AN INQUIRY INTO

THE NATURE OF PEACE

AND

THE TERMS OF ITS PERPETUATION

BY

THORSTEIN VEBLEN

New YorkB. W. HUEBSCH1919

_All rights reserved_

COPYRIGHT, 1917. BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 

Published April, 1917:Reprinted August, 1917. 

New edition published byB. W. HUEBSCH. January, 1919. 

PREFACE

It is now some 122 years since Kant wrote the essay, _Zum ewigenFrieden_. Many things have happened since then, although the Peace towhich he looked forward with a doubtful hope has not been among them. But many things have happened which the great critical philosopher, andno less critical spectator of human events, would have seen withinterest. To Kant the quest of an enduring peace presented itself as anintrinsic human duty, rather than as a promising enterprise. Yet throughall his analysis of its premises and of the terms on which it may berealised there runs a tenacious persuasion that, in the end, the régimeof peace at large will be installed. Not as a deliberate achievement ofhuman wisdom, so much as a work of Nature the Designer ofthings--_Natura daedala rerum_. 

To any attentive reader of Kant's memorable essay it will be apparentthat the title of the following inquiry--On the nature of peace and theterms of its perpetuation--is a descriptive translation of the captionunder which he wrote. That such should be the case will not, it ishoped, be accounted either an unseemly presumption or an undueinclination to work under a borrowed light. The aim and compass of anydisinterested inquiry in these premises is still the same as it was inKant's time; such, indeed, as he in great part made it, --viz. , asystematic knowledge of things as they are. Nor is the light of Kant'sleading to be dispensed with as touches the ways and means ofsystematic knowledge, wherever the human realities are in question. 

Meantime, many things have also changed since the date of Kant's essay. Among other changes are those that affect the direction of inquiry andthe terms of systematic formulation. _Natura daedala rerum_ is no longerallowed to go on her own recognizances, without divulging the ways andmeans of her workmanship. And it is such a line of extension that ishere attempted, into a field of inquiry which in Kant's time still layover the horizon of the future. 

The quest of perpetual peace at large is no less a paramount andintrinsic human duty today than it was, nor is it at all certain thatits final accomplishment is nearer. But the question of its pursuit andof the conditions to be met in seeking this goal lies in a differentshape today; and it is this question that concerns the inquiry which ishere undertaken, --What are the terms on which peace at large mayhopefully be installed and maintained? What, if anything, is there inthe present situation that visibly makes for a realisation of thesenecessary terms within the calculable future? And what are theconsequences presumably due to follow in the nearer future from theinstallation of such a peace at large? And the answer to these questionsis here sought not in terms of what ought dutifully to be done towardthe desired consummation, but rather in terms of those known factors ofhuman behaviour that can be shown by analysis of experience to controlthe conduct of nations in conjunctures of this kind. 

February 1917

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY: ON THE STATE AND ITS RELATION TO WARAND PEACE 1

The inquiry is not concerned with the intrinsic meritsof peace or war, 2. 

--But with the nature, causes and consequences of thepreconceptions favoring peace or war, 3. 

--A breach of the peace is an act of the government, or State, 3. 

--Patriotism is indispensable to furtherance of warlikeenterprise, 4. 

--All the peoples of Christendom are sufficiently patriotic, 6. 

--Peace established by the State, an armistice--the Stateis an instrumentality for making peace, not for perpetuating it, 7. 

--The governmental establishments and their powers in allthe Christian nations are derived from the feudal establishmentsof the Middle Ages, 9. 

--Still retain the right of coercively controlling the actionsof their citizens, 11. 

--Contrast of Icelandic Commonwealth, 12. 

--The statecraft of the past half century has beenone of competitive preparedness, 14. 

--Prussianised Germany has forced the pace in thiscompetitive preparedness, 20. 

--An avowedly predatory enterprise no longer meetswith approval, 21. 

--When a warlike enterprise has been entered upon, itwill have the support of popular sentiment even if itis an aggressive war, 22. 

--The moral indignation of both parties to the quarrelis to be taken for granted, 23. 

--The spiritual forces of any Christian nation may bemobilised for war by either of two pleas: (1) Thepreservation or furtherance of the community's materialinterests, real or fancied, and (2) vindication of theNational Honour; as perhaps also perpetuation of thenational "Culture, " 23. 

CHAPTER II

ON THE NATURE AND USES OF PATRIOTISM 31

The nature of Patriotism, 31. 

--Is a spirit of Emulation, 33. 

--Must seem moral, if only to a biased populace, 33. 

--The common man is sufficiently patriotic but is hamperedwith a sense of right and honest dealing, 38. 

--Patriotism is at cross purposes with modern life, 38. 

--Is an hereditary trait? 41. 

--Variety of racial stocks in Europe, 43. 

--Patriotism a ubiquitous trait, 43. 

--Patriotism disserviceable, yet men hold to it, 46. 

--Cultural evolution of Europeans, 48. 

--Growth of a sense of group solidarity, 49. 

--Material interests of group falling into abeyanceas class divisions have grown up, until prestigeremains virtually the sole community interest, 51. 

--Based upon warlike prowess, physical magnitude andpecuniary traffic of country, 54. 

--Interests of the master class are at cross purposeswith the fortunes of the common man, 57. 

--Value of superiors is a "prestige value, " 57. 

--The material benefits which this ruling class contributeare: defense against aggression, and promotion of thecommunity's material gain, 60. 

--The common defense is a remedy for evils due to thepatriotic spirit, 61. 

--The common defense the usual blind behind which eventsare put in train for eventual hostilities, 62. 

--All the nations of warring Europe convinced that theyare fighting a defensive war, 62. 

--Which usually takes the form of a defense of the NationalHonour, 63. 

--Material welfare is of interest to the Dynastic statesmanonly as it conduces to political success, 64. 

--The policy of national economic self-sufficiency, 67. 

--The chief material use of patriotism is its use to alimited number of persons in their quest of private gain, 67. 

--And has the effect of dividing the nations on lines ofrivalry, 76. 

CHAPTER III

ON THE CONDITIONS OF A LASTING PEACE 77

The patriotic spirit of modern peoples is the abidingsource of contention among nations, 77. 

--Hence any calculus of the Chances of Peace will bea reckoning of forces which may be counted on to keepa patriotic nation in an unstable equilibrium of peace, 78. 

--The question of peace and war at large is a question ofpeace and war among the Powers, which are of two contrastedkinds: those which may safely be counted on spontaneouslyto take the offensive and those which will fight on provocation, 79. 

--War not a question of equity but of opportunity, 81. 

--The Imperial designs of Germany and Japan as the prospectivecause of war, 82. 

--Peace can be maintained in two ways: submission totheir dominion, or elimination of these two Powers;No middle course open, 84. 

--Frame of mind of states; men and popular sentiment ina Dynastic State, 84. 

--Information, persuasion and reflection will not subduenational animosities and jealousies; Peoples of Europeare racially homogeneous along lines of climatic latitude, 88. 

--But loyalty is a matter of habituation, 89. 

--Derivation and current state of German nationalism, 94. 

--Contrasted with the animus of the citizens of a commonwealth, 103;--A neutral peace-compact may be practicable in theabsence of Germany and Japan, but it has no chance intheir presence, 106. 

--The national life of Germany: the Intellectuals, 108. 

--Summary of chapter, 116. 

CHAPTER IV

PEACE WITHOUT HONOUR 118

Submission to the Imperial Power one of the conditionsprecedent to a peaceful settlement, 118. 

--Character of the projected tutelage, 118. 

--Life under the _Pax Germanica_ contrasted withthe Ottoman and Russian rule, 124. 

--China and biological and cultural success, 130. 

--Difficulty of non-resistant subjection is of a psychologicalorder, 131. 

--Patriotism of the bellicose kind is of the nature ofhabit, 134. 

--And men may divest themselves of it, 140. 

--A decay of the bellicose national spirit must be ofthe negative order, the disuse of the discipline outof which it has arisen, 142. 

--Submission to Imperial authorities necessitatesabeyance of national pride among the other peoples, 144. 

--Pecuniary merits of the projected Imperial dominion, 145. 

--Pecuniary class distinctions in the commonwealths andthe pecuniary burden on the common man, 150. 

--Material conditions of life for the common man underthe modern rule of big business, 156. 

--The competitive régime, "what the traffic will bear, "and the life and labor of the common man, 158. 

--Industrial sabotage by businessmen, 165. 

--Contrasted with the Imperial usufruct and its materialadvantages to the common man, 174. 

CHAPTER V

PEACE AND NEUTRALITY 178

Personal liberty, not creature comforts, the ulteriorsprings of action of the common man of the democraticnations, 178. 

--No change of spiritual state to be looked for in thelife-time of the oncoming generation, 185. 

--The Dynastic spirit among the peoples of the Empirewill, under the discipline of modern economic conditions, fall into decay, 187. 

--Contrast of class divisions in Germany and England, 192. 

--National establishments are dependent for theircontinuance upon preparation for hostilities, 196. 

--The time required for the people of the DynasticStates to unlearn their preconceptions will be longerthan the interval required for a new onset, 197. 

--There can be no neutral course between peace byunconditional surrender and submission or peace bythe elimination of Imperial Germany and Japan, 202. 

--Peace by submission not practicable for the modernnations, 203. 

--Neutralisation of citizenship, 205. 

--Spontaneous move in that direction not to be looked for, 213. 

--Its chances of success, 219. 

--The course of events in America, 221. 

CHAPTER VI

ELIMINATION OF THE UNFIT 233

A league of neutrals, its outline, 233. 

--Need of security from aggression of Imperial Germany, 234. 

--Inclusion of the Imperial States in the league, 237. 

--Necessity of elimination of Imperial military clique, 239. 

--Necessity of intermeddling in internal affairs of Germany evenif not acceptable to the German people, 240. 

--Probability of pacific nations taking measures to insure peace, 244-298. 

--The British gentleman and his control of the English government, 244. 

--The shifting of control out of the hands of the gentleman intothose of the underbred common man, 251. 

--The war situation and its probable effect on popular habitsof thought in England, 252. 

--The course of such events and their bearing on the chancesof a workable pacific league, 255. 

--Conditions precedent to a successful pacific leagueof neutrals, 258. 

--Colonial possessions, 259. 

--Neutralisation of trade relations, 263. 

--Futility of economic boycott, 266. 

--The terms of settlement, 269. 

--The effect of the war and the chances of the British peoplebeing able to meet the exigencies of peace, 273. 

--Summary of the terms of settlement, 280. 

--Constitutional monarchies and the British gentlemanlygovernment, 281. 

--The American national establishment, a governmentby businessmen, and its economic policy, 292. 

--America and the league, 294. 

CHAPTER VII

PEACE AND THE PRICE SYSTEM 299

The different conceptions of peace, 299. 

--Psychological effects of the war, 303. 

--The handicraft system and the machine industry, and their psychological effect on political preconceptions, 306. 

--The machine technology and the decay of patriotic loyalty, 310. 

--Summary, 313. 

--Ownership and the right of contract, 315. 

--Standardised under handicraft system, 319. 

--Ownership and the machine industry. 320. 

--Business control and sabotage, 322. 

--Governments of pacific nations controlled by privileged classes, 326. 

--Effect of peace on the economic situation, 328. 

--Economic aspects of a régime of peace, especially as relatedto the development of classes, 330. 

--The analogy of the Victorian Peace, 344. 

--The case of the American Farmer, 348. 

--The leisure class, 350. 

--The rising standard of living, 354. 

--Culture, 355. 

--The eventual cleavage of classes, those who own and thosewho do not, 360. 

--Conditioned by peace at large, 366. 

--Necessary conditions of a lasting peace, 367. 

AN INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE OF PEACE AND THE TERMS OF ITS PERPETUATION

ON THE NATURE OF PEACE AND THE TERMS OF ITS PERPETUATION

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY: ON THE STATE AND ITS RELATION TO WAR AND PEACE

To many thoughtful men ripe in worldly wisdom it is known of a veritythat war belongs indefeasibly in the Order of Nature. Contention, withmanslaughter, is indispensable in human intercourse, at the same timethat it conduces to the increase and diffusion of the manly virtues. Solikewise, the unspoiled youth of the race, in the period of adolescenceand aspiring manhood, also commonly share this gift of insight and backit with a generous commendation of all the martial qualities; and womenof nubile age and no undue maturity gladly meet them half way. 

On the other hand, the mothers of the people are commonly unable to seethe use of it all. It seems a waste of dear-bought human life, with alarge sum of nothing to show for it. So also many men of an elderlyturn, prematurely or otherwise, are ready to lend their countenance tothe like disparaging appraisal; it may be that the spirit of prowess inthem runs at too low a tension, or they may have outlived the more vividappreciation of the spiritual values involved. There are many, also, with a turn for exhortation, who find employment for their bestfaculties in attesting the well-known atrocities and futility of war. 

Indeed, not infrequently such advocates of peace will devote theirotherwise idle powers to this work of exhortation without stipend orsubsidy. And they uniformly make good their contention that thecurrently accepted conception of the nature of war--General Sherman'sformula--is substantially correct. All the while it is to be admittedthat all this axiomatic exhortation has no visible effect on the courseof events or on the popular temper touching warlike enterprise. Indeed, no equal volume of speech can be more incontrovertible or lessconvincing than the utterances of the peace advocates, whethersubsidised or not. "War is Bloodier than Peace. " This would doubtless beconceded without argument, but also without prejudice. Hitherto thepacifists' quest of a basis for enduring peace, it must be admitted, hasbrought home nothing tangible--with the qualification, of course, thatthe subsidised pacifists have come in for the subsidy. So that, aftersearching the recesses of their imagination, able-bodied pacifists whoseloquacity has never been at fault hitherto have been brought to ask:"What Shall We Say?"

 * * * * *

Under these circumstances it will not be out of place to inquire intothe nature of this peace about which swings this wide orbit of opinionand argument. At the most, such an inquiry can be no more gratuitous andno more nugatory than the controversies that provoke it. The intrinsicmerits of peace at large, as against those of warlike enterprise, itshould be said, do not here come in question. That question lies in thedomain of preconceived opinion, so that for the purposes of thisinquiry it will have no significance except as a matter to be inquiredinto; the main point of the inquiry being the nature, causes andconsequences of such a preconception favoring peace, and thecircumstances that make for a contrary preconception in favor of war. 

By and large, any breach of the peace in modern times is an official actand can be taken only on initiative of the governmental establishment, the State. The national authorities may, of course, be driven to takesuch a step by pressure of warlike popular sentiment. Such, e. G. , ispresumed to have been the case in the United States' attack on Spainduring the McKinley administration; but the more that comes to light ofthe intimate history of that episode, the more evident does it becomethat the popular war sentiment to which the administration yielded hadbeen somewhat sedulously "mobilised" with a view to such yielding andsuch a breach. So also in the case of the Boer war, the move was madeunder sanction of a popular war spirit, which, again, did not come to ahead without shrewd surveillance and direction. And so again in thecurrent European war, in the case, e. G. , of Germany, where theinitiative was taken, the State plainly had the full support of popularsentiment, and may even be said to have precipitated the war in responseto this urgent popular aspiration; and here again it is a matter ofnotoriety that the popular sentiment had long been sedulously nursed and"mobilised" to that effect, so that the populace was assiduously kept inspiritual readiness for such an event. The like is less evident asregards the United Kingdom, and perhaps also as regards the otherAllies. 

And such appears to have been the common run of the facts as regards allthe greater wars of the last one hundred years, --what may be called the"public" wars of this modern era, as contrasted with the "private" oradministrative wars which have been carried on in a corner by one andanother of the Great Powers against hapless barbarians, from time totime, in the course of administrative routine. 

It is also evident from the run of the facts as exemplified in thesemodern wars that while any breach of the peace takes place only on theinitiative and at the discretion of the government, or State, [1] it isalways requisite in furtherance of such warlike enterprise to cherishand eventually to mobilise popular sentiment in support of any warlikemove. Due fomentation of a warlike animus is indispensable to theprocuring and maintenance of a suitable equipment with which eventuallyto break the peace, as well as to ensure a diligent prosecution of suchenterprise when once it has been undertaken. Such a spirit of militantpatriotism as may serviceably be mobilised in support of warlikeenterprise has accordingly been a condition precedent to any people'sentry into the modern Concert of Nations. This Concert of Nations is aConcert of Powers, and it is only as a Power that any nation plays itspart in the concert, all the while that "power" here means eventualwarlike force. 

[Footnote 1: A modern nation constitutes a State only in respect of orwith ulterior bearing on the question of International peace or war. ]

Such a people as the Chinese, e. G. , not pervaded with an adequatepatriotic spirit, comes into the Concert of Nations not as a Power butas a bone of contention. Not that the Chinese fall short in any of thequalities that conduce to efficiency and welfare in time of peace, butthey appear, in effect, to lack that certain "solidarity of prowess" byvirtue of which they should choose to be (collectively) formidablerather than (individually) fortunate and upright; and the moderncivilised nations are not in a position, nor in a frame of mind, totolerate a neighbor whose only claim on their consideration falls underthe category of peace on earth and good-will among men. China appearshitherto not to have been a serviceable people for warlike ends, exceptin so far as the resources of that country have been taken over andconverted to warlike uses by some alien power working to its own ends. Such have been the several alien dynasties that have seized upon thatcountry from time to time and have achieved dominion by usufruct of itsunwarlike forces. Such has been the nature of the Manchu empire of therecent past, and such is the evident purpose of the prospective Japaneseusufruct of the same country and its populace. Meantime the Chinesepeople appear to be incorrigibly peaceable, being scarcely willing tofight in any concerted fashion even when driven into a corner byunprovoked aggression, as in the present juncture. Such a people is veryexceptional. Among civilised nations there are, broadly speaking, noneof that temper, with the sole exception of the Chinese, --if the Chineseare properly to be spoken of as a nation. 

Modern warfare makes such large and direct use of the industrial arts, and depends for its successful prosecution so largely on a voluminousand unremitting supply of civilian services and wrought goods, that anyinoffensive and industrious people, such as the Chinese, could doubtlessnow be turned to good account by any warlike power that might have thedisposal of their working forces. To make their industrial efficiencycount in this way toward warlike enterprise and imperial dominion, theusufruct of any such inoffensive and unpatriotic populace would have tofall into the hands of an alien governmental establishment. And no aliengovernment resting on the support of a home population trained in thehabits of democracy or given over to ideals of common honesty innational concerns could hopefully undertake the enterprise. This work ofempire-building out of unwarlike materials could apparently be carriedout only by some alien power hampered by no reserve of scruple, andbacked by a servile populace of its own, imbued with an impeccableloyalty to its masters and with a suitably bellicose temper, as, e. G. , Imperial Japan or Imperial Germany. 

However, for the commonplace national enterprise the common run will dovery well. Any populace imbued with a reasonable measure of patriotismwill serve as ways and means to warlike enterprise under competentmanagement, even if it is not habitually prone to a bellicose temper. Rightly managed, ordinary patriotic sentiment may readily be mobilisedfor warlike adventure by any reasonably adroit and single-minded body ofstatesmen, --of which there is abundant illustration. All the peoples ofChristendom are possessed of a sufficiently alert sense of nationality, and by tradition and current usage all the national governments ofChristendom are warlike establishments, at least in the defensive sense;and the distinction between the defensive and the offensive ininternational intrigue is a technical matter that offers no greatdifficulty. None of these nations is of such an incorrigibly peaceabletemper that they can be counted on to keep the peace consistently in theordinary course of events. 

Peace established by the State, or resting in the discretion of theState, is necessarily of the nature of an armistice, in effectterminable at will and on short notice. It is maintained only onconditions, stipulated by express convention or established by custom, and there is always the reservation, tacit or explicit, that recoursewill be had to arms in case the "national interests" or the punctiliosof international etiquette are traversed by the act or defection of anyrival government or its subjects. The more nationally-minded thegovernment or its subject populace, the readier the response to the callof any such opportunity for an unfolding of prowess. The most peaceablegovernmental policy of which Christendom has experience is a policy of"watchful waiting, " with a jealous eye to the emergence of any occasionfor national resentment; and the most irretrievably shameful derelictionof duty on the part of any civilised government would be its eventualinsensibility to the appeal of a "just war. " Under any governmentalauspices, as the modern world knows governments, the keeping of thepeace comes at its best under the precept, "Speak softly and carry a bigstick. " But the case for peace is more precarious than the wording ofthe aphorism would indicate, in as much as in practical fact the "bigstick" is an obstacle to soft speech. Evidently, in the light of recenthistory, if the peace is to be kept it will have to come aboutirrespective of governmental management, --in spite of the State ratherthan by its good offices. At the best, the State, or the government, isan instrumentality for making peace, not for perpetuating it. 

 * * * * *

Anyone who is interested in the nature and derivation of governmentalinstitutions and establishments in Europe, in any but the formalrespect, should be able to satisfy his curiosity by looking over theshoulders of the professed students of Political Science. Quite properlyand profitably that branch of scholarship is occupied with the authenticpedigree of these institutions, and with the documentary instruments inthe case; since Political Science is, after all, a branch of theoreticaljurisprudence and is concerned about a formally competent analysis ofthe recorded legal powers. The material circumstances from which theseinstitutions once took their beginning, and the exigencies which havegoverned the rate and direction of their later growth and mutation, aswell as the _de facto_ bearing of the institutional scheme on thematerial welfare or the cultural fortunes of the given community, --whileall these matters of fact may be germane to the speculations ofPolitical Theory, they are not intrinsic to its premises, to the logicalsequence of its inquiry, or to its theoretical findings. The like isalso true, of course, as regards that system of habits of thought, thatcurrent frame of mind, in which any given institutional schemenecessarily is grounded, and without the continued support of which anygiven scheme of governmental institutions or policy would becomenugatory and so would pass into the province of legal fiction. All theseare not idle matters in the purview of the student of Political Science, but they remain after all substantially extraneous to the structure ofpolitical theory; and in so far as matters of this class are to bebrought into the case at all, the specialists in the field can notfairly be expected to contribute anything beyond an occasional _obiterdictum_. There can be no discourteous presumption, therefore, inaccepting the general theorems of current political theory withoutprejudice, and looking past the received theoretical formulations for aview of the substantial grounds on which the governmental establishmentshave grown into shape, and the circumstances, material and spiritual, that surround their continued working and effect. 

By lineal descent the governmental establishments and the powers withwhich they are vested, in all the Christian nations, are derived fromthe feudal establishments of the Middle Ages; which, in turn, are of apredatory origin and of an irresponsible character. [2] In nearly allinstances, but more particularly among the nations that are accountedcharacteristically modern, the existing establishments have been greatlyaltered from the mediaeval pattern, by concessive adaptation to laterexigencies or by a more or less revolutionary innovation. The degree oftheir modernity is (conventionally) measured, roughly, by the degree inwhich they have departed from the mediaeval pattern. Wherever theunavoidable concessions have been shrewdly made with a view toconserving the autonomy and irresponsibility of the governmentalestablishment, or the "State, " and where the state of national sentimenthas been led to favor this work of conservation, as, e. G. , in the caseof Austria, Spain or Prussia, there the modern outcome has been what maybe called a Dynastic State. Where, on the other hand, the run ofnational sentiment has departed notably from the ancient holding groundof loyal abnegation, and has enforced a measure of revolutionaryinnovation, as in the case of France or of the English-speaking peoples, there the modern outcome has been an (ostensibly) democraticcommonwealth of ungraded citizens. But the contrast so indicated is acontrast of divergent variants rather than of opposites. These twotype-forms may be taken as the extreme and inclusive limits of variationamong the governmental establishments with which the modern world isfurnished. [3]

[Footnote 2: The partial and dubious exception of the Scandinaviancountries or of Switzerland need raise no question on this head. ]

[Footnote 3: Cf. , e. G. , Eduard Meyer, _England: its politicalorganisation and development_. Ch. Ii. ]

The effectual difference between these two theoretically contrastedtypes of governmental establishments is doubtless grave enough, and formany purposes it is consequential, but it is after all not of such anature as need greatly detain the argument at this point. The two differless, in effect, in that range of their functioning which comes inquestion here than in their bearing on the community's fortunes apartfrom questions of war and peace. In all cases there stand over in thisbearing certain primary characteristics of the ancient régime, which allthese modern establishments have in common, though not all in an equaldegree of preservation and effectiveness. They are, e. G. , all vestedwith certain attributes of "sovereignty. " In all cases the citizen stillproves on closer attention to be in some measure a "subject" of theState, in that he is invariably conceived to owe a "duty" to theconstituted authorities in one respect and another. All civilisedgovernments take cognizance of Treason, Sedition, and the like; and allgood citizens are not only content but profoundly insistent on the clearduty of the citizen on this head. The bias of loyalty is not a matter onwhich argument is tolerated. By virtue of this bias of loyalty, or"civic duty"--which still has much of the color of feudalallegiance--the governmental establishment is within its rights incoercively controlling and directing the actions of the citizen, orsubject, in those respects that so lie within his duty; as also inauthoritatively turning his abilities to account for the purposes thatso lie within the governmental discretion, as, e. G. , the Common Defense. 

These rights and powers still remain to the governmental establishmenteven at the widest democratic departure from that ancient pattern ofmasterful tutelage and usufruct that marked the old-fashionedpatrimonial State, --and that still marks the better preserved ones amongits modern derivatives. And so intrinsic to these governmentalestablishments are these discretionary powers, and by so unfailing apopular bias are they still accounted a matter of course and ofaxiomatic necessity, that they have invariably been retained also amongthe attributes of those democratic governments that trace their originto a revolutionary break with the old order. 

To many, all this will seem a pedantic taking note of commonplaces, --asif it were worth while remarking that the existing governments arevested with the indispensable attributes of government. Yet historyrecords an instance at variance with this axiomatic rule, a rule whichis held to be an unavoidable deliverance of common sense. And it is byno means an altogether unique instance. It may serve to show that thesecharacteristic and unimpeachable powers that invest all currentgovernmental establishments are, after all, to be rated as the marks ofa particular species of governments, and not characteristics of thegenus of governmental establishments at large. These powers answer to anacquired bias, not to an underlying trait of human nature; a matter ofhabit, not of heredity. 

Such an historical instance is the so-called Republic, or Commonwealth, of Iceland--tenth to thirteenth centuries. Its case is looked on bystudents of history as a spectacular anomaly, because it admitted noneof these primary powers of government in its constituted authorities. And yet, for contrast with these matter-of-course preconceptions ofthese students of history, it is well to note that in the deliberationsof those ancients who installed the Republic for the management of theirjoint concerns, any inclusion of such powers in its competency appearsnever to have been contemplated, not even to the extent of its beingrejected. This singularity--as it would be rated by modern statesmen andstudents--was in no degree a new departure in state-making on the partof the founders of the Republic. They had no knowledge of such powers, duties and accountabilities, except as unwholesome features of a noveland alien scheme of irresponsible oppression that was sought to beimposed on them by Harald Fairhair, and which they incontinently made ittheir chief and immediate business to evade. They also set up no jointor collective establishment with powers for the Common Defense, nor doesit appear that such a notion had occurred to them. 

In the history of its installation there is no hint that the men who setup this Icelandic Commonwealth had any sense of the need, or even of thefeasibility, of such a coercive government as would be involved inconcerted preparation for the common defense. Subjection to personalrule, or to official rule in any degree of attenuation, was notcomprised in their traditional experience of citizenship; and it wasnecessarily out of the elements comprised in this traditional experiencethat the new structure would have to be built up. The new commonwealthwas necessarily erected on the premises afforded by the received schemeof use and wont; and this received scheme had come down out ofpre-feudal conditions, without having passed under the discipline ofthat régime of coercion which the feudal system had imposed on the restof Europe, and so had established as an "immemorial usage" and a "secondnature" among the populations of Christendom. The resulting character ofthe Icelandic Commonwealth is sufficiently striking when contrasted withthe case of the English commonwealth of the seventeenth century, or thelater French and American republics. These, all and several, came out ofa protracted experience in feudalistic state-making and State policy;and the common defense--frequently on the offensive--with its necessarycoercive machinery and its submissive loyalty, consequently would takethe central place in the resulting civic structure. 

To close the tale of the Icelandic commonwealth it may be added thattheir republic of insubordinate citizens presently fell into default, systematic misuse, under the disorders brought on by an accumulation ofwealth, and that it died of legal fiction and constitutional formalitiesafter some experience at the hands of able and ambitious statesmen incontact with an alien government drawn on the coercive plan. The clayvessel failed to make good among the iron pots, and so proved itsunfitness to survive in the world of Christian nations, --very much asthe Chinese are today at the mercy of the defensive rapacity of thePowers. 

 And the mercy that we gave them Was to sink them in the sea, Down on the coast of High Barbarie. 

No doubt, it will be accepted as an axiomatic certainty that theestablishment of a commonwealth after the fashion of the IcelandicRepublic, without coercive authority or provision for the commondefense, and without a sense of subordination or collectiveresponsibility among its citizens, would be out of all question underexisting circumstances of politics and international trade. Nor wouldsuch a commonwealth be workable on the scale and at the pace imposed bymodern industrial and commercial conditions, even apart frominternational jealousy and ambitions, provided the sacred rights ofownership were to be maintained in something like their current shape. And yet something of a drift of popular sentiment, and indeed somethingof deliberate endeavour, setting in the direction of such a harmless andhelpless national organisation is always visible in Western Europe, throughout modern times; particularly through the eighteenth and theearly half of the nineteenth centuries; and more particularly among theEnglish-speaking peoples and, with a difference, among the French. TheDutch and the Scandinavian countries answer more doubtfully to the samecharacterisation. 

The movement in question is known to history as the Liberal, Rationalistic, Humanitarian, or Individualistic departure. Its ideal, when formulated, is spoken of as the System of Natural Rights; and itsgoal in the way of a national establishment has been well characterisedby its critics as the Police State, or the Night-Watchman State. Thegains made in this direction, or perhaps better the inroads of thisanimus in national ideals, are plainly to be set down as a shift in thedirection of peace and amity; but it is also plain that the shift ofground so initiated by this strain of sentiment has never reached aconclusion and never has taken effect in anything like an effectualworking arrangement. Its practical consequences have been of the natureof abatement and defection in the pursuit of national ambitions anddynastic enterprise, rather than a creative work of installing anyinstitutional furniture suitable to its own ends. It has in effect goneno farther than what would be called an incipient correction of abuses. The highest rise, as well as the decline, of this movement lie withinthe nineteenth century. 

In point of time, the decay of this amiable conceit of _laissez-faire_in national policy coincides with the period of great advance in thetechnology of transport and communication in the nineteenth century. Perhaps, on a larger outlook, it should rather be said that the run ofnational ambitions and animosities had, in the eighteenth and nineteenthcenturies, suffered a degree of decay through the diffusion of thissentimental predilection for Natural Liberty, and that this decline ofthe manlier aspirations was then arrested and corrected by help of theseimprovements in the technological situation; which enabled a closer andmore coercive control to be exercised over larger areas, and at the sametime enabled a more massive aggregate of warlike force to strike moreeffectively at a greater distance. This whole episode of the rise anddecline of _laissez-faire_ in modern history is perhaps best to beconceived as a transient weakening of nationalism, by neglect; ratherthan anything like the growth of a new and more humane ideal of nationalintercourse. Such would be the appraisal to be had at the hands of thosewho speak for a strenuous national life and for the arbitrament ofsportsmanlike contention in human affairs. And the latterday growth ofmore militant aspirations, together with the more settled and sedulousattention to a development of control and of formidable armaments, suchas followed on through the latter half of the nineteenth century, wouldthen be rated as a resumption of those older aims and ideals that hadbeen falling somewhat into abeyance in the slack-water days ofLiberalism. 

There is much to be said for this latter view; and, indeed, much hasbeen said for it, particularly by the spokesmen of imperialist politics. This bias of Natural Liberty has been associated in history with theEnglish-speaking peoples, more intimately and more extensively than withany other. Not that this amiable conceit is in any peculiar degree arace characteristic of this group of peoples; nor even that the historyof its rise and decline runs wholly within the linguistic frontiersindicated by this characterisation. The French and the Dutch have bornetheir share, and at an earlier day Italian sentiment and speculationlent its impulsion to the same genial drift of faith and aspiration. But, by historical accident, its center of gravity and of diffusion haslain with the English-speaking communities during the period when thisbias made history and left its impress on the institutional scheme ofthe Western civilisation. By grace of what may, for the present purpose, be called historical accident, it happens that the interval of historyduring which the bias of Natural Liberty made visible headway was also aperiod during which these English-speaking peoples, among whom itseffects are chiefly visible, were relatively secure from internationaldisturbance, by force of inaccessibility. Little strain was put upontheir sense of national solidarity or national prowess; so little, indeed, that there was some danger of their patriotic animosity fallinginto decay by disuse; and then they were also busy with other things. Peaceable intercourse, it is true, was relatively easy, active andfar-reaching--eighteenth and nineteenth centuries--as compared with whathad been the case before that time; but warlike intercourse on such ascale as would constitute a substantial menace to any large nation wasnearly out of the question, so far as regards the English-speakingpeoples. The available means of aggression, as touches the case of theseparticular communities, were visibly and consciously inadequate ascompared with the means of defense. The means of internal orintra-national control or coercion were also less well provided by thestate of the arts current at that time than the means of peaceableintercourse. These means of transport and communication were, at thatstage of their development, less well suited for the purposes offar-reaching warlike strategy and the exercise of surveillance andcoercion over large spaces than for the purposes of peaceable traffic. 

But the continued improvement in the means of communication during thenineteenth century presently upset that situation, and so presentlybegan to neutralise the geographical quarantine which had hedged aboutthese communities that were inclined to let well enough alone. Theincreasing speed and accuracy of movement in shipping, due to thesuccessful introduction of steam, as well as the concomitant increasingsize of the units of equipment, all runs to this effect and presentlysets at naught the peace barriers of sea and weather. So also thedevelopment of railways and their increasing availability for strategicuses, together with the far-reaching coordination of movement madepossible by their means and by the telegraph; all of which is furtherfacilitated by the increasing mass and density of population. Improvements in the technology of arms and armament worked to the likeeffect, of setting the peace of any community on an increasinglyprecarious footing, through the advantage which this new technology gaveto a ready equipment and a rapid mobilisation. The new state of theindustrial arts serviceable for warlike enterprise put an increasinglyheavy premium on readiness for offense or defense, but more particularlyit all worked increasingly to the advantage of the offensive. It put theFabian strategy out of date, and led to the doctrine of a defensiveoffense. 

Gradually it came true, with the continued advance in those industrialarts that lend themselves to strategic uses, and it came also to berealised, that no corner of the earth was any longer secure by merefavor of distance and natural difficulty, from eventual aggression atthe hands of any provident and adventurous assailant, --even by help of amodicum of defensive precaution. The fear of aggression then camedefinitively to take the place of international good-will and became thechief motive in public policy, so fast and so far as the state of theindustrial arts continued to incline the balance of advantage to theside of the aggressor. All of which served greatly to strengthen thehands of those statesmen who, by interest or temperament, were inclinedto imperialistic enterprise. Since that period all armament hasconventionally been accounted defensive, and all statesmen haveprofessed that the common defense is their chief concern. Professedlyall armament has been designed to keep the peace; so much of a shadow ofthe peaceable bias there still stands over. 

Throughout this latest phase of modern civilisation the avowed fear ofaggression has served as apology, possibly as provocation in fact, tonational armaments; and throughout the same period any analysis of thesituation will finally run the chain of fear back to Prussia as theputative or actual, center of disturbance and apprehension. No doubt, Prussian armament has taken the lead and forced the pace among thenations of Christendom; but the Prussian policy, too, has beendiligently covered with the same decorous plea of needful provision forthe common defense and an unremitting solicitude for internationalpeace, --to which has been added the canny afterthought of the "defensiveoffense. "

It is characteristic of this era of armed peace that in all theseextensive preparations for breaking the peace any formal avowal of otherthan a defensive purpose has at all times been avoided as aninsufferable breach of diplomatic decorum. It is likewise characteristicof the same era that armaments have unremittingly been increased, beyondanything previously known; and that all men have known all the whilethat the inevitable outcome of this avowedly defensive armament musteventually be war on an unprecedented scale and of unexampled ferocity. It would be neither charitable nor otherwise to the point to callattention to the reflection which this state of the case throws on thecollective sagacity or the good faith of the statesmen who have had themanagement of affairs. It is not practicable to imagine how such anoutcome as the present could have been brought about by any degree ofstupidity or incapacity alone, nor is it easier to find evidence thatthe utmost sagacity of the statecraft engaged has had the slightestmitigating effect on the evil consummation to which the whole case hasbeen brought. It has long been a commonplace among observers of publicevents that these professedly defensive warlike preparations have ineffect been preparations for breaking the peace; against which, atleast ostensibly, a remedy had been sought in the preparation of stillheavier armaments, with full realisation that more armament wouldunfailingly entail a more unsparing and more disastrous war, --which sumsup the statecraft of the past half century. 

Prussia, and afterwards Prussianised Germany, has come in for thedistinction of taking the lead and forcing the pace in this competitivepreparation--or "preparedness"--for war in time of peace. That such hasbeen the case appears in good part to be something of a fortuitouscircumstance. The season of enterprising force and fraud to which thatcountry owes its induction into the concert of nations is an episode ofrecent history; so recent, indeed, that the German nation has not yethad time to live it down and let it be forgotten; and the Imperial Stateis consequently burdened with an irritably uneasy sense of odium and anestablished reputation for unduly bad faith. From which it has followed, among other things, that the statesmen of the Empire have lived in theexpectation of having their unforgotten derelictions brought home, andso have, on the one hand, found themselves unable to credit any pacificintentions professed by the neighboring Powers, while on the other handthey have been unable to gain credence for their own voluble professionsof peace and amity. So it has come about that, by a fortuitousconjuncture of scarcely relevant circumstances, Prussia and the Empirehave been thrown into the lead in the race of "preparedness" and havebeen led assiduously to hasten a breach which they could ill afford. Itis, to say the least, extremely doubtful if the event would have beensubstantially different in the absence of that special provocation tocompetitive preparedness that has been injected into the situation bythis German attitude; but the rate of approach to a warlike climax hasdoubtless been hastened by the anticipatory policy of preparedness whichthe Prussian dynasty has seen itself constrained to pursue. Eventually, the peculiar circumstances of its case--embarrassment at home anddistaste and discredit abroad--have induced the Imperial State to takethe line of a defensive offense, to take war by the forelock andretaliate on presumptive enemies for prospective grievances. But in anycase, the progressive improvement in transport and communication, aswell as in the special technology of warfare, backed by greatly enhancedfacilities for indoctrinating the populace with militantnationalism, --these ways and means, working under the hand of patrioticstatesmen must in course of the past century have brought the peace ofEurope to so precarious a footing as would have provoked a materialincrease in the equipment for national defense; which would unavoidablyhave led to competitive armament and an enhanced international distrustand animosity, eventually culminating in hostilities. 

 * * * * *

It may well be that the plea of defensive preparation advanced by thestatesmen, Prussian and others, in apology for competitive armaments isa diplomatic subterfuge, --there are indications that such has commonlybeen the case; but even if it commonly is visibly disingenuous, the needof making such a plea to cover more sinister designs is itself anevidence that an avowedly predatory enterprise no longer meets with therequisite popular approval. Even if an exception to this rule beadmitted in the recent attitude of the German people, it is to berecalled that the exception was allowed to stand only transiently, andthat presently the avowal of a predatory design in this case wasurgently disclaimed in the face of adversity. Even those who speak mostfluently for the necessity of war, and for its merits as a neededdiscipline in the manly virtues, are constrained by the prevailingsentiment to deprecate its necessity. 

Yet it is equally evident that when once a warlike enterprise has beenentered upon so far as to commit the nation to hostilities, it will havethe cordial support of popular sentiment even if it is patently anaggressive war. Indeed, it is quite a safe generalisation that whenhostilities have once been got fairly under way by the interestedstatesmen, the patriotic sentiment of the nation may confidently becounted on to back the enterprise irrespective of the merits of thequarrel. But even if the national sentiment is in this way to be countedin as an incidental matter of course, it is also to be kept in mind inthis connection that any quarrel so entered upon by any nation willforthwith come to have the moral approval of the community. Dissenterswill of course be found, sporadically, who do not readily fall in withthe prevailing animus; but as a general proposition it will still holdtrue that any such quarrel forthwith becomes a just quarrel in the eyesof those who have so been committed to it. 

A corollary following from this general theorem may be worth noting inthe same connection. Any politician who succeeds in embroiling hiscountry in a war, however nefarious, becomes a popular hero and isreputed a wise and righteous statesman, at least for the time being. Illustrative instances need perhaps not, and indeed can not gracefully, be named; most popular heroes and reputed statesmen belong in thisclass. 

Another corollary, which bears more immediately on the question in hand, follows also from the same general proposition: Since the ethical valuesinvolved in any given international contest are substantially of thenature of afterthought or accessory, they may safely be left on one sidein any endeavour to understand or account for any given outbreak ofhostilities. The moral indignation of both parties to the quarrel is tobe taken for granted, as being the statesman's chief and necessary waysand means of bringing any warlike enterprise to a head and floating itto a creditable finish. It is a precipitate of the partisan animositythat inspires both parties and holds them to their duty ofself-sacrifice and devastation, and at its best it will chiefly serve asa cloak of self-righteousness to extenuate any exceptionally profligateexcursions in the conduct of hostilities. 

Any warlike enterprise that is hopefully to be entered on must have themoral sanction of the community, or of an effective majority in thecommunity. It consequently becomes the first concern of the warlikestatesman to put this moral force in train for the adventure on which heis bent. And there are two main lines of motivation by which thespiritual forces of any Christian nation may so be mobilised for warlikeadventure: (1) The preservation or furtherance of the community'smaterial interests, real or fancied, and (2) vindication of the nationalhonour. To these should perhaps be added as a third, the advancement andperpetuation of the nation's "Culture;" that is to say, of its habitualscheme of use and wont. It is a nice question whether, in practicaleffect, the aspiration to perpetuate the national Culture isconsistently to be distinguished from the vindication of the nationalhonour. There is perhaps the distinction to be made that "theperpetuation of the national Culture" lends a readier countenance togratuitous aggression and affords a broader cover for incidentalatrocities, since the enemies of the national Culture will necessarilybe conceived as an inferior and obstructive people, falling beneath therules of commonplace decorum. 

Those material interests for which modern nations are in the habit oftaking to arms are commonly of a fanciful character, in that theycommonly have none but an imaginary net value to the community at large. Such are, e. G. , the national trade or the increase of the nationalterritory. These and the like may serve the warlike or dynasticambitions of the nation's masters; they may also further the interestsof office-holders, and more particularly of certain business houses orbusinessmen who stand to gain some small advantage by help of the powersin control; but it all signifies nothing more to the common man than anincreased bill of governmental expense and a probable increase in thecost of living. 

That a nation's trade should be carried in vessels owned by its citizensor registered in its ports will doubtless have some sentimental value tothe common run of its citizens, as is shown by the fact thatdisingenuous politicians always find it worth their while to appeal tothis chauvinistic predilection. But it patently is all a completely idlequestion, in point of material advantage, to anyone but the owners ofthe vessels; and to these owners it is also of no material consequenceunder what flag their investments sail, except so far as the governmentin question may afford them some preferential opportunity forgain, --always at the cost of their fellow citizens. The like is equallytrue as regards the domicile and the national allegiance of thebusinessmen who buy and sell the country's imports and exports. Thecommon man plainly has no slightest material interest in the nationalityor the place of residence of those who conduct this traffic; though allthe facts go to say that in some puzzle-headed way the common mancommonly persuades himself that it does make some occult sort ofdifference to him; so that he is commonly willing to pay somethingsubstantial toward subsidising businessmen of his own nationality, inthe way of a protective tariff and the like. 

The only material advantage to be derived from such a preferential tradepolicy arises in the case of international hostilities, in which casethe home-owned vessels and merchants may on occasion count towardmilitary readiness; although even in that connection their value iscontingent and doubtful. But in this way they may contribute in theirdegree to a readiness to break off peaceable relations with othercountries. It is only for warlike purposes, that is to say for thedynastic ambitions of warlike statesmen, that these preferentialcontrivances in economic policy have any substantial value; and even inthat connection their expediency is always doubtful. They are a sourceof national jealousy, and they may on occasion become a help to militarystrategy when this national jealousy eventuates in hostilities. 

The run of the facts touching this matter of national trade policy issomething as follows: At the instance of businessmen who stand to gainby it, and with the cordial support of popular sentiment, theconstituted authorities sedulously further the increase of shipping andcommerce under protection of the national power. At the same time theyspend substance and diplomatic energy in an endeavor to extend theinternational market facilities open to the country's businessmen, witha view always to a preferential advantage in favor of thesebusinessmen, also with the sentimental support of the common man and athis cost. To safeguard these commercial interests, as well asproperty-holdings of the nation's citizens in foreign parts, the nationmaintains naval, military, consular and diplomatic establishments, atthe common expense. The total gains derivable from these commercial andinvestment interests abroad, under favorable circumstances, will neverby any chance equal the cost of the governmental apparatus installed tofurther and safeguard them. These gains, such as they are, go to theinvestors and businessmen engaged in these enterprises; while the costsincident to the adventure are borne almost wholly by the common man, whogets no gain from it all. Commonly, as in the case of a protectivetariff or a preferential navigation law, the cost to the common man isaltogether out of proportion to the gain which accrues to thebusinessmen for whose benefit he carries the burden. The only otherclass, besides the preferentially favored businessmen, who derive anymaterial benefit from this arrangement is that of the office-holders whotake care of this governmental traffic and draw something in the way ofsalaries and perquisites; and whose cost is defrayed by the common man, who remains an outsider in all but the payment of the bills. The commonman is proud and glad to bear this burden for the benefit of hiswealthier neighbors, and he does so with the singular conviction that insome occult manner he profits by it. All this is incredible, but it iseveryday fact. 

In case it should happen that these business interests of the nation'sbusinessmen interested in trade or investments abroad are jeopardised bya disturbance of any kind in these foreign parts in which thesebusiness interests lie, then it immediately becomes the urgent concernof the national authorities to use all means at hand for maintaining thegainful traffic of these businessmen undiminished, and the common manpays the cost. Should such an untoward situation go to such sinisterlengths as to involve actual loss to these business interests orotherwise give rise to a tangible grievance, it becomes an affair of thenational honour; whereupon no sense of proportion as between thematerial gains at stake and the cost of remedy or retaliation needlonger be observed, since the national honour is beyond price. Themotivation in the case shifts from the ground of material interest tothe spiritual ground of the moral sentiments. 

In this connection "honour" is of course to be taken in the euphemisticsense which the term has under the _code duello_ governing "affairs ofhonour. " It carries no connotation of honesty, veracity, equity, liberality, or unselfishness. This national honour is of the nature ofan intangible or immaterial asset, of course; it is a matter ofprestige, a sportsmanlike conception; but that fact must not be taken tomean that it is of any the less substantial effect for purposes of a_casus belli_ than the material assets of the community. Quite thecontrary: "Who steals my purse, steals trash, " etc. In point of fact, itwill commonly happen that any material grievance must first be convertedinto terms of this spiritual capital, before it is effectually turned toaccount as a stimulus to warlike enterprise. 

Even among a people with so single an eye to the main chance as theAmerican community it will be found true, on experiment or on review ofthe historical evidence, that an offense against the national honourcommands a profounder and more unreserved resentment than anyinfraction of the rights of person or property simply. This has latterlybeen well shown in connection with the manoeuvres of the severalEuropean belligerents, designed to bend American neutrality to theservice of one side or the other. Both parties have aimed to intimidateand cajole; but while the one party has taken recourse to effrontery andhas made much and ostentatious use of threats and acts of violenceagainst person and property, the other has constantly observed adeferential attitude toward American national self-esteem, even whileengaged on a persistent infraction of American commercial rights. Thefirst named line of diplomacy has convicted itself of miscarriage andhas lost the strategic advantage, as against the none too adroit finesseof the other side. The statesmen of this European war power were so illadvised as to enter on a course of tentatively cumulative intimidation, by threats and experimentally graduated crimes against the property andpersons of American citizens, with a view to coerce American cupidityand yet to avoid carrying these manoeuvres of terrorism far enough toarouse an unmanageable sense of outrage. The experiment has served toshow that the breaking point in popular indignation will be reachedbefore the terrorism has gone far enough to raise a serious question ofpecuniary caution. 

This national honour, which so is rated a necessary of life, is animmaterial substance in a peculiarly high-wrought degree, being not onlynot physically tangible but also not even capable of adequate statementin pecuniary terms, --as would be the case with ordinary immaterialassets. It is true, where the point of grievance out of which a questionof the national honour arises is a pecuniary discrepancy, the nationalhonour can not be satisfied without a pecuniary accounting; but it needsno argument to convince all right-minded persons that even at such ajuncture the national honour that has been compromised is indefinitelyand indefinably more than what can be made to appear on an accountant'spage. It is a highly valued asset, or at least a valued possession, butit is of a metaphysical, not of a physical nature, and it is not knownto serve any material or otherwise useful end apart from affording apracticable grievance consequent upon its infraction. 

This national honour is subject to injury in divers ways, and so mayyield a fruitful grievance even apart from offences against the personor property of the nation's businessmen; as, e. G. , through neglect ordisregard of the conventional punctilios governing diplomaticintercourse, or by disrespect or contumelious speech touching the Flag, or the persons of national officials, particularly of such officials ashave only a decorative use, or the costumes worn by such officials, or, again, by failure to observe the ritual prescribed for parading thenational honour on stated occasions. When duly violated the nationalhonour may duly be made whole again by similarly immaterialinstrumentalities; as, e. G. , by recital of an appropriate formula ofwords, by formal consumption of a stated quantity of ammunition in theway of a salute, by "dipping" an ensign, and the like, --procedure whichcan, of course, have none but a magical efficacy. The national honour, in short, moves in the realm of magic, and touches the frontiers ofreligion. 

Throughout this range of duties incumbent on the national defense, itwill be noted, the offenses or discrepancies to be guarded against orcorrected by recourse to arms have much of a ceremonial character. Whatever may be the material accidents that surround any given concretegrievance that comes up for appraisal and redress, in bringing the caseinto the arena for trial by combat it is the spiritual value of theoffense that is played up and made the decisive ground of action, particularly in so far as appeal is made to the sensibilities of thecommon man, who will have to bear the cost of the adventure. And in sucha case it will commonly happen that the common man is unable, withoutadvice, to see that any given hostile act embodies a sacrilegiousinfraction of the national honour. He will at any such conjuncturescarcely rise to the pitch of moral indignation necessary to float awarlike reprisal, until the expert keepers of the Code come in toexpound and certify the nature of the transgression. But when once thelesion to the national honour has been ascertained, appraised and dulyexhibited by those persons whose place in the national economy it is tolook after all that sort of thing, the common man will be found nowisebehindhand about resenting the evil usage of which he so, by force ofinterpretation, has been a victim. 

CHAPTER II

ON THE NATURE AND USES OF PATRIOTISM

Patriotism may be defined as a sense of partisan solidarity in respectof prestige. What the expert psychologists, and perhaps the experts inPolitical Science, might find it necessary to say in the course of anexhaustive analysis and definition of this human faculty wouldpresumably be something more precise and more extensive. There is noinclination here to forestall definition, but only to identify anddescribe the concept that loosely underlies the colloquial use of thisterm, so far as seems necessary to an inquiry into the part played bythe patriotic animus in the life of modern peoples, particularly as itbears on questions of war and peace. 

On any attempt to divest this concept of all extraneous or adventitiouselements it will be found that such a sense of an undivided jointinterest in a collective body of prestige will always remain as anirreducible minimum. This is the substantial core about which many anddivers subsidiary interests cluster, but without which these otherclustering interests and aspirations will not, jointly or severally, make up a working palladium of the patriotic spirit. 

It is true, seen in some other light or rated in some other bearing orconnection, one and another of these other interests, ideals, aspirations, beatitudes, may well be adjudged nobler, wiser, possiblymore urgent than the national prestige; but in the forum of patriotismall these other necessaries of human life--the glory of God and the goodof man--rise by comparison only to the rank of subsidiaries, auxiliaries, amenities. He is an indifferent patriot who will let "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" cloud the issue and get in the wayof the main business in hand. 

There once were, we are told, many hardy and enterprising spirits bandedtogether along the Spanish Main for such like ends, just as there are inour day an even greater number of no less single-minded spirits bent ontheir own "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, " according to theirlight, in the money-markets of the modern world; but for all theiradmirable qualities and splendid achievements, their passionate quest ofthese amenities has not entitled these Gentlemen Adventurers to claimrank as patriots. The poet says:

 "Strike for your altars and your fires! Strike for the green graves of your sires! God and your native land!"

But, again, a temperate scrutiny of the list of desiderata so enumeratedin the poet's flight, will quickly bring out the fact that any or all ofthem might drop out of the situation without prejudice to the plain callof patriotic duty. In the last resort, when the patriotic spirit fallsback on its naked self alone, it is not reflection on the merits ofthese good and beautiful things in Nature that gives him his cue andenforces the ultimate sacrifice. Indeed it is something infinitely morefutile and infinitely more urgent, --provided only that the man is imbuedwith the due modicum of patriotic devotion; as, indeed, men commonlyare. It is not faith, hope or charity that abide as the irreducibleminimum of virtue in the patriot's scheme of things; particularly notthat charity that has once been highly spoken of as being the greatestof these. It may be that, viewed in the light of reason, as DoctorKatzenberger would say, patriotic devotion is the most futile thing inthe world; but, for good or ill, the light of reason has nothing to dowith the case, --no more than "The flowers that bloom in the spring. "

The patriotic spirit is a spirit of emulation, evidently, at the sametime that it is emulation shot through with a sense of solidarity. Itbelongs under the general caption of sportsmanship, rather than ofworkmanship. Now, any enterprise in sportsmanship is bent on aninvidious success, which must involve as its major purpose the defeatand humiliation of some competitor, whatever else may be comprised inits aim. Its aim is a differential gain, as against a rival; and theemulative spirit that comes under the head of patriotism commonly, ifnot invariably, seeks this differential advantage by injury of the rivalrather than by an increase of home-bred well-being. 

Indeed, well-being is altogether out of the perspective, except asunderpinning for an edifice of national prestige. It is, at least, asafe generalisation that the patriotic sentiment never has been known torise to the consummate pitch of enthusiastic abandon except when bent onsome work of concerted malevolence. Patriotism is of a contentiouscomplexion, and finds its full expression in no other outlet thanwarlike enterprise; its highest and final appeal is for the death, damage, discomfort and destruction of the party of the second part. 

It is not that the spirit of patriotism will tolerate no othersentiments bearing on matters of public interest, but only that it willtolerate none that traverse the call of the national prestige. Likeother men, the patriot may be moved by many and divers otherconsiderations, besides that of the national prestige; and these otherconsiderations may be of the most genial and reasonable kind, or theymay also be as foolish and mischievous as any comprised in the range ofhuman infirmities. He may be a humanitarian given over to the kindliestsolicitude for the common good, or a religious devotee hedged about inall his motions by the ever present fear of God, or taken up withartistic, scholarly or scientific pursuits; or, again, he may be aspendthrift devotee of profane dissipation, whether in the slums or onthe higher levels of gentility, or he may be engaged on a rapaciousquest of gain, as a businessman within the law or as a criminal withoutits benefit, or he may spend his best endeavors in advancing theinterests of his class at the cost of the nation at large. All that isunderstood as a matter of course and is beside the point. In so far ashe is a complete patriot these other interests will fall away from himwhen the one clear call of patriotic duty comes to enlist him in thecause of the national prestige. There is, indeed, nothing to hinder abad citizen being a good patriot; nor does it follow that a goodcitizen--in other respects--may not be a very indifferent patriot. 

Many and various other preferences and considerations may coincide withthe promptings of the patriotic spirit, and so may come in to coalescewith and fortify its driving force; and it is usual for patriotic men toseek support for their patriotic impulses in some reasoned purpose ofthis extraneous kind that is believed to be served by following the callof the national prestige, --it may be a presumptive increase anddiffusion of culture at large, or the spread and enhancement of apresumptively estimable religious faith, or a prospective liberation ofmankind from servitude to obnoxious masters and outworn institutions;or, again, it may be the increase of peace and material well-being amongmen, within the national frontiers or impartially throughout thecivilised world. There are, substantially, none of the desirable thingsin this world that are not so counted on by some considerable body ofpatriots to be accomplished by the success of their own particularpatriotic aspirations. What they will not come to an understanding aboutis the particular national ascendency with which the attainment of theseadmirable ends is conceived to be bound up. 

The ideals, needs and aims that so are brought into the patrioticargument to lend a color of rationality to the patriotic aspiration inany given case will of course be such ideals, needs and aims as arecurrently accepted and felt to be authentic and self-legitimating amongthe people in whose eyes the given patriotic enterprise is to findfavor. So one finds that, e. G. , among the followers of Islam, devout andresolute, the patriotic statesman (that is to say the politician whodesigns to make use of the popular patriotic fervor) will in the lastresort appeal to the claims and injunctions of the faith. In a similarway the Prussian statesman bent on dynastic enterprise will conjure inthe name of the dynasty and of culture and efficiency; or, if worsecomes to worst, an outbreak will be decently covered with a plea ofmortal peril and self-defense. Among English-speaking peoples much is tobe gained by showing that the path of patriotic glory is at the sametime the way of equal-handed justice under the rule of freeinstitutions; at the same time, in a fully commercialised community, such as the English-speaking commonly are, material benefits in the wayof trade will go far to sketch in a background of decency for anyenterprise that looks to the enhancement of the national prestige. 

But any promise of gain, whether in the nation's material or immaterialassets, will not of itself carry full conviction to the commonplacemodern citizen; or even to such modern citizens as are best endowed witha national spirit. By and large, and overlooking that appreciablecontingent of morally defective citizens that is to be counted on in anyhybrid population, it will hold true that no contemplated enterprise orline of policy will fully commend itself to the popular sense of meritand expediency until it is given a moral turn, so as to bring it tosquare with the dictates of right and honest dealing. On no terms shortof this will it effectually coalesce with the patriotic aspiration. Togive the fullest practical effect to the patriotic fervor that animatesany modern nation, and so turn it to use in the most effective way, itis necessary to show that the demands of equity are involved in thecase. Any cursory survey of modern historical events bearing on thispoint, among the civilised peoples, will bring out the fact that noconcerted and sustained movement of the national spirit can be hadwithout enlisting the community's moral convictions. The common man mustbe persuaded that right is on his side. "Thrice is he armed who knowshis quarrel just. " The grounds of this conviction may often be tawdryenough, but the conviction is a necessary factor in the case. 

The requisite moral sanction may be had on various grounds, and, on thewhole, it is not an extremely difficult matter to arrange. In thesimplest and not infrequent case it may turn on a question of equity inrespect of trade or investment as between the citizens or subjects ofthe several rival nations; the Chinese "Open Door" affords as sordid anexample as may be desired. Or it may be only an envious demand for ashare in the world's material resources--"A Place in the Sun, " as apicturesque phrase describes it; or "The Freedom of the Seas, " asanother equally vague and equally invidious demand for internationalequity phrases it. These demands are put forward with a color ofdemanding something in the way of equitable opportunity for thecommonplace peaceable citizen; but quite plainly they have none but afanciful bearing on the fortunes of the common man in time of peace, andthey have a meaning to the nation only as a fighting unit; apart fromtheir prestige value, these things are worth fighting for only asprospective means of fighting. The like appeal to the moralsensibilities may, again, be made in the way of a call to self-defense, under the rule of Live and let live; or it may also rest on the moretenuous obligation to safeguard the national integrity of a weakerneighbor, under a broader interpretation of the same equitable rule ofLive and let live. But in one way or another it is necessary to set upthe conviction that the promptings of patriotic ambition have thesanction of moral necessity. 

It is not that the line of national policy or patriotic enterprise soentered upon with the support of popular sentiment need be right andequitable as seen in dispassionate perspective from the outside, butonly that it should be capable of being made to seem right and equitableto the biased populace whose moral convictions are requisite to itsprosecution; which is quite another matter. Nor is it that any suchpatriotic enterprise is, in fact, entered on simply or mainly on thesemoral grounds that so are alleged in its justification, but only thatsome such colorable ground of justification or extenuation is necessaryto be alleged, and to be credited by popular belief. 

It is not that the common man is not sufficiently patriotic, but onlythat he is a patriot hampered with a plodding and uneasy sense of rightand honest dealing, and that one must make up one's account with thismoral bias in looking to any sustained and concerted action that drawson the sentiment of the common man for its carrying on. But the moralsense in the case may be somewhat easily satisfied with a modicum ofequity, in case the patriotic bias of the people is well pronounced, orin case it is reenforced with a sufficient appeal to self-interest. Inthose cases where the national fervor rises to an excited pitch, evenvery attenuated considerations of right and justice, such as would underordinary conditions doubtfully bear scrutiny as extenuatingcircumstances, may come to serve as moral authentication for anyextravagant course of action to which the craving for national prestigemay incite. The higher the pitch of patriotic fervor, the more tenuousand more thread-bare may be the requisite moral sanction. By cumulativeexcitation some very remarkable results have latterly been attainedalong this line. 

 * * * * *

Patriotism is evidently a spirit of particularism, of aliency andanimosity between contrasted groups of persons; it lives on invidiouscomparison, and works out in mutual hindrance and jealousy betweennations. It commonly goes the length of hindering intercourse andobstructing traffic that would patently serve the material and culturalwell-being of both nationalities; and not infrequently, indeednormally, it eventuates in competitive damage to both. 

All this holds true in the world of modern civilisation, at the sametime that the modern civilised scheme of life is, notoriously, of acosmopolitan character, both in its cultural requirements and in itseconomic structure. Modern culture is drawn on too large a scale, is oftoo complex and multiform a character, requires the cooperation of toomany and various lines of inquiry, experience and insight, to admit ofits being confined within national frontiers, except at the cost ofinsufferable crippling and retardation. The science and scholarship thatis the peculiar pride of civilised Christendom is not onlyinternational, but rather it is homogeneously cosmopolitan; so that inthis bearing there are, in effect, no national frontiers; with theexception, of course, that in a season of patriotic intoxication, suchas the current war has induced, even the scholars and scientists will betemporarily overset by their patriotic fervour. Indeed, with the bestefforts of obscurantism and national jealousy to the contrary, itremains patently true that modern culture is the culture of Christendomat large, not the culture of one and another nation in severalty withinthe confines of Christendom. It is only as and in so far as they partakein and contribute to the general run of Western civilisation at largethat the people of any one of these nations of Christendom can claimstanding as a cultured nation; and even any distinctive variation fromthis general run of civilised life, such as may give a "local colour" ofideals, tastes and conventions, will, in point of cultural value, haveto be rated as an idle detail, a species of lost motion, that serves nobetter purpose than a transient estrangement. 

So also, the modern state of the industrial arts is of a likecosmopolitan character, in point of scale, specialisation, and thenecessary use of diversified resources, of climate and raw materials. None of the countries of Europe, e. G. , is competent to carry on itsindustry by modern technological methods without constantly drawing onresources outside of its national boundaries. Isolation in thisindustrial respect, exclusion from the world market, would meanintolerable loss of efficiency, more pronounced the more fully the givencountry has taken over this modern state of the industrial arts. Exclusion from the general body of outlying resources would seriouslycripple any one or all of them, and effectually deprive them of theusufruct of this technology; and partial exclusion, by prohibitive orprotective tariffs and the like, unavoidably results in a partiallowering of the efficiency of each, and therefore a reduction of thecurrent well-being among them all together. 

Into this cultural and technological system of the modern world thepatriotic spirit fits like dust in the eyes and sand in the bearings. Its net contribution to the outcome is obscuration, distrust, andretardation at every point where it touches the fortunes of modernmankind. Yet it is forever present in the counsels of the statesmen andin the affections of the common man, and it never ceases to command theregard of all men as the prime attribute of manhood and the final testof the desirable citizen. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that noother consideration is allowed in abatement of the claims of patrioticloyalty, and that such loyalty will be allowed to cover any multitude ofsins. When the ancient philosopher described Man as a "political animal, "this, in effect, was what he affirmed; and today the ancient maxim is asgood as new. The patriotic spirit is at cross purposes with modern life, but in any test case it is found that the claims of life yield beforethose of patriotism; and any voice that dissents from this order of thingsis as a voice crying in the wilderness. 

 * * * * *

To anyone who is inclined to moralise on the singular discrepancies ofhuman life this state of the case will be fruitful of much profoundspeculation. The patriotic animus appears to be an enduring trait ofhuman nature, an ancient heritage that has stood over unshorn from timeimmemorial, under the Mendelian rule of the stability of racial types. It is archaic, not amenable to elimination or enduring suppression, andapparently not appreciably to be mitigated by reflection, education, experience or selective breeding. 

Throughout the historical period, and presumably through an incalculableperiod of the unrecorded past, patriotic manslaughter has consistentlybeen weeding out of each successive generation of men the most patrioticamong them; with the net result that the level of patriotic ardor todayappears to be no lower than it ever was. At the same time, with theadvance of population, of culture and of the industrial arts, patriotismhas grown increasingly disserviceable; and it is to all appearance asubiquitous and as powerful as ever, and is held in as high esteem. 

The continued prevalence of this archaic animus among the modernpeoples, as well as the fact that it is universally placed high amongthe virtues, must be taken to argue that it is, in its elements, anhereditary trait, of the nature of an inborn impulsive propensity, rather than a product of habituation. It is, in substance, notsomething that can be learned and unlearned. From one generation toanother, the allegiance may shift from one nationality to another, butthe fact of unreflecting allegiance at large remains. And it all arguesalso that no sensible change has taken effect in the hereditaryendowment of the race, at least in this respect, during the period knownby record or by secure inference, --say, since the early Neolithic inEurope; and this in spite of the fact that there has all this while beenopportunity for radical changes in the European population bycross-breeding, infiltration and displacement of the several racialstocks that go to make up this population. Hence, on slight reflectionthe inference has suggested itself and has gained acceptance that thistrait of human nature must presumably have been serviceable to thepeoples of the earlier time, on those levels of savagery or of the lowerbarbarism on which the ancestral stocks of the European population firstmade good their survival and proved their fitness to people that quarterof the earth. Such, indeed, is the common view; so common as to pass formatter-of-course, and therefore habitually to escape scrutiny. 

Still it need not follow, as more patient reflection will show. All theEuropean peoples show much the same animus in this respect; whatevertheir past history may have been, and whatever the difference in pastexperience that might be conceived to have shaped their temperament. Anydifference in the pitch of patriotic conceit and animosity, between theseveral nationalities or the several localities, is by no means wide, even in cases where the racial composition of the population is held tobe very different, as, e. G. , between the peoples on the Baltic seaboardand those on the Mediterranean. In point of fact, in this matter ofpatriotic animus there appears to be a wider divergence, temperamentally, between individuals within any one of these communitiesthan between the common run in any one community and the correspondingcommon run in any other. But even such divergence of individual temperin respect of patriotism as is to be met with, first and last, is afterall surprisingly small in view of the scope for individual variationwhich this European population would seem to offer. 

 * * * * *

These peoples of Europe, all and several, are hybrids compounded out ofthe same run of racial elements, but mixed in varying proportions. Onany parallel of latitude--taken in the climatic rather than in thegeometric sense--the racial composition of the west-European populationwill be much the same, virtually identical in effect, although always ofa hybrid complexion; whereas on any parallel of longitude--also in theclimatic sense--the racial composition will vary progressively, butalways within the limits of the same general scheme of hybridisation, --thevariation being a variation in the proportion in which the several racialelements are present in any given case. But in no case does a notabledifference in racial composition coincide with a linguistic or nationalfrontier. But in point of patriotic animus these European peoples are oneas good as another, whether the comparison be traced on parallels oflatitude or of longitude. And the inhabitants of each national territory, or of each detail locality, appear also to run surprisingly uniform inrespect of their patriotic spirit. 

Heredity in any such community of hybrids will, superficially, appear torun somewhat haphazard. There will, of course, be no traceabledifference between social or economic classes, in point of heredity, --asis visibly the case in Christendom. But variation--of an apparentlyhaphazard description--will be large and ubiquitous among theindividuals of such a populace. Indeed, it is a matter of course and ofeasy verification that individual variation within such a hybrid stockwill greatly exceed the extreme differences that may subsist between theseveral racial types that have gone to produce the hybrid stock. Such isthe case of the European peoples. The inhabitants vary greatly amongthemselves, both in physical and in mental traits, as would be expected;and the variation between individuals in point of patriotic animusshould accordingly also be expected to be extremely wide, --should, ineffect, greatly exceed the difference, if any, in this respect betweenthe several racial elements engaged in the European population. Someappreciable difference in this respect there appears to be, betweenindividuals; but individual divergence from the normal or averageappears always to be of a sporadic sort, --it does not run on classlines, whether of occupation, status or property, nor does it run at allconsistently from parent to child. When all is told the argument returnsto the safe ground that these variations in point of patriotic animusare sporadic and inconsequential, and do not touch the generalproposition that, one with another, the inhabitants of Europe and theEuropean Colonies are sufficiently patriotic, and that the averageendowment in this respect runs with consistent uniformity across alldifferences of time, place and circumstance. It would, in fact, beextremely hazardous to affirm that there is a sensible difference in theordinary pitch of patriotic sentiment as between any two widely diversesamples of these hybrid populations, in spite of the fact that thediversity in visible physical traits may be quite pronounced. 

In short, the conclusion seems safe, on the whole, that in this respectthe several racial stocks that have gone to produce the existingpopulations of Christendom have all been endowed about as richly one asanother. Patriotism appears to be a ubiquitous trait, at least among theraces and peoples of Christendom. From which it should follow, thatsince there is, and has from the beginning been, no differentialadvantage favoring one racial stock or one fashion of hybrid as againstanother, in this matter of patriotic animus, there should also be noground of selective survival or selective elimination on this account asbetween these several races and peoples. So that the undisturbed andundiminished prevalence of this trait among the European population, early or late, argues nothing as to its net serviceability ordisserviceability under any of the varying conditions of culture andtechnology to which these Europeans have been subjected, first and last;except that it has, in any case, not proved so disserviceable under theconditions prevailing hitherto as to result in the extinction of theseEuropeans, one with another. [4]

[Footnote 4: For a more extended discussion of this matter, cf. _Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution_, ch. I. AndSupplementary Notes i. And ii. ]

The patriotic frame of mind has been spoken of above as if it were anhereditary trait, something after the fashion of a Mendelian unitcharacter. Doubtless this is not a competent account of the matter; butthe present argument scarcely needs a closer analysis. Still, in ameasure to quiet title and avoid annoyance, it may be noted that thispatriotic animus is of the nature of a "frame of mind" rather than aMendelian unit character; that it so involves a concatenation ofseveral impulsive propensities (presumably hereditary); and that boththe concatenation and the special mode and amplitude of the response area product of habituation, very largely of the nature of conventionaliseduse and wont. What is said above, therefore, goes little farther thansaying that the underlying aptitudes requisite to this patriotic frameof mind are heritable, and that use and wont as bearing on this pointrun with sufficient uniformity to bring a passably uniform result. Itmay be added that in this concatenation spoken of there seems to becomprised, ordinarily, that sentimental attachment to habitat and customthat is called love of home, or in its accentuated expression, home-sickness; so also an invidious self-complacency, coupled with agregarious bent which gives the invidious comparison a group content;and further, commonly if not invariably, a bent of abnegation, self-abasement, subservience, or whatever it may best be called, thatinclines the bearer unreasoningly and unquestioningly to accept andserve a prescriptive ideal given by custom or by customary authority. 

 * * * * *

The conclusion would therefore provisionally run to the effect thatunder modern conditions the patriotic animus is wholly a disserviceabletrait in the spiritual endowment of these peoples, --in so far as bearson the material conditions of life unequivocally, and as regards thecultural interests more at large presumptively; whereas there is noassured ground for a discriminating opinion as touches its possibleutility or disutility at any remote period in the past. There is, ofcourse, always room for the conservative estimate that, as thepossession of this spiritual trait has not hitherto resulted in theextinction of the race, so it may also in the calculable futurecontinue to bring no more grievous results than a degree of mischief, without even stopping or greatly retarding the increase of population. 

All this, of course, is intended to apply only so far as it goes. Itmust not be taken as intending to say any least word in derogation ofthose high qualities that inspire the patriotic citizen. In itseconomic, biological and cultural incidence patriotism appears to be anuntoward trait of human nature; which has, of course, nothing to say asto its moral excellence, its aesthetic value, or its indispensability toa worthy life. No doubt, it is in all these respects deserving of allthe esteem and encomiums that fall to its share. Indeed, its well-knownmoral and aesthetic value, as well as the reprobation that is visited onany shortcomings in this respect, signify, for the purposes of thepresent argument, nothing more than that the patriotic animus meets theunqualified approval of men because they are, all and several, infectedwith it. It is evidence of the ubiquitous, intimate and ineradicablepresence of this quality in human nature; all the more since itcontinues untiringly to be held in the highest esteem in spite of thefact that a modicum of reflection should make its disserviceabilityplain to the meanest understanding. No higher praise of moralexcellence, and no profounder test of loyalty, can be asked than thiscurrent unreserved commendation of a virtue that makes invariably fordamage and discomfort. The virtuous impulse must be deep-seated andindefeasible that drives men incontinently to do good that evil may comeof it. "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him. "

In the light--and it is a dim and wavering light--of the archaeologicalevidence, helped out by circumstantial evidence from such parallel oranalogous instances as are afforded by existing communities on acomparable level of culture, one may venture more or less confidently ona reconstruction of the manner of life among the early Europeans, ofearly neolithic times and later. [5] And so one may form some conceptionof the part played by this patriotic animus among those beginnings, when, if not the race, at least its institutions were young; and whenthe native temperament of these peoples was tried out and found fit tosurvive through the age-long and slow-moving eras of stone and bronze. In this connection, it appears safe to assume that since early neolithictimes no sensible change has taken effect in the racial complexion ofthe European peoples; and therefore no sensible change in theirspiritual and mental make-up. So that in respect of the spiritualelements that go to make up this patriotic animus the Europeans of todaywill be substantially identical with the Europeans of that early time. The like is true as regards those other traits of temperament that comein question here, as being included among the stable characteristicsthat still condition the life of these peoples under the alteredcircumstances of the modern age. 

[Footnote 5: Cf. _Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution_, asabove. ]

The difference between prehistoric Europe and the present state of thesepeoples resolves itself on analysis into a difference in the state ofthe industrial arts, together with such institutional changes as havecome on in the course of working out this advance in the industrialarts. The habits and the exigencies of life among these peoples havegreatly changed; whereas in temperament and capacities the peoples thatnow live by and under the rule of this altered state of the industrialarts are the same as they were. It is to be noted, therefore, that thefact of their having successfully come through the long ages ofprehistory by the use of this mental and spiritual endowment can not betaken to argue that these peoples are thereby fit to meet the exigenciesof this later and gravely altered age; nor will it do to assume thatbecause these peoples have themselves worked out this modern culture andits technology, therefore it must all be suitable for their use andconducive to their biological success. The single object lesson of themodern urban community, with its endless requirements in the way ofsanitation, police, compulsory education, charities, --all this and manyother discrepancies in modern life should enjoin caution on anyone whois inclined off-hand to hold that because modern men have created theseconditions, therefore these must be the most suitable conditions of lifefor modern mankind. 

In the beginning, that is to say in the European beginning, men lived insmall and close groups. Control was close within the group, and thenecessity of subordinating individual gains and preferences to thecommon good was enjoined on the group by the exigencies of the case, onpain of common extinction. The situation and usages of existing Eskimovillages may serve to illustrate and enforce the argument on this head. The solidarity of sentiment necessary to support the requisitesolidarity of action in the case would be a prime condition of survivalin any racial stock exposed to the conditions which surrounded theseearly Europeans. This needful sense of solidarity would touch not simplyor most imperatively the joint prestige of the group, but rather thejoint material interests; and would enforce a spirit of mutual supportand dependence. Which would be rather helped than hindered by a jealousattitude of joint prestige; so long as no divergent interests of memberswithin the group were in a position to turn this state of the commonsentiment to their own particular advantage. 

This state of the case will have lasted for a relatively long time; longenough to have tested the fitness of these peoples for that manner oflife, --longer, no doubt, than the interval that has elapsed sincehistory began. Special interests--e. G. , personal and familyinterests--will have been present and active in these days of thebeginning; but so long as the group at large was small enough to admitof a close neighborly contact throughout its extent and throughout theworkday routine of life, at the same time that it was too small andfeeble to allow any appreciable dissipation of its joint energies insuch pursuit of selfish gains as would run counter to the paramountbusiness of the common livelihood, so long the sense of a commonlivelihood and a joint fortune would continue to hold any particularistambitions effectually in check. Had it fallen out otherwise, the storyof the group in question would have been ended, and another and moresuitably endowed type of men would have taken the place vacated by itsextinction. 

With a sensible advance in the industrial arts the scale of operationswould grow larger, and the group more numerous and extensive. The marginbetween production and subsistence would also widen and admit additionalscope for individual ambitions and personal gains. And as this processof growth and increasing productive efficiency went on, the controlexercised by neighborly surveillance, through the sentiment of thecommon good as against the self-seeking pursuits of individuals andsub-groups, would gradually slacken; until by progressive disuse itwould fall into a degree of abeyance; to be called into exercise andincite to concerted action only in the face of unusual exigenciestouching the common fortunes of the group at large, or on persuasionthat the collective interest of the group at large was placed injeopardy in the molestation of one and another of its members fromwithout. The group's prestige at least would be felt to suffer in thedefeat or discourtesy suffered by any of its members at the hands of anyalien; and, under compulsion of the ancient sense of group solidarity, whatever material hardship or material gain might so fall to individualmembers in their dealings with the alien would pass easy scrutiny asmaterial detriment or gain inuring to the group at large, --in theapprehension of men whose sense of community interest is inflamed with ajealous disposition to safeguard their joint prestige. 

With continued advance in the industrial arts the circumstancesconditioning life will undergo a progressive change of such a characterthat the joint interest of the group at large, in the material respect, will progressively be less closely bound up with the material fortunesof any particular member or members; until in the course of time andchange there will, in effect, in ordinary times be no general andinclusive community of material interest binding the members together ina common fortune and working for a common livelihood. As the rights ofownership begin to take effect, so that the ownership of property andthe pursuit of a livelihood under the rules of ownership come to governmen's economic relations, these material concerns will cease to be amatter of undivided joint interest, and will fall into the shape ofinterest in severalty. So soon and so far as this institution ofownership or property takes effect, men's material interests cease torun on lines of group solidarity. Solely, or almost solely, in theexceptional case of defense against a predatory incursion from outside, do the members of the group have a common interest of a material kind. Progressively as the state of the arts advances, the industrialorganisation advances to a larger scale and a more extensivespecialisation, with increasing divergence among individual interestsand individual fortunes; and intercourse over larger distances growseasier and makes a larger grouping practicable; which enables a larger, prompter and more effective mobilisation of forces with which to defendor assert any joint claims. But by the same move it also follows, or atleast it appears uniformly to have followed in the European case, thatthe accumulation of property and the rights of ownership haveprogressively come into the first place among the material interests ofthese peoples; while anything like a community of usufruct hasimperceptibly fallen into the background, and has presently gonevirtually into abeyance, except as an eventual recourse _in extremis_for the common defense. Property rights have displaced community ofusufruct; and invidious distinctions as between persons, sub-groups, andclasses have displaced community of prestige in the workday routine ofthese peoples; and the distinctions between contrasted persons orclasses have come to rest, in an ever increasing degree, directly orindirectly, on invidious comparisons in respect of pecuniary standingrather than on personal affiliation with the group at large. 

So, with the advance of the industrial arts a differentiation of a newcharacter sets in and presently grows progressively more pronounced andmore effectual, giving rise to a regrouping on lines that run regardlessof those frontiers that divide one community from another for purposesof patriotic emulation. So far as it comes chiefly and typically inquestion here, this regrouping takes place on two distinct but somewhatrelated principles of contrast: that of wealth and poverty, and that ofmaster and servant, or authority and obedience. The material interestsof the population in this way come to be divided between the group ofthose who own and those who command, on the one hand, and of those whowork and who obey, on the other hand. 

Neither of these two contrasted categories of persons have any directmaterial interest in the maintenance of the patriotic community; or atany rate no such interest as should reasonably induce them to spendtheir own time and substance in support of the political (patriotic)organisation within which they live. It is only in so far as one oranother of these interests looks for a more than proportionate share inany prospective gain from the joint enterprise, that the group or classin question can reasonably be counted on to bear its share in the jointventure. And it is only when and in so far as their particular materialor self-regarding interest is reenforced by patriotic conceit, that theycan be counted on to spend themselves in furtherance of the patrioticenterprise, without the assurance of a more than proportionate share inany gains that may be held in prospect from any such joint enterprise;and it is only in its patriotic bearing that the political communitycontinues to be a joint venture. That is to say, in more generalisedterms, through the development of the rights of property, and of suchlike prescriptive claims of privilege and prerogative, it has comeabout that other community interests have fallen away, until thecollective prestige remains as virtually the sole community interestwhich can hold the sentiment of the group in a bond of solidarity. 

To one or another of these several interested groups or classes withinthe community the political organisation may work a benefit; but only toone or another, not to each and several, jointly or collectively. Sinceby no chance will the benefit derived from such joint enterprise on thepart of the community at large equal the joint cost; in as much as alljoint enterprise of the kind that looks to material advantage works byone or another method of inhibition and takes effect, if at all, bylowering the aggregate efficiency of the several countries concerned, with a view to the differential gain of one at the cost of another. So, e. G. , a protective tariff is plainly a conspiracy in restraint of trade, with a view to benefit the conspirators by hindering their competitors. The aggregate cost to the community at large of such an enterprise inretardation is always more than the gains it brings to those who maybenefit by it. 

In so speaking of the uses to which the common man's patriotic devotionmay be turned, there is no intention to underrate its intrinsic value asa genial and generous trait of human nature. Doubtless it is best andchiefly to be appreciated as a spiritual quality that beautifies andennobles its bearer, and that endows him with the full stature ofmanhood, quite irrespective of ulterior considerations. So it is to beconceded without argument that this patriotic animus is a highlymeritorious frame of mind, and that it has an aesthetic value scarcelyto be overstated in the farthest stretch of poetic license. But thequestion of its serviceability to the modern community, in any otherthan this decorative respect, and particularly its serviceability to thecurrent needs of the common man in such a modern community, is nottouched by such an admission; nor does this recognition of its generousspiritual nature afford any help toward answering a further question asto how and with what effect this animus may be turned to account byanyone who is in position to make use of the forces which it sets free. 

Among Christian nations there still is, on the whole, a decidedpredilection for that ancient and authentic line of national repute thatsprings from warlike prowess. This repute for warlike prowess is whatfirst comes to mind among civilised peoples when speaking of nationalgreatness. And among those who have best preserved this warlike ideal ofworth, the patriotic ambition is likely to converge on the prestige oftheir sovereign; so that it takes the concrete form of personal loyaltyto a master, and so combines or coalesces with a servile habit of mind. 

But peace hath its victories no less renowned than war, it is said; andpeaceable folk of a patriotic temper have learned to make the best oftheir meager case and have found self-complacency in these victories ofthe peaceable order. So it may broadly be affirmed that all nations lookwith complacency on their own peculiar Culture--the organised complex ofhabits of thought and of conduct by which their own routine of life isregulated--as being in some way worthier than the corresponding habitsof their neighbors. The case of the German Culture has latterly comeunder a strong light in this way. But while it may be that no othernation has been so naive as to make a concerted profession of faith tothe effect that their own particular way of life is altogethercommendable and is the only fashion of civilisation that is fit tosurvive; yet it will scarcely be an extravagance to assert that in theirown secret mind these others, too, are blest with much the sameconsciousness of unique worth. Conscious virtue of this kind is a goodand sufficient ground for patriotic inflation, so far as it goes. Itcommonly does not go beyond a defensive attitude, however. Now andagain, as in the latterday German animation on this head, thesephenomena of national use and wont may come to command such a degree ofpopular admiration as will incite to an aggressive or proselytingcampaign. 

In all this there is nothing of a self-seeking or covetous kind. Thecommon man who so lends himself to the aggressive enhancement of thenational Culture and its prestige has nothing of a material kind to gainfrom the increase of renown that so comes to his sovereign, hislanguage, his countrymen's art or science, his dietary, or his God. There are no sordid motives in all this. These spiritual assets ofself-complacency are, indeed, to be rated as grounds of high-mindedpatriotism without afterthought. These aspirations and enthusiasms wouldperhaps be rated as Quixotic by men whose horizon is bounded by the mainchance; but they make up that substance of things hoped for thatinflates those headlong patriotic animosities that stir universaladmiration. 

So also, men find an invidious distinction in such matters of physicalmagnitude as their country's area, the number of its population, thesize of its cities, the extent of its natural resources, its aggregatewealth and its wealth per capita, its merchant marine and its foreigntrade. As a ground of invidious complacency these phenomena of physicalmagnitude and pecuniary traffic are no better and no worse than suchimmaterial assets as the majesty of the sovereign or the perfections ofthe language. They are matters in which the common man is concernedonly by the accident of domicile, and his only connection with thesethings is an imaginary joint interest in their impressiveness. To thesethings he has contributed substantially nothing, and from them hederives no other merit or advantage than a patriotic inflation. He takespride in these things in an invidious way, and there is no good reasonwhy he should not; just as there is also no good reason why he should, apart from the fact that the common man is so constituted that he, mysteriously, takes pride in these things that concern him not. 

 * * * * *

Of the several groups or classes of persons within the politicalfrontiers, whose particular interests run systematically at crosspurposes with those of the community at large under modern conditions, the class of masters, rulers, authorities, --or whatever term may seemmost suitable to designate that category of persons whose characteristicoccupation is to give orders and command deference, --of the severalorders and conditions of men these are, in point of substantial motiveand interest, most patently at variance with all the rest, or with thefortunes of the common man. The class will include civil and militaryauthorities and whatever nobility there is of a prescriptive andprivileged kind. The substantial interest of these classes in the commonwelfare is of the same kind as the interest which a parasite has in thewell-being of his host; a sufficiently substantial interest, no doubt, but there is in this relation nothing like a community of interest. Anygain on the part of the community at large will materially serve theneeds of this group of personages, only in so far as it may afford thema larger volume or a wider scope for what has in latterday colloquialphrase been called "graft. " These personages are, of course, not to bespoken of with disrespect or with the slightest inflection ofdiscourtesy. They are all honorable men. Indeed they afford theconventional pattern of human dignity and meritorious achievement, andthe "Fountain of Honor" is found among them. The point of the argumentis only that their material or other self-regarding interests are ofsuch a nature as to be furthered by the material wealth of thecommunity, and more particularly by the increasing volume of the bodypolitic; but only with the proviso that this material wealth and thisincrement of power must accrue without anything like a correspondingcost to this class. At the same time, since this class of the superiorsis in some degree a specialised organ of prestige, so that their value, and therefore their tenure, both in the eyes of the community and intheir own eyes, is in the main a "prestige value" and a tenure byprestige; and since the prestige that invests their persons is a shadowcast by the putative worth of the community at large, it follows thattheir particular interest in the joint prestige is peculiarly alert andinsistent. But it follows also that these personages cannot of their ownsubstance or of their own motion contribute to this collective prestigein the same proportion in which it is necessary for them to draw on itin support of their own prestige value. It would, in other words, be apatent absurdity to call on any of the current ruling classes, dynasties, nobility, military and diplomatic corps, in any of thenations of Europe, e. G. , to preserve their current dignity and commandthe deference that is currently accorded them, by recourse to their ownpowers and expenditure of their own substance, without the usufruct ofthe commonalty whose organ of dignity they are. The current prestigevalue which they enjoy is beyond their unaided powers to create ormaintain, without the usufruct of the community. Such an enterprise doesnot lie within the premises of the case. 

In this bearing, therefore, the first concern with which thesepersonages are necessarily occupied is the procurement and retention ofa suitable usufruct in the material resources and good-will of asufficiently large and industrious population. The requisite good-willin these premises is called loyalty, and its retention by the line ofpersonages that so trade on prestige rests on a superinduced associationof ideas, whereby the national honour comes to be confounded in popularapprehension with the prestige of these personages who have the keepingof it. But the potentates and the establishments, civil and military, onwhom this prestige value rests will unavoidably come into invidiouscomparison with others of their kind; and, as invariably happens inmatters of invidious comparison, the emulative needs of all thecompetitors for prestige are "indefinitely extensible, " as the phrase ofthe economists has it. Each and several of them incontinently needs afurther increment of prestige, and therefore also a further increment ofthe material assets in men and resources that are needful as ways andmeans to assert and augment the national honor. 

It is true, the notion that their prestige value is in any degreeconditioned by the material circumstances and the popular imagination ofthe underlying nation is distasteful to many of these vicars of thenational honour. They will incline rather to the persuasion that thisprestige value is a distinctive attribute, of a unique order, intrinsicto their own persons. But, plainly, any such detached line of magnates, notables, kings and mandarins, resting their notability on nothing moresubstantial than a slightly sub-normal intelligence and a moderatelyscrofulous habit of body could not long continue to command that eagerdeference that is accounted their due. Such a picture of majesty wouldbe sadly out of drawing. There is little conviction and no great dignityto be drawn from the unaided pronouncement:

 "We're here because, We're here because, We're here because We're here, "

even when the doggerel is duly given the rhetorical benefit of a "Tenureby the Grace of God. " The personages that carry this dignity require thebacking of a determined and patriotic populace in support of theirprestige value, and they commonly have no great difficulty in procuringit. And their prestige value is, in effect, proportioned to the volumeof material resources and patriotic credulity that can be drawn on forits assertion. It is true, their draught on the requisite sentimentaland pecuniary support is fortified with large claims of serviceabilityto the common good, and these claims are somewhat easily, indeedeagerly, conceded and acted upon; although the alleged benefit to thecommon good will scarcely be visible except in the light of glory shedby the blazing torch of patriotism. 

In so far as it is of a material nature the benefit which theconstituted authorities so engage to contribute to the common good, orin other words to confer on the common man, falls under two heads:defense against aggression from without; and promotion of thecommunity's material gain. It is to be presumed that the constitutedauthorities commonly believe more or less implicitly in their ownprofessions in so professing to serve the needs of the common man inthese respects. The common defense is a sufficiently grave matter, anddoubtless it claims the best affections and endeavour of the citizen;but it is not a matter that should claim much attention at this point inthe argument, as bearing on the service rendered the common man by theconstituted authorities, taken one with another. Any given governmentalestablishment at home is useful in this respect only as against anothergovernmental establishment elsewhere. So that on the slightestexamination it resolves itself into a matter of competitive patrioticenterprise, as between the patriotic aspirations of differentnationalities led by different governmental establishments; and theservice so rendered by the constituted authorities in the aggregatetakes on the character of a remedy for evils of their own creation. Itis invariably a defense against the concerted aggressions of otherpatriots. Taken in the large, the common defense of any given nationbecomes a detail of the competitive struggle between rival nationalitiesanimated with a common spirit of patriotic enterprise and led byauthorities constituted for this competitive purpose. 

Except on a broad basis of patriotic devotion, and except under thedirection of an ambitious governmental establishment, no seriousinternational aggression is to be had. The common defense, therefore, isto be taken as a remedy for evils arising out of the working of thepatriotic spirit that animates mankind, as brought to bear under adiscretionary authority; and in any balance to be struck between theutility and disutility of this patriotic spirit and of its service inthe hands of the constituted authorities, it will have to be cancelledout as being at the best a mitigation of some of the disorders broughton by the presence of national governments resting on patriotic loyaltyat large. 

But this common defense is by no means a vacant rubric in any attemptedaccount of modern national enterprise. It is the commonplace andconclusive plea of the dynastic statesmen and the aspiring warlords, andit is the usual blind behind which events are put in train for eventualhostilities. Preparation for the common defense also appears unfailinglyto eventuate in hostilities. With more or less _bona fides_ thestatesmen and warriors plead the cause of the common defense, and withpatriotic alacrity the common man lends himself to the enterprise aimedat under that cover. In proportion as the resulting equipment fordefense grows great and becomes formidable, the range of items which apatriotically biased nation are ready to include among the claims to bedefended grows incontinently larger, until by the overlapping ofdefensive claims between rival nationalities the distinction betweendefense and aggression disappears, except in the biased fancy of therival patriots. 

Of course, no reflections are called for here on the current Americancampaign of "Preparedness. " Except for the degree of hysteria it appearsto differ in no substantial respect from the analogous course ofauto-intoxication among the nationalities of Europe, which came to ahead in the current European situation. It should conclusively serve theturn for any self-possessed observer to call to mind that all thecivilised nations of warring Europe are, each and several, convincedthat they are fighting a defensive war. 

The aspiration of all right-minded citizens is presumed to be "Peacewith Honour. " So that first, as well as last, among those nationalinterests that are to be defended, and in the service of which thesubstance and affections of the common man are enlisted under the aegisof the national prowess, comes the national prestige, as a matter ofcourse. And the constituted authorities are doubtless sincere andsingle-minded in their endeavors to advance and defend the nationalhonour, particularly those constituted authorities that hold their placeof authority on grounds of fealty; since the national prestige in such acase coalesces with the prestige of the nation's ruler in much the samedegree in which the national sovereignty devolves upon the person of itsruler. In so defending or advancing the national prestige, such adynastic or autocratic overlord, together with the other privilegedelements assisting and dependent on him, is occupied with his owninterest; his own tenure is a tenure by prestige, and the security ofhis tenure lies in the continued maintenance of that popular fancy thatinvests his person with this national prestige and so constitutes himand his retinue of notables and personages its keeper. 

But it is uniformly insisted by the statesmen--potentates, notables, kings and mandarins--that this aegis of the national prowess in theirhands covers also many interests of a more substantial and more tangiblekind. These other, more tangible interests of the community have also avalue of a direct and personal sort to the dynasty and its hierarchy ofprivileged subalterns, in that it is only by use of the material forcesof the nation that the dynastic prestige can be advanced and maintained. The interest of such constituted authorities in the material welfare ofthe nation is consequently grave and insistent; but it is evidently aninterest of a special kind and is subject to strict and peculiarlimitations. The common good, in the material respect, interests thedynastic statesman only as a means to dynastic ends; that is to say, only in so far as it can be turned to account in the achievement ofdynastic aims. These aims are "The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory, " asthe sacred formula phrases the same conception in another bearing. 

That is to say, the material welfare of the nation is a means to theunfolding of the dynastic power; provided always that this materialwelfare is not allowed to run into such ramifications as will make thecommonwealth an unwieldy instrument in the hands of the dynasticstatesmen. National welfare is to the purpose only in so far as itconduces to political success, which is always a question of warlikesuccess in the last resort. The limitation which this considerationimposes on the government's economic policy are such as will make thenation a self-sufficient or self-balanced economic commonwealth. It mustbe a self-balanced commonwealth at least in such measure as will make itself-sustaining in case of need, in all those matters that bear directlyon warlike efficiency. 

Of course, no community can become fully self-sustaining under modernconditions, by use of the modern state of the industrial arts, except byrecourse to such drastic measures of repression as would reduce itstotal efficiency in an altogether intolerable degree. This will holdtrue even of those nations who, like Russia or the United States, arepossessed of extremely extensive territories and extremely large andvaried resources; but it applies with greatly accentuated force tosmaller and more scantily furnished territorial units. Peoples livingunder modern conditions and by use of the modern state of the industrialarts necessarily draw on all quarters of the habitable globe formaterials and products which they can procure to the best advantagefrom outside their own special field so long as they are allowed accessto these outlying sources of supply; and any arbitrary limitation onthis freedom of traffic makes the conditions of life that much harder, and lowers the aggregate efficiency of the community by that much. National self-sufficiency is to be achieved only by a degree of economicisolation; and such a policy of economic isolation involves a degree ofimpoverishment and lowered efficiency, but it will also leave the nationreadier for warlike enterprise on such a scale as its reduced efficiencywill compass. 

So that the best that can be accomplished along this line by thedynastic statesmen is a shrewd compromise, embodying such a degree ofisolation and inhibition as will leave the country passablyself-sufficient in case of need, without lowering the nationalefficiency to such a point as to cripple its productive forces beyondwhat will be offset by the greater warlike readiness that is soattained. The point to which such a policy of isolation and sufficiencywill necessarily be directed is that measure of inhibition that willyield the most facile and effective ways and means of warlikeenterprise, the largest product of warlike effectiveness to be had onmultiplying the nation's net efficiency into its readiness to take thefield. 

Into any consideration of this tactical problem a certain subsidiaryfactor enters, in that the patriotic temper of the nation is always moreor less affected by such an economic policy. The greater the degree ofeffectual isolation and discrimination embodied in the national policy, the greater will commonly be its effect on popular sentiment in the wayof national animosity and spiritual self-sufficiency; which may be anasset of great value for the purposes of warlike enterprise. 

Plainly, any dynastic statesman who should undertake to further thecommon welfare regardless of its serviceability for warlike enterprisewould be defeating his own purpose. He would, in effect, go near toliving up to his habitual professions touching international peace, instead of professing to live up to them, as the exigencies of hisnational enterprise now conventionally require him to do. In effect, hewould be _functus officio_. 

There are two great administrative instruments available for this workof repression and national self-sufficiency at the hands of theimperialistic statesman: the protective tariff, and commercialsubvention. The two are not consistently to be distinguished from oneanother at all points, and each runs out into a multifarious convolutionof variegated details; but the principles involved are, after all, fairly neat and consistent. The former is of the nature of a conspiracyin restraint of trade by repression; the latter, a conspiracy to thelike effect by subsidised monopoly; both alike act to check the pursuitof industry in given lines by artificially increasing the cost ofproduction for given individuals or classes of producers, and both alikeimpose a more than proportionate cost on the community within which theytake effect. Incidentally, both of these methods of inhibition bring adegree, though a less degree, of hardship, to the rest of the industrialworld. 

All this is matter of course to all economic students, and it should, reasonably, be plain to all intelligent persons; but its voluble denialby interested parties, as well as the easy credulity with whichpatriotic citizens allow themselves to accept the sophistries offered indefense of these measures of inhibition, has made it seem worth whilehere to recall these commonplaces of economic science. 

The ground of this easy credulity is not so much infirmity of intellectas it is an exuberance of sentiment, although it may reasonably bebelieved that its more pronounced manifestations--as, e. G. , the highprotective tariff--can be had only by force of a formidable cooperationof the two. The patriotic animus is an invidious sentiment of jointprestige; and it needs no argument or documentation to bear out theaffirmation that its bias will lend a color of merit and expediency toany proposed measure that can, however speciously, promise an increaseof national power or prestige. So that when the statesmen propose apolicy of inhibition and mitigated isolation on the professed groundthat such a policy will strengthen the nation economically by making iteconomically self-supporting, as well as ready for any warlikeadventure, the patriotic citizen views the proposed measures through therosy haze of national aspirations and lets the will to believe persuadehim that whatever conduces to a formidable national battle-front willalso contribute to the common good. At the same time all these nationalconspiracies in restraint of trade are claimed, with more or lessreason, to inflict more or less harm on rival nationalities with whomeconomic relations are curtailed; and patriotism being an invidioussentiment, the patriotic citizen finds comfort in the promise ofmischief to these others, and is all the more prone to find all kinds ofmerit in proposals that look to such an invidious outcome. In anycommunity imbued with an alert patriotic spirit, the fact that any givencircumstance, occurrence or transaction can be turned to account as ameans of invidious distinction or invidious discrimination againsthumanity beyond the national pale, will always go far to procureacceptance of it as being also an article of substantial profit to thecommunity at large, even though the slightest unbiased scrutiny wouldfind it of no ascertainable use in any other bearing than that ofinvidious mischief. And whatever will bear interpretation as anincrement of the nation's power or prowess, in comparison with rivalnationalities, will always be securely counted as an item of jointcredit, and will be made to serve the collective conceit as an invidiousdistinction; and patriotic credulity will find it meritorious also inother respects. 

So, e. G. , it is past conception that such a patent imbecility as aprotective tariff should enlist the support of any ordinarilyintelligent community except by the help of some such chauvinisticsophistry. So also, the various royal establishments of Europe, e. G. , afford an extreme but therefore all the more convincing illustration ofthe same logical fallacy. These establishments and personages are greatand authentic repositories of national prestige, and they are thereforeunreflectingly presumed by their several aggregations of subjects to beof some substantial use also in some other bearing; but it would be ahighly diverting exhibition of credulity for any outsider to fall intothat amazing misconception. But the like is manifestly true ofcommercial turnover and export trade among modern peoples; although onthis head the infatuation is so ingrained and dogmatic that even a rankoutsider is expected to accept the fallacy without reflection, on painof being rated as unsafe or unsound. Such matters again, as thedimensions of the national territory, or the number of the populationand the magnitude of the national resources, are still and have perhapsalways been material for patriotic exultation, and are fatuouslybelieved to have some great significance for the material fortunes ofthe common man; although it should be plain on slight reflection thatunder modern conditions of ownership, these things, one and all, are ofno consequence to the common man except as articles of prestige tostimulate his civic pride. The only conjuncture under which these andthe like national holdings can come to have a meaning as joint orcollective assets would arise in case of a warlike adventure carried tosuch extremities as would summarily cancel vested rights of ownershipand turn them to warlike uses. While the rights of ownership hold, thecommon man, who does not own these things, draws no profit from theirinclusion in the national domain; indeed, he is at some cost toguarantee their safe tenure by their rightful owners. 

In so pursuing their quest of the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory, byuse of the national resources and by sanction of the national spirit, the constituted authorities also assume the guardianship of sundrymaterial interests that are presumed to touch the common good; such assecurity of person and property in dealings with aliens, whether at homeor abroad; security of investment and trade, and vindication of theircitizens before the law in foreign parts; and, chiefly and ubiquitously, furtherance and extension of the national trade into foreign parts, particularly of the export trade, on terms advantageous to the tradersof the nation. 

The last named of these advantages is the one on which stress is apt tofall in the argument of all those who advocate an unfolding of nationalpower, as being a matter of vital material benefit to the common man. The other items indicated above, it is plain on the least reflection, are matters of slight if any material consequence to him. The commonman--that is ninety-nine and a fraction in one hundred of the nation'scommon men--has no dealings with aliens in foreign parts, as capitalist, trader, missionary or wayfaring man, and has no occasion for security ofperson or property under circumstances that raise any remotest questionof the national prowess or the national prestige; nor does he seek oraspire to trade to foreign parts on any terms, equitable or otherwise, or to invest capital among aliens under foreign rule, or to exploitconcessions or take orders, for acceptance or delivery; nor, indeed, does he at all commonly come into even that degree of contact withabroad that is implied in the purchase of foreign securities. Virtuallythe sole occasion on which he comes in touch with the world beyond thefrontier is when, and if, he goes away from home as an emigrant, and soceases to enjoy the tutelage of the nation's constituted authorities. But the common man, in point of fact, is a home-keeping body, whotouches foreign parts and aliens outside the national frontiers only atthe second or third remove, if at all, in the occasional purchase offoreign products, or in the sale of goods that may find their way abroadafter he has lost sight of them. The exception to this general rulewould be found in the case of those under-sized nations that are toosmall to contain the traffic in which their commonplace population areengaged, and that have neither national prowess nor national prestige tofall back on in a conceivable case of need, --and whose citizens, individually, appear to be as fortunately placed in their workdayforeign relations, without a background of prowess and prestige, as thecitizens of the great powers who are most abundantly provided in theserespects. 

With wholly negligible exceptions, these matters touch the needs or thesensibilities of the common man only through the channel of thenational honour, which may be injured in the hardships suffered by hiscompatriots in foreign parts, or which may, again, be repaired orenhanced by the meritorious achievements of the same compatriots; ofwhose existence he will commonly have no other or more substantialevidence, and in whose traffic he has no share other than this vicarioussuffering of vague and remote indignity or vainglory by force of thewholly fortuitous circumstance that they are (inscrutably) hiscompatriots. These immaterial goods of vicarious prestige are, ofcourse, not to be undervalued, nor is the fact to be overlooked orminimised that they enter into the sum total of the common citizen's"psychic income, " for whatever they may foot up to; but evidently theirconsideration takes us back to the immaterial category of prestigevalue, from which the argument just now was hopefully departing with aview to consideration of the common man's material interest in thatnational enterprise about which patriotic aspirations turn. 

These things, then, are matters in which the common man has an interestonly as they have a prestige value. But there need be no question as totheir touching his sensibilities and stirring him to action, and even toacts of bravery and self-sacrifice. Indignity or ill treatment of hiscompatriots in foreign parts, even when well deserved, as is notinfrequently the case, are resented with a vehemence that is greatly tothe common man's credit, and greatly also to the gain of those patrioticstatesmen who find in such grievances their safest and most reliable rawmaterials for the production of international difficulty. That he willso respond to the stimulus of these, materially speaking irrelevant, vicissitudes of good or ill that touch the fortunes of his compatriots, as known to him by hearsay, bears witness, of course, to the highquality of his manhood; but it falls very far short of arguing thatthese promptings of his patriotic spirit have any value as traits thatcount toward his livelihood or his economic serviceability in thecommunity in which he lives. It is all to his credit, and it goes toconstitute him a desirable citizen, in the sense that he is properlyamenable to the incitements of patriotic emulation; but it is none theless to be admitted, however reluctantly, that this trait of impulsivelyvicarious indignation or vainglory is neither materially profitable tohimself nor an asset of the slightest economic value to the community inwhich he lives. Quite the contrary, in fact. So also is it true that thecommon man derives no material advantage from the national success alongthis line, though he commonly believes that it all somehow inures to hisbenefit. It would seem that an ingrown bias of community interest, blurred and driven by a jealously sensitive patriotic pride, bends hisfaith uncritically to match his inclination. His persuasion is a work ofpreconception rather than of perception. 

But the most substantial and most unqualified material benefit currentlybelieved to be derivable from a large unfolding of national prowess anda wide extension of the national domain is an increased volume of thenation's foreign trade, particularly of the export trade. "Trade followsthe Flag. " And this larger trade and enhanced profit is presumed toinure to the joint benefit of the citizens. Such is the profession offaith of the sagacious statesmen and such is also the unreflectingbelief of the common man. 

It may be left an open question if an unfolding of national prowess andprestige increases the nation's trade, whether in imports or inexports. There is no available evidence that it has any effect of thekind. What is not an open question is the patent fact that such anextension of trade confers no benefit on the common man, who is notengaged in the import or export business. More particularly does ityield him no advantage at all commensurate with the cost involved in anyendeavour so to increase the volume of trade by increasing the nation'spower and extending its dominion. The profits of trade go not to thecommon man at large but to the traders whose capital is invested; and itis a completely idle matter to the common citizen whether the traderswho profit by the nation's trade are his compatriots or not. [6]

[Footnote 6: All this, which should be plain without demonstration, hasbeen repeatedly shown in the expositions of various peace advocates, typically by Mr. Angell. ]

The pacifist argument on the economic futility of national ambitionswill commonly rest its case at this point; having shown as unreservedlyas need be that national ambition and all its works belong of rightunder that rubric of the litany that speaks of Fire, Flood andPestilence. But an hereditary bent of human nature is not to be put outof the way with an argument showing that it has its disutilities. Sowith the patriotic animus; it is a factor to be counted with, ratherthan to be exorcised. 

As has been remarked above, in the course of time and change the advanceof the industrial arts and of the institutions of ownership have takensuch a turn that the working system of industry and business no longerruns on national lines and, indeed, no longer takes account of nationalfrontiers, --except in so far as the national policies and legislation, arbitrarily and partially, impose these frontiers on the workings oftrade and industry. The effect of such regulation for political ends is, with wholly negligible exceptions, detrimental to the efficient workingof the industrial system under modern conditions; and it is thereforedetrimental to the material interests of the common citizen. But thecase is not the same as regards the interests of the traders. Trade is acompetitive affair, and it is to the advantage of the traders engaged inany given line of business to extend their own markets and to excludecompeting traders. Competition may be the soul of trade, but monopoly isnecessarily the aim of every trader. And the national organisation is ofservice to its traders in so far as it shelters them, wholly or partly, from the competition of traders of other nationalities, or in so far asit furthers their enterprise by subvention or similar privileges asagainst their competitors, whether at home or abroad. The gain that socomes to the nation's traders from any preferential advantage affordedthem by national regulations, or from any discrimination against tradersof foreign nationality, goes to the traders as private gain. It is of nobenefit to any of their compatriots; since there is no community ofusufruct that touches these gains of the traders. So far as concerns hismaterial advantage, it is an idle matter to the common citizen whetherhe deals with traders of his own nationality or with aliens; both alikewill aim to buy cheap and sell dear, and will charge him "what thetraffic will bear. " Nor does it matter to him whether the gains of thistrade go to aliens or to his compatriots; in either case equally theyimmediately pass beyond his reach, and are equally removed from anytouch of joint interest on his part. Being private property, undermodern law and custom he has no use of them, whether a national frontierdoes or does not intervene between his domicile and that of their owner. 

These are facts that every man of sound mind knows and acts on withoutdoubt or hesitation in his own workday affairs. He would scarcely evenfind amusement in so futile a proposal as that his neighbor should sharehis business profits with him for no better reason than that he is acompatriot. But when the matter is presented as a proposition innational policy and embroidered with an invocation of his patrioticloyalty the common citizen will commonly be found credulous enough toaccept the sophistry without abatement. His archaic sense of groupsolidarity will still lead him at his own cost to favor his tradingcompatriots by the imposition of onerous trade regulations for theirprivate advantage, and to interpose obstacles in the way of alientraders. All this ingenious policy of self-defeat is greatly helped outby the patriotic conceit of the citizens; who persuade themselves to seein it an accession to the power and prestige of their own nation and adisadvantage to rival nationalities. It is, indeed, more than doubtfulif such a policy of self-defeat as is embodied in current internationaltrade discriminations could be insinuated into the legislation of anycivilized nation if the popular intelligence were not so clouded withpatriotic animosity as to let a prospective detriment to their foreignneighbors count as a gain to themselves. 

So that the chief material use of the patriotic bent in modernpopulations, therefore, appears to be its use to a limited class ofpersons engaged in foreign trade, or in business that comes incompetition with foreign industry. It serves their private gain bylending effectual countenance to such restraint of international tradeas would not be tolerated within the national domain. In so doing it hasalso the secondary and more sinister effect of dividing the nations onlines of rivalry and setting up irreconcilable claims and ambitions, ofno material value but of far-reaching effect in the way of provocationto further international estrangement and eventual breach of the peace. 

How all this falls in with the schemes of militant statesmen, andfurther reacts on the freedom and personal fortunes of the common man, is an extensive and intricate topic, though not an obscure one; and ithas already been spoken of above, perhaps as fully as need be. 

CHAPTER III

ON THE CONDITIONS OF A LASTING PEACE

The considerations set out in earlier chapters have made it appear thatthe patriotic spirit of modern peoples is the abiding source ofcontention among nations. Except for their patriotism a breach of thepeace among modern peoples could not well be had. So much will doubtlessbe assented to as a matter of course. It is also a commonplace ofcurrent aphoristic wisdom that both parties to a warlike adventure inmodern times stand to lose, materially; whatever nominal--that is to saypolitical--gains may be made by one or the other. It has also appearedfrom these considerations recited in earlier passages that thispatriotic spirit prevails throughout, among all civilised peoples, andthat it pervades one nation about as ubiquitously as another. Nor isthere much evidence of a weakening of this sinister proclivity with thepassage of time or the continued advance in the arts of life. The onlycivilized nations that can be counted on as habitually peaceable arethose who are so feeble or are so placed as to be cut off from hope ofgain through contention. Vainglorious arrogance may run at a highertension among the more backward and boorish nations; but it is notevident that the advance guard among the civilised peoples are imbuedwith a less complete national self-complacency. If the peace is to bekept, therefore, it will have to be kept by and between peoples made up, in effect, of complete patriots; which comes near being a contradictionin terms. Patriotism is useful for breaking the peace, not for keepingit. It makes for national pretensions and international jealously anddistrust, with warlike enterprise always in perspective; as a way tonational gain or a recourse in case of need. And there is commonly nosettled demarkation between these two contrasted needs that urge apatriotic people forever to keep one eye on the chance of a recourse toarms. 

Therefore any calculus of the Chances of Peace appears to become areckoning of the forces which may be counted on to keep a patrioticnation in an unstable equilibrium of peace for the time being. As hasjust been remarked above, among civilised peoples only those nations canbe counted on consistently to keep the peace who are so feeble orotherwise so placed as to be cut off from hope of national gain. Andthese can apparently be so counted on only as regards aggression, not asregards the national defense, and only in so far as they are not drawninto warlike enterprise, collectively, by their more competentneighbors. Even the feeblest and most futile of them feels in honourbound to take up arms in defense of such national pretensions as theystill may harbour; and all of them harbour such pretensions. In certainextreme cases, which it might seem invidious to specify more explicitly, it is not easy to discover any specific reasons for the maintenance of anational establishment, apart from the vindication of certain nationalpretensions which would quietly lapse in the absence of a nationalestablishment on whom their vindication is incumbent. 

Of the rest, the greater nations that are spoken of as Powers no suchgeneral statement will hold. These are the peoples who stand, inmatters of national concern, on their own initiative; and the questionof peace and war at large is in effect, a question of peace and waramong these Powers. They are not so numerous that they can be siftedinto distinct classes, and yet they differ among themselves in such away that they may, for the purpose in hand, fairly be ranged under twodistinguishable if not contrasted heads: those which may safely becounted on spontaneously to take the offensive, and those which willfight on provocation. Typically of the former description are Germanyand Japan. Of the latter are the French and British, and lessconfidently the American republic. In any summary statement of this kindRussia will have to be left on one side as a doubtful case, for reasonsto which the argument may return at a later point; the prospectivecourse of things in Russia is scarcely to be appraised on the ground ofits past. Spain and Italy, being dubious Powers at the best, need notdetain the argument; they are, in the nature of things, subsidiaries whowait on the main chance. And Austria, with whatever the name may cover, is for the immediate purpose to be counted under the head of Germany. 

There is no invidious comparison intended in so setting off these twoclasses of nations in contrast to one another. It is not a contrast ofmerit and demerit or of prestige. Imperial Germany and Imperial Japanare, in the nature of things as things go, bent in effect on adisturbance of the peace, --with a view to advance the cause of their owndominion. On a large view of the case, such as many German statesmenwere in the habit of professing in the years preceding the great war, itmay perhaps appear reasonable to say--as they were in the habit ofsaying--that these Imperial Powers are as well within the lines of fairand honest dealing in their campaign of aggression as the other Powersare in taking a defensive attitude against their aggression. Some sortof international equity has been pleaded in justification of theirdemand for an increased share of dominion. At least it has appeared thatthese Imperial statesmen have so persuaded themselves after very maturedeliberation; and they have showed great concern to persuade others ofthe equity of their Imperial claim to something more than the law wouldallow. These sagacious, not to say astute, persons have not only reacheda conviction to this effect, but they have become possessed of thisconviction in such plenary fashion that, in the German case, they havecome to admit exceptions or abatement of the claim only when and in sofar as the campaign of equitable aggression on which they had enteredhas been proved impracticable by the fortunes of war. 

With some gift for casuistry one may, at least conceivably, hold thatthe felt need of Imperial self-aggrandisement may become so urgent as tojustify, or at least to condone, forcible dispossession of weakernationalities. This might, indeed it has, become a sufficientlyperplexing question of casuistry, both as touches the punctilios ofnational honour and as regards an equitable division between rivalPowers in respect of the material means of mastery. So in private lifeit may become a moot question--in point of equity--whether the cravingof a kleptomaniac may not on occasion rise to such an intolerable pitchof avidity as to justify him in seizing whatever valuables he can safelylay hands on, to ease the discomfort of ungratified desire. In privatelife any such endeavour to better oneself at one's neighbors' cost isnot commonly reprobated if it takes effect on a decently large scaleand shrewdly within the flexibilities of the law or with the connivanceof its officers. Governing international endeavours of this class thereis no law so inflexible that it can not be conveniently made over to fitparticular circumstances. And in the absence of law the felt need of aformal justification will necessarily appeal to the unformulatedequities of the case, with some such outcome as alluded to above. Allthat, of course, is for the diplomatists to take care of. 

But any speculation on the equities involved in the projected course ofempire to which these two enterprising nations are committing themselvesmust run within the lines of diplomatic parable, and will have none buta speculative interest. It is not a matter of equity. Accepting thesituation as it stands, it is evident that any peace can only have aqualified meaning, in the sense of armistice, so long as there isopportunity for national enterprise of the character on which these twoenterprising national establishments are bent, and so long as these andthe like national establishments remain. So, taking the peaceableprofessions of their spokesmen at a discount of one hundred percent, asone necessarily must, and looking to the circumstantial evidence of thecase, it is abundantly plain that at least these two imperial Powers maybe counted on consistently to manoeuvre for warlike advantage so long asany peace compact holds, and to break the peace so soon as the strategyof Imperial enterprise appears to require it. 

There has been much courteous make-believe of amiable and uprightsolicitude on this head the past few years, both in diplomaticintercourse and among men out of doors; and since make-believe is amatter of course in diplomatic intercourse it is right and seemly, ofcourse, that no overt recognition of unavowed facts should be allowedto traverse this run of make-believe within the precincts of diplomaticintercourse. But in any ingenuous inquiry into the nature of peace andthe conditions of its maintenance there can be no harm in convenientlyleaving the diplomatic make-believe on one side and looking to thecircumstances that condition the case, rather than to the formalprofessions designed to mask the circumstances. 

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Chief among the relevant circumstances in the current situation are theimperial designs of Germany and Japan. These two national establishmentsare very much alike. So much so that for the present purpose a singleline of analysis will passably cover both cases. The same line ofanalysis will also apply, with slight adaptation, to more than one ofthe other Powers, or near-Powers, of the modern world; but in so far assuch is held to be the case, that is not a consideration that weakensthe argument as applied to these two, which are to be taken as theconsummate type-form of a species of national establishments. They are, between them, the best instance there is of what may be called aDynastic State. 

Except as a possible corrective of internal disorders and discontent, neither of the two States "desires" war; but both are bent on dominion, and as the dominion aimed at is not to be had except by fighting for it, both in effect are incorrigibly bent on warlike enterprise. And inneither case will considerations of equity, humanity, decency, veracity, or the common good be allowed to trouble the quest of dominion. As liesin the nature of the dynastic State, imperial dominion, in the ambitionsof both, is beyond price; so that no cost is too high so long asultimate success attends the imperial enterprise. So much is commonplaceknowledge among all men who are at all conversant with the facts. 

To anyone who harbors a lively sentimental prejudice for or againsteither or both of the two nations so spoken of, or for or against themanner of imperial enterprise to which both are committed, it may seemthat what has just been said of them and their relation to the world'speace runs on something of a bias and conveys something of dispraise andreprobation. Such is not the intention, however, though the appearanceis scarcely to be avoided. It is necessary for the purposes of theargument unambiguously to recognise the nature of these facts with whichthe inquiry is concerned; and any plain characterisation of the factswill unavoidably carry a fringe of suggestions of this character, because current speech is adapted for their reprobation. The point aimedat is not this inflection of approval or disapproval. The facts are tobe taken impersonally for what they are worth in their causal bearing onthe chance of peace or war; not at their sentimental value as traits ofconduct to be appraised in point of their goodness or expediency. 

So seen without prejudice, then, if that may be, this Imperialenterprise of these two Powers is to be rated as the chief circumstancebearing on the chances of peace and conditioning the terms on which anypeace plan must be drawn. Evidently, in the presence of these twoImperial Powers any peace compact will be in a precarious case; equallyso whether either or both of them are parties to such compact or not. Noengagement binds a dynastic statesman in case it turns out not tofurther the dynastic enterprise. The question then recurs: How may peacebe maintained within the horizon of German or Japanese ambitions? Thereare two obvious alternatives, neither of which promises an easy way outof the quandary in which the world's peace is placed by their presence:Submission to their dominion, or Elimination of these two Powers. Eitheralternative would offer a sufficiently deterrent outlook, and yet anyproject for devising some middle course of conciliation and amicablesettlement, which shall be practicable and yet serve the turn, scarcelyhas anything better to promise. The several nations now engaged on a warwith the greater of these Imperial Powers hold to a design ofelimination, as being the only measure that merits hopefulconsideration. The Imperial Power in distress bespeaks peace andgood-will. 

Those advocates, whatever their nationality, who speak for negotiationwith a view to a peace compact which is to embrace these States intact, are aiming, in effect, to put things in train for ultimate submission tothe mastery of these Imperial Powers. In these premises an amicablesettlement and a compact of perpetual peace will necessarily beequivalent to arranging a period of recuperation and recruiting for anew onset of dynastic enterprise. For, in the nature of the case, nocompact binds the dynastic statesman, and no consideration other thanthe pursuit of Imperial dominion commands his attention. 

There is, of course, no intention to decry this single-mindedness thatis habitually put in evidence by the dynastic statesmen. Nor should itbe taken as evidence of moral obliquity in them. It is rather the resultof a peculiar moral attitude or bent, habitual to such statesmen, and inits degree also habitual to their compatriots, and is indispensablyinvolved in the Imperial frame of mind. The consummation of Imperialmastery being the highest and ubiquitously ulterior end of allendeavour, its pursuit not only relieves its votaries from theobservance of any minor obligations that run counter to its needs, butit also imposes a moral obligation to make the most of any opportunityfor profitable deceit and chicanery that may offer. In short, thedynastic statesman is under the governance of a higher morality, bindinghim to the service of his nation's ambition--or in point of fact, to thepersonal service of his dynastic master--to which it is his dutifulprivilege loyally to devote all his powers of force and fraud. 

Democratically-minded persons, who are not moved by the call of loyaltyto a gratuitous personal master, may have some difficulty inappreciating the force and the moral austerity of this spirit ofdevotion to an ideal of dynastic aggrandisement, and in seeing how itsparamount exigence will set aside all meticulous scruples of personalrectitude and veracity, as being a shabby with-holding of service due. 

To such of these doubters as still have retained some remnants of theirreligious faith this attitude of loyalty may perhaps be madeintelligible by calling to mind the analogous self-surrender of thereligious devotee. And in this connection it may also be to the purposeto recall that in point of its genesis and derivation that unreservedself-abasement and surrender to the divine ends and guidance, which isthe chief grace and glory of the true believer, is held by secularstudents of these matters to be only a sublimated analogue orcounterfeit of this other dutiful abasement that constitutes loyalty toa temporal master. The deity is currently spoken of as The HeavenlyKing, under whose dominion no sinner has a right that He is bound torespect; very much after the fashion in which no subject of a dynasticstate has a right which the State is bound to respect. Indeed, all thesedynastic establishments that so seek the Kingdom, the Power and theGlory are surrounded with a penumbra of divinity, and it is commonly abootless question where the dynastic powers end and the claims ofdivinity begin. There is something of a coalescence. [7]

[Footnote 7: "To us the state is the most indispensable as well as thehighest requisite to our earthly existence.... All individualisticendeavor ... Must be unreservedly subordinated to this lofty claim.... The state ... Eventually is of infinitely more value than the sum of allthe individuals within its jurisdiction. " "This conception of the state, which is as much a part of our life as is the blood in our veins, isnowhere to be found in the English Constitution, and is quite foreign toEnglish thought, and to that of America as well. "--Eduard Meyer, _England, its Political Organisation and Development and the War againstGermany_, translated by H. S. White. Boston 1916. Pp. 30-31. ]

The Kaiser holds dominion by divine grace and is accountable to none butGod, if to Him. The whole case is in a still better state of repair astouches the Japanese establishment, where the Emperor is a linealdescendant of the supreme deity, Amaterazu (_o mi Kami_), and where, byconsequence, there is no line of cleavage between a divine and a secularmastery. Pursuant to this more unqualified authenticity of autocraticrule, there is also to be found in this case a correspondinglyunqualified devotion in the subjects and an unqualified subservience todynastic ends on the part of the officers of the crown. The coalescenceof dynastic rule with the divine order is less complete in the Germancase, but all observers bear witness that it all goes far enough also inthe German case. This state of things is recalled here as a means ofmaking plain that the statesmen of these Imperial Powers must in thenature of the case, and without blame, be drawn out from under thecustomary restraint of those principles of vulgar morality that areembodied in the decalogue. It is not that the subject, or--what comes tothe same thing--the servant of such a dynastic State may not be upright, veracious and humane in private life, but only that he must not beaddicted to that sort of thing in such manner or degree as might hinderhis usefulness for dynastic purposes. These matters of selfishlyindividual integrity and humanity have no weight as against theexigencies of the dynastic enterprise. 

These considerations may not satisfy all doubters as to the moralsufficiency of these motives that so suffice to decide the dynasticstatesmen on their enterprise of aggression by force and fraud; but itshould be evident that so long as these statesmen continue in the frameof mind spoken of, and so long as popular sentiment in these countriescontinues, as hitherto, to lend them effectual support in the pursuit ofsuch Imperial enterprise, so long it must also remain true that noenduring peace can be maintained within the sweep of their Imperialambition. Any peace compact would necessarily be, in effect, anarmistice terminable at will and serving as a season of preparation tomeet a deferred opportunity. For the peaceable nations it would, ineffect, be a respite and a season of preparation for eventual submissionto the Imperial rule. 

By advocates of such a negotiated compact of perpetual peace it has beenargued that the populace underlying these Imperial Powers will readilybe brought to realise the futility and inexpediency of such dynasticenterprise, if only the relevant facts are brought to their knowledge, and that so these Powers will be constrained to keep the peace bydefault of popular support for their warlike projects. What is required, it is believed by these sanguine persons, is that information becompetently conveyed to the common people of these warlike nations, showing them that they have nothing to apprehend in the way ofaggression or oppressive measures from the side of their more peaceableneighbours; whereupon their warlike animus will give place to areasonable and enlightened frame of mind. This argument runs tacitly orexplicitly, on the premise that these peoples who have soenthusiastically lent themselves to the current warlike enterprise arefundamentally of the same racial complexion and endowed with the samehuman nature as their peaceable neighbours, who would be only too gladto keep the peace on any terms of tolerable security from aggression. Ifonly a fair opportunity is offered for the interested peoples to come toan understanding, it is held, a good understanding will readily bereached; at least so far as to result in a reasonable willingness tosubmit questions in dispute to an intelligent canvass and an equitablearbitration. 

Projects for a negotiated peace compact, to include the dynastic States, can hold any prospect of a happy issue only if this line of argument, orits equivalent, is pertinent and conclusive; and the argument is to thepoint only in so far as its premises are sound and will carry as far asthe desired conclusion. Therefore a more detailed attention to thepremises on which it runs will be in place, before any project of thekind is allowed to pass inspection. 

As to homogeneity of race and endowment among the several nations inquestion, the ethnologists, who are competent to speak of that matter, are ready to assert that this homogeneity goes much farther among thenations of Europe than any considerable number of peace advocates wouldbe ready to claim. In point of race, and broadly speaking, there issubstantially no difference between these warring nations, along anyeast-and-west line; while the progressive difference in racialcomplexion that is always met with along any north-and-south line, nowhere coincides with a national or linguistic frontier. In no casedoes a political division between these nations mark or depend on adifference of race or of hereditary endowment. And, to give fullmeasure, it may be added that also in no case does a division of classeswithin any one of these nations, into noble and base, patrician andplebeian, lay and learned, innocent and vicious, mark or rest on anyslightest traceable degree of difference in race or in heritableendowment. On the point of racial homogeneity there is no fault to findwith the position taken. 

If the second postulate in this groundwork of premises on which theadvocates of negotiable peace base their hopes were as well taken thereneed be no serious misgiving as to the practicability of such a plan. The plan counts on information, persuasion and reflection to subduenational animosities and jealousies, at least in such measure as wouldmake them amenable to reason. The question of immediate interest on thishead, therefore, would be as to how far this populace may be accessibleto the contemplated line of persuasion. At present they are, notoriously, in a state of obsequious loyalty to the dynasty, single-minded devotion to the fortunes of the Fatherland, anduncompromising hatred of its enemies. In this frame of mind there isnothing that is new, except the degree of excitement. The animus, itwill be recalled, was all there and on the alert when the call came, sothat the excitement came on with the sweep of a conflagration on thefirst touch of a suitable stimulus. The German people at large wasevidently in a highly unstable equilibrium, so that an unexampledenthusiasm of patriotic self-sacrifice followed immediately on the firstincitement to manslaughter, very much as if the nation had been heldunder an hypnotic spell. One need only recall the volume of overbearingmagniloquence that broke out all over the place in that beginning, whenThe Day was believed to be dawning. 

Such a popular frame of mind is not a transient episode, to be createdat short notice and put aside for a parcel of salutary advice. Thenation that will make such a massive concerted move with the alacrityshown in this instance must be living in a state of alert readiness forjust such an onset. Yet this is not to be set down as anything in theway of a racial trait specifically distinguishing the German people fromthose other adjacent nationalities that are incapable of a similarlyswift and massive response to the appeal of patriotism. These adjacentnationalities are racially identical with the German people, but they donot show the same warlike abandon in nearly the same degree. 

But for all that, it is a national trait, not to be acquired or put awayby taking thought. It is just here that the line of definition runs: itis a national trait, not a racial one. It is not Nature, but it isSecond Nature. But a national trait, while it is not heritable in thesimple sense of that term, has the same semblance, or the same degree, of hereditary persistence that belongs to the national institutions, usages, conventionalities, beliefs, which distinguish the given nationfrom its neighbors. In this instance it may be said more specificallythat this eager loyalty is a heritage of the German people at large inthe same sense and with the same degree of permanence as the institutionof an autocratic royalty has among them, or a privileged nobility. Indeed, it is the institutional counterfoil of these establishments. Itis of an institutional character, just as the corresponding sense ofnational solidarity and patriotic devotion is among the neighboringpeoples with whom the German nation comes in comparison. And aninstitution is an historical growth, with just so much of a character ofpermanence and continuity of transmission as is given it by thecircumstances out of which it has grown. Any institution is a product ofhabit, or perhaps more accurately it is a body of habits of thoughtbearing on a given line of conduct, which prevails with such generalityand uniformity throughout the group as to have become a matter of commonsense. 

Such an article of institutional furniture is an outcome of usage, notof reflection or deliberate choice; and it has consequently a characterof self-legitimation, so that it stands in the accredited scheme ofthings as intrinsically right and good, and not merely as a shrewdlychosen expedient _ad interim_. It affords a norm of life, inosculatingwith a multiplicity of other norms, with which it goes to make up abalanced scheme of ends, ways and means governing human conduct; and noone such institutional item, therefore, is materially to be disturbed, discarded or abated except at the cost of serious derangement to thebalanced scheme of things in which it belongs as an integralconstituent. Nor can such a detail norm of conduct and habitualpropensity come into bearing and hold its place, except by force ofhabituation which is at the same time consonant with the common run ofhabituation to which the given community is subject. It follows thatthe more rigorous, comprehensive, unremitting and long-continued thehabituation to which a given institutional principle owes its vogue, themore intimately and definitively will it be embedded in the common senseof the community, the less chance is there of its intrinsic necessitybeing effectually questioned or doubted, and the less chance is there ofcorrecting it or abating its force in case circumstances should sochange as to make its continued rule visibly inexpedient. Its abatementwill be a work not of deliberation and design, but of defection throughdisuse. 

Not that reflection and sane counsel will count for nothing in thesepremises, but only that these exertions of intelligence will count forrelatively very little by comparison with the run of habituation asenforced by the circumstances conditioning any given case; and further, that wise counsel and good resolutions can take effect in the way ofamending any untoward institutional bent only by way of suitablehabituation, and only at such a rate of change as the circumstancesgoverning habituation will allow. It is, at the best, slow work to shiftthe settled lines of any community's scheme of common sense. Now, national solidarity, and more particularly an unquestioning loyalty tothe sovereign and the dynasty, is a matter of course and of commonsensenecessity with the German people. It is not necessary to call to mindthat the Japanese nation, which has here been coupled with the German, are in the same case, only more so. 

Doubtless it would be exceeding the premises to claim that it shouldnecessarily take the German people as long-continued and as harsh aschooling to unlearn their excess of chauvinism, their servile stoopingto gratuitous authority, and their eager subservience to the dynasticambitions of their masters, as that which has in the course of historyinduced these habits in them. But it would seem reasonable to expectthat there should have to be some measure of proportion between what ithas cost them in time and experience to achieve their current frame ofmind in this bearing and what it would cost to divest themselves of it. It is a question of how long a time and how exacting a discipline wouldbe required so far to displace the current scheme of commonsense valuesand convictions in force in the Fatherland as to neutralise theircurrent high-wrought principles of servility, loyalty and nationalanimosity; and on the solution of this difficulty appear to depend thechances of success for any proposed peace compact to which the Germannation shall be made a party, on terms of what is called an "honorablepeace. "

The national, or rather the dynastic and warlike, animus of this peopleis of the essence of their social and political institutions. Withoutsuch a groundwork of popular sentiment neither the nationalestablishment, nor the social order on which it rests and through whichit works, could endure. And with this underlying national sentimentintact nothing but a dynastic establishment of a somewhat ruthlessorder, and no enduring system of law and order not based on universalsubmission to personal rule, could be installed. Both the popular animusand the correlative coercive scheme of law and order are of historicalgrowth. Both have been learned, acquired, and are in no cogent senseoriginal with the German people. But both alike and conjointly have comeout of a very protracted, exacting and consistent discipline of masteryand subjection, running virtually unbroken over the centuries that havepassed since the region that is now the Fatherland first passed underthe predaceous rule of its Teutonic invaders, --for no part of the"Fatherland" is held on other tenure than that of forcible seizure inancient times by bands of invaders, with the negligible exception ofHolstein and a slight extent of territory adjoining that province to thesouth and south-west. Since the time when such peoples as were overtakenin this region by the Germanic barbarian invasions, and were reduced tosubjection and presently merged with their alien masters, the samegeneral fashion of law and order that presently grew out of thatbarbarian conquest has continued to govern the life of those peoples, with relatively slight and intermittent relaxation of its rigors. Contrasted with its beginnings, in the shameful atrocities of the DarkAges and the prehistoric phases of this German occupation, the laterstages of this system of coercive law and order in the Fatherland willappear humane, not to say genial; but as compared with the degree ofmitigation which the like order of things presently underwent elsewherein western Europe, it has throughout the historical period preserved aremarkable degree of that character of arrogance and servility which itowes to its barbarian and predatory beginnings. 

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The initial stages of this Germanic occupation of the Fatherland aresufficiently obscure under the cloud of unrecorded antiquity that coversthem; and then, an abundance of obscurantism has also been added by thevapours of misguided vanity that have surrounded so nearly allhistorical inquiry on the part of patriotic German scholars. Yet thereare certain outstanding features in the case, in history and prehistory, that are too large or too notorious to be set aside or to be coveredover, and these may suffice to show the run of circumstances which havesurrounded the German peoples and shaped their civil and politicalinstitutions, and whose discipline has guided German habits of thoughtand preserved the German spirit of loyalty in the shape in which itunderlies the dynastic State of the present day. 

Among the most engaging of those fables that make the conventionalbackground of German history is the academic legend of a freeagricultural village community made up of ungraded and masterless men. It is not necessary here to claim that such a village community neverplayed a part in the remoter prehistoric experiences out of which theGerman people, or their ruling classes, came into the territory of theFatherland; such a claim might divert the argument. But it issufficiently patent to students of those matters today that no suchcommunity of free and ungraded men had any part in the Germanicbeginnings; that is to say, in the early experiences of the Fatherlandunder German rule. The meager and ambiguous remarks of Tacitus on thestate of domestic and civil economy among the inhabitants of Germanyneed no longer detain anyone, in the presence of the availablearchaeological and historical evidence. The circumstantial evidence ofthe prehistoric antiquities which touch this matter, as well as theslight allusions of historical records in antiquity, indicateunambiguously enough that when the Germanic immigrants moved into theterritories of the Fatherland they moved in as invaders, or rather asmarauders, and made themselves masters of the people already living onthe land. And history quite as unambiguously declares that when theFatherland first comes under its light it presents a dark and bloodyground of tumultuous contention and intrigue; where princes andprincelings, captains of war and of rapine as well as the captains ofsuperstition, spend the substance of an ignominiously sordid and servilepopulace in an endless round of mutual raiding, treachery, assassinations and supersession. 

Taken at their face value, the recorded stories of that early time wouldleave one to infer that the common people, whose industry supported thissuperstructure of sordid mastery, could have survived only by oversight. But touched as it is with poetic license and devoted to the admirablelife of the master class--admirable in their own eyes and in those oftheir chroniclers, as undoubtedly also in the eyes of the subjectpopulace--the history of that time doubtless plays up the notableexploits and fortunes of its conspicuous personages, somewhat to theneglect of the obscure vicissitudes of life and fortune among that humanraw material by use of which the admirable feats of the master classwere achieved, and about the use of which the dreary traffic of greedand crime went on among the masters. 

Of the later history, what covers, say, the last one thousand years, there is no need to speak at length. With transient, episodic, interruptions it is for the Fatherland a continuation out of thesebeginnings, leading out into a more settled system of subjection andmastery and a progressively increased scale of princely enterprise, resting on an increasingly useful and increasingly loyal populace. Inall this later history the posture of things in the Fatherland is by nomeans unique, nor is it even strikingly peculiar, by contrast with therest of western Europe, except in degree. It is of the same general kindas the rest of what has gone to make the historical advance of medievaland modern times; but it differs from the generality in a more sluggishmovement and a more tenacious adherence to what would be rated as theuntoward features of mediaevalism. The approach to a modern scheme ofinstitutions and modern conceptions of life and of human values has beenslow, and hitherto incomplete, as compared with those communities thathave, for good or ill, gone farthest along the ways of modernity. Habituation to personal subjection and subservience under the rigorousand protracted discipline of standardised service and fealty hascontinued later, and with later and slighter mitigation, in theFatherland; so as better to have conserved the spiritual attitude of thefeudal order. Law and order in the Fatherland has in a higher degreecontinued to mean unquestioning obedience to a personal master andunquestioning subservience to the personal ambitions of the master. Andsince freedom, in the sense of discretionary initiative on the part ofthe common man, does not fit into the framework of such a system ofdependence on personal authority and surveillance, any degree of suchfree initiative will be "licence" in the eyes of men bred into theframework of this system; whereas "liberty, " as distinct from "licence, "is not a matter of initiative and self-direction, but of latitude in theservice of a master. Hence no degree of curtailment in this delegated"liberty" will be resented or repudiated by popular indignation, so longas the master to whom service is due can give assurance that it isexpedient for his purposes. 

The age-long course of experience and institutional discipline out ofwhich the current German situation has come may be drawn schematicallyto the following effect: In the beginning a turmoil of conquest, rapine, servitude, and contention between rival bands of marauders and theircaptains, gradually, indeed imperceptibly, fell into lines of settledand conventionalised exploitation; with repeated interruptions due tonew incursions and new combinations of rapacious chieftains. Out of itall in the course of time came a feudal régime, under which personalallegiance and service to petty chiefs was the sole and universalaccredited bond of solidarity. As the outcome of further unremittingintrigue and contention among feudal chiefs, of high and low degree, thepopulace fell into larger parcels, under the hands of feudal lords oflarger dominion, and the bias of allegiance and service came to holdwith some degree of permanence and uniformity, or at least ofconsistency, over a considerable reach of country, including itsinhabitants. With the rise of States came allegiance to a dynasty, asdistinguished from the narrower and more ephemeral allegiance to thesemi-detached person of a victorious prince; and the relative permanenceof territorial frontiers under this rule gave room for an effectualrecrudescence of the ancient propensity to a sentimental groupsolidarity; in which the accredited territorial limits of the dynasticdominion served to outline the group that so was felt to belong togetherunder a joint dispensation and with something of a joint interest inmatters of fame and fortune. As the same notion is more commonly andmore suggestively expressed, a sense of nationality arose within thesweep of the dynastic rule. This sense of community interest that iscalled nationality so came in to reenforce the sense of allegiance tothe dynastic establishment and so has coalesced with it to produce thathigh-wrought loyalty to the State, that draws equally on the sentimentof community interest in the nation and on the prescriptive docility tothe dynastic head. The sense of national solidarity and of feudalloyalty and service have coalesced, to bring this people to that climaxof patriotic devotion beyond which there lies no greater height alongthis way. But this is also as far as the German people have gone; and itis scarcely to be claimed that the Japanese have yet reached this stage;they would rather appear to be, essentially, subjects of the emperor, and only inchoately a Japanese nation. Of the German people it seemssafe to say that they have achieved such a coalescence of unimpairedfeudal fealty to a personal master and a full-blown sense of nationalsolidarity, without any perceptible slackening in either strand of thedouble tie which so binds them in the service of the dynastic State. 

Germany, in other words, is somewhat in arrears, as compared with thoseEuropeans that have gone farthest along this course of institutionalgrowth, or perhaps rather institutional permutation. It is not that thisretardation of the German people in this matter of national spirit is tobe counted as an infirmity, assuredly not as a handicap in the pursuitof that national prestige on which all patriotic endeavour finallyconverges. For this purpose the failure to distinguish between theambitions of the dynastic statesmen and the interests of thecommonwealth is really a prodigious advantage, which their rivals, ofmore mature growth politically, have lost by atrophy of this samedynastic axiom of subservience. These others, of whom the French and theEnglish-speaking peoples make up the greater part and may be taken asthe typical instance, have had a different history, in part. Thediscipline of experience has left a somewhat different residue of habitsof thought embedded in their institutional equipment and effective asaxiomatic premises in their further apprehension of what is worth while, and why. 

It is not that the difference between these two contrasted strains ofthe Western civilisation is either profound or very pronounced; it isperhaps rather to be stated as a difference of degree than of kind; aretardation of spiritual growth, in respect of the prevalent andcontrolling habits of thought on certain heads, in the one case asagainst the other. Therefore any attempt to speak with sufficientdefinition, so as to bring out this national difference of animus in anyconvincing way, will unavoidably have an appearance of overstatement, ifnot also of bias. And in any case, of course, it is not to be expectedthat the national difference here spoken for can be brought home to theapprehension of any unspoiled son of the Fatherland, since it does notlie within that perspective. 

It is not of the nature of a divergence, but rather a differential inpoint of cultural maturity, due to a differential in the rate ofprogression through that sequence of institutional phases through whichthe civilised peoples of Europe, jointly and severally, have been led byforce of circumstance. In this movement out of the Dark Ages and onward, circumstances have fallen out differently for those Europeans thatchanced to live within the confines of the Fatherland, different withsuch effect as to have in the present placed these others at a fartherremove from the point of departure, leaving them furnished with less ofthat archaic frame of mind that is here in question. Possessed of less, but by no means shorn of all--perhaps not of the major part--of thatbarbaric heritage. 

Circumstances have so fallen out that these--typically the French andthe English-speaking peoples--have left behind and partly forgotten thatinstitutional phase in which the people of Imperial Germany now live andmove and have their being. The French partly because they--that is thecommon people of the French lands--entered the procession with a verysubstantial lead, having never been put back to a point abreast of theirneighbors across the Rhine, in that phase of European civilisation fromwhich the peoples of the Fatherland tardily emerged into the feudal age. So, any student who shall set out to account for the visible lead whichthe French people still so obstinately maintain in the advance ofEuropean culture, will have to make up his account with this notablefact among the premises of his inquiry, that they have had a shortercourse to cover and have therefore, in the sporting phrase, had theinside track. They measure from a higher datum line. Among theadvantages which so have come, in a sense unearned, to the Frenchpeople, is their uninterrupted retention, out of Roman--and perhapspre-Roman--times, of the conception of a commonwealth, a community ofmen with joint and mutual interests apart from any superimposeddependence on a joint feudal superior. The French people thereforebecame a nation, with unobtrusive facility, so soon as circumstancespermitted, and they are today the oldest "nation" in Europe. Theytherefore were prepared from long beforehand, with an adequate principle(habit of thought) of national cohesion and patriotic sentiment, to makethe shift from a dynastic State to a national commonwealth whenever theoccasion for such a move should arise; that is to say, whenever thedynastic State, by a suitable conjunction of infirmity and irksomeness, should pass the margin of tolerance in this people's outraged sense ofnational shame. The case of the German people in their latterdayattitude toward dynastic vagaries may afford a term of comparison. Theseappear yet incapable of distinguishing between national shame anddynastic ambition. 

By a different course and on lines more nearly parallel with thelife-history of the German peoples, the English-speaking peoples havereached what is for the present purpose much the same ground as theFrench, in that they too have made the shift from the dynastic State tothe national commonwealth. The British started late, but the disciplineof servitude and unmitigated personal rule in their case was relativelybrief and relatively ineffectual; that is to say, as compared with whattheir German cousins had to endure and to learn in the like connection. So that the British never learned the lesson of dynastic loyalty fullyby heart; at least not the populace; whatever may be true for theprivileged classes, the gentlemen, whose interests were on the side ofprivilege and irresponsible mastery. Here as in the French case it wasthe habits of thought of the common man, not of the class of gentlemen, that made the obsolescence of the dynastic State a foregone conclusionand an easy matter--as one speaks of easy achievement in respect ofmatters of that magnitude. It is now some two and a half centuries sincethis shift in the national point of view overtook the English-speakingcommunity. Perhaps it would be unfair to say that that period, or thatperiod plus what further time may yet have to be added, marks theinterval by which German habits of thought in these premises are inarrears, but it is not easy to find secure ground for a different andmore moderate appraisal. 

The future, of course, is not to be measured in terms of the past, andthe tempo of the present and of the calculable future is in manybearings very different from that which has ruled even in the recenthistorical past. But then, on the other hand, habituation alwaysrequires time; more particularly such habituation as is to take effectthroughout a populous nation and is counted on to work a displacement ofa comprehensive institutional system and of a people's outlook on life. 

Germany is still a dynastic State. That is to say, its nationalestablishment is, in effect, a self-appointed and irresponsibleautocracy which holds the nation in usufruct, working through anappropriate bureaucratic organisation, and the people is imbued withthat spirit of abnegation and devotion that is involved in theirenthusiastically supporting a government of that character. Now, it isin the nature of a dynastic State to seek dominion, that being the wholeof its nature. And a dynastic establishment which enjoys the unqualifiedusufruct of such resources as are placed at its disposal by thefeudalistic loyalty of the German people runs no chance of keeping thepeace, except on terms of the unconditional surrender of all those whomit may concern. No solemn engagement and no pious resolution has anyweight in the balance against a cultural fatality of this magnitude. 

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This account of the derivation and current state of German nationalismwill of course appear biased to anyone who has been in the habit ofrating German Culture high in all its bearings, and to whom at the sametime the ideals of peace and liberty appeal. Indeed, such a critic, gifted with the due modicum of asperity, might well be provoked to callit all a more or less ingenious diatribe of partisan malice. But it canbe so construed only by those who see the question at issue as a pointof invidious distinction between this German animus on the one hand andthe corresponding frame of mind of the neighboring peoples on the otherhand. There may also appear to the captious to be some air ofdeprecation about the characterisation here offered of the past historyof political traffic within the confines of the Fatherland. All ofwhich, of course, touches neither the veracity of the characterisationnor the purpose with which so ungrateful a line of analysis andexposition has been entered upon. It is to be regretted if facts thatmay flutter the emotions of one and another among the sensitive andunreflecting can not be drawn into such an inquiry without having theircogency discounted beforehand on account of the sentimental valueimputed to them. Of course no offense is intended and no invidiouscomparison is aimed at. 

Even if the point of it all were an invidious comparison it wouldimmediately have to be admitted that the net showing in favor of theseothers, e. G. , the French or the English-speaking peoples, is by no meansso unreservedly to their credit as such a summary statement of theGerman case might seem to imply. As bearing on the chances of a peacecontingent upon the temper of the contracting nationalities, it is by nomeans a foregone conclusion that such a peace compact would holdindefinitely even if it depended solely on the pacific animus of theseothers that have left the dynastic State behind. These others, in fact, are also not yet out of the woods. They may not have the same gift ofgratuitous and irresponsible truculence as their German cousins, in thesame alarming degree; but as was said in an earlier passage, they tooare ready to fight on provocation. They are patriotic to a degree;indeed to such a degree that anything which visibly touches the nationalprestige will readily afford a _casus belli_. But it remains true thatthe popular temper among them is of the defensive order; perhaps of anunnecessarily enthusiastic defensive order, but after all in such aframe of mind as leaves them willing to let well enough alone, to liveand let live. 

And herein appears to lie the decisive difference between those peopleswhose patriotic affections center about the fortunes of an impersonalcommonwealth and those in whom is superadded a fervent aspiration fordynastic ascendency. The latter may be counted on to break the peacewhen a promising opportunity offers. 

The contrast may be illustrated, though not so sharply as might bedesirable, in the different temper shown by the British people in theBoer war on the one hand, as compared with the popularity of theFrench-Prussian war among the German people on the other hand. Both wereaggressive wars, and both were substantially unprovoked. Diplomaticallyspeaking, of course, sufficient provocation was found in either case, ashow should it not? But in point of substantial provocation and ofmaterial inducement, both were about equally gratuitous. In either casethe war could readily have been avoided without material detriment tothe community and without perceptible lesion to the national honour. Both were "engineered" on grounds shamelessly manufactured _ad hoc_ byinterested parties; in the one case by a coterie of dynastic statesmen, in the other by a junta of commercial adventurers and imperialisticpoliticians. In neither case had the people any interest of gain or lossin the quarrel, except as it became a question of national prestige. Butboth the German and the British community bore the burden and fought thecampaign to a successful issue for those interested parties who hadprecipitated the quarrel. The British people at large, it is true, borethe burden; which comes near being all that can be said in the way ofpopular approval of this war, which political statesmen have since thenrated as one of the most profitable enterprises in which the forces ofthe realm have been engaged. On the subject of this successful war thecommon man is still inclined to cover his uneasy sense of decency with arecital of extenuating circumstances. What parallels all this in theGerman case is an outbreak of patriotic abandon and an admirable spiritof unselfish sacrifice in furtherance of the dynastic prestige, anintoxication of patriotic blare culminating in the triumphant coronationat Versailles. Nor has the sober afterthought of the past forty-sixyears cast a perceptible shadow of doubt across the glorious memory ofthat patriotic debauch. 

Such is the difference of animus between a body of patriotic citizens ina modern commonwealth on the one hand and the loyal subjects of adynastic State on the other hand. There need be no reflections on theintrinsic merits of either. Seen in dispassionate perspective fromoutside the turmoil, there is not much to choose, in point of sane andself-respecting manhood, between the sluggish and shamefaced abettor ofa sordid national crime, and a ranting patriot who glories in serving ascat's-paw to a syndicate of unscrupulous politicians bent on dominionfor dominion's sake. But the question here is not as to the relativemerits or the relative manhood contents of the two contrasted types ofpatriot. Doubtless both and either have manhood enough and to spare; atleast, so they say. But the point in question is the simpler and nowiseinvidious one, as to the availability of both or either for theperpetuation of the world's peace under a compact of vigilantneutrality. Plainly the German frame of mind admits of no neutrality;the quest of dominion is not compatible with neutrality, and thesubstantial core of German national life is still the quest of dominionunder dynastic tutelage. How it stands with the spirit that hasrepeatedly come in sight in the international relations of the Britishcommunity is a question harder to answer. 

It may be practicable to establish a peace of neutrals on the basis ofsuch national spirit as prevails among these others--the French andEnglish-speaking peoples, together with the minor nationalities thatcluster about the North Sea--because their habitual attitude is that ofneutrality, on the whole and with allowance for a bellicose minority inall these countries. By and large, these peoples have come to thetolerant attitude that finds expression in the maxim, Live and let live. But they are all and several sufficiently patriotic. It may, indeed, prove that they are more than sufficiently patriotic for the purposes ofa neutral peace. They stand for peace, but it is "peace with honour;"which means, in more explicit terms, peace with undiminished nationalprestige. Now, national prestige is a very particular commodity, as hasbeen set out in earlier passages of this inquiry; and a peace which isto be kept only on terms of a jealous maintenance of the national honouris likely to be in a somewhat precarious case. If, and when, thenational honour is felt to require an enhanced national ascendancy, thecase for a neutral peace immediately becomes critical. And the greaterthe number and diversity of pretensions and interests that are conceivedto be bound up with the national honour, the more unstable will theresulting situation necessarily be. 

The upshot of all this recital of considerations appears to be that aneutral peace compact may, or it may not, be practicable in the absenceof such dynastic States as Germany and Japan; whereas it has no chancein the presence of these enterprising national establishments. 

No one will be readier or more voluble in exclaiming against the falsityof such a discrimination as is here attempted, between the democraticand the dynastic nations of the modern world, than the spokesmen ofthese dynastic Powers. No one is more outspoken in professions ofuniversal peace and catholic amity than these same spokesmen of thedynastic Powers; and nowhere is there more urgent need of suchprofessions. Official and "inspired" professions are, of course, to beoverlooked; at least, so charity would dictate. But there have, in thehistoric present, been many professions of this character made also bycredible spokesmen of the German, and perhaps of the Japanese, people, and in all sincerity. By way of parenthesis it should be said that thisis not intended to apply to expressions of conviction and intention thathave come out of Germany these two years past (December 1916). Withoutquestioning the credibility of these witnesses that have borne witnessto the pacific and genial quality of national sentiment in the Germanpeople, it will yet be in place to recall the run of facts in thenational life of Germany in this historical present and the position ofthese spokesmen in the German community. 

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The German nation is of a peculiar composition in respect of its socialstructure. So far as bears on the question in hand, it is made up ofthree distinctive constituent factors, or perhaps rather categories orconditions of men. The populace is of course the main category, and inthe last resort always the main and decisive factor. Next in point ofconsequence as well as of numbers and initiative is the personnel of thecontrol, --the ruling class, the administration, the official community, the hierarchy of civil and political servants, or whatever designationmay best suit; the category comprises that pyramidal superstructure ofprivilege and control whereof the sovereign is the apex, and in whom, under any dynastic rule, is in effect vested the usufruct of thepopulace. These two classes or conditions of men, the one of whichorders and the other obeys, make up the working structure of the nation, and they also between them embody the national life and carry forwardthe national work and aim. Intermediate between them, or rather besidethem and overlapping the commissure, is a third category whose lifearticulates loosely with both the others at the same time that it stillruns along in a semi-detached way. This slighter but more visible, andparticularly more audible, category is made up of the "Intellectuals, "as a late, and perhaps vulgar, designation would name them. 

These are they who chiefly communicate with the world outside, and atthe same time they do what is academically called thinking. They are inintellectual contact and communication with the world at large, in acontact of give and take, and they think and talk in and about thoseconcepts that go in under the caption of the humanities in the world atlarge. The category is large enough to constitute an intellectualcommunity, indeed a community of somewhat formidable magnitude, taken inabsolute terms, although in percentages of the population at large theirnumbers will foot up to only an inconsiderable figure. Their contactwith the superior class spoken of above is fairly close, being acontact, in the main, of service on the one side and of control on theother. With the populace their contact and communion is relativelyslight, the give and take in the case being neither intimate norfar-reaching. More particularly is there a well-kept limit of moderationon any work of indoctrination or intellectual guidance which this classmay carry down among the people at large, dictated and enforced bydynastic expediency. This category, of the Intellectuals, issufficiently large to live its own life within itself, without drawingon the spiritual life of the community at large, and of sufficientlysubstantial quality to carry its own peculiar scheme of intellectualconventions and verities. Of the great and highly meritorious place andwork of these Intellectuals in the scheme of German culture it isneedless to speak. What is to the point is that they are the accreditedspokesmen of the German nation in all its commonplace communication withthe rest of civilised Europe. 

The Intellectuals have spoken with conviction and sincerity of thespiritual state of the German people, but in so doing, and in so far asbears on the character of German nationalism, they have been in closercontact, intellectually and sympathetically, with the intellectual andspiritual life of civilised Europe at large than with the movements ofthe spirit among the German populace. And their canvassing of theconcepts which so have come under their attention from over the nationalfrontiers has been carried forward--so far, again, as bears on thequestions that are here in point--with the German-dynastic principles, logic and mechanism of execution under their immediate observation andsupplying the concrete materials for inquiry. Indeed, it holds true, byand large, that nothing else than this German-dynastic complement ofways and means has, or can effectually, come under their observation insuch a degree of intimacy as to give body and definition to the somewhatabstract theorems on cultural aims and national preconceptions that havecome to them from outside. In short, they have borrowed thesetheoretical formulations from abroad, without the concrete apparatus ofways and means in which these theorems are embodied in their foreignhabitat, and have so found themselves construing these theoreticalborrowings in the only concrete terms of which they have had first-handand convincing knowledge. Such an outcome would be fairly unavoidable, inasmuch as these Intellectuals, however much they are, in the spirit, citizens of the cosmopolitan republic of knowledge and intelligence, they are after all, _in propria persona_, immediately and unremittinglysubjects of the German-dynastic State; so that all their detail thinkingon the aims, ways and means of life, in all its civil and politicalbearings, is unavoidably shaped by the unremitting discipline of theirworkday experience under this dynastic scheme. The outcome has been thatwhile they have taken up, as they have understood them, the conceptsthat rule the civic life of these other, maturer nations, they haveapprehended and developed these theorems of civic life in the terms andby the logic enforced in that system of control and surveillance knownto them by workday experience, --the only empirical terms at hand. 

The apex of growth and the center of diffusion as regards the modernculture in respect of the ideals and logic of civic life--other phasesof this culture than this its civil aspect do not concern the point herein question--this apex of growth and center of diffusion lie outside theFatherland, in an environment alien to the German institutional scheme. Yet so intrinsic to the cultural drift of modern mankind are these aimsand this logic, that in taking over and further enriching theintellectual heritage of this modern world the Intellectuals of theFatherland have unavoidably also taken over those conceptions of civilinitiative and masterless self-direction that rule the logic of life ina commonwealth of ungraded men. They have taken these over andassimilated them as best their experience would permit. But workdayexperience and its exigencies are stubborn things; and in this processof assimilation of these alien conceptions of right and honest living, it is the borrowed theorems concerning civic rights and duties that haveundergone adaptation and revision, not the concrete system of ways andmeans in which these principles, so accepted, are to be put in practice. Necessarily so, since in the German scheme of law and order the majorpremise is the dynastic State, whereas the major premise of the moderncivilised scheme of civic life is the absence of such an organ. So, thedevelopment and elaboration of these modern principles of civicliberty--and this elaboration has taken on formidable dimensions--underthe hand of the German Intellectuals has uniformly run out intoPickwickian convolutions, greatly suggestive of a lost soul seeking aplace to rest. With unquestionably serious purpose and untiringendeavour, they have sought to embody these modern civilisedpreconceptions in terms afforded by, or in terms compatible with, theinstitutions of the Fatherland; and they have been much concerned andmagniloquently elated about the German spirit of freedom that so was tobe brought to final and consummate realisation in the life of a freepeople. But at no point and in no case have either the proposals ortheir carrying out taken shape as a concrete application of the familiarprinciple of popular self-direction. It has always come to something inthe way of a concessive or expedient mitigation of the antagonisticprinciple of personal authority. Where the forms of self-government orof individual self-direction have concessively been installed, under theImperial rule, they have turned out to be an imitative structure withsome shrewd provision for their coercion or inhibition at the discretionof an irresponsible authority. 

Neither the sound intelligence nor the good faith of these Intellectualsof the Fatherland is to be impugned. That the--necessarily vague andcircumlocutory--expositions of civic institutions and popular libertywhich they have so often and so largely promulgated should have beenused as a serviceable blind of dynastic statecraft is not to be set downto their discredit. Circumstances over which they could have no control, since they were circumstances that shaped their own habits of thought, have placed it beyond their competence to apprehend or to formulatethese alien principles (habits of thought) concretely in those alieninstitutional details and by the alien logic with which they could haveno working acquaintance. 

To one and another this conception of cultural solidarity within thenation, and consequent cultural aliency between nations, due to thedifferent habits of life and of thought enforced by the two diverseinstitutional systems, may be so far unfamiliar as to carry noconviction. It may accordingly not seem out of place to recall that theinstitutional system of any given community, particularly for anycommunity living under a home-bred and time-tried system of its own, will necessarily be a balanced system of interdependent and mutuallyconcordant parts working together in one comprehensive plan of law andorder. Through such an institutional system, as, e. G. , the GermanImperial organisation, there will run a degree of logical consistency, consonant with itself throughout, and exerting a consistent disciplinethroughout the community; whereby there is enforced a consistent driftor bent in the prevalent habits of life, and a correlative bent in theresulting habits of thought prevalent in the community. It is, in fact, this possession of a common scheme of use and wont, and a consequentcommon outlook and manner of thinking, that constitutes the mostintrinsic bond of solidarity in any nationality, and that finally marksit off from any other. 

It is equally a matter of course that any other given community, livingunder the rule of a substantially different, or divergent, system ofinstitutions, will be exposed to a course of workday discipline runningto a different, perhaps divergent, effect; and that this other communitywill accordingly come in for a characteristically different disciplineand fall under the rule of a different commonsense outlook. Where aninstitutional difference of this kind is somewhat large and consistent, so as to amount in effect to a discrepancy, as may fairly be said of thedifference between Imperial Germany and its like on the one hand, andthe English-speaking nations on the other hand, there the difference ineveryday conceptions may readily make the two peoples mutuallyunintelligible to one another, on those points of institutionalprinciple that are involved in the discrepancy. This is the state of thecase as between the German people, including the Intellectuals, and thepeoples against whom their preconceptions of national destiny havearrayed them. And the many vivid expressions of consternation, abhorrence and incredulity that have come out of this community ofIntellectuals in the course of the past two years of trial and error, bear sufficient testimony to the rigorous constraint which these Germanpreconceptions and their logic exercise over the Intellectuals, no lessthan over the populace. 

Conversely, of course, it is nearly as impracticable for those who havegrown up under the discipline of democratic institutions to comprehendthe habitual outlook of the commonplace German patriot on nationalinterests and aims; not quite, perhaps, because the discipline of useand wont and indoctrination is neither so rigorous nor so consistent intheir case. But there is, after all, prevalent among them a sufficientlyevident logical inability to understand and appreciate the paramountneed of national, that is to say dynastic, ascendancy that actuates allGerman patriots; just as these same patriots are similarly unable toconsider national interests in any other light than that of dynasticascendancy. 

Going simply on the face value of the available evidence, any outsidermight easily fall into the error of believing that when the greatadventure of the war opened up before them, as well as when presentlythe shock of baffled endeavour brought home its exasperating futility, the Intellectuals of the Fatherland distinguished themselves above allother classes and conditions of men in the exuberance of their patrioticabandon. Such a view would doubtless be almost wholly erroneous. It isnot that the Intellectuals reached a substantially superior pitch ofexaltation, but only that, being trained in the use of language, theywere able to express their emotions with great facility. There seems noreason to believe that the populace fell short of the same measure inrespect of their prevalent frame of mind. 

To return to the workings of the Imperial dynastic State and the forcesengaged. It plainly appears that the Intellectuals are to be counted assupernumeraries, except so far as they serve as an instrument ofpublicity and indoctrination in the hands of the discretionaryauthorities. The working factors in the case are the dynasticorganisation of control, direction and emolument, and the populace atlarge by use of whose substance the traffic in dynastic ascendancy andemolument is carried on. These two are in fairly good accord, on theancient basis of feudal loyalty. Hitherto there is no evident ground forbelieving that this archaic tie that binds the populace to the dynasticambitions has at all perceptibly weakened. And the possibility ofdynastic Germany living at peace with the world under any compact, therefore translates itself into the possibility of the German people'sunlearning its habitual deference and loyalty to the dynasty. 

As its acquirement has been a work of protracted habituation, so can itsobsolescence also come about only through more or less protractedhabituation under a system of use and wont of a different or divergentorder. The elements of such a systematic discipline running to an effectat cross purposes with this patriotic animus are not absent from thecurrent situation in the Fatherland; the discipline of the modernindustrial system, for instance, runs to such a divergent effect; butthis, and other conceivable forces which may reenforce it, will afterall take time, if they are to work a decisive change in the currentframe of mind of the patriotic German community. During the intervalrequired for such a change in the national temper, the peace of theworld would be conditioned on the inability of the dynastic State tobreak it. So that the chances of success for any neutral peace leaguewill vary inversely as the available force of Imperial Germany, and itcould be accounted secure only in the virtual elimination of theImperial State as a national Power. 

If the gradual obsolescence of the spirit of militant loyalty in theGerman people, through disuse under a régime of peace, industry, selfgovernment and free trade, is to be the agency by force of whichdynastic imperialism is to cease, the chance of a neutral peace willdepend on the thoroughness with which such a régime of self-directioncan be installed in this case, and on the space of time required forsuch obsolescence through disuse. Obviously, the installation of aworkable régime of self-government on peaceable lines would in any casebe a matter of great difficulty among a people whose past experience hasso singularly incapacitated them for self-government; and obviously, too, the interval of time required to reach secure ground along thisline of approach would be very considerable. Also, in view of theseconditions, obviously, this scheme for maintaining the peace of nationsby a compact of neutrals based on a compromise with an aspiring dynasticState resolves itself into the second of the two alternatives spoken ofat the outset, viz. , a neutral peace based on the elimination of Germanyas a war power, together with the elimination of any materials suitablefor the formation of a formidable coalition. And then, with ImperialGermany supposedly eliminated or pacified, there would still remain theJapanese establishment, to which all the arguments pertinent in the caseof Germany will apply without abatement; except that, at least hitherto, the dynastic statesmen of Japan have not had the disposal of so massivea body of resources, in population, industry, or raw materials. 

CHAPTER IV

PEACE WITHOUT HONOUR

The argument therefore turns back to a choice between the twoalternatives alluded to: peace in submission to the rule of the Germandynastic establishment (and to Japan), or peace through elimination ofthese enterprising Powers. The former alternative, no doubt, issufficiently unattractive, but it is not therefore to be put asidewithout a hearing. As goes without saying, it is repugnant to thepatriotic sentiments of those peoples whom the Imperial Germanestablishment have elected for submission. But if this unreflectingpatriotic revulsion can once be made amenable to reason, there is alwayssomething to be said in favor of such a plan of peaceable submission, orat least in extenuation of it; and if it is kept in mind that theulterior necessity of such submission must always remain in perspectiveas a condition precedent to a peaceful settlement, so long as one orboth of these enterprising Powers remains intact, it will be seen that asane appraisal of the merits of such a régime of peace is by no meansuncalled for. For neither of these two Powers is there a conclusiveissue of endeavour short of paramount dominion. 

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There should also be some gain of insight and sobriety in recalling thatthe Intellectuals of the Fatherland, who have doubtless pondered thismatter longer and more dispassionately than all other men, have spokenvery highly of the merits of such a plan of universal submission to therule of this German dynastic establishment. They had, no doubt, beenconsidering the question both long and earnestly, as to what would, inthe light of reason, eventually be to the best interest of those peopleswhose manifest destiny was eventual tutelage under the Imperial crown;and there need also be no doubt that in that time (two years past) theytherefore spoke advisedly and out of the fulness of the heart on thishead. The pronouncements that came out of the community of Intellectualsin that season of unembarrassed elation and artless avowal are doubtlessto be taken as an outcome of much thoughtful canvassing of what had bestbe done, not as an enforced compromise with untoward necessities but asthe salutary course freely to be pursued with an eye single to the bestgood of all concerned. 

It is true, the captious have been led to speak slightingly of the manyutterances of this tenure coming out of the community of Intellectuals, as, e. G. , the lay sermons of Professor Ostwald dating back to thatseason; but no unprejudiced reader can well escape the persuasion thatthese, as well as the very considerable volume of similar pronouncementsby many other men of eminent scholarship and notable for benevolentsentiments, are faithfully to be accepted as the expressions of aprofound conviction and a consciously generous spirit. In so speaking ofthe advantages to be derived by any subject people from submission tothe German Imperial rule, these Intellectuals are not to be construed asformulating the drift of vulgar patriotic sentiment among theircompatriots at large, but rather as giving out the deliverances of theirown more sensitive spirit and maturer deliberation, as men who are in aposition to see human affairs and interests in a larger perspective. Such, no doubt, would be their own sense of the matter. 

Reflection on the analogous case of the tutelage exercised by theAmerican government over the subject Philippinos may contribute to ajust and temperate view of what is intended in the régime of tutelageand submission so spoken for by the German Intellectuals, --and, it maybe added, found good by the Imperial statesmen. There would, of course, be the difference, as against the case of the Philippinos, that whereasthe American government is after all answerable, in the last resort andin a somewhat random fashion, to a popular opinion that runs ondemocratic preconceptions, the German Imperial establishment on theother hand is answerable to no one, except it be to God, who isconceived to stand in somewhat the relation of a silent partner, or aminority stockholder in this dynastic enterprise. 

Yet it should not be overlooked that any presumptive hard usage whichthe vassal peoples might look for at the hands of the German dynastywould necessarily be tempered with considerations of expediency asdictated by the exigencies of usufruct. The Imperial establishment hasshown itself to be wise, indeed more wise than amiable, but wise atleast in its intentions, in the use which it has made of subject peopleshitherto. It is true, a somewhat accentuated eagerness on the part ofthe Imperial establishment to get the maximum service in a minimum oftime and at a minimum cost from these subject populations, --as, e. G. , inSilesia and Poland, in Schleswig-Holstein, in Alsace-Lorraine, or in itsAfrican and Oceanic possessions, --has at times led to practicesaltogether dubious on humanitarian grounds, at the same time that inpoint of thrifty management they have gone beyond "what the traffic willbear. " Yet it is not to be overlooked--and in this connection it is apoint of some weight--that, so far as the predatory traditions of itsstatecraft will permit, the Imperial establishment has in all thesematters been guided by a singularly unreserved attention to its ownmaterial advantage. Where its management in these premises has yielded aless profitable usufruct than the circumstances would reasonably admit, the failure has been due to an excess of cupidity rather than thereverse. 

The circumstantial evidence converges to the effect that the Imperialestablishment may confidently be counted on to manage the affairs of itssubject peoples with an eye single to its own material gain, and it maywith equal confidence be counted on that in the long run no unadvisedexcesses will be practised. Of course, an excessive adventure inatrocity and predation, due to such human infirmity in its agents or inits directorate as has been shown in various recent episodes, is to belooked for now and again; but these phenomena would come in by way offluctuating variations from the authentic routine, rather than assystematic features of it. 

That superfluity of naughtiness that has given character to the currentGerman Imperial policy in Belgium, e. G. , or that similarly hascharacterised the dealings of Imperial Japan in Korea during the late"benevolent assimilation" of that people into Japanese-Imperialusufruct, is not fairly to be taken to indicate what such an Imperialestablishment may be expected to do with a subject people on a footingof settled and long-term exploitation. At the outset, in both instances, the policy of frightfulness was dictated by a well-advised view toeconomy of effort in reducing the subject people to an abject state ofintimidation, according to the art of war as set forth in the manuals;whereas latterly the somewhat profligate excesses of the government ofoccupation--decently covered with diplomatic parables on benevolence andlegality--have been dictated by military convenience, particularly bythe need of forced labor and the desirability of a reduced population inthe acquired territory. So also the "personally conducted" dealings withthe Armenians by use of the Turks should probably also best be explainedas an endeavour to reduce the numbers of an undesirable populationbeforehand, without incurring unnecessary blame. All these things are, at the most, misleading indications of what the Imperial policy would belike under settled conditions and in the absence of insubordination. 

By way of contrast, such as may serve to bring the specific traits ofthis prospective Imperial tutelage of nations into a better light, theOttoman usufruct of the peoples of the Turkish dominions offers aninstructive instance. The Ottoman tutelage is today spoken of by itsapologists in terms substantially identical with the sketches of thefuture presented by hopeful German patriots in the early months of thecurrent war. But as is so frequently the case in such circumstances, these expressions of the officers have to be understood in a diplomaticsense; not as touching the facts in any other than a formal way. It issufficiently evident that the Ottoman management of its usufruct hasthroughout been ill-advised enough persistently to charge more than thetraffic would bear, probably due in great part to lack of control overits agents or ramifications, by the central office. The Ottomanestablishment has not observed, or enforced, the plain rules of economyin its utilisation of the subject peoples, and finds itself todaybankrupt in consequence. What may afford more of a parallel to theprospective German tutelage of the nations is the procedure of theJapanese establishment in Korea, Manchuria, or China; which is also dulycovered with an ostensibly decent screen of diplomatic parables, but thenature and purpose of which is overt enough in all respects but thenomenclature. It is not unlikely that even this Japanese usufruct andtutelage runs on somewhat less humane and complaisant lines than awell-advised economy of resources would dictate for the prospectiveGerman usufruct of the Western nations. 

There is the essential difference between the two cases that while Japanis over-populated, so that it becomes the part of a wise government tofind additional lands for occupancy, and that so it is constrained by itsimperial ambitions to displace much of the population in its subjectterritories, the Fatherland on the other hand is under-populated--notoriously, though not according to the letter of the diplomaticparables on this head--and for the calculable future must continue to beunder-populated; provided that the state of the industrial artscontinues subject to change in the same general direction as hitherto, and provided that no radical change affects the German birth-rate. So, since the Imperial government has no need of new lands for occupancy byits home population, it will presumably be under no inducement to takemeasures looking to the partial depopulation of its subject territories. 

The case of Belgium and the measures looking to a reduction of itspopulation may raise a doubt, but probably not a well taken doubt. It israther that since it has become evident that the territory can not beheld, it is thought desirable to enrich the Fatherland with whateverproperty can be removed, and to consume the accumulated man-power of theBelgian people in the service of the war. It would appear that it is awar-measure, designed to make use of the enemy's resources for hisdefeat. Indeed, under conditions of settled occupation or subjection, any degree of such depopulation would entail an economic loss, and anywell-considered administrative policy would therefore look to themaintenance of the inhabitants of the acquired territories inundiminished numbers and unimpaired serviceability. 

The resulting scheme of Imperial usufruct should accordingly be of aconsiderate, not to say in effect humane, character, --always providedthat the requisite degree of submission and subservience ("law andorder") can be enforced by a system of coercion so humane as not toreduce the number of the inhabitants or materially to lower theirphysical powers. Such would, by reasonable expectation, be the characterof this projected Imperial tutelage and usufruct of the nations ofChristendom. In its working-out this German project should accordinglydiffer very appreciably from the policy which its imperial ambitionshave constrained the Japanese establishment to pursue in its dealingswith the life and fortunes of its recently, and currently, acquiredsubject peoples. 

The better to appreciate in some concrete fashion what should, byreasonable expectation, be the terms on which life might so be carriedon _sub pace germanica_, attention may be invited to certain typicalinstances of such peace by abnegation among contemporary peoples. Perhaps at the top of the list stands India, with its many and variednative peoples, subject to British tutelage, but, the British apologistssay, not subject to British usufruct. The margin of tolerance in thisinstance is fairly wide, but its limits are sharply drawn. India iswanted and held, not for tribute or revenue to be paid into the Imperialtreasury, nor even for exclusive trade privileges or preferences, butmainly as a preserve to provide official occupation and emoluments forBritish gentlemen not otherwise occupied or provided for; andsecondarily as a means of safeguarding lucrative British investments, that is to say, investments by British capitalists of high and lowdegree. The current British professions on the subject of thisoccupation of India, and at times the shamefaced apology for it, is thatthe people of India suffer no hardship by this means; the resultinggovernmental establishment being no more onerous and no more expensiveto them than any equally, or even any less, competent government oftheir own would necessarily be. The fact, however, remains, that Indiaaffords a much needed and very considerable net revenue to the class ofBritish gentlemen, in the shape of official salaries and pensions, whichthe British gentry at large can on no account forego. Narrowed to theseproportions it is readily conceivable that the British usufruct of Indiashould rest with no extraordinary weight on the Indian people at large, however burdensome it may at times become to those classes who aspire totake over the usufruct in case the British establishment can bedislodged. This case evidently differs very appreciably from theprojected German usufruct of neighboring countries in Europe. 

A case that may be more nearly in point would be that of any one of thecountries subject to the Turkish rule in recent times; although theseinstances scarcely show just what to expect under the projected Germanrégime. The Turkish rule has been notably inefficient, considered as aworking system of dynastic usufruct; whereas it is confidently expectedthat the corresponding German system would show quite an exceptionaldegree of efficiency for the purpose. This Turkish inefficiency has hada two-fold effect, which should not appear in the German case. Throughadministrative abuses intended to serve the personal advantage of theirresponsible officials, the underlying peoples have suffered aprogressive exhaustion and dilapidation; whereby the central authority, the dynastic establishment, has also grown progressively, cumulativelyweaker and therefore less able to control its agents; and, in the secondplace, on the same grounds, in the pursuit of personal gain, andprompted by personal animosities, these irresponsible agents havepersistently carried their measures of extortion beyond reasonablebounds, --that is to say beyond the bounds which a well considered planof permanent usufruct would countenance. All this would be otherwise andmore sensibly arranged under German Imperial auspices. 

One of the nations that have fallen under Turkish rule--and Turkishpeace--affords a valuable illustration of a secondary point that is tobe considered in connection with any plan of peace by submission. TheArmenian people have in later time come partly under Russian dominion, and so have been exposed to the Russian system of bureaucraticexploitation; and the difference between Russian and Turkish Armenia isinstructive. According to all credible--that is unofficial--accounts, conditions are perceptibly more tolerable in Russian Armenia. Wellinformed persons relate that the cause for this more lenient, or lessextreme, administration of affairs under Russian officials is aselective death rate among them, such that a local official whopersistently exceeds a certain ill-defined limit of tolerance is removedby what would under other circumstances be called an untimely death. Noadequate remedy has been found, within the large limits which Russianbureaucratic administration habitually allows itself in questions ofcoercion. The Turk, on the other hand, less deterred by considerationsof long-term expediency, and, it may be, less easily influenced byoutside opinion on any point of humanity, has found a remedy in thesystematic extirpation of any village in which an illicit death occurs. One will incline to presume that on this head the German Imperialprocedure would be more after the Russian than after the Turkishpattern; although latterday circumstantial evidence will throw somesinister doubt on the reasonableness of such an expectation. 

It is plain, however, that the Turkish remedy for this form ofinsubordination is a wasteful means of keeping the peace. Plainly, tothe home office, the High Command, the extinction of a village with itspopulation is a more substantial loss than the unseasonable decease ofone of its administrative agents; particularly when it is called to mindthat such a decease will presumably follow only on such profligateexcesses of naughtiness as are bound to be inexcusably unprofitable tothe central authority. It may be left an open question how far acorrective of this nature can hopefully be looked to as applicable, incase of need, under the projected German Imperial usufruct. 

It may, I apprehend, be said without offense that there is no depth ofdepravity below the ordinary reach of the Russian bureaucracy; but thisorganisation finds itself constrained, after all, to use circumspectionand set some limits on individual excursions beyond the bounds ofdecency and humanity, so soon as these excesses touch the common orjoint interest of the organisation. Any excess of atrocity, beyond acertain margin of tolerance, on the part of any one of its members islikely to work pecuniary mischief to the rest; and then, thebureaucratic conduct of affairs is also, after all, in an uncertaindegree subject to some surveillance by popular sentiment at home orabroad. The like appears not to hold true of the Turkish officialorganisation. The difference may be due to a less provident spirit amongthe latter, as already indicated. But a different tradition, perhaps anoutgrowth of this lack of providence and of the consequent growth of apolicy of "frightfulness, " may also come in for a share in the outcome;and there is also a characteristic difference in point of religiousconvictions, which may go some way in the same direction. The followersof Islam appear on the whole to take the tenets of their faith at theirface value--servile, intolerant and fanatic--whereas the Russianofficial class may perhaps without undue reproach be considered to haveon the whole outlived the superstitious conceits to which they yield anexpedient _pro forma_ observance. So that when worse comes to worst, andthe Turk finds himself at length with his back against the lastconsolations of the faith that makes all things straight, he has theassured knowledge that he is in the right as against the unbelievers;whereas the Russian bureaucrat in a like case only knows that he is inthe wrong. The last extremity is a less conclusive argument to the manin whose apprehension it is not the last extremity. Again, there is someshadow of doubt falls on the question as to which of these is morenearly in the German Imperial spirit. 

On the whole, the case of China is more to the point. By and large, thepeople of China, more particularly the people of the coastal-plainsregion, have for long habitually lived under a régime of peace bynon-resistance. The peace has been broken transiently from time to time, and local disturbances have not been infrequent; but, taken by andlarge, the situation has habitually been of the peaceful order, on aground of non-resisting submission. But this submission has not commonlybeen of a whole-hearted kind, and it has also commonly been associatedwith a degree of persistent sabotage; which has clogged and retarded theadministration of governmental law and order, and has also beenconducive to a large measure of irresponsible official corruption. Thehabitual scheme of things Chinese in this bearing may fairly bedescribed as a peace of non-resistance tempered with sabotage andassassination. Such was the late Manchu régime, and there is no reasonin China for expecting a substantially different outcome from theJapanese invasion that is now under way. The nature of this Japaneseincursion should be sufficiently plain. It is an enterprise instatecraft after the order of Macchiavelli, Metternich, and Bismarck. Ofcourse, the conciliatory fables given out by the diplomatic service, andby the other apologists, are to be taken at the normal discount ofone-hundred percent. The relatively large current output of such fablesmay afford a hint as to the magnitude of the designs which the fablesare intended to cover. 

The Chinese people have had a more extended experience in peace of thisorder than all others, and their case should accordingly be instructivebeyond all others. Not that a European peace by non-resistance need beexpected to run very closely on the Chinese lines, but there should bea reasonable expectation that the large course of things would besomewhat on the same order in both cases. Neither the Europeantraditions and habitual temperament nor the modern state of theindustrial arts will permit one to look for anything like a closeparallel in detail; but it remains true, when all is said, that theChinese experience of peace under submission to alien masters affordsthe most instructive illustration of such a régime, as touches itspracticability, its methods, its cultural value, and its effect on thefortunes of the subject peoples and of their masters. 

Now, it may be said by way of preliminary generalisation that thelife-history of the Chinese people and their culture is altogether themost imposing achievement which the records of mankind have to show;whereas the history of their successive alien establishments of masteryand usufruct is an unbroken sequence of incredibly shamefulepisodes, --always beginning in unbounded power and vainglory, running byway of misrule, waste and debauchery, to an inglorious finish in abjectcorruption and imbecility. Always have the gains in civilisation, industry and in the arts, been made by the subject Chinese, and alwayshave their alien masters contributed nothing to the outcome but misrule, waste, corruption and decay. And yet in the long run, with all thishandicap and misrule, the Chinese people have held their place and madeheadway in those things to which men look with affection and esteem whenthey come to take stock of what things are worth while. It would be ahopeless task to count up how many dynasties of masterful barbarians, here and there, have meanwhile come up and played their ephemeral roleof vainglorious nuisance and gone under in shame and confusion, anddismissed with the invariable verdict of "Good Riddance!"

It may at first sight seem a singular conjuncture of circumstances, butit is doubtless a consequence of the same conjuncture, that the Chinesepeople have also kept their hold through all history on the Chineselands. They have lived and multiplied and continued to occupy the land, while their successive alien masters have come and gone. So that today, as the outcome of conquest, and of what would be rated as defeat, thepeople continue to be Chinese, with an unbroken pedigree as well as anunbroken line of home-bred culture running through all the ages ofhistory. In the biological respect the Chinese plan of non-resistancehas proved eminently successful. 

And, by the way, much the same, though not in the same degree, is truefor the Armenian people; who have continued to hold their hill countrythrough good days and evil, apparently without serious or enduringreduction of their numbers and without visible lapse into barbarism, while the successive disconnected dynasties of their conquering rulershave come and gone, leaving nothing but an ill name. "This fableteaches" that a diligent attention to the growing of crops and childrenis the sure and appointed way to the maintenance of a people and itsculture even under the most adverse conditions, and that eventual deathand shameful destruction inexorably wait on any "ruling race. " Hithertothe rule has not failed. The rule, indeed, is grounded in the heritabletraits of human nature, from which there is no escape. 

For its long-term biological success, as well as for the continuedintegrity of a people's culture, a peace of non-resistance, under goodor evil auspices, is more to be desired than imperial dominion. Butthese things are not all that modern peoples live for, perhaps it issafe to say that in no case are these chief among the things for whichcivilised Europeans are willing to live. They urgently need also freedomto live their own life in their own way, or rather to live within thebonds of convention which they have come in for by use and wont, or atleast they believe that such freedom is essential to any life that shallbe quite worth while. So also they have a felt need of security fromarbitrary interference in their pursuit of a livelihood and in the freecontrol of their own pecuniary concerns. And they want a discretionaryvoice in the management of their joint interests, whether as a nation orin a minor civil group. In short, they want personal, pecuniary andpolitical liberty, free from all direction or inhibition from without. They are also much concerned to maintain favorable economic conditionsfor themselves and their children. And last, but chiefly rather thanleast, they commonly are hide-bound patriots inspired with anintractable felt need of national prestige. 

It is an assemblage of peoples in such a frame of mind to whom thepacifists are proposing, in effect, a plan for eventual submission to analien dynasty, under the form of a neutral peace compact to include thewarlike Powers. There is little likelihood of such a scheme being foundacceptable, with popular sentiment running as it now does in thecountries concerned. And yet, if the brittle temper in which any suchproposal is rejected by popular opinion in these countries today couldbe made to yield sufficiently to reflection and deliberate appraisal, itis by no means a foregone conclusion that its acceptance would not bethe best way out of a critical situation. The cost of disabling andeliminating the warlike Power whose dominion is feared, or even ofstaving off the day of surrender, is evidently serious enough. Themerits of the alternative should be open to argument, and should, indeed, be allowed due consideration. And any endeavour to present themwithout heat should presumably find a hearing. It appears to have beenmuch of the fault of the pacifists who speak for the Peace League thatthey have failed or refused to recognise these ulterior consequences ofthe plan which they advocate; so that they appear either not to knowwhat they are talking about, or to avoid talking about what they know. 

It will be evident from beforehand that the grave difficulty to be metin any advocacy of peace on terms of non-resistant subjection to analien dynastic rule--"peace at any price"--is a difficulty of thepsychological order. Whatever may be conceived to hold true for theChinese people, such submission is repugnant to the sentiments of theWestern peoples. Which in turn evidently is due to the prevalence ofcertain habitual preconceptions among modern civilised men, --certainacquired traits of temper and bias, of the nature of fixed ideas. Thatsomething in the way of a reasonably contented and useful life ispossible under such a régime as is held in prospect, and even sometolerable degree of well-being, is made evident in the Chinese case. Butthe Chinese tolerance of such a régime goes to argue that they arecharged with fewer preconceptions at variance with the exigencies oflife under these conditions. So, it is commonly accepted, and presumablyto be accepted, that the Chinese people at large have little if anyeffectual sense of nationality; their patriotism appears to be nearly anegligible quantity. This would appear to an outsider to have been theirbesetting weakness, to which their successful subjection by various andsundry ambitious aliens has been due. But it appears also to have beenthe infirmity by grace of which this people have been obliged to learnthe ways of submission, and so have had the fortune to outlive theiralien masters, all and sundry, and to occupy the land and save theuncontaminated integrity of their long-lived civilisation. 

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Some account of the nature and uses of this spirit of patriotism that isheld of so great account among Western nations has already been set outin an earlier passage. One or two points in the case, that bear on theargument here, may profitably be recalled. The patriotic spirit, or thetie of nationalism, is evidently of the nature of habit, whateverproclivity to the formation of such a habit may be native to mankind. More particularly is it a matter of habit--it might even be called amatter of fortuitous habit--what particular national establishment agiven human subject will become attached to on reaching what is called"years of discretion" and so becoming a patriotic citizen. 

The analogy of the clam may not be convincing, but it may at least serveto suggest what may be the share played by habituation in the matter ofnational attachment. The young clam, after having passed thefree-swimming phase of his life, as well as the period of attachment tothe person of a carp or similar fish, drops to the bottom and attacheshimself loosely in the place and station in life to which he has beenled; and he loyally sticks to his particular patch of ooze and sandthrough good fortune and evil. It is, under Providence, something of afortuitous matter where the given clam shall find a resting place forthe sole of his foot, but it is also, after all, "his own, his nativeland" etc. It lies in the nature of a clam to attach himself after thisfashion, loosely, to the bottom where he finds a living, and he wouldnot be a "good clam and true" if he failed to do so; but the particularspot for which he forms this attachment is not of the essence of thecase. At least, so they say. 

It may be, as good men appear to believe or know, that all men of sound, or at least those of average, mind will necessarily be of a patriotictemper and be attached by ties of loyalty to some particular nationalestablishment, ordinarily the particular establishment which is formallyidentified with the land in which they live; although it is alwayspossible that a given individual may be an alien in the land, and so mayowe allegiance to and be ruled by a patriotic attachment to anothernational establishment, to which the conventionalities governing hisspecial case have assigned him as his own proper nation. The analogy ofthe clam evidently does not cover the case. The patriotic citizen isattached to his own proper nationality not altogether by the accident ofdomicile, but rather by the conventions, legal or customary, whichassign him to this or that national establishment according to certainprinciples of use and wont. 

Mere legal citizenship or allegiance does not decide the matter either;at least not by any means unavoidably; as appears in the case of theChinese subject under Manchu or Japanese rule; and as appears perhapsmore perspicuously in the case of the "hyphenate" American citizen, whose formal allegiance is to the nation in whose land he prefers tolive, all the while that his patriotic affection centers on hisspiritual Fatherland in whose fortunes he has none but a non-residentinterest. Indeed, the particular national tie that will bind theaffections--that is to say the effectual patriotic attachment--of anygiven individual may turn out on closer scrutiny to be neither that ofdomicile or of formal legal allegiance, nor that of putative origin orpedigree, but only a reflex of certain national animosities; which mayalso turn out on examination to rest on putative grounds--as illustratedby a subsidiary class of hyphenate American citizens whose affectionshave come to be bound up in the national fortunes of one foreign Powerfor the simple, but sufficient, reason that, on conventional grounds, they bear malice against another equally foreign Power. 

Evidently there is much sophistication, not to say conventionalisedaffectation, in all this national attachment and allegiance. It willperhaps not do to say that it is altogether a matter of sophistication. Yet it may not exceed the premises to say that the particular choice, the concrete incidence, of this national attachment is in any given casea matter of sophistication, largely tempered with fortuity. One is borninto a given nationality--or, in case of dynastic allegiance, intoservice and devotion to a (fortuitously) given sovereign--or at least soit is commonly believed. Still one can without blame, and withoutexcessive shame, shift one's allegiance on occasion. What is notcountenanced among civilised men is to shift out of allegiance to anygiven nationality or dynasty without shifting into the like complicationof gainless obligations somewhere else. Such a shifting of national ordynastic base is not quite reputable, though it is also not preciselydisreputable. The difficulty in the case appears to be a moraldifficulty, not a mental or a pecuniary one, and assuredly not aphysical difficulty, since the relation in question is not a physicalrelation. It would appear to be of the moral order of things, in thatsense of the term in which conventional proprieties are spoken of asmoral. That is to say, it is a question of conforming to currentexpectations under a code of conventional proprieties. Like much of theconventional code of behavior this patriotic attachment has the benefitof standardised decorum, and its outward manifestations are enjoined bylaw. All of which goes to show how very seriously the whole matter isregarded. 

And yet it is also a matter of common notoriety that large aggregates ofmen, not to speak of sporadic individuals, will on occasion shift theirallegiance with the most felicitous effect and with no sensible loss ofself-respect or of their good name. Such a shift is to be seen inmultiple in the German nation within the past half-century, when, forinstance, the Hanoverians, the Saxons, and even the Holsteiners in veryappreciable numbers, not to mention the subjects of minuscularprincipalities whose names have been forgotten in the shuffle, allbecame good and loyal subjects of the Empire and of the Imperialdynasty, --good and loyal without reservation, as has abundantlyappeared. So likewise within a similar period the inhabitants of theSouthern States repudiated their allegiance to the Union, putting in itsplace an equivalent loyalty to their new-made country; and then, whenthe new national establishment slipped out from under their feet theyreturned as whole-heartedly as need be to their earlier allegiance. Ineach of these moves, taken with deliberation, it is not to be doubtedthat this body of citizens have been moved by an unimpeachable spirit ofpatriotic honour. No one who is in any degree conversant with the factsis likely to question the declaration that it would be a perversion, notto say an inversion, of fact to rate their patriotic devotion to theUnion today lower than that of any other section of the country or anyother class or condition of men. 

But there is more, and in a sense worse, to be found along the samegeneral line of evidence touching this sublimated sentiment of groupsolidarity that is called nationalism. The nation, of course, is large;the larger the better, it is believed. It is so large, indeed, thatconsidered as a group or community of men living together it has nosensible degree of homogeneity in any of their material circumstances orinterests; nor is anything more than an inconsiderable fraction of theaggregate population, territory, industry, or daily life known to anyone of these patriotic citizens except by remote and highly dubioushearsay. The one secure point on which there is a (constructive)uniformity is the matter of national allegiance; which grows strongerand more confident with every increase in aggregate mass and volume. Itis also not doubtful, e. G. , that if the people of the British Dominionsin North America should choose to throw in their national lot with theUnion, all sections and classes, except those whose pecuniary interestin a protective tariff might be conceived to suffer, would presentlywelcome them; nor is it doubtful that American nationality would coverthe new and larger aggregate as readily as the old. Much the same willhold true with respect to the other countries colonised under Britishauspices. And there is no conclusive reason for drawing the limit ofadmissible national extension at that point. 

So much, however, is fairly within the possibilities of the calculablefuture; its realisation would turn in great measure on thediscontinuance of certain outworn or disserviceable institutionalarrangements; as, e. G. , the remnants of a decayed monarchy, and thelegally protected vested interests of certain business enterprises andof certain office-holding classes. What more and farther mightpracticably be undertaken in this way, in the absence of marplotoffice-holders, office-seekers, sovereigns, priests and monopolisticbusiness concerns sheltered under national animosities and restraints oftrade, would be something not easy to assign a limit to. All the minorneutrals, that cluster about the North Sea, could unquestionably bedrawn into such a composite nationality, in the absence, or with duedisregard, of those classes, families and individuals whose pecuniary orinvidious gain is dependent on or furthered by the existing division ofthese peoples. 

The projected defensive league of neutrals is, in effect, an inchoatecoalescence of the kind. Its purpose is the safeguarding of the commonpeace and freedom, which is also the avowed purpose and justification ofall those modern nations that have outlived the régime of dynasticambition and so of enterprise in dominion for dominion's sake, and havepassed into the neutral phase of nationality; or it should perhapsrather be said that such is the end of endeavour and the warrant ofexistence and power for these modern national establishments in so faras they have outlived and repudiated such ambitions of a dynastic or aquasi-dynastic order, and so have taken their place as intrinsicallyneutral commonwealths. 

It is only in the common defense (or in the defense of the likeconditions of life for their fellowmen elsewhere) that the citizens ofsuch a commonwealth can without shame entertain or put in evidence aspirit of patriotic solidarity; and it is only by specious andsophistical appeal to the national honour--a conceit surviving out ofthe dynastic past--that the populace of such a commonwealth can bestirred to anything beyond a defense of their own proper liberties orthe liberties of like-minded men elsewhere, in so far as they are notstill imbued with something of the dynastic animus and the chauvinisticanimosities which they have formally repudiated in repudiating thefeudalistic principles of the dynastic State. 

The "nation, " without the bond of dynastic loyalty, is after all amake-shift idea, an episodic half-way station in the sequence, andloyalty, in any proper sense, to the nation as such is so much of amake-believe, that in the absence of a common defense to be safeguardedany such patriotic conceit must lose popular assurance and, with thepassing of generations, fall insensibly into abeyance as an archaicaffectation. The pressure of danger from without is necessary to keepthe national spirit alert and stubborn, in case the pressure fromwithin, that comes of dynastic usufruct working for dominion, has beenwithdrawn. With further extension of the national boundaries, such thatthe danger of gratuitous infraction from without grows constantly lessmenacing, while the traditional régime of international animositiesfalls more and more remotely into the background, the spirit ofnationalism is fairly on the way to obsolescence through disuse. Inother words, the nation, as a commonwealth, being a partisanorganisation for a defensive purpose, becomes _functa officio_ inrespect of its nationalism and its patriotic ties in somewhat the samemeasure as the national coalition grows to such a size that partisanshipis displaced by a cosmopolitan security. 

Doubtless the falling into abeyance through disuse of so pleasing avirtue as patriotic devotion will seem an impossibly distastefulconsummation; and about tastes there is no disputing, but tastes aremainly creations of habit. Except for the disquieting name of the thing, there is today little stands in the way of a cosmopolitan order ofhuman intercourse unobtrusively displacing national allegiance; exceptfor vested interests in national offices and internationaldiscriminations, and except for those peoples among whom national lifestill is sufficiently bound up with dynastic ambition. 

In an earlier passage the patriotic spirit has been defined as a senseof partisan solidarity in point of prestige, and sufficient argument hasbeen spent in confirming the definition and showing its implications. With the passing of all occasion for a partisan spirit as touches thecommon good, through coalescence of the parts between which partisandiscrepancies have hitherto been kept up, there would also have passedall legitimate occasion for or provocation to an intoxication ofinvidious prestige on national lines, --and there is no prestige that isnot of an invidious nature, that being, indeed, the whole of its nature. He would have to be a person of praeternatural patriotic sensibilitieswho could fall into an emotional state by reason of the nationalprestige of such a coalition commonwealth as would be made up, e. G. , ofthe French and English-speaking peoples, together with those otherneutrally and peaceably inclined European communities that are of asufficiently mature order to have abjured dynastic ambitions ofdominion, and perhaps including the Chinese people as well. Such acoalition may now fairly be said to be within speaking distance, andwith its consummation, even in the inchoate shape of a defensive leagueof neutrals, the eventual abeyance of that national allegiance andnational honour that bulks so large in the repertory of currenteloquence would also come in prospect. 

All this is by no means saying that love of country, and of use and wontas it runs in one's home area and among one's own people, would sufferdecay, or even abatement. The provocation to nostalgia would presumablybe as good as ever. It is even conceivable that under such a(contemplated) régime of unconditional security, attachment to one's ownhabitat and social circumstances might grow to something more than iscommonly seen in the precarious situation in which the chances of aquiet life are placed today. But nostalgia is not a bellicose distemper, nor does it make for gratuitous disturbance of peaceable alien peoples;neither is it the spirit in which men lend themselves to warlikeenterprise looking to profitless dominion abroad. Men make patrioticsacrifices of life and substance in spite of home-sickness rather thanby virtue of it. 

 * * * * *

The aim of this long digression has been to show that patriotism, ofthat bellicose kind that seeks satisfaction in inflicting damage anddiscomfort on the people of other nations, is not of the essence ofhuman life; that it is of the nature of habit, induced by circumstancesin the past and handed on by tradition and institutional arrangementsinto the present; and that men can, without mutilation, divestthemselves of it, or perhaps rather be divested of it by force ofcircumstances which will set the current of habituation the contraryway. 

The change of habituation necessary to bring about such a decay of thebellicose national spirit would appear to be of a negative order, atleast in the main. It would be an habituation to unconditional peace andsecurity; in other words, to the absence of provocation, rather than acoercive training away from the bellicose temper. This bellicose temper, as it affects men collectively, appears to be an acquired trait; and itshould logically disappear in time in the absence of those conditions byimpact of which it has been acquired. Such obsolescence of patriotism, however, would not therefore come about abruptly or swiftly, since thepatriotic spirit has by past use and wont, and by past indoctrination, been so thoroughly worked into the texture of the institutional fabricand into the commonsense taste and morality, that its effectualobsolescence will involve a somewhat comprehensive displacement andmutation throughout the range of institutions and popular conceits thathave been handed down. And institutional changes take time, beingcreations of habit. Yet, again, there is the qualification to this last, that since the change in question appears to be a matter, not ofacquiring a habit and confirming it in the shape of an article ofgeneral use and wont, but of forgetting what once was learned, the timeand experience to be allowed for its decay need logically not equal thatrequired for its acquirement, either in point of duration or in point ofthe strictness of discipline necessary to inculcate it. 

While the spirit of nationalism is such an acquired trait, and while itshould therefore follow that the chief agency in divesting men of itmust be disuse of the discipline out of which it has arisen, yet apositive, and even something of a drastic discipline to the contraryeffect need not be altogether ineffectual in bringing about itsobsolescence. The case of the Chinese people seems to argue something ofthe sort. Not that the Chinese are simply and neutrally unpatriotic;they appear also to be well charged with disloyalty to their alienrulers. But along with a sense of being on the defensive in their commonconcerns, there is also the fact that they appear not to be appreciablypatriotic in the proper sense; they are not greatly moved by a spiritof nationality. And this failure of the national spirit among them canscarcely be set down to a neutral disuse of that discipline which has onthe other hand induced a militant nationalism in the peoples ofChristendom; it should seem more probable, at least, that this relativeabsence of a national ambition is traceable in good part to its havingbeen positively bred out of them by the stern repression of all suchaspirations under the autocratic rule of their alien masters. 

 * * * * *

Peace on terms of submission and non-resistance to the ordinaryexactions and rulings of those Imperial authorities to whom suchsubmission may become necessary, then, will be contingent on the virtualabeyance of the spirit of national pride in the peoples who so are tocome under Imperial rule. A sufficient, by no means necessarily a total, elimination or decadence of this proclivity will be the conditionprecedent of any practicable scheme for a general peace on this footing. How large an allowance of such animus these prospectively subjectpeoples might still carry, without thereby assuring the defeat of anysuch plan, would in great measure depend on the degree of clemency orrigor with which the superior authority might enforce its rule. It isnot that a peace plan of this nature need precisely be considered tofall outside the limits of possibility, on account of this necessarycondition, but it is at the best a manifestly doubtful matter. Advocatesof a negotiated peace should not fail to keep in mind and make publicthat the plan which they advocate carries with it, as a sequel orsecondary phase, such an unconditional surrender and a consequent régimeof non-resistance, and that there still is grave doubt whether thepeoples of these Western nations are at present in a sufficientlytolerant frame of mind, or can in the calculable future come in for sucha tolerantly neutral attitude in point of national pride, as to submitin any passable fashion to any alien Imperial rule. 

If the spiritual difficulty presented by this prevalent spirit ofnational pride--sufficiently stubborn still, however inane a conceit itmay seem on sober reflection--if this animus of factionalinsubordination could be overcome or in some passable measure beconciliated or abated, there is much to be said in favor of such a planof peaceable submission to an extraneous and arbitrary authority, andtherefore also for that plan of negotiated peace by means of whichevents would be put in train for its realisation. 

Any passably dispassionate consideration of the projected régime willcome unavoidably to the conclusion that the prospectively subjectpeoples should have no legitimate apprehension of loss or disadvantagein the material respect. It is, of course, easy for an unreflectingperson to jump to the conclusion that subjection to an alien power mustbring grievous burdens, in the way of taxes and similar impositions. Butreflection will immediately show that no appreciable increase, over theeconomic burdens already carried by the populace under their severalnational establishments, could come of such a move. 

As bearing on this question it is well to call to mind that thecontemplated imperial dominion is designed to be very wide-reaching andwith very ample powers. Its nearest historical analogue, of course, isthe Roman imperial dominion--in the days of the Antonines--and that thenearest analogue to the projected German peace is the Roman peace, inthe days of its best security. There is every warrant for thepresumption that the contemplated Imperial dominion is to besubstantially all-inclusive. Indeed there is no stopping place for theprojected enterprise short of an all-inclusive dominion. And there willconsequently be no really menacing outside power to be provided against. Consequently there will be but little provision necessary for the commondefense, as compared, e. G. , with the aggregate of such provision foundnecessary for self-defense on the part of the existing nations acting inseveralty and each jealously guarding its own national integrity. Indeed, compared with the burden of competitive armament to which thepeoples of Europe have been accustomed, the need of any armed forceunder the new régime should be an inconsiderable matter, even when thereis added to the necessary modicum of defensive preparation the moreimperative and weightier provision of force with which to keep the peaceat home. 

Into the composition of this necessary modicum of armed force slight ifany contingents of men would be drawn from the subject peoples, for thereason that no great numbers would be needed; as also because no devotedloyalty to the dynasty could reasonably be looked for among them, evenif no positive insecurity were felt to be involved in their employment. On this head the projected scheme unambiguously commends itself as ameasure of economy, both in respect of the pecuniary burdens demandedand as regards the personal annoyance of military service. 

As a further count, it is to be presumed that the burden of the Imperialgovernment and its bureaucratic administration--what would be called thecost of maintenance and repairs of the dynastic establishment and itsapparatus of control--would be borne by the subject peoples. Here againone is warranted in looking for a substantial economy to be effected bysuch a centralised authority, and a consequent lighter aggregate burdenon the subjects. Doubtless, the "overhead charges" would not be reducedto their practicable minimum. Such a governmental establishment, withits bureaucratic personnel, its "civil list" and its privileged classes, would not be conducted on anything like a parsimonious footing. There isno reason to apprehend any touch of modesty in the exactions of such adynastic establishment for itself or in behalf of its underlyinghierarchy of gentlefolk. 

There is also to be counted in, in the concrete instance on which theargument here turns, a more or less considerable burden of contributionstoward the maintenance and augmentation of that culture that has beenthe topic of so many encomiums. At this point it should be recalled thatit is the pattern of Periclean Athens that is continually in mind inthese encomiums. Which brings up, in this immediate connection, thedealings of Periclean Athens with the funds of the League, and thesource as well as the destination of these surplus funds. Out of it allcame the works on the Acropolis, together with much else of intellectualand artistic life that converged upon and radiated from this Atheniancenter of culture. The vista of _Denkmäler_ that so opens to the visionof a courageous fancy is in itself such a substance of things hoped foras should stir the heart of all humane persons. [8] The cost of thissubvention of Culture would doubtless be appreciable, but those gravemen who have spent most thought on this prospective cultural gain to behad from the projected Imperial rule appear to entertain no doubt as toits being worth all that it would cost. 

[Footnote 8: _Denk 'mall_]

Any one who is inclined to rate the prospective pecuniary costs andlosses high would doubtless be able to find various and sundry items ofminor importance to add to this short list of general categories on theside of cost; but such additional items, not fairly to be included underthese general captions, would after all be of minor importance, in theaggregate or in detail, and would not appreciably affect the grandbalance of pecuniary profit and loss to be taken account of in anyappraisal of the projected Imperial régime. There should evidently belittle ground to apprehend that its installation would entail a net lossor a net increase of pecuniary burdens. There is, of course, theill-defined and scarcely definable item of expenditure under the generalhead of Gentility, Dignity, Distinction, Magnificence, or whatever termmay seem suitable to designate that consumption of goods and servicesthat goes to maintain the high repute of the Court and to keep theunderlying gentlefolk in countenance. In its pecuniary incidence thisline of (necessary) expenditure belongs under the rubric of ConspicuousWaste; and one will always have to face the disquieting flexibility ofthis item of expenditure. The consumptive demand of this kind is in aneminent degree "indefinitely extensible, " as the phrasing of theeconomists would have it, and as various historical instances of courtlysplendor and fashionable magnificence will abundantly substantiate. There is a constant proclivity to advance this conventional "standard ofliving" to the limit set by the available means; and yet theseconventional necessities will ordinarily not, in the aggregate, take upall the available means; although now and again, as under the _AncienRégime_, and perhaps in Imperial Rome, the standard of splendid livingmay also exceed the current means in hand and lead to impoverishment ofthe underlying community. 

An analysis of the circumstances governing this flexibility of theconventional standard of living and of pecuniary magnificence can not begone into here. In the case under consideration it will have to be leftas an indeterminate but considerable item in the burden of cost whichthe projected Imperial rule may be counted on to impose on theunderlying peoples. The cost of the Imperial court, nobility, and civilservice, therefore, would be a matter of estimate, on which no closeagreement would be expected; and yet, here as in an earlier connection, it seems a reasonable expectation that sufficient dignity andmagnificence could be put in evidence by such a large-scaleestablishment at a lower aggregate cost than the aggregate ofexpenditures previously incurred for the like ends by various nationsworking in severalty and at cross purposes. 

Doubtless it would be altogether a mistaken view of this production ofdignity by means of a lavish expenditure on superfluities, to believethat the same principle of economy should apply here as was foundapplicable in the matter of armament for defense. With the installationof a collective national establishment, to include substantially all thepreviously competing nations, the need of defensive armament should inall reason decline to something very inconsiderable indeed. But it wouldbe hasty to conclude that with the coalescence of these nations underone paramount control the need of creating notoriety and prestige forthis resulting central establishment by the consumption of decorativesuperfluities would likewise decline. The need of such dignity andmagnificence is only in part, perhaps a minor part, of a defensivecharacter. For the greater part, no doubt, the motive to thisconspicuously wasteful consumption is personal vanity, in Imperialpolicy as well as in the private life of fashion, --or perhaps one shouldmore deferentially say that it is a certain range of considerationswhich would be identified as personal vanity in case they were met withamong men beneath the Imperial level. And so far as the creation of thisform of "good-will" by this manner of advertising is traceable to such, or equivalent, motives of a personal incidence, the provocation toeconomy along this line would presumably not be a notable factor in thecase. And one returns perforce to the principle already spoken of above, that the consumptive need of superfluities is indefinitely extensible, with the resulting inference that nothing conclusive is to be said as tothe prospective magnitude of this item in the Imperial bill of expense, or of the consequent pecuniary burdens which it would impose on theunderlying peoples. 

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So far the argument has run on the pecuniary incidence of this projectedImperial dominion as it falls on the underlying community as a whole, with no attempt to discriminate between the divergent interests of thedifferent classes and conditions of men that go to make up any moderncommunity. The question in hand is a question of pecuniary burdens, andtherefore of the pecuniary interests of these several distinguishableclasses or conditions of men. In all these modern nations that now standin the article of decision between peace by submission or a doubtful andmelancholy alternative, --in all of them men are by statute and custominviolably equal before the law, of course; they are ungraded andmasterless men before the law. But these same peoples are also alike inthe respect that pecuniary duties and obligations among them aresimilarly sacred and inviolable under the dispassionate findings of thelaw. This pecuniary equality is, in effect, an impersonal equalitybetween pecuniary magnitudes; from which it follows that these citizensof the advanced nations are not ungraded men in the pecuniary respect;nor are they masterless, in so far as a greater pecuniary force willalways, under this impersonal equality of the law, stand in a relationof mastery toward a lesser one. 

Class distinctions, except pecuniary distinctions, have fallen away. Butall these modern nations are made up of pecuniary classes, differingfrom one another by minute gradations in the marginal cases, butfalling, after all, and in the large, into two broadly and securelydistinguishable pecuniary categories: those who have more and those whohave less. Statisticians have been at pains to ascertain that arelatively very small numerical minority of the citizens in these modernnations own all but a relatively very small proportion of the aggregatewealth in the country. So that it appears quite safe to say that in sucha country as America, e. G. , something less than ten percent of theinhabitants own something more than ninety percent of the country'swealth. It would scarcely be a wild overstraining of its practicalmeaning to say that this population is made up of two classes: those whoown the country's wealth, and those who do not. In strict accuracy, asbefore the law, this characterisation will not hold; whereas inpractical effect, it is a sufficiently close approximation. This latterclass, who have substantially no other than a fancied pecuniary interestin the nation's material fortunes, are the category often spoken of asThe Common Man. It is not necessary, nor is it desired, to find acorresponding designation for the other category, those who own. 

The articulate recognition of this division into contrasted pecuniaryclasses or conditions, with correspondingly (at least potentially)divergent pecuniary interests, need imply no degree of approval ordisapproval of the arrangement which is so recognised. The recognitionof it is necessary to a perspicuous control of the argument, as bears onthe possible systematic and inherent discrepancy among these men inrespect of their material interests under the projected Imperial rule. Substantially, it is a distinction between those who have and those whohave not, and in a question of prospective pecuniary loss the man whohas nothing to lose is differently placed from the one who has. It wouldperhaps seem flippant, and possibly lacking in the courtesy due one'sprospective lord paramount, to say with the poet, _Cantabit vacuus coramlatrone viator_. 

But the whole case is not so simple. It is only so long as the projectedpecuniary inroad is conceived as a simple sequestration of wealth inhand, that such a characterisation can be made to serve. The Imperialaim is not a passing act of pillage, but a perpetual usufruct; and thewhole question takes on a different and more complex shape when it sotouches the enduring conditions of life and livelihood. The citizen whohas nothing, or who has no capitalisable source of unearned income, yethas a pecuniary interest in a livelihood to be gained from day to day, and he is yet vulnerable in the pecuniary respect in that his livelihoodmay with the utmost facility be laid under contribution by various andsundry well-tried contrivances. Indeed, the common man who depends forhis livelihood on his daily earnings is in a more immediatelyprecarious position than those who have something appreciable laid upagainst a rainy day, in the shape of a capitalised source of income. Only that it is still doubtful if his position is precarious in such afashion as to lay him open to a notable increase of hardship, or to lossof the amenities of life, in the same relative degree as his well-to-doneighbour. 

In point of fact it may well be doubted if this common man has anythingto apprehend in the way of added hardship or loss of creature comfortsunder the contemplated régime of Imperial tutelage. He would presumablyfind himself in a precarious case under the arbitrary and irresponsibleauthority of an alien master working through an alien master class. Thedoubt which presents itself is as to whether this common man would bemore precariously placed, or would come in for a larger and surer sum ofhard usage and scant living, under this projected order of things, thanwhat he already is exposed to in his pecuniary relations with hiswell-to-do compatriots under the current system of law and order. 

Under this current régime of law and order, according to the equitableprinciples of Natural Rights, the man without means has no pecuniaryrights which his well-to-do pecuniary master is bound to respect. Thismay have been an unintended, as it doubtless was an unforeseen, outcomeof the move out of feudalism and prescriptive rights and immunities, into the system of individual liberty and manhood franchise; but ascommonly happens in case of any substantial change in the scheme ofinstitutional arrangements, unforeseen consequences come in along withthose that have been intended. In that period of history when WesternEurope was gathering that experience out of which the current habitualscheme of law and order has come, the right of property and freecontract was a complement and safeguard to that individual initiativeand masterless equality of men for which the spokesmen of the new eracontended. That it is no longer so at every turn, or even in the main, in later time, is in great part due to changes of the pecuniary order, that have come on since then, and that seem not to have cast theirshadow before. 

In all good faith, and with none but inconsequential reservations, thematerial fortunes of modern civilised men--together with much else--haveso been placed on a pecuniary footing, with little to safeguard them atany point except the inalienable right of pecuniary self-direction andinitiative, in an environment where virtually all the indispensablemeans of pecuniary self-direction and initiative are in the hands ofthat contracted category of owners spoken of above. A numericalminority--under ten percent of the population--constitutes a conclusivepecuniary majority--over ninety percent of the means--under a system oflaw and order that turns on the inalienable right of owners to disposeof the means in hand as may suit their convenience and profit, --alwaysbarring recourse to illegal force or fraud. There is, however, a veryappreciable margin of legal recourse to force and of legally protectedfraud available in case of need. Of course the expedients here referredto as legally available force and fraud in the defense of pecuniaryrights and the pursuit of pecuniary gain are not force and fraud _dejure_ but only _de facto_. They are further, and well known, illustrations of how the ulterior consequences of given institutionalarrangements and given conventionalised principles (habits of thought)of conduct may in time come to run at cross purposes with the initialpurpose that led to the acceptance of these institutions and to theconfirmation and standardisation of these habitual norms of conduct. Forthe time being, however, they are "fundamentally and eternally right andgood. "

Being a pecuniary majority--what may be called a majority of thecorporate stock--of the nation, it is also fundamentally and eternallyright and good that the pecuniary interests of the owners of thematerial means of life should rule unabated in all those matters ofpublic policy that touch on the material fortunes of the community atlarge. Barring a slight and intermittent mutter of discontent, thisarrangement has also the cordial approval of popular sentiment in thesemodern democratic nations. One need only recall the paramount importancewhich is popularly attached to the maintenance and extension of thenation's trade--for the use of the investors--or the perpetuation of aprotective tariff--for the use of the protected business concerns--or, again, the scrupulous regard with which such a body of public servantsas the Interstate Commerce Commission will safeguard the legitimateclaim of the railway companies to a "reasonable" rate of earnings on thecapitalised value of the presumed earning-capacity of their property. 

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Again, in view of the unaccustomed freedom with which it is herenecessary to speak of these delicate matters, it may be in place todisclaim all intention to criticise the established arrangements ontheir merits as details of public policy. All that comes in questionhere, touching these and the like features of the established law andorder, is the bearing of all this on the material fortunes of the commonman under the current régime, as contrasted with what he wouldreasonably have to look for under the projected régime of Imperialtutelage that would come in, consequent upon this national surrender toImperial dominion. 

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In these democratic countries public policy is guided primarily byconsiderations of business expediency, and the administration, as wellas the legislative power, is in the hands of businessmen, chosenavowedly on the ground of their businesslike principles and ability. There is no power in such a community that can over-rule the exigenciesof business, nor would popular sentiment countenance any exercise ofpower that should traverse these exigencies, or that would act torestrain trade or discourage the pursuit of gain. An apparent exceptionto the rule occurs in wartime, when military exigencies may over-rulethe current demands of business traffic; but the exception is in greatpart only apparent, in that the warlike operations are undertaken inwhole or in part with a view to the protection or extension of businesstraffic. 

National surveillance and regulation of business traffic in thesecountries hitherto, ever since and in so far as the modern democraticorder of things has taken effect, has uniformly been of the nature ofinterference with trade and investment in behalf of the nation'smercantile community at large, as seen in port and shipping regulationsand in the consular service, or in behalf of particular favored groupsor classes of business concerns, as in protective tariffs and subsidies. In all this national management of pecuniary affairs, under moderndemocratic principles, the common man comes into the case only as rawmaterial of business traffic, --as consumer or as laborer. He is one ofthe industrial agencies by use of which the businessman who employs himsupplies himself with goods for the market, or he is one of the unitsof consumptive demand that make up this market in which the business mansells his goods, and so "realises" on his investment. He is, of course, free, under modern principles of the democratic order, to deal or not todeal with this business community, whether as laborer or as consumer, oras small-scale producer engaged in purveying materials or services onterms defined by the community of business interests engaged on so largea scale as to count in their determination. That is to say, he is free_de jure_ to take or leave the terms offered. _De facto_ he is only freeto take them--with inconsequential exceptions--the alternative beingobsolescence by disuse, not to choose a harsher name for a distastefuleventuality. 

The general ground on which the business system, as it works under theover-ruling exigencies of the so-called "big business, " so defines theterms of life for the common man, who works and buys, is the groundafforded by the principle of "charging what the traffic will bear;" thatis to say, fixing the terms of hiring, buying and selling at such afigure as will yield the largest net return to the business concerns inwhom, collectively or in severalty, the discretion vests. Discretion inthese premises does not vest in any business concern that does notarticulate with the system of "big business, " or that does not disposeof resources sufficient to make it a formidable member of the system. Whether these concerns act in severalty or by collusion and conspiracy, in so defining the pecuniary terms of life for the community at large, is substantially an idle question, so far as bears on the materialinterest of the common man. The base-line is still what the traffic willbear, and it is still adhered to, so nearly as the human infirmity ofthe discretionary captains of industry will admit, whether the dueapproximation to this base-line is reached by a process of competitivebidding or by collusive advisement. 

The generalisation so offered, touching the material conditions of lifefor the common man under the modern rule of big business, may seemunwarrantably broad. It may be worth while to take note of more than onepoint in qualification of it, chiefly to avoid the appearance of havingoverlooked any of the material circumstances of the case. The "system"of large business, working its material consequences through the systemof large-scale industry, but more particularly by way of the large-scaleand wide-reaching business of trade in the proper sense, draws into thenet of its control all parts of the community and all its inhabitants, in some degree of dependence. But there is always, hitherto, anappreciable fraction of the inhabitants--as, e. G. , outlying agriculturalsections that are in a "backward" state--who are by no means closelybound in the orderly system of business, or closely dependent on themarkets. They may be said to enjoy a degree of independence, by virtueof their foregoing as much as may be of the advantages offered by modernindustrial specialisation. So also there are the minor and interstitialtrades that are still carried on by handicraft methods; these, too, arestill somewhat loosely held in the fabric of the business system. Thereis one thing and another in this way to be taken account of in anyexhaustive survey, but the accounting for them will after all amount tonothing better than a gleaning of remnants and partial exceptions, suchas will in no material degree derange the general proposition in hand. 

Again, there runs through the length and breadth of this businesscommunity a certain measure of incompetence or inefficiency ofmanagement, as seen from the point of view of the conceivable perfectworking of the system as a whole. It may be due to a slack attentionhere and there; or to the exigencies of business strategy which mayconstrain given business concerns to an occasional attitude of "watchfulwaiting" in the hope of catching a rival off his guard; or to a lack ofperfect mutual understanding among the discretionary businessmen, duesometimes to an over-careful guarding of trade secrets or advanceinformation; or, as also happens, and quite excusably, to a lack ofperfect mutual confidence among these businessmen, as to one another'sentire good faith or good-will. The system is after all a competitiveone, in the sense that each of the discretionary directors of businessis working for his own pecuniary gain, whether in cooperation with hisfellows or not. "An honest man will bear watching. " As in othercollusive organisations for gain, confederates are apt to fall out whenit comes to a division of what is in hand. In one way and another thesystem is beset with inherent infirmities, which hinder its perfectwork; and in so far it will fall short of the full realisation of thatrule of business that inculcates charging what the traffic will bear, and also in so far the pressure which the modern system of businessmanagement brings to bear on the common man will also fall short of thelast straw--perhaps even of the next-to-the-last. Again it turns out tobe a question not of the failure of the general proposition asformulated, but rather as to the closeness of approximation to itstheoretically perfect work. It may be remarked by the way that vigilantand impartial surveillance of this system of business enterprise by anexternal authority interested only in aggregate results, rather than inthe differential gains of the interested individuals, might hopefullybe counted on to correct some of these shortcomings which the systemshows when running loose under the guidance of its own multifariousincentives. 

On the opposite side of the account, it is also worth noting that, whilemodern business management may now and again fall short of what thetraffic will bear, it happens more commonly that its exactions willexceed that limit. This will particularly be true in businessmen'sdealings with hired labour, as also and perhaps with equallyfar-reaching consequences in an excessive recourse to sophisticationsand adulterants and an excessively parsimonious provision for thesafety, health or comfort of their customers--as, e. G. , in passengertraffic by rail, water or tramway. The discrepancy to which attention isinvited here is due to a discrepancy between business expediency, thatis expediency for the purpose of gain by a given businessman, on the onehand, and serviceability to the common good, on the other hand. Thebusiness concern's interest in the traffic in which it engages is ashort-term interest, or an interest in the short-term returns, ascontrasted with the long-term or enduring interest which the communityat large has in the public service over which any such given businessconcern disposes. The business incentive is that afforded by theprospective net pecuniary gain from the traffic, substantially aninterest in profitable sales; while the community at large, or thecommon man that goes to make up such a community, has a materialinterest in this traffic only as regards the services rendered and theenduring effects that follow from it. 

The businessman has not, or at least is commonly not influenced by, anyinterest in the ulterior consequences of the transactions in which heis immediately engaged. This appears to hold true in an accentuateddegree in the domain of that large-scale business that draws its gainsfrom the large-scale modern industry and is managed on the modernfooting of corporation finance. This modern fashion of businessorganisation and management apparently has led to a substantialshortening of the term over which any given investor maintains aneffective interest in any given corporate enterprise, in which hisinvestments may be placed for the time being. With the current practiceof organising industrial and mercantile enterprises on a basis ofvendible securities, and with the nearly complete exemption frompersonal responsibility and enduring personal attachment to any onecorporate enterprise which this financial expedient has brought, it hascome about that in the common run of cases the investor, as well as thedirectorate, in any given enterprise, has an interest only for the timebeing. The average term over which it is (pecuniarily) incumbent on themodern businessman to take account of the working of any givenenterprise has shortened so far that the old-fashioned accountability, that once was depended on to dictate a sane and considerate managementwith a view to permanent good-will, has in great measure becomeinoperative. 

By and large, it seems unavoidable that the pecuniary interests of thebusinessmen on the one hand and the material interests of the communityon the other hand are diverging in a more and more pronounced degree, due to institutional circumstances over which no prompt control can behad without immediate violation of that scheme of personal rights inwhich the constitution of modern democratic society is grounded. Thequandary in which these communities find themselves, as an outcome oftheir entrance upon "the simple and obvious system of Natural Liberty, "is shown in a large and instructive way by what is called "labortrouble, " and in a more recondite but no less convincing fashion by thefortunes of the individual workman under the modern system. 

The cost of production of a modern workman has constantly increased, with the advance of the industrial arts. The period of preparation, ofeducation and training, necessary to turn out competent workmen, hasbeen increasing; and the period of full workmanlike efficiency has beenshortening, in those industries that employ the delicate and exactingprocesses of the modern technology. The shortening of this working-lifeof the workman is due both to a lengthening of the necessary period ofpreparation, and to the demand of these processes for so full a use ofthe workman's forces that even the beginning of senescence will count asa serious disability, --in many occupations as a fatal disability. It isalso a well ascertained fact that effectual old age will be brought onat an earlier period by overwork; overwork shortens the workinglife-time of the workman. Thorough speeding-up ("ScientificManagement"?) will unduly shorten this working life-time, and so it may, somewhat readily, result in an uneconomical consumption of thecommunity's man-power, by consuming the workmen at a higher rate ofspeed, a higher pressure, with a more rapid rate of deterioration, thanwould give the largest net output of product per unit of man-poweravailable, or per unit of cost of production of such man-power. 

On this head the guiding incentives of the businessman and the materialinterest of the community at large--not to speak of the selfish interestof the individual workman--are systematically at variance. The cost ofproduction of workmen does not fall on the business concern whichemploys them, at least not in such definite fashion as to make it appearthat the given business concern or businessman has a material interestin the economical consumption of the man-power embodied in this givenbody of employees. Some slight and exceptional qualification of thisstatement is to be noted, in those cases where the processes in use aresuch as to require special training, not to be had except by a workinghabituation to these processes in the particular industrial plant inquestion. So far as such special training, to be had only as employeesof the given concern, is a necessary part of the workman's equipment forthis particular work, so far the given employer bears a share and aninterest in the cost of production of the workmen employed; and so far, therefore, the employer has also a pecuniary interest in the economicaluse of his employees; which usually shows itself in the way of somespecial precautions being taken to prevent the departure of theseworkmen so long as there is a clear pecuniary loss involved in replacingthem with men who have not yet had the special training required. Evidently this qualifying consideration covers no great proportion ofthe aggregate man-power consumed in industrial enterprises underbusiness management. And apart from the instances, essentiallyexceptional, where such a special consideration comes in, thebusinessmen in charge will, quite excusably as things go, endeavour toconsume the man-power of which they dispose in the persons of theiremployees, not at the rate that would be most economical to thecommunity at large, in view of the cost of their replacement, nor atsuch a rate as would best suit the taste or the viability of theparticular workman, but at such a rate as will yield the largest netpecuniary gain to the employer. 

There is on record an illustrative, and indeed an illustrious, instanceof such cannily gainful consumption of man-power carried outsystematically and with consistently profitable effect in one of thestaple industries of the country. In this typical, though exceptionallythoroughgoing and lucrative enterprise, the set rule of the managementwas, to employ none but select workmen, in each respective line of work;to procure such select workmen and retain them by offering wagesslightly over the ordinary standard; to work them at the highest paceand pressure attainable with such a picked body; and to discharge themon the first appearance of aging or of failing powers. In the rules ofthe management was also included the negative proviso that the concernassumed no responsibility for the subsequent fortunes of dischargedworkmen, in the way of pension, insurance or the like. 

This enterprise was highly successful and exceedingly profitable, evenbeyond the high average of profits among enterprises in the same line ofbusiness. Out of it came one of the greater and more illustriousfortunes that have been accumulated during the past century; a fortunewhich has enabled one of the most impressive and most gracious of thisgeneration's many impressive philanthropists, never weary in well-doing;but who, through this cannily gainful consumption of man-power, has beenplaced in the singular position of being unable, in spite of avowedlyunremitting endeavour, to push his continued disbursements in theservice of humanity up to the figure of his current income. The case inquestion is one of the most meritorious known to the records of modernbusiness, and while it will conveniently serve to illustrate many another, and perhaps more consequential truth come to realisation in themarch of Triumphant Democracy, it will also serve to show thegainfulness of an unreservedly canny consumption of man-power with aneye single to one's own net gain in terms of money. 

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Evidently this is a point in the articulation of the modern economicsystem where a sufficiently ruthless outside authority, not actuated bya primary regard for the pecuniary interests of the employers, mightconceivably with good effect enforce a more economical consumption ofthe country's man-power. It is not a matter on which one prefers todwell, but it can do no harm to take note of the fact for once in a way, that these several national establishments of the democratic order, asthey are now organised and administered, do somewhat uniformly andpervasively operate with an effectual view to the advantage of a class, so far as may plausibly be done. They are controlled by and administeredin behalf of those elements of the population that, for the purpose inhand, make up a single loose-knit class, --the class that lives by incomerather than by work. It may be called the class of the businessinterests, or of capital, or of gentlemen. It all comes to much thesame, for the purpose in hand. 

The point in speaking of this contingent whose place in the economy ofhuman affairs it is to consume, or to own, or to pursue a margin ofprofit, is simply that of contrasting this composite human contingentwith the common man; whose numbers account for some nine-tenths or moreof the community, while his class accounts for something less thanone-tenth of the invested wealth, and appreciably less than thatproportion of the discretionary national establishment, --the government, national or local, courts, attorneys, civil service, diplomatic andconsular, military and naval. The arrangement may be called agentlemen's government, if one would rather have it that way; but agentleman is necessarily one who lives on free income from investedwealth--without such a source of free, that is to say unearned, incomehe becomes a decayed gentleman. Again, pushing the phrasing back a stepfarther toward the ground facts, there are those who would speak of thecurrent establishments as "capitalistic;" but this term is out of linein that it fails to touch the human element in the case, andinstitutions, such as governmental establishments and their functioning, are after all nothing but the accustomed ways and means of humanbehaviour; so that "capitalistic" becomes a synonym for "businessmen's"government so soon as it is designated in terms of the drivingincentives and the personnel. It is an organisation had with a view tothe needs of business (i. E. Pecuniary) enterprise, and is made up ofbusinessmen and gentlemen, which comes to much the same, since agentleman is only a businessman in the second or some later generation. Except for the slightly odious suggestion carried by the phrase, onemight aptly say that the gentleman, in this bearing, is only abusinessman gone to seed. 

By and large, and taking the matter naively at the simple face value ofthe material gain or loss involved, it should seem something of an idlequestion to the common man whether his collective affairs are to bemanaged by a home-bred line of businessmen and their successive filialgenerations of gentlemen, with a view to accelerate the velocity andincrease the volume of competitive gain and competitive spending, onthe one hand, or by an alien line of officials, equally aloof from hiscommon interests, and managing affairs with a view to the usufruct ofhis productive powers in furtherance of the Imperial dominion. 

Not that the good faith or the generous intentions of these governmentsof gentlemen is questioned or is in any degree questionable; what ishere spoken of is only the practical effect of the policies which theypursue, doubtless with benevolent intentions and well-placedcomplacency. In effect, things being as they are today in the civilisedworld's industry and trade, it happens, as in some sort an unintendedbut all-inclusive accident, that the guidance of affairs by businessprinciples works at cross purposes with the material interests of thecommon man. 

So ungraceful a view of the sacred core of this modern democraticorganisation will need whatever evidence can be cited to keep it incountenance. Therefore indulgence is desired for one further count inthis distasteful recital of ineptitudes inherent in this institutionalscheme of civilised life. This count comes under the head of what may becalled capitalistic sabotage. "Sabotage" is employed to designate awilful retardation, interruption or obstruction of industry bypeaceable, and ordinarily by legally defensible, measures. In itspresent application, particularly, there is no design to let the termdenote or insinuate a recourse to any expedients or any line of conductthat is in any degree legally dubious, or that is even of questionablelegitimacy. 

Sabotage so understood, as not comprising recourse to force or fraud, isa necessary and staple expedient of business management, and itsemployment is grounded in the elementary and indefeasible rights ofownership. It is simply that the businessman, like any other owner, isvested with the right freely to use or not to use his property for anygiven purpose. His decision, for reasons of his own, not to employ theproperty at his disposal in a particular way at a particular time, iswell and blamelessly within his legitimate discretion, under the rightsof property as universally accepted and defended by modern nations. Inthe particular instance of the American nation he is protected in thisright by a constitutional provision that he must not be deprived of hisproperty without due process of law. When the property at his disposalis in the shape of industrial plant or industrial material, means oftransportation or stock of goods awaiting distribution, then hisdecision not to employ this property, or to limit its use to somethingless than full capacity, in the way for which it is adapted, becomessabotage, normally and with negligible exceptions. In so doing hehinders, retards or obstructs the working of the country's industrialforces by so much. It is a matter of course and of absolute necessity tothe conduct of business, that any discretionary businessman must be freeto deal or not to deal in any given case; to limit or to withhold theequipment under his control, without reservation. Business discretionand business strategy, in fact, has no other means by which to work outits aims. So that, in effect, all business sagacity reduces itself inthe last analysis to a judicious use of sabotage. Under modernconditions of large business, particularly, the relation of thediscretionary businessman to industry is that of authoritativepermission and of authoritative limitation or stoppage, and on hisshrewd use of this authority depends the gainfulness of his enterprise. 

If this authority were exercised with an eye single to the largest andmost serviceable output of goods and services, or to the most economicaluse of the country's material resources and man-power, regardless ofpecuniary consequences, the course of management so carried out would benot sabotage but industrial strategy. But business is carried on forpecuniary gain, not with an unreserved view to the largest and mostserviceable output or to the economical use of resources. The volume andserviceability of the output must wait unreservedly on the veryparticular pecuniary question of what quantity and what degree ofserviceability will yield the largest net return in terms of price. Uneconomical use of equipment, labor and resources is necessarily aneveryday matter under these circumstances, as in the duplication ofplant and processes between rival concerns, and in the wasteful use ofall resources that do not involve expenditure on the part of the givenconcern. 

It has been the traditional dogma among economists and publicists inthese modern communities that free competition between the businessmenin charge will indefeasibly act to bring the productiveness of industryto the highest practicable pitch and would lead to the most unreservedand vigilant endeavour to serve the community's material needs at allpoints. The reasons for the failure of this genial expectation, particularly under latterday business management, might be shown in somedetail, if that were needed to enforce the argument as it runs in thepresent connection. But a summary indication of the commoner varietiesand effects of sabotage as it is systematically applied in thebusinesslike conduct of industry will serve the purpose as well and withless waste of words and patience. 

It is usual to notice, and not unusual to deplore the duplication ofplant and appliances in many lines of industry, due to competitivemanagement, as in factories engaged in the same class of manufacture, inparallel or otherwise competing railways and boat lines, in retailmerchandising, and in some degree also in the wholesale trade. Theresult, of course, is sabotage; in the sense that this volume ofappliances, materials and workmen are not employed to the best advantagefor the community. One effect of the arrangement is an increasednecessary cost of the goods and services supplied by these means. Thereason for it is competition for gain to be got from the traffic. Thatall this is an untoward state of things is recognised on all hands; butno lively regret is commonly spent on the matter, since it is commonlyrecognised that under the circumstances there is no help for it exceptat the cost of a more untoward remedy. 

The competitive system having been tried and found good--or at least soit is assumed--it is felt that the system will have to be accepted withthe defects of its qualities. Its characteristic qualities are held tobe good, acceptable to the tastes of modern men whose habits of thoughthave been standardised in its terms; and it would be only reluctantlyand by tardy concession that these modern men could bring themselves togive up that scheme of "Natural Liberty" within the framework of whichruns this competitive system of business management and its wastefulmanifolding of half-idle equipment and nugatory work. The common man, atthe worst, comforts himself and his neighbour with the sage reflectionthat "It might have been worse. " The businessmen, on the other hand, have also begun to take note of this systematic waste by duplicationand consequent incompetence, and have taken counsel how to intercept thewaste and divert it to their own profit. The businessmen's remedy isconsolidation of competing concerns, and monopoly control. 

To the common man, with his preconceptions on the head of "restraint oftrade, " the proposed remedy seems more vicious than the evil it isdesigned to cure. The fault of the remedy plainly is not that themismanagement of affairs due to competitive business can not becorrected by recourse to monopoly, but only that the community, it ispresumed, would still suffer all the burdens and discomforts of therégime of competition and sabotage, with, possibly, furtherinconveniences and impositions at the hands of the businesslikemonopoly; which, men are agreed, may fairly be depended on to use itsadvantage unsparingly under the business principle of charging what thetraffic will bear. 

There is also this other singular phenomenon in this modern industrialworld, that something not very far short of one-half the industrialequipment systematically lies idle for something approaching one-halfthe time, or is worked only to one-half its capacity half the time; notbecause of competition between these several industrial concerns, butbecause business conditions will not allow its continued productive use;because the volume of product that would be turned out if the equipmentwere working uninterruptedly at its full capacity could not be sold atremunerative prices. From time to time one establishment and anotherwill shut down during a period of slack times, for the same reason. 

This state of things is singular only as seen from the point of view ofthe community's material interest, not that it is in any degreeunfamiliar or that any serious fault is found with the captains ofindustry for so shutting off the industrial process and letting theindustrial equipment lie waste. As all men know, the exigencies ofbusiness will not tolerate production to supply the community's needsunder these circumstances; although, as is equally notorious, theseslack times, when production of goods is unadvisable on grounds ofbusiness expediency, are commonly times of wide-spread privation, "hardtimes, " in the community at large, when the failure of the supply iskeenly felt. 

It is not that the captains of industry are at fault in so failing, orrefusing, to supply the needs of the community under thesecircumstances, but only that they are helpless under the exigencies ofbusiness. They can not supply the goods except for a price, indeed notexcept for a remunerative price, a price which will add something to thecapital values which they are venturing in their various enterprises. Solong as the exigencies of price and of pecuniary gain rule the case, there is manifestly no escaping this enforced idleness of the country'sproductive forces. 

It may not be out of place also to remark, by way of parenthesis, thatthis highly productive state of the industrial arts, which is embodiedin the industrial plant and processes that so are systematically andadvisedly retarded or arrested under the rule of business, is at thesame time the particular pride of civilised men and the most tangibleachievement of the civilised world. 

A conservative estimate of this one item of capitalistic sabotage couldscarcely appraise it at less than a twenty-five percent reduction fromthe normally possible productive capacity of the community, at anaverage over any considerable period; and a somewhat thorough review ofthe pertinent facts would probably persuade any impartial observer that, one year with another, such businesslike enforced idleness of plant andpersonnel lowers the actual output of the country's industry bysomething nearer fifty percent of its ordinary capacity when fullyemployed. To many, such an assertion may seem extravagant, but withfurther reflection on the well-known facts in the case it will seem lessso in proportion as the unfamiliarity of it wears off. 

However, the point of attention in the case is not the precise, nor theapproximate, percentages of this arrest and retardation, this partialneutralisation of modern improvements in the industrial arts; it is onlythe notorious fact that such arrest occurs, systematically andadvisedly, under the rule of business exigencies, and that there is nocorrective to be found for it that will comport with those fundamentalarticles of the democratic faith on which the businessmen necessarilyproceed. Any effectual corrective would break the framework ofdemocratic law and order, since it would have to traverse theinalienable right of men who are born free and equal, each freely todeal or not to deal in any pecuniary conjuncture that arises. 

But it is at the same time plain enough that this, in the larger senseuntoward, discrepancy between productive capacity and current productiveoutput can readily be corrected, in some appreciable degree at least, byany sufficient authority that shall undertake to control the country'sindustrial forces without regard to pecuniary profit and loss. Anyauthority competent to take over the control and regulate the conduct ofthe community's industry with a view to maximum output as counted byweight and tale, rather than by net aggregate price-income overprice-cost, can readily effect an appreciable increase in the effectualproductive capacity; but it can be done only by violating thatdemocratic order of things within which business enterprise runs. Theseveral belligerent nations of Europe are showing that it can be done, that the sabotage of business enterprise can be put aside bysufficiently heroic measures. And they are also showing that they areall aware, and have always been aware, that the conduct of industry onbusiness principles is incompetent to bring the largest practicableoutput of goods and services; incompetent to such a degree, indeed, asnot to be tolerable in a season of desperate need, when the nationrequires the full use of its productive forces, equipment and man-power, regardless of the pecuniary claims of individuals. 

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Now, the projected Imperial dominion is a power of the characterrequired to bring a sufficient corrective to bear, in case of need, onthis democratic situation in which the businessmen in charge necessarilymanage the country's industry at cross purposes with thecommunity's--that is the common man's--material interest. It is anextraneous power, to whom the continued pecuniary gain of these nations'businessmen is a minor consideration, a negligible consideration in caseit shall appear that the Imperial usufruct of the underlying nation'sproductive forces is in any degree impaired by the businessmen'smanagement of it for their own net gain. It is difficult to see on whatgrounds of self-interest such an Imperial government could consent totolerate the continued management of these underlying nations'industries on business principles, that is to say on the principle ofthe maximum pecuniary gain to the businesslike managers; and recentexperience seems to teach that no excessive, that is to say noinconvenient, degree of consideration for vested rights, and the like, would long embarrass the Imperial government in its administration ofits usufruct. 

It should be a reasonable expectation that, without malice and with anunprejudiced view to its own usufruct of these underlying countries, theImperial establishment would take due care that no systematically, andin its view gratuitously, uneconomical methods should continue in theordinary conduct of their industry. Among other considerations of weightin this connection is the fact that a contented, well-fed, and notwantonly over-worked populace is a valuable asset in such a case. Similarly, by contraries, as an asset in usufruct to such an alienpower, a large, wealthy, spendthrift, body of gentlefolk, held in highesteem by the common people, would have but a slight value, conceivablyeven a negative value, in such a case. A wise administration wouldpresumably look to their abatement, rather than otherwise. At this pointthe material interest of the common man would seem to coincide with thatof the Imperial establishment. Still, his preconceived notions of thewisdom and beneficence of his gentlefolk would presumably hinder hisseeing the matter in that reasonable light. 

Under the paramount surveillance of such an alien power, guided solelyby its own interest in the usufruct of the country and its population, it is to be presumed that class privileges and discrimination would begreatly abated if not altogether discontinued. The point is in somedoubt, partly because this alien establishment whose dominion is inquestion is itself grounded in class prerogatives and discrimination, and so, not improbably, it would carry over into its supervision of theunderlying nations something of a bias in favor of class privileges. Anda similar order of things might also result by choice of a class-systemas a convenient means of control and exploitation. The latterconsideration is presumably the more cogent, since the Imperialestablishment in question is already, by ancient habit, familiar withthe method of control by class and privilege; and, indeed, unfamiliarwith any other method. Such a government, which governs withouteffectual advice or formal consent of the governed, will almostnecessarily rest its control of the country on an interested class, ofsufficient strength and bound by sufficiently grave interest to abet theImperial establishment effectually in all its adventures andenterprises. 

But such a privileged order, that is to be counted in to share dynasticusufruct and liabilities, in good days and evil, will be of afeudalistic complexion rather than something after the fashion of amodern business community doing business by investment and pecuniaryfinesse. It would still be a reasonable expectation that discriminationbetween pecuniary classes should fall away under this projected alientutelage; more particularly all such discrimination as is designed tobenefit any given class or interest at the cost of the whole, as, e. G. , protective tariffs, monopolistic concessions and immunities, engrossingof particular lines of material resources, and the like. 

The character of the economic policy to be pursued should not bedifficult of apprehension, if only these underlying peoples areconceived as an estate in tail within the dynastic line of descent. TheImperial establishment which so is prospectively to take over thesurveillance of these modern peoples under this projected enterprise indominion, may all the more readily be conceived as handling its new andlarger resources somewhat unreservedly as an estate to be administeredwith a shrewd eye to the main chance, since such has always been itsrelation to the peoples and territories whose usufruct it alreadyenjoys. It is only that the circumstances of the case will admit a freerand more sagacious application of those principles of usufruct that lieat the root of the ancient Culture of the Fatherland. 

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This excessively long, and yet incomplete, review of the presumptivematerial advantages to accrue to the common man under a régime of peaceby unconditional surrender to an alien dynasty, brings the argumentapparently to the conclusion that such an eventuality might be fortunaterather than the reverse; or at least that it has its compensations, evenif it is not something to be desired. Such should particularly appear tobe the presumption in case one is at all inclined to make much of thecultural gains to be brought in under the new régime. And moreparticularly should a policy of non-resistant submission to theprojected new order seem expedient in view of the exceedingly high, notto say prohibitive, cost of resistance, or even of materially retardingits fulfillment. 

CHAPTER V

PEACE AND NEUTRALITY

Considered simply on the face of the tangible material interestsinvolved, the choice of the common man in these premises should seemvery much of a foregone conclusion, if he could persuade himself to asane and perspicuous consideration of these statistically apparentmerits of the case alone. It is at least safely to be presumed that hehas nothing to lose, in a material way, and there is reason to look forsome slight gain in creature comforts and in security of life and limb, consequent upon the elimination, or at least the partialdisestablishment, of pecuniary necessity as the sole bond and criterionof use and wont in economic concerns. 

But man lives not by bread alone. In point of fact, and particularly astouches the springs of action among that common run that do nothabitually formulate their aspirations and convictions in extended andgrammatically defensible documentary form, and the drift of whoseimpulses therefore is not masked or deflected by the illusiveconsistencies of set speech, --as touches the common run, particularly, it will hold true with quite an unacknowledged generality that thematerial means of life are, after all, means only; and that when thequestion of what things are worth while is brought to the final test, itis not these means, nor the life conditioned on these means, that areseen to serve as the decisive criterion; but always it is someulterior, immaterial end, in the pursuit of which these material meansfind their ulterior ground of valuation. Neither the overt testimony northe circumstantial evidence to this effect is unequivocal; but seen indue perspective, and regard being had chiefly to the springs ofconcerted action as shown in any massive movement of this common run ofmankind, there is, after all, little room to question that the thingswhich commend themselves as indefeasibly worth while are the things ofthe human spirit. 

These ideals, aspirations, aims, ends of endeavour, are by no means of auniform or homogeneous character throughout the modern communities, still less throughout the civilised world, or throughout the checkeredrange of classes and conditions of men; but, with such frequency andamplitude that it must be taken as a major premise in any attemptedinsight into human behaviour, it will hold true that they are of aspiritual, immaterial nature. 

The caution may, parenthetically, not be out of place, that thischaracterisation of the ulterior springs of action as essentially not ofthe nature of creature comforts, need be taken in no wider extensionthan that which so is specifically given it. It will be found to applyas touches the conduct of the common run; what modification of it mightbe required to make it at all confidently applicable to the case of oneand another of those classes into whose scheme of life creature comfortsenter with more pronounced effect may be more of a delicate point. Butsince it is the behaviour, and the grounds of behaviour, of the commonrun that are here in question, the case of their betters in this respectmay conveniently be left on one side. 

The question in hand touches the behavior of the common man, taken inthe aggregate, in face of the quandary into which circumstances have ledhim; since the question of what these modern peoples will do is afterall a question of what the common man in the aggregate will do, of hisown motion or by persuasion. His betters may be in a position to guide, persuade, cajole, mislead, and victimise him; for among the manysingular conceits that beset the common man is the persuasion that hisbetters are in some way better than he, wiser, more beneficent. But thecourse that may so be chosen, with or without guidance or persuasionfrom the superior classes, as well as the persistence and energy withwhich this course is pursued, is conditioned on the frame of mind of thecommon run. 

Just what will be the nature and the concrete expression of these idealaspirations that move the common run is a matter of habitualpreconceptions; and habits of thought vary from one people to anotheraccording to the diversity of experience to which they have beenexposed. Among the Western nations the national prestige has come toseem worth while as an ulterior end, perhaps beyond all else that iscomprised in the secular scheme of things desirable to be had or to beachieved. And in the apprehension of such of them as have best preservedthe habits of thought induced by a long experience in feudal subjection, the service of the sovereign or the dynasty still stands over as thesubstantial core of the cultural scheme, upon which sentiment andendeavour converge. In the past ages of the democratic peoples, as wellas in the present-day use and wont among subjects of the dynasticStates--as e. G. , Japan or Germany--men are known to have resolutelyrisked, and lost, their life for the sake of the sovereign's renown, oreven to save the sovereign's life; whereas, of course, even theslightest and most nebulous reflection would make it manifest that inpoint of net material utility the sovereign's decease is an idle matteras compared with the loss of an able-bodied workman. The sovereign mayalways be replaced, with some prospect of public advantage, or failingthat, it should be remarked that a regency or inter-regnum will commonlybe a season of relatively economical administration. Again, religiousenthusiasm, and the furtherance of religious propaganda, may come toserve the same general purpose as these secular ideals, and will perhapsserve it just as well. Certain "principles, " of personal liberty and ofopportunity for creative self-direction and an intellectually worthylife, perhaps may also become the idols of the people, for which theywill then be willing to risk their material fortune; and where this hashappened, as among the democratic peoples of Christendom, it is notselfishly for their own personal opportunity to live untroubled underthe light of these high principles that these opinionated men are readyto contend, but rather impersonally for the human right which underthese principles is the due of all mankind, and particularly of theincoming and of later generations. 

On these and the like intangible ends the common man is set with suchinveterate predilection that he will, on provocation, stick at nothingto put the project through. For such like ends the common man will laydown his life; at least, so they say. There may always be something ofrhetorical affectation in it all; but, after all, there is sufficientevidence to hand of such substance and tenacity in the common man's holdon these ideal aspirations, on these idols of his human spirit, as towarrant the assertion that he is, rather commonly, prepared to go togreater lengths in the furtherance of these immaterial gains that are toinure to someone else than for any personal end of his own, in the wayof creature comforts or even of personal renown. 

For such ends the common man, in democratic Christendom is, onprovocation, willing to die; or again, the patient and perhaps morefar-seeing common man of pagan China is willing to live for these idolsof an inveterate fancy, through endless contumely and hard usage. Theconventional Chinese preconceptions, in the way of things that are worthwhile in their own right, appear to differ from those current in theOccident in such a way that the preconceived ideal is not to be realisedexcept by way of continued life. The common man's accountability to thecause of humanity, in China, is of so intimately personal a characterthat he can meet it only by tenaciously holding his place in thesequence of generations; whereas among the peoples of Christendom therehas arisen out of their contentious past a preconception to the effectthat this human duty to mankind is of the nature of a debt, which can becancelled by bankruptcy proceedings, so that the man who unprofitablydies fighting for the cause has thereby constructively paid thereckoning in full. 

Evidently, if the common man of these modern nations that areprospectively to be brought under tutelage of the Imperial governmentcould be brought to the frame of mind that is habitual with his Chinesecounterpart, there should be a fair hope that pacific counsels wouldprevail and that Christendom would so come in for a régime of peace bysubmission under this Imperial tutelage. But there are always thesepreconceptions of self-will and insubordination to be counted withamong these nations, and there is the ancient habit of a contentiousnational solidarity in defense of the nation's prestige, more urgentamong these peoples than any sentiment of solidarity with mankind atlarge, or any ulterior gain in civilisation that might come of continueddiscipline in the virtues of patience and diligence under distastefulcircumstances. 

The occidental conception of manhood is in some considerable measuredrawn in negative terms. So much so that whenever a question of themanly virtues comes under controversy it presently appears that at leastthe indispensable minimum, and indeed the ordinary marginal modicum, ofwhat is requisite to a worthy manner of life is habitually formulated interms of what not. This appearance is doubtless misleading if takenwithout the universally understood postulate on the basis of whichnegative demands are formulated. There is a good deal of what would becalled historical accident in all this. The indispensable demands ofthis modern manhood take the form of refusal to obey extraneousauthority on compulsion; of exemption from coercive direction andsubservience; of insubordination, in short. But it is always understoodas a matter of course that this insubordination is a refusal to submitto irresponsible or autocratic rule. Stated from the positive side itwould be freedom from restraint by or obedience to any authority notconstituted by express advice and consent of the governed. And as nearas it may be formulated, when reduced to the irreducible minimum ofconcrete proviso, this is the final substance of things which neithershame nor honour will permit the modern civilised man to yield. To noarrangement for the abrogation of this minimum of free initiative andself-direction will he consent to be a party, whether it touches theconditions of life for his own people who are to come after, or astouches the fortunes of such aliens as are of a like mind on this headand are unable to make head against invasion of these human rights fromoutside. 

As has just been remarked, the negative form so often taken by thesedemands is something of an historical accident, due to the fact thatthese modern peoples came into their highly esteemed system of NaturalLiberty out of an earlier system of positive checks on self-directionand initiative; a system, in effect, very much after the fashion of thatImperial jurisdiction that still prevails in the dynastic States--as, e. G. , Germany or Japan--whose projected dominion is now the immediateobject of apprehension and repugnance. How naively the negativeformulation gained acceptance, and at the same time how intrinsic to thenew dispensation was the aspiration for free initiative, appears in theconfident assertion of its most genial spokesman, that when thesepositive checks are taken away, "The simple and obvious system ofNatural Liberty establishes itself of its own accord. "

The common man, in these modern communities, shows a brittle temper whenany overt move is made against this heritage of civil liberty. He maynot be altogether well advised in respect of what liberties he willdefend and what he will submit to; but the fact is to be counted with inany projected peace, that there is always this refractory residue ofterms not open to negotiation or compromise. Now it also happens, alsoby historical accident, that these residual principles of civil libertyhave come to blend and coalesce with a stubborn preconception ofnational integrity and national prestige. So that in the workdayapprehension of the common man, not given to analytic excursions, anyinfraction of the national integrity or any abatement of the nationalprestige has come to figure as an insufferable infringement on hispersonal liberty and on those principles of humanity that make up thecategorical articles of the secular creed of Christendom. The fact maybe patent on reflection that the common man's substantial interest inthe national integrity is slight and elusive, and that in sober commonsense the national prestige has something less than a neutral value tohim; but this state of the substantially pertinent facts is not greatlyof the essence of the case, since his preconceptions in these premisesdo not run to that effect, and since they are of too hard and fast atexture to suffer any serious abatement within such a space of time ascan come in question here and now. 

 * * * * *

The outlook for a speedy settlement of the world's peace on a plan ofunconditional surrender to the projected Imperial dominion seemsunpromisingly dubious, in view of the stubborn temper shown by thesemodern peoples wherever their preconceived ideas of right and honestliving appear to be in jeopardy; and the expediency of entering into anynegotiated compact of diplomatic engagements and assurances designed toserve as groundwork to an eventual enterprise of that kind musttherefore also be questionable in a high degree. It is even doubtful ifany allowance of time can be counted on to bring these modern peoples toa more reasonable, more worldly-wise, frame of mind; so that they wouldcome to see their interest in such an arrangement, or would divestthemselves of their present stubborn and perhaps fantastic prejudiceagainst an autocratic régime of the kind spoken for. At least for thepresent any such hope of a peaceable settlement seems illusive. Whatmay be practicable in this way in the course of time is of course stillmore obscure; but argument on the premises which the present affordsdoes not point to a substantially different outcome in the calculablefuture. 

For the immediate future--say, within the life-time of the oncominggeneration--the spiritual state of the peoples concerned in thisinternational quandary is not likely to undergo so radical a change asto seriously invalidate an argument that proceeds on the present lie ofthe land in this respect. Preconceptions are a work of habit impingingon a given temperamental bent; and where, as in these premises, thepreconceptions have taken on an institutionalised form, have becomeconventionalised and commonly accepted, and so have been woven into thetexture of popular common sense, they must needs be a work of protractedand comprehensive habituation impinging on a popular temperamental bentof so general a prevalence that it may be called congenital to thecommunity at large. A heritable bent pervading the group within whichinheritance runs, does not change, so long as the racial complexion ofthe group remains passably intact; a conventionalised, commonlyestablished habit of mind will change only slowly, commonly not withoutthe passing of at least one generation, and only by grace of asufficiently searching and comprehensive discipline of experience. Forgood or ill, the current situation is to be counted on not to losecharacter over night or with a revolution of the seasons, so far asconcerns these spiritual factors that make or mar the fortunes ofnations. 

At the same time these spiritual assets, being of the nature of habit, are also bound to change character more or less radically, by insensibleshifting of ground, but incontinently, --provided only that theconditions of life, and therefore the discipline of experience, undergoany substantial change. So the immediate interest shifts to thepresumptive rate and character of those changes that are in prospect, due to the unremitting change of circumstances under which these modernpeoples live and to the discipline of which they are unavoidablyexposed. For the present and for the immediate future the current stateof things is a sufficiently stable basis of argument; but assurance asto the sufficiency of the premises afforded by the current state ofthings thins out in proportion as the perspective of the argument runsout into the succeeding years. The bearing of it all is two-fold, ofcourse. This progressive, cumulative habituation under changingcircumstances affects the case both of those democratic peoples whosefortunes are in the hazard, and also of those dynastic States by whomthe projected enterprise in dominion is to be carried into effect. 

 * * * * *

The case of the two formidable dynastic States whose names have beencoupled together in what has already been said is perhaps the moreimmediately interesting in the present connection. As matters stand, andin the measure in which they continue so to stand, the case of these isin no degree equivocal. The two dynastic establishments seek dominion, and indeed they seek nothing else, except incidentally to and infurtherance of the main quest. As has been remarked before, it lies inthe nature of a dynastic State to seek dominion, that being the whole ofits nature in so far as it runs true to form. But a dynastic State, likeany other settled, institutionalised community of men, rests on anddraws its effectual driving force from the habit of mind of itsunderlying community, the common man in the aggregate, hispreconceptions and ideals as to what things are worth while. Without asuitable spiritual ground of this kind such a dynastic State passes outof the category of formidable Powers and into that of precariousdespotism. 

In both of the two States here in question the dynastic establishmentand its bodyguard of officials and gentlefolk may be counted on topersevere in the faith that now animates them, until an uneasydisplacement of sentiment among the underlying populace may in timeinduce them judiciously to shift their footing. Like the ruling classeselsewhere, they are of a conservative temper and may be counted on so tocontinue. They are also not greatly exposed to the discipline ofexperience that makes for adaptive change in habits of life, andtherefore in the correlated habits of thought. It is always the commonman that is effectually reached by any exacting or wide-reaching changein the conditions of life. He is relatively unsheltered from any forcesthat make for adaptive change, as contrasted with the case of hisbetters; and however sluggish and reluctant may be his response to suchdiscipline as makes for a displacement of outworn preconceptions, yet itis always out of the mass of this common humanity that those movementsof disaffection and protest arise, which lead, on occasion, to anymaterial realignment of the institutional fabric or to any substantialshift in the line of policy to be pursued under the guidance of theirbetters. 

The common mass of humanity, it may be said in parenthesis, is of coursenot a homogeneous body. Uncommon men, in point of native gifts ofintelligence, sensibility, or personal force, will occur as frequently, in proportion to the aggregate numbers, among the common mass as amongtheir betters. Since in any one of these nations of Christendom, withtheir all-inclusive hybridisation, the range, frequency and amplitude ofvariations in hereditary endowment is the same throughout all classes. Class differentiation is a matter of habit and convention; and indistinction from his betters the common man is common only in point ofnumbers and in point of the more general and more exacting conditions towhich he is exposed. He is in a position to be more hardly ridden by thediscipline of experience, and is at the same time held more consistentlyto such a body of preconceptions, and to such changes only in this bodyof preconceptions, as fall in with the drift of things in a larger massof humanity. But all the while it is the discipline which impinges onthe sensibilities of this common mass that shapes the spiritual attitudeand temper of the community and so defines what may and what may not beundertaken by the constituted leaders. So that, in a way, these dynasticStates are at the mercy of that popular sentiment whose creatures theyare, and are subject to undesired changes of direction and efficiency intheir endeavors, contingent on changes in the popular temper; over whichthey have only a partial, and on the whole a superficial control. 

A relatively powerful control and energetic direction of the populartemper is and has been exercised by these dynastic establishments, witha view to its utilisation in the pursuit of the dynastic enterprise; andmuch has visibly been accomplished in that way; chiefly, perhaps, bymilitary discipline in subordination to personal authority, and also byan unsparing surveillance of popular education, with a view to fortifythe preconceptions handed down from the passing order as well as toeliminate all subversive innovation. Yet in spite of all thewell-conceived and shrewdly managed endeavors of the German Imperialsystem in this direction, e. G. , there has been evidence of an obscurelygrowing uneasiness, not to say disaffection, among the underlying mass. So much so that hasty observers, and perhaps biased, have reached theinference that one of the immediate contributory causes that led to thepresent war was the need of a heroic remedy to correct this untowarddrift of sentiment. 

For the German people the government of the present dynastic incumbenthas done all that could (humanly speaking) be expected in the way ofendeavoring to conserve the passing order and to hold the popularimagination to the received feudalistic ideals of loyal service. And yetthe peoples of the Empire are already caught in the net of that newerorder which they are now endeavoring to break by force of arms. They areinextricably implicated in the cultural complex of Christendom; andwithin this Western culture those peoples to whom it fell to lead theexodus out of the Egypt of feudalism have come quite naturally to setthe pace in all the larger conformities of civilised life. Within theconfines of Christendom today, for good or ill, whatever usage orcustomary rule of conduct falls visibly short of the precedent set bythese cultural pioneers is felt to fall beneath the prescriptivecommonplace level of civilisation. Failure to adopt and make use ofthose tried institutional expedients on which these peoples of theadvance guard have set their mark of authentication is todaypresumptively a mistake and an advantage foregone; and a people who aredenied the benefit of these latterday ways and means of civic life areuneasy with a sense of grievance at the hands of their rulers. Besideswhich, the fashion in articles of institutional equipage so set by theauthentic pioneers of culture has also come to be mandatory, as apunctilio of the governmental proprieties; so that no nationalestablishment which aspires to a decorous appearance in the eyes of thecivilised world can longer afford to be seen without them. The forms atleast must be observed. Hence the "representative" andpseudo-representative institutions of these dynastic States. 

These dynastic States among the rest have partly followed the dictatesof civilised fashion, partly yielded to the, more or less intelligent, solicitations of their subjects, or the spokesmen of their subjects, andhave installed institutional apparatus of this modern pattern--more inpoint of form than of substance, perhaps. Yet in time the adoption ofthe forms is likely to have an effect, if changing circumstances favortheir taking effect. Such has on the whole been the experience of thosepeoples who have gone before along this trail of political advance. Asinstance the growth of discretionary powers under the hands ofparliamentary representatives in those cases where the movement has goneon longest and farthest; and these instances should not be consideredidle, as intimations of what may presumptively be looked for under theImperial establishments of Germany or Japan. It may be true thathitherto, along with the really considerable volume of imitativegestures of discretionary deliberation delegated to these parliamentarybodies, they have as regards all graver matters brought to their noticeonly been charged with a (limited) power to talk. It may be true that, for the present, on critical or weighty measures the parliamentarydiscretion extends no farther than respectfully to say: "_Ja wohl_!" Butthen, _Ja wohl_ is also something; and there is no telling where it mayall lead to in the long course of years. One has a vague apprehensionthat this "_Ja wohl_!" may some day come to be a customarily necessaryform of authentication, so that with-holding it (_Behüt' es Gott_!) mayeven come to count as an effectual veto on measures so pointedlyneglected. More particularly will the formalities of representation andself-government be likely to draw the substance of such like "freeinstitutions" into the effectual conduct of public affairs if it turnsout that the workday experiences of these people takes a turn moreconducive to habits of insubordination than has been the case hitherto. 

Indications are, again, not wanting, that even in the Empire thediscipline of workday experience is already diverging from that linethat once trained the German subjects into the most loyal and unrepiningsubservience to dynastic ambitions. Of course, just now, under theshattering impact of warlike atrocities and patriotic clamour, theworkday spirit of insubordination and critical scrutiny is gone out ofsight and out of hearing. 

Something of this inchoate insubordination has showed itself repeatedlyduring the present reign, sufficient to provoke many shrewd protectivemeasures on the side of the dynastic establishment, both by way ofpolitical strategy and by arbitrary control. Disregarding many minor andinconsequential divisions of opinion and counsel among the German peopleduring this eventful reign, the political situation has been moving onthe play of three, incipiently divergent, strains of interest andsentiment: (a) the dynasty (together with the Agrarians, of whom in asense the dynasty is a part); (b) the businessmen, or commercialinterest (including investors); and (c) the industrial workmen. Doubtless it would be easier to overstate than to indicate with any niceprecision what has been the nature, and especially the degree, of thisalienation of sentiment and divergence of conscious interest among theseseveral elements. It is not that there has at any point been aperceptible faltering in respect of loyalty to the crown as such. Butsince the crown belongs, by origin, tradition, interest and spiritualidentity, in the camp of the Agrarians, the situation has been such aswould inevitably take on a character of disaffection toward the dynasticestablishment, in the conceivable absence of that strong survivingsentiment of dynastic loyalty that still animates all classes andconditions of men in the Fatherland. It would accordingly, again, be anoverstatement to say that the crown has been standing precariously atthe apex of a political triangle, the other two corners of which areoccupied by these two divided and potentially recalcitrant elements ofthe body politic, held apart by class antipathy and divergent pecuniaryinterest, and held in check by divided counsels; but something afterthat fashion is what would have resulted under similar conditions ofstrain in any community where the modern spirit of insubordination hastaken effect in any large measure. 

Both of these elements of incipient disturbance in the dynastic economy, the modern commercial and working classes, are creatures of the new era;and they are systematically out of line with the received dynastictradition of fealty, both in respect of their pecuniary interests and inrespect of that discipline of experience to which their workdayemployment subjects them. They are substantially the same two classes orgroupings that came forward in the modernisation of the Britishcommunity, with a gradual segregation of interest and a consequentinduced solidarity of class sentiment and class animosities. But withthe difference that in the British case the movement of changingcircumstances was slow enough to allow a fair degree of habituation tothe altered economic conditions; whereas in the German case the moveinto modern economic conditions has been made so precipitately as tohave carried the mediaeval frame of mind over virtually intact into thisera of large business and machine industry. In the Fatherland thecommercial and industrial classes have been called on to play their partwithout time to learn their lines. 

The case of the English-speaking peoples, who have gone over this courseof experience in more consecutive fashion than any others, teaches thatin the long run, if these modern economic conditions persist, one or theother or both of these creatures of the modern era must prevail, andmust put the dynastic establishment out of commission; although thesequel has not yet been seen in this British case, and there is noground afforded for inference as to which of the two will have thefortune to survive and be invested with the hegemony. Meantime theopportunity of the Imperial establishment to push its enterprise indominion lies in the interval of time so required for the discipline ofexperience under modern conditions to work out through the growth ofmodern habits of thought into such modern (i. E. Civilised) institutionalforms and such settled principles of personal insubordination as willput any effectual dynastic establishment out of commission. The sameinterval of time, that must so be allowed for the decay of the dynasticspirit among the German people under the discipline of life by themethods of modern trade and industry, marks the period during which nopeace compact will be practicable, except with the elimination of theImperial establishment as a possible warlike power. All this, ofcourse, applies to the case of Japan as well, with the difference thatwhile the Japanese people are farther in arrears, they are also asmaller, less formidable body, more exposed to outside forces, and theirmediaevalism is of a more archaic and therefore more precarious type. 

What length of time will be required for this decay of the dynasticspirit among the people of the Empire is, of course, impossible to say. The factors of the case are not of a character to admit anything likecalculation of the rate of movement; but in the nature of the factorsinvolved it is also contained that something of a movement in thisdirection is unavoidable, under Providence. As a preliminaryconsideration, these peoples of the Empire and its allies, as well astheir enemies in the great war, will necessarily come out of theirwarlike experience in a more patriotic and more vindictive frame of mindthan that in which they entered on this adventure. Fighting makes formalevolence. The war is itself to be counted as a set-back. A very largeproportion of those who have lived through it will necessarily carry awarlike bent through life. By that much, whatever it may count for, thedecay of the dynastic spirit--or the growth of tolerance and equity innational sentiment, if one chooses to put it that way--will be retardedfrom beforehand. So also the Imperial establishment, or whatever is leftof it, may be counted on to do everything in its power to preserve thepopular spirit of loyalty and national animosity, by all means at itsdisposal; since the Imperial establishment finally rests on theeffectual body of national animosity. What hindrance will come in fromthis agency of retardation can at least vaguely be guessed at, in thelight of what has been accomplished in that way under the strenuouslyreactionary rule of the present reign. 

Again, there is the chance, as there always is a chance of human folly, that the neighboring peoples will undertake, whether jointly orseverally, to restrict or prohibit trade relations between the people ofthe Empire and their enemies in the present war; thereby fomentinginternational animosity, as well as contributing directly to theeconomic readiness for war both on their own part and on that of theEmpire. This is also, and in an eminent degree, an unknown factor in thecase, on which not even a reasonable guess can be made beforehand. Theseare, all and several, reactionary agencies, factors of retardation, making for continuation of the current international situation ofanimosity, distrust, chicane, trade rivalry, competitive armament, andeventual warlike enterprise. 

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To offset these agencies of conservatism there is nothing much that canbe counted on but that slow, random, and essentially insidious workingof habituation that tends to the obsolescence of the receivedpreconceptions; partly by supplanting them with something new, but moreeffectually by their falling into disuse and decay. There is, it willhave to be admitted, little of a positive character that can be donetoward the installation of a régime of peace and good-will. Theendeavours of the pacifists should suffice to convince any dispassionateobserver of the substantial futility of creative efforts looking to suchan end. Much can doubtless be done in the way of precautionary measures, mostly of a negative character, in the way especially of removingsources of infection and (possibly) of so sterilising the apparatus ofnational life that its working shall neither maintain animosities andinterests at variance with the conditions of peace nor contribute totheir spread and growth. 

There is necessarily little hope or prospect that any nationalestablishment will contribute materially or in any direct way to theobsolescence of warlike sentiments and ambitions; since suchestablishments are designed for the making of war by keeping nationaljealousies intact, and their accepted place in affairs is that ofpreparation for eventual hostilities, defensive or offensive. Except forthe contingency of eventual hostilities, no national establishment couldbe kept in countenance. They would all fall into the decay of desuetude, just as has happened to the dynastic establishments among those peopleswho have (passably) lost the spirit of dynastic aggression. 

The modern industrial occupations, the modern technology, and thatmodern empirical science that runs so close to the frontiers oftechnology, all work at cross purposes with the received preconceptionsof the nationalist order; and in a more pronounced degree they are atcross purposes with that dynastic order of preconceptions that convergeson Imperial dominion. The like is true, with a difference, of the ways, means and routine of business enterprise as it is conducted in thecommercialised communities of today. The working of these agencies runsto this effect not by way of deliberate and destructive antagonism, butalmost wholly by force of systematic, though unintended and incidental, neglect of those values, standards, verities, and grounds ofdiscrimination and conviction that make up the working realities of thenational spirit and of dynastic ambition. The working concepts of thisnew, essentially mechanistic, order of human interests, do notnecessarily clash with those of the old order, essentially the order ofpersonages and personalities; the two are incommensurable, and they areincompatible only in the sense and degree implied in that state of thecase. The profoundest and most meritorious truths of dynastic politicscan on no provocation and by no sleight of hand be brought within thelogic of that system of knowledge and appraisal of values by which themechanistic technology proceeds. Within the premises of this modernmechanistic industry and science all the best values and verities of thedynastic order are simply "incompetent, irrelevant and impertinent. "

There is accordingly no unavoidable clash and no necessary frictionbetween the two schemes of knowledge or the two habits of mind thatcharacterise the two contrasted cultural eras. It is only that a givenindividual--call him the common man--will not be occupied with both ofthese incommensurable systems of logic and appreciation at the same timeor bearing on the same point; and further that in proportion as hiswaking hours and his mental energy are fully occupied within the linesof one of these systems of knowledge, design and employment, in much thesame measure he will necessarily neglect the other, and in time he willlose proficiency and interest in its pursuits and its conclusions. Theman who is so held by his daily employment and his life-long attentionwithin the range of habits of thought that are valid in the mechanistictechnology, will, on an average and in the long run, lose his grip onthe spiritual virtues of national prestige and dynastic primacy; "forthey are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because theyare spiritually discerned. "

Not that the adepts in this modern mechanistic system of knowledge anddesign may not also be very good patriots and devoted servants of thedynasty. The artless and, on the whole, spontaneous riot of dynasticavidity displayed to the astonished eyes of their fellow craftsmen inthe neutral countries by the most eminent scientists of the Fatherlandduring the early months of the war should be sufficient warning that thearchaic preconceptions do not hurriedly fly out of the window when thehabits of thought of the mechanistic order come in at the door. But withthe passage of time, pervasively, by imperceptible displacement, by thedecay of habitual disuse, as well as by habitual occupation with theseother and unrelated ways and means of knowledge and belief, dynasticloyalty and the like conceptions in the realm of religion and magic passout of the field of attention and fall insensibly into the category ofthe lost arts. Particularly will this be true of the common man, wholives, somewhat characteristically, in the mass and in the present, andwhose waking hours are somewhat fully occupied with what he has to do. 

With the commercial interests the Imperial establishment can probablymake such terms as to induce their support of the dynastic enterprise, since they can apparently always be made to believe that an extension ofthe Imperial dominion will bring correspondingly increased opportunitiesof trade. It is doubtless a mistake, but it is commonly believed by theinterested parties, which is just as good for the purpose as if it weretrue. And it should be added that in this, as in other instances of thequest of larger markets, the costs are to be paid by someone else thanthe presumed commercial beneficiaries; which brings the matter under thedearest principle known to businessmen: that of getting something fornothing. It will not be equally easy to keep the affections of thecommon man loyal to the dynastic enterprise when he begins to lose hisgrip on the archaic faith in dynastic dominion and comes to realise thathe has also--individually and in the mass--no material interest even inthe defense of the Fatherland, much less in the further extension ofImperial rule. 

But the time when this process of disillusionment and decay of idealsshall have gone far enough among the common run to afford no securefooting in popular sentiment for the contemplated Imperialenterprise, --this time is doubtless far in the future, as compared withthe interval of preparation required for a new onset. Habituation takestime, particularly such habituation as can be counted on to derange thehabitual bent of a great population in respect of their dearestpreconceptions. It will take a very appreciable space of time even inthe case of a populace so accessible to new habits of thought as theGerman people are by virtue of their slight percentage of illiteracy, the very large proportion engaged in those modern industries thatconstantly require some intelligent insight into mechanistic facts, thedensity of population and the adequate means of communication, and theextent to which the whole population is caught in the web ofmechanically standardised processes that condition their daily life atevery turn. As regards their technological situation, and their exposureto the discipline of industrial life, no other population of nearly thesame volume is placed in a position so conducive to a rapid acquirementof the spirit of the modern era. But, also, no other people comparablewith the population of the Fatherland has so large and well-knit a bodyof archaic preconceptions to unlearn. Their nearest analogue, of course, is the Japanese nation. 

In all this there is, of course, no inclination to cast a slur on theGerman people. In point of racial characteristics there is no differencebetween them and their neighbours. And there is no reason to questiontheir good intentions. Indeed, it may safely be asserted that no peopleis more consciously well-meaning than the children of the Fatherland. Itis only that, with their archaic preconceptions of what is right andmeritorious, their best intentions spell malevolence when projected intothe civilised world as it stands today. And by no fault of theirs. Noris it meant to be intimated that their rate of approach to the acceptedOccidental standard of institutional maturity will be unduly slow orunduly reluctant, so soon as the pertinent facts of modern life begineffectively to shape their habits of thought. It is only that, humannature--and human second nature--being what it always has been, the rateof approach of the German people to a passably neutral complexion inmatters of international animosity and aggression must necessarily beslow enough to allow ample time for the renewed preparation of a moreunsparing and redoubtable endeavour on the part of the Imperialestablishment. 

What makes this German Imperial establishment redoubtable, beyondcomparison, is the very simple but also very grave combination ofcircumstances whereby the German people have acquired the use of themodern industrial arts in the highest state of efficiency, at the sametime that they have retained unabated the fanatical loyalty of feudalbarbarism. [9] So long, and in so far, as this conjunction of forcesholds there is no outlook for peace except on the elimination ofGermany as a power capable of disturbing the peace. 

[Footnote 9: For an extended discussion of this point, see _ImperialGermany and the Industrial Revolution_, especially ch. V. And vi. ]

It may seem invidious to speak so recurrently of the German Imperialestablishment as the sole potential disturber of the peace in Europe. The reason for so singling out the Empire for this invidiousdistinction--of merit or demerit, as one may incline to take it--is thatthe facts run that way. There is, of course, other human material, andno small volume of it in the aggregate, that is of much the samecharacter, and serviceable for the same purposes as the resources andman-power of the Empire. But this other material can come effectuallyinto bearing as a means of disturbance only in so far as it clustersabout the Imperial dynasty and marches under his banners. In so speakingof the Imperial establishment as the sole enemy of a European peace, therefore, these outlying others are taken for granted, very much as onetakes the nimbus for granted in speaking of one of the greater saints ofGod. 

 * * * * *

So the argument returns to the alternative: Peace by unconditionalsurrender and submission, or peace by elimination of Imperial Germany(and Japan). There is no middle course apparent. The old-fashioned--thatis to say nineteenth-century--plan of competitive defensive armament anda balance of powers has been tried, and it has not proved to be asuccess, even so early in the twentieth century. This plan offers asubstitute (_Ersatz_) for peace; but even as such it has becomeimpracticable. The modern, or rather the current late-modern, state ofthe industrial arts does not tolerate it. Technological knowledge hasthrown the advantage in military affairs definitively to the offensive, particularly to the offensive that is prepared beforehand with thesuitable appliances and with men ready matured in that rigorous andprotracted training by which alone they can become competent to makewarlike use of these suitable appliances provided by the moderntechnology. At the same time, and by grace of the same advance intechnology, any well-designed offensive can effectually reach any givencommunity, in spite of distance or of other natural obstacles. The eraof defensive armaments and diplomatic equilibration, as a substitute forpeace, has been definitively closed by the modern state of theindustrial arts. 

Of the two alternatives spoken of above, the former--peace by submissionunder an alien dynasty--is presumably not a practicable solution, as hasappeared in the course of the foregoing argument. 

The modern nations are not spiritually ripe for it. Whether they havereached even that stage of national sobriety, or neutrality, that wouldenable them to live at peace among themselves after elimination of theImperial Powers is still open to an uneasy doubt. It would be by aprecarious margin that they can be counted on so to keep the peace inthe absence of provocation from without the pale. Their predilection forpeace goes to no greater lengths than is implied in the formula: Peacewith Honour; which assuredly does not cover a peace of non-resistance, and which, in effect, leaves the distinction between an offensive and adefensive war somewhat at loose ends. The national prestige is still alive asset in the mind of these peoples; and the limit of tolerance inrespect of this patriotic animosity appears to be drawn appreciablycloser than the formula cited above would necessarily presume. They willfight on provocation, and the degree of provocation required to upsetthe serenity of these sportsmanlike modern peoples is a point on whichthe shrewdest guesses may diverge. Still, opinion runs more and moreconsistently to the effect that if these modern--say the French and theEnglish-speaking--peoples were left to their own devices the peace mightfairly be counted on to be kept between them indefinitely, barringunforeseen contingencies. 

Experience teaches that warlike enterprise on a moderate scale and as aside interest is by no means incompatible with such a degree of neutralanimus as these peoples have yet acquired, --e. G. , the Spanish-Americanwar, which was made in America, or the Boer war, which was made inEngland. But these wars, in spite of the dimensions which they presentlytook on, were after all of the nature of episodes, --the one chiefly anextension of sportsmanship, which engaged the best attention of only themore sportsmanlike elements, the other chiefly engineered by certainbusiness interests with a callous view to getting something for nothing. Both episodes came to be serious enough, both in their immediateincidence and in their consequences; but neither commanded thedeliberate and cordial support of the community at large. There is ameretricious air over both; and there is apparent a popular inclinationto condone rather than to take pride in these _faits accomplis_. The oneexcursion was a product of sportsmanlike bravado, fed on boyishexuberance, fomented for mercenary objects by certain business interestsand place-hunting politicians, and incited by meretricious newspaperswith a view to increase their circulation. The other was set afoot byinterested businessmen, backed by politicians, seconded by newspapers, and borne by the community at large, in great part undermisapprehension and stung by wounded pride. 

Opinions will diverge widely as to the chances of peace in a communityof nations among whom episodes of this character, and of suchdimensions, have been somewhat more than tolerated in the immediatepast. But the consensus of opinion in these same countries appears to besetting with fair consistency to the persuasion that the popular spiritshown in these and in analogous conjunctures in the recent past giveswarrant that peace is deliberately desired and is likely to bemaintained, barring unforeseen contingencies. 

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In the large, the measures conducive to the perpetuation of peace, andnecessary to be taken, are simple and obvious; and they are largely of anegative character, exploits of omission and neglect. Under modernconditions, and barring aggression from without, the peace is kept byavoiding the breaking of it. It does not break of itself, --in theabsence of such national establishments as are organised with the soleulterior view of warlike enterprise. A policy of peace is obviously apolicy of avoidance, --avoidance of offense and of occasion forannoyance. 

What is required to insure the maintenance of peace among pacificnations is the neutralisation of all those human relations out of whichinternational grievances are wont to arise. And what is necessary toassure a reasonable expectation of continued peace is the neutralisationof so much of these relations as the patriotic self-conceit andcredulity of these peoples will permit. These two formulations are by nomeans identical; indeed, the disparity between what could advantageouslybe dispensed with in the way of national rights and pretensions, andwhat the common run of modern patriots could be induced to relinquish, is probably much larger than any sanguine person would like to believe. It should be plain on slight reflection that the greater part, indeedsubstantially the whole, of those material interests and demands thatnow engage the policy of the nations, and that serve on occasion to setthem at variance, might be neutralised or relinquished out of hand, without detriment to any one of the peoples concerned. 

The greater part of these material interests over which the variousnational establishments keep watch and hold pretensions are, in point ofhistorical derivation, a legacy from the princely politics of what iscalled the "Mercantilist" period; and they are uniformly of the natureof gratuitous interference or discrimination between the citizens of thegiven nation and outsiders. Except (doubtfully) in the English case, where mercantilist policies are commonly believed to have been adopteddirectly for the benefit of the commercial interest, measures of thisnature are uniformly traceable to the endeavours of the crown and itsofficers to strengthen the finances of the prince and give him anadvantage in warlike enterprise. They are kept up essentially for thesame eventual end of preparation for war. So, e. G. , protective tariffs, and the like discrimination in shipping, are still advocated as a meansof making the nation self-supporting, self-contained, self-sufficient;with a view to readiness in the event of hostilities. 

A nation is in no degree better off in time of peace for beingself-sufficient. In point of patent fact no nation can be industriallyself-sufficient except at the cost of foregoing some of the economicadvantages of that specialisation of industry which the modern state ofthe industrial arts enforces. In time of peace there is no benefitcomes to the community at large from such restraint of trade with theoutside world, or to any class or section of the community except thosecommercial concerns that are favored by the discrimination; and theseinvariably gain their special advantage at the cost of theircompatriots. Discrimination in trade--export, import or shipping--has nomore beneficial effect when carried out publicly by the nationalauthorities than when effected surreptitiously and illegally by aprivate conspiracy in restraint of trade within a group of interestedbusiness concerns. 

Hitherto the common man has found it difficult to divest himself of anhabitual delusion on this head, handed down out of the past andinculcated by interested politicians, to the effect that in somemysterious way he stands to gain by limiting his own opportunities. Butthe neutralisation of international trade, or the abrogation of alldiscrimination in trade, is the beginning of wisdom as touches theperpetuation of peace. The first effect of such a neutral policy wouldbe wider and more intricately interlocking trade relations, coupled witha further specialisation and mutual dependence of industry between theseveral countries concerned; which would mean, in terms of internationalcomity, a lessened readiness for warlike operations all around. 

It used to be an argument of the free-traders that the growth ofinternational commercial relations under a free-trade policy wouldgreatly conduce to a spirit of mutual understanding and forbearancebetween the nations. There may or may not be something appreciable inthe contention; it has been doubted, and there is no considerableevidence to be had in support of it. But what is more to the point isthe tangible fact that such specialisation of industry and consequentindustrial interdependence would leave all parties to this relation lesscapable, materially and spiritually, to break off amicable relations. Soagain, in time of peace and except with a view to eventual hostilities, it would involve no loss, and presumably little pecuniary gain, to anycountry, locality, town or class, if all merchant shipping wereregistered indiscriminately under neutral colors and sailed under theneutral no-man's flag, responsible indiscriminately to the courts wherethey touched or where their business was transacted. 

Neither producers, shippers, merchants nor consumers have any slightestinterest in the national allegiance of the carriers of their freight, except such as may artificially be induced by discriminatory shippingregulations. In all but the name--in time of peace--the world's merchantshipping already comes near being so neutralised, and the slight furthersimplification required to leave it on a neutral peace footing would belittle else than a neglect of such vexatious discrimination as is stillin force. If no nation could claim the allegiance, and therefore theusufruct, of any given item of merchant shipping in case of eventualhostilities, on account of the domicile of the owners or the port ofregistry, that would create a further handicap on eventual warlikeenterprise and add so much to the margin of tolerance. At the same time, in the event of hostilities, shipping sailing under the neutral no-man'sflag and subject to no national allegiance would enjoy such immunitiesas still inure to neutral shipping. It is true, neutrality has notcarried many immunities lately. 

Cumulatively effective usage and the exigencies of a large, varied, shifting and extensive maritime trade have in the course of timebrought merchant shipping to something approaching a neutral footing. For most, one might venture to say for virtually all, routine purposesof business and legal liability the merchant shipping comes under thejurisdiction of the local courts, without reservation. It is true, therestill are formalities and reservations which enable questions arisingout of incidents in the shipping trade to become subject ofinternational conference and adjustment, but they are after all not suchas would warrant the erection of national apparatus to take care of themin case they were not already covered by usage to that effect. Thevisible drift of usage toward neutralisation in merchant shipping, inmaritime trade, and in international commercial transactions, togetherwith the similarly visible feasibility of a closer approach tounreserved neutralisation of this whole range of traffic, suggests thatmuch the same line of considerations should apply as regards thepersonal and pecuniary rights of citizens traveling or residing abroad. The extreme, --or, as seen from the present point of view, theultimate--term in the relinquishment of national pretensions along thisline would of course be the neutralisation of citizenship. 

This is not so sweeping a move as a patriotically-minded person mightimagine on the first alarm, so far as touches the practical status ofthe ordinary citizen in his ordinary relations, and particularly amongthe English-speaking peoples. As an illustrative instance, citizenshiphas sat somewhat lightly on the denizens of the American republic, andwith no evident damage to the community at large or to the inhabitantsin detail. Naturalisation has been easy, and has been sought with nomore eagerness, on the whole, than the notably low terms of itsacquirement would indicate. Without loss or discomfort many law-abidingaliens have settled in this country and spent the greater part of alife-time under its laws without becoming citizens, and no one the worseor the wiser for it. Not infrequently the decisive inducement tonaturalisation on the part of immigrant aliens has been, and is, thedesirability of divesting themselves of their rights of citizenship inthe country of their origin. Not that the privilege and dignity ofcitizenship, in this or in any other country, is to be held of littleaccount. It is rather that under modern civilised conditions, and amonga people governed by sentiments of humanity and equity, the strangerwithin our gates suffers no obloquy and no despiteful usage for being astranger. It may be admitted that of late, with the fomentation of amore accentuated nationalism by politicians seeking a _raison d'ętre_, additional difficulties have been created in the way of naturalisationand the like incidents. Still, when all is told of the average Americancitizen, _qua_ citizen, there is not much to tell. The like is truethroughout the English-speaking peoples, with inconsequential allowancefor local color. A definitive neutralisation of citizenship within therange of these English-speaking countries would scarcely ripple thesurface of things as they are--in time of peace. 

All of which has not touched the sore and sacred spot in the receivedscheme of citizenship and its rights and liabilities. It is in the eventof hostilities that the liabilities of the citizen at home come into theforeground, and it is as a source of patriotic grievance looking towarlike retaliation that the rights of the citizen abroad chiefly comeinto the case. 

If, as was once, almost inaudibly, hinted by a well-regarded statesman, the national establishment should refuse to jeopardise the public peacefor the safeguarding of the person and property of citizens who go out_in partes infidelium_ on their own private concerns, and should soleave them under the uncurbed jurisdiction of the authorities in thosecountries into which they have intruded, the result might in many casesbe hardship to such individuals. This would, of course, be true almostexclusively of such instances only as occur in such localities as are, temporarily or permanently, outside the pale of modern law and order. And, it may be in place to remark, instances of such hardship, with theaccompanying hazard of national complications, would, no doubt, greatlydiminish in frequency consequent upon the promulgation of such adisclaimer of national responsibility for the continued well-being ofcitizens who so expatriate themselves in the pursuit of their ownadvantage or amusement. Meantime, let it not seem inconsiderate torecall that to the community at large the deplorable case of suchexpatriates under hardship involves no loss or gain in the materialrespect; and that, except for the fortuitous circumstance of his being acompatriot, the given individual's personal or pecuniary fortune inforeign parts has no special claim on his compatriots' sympathy orassistance; from which it follows also that with the definitiveneutralisation of citizenship as touches expatriates, the sympathy whichis now somewhat unintelligently confined to such cases, on what maywithout offense be called extraneous grounds, would somewhat moreimpartially and humanely extend to fellowmen in distress, regardless ofnativity or naturalisation. 

What is mainly to the point here, however, is the fact that ifcitizenship were so neutralised within the range of neutral countrieshere contemplated, one further source of provocation to internationaljealousy and distrust would drop out of the situation. And it is noteasy to detect any element of material loss involved in such a move. Inthe material respect no individual would be any the worse off, with thedoubtful and dubious exception of the expatriate fortune-hunter, whoaims to fish safely in troubled waters at his compatriots' expense. Butthe case stands otherwise as regards the balance of immaterial assets. The scaffolding of much highly-prized sentiment would collapse, and theworld of poetry and pageantry--particularly that of the tawdrier andmore vendible poetry and pageantry--would be poorer by so much. The ManWithout a Country would lose his pathetic appeal, or would at any ratelose much of it. It may be, of course, that in the sequel there wouldresult no net loss even in respect of these immaterial assets ofsentimental animation and patriotic self-complacency, but it is afterall fairly certain that something would be lost, and it is by no meansclear what if anything would come in to fill its place. 

An historical parallel may help to illustrate the point. In the movementout of what may be called the royal age of dynasties and chivalricservice, those peoples who have moved out of that age and out of itsspiritual atmosphere have lost much of the conscious magnanimity andconviction of merit that once characterised that order of things, as itstill continues to characterise the prevalent habit of mind in thecountries that still continue under the archaic order of dynasticmastery and service. But it is also to be noted that these peoples whoso have moved out of the archaic order appear to be well content withthis change of spiritual atmosphere, and they are even fairly wellpersuaded, in the common run, that the move has brought them some netgain in the way of human dignity and neighbourly tolerance, such as tooffset any loss incurred on the heroic and invidious side of life. Suchis the tempering force of habit. Whereas, e. G. , on the other hand, thepeoples of these surviving dynastic States, to which it is necessarycontinually to recur, who have not yet moved out of that realm ofheroics, find themselves unable to see anything in such a prospectiveshift but net loss and headlong decay of the spirit; that modicum offorbearance and equity that is requisite to the conduct of life in acommunity of ungraded masterless men is seen by these stouter stomachsas a loosening of the moral fiber and a loss of nerve. 

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What is here tentatively projected under the phrase, "neutralization ofcitizenship, " is only something a little more and farther along the samegeneral line of movement which these more modern peoples have beenfollowing in all that sequence of institutional changes that has giventhem their present distinctive character of commonwealths, as contrastedwith the dynastic States of the mediaeval order. What may be inprospect--if such a further move away from the mediaeval landmarks is totake effect--may best be seen in the light of the later moves in thesame direction hitherto, more particularly as regards the moral andaesthetic merits at large of such an institutional mutation. As touchesthis last previous shifting of ground along this line, just spoken of, the case stands in this singular but significant posture, in respect ofthe spiritual values and valuations involved: These peoples who have, even in a doubtful measure, made this transition from the archaicinstitutional scheme, of fealty and dynastic exploit and coercion, tothe newer scheme of the ungraded commonwealth, are convinced, to thepoint of martyrdom, that anything like a return to the old order ismorally impossible as well as insufferably shameful and irksome; whereasthose people, of the retarded division of the race, who have had noexperience of this new order, are equally convinced that it is all quiteincompatible with a worthy life. 

Evidently, there should be no disputing about tastes. Evidently, too, these retarded others will not move on into the later institutionalphase, of the ungraded commonwealth, by preconceived choice; but only, if at all, by such schooling of experience as will bring them insensiblyto that frame of mind out of which the ideal of the ungradedcommonwealth emerges by easy generalisation of workday practice. Meantime, having not yet experienced that phase of sentiment and opinionon civic rights and immunities that is now occupied by theirinstitutionally maturer neighbours, the subjects of the ImperialFatherland, e. G. , in spite of the most laudable intentions and the bestendeavour, are, by failure of this experience, unable to comprehendeither the ground of opposition to their well-meaning projects ofdominion or the futility of trying to convert these their elder brothersto their own prescriptive acceptation of what is worth while. In time, and with experience, this retarded division of Christendom may come tothe same perspective on matters of national usage and ideals as has beenenforced on the more modern peoples by farther habituation. So, also, intime and with experience, if the drift of circumstance shall turn out toset that way, the further move away from mediaeval discriminations andconstraint and into the unspectacular scheme of neutralisation may cometo seem as right, good and beautiful as the democratic commonwealth nowseems to the English-speaking peoples, or as the Hohenzollern ImperialState now seems to the subjects of the Fatherland. There is, in effect, no disputing about tastes. 

There is little that is novel, and nothing that is to be rated asconstructive innovation, in this sketch of what might not inaptly becalled peace by neglect. The legal mind, which commonly takes theinitiative in counsels on what to do, should scarcely be expected tolook in that direction for a way out, or to see its way out in thatdirection in any case; so that it need occasion no surprise if the manycurrent projects of pacification turn on ingenious and elaborateprovisions of apparatus and procedure, rather than on that simpler lineof expedients which the drift of circumstance, being not possessed of alegal mind, has employed in the sequence of institutional changehitherto. The legal mind that dominates in the current deliberations onpeace is at home in exhaustive specifications and meticulousdemarkations, and it is therefore prone to seek a remedy for the burdenof supernumerary devices by recourse to further excesses of regulation. 

This trait of the legal mind is not a bad fault at the worst, and thequality in which this defect inheres is of the greatest moment in anyproject of constructive engineering on the legal and political plane. But it is less to the purpose, indeed it is at cross purposes, in such aconjuncture as the present; when the nations are held up in their questof peace chiefly by an accumulation of institutional apparatus that hasout-stayed its usefulness. It is the fortune even of good institutionsto become imbecile with the change of conditioning circumstances, and itthen becomes a question of their disestablishment, not of theirrehabilitation. If there is anywhere a safe negative conclusion, it isthat an institution grown mischievous by obsolescence need not bereplaced by a substitute. 

Instances of such mischievous institutional arrangements, obsolete or inprocess of obsolescence, would be, e. G. , the French monarchy of theancient régime, the Spanish Inquisition, the British corn laws and the"rotten boroughs, " the Barbary pirates, the Turkish rule in Armenia, theBritish crown, the German Imperial Dynasty, the European balance ofpowers, the Monroe Doctrine. In some sense, at least in the sense anddegree implied in their selective survival, these various articles ofinstitutional furniture, and many like them, have once presumably beensuitable to some end, in the days of their origin and vigorous growth;and they have at least in some passable fashion met some felt want; butif they ever had a place and use in the human economy they have in timegrown imbecile and mischievous by force of changing circumstances, andthe question is not how to replace them with something else to the samepurpose after their purpose is outworn. A man who loses a wart off theend of his nose does not apply to the _Ersatz_ bureau for a convenientsubstitute. 

Now, a large proportion, perhaps even substantially the whole, of theexisting apparatus of international rights, pretensions, discriminations, covenants and provisos, visibly fall in that class, inso far as concerns their material serviceability to the nation at large, and particularly as regards any other than a warlike purpose, offensiveor defensive. Of course, the national dignity and diplomatic punctilio, and the like adjuncts and instrumentalities of the national honour, allhave their prestige value; and they are not likely to be given up out ofhand. In point of fact, however solicitous for a lasting peace thesepatriotically-minded modern peoples may be, it is doubtful if they couldbe persuaded to give up any appreciable share of these appurtenances ofnational jealousy even when their retention implies an imminent breachof the peace. Yet it is plain that the peace will be secure in directproportion to the measure in which national discrimination and prestigeare allowed to pass into nothingness and be forgot. 

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By so much as it might amount to, such neutralisation of outstandinginterests between these pacific nations should bring on a degree ofcoalescence of these nationalities. In effect, they are now held apartin many respects by measures of precaution against their coming to acommon plan of use and wont. The degree of coalescence would scarcely beextreme; more particularly it could not well become onerous, since itwould rest on convenience, inclination and the neglect of artificialdiscrepancies. The more intimate institutions of modern life, thatgovern human conduct locally and in detail, need not be affected, or notgreatly affected, for better or worse. Yet something appreciable in thatway might also fairly be looked for in time. 

The nature, reach and prescriptive force of this prospective coalescencethrough neutralisation may perhaps best be appreciated in the light ofwhat has already come to pass, without design or mandatory guidance, inthose lines of human interest where the national frontiers interpose nobar, or at least no decisive bar, whether by force of unconcern orthrough impotence. Fashions of dress, equipage and decorous usage, e. G. , run with some uniformity throughout these modern nations, and indeedwith some degree of prescriptive force. There is, of course, nothingmandatory, in the simpler sense, about all this; nor is the degree ofconformity extreme or uniform throughout. But it is a ready-madegeneralisation that only those communities are incorporated in thiscosmopolitan coalescence of usage that are moved by their ownincitement, and only so far as they have an effectually felt need ofconformity in these premises. It is true, a dispassionate outsider, ifsuch there be, would perhaps be struck by the degree of such painstakingconformity to canons of conduct which it frequently must cost seriouseffort even to ascertain in such detail as the case calls for. Doubtless, or at least presumably, conformity under the jurisdiction ofthe fashions, and in related provinces of decorum, is obligatory in adegree that need not be looked for throughout the scheme of use and wontat large, even under the advisedly established non-interference of theauthorities. Still, on a point on which the evidence hitherto isextremely scant it is the part of discretion to hold no settled opinion. 

A more promising line of suggestion is probably that afforded by thecurrent degree of contact and consistency among the modern nations inrespect of science and scholarship, as also in the aesthetic or theindustrial arts. Local color and local pride, with one thing and anotherin the way of special incitement or inhibition, may come in to vary therun of things, or to blur or hinder a common understanding and mutualfurtherance and copartnery in these matters of taste and intellect. Yetit is scarcely misleading to speak of the peoples of Christendom as onecommunity in these respects. The sciences and the arts are held as ajoint stock among these peoples, in their elements, and measurably alsoin their working-out. It is true, these interests and achievements ofthe race are not cultivated with the same assiduity or with identicaleffect throughout; but it is equally true that no effectual bar couldprofitably be interposed, or would be tolerated in the long run in thisfield, where men have had occasion to learn that unlimited collusion ismore to the purpose than a clannish discrimination. 

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It is, no doubt, beyond reasonable hope that these democratic peoplescould be brought forthwith to concerted action on the lines of such aplan of peace by neutralisation of all outstanding national pretensions. Both the French and the English-speaking peoples are too eagerly set onnational aims and national prestige, to allow such a plan to come to ahearing, even if something of the kind should be spoken for by theirmost trusted leaders. By settled habit they are thinking in terms ofnationality, and just now they are all under the handicap of an inflamednational pride. Advocacy of such a plan, of course, does not enterseriously into the purpose of this inquiry; which is concerned with theconditions under which peace is sought today, with the furtherconditions requisite to its perpetuation, and with the probable effectsof such a peace on the fortunes of these peoples in case peace isestablished and effectually maintained. 

It is a reasonable question, and one to which a provisional answer maybe found, whether the drift of circumstances in the present and for theimmediate future may be counted on to set in the direction of aprogressive neutralisation of the character spoken of above, andtherefore possibly toward a perpetuation of that peace that is to followthe present season of war. So also is it an open and interestingquestion whether the drift in that direction, if such is the set of it, can be counted on to prove sufficiently swift and massive, so as not tobe overtaken and overborne by the push of agencies that make fordissension and warlike enterprise. 

Anything like a categorical answer to these questions would have to be awork of vaticination or of effrontery, --possibly as much to the pointthe one as the other. But there are certain conditions precedent to alasting peace as the outcome of events now in train, and there arecertain definable contingencies conditioned on such current facts as theexisting state of the industrial arts and the state of popularsentiment, together with the conjuncture of circumstances under whichthese factors will come into action. 

The state of the industrial arts, as it bears on the peace and itsviolation, has been spoken of above. It is of such a character that ajudiciously prepared offensive launched by any Power of the first rankat an opportune time can reach and lay waste any given country of thehabitable globe. The conclusive evidence of this is at hand, and it isthe major premise underlying all current proposals and projects ofpeace, as well as the refusal of the nations now on the defensive toenter into negotiations looking to an "inconclusive peace. " This stateof the case is not commonly recognised in so many words, but it is wellenough understood. So that all peace projects that shall hope to find ahearing must make up their account with it, and must show cause why theyshould be judged competent to balk any attempted offensive. In aninarticulate or inchoate fashion, perhaps, but none the less withever-increasing certitude and increasing apprehension, this state of thecase is also coming to be an article of popular "knowledge and belief, "wherever much or little thought is spent on the outlook for peace. Ithas already had a visible effect in diminishing the exclusiveness ofnationalities and turning the attention of the pacific peoples to thequestion of feasible ways and means of international cooperation in caseof need; but it has not hitherto visibly lessened the militant spiritamong these nations, nor has it lowered the tension of their nationalpride, at least not yet; rather the contrary, in fact. 

The effect, upon the popular temper, of this inchoate realisation of thefatality that so lies in the modern state of the industrial arts, variesfrom one country to another, according to the varying position in whichthey are placed, or in which they conceive themselves to be placed. Among the belligerent nations it has put the spur of fear to their needof concerted action as well as to their efforts to strengthen thenational defense. But the state of opinion and sentiment abroad in thenation in time of war is no secure indication of what it will be afterthe return to peace. The American people, the largest and mostimmediately concerned of the neutral nations, should afford moresignificant evidence of the changes in the popular attitude likely tofollow from a growing realisation of this state of the case, that theadvantage has passed definitively to any well prepared and resoluteoffensive, and that no precautions of diplomacy and no practicablemeasures of defensive armament will any longer give security, --providedalways that there is anywhere a national Power actuated by designs ofimperial dominion. 

It is, of course, only little by little that the American people andtheir spokesmen have come to realise their own case under thislate-modern situation, and hitherto only in an imperfect degree. Theirfirst response to the stimulus has been a display of patrioticself-sufficiency and a move to put the national defense on awar-footing, such as would be competent to beat off all aggression. Those elements of the population who least realise the gravity of thesituation, and who are at the same time commercially interested inmeasures of armament or in military preferment, have not begun to shiftforward beyond this position of magniloquence and resolution; nor isthere as yet much intimation that they see beyond it, although there isan ever-recurring hint that they in a degree appreciate the practicaldifficulty of persuading a pacific people to make adequate preparationbeforehand, in equipment and trained man-power, for such a plan ofself-sufficient self-defense. But increasingly among those who are, byforce of temperament or insight or by lack of the pecuniary and theplaceman's interest, less confident of an appeal to the nation'sprowess, there is coming forward an evident persuasion that warlikepreparations--"preparedness"--alone and carried through by the Republicin isolation, will scarcely serve the turn. 

There are at least two lines of argument, or of persuasion, running tothe support of such a view; readiness for a warlike defense, byproviding equipment and trained men, might prove a doubtfully effectualmeasure even when carried to the limit of tolerance that will always bereached presently in any democratic country; and then, too, there ishope of avoiding the necessity of such warlike preparation, at least inthe same extreme degree, by means of some practicable workingarrangement to be effected with other nations who are in the same case. Hitherto the farthest reach of these pacific schemes for maintaining thepeace, or for the common defense, has taken the shape of a projectedleague of neutral nations to keep the peace by enforcement of specifiedinternational police regulations or by compulsory arbitration ofinternational disputes. It is extremely doubtful how far, if at all, popular sentiment of any effectual force falls in with this line ofprecautionary measures. Yet it is evident that popular sentiment, andpopular apprehension, has been stirred profoundly by the events of thepast two years, and the resulting change that is already visible in theprevailing sentiment as regards the national defense would argue thatmore far-reaching changes in the same connection are fairly to be lookedfor within a reasonable allowance of time. 

In this American case the balance of effectual public opinion hithertois to all appearance quite in doubt, but it is also quite unsettled. Thefirst response has been a display of patriotic emotion and nationalself-assertion. The further, later and presumably more deliberate, expressions of opinion carry a more obvious note of apprehension andless of stubborn or unreflecting national pride. It may be too early toanticipate a material shift of base, to a more neutral, or lessexclusively national footing in matters of the common defense. 

The national administration has been moving at an accelerated rate inthe direction not of national isolation and self-reliance resting on awarlike equipment formidable enough to make or break the peace atwill--such as the more truculent and irresponsible among the politicianshave spoken for--but rather in the direction of moderating or curtailingall national pretensions that are not of undoubted material consequence, and of seeking a common understanding and concerted action with thosenationalities whose effectual interests in the matters of peace and warcoincide with the American. The administration has grown visibly morepacific in the course of its exacting experience, --more resolutely, onemight even say more aggressively pacific; but the point of chiefattention in all this strategy of peace has also visibly been shiftingsomewhat from the maintenance of a running equilibrium betweenbelligerents and a keeping of the peace from day to day, to the ulteriorand altogether different question of what is best to be done toward aconclusive peace at the close of hostilities, and the ways and means ofits subsequent perpetuation. 

This latter is, in effect, an altogether different question from that ofpreserving neutrality and amicable relations in the midst of importunatebelligerents, and it may even, conceivably, perhaps not unlikely, cometo involve a precautionary breach of the current peace and a taking ofsides in the war with an urgent view to a conclusive outcome. It wouldbe going too far to impute to the administration, at the present stage, such an aggressive attitude in its pursuit of a lasting peace as couldbe called a policy of defensive offense; but it will shock no one'ssensibilities to say that such a policy, involving a taking of sides anda renouncing of national isolation, is visibly less remote from thecounsels of the administration today than it has been at any earlierperiod. 

In this pacific attitude, increasingly urgent and increasinglyfar-reaching and apprehensive, the administration appears to be speakingfor the common man rather than for the special interests or theprivileged classes. Such would appear, on the face of the returns, to bethe meaning of the late election. It is all the more significant on thataccount, since in the long run it is after all the common man that willhave to pass on the expediency of any settled line of policy and to bearthe material burden of carrying it into effect. 

It may seem rash to presume that a popularly accredited administrationin a democratic country must approximately reflect the effectual changesof popular sentiment and desire. Especially would it seem rash to anyonelooking on from the point of view of an undemocratic nation, andtherefore prone to see the surface fluctuations of excitement andshifting clamor. But those who are within the democratic pale will knowthat any administration in such a country, where official tenure andcontinued incumbency of the party rest on a popular vote, --any suchadministration is a political organisation and is guided by politicalexpediency, in the tawdry sense of the phrase. Such a politicalsituation has the defects of its qualities, as has been well andfrequently expounded by its critics, but it has also the merits of itsshortcomings. In a democracy of this modern order any incumbent of highoffice is necessarily something of a politician, quite indispensably so;and a politician at the same time necessarily is something of ademagogue. He yields to the popular drift, or to the set of opinion anddemands among the effective majority on whom he leans; and he can noteven appear to lead, though he may surreptitiously lead opinion inadroitly seeming to reflect it and obey it. Ostensible leadership, suchas has been staged in this country from time to time, has turned out tobe ostensible only. The politician must be adroit; but if he is also tobe a statesman he must be something more. He is under the necessity ofguessing accurately what the drift of events and opinion is going to beon the next reach ahead; and in taking coming events by the forelock hemay be able to guide and shape the drift of opinion and sentimentsomewhat to his own liking. But all the while he must keep within thelines of the long-term set of the current as it works out in the habitsof thought of the common man. 

Such foresight and flexibility is necessary to continued survival, butflexibility of convictions alone does not meet the requirements. Indeed, it has been tried. It is only the minor politicians--the most numerousand long-lived, it is true--who can hold their place in the crevices ofthe party organisation, and get their livelihood from the business ofparty politics, without some power of vision and some hazard offorecast. It results from this state of the case that the drift ofpopular sentiment and the popular response to the stimulus of currentevents is reflected more faithfully and more promptly by the short-livedadministrations of a democracy than by the stable and formallyirresponsible governmental establishments of the older order. It shouldalso be noted that these democratic administrations are in a lessadvantageous position for the purpose of guiding popular sentiment andshaping it to their own ends. 

 * * * * *

Now, it happens that at no period within the past half-century has thecourse of events moved with such celerity or with so grave a bearing onthe common good and the prospective contingencies of national life asduring the present administration. This apparent congruity of theadministration's policy with the drift of popular feeling and beliefwill incline anyone to put a high rating on the administration's courseof conduct, in international relations as well as in national measuresthat have a bearing on international relations, as indicating the coursetaken by sentiment and second thought in the community at large, --for, in effect, whether or not in set form, the community at large reflectson any matters of such gravity and urgency as to force themselves uponthe attention of the common man. 

Two main lines of reflection have visibly been enforced on theadministration by the course of events in the international field. Therehas been a growing apprehension, mounting in the later months tosomething like the rank of a settled conviction, that the Republic hasbeen marked down for reduction to a vassal state by the dynastic Empirenow engaged with its European adversaries. In so saying that theRepublic has been marked down for subjection it is not intended tointimate that deliberate counsel has been had by the Imperialestablishment on that prospective enterprise; still less that aresolution to such effect, with specification of ways and means, hasbeen embodied in documentary form and deposited for future reference inthe Imperial archives. All that is intended, and all that is necessaryto imply, is that events are in train to such effect that thesubjugation of the American republic will necessarily find its place inthe sequence presently, provided that the present Imperial adventure isbrought to a reasonably auspicious issue; though it does not follow thatthis particular enterprise need be counted on as the next largeadventure in dominion to be undertaken when things again fall intopromising shape. This latter point would, of course, depend on theconjuncture of circumstances, chief of which would have to be theexigencies of imperial dominion shaping the policy of the Empire'snatural and necessary ally in the Far East. All this has evidently beencoming more and more urgently into the workday deliberations of theAmerican administration. Of course, it is not spoken of in set terms tothis effect in official utterances, perhaps not even within doors; thatsort of thing is not done. But it can do no harm to use downrightexpressions in a scientific discussion of these phenomena, with a viewto understanding the current drift of things in this field. 

Beyond this is the similar apprehension, similarly though more slowlyand reluctantly rising to the level of settled conviction, that theAmerican commonwealth is not fit to take care of its own casesingle-handed. This apprehension is enforced more and more unmistakablywith every month that passes on the theatre of war. And it is reenforcedby the constantly more obvious reflection that the case of the Americancommonwealth in this matter is the same as that of the democraticcountries of Europe, and of the other European colonies. It is not, orat least one may believe it is not yet, that in the patrioticapprehension of the common man, or of the administration which speaksfor him, the resources of the country would be inadequate to meet anycontingencies of the kind that might arise, whether in respect ofindustrial capacity or in point of man-power, if these resources wereturned to this object with the same singleness of purpose and the samedrastic procedure that marks the course of a national establishmentguided by no considerations short of imperial dominion. The doubtpresents itself rather as an apprehension that the cost would beextravagantly high, in all respects in which cost can be counted; whichis presently seconded, on very slight reflection and review ofexperience, by recognition of the fact that a democracy is, in point offact, not to be persuaded to stand under arms interminably in merereadiness for a contingency, however distasteful the contingency may be. 

In point of fact, a democratic commonwealth is moved by other interestsin the main, and the common defense is a secondary consideration, not aprimary interest, --unless in the exceptional case of a commonwealth soplaced under the immediate threat of invasion as to have the commondefense forced into the place of paramount consequence in its workdayhabits of thought. The American republic is not so placed. Anyone maysatisfy himself by reasonable second thought that the people of thisnation are not to be counted on to do their utmost in time of peace toprepare for war. They may be persuaded to do much more than has beentheir habit, and adventurous politicians may commit them to much morethan the people at large would wish to undertake, but when all is donethat can be counted on for a permanency, up to the limit of populartolerance, it would be a bold guess that should place the result at morethan one-half of what the country is capable of. Particularly would thepeople's patience balk at the extensive military training requisite toput the country in an adequate position of defense against a sudden andwell-prepared offensive. It is otherwise with a dynastic State, to thedirectorate of which all other interests are necessarily secondary, subsidiary, and mainly to be considered only in so far as they arecontributory to the nation's readiness for warlike enterprise. 

America at the same time is placed in an extra-hazardous position, between the two seas beyond which to either side lie the two ImperialPowers whose place in the modern economy of nations it is to disturb thepeace in an insatiable quest of dominion. This position is no longerdefensible in isolation, under the later state of the industrial arts, and the policy of isolation that has guided the national policy hithertois therefore falling out of date. The question is as to the manner ofits renunciation, rather than the fact of it. It may end in a defensivecopartnership with other nations who are placed on the defensive by thesame threatening situation, or it may end in a bootless struggle forindependence, but the choice scarcely extends beyond this alternative. It will be said, of course, that America is competent to take care ofitself and its Monroe doctrine in the future as in the past. But thatview, spoken for cogently by thoughtful men and by politicians lookingfor party advantage, overlooks the fact that the modern technology hasdefinitively thrown the advantage to the offensive, and that interveningseas can no longer be counted on as a decisive obstacle. On this latterhead, what was reasonably true fifteen years ago is doubtful today, andit is in all reasonable expectation invalid for the situation fifteenyears hence. 

The other peoples that are of a neutral temper may need the help ofAmerica sorely enough in their endeavours to keep the peace, butAmerica's need of cooperation is sorer still, for the Republic is cominginto a more precarious place than any of the others. America is also, atleast potentially, the most democratic of the greater Powers, and ishandicapped with all the disabilities of a democratic commonwealth inthe face of war. America is also for the present, and perhaps for thecalculable future, the most powerful of these greater Powers, in pointof conceivably available resources, though not in actually availablefighting-power; and the entrance of America unreservedly into a neutralleague would consequently be decisive both of the purposes of the leagueand of its efficiency for the purpose; particularly if theneutralisation of interests among the members of the league were carriedso far as to make withdrawal and independent action disadvantageous. 

On the establishment of such a neutral league, with such neutralisationof national interests as would assure concerted action in time ofstress, the need of armament on the part of the American republic woulddisappear, at least to the extent that no increase of armed force wouldbe advisable. The strength of the Republic lies in its large and variedresources and the unequalled industrial capacity of its population, --acapacity which is today seriously hampered by untoward businessinterests and business methods sheltered under national discrimination, but which would come more nearly to its own so soon as these nationaldiscriminations were corrected or abrogated in the neutralisation ofnational pretensions. The neutrally-minded countries of Europe have beenconstrained to learn the art of modern war, as also to equip themselveswith the necessary appliances, sufficient to meet all requirements forkeeping the peace through such a period as can or need be taken intoaccount, --provided the peace that is to come on the conclusion of thepresent war shall be placed on so "conclusive" a footing as will make itanything substantially more than a season of recuperation for thatwarlike Power about whose enterprise in dominion the whole questionturns. Provided that suitably "substantial guarantees" of a reasonablequiescence on the part of this Imperial Power are had, there need be noincrease of the American armament. Any increased armament would in thatcase amount to nothing better than an idle duplication of plant andpersonnel already on hand and sufficient to meet the requirements. 

To meet the contingencies had in view in its formation, such a leaguewould have to be neutralised to the point that all pertinent nationalpretensions would fall into virtual abeyance, so that all the necessaryresources at the disposal of the federated nations would automaticallycome under the control of the league's appointed authorities withoutloss of time, whenever the need might arise. That is to say, nationalinterests and pretensions would have to give way to a collective controlsufficient to insure prompt and concerted action. In the face of such aneutral league Imperial Japan alone would be unable to make a reallyserious diversion or to entertain much hope of following up its quest ofdominion. The Japanese Imperial establishment might even be persuadedpeaceably to let its unoffending neighbours live their own lifeaccording to their own light. It is, indeed, possibly the apprehensionof some such contingency that has hurried the rapacity of the IslandEmpire into the headlong indecencies of the past year or two. 

CHAPTER VI

ELIMINATION OF THE UNFIT

It may seem early (January 1917) to offer a surmise as to what must bethe manner of league into which the pacific nations are to enter and bywhich the peace will be kept, in case such a move is to be made. But thecircumstances that are to urge such a line of action, and that willcondition its carrying out in case it is entered on, have already comeinto bearing and should, on the whole, no longer be especially obscureto anyone who will let the facts of the case rather than his ownpredilections decide what he will believe. By and large, the pressure ofthese conditioning circumstances may be seen, and the line of leastresistance under this pressure may be calculated, with due allowance ofa margin of error owing to unknown contingencies of time and minorvariables. 

Time is of the essence of the case. So that what would have beendismissed as idle vapour two years ago has already become subject ofgrave deliberation today, and may rise to paramount urgency that farhence. Time is needed to appreciate and get used to any innovation ofappreciable gravity, particularly where the innovation depends in anydegree on a change in public sentiment, as in this instance. The presentoutlook would seem to be that no excess of time is allowed in thesepremises; but it should also be noted that events are moving withunexampled celerity, and are impinging on the popular apprehension withunexampled force, --unexampled on such a scale. It is hoped that arecital of these circumstances that provoke to action along this linewill not seem unwarrantably tedious, and that a tentative definition ofthe line of least resistance under pressure of these circumstances maynot seem unwarrantably presumptuous. 

The major premise in the case is the felt need of security fromaggression at the hands of Imperial Germany and its auxiliary Powers;seconded by an increasingly uneasy apprehension as to the prospectiveline of conduct on the part of Imperial Japan, bent on a similar questof dominion. There is also the less articulate apprehension of what, ifanything, may be expected from Imperial Russia; an obscure and scarcelydefinable factor, which comes into the calculation chiefly by way ofreenforcing the urgency of the situation created by the dynasticambitions of these other two Imperial States. Further, the pacificnations, the leading ones among them being the French andEnglish-speaking peoples, are coming to recognise that no one among themcan provide for its own security single-handed, even at the cost oftheir utmost endeavour in the way of what is latterly called"preparedness;" and they are at the same time unwilling to devote theirforce unreservedly to warlike preparation, having nothing to gain. Thesolution proposed is a league of the pacific nations, commonly spoken ofat the present stage as a league to enforce peace, or less ambitiouslyas a league to enforce arbitration. The question being left somewhat atloose ends, whether the projected league is to include the two or threeImperial Powers whose pacific intentions are, euphemistically, open todoubt. 

Such is the outline of the project and its premises. An attempt to fillin this outline will, perhaps, conduce to an appreciation of what issought and of what the conditioning circumstances will enforce in thecourse of its realisation. As touches the fear of aggression, it hasalready been indicated, perhaps with unnecessary iteration, that thesetwo Imperial Powers are unable to relinquish the quest of dominionthrough warlike enterprise, because as dynastic States they have noother ulterior aim; as has abundantly appeared in the great volume ofexpository statements that have come out of the Fatherland the past fewyears, official, semi-official, inspired, and spontaneous. "Assurance ofthe nation's future" is not translatable into any other terms. TheImperial dynasty has no other ground to stand on, and can not give upthe enterprise so long as it can muster force for any formidablediversion, to get anything in the way of dominion by seizure, threat orchicane. 

This is coming to be informally and loosely, but none the lessdefinitively, realised by the pacific nations; and the realisation of itis gaining in clearness and assurance as time passes. And it is backedby the conviction that, in the nature of things, no engagement on thepart of such a dynastic State has any slightest binding force, beyondthe material constraint that would enforce it from the outside. So thedemand has been diplomatically phrased as a demand for "substantialguarantees. " Any gain in resources on the part of these Powers is to becounted as a gain in the ways and means of disturbing the peace, withoutreservation. 

The pacific nations include among them two large items, both of whichare indispensable to the success of the project, the United States andthe United Kingdom. The former brings in its train, virtually withoutexception or question, the other American republics, none of which canpracticably go in or stay out except in company and collusion with theUnited States. The United Kingdom after the same fashion, and withscarcely less assurance, may be counted on to carry the Britishcolonies. Evidently, without both of these groups the project would noteven make a beginning. Beyond this is to be counted in as elements ofstrength, though scarcely indispensable, France, Belgium, theNetherlands and the Scandinavian countries. The other west-Europeannations would in all probability be found in the league, although so faras regards its work and its fortunes their adhesion would scarcely be amatter of decisive consequence; they may therefore be left somewhat onone side in any consideration of the circumstances that would shape theleague, its aims and its limitations. The Balkan states, in the wideracceptance, they that frequent the Sign of the Double Cross, aresimilarly negligible in respect of the organisation of such a league orits resources and the mutual concessions necessary to be made betweenits chief members. Russia is so doubtful a factor, particularly asregards its place and value in industry, culture and politics, in thenear future, as to admit nothing much more than a doubt on what itsrelation to the situation will be. The evil intentions of theImperial-bureaucratic establishment are probably no more to bequestioned than the good intentions of the underlying peoples of Russia. China will have to be taken in, if for no other reason than the use towhich the magnificent resources of that country would be turned by itsImperial neighbour in the absence of insurmountable interference fromoutside. But China will come in on any terms that include neutrality andsecurity. 

The question then arises as to the Imperial Powers whose dynasticenterprise is primarily to be hedged against by such a league. Reflection will show that if the league is to effect any appreciablepart of its purpose, these Powers will also be included in the league, or at least in its jurisdiction. A pacific league not including thesePowers, or not extending its jurisdiction and surveillance to them andtheir conduct, would come to the same thing as a coalition of nations intwo hostile groups, the one standing on the defensive against thewarlike machinations of the other, and both groups bidding for the favorof those minor Powers whose traditions and current aspirations run tonational (dynastic) aggrandizement by way of political intrigue. Itwould come to a more articulate and accentuated form of that balance ofpower that has latterly gone bankrupt in Europe, with the most corruptand unreliable petty monarchies of eastern Europe vested with a castingvote; and it would also involve a system of competitive armaments of thesame general character as what has also shown itself bankrupt. It would, in other words, mean a virtual return to the _status quo ante_, but withan overt recognition of its provisional character, and with the lines ofdivision more sharply drawn. That is to say, it would amount toreinstating the situation which the projected league is intended toavert. It is evidently contained in the premises that the projectedleague must be all-inclusive, at least as regards its jurisdiction andsurveillance. The argument will return to this point presently. 

The purpose of the projected league is peace and security, commonlyspoken of under patriotic preconceptions as "national" peace andsecurity. This will have to mean a competent enforcement of peace, onsuch a footing of overmastering force at the disposal of the associatedpacific nations as to make security a matter of ordinary routine. It istrue, the more genial spokesmen of the project are given to the viewthat what is to come of it all is a comity of neutral nations, amicablyadjusting their own relations among themselves in a spirit of peace andgood-will. But this view is over-sanguine, in that it overlooks thepoint that into this prospective comity of nations Imperial Germany (andImperial Japan) fit like a drunken savage with a machine gun. It alsooverlooks the patent fatality that these two are bound to come into acoalition at the next turn, with whatever outside and subsidiaryresources they can draw on; provided only that a reasonable opening forfurther enterprise presents itself. The league, in other terms, must bein a position to enforce peace by overmastering force, and to anticipateany move at cross purposes with the security of the pacific nations. 

This end can be reached by either one of two ways. If the dynasticStates are left to their own devices, it will be incumbent on theassociated nations to put in the field a standing force sufficient toprevent a recourse to arms; which means competitive armament anduniversal military rule. Or the dynastic States may be taken intopartnership and placed under such surveillance and constraint as topractically disarm them; which would admit virtual disarmament of thefederated nations. The former arrangement has nothing in its favour, except the possibility that no better or less irksome arrangement can behad under existing circumstances; that is to say that the pacificnations may not be able to bring these dynastic states to terms ofdisarmament under surveillance. They assuredly can not except by force;and this is the precise point on which the continued hostilities inEurope turn today. In diplomatic parable the German Imperial spokesmensay that they can accept (or as they prefer to phrase it, grant) noterms that do not fully safeguard the Future of the Fatherland; and insimilarly diplomatic parable the spokesmen of the Entente insist thatPrussian militarism must be permanently put out of commission; but itall means the same thing, viz. That the Imperial establishment is to be(or is not to be) disabled beyond the possibility of its entering on asimilar warlike enterprise again, when it has had time for recuperation. The dynastic statesmen, and the lay subjects of the Imperialestablishment, are strenuously set on securing a fair opportunity forrecuperation and a wiser endeavour to achieve that dominion which thepresent adventure promises to defeat; while the Entente want norecurrence, and are persuaded that a recurrence can be avoided only onthe footing of a present collapse of the Imperial power and ascrupulously enforced prostration of it henceforth. 

Without the definitive collapse of the Imperial power no pacific leagueof nations can come to anything much more than armistice. On the basisof such a collapse the league may as well administer its affairseconomically by way of an all-around reduction of armaments, as by thecostlier and more irksome way of "preparedness. " But a sensiblereduction of armaments on the part of the neutral nations impliesdisarmament of the dynastic States. Which would involve a neutralsurveillance of the affairs of these dynastic States in such detail andwith such exercise of authority as would reduce their governments to theeffective status of local administrative officials. Out of which, inturn, would arise complications that would lead to necessaryreadjustments all along the line. It would involve the virtual, if notalso the formal, abolition of the monarchy, since the monarchy has noother use than that of international war and intrigue; or at least itwould involve the virtual abrogation of its powers, reducing it to thesame status of _faineantise_ as now characterises the British crown. Evidently this means a serious intermeddling in the domestic concernsand arrangements of the Fatherland, such as is not admissible under thedemocratic principle that any people must be left free to follow theirown inclinations and devices in their own concerns; at the same timethat this degree of interference is imperative if the peace is to bekept on any other footing than that of eternal vigilance and superiorarmed force, with a people whose own inclinations and devices are of thekind now grown familiar in the German case, --all of which also applies, with accentuation, in the case of Imperial Japan. 

 * * * * *

Some such policy of neutral surveillance in the affairs of these peopleswhose pacific temper is under suspicion, is necessarily involved in aplan to enforce peace by concert of the pacific nations, and it willnecessarily carry implications and farther issues, touching not onlythese supposedly recalcitrant peoples, but also as regards the pacificnations themselves. Assuming always that the prime purpose andconsistent aim of the projected league is the peace and security ofthose pacific nations on whose initiative it is to be achieved, then itshould be reasonable to assume that the course of procedure in itsorganisation, administration and further adaptations and adjustmentsmust follow the logic of necessities leading to that end. He who willsthe end must make up his account with the means. 

The end in this case is peace and security; which means, for practicalpurposes, peace and good-will. Ill-will is not a secure foundation ofpeace. Even the military strategists of the Imperial establishmentrecommend a programme of "frightfulness" only as a convenient militaryexpedient, essentially a provisional basis of tranquility. In the longrun and as a permanent peace measure it is doubtless not to the point. Security is finally to be had among or between modern peoples only onthe ground of a common understanding and an impartially common basis ofequity, or something approaching that basis as nearly as circumstanceswill permit. Which means that in so far as the projected peace-compactis to take effect in any enduring way, and leave the federated nationssome degree of freedom from persistent apprehension and animosity, aswell as from habitual insecurity of life and limb, the league must notonly be all-inclusive, but it must be inclusively uniform in all itsrequirements and regulations. 

The peoples of the quondam Imperial nations must come into the league ona footing of formal equality with the rest. This they can not do withoutthe virtual abdication of their dynastic governmental establishments anda consequent shift to a democratic form of organisation, and a formalabrogation of class privileges and prerogatives. 

However, a virtual abdication or cancelment of the dynastic rule, suchas to bring it formally into the same class with the British crown, would scarcely meet the requirements in the case of the German Imperialestablishment; still more patently not in the case of Imperial Japan. If, following the outlines of the decayed British crown, one or theother of these Imperial establishments were by formal enactment reducedto a state of nominal desuetude, the effect would be very appreciablydifferent from what happens in the British community, where the crownhas lost its powers by failure of the requisite subordination on thepart of the people, and not by a formal abdication of rights. In theGerman case, and even more in the Japanese case, the strength of theImperial establishment lies in the unimpaired loyalty of the populace;which would remain nearly intact at the outset, and would thin out onlyby insensible degrees in the sequel; so that if only the Imperialestablishment were left formally standing it would command the fealty ofthe common run in spite of any formal abrogation of its powers, and thecourse of things would, in effect, run as before the break. In effect, to bring about a shift to a democratic basis the dynastic slate wouldhave to be wiped very clean indeed. And this shift would beindispensable to the successful conduct of such a pacific league ofnations, since any other than an effectually democratic nationalestablishment is to be counted on unfailingly to intrigue for dynasticaggrandizement, through good report and evil. 

In a case like that of Imperial Germany, with its federated States andsubsidiaries, where royalty and nobility still are potent preconceptionsinvesting the popular imagination, and where loyal abnegation in thepresence of authority still is the chief and staple virtue of the commonman, --in all such cases virtual abdication of the dynastic initiativeunder constitutional forms can be had only by a formal and scrupulouslycomplete abrogation of all those legal and customary arrangements onwhich this irresponsible exercise of authority has rested and throughwhich it has taken effect. Neutralisation in these instances will meanreduction to an unqualified democratic footing; which will, at least atthe outset, not be acceptable to the common people, and will be whollyintolerable to the ruling classes. Such a régime, therefore, while it isindispensable as a working basis for a neutral league of peace, wouldfrom the outset have to be enforced against the most desperateresistance of the ruling classes, headed by the dynastic statesmen andwarlords, and backed by the stubborn loyalty of the subject populace. Itwould have to mean the end of things for the ruling classes and the mostdistasteful submission to an alien scheme of use and wont for thepopulace. And yet it is also an indispensable element in any scheme ofpacification that aims at permanent peace and security. In time, it maywell be believed, the people of the Fatherland might learn to do wellenough without the gratuitous domination of their ruling classes, but atthe outset it would be a heartfelt privation. 

It follows that a league to enforce peace would have to begin its régimewith enforcing peace on terms of the unconditional surrender of theformidable warlike nations; which could be accomplished only by theabsolute and irretrievable defeat of these Powers as they now stand. Thequestion will, no doubt, present itself, Is the end worth the cost? Thatquestion can, of course, not be answered in absolute terms, inasmuch asit resolves itself into a question of taste and prepossession. An answerto it would also not be greatly to the purpose here, since it would haveno particular bearing on the course of action likely to be pursued bythese pacific nations in their quest of a settled peace. It is more tothe point to ask what is likely to be the practical decision of thesepeoples on that head when the question finally presents itself in aconcrete form. 

Again it is necessary to call to mind that any momentous innovationwhich rests on popular sentiment will take time; that consequentlyanything like a plébiscite on the question today would scarcely give asafe index of what the decision is likely to be when presently put tothe test; and that as things go just now, swiftly and urgent, anytime-allowance counts at something more than its ordinary workdaycoefficient. What can apparently be said with some degree of confidenceis that just now, during these two years past, sentiment has been movingin the direction indicated, and that any growing inclination of the kindis being strongly reenforced by a growing realisation that nothing butheroic remedies will avail at this juncture. If it comes to be currentlyrecognised that a settled peace can be had only at the cost oferadicating privilege and royalty from the warlike nations, it wouldseem reasonable to expect, from their present state of mind, that thepacific nations will scarcely hesitate to apply that remedy, --providedalways that the fortunes of war fall out as that measure would require, and provided also that the conflict lasts long enough and severe enoughto let them make up their mind to anything so drastic. 

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There is a certain side issue bearing on this question of the ulteriorprobabilities of popular sentiment and national policy as to what is tobe done with the warlike nations in the event that the allied nationswho fight for neutrality have the disposal of such matters. This sideissue may seem remote, and it may not unlikely be overlooked among themass of graver and more tangible considerations. It was remarked abovethat the United Kingdom is one of the two chief pillars of the projectedhouse of peace; and it may be added without serious fear ofcontradiction or annoyance that the United Kingdom is also the one amongthese pacific nations that comes nearest being capable, in the event ofsuch an emergency, to take care of its own case single-handed. Forbetter or worse, British adhesion to the project is indispensable, andthe British are in a position virtually to name their own terms ofadhesion. The British commonwealth--a very inclusive phrase in thisconnection--must form the core of the pacific league, if any, andBritish sentiment will have a very great place in the terms of itsformation and in the terms which it will be inclined to offer theImperial coalition at the settlement. 

Now, it happens that the British community entered on this war as ademocratic monarchy ruled and officered by a body of gentlemen--doubtlessthe most correct and admirable muster of gentlemen, of anything approachingits volume, that the modern world can show. But the war has turned out notto be a gentlemen's war. It has on the contrary been a war of technologicalexploits, reenforced with all the beastly devices of the heathen. It is awar in which all the specific traits of the well-bred and gently-minded manare a handicap; in which veracity, gallantry, humanity, liberality areconducive to nothing but defeat and humiliation. The death-rate among theBritish gentlemen-officers in the early months, and for many months, ranextravagantly high, for the most part because they were gallantgentlemen as well as officers imbued with the good, old class spirit of_noblesse oblige_, that has made half the tradition and more than halfthe working theory of the British officer in the field, --good, but old, hopelessly out of date. That generation of officers died, for the mostpart; being unfit to survive or to serve the purpose under these modernconditions of warfare, to which their enemy on the other hand hadadapted themselves with easy facility from beforehand. The gentlemanlyqualifications, and the material apparatus of gentility, and, it willperhaps have to be admitted, the gentlemen, have fallen into thebackground, or perhaps rather have measurably fallen into abeyance, among the officers of the line. There may be more doubt as to the stateof things in respect of the gentility of the staff, but the best thatcan confidently be said is that it is a point in doubt. 

It is hoped that one may say without offense that in the course of timethe personnel has apparently worked down to the level of vulgaritydefined by the ways and means of this modern warfare; which means thelevel on which runs a familiar acquaintance with large and complexmechanical apparatus, railway and highway transport and power, reenforced concrete, excavations and mud, more particularly mud, concealment and ambush, and unlimited deceit and ferocity. It is notprecisely that persons of pedigree and gentle breeding have ceased toenter or seek entrance to employment as officers, still less thatmeasures have been taken to restrain their doing so or to eliminate fromthe service those who have come into it--though there may present itselfa doubt on this point as touches the more responsible discretionarypositions--but only that the stock of suitable gentlemen, uncommonlylarge as it is, has been overdrawn; that those who have latterly goneinto service, or stayed in, have perforce divested themselves of theirgentility in some appreciable measure, particularly as regards classdistinction, and have fallen on their feet in the more commonplace roleof common men. 

Serviceability in this modern warfare is conditioned on much the sametraits of temperament and training that make for usefulness in themodern industrial processes, where large-scale coordinations of movementand an effective familiarity with precise and far-reaching mechanicalprocesses is an indispensable requirement, --indispensable in the samemeasure as the efficient conduct of this modern machine industry isindispensable. But the British gentleman, in so far as he runs true totype, is of no use to modern industry; quite the contrary, in fact. Still, the British gentleman is, in point of heredity, the same thingover again as the British common man; so that, barring the misdirectedtraining that makes him a gentleman, and which can largely be undoneunder urgent need and pressure, he can be made serviceable for such usesas the modern warfare requires. Meantime the very large demand forofficers, and the insatiable demand for capable officers, has broughtthe experienced and capable common man into the case and is in a fairway to discredit gentility as a necessary qualification of fieldofficers. 

But the same process of discredit and elimination is also extending tothe responsible officials who have the administration of things in hand. Indeed, the course of vulgarisation among the responsible officials hasnow been under way for some appreciable time and with very perceptibleeffect, and the rate of displacement appears to be gathering velocitywith every month that passes. Here, as in the field operations, it alsoappears that gentlemanly methods, standards, preconceptions, andknowledge of men and things, is no longer to the purpose. Here, too, itis increasingly evident that this is not a gentlemen's war. And thetraditional qualifications that have sufficed in the past, at least tothe extent of enabling the British management to "muddle through, " asthey are proudly in the habit of saying, --these qualifications are ofslight account in this technological conjuncture of the nation'sfortunes. It would perhaps be an under-statement to say that thesegentlemanly qualifications are no longer of any account, for the purposeimmediately in hand, and it would doubtless not do to say that they arewholly and unreservedly disserviceable as things run today; but captiouscritics might find at least a precarious footing of argument on such aproposition. 

Through the course of the nineteenth century the British government hadprogressively been taking on the complexion of a "gentlemen'sagreement;" a government by gentlemen, for gentlemen, and of gentlemen, too, beyond what could well be alleged in any other known instance, though never wholly so. No government could be a government of gentlemenexclusively, since there is no pecuniary profit in gentlemen as such, and therefore no object in governing them; more particularly could therenever be any incentive in it for gentlemen, whose livelihood is, in thenature of the case, drawn from some one else. A gentlemen's governmentcan escape death by inanition only in so far as it serves the materialinterest of its class, as contrasted with the underlying population fromwhich the class draws its livelihood. This British arrangement of agovernment by prudent and humane gentlemen with a view to theconservation of that state of things that best conduced to the materialwell-being of their own class, has on the whole had the loyal support ofthe underlying populace, with an occasional floundering protest. Butthe protest has never taken the shape of an expressed distrust ofgentlemen, considered as the staple ways and means of government; norhas the direction of affairs ever descended into the hands of any otheror lower class or condition of men. 

On the whole, this British arrangement for the control of nationalaffairs by a body of interested gentlemen-investors has been, andperhaps still is, just as well at home in the affectionatepreconceptions of the nineteenth-century British as the correspondingGerman usufruct by self-appointed swaggering aristocrats has been amongthe underlying German population, or as the American arrangement ofnational control by business men for business ends. The British and theAmerican arrangements run very much to the same substantial effect, ofcourse, inasmuch as the British gentlemen represent, as a class, thefilial generations of a business community, and their aims and standardsof conduct continue to be such as are enforced by the pecuniaryinterests on which their gentility is conditioned. They continue to drawthe ways and means of a worthy life from businesslike arrangements of a"vested" character, made and provided with a view to their nourishmentand repose. Their resulting usufruct of the community's productiveefforts rests on a vested interest of a pecuniary sort, sanctioned bythe sacred rights of property; very much as the analogous Germandynastic and aristocratic usufruct rests on personal prerogative, sanctioned by the sacred rights of authentic prescription, withoutafterthought. The two, it will be noted are very much alike, in effect, "under the skin. " The great distinguishing mark being that the Germanusufructuary gentlemen are, in theory at least, gentlemen-adventurers ofprowess and proud words, whose place in the world's economy it is toglorify God and disturb the peace; whereas their British analogues aregentlemen-investors, of blameless propriety, whose place it is moresimply to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. 

All this arrangement of a usufruct with a view to the reputableconsumption of the community's superfluous production has had thecordial support of British sentiment, perhaps fully as cordial as theGerman popular subservience in the corresponding German scheme; bothbeing well embedded in the preconceptions of the common man. But the warhas put it all to a rude test, and has called on the British gentlemen'sexecutive committee to take over duties for which it was not designed. The exigencies of this war of technological exploits have been almostwholly, and very insistently, of a character not contemplated in theconstitution of such an executive committee of gentlemen-investorsdesigned to safeguard class interests and promote their pecuniary classadvantage by a blamelessly inconspicuous and indirect management ofnational affairs. The methods are of the class known colloquially amongthe vulgar-spoken American politicians as "pussyfooting" and"log-rolling"; but always with such circumstance of magnitude, authenticity and well-bred deference to precedent, as to give theresulting routine of subreption, trover and conversion, an air not onlyof benevolent consideration but of austere morality. 

But the most austere courtesy and the most authentically dispassionatedivision of benefits will not meet the underbred exigencies of a warconducted on the mechanistic lines of the modern state of the industrialarts. So the blameless, and for the purpose imbecile, executivecommittee of gentlemen-investors has been insensibly losing theconfidence and the countenance of the common man; who, when all is said, will always have to do what is to be done. The order of gentlemanlyparleying and brokery has, therefore, with many apprehensions ofcalamity, been reluctantly and tardily giving ground before somethingthat is of a visibly underbred order. Increasingly underbred, andthereby insensibly approaching the character of this war situation, butaccepted with visible reluctance and apprehension both by the rulingclass and by the underlying population. The urgent necessity of going tosuch a basis, and of working out the matter in hand by an unblushingrecourse to that matter-of-fact logic of mechanical efficiency, whichalone can touch the difficulties of the case, but which has no respectof persons, --this necessity has been present from the outset and hasbeen vaguely apprehended for long past, but it is only tardily and afterthe chastening of heavy penalties on this gentlemanly imbecility that asubstantial move in that direction has been made. It has required muchBritish resolution to overcome the night-fear of going out into theunhallowed ground of matter-of-fact, where the farthest earlierexcursions of the governmental agencies had taken them no farther thansuch financial transactions as are incident to the accomplishment ofanything whatever in a commercial nation. And then, too, there is apecuniary interest in being interested in financial transactions. 

This shifting of discretionary control out of the hands of the gentlemeninto those of the underbred common run, who know how to do what isnecessary to be done in the face of underbred exigencies, mayconceivably go far when it has once been started, and it may go forwardat an accelerated rate if the pressure of necessity lasts long enough. If time be given for habituation to this manner of directorate innational affairs, so that the common man comes to realise how it isfeasible to get along without gentlemen-investors holding thediscretion, the outcome may conceivably be very grave. It is a point indoubt, but it is conceivable that in such a case the gentlemanlyexecutive committee administering affairs in the light of thegentlemanly pecuniary interest, will not be fully reinstated in thediscretionary control of the United Kingdom for an appreciable number ofyears after the return of peace. Possibly, even, the régime may bepermanently deranged, and there is even a shadowy doubt possible to beentertained as to whether the vested pecuniary rights, on which theclass of gentlemen rests, may not suffer some derangement, in case thecontrol should pass into the hands of the underbred and unpropertied forso long a season as to let the common man get used to thinking that thevested interests and the sacred rights of gentility are so much adoabout nothing. 

Such an outcome would be extreme, but as a remote contingency it is tobe taken into account. The privileged classes of the United Kingdomshould by this time be able to see the danger there may be for them andtheir vested interests, pecuniary and moral, in an excessiveprolongation of the war; in such postponement of peace as would affordtime for a popular realisation of their incompetence anddisserviceability as touches the nation's material well-being undermodern conditions. To let the nation's war experience work to such anoutcome, the season of war would have to be prolonged beyond what eitherthe hopes or the fears of the community have yet contemplated; but thepoint is after all worth noting, as being within the premises of thecase, that there is herein a remote contingency of losing, at least fora time, that unformulated clause in the British constitution which hashitherto restricted the holding of responsible office to men of pedigreeand of gentle breeding, or at least of very grave pecuniary weight; sograve as to make the incumbents virtual gentlemen, with a virtualpedigree, and with a virtual gentleman's accentuated sense of classinterest. Should such an eventuality overtake British popular sentimentand belief there is also the remote contingency that the rights ofownership and investment would lose a degree of sanctity. 

It seems necessary to note a further, and in a sense more improbable, line of disintegration among modern fixed ideas. Among the bestentrenched illusions of modern economic preconceptions, and in economicas well as legal theory, has been the indispensability of funds, and thehard and fast limitation of industrial operations by the supply orwith-holding of funds. The war experience has hitherto gone tentativelyto show that funds and financial transactions, of credit, bargain, saleand solvency, may be dispensed with under pressure of necessity; andapparently without seriously hindering that run of mechanical fact, onwhich interest in the present case necessarily centers, and which mustbe counted on to give the outcome. Latterly the case is clearing up alittle further, on further experience and under further pressure oftechnological exigencies, to the effect that financial arrangements areindispensable in this connection only because and in so far as it hasbeen arranged to consider them indispensable; as in international trade. They are an indispensable means of intermediation only in so far aspecuniary interests are to be furthered or safeguarded in theintermediation. When, as has happened with the belligerents in thepresent instance, the national establishment becomes substantiallyinsolvent, it is beginning to appear that its affairs can be taken careof with less difficulty and with better effect without the use offinancial expedients. Of course, it takes time to get used to doingthings by the more direct method and without the accustomedcircumlocution of accountancy, or the accustomed allowance for profitsto go to interested parties who, under the financial régime, hold apower of discretionary permission in all matters that touch the use ofthe industrial arts. Under these urgent material exigencies, investmentcomes to have much of the appearance of a gratuitous drag and drain onthe processes of industry. 

Here, again, is a sinister contingency; sinister, that is, for thosevested rights of ownership by force of which the owners of "capital" areenabled to permit or withhold the use of the industrial arts by thecommunity at large, on pain of privation in case the accustomed toll tothe owners of capital is not paid. It is, of course, not intended tofind fault with this arrangement; which has the sanction of "timeimmemorial" and of a settled persuasion that it lies at the root of allcivilised life and intercourse. It is only that in case of extreme needthis presumed indispensable expedient of industrial control has brokendown, and that experience is proving it to be, in these premises, anitem of borrowed trouble. Should experience continue to run on the samelines for an appreciable period and at a high tension, it is at leastconceivable that the vested right of owners to employ unlimited sabotagein the quest of profits might fall so far into disrepute as to leavethem under a qualified doubt on the return of "normal" conditions. Thecommon man, in other words, who gathers nothing but privation andanxiety from the owners' discretionary sabotage, may conceivably standto lose his preconception that the vested rights of ownership are thecornerstone of his life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. 

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The considerations recited in this lengthy excursion on the warsituation and its probable effects on popular habits of thought in theUnited Kingdom go to say that when peace comes to be negotiated, withthe United Kingdom as the chief constituent and weightiest spokesman ofthe allied nations and of the league of pacific neutrals, therepresentatives of British aims and opinions are likely to speak in adifferent, chastened, and disillusioned fashion, as contrasted with whatthe British attitude was at the beginning of hostilities. Thegentlemanly British animus of arrogant self-sufficiency will have beensomewhat sobered, perhaps somewhat subdued. Concession to the claims andpretensions of the other pacific nations is likely to go farther thanmight once have been expected, particularly in the way of concession toany demand for greater international comity and less internationaldiscrimination; essentially concession looking to a reduction ofnational pretensions and an incipient neutralisation of nationalinterests. Coupled with this will presumably be a less conciliatoryattitude toward the members of the dynastic coalition against whom thewar has been fought, owing to a more mature realisation of theimpossibility of a lasting peace negotiated with a Power whosesubstantial core is a warlike and irresponsible dynastic establishment. The peace negotiations are likely to run on a lower level of diplomaticdeference to constituted authorities, and with more of a view to theinterests and sentiments of the underlying population, than was evidentin the futile negotiations had at the outbreak of hostilities. Thegentle art of diplomacy, that engages the talents of exalted personagesand well-bred statesmen, has been somewhat discredited; and if it turnsout that the vulgarisation of the directorate in the United Kingdom andits associated allies and neutrals will have time to go on to somethinglike dominance and authenticity, then the deference which the spokesmenof these nations are likely to show for the prescriptive rights ofdynasty, nobility, bureaucracy, or even of pecuniary aristocracy, in thecountries that make up the party of the second part, may be expected tohave shrunk appreciably, conceivably even to such precarious dimensionsas to involve the virtual neglect or possible downright abrogation ofthem, in sum and substance. 

Indeed, the chances of a successful pacific league of neutrals to comeout of the current situation appear to be largely bound up with thedegree of vulgarisation due to overtake the several directorates of thebelligerent nations as well as the popular habits of thought in theseand in the neutral countries, during the further course of the war. Itis too broad a generalisation, perhaps, to say that the longer the warlasts the better are the chances of such a neutral temper in theinterested nations as will make a pacific league practicable, but thecontrary would appear a much less defensible proposition. It is, ofcourse, the common man that has the least interest in warlikeenterprise, if any, and it is at the same time the common man that bearsthe burden of such enterprise and has also the most immediate interestin keeping the peace. If, slowly and pervasively, in the course of hardexperience, he learns to distrust the conduct of affairs by his betters, and learns at the same move to trust to his own class to do what isnecessary and to leave undone what is not, his deference to his bettersis likely to suffer a decline, such as should show itself in a somewhatunguarded recourse to democratic ways and means. 

In short, there is in this progressive vulgarisation of effectual useand wont and of sentiment, in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, someslight ground for the hope, or the apprehension, that no peace will bemade with the dynastic Powers of the second part until they cease to bedynastic Powers and take on the semblance of democratic commonwealths, with dynasties, royalties and privileged classes thrown in the discard. 

This would probably mean some prolongation of hostilities, until thedynasties and privileged classes had completely exhausted theiravailable resources; and, by the same token, until the privilegedclasses in the more modern nations among the belligerents had also beendisplaced from direction and discretion by those underbred classes onwhom it is incumbent to do what is to be done; or until a juncture werereached that comes passably near to such a situation. On the contingencyof such a course of events and some such outcome appears also to hangthe chance of a workable pacific league. Without further experience ofthe futility of upper-class and pecuniary control, to discreditprecedent and constituted authority, it is scarcely conceivable, e. G. , that the victorious allies would go the length of coercively discardingthe German Imperial dynasty and the kept classes that with it constitutethe Imperial State, and of replacing it with a democratic organisationof the people in the shape of a modern commonwealth; and without achange of that nature, affecting that nation and such of its allies aswould remain on the map, no league of pacific neutrals would be able tomanage its affairs, even for a time, except on a war-footing that wouldinvolve a competitive armament against future dynastic enterprises fromthe same quarter. Which comes to saying that a lasting peace is possibleon no other terms than the disestablishment of the Imperial dynasty andthe abrogation of all feudalistic remnants of privilege in theFatherland and its allies, together with the reduction of thosecountries to the status of commonwealths made up of ungraded men. 

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It is easy to speculate on what the conditions precedent to such apacific league of neutrals must of necessity be; but it is not thereforeless difficult to make a shrewd guess as to the chances of theseconditions being met. Of these conditions precedent, the chief andforemost, without which any other favorable circumstances arecomparatively idle, is a considerable degree of neutralisation, extending to virtually all national interests and pretensions, but moreparticularly to all material and commercial interests of the federatedpeoples; and, indispensably and especially, such neutralisation wouldhave to extend to the nations from whom aggression is now apprehended, as, e. G. , the German people. But such neutralisation could notconceivably reach the Fatherland unless that nation were made over inthe image of democracy, since the Imperial State is, by force of theterms, a warlike and unneutral power. This would seem to be theostensibly concealed meaning of the allied governments in proclaimingthat their aim is to break German militarism without doing harm to theGerman people. 

As touches the neutralisation of the democratically rehabilitatedFatherland, or in default of that, as touches the peace terms to beoffered the Imperial government, the prime article among thestipulations would seem to be abolition of all trade discriminationagainst Germany or by Germany against any other nationality. Suchstipulation would, of course, cover all manner of tradediscrimination, --e. G. , import, export and excise tariff, harbor andregistry dues, subsidy, patent right, copyright, trade mark, taxexemption whether partial or exclusive, investment preferences at homeand abroad, --in short it would have to establish a thoroughgoingneutralisation of trade relations in the widest acceptation of the term, and to apply in perpetuity. The like applies, of course, to all thatfringe of subsidiary and outlying peoples on whom Imperial Germanyrelies for much of its resources in any warlike enterprise. Such a movealso disposes of the colonial question in a parenthesis, so far asregards any special bond of affiliation between the Empire, or theFatherland, and any colonial possessions that are now thought desirableto be claimed. Under neutralisation, colonies would cease to be"colonial possessions, " being necessarily included under the generalabrogation of commercial discriminations, and also necessarily exemptfrom special taxation or specially favorable tax rates. 

Colonies there still would be, though it is not easy to imagine whatwould be the meaning of a "German Colony" in such a case. Colonies wouldbe free communities, after the fashion of New Zealand or Australia, butwith the further sterilisation of the bond between colony and mothercountry involved in the abolition of all appointive offices and allresponsibility to the crown or the imperial government. Now, there areno German colonies in this simpler British sense of the term, whichimplies nothing more than community of blood, institutions and language, together with that sense of solidarity between the colony and the mothercountry which this community of pedigree and institutions willnecessarily bring; but while there are today no German colonies, in thesense of the term so given, there is no reason to presume that no suchGerman colonies would come into bearing under the conditions of thisprospective régime of neutrality installed by such a pacific league, when backed by the league's guarantee that no colony from the Fatherlandwill be exposed to the eventual risk of coming under the discretionarytutelage of the German Imperial establishment and so falling into arelation of step-childhood to the Imperial dynasty. 

As is well known, and as has by way of superfluous commonplace been setforth by a sometime Colonial Secretary of the Empire, the decisivereason for there being no German colonies in existence is theconsistently impossible colonial policy of the German government, looking to the usufruct of the colonies by the government, and the fearof further arbitrary control and nepotic discrimination at the pleasureof the self-seeking dynastic establishment. It is only under Imperialrule that no German colony, in this modern sense of the term, ispossible; and only because Imperial rule does not admit of a freecommunity being formed by colonists from the Fatherland; or of anostensibly free community of that kind ever feeling secure fromunsolicited interference with its affairs. 

The nearest approach to a German Colony, as contrasted with a "ColonialPossession, " hitherto have been the very considerable, number ofescaped German subjects who have settled in English-speaking orLatin-speaking countries, particularly in North and South America. Andconsidering that the chief common trait among them is their successfulevasion of the Imperial government's heavy hand, they show an admirablefilial piety toward the Imperial establishment; though troubled with noslightest regret at having escaped from the Imperial surveillance and noslightest inclination to return to the shelter of the Imperial tutelage. A colloquialism--"hyphenate"--has latterly grown up to meet the need ofa term to designate these evasive and yet patriotic colonists. It isscarcely misleading to say that the German-American hyphenate, e. G. , inso far as he runs true to form, is still a German subject with hisheart, but he is an American citizen with his head. All of which goes toargue that if the Fatherland were to fall into such a state ofdemocratic tolerance that no recidivist need carry a defensive hyphen toshield him from the importunate attentions of the Imperial government, German colonies would also come into bearing; although, it is true, theywould have no value to the German government. 

In the Imperial colonial policy colonies are conceived to stand to theirImperial guardian or master in a relation between that of a step-childand that of an indentured servant; to be dealt with summarily and atdiscretion and to be made use of without scruple. The like attitudetoward colonies was once familiar matter-of-course with the British andSpanish statesmen. The British found the plan unprofitable, and alsounworkable, and have given it up. The Spanish, having no politicaloutlook but the dynastic one, could of course not see their way torelinquish the only purpose of their colonial enterprise, except inrelinquishing their colonial possessions. The German (Imperial) colonialpolicy is and will be necessarily after the Spanish pattern, andnecessarily, too, with the Spanish results. 

Under the projected neutral scheme there would be no colonial policy, and of course, no inducement to the acquisition of colonies, sincethere would be no profit to be derived, or to be fancied, in the case. But while no country, as a commonwealth, has any material interest inthe acquisition or maintenance of colonies, it is otherwise as regardsthe dynastic interests of an Imperial government; and it is alsootherwise, at least in the belief of the interested parties, as regardsspecial businessmen or business concerns who are in a position to gainsomething by help of national discrimination in their favor. As regardsthe pecuniary interests of favored businessmen or business concerns, andof investors favored by national discrimination in colonial relations, the case falls under the general caption of trade discrimination, anddoes not differ at all materially from such expedients as a protectivetariff, a ship subsidy, or a bounty on exports. But as regards thewarlike, that is to say dynastic, interest of an Imperial government thecase stands somewhat different. 

Colonial Possessions in such a case yield no material benefit to thecountry at large, but their possession is a serviceable plea for warlikepreparations with which to retain possession of the colonies in the faceof eventualities, and it is also a serviceable means of stirring thenational pride and keeping alive a suitable spirit of patrioticanimosity. The material service actually to be derived from suchpossessions in the event of war is a point in doubt, with theprobabilities apparently running against their being of any eventual netuse. But there need be no question that such possessions, under the handof any national establishment infected with imperial ambitions, are afruitful source of diplomatic complications, excuses for armament, international grievances, and eventual aggression. A pacific league ofneutrals can evidently not tolerate the retention of colonialpossessions by any dynastic State that may be drawn into the league orunder its jurisdiction, as, e. G. , the German Empire in case it should beleft on an Imperial footing. Whereas, in case the German peoples arethrown back on a democratic status, as neutralised commonwealths withouta crown or a military establishment, the question of their colonialpossessions evidently falls vacant. 

As to the neutralisation of trade relations apart from the question ofcolonies, and as bears on the case of Germany under the projectedjurisdiction of a pacific league of neutrals, the considerations to betaken account of are of much the same nature. As it would have to takeeffect, e. G. , in the abolition of commercial and industrialdiscriminations between Germany and the pacific nations, suchneutralisation would doubtless confer a lasting material benefit on theGerman people at large; and it is not easy to detect any loss ordetriment to be derived from such a move so long as peace prevails. Protective, that is to say discriminating, export, import, or exciseduties, harbor and registry dues, subsidies, tax exemptions and tradepreferences, and all the like devices of interference with trade andindustry, are unavoidably a hindrance to the material interests of anypeople on whom they are imposed or who impose these disabilities onthemselves. So that exemption from these things by a comprehensiveneutralisation of trade relations would immediately benefit all thenations concerned, in respect of their material well-being in times ofpeace. There is no exception and no abatement to be taken account ofunder this general statement, as is well known to all men who areconversant with these matters. 

But it is otherwise as regards the dynastic interest in the case, and asregards any national interest in warlike enterprise. It is doubtlesstrue that all restraint of trade between nations, and between classes orlocalities within the national frontiers, unavoidably acts to weaken andimpoverish the people on whose economic activities this restraint islaid; and to the extent to which this effect is had it will also be truethat the country which so is hindered in its work will have a lessaggregate of resources to place at the disposal of its enterprisingstatesmen for imperialist ends. But these restraints may yet be usefulfor dynastic, that is to say warlike, ends by making the country morenearly a "self-contained economic whole. " A country becomes a"self-contained economic whole" by mutilation, in cutting itself offfrom the industrial system in which industrially it belongs, but inwhich it is unwilling nationally to hold its place. National frontiersare industrial barriers. But as a result of such mutilation of itsindustrial life such a country is better able--it has been believed--tobear the shock of severing its international trade relations entirely, as is likely to happen in case of war. 

In a large country, such as America or Russia, which comprises withinits national boundaries very extensive and very varied resources and awidely distributed and diversified population, the mischief sufferedfrom restraints of trade that hinder industrial relations with the worldat large will of course be proportionately lessened. Such a countrycomes nearer being a miniature industrial world; although none of thecivilised nations, large or small, can carry on its ordinary industrialactivities and its ordinary manner of life without drawing on foreignparts to some appreciable extent. But a country of small territorialextent and of somewhat narrowly restricted natural resources, as, e. G. , Germany or France, can even by the most drastic measures of restraintand mutilation achieve only a very mediocre degree of industrialisolation and "self-sufficiency, "--as has, e. G. , appeared in the presentwar. But in all cases, though in varying measure, the mitigatedisolation so enforced by these restraints on trade will in their degreeimpair the country's industrial efficiency and lower the people'smaterial well-being; yet, if the restrictions are shrewdly applied thispartial isolation and partial "self-sufficiency" will go some way towardpreparing the nation for the more thorough isolation that follows on theoutbreak of hostilities. 

The present plight of the German people under war conditions may serveto show how nearly that end may be attained, and yet how inadequate eventhe most unreserved measures of industrial isolation must be in face ofthe fact that the modern state of the industrial arts necessarily drawson the collective resources of the world at large. It may well bedoubted, on an impartial view, if the mutilation of the country'sindustrial system by such measures of isolation does not after allrather weaken the nation even for warlike ends; but then, thediscretionary authorities in the dynastic States are always, and it maybe presumed necessarily, hampered with obsolete theories handed downfrom that cameralistic age, when the little princes of the Fatherlandwere making dynastic history. So, e. G. , the current, nineteenth andtwentieth century, economic policy of the Prussian-Imperial statesmen isstill drawn on lines within which Frederick II, called the Great, wouldhave felt well at home. 

Like other preparation for hostilities this reduction of the country tothe status of a self-contained economic organisation is costly, butlike other preparation for hostilities it also puts the nation in aposition of greater readiness to break off friendly relations with itsneighbors. It is a war measure, commonly spoken for by its advocates asa measure of self-defense; but whatever the merits of theself-defenders' contention, this measure is a war measure. As such itcan reasonably claim no hearing in the counsels of a pacific league ofneutrals, whose purpose it is to make war impracticable. Particularlycan there be no reasonable question of admitting a policy of tradediscrimination and isolation on the part of a nation which has, forpurposes of warlike aggression, pursued such a policy in the past, andwhich it is the immediate purpose of the league to bind over to keep thepeace. 

There has been a volume of loose talk spent on the justice andexpediency of boycotting the trade of the peoples of the Empire afterthe return of peace, as a penalty and as a preventive measure designedto retard their recovery of strength with which to enter on a furtherwarlike enterprise. Such a measure would necessarily be somewhat futile;since "Business is business, " after all, and the practical limitationsimposed on an unprofitable boycott by the moral necessity to buy cheapand sell dear that rests on all businessmen would surreptitiouslymitigate it to the point of negligibility. It is inconceivable--or itwould be inconceivable in the absence of imbecile politicians andself-seeking businessmen--that measures looking to the trade isolationof any one of these countries could be entertained as a point of policyto be pursued by a league of neutrals. And it is only in so far aspatriotic jealousy and vindictive sentiments are allowed to displace theaspiration for peace and security, that such measures can claimconsideration. Considered as a penalty to be imposed on the erringnations who set this warlike adventure afoot, it should be sufficientlyplain that such a measure as a trade boycott could not touch the chiefoffenders, or even their responsible abettors. It would, rather, playinto the hands of the militarist interests by keeping alive the spiritof national jealousy and international hatred, out of which wars ariseand without which warlike enterprise might hopefully be expected todisappear out of the scheme of human intercourse. The punishment wouldfall, as all economic burdens and disabilities must always fall, on thecommon man, the underlying population. 

The chief relation of this common run, this underlying population ofGerman subjects, to the inception and pursuit of this Imperial warlikeenterprise, is comprised in the fact that they are an underlyingpopulation of subjects, held in usufruct by the Imperial establishmentand employed at will. It is true, they have lent themselves unreservedlyto the uses for which the dynasty has use for them, and they haveentered enthusiastically into the warlike adventure set afoot by thedynastic statesmen; but that they have done so is their misfortunerather than their fault. By use and wont and indoctrination they havefor long been unremittingly, and helplessly, disciplined into a spiritof dynastic loyalty, national animosity and servile abnegation; until itwould be nothing better than a pathetic inversion of all the equities ofthe case to visit the transgressions of their masters upon the commonrun; whose fault lies, after all, in their being an underlyingpopulation of subjects, who have not had a chance to reach thatspiritual level on which they could properly be held accountable for theuses to which they are turned. It is true, men are ordinarily punishedfor their misfortunes; but the warlike enterprise of the Imperialdynasty has already brought what might fairly be rated as a good measureof punishment on this underlying populace, whose chief fault and chiefmisfortune lies in an habitual servile abnegation of those traits ofinitiative and discretion in man that constitute him an agentsusceptible of responsibility or retribution. 

It would be all the more of a pathetic mockery to visit thetransgressions of their masters on these victims of circumstance anddynastic mendacity, since the conventionalities of international equitywill scarcely permit the high responsible parties in the case to bechastised with any penalty harsher than a well-mannered figure ofspeech. To serve as a deterrent, the penalty must strike the point wherevests the discretion; but servile use and wont is still too well intactin these premises to let any penalty touch the guilty core of aprofligate dynasty. Under the wear and tear of continued war and itsincident continued vulgarisation of the directorate and responsiblestaff among the pacific allies, the conventional respect of persons islikely to suffer appreciable dilapidation; but there need be noapprehension of such a loss of decent respect for personages as wouldcompromise the creature comforts of that high syndicate of personages onwhose initiative the Fatherland entered upon this enterprise indominion. 

Bygone shortcomings and transgressions can have no reasonable place inthe arrangements by which a pacific league of neutrals designs to keepthe peace. Neither can bygone prerogatives and precedents ofmagnificence and of mastery, except in so far as they unavoidably mustcome into play through the inability of men to divest themselves oftheir ingrained preconceptions, by virtue of which a Hohenzollern or aHapsburger is something more formidable and more to be considered than arecruiting sergeant or a purveyor of light literature. The league can doits work of pacification only by elaborately forgetting differences anddiscrepancies of the kind that give rise to international grievances. Which is the same as saying that the neutralisation of nationaldiscriminations and pretensions will have to go all the way, if it is toserve. But this implies, as broadly as need be, that the pacific nationswho make the league and provisionally administer its articles ofagreement and jurisdiction, can not exempt themselves from any of theleveling measures of neutralisation to which the dynastic suspects amongthem are to be subject. It would mean a relinquishment of all thoseundemocratic institutional survivals out of which internationalgrievances are wont to arise. As a certain Danish adage would have it, the neutrals of the league must all be shorn over the same comb. 

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What is to be shorn over this one comb of neutralisation and democracyis all those who go into the pacific league of neutrals and all who comeunder its jurisdiction, whether of their own choice or by thenecessities of the case. It is of the substance of the case that thosepeoples who have been employed in the campaigns of the German-Imperialcoalition are to come in on terms of impartial equality with those whohave held the ground against them; to come under the jurisdiction, andprospectively into the copartnery, of the league of neutrals--all on thepresumption that the Imperial coalition will be brought to make peace onterms of unconditional surrender. 

Let it not seem presumptuous to venture on a recital of summaryspecifications intended to indicate the nature of those concretemeasures which would logically be comprised in a scheme of pacificationcarried out with such a view to impartial equality among the peoples whoare to make up the projected league. There is a significant turn ofexpression that recurs habitually in the formulation of terms put forthby the spokesmen of the Entente belligerents, where it is insisted thathostilities are carried on not against the German people or the otherpeoples associated with them, but only against the Imperialestablishments and their culpable aids and abettors in the enterprise. So it is further insisted that there is no intention to bring pains andpenalties on these peoples, who so have been made use of by theirmasters, but only on the culpable master class whose tools these peopleshave been. And later, just now (January 1917), and from a responsibleand disinterested spokesman for the pacific league, there comes thedeclaration that a lasting peace at the hands of such a league can begrounded only in a present "peace without victory. "

The mutual congruity of these two declarations need not imply collusion, but they are none the less complementary propositions and they are nonethe less indicative of a common trend of convictions among the men whoare best able to speak for those pacific nations that are looked to asthe mainstay of the prospective league. They both converge to the pointthat the objective to be achieved is not victory for the Ententebelligerents but defeat for the German-Imperial coalition; that thepeoples underlying the defeated governments are not to be dealt with asvanquished enemies but as fellows in undeserved misfortune brought on bytheir culpable masters; and that no advantage is designed to be taken ofthese peoples, and no gratuitous hardship to be imposed on them. Theirmasters are evidently to be put away, not as defeated antagonists but asa public nuisance to be provided against as may seem expedient for thepeace and security of those nations whom they have been molesting. 

Taking this position as outlined, it should not be extremely difficultto forecast the general line of procedure which it would logicallydemand, --barring irrelevant regard for precedents and overheatedresentment, and provided that the makers of these peace terms have afree hand and go to their work with an eye single to the establishmentof an enduring peace. The case of Germany would be typical of all therest; and the main items of the bill in this case would seem logicallyto run somewhat as follows:

(1) The definitive elimination of the Imperial establishment, togetherwith the monarchical establishments of the several states of the Empireand the privileged classes;

(2) Removal or destruction of all warlike equipment, military and naval, defensive and offensive;

(3) Cancelment of the public debt, of the Empire and of itsmembers--creditors of the Empire being accounted accessory to theculpable enterprise of the Imperial government;

(4) Confiscation of such industrial equipment and resources as havecontributed to the carrying on of the war, as being also accessory;

(5) Assumption by the league at large of all debts incurred, by theEntente belligerents or by neutrals, for the prosecution or by reason ofthe war, and distribution of the obligation so assumed, impartiallyamong the members of the league, including the peoples of the defeatednations;

(6) Indemnification for all injury done to civilians in the invadedterritories; the means for such indemnification to be procured byconfiscation of all estates in the defeated countries exceeding acertain very modest maximum, calculated on the average of propertyowned, say, by the poorer three-fourths of the population, --the keptclasses being properly accounted accessory to the Empire's culpableenterprise. 

The proposition to let the war debt be shared by all members of theleague on a footing of impartial equality may seem novel, and perhapsextravagant. But all projects put forth for safeguarding the world'speace by a compact among the pacific nations run on the patent, thoughoften tacit, avowal that the Entente belligerents are spending theirsubstance and pledging their credit for the common cause. Among theAmericans, the chief of the neutral nations, this is coming to berecognised more and more overtly. So that, in this instance at least, noinsurmountable reluctance to take over their due share of the commonburden should fairly be looked for, particularly when it appears thatthe projected league, if it is organised on a footing of neutrality, will relieve the republic of virtually all outlay for their own defense. 

Of course, there is, in all this, no temerarious intention to offeradvice as to what should be done by those who have it to do, or even tosketch the necessary course which events are bound to take. As has beenremarked in another passage, that would have to be a work of prophesy orof effrontery, both of which, it is hoped, lie equally beyond thehorizon of this inquiry; which is occupied with the question of whatconditions will logically have to be met in order to an enduring peace, not what will be the nature and outcome of negotiations entered into byastute delegates pursuing the special advantage, each of his own nation. And yet the peremptory need of reaching some practicable arrangementwhereby the peace may be kept, goes to say that even the most astutenegotiations will in some degree be controlled by that need, and mayreasonably be expected to make some approach to the simple and obviousrequirements of the situation. 

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Therefore the argument returns to the United Kingdom and the probablelimit of tolerance of that people, in respect of what they are likely toinsist on as a necessary measure of democratisation in the nations ofthe second part, and what measure of national abnegation they are likelyto accommodate themselves to. The United Kingdom is indispensable to theformation of a pacific league of neutrals. And the British terms ofadhesion, or rather of initiation of such a league, therefore, will haveto constitute the core of the structure, on which details may beadjusted and to which concessive adjustments will have to be made by allthe rest. This is not saying that the projected league must or will bedominated by the United Kingdom or administered in the British interest. Indeed, it can not well be made to serve British particular interests inany appreciable degree, except at the cost of defeat to its mainpurpose; since the purposes of an enduring peace can be served only byan effectual neutralisation of national claims and interests. But itwould mean that the neutralisation of national interests anddiscriminations to be effected would have to be drawn on linesacceptable to British taste in these matters, and would have to goapproximately so far as would be dictated by the British notions of whatis expedient, and not much farther. The pacific league of neutrals wouldhave much of a British air, but "British" in this connection is to betaken as connoting the English-speaking countries rather than asapplying to the United Kingdom alone; since the entrance of the Britishinto the league would involve the entrance of the British colonies, and, indeed, of the American republic as well. 

The temper and outlook of this British community, therefore, becomes amatter of paramount importance in any attempted analysis of thesituation resulting after the war, or of any prospective course ofconduct to be entered on by the pacific nations. And the questiontouches not so much the temper and preconceptions of the Britishcommunity as known in recent history, but rather as it is likely to bemodified by the war experience. So that the practicability of a neutralleague comes to turn, in great measure, on the effect which this warexperience is having on the habits of thought of the British people, oron that section of the British population which will make up theeffectual majority when the war closes. The grave interest that attachesto this question must serve as justification for pursuing it farther, even though there can be no promise of a definite or confident answer tobe found beforehand. 

Certain general assertions may be made with some confidence. Theexperiences of the war, particularly among the immediate participantsand among their immediate domestic connections--a large and increasingproportion of the people at large--are plainly impressing on them theuselessness and hardship of such a war. There can be no question butthey are reaching a conviction that a war of this modern kind and scaleis a thing to be avoided if possible. They are, no doubt, willing to goto very considerable lengths to make a repetition of it impossible, andthey may reasonably be expected to go farther along that line beforepeace returns. But the lengths to which they are ready to go may be inthe way of concessions, or in the way of contest and compulsion. Thereneed be no doubt but a profound and vindictive resentment runs throughthe British community, and there is no reason to apprehend that thiswill be dissipated in the course of further hostilities; although itshould fairly be expected to lose something of its earlier exuberantmalevolence and indiscrimination, more particularly if hostilitiescontinue for some time. It is not too much to expect, that this populartemper of resentment will demand something very tangible in the way ofsummary vengeance on those who have brought the hardships of war uponthe nation. 

The manner of retribution which would meet the popular demand for"justice" to be done on the enemy is likely to be affected by thefortunes of war, as also the incidence of it. Should the governmentalestablishment and the discretion still vest in the gentlemanly classesat the close of hostilities, the retribution is likely to take theaccustomed gentlemanly shape of pecuniary burdens imposed on the peopleof the defeated country, together with diplomatically specifiedsurrender of territorial and colonial possessions, and the like; such asto leave the _de facto_ enemy courteously on one side, and to yieldsomething in the way of pecuniary benefit to the gentlemen-investors incharge, and something more in the way of new emoluments of office to theoffice-holding class included in the same order of gentlemen. Theretribution in the case would manifestly fall on the underlyingpopulation in the defeated country, without seriously touching theresponsible parties, and would leave the defeated nation with a newgrievance to nourish its patriotic animosity and with a new incentiveto a policy of watchful waiting for a chance of retaliation. 

But it is to be noted that under the stress of the war there is goingforward in the British community a progressive displacement ofgentlemanly standards and official procedure by standards and procedureof a visibly underbred character, a weakening of the hold of thegentlemanly classes on the control of affairs and a weakening of thehold which the sacred rights of property, investment and privilege havelong had over the imagination of the British people. Should hostilitiescontinue, and should the exigencies of the war situation continue tokeep the futility of these sacred rights, as well as the fatuity oftheir possessors, in the public eye, after the same fashion as hitherto, it would not be altogether unreasonable to expect that the discretionwould pass into the hands of the underbred, or into the hands of menimmediately and urgently accountable to the underbred. In such a case, and with a constantly growing popular realisation that the directorateand responsible enemy in the war is the Imperial dynasty and itspedigreed aids and abettors, it is conceivable that the popularresentment would converge so effectually on these responsibleinstigators and directors of misfortune as to bring the incidence of therequired retribution effectually to bear on them. The outcome might, notinconceivably, be the virtual erasure of the Imperial dynasty, togetherwith the pedigreed-class rule on which it rests and the apparatus ofirresponsible coercion through which it works, in the Fatherland and inits subsidiaries and dependencies. 

With a sufficiently urgent realisation of their need of peace andsecurity, and with a realisation also that the way to avoid war is toavoid the ways and means of international jealousy and of the nationaldiscriminations out of which international jealousy grows, it isconceivable that a government which should reflect the British temperand the British hopes might go so far in insisting on a neutralisationof the peoples of the Fatherland as would leave them without thedynastic apparatus with which warlike enterprise is set afoot, and soleave them also perforce in a pacific frame of mind. In time, in theabsence of their dearly beloved leavings of feudalism, an enforcedreliance on their own discretion and initiative, and an enforced respitefrom the rant and prance of warlike swagger, would reasonably beexpected to grow into a popular habit. The German people are by no meansless capable of tolerance and neighbourly decorum than their British orScandinavian neighbours of the same blood, --if they can only be left totheir own devices, untroubled by the maggoty conceit of nationaldomination. 

There is no intention herewith to express an expectation that thisout-and-out neutralisation of the Fatherland's international relationsand of its dynastic government will come to pass on the return of peace, or that the German people will, as a precaution against recurrentImperial rabies, be organised on a democratic pattern by constraint ofthe pacific nations of the league. The point is only that this measureof neutralisation appears to be the necessary condition, in the absenceof which no such neutral league can succeed, and that so long as the wargoes on there is something of a chance that the British community may intime reach a frame of mind combining such settled determination tosafeguard the peace at all costs, with such a degree of disregard foroutworn conventions, that their spokesmen in the negotiations may pushthe neutralisation of these peoples to that length. 

The achievement of such an outcome would evidently take time as well asharsh experience, more time and harsher experience, perhaps, than onelikes to contemplate. 

Most men, therefore, would scarcely rate the chance of such an outcomeat all high. And yet it is to be called to mind that the war has lastedlong and the effect of its demands and its experience has already gonefar, and that the longer it lasts the greater are the chances of itsprolongation and of its continued hardships, at least to the extent thatwith every month of war that passes the prospect of the allied nationsmaking peace on any terms short of unconditional surrender grows less. And unconditional surrender is the first step in the direction of anunconditional dispossession of the Imperial establishment and its warprophets, --depending primarily on the state of mind of the Britishpeople at the time. And however unlikely, it is also always possible, assome contend, that in the course of further war experience the commonman in the Fatherland may come to reflect on the use and value of theImperial establishment, with the result of discarding and disowning itand all its works. Such an expectation would doubtless underrate theforce of ancient habit, and would also involve a misapprehension of thepsychological incidence of a warlike experience. The German people havesubstantially none of those preconceptions of independence andself-direction to go on, in the absence of which an effectual revulsionagainst dynastic rule can not come to pass. 

Embedded in the common sense of the British population at large is acertain large and somewhat sullen sense of fair dealing. In this theyare not greatly different from their neighbours, if at all, except thatthe body of common sense in which this British sense of fair dealinglies embedded is a maturer fashion of common sense than that whichserves to guide the workday life of many of their neighbours. And thematurity in question appears to be chiefly a matter of their havingunlearned, divested themselves of, or been by force of disuse divestedof, an exceptionally large proportion of that burden of untowardconceits which western Europe, and more particularly middle Europe, atlarge has carried over from the Middle Ages. They have had time andoccasion to forget more of what the exigencies of modern life make itexpedient to have forgotten. And yet they are reputed slow, conservative. But they have been well placed for losing much of whatwould be well lost. 

Among other things, their preconception of national animosity is notsecure, in the absence of provocation. They are now again in a positionto learn to do without some of the useless legacy out of thepast, --useless, that is, for life as it runs today, however it may berated in the setting in which it was all placed in that past out ofwhich it has come. And the question is whether now, under the pressureof exigencies that make for a disestablishment of much cumbersomeinherited apparatus for doing what need not be done, they will be ruledby their sense of expediency and of fair dealing to the extent ofcancelling out of their own scheme of life so much of this legacy ofconventional preconceptions as has now come visibly to hinder their ownmaterial well-being, and at the same time to defeat that peace andsecurity for which they have shown themselves willing to fight. It is, of course, a simpler matter to fight than it is to put away apreconceived, even if it is a bootless, superstition; as, e. G. , theprestige of hereditary wealth, hereditary gentility, nationalvainglory, and perhaps especially national hatred. But if the school ishard enough and the discipline protracted enough there is no reason inthe nature of things why the common run of the British people should notunlearn these futilities that once were the substance of things under anolder and outworn order. They have already shown their capacity fordivesting themselves of outworn institutional bonds, in discarding themain substance of dynastic rule; and when they now come to face theexigencies of this new situation it should cause no great surprise ifthey are able to see their way to do what further is necessary to meetthese exigencies. 

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At the hands of this British commonwealth the new situation requires theputting away of the German Imperial establishment and the militarycaste; the reduction of the German peoples to a footing of unreserveddemocracy with sufficient guarantees against national tradediscriminations; surrender of all British tutelage over outlyingpossessions, except what may go to guarantee their local autonomy;cancelment of all extra-territorial pretensions of the several nationsentering into the league; neutralisation of the several nationalestablishments, to comprise virtual disarmament, as well as cancelmentof all restrictions on trade and of all national defense ofextra-territorial pecuniary claims and interests on the part ofindividual citizens. The naval control of the seas will best be left inBritish hands. No people has a graver or more immediate interest in thefreedom and security of the sea-borne trade; and the United Kingdom hasshown that it is to be trusted in that matter. And then it may well bethat neither the national pride nor the apprehensions of the Britishpeople would allow them to surrender it; whereas, if the league is tobe formed it will have to be on terms to which the British people arewilling to adhere. A certain provision of armed force will also beneeded to keep the governments of unneutral nations in check, --and forthe purpose in hand all effectively monarchical countries are to becounted as congenitally unneutral, whatever their formal professions andwhether they are members of the league or not. Here again it willprobably appear that the people of the United Kingdom, and of theEnglish-speaking countries at large, will not consent to this armedforce and its discretionary use passing out of British hands, or ratherout of French-British hands; and here again the practical decision willhave to wait on the choice of the British people, all the more becausethe British community has no longer an interest, real or fancied, in thecoercive use of this force for their own particular ends. No other poweris to be trusted, except France, and France is less well placed for thepurpose and would assuredly also not covet so invidious an honour and sothankless an office. 

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The theory, i. E. The logical necessities, of such a pacific league ofneutral nations is simple enough, in its elements. War is to be avoidedby a policy of avoidance. Which signifies that the means and the motivesto warlike enterprise and warlike provocation are to be put away, so faras may be. If what may be, in this respect, does not come up to therequirements of the case, the experiment, of course, will fail. Thepreliminary requirement, --elimination of the one formidable dynasticState in Europe, --has been spoken of. Its counterpart in the Far Eastwill cease to be formidable on the decease of its natural ally inCentral Europe, in so far as touches the case of such a projectedleague. The ever increasingly dubious empire of the Czar would appear tofall in the same category. So that the pacific league's fortunes wouldseem to turn on what may be called its domestic or internalarrangements. 

Now, the means of warlike enterprise, as well as of unadvisedembroilment, is always in the last analysis the patriotic spirit of thenation. Given this patriotic spirit in sufficient measure, both thematerial equipment and the provocation to hostilities will easily befound. It should accordingly appear to be the first care of such apacific league to reduce the sources of patriotic incitement to thepracticable minimum. This can be done, in such measure as it can be doneat all, by neutralisation of national pretensions. The finished outcomein this respect, such as would assure perpetual peace among the peoplesconcerned, would of course be an unconditional neutralisation ofcitizenship, as has already been indicated before. The question which, in effect, the spokesmen for a pacific league have to face is as to hownearly that outcome can be brought to pass. The rest of what they mayundertake, or may come to by way of compromise and stipulation, isrelatively immaterial and of relatively transient consequence. 

A neutralisation of citizenship has of course been afloat in a somewhatloose way in the projects of socialistic and other "undesirable"agitators, but nothing much has come of it. Nor have specific projectsfor its realisation been set afoot. That anything conclusive along thatline could now be reached would seem extremely doubtful, in view of theardent patriotic temper of all these peoples, heightened just now by theexperience of war. Still, an undesigned and unguided drift in thatdirection has been visible in all those nations that are accounted thevanguard among modern civilised peoples, ever since the dynastic ruleamong them began to be displaced by a growth of "free" institutions, that is to say institutions resting on an accepted ground ofinsubordination and free initiative. 

The patriotism of these peoples, or their national spirit, is after alland at the best an attenuated and impersonalised remnant of dynasticloyalty, and it amounts after all, in effect, to nothing much else thana residual curtailment or partial atrophy of that democratic habit ofmind that embodies itself in the formula: Live and let live. It is, nodoubt, both an ancient and a very meritorious habit. It is easilyacquired and hard to put away. The patriotic spirit and the nationallife (prestige) on which it centers are the subject of untiring eulogy;but hitherto its encomiasts have shown no cause and put forward no claimto believe that it all is of any slightest use for any purpose that doesnot take it and its paramount merit for granted. It is doubtless a verymeritorious habit; at least so they all say. But under the circumstancesof modern civilised life it is fruitful of no other net material resultthan damage and discomfort. Still it is virtually ubiquitous amongcivilised men, and in an admirable state of repair; and for thecalculable future it is doubtless to be counted in as an enduringobstacle to a conclusive peace, a constant source of anxiety andunremitting care. 

The motives that work out through this national spirit, by use of thispatriotic ardor, fall under two heads: dynastic ambition, and businessenterprise. The two categories have the common trait that neither theone nor the other comprises anything that is of the slightest materialbenefit to the community at large; but both have at the same time ahigh prestige value in the conventional esteem of modern men. Therelation of dynastic ambition to warlike enterprise, and the uses ofthat usufruct of the nation's resources and man-power which the nation'spatriotism places at the disposal of the dynastic establishment, havealready been spoken of at length above, perhaps at excessive length, inthe recurrent discussion of the dynastic State and its quest of dominionfor dominion's sake. What measures are necessary to be taken as regardsthe formidable dynastic States that threaten the peace, have also beenoutlined, perhaps with excessive freedom. 

But it remains to call attention to that mitigated form of dynastic rulecalled a constitutional monarchy. Instances of such a constitutionalmonarchy, designed to conserve the well-beloved abuses of dynastic ruleunder a cover of democratic formalities, or to bring in effectualdemocratic insubordination under cover of the ancient dignities of anoutworn monarchical system, --the characterisation may run either wayaccording to the fancy of the speaker, and to much the same practicaleffect in either case, --instances illustrative of this compromisemonarchy at work today are to be had, as felicitously as anywhere, inthe Balkan states; perhaps the case of Greece will be especiallyinstructive. At the other, and far, end of the line will be found suchother typical instances as the British, the Dutch, or, in pathetic anddroll miniature, the Norwegian. 

There is, of course, a wide interval between the grotesque effronterythat wears the Hellenic crown and the undeviatingly decorousself-effacement of the Dutch sovereign; and yet there is something of acommon complexion runs through the whole range of establishments, allthe way from the quasi-dynastic to the pseudo-dynastic. For reasonsunavoidable and persistent, though not inscribed in the constituent law, the governmental establishment associated with such a royal concern willbe made up of persons drawn from the kept classes, the nobility orlesser gentlefolk, and will be imbued with the spirit of these "better"classes rather than that of the common run. 

With what may be uncanny shrewdness, or perhaps mere tropismaticresponse to the unreasoned stimulus of a "consciousness of kind, " theBritish government--habitually a syndicate of gentlefolk--has uniformlyinsisted on the installation of a constitutional monarchy at theformation of every new national organisation in which that governmenthas had a discretionary voice. And the many and various constitutionalgovernments so established, commonly under British auspices in somedegree, have invariably run true to form, in some appreciable degree. They may be quasi-dynastic or pseudo-dynastic, but at this nearestapproach to democracy they always, and unavoidably, include at least acircumlocution office of gentlefolk, in the way of a ministry and courtestablishment, whose place in the economy of the nation's affairs it isto adapt the run of these affairs to the needs of the kept classes. 

There need be no imputation of sinister designs to these gentlefolk, whoso are elected by force of circumstances to guard and guide the nation'sinterests. As things go, it will doubtless commonly be found that theyare as well-intentioned as need be. But a well-meaning gentleman of goodantecedents means well in a gentlemanly way and in the light of goodantecedents. Which comes unavoidably to an effectual bias in favor ofthose interests which honorable gentlemen of good antecedents have atheart. And among these interests are the interests of the kept classes, as contrasted with that common run of the population from which theirkeep is drawn. 

Under the auspices, even if they are only the histrionic and decorativeauspices, of so decorous an article of institutional furniture asroyalty, it follows of logical necessity that the personnel of theeffectual government must also be drawn from the better classes, whoseplace and station and high repute will make their association with theFirst Gentleman of the Realm not too insufferably incongruous. And then, the popular habit of looking up to this First Gentleman with thatdeference that royalty commands, also conduces materially to theattendant habitual attitude of deference to gentility more at large. 

Even in so democratic a country, and with so exanimate a crown as is tobe found in the United Kingdom, the royal establishment visibly, anddoubtless very materially, conduces to the continued tenure of theeffectual government by representatives of the kept classes; and ittherefore counts with large effect toward the retardation of thecountry's further move in the direction of democratic insubordinationand direct participation in the direction of affairs by the underbred, who finally pay the cost. And on the other hand, even so moderatelyroyal an establishment as the Norwegian has apparently a sensible effectin the way of gathering the reins somewhat into the hands of the betterclasses, under circumstances of such meagerness as might be expected topreclude anything like a "better" class, in the conventional acceptationof that term. It would appear that even the extreme of pseudo-dynasticroyalty, sterilised to the last degree, is something of an effectualhindrance to democratic rule, and in so far also a hindrance to thefurther continued neutralisation of nationalist pretensions, as also aneffectual furtherance of upper-class rule for upper-class ends. 

Now, a government by well-meaning gentlemen-investors will, at thenearest, come no nearer representing the material needs and interests ofthe common run than a parable comes to representing the concrete factswhich it hopes to illuminate. And as bears immediately on the point inhand, these gentlemanly administrators of the nation's affairs who socluster about the throne, vacant though it may be of all but the bodilypresence of majesty, are after all gentlemen, with a gentlemanly senseof punctilio touching the large proprieties and courtesies of politicallife. The national honor is a matter of punctilio, always; and out ofthe formal exigencies of the national honor arise grievances to beredressed; and it is grievances of this character that commonly affordthe formal ground of a breach of the peace. An appeal on patrioticgrounds of wounded national pride, to the common run who have no trainedsense of punctilio, by the gentlemanly responsible class who have such asense, backed by assurances that the national prestige or the nationalinterests are at stake, will commonly bring a suitable response. It isscarcely necessary that the common run should know just what the stir isabout, so long as they are informed by their trusted betters that thereis a grievance to redress. In effect, it results that the democraticnation's affairs are administered by a syndicate composed of the leastdemocratic class in the population. 

Excepting what is to be excepted, it will commonly hold true today thatthese gentlemanly governments are conducted in a commendably clean andupright fashion, with a conscious rectitude and a benevolent intention. But they are after all, in effect, class governments, and theyunavoidably carry the bias of their class. The gentlemanly officials andlaw-givers come, in the main, from the kept classes, whose living comesto them in the way of income from investments, at home or in foreignparts, or from an equivalent source of accumulated wealth or officialemolument. The bias resulting from this state of the case need not be ofan intolerant character in order to bring its modicum of mischief intothe national policy, as regards amicable relations with othernationalities. A slight bias running on a ground of conscious right andunbroken usage may go far. So, e. G. , anyone of these gentlemanlygovernments is within its legitimate rights, or rather within itsimperative duty, in defending the foreign investments of its citizensand enforcing due payment of its citizens' claims to income or principalof such property as they may hold in foreign parts; and it is within itsordinary lines of duty in making use of the nation's resources--that isto say of the common man and his means of livelihood--in enforcing suchclaims held by the investing classes. The community at large has nointerest in the enforcement of such claims; it is evidently a classinterest, and as evidently protected by a code of rights, duties andprocedure that has grown out of a class bias, at the cost of thecommunity at large. 

This bias favoring the interests of invested wealth may also, and indeedit commonly does, take the aggressive form of aggressively forwardingenterprise in investment abroad, particularly in commercially backwardcountries abroad, by extension of the national jurisdiction and theactive countenancing of concessions in foreign parts, by subventions, or by creation of offices to bring suitable emoluments to the youngersons of deserving families. The protective tariffs to which recourse issometimes had, are of the same general nature and purpose. Of course, itis in this latter, aggressive or excursive, issue of the well-to-do biasin favor of investment and invested wealth that its most perniciouseffect on international relations is traceable. 

Free income, that is to say income not dependent on personal merit orexertion of any kind, is the breath of life to the kept classes; and asa corollary of the "First Law of Nature, " therefore, the invested wealthwhich gives a legally equitable claim to such income has in their eyesall the sanctity that can be given by Natural Right. Investment--oftenspoken of euphemistically as "savings"--is consequently a meritoriousact, conceived to be very serviceable to the community at large, andproperly to be furthered by all available means. Invested wealth is somuch added to the aggregate means at the community's disposal, it isbelieved. Of course, in point of fact, income from investment in thehands of these gentlefolk is a means of tracelessly consuming that muchof the community's yearly product; but to the kept classes, who see thematter from the point of view of the recipient, the matter does notpresent itself in that light. To them it is the breath of life. Likeother honorable men they are faithful to their bread; and by authentictradition the common man, in whose disciplined preconceptions the keptclasses are his indispensable betters, is also imbued with theuncritical faith that the invested wealth which enables these betterstracelessly to consume a due share of the yearly product is an additionto the aggregate means in hand. 

The advancement of commercial and other business enterprise beyond thenational frontiers is consequently one of the duties not to beneglected, and with which no trifling can be tolerated. It is so boundup with national ideals, under any gentlemanly government, that anyinvasion or evasion of the rights of investors in foreign parts, or ofother business involved in dealings with foreign parts, immediatelyinvolves not only the material interest of the nation but the nationalhonour as well. Hence international jealousies and eventual embroilment. 

The constitutional monarchy that commonly covers a modern democraticcommunity is accordingly a menace to the common peace, and any pacificleague of neutrals will be laying up trouble and prospective defeat foritself in allowing such an institution to stand over in any instance. Acting with a free hand, if such a thing were possible, the projectedleague should logically eliminate all monarchical establishments, constitutional or otherwise, from among its federated nations. It isdoubtless not within reason to look for such a move in the negotiationsthat are to initiate the projected league of neutrals; but the point iscalled to mind here chiefly as indicating one of the difficult passageswhich are to be faced in any attempted formation of such a league, aswell as one of the abiding sources of international irritation withwhich the league's jurisdiction will be burdened so long as a decisivemeasure of the kind is not taken. 

The logic of the whole matter is simple enough, and the necessarymeasures to be taken to remedy it are no less simple--barringsentimental objections which will probably prove insuperable. Amonarchy, even a sufficiently inane monarchy, carries the burden of agentlemanly governmental establishment--a government by and for thekept classes; such a government will unavoidably direct the affairs ofstate with a view to income on invested wealth, and will see thematerial interests of the country only in so far as they presentthemselves under the form of investment and business enterprise designedto eventuate in investment; these are the only forms of materialinterest that give rise to international jealousies, discriminations andmisunderstanding, at the same time that they are interests ofindividuals only and have no material use or value to the community atlarge. Given a monarchical establishment and the concomitant gentlemanlygovernmental corps, there is no avoiding this sinister prime mover ofinternational rivalry, so long as the rights of invested wealth continuein popular apprehension to be held inviolable. 

Quite obviously there is a certain _tu quoque_ ready to the hand ofthese "gentlemen of the old school" who see in the constitutionalmonarchy a God-given shelter from the unreserved vulgarisation of lifeat the hands of the unblest and unbalanced underbred and underfed. Theformally democratic nations, that have not retained even apseudo-dynastic royalty, are not much more fortunately placed in respectof national discrimination in trade and investment. The Americanrepublic will obviously come into the comparison as the type-form ofeconomic policy in a democratic commonwealth. There is little to choosebetween the economic policy pursued by such republics as France orAmerica on the one side and their nearest counterparts among theconstitutional monarchies on the other. It is even to be admitted out ofhand that the comparison does no credit to democratic institutions asseen at work in these republics. They are, in fact, somewhat the crudestand most singularly foolish in their economic policy of any peoples inChristendom. And in view of the amazing facility with which thesedemocratic commonwealths are always ready to delude themselves ineverything that touches their national trade policies, it is obviousthat any league of neutrals whose fortunes are in any degree contingenton their reasonable compliance with a call to neutralise their traderegulations for the sake of peace, will have need of all the persuasivepower it can bring to bear. 

However, the powers of darkness have one less line of defense to shelterthem and their work of malversation in these commonwealths than in theconstitutional monarchies. The American national establishment, e. G. , which may be taken as a fairly characteristic type-form in this bearing, is a government of businessmen for business ends; and there is no tabuof axiomatic gentility or of certified pedigree to hedge about thisworking syndicate of business interests. So that it is all nearer by oneremove to the disintegrating touch of the common man and his commonplacecircumstances. The businesslike régime of these democratic politiciansis as undeviating in its advocacy and aid of enterprise in pursuit ofprivate gain under shelter of national discrimination as thecircumstances will permit; and the circumstances will permit them to domuch and go far; for the limits of popular gullibility in all thingsthat touch the admirable feats of business enterprise are very wide inthese countries. There is a sentimental popular belief running to thecurious effect that because the citizens of such a commonwealth areungraded equals before the law, therefore somehow they can all andseveral become wealthy by trading at the expense of their neighbours. 

Yet, the fact remains that there is only the one line of defense inthese countries where the business interests have not the countenance ofa time-honored order of gentlefolk, with the sanction of royalty in thebackground. And this fact is further enhanced by one of its immediateconsequences. Proceeding upon the abounding faith which these peopleshave in business enterprise as a universal solvent, the unreservedvenality and greed of their businessmen--unhampered by the gentleman's_noblesse oblige_--have pushed the conversion of public law to privategain farther and more openly here than elsewhere. The outcome has beendivers measures in restraint of trade or in furtherance of profitableabuses, of such a crass and flagrant character that if once the popularapprehension is touched by matter-of-fact reflection on the actualitiesof this businesslike policy the whole structure should reasonably beexpected to crumble. If the present conjuncture of circumstances should, e. G. , present to the American populace a choice between exclusion fromthe neutral league, and a consequent probable and dubious war ofself-defense, on the one hand; as against entrance into the league, andsecurity at the cost of relinquishing their national tariff in restraintof trade, on the other hand, it is always possible that the people mightbe brought to look their protective tariff in the face and recognise itfor a commonplace conspiracy in restraint of trade, and so decide toshuffle it out of the way as a good riddance. And the rest of theRepublic's businesslike policy of special favors would in such a casestand a chance of going in the discard along with the protective tariff, since the rest is of substantially the same disingenuous character. 

Not that anyone need entertain a confident expectation of such anexploit of common sense on the part of the American voters. There islittle encouragement for such a hope in their past career of gullibilityon this head. But this is again a point of difficulty to be faced innegotiations looking to such a pacific league of neutrals. Without asomewhat comprehensive neutralisation of national trade regulations, theoutlook for lasting peace would be reduced by that much; there would beso much material for international jealousy and misunderstanding leftstanding over and requiring continued readjustment and compromise, always with the contingency of a breach that much nearer. Theinfatuation of the Americans with their protective tariff and otherbusinesslike discriminations is a sufficiently serious matter in thisconnection, and it is always possible that their inability to give upthis superstition might lead to their not adhering to this projectedneutral league. Yet it is at least to be said that the longer the timethat passes before active measures are taken toward the organisation ofsuch a league--that is to say, in effect, the longer the great warlasts--the more amenable is the temper of the Americans likely to be, and the more reluctantly would they see themselves excluded. Should thewar be protracted to some such length as appears to be promised bylatterday pronunciamentos from the belligerents, or to somethingpassably approaching such a duration; and should the Imperial designsand anomalous diplomacy of Japan continue to force themselves on thepopular attention at the present rate; at the same time that theoperations in Europe continue to demonstrate the excessive cost ofdefense against a well devised and resolute offensive; then it shouldreasonably be expected that the Americans might come to such arealisation of their own case as to let no minor considerations of tradediscrimination stand in the way of their making common cause with theother pacific nations. 

It appears already to be realised in the most responsible quarter thatAmerica needs the succor of the other pacific nations, with a need thatis not to be put away or put off; as it is also coming to be realisedthat the Imperial Powers are disturbers of the peace, by force of theirImperial character. Of course, the politicians who seek their ownadvantage in the nation's embarrassment are commonly unable to see thematter in that light. But it is also apparent that the popular sentimentis affected with the same apprehension, more and more as time passes andthe aims and methods of the Imperial Powers become more patent. 

Hitherto the spokesmen of a pacific federation of nations have spokenfor a league of such an (indeterminate) constitution as to leave all thefederated nations undisturbed in all their conduct of their own affairs, domestic or international; probably for want of second thought as to thecomplications of copartnership between them in so grave and unwonted anenterprise. They have also spoken of America's share in the project asbeing that of an interested outsider, whose interest in anyprecautionary measures of this kind is in part a regard for his owntranquility as a disinterested neighbour, but in greater part a humanesolicitude for the well-being of civilised mankind at large. In thisview, somewhat self-complacent it is to be admitted, America isconceived to come into the case as initiator and guide, about whom thepacific nations are to cluster as some sort of queen-bee. 

Now, there is not a little verisimilitude in this conception of Americaas a sort of central office and a tower of strength in the projectedfederation of neutral nations, however pharisaical an appearance it mayall have in the self-complacent utterances of patriotic Americans. TheAmerican republic is, after all, the greatest of the pacific nations ofChristendom, in resources, population and industrial capacity; and it isalso not to be denied that the temper of this large population is, onthe whole, as pacific as that of any considerable people--outside ofChina. The adherence of the American republic would, in effect, doublethe mass and powers of the projected league, and would so place itbeyond all hazard of defeat from without, or even of serious outsideopposition to its aims. 

Yet it will not hold true that America is either disinterested orindispensable. The unenviable position of the indispensable belongs tothe United Kingdom, and carries with it the customary suspicion ofinterested motives that attaches to the stronger party in a bargain. ToAmerica, on the other hand, the league is indispensable, as a refugefrom otherwise inevitable dangers ahead; and it is only a question of amoderate allowance of time for the American voters to realise thatwithout an adequate copartnership with the other pacific nations theoutlook of the Republic is altogether precarious. Single-handed, Americacan not defend itself, except at a prohibitive cost; whereas incopartnership with these others the national defense becomes a virtuallynegligible matter. It is for America a choice between a policy ofextravagant armament and aggressive diplomacy, with a doubtful issue, onthe one side, and such abatement of national pretensions as wouldobviate bootless contention, on the other side. 

Yet, it must be admitted, the patriotic temper of the American people isof such a susceptible kind as to leave the issue in doubt. Not that theAmericans will not endeavor to initiate some form of compact for thekeeping of the peace, when hostilities are concluded; barring unforeseencontingencies, it is virtually a foregone conclusion that the attemptwill be made, and that the Americans will take an active part in itspromotion. But the doubt is as to their taking such a course as willlead to a compact of the kind needed to safeguard the peace of thecountry. The business interests have much to say in the counsels of theAmericans, and these business interests look to short-termgains--American business interests particularly--to be derived from thecountry's necessities. It is likely to appear that the businessinterests, through representatives in Congress and elsewhere, willdisapprove of any peace compact that does not involve an increase of thenational armament and a prospective demand for munitions and anincreased expenditure of the national funds. 

With or without the adherence of America, the pacific nations of Europewill doubtless endeavour to form a league or alliance designed to keepthe peace. If America does not come into the arrangement it may wellcome to nothing much more than a further continued defensive alliance ofthe belligerent nations now opposed to the German coalition. In any caseit is still a point in doubt whether the league so projected is to bemerely a compact of defensive armament against a common enemy--in whichcase it will necessarily be transient, perhaps ephemeral--or a moreinclusive coalition of a closer character designed to avoid any breachof the peace, by disarmament and by disallowance and disclaimer of suchnational pretensions and punctilio as the patriotic sentiment of thecontracting parties will consent to dispense with. The nature of theresulting peace, therefore, as well as its chances of duration, will ingreat measure be conditioned on the fashion of peace-compact on which itis to rest; which will be conditioned in good part on the degree inwhich the warlike coalition under German Imperial control is effectuallyto be eliminated from the situation as a prospective disturber of thepeace; which, in turn, is a question somewhat closely bound up with thefurther duration of the war, as has already been indicated in an earlierpassage. 

CHAPTER VII

PEACE AND THE PRICE SYSTEM

Evidently the conception of peace on which its various spokesmen areproceeding is by no means the same for all of them. In the currentGerman conception, e. G. , as seen in the utterances of its many andurgent spokesmen, peace appears to be of the general nature of a trucebetween nations, whose God-given destiny it is, in time, to adjust aclaim to precedence by wager of battle. They will sometimes speak of it, euphemistically, with a view to conciliation, as "assurance of thenational future, " in which the national future is taken to mean anopportunity for the extension of the national dominion at the expense ofsome other national establishment. In the same connection one may recallthe many eloquent passages on the State and its paramount place andvalue in the human economy. The State is useful for disturbing thepeace. This German notion may confidently be set down as the lowest ofthe current conceptions of peace; or perhaps rather as the notion ofpeace reduced to the lowest terms at which it continues to berecognisable as such. Next beyond in that direction lies the notion ofarmistice; which differs from this conception of peace chiefly inconnoting specifically a definite and relatively short interval betweenwarlike operations. 

The conception of peace as being a period of preparation for war hasmany adherents outside the Fatherland, of course. Indeed, it hasprobably a wider vogue and a readier acceptance among men who interestthemselves in questions of peace and war than any other. It goes hand inhand with that militant nationalism that is taken for granted, conventionally, as the common ground of those international relationsthat play a part in diplomatic intercourse. It is the diplomatist's_métier_ to talk war in parables of peace. This conception of peace as aprecarious interval of preparation has come down to the present out ofthe feudal age and is, of course, best at home where the feudal range ofpreconceptions has suffered least dilapidation; and it carries thefeudalistic presumption that all national establishments are competitorsfor dominion, after the scheme of Macchiavelli. The peace which is hadon this footing, within the realm, is a peace of subjection, more orless pronounced according as the given national establishment is more orless on the militant order; a warlike organisation being necessarily ofa servile character, in the same measure in which it is warlike. 

In much the same measure and with much the same limitations as themodern democratic nations have departed from the feudal system of civilrelations and from the peculiar range of conceptions which characterisethat system, they have also come in for a new or revised conception ofpeace. Instead of its being valued chiefly as a space of time in whichto prepare for war, offensive or defensive, among these democratic andprovisionally pacific nations it has come to stand in the commonestimation as the normal and stable manner of life, good and commendablein its own right. These modern, pacific, commonwealths stand on thedefensive, habitually. They are still pugnaciously national, but theyhave unlearned so much of the feudal preconceptions as to leave them ina defensive attitude, under the watch-word: Peace with honour. Theirquasi-feudalistic national prestige is not to be trifled with, though ithas lost so much of its fascination as ordinarily not to serve thepurposes of an aggressive enterprise, at least not without some shrewdsophistication at the hands of militant politicians and their diplomaticagents. Of course, an exuberant patriotism may now and again take on theancient barbarian vehemence and lead such a provisionally pacific nationinto an aggressive raid against a helpless neighbour; but it remainscharacteristically true, after all, that these peoples look on thecountry's peace as the normal and ordinary course of things, which eachnation is to take care of for itself and by its own force. 

The ideal of the nineteenth-century statesmen was to keep the peace by abalance of power; an unstable equilibrium of rivalries, in which it wasrecognised that eternal vigilance was the price of peace byequilibration. Since then, by force of the object-lesson of thetwentieth-century wars, it has become evident that eternal vigilancewill no longer keep the peace by equilibration, and the balance of powerhas become obsolete. At the same time things have so turned that aneffective majority of the civilised nations now see their advantage inpeace, without further opportunity to seek further dominion. Thesenations have also been falling into the shape of commonwealths, and sohave lost something of their national spirit. 

With much reluctant hesitation and many misgivings, the statesmen ofthese pacific nations are accordingly busying themselves with schemesfor keeping the peace on the unfamiliar footing of a stable equilibrium;the method preferred on the whole being an equilibration ofmake-believe, in imitation of the obsolete balance of power. There is ameticulous regard for national jealousies and discriminations, which itis thought necessary to keep intact. Of course, on any one of theseslightly diversified plans of keeping the peace on a stable footing ofcopartnery among the pacific nations, national jealousies and nationalintegrity no longer have any substantial meaning. But statesmen thinkand plan in terms of precedent; which comes to thinking and planning interms of make-believe, when altered circumstances have made theprecedents obsolete. So one comes to the singular proposal of thestatesmen, that the peace is to be kept in concert among these pacificnations by a provision of force with which to break it at will. Thepeace that is to be kept on this footing of national discriminations andnational armaments will necessarily be of a precarious kind; being, ineffect, a statesmanlike imitation of the peace as it was once kept evenmore precariously by the pacific nations in severalty. 

Hitherto the movement toward peace has not gone beyond this conceptionof it, as a collusive safeguarding of national discrepancies by force ofarms. Such a peace is necessarily precarious, partly because armed forceis useful for breaking the peace, partly because the nationaldiscrepancies, by which these current peace-makers set such store, are aconstant source of embroilment. What the peace-makers might logically beexpected to concern themselves about would be the elimination of thesediscrepancies that make for embroilment. But what they actually seemconcerned about is their preservation. A peace by collusive neglect ofthose remnants of feudalistic make-believe that still serve to dividethe pacific nations has hitherto not seriously come under advisement. 

Evidently, hitherto, and for the calculable future, peace is a relativematter, a matter of more or less, whichever of the several workingconceptions spoken of above may rule the case. Evidently, too, a peacedesigned to strengthen the national establishment against eventual war, will count to a different effect from a collusive peace of a defensivekind among the pacific peoples, designed by its projectors to conservethose national discrepancies on which patriotic statesmen like to dwell. Different from both would be the value of a peace by neglect of suchuseless national discriminations as now make for embroilment. Aprotracted season of peace should logically have a somewhat differentcultural value according to the character of the public policy to bepursued under its cover. So that a safe and sane conservation of thereceived law and order should presumably best be effected under cover ofa collusive peace of the defensive kind, which is designed to retainthose national discrepancies intact that count for so much in thenational life of today, both as a focus of patriotic sentiment and as anoutlet for national expenditures. This plan would involve the leastderangement of the received order among the democratic peoples, althoughthe plan might itself undergo some change in the course of time. 

 * * * * *

Among the singularities of the latterday situation, in this connection, and brought out by the experiences of the great war, is a closeresemblance between latterday warlike operations and the ordinaryprocesses of industry. Modern warfare and modern industry alike arecarried on by technological processes subject to surveillance anddirection by mechanical engineers, or perhaps rather experts inengineering science of the mechanistic kind. War is not now a matter ofthe stout heart and strong arm. Not that these attributes do not havetheir place and value in modern warfare; but they are no longer thechief or decisive factors in the case. The exploits that count in thiswarfare are technological exploits; exploits of technological science, industrial appliances, and technological training. As has been remarkedbefore, it is no longer a gentlemen's war, and the gentleman, as such, is no better than a marplot in the game as it is played. 

Certain consequences follow from this state of the case. Technology andindustrial experience, in large volume and at a high proficiency, areindispensable to the conduct of war on the modern plan, as well as alarge, efficient and up-to-date industrial community and industrialplant to supply the necessary material of this warfare. At the same timethe discipline of the campaign, as it impinges on the rank and file aswell as on the very numerous body of officers and technicians, is not atcross purposes with the ordinary industrial employments of peace, or notin the same degree as has been the case in the past, even in the recentpast. The experience of the campaign does not greatly unfit the men whosurvive for industrial uses; nor does it come in as a sheer interruptionof their industrial training, or break the continuity of that range ofhabits of thought which modern industry of the technological orderinduces; not in the same degree as was the case under the conditions ofwar as carried on in the nineteenth century. The cultural, andparticularly the technological, incidence of this modern warfare shouldevidently be appreciably different from what has been experienced in thepast, and from what this past experience has induced students of thesematters to look for among the psychological effects of warlikeexperience. 

It remains true that the discipline of the campaign, however impersonalit may tend to become, still inculcates personal subordination andunquestioning obedience; and yet the modern tactics and methods offighting bear somewhat more on the individual's initiative, discretion, sagacity and self-possession than once would have been true. Doubtlessthe men who come out of this great war, the common men, will bring homean accentuated and acrimonious patriotism, a venomous hatred of theenemies whom they have missed killing; but it may reasonably be doubtedif they come away with a correspondingly heightened admiration andaffection for their betters who have failed to make good as foremen incharge of this teamwork in killing. The years of the war have beentrying to the reputation of officials and officers, who have had to meetuncharted exigencies with not much better chance of guessing the waythrough than their subalterns have had. 

By and large, it is perhaps not to be doubted that the populace nowunder arms will return from the experience of the war with some net gainin loyalty to the nation's honour and in allegiance to their masters;particularly the German subjects, --the like is scarcely true for theBritish; but a doubt will present itself as to the magnitude of this netgain in subordination, or this net loss in self-possession. A doubt maybe permitted as to whether the common man in the countries of theImperial coalition, e. G. , will, as the net outcome of this warexperience, be in a perceptibly more pliable frame of mind as toucheshis obligations toward his betters and subservience to the irresponsibleauthority exercised by the various governmental agencies, than he was atthe outbreak of the war. At that time, there is reason to believe, therewas an ominous, though scarcely threatening, murmur of discontentbeginning to be heard among the working classes of the industrial towns. It is fair to presume, however, that the servile discipline of theservice and the vindictive patriotism bred of the fight should combineto render the populace of the Fatherland more amenable to theirresponsible rule of the Imperial dynasty and its subaltern royalestablishments, in spite of any slight effect of a contrary characterexercised by the training in technological methods and in self-reliance, with which this discipline of the service has been accompanied. As tothe case of the British population, under arms or under compulsion ofnecessity at home, something has already been said in an earlierpassage; and much will apparently depend, in their case, on the furtherduration of the war. The case of the other nationalities involved, bothneutrals and belligerents, is even more obscure in this bearing, but itis also of less immediate consequence for the present argument. 

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The essentially feudal virtues of loyalty and bellicose patriotism wouldappear to have gained their great ascendency over all men's spiritwithin the Western civilisation by force of the peculiarly consistentcharacter of the discipline of life under feudal conditions, whether inwar or peace; and to the same uniformity of these forces that shaped theworkday habits of thought among the feudal nations is apparently duethat profound institutionalisation of the preconceptions of patriotismand loyalty, by force of which these preconceptions still hold themodern peoples in an unbreakable web of prejudice, after the conditionsfavoring their acquirement have in great part ceased to operate. Thesepreconceptions of national solidarity and international enmity have comedown from the past as an integral part of the unwritten constitutionunderlying all these modern nations, even those which have departed mostwidely from the manner of life to which the peoples owe these ancientpreconceptions. Hitherto, or rather until recent times, the workdayexperience of these peoples has not seriously worked at cross purposeswith the patriotic spirit and its bias of national animosity; and whatdiscrepancy there has effectively been between the discipline of workdaylife and the received institutional preconceptions on this head, hashitherto been overborne by the unremitting inculcation of these virtuesby interested politicians, priests and publicists, who speak habituallyfor the received order of things. 

That order of things which is known on its political and civil side asthe feudal system, together with that era of the dynastic States whichsucceeds the feudal age technically so called, was, on its industrial ortechnological side, a system of trained man-power organised on a plan ofsubordination of man to man. On the whole, the scheme and logic of thatlife, whether in its political (warlike) or its industrial doings, whether in war or peace, runs on terms of personal capacity, proficiencyand relations. The organisation of the forces engaged and theconstraining rules according to which this organisation worked, were ofthe nature of personal relations, and the impersonal factors in the casewere taken for granted. Politics and war were a field for personalvalor, force and cunning, in practical effect a field for personal forceand fraud. Industry was a field in which the routine of life, and itsoutcome, turned on "the skill, dexterity and judgment of the individualworkman, " in the words of Adam Smith. 

The feudal age passed, being done to death by handicraft industry, commercial traffic, gunpowder, and the state-making politicians. But thepolitical States of the statemakers, the dynastic States as they maywell be called, continued the conduct of political life on the personalplane of rivalry and jealousy between dynasties and between theirStates; and in spite of gunpowder and the new military engineering, warfare continued also to be, in the main and characteristically, afield in which man-power and personal qualities decided the outcome, byvirtue of personal "skill, dexterity and judgment. " Meantime industryand its technology by insensible degrees underwent a change in thedirection of impersonalisation, particularly in those countries in whichstate-making and its warlike enterprise had ceased, or were ceasing, tobe the chief interests and the controlling preconception of the people. 

The logic of the new, mechanical industry which has supplantedhandicraft in these countries, is a mechanistic logic, which proceeds interms of matter-of-fact strains, masses, velocities, and the like, instead of the "skill, dexterity and judgment" of personal agents. Thenew industry does not dispense with the personal agencies, nor can iteven be said to minimise the need of skill, dexterity and judgment inthe personal agents employed, but it does take them and their attributesfor granted as in some sort a foregone premise to its main argument. Thelogic of the handicraft system took the impersonal agencies for granted;the machine industry takes the skill, dexterity and judgment of theworkmen for granted. The processes of thought, and therefore theconsistent habitual discipline, of the former ran in terms of thepersonal agents engaged, and of the personal relations of discretion, control and subordination necessary to the work; whereas themechanistic logic of the modern technology, more and more consistently, runs in terms of the impersonal forces engaged, and inculcates anhabitual predilection for matter-of-fact statement, and an habitualpreconception that the findings of material science alone areconclusive. 

In those nations that have made up the advance guard of Westerncivilisation in its movement out of feudalism, the disintegrating effectof this matter-of-fact animus inculcated by the later state of theindustrial arts has apparently acted effectively, in some degree, todiscredit those preconceptions of personal discrimination on whichdynastic rule is founded. But in no case has the discipline of thismechanistic technology yet wrought its perfect work or come to adefinitive conclusion. Meantime war and politics have on the wholecontinued on the ancient plane; it may perhaps be fair to say thatpolitics has so continued because warlike enterprise has continued stillto be a matter of such personal forces as skill, dexterity and judgment, valor and cunning, personal force and fraud. Latterly, gradually, butincreasingly, the technology of war, too, has been shifting to themechanistic plane; until in the latest phases of it, somewhere about theturn of the century, it is evident that the logic of warfare too hascome to be the same mechanistic logic that makes the modern state of theindustrial arts. 

What, if anything, is due by consequence to overtake the politicalstrategy and the political preconceptions of the new century, is aquestion that will obtrude itself, though with scant hope of finding aready answer. It may even seem a rash, as well as an ungraceful, undertaking to inquire into the possible manner and degree ofprospective decay to which the received political ideals and virtueswould appear to be exposed by consequence of this derangement of theancient discipline to which men have been subjected. So much, however, would seem evident, that the received virtues and ideals of patrioticanimosity and national jealousy can best be guarded against untimelydecay by resolutely holding to the formal observance of all outwornpunctilios of national integrity and discrimination, in spite of theirincreasing disserviceability, --as would be done, e. G. , or at leastsought to be done, in the installation of a league of neutral nations tokeep the peace and at the same time to safeguard those "nationalinterests" whose only use is to divide these nations and keep them in astate of mutual envy and distrust. 

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Those peoples who are subject to the constraining governance of thismodern state of the industrial arts, as all modern peoples are in muchthe same measure in which they are "modern, " are, therefore, exposed toa workday discipline running at cross purposes with the received law andorder as it takes effect in national affairs; and to this is to be addedthat, with warlike enterprise also shifted to this samemechanistic-technological ground, war can no longer be counted on soconfidently as before to correct all the consequent drift away from theancient landmarks of dynastic, pseudo-dynastic, and national enterprisein dominion. 

As has been noted above, modern warfare not only makes use of, andindeed depends on, the modern industrial technology at every turn of theoperations in the field, but it draws on the ordinary industrialresources of the countries at war in a degree and with an urgency neverequalled. No nation can hope to make a stand in modern warfare, muchless to make headway in warlike enterprise, without the mostthoroughgoing exploitation of the modern industrial arts. Whichsignifies for the purpose in hand that any Power that harbors animperial ambition must take measures to let its underlying populationacquire the ways and means of the modern machine industry, withoutreservation; which in turn signifies that popular education must betaken care of to such an extent as may be serviceable in this manner ofindustry and in the manner of life which this industrial systemnecessarily imposes; which signifies, of course, that only thethoroughly trained and thoroughly educated nations have a chance ofholding their place as formidable Powers in this latterday phase ofcivilisation. What is needed is the training and education that go tomake proficiency in the modern fashion of technology and in thosematerial sciences that conduce to technological proficiency of thismodern order. It is a matter of course that in these premises anyappreciable illiteracy is an intolerable handicap. So is also anytraining which discourages habitual self-reliance and initiative, orwhich acts as a check on skepticism; for the skeptical frame of mind isa necessary part of the intellectual equipment that makes for advance, invention and understanding in the field of technological proficiency. 

But these requirements, imperatively necessary as a condition of warlikesuccess, are at cross purposes with that unquestioning respect ofpersons and that spirit of abnegation that alone can hold a people tothe political institutions of the old order and make them a willinginstrument in the hands of the dynastic statesmen. The dynastic State isapparently caught in a dilemma. The necessary preparation for warlikeenterprise on the modern plan can apparently be counted on, in the longrun, to disintegrate the foundations of the dynastic State. But it isonly in the long run that this effect can be counted on; and it isperhaps not securely to be counted on even in a moderately long run ofthings as they have run hitherto, if due precautions are taken by theinterested statesmen, --as would seem to be indicated by the successfulconservation of archaic traits in the German peoples during the pasthalf century under the archaising rule of the Hohenzollern. It is amatter of habituation, which takes time, and which can at the same timebe neutralised in some degree by indoctrination. 

Still, when all is told, it will probably have to be conceded that, e. G. , such a nation as Russia will fall under this rule of inherentdisability imposed by the necessary use of the modern industrial arts. Without a fairly full and free command of these modern industrialmethods on the part of the Russian people, together with the virtualdisappearance of illiteracy, and with the facile and far-reaching systemof communication which it all involves, the Russian Imperialestablishment would not be a formidable power or a serious menace to thepacific nations; and it is not easy to imagine how the Imperialestablishment could retain its hold and its character under theconditions indicated. 

The case of Japan, taken by itself, rests on somewhat similar lines asthese others. In time, and in this case the time-allowance shouldpresumably not be anything very large, the Japanese people are likely toget an adequate command of the modern technology; which would, here aselsewhere, involve the virtual disappearance of the present highilliteracy, and the loss, in some passable measure, of the currentsuperstitiously crass nationalism of that people. There are indicationsthat something of that kind, and of quite disquieting dimensions, isalready under way; though with no indication that any consequentdisintegrating habits of thought have yet invaded the sacred close ofJapanese patriotic devotion. 

Again, it is a question of time and habituation. With time andhabituation the emperor may insensibly cease to be of divine pedigree, and the syndicate of statesmen who are doing business under hissignature may consequently find their measures of Imperial expansionquestioned by the people who pay the bills. But so long as the Imperialsyndicate enjoy their present immunity from outside obstruction, and canaccordingly carry on an uninterrupted campaign of cumulative predationin Korea, China and Manchuria, the patriotic infatuation is less likelyto fall off, and by so much the decay of Japanese loyalty will beretarded. Yet, even if allowed anything that may seem at all probable inthe way of a free hand for aggression against their hapless neighbours, the skepticism and insubordination to personal rule that seemsinseparable in the long run from addiction to the modern industrial artsshould be expected presently to overtake the Japanese spirit of loyalservitude. And the opportunity of Imperial Japan lies in the interval. So also does the menace of Imperial Japan as a presumptive disturber ofthe peace at large. 

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At the cost of some unavoidable tedium, the argument as regards theseand similar instances may be summarised. It appears, in the (possiblydoubtful) light of the history of democratic institutions and of moderntechnology hitherto, as also from the logical character of thistechnology and its underlying material sciences, that consistentaddiction to the peculiar habits of thought involved in its carrying onwill presently induce a decay of those preconceptions in which dynasticgovernment and national ambitions have their ground. Continued addictionto this modern scheme of industrial life should in time eventuate in adecay of militant nationalism, with a consequent lapse of warlikeenterprise. At the same time, popular proficiency in the modernindustrial arts, with all that that implies in the way of intelligenceand information, is indispensable as a means to any successful warlikeenterprise on the modern plan. The menace of warlike aggression fromsuch dynastic States, e. G. , as Imperial Germany and Imperial Japan isdue to their having acquired a competent use of this modern technology, while they have not yet had time to lose that spirit of dynastic loyaltywhich they have carried over from an archaic order of things, out ofwhich they have emerged at a very appreciably later period (last half ofthe nineteenth century) than those democratic peoples whose peace theynow menace. As has been said, they have taken over this modern state ofthe industrial arts without having yet come in for the defects of itsqualities. This modern technology, with its underlying materialsciences, is a novel factor in the history of human culture, in thataddiction to its use conduces to the decay of militant patriotism, atthe same time that its employment so greatly enhances the warlikeefficiency of even a pacific people, at need, that they can not beseriously molested by any other peoples, however valorous and numerous, who have not a competent use of this technology. A peace at large amongthe civilised nations, by loss of the militant temper through addictionto this manner of arts of peace, therefore, carries no risk ofinterruption by an inroad of warlike barbarians, --always provided thatthose existing archaic peoples who might pass muster as barbarians arebrought into line with the pacific nations on a footing of peace andequality. The disparity in point of outlook as between the resultingpeace at large by neglect of bootless animosities, on the one hand, andthose historic instances of a peaceable civilisation that have beenoverwhelmed by warlike barbarian invasions, on the other hand, should beevident. 

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It is always possible, indeed it would scarcely be surprising to find, that the projected league of neutrals or of nations bent on peace cannot be brought to realisation at this juncture; perhaps not for a longtime yet. But it should at the same time seem reasonable to expect thatthe drift toward a peaceable settlement of national discrepancies suchas has been visible in history for some appreciable time past will, inthe absence of unforeseen hindrances, work out to some such effect inthe course of further experience under modern conditions. And whetherthe projected peace compact at its inception takes one form or another, provided it succeeds in its main purpose, the long-term drift of thingsunder its rule should logically set toward some ulterior settlement ofthe general character of what has here been spoken of as a peace byneglect or by neutralisation of discrepancies. 

It should do so, in the absence of unforeseen contingencies; moreparticularly if there were no effectual factor of dissension included inthe fabric of institutions within the nation. But there should also, e. G. , be no difficulty in assenting to the forecast that when and ifnational peace and security are achieved and settled beyond recall, thediscrepancy in fact between those who own the country's wealth and thosewho do not is presently due to come to an issue. Any attempt to forecastthe form which this issue is to take, or the manner, incidents, adjuncts and sequelae of its determination, would be a bolder and a moreambiguous, undertaking. Hitherto attempts to bring this question to anissue have run aground on the real or fancied jeopardy to paramountnational interests. How, if at all, this issue might affect nationalinterests and international relations, would obviously depend in thefirst instance on the state of the given national establishment and thecharacter of the international engagements entered into in the formationof this projected pacific league. It is always conceivable that thetransactions involving so ubiquitous an issue might come to take on aninternational character and that they might touch the actual or fancifulinterests of these diverse nations with such divergent effect as tobring on a rupture of the common understanding between them and of thepeace-compact in which the common understanding is embodied. 

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In the beginning, that is to say in the beginnings out of which thismodern era of the Western civilisation has arisen, with its scheme oflaw and custom, there grew into the scheme of law and custom, by settledusage, a right of ownership and of contract in disposal ofownership, --which may or may not have been a salutary institutionalarrangement on the whole, under the circumstances of the early days. With the later growth of handicraft and the petty trade in WesternEurope this right of ownership and contract came to be insisted on, standardised under legal specifications, and secured against molestationby the governmental interests; more particularly and scrupulously amongthose peoples that have taken the lead in working out that system offree or popular institutions that marks the modern civilised nations. Soit has come to be embodied in the common law of the modern world as aninviolable natural right. It has all the prescriptive force of legallyauthenticated immemorial custom. 

Under the system of handicraft and petty trade this right of propertyand free contract served the interest of the common man, at least inmuch of its incidence, and acted in its degree to shelter industriousand economical persons from hardship and indignity at the hands of theirbetters. There seems reason to believe, as is commonly believed, that solong as that relatively direct and simple scheme of industry and tradelasted, the right of ownership and contract was a salutary custom, inits bearing on the fortunes of the common man. It appears also, on thewhole, to have been favorable to the fuller development of thehandicraft technology, as well as to its eventual outgrowth into the newline of technological expedients and contrivances that presently gaverise to the machine industry and the large-scale business enterprise. 

The standard theories of economic science have assumed the rights ofproperty and contract as axiomatic premises and ultimate terms ofanalysis; and their theories are commonly drawn in such a form as wouldfit the circumstances of the handicraft industry and the petty trade, and such as can be extended to any other economic situation by shrewdinterpretation. These theories, as they run from Adam Smith down throughthe nineteenth century and later, appear tenable, on the whole, whentaken to apply to the economic situation of that earlier time, invirtually all that they have to say on questions of wages, capital, savings, and the economy and efficiency of management and production bythe methods of private enterprise resting on these rights of ownershipand contract and governed by the pursuit of private gain. It is whenthese standard theories are sought to be applied to the later situation, which has outgrown the conditions of handicraft, that they appearnugatory or meretricious. The "competitive system" which these standardtheories assume as a necessary condition of their own validity, andabout which they are designed to form a defensive hedge, would, underthose earlier conditions of small-scale enterprise and personal contact, appear to have been both a passably valid assumption as a premise and apassably expedient scheme of economic relations and traffic. At thatperiod of its life-history it can not be said consistently to haveworked hardship to the common man; rather the reverse. And the commonman in that time appears to have had no misgivings about the excellenceof the scheme or of that article of Natural Rights that underlies it. 

This complexion of things, as touches the effectual bearing of theinstitution of property and the ancient customary rights of ownership, has changed substantially since the time of Adam Smith. The "competitivesystem, " which he looked to as the economic working-out of that "simpleand obvious system of natural liberty" that always engaged his bestaffections, has in great measure ceased to operate as a routine ofnatural liberty, in fact; particularly in so far as touches the fortunesof the common man, the impecunious mass of the people. _De jure_, ofcourse, the competitive system and its inviolable rights of ownershipare a citadel of Natural Liberty; but _de facto_ the common man is now, and has for some time been, feeling the pinch of it. It is law, anddoubtless it is good law, grounded in immemorial usage and authenticatedwith statute and precedent. But circumstances have so changed that thisgood old plan has in a degree become archaic, perhaps unprofitable, oreven mischievous, on the whole, and especially as touches the conditionsof life for the common man. At least, so the common man in these moderndemocratic and commercial countries is beginning to apprehend thematter. 

Some slight and summary characterisation of these changing circumstancesthat have affected the incidence of the rights of property during moderntimes may, therefore, not be out of place; with a view to seeing how farand why these rights may be due to come under advisement and possiblerevision, in case a state of settled peace should leave men's attentionfree to turn to these internal, as contrasted with national interests. 

Under that order of handicraft and petty trade that led to thestandardisation of these rights of ownership in the accentuated formwhich belongs to them in modern law and custom, the common man had apracticable chance of free initiative and self-direction in his choiceand pursuit of an occupation and a livelihood, in so far as rights ofownership bore on his case. At that period the workman was the mainfactor in industry and, in the main and characteristically, the questionof his employment was a question of what he would do. The materialequipment of industry--the "plant, " as it has come to be called--wassubject of ownership, then as now; but it was then a secondary factorand, notoriously, subsidiary to the immaterial equipment of skill, dexterity and judgment embodied in the person of the craftsman. The bodyof information, or general knowledge, requisite to a workmanlikeproficiency as handicraftsman was sufficiently slight and simple to fallwithin the ordinary reach of the working class, without specialschooling; and the material equipment necessary to the work, in the wayof tools and appliances, was also slight enough, ordinarily, to bring itwithin the reach of the common man. The stress fell on the acquirementof that special personal skill, dexterity and judgment that wouldconstitute the workman a master of his craft. Given a reasonable measureof pertinacity, the common man would be able to compass the materialequipment needful to the pursuit of his craft, and so could make his wayto a livelihood; and the inviolable right of ownership would then serveto secure him the product of his own industry, in provision for his ownold-age and for a fair start in behalf of his children. At least in thepopular conception, and presumably in some degree also in fact, theright of property so served as a guarantee of personal liberty and abasis of equality. And so its apologists still look on the institution. 

In a very appreciable degree this complexion of things and of popularconceptions has changed since then; although, as would be expected, thechange in popular conceptions has not kept pace with the changingcircumstances. In all the characteristic and controlling lines ofindustry the modern machine technology calls for a very considerablematerial equipment; so large an equipment, indeed, that this plant, asit is called, always represents a formidable amount of invested wealth;and also so large that it will, typically, employ a considerable numberof workmen per unit of plant. On the transition to the machinetechnology the plant became the unit of operation, instead of theworkman, as had previously been the case; and with the furtherdevelopment of this modern technology, during the past hundred and fiftyyears or so, the unit of operation and control has increasingly come tobe not the individual or isolated plant but rather an articulated groupof such plants working together as a balanced system and keeping pace incommon, under a collective business management; and coincidently theindividual workman has been falling into the position of an auxiliaryfactor, nearly into that of an article of supply, to be charged up as anitem of operating expenses. Under this later and current system, discretion and initiative vest not in the workman but in the owners ofthe plant, if anywhere. So that at this point the right of ownership hasceased to be, in fact, a guarantee of personal liberty to the commonman, and has come to be, or is coming to be, a guarantee of dependence. All of which engenders a feeling of unrest and insecurity, such as toinstill a doubt in the mind of the common man as to the continuedexpediency of this arrangement and of the prescriptive rights ofproperty on which the arrangement rests. 

There is also an insidious suggestion, carrying a sinister note ofdiscredit, that comes in from ethnological science at this point; whichis adapted still further to derange the common man's faith in thisreceived institution of ownership and its control of the materialequipment of industry. To students interested in human culture it is amatter of course that this material equipment is a means of utilisingthe state of the industrial arts; that it is useful in industry andprofitable to its owners only because and in so far as it is a creationof the current technological knowledge and enables its owner toappropriate the usufruct of the current industrial arts. It is likewisea matter of course that this technological knowledge, that so enablesthe material equipment to serve the purposes of production and ofprivate gain, is a free gift of the community at large to the owners ofindustrial plant; and, under latterday conditions, to them exclusively. The state of the industrial arts is a joint heritage of the community atlarge, but where, as in the modern countries, the work to be done bythis technology requires a large material equipment, the usufruct ofthis joint heritage passes, in effect, into the hands of the owners ofthis large material equipment. 

These owners have, ordinarily, contributed nothing to the technology, the state of the industrial arts, from which their control of thematerial equipment of industry enables them to derive a gain. Indeed, noclass or condition of men in the modern community--with the possibleexception of politicians and the clergy--can conceivably contribute lessto the community's store of technological knowledge than the largeowners of invested wealth. By one of those singular inversions due toproduction being managed for private gain, it happens that theseinvestors are not only not given to the increase and diffusion oftechnological knowledge, but they have a well-advised interest inretarding or defeating improvements in the industrial arts in detail. Improvements, innovations that heighten productive efficiency in thegeneral line of production in which a given investment is placed, arecommonly to be counted on to bring "obsolescence by supersession" to theplant already engaged in that line; and therefore to bring a decline inits income-yielding capacity, and so in its capital or investment value. 

Invested capital yields income because it enjoys the usufruct of thecommunity's technological knowledge; it has an effectual monopoly ofthis usufruct because this machine technology requires large materialappliances with which to do its work; the interest of the owners ofestablished industrial plant will not tolerate innovations designed tosupersede these appliances. The bearing of ownership on industry and onthe fortunes of the common man is accordingly, in the main, the bearingwhich it has by virtue of its monopoly control of the industrial arts, and its consequent control of the conditions of employment and of thesupply of vendible products. It takes effect chiefly by inhibition andprivation; stoppage of production in case it brings no suitable profitto the investor, refusal of employment and of a livelihood to theworkmen in case their product does not command a profitable price in themarket. 

The expediency of so having the nation's industry managed on a footingof private ownership in the pursuit of private gain, by persons who canshow no equitable personal claim to even the most modest livelihood, andwhose habitual method of controlling industry is sabotage--refusal tolet production go on except it affords them an unearned income--theexpediency of all this is coming to be doubted by those who have to paythe cost of it. And it does not go far to lessen their doubts to findthat the cost which they pay is commonly turned to no more urgent oruseful purpose than a conspicuously wasteful consumption ofsuperfluities by the captains of sabotage and their domesticestablishments. 

This may not seem a veracious and adequate account of these matters; itmay, in effect, fall short of the formulation: The truth, the wholetruth, and nothing but the truth; nor does the question here turn on itsadequacy as a statement of fact. Without prejudice to the question ofits veracity and adequacy, it is believed to be such an account of thesematters as will increasingly come easy and seem convincing to the commonman who, in an ever increasing degree, finds himself pinched withprivation and insecurity by a run of facts which will consistently bearthis construction, and who perforce sees these facts from the prejudicedstandpoint of a loser. To such a one, there is reason to believe, theview so outlined will seem all the more convincing the more attentivelythe pertinent facts and their bearing on his fortunes are considered. How far the contrary prejudice of those whose interest or traininginclines them the other way may lead them to a different construction ofthese pertinent facts, does not concern the present argument; which hasto do with this run of facts only as they bear on the prospective frameof mind of that unblest mass of the population who will have opportunityto present their proposals when peace at large shall have put nationalinterests out of their preferential place in men's regard. 

At the risk of what may seem an excessively wide digression, there issomething further to be said of the capitalistic sabotage spoken ofabove. The word has by usage come to have an altogether ungraceful airof disapproval. Yet it signifies nothing more vicious than a deliberateobstruction or retardation of industry, usually by legitimate means, forthe sake of some personal or partisan advantage. This morally colorlessmeaning is all that is intended in its use here. It is extremely commonin all industry that is designed to supply merchantable goods for themarket. It is, in fact, the most ordinary and ubiquitous of allexpedients in business enterprise that has to do with supplying themarket, being always present in the businessman's necessarycalculations; being not only a usual and convenient recourse but quiteindispensable as an habitual measure of business sagacity. So that nopersonal blame can attach to its employment by any given businessman orbusiness concern. It is only when measures of this nature are resortedto by employees, to gain some end of their own, that such conductbecomes (technically) reprehensible. 

Any businesslike management of industry is carried on for gain, which isto be got only on condition of meeting the terms of the market. Theprice system under which industrial business is carried on will nottolerate production in excess of the market demand, or without dueregard to the expenses of production as determined by the market on theside of the supplies required. Hence any business concern must adjustits operations, by due acceleration, retardation or stoppage, to themarket conditions, with a view to what the traffic will bear; that is tosay, with a view to what will yield the largest obtainable net gain. Solong as the price system rules, that is to say so long as industry ismanaged on investment for a profit, there is no escaping this necessityof adjusting the processes of industry to the requirements of aremunerative price; and this adjustment can be taken care of only bywell-advised acceleration or curtailment of the processes of industry;which answers to the definition of sabotage. Wise business management, and more particularly what is spoken of as safe and sane businessmanagement, therefore, reduces itself in the main to a sagacious use ofsabotage; that is to say a sagacious limitation of productive processesto something less than the productive capacity of the means in hand. 

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To anyone who is inclined to see these matters of usage in the light oftheir history and to appraise them as phenomena of habituation, adaptation and supersession in the sequence of cultural proliferation, there should be no difficulty in appreciating that this institution ofownership that makes the core of the modern institutional structure isa precipitate of custom, like any other item of use and wont; and that, like any other article of institutional furniture, it is subject to thecontingencies of supersession and obsolescence. If prevalent habits ofthought, enforced by the prevalent exigencies of life and livelihood, come to change in such a way as to make life under the rule imposed bythis institution seem irksome, or intolerable, to the mass of thepopulation; and if at the same time things turn in such a way as toleave no other and more urgent interest or exigency to take precedenceof this one and hinder its being pushed to an issue; then it shouldreasonably follow that contention is due to arise between the unblestmass on whose life it is a burden and the classes who live by it. But itis, of course, impossible to state beforehand what will be the preciseline of cleavage or what form the division between the two parties ininterest will take. Yet it is contained in the premises that, barringunforeseen contingencies of a formidable magnitude, such a cleavage isdue to follow as a logical sequel of an enduring peace at large. And itis also well within the possibilities of the case that this issue maywork into an interruption or disruption of the peace between thenations. 

In this connection it may be called to mind that the existinggovernmental establishments in these pacific nations are, in all cases, in the hands of the beneficiary, or kept classes, --beneficiaries in thesense in which a distinction to that effect comes into the premises ofthe case at this point. The responsible officials and their chiefadministrative officers, --so much as may at all reasonably be called the"Government" or the "Administration, "--are quite invariably andcharacteristically drawn from these beneficiary classes; nobles, gentlemen, or business men, which all comes to the same thing for thepurpose in hand; the point of it all being that the common man does notcome within these precincts and does not share in these counsels thatassume to guide the destiny of the nations. 

Of course, sporadically and ephemerally, a man out of the impecuniousand undistinguished mass may now and again find his way within thegates; and more frequently will a professed "Man of the People" sit incouncil. But that the rule holds unbroken and inviolable is sufficientlyevident in the fact that no community will let the emoluments of officefor any of its responsible officials, even for those of a very scantresponsibility, fall to the level of the habitual livelihood of theundistinguished populace, or indeed to fall below what is esteemed to bea seemly income for a gentleman. Should such an impecunious one bethrown up into a place of discretion in the government, he willforthwith cease to be a common man and will be inducted into the rank ofgentleman, --so far as that feat can be achieved by taking thought or byassigning him an income adequate to a reputably expensive manner oflife. So obvious is the antagonism between a vulgar station in life anda position of official trust, that many a "selfmade man" has advisedlytaken recourse to governmental position, often at some appreciable cost, from no apparent motive other than its known efficacy as a Leviticalcorrective for a humble origin. And in point of fact, neither here northere have the underbred majority hitherto learned to trust one of theirown kind with governmental discretion; which has never yet, in thepopular conviction, ceased to be a perquisite of the gently-bred and thewell-to-do. 

Let it be presumed that this state of things will continue withoutsubstantial alteration, so far as regards the complexion of thegovernmental establishments of these pacific nations, and with suchallowance for overstatement in the above characterisation as may seemcalled for. These governmental establishments are, by official positionand by the character of their personnel, committed more or lessconsistently to the maintenance of the existing law and order. Andshould no substantial change overtake them as an effect of the warexperience, the pacific league under discussion would be entered into byand between governments of this complexion. Should difficulties thenarise between those who own and those who do not, in any one of thesecountries, it would become a nice question whether the compact tomaintain the peace and national integrity of the several nationscomprised in the league should be held to cover the case of internaldissensions and possible disorders partaking of the character of revoltagainst the established authorities or against the establishedprovisions of law. A strike of the scope and character of the onerecently threatened, and narrowly averted, on the American railroads, e. G. , might easily give rise to disturbances sufficiently formidable toraise a question of the peace league's jurisdiction; particularly ifsuch a disturbance should arise in a less orderly and less isolatedcountry than the American republic; so as unavoidably to carry theeffects of the disturbance across the national frontiers along the linesof industrial and commercial intercourse and correlation. It is alwaysconceivable that a national government standing on a somewhatconservative maintenance of the received law and order might feel itselfbound by its conception of the peace to make common cause with thekeepers of established rights in neighboring states, particularly ifthe similar interests of their own nation were thought to be placed injeopardy by the course of events. 

Antecedently it seems highly probable that the received rights ofownership and disposal of property, particularly of investment, willcome up for advisement and revision so soon as a settled state of peaceis achieved. And there should seem to be little doubt but this revisionwould go toward, or at least aim at the curtailment or abrogation ofthese rights; very much after the fashion in which the analogous vestedrights of feudalism and the dynastic monarchy have been revised and ingreat part curtailed or abrogated in the advanced democratic countries. Not much can confidently be said as to the details of such a prospectiverevision of legal rights, but the analogy of that procedure by whichthese other vested rights have been reduced to a manageable disability, suggests that the method in the present case also would be by way ofcurtailment, abrogation and elimination. Here again, as in analogousmovements of disuse and disestablishment, there would doubtless be muchconservative apprehension as to the procuring of a competent substitutefor the supplanted methods of doing what is no longer desirable to bedone; but here as elsewhere, in a like conjuncture, the practicable wayout would presumably be found to lie along the line of simple disuse anddisallowance of class prerogative. Taken at its face value, withoutunavoidable prejudice out of the past, this question of a substitute toreplace the current exploitation of the industrial arts for private gainby capitalistic sabotage is not altogether above a suspicion ofdrollery. 

Yet it is not to be overlooked that private enterprise on the basis ofprivate ownership is the familiar and accepted method of conductingindustrial affairs, and that it has the sanction of immemorial usage, inthe eyes of the common man, and that it is reenforced with the urgencyof life and death in the apprehension of the kept classes. It shouldaccordingly be a possible outcome of such a peace as would put awayinternational dissension, that the division of classes would come on ina new form, between those who stand on their ancient rights ofexploitation and mastery, and those who are unwilling longer to submit. And it is quite within the possibilities of the case that the divisionof opinion on these matters might presently shift back to the oldfamiliar ground of international hostilities; undertaken partly to putdown civil disturbances in given countries, partly by the more archaic, or conservative, peoples to safeguard the institutions of the receivedlaw and order against inroads from the side of the iconoclastic ones. 

 * * * * *

In the apprehension of those who are speaking for peace between thenations and planning for its realisation, the outlook is that of areturn to, or a continuance of, the state of things before the great warcame on, with peace and national security added, or with the danger ofwar eliminated. Nothing appreciable in the way of consequent innovation, certainly nothing of a serious character, is contemplated as being amongthe necessary consequences of such a move into peace and security. National integrity and autonomy are to be preserved on the receivedlines, and international division and discrimination is to be managed asbefore, and with the accustomed incidents of punctilio and pecuniaryequilibration. Internationally speaking, there is to dawn an era ofdiplomacy without afterthought, whatever that might conceivably mean. 

There is much in the present situation that speaks for such anarrangement, particularly as an initial phase of the perpetual peacethat is aimed at, whatever excursive variations might befall presently, in the course of years. The war experience in the belligerent countriesand the alarm that has disturbed the neutral nations have visibly raisedthe pitch of patriotic solidarity in all these countries; and patriotismgreatly favors the conservation of established use and wont; moreparticularly is it favorable to the established powers and policies ofthe national government. The patriotic spirit is not a spirit ofinnovation. The chances of survival, and indeed of stabilisation, forthe accepted use and wont and for the traditional distinctions of classand prescriptive rights, should therefore seem favorable, at any rate inthe first instance. 

Presuming, therefore, as the spokesmen of such a peace-compact aresingularly ready to presume, that the era of peace and good-will whichthey have in view is to be of a piece with the most tranquil decades ofthe recent past, only more of the same kind, it becomes a question ofimmediate interest to the common man, as well as to all students ofhuman culture, how the common man is to fare under this régime of lawand order, --the mass of the population whose place it is to do what isto be done, and thereby to carry forward the civilisation of thesepacific nations. It may not be out of place to recall, by way ofparenthesis, that it is here taken for granted as a matter of coursethat all governmental establishments are necessarily conservative in alltheir dealings with this heritage of culture, except so far as they maybe reactionary. Their office is the stabilisation of archaicinstitutions, the measure of archaism varying from one to another. 

With due stabilisation and with a sagacious administration of theestablished scheme of law and order, the common man should find himselfworking under conditions and to results of the familiar kind; but withthe difference that, while legal usage and legal precedent remainunchanged, the state of the industrial arts can confidently be expectedto continue its advance in the same general direction as before, whilethe population increases after the familiar fashion, and the investingbusiness community pursues its accustomed quest of competitive gain andcompetitive spending in the familiar spirit and with cumulativelyaugmented means. Stabilisation of the received law and order will nottouch these matters; and for the present it is assumed that thesematters will not derange the received law and order. The assumption mayseem a violent one to the students of human culture, but it is a simplematter of course to the statesmen. 

To this piping time of peace the nearest analogues in history would seemto be the Roman peace, say, of the days of the Antonines, and passablythe British peace of the Victorian era. Changes in the scheme of law andorder supervened in both of these instances, but the changes were, afterall, neither unconscionably large nor were they of a subversive nature. The scheme of law and order, indeed, appears in neither instance to havechanged so far as the altered circumstances would seem to have calledfor. To the common man the Roman peace appears to have been a peace bysubmission, not widely different from what the case of China haslatterly brought to the appreciation of students. The Victorian peace, which can be appreciated more in detail, was of a more genial character, as regards the fortunes of the common man. It started from a reasonablylow level of hardship and _de facto_ iniquity, and was occupied withmany prudent endeavours to improve the lot of the unblest majority; butit is to be admitted that these prudent endeavours never caught up withthe march of circumstances. Not that these prudent measures ofamelioration were nugatory, but it is clear that they were not analtogether effectual corrective of the changes going on; they were, ineffect, systematically so far in arrears as always to leave an uncoveredmargin of discontent with current conditions. It is a fact of historythat very appreciable sections of the populace were approaching anattitude of revolt against what they considered to be intolerableconditions when that era closed. Much of what kept them within bounds, that is to say within legal bounds, was their continued loyalty to thenation; which was greatly, and for the purpose needfully, reenforced bya lively fear of warlike aggression from without. Now, under theprojected _pax orbis terrarum_ all fear of invasion, it is hopefullybelieved, will be removed; and with the disappearance of this fearshould also disappear the drag of national loyalty on the counsels ofthe underbred. 

If this British peace of the nineteenth century is to be taken as asignificant indication of what may be looked for under a régime of peaceat large, with due allowance for what is obviously necessary to beallowed for, then what is held in promise would appear to be an era ofunexampled commercial prosperity, of investment and business enterpriseon a scale hitherto not experienced. These developments will bring theirnecessary consequences affecting the life of the community, and some ofthe consequences it should be possible to foresee. The circumstancesconditioning this prospective era of peace and prosperity willnecessarily differ from the corresponding circumstances thatconditioned the Victorian peace, and many of these points of differenceit is also possible to forecast in outline with a fair degree ofconfidence. It is in the main these economic factors going to conditionthe civilisation of the promised future that will have to be depended onto give the cue to any student interested in the prospective unfoldingof events. 

The scheme of law and order governing all modern nations, both in theconduct of their domestic affairs and in their national policies, is inits controlling elements the scheme worked out through British (andFrench) experience in the eighteenth century and earlier, as revised andfurther accommodated in the nineteenth century. Other peoples, particularly the Dutch, have of course had their part in the derivationand development of this modern scheme of institutional principles, butit has after all been a minor part; so that the scheme at large wouldnot differ very materially, if indeed it should differ sensibly, fromwhat it is, even if the contribution of these others had not been had. The backward nations, as e. G. , Germany, Russia, Spain, etc. , have ofcourse contributed substantially nothing but retardation andmaladjustment to this modern scheme of civil life; whatever may be dueto students resident in those countries, in the way of scholarlyformulation. This nineteenth century scheme it is proposed to carry overinto the new era; and the responsible spokesmen of the projected neworder appear to contemplate no provision touching this scheme of law andorder, beyond the keeping of it intact in all substantial respects. 

When and in so far as the projected peace at large takes effect, international interests will necessarily fall somewhat into thebackground, as being no longer a matter of precarious equilibration, with heavy penalties in the balance; and diplomacy will consequentlybecome even more of a make-believe than today--something after thefashion of a game of bluff played with irredeemable "chips. " Commercial, that is to say business, enterprise will consequently come in for a moreundivided attention and be carried on under conditions of greatersecurity and of more comprehensive trade relations. The population ofthe pacified world may be expected to go on increasing somewhat as inthe recent past; in which connection it is to be remarked that not morethan one-half, presumably something less than one-half, of the availableagricultural resources have been turned to account for the civilisedworld hitherto. The state of the industrial arts, including means oftransport and communication, may be expected to develop farther in thesame general direction as before, assuming always that peace conditionscontinue to hold. Popular intelligence, as it is called, --more properlypopular education, --may be expected to suffer a further advance;necessarily so, since it is a necessary condition of any effectualadvance in the industrial arts, --every appreciable technological advancepresumes, as a requisite to its working-out in industry, an augmentedstate of information and of logical facility in the workmen under whosehands it is to take effect. 

Of the prescriptive rights carried over into the new era, under thereceived law and order, the rights of ownership alone may be expected tohave any material significance for the routine of workday life; theother personal rights that once seemed urgent will for everyday purposeshave passed into a state of half-forgotten matter-of-course. As now, butin an accentuated degree, the rights of ownership will, in effect, coincide and coalesce with the rights of investment and businessmanagement. The market--that is to say the rule of the price-system inall matters of production and livelihood--may be expected to gain involume and inclusiveness; so that virtually all matters of industry andlivelihood will turn on questions of market price, even beyond thedegree in which that proposition holds today. The progressive extensionand consolidation of investments, corporate solidarity, and businessmanagement may be expected to go forward on the accustomed lines, asillustrated by the course of things during the past few decades. Marketconditions should accordingly, in a progressively increased degree, fallunder the legitimate discretionary control of businessmen, or syndicatesof businessmen, who have the disposal of large blocks of investedwealth, --"big business, " as it is called, should reasonably be expectedto grow bigger and to exercise an increasingly more unhampered controlof market conditions, including the money market and the labor market. 

With such improvements in the industrial arts as may fairly be expectedto come forward, and with the possible enhancement of industrialefficiency which should follow from a larger scale of organisation, awider reach of transport and communication, and an increasedpopulation, --with these increasing advantages on the side of productiveindustry, the per-capita product as well as the total product should beincreased in a notable degree, and the conditions of life shouldpossibly become notably easier and more attractive, or at least moreconducive to efficiency and personal comfort, for all concerned. Suchwould be the first and unguarded inference to be drawn from the premisesof the case as they offer themselves in the large; and something of thatkind is apparently what floats before the prophetic vision of theadvocates of a league of nations for the maintenance of peace at large. These premises, and the inferences so drawn from them, may be furtherfortified and amplified in the same sense on considering that certainvery material economies also become practicable, and should take effect"in the absence of disturbing causes, " on the establishment of such apeace at large. It will of course occur to all thoughtful persons thatarmaments must be reduced, perhaps to a minimum, and that the cost ofthese things, in point of expenditures as well as of man-power spent inthe service, would consequently fall off in a corresponding measure. Soalso, as slight further reflection will show, would the cost of thecivil service presumably fall off very appreciably; more particularlythe cost of this service per unit of service rendered. Some such climaxof felicities might be looked for by hopeful persons, in the absence ofdisturbing causes. 

Under the new dispensation the standard of living, that is to say thestandard of expenditure, would reasonably be expected to advance in avery appreciable degree, at least among the wealthy and well-to-do; andby pressure of imitative necessity a like effect would doubtless also behad among the undistinguished mass. It is not a question of the standardof living considered as a matter of the subsistence minimum, or even astandard of habitually prevalent creature comfort, particularly notamong the wealthy and well-to-do. These latter classes have long sinceleft all question of material comfort behind in their accepted standardsof living and in the continued advance of these standards. For theseclasses who are often spoken of euphemistically as being "in easycircumstances, " it is altogether a question of a standard of reputableexpenditure, to be observed on pain of lost self-respect and of lostreputation at large. As has been remarked in an earlier passage, wantsof this kind are indefinitely extensible. So that some doubt may well beentertained as to whether the higher productive efficiency spoken ofwill necessarily make the way of life easier, in view of this need of ahigher standard of expenditure, even when due account is taken of themany economies which the new dispensation is expected to makepracticable. 

One of the effects to be looked for would apparently be an increasedpressure on the part of aspiring men to get into some line of businessenterprise; since it is only in business, as contrasted with theindustrial occupations, that anyone can hope to find the relativelylarge income required for such an expensive manner of life as will bringany degree of content to aspirants for pecuniary good repute. So itshould follow that the number of businessmen and business concerns wouldincrease up to the limit of what the traffic could support, and that thecompetition between these rival, and in a sense over-numerous, concernswould push the costs of competition to the like limit. In this respectthe situation would be of much the same character as what it now is, with the difference that the limit of competitive expenditures would berather higher than at present, to answer to the greater available marginof product that could be devoted to this use; and that the competingconcerns would be somewhat more numerous, or at least that the aggregateexpenditure on competitive enterprise would be somewhat larger; as, e. G. , costs of advertising, salesmanship, strategic litigation, procuration of legislative and municipal grants and connivance, and thelike. 

It is always conceivable, though it may scarcely seem probable, thatthese incidents of increased pressure of competition in business trafficmight eventually take up all the slack, and leave no net margin ofproduct over what is available under the less favorable conditions ofindustry that prevail today; more particularly when this increasedcompetition for business gains is backed by an increased pressure ofcompetitive spending for purposes of a reputable appearance. All thisapplies in retail trade and in such lines of industry and public serviceas partakes of the nature of retail trade, in the respect thatsalesmanship and the costs of salesmanship enter into their case in anappreciable measure; this is an extensive field, it is true, andincontinently growing more extensive with the later changes in thecustomary methods of marketing products; but it is by no means anythinglike the whole domain of industrial business, and by no means a field inwhich business is carried on without interference of a higher controlfrom outside its own immediate limits. 

All this generously large and highly expensive and profitable field oftrade and of trade-like industry, in which the businessmen in chargedeal somewhat directly with a large body of customers, is always subjectto limitations imposed by the condition of the market; and the conditionof the market is in part not under the control of these businessmen, butis also in part controlled by large concerns in the background; which intheir turn are after all also not precisely free agents; in fact notmuch more so than their cousins in the retail trade, being confined inall their motions by the constraint of the price-system that dominatesthe whole and gathers them all in its impersonal and inexorable net. 

There is a colloquial saying among businessmen, that they are not doingbusiness for their health; which being interpreted means that they aredoing business for a price. It is out of a discrepancy in price, betweenpurchase and sale, or between transactions which come to the same resultas purchase and sale, that the gains of business are drawn; and it is interms of price that these gains are rated, amassed and funded. It isnecessary, for a business concern to achieve a favorable balance interms of price; and the larger the balance in terms of price the moresuccessful the enterprise. Such a balance can not be achieved except bydue regard to the conditions of the market, to the effect that dealingsmust not go on beyond what will yield a favorable balance in terms ofprice between income and outgo. As has already been remarked above, theprescriptive and indispensable recourse in all this conduct of businessis sabotage, limitation of supply to bring a remunerative price result. 

The new dispensation offers two new factors bearing on this businesslikeneed of a sagacious sabotage, or rather it brings a change ofcoefficients in two factors already familiar in business management: agreater need, for gainful business, of resorting to such limitation oftraffic; and a greater facility of ways and means for enforcing theneeded restriction. So, it is confidently to be expected that in theprospective piping time of peace the advance in the industrial arts willcontinue at an accelerated rate; which may confidently be expected toaffect the practicable increased production of merchantable goods; fromwhich it follows that it will act to depress the prices of these goods;from which it follows that if a profitable business is to be done in theconduct of productive industry a greater degree of continence thanbefore will have to be exercised in order not to let prices fall to anunprofitable figure; that is to say, the permissible output must be heldshort of the productive capacity of such industry by a wider margin thanbefore. On the other hand, it is well known out of the experience of thepast few decades that a larger coalition of invested capital, controlling a larger proportion of the output, can more effectuallylimit the supply to a salutary maximum, such as will afford reasonableprofits. And with the new dispensation affording a freer scope forbusiness enterprise on conditions of greater security, larger coalitionsthan before are due to come into bearing. So that the means will be athand competently to meet this more urgent need of a stricter limitationof the output, in spite of any increased productive capacity conferredon the industrial community by any conceivable advance in the industrialarts. The outcome to be looked for should apparently be such aneffectual recourse to capitalistic sabotage as will neutralise any addedadvantage that might otherwise accrue to the community from itscontinued improvements in technology. 

In spite of this singularly untoward conjuncture of circumstances to belooked for, there need be no serious apprehension that capitalisticsabotage, with a view to maintaining prices and the rate of profits, will go all the way, to the result indicated, at least not on thegrounds so indicated alone. There is in the modern development oftechnology, and confidently to be counted on, a continued flow of newcontrivances and expedients designed to supersede the old; and these arein fact successful, in greater or less measure, in finding their wayinto profitable use, on such terms as to displace older appliances, underbid them in the market, and render them obsolete or subject torecapitalisation on a lowered earning-capacity. So far as thisunremitting flow of innovations has its effect, that is to say so far asit can not be hindered from having an effect, it acts to lower theeffectual cost of products to the consumer. This effect is but a partialand somewhat uncertain one, but it is always to be counted in as apersistent factor, of uncertain magnitude, that will affect the resultsin the long run. 

As has just been spoken of above, large coalitions of invested wealthare more competent to maintain, or if need be to advance, prices thansmaller coalitions acting in severalty, or even when acting incollusion. This state of the case has been well illustrated by the verysuccessful conduct of such large business organisations during the pastfew decades; successful, that is, in earning large returns on theinvestments engaged. Under the new dispensation, as has already beenremarked, coalitions should reasonably be expected to grow to a largersize and achieve a greater efficiency for the same purpose. 

The large gains of the large corporate coalitions are commonly ascribedby their promoters, and by sympathetic theoreticians of the ancientline, to economies of production made practicable by a larger scale ofproduction; an explanation which is disingenuous only so far as it needsbe. What is more visibly true on looking into the workings of thesecoalitions in detail is that they are enabled to maintain prices at aprofitable, indeed at a strikingly profitable, level by such a controlof the output as would be called sabotage if it were put in practice byinterested workmen with a view to maintain wages. The effects of thissagacious sabotage become visible in the large earnings of theseinvestments and the large gains which, now and again, accrue to theirmanagers. Large fortunes commonly are of this derivation. 

In cases where no recapitalisation has been effected for a considerableseries of years the yearly earnings of such businesslike coalitions havebeen known to approach fifty percent on the capitalised value. Commonly, however, when earnings rise to a striking figure, the business will berecapitalised on the basis of its earning-capacity, by issue of a stockdividend, by reincorporation in a new combination with an increasedcapitalisation, and the like. Such augmentation of capital not unusuallyhas been spoken of by theoretical writers and publicists as an increaseof the community's wealth, due to savings; an analysis of any given caseis likely to show that its increased capital value represents anincreasingly profitable procedure for securing a high price above cost, by stopping the available output short of the productive capacity of theindustries involved. Loosely speaking, and within the limits of what thetraffic will bear, the gains in such a case are proportioned to thedeficiency by which the production or supply under control falls shortof productive capacity. So that the capitalisation in the case comes tobear a rough proportion to the material loss which this organisation ofsabotage is enabled to inflict on the community at large; and instead ofits being a capitalisation of serviceable means of production it may, now and again, come to little else than a capitalisation of charteredsabotage. 

Under the new dispensation of peace and security at large this manner ofcapitalisation and business enterprise might reasonably be expected togain something in scope and security of operation. Indeed, there are fewthings within the range of human interest on which an opinion may moreconfidently be formed beforehand. If the rights of property, in theirextent and amplitude, are maintained intact as they are before the lawtoday, the hold which business enterprise on the large scale now has onthe affairs and fortunes of the community at large is bound to growfirmer and to be used more unreservedly for private advantage under thenew conditions contemplated. 

The logical result should be an accelerated rate of accumulation of thecountry's wealth in the hands of a relatively very small class ofwealthy owners, with a relatively inconsiderable semi-dependent middleclass of the well-to-do, and with the mass of the population even morenearly destitute than they are today. At the same time it is scarcely tobe avoided that this wholly dependent and impecunious mass of thepopulation must be given an appreciably better education than they havetoday. The argument will return to the difficulties that are liable toarise out of this conjuncture of facts, in the way of discontent andpossible disturbance. 

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Meantime, looking to the promise of the pacific future in the light ofthe pacific past, certain further consequences, particularlyconsequences of the economic order, that may reasonably be expected tofollow will also merit attention. The experience of the Victorian peaceis almost as pointed in its suggestion on this head as if it had been anexperiment made _ad hoc_; but with the reservation that the scale ofeconomic life, after all, was small in the Victorian era, and its pacewas slack, compared with what the twentieth century should have to offerunder suitable conditions of peace and pecuniary security. In the lightof this most instructive modern instance, there should appear to be inprospect a growth of well-bred families resting on invested wealth andso living on unearned incomes; larger incomes and consequently a moreimposingly well-bred body of gentlefolk, sustained and vouched for by amore munificent expenditure on superfluities, than the modern world haswitnessed hitherto. Doubtless the resulting growth of gentlemen andgentlewomen would be as perfect after their kind as these unexampledopportunities of gentle breeding might be expected to engender; so thateven their British precursors on the trail of respectability would fallsomewhat into insignificance by comparison, whether in respect ofgentlemanly qualities or in point of cost per unit. 

The moral, and even more particularly the aesthetic, value of such aline of gentlefolk, and of the culture which they may be expected toplace on view, --this cultural side of the case, of course, is what onewould prefer to dwell on, and on the spiritual gains that might beexpected to accrue to humanity at large from the steady contemplation ofthis meritorious respectability so displayed at such a cost. 

But the prosaic necessity of the argument turns back to the economic andcivil bearing of this prospective development, this virtual bifurcationof the pacified nation into a small number of gentlemen who own thecommunity's wealth and consume its net product in the pursuit ofgentility, on the one hand, and an unblest mass of the populace who dothe community's work on a meager livelihood tapering down toward thesubsistence minimum, on the other hand. Evidently, this prospectiveposture of affairs may seem "fraught with danger to the common weal, " asa public spirited citizen might phrase it. Or, as it would be expressedin less eloquent words, it appears to comprise elements that shouldmake for a change. At the same time it should be recalled, and thestatement will command assent on slight reflection, that there is noavoiding substantially such a posture of affairs under the promisedrégime of peace and security, provided only that the price-system standsover intact, and the current rights of property continue to be heldinviolate. If the known principles of competitive gain and competitivespending should need enforcement to that effect by an illustrativeinstance, the familiar history of the Victorian peace is sufficient toquiet all doubts. 

Of course, the resulting articulation of classes in the community willnot be expected to fall into such simple lines of sheer contrast as thisscheme would indicate. The class of gentlefolk, the legally constitutedwasters, as they would be rated from the economic point of view, can notbe expected personally to take care of so large a consumption ofsuperfluities as this posture of affairs requires at their hands. Theywould, as the Victorian peace teaches, necessarily have the assistanceof a trained corps of experts in unproductive consumption, the first andmost immediate of whom would be those whom the genial phrasing of AdamSmith designates "menial servants. " Beyond these would come thepurveyors of superfluities, properly speaking, and the large, indeedredundant, class of tradespeople of high and low degree, --dependent infact but with an illusion of semi-dependence; and farther out again thelegal and other professional classes of the order of stewards, whoseduty it will be to administer the sources of income and receive, apportion and disburse the revenues so devoted to a tracelessextinguishment. 

There would, in other words, be something of a "substantial middleclass, " dependent on the wealthy and on their expenditure of wealth, butpresumably imbued with the Victorian middle-class illusion that they areof some account in their own right. Under the due legal forms andsanctions this, somewhat voluminous, middle-class population wouldengage in the traffic which is their perquisite, and would continue tobelieve, in some passable fashion, that they touch the substance ofthings at something nearer than the second remove. They would in greatpart appear to be people of "independent means, " and more particularlywould they continue in the hope of so appearing and of some time makinggood the appearance. Hence their fancied, and therefore theirsentimental, interest would fall out on the side of the established lawand order; and they would accordingly be an element of stability in thecommonwealth, and would throw in their weight, and their voice, tosafeguard that private property and that fabric of prices and creditthrough which the "income stream" flows to the owners of preponderantinvested wealth. 

Judged on the state of the situation as it runs in our time, andallowing for the heightened efficiency of large-scale investment andconsolidated management under the prospective conditions of addedpecuniary security, it is to be expected that the middle-classpopulation with "independent means" should come in for a somewhat meagerlivelihood, provided that they work faithfully at their business ofmanaging pecuniary traffic to the advantage of their pecuniarybetters, --meager, that is to say, when allowance is made for theconventionally large expenditure on reputable appearances which isnecessarily to be included in their standard of living. It lies in thenature of this system of large-scale investment and enterprise that the(pecuniarily) minor agencies engaged on a footing of ostensibleindependence will come in for only such a share in the aggregate gainsof the community as it is expedient for the greater business intereststo allow them as an incentive to go on with their work as purveyors oftraffic to these greater business interests. 

The current, and still more this prospective, case of thequasi-self-directing middle class may fairly be illustrated by the caseof the American farmers, of the past and present. The American farmerrejoices to be called "The Independent Farmer. " He once was independent, in a meager and toil-worn fashion, in the days before the price-systemhad brought him and all his works into the compass of the market; butthat was some time ago. He now works for the market, ordinarily atsomething like what is called a "living wage, " provided he has"independent means" enough to enable him by steady application to earn aliving wage; and of course, the market being controlled by the paramountinvestment interests in the background, his work, in effect, inures totheir benefit; except so much as it may seem necessary to allow him asincentive to go on. Also of course, these paramount investment interestsare in turn controlled in all their manoeuvres by the impersonalexigencies of the price-system, which permits no vagaries in violationof the rule that all traffic must show a balance of profit in terms ofprice. 

The Independent Farmer still continues to believe that in some occultsense he still is independent in what he will do and what not; orperhaps rather that he can by shrewd management retain or regain atolerable measure of such independence, after the fashion of what isheld to have been the posture of affairs in the days before the comingof corporation finance; or at least he believes that he ought to have, or to regain or reclaim, some appreciable measure of such independence;which ought then, by help of the "independent means" which he stilltreasures, to procure him an honest and assured livelihood in return foran honest year's work. Latterly he, that is the common run of thefarmers, has been taking note of the fact that he is, as he apprehendsit, at a disadvantage in the market; and he is now taking recourse toconcerted action for the purpose of what might be called "rigging themarket" to his own advantage. In this he overlooks the impregnableposition which the party of the second part, the great investmentinterests, occupy; in fact, he is counting without his host. Hitherto hehas not been convinced of his own helplessness. And with a fine fancy hestill imagines that his own interest is on the side of the propertiedand privileged classes; so that the farmer constituency is the chiefpillar of conservative law and order, particularly in all that touchesthe inviolable rights of property and at every juncture where a divisioncomes on between those who live by investment and those who live bywork. In pecuniary effect, the ordinary American farmer, who legallyowns a moderate farm of the common sort, belongs among those who workfor a livelihood; such a livelihood as the investment interests find itworth while to allow him under the rule of what the traffic will bear;but in point of sentiment and class consciousness he clings to a belatedstand on the side of those who draw a profit from his work. 

So it is also with the menial servants and the middle-class people of"independent means, " who are, however, in a position to see more clearlytheir dependence on the owners of predominant wealth. And such, with afurther accentuation of the anomaly, may reasonably be expected to bethe further run of these relations under the promised régime of peaceand security. The class of well-kept gentlefolk will scarcely be calledon to stand alone, in case of a division between those who live byinvestment and those who live by work; inasmuch as, for the calculablefuture, it should seem a reasonable expectation that this veryconsiderable fringe of dependents and pseudo-independents will abide bytheir time-tried principles of right and honest living, through gooddays and evil, and cast in their lot unreservedly with that reputablebody to whom the control of trade and industry by investment assigns theusufruct of the community's productive powers. 

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Something has already been said of the prospective breeding of pedigreedgentlefolk under the projected régime of peace. Pedigree, for thepurpose in hand, is a pecuniary attribute and is, of course, a productof funded wealth, more or less ancient. Virtually ancient pedigree canbe procured by well-advised expenditure on the conspicuous amenities;that is to say pedigree effectually competent as a background of currentgentility. Gentlefolk of such syncopated pedigree may have to walkcircumspectly, of course; but their being in this manner put on theirgood behavior should tend to heighten their effectual serviceability asgentlefolk, by inducing a single-mindedness of gentility beyond what canfairly be expected of those who are already secure in their tenure. 

Except conventionally, there is no hereditary difference between thestandard gentlefolk and, say, their "menial servants, " or the generalpopulation of the farms and the industrial towns. This is awell-established commonplace among ethnological students; which has, ofcourse, nothing to say with respect to the conventionally distinct linesof descent of the "Best Families. " These Best Families are nowisedistinguishable from the common run in point of hereditary traits; thedifference that makes the gentleman and the gentlewoman being wholly amatter of habituation during the individual's life-time. It is somethingof a distasteful necessity to call attention to this total absence ofnative difference between the well-born and the common, but it is anecessity of the argument in hand, and the recalling of it may, therefore, be overlooked for once in a way. There is no harm and noannoyance intended. The point of it all is that, on the premises whichthis state of the case affords, the body of gentlefolk created by suchan accumulation of invested wealth will have no less of an effectualcultural value than they would have had if their virtually ancientpedigree had been actual. 

At this point, again, the experience of the Victorian peace and thefunctioning of its gentlefolk come in to indicate what may fairly behoped for in this way under this prospective régime of peace at large. But with the difference that the scale of things is to be larger, thepace swifter, and the volume and dispersion of this prospective leisureclass somewhat wider. The work of this leisure class--and there isneither paradox nor inconsistency in the phrase--should be patterned onthe lines worked out by their prototypes of the Victorian time, but withsome appreciable accentuation in the direction of what chieflycharacterised the leisure class of that era of tranquility. Thecharacteristic feature to which attention naturally turns at thissuggestion is the tranquility that has marked that body of gentlefolkand their code of clean and honest living. Another word than"tranquility" might be hit upon to designate this characteristic animus, but any other word that should at all adequately serve the turn wouldcarry a less felicitous suggestion of those upper-class virtues thathave constituted the substantial worth of the Victorian gentleman. Theconscious worth of these gentlefolk has been a beautifully completeachievement. It has been an achievement of "faith without works, " ofcourse; but, needless to say, that is as it should be, also of course. The place of gentlefolk in the economy of Nature is tracelessly toconsume the community's net product, and in doing so to set a standardof decent expenditure for the others emulatively to work up to as nearas may be. It is scarcely conceivable that this could have been done ina more unobtrusively efficient manner, or with a more austerely virtuousconviction of well-doing, than by the gentlefolk bred of the Victorianpeace. So also, in turn, it is not to be believed that the prospectivebreed of gentlefolk derivable from the net product of the pacificnations under the promised régime of peace at large will prove in anydegree less effective for the like ends. More will be required of themin the way of a traceless consumption of superfluities and an unexampledexpensive standard of living. But this situation that so faces them maybe construed as a larger opportunity, quite as well as a more difficulttask. 

A theoretical exposition of the place and cultural value of a leisureclass in modern life would scarcely be in place here; and it has alsobeen set out in some detail elsewhere. [10] For the purpose in hand itmay be sufficient to recall that the canons of taste and the standardsof valuation worked out and inculcated by leisure-class life have in allages run, with unbroken consistency, to pecuniary waste and personalfutility. In its economic bearing, and particularly in its immediatebearing on the material well-being of the community at large, theleadership of the leisure class can scarcely be called by a lessderogatory epithet than "untoward. " But that is not the whole of thecase, and the other side should be heard. The leisure-class life oftranquility, running detached as it does above the turmoil out of whichthe material of their sustenance is derived, enables a growth of allthose virtues that mark, or make, the gentleman; and that affect thelife of the underlying community throughout, pervasively, by imitation;leading to a standardisation of the everyday proprieties on apresumably, higher level of urbanity and integrity than might beexpected to result in the absence of this prescriptive model. 

[Footnote 10: Cf. _The Theory of the Leisure Class_, especially ch. V. -ix. And xiv. ]

_Integer vitae scelerisque purus_, the gentleman of assured stationturns a placid countenance to all those petty vexations of breadwinningthat touch him not. Serenely and with an impassive fortitude he facesthose common vicissitudes of life that are impotent to make or mar hismaterial fortunes and that can neither impair his creature comforts norput a slur on his good repute. So that without afterthought he dealsfairly in all everyday conjunctures of give and take; for they are atthe most inconsequential episodes to him, although the like might spellirremediable disaster to his impecunious counterfoil among the commonmen who have the community's work to do. In short, he is a gentleman, inthe best acceptation of the word, --unavoidably, by force ofcircumstance. As such his example is of invaluable consequence to theunderlying community of common folk, in that it keeps before their eyesan object lesson in habitual fortitude and visible integrity such ascould scarcely have been created except under such shelter from thosedisturbances that would go to mar habitual fortitude and integrity. There can be little doubt but the high example of the Victoriangentlefolk has had much to do with stabilising the animus of the Britishcommon man on lines of integrity and fair play. What else and more inthe way of habitual preconceptions he may, by competitive imitation, oweto the same high source is not immediately in question here. 

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Recalling once more that the canon of life whereby folk are gentlefolksums itself up in the requirements of pecuniary waste and personalfutility, and that these requirements are indefinitely extensible, atthe same time that the management of the community's industry byinvestment for a profit enables the owners of invested wealth to divertto their own use the community's net product, wherewith to meet theserequirements, it follows that the community at large which provides thisoutput of product will be allowed so much as is required by theirnecessary standard of living, --with an unstable margin of error in theadjustment. This margin of error should tend continually to grownarrower as the businesslike management of industry grows more efficientwith experience; but it will also continually be disturbed in thecontrary sense by innovations of a technological nature that requirecontinual readjustment. This margin is probably not to be got rid of, though it may be expected to become less considerable under more settledconditions. 

It should also not be overlooked that the standard of living here spokenof as necessarily to be allowed the working population by no meanscoincides with the "physical subsistence minimum, " from which in fact italways departs by something appreciable. The necessary standard ofliving of the working community is in fact made up of twodistinguishable factors: the subsistence minimum, and the requirementsof decorously wasteful consumption--the "decencies of life. " Thesedecencies are no less requisite than the physical necessaries, in pointof workday urgency, and their amount is a matter of use and wont. Thiscomposite standard of living is a practical minimum, below whichconsumption will not fall, except by a fluctuating margin of error; theeffect being the same, in point of necessary consumption, as if it wereall of the nature of a physical subsistence minimum. 

Loosely speaking, the arrangement should leave nothing appreciable over, after the requirements of genteel waste and of the workday standard ofconsumption have been met. From which in turn it should follow that therest of what is comprised under the general caption of "culture" willfind a place only in the interstices of leisure-class expenditure andonly at the hands of aberrant members of the class of the gently-bred. The working population should have no effectual margin of time, energyor means for other pursuits than the day's work in the service of theprice-system; so that aberrant individuals in this class, who might bynative propensity incline, e. G. , to pursue the sciences or the finearts, should have (virtually) no chance to make good. It would be avirtual suppression of such native gifts among the common folk, not adefinitive and all-inclusive suppression. The state of the case underthe Victorian peace may, again, be taken in illustration of the point;although under the presumably more effectual control to be looked for inthe pacific future the margin might reasonably be expected to runsomewhat narrower, so that this virtual suppression of cultural talentamong the common men should come nearer a complete suppression. 

The working of that free initiative that makes the advance ofcivilisation, and also the greater part of its conservation, would ineffect be allowed only in the erratic members of the kept classes; whereat the same time it would have to work against the side-draught ofconventional usage, which discountenances any pursuit that is notvisibly futile according to some accepted manner of futility. Now underthe prospective perfect working of the price-system, bearers of thebanners of civilisation could effectually be drawn only from the keptclasses, the gentlefolk who alone would have the disposal of such freeincome as is required for work that has no pecuniary value. Andnumerically the gentlefolk are an inconsiderable fraction of thepopulation. The supply of competently gifted bearers of the community'sculture would accordingly be limited to such as could be drawn byself-selection from among this inconsiderable proportion of thecommunity at large. 

It may be recalled that in point of heredity, and therefore in point ofnative fitness for the maintenance and advance of civilisation, there isno difference between the gentlefolk and the populace at large; or atleast there is no difference of such a nature as to count in abatementof the proposition set down above. Some slight, but after allinconsequential, difference there may be, but such difference as thereis, if any, rather counts against the gentlefolk as keepers of thecultural advance. The gentlefolk are derived from business; thegentleman represents a filial generation of the businessman; and if theclass typically is gifted with any peculiar hereditary traits, therefore, they should presumably be such as typically mark thesuccessful businessman--astute, prehensile, unscrupulous. For ageneration or two, perhaps to the scriptural third and fourthgeneration, it is possible that a diluted rapacity and cunning maycontinue to mark the businessman's well-born descendants; but these arenot serviceable traits for the conservation and advancement of thecommunity's cultural heritage. So that no consideration of specialhereditary fitness in the well-born need be entertained in thisconnection. 

As to the limitation imposed by the price-system on the supply ofcandidates suited by native gift for the human work of civilisation; itwould no doubt, be putting the figure extravagantly high to say that thegentlefolk, properly speaking, comprise as much as ten percent of thetotal population; perhaps something less than one-half of thatpercentage would still seem a gross overstatement. But, to cover looseends and vagrant cases, the gentlefolk may for the purpose be creditedwith so high a percentage of the total population. If ten percent beallowed, as an outside figure, it follows that the community'sscientists, artists, scholars, and the like individuals given over tothe workday pursuits of the human spirit, are by conventionalrestriction to be drawn from one-tenth of the current supply of personssuited by native gift for these pursuits. Or as it may also beexpressed, in so far as the projected scheme takes effect it shouldresult in the suppression of nine (or more) out of every ten personsavailable for the constructive work of civilisation. The culturalconsequences to be looked for, therefore, should be quite markedly ofthe conservative order. 

Of course, in actual effect, the retardation or repression ofcivilisation by this means, as calculated on these premises, shouldreasonably be expected to count up to something appreciably more thannine-tenths of the gains that might presumably be achieved in theconceivable absence of the price-system and the régime of investment. All work of this kind has much of the character of teamwork; so that theefforts of isolated individuals count for little, and a few working inmore or less of concert and understanding will count for proportionallymuch less than many working in concert. The endeavours of theindividuals engaged count cumulatively, to such effect that doublingtheir forces will more than double the aggregate efficiency; andconversely, reducing the number will reduce the effectiveness of theirwork by something more than the simple numerical proportion. Indeed, anundue reduction of numbers in such a case may lead to the total defeatof the few that are left, and the best endeavours of a dwindling remnantmay be wholly nugatory. There is needed a sense of community andsolidarity, without which the assurance necessary to the work is boundto falter and dwindle out; and there is also needed a degree of popularcountenance, not to be had by isolated individuals engaged in anunconventional pursuit of things that are neither to be classed asspendthrift decorum nor as merchantable goods. In this connection anisolated one does not count for one, and more than the critical minimumwill count for several per capita. It is a case where the "minimal dose"is wholly inoperative. 

There is not a little reason to believe that consequent upon theinstallation of the projected régime of peace at large and secureinvestment the critical point in the repression of talent will veryshortly be reached and passed, so that the principle of the "minimaldose" will come to apply. The point may readily be illustrated by thecase of many British and American towns and neighbourhoods during thepast few decades; where the dominant price-system and its commercialstandards of truth and beauty have over-ruled all inclination tocultural sanity and put it definitively in abeyance. The cultural, orperhaps the conventional, residue left over in these cases wherecivilisation has gone stale through inefficiency of the minimal dose isnot properly to be found fault with; it is of a blameless character, conventionally; nor is there any intention here to cast aspersion on thedesolate. The like effects of the like causes are to be seen in theAmerican colleges and universities, where business principles havesupplanted the pursuit of learning, and where the commercialisation ofaims, ideals, tastes, occupations and personnel is following much thesame lines that have led so many of the country towns effectuallyoutside the cultural pale. The American university or college is comingto be an outlier of the price-system, in point of aims, standards andpersonnel; hitherto the tradition of learning as a trait ofcivilisation, as distinct from business, has not been fully displaced, although it is now coming to face the passage of the minimal dose. Thelike, in a degree, is apparently true latterly for many English, andstill more evidently for many German schools. 

In these various instances of what may be called dry-rot or local blighton the civilised world's culture the decline appears to be due not to apositive infection of a malignant sort, so much as to a failure of theactive cultural ferment, which has fallen below the critical point ofefficacy; perhaps through an unintended refusal of a livelihood topersons given over to cultivating the elements of civilisation; perhapsthrough the conventional disallowance of the pursuit of any other endsthan competitive gain and competitive spending. Evidently it issomething much more comprehensive in this nature that is reasonably tobe looked for under the prospective régime of peace, in case theprice-system gains that farther impetus and warrant which it should comein for if the rights of ownership and investment stand over intact, andso come to enjoy the benefit of a further improved state of theindustrial arts and a further enlarged scale of operation and enhancedrate of turnover. 

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To turn back to the point from which this excursion branched off. It hasbeen presumed all the while that the technological equipment, or thestate of the industrial arts, must continue to advance under theconditions offered by this régime of peace at large. But the last fewparagraphs will doubtless suggest that such a single-minded addiction tocompetitive gain and competitive spending as the stabilised andamplified price-system would enjoin, must lead to an effectualretardation, perhaps to a decline, of those material sciences on whichmodern technology draws; and that the state of the industrial artsshould therefore cease to advance, if only the scheme of investment andbusinesslike sabotage can be made sufficiently secure. That such may bethe outcome is a contingency which the argument will have to meet and toallow for; but it is after all a contingency that need not be expectedto derange the sequence of events, except in the way of retardation. Even without further advance in technological expedients or in therelevant material sciences, there will still necessarily ensue aneffectual advance in the industrial arts, in the sense that furtherorganisation and enlargement of the material equipment and industrialprocesses on lines already securely known and not to be forgotten mustbring an effectually enhanced efficiency of the industrial process as awhole. 

In illustration, it is scarcely to be assumed even as a tentativehypothesis that the system of transport and communication will notundergo extension and improvement on the lines already familiar, even inthe absence of new technological contrivances. At the same time acontinued increase of population is to be counted on; which has, for thepurpose in hand, much the same effect as an advance in the industrialarts. Human contact and mutual understanding will necessarily grow widerand closer, and will have its effect on the habits of thought prevalentin the communities that are to live under the promised régime of peace. The system of transport and communication having to handle a morevoluminous and exacting traffic, in the service of a larger and morecompact population, will have to be organised and administered onmechanically drawn schedules of time, place, volume, velocity, andprice, of a still more exacting accuracy than hitherto. The like willnecessarily apply throughout the industrial occupations that employextensive plant or processes, or that articulate with industrialprocesses of that nature; which will necessarily comprise a largerproportion of the industrial process at large than hitherto. 

As has already been remarked more than once in the course of theargument, a population that lives and does its work, and such play as isallowed it, in and by an exactingly articulate mechanical system of thiskind will necessarily be an "intelligent" people, in the colloquialsense of the word; that is to say it will necessarily be a people thatuses printed matter freely and that has some familiarity with theelements of those material sciences that underlie this mechanicallyorganised system of appliances and processes. Such a population lives byand within the framework of the mechanistic logic, and is in a fair wayto lose faith in any proposition that can not be stated convincingly interms of this mechanistic logic. Superstitions are liable to lapse byneglect or disuse in such a community; that is to say propositions of anon-mechanistic complexion are liable to insensible disestablishment insuch a case; "superstition" in these premises coming to signify whateveris not of this mechanistic, or "materialistic" character. An exceptionto this broad characterisation of non-mechanistic propositions as"superstition" would be matters that are of the nature of an immediatedeliverance of the senses or of the aesthetic sensibilities. 

By a simile it might be said that what so falls under the caption of"superstition" in such a case is subject to decay by inanition. Itshould not be difficult to conceive the general course of such a decayof superstitions under this unremitting discipline of mechanistic habitsof life. The recent past offers an illustration, in the unemotionalprogress of decay that has overtaken religious beliefs in the morecivilised countries, and more particularly among the intellectuallytrained workmen of the mechanical industries. The elimination of suchnon-mechanistic propositions of the faith has been visibly going on, butit has not worked out on any uniform plan, nor has it overtaken anylarge or compact body of people consistently or abruptly, being of thenature of obsolescence rather than of set repudiation. But in a slackand unreflecting fashion the divestment has gone on until the aggregateeffect is unmistakable. 

A similar divestment of superstitions is reasonably to be looked foralso in that domain of preconceptions that lies between the supernaturaland the mechanistic. Chief among these time-warped preconceptions--orsuperstitions--that so stand over out of the alien past among thesedemocratic peoples is the institution of property. As is true ofpreconceptions touching the supernatural verities, so here too thearticle of use and wont in question will not bear formulation inmechanistic terms and is not congruous with that mechanistic logic thatis incontinently bending the habits of thought of the common man moreand more consistently to its own bent. There is, of course, thedifference that while no class--apart from the servants of thechurch--have a material interest in the continued integrity of thearticles of the supernatural faith, there is a strong and stubbornmaterial interest bound up with the maintenance of this article of thepecuniary faith; and the class in whom this material interest vests arealso, in effect, invested with the coercive powers of the law. 

The law, and the popular preconceptions that give the law its bindingforce, go to uphold the established usage and the establishedprerogatives on this head; and the disestablishment of the rights ofproperty and investment therefore is not a simple matter of obsolescencethrough neglect. It may confidently be counted on that all the apparatusof the law and all the coercive agencies of law and order, will bebrought in requisition to uphold the ancient rights of ownership, whenever any move is made toward their disallowance or restriction. Butthen, on the other hand, the movement to disallow or diminish theprerogatives of ownership is also not to take the innocuous shape ofunstudied neglect. So soon, or rather so far, as the common man comes torealise that these rights of ownership and investment uniformly work tohis material detriment, at the same time that he has lost the "will tobelieve" in any argument that does not run in terms of the mechanisticlogic, it is reasonable to expect that he will take a stand on thismatter; and it is more than likely that the stand taken will be of anuncompromising kind, --presumably something in the nature of the standonce taken by recalcitrant Englishmen in protest against theirresponsible rule of the Stuart sovereign. It is also not likely thatthe beneficiaries under these proprietary rights will yield their groundat all amicably; all the more since they are patently within theirauthentic rights in insisting on full discretion in the disposal oftheir own possessions; very much as Charles I or James II once werewithin their prescriptive right, --which had little to say in theoutcome. 

Even apart from "time immemorial" and the patent authenticity of theinstitution, there were and are many cogent arguments to be alleged infavor of the position for which the Stuart sovereigns and theirspokesmen contended. So there are and will be many, perhaps more, cogentreasons to be alleged for the maintenance of the established law andorder in respect of the rights of ownership and investment. Not leasturgent, nor least real, among these arguments is the puzzling questionof what to put in the place of these rights and of the methods ofcontrol based on them, very much as the analogous question puzzled thepublic-spirited men of the Stuart times. All of which goes to argue thatthere may be expected to arise a conjuncture of perplexities andcomplications, as well as a division of interests and claims. To whichshould be added that the division is likely to come to a head so soon asthe balance of forces between the two parties in interest becomesdoubtful, so that either party comes to surmise that the success of itsown aims may depend on its own efforts. And as happens where twoantagonistic parties are each convinced of the justice of its cause, andin the absence of an umpire, the logical recourse is the wager ofbattle. 

Granting the premises, there should be no reasonable doubt as to thiseventual cleavage between those who own and those who do not; and of thepremises the only item that is not already an accomplished fact is theinstallation of peace at large. The rest of what goes into the argumentis the well-known modern state of the industrial arts, and the equallywell-known price-system; which, in combination, give its character tothe modern state of business enterprise. It is only an unusually broadinstance of an institutional arrangement which has in the course of timeand changing conditions come to work at cross purposes with thatunderlying ground of institutional arrangements that takes form in thecommonplace aphorism, Live and let live. With change setting in thedirection familiar to all men today, it is only a question of limitedtime when the discrepancy will reach a critical pass, and theinstallation of peace may be counted on to hasten this course of things. 

That a decision will be sought by recourse to forcible measures, is alsoscarcely open to question; since the established law and order providesfor a resort to coercion in the enforcement of these prescriptiverights, and since both parties in interest, in this as in other cases, are persuaded of the justice of their claims. A decision either way isan intolerable iniquity in the eyes of the losing side. History teachesthat in such a quarrel the recourse has always been to force. 

History teaches also, but with an inflection of doubt, that the outworninstitution in such a conjuncture faces disestablishment. At least, somen like to believe. What the experience of history does not leave indoubt is the grave damage, discomfort and shame incident to thedisplacement of such an institutional discrepancy by such recourse toforce. What further appears to be clear in the premises, at least to thepoint of a strong presumption, is that in the present case the decision, or the choice, lies between two alternatives: either the price-systemand its attendant business enterprise will yield and pass out; or thepacific nations will conserve their pecuniary scheme of law and order atthe cost of returning to a war footing and letting their owners preservethe rights of ownership by force of arms. 

The reflection obviously suggests itself that this prospect ofconsequences to follow from the installation of peace at large mightwell be taken into account beforehand by those who are aiming to workout an enduring peace. It has appeared in the course of the argumentthat the preservation of the present pecuniary law and order, with allits incidents of ownership and investment, is incompatible with anunwarlike state of peace and security. This current scheme ofinvestment, business, and sabotage, should have an appreciably betterchance of survival in the long run if the present conditions of warlikepreparation and national insecurity were maintained, or if the projectedpeace were left in a somewhat problematical state, sufficientlyprecarious to keep national animosities alert, and thereby to theneglect of domestic interests, particularly of such interests as touchthe popular well-being. On the other hand, it has also appeared that thecause of peace and its perpetuation might be materially advanced ifprecautions were taken beforehand to put out of the way as much as maybe of those discrepancies of interest and sentiment between nations andbetween classes which make for dissension and eventual hostilities. 

So, if the projectors of this peace at large are in any degree inclinedto seek concessive terms on which the peace might hopefully be madeenduring, it should evidently be part of their endeavours from theoutset to put events in train for the present abatement and eventualabrogation of the rights of ownership and of the price-system in whichthese rights take effect. A hopeful beginning along this line wouldmanifestly be the neutralisation of all pecuniary rights of citizenship, as has been indicated in an earlier passage. On the other hand, if peaceis not desired at the cost of relinquishing the scheme of competitivegain and competitive spending, the promoters of peace should logicallyobserve due precaution and move only so far in the direction of apeaceable settlement as would result in a sufficiently unstableequilibrium of mutual jealousies; such as might expeditiously be upsetwhenever discontent with pecuniary affairs should come to threaten thisestablished scheme of pecuniary prerogatives. 

BOOKS BY THORSTEIN VEBLEN

THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS

THE THEORY OF BUSINESS ENTERPRISE

THE INSTINCT OF WORKMANSHIP

IMPERIAL GERMANYAND THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

THE NATURE OF PEACEAND THE TERMS OF ITS PERPETUATION

THE HIGHER LEARNING IN AMERICA