Junker. It will not matter greatly which.’
-(<i>New Republic</i>, Sept. 15th, 1920).</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> December 23rd, 1919.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> <i>The Times</i> of September 4th, 1920 reproduces an article
-from the Matin, on M. Millerand’s policy with regard to small States. M.
-Millerand’s aim was that economic aid should go hand in hand with French
-military protection. With this policy in view, a number of large
-businesses recently passed under French control, including the Skoda
-factory in Czecho-Slovakia, big works at Kattowitz in Upper Silesia, the
-firm of Huta-Bankowa in Poland, railway factories in Rumania, and
-certain river systems and ports in Yugo-Slavia. In return for assistance
-to Admiral Horthy, an agreement was signed whereby France obtained
-control of the Hungarian State Railways, of the Credit Bank, the
-Hungarian river system and the port of Buda-pest. Other reports state
-that France has secured 85 per cent. of the oil-fields of Poland, in
-return for her help at the time of the threat to Warsaw. As the majority
-of shares in the Polish Oil Company ‘Galicia,’ which have been in
-British hands until recently, have been bought up by a French Company,
-the ‘Franco-Polonaise,’ France now holds an important weapon of
-international policy.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a> The present writer would like to enter a warning here that
-nothing in this chapter implies that we should disregard France’s very
-legitimate fears of a revived militarist Germany. The implication is
-that she is going the right way about to create the very dangers that
-terrify her. If this were the place to discuss alternative policies, I
-should certainly go on to urge that England&mdash;and America&mdash;should make it
-plain to France that they are prepared to pledge their power to her
-defence. More than that, both countries should offer to forgo the debts
-owing to them by France on condition of French adhesion to more workable
-European arrangements. The last thing to be desired is a rupture, or a
-mere change of rôles: France to become once more the ‘enemy’ and Germany
-once more the ‘Ally.’ That outcome would merely duplicate the weary
-story of the past.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> <i>The Expansion of England</i>, p. 202.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> The assumption marks even post-war rhetoric. M.
-Millerand’s message to the Senate and Chamber upon his election as
-President of the Republic says: ‘True to the Alliances for ever cemented
-by blood shed in common,’ France will strictly enforce the Treaty of
-Versailles, ‘a new charter of Europe and the World.’ (<i>Times</i>, Sept.
-27th, 1920). The passage is typical of the moral fact dealt with in this
-chapter. M. Millerand knows, his hearers know, that the war Alliance
-‘for ever cemented by blood shed in common,’ has already ceased to
-exist. But the admission of this patent fact would be fatal to the
-‘blood’ heroics.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a> Dr L. P. Jacks, Editor of <i>The Hibbert Journal</i>, tells us
-that before the War the English nation, regarded from the moral point of
-view, was a scene of ‘indescribable confusion; a moral chaos.’ But there
-has come to it ‘the peace of mind that comes to every man who, after
-tossing about among uncertainties, finds at last a mission, a cause to
-which he can devote himself.’ For this reason, he says, the War has
-actually made the English people happier than they were before:
-‘brighter, more cheerful. The Englishman worries less about himself....
-The tone and substance of conversation are better.... There is more
-health in our souls and perhaps in our bodies.’ And he tells how the War
-cured a friend of insomnia. (<i>The Peacefulness of Being at War</i>, <i>New
-Republic</i>, September 11, 1915).</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> The facts of both the Russian and the Italian bargains are
-dealt with in more detail in Chap. III.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> Quoted by Mr T. L. Stoddard in an article on Italian
-Nationalism, in the <i>Forum</i>, Sept. 1915. One may hope that the outcome
-of the War has modified the tendencies in Italy of which he treats. But
-the quotations he makes from Italian Nationalist writers put Treitschke
-and Bernhardi in the shade. Here are some. Corradini says: ‘Italy must
-become once more the first nation in the world.’ Rocco: ‘It is said that
-all the other territories are occupied. But strong nations, or nations
-on the path of progress, conquer.... territories occupied by nations in
-decadence.’ Luigi Villari rejoices that the cobwebs of mean-spirited
-Pacifism have been swept away. Italians are beginning to feel, in
-whatever part of the world they may happen to be, something of the pride
-of Roman citizens.’ Scipione Sighele writes: ‘War must be loved for
-itself.... To say “War is the most horrible of evils,” to talk of war as
-“an unhappy necessity,” to declare that we should “never attack but
-always know how to defend ourselves,” to say these things is as
-dangerous as to make out-and-out Pacifist and anti-militarist speeches.
-It is creating for the future a conflict of duties: duties towards
-humanity, duties towards the Fatherland.’ Corradini explains the
-programme of the Nationalists: ‘All our efforts will tend towards making
-the Italians a warlike race. We will give it a new will; we will instil
-into it the appetite for power, the need of mighty hopes. We will create
-a religion&mdash;the religion of the Fatherland victorious over the other
-nations.’
-</p><p>
-I am indebted to Mr Stoddard for the translations; but they read quite
-‘true to type.’</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a> It is true that the Labour Party, alone of all the
-parties, did take action, happily effective, against the Russian
-adventure&mdash;after it had gone on in intermittent form for two years. But
-the above paragraphs refer particularly to the period which immediately
-succeeded the War, and to a general temper which was unfortunately a
-fact despite Labour action.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a> Mr Hartley Manners, the playwright, who produced during
-the War a book entitled <i>Hate with a Will to Victory</i>, writes thus:&mdash;
-</p><p>
-‘And in voicing our doctrine of Hate let us not forget that the German
-people were, and are still, solidly behind him (the Kaiser) in
-everything he does.’ ...
-</p><p>
-‘The German people are actively and passively with their Government to
-the last man and the last mark. No people receive their faith and their
-rules of conduct more fatuously from their rulers than do the German
-people. Fronting the world they stand as one with their beloved Kaiser.
-He who builds on a revolution in Germany as a possible ending of the
-war, knows not what he says. They will follow through any degradation of
-the body, through any torture of spirit, the tyrants they have been
-taught from infancy to regard as their Supreme Masters of body and
-soul.’ ...
-</p><p>
-And here is his picture of ‘the German’:&mdash;
-</p><p>
-... ‘a slave from birth, with no rights as a free man, owing allegiance
-to a militaristic Government to whom he looks for his very life; crushed
-by taxation to keep up the military machine; ill-nourished, ignorant,
-prone to crime in greater measure than the peasants of any other
-country&mdash;as the German statistics of crime show&mdash;a degraded peasant, a
-wretched future, and a loathesome past&mdash;these are the inheritances to
-which the German peasant is born. What type of nature can develop in
-such conditions? But one&mdash;the <i>brute</i>. And the four years’ commerce of
-this War has shown the German from prince to peasant as offspring of the
-one family&mdash;the <i>brute</i> family.’ ...</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a> The following&mdash;which appeared in <i>The Times</i> of April 17,
-1915&mdash;is merely a type of at least thirty or forty similar reports
-published by the German Army Headquarters: ‘In yesterday’s clear weather
-the airmen were very active. Enemy airmen bombarded places behind our
-positions. Freiburg was again visited, and several civilians, the
-majority being children, were killed and wounded.’ A few days later the
-Paris <i>Temps</i> (April 22, 1915) reproduced the German accounts of French
-air-raids where bombs were dropped on Kandern, Loerrach, Mulheim,
-Habsheim, Wiesenthal, Tüblingen, Mannheim. These raids were carried out
-by squads of airmen, and the bombs were thrown particularly at railway
-stations and factories. Previous to this, British and French airmen had
-been particularly active in Belgium, dropping bombs on Zeebrugge,
-Bruges, Middlekirke, and other towns. One German official report tells
-how a bomb fell on to a loaded street car, killing many women and
-children. Another (dated September 7, 1915) contains the following: ‘In
-the course of an enemy aeroplane attack on Lichtervelde, north of
-Roulers in Flanders, seven Belgian inhabitants were killed and two
-injured.’ A despatch from Zürich, dated Sept. 24, 1915, says: ‘At
-yesterday’s meeting of the Stuttgart City Council, the Mayor and
-Councillors protested vigorously against the recent French raid upon an
-undefended city. Burgomaster Lautenschlager asserted that an enemy that
-attacked harmless civilians was fighting a lost cause.’</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_65_65" id="Footnote_65_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a> March 27th, 1919.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_66_66" id="Footnote_66_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a> In Drinkwater’s play, <i>Abraham Lincoln</i>, the fire-eating
-wife of the war-profiteer, who had been violently abusing an old Quaker
-lady, is thus addressed by Lincoln:&mdash;
-</p><p>
-‘I don’t agree with her, but I honour her. She’s wrong, but she is
-noble. You’ve told me what you think. I don’t agree with you, and I’m
-ashamed of you and your like. You, who have sacrificed nothing babble
-about destroying the South while other people conquer it. I accepted
-this war with a sick heart, and I’ve a heart that’s near to breaking
-every day. I accepted it in the name of humanity, and just and merciful
-dealing, and the hope of love and charity on earth. And you come to me,
-talking of revenge and destruction, and malice, and enduring hate. These
-gentle people are mistaken, but they are mistaken cleanly, and in a
-great name. It is you that dishonour the cause for which we stand&mdash;it is
-you who would make it a mean and little thing....’</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_67_67" id="Footnote_67_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a> The official record of the Meeting of the Council of Ten
-on January 16, 1919, as furnished to the Foreign Relations Committee of
-the American Senate, reports Mr Lloyd George as saying:&mdash;
-</p><p>
-‘The mere idea of crushing Bolshevism by military force is pure
-madness....
-</p><p>
-‘The Russian blockade would be a “death cordon,” condemning women and
-children to starvation, a policy which, as humane people, those present
-could not consider.’</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_68_68" id="Footnote_68_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a> While attempting in this chapter to reveal the essential
-difference of the two methods open to us, it is hardly necessary to say
-that in the complexities and cross-currents of human society practical
-policy can rarely be guided by a single absolute principle. Reference
-has been made to the putting of the pooled force of the nations behind a
-principle or law as the alternative of each attempting to use his own
-for enforcing his own view. The writer does not suppose for an instant
-that it is possible immediately to draw up a complete Federal Code of
-Law for Europe, to create a well-defined European constitution and then
-raise a European army to defend it, or body of police to enforce it. He
-is probably the last person in the world likely to believe the political
-ideas of the European capable of such an agile adaptation.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_69_69" id="Footnote_69_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_69_69"><span class="label">[69]</span></a> Delivered at Portland, Maine, on March 28th, 1918;
-reported in <i>New York Times</i>, March 29th.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_70_70" id="Footnote_70_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_70_70"><span class="label">[70]</span></a> Bertrand Russell: <i>Principles of Social Reconstruction.</i>
-</p><p>
-Mr. Trotter in <i>Instincts of the Herd in War and Peace</i>, says:&mdash;
-</p><p>
-‘We see one instinct producing manifestations directly hostile to each
-other&mdash;prompting to ever-advancing developments of altruism while it
-necessarily leads to any new product of advance being attacked. It
-shows, moreover ... that a gregarious species rapidly developing a
-complex society can be saved from inextricable confusion only by the
-appearance of reason and the application of it to life. (p. 46.)
-</p><p>
-... ‘The conscious direction of man’s destiny is plainly indicated by
-Nature as the only mechanism by which the social life of so complex an
-animal can be guaranteed against disaster and brought to yield its full
-possibilities, (p. 162.)
-</p><p>
-... ‘Such a directing intelligence or group of intelligences would take
-into account before all things the biological character of man.... It
-would discover when natural inclinations in man must be indulged, and
-would make them respectable, what inclinations in him must be controlled
-for the advantage of the species, and make them insignificant.’ (p.
-162-3.)</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_71_71" id="Footnote_71_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71_71"><span class="label">[71]</span></a> The opening sentence of a five volume <i>History of the
-Peace Conference of Paris</i>, edited by H. W. V. Temperley, and published
-under the auspices of the Institute of International Affairs, is as
-follows:&mdash;
-</p><p>
-‘The war was a conflict between the principles of freedom and of
-autocracy, between the principles of moral influence and of material
-force, of government by consent and of government by compulsion.’</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_72_72" id="Footnote_72_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_72_72"><span class="label">[72]</span></a> Foremost as examples stand out the claims of German
-Austria to federate with Germany; the German population of the Southern
-Tyrol with Austria; the Bohemian Germans with Austria; the Transylvanian
-Magyars with Hungary; the Bulgarians of Macedonia, the Bulgarians of the
-Dobrudja, and the Bulgarians of Western Thrace with Bulgaria; the Serbs
-of the Serbian Banat with Yugo-Slavia; the Lithuanians and Ukrainians
-for freedom from Polish dominion.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_73_73" id="Footnote_73_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_73_73"><span class="label">[73]</span></a> We know now (see the interview with M. Paderewski in the
-<i>New York World</i>) that we compelled Poland to remain at war when she
-wanted to make peace. It has never been fully explained why the Prinkipo
-peace policy urged by Mr Lloyd George as early as December 1918 was
-defeated, and why instead we furnished munitions, tanks, aeroplanes,
-poison gas, military missions and subsidies in turn to Koltchak,
-Denikin, Yudenitch, Wrangel, and Poland. We prolonged the
-blockade&mdash;which in the early phases forbade Germany that was starving to
-catch fish in the Baltic, and stopped medicine and hospital supplies to
-the Russians&mdash;for fear, apparently, of the very thing which might have
-helped to save Europe, the economic co-operation of Russia and Central
-Europe.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_74_74" id="Footnote_74_74"></a><a href="#FNanchor_74_74"><span class="label">[74]</span></a> ‘We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no
-feeling towards them but one of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon
-their impulse that their government acted in entering this war.’ ... ‘We
-are glad ... to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world, and for
-the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included: for the
-rights of nations great and small ... to choose their way of life.’
-(President Wilson, Address to Congress, April 2nd, 1917).</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_75_75" id="Footnote_75_75"></a><a href="#FNanchor_75_75"><span class="label">[75]</span></a> <i>The Economic Consequences of the Peace</i>, p. 211.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_76_76" id="Footnote_76_76"></a><a href="#FNanchor_76_76"><span class="label">[76]</span></a> See quotations from Sir A. Conan Doyle, later in this
-Chapter.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_77_77" id="Footnote_77_77"></a><a href="#FNanchor_77_77"><span class="label">[77]</span></a> See, e.g., the facts as to the repression of Socialism in
-America, Chapter V.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_78_78" id="Footnote_78_78"></a><a href="#FNanchor_78_78"><span class="label">[78]</span></a> <i>The Atlantic Monthly</i>, November 1920.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_79_79" id="Footnote_79_79"></a><a href="#FNanchor_79_79"><span class="label">[79]</span></a> <i>Realities of War</i>, pp. 426-7, 441.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_80_80" id="Footnote_80_80"></a><a href="#FNanchor_80_80"><span class="label">[80]</span></a> Is it necessary to say that the present writer does not
-accept it?</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_81_81" id="Footnote_81_81"></a><a href="#FNanchor_81_81"><span class="label">[81]</span></a> The argument is not invalidated in the least by sporadic
-instances of liberal activity here&mdash;an isolated article or two. For
-iteration is the essence of propaganda as an opinion forming factor.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_82_82" id="Footnote_82_82"></a><a href="#FNanchor_82_82"><span class="label">[82]</span></a> In an article in the <i>North American Review</i>, just before
-America’s entrance into the War, I attempted to indicate the danger by
-making one character in an imaginary symposium say: ‘One talks of
-“Wilson’s programme,” “Wilson’s policy.” There will be only one
-programme and one policy possible as soon as the first American soldier
-sets foot on European soil: Victory. Bottomley and Maxse will be milk
-and water to what we shall see America producing. We shall have a
-settlement so monstrous that Germany will offer any price to Russia and
-Japan for their future help.... America’s part in the War will absorb
-about all the attention and interest that busy people can give to public
-affairs. They will forget about these international arrangements
-concerning the sea, the League of Peace&mdash;the things for which the
-country entered the War. In fact if Wilson so much as tries to remind
-them of the objects of the War he will be accused of pro-Germanism, and
-you will have their ginger Press demanding that the “old gang” be
-“combed out.”’</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_83_83" id="Footnote_83_83"></a><a href="#FNanchor_83_83"><span class="label">[83]</span></a> ‘If we take the extremist 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.’ (<i>What is coming?</i> p. 198).</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_84_84" id="Footnote_84_84"></a><a href="#FNanchor_84_84"><span class="label">[84]</span></a> See the memoranda published in <i>The Secrets of Crewe
-House</i>.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_85_85" id="Footnote_85_85"></a><a href="#FNanchor_85_85"><span class="label">[85]</span></a> Mr Keynes is not alone in declaring that the Treaty makes
-of our armistice engagements a ‘scrap of paper.’ <i>The Round Table</i>, in
-an article which aims at justifying the Treaty as a whole, says:
-‘Opinions may differ as to the actual letter of the engagements which we
-made at the Armistice, but the spirit of them is undoubtedly strained in
-some of the detailed provisions of the peace. There is some honest
-ground for the feeling manifested in Germany that the terms on which she
-laid down her arms have not been observed in all respects.’
-</p><p>
-A very unwilling witness to our obligations is Mr Leo Maxse, who writes
-(<i>National Review</i>, February, 1921):&mdash;
-</p><p>
-‘Thanks to the American revelations we are in a better position to
-appreciate the trickery and treachery of the pre-Armistice negotiations,
-as well as the hideous imposture of the Paris Peace Conference, which,
-we now learn for the first time, was governed by the self-denying
-ordinance of the previous November, when, unbeknown to the countries
-betrayed, the Fourteen Points had been inextricably woven into the
-Armistice. Thus was John Bull effectively ‘dished’ of every farthing of
-his war costs.’
-</p><p>
-As a fact, of course, the self-denying ordinance was not ‘unbeknown to
-the countries betrayed.’ The Fourteen Points commitment was quite open;
-the European Allies could have repudiated them, as, on one point,
-Britain did.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_86_86" id="Footnote_86_86"></a><a href="#FNanchor_86_86"><span class="label">[86]</span></a> A quite considerable school, who presumably intend to be
-taken seriously, would have us believe that the French Revolution, the
-Russian Revolution, the English Trade Union Movement are all the work of
-a small secret Jewish Club or Junta&mdash;their work, that is, in the sense
-that but for them the Revolutions or Revolutionary movements would not
-have taken place. These arguments are usually brought by ‘intense
-nationalists’ who also believe that sentiments like nationalism are so
-deeply rooted that mere ideas or theories can never alter them.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_87_87" id="Footnote_87_87"></a><a href="#FNanchor_87_87"><span class="label">[87]</span></a> An American playwright has indicated amusingly with what
-ingenuity we can create a ‘collectivity.’ One of the characters in the
-play applies for a chauffeur’s job. A few questions reveal the fact that
-he does not know anything about it. ‘Why does he want to be a
-chauffeur?’ ‘Well, I’ll tell you, boss. Last year I got knocked down by
-an automobile and badly hurt. And I made up my mind that when I came out
-of the hospital I’d get a bit of my own back. Get even by knocking over
-a few guys, see?’ A policy of ‘reprisals,’ in fact.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_88_88" id="Footnote_88_88"></a><a href="#FNanchor_88_88"><span class="label">[88]</span></a> December 26th, 1917.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_89_89" id="Footnote_89_89"></a><a href="#FNanchor_89_89"><span class="label">[89]</span></a> A thing which happens about once a week in the United
-States.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_90_90" id="Footnote_90_90"></a><a href="#FNanchor_90_90"><span class="label">[90]</span></a> October 16th, 1917.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_91_91" id="Footnote_91_91"></a><a href="#FNanchor_91_91"><span class="label">[91]</span></a> The amazing rapidity with which we can change sides and
-causes, and the enemy become the Ally, and the Ally the enemy, in the
-course of a few weeks, approaches the burlesque.
-</p><p>
-At the head of the Polish armies is Marshal Pilsudski, who fought under
-Austro-German command, against Russia. His ally is the Ukrainian
-adventurer, General Petlura, who first made a separate peace at
-Brest-Litovsk, and contracted there to let the German armies into the
-Ukraine, and to deliver up to them its stores of grain. These in May
-1920 were the friends of the Allies. The Polish Finance Minister at the
-time we were aiding Poland was Baron Bilinski, a gentleman who filled
-the same post in the Austrian Cabinet which let loose the world war,
-insisted hotly on the ultimatum to Serbia, helped to ruin the finances
-of the Hapsburg dominions by war, and then after the collapse repeated
-the same operation in Poland. On the other side the command has passed,
-it is said, to the dashing General Brusiloff, who again and again saved
-the Eastern front from Austrian and German offensives. He is now the
-‘enemy’ and his opponents our ‘Allies.’ They are fighting to tear the
-Ukraine, which means all South Russia, away from the Russian State. The
-preceding year we spent millions to achieve the opposite result. The
-French sent their troops to Odessa, and we gave our tanks to Denikin, in
-order to enable him to recover this region for Imperial Russia.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_92_92" id="Footnote_92_92"></a><a href="#FNanchor_92_92"><span class="label">[92]</span></a> The Russian case is less evident. But only the moral
-inertia following on a long war could have made our Russian record
-possible.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_93_93" id="Footnote_93_93"></a><a href="#FNanchor_93_93"><span class="label">[93]</span></a> He complained that I had ‘publicly reproved him’ for
-supporting severity in warfare. He was mistaken. As he really did
-believe in the effectiveness of terrorism, he did a very real service by
-standing publicly for his conviction.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_94_94" id="Footnote_94_94"></a><a href="#FNanchor_94_94"><span class="label">[94]</span></a> Here is what the <i>Times</i> of December 10th, 1870, has to
-say about France and Germany respectively, and on the Alsace-Lorraine
-question:&mdash;
-</p><p>
-‘We must say with all frankness that France has never shown herself so
-senseless, so pitiful, so worthy of contempt and reprobation, as at the
-present moment, when she obstinately declines to look facts in the face,
-and refuses to accept the misfortune her own conduct has brought upon
-her. A France broken up in utter anarchy, Ministers who have no
-recognised chief, who rise from the dust in their air balloons, and who
-carry with them for ballast shameful and manifest lies and proclamations
-of victories that exist only in their imagination, a Government which is
-sustained by lies and imposture, and chooses rather to continue and
-increase the waste of lives than to resign its own dictatorship and its
-wonderful Utopia of a republic; that is the spectacle which France
-presents to-day. It is hard to say whether any nation ever before
-burdened itself with such a load of shame. The quantity of lies which
-France officially and unofficially has been manufacturing for us in the
-full knowledge that they are lies, is something frightful and absolutely
-unprecedented. Perhaps it is not much after all in comparison with the
-immeasurable heaps of delusions and unconscious lies which have so long
-been in circulation among the French. Their men of genius who are
-recognised as such in all departments of literature are apparently of
-opinion that France outshines other nations in a superhuman wisdom, that
-she is the new Zion of the whole world, and that the literary
-productions of the French, for the last fifty years, however insipid,
-unhealthy, and often indeed devilish, contain a real gospel, rich in
-blessing for all the children of men.
-</p><p>
-We believe that Bismarck will take as much of Alsace-Lorraine, too, as
-he chooses, and that it will be the better for him, the better for us,
-the better for all the world but France, and the better in the long run
-for France herself. Through large and quiet measures, Count von Bismarck
-is aiming with eminent ability at a single object; the well-being of
-Germany and of the world, of the large-hearted, peace-loving,
-enlightened, and honest people of Germany growing into one nation; and
-if Germany becomes mistress of the Continent in place of France, which
-is light-hearted, ambitious, quarrelsome, and over-excitable, it will be
-the most momentous event of the present day, and all the world must hope
-that it will soon come about.’</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_95_95" id="Footnote_95_95"></a><a href="#FNanchor_95_95"><span class="label">[95]</span></a> We realise without difficulty that no society could be
-formed by individuals each of whom had been taught to base his conduct
-on adages such as these: ‘Myself alone’; ‘myself before anybody else’;
-‘my ego is sacred’; ‘myself over all’; ‘myself right or wrong.’ Yet
-those are the slogans of Patriotism the world over and are regarded as
-noble and inspiring, shouted with a moral and approving thrill.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_96_96" id="Footnote_96_96"></a><a href="#FNanchor_96_96"><span class="label">[96]</span></a> However mischievous some of the manifestations of
-Nationalism may prove, the worst possible method of dealing with it is
-by the forcible repression of any of its claims which can be granted
-with due regard to the general interest. To give Nationalism full play,
-as far as possible, is the best means of attenuating its worst features
-and preventing its worst developments. This, after all, is the line of
-conduct which we adopt to certain religious beliefs which we may regard
-as dangerous superstitions. Although the belief may have dangers, the
-social dangers involved in forcible repression would be greater still.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_97_97" id="Footnote_97_97"></a><a href="#FNanchor_97_97"><span class="label">[97]</span></a> <i>The Great Illusion</i>, p. 326</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_98_98" id="Footnote_98_98"></a><a href="#FNanchor_98_98"><span class="label">[98]</span></a> ‘The Pacifists lie when they tell us that the danger of
-war is over.’ General Leonard Wood.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_99_99" id="Footnote_99_99"></a><a href="#FNanchor_99_99"><span class="label">[99]</span></a> <i>The Science of Power</i>, p. 14.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_100_100" id="Footnote_100_100"></a><a href="#FNanchor_100_100"><span class="label">[100]</span></a> Ibid, p. 144.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_101_101" id="Footnote_101_101"></a><a href="#FNanchor_101_101"><span class="label">[101]</span></a> See quotations, Part I, Chapters I and III.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_102_102" id="Footnote_102_102"></a><a href="#FNanchor_102_102"><span class="label">[102]</span></a> The validity of this assumption still holds even though
-we take the view that the defence of war as an inevitable struggle for
-bread is merely a rationalisation (using that word in the technical
-sense of the psychologists) of impulse or instinct, merely, that is, an
-attempt to find a ‘reason’ for conduct the real explanation of which is
-the subconscious promptings of pugnacities or hostilities, the craving
-of our nature for certain kinds of action. If we could not justify our
-behaviour in terms of self-preservation, it would stand so plainly
-condemned ethically and socially that discipline of instinct&mdash;as in the
-case of sex instinct&mdash;would obviously be called for and enforced. In
-either case, the road to better behaviour is by a clearer revelation of
-the social mischief of the predominant policy.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_103_103" id="Footnote_103_103"></a><a href="#FNanchor_103_103"><span class="label">[103]</span></a> Rear-Admiral A. T. Mahan: <i>Force in International
-Relations</i>.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_104_104" id="Footnote_104_104"></a><a href="#FNanchor_104_104"><span class="label">[104]</span></a> <i>The Interest of America in International Conditions</i>, by
-Rear-Admiral A. T. Mahan, pp. 47-87.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_105_105" id="Footnote_105_105"></a><a href="#FNanchor_105_105"><span class="label">[105]</span></a> <i>Government and the War</i>, p. 62.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_106_106" id="Footnote_106_106"></a><a href="#FNanchor_106_106"><span class="label">[106]</span></a> <i>State Morality and a League of Nations</i>, pp 83-85.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_107_107" id="Footnote_107_107"></a><a href="#FNanchor_107_107"><span class="label">[107]</span></a> <i>North American Review</i>, March 1912.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_108_108" id="Footnote_108_108"></a><a href="#FNanchor_108_108"><span class="label">[108]</span></a> Admiral Mahan himself makes precisely this appeal:&mdash;
-</p><p>
-‘That extension of national authority over alien communities, which is
-the dominant note in the world politics of to-day, dignifies and
-enlarges each State and each citizen that enters its fold.... Sentiment,
-imagination, aspiration, the satisfaction of the rational and moral
-faculties in some object better than bread alone, all must find a part
-in a worthy motive. Like individuals, nations and empires have souls as
-well as bodies. Great and beneficent achievement ministers to worthier
-contentment than the filling of the pocket.’</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_109_109" id="Footnote_109_109"></a><a href="#FNanchor_109_109"><span class="label">[109]</span></a> It is not necessary to enter exhaustively into the
-difficult problem of ‘natural right.’ It suffices for the purpose of
-this argument that the claim of others to life will certainly be made
-and that we can only refuse it at a cost which diminishes our own
-chances of survival.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_110_110" id="Footnote_110_110"></a><a href="#FNanchor_110_110"><span class="label">[110]</span></a> See Mr Churchill’s declaration, quoted Part I Chapter V.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_111_111" id="Footnote_111_111"></a><a href="#FNanchor_111_111"><span class="label">[111]</span></a> Mr J. L. Garvin, who was among those who bitterly
-criticised this thesis on account of its ‘sordidness,’ now writes:
-‘Armageddon might become almost as frequent as General Elections if
-belligerency were not restrained by sheer dread of the consequences in
-an age of economic interdependence when even victory has ceased to pay.’
-</p><p>
-(Quoted in <i>Westminster Gazette</i>, Jan. 24, 1921.)</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_112_112" id="Footnote_112_112"></a><a href="#FNanchor_112_112"><span class="label">[112]</span></a> The introductory synopsis reads:&mdash;
-</p><p>
-What are the fundamental motives that explain the present rivalry of
-armaments in Europe, notably the Anglo-German? Each nation pleads the
-need for defence; but this implies that some one is likely to attack,
-and has therefore a presumed interest in so doing. What are the motives
-which each State thus fears its neighbours may obey?
-</p><p>
-They are based on the universal assumption that a nation, in order to
-find outlets for expanding population and increasing industry, or simply
-to ensure the best conditions possible for its people, is necessarily
-pushed to territorial expansion and the exercise of political force
-against others (German naval competition is assumed to be the expression
-of the growing need of an expanding population for a larger place in the
-world, a need which will find a realisation in the conquest of English
-Colonies or trade, unless these were defended); it is assumed,
-therefore, that a nation’s relative prosperity is broadly determined by
-its political power; that nations being competing units, advantage, in
-the last resort, goes to the possessor of preponderant military force,
-the weaker going to the wall, as in the other forms of the struggle for
-life.
-</p><p>
-The author challenges this whole doctrine.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_113_113" id="Footnote_113_113"></a><a href="#FNanchor_113_113"><span class="label">[113]</span></a> See chapters <i>The Psychological Case for Peace</i>,
-<i>Unchanging Human Nature</i>, and <i>Is the Political Reformation Possible?</i>
-</p><p>
-‘Not the facts, but men’s opinions about the facts, is what matters.
-Men’s conduct is determined, not necessarily by the right conclusion
-from facts, but the conclusion they believe to be right.’
-</p><p>
-In another pre-war book of the present writer (<i>The Foundations of
-International Polity</i>) the same view is developed, particularly in the
-passage which has been reproduced in Chapter VI of this book, ‘The
-Alternative Risks of Status and Contract.’</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_114_114" id="Footnote_114_114"></a><a href="#FNanchor_114_114"><span class="label">[114]</span></a> The cessation of religious war indicates the greatest
-outstanding fact in the history of civilised mankind during the last
-thousand years, which is this: that all civilised Governments have
-abandoned their claim to dictate the belief of their subjects. For very
-long that was a right tenaciously held, and it was held on grounds for
-which there is an immense deal to be said. It was held that as belief is
-an integral part of conduct, that as conduct springs from belief, and
-the purpose of the State is to ensure such conduct as will enable us to
-go about our business in safety, it was obviously the duty of the State
-to protect those beliefs, the abandonment of which seemed to undermine
-the foundations of conduct. I do not believe that this case has ever
-been completely answered.... Men of profound thought and profound
-learning to-day defend it, and personally I have found it very difficult
-to make a clear and simple case for the defence of the principle on
-which every civilised Government in the world is to-day founded. How do
-you account for this&mdash;that a principle which I do not believe one man in
-a million could defend from all objections has become the dominating
-rule of civilised government throughout the world?
-</p><p>
-‘Well, that once universal policy has been abandoned, not because every
-argument, or even perhaps most of the arguments, which led to it, have
-been answered, but because the fundamental one has. The conception on
-which it rested has been shown to be, not in every detail, but in the
-essentials at least, an illusion, a <i>mis</i>conception.
-</p><p>
-‘The world of religious wars and of the Inquisition was a world which
-had a quite definite conception of the relation of authority to
-religious belief and to truth&mdash;as that authority was the source of
-truth; that truth could be, and should be, protected by force; that
-Catholics who did not resent an insult offered to their faith (like the
-failure of a Huguenot to salute a passing religious procession) were
-renegade.
-</p><p>
-‘Now, what broke down this conception was a growing realisation that
-authority, force, was irrelevant to the issues of truth (a party of
-heretics triumphed by virtue of some physical accident, as that they
-occupied a mountain region); that it was ineffective, and that the
-essence of truth was something outside the scope of physical conflict.
-As the realisation of this grew, the conflicts declined.’&mdash;<i>Foundations
-of International Polity</i>, p. 214.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_115_115" id="Footnote_115_115"></a><a href="#FNanchor_115_115"><span class="label">[115]</span></a> An attempt is made, in <i>The Great Illusion</i>, to sketch
-the process which lies behind the progressive substitution of bargain
-for coercion (The Economic Interpretation of the History of Development
-‘From Status to Contract’) on pages 187-192, and further developed in a
-chapter ‘the Diminishing Factor of Physical Force’ (p. 257).</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_116_116" id="Footnote_116_116"></a><a href="#FNanchor_116_116"><span class="label">[116]</span></a> ‘When we learn that London, instead of using its police
-for the running in of burglars and “drunks,” is using them to lead an
-attack on Birmingham for the purpose of capturing that city as part of a
-policy of “municipal expansion,” or “Civic Imperialism,” or
-“Pan-Londonism,” or what not; or is using its force to repel an attack
-by the Birmingham police acting as the result of a similar policy on the
-part of the Birmingham patriots&mdash;when that happens you can safely
-approximate a police force to a European army. But until it does, it is
-quite evident that the two&mdash;the army and the police force&mdash;have in
-reality diametrically opposed roles. The police exist as an instrument
-of social co-operation; the armies as the natural outcome of the quaint
-illusion that though one city could never enrich itself by “capturing”
-or “subjugating” another, in some wonderful (and unexplained) way one
-country can enrich itself by capturing or subjugating another....
-</p><p>
-‘France has benefited by the conquest of Algeria, England by that of
-India, because in each case the arms were employed not, properly
-speaking, for conquest, but for police purposes, for the establishment
-and maintenance of order; and, so far as they filled that role, their
-role was a useful one....
-</p><p>
-‘Germany has no need to maintain order in England, nor England in
-Germany, and the latent struggle, therefore, between these two countries
-is futile....
-</p><p>
-‘It is one of the humours of the whole Anglo-German conflict that so
-much has the British public been concerned with the myths and bogeys of
-the matter, that it seems calmly to have ignored the realities. While
-even the wildest Pan-German does not cast his eyes in the direction of
-Canada, he does cast them in the direction of Asia Minor; and the
-political activities of Germany may centre on that area for precisely
-the reasons which result from the distinction between policing and
-conquest which I have drawn. German industry is coming to have a
-dominating situation in the Near East, and as those interests&mdash;her
-markets and investments&mdash;increase, the necessity for better order in,
-and the better organisation of, such territories, increases in
-corresponding degree. Germany may need to police Asia Minor.’ (<i>The
-Great Illusion</i>, pp. 131-2-3.)</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_117_117" id="Footnote_117_117"></a><a href="#FNanchor_117_117"><span class="label">[117]</span></a> ‘If a great country benefits every time it annexes a
-province, and her people are the richer for the widened territory, the
-small nations ought to be immeasurably poorer than the great; instead of
-which, by every test which you like to apply&mdash;public credit, amounts in
-savings banks, standard of living, social progress, general
-well-being&mdash;citizens of small States are, other things being equal, as
-well off as, or better off than, the citizens of great. The citizens of
-countries like Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, are, by every
-possible test, just as well off as the citizens of countries like
-Germany, Austria, or Russia. These are the facts which are so much more
-potent than any theory. If it were true that a country benefited by the
-acquisition of territory, and widened territory meant general
-well-being, why do the facts so eternally deny it? There is something
-wrong with the theory.’ (<i>The Great Illusion</i>, p. 44).</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_118_118" id="Footnote_118_118"></a><a href="#FNanchor_118_118"><span class="label">[118]</span></a> See Chapters of <i>The Great Illusion</i>, <i>The State as a
-Person</i>, and <i>A False Analogy and its Consequences</i>.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_119_119" id="Footnote_119_119"></a><a href="#FNanchor_119_119"><span class="label">[119]</span></a> In the synopsis of the book the point is put thus: ‘If
-credit and commercial contract are tampered with an attempt at
-confiscation, the credit-dependent wealth is undermined, and its
-collapse involves that of the conqueror; so that if conquest is not to
-be self-injurious it must respect the enemy’s property, in which case it
-becomes economically futile.’</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_120_120" id="Footnote_120_120"></a><a href="#FNanchor_120_120"><span class="label">[120]</span></a> ‘We need markets. What is a market? “A place where things
-are sold.” That is only half the truth. It is a place where things are
-bought and sold, and one operation is impossible without the other, and
-the notion that one nation can sell for ever and never buy is simply the
-theory of perpetual motion applied to economics; and international trade
-can no more be based upon perpetual motion than can engineering. As
-between economically highly-organised nations a customer must also be a
-competitor, a fact which bayonets cannot alter. To the extent to which
-they destroy him as a competitor, they destroy him, speaking generally
-and largely, as a customer.... This is the paradox, the futility of
-conquest&mdash;the great illusion which the history of our own empire so well
-illustrates. We “own” our empire by allowing its component parts to
-develop themselves in their own way, and in view of their own ends, and
-all the empires which have pursued any other policy have only ended by
-impoverishing their own populations and falling to pieces.’ (p. 75).</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_121_121" id="Footnote_121_121"></a><a href="#FNanchor_121_121"><span class="label">[121]</span></a> See Part I, Chapter II.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_122_122" id="Footnote_122_122"></a><a href="#FNanchor_122_122"><span class="label">[122]</span></a> <i>Government and the War</i>, pp. 52-59.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_123_123" id="Footnote_123_123"></a><a href="#FNanchor_123_123"><span class="label">[123]</span></a> <i>The Political Theory of Mr Norman Angell</i>, by Professor
-A. D. Lindsay, <i>The Political Quarterly</i>, December 1914.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_124_124" id="Footnote_124_124"></a><a href="#FNanchor_124_124"><span class="label">[124]</span></a> In order that the reader may grasp more clearly Mr
-Lindsay’s point, here are some longer passages in which he elaborates
-it:&mdash;
-</p><p>
-‘If all nations really recognised the truth of Mr Angell’s arguments,
-that they all had common interests which war destroyed, and that
-therefore war was an evil for victors as well as for vanquished, the
-European situation would be less dangerous, but were every one in the
-world as wisely concerned with their own interests as Mr Angell would
-have men to be, if they were nevertheless bound by no political ties,
-the situation would be infinitely more dangerous than it is. For
-unchecked competition, as Hobbes showed long ago, leads straight to war
-however rational men are. The only escape from its dangers is by
-submitting it to some political control. And for that reason the growth
-of economic relations at the expense of political, which Mr Angell
-heralds with such enthusiasm, is the greatest peril of modern times.
-</p><p>
-‘If men are to avoid the danger that, in competing with one another in
-the small but immediate matters where their interests diverge, they may
-overreach themselves and bring about their mutual ruin, two things are
-essential, one moral or emotional, the other practical. It is not enough
-that men should recognise that what they do affects other men, and vice
-versa. They must care for how their actions affect other men, not only
-for how they may react on themselves. They must, that is, love their
-neighbours. They must further agree with one another in caring for
-certain ways of action quite irrespective of how such ways of action
-affect their personal interests. They must, that is, be not only
-economic but moral men. Secondly, recognising that the range of their
-personal sympathies with other men is more restricted than their
-interdependence, and that in the excitement of competition all else is
-apt to be neglected, they must depute certain persons to stand out of
-the competitive struggle and look after just those vital common
-interests and greater issues which the contending parties are apt to
-neglect. These men will represent the common interests of all, their
-common ideals and their mutual sympathies; they will give to men’s
-concern for these common ends a focus which will enable them to resist
-the pull of divergent interests and round their actions will gather the
-authority which these common ends inspire....
-</p><p>
-’ ... Such propositions are of course elementary. It is, however,
-important to observe that economic relations are in this most
-distinguished from political relations, that men can enter into economic
-relations without having any real purpose in common. For the money which
-they gain by their co-operation may represent power to carry out the
-most diverse and conflicting purposes....
-</p><p>
-’ ... Politics implies mutual confidence and respect and a certain
-measure of agreement in ideals. The consequence is that co-operation for
-economic is infinitely easier than for political purposes and spreads
-much more rapidly. Hence it easily overruns any political boundaries,
-and by doing so has produced the modern situation which Mr Angell has
-described.’</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_125_125" id="Footnote_125_125"></a><a href="#FNanchor_125_125"><span class="label">[125]</span></a> I have in mind, of course, the writings of Cole, Laski,
-Figgis, and Webb. In <i>A Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth of
-Great Britain</i>, Mr Webb writes:&mdash;
-</p><p>
-‘Whilst metaphysical philosophers had been debating what was the nature
-of the State&mdash;by which they always meant the sovereign Political
-State&mdash;the sovereignty, and even the moral authority of the State
-itself, in the sense of the political government, were being silently
-and almost unwittingly undermined by the growth of new forms of
-Democracy.’ (p. xv.)
-</p><p>
-In <i>Social Theory</i>, Mr Cole, speaking of the necessary co-ordination of
-the new forms of association, writes:&mdash;
-</p><p>
-‘To entrust the State with the function of co-ordination would be to
-entrust it in many cases with the task of arbitrating between itself and
-some other functional association, say a church or a trade union.’ There
-must be a co-ordinating body, but it ‘must be not any single
-association, but a combination of associations, a federal body in which
-some or all of the various functional associations are linked together.’
-(pp. 101 and 134.) A reviewer summarises Mr Cole as saying: ‘I do not
-want any single supreme authority. It is the sovereignty of the State
-that I object to, as fatal to liberty. For single sovereignty I
-substitute a federal union of functions, and I see the guarantee of
-personal freedom in the severalty which prevents any one of them from
-undue encroachments.’</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_126_126" id="Footnote_126_126"></a><a href="#FNanchor_126_126"><span class="label">[126]</span></a> The British Treasury has issued statements showing that
-the French people at the end of last year were paying £2. 7s., and the
-British people £15. 3s. per head in direct taxation. The French tax is
-calculated at 3.5. per cent. on large incomes, whereas similar incomes
-in Great Britain would pay at least 25 per cent. This does not mean that
-the burden of taxes on the poor in France is small. Both the working and
-middle classes have been very hard hit by indirect taxes and by the rise
-in prices, which is greater in France than in England.
-</p><p>
-The point is that in France the taxation is mainly indirect, this
-falling most heavily upon the poor; while in England it is much more
-largely direct.
-</p><p>
-The French consumers are much more heavily taxed than the British, but
-the protective taxes of France bring in comparatively little revenue,
-while they raise the price of living and force the French Government and
-the French local authorities to spend larger and larger amounts on
-salaries and wages.
-</p><p>
-The Budget for the year 1920 is made the occasion for an illuminating
-review of France’s financial position by the reporter of the Finance
-Commission, M. Paul Doumar.
-</p><p>
-The expenditure due to the War until the present date amounts roughly to
-233,000 million francs (equivalent, at the normal rate of exchange, to
-£9,320,000,000) whereof the sum of 43,000 million francs has been met
-out of revenue, leaving a deficit of 190 billions.
-</p><p>
-This huge sum has been borrowed in various ways&mdash;26 billions from the
-Bank of France, 35 billions from abroad, 46 billions in Treasury notes,
-and 72 billions in regular loans. The total public debt on July 1 is put
-at 233,729 millions, reckoning foreign loans on the basis of exchange at
-par.
-</p><p>
-M. Doumer declares that so long as this debt weighs on the State, the
-financial situation must remain precarious and its credit mediocre.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_127_127" id="Footnote_127_127"></a><a href="#FNanchor_127_127"><span class="label">[127]</span></a> January, 1921.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_128_128" id="Footnote_128_128"></a><a href="#FNanchor_128_128"><span class="label">[128]</span></a> An authorised interview published by the daily papers of
-January 28th, 1921.
-</p><p>
-M. Briand, the French Premier, in explaining what he and Mr Lloyd George
-arranged at Paris to the Chamber and Senate on February 3rd, remarked:&mdash;
-</p><p>
-‘We must not lose sight of the fact that in order to pay us Germany must
-every year create wealth abroad for herself by developing her exports
-and reducing her imports to strictly necessary things. She can only do
-that to the detriment of the commerce and industry of the Allies. That
-is a strange and regrettable consequence of facts. The placing of an
-annuity on her exports, payable in foreign values, will, however,
-correct as much as possible this paradoxical situation.’</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_129_129" id="Footnote_129_129"></a><a href="#FNanchor_129_129"><span class="label">[129]</span></a> Version appearing in the <i>Times</i> of January 28th, 1921.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_130_130" id="Footnote_130_130"></a><a href="#FNanchor_130_130"><span class="label">[130]</span></a> <i>The Manchester Guardian</i>, Jan 31st, 1921.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_131_131" id="Footnote_131_131"></a><a href="#FNanchor_131_131"><span class="label">[131]</span></a> Mr John Foster Dulles, who was a member of the American
-delegation at the Peace Conference, has, in an article in <i>The New
-Republic</i> for March 30th, 1921, outlined the facts concerning the
-problem of payment more completely than I have yet seen it done. The
-facts he reveals constitute a complete and overwhelming vindication of
-the case as stated in the first edition of <i>The Great Illusion</i>.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_132_132" id="Footnote_132_132"></a><a href="#FNanchor_132_132"><span class="label">[132]</span></a> As the Lorraine ores are of a kind that demand much less
-than their own weight of coal for smelting, it is more economic to bring
-the coal to the ore than vice versa. It was for political and military
-reasons that the German State encouraged the placing of some of the
-great furnaces on the right instead of the left bank of the Rhine.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_133_133" id="Footnote_133_133"></a><a href="#FNanchor_133_133"><span class="label">[133]</span></a> It is worth while to recall here a passage from <i>The
-Economic Consequences of the Peace</i>, by Mr J. M. Keynes, quoted in
-Chapter I. of this book.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_134_134" id="Footnote_134_134"></a><a href="#FNanchor_134_134"><span class="label">[134]</span></a> There is one aspect of the possible success of France
-which is certainly worth consideration. France has now in her possession
-the greatest iron ore fields in Europe. Assume that she is so far
-successful in her policy of military coercion that she succeeds in
-securing vast quantities of coal and coke for nothing. French industry
-then secures a very marked advantage&mdash;and an artificial and ‘uneconomic’
-one&mdash;over British industry, in the conversion of raw materials into
-finished products. The present export by France of coal which she gets
-for nothing to Dutch and other markets heretofore supplied by Britain
-might be followed by the ‘dumping’ of steel and iron products on terms
-which British industry could not meet. This, of course, is on the
-hypothesis of success in obtaining ‘coal for nothing,’ which the present
-writer regards as extremely unlikely for the reasons here given. But it
-should be noted that the failure of French effort in this matter will be
-from causes just as disastrous for British prosperity as French success
-would be.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_135_135" id="Footnote_135_135"></a><a href="#FNanchor_135_135"><span class="label">[135]</span></a> See Part I, Chapter I.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_136_136" id="Footnote_136_136"></a><a href="#FNanchor_136_136"><span class="label">[136]</span></a> <i>English Review</i>, January 1913.
-</p><p>
-Lord Roberts, in his ‘Message to the Nation,’ declared that Germany’s
-refusal to accept the world’s <i>status quo</i> was ‘as statesmanlike as it
-is unanswerable.’ He said further:&mdash;
-</p><p>
-‘How was this Empire of Britain founded? War founded this Empire&mdash;war
-and conquest! When we, therefore, masters by war of one-third of the
-habitable globe, when <i>we</i> propose to Germany to disarm, to curtail her
-navy or diminish her army, Germany naturally refuses; and pointing, not
-without justice, to the road by which England, sword in hand, has
-climbed to her unmatched eminence, declares openly, or in the veiled
-language of diplomacy, that by the same path, if by no other, Germany is
-determined also to ascend! Who amongst us, knowing the past of this
-nation, and the past of all nations and cities that have ever added the
-lustre of their name to human annals, can accuse Germany or regard the
-utterance of one of her greatest a year and a half ago, (or of General
-Bernhardi three months ago) with any feelings except those of respect?’
-(pp. 8-9.)</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_137_137" id="Footnote_137_137"></a><a href="#FNanchor_137_137"><span class="label">[137]</span></a> Lord Loreburn says: ‘The whole train of causes which
-brought about the tragedy of August 1914 would have been dissolved by a
-Russian revolution.... We could have come to terms with Germany as
-regards Asia Minor: Nor could the Alsace-Lorraine difficulty have
-produced trouble. No one will pretend that France would have been
-aggressive when deprived of Russian support considering that she was
-devoted to peace even when she had that support. Had the Russian
-revolution come, war would not have come.’ (<i>How the War Came</i>, p.
-278.)</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_138_138" id="Footnote_138_138"></a><a href="#FNanchor_138_138"><span class="label">[138]</span></a> Mr Walter Lippmann did tackle the problem in much the way
-I have in mind in <i>The Stakes of Diplomacy</i>. That book is critical of my
-own point of view. But if books like that had been directed at <i>The
-Great Illusion</i>, we might have made headway. As it is, of course, Mr
-Lippmann’s book has been useful in suggesting most that is good in the
-mandate system of the League of Nations.</p></div>
-
-</div>
-
-<p><a name="transcrib" id="transcrib"></a></p>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""
-style="padding:2%;border:3px dotted gray;">
-<tr><th align="center">Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:</th></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><span class="errata">wth</span> Great Britain=> with Great Britain {pg xvii}</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">his <span class="errata">colleages</span>=> his colleagues {pg 38}</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><span class="errata">retore</span> devastated districts=> restore devastated districts {pg 39}</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><span class="errata">aquiescence</span>=> acquiescence {pg 45}</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><span class="errata">indispensible</span>=> indispensable {pg 46}</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">the <span class="errata">Lorrarine</span> work=> the Lorraine work {pg 86}</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><span class="errata">rcently</span> passed=> recently passed {pg 135}</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">Allied <span class="errata">aerodomes</span> on the Rhine=> Allied aerodromes on the Rhine {pg 163}</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">the <span class="errata">sublest</span>=> the subtlest {pg 239}</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">the enemy’s <span class="errata">propetry</span>=> the enemy’s property {pg 294}</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">a <span class="errata">monoply</span>=> a monopoly {pg 299}</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><span class="errata">goverments</span>=> governments {pg 299}</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><span class="errata">econmic</span>=> economic {pg 303}</td></tr>
-</table>
-
-<hr class="full" />
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
-
-
-
-
-
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Fruits of Victory, by Norman Angell
-
-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/license
-
-
-Title: The Fruits of Victory
-       A Sequel to The Great Illusion
-
-Author: Norman Angell
-
-Release Date: August 29, 2013 [EBook #43598]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ASCII
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FRUITS OF VICTORY ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by David Edwards, Chuck Greif and the Online
-Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
-file was produced from images generously made available
-by The Internet Archive)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-                         THE FRUITS OF VICTORY
-
-
-
-
-                    "THE GREAT ILLUSION" CONTROVERSY
-
-
-     'Mr. Angell's pamphlet was a work as unimposing in form as it was
-     daring in expression. For a time nothing was heard of it in public,
-     but many of us will remember the curious way in which ... "Norman
-     Angellism" suddenly became one of the principal topics of
-     discussion amongst politicians and journalists all over Europe.
-     Naturally at first it was the apparently extravagant and
-     paradoxical elements that were fastened upon most--that the whole
-     theory of the commercial basis of war was wrong, that no modern war
-     could make a profit for the victors, and that--most astonishing
-     thing of all--a successful war might leave the conquerors who
-     received the indemnity relatively worse off than the conquered who
-     raid it. People who had been brought up in the acceptance of the
-     idea that a war between nations was analogous to the struggle of
-     two errand boys for an apple, and that victory inevitably meant
-     economic gain, were amazed into curiosity. Men who had never
-     examined a Pacifist argument before read Mr. Angell's book. Perhaps
-     they thought that his doctrines sounded so extraordinarily like
-     nonsense that there really must be some sense in them or nobody
-     would have dared to propound them.'--_The New Stateman_, October
-     11, 1913.
-
-     'The fundamental proposition of the book is a mistake.... And the
-     proposition that the extension of national territory--that is the
-     bringing of a large amount of property under a single
-     administration--is not to the financial advantage of a nation
-     appears to me as illusory as to maintain that business on a small
-     capital is as profitable as on a large.... The armaments of
-     European States now are not so much for protection against conquest
-     as to secure to themselves the utmost possible share of the
-     unexploited or imperfectly exploited regions of the world.'--The
-     late ADMIRAL MAHAN.
-
-     'I have long ago described the policy of _The Great Illusion_ ...
-     not only as a childish absurdity but a mischievous and immoral
-     sophism.'--MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.
-
-     'Among the mass of printed books there are a few that may be
-     counted as acts, not books. _The Control Social_ was indisputably
-     one; and I venture to suggest to you that _The Great Illusion_ is
-     another. The thesis of Galileo was not more diametrically opposed
-     to current ideas than those of Norman Angell. Yet it had in the end
-     a certain measure of success.'--VISCOUNT ESHER.
-
-     'When all criticisms are spent, it remains to express a debt of
-     gratitude to Mr. Angell. He belongs to the cause of
-     internationalism--the greatest of all the causes to which a man can
-     set his hands in these days. The cause will not triumph by
-     economics. But it cannot reject any ally. And if the economic
-     appeal is not final, it has its weight. "We shall perish of
-     hunger," it has been said, "in order to have success in murder." To
-     those who have ears for that saying, it cannot be said too
-     often.'--_Political Thought in England, from Herbert Spencer to the
-     Present Day_, by ERNEST BARKER.
-
-     'A wealth of closely reasoned argument which makes the book one of
-     the most damaging indictments that have yet appeared of the
-     principles governing the relation of civilized nations to one
-     another.'--_The Quarterly Review._
-
-     'Ranks its author with Cobden amongst the greatest of our
-     pamphleteers, perhaps the greatest since Swift.'--_The Nation._
-
-     'No book has attracted wider attention or has done more to
-     stimulate thought in the present century than _The Great
-     Illusion_.'--_The Daily Mail._
-
-     'One of the most brilliant contributions to the literature of
-     international relations which has appeared for a very long
-     time.'--_Journal of the Institute of Bankers._
-
-     'After five and a half years in the wilderness, Mr. Norman Angell
-     has come back.... His book provoked one of the great controversies
-     of this generation.... To-day, Mr. Angell, whether he likes it or
-     not, is a prophet whose prophesies have come true.... It is hardly
-     possible to open a current newspaper without the eye lighting on
-     some fresh vindication of the once despised and rejected doctrine
-     of Norman Angellism.'--_The Daily News_, February 25, 1920.
-
-
-
-
-                                  THE
-                           FRUITS OF VICTORY
-
-                              A SEQUEL TO
-                          "THE GREAT ILLUSION"
-
-                                   BY
-                             NORMAN ANGELL
-
-                        [Illustration: colophon]
-
-                                NEW YORK
-
-                            THE CENTURY CO.
-
-                                  1921
-
-
-
-
-   _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
-
-      PATRIOTISM UNDER THREE FLAGS
-      THE GREAT ILLUSION
-      THE FOUNDATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL POLITY
-      WHY FREEDOM MATTERS
-      WAR AND THE WORKER
-      AMERICA AND THE WORLD STATE (AMERICA)
-      PRUSSIANISM AND ITS DESTRUCTION
-      THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY (AMERICA)
-      WAR AIMS
-      DANGERS OF HALF-PREPAREDNESS (AMERICA)
-      POLITICAL CONDITIONS OF ALLIED SUCCESS (AMERICA)
-      THE BRITISH REVOLUTION AND THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY (AMERICA)
-      THE PEACE TREATY AND THE ECONOMIC CHAOS
-
-
-                          Copyright, 1921, by
-                            THE CENTURY CO.
-
-                       _Printed in the U. S. A._
-
-
-
-
-                                To H. S.
-
-
-
-
-INTRODUCTION TO THE AMERICAN EDITION
-
-
-The case which is argued in these pages includes the examination of
-certain concrete matters which very obviously and directly touch
-important American interests--American foreign trade and investments,
-the exchanges, immigration, armaments, taxation, industrial unrest and
-the effect of these on social and political organisation. Yet the
-greatest American interest here discussed is not any one of those
-particular issues, or even the sum of them, but certain underlying
-forces which more than anything else, perhaps, influence all of them.
-The American reader will have missed the main bearing of the argument
-elaborated in these pages unless that point can be made clear.
-
-Let us take a few of the concrete issues just mentioned. The opening
-chapter deals with the motives which may push Great Britain still to
-struggle for the retention of predominant power at sea. The force of
-those motives is obviously destined to be an important factor in
-American politics, in determining, for instance, the amount of American
-taxation. It bears upon the decisions which American voters and American
-statesmen will be called upon to make in American elections within the
-next few years. Or take another aspect of the same question: the
-peculiar position of Great Britain in the matter of her dependence upon
-foreign food. This is shown to be typical of a condition common to very
-much of the population of Europe, and brings us to the problem of the
-pressure of population in the older civilisations upon the means of
-subsistence. That "biological pressure" is certain, in some
-circumstances, to raise for America questions of immigration, of
-relations generally with foreign countries, of defence, which American
-statesmanship will have to take into account in the form of definite
-legislation that will go on to American Statute books. Or, take the
-general problem of the economic reconstruction of Europe, with which the
-book is so largely occupied. That happens to bear, not merely on the
-expansion of American trade, the creation of new markets, that is, and
-on the recovery of American debts, but upon the preservation of markets
-for cotton, wheat, meat and other products, to which large American
-communities have in the past looked, and do still look, for their
-prosperity and even for their solvency. Again, dealing with the manner
-in which the War has affected the economic organisation of the European
-society, the writer has been led to describe the process by which
-preparation for modern war has come to mean, to an increasing degree,
-control by the government of the national resources as a whole, thus
-setting up strong tendencies towards a form of State Socialism. To
-America, herself facing a more far-reaching organisation of the national
-resources for military purposes than she has known in the past, the
-analysis of such a process is certainly of very direct concern. Not less
-so is the story of the relation of revolutionary forces in the
-industrial struggle--"Bolshevism"--to the tendencies so initiated or
-stimulated.
-
-One could go on expanding this theme indefinitely, and write a whole
-book about America's concern in these things. But surely in these days
-it would be a book of platitudes, elaborately pointing out the obvious.
-Yet an American critic of these pages in their European form warns me
-that I must be careful to show their interest for American readers.
-
-Their main interest for the American is not in the kind of relationship
-just indicated, very considerable and immediate as that happens to be.
-Their chief interest is in this: they attempt an analysis of the
-ultimate forces of policies in Western society; of the interrelation of
-fundamental economic needs and of predominant political ideas--public
-opinion, with its constituent elements of "human nature," social--or
-anti-social--instinct, the tradition of Patriotism and Nationalism, the
-mechanism of the modern Press. It is suggested in these pages that some
-of the main factors of political action, the dominant motives of
-political conduct, are still grossly neglected by "practical statesmen";
-and that the statesmen still treat as remote and irrelevant certain
-moral forces which recent events have shown to have very great and
-immediate practical importance. (A number of cases are discussed in
-which practical and realist European statesmen have seen their plans
-touching the stability of alliances, the creation of international
-credit, the issuing of international loans, indemnities, a "new world"
-generally, all this frustrated because in drawing them up they ignored
-the invisible but final factor of public feeling and temper, which the
-whole time they were modifying or creating, thus unconsciously
-undermining the edifices they were so painfully creating. Time and again
-in the last few years practical men of affairs in Europe have found
-themselves the helpless victims of a state of feeling or opinion which
-they so little understood that they had often themselves unknowingly
-created it.)
-
-In such hard realities as the exaction of an indemnity, we see
-governments forced to policies which can only make their task more
-difficult, but which they are compelled to adopt in order to placate
-electoral opinion, or to repel an opposition which would exploit some
-prevailing prejudice or emotion.
-
-To understand the nature of forces which must determine America's main
-domestic and foreign policies--as they have determined those of Western
-Society in Europe during the last generation--is surely an "American
-interest"; though indeed, in neglecting the significance of those
-"hidden currents flowing continually beneath the surface of political
-history," American students of politics would be following much
-European precedent. Although public opinion and feeling are the raw
-material with which statesmen deal, it is still considered irrelevant
-and academic to study the constituent elements of that raw material.
-
-Americans are sufficiently detached from Europe to see that in the way
-of a better unification of that Continent for the purposes of its own
-economic and moral restoration stand disruptive forces of
-"Balkanisation," a development of the spirit of Nationalism which the
-statesmen for years have encouraged and exploited. The American of
-to-day speaks of the Balkanisation of Europe just as the Englishman of
-two or three years ago spoke of the Balkanisation of the Continent, of
-the wrangles of Poles, Czecho-Slovaks, Hungarians, Rumanians, Italians,
-Jugo-Slavs. And the attitude of both Englishman and American are alike
-in this: to the Englishman, watching the squabbles of all the little new
-States and the breaking out of all the little new wars, there seemed at
-work in that spectacle forces so suicidal that they could never in any
-degree touch his own political problems; the American to-day, watching
-British policy in Ireland or French policy towards Germany, feels that
-in such conflict are moral forces that could never produce similar
-paralysis in American policy. "Why," asks the confident American, "does
-England bring such unnecessary trouble upon herself by her military
-conduct in Ireland? Why does France keep three-fourths of a Continent
-still in ferment, making reparations more and more remote"? Americans
-have a very strong feeling that they could not be guilty of the Irish
-mess, or of prolonging the confusion which threatens to bring Europe's
-civilisation to utter collapse. How comes it that the English people, so
-genuinely and so sincerely horrified at the thought of what a Bissing
-could do in Belgium, unable to understand how the German people could
-tolerate a government guilty of such things, somehow find that their own
-British Government is doing very similar things in Cork and Balbriggan;
-and finding it, simply acquiesce? To the American the indefensibility of
-British conduct is plain. "America could never be guilty of it." To the
-Englishman just now, the indefensibility of French conduct is plain. The
-policy which France is following is seen to be suicidal from the point
-of view of French interests. The Englishman is sure that "English
-political sense" would never tolerate it in an English government.
-
-The situation suggests this question: would Americans deny that England
-in the past has shown very great political genius, or that the French
-people are alert, open-minded, "realist," intelligent? Recalling what
-England has done in the way of the establishment of great free
-communities, the flexibility and "practicalness" of her imperial policy,
-what France has contributed to democracy and European organisation, can
-we explain the present difficulties of Europe by the absence, on the
-part of Englishmen or Frenchmen, or other Europeans, of a political
-intelligence granted only so far in the world's history to Americans? In
-other words, do Americans seriously argue that the moral forces which
-have wrought such havoc in the foreign policy of European States could
-never threaten the foreign policy of America? Does the American plead
-that the circumstances which warp an Englishman's or Frenchman's
-judgment could never warp an American's? Or that he could never find
-himself in similar circumstances? As a matter of fact, of course, that
-is precisely what the American--like the Englishman or Frenchman or
-Italian in an analogous case--does plead. To have suggested five years
-ago to an Englishman that his own generals in India or Ireland would
-copy Bissing, would have been deemed too preposterous even for anger:
-but then equally, to Americans, supporting in their millions in 1916 the
-League to Enforce Peace, would the idea have seemed preposterous that a
-few years later America, having the power to take the lead in a Peace
-League, would refuse to do so, and would herself be demanding, as the
-result of participation in a war to end war, greater armament than
-ever--as protection against Great Britain.
-
-I suggest that if an English government can be led to sanction and
-defend in Ireland the identical things which shocked the world when
-committed in Belgium by Germans, if France to-day threatens Europe with
-a military hegemony not less mischievous than that which America
-determined to destroy, the causes of those things must be sought, not in
-the special wickedness of this or that nation, but in forces which may
-operate among any people.
-
-One peculiarity of the prevailing political mind stands out. It is
-evident that a sensible, humane and intelligent people, even with
-historical political sense, can quite often fail to realise how one step
-of policy, taken willingly, must lead to the taking of other steps which
-they detest. If Mr. Lloyd George is supporting France, if the French
-Government is proclaiming policies which it knows to be disastrous, but
-which any French Government must offer to its people or perish, it is
-because somewhere in the past there have been set in motion forces the
-outcome of which was not realised. And if the outcome was not realised,
-although, looking back, or looking at the situation from the distance of
-America from Europe, the inevitability of the result seems plain enough,
-I suggest that it is because judgment becomes warped as the result of
-certain feelings or predominant ideas; and that it will be impossible
-wisely to guide political conduct without some understanding of the
-nature of those feelings and ideas, and unless we realise with some
-humility and honesty that all nations alike are subject to these
-weaknesses.
-
-We all of us clamantly and absolutely deny this plain fact when it is
-suggested that it also applies to our own people. What would have
-happened to the publicist who, during the War, should have urged:
-"Complete and overwhelming victory will be bad, because we shall misuse
-it?" Yet all the victories of history would have been ground for such a
-warning. Universal experience was not merely flouted by the
-uninstructed. One of the curiosities of war literature is the fashion in
-which the most brilliant minds, not alone in politics, but in literature
-and social science, simply disregard this obvious truth. We each knew
-"our" people--British, French, Italian, American--to be good people:
-kindly, idealistic, just. Give them the power to do the Right--to do
-justice, to respect the rights of others, to keep the peace--and it will
-be done. That is why we wanted "unconditional surrender" of the Germans,
-and indignantly rejected a negotiated peace. It was admitted, of course,
-that injustice at the settlement would fail to give us the world we
-fought for. It was preposterous to suppose that we, the defenders of
-freedom and democracy, arbitration, self-determination,--America,
-Britain, France, Japan, Russia, Italy, Rumania--should not do exact and
-complete justice. So convinced, indeed, were we of this that we may
-search in vain the works of all the Allied writers to whom any attention
-was paid, for any warning whatsoever of the one danger which, in fact,
-wrecked the settlement, threw the world back into its oldest
-difficulties, left it fundamentally just where it was, reduced the War
-to futility. The one condition of justice--that the aggrieved party
-should not be in the position of imposing his unrestrained will--, the
-one truth which, for the world's welfare, it was most important to
-proclaim, was the one which it was black heresy and blasphemy to utter,
-and which, to do them justice, the moral and intellectual guides of the
-nations never did utter.
-
-It is precisely the truth which Americans to-day are refusing to face.
-We all admit that, "human nature being what it is," preponderance of
-power, irresponsible power, is something which no nation (but our own)
-can be trusted to use wisely or with justice. The backbone of American
-policy shall therefore be an effort to retain preponderance of power. If
-this be secured, little else matters. True, the American advocate of
-isolation to-day says: "We are not concerned with Europe. We ask only
-to be let alone. Our preponderance of power, naval or other, threatens
-no-one. It is purely defensive." Yet the truth is that the demand for
-preponderance of armaments itself involves a denial of right. Let us see
-why.
-
-No one denies that the desire to possess a definitely preponderant navy
-is related, at least in some degree, to such things as, shall we say,
-the dispute over the Panama tolls. A growing number feel and claim that
-that is a purely American dispute. To subject it to arbitral decision,
-in which necessarily Europeans would have a preponderance, would be to
-give away the American case beforehand. With unquestioned naval
-preponderance over any probable combination of rivals, America is in a
-position to enforce compliance with what she believes to be her just
-rights. At this moment a preponderant navy is being urged on precisely
-those grounds. In other words, the demand is that in a dispute to which
-she is a party she shall be judge, and able to impose her own judgement.
-That is to say, she demands from others the acceptance of a position
-which she would not herself accept. There is nothing at all unusual in
-the demand. It is the feeling which colours the whole attitude of
-combative nationalism. But it none the less means that "adequate
-defence" on this basis inevitably implies a moral aggression--a demand
-upon others which, if made by others upon ourselves, we should resist to
-the death.
-
-It is not here merely or mainly the question of a right: American
-foreign policy has before it much the same alternatives with reference
-to the world as a whole, as were presented to Great Britain with
-reference to the Continent in the generation which preceded the War. Her
-"splendid isolation" was defended on grounds which very closely resemble
-those now put forward by America as the basis of the same policy.
-Isolation meant, of course, preponderance of power, and when she
-declared her intention to use that power only on behalf of even-handed
-justice, she not only meant it, but carried out the intention, at least
-to an extent that no other nation has done. She accorded a degree of
-equality in economic treatment which is without parallel. One thing only
-led her to depart from justice: that was the need of maintaining the
-supremacy. For this she allowed herself to become involved in certain
-exceedingly entangling Alliances. Indeed, Great Britain found that at no
-period of her history were her domestic politics so much dominated by
-the foreign situation as when she was proclaiming to the world her
-splendid isolation from foreign entanglements. It is as certain, of
-course, that American "isolation" would mean that the taxation of Gopher
-Prairie would be settled in Tokio; and that tens of thousands of
-American youth would be sentenced to death by unknown elderly gentlemen
-in a European Cabinet meeting. If the American retorts that his country
-is in a fundamentally different position, because Great Britain
-possesses an Empire and America does not, that only proves how very much
-current ideas in politics fail to take cognizance of the facts. The
-United States to-day has in the problem of the Philippines, their
-protection and their trade, and the bearing of those things upon
-Japanese policy; in Hayti and the West Indies, and their bearing upon
-America's subject nationality problem of the negro; in Mexico, which is
-likely to provide America with its Irish problem; in the Panama Canal
-tolls question and its relation to the development of a mercantile
-marine and naval competition with Great Britain, in these things alone,
-to mention no others, subjects of conflict, involving defence of
-American interests, out of which will arise entanglements not differing
-greatly in kind from the foreign questions which dominated British
-domestic policy during the period of British isolation.
-
-Now, what America will do about these things will not depend upon highly
-rationalised decisions, reached by a hundred million independent
-thinkers investigating the facts concerning the Panama Treaty, the
-respective merits of alternative alliance combinations, or the real
-nature of negro grievances. American policy will be determined by the
-same character of force as has determined British policy in Ireland or
-India, in Morocco or Egypt, French policy in Germany or in Poland, or
-Italian policy in the Adriatic. The "way of thinking" which is applied
-to the decisions of the American democracy has behind it the same kind
-of moral and intellectual force that we find in the society of Western
-Europe as a whole. Behind the American public mind lie practically the
-same economic system based on private property, the same kind of
-political democracy, the same character of scholastic training, the same
-conceptions of nationalism, roughly the same social and moral values. If
-we find certain sovereign ideas determining the course of British or
-French or Italian policy, giving us certain results, we may be sure that
-the same ideas will, in the case of America, give us very much the same
-results.
-
-When Britain spoke of "splendid isolation," she meant what America means
-by the term to-day, namely, a position by virtue of which, when it came
-to a conflict of policy between herself and others, she should possess
-preponderant power, so that she could impose her own view of her own
-rights, be judge and executioner in her own case. To have suggested to
-an Englishman twenty years ago that the real danger to the security of
-his country lay in the attitude of mind dominant among Englishmen
-themselves, that the fundamental defect of English policy was that it
-asked of others something which Englishmen would never accord if asked
-by others of them, and that such a policy was particularly inimical in
-the long run to Great Britain, in that her population lived by processes
-which dominant power could not, in the last resort, exact--such a line
-of argument would have been, and indeed was, regarded as too remote from
-practical affairs to be worth the attention of practical politicians. A
-discussion of the Japanese Alliance, the relations with Russia, the size
-of foreign fleets, the Bagdad railway, would have been regarded as
-entirely practical and relevant. These things were the "facts" of
-politics. It was not regarded as relevant to the practical issues to
-examine the role of certain general ideas and traditions which had grown
-up in England in determining the form of British policy. The growth of a
-crude philosophy of militarism, based on a social pseudo-Darwinism, the
-popularity of Kipling and Roberts, the jingoism of the Northcliffe
-Press--these things might be regarded as items in the study of social
-psychology; they were not regarded as matters for the practical
-statesman. "What would you have us do about them, anyway?"
-
-It has happened to the present writer, in addressing American students,
-to lay stress upon the role of certain dominant ideas in determining
-policy (upon the idea, say, of the State as a person, upon the
-conception of States as necessarily rival entities), and afterwards to
-get questions in this wise: "Your lecture seems to imply an
-internationalist policy. What is your plan? What ought we to do? Should
-we make a naval alliance, with Great Britain, or form a new League of
-Nations, or denounce Article X, or ...?" I have replied: "The first
-thing to do is to change your ideas and moral values; or to get to know
-them better. That is the most practical and immediate platform, because
-all others depend on it. We all profess great love of peace and justice.
-What will you pay for it, in terms of national sovereignty? What degree
-of sovereignty will you surrender as your contribution to a new order?
-If your real feeling is for domination, then the only effect of writing
-constitutions of the League of Nations will be to render international
-organisation more remote than ever, by showing how utterly incompatible
-it is with prevailing moral values."
-
-But such a reply is usually regarded as hopelessly "unpractical." There
-is no indication of something to be "done"--a platform to be defended or
-a law to be passed. To change fundamental opinions and redirect desires
-is not apparently to "do" anything at all. Yet until that invisible
-thing is done our Covenants and Leagues will be as futile as have been
-the numberless similar plans of the past, "concerning which," as one
-seventeenth century critic wrote, "I know no single imperfection save
-this: That by no possibility would any Prince or people be brought to
-abide by them." It was, I believe, regarded as a triumph of practical
-organisation to have obtained nation-wide support for the 'League to
-Enforce Peace' proposal, "without raising controversial matters at
-all"--leaving untouched, that is, the underlying ideas of patriotism, of
-national right and international obligation, the prevailing moral and
-political values, in fact. The subsequent history of America's relation
-to the world's effort to create a League of Nations is sufficient
-commentary as to whether it is "practical" to devise plans and
-constitutions without reference to a prevailing attitude of mind.
-
-America has before her certain definite problems of foreign
-policy--Japanese immigration into the United States and the Philippines;
-concessions granted to foreigners in Mexico; the question of disorder in
-that country; the relations with Hayti (which will bear on the question
-of America's subject nationality, the negro); the exemption of American
-ships from tolls in the Panama Canal; the exclusion of foreign shipping
-from "coastwise" trade with the Philippines. It would be possible to
-draw up plans of settlement with regard to each item which would be
-equitable. But the development of foreign policy (which, more than any
-other department of politics, will fix the quality of American society
-in the future) will not depend upon the more or less equitable
-settlement of those specific questions. The specific differences between
-England and Germany before the War were less serious than those between
-England and America--and were nearly all settled when war broke out.
-Whether an issue like Japanese immigration or the Panama tolls leads to
-war will not depend upon its intrinsic importance, or whether Britain or
-Japan or America make acceptable proposals on the subject. Mr
-ex-Secretary Daniels has just told us that the assertion of the right
-to establish a cable station on the Island of Yap is good ground for
-risking war. The specific issues about which nations fight are so little
-the real cause of the fight that they are generally completely forgotten
-when it comes to making the peace. The future of submarine warfare was
-not mentioned at Versailles. Given a certain state of mind, a difference
-about cables on the Island of Yap is quite sufficient to make war
-inevitable. We should probably regard it as a matter of national honour,
-concerning which there must be no argument. Another mood, and it would
-be impossible to get the faintest ripple of interest in the subject.
-
-It was not British passion for Serbian nationality which brought Britain
-to the side of Russia in 1914. It was the fear of German power and what
-might be done with it, a fear wrought to frenzy pitch by a long
-indoctrination concerning German wickedness and aggression. Passion for
-the subjugation of Germany persisted long after there was any ground of
-fear of what German power might accomplish. If America fights Japan, it
-will not be over cables on Yap; it will be from fear of Japanese power,
-the previous stimulation of latent hatreds for the strange and foreign.
-And if the United States goes to war over Panama Canal tolls, it will
-not be because the millions who will get excited over that question have
-examined the matter, or possess ships or shares in ships that will
-profit by the exemption; it will be because all America has read of
-Irish atrocities which recall school-day histories of British atrocities
-in the American Colonies; because the "person," Britain, has become a
-hateful and hostile person, and must be punished and coerced.
-
-War either with Japan or Britain or both is, of course, quite within the
-region of possibility. It is merely an evasion of the trouble which
-facing reality always involves, to say that war between Britain and
-America is "unthinkable." If any war, as we have known it these last ten
-years, is thinkable, war between nations that have already fought two
-wars is obviously not unthinkable. And those who can recall at all
-vividly the forces which marked the growth of the conflict between
-Britain and Germany will see just those forces beginning to colour the
-relations of Britain and America. Among those forces none is more
-notable than this: a disturbing tendency to stop short at the ultimate
-questions, a failure to face the basic causes of divergence. Among
-people of good will there is a tendency to say: "Don't let's talk about
-it. Be discreet. Let us assume we are good friends and we shall be. Let
-us exchange visits." In just such a way, even within a few weeks of war,
-did people of good will in England and Germany decide not to talk of
-their differences, to be discreet, to exchange visits. But the men of
-ill will talked--talked of the wrong things--and sowed their deadly
-poison.
-
-These pages suggest why neither side in the Anglo-German conflict came
-down to realities before the War. To have come to fundamentals would
-have revealed the fact to both parties that any real settlement would
-have asked things which neither would grant. Really to have secured
-Germany's future economic security would have meant putting her access
-to the resources of India and Africa upon a basis of Treaty, of
-contract. That was for Britain the end of Empire, as Imperialists
-understood it. To have secured in exchange the end of "marching and
-drilling" would have been the end of military glory for Prussia. For
-both it would have meant the surrender of certain dominations, a
-recasting of patriotic ideals, a revolution of ideas.
-
-Whether Britain and America are to fight may very well depend upon this:
-whether the blinder and more unconscious motives rooted in traditional
-patriotisms, and the impulse to the assertion of power, will work their
-evil before the development of ideas has brought home to us a clearer
-vision of the abyss into which we fall; before we have modified, in
-other words, our tradition of patriotism, our political moralities, our
-standard of values. Without that more fundamental change no scheme of
-settlement of specific differences, no platforms, Covenants,
-Constitution can avail, or have any chance of acceptance or success.
-
-As a contribution to that change of ideas and of values these pages are
-offered.
-
-
-SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT
-
-The central conclusion suggested by the following analysis of the events
-of the past few years is that, underlying the disruptive processes so
-evidently at work--especially in the international field--is the
-deep-rooted instinct to the assertion of domination, preponderant power.
-This impulse sanctioned and strengthened by prevailing traditions of
-'mystic' patriotism, has been unguided and unchecked by any adequate
-realisation either of its anti-social quality, the destructiveness
-inseparable from its operation, or its ineffectiveness to ends
-indispensable to civilisation.
-
-The psychological roots of the impulse are so deep that we shall
-continue to yield to it until we realise more fully its danger and
-inadequacy to certain vital ends like sustenance for our people, and
-come to see that if civilisation is to be carried on we must turn to
-other motives. We may then develop a new political tradition, which will
-'discipline' instinct, as the tradition of toleration disciplined
-religious fanaticism when that passion threatened to shatter European
-society.
-
-Herein lies the importance of demonstrating the economic futility of
-military power. While it may be true that conscious economic motives
-enter very little into the struggle of nations, and are a very small
-part of the passions of patriotism and nationalism, it is by a
-realisation of the economic truth regarding the indispensable condition
-of adequate life, that those passions will be checked, or redirected and
-civilised.
-
-This does not mean that economic considerations should dominate life,
-but rather the contrary--that those considerations will dominate it if
-the economic truth is neglected. A people that starves is a people
-thinking only of material things--food. The way to dispose of economic
-pre-occupations is to solve the economic problem.
-
-The bearing of this argument is that developed by the present writer in
-a previous book, _The Great Illusion_, and the extent to which it has
-been vindicated by events, is shown in the Addendum.
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
-
-CHAPTER                                                             PAGE
-
-  I OUR DAILY BREAD                                                    3
-
- II THE OLD ECONOMY AND THE POST-WAR STATE                            61
-
-III NATIONALITY, ECONOMICS, AND THE ASSERTION OF
-RIGHT                                                                 81
-
- IV MILITARY PREDOMINANCE--AND INSECURITY                            112
-
-  V PATRIOTISM AND POWER IN WAR AND PEACE: THE
-SOCIAL OUTCOME                                                       142
-
- VI THE ALTERNATIVE RISKS OF STATUS AND CONTRACT                     169
-
-VII THE SPIRITUAL ROOTS OF THE SETTLEMENT                            199
-
-    ADDENDUM: SOME NOTES ON 'THE GREAT ILLUSION'
-    AND ITS PRESENT RELEVANCE                                        253
-
-    I. The 'Impossibility of War' Myth. II. 'Economic'
-    and 'Moral' Motives in International Affairs. III. The
-    'Great Illusion' Argument. IV. Arguments now out of
-    date. V. The Argument as an attack on the State.
-    VI. Vindication by Events. VII. Could the War have
-    been prevented?
-
-
-
-
-SYNOPSIS
-
-
-CHAPTER I (pp. 3-60)
-
-OUR DAILY BREAD
-
-An examination of the present conditions in Europe shows that much of
-its dense population (particularly that of these islands) cannot live at
-a standard necessary for civilisation (leisure, social peace, individual
-freedom) except by certain co-operative processes which must be carried
-on largely across frontiers. (The prosperity of Britain depends on the
-production by foreigners of a surplus of food and raw material above
-their own needs.) The present distress is not mainly the result of the
-physical destruction of war (famine or shortage is worst, as in the
-Austrian and German and Russian areas, where there has been no
-destruction). The Continent as a whole has the same soil and natural
-resources and technical knowledge as when it fed its populations. The
-causes of its present failure at self-support are moral: economic
-paralysis following political disintegration, 'Balkanisation'; that, in
-its turn, due to certain passions and prepossessions.
-
-A corresponding phenomenon is revealed within each national society: a
-decline of production due to certain moral disorders, mainly in the
-political field; to 'unrest,' a greater cleavage between groups,
-rendering the indispensable co-operation less effective.
-
-The necessary co-operation, whether as between nations or groups within
-each nation, cannot be compelled by physical coercion, though disruptive
-forces inseparable from the use of coercion can paralyse co-operation.
-Allied preponderance of power over Germany does not suffice to obtain
-indemnities, or even coal in the quantities demanded by the Treaty. The
-output of the workers in Great Britain would not necessarily be improved
-by adding to the army or police force. As interdependence increases, the
-limits of coercion are narrowed. Enemies that are to pay large
-indemnities must be permitted actively to develop their economic life
-and power; they are then so potentially strong that enforcement of the
-demands becomes correspondingly expensive and uncertain. Knowledge and
-organisation acquired by workers for the purposes of their labour can be
-used to resist oppression. Railwaymen or miners driven to work by force
-would still find means of resistance. A proletarian dictatorship cannot
-coerce the production of food by an unwilling peasantry. The processes
-by which wealth is produced have, by increasing complexity, become of a
-kind which can only be maintained if there be present a large measure of
-voluntary acquiescence, which means, in its turn, confidence. The need
-for that is only made the more imperative by the conditions which have
-followed the virtual suspension of the gold standard in all the
-belligerent States of Europe, the collapse of the exchanges and other
-manifestations of instability of the currencies.
-
-European statesmanship, as revealed in the Treaty of Versailles, and in
-the conduct of international affairs since the Armistice, has recognised
-neither the fact of interdependence--the need for the economic unity of
-Europe--nor the futility of attempted coercion. Certain political ideas
-and passions give us an unworkable Europe. What is their nature? How
-have they arisen? How can they be corrected? These questions are part of
-the problem of sustenance; which is the first indispensable of
-civilisation.
-
-
-CHAPTER II (pp. 61-80)
-
-THE OLD ECONOMY AND THE POST-WAR STATE
-
-The trans-national processes which enabled Europe to support itself
-before the War were based mainly on private exchanges prompted by the
-expectation of individual advantage. They were not dependent upon
-political power. (The fifteen millions for whom German soil could not
-provide lived by trade with countries over which Germany had no
-political control, as a similar number of British live by similar
-non-political means.)
-
-The old individualist economy has been largely destroyed by the State
-Socialism introduced for war purposes: the nation, taking over
-individual enterprise, became trader and manufacturer in increasing
-degree. The economic clauses of the Treaty, if enforced, must prolong
-this tendency, rendering a large measure of such Socialism permanent.
-
-The change may be desirable. But if co-operation must in future be less
-as between individuals for private advantage, and much more as between
-_nations_, governments acting in an economic capacity, the political
-emotions of nationalisation will play a much larger role in the economic
-processes of Europe. If to Nationalist hostilities as we have known them
-in the past is to be added the commercial rivalry of nations now
-converted into traders and capitalists, we are likely to have not a less
-but a more quarrelsome world, unless the fact of interdependence is much
-more vividly realised than in the past.
-
-
-CHAPTER III (pp. 81-111)
-
-NATIONALITY, ECONOMICS, AND THE ASSERTION OF RIGHT
-
-
-The change noted in the preceding chapter raises a profound question of
-Right--Have we the right to use our power to deny to others the means of
-life? By our political power we _can_ create a Europe which, while not
-assuring advantage to the victor, deprives the vanquished of means of
-existence. The loss of both ore and coal by the Central Powers might
-well make it impossible for their future populations to find food. What
-are they to do? Starve? To disclaim responsibility is to claim that we
-are entitled to use our power to deny them life.
-
-This 'right' to starve foreigners can only be invoked by invoking the
-conception of nationalism--'Our nation first.' But the policy of placing
-life itself upon a foundation of preponderant force, instead of mutually
-advantageous co-operation, compels statesmen perpetually to betray the
-principle of nationality; not only directly, (as in the case of the
-annexation of territory, economically necessary, but containing peoples
-of alien nationality,) but indirectly; for the resistance which our
-policy (of denying means of subsistence to others) provokes, makes
-preponderance of power the condition of survival. All else must give way
-to that need.
-
-Might cannot be pledged to Right in these conditions. If our power is
-pledged to Allies for the purpose of the Balance (which means, in fact,
-preponderance), it cannot be used against them to enforce respect for
-(say) nationality. To turn against Allies would break the Balance. To
-maintain the Balance of Power we are compelled to disregard the moral
-merits of an Ally's policy (as in the case of the promise to the Czar's
-government not to demand the independence of Poland). The maintenance of
-a Balance (_i.e._ preponderance) is incompatible with the maintenance of
-Right. There is a conflict of obligation.
-
-
-CHAPTER IV (pp. 112-141)
-
-MILITARY PREDOMINANCE--AND INSECURITY
-
-The moral questions raised in the preceding chapter have a direct
-bearing on the effectiveness of military power based on the National
-unit, or a group of National units, such as an Alliance. Military
-preponderance of the smaller Western National units over large and
-potentially powerful groups, like the German or the Russian, must
-necessitate stable and prolonged co-operation. But, as the present
-condition of the Alliance which fought the War shows, the rivalries
-inseparable from the fears and resentments of 'instinctive' nationalism,
-make that prolonged co-operation impossible. The qualities of
-Nationalism which stand in the way of Internationalism stand also in the
-way of stable alliances (which are a form of Internationalism) and make
-them extremely unstable foundations of power.
-
-The difficulties encountered by the Allies in taking combined action in
-Russia show that to this fundamental instability due to the moral nature
-of Nationalism, must be added, as causes of military paralysis, the
-economic disruption which reduces the available material resources, and
-the social unrest (largely the result of the economic difficulties)
-which undermines the cohesion even of the national unit.
-
-These forces render military predominance based on the temporary
-co-operation of units still preserving the Nationalist outlook extremely
-precarious and unreliable.
-
-
-CHAPTER V (pp. 142-168)
-
-PATRIOTISM AND POWER IN WAR AND PEACE: THE SOCIAL OUTCOME
-
-The greatest and most obvious present need of Europe, for the salvation
-of its civilisation, is unity and co-operation. Yet the predominant
-forces of its politics push to conflict and disunity. If it is the
-calculating selfishness of 'realist' statesmen that thus produces
-impoverishment and bankruptcy, the calculation would seem to be
-defective. The Balkanisation of Europe obviously springs, however, from
-sources belonging to our patriotisms, which are mainly uncalculating
-and instinctive, 'mystic' impulses and passions. Can we safely give
-these instinctive pugnacities full play?
-
-One side of patriotism--gregariousness, 'herd instinct'--has a socially
-protective origin, and is probably in some form indispensable. But
-coupled with uncontrolled pugnacity, tribal gregariousness grows into
-violent partisanship as against other groups, and greatly strengthens
-the instinct to coercion, the desire to impose our power.
-
-In war-time, pugnacity, partisanship, coerciveness can find full
-satisfaction in the fight against the enemy. But when the war is over,
-these instincts, which have become so highly developed, still seek
-satisfaction. They may find it in two ways: in conflict between Allies,
-or in strife between groups within the nation.
-
-We may here find an explanation of what seems otherwise a moral enigma:
-that just _after a war_, universally lauded as a means of national
-unity, 'bringing all classes together,' the country is distraught by
-bitter social chaos, amounting to revolutionary menace; and that after
-the war which was to wipe out at last all the old differences which
-divided the Allies, their relations are worse than before the War (as in
-the case of Britain and America and Britain and France).
-
-Why should the fashionable lady, capable of sincere self-sacrifice
-(scrubbing hospital floors and tending canteens) for her countrymen when
-they are soldiers, become completely indifferent to the same countrymen
-when they have returned to civil life (often dangerous and hard, as in
-mining and fishing)? In the latter case there is no common enmity
-uniting duchess and miner.
-
-Another enigma may be solved in the same way: why military terrorism,
-unprovoked war, secret diplomacy, autocratic tyranny, violation of
-nationality, which genuinely appal us when committed by the enemy, leave
-us unmoved when political necessity' provokes very similar conduct on
-our part; why the ideals for which we went to war become matters of
-indifference to us when we have achieved victory. Gregariousness, which
-has become intense partisanship, makes right that which our side does or
-desires; wrong that which the other side does.
-
-This is fatal, not merely to justice, but to sincerity, to intellectual
-rectitude, to the capacity to see the truth objectively. It explains why
-we can, at the end of a war, excuse or espouse the very policies which
-the war was waged to make impossible.
-
-
-CHAPTER VI (pp. 169-198)
-
-THE ALTERNATIVE RISKS OF STATUS AND CONTRACT
-
-Instinct, being co-terminous with all animal life, is a motive of
-conduct immeasurably older and more deeply rooted than reasoning based
-on experience. So long as the instinctive, 'natural' action succeeds, or
-appears to succeed in its object, we do not trouble to examine the
-results of instinct or to reason. Only failure causes us to do that.
-
-We have seen that the pugnacities, gregariousness, group partisanship
-embodied in patriotism, give a strong emotional push to domination, the
-assertion of our power over others as a means of settling our relations
-with them. Physical coercion marks all the early methods in politics (as
-in autocracy and feudalism), in economics (as in slavery), and even in
-the relations of the sexes.
-
-But we try other methods (and manage to restrain our impulse
-sufficiently) when we really discover that force won't work. When we
-find we cannot coerce a man but still need his service, we offer him
-inducements, bargain with him, enter a contract. This is the result of
-realising that we really need him, and cannot compel him. That is the
-history of the development from status to contract.
-
-Stable international co-operation cannot come in any other way. Not
-until we realise the failure of national coercive power for
-indispensable ends (like the food of our people) shall we cease to
-idealise power and to put our intensest political emotions, like those
-of patriotism, behind it.
-
-The alternative to preponderance is partnership of power. Both may imply
-the employment of force (as in policing), but the latter makes force the
-instrument of a conscious social purpose, offering to the rival that
-challenges the force (as in the case of the individual criminal within
-the nation) the same rights as those claimed by the users of force.
-Force as employed by competitive nationalism does not do this. It says
-'You or me,' not 'You and me.' The method of social co-operation may
-fail temporarily; but it has the perpetual opportunity of success. It
-succeeds the moment that the two parties both accept it. But the other
-method is bound to fail; the two parties cannot both accept it. Both
-cannot be masters. Both can be partners.
-
-The failure of preponderant power on a nationalist basis for
-indispensable ends would be self-evident but for the push of the
-instincts which warp our judgment.
-
-Yet faith in the social method is the condition of its success. It is a
-choice of risks. We distrust and arm. Others, then, are entitled also to
-distrust; their arming is our justification for distrusting them. The
-policy of suspicion justifies itself. To allay suspicion we must accept
-the risk of trust. That, too, will justify itself.
-
-Man's future depends on making the better choice, for either the
-distrust or the faith will justify itself. His judgment will not be fit
-to make that choice if it is warped by the passions of pugnacity and
-hate that we have cultivated as part of the apparatus of war.
-
-
-CHAPTER VII (pp. 199-251)
-
-THE SPIRITUAL ROOTS OF THE SETTLEMENT
-
-If our instinctive pugnacities and hates are uncontrollable, and they
-dictate conduct, no more is to be said. We are the helpless victims of
-outside forces, and may as well surrender. But many who urge this most
-insistently in the case of our patriotic pugnacities obviously do not
-believe it: their demands for the suppression of 'defeatist' propaganda
-during the War, their support of war-time propaganda for the maintenance
-of morale, their present fears of the 'deadly infection' of Bolshevist
-ideas, indicate, on the contrary, a very real belief that feelings can
-be subject to an extremely rapid modification or redirection. In human
-society mere instinct has always been modified or directed in some
-measure by taboos, traditions, conventions, constituting a social
-discipline. The character of that discipline is largely determined by
-some sense of social need, developed as the result of the suggestion of
-transmitted ideas, discussions, intellectual ferment.
-
-The feeling which made the Treaty inevitable was the result of a partly
-unconscious but also partly conscious propaganda of war half-truths,
-built up on a sub-structure of deeply rooted nationalist conceptions.
-The systematic exploitation of German atrocities, and the systematic
-suppression of similar Allied offences, the systematic suppression of
-every good deed done by our enemy, constituted a monstrous half-truth.
-It had the effect of fortifying the conception of the enemy people as a
-single person; its complete collective responsibility. Any one of
-them--child, woman, invalid--could properly be punished (by famine, say)
-for any other's guilt. Peace became a problem of repressing or
-destroying this entirely bad person by a combination of nations entirely
-good.
-
-This falsified the nature of the problem, gave free rein to natural and
-instinctive retaliations, obscured the simplest human realities, and
-rendered possible ferocious cruelty on the part of the Allies. There
-would have been in any case a strong tendency to ignore even the facts
-which in Allied interest should have been considered. In the best
-circumstances it would have been extremely difficult to put through a
-Wilsonian (type 1918) policy, involving restraint of the sacred
-egoisms, the impulsive retaliations, the desire for dominion inherent
-in 'intense' nationalisms. The efficiency of the machinery by which the
-Governments for the purpose of war formed the mind of the nation, made
-it out of the question.
-
-If ever the passions which gather around the patriotisms disrupting and
-Balkanising Europe are to be disciplined or directed by a better social
-tradition, we must face without pretence or self-deception the results
-which show the real nature of the older political moralities. We must
-tell truths that disturb strong prejudices.
-
-
-
-
-
-THE FRUITS OF VICTORY
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-OUR DAILY BREAD
-
-
-I
-
-_The relation of certain economic facts to Britain's independence and
-Social Peace_
-
-Political instinct in England, particularly in the shaping of naval
-policy, has always recognised the intimate relation which must exist
-between an uninterrupted flow of food to these shores and the
-preservation of national independence. An enemy in a position to stop
-that flow would enjoy not merely an economic but a political power over
-us--the power to starve us into ignominious submission to his will.
-
-The fact has, of course, for generations been the main argument for
-Britain's right to maintain unquestioned command of the sea. In the
-discussions before the War concerning the German challenge to our naval
-power, it was again and again pointed out that Britain's position was
-very special: what is a matter of life and death for her had no
-equivalent importance for other powers. And it was when the Kaiser
-announced that Germany's future was upon the sea that British fear
-became acute! The instinct of self-preservation became aroused by the
-thought of the possible possession in hostile hands of an instrument
-that could sever vital arteries.
-
-The fact shows how impossible it is to divide off into watertight
-compartments the 'economic' from the political or moral. To preserve the
-capacity to feed our people, to see that our children shall have milk,
-is certainly an economic affair--a commercial one even. But it is an
-indispensable condition also of the defence of our country, of the
-preservation of our national freedom. The ultimate end behind the
-determination to preserve a preponderant navy may be purely nationalist
-or moral; the means is the maintenance of a certain economic situation.
-
-Indeed the task of ensuring the daily bread of the people touches moral
-and social issues nearer and more intimate even than the preservation of
-our national independence. The inexorable rise in the cost of living,
-the unemployment and loss and insecurity which accompany a rapid fall in
-prices, are probably the predominating factors in a social unrest which
-may end in transforming the whole texture of Western society. The worker
-finds his increased wage continually nullified by increase of price. Out
-of this situation arises an exasperation which, naturally enough, with
-peoples habituated by five years of war to violence and emotional
-mass-judgments, finds expression, not necessarily in organised
-revolution--that implies, after all, a plan of programme, a hope of a
-new order--but rather in sullen resentment; declining production, the
-menace of general chaos. However restricted the resources of a country
-may have become, there will always be some people under a regime of
-private capital and individual enterprise who will have more than a mere
-sufficiency, whose means will reach to luxury and even ostentation. They
-may be few in number; the amount of waste their luxury represents may in
-comparison with the total resources be unimportant. But their existence
-will suffice to give colour to the charge of profiteering and
-exploitation and to render still more acute the sullen discontent, and
-finally perhaps the tendency to violence.
-
-It is in such a situation that the price of a few prime
-necessaries--bread, coal, milk, sugar, clothing--becomes a social,
-political, and moral fact of the first importance. A two-shilling loaf
-may well be a social and political portent.
-
-In the week preceding the writing of these lines five cabinets have
-fallen in Europe. The least common denominator in the cause is the
-grinding poverty which is common to the peoples they ruled. In two cases
-the governments fell avowedly over the question of bread, maintained by
-subsidy at a fraction of its commercial cost. Everywhere the social
-atmosphere, the temper of the workers, responds to stimulus of that
-kind.
-
-When we reach the stage at which mothers are forced to see their
-children slowly die for lack of milk and bread, or the decencies of life
-are lost in a sordid scramble for sheer physical existence, then the
-economic problem becomes the gravest moral problem. The two are merged.
-
-The obvious truth that, if economic preoccupations are not to dominate
-the minds and absorb the energies of men to the exclusion of less
-material things, then the fundamental economic needs must be satisfied;
-the fact, that though the foundations are certainly not the whole
-building, civilisation does rest upon foundations of food, shelter,
-fuel, and that if it is to be stable they must be sound--these things
-have been rendered commonplace by events since the Armistice. But before
-the War they were not commonplaces. The suggestion that the economic
-results of war were worth considering was quite commonly rejected as
-'offensive,' implying that men went to war for 'profit.' Nations in
-going to war, we were told, were lifted beyond the region of
-'economics.' The conception that the neglect of the economics of war
-might mean--as it has meant--the slow torture of tens of millions of
-children and the disintegration of whole civilisations, and that if
-those who professed to be the trustees of their fellows were not
-considering these things they ought to be--this was, very curiously as
-it now seems to us at this date, regarded as sordid and material. We now
-see that the things of the spirit depend upon the solution of these
-material problems.
-
-The one fact which stood out clear above all others after the Armistice
-was the actual shortage of goods at a time when millions were literally
-dying of hunger. The decline of productivity was obvious. It was due in
-part to diversion of energies to the task of war, to the destruction of
-materials, failure in many cases to maintain plant (factories, railways,
-roads, housing); to a varying degree of industrial and commercial
-demoralisation arising out of the War and, later, out of the struggle
-for political rearrangements both within States and as between States;
-to the shortening of the hours of labour; to the dislocation, first of
-mobilisation, and then of demobilisation; to relaxation of effort as
-reaction from the special strain of war; to the demoralisation of credit
-owing to war-time financial shifts. We had all these factors of reduced
-productivity on the one side, and on the other a generally increased
-habit and standard of expenditure, due in part to a stimulation of
-spending power owing to the inflation of the currency and in part to the
-recklessness which usually follows war; and above all an increasingly
-insistent demand on the part of the worker everywhere in Europe for a
-higher general standard of living, that is to say, not only a larger
-share of the diminished product of his labour, but a larger absolute
-amount drawn from a diminished total.
-
-This created an economic _impasse_--the familiar 'vicious circle.' The
-decline in the purchasing power of money and the rise in the rate of
-interest set up demands for compensating increases both of wages and of
-profits, which increases in turn added to the cost of production, to
-prices. And so on _da capo_. As the first and last remedy for this
-condition one thing was urged, to the exclusion of almost all
-else--increased production. The King, the Cabinet, economists, Trades
-Union leaders, the newspapers, the Churches, all agreed upon that one
-solution. Until well into the autumn of 1920 all were enjoining upon the
-workers their duty of an ever-increasing output.
-
-By the end of that year, workers, who had on numberless occasions been
-told that their one salvation was to increase their output, and who had
-been upbraided in no mild terms because of their tendency to diminish
-output, were being discharged in their hundreds of thousands because
-there was a paralysing over-production and glut! Half a world was
-famished and unclothed, but vast stores of British goods were rotting
-and multitudes of workers unemployed. America revealed the same
-phenomena. After stories of the fabulous wealth which had come to her as
-the result of the War and the destruction of her commercial competitors,
-we find, in the winter of 1920-21 that over great areas in the South and
-West her farmers are near to bankruptcy because their cotton and wheat
-are unsaleable at prices that are remunerative, and her industrial
-unemployment problem as acute as it has been in a generation. So bad is
-it, indeed, that the Labour Unions are unable to resist the Open Shop
-campaign forced upon them by the employers, a campaign menacing the
-gains in labour organisation that it has taken more than a generation to
-make. America's commercial competitors being now satisfactorily disposed
-of by the War, and 'the economic conquest of the world' being now open
-to that country, we find the agricultural interests (particularly cotton
-and wheat) demanding government aid for the purpose of putting these
-aforesaid competitors once more on their feet (by loan) in order that
-they may buy American products. But the loans can only be repaid and the
-products paid for in goods. This, of course, constitutes, in terms of
-nationalist economics, a 'menace.' So the same Congress which receives
-demands for government credits to European countries, also receives
-demands for the enactment of Protectionist legislation, which will
-effectually prevent the European creditors from repaying the loans or
-paying for the purchases. The spectacle is a measure of the chaos in our
-thinking on international economics.[1]
-
-But the fact we are for the moment mainly concerned with is this: on the
-one side millions perishing for lack of corn or cotton; on the other
-corn and cotton in such abundance that they are burned, and their
-producers face bankruptcy.
-
-Obviously therefore it is not merely a question of production, but of
-production adjusted to consumption, and vice versa; of proper
-distribution of purchasing power, and a network of processes which must
-be in increasing degree consciously controlled. We should never have
-supposed that mere production would suffice, if there did not
-perpetually slip from our minds the very elementary truth that in a
-world where division of labour exists wealth is not a material but a
-material plus a process--a process of exchange. Our minds are still
-dominated by the mediaeval aspect of wealth as a 'possession' of static
-material such as land, not as part of a flow. It is that oversight which
-probably produced the War; it certainly produced certain clauses of the
-Treaty. The wealth of England is not coal, because if we could not
-exchange it (or the manufactures and services based on it) for other
-things--mainly food--it certainly would not even feed our population.
-And the process by which coal becomes bread is only possible by virtue
-of certain adjustments, which can only be made if there be present such
-things as a measure of political security, stability of conditions
-enabling us to know that crops can be gathered, transported and sold for
-money of stable value; if there be in other words the indispensable
-element of contract, confidence, rendering possible the indispensable
-device of credit. And as the self-sufficing economic unit--quite
-obviously in the case of England, less obviously but hardly less
-certainly in other notable cases--cannot be the national unit, the field
-of the contract--the necessary stability of credit, that is--must be, if
-not international, then trans-national. All of which is extremely
-elementary; and almost entirely overlooked by our statesmanship, as
-reflected in the Settlement and in the conduct of policy since the
-Armistice.
-
-
-2
-
-     _Britain's dependence on the production by foreigners of a surplus
-     of food and raw materials beyond their own needs_
-
-The matter may be clarified if we summarise what precedes, and much of
-what follows, in this proposition:--
-
-     The present conditions in Europe show that much of its dense
-     population (notably the population of these islands) can only live
-     at a standard necessary for civilisation (leisure, social peace,
-     individual freedom) by means of certain co-operative processes,
-     which must be carried on largely across frontiers. The mere
-     physical existence of much of the population of Britain is
-     dependent upon the production by foreigners of a surplus of food
-     and raw materials beyond their own needs.
-
-     The processes of production have become of the complex kind which
-     cannot be compelled by preponderant power, exacted by physical
-     coercion.
-
-     But the attempt at such coercion, the inevitable results of a
-     policy aimed at securing predominant power, provoking resistance
-     and friction, can and does paralyse the necessary processes, and by
-     so doing is undermining the economic foundations of British life.
-
-What are the facts supporting the foregoing proposition?
-
-Many whose instincts of national protection would become immediately
-alert at the possibility of a naval blockade of these islands, remain
-indifferent to the possibility of a blockade arising in another but
-every bit as effective a fashion.
-
-That is through the failure of the food and raw material, upon which our
-populations and our industries depend, to be produced at all owing to
-the progressive social disintegration which seems to be going on over
-the greater part of the world. To the degree to which it is true to say
-that Britain's life is dependent upon her fleet, it is true to say that
-it is dependent upon the production by foreigners of a surplus above
-their own needs of food and raw material. This is the most fundamental
-fact in the economic situation of Britain: a large portion of her
-population are fed by the exchange of coal, or services and manufactures
-based on coal, for the surplus production, mainly food and raw material,
-of peoples living overseas.[2] Whether the failure of food to reach us
-were due to the sinking of our ships at sea or the failure of those
-ships to obtain cargoes at the port of embarkation the result in the end
-would be the same. Indeed, the latter method, if complete, would be the
-more serious as an armistice or surrender would not bring relief.
-
-The hypothesis has been put in an extreme form in order to depict the
-situation as vividly as possible. But such a condition as the complete
-failure of the foreigner's surplus does not seem to-day so preposterous
-as it might have done five years ago. For that surplus has shrunk
-enormously and great areas that once contributed to feeding us can do so
-no longer. Those areas already include Russia, Siberia, the Balkans, and
-a large part of the Near and Far East. What we are practically concerned
-with, of course, is not the immediate disappearance of that surplus on
-which our industries depend, but the degree to which its reduction
-increases for us the cost of food, and so intensifies all the social
-problems that arise out of an increasing cost of living. Let the
-standard alike of consumption and production of our overseas white
-customers decline to the standard of India and China, and our foreign
-trade would correspondingly decrease; the decline in the world's
-production of food would mean that much less for us; it would reduce the
-volume of our trade, or in terms of our own products, cost that much
-more; this in turn would increase the cost of our manufactures, create
-an economic situation which one could describe with infinite technical
-complexity, but which, however technical and complex that description
-were made, would finally come to this--that our own toil would become
-less productive.
-
-That is a relatively new situation. In the youth of men now living,
-these islands with their twenty-five or thirty million population were,
-so far as vital needs are concerned, self-sufficing. What will be the
-situation when the children now growing up in our homes become members
-of a British population which may number fifty, sixty, or seventy
-millions? (Germany's population, which, at the outbreak of war, was
-nearly seventy millions, was in 1870 a good deal less than the present
-population of Great Britain.)
-
-Moreover, the problem is affected by what is perhaps the most important
-economic change in the world since the industrial revolution, namely the
-alteration in the ratio of the exchange value of manufactures and
-food--the shift over of advantage in exchange from the side of the
-industrialist and manufacturer to the side of the producer of food.
-
-Until the last years of the nineteenth century the world was a place in
-which it was relatively easy to produce food, and nearly the whole of
-its population was doing it. In North and South America, in Russia,
-Siberia, China, India, the universal occupation was agriculture, carried
-on largely (save in the case of China and India) upon new soil, its
-first fertility as yet unexhausted. A tiny minority of the world's
-population only was engaged in industry in the modern sense: in
-producing things in factories by machinery, in making iron and steel.
-Only in Great Britain, in Northern Germany, in a few districts in the
-United States, had large-scale industry been systematically developed.
-It is easy to see, therefore, what immense advantage in exchange the
-industrialist had. What he had for sale was relatively scarce; what the
-agriculturist had for sale was produced the world over and was, _in
-terms of manufactures_, extremely cheap. It was the economic paradox of
-the time that in countries like America, South and North, the
-farmer--the producer of food--was naturally visualised as a
-poverty-stricken individual--a 'hayseed' dressed in cotton jeans,
-without the conveniences and amenities of civilisation, while it was in
-the few industrial centres that the vast wealth was being piled up. But
-as the new land in North America and Argentina and Siberia became
-occupied and its first fertility exhausted, as the migration from the
-land to the towns set in, it became possible with the spread of
-technical training throughout the world, with the wider distribution of
-mechanical power and the development of transport, for every country in
-some measure to engage in manufacture, and the older industrial centres
-lost some of their monopoly advantage in dealing with the food producer.
-In Cobden's day it was almost true to say that England spun cotton for
-the world. To-day cotton is spun where cotton is grown; in India, in the
-Southern States of America, in China.
-
-This is a condition which (as the pages which follow reveal in greater
-detail) the intensification of nationalism and its hostility to
-international arrangement will render very much more acute. The
-patriotism of the future China or Argentina--or India and Australia, for
-that matter--may demand the home production of goods now bought in (say)
-England. It may not in economic terms benefit the populations who thus
-insist upon a complete national economy. But 'defence is more than
-opulence.' The very insecurity which the absence of a definitely
-organised international order involves will be invoked as justifying the
-attempt at economic self-sufficiency. Nationalism creates the situation
-to which it points as justification for its policy: it makes the very
-real dangers that it fears. And as Nationalism thus breaks up the
-efficient transnational division of labour and diminishes total
-productivity, the resultant pressure of population or diminished means
-of subsistence will push to keener rivalry for the conquest of
-territory. The circle can become exceedingly vicious--so vicious,
-indeed, that we may finally go back to the self-sufficing village
-community; a Europe sparsely populated if the resultant clerical
-influence is unable to check prudence in the matter of the birth-rate,
-densely populated to a Chinese or Indian degree if the birth-rate is
-uncontrolled.
-
-The economic chaos and social disintegration which have stricken so
-much of the world have brought a sharp reminder of the primary, the
-elemental place of food in the catalogue of man's needs, and the
-relative ease and rapidity with which most else can be jettisoned in our
-complex civilisation, provided only that the stomach can be filled.
-
-Before the War the towns of Europe were the luxurious and opulent
-centres; the rural districts were comparatively poor. To-day it is the
-cities of the Continent that are half-starved or famine-stricken, while
-the farms are well-fed and relatively opulent. In Russia, Poland,
-Hungary, Germany, Austria, the cities perish, but the peasants for the
-most part have a sufficiency. The cities are finding that with the
-breakdown of the old stability--of the transport and credit systems
-particularly--they cannot obtain food from the farmers. This process
-which we now see at work on the Continent is in fact the reversal of our
-historical development.
-
-As money acquired a stable value and transport and communication became
-easy and cheap, the manor ceased to be self-contained, to weave its own
-clothes and make its own implements. But the Russian peasants are
-proving to-day that if the railroads break down, and the paper money
-loses its value, the farm can become once more self-sufficing. Better to
-thresh the wheat with a flail, to weave clothes from the wool, than to
-exchange wheat and wool for a money that will buy neither cloth nor
-threshing machinery. But a country-side that weaves its own cloth and
-threshes its grain by hand is one that has little surplus of food for
-great cities--as Vienna, Buda-Pest, Moscow, and Petrograd have already
-discovered.
-
-If England is destined in truth to remain the workshop of that world
-which produces the food and raw material, then she has indeed a very
-direct interest in the maintenance of all those processes upon which the
-pre-war exchange between farm and factory, city and country,
-depended.[3]
-
-The 'farm' upon which the 'factory' of Great Britain depends is the
-food-producing world as a whole. It does not suffice that the overseas
-world should merely support itself as it did, say, in the tenth century,
-but it must be induced by hope of advantage to exchange a surplus for
-those things which we can deliver to it more economically than it can
-make them for itself. Because the necessary social and political
-stability, with its material super-structure of transport and credit,
-operating trans-nationally, has broken down, much of Europe is returning
-to its earlier simple life of unco-ordinated production, and its total
-fertility is being very greatly reduced. The consequent reaction of a
-diminished food supply for ourselves is already being felt.
-
-
-3
-
-_The 'Prosperity' of Paper Money_
-
-It will be said: Does not the unquestioned rise in the standard of
-wages, despite all the talk of debt, expenditure, unbalanced budgets,
-public bankruptcy, disprove any theory of a vital connection between a
-stable Europe and our own prosperity? Indeed, has not the experience of
-the War discredited much of the theory of the interdependence of
-nations?
-
-The first few years of the War did, indeed, seem to discredit it, to
-show that this interdependence was not so vital as had been supposed.
-Germany seemed for a long time really to be self-supporting, to manage
-without contact with other peoples. It seemed possible to re-direct the
-channels of trade with relative ease. It really appeared for a time that
-the powers of the Governments could modify fundamentally the normal
-process of credit almost at will, which would have been about equivalent
-to the discovery of perpetual motion! Not only was private credit
-maintained by governmental assistance, but exchanges were successfully
-'pegged'; collapse could be prevented apparently with ease. Industry
-itself showed a similar elasticity. In this country it seemed possible
-to withdraw five or six million men from actual production, and so
-organise the remainder as to enable them to produce enough not only to
-maintain themselves, but the country at large and the army, in food,
-clothing and other necessaries. And this was accomplished at a standard
-of living above rather than below that which obtained when the country
-was at peace, and when the six or seven or eight millions engaged in war
-or its maintenance were engaged in the production of consumable wealth.
-It seemed an economic miracle that with these millions withdrawn from
-production, though remaining consumers, the total industrial output
-should be very little less than it was before the War.
-
-But we are beginning to see how this miracle was performed, and also
-what is the truth as to the self-sufficiency of the great nations. As
-late as the early summer of 1918, when, even after four years of the
-exhausting drain of war, well-fed German armies were still advancing and
-gaining victories, and German guns were bombarding Paris (for the first
-time in the War), the edifice of German self-sufficiency seemed to be
-sound. But this apparently stalwart economic structure crumbled in a few
-months into utter ruins and the German population was starving and
-freezing, without adequate food, fuel, clothing. England has in large
-measure escaped this result just because her contacts with the rest of
-the world have been maintained while Germany's have not. These latter
-were not even re-established at the Armistice; in many respects her
-economic isolation was more complete after the War than during it.
-Moreover, because our contacts with the rest of the world are
-maintained by shipping, a very great flexibility is given to our
-extra-national economic relationships. Our lines of communication can be
-switched from one side of the world to the other instantly, whereas a
-country whose approaches are by railroads may find its communications
-embarrassed for a generation if new frontiers render the old lines
-inapplicable to the new political conditions.
-
-In the first year or so following the Armistice there was a curious
-contradiction in the prevailing attitude towards the economic situation
-at home. The newspapers were full of headlines about the Road to Ruin
-and National Bankruptcy; the Government plainly was unable to make both
-ends meet; the financial world was immensely relieved when America
-postponed the payments of debts to her; we were pathetically appealing
-to her to come and save us; the British sovereign, which for generations
-has been a standard of value for the world and the symbol of security,
-dropped to a discount of 20 per cent, in terms of the dollar; our
-Continental creditors were even worse off; the French could only pay us
-in a depreciated paper currency, the value of which in terms of the
-dollar varied between a third and a fourth of what it was before the
-War; the lira was cheaper still. Yet side by side with this we had
-stories of a trade boom (especially in textiles and cotton), so great
-that merchants and manufacturers refused to go to their offices, in
-order to dodge the flood of orders so vastly in excess of what they
-could fulfil. Side by side with depreciated paper currency, with public
-debts so crippling that the Government could only balance its budget by
-loans which were not successful when floated, the amusement trades
-flourished as never before. Theatre, music hall, and cinematograph
-receipts beat all records. There was a greater demand for motor-cars
-than the trade could supply. The Riviera was fuller than it had ever
-been before. The working class itself was competing with others for the
-purchase of luxuries which in the past that class never knew. And while
-the financial situation made it impossible, apparently, to find capital
-for building houses to live in, ample capital was forthcoming wherewith
-to build cinema palaces. We heard and read of famine almost at our
-doors, and saw great prosperity around us; read daily of impending
-bankruptcy--and of high profits and lavish spending; of world-wide
-unrest and revolution--and higher wages than the workers had ever known.
-
-Complex and contradictory as the facts seemed, the difficulty of a true
-estimate was rendered greater by the position in which European
-Governments found themselves placed. These Governments were faced by the
-necessity of maintaining credit and confidence at almost any cost. They
-must not, therefore, throw too great an emphasis upon the dark features.
-Yet the need for economy and production was declared to be as great as
-it was during the war. To create a mood of seriousness and sober
-resolution adequate to the situation would involve stressing facts
-which, in their efforts to obtain loans, internal or external, and to
-maintain credit, governments were compelled to minimise.
-
-Then, of course, the facts were obscured mainly by the purchasing power
-created by the manufacture of credit and paper money. Some light is
-thrown upon this ambiguous situation by a fact which is now so
-manifest--that this juxtaposition of growing indebtedness and lavish
-spending, high wages, high profits, active trade, and a rising standard
-of living, were all things that marked the condition of Germany in the
-first few years of the War. Industrial concerns showed profits such as
-they had never shown before; wages steadily rose; and money was
-plentiful. But the profits were made and the wages were paid in a money
-that continually declined in value--as ours is declining. The higher
-consumption drew upon sources that were steadily being depleted--as ours
-are being depleted. The production was in certain cases maintained by
-very uneconomic methods: as by working only the best seams in the coal
-mines, by devoting no effort to the proper upkeep of plant (locomotives
-on the railway which ordinarily would go into the repair shop every six
-weeks were kept running somehow during the whole course of the War). In
-this sense the people were 'living upon capital'--devoting, that is, to
-the needs of current consumption energy which should have been devoted
-to ensuring future production. In another way, they were converting into
-income what is normally a source of capital. An increase in profits or
-wages, which ordinarily would have provided a margin, over and above
-current expenditure, out of which capital for new plant, etc., could
-have been drawn, was rapidly nullified by a corresponding increase in
-prices. Loans for the purpose even of capital expenditure involved an
-inflation of currency which still further increased prices, thus
-diminishing the value of the capital so provided, necessitating the
-issue of further loans which had the same effect. And so the vicious
-circle was narrowed. Even after four years of this kind of thing the
-edifice had in many respects the outward appearances of prosperity. As
-late as April, 1918, the German organisation, as we have noted, was
-still capable of maintaining a military machine which could not only
-hold its own but compel the retirement of the combined forces of France,
-Britain, America, and minor Allies. But once the underlying process of
-disintegration became apparent, the whole structure went to pieces.
-
-It is that unnoticed process of disintegration, preceding the final
-collapse, which should interest us. For the general method employed by
-Germany for meeting the consumption of war and disguising the growing
-scarcity is in many respects the method her neighbours adopted for
-meeting the consumption of a new standard of life on the basis of less
-total wealth--a standard which, on the part of the workers, means both
-shorter hours and a larger share of their produce, and on the part of
-other classes a larger share of the more expensive luxuries. Like the
-Germans of 1914-18, we are drawing for current consumption upon the fund
-which, in a more healthy situation, would go to provide for renewal of
-plant and provision of new capital. To 'eat the seed corn' may give an
-appearance of present plenty at the cost of starvation later.
-
-It is extremely unlikely that there will ever be in England the sudden
-catastrophic economic collapse which we have witnessed in Russia,
-Germany, Austria, and Central Europe generally. But we shall none the
-less be concerned. As the increased wages gained by strikes lose with
-increasing rapidity their value in purchasing power, thus wiping out the
-effect of the industrial 'victory,' irritation among the workers will
-grow. On minds so prepared the Continental experiments in social
-reconstruction--prompted by conditions immeasurably more acute--will act
-with the force of hypnotic suggestion. Our Government may attempt to
-cope with these movements by repression or political devices. Tempers
-will be too bad and patience too short to give the sound solutions a
-real chance. And an economic situation, not in itself inherently
-desperate, may get steadily worse because of the loss of social
-discipline and of political insight, the failure to realise past
-expectations, the continuance of military burdens created by external
-political chaos.
-
-
-4
-
-_The European disintegration: Britain's concern._
-
-What has actually happened in so much of Europe around us ought
-certainly to prevent any too complacent sense of security. In the midst
-of this old civilisation are (in Mr. Hoover's calculation) some hundred
-million folk, who before the War managed to support themselves in fair
-comfort but are now unable to be truly self-supporting. Yet they live
-upon the same soil and in the presence of the same natural resources as
-before the War. Their inability to use that soil and those materials is
-not due to the mere physical destruction of war, for the famine is worst
-where there has been no physical destruction at all. It is not a lack
-of labour, for millions are unemployed, seeking work. Nor is it lack of
-technical or scientific knowledge, upon which (very erroneously) we are
-apt to look as the one sufficient factor of civilisation; for our
-technical knowledge in the management of matter is greater even than
-before the War.
-
-What then is the reason why these millions starve in the midst of
-potential plenty? It is that they have lost, from certain moral causes
-examined later in these pages, the capacity to co-ordinate their labour
-sufficiently to carry on the processes by which alone labour and
-knowledge can be applied to an exploitation of nature sufficiently
-complete to support our dense modern populations.
-
-The fact that wealth is not to-day a material which can be taken, but a
-process which can only be maintained by virtue of certain moral factors,
-marks a change in human relationship, the significance of which still
-seems to escape us.
-
-The manor, or even the eighteenth century village, was roughly a
-self-sufficing unit. It mattered little to that unit what became of the
-outside world. The manor or village was independent; its people could be
-cut off from the outside world, could ravage the near parts of it and
-remain unaffected. But when the development of communication and the
-discovery of steam turns the agricultural community into coal miners,
-these are no longer indifferent to the condition of the outside world.
-Cut them off from the agriculturalists who take their coal or
-manufactures, or let these latter be unable to carry on their calling,
-and the miner starves. He cannot eat his coal. He is no longed
-independent. His life hangs upon certain activities of others. Where his
-forebears could have raided and ravaged with no particular hurt to
-themselves, the miner cannot. He is dependent upon those others and has
-given them hostages. He is no longer 'independent,' however clamorously
-in his Nationalist oratory he may use that word. He has been forced into
-a relation of partnership. And how very small is the effectiveness of
-any physical coercion he can apply, in order to exact the services by
-which he lives, we shall see presently.
-
-This situation of interdependence is of course felt much more acutely by
-some countries than others--much more by England, for instance, than by
-France. France in the matter of essential foodstuffs can be nearly
-self-supporting, England cannot. For England, an outside world of fairly
-high production is a matter of life and death; the economic
-consideration must in this sense take precedence of others. In the case
-of France considerations of political security are apt to take
-precedence of economic considerations. France can weaken her neighbours
-vitally without being brought to starvation. She can purchase security
-at the cost of mere loss of profits on foreign trade by the economic
-destruction of, say, Central Europe. The same policy would for Britain
-in the long run spell starvation. And it is this fundamental difference
-of economic situation which is at the bottom of much of the divergence
-of policy between Britain and France which has recently become so acute.
-
-This is the more evident when we examine recent changes of detail in
-this general situation special to England. Before the War a very large
-proportion of our food and raw material was supplied by the United
-States. But our economic relationship with that country has been changed
-as the result of the War. Previous to 1914 we were the creditor and
-America the debtor nation. She was obliged to transmit to us large sums
-in interest on investments of British capital. These annual payments
-were in fact made in the form of food and raw materials, for which, in a
-national sense, we did not have to give goods or services in return. We
-are now less in the position of creditor, more in that of debtor.
-America does not have to transmit to us. Whereas, originally, we did an
-immense proportion of America's carrying trade, because she had no
-ocean-going mercantile marine, she has begun to do her own carrying.
-Further, the pressure of her population upon her food resources is
-rapidly growing. The law diminishing returns is in some instances
-beginning to apply to the production of food, which in the past has been
-plentiful without fertilisers and under a very wasteful and simple
-system. And in America, as elsewhere, the standard of consumption, owing
-to a great increase of the wage standard, has grown, while the standard
-of production has not always correspondingly increased.
-
-The practical effect of this is to throw England into greater dependence
-upon certain new sources of food--or trade, which in the end is the same
-thing. The position becomes clearer if we reflect that our dependence
-becomes more acute with every increase of our population. Our children
-now at school may be faced by the problem of finding food for a
-population of sixty or seventy millions on these islands. A high
-agricultural productivity on the part of countries like Russia and
-Siberia and the Balkans might well be then a life and death matter.
-
-Now the European famine has taught us a good deal about the necessary
-conditions of high agricultural productivity. The co-operation of
-manufactures--of railways for taking crops out and fertilisers in, of
-machinery, tools, wagons, clothing--is one of them. That manufacturing
-itself must be done by division of labour is another: the country or
-area that is fitted to supply textiles or cream separators is not
-necessarily fitted to supply steel rails: yet until the latter are
-supplied the former cannot be obtained. Often productivity is paralysed
-simply because transport has broken down owing to lack of rolling stock,
-or coal, or lubricants, or spare parts for locomotives; or because a
-debased currency makes it impossible to secure food from peasants, who
-will not surrender it in return for paper that has no value--the
-manufactures which might ultimately give it value being paralysed. The
-lack of confidence in the maintenance of the value of paper money, for
-instance, is rapidly diminishing the food productivity of the soil;
-peasants will not toil to produce food which they cannot exchange,
-through the medium of money, for the things which they need--clothing,
-implements, and so on. This diminishing productivity is further
-aggravated by the impossibility of obtaining fertilisers (some of which
-are industrial products, and all of which require transport), machines,
-tools, etc. The food producing capacity of Europe cannot be maintained
-without the full co-operation of the non-agricultural industries--transport,
-manufactures, coal mining, sound banking--and the maintenance of
-political order. Nothing but the restoration of all the economic
-processes of Europe as a whole can prevent a declining productivity
-that must intensify social and political disorder, of which we may
-merely have seen the beginning.
-
-But if this interdependence of factory and farm in the production of
-food is indisputable, though generally ignored, it involves a further
-fact just as indisputable, and even more completely ignored. And the
-further fact is that the manufacturing and the farming, neither of which
-can go on without the other, may well be situated in different States.
-Vienna starves largely because the coal needed for its factories is now
-situated in a foreign State--Czecho-Slovakia--which, partly from
-political motives perhaps, fails to deliver it. Great food producing
-areas in the Balkans and Russia are dependent for their tools and
-machinery, for the stability of the money without which the food will
-not be produced, upon the industries of Germany. Those industries are
-destroyed, the markets have disappeared, and with them the incentive to
-production. The railroads of what ought to be food producing States are
-disorganized from lack of rolling stock, due to the same paralysis of
-German industry; and so the food production is diminished. Tens of
-millions of acres outside Germany, whose food the world sorely needs,
-have been rendered barren by the industrial paralysis of the Central
-Empires which the economic terms of the Treaty render inevitable.
-
-Speaking of the need of Russian agriculture for German industry, Mr.
-Maynard Keynes, who has worked out the statistics revealing the relative
-position of Germany to the rest of Europe, writes:--
-
-'It is impossible geographically and for many other reasons for
-Englishmen, Frenchmen, or Americans to undertake it--we have neither the
-incentive nor the means for doing the work on a sufficient scale.
-Germany, on the other hand, has the experience, the incentive, and to a
-large extent, the materials for furnishing the Russian peasant with the
-goods of which he has been starved for the past five years, for
-reorganising the business of transport and collection, and so for
-bringing into the world's pool, for the common advantage, the supplies
-from which we are now disastrously cut off.... If we oppose in detail
-every means by which Germany or Russia can recover their material
-well-being, because we feel a national, racial, or political hatred for
-their populations or their governments, we must be prepared to face the
-consequences of such feelings. Even if there is no moral solidarity
-between the newly-related races of Europe, there is an economic
-solidarity which we cannot disregard. Even now, the world markets are
-one. If we do not allow Germany to exchange products with Russia and so
-feed herself, she must inevitably compete with us for the produce of the
-New World. The more successful we are in snapping economic relations
-between Germany and Russia, the more we shall depress the level of our
-own economic standards and increase the gravity of our own domestic
-problems.'[4]
-
-It is not merely the productivity of Russia which is involved. Round
-Germany as a central support the rest of the European economic system
-grouped itself, and upon the prosperity and enterprise of Germany the
-prosperity of the rest of the Continent mainly depended. Germany was the
-best customer of Russia, Norway, Poland, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy,
-and Austria-Hungary; she was the second best customer of Great Britain,
-Sweden, and Denmark; and the third best customer of France. She was the
-largest source of supply to Russia, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Poland,
-Switzerland, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria; and the
-second largest source of supply to Great Britain, Belgium, and France.
-Britain sent more experts to Germany than to any other country in the
-world except India, and bought more from her than any other country in
-the world except the United States. There was no European country except
-those west of Germany which did not do more than a quarter of their
-total trade with her; and in the case of Russia, Austria-Hungary, and
-Poland, the proportion was far greater. To retard or prevent the
-economic restoration of Germany means retarding the economic
-reconstruction of Europe.
-
-This gives us a hint of the deep causes underlying the present
-divergence of French and British policy with reference to the economic
-reconstruction of Russia and Central Europe. A Britain of sixty or
-seventy millions faced by the situation with reference to America that
-has just been touched upon, might well find that the development of the
-resources of Russia, Siberia, and the Near East--even at the cost of
-dividing the profits thereof in terms of industrial development with
-Germany, each supplying that for which it was best suited--was the
-essential condition of food and social peace. France has no such
-pre-occupation. Her concern is political: the maintenance of a military
-predominance on which she believes her political security to depend, an
-object that might well be facilitated by the political disintegration of
-Europe even though it involved its economic disintegration.
-
-That brings us to the political factor in the decline in productivity.
-From it we may learn something of the moral factor, which is the
-ultimate condition of any co-operation whatsoever.
-
-The relationship of the political to the economic situation is
-illustrated most vividly, perhaps, in the case of Austria. Mr. Hoover,
-in testimony given to a United States Senate Committee, has declared
-bluntly that it is no use talking of loans to Austria which imply future
-security, if the present political status is to be maintained, because
-that status has rendered the old economic activities impossible.
-Speaking before the Committee, he said:--
-
-     'The political situation in Austria I hesitate to discuss, but it
-     is the cause of the trouble. Austria has now no hope of being
-     anything more than a perpetual poorhouse, because all her lands
-     that produce food have been taken from her. This, I will say, was
-     done without American inspiration. If this political situation
-     continues, and Austria is made a perpetual mendicant, the United
-     States should not provide the charity. We should make the loan
-     suggested with full notice that those who undertake to continue
-     Austria's present status must pay the bill. Present Austria faces
-     three alternatives--death, migration, or a complete industrial
-     diversion and re-organization. Her economic rehabilitation seems
-     impossible after the way she was broken up at the Peace Conference.
-     Her present territory will produce only enough food for three
-     months, and she has now no factories which might produce products
-     to be exchanged for food.'[5]
-
-To realise what can really be accomplished by statesmanship that has a
-soul above such trifles as food and fuel, when it sets its hand to
-map-drawing, one should attempt to visualise the state of Vienna to-day.
-Mr A. G. Gardiner, the English journalist, has sketched it thus:--
-
-     'To conceive its situation one must imagine London suddenly cut off
-     from all the sources of its life, no access to the sea, frontiers
-     of hostile Powers all round it, every coalfield of Yorkshire or
-     South Wales or Scotland in foreign hands, no citizen able to travel
-     to Birmingham or Manchester without a passport, the mills it had
-     financed in Lancashire taken from it, no coal to burn, no food to
-     eat, and--with its shilling down in value to a farthing--no money
-     to buy raw materials for its labour, industry at a standstill,
-     hundreds of thousands living (or dying) on charity, nothing
-     prospering except the vile exploiters of misery, the traffickers in
-     food, the traffickers in vice. That is the Vienna which the peace
-     criminals have made.
-
-     'Vienna was the financial and administrative centre of fifty
-     million of people. It financed textile factories, paper
-     manufacturing, machine works, beet growing, and scores of other
-     industries in German Bohemia. It owned coal mines at Teschen. It
-     drew its food from Hungary. From every quarter of the Empire there
-     came to Vienna the half-manufactured products of the provinces for
-     the finishing processes, tailoring, dyeing, glass-working, in which
-     a vast population found employment.
-
-     'Suddenly all this elaborate structure of economic life was swept
-     away. Vienna, instead of being the vital centre of fifty millions
-     of people, finds itself a derelict city with a province of six
-     millions. It is cut off from its coal supplies, from its food
-     supplies, from its factories, from everything that means existence.
-     It is enveloped by tariff walls.'
-
-The writer goes on to explain that the evils are not limited to Austria.
-In this unhappy Balkanised Society that the peace has created at the
-heart of Europe, every State is at issue with its neighbours: the Czechs
-with the Poles, the Hungarians with the Czechs, the Rumanians with the
-Hungarians, and all with Austria. The whole Empire is parcelled out into
-quarrelling factions, with their rival tariffs, their passports and
-their animosities. All free intercourse has stopped, all free
-interchange of commodities has ceased. Each starves the other and is
-starved by the other. 'I met a banker travelling from Buda-Pest to
-Berlin by Vienna and Bavaria. I asked him why he went so far out of his
-way to get to his goal, and he replied that it was easier to do that
-than to get through the barbed-wire entanglements of Czecho-Slovakia.
-There is great hunger in Bohemia, and it is due largely to the same
-all-embracing cause. Formerly the Czech peasants used to go to Hungary
-to gather the harvest and returned with corn as part payment. Now
-intercourse has stopped, the Hungarian cornfields are without the
-necessary labour, and the Czech peasant starves at home, or is fed by
-the American Relief Fund. "One year of peace," said Herr Renner, the
-Chancellor, to me, "has wrought more ruin than five years of war."'
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Mr Gardiner's final verdict[6] does not in essence differ from that of
-Mr Hoover:--
-
-     'It is the levity of mind which has plunged this great city into
-     ruin that is inexplicable. The political dismemberment of Austria
-     might be forgiven. That was repeatedly declared by the Allies not
-     to be an object of the War; but the policy of the French, backed by
-     the industrious propaganda of a mischievous newspaper group in this
-     country, triumphed and the promise was dishonoured. Austria-Hungary
-     was broken into political fragments. That might be defended as a
-     political necessity. But the economic dismemberment was as
-     gratuitous as it was deadly. It could have been provided against if
-     ordinary foresight had been employed. Austria-Hungary was an
-     economic unit, a single texture of the commercial, industrial, and
-     financial interests.'[7]
-
-We have talked readily enough in the past of this or that being a
-'menace to civilisation.' The phrase has been applied indifferently to a
-host of things from Prussian Militarism to the tango. No particular
-meaning was attached to the phrase, and we did not believe that the
-material security of our civilisation--the delivery of the letters and
-the milk in the morning, and the regular running of the 'Tubes'--would
-ever be endangered in our times.
-
-But this is what has happened in a few months. We have seen one of the
-greatest and most brilliant capitals of Europe, a city completely
-untouched by the physical devastation of war, endowed beyond most with
-the equipment of modern technical learning and industry, with some of
-the greatest factories, medical schools and hospitals of our times,
-unable to save its children from death by simple starvation--unable,
-with all that equipment, to provide them each with a little milk and a
-few ounces of flour every day.
-
-
-5
-
-_The Limits of Political Control_
-
-It is sometimes suggested that as political factors (particularly the
-drawing of frontiers) entered to some extent at least into the present
-distribution of population, political forces can re-distribute that
-population. But re-distribution would mean in fact killing.
-
-So to re-direct the vast currents of European industry as to involve a
-great re-distribution of the population would demand a period of time
-so great that during the necessary stoppage of the economic process most
-of the population concerned would be dead--even if we could imagine
-sufficient stability to permit of these vast changes taking place
-according to the naive and what we now know to be fantastic, programme
-of our Treaties. And since the political forces--as we shall see--are
-extremely unstable, the new distribution would presumably again one day
-undergo a similarly murderous modification.
-
-That brings us to the question suggested in the proposition set out some
-pages back, how far preponderant political power can ensure or compel
-those processes by which a population in the position of that of these
-islands lives.
-
-For, as against much of the foregoing, it is sometimes urged that
-Britain's concern in the Continental chaos is not really vital, because
-while the British Isles cannot be self-sufficing, the British Empire can
-be.
-
-During the War a very bold attempt was made to devise a scheme by which
-political power should be used to force the economic development of the
-world into certain national channels, a scheme whereby the military
-power of the dominant group should be so used as to ensure it a
-permanent preponderance of economic resources. The plan is supposed to
-have emanated from Mr Hughes, the Prime Minister of Australia, and the
-Allies (during Mr Asquith's Premiership incidentally) met in Paris for
-its consideration. Mr Hughes's idea seems to have been to organise the
-world into economic categories: the British Empire first in order of
-mutual preference, the Allies next, the neutrals next, and the enemy
-States last of all. Russia was, of course, included among the Allies,
-America among the neutrals, the States then Austria-Hungary among the
-enemies.
-
-One has only to imagine some such scheme having been voted and put into
-operation, and the modifications which political changes would to-day
-compel, to get an idea of merely the first of the difficulties of using
-political and military power, with a basis of separate and competing
-nationalisms, for economic purposes. The very nature of military
-nationalism makes surrender of competition in favour of long continued
-co-operation for common purposes, a moral impossibility. The foundations
-of the power are unstable, the wills which determine its use
-contradictory.
-
-Yet military power must rest upon Alliance. Even the British Empire
-found that its defence needed Allies. And if the British Empire is to be
-self-sufficing, its trade canalised into channels drawn along certain
-political lines, the preferences and prohibitions will create many
-animosities. Are we to sacrifice our self-sufficiency for the sake of
-American and French friendship, or risk losing the friendship by
-preferences designed to ensure self-sufficiency? Yet to the extent that
-our trade is with countries like North and South America we cannot
-exercise on its behalf even the shadow of military coercion.
-
-But that is only the beginning of the difficulty.
-
-A suggestive fact is that ever since the population of these islands
-became dependent upon overseas trade, that trade has been not mainly
-with the Empire but with foreigners. It is to-day.[8] And if one
-reflects for a moment upon the present political relationship of the
-Imperial Government to Ireland, Egypt, India, South Africa, and the
-tariff and immigration legislation that has marked the economic history
-of Australia and Canada during the last twenty years, one will get some
-idea of the difficulty which surrounds the employment of political power
-for the shaping of an economic policy to subserve any large and
-long-continued political end.
-
-The difficulties of an imperial policy in this respect do not differ
-much in character from the difficulties encountered in Paris. The
-British Empire, too, has its problems of 'Balkanisation,' problems that
-have arisen also from the anti-social element of 'absolute' nationalism.
-The present Nationalist fermentation within the Empire reveals very
-practical limits to the use of political power. We cannot compel the
-purchase of British goods by Egyptian, Indian, or Irish Nationalists.
-Moreover, an Indian or Egyptian boycott or Irish agitation, may well
-deprive political domination of any possibility of economic advantage.
-The readiness with which British opinion has accepted very large steps
-towards the independence and evacuation of Egypt after having fiercely
-resisted such a policy for a generation, would seem to suggest that some
-part of the truth in this matter is receiving general recognition. It is
-hardly less noteworthy that popular newspapers--that one could not have
-imagined taking such a view at the time, say, of the Boer war--now
-strenuously oppose further commitments in Mesopotamia and Persia--and do
-so on financial grounds. And even where the relations of the Imperial
-Government with States like Canada or Australia are of the most cordial
-kind, the impotence of political power for exacting economic advantage
-has become an axiom of imperial statecraft. The day that the Government
-in London proposed to set in motion its army or navy for the purpose of
-compelling Canada or Australia to cease the manufacture of cotton or
-steel in order to give England a market, would be the day, as we are all
-aware, of another Declaration of Independence. Any preference would be
-the result of consent, agreement, debate, contract: not of coercion.
-
-But the most striking demonstration yet afforded in history of the
-limits placed by modern industrial conditions upon the economic
-effectiveness of political power is afforded by the story of the attempt
-to secure reparations, indemnity, and even coal from Germany, and the
-attempt of the victors, like France, to repair the disastrous financial
-situation which has followed war by the military seizure of the wealth
-of a beaten enemy. That story is instructive both by reason of the light
-which it throws upon the facts as to the economic value of military
-power, and upon the attitude of public and statesmen towards these
-facts.
-
-When, some fifteen years ago, it was suggested that, given the
-conditions of modern trade and industry, a victor would not in practice
-be able to turn his military preponderance to economic account even in
-such a relatively simple matter as the payment of an indemnity, the
-suggestion was met with all but universal derision. European economists
-of international reputation implied that an author who could make a
-suggestion of that kind was just playing with paradox for the purpose of
-notoriety. And as for newspaper criticism--it revealed the fact that in
-the minds of the critics it was as simple a matter for an army to 'take'
-a nation's wealth once military victory had been achieved, as it would
-be for a big schoolboy to take an apple from a little one.
-
-Incidentally, the history of the indemnity negotiations illuminates
-extraordinarily the truth upon which the present writer happens so often
-to have insisted, namely, that in dealing with the economics of
-nationalism, one cannot dissociate from the problem the moral facts
-which make the nationalism--without which there would be no
-nationalisms, and therefore no 'international' economics.
-
-A book by the present author published some fifteen years ago has a
-chapter entitled 'The Indemnity Futility.' In the first edition the main
-emphasis of the chapter was thrown on this suggestion: on the morrow of
-a great war the victor would be in no temper to see the foreign trade of
-his beaten enemy expand by leaps and bounds, yet by no other means than
-by an immense foreign trade could a nation pay an indemnity commensurate
-with the vast expenditure of modern war. The idea that it would be paid
-in 'money,' which by some economic witchcraft should not involve the
-export of goods, was declared to be a gross and ignorant fallacy. The
-traders of the victorious nation would have to face a greatly sharpened
-competition from the beaten nation; or the victor would have to go
-without any very considerable indemnity. The chapter takes the ground
-that an indemnity is not in terms of theoretical economics an
-impossibility: it merely indicates the indispensable condition of
-securing it--the revival of the enemy's economic strength--and suggests
-that this would present for the victorious nation, not only a practical
-difficulty of internal politics (the pressure of Protectionist groups)
-but a grave political difficulty arising out of the theory upon which
-defence by preponderant isolated national power is based. A country
-possessing the economic strength to pay a vast indemnity is of potential
-military strength. And this is a risk your nationalists will not accept.
-
-Even friendly Free Trade critics shook their heads at this and implied
-that the argument was a reversion to Protectionist illusions for the
-purpose of making a case. That misunderstanding (for the argument does
-not involve acceptance of Protectionist premises) seemed so general that
-in subsequent editions of the book this particular passage was
-deleted.[9]
-
-It is not necessary now to labour the point, in view of all that has
-happened in Paris. The dilemma suggested fifteen years ago is precisely
-the dilemma which confronted the makers of the Peace Treaty; it is,
-indeed, precisely the dilemma which confronts us to-day.
-
-It applies not only to the Indemnity, Reparations, but to our entire
-policy, to larger aspects of our relations with the enemy. Hence the
-paralysis which results from the two mutually exclusive aims of the
-Treaty of Versailles: the desire on the one hand to reduce the enemy's
-strength by checking his economic vitality--and on the other to restore
-the general productivity of Europe, to which the economic life of the
-enemy is indispensable.
-
-France found herself, at the end of the War, in a desperate financial
-position and in dire need of all the help which could come from the
-enemy towards the restoration of her devastated districts. She presented
-demands for reparation running to vast, unprecedented sums. So be it.
-Germany then was to be permitted to return to active and productive
-work, to be permitted to have the iron and the other raw materials
-necessary for the production of the agricultural machinery, the building
-material and other sorts of goods France needed. Not the least in the
-world! Germany was to produce this great mass of wealth, but her
-factories were to remain closed, her rolling stock was to be taken from
-her, she was to have neither food nor raw materials. This is not some
-malicious travesty of the attitude which prevailed at the time that the
-Treaty was made. It was, and to a large extent still is, the position
-taken by many French publicists as well as by some in England. Mr.
-Vanderlip, the American banker, describes in his book[10] the attitude
-which he found in Paris during the Conference in these words: 'The
-French burn to milk the cow but insist first that its throat must be
-cut.'
-
-Despite the lessons of the year which followed the signing of the
-Treaty, one may doubt whether even now the nature of wealth and 'money'
-has come home to the Chauvinists of the Entente countries. The demand
-that we should at one and the same time forbid Germany to sell so much
-as a pen-knife in the markets of the world and yet compel her to pay us
-a tribute which could only be paid by virtue of a foreign trade greater
-than any which she has been able to maintain in the past--these mutually
-exclusive demands are still made in our own Parliament and Press.
-
-How powerfully the Nationalist fears operate to obscure the plain
-alternatives is revealed in a letter of M. Andre Tardieu, written more
-than eighteen months after the Armistice.
-
-M. Tardieu, who was M. Clemenceau's political lieutenant in the framing
-of the Treaty, and one of the principal inspirers of the French policy,
-writing in July, 1920, long after the condition of Europe and the
-Continent's economic dependence on Germany had become visible, 'warns'
-us of the 'danger' that Germany may recover unless the Treaty is applied
-in all its rigour! He says:--
-
-     'Remember your own history and remember what the _rat de terre de
-     cousin_ which Great Britain regarded with such disdain after the
-     Treaty of Frankfurt became in less than forty years. We shall see
-     Germany recover economically, profiting by the ruins she has made
-     in other countries, with a rapidity which will astonish the world.
-     When that day arrives, if we have given way at Spa to the madness
-     of letting her off part of the debt that was born of her crime, no
-     courses will be too strong for the Governments which allowed
-     themselves to be duped. M. Clemenceau always said to British and
-     American statesmen: "We of France understand Germany better than
-     you." M. Clemenceau was right, and in bringing his colleagues round
-     to his point of view he did good work for the welfare of humanity.
-     If the work of last year is to be undone, the world will be
-     delivered up to the economic hegemony of Germany before twenty-five
-     years have passed. There could be no better proof than the recent
-     despatches of _The Times_ correspondent in Germany, which bear
-     witness to the fever of production which consumes Herr Stinnes and
-     his like. Such evidence is stronger than the biased statistics of
-     Mr Keynes. Those who refuse to take it into account will be the
-     criminals in the eyes of their respective countries.'[11]
-
-Note M. Tardieu's argument. He fears the restoration of Germany
-industry, _unless_ we make her pay the whole indemnity. That is to say,
-in other words, if we compel Germany to produce during the next
-twenty-five years something like ten thousand millions worth of wealth
-_over and above her own needs_, involving as it must a far greater
-output from her factories, mines, shipyards, laboratories, a far greater
-development of her railways, ports, canals, a far greater efficiency and
-capacity in her workers than has ever been known in the past, if that
-takes place as it must if we are to get an indemnity on the French
-scale, why, in that case, there will be no risk of Germany's making too
-great an economic recovery!
-
-The English Press is not much better. It was in December, 1918, that
-Professor Starling presented to the British Government his report
-showing that unless Germany had more food she would be utterly unable to
-pay any large indemnity to aid in reparations to France. Fully eighteen
-months later we find the _Daily Mail_ (June 18, 1920) rampaging and
-shouting itself hoarse at the monstrous discovery that the Government
-have permitted Germans to purchase wheat! Yet the _Mail_ has been
-foremost in insisting upon France's dire need for a German indemnity in
-order to restore devastated districts. If the _Mail_ is really
-representative of John Bull, then that person is at present in the
-position of a farmer who at seed-time is made violently angry at the
-suggestion that grain should be taken for the purpose of sowing the
-land, and shouts that it is a wicked proposal to take food from the
-mouths of his children. Although the Northcliffe Press has itself
-published page advertisements (from the Save the Children Fund)
-describing the incredible and appalling conditions in Europe, the _Daily
-Mail_ shouts in its leading article: 'Is British Food to go to the
-Boches?' The thing is in the best war style. 'Is there any reason why
-the Briton should be starved to feed the German?' asks the _Mail_. And
-there follows, of course, the usual invective about the submarines, war
-criminals, the sinking of hospital ships, and the approval by the whole
-German people of all these crimes.
-
-We get here, as at every turn and twist of our policy, not any
-recognition of interdependence, but a complete repudiation of that idea,
-and an assumption, instead, of a conflict of interest. If the children
-of Vienna or Berlin are to be fed, then it is assumed that it must be at
-the expense of the children of Paris and London. The wealth of the world
-is conceived as a fixed quantity, unaffected by any process of
-co-operation between the peoples sharing the world. The idea is, of
-course, an utter fallacy. French or Belgian children will have more, not
-less, if we take measures to avoid European conditions in which the
-children of Vienna are left to die. If, during the winter of 1919-1920,
-French children died from sickness due to lack of fuel, it was because
-the German coal was not delivered, and the German coal was not delivered
-because, among other things, of general disorganization of transport, of
-lack of rolling stock, of underfeeding of the miners, of collapse of the
-currency, political unrest, uncertainty of the future.
-
-It is one of the contradictions of the whole situation that France
-herself gives intermittent recognition to the fact of this
-interdependence. When, at Spa, it became evident that coal simply could
-not be delivered in the quantities demanded unless Germany had some
-means of buying imported food, France consented to what was in fact a
-loan to Germany (to the immense mystification of certain journalistic
-critics in Paris). One is prompted to ask what those who, before the War
-so scornfully treated the present writer for throwing doubts upon the
-feasibility of a post-war indemnity, would have said had he predicted
-that on the morrow of victory, the victor, instead of collecting a vast
-indemnity would from the simplest motives of self-protection, out of his
-own direly depleted store of capital, be advancing money to the
-vanquished.[12]
-
-The same inconsistency runs through much of our post-war behaviour. The
-famine in Central Europe has become so appalling that very great sums
-are collected in Britain and America for its relief. Yet the reduced
-productivity out of which the famine has arisen was quite obviously
-deliberately designed, and most elaborately planned by the economic
-provisions of the Treaty and by the blockades prolonged after the
-Armistice, for months in the case of Germany and years in the case of
-Russia. And at the very time that advertisements were appearing in the
-_Daily Mail_ for 'Help to Starving Europe,' and only a few weeks before
-France consented to advance money for the purpose of feeding Germany,
-that paper was working up 'anti-Hun stunts' for the purpose of using
-our power to prevent any food whatsoever going to Boches. It is also a
-duplication of the American phenomenon already touched upon: One Bill
-before Congress for the loaning of American money to Europe in order
-that cotton and wheat may find a market: another Bill before the same
-Congress designed, by a stiffly increased tariff, to keep out European
-goods so that the loans can never be repaid.[13]
-
-The experience of France in the attempt to exact coal by the use of
-military pressure throws a good deal of light upon what is really
-annexed when a victor takes over territory containing, say, coal; as
-also upon the question of getting the coal when it has been annexed. 'If
-we need coal,' wrote a Paris journalist plaintively during the Spa
-Conference, 'why in heaven's name don't we go and take it.' The
-implication being that it could be 'taken' without payment, for nothing.
-But even if France were to occupy the Ruhr and to administer the mines,
-the plant would have to be put in order, rolling stock provided,
-railroads restored, and, as France has already learned, miners fed and
-clothed and housed. But that costs money--to be paid as part of the cost
-of the coal. If Germany is compelled to provide those things--mining
-machinery, rolling stock, rails, miners' houses and clothing and
-food--we are confronted with pretty much the same dilemma as we
-encounter in compelling the payment of an indemnity. A Germany that can
-buy foreign food is a Germany of restored credit; a Germany that can
-furnish rolling stock, rails, mining machinery, clothing and housing for
-miners, is a Germany restored to general economic health--and
-potentially powerful. That Germany France fears to create. And even
-though we resort to a military occupation, using forced labour
-militarily controlled, we are faced by the need of all the things that
-must still enter in the getting of the coal, from miners' food and
-houses to plant and steel rails. Their cost must be charged against the
-coal obtained. And the amount of coal obtained in return for a given
-outlay will depend very largely, as we know in England to our cost, upon
-the willingness of the miner himself. Even the measure of resistance
-provoked in British miners by disputes about workers' control and
-Nationalisation, has meant a great falling off in output. But at least
-they are working for their own countrymen. What would be their output if
-they felt they were working for an enemy, and that every ton they mined
-might merely result in increasing the ultimate demands which that enemy
-would make upon their country? Should we get even eighty per cent, of
-the pre-war output or anything like it?[14] Yet that diminished output
-would have to stand the cost of all the permanent charges aforesaid.
-Would the cost of the coal to France, under some scheme of forced
-labour, be in the end less than if she were to buy it in the ordinary
-commercial way from German mines, as she did before the War? This latter
-method would almost certainly be in economic terms more advantageous.
-Where is the economic advantage of the military method? This, of course,
-is only the re-discovery of the old truth that forced or slave labour is
-more costly than paid labour.
-
-The ultimate explanation of the higher cost of slave labour is the
-ultimate explanation of the difficulty of using political power for
-economic ends, of basing our economic security upon military
-predominance. Here is France, with her old enemy helpless and prostrate.
-She needs his work for reparations, for indemnities, for coal. To
-perform that work the prostrate enemy must get upon his feet. If he
-does, France fears that he will knock her down. From that fear arise
-contradictory policies, self-stultifying courses. If she overcomes her
-fear sufficiently to allow the enemy to produce a certain amount of
-wealth for her, it is extremely likely that more than the amount of that
-wealth will have to be spent in protecting herself against the danger of
-the enemy's recovered vitality. Even when wars were less expensive than
-they are, indemnities were soon absorbed in the increase of armament
-necessitated by the Treaties which exacted the indemnities.
-
-Again, this is a very ancient story. The victor on the Egyptian vase has
-his captured enemy on the end of a rope. We say that one is free, the
-other bond. But as Spencer has shown us, both are bond. The victor is
-tied to the vanquished: if he should let go the prisoner would escape.
-The victor spends his time seeing that the prisoner does not escape; the
-prisoner his time and energy trying to escape. The combined efforts in
-consequence are not turned to the production of wealth; they are
-'cancelled out' by being turned one against another. Both may come near
-to starvation in that condition if much labour is needed to produce
-food. Only if they strike a bargain and co-operate will they be in the
-position each to turn his energy to the best economic account.
-
-But though the story is ancient, men have not yet read it. These pages
-are an attempt to show why it has not been read.
-
-Let us summarise the conclusions so far reached, namely:--
-
-     That predominant political and military power is important to exact
-     wealth is shown by the inability of the Allies to turn their power
-     to really profitable account; notably by the failure of France to
-     alleviate her financial distress by adequate reparations--even
-     adequate quantities of coal--from Germany; and by the failure of
-     the Allied statesmen as a whole, wielding a concentration of power
-     greater perhaps than any known in history to arrest an economic
-     disintegration, which is not only the cause of famine and vast
-     suffering, but is a menace to Allied interest, particularly to the
-     economic security of Britain.
-
-     The causes of this impotence are both mechanical and moral. If
-     another is to render active service in the production of wealth for
-     us--particularly services of any technical complexity in industry,
-     finance, commerce--he must have strength for that activity,
-     knowledge, and the instruments. But all those things can be turned
-     against us as means of resistance to our coercion. To the degree
-     to which we make him strong for our service we make him strong for
-     resistance to our will. As resistance increases we are compelled to
-     use an increasing proportion of what we obtain from him in
-     protecting ourselves against him. Energies cancel each other,
-     indemnities must be used in preparation for the next war. Only
-     voluntary co-operation can save this waste and create an effective
-     combination for the production of wealth that can be utilised for
-     the preservation of life.
-
-
-6
-
-_The Ultimate Moral Factor_
-
-The problem is not merely one of foreign politics or international
-relationship. The passions which obscure the real nature of the process
-by which men live are present in the industrial struggle also,
-and--especially in the case of communities situated as is the
-British--make of the national and international order one problem.
-
-It is here suggested that:--
-
-     Into the processes which maintain life within the nation an
-     increasing measure of consent and acquiescence by all parties must
-     enter: physical coercion becomes increasingly impotent to ensure
-     them. The problem of declining production by (_inter alios_)
-     miners, cannot be solved by increasing the army or police. The
-     dictatorship of the proletariat fails before the problem of
-     exacting big crops by the coercion of the peasant or countryman. It
-     would fail still more disastrously before the problem of obtaining
-     food or raw materials from foreigners (without which the British
-     could not live) in the absence of a money of stable value.
-
-One of the most suggestive facts of the post-war situation is that
-European civilization almost breaks down before one of the simplest of
-its mechanical problems: that of 'moving some stones from where they
-are not needed to the places where they are needed,' in other words
-before the problem of mining and distributing coal. Millions of children
-have died in agony in France during this last year or two because there
-was no coal to transport the food, to warm the buildings. Coal is the
-first need of our massed populations. Its absence means collapse of
-everything--of transport, of the getting of food to the towns, of
-furnishing the machinery and fertilisers by which food can be produced
-in sufficient quantity. It is warmth, it is clothing, it is light, it is
-the daily newspaper, it is water, it is communication. All our
-elaboration of knowledge and science fails in the presence of this
-problem of 'taking some stones from one heap and putting them on
-another.' The coal famine is a microcosm of the world's present failure.
-
-But if all those things--and spiritual things also are involved because
-the absence of material well-being means widespread moral evils--depend
-upon coal, the getting of the coal itself is dependent upon them. We
-have touched upon the importance of the one element of sheer goodwill on
-the part of the miners as a factor in the production of coal; upon the
-hopelessness of making good its absence by physical coercion. But we
-have also seen that just as the attempted use of coercion in the
-international field, though ineffective to exact necessary service or
-exchange, can and does produce paralysis of the indispensable processes,
-so the 'power' which the position of the miner gives him is a power of
-paralysis only.
-
-A later chapter shows that the instinct of industrial groups to solve
-their difficulties by simple coercion, the sheer assertion of power, is
-very closely related to the psychology of nationalism, so disruptive in
-the international field. Bolshevism, in the sense of belief in the
-effectiveness of coercion, represents the transfer of jingoism to the
-industrial struggle. It involves the same fallacies. A mining strike can
-bring the industrial machine to a full stop; to set that machine to work
-for the feeding of the population--which involves the co-ordination of
-a vast number of industries, the purchase of food and raw material from
-foreigners, who will only surrender it in return for promises to pay
-which they believe will be fulfilled--means not only technical
-knowledge, it means also the presence of a certain predisposition to
-co-operation. This Balkanised Europe which cannot feed itself has all
-the technical knowledge that it ever had. But its natural units are
-dominated by a certain temper which make impossible the co-operations by
-which alone the knowledge can be applied to the available natural
-resources.
-
-It is also suggestive that the virtual abandonment of the gold standard
-is playing much the same role (rendering visible the inefficiency of
-coercion) in the struggle between the industrial that it is between the
-national groups. A union strikes for higher wages and is successful. The
-increase is granted--and is paid in paper money.
-
-When wages were paid in gold an advance in wages, gained as the result
-of strike or agitation, represented, temporarily at least, a real
-victory for the workers. Prices might ultimately rise and wipe out the
-advantage, but with a gold currency price movements have nothing like
-the rapidity and range which is the case when unlimited paper money can
-be printed. An advance in wages paid in paper may mean nothing more than
-a mere readjustment of symbols. The advance, in other words, can be
-cancelled by 'a morning's work of the inflationist' as a currency expert
-has put it. The workers in these conditions can never know whether that
-which they are granted with the right hand of increased wages will not
-be taken away by the left hand of inflation.
-
-In order to be certain that they are not simply tricked, the workers
-must be in a position to control the conditions which determine the
-value of currency. But again, that means the co-ordination of the most
-complex economic processes, processes which can only be ensured by
-bargaining with other groups and with foreign countries.
-
-This problem would still present itself as acutely on the morrow of the
-establishment of a British Soviet Republic as it presents itself to-day.
-If the British Soviets could not buy food and raw materials in twenty
-different centres throughout the world they could not feed the people.
-We should be blockaded, not by ships, but by the worthlessness of our
-money. Russia, which needs only an infinitesimal proportion relatively
-of foreign imports has gold and the thing of absolutely universal need,
-food. We have no gold--only things which a world fast disintegrating
-into isolated peasantries is learning somehow to do without.
-
-Before blaming the lack of 'social sense' on the part of striking miners
-or railwaymen let us recall the fact that the temper and attitude to
-life and the social difficulties which lie at the bottom of the
-Syndicalist philosophy have been deliberately cultivated by Government,
-Press, and Church, during five years for the purposes of war; and that
-the selected ruling order have shown the same limitation of vision in
-not one whit less degree.
-
-Think what Versailles actually did and what it might have done.
-
-Here when the Conference met, was a Europe on the edge of famine--some
-of it over the edge. Every country in the world, including the
-wealthiest and most powerful, like America, was faced with social
-maladjustment in one form or another. In America it was an
-inconvenience, but in the cities of a whole continent--in Russia,
-Poland, Germany, Austria--it was shortly to mean ill-health, hunger,
-misery, and agony to millions of children and their mothers. Terms of
-the study like 'the interruption of economic processes' were to be
-translated into such human terms as infantile cholera, tuberculosis,
-typhus, hunger-oedema. These, as events proved, were to undermine the
-social sanity of half a world.
-
-The acutest statesmen that Europe can produce, endowed with the most
-autocratic power, proceed to grapple with the situation. In what way do
-they apply that power to the problem of production and distribution, of
-adding to the world's total stock of goods, which nearly every
-government in the world was in a few weeks to be proclaiming as
-humanity's first need, the first condition of reconstruction and
-regeneration?
-
-The Treaty and the policy pursued since the Armistice towards Russia
-tell us plainly enough. Not only do the political arrangements of the
-Treaty, as we have seen, ignore the needs of maintaining the machinery
-of production in Europe[15] but they positively discourage and in many
-cases are obviously framed to prevent, production over very large areas.
-
-The Treaty, as some one has said, deprived Germany of both the means and
-the motive of production. No adequate provision was made for enabling
-the import of food and raw materials, without which Germany could not
-get to work on the scale demanded by the indemnity claims; and the
-motive for industry was undermined by leaving the indemnity claims
-indeterminate.
-
-The victor's passion, as we have seen, blinded him to the indispensable
-condition of the very demands which he was making. Europe was unable
-temperamentally to reconcile itself to the conditions of that increased
-productivity, by which alone it was to be saved. It is this element in
-the situation--its domination, that is, by an uncalculating popular
-passion poured out lavishly in support of self-destructive
-policies--which prompts one to doubt whether these disruptive forces
-find their roots merely in the capitalist organization of society: still
-less whether they are due to the conscious machinations of a small group
-of capitalists. No considerable section of capitalism any where has any
-interest in the degree of paralysis that has been produced. Capitalism
-may have overreached itself by stimulating nationalist hostilities until
-they have got beyond control. Even so, it is the unseeing popular
-passion that furnishes the capitalist with his arm, and is the factor of
-greatest danger.
-
-Examine for a moment the economic manifestation of international
-hostilities. There has just begun in the United States a clamorous
-campaign for the denunciation of the Panama Treaty which places British
-ships on an equality with American. American ships must be exempt from
-the tolls. 'Don't we own the Canal?' ask the leaders of this campaign.
-There is widespread response to it. But of the millions of Americans who
-will become perhaps passionately angry over that matter and extremely
-anti-British, how many have any shares in any ships that can possibly
-benefit by the denunciation of the Treaty? Not one in a thousand. It is
-not an economic motive operating at all.
-
-Capitalism--the management of modern industry by a small economic
-autocracy of owners of private capital--has certainly a part in the
-conflicts that produce war. But that part does not arise from the direct
-interest that the capitalists of one nation as a whole have in the
-destruction of the trade or industry of another. Such a conclusion
-ignores the most elementary facts in the modern organisation of
-industry. And it is certainly not true to say that British capitalists,
-as a distinct group, were more disposed than the public as a whole to
-insist upon the Carthaginian features of the Treaty. Everything points
-rather to the exact contrary. Public opinion as reflected, for instance,
-by the December, 1918, election, was more ferociously anti-German than
-capitalists are likely to have been. It is certainly not too much to say
-that if the Treaty had been made by a group of British--or
-French--bankers, merchants, shipowners, insurance men, and
-industrialists, liberated from all fear of popular resentment, the
-economic life of Central Europe would not have been crushed as it has
-been.
-
-Assuredly, such a gathering of capitalists would have included groups
-having direct interest in the destruction of German competition. But it
-would also have included others having an interest in the restoration of
-the German market and German credit, and one influence would in some
-measure have cancelled the other.
-
-As a simple fact we know that not all British capitalists, still less
-British financiers, _are_ interested in the destruction of German
-prosperity. Central Europe was one of the very greatest markets
-available for British industry, and the recovery of that market may
-constitute for a very large number of manufacturers, merchants,
-shippers, insurance companies, and bankers, a source of immense
-potential profit. It is a perfectly arguable proposition, to put it at
-the very lowest, that British 'capitalism' has, as a whole, more to gain
-from a productive and stable Europe than from a starving and unstable
-one. There is no reason whatever to doubt the genuineness of the
-internationalism that we associate with the Manchester School of
-Capitalist Economics.
-
-But in political nationalism as a force there are no such cross currents
-cancelling out the hostility of one nation to another. Economically,
-Britain is not one entity and Germany another. But as a sentimental
-concept, each may perfectly well be an entity; and in the imagination of
-John Citizen, in his political capacity, voting on the eve of the Peace
-Conference, Britain is a triumphant and heroic 'person,' while Germany
-is an evil and cruel 'person,' who must be punished, and whose pockets
-must be searched. John has neither the time nor has he felt the need,
-for a scientific attitude in politics. But when it is no longer a
-question of giving his vote, but of earning his income, of succeeding as
-a merchant or shipowner in an uncertain future, he will be thoroughly
-scientific. When it comes to carrying cargoes or selling cotton goods,
-he can face facts. And, in the past at least, he knows that he has not
-sold those materials to a wicked person called 'Germany,' but to a
-quite decent and human trader called Schmidt.
-
-What I am suggesting here is that for an explanation of the passions
-which have given us the Treaty of Versailles we must look much more to
-rival nationalisms than to rival capitalisms; not to hatreds that are
-the outgrowth of a real conflict of interests, but to certain
-nationalist conceptions, 'myths,' as Sorel has it. To these conceptions
-economic hostilities may assuredly attach themselves. At the height of
-the war-hatred of things German, a shopkeeper who had the temerity to
-expose German post cards or prints for sale would have risked the
-sacking of his shop. The sackers would not have been persons engaged in
-the post card producing trade. Their motive would have been patriotic.
-If their feelings lasted over the war, they would vote against the
-admission of German post cards. They would not be moved by economic,
-still less by capitalistic motives. These motives do enter, as we shall
-see presently, into the problems raised by the present condition of
-Europe. But it is important to see at what point and in what way. The
-point for the moment--and it has immense practical importance--is that
-the Treaty of Versailles and its economic consequences should be
-attributed less to capitalism (bad as that has come to be in its total
-results) than to the pressure of a public opinion that had crystallised
-round nationalist conceptions.[16]
-
-Here, at the end of 1920, is the British Press still clamouring for the
-exclusion of German toys. Such an agitation presumably pleases the
-millions of readers. They are certainly not toymakers or sellers; they
-have no commercial interest in the matter save that 'their toys will
-cost them more' if the agitation succeeds. They are actuated by
-nationalist hostility.
-
-If Germany is not to be allowed to sell even toys, there will be very
-few things indeed that she can sell. We are to go on with the policy of
-throttling Europe in order that a nation whose industrial activity is
-indispensable to Europe shall not become strong. We do not see, it is
-true, the relation between the economic revival of Europe and the
-industrial recuperation of Germany; we do not see it because we can be
-made to feel anger at the idea of German toys for British children so
-much more readily than we can be made to see the causes which deprive
-French children of warmth in their schoolrooms. European society seems
-to be in the position of an ill-disciplined child that cannot bring
-itself to swallow the medicine that would relieve it of its pain. The
-passions which have been cultivated in five years of war must be
-indulged, whatever the ultimate cost to ourselves. The judgment of such
-a society is swamped in those passions.
-
-The restoration of much of Europe will involve many vast and complex
-problems of reconstruction. But here, in the alternatives presented by
-the payment of a German indemnity, for instance, is a very simple issue:
-if Germany is to pay, she must produce goods, that is, she must be
-economically restored; if we fear her economic restoration, then we
-cannot obtain the execution of the reparation clauses of the Treaty. But
-that simple issue one of the greatest figures of the Conference cannot
-face. He has not, eighteen months after the Treaty, emerged from the
-most elementary confusion concerning it. If the psychology of
-Nationalism renders so simple a problem insoluble, what will be its
-effect upon the problem of Europe as a whole?
-
-Again, it may be that shipowners are behind the American agitation and
-toy manufacturers behind the British. A Coffin Trust might intrigue
-against measures to prevent a repetition of the influenza epidemic. But
-what should we say of the fitness for self-government of a people that
-should lend itself by millions to such an intrigue of Coffin-makers,
-showing as the result of its propaganda a fierce hostility to
-sanitation? We should conclude that it deserved to die. If Europe went
-to war as the result of the intrigues of a dozen capitalists, its
-civilisation is not worth saving; it cannot be saved, for as soon as the
-capitalists were removed, its inherent helplessness would place it at
-the mercy of some other form of exploitation.
-
-Its only hope lies in a capacity for self-management, self-rule, which
-means self-control. But a few financial intriguers, we are told, have
-only to pronounce certain words, 'fatherland above all,' 'national
-honour,' put about a few stories of atrocities, clamour for revenge, for
-the millions to lose all self-control, to become completely blind as to
-where they are going, what they are doing, to lose all sense of the
-ultimate consequences of their acts.
-
-The gravest fact in the history of the last ten years is not the fact of
-war; it is the temper of mind, the blindness of conduct on the part of
-the millions, which alone, ultimately, explains our policies. The
-suffering and cost of war may well be the best choice of evils, like the
-suffering and cost of surgery, or the burdens we assume for a clearly
-conceived moral end. But what we have seen in recent history is not a
-deliberate choice of ends with a consciousness of moral and material
-cost. We see a whole nation demanding fiercely in one breath certain
-things, and in the next just as angrily demanding other things which
-make compliance with the first impossible; a whole nation or a whole
-continent given over to an orgy of hate, retaliation, the indulgence of
-self-destructive passions. And this collapse of the human mind does but
-become the more appalling if we accept the explanation that 'wars are
-caused by capitalism' or 'Junkerthum'; if we believe that six Jew
-financiers sitting in a room can thus turn millions into something
-resembling madmen. No indictment of human reason could be more severe.
-
-To assume that millions will, without any real knowledge of why they do
-it or of the purpose behind the behests they obey, not only take the
-lives of others and give their own, but turn first in one direction and
-then in another the flood of their deepest passions of hate and
-vengeance, just as a little group of mean little men, manipulating mean
-little interests, may direct, is to argue a moral helplessness and
-shameful docility on the part of those millions which would deprive the
-future of all hope of self-government. And to assume that they are _not_
-unknowing as to the alleged cause--that would bring us to moral
-phantasmagoria.
-
-We shall get nearer to the heart of our problem if, instead of asking
-perpetually '_Who_ caused the War?' and indicting 'Capitalists' or
-'Junkers,' we ask the question: 'What is the cause of that state of mind
-and temper in the millions which made them on the one side welcome war
-(as we allege of the German millions), or on the other side makes them
-acclaim, or impose, blockades, famines,' 'punitive' 'Treaties of
-Peace?'
-
-Obviously 'selfishness' is not operating so far as the mass is
-concerned, except of course in the sense that a yielding to the passion
-of hate is self-indulgence. Selfishness, in the sense of care for social
-security and well-being, might save the structure of European society.
-It would bring the famine to an end. But we have what a French writer
-has called a 'holy and unselfish hate.' Balkan peasants prefer to burn
-their wheat rather than send it to the famished city across the river.
-Popular English newspapers agitate against a German trade which is the
-only hope of necessitous Allies obtaining any considerable reparation
-from Germany. A society in which each member is more desirous of hurting
-his neighbour than of promoting his own welfare, is one in which the
-aggregate will to destruction is more powerful than the will to
-preservation.
-
-The history of these last years shows with painful clarity that as
-between groups of men hostilities and hates are aroused very much more
-easily than any emotion of comradeship. And the hate is a hungrier and
-more persistent emotion than the comradeship. The much proclaimed
-fellowship of the Allies, 'cemented by the blood shed on the field,'
-vanished rapidly. But hate remained and found expression in the social
-struggle, in fierce repressions, in bickerings, fears, and rancours
-between those who yesterday fought side by side. Yet the price of
-survival is, as we have seen, an ever closer cohesion and social
-co-operation.
-
-And while it is undoubtedly true that the 'hunger of hate'--the actual
-desire to have something to hate--may so warp our judgment as to make us
-see a conflict of interest where none exists, it is also true that a
-sense of conflict of vital interest is a great feeder of hate. And that
-sense of conflict may well become keener as the problem of man's
-struggle for sustenance on the earth becomes more acute, as his numbers
-increase and the pressure upon that sustenance becomes greater.
-
-Once more, as millions of children are born at our very doors into a
-world that cannot feed them, condemned, if they live at all, to form a
-race that will be defective, stunted, unhealthy, abnormal, this question
-which Malthus very rightly taught our grandfathers to regard as the
-final and ultimate question of their Political Economy, comes
-dramatically into the foreground. How can the earth, which is limited,
-find food for an increase of population which is unlimited?
-
-The haunting anxieties which lie behind the failure to find a conclusive
-answer to that question, probably affect political decisions and deepen
-hostilities and animosities even where the reason is ill-formulated or
-unconscious. Some of us, perhaps, fear to face the question lest we be
-confronted with morally terrifying alternatives. Let posterity decide
-its own problems. But such fears, and the motives prompted by them, do
-not disappear by our refusal to face them. Though hidden, they still
-live, and under various moral disguises influence our conduct.
-
-Certainly the fears inspired by the Malthusian theory and the facts upon
-which it is based, have affected our attitude to war; affected the
-feeling of very many for whom war is not avowedly, as it is openly and
-avowedly to some of its students, 'the Struggle for Bread.'[17]
-
-_The Great Illusion_ was an attempt frankly to face this ultimate
-question of the bearing of war upon man's struggle for survival. It took
-the ground that the victory of one nation over another, however
-complete, does not solve the problem; it makes it worse in that the
-conditions and instincts which war accentuates express themselves in
-nationalist and racial rivalries, create divisions that embarrass and
-sometimes make impossible the widespread co-operation by which alone man
-can effectively exploit nature.
-
-That demonstration as a whole belongs to the pages that follow. But
-bearing upon the narrower question of war in relation to the world's
-good, this much is certain:--
-
-If the object of the combatants in the War was to make sure of their
-food, then indeed is the result in striking contrast with that
-intention, for food is assuredly more insecure than ever alike for
-victor and vanquished. They differ only in the degree of insecurity. The
-War, the passions which it has nurtured, the political arrangements
-which those passions have dictated, have given us a Europe immeasurably
-less able to meet its sustenance problem than it was before. So much
-less able that millions, who before the War could well support
-themselves by their own labour, are now unable so to do and have to be
-fed by drawing upon the slender stocks of their conquerors--stocks very
-much less than when some at least of those conquerors were in the
-position of defeated peoples.
-
-This is not the effect of the material destruction of war, of the mere
-battering down of houses and bridges and factories by the soldier.
-
-The physical devastation, heart-breaking as the spectacle of it is, is
-not the difficult part of the problem, nor quantitatively the most
-important.[18] It is not the devastated districts that are suffering
-from famine, nor their losses which appreciably diminish the world
-supply of food. It is in cities in which not a house has been destroyed,
-in which, indeed, every wheel in every factory is still intact, that the
-population dies of hunger, and the children have to be fed by our
-charity. It is the fields over which not a single soldier has tramped
-that are condemned to sterility because those factories are idle, while
-the factories are condemned to idleness because the fields are sterile.
-
-The real 'economic argument' against war does not consist in the
-presentation of a balance sheet showing so much cost and destruction and
-so much gain. The real argument consists in the fact that war, and still
-more the ideas out of which it arises, produce ultimately an unworkable
-society. The physical destruction and perhaps the cost are greatly
-exaggerated. It is perhaps true that in the material foundations of
-wealth Britain is as well off to-day as before the War. It is not from
-lack of technical knowledge that the economic machine works with such
-friction: that has been considerably increased by the War. It is not
-from lack of idealism and unselfishness. There has been during the last
-five years such an outpouring of devoted unselfishness--the very hates
-have been unselfish--as history cannot equal. Millions have given their
-lives for the contrary ideals in which they believed. It is sometimes
-the ideals for which men die that make impossible their life and work
-together.
-
-The real 'economic argument,' supported by the experience of our
-victory, is that the ideas which produce war--the fears out of which it
-grows and the passions which it feeds--produce a state of mind that
-ultimately renders impossible the co-operation by which alone wealth can
-be produced and life maintained. The use of our power or our knowledge
-for the purpose of subduing Nature to our service depends upon the
-prevalence of certain ideas, ideas which underlie the 'art of living
-together.' They are something apart from mere technical knowledge which
-war, as in Germany, may increase, but which can never be a substitute
-for this 'art of living together.' (The arms, indeed, may be the
-instruments of anarchy, as in so much of Europe to-day).
-
-The War has left us a defective or perverted social sense, with a group
-of instincts and moralities that are disintegrating Western society, and
-will, unless checked, destroy it.
-
-These forces, like the 'ultimate art' which they have so nearly
-destroyed, are part of the problem of economics. For they render a
-production of wealth adequate to welfare impossible. How have they
-arisen? How can they be corrected? These questions will form an integral
-part of the problems here dealt with.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-THE OLD ECONOMY AND THE POST-WAR STATE
-
-
-This chapter suggests the following:--
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The trans-national processes which enabled Europe to support itself
-before the War, were based mainly on private exchanges prompted by the
-expectation of individual advantage. They were not dependent upon
-political power. (The fifteen millions for whom German soil could not
-provide, lived by trade with countries over which Germany had no
-political control, as a similar number of British live by similar
-non-political means.)
-
-The old individualist economy has been largely destroyed by the State
-Socialism introduced for war purposes; the Nation, taking over
-individual enterprise, became trader and manufacturer in increasing
-degree. The economic clauses of the Treaty, if enforced, must prolong
-this tendency, rendering a large measure of such Socialism permanent.
-
-The change may be desirable. But if co-operation must in future be less
-as between individuals for private advantage, and much more as between
-_nations_, Governments acting in an economic capacity, the political
-emotions of nationalism will play a much larger role in the economic
-processes of Europe. If to Nationalist hostilities as we have known them
-in the past, is to be added the commercial rivalry of nations now
-converted into traders and capitalists, we are likely to have not a less
-but more quarrelsome world, unless the fact of interdependence is much
-more vividly realised than in the past.
-
-The facts of the preceding chapter touching the economic chaos in
-Europe, the famine, the debauchery of the currencies, the collapse of
-credit, the failure to secure indemnities, and particularly the remedies
-of an international kind to which we are now being forced, all confirm
-what had indeed become pretty evident before the War, namely, that much
-of Europe lives by virtue of an international, or, more correctly, a
-transnational economy. That is to say, there are large populations that
-cannot live at much above a coolie standard unless there is a
-considerable measure of economic co-operation across frontiers. The
-industrial countries, like Britain and Germany, can support their
-populations only by exchanging their special products and
-services--particularly coal, iron, manufactures, ocean carriage--for
-food and raw materials; while more agricultural countries like Italy and
-even Russia, can maintain their full food-producing capacity only by an
-apparatus of railways, agricultural machinery, imported coal and
-fertilisers, to which the industry of the manufacturing area is
-indispensable.
-
-That necessary international co-operation had, as a matter of fact, been
-largely developed before the War. The cheapening of transport, the
-improvement of communication, had pushed the international division of
-labour very far indeed. The material in a single bale of clothes would
-travel half round the world several times, and receive the labour of
-half a dozen nationalities, before finally reaching its consumer. But
-there was this very significant fact about the whole process;
-Governments had very little to do with it, and the process did not rest
-upon any clearly defined body of commercial right, defined in a regular
-code or law. One of the greatest of all British industries, cotton
-spinning, depended upon access to raw material under the complete
-control of a foreign State, America. (The blockade of the South in the
-War of Secession proved how absolute was the dependence of a main
-British industry upon the political decisions of a foreign Government).
-The mass of contradictory uncertainties relating to rights of neutral
-trade in war-time, known as International Law, furnished no basis of
-security at all. It did not even pretend to touch the source--the right
-of access to the material itself.
-
-That right, and the international economy that had become so
-indispensable to the maintenance of so much of the population of Western
-Europe, rested upon the expectation that the private owner of raw
-materials--the grower of wheat or cotton, or the owner of iron ore or
-coal-mines--would continue to desire to sell those things, would always,
-indeed, be compelled so to do, in order to turn them to account. The
-main aim of the Industrial Era was markets--to sell things. One heard of
-'economic invasions' before the War. This did not mean that the invader
-took things, but that he brought them--for sale. The modern industrial
-nation did not fear the loss of commodities. What it feared was their
-receipt. And the aid of Governments was mainly invoked, not for the
-purpose of preventing things leaving the country, but for the purpose of
-putting obstacles in the way of foreigners bringing commodities into the
-country. Nearly every country had 'Protection' against foreign goods.
-Very rarely did we find countries fearing to lose their goods and
-putting on export duties. Incidentally such duties are forbidden by the
-American Constitution.
-
-Before the War it would have seemed a work of supererogation to frame
-international regulations to protect the right to buy: all were
-searching for buyers. In an economic world which revolved on the
-expectation of individual profit, the competition for profit kept open
-the resources of the world.
-
-Under that system it did not matter much, economically, what political
-administration--provided always that it was an orderly one--covered the
-area in which raw materials were found, or even controlled ports and
-access to the sea. It was in no way indispensable to British industry
-that its most necessary raw material--cotton, say--should be under its
-own control. That industry had developed while the sources of the
-material were in a foreign State. Lancashire did not need to 'own'
-Louisiana. If England had 'owned' Louisiana, British cotton-spinners
-would still have had to pay for the cotton as before. When a writer
-declared before the War that Germany dreamed of the conquest of Canada
-because she needed its wheat wherewith to feed her people, he certainly
-overlooked the fact that Germany could have had the wheat of Canada on
-the same conditions as the British who 'owned' the country--and who
-certainly could not get it without paying for it.
-
-It was true before the War to write:--
-
-     'Co-operation between nations has become essential for the very
-     life of their peoples. But that co-operation does not take place as
-     between States at all. A trading corporation called "Britain" does
-     not buy cotton from another corporation called "America." A
-     manufacturer in Manchester strikes a bargain with a merchant in
-     Louisiana in order to keep a bargain with a dyer in Germany, and
-     three, or a much larger number of parties, enter into virtual, or
-     perhaps actual, contract, and form a mutually dependent economic
-     community (numbering, it may be, with the work-people in the group
-     of industries involved, some millions of individuals)--an economic
-     entity so far as one can exist which does not include all organised
-     society. The special interests of such a community may become
-     hostile to those of another community, but it will almost certainly
-     not be a "national" one, but one of a like nature, say a shipping
-     ring or groups of international bankers or Stock Exchange
-     speculators. The frontiers of such communities do not coincide with
-     the areas in which operate the functions of the State. How could a
-     State, say Britain, act on behalf of an economic entity such as
-     that just indicated? By pressure against America or Germany? But
-     the community against which the British manufacturer in this case
-     wants pressure exercised is not "America" or "Germany"--both want
-     it exercised against the shipping ring or the speculators or the
-     bankers who in part are British. If Britain injures America or
-     Germany as a whole, she injures necessarily the economic entity
-     which it was her object to protect.'[19]
-
-This line of reasoning is no longer valid, for it was based upon a
-system of economic individualism, upon a distinction between the
-functions proper to the State and those proper to the citizen. This
-individualist system has been profoundly transformed in the direction of
-national control by the measures adopted everywhere for the purposes of
-war; a transformation that the confiscatory clauses of the Treaty and
-the arrangements for the payment of the indemnity help to render
-permanent. While the old understanding or convention has been
-destroyed--or its disappearance very greatly accelerated--by the Allies,
-no new one has so far been established to take its place. To that fact
-we must ascribe much of the economic paralysis that has come upon the
-world.
-
-I am aware, of course, that the passage I have quoted did not tell the
-whole story; that already before the War the power of the political
-State was being more and more used by 'big business'; that in China,
-Mexico, Central America, the Near East, Morocco, Persia, Mesopotamia,
-wherever there was undeveloped _and disorderly_ territory, private
-enterprise was exercising pressure upon the State to use its power to
-ensure sources of raw material or areas for the investment of capital.
-That phase of the question is dealt with at greater length
-elsewhere.[20] But the actual (whatever the potential) economic
-importance of the territory about which the nations quarrelled was as
-yet, in 1914, small; the part taken by Governments in the control and
-direction of international trade was negligible. Europe lived by
-processes that went on without serious obstacle across frontiers. Little
-States, for instance, without Colonies (Scandinavia, Switzerland) not
-only maintained a standard of living for their people quite as high as
-that in the great States, but maintained it moreover by virtue of a
-foreign trade relatively as considerable. And the forces which preserved
-the international understanding by which that trade was carried on were
-obviously great.
-
-It was not true, before the War, to say that Germany had to expand her
-frontiers to feed her population. It is true that with her, as with us,
-her soil did not produce the food needed for the populations living on
-it; as with us, about fifteen millions were being fed by means of trade
-with territories which politically she did not 'own,' and did not need
-to 'own'--with Russia, with South America, with Asia, with our own
-Colonies. Like us Germany was turning her coal and iron into bread. The
-process could have gone on almost indefinitely, so long as the coal and
-iron lasted, as the tendency to territorial division of labour was being
-intensified by the development of transport and invention. (The pressure
-of the population on the food resources of these islands was possibly
-greater under the Heptarchy than at present, when they support
-forty-five millions.) Under the old economic order conquest meant, not a
-transfer of wealth from one set of persons to another--for the soil of
-Alsace, for instance, remained in the hands of those who had owned it
-under France--but a change of administration. The change may have been
-as unwarrantable and oppressive as you will, but it did not involve
-economic strangulation of the conquered peoples or any very fundamental
-economic change at all. French economic life did not wither as the
-result of the changes of frontier in 1872, and French factories were not
-shut off from raw material, French cities were not stricken with
-starvation as the result of France's defeat. Her economic and financial
-recovery was extraordinarily rapid; her financial position a year or two
-after the War was sounder than that of Germany. It seemed, therefore,
-that if Germany, of all nations, and Bismarck, of all statesmen, could
-thus respect the convention which after war secured the immunity of
-private trade and property, it must indeed be deeply rooted in
-international comity.
-
-Indeed, the 'trans-national' economic activities of individuals, which
-had ensued so widespread an international economy, and the principle of
-the immunity of private property from seizure after conquest, had become
-so firmly rooted in international relationship as to survive all the
-changes of war and conquest. They were based on a principle that had
-received recognition in English Treaties dating back to the time of
-Magna Carta, and that had gradually become a convention of international
-relationship.
-
-At Versailles the Germans pointed out that their country was certainly
-not left with resources to feed its population. The Allies replied to
-that, not by denying the fact--to which their own advisers, like Mr
-Hoover, have indeed pointedly called attention--but as follows:--
-
-     'It would appear to be a fundamental fallacy that the political
-     control of a country is essential in order to procure a reasonable
-     share of its products. Such a proposal finds no foundation in
-     economic law or history.'[21]
-
-In making their reply the Allies seemed momentarily to have overlooked
-one fact--their own handiwork in the Treaty.
-
-Before the War it would have been a true reply. But the Allies have
-transformed what were, before the War, dangerous fallacies into
-monstrous truths.
-
-President Wilson has described the position of Germany under the Treaty
-in these terms:--
-
-     'The Treaty of Peace sets up a great Commission, known as the
-     Reparations Commission.... That Reparation Commission can
-     determine the currents of trade, the conditions of credit, of
-     international credit; it can determine how much Germany is going to
-     buy, where it is going to buy, and how it is going to pay for
-     it.'[22]
-
-In other words, it is no longer open to Germany, as the result of
-guarantees of free movement accorded to individual traders, to carry on
-that process by which before the War she supported herself. Individual
-Germans cannot now, as heretofore, get raw materials by dealing with
-foreign individuals, without reference to their nationality. Germans are
-now, in fact, placed in the position of having to deal through their
-State, which in turn deals with other States. To buy wheat or iron, they
-cannot as heretofore go to individuals, to the grower or mine-owner, and
-offer a price; the thing has to be done through Governments. We have
-come much nearer to a condition in which the States do indeed 'own'
-(they certainly control) their raw material.
-
-The most striking instance is that of access to the Lorraine iron, which
-before the War furnished three-fourths of the raw material of Germany's
-basic industry. Under the individualist system, in which 'the buyer is
-king' in which efforts were mainly directed to finding markets, no
-obstacle was placed on the export of iron (except, indeed, the obstacle
-to the acquisition by French citizens of Lorraine iron set up by the
-French Government in the imposition of tariffs). But under the new
-order, with the French State assuming such enormously increased economic
-functions, the destination of the iron will be determined by political
-considerations. And 'political considerations,' in an order of
-international society in which the security of the nation depends, not
-upon the collective strength of the whole society, but upon its relative
-strength as against rival units, mean the deliberate weakening of
-rivals. Thus, no longer will the desire of private owners to find a
-market for their wares be a guarantee of the free access of citizens in
-other States to those materials. In place of a play of factors which
-did, however clumsily, ensure in practice general access to raw
-materials, we have a new order of motives; the deliberate desire of
-States, competing in power, owning great sources of raw material, to
-deprive rival States of the use of them.
-
-That the refusal of access will not add to the welfare of the people of
-the State that so owns these materials, that, indeed, it will inevitably
-lower the standard of living in all States alike, is certainly true. But
-so long as there is no real international society organised on the basis
-of collective strength and co-operation, the motive of security will
-override considerations of welfare. The condition of international
-anarchy makes true what otherwise need not be true, that the vital
-interests of nations are conflicting.
-
-Parenthetically, it is necessary to say this: the time may have come for
-the destruction of the older order. If the individualist order was that
-which gave us Armageddon, and still more, the type of mind which
-Armageddon and the succeeding 'peace' revealed, then the present writer,
-for one, sheds no tears over its destruction. In any case, a discussion
-of the intrinsic merits, social and moral, of socialism and
-individualism respectively, would to-day be quite academic. For those
-who profess to stand for individualism are the most active agents of its
-destruction. The Conservative Nationalists, who oppose the socialisation
-of wealth and yet advocate the conscription of life; oppose
-Nationalisation, yet demand the utmost military preparedness in an age
-when effective preparation for war means the mobilisation particularly
-of the nation's industrial resources; resent the growing authority of
-the State, yet insist that the power of the National State shall be such
-as to give it everywhere domination; do, indeed, demand omelets without
-eggs, and bricks not only without straw but without clay.
-
-A Europe of competing military nationalisms means a Europe in which the
-individual and all his activities must more and more be merged in his
-State for the purpose of that competition. The process is necessarily
-one of progressively intense socialisation; and the war measures carried
-it to very great lengths indeed. Moreover, the point to which our
-attention just now should be directed, is the difference which
-distinguishes the process of change within the State from that which
-marks the change in the international field. Within the State the old
-method is automatically replaced by the new (indeed nationalisation is
-mostly the means by which the old individualism is brought to an end);
-between nations, on the other hand, no organised socialistic
-internationalism replaces the old method which is destroyed. The world
-is left without any settled international economy.
-
-Let us note the process of destruction of the old economy.
-
-In July, 1914, the advocacy of economic nationalisation or Socialism
-would have been met with elaborate arguments from perhaps nine average
-Englishmen out of ten, to the effect that control or management of
-industries and services by the Government was impossible, by reason of
-the sheer inefficiency which marks Governmental work. Then comes the
-War, and an efficient railway service and the co-ordination of industry
-and finance to national ends becomes a matter of life and death. In this
-grave emergency, what policy does this same average Englishman, who has
-argued so elaborately against State control, and the possibility of
-governments ever administering public services, pursue? Almost as a
-matter of course, as the one thing to be done, he clamours for the
-railways and other public services to be taken over by the Government,
-and for the State to control the industry, trade, and finance of the
-country.
-
-Now it may well be that the Socialist would deny that the system which
-obtained during the War was Socialism, and would say that it came nearer
-to being State Capitalism than State Socialism; the individualist may
-argue that the methods would never be tolerated as a normal method of
-national life. But when all allowances are made the fact remains that
-when our need was greatest we resorted to the very system which we had
-always declared to be the worst from the point of view of efficiency. As
-Sir Leo Chiozza Money, in sketching the history of this change, which he
-has called 'The Triumph of Nationalisation,' says: 'The nation won
-through the unprecedented economic difficulties of the greatest War in
-history by methods which it had despised. National organisation
-triumphed in a land where it had been denied.' In this sense the England
-of 1914-1920 was a Socialist England; and it was a Socialist England by
-common consent.
-
-This fact has an effect on the moral outlook not generally realised.
-
-For very many, as the War went on and increasing sacrifices of life and
-youth were demanded, new light was thrown upon the relations of the
-individual to the State. A whole generation of young Englishmen were
-suddenly confronted with the fact that their lives did not belong to
-themselves, that each owed his life to the State. But if each must give,
-or at least risk, everything that he possessed, even life itself, were
-others giving or risking what they possessed? Here was new light on the
-institution of private property. If the life of each belongs to the
-community, then assuredly does his property. The Communist State which
-says to the citizen, 'You must work and surrender your private property
-or you will have no vote,' asks, after all, somewhat less than the
-_bourgeois_ Military State which says to the conscript, 'Fight and give
-your person to the State or we will kill you.' For great masses of the
-British working-classes conscription has answered the ethical problem
-involved in the confiscation of capital. The Eighth Commandment no
-longer stands in the way, as it stood so long in the case of a people
-still religiously minded and still feeling the weight of Puritan
-tradition.
-
-Moreover, the War showed that the communal organisation of industry
-could be made to work. It could 'deliver the goods' if those goods
-were, say, munitions. And if it could work for the purposes of war, why
-not for those of peace? The War showed that by co-ordinated and
-centralised action the whole economic structure can without disaster be
-altered to a degree that before the War no economist would have supposed
-possible. We witnessed the economic miracle mentioned in the last
-chapter, but worth recalling here. Suppose before the War you had
-collected into one room all the great capitalist economists in England,
-and had said to them: 'During the next few years you will withdraw from
-normal production five or six millions of the best workers. The mere
-residue of the workers will be able to feed, clothe, and generally
-maintain those five or six millions, themselves, and the country at
-large, at a standard of living on the whole as high, if not higher, than
-that to which the people were accustomed before those five or six
-million workers were withdrawn.' If you had said that to those
-capitalist economists, there would not have been one who would have
-admitted the possibility of the thing, or regarded the forecast as
-anything but rubbish.
-
-Yet that economic miracle has been performed, and it has been performed
-thanks to Nationalisation and Socialism, and could not have been
-performed otherwise.
-
-However, one may qualify in certain points this summary of the
-outstanding economic facts of the War, it is impossible to exaggerate
-the extent to which the revelation of economic possibilities has
-influenced working-class opinion.
-
-To the effect of this on the minds of the more intelligent workers, we
-have to add another psychological effect, a certain recklessness,
-inseparable from the conditions of war, reflected in the workers'
-attitude towards social reform.
-
-Perhaps a further factor in the tendency towards Communism is the
-habituation to confiscation which currency inflation involves. Under the
-influence of war contrivances States have learned to pay their debts in
-paper not equivalent in value to the gold in which the loan was made:
-whole classes of bondholders have thus been deprived of anything from
-one-half to two-thirds of the value of their property. It is
-confiscation in its most indiscriminate and sometimes most cruel form.
-_Bourgeois_ society has accepted it. A socialistic society of to-morrow
-may be tempted to find funds for its social experiments in somewhat the
-same way.
-
-Whatever weight we may attach to some of these factors, this much is
-certain: not only war, but preparation for war, means, to a much greater
-degree than it has ever meant before, mobilisation of the whole
-resources of the country--men, women, industry. This form of
-'nationalisation' cannot go on for years and not affect the permanent
-form of the society subjected to it. It has affected it very deeply. It
-has involved a change in the position of private property and individual
-enterprise that since the War has created a new cleavage in the West.
-The future of private property which was before the War a theoretical
-speculation, has become within a year or two, and especially, perhaps,
-since the Bolshevist Revolution in Russia, a dominating issue in
-European social and political development. It has subjected European
-society to a new strain. The wearing down of the distinction between the
-citizen and the State, and the inroads upon the sacro-sanctity of
-private property and individual enterprise, make each citizen much more
-dependent upon his State, much more a part of it. Control of foreign
-trade so largely by the State has made international trade less a matter
-of processes maintained by individuals who disregarded their
-nationality, and more a matter of arrangement between States, in which
-the non-political individual activity tends to disappear. We have here a
-group of forces which has achieved a revolution, a revolution in the
-relationship of the individual European to the European State, and of
-the States to one another.
-
-The socialising and communist tendencies set up by measures of
-industrial mobilisation for the purposes of the War, have been carried
-forward in another sphere by the economic terms of the Treaty of
-Versailles. These latter, if even partly carried into effect, will mean
-in very large degree the compulsory socialisation, even communisation,
-of the enemy States. Not only the country's foreign trade, but much of
-its internal industry must be taken out of the hands of private traders
-or manufacturers. The provisions of the Treaty assuredly help to destroy
-the process upon which the old economic order in Europe rested.
-
-Let the reader ask himself what is likely to be the influence upon the
-institution of private property and private commerce of a Treaty
-world-wide in its operation, which will take a generation to carry out,
-which may well be used as a precedent for future settlements between
-States (settlements which may include very great politico-economic
-changes in the position of Egypt, Ireland, and India), and of which the
-chief economic provisions are as follows:--
-
-     'It deprives Germany of nearly the whole of her overseas marine. It
-     banishes German sovereignty and economic influence from all her
-     overseas possessions, and sequestrates the private property of
-     Germans in those places, in Alsace-Lorraine, and in all countries
-     within Allied jurisdiction. It puts at the disposal of the Allies
-     all German financial rights and interests, both in the countries of
-     her former Allies and in the States and territories which have been
-     formed out of them. It gives the Reparations Commission power to
-     put its finger on any great business or property in Germany and to
-     demand its surrender. Outside her own frontiers Germany can be
-     stripped of everything she possesses, and inside them, until an
-     impossible indemnity has been paid to the last farthing, she can
-     truly call nothing her own.
-
-     'The Treaty inflicts on an Empire built up on coal and iron the
-     loss of about one-third cf her coal supplies, with such a heavy
-     drain on the scanty remainder as to leave her with an annual supply
-     of only 60 million tons, as against the pre-war production of over
-     190 million tons, and the loss of over three-quarters of her iron
-     ore. It deprives her of all effective control over her own system
-     of transport; it takes the river system of Germany out of German
-     hands, so that on every International Committee dealing with German
-     waters, Germans are placed in a clear minority. It is as though the
-     Powers of Central Europe were placed in a majority on the Thames
-     Conservancy or the Port of London Authority. Finally, it forces
-     Germany for a period of years to concede "most favoured nation"
-     treatment to the Allies, while she receives no such reciprocal
-     favour in return.'
-
-This wholesale confiscation of private property[23] is to take place
-without the Allies affording any compensation to the individuals
-expropriated, and the proceeds will be employed, first, to meet private
-debts due to Allied nationals from any German nationals, and, second, to
-meet claims due from Austrian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, or Turkish
-nationals. Any balance may either be returned by the liquidating power
-direct to Germany, or retained by them. If retained, the proceeds must
-be transferred to the Reparations Commission for Germany's credit in
-the Reparations account. Note, moreover, how the identification of a
-citizen with his State is carried forward by the discrimination made
-against Germans in overseas trade. Heretofore there were whole spheres
-of international trade and industrial activity in which the individual's
-nationality mattered very little. It was a point in favour of individual
-effort, and, incidentally, of international peace. Under the Treaty,
-whereas the property of Allied nationals within German jurisdiction
-reverts to Allied ownership on the conclusion of peace, the property of
-Germans within Allied jurisdiction is to be retained and liquidated as
-described above, with the result that the whole of German property over
-a large part of the world can be expropriated, and the large properties
-now within the custody of Public Trustees and similar officials in the
-Allied countries may be retained permanently. In the second place, such
-German assets are chargeable, not only with the liabilities of Germans,
-but also, if they run to it, with 'payment of the amounts due in respect
-of claims by the nationals of such Allied or Associated Power with
-regard to their property, rights, and interests in the territory of
-other Enemy Powers,' as, for example, Turkey, Bulgaria, and Austria.
-This is a remarkable provision, which is naturally non-reciprocal. In
-the third place, any final balance due to Germany on private account
-need not be paid over, but can be held against the various liabilities
-of the German Government.[24] The effective operation of these articles
-is guaranteed by the delivery of deeds, titles, and information.
-
-It will be noted how completely the Treaty returns to the Tribal
-conception of a collective responsibility, and how it wipes away the
-distinction heretofore made in International Law, between the civilian
-citizen and the belligerent Government. An Austrian who has lived and
-worked in England or China or Egypt all his life, and is married to an
-English woman and has children who do not speak a word of German, who is
-no more responsible for the invasion of Belgium than an Icelander or a
-Chinaman, finds that the savings of his lifetime left here in the faith
-of British security, are confiscated under the Treaty in order to
-satisfy the claims of France or Japan. And, be it noted, whenever
-attention is directed to what the defenders of the Treaty like to call
-its 'sternness' (as when it deprives Englishborn women and their
-children of their property) we are invited to repress our misgiving on
-that score in order to contemplate the beauty of its 'justice,' and to
-admire the inexorable accuracy with which reward and punishment are
-distributed. It is the standing retort to critics of the Treaty: they
-forget its 'justice.'[25]
-
-How far this new tendency is likely to go towards a reassertion of the
-false doctrine of the complete submergence of the individual in the
-State, the erection of the 'God-State' which at the beginning we
-declared to be the main moral cause of the War and set out to destroy,
-will be discussed later. The point for the moment is that the
-enforcement of this part of the Treaty, like other parts, will go to
-swell communistic tendencies. It will be the business of the German
-State to maintain the miners who are to deliver the coal under the
-Treaty, the workers in the shipyards who are to deliver the yearly toll
-of ships. The intricate and elaborate arrangements for 'searching
-Germany's pockets' for the purpose of the indemnity mean the very
-strictest Governmental control of private trade in Germany, in many
-spheres its virtual abolition. All must be done through the Government
-in order that the conditions of the Treaty may be fulfilled. Foreign
-trade will be no longer the individual enterprise of private citizens.
-It will, by the order of the Allies, be a rigidly controlled
-Governmental function, as President Wilson reminded us in the passage
-quoted above.
-
-To a lesser degree the same will be true of the countries receiving the
-indemnity. Mr. Lloyd George promises that it will not be paid in cheap
-goods, or in such a way as to damage home industries. But it must be
-paid in some goods: ships, dyes, or (as some suggest) raw materials.
-Their distribution to private industry, the price that these industries
-shall pay, must be arranged by the receiving Government. This inevitably
-means a prolongation of the State's intervention in the processes of
-private trade and industry. Nor is it merely the disposal of the
-indemnity in kind which will compel each Allied Government to continue
-to intervene in the trade and industry of its citizens. The fact that
-the Reparations Commission is, in effect, to allocate the amount of ore,
-cotton, shipping, Germany is to get, to distribute the ships and coal
-which she may deliver, means the establishment of something resembling
-international rationing. The Governments will, in increasing degree,
-determine the amount and direction of trade.
-
-The more thoroughly we 'make Germany pay,' the more State-controlled do
-we compel her (and only to a lesser extent ourselves) to become. We
-should probably regard a standard of life in Germany very definitely
-below that of the rest of Western Europe, as poetic justice. But it
-would inevitably set up forces, both psychological and economic, that
-make not only for State-control--either State Socialism or State
-Capitalism--but for Communism.
-
-Suppose we did our work so thoroughly that we took absolutely all
-Germany could produce over and above what was necessary for the
-maintenance of the physical efficiency of her population. That would
-compel her to organise herself increasingly on the basis of equality of
-income: no one, that is, going above the line of physical efficiency and
-no one falling below it.
-
-Thus, while British, French, and American anti-socialists are declaring
-that the principle enunciated by the Russian Government, that all trade
-must be through the Soviet, is one which will prove most mischievous in
-its example, it is precisely that principle which increasingly, if the
-Treaty is enforced, they will in fact impose upon a great country,
-highly organised, of great bureaucratic efficiency, far more likely by
-its training and character to make the principle a success.
-
-This tendency may be in the right direction or the wrong one. The point
-is that no provision has been made to meet the condition which the
-change creates. The old system permitted the world to work under
-well-defined principles. The new regimen, because it has not provided
-for the consequences of the changes it has provoked, condemns a great
-part of Europe to economic paralysis which must end in bitter anarchic
-struggles unless the crisis is anticipated by constructive
-statesmanship.
-
-Meantime the continued coercion of Germany will demand on the part of
-the Western democracies a permanent maintenance of the machine of war,
-and so a perpetuation of the tendency, in the way already described,
-towards a militarised Nationalisation.
-
-The resultant 'Socialism' will assuredly not be of the type that most
-Socialists (among whom, incidentally, the present writer counts himself)
-would welcome. But it will not necessarily be for that reason any less
-fatal to the workable transnational individualism.
-
-Moreover, military nationalisation presupposes international conflict,
-if not perpetually recurrent war; presupposes, that is, first, an
-inability to organise a stable international economy indispensable to a
-full life for Europe's population; and, secondly, an increasing
-destructiveness in warfare--self-destruction in terms of European
-Society as a whole. 'Efficiency' in such a society would be efficiency
-in suicide.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-NATIONALITY, ECONOMICS, AND THE ASSERTION OF RIGHT
-
-
-The change noted in the preceding chapter raises certain profound
-questions of Right. These may be indicated as follows:--
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-By our political power we _can_ create a Europe which, while not
-assuring advantage to the victor, deprives the vanquished of means of
-existence. The loss of both ore and coal by the Central Powers might
-well make it impossible for their future populations to find food. What
-are they to do? Starve? To disclaim responsibility is to claim that we
-are entitled to use our power to deny them life.
-
-This 'right' to starve foreigners can only be invoked by invoking the
-concept of nationalism. 'Our nation first.' But the policy of placing
-life itself upon a foundation of preponderant force instead of mutually
-advantageous co-operation, compels statesmen perpetually to betray the
-principle of nationality; not only directly (as in the case of the
-annexation of territory, economically necessary, but containing peoples
-of alien nationality), but indirectly; for the resistance which our
-policy (of denying means of subsistence to others) provokes, makes
-preponderance of power the condition of survival. All else must give way
-to that need.
-
-Might cannot be pledged to Right in these conditions. If our power is
-pledged to Allies for the purposes of the Balance (which means, in fact,
-preponderance), it cannot be used against them to enforce respect for
-(say) nationality. To turn against Allies would break the Balance. To
-maintain the Balance of Power we are compelled to disregard the moral
-merits of an Ally's policy (as in the case of the promise to the Czar's
-Government not to demand the independence of Poland). The maintenance of
-a Balance (_i.e._ preponderance) is incompatible with the maintenance of
-Right. There is a conflict of obligation.
-
-Before the War, a writer in the _National Review_, desiring to show the
-impossibility of obviating war by any international agreement, took the
-example of the conflict with Germany and put the case as follows:--
-
-     'Germany _must_ go to war. Every year an extra million babies are
-     crying out for more room, and as the expansion of Germany by
-     peaceful means seems impossible, Germany can only provide for those
-     babies at the cost of potential foes.
-
-     'This ... it cannot be too often repeated, is not mere envious
-     greed, but stern necessity. The same struggle for life and space
-     which more than a thousand years ago drove one Teutonic wave after
-     another across the Rhine and the Alps, is now once more a great
-     compelling force.... This aspect of the case may be all very sad
-     and very wicked, but it is true.... Herein lies the ceaseless and
-     ruinous struggle for armaments, and herein for France lies the dire
-     necessity of linking her foreign policy with that of powerful
-     allies.'
-
-'And so,' adds the writer, 'it is impossible and absurd to accept the
-theory of Mr. Norman Angell.'
-
-Now that theory was, not that Germany and others would not fight--I was
-very insistent indeed that[26] unless there was a change in European
-policy they would--but that war, however it might end, would not solve
-the question. And that conclusion at least, whatever may be the case
-with others, is proved true.
-
-For we have had war; we have beaten Germany; and those million babies
-still confront us. The German population and its tendency to increase is
-still there. What are we going to do about it? The War has killed two
-million out of about seventy million Germans; it killed very few of the
-women. The subsequent privations of the blockade certainly disposed of
-some of the weaker among both women and children. The rate of increase
-may in the immediate future be less. It was declining before the War as
-the country became more prosperous, following in this what seems to be a
-well-established rule: the higher the standard of civilisation the more
-does the birth-rate decline. But if the country is to become extremely
-frugal and more agricultural, this tendency to decline is likely to be
-checked. In any case the number of mouths to be fed will not have been
-decreased by war to the same extent that the resources by which they
-might have been fed have been decreased.
-
-What do we propose to Germany, now that we have beaten her, as the means
-of dealing with those million babies? Professor Starling, in a report to
-the British Government,[27] suggests emigration:--
-
-     'Before the War Germany produced 85 per cent. of the total food
-     consumed by her inhabitants. This large production was only
-     possible by high cultivation, and by the plentiful use of manure
-     and imported feeding stuffs, means for the purchase of these being
-     furnished by the profits of industry.... The loss to Germany of 40
-     per cent. of its former coal output must diminish the number of
-     workers who can be maintained. The great increase in German
-     population during the last twenty-five years was rendered possible
-     only by exploiting the agricultural possibilities of the soil to
-     the greatest possible extent, and this in its turn depended on the
-     industrial development of the country. The reduction by 20 per
-     cent. in the productive area of the country, and the 40 per cent.
-     diminution in the chief raw material for the creation of wealth,
-     renders the country at present over-populated, and it seems
-     probable that within the next few years many million (according to
-     some estimates as many as fifteen million) workers and their
-     families will be obliged to emigrate, since there will be neither
-     work nor food for them to be obtained from the reduced industries
-     of the country.'
-
-But emigration where? Into Russia? The influence of Germans in Russia
-was very great even before the War. Certain French writers warn us
-frantically against the vast danger of Russia's becoming a German colony
-unless a cordon of border States, militarily strong, is created for the
-purpose of keeping the two countries apart. But we should certainly get
-a Germanisation of Russia from the inside if five or ten or fifteen
-million Germans were dispersed therein and the country became a
-permanent reservoir for those annual million babies.
-
-And if not Russia, where? Imagine a migration of ten or fifteen million
-Huns throughout the world--a dispersion before which that of the Jews
-and of the Irish would pale. We know how the migration from an Ireland
-of eight millions that could not feed itself has reacted upon our
-politics and our relations with America. What sort of foreign problems
-are we going to bequeath to our children if our policy forces a great
-German migration into Russia, or the Balkans, or Turkey?
-
-This insistent fact of a million more or less of little Huns being born
-into the world every year remains. Shall we suggest to Germany that she
-must deal with this problem as the thrifty householder deals with the
-too frequent progeny of the family cat?
-
-Or shall we do just nothing, and say that it is not our affair; that as
-we have the power over the iron of Lorraine and Morocco, over the
-resources of Africa and Asia, over the ocean highways of the world, we
-are going to see that that power, naval and military, is used to ensure
-abundance for ourselves and our friends; that as for others, since they
-have not the power, they may starve? _Vae victis_ indeed![28]
-
-Just note what is involved. This war was fought to destroy the doctrine
-that might is right. Our power, we say, gives us access to the wealth of
-the world; others shall be excluded. Then we are using our power to deny
-to some millions the most elemental of all rights, the right to
-existence. By the economic use of our military power (assuming that
-military power is as effective as we claim) we compel some millions to
-choose between war and penury or starvation; we give to war, in their
-case, the justification that it is on behalf of the bread of their
-children, their livelihood.
-
-Let us compare France's position. Unlike the German, the French
-population has hardly increased at all in recent generations. In the
-years immediately preceding the War, indeed, it showed a definite
-decline, a tendency naturally more marked since the War. This low
-birth-rate has greatly concerned French statesmen, and remedies have
-been endlessly discussed, with no result. The causes are evidently very
-deep-rooted indeed. The soil which has been inherited by this declining
-population is among the richest and most varied in the world, producing
-in the form of wines, brandies, and certain other luxuries, results
-which can be duplicated nowhere else. It stretches almost into the
-sub-tropics. In addition, the nation possesses a vast colonial
-empire--in Algeria, Tunis, Morocco (which include some of the greatest
-food-growing areas in the world), Madagascar, Equatorial Africa,
-Cochin-China; an empire managed, by the way, on strongly protectionist
-principles.
-
-We have thus on the one side a people of forty millions with no tendency
-to increase, mainly not industrial (because not needing to be),
-possessing undeveloped areas capable, in their food and mineral
-resources (home and colonial), of supporting a population very many
-times its size. On the other hand is a neighbouring group, very much
-larger, and rapidly increasing, occupying a poorer and smaller
-territory. It is unable to subsist at modern standards on that territory
-without a highly-developed industry. The essential raw materials have
-passed into the hands of the smaller group. The latter on grounds of
-self-defence, fearing to be outnumbered, may withhold those materials
-from the larger group; and its right so to do is to be unquestioned.
-
-Does any one really believe that Western Society could remain stable,
-resting on moral foundations of this kind? Can one disregard primary
-economic need in considering the problem of preserving the Europe of
-'free and independent national states' of Mr. Asquith's phrase?[29]
-
-If things are left where this Treaty leaves them, then the militarist
-theories which before were fallacies will have become true. We can no
-longer say that peoples as distinct from imperialist parties have no
-interest in conquest. In this new world of to-morrow--this 'better and
-more stable world'--the interests of peoples themselves will be in
-deadly conflict. For an expanding people it will be a choice between
-robbery of neighbours' territory and starvation. Re-conquest of Lorraine
-will become for the Germans not a matter of hurt pride or sentiment, but
-a matter of actual food need, a need which will not, like hurt pride,
-diminish with the lapse of time, but increase with the growth of the
-population. On the side of war, then, truly we shall find 'the human
-stomach and the human womb.'
-
-The change is a deeper reversion than we seem to realise. Even under
-feudalism the means of subsistence of the people, the land they
-cultivated, remained as before. Only the lords were changed--and one
-lord was very like another. But where, under modern industrial economy,
-titles to property in indispensable raw materials can be cancelled by a
-conqueror and become the State property of the conquering nation, which
-enforces the right to distribute them as it pleases, whole populations
-may find themselves deprived of the actual means of supporting
-themselves on the territory that they occupy.
-
-We shall have set up a disruptive ferment working with all the force of
-the economic needs of 50 or 100 million virile folk to bring about once
-more some vast explosion. Europe will once more be living on a volcano,
-knowing no remedy save futile efforts to 'sit on the lid.'
-
-The beginnings of the attempt are already visible. Colonel Repington
-points out that owing to the break up of Russia and Austria, and the
-substitution for these two powerful States of a large number of small,
-independent ones likely to quarrel among themselves, Germany will be the
-largest and most cohesive of all the European Continental nations,
-relatively stronger than she was before the War. He demands in
-consequence, that not only France, but Holland and Belgium, be extended
-to the Rhine, which must become the strategic frontier of civilisation
-against barbarism. He says there can be no sort of security otherwise.
-He even reminds us that it was Rome's plan. (He does not remind us that
-if it had notably succeeded then we should hardly be trying it again two
-thousand years later.) The plan gives us, in fact, this prospect: the
-largest and most unified racial block in Europe will find itself
-surrounded by a number of lesser States, containing German minorities,
-and possessing materials indispensable to Germany's economic life, to
-which she is refused peaceful access in order that she may not become
-strong enough to obtain access by force; an attempt which she will be
-compelled to make because peaceful access is denied to her. Our measures
-create resistance; that resistance calls forth more extreme measures;
-those measures further resistance, and so on. We are in the thick once
-more of Balance of Power, strategic frontiers, every element of the old
-stultifying statecraft against which all the Allies--before the
-Armistice--made flaming protest.
-
-And when this conflict of rights--each fighting as he believes for the
-right to life--has blazed up into passions that transcend all thought of
-gain or advantage, we shall be asked somewhat contemptuously what
-purpose it serves to discuss so cold a thing as 'economics' in the midst
-of this welter.
-
-It won't serve any purpose. But the discussion of economics before it
-had become a matter for passion might have prevented the conflict.
-
-The situation has this complication--and irony: Increasing prosperity, a
-higher standard of living, sets up a tendency prudentially to check
-increase of population. France, and in hardly less degree even new and
-sparsely populated countries like Australia, have for long shown a
-tendency to a decline of the rate of increase. In France, indeed, as has
-already been mentioned, an absolute decrease had set in before the War.
-But as soon as this tendency becomes apparent, the same nationalist who
-invokes the menace of over-population as the justification for war, also
-invokes nationalism to reverse the tendency which would solve the
-over-population problem. This is part of the mystic nature of the
-nationalist impulse. Colonel Roosevelt is not the only warlike
-nationalist who has exhausted the resources of invective to condemn
-'race suicide' and to enjoin the patriotic duty of large families.
-
-We may gather some idea of the morasses into which the conception of
-nationalism and its 'mystic impulses' may lead us when applied to the
-population problem by examining some current discussions of it. Dr
-Raymond Pearl, of John Hopkins University, summarises certain of his
-conclusions thus:--
-
-     'There are two ways which have been thought of and practised, by
-     which a nation may attempt to solve its problem of population after
-     it has become very pressing and after the effects of internal
-     industrial development and its creation of wealth have been
-     exhausted. These are respectively the methods of France and
-     Germany. By consciously controlled methods, France endeavoured, and
-     on the whole succeeded, in keeping her birth-rate at just such a
-     delicate balance with the death-rate as to make the population
-     nearly stationary. Then any industrial developments simply
-     operated to raise the standard of living of those fortunate enough
-     to be born. France's condition, social economy, and political, in
-     1914 represented, I think, the results of about the maximum
-     efficiency of what may be called the birth-control method of
-     meeting the problem of population.
-
-     'Germany deliberately chose the other plan of meeting the problem
-     of population. In fewest words the scheme was, when your population
-     pressed too hard upon subsistence, and you had fully liquidated the
-     industrial development asset, to go out and conquer some one,
-     preferably a people operating under the birth-control population
-     plan, and forcibly take his land for your people. To facilitate
-     this operation a high birth-rate is made a matter of sustained
-     propaganda, and in every other possible way encouraged. An
-     abundance of cannon fodder is essential to the success of the
-     scheme.'[30]
-
-A word or two as to the facts alleged in the foregoing. We are told that
-the two nations not only followed respectively two different methods,
-but that it was in each case a deliberate national choice, supported by
-organised propaganda. 'By consciously controlled methods, France,' we
-are told, 'endeavoured' to keep her birth-rate down. The fact is, of
-course, that all the conscious endeavours of 'France,' if by France is
-meant the Government, the Church, the learned bodies, were in the
-exactly contrary direction. Not only organised propaganda, but most
-elaborate legislation, aiming through taxation at giving a preference to
-large families, has for a generation been industriously urging an
-increase in the French population. It has notoriously been a standing
-dish in the menu of the reformers and uplifters of nearly every
-political party. What we obviously have in the case of France is not a
-decision made by the nation as a corporate body and the Government
-representing it, but a tendency which their deliberate decision, as
-represented by propaganda and legislation, has been unable to check.[31]
-
-In discussing the merits of the two plans, Dr Pearl goes on:--
-
-     'Now the morals of the two plans are not at issue here. Both are
-     regarded, on different grounds to be sure, as highly immoral by
-     many people. Here we are concerned only with actualities. There can
-     be no doubt that in general and in the long run the German plan is
-     bound to win over the birth-control plan, if the issue is joined
-     between the two and only the two, and its resolution is military in
-     character.... So long as there are on the earth aggressively-minded
-     peoples who from choice deliberately maintain a high birth-rate, no
-     people can afford to put the French solution of the population
-     problem into operation unless they are prepared to give up,
-     practically at the asking, both their national integrity and their
-     land.'
-
-Let us assume, therefore, that France adopts the high birth-rate plan.
-She, too, will then be compelled, if the plan has worked out
-successfully, 'to get out and conquer some one.' But that some one will
-also, for the same reasons, have been following the plan of high
-birth-rate. What is then to happen? A competition in fecundity as a
-solution of the excess population problem seems inadequate. Yet it is
-inevitably prompted by the nationalist impulse.
-
-Happily the general rise in the standard of life itself furnishes a
-solution. As we have seen, the birth-rate is, within certain limits, in
-inverse ratio to a people's prosperity. But again, nationalism, by
-preventing the economic unification of Europe, may well stand in the way
-of that solution also. It checks the tendencies which would solve the
-problem.
-
-A fall in the birth-rate, as a concomitant of a rising standard of
-living, was beginning to be revealed in Germany also before the War.[32]
-If now, under the new order, German industrialism is checked and we get
-an agricultural population compelled by circumstances to a standard of
-life not higher than that of the Russian _moujik_, we may perhaps also
-be faced by a revival of high fertility in mystic disregard of the
-material means available for the support of the population.
-
-There is a further point.
-
-Those who have dealt with the world's food resources point out that
-there are great sources of food still undeveloped. But the difficulties
-do not arise from a total shortage. They arise from a mal-distribution
-of population, coupled with the fact that as between nations the Ten
-Commandments--particularly the eighth--do not run. By the code of
-nationalism we have no obligation towards starving foreigners. A nation
-may seize territory which it does not need, and exclude from it those
-who direly need its resources. While we insist that internationalism is
-political atheism, and that the only doctrine fit for red-blooded people
-is what Colonel Roosevelt called 'intense Nationalism,' intense
-nationalism means, in economic practice, the attempt, even at some
-cost, to render the political unit also the economic unit, and as far as
-possible self-sufficing.
-
-It serves little purpose, therefore, to point out that one or two States
-in South America can produce food for half the world, if we also create
-a political tradition which leads the patriotic South American to insist
-upon having his own manufactures, even at cost to himself, so that he
-will not need ours. He will achieve that result at the cost of
-diminishing his production of food. Both he and the Englishman will be
-poorer, but according to the standard of the intense nationalist, the
-result should be a good one, though it may confront many of us with
-starvation, just as the intense nationalism of the various nations of
-Eastern and South-Eastern Europe actually results in famine on soil
-fully capable, before the War, of supporting the population, and capable
-of supporting still greater populations if natural resources are used to
-the best advantage. It is political passions, anti-social doctrines, and
-the muddle, confusion, and hostility that go therewith which are the
-real cause of the scarcity.
-
-And that may forecast the position of Europe as a whole to-morrow: we
-may suffer starvation for the patriotic joy of seeing foreigners--Boche
-or Bolshevist--suffer in still greater degree.
-
-Given the nationalist conception of a world divided into completely
-distinct groups of separate corporate bodies, entities so different that
-the binding social ties between them (laws, in fact) are impossible of
-maintenance, there must inevitably grow up pugnacities and rivalries,
-creating a general sense of conflict that will render immeasurably
-difficult the necessary co-operation between the peoples, the kind of
-co-operation which the Treaty of Versailles has, in so large degree,
-deliberately destroyed. Whether the hostility comes, in the first
-instance, from the 'herd,' or tribal, instinct, and develops into a
-sense of economic hostility, or whether the hostility arises from the
-conviction that there exists a conflict of interest, the result is
-pretty much the same. I happen to have put the case elsewhere in these
-terms:--
-
-If it be true that since the world is of limited space, we must fight
-one another for it, that if our children are to be fed others must
-starve, then agreement between peoples will be for ever impossible.
-Nations will certainly not commit suicide for the sake of peace. If this
-is really the relationship of two great nations, they are, of course, in
-the position of two cannibals, one of whom says to the other: 'Either I
-have got to eat you, or you have got to eat me. Let's come to a friendly
-agreement about it.' They won't come to a friendly agreement about it.
-They will fight. And my point is that not only would they fight if it
-really were true that the one had to kill and eat the other, but they
-would fight as long as they believed it to be true. It might be that
-there was ample food within their reach--out of their reach, say, so
-long as each acted alone, but within their reach if one would stand on
-the shoulders of the other ('this is an allegory'), and so get the fat
-cocoa-nuts on the higher branches. But they would, nevertheless, be
-cannibals so long as each believed that the flesh of the other was the
-only source of food. It would be that mistake, not the necessary fact,
-which would provoke them to fight.
-
-When we learn that one Balkan State refuses to another a necessary raw
-material, or access over a railroad, because it prefers the suffering of
-that neighbour to its own welfare, we are shocked and talk about
-primitive and barbarous passions. But are we ourselves--Britain or
-France--in better state? The whole story of the negotiations about the
-indemnity and the restoration of Europe shows that we are not. Quite
-soon after the Armistice the expert advisers of the British Government
-urged the necessity, for the economic safety of the Allies themselves,
-of helping in the restoration of Germany. But they also admitted that it
-was quite hopeless to go to Parliament with any proposal to help
-Germany. And even when one gets a stage further and there is general
-admission 'in the abstract' that if France is to secure reparations,
-Germany must be fed and permitted to work, the sentiment of hostility
-stands in the way of any specific measure.
-
-We are faced with certain traditions and moralities, involving a
-psychology which, gathering round words like 'patriotism,' deprives us
-of the emotional restraint and moral discipline necessary to carry
-through the measures which intellectually we recognise to be
-indispensable to our country's welfare.
-
-We thus see why it is impossible to speak of international economics
-without predicating the nation as a concept. In the economic problems of
-nations or States, one is necessarily dealing not only with economic
-facts, but with political facts: a political entity in its economic
-relations (before the War inconsiderable, but since the War very great);
-group consciousness; the interests, or what is sometimes as important,
-the supposed interests of this group or area as distinct from that; the
-moral phenomena of nationalism--group preferences or prejudices, herd
-instinct, tribal hostility. All this is part of the economic problem in
-international politics. Protection, for instance, is only in part a
-problem of economics; it is also a problem of political preferences: the
-manufacturer who is content to face the competition of his own
-countrymen, objects to facing that of foreigners. Political conceptions
-are part of the economic problem when dealing with nations, just as
-primary economic need must be taken into account as part of the cause of
-the conflict of nationalisms.
-
-One very commonly hears the argument: 'What is the good of discussing
-economic forces in relation to the conflict of Europe when our
-participation, for instance, in the War, was in no way prompted by
-economic considerations?'
-
-Our motive may not have been economic, yet the cause of the War may very
-well have been mainly economic. The sentiment of nationality may be a
-stronger motive in European politics than any other. The chief menace
-to nationality may none the less be economic need.
-
-While it may be perfectly true that Belgians, Serbs, Poles, Bohemians,
-fought from motives of nationality, it may also be true that the wars
-which they were compelled to fight had an economic cause.
-
-If the desire of Germany or Austria for undeveloped territory had
-anything to do with that thrust towards the Near East in the way of
-which stood Serbian nationality, then economic causes _had_ something to
-do with compelling Serbia and Belgium to fight for their nationality.
-Owing to the pressure of the economic need or greed of others, we are
-still concerned with economic forces, though we may be actuated only by
-the purest nationalism: the economic pressure of others is obviously
-part of the problem of our national defence. And if one examines in turn
-the chief problems of nationality, one finds in almost every case that
-any aggression by which it may be menaced is prompted by the need, or
-assumed need, of other nations for mines, ports, access to the sea (warm
-water or other), or for strategic frontiers to defend those things.
-
-Why should the desire of one people to rule itself, to be free, be
-thwarted by another making exactly the same demands? In the case of the
-Germans we ascribe it to some special and evil lust peculiar to their
-race and training. But the Peace has revealed to us that it exists in
-every people, every one.
-
-A glance at the map enables us to realise readily enough why a given
-State may resist the 'complete independence' of a neighbouring
-territory.
-
-Here, on the borders of Russia, for instance, are a number of small
-States in a position to block the access of the population of Russia to
-the sea; in a position, indeed, by their control of certain essential
-raw materials, to hold up the development of a hundred million people,
-very much as the robber barons of the Rhine held up the commerce of that
-waterway. No powerful Russia, Bolshevik or Czarist, will permanently
-recognise the absolute right of a little State, at will (at the
-bidding, perhaps, of some military dictator, who in South American
-fashion may have seized its Government), to block her access to the
-'highways of the world.' 'Sovereignty and independence'--absolute
-sovereignty over its own territory, that is--may well include the
-'right' to make the existence of others intolerable. Ought any nation to
-have such a right? Like questions are raised in the case of the States
-that once were Austria. They have achieved their complete freedom and
-independence. Some of the results are dealt with in the first chapter.
-In some cases the new States are using their 'freedom, sovereignty, and
-independence' for the purpose of worsening a condition of famine and
-economic paralysis that spells indescribable suffering for millions of
-completely innocent folk.[33]
-
-So far, the new Europe is economically less competent than the old. The
-old Austrian grouping, for instance, made possible a stable and orderly
-life for fifty million people. A Mittel Europa, with its Berlin-Bagdad
-designs, would, whatever its dangers otherwise, have given us a vastly
-greater area of co-ordinated production, an area approaching that of the
-United States; it would have ensured the effective co-operation of
-populations greatly in excess of those of the United States. Whatever
-else might have happened, there would have been no destruction by famine
-of the populations concerned if some such plan of organised production
-had materialised. The old Austria at least ensured for the children
-physical health and education, for the peasants work in their fields, in
-security; and although denial of full national rights was doubtless an
-evil thing, it still left free a vast field of human activities--those
-of the family, of productive labour, of religion, music, art, love,
-laughter.
-
-A Europe of small 'absolute' nationalisms threatens to make these things
-impossible. We have no standard, unhappily, by which we can appraise the
-moral loss and gain in the exchange of the European life of July, 1914,
-for that which Europe now faces and is likely to face in the coming
-years. But if we cannot measure or weigh the moral value of absolute
-nationalism, the present situation does enable us to judge in some
-measure the degree of security achieved for the principle of
-nationality, and to what extent it may be menaced by the economic needs
-of the millions of Europe. And one is impelled to ask whether
-nationality is not threatened by a danger far greater than any it had to
-meet in the old Europe, in the anarchy and chaos that nationalism itself
-is at present producing.
-
-The greater States, like Germany, may conceivably manage somehow to find
-a _modus vivendi_. A self-sufficing State may perhaps be developed (a
-fact which will enable Germany at one and the same time to escape the
-payment of reparations and to defy future blockades). But that will mean
-embittered nationalism. The sense of exclusion and resentment will
-remain.
-
-The need of Germany for outside raw materials and food may, as the
-result of this effort to become self-sufficing, prove less than the
-above considerations might suggest. But unhappily, assumed need can be
-as patent a motive in international politics as real need. Our recent
-acquiescence in the independence of Egypt would imply that our need for
-persistent occupation was not as great as we supposed. Yet the desire to
-remain in Egypt helped to shape our foreign policy during a whole
-generation, and played no small part in the bargaining with France over
-Morocco which widened the gulf between ourselves and Germany.
-
-The preservation of the principle of nationality depends upon making it
-subject at least to some form of internationalism. If 'self-determination'
-means the right to condemn other peoples to death by starvation, then
-that principle cannot survive. The Balkanisation of Europe, turning it
-into a cauldron of rival 'absolute' nationalisms, does not mean safety
-for the principle of nationality, it means its ultimate destruction
-either by anarchy or by the autocratic domination of the great
-Powers. The problem is to reconcile national right and international
-obligation. That will mean a discipline of the national impulse, and
-of the instincts of domination which so readily attach themselves to
-it. The recognition of economic needs will certainly help towards such
-discipline. However 'materialistic' it may be to recognise the right of
-others to life, that recognition makes a sounder foundation for human
-society than do the instinctive impulses of mystic nationalism.
-
-Until we have managed somehow to create an economic code or comity which
-makes the sovereignty of each nationality subject to the general need of
-the whole body of organised society, this struggle, in which nationality
-is for ever threatened, will go on.
-
-The alternatives were very clearly stated on the other side of the
-Atlantic:--
-
-'The underlying assumption heretofore has been that a nation's security
-and prosperity rest chiefly upon its own strength and resources. Such an
-assumption has been used to justify statesmen in attempting, on the
-ground of the supreme need for national security, to increase their own
-nation's power and resources by insistence upon strategic frontiers,
-territory with raw material, outlets to the sea, even though that course
-does violence to the security and prosperity of others. Under any system
-in which adequate defence rests upon individual preponderance of power,
-the security of one must involve the insecurity of another, and must
-inevitably give rise to covert or overt competitions for power and
-territory, dangerous to peace and destructive to justice.
-
-'Under such a system of competitive as opposed to co-operative
-nationalism, the smaller nationalities can never be really secure.
-International commitments of some kind there must be. The price of
-secure nationality is some degree of internationalism.
-
-'The problem is to modify the conditions that lead to war. It will be
-quite inadequate to establish courts of arbitration or of law if they
-have to arbitrate or judge on the basis of the old laws and practices.
-These have proved insufficient.
-
-'It is obvious that any plan ensuring national security and equality of
-opportunity will involve a limitation of national sovereignty. States
-possessing ports that are the natural outlet of a hinterland occupied by
-another people, will perhaps regard it as an intolerable invasion of
-their independence if their sovereignty over those ports is not absolute
-but limited by the obligation to permit of their use by a foreign and
-possibly rival people on equal terms. States possessing territories in
-Africa or Asia inhabited by populations in a backward state of
-development, have generally heretofore looked for privileged and
-preferential treatment of their own industry and commerce in those
-territories. Great interests will be challenged, some sacrifice of
-national pride demanded, and the hostility of political factions in some
-countries will be aroused.
-
-'Yet if, after the War, States are to be shut out from the sea; if
-rapidly expanding populations find themselves excluded from raw
-materials indispensable to their prosperity; if the privileges and
-preferences enjoyed by States with overseas territories place the less
-powerful States at a disadvantage, we shall have re-established potent
-motives for that competition for political power which, in the past, has
-been so large an element in the causation of war and the subjugation of
-weaker peoples. The ideal of the security of all nations and "equality
-of opportunity" will have failed of realisation.'[34]
-
-
-_The Balance of Power and Defence of Law and Nationality._
-
-'Why were you so whole-soully for this war?' asked the interviewer of Mr
-Lloyd George.
-
-'Belgium,' was the reply.
-
-The Prime Minister of the morrow continued:--
-
-     'The Saturday after war had actually been declared on the Continent
-     (Saturday, 1st August), a poll of the electors of Great Britain
-     would have shown ninety-five per cent. against embroiling this
-     country in hostilities. Powerful city financiers whom it was my
-     duty to interview this Saturday on the financial situation, ended
-     the conference with an earnest hope that Britain would keep out of
-     it. A poll on the following Tuesday would have resulted in a vote
-     of ninety-nine per cent. in favour of war.
-
-     'What had happened in the meantime? The revolution in public
-     sentiment was attributable entirely to an attack made by Germany on
-     a small and unprotected country, which had done her no wrong, and
-     what Britain was not prepared to do for interests political and
-     commercial, she readily risked to help the weak and helpless. Our
-     honour as a nation is involved in this war, because we are bound in
-     an honourable obligation to defend the independence, the liberty,
-     the integrity of a small neighbour that has lived peaceably; but
-     she could not have compelled us, being weak. The man who declined
-     to discharge his debt because his creditor is too poor to enforce
-     it, is a blackguard.'
-
-A little later, in the same interview, Mr Lloyd George, after allusion
-to German misrepresentations, said:--
-
-     'But this I know is true--after the guarantee given that the German
-     fleet would not attack the coast of France or annex any French
-     territory, _I_ would not have been party to a declaration of war,
-     had Belgium not been invaded, and I think I can say the same thing
-     for most, if not all, of my colleagues. If Germany had been wise,
-     she would not have set foot on Belgian soil. The Liberal Government
-     then would not have intervened. Germany made a grave mistake.'[35]
-
-This interview compels several very important conclusions. One, perhaps
-the most important--and the most hopeful--is profoundly creditable to
-English popular instinct and not so creditable to Mr Lloyd George.
-
-If Mr Lloyd George is speaking the truth (it is difficult to find just
-the phrase which shall express one's meaning and be Parliamentary), if
-he believes it would have been entirely safe for Great Britain to have
-kept out of the War provided only that the invasion of Belgium could
-have been prevented, then indeed is the account against the Cabinet, of
-which he was then a member and (after modifications in it) was shortly
-to become the head, a heavy one. I shall not pursue here the inquiry
-whether in point of simple political fact, Belgium was the sole cause of
-our entrance into the War, because I don't suppose anybody believes it.
-But--and here Mr Lloyd George almost certainly does speak the truth--the
-English people gave their whole-souled support to the war because they
-believed it to be for a cause of which Belgium was the shining example
-and symbol: the right of the small nation to the same consideration as
-the great. That objective may not have been the main inspiration of the
-Governments: it was the main moral inspiration of the British people,
-the sentiment which the Government exploited, and to which it mainly
-appealed.
-
-'The purpose of the Allies in this War,' said Mr Asquith, 'is to pave
-the way for an international system which will secure the principle of
-equal rights for all civilised States ... to render secure the principle
-that international problems must be handled by free people and that
-their settlement shall no longer be hampered and swayed by the
-overmastering dictation of a Government controlled by a military
-caste.' We should not sheathe the sword 'until the rights of the smaller
-nationalities of Europe are placed upon an unassailable foundation.'
-Professor Headlam (an ardent upholder of the Balance of Power, by the
-way), in a book that is characteristic of the early war literature, says
-the cardinal principles for which the War was fought were two: first,
-that Europe is, and should remain, divided between independent national
-States, and, second, that subject to the condition that it did not
-threaten or interfere with the security of other States, each country
-should have full and complete control over its own affairs.
-
-How far has our victory achieved that object? Is the policy which our
-power supported before the War--and still supports--compatible with it?
-Does it help to strengthen the national security of Belgium, and other
-weak States like Yugo-Slavia, Poland, Albania, Finland, the Russian
-Border States, China?
-
-It is here suggested, first, that our commitments under the Balance of
-Power policy which we had espoused[36] deprived our national force of
-any preventive effectiveness whatever in so far as the invasion of
-Belgium was concerned, and secondly, that our post-war policy, which is
-also in fact a Balance of Power policy is betraying in like fashion the
-cause of the small State.
-
-It is further suggested that the very nature of the operation of the
-Balance of Power policy sets up in practice a conflict of obligation: if
-our power is pledged to the support of one particular group, like the
-Franco-Russian group of 1914, it cannot also be pledged to the support,
-honestly and impartially, of a general principle of European law.
-
-We were drawn into the War, Mr Lloyd George tells us, to vindicate the
-integrity of Belgium. Very good. We know what happened in the
-negotiations. Germany wanted very much to know what would induce us to
-keep out of the War. Would we keep out of the War if Germany refrained
-from crossing the Belgian frontier? Such an assurance, giving Germany
-the strongest material reasons for not invading Belgium, converting a
-military reason (the only reason, we are told, that Germany would listen
-to) for that offence into an immensely powerful military reason against
-it, could not be given. In order to be able to maintain the Balance of
-Power against Germany we must 'keep our hands free.'
-
-It is not a question here of Germany's trustworthiness, but of using her
-sense of self-interest to secure our object of the protection of
-Belgium. The party in the German councils opposed to the invasion would
-say: 'If you invade Belgium you will have to meet the hostility of Great
-Britain. If you don't, you will escape that hostility.' To which the
-general staff was able to reply: 'Britain's Balance of Power policy
-means that you will have to meet the enmity of Britain in any case. In
-terms of expediency, it does not matter whether you go through Belgium
-or not.'
-
-The fact that the principle of the 'Balance' compelled us to support
-France, whether Germany respected the Treaty of 1839 or not, deprived
-our power of any value as a restraint upon German military designs
-against Belgium. There was, in fact, a conflict of obligations: the
-obligations to the Balance of Power rendered that to the support of the
-Treaty of no avail in terms of protection. If the object of force is to
-compel observance of law on the part of those who will not observe it
-otherwise, that object is defeated by the entanglements of the Balance
-of Power.
-
-Sir Edward Grey's account of that stage of the negotiations at which the
-question of Belgium was raised, is quite clear and simple. The German
-Ambassador asked him 'whether, if Germany gave a promise not to violate
-Belgian neutrality, we would engage to remain neutral.' 'I replied,'
-writes Sir Edward, 'that I could not say that; our hands were still
-free, and we were considering what our attitude should be. I did not
-think that we could give a promise of neutrality on that condition
-alone. The Ambassador pressed me as to whether I could not formulate
-conditions on which we would remain neutral. He even suggested that the
-integrity of France and her Colonies might be guaranteed. I said that I
-felt obliged to refuse definitely any promise to remain neutral on
-similar terms, and I could only say that we must keep our hands free.'
-
-'If language means anything,' comments Lord Loreburn,[37] 'this means
-that whereas Mr Gladstone bound this country to war in order to
-safeguard Belgian neutrality, Sir Edward would not even bind this
-country to neutrality to save Belgium. He may have been right, but it
-was not for the sake of Belgian interests that he refused.'
-
-Compare our experience, and the attitude of Sir Edward Grey in 1914,
-when we were concerned to maintain the Balance of Power, with our
-experience and Mr Gladstone's behaviour when precisely the same problem
-of protecting Belgium was raised in 1870. In these circumstances Mr
-Gladstone proposed both to France and to Prussia a treaty by which Great
-Britain undertook that, if either of the belligerents should in the
-course of that war violate the neutrality of Belgium, Great Britain
-would co-operate with the other belligerent in defence of the same,
-'employing for that purpose her naval and military forces to ensure its
-observance.' In this way both France and Germany knew and the whole
-world knew, that invasion of Belgium meant war with Great Britain.
-Whichever belligerent violated the neutrality must reckon with the
-consequences. Both France and Prussia signed that Treaty. Belgium was
-saved.
-
-Lord Loreborn (_How the War Came_) says of the incident:--
-
-     'This policy, which proved a complete success in 1870, indicated
-     the way in which British power could effectively protect Belgium
-     against an unscrupulous neighbour. But then it is a policy which
-     cannot be adopted unless this country is itself prepared to make
-     war against either of the belligerents which shall molest Belgium.
-     For the inducement to each of such belligerents is the knowledge
-     that he will have Great Britain as an enemy if he invades Belgium,
-     and as an Ally if his enemy attacks him through Belgian territory.
-     And that cannot be a security unless Great Britain keeps herself
-     free to give armed assistance to either should the other violate
-     the Treaty. The whole leverage would obviously disappear if we took
-     sides in the war on other grounds.'[38]
-
-This, then, is an illustration of the truth above insisted upon: to
-employ our force for the maintenance of the Balance of Power is to
-deprive it of the necessary impartiality for the maintenance of Right.
-
-Much more clear even than in the case of Belgium was the conflict in
-certain other cases between the claims of the Balance of Power and our
-obligation to place 'the rights of the smaller nationalities of Europe
-upon an unassailable foundation' which Mr Asquith proclaimed as the
-object of the War.
-
-The archetype of suppressed nationality was Poland; a nation with an
-ancient culture, a passionate and romantic attachment to its ancient
-traditions, which had simply been wiped off the map. If ever there was a
-case of nation-murder it was this. And one of the culprits--perhaps the
-chief culprit--was Russia. To-day the Allies, notably France, stand as
-the champions of Polish nationality. But as late as 1917, as part of
-that kind of bargain which inevitably marks the old type of diplomatic
-Alliance, France was agreeing to hand over Poland, helpless, to her old
-jailer, the Czarist Government. In March, 1916, the Russian Ambassador
-in Paris was instructed that, at the then impending diplomatic
-conference[39]
-
-     'It is above all necessary to demand that the Polish question
-     should be excluded from the subjects of international negotiation,
-     and that all attempts to place Poland's future under the guarantee
-     and control of the Powers should be prevented.'
-
-On February 12th, 1917, the Russian Foreign Minister informed the
-Russian Ambassador that M. Doumergue (French Ambassador in Petrograd)
-had told the Czar of France's wish to get Alsace-Lorraine at the end of
-the War, and also 'a special position in the Saar Valley, and to bring
-about the detachment from Germany of the territories west of the Rhine
-and their reorganisation in such a way that in future the Rhine may form
-a permanent strategic obstacle to any German advance.' The Czar was
-pleased to express his approval in principle of this proposal.
-Accordingly the Russian Foreign Minister expressed his wish that an
-Agreement by exchange of Notes should take place on this subject, and
-desired that if Russia agreed to the unrestricted right of France and
-Britain to fix Germany's western frontiers, so Russia was to have an
-assurance of freedom of action in fixing Germany's future frontier on
-the east. (This means the Russian western frontier.)[40]
-
-Or take the case of Serbia, the oppressed nationality whose struggle for
-freedom against Austria was the immediate cause of the War. It was
-because Russia would not permit Austria to do with reference to Serbia,
-what Russia claimed the right to do with reference to Poland, that the
-latter made of the Austrian policy a _casus belli_.
-
-Very well. We stood at least for the vindication of Serbian nationality.
-But the 'Balance' demanded that we should win Italy to our side of the
-scale. She had to be paid. So on April 20th, 1915, without informing
-Serbia, Sir Edward Grey signed a Treaty (the last article of which
-stipulated that it should be kept secret) giving to Italy the whole of
-Dalmatia, in its present extent, together with the islands north and
-west of the Dalmatian coast and Istria as far as the Quarnero and the
-Istrian Islands. That Treaty placed under Italian rule whole populations
-of Southern Slavs, creating inevitably a Southern Slav irredentism, and
-put the Yugo-Slavia, that we professed to be creating, under the same
-kind of economic disability which it had suffered from the Austrian
-Empire. One is not astonished to find Signor Salandra describing the
-principles which should guide his policy as 'a freedom from all
-preoccupations and prejudices, and from every sentiment except that of
-"Sacred egoism" (_sacro egoismo_) for Italy.'
-
-To-day, it need hardly be said, there is bitter hatred between our
-Serbian Ally and our Italian Ally, and most patriotic Yugo-Slavs regard
-war with Italy one day as inevitable.[41] Yet, assuredly, Sir Edward
-Grey is not to be blamed. If allegiance to the Balance of Power was to
-come first, allegiance to any principle, of nationality or of anything
-else, must come second.
-
-The moral implications of this political method received another
-illustration in the case of the Rumanian Treaty. Its nature is indicated
-in the Report of General Polivanov, amongst the papers published at
-Petrograd and dated 7th-20th November, 1916. It explains how Rumania was
-at first a neutral, but shifting between different inclinations--a wish
-not to come in too late for the partition of Austria-Hungary, and a wish
-to earn as much as possible at the expense of the belligerents. At
-first, according to this Report, she favoured our enemies and had
-obtained very favourable commercial agreements with Germany and
-Austria-Hungary. Then in 1916, on the Russian successes under Brusilov,
-she inclined to the Entente Powers. The Russian Chief of the Staff
-thought Rumanian neutrality preferable to her intervention, but later on
-General Alexeiev adopted the view of the Allies, 'who looked upon
-Rumania's entry as a decisive blow for Austria-Hungary and as the
-nearing of the War's end.' So in August, 1916, an agreement was signed
-with Rumania (by whom it was signed is not stated), assigning to her
-Bukovina and all Transylvania. 'The events which followed,' says the
-report, 'showed how greatly our Allies were mistaken and how they
-overvalued Rumania's entry.' In fact, Rumania was in a brief time
-utterly overthrown. And then Polivanov points out that the collapse of
-Rumania's plans as a Great Power 'is not particularly opposed to
-Russia's interests.'
-
-One might follow up this record and see how far the method of the
-Balance has protected the small and weak nation in the case of Albania,
-whose partition was arranged for in April, 1915, under the Treaty of
-London; in the case of Macedonia and the Bulgarian Macedonians; in the
-case of Western Thrace, of the Serbian Banat, of the Bulgar Dobrudja, of
-the Southern Tyrol, of German Bohemia, of Shantung--of still further
-cases in which we were compelled to change or modify or betray the cause
-for which we entered the War in order to maintain the preponderance of
-power by which we could achieve military success.
-
-The moral paralysis exemplified in this story is already infecting our
-nascent efforts at creating a society of nations--witness the relation
-of the League with Poland. No one in 1920 justified the Polish claims
-made against Russia. Our own communications to Russia described them as
-'imperialistic.' The Prime Minister condemned them in unmeasured terms.
-Poland was a member of the League. Her supplies of arms and ammunition,
-military stores, credit, were obtained by the grace of the chief members
-of the League. The only port by which arms could enter Poland was a city
-under the special control of the League. An appeal was made to the
-League to take steps to prevent the Polish adventure. Lord Robert Cecil
-advocated the course with particular urgency. The Soviet Government
-itself, while Poland was preparing, appealed to the chief constitutional
-governments of the League for some preventive action. Why was none
-taken? Because the Balance of Power demanded that we should 'stand by
-France,' and Polish Imperialism was part of the policy quite overtly and
-deliberately laid down by M. Clemenceau, who, with a candour entirely
-admirable, expressed his preference for the old system of alliances as
-against the newfangled Society of Nations. We could not restrain Poland
-and at the same time fulfil our Alliance obligations to France, who was
-supporting the Polish policy.[42]
-
-By reason of the grip of this system we supported (while proclaiming the
-sacredness of the cause of oppressed nationalities) or acquiesced in the
-policy of Czarist Russia against Poland, and incidentally Finland; we
-supported Poland against republican Russia; we encouraged the creation
-of small border States as means of fighting Soviet Russia, while we
-aided Koltchak and Denikin, who would undoubtedly if successful have
-suppressed the border States. We supported the Southern Slavs against
-Austria when we desired to destroy the latter; we supported Italy (in
-secret treaties) against the Southern Slavs when we desired the help of
-the former. Violations and repressions of nationality which, when
-committed by the enemy States, we declared should excite the deathless
-resistance of all free men and call down the punishment of Heaven, we
-acquiesce in and are silent about when committed by our Allies.
-
-This was the Fight for Right, the war to vindicate the moral law in the
-relations of States.
-
-The political necessities of the Balance of Power have prevented the
-country from pledging its power, untrammelled, to the maintenance of
-Right. The two objects are in theory and practice incompatible. The
-Balance of Power is in fact an assertion of the principle of
-_Macht-Politik_, of the principle that Might makes Right.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-MILITARY PREDOMINANCE--AND INSECURITY
-
-
-The War revealed this: However great the military power of a State, as
-in the case of France; however great its territorial extent, as in the
-case of the British Empire; or its economic resources and geographical
-isolation as in the case of the United States, the conditions of the
-present international order compel that State to resort to Alliance as
-an indispensable part of its military defence. And the peace reveals
-this: that no Alliance can long resist the disruptive forces of
-nationalist psychology. So rapid indeed has been the disintegration of
-the Alliance that fought this War, that, from this one cause, the power
-indispensable for carrying out the Treaty imposed upon the enemy has on
-the morrow of victory already disappeared.
-
-So much became patent in the year that followed the signing of the
-Treaty. The fact bears of course fundamentally upon the question of the
-use of political power for those economic ends discussed in the
-preceding pages. If the economic policy of the Treaty of Versailles is
-to be carried out, it will in any case demand a preponderance of power
-so immense and secure that the complete political solidarity of the
-Alliance which fought the War must be assumed. It cannot be assumed.
-That Alliance has in fact already gone to pieces; and with it the
-unquestioned preponderance of power.
-
-The fact bears not only upon the use of power for the purpose of
-carrying an economic policy--or some moral end, like the defence of
-Nationality--into effect. The disruptive influence of the Nationalisms
-of which alliances are composed raises the question of how far a
-military preponderance resting on a National foundation can even give us
-political security.
-
-If the moral factors of nationality are, as we have seen, an
-indispensable part of the study of international economics, so must
-those same factors be considered as an indispensable part of the problem
-of the power to be exercised by an alliance.
-
-During the War there was an extraordinary neglect of this simple truth.
-It seemed to occur to no one that the intensification of the psychology
-of nationalism--not only among the lesser States but in France and
-America and England--ran the risk of rendering the Alliance powerless
-after its victory. Yet that is what has happened.
-
-The power of an Alliance (again we are dealing with things that are
-obvious but neglected) does not depend upon the sum of its material
-forces--navies, armies, artillery. It depends upon being able to
-assemble those things to a common purpose; in other words, upon policy
-fit to direct the instrument. If the policy, or certain moral elements
-within it, are such that one member of the Alliance is likely to turn
-his arms against the others, the extent of _his_ armament does not add
-to the strength of the Alliance. It was with ammunition furnished by
-Britain and France that Russia in 1919 and 1920 destroyed British and
-French troops. The present building of an enormous navy by America is
-not accepted in Britain as necessarily adding to the security of the
-British Empire.
-
-It is worth while to note how utterly fallacious are certain almost
-universal assumptions concerning the relation of war psychology to the
-problem of alliance solidarity. An English visitor to the United States
-(or an American visitor to England) during the years 1917-1918 was apt
-to be deluged by a flood of rhetoric to this effect: The blood shed on
-the same battle-fields, the suffering shared in common in the same
-common cause, would unite and cement as nothing had ever yet united the
-two great branches of the English-speaking race, destined by
-Providence....
-
-But the same visitor moving in the same circle less than two years later
-found that this eternal cement of friendship had already lost its
-potency. Never, perhaps, for generations were Anglo-American relations
-so bad as they had become within a score or so of months of the time
-that Englishmen and Americans were dying side by side on the
-battle-field. At the beginning of 1921, in the United States, it was
-easier, on a public platform, to defend Germany than to present a
-defence of English policy in Ireland or in India. And at that period one
-might hear commonly enough in England, in trams and railway carriages, a
-repetition of the catch phrase, 'America next.' If certain popular
-assumptions as to war psychology were right, these things would be
-impossible.
-
-Yet, as a matter of fact, the psychological phenomenon is true to type.
-It was not an accident that the internationalist America of 1915, of
-'Peace without Victory,' should by 1918 have become more fiercely
-insistent upon absolute victory and unconditional surrender than any
-other of the belligerents, whose emotions had found some outlet during
-three years of war before America had begun. The complete reversal of
-the 'Peace without Victory' attitude was demanded--cultivated,
-deliberately produced--as a necessary part of war morale. But these
-emotions of coercion and domination cannot be intensively cultivated and
-then turned off as by a tap. They made America fiercely nationalist,
-with necessarily a temperamental distaste for the internationalism of Mr
-Wilson. And when a mere year of war left the emotional hungers
-unsatisfied, they turned unconsciously to other satisfactions. Twenty
-million Americans of Irish descent or association, among others,
-utilised the opportunity.
-
-One feature--perhaps the very largest feature of all--of war morale, had
-been the exploitation of the German atrocities. The burning of Louvain,
-and other reprisals upon the Belgian civilian population, meant
-necessarily a special wickedness on the part of a definite entity, known
-as 'Germany,' that had to be crushed, punished, beaten, wiped out. There
-were no distinctions. The plea that all were not equally guilty excited
-the fierce anger reserved for all such 'pacifist' and pro-German pleas.
-A German woman had laughed at a wounded American: all German women were
-monsters. 'No good German but a dead German.' It was in the German blood
-and grey matter. The elaborate stories--illustrated--of Germans sticking
-bayonets into Belgian children produced a thesis which was beyond and
-above reason or explanation: for that atrocity, 'Germany'--seventy
-million people, ignorant peasants, driven workmen, the babies, the
-invalids, the old women gathering sticks in the forest, the children
-trooping to school--all were guilty. To state the thing in black and
-white sounds like a monstrous travesty. But it is not a travesty. It is
-the thesis we, too, maintained; but in America it had, in the American
-way, an over simplification and an extra emphasis.
-
-And then after the War an historical enemy of America's does precisely
-the same thing. In the story of Amritsar and the Irish reprisals it is
-the Indian and Sinn Fein version only which is told; just as during the
-War we got nothing but the anti-German version of the burning of
-Louvain, or reprisals upon civilians. Why should we expect that the
-result should be greatly different upon American opinion? Four hundred
-unarmed and hopeless people, women and children as well as men, are mown
-down by machine-guns. Or, in the Irish reprisals, a farmer is shot in
-the presence of his wife and children. The Government defends the
-soldiers. 'Britain' has done this thing: forty-five millions of people,
-of infinitely varying degrees of responsibility, many opposing it, many
-ignorant of it, almost all entirely helpless. To represent them as
-inhuman monsters because of these atrocities is an infinitely
-mischievous falsehood. But it is made possible by a theory, which in the
-case of Germany we maintained for years as essentially true. And now it
-is doing as between Britain and America what a similar falsehood did as
-between Germany and England, and will go on doing so long as Nationalism
-includes conceptions of collective responsibility which fly in the face
-of common sense and truth. If the resultant hostilities can operate as
-between two national groups like the British and the American, what
-groups can be free of them?
-
-It is a little difficult now, two years after the end of the War, with
-the world in its present turmoil, to realise that we really did expect
-the defeat of Germany to inaugurate an era of peace and security, of
-reduction of armaments, the virtual end of war; and believed that it was
-German militarism, 'that trampling, drilling foolery in the heart of
-Europe, that has arrested civilisation and darkened the hopes of mankind
-for forty years,'[43] as Mr Wells wrote in _The War that will End War_,
-which accounted for nearly all the other militarisms, and that after its
-destruction we could anticipate 'the end of the armament phase of
-European history.' For, explained Mr Wells, 'France, Italy, England, and
-all the smaller Powers of Europe are now pacific countries; Russia,
-after this huge War, will be too exhausted for further adventure.'[44]
-
-'When will peace come?' asked Professor Headlam, and answered that
-
-     'It will come when Germany has learnt the lesson of the War, when
-     it has learnt, as every other nation has had to learn, that the
-     voice of Europe cannot be defied with impunity.... Men talk about
-     the terms of peace. They matter little. With a Germany victorious
-     no terms could secure the future of Europe, with a Germany
-     defeated, no artificial securities will be wanted, for there will
-     be a stronger security in the consciousness of defeat.'[45]
-
-There were to be no limits to the political or economic rearrangements
-which victory would enable us to effect. Very authoritative military
-critics like Mr Hilaire Belloc became quite angry and contemptuous at
-the suggestion that the defeat of the enemy would not enable us to
-rearrange Europe at our will. The doctrine that unlimited power was
-inherent in victory was thus stated by Mr Belloc:--
-
-     'It has been well said that the most straightforward and obvious
-     conclusions on the largest lines of military policy are those of
-     which it is most difficult to convince a general audience; and we
-     find in this matter a singular miscalculation running through the
-     attitude of many Western publicists. They speak as though, whatever
-     might happen in the West, the Alliance, which is fighting for
-     European civilisation, the Western Allies and the United States,
-     could not now affect the destinies of Eastern Europe....
-
-     Such an attitude is, upon the simplest principles of military
-     science, a grotesque error.... If we are victorious ... the
-     destruction of the enemy's military power gives us as full an
-     opportunity for deciding the fate of Eastern Europe as it does for
-     deciding the fate of Western Europe. Victory gained by the Allies
-     will decide the fate of all Europe, and, for that matter, of the
-     whole world. It will open the Baltic and the Black Sea. It will
-     leave us masters with the power to dictate in what fashion the new
-     boundaries shall be arranged, how the entries to the Eastern
-     markets shall be kept open, garrisoned and guaranteed....
-
-     Wherever they are defeated, whether upon the line they now hold or
-     upon other lines, their defeat and our victory will leave us with
-     complete power. If that task be beyond our strength, then
-     civilisation has suffered defeat, and there is the end of it.'
-
-German power was to be destroyed as the condition of saving
-civilisation. Mr Belloc wrote:--
-
-     'If by some negotiation (involving of course the evacuation of the
-     occupied districts in the West) the enemy remains undefeated,
-     civilised Europe has lost the war and Prussia has won it.'[46]
-
-Such was the simple and popular thesis. Germany, criminal and barbarian,
-challenged Europe, civilised and law-abiding. Civilisation can only
-assert itself by the punishment of Germany and save itself by the
-destruction of German power. Once the German military power is
-destroyed, Europe can do with Germany what it will.
-
-I suggest that the experience of the last two years, and our own present
-policy, constitute an admission or demonstration, first, that the moral
-assumption of this thesis--that the menace of German power was due to
-some special wickedness on the part of the German nation not shared by
-other peoples in any degree--is false; and, secondly, that the
-destruction of Germany's military force gives to Europe no such power to
-control Germany.
-
-Our power over Germany becomes every day less:
-
-First, by the break-up of the Alliance. The 'sacred egoisms' which
-produced the War are now disrupting the Allies. The most potentially
-powerful European member of the Alliance or Association--Russia--has
-become an enemy; the most powerful member of all, America, has withdrawn
-from co-operation; Italy is in conflict with one Ally, Japan with
-another.
-
-Secondly, by the more extended Balkanisation of Europe. The States
-utilised by (for instance) France as the instruments of Allied policy
-(Poland, Hungary, Ukrainia, Rumania, Czecho-Slovakia) are liable to
-quarrel among themselves. The groups rendered hostile to Allied
-policy--Germany, Russia, China--are much larger, and might well once
-more become cohesive units. The Nationalism which is a factor of Allied
-disintegration may nevertheless work for the consolidation of the groups
-opposed to us.
-
-Thirdly, by the economic disorganisation of Europe (resulting mainly
-from the desire to weaken the enemy), which deprives the Alliance of
-economic resources sufficient for a military task like that of the
-conquest of Russia or the occupation of Germany.
-
-Fourthly, by the social unrest within each country (itself due in part
-to the economic disorganisation, in part to the introduction of the
-psychology of jingoism into the domain of industrial strife):
-Bolshevism. A long war of intervention in Russia by the Alliance would
-have broken down under the strain of internal unrest in Allied
-countries.
-
-The Alliance thus succumbs to the clash of Nationalisms and the clash of
-classes.
-
-These moral factors render the purpose which will be given to
-accumulated military force--'the direction in which the guns will
-shoot'--so uncertain that the amount of material power available is no
-indication of the degree of security attained.
-
-If it were true, as we argued so universally before and during the War,
-that German power was the final cause of the armament rivalry in Europe,
-then the disappearance of that power should mark, as so many prophesied
-it would mark, the end of the 'armament era.'[47] Has it done so? Or
-does any one to-day seriously argue that the increase of armament
-expenditure over the pre-war period is in some mystic way due to
-Prussian militarism?
-
-Let us turn to a _Times_ leader in the summer of 1920:--
-
-     'To-day the condition of Europe and of a large portion of the world
-     is scarcely less critical than it was six years ago. Within a few
-     days, or at most a few weeks, we may know whether the Peace Treaty
-     signed at Versailles will possess effective validity. The
-     independent existence of Poland, which is a keystone of the
-     reorganisation of Europe contemplated by the Treaty, is in grave
-     peril; and with it, though perhaps not in the manner currently
-     imagined in Germany, is jeopardised the present situation of
-     Germany herself.
-
-... There is undoubtedly a widespread plot against Western
-     civilisation as we know it, and probably against British liberal
-     institutions as a principal mainstay of that civilisation. Yet if
-     our institutions, and Western civilisation with them, are to
-     withstand the present onslaught, they must be defended.... We never
-     doubted the staunchness and vigour of England six years ago, and we
-     doubt them as little to-day.'[48]
-
-And so we must have even larger armaments than ever. Field-Marshal Earl
-Haig and Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson in England, Marshal Foch in
-France, General Leonard Wood in America, all urge that it will be
-indispensable to maintain our armaments at more than the pre-war scale.
-The ink of the Armistice was barely dry before the _Daily Mail_
-published a long interview with Marshal Foch[49] in the course of which
-the Generalissimo enlarged on the 'inevitability' of war in the future
-and the need of being 'prepared for it.' Lord Haig, in his Rectorial
-Address at St Andrews (May 14th, 1919) followed with the plea that as
-'the seeds of future conflict are to be found in every quarter, only
-waiting the right condition, moral, economic, political, to burst once
-more into activity,' every man in the country must immediately be
-trained for war. The _Mail_, supporting his plea, said:--
-
-     'We all desire peace, but we cannot, even in the hour of complete
-     victory, disregard the injunction uttered by our first soldier,
-     that "only by adequate preparation for war can peace in every way
-     be guaranteed."
-
-     '"A strong citizen army on strong territorial lines," is the advice
-     Sir Douglas Haig urges on the country. A system providing twelve
-     months' military training for every man in the country should be
-     seriously thought of.... Morally and physically the War has shown
-     us that the effect of discipline upon the youths of the country is
-     an asset beyond calculation.'
-
-So that the victory which was to end the 'trampling and drilling
-foolery' is made a plea for the institution of permanent conscription in
-England, where, before the victory, it did not exist.
-
-The admission involved in this recommendation, the admission that
-destruction of German power has failed to give us security, is as
-complete as it well could be.
-
-If this was merely the exuberant zeal of professional soldiers, we might
-perhaps disregard these declarations. But the conviction of the soldiers
-is reflected in the policy of the Government. At a time when the
-financial difficulties of all the Allied countries are admittedly
-enormous, when the bankruptcy of some is a contingency freely discussed,
-and when the need of economy is the refrain everywhere, there is not an
-Allied State which is not to-day spending more upon military and naval
-preparations than it was spending before the destruction of the German
-power began. America is preparing to build a bigger fleet than she has
-ever had in her history[50]--a larger fleet than the German armada,
-which was for most Englishmen perhaps the decisive demonstration of
-Germany's hostile intent. Britain on her side has at present a larger
-naval budget than that of the year which preceded the War; while for the
-new war instrument of aviation she has a building programme more costly
-than the shipbuilding programmes of pre-war time. France is to-day
-spending more on her army than before the War; spending, indeed, upon it
-now a sum larger than that which she spent upon the whole of her
-Government when German militarism was undestroyed.
-
-Despite all this power possessed by the members of the Alliance, the
-predominant note in current political criticism is that Germany is
-evading the execution of the Treaty of Versailles, that in the payment
-of the indemnity, the punishment of military criminals, and disarmament,
-the Treaty is a dead letter, and the Allies are powerless. As the
-_Times_ reminds us, the very keystone of the Treaty, in the independence
-of Poland, trembles.
-
-It is not difficult to recall the fashion in which we thought and wrote
-of the German menace before and during the War. The following from _The
-New Europe_ (which had taken as its device 'La Victoire Integrale') will
-be recognised as typical:--
-
-     'It is of vital importance to us to understand, not only Germany's
-     aims, but the process by which she hopes to carry them through. If
-     Germany wins, she will not rest content with this victory. Her next
-     object will be to prepare for further victories both in Asia and in
-     Central and Western Europe.
-
-     'Those who still cherish the belief that Prussia is pacifist show a
-     profound misunderstanding of her psychology.... On this point the
-     Junkers have been frank: those who have not been frank are the
-     wiseacres who try to persuade us that we can moderate their
-     attitude by making peace with them. If they would only pay a
-     little more attention to the Junkers' avowed objects, and a little
-     less attention to their own theories about those objects, they
-     would be more useful guides to public opinion in this country,
-     which finds itself hopelessly at sea on the subject of Prussianism.
-
-     'What then are Germany's objects? What is likely to be her view of
-     the general situation in Europe at the present moment?... Whatever
-     modifications she may have introduced into her immediate programme,
-     she still clings to her desire to overthrow our present
-     civilisation in Europe, and to introduce her own on the ruins of
-     the old order....
-
-     'Buoyed up by recent successes ... her offers of peace will become
-     more insistent and more difficult to refuse. Influences will
-     clamour for the resumption of peace on economic and financial
-     grounds.... We venture to say that it will be very difficult for
-     any Government to resist this pressure, and, _unless the danger of
-     coming to terms with Germany is very clearly and strongly put
-     before the public, we may find ourselves caught in the snares that
-     Germany has for a long time past been laying for us_.
-
-... 'We shall be told that once peace is concluded the Junkers will
-     become moderate, and all those who wish to believe this will
-     readily accept it without further question.
-
-     'But, while we in our innocence may be priding ourselves on the
-     conclusion of peace to Germany it will not be a peace, but a
-     "respite." ... This "respite" will be exceedingly useful to Germany
-     not only for propaganda purposes, but in order to replenish her
-     exhausted resources necessary for future aggression. Meanwhile
-     German activities in Asia and Ireland are likely to continue
-     unabated until the maximum inconvenience to England has been
-     produced.'
-
-If the reader will carry his mind back a couple of years, he will recall
-having read numberless articles similar to the above, concerning the
-duty of annihilating the power of Germany.
-
-Well, will the reader note that _the above does not refer to Germany at
-all, but to Russia_? I have perpetrated a little forgery for his
-enlightenment. In order to bring home the rapidity with which a change
-of roles can be accomplished, an article warning us against any peace
-with _Russia_, appearing in the _New Europe_ of January 8th, 1920, has
-been reproduced word for word, except that 'Russia' or 'Lenin' has been
-changed to 'Germany' or 'the Junkers,' as the case may be.
-
-Now let us see what this writer has to say as to the German power
-to-day?
-
-Well, he says that the security of civilisation now depends upon the
-restoration, in part at least, of that German power, for the destruction
-of which the world gave twenty million lives. The danger to civilisation
-now is mainly 'the breach between Germany and the West, and the
-rivalries of nationalism.' Lenin, plotting our destruction, relies
-mainly on that:--
-
-     'Above all we may be sure that his attention is concentrated on
-     England and Germany. So long as Germany remains aloof and feelings
-     of bitterness against the Allies are allowed to grow still more
-     acute, Lenin can rub his hands with glee; what he fears more than
-     anything is the first sign that the sores caused by five years of
-     war are being healed, and that England, France, and Germany are
-     preparing to treat one another as neighbours, who have each their
-     several parts to play in the restoration of normal economic
-     conditions in Europe.'
-
-As to the policy of preventing Germany's economic restoration for fear
-that she should once more possess the raw material of military power,
-this writer declares that it is precisely that Carthaginian policy
-(embodied in the Treaty of Versailles) which Lenin would most of all
-desire:--
-
-     'As a trained economist we may be sure that he looks first and
-     foremost at the widespread economic chaos. We can imagine his
-     chuckle of satisfaction when he sees the European exchanges getting
-     steadily worse and national antagonisms growing more acute.
-     Disputes about territorial questions are to him so much grist to
-     the Bolshevik mill, as they all tend to obscure the fundamental
-     question of the economic reconstruction of Europe, without which no
-     country in Europe can consider itself safe from Bolshevism.
-
-     'He must realise to the full the lamentable condition of the
-     finances of the new States in Central and South-east Europe.'
-
-In putting forward these views, The _New Europe_ is by no means alone.
-Already in January, 1920, Mr J. L. Garvin had declared what indeed was
-obvious, that it was out of the question to expect to build a new Europe
-on the simultaneous hostility of Germany _and_ Russia.
-
-     'Let us face the main fact. If there is to be no peace with the
-     Bolshevists _there must be an altogether different understanding
-     with Germany.... For any sure and solid barrier against the
-     external consequences of Bolshevism Germany is essential._'
-
-Barely six months later Mr Winston Churchill, Secretary of State for War
-in the British Cabinet, chooses the _Evening News_, probably the
-arch-Hun-Hater of all the English Press, to open out the new policy of
-Alliance with Germany against Russia. He says:--
-
-     'It will be open to the Germans ... by a supreme effort of
-     sobriety, of firmness, of self-restraint, and of
-     courage--undertaken, as most great exploits have to be, under
-     conditions of peculiar difficulty and discouragement--to build a
-     dyke of peaceful, lawful, patient strength and virtue against the
-     flood of red barbarism flowing from the East, and thus safeguard
-     their own interests and the interests of their principle
-     antagonists in the West.
-
-     'If the Germans were able to render such a service, not by
-     vainglorious military adventure or with ulterior motives, they
-     would unquestionably have taken a giant step upon that path of
-     self-redemption which would lead them surely and swiftly as the
-     years pass by to their own great place in the councils of
-     Christendom, and would have rendered easier the sincere
-     co-operation between Britain, France, and Germany, on which the
-     very salvation of Europe depends.'
-
-So the salvation of Europe depends upon our co-operation with Germany,
-upon a German dyke of 'patient strength.'[51]
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-One wonders why we devoted quite so many lives and so much agony to
-knocking Germany out; and why we furnished quite so much treasure to the
-military equipment of the very Muscovite 'barbarians' who now threaten
-to overflow it.
-
-One wonders also, why, if 'the very salvation of Europe' in July, 1920,
-depends upon sincere co-operation of the Entente with Germany, those
-Allies were a year earlier exacting by force her signature to a Treaty
-which not even its authors pretended was compatible with German
-reconciliation.
-
-If the Germans are to fulfil the role Mr Churchill assigns to them, then
-obviously the Treaty of Versailles must be torn up. If they are to be
-the 'dyke' protecting Western civilisation against the Red military
-flood, it must, according to the Churchillian philosophy, be a military
-dyke: the disarmament clauses must be abolished, as must the other
-clauses--particularly the economic ones--which would make of any people
-suffering from them the bitter enemy of the people that imposed them.
-Our Press is just now full of stories of secret Treaties between Germany
-and Russia against France and England. Whether the stories are true or
-not, it is certain that the effect of the Treaty of Versailles and the
-Allied policy to Russia will be to create a Russo-German understanding.
-And Mr Churchill (phase 1920) has undoubtedly indicated the
-alternatives. If you are going to fight Russia to the death, then you
-must make friends with Germany; if you are going to maintain the Treaty
-of Versailles, then you must make friends with Russia. You must 'trust'
-either the Boche or the Bolshevist.
-
-Popular feeling at this moment (or rather the type of feeling envisaged
-by the Northcliffe Press) won't do either. Boche and Bolshevist alike
-are 'vermin' to be utterly crushed, and any policy implying co-operation
-with either is ruled out. 'Force ... force to the uttermost' against
-both is demanded by the _Times_, the _Daily Mail_, and the various
-evening, weekly, or monthly editions thereof.
-
-Very well. Let us examine the proposal to 'hold down' by force both
-Russia and Germany. Beyond Russia there is Asia, particularly India. The
-_New Europe_ writer reminds us:--
-
-     ' ... If England cannot be subdued by a direct attack, she is, at
-     any rate, vulnerable in Asia, and it is here that Lenin is
-     preparing to deliver his real propaganda offensive. During the last
-     few months more and more attention has been paid to Asiatic
-     propaganda, and this will not be abandoned, no matter what
-     temporary arrangements the Soviet Government may attempt to make
-     with Western Europe. It is here, and here only, that England can be
-     wounded, so that she may be counted out of the forth-coming
-     revolutionary struggle in Europe that Lenin is preparing to engage
-     in at a later date....
-
-     'We should find ourselves so much occupied in maintaining order in
-     Asia that we should have little time or energy left for interfering
-     in Europe.'
-
-As a matter of fact, we know how great are the forces that can be
-absorbed[52] when the territory for subjection stretches from Archangel
-to the Deccan--through Syria, Arabia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia,
-Afghanistan. Our experience in Archangel, Murmansk, Vladivostock, and
-with Koltchak, Denikin, and Wrangel shows that the military method must
-be thorough or it will fail. It is no good hoping that a supply of
-surplus ammunition to a counter-revolutionary general will subdue a
-country like Russia. The only safe and thorough-going plan is complete
-occupation--or a very extended occupation--of both countries. M.
-Clemenceau definitely favoured this course, as did nearly all the
-military-minded groups in England and America, when the Russian policy
-was discussed at the end of 1918 and early in 1919.
-
-Why was that policy not carried out?
-
-The history of the thing is clear enough. That policy would have called
-upon the resources in men and material of the whole of the Alliance, not
-merely those of the Big Four, but of Poland, Czecho-Slovakia,
-Yugo-Slavia, Italy, Greece, and Japan as well. The 'March to Berlin and
-Moscow' which so many, even in England and America, were demanding at
-the time of the Armistice would not have been the march of British
-Grenadiers; nor the succeeding occupation one like that of Egypt or
-India. Operations on that scale would have brought in sooner or later
-(indeed, much smaller operations have already brought in) the forces of
-nations in bitter conflict the one with the other. We know what the
-occupation of Ireland by British troops has meant. Imagine an Ireland
-multiplied many times, occupied not only by British but by 'Allied'
-troops--British side by side with Senegalese negroes, Italians with
-Yugo-Slavs, Poles with Czecho-Slovaks and White Russians, Americans with
-Japanese. Remember, moreover, how far the disintegration of the Alliance
-had already advanced. The European member of the Alliance greatest in
-its potential resources, human and material, was of course the very
-country against which it was now proposed to act; the 'steamroller' had
-now to be destroyed ... by the Allies. America, the member of the
-Alliance, which, at the time of the Armistice, represented the greatest
-unit of actual material force, had withdrawn into a nationalist
-isolation from, and even hostility to, the European Allies. Japan was
-pursuing a line of policy which rendered increasingly difficult the
-active co-operation of certain of the Western democracies with her; her
-policy had already involved her in declared and open hostility to the
-other Asiatic element of the Alliance, China. Italy was in a state of
-bitter hostility to the nationality--Greater Serbia--whose defence was
-the immediate occasion of the War, and was soon to mark her feeling
-towards the peace by returning to power the Minister who had opposed
-Italy's entrance into the War; a situation which we shall best
-understand if we imagine a 'pro-German' (say, for instance, Lord Morley,
-or Mr Ramsay MacDonald, or Mr Philip Snowden) being made Prime Minister
-of England. What may be termed the minor Allies, Yugo-Slavia,
-Czecho-Slovakia, Rumania, Greece, Poland, the lesser Border States, the
-Arab kingdom that we erected, were drifting towards the entangling
-conflicts which have since broken out. Already, at a time when the Quai
-d'Orsay and Carmelite House were both clamouring for what must have
-meant in practice the occupation of both Germany and Russia, the
-Alliance had in fact disintegrated, and some of its main elements were
-in bitter conflict. The picture of a solid alliance of pacific and
-liberal democracies standing for the maintenance of an orderly European
-freedom against German attacks had completely faded away. Of the Grand
-Alliance of twenty-four States as a combination of power pledged to a
-common purpose, there remained just France and England--and their
-relations, too, were becoming daily worse; in fundamental disagreement
-over Poland, Turkey, Syria, the Balkan States, Austria, and Germany
-itself, its indemnities, and its economic treatment generally. Was this
-the instrument for the conquest of half a world?
-
-But the political disintegration of the Alliance was not the only
-obstacle to a thorough-going application of military force to the
-problem of Germany and Russia.
-
-By the very terms of the theory of security by preponderant power,
-Germany had to be weakened economically, for her subjugation could never
-be secure if she were permitted to maintain an elaborate, nationally
-organised economic machinery, which not only gives immense powers of
-production, capable without great difficulty of being transformed to the
-production of military material, but which, through the organisation of
-foreign trade, gives influence in countries like Russia, the Balkans,
-the Near and Far East.
-
-So part of the policy of Versailles, reflected in the clauses of the
-Treaty already dealt with, was to check the economic recovery of Germany
-and more particularly to prevent economic co-operation between that
-country and Russia. That Russia should become a 'German Colony' was a
-nightmare that haunted the minds of the French peace-makers.[53]
-
-But, as we have already seen, to prevent the economic co-operation of
-Germany and Russia meant the perpetuation of the economic paralysis of
-Europe. Combined with the maintenance of the blockade it would
-certainly have meant utter and perhaps irretrievable collapse.
-
-Perhaps the Allies at the beginning of 1919 were in no mood to be
-greatly disturbed by the prospect. But they soon learned that it had a
-very close bearing both on the aims which they had set before themselves
-in the Treaty and, indeed, on the very problem of maintaining military
-predominance.
-
-In theory, of course, an army of occupation should live on the occupied
-country. But it soon became evident that it was quite out of the
-question to collect even the cost of the armies for the limited
-occupation of the Rhine territories from a country whose industrial life
-was paralysed by blockade. Moreover, the costs of the German occupation
-were very sensibly increased by the fact of the Russian blockade.
-Deprived of Russian wheat and other products, the cost of living in
-Western Europe was steadily rising, the social unrest was in consequence
-increasing, and it was vitally necessary, if something like the old
-European life was to be restored, that production should be restarted as
-rapidly as possible. We found that a blockade of Russia which cut off
-Russian foodstuffs from Western Europe, was also a blockade of
-ourselves. But the blockade, as we have seen, was not the only economic
-device used as a part of military pressure: the old economic nerves
-between Germany and her neighbours had been cut out and the creeping
-paralysis of Europe was spreading in every direction. There was not a
-belligerent State on the Continent of Europe that was solvent in the
-strict sense of the term--able, that is, to discharge its obligations in
-the gold money in which it had contracted them. All had resorted to the
-shifts of paper--fictitious--money, and the debacle of the exchanges was
-already setting in. Whence were to come the costs of the forces and
-armies of occupation necessitated by the policy of complete conquest of
-Russia and Germany at the same time?
-
-When, therefore (according to a story current at the time), President
-Wilson, following the announcement that France stood for the military
-coercion of Russia, asked each Ally in turn how many troops and how much
-of the cost it would provide, each replied: 'None.' It was patent,
-indeed, that the resources of an economically paralysed Western Europe
-were not adequate to this enterprise. A half-way course was adopted.
-Britain supplied certain counter-revolutionary generals with a very
-considerable quantity of surplus stores, and a few military missions;
-France adopted the policy of using satellite States--Poland, Rumania,
-and even Hungary--as her tools. The result we know.
-
-Meantime, the economic and financial situation at home (in France and
-Italy) was becoming desperate. France needed coal, building material,
-money. None of these things could be obtained from a blockaded,
-starving, and restless Germany. One day, doubtless, Germany will be able
-to pay for the armies of occupation; but it will be a Germany whose
-workers are fed and clothed and warmed, whose railways have adequate
-rolling stock, whose fields are not destitute of machines, and factories
-of coal and the raw materials of production. In other words, it will be
-a strong and organised Germany, and, if occupied by alien troops, most
-certainly a nationalist and hostile Germany, dangerous and difficult to
-watch, however much disarmed.
-
-But there was a further force which the Allied Governments found
-themselves compelled to take into consideration in settling their
-military policy at the time of the Armistice. In addition to the
-economic and financial difficulties which compelled them to refrain from
-large scale operations in Russia and perhaps in Germany; in addition to
-the clash of rival nationalisms among the Allies, which was already
-introducing such serious rifts into the Alliance, there was a further
-element of weakness--revolutionary unrest, the 'Bolshevik' fever.
-
-In December, 1918, the British Government was confronted by the refusal
-of soldiers at Dover, who believed that they were being sent to Russia,
-to embark. A month or two later the French Government was faced by a
-naval mutiny at Odessa. American soldiers in Siberia refused to go into
-action against the Russians. Still later, in Italy, the workers enforced
-their decision not to handle munitions for Russia, by widespread
-strikes. Whether the attempt to obtain troops in very large quantities
-for a Russian war, involving casualties and sacrifices on a considerable
-scale, would have meant at the beginning of 1919 military revolts, or
-Communist, Spartacist, or Bolshevik revolutionary movements, or not, the
-Governments were evidently not prepared to face the issue.
-
-We have seen, therefore, that the blockade and the economic weakening of
-our enemy are two-edged weapons, only of effective use within very
-definite limits; that these limits in turn condition in some degree the
-employment of more purely military instruments like the occupation of
-hostile territory; and indeed condition the provision of the
-instruments.
-
-The power basis of the Alliance, such as it is, has been, since the
-Armistice, the naval power of England, exercised through the blockades,
-and the military force of France exercised mainly through the management
-of satellite armies. The British method has involved the greater
-immediate cruelty (perhaps a greater extent and degree of suffering
-imposed upon the weak and helpless than any coercive device yet
-discovered by man) though the French has involved a more direct negation
-of the aims for which the War was fought. French policy aims quite
-frankly at the re-imposition of France's military hegemony of the
-Continent. That aim will not be readily surrendered.
-
-Owing to the division in Socialist and Labour ranks, to the growing fear
-and dislike of 'confiscatory' legislation, by a peasant population and a
-large _petit rentier_ class, conservative elements are bound to be
-predominant in France for a long time. Those elements are frankly
-sceptical of any League of Nations device. A League of Nations would
-rob them of what in the Chamber of Deputies a Nationalist called 'the
-Right of Victory.' But the alternative to a League as a means of
-security is military predominance, and France has bent her energies
-since the Armistice to securing it. To-day, the military predominance of
-France on the Continent is vastly greater than that of Germany ever was.
-Her chief antagonist is not only disarmed--forbidden to manufacture
-heavy artillery, tanks or fighting aircraft--but as we have seen, is
-crippled in economic life by the loss of nearly all his iron and much of
-his coal. France not only retains her armament, but is to-day spending
-more upon it than before the War. The expenditure for the army in 1920
-amounted to 5000 millions of francs, whereas in 1914 it was only 1200
-millions. Translate this expenditure even with due regard to the changed
-price level into terms of policy, and it means, _inter alia_, that the
-Russo-Polish war and Feisal's deposition in Syria are burdens beyond her
-capacity. And this is only the beginning. Within a few months France has
-revived the full flower of the Napoleonic tradition so far as the use of
-satellite military States is concerned. Poland is only one of many
-instruments now being industriously fashioned by the artisans of the
-French military renaissance. In the Ukraine, in Hungary, in
-Czecho-Slovakia, in Rumania, in Yugo-Slavia; in Syria, Greece, Turkey,
-and Africa, French military and financial organisers are at work.
-
-M. Clemenceau, in one of his statements to the Chamber[54] on France's
-future policy, outlined the method:--
-
-     'We have said that we would create a system of barbed wire. There
-     are places where it will have to be guarded to prevent Germany from
-     passing. There are peoples like the Poles, of whom I spoke just
-     now, who are fighting against the Soviets, who are resisting, who
-     are in the van of civilisation. Well, we have decided ... to be
-     the Allies of any people attacked by the Bolsheviks. I have spoken
-     of the Poles, of the help that we shall certainly get from them in
-     case of necessity. Well, they are fighting at this moment against
-     the Bolsheviks, and if they are not equal to the task--but they
-     will be equal to it--the help which we shall be able to give them
-     in different ways, and which we are actually giving them,
-     particularly in the form of military supplies and uniforms--that
-     help will be continued. There is a Polish army, of which the
-     greater part has been organised and instructed by French
-     officers.... The Polish army must now be composed of from 450,000
-     to 500,000 men. If you look on the map at the geographical
-     situation of this military force, you will think that it is
-     interesting from every point of view. There is a Czecho-Slovak
-     army, which already numbers nearly 150,000 men, well equipped, well
-     armed, and capable of sustaining all the tasks of war. Here is
-     another factor on which we can count. But I count on many other
-     elements. I count on Rumania.'
-
-Since then Hungary has been added, part of the Hungarian plan being the
-domination of Austria by Hungary, and, later, possibly the restoration
-of an Austrian Monarchy, which might help to detach monarchical and
-clerical Bavaria from Republican Germany.[55] This is the revival of the
-old French policy of preventing the unification of the German
-people.[56] It is that aspiration which largely explains recent French
-sympathy for Clericalism and Monarchism and the reversal of the policy
-heretofore pursued by the Third Republic towards the Vatican.
-
-The systematic arming of African negroes reveals something of Napoleon's
-leaning towards the military exploitation of servile races. We are
-probably only at the beginning of the arming of Africa's black millions.
-They are, of course, an extremely convenient military material. French
-or British soldiers might have scruples against service in a war upon a
-Workers' Republic. Cannibals from the African forest 'conscribed' for
-service in Europe are not likely to have political or social scruples of
-that kind. To bring some hundreds of thousands of these Africans to
-Europe, to train them systematically to the use of European arms; to
-teach them that the European is conquerable; to put them in the position
-of victors over a vanquished European people--here indeed are
-possibilities. With Senegalese negroes having their quarters in Goethe's
-house, and placed, if not in authority, at least as the instruments of
-authority over the population of a European university city; and with
-the Japanese imposing their rule upon great stretches of what was
-yesterday a European Empire (and our Ally) a new page may well have
-opened for Europe.
-
-But just consider the chances of stability for power based on the
-assumption of continued co-operation of a number of 'intense'
-nationalisms, each animated by its sacred egoisms. France has turned to
-this policy as a substitute for the alliance of two or three great
-States, which national feeling and conflicting interests have driven
-apart. Is this collection of mushroom republics to possess a stability
-to which the Entente could not attain?
-
-One looks over the list. We have, it is true, after a century, the
-re-birth of Poland, a great and impressive case of the vindication of
-national right. But Poland, yesterday the victim of the imperialist
-oppressor, has, herself, almost in a few hours, as it were, acquired an
-imperialism of her own. The Pole assures us that his nationality can
-only be secure if he is given dominion over territories with largely
-non-Polish populations; if, that is, some fifteen millions of Ruthenes,
-Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Russians, are deprived of a separate national
-existence. Italy, it is true, is now fully redeemed; but that redemption
-involves the 'irredentism' of large numbers of German Tyrolese,
-Yugo-Slavs, and Greeks. The new Austria is forbidden to federate with
-the main branch of the race to which her people belong--though
-federation alone can save them from physical extinction. The
-Czecho-Slovak nation is now achieved, but only at the expense of a
-German unredeemed population larger numerically than that of
-Alsace-Lorraine. And Slovaks and Czechs already quarrel--many foresee
-the day when the freed State will face its own rebels. The Slovenes and
-Croats and the Serbs do not yet make a 'nationality,' and threaten to
-fight one another as readily as they would fight the Bulgarians they
-have annexed in Bulgarian Macedonia. Rumania has marked her redemption
-by the inclusion of considerable Hungarian, Bulgarian, and Serbian
-'irredentisms' within her new borders. Finland, which with Poland
-typified for so long the undying struggle for national right, is to-day
-determined to coerce the Swedes on the Aaland Islands and the Russians
-on the Carelian Territory. Greek rule of Turks has already involved
-retaliatory, punitive, or defensive measures which have needed Blue Book
-explanation. Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaidjan have not yet acquired
-their subject nationalities.
-
-The prospect of peace and security for these nationalities may be
-gathered in some measure by an enumeration of the wars which have
-actually broken out since the Peace Conference met in Paris, for the
-appeasement of Europe. The Poles have fought in turn, the
-Czecho-Slovaks, the Ukrainians, the Lithuanians, and the Russians. The
-Ukrainians have fought the Russians and the Hungarians. The Finns have
-fought the Russians, as have also the Esthonians and the Letts. The
-Esthonians and Letts have also fought the Baltic Germans. The Rumanians
-have fought Hungary. The Greeks have fought the Bulgarians and are at
-present in 'full dress' war with the Turks. The Italians have fought the
-Albanians, and the Turks in Asia Minor. The French have been fighting
-the Arabs in Syria and the Turks in Cilicia. The various British
-expeditions or missions, naval or military, in Archangel, Murmansk, the
-Baltic, the Crimea, Persia, Siberia, Turkestan, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor,
-the Soudan, or in aid of Koltchak, Denikin, Yudenitch, or Wrangel, are
-not included in this list as not arising in a strict sense perhaps out
-of nationality problems.
-
-Let us face what all this means in the alignment of power in the world.
-The Europe of the Grand Alliance is a Europe of many nationalities:
-British, French, Italian, Rumanian, Polish, Czecho-Slovak, Yugo-Slav,
-Greek, Belgian, Magyar, to say nothing of the others. None of these
-States exceeds greatly forty millions of people, and the populations of
-most are very much less. But the rival group of Germany and Russia,
-making between them over two hundred millions, comprises just two great
-States. And contiguous to them, united by the ties of common hatreds,
-lie the Mahomedan world and China. Prusso-Slavdom (combining racial
-elements having common qualities of amenity to autocratic discipline)
-might conceivably give a lead to Chinese and other Asiatic millions,
-brought to hate the West. The opposing group is a Balkanised Europe of
-irreconcilable national rivalries, incapable, because of those
-rivalries, of any prolonged common action, and taking a religious pride
-in the fact of this incapacity to agree. Its moral leaders, or many of
-them, certainly its powerful and popular instrument of education, the
-Press, encourage this pugnacity, regarding any effort towards its
-restraint or discipline as political atheism; deepening the tradition
-which would make 'intense' nationalism a noble, virile, and inspiring
-attitude, and internationalism something emasculate and despicable.
-
-We talk of the need of 'protecting European civilisation' from hostile
-domination, German or Russian. It is a danger. Other great civilisations
-have found themselves dominated by alien power. Seeley has sketched for
-us the process by which a vast country with two or three hundred million
-souls, not savage or uncivilised but with a civilisation, though
-descending along a different stream of tradition, as real and ancient as
-our own, came to be utterly conquered and subdued by a people, numbering
-less than twelve millions, living on the other side of the world. It
-reversed the teaching of history which had shown again and again that it
-was impossible really to conquer an intelligent people alien in
-tradition from its invaders. The whole power of Spain could not in
-eighty years conquer the Dutch provinces with their petty population.
-The Swiss could not be conquered. At the very time when the conquest of
-India's hundreds of millions was under way, the English showed
-themselves wholly unable to reduce to obedience three millions of their
-own race in America. What was the explanation? The Inherent Superiority
-of the Anglo-Saxon Stock?
-
-For long we were content to draw such a flattering conclusion and leave
-it at that, until Seeley pointed out the uncomfortable fact that the
-great bulk of the forces used in the conquest of India were not British
-at all. They were Indian. India was conquered for Great Britain by the
-natives of India.
-
-     'The nations of India (says Seeley) have been conquered by an army
-     of which, on the average, about a fifth part was English. India can
-     hardly be said to have been conquered at all by foreigners; she was
-     rather conquered by herself. If we were justified, which we are
-     not, in personifying India as we personify France or England, we
-     could not describe her as overwhelmed by a foreign enemy; we should
-     rather have to say that she elected to put an end to anarchy by
-     submitting to a single government, even though that government were
-     in the hands of foreigners.'[57]
-
-In other words, India is an English possession because the peoples of
-India were incapable of cohesion, the nations of India incapable of
-internationalism.
-
-The peoples of India include some of the best fighting stock in the
-world. But they fought one another: the pugnacity and material power
-they personified was the force used by their conquerors for their
-subjection.
-
-I will venture to quote what I wrote some years ago touching Seeley's
-moral:--
-
-     'Our successful defeat of tyranny depends upon such a development
-     of the sense of patriotism among the democratic nations that it
-     will attach itself rather to the conception of the unity of all
-     free co-operative societies, than to the mere geographical and
-     racial divisions; a development that will enable it to organise
-     itself as a cohesive power for the defence of that ideal, by the
-     use of all the forces, moral and material, which it wields.
-
-'That unity is impossible on the basis of the old policies, the European
-statecraft of the past. For that assumes a condition of the world in
-which each State must look for its national security to its own isolated
-strength; and such assumption compels each member, as a measure of
-national self-preservation, and so justifiably, to take precaution
-against drifting into a position of inferior power, compels it, that is,
-to enter into a competition for the sources of strength--territory and
-strategic position. Such a condition will inevitably, in the case of any
-considerable alliance, produce a situation in which some of its members
-will be brought into conflict by claims for the same territory. In the
-end, that will inevitably disrupt the Alliance.
-
-'The price of the preservation of nationality is a workable
-internationalism. If this latter is not possible then the smaller
-nationalities are doomed. Thus, though internationalism may not be in
-the case of every member of the Alliance the object of war, it is the
-condition of its success.'
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-PATRIOTISM AND POWER IN WAR AND PEACE
-
-
-In the preceding chapter attention has been called to a phenomenon which
-is nothing short of a 'moral miracle' if our ordinary reading of war
-psychology is correct. The phenomenon in question is the very definite
-and sudden worsening of Anglo-American relations, following upon common
-suffering on the same battle-fields, our soldiers fighting side by side;
-an experience which we commonly assume should weld friendship as nothing
-else could.[58]
-
-This miracle has its replica within the nation itself: intense
-industrial strife, class warfare, revolution, embittered rivalries,
-following upon a war which in its early days our moralists almost to a
-man declared at least to have this great consolation, that it achieved
-the moral unity of the nation. Pastor and poet, statesman and professor
-alike rejoiced in this spiritual consolidation which dangers faced in
-common had brought about. Never again was the nation to be riven by the
-old differences. None was now for party and all were for the State. We
-had achieved the '_union sacree_' ... 'duke's son, cook's son.' On this
-ground alone many a bishop has found (in war time) the moral
-justification of war.[59]
-
-Now no one can pretend that this sacred union has really survived the
-War. The extraordinary contrast between the disunity with which we
-finish war and the unity with which we begin it, is a disturbing thought
-when we recollect that the country cannot always be at war, if only
-because peace is necessary as a preparation for war, for the creation of
-things for war to destroy. It becomes still more disturbing when we add
-to this post-war change another even more remarkable, which will be
-dealt with presently: the objects for which at the beginning of a war we
-are ready to die--ideals like democracy, freedom from military
-regimentation and the suppression of military terrorism, the rights of
-small nations--are things about which at the end of the War we are
-utterly indifferent. It would seem either that these are not the things
-that really stirred us--that our feelings had some other unsuspected
-origin--or that war has destroyed our feeling for them.
-
-Note this juxtaposition of events. We have had in Europe millions of men
-in every belligerent country showing unfathomable capacity for
-disinterested service. Millions of youngsters--just ordinary folk--gave
-the final and greatest sacrifice without hesitation and without
-question. They faced agony, hardship, death, with no hope or promise of
-reward save that of duty discharged. And, very rightly, we acclaim them
-as heroes. They have shown without any sort of doubt that they are
-ready to die for their country's cause or for some even greater
-cause--human freedom, the rights of a small nation, democracy, or the
-principle of nationality, or to resist a barbarous morality which can
-tolerate the making of unprovoked war for a monarchy's ambition or the
-greed of an autocratic clique.
-
-And, indeed, whatever our final conclusion, the spectacle of vast
-sacrifices so readily made is, in its ultimate meaning one of infinite
-inspiration and hope. But the War's immediate sequel puts certain
-questions to us that we cannot shirk. For note what follows.
-
-After some years the men who could thus sacrifice themselves, return
-home--to Italy, or France, or Britain--and exchange khaki for the
-miner's overall or the railway worker's uniform. And it would then seem
-that at that moment their attitude to their country and their country's
-attitude to them undergo a wonderful change. They are ready--so at least
-we are told by a Press which for five years had spoken of them daily as
-heroes, saints, and gentlemen--through their miners' or railway Unions
-to make war upon, instead of for, that community which yesterday they
-served so devotedly. Within a few months of the close of this War which
-was to unify the nation as it had never been unified before (the story
-is the same whichever belligerent you may choose) there appear divisions
-and fissures, disruptions and revolutions, more disturbing than have
-been revealed for generations.
-
-Our extreme nervousness about the danger of Bolshevist propaganda shows
-that we believe that these men, yesterday ready to die for their
-country, are now capable of exposing it to every sort of horror.
-
-Or take another aspect of it. During the War fashionable ladies by
-thousands willingly got up at six in the morning to scrub canteen floors
-or serve coffee, in order to add to the comfort of their working-class
-countrymen--in khaki. They did this, one assumes, from the love of
-countrymen who risked their lives and suffered hardship in the
-execution of duty. It sounds satisfactory until the same countryman
-ceases fighting and turns to extremely hard and hazardous duties like
-mining, or fishing in winter-time in the North Sea. The ladies will no
-longer scrub floors or knit socks for him. They lose all real interest
-in him. But if it was done originally from 'love of fellow-countrymen,'
-why this cessation of interest? He is the same man. Into the psychology
-of that we shall inquire a little more fully later. The phenomenon is
-explained here in the conviction that its cause throws light upon the
-other phenomenon equally remarkable, namely, that victory reveals a most
-astonishing post-war indifference to those moral and ideal ends for
-which we believed we were fighting. Is it that they never were our real
-aims at all, or that war has wrought a change in our nature with
-reference to them?
-
-The importance of knowing what really moves us is obvious enough. If our
-potential power is to stand for the protection of any principle--nationality
-or democracy--that object must represent a real purpose, not a
-convenient clothing for a quite different purpose. The determination
-to defend nationality can only be permanent if our feeling for it
-is sufficiently deep and sincere to survive in the competition of
-other moral 'wishes.' Where has the War, and the complex of desires
-it developed, left our moral values? And, if there has been a
-re-valuation, why?
-
-The Allied world saw clearly that the German doctrine--the right of a
-powerful State to deny national independence to a smaller State, merely
-because its own self-preservation demanded it--was something which
-menaced nationality and right. The whole system by which, as in Prussia,
-the right of the people to challenge the political doctrines of the
-Government was denied (as by a rigorous control of press and education),
-was seen to be incompatible with the principles upon which free
-government in the West has been established. All this had to be
-destroyed in order that the world might be made 'safe for democracy.'
-The trenches in Flanders became 'the frontiers of freedom.' To uphold
-the rights of small nations, freedom of speech and press, to punish
-military terror, to establish an international order based on right as
-against might--these were things for which free men everywhere should
-gladly die. They did die, in millions. Nowhere so much, perhaps, as in
-America were these ideals the inspiration which brought that country
-into the War. She had nothing to gain territorially or materially. If
-ever the motive to war was an ideal motive, America's was.
-
-Then comes the Peace. And the America which had discarded her tradition
-of isolation to send two million soldiers on the European continent, 'at
-the call of the small nation,' was asked to co-operate with others in
-assuring the future security of Belgium, in protecting the small States
-by the creation of some international order (the only way in which they
-ever can be effectively protected); to do it in another form for a small
-nation that has suffered even more tragically than Belgium, Armenia;
-definitely to organise in peace that cause for which she went to war.
-And then a curious discovery is made. A cause which can excite immense
-passion when it is associated with war, is simply a subject for boredom
-when it becomes a problem of peace-time organisation. America will give
-lavishly of the blood of her sons to fight for the small nations; she
-will not be bothered with mandates or treaties in order to make it
-unnecessary to fight for them. It is not a question whether the
-particular League of Nations established at Paris was a good one. The
-post-war temper of America is that she does not want to be bothered with
-Europe at all: talk about its security makes the American public of 1920
-irritable and angry. Yet millions were ready to die for freedom in
-Europe two years ago! A thing to die for in 1918 is a thing to yawn
-over, or to be irritable about, when the war is done.
-
-Is America alone in this change of feeling about the small State?
-Recall all that we wrote and talked about the sacredness of the rights
-of small nations--and still in certain cases talk and write. There is
-Poland. It is one of the nations whose rights are sacred--to-day. But in
-1915 we acquiesced in an arrangement by which Poland was to be
-delivered, bound hand and foot, at the end of the war, to its worst and
-bitterest enemy, Czarist Russia. The Alliance (through France, to-day
-the 'protector of Poland') undertook not to raise any objection to any
-policy that the Czar's Government might inaugurate in Poland. It was to
-have a free hand. A secret treaty, it will be urged, about which the
-public knew nothing? We were fighting to liberate the world from
-diplomatic autocracies using their peoples for unknown and unavowed
-purposes. But the fact that we were delivering over Poland to the
-mercies of a Czarist Government was not secret. Every educated man knew
-what Russian policy under the Czarist Government would be, must be, in
-Poland. Was the Russian record with reference to Poland such that the
-unhampered discretion of the Czarist Government was deemed sufficient
-guarantee of Polish independence? Did we honestly think that Russia had
-proved herself more liberal in the treatment of the Poles than Austria,
-whose Government we were destroying? The implication, of course, flew in
-the face of known facts: Austrian rule over the Poles, which we proposed
-to destroy, had proved itself immeasurably more tolerant than the
-Russian rule which we proposed to re-enforce and render more secure.
-
-And there were Finland and the Border States. If Russia had remained in
-the War, 'loyal to the cause of democracy and the rights of small
-nations,' there would have been no independent Poland, or Finland, or
-Esthonia, or Georgia; and the refusal of our Ally to recognise their
-independence would not have disturbed us in the least.
-
-Again, there was Serbia, on behalf of whose 'redemption' in a sense, the
-War began. An integral part of that 'redemption' was the inclusion of
-the Dalmatian coast in Serbia--the means of access of the new Southern
-Slav State to the sea. Italy, for naval reasons, desired possession of
-that coast, and, without informing Serbia, we undertook to see that
-Italy should get it. (Italy, by the way, also entered the War on behalf
-of the principle of Nationality.)[60]
-
-It is not to be supposed, however, that the small State itself, however
-it may declaim about 'liberty or death,' has, when the opportunity to
-assert power presents itself, any greater regard for the rights of
-nationality--in other people. Take Poland. For a hundred and fifty years
-Poland has called upon Heaven to witness the monstrous wickedness of
-denying to a people its right to self-determination; of forcing a people
-under alien rule. After a hundred and fifty years of the martyrdom of
-alien rule, Poland acquires its freedom. That freedom is not a year old
-before Poland itself becomes in temper as imperialistic as any State in
-Europe. It may be bankrupt, racked with typhus and famine, split by
-bitter factional quarrels, but the one thing upon which all Poles will
-unite is in the demand for dominion over some fifteen millions of
-people, not merely non-Polish, but bitterly anti-Polish. Although Poland
-is perhaps the worst case, all the new small States show a similar
-disposition: Czecho-Slovakia, Yugoslavia, Rumania, Finland, Greece, have
-all now their own imperialism, limited only, apparently, by the extent
-of their power. All these people have fought for the right to national
-independence; there is not one that is not denying the right to national
-independence. If every Britain has its Ireland, every Ireland has its
-Ulster.
-
-But is this belief in Nationality at all? What should we have thought of
-a Southerner of the old Slave States fulminating against the crime of
-slavery? Should we have thought his position any more logical if he had
-explained that he was opposed to slavery because he did not want to
-become a slave? The test of his sincerity would have been, not the
-conduct he exacted of others, but the conduct he proposed to follow
-towards others. 'One is a Nationalist,' says Professor Corradini, one of
-the prophets of Italian _sacro egoismo_, 'while waiting to be able to
-become an Imperialist.' He prophesies that in twenty years 'all Italy
-will be Imperialist.'[61]
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The last thing intended here is any excuse of German violence by a
-futile _tu quoque_. But what it is important to know, if we are to
-understand the real motives of our conduct--and unless we do, we cannot
-really know where our conduct is leading us, where we are going--is
-whether we really cared about the 'moral aims of war,' the things for
-which we thought we were willing to die. Were we not as a matter of fact
-fighting--and dying--for something else?
-
-Test the nature of our feelings by what was after all perhaps the most
-dramatised situation in the whole drama: the fact that in the Western
-world a single man, or a little junta of military chiefs, could by a
-word send nations into war, millions to their death; and--worse still in
-a sense--that those millions would accept the fact of thus being made
-helpless pawns, and with appalling docility, without question, kill and
-be killed for reasons they did not even know. It must be made impossible
-ever again for half a dozen Generals or Cabinet Ministers thus to play
-with nations and men and women as with pawns.
-
-The War is at last over. And in Eastern Europe, the most corrupt, as it
-was one of the potentially most powerful of all the military
-autocracies--that of the Czar--has either gone to pieces from its own
-rottenness, or been destroyed by the spontaneous uprising of the people.
-Bold experiments, in entirely new social and economic methods, are
-attempted in this great community which may have so much to teach the
-Western world, experiments which challenge not only old political
-institutions, but old economic ones as well. But the men who were the
-Czar's Ministers are still in Paris and London, in close but secret
-confabulation with Allied Governments.
-
-And one morning we find that we are at war with the first Workers'
-Republic of the world, the first really to try a great social
-experiment. There had been no declaration, no explanation. President
-Wilson had, indeed, said that nothing would induce the Allies to
-intervene. Their behaviour on that point would be the 'acid test' of
-sincerity. But in Archangel, Murmansk, Vladivostock, the Crimea, on the
-Polish border, on the shores of the Caspian, our soldiers were killing
-Russians, or organising their killing; our ships sank Russian ships and
-bombarded Russian cities. We found that we were supporting the Royalist
-parties--military leaders who did not hide in the least their intention
-to restore the monarchy. But again, there is no explanation. But
-somewhere, for some purpose undefined, killing has been proclaimed. And
-we kill--and blockade and starve.
-
-The killing and blockading are not the important facts. Whatever may be
-behind the Russian business, the most disturbing portent is the fact
-which no one challenges and which indeed is most generally offered as a
-sort of defence. It is this: Nobody knows what the policy of the
-Government in Russia is, or was. It is commonly said they had no policy.
-Certainly it was changeable. That means that the Government does not
-need to give an explanation in order to start upon a war which may
-affect the whole future form of Western society. They did not have to
-explain because nobody particularly cared. Commands for youths to die in
-wars of unknown purpose do not strike us as monstrous when the commands
-are given by our own Governments--Governments which notoriously we do
-not trouble to control. Public opinion as a whole did not have any
-intense feeling about the Russian war, and not the slightest as to
-whether we used poison gas, or bombarded Russian cathedrals, or killed
-Russian civilians. We did not want it to be expensive, and Mr Churchill
-promised that if it cost too much he would drop it. He admitted finally
-that it was unnecessary by dropping it. But it was not important enough
-for him to resign over. And as for bringing anybody to trial for it, or
-upsetting the monarchy....[62]
-
-There is another aspect of our feeling about the Prussian tendencies and
-temper, to rid the world of which we waged the War.
-
-All America (or Britain, for that matter: America is only a striking and
-so a convenient example) knew that the Bismarckian persecution of the
-Socialists, the imprisonment of Bebel, of Liebknecht, the prosecution of
-newspapers for anti-militarist doctrines, the rigid control of
-education, by the Government, were just the natural prelude to what
-ended in Louvain and Aerschot, to the shooting down of the civilians of
-an invaded country. Again, that was why Prussia had to be destroyed in
-the interest of human freedom and the safety of democracy. The
-newspapers, the professors, the churches, were telling us all this
-endlessly for five years. Within a year of the end of the War, America
-is engaged in an anti-Socialist campaign more sweeping, more ruthless,
-by any test which you care to apply--the numbers arrested, the severity
-of the sentences imposed, the nature of the offences alleged--than
-anything ever attempted by Bismarck or the Kaiser. Old men of seventy
-(one selected by the Socialist party as Presidential Candidate), young
-girls, college students, are sent to prison with sentences of ten,
-fifteen, or twenty years. The elected members of State Legislatures are
-not allowed to sit, on the ground of their Socialist opinions. There are
-deportations in whole shiploads. If one takes the Espionage Act and
-compares it with any equivalent German legislation (the tests applied to
-school teachers or the refusal of mailing privileges to Socialist
-papers), one finds that the general principle of control of political
-opinion by the Government, and the limitations imposed upon freedom of
-discussion, and the Press, are certainly pushed further by the post-war
-America than they were by the pre-war Germany--the Germany that had to
-be destroyed for the precise reason that the principle of government by
-free discussion was more valuable than life itself.
-
-And as to military terrorism. Americans can see--scores of American
-papers are saying it every day--that the things defended by the British
-Government in Ireland are indistinguishable from what brought upon
-Germany the wrath of Allied mankind. But they do not even know and
-certainly would not care if they did know, that American marines in
-Hayti--a little independent State that might one day become the hope and
-symbol of a subject nationality, an unredeemed race that has suffered
-and does suffer more at American hands than Pole or Alsatian ever
-suffered at German hands--have killed ten times as many Haytians as the
-Black and Tans have killed Irish. Nor for that matter do Americans know
-that every week there takes place in their own country--as there has
-taken place week after week in the years of peace for half a
-century--atrocities more ferocious than any which are alleged against
-even the British or the German. Neither of the latter burn alive,
-weekly, untried fellow-countrymen with a regularity that makes the thing
-an institution.
-
-If indeed it was the militarism, the terrorism, the crude assertion of
-power, the repressions of freedom, which made us hate the German, why
-are we relatively indifferent when all those evils raise their heads,
-not far away, among a people for whom after all we are not responsible,
-but at home, near to us, where we have some measure of responsibility?
-
-For indifferent in some measure to those near-by evils we all are.
-
-The hundred million people who make up America include as many kindly,
-humane, and decent folk as any other hundred million anywhere in the
-world. They have a habit of carrying through extraordinary and unusual
-measures--like Prohibition. Yet nothing effective has been done about
-lynching, for which the world holds them responsible, any more than we
-have done anything effective about Ireland, for which the world holds us
-responsible. Their evil may one day land them in a desperate 'subject
-nationality' problem, just as our Irish problem lands us in political
-difficulty the world over. Yet neither they nor we can manage to achieve
-one-tenth of the emotional interest in our own atrocity or oppression,
-which we managed in a few weeks to achieve in war-time over the German
-barbarities in Belgium. If we could--if every schoolboy and maid-servant
-felt as strongly over Balbriggan or Amritsar as they felt over the
-_Lusitania_ and Louvain--our problem would be solved; whereas the action
-and policy which arose out of our feeling about Louvain did not solve
-the evil of military terrorism. It merely made it nearly universal.
-
-It brings us back to the original question. Is it mainly, or at all, the
-cruelty or the danger of oppression which moves us, which is at the
-bottom of our flaming indignation over the crimes of the enemy?
-
-We believed that we were fighting because of a passionate feeling for
-self-rule; for freedom of discussion, of respect for the rights of
-others, particularly the weak; the hatred of the mere pride of power out
-of which oppression grows; of the regimentation of minds which is its
-instrument. But after the War we find that in truth we have no
-particular feeling about the things we fought to make impossible. We
-rather welcome them, if they are a means of harassing people that we do
-not happen to like. We get the monstrous paradox that the very
-tendencies which it was the object of the War to check, are the very
-tendencies that have acquired an elusive power in our own
-country--possibly as the direct result of the War!
-
-Perhaps if we examine in some detail the process of the break-up after
-war, within the nation, of the unity which marked it during war, we may
-get some explanation of the other change just indicated.
-
-The unity on which we congratulated ourselves was for a time a fact. But
-just as certainly the patriotism which prompted the duchess to scrub
-floors was not simply love of her countrymen, or it would not suddenly
-cease when the war came to an end. The self-same man who in khaki was a
-hero to be taken for drives in the duchess's motor-car, became as
-workman--a member of some striking union, say--an object of hostility
-and dislike. The psychology revealed here has a still more curious
-manifestation.
-
-When in war-time we read of the duke's son and the cook's son peeling
-potatoes into the same tub, we regard this aspect of the working of
-conscription as something in itself fine and admirable, a real national
-comradeship in common tasks at last. Colonel Roosevelt orates; our
-picture papers give us photographs; the country thrills to this note of
-democracy. But when we learn that for the constructive purposes of
-peace--for street-cleaning--the Soviet Government has introduced
-precisely this method and compelled the sons of Grand Dukes to shovel
-snow beside common workmen, the same papers give the picture as an
-example of the intolerable tyranny of socialism, as a warning of what
-may happen in England if the revolutionists are listened to. That for
-years that very thing _had_ been happening in England for the purposes
-of war, that we were extremely proud of it, and had lauded it as
-wholesome discipline and a thing which made conscription fine and
-democratic, is something that we are unable even to perceive, so strong
-and yet so subtle are the unconscious factors of opinion. This peculiar
-psychological twist explains, of course, several things: why we are all
-socialists for the purposes of war, and why socialism can then give
-results which nothing else could give; why we cannot apply the same
-methods successfully to peace; and why the economic miracles possible in
-war are not possible in peace. And the outcome is that forces,
-originally social and unifying, are at present factors only of
-disruption and destruction, not merely internationally, but, as we shall
-see presently, nationally as well.
-
-When the accomplishment of certain things--the production of shells, the
-assembling of certain forces, the carriage of cargoes--became a matter
-of life and death, we did not argue about nationalisation or socialism;
-we put it into effect, and it worked. There existed for war a will which
-found a way round all the difficulties of credit adjustment,
-distribution, adequate wages, unemployment, incapacitation. We could
-take over the country's railways and mines, control its trade, ration
-its bread, and decide without much discussion that those things were
-indispensable for its purposes. But we can do none of these things for
-the upbuilding of the country in peace time. The measures to which we
-turn when we feel that the country must produce or perish, are precisely
-the measures which, when the war is over, we declare are the least
-likely to get anything done at all. We could make munitions; we cannot
-make houses. We could clothe and feed our soldiers and satisfy all their
-material wants; we cannot do that for the workers. Unemployment in
-war-time was practically unknown; the problem of unemployment in peace
-time seems beyond us. Millions go unclothed; thousands of workers who
-could make clothes are without employment. One speaks of the sufferings
-of the army of poverty as though they were dispensations of heaven. We
-did not speak thus of the needs of soldiers in war-time. If soldiers
-wanted uniforms and wool was obtainable, weavers did not go unemployed.
-Then there existed a will and common purpose. That will and common
-purpose the patriotism of peace-time cannot give us.
-
-Yet, again, we cannot always be at war. Women must have time and
-opportunity to bear and to bring up children, and men to build up a
-country-side, if only in order to have men for war to slay and things
-for war to destroy. Patriotism fails as a social cement within the
-nation at peace, it fails as a stimulus to its constructive tasks; and
-as between nations, we know it acts as a violent irritant and disruptive
-force.
-
-We need not question the genuineness of the emotion which moves our
-duchess when she knits socks for the dear boys in the trenches--or when
-she fulminates against the same dear boys as working men when they come
-home. As soldiers she loved them because her hatred of Germans--that
-atrocious, hostile 'herd'--was deep and genuine. She felt like killing
-Germans herself. Consequently, to those who risked their lives to fulfil
-this wish of hers, her affections went out readily enough. But why
-should she feel any particular affection for men who mine coal, or
-couple railway trucks, or catch fish in the North Sea? Dangerous as are
-those tasks, they are not visibly and intimately related to her own
-fierce emotions. The men performing them are just workpeople, the
-relation of whose labour to her own life is not, perhaps, always very
-clear. The suggestion that she should scrub floors or knit socks for
-_them_ would appear to her as merely silly or offensive.
-
-But unfortunately the story does not end there. During these years of
-war her very genuine emotions of hate were fed and nourished by war
-propaganda; her emotional hunger was satisfied in some measure by the
-daily tale of victories over the enemy. She had, as it were, ten
-thousand Germans for breakfast every morning. And when the War stopped,
-certainly something went out of her life. No one would pretend that
-these flaming passions of five years went for so little in her emotional
-experience that they could just be dropped from one day to another
-without something going unsatisfied.
-
-And then she cannot get coal; her projected journey to the Riviera is
-delayed by a railway strike; she has troubles with servants; faces a
-preposterous super-tax and death duties; an historical country seat can
-no longer be maintained and old associations must be broken up; Labour
-threatens revolution--or her morning paper says it does; Labour leaders
-say grossly unfair things about dukes. Here, indeed, is a new hostility,
-a new enemy tribe, on which the emotions cultivated so assiduously
-during five years, but hungry and unfed since the War, can once more
-feed and find some satisfaction. The Bolshevist, or the Labour agitator,
-takes the place of the Hun; the elements of enmity and disruption are
-already present.
-
-And something similar takes place with the miner, or labour man, in
-reference to the duchess and what she stands for. For him also the main
-problem of life had resolved itself during the War into something simple
-and emotional; an enemy to be fought and overcome. Not a puzzling
-intellectual difficulty, with all the hesitations and uncertainties of
-intellectual decision dependent upon sustained mental effort. The
-rights and wrongs were settled for him; right was our side, wrong the
-enemy's. What we had to do was to crush him. That done, it would be a
-better world, his country 'a land fit for heroes to live in.'
-
-On return from the War he does not find quite that. He can, for
-instance, get no house fit to live in at all. High prices, precarious
-employment. What is wrong? There are fifty theories, all puzzling. As to
-housing, he is sometimes told it is his own fault; the building unions
-won't permit dilution. When the 'high-brows' are all at sixes and
-sevens, what is a man to think? But it is suggested to him that behind
-all this is one enemy: the Capitalist. His papers have a picture of him:
-very like the Hun. Now here is something emotionally familiar. For years
-he has learned to hate and fight, to embody all problems in the one
-problem of fighting some definite--preferably personified--enemy. Smash
-him; get him by the throat, and then all these brain-racking puzzles
-will clear themselves up. Our side, our class, our tribe, will then be
-on top, and there will be no real solution until it is. To this respond
-all the emotions, the whole state of feeling which years of war have
-cultivated. Once more the problem of life is simple; one of power,
-domination, the fight for mastery; loyalty to our side, our lot, 'right
-or wrong.' Workers to be masters, workers who have been shoved and
-ordered about, to do the shoving and the ordering. Dictatorship of the
-proletariat. The headaches disappear and one can live emotionally free
-once more.
-
-There are 'high-brows' who will even philosophise the thing for him, and
-explain that only the psychology of war and violence will give the
-emotional drive to get anything done; that only by the myths which mark
-patriotism can real social change be made. Just as for the hate which
-keeps war going, the enemy State must be a single 'person,' a
-collectivity in which any one German can be killed as vengeance or
-reprisal for any other,[63] so 'the capitalist class' must be a
-personality, if class hatred is to be kept alive in such a way as to
-bring the class war to victory.
-
-But that theory overlooks the fact that just as the nationalism which
-makes war also destroys the Alliances by which victory can be made
-effective, so the transfer of the psychology of Nationalism to the
-industrial field has the same effect of Balkanisation. We get in both
-areas, not the definite triumph of a cohesive group putting into
-operation a clear-cut and understandable programme or policy, but the
-chaotic conflict of an infinite number of groups unable to co-operate
-effectively for any programme.
-
-If the hostilities which react to the Syndicalistic appeal were confined
-to the Capitalist, there might be something to be said for it from the
-point of view of the Labour movement. But forces so purely instinctive,
-by their very nature repelling the restraint of self-imposed discipline
-by intelligent foresight of consequences, cannot be the servant of an
-intelligent purpose, they become its master. The hostility becomes more
-important than the purpose. To the industrial Jingo, as to the
-nationalist Jingo, all foreigners are potential enemies. The hostile
-tribe or herd may be constituted by very small differences; slight
-variations of occupation, interest, race, speech, and--most potently of
-all perhaps--dogma or belief. Heresy-hunting is, of course, one
-manifestation of tribal animosity; and a heretic is the person who has
-the insufferable impudence to disagree with us.
-
-So the Sorelian philosophy of violence and instinctive pugnacity gives
-us, not the effective drive of a whole movement against the present
-social order (for that would require order, discipline, self-control,
-tolerance, and toleration); it gives us the tendency to an infinite
-splitting of the Labour movement. No sooner does the Left of some party
-break off and found a new party than it is immediately confronted by its
-own 'Leftism.' And your dogmatist hates the dissenting member of his own
-sect more fiercely than the rival sect; your Communist some rival
-Communism more bitterly than the Capitalist. Already the Labour movement
-is crossed by the hostilities of Communist against Socialist, the Second
-International against the Third, the Third against the Fourth; Trades
-Unionism by the hostility of skilled against unskilled, and in much of
-Europe there is also the conflict of town against country.
-
-This tendency has happily not yet gone far in England; but here, as
-elsewhere, it represents the one great danger, the tendency to be
-watched. And it is a tendency that has its moral and psychological roots
-in the same forces which have given us the chaos in the international
-field: The deep human lust for coercion, domination; the irksomeness of
-toleration, thought, self-discipline.
-
-The final difficulty in social and political discussion is, of course,
-the fact that the ultimate values--what is the highest good, what is the
-worst evil--cannot usually be argued about at all; you accept them, you
-see that they are good or bad as the case may be, or you don't.
-
-Yet we cannot organise a society save on the basis of some sort of
-agreement concerning these least common denominators; the final argument
-for the view that Western Europe had to destroy German Prussianism was
-that the system challenged certain ultimate moral values common to
-Western society. On the morrow of the sinking of the _Lusitania_ an
-American writer pointed out that if the cold-blooded slaughter of
-innocent women and children were accepted as a normal incident of war,
-like any other, the whole moral standards of the West would then
-definitely be placed on another plane. That elusive but immeasurably
-important moral sense, which gives a society sufficient community of aim
-to make common action possible, would have been radically altered. The
-ancient world--highly civilised and cultured as much of it was--had a
-_Sittlichkeit_ which made the chattel-slavery of the greater part of the
-human race an entirely normal--and, as they thought, inevitable--condition
-of things. It was accepted by the slaves themselves, and it was this
-acquiescence in the arrangement by both parties to it which mainly
-accounted for its continuance through a very long period of a very high
-civilisation. The position of women illustrates the same thing. There
-are to-day highly developed civilisations in which a man of education
-buys a wife, or several, as in the West he would buy a racehorse. And
-the wife, or wives, accept that situation; there can be no change in
-that particular matter until certain quite 'unarguable' moral values
-have altered in the minds of those concerned.
-
-The American writer raised, therefore, an extremely important question
-in relation to the War. Has its total outcome affected certain values of
-the fundamental kind just indicated? What has been its effect upon
-social impulses? Has it any direct relation to certain moral tendencies
-that have succeeded it?
-
-Perhaps the War is now old enough to enable us to face a few quite
-undeniable facts with some measure of detachment.
-
-When the Germans bombarded Scarborough early in the War, there was such
-a hurricane of moralisation that one rejoiced that this War would not be
-marked on our side, at least, by the bombardment of open cities. But
-when our Press began to print reports of French bombs falling on circus
-tents full of children, scores being killed, there was simply no protest
-at all. And one of the humours of the situation was that after more than
-a year, in which scores of such reports had appeared in the Press, some
-journalistic genius began an agitation on behalf of 'reprisals' for air
-raids.[64]
-
-At a time when it seemed doubtful whether the Germans would sign the
-Treaty or not, and just what would be the form of the Hungarian
-Government, the _Evening News_ printed the following editorial:--
-
-     'It might take weeks or months to bring the Hungarian Bolshevists
-     and recalcitrant Germans to book by extensive operations with
-     large forces. It might take but a few days to bring them to reason
-     by adequate use of aircraft.
-
-     'Allied airmen could reach Buda-pest in a few hours, and teach its
-     inhabitants such a lesson that Bolshevism would lose its
-     attractions for them.
-
-     'Strong Allied aerodromes on the Rhine and in Poland, well equipped
-     with the best machines and pilots, could quickly persuade the
-     inhabitants of the large German cities of the folly of having
-     refused to sign the peace.
-
-     'Those considerations are elementary. For that reason they may be
-     overlooked. They are "milk for babes."'[65]
-
-Now the prevailing thesis of the British, and particularly the
-Northcliffe Press, in reference to Bolshevism, was that it is a form of
-tyranny imposed by a cruel minority upon a helpless people. The proposal
-amounts, therefore, either to killing civilians for a form of Government
-which they cannot possibly help, or to an admission that Bolshevism has
-the support of the populace, and that as the outcome of our war for
-democracy we should refuse them the right to choose the government they
-prefer.
-
-When the Germans bombarded Scarborough and dropped bombs on London, the
-Northcliffe Press called Heaven to witness (_a_) that only fiends in
-human form could make war on helpless civilian populations, women, and
-children; (_b_) that not only were the Huns dastardly baby-killers for
-making war in that fashion, but were bad psychologists as well, because
-our anger at such unheard-of devilries would only render our resistance
-more unconquerable than ever; and (_c_) that no consideration whatever
-would induce English soldiers to blow women and children to pulp--unless
-it were as a reprisal. Well, Lord Northcliffe proposed to _commence_ a
-war against Hungarians (as it had already been commenced against the
-Russians) by such a wholesale massacre of the civil population that a
-Government, which he tells us is imposed upon them against their will,
-may 'lose its attractions.' This would be, of course, the second edition
-of the war waged to destroy militarist modes of thought, to establish
-the reign of righteousness and the protection of the defenceless and the
-weak.
-
-The _Evening News_ is the paper, by the way, whose wrath became violent
-when it learned that some Quakers and others were attempting to make
-some provision for the children of interned Austrians and Germans. Those
-guilty of such 'un-English' conduct as a little mercy and pity extended
-to helpless children, were hounded in headlines day after day as
-'Hun-coddlers,' traitors 'attempting to placate the Hun tiger by bits of
-cake to its cubs'; and when the War is all over--a year after all the
-fighting is stopped--a vicar of the English Church opposes, with
-indignation, the suggestion that his parish should be contaminated by
-'enemy' children brought from the famine area to save them from
-death.[66]
-
-On March 3, 1919, Mr Winston Churchill stated in the House of Commons,
-speaking of the blockade:--
-
-     ' ... This weapon of starvation falls mainly upon the women and
-     children, upon the old and the weak and the poor, after all the
-     fighting has stopped.'
-
-One might take this as a prelude to a change of policy. Not at all: he
-added that we were 'enforcing the blockade with rigour' and would
-continue to do so.
-
-Mr Churchill's indication as to how the blockade acts is important. We
-spoke of it as 'punishment' for Germany's crimes, or Bolshevist
-infamies, as the case may be. But it did not punish 'Germany' or the
-Bolshevists.[67] Its penalties are in a peculiar degree unevenly
-distributed. The country districts escape almost entirely, the peasants
-can feed themselves. It falls on the cities. But even in the cities the
-very wealthy and the official classes can as a rule escape. Virtually
-its whole weight--as Mr Churchill implies--falls upon the urban poor,
-and particularly the urban child population, the old, the invalids, the
-sick. Whoever may be the parties responsible for the War, these are
-guiltless. But it is these we punish.
-
-Very soon after the Armistice there was ample evidence available as to
-the effect of the blockade, both in Russia and in Central Europe.
-Officers of our Army of Occupation reported that their men 'could not
-stand' the spectacle of the suffering around them. Organisations like
-the 'Save the Children Fund' devoted huge advertisements to
-familiarising the public with the facts. Considerable sums for relief
-were raised--but the blockade was maintained. There was no connection
-between the two things--our foreign policy and the famine in Europe--in
-the public mind. It developed a sort of moral shock absorber. Facts did
-not reach it or disturb its serenity.
-
-This was revealed in a curious way at the time of the signature of the
-Treaty. At the gathering of the representatives, the German delegate
-spoke sitting down. It turned out afterwards that he was so ill and
-distraught, that he dared not trust himself to stand up. Every paper was
-full of the incident, as also of the fact that the paper-cutter in front
-of him on the table was found afterwards to be broken; that he placed
-his gloves upon his copy of the Treaty; and that he had thrown away his
-cigarette on entering the room. These were the offences which prompted
-the _Daily Mail_ to say: 'After this no one will treat the Huns as
-civilised or repentant.' Almost the entire Press rang with the story of
-'Rantzau's insult.' But not one paper, so far as I could discover, paid
-any attention to what Rantzau had said. He said:--
-
-     'I do not want to answer by reproaches to reproaches.... Crimes in
-     war may not be excusable, but they are committed in the struggle
-     for victory and in the defence of national existence, and passions
-     are aroused which make the conscience of peoples blunt. The
-     hundreds of thousands of non-combatants who have perished since
-     November 11 by reason of the blockade, were killed with cold
-     deliberation, after our adversaries had conquered and victory had
-     been assured them. Think of that when you speak of guilt and
-     punishment.'
-
-No one seems to have noticed this trifle in presence of the heinousness
-of the cigarette, the gloves, and the other crimes. Yet this was an
-insult indeed. If true, it shamefully disgraces England--if England is
-responsible. The public presumably simply did not care whether it was
-true or not.
-
-A few months after the Armistice I wrote as follows:--
-
-     'When the Germans sank the _Lusitania_ and slew several hundred
-     women and children, _we_ knew--at least we thought we knew--that
-     that was the kind of thing which Englishmen could not do. In all
-     the hates and stupidities, the dirt and heartbreaks of the war,
-     there was just this light on the horizon: that there were certain
-     things to which we at least could never fall, in the name of
-     victory or patriotism, or any other of the deadly masked words that
-     are "the unjust stewards of men's ideas."
-
-     'And then we did it. We, too, sank _Lusitanias_. We, too, for some
-     cold political end, plunged the unarmed, the weak, the helpless,
-     the children, the suffering women, to agonising death and torture.
-     Without a tremor. Not alone in the bombing of cities, which we did
-     so much better than the enemy. For this we had the usual excuse. It
-     was war.
-
-     'But after the War, when the fighting was finished, the enemy was
-     disarmed, his submarines surrendered, his aeroplanes destroyed, his
-     soldiers dispersed; months afterwards, we kept a weapon which was
-     for use first and mainly against the children, the weak, the sick,
-     the old, the women, the mothers, the decrepit: starvation and
-     disease. Our papers told us--our patriotic papers--how well it was
-     succeeding. Correspondents wrote complacently, sometimes
-     exultingly, of how thin and pinched were all the children, even
-     those well into teens; how stunted, how defective, the next
-     generation would be; and how the younger children, those of seven
-     and eight, looked like children of three and four; and how those
-     beneath this age simply did not live. Either they were born dead,
-     or if they were born alive--what was there to give them? Milk? An
-     unheard-of luxury. And nothing to wrap them in; even in hospitals
-     the new-born children were wrapped in newspapers, the lucky ones in
-     bits of sacking. The mothers were most fortunate when the children
-     were born dead. In an insane asylum a mother wails: "If only I did
-     not hear the cry of the children for food all day long, all day
-     long!" To "bring Germany to reason" we had, you see, to drive
-     mothers out of their reason.
-
-     '"It would have been more merciful," said Bob Smillie, "to turn the
-     machine-guns on those children." Put this question to yourself,
-     patriot Englishmen: "Was the sinking of the _Lusitania_ as cruel,
-     as prolonged, as mean, as merciless a death as this?" And we--you
-     and I--do it every day, every night.
-
-     'Here is the _Times_ of May 21, half a year after the cessation of
-     war, telling the Germans that they do not know how much more severe
-     we can still make the "domestic results" of starvation, if we
-     really put our mind to it. To the blockade we shall add the
-     "horrors of invasion." The invasion of a country already disarmed
-     is to be marked--when we do it--by horror.
-
-     'But the purpose! That justifies it! What purpose? To obtain the
-     signature to the Treaty of Peace. Many Englishmen--not Pacifists,
-     not sentimentalists, not conscientious objectors, or other vermin
-     of that kind, but Bishops, Judges, Members of the House of Lords,
-     great public educators. Tory editors--have declared that this
-     Treaty is a monstrous injustice. Some Englishmen at least think so.
-     But if the Germans say so, that becomes a crime which we shall know
-     how to punish. "The enemy have been reminded already" says the
-     _Times_, proud organ of British respectability, of Conservatism, of
-     distinguished editors and ennobled proprietors, "that the machinery
-     of the blockade can again be put into force at a few hours' notice
-... the intention of the Allies to take military action if
-     necessary.... Rejection of the Peace terms now offered them, will
-     assuredly lead to fresh chastisement."
-
-     'But will not Mr Lloyd George be able to bring back _signatures_?
-     Will he not have made Peace--permanent Peace? Shall we not have
-     destroyed this Prussian philosophy of frightfulness, force, and
-     hate? Shall we not have proved to the world that a State without
-     military power can trust to the good faith and humanity of its
-     neighbours? Can we not, then, celebrate victory with light hearts,
-     honour our dead and glorify our arms? Have we not served faithfully
-     those ideals of right and justice, mercy and chivalry, for which a
-     whole generation of youth went through hell and gave their lives?'
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-THE ALTERNATIVE RISKS OF STATUS AND CONTRACT
-
-
-The facts of the present situation in Europe, so far sketched, reveal
-broadly this spectacle: everywhere the failure of national power to
-indispensable ends, sustenance, political security, nationality, right;
-everywhere a fierce struggle for national power.
-
-Germany, which successfully fed her expanding population by a system
-which did not rest upon national power, wrecked that system in order to
-attempt one which all experience showed could not succeed. The Allied
-world pilloried both the folly and the wickedness of such a statecraft;
-and at the peace proceeded to imitate it in every particular. The faith
-in the complete efficacy of preponderant power which the economic and
-other demands of the Treaty of Versailles and the policy towards Russia
-reveal, is already seen to be groundless (for the demands, in fact, are
-being abandoned). There is in that document an element of _naivete_, and
-in the subsequent policy a cruelty which will be the amazement of
-history--if our race remains capable of history.
-
-Yet the men who made the Treaty, and accelerated the famine and break-up
-of half a world, including those, like M. Tardieu, who still demand a
-ruined Germany and an indemnity-paying one, were the ablest statesmen of
-Europe, experienced, realist, and certainly not morally monsters. They
-were probably no worse morally, and certainly more practical, than the
-passionate democracies, American and European, who encouraged all the
-destructive elements of policy and were hostile to all that was
-recuperative and healing.
-
-It is perfectly true--and this truth is essential to the thesis here
-discussed--that the statesmen at Versailles were neither fools or
-villains. Neither were the Cardinals and the Princes of the Church, who
-for five hundred years, more or less, attempted to use physical coercion
-for the purpose of suppressing religious error. There is, of course an
-immeasurably stronger case for the Inquisition as an instrument of
-social order than there is for the use of competing national military
-power as the basis of modern European society. And the stronger case for
-the Inquisition as an instrument of social by a modern statesman when he
-goes to war. It was less. The inquisitor, in burning and torturing the
-heretic, passionately believed that he obeyed the voice of God, as the
-modern statesman believes that he is justified by the highest dictates
-of patriotism. We are now able to see that the Inquisitor was wrong, his
-judgment twisted by some overpowering prepossession: Is some similar
-prepossession distorting vision and political wisdom in modern
-statecraft? And if so, what is the nature of this prepossession?
-
-As an essay towards the understanding of its nature, the following
-suggestions are put forward:--
-
-     The assertion of national power, domination, is always in line with
-     popular feeling. And in crises--like that of the settlement with
-     Germany--popular feeling dictates policy.
-
-     The feelings associated with coercive domination evidently lie near
-     the surface of our natures and are easily excited. To attain our
-     end by mere coercion instead of bargain or agreement, is the method
-     in conduct which, in the order of experiments, our race generally
-     tries first, not only in economics (as by slavery) but in sex, in
-     securing acquiescence to our religious beliefs, and in most other
-     relationships. Coercion is not only the response to an instinct; it
-     relieves us of the trouble and uncertainties of intellectual
-     decision as to what is equitable in a bargain.
-
-     To restrain the combative instinct sufficiently to realise the need
-     of co-operation, demands a social discipline which the prevailing
-     political traditions and moralities of Nationalism and Patriotism
-     not only do not furnish, but directly discourage.
-
-     But when some vital need becomes obvious and we find that force
-     simply cannot fulfil it, we then try other methods, and manage to
-     restrain our impulse sufficiently to do so. If we simply must have
-     a man's help, and we find we cannot force him to give it, we then
-     offer him inducements, bargain, enter a contract, even though it
-     limits our independence.
-
-     Stable international co-operation cannot come in any other way. Not
-     until we realise the failure of national coercive power for
-     indispensable ends (like the food of our people) shall we cease to
-     idealise power and to put our most intense political emotions (like
-     those of patriotism) behind it. Our traditions will buttress and
-     'rationalise' the instinct to power until we see that it is
-     mischievous. We shall then begin to discredit it and create new
-     traditions.
-
-An American sociologist (Professor Giddings of Columbia University) has
-written thus:--
-
-     'So long as we can confidently act, we do not argue; but when we
-     face conditions abounding in uncertainty, or when we are confronted
-     by alternative possibilities, we first hesitate, then feel our way,
-     then guess, and at length venture to reason. Reasoning,
-     accordingly, is that action of the mind to which we resort when the
-     possibilities before us and about us are distributed substantially
-     according to the law of chance occurrence, or, as the mathematician
-     would say, in accordance with "the normal curve" of random
-     frequency. The moment the curve is obviously skewed, we decide; if
-     it is obviously skewed from the beginning, by authority, or
-     coercion, our reasoning is futile or imperfect. So, in the State,
-     if any interest or coalition of interests is dominant, and can act
-     promptly, it rules by absolutist methods. Whether it is benevolent
-     or cruel, it wastes neither time nor resources upon government by
-     discussion; but if interests are innumerable, and so distributed as
-     to offset one another, and if no great bias or overweighting
-     anywhere appears, government by discussion inevitably arises. The
-     interests can get together only if they talk. If power shall be
-     able to dictate, it will also rule, and the appeal to reason will
-     be vain.'
-
-This means that a realisation of interdependence--even though it be
-subconscious--is the basis of the social sense, the feeling and
-tradition which make possible a democratic society, in which freedom is
-voluntarily limited for the purpose of preserving any freedom at all.
-
-It indicates also the relation of certain economic truths to the
-impulses and instincts that underlie international conflict. We shall
-excuse or justify or fail to restrain those instincts, unless and until
-we see that their indulgence stands in the way of the things which we
-need and must have if society is to live. We shall then discredit them
-as anti-social, as we have discredited religious fanaticism, and build
-up a controlling _Sittlichkeit_.
-
-The statement of Professor Giddings, quoted above, leaves out certain
-psychological facts which the present writer in an earlier work has
-attempted to indicate. He, therefore, makes no apology for reproducing a
-somewhat long passage bearing on the case before us:--
-
-     'The element in man which makes him capable, however feebly, of
-     choice in the matter of conduct, the one fact distinguishing him
-     from that vast multitude of living things which act unreflectingly,
-     instinctively (in the proper and scientific sense of the word), as
-     the mere physical reaction to external prompting, is something not
-     deeply rooted, since it is the latest addition of all to our
-     nature. The really deeply rooted motives of conduct, those having
-     by far the greatest biological momentum, are naturally the
-     "motives" of the plant and the animal, the kind that marks in the
-     main the acts of all living things save man, the unreflecting
-     motives, those containing no element of ratiocination and free
-     volition, that almost mechanical reaction to external forces which
-     draw the leaves towards the sun-rays and makes the tiger tear its
-     living food limb from limb.
-
-     'To make plain what that really means in human conduct, we must
-     recall the character of that process by which man turns the forces
-     of nature to his service instead of allowing them to overwhelm him.
-     Its essence is a union of individual forces against the common
-     enemy, the forces of nature. Where men in isolated action would
-     have been powerless, and would have been destroyed, union,
-     association, co-operation, enabled them to survive. Survival was
-     contingent upon the cessation of struggle between them, and the
-     substitution therefor of common action. Now, the process both in
-     the beginning and in the subsequent development of this device of
-     co-operation is important. It was born of a failure of force. If
-     the isolated force had sufficed, the union of force would not have
-     been resorted to. But such union is not a mere mechanical
-     multiplication of blind energies; it is a combination involving
-     will, intelligence. If mere multiplication of physical energy had
-     determined the result of man's struggles, he would have been
-     destroyed or be the helpless slave of the animals of which he makes
-     his food. He has overcome them as he has overcome the flood and the
-     storm--by quite another order of action. Intelligence only emerges
-     where physical force is ineffective.
-
-     'There is an almost mechanical process by which, as the complexity
-     of co-operation grows, the element of physical compulsion declines
-     in effectiveness, and is replaced by agreement based on mutual
-     recognition of advantage. There is through every step of this
-     development the same phenomenon: intelligence and agreement only
-     emerge as force becomes ineffective. The early (and purely
-     illustrative) slave-owner who spent his days seeing that his slave
-     did not run away, and compelling him to work, realised the economic
-     defect of the arrangement: most of the effort, physical and
-     intellectual, of the slave was devoted to trying to escape; that of
-     the owner, trying to prevent him. The force of the one,
-     intellectual or physical, cancelled the force of the other, and the
-     energies of both were lost so far as productive value was
-     concerned, and the needed task, the building of the shelter or the
-     catching of the fish, was not done, or badly done, and both went
-     short of food and shelter. But from the moment that they struck a
-     bargain as to the division of labour and of spoils, and adhered to
-     it, the full energies of both were liberated for direct production,
-     and the economic effectiveness of the arrangement was not merely
-     doubled, but probably multiplied many times. But this substitution
-     of free agreement for coercion, with all that it implied of
-     contract, of "what is fair," and all that followed of mutual
-     reliance in the fulfilment of the agreement, was _based upon mutual
-     recognition of advantage_. Now, that recognition, without which the
-     arrangement could not exist at all, required, relatively, a
-     considerable mental effort, _due in the first instance to the
-     failure of force_. If the slave-owner had had more effective means
-     of physical coercion, and had been able to subdue his slave, he
-     would not have bothered about agreement, and this embryo of human
-     society and justice would not have been brought into being. And in
-     history its development has never been constant, but marked by the
-     same rise and fall of the two orders of motive; as soon as one
-     party or the other obtained such preponderance of strength as
-     promised to be effective, he showed a tendency to drop free
-     agreement and use force; this, of course, immediately provoked the
-     resistance of the other, with a lesser or greater reversion to the
-     earlier profitless condition.
-
-     'This perpetual tendency to abandon the social arrangement and
-     resort to physical coercion is, of course, easily explainable by
-     the biological fact just touched on. To realise at each turn and
-     permutation of the division of labour that the social arrangement
-     was, after all, the best demanded on the part of the two characters
-     in our sketch, not merely control of instinctive actions, but a
-     relatively large ratiocinative effort for which the biological
-     history of early man had not fitted him. The physical act of
-     compulsion only required a stone axe and a quickness of purely
-     physical movement for which his biological history had afforded
-     infinitely long training. The more mentally-motived action, that of
-     social conduct, demanding reflection as to its effect on others,
-     and the effect of that reaction upon our own position and a
-     conscious control of physical acts, is of modern growth; it is but
-     skin-deep; its biological momentum is feeble. Yet on that feeble
-     structure has been built all civilisation.
-
-     'When we remember this--how frail are the ultimate foundations of
-     our fortress, how much those spiritual elements which alone can
-     give us human society are outnumbered by the pre-human elements--is
-     it surprising that those pre-social promptings of which
-     civilisation represents the conquest, occasionally overwhelm man,
-     break up the solidarity of his army, and push him back a stage or
-     two nearer to the brute condition from which he came? That even at
-     this moment he is groping blindly as to the method of distributing
-     in the order of his most vital needs the wealth he is able to wring
-     from the earth; that some of his most fundamental social and
-     political conceptions--those, among others, with which we are now
-     dealing--have little relation to real facts; that his animosities
-     and hatreds are as purposeless and meaningless as his enthusiasms
-     and his sacrifices; that emotion and effort which quantitatively
-     would suffice amply for the greater tasks before him, for the
-     firmer establishment of justice and well-being, for the cleaning up
-     of all the festering areas of moral savagery that remain, are as a
-     simple matter of fact turned to those purposes hardly at all, but
-     to objects which, to the degree to which they succeed, merely
-     stultify each other?
-
-     'Now, this fact, the fact that civilisation is but skin-deep and
-     that man is so largely the unreflecting brute, is not denied by
-     pro-military critics. On the contrary they appeal to it as the
-     first and last justification of their policy. "All your talk will
-     never get over human nature; men are not guided by logic; passion
-     is bound to get the upper hand," and such phrases, are a sort of
-     Greek chorus supplied by the military party to the whole of this
-     discussion.
-
-     'Nor do the militarist advocates deny that these unreflecting
-     elements are anti-social; again, it is part of their case that,
-     unless they are held in check by the "iron hand," they will
-     submerge society in a welter of savagery. Nor do they deny--it is
-     hardly possible to do so--that the most important securities which
-     we enjoy, the possibility of living in mutual respect of right
-     because we have achieved some understanding of right; all that
-     distinguishes modern Europe from the Europe of (among other things)
-     religious wars and St. Bartholomew massacres, and distinguishes
-     British political methods from those Turkey or Venezuela, are due
-     to the development of moral forces (since physical force is most
-     resorted to in the less desirable age and area), and particularly
-     to the general recognition that you cannot solve religious and
-     political problems by submitting them to the irrelevant hazard of
-     physical force.
-
-     'We have got thus far, then: both parties to the discussion are
-     agreed as to the fundamental fact that civilisation is based upon
-     moral and intellectual elements in constant danger of being
-     overwhelmed by more deeply-rooted anti-social elements. The plain
-     facts of history past and present are there to show that where
-     those moral elements are absent the mere fact of the possession of
-     arms only adds to the destructiveness of the resulting welter.
-
-     'Yet all attempts to secure our safety by other than military means
-     are not merely regarded with indifference; they are more generally
-     treated either with a truly ferocious contempt or with definite
-     condemnation.
-
-     'This apparently on two grounds: first, that nothing that we can do
-     will affect the conduct of other nations; secondly, that, in the
-     development of those moral forces which do undoubtedly give us
-     security, government action--which political effort has in
-     view--can play no part.
-
-     'Both assumptions are, of course, groundless. The first implies not
-     only that our own conduct and our own ideas need no examination,
-     but that ideas current in one country have no reaction on those of
-     another, and that the political action of one State does not affect
-     that of others. "The way to be sure of peace is to be so much
-     stronger than your enemy that he will not dare to attack you," is
-     the type of accepted and much-applauded "axioms" the unfortunate
-     corollary of which is (since both parties can adopt the rule) that
-     peace will only be finally achieved when each is stronger than the
-     other.
-
-     'So thought and acted the man with the stone axe in our
-     illustration, and in both cases the psychological motive is the
-     same: the long-inherited impulse to isolated action, to the
-     solution of a difficulty by some simple form of physical movement;
-     the tendency to break through the more lately acquired habit of
-     action based on social compact and on the mental realisation of its
-     advantage. It is the reaction against intellectual effort and
-     responsible control of instinct, a form of natural protest very
-     common in children and in adults not brought under the influence of
-     social discipline.
-
-     'The same general characteristics are as recognisable in militarist
-     politics within the nation as in the international field. It is not
-     by accident that Prussian and Bismarckian conceptions in foreign
-     policy are invariably accompanied by autocratic conceptions in
-     internal affairs. Both are founded upon a belief in force as the
-     ultimate determinant in human conduct; a disbelief in the things of
-     the mind as factors of social control, a disbelief in moral forces
-     that cannot be expressed in "blood and iron." The impatience shown
-     by the militarist the world over at government by discussion, his
-     desire to "shut up the talking shops" and to govern autocratically,
-     are but expressions of the same temper and attitude.
-
-     'The forms which Governments have taken and the general method of
-     social management, are in large part the result of its influence.
-     Most Governments are to-day framed far more as instruments for the
-     exercise of physical force than as instruments of social
-     management.
-
-     'The militarist does not allow that man has free will in the matter
-     of his conduct at all; he insists that mechanical forces on the one
-     side or the other alone determine which of two given courses shall
-     be taken; the ideas which either hold, the role of intelligent
-     volition, apart from their influence in the manipulation of
-     physical force, play no real part in human society. "Prussianism,"
-     Bismarckian "blood and iron," are merely political expressions of
-     this belief in the social field--the belief that force alone can
-     decide things; that it is not man's business to question authority
-     in politics or authority in the form of inevitability in nature. It
-     is not a question of who is right, but of who is stronger. "Fight
-     it out, and right will be on the side of the victor"--on the side,
-     that is, of the heaviest metal or the heaviest muscle, or, perhaps,
-     on that of the one who has the sun at his back, or some other
-     advantage of external nature. The blind material things--not the
-     seeing mind and the soul of man--are the ultimate sanction of human
-     society.
-
-     'Such a doctrine, of course, is not only profoundly anti-social, it
-     is anti-human--fatal not merely to better international relations,
-     but, in the end, to the degree to which it influences human conduct
-     at all, to all those large freedoms which man has so painfully won.
-
-     'This philosophy makes of man's acts, not something into which
-     there enters the element of moral responsibility and free volition,
-     something apart from and above the mere mechanical force of
-     external nature, but it makes man himself a helpless slave; it
-     implies that his moral efforts and the efforts of his mind and
-     understanding are of no worth--that he is no more the master of his
-     conduct than the tiger of his, or the grass and the trees of
-     theirs, and no more responsible.
-
-     'To this philosophy the "civilist" may oppose another: that in man
-     there is that which sets him apart from the plants and the animals,
-     which gives him control of and responsibility for his social acts,
-     which makes him the master of his social destiny if he but will it;
-     that by virtue of the forces of his mind he may go forward to the
-     completer conquest, not merely of nature, but of himself, and
-     thereby, and by that alone, redeem human association from the evils
-     that now burden it.'
-
-
-_From Balance to Community of Power_
-
-Does the foregoing imply that force or compulsion has no place in human
-society? Not the least in the world. The conclusions so far drawn might
-be summarised, and certain remaining ones suggested, thus:--
-
-     Coercion has its place in human society, and the considerations
-     here urged do not imply any sweeping theory of non-resistance. They
-     are limited to the attempt to show that the effectiveness of
-     political power depends upon certain moral elements usually utterly
-     neglected in international politics, and particularly that
-     instincts inseparable from Nationalism as now cultivated and
-     buttressed by prevailing political morality, must condemn political
-     power to futility. Two broad principles of policy are available:
-     that looking towards isolated national power, or that looking
-     towards common power behind a common purpose. The second may fail;
-     it has risks. But the first is bound to fail. The fact would be
-     self-evident but for the push of certain instincts warping our
-     judgment in favour of the first. If mankind decides that it can do
-     better than the first policy, it will do better. If it decides that
-     it cannot, that decision will itself make failure inevitable. Our
-     whole social salvation depends upon making the right choice.
-
-In an earlier chapter certain stultifications of the Balance of Power as
-applied to the international situation were dealt with. It was there
-pointed out that if you could get such a thing as a real Balance, that
-would certainly be a situation tempting the hot-heads of both sides to a
-trial of strength. An obvious preponderance of power on one side might
-check the temper of the other. A 'balance' would assuredly act as no
-check. But preponderance has an even worse result.
-
-How in practical politics are we to say when a group has become
-preponderantly powerful? We know to our cost that military power is
-extremely difficult of precise estimate. It cannot be weighed and
-balanced exactly. In political practice, therefore, the Balance of Power
-means a rivalry of power, because each to be on the safe side wants to
-be just a bit stronger than the other. The competition creates of itself
-the very condition it sets out to prevent.
-
-The defect of principle here is not the employment of force. It is the
-refusal to put force behind a law which may demand our allegiance. The
-defect lies in the attempt to make ourselves and our own interests by
-virtue of preponderant power superior to law.
-
-The feature which stood condemned in the old order was not the
-possession by States of coercive power. Coercion is an element in every
-good society that we have heretofore known. The evil of the old order
-was that in case of States the Power was anti-social; that it was not
-pledged to the service of some code or rule designed for mutual
-protection, but was the irresponsible possession of each individual,
-maintained for the express purpose of enabling him to enforce his own
-views of his own rights, to be judge and executioner in his own case,
-when his view came into collision with that of others. The old effort
-meant in reality the attempt on the part of a group of States to
-maintain in their own favour a preponderance of force of undefined and
-unlimited purpose. Any opposing group that found itself in a position of
-manifest inferiority had in fact to submit in international affairs to
-the decision of the possessor of preponderant power for the time being.
-It might be used benevolently; in that case the weaker obtained his
-rights as a gift from the stronger. But so long as the possession of
-power was unaccompanied by any defined obligation, there could be no
-democracy of States, no Society of Nations. To destroy the power of the
-preponderant group meant merely to transpose the situation. The security
-of one meant always the insecurity of the other.
-
-The Balance of Power in fact adopts the fundamental premise of the
-'might makes right' principle, because it regards power as the ultimate
-fact in politics; whereas the ultimate fact is the purpose for which the
-power will be used. Obviously you don't want a Balance of Power between
-justice and injustice, law and crime; between anarchy and order. You
-want a preponderance of power on the side of justice, of law and of
-order.
-
-We approach here one of the commonest and most disastrous confusions
-touching the employment of force in human society, particularly in the
-Society of Nations.
-
-It is easy enough to make play with the absurdities and contradictions
-of the _si vis pacem para bellum_ of our militarists. And the hoary
-falsehood does indeed involve a flouting of all experience, an
-intellectual astigmatism that almost makes one despair. But what is the
-practical alternative?
-
-The anti-militarist who disparages our reliance upon 'force' is almost
-as remote from reality, for all society as we know it in practice, or
-have ever known it, does rely a great deal upon the instrument of
-'force,' upon restraint and coercion.
-
-We have seen where the competition in arming among European nations has
-led us. But it may be argued: suppose you were greatly to reduce all
-round, cut in half, say, the military equipment of Europe, would the
-power for mutual destruction be sensibly reduced, the security of Europe
-sensibly greater? 'Adequacy' and 'destructiveness' of armament are
-strictly relative terms. A country with a couple of battleships has
-overwhelming naval armament if its opponent has none. A dozen
-machine-guns or a score of rifles against thousands of unarmed people
-may be more destructive of life than a hundred times that quantity of
-material facing forces similarly armed. (Fifty rifles at Amritsar
-accounted for two thousand killed and wounded, without a single casualty
-on the side of the troops.) Wars once started, instruments of
-destruction can be rapidly improvised, as we know. And this will be
-truer still when we have progressed from poison gas to disease germs, as
-we almost certainly shall.
-
-The first confusion is this:--
-
-The issue is made to appear as between the 'spiritual' and the
-'material'; as between material force, battleships, guns, armies on the
-one side as one method, and 'spiritual' factors, persuasion, moral
-goodness on the other side, as the contrary method. 'Force v. Faith,' as
-some evangelical writer has put it. The debate between the Nationalist
-and the Internationalist is usually vitiated at the outset by an
-assumption which, though generally common to the two parties, is not
-only unproven, but flatly contrary to the weight of evidence. The
-assumption is that the military Nationalist, basing his policy upon
-material force--a preponderant navy, a great army, superior
-artillery--can dispense with the element of trust, contract, treaty.
-
-Now to state the issue in that way creates a gross confusion, and the
-assumption just indicated is quite unjustifiable. The militarist quite
-as much as the anti-militarist, the nationalist quite as much as the
-internationalist, has to depend upon a moral factor, 'a contract,' the
-force of tradition, and of morality. Force cannot operate at all in
-human affairs without a decision of the human mind and will. Guns do not
-get pointed and go off without a mind behind them, and as already
-insisted, the direction in which the gun shoots is determined by the
-mind which must be reached by a form of moral suasion, discipline, or
-tradition; the mind behind the gun will be influenced by patriotism in
-one case, or by a will to rebellion and mutiny, prompted by another
-tradition or persuasion, in another. And obviously the moral decision,
-in the circumstances with which we are dealing, goes much deeper and
-further back. The building of battleships, or the forming of armies, the
-long preparation which is really behind the material factor, implies a
-great deal of 'faith.' These armies and navies could never have been
-brought into existence and be manoeuvred without vast stores of faith
-and tradition. Whether the army serves the nation, as in Britain or
-France, or dominates it as in a Spanish-American Republic (or in a
-somewhat different sense in Prussia), depends on a moral factor: the
-nature of the tradition which inspires the people from whom the army is
-drawn. Whether the army obeys its officers or shoots them is determined
-by moral not material factors, for the officers have not a preponderance
-of physical force over the men. You cannot form a pirate crew without a
-moral factor: the agreement not to use force against one another, but to
-act in consort and combine it against the prey. Whether the military
-material we and France supplied Russia, and the armies France helped to
-train, are employed against us or the Germans, depends upon certain
-moral and political factors inside Russia, certain ideas formed in the
-minds of certain men. It is not a situation of Ideas against Guns, but
-of ideas using guns. The confusion involves a curious distortion in our
-reading of the history of the struggle against privilege and tyranny.
-
-Usually when we speak of the past struggles of the people against
-tyranny, we have in our minds a picture of the great mass held down by
-the superior physical force of the tyrant. But such a picture is, of
-course, quite absurd. For the physical force which held down the people
-was that which they themselves supplied. The tyrant had no physical
-force save that with which his victims furnished him. In this struggle
-of 'People _v._ Tyrant,' obviously the weight of physical force was on
-the side of the people. This was as true of the slave States of
-antiquity as it is of the modern autocracies. Obviously the free
-minority--the five or ten or fifteen per cent.--of Rome or Egypt, or the
-governing orders of Prussia or Russia, did not impose their will upon
-the remainder by virtue of superior physical force, the sheer weight of
-numbers, of sinew and muscle. If the tyranny of the minority had
-depended upon its own physical power, it could not have lasted a day.
-The physical force which the minority used was the physical force of the
-majority. The people were oppressed by an instrument which they
-themselves furnished.
-
-In that picture, therefore, which we make of the mass of mankind
-struggling against the 'force' of tyranny, we must remember that the
-force against which they struggled was not in the last analysis physical
-force at all; it was their own weight from which they desired to be
-liberated.
-
-Do we realise all that this means? It means that tyranny has been
-imposed, as freedom has been won: through the Mind.
-
-The small minority imposes itself and can only impose itself by getting
-first at the mind of the majority--the people--in one form or another:
-by controlling it through keeping knowledge from it, as in so much of
-antiquity, or by controlling the knowledge itself, as in Germany. It is
-because the minds of the masses have failed them that they have been
-enslaved. Without that intellectual failure of the masses, tyranny could
-have found no force wherewith to impose its burdens.
-
-This confusion as to the relation of 'force' to the moral factor is of
-all confusions most worth while clearing up: and for that purpose we may
-descend to homely illustrations.
-
-You have a disorderly society, a frontier mining camp, every man armed,
-every man threatened by the arms of his neighbour and every man in
-danger. What is the first need in restoring order? More force--more
-revolvers and bowie knives? No; every man is fully armed already. If
-there exists in this disorder the germ of order some attempt will be
-made to move towards the creation of a police. But what is the
-indispensable prerequisite for the success of such an effort? It is the
-capacity for a nucleus of the community to act in common, to agree
-together to make the beginnings of a community. And unless that nucleus
-can achieve agreement--a moral and intellectual problem--there can be no
-police force. But be it noted well, this first prerequisite--the
-agreement among a few members necessary to create the first Vigilance
-Committee--is not force; it is a decision of certain minds determining
-how force shall be used, how combined. Even when you have got as far as
-the police, this device of social protection will entirely break down
-unless the police itself can be trusted to obey the constituted
-authority, and the constituted authority itself to abide by the law. If
-the police represents a mere preponderance of power, using that power to
-create a privileged position for itself or for its employers--setting
-itself, that is, against the community--you will sooner or later get
-resistance which will ultimately neutralise that power and produce a
-mere paralysis so far as any social purpose is concerned. The existence
-of the police depends upon general agreement not to use force except as
-the instrument of the social will, the law to which all are party. This
-social will may not exist; the members of the vigilance committee or
-town council or other body may themselves use their revolvers and knives
-each against the other. Very well, in that case you will get no police.
-'Force' will not remedy it. Who is to use the force if no one man can
-agree with the other? All along the line here we find ourselves,
-whatever our predisposition to trust only 'force,' thrown back upon a
-moral factor, compelled to rely upon contract, an agreement, before we
-can use force at all.
-
-It will be noted incidentally that effective social force does not rest
-upon a Balance of Power: society does not need a Balance of Power as
-between the law and crime; it wants a preponderance of power on the
-side of the law. One does not want a Balance of Power between rival
-parties in the State. One wants a preponderance of power on behalf of a
-certain fundamental code upon which all parties, or an immense majority
-of parties, will be agreed. As against the Balance of Power we need a
-Community of Power--to use Mr. Wilson's phrase--on the side of a purpose
-or code of which the contributors to the power are aware.
-
-One may read in learned and pretentious political works that the
-ultimate basis of a State is force--the army--which is the means by
-which the State's authority is maintained. But who compels the army to
-carry out the State's orders rather than its own will or the personal
-will of its commander? _Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?_ The following
-passage from an address delivered by the present writer in America may
-perhaps help to make the point clear:--
-
-     'When, after the counting of the votes, you ask Mr Wilson to step
-     down from the President's chair, how do you know he will get down?
-     I repeat, How do you know he will get down? You think that a
-     foolish and fantastic question? But, in a great many interesting
-     American republics, Mexico, Venezuela, or Hayti, he would not get
-     down! You say, "Oh, the army would turn him out." I beg your
-     pardon. It is Mr Wilson who commands the army; it is not the army
-     that commands Mr Wilson. Again, in many American republics a
-     President who can depend on his army, when asked to get out of the
-     Presidency, would reply almost as a matter of course, "Why should I
-     get down when I have an army that stands by me?"
-
-     'How do we know that Mr Wilson, able, we will assume, to count on
-     his army, or, if you prefer, some President particularly popular
-     with the army, will not do that? Is it physical force which
-     prevents it? If so, whose? You may say: "If he did that, he knows
-     that the country would raise an army of rebellion to turn him out."
-     Well, suppose it did? You raise this army, as they would in
-     Mexico, or Venezuela, and the army turns him out. And your man gets
-     into the Presidential chair, and then, when you think he has stolen
-     enough, you vote _him_ down. He would do precisely the same thing.
-     He would say: "My dear people, as very great philosophers tell you,
-     the State is Force, and as a great French monarch once said. 'I am
-     the State.' _J'y suis, j'y reste._". And then you would have to get
-     another army of rebellion to turn _him_ out--just as they do in
-     Mexico, Venezuela, Hayti, or Honduras.'
-
-There, then, is the crux of the matter. Every constitution at times
-breaks down. But if that fact were a conclusive argument for the
-anarchical arming of each man against the other as preferable to a
-police enforcing law, there could be no human society. The object of
-constitutional machinery for change is to make civil war unnecessary.
-
-There will be no advance save through an improved tradition. Perhaps it
-will be impossible to improve the tradition. Very well, then the old
-order, whether among the nations of Europe or the political parties of
-Venezuela, will remain unchanged. More 'force,' more soldiers, will not
-do it. The disturbed areas of Spanish-America each show a greater number
-of soldiers to population than States like Massachusetts or Ohio. So in
-the international solution. What would it have availed if Britain had
-quadrupled the quantity of rifles to Koltchak's peasant soldiers so long
-as his land policy caused them to turn their rifles against his
-Government? Or for France to have multiplied many times the loans made
-to the Ukraine, if at the same time the loans made to Poland so fed
-Polish nationalism that the Ukrainians preferred making common cause
-with the Bolsheviks to becoming satellites of an Imperialist Poland? Do
-we add to the 'force' of the Alliance by increasing the military power
-of Serbia, if that fact provokes her to challenge Italy? Do we
-strengthen it by increasing at one and the same time the military forces
-of two States--say Poland and Czecho-Slovakia--if the nationalism which
-we nurse leads finally to those two States turning their forces one
-against the other? Unless we know the policy (again a thing of the mind,
-of opinion) which will determine the use to which guns will be put, it
-does not increase our security--it may diminish it--to add more guns.
-
-
-_The Alternative Risks_
-
-We see, therefore, that the alternatives are not in fact a choice
-between 'material' and 'spiritual' means. The material can only operate,
-whether for our defence or against us, by virtue of a spiritual thing,
-the will. 'The direction in which the gun will shoot'--a rather
-important point in its effectiveness as a defensive weapon--depends not
-on the gun but on the mind of the man using it, the moral factor. The
-two cannot be separated.
-
-It is untrue to say that the knife is a magic instrument, saving the
-cancer patient's life: it is the mind of the surgeon using the material
-thing in a certain way which saves the patient's life. A child or savage
-who, failing to realise the part played by the invisible element of the
-surgeon's mind, should deem that a knife of a particular pattern used
-'boldly' could be depended upon to cure cancer, would merely, of course
-commit manslaughter.
-
-It is foolish to talk of an absolute guarantee of security by force, as
-of guarantee of success in surgical operations by perfection of knives.
-In both cases we are dealing with instruments, indispensable, but not of
-themselves enough. The mind behind the instrument, technical in one
-case, social in the other, may in both cases fail; then we must improve
-it. Merely to go on sharpening the knife, to go on applying, for
-instance, to the international problem more 'force,' in the way it has
-been applied in the past, can only give us in intenser degree the
-present results.
-
-Yet the truth here indicated is perpetually being disregarded,
-particularly by those who pique themselves on being 'practical.' In the
-choice of risks by men of the world and realist statesmen the choice
-which inevitably leads to destruction is for ever being made on grounds
-of safety; the choice which leads at least in the direction of security
-is for ever being rejected on the grounds of its danger.
-
-Why is this? The choice is instinctive assuredly; it is not the result
-of 'hard-headed calculation' though it often professes to be. We speak
-of it as the 'protective' instinct. But it is a protective instinct
-which obviously destroys us.
-
-I am suggesting here that, at the bottom of the choice in favour of the
-Balance of Power or preponderance as a political method, is neither the
-desire for safety nor the desire to place 'might behind right,' but the
-desire for domination, the instinct of self-assertion, the anti-social
-wish to be judge in our own case; and further, that the way out of the
-difficulty is to discipline this instinct by a better social tradition.
-To do that we must discredit the old tradition--create a different
-feeling about it; to which end it is indispensable to face frankly the
-nature of its moral origins; to look its motives in the face.[68]
-
-It is extremely suggestive in this connection that the 'realist'
-politician, the 'hard-headed practical man,' disdainful of Sunday School
-standards,' in his defence of national necessity, is quite ready to be
-contemptuous of national safety and interest when these latter point
-plainly to a policy of international agreement as against domination.
-Agreement is then rejected as pusillanimous, and consideration for
-national interest as placing 'pocket before patriotism.' We are then
-reminded, even by the most realist of nationalists, that nations live
-for higher things than 'profit' or even safety. 'Internationalism,' says
-Colonel Roosevelt, 'inevitably emasculates its sincere votaries,' and
-'every civilisation worth calling such' must be based 'on a spirit of
-intense nationalism.' For Colonel Roosevelt or General Wood in America
-as for Mr Kipling, or Mr Chesterton, or Mr Churchill, or Lord
-Northciffe, or Mr Bottomley, and a vast host of poets, professors,
-editors, historians, bishops, publicists of all sorts in England and
-France, 'Internationalist' and 'Pacifist' are akin to political atheist.
-A moral consideration now replaces the 'realist.' The metamorphosis is
-only intelligible on the assumption here suggested that both
-explanations or justifications are a rationalisation of the impulse to
-power and domination.
-
-Our political, quite as much as our social, conduct is in the main the
-result of motives that are mainly unconscious instinct, habit,
-unquestioned tradition. So long as we find the result satisfactory, well
-and good. But when the result of following instinct is disaster, we
-realise that the time has come to 'get outside ourselves,' to test our
-instincts by their social result. We have then to see whether the
-'reasons' we have given for our conduct are really its motives. That
-examination is the first step to rendering the unconscious motive
-conscious. In considering, for instance, the two methods indicated in
-this chapter, we say, in 'rationalising' our decision, that we chose the
-lesser of two risks. I am suggesting that in the choice of the method of
-the Balance of Power our real motive was not desire to achieve security,
-but domination. It is just because our motives are not mainly
-intellectual but 'instinctive' that the desire for domination is so
-likely to have played the determining role: for few instincts and
-innate desires are stronger than that which pushes to 'self-affirmation'--the
-assertion of preponderant force.
-
-We have indeed seen that the Balance of Power means in practice the
-determination to secure a preponderance of power. What is a 'Balance?'
-The two sides will not agree on that, and each to be sure will want it
-tilted in its favour. We decline to place ourselves within the power of
-another who may differ from us as to our right. We demand to be
-stronger, in order that we may be judge in our own case. This means that
-we shall resist the claim of others to exactly the same thing.
-
-The alternative is partnership. It means trust. But we have seen that
-the exercise of any form of force, other than that which one single
-individual can wield, must involve an element of 'trust.' The soldiers
-must be trusted to obey the officers, since the former have by far the
-preponderance of force; the officers must be trusted to obey the
-constitution instead of challenging it; the police must be trusted to
-obey the authorities; the Cabinet must be trusted to obey the electoral
-decision; the members of an alliance to work together instead of against
-one another, and so on. Yet the assumption of the 'Power Politician' is
-that the method which has succeeded (notably within the State) is the
-'idealistic' but essentially unpractical method in which security and
-advantage are sacrificed to Utopian experiment; while the method of
-competitive armament, however distressing it may be to the Sunday
-Schools, is the one that gives us real security. 'The way to be sure of
-preserving peace,' says Mr Churchill, 'is to be so much stronger than
-your enemy that he won't dare to attack you.' In other words it is
-obvious that the way for two people to keep the peace is for each to be
-stronger than the other.
-
-'You may have made your front door secure' says Marshal Foch, arguing
-for the Rhine frontier, 'but you may as well make sure by having a good
-high garden wall as well.'
-
-'Make sure,' that is the note--_si vis pacem_.... And he can be sure
-that 'the average practical man,' who prides himself on 'knowing human
-nature' and 'distrusting theories' will respond to the appeal. Every
-club smoking room will decide that 'the simple soldier' knows his
-business and has judged human forces aright.
-
-Yet of course the simple truth is that the 'hard-headed soldier' has
-chosen the one ground upon which all experience, all the facts, are
-against him. Then how is he able to 'get away with it'--to ride off
-leaving at least the impression of being a sternly practical
-unsentimental man of the world by virtue of having propounded an
-aphorism which all practical experience condemns? Here is Mr Churchill.
-He is talking to hard-headed Lancashire manufacturers. He desires to
-show that he too is no theorist, that he also can be hard-headed and
-practical. And he--who really does know the mind of the 'hard-headed
-business man'--is perfectly aware that the best road to those hard heads
-is to propound an arrant absurdity, to base a proposed line of policy on
-the assumption of a physical impossibility, to follow a will-o'-the-wisp
-which in all recorded history has led men into a bog.
-
-They applaud Mr Churchill, not because he has put before them a cold
-calculation of relative risk in the matter of maintaining peace, an
-indication, where, on the whole, the balance of safety lies; Mr
-Churchill, of course, knows perfectly well that, while professing to do
-that, he has been doing nothing of the sort. He has, in reality, been
-appealing to a sentiment, the emotion which is strongest and steadiest
-in the 'hard-faced men' who have elbowed their way to the top in a
-competitive society. He has 'rationalised' that competitive sentiment of
-domination by putting forward a 'reason' which can be avowed to them and
-to others.
-
-Colonel Roosevelt managed to inject into his reasons for predominance a
-moral strenuousness which Mr Churchill does not achieve.
-
-The following is a passage from one of the last important speeches made
-by Colonel Roosevelt--twice President of the United States and one of
-the out-standing figures in the world in his generation:--
-
-     'Friends, be on your guard against the apostles of weakness and
-     folly when peace comes. They will tell you that this is the last
-     great war. They will tell you that they can make paper treaties and
-     agreements and guarantees by which brutal and unscrupulous men will
-     have their souls so softened that weak and timid men won't have
-     anything to fear and that brave and honest men won't have to
-     prepare to defend themselves.
-
-     'Well, we have seen that all such treaties are worth less than
-     scraps of paper when it becomes to the interests of powerful and
-     ruthless militarist nations to disregard them.... After this War is
-     over, these foolish pacifist creatures will again raise their
-     piping voices against preparedness and in favour of patent devices
-     for maintaining peace without effort. Let us enter into every
-     reasonable agreement which bids fair to minimise the chances of war
-     and to circumscribe its area.... But let us remember it is a
-     hundred times more important for us to prepare our strength for our
-     own defence than to enter any of these peace treaties, and that if
-     we thus prepare our strength for our own defence we shall minimise
-     the chances of war as no paper treaties can possibly minimise them;
-     and we shall thus make our views effective for peace and justice in
-     the world at large as in no other way can they be made
-     effective.'[69]
-
-Let us dispose of one or two of the more devastating confusions in the
-foregoing.
-
-First there is the everlasting muddle as to the internationalist
-attitude towards the likelihood of war. To Colonel Roosevelt one is an
-internationalist or 'pacifist' because one thinks war will not take
-place. Whereas probably the strongest motive of internationalism is the
-conviction that without it war is inevitable, that in a world of rival
-nationalisms war cannot be avoided. If those who hate war believe that
-the present order will without effort give them peace, why in the name
-of all the abuse which their advocacy brings on their heads should they
-bother further about the matter?
-
-Secondly, internationalism is assumed to be the _alternative_ to the
-employment of force or power of arms, whereas it is the organisation of
-force, of power (latent or positive) to a common--an international--end.
-
-Our incurable habit of giving to homely but perfectly healthy and
-justifiable reasons of conduct a high faluting romanticism sometimes
-does morality a very ill service. When in political situations--as in
-the making of a Peace Treaty--a nation is confronted by the general
-alternative we are now discussing, the grounds of opposition to a
-co-operative or 'Liberal' or 'generous' settlement are almost always
-these: 'Generosity' is lost upon a people as crafty and treacherous as
-the enemy; he mistakes generosity for weakness; he will take advantage
-of it; his nature won't be softened by mild treatment; he understands
-nothing but force.
-
-The assumption is that the liberal policy is based upon an appeal to the
-better side of the enemy; upon arousing his nobler nature. And such an
-assumption concerning the Hun or the Bolshevik, for instance (or at an
-earlier date, the Boer or the Frenchman), causes the very gorge of the
-Roosevelt-Bottomley patriot to rise in protest. He simply does not
-believe in the effective operation of so remote a motive.
-
-But the real ground of defence for the liberal policy is not the
-existence of an abnormal if heretofore successfully disguised nobility
-on the part of the enemy, but of his very human if not very noble fears
-which, from our point of view, it is extremely important not to arouse
-or justify. If our 'punishment' of him creates in his mind the
-conviction that we are certain to use our power for commercial
-advantage, or that in any case our power is a positive danger to him,
-he _will_ use his recovered economic strength for the purpose of
-resisting it; and we should face a fact so dangerous and costly to us.
-
-To take cognisance of this fact, and to shape our policy accordingly is
-not to attribute to the enemy any particular nobility of motive. But
-almost always when that policy is attacked, it is attacked on the ground
-of its 'Sunday School' assumption of the accessibility of the enemy to
-gratitude or 'softening' in Colonel Roosevelt's phrase.
-
-We reach in the final analysis of the interplay of motive a very clear
-political pragmatism. Either policy will justify itself, and by the way
-it works out in practice, prove that it is right.
-
-Here is a statesman--Italian, say--who takes the 'realist' view, and
-comes to a Peace Conference which may settle for centuries the position
-of his country in the world--its strength, its capacity for defending
-itself, the extent of its resources. In the world as he knows it, a
-country has one thing, and one thing only, upon which it can depend for
-its national security and the defence of its due rights; and that thing
-is its own strength. Italy's adequate defence must include the naval
-command of the Adriatic and a strategic position in the Tyrol. This
-means deep harbours on the Dalmatian coast and the inclusion in the
-Tyrol of a very considerable non-Italian population. To take them may,
-it is true, not only violate the principle of nationality but shut off
-the new Yugo-Slav nation from access to the sea and exchange one
-irredentism for another. But what can the 'realist' Italian statesman,
-whose first duty is to his own country do? He is sorry, but his own
-nationality and its due protection are concerned; and the Italian nation
-will be insecure without those frontiers and those harbours.
-Self-preservation is the law of life for nations as for other living
-things. You have, unfortunately, a condition in which the security of
-one means the insecurity of another, and if a statesman in these
-circumstances has to choose which of the two is to be secure, he must
-choose his own country.
-
-Some day, of course, there may come into being a League of Nations so
-effective that nations can really look to it for their safety. Meantime
-they must look to themselves. But, unfortunately, for each nation to
-take these steps about strategic frontiers means not only killing the
-possibility of an effective League: it means, sooner or later, killing
-the military alliance which is the alternative. If one Alsace-Lorraine
-could poison European politics in the way it did, what is going to be
-the effect ultimately of the round dozen that we have created under the
-treaty? The history of Britain in reference to Arab and Egyptian
-Nationality; of France in relation to Poland and other Russian border
-States; of all the Allies in reference to Japanese ambitions in China
-and Siberia, reveals what is, fundamentally, a precisely similar
-dilemma.
-
-When the statesmen--Italian or other--insist upon strategic frontiers
-and territories containing raw materials, on the ground that a nation
-must look to itself because we live in a world in which international
-arrangements cannot be depended on, they can be quite certain that the
-reason they give is a sound one: because their own action will make it
-so: their action creates the very conditions to which they appeal as the
-reason for it. Their decision, with the popular impulse of sacred egoism
-which supports it, does something more than repudiate Mr Wilson's
-principles; it is the beginning of the disruption of the Alliance upon
-which their countries have depended. The case is put in a manifesto
-issued a year or two ago by a number of eminent Americans from which we
-have already quoted in Chapter III.
-
-It says:--
-
-     'If, as in the past, nations must look for their future security
-     chiefly to their own strength and resources, then inevitably, in
-     the name of the needs of national defence, there will be claims for
-     strategic frontiers and territories with raw material which do
-     violence to the principle of nationality. Afterwards those who
-     suffer from such violations would be opposed to the League of
-     Nations, because it would consecrate the injustice of which they
-     would be the victims. A refusal to trust to the League of Nations,
-     and a demand for "material" guarantees for future safety, will set
-     up that very distrust which will afterwards be appealed to as
-     justification for regarding the League as impracticable because it
-     inspires no general confidence. A bold "Act of Political Faith" in
-     the League will justify itself by making the League a success; but,
-     equally, lack of faith will justify itself by ruining the League.'
-
-That is why, when in the past the realist statesman has sometimes
-objected that he does not believe in internationalism because it is not
-practical, I have replied that it is not practical because he does not
-believe in it.
-
-The prerequisite to the creation of a society is the Social Will. And
-herein lies the difficulty of making any comparative estimate of the
-respective risks of the alternative courses. We admit that if the
-nations would sink their sacred egoisms and pledge their power to mutual
-and common protection, the risk of such a course would disappear. We get
-the paradox that there is no risk if we all take the risk. But each
-refuses to begin. William James has illustrated the position:--
-
-     'I am climbing the Alps, and have had the ill luck to work myself
-     into a position from which the only escape is by a terrible leap.
-     Being without similar experience, I have no evidence of my ability
-     to perform it successfully; but hope and confidence in myself make
-     me sure that I shall not miss my aim, and nerve my feet to execute
-     what, without those subjective emotions, would have been
-     impossible.
-
-     'But suppose that, on the contrary, the emotions ... of mistrust
-     predominate.... Why, then, I shall hesitate so long that at last,
-     exhausted and trembling, and launching myself in a moment of
-     despair, I miss my foothold and roll into the abyss. In this case,
-     and it is one of an immense class, the part of wisdom is to believe
-     what one desires; for the belief is one of the indispensable,
-     preliminary conditions of the realisation of its object. There are
-     cases where faith creates its own justification. Believe, and you
-     shall be right, for you shall save yourself; doubt, and you shall
-     again be right, for you shall perish.'
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-THE SPIRITUAL ROOTS OF THE SETTLEMENT
-
-
-_'Human Nature is always what it is'_
-
-'You may argue as much as you like. All the logic chopping will never
-get over the fact that human nature is always what it is. Nations will
-always fight.... always retaliate at victory.'
-
-If that be true, and our pugnacities, and hates, and instincts
-generally, are uncontrollable, and they dictate conduct, no more is to
-be said. We are the helpless victims of outside forces, and may as well
-surrender, without further discussion, or political agitation, or
-propaganda. For if those appeals to our minds can neither determine the
-direction nor modify the manifestation of our innate instincts, nor
-influence conduct, one rather wonders at our persistence in them.
-
-Why so many of us find an obvious satisfaction in this fatalism, so
-patently want it to be true, and resort to it in such convenient
-disregard of the facts, has been in some measure indicated in the
-preceding chapter. At bottom it comes to this: that it relieves us of so
-much trouble and responsibility; the life of instinct and emotion is so
-easily flowing a thing, and that of social restraints and rationalised
-decisions so cold and dry and barren.
-
-At least that is the alternative as many of us see it. And if the only
-alternative to an impulse spending itself in hostilities and hatreds
-destructive of social cohesion, were the sheer restraint of impulse by
-calculation and reason; if our choice were truly between chaos,
-anarchy, and the perpetual repression of all spontaneous and vigorous
-impulse--then the choice of a fatalistic refusal to reason would be
-justifiable.
-
-But happily that is not the alternative. The function of reason and
-discipline is not to repress instinct and impulse, but to turn those
-forces into directions in which they may have free play without
-disaster. The function of the compass is not to check the power of the
-ship's engines; it is to indicate a direction in which the power can be
-given full play, because the danger of running on to the rocks has been
-obviated.
-
-Let us first get the mere facts straight--facts as they have worked out
-in the War and the Peace.
-
-It is not true that the directions taken by our instincts cannot in any
-way be determined by our intelligence. 'A man's impulses are not fixed
-from the beginning by his native disposition: within certain limits they
-are profoundly modified by his circumstances and way of life.'[70] What
-we regard as the 'instinctive' part of our character is, again, within
-large limits very malleable: by beliefs, by social circumstances, by
-institutions, and above all by the suggestibility of tradition, the work
-is often of individual minds.
-
-It is not so much the _character_ of our impulsive and instinctive life
-that is changed by these influences, as the direction. The elements of
-human nature may remain unchangeable, but the manifestations resulting
-from the changing combinations may be infinitely various as are the
-forms of matter which result from changing combinations of the same
-primary elements.
-
-It is not a choice between a life of impulse and emotion on the one
-side, and wearisome repressions on the other. The perception that
-certain needs are vital will cause us to use our emotional energy for
-one purpose instead of another. And just because the traditions that
-have grouped around nationalism turn our combativeness into the
-direction of war, the energy brought into play by that impulse is not
-available for the creativeness of peace. Having become habituated to a
-certain reagent--the stimulus of some personal or visible enemy--energy
-fails to react to a stimulus which, with a different way of life, would
-have sufficed. Because we must have gin to summon up our energy, that is
-no proof that energy is impossible without it. It is hardly for an
-inebriate to laud the life of instinct and impulse. For the time being
-that is not the attitude and tendency that most needs encouragement.
-
-As to the fact that the instinctive and impulsive part of our behaviour
-is dirigible and malleable by tradition and discussion, that is not only
-admitted, but it is apt to be over-emphasised--by those who insist upon
-the 'unchangeability of human nature.' The importance which we attached
-to the repression of pacifist and defeatist propaganda during the War,
-and of Bolshevist agitation after the War, proves that we believe these
-feelings, that we allege to be unchangeable, can be changed too easily
-and readily by the influence of ideas, even wrong ones.
-
-The type of feeling which gave us the Treaty was in a large degree a
-manufactured feeling, in the sense that it was the result of opinion,
-formed day by day by a selection only of the facts. For this manufacture
-of opinion, we consciously created a very elaborate machinery, both of
-propaganda and of control of news. But that organisation of public
-opinion, justifiable in itself perhaps as a war measure, was not guided
-(as the result shows) by an understanding of what the political ends,
-which, in the early days of the War, we declared to be ours, would need
-in the way of psychology. Our machinery developed a psychology which
-made our higher political aims quite impossible of realisation.
-
-Public opinion, 'human nature,' would have been more manageable, its
-'instincts' would have been sounder, and we should have had a Europe
-less in disintegration, if we had told as far as possible that part of
-the truth which our public bodies (State, Church, Press, the School)
-were largely occupied in hiding. But the opinion which dictated the
-policy of repression is itself the result of refusing to face the truth.
-To tell the truth is the remedy here suggested.
-
-
-_The Paradox of the Peace_
-
-The supreme paradox of the Peace is this:--
-
-We went into the War with certain very definitely proclaimed principles,
-which we declared to be more valuable than the lives of the men that were
-sacrificed in their defence. We were completely victorious, and went into
-the Conference with full power, so far as enemy resistance was concerned,
-to put those principles into effect.[71] We did not use the victory which
-our young men had given us to that end, but for enforcing a policy which
-was in flat contradiction to the principles we had originally proclaimed.
-
-In some respects the spectacle is the most astounding of all history. It
-is literally true to say that millions of young soldiers gladly gave
-their lives for ideals to which the survivors, when they had the power
-to realise them (again so far as physical force can give us power,)
-showed complete indifference, sometimes a contemptuous hostility.
-
-It was not merely an act of the statesmen. The worst features of the
-Treaty were imposed by popular feeling--put into the Treaty by statesmen
-who did not believe in them, and only included them in order to satisfy
-public opinion. The policy of President Wilson failed in part because of
-the humane and internationalist opinion of the America of 1916 had
-become the fiercely chauvinist and coercive opinion of 1919, repudiating
-the President's efforts.
-
-Part of the story of these transformations has been told in the
-preceding pages. Let us summarise the story as a whole.
-
-We saw at the beginning of the War a real feeling for the right of
-peoples to choose their own form of government, for the principle of
-nationality. At the end of the War we deny that right in half a score of
-cases,[72] where it suits our momentary political or military interest.
-The very justification of 'necessity,' which shocks our conscience when
-put forward by the enemy, is the one we invoke callously at the
-peace--or before it, as when we agree to allow Czarist Russia to do what
-she will with Poland, and Italy with Serbia. Having sacrificed the small
-State to Russia in 1916, we are prepared to sacrifice Russia to the
-small State in 1919, by encouraging the formation of border
-independencies, which, if complete independencies, must throttle Russia,
-and which no 'White' Russian would accept. While encouraging the lesser
-States to make war on Russia, we subsidise White Russian military
-leaders who will certainly destroy the small States if successful. We
-entered the War for the destruction of militarism, and to make
-disarmament possible, declaring that German arms were the cause of our
-arms; and having destroyed German arms, we make ours greater than they
-were before the War, and introduce such new elements as the systematic
-arming of African savages for European warfare. We fought to make the
-secret bringing about of war by military or diplomatic cliques
-impossible, and after the Armistice the decision to wage war on the
-Russian Republic is made without even public knowledge, in opposition to
-sections in the Cabinets concerned, by cliques of whose composition the
-public is completely ignorant.[73] The invasion of Russia from the
-north, south, east, and west, by European, Asiatic, and negro troops, is
-made without a declaration of war, after a solemn statement by the chief
-spokesman of the Allies that there should be no invasion. Having
-declared, during the War, on a score of occasions, that we were not
-fighting against any right or interest of the German people[74]--or the
-German people at all--because we realised that only by ensuring that
-right and interest ourselves could we turn Germany from the ways of the
-past, at the peace we impose conditions which make it impossible for the
-German people even adequately to feed their population, and leave them
-no recourse but the recreation of their power. Having promised at the
-Armistice not to use our power for the purpose of preventing the due
-feeding of Germany, we continue for months a blockade which, even by the
-testimony of our own officials, creates famine conditions and literally
-kills very many of the children.
-
-At the beginning of the War, our statesmen, if not our public, had some
-rudimentary sense of the economic unity of mankind, of our need of one
-another's work, and the idea of blockading half a world in time of dire
-scarcity would have appalled them. Yet at the Armistice it was done so
-light-heartedly that, having at last abandoned it, they have never even
-explained what they proposed to accomplish by it, for, says Mr Maynard
-Keynes. 'It is an extraordinary fact that the fundamental economic
-problem of a Europe starving and disintegrating before their eyes, was
-the one question in which it was impossible to arouse the interest of
-the Four.'[75] At the beginning of the War we invoked high heaven to
-witness the danger and anomaly of autocratic government in our day. We
-were fighting for Parliamentary institutions, 'open Covenants openly
-arrived at.' After victory, we leave the real settlement of Europe to be
-made by two or three Prime Ministers, rendering no account of their
-secret deliberations and discussions to any Parliament until, in
-practice, it is too late to alter them. At the beginning of the War we
-were profoundly moved by the wickedness of military terrorism; at its
-close we employ it--whether by means of starvation, blockade, armed
-negro savages in German cities, reprisals in Ireland, or the ruthless
-slaughter of unarmed civilians in India--without creating any strong
-revulsion of feeling at home. At the beginning of the War we realised
-that the governmental organisation of hatred with the prostitution of
-art to 'hymns of hate' was vile and despicable. We copied that
-governmental organisation of hatred, and famous English authors duly
-produce _our_ hymns of hate.[76] We felt at the beginning that all human
-freedom was menaced by the German theory of the State as the master of
-man and not as his instrument, with all that means of political
-inquisition and repression. When some of its worst features are applied
-at home, we are so indifferent to the fact that we do not even recognise
-that the thing against which we fought has been imposed upon
-ourselves.[77]
-
-Many will dissent from this indictment. Yet its most important item--our
-indifference to the very evils against which we fought--is something
-upon which practically all witnesses testifying to the state of public
-opinion to-day agree. It is a commonplace of current discussion of
-present-day feeling. Take one or two at random, Sir Philip Gibbs and Mr.
-Sisley Huddleston, both English journalists. (I choose journalists
-because it is their business to know the nature of the public mind and
-spirit.) Speaking of the wholesale starvation, unimaginable misery, from
-the Baltic to the Black Sea, Mr. Huddleston writes:--
-
-     'We read these things. They make not the smallest impression on us.
-     Why? How is it that we are not horrified and do not resolve that
-     not for a single day shall any preventable evil exist? How is it,
-     that, on the contrary, for two years we have been cheerfully
-     engaged in intensifying the sum of human suffering? Why are we so
-     heedless? Why are we so callous? Why do we allow to be committed,
-     in our name, a thousand atrocities, and to be written, in our name
-     and for our delectation, a million vile words which reveal the most
-     amazing lack either of feeling or of common sense?
-
-     'There have been crimes perpetrated by the politicians--by all the
-     politicians--which no condemnation could fitly characterise. But
-     the peoples must be blamed. The peoples support the war-making
-     politicians. It is my business to follow the course of events day
-     by day, and it is sometimes difficult to stand back and take a
-     general view. Whenever I do so, I am appalled at the blundering or
-     the wickedness of the leaders of the world. Without party
-     prejudices or personal predilections, an impartial observer, I
-     cannot conceive how it is possible to be always blind to the truth,
-     the glaring truth, that since the Armistice we have never sought to
-     make peace, but have sought only some pretext and method for
-     prolonging the War.
-
-     'Hate exudes from every journal in speaking of certain peoples--a
-     weary hate, a conventional hate, a hate which is always whipping
-     itself into a passion. It is, perhaps, more strictly, apathy
-     masquerading as hate--which is worst of all. The people are
-     _blase_: they seek only bread and circuses for themselves. They
-     regard no bread for others as a rather boring circus for
-     themselves.'
-
-Mr. Huddleston was present throughout most of the Conference. This is
-his verdict:--
-
-     ' ... Cynicism soon became naked. In the East all pretence of
-     righteousness was abandoned. Every successive Treaty was more
-     frankly the expression of shameful appetites. There was no pretence
-     of conscience in politics. Force rules without disguise. What was
-     still more amazing was the way in which strife was stirred up
-     gratuitously. What advantage was it, even for a moment, to any one
-     to foment civil war in Russia, to send against the unhappy,
-     famine-stricken country army after army? The result was so
-     obviously to consolidate the Bolshevist Government around which
-     were obliged to rally all Russians who had the spirit of
-     nationality. It seemed as if everywhere we were plotting our own
-     ruin and hastening our own end. A strange dementia seized our
-     rulers, who thought peace, replenishment of empty larders, the
-     fraternisation of sorely tired nations, ignoble and delusive
-     objects. It appeared that war was for evermore to be humanity's
-     fate.
-
-     'Time after time I saw excellent opportunities of universal peace
-     deliberately rejected. There was somebody to wreck every Prinkipo,
-     every Spa. It was almost with dismay that all Europeans who had
-     kept their intelligence unclouded saw the frustration of peace, and
-     heard the peoples applaud the men who frustrated peace. I care not
-     whether they still enjoy esteem: history will judge them harshly
-     and will judge harshly the turbulence which men plumed themselves
-     on creating two years after the War.'
-
-As to the future:--
-
-     'If it is certain that France must force another fight with Germany
-     in a short span of years, if she pursues her present policy of
-     implacable antagonism; if it is certain that England is already
-     carefully seeking the European equilibrium, and that a responsible
-     minister has already written of the possibility of a military
-     accord with Germany; if there has been seen, owing to the foolish
-     belief of the Allies in force--a belief which increases in inverse
-     ratio to the Allied possession of effective force--the re-birth of
-     Russian militarism, as there will assuredly be seen the re-birth of
-     German militarism; if there are quarrels between Greece and Italy,
-     between Italy and the Jugo-Slavs, between Hungary and Austria,
-     between every tiny nation and its neighbour, even between England
-     and France, it is because, when war has once been invoked, it
-     cannot easily be exorcised. It will linger long in Europe: the
-     straw will smoulder and at any moment may break into flame....
-
-     'This is not lurid imagining: it is as logical as a piece of
-     Euclidean reasoning. Only by a violent effort to change our fashion
-     of seeing things can it be averted. War-making is now a habit.'
-
-And as to the outcome on the mind of the people:--
-
-     'The war has killed elasticity of mind, independence of judgment,
-     and liberty of expression. We think not so much of the truth as of
-     conforming to the tacitly accepted fiction of the hour.[78]
-
-Sir Philip Gibbs renders on the whole a similar verdict. He says:--
-
-     'The people of all countries were deeply involved in the general
-     blood-guiltiness of Europe. They made no passionate appeal in the
-     name of Christ or in the name of humanity for the cessation of the
-     slaughter of boys and the suicide of nations, and for a
-     reconciliation of peoples upon terms of some more reasonable
-     argument than that of high explosives. Peace proposals from the
-     Pope, from Germany, from Austria, were rejected with fierce
-     denunciation, most passionate scorn, as "peace plots" and "peace
-     traps," not without the terrible logic of the vicious circle,
-     because indeed, there was no sincerity of renunciation in some of
-     those offers of peace, and the Powers opposite to us were simply
-     trying our strength and our weakness in order to make their own
-     kind of peace, which should be that of conquest. The gamblers,
-     playing the game of "poker," with crowns and armies as their
-     stakes, were upheld generally by the peoples, who would not abate
-     one point of pride, one fraction of hate, one claim of vengeance,
-     though all Europe should fall in ruin, and the last legions of boys
-     be massacred. There was no call from people to people across the
-     frontiers of hostility. "Let us end this homicidal mania. Let us
-     get back to sanity and save our younger sons. Let us hand over to
-     justice those who will continue the slaughter of our youth!" There
-     was no forgiveness, no generous instinct, no large-hearted common
-     sense in any combatant nation of Europe. Like wolves they had their
-     teeth in one another's throats, and would not let go, though all
-     bloody and exhausted, until one should fall at the last gasp, to be
-     mangled by the others. Yet in each nation, even in Germany, there
-     were men and women who saw the folly of the war and the crime of
-     it, and desired to end it by some act of renunciation and
-     repentance, and by some uplifting of the people's spirit to vault
-     the frontiers of hatred and the barbed wire which hedged in
-     patriotism. Some of them were put in prison. Most of them saw the
-     impossibility of counteracting the forces of insanity which had
-     made the world mad, and kept silent, hiding their thoughts and
-     brooding over them. The leaders of the nations continued to use
-     mob-passion as their argument and justification, excited it anew
-     when its fires burned low, focussed it upon definite objectives,
-     and gave it a sense of righteousness by the high-sounding
-     watchwords of liberty, justice, honour, and retribution. Each side
-     proclaimed Christ as its captain, and invoked the blessing and aid
-     of the God of Christendom, though Germans were allied with Turks,
-     and France was full of black and yellow men. The German people did
-     not try to avert their ruin by denouncing the criminal acts of
-     their War Lords nor by deploring the cruelties they had committed.
-     The Allies did not help them to do so, because of their lust for
-     bloody vengeance and their desire for the spoils of victory. The
-     peoples shared the blame of their rulers because they were not
-     nobler than their rulers. They cannot now plead ignorance or
-     betrayal by false ideals which duped them, because character does
-     not depend on knowledge, and it was the character of European
-     peoples which failed in the crisis of the world's fate, so that
-     they followed the call-back of the beast in the jungle rather than
-     the voice of the Crucified One whom they pretended to adore.'
-
-And perhaps most important of all (though the clergy here just stand for
-the complacent mob mind; they were no worse than the laity), this:--
-
-     'I think the clergy of all nations, apart from a heroic and saintly
-     few, subordinated their faith, which is a gospel of charity, to
-     national limitations. They were patriots before they were priests,
-     and their patriotism was sometimes as limited, as narrow, as
-     fierce, and as blood-thirsty as that of the people who looked to
-     them for truth and light. They were often fiercer, narrower, and
-     more desirous of vengeance than the soldiers who fought, because it
-     is now a known truth that the soldiers, German and Austrian, French
-     and Italian and British, were sick of the unending slaughter long
-     before the ending of the war, and would have made a peace more fair
-     than that which now prevails if it had been put to the common vote
-     in the trenches; whereas the Archbishop of Canterbury, the
-     Archbishop of Cologne, and the clergy who spoke from many pulpits
-     in many nations under the Cross of Christ, still stoked up the
-     fires of hate and urged the armies to go on fighting "in the cause
-     of Justice," "for the defence of the Fatherland," "for Christian
-     righteousness," to the bitter end. Those words are painful to
-     write, but as I am writing this book for truth's sake, at all cost,
-     I let them stand.'[79]
-
-
-_From Passion to Indifference: the Result of Drift_
-
-A common attitude just now is something like this:--
-
-'With the bitter memory of all that the Allies had suffered strong upon
-them, it is not astonishing that at the moment of victory an attitude of
-judicial impartiality proved too much to ask of human nature. The real
-terms will depend upon the fashion in which the formal terms are
-enforced. Much of the letter of the Treaty--trial of the Kaiser,
-etc.--has already disappeared. It is an intolerable priggishness to rake
-up this very excusable debauch just as we are returning to sobriety.'
-
-And that would be true, if, indeed, we had learned the lesson, and were
-adopting a new policy. But we are not. We have merely in some measure
-exchanged passion for lassitude and indifference. Later on we shall
-plead that the lassitude was as 'inevitable' as the passion. On such a
-line of reasoning, it is no good reacting by a perception of
-consequences against a mood of the moment. That is bad psychology and
-disastrous politics. To realise what 'temperamental politics' have
-already involved us in, is the first step towards turning our present
-drift into a more consciously directed progress.
-
-Note where the drift has already carried us with reference to the
-problem of the new Germany which it was our declared object to create.
-There were weeks following the Armistice in Germany, when a faithful
-adherence to the spirit of the declarations made by the Allies during
-the War would have brought about the utter moral collapse of the
-Prussianism we had fought to destroy. The Prussian had said to the
-people: 'Only Germany's military power has stood between her and
-humiliating ruin. The Allies victorious will use their victory to
-deprive Germany of her vital rights.' Again and again had the Allies
-denied this, and Germany, especially young Germany, watched to see which
-should prove right. A blockade, falling mainly, as Mr Churchill
-complacently pointed out (months after an armistice whose terms had
-included a promise to take into consideration the food needs of Germany)
-upon the feeble, the helpless, the children, answered that question for
-millions in Germany. Her schools and universities teem with hundreds of
-thousands stricken in their health, to whom the words 'never again' mean
-that never more will they put their trust in the 'naive innocence' of
-an internationalism that could so betray them.
-
-The militarism which morally was at so low an ebb at the Armistice, has
-been rehabilitated by such things as the blockade and its effects, the
-terms of the Treaty, and by minor but dramatic features like the
-retention of German prisoners long after Allied prisoners had returned
-home, and the occupation of German university town by African negroes.
-So that to-day a League of Nations offered by the Allies would probably
-be regarded with a contemptuous scepticism--somewhat similar to that
-with which America now regards the political beatitudes which it
-applauded in 1916-17.
-
-We are in fact modifying the Treaty. But those modifications will not
-meet the present situation, though they might well have met the
-situation in 1918. If we had done then what we are prepared to do _now_,
-Europe would have been set on the right road.
-
-Suppose the Allies had said in December, 1918 (as they are in effect
-being brought to say in 1920): 'We are not going to play into the hands
-of your militarists by demanding the surrender of the Kaiser or the
-punishment of the war criminals, vile as we believe their offences to
-be. We are not going to stimulate your waning nationalism by demanding
-an acknowledgment of your sole guilt. Nor are we going to ruin your
-industry or shatter your credit. On the contrary, we will start by
-making you a loan, facilitating your purchases of food and raw
-materials, and we will admit you into the League of Nations.'
-
-We are coming to that. If it could have been our policy early instead of
-late, how different this story would have been.
-
-And the tragedy is this: To do it late is to cause it to lose its
-effectiveness, for the situation changes. The measures which would have
-been adequate in 1918 are inadequate in 1920. It is the story of Home
-Rule. In the eighties Ireland would have accepted Gladstonian Home Rule
-as a basis at least of co-operation. English and Ulster opinion was not
-ready even for Home Rule. Forty years later it had reconciled itself to
-Home Rule. But by the time Britain was ready for the remedy, the
-situation had got quite beyond it. It now demanded something for which
-slow-moving opinion was unprepared. So with a League of Nations. The
-plan now supported by Conservatives would, as Lord Grey has avowed, have
-assuredly prevented this War if adopted in place of the mere Arbitration
-plans of the Hague Conference. At that date the present League of
-Nations Covenant would have been adequate to the situation. But some of
-the self-same Conservatives who now talk the language of
-internationalism--even in economic terms--poured contumely and scorn
-upon those of us who used it a decade or two since. And now, it is to be
-feared, the Government for which they are ready will certainly be
-inadequate to the situation which we face.
-
-
-_'An evil idealism and self-sacrificing hates.'_
-
-'The cause of this insanity,' says Sir Philip Gibbs, 'is the failure of
-idealism.' Others write in much the same strain that selfishness and
-materialism have reconquered the world. But this does not get us very
-far. By what moral alchemy was this vast outpouring of unselfishness,
-which sent millions to their death as to a feast (for men cannot die for
-selfish motives, unless more certain of their heavenly reward than we in
-the Western world are in the habit of being) turned into selfishness;
-their high ideals into low desires--if that is what has happened? Can it
-be a selfishness which ruins and starves us all? Is it selfishness on
-the part of the French which causes them to adopt towards Germany a
-policy of vengeance that prevents them receiving the Reparations that
-they so sorely need? Is it not indeed what one of their writers had
-called a 'holy hate,' instinctive, intuitive, purged of all calculation
-of advantage or disadvantage? Would not selfishness--enlightened
-selfishness--have given us not only a sounder Europe in the material
-sense, but a more humane Europe, with its hostilities softened by the
-very fact of contact and co-operation, and the very obviousness of our
-need for one another? The last thing desired here is to raise the old
-never-ending question of egoism versus altruism. All that is desired is
-to point out that a mere appeal to feeling, to a 'sense of
-righteousness' and idealism, is not enough. We have an illimitable
-capacity for sublimating our own motives, and of convincing ourselves
-completely, passionately, that our evil is good. And the greater our
-fear that intellectual inquiry, some sceptical rationalism, might shake
-the certitude of our righteousness, the greater the passion with which
-we shall stand by the guide of 'instinct and intuition.' Can there not
-be a destructive idealism as well as a social one? What of the Holy
-Wars? What of the Prussian who, after all, had his ideal, as the
-Bolshevist has his? What of all fanatics ready to die for their
-idealism?
-
-It is never the things that are obviously and patently evil that
-constitute the real menace to mankind. If Prussian nationalism had been
-nothing but gross lust and cruelty and oppression, as we managed to
-persuade ourselves during the War that it was, it would never have
-menaced the world. It did that because it could rally to its end great
-enthusiasms; because men were ready to die for it. Then it threatened
-us. Only those things which have some element of good are dangerous.
-
-A Treaty of the character of that Versailles would never have been
-possible if men had not been able to justify it to themselves on the
-ground of its punitive justice. The greeds expressed in the annexation
-of alien territory, and the violation of the principle of nationality,
-would never have been possible but for the plea of the sacred egoism of
-patriotism; our country before the enemy's, our country right or wrong.
-The assertion of sheer immoralism embodied in this last slogan can be
-made into the garments of righteousness if only our idealism is
-instinctive enough.
-
-Some of the worst crimes against justice have been due to the very
-fierceness of our passion for righteousness--a passion so fierce that it
-becomes undiscriminating and unseeing. It was the passion for what men
-believed to be religious truth which gave us the Inquisition and the
-religious wars; it was the passion for patriotism which made France for
-so many years, to the astonishment of the world, refuse justice to
-Dreyfus; it is a righteous loathing for negro crime which has made
-lynching possible for half a century in the United States, and which
-prevents the development of an opinion which will insist on its
-suppression. It is 'the just anger that makes men unjust.' The righteous
-passion that insists on a criminal's dying for some foul crime, is the
-very thing which prevents our seeing that the crime was not committed by
-him at all.
-
-It was something akin to this that made the Treaty of Versailles
-possible. That is why merely to appeal to idealism and feeling will
-fail, unless the defect of vision which makes evil appear good is
-corrected. It is not the feeling which is at fault; it is the defective
-vision causing feeling to be misused, as in the case of our feeling
-against the man accused on what seem to us good grounds, of a detestable
-offence. He is loathsome to our sight, because the crime is loathsome.
-But when some one else confesses to the crime, our feeling against the
-innocent man disappears. The direction it took, the object upon which it
-settled, was due to a misconception.
-
-Obviously that error may occur in politics. Equally certainly something
-worse may happen. With some real doubt in our mind whether this man is
-the criminal, we may yet, in the absence of any other culprit, stifle
-that doubt because of our anger, and our vague desire to have some
-victim suffer for so vile a crime. Feeling will be at fault, in such a
-case, as well as vision. And this thing happens, as many a lynching
-testifies. ('The innocence of Dreyfus would be a crime,' said a famous
-anti-Dreyfusard.) Both defects may have played their part in the tragedy
-of Versailles. In making our appeal to idealism, we assume that it is
-there, somewhere, to be aroused on behalf of justice; we must assume,
-consequently, that if it has not been aroused, or has attached itself to
-wrong purposes, it is because it has not seen where justice lay.
-
-Our only protection against these miscarriages, by which our passion is
-borne into the wrong channel, against the innocent while the guilty
-escape, is to keep our minds open to all the facts, all the truth. But
-this principle, which we have proclaimed as the very foundation stone of
-our democratic faith, was the first to go when we began the War. The
-idea that in war time, most particularly, a democracy needs to know the
-enemy's, or the Pacifist, or even the internationalist and liberal case,
-would have been regarded as a bad joke. Yet the failure to do just that
-thing inevitably created a conviction that all the wrong was on one side
-and all the right on the other, and that the problem of the settlement
-was mainly a problem of ruthless punishment. One of that temper may have
-come the errors of the Treaty and the miseries that have flowed from
-them. It was the virtual suppression of free debate on the purposes and
-aims of the War and their realisation that delivered public opinion into
-the keeping of the extremest Jingoes when we came to make the peace.
-
-
-_We create the temper that destroys us_
-
-Behind the war-time attitude of the belligerents, when they suppressed
-whatever news might tell in favour of the enemy, was the conviction that
-if we could really understand the enemy's position we should not want to
-fight him. That is probably true. Let us assume that, and assume
-consequently the need for control of news and discussion. If we are to
-come to the control by governments of political belief, as we once
-attempted control by ecclesiastical authority of religious belief, let
-us face the fact, and drop pretence about freedom of discussion, and see
-that the organisation of opinion is honest and efficient. There is a
-great deal to be said for the suppression of freedom of discussion. Some
-of the greatest minds in the world have refused to accept it as a
-working principle of society. Theirs is a perfectly arguable, extremely
-strong and thoroughly honest case.[80] But virtually to subpress the
-free dissemination of facts, as we have done not only during, but after
-the War, and at the same time to go on with our talk about free speech,
-free Press, free discussion, free democracy is merely to add to the
-insincerities and falsehoods, which can only end by making society
-unworkable. We not only disbelieve in free discussion in the really
-vital crises; we disbelieve in truth. That is one fact. There is another
-related to it. If we frankly admitted that public opinion has to be
-'managed,' organised, shaped, we should demand that it be done
-efficiently with a view to the achievement of conscious ends, which we
-should place before ourselves. What happened during the War was that
-everybody, including the governments who ought to have been free from
-the domination of the myths they were engaged in creating, lost sight of
-the ultimate purposes of the War, and of the fact that they were
-creating forces which would make the attainment of those ends
-impossible; rob victory, that is, of its effectiveness.
-
-Note how the process works. We say when war is declared: 'A truce to
-discussion. The time is for action, not words.' But the truce is a
-fiction. It means, not that talk and propaganda shall cease, only that
-all liberal contribution to it must cease. The _Daily News_ suspends its
-internationalism, but the _Daily Mail_ is more fiercely Chauvinist than
-ever. We must not debate terms. But Mr Bottomley debates them every
-week, on the text that Germans are to be exterminated like vermin. What
-results? The natural defenders of a policy even as liberal as that of an
-Edward Grey are silenced. The function of the liberal Press is
-suspended. The only really articulate voices on policy are the voices of
-Lord Northcliffe and Mr Bottomley. On such subjects as foreign policy
-those gentlemen do not ordinarily embrace all wisdom; there is something
-to be said in criticism of their views. But in the matter of the future
-settlement of Europe, to have criticised those views during the War
-would have exposed the critic to the charge of pro-Germanism. So
-Chauvinism had it all its own way. For months and years the country
-heard one view of policy only. The early policy of silence did really
-impose a certain silence upon the _Daily News_ or the _Manchester
-Guardian_; none whatever upon the _Times_ or the _Daily Mail_. None of
-us can, day after day, be under the influence of such a process without
-being affected by it.[81] The British public were affected by it. Sir
-Edward Grey's policy began to appear weak, anaemic, pro-German. And in
-the end he and his colleagues disappeared, partly, at least, as the
-result of the very policy of 'leaving it to the Government' upon which
-they had insisted at the beginning of the War. And the very group which,
-in 1914, was most insistent that there should be no criticism of
-Asquith, or McKenna, or Grey, were the very group whose criticisms
-turned those leaders out of office! While in 1914 it was accepted as
-proof of treason to say a word in criticism of (say) Grey, by 1916 it
-had almost become evidence of treason to say a word for him ... and that
-while he was still in office!
-
-The history of America's attitude towards the War displays a similar
-line of development. We are apt to forget that the League of Nations
-idea entered the realm of practical politics as the result of a great
-spontaneous popular movement in America in 1916, as powerful and
-striking as any since the movement against chattel-slavery. A year of
-war morale resulted, as has already been noted, in a complete reversal
-of attitude. America became the opponent and Britain the protagonist of
-the League of Nations.
-
-In passing, one of the astonishing things is that statesmen, compelled
-by the conditions of their profession to work with the raw material of
-public opinion, seem blind to the fact that the total effect of the
-forces which they set in motion will be to transform opinion and render
-it intractable. American advisers of President Wilson scouted the idea,
-when it was suggested to them early in the War, that the growth of the
-War temper would make it difficult for the President to carry out his
-policy.[82] A score of times the present writer has heard it said by
-Americans who ought to have known better, that the public did not care
-what the foreign policy of the country was, and that the President could
-carry out any policy that he liked. At that particular moment it was
-true, but quite obviously there was growing up at the time, as the
-direct result of war propaganda, a fierce Chauvinism, which should have
-made it plain to any one who observed its momentum, that the notion of
-President Wilson's policy being put into execution after victory was
-simply preposterous.
-
-Mr Asquith's Government was thus largely responsible for creating a
-balance of force in public opinion (as we shall see presently) which was
-responsible for its collapse. Mr Lloyd George has himself sanctioned a
-jingoism which, if useful temporarily, becomes later an insuperable
-obstacle to the putting into force of workable policies. For while
-Versailles could do what it liked in matters that did not touch the
-popular passion of the moment, in the matters that did, the statesmen
-were the victims of the temper they had done so much to create. There
-was a story current in Paris at the time of the Conference: 'You can't
-really expect to get an indemnity of ten thousand millions, so what is
-the good of putting it in the Treaty,' an expert is said to have
-remarked. 'My dear fellow,' said the Prime Minister, 'if the election
-had gone on another fortnight, it would have been fifty thousand
-millions.' But the insertion of these mythical millions into the Treaty
-has not been a joke; it has been an enormous obstacle to the
-reconstruction of Europe. It was just because public opinion was not
-ready to face facts in time, that the right thing had to be done at the
-wrong time, when perhaps it was too late. The effect on French policy
-has been still more important. It is the illusions concerning
-illimitable indemnities--directly fostered by the Governments in the
-early days of the Armistice--still dominating French public opinion,
-which more than anything else, perhaps, explains an attitude on the part
-of the French Government that has come near to smashing Europe.
-
-Even minds extraordinarily brilliant, as a rule, miscalculated the
-weight of this factor of public passion stimulated by the hates of war,
-and the deliberate exploitation of it for purposes of 'war morale' and
-propaganda. Thus Mr Wells,[83] writing even after two years of war,
-predicted that if the Germans were to make a revolution and overthrow
-the Kaiser, the Allies would 'tumble over each other' to offer Germany
-generous terms. What is worse is that British propaganda in enemy
-countries seems to have been based very largely on this assumption.[84]
-It constituted an elaboration of the offers implicit in Mr Wilson's
-speeches, that once Germany was democratised there should be, in Mr
-Wilson's words, 'no reprisal upon the German people, who have themselves
-suffered all things in this War which they did not choose.' The
-statement made by the German rulers that Germany was fighting against a
-harsh and destructive fate at the hands of the victors, was, President
-Wilson said, 'wantonly false.' 'No one is threatening the peaceful
-enterprise of the German Empire.' Our propaganda in Germany seems to
-have been an expansion of this text, while the negotiations which
-preceded the Armistice morally bound us to a 'Fourteen Points peace'
-(less the British reservation touching the Freedom of the Seas). The
-economic terms of the Peace Treaty, the meaning of which has been so
-illuminatingly explained by the representative of the British Treasury
-at the Conference, give the measure of our respect for that obligation
-of honour, once we had the Germans at our mercy.[85]
-
-
-_Fundamental Falsehoods and their Outcome_
-
-We witnessed both in England and America very great changes in the
-dynamics of opinion. Not only was one type of public man being brought
-forward and another thrust into the background, but one group of
-emotions and of motives of public policy were being developed and
-another group atrophied. The use of the word 'opinion,' with its
-implication of a rationalised process of intellectual decision, may be
-misleading. 'Public opinion' is here used as the sum of the forces which
-become articulate in a country, and which a government is compelled not
-necessarily to obey, but to take into account. (A government may
-bamboozle it or dodge it, but it cannot openly oppose it.)
-
-And when reference is made to the force of ideas--Nationalist or
-Socialist or Revolutionary--a power which we all admit by our panic
-fears of defeatist or Red Propaganda, it is necessary to keep in mind
-the kind of force that is meant. One speaks of Communist or Socialist,
-Pacifist or Patriotic ideas gaining influence, or creating a ferment.
-The idea of Communism, for instance, has obviously played some part in
-the vast upheavals that have followed the War.[86] But in a world where
-the great majority are still condemned to intense physical labour in
-order to live at all, where peoples as a whole are overworked, harassed,
-pre-occupied, it is impossible that ideas like those of Karl Marx
-should be subjected to elaborate intellectual analysis. Rather is it
-_an_ idea--of the common ownership of wealth or its equal distribution,
-of poverty being the fault of a definite class of the corporate body--an
-idea which fits into a mood produced largely by the prevailing
-conditions of life, which thus becomes the predominating factor of the
-new public opinion. Now foreign policy is certainly influenced, and in
-some great crises determined, by public opinion. But that opinion is not
-the resultant of a series of intellectual analyses of problems of Balkan
-nationalities or of Eastern frontiers; that is an obvious impossibility
-for a busy headline-reading public, hard at work all day and thirsty for
-relaxation and entertainment at night. The public opinion which makes
-itself felt in Foreign Policy--which, when war is in the balance after a
-longish period of peace, gives the preponderance of power to the most
-Chauvinistic elements; which, at the end of a war and on the eve of
-Treaty-making, as in the December 1918 election, insists upon a
-rigorously punitive peace--this opinion is the result of a few
-predominant 'sovereign ideas' or conceptions giving a direction to
-certain feelings.
-
-Take one such sovereign idea, that of the enemy nation as a person: the
-conception of it as a completely responsible corporate body. Some
-offence is committed by a German: 'Germany' did it, Germany including
-all Germans. To punish any German is to inflict satisfactory punishment
-for the offence, to avenge it. The idea, when we examine it, is found to
-be extremely abstract, with but the faintest relation to human
-realities. 'They drowned my brother,' said an Allied airman, when asked
-his feelings on a reprisal bombing raid over German cities. Thus,
-because a sailor from Hamburg drowns an Englishman in the North Sea, an
-old woman in a garret in Freiburg, or some children, who have but dimly
-heard of the war, and could not even remotely be held responsible for
-it, or have prevented it, are killed with a clear conscience because
-they are German. We cannot understand the Chinese, who punish one member
-of a family for another's fault, yet that is very much more rational
-than the conception which we accept as the most natural thing in the
-world. It is never questioned, indeed, until it is applied to ourselves.
-When the acts of British troops in Ireland or India, having an
-extraordinary resemblance to German acts in Belgium, are taken by
-certain American newspapers as showing that 'Britain,' (_i.e._ British
-people) is a bloodthirsty monster who delights in the killing of unarmed
-priests or peasants, we know that somehow the foreign critic has got it
-all wrong. We should realise that for some Irishman or Indian to
-dismember a charwoman or decapitate a little girl in Somersetshire,
-because of the crime of some Black and Tan in Cork, or English General
-at Amritsar, would be unadulterated savagery, a sort of dementia. In any
-case the poor folk in Somerset were not responsible; millions of English
-folk are not. They are only dimly aware of what goes on in India or
-Ireland, and are not really able in all matters, by any means, to
-control their government--any more than the Americans are able to
-control theirs.
-
-Yet the idea of responsibility attaching to a whole group, as
-justification for retaliation, is a very ancient idea, savage, almost
-animal in its origin. And anything can make a collectivity. To one small
-religious sect in a village it is a rival sect who are the enemies of
-the human race; in the mind of the tortured negro in the Congo any man,
-woman, or child of the white world could fairly be punished for the
-pains that he has suffered.[87] The conception has doubtless arisen out
-of something protective, some instinct useful, indispensable to the
-race; as have so many of the instincts which, applied unadapted to
-altered conditions, become socially destructive.
-
-Here then is evidence of a great danger, which can, in some measure, be
-avoided on one condition: that the truth about the enemy collectively is
-told in such a way as to be a reminder to us not to slip into injustices
-that, barbarous in themselves, drag us back into barbarism.
-
-But note how all the machinery of Press control and war-time colleges of
-propaganda prepared the public mind for the extremely difficult task of
-the settlement and Treaty-making that lay before it. (It was a task in
-which everything indicated that, unless great care were taken, public
-judgment would be so swamped in passion that a workable peace would be
-impossible.) The more tribal and barbaric aspect of the conception of
-collective responsibility was fortified by the intensive and deliberate
-exploitation of atrocities during the years of the War. The atrocities
-were not just an incident of war-time news: the principal emotions of
-the struggle came to centre around them. Millions whom the obscure
-political debate behind the conflict left entirely cold, were profoundly
-moved by these stories of cruelty and barbarity. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
-was among those who urged their systematic exploitation on that ground,
-in a Christmas communication to the _Times_.[88] With reference to
-stories of German cruelty, he said:--
-
-     'Hate has its uses in war, as the Germans have long discovered. It
-     steels the mind and sets the resolution as no other emotion can do.
-     So much do they feel this that Germans are constrained to invent
-     all sorts of reasons for hatred against us, who have, in truth,
-     never injured them in any way save that history and geography both
-     place us before them and their ambitions. To nourish hatred they
-     invent every lie against us, and so they attain a certain national
-     solidity....
-
-     'The bestiality of the German nation has given us a driving power
-     which we are not using, and which would be very valuable in this
-     stage of the war. Scatter the facts. Put them in red-hot fashion.
-     Do not preach to the solid south, who need no conversion, but
-     spread the propaganda wherever there are signs of any intrigue--on
-     the Tyne, the Clyde, in the Midlands, above all in Ireland, and
-     French Canada. Let us pay no attention to platitudinous Bishops or
-     gloomy Deans or any other superior people, who preach against
-     retaliation or whole-hearted warfare. We have to win, and we can
-     only win by keeping up the spirit of resolution of our own people.'
-
-Particularly does Sir Arthur Conan Doyle urge that the munition
-workers--who were, it will be remembered, largely woman--be stimulated
-by accounts of atrocities:
-
-     'The munition workers have many small vexations to endure, and
-     their nerves get sadly frayed. They need strong elemental emotions
-     to carry them on. Let pictures be made of this and other incidents.
-     Let them be hung in every shop. Let them be distributed thickly in
-     the Sinn Fein districts of Ireland, and in the hot-beds of
-     Socialism and Pacifism in England and Scotland. The Irishman has
-     always been of a most chivalrous nature.'
-
-It is possible that Sinn Fein has now taken to heart this counsel as to
-the use that may be made of cruelties committed by the enemy in war.
-
-Now there is no reason to doubt the truth of atrocities, whether they
-concern the horrible ill-treatment of prisoners in war-time of which Sir
-Arthur Conan Doyle writes, or the burning alive of negro women in peace
-time in Texas and Alabama, or the flogging of women in India, or
-reprisals by British soldiers in Ireland, or by Red Russians against
-White and White against Red. Every story may be true. And if each side
-told the whole truth, instead of a part of it, these atrocities would
-help us towards an understanding of this complex nature of ours. But we
-never do tell the whole truth. Always in war-time does each side leave
-out two things essential to the truth: the good done by the enemy and
-the evil done by ourselves. If that elementary condition of truth were
-fulfilled, these pictures of cruelty, bestiality, obscenity, rape,
-sadism, sheer ferocity, might possibly tell us this: 'There is the
-primeval tiger in us; man's history--and especially the history of his
-wars--is full of these warnings of the depths to which he can descend.
-Those ten thousand men and women of pure English stock gloating over the
-helpless prisoners whom they are slowly roasting alive, are not normally
-savages.[89] Most of them are kindly and decent folk. These stories of
-the September massacres of the Terror no more prove French nature to be
-depraved than the history of the Inquisition, or of Ireland or India,
-proves Spanish or British nature to be depraved.'
-
-But the truth is never so told. It was not so told during the War. Day
-after day, month after month, we got these selected stories. In the
-Press, in the cinemas, in Church services, they were related to us. The
-message the atrocity carried was not: here is a picture of what human
-nature is capable of; let us be on our guard that nothing similar marks
-our history. That was neither the intention nor the result of
-propaganda. It said in effect and was intended to say:--
-
-'This lecherous brute abusing a woman is a picture of Germany. All
-Germans are like that; and no people but Germans are like that. That
-sort of thing never happens in other armies; cruelty, vengeance, and
-blood-lust are unknown in the Allied forces. That is why we are at war.
-Remember this at the peace table.'
-
-That falsehood was conveyed by what the Press and the cinema
-systematically left out. While they told us of every vile thing done by
-the enemy, they told us of not one act of kindness or mercy among all
-those hundred million during the years of war.
-
-The suppression of everything good of the enemy was paralleled by the
-suppression of everything evil done by our side. You may search Press
-and cinemas in vain for one single story of brutality committed by
-Serbian, Rumanian, Greek, Italian, French, or Russian--until the last in
-time became an enemy. Then suddenly our papers were full of Russian
-atrocities. At first these were Bolshevik atrocities only, and of the
-'White' troops we heard no evil. Then when later the self-same Russian
-troops that had fought on our side during the War fought Poland, our
-papers were full of the atrocities inflicted on Poles.
-
-By the daily presentation during years of a picture which makes the
-enemy so entirely bad as not to be human at all, and ourselves entirely
-good, the whole nature of the problem is changed. Admit these premises,
-and policies like those proposed by Mr Wells become sheer rubbish. They
-are based on the assumption that Germans are accessible to ordinary
-human influences like other human beings. But every day for years we
-have been denying that premise. If the daily presentation of the facts
-is a true presentation, the _New York Tribune_ is right:--
-
-     'We shall not get permanent peace by treating the Hun as if he were
-     not a Hun. One might just as well attempt to cure a man-eating
-     tiger of his hankering for human flesh by soft words as to break
-     the German of his historic habits by equally futile kind words. The
-     way to treat a German, while Germans follow their present methods,
-     is as a common peril to all civilised mankind. Since the German
-     employs the method of the wild beast he must be treated as beyond
-     the appeal of generous or kind methods. When one is generous to a
-     German, he plans to take advantage of that generosity to rob or
-     murder; this is his international history, never more
-     conspicuously illustrated than here in America. Kindness he
-     interprets as fear, regard for international law as proof of
-     decadence; agitation for disarmament has been for him the final
-     evidence of the degeneracy of his neighbours.'[90]
-
-That conclusion is inevitable if the facts are really as presented by
-the _Daily Mail_ for four years. The problem of peace in that case is
-not one of finding a means of dealing, by the discipline of a common
-code or tradition, with common shortcomings--violences, hates,
-cupidities, blindnesses. The problem is not of that nature at all. We
-don't have these defects; they are German defects. For five years we
-have indoctrinated the people with a case, which if true, renders only
-one policy in Europe admissible; either the ruthless extermination of
-these monsters, who are not human beings at all; or their permanent
-subjugation, the conversion of Germany into a sort of world lunatic
-asylum.
-
-When therefore the big public, whether in America or France or Britain,
-simply will not hear (in 1919) of any League of Nations that shall ever
-include Germany they are right--if we have been telling them the truth.
-
-Was it necessary thus to 'organise' hate for the purposes of war?
-Violent partisanship would assuredly assert itself in war-time without
-such stimulus. And if we saw more clearly the relationship of these
-instincts and emotions to the formation of policy, we should organise,
-not their development, but their restraint and discipline, or, that
-being impossible in sufficient degree (which it may be), organise their
-re-direction to less anti-social ends.
-
-As it was, it ended by making the war entered upon sincerely, so far as
-public feeling was concerned, for a principle or policy, simply a war
-for no purpose beyond victory--and finally for domination at the price
-of its original purpose. For one who is attracted to the purpose, a
-thousand are attracted to the war--the simple success of 'our side.'
-Partisanship as a motive is animal in its deep, remote innateness.
-Little boys and girls at the time of the University boat race will
-choose the Oxford or the Cambridge colours, and from that moment
-passionately desire the victory of 'their' side. They may not know what
-Oxford is, or what a University is, or what a boat race is: it does not
-in the least detract from the violence of their partisanship. You get
-therefore a very simple mathematical explanation of the increasing
-subservience of the War's purpose to the simple purpose of victory and
-domination for itself. Every child can understand and feel for the
-latter, very few adults for the former.
-
-This competitive feeling, looking to victory, domination, is feeding the
-whole time the appetite for power. These instincts, and the clamant
-appetite for domination and coercion are whetted to the utmost and then
-re-inforced by a moral indignation, which justifies the impulse to
-retaliation on the ground of punitive justice for inhuman horrors. We
-propose to establish with this outlaw a relationship of contract! To
-bargain with him about our respective rights! In the most favourable
-circumstances it demands a very definite effort of discipline to impose
-upon ourselves hampering restrictions in the shape of undertakings to
-another Power, when we believe that we are in a position to impose our
-will. But to suggest imposing upon ourselves the restrictions of such a
-relationship with an enemy of the human race.... The astonishing thing
-is that those who acquiesced in this deliberate cultivation of the
-emotions and instincts inseparable from violent partisanship, should
-ever have expected a policy of impartial justice to come out of that
-state of mind. They were asking for psychological miracles.
-
-That the propaganda was in large part conscious and directed was proved
-by the ease with which the flood of atrocity stories could suddenly be
-switched over from Germans to Russians. During the time that the Russian
-armies were fighting on our side, there was not a single story in our
-Press of Russian barbarity. But when the same armies, under the same
-officers, are fighting against the Poles, atrocities even more ingenious
-and villainous than those of the Germans in Belgium suddenly
-characterise the conduct of the Russian troops. The atrocities are
-transposed with an ease equal to that with which we transfer our
-loyalties.[91] When Pilsudski's troops fought against Russia, all the
-atrocities were committed by them, and of the Russian troops we heard
-nothing but heroism. When Brusiloff fights under Bolshevik command our
-papers print long Polish accounts of the Russian barbarities.
-
-We have seen that behind the conception of the enemy as a single person
-is a falsehood: it is obvious that seventy millions of men, women, and
-children, of infinitely varying degrees of responsibility, are not a
-single person. The falsehood may be, in some degree, an unwitting one, a
-primitive myth that we have inherited from tribal forbears. But if that
-is so, we should control our news with a view to minimizing the dangers
-of mythical fallacies, bequeathed to us by a barbaric past. If it is
-necessary to use them for the purposes of war morale, we should drop
-them when the war is over, and pass round the word, to the Churches for
-instance, that on the signing of an armistice the moratorium of the
-Sermon on the Mount comes to an end. As it is, two years after the
-Armistice, an English Vicar tells his congregation that to bring
-Austrian children to English, to save them from death by famine, is an
-unpatriotic and seditious act.
-
-Note where the fundamental dishonesties of our propaganda lead us in the
-matter of policy, in what we declared to be one of the main objects of
-the War: the erection of Europe upon a basis of nationality. Our whole
-campaign implied that the problem resolved itself into the destruction
-of one great Power, who denied that principle, as against the Allies,
-who were ready to grant it. How near that came to the truth, the round
-score of 'unredeemed' nationalities deliberately created by the Allies
-in the Treaties sufficiently testifies. If we had avowed the facts, that
-a Europe of completely independent nationalities is not possible, that
-great populations will not be shut off from the sea, or recognise
-independent nationalities to the extent of risking economic or political
-strangulation, we should then necessarily have gone on to devise the
-limitations and obligations which all must accept and the rights which
-all must accord. We should have been fighting for a body of principles
-as the basis of a real association of States. The truth, or some measure
-of it, would have prepared us all for that limitation of independence
-without which no nationality can be secure. The falsehood that Germany
-alone stood in the way of the recognition of nationality, made a treaty
-really based on that principle (namely, upon all of us consenting to
-limit our independence) impossible of acceptance by our own opinion. And
-one falsehood leads to another. Because we refused to be sincere about
-the inducements which we held out in turn to Italy, Bulgaria, Rumania,
-Greece, we staggered blindly into the alternative betrayal first of one
-party, then of another. Just as we were faithless to the principle of
-nationality when we acquiesced in the Russian attitude towards Finland
-and Poland, and the Italian towards Serbia, so later we were to prove
-faithless to the principle of the Great State when we supported the
-Border Nationalities in their secession from Russia. We have encouraged
-and helped States like Ukrainia, Azerbaidjan. But we have been just as
-ready to stand for 'Great Russia,' if Koltchak appeared to be winning,
-knowing perfectly well that we cannot be loyal to both causes.
-
-Our defence is apparent enough. It is fairly illustrated in the case of
-Italy. If Italy had not come into the war, Serbia's prospect of any
-redemption at all would have been hopeless; we were doing the best we
-could for Serbia.[92]
-
-Assuredly--but we happened to be doing it by false pretences, sham
-heroics, immeasurable hypocrisy. And the final effect was to be the
-defeat of the aims for which we were fighting. If our primary aims had
-been those we proclaimed, we could no more have violated the principle
-of nationality to gain an ally, than we could have ceded the Isle of
-Wight to Germany, and the intellectual rectitude which would have
-enabled us to see that, would also have enabled us to see the necessity
-of the conditions on which alone a society of nations is possible.
-
-The indispensable step to rendering controllable those passions now
-'uncontrollable' and disrupting Europe, is to tell the truth about the
-things by which we excuse them. Again, our fundamental nature may not
-change, any more than it would if we honestly investigated the evidence
-proving the innocence of the man, whose execution we demand, of the
-crime which is the cause of our hatred. That investigation would be an
-effort of the mind; the result of it would be a change in the direction
-of our feelings. The facts which it is necessary to face are not
-abstruse or difficult. They are self-evident to the simplest mind. The
-fact that the 'person' whose punishment we demand in the case of the
-enemy is not a person at all, either bad or good, but millions of
-different persons of varying degrees of badness and goodness, many of
-them--millions--without any responsibility at all for the crime that
-angers us, this fact, if faced, would alter the nature of our feelings.
-We should see that we were confronted by a case of mistaken identity.
-Perhaps we do not face this evidence because we treasure our hate. If
-there were not a 'person' our hate could have no meaning; we could not
-hate an 'administrative area,' nor is there much satisfaction in
-humiliating it and dominating it. We can desire to dominate and
-humiliate a person, and are often ready to pay a high price for the
-pleasure. If we ceased to think of national States as persons, we might
-cease to think of them as conflicting interests, in competition with one
-another, and begin to think of them instead as associations within a
-great association.
-
-Take another very simple truth that we will not face: that our arms do,
-and must do, the things that raise our passions when done by the enemy.
-Our blockades and bombardments also kill old women and children. Our
-soldiers, too, the gallant lads who mount our aeroplanes, the sailors
-who man our blockades, are baby-killers. They must be; they cannot help
-it if they are to bomb or blockade at all. Yet we never do admit this
-obvious fact. We erect a sheer falsehood, and then protect ourselves
-against admitting it by being so 'noble' about it that we refuse to
-discuss it. We simply declare that in no circumstances could England, or
-English soldiers, ever make war upon women and children, or even be
-unchivalrous to them. That is a moral premise beyond or behind which
-patriotism will not permit our minds to go. If the 'nobility' of
-attitude had any relation to our real conduct, one would rejoice. When,
-during the armistice negotiations, the Germans exacted that they should
-be permitted means, after the surrender of their fleet, of feeding their
-people, a New York paper declared the condition an insult to the Allies.
-'The Germans are prisoners,' it said, 'and the Allies do not starve
-prisoners.' But one discovers a few weeks later that these noble
-gestures are quite compatible with the maintenance of the blockade, on
-the ground that Germans for their sins ought to be starved. We then
-become the agents of Providence in punitive justice.
-
-When the late Lord Fisher[93] came out squarely and publicly in defence
-of the killing of women and children (in the submarine sinking) as a
-necessary part of war, there seemed a chance for intellectual honesty in
-the matter; for a real examination of the principles of our conduct. If
-we faced the facts in this honest sailor-like fashion there was some
-hope either that we should refuse to descend to reprisals by
-disembowelling little girls; or, if it should appear that such things
-are inseparable from war, that it would help to get a new feeling about
-war. But Lord Fisher complains that the Editor of the paper to which he
-sent his letter suppressed it from the later editions of his paper for
-fear it should shock the public. Shock!
-
-You see, _our_ shells falling on schools and circuses don't disembowel
-little girls; our blockades don't starve them. Everybody knows that
-British shells and British blockades would not do such things. When
-Britain blockades, pestilence and hunger and torture are not suffering;
-a dying child is not a dying child. Patriotism draws a shutter over our
-eyes and ears.
-
-When this degree of self-deception is possible, there is no infamy of
-which a kindly, humane, and emotionally moral people may not prove
-themselves capable; no moral contradiction or absurdity which mankind
-may not approve. Anything may become right, anything may become wrong.
-
-The evil is not only in its resultant inhumanities. It lies much more in
-the fact that this development of moral blinkers deprives us of the
-capacity to see where we are going, and what we are crushing underfoot;
-and that may well end by our walking over the precipice.
-
-During the War, we formed judgments of the German character which
-literally make it sub-human. For our praise of the French (during the
-same period) language failed us. Yet less than twenty years ago the
-roles were reversed.[94] The French were the mad dogs, and the Germans
-of our community of blood.
-
-The refusal to face the plain facts of life, a refusal made on grounds
-which we persuade ourselves are extremely noble, but which in fact
-result too often in simple falsehood and distortion, is revealed by the
-common pre-war attitude to the economic situation dealt with in this
-book. The present writer took the ground before the War that much of the
-dense population of modern Europe could not support itself save by
-virtue of an economic internationalism which political ideas (ideas
-which war would intensify) were tending to make impossible. Now it is
-obvious that before there can be a spiritual life, there must be a
-fairly adequate physical one. If life is a savage and greedy scramble
-over the means of sheer physical sustenance, there cannot be much in it
-that is noble and inspiring. The point of the argument was, as already
-mentioned, not that the economic pre-occupation _should_ occupy the
-whole of life, but that it _will_ if it is simply disregarded; the way
-to reduce the economic pre-occupation is to solve the economic problem.
-Yet these plain and undeniable truths were somehow twisted into the
-proposition that men went to war because they believed it 'paid,' in the
-stockbroking sense, and that if they saw it did not 'pay' they would not
-go to war. The task of attempting to find the conditions in which it
-will be possible for men to live at all with decent regard for their
-fellows, without drifting into cannibalistic struggles for sustenance
-one against another, is made to appear something sordid, a 'usurer's
-gospel.' And on that ground, very largely, the 'economics' of
-international policy were neglected. We are still facing the facts. Self
-deception has become habitual.
-
-President Wilson failed to carry through the policy he had proclaimed,
-as greater men have failed in similar moral circumstances. The failure
-need not have been disastrous to the cause which he had espoused. It
-might have marked merely a step towards ultimate success, if he had
-admitted the failure. Had he said in effect: 'Reaction has won this
-battle; we have been guilty of errors and shortcomings, but we shall
-maintain the fight, and avoid such errors in future,' he would have
-created for the generation which followed a clear-cut issue. Whatever
-there was of courage and sincerity of purpose in the idealism he had
-created earlier in the War, would have rallied to his support. Just
-because such a declaration would have created an issue dividing men
-sharply and even bitterly, it would have united each side strongly; men
-would have had the two paths clearly and distinctly before their eyes,
-and though forced for the time along that of reaction, they would have
-known the direction in which they were travelling. Again and again
-victory has come out of defeat; again and again defeat has nerved men to
-greater effort.
-
-But when defeat is represented as victory by the trusted leader, there
-follows the subtlest and most paralysing form of confusion and doubt.
-Men no longer know who are the friends and who the enemies of the things
-they care for. When callous cruelty is called righteous, and cynical
-deception justice, men begin to lose their capacity to distinguish the
-one from the other, and to change sides without consciousness of their
-treason.
-
-In the field of social relationship, the better management by men of
-their society, a sincere facing of the simple truths of life, right
-conclusions from facts that are of universal knowledge, are of
-immeasurably greater importance than erudition. Indeed we see that again
-and again learning obscures in this field the simpler truths. The
-Germany that had grown up before the War is a case in point. Vast
-learning, meticulous care over infinite detail, had become the mark of
-German scholarship. But all the learning of the professors did not
-prevent a gross misreading of what, to the rest of the world, seemed all
-but self-evident--simple truths which perhaps would have been clearer if
-the learning had been less, used as it was to buttress the lusts of
-domination and power.
-
-The main errors of the Treaty (which, remember, was the work of the
-greatest diplomatic experts in Europe) reveal something similar. If the
-punitive element--which is still applauded--defeats finally the aims
-alike of justice, our own security, appeasement, disarmament, and sets
-up moral forces that will render our New World even more ferociously
-cruel and hopeless than the Old, it will not be because we were ignorant
-of the fact that 'Germany'--or 'Austria' or 'Russia'--is not a person
-that can be held responsible and punished in this simple fashion. It did
-not require an expert knowledge of economics to realise that a ruined
-Germany could not pay vast indemnities. Yet sometimes very learned men
-were possessed by these fallacies. It is not learning that is needed to
-penetrate them. A wisdom founded simply on the sincere facing of
-self-evident facts would have saved European opinion from its most
-mischievous excesses. This ignorance of the learned may perhaps be
-related to another phenomenon; a great increase in our understanding of
-inert matter, unaccompanied by any corresponding increase in our
-understanding of human conduct. This latter understanding demands a
-temperamental self-control and detachment, which mere technical
-knowledge does not ask. Although in technical science we have made such
-advances as would cause the Athenians, say, to look on us as gods, we
-show no corresponding advance upon them, or upon the Hebrew prophets for
-that matter, in the understanding of conduct and its motives. And the
-spectacle of Germany--of the modern world, indeed--so efficient in the
-management of matter, so clumsy in the understanding of the essentials
-of human relationship, reminds us once more of the futility of mere
-technical knowledge, unless accompanied by a better moral understanding.
-For without the latter we are unable to use the improvement in technique
-(as Europe is unable to use it to-day) for indispensable human ends. Or
-worse still, technical knowledge, in the absence of wisdom and
-discipline, merely gives us more efficient weapons of collective
-suicide. Butler's fantasy of the machines which men have made acquiring
-a mind of their own, and then rounding upon their masters and
-destroying them, has very nearly come true. If some new force, like the
-release of atomic energy, had been discovered during this war, and
-applied (as Mr Wells has imagined it being applied) to bombs that would
-go on exploding without cessation for a week or two, we know that
-passions ran so high that both sides would have used them, as both sides
-in the next war will use super-poison gas and disease germs. Not only
-the destruction, therefore, but the passion and the ruthlessness, the
-fears and hates, the universal pre-emption of wealth for 'defence'
-perpetually translating itself into preventive offence, would have
-grown. Man's society would assuredly have been destroyed by the
-instruments that he himself had made, and Butler's fantasy would have
-come true.
-
-It is coming true to-day. What starves Europe is not lack of technical
-knowledge; there is more technical knowledge than when Europe could feed
-itself. If we could combine our forces to effective co-operation, the
-Malthusian dragon could be kept at bay. It is the group of ideas which
-underlie the process of Balkanisation that stand in the way of turning
-our combined forces against Nature instead of against one another.
-
-We have gone wrong mainly in certain of the simpler and broader issues
-of human relationship, and this book has attempted to disentangle from
-the complex mass of facts in the international situation, those
-'sovereign ideas' which constitute in crises the basic factors of public
-action and opinion. In so doing there may have been some
-over-simplification. That will not greatly matter, if the result is some
-re-examination and clarification of the predominant beliefs that have
-been analysed. 'Truth comes out of error more easily than out of
-confusion,' as Bacon warned us. It is easier to correct a working
-hypothesis of society, which is wrong in some detail, than to achieve
-wise conduct in society without any social principle. If social or
-political phenomena are for us first an unexplained tangle of forces,
-and we live morally from hand to mouth, by opinions which have no
-guiding principle, our emotions will be at the mercy first of one
-isolated fact or incident, and then of another.
-
-A certain parallel has more than once been suggested in these pages.
-European society is to-day threatened with disintegration as the result
-of ideas and emotions that have collected round Patriotism. A century or
-two since it was threatened by ideas and passions which gathered round
-religious dogma. By what process did we arrive at religious toleration
-as a social principle? That question has been suggested because to
-answer it may throw some light on our present problem of rendering
-Patriotism a social instead of an anti-social force.
-
-If to-day, for the most part, in Europe and America one sect can live
-beside another in peace, where a century or two ago there would have
-been fierce hatreds, wars, massacres, and burnings, it is not because
-the modern population is more learned in theology (it is probably less
-so), but rather conversely, because theological theory gave place to lay
-judgment in the ordinary facts of life.
-
-If we have a vast change in the general ideas of Europe in the religious
-sphere, in the attitude of men to dogma, in the importance which they
-attach to it, in their feeling about it; a change which for good or evil
-is a vast one in its consequences, a moral and intellectual revulsion
-which has swept away one great difficulty of human relationship and
-transformed society; it is because the laity have brought the discussion
-back to principles so broad and fundamental that the data became the
-facts of human life and experience--data with which the common man is as
-familiar as the scholar. Of the present-day millions for whom certain
-beliefs of the older theologians would be morally monstrous, how many
-have been influenced by elaborate study concerning the validity of this
-or that text? The texts simply do not weigh with them, though for
-centuries they were the only things that counted. What do weigh with
-them are profounder and simpler things--a sense of justice,
-compassion--things which would equally have led the man of the sixteenth
-century to question the texts and the premises of the Church, if
-discussion had been free. It is because it was not free that the social
-instinct of the mass, the general capacity to order their relations so
-as to make it possible for them to live together, became distorted and
-vitiated. And the wars of religion resulted. To correct this vitiation,
-to abolish these disastrous hates and misconceptions, elaborate learning
-was not needed. Indeed, it was largely elaborate learning which had
-occasioned them. The judges who burned women alive for witchcraft, or
-inquisitors who sanctioned that punishment for heresy, had vast and
-terrible stores of learning. _What was needed was that these learned
-folk should question their premises in the light of facts of common
-knowledge._ It is by so doing that their errors are patent to the quite
-unlearned of our time. No layman was equipped to pass judgment on the
-historical reasons which might support the credibility of this or that
-miracle, or the intricate arguments which might justify this or that
-point of dogma. But the layman was as well equipped, indeed, he was
-better equipped than the schoolman, to question whether God would ever
-torture men everlastingly for the expression of honest belief; the
-observer of daily occurrences, to say nothing of the physicist, was as
-able as the theologian to question whether a readiness to believe
-without evidence is a virtue at all. Questions of the damnation of
-infants, eternal torment, were settled not by the men equipped with
-historical and ecclesiastical scholarship, but by the average man, going
-back to the broad truths, to first principles, asking very simple
-questions, the answer to which depended not upon the validity of texts,
-but upon correct reasoning concerning facts which are accessible to all;
-upon our general sense of life as a whole, and our more elementary
-institutions of justice and mercy; reasoning and intuitions which the
-learning of the expert often distorts.
-
-Exactly the service which extricated us from the intellectual and moral
-confusion that resulted in such catastrophes in the field of religion,
-is needed in the field of politics. From certain learned folk--writers,
-poets, professors (German and other), journalists, historians, and
-rulers--the public have taken a group of ideas concerning Patriotism,
-Nationalism, Imperialism, the nature of our obligation to the State, and
-so on, ideas which may be right or wrong, but which we are all agreed,
-will have to be very much changed if men are ever to live together in
-peace and freedom; just as certain notions concerning the institution of
-private property will have to be changed if the mass of men are to live
-in plenty.
-
-It is a commonplace of militarist argument that so long as men feel as
-they do about their Fatherland, about patriotism and nationalism,
-internationalism will be an impossibility. If that is true--and I think
-it is--peace and freedom and welfare will wait until those large issues
-have been raised in men's minds with sufficient vividness to bring about
-a change of idea and so a change of feeling with reference to them.
-
-It is unlikely, to say the least, that the mass of Englishmen or
-Frenchmen will ever be in possession of detailed knowledge sufficient to
-equip them to pass judgment on the various rival solutions of the
-complex problems that face us, say, in the Balkans. And yet it was
-immediately out of a problem of Balkan politics that the War arose, and
-future wars may well arise out of those same problems if they are
-settled as badly in the future as in the past.
-
-The situation would indeed be hopeless if the nature of human
-relationship depended upon the possession by the people as a whole of
-expert knowledge in complex questions of that kind. But happily the
-Sarajevo murders would never have developed into a war involving twenty
-nations but for the fact that there had been cultivated in Europe
-suspicions, hatreds, insane passions, and cupidities, due largely to
-false conceptions (though in part also themselves prompting the false
-conceptions) of a few simple facts in political relationship;
-conceptions concerning the necessary rivalry of nations, the idea that
-what one nation gains another loses, that States are doomed by a fate
-over which they have no control to struggle together for the space and
-opportunities of a limited world. But for the atmosphere that these
-ideas create (as false theological notions once created a similar
-atmosphere between rival religious groups) most of these at present
-difficult and insoluble problems of nationality and frontiers and
-government, would have solved themselves.
-
-The ideas which feed and inflame these passions of rivalry, hostility,
-fear, hate, will be modified, if at all, by raising in the mind of the
-European some such simple elementary questions as were raised when he
-began to modify his feeling about the man of rival religious belief. The
-Political Reformation in Europe will come by questioning, for instance,
-the whole philosophy of patriotism, the morality or the validity, in
-terms of human well-being, of a principle like that of 'my country,
-right or wrong';[95] by questioning whether a people really benefit by
-enlarging the frontiers of their State; whether 'greatness' in a nation
-particularly matters; whether the man of the small State is not in all
-the great human values the equal of the man of the great Empire; whether
-the real problems of life are greatly affected by the colour of the
-flag; whether we have not loyalties to other things as well as to our
-State; whether we do not in our demand for national sovereignty ignore
-international obligation without which the nations can have neither
-security nor freedom; whether we should not refuse to kill or horribly
-mutilate a man merely because we differ from him in politics. And with
-those, if the emergence from chattel-slavery is to be complemented by
-the emergence from wage slavery, must be put similarly fundamental
-questions touching problems like that of private property and the
-relation of social freedom thereto; we must ask why, if it is rightly
-demanded of the citizen that his life shall be forfeit to the safety of
-the State, his surplus money, property, shall not be forfeit to its
-welfare.
-
-To very many, these questions will seem a kind of blasphemy, and they
-will regard those who utter them as the subjects of a loathsome
-perversion. In just that way the orthodox of old regarded the heretic
-and his blasphemies. And yet the solution of the difficulties of our
-time, this problem of learning to live together without mutual homicide
-and military slavery, depends upon those blasphemies being uttered.
-Because it is only in some such way that the premises of the differences
-which divide us, the realities which underlie them, will receive
-attention. It is not that the implied answer is necessarily the truth--I
-am not concerned now for a moment to urge that it is--but that until the
-problem is pushed back in our minds to these great yet simple issues,
-the will, temper, general ideas of Europe on this subject will remain
-unchanged. And if _they_ remain unchanged so will its conduct and
-condition.
-
-The tradition of nationalism and patriotism, around which have gathered
-our chief political loyalties and instincts, has become in the actual
-conditions of the world an anti-social and disruptive force. Although we
-realize perhaps that a society of nations of some kind there must be,
-each unit proclaims proudly its anti-social slogan of sacred egoisms and
-defiant immoralism; its espousal of country as against right.[96]
-
-The danger--and the difficulty--resides largely in the fact that the
-instincts of gregariousness and group solidarity, which prompt the
-attitude of 'my country right or wrong,' are not in themselves evil:
-both gregariousness and pugnacity are indispensable to society.
-Nationality is a very precious manifestation of the instincts by which
-alone men can become socially conscious and act in some corporate
-capacity. The identification of 'self' with society, which patriotism
-accomplishes within certain limits, the sacrifice of self for the
-community which it inspires--even though only when fighting other
-patriotisms--are moral achievements of infinite hope.
-
-The Catharian heresy that Jehovah of the Old Testament is in reality
-Satan masquerading as God has this pregnant suggestion; if the Father of
-Evil ever does destroy us, we may be sure that he will come, not
-proclaiming himself evil, but proclaiming himself good, the very Voice
-of God. And that is the danger with patriotism and the instincts that
-gather round it. If the instincts of nationalism were simply evil, they
-would constitute no real danger. It is the good in them that has made
-them the instrument of the immeasurable devastation which they
-accomplish.
-
-That Patriotism does indeed transcend all morality, all religious
-sanctions as we have heretofore known them, can be put to a very simple
-test. Let an Englishman, recalling, if he can, his temper during the
-War, ask himself this question: Is there anything, anything whatsoever,
-that he would have refused to do, if the refusal had meant the triumph
-of Germany and the defeat of England? In his heart he knows that he
-would have justified any act if the safety of his country had hung upon
-it.
-
-Other patriotisms have like justifications. Yet would defeat,
-submission, even to Germany, involve worse acts than those we have felt
-compelled to commit during the War and since--in the work of making our
-power secure? Did the German ask of the Alsatian or the Pole worse than
-we have been compelled to ask of our own soldiers in Russia, India, or
-Ireland?
-
-The old struggle for power goes on. For the purpose of that struggle we
-are prepared to transform our society in any way that it may demand. For
-the purposes of the war for power we will accept anything that the
-strength of the enemy imposes: we will be socialist, autocratic,
-democratic, or communist; we will conscribe the bodies, souls, wealth of
-our people; we will proscribe, as we do, the Christian doctrine, and
-all mercy and humanity; we will organise falsehood and deceit, and call
-it statecraft and strategy; lie for the purpose of inflaming hate, and
-rejoice at the effectiveness of our propaganda; we will torture helpless
-millions by pestilence and famine--as we have done--and look on unmoved;
-our priests, in the name of Christ, will reprove misplaced pity, and
-call for the further punishment of the wicked, still greater efforts in
-the Fight for Right. We shall not care what transformations take place
-in our society or our natures; or what happens to the human spirit.
-Obediently, at the behest of the enemy--because, that is, his power
-demands that conduct of us--shall we do all those things, or anything,
-save only one: we will not negotiate or make a contract with him. _That_
-would limit our 'independence'; by which we mean that his submission to
-our mastery would be less complete.
-
-We can do acts of infinite cruelty; disregard all accepted morality; but
-we cannot allow the enemy to escape the admission of defeat.
-
-If we are to correct the evils of the older tradition, and build up one
-which will restore to men the art of living together, we must honestly
-face the fact that the older tradition has failed. So long as the old
-loyalties and patriotisms, tempting us with power and dominion, calling
-to the deep hunger excited by those things, and using the banners of
-righteousness and justice, seem to offer security, and a society which,
-if not ideal, is at least workable, we certainly shall not pay the price
-which all profound change of habit demands. We have seen that as a fact
-of his history man only abandons power and force over others when it
-fails. At present, almost everywhere, we refuse to face the failure of
-the old forms of political power. We don't believe that we need the
-co-operation of the foreigner, or we believe that we can coerce him.
-
-Little attention has been given here to the machinery of
-internationalism--League of Nations, Courts of Arbitration, Disarmament.
-This is not because machinery is unimportant. But if we possessed the
-Will, if we were ready each to pay his contribution in some sacrifice of
-his independence, of his opportunity of domination, the difficulties of
-machinery would largely disappear. The story of America's essay in
-internationalism has warned us of the real difficulty. Courts of
-Arbitration, Leagues of Nations, were devices to which American opinion
-readily enough agreed; too readily. For the event showed that the old
-conceptions were not changed. They had only been disregarded. No
-machinery of internationalism can work so long as the impulses and
-prepossessions of irresponsible nationalism retain their power. The test
-we must apply to our sincerity is our answer to the question:--What
-price, in terms of national independence, are we prepared to pay for a
-world law? What, in fact, _is_ the price that is asked of us? To this
-last question, the pages that precede, and to some extent those that
-follow, have attempted to supply an answer. We should gain many times in
-freedom and independence the contribution in those things that we made.
-
-Perhaps we may be driven by hunger--the actual need of our children for
-bread--to forsake a method which cannot give them bread or freedom, in
-favour of one that can. But, for the failure of power to act as a
-deterrent upon our desire for it, we must perceive the failure. Our
-angers and hatreds obscure that failure, or render us indifferent to it.
-Hunger does not necessarily help the understanding; it may bemuse it by
-passion and resentment. We may in our passion wreck civilisation as a
-passionate man in his anger will injure those he loves. Yet, well fed,
-we may refuse to concern ourselves with problems of the morrow. The
-mechanical motive will no longer suffice. In the simpler, more animal
-forms of society, the instinct of each moment, with no thought of
-ultimate consequence, may be enough. But the Society which man has built
-up can only go forward or be preserved as it began: by virtue of
-something which is more than instinct. On man is cast the obligation to
-be intelligent; the responsibility of will; the burden of thought.
-
-If some of us have felt that, beyond all other evils which translate
-themselves into public policy, those with which these pages deal
-constitute the greatest, it is not because war means the loss of life,
-the killing of men. Many of our noblest activities do that. There are so
-many of us that it is no great disaster that a few should die. It is not
-because war means suffering. Suffering endured for a conscious and
-clearly conceived human purpose is redeemed by hope of real achievement;
-it may be a glad sacrifice for some worthy end. But if we have
-floundered hopelessly into a bog because we have forgotten our end and
-purpose in the heat of futile passion, the consolation which we may
-gather from the willingness with which men die in the bog should not
-stand in the way of our determination to rediscover our destination and
-create afresh our purpose. These pages have been concerned very little
-with the loss of life, the suffering of the last seven years. What they
-have dealt with mainly is the fact that the War has left us a less
-workable society, has been marked by an increase in the forces of chaos
-and disintegration. That is the ultimate indictment of this War as of
-all wars: the attitude towards life, the ideas and motive forces out of
-which it grows, and which it fosters, makes men less able to live
-together, their society less workable, and must end by making free
-society impossible. War not only arises out of the failure of human
-wisdom, from the defect of that intelligence by which alone we can
-successfully fight the forces of nature; it perpetuates that failure and
-worsens it. For only by a passion which keeps thought at bay can the
-'morale' of war be maintained. The very justification which we advance
-for our war-time censorships and propaganda, our suspension of free
-speech and discussion, is that if we gave full value to the enemy's
-case, saw him as he really is, blundering, foolish, largely helpless
-like ourselves; saw the defects of our own and our Allies' policy, saw
-what our own acts in war really involved and how nearly they resembled
-those which aroused our anger when done by the enemy, if we saw all
-this and kept our heads, we should abandon war. A thousand times it has
-been explained that in an impartial mood we cannot carry on war; that
-unless the people come to feel that all the right is on our side and all
-the wrong on the enemy's, morale will fail. The most righteous war can
-only be kept going by falsehood. The end of that falsehood is that our
-mind collapses. And although the mind, thought, judgment, are not
-all-sufficient for man's salvation, it is impossible without them.
-Behind all other explanations of Europe's creeping paralysis is the
-blindness of the millions, their inability to see the effects of their
-demands and policy, to see where they are going.
-
-Only a keener feeling for truth will enable them to see. About
-indifferent things--about the dead matter that we handle in our
-science--we can be honest, impartial, true. That is why we succeed in
-dealing with matter. But about the things we care for--which are
-ourselves--our desires and lusts, our patriotisms and hates, we find a
-harder test of thinking straight and truly. Yet there is the greater
-need; only by that rectitude shall we be saved. There is no refuge but
-in truth.
-
-
-
-
-ADDENDUM
-
-THE ARGUMENT OF _THE GREAT ILLUSION_
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-THE 'IMPOSSIBILITY OF WAR' MYTH
-
-
-It will illustrate certain difficulties which have marked--and mark--the
-presentation of the argument of this book, if the reader will consider
-for a few minutes the justice of certain charges which have been brought
-against _The Great Illusion_. Perhaps the commonest is that it argued
-that 'war had become impossible.' The truth of that charge at least can
-very easily be tested. The first page of that book, the preface,
-referring to the thesis it proposed to set out, has these words: 'the
-argument is _not_ that war is impossible, but that it is futile.' The
-next page but one describes what the author believes to be the main
-forces at work in international politics: a fierce struggle for
-preponderant power 'based on the universal assumption that a nation, in
-order to find outlets for expanding population and increasing industry,
-or simply to ensure the best conditions possible for its people, is
-necessarily pushed to territorial expansion and the exercise of
-political force against others ... that nations being competing units,
-advantage, in the last resort, goes to the possessor of preponderant
-military force, the weaker going to the wall, as in the other forms of
-the struggle for life.' A whole chapter is devoted to the evidence which
-goes to show that this aggressive and warlike philosophy was indeed the
-great actuating force in European politics. The first two paragraphs of
-the first chapter forecast the likelihood of an Anglo-German explosion;
-that chapter goes on to declare that the pacifist effort then current
-was evidently making no headway at all against the tendencies towards
-rivalry and conflict. In the third chapter the ideas underlying those
-tendencies are described as 'so profoundly mischievous,' and so
-'desperately dangerous,' as to threaten civilisation itself. A chapter
-is devoted to showing that the fallacy and folly of those all but
-universal ideas was no guarantee at all that the nations would not act
-upon them. (Particularly is the author insistent on the fact that the
-futility of war will never in itself suffice to stop war. The folly of a
-given course of action will only be a deterrent to the degree to which
-men realise its folly. That was why the book was written.) A warning is
-uttered against any reliance upon the Hague Conferences, which, it is
-explained at length, are likely to be quite ineffective against the
-momentum of the motives of aggression. A warning is uttered towards the
-close of the book against any reduction of British armaments,
-accompanied, however, by the warning that mere increase of armaments
-unaccompanied by change of policy, a Political Reformation in the
-direction of internationalism, will provoke the very catastrophe it is
-their object to avoid; only by that change of policy could we take a
-real step towards peace 'instead of _a step towards war, to which the
-mere piling up of armaments, unchecked by any other factor, must in the
-end inevitably lead_.'[97]
-
-The last paragraph of the book asks the reader which of two courses we
-are to follow: a determined effort towards placing European policy on a
-new basis, or a drift along the current of old instincts and ideas, a
-course which would condemn us to the waste of mountains of treasure and
-the spilling of oceans of blood.
-
-Yet, it is probably true to say that, of the casual newspaper references
-(as distinct from reviews) made during the last ten years to the book
-just described, four out of five are to the effect that its author said
-'war was impossible because it did not pay.'
-
-The following are some passages referred to in the above summary:--
-
-     'Not the facts, but men's opinions about the facts is what matters.
-     This is because men's conduct is determined, not necessarily by the
-     right conclusion from facts, but the conclusion they believe to be
-     right.... As long as Europe is dominated by the old beliefs, those
-     beliefs will have virtually the same effect in politics as though
-     they were intrinsically sound.'--(p. 327.)
-
-     'It is evident that so long as the misconception we are dealing
-     with is all but universal in Europe, so long as the nations believe
-     that in some way the military and political subjugation of others
-     will bring with it a tangible material advantage to the conqueror,
-     we all do, in fact, stand in danger from such aggression. Not his
-     interest, but what he deems to be his interest, will furnish the
-     real motive of our prospective enemy's action. And as the illusion
-     with which we are dealing does, indeed, dominate all those minds
-     most active in European politics, we must, while this remains the
-     case, regard an aggression, even such as that which Mr Harrison
-     foresees, as within the bounds of practical politics.... On this
-     ground alone I deem that we or any other nation are justified in
-     taking means of self-defence to prevent such aggression. This is
-     not, therefore, a plea for disarmament irrespective of the action
-     of other nations. So long as current political philosophy in Europe
-     remains what it is, I would not urge the reduction of our war
-     budget by a single sovereign.'--(p. 329.)
-
-     'The need for defence arises from the existence of a motive for
-     attack.... That motive is, consequently, part of the problem of
-     defence.... Since as between the European peoples we are dealing
-     with in this matter, one party is as able in the long run to pile
-     up armaments as the other, we cannot get nearer to solution by
-     armaments alone; we must get at the original provoking cause--the
-     motive making for aggression.... If that motive results from a
-     true judgment of the facts; if the determining factor in a nation's
-     well-being and progress is really its power to obtain by force
-     advantage over others, the present situation of armament rivalry
-     tempered by war is a natural and inevitable one.... If, however,
-     the view is a false one, our progress towards solution will be
-     marked by the extent to which the error becomes generally
-     recognised in European public opinion.'--(p. 337.)
-
-     'In this matter it seems fatally easy to secure either one of two
-     kinds of action: that of the "practical man" who limits his
-     energies to securing a policy which will perfect the machinery of
-     war and disregard anything else; or that of the Pacifist, who,
-     persuaded of the brutality or immorality of war, is apt to
-     deprecate effort directed at self-defence. What is needed is the
-     type of activity which will include both halves of the problem:
-     provision for education, for a Political Reformation in this
-     matter, _as well as_ such means of defence as will meantime
-     counterbalance the existing impulse to aggression. To concentrate
-     on either half to the exclusion of the other half is to render the
-     whole problem insoluble.'--(p. 330.)
-
-     'Never has the contest of armament been so keen as when Europe
-     began to indulge in Peace Conferences. Speaking roughly and
-     generally, the era of great armament expansion dates from the first
-     Hague Conference. The reader who has appreciated the emphasis laid
-     in the preceding pages on working through the reform of ideas will
-     not feel much astonishment at the failure of efforts such as these.
-     The Hague Conferences represented an attempt, not to work through
-     the reform of ideas, but to modify by mechanical means the
-     political machinery of Europe, without reference to the ideas which
-     had brought it into existence.
-
-     'Arbitration treaties, Hague Conferences, International Federation,
-     involve a new conception of relationship between nations. But the
-     ideals--political, economical, and social--on which the old
-     conceptions are based, our terminology, our political literature,
-     our old habits of thought, diplomatic inertia, which all combine to
-     perpetuate the old notions, have been left serenely undisturbed.
-     And surprise is expressed that such schemes do not succeed.'--(p.
-     350.)
-
-Very soon after the appearance of the book, I find I am shouting myself
-hoarse in the Press against this monstrous 'impossibility of war'
-foolishness. An article in the _Daily Mail_ of September 15th, 1911,
-begins thus:--
-
-     ' ... One learns, with some surprise, that the very simple facts to
-     which I have now for some years been trying to draw the attention
-     they deserve, teach that:--
-
-     1. War is now impossible.
-
-     2. War would ruin both the victor and the vanquished.
-
-     3. War would leave the victor worse off than the vanquished.
-
-     'May I say with every possible emphasis that nothing I have ever
-     written justifies any one of these conclusions.
-
-     'I have always, on the contrary, urged that:--
-
-     (1) War is, unhappily, quite possible, and, in the prevailing
-     condition of ignorance concerning certain elementary
-     politico-economic facts, even likely.
-
-     (2) There is nothing to justify the conclusion that war would
-     "ruin" both victor and vanquished. Indeed, I do not quite know what
-     the "ruin" of a nation means.
-
-     (3) While in the past the vanquished has often profited more by
-     defeat than he could possibly have done by victory, it is no
-     necessary result, and we are safest in assuming that the vanquished
-     will suffer most.'
-
-Nearly two years later I find myself still engaged in the same task.
-Here is a letter to the _Saturday Review_ (March 8th, 1913):--
-
-     'You are good enough to say that I am "one of the very few
-     advocates of peace at any price who is not altogether an ass." And
-     yet you also state that I have been on a mission "to persuade the
-     German people that war in the twentieth century is impossible." If
-     I had ever tried to teach anybody such sorry rubbish I should be
-     altogether an unmitigated ass. I have never, of course, nor so far
-     as I am aware, has any one ever said that war was impossible.
-     Personally, not only do I regard war as possible, but extremely
-     likely. What I have been preaching in Germany is that it is
-     impossible for Germany to benefit by war, especially a war against
-     us; and that, of course, is quite a different matter.'
-
-It is true that if the argument of the book as a whole pointed to the
-conclusion that war was 'impossible,' it would be beside the point to
-quote passages repudiating that conclusion. They might merely prove the
-inconsequence of the author's thought. But the book, and the whole
-effort of which it was a part, would have had no _raison d'etre_ if the
-author had believed war unlikely or impossible. It was a systematic
-attack on certain political ideas which the author declared were
-dominant in international politics. If he had supposed those powerful
-ideas were making _not_ for war, but for peace, why as a pacifist should
-he be at such pains to change them? And if he thought those
-war-provoking ideas which he attacked were not likely to be put into
-effect, why, in that case either, should he bother at all? Why, for that
-matter, should a man who thought war impossible engage in not too
-popular propaganda against war--against something which could not occur?
-
-A moment's real reflection on the part of those responsible for this
-description of _The Great Illusion_, should have convinced them that it
-could not be a true one.
-
-I have taken the trouble to go through some of the more serious
-criticisms of the book to see whether this extraordinary confusion was
-created in the mind of those who actually read the book instead of
-reading about it. So far as I know, not a single serious critic has come
-to a conclusion that agrees with the 'popular' verdict. Several going to
-the book after the War, seem to express surprise at the absence of any
-such conclusion. Professor Lindsay writes:--
-
-     'Let us begin by disposing of one obvious criticism of the
-     doctrines of _The Great Illusion_ which the out-break of war has
-     suggested. Mr Angell never contended that war was impossible,
-     though he did contend that it must always be futile. He insisted
-     that the futility of war would not make war impossible or armament
-     unnecessary until all nations recognised its futility. So long as
-     men held that nations could advance their interests by war, so long
-     war would last. His moral was that we should fight militarism,
-     whether in Germany or in our own country, as one ought to fight an
-     idea with better ideas. He further pointed out that though it is
-     pleasanter to attack the wrong ideals held by foreigners, it is
-     more effective to attack the wrong ideals held in our own
-     country.... The pacifist hope was that the outbreak of a European
-     war, which was recognised as quite possible, might be delayed
-     until, with the progress of pacifist doctrine, war became
-     impossible. That hope has been tragically frustrated, but if the
-     doctrines of pacifism are convincing and irrefutable, it was not in
-     itself a vain hope. Time was the only thing it asked of fortune,
-     and time was denied it.'
-
-Another post-war critic--on the other side of the Atlantic--writes:--
-
-     'Mr. Angell has received too much solace from the unwisdom of his
-     critics. Those who have denounced him most vehemently are those who
-     patently have not read his books. For example, he cannot properly
-     be classed, as frequently asserted in recent months, as one of
-     those Utopian pacifists who went about proclaiming war impossible.
-     A number of passages in _The Great Illusion_ show him fully alive
-     to the danger of the present collapse; indeed, from the narrower
-     view of politics his book was one of the several fruitless attempts
-     to check that growing estrangement between England and Germany
-     whose sinister menace far-sighted men discerned. Even less
-     justifiable are the flippant sneers which discard his argument as
-     mercenary or sordid. Mr Angell has never taken an "account book" or
-     "breeches pocket" view of war. He inveighs against what he terms
-     its political and moral futilities as earnestly as against its
-     economic futility.'
-
-It may be said that there must be some cause for so persistent a
-misrepresentation. There is. Its cause is that obstinate and deep-seated
-fatalism which is so large a part of the prevailing attitude to war and
-against which the book under consideration was a protest. Take it as an
-axiom that war comes upon us as an outside force, like the rain or the
-earthquake, and not as something that we can influence, and a man who
-'does not believe in war,' must be a person who believes that war is not
-coming;[98] that men are naturally peaceable. To be a Pacifist because
-one believes that the danger of war is very great indeed, or because one
-believes men to be naturally extremely prone to war, is a position
-incomprehensible until we have rid our minds of the fatalism which
-regards war as an 'inevitable' result of uncontrollable forces.
-
-What is a writer to do, however, in the face of persistent
-misrepresentation such as this? If he were a manufacturer of soap and
-some one said his soap was underweight, or he were a grocer and some one
-said his sugar was half sand, he could of course obtain enormous
-damages. But a mere writer, having given some years of his life to the
-study of the most important problem of his time, is quite helpless when
-a tired headline writer, or a journalist indulging his resentment, or
-what he thinks is likely to be the resentment of his readers, describes
-a book as proclaiming one thing when as a matter of simple fact it
-proclaims the exact contrary.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-So much for myth or misrepresentation No. 1. We come to a second,
-namely, that _The Great Illusion_ is an appeal to avarice; that it urges
-men not to defend their country 'because to do so does not pay;' that it
-would have us place 'pocket before patriotism,' a view reflected in
-Benjamin Kidd's last book, pages of which are devoted to the
-condemnation of the 'degeneracy and futility' of resting the cause of
-peace on no higher ground than that it is 'a great illusion to believe
-that a national policy founded on war can be a profitable policy for any
-people in the long run.'[99] He quotes approvingly Sir William Robertson
-Nicoll for denouncing those who condemn war because 'it would postpone
-the blessed hour of tranquil money getting.'[100] As a means of
-obscuring truths which it is important to realise, of creating by
-misrepresentation a moral repulsion to a thesis, and thus depriving it
-of consideration, this second line of attack is even more important than
-the first.
-
-To say of a book that it prophesied 'the impossibility of war,' is to
-imply that it is mere silly rubbish, and its author a fool. Sir William
-Robertson Nicoll's phrase would of course imply that its doctrine was
-morally contemptible.
-
-The reader must judge, after considering dispassionately what follows,
-whether this second description is any truer than the first.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-'ECONOMIC' AND 'MORAL' MOTIVES IN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
-
-
-_The Great Illusion_ dealt--among other factors of international
-conflict--with the means by which the population of the world is driven
-to support itself; and studied the effect of those efforts to find
-sustenance upon the relations of States. It therefore dealt with
-economics.
-
-On the strength of this, certain critics (like some of those quoted in
-the last chapter) who cannot possibly have read the book thoroughly,
-seem to have argued: If this book about war deals with 'economics,' it
-must deal with money and profits. To bring money and profits into a
-discussion of war is to imply that men fight for money, and won't fight
-if they don't get money from it; that war does not 'pay.' This is wicked
-and horrible. Let us denounce the writer for a shallow Hedonist and
-money-grubber....
-
-As a matter of simple fact, as we shall see presently, the book was
-largely an attempt to show that the economic argument usually adduced
-for a particularly ruthless form of national selfishness was not a sound
-argument; that the commonly invoked justification for a selfish
-immoralism in Foreign Policy was a fallacy, an illusion. Yet the critics
-somehow managed to turn what was in fact an argument against national
-egoism into an argument for selfishness.
-
-What was the political belief and the attitude towards life which _The
-Great Illusion_ challenged? And what was the counter principle which it
-advocated as a substitute therefore?
-
-It challenged the theory that the vital interests of nations are
-conflicting, and that war is part of the inevitable struggle for life
-among them; the view that, in order to feed itself, a nation with an
-expanding population must conquer territory and so deprive others of the
-means of subsistence; the view that war is the 'struggle for
-bread.'[101] In other words, it challenged the economic excuse or
-justification for the 'sacred egoism' which is so largely the basis of
-the nationalist political philosophy, an excuse, which, as we shall see,
-the nationalist invokes if not to deny the moral law in the
-international field, at least to put the morality governing the
-relations of States on a very different plane from that which governs
-the relations of individuals. As against this doctrine _The Great
-Illusion_ advanced the proposition, among others, that the economic or
-biological assumption on which it is based is false; that the policy of
-political power which results from this assumption is economically
-unworkable, its benefits an illusion; that the amount of sustenance
-provided by the earth is not a fixed quantity so that what one nation
-can seize another loses, but is an expanding quantity, its amount
-depending mainly upon the efficiency with which men co-operate in their
-exploitation of Nature. As already pointed out, a hundred thousand Red
-Indians starved in a country where a hundred million modern Americans
-have abundance. The need for co-operation, and the faith on which alone
-it can be maintained, being indispensable to our common welfare, the
-violation of the social compact, international obligation, will be
-visited with penalties just as surely as are violations of the moral law
-in relations between individuals. The economic factor is not the sole or
-the largest element in human relations, but it is the one which occupies
-the largest place in public law and policy. (Of two contestants, each
-can retain his religion or literary preferences without depriving the
-other of like possessions; they cannot both retain the same piece of
-material property.) The economic problem is vital in the sense of
-dealing with the means by which we maintain life; and it is invoked as
-justification for the political immoralism of States. Until the
-confusions concerning it are cleared up, it will serve little purpose to
-analyse the other elements of conflict.
-
-What justifies the assumption that the predatory egotism, sacred or
-profane, here implied, was an indispensable part of the pre-war
-political philosophy, explaining the great part of policy in the
-international field?[102]
-
-First the facts: the whole history of international conflict in the
-decade or two which preceded the War; and the terms of the Treaty of
-Versailles. If you would find out the nature of a people's (or a
-statesman's) political morality, note their conduct when they have
-complete power to carry their desires into effect. The terms of peace,
-and the relations of the Allies with Russia, show a deliberate and
-avowed pre-occupation with sources of oil, iron, coal; with indemnities,
-investments, old debts; with Colonies, markets; the elimination of
-commercial rivals--with all these things to a degree very much greater
-and in a fashion much more direct than was assumed in _The Great
-Illusion_.
-
-But the tendency had been evident in the conflicts which preceded the
-War. These conflicts, in so far as the Great Powers were concerned, had
-been in practically every case over territory, or roads to territory;
-over Madagascar, Egypt, Morocco, Korea, Mongolia; 'warm water' ports,
-the division of Africa, the partitioning of China, loans thereto and
-concessions therein; the Persian Gulf, the Bagdad Railway, the Panama
-Canal. Where the principle of nationality was denied by any Great Power
-it was generally because to recognise it might block access to the sea
-or raw materials, throw a barrier across the road to undeveloped
-territory.
-
-There was no denial of this by those who treated of public affairs. Mr
-Lloyd George declared that England would be quite ready to go to war
-rather than have the Morocco question settled without reference to her.
-Famous writers like Mahan did not balk at conclusions like this:--
-
-     'It is the great amount of unexploited raw material in territories
-     politically backward, and now imperfectly possessed by the nominal
-     owners, which at the present moment constitutes the temptation and
-     the impulse to war of European States.'[103]
-
-Nor to justify them thus:--
-
-     'More and more Germany needs the assured importation of raw
-     materials, and, where possible, control of regions productive of
-     such materials. More and more she requires assured markets, and
-     security as to the importation of food, since less and less
-     comparatively is produced within her own borders for her rapidly
-     increasing population. This all means security at sea.... Yet the
-     supremacy of Great Britain in European seas means a perpetually
-     latent control of German commerce.... The world has long been
-     accustomed to the idea of a predominant naval power, coupling it
-     accurately with the name of Great Britain: and it has been noted
-     that such power, when achieved, is commonly found associated with
-     commercial and industrial pre-eminence, the struggle for which is
-     now in progress between Great Britain and Germany. Such
-     pre-eminence forces a nation to seek markets, and, where possible,
-     to control them to its own advantage by preponderant force, the
-     ultimate expression of which is possession.... From this flow two
-     results: the attempt to possess, and the organisation of force by
-     which to maintain possession already achieved.... This statement is
-     simply a specific formulation of the general necessity stated;
-     itself an inevitable link in a chain of logical sequence: industry,
-     markets, control, navy, bases....[104]
-
-Mr Spenser Wilkinson, of a corresponding English school, is just as
-definite:--
-
-     'The effect of growth is an expansion and an increase of power. It
-     necessarily affects the environment of the growing organisms; it
-     interferes with the _status quo_. Existing rights and interests are
-     disturbed by the fact of growth, which is itself a change. The
-     growing community finds itself hedged in by previously existing and
-     surviving conditions, and fettered by prescriptive rights. There
-     is, therefore, an exertion of force to overcome resistance. No
-     process of law or of arbitration can deal with this phenomenon,
-     because any tribunal administering a system of right or law must
-     base its decision upon the tradition of the past which has become
-     unsuited to the new conditions that have arisen. The growing State
-     is necessarily expansive or aggressive.'[105]
-
-Even more decisive as a definite philosophy are the propositions of Mr
-Petre, who, writing on 'The Mandate of Humanity,' says:--
-
-     'The conscience of a State cannot, therefore, be as delicate, as
-     disinterested, as altruistic, as that of the noblest individuals.
-     The State exists primarily for its own people and only secondarily
-     for the rest of the world. Hence, given a dispute in which it feels
-     its rights and welfare to be at stake, it may, however erroneously,
-     set aside its moral obligations to international society in favour
-     of its obligations to the people for whom it exists.
-
-     'But no righteous conscience, it may be said, could give its
-     verdict against a solemn pledge taken and reciprocated; no
-     righteous conscience could, in a society of nations, declare
-     against the ends of that society. Indeed I think it could, and
-     sometimes would, if its sense of justice were outraged, if its duty
-     to those who were bone of its bone and flesh of its flesh came into
-     conflict with its duty to those who were not directly belonging to
-     it....
-
-     'The mechanism of a State exists mainly for its own preservation,
-     and cannot be turned against this, its legitimate end. The
-     conscience of a State will not traverse this main condition, and to
-     weaken its conscience is to weaken its life....
-
-     'The strong will not give way to the weak; the one who thinks
-     himself in the right will not yield to those whom he believes to be
-     in the wrong; the living generations will not be restrained by the
-     promises to a dead one; nature will not be controlled by
-     conventions.'[106]
-
-It is the last note that gives the key to popular feeling about the
-scramble for territory. In _The Great Illusion_ whole pages of popular
-writing are quoted to show that the conception of the struggle as in
-truth the struggle for survival had firmly planted itself in the popular
-consciousness. One of the critics who is so severe upon the present
-writer for trying to undermine the economic foundation of that popular
-creed, Benjamin Kidd, himself testifies to the depth and sweep of this
-pseudo-Darwinism (he seems to think indeed that it is true Darwinism,
-which it is not, as Darwin himself pointed out). He declares that 'there
-is no precedent in the history of the human mind to compare with the
-saturnalia of the Western intellect' which followed the popularisation
-of what he regards as Darwin's case and I would regard as a distortion
-of it. Kidd says it 'touched the profoundest depth of the psychology of
-the West.' 'Everywhere throughout civilisation an almost inconceivable
-influence was given to the doctrine of the law of biological necessity
-in books of statecraft and war-craft, of expanding military empires.'
-'Struggle for life,' 'a biological necessity,' 'survival of the fit,'
-had passed into popular use and had come to buttress popular feeling
-about the inevitability of war and its ultimate justification and the
-uselessness of organising the natives save on a basis of conflict.
-
-We are now in a position to see the respective moral positions of the
-two protagonists.
-
-The advocate of Political Theory No. 1, which an overwhelming
-preponderance of evidence shows to be the prevailing theory, says:--You
-Pacifists are asking us to commit national suicide; to sacrifice future
-generations to your political ideals. Now, as voters or statesmen we are
-trustees, we act for others. Sacrifice, suicide even, on behalf of an
-ideal, may be justified when we are sacrificing ourselves. But we cannot
-sacrifice others, our wards. Our first duty is to our own nation, our
-own children; to their national security and future welfare. It is
-regrettable if, by the conquests, wars, blockades, rendered necessary by
-those objects other people starve, and lose their national freedom and
-see their children die; but that is the hard necessity of life in a hard
-world.
-
-Advocate of Political Theory No. 2 says:--I deny that the excuse of
-justification which you give for your cruelty to others is a valid
-excuse or justification. Pacifism does not ask you to sacrifice your
-people, to betray the interest of your wards. You will serve their
-interests best by the policy we advocate. Your children will not be more
-assured of their sustenance by these conquests that attempt to render
-the feeding of foreign children more difficult; yours will be less
-secure. By co-operating with those others instead of using your
-energies against them, the resultant wealth....
-
-Advocate No. 1:--Wealth! Interest! You introduce your wretched economic
-calculations of interest into a question of Patriotism. You have the
-soul of a bagman concerned only to restore 'the blessed hour of tranquil
-money-getting,' and Sir William Robertson Nicoll shall denounce you in
-the _British Weekly_!
-
-And the discussion usually ends with this moral flourish and gestures of
-melodramatic indignation.
-
-But are they honest gestures? Here are the upholders of a certain
-position who say:--'In certain circumstances as when you are in a
-position of trustee, the only moral course, the only right course, is to
-be guided by the interests of your ward. Your duty then demands a
-calculation of advantage. You may not be generous at your ward's
-expense. This is the justification of the "sacred egoism" of the poet.'
-
-If in that case a critic says: 'Very well. Let us consider what will be
-the best interests of your ward,' is it really open to the first party
-to explain in a paroxysm of moral indignation: 'You are making a
-shameful and disgraceful appeal to selfishness and avarice?'
-
-This is not an attempt to answer one set of critics by quoting another
-set. The self-same people take those two attitudes. I have quoted above
-a passage of Admiral Mahan's in which he declares that nations can never
-be expected to act from any other motive than that of interest (a
-generalisation, by the way, from which I should most emphatically
-dissent). He goes on to declare that Governments 'must put first the
-rival interests of their own wards ... their own people,' and are thus
-pushed to the acquisition of markets by means of military predominance.
-
-Very well. _The Great Illusion_ argued some of Admiral Mahan's
-propositions in terms of interest and advantage. And then, when he
-desired to demolish that argument, he did not hesitate in a long
-article in the _North American Review_ to write as follows:--
-
-     'The purpose of armaments, in the minds of those maintaining them,
-     is not primarily an economical advantage, in the sense of depriving
-     a neighbour State of its own, or fear of such consequences to
-     itself through the deliberate aggression of a rival having that
-     particular end in view.... The fundamental proposition of the book
-     is a mistake. Nations are under no illusion as to the
-     unprofitableness of war in itself.... The entire conception of the
-     work is itself an illusion, based upon a profound misreading of
-     human action. To regard the world as governed by self-interest only
-     is to live in a non-existent world, an ideal world, a world
-     possessed by an idea much less worthy than those which mankind, to
-     do it bare justice, persistently entertains.'[107]
-
-Admiral Mahan was a writer of very great and deserved reputation, in the
-very first rank of those dealing with the relations of power to national
-politics, certainly incapable of any conscious dishonesty of opinion.
-Yet, as we have seen, his opinion on the most important fact of all
-about war--its ultimate purpose, and the reasons which justify it or
-provoke it--swings violently in absolute self-contradiction. And the
-flat contradiction here revealed shows--and this surely is the moral of
-such an incident--that he could never have put to himself detachedly,
-coldly, impartially the question: 'What do I really believe about the
-motives of nations in War? To what do the facts as a whole really
-point?' Had he done so, it might have been revealed to him that what
-really determined his opinion about the causes of war was a desire to
-justify the great profession of arms, to one side of which he had
-devoted his life and given years of earnest labour and study; to defend
-from some imputation of futility one of the most ancient of man's
-activities that calls for some at least of the sublimest of human
-qualities. If a widened idealism clearly discredited that ancient
-institution, he was prepared to show that an ineradicable conflict of
-national interests rendered it inevitable. If it was shown that war was
-irrelevant to those conflicts, or ineffective as a means of protecting
-the interests concerned, he was prepared to show that the motives
-pushing to war were not those of interest at all.
-
-It may be said that none the less the thesis under discussion
-substitutes one selfish argument for another; tries by appealing to
-self-interest (the self-interest of a group or nation) to turn
-selfishness from a destructive result to a more social result. Its basis
-is self. Even that is not really true. For, first, that argument ignores
-the question of trusteeship; and, secondly, it involves a confusion
-between the motive of a given policy and the criterion by which its
-goodness or badness shall be tested.
-
-How is one to deal with the claim of the 'mystic nationalist' (he exists
-abundantly even outside the Balkans) that the subjugation of some
-neighbouring nationalism is demanded by honour; that only the great
-State can be the really good State; that power--'majesty,' as the
-Oriental would say--is a thing good in itself?[108] There are ultimate
-questions as to what is good and what is bad that no argument can
-answer; ultimate values which cannot be discussed. But one can reduce
-those unarguable values to a minimum by appealing to certain social
-needs. A State which has plenty of food may not be a good State; but a
-State which cannot feed its population cannot be a good State, for in
-that case the citizens will be hungry, greedy, and violent.
-
-In other words, certain social needs and certain social utilities--which
-we can all recognise as indispensables--furnish a ground of agreement
-for the common action without which no society can be established. And
-the need for such a criterion becomes more manifest as we learn more of
-the wonderful fashion in which we sublimate our motives. A country
-refuses to submit its dispute to arbitration, because its 'honour' is
-involved. Many books have been written to try and find out precisely
-what honour of this kind is. One of the best of them has decided that it
-is anything which a country cares to make it. It is never the presence
-of coal, or iron, or oil, which makes it imperative to retain a given
-territory: it is honour (as Italy's Foreign Minister explained when
-Italy went to war for the conquest of Tripoli). Unfortunately, rival
-States have also impulses of honour which compel them to claim the same
-undeveloped territory. Nothing can prove--or disprove--that honour, in
-such circumstances, is invoked by each or either of the parties
-concerned to make a piece of acquisitiveness or megalomania appear as
-fine to himself as possible: that, just because he has a lurking
-suspicion that all is not well with the operation, he seeks to justify
-it to himself with fine words that have a very vague content. But on
-this basis there can be no agreement. If, however, one shifts the
-discussion to the question of what is best for the social welfare of
-both, one can get a _modus vivendi_. For each to admit that he has no
-right so to use his power as to deprive the other of means of life,
-would be the beginning of a code which could be tested. Each might
-conceivably have that right to deprive the other of means of livelihood,
-if it were a choice between the lives of his own people or others.
-
-The economic fact is the test of the ethical claim: if it really be true
-that we must withhold sources of food from others because otherwise our
-own would starve, there is some ethical justification for such use of
-our power. If such is not the fact, the whole moral issue is changed,
-and with it, to the degree to which it is mutually realised, the social
-outlook and attitude. The knowledge of interdependence is part, at
-least, of an attitude which makes the 'social sense'--the sense that one
-kind of arrangement is fair and workable, and another is not. To bring
-home the fact of this interdependence is not simply an appeal to
-selfishness: it is to reveal a method by which an apparently
-irreconcilable conflict of vital needs can be reconciled. The sense of
-interdependence, of the need of one for another, is part of the
-foundation of the very difficult art of living together.
-
-Much mischief arises from the misunderstanding of the term 'economic
-motive.' Let us examine some further examples of this. One is a common
-confusion of terms: an economic motive may be the reverse of selfish.
-The long sustained efforts of parents to provide fittingly for their
-children--efforts continued, it may be, through half a lifetime--are
-certainly economic. Just as certainly they are not selfish in any exact
-sense of the term. Yet something like this confusion seems to overlie
-the discussion of economics in connection with war.
-
-Speaking broadly, I do not believe that men ever go to war from a cold
-calculation of advantage or profit. I never have believed it. It seems
-to me an obvious and childish misreading of human psychology. I cannot
-see how it is possible to imagine a man laying down his life on the
-battle-field for personal gain. Nations do not fight for their money or
-interests, they fight for their rights, or what they believe to be their
-rights. The very gallant men who triumphed at Bull Run or
-Chancellorsville were not fighting for the profits on slave-labour: they
-were fighting for what they believed to be their independence: the
-rights, as they would have said, to self-government or, as we should now
-say, of self-determination. Yet it was a conflict which arose out of
-slave labour: an economic question. Now the most elementary of all
-rights, in the sense of the first right which a people will claim, is
-the right to existence--the right of a population to bread and a decent
-livelihood.[109] For that nations certainly will fight. Yet, as we see,
-it is a right which arises out of an economic need or conflict. We have
-seen how it works as a factor in our own foreign policy: as a compelling
-motive for the command of the sea. We believe that the feeding of these
-islands depends upon it: that if we lost it our children might die in
-the streets and the lack of food compel us to an ignominious surrender.
-It is this relation of vital food supply to preponderant sea power which
-has caused us to tolerate no challenge to the latter. We know the part
-which the growth of the German Navy played in shaping Anglo-Continental
-relations before the War; the part which any challenge to our naval
-preponderance has always played in determining our foreign policy. The
-command of the sea, with all that that means in the way of having built
-up a tradition, a battle-cry in politics, has certainly bound up with it
-this life and death fact of feeding our population. That is to say it is
-an economic need. Yet the determination of some millions of Englishmen
-to fight for this right to life, to die rather than see the daily bread
-of their people in jeopardy, would be adequately described by some
-phrase about Englishmen going to war because it 'paid.' It would be a
-silly or dishonest gibe. Yet that is precisely the kind of gibe that I
-have had to face these fifteen years in attempting to disentangle the
-forces and motives underlying international conflict.
-
-What picture is summoned to our minds by the word 'economics' in
-relation to war? To the critics whose indignation is so excited at the
-introduction of the subject at all into the discussion of war--and they
-include, unhappily, some of the great names of English literature--'economic'
-seems to carry no picture but that of an obese Semitic stockbroker, in
-quaking fear for his profits. This view cannot be said to imply either
-much imagination or much sense of reality. For among the stockbrokers,
-the usurers, those closest to financial manipulation and in touch with
-financial changes, are to be found some groups numerically small, who
-are more likely to gain than to lose by war; and the present writer has
-never suggested the contrary.
-
-But the 'economic futility' of war expresses itself otherwise: in half a
-Continent unable to feed or clothe or warm itself; millions rendered
-neurotic, abnormal, hysterical by malnutrition, disease, and anxiety;
-millions rendered greedy, selfish, and violent by the constant strain of
-hunger; resulting in 'social unrest' that threatens more and more to
-become sheer chaos and confusion: the dissolution and disintegration of
-society. Everywhere, in the cities, are the children who cry and who are
-not fed, who raise shrunken arms to our statesmen who talk with
-pride[110] of their stern measures of 'rigorous' blockade. Rickety and
-dying children, and undying hate for us, their murderers, in the hearts
-of their mothers--these are the human realities of the 'economics of
-war.'
-
-The desire to prevent these things, to bring about an order that would
-render possible both patriotism and mercy, would save us from the
-dreadful dilemma of feeding our own children only by the torture and
-death of others equally innocent--the effort to this end is represented
-as a mere appeal to selfishness and avarice, something mean and ignoble,
-a degradation of human motive.
-
-'These theoretical dilemmas do not state accurately the real conditions
-of politics,' the reader may object. 'No one proposes to inflict famine
-as a means of enforcing our policy' ... 'England does not make war on
-women and children.'
-
-Not one man or woman in a million, English or other, would wittingly
-inflict the suffering of starvation upon a single child, if the child
-were visible to his eyes, present in his mind, and if the simple human
-fact were not obscured by the much more complex and artificial facts
-that have gathered round our conceptions of patriotism. The heaviest
-indictment of the military-nationalist philosophy we are discussing is
-that it manages successfully to cover up human realities by dehumanising
-abstractions. From the moment that the child becomes a part of that
-abstraction--'Russia,' 'Austria,' 'Germany'--it loses its human
-identity, and becomes merely an impersonal part of the political problem
-of the struggle of our nation with others. The inverted moral alchemy,
-by which the golden instinct that we associate with so much of direct
-human contact is transformed into the leaden cruelty of nationalist hate
-and high statecraft, has been dealt with at the close of Part I. When in
-tones of moral indignation it is declared that Englishmen 'do not make
-war on women and children,' we must face the truth and say that
-Englishmen, like all peoples, do make such war.
-
-An action in public policy--the proclamation of the blockade, or the
-confiscation of so much tonnage, or the cession of territory, or the
-refusal of a loan--these things are remote and vague; not only is the
-relation between results and causes remote and sometimes difficult to
-establish, but the results themselves are invisible and far away. And
-when the results of a policy are remote, and can be slurred over in our
-minds, we are perfectly ready to apply, logically and ruthlessly, the
-most ferocious of political theories. It is of supreme importance then
-what those theories happen to be. When the issue of war and peace hangs
-in the balance, the beam may well be kicked one way or the other by our
-general political philosophy, these somewhat vague and hazy notions
-about life being a struggle, and nature red of tooth and claw, about
-wars being part of the cosmic process, sanctioned by professors and
-bishops and writers. It may well be these vague notions that lead us to
-acquiesce in the blockade or the newest war. The typhus or the rickets
-do not kill or maim any the less because we do not in our minds connect
-those results with the political abstractions that we bandy about so
-lightly. And we touch there the greatest service which a more 'economic'
-treatment of European problems may perform. If the Treaty of Versailles
-had been more economic it would also have been a more humane and human
-document. If there had been more of Mr Keynes and less of M. Clemenceau,
-there would have been not only more food in the world, but more
-kindliness; not only less famine, but less hate; not only more life, but
-a better way of life; those living would have been nearer to
-understanding and discarding the way of death.
-
-Let us summarise the points so far made with reference to the 'economic'
-motive.
-
-We need not accept any hard and fast (and in the view of the present
-writer, unsound) doctrine of economic determinism, in order to admit the
-truth of the following:--
-
-1. Until economic difficulties are so far solved as to give the mass of
-the people the means of secure and tolerable physical existence,
-economic considerations and motives will tend to exclude all others. The
-way to give the spiritual a fair chance with ordinary men and women is
-not to be magnificently superior to their economic difficulties, but to
-find a solution for them. Until the economic dilemma is solved, no
-solution of moral difficulties will be adequate. If you want to get rid
-of the economic preoccupation, you must solve the worst of the economic
-problem.
-
-2. In the same way the solution of the economic conflict between nations
-will not of itself suffice to establish peace; but no peace is possible
-until that conflict is solved. That makes it of sufficient importance.
-
-3. The 'economic' problem involved in international politics the use of
-political power for economic ends--is also one of Right, including the
-most elemental of all rights, that to exist.
-
-4. The answer which we give to that question of Right will depend upon
-our answer to the actual query of _The Great Illusion_: must a country
-of expanding population expand its territory or trade by means of its
-political power, in order to live? Is the political struggle for
-territory a struggle for bread?
-
-5. If we take the view that the truth is contained in neither an
-unqualified affirmative nor an unqualified negative, then all the more
-is it necessary that the interdependence of peoples, the necessity for a
-truly international economy, should become a commonplace. A wider
-realisation of those facts would help to create that pre-disposition
-necessary for a belief in the workability of voluntary co-operation, a
-belief which must precede any successful attempt to make such
-co-operation the basis of an international order.
-
-6. The economic argument of _The Great Illusion_, if valid, destroys the
-pseudo-scientific justification for political immoralism, the doctrine
-of State necessity, which has marked so much of classical statecraft.
-
-7. The main defects of the Treaty of Versailles are due to the pressure
-of a public opinion obsessed by just those ideas of nations as persons,
-of conflicting interests, which _The Great Illusion_ attempted to
-destroy. If the Treaty had been inspired by the ideas of interdependence
-of interest, it would have been not only more in the interests of the
-Allies, but morally sounder, providing a better ethical basis for future
-peace.
-
-8. To go on ignoring the economic unity and interdependence of Europe,
-to refuse to subject nationalist pugnacities to that needed unity
-because 'economics' are sordid, is to refuse to face the needs of human
-life, and the forces that shape it. Such an attitude, while professing
-moral elevation, involves a denial of the right of others to live. Its
-worst defect, perhaps, is that its heroics are fatal to intellectual
-rectitude, to truth. No society built upon such foundations can stand.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-THE GREAT ILLUSION ARGUMENT
-
-
-The preceding chapters have dealt rather with misconceptions concerning
-_The Great Illusion_ than with its positive propositions. What, outlined
-as briefly as possible, was its central argument?
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-That argument was an elaboration of these propositions: Military
-preponderance, conquest, as a means to man's most elemental
-needs--bread, sustenance--is futile, because the processes (exchange,
-division of labour) to which the dense populations of modern Western
-society are compelled to resort, cannot be exacted by military coercion;
-they can only operate as the result of a large measure of voluntary
-acquiescence by the parties concerned. A realisation of this truth is
-indispensable for the restraint of the instinctive pugnacities that
-hamper human relationship, particularly where nationalism enters.[111]
-The competition for power so stimulates those pugnacities and fears,
-that isolated national power cannot ensure a nation's political security
-or independence. Political security and economic well-being can only be
-ensured by international co-operation. This must be economic as well as
-political, be directed, that is, not only at pooling military forces for
-the purpose of restraining aggression, but at the maintenance of some
-economic code which will ensure for all nations, whether militarily
-powerful or not, fair economic opportunity and means of subsistence.
-
-It was, in other words, an attempt to clear the road to a more workable
-international policy by undermining the main conceptions and
-prepossessions inimical to an international order.[112] It did not
-elaborate machinery, but the facts it dealt with point clearly to
-certain conclusions on that head.
-
-While arguing that prevailing beliefs (false beliefs for the most part)
-and feelings (largely directed by the false beliefs) were the
-determining factors in international politics, the author challenged the
-prevailing assumption of the unchangeability of those ideas and
-feelings, particularly the proposition that war between human groups
-arises out of instincts and emotions incapable of modification or
-control or re-direction by conscious effort. The author placed equal
-emphasis on both parts of the proposition--that dealing with the alleged
-immutability of human pugnacity and ideas, and that which challenged the
-representation of war as an inevitable struggle for physical
-sustenance--if only because no exposure of the biological fallacy would
-be other than futile if the former proposition were true.[113]
-
-If conduct in these matters is the automatic reaction to uncontrollable
-instinct and is not affected by ideas, or if ideas themselves are the
-mere reflection of that instinct, obviously it is no use attempting
-demonstrations of futility, economic or other. The more we demonstrate
-the intensity of our inherent pugnacity and irrationalism, the more do
-we in fact demonstrate the need for the conscious control of those
-instincts. The alternative conclusion is fatalism: an admission not only
-that our ship is not under control, but that we have given up the task
-of getting it under control. We have surrendered our freedom.
-
-Moreover, our record shows that the direction taken by our
-pugnacities--their objective--is in fact largely determined by
-traditions and ideas which are in part at least the sum of conscious
-intellectual effort. The history of religious persecution--its wars,
-inquisitions, repressions--shows a great change (which we must admit as
-a fact, whether we regard it as good or bad) not only of idea but of
-feeling.[114] The book rejected instinct as sufficient guide and urged
-the need of discipline by intelligent foresight of consequence.
-
-To examine our subconscious or unconscious motives of conduct is the
-first step to making them conscious and modifying them.
-
-This does not imply that instincts--whether of pugnacity or other--can
-readily be repressed by a mere effort of will. But their direction, the
-object upon which they expend themselves, will depend upon our
-interpretation of facts. If we interpret the hailstorm or the curdled
-milk in one way, our fear and hatred of the witch is intense; the same
-facts interpreted another way make the witch an object of another
-emotion, pity.
-
-Reason may be a very small part of the apparatus of human conduct
-compared with the part played by the unconscious and subconscious, the
-instinctive and the emotional. The power of a ship's compass is very
-small indeed compared with the power developed by the engines. But the
-greater the power of the engines, the greater will be the disaster if
-the relatively tiny compass is deflected and causes the ship to be
-driven on to the rocks. The illustration indicates, not exactly but with
-sufficient truth, the relationship of 'reason' to 'instinct.'
-
-The instincts that push to self-assertion, to the acquisition of
-preponderant power, are so strong that we shall only abandon that method
-as the result of perceiving its futility. Co-operation, which means a
-relationship of partnership and give and take, will not succeed till
-force has failed.
-
-The futility of power as a means to our most fundamental and social ends
-is due mainly to two facts, one mechanical, and the other moral. The
-mechanical fact is that if we really need another, our power over him
-has very definite limits. Our dependence on him gives him a weapon
-against us. The moral fact is that in demanding a position of
-domination, we ask something to which we should not accede if it were
-asked of us: the claim does not stand the test of the categorical
-imperative. If we need another's labour, we cannot kill him; if his
-custom, we cannot forbid him to earn money. If his labour is to be
-effective, we must give him tools, knowledge; and these things can be
-used to resist our exactions. To the degree to which he is powerful for
-service he is powerful for resistance. A nation wealthy as a customer
-will also be ubiquitous as a competitor.
-
-The factors which have operated to make physical compulsion (slavery) as
-a means of obtaining service less economical than service for reward,
-operate just as effectively between nations. The employment of military
-force for economic ends is an attempt to apply indirectly the principle
-of chattel-slavery to groups; and involves the same disadvantages.[115]
-
-In so far as coercion represents a means of securing a wider and more
-effective social co-operation as against a narrower social co-operation,
-or more anarchic condition, it is likely to be successful and to justify
-itself socially. The imposition of Western government upon backward
-peoples approximates to the role of police; the struggles between the
-armed forces of rival Western Powers do not. The function of a police
-force is the exact contrary to that of armies competing with one
-another.[116]
-
-The demonstration of the futility of conquest rested mainly on these
-facts. After conquest the conquered people cannot be killed. They
-cannot be allowed to starve. Pressure of population on means of
-subsistence has not been reduced, but probably increased, since the
-number of mouths to fill eliminated by the casualty lists is not
-equivalent to the reduced production occasioned by war. To impose by
-force (e.g. exclusion from raw materials) a lower standard of living,
-creates (_a_) resistance which involves costs of coercion (generally in
-military establishments, but also in the political difficulties in which
-the coercion of hostile peoples--as in Alsace-Lorraine and
-Ireland--generally involves their conqueror), costs which must be
-deducted from the economic advantage of the conquest; and (_b_) loss of
-markets which may be indispensable to countries (like Britain) whose
-prosperity depends upon an international division of labour. A
-population that lives by exchanging its coal and iron for (say) food,
-does not profit by reducing the productivity of subject peoples engaged
-in food production.
-
-In _The Great Illusion_ the case was put as follows:--
-
-     'When we conquer a nation in these days, we do not exterminate it:
-     we leave it where it was. When we "overcome" the servile races, far
-     from eliminating them, we give them added chances of life by
-     introducing order, etc., so that the lower human quality tends to
-     be perpetuated by conquest by the higher. If ever it happens that
-     the Asiatic races challenge the white in the industrial or military
-     field, it will be in large part thanks to the work of race
-     conservation, which has been the result of England's conquest in
-     India, Egypt, and Asia generally.'--(pp. 191-192.)
-
-     'When the division of labour was so little developed that every
-     homestead produced all that it needed, it mattered nothing if part
-     of the community was cut off from the world for weeks and months at
-     a time. All the neighbours of a village or homestead might be slain
-     or harassed, and no inconvenience resulted. But if to-day an
-     English county is by a general railroad strike cut off for so much
-     as forty-eight hours from the rest of the economic organism, we
-     know that whole sections of its population are threatened with
-     famine. If in the time of the Danes England could by some magic
-     have killed all foreigners, she would presumably have been the
-     better off. If she could do the same thing to-day half her
-     population would starve to death. If on one side of the frontier a
-     community is, say, wheat-producing, and on the other
-     coal-producing, each is dependent for its very existence on the
-     fact of the other being able to carry on its labour. The miner
-     cannot in a week set to and grow a crop of wheat; the farmer must
-     wait for his wheat to grow, and must meantime feed his family and
-     dependents. The exchange involved here must go on, and each party
-     have fair expectation that he will in due course be able to reap
-     the fruits of his labour, or both starve; and that exchange, that
-     expectation, is merely the expression in its simplest form of
-     commerce and credit; and the interdependence here indicated has, by
-     the countless developments of rapid communication, reached such a
-     condition of complexity that the interference with any given
-     operation affects not merely the parties directly involved, but
-     numberless others having at first sight no connection therewith.
-
-     'The vital interdependence here indicated, cutting athwart
-     frontiers, is largely the work of the last forty years; and it has,
-     during that time, so developed as to have set up a financial
-     interdependence of the capitals of the world, so complex that
-     disturbance in New York involves financial and commercial
-     disturbance in London, and, if sufficiently grave, compels
-     financiers of London to co-operate with those of New York to put an
-     end to the crisis, not as a matter of altruism, but as a matter of
-     commercial self-protection. The complexity of modern finance makes
-     New York dependent on London, London upon Paris, Paris upon Berlin,
-     to a greater degree than has ever yet been the case in history.
-     This interdependence is the result of the daily use of those
-     contrivances of civilisation which date from yesterday--the rapid
-     post, the instantaneous dissemination of financial and commercial
-     information by means of telegraphy, and generally the incredible
-     progress of rapidity in communication which has put the half-dozen
-     chief capitals of Christendom in closer contact financially, and
-     has rendered them more dependent the one upon the other than were
-     the chief cities of Great Britain less than a hundred years
-     ago.--(pp. 49-50.)
-
-     'Credit is merely an extension of the use of money, and we can no
-     more shake off the domination of the one than we can of the other.
-     We have seen that the bloodiest despot is himself the slave of
-     money, in the sense that he is compelled to employ it. In the same
-     way no physical force can in the modern world set at naught the
-     force of credit. It is no more possible for a great people of the
-     modern world to live without credit than without money, of which it
-     is a part.... The wealth of the world is not represented by a fixed
-     amount of gold or money now in the possession of one Power, and now
-     in the possession of another, but depends on all the unchecked
-     multiple activities of a community for the time being. Check that
-     activity, whether by imposing tribute, or disadvantageous
-     commercial conditions, or an unwelcome administration which sets up
-     sterile political agitation, and you get less wealth--less wealth
-     for the conqueror, as well as less for the conquered. The broadest
-     statement of the case is that all experience--especially the
-     experience indicated in the last chapter--shows that in trade by
-     free consent carrying mutual benefit we get larger results for
-     effort expended than in the exercise of physical force which
-     attempts to exact advantage for one party at the expense of the
-     other.'--(pp. 270-272.)
-
-In elaboration of this general thesis it is pointed out that the
-processes of exchange have become too complex for direct barter, and can
-only take place by virtue of credit; and it is by the credit system, the
-'sensory nerve' of the economic organism, that the self-injurious
-results of economic war are first shown. If, after a victorious war, we
-allow enemy industry and international trade to go on much as before,
-then obviously our victory will have had very little effect on the
-fundamental economic situation. If, on the other hand, we attempt for
-political or other reasons to destroy our enemy's industry and trade, to
-keep him from the necessary materials of it, we should undermine our own
-credit by diminishing the exchange value of much of our own real wealth.
-For this reason it is 'a great illusion' to suppose that by the
-political annexation of colonies, territories with iron-mines,
-coal-mines, we enrich ourselves by the amount of wealth their
-exploitation represents.[117]
-
-The large place which such devices as an international credit system
-must take in our international economy, adds enormously to the
-difficulty of securing any 'spoils of victory' in the shape of
-indemnity. A large indemnity is not impossible, but the only condition
-on which it can be made possible--a large foreign trade by the defeated
-people--is not one that will be readily accepted by the victorious
-nation. Yet the dilemma is absolute: the enemy must do a big foreign
-trade (or deliver in lieu of money large quantities of goods) which will
-compete with home production, or he can pay no big indemnity--nothing
-commensurate with the cost of modern war.
-
-Since we are physically dependent on co-operation with foreigners, it
-is obvious that the frontiers of the national State are not co-terminous
-with the frontiers of our society. Human association cuts athwart
-frontiers. The recognition of the fact would help to break down that
-conception of nations as personalities which plays so large a part in
-international hatred. The desire to punish this or that 'nation' could
-not long survive if we had in mind, not the abstraction, but the babies,
-the little girls, old men, in no way responsible for the offences that
-excited our passions, whom we treated in our minds as a single
-individual.[118]
-
-As a means of vindicating a moral, social, religious, or cultural
-ideal--as of freedom or democracy--war between States, and still more
-between Alliances, must be largely ineffective for two main reasons.
-First, because the State and the moral unit do not coincide. France or
-the British Empire could not stand as a unit for Protestanism as opposed
-to Catholicism, Christianity as opposed to Mohammedanism, or
-Individualism as opposed to Socialism, or Parliamentary Government as
-opposed to Bureaucratic Autocracy, or even for European ascendancy as
-against Coloured Races. For both Empires include large coloured
-elements; the British Empire is more Mohammedan than Christian, has
-larger areas under autocratic than under Parliamentary government; has
-powerful parties increasingly Socialistic. The State power in both cases
-is being used, not to suppress, but to give actual vitality to the
-non-Christian or non-European or coloured elements that it has
-conquered. The second great reason why it is futile to attempt to use
-the military power of States for ends such as freedom and democracy, is
-that the instincts to which it is compelled to appeal, the spirit it
-must cultivate and the methods it is compelled increasingly to employ,
-are themselves inimical to the sentiment upon which freedom must rest.
-Nations that have won their freedom as the result of military victory,
-usually employ that victory to suppress the freedom of others. To rest
-our freedom upon a permanent basis of nationalist military power, is
-equivalent to seeking security from the moral dangers of Prussianism by
-organising our States on the Prussian model.
-
-Our real struggle is with nature: internecine struggles between men
-lessen the effectiveness of the human army. A Continent which supported
-precariously, with recurrent famine, a few hundred thousand savages
-fighting endlessly between themselves, can support, abundantly a hundred
-million whites who can manage to maintain peace among themselves and
-fight nature.
-
-Nature here includes human nature. Just as we turn the destructive
-forces of external nature from our hurt to our service, not by their
-unintelligent defiance, but by utilising them through a knowledge of
-their qualities, so can the irrepressible but not 'undirectable' forces
-of instinct, emotion, sentiment, be turned by intelligence to the
-service of our greatest and most permanent needs.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-ARGUMENTS NOW OUT OF DATE
-
-
-For the purposes of simplicity and brevity the main argument of _The
-Great Illusion_ assumed the relative permanence of the institution of
-private property in Western society, and the persistence of the tendency
-of victorious belligerents to respect it, a tendency which had steadily
-grown in strength for five hundred years. The book assumed that the
-conqueror would do in the future what he has done to a steadily
-increasing degree in the past, especially as the reasons for such
-policy, in terms of self-interest, have so greatly grown in force during
-the last generation or two. To have argued its case in terms of
-non-existent and hypothetical conditions which might not exist for
-generations or centuries, would have involved hopelessly bewildering
-complications. And the decisive reason for not adding this complication
-was the fact that _though it would vary the form of the argument, it
-would not effect the final conclusion_.
-
-As already explained in the first part of this book (Chapter II) this
-war has marked a revolution in the position of private property and the
-relation of the citizen to the State. The Treaty of Versailles departs
-radically from the general principles adhered to, for instance, in the
-Treaty of Frankfurt; the position of German traders and that of the
-property of German citizens does not at all to-day resemble the position
-in which the Treaty of Frankfurt left the French trader and French
-private property.
-
-The fact of the difference has already been entered into at some length.
-It remains to see how the change affects the general argument adopted in
-_The Great Illusion_.
-
-It does not affect its final conclusions. The argument ran: A conqueror
-cannot profit by 'loot' in the shape of confiscations, tributes,
-indemnities, which paralyse the economic life of the defeated enemy.
-They are economically futile. They are unlikely to be attempted, but if
-they are attempted they will still be futile.[119]
-
-Events have confirmed that conclusion, though not the expectation that
-the enemy's economic life would be left undisturbed. We have started a
-policy which does injure the economic life of the enemy. The more it
-injures him, the less it pays us. And we are abandoning it as rapidly as
-nationalist hostilities will permit us. In so far as pre-war conditions
-pointed to the need of a definitely organised international economic
-code, the situation created by the Treaty has only made the need more
-visible and imperative. For, as already explained in the first Part, the
-old understandings enabled industry to be built up on an international
-basis; the Treaty of Versailles and its confiscations, prohibitions,
-controls, have destroyed those foundations. Had that instrument treated
-German trade and industry as the Germans treated French in 1871 we might
-have seen a recovery of German economic life relatively as rapid as that
-which took place in France during the ten years which followed her
-defeat. We should not to-day be faced by thirty or forty millions in
-Central and Eastern Europe without secure means of livelihood.
-
-The present writer confesses most frankly--and the critics of _The Great
-Illusion_ are hereby presented with all that they can make of the
-admission--that he did not expect a European conqueror, least of all
-Allied conquerors, to use their victory for enforcing a policy having
-these results. He believed that elementary considerations of
-self-interest, the duty of statesmen to consider the needs of their own
-countries just emerging from war, would stand in the way of a policy of
-this kind. On the other hand, he was under no illusions as to what would
-result if they did attempt to enforce that policy. Dealing with the
-damage that a conqueror might inflict, the book says that such things as
-the utter destruction of the enemy's trade
-
-     could only be inflicted by an invader as a means of punishment
-     costly to himself, or as the result of an unselfish and expensive
-     desire to inflict misery for the mere joy of inflicting it. In this
-     self-seeking world it is not practical to assume the existence of
-     an inverted altruism of this kind.--(p. 29.)
-
-Because of the 'interdependence of our credit-built finance and
-industry'
-
-     the confiscation by an invader of private property, whether stocks,
-     shares, ships, mines, or anything more valuable than jewellery or
-     furniture--anything, in short, which is bound up with the economic
-     life of the people--would so react upon the finance of the
-     invader's country as to make the damage to the invader resulting
-     from the confiscation exceed in value the property confiscated--(p.
-     29).
-
-     Speaking broadly and generally, the conqueror in our day has before
-     him two alternatives: to leave things alone, and in order to do
-     that he need not have left his shores; or to interfere by
-     confiscation in some form, in which case he dries up the source of
-     the profit which tempted him--(p. 59).
-
-All the suggestions made as to the economic futility of such a
-course--including the failure to secure an indemnity--have been
-justified.[120]
-
-In dealing with the indemnity problem the book did forecast the
-likelihood of special trading and manufacturing interests within the
-conquering nation opposing the only condition upon which a very large
-indemnity would be possible--that condition being either the creation of
-a large foreign trade by the enemy or the receipt of payment in kind, in
-goods which would compete with home production. But the author certainly
-did not think it likely that England and France would impose conditions
-so rapidly destructive of the enemy's economic life that they--the
-conquerors--would, for their own economic preservation, be compelled to
-make loans to the defeated enemy.
-
-Let us note the phase of the argument that the procedure adopted renders
-out of date. A good deal of _The Great Illusion_ was devoted to showing
-that Germany had no need to expand territorially; that her desire for
-overseas colonies was sentimental, and had little relation to the
-problem of providing for her population. At the beginning of 1914 that
-was certainly true. It is not true to-day. The process by which she
-supported her excess population before the War will, to put it at its
-lowest, be rendered extremely difficult of maintenance as the result of
-allied action. The point, however, is that we are not benefiting by
-this paralysis of German industry. We are suffering very greatly from
-it: suffering so much that we can be neither politically nor
-economically secure until this condition is brought to an end. There can
-be no peace in Europe, and consequently no safety for us or France, so
-long as we attempt by power to maintain a policy which denies to
-millions in the midst of our civilisation the possibility of earning
-their living. In so far as the new conditions create difficulties which
-did not originally exist, our victory does but the more glaringly
-demonstrate the economic futility of our policy towards the vanquished.
-
-An argument much used in _The Great Illusion_ as disproving the claims
-made for conquest was the position of the population of small States.
-'Very well,' may say the critic, 'Germany is now in the position of a
-small State. But you talk about her being ruined!'
-
-In the conditions of 1914, the small State argument was entirely valid
-(incidentally the Allied Governments argue that it still holds).[121] It
-does not hold to-day. In the conditions of 1920 at any rate, the small
-State is, like Germany, economically at the mercy of British sea power
-or the favoritism of the French Foreign Office, to a degree that was
-unknown before the War. How is the situation to develop? Is the Dutch or
-Swedish or Austrian industrial city permanently to be dependent upon the
-good graces of some foreign official sitting in Whitehall or the Quai
-d'Orsay? At present, if an industrialist in such a city wishes to import
-coal or to ship a cargo to one of the new Baltic States, he may be
-prevented owing to political arrangements between France and England. If
-that is to be the permanent situation of the non-Entente world, then
-peace will become less and less secure, and all our talk of having
-fought for the rights of the small and weak will be a farce. The
-friction, the irritation, and sense of grievance will prolong the unrest
-and uncertainty, and the resultant decline in the productivity of
-Europe will render our own economic problems the more acute. The power
-by which we thus arrogate to ourselves the economic dictatorship of
-Europe will ultimately be challenged.
-
-Can we revert to the condition of things which, by virtue of certain
-economic freedoms that were respected, placed the trader or
-industrialist of a small State pretty much on an equality, in most
-things, with the trader of the Great State? Or shall we go forward to a
-recognised international economic system, in which the small States will
-have their rights secured by a definite code?
-
-Reversion to the old individualist 'trans-nationalism' or an
-internationalism without considerable administrative machinery--seems
-now impossible. The old system is destroyed at its sources within each
-State. The only available course now is, recognising the fact of an
-immense growth in the governmental control or regulation of foreign
-trade, to devise definite codes or agreements to meet the case. If the
-obtaining of necessary raw materials by all the States other than France
-and England is to be the subject of wrangles between officials, each
-case to be treated on its merits, we shall have a much worse anarchy
-than before the War. A condition in which two or three powers can lay
-down the law for the world will indeed be an anti-climax.
-
-We may never learn the lesson; the old futile struggles may go on
-indefinitely. But if we do put our intelligences to the situation it
-will call for a method of treatment somewhat different from that which
-pre-war conditions required.
-
-For the purposes of the War, in the various Inter-Allied bodies for the
-apportionment of shipping and raw material, we had the beginnings of an
-economic League of Nations, an economic World Government. Those bodies
-might have been made democratic, and enlarged to include neutral
-interests, and maintained for the period of Reconstruction (which might
-in any case have been regarded as a phase properly subject to war
-treatment in these matters). But these international organisations were
-allowed to fall to pieces on the removal of the common enmity which held
-the European Allies and America together.
-
-The disappearance of these bodies does not mean the disappearance of
-'controls,' but the controls will now be exercised in considerable part
-through vast private Capitalist Trusts dealing with oil, meat, and
-shipping. Nor will the interference of government be abolished. If it is
-considered desirable to ensure to some group a monopoly of phosphates,
-or palm nuts, the aid of governments will be invoked for the purpose.
-But in this case the government will exercise its powers not as the
-result of a publicly avowed and agreed principle, but illicitly,
-hypocritically.
-
-While professing to exercise a 'mandate' for mankind, a government will
-in fact be using its authority to protect special interests. In other
-words we shall get a form of internationalism in which the international
-capitalist Trust will control the Government instead of the Government's
-controlling the Trust.
-
-The fact that this was happening more and more before the War was one
-reason why the old individualist order has broken down. More and more
-the professed position and function of the State was not its real
-position and function. The amount of industry and trade dependent upon
-governmental intervention (enterprises of the Chinese Loan and Bagdad
-Railway type) before the War was small compared with the quantity that
-owed nothing to governmental protection. But the illicit pressure
-exercised upon governments by those interested in the exploitation of
-backward countries was out of proportion to the public importance of
-their interests.
-
-It was this failure of democratic control of 'big business' by the
-pre-war democracies which helped to break down the old individualism.
-While private capital was apparently gaining control over the democratic
-forces, moulding the policy of democratic governments, it was in fact
-digging its own grave. If political democracy in this respect had been
-equal to its task, or if the captains of industry had shown a greater
-scruple or discernment in their use of political power, the
-individualist order might have given us a workable civilisation; or its
-end might have been less painful.
-
-_The Great Illusion_ did not assume its impending demise. Democracy had
-not yet organised socialistic controls within the nation. To have
-assumed that the world of nationalisms would face socialistic regulation
-and control as between States, would have implied an agility on the part
-of the public imagination which it does not in fact possess. An
-international policy on these lines would have been unintelligible and
-preposterous. It is only because the situation which has followed
-victory is so desperate, so much worse than anything _The Great
-Illusion_ forecast, that we have been brought to face these remedies
-to-day.
-
-Before the War, the line of advance, internationally, was not by
-elaborate regulation. We had seen a congeries of States like those of
-the British Empire maintain not only peace but a sort of informal
-Federation, without limitation in any formal way of the national freedom
-of any one of them. Each could impose tariffs against the mother
-country, exclude citizens of the Empire, recognise no common defined
-law. The British Empire seemed to forecast a type of international
-Association which could secure peace without the restraints or
-restrictions of a central authority in anything but the most shadowy
-form. If the merely moral understanding which held it together and
-enabled co-operation in a crisis could have been extended to the United
-States; if the principle of 'self-determination' that had been applied
-to the white portion of the Empire were gradually extended to the
-Asiatic; if a bargain had been made with Germany and France as to the
-open door, and equality of access to undeveloped territory made a matter
-of defined agreement, we should have possessed the nucleus of a world
-organisation giving the widest possible scope for independent national
-development. But world federation on such lines depended above all, of
-course, upon the development of a certain 'spirit,' a guiding temper, to
-do for nations of different origin what had already been done for
-nations of a largely common origin (though Britain has many different
-stocks--English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, and, overseas, Dutch and French
-as well). But the spirit was not there. The whole tradition in the
-international field was one of domination, competition, rivalry,
-conflicting interest, 'Struggle for life.'
-
-The possibility of such a free international life has disappeared with
-the disappearance of the _laisser-faire_ ideal in national organisation.
-We shall perforce be much more concerned now with the machinery of
-control in both spheres as the only alternative to an anarchy more
-devastating than that which existed before the War. For all the reasons
-which point to that conclusion the reader is referred once more to the
-second chapter of the first part of this book.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-THE ARGUMENT AS AN ATTACK ON THE STATE
-
-
-There was not before the War, and there has not been since, any serious
-challenge to the economic argument of _The Great Illusion_. Criticism
-(which curiously enough does not seem to have included the point dealt
-with in the preceding Chapter) seems to have centred rather upon the
-irrelevance of economic considerations to the problem of war--the
-problem, that is, of creating an international society. The answer to
-that is, of course, both explicit and implicit in much of what precedes.
-
-The most serious criticism has been directed to one specific point. It
-is made notably both by Professor Spenser Wilkinson[122] and Professor
-Lindsay,[123] and as it is relevant to the existing situation and to
-much of the argument of the present book, it is worth dealing with.
-
-The criticism is based on the alleged disparagement of the State implied
-in the general attitude of the book. Professor Lindsay (whose article,
-by the way, although hostile and misapprehending the spirit of the book,
-is a model of fair, sincere, and useful criticism) describes the work
-under criticism largely as an attack on the conception of 'the State as
-a person.' He says in effect that the present author argues thus:--
-
-     'The only proper thing to consider is the interest or the happiness
-     of individuals. If a political action conduces to the interests of
-     individuals, it must be right; if it conflicts with these interests
-     it must be wrong.'
-
-Professor Lindsay continues:--
-
-     'Now if pacifism really implied such a view of the relation of the
-     State and the individual, and of the part played by self-interest
-     in life, its appeal has little moral force behind it....
-
-     'Mr. Angell seems to hold that not only is the national State being
-     superseded, but that the supersession is to be welcomed. The
-     economic forces which are destroying the State will do all the
-     State has done to bind men together, and more.'
-
-As a matter of fact Professor Lindsay has himself answered his own
-criticism. For he goes on:--
-
-     'The argument of _The Great Illusion_ is largely based on the
-     public part played by the organisation of credit. Mr Angell has
-     been the first to notice the great significance of its activity. It
-     has misled him, however, into thinking that it presaged a
-     supersession of political by economic control.... The facts are,
-     not that political forces are being superseded by economic, but
-     that the new industrial situation has called into being new
-     political organisations.... To co-ordinate their activities ...
-     will be impossible if the spirit of exclusive nationalism and
-     distrust of foreigners wins the day; it will be equally impossible
-     if the strength of our existing centres of patriotism and public
-     spirit are destroyed.'
-
-Very well. We had here in the pre-war period two dangers, either of
-which in Professor Lindsay's view would make the preservation of
-civilisation impossible: one danger was that men would over-emphasise
-their narrower patriotism and surrender themselves to the pugnacities
-of exclusive nationalism and distrust of foreigners, forgetting that the
-spiritual life of densely packed societies can only be rendered possible
-by certain widespread economic co-operations, contracts; the other
-danger was that we should under-emphasise each our own nationalism and
-give too much importance to the wider international organisation of
-mankind.
-
-Into which danger have we run as a matter of simple fact? Which tendency
-is it that is acting as the present disruptive force in Europe? Has
-opinion and statesmanship--as expressed in the Treaty, for
-instance--given too much or too little attention to the interdependence
-of the world, and the internationally economic foundations of our
-civilisation?
-
-We have seen Europe smashed by neglecting the truths which _The Great
-Illusion_ stressed, perhaps over-stressed, and by surrendering to the
-exclusive nationalism which that book attacked. The book was based on
-the anticipation that Europe would be very much more likely to come to
-grief through over-stressing exclusive nationalism and neglecting its
-economic interdependence, than through the decay of the narrower
-patriotism.
-
-If the book had been written _in vacuo_, without reference to impending
-events, the emphasis might have been different.[124]
-
-But in criticising the emphasis that is thrown upon the welfare of the
-individual, Professor Lindsay would seem to be guilty of confusing the
-_test_ of good political conduct with the _motive_. Certainly _The Great
-Illusion_ did not disparage the need of loyalty to the social group--to
-the other members of the partnership. That need is the burden of most
-that has been written in the preceding pages when dealing with the facts
-of interdependence. An individual who can see only his own interest does
-not see even that; for such interest is dependent on others. (These
-arguments of egoism versus altruism are always circular.) But it
-insisted upon two facts which modern Europe seemed in very great danger
-of forgetting. The first was that the Nation-State was not the social
-group, not co-terminous with the whole of Society, only a very
-arbitrarily chosen part of it; and the second was that the _test_ of the
-'good State' was the welfare of the citizens who composed it. How
-otherwise shall we settle the adjustment between national right and
-international obligation, answer the old and inevitable question, 'What
-is the _Good_ State?' The only intelligible answer is: the State which
-produces good men, subserves their welfare. A State which did not
-subserve the welfare of its citizens, that produced men morally,
-intellectually, physically poor and feeble, could not be a good State. A
-State is tested by the degree to which it serves individuals.
-
-Now the fact of forgetting the first truth, that the Nation-State is not
-the whole of Society but only a part, and that we have obligations to
-the other part, led to a distortion of the second. The Hegelianism which
-denied any obligation above or beyond that of the Nation-State sets up a
-conflict of sovereignties, a competition of power, stimulating the
-instinct of domination, making indeed the power and position of the
-State with reference to rival States the main end of politics. The
-welfare of men is forgotten. The fact that the State is made for man,
-not man for the State, is obscured. It was certainly forgotten or
-distorted by the later political philosophers of Prussia. The oversight
-gave us Prussianism and Imperialism, the ideal of political power as an
-end in itself, against which _The Great Illusion_ was a protest. The
-Imperialism, not alone in Prussia, takes small account of the quality of
-individual life, under the flag. The one thing to be sought is that the
-flag should be triumphant, be flown over vast territories, inspire fear
-in foreigners, and be an emblem of 'glory.' There is a discernible
-distinction of aim and purpose between the Patriot, Jingo, Chauvinist,
-and the citizen of the type interested in such things as social reform.
-The military Patriot the world over does not attempt to hide his
-contempt for efforts at the social betterment of his countryman. That is
-'parish pump.' Mr Maxse or Mr Kipling is keenly interested in England,
-but not in the betterment of Englishmen; indeed, both are in the habit
-of abusing Englishmen very heartily, unless they happen to be soldiers.
-In other words, the real end of politics is forgotten. It is not only
-that the means have become the end, but that one element of the means,
-power, has become the end.
-
-The point I desired to emphasise was that unless we keep before
-ourselves the welfare of the individual as the _test_ of politics (not
-necessarily the motive of each individual for himself) we constantly
-forget the purpose and aim of politics, and patriotism becomes not the
-love of one's fellow countrymen and their welfare, but the love of power
-expressed by that larger 'ego' which is one's group. 'Mystic
-Nationalism' comes to mean something entirely divorced from any
-attribute of individual life. The 'Nation' becomes an abstraction apart
-from the life of the individual.
-
-There is a further consideration. The fact that the Nation-State is not
-co-terminous with Society is shown by its vital need of others; it
-cannot live by itself; it must co-operate with others; consequently it
-has obligations to those others. The demonstration of that fact involves
-an appeal to 'interest,' to welfare. The most visible and vital
-co-operation outside the limits of the Nation-State is the economic; it
-gives rise to the most definite, as to the most fundamental
-obligation--the obligation to accord to others the right to existence.
-It is out of the common economic need that the actual structure of some
-mutual arrangement, some social code, will arise, has indeed arisen.
-This makes the beginning of the first visible structure of a world
-society. And from these homely beginnings will come, if at all, a more
-vivid sense of the wider society. And the 'economic' interest, as
-distinct from the temperamental interest of domination, has at least
-this social advantage. Welfare is a thing that in society may well grow
-the more it is divided: the better my countrymen the richer is my life
-likely to become. Domination has not this quality: it is mutually
-exclusive. We cannot all be masters. If any country is to dominate,
-somebody or some one else's country must be dominated; if the one is to
-be the Superior Race, some other must be inferior. And the inferior
-sooner or later objects, and from that resistance comes the
-disintegration that now menaces us.
-
-It is perfectly true that we cannot create the kind of State which will
-best subserve the interests of its citizens unless each is ready to give
-allegiance to it, irrespective of his immediate personal 'interest.'
-(The word is put in inverted commas because in most men not compelled by
-bad economic circumstances to fight fiercely for daily bread, sheer
-physical sustenance, the satisfaction of a social and creative instinct
-is a very real 'interest,' and would, in a well-organised society, be as
-spontaneous as interest in sport or social ostentation.) The State must
-be an idea, an abstraction, capable of inspiring loyalty, embodying the
-sense of interdependence. But the circumstances of the independent
-modern national State, in frequent and unavoidable contact with other
-similar States, are such as to stimulate not mainly the motives of
-social cohesion, but those instincts of domination which become
-anti-social and disruptive. The nationalist stands condemned not because
-he asks allegiance or loyalty to the social group, but first, because he
-asks absolute allegiance to something which is not the social group but
-only part of it, and secondly, because that exclusive loyalty gives rise
-to disruptive pugnacities, injurious to all.
-
-In pointing out the inadequacy of the unitary political Nation-State as
-the embodiment of final sovereignty, an inadequacy due to precisely the
-development of such organisations as Labour, the present writer merely
-anticipated the drift of much political writing of the last ten years on
-the problem of State sovereignty; as also the main drift of
-events.[125]
-
-If Mr Lindsay finds the very mild suggestions in _The Great Illusion_
-touching the necessary qualification of the sovereignty of the
-Nation-State subversive, one wonders what his feelings are on reading,
-say, Mr Cole, who in a recent book (_Social Theory_) leaves the
-Political State so attenuated that one questions whether what is left is
-not just ghost. At the best the State is just one collateral association
-among others.
-
-The sheer mechanical necessities of administration of an industrial
-society, so immeasurably more complex than the simple agricultural
-society which gave us the unitary political State, seem to be pushing us
-towards a divided or manifold sovereignty. If we are to carry over from
-the National State into the new form of the State--as we seem now in
-danger of doing--the attitude of mind which demands domination for 'our'
-group, the pugnacities, suspicions, and hostilities characteristic of
-nationalist temper, we may find the more complex society beyond our
-social capacity. I agree that we want a common political loyalty, that
-mere obedience to the momentary interest of our group will not give it;
-but neither will the temper of patriotism as we have seen it manifested
-in the European national State. The loyalty to some common code will
-probably only come through a sense of its social need. (It is on the
-ground of its social need that Mr Lindsay defends the political State.)
-At present we have little sense of that need, because we have (as
-Versailles proved) a belief in the effectiveness of our own power to
-exact the services we may require. The rival social or industrial groups
-have a like belief. Only a real sense of interdependence can undermine
-that belief; and it must be a visible, economic interdependence.
-
-A social sense may be described as an instinctive feeling for 'what will
-work.' We are only yet at the beginning of the study of human motive. So
-much is subconscious that we are certainly apt to ascribe to one motive
-conduct which in fact is due to another. And among the neglected motives
-of conduct is perhaps a certain sense of art--a sense, in this
-connection, of the difficult 'art of living together.' It is probably
-true that what some, at least, find so revolting in some of the
-manifestations of nationalism, chauvinism, is that they violently
-challenge the whole sense of what will work, to say nothing of the
-rights of others. 'If every one took that line, nobody could live.' In a
-social sense this is gross and offensive. It has an effect on one like
-the manners of a cad. It is that sort of motive, perhaps, more than any
-calculation of 'interest,' which may one day cause a revulsion against
-Balkanisation. But to that motive some informed sense of interdependence
-is indispensable.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-VINDICATION BY EVENTS
-
-
-If the question merely concerned the past, if it were only a matter of
-proving that this or that 'School of thought' was right, this
-re-examination of arguments put forward before the War would be a
-sterile business enough. But it concerns the present and the future;
-bears directly and pertinently upon the reasons which have led us into
-the existing chaos; and the means by which we might hope to emerge. As
-much to-day as before the War (and far more obviously) is it true that
-upon the reply to the questions raised in this discussion depends the
-continuance of our civilisation. Our society is still racked by a fierce
-struggle for political power, our populations still demand the method of
-coercion, still refuse to face the facts of interdependence, still
-insist clamorously upon a policy which denies those facts.
-
-The propositions we are here discussing were not, it is well to recall,
-merely to the effect that 'war does not pay,' but that the ideas and
-impulses out of which it grows, and which underlay--and still
-underlie--European politics, give us an unworkable society; and that
-unless they can be corrected they will increasingly involve social
-collapse and disintegration.
-
-That conclusion was opposed, as we have seen, on two main grounds. One
-was that the desire for conquest and extension of territory did not
-enter appreciably into the causes of war, 'since no one really believed
-that victory could advantage them.' The other ground of objection, in
-contradistinction, was that the economic advantages of conquest or
-military predominance were so great and so obvious that to deny them was
-mere paradox-mongering.
-
-The validity of both criticisms has been very thoroughly tested in the
-period that has followed the Armistice. Whether it be true or not that
-the competition for territory, the belief that predominant power could
-be turned to economic account, entered into the causes of the War, that
-competition and belief have certainly entered into the settlement and
-must be reckoned among the causes of the next war. The proposition that
-the economic advantages of conquest and coercion are illusory is hardly
-to-day a paradox, however much policy may still ignore the facts.
-
-The outstanding facts of the present situation most worth our attention
-in this connection are these: Military predominance, successful war,
-evidently offer no solution either of specifically international or of
-our common social and economic problems. The political disintegration
-going on over wide areas in Europe is undoubtedly related very
-intimately to economic conditions: actual lack of food, the struggle for
-ever-increasing wages and better conditions. Our attempted remedies--our
-conferences for dealing with international credit, the suggestion of an
-international loan, the loans actually made to the enemy--are a
-confession of the international character of that problem. All this
-shows that the economic question, alike nationally and internationally,
-is not, it is true, something that ought to occupy all the energies of
-men, but something that will, unless dealt with adequately; is a
-question that simply cannot be swept aside with magnificent gestures.
-Finally, the nature of the settlement actually made by the victor, its
-characteristic defects, the failure to realise adequately the victor's
-dependence on the economic life of the vanquished, show clearly enough
-that, even in the free democracies, orthodox statecraft did indeed
-suffer from the misconception which _The Great Illusion_ attributed to
-it.
-
-What do we see to-day in Europe? Our preponderant military
-power--overwhelming, irresistible, unquestioned--is impotent to secure
-the most elementary forms of wealth needed by our people: fuel, food,
-shelter. France, who in the forty years of her 'defeat' had the soundest
-finances in Europe, is, as a victor over the greatest industrial nation
-in Europe, all but bankrupt. (The franc has fallen to a discount of over
-seventy per cent.) All the recurrent threats of extended military
-occupation fail to secure reparations and indemnities, the restoration
-of credit, exchange, of general confidence and security.
-
-And just as we are finding that the things necessary for the life of our
-peoples cannot be secured by military force exercised against foreign
-nations or a beaten enemy, so are we finding that the same method of
-force within the limits of the nation used by one group as against
-another, fails equally. The temper or attitude towards life which leads
-us to attempt to achieve our end by the forcible imposition of our will
-upon others, by dictatorship, and to reject agreement, has produced in
-some degree everywhere revolt and rebellion on the one side, and
-repression on the other; or a general disruption and the breakdown of
-the co-operative processes by which mankind lives. All the raw materials
-of wealth are here on the earth as they were ten years ago. Yet Europe
-either starves or slips into social chaos, because of the economic
-difficulty.
-
-In the way of the necessary co-operation stands the Balkanisation of
-Europe. Why are we Balkanised rather than Federalised? Why do Balkan and
-other border States fight fiercely over this coalfield or that harbour?
-Why does France still oppose trade with Russia, and plot for the control
-of an enlarged Poland or a reactionary Hungary? Why does America now
-wash her hands of the whole muddle in Europe?
-
-Because everywhere the statesmen and the public believe that if only
-the power of their State were great enough, they could be independent of
-rival States, achieve political and economic security and dispense with
-agreements and obligations.
-
-If they had any vivid sense of the vast dangers to which reliance upon
-isolated power exposed any State, however great; if they had realised
-how the prosperity and social peace of their own States depended upon
-the reconciliation and well-being of the vanquished, the Treaty would
-have been a very different document, peace would long since have been
-established with Russia, and the moral foundations of co-operation would
-be present.
-
-By every road that presented itself, _The Great Illusion_ attempted to
-reveal the vital interdependence of peoples--within and without the
-State--and, as a corollary to that interdependence, the very strict
-limits of the force that can be exercised against any one whose life,
-and daily--and willing--labour is necessary to us. It was not merely the
-absence of these ideas but the very active presence of the directly
-contrary ideas of rival and conflicting interest, which explained the
-drift that the present writer thought--and said so often--would, unless
-checked, lead Western civilisation to a vast orgy of physical
-self-destruction and moral violence and chaos.
-
-The economic conditions which constitute one part of the vindication of
-_The Great Illusion_ are of course those described in the first part of
-this book, particularly in the first chapter. All that need be added
-here are a few suggestions as to the relationship between those
-conditions and the propositions we are concerned to verify.
-
-As bearing upon the truth of those propositions, we cannot neglect the
-condition of Germany.
-
-If ever national military power, the sheer efficiency of the military
-instrument, could ensure a nation's political and economic security,
-Germany should have been secure. It was not any lack of the 'impulse to
-defence,' of the 'manly and virile qualities' so beloved of the
-militarist, no tendency to 'softness,' no 'emasculating
-internationalism' which betrayed her. She fell because she failed to
-realise that she too, for all her power, had need of a co-operation
-throughout the world, which her force could not compel; and that she
-must secure a certain moral co-operation in her purposes or be defeated.
-She failed, not for lack of 'intense nationalism,' but by reason of it,
-because the policy which guided the employment of her military
-instrument had in it too small a regard for the moral factors in the
-world at large, which might set in motion material forces against her.
-
-It is hardly possible to doubt that the easy victories of 1871 marked
-the point at which the German spirit took the wrong turning, and
-rendered her statesmen incapable of seeing the forces which were massing
-for her destruction. The presence in 1919 of German delegates at
-Versailles in the capacity of vanquished can only be adequately
-explained by recalling the presence there of German statesmen as victors
-in 1871. It took forty years for some of the moral fruits of victory to
-manifest themselves in the German spirit.
-
-But the very severity of the present German lot is one that lends itself
-to sophistry. It will be argued: 'You say that preponderant military
-power, victory, is ineffective to economic ends. Well, look at the
-difference between ourselves and Germany. The victors, though they may
-not flourish, are at least better off than the vanquished. If we are
-lean, they starve. Our military power is not economically futile.'
-
-If to bring about hardship to ourselves in order that some one else may
-suffer still greater hardship is an economic gain, then it is untrue to
-say that conquest is economically futile. But I had assumed that
-advantage or utility was to be measured by the good to us, not by the
-harm done to others at our cost. We are arguing for the moment the
-economic, and not the ethical aspect of the thing. Keep for a moment to
-those terms. If you were told that an enterprise was going to be
-extremely profitable and you lost half your fortune in it, you would
-certainly regard as curious the logic of the reply, that after all you
-_had_ gained, because others in the same enterprise had lost everything.
-
-We are considering in effect whether the facts show that nations must,
-in order to provide bread for their people, defeat in war competing
-nations who otherwise would secure it. But that economic case for the
-'biological inevitability' of war is destroyed if it is true that, after
-having beaten the rival nation, we find that we have less bread than
-before; that the future security of our food is less; and that out of
-our own diminished store we have to feed a defeated enemy who, before
-his defeat, managed to feed himself, and helped to feed us as well.
-
-And that is precisely what the present facts reveal.
-
-Reference has already been made to the position of France. In the forty
-years of her defeat France was the banker of Europe. She exacted tribute
-in the form of dividends and interest upon investments from Russia, the
-Near East, Germany herself; exacted it in a form which suited the
-peculiar genius of her people and added to the security of her social
-life. She was Germany's creditor, and managed to secure from her
-conqueror of 1871 the prompt payment of the debts owing to her. When
-France was not in a position to compel anything whatsoever from Germany
-by military force, the financial claims of Frenchmen upon Germany were
-readily discountable in any market of the world. To-day, the financial
-claims on Germany, made by a France which is militarily all-powerful,
-simply cannot be discounted anywhere. The indemnity vouchers, whatever
-may be the military predominance behind them, are simply not negotiable
-instruments so long as they depend upon present policy. They are a form
-of paper which no banker would dream of discounting on their commercial
-merits.
-
-To-day France stands as the conquerer of the richest ore-fields in the
-world, of territory which is geographically the industrial centre of
-Europe; of a vast Empire in Africa and Asia; in a position of
-predominance in Poland, Hungary, and Rumania. She has acquired through
-the Reparations Commission such power over the enemy countries as to
-reduce them almost to the economic position of an Asiatic or African
-colony. If ever wealth could be conquered, France has conquered it. If
-political power could really be turned to economic account, France ought
-to-day to be rich beyond any nation in history. Never was there such an
-opportunity of turning military power into wealth.
-
-Then why is she bankrupt? Why is France faced by economic and financial
-difficulties so acute that the situation seems inextricable save by
-social revolution, a social reconstruction, that is, involving new
-principles of taxation, directly aiming at the re-distribution of
-wealth, a re-distribution resisted by the property-owning classes.
-These, like other classes, have since the Armistice been so persistently
-fed upon the fable of making the Boche pay, that the government is
-unable to induce them to face reality.[126]
-
-With a public debt of 233,729 million of francs (about L9,300,000,000,
-at the pre-war rate of exchange); with the permanent problem of a
-declining population accentuated by the loss of millions of men killed
-and wounded in the war, and complicated by the importation of coloured
-labour; with the exchange value of the franc reduced to sixty in terms
-of the British pound, and to fifteen in terms of the American
-dollar,[127] the position of victorious France in the hour of her
-complete military predominance over Europe seems wellnigh desperate.
-
-She could of course secure very considerable alleviation of her present
-difficulties if she would consent to the only condition upon which
-Germany could make a considerable contribution to Reparations; the
-restoration of German industry. But to that one indispensable condition
-of indemnity or reparation France will not consent, because the French
-feel that a flourishing Germany would be a Germany dangerous to the
-security of France.
-
-In this condition one may recall a part of _The Great Illusion_ case
-which, more than any other of the 'preposterous propositions,' excited
-derision and scepticism before the War. That was the part dealing with
-the difficulties of securing an indemnity. In a chapter (of the early
-1910 Edition) entitled _The Indemnity Futility_, occurred these
-passages:--
-
-     'The difficulty in the case of a large indemnity is not so much the
-     payment by the vanquished as the receiving by the victor ...
-
-     'When a nation receives an indemnity of a large amount of gold, one
-     or two things happens: either the money is exchanged for real
-     wealth with other nations, in which case the greatly increased
-     imports compete directly with the home producers, or the money is
-     kept within the frontiers and is not exchanged for real wealth from
-     abroad, and prices inevitably rise.... The rise in price of home
-     commodities hampers the nation receiving the indemnity in selling
-     those commodities in the neutral markets of the world, especially
-     as the loss of so large a sum by the vanquished nation has just the
-     reverse effect of cheapening prices and therefore, enabling that
-     nation to compete on better terms with the conqueror in neutral
-     markets.'--(p. 76.)
-
-The effect of the payment of the French indemnity of 1872 upon German
-industry was analysed at length.
-
-This chapter was criticised by economists in Britain, France, and
-America. I do not think that a single economist of note admitted the
-slightest validity in this argument. Several accused the author of
-adopting protectionist fallacies in an attempt to 'make out a case.' It
-happens that he is a convinced Free Trader. But he is also aware that it
-is quite impracticable to dissociate national psychology from
-international commercial problems. Remembering what popular feeling
-about the expansion of enemy trade must be on the morrow of war, he
-asked the reader to imagine vast imports of enemy goods as the means of
-paying an indemnity, and went on:--
-
-     'Do we not know that there would be such a howl about the ruin of
-     home industry that no Government could stand the clamour for a
-     week?... That this influx of goods for nothing would be represented
-     as a deep-laid plot on the part of foreign nations to ruin the home
-     trade, and that the citizens would rise in their wrath to prevent
-     the accomplishment of such a plot? Is not this very operation by
-     which foreign nations tax themselves to send abroad goods, not for
-     nothing (that would be a crime at present unthinkable), but at
-     below cost, the offence to which we have given the name of
-     "dumping"? When it is carried very far, as in the case of sugar,
-     even Free Trade nations like Great Britain join International
-     Conferences to prevent these gifts being made!...'
-
-The fact that not one single economist, so far as I know, would at the
-time admit the validity of these arguments, is worth consideration. Very
-learned men may sometimes be led astray by keeping their learning in
-watertight compartments, 'economics' in one compartment and 'politics'
-or political psychology in another. The politicians seemed to misread
-the economies and the economists the politics.
-
-What are the post-war facts in this connection? We may get them
-summarised on the one hand by the Prime Minister of Great Britain and on
-the other by the expert adviser of the British Delegation to the Peace
-Conference.
-
-Mr Lloyd George, speaking two years after the Armistice, and after
-prolonged and exhaustive debates on this problem, says:--
-
-     'What I have put forward is an expression of the views of all the
-     experts.... Every one wants gold, which Germany has not got, and
-     they will not take German goods. Nations can only pay debts by
-     gold, goods, services, or bills of exchange on nations which are
-     its debtors.[128]
-
-     'The real difficulty ... is due to the difficulty of securing
-     payment outside the limits of Germany. Germany could pay--pay
-     easily--inside her own boundary, but she could not export her
-     forests, railways, or land across her own frontiers and make them
-     over to the Allies. Take the railways, for example. Suppose the
-     Allies took possession of them and doubled the charges; they would
-     be paid in paper marks which would be valueless directly they
-     crossed the frontier.
-
-     'The only way Germany could pay was by way of exports--that is by
-     difference between German imports and exports. If, however, German
-     imports were too much restricted, the Germans would be unable to
-     obtain food and raw materials necessary for their manufactures.
-     Some of Germany's principal markets--Russia and Central
-     Europe--were no longer purchasers, and if she exported too much to
-     the Allies, it meant the ruin of their industry and lack of
-     employment for their people. Even in the case of neutrals it was
-     only possible generally to increase German exports by depriving our
-     traders of their markets.'[129]
-
-There is not a line here that is not a paraphrase of the chapter in the
-early edition of _The Great Illusion_.
-
-The following is the comment of Mr Maynard Keynes, ex-Advisor to the
-British Treasury, on the claims put forward after the Paris Conference
-of January 1921:--
-
-     'It would be easy to point out how, if Germany could compass the
-     vast export trade which the Paris proposals contemplate, it could
-     only be by ousting some of the staple trades of Great Britain from
-     the markets of the world. Exports of what commodities, we may ask,
-     in addition to her present exports, is Germany going to find a
-     market for in 1922--to look no farther ahead--which will enable her
-     to make the payment of between L150,000,000 and L200,000,000
-     including the export proportion which will be due from her in that
-     year? Germany's five principal exports before the War were iron,
-     steel, and machinery, coal and coke, woollen goods and cotton
-     goods. Which of these trades does Paris think she is going to
-     develop on a hitherto unprecedented scale? Or if not these, what
-     others? And how is she going to finance the import of raw materials
-     which, except in the case of coal and coke, are a prior necessity
-     to manufacture, if the proceeds of the goods when made will not be
-     available to repay the credits? I ask these questions in respect of
-     the year 1922 because many people may erroneously believe that
-     while the proposed settlement is necessarily of a problematic
-     character for the later years--only time can show--it makes some
-     sort of a start possible. These questions are serious and
-     practical, and they deserve to be answered. If the Paris proposals
-     are more than wind, they mean a vast re-organisation of the
-     channels of international trade. If anything remotely like them is
-     really intended to happen, the reactions on the trade and industry
-     of this country are incalculable. It is an outrage that they should
-     be dealt with by the methods of the poker party of which news comes
-     from Paris.'[130]
-
-If the expert economists failed to admit the validity of _The Great
-Illusion_ argument fifteen years ago, the general public has barely a
-glimmering of it to-day. It is true that our miners realise that vast
-deliveries of coal for nothing by Germany disorganise our coal export
-trade. British shipbuilding has been disastrously affected by the Treaty
-clauses touching the surrender of German tonnage--so much so that the
-Government have now recommended the abandonment of these clauses, which
-were among the most stringent and popular in the whole Treaty. The
-French Government has flatly refused to accept German machinery to
-replace that destroyed by the German armies, while French labour refuses
-to allow German labour, in any quantity, to operate in the devastated
-regions. Thus coal, ships, machinery, manufactures, labour, as means of
-payment, have either already created great economic havoc or have been
-rejected because they might. Yet our papers continue to shout that
-'Germany can pay,' implying that failure to do so is merely a matter of
-her will. Of course she can pay--if we let her. Payment means increasing
-German foreign trade. Suppose, then, we put the question 'Can German
-Foreign Trade be increased?' Obviously it can. It depends mainly on us.
-To put the question in its truer form shows that the problem is much
-more a matter of our will than of Germany's. Incidentally, of course,
-German diplomacy has been as stupid as our own. If the German
-representatives had said, in effect: 'It is common ground that we can
-pay only in commodities. If you will indicate the kind and quantity of
-goods we shall deliver, and will facilitate the import into Germany of,
-and the payment for, the necessary food and raw material, we will
-accept--on that condition--even your figures of reparation.' The Allies,
-of course, could not have given the necessary undertaking, and the real
-nature of the problem would have stood revealed.[131]
-
-The review of the situation of France given in the preceding pages will
-certainly be criticised on the ground that it gives altogether too great
-weight to the temporary embarrassment, and leaves out the advantages
-which future generations of Frenchmen will reap.
-
-Now, whatever the future may have in store, it will certainly have for
-France the task of defending her conquests if she either withholds their
-product (particularly iron) from the peoples of Central Europe who need
-them, or if she makes of their possession a means of exacting a tribute
-which they feel to be burdensome and unjust. Again we are faced by the
-same dilemma; if Germany gets the iron, her population goes on
-expanding and her potential power of resistance goes on increasing. Thus
-France's burden of defence would grow steadily greater, while her
-population remained constant or declined. This difficulty of French
-deficiency in human raw material is not a remote contingency; it is an
-actual difficulty of to-day, which France is trying to meet in part by
-the arming of the negro population of her African colonies, and in part
-by the device of satellite militarisms, as in Poland. But the
-precariousness of such methods is already apparent.
-
-The arming of the African negro carries its appalling possibilities on
-its face. Its development cannot possibly avoid the gravest complication
-of the industrial problem. It is the Servile State in its most sinister
-form; and unless Europe is itself ready for slavery it will stop this
-reintroduction of slavery for the purposes of militarism.
-
-The other device has also its self-defeating element. To support an
-imperialist Poland means a hostile Russia; yet Poland, wedged in between
-a hostile Slav mass on the one side and a hostile Teutonic one on the
-other, herself compounded of Russian, German, Austrian, Lithuanian,
-Ukrainian, and Jewish elements, ruled largely by a landowning
-aristocracy when the countries on both sides have managed to transfer
-the great estates to the peasants, is as likely, in these days, to be a
-military liability as a military asset.
-
-These things are not irrelevant to the problem of turning military power
-to economic account: they are of the very essence of the problem.
-
-Not less so is this consideration: If France should for political
-reasons persist in a policy which means a progressive reduction in the
-productivity of Europe, that policy would be at its very roots directly
-contrary to the vital interests of England. The foregoing pages have
-explained why the increasing population of these islands, that live by
-selling coal or its products, are dependent upon the high productivity
-of the outside world. France is self-supporting and has no such
-pre-occupation. Already the divergence is seen in the case of the
-Russian policy. Britain direly needs the wheat of Russia to reduce the
-cost of living--or improve the value of what she has to sell, which is
-very nearly the same thing. France does not need Russian foodstuffs, and
-in terms of narrow self-interest (cutting her losses in Czarist bonds)
-can afford to be indifferent to the devastation of Russia. As soon as
-this divergence reaches a certain degree, rupture becomes inevitable.
-
-The mainspring of French policy during the last two years has been
-fear--fear of the economic revival of Germany which might be the
-beginning of a military revival. The measures necessary to check German
-economic revival inevitably increase German resentment, which is taken
-as proof of the need for increasingly severe measures of repression.
-Those measures are tending already to deprive France of her most
-powerful military Allies. That fact still further increases the burden
-that will be thrown upon her. Such burdens must inevitably make very
-large deductions from the 'profits' of her new conquests.
-
-Note in view of these circumstances some further difficulties of turning
-those conquests to account. Take the iron mines of Lorraine.[132] France
-has now within her borders what is, as already noted, the geographical
-centre of Continental industry. How shall she turn that fact to account?
-
-For the iron to become wealth at all, for France to become the actual
-centre of European industry, there must be a European industry: the
-railroads and factories and steamship lines as consumers of the iron
-must once more operate. To do that they in their turn must have _their_
-market in the shape of active consumption on the part of the millions of
-Europe. In other words the Continent must be economically restored. But
-that it cannot be while Germany is economically paralysed. Germany's
-industry is the very keystone of the European industry and
-agriculture--whether in Russia, Poland, the Balkans, or the Near
-East--which is the indispensable market of the French iron.[133] Even if
-we could imagine such a thing as a reconstruction of Europe on lines
-that would in some wonderful way put seventy or eighty million Germans
-into a secondary place--involving as it would vast redistributions of
-population--the process obviously would take years or generations.
-Meantime Europe goes to pieces. 'Men will not always die quietly' as Mr
-Keynes puts it. What is to become of French credit while France is
-suppressing Bolshevik upheavals in Poland or Hungary caused by the
-starvation of cities through the new economic readjustments? Europe
-famishes now for want of credit. But credit implies a certain dependence
-upon the steady course of future events, some assurance, for instance,
-that this particular railway line to which advances are made will not
-find itself, in a year or two's time, deprived of its traffic in the
-interest of economic rearrangements resulting from an attempt to re-draw
-the economic map of Europe. Nor can such re-drawing disregard the
-present. It is no good telling peasants who have not ploughs or reapers
-or who cannot get fertilisers because their railroad has no locomotives,
-that a new line running on their side of the new frontier will be built
-ten or fifteen years hence. You cannot stop the patients breathing 'for
-just a few hours' while experiments are made with vital organs. The
-operation must adapt itself to the fact that all the time he must
-breathe. And to the degree to which we attempt violently to re-direct
-the economic currents, does the security upon which our credit depends
-decline.[134]
-
-There are other considerations. A French journalist asks plaintively:
-'If we want the coal why don't we go in and take it'--by the occupation
-of the Ruhr. The implication is that France could get the coal for
-nothing. Well, France has taken over the Saar Valley. By no means does
-she get the coal for nothing. The miners have to be paid. France tried
-paying them at an especially low rate. The production fell off; the
-miners were discontented and underfed. They had to be paid more. Even so
-the Saar has been 'very restless' under French control, and the last
-word, as we know, will rest with the men. Miners who feel they are
-working for the enemy of their fatherland are not going to give a high
-production. It is a long exploded illusion that slave labour--labour
-under physical compulsion--is a productive form of labour. Its output
-invariably is small. So assuredly France does not get this coal for
-nothing. And from the difference between the price which it costs her as
-owner of the mines and administrator of their workers, and that which
-she would pay if she had to buy the coal from the original owners and
-administrators (if there is a difference on the credit side at all) has
-to be deducted the ultimate cost of defence and of the political
-complications that that has involved. Precise figures are obviously not
-available; but it is equally obvious that the profit of seizure is
-microscopic.
-
-Always does the fundamental dilemma remain. France will need above all,
-if she is to profit by these raw materials of European industry,
-markets, and again markets. But markets mean that the iron which has
-been captured must be returned to the nation from which it was taken, on
-conditions economically advantageous to that nation. A central Europe
-that is consuming large quantities of metallurgical products is a
-Central Europe growing in wealth and power and potentially dangerous
-unless reconciled. And reconciliation will include economic justice,
-access to the very 'property' that has been seized.
-
-The foregoing is not now, as it was when the present author wrote in
-similar terms a decade since, mere speculation or hypothesis. Our
-present difficulties with reference to the indemnity or reparations, the
-fall in the exchanges, or the supply of coal, are precisely of the order
-just indicated. The conqueror is caught in the grip of just those
-difficulties in turning conquest to economic account upon which _The
-Great Illusion_ so repeatedly insisted.
-
-The part played by credit--as the sensory nerve of the economic
-organism--has, despite the appearances to the contrary in the early part
-of the War, confirmed those propositions that dealt with it. Credit--as
-the extension of the use of money--is society's bookkeeping. The
-debauchery of the currencies means of course juggling with the promises
-to pay. The general relation of credit to a certain dependability upon
-the future has already been dealt with.[135] The object here is to call
-attention to the present admissions that the maintenance or re-creation
-of credit is in very truth an indispensable element in the recovery of
-Europe. Those admissions consist in the steps that are being taken
-internationally, the emphasis which the governments themselves are
-laying upon this factor. Yet ten years ago the 'diplomatic expert'
-positively resented the introduction of such a subject into the
-discussion of foreign affairs at all. Serious consideration of the
-subject was generally dismissed by the orthodox authority on
-international politics with some contemptuous reference to 'cosmopolitan
-usury.'
-
-Even now we seize every opportunity of disguising the truth to
-ourselves. In the midst of the chaos we may sometimes see flamboyant
-statements that England at any rate is greater and richer than before.
-(It is a statement, indeed, very apt to come from our European
-co-belligerents, worse off than ourselves.) It is true, of course, that
-we have extended our Empire; that we have to-day the same materials of
-wealth as--or more than--we had before the War; that we have improved
-technical knowledge. But we are learning that to turn all this to
-account there must be not only at home, but abroad, a widespread
-capacity for orderly co-operation; the diffusion throughout the world of
-a certain moral quality. And the war, for the time being, at least, has
-very greatly diminished that quality. Because Welsh miners have absorbed
-certain ideas and developed a certain temperament, the wealth of many
-millions who are not miners declines. The idea of a self-sufficing
-Empire that can disregard the chaos of the outside world recedes
-steadily into the background when we see the infection of certain ideas
-beginning the work of disintegration within the Empire. Our control over
-Egypt has almost vanished; that over India is endangered; our relations
-with Ireland affect those with America and even with some of our white
-colonies. Our Empire, too, depends upon the prevalence of certain
-ideas.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-COULD THE WAR HAVE BEEN PREVENTED?
-
-
-'But the real irrelevance of all this discussion,' it will be said, 'is
-that however complete our recognition of these truths might have been,
-that recognition would not have affected Germany's action. We did not
-want territory, or colonies, or mines, or oil-wells, or phosphate
-islands, or railway concessions. We fought simply to resist aggression.
-The alternatives for us were sheer submission to aggression, or war, a
-war of self-defence.'
-
-Let us see. Our danger came from Germany's aggressiveness. What made her
-more aggressive than other nations, than those who later became our
-Allies--Russia, Rumania, Italy, Japan, France? Sheer original sin, apart
-from political or economic circumstance?
-
-Now it was an extraordinary thing that those who were most clamant about
-the danger were for the most part quite ready to admit--even to urge and
-emphasise as part of their case--that Germany's aggression was _not_ due
-to inherent wickedness, but that any nation placed in her position would
-behave in just about the same way. That, indeed, was the view of very
-many pre-eminent before the War in their warnings of the German peril,
-of among others, Lord Roberts, Admiral Mahan, Mr Frederic Harrison, Mr
-Blatchford, Professor Wilkinson.
-
-Let us recall, for instance, Mr Harrison's case for German
-aggression--Germany's 'poor access to the sea and its expanding
-population':--
-
-     'A mighty nation of 65,000,000, with such superb resources both for
-     peace and war, and such overweening pride in its own superiority
-     and might, finds itself closed up in a ring-fence too narrow for
-     its fecundity as for its pretensions, constructed more by history,
-     geography, and circumstances than by design--a fence maintained by
-     the fears rather than the hostility of its weaker neighbours. That
-     is the rumbling subterranean volcano on which the European State
-     system rests.
-
-     'It is inevitable but that a nation with the magnificent resources
-     of the German, hemmed in a territory so inadequate to their needs
-     and pretensions, and dominated by a soldier, bureaucratic, and
-     literary caste, all deeply imbued with the Bismarckian doctrine,
-     should thirst to extend their dominions, and their power at any
-     sacrifice--of life, of wealth, and of justice. One must take facts
-     as they are, and it is idle to be blind to facts, or to rail
-     against them. It is as silly to gloss over manifest perils as it is
-     to preach moralities about them.... England, Europe, civilisation,
-     is in imminent peril from German expansion.'[136]
-
-Very well. We are to drop preaching moralities and look at the facts.
-Would successful war by us remove the economic and political causes
-which were part at least of the explanation of German aggression? Would
-her need for expansion become less? The preceding pages answer that
-question. Successful war by us would not dispose of the pressure of
-German population.
-
-If the German menace was due in part at least to such causes as 'poor
-access to the sea,' the absence of any assurance as to future provision
-for an expanding population, what measures were proposed for the removal
-of those causes?
-
-None whatever. Not only so, but any effort towards a frank facing of the
-economic difficulty was resisted by the very people who had previously
-urged the economic factors of the conflict, as a 'sordid' interpretation
-of that conflict. We have seen what happened, for instance, in the case
-of Admiral Mahan. He urged that the competition for undeveloped
-territory and raw materials lay behind the political struggle. So be it;
-replies some one; let us see whether we cannot remove that economic
-cause of conflict, whether indeed there is any real economic conflict at
-all. And the Admiral then retorts that economics have nothing to do with
-it. To Mr Frederic Harrison '_The Great Illusion_ policy is childish and
-mischievous rubbish.' What was that policy? To deny the existence of the
-German or other aggressiveness? The whole policy was prompted by the
-very fact of that danger. Did the policy suggest that we should simply
-yield to German political pretensions? Again, as we have seen, such a
-course was rejected with every possible emphasis. The one outstanding
-implication of the policy was that while arming we must find a basis of
-co-operation by which both peoples could live.
-
-In any serious effort to that end, one overpowering question had to be
-answered by Englishmen who felt some responsibility for the welfare of
-their people. Would that co-operation, giving security to others, demand
-the sacrifice of the interest or welfare of their own people? _The Great
-Illusion_ replied, No, and set forth the reasons for that reply. And the
-setting-forth of those reasons made the book an 'appeal to avarice
-against patriotism,' an attempt 'to restore the blessed hour of money
-getting.' Eminent Nonconformist divines and patriotic stockbrokers
-joined hands in condemning the appalling sordidness of the demonstration
-which might have led to a removal of the economic causes of
-international quarrel.
-
-It is not true to say that in the decade preceding Armageddon the
-alternatives to fighting Germany were exhausted, and that nothing was
-left but war or submission. We simply had not tried the remedy of
-removing the economic excuse for aggression. The fact that Germany did
-face these difficulties and much future uncertainty was indeed urged by
-those of the school of Mr Harrison and Lord Roberts as a conclusive
-argument against the possibility of peace or any form of agreement with
-her. The idea that agreement should reach to such fundamental things as
-the means of subsistence seemed to involve such an invasion of
-sovereignty as not even to be imaginable.
-
-To show that such an agreement would not ask a sacrifice of vital
-national interest, that indeed the economic advantages which could be
-exacted by military preponderance were exceedingly small or
-non-existent, seemed the first indispensable step towards bringing some
-international code of economic right within the area of practical
-politics, of giving it any chance of acceptance by public opinion. Yet
-the effort towards that was disparaged and derided as 'materialistic.'
-
-One hoped at least that this disparagement of material interest as a
-motive in international politics might give us a peace settlement which
-would be free from it. But economic interest which is 'sordid' when
-appealed to as a means of preserving the peace, becomes a sacred egoism
-when invoked on behalf of a policy which makes war almost inevitable.
-
-Why did it create such bitter resentment before the War to suggest that
-we should discuss the economic grounds of international conflict--why
-before the War were many writers who now demand that discussion so angry
-at it being suggested? Among the very hostile critics of _The Great
-Illusion_--hostile mainly on the ground that it misread the motive
-forces in international politics--was Mr J. L. Garvin. Yet his own first
-post-war book is entitled: _The Economic Foundations of Peace_, and its
-first Chapter Summary begins thus:--
-
-     'A primary war, largely about food and raw materials: inseparable
-     connection of the politics and economics of the peace.'
-
-And his first paragraph contains the following:--
-
-     'The war with many names was in one main aspect a war about food
-     supply and raw materials. To this extent it was Germany's fight to
-     escape from the economic position of interdependence without
-     security into which she had insensibly fallen--to obtain for
-     herself independent control of an ample share in the world's
-     supplies of primary resources. The war meant much else, but it
-     meant this as well and this was a vital factor in its causes.'
-
-His second chapter is thus summarised:--
-
-     'Former international conditions transformed by the revolution in
-     transport and telegraphic intelligence; great nations lose their
-     former self-sufficient basis: growth of interdependence between
-     peoples and continents.... Germany without sea power follows
-     Britain's economic example; interdependence without security:
-     national necessities and cosmopolitan speculation: an Armageddon
-     unavoidable.'
-
-Lord Grey has said that if there had existed in 1914 a League of Nations
-as tentative even as that embodied in the Covenant, Armageddon could in
-any case have been delayed, and delay might well have meant prevention.
-We know now that if war had been delayed the mere march of events would
-have altered the situation. It is unlikely that a Russian revolution of
-one kind or another could have been prevented even if there had been no
-war; and a change in the character of the Russian government might well
-have terminated on the one side the Serbian agitation against Austria,
-and on the other the genuine fear of German democrats concerning
-Russia's imperialist ambitions. The death of the old Austrian emperor
-was another factor that might have made for peace.[137]
-
-Assume, in addition to such factors, that Britain had been prepared to
-recognise Germany's economic needs and difficulties, as Mr Garvin now
-urges we should recognise them. Whether even this would have prevented
-war, no man can say. But we can say--and it is implicit in the economic
-case now so commonly urged as to the need of Germany for economic
-security--that since we did not give her that security we did not do all
-that we might have done to remove the causes of war. 'Here in the
-struggle for primary raw materials' says Mr Garvin in effect over the
-six hundred pages more or less of his book, 'are causes of war that must
-be dealt with if we are to have peace.' If then, in the years that
-preceded Armageddon, the world had wanted to avoid that orgy, and had
-had the necessary wisdom, these are things with which it would have
-occupied itself.
-
-Yet when the attempt was made to draw the attention of the world to just
-those factors, publicists even as sincere and able as Mr Garvin
-disparaged it; and very many misrepresented it by silly distortion. It
-is easy now to see where that pre-war attempt to work towards some
-solution was most defective: if greater emphasis had been given to some
-definite scheme for assuring Germany's necessary access to resources,
-the real issue might have been made plainer. A fair implication of _The
-Great Illusion_ was that as Britain had no real interest in thwarting
-German expansion, the best hope for the future lay in an increasingly
-clear demonstration of the fact of community of interest. The more valid
-conclusion would have been that the absence of conflict in vital
-interests should have been seized upon as affording an opportunity for
-concluding definite conventions and obligations which would assuage
-fears on both sides. But criticism, instead of bringing out this defect,
-directed itself, for the most part, to an attempt to show that the
-economic fears or facts had nothing to do with the conflict. Had
-criticism consisted in taking up the problem where _The Great Illusion_
-left it, much more might have been done--perhaps sufficient--to make
-Armageddon unnecessary.[138]
-
-The importance of the phenomenon we have just touched upon--the
-disparagement before war of truths we are compelled to face after
-war--lies in its revelation of subconscious or unconscious motive. There
-grows up after some years of peace in every nation possessing military
-and naval traditions and a habit of dominion, a real desire for
-domination, perhaps even for war itself; the opportunity that it affords
-for the assertion of collective power; the mysterious dramatic impulse
-to 'stop the cackle with a blow; strike, and strike home.'
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-For the moment we are at the ebb of that feeling and another is
-beginning perhaps to flow. The results are showing in our policy. We
-find in what would have been ten years ago very strange places for such
-things, attacks upon the government for its policy of 'reckless
-militarism' in Mesopotamia or Persia. Although public opinion did not
-manage to impose a policy of peace with Russia, it did at least make
-open and declared war impossible, and all the efforts of the Northcliffe
-Press to inflame passion by stories of Bolshevist atrocities fell
-completely flat. For thirty years it has been a crime of _lese patrie_
-to mention the fact that we have given solemn and repeated pledges for
-the evacuation of Egypt. And indeed to secure a free hand in Egypt we
-were ready to acquiesce in the French evasion of international
-obligations in Morocco, a policy which played no small part in widening
-the gulf between ourselves and Germany. Yet the political position on
-behalf of which ten years ago these risks were taken is to-day
-surrendered with barely a protest. A policy of almost unqualified
-'scuttle' which no Cabinet could have faced a decade since, to-day
-causes scarcely a ripple. And as to the Treaty, certain clauses therein,
-around which centred less than two years ago a true dementia--the trial
-of the Kaiser in London, the trial of war prisoners--we have simply
-forgotten all about.
-
-It is certain that sheer exhaustion of the emotions associated with war
-explains a good deal. But Turks, Poles, Arabs, Russians, who have
-suffered war much longer, still fight. The policy of the loan to
-Germany, the independence of Egypt, the evacuation of Mesopotamia, the
-refusal to attempt the removal of the Bolshevist 'menace to freedom and
-civilisation' by military means, are explained in part at least by a
-growing recognition of both the political and the economic futility of
-the military means, and the absolute need of replacing or supplementing
-the military method by an increasing measure of agreement and
-co-operation. The order of events has been such as to induce an
-interpretation, bring home a conviction, which has influenced policy.
-But the strength and permanence of the conviction will depend upon the
-degree of intelligence with which the interpretation is made. Discussion
-is indispensable and that justifies this re-examination of the
-suggestions made in _The Great Illusion_.
-
-In so far as it is mere emotional exhaustion which we are now feeling,
-and not the beginning of a new tradition and new attitude in which
-intelligence, however dimly, has its part, it has in it little hope. For
-inertia has its dangers as grave as those of unseeing passion. In the
-one case the ship is driven helplessly by a gale on to the rocks, in the
-other it drifts just as helplessly into the whirlpool. A consciousness
-of direction, a desire at least to be master of our fate and to make the
-effort of thought to that end, is the indispensable condition of
-freedom, salvation. That is the first and last justification for the
-discussion we have just summarised.
-
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[1] But British policy can hardly be called less contradictory. A year
-after the enactment of a Treaty which quite avowedly was framed for the
-purpose of checking the development of German trade, we find the
-unemployment crisis producing on the part of the _New Statesman_ the
-following comment:--
-
-'It must be admitted, however, that the present wave of depression and
-unemployment is far more an international than a national problem. The
-abolition of "casual labour" and the adoption of a system of "industrial
-maintenance" would appreciably affect it. The international aspect of
-the question has always been important, but never so overwhelmingly
-important as it is to-day.
-
-'The present great depression, however, is not normal. It is due in the
-main to the breakdown of credit and the demoralisation of the
-"exchanges" throughout Europe. France cannot buy locomotives in England
-if she has to pay 60 francs to the pound sterling. Germany, with an
-exchange of 260 (instead of the pre-war 20) marks to the pound, can buy
-scarcely anything. Russia, for other reasons cannot buy at all. And even
-neutral countries like Sweden and Denmark, which made much money out of
-the war and whose "exchanges" are fairly normal, are financially almost
-_hors de combat_, owing presumably to the ruin of Germany. There appears
-to be no remedy for this position save the economic rehabilitation of
-Central Europe.
-
-'As long as German workmen are unable to exercise their full productive
-capacity, English workmen will be unemployed. That, at present, is the
-root of the problem. For the last two years we, as an industrial nation,
-have been cutting off our nose to spite our face. In so far as we ruin
-Germany we are ruining ourselves; and in so far as we refuse to trade
-with revolutionary Russia we are increasing the likelihood of violent
-upheavals in Great Britain. Sooner or later we shall have to scrap every
-Treaty that has been signed and begin again the creation of the New
-Europe on the basis of universal co-operation and mutual aid. Where we
-have demanded indemnities we must offer loans.
-
-'A system of international credit--founded necessarily on British
-credit--is as great a necessity for ourselves as it is for Central
-Europe. We must finance our customers or lose them and share their ruin,
-sinking deeper every month into the morass of doles and relief works.
-That is the main lesson of the present crisis.'--(Jan. 1st, 1921.)
-
-[2] Out of a population of 45,000,000 our home-grown wheat suffices for
-only about 12,500,000, on the basis of the 1919-20 crop. Sir Henry Rew,
-_Food Supplies in Peace and War_, says: 'On the basis of our present
-population ... we should still need to import 78 per cent. of our
-requirements.' (p. 165). Before the War, according to the same
-authority, home produce supplied 48 per cent. in food value of the total
-consumption, but the table on which this figure is based does not
-include sugar, tea, coffee, or cocoa.
-
-[3] The growing power of the food-producing area and its determination
-to be independent as far as possible of the industrial centre, is a fact
-too often neglected in considering the revolutionary movements of
-Europe. The war of the classes almost everywhere is crossed by another
-war, that between cities and country. The land-owning countryman,
-whether peasant or noble, tends to become conservative, clerical,
-anti-socialist (and anti-social) in his politics and outlook.
-
-[4] 'The Economic Consequences of the Peace,' pp. 275-277.
-
-[5] _Manchester Guardian_, Weekly Edition, February 6th., 1920.
-
-[6] _Daily News_, June 28th., 1920.
-
-[7] Sir William Goode, British Director of Relief, has said, (_Times_
-Dec. 6th., 1919):--
-
-'I have myself recently returned from Vienna. I feel as if I had spent
-ten days in the cell of a condemned murderer who has given up all hope
-of reprieve. I stayed at the best hotel, but I saw no milk and no eggs
-the whole time I was there. In the bitter, cold hall of the hotel, once
-the gayest rendezvous in Europe, the visitors huddled together in the
-gloom of one light where there used to be forty. They were more like
-shadows of the Embankment than representatives of the rich. Vienna's
-world-famous Opera House is packed every afternoon. Why? Women and men
-go there in order to keep themselves warm, and because they have no work
-to do.'
-
-He went on:--
-
-'First aid was to hasten peace. Political difficulties combined with
-decreased production, demoralisation of railway traffic, to say nothing
-of actual shortages of coal, food, and finance, had practically
-paralysed industrial and commercial activity. The bold liberation or
-creation of areas, without simultaneous steps to reorganise economic
-life, had so far proved to be a dangerous experiment. Professor Masaryk,
-the able President of Czecho-Slovakia, put the case in a nutshell when
-he said: "It is a question of the export of merchandise or of
-population."'
-
-[8] The figures for 1913 are:--
-
-  Imports.         From British Possessions      L192,000,000.
-                   From Foreign Countries        L577,000,000.
-  Exports.         To British Possessions        L195,000,000.
-                   To Foreign Countries          L330,000,000.
-  Re-exports.      To British Possessions         L14,000,000.
-                   To Foreign Countries           L96,000,000.
-
-
-[9] The question is dealt with more fully in the last chapter of the
-'Addendum' to this book. The chapter of 'The Great Illusion' dealing
-with the indemnity says: 'The difficulty in the case of a large
-indemnity is not so much the payment by the vanquished as the receiving
-by the victor.' (p. 76, 1910 Edition.) Mr Lloyd George (Jan. 28th.,
-1921) says: 'The real difficulty is in securing payment outside the
-limits of Germany.... The only way Germany can pay is by exports--the
-difference between German imports and exports.... If she exports too
-much for the Allies it means the ruin of their industry.'
-
-Thus the main problem of an indemnity is to secure wealth in exportable
-form which will not disorganise the victor's trade. Yet so obscured does
-the plainest fact become in the murky atmosphere of war time that in
-many of the elaborate studies emanating from Westminster and Paris, as
-to 'What Germany can pay' this phase of the problem is not even touched
-upon. We get calculations as to Germany's total wealth in railroads,
-public buildings, houses, as though these things could be picked up and
-transported to France or Belgium. We are told that the Allies should
-collect the revenues of the railroads; the _Daily Mail_ wants us to
-'take' the income of Herr Stinnes, all without a word as to the form in
-which this wealth is to _leave Germany_. Are we prepared to take the
-things made in the factories of Herr Stinnes or other Germans? If not,
-what do we propose that Germany shall give? Paper marks increased in
-quantity until they reach just the value of the paper they are printed
-on? Even to secure coal, we must, as we have seen, give in return food.
-
-If the crux of the situation were really understood by the memorialists
-who want Germany's pockets searched, their studies would be devoted
-_not_ to showing what Germany might produce under favourable
-circumstances, which her past has shown to be very great indeed, but
-what degree of competitive German production Allied industrialists will
-themselves be ready to face.
-
-"Big business" in England is already strongly averse to the payment of
-an indemnity, as any conversation in the City or with industrialists
-readily reveals. Yet it was the suggestion of what has actually taken
-place which excited the derision of critics a few years ago. Obviously
-the feasibility of an indemnity is much more a matter of our will than
-of Germany's, for it depends on what shall be the size of Germany's
-foreign trade. Clearly we can expand that if we want to. We might give
-her a preference!
-
-[10] 'What Happened to Europe.'
-
-[11] _Times_, July 3rd., 1920.
-
-[12] The proposal respecting Austria was a loan of 50 millions in
-instalments of five years.
-
-[13] Mr Hoover seems to suggest that their repayment should never take
-place. To a meeting of Bankers he says:--
-
-'Even if we extend these credits and if upon Europe's recovery we then
-attempt to exact the payment of these sums by import of commodities, we
-shall have introduced a competition with our own industries that cannot
-be turned back by any tariff wall.... I believe that we have to-day an
-equipment and a skill in production that yield us a surplus of
-commodities for export beyond any compensation we can usefully take by
-way of imported commodities.... Gold and remittances and services cannot
-cover this gulf in our trade balance.... To me there is only one remedy,
-and that is by the systematic permanent investment of our surplus
-production in reproductive works abroad. We thus reduce the return we
-must receive to a return of interest and profit.'
-
-A writer in the _New Republic_ (Dec. 29th., 1920.) who quotes this says
-pertinently enough:--
-
-'Mr Hoover disposes of the principal of our foreign loans. The debtors
-cannot return it and we cannot afford to receive it back. But the
-interest and profit which he says we may receive--that will have to be
-paid in commodities, as the principal would be if it were paid at all.
-What shall we do when the volume of foreign commodities received in
-payment of interest and profit becomes very large and our industries cry
-for protection?'
-
-[14] The present writer declines to join in the condemnation of British
-miners for reduced output. In an ultimate sense (which is no part of the
-present discussion) the decline in effort of the miner is perhaps
-justified. But the facts are none the less striking as showing how great
-the difference of output can be. Figures given by Sir John Cadman,
-President of the Institute of Mining Engineers a short time ago (and
-quoted in the _Fortnightly Review_ for Oct. 1920.), show that in 1916
-the coal production per person employed in the United Kingdom was 263
-tons, as against 731 tons in the United States. In 1918 the former
-amounted to 236 tons, and during 1919 it sank to 1971/2 tons. In 1913 the
-coal produced per man per day in this country was 0.98 tons, and in
-America it was 3.91 tons for bituminous coal and 2.19 tons for
-anthracite. In 1918 the British output figure was 0.80 tons, and the
-American 3.77 tons for bituminous coal and 2.27 for anthracite. Measured
-by their daily output, a single American miner does just as much work as
-do five Englishmen.
-
-The inferiority in production is, of course, 'to some considerable
-extent' due to the fact that the most easily workable deposits in
-England are becoming exhausted, while the United States can most easily
-draw on their most prolific and most easily workable sites....
-
-It is the fact that in our new and favourable coalfields, such as the
-South Yorkshire area, the men working under the most favourable modern
-conditions and in new mines where the face is near the shaft, do not
-obtain as much coal per man employed, as that got by the miners in the
-country generally under the conditions appertaining forty and fifty
-years ago.
-
-[15] Mr J. M. Keynes, 'The Economic Consequences of the Peace,' p. 211,
-says:--'It is an extraordinary fact that the fundamental economic
-problem of a Europe starving and disintegrating before their eyes, was
-the one question in which it was impossible to arouse the interest of
-the Four.'
-
-[16] Incidentally we see nations not yet brought under capitalist
-organisation (e.g. the peasant nations of the Balkans) equally subject
-to the hostilities we are discussing.
-
-Bertrand Russell writes (_New Republic_, September 15th., 1920):--'No
-doubt commercial rivalry between England and Germany had a great deal to
-do with causing the war, but rivalry is a different thing from
-profit-seeking. Probably by combination, English and German capitalists
-could have made more than they did out of rivalry, but the rivalry was
-instinctive, and its economic form was accidental. The capitalists were
-in the grip of nationalist instinct as much as their proletarian
-'dupes.' In both classes some have gained by the war, but the universal
-will to war was not produced by the hope of gain. It was produced by a
-different set of instincts, one which Marxian psychology fails to
-recognise adequately....
-
-Men desire power, they desire satisfaction for their pride and their
-self-respect. They desire victory over their rivals so profoundly that
-they will invent a rivalry for the unconscious purpose of making a
-victory possible. All these motives cut across the pure economic motive
-in ways that are practically important.
-
-There is need of a treatment of political motives by the methods of
-psycho-analysis. In politics, as in private life, men invent myths to
-rationalise their conduct. If a man thinks that the only reasonable
-motive in politics is economic self-advancement, he will persuade
-himself that the things he wishes to do will make him rich. When he
-wants to fight the Germans, he tells himself that their competition is
-ruining his trade. If, on the other hand, he is an 'idealist,' who holds
-that his politics should aim at the advancement of the human race, he
-will tell himself that the crimes of the Germans demand their
-humiliation. The Marxian sees through this latter camouflage, but not
-through the former.
-
-[17] 'If the Englishman sells goods in Turkey or Argentina, he is taking
-trade from the German, and if the German sells goods in either of these
-countries--or any other country, come to that--he is taking trade from
-the Englishman; and the well-being of every inhabitant of the great
-manufacturing towns, such as London, Paris, or Berlin, is bound up in
-the power of the capitalist to sell his wares; and the production of
-manufactured articles has outstripped the natural increase of demand by
-67 per cent., therefore new markets must be found for these wares or the
-existing ones be "forced"; hence the rush for colonies and feverish
-trade competition between the great manufacturing countries. And the
-production of manufactured goods is still increasing, and the great
-cities must sell their wares or starve. Now we understand what trade
-rivalry really is. It resolves itself, in fact, into the struggle for
-bread.' (A Rifleman: '_Struggle for Bread._' p. 54.)
-
-[18] Mr J. M. Keynes, _The Economic Consequences of the Peace_, says: 'I
-do not put the money value of the actual _physical_ loss to Belgian
-property by destruction and loot above L150,000,000 as a _maximum_, and
-while I hesitate to put yet lower an estimate which differs so widely
-from those generally current, I shall be surprised if it proves possible
-to substantiate claims even to this amount.... While the French claims
-are immensely greater, here too, there has been excessive exaggeration,
-as responsible French statisticians have themselves pointed out. Not
-above 10 per cent. of the area of France was effectively occupied by the
-enemy, and not above 4 per cent. lay within the area of substantial
-devastation.... In short, it will be difficult to establish a bill
-exceeding L500,000,000 for _physical and material_ damage in the
-occupied and devastated areas of Northern France.' (pp. 114-117.)
-
-[19] _The Foundations of International Policy_ pp. xxiii-xxiv.
-
-It is true, of course, that Governments were for their armies and navies
-and public departments considerable purchasers in the international
-market. But the general truth of the distinction here made is
-unaffected. The difference in degree, in this respect, between the
-pre-war and post-war state in so great as to make a difference of kind.
-The dominant motive for State action has been changed.
-
-[20] See Addendum and also the authors' _War and the Workers_. (National
-Labour Press). pp. 29-50.
-
-[21] Note of May 22, 1919.
-
-[22] Speech of September 5, 1919. From report in Philadelphia Public
-Ledger, Sept 6.
-
-[23] In German East Africa we have a case in which practically the whole
-of the property in land was confiscated. The whole European population
-were evicted from the farms and plantations--many, of course,
-representing the labour of a lifetime--and deported. A visitor to the
-colony describes it as an empty shell, its productivity enormously
-reduced. In contradistinction, however, one welcomes General Smuts's
-statement in the Union House of Assembly in regard to the Government's
-intentions as to German property. He declared that the balance of nine
-millions in the hands of the Custodian after claims for damages had been
-recovered, would not be paid to the Reparations Commission, as this
-would practically mean confiscation. The Government would take the nine
-millions, plus interest, as a loan to South Africa for thirty years at
-four per cent. While under the Peace Treaty they had the right to
-confiscate all private property in South-West Africa, they did not
-intend to avail themselves of those rights. They would leave private
-property alone. As to the concessions, if the titles to these were
-proved, they would also be left untouched. The statement of the South
-African Government's intentions, which are the most generous of any
-country in the world, was received with repeated cheers from all
-sections of the House.
-
-[24] Since the above lines were written the following important
-announcement has appeared (according to _The Times_ of October 26th.,
-1920.) in the _Board of Trade Journal_ of October 21st.:--
-
-'H. M. Government have informed the German Government that they do not
-intend to exercise their rights under paragraph 18 of Annex II to Part
-VIII of the Treaty of Versailles, to seize the property of German
-nationals in this country in case of voluntary default by Germany. This
-applies to German property in the United Kingdom or under United Kingdom
-control, whether in the form of bank balances, or in that of goods in
-British bottoms, or of goods sent to this country for sale.
-
-'It has already been announced that German property, rights, and
-interests acquired since the publication of the General Licence
-permitting the resumption of trade with Germany (i.e. since July 12th.,
-1919), are not liable to retention under Art. 297 of the Peace Treaty,
-which gives the Allied and Associated Powers the right to liquidate all
-German property, rights, and interests within their territories at the
-date of the coming into force of the Treaty.'
-
-This announcement has called forth strong protests from France and from
-some quarters in this country, to which the British Government has
-rejoined by a semi-official statement that the concession has been made
-solely on account of British commercial interests. The incident
-illustrates the difficulty of waiving even permissive powers under the
-Treaty, although the exercise of those powers would obviously injure
-British traders. Moreover, the Reparations (Recovery) Act, passed in
-March 1921, appears to be inconsistent with the above announcement.
-
-[25] A point that seems to have been overlooked is the effect of this
-Treaty on the arrangements which may follow changes in the political
-status of, say, Egypt or India or Ireland. If some George Washington of
-the future were to apply the principles of the Treaty to British
-property, the effects might be far-reaching.
-
-A _Quarterly Review_ critic (April 1920) says of these clauses of the
-Treaty (particularly Article 297b.):--
-
-'We are justified in regarding this policy with the utmost apprehension,
-not only because of its injustice, but also because it is likely to form
-precedents of a most mischievous character in the future. If, it will be
-said, the Allied Governments ended their great war for justice and right
-by confiscating private property and ruining those unfortunate
-individuals who happened to have investments outside their own country,
-how can private wealth at home complain if a Labour Government proposes
-to confiscate private property in any business which it thinks suitable
-for "nationalisation"? Under another provision the Reparations
-Commission is actually allowed to demand the surrender of German
-properties and German enterprises in _neutral_ countries. This will be
-found in Article 235, which "introduces a quite novel principle in the
-collection of indemnities."'
-
-[26] See quotations in Addendum.
-
-[27] Cmd. 280 (1919), p. 15.
-
-[28] The dilemma is not, of course, as absolute, as this query would
-suggest. What I am trying to make perfectly clear here is the _kind_ of
-problem that faces us rather than the precise degree of its difficulty.
-My own view is that after much suffering especially to the children, and
-the reduction during a generation or two, perhaps, of the physical
-standard of the race, the German population will find a way round the
-sustenance difficulty. For one thing, France needs German coke quite as
-badly as Germany needs French ore, and this common need may be made the
-basis of a bargain. But though Germany may be able to surmount the
-difficulties created for her by her victors, it is those difficulties
-which will constitute her grievance, and will present precisely the
-kind, if not the degree, of injustice here indicated.
-
-[29] One very commonly sees the statement that France had no adequate
-resources in iron ore before the War. This is an entire mistake, as the
-Report of the Commission appointed by the Minister of Munitions to visit
-Lorraine (issued July, 1919), points out (p. 11.):--'Before the War the
-resources of Germany of iron ore were 3,600,000,000 tons and those of
-France 3,300,000,000.' What gave Germany the advantage was the
-possession not of greater ore resources than France, but of coal
-suitable for furnace coke, and this superiority in coal will still
-remain even after the Treaty, although the paralysis of transport and
-other indispensable factors may render the superiority valueless. The
-report just quoted says:--'It is true that Germany will want iron ore
-from Lorraine (in 1913 she took 14,000,000 tons from Briey and
-18,500,000 tons from Lorraine), but she will not be so entirely
-dependent upon this one source of supply as the Lorraine works will be
-upon Germany for coke, unless some means are provided to enable Lorraine
-to obtain coke from elsewhere, or to produce her own needs from Saar
-coal and imported coking coal.' The whole report seems to indicate that
-the _mise en valeur_ of France's new 'property' depends upon supplies of
-German coal--to say nothing of the needs of a German market and the
-markets depending on that market. As it is, the Lorraine steel works are
-producing nothing like their full output because of the inability of
-Germany to supply furnace coke, owing largely to the Westphalian labour
-troubles and transport disorganisation. Whether political passion will
-so far subside as to enable the two countries to come to a bargain in
-the matter of exchange of ore or basic pig-iron for furnace coke,
-remains to be seen. In any case one may say that the ore-fields of
-Lorraine will only be of value to France provided that much of their
-product is returned to Germany and used for the purpose of giving value
-to German coal.
-
-[30] From the summary of a series of lectures on the _Biology of Death_,
-as reported in the _Boston Herald_ of December 19th., 1920.
-
-[31] A recent book on the subject, summing up the various
-recommendations made in France up to 1918 for increasing the birth-rate
-is _La Natalite: ses Lois Economiques et Psychologiques_, by Gaston
-Rageot.
-
-The present writer remembers being present ten years before the War at a
-Conference at the Sorbonne on this subject. One of the lecturers
-summarised all the various plans that had been tried to increase the
-birth-rate. 'They have all failed,' he concluded, 'and I doubt if
-anything remains to be done.' And one of the savants present added:
-'Except to applaud.'
-
-[32] Mr William Harbutt Dawson gives the figures as follows:--
-
-'The decline in the birth-rate was found to have become a settled factor
-in the population question.... The birth-rate for the whole Empire
-reached the maximum figure in 1876, when it stood at 41.0 per 1000 of
-the population.... Since 1876 the movement has been steadily downward,
-with the slightest possible break at the beginning of the 'nineties....
-Since 1900 the rate has decreased as follows:--
-
-  1900      35.6 per 1000.
-  1901      35.7 per   "
-  1902      35.1 per   "
-  1903      33.9 per   "
-  1904      34.1 per 1000.
-  1905      33.0 per   "
-  1906      33.1 per   "
-
-(_The Evolution of Modern Germany._ p. 309)
-
-[33] Conversely it may be said that the economic position of the border
-States becomes impossible unless the greater States are orderly. In
-regard to Poland, Mr Keynes remarks: 'Unless her great neighbours are
-prosperous and orderly, Poland is an economic impossibility, with no
-industry but Jew-baiting.'
-
-Sir William Goode (the British Director of Relief) states that he found
-'everywhere never-ending vicious circles of political paradox and
-economic complication, with consequent paralysis of national life and
-industry. The new States of repartitioned Europe seem not only incapable
-of maintaining their own economic life, but also either unable or
-unwilling to help their neighbours.' (Cmd. 521 (1920), p. 6.)
-
-[34] From a manifesto signed by a large number of American
-intellectuals, business men, and Labour Leaders ('League of Free Nations
-Association') on the eve of President Wilson's departure for Paris.
-
-[35] Interview published by _Pearson's Magazine_, March, 1915.
-
-[36] _Times_, March 8, 1915. 'Our honour and interest must have
-compelled us to join France and Russia even if Germany had scrupulously
-respected the rights of her small neighbours and had sought to hack her
-way through the Eastern fortresses. The German Chancellor has insisted
-more than once upon this truth. He has fancied apparently that he was
-making an argumentative point against us by establishing it. That, like
-so much more, only shows his complete misunderstanding of our attitude
-and our character.... We reverted to our historical policy of the
-Balance of Power.'
-
-The _Times_ maintains the same position five years later (July 31st,
-1920): 'It needed more than two years of actual warfare to render the
-British people wholly conscious that they were fighting not a quixotic
-fight for Belgium and France, but a desperate battle for their own
-existence.'
-
-[37] _How the War Came_, p. 238.
-
-[38] Lord Loreburn adds:--
-
-'But Sir Edward Grey in 1914 did not and could not offer similar
-Treaties to France and Germany because our relations with France and the
-conduct of Germany were such, that for us to join Germany in any event
-was unthinkable. And he did not proclaim our neutrality because our
-relations with France, as described in his own speech, were such that he
-could not in honour refuse to join France in the war. Therefore the
-example of 1870 could not be followed in 1914, and Belgium was not saved
-but destroyed.'
-
-[39] See the Documents published by the Russian Government in November,
-1917.
-
-[40] It is not clear whether the undertaking to Russia was actually
-given. Lord R. Cecil in the House of Commons on July 24th, 1917, said:
-'It will be for this country to back up the French in what they desire.
-I will not go through all the others of our Allies--there are a good
-many of them--but the principle (to stand by our Allies) will be equally
-there in the case of all and particularly in the case of Serbia.'
-
-[41] Since these lines were written, there has been a change of
-government and of policy in Italy. An agreement has been reached with
-Yugo-Slavia, which appears to satisfy the moderate elements in both
-countries.
-
-[42] Lord Curzon (May 17th, 1920) wrote that he did not see how we could
-invoke the League to restrain Poland. The Poles, he added, must choose
-war or peace on their own responsibility. Mr Lloyd George (June 19th,
-1920) declared that 'the League of Nations could not intervene in
-Poland.'
-
-[43] _The War that will End War_, p. 14.
-
-[44] _Ibid._, p. 19.
-
-[45] _The Issue_, p. 37-39.
-
-[46] _Land and Water_, February 21st, 1918.
-
-[47] Even as late as January 13th, 1920, Mr H. W. Wilson of the _Daily
-Mail_ writes that if the disarmament of Germany is carried out 'the real
-cause of swollen armaments in Europe will vanish.'
-
-On May 18th, 1920, Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson (_Morning Post_, May
-19th) declares himself thus:--
-
-'We were told that after this last war we were to have peace. We have
-not; there are something between twenty and thirty bloody wars going on
-at the present moment. We were told that the great war was to end war.
-It did not; it could not. We have a very difficult time ahead, whether
-on the sea, in the air, or on the land.' He wanted them to take away the
-warning from a fellow soldier that their country and their Empire both
-wanted them to-day as much as ever they had, and if they were as proud
-of belonging to the British Empire as he was they would do their best,
-in whatever capacity they served, to qualify themselves for the times
-that were coming.
-
-[48] July 31st, 1920.
-
-[49] April 19th, 1919.
-
-[50] A Reuter Despatch dated August 31st, 1920, says:--
-
-'Speaking to-day at Charleston (West Virginia) Mr Daniels, U. S. Naval
-Secretary, said: "We are building enormous docks and are constructing 18
-dreadnoughts and battle cruisers, with a dozen other powerful ships
-which in effective fighting power will give our navy world primacy."'
-
-[51] We are once more back to the Carlylean 'deep, patient ... virtuous
-... Germany.'
-
-[52] Sir Henry Wilson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, in a
-memorandum dated December 1st, 1919, which appears in a Blue Book on
-'the Evacuation of North Russia, 1919,' says:--'There is one great
-lesson to be learned from the history of the campaign.... It is that
-once a military force is involved in operations on land it is almost
-impossible to limit the magnitude of its commitments.'
-
-[53] And Russo-German co-operation is of course precisely what French
-policy must create. Says an American critic:--
-
-'France certainly carries a big stick, but she does not speak softly;
-she takes her own part, but she seems to fear neither God nor the
-revulsion of man. Yet she has reason to fear. Suppose she succeeds for a
-while in reducing Germany to servitude and Russia to a dictatorship of
-the Right, in securing her own dominion on the Continent as overlord by
-the petty States of Europe. What then? What can be the consequence of a
-common hostility of the Teutonic and Slavonic peoples, except in the end
-common action on their part to throw off an intolerable yoke? The
-nightmare of a militant Russo-German alliance becomes daily a more
-sinister prophecy, as France teaches the people of Europe that force
-alone is the solvent. France has only to convince all of Germany that
-the Treaty of Versailles will be enforced in all its rigour, which means
-occupation of the Ruhr and the loss of Silesia, to destroy the final
-resistance of those Germans who look to the West rather than to the East
-for salvation. Let it be known that the barrier of the Rhine is all
-bayonet and threat, and western-minded Germany must go down before the
-easterners, Communist or Junker. It will not matter greatly which.'
-(_New Republic_, Sept. 15th, 1920).
-
-[54] December 23rd, 1919.
-
-[55] _The Times_ of September 4th, 1920 reproduces an article from the
-Matin, on M. Millerand's policy with regard to small States. M.
-Millerand's aim was that economic aid should go hand in hand with French
-military protection. With this policy in view, a number of large
-businesses recently passed under French control, including the Skoda
-factory in Czecho-Slovakia, big works at Kattowitz in Upper Silesia, the
-firm of Huta-Bankowa in Poland, railway factories in Rumania, and
-certain river systems and ports in Yugo-Slavia. In return for assistance
-to Admiral Horthy, an agreement was signed whereby France obtained
-control of the Hungarian State Railways, of the Credit Bank, the
-Hungarian river system and the port of Buda-pest. Other reports state
-that France has secured 85 per cent. of the oil-fields of Poland, in
-return for her help at the time of the threat to Warsaw. As the majority
-of shares in the Polish Oil Company 'Galicia,' which have been in
-British hands until recently, have been bought up by a French Company,
-the 'Franco-Polonaise,' France now holds an important weapon of
-international policy.
-
-[56] The present writer would like to enter a warning here that nothing
-in this chapter implies that we should disregard France's very
-legitimate fears of a revived militarist Germany. The implication is
-that she is going the right way about to create the very dangers that
-terrify her. If this were the place to discuss alternative policies, I
-should certainly go on to urge that England--and America--should make it
-plain to France that they are prepared to pledge their power to her
-defence. More than that, both countries should offer to forgo the debts
-owing to them by France on condition of French adhesion to more workable
-European arrangements. The last thing to be desired is a rupture, or a
-mere change of roles: France to become once more the 'enemy' and Germany
-once more the 'Ally.' That outcome would merely duplicate the weary
-story of the past.
-
-[57] _The Expansion of England_, p. 202.
-
-[58] The assumption marks even post-war rhetoric. M. Millerand's message
-to the Senate and Chamber upon his election as President of the Republic
-says: 'True to the Alliances for ever cemented by blood shed in common,'
-France will strictly enforce the Treaty of Versailles, 'a new charter of
-Europe and the World.' (_Times_, Sept. 27th, 1920). The passage is
-typical of the moral fact dealt with in this chapter. M. Millerand
-knows, his hearers know, that the war Alliance 'for ever cemented by
-blood shed in common,' has already ceased to exist. But the admission of
-this patent fact would be fatal to the 'blood' heroics.
-
-[59] Dr L. P. Jacks, Editor of _The Hibbert Journal_, tells us that
-before the War the English nation, regarded from the moral point of
-view, was a scene of 'indescribable confusion; a moral chaos.' But there
-has come to it 'the peace of mind that comes to every man who, after
-tossing about among uncertainties, finds at last a mission, a cause to
-which he can devote himself.' For this reason, he says, the War has
-actually made the English people happier than they were before:
-'brighter, more cheerful. The Englishman worries less about himself....
-The tone and substance of conversation are better.... There is more
-health in our souls and perhaps in our bodies.' And he tells how the War
-cured a friend of insomnia. (_The Peacefulness of Being at War_, _New
-Republic_, September 11, 1915).
-
-[60] The facts of both the Russian and the Italian bargains are dealt
-with in more detail in Chap. III.
-
-[61] Quoted by Mr T. L. Stoddard in an article on Italian Nationalism,
-in the _Forum_, Sept. 1915. One may hope that the outcome of the War has
-modified the tendencies in Italy of which he treats. But the quotations
-he makes from Italian Nationalist writers put Treitschke and Bernhardi
-in the shade. Here are some. Corradini says: 'Italy must become once
-more the first nation in the world.' Rocco: 'It is said that all the
-other territories are occupied. But strong nations, or nations on the
-path of progress, conquer.... territories occupied by nations in
-decadence.' Luigi Villari rejoices that the cobwebs of mean-spirited
-Pacifism have been swept away. Italians are beginning to feel, in
-whatever part of the world they may happen to be, something of the pride
-of Roman citizens.' Scipione Sighele writes: 'War must be loved for
-itself.... To say "War is the most horrible of evils," to talk of war as
-"an unhappy necessity," to declare that we should "never attack but
-always know how to defend ourselves," to say these things is as
-dangerous as to make out-and-out Pacifist and anti-militarist speeches.
-It is creating for the future a conflict of duties: duties towards
-humanity, duties towards the Fatherland.' Corradini explains the
-programme of the Nationalists: 'All our efforts will tend towards making
-the Italians a warlike race. We will give it a new will; we will instil
-into it the appetite for power, the need of mighty hopes. We will create
-a religion--the religion of the Fatherland victorious over the other
-nations.'
-
-I am indebted to Mr Stoddard for the translations; but they read quite
-'true to type.'
-
-[62] It is true that the Labour Party, alone of all the parties, did
-take action, happily effective, against the Russian adventure--after it
-had gone on in intermittent form for two years. But the above paragraphs
-refer particularly to the period which immediately succeeded the War,
-and to a general temper which was unfortunately a fact despite Labour
-action.
-
-[63] Mr Hartley Manners, the playwright, who produced during the War a
-book entitled _Hate with a Will to Victory_, writes thus:--
-
-'And in voicing our doctrine of Hate let us not forget that the German
-people were, and are still, solidly behind him (the Kaiser) in
-everything he does.' ...
-
-'The German people are actively and passively with their Government to
-the last man and the last mark. No people receive their faith and their
-rules of conduct more fatuously from their rulers than do the German
-people. Fronting the world they stand as one with their beloved Kaiser.
-He who builds on a revolution in Germany as a possible ending of the
-war, knows not what he says. They will follow through any degradation of
-the body, through any torture of spirit, the tyrants they have been
-taught from infancy to regard as their Supreme Masters of body and
-soul.' ...
-
-And here is his picture of 'the German':--
-
-... 'a slave from birth, with no rights as a free man, owing allegiance
-to a militaristic Government to whom he looks for his very life; crushed
-by taxation to keep up the military machine; ill-nourished, ignorant,
-prone to crime in greater measure than the peasants of any other
-country--as the German statistics of crime show--a degraded peasant, a
-wretched future, and a loathesome past--these are the inheritances to
-which the German peasant is born. What type of nature can develop in
-such conditions? But one--the _brute_. And the four years' commerce of
-this War has shown the German from prince to peasant as offspring of the
-one family--the _brute_ family.' ...
-
-[64] The following--which appeared in _The Times_ of April 17, 1915--is
-merely a type of at least thirty or forty similar reports published by
-the German Army Headquarters: 'In yesterday's clear weather the airmen
-were very active. Enemy airmen bombarded places behind our positions.
-Freiburg was again visited, and several civilians, the majority being
-children, were killed and wounded.' A few days later the Paris _Temps_
-(April 22, 1915) reproduced the German accounts of French air-raids
-where bombs were dropped on Kandern, Loerrach, Mulheim, Habsheim,
-Wiesenthal, Tublingen, Mannheim. These raids were carried out by squads
-of airmen, and the bombs were thrown particularly at railway stations
-and factories. Previous to this, British and French airmen had been
-particularly active in Belgium, dropping bombs on Zeebrugge, Bruges,
-Middlekirke, and other towns. One German official report tells how a
-bomb fell on to a loaded street car, killing many women and children.
-Another (dated September 7, 1915) contains the following: 'In the course
-of an enemy aeroplane attack on Lichtervelde, north of Roulers in
-Flanders, seven Belgian inhabitants were killed and two injured.' A
-despatch from Zurich, dated Sept. 24, 1915, says: 'At yesterday's
-meeting of the Stuttgart City Council, the Mayor and Councillors
-protested vigorously against the recent French raid upon an undefended
-city. Burgomaster Lautenschlager asserted that an enemy that attacked
-harmless civilians was fighting a lost cause.'
-
-[65] March 27th, 1919.
-
-[66] In Drinkwater's play, _Abraham Lincoln_, the fire-eating wife of
-the war-profiteer, who had been violently abusing an old Quaker lady, is
-thus addressed by Lincoln:--
-
-'I don't agree with her, but I honour her. She's wrong, but she is
-noble. You've told me what you think. I don't agree with you, and I'm
-ashamed of you and your like. You, who have sacrificed nothing babble
-about destroying the South while other people conquer it. I accepted
-this war with a sick heart, and I've a heart that's near to breaking
-every day. I accepted it in the name of humanity, and just and merciful
-dealing, and the hope of love and charity on earth. And you come to me,
-talking of revenge and destruction, and malice, and enduring hate. These
-gentle people are mistaken, but they are mistaken cleanly, and in a
-great name. It is you that dishonour the cause for which we stand--it is
-you who would make it a mean and little thing....'
-
-[67] The official record of the Meeting of the Council of Ten on January
-16, 1919, as furnished to the Foreign Relations Committee of the
-American Senate, reports Mr Lloyd George as saying:--
-
-'The mere idea of crushing Bolshevism by military force is pure
-madness....
-
-'The Russian blockade would be a "death cordon," condemning women and
-children to starvation, a policy which, as humane people, those present
-could not consider.'
-
-[68] While attempting in this chapter to reveal the essential difference
-of the two methods open to us, it is hardly necessary to say that in the
-complexities and cross-currents of human society practical policy can
-rarely be guided by a single absolute principle. Reference has been made
-to the putting of the pooled force of the nations behind a principle or
-law as the alternative of each attempting to use his own for enforcing
-his own view. The writer does not suppose for an instant that it is
-possible immediately to draw up a complete Federal Code of Law for
-Europe, to create a well-defined European constitution and then raise a
-European army to defend it, or body of police to enforce it. He is
-probably the last person in the world likely to believe the political
-ideas of the European capable of such an agile adaptation.
-
-[69] Delivered at Portland, Maine, on March 28th, 1918; reported in _New
-York Times_, March 29th.
-
-[70] Bertrand Russell: _Principles of Social Reconstruction._
-
-Mr. Trotter in _Instincts of the Herd in War and Peace_, says:--
-
-'We see one instinct producing manifestations directly hostile to each
-other--prompting to ever-advancing developments of altruism while it
-necessarily leads to any new product of advance being attacked. It
-shows, moreover ... that a gregarious species rapidly developing a
-complex society can be saved from inextricable confusion only by the
-appearance of reason and the application of it to life. (p. 46.)
-
-... 'The conscious direction of man's destiny is plainly indicated by
-Nature as the only mechanism by which the social life of so complex an
-animal can be guaranteed against disaster and brought to yield its full
-possibilities, (p. 162.)
-
-... 'Such a directing intelligence or group of intelligences would take
-into account before all things the biological character of man.... It
-would discover when natural inclinations in man must be indulged, and
-would make them respectable, what inclinations in him must be controlled
-for the advantage of the species, and make them insignificant.' (p.
-162-3.)
-
-[71] The opening sentence of a five volume _History of the Peace
-Conference of Paris_, edited by H. W. V. Temperley, and published under
-the auspices of the Institute of International Affairs, is as follows:--
-
-'The war was a conflict between the principles of freedom and of
-autocracy, between the principles of moral influence and of material
-force, of government by consent and of government by compulsion.'
-
-[72] Foremost as examples stand out the claims of German Austria to
-federate with Germany; the German population of the Southern Tyrol with
-Austria; the Bohemian Germans with Austria; the Transylvanian Magyars
-with Hungary; the Bulgarians of Macedonia, the Bulgarians of the
-Dobrudja, and the Bulgarians of Western Thrace with Bulgaria; the Serbs
-of the Serbian Banat with Yugo-Slavia; the Lithuanians and Ukrainians
-for freedom from Polish dominion.
-
-[73] We know now (see the interview with M. Paderewski in the _New York
-World_) that we compelled Poland to remain at war when she wanted to
-make peace. It has never been fully explained why the Prinkipo peace
-policy urged by Mr Lloyd George as early as December 1918 was defeated,
-and why instead we furnished munitions, tanks, aeroplanes, poison gas,
-military missions and subsidies in turn to Koltchak, Denikin, Yudenitch,
-Wrangel, and Poland. We prolonged the blockade--which in the early
-phases forbade Germany that was starving to catch fish in the Baltic,
-and stopped medicine and hospital supplies to the Russians--for fear,
-apparently, of the very thing which might have helped to save Europe,
-the economic co-operation of Russia and Central Europe.
-
-[74] 'We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling
-towards them but one of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon their
-impulse that their government acted in entering this war.' ... 'We are
-glad ... to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world, and for the
-liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included: for the rights
-of nations great and small ... to choose their way of life.' (President
-Wilson, Address to Congress, April 2nd, 1917).
-
-[75] _The Economic Consequences of the Peace_, p. 211.
-
-[76] See quotations from Sir A. Conan Doyle, later in this Chapter.
-
-[77] See, e.g., the facts as to the repression of Socialism in America,
-Chapter V.
-
-[78] _The Atlantic Monthly_, November 1920.
-
-[79] _Realities of War_, pp. 426-7, 441.
-
-[80] Is it necessary to say that the present writer does not accept it?
-
-[81] The argument is not invalidated in the least by sporadic instances
-of liberal activity here--an isolated article or two. For iteration is
-the essence of propaganda as an opinion forming factor.
-
-[82] In an article in the _North American Review_, just before America's
-entrance into the War, I attempted to indicate the danger by making one
-character in an imaginary symposium say: 'One talks of "Wilson's
-programme," "Wilson's policy." There will be only one programme and one
-policy possible as soon as the first American soldier sets foot on
-European soil: Victory. Bottomley and Maxse will be milk and water to
-what we shall see America producing. We shall have a settlement so
-monstrous that Germany will offer any price to Russia and Japan for
-their future help.... America's part in the War will absorb about all
-the attention and interest that busy people can give to public affairs.
-They will forget about these international arrangements concerning the
-sea, the League of Peace--the things for which the country entered the
-War. In fact if Wilson so much as tries to remind them of the objects of
-the War he will be accused of pro-Germanism, and you will have their
-ginger Press demanding that the "old gang" be "combed out."'
-
-[83] 'If we take the extremist 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.' (_What is
-coming?_ p. 198).
-
-[84] See the memoranda published in _The Secrets of Crewe House_.
-
-[85] Mr Keynes is not alone in declaring that the Treaty makes of our
-armistice engagements a 'scrap of paper.' _The Round Table_, in an
-article which aims at justifying the Treaty as a whole, says: 'Opinions
-may differ as to the actual letter of the engagements which we made at
-the Armistice, but the spirit of them is undoubtedly strained in some of
-the detailed provisions of the peace. There is some honest ground for
-the feeling manifested in Germany that the terms on which she laid down
-her arms have not been observed in all respects.'
-
-A very unwilling witness to our obligations is Mr Leo Maxse, who writes
-(_National Review_, February, 1921):--
-
-'Thanks to the American revelations we are in a better position to
-appreciate the trickery and treachery of the pre-Armistice negotiations,
-as well as the hideous imposture of the Paris Peace Conference, which,
-we now learn for the first time, was governed by the self-denying
-ordinance of the previous November, when, unbeknown to the countries
-betrayed, the Fourteen Points had been inextricably woven into the
-Armistice. Thus was John Bull effectively 'dished' of every farthing of
-his war costs.'
-
-As a fact, of course, the self-denying ordinance was not 'unbeknown to
-the countries betrayed.' The Fourteen Points commitment was quite open;
-the European Allies could have repudiated them, as, on one point,
-Britain did.
-
-[86] A quite considerable school, who presumably intend to be taken
-seriously, would have us believe that the French Revolution, the Russian
-Revolution, the English Trade Union Movement are all the work of a small
-secret Jewish Club or Junta--their work, that is, in the sense that but
-for them the Revolutions or Revolutionary movements would not have taken
-place. These arguments are usually brought by 'intense nationalists' who
-also believe that sentiments like nationalism are so deeply rooted that
-mere ideas or theories can never alter them.
-
-[87] An American playwright has indicated amusingly with what ingenuity
-we can create a 'collectivity.' One of the characters in the play
-applies for a chauffeur's job. A few questions reveal the fact that he
-does not know anything about it. 'Why does he want to be a chauffeur?'
-'Well, I'll tell you, boss. Last year I got knocked down by an
-automobile and badly hurt. And I made up my mind that when I came out of
-the hospital I'd get a bit of my own back. Get even by knocking over a
-few guys, see?' A policy of 'reprisals,' in fact.
-
-[88] December 26th, 1917.
-
-[89] A thing which happens about once a week in the United States.
-
-[90] October 16th, 1917.
-
-[91] The amazing rapidity with which we can change sides and causes, and
-the enemy become the Ally, and the Ally the enemy, in the course of a
-few weeks, approaches the burlesque.
-
-At the head of the Polish armies is Marshal Pilsudski, who fought under
-Austro-German command, against Russia. His ally is the Ukrainian
-adventurer, General Petlura, who first made a separate peace at
-Brest-Litovsk, and contracted there to let the German armies into the
-Ukraine, and to deliver up to them its stores of grain. These in May
-1920 were the friends of the Allies. The Polish Finance Minister at the
-time we were aiding Poland was Baron Bilinski, a gentleman who filled
-the same post in the Austrian Cabinet which let loose the world war,
-insisted hotly on the ultimatum to Serbia, helped to ruin the finances
-of the Hapsburg dominions by war, and then after the collapse repeated
-the same operation in Poland. On the other side the command has passed,
-it is said, to the dashing General Brusiloff, who again and again saved
-the Eastern front from Austrian and German offensives. He is now the
-'enemy' and his opponents our 'Allies.' They are fighting to tear the
-Ukraine, which means all South Russia, away from the Russian State. The
-preceding year we spent millions to achieve the opposite result. The
-French sent their troops to Odessa, and we gave our tanks to Denikin, in
-order to enable him to recover this region for Imperial Russia.
-
-[92] The Russian case is less evident. But only the moral inertia
-following on a long war could have made our Russian record possible.
-
-[93] He complained that I had 'publicly reproved him' for supporting
-severity in warfare. He was mistaken. As he really did believe in the
-effectiveness of terrorism, he did a very real service by standing
-publicly for his conviction.
-
-[94] Here is what the _Times_ of December 10th, 1870, has to say about
-France and Germany respectively, and on the Alsace-Lorraine question:--
-
-'We must say with all frankness that France has never shown herself so
-senseless, so pitiful, so worthy of contempt and reprobation, as at the
-present moment, when she obstinately declines to look facts in the face,
-and refuses to accept the misfortune her own conduct has brought upon
-her. A France broken up in utter anarchy, Ministers who have no
-recognised chief, who rise from the dust in their air balloons, and who
-carry with them for ballast shameful and manifest lies and proclamations
-of victories that exist only in their imagination, a Government which is
-sustained by lies and imposture, and chooses rather to continue and
-increase the waste of lives than to resign its own dictatorship and its
-wonderful Utopia of a republic; that is the spectacle which France
-presents to-day. It is hard to say whether any nation ever before
-burdened itself with such a load of shame. The quantity of lies which
-France officially and unofficially has been manufacturing for us in the
-full knowledge that they are lies, is something frightful and absolutely
-unprecedented. Perhaps it is not much after all in comparison with the
-immeasurable heaps of delusions and unconscious lies which have so long
-been in circulation among the French. Their men of genius who are
-recognised as such in all departments of literature are apparently of
-opinion that France outshines other nations in a superhuman wisdom, that
-she is the new Zion of the whole world, and that the literary
-productions of the French, for the last fifty years, however insipid,
-unhealthy, and often indeed devilish, contain a real gospel, rich in
-blessing for all the children of men.
-
-We believe that Bismarck will take as much of Alsace-Lorraine, too, as
-he chooses, and that it will be the better for him, the better for us,
-the better for all the world but France, and the better in the long run
-for France herself. Through large and quiet measures, Count von Bismarck
-is aiming with eminent ability at a single object; the well-being of
-Germany and of the world, of the large-hearted, peace-loving,
-enlightened, and honest people of Germany growing into one nation; and
-if Germany becomes mistress of the Continent in place of France, which
-is light-hearted, ambitious, quarrelsome, and over-excitable, it will be
-the most momentous event of the present day, and all the world must hope
-that it will soon come about.'
-
-[95] We realise without difficulty that no society could be formed by
-individuals each of whom had been taught to base his conduct on adages
-such as these: 'Myself alone'; 'myself before anybody else'; 'my ego is
-sacred'; 'myself over all'; 'myself right or wrong.' Yet those are the
-slogans of Patriotism the world over and are regarded as noble and
-inspiring, shouted with a moral and approving thrill.
-
-[96] However mischievous some of the manifestations of Nationalism may
-prove, the worst possible method of dealing with it is by the forcible
-repression of any of its claims which can be granted with due regard to
-the general interest. To give Nationalism full play, as far as possible,
-is the best means of attenuating its worst features and preventing its
-worst developments. This, after all, is the line of conduct which we
-adopt to certain religious beliefs which we may regard as dangerous
-superstitions. Although the belief may have dangers, the social dangers
-involved in forcible repression would be greater still.
-
-[97] _The Great Illusion_, p. 326
-
-[98] 'The Pacifists lie when they tell us that the danger of war is
-over.' General Leonard Wood.
-
-[99] _The Science of Power_, p. 14.
-
-[100] Ibid, p. 144.
-
-[101] See quotations, Part I, Chapters I and III.
-
-[102] The validity of this assumption still holds even though we take
-the view that the defence of war as an inevitable struggle for bread is
-merely a rationalisation (using that word in the technical sense of the
-psychologists) of impulse or instinct, merely, that is, an attempt to
-find a 'reason' for conduct the real explanation of which is the
-subconscious promptings of pugnacities or hostilities, the craving of
-our nature for certain kinds of action. If we could not justify our
-behaviour in terms of self-preservation, it would stand so plainly
-condemned ethically and socially that discipline of instinct--as in the
-case of sex instinct--would obviously be called for and enforced. In
-either case, the road to better behaviour is by a clearer revelation of
-the social mischief of the predominant policy.
-
-[103] Rear-Admiral A. T. Mahan: _Force in International Relations_.
-
-[104] _The Interest of America in International Conditions_, by
-Rear-Admiral A. T. Mahan, pp. 47-87.
-
-[105] _Government and the War_, p. 62.
-
-[106] _State Morality and a League of Nations_, pp 83-85.
-
-[107] _North American Review_, March 1912.
-
-[108] Admiral Mahan himself makes precisely this appeal:--
-
-'That extension of national authority over alien communities, which is
-the dominant note in the world politics of to-day, dignifies and
-enlarges each State and each citizen that enters its fold.... Sentiment,
-imagination, aspiration, the satisfaction of the rational and moral
-faculties in some object better than bread alone, all must find a part
-in a worthy motive. Like individuals, nations and empires have souls as
-well as bodies. Great and beneficent achievement ministers to worthier
-contentment than the filling of the pocket.'
-
-[109] It is not necessary to enter exhaustively into the difficult
-problem of 'natural right.' It suffices for the purpose of this argument
-that the claim of others to life will certainly be made and that we can
-only refuse it at a cost which diminishes our own chances of survival.
-
-[110] See Mr Churchill's declaration, quoted Part I Chapter V.
-
-[111] Mr J. L. Garvin, who was among those who bitterly criticised this
-thesis on account of its 'sordidness,' now writes: 'Armageddon might
-become almost as frequent as General Elections if belligerency were not
-restrained by sheer dread of the consequences in an age of economic
-interdependence when even victory has ceased to pay.'
-
-(Quoted in _Westminster Gazette_, Jan. 24, 1921.)
-
-[112] The introductory synopsis reads:--
-
-What are the fundamental motives that explain the present rivalry of
-armaments in Europe, notably the Anglo-German? Each nation pleads the
-need for defence; but this implies that some one is likely to attack,
-and has therefore a presumed interest in so doing. What are the motives
-which each State thus fears its neighbours may obey?
-
-They are based on the universal assumption that a nation, in order to
-find outlets for expanding population and increasing industry, or simply
-to ensure the best conditions possible for its people, is necessarily
-pushed to territorial expansion and the exercise of political force
-against others (German naval competition is assumed to be the expression
-of the growing need of an expanding population for a larger place in the
-world, a need which will find a realisation in the conquest of English
-Colonies or trade, unless these were defended); it is assumed,
-therefore, that a nation's relative prosperity is broadly determined by
-its political power; that nations being competing units, advantage, in
-the last resort, goes to the possessor of preponderant military force,
-the weaker going to the wall, as in the other forms of the struggle for
-life.
-
-The author challenges this whole doctrine.
-
-[113] See chapters _The Psychological Case for Peace_, _Unchanging Human
-Nature_, and _Is the Political Reformation Possible?_
-
-'Not the facts, but men's opinions about the facts, is what matters.
-Men's conduct is determined, not necessarily by the right conclusion
-from facts, but the conclusion they believe to be right.'
-
-In another pre-war book of the present writer (_The Foundations of
-International Polity_) the same view is developed, particularly in the
-passage which has been reproduced in Chapter VI of this book, 'The
-Alternative Risks of Status and Contract.'
-
-[114] The cessation of religious war indicates the greatest outstanding
-fact in the history of civilised mankind during the last thousand years,
-which is this: that all civilised Governments have abandoned their claim
-to dictate the belief of their subjects. For very long that was a right
-tenaciously held, and it was held on grounds for which there is an
-immense deal to be said. It was held that as belief is an integral part
-of conduct, that as conduct springs from belief, and the purpose of the
-State is to ensure such conduct as will enable us to go about our
-business in safety, it was obviously the duty of the State to protect
-those beliefs, the abandonment of which seemed to undermine the
-foundations of conduct. I do not believe that this case has ever been
-completely answered.... Men of profound thought and profound learning
-to-day defend it, and personally I have found it very difficult to make
-a clear and simple case for the defence of the principle on which every
-civilised Government in the world is to-day founded. How do you account
-for this--that a principle which I do not believe one man in a million
-could defend from all objections has become the dominating rule of
-civilised government throughout the world?
-
-'Well, that once universal policy has been abandoned, not because every
-argument, or even perhaps most of the arguments, which led to it, have
-been answered, but because the fundamental one has. The conception on
-which it rested has been shown to be, not in every detail, but in the
-essentials at least, an illusion, a _mis_conception.
-
-'The world of religious wars and of the Inquisition was a world which
-had a quite definite conception of the relation of authority to
-religious belief and to truth--as that authority was the source of
-truth; that truth could be, and should be, protected by force; that
-Catholics who did not resent an insult offered to their faith (like the
-failure of a Huguenot to salute a passing religious procession) were
-renegade.
-
-'Now, what broke down this conception was a growing realisation that
-authority, force, was irrelevant to the issues of truth (a party of
-heretics triumphed by virtue of some physical accident, as that they
-occupied a mountain region); that it was ineffective, and that the
-essence of truth was something outside the scope of physical conflict.
-As the realisation of this grew, the conflicts declined.'--_Foundations
-of International Polity_, p. 214.
-
-[115] An attempt is made, in _The Great Illusion_, to sketch the process
-which lies behind the progressive substitution of bargain for coercion
-(The Economic Interpretation of the History of Development 'From Status
-to Contract') on pages 187-192, and further developed in a chapter 'the
-Diminishing Factor of Physical Force' (p. 257).
-
-[116] 'When we learn that London, instead of using its police for the
-running in of burglars and "drunks," is using them to lead an attack on
-Birmingham for the purpose of capturing that city as part of a policy of
-"municipal expansion," or "Civic Imperialism," or "Pan-Londonism," or
-what not; or is using its force to repel an attack by the Birmingham
-police acting as the result of a similar policy on the part of the
-Birmingham patriots--when that happens you can safely approximate a
-police force to a European army. But until it does, it is quite evident
-that the two--the army and the police force--have in reality
-diametrically opposed roles. The police exist as an instrument of social
-co-operation; the armies as the natural outcome of the quaint illusion
-that though one city could never enrich itself by "capturing" or
-"subjugating" another, in some wonderful (and unexplained) way one
-country can enrich itself by capturing or subjugating another....
-
-'France has benefited by the conquest of Algeria, England by that of
-India, because in each case the arms were employed not, properly
-speaking, for conquest, but for police purposes, for the establishment
-and maintenance of order; and, so far as they filled that role, their
-role was a useful one....
-
-'Germany has no need to maintain order in England, nor England in
-Germany, and the latent struggle, therefore, between these two countries
-is futile....
-
-'It is one of the humours of the whole Anglo-German conflict that so
-much has the British public been concerned with the myths and bogeys of
-the matter, that it seems calmly to have ignored the realities. While
-even the wildest Pan-German does not cast his eyes in the direction of
-Canada, he does cast them in the direction of Asia Minor; and the
-political activities of Germany may centre on that area for precisely
-the reasons which result from the distinction between policing and
-conquest which I have drawn. German industry is coming to have a
-dominating situation in the Near East, and as those interests--her
-markets and investments--increase, the necessity for better order in,
-and the better organisation of, such territories, increases in
-corresponding degree. Germany may need to police Asia Minor.' (_The
-Great Illusion_, pp. 131-2-3.)
-
-[117] 'If a great country benefits every time it annexes a province, and
-her people are the richer for the widened territory, the small nations
-ought to be immeasurably poorer than the great; instead of which, by
-every test which you like to apply--public credit, amounts in savings
-banks, standard of living, social progress, general well-being--citizens
-of small States are, other things being equal, as well off as, or better
-off than, the citizens of great. The citizens of countries like Holland,
-Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, are, by every possible test, just as
-well off as the citizens of countries like Germany, Austria, or Russia.
-These are the facts which are so much more potent than any theory. If it
-were true that a country benefited by the acquisition of territory, and
-widened territory meant general well-being, why do the facts so
-eternally deny it? There is something wrong with the theory.' (_The
-Great Illusion_, p. 44).
-
-[118] See Chapters of _The Great Illusion_, _The State as a Person_, and
-_A False Analogy and its Consequences_.
-
-[119] In the synopsis of the book the point is put thus: 'If credit and
-commercial contract are tampered with an attempt at confiscation, the
-credit-dependent wealth is undermined, and its collapse involves that of
-the conqueror; so that if conquest is not to be self-injurious it must
-respect the enemy's property, in which case it becomes economically
-futile.'
-
-[120] 'We need markets. What is a market? "A place where things are
-sold." That is only half the truth. It is a place where things are
-bought and sold, and one operation is impossible without the other, and
-the notion that one nation can sell for ever and never buy is simply the
-theory of perpetual motion applied to economics; and international trade
-can no more be based upon perpetual motion than can engineering. As
-between economically highly-organised nations a customer must also be a
-competitor, a fact which bayonets cannot alter. To the extent to which
-they destroy him as a competitor, they destroy him, speaking generally
-and largely, as a customer.... This is the paradox, the futility of
-conquest--the great illusion which the history of our own empire so well
-illustrates. We "own" our empire by allowing its component parts to
-develop themselves in their own way, and in view of their own ends, and
-all the empires which have pursued any other policy have only ended by
-impoverishing their own populations and falling to pieces.' (p. 75).
-
-[121] See Part I, Chapter II.
-
-[122] _Government and the War_, pp. 52-59.
-
-[123] _The Political Theory of Mr Norman Angell_, by Professor A. D.
-Lindsay, _The Political Quarterly_, December 1914.
-
-[124] In order that the reader may grasp more clearly Mr Lindsay's
-point, here are some longer passages in which he elaborates it:--
-
-'If all nations really recognised the truth of Mr Angell's arguments,
-that they all had common interests which war destroyed, and that
-therefore war was an evil for victors as well as for vanquished, the
-European situation would be less dangerous, but were every one in the
-world as wisely concerned with their own interests as Mr Angell would
-have men to be, if they were nevertheless bound by no political ties,
-the situation would be infinitely more dangerous than it is. For
-unchecked competition, as Hobbes showed long ago, leads straight to war
-however rational men are. The only escape from its dangers is by
-submitting it to some political control. And for that reason the growth
-of economic relations at the expense of political, which Mr Angell
-heralds with such enthusiasm, is the greatest peril of modern times.
-
-'If men are to avoid the danger that, in competing with one another in
-the small but immediate matters where their interests diverge, they may
-overreach themselves and bring about their mutual ruin, two things are
-essential, one moral or emotional, the other practical. It is not enough
-that men should recognise that what they do affects other men, and vice
-versa. They must care for how their actions affect other men, not only
-for how they may react on themselves. They must, that is, love their
-neighbours. They must further agree with one another in caring for
-certain ways of action quite irrespective of how such ways of action
-affect their personal interests. They must, that is, be not only
-economic but moral men. Secondly, recognising that the range of their
-personal sympathies with other men is more restricted than their
-interdependence, and that in the excitement of competition all else is
-apt to be neglected, they must depute certain persons to stand out of
-the competitive struggle and look after just those vital common
-interests and greater issues which the contending parties are apt to
-neglect. These men will represent the common interests of all, their
-common ideals and their mutual sympathies; they will give to men's
-concern for these common ends a focus which will enable them to resist
-the pull of divergent interests and round their actions will gather the
-authority which these common ends inspire....
-
-' ... Such propositions are of course elementary. It is, however,
-important to observe that economic relations are in this most
-distinguished from political relations, that men can enter into economic
-relations without having any real purpose in common. For the money which
-they gain by their co-operation may represent power to carry out the
-most diverse and conflicting purposes....
-
-' ... Politics implies mutual confidence and respect and a certain
-measure of agreement in ideals. The consequence is that co-operation for
-economic is infinitely easier than for political purposes and spreads
-much more rapidly. Hence it easily overruns any political boundaries,
-and by doing so has produced the modern situation which Mr Angell has
-described.'
-
-[125] I have in mind, of course, the writings of Cole, Laski, Figgis,
-and Webb. In _A Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth of Great
-Britain_, Mr Webb writes:--
-
-'Whilst metaphysical philosophers had been debating what was the nature
-of the State--by which they always meant the sovereign Political
-State--the sovereignty, and even the moral authority of the State
-itself, in the sense of the political government, were being silently
-and almost unwittingly undermined by the growth of new forms of
-Democracy.' (p. xv.)
-
-In _Social Theory_, Mr Cole, speaking of the necessary co-ordination of
-the new forms of association, writes:--
-
-'To entrust the State with the function of co-ordination would be to
-entrust it in many cases with the task of arbitrating between itself and
-some other functional association, say a church or a trade union.' There
-must be a co-ordinating body, but it 'must be not any single
-association, but a combination of associations, a federal body in which
-some or all of the various functional associations are linked together.'
-(pp. 101 and 134.) A reviewer summarises Mr Cole as saying: 'I do not
-want any single supreme authority. It is the sovereignty of the State
-that I object to, as fatal to liberty. For single sovereignty I
-substitute a federal union of functions, and I see the guarantee of
-personal freedom in the severalty which prevents any one of them from
-undue encroachments.'
-
-[126] The British Treasury has issued statements showing that the French
-people at the end of last year were paying L2. 7s., and the British
-people L15. 3s. per head in direct taxation. The French tax is
-calculated at 3.5. per cent. on large incomes, whereas similar incomes
-in Great Britain would pay at least 25 per cent. This does not mean that
-the burden of taxes on the poor in France is small. Both the working and
-middle classes have been very hard hit by indirect taxes and by the rise
-in prices, which is greater in France than in England.
-
-The point is that in France the taxation is mainly indirect, this
-falling most heavily upon the poor; while in England it is much more
-largely direct.
-
-The French consumers are much more heavily taxed than the British, but
-the protective taxes of France bring in comparatively little revenue,
-while they raise the price of living and force the French Government and
-the French local authorities to spend larger and larger amounts on
-salaries and wages.
-
-The Budget for the year 1920 is made the occasion for an illuminating
-review of France's financial position by the reporter of the Finance
-Commission, M. Paul Doumar.
-
-The expenditure due to the War until the present date amounts roughly to
-233,000 million francs (equivalent, at the normal rate of exchange, to
-L9,320,000,000) whereof the sum of 43,000 million francs has been met
-out of revenue, leaving a deficit of 190 billions.
-
-This huge sum has been borrowed in various ways--26 billions from the
-Bank of France, 35 billions from abroad, 46 billions in Treasury notes,
-and 72 billions in regular loans. The total public debt on July 1 is put
-at 233,729 millions, reckoning foreign loans on the basis of exchange at
-par.
-
-M. Doumer declares that so long as this debt weighs on the State, the
-financial situation must remain precarious and its credit mediocre.
-
-[127] January, 1921.
-
-[128] An authorised interview published by the daily papers of January
-28th, 1921.
-
-M. Briand, the French Premier, in explaining what he and Mr Lloyd George
-arranged at Paris to the Chamber and Senate on February 3rd, remarked:--
-
-'We must not lose sight of the fact that in order to pay us Germany must
-every year create wealth abroad for herself by developing her exports
-and reducing her imports to strictly necessary things. She can only do
-that to the detriment of the commerce and industry of the Allies. That
-is a strange and regrettable consequence of facts. The placing of an
-annuity on her exports, payable in foreign values, will, however,
-correct as much as possible this paradoxical situation.'
-
-[129] Version appearing in the _Times_ of January 28th, 1921.
-
-[130] _The Manchester Guardian_, Jan 31st, 1921.
-
-[131] Mr John Foster Dulles, who was a member of the American delegation
-at the Peace Conference, has, in an article in _The New Republic_ for
-March 30th, 1921, outlined the facts concerning the problem of payment
-more completely than I have yet seen it done. The facts he reveals
-constitute a complete and overwhelming vindication of the case as stated
-in the first edition of _The Great Illusion_.
-
-[132] As the Lorraine ores are of a kind that demand much less than
-their own weight of coal for smelting, it is more economic to bring the
-coal to the ore than vice versa. It was for political and military
-reasons that the German State encouraged the placing of some of the
-great furnaces on the right instead of the left bank of the Rhine.
-
-[133] It is worth while to recall here a passage from _The Economic
-Consequences of the Peace_, by Mr J. M. Keynes, quoted in Chapter I. of
-this book.
-
-[134] There is one aspect of the possible success of France which is
-certainly worth consideration. France has now in her possession the
-greatest iron ore fields in Europe. Assume that she is so far successful
-in her policy of military coercion that she succeeds in securing vast
-quantities of coal and coke for nothing. French industry then secures a
-very marked advantage--and an artificial and 'uneconomic' one--over
-British industry, in the conversion of raw materials into finished
-products. The present export by France of coal which she gets for
-nothing to Dutch and other markets heretofore supplied by Britain might
-be followed by the 'dumping' of steel and iron products on terms which
-British industry could not meet. This, of course, is on the hypothesis
-of success in obtaining 'coal for nothing,' which the present writer
-regards as extremely unlikely for the reasons here given. But it should
-be noted that the failure of French effort in this matter will be from
-causes just as disastrous for British prosperity as French success would
-be.
-
-[135] See Part I, Chapter I.
-
-[136] _English Review_, January 1913.
-
-Lord Roberts, in his 'Message to the Nation,' declared that Germany's
-refusal to accept the world's _status quo_ was 'as statesmanlike as it
-is unanswerable.' He said further:--
-
-'How was this Empire of Britain founded? War founded this Empire--war
-and conquest! When we, therefore, masters by war of one-third of the
-habitable globe, when _we_ propose to Germany to disarm, to curtail her
-navy or diminish her army, Germany naturally refuses; and pointing, not
-without justice, to the road by which England, sword in hand, has
-climbed to her unmatched eminence, declares openly, or in the veiled
-language of diplomacy, that by the same path, if by no other, Germany is
-determined also to ascend! Who amongst us, knowing the past of this
-nation, and the past of all nations and cities that have ever added the
-lustre of their name to human annals, can accuse Germany or regard the
-utterance of one of her greatest a year and a half ago, (or of General
-Bernhardi three months ago) with any feelings except those of respect?'
-(pp. 8-9.)
-
-[137] Lord Loreburn says: 'The whole train of causes which brought about
-the tragedy of August 1914 would have been dissolved by a Russian
-revolution.... We could have come to terms with Germany as regards Asia
-Minor: Nor could the Alsace-Lorraine difficulty have produced trouble.
-No one will pretend that France would have been aggressive when deprived
-of Russian support considering that she was devoted to peace even when
-she had that support. Had the Russian revolution come, war would not
-have come.' (_How the War Came_, p. 278.)
-
-[138] Mr Walter Lippmann did tackle the problem in much the way I have
-in mind in _The Stakes of Diplomacy_. That book is critical of my own
-point of view. But if books like that had been directed at _The Great
-Illusion_, we might have made headway. As it is, of course, Mr
-Lippmann's book has been useful in suggesting most that is good in the
-mandate system of the League of Nations.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
-
-wth Great Britain=> with Great Britain {pg xvii}
-
-his colleages=> his colleagues {pg 38}
-
-retore devastated districts=> restore devastated districts {pg 39}
-
-aquiescence=> acquiescence {pg 45}
-
-indispensible=> indispensable {pg 46}
-
-the Lorrarine work=> the Lorraine work {pg 86}
-
-rcently passed=> recently passed {pg 135}
-
-Allied aerodomes on the Rhine=> Allied aerodromes on the Rhine {pg 163}
-
-the sublest=> the subtlest {pg 239}
-
-the enemy's propetry=> the enemy's property {pg 294}
-
-a monoply=> a monopoly {pg 299}
-
-goverments=> governments {pg 299}
-
-econmic=> economic {pg 303}
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
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