PEACE THEORIES AND THE BALKAN WAR

BY

NORMAN ANGELL

Author of "The Great Illusion"

1912

PEACE THEORIES AND THE BALKAN WAR

By NORMAN ANGELL, Author of "The Great Illusion. "

1912

THE TEXT OF THIS BOOK. 

 Whether we blame the belligerents or criticise the powers, or sit in sackcloth and ashes ourselves is absolutely of no consequence at the present moment. . . . 

 We have sometimes been assured by persons who profess to know that the danger of war has become an illusion. . . . Well, here is a war which has broken out in spite of all that rulers and diplomatists could do to prevent it, a war in which the Press has had no part, a war which the whole force of the money power has been subtly and steadfastly directed to prevent, which has come upon us, not through the ignorance or credulity of the people, but, on the contrary, through their knowledge of their history and their destiny, and through their intense realisation of their wrongs and of their duties, as they conceived them, a war which from all these causes has burst upon us with all the force of a spontaneous explosion, and which in strife and destruction has carried all before it. Face to face with this manifestation, who is the man bold enough to say that force is never a remedy? Who is the man who is foolish enough to say that martial virtues do not play a vital part in the health and honour of every people? (Cheers. ) Who is the man who is vain enough to suppose that the long antagonisms of history and of time can in all circumstances be adjusted by the smooth and superficial conventions of politicians and ambassadors?--MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL at Sheffield. 

 Mr. Norman Angell's theory was one to enable the citizens of this country to sleep quietly, and to lull into false security the citizens of all great countries. That is undoubtedly the reason why he met with so much success. . . . It was a very comfortable theory for those nations which have grown rich and whose ideals and initiative have been sapped by over much prosperity. But the great delusion of Norman Angell, which led to the writing of "The Great Illusion, " has been dispelled for ever by the Balkan League. In this connection it is of value to quote the words of Mr. Winston Churchill, which give very adequately the reality as opposed to theory. --_The Review of Reviews_, from an article on "The Débâcle of Norman Angell. "

And an odd score of like pronouncements from newspapers and public mensince the outbreak of the Balkan War. 

The interrogations they imply have been put definitely in the firstchapter of this book; the replies to those questions summarised in thatchapter and elaborated in the others. 

_The "key" to this book and the summary of its arguments are containedin Chapter I. (pp. 7-12)_

CONTENTS. 

I. The Questions and their Answers

II. "Peace" and "War" in the Balkans

III. Economic Causes in the Balkan War

IV. Turkish Ideals in our Political Thought

V. Our Responsibility for Balkan Wars

VI. Pacifism, Defence, and the "Impossibility of War"

VII. "Theories" False and True; their Role in European Politics

VIII. What Shall we DO?

CHAPTER I. 

THE QUESTIONS AND THEIR ANSWER. 

CHAPTER II. 

"PEACE" AND "WAR" IN THE BALKANS. 

"Peace" in the Balkans under the Turkish System--The inadequacy of ourterms--The repulsion of the Turkish invasion--The Christian effort tobring the reign of force and conquest to an end--The difference betweenaction designed to settle relationship on force and counter actiondesigned to prevent such settlement--The force of the policeman and theforce of the brigand--The failure of conquest as exemplified by theTurk--Will the Balkan peoples prove Pacifist or Bellicist; adopt theTurkish or the Christian System?

CHAPTER III. 

ECONOMICS AND THE BALKAN WAR. 

The "economic system" of the Turk--The Turkish "Trade of Conquest" as acause of this war--Racial and Religious hatred of primitivesocieties--Industrialism as a solvent--Its operation in Europe--Balkansgeographically remote from main drift of European economicdevelopment--The false economies of the Powers as a cause of theirjealousies and quarrels--- This has prevented settlement--What is the"economic motive"?--Impossible to separate moral andmaterial--Nationality and the War System. 

CHAPTER IV. 

TURKISH IDEALS IN OUR POLITICAL THOUGHT. 

This war and "the Turks of Britain and Prussia"--The Anglo-Saxon andopposed ideals--Mr. C. Chesterton's case for "killing and being killed"as the best method of settling differences--Its application to CivilConflicts--As in Spanish-America--The difference between Devonshire andVenezuela--Will the Balkans adopt the Turco-Venezuelan political idealsor the British?

CHAPTER V. 

OUR RESPONSIBILITY FOR BALKAN WARS. 

Mr. Winston Churchill on the "Responsibility" of Diplomacy--What does hemean?--An easy (and popular) philosophy--Can we neglect past if we wouldavoid future errors?--British temper and policy in the Crimean War--Whatare its lessons?--Why we fought a war to sustain the "integrity andindependence of the Turkish dominion in Europe"--Supporting the Turkagainst his Christian victims--From fear of Russian growth which we arenow aiding--The commentary of events--Shall we back the wrong horseagain?

CHAPTER VI. 

PACIFISM, DEFENCE, AND "THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF WAR. "

Did the Crimean War prove Bright and Cobden wrong?--Our curiousreasoning--Mr. Churchill on "illusions"--The danger of war is not theillusion but its benefits--We are all Pacifists now since we all desirePeace--Will more armaments alone secure it?--The experience ofmankind--War "the failure of human wisdom"--Therefore more wisdom is theremedy--But the Militarists only want more arms--The German LordRoberts--The military campaign against political Rationalism--How tomake war certain. 

CHAPTER VII. 

"THEORIES" FALSE AND TRUE: THEIR ROLE IN EUROPEAN PROGRESS. 

The improvement of ideas the foundation of all improvement--Shootingstraight and thinking straight; the one as important as theother--Pacifism and the Millennium--How we got rid of wars ofreligion--A few ideas have changed the face of the world--The simpleideas the most important--The "theories" which have led to war--The workof the reformer to destroy old and false theories--The intellectualinterdependence of nations--Europe at unity in this matter--New ideascannot be confined to one people--No fear of ourselves or any nationbeing ahead of the rest. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

WHAT MUST WE _DO_?

We must have the right political faith--Then we must give effect toit--Good intention not enough--The organization of the great forces ofmodern life--Our indifference as to the foundations of the evil--Theonly hope. 

CHAPTER I. 

THE QUESTIONS AND THEIR ANSWER. 

What has Pacifism, Old or New, to say now?

Is War impossible?

Is it unlikely?

Is it futile?

Is not force a remedy, and at times the only remedy?

Could any remedy have been devised on the whole so conclusive andcomplete as that used by the Balkan peoples?

Have not the Balkan peoples redeemed War from the charges too readilybrought against it as simply an instrument of barbarism?

Have questions of profit and loss, economic considerations, anythingwhatever to do with this war?

Would the demonstration of its economic futility have kept the peace?

Are theories and logic of the slightest use, since force alone candetermine the issue?

Is not war therefore inevitable, and must we not prepare diligently forit? I will answer all these questions quite simply and directly withoutcasuistry and logic-chopping, and honestly desiring to avoid paradox and"cleverness. " And these quite simple answers will not be incontradiction with anything that I have written, nor will theyinvalidate any of the principles I have attempted to explain. 

And my answers may be summarised thus:--

(1) This war has justified both the Old Pacifism and the New. Byuniversal admission events have proved that the Pacifists who opposedthe Crimean War were right and their opponents wrong. Had public opiniongiven more consideration to those Pacifist principles, this countrywould not have "backed the wrong horse, " and this war, two wars whichhave preceded it, and many of the abominations of which the Balkanpeninsular has been the scene during the last 60 years might have beenavoided, and in any case Great Britain would not now carry upon hershoulders the responsibility of having during half a century supportedthe Turk against the Christian and of having tried uselessly to preventwhat has now taken place--the break-up of the Turk's rule in Europe. 

(2) War is not impossible, and no responsible Pacifist ever said it was;it is not the likelihood of war which is the illusion, but its benefits. 

(3) It is likely or unlikely according as the parties to a dispute areguided by wisdom or folly. 

(4) It _is_ futile; and force is no remedy. 

(5) Its futility is proven by the war waged daily by the Turks asconquerors, during the last 400 years. And because the Balkan peopleshave chosen the less evil of two kinds of war, and will use theirvictory to bring a system based on force and conquest to an end, we whodo not believe in force and conquest rejoice in their action, andbelieve it will achieve immense benefits. But if instead of using theirvictory to eliminate force, they in their turn pin their faith to it, continue to use it the one against the other, exploiting by its meansthe populations they rule, and become not the organisers of socialco-operation among the Balkan populations, but merely, like the Turks, their conquerors and "owners, " then they in their turn will share thefate of the Turk. 

(6) The fundamental causes of this war are economic in the narrower, aswell as in the larger sense of the term; in the first because conquestwas the Turk's only trade--he desired to live out of taxes wrung from aconquered people, to exploit them as a means of livelihood, and thisconception was at the bottom of most of Turkish misgovernment. And inthe larger sense its cause is economic because in the Balkans, remotegeographically from the main drift of European economic development, there has not grown up that interdependent social life, the innumerablecontacts which in the rest of Europe have done so much to attenuateprimitive religious and racial hatreds. 

(7) A better understanding by the Turk of the real nature of civilisedgovernment, of the economic futility of conquest of the fact that ameans of livelihood (an economic system), based upon having more forcethan someone else and using it ruthlessly against him, is an impossibleform of human relationship bound to break down, _would_ have kept thepeace. 

(8) If European statecraft had not been animated by false conceptions, largely economic in origin, based upon a belief in the necessary rivalryof states, the advantages of preponderant force and conquest, theWestern nations could have composed their quarrels and ended theabominations of the Balkan peninsula long ago--even in the opinion ofthe _Times_. And it is our own false statecraft--that of GreatBritain--which has a large part of the responsibility for this failureof European civilisation. It has caused us to sustain the Turk inEurope, to fight a great and popular war with that aim, and led us intotreaties which had they been kept, would have obliged us to fight to-dayon the side of the Turk against the Balkan States. 

(9) If by "theories" and "logic" is meant the discussion of and interestin principles, the ideas that govern human relationship, they are theonly things that can prevent future wars, just as they were the onlythings that brought religious wars to an end--a preponderant power"imposing" peace playing no role therein. Just as it was false religioustheories which made the religious wars, so it is false politicaltheories which make the political wars. 

(10) War is only inevitable in the sense that other forms of error andpassion--religious persecution for instance--are inevitable; they ceasewith better understanding, as the attempt to impose religious belief byforce has ceased in Europe. 

(11) We should not prepare for war; we should prepare to prevent war;and though that preparation may include battleships and conscription, those elements will quite obviously make the tension and danger greaterunless there is also a better European opinion. 

These summarised replies need a little expansion. 

CHAPTER II. 

"PEACE" AND "WAR" IN THE BALKANS. 

"Peace" in the Balkans under the Turkish System--The inadequacy of ourterms--The repulsion of the Turkish invasion--The Christian effort tobring the reign of force and conquest to an end--The difference betweenaction designed to settle relationship on force and counter actiondesigned to prevent such settlement--The force of the policeman and theforce of the brigand--The failure of conquest as exemplified by theTurk--Will the Balkan peoples prove Pacifist or Bellicist; adopt theTurkish or the Christian System?

Had we thrashed out the question of war and peace as we must finally, itwould hardly be necessary to explain that the apparent paradox in AnswerNo. 4 (that war is futile, and that this war will have immense benefits)is due to the inadequacy of our language, which compels us to use thesame word for two opposed purposes, not to any real contradiction offact. 

We called the condition of the Balkan peninsula "Peace" until the otherday, merely because the respective Ambassadors still happened to beresident in the capitals to which they were accredited. 

Let us see what "Peace" under Turkish rule really meant, and who is thereal invader in this war. Here is a very friendly and impartialwitness--Sir Charles Elliot--who paints for us the character of theTurk as an "administrator":--

 "The Turk in Europe has an overweening sense of his superiority, and remains a nation apart, mixing little with the conquered populations, whose customs and ideas he tolerates, but makes little effort to understand. The expression indeed, 'Turkey in Europe' means indeed no more than 'England in Asia, ' if used as a designation for India. . . . The Turks have done little to assimilate the people whom they have conquered, and still less, been assimilated by them. In the larger part of the Turkish dominions, the Turks themselves are in a minority. . . . The Turks certainly resent the dismemberment of their Empire, but not in the sense in which the French resent the conquest of Alsace-Lorraine by Germany. They would never use the word 'Turkey' or even its oriental equivalent, 'The High Country' in ordinary conversation. They would never say that Syria and Greece are parts of Turkey which have been detached, but merely that they are tributaries which have become independent, provinces once occupied by Turks where there are no Turks now. As soon as a province passes under another Government, the Turks find it the most natural thing in the world to leave it and go somewhere else. In the same spirit the Turk talks quite pleasantly of leaving Constantinople some day, he will go over to Asia and found another capital. One can hardly imagine Englishmen speaking like that of London, but they might conceivably speak so of Calcutta. . . . The Turk is a conqueror and nothing else. The history of the Turk is a catalogue of battles. His contributions to art, literature, science and religion, are practically nil. Their desire has not been to instruct, to improve, hardly even to govern, but simply to conquer. . . . The Turk makes nothing at all; he takes whatever he can get, as plunder or pillage. He lives in the houses which he finds, or which he orders to be built for him. In unfavourable circumstances he is a marauder. In favourable, a _Grand Seigneur_ who thinks it his right to enjoy with grace and dignity all that the world can hold, but who will not lower himself by engaging in art, literature, trade or manufacture. Why should he, when there are other people to do these things for him. Indeed, it may be said that he takes from others even his religion, clothes, language, customs; there is hardly anything which is Turkish and not borrowed. The religion is Arabic; the language half Arabic and Persian; the literature almost entirely imitative; the art Persian or Byzantine; the costumes, in the Upper Classes and Army mostly European. There is nothing characteristic in manufacture or commerce, except an aversion to such pursuits. In fact, all occupations, except agriculture and military service are distasteful to the true Osmanli. He is not much of a merchant. He may keep a stall in a bazaar, but his operations are rarely undertaken on a scale which merits the name of commerce or finance. It is strange to observe how, when trade becomes active in any seaport, or upon the railway lines, the Osmanli retires and disappears, while Greeks, Armenians and Levantines thrive in his place. Neither does he much affect law, medicine or the learned professions. Such callings are followed by Moslims but they are apt to be of non-Turkish race. But though he does none of these things . . . The Turk is a soldier. The moment a sword or rifle is put into his hands, he instinctively knows how to use it with effect, and feels at home in the ranks or on a horse. The Turkish Army is not so much a profession or an institution necessitated by the fears and aims of the Government as the quite normal state of the Turkish nation. . . . Every Turk is a born soldier, and adopts other pursuits chiefly because times are bad. When there is a question of fighting, if only in a riot, the stolid peasant wakes up and shows surprising power of finding organisation and expedients, and alas! a surprising ferocity. The ordinary Turk is an honest and good-humoured soul, kind to children and animals, and very patient; but when the fighting spirit comes on him, he becomes like the terrible warriors of the Huns or Henghis Khan, and slays, burns and ravages without mercy or discrimination. "[1]

Such is the verdict of an instructed, travelled and observant Englishauthor and diplomatist, who lived among these people for many years, andwho learned to like them, who studied them and their history. It doesnot differ, of course, appreciably, from what practically every studentof the Turk has discovered: the Turk is the typical conqueror. As anation, he has lived by the sword, and he is dying by the sword, becausethe sword, the mere exercise of force by one man or group of men uponanother, conquest in other words, is an impossible form of humanrelationship. 

And in order to maintain this evil form of relationship--its evil andfutility is the whole basis of the principles I have attempted toillustrate--he has not even observed the rough chivalry of the brigand. The brigand, though he might knock men on the head, will refrain fromhaving his force take the form of butchering women and disembowellingchildren. Not so the Turk. His attempt at Government will take the formof the obscene torture of children, of a bestial ferocity which is not amatter of dispute or exaggeration, but a thing to which scores, hundreds, thousands even of credible European, witnesses have testified. "The finest gentleman, sir, that ever butchered a woman or burned avillage, " is the phrase that _Punch_ most justly puts into the mouth ofthe defender of our traditional Turcophil policy. 

And this condition is "Peace, " and the act which would put a stop to itis "War. " It is the inexactitude and inadequacy of our language whichcreates much of the confusion of thought in this matter; we have thesame term for action destined to achieve a given end and for acounter-action destined to prevent it. 

Yet we manage, in other than the international field, in civil matters, to make the thing clear enough. 

Once an American town was set light to by incendiaries, and wasthreatened with destruction. In order to save at least a part of it, theauthorities deliberately burned down a block of buildings in the pathwayof the fire. Would those incendiaries be entitled to say that the townauthorities were incendiaries also, and "believed in setting light totowns?" Yet this is precisely the point of view of those who taxPacifists with approving war because they approve the measure aimed atbringing it to an end. 

Put it another way. You do not believe that force should determine thetransfer of property or conformity to a creed, and I say to you: "Handme your purse and conform to my creed or I kill you. " You say: "BecauseI do not believe that force should settle these matters, I shall try andprevent it settling them, and therefore if you attack I shall resist; ifI did not I should be allowing force to settle them. " I attack; youresist and disarm me and say: "My force having neutralised yours, andthe equilibrium being now established, I will hear any reasons you mayhave to urge for my paying you money; or any argument in favour of yourcreed. Reason, understanding, adjustment shall settle it. " You would bea Pacifist. Or, if you deem that that word connotes non-resistance, though to the immense bulk of Pacifists it does not, you would be ananti-Bellicist to use a dreadful word coined by M. Emile Faguet in thediscussion of this matter. If, however, you said: "Having disarmed youand established the equilibrium, I shall now upset it in my favour bytaking your weapon and using it against you unless you hand me _your_purse and subscribe to _my_ creed. I do this because force alone candetermine issues, and because it is a law of life that the strong shouldeat up the weak. " You would then be a Bellicist. 

In the same way, when we prevent the brigand from carrying on histrade--taking wealth by force--it is not because we believe in force asa means of livelihood, but precisely because we do not. And if, inpreventing the brigand from knocking out brains, we are compelled toknock out his brains, is it because we believe in knocking out people'sbrains? Or would we urge that to do so is the way to carry on a trade, or a nation, or a government, or make it the basis of humanrelationship?

In every civilised country, the basis of the relationship on which thecommunity rests is this: no individual is allowed to settle hisdifferences with another by force. But does this mean that if onethreatens to take my purse, I am not allowed to use force to prevent it?That if he threatens to kill me, I am not to defend myself, because "theindividual citizens are not allowed to settle their differences byforce?" It is _because_ of that, because the act of self-defence is anattempt to prevent the settlement of a difference by force, that the lawjustifies it. [2]

But the law would not justify me, if having disarmed my opponent, havingneutralised his force by my own, and re-established the socialequilibrium, I immediately proceeded to upset it, by asking him for hispurse on pain of murder. I should then be settling the matter byforce--I should then have ceased to be a Pacifist, and have become aBellicist. 

For that is the difference between the two conceptions: the Bellicistsays: "Force alone can settle these matters; it is the final appeal;therefore fight it out. Let the best man win. When you have preponderantstrength, impose your view; force the other man to your will; notbecause it is right, but because you are able to do so. " It is the"excellent policy" which Lord Roberts attributes to Germany andapproves. 

We anti-Bellicists take an exactly contrary view. We say: "To fight itout settles nothing, since it is not a question of who is stronger, butof whose view is best, and as that is not always easy to establish, itis of the utmost importance in the interest of all parties, in the longrun, to keep force out of it. "

The former is the policy of the Turks. They have been obsessed with theidea that if only they had enough of physical force, ruthlesslyexercised, they could solve the whole question of government, ofexistence for that matter, without troubling about social adjustment, understanding, equity, law, commerce; "blood and iron" were all that wasneeded. The success of that policy can now be judged. 

And whether good or evil comes of the present war will depend uponwhether the Balkan States are on the whole guided by the Bellicistprinciple or the opposed one. If having now momentarily eliminated forceas between themselves, they re-introduce it, if the strongest, presumably Bulgaria, adopts Lord Roberts' "excellent policy" of strikingbecause she has the preponderant force, enters upon a career of conquestof other members of the Balkan League, and the populations of theconquered territories, using them for exploitation by militaryforce--why then there will be no settlement and this war will haveaccomplished nothing save futile waste and slaughter. For they will havetaken under a new flag, the pathway of the Turk to savagery, degeneration, death. 

But if on the other hand they are guided more by the Pacifist principle, if they believe that co-operation between States is better than conflictbetween them, if they believe that the common interest of all in goodGovernment is greater than the special interest of any one in conquest, that the understanding of human relationships, the capacity for theorganisation of society are the means by which men progress, and not theimposition of force by one man or group upon another, why, they willhave taken the pathway to better civilisation. But then they will havedisregarded Lord Roberts' advice. 

And this distinction between the two systems, far from being a matter ofabstract theory of metaphysics or logic chopping, is just the differencewhich distinguishes the Briton from the Turk, which distinguishesBritain from Turkey. The Turk has just as much physical vigour as theBriton, is just as virile, manly and military. The Turk has the same rawmaterials of Nature, soil and water. There is no difference in thecapacity for the exercise of physical force--or if there is, thedifference is in favour of the Turk. The real difference is a differenceof ideas, of mind and outlook on the part of the individuals composingthe respective societies; the Turk has one general conception of humansociety and the code and principles upon which it is founded, mainly amilitarist one; and the Englishman has another, mainly a Pacifist one. And whether the European society as a whole is to drift towards theTurkish ideal or towards the English ideal will depend upon whether itis animated mainly by the Pacifist or mainly by the Bellicist doctrine;if the former, it will stagger blindly like the Turk along the path tobarbarism; if the latter, it will take a better road. 

[Footnote 1: "Turkey in Europe, " pp. 88-9 and 91-2. 

It is significant, by the way, that the "born soldier" has now beencrushed by a non-military race whom he has always despised as having nomilitary tradition. Capt. F. W. Von Herbert ("Bye Paths in the Balkans")wrote (some years before the present war): "The Bulgars as Christiansubjects of Turkey exempt from military service, have tilled the groundunder stagnant and enfeebling peace conditions, and the profession ofarms is new to them. "

"Stagnant and enfeebling peace conditions" is, in view of subsequentevents distinctly good. ]

[Footnote 2: I dislike to weary the reader with such damnable iteration, but when a Cabinet Minister is unable in this discussion to distinguishbetween the folly of a thing and its possibility, one _must_ make thefundamental point clear. ]

CHAPTER III. 

ECONOMICS AND THE BALKAN WAR. 

The "economic system" of the Turk--The Turkish "Trade of Conquest" as acause of this war--Racial and Religious hatred of primitivesocieties--Industrialism as a solvent--Its operation in Europe--Balkansgeographically remote from main drift of European economicdevelopment--The false economies of the Powers as a cause of theirjealousies and quarrels--This has prevented settlement--What is the"economic motive"?--Impossible to separate moral andmaterial--Nationality and the War System. 

In dealing with answer No. 4 I have shown how the inadequacy of ourlanguage leads us so much astray in our notions of the real role offorce in human relationships. But there is a curious phenomenon ofthought which explains perhaps still more how misconceptions grow up onthis subject, and that is the habit of thinking of a war which, ofcourse, must include two parties, in terms, solely of one party at a time. Thus one critic[3] is quite sure that because the Balkan peoples "reckednothing of financial disaster, " economic considerations have had nothingto do with their war--a conclusion which seems to be arrived at by theprocess of judgment just indicated: to find the cause of conditionproduced by two parties you shall rigorously ignore one. For there is agreat deal of internal evidence for believing that the writer of thearticle in question would admit very readily that the efforts of theTurk to wring taxes out of the conquered peoples--not in return for acivilized administration but simply as the means of livelihood, ofturning conquest into a trade--had a very great deal to do in explainingthe Turk's presence there at all and the Christian's desire to get ridof him; while the same article specifically states that the mutualjealousies of the great powers, based on a desire to "grab" (an economicmotive), had a great deal to do with preventing a peaceful settlement ofthe difficulties. Yet "economics" have nothing to do with it!

I have attempted elsewhere to make these two points--that it is on theone hand the false economics of the Turks, and on the other hand thefalse economics of the powers of Europe, colouring the policy andStatecraft of both, which have played an enormous, in all humanprobability, a determining role in the immediate provoking cause of thewar; and, of course, a further and more remote cause of the wholedifficulty is the fact that the Balkan peoples never having beensubjected to the discipline of that complex social life which arisesfrom trade and commerce have never grown out of (or to a less degree)those primitive racial and religious hostilities which at one time inEurope as a whole provoked conflicts like that now raging in theBalkans. The following article which appeared[4] at the outbreak of thewar may summarise some of the points with which we have been dealing. 

Polite and good-natured people think it rude to say "Balkans" if aPacifist be present. Yet I never understood why, and I understand nowless than ever. It carries the implication that because war has brokenout that fact disposes of all objection to it. The armies are at grips, therefore peace is a mistake. Passion reigns on the Balkans, thereforepassion is preferable to reason. 

I suppose cannibalism and infanticide, polygamy, judicial torture, religious persecution, witchcraft, during all the years we did these"inevitable" things, were defended in the same way, and those whoresented all criticism of them pointed in triumph to the cannibal feast, the dead child, the maimed witness, the slain heretic, or the burnedwitch. But the fact did not prove the wisdom of those habits, still lesstheir inevitability; for we have them no more. 

We are all agreed as to the fundamental cause of the Balkan trouble: thehate born of religious, racial, national, and language differences; theattempt of an alien conqueror to live parasitically upon the conquered, and the desire of conqueror and conquered alike to satisfy in massacreand bloodshed the rancour of fanaticism and hatred. 

Well, in these islands, not so very long ago, those things were causesof bloodshed; indeed, they were a common feature of European life. Butif they are inevitable in human relationship, how comes it that Adana isno longer duplicated by St. Bartholomew; the Bulgarian bands by thevendetta of the Highlander and the Lowlander; the struggle of the Slavand Turk, Serb and Bulgar, by that of Scots and English, and English andWelsh? The fanaticism of the Moslem to-day is no intenser than that ofCatholic and heretic in Rome, Madrid, Paris, and Geneva at a time whichis only separated from us by the lives of three or four elderly men. Theheretic or infidel was then in Europe also a thing unclean andhorrifying, exciting in the mind of the orthodox a sincere and honesthatred and a (very largely satisfied) desire to kill. The Catholic ofthe 16th century was apt to tell you that he could not sit at table witha heretic because the latter carried with him a distinctive andoverpoweringly repulsive odour. If you would measure the distance Europehas travelled, think what this means: all the nations of Christendomunited in a war lasting 200 years for the capture of the Holy Sepulchre;and yet, when in our day the representatives, seated round a table, could have had it for the asking, they did not deem it worth the asking, so little of the ancient passion was there left. The very nature of manseemed to be transformed. For, wonderful though it be that orthodoxshould cease killing heretic, infinitely more wonderful still is it thathe should cease wanting to kill him. 

And just as most of us are certain that the underlying causes of thisconflict are "inevitable" and "inherent in unchanging human nature, " soare we certain that so _un_human a thing as economics can have nobearing on it. 

Well, I will suggest that the transformation of the heretic-hating andheretic-killing European is due mainly to economic forces; that it isbecause the drift of those forces has in such large part left theBalkans, where until yesterday the people lived the life not muchdifferent from that which they lived in the time of Abraham, to one sidethat war is now raging; that economic factors of a more immediate kindform a large part of the provoking cause of that war; and that a betterunderstanding mainly of certain economic facts of their internationalrelationship on the part of the great nations of Europe is essentialbefore much progress towards solution can be made. 

But then, by "economics, " of course, I mean not a merchant's profit or amoneylender's interest, but the method by which men earn their bread, which must also mean the kind of life they lead. 

We generally think of the primitive life of man--that of the herdsman orthe tent liver--as something idyllic. The picture is as far as possiblefrom the truth. Those into whose lives economics do not enter, or entervery little--that is to say, those who, like the Congo cannibal, or theRed Indian, or the Bedouin, do not cultivate, or divide their labour, ortrade, or save, or look to the future, have shed little of the primitivepassions of other animals of prey, the tigers and the wolves, who haveno economics at all, and have no need to check an impulse or a hate. But industry, even of the more primitive kind, means that men mustdivide their labour, which means that they must put some sort ofreliance upon one another; the thing of prey becomes a partner, and theattitude towards it changes. And as this life becomes more complex, asthe daily needs and desires push men to trade and barter, that meansbuilding up a social organisation, rules and codes, and courts toenforce them; as the interdependence widens and deepens it necessarilymeans disregarding certain hostilities. If the neighbouring tribe wantsto trade with you they must not kill you; if you want the services ofthe heretic you must not kill him, and you must keep your obligationtowards him, and mutual good faith is death to long-sustained hatreds. 

You cannot separate the moral from the social and economic developmentof a people, and the great service of a complex social and industrialorganisation, which is built up by the desire of men for better materialconditions, is not that it "pays" but that it makes a moreinterdependent human society, and that it leads men to recognise what isthe best relationship between them. And the fact of recognising thatsome act of aggression is causing stocks to fall is not importantbecause it may save Oppenheim's or Solomon's money but because it is ademonstration that we are dependent upon some community on the otherside of the world, that their damage is our damage, and that we have aninterest in preventing it. It teaches us, as only some such simple andmechanical means can teach, the lesson of human fellowship. 

And it is by such means as this that Western Europe has in some measure, within its respective political frontiers, learnt that lesson. Each haslearnt, within the confines of the nation at least, that wealth is madeby work, not robbery; that, indeed, general robbery is fatal toprosperity; that government consists not merely in having the power ofthe sword but in organising society--in "knowing how"; which means thedevelopment of ideas; in maintaining courts; in making it possible torun railways, post offices, and all the contrivances of a complexsociety. 

Now rulers did not create these things; it was the daily activities ofthe people, born of their desires and made possible by the circumstancesin which they lived, by the trading and the mining and the shippingwhich they carried on, that made them. But the Balkans have beengeographically outside the influence of European industrial andcommercial life. The Turk has hardly felt it at all. He has learnt noneof the social and moral lessons which interdependence and improvedcommunications have taught the Western European, and it is because hehas not learnt these lessons, because he is a soldier and a conqueror, to an extent and completeness that other nations of Europe lost ageneration or two since, that the Balkanese are fighting and that war israging. 

But not merely in this larger sense, but in the more immediate, narrowersense, are the fundamental causes of this war economic. 

This war arises, as the past wars against the Turkish conqueror havearisen, by the desire of the Christian peoples on whom he lives to shakeoff this burden. "To live upon their subjects is the Turks' only meansof livelihood, " says one authority. The Turk is an economic parasite, and the economic organism must end of rejecting him. 

For the management of society, simple and primitive even as that of theBalkan mountains, needs some effort and work and capacity foradministration, or even rudimentary economic life cannot be carried on. And the Turkish system, founded on the sword and nothing else ("thefinest soldier in Europe"), cannot give that small modicum, of energy oradministrative capacity. The one thing he knows is brute force; but itis not by the strength of his muscles that an engineer runs a machine, but by knowing how. The Turk cannot build a road, or make a bridge, oradminister a post office, or found a court of law. And these things arenecessary. And he will not let them be done by the Christian, who, because he did not belong to the conquering class, has had to work, andhas consequently become the class which possesses whatever capacity forwork and administration the country can show, because to do so would beto threaten the Turk's only trade. If the Turk granted the Christiansequal political rights they would inevitably "run the country, " And yetthe Turk himself cannot do it; and he will not let others do it, becauseto do so would be to threaten his supremacy. 

And the more the use of force fails, the more, of course, does he resortto it, and that is why many of us who do not believe in force, anddesire to see it disappear in the relationship not merely of religiousbut of political groups, might conceivably welcome this war of theBalkan Christians, in so far as it is an attempt to resist the use offorce in those relationships. Of course, I do not try to estimate the"balance of criminality. " Right is not all on one side--it never is. Butthe broad issue is clear and plain. And only those concerned with thename rather than the thing, with nominal and verbal consistency ratherthan realities, will see anything paradoxical or contradictory inPacifist approval of Christian resistance to the use of Turkish force. 

It is the one fact which stands out incontrovertibly from the wholeweary muddle. It is quite clear that the inability to act in commonarises from the fact that in the international sphere the European isstill dominated by illusions which he has dropped when he deals withhome politics. The political faith of the Turk, which he would neverthink of applying at home as between the individuals of his nation, heapplies pure and unalloyed when he comes to deal with foreigners asnations. The economic conception--using the term in that wider sensewhich I have indicated earlier in this article--which guides hisindividual conduct is the antithesis of that which guides his nationalconduct. 

While the Christian does not believe in robbery inside the frontier, hedoes without; while within the State he realises that greater advantagelies on the side of each observing the general code, so that civilisedsociety can exist, instead of on the side of having society go to piecesby each disregarding it; while within the State he realises thatgovernment is a matter of administration, not the seizure of property;that one town does not add to its wealth by "capturing" another, thatindeed one community cannot "own" another--while, I say, he believes allthese things in his daily life at home, he disregards them all when hecomes to the field of international relationship, _la haute politique_. To annex some province by a cynical breach of treaty obligation (Austriain Bosnia, Italy in Tripoli) is regarded as better politics than to actloyally with the community of nations to enforce their common interestin order and good government. In fact, we do not believe that there canbe a community of nations, because, in fact, we do not believe thattheir interests are common, but rival; like the Turk, we believe that ifyou do not exercise force upon your "rival" he will exercise it uponyou; that nations live upon one another, not by co-operation with oneanother--and it is for this reason presumably that you must "own" asmuch of your neighbours' as possible. It is the Turkish conception frombeginning to end. 

And it is because these false beliefs prevent the nations of Christendomacting loyally the one to the other, because each is playing for its ownhand, that the Turk, with hint of some sordid bribe, has been able toplay off each against the other. 

This is the crux of the matter. When Europe can honestly act in commonon behalf of common interests some solution can be found. And thecapacity of Europe to act together will not be found so long as theaccepted doctrines of European statecraft remain unchanged, so long asthey are dominated by existing illusions. 

 * * * * *

In a paper read before the British Association of this year, I attemptedto show in more general terms this relation between economic impulse andideal motive. The following are relevant passages:--

A nation, a people, we are given to understand, have higher motives thanmoney, or "self-interest. " What do we mean when we speak of the money ofa nation, or the self-interest of a community? We mean--and in such adiscussion as this can mean nothing else--better conditions for thegreat mass of the people, the fullest possible lives, the abolition orattenuation of poverty and of narrow circumstances, that the millionsshall be better housed and clothed and fed, capable of making provisionfor sickness and old age, with lives prolonged and cheered--and notmerely this, but also that they shall be better educated, with characterdisciplined by steady labour and a better use of leisure, a generalsocial atmosphere which shall make possible family affection, individualdignity and courtesy and the graces of life, not alone among the few, but among the many. 

Now, do these things constitute as a national policy an inspiringaim or not? Yet they are, speaking in terms of communities, pureself-interest--all bound up with economic problems, with money. DoesAdmiral Mahan mean us to take him at his word when he would attach tosuch efforts the same discredit that one implies in talking of amercenary individual? Would he have us believe that the typical greatmovements of our times--Socialism, Trades Unionism, Syndicalism, Insurance Bills, Land Laws, Old Age Pensions, Charity Organisation, Improved Education--bound up as they all are with economic problems--arenot the sort of objects which more and more are absorbing the bestactivities of Christendom?

I have attempted to show that the activities which lie outside the rangeof these things--the religious wars, movements like those which promotedthe Crusades, or the sort of tradition which we associate with the duel(which has, in fact, disappeared from Anglo-Saxon society)--do not andcannot any longer form part of the impulse creating the long-sustainedconflicts between large groups which a European war implies, partlybecause such allied moral differences as now exist do not in any waycoincide with the political divisions, but intersect them, and partlybecause in the changing character of men's ideals there is a distinctnarrowing of the gulf which is supposed to separate ideal and materialaims. Early ideals, whether in the field of politics or religion, aregenerally dissociated from any aim of general well-being. In earlypolitics ideals are concerned simply with personal allegiance to somedynastic chief, a feudal lord or a monarch. The well-being of acommunity does not enter into the matter at all: it is the personalallegiance which matters. Later the chief must embody in his person thatwell-being, or he does not achieve the allegiance of a community of anyenlightenment; later, the well-being of the community becomes the end initself without being embodied in the person of an hereditary chief, sothat the community realise that their efforts, instead of being directedto the protection of the personal interests of some chief, are as amatter of fact directed to the protection of their own interests, andtheir altruism has become self-interest, since self-sacrifice of acommunity for the sake of the community is a contradiction in terms. Inthe religious sphere a like development has been shown. Early religiousideals have no relation to the material betterment of mankind. The earlyChristian thought it meritorious to live a sterile life at the top of apillar, eaten by vermin, as the Hindoo saint to-day thinks itmeritorious to live an equally sterile life upon a bed of spikes. But asthe early Christian ideal progressed, sacrifices having no end connectedwith the betterment of mankind lost their appeal. The Christian saintwho would allow the nails of his fingers to grow through the palms ofhis clasped hands would excite, not our admiration, but our revolt. Moreand more is religious effort being subjected to this test: does it makefor the improvement of society? If not, it stands condemned. Politicalideals will inevitably follow a like development, and will be more andmore subjected to a like test. 

I am aware that very often at present they are not so subjected. Dominated as our political thought is by Roman and feudalimagery--hypnotised by symbols and analogies which the necessarydevelopment of organised society has rendered obsolete--the ideals evenof democracies are still often pure abstractions, divorced from any aimcalculated to advance the moral or material betterment of mankind. Thecraze for sheer size of territory, simple extent of administrative area, is still deemed a thing deserving immense, incalculable sacrifices. 

 * * * * *

And yet even these ideals, firmly set as they are in our language andtradition, are rapidly yielding to the necessary force of events. Ageneration ago it would have been inconceivable that a people or amonarch should calmly see part of its country secede and establishitself as a separate political entity without attempting to prevent itby force of arms. Yet this is what happened but a year or two since inthe Scandinavian peninsula. For forty years Germany has added to her owndifficulties and those of the European situation for the purpose ofincluding Alsace and Lorraine in its Federation, but even there, obeyingthe tendency which is world-wide, an attempt has been made at thecreation of a constitutional and autonomous government. The history ofthe British Empire for fifty years has been a process of undoing thework of conquest. Colonies are now neither colonies nor possessions. They are independent States. Great Britain, which for centuries has madesuch sacrifices to retain Ireland, is now making great sacrifices inorder to make her secession workable. To all political arrangements, toall political ideals, the final test will be applied: Does it or does itnot make for the widest interests of the mass of the people involved?. . . And I would ask those who think that war must be a permanent element inthe settlement of the moral differences of men to think for one momentof the factors which stood in the way of the abandonment of the use offorce by governments, and by one religious group against another in thematter of religious belief. On the one hand you had authority with allthe prestige of historical right and the possession of physical power inits most imposing form, the means of education still in their hands;government authority extending to all sorts of details of life to whichit no longer extends; immense vested interests outside government; andfinally the case for the imposition of dogma by authority a strong one, and still supported by popular passion: and on the other hand, you hadas yet poor and feeble instruments of mere opinion; the printed bookstill a rarity; the Press non-existent, communication between men stillrudimentary, worse even than it had been two thousand years previously. And yet, despite these immense handicaps upon the growth of opinion andintellectual ferment as against physical force, it was impossible for anew idea to find life in Geneva or Rome or Edinburgh or London withoutquickly crossing and affecting all the other centres, and not merelymaking headway against entrenched authority, but so quickly breaking upthe religious homogeneity of states, that not only were governmentsobliged to abandon the use of force in religious matters as againsttheir subjects, but religious wars between nations became impossible forthe double reason that a nation no longer expressed a single religiousbelief (you had the anomaly of a Protestant Sweden fighting in alliancewith a Catholic France), and that the power of opinion had becomestronger than the power of physical force--because, in other words, thelimits of military force were more and more receding. 

But if the use of force was so ineffective against the spiritualpossessions of man when the arms to be used in their defence were sopoor and rudimentary, how could a government hope to crush out by forceto-day such things as a nation's language, law, literature, morals, ideals, when it possesses such means of defence as are provided insecurity of tenure of material possessions, a cheap literature, apopular Press, a cheap and secret postal system, and all the other meansof rapid and perfected inter-communication?

You will notice that I have spoken throughout not of the _defence_ of anational ideal by arms, but of its attack; if you have to defend yourideal it is because someone attacks it, and without attack your defencewould not be called for. 

If you are compelled to prevent someone using force as against yournationality, it is because he believes that by the use of that force hecan destroy or change it. If he thought that the use of force would beineffective to that end he would not employ it. 

I have attempted to show elsewhere that the abandonment of war formaterial ends depends upon a general realisation of its futility foraccomplishing those ends. In like manner does the abandonment of war formoral or ideal ends depend upon the general realisation of the growingfutility of such means for those ends also--and for the growing futilityof those ends if they could be accomplished. 

We are sometimes told that it is the spirit of nationality--the desireto be of your place and locality--that makes war. That is not so. It isthe desire of other men that you shall not be of your place andlocality, of your habits and traditions, but of theirs. Not the desireof nationality, but the desire to destroy nationality is what makes thewars of nationality. If the Germans did not think that the retention ofPolish or Alsatian nationality might hamper them in the art of war, hamper them in the imposition of force on some other groups, there wouldbe no attempt to crush out this special possession of the Poles andAlsatians. It is the belief in force and a preference for settlingthings by force instead of by agreement that threatens or destroysnationality. And I have given an indication of the fact that it is notmerely war, but the preparation for war, implying as it does greathomogeneity in states and centralised bureaucratic control, which isto-day the great enemy of nationality. Before this tendency tocentralisation which military necessity sets up much that gives colourand charm to European life is disappearing. And yet we are told that itis the Pacifists who are the enemy of nationality, and we are led tobelieve that in some way the war system in Europe stands for thepreservation of nationality!

[Footnote 3: Review of Reviews, November, 1912. ]

[Footnote 4: In the "Daily Mail, " to whose Editor I am indebted forpermission to reprint it. ]

CHAPTER IV. 

TURKISH IDEALS IN OUR POLITICAL THOUGHT. 

This war and "the Turks of Britain and Prussia"--The Anglo-Saxon andopposed ideals--Mr. C. Chesterton's case for "killing and being killed"as the best method of settling differences--Its application to CivilConflicts--As in Spanish-America--The difference between Devonshire andVenezuela--Will the Balkans adopt the Turco-Venezuelan political idealsor the British?

An English political writer remarked, on it becoming evident that theChristian States were driving back the Turks: "This is a staggering blowto _all_ the Turks--those of England and Prussia as well as those ofTurkey. "

But, of course, the British and Prussian Turks will never see it--likethe Bourbons, they learn not. Here is a typically military system, thework of "born fighters" which has gone down in welter before theassaults of much less military States, the chief of which, indeed, hasgrown up in what Captain von Herbert has called, with some contempt, "stagnant and enfeebling peace conditions, " formed by the people whomthe Turks regarded as quite unfit to be made into warriors; whom theyregarded much as some Europeans regard the Jews. It is the Christianpopulations of the Balkans who were the traders and workers--thosebrought most under economic influences; it was the Turks who escapedthose influences. A few years since, I wrote: "If the conqueror profitsmuch by his conquest, as the Romans in one sense did, it is theconqueror who is threatened by the enervating effect of the soft andluxurious life; while it is the conquered who are forced to labour forthe conqueror, and who learn in consequence those qualities of steadyindustry which are certainly a better moral training than living uponthe fruits of others, upon labour extorted at the sword's point. It isthe conqueror who becomes effete, and it is the conquered who learndiscipline and the qualities making for a well-ordered State. "

Could we ask a better illustration than the history of the Turk and hisChristian victims? I exemplified the matter thus: "If during longperiods a nation gives itself up to war, trade languishes, thepopulation loses the habit of steady industry, government andadministration become corrupt, abuses escape punishment, and the realsources of a people's strength and expansion dwindle. What has causedthe relative failure and decline of Spanish, Portuguese, and Frenchexpansion in Asia and the New World, and the relative success of Englishexpansion therein? Was it the mere hazards of war which gave to GreatBritain the domination of India and half of the New World? That issurely a superficial reading of history. It was, rather, that themethods and processes of Spain, Portugal, and France were military, while those of the Anglo-Saxon world were commercial and peaceful. Is itnot a commonplace that in India, quite as much as in the New World, thetrader and the settler drove out the soldier and the conqueror? Thedifference between the two methods was that one was a process ofconquest, and the other of colonizing, or non-military administrationfor commercial purposes. The one embodied the sordid Cobdenite idea, which so excites the scorn of the militarists, and the other the loftymilitary ideal. The one was parasitism; the other co-operation. . . . 

"How may we sum up the whole case, keeping in mind every empire thatever existed--the Assyrian, the Babylonian, the Mede and Persian, theMacedonian, the Roman, the Frank, the Saxon, the Spanish, thePortuguese, the Bourbon, the Napoleonic? In all and every one of them wemay see the same process, which is this: If it remains military itdecays; if it prospers and takes its share of the work of the world itceases to be military. There is no other reading of history. "

But despite these very plain lessons, there are many amongst us whoregard physical conflict as the ideal form of human relationship;"killing and being killed" as the best way to determine the settlementof differences, and a society which drifts from these ideals as on thehigh road to degeneration, and who deem those who set before themselvesthe ideal of abolishing or attenuating poverty for the mass of men, "lowand sordid. "

Thus Mr. Cecil Chesterton[5]:

 In essence Mr. Angell's query is: "Should usurers go to war?"

 I may say, in passing, that I am not clear that even on the question thus raised Mr. Angell makes out his case. His case, broadly stated, is that the net of "Finance"--or, to put it plainer, Cosmopolitan Usury--which is at present spread over Europe would be disastrously torn by any considerable war; and that in consequence it is to the interest of the usurers to preserve peace. But here, it seems to me, we must make a clear differentiation. It may easily be to the interest of a particular usurer, or group of usurers, to provoke war; that very financial crisis which Mr. Angell anticipates may quite probably be a source of profit to them. That it would not be to the interest of a nation of usurers to fight is very probable. That such a nation would not fight, or, if it did, would be exceedingly badly beaten, is certain. But that only serves to raise the further question of whether it is to the ultimate advantage of a nation to repose upon usury; and whether the breaking of the net of usury which at present unquestionably holds Europe in captivity would not be for the advantage, as it would clearly be for the honour, of our race. . . . The sword is too sacred a thing to be prostituted to such dirty purposes. But whether he succeeds or fails in this attempt, it will make no difference to the mass of plain men who, when they fight and risk their lives, do not do so in the expectation of obtaining a certain interest on their capital, but for quite other reasons. 

 Mr. Angell's latest appeal comes, I think, at an unfortunate moment. It is not merely that the Balkan States have refused to be convinced by Mr. Angell as to their chances of commercial profit from the war. It is that if Mr. Angell had succeeded to the fullest extent in convincing them that there was not a quarter per cent. To be made out of the war, nay, that--horrible thought!--they would actually be poorer at the end of the war than at the beginning, they would have gone to war all the same. 

 Since Mr. Angell's argument clearly applies as much or more to civil as to international conflicts, I may perhaps be allowed to turn to civil conflicts to make clear my meaning. In this country during the last three centuries one solid thing has been done. The power of Parliament was pitted in battle against the power of the Crown, and won. As a result, for good or evil, Parliament really is stronger than the Crown to-day. The power of the mass of the people to control Parliament has been given as far as mere legislation could give it. We all know that it is a sham. And if you ask what it is that makes the difference of reality between the two cases, it is this: that men killed and were killed for the one thing and not for the other. 

 I have no space to develop all that I should like to say about the indirect effects of war. All I will say is this, that men do judge, and always will judge, things by the ultimate test of how they fight. The German victory of forty years ago has produced not only an astonishing expansion, industrial as well as political of Germany, but has (most disastrously, as I think) infected Europe with German ideas, especially with the idea that you make a nation strong by making its people behave like cattle. God send that I may live to see the day when victorious armies from Gaul shall shatter this illusion, burn up Prussianism with all its Police Regulations, Insurance Acts, Poll Taxes, and insults to the poor, and reassert the Republic. It will never be done in any other way. 

 If arbitration is ever to take the place of war, it must be backed by a corresponding array of physical force. Now the question immediately arises: Are we prepared to arm any International Tribunal with any such powers? Personally, I am not. . . . Turn back some fifty years to the great struggle for the emancipation of Italy. Suppose that a Hague Tribunal had then been in existence, armed with coercive powers. The dispute between Austria and Sardinia must have been referred to that tribunal. That tribunal must have been guided by existing treaties. The Treaty of Vienna was perhaps the most authoritative ever entered into by European Powers. By that treaty, Venice and Lombardy were unquestionably assigned to Austria. A just tribunal administering international law _must_ have decided in favour of Austria, and have used the whole armed force of Europe to coerce Italy into submission. Are those Pacifists, who try at the same time to be Democrats, prepared to acquiesce in such a conclusion? Personally, I am not. 

I replied as follows:

 Mr. Cecil Chesterton says that the question which I have raised is this: "Should usurers go to war?"

 That, of course, is not true. I have never, even by implication, put such a problem, and there is nothing in the article which he criticises, nor in any other statement of my own, that justifies it. What I have asked is whether peoples should go to war. 

 I should have thought it was pretty obvious that, whatever happens, usurers do not go to war: the peoples go to war, and the peoples pay, and the whole question is whether they should go on making war and paying for it. Mr. Chesterton says that if they are wise they will; I say that if they are wise they will not. 

 I have attempted to show that the prosperity of peoples--by which, of course, one means the diminution of poverty, better houses, soap and water, healthy children, lives prolonged, conditions sufficiently good to ensure leisure and family affection, fuller and completer lives generally--is not secured by fighting one another, but by co-operation and labour, by a better organisation of society, by improved human relationship, which, of course, can only come of better understanding of the conditions of that relationship, which better understanding means discussion, adjustment, a desire and capacity to see the point of view of the other man--of all of which war and its philosophy is the negation. 

 To all of this Mr. Chesterton replies: "That only concerns the Jews and the moneylenders. " Again, this is not true. It concerns all of us, like all problems of our struggle with Nature. It is in part at least an economic problem, and that part of it is best stated in the more exact and precise terms that I have employed to deal with it--the term's of the market-place. But to imply that the conditions that there obtain are the affair merely of bankers and financiers, to imply that these things do not touch the lives of the mass, is simply to talk a nonsense the meaninglessness of which only escapes some of us because in these matters we happen to be very ignorant. It is not mainly usurers who suffer from bad finance and bad economics (one may suggest that they are not quite so simple); it is mainly the people as a whole. 

 Mr. Chesterton says that we should break this "net of usury" in which the peoples are enmeshed. I agree heartily; but that net has been woven mainly by war (and that diversion of energy and attention from social management which war involves), and is, so far as the debts of the European States are concerned (so large an element of usury), almost solely the outcome of war. And if the peoples go on piling up debt, as they must if they are to go on piling up armaments (as Mr. Chesterton wants them to), giving the best of their attention and emotion to sheer physical conflict, instead of to organisation and understanding, they will merely weave that web of debt and usury still closer; it will load us more heavily and strangle us to a still greater extent. If usury is the enemy, the remedy is to fight usury. Mr. Chesterton says the remedy is for its victims to fight one another. 

 And you will not fight usury by hanging Rothschilds, for usury is worst where that sort of thing is resorted to. Widespread debt is the outcome of bad management and incompetence, economic or social, and only better management will remedy it. Mr. Chesterton is sure that better management is only arrived at by "killing and being killed. " He really does urge this method even in civil matters. (He tells us that the power of Parliament over the Crown is real, and that of the people over Parliament a sham, "because men killed and were killed for the one, and not for the other. ") It is the method of Spanish America where it is applied more frankly and logically, and where still, in many places, elections are a military affair, the questions at issue being settled by killing and being killed, instead of by the cowardly, pacifist methods current in Europe. The result gives us the really military civilisations of Venezuela, Colombia, Nicaragua, and Paraguay. And, although the English system may have many defects--I think it has--those defects exist in a still greater degree where force "settles" the matters in dispute, where the bullet replaces the ballot, and where bayonets are resorted to instead of brains. For Devonshire is better than Nicaragua. Really it is. And it would get us out of none of our troubles for one group to impose its views simply by preponderant physical force, for Mr. Asquith, for instance, in the true Castro or Zuyala manner, to announce that henceforth all critics of the Insurance Act are to be shot, and that the present Cabinet will hold office as long as it can depend upon the support of the Army. For, even if the country rose in rebellion, and fought it out and won, the successful party would (if they also believed in force) do exactly the same thing to _their_ opponents; and so it would go on never-endingly (as it has gone on during weary centuries throughout the larger part of South America), until the two parties came once more to their senses, and agreed not to use force when they happened to be able to do so; which is our present condition. But it is the condition of England merely because the English, as a whole, have ceased to believe in Mr. Chesterton's principles; it is not yet the condition of Venezuela because the Venezuelans have not yet ceased to believe those principles, though even they are beginning to. 

 Mr. Chesterton says: "Men do judge, and always will judge, by the ultimate test of how they fight. " The pirate who gives his blood has a better right, therefore, to the ship than the merchant (who may be a usurer!) who only gives his money. Well, that is the view which was all but universal well into the period of what, for want of a better word, we call civilisation. Not only was it the basis of all such institutions as the ordeal and duel; not only did it justify (and in the opinion of some still justifies) the wars of religion and the use of force in religious matters generally; not only was it the accepted national polity of such communities as the Vikings, the Barbary States, and the Red Indians; but it is still, unfortunately, the polity of certain European states. But the idea is a survival and--and this is the important point--an admission of failure to understand where right lies: to "fight it out" is the remedy of the boy who for the life of him cannot see who is right and who is wrong. 

 At ten years of age we are all quite sure that piracy is a finer calling than trade, and the pirate a finer fellow than the Shylock who owns the ship--which, indeed, he may well be. But as we grow up (which some of the best of us never do) we realise that piracy is not the best way to establish the ownership of cargoes, any more than the ordeal is the way to settle cases at law, or the rack of proving a dogma, or the Spanish American method the way to settle differences between Liberals and Conservatives. 

 And just as civil adjustments are made most efficiently, as they are in England (say), as distinct from South America, by a general agreement not to resort to force, so it is the English method in the international field which gives better results than that based on force. The relationship of Great Britain to Canada or Australia is preferable to the relationship of Russia to Finland or Poland, or Germany to Alsace-Lorraine. The five nations of the British Empire have, by agreement, abandoned the use of force as between themselves. Australia may do us an injury--exclude our subjects, English or Indian, and expose them to insult--but we know very well that force will not be used against her. To withhold such force is the basis of the relationship of these five nations; and, given a corresponding development of ideas, might equally well be the basis of the relationship of fifteen--about all the nations of the world who could possibly fight. The difficulties Mr. Chesterton imagines--an international tribunal deciding in favour of Austria concerning the recession of Venice and Lombardy, and summoning the forces of United Europe to coerce Italy into submission--are, of course, based on the assumption that a United Europe, having arrived at such understanding as to be able to sink its differences, would be the same kind of Europe that it is now, or was a generation ago. If European statecraft advances sufficiently to surrender the use of force against neighbouring states, it will have advanced sufficiently to surrender the use of force against unwilling provinces, as in some measure British statesmanship has already done. To raise the difficulty that Mr. Chesterton does is much the same as assuming that a court of law in San Domingo or Turkey will give the same results as a court of law in Great Britain, because the form of the mechanism is the same. And does Mr. Chesterton suggest that the war system settles these matters to perfection? That it has worked satisfactorily in Ireland and Finland, or, for the matter of that, in Albania or Macedonia?

 For if Mr. Chesterton urges that killing and being killed is the way to determine the best means of governing a country, it is his business to defend the Turk, who has adopted that principle during four hundred years, not the Christians, who want to bring that method to an end and adopt another. And I would ask no better example of the utter failure of the principles that I combat and Mr. Chesterton defends than their failure in the Balkan Peninsula. 

 This war is due to the vile character of Turkish rule, and the Turk's rule is vile because it is based on the sword. Like Mr. Chesterton (and our pirate), the Turk believes in the right of conquest, "the ultimate test of how they fight. " "The history of the Turks, " says Sir Charles Elliott, "is almost exclusively a catalogue of battles. " He has lived (for the most gloriously uneconomic person has to live, to follow a trade of some sort, even if it be that of theft) on tribute exacted from the Christian populations, and extorted, not in return for any work of administration, but simply because he was the stronger. And that has made his rule intolerable, and is the cause of this war. 

 Now, my whole thesis is that understanding, work, co-operation, adjustment, must be the basis of human society; that conquest as a means of achieving national advantage must fail; that to base your prosperity or means of livelihood, your economic system, in short, upon having more force than someone else, and exercising it against him, is an impossible form of human relationship that is bound to break down. And Mr. Chesterton says that the war in the Balkans demolishes this thesis. I do not agree with him. 

 The present war in the Balkans is an attempt--and happily a successful one--to bring this reign of force and conquest to an end, and that is why those of us who do not believe in military force rejoice. 

 The debater, more concerned with verbal consistency than realities and the establishment of sound principles, will say that this means the approval of war. It does not; it merely means the choice of the less evil of two forms of war. War has been going on in the Balkans, not for a month, but has been waged by the Turks daily against these populations for 400 years. 

 The Balkan peoples have now brought to an end a system of rule based simply upon the accident of force--"killing and being killed. " And whether good or ill comes of this war will depend upon whether they set up a similar system or one more in consonance with pacifist principles. I believe they will choose the latter course; that is to say, they will continue to co-operate between themselves instead of fighting between themselves; they will settle differences by discussion, adjustment, not force. But if they are guided by Mr. Chesterton's principle, if each one of the Balkan nations is determined to impose its own especial point of view, to refuse all settlement by co-operation and understanding, where it can resort to force--why, in that case, the strongest (presumably Bulgaria) will start conquering the rest, start imposing government by force, and will listen to no discussion or argument; will simply, in short, take the place of the Turk in the matter, and the old weary contest will begin afresh, and we shall have the Turkish system under a new name, until that in its turn is destroyed, and the whole process begun again _da capo_. And if Mr. Chesterton says that this is not his philosophy, and that he would recommend the Balkan nations to come to an understanding, and co-operate together, instead of fighting one another, why does he give different counsels to the nations of Christendom as a whole? If it is well for the Balkan peoples to abandon conflict as between themselves in favour of co-operation against the common enemy, why is it ill for the other Christian peoples to abandon such conflict in favour of co-operation against their common enemy, which is wild nature and human error, ignorance and passion. 

[Footnote 5: From "Everyman" to whose Editor I am indebted forpermission to print my reply. ]

CHAPTER V. 

OUR RESPONSIBILITY FOR BALKAN WARS. 

Mr. Winston Churchill on the "Responsibility" of Diplomacy--What does hemean?--An easy (and popular) philosophy--Can we neglect past if we wouldavoid future errors?--British temper and policy in the Crimean War--Whatare its lessons?--Why we fought a war to sustain the "integrity andindependence of the Turkish dominion in Europe"--Supporting the Turkagainst his Christian victims--From fear of Russian growth which we arenow aiding--The commentary of events--Shall we back the wrong horseagain?

 Here was a war which had broken out in spite of all that rulers and diplomatists could do to prevent it, a war in which the Press had had no part, a war which the whole force of the money power had been subtly and steadfastly directed to prevent, which had come upon us not through the ignorance or credulity of the people; but, on the contrary, through their knowledge of their history and their destiny. . . . Who is the man who is vain enough to suppose that the long antagonisms of history and of time can in all circumstances be adjusted by the smooth and superficial conventions of politicians and ambassadors?

Thus Mr. Churchill. It is a plea for the inevitability, not merely ofwar, but of a people's "destiny. "

What precisely does it mean? Does it mean that the European Powers havein the past been entirely wise and honest, have never intrigued withthe Turk the one against the other, have always kept good faith, havenever been inspired by false political theories and tawdry and shoddyideals, have, in short, no responsibility for the abominations that havegone on in the Balkan peninsula for a century? No one outside a lunaticasylum would urge it. But, then, that means that diplomacy has _not_done all it might to prevent this war. Why does Mr. Churchill say ithas?

And does the passage I have quoted mean that we--that Englishdiplomacy--has had no part in European diplomacy in the past? Have wenot, on the contrary, by universal admission played a predominant roleby backing the wrong horse?

But, then, that is not a popular thing to point out, and Mr. Churchillis very careful not to point it out in any way that could givejustification to an unpopular view or discredit a popular one. He is, however, far too able a Cabinet Minister to ignore obvious facts, and itis interesting to note how he disposes of them. Observe the followingpassage:

 For the drama or tragedy which is moving to its climax in the Balkans we all have our responsibilities, and none of us can escape our share of them by blaming others or by blaming the Turk. If there is any man here who, looking back over the last 35 years, thinks he knows where to fix the sole responsibility for all the procrastination and provocation, for all the jealousies and rivalries, for all the religious and racial animosities, which have worked together for this result, I do not envy him his complacency. . . . Whether we blame the belligerents or criticise the Powers or sit in sackcloth and ashes ourselves is absolutely of no consequence at the present moment. 

Now if for this tragedy we "all have our responsibility, " then whatbecomes of his first statement that the war is raging despite all thatrulers and diplomats could do to prevent it? If the war was"inevitable, " and rulers and diplomats have done all they could toprevent it, neither they nor we have any responsibility for it. Heknows, of course, that it is impossible to deny that responsibility, that our errors in the past _have_ been due not to any lack of readinessto fight or quarrel with foreign nations, but precisely to the tendencyto do those things and our _in_disposition to set aside instinctive andreasonless jealousies and rivalries in favour of a deeper sense ofresponsibility and a somewhat longer vision. 

But, again, this quite obvious moral, that if we have ourresponsibility, if, in other words, we have _not_ done all that we mightand _have_ been led away by temper and passion, we should, in order toavoid a repetition of such errors in the future, try and see where wehave erred in the past, is precisely the moral that Mr. Churchill does_not_ draw. Again, it is not the popular line to show with anydefiniteness that we have been wrong. An abstract proposition that "weall have our responsibilities, " is, while a formal admission of theobvious fact also at the same time, an excuse, almost a justification. You realise Mr. Churchill's method: Having made the necessary admissionof fact, you immediately prevent any unpleasant (or unpopular) practicalconclusion concerning our duty in the matter by talking of the"complacency" of those who would fix any real and definite part of theresponsibility upon you. (Because, of course, no man, knows where lies, and no one would ever attempt to fix, the "sole" responsibility). Incidentally, one might point out to Mr. Churchill that the attempt tosee the errors of past conduct and to avoid them in the future is _not_complacency, but that airily to dismiss our responsibility by sayingthat it is of "no consequence whether we sit in sackcloth and ashes"_is_ complacency. 

Mr. Churchill's idea seems to be that men should forget theirerrors--and commit them again. For that is what it amounts to. Wecannot, indeed, undo the past, that is true; but we can prevent itbeing repeated. But we certainly shall not prevent such repetition if wehug the easy doctrine that we have always been right--that it is notworth while to see how our principles have worked out in practice, totake stock of our experience, and to see what results the principles wepropose again to put into operation, have given. 

The practical thing for us if we would avoid like errors in the futureis to see where _our_ responsibility lies--a thing which we shall neverdo if we are governed by the net impression which disengages itself fromspeeches like those of Mr. Churchill. For the net result of that speech, the impression, despite a few shrewd qualifications which do not inreality affect that net result but which may be useful later wherewithto silence critics, is that war is inevitable, a matter of "destiny, "that diplomacy--the policy pursued by the respective powers--can donothing to prevent it; that as brute force is the one and final appealthe only practical policy is to have plenty of armaments and to show agreat readiness to fight; that it is futile to worry about past errors;(especially as an examination of them would go a long way to discreditthe policy just indicated); that the troublesome and unpopular peoplewho in the past happen to have kept their heads during a prevailingdementia--and whose policy happens to have been as right as that of thepopular side was wrong--can be dismissed with left-handed references to"complacency, " This sort of thing is popular enough, of course, but--

Well, I will take the risks of a tactic which is the exact contrary tothat adopted by Mr. Churchill and would urge upon those whose patriotismis not of the order which is ready to see their country in the wrong andwho do feel some responsibility for its national policy, to askthemselves these questions:

Is it true that the Powers could have prevented in large measure theabominations which Turkey has practised in the Balkans for the lasthalf-century or so?

Has our own policy been a large factor in determining that of thePowers?

Has our own policy directly prevented in the past the triumph of theChristian populations which, despite that policy, has finally takenplace?

Was our own policy at fault when we were led into a war to ensure the"integrity and independence of the Turkish dominions in Europe"?

Is the general conception of Statecraft on which that policy has beenbased--the "Balance of Power" which presupposes the necessary rivalry ofnations and which in the past has led to oppose Russia as it is nowleading to oppose Germany--sound, and has it been justified in history?

Did we give due weight to the considerations urged by the public men ofthe past who opposed such features of this policy as the Crimean War;was the immense popularity of that war any test of its wisdom; were therancour, hatred and scorn poured upon those men just or deserved?

 * * * * *

Now the first four of these questions have been answered by history andare answered by every one to-day in an emphatic affirmative. This is notthe opinion of a Pacifist partisan. Even the _Times_ is constrained toadmit that "these futile conflicts might have ended years ago, if it hadnot been for the quarrels of the Western nations. "[6] And as to theCrimean War, has not the greatest Conservative foreign minister of thenineteenth century admitted that "we backed the wrong horse"--and, whatis far more to the point, have not events unmistakably demonstrated it?

Do we quite realise that if foreign policy had that continuity whichthe political pundits pretend, we should now be fighting on the side ofthe Turk against the Balkan States? That we have entered into solemntreaty obligations, as part of our national policy, to guarantee forever the "integrity and independence of the Turkish dominions inEurope, " that we fought a great and popular war to prevent that triumphof the Christian population which will arise as the result of thepresent war? That but for this policy which caused us to maintain theTurk in Europe the present war would certainly not be raging, and, whatis much more to the point, that but for our policy the abominationswhich have provoked it and which it is its object to terminate, would sofar as human reason can judge at all have been brought to an endgenerations since? Do we quite realise that _we_ are in large partresponsible, not merely for the war, but for the long agony of horrorwhich have provoked it and made it necessary; that when we talk of thejealousies and rivalries of the Powers as playing so large a part in theresponsibility for these things, we represent, perhaps, the chief amongthose jealousies and rivalries? That it is not mainly the Turk nor theRussian nor the Austrian which has determined the course of history inthe Balkan peninsular since the middle of the 19th century, but weEnglishmen--the country gentleman obsessed by vague theories of theBalance of Power and heaven knows what, reading his _Times_ and barkingout his preposterous politics over the dinner table? That this fatalpolicy was dictated simply by fear of the growth of "Russian barbarismand autocracy" and "the overshadowing of the Western nations by acountry whose institutions are inimical to our own"? That while we werethus led into war by a phantom danger to our Indian possessions, we werequite blind to the real danger which threatened them, which a year ortwo later, in the Mutiny, nearly lost us them and which were not due tothe machinations of a rival power but to our own misgovernment; thatthis very "barbaric growth" and expansion towards India which we foughta war to check we are now actively promoting in Persia and elsewhere byour (effective) alliance? That while as recently as fifteen years ago wewould have gone to war to prevent any move of Russia towards the Indianfrontier, we are to-day actually encouraging her to build a railwaythere? And that it is now another nation which stands as the naturalbarrier to Russian expansion to the West--Germany--whose power we arechallenging, and that all tendencies point to our backing again thewrong horse, to our fighting _with_ the "semi-Asiatic barbarian" (as ourfathers used to call him) against the nation which has close racial andcultural affinity to our own, just as half a century since the samefatal obsession about the "Balance of Power" led us to fight with theMohammedan in order to bolster up for half a century his anti-Christianrule. 

The misreading of history in this matter is, unfortunately, notpossible. The point upon which in the Crimean war the negotiations withRussia finally broke was the claim, based upon her reading of the Viennanote, to stand as religious protector of the Greek Christians in theBalkan peninsular. That was the pivot of the whole negotiations, and thewar was the outcome of our support of the Turkish view--or, rather, ourconduct of Turkish policy, for throughout the whole period England wasconducting the Turkish negotiations; indeed, as Bright said at the time, she was carrying on the Turkish Government and ruling the Turkish Empirethrough her ministers in Constantinople. 

I will quote a speech of the period made in the House of Commons. It wasas follows:

 Our opponents seem actuated by a frantic and bitter hostility to Russia, and, without considering the calamities in which they might involve this country, they have sought to urge it into a great war, as they imagined, on behalf of European freedom, and in order to cripple the resources of Russia. . . . 

 The question is, whether the advantages both to Turkey and England of avoiding war altogether, would have been less than those which are likely to arise from the policy which the Government has pursued? Now, if the noble Lord the Member for Tiverton is right in saying that Turkey is a growing power, and that she has elements of strength which unlearned persons like myself know nothing about; surely no immediate, or sensible, or permanent mischief could have arisen to her from the acceptance of the Vienna note, which all the distinguished persons who agreed to it have declared to be perfectly consistent with her honour and independence. If she had been growing stronger and stronger of late years, surely she would have grown still stronger in the future, and there might have been a reasonable expectation that, whatever disadvantages she might have suffered for a time from that note, her growing strength would have enabled her to overcome them, while the peace of Europe might have been preserved. But suppose that Turkey is not a growing power, but that the Ottoman rule in Europe is tottering to its fall, I come to the conclusion that, whatever advantages were afforded to the Christian population of Turkey would have enabled them to grow more rapidly in numbers, in industry, in wealth, in intelligence, and in political power; and that, as they thus increased in influence, they would have become more able, in case any accident, which might not be far distant, occurred, to supplant the Mahommedan rule, and to establish themselves in Constantinople as a Christian State, which, I think, every man who hears me will admit is infinitely more to be desired than that the Mahommedan power should be permanently sustained by the bayonets of France and the fleets of England. Europe would thus have been at peace; for I do not think even the most bitter enemies of Russia believe that the Emperor of Russia intended last year, if the Vienna note or Prince Menchikoff's last and most moderate proposition had been accepted, to have marched on Constantinople. Indeed, he had pledged himself in the most distinct manner to withdraw his troops at once from the Principalities, if the Vienna note were accepted; and therefore in that case Turkey would have been delivered from the presence of the foe; peace would for a time have been secured for Europe; and the whole matter would have drifted on to its natural solution--which is, that the Mahommedan power in Europe should eventually succumb to the growing power of the Christian population of the Turkish territories. 

Now, looking back upon what has since happened, which view shows thegreater wisdom and prevision? That of the man who delivered this speech(and he was John Bright) or those against whom he spoke? To which set ofprinciples has time given the greater justification?

Yet upon the men who resisted what we all admit, in this case at least, to have been the false theories and who supported, what we equally admitnow, to have been the right principles, we poured the same sort offerocious contempt that we are apt now spasmodically to pour upon thosewho, sixty years later, would prevent our drifting in the same blindfashion into a war just as futile and bound to be infinitely moredisastrous--a war embodying the same "principles" supported by just thesame theories and just the same arguments which led us into this otherone. 

I know full well the prejudice which the names I am about to cite is aptto cause. We poured out upon the men who bore them a rancour, contemptand hatred which few men in English public life have had to face. Morley, in his life of Cobden, says of these two men--Cobden and Bright:

 They had, as Lord Palmerston said, the whole world against them. It was not merely the august personages of the Court, nor the illustrious veterans in Government and diplomacy, nor the most experienced politicians in Parliament, nor the powerful journalists, nor the men versed in great affairs of business. It was no light thing to confront even that solid mass of hostile judgment. But besides all this, Cobden and Mr. Bright knew that the country at large, even their trusty middle and industrial classes, had turned their faces resolutely and angrily away from them. Their own great instrument, the public meeting, was no longer theirs to wield. The army of the Nonconformists, which has so seldom been found fighting on the wrong side, was seriously divided. 

 Public opinion was bitterly and impatiently hostile and intractable. Mr. Bright was burnt in effigy. Cobden, at a meeting in his own constituency, after an energetic vindication of his opinions, saw resolutions carried against him. Every morning they were reviled in half the newspapers in the country as enemies of the commonwealth. They were openly told that they were traitors, and that it was a pity they could not be punished as traitors. 

 In the House, Lord Palmerston once began his reply by referring to Mr. Bright as "the Honourable and Reverend gentleman, " Cobden rose to call him to order for this flippant and unbecoming phrase. Lord Palmerston said he would not quarrel about words. Then went on to say that he thought it right to tell Mr. Bright that his opinion was a matter of entire difference, and that he treated his censure with the most perfect indifference and contempt. On another occasion he showed the same unmannerliness to Cobden himself. Cobden had said that under certain circumstances he would fight, or if he could not fight, he would work for the wounded in the hospitals. "Well, " said Lord Palmerston in reply, with the sarcasm of a schoolboy's debating society, "there are many people in this country who think that the party to which he belongs should go immediately into a hospital of a different kind, and which I shall not mention. " This refined irony was a very gentle specimen of the insult and contumely which was poured upon Cobden and Mr. Bright at this time. . . . 

 It is impossible not to regard the attitude of the two objects of this vast unpopularity as one of the most truly honourable spectacles in our political history. The moral fortitude, like the political wisdom of these two strong men, begins to stand out with a splendour that already recalls the great historic heights of statesmanship and patriotism. Even now our heart-felt admiration and gratitude goes out to them as it goes out to Burke for his lofty and manful protests against the war with America and the oppression of Ireland, and to Charles Fox for his bold and strenuous resistance to the war with the French Republic. 

Before indulging in the dementia which those names usually produce, willthe reader please note that it is not my business now to defend eitherthe general principles of Cobden and Bright or the political spiritwhich they are supposed to represent. Let them be as sordid, mean, unworthy, pusillanimous as you like--and as the best of us then saidthey were ("a mean, vain, mischievous clique" even so good a man as TomHughes could call them). We called them cowards--because practicallyalone they faced a country which had become a howling mob; we calledtheir opponents "courageous" because with the whole country behind themthey habitually poured contempt upon the under dog. 

And we thus hated these men because they did their best to dissuade usfrom undertaking a certain war. Very good; we have had our war; wecarried our point, we prevented the break-up of the Turkish Empire;those men were completely beaten. And they are dead. Cannot we affordto set aside those old passions and see how far in one particular atleast they may have been right?

We admit, of course, if we are honest--happily everyone admits--thatthese despised men were right and those who abused them were wrong. Theverdict of fact is there. Says Lord Morley:--

 When we look back upon the affairs of that time, we see that there were two policies open. Lord Palmerston's was one, Cobden and Bright's the other. If we are to compare Lord Palmerston's statesmanship and insight in the Eastern Question with that of his two great adversaries, it is hard, in the light of all that has happened since, to resist the conclusion that Cobden and Mr. Bright were right, and Lord Palmerston was disastrously wrong. It is easy to plead extenuating circumstances for the egregious mistakes in Lord Palmerston's policy about the Eastern Question, the Suez Canal, and some other important subjects; but the plea can only be allowed after it has been frankly recognized that they really were mistakes, and that these abused men exposed and avoided them. Lord Palmerston, for instance, asked why the Czar could not be "satisfied, as we all are, with the progressively liberal system of Turkey. " Cobden, in his pamphlet twenty years before, insisted that this progressively liberal system of Turkey had no existence. Which of these two propositions was true may be left to the decision of those who lent to the Turk many millions of money on the strength of Lord Palmerston's ignorant and delusive assurances. It was mainly owing to Lord Palmerston, again, that the efforts of the war were concentrated at Sebastopol. Sixty thousand English and French troops, he said, with the co-operation of the fleets, would take Sebastopol in six weeks. Cobden gave reasons for thinking very differently, and urged that the destruction of Sebastopol, even when it was achieved, would neither inflict a crushing blow to Russia, nor prevent future attacks upon Turkey. Lord Palmerston's error may have been intelligible and venial; nevertheless, as a fact, he was in error and Cobden was not, and the error cost the nation one of the most unfortunate, mortifying, and absolutely useless campaigns in English history. Cobden held that if we were to defend Turkey against Russia, the true policy was to use our navy, and not to send a land force to the Crimea. Would any serious politician now be found to deny it? We might prolong the list of propositions, general and particular, which Lord Palmerston maintained and Cobden traversed, from the beginning to the end of the Russian War. There is not one of these propositions in which later events have not shown that Cobden's knowledge was greater, his judgment cooler, his insight more penetrating and comprehensive. The bankruptcy of the Turkish Government, the further dismemberment of its Empire by the Treaty of Berlin, the abrogation of the Black Sea Treaty, have already done something to convince people that the two leaders saw much further ahead in 1854 and 1855 than men who had passed all their lives in foreign chanceries and the purlieus of Downing Street. 

 It is startling to look back upon the bullying contempt which the man who was blind permitted himself to show to the men who could see. The truth is, that to Lord Palmerston it was still incomprehensible and intolerable that a couple of manufacturers from Lancashire should presume to teach him foreign policy. Still more offensive to him was their introduction of morality into the mysteries of the Foreign Office. [7]

What have peace theories to do with this war? asks the practical man, who is the greatest mystic of all, contemptuously. Well, they haveeverything to do with it. For if we had understood some peace theories alittle better a generation or two ago, if we had not allowed passion anderror and prejudice instead of reason to dominate our policy, the sum ofmisery which these Balkan populations have known would have beenimmeasurably less. It is quite true that we could not have preventedthis war by sending peace pamphlets to the Turk, or to the Balkanese, for that matter, but we could have prevented it if we ourselves had readthem a generation or two since, just as our only means of preventingfuture wars is by showing a little less prejudice and a little lessblindness. 

And the practical question, despite Mr. Churchill, is whether we shallallow a like passion and a like prejudice again to blind us; whether weshall again back the wrong horse in the name of the same hollow theoriesdrifting to a similar but greater futility and catastrophe, or whetherwe shall profit by our past to assure a better future. 

[Footnote 6: 14/11/12]

[Footnote 7: _The Life of Richard Cobden. _--UNWIN. ]

CHAPTER VI. 

PACIFISM, DEFENCE, AND "THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF WAR. "

Did the Crimean War prove Bright and Cobden wrong?--Our curiousreasoning--Mr. Churchill on "illusions"--The danger of war is not theillusion but its benefits--We are all Pacifists now since we all desirePeace--Will more armaments alone secure it?--The experience ofmankind--War "the failure of human wisdom"--Therefore more wisdom is theremedy--But the Militarists only want more arms--The German LordRoberts--The military campaign against political Rationalism--How tomake war certain. 

The question surely, which for practical men stands out from the mightyhistorical episode touched on in the last chapter, is this: Was the factthat these despised men were so entirely right and their triumphantadversaries so entirely wrong a mere fluke, or was it due to thesoundness of one set of principles and the hollowness of the other; andwere the principles special to that case, or general to internationalconflict as a whole?

To have an opinion of worth on that question we must get away fromcertain confusions and misrepresentations. 

It is a very common habit for the Bellicist to quote the list of warswhich have taken place since the Crimean War as proof of the error ofBright and Cobden. But what are the facts?

Here were two men who strenuously and ruthlessly opposed a certainpolicy; they urged, not only that it would inevitably lead to war, butthat the war would be futile--but not sterile, for they saw that otherswould grow from it. Their counsel was disregarded and the war came, andevents have proved that they were right and the war-makers wrong, andthe very fact that the wars took place is cited as disapproving their"theories. "[8]

It is a like confusion of thought which prompts Mr. Churchill to referto Pacifists as people who deem the _danger_ of war an illusion. 

This persistent misconception is worth a little examination. 

 * * * * *

The smoke from the first railway engines in England killed the cattleand the poultry of the country gentlemen near whose property therailroad passed--at least, that is what the country gentleman wrote tothe _Times_. 

Now if in the domain of quite simple material things the dislike ofhaving fixed habits of thought disturbed, leads gentlemen to resentinnovations in that way, it is not astonishing that innovations of amore intangible and elusive kind should be subject to a like unconsciousmisrepresentation, especially by newspapers and public men pushed bycommercial or political necessity to say the popular thing rather thanthe true thing: that contained in the speech of Mr. Churchill, which, together with a newspaper comment thereon, I have made the "text" ofthis little book, is a typical case in point. 

It is possible, of course, that Mr. Churchill in talking about "personswho profess to know that the danger of war has become an illusion, " hadnot the slightest intention of referring to those who share the viewsembodied in "The Great Illusion, " which are, _not_ that the danger ofwar is an illusion, but that the benefit is. All that happened was thathis hearers and readers interpreted his words as referring thereto; andthat, of course, he could not possibly prevent. 

In any case, to misrepresent an author (and I mean always, of course, quite sincere and unconscious misrepresentations, like that which ledthe country gentlemen to write that railway smoke killed poultry) is atrifling matter, but to misrepresent an idea, is not, for it makes thatbetter understanding of facts, the creation of a more informed publicopinion, by which alone we can avoid a possibly colossal folly, anunderstanding difficult enough as it is, still more difficult. 

And that is why the current misrepresentation (again unconscious) ofmost efforts at the better understanding of the facts of internationalrelationship needs very badly to be corrected. I will therefore be verydefinite. 

The implication that Pacifists of any kind have ever urged that war isimpossible is due either to that confusion of thought just touched upon, or is merely a silly gibe of those who deride arguments to which theyhave not listened, and consequently do not understand, or which theydesire to misrepresent; and such misrepresentation is, when notunconscious, always stupid and unfair. 

So far as I am concerned, I have never written a line, nor, so far as Iknow, has anyone else, to plead that war is impossible. I have, on thecontrary, always urged, with the utmost emphasis that war is not onlypossible but extremely likely, so long as we remain as ignorant as weare concerning what it can accomplish, and unless we use our energiesand efforts to prevent it, instead of directing those efforts to createit. What anti-Bellicists as a whole urge, is not that war is impossibleor improbable, but that it is impossible to benefit by it; that conquestmust, in the long run, fail to achieve advantage; that the generalrecognition of this can only add to our security. And incidentally mostof us have declared our complete readiness to take any demonstrablynecessary measure for the maintenance of armament, but urge that theeffort must not stop there. 

One is justified in wondering whether the public men--statesmen, soldiers, bishops, preachers, journalists--who indulge in this gibe, arereally unable to distinguish between the plea that a thing is unwise, foolish, and the plea that it is impossible; whether they really supposethat anyone in our time could argue that human folly is impossible, oran "illusion. " It is quite evidently a tragic reality. Undoubtedly thereadiness with which these critics thus fall back upon confusionof thought indicates that they themselves have illimitable confidence init. But the confusion of thought does not stop here. 

I have spoken of Pacifists and Bellicists, but, of course, we are allPacifists now. Lord Roberts, Lord Charles Beresford, Lord Fisher, Mr. Winston Churchill, The Navy League, the Navier League, the UniversalMilitary Service League, the German Emperor, the Editor of _TheSpectator_, all the Chancelleries of Europe, alike declare that theirone object is the maintenance of peace. Never were such Pacifists. TheGerman Emperor, speaking to his army, invariably points out that theystand for the peace of Europe. Does a First Lord want new ships? It isbecause a strong British Navy is the best guarantee of peace. LordRoberts wants conscription because that is the one way to preservepeace, and the Editor of _The Spectator_ tells us that Turkey's greatcrime is that she has not paid enough attention to soldiering andarmament, that if only she had been stronger all would have been well. All alike are quite persuaded indeed that the one way to peace is to getmore armament. 

Well, that is the method that mankind has pursued during the whole ofits history; it has never shown the least disposition not to take thisadvice and not to try this method to the full. And written history, tosay nothing of unwritten history, is there to tell us how well it hassucceeded. 

Unhappily, one has to ask whether some of these military Pacifistsreally want it to succeed? Again I do not tax any with consciousinsincerity. But it does result not merely from what some imply, butfrom what they say. For certain of these doughty Pacifists having toldyou how much their one object is to secure peace, then proceed to tellyou that this thing which they hope to secure is a very evil thing, thatunder its blighting influence nations wane in luxury and sloth. And ofcourse they imply that our own nation, about a third of whom have notenough to eat and about another third of whom have a heart-breakingstruggle with small means and precariousness of livelihood, is in dangerof this degeneration which comes from too much wealth and luxury andsloth and ease. I could fill a dozen books the size of this with thesolemn warning of such Pacifists as these against the danger of peace(which they tell you they are struggling to maintain), and how splendidand glorious a thing, how fine a discipline is war (which they tell youthey are trying so hard to avoid). Thus the Editor of _The Spectator_tells us that mankind cannot yet dispense with the discipline of war;and Lord Roberts, that to make war when you are really ready for it (orthat in any case for Germany to do it) is "an excellent policy and oneto be pursued by every nation prepared to play a great part in history. "

The truth is, of course, that we are not likely to get peace from thosewho believe it to be an evil thing and war and aggression a good thing, or, at least, are very mixed in their views as to this. Before men cansecure peace they must at least make up their minds whether it is peaceor war they want. If you do not know what you want, you are not likelyto get it--or you are likely to get it, whichever way you prefer to putit. 

And that is another thing which divides us from the military Pacifists:we really do want peace. As between war and peace we have made ourchoice, and having made it, stick to it. There may be something to besaid for war--for settling a thing by fighting about it instead of byunderstanding it, --just as there may be something to be said for theordeal, or the duel, as against trial by evidence, for the rack as acorrective of religious error, for judicial torture as a substitute forcross-examination, for religious wars, for all these things--but thebalance of advantage is against them and we have discarded them. 

But there is a still further difference which divides us: We haverealised that we discarded those things only when we really understoodtheir imperfections and that we arrived at that understanding bystudying them, by discussing them, --because one man in London or anotherin Paris raised plainly and boldly the whole question of their wisdomand because the intellectual ferment created by those interrogations, either in the juridical or religious field, re-acted on the minds of menin Geneva or Wurtenburg or Rome or Madrid. It was by this means, not byimproving the rapiers or improving the instruments of the inquisition, that we got rid of the duel and that Catholics ceased to tortureProtestants or _vice versa_. We gave these things up because we realisedthe futility of physical force in these conflicts. We shall give up warfor the same reason. 

But the Bellicist says that discussions of this sort, these attempts tofind out the truth, are but the encouragement of pernicious theories:there is, according to him, but one way--better rapiers, more and betterracks, more and better inquisitions. 

Mr. Bonar Law, in one of the very wisest phrases ever pronounced by astatesman, has declared that "war is the failure of human wisdom. "

That is the whole case of Pacifism: we shall not improve except at theprice of using our reason in these matters; of understanding thembetter. Surely it is a truism that that is the price of all progress;saner conceptions--man's recognition of his mistakes, whether thosemistakes take the form of cannibalism, slavery, torture, superstition, tyranny, false laws, or what you will. The veriest savage, or for thatmatter the ape, can blindly fight, but whether the animal develops intoa man, or the savage into civilized man, depends upon whether theelement of reason enters in an increasing degree into the solution ofhis problems. 

The Militarist argues otherwise. He admits the difficulty comes fromman's small disposition to think; therefore don't think--fight. Wefight, he says, because we have insufficient wisdom in these matters;therefore do not let us trouble to get more wisdom or understanding; allwe need do is to get better weapons. I am not misrepresenting him; thatis quite fairly the popular line: it is no use talking about thesethings or trying to explain them, all that is logic and theories; whatyou want to do is to get a bigger army or more battleships. And, ofcourse, the Bellicist on the other side of the frontier says exactly thesame thing, and I am still waiting to have explained to me how, therefore, if this matter depends upon understanding, we can ever solveit by neglecting understanding, which the Militarist urges us to do. Notonly does he admit, but pleads, that these things are complex, andsupposes that that is an argument why they should not be studied. 

And a third distinction will, I think, make the difference between usstill clearer. Like the Bellicist, I am in favour of defence. If in aduelling society a duellist attacked me, or, as a Huguenot in the Parisof the sixteenth century a Catholic had attacked me, I should certainlyhave defended myself, and if needs be have killed my aggressor. But thatattitude would not have prevented my doing my small part in the creationof a public opinion which should make duelling or such things as themassacre of St. Bartholomew impossible by showing how unsatisfactory andfutile they were; and I should know perfectly well that neither wouldstop until public opinion had, as the result of education of one kind oranother, realised their futility. But it is as certain as anything canbe that the Churchills of that society or of that day would have beenvociferous in declaring (as in the case of the duel they still to-daydeclare in Prussia) that this attempt to prove the futility of duellingwas not only a bad and pernicious campaign, but was in reality a subtleattempt to get people killed in the street by bullies, and that thosewho valued their security would do their best to discredit allanti-duelling propaganda--by misrepresentation, if needs be. 

Let this matter be quite clear. No one who need be considered in thisdiscussion would think of criticising Lord Roberts for wanting the army, and Mr. Churchill for wanting the navy, to be as good and efficient aspossible and as large as necessary. Personally--and I speak, I know, formany of my colleagues in the anti-war movement--I would be prepared tosupport British conscription if it be demonstrably wise or necessary. But what we criticise is the persistent effort to discredit honestattempts at a better understanding of the facts of internationalrelationship, the everlasting gibe which it is thought necessary tofling at any constructive effort, apart from armament, to make peacesecure. These men profess to be friends of peace, they profess toregret the growth of armament, to deplore the unwisdom, ignorance, prejudice and misunderstanding out of which the whole thing grows, butimmediately there is any definite effort to correct this unwisdom, toexamine the grounds of the prejudice and misunderstanding, there is avolte face and such efforts are sneered at as "sentimental" or "sordid, "according as the plea for peace is put upon moral or material grounds. It is not that they disagree in detail with any given propositionlooking towards a basis of international co-operation, but that in realitythey deprecate raising the matter at all. [9] It must be armaments andnothing but armaments with them. If there had been any possibility ofsuccess in that we should not now be entering upon the 8, 000th or9, 000th war of written history. Armaments may be necessary, but they arenot enough. Our plan is armaments plus education; theirs is armamentversus education. And by education, of course, we do not mean schoolbooks, or an extension of the School Board curriculum, but a recognitionof the fact that the character of human society is determined by theextent to which its units attempt to arrive at an _understanding_ oftheir relationship, instead of merely subduing one another by force, which does not lead to understanding at all: in Turkey, or Venezuela, orSan Domingo, there is no particular effort made to adjust differences byunderstanding; in societies of that type they only believe in settlingdifferences by armaments. That is why there are very few books, verylittle thought or discussion, very little intellectual ferment but agreat many guns and soldiers and battles. And throughout the world theconflict is going on between these rival schools. On the whole theWestern world, inside the respective frontiers, almost entirely nowtends to the Pacifist type. But not so in the international field, forwhere the Powers are concerned, where it is a question of the attitudeof one nation in relation to another, you get a degree of understandingrather less than more than that which obtains in the internal politicsof Venezuela, or Turkey, or Morocco, or any other "warlike" state. 

And the difficulty of creating a better European opinion and temper isdue largely to just this idea that obsesses the Militarist, that unlessthey misrepresent facts in a sensational direction the nations will betoo apathetic to arm; that education will abolish funk, and thatpresumably funk is a necessary element in self-defence. 

For the most creditable explanation that we can give of the Militarist'sobjection to having this matter discussed at all, is the evidentimpression that such discussion will discourage measures forself-defence; the Militarist does not believe that a people desiring tounderstand these things and interested in the development of a betterEuropean society, can at the same time be determined to resist the useof force. They believe that unless the people are kept in a blue funk, they will not arm, and that is why it is that the Militarist of therespective countries are for ever talking about our degeneration and therest. And the German Militarist is just as angry with the unwarlikequalities of his people as the English Militarist is with ours. 

Just note this parallel:

 BRITISH OPINION ON BRITISH APATHY AND GERMAN VIGOUR. 

 "There is a way in which Britain is certain to have war and its horrors and calamities; it is this--by persisting in her present course of unpreparedness, her apathy, unintelligence, and blindness, and in her disregard of the warnings of the most ordinary political insight, as well as of the example of history. 

 "Now in the year 1912, just as in 1866, and just as in 1870, war will take place the instant the German forces by land and sea are, by their superiority at every point, as certain of victory as anything in human calculation can be made certain. 'Germany strikes when Germany's hour has struck. ' That is the time-honoured policy of her Foreign Office. It is her policy at the present hour, and it is an excellent policy. It is, or should be, the policy of every nation prepared to play a great part in history. "--LORD ROBERTS, at Manchester. 

 "Britain is disunited; Germany is homogeneous. We are quarrelling about the Lords' Veto, Home Rule, and a dozen other questions of domestic politics. We have a Little Navy Party, an Anti-Militarist Party; Germany is unanimous upon the question of naval expansion. "--MR. BLATCHFORD. 

 GERMAN OPINION ON GERMAN APATHY AND BRITISH VIGOUR. 

 "Whole strata of our nation seem to have lost that ideal enthusiasm which constituted the greatness of its history. With the increase of wealth they live for the moment, they are incapable of sacrificing the enjoyment of the hour to the service of great conceptions, and close their eyes complacently to the duties of our future and to the pressing problems of international life which await a solution at the present time. "--GENERAL VON BERNHARDI in "Germany and the Next War. "

 "There is no one German people, no single Germany. . . . There are more abrupt contrasts between Germans and Germans than between Germans and Indians. "

 "One must admire the consistent fidelity and patriotism of the English race, as compared with the uncertain and erratic methods of the German people, their mistrust, and suspicion. . . . In spite of numerous wars, bloodshed, and disaster, England always emerges smoothly and easily from her military crises and settles down to new conditions and surroundings in her usual cool and deliberate manner, so different from the German. "--_Berliner Tageblatt_, March 14, 1911. 

Presumably each doughty warrior knows his own country better than thatof the other, which would carry a conclusion directly contrary to thatwhich he draws. 

But note also where this idea that it is necessary artificially tostimulate the defensive zeal of each country by resisting any tendencyto agreement and understanding leads. It leads even so good a man asLord Roberts into the trap of dogmatic prophesy concerning theintentions of a very complex heterogeneous nation of 65 million people. Lord Roberts could not possibly tell you what his own country will dofive, ten, or fifteen years hence in such matters as Home Rule or theSuffragists, or even the payment of doctors, but he knows exactly what aforeign country will do in a much more serious matter. The simple truthis, of course, that no man knows what "Germany" will do ten years hence, any more than we can know what "England" will do. We don't even knowwhat England will _be_, whether Unionist or Liberal or Labour, Socialist, Free Trade or Protectionist. All these things, like thequestion of Peace and War depends upon all sorts of tendencies, driftsand developments. At bottom, of course, since war, in Mr. Bonar Law'sfine phrase, is "never inevitable--only the failure of human wisdom, " itdepends upon whether we become a little less or a little more wise. Ifthe former, we shall have it; if the latter, we shall not. But thisdogmatism concerning the other man's evil intentions is the very thing thatleads away from wisdom. [10] The sort of temper and ideas which itprovokes on both sides of the frontier may be gathered from just suchaverage gems as these plucked recently from the English press:--

 Yes, we may as well face it. _War with Germany is inevitable_, and the only question is--Shall we consult her convenience as to its date? Shall we wait till Germany's present naval programme, which is every year reducing our advantage, is complete? Shall we wait till the smouldering industrial revolution, of which all these strikes are warnings, has broken into flame? Shall we wait till Consols are 65 and our national credit is gone? Shall we wait till the Income Tax is 1s. 6d. In the pound? OR SHALL WE STRIKE NOW--_finding every out-of-work a job in connection with the guardianship of our shores_, and, with our mighty fleet, either sinking every German ship or towing it in triumph into a British port? _Why_ should we do it? _Because the command of the seas is ever ours_; because our island position, our international trade and our world-wide dominions _demand that no other nation shall dare to challenge our supremacy_. That is why. Oh, yes, the cost would be great, but we could raise it to-day all right, _and we should get it back_. 

 If the struggle comes to-day, we shall win--and after it is over, there will be abounding prosperity in the land, and no more labour unrest. 

 Yes, we have no fear of Germany to-day. The only enemy we fear is the crack-brained fanatics who prate about peace and goodwill whilst foreign _Dreadnoughts_ are gradually closing in upon us. As Mr. Balfour said at the Eugenic Conference the other day, man is a wild animal; and there is no room, in present circumstances, for any tame ones. --_John Bull_, Aug. 24, 1912. 

The italics and large type are those of the original, not mine. Thispaper explains, by the way, in this connection that "In theChancelleries of Europe _John Bull_ is regarded as a negligiblejournalistic quantity. But _John Bull_ is read by a million people everyweek, and that million not the least thoughtful and intelligent sectionof the community, they _think_ about what they read. "

One of the million seems to have thought to some purpose, for the nextweek there was the following letter from him. It was given the place ofhonour in a series and runs as follows:--

 I would have extended your "Down with the German Fleet!" to "Down with Germany and the Germans!" For, unless the whole ---- lot are swept off the surface of the earth, there will be no peace. If the people in England could only realise the quarrelsome, deceitful, underhanded, egotistic any tyrannical character of the Germans, there would not be so much balderdash about a friendly understanding, etc. , between England and Germany. The German is a born tyrant. The desire to remain with Britain on good terms will only last so long until Germany feels herself strong enough to beat England both on sea and on land: afterwards it'll simply be "_la bourse ou la vie_, " as the French proverb goes. Provided they do not know that there are any English listeners about, phrases like the following can be heard every day in German restaurants and other public places: "I hate England and the English!" "Never mind, they won't be standing in our way much longer. We shall soon be ready. "

And _John Bull_, with its million readers, is not alone. This is how the_Daily Express_, in a double-leaded leader, teaches history to itsreaders:--

 When, one day, Englishmen are not allowed to walk the pavements of their cities, and their women are for the pleasure of the invaders, and the offices of the Tiny England newspapers are incinerated by a furious mob; when foreign military officers proclaim martial law from the Royal Exchange steps, and when some billions of pounds have to be raised by taxation--by taxation of the "toiling millions" as well as others--to pay the invaders out, and the British Empire consists of England--less Dover, required for a foreign strategic tunnel--and the Channel Islands--then the ghosts of certain politicians and publicists will probably call a meeting for the discussion of the Fourth Dimension. --Leading Article, _Daily Express_, 8/7/12. 

And not merely shall our women fill the harems of the German pashas, and Englishmen not be allowed to walk upon the pavement (it would be theGerman way of solving the traffic problem--near the Bank), but a"well-known Diplomat" in another paper tells us what else will happen. 

 If England be vanquished it means the end of all things as far as she is concerned, and will ring in a new and somewhat terrible era. Bankrupt, shorn of all power, deserted, as must clearly follow, as a commercial state, and groaning under a huge indemnity that she cannot pay and is not intended to be able to pay, what will be the melancholy end of this great country and her teeming population of forty-five millions?

 . . . Her shipping trade will be transferred as far as possible from the English to the German flag. Her banking will be lost, as London will no longer be the centre of commerce, and efforts will be made to enable Berlin to take London's place. Her manufactures will gradually desert her. Failing to obtain payments in due time, estates will be sequestered and become the property of wealthy Germans. The indemnity to be demanded is said to be one thousand millions sterling. 

 The immediate result of defeat would mean, of course, that insolvency would take place in a very large number of commercial businesses, and others would speedily follow. Those who cannot get away will starve unless large relief funds are forthcoming from, say, Canada and the United States, for this country, bereft of its manufactures, will not be able to sustain a population of more than a very few millions. --From an Article by "A Well-known Diplomatist" in _The Throne_, June 12, 1912. 

These are but samples; and this sort of thing is going on in England andGermany alike. And when one protests that it is wicked rubbish born offunk and ignorance, that whatever happens in war this does not happen, and that it is based on false economics and grows into utterly falseconceptions of international relationship, one is shouted down as ananti-armament man and an enemy of his country. 

Well, if that view is persisted in, if in reality it is necessary for apeople to have lies and nonsense told to them in order to induce them todefend themselves, some will be apt to decide that they are not worthdefending. Or rather will they decide that this phase of thepro-armament campaign--which is not so much a campaign in favour ofarmament as one against education and understanding--will end in turningus into a nation either of poltroons or of bullies and aggressors, andthat since life is a matter of the choice of risks it is wiser and morecourageous to choose the less evil. A nation may be defeated and stilllive in the esteem of men--and in its own. No civilized man esteems anation of Bashi-Bazouks or Prussian Junkers. Of the two risksinvolved--the risk of attack arising from a possible superiority ofarmament on the part of a rival, and the risk of drifting into conflictbecause, concentrating all our energies on the mere instrument ofcombat, we have taken no adequate trouble to understand the facts ofthis case--it is at least an arguable proposition that the second riskis the greater. And I am prompted to this expression of opinion withoutsurrendering one iota of a lifelong and passionate belief that a nationattacked should defend itself to the last penny and to the last man. 

And you think that this idea that the nations--ours amongst them--maydrift into futile war from sheer panic and funk arising out of theterror inspired by phantoms born of ignorance, is merely the idea ofPacifist cranks?

The following, referring to the "precautionary measures" (_i. E. _, mobilization of armies) taken by the various Powers, is from a leadingarticle of the _Times_:--

 "Precautions" are understandable, but the remark of our Berlin Correspondent that they may produce an untenable position from which retreat must be humiliating is applicable in more than one direction. Our Vienna Correspondent truly says that "there is no valid reason to believe war between Austria-Hungary and Russia to be inevitable, or even immediately probable. " We entirely agree, but wish we could add that the absence of any valid reason was placing strict limitations upon the scope of "precautions. " The same correspondent says he is constantly being asked:--"Is there no means of avoiding war?" The same question is now being asked, with some bewilderment, by millions of men in this country, who want to know what difficulties there are in the present situation which should threaten Europe with a general war, or even a collision larger than that already witnessed. . . . There is no great nation in Europe which to-day has the least desire that millions of men should be torn from their homes and flung headlong to destruction at the bidding of vain ambitions. The Balkan peoples fought for a cause which was peculiarly their own. They were inspired by the memories of centuries of wrong which they were burning to avenge. The larger nations have no such quarrel, unless it is wilfully manufactured for them. The common sense of the peoples of Europe is well aware that no issue has been presented which could not be settled by amicable discussion. In England men will learn with amazement and incredulity that war is possible over the question of a Servian port, or even over the larger issues which are said to lie behind it. Yet that is whither the nations are blindly drifting Who, then, makes war? The answer is to be found in the Chancelleries of Europe, among the men who have too long played with human lives as pawns in a game of chess, who have become so enmeshed in formulas and the jargon of diplomacy that they have ceased to be conscious of the poignant realities with which they trifle. And thus will war continue to be made, until the great masses who are the sport of professional schemers and dreamers say the word which, shall bring, not eternal peace, for that is impossible, but a determination that wars shall be fought only in a just and righteous and vital cause. If that word is ever to be spoken, there never was a more appropriate occasion than the present; and we trust it will be spoken while there is yet time. 

And the very next day there appeared in the _Daily Mail_ an article byMr. Lovat Fraser ending thus:--

 The real answer rests, or ought to rest, with the man in the train. Does he want to join in Armageddon? It is time that he began to think about it, for his answer may soon be sought. 

Now we have here, stated in the first case by the most authoritative ofEnglish newspapers, and in the second by an habitual contributor of themost popular, the whole case of Pacifism as I have attempted to expoundit, namely: (1) That our current statecraft--its fundamentalconceptions, its "axioms, " its terminology--has become obsolete byvirtue of the changed conditions of European society; that the causes ofconflict which it creates are half the time based on illusions, uponmeaningless and empty formulas; (2) that its survival is at bottom dueto popular ignorance and indifference--the survival on the part of thegreat mass of just those conceptions born of the old and now obsoleteconditions--since diplomacy, like all functions of government, is areflection of average opinion; (3) that this public opinion is notsomething which descends upon us from the skies but is the sum of theopinions of each one of us and is the outcome of our daily contacts, ourwriting and talking and discussion, and that the road to safety lies inhaving that general public opinion better informed not in directlydiscouraging such better information; (4) that the mere multiplicationof "precautions" in the shape of increased armaments and a readiness forwar, in the absence of a corresponding and parallel improvement ofopinion, will merely increase and not exorcise the danger, and, finally, (5) that the problem of war is necessarily a problem of atleast two parties, and that if we are to solve it, to understand iteven, we must consider it in terms of two parties, not one; it is not aquestion of what shall be the policy of each without reference to theother, but what the final upshot of the two policies taken inconjunction will be. 

Now in all this the _Times_, especially in one outstanding central idea, is embodying a conception which is the antithesis of that expressed byMilitarists of the type of Mr. Churchill, and, I am sorry to say, ofLord Roberts. To these latter war is not something that we, the peoplesof Europe, create by our ignorance and temper, by the nursing of old andvicious theories, by the poorness and defects of the ideas ourintellectual activities have developed during the last generation ortwo, but something that "comes upon us" like the rain or the earthquake, and against which we can only protect ourselves by one thing: more arms, a greater readiness to fight. 

In effect the anti-Educationalists say this: "What, as practical men, wehave to do, is to be stronger than our enemy; the rest is theory anddoes not matter. "

Well the inevitable outcome of such an attitude is catastrophe. 

I have said elsewhere that in this matter it seems fatally easy tosecure either one of two kinds of action: that of the "practical man"who limits his energies to securing a policy which will perfect themachinery of war and disregard anything else; or that of the idealist, who, persuaded of the brutality or immorality of war, is apt to show acertain indifference concerning self-defence. What is needed is the typeof activity which will include both halves of the problem: provision foreducation, for a Political Reformation in this matter, _as well as_ suchmeans of defence as will meantime counterbalance the existing impulseto aggression. To concentrate on either half to the exclusion of theother half is to render the whole problem insoluble. 

What must inevitably happen if the nations take the line of the"practical man, " and limit their energies simply and purely to piling uparmaments?

A critic once put to me what he evidently deemed a poser: "Do you urgethat we shall be stronger than our enemy, or weaker?"

To which I replied: "The last time that question was asked me was inBerlin, by Germans. What would you have had me reply to thoseGermans?"--a reply which, of course, meant this: In attempting to findthe solution of this question in terms of one party, you are attemptingthe impossible. The outcome will be war, and war would not settle it. Itwould all have to be begun over again. 

The Navy League catechism says: "Defence consists in being so strongthat it will be dangerous for your enemy to attack you. "[11] Mr. Churchill, however, goes farther than the Navy League, and says: "Theway to make war impossible is to make victory certain. "

The Navy League definition is at least possible of application topractical politics, because rough equality of the two parties would makeattack by either dangerous. Mr. Churchill's principle is impossible ofapplication to practical politics, because it could only be applied byone party, and would, in the terms of the Navy League principle, deprivethe other party of the right of defence. As a matter of simple fact, both the Navy League, by its demand for two ships to one, and Mr. Churchill, by his demand for certain victory, deny in this matterGermany's right to defend herself; and such denial is bound, on the partof a people animated by like motives to ourselves, to provoke achallenge. When the Navy League says, as it does, that a self-respectingnation should not depend upon the goodwill of foreigners for its safety, but upon its own strength, it recommends Germany to maintain her effortsto arrive at some sort of equality with ourselves. When Mr. Churchillgoes further and says that a nation should be so strong as to makevictory over its rivals certain, he knows that if Germany were to adopthis own doctrine its inevitable outcome would be war. 

The issue is plain: We get a better understanding of certain politicalfacts in Europe, or we have war. And the Bellicist at present isresolutely opposed to such political education. And it is for thatreason, not because he is asking for adequate armament, that some of thebest of this country look with the deepest misgiving upon his work, andwill continue to do so in increasing degree unless his policy bechanged. 

Now a word as to the peace Pacifist--the Pacifist sans phrases--asdistinct from the military Pacifist. It is not because I am in favour ofdefence that I have at times with some emphasis disassociated myselffrom certain features and methods of the peace movement, fornon-resistance is no necessary part of that movement, and, indeed, sofar as I know, it is no appreciable part. It is the methods not theobject or the ideals of the peace movement which I have ventured tocriticize, without, I hope, offence to men whom I respect in the veryhighest and sincerest degree. The methods of Pacifism have in the past, to some extent at least, implied a disposition to allow easy emotion totake the place of hard thinking, good intention to stand forintellectual justification; and it is as plain as anything well can bethat some of the best emotion of the world has been expended upon someof the very worst objects, and that in no field of humaneffort--medicine, commerce, engineering, legislation--has good intentionever been able to dispense with the necessity of knowing the how and thewhy. 

It is not that the somewhat question-begging and emotional terminologyof some Pacifists--the appeal to brotherly love and humanity--connotesthings which are in themselves poor or mean (as the average Militaristwould imply), but because so much of Pacifism in the past has failed toreconcile intellectually the claims of these things with what are thefundamental needs of men and to show their relation and practicalapplication to actual problems and conditions. 

[Footnote 8: As a matter of fact, of course, the work of these two menhas not been fruitless. As Lord Morley truly says: "They were routed onthe question of the Crimean War, but it was the rapid spread of theirprinciples which within the next twenty years made interventionimpossible in the Franco-Austrian War, in the American War, in theDanish War, in the Franco-German War, and above all, in the war betweenRussia and Turkey, which broke out only the other day. "]

[Footnote 9: Thus the Editor of the _Spectator_:--

"For ourselves, as far as the main economic proposition goes, hepreaches to the converted. . . . If nations were perfectly wise and heldperfectly sound economic theories, they would recognize that exchange isthe union of forces, and that it is very foolish to hate or be jealousof your co-operators. . . . Men are savage, bloodthirsty creatures . . . Andwhen their blood is up will fight for a word or a sign, or, as Mr. Angell would put it, for an illusion. "

Therefore, argues the _Spectator_, let the illusion continue--for thereis no other conclusion to be drawn from the argument. ]

[Footnote 10: Need it be said that this criticism does not imply thefaintest want of respect for Lord Roberts, his qualities and hisservices. He has ventured into the field of foreign politics andprophecy. A public man of great eminence, he has expressed an Englishview of German "intentions. " For the man in the street (I write in thatcapacity) to receive that expression in silence is to endorse it, tomake it national. And I have stated here the reasons which make such anattitude disastrous. We all greatly respect Lord Roberts, but, evenbefore that, must come respect for our country, the determination thatit shall be in the right and not in the wrong, which it certainly willbe if this easy dogmatism concerning the evil intentions of othernations becomes national. ]

[Footnote 11: The German Navy Law in its preamble might have filchedthis from the British Navy League catechism. ]

CHAPTER VII. 

"THEORIES" FALSE AND TRUE: THEIR ROLE IN EUROPEAN PROGRESS. 

The improvement of ideas the foundation of all improvement--Shootingstraight and thinking straight; the one as important as theother--Pacifism and the Millennium--How we got rid of wars ofreligion--A few ideas have changed the face of the world--The simpleideas the most important--The "theories" which have led to war--The workof the reformer to destroy old and false theories--The intellectualinterdependence of nations--Europe at unity in this matter--New ideascannot be confined to one people--No fear of ourselves or any nationbeing ahead of the rest. 

But what, it will be said, is the practical outcome? Admitting that weare, or that our fathers were, in part responsible for this war, that itis their false theories which have made it necessary, that like falsetheories on our part may make future wars inevitable--what shall we doto prevent that catastrophe?

Now while as an "abstract proposition" everyone will admit that the onething which distinguishes the civilized man from the savage is adifference of ideas, no one apparently believes that it is a dangerousand evil thing for the political ideas of savages to dominate most ofour countrymen or that so intangible a thing as "ideas" have anypractical importance at all. While we believe this, of course--to theextent to which we believe it--improvement is out of the question. Wehave to realize that civic faith, like religious faith, is ofimportance; that if English influence is to stand for the right and notthe wrong in human affairs, it is impossible for each one of usindividuals to be wrong; that if the great mass is animated by temper, blindness, ignorance, passion, small and mean prejudices, it is notpossible for "England" to stand for something quite different and forits influence to be ought but evil. To say that we are "for our countryright or wrong" does not get over the matter at all; rather is itequivalent to saying that we would as readily have it stand for evil asfor good. And we do not in the least seem to realize that for anEnglishman to go on talking wicked nonsense across the dinner table andmaking one of the little rivulets of bad temper and prejudice whichforms the mighty river drowning sane judgment is to do the England ofour dreams a service as ill (in reality far more mischievous) as thoughthe plans of fortresses were sold to Germany. We must all learn to shootstraight; apparently we need not learn to think straight. And yet ifEurope could do the second it could dispense with the first. "Goodfaith" has a score of connotations, and we believe apparently that goodpolitics can dispense with all of them and that "Patriotism" has naughtto do with any. 

Of course, to shoot straight is so much easier than to think straight, and I suppose at bottom the bellicist believes that the latter is ahopeless object since "man is not a thinking animal. " He deems, apparently, we must just leave it at that. Of course, if he does leaveit at that--if we persist in believing that it is no good discussingthese matters, trying to find out the truth about them, writing booksand building churches--our civilization is going to drift just preciselyas those other civilizations which have been guided by the same dreadfulfatalism have drifted--towards the Turkish goal. "Kismet. Man is a foolto babble of these things; what he may do is of no avail; all thingswill happen as they were pre-ordained. " And the English Turk--the manwho prefers to fight things out instead of thinking things out--takesthe same line. 

If he adopts the Turkish philosophy he must be content with the Turkishresult. But the Western world as a whole has refused to be content withthe Turkish result, and however tiresome it may be to know aboutthings, to bother with "theories" and principles, we have come torealise that we have to choose between one of two courses: either toaccept things as they are, not to worry about improvement or bettermentat all, fatalistically to let things slide or--to find out bit by bitwhere our errors have been and to correct those errors. This is a hardroad, but it is the road the Western world has chosen; and it is betterthan the other. 

And it has not accepted this road because it expects the milleniumto-morrow week. There is no millenium, and Pacifists do not expect it ortalk about it; the word is just one of those three-shies-a-pennybrickbats thrown at them by ignorance. You do not dismiss attempts tocorrect errors in medicine or surgery, or education, or tramcars, orcookery, by talking about the millenium; why should you throw that wordat attempts to correct the errors of international relationship?

Nothing has astonished me more than the fact that the "practical" manwho despises "theories" nearly always criticises Pacifism because it isnot an absolute dogma with all its thirty-nine articles water-tight. "You are a Pacifist, then suppose. . . , " and then follows generally somevery remote hypothesis of what would happen if all the Orient composedits differences and were to descend suddenly upon the Western world; orsome dogmatic (and very theoretical) proposition about theunchangeability of human nature, and the foolishness of expecting themillenium--an argument which would equally well have told against theunion of Scotland and England or would equally justify the politicalparties in a South American republic in continuing to settle theirdifferences by militarist methods instead of the Pacifist methods ofEngland. 

Human nature may be unchanging: it is no reason why we should fight afutile war with Germany over nothing at all; the yellow peril maythreaten; that is a very good reason why we should compose ourdifferences in Europe. Men always will quarrel, perhaps, over religiousquestions, bigotry and fanaticism always will exist--it did not preventour getting rid of the wars of religion, still less is it a reason forre-starting them. 

The men who made that immense advance--the achievement of religioustoleration--possible, were not completely right and had not awater-tight theory amongst them; they did not bring the millenium, butthey achieved an immense step. They _were_ pioneers of religiousfreedom, yet were themselves tyrants and oppressors; those who abolishedslavery _did_ a good work, though much of the world _was_ left inindustrial servitude; it _was_ a good thing to abolish judicial torture, though much of our penal system did yet remain barbaric; it _was_ a realadvance to recognise the errors upon which these things rested, althoughthat recognition did not immediately achieve a complete, logical, symmetrical and perfect change, because mankind does not advance thatway. And so with war. Pacifism does not even pretend to be a dogma: itis an attempt to correct in men's minds some of the errors and falsetheories out of which war grows. 

The reply to this is generally that the inaptitude of men for clearthinking and the difficulties of the issues involved will render anydecision save the sheer clash of physical force impossible; that thefield of foreign politics is such a tangle that the popular mind willalways fall back upon decision by force. 

As a matter of fact the outstanding principles which serve to improvehuman conduct, are quite simple and understandable, as soon as they havebeen shorn of the sophistries and illusions with which the punditsclothe them. The real work of the reformers is to hack away theseencumbering theories. The average European has not followed, and couldnot follow, the amazing and never-ending disputation on obscuretheological points round which raged the Reformation; but the one solidfact which did emerge from the whole was the general realization thatwhatever the truth might be in all this confusion, it was quiteevidently wicked and futile to attempt to compel conformity to any onesection of it by force; that in the interests of all force should bewithheld; because if such queries were settled by the accident ofpredominant force, it would prove, not which was right, but which wasstronger. So in such things as witchcraft. The learned and astute judgesof the 18th century, who sent so many thousands to their death forimpossible crimes, knew far more of the details of witchcraft than dowe, and would beat us hopelessly in an argument on the subject; but alltheir learning was of no avail, because they had a few simple facts, thepremises, crooked, and we have them straight; and all that we need toknow in this amazing tangle of learned nonsense, is that theprobabilities are against an old woman having caused a storm at sea anddrowned a Scottish King. And so with the French Revolution. What theEncyclopaedists and other pioneers of that movement really did for theEuropean peoples in that matter, was not to elaborate fantastic schemesof constitution making, but by their argumentation to achieve thedestruction of old political sophistries--Divine Rights of Kings andwhat not--and to enable one or two simple facts to emerge clearly andunmistakeably, as that the object of government is the good of thegoverned, and can find its justification in nothing else whatsoever. Itwas these simple truths which, spreading over the world--with manychecks and set-backs--have so profoundly modified the structure ofChristendom. 

Somewhere it is related of Montaigne that talking with academiccolleagues, he expressed a contemptuous disbelief in the whole elaboratetheory of witchcraft as it existed at that time. Scandalised, hiscolleagues took him into the University library, and showed himhundreds, thousands, of parchment volumes written in Latin by thelearned men of the subject. Had he read these volumes, that he talked sodisrespectfully of their contents? No, replied Montaigne, he had notread them, and he was not going to, because they were all wrong, and hewas right. And Montaigne spoke with this dogmatism because he realisedthat he saw clearly that which they did not--the crookedness andunsoundness of just those simple fundamental assumptions on which thewhole fantastic structure was based. 

And so with all the sophistries and illusions by which the war system isstill defended. If the public as a whole had to follow all theintricacies of those marvellous diplomatic combinations, the maze of ourforeign politics, to understand abstruse points of finance andeconomics, in order to have just and sound ideas as to the realcharacter of international relationship, why then public opinion wouldgo on being as ignorant and mistaken as it had been hitherto. But soundopinion and instincts in that field depend upon nothing of the sort, butupon the emergence of a few quite simple facts, which are indisputableand self-evident, which stare us in the face, and which absolutelydisprove all the elaborate theories of the Bellicist statesmen. 

For instance, if conquest and extension of territory is the main road ofmoral and material progress, the fundamental need which sets up allthese rivalries and collisions, then it is the populations of the GreatStates which should be the most enviable; the position of the Russianshould be more desirable than that of the Hollander; it is not. TheAustrian should be better off than the Switzer; he is not. If a nation'swealth is really subject to military confiscation, and needs the defenceof military power, then the wealth of those small states should beinsecure indeed--and Belgian national stocks stand 20 points higher thanthe German. If nations are rival units, then we should benefit by thedisappearance of our rivals--and if they disappeared, something like athird of our population would starve to death. If the growth andprosperity of rival nations threatens us, then we should be in fargreater danger of America to-day than we were some 50 years ago, whenthe growth of that power disturbed the sleep of our statesmen (and when, incidentally, we were just as much afraid of the growth of that power aswe are now afraid of the growth of Germany). If the growing power ofRussia compelled us to fight a great war in alliance with the Turk tocheck her "advance on India, " why are we now co-operating with Russia tobuild railroads to India?

It is such quite simple questions as these, and the quite plain factswhich underlie them which will lead to sounder conceptions in thismatter on the part of the peoples. 

It is not we who are the "theorists, " if by "theorists" is meant theconstructors of elaborate and deceptive theorems in this matter. It isour opponents, the military mystics, who persistently shut their eyes tothe great outstanding facts of history and of our time. And thesefantastic theories are generally justified by most esoteric doctrine, not by the appeal to the facts which stare you in the face. I oncereplied to a critic thus:--

 In examining my critic's balance sheet I remarked that were his figures as complete as they were absurdly incomplete and misleading, I should still have been unimpressed. We all know that very marvellous results are possible with figures; but one can generally find some simple fact which puts them to the supreme test without undue mathematics. I do not know whether it has ever happened to my critic, as it has happened to me, while watching the gambling in the casino of a Continental watering resort, to have a financial genius present weird columns of figures, which demonstrate conclusively, irrefragably, that by this system which they embody one can break the bank and win a million. I have never examined these figures, and never shall, for this reason: the genius in question is prepared to sell his wonderful secret for twenty francs. Now, in the face of that fact I am not interested in his figures. If they were worth examination they would not be for sale. 

 And so in this matter there are certain test facts which upset the adroitest statistical legerdemain. Though, really, the fallacy which regards an addition of territory as an addition of wealth to the "owning" nation is a very much simpler matter than the fallacies lying behind gambling systems, which are bound up with the laws of chance and the law of averages and much else that philosophers will quarrel about till the end of time. It requires an exceptional mathematical brain really to refute those fallacies, whereas the one we are dealing with is due simply to the difficulty experienced by most of us in carrying in our heads two facts at the same time. It is so much easier to seize on one fact and forget the other. Thus we realize that when Germany has conquered Alsace-Lorraine she has "captured" a province worth, "cash value, " in my critic's phrase, sixty-six millions sterling. What we overlook is that Germany has also captured the people who own the property and who continue to own it. We have multiplied by _x_, it is true, but we have overlooked the fact that we have had to divide by _x_, and that the resultant is consequently, so far as the individual is concerned, exactly what it was before. My critic remembered the multiplication all right, but he forgot the division. 

Just think of all the theories, the impossible theories for which the"practical" man has dragged the nations into war: the Balance of Power, for instance. Fifteen or twenty years ago it was the ineradicable beliefof fifty or sixty million Americans, good, honest, sincere, and astutefolk, that it was their bounden duty, their manifest interest, tofight--and in the words of one of their Senators, annihilate--GreatBritain, in the interests of the Monroe Doctrine (which is a form of the"Balance of Power"). I do not think any one knew what the MonroeDoctrine meant, or could coherently defend it. An American Ambassadorhad an after-dinner story at the time. 

"What is this I hear, Jones, that you do not believe in the MonroeDoctrine?"

"It is a wicked lie. I have said no such thing. I do believe in theMonroe Doctrine. I would lay down my life for it; I would die for it. What I did say was that I didn't know what it meant. "

And it was this vague theory which very nearly drove America into a warthat would have been disastrous to the progress of Anglo-Saxoncivilization. 

This was at the time of the Venezuelan crisis: the United States, whichfor nearly one hundred years had lived in perfect peace with a Britishpower touching her frontier along three thousand miles, laid it down asa doctrine that her existence was imperilled if Great Britain shouldextend by so much as a mile a vague frontier running through a SouthAmerican swamp thousands of miles away. And for that cause these decentand honourable people were prepared to take all the risks that would beinvolved to Anglo-Saxon civilisation by a war between England andAmerica. The present writer happened at that time to be living inAmerica, and concerned with certain political work. Night after night heheard these fulminations against Great Britain; politicians, Congressmen, Senators, Governors, Ministers, Preachers, clamouring forwar, for a theory as vague and as little practical as one could wish. 

And we, of course, have had our like obsessions without number: "theindependence integrity of the Turkish dominion in Europe" is one. Justthink of it! Take in the full sound of the phrase: "the independenceintegrity of the Turkish dominion in Europe!"

What, of course, makes these fantastic political doctrines possible, what leads men to subscribe to them, are a few false general conceptionsto which they hold tenaciously--as all fundamental conceptions are held, and ought to be. The general conceptions in question are precisely theones I have indicated: that nations are rival and struggling units, thatmilitary force is consequently the determining factor of their relativeadvantage; that enlargement of political frontiers is the supreme need, and so on. 

And the revision of these fundamental conceptions will, of course, bethe general work of Christendom, and given the conditions which nowobtain, the development will go on _pari passu_ in all nations or notall. It will not be the work of "nations" at all; it will be the work ofindividual men. 

States do not think. It is the men who form the states who think, andthe number of those men who will act as pioneers in a better policymust, of course, at first be small: a group here and a group there, thebest men of all countries--England, France, Germany, America--influencing by their ideas finally the great mass. To say, asso many do in this matter: "Let other nations do it first" is, ofcourse, to condemn us all to impotence--for the other nations use thesame language. To ask that one group of forty or seventy or ninetymillion people shall by some sort of magic all find their way to a sanerdoctrine before such doctrine has affected other groups is to talk thelanguage of childishness. Things do not happen in that in human affairs. It is not in that way that opinion grows. It did not grow in that wayin any one of the steps that I have mentioned--in the abolition ofreligious persecution, or slavery, or judicial torture. Unless theindividual man sees his responsibility for determining what is right andknowing how and why it is right, there will be no progress; there cannoteven be a beginning. 

We are to an even greater degree an integral part of European Society, and a factor of European Policy, than we were at the time of the CrimeanWar, when we mainly determined it; and our theories and discussions willact and re-act upon that policy just as did any considerable body ofthought, whether French political thought of the eighteenth century, orGerman religious thought of the sixteenth century, even at a time whenthe means of producing that reaction, the book, literature, thenewspaper, rapid communication, were so immeasurably more primitive andrudimentary than ours. What we think and say and do affects not merelyourselves, but that whole body politic of Christendom of which we are anintegral part. 

It is a curious fact that the moral and intellectual interdependence ofStates preceded by a long period, that material and economicindependence which I have tried recently to make clear. Nothing is morecontrary to fact than to suppose that any considerable movement ofopinion in Europe can be limited to the frontiers of one nation. Even ata time when it took half a generation for a thought to travel from onecapital to another, a student or thinker in some obscure Italian, Swissor German village was able to modify policy, to change the face ofEurope and of mankind. Coming nearer to our time, it was the work of theencyclopaedists and earlier political questioners which made the FrenchRevolution; and the effect of that Revolution was not confined toFrance. The ideas which animated it re-acted directly upon our Empire, upon the American Colonies, upon the Spanish Colonies, upon Italy, andthe formation of United Italy, upon Germany--the world over. Thesemiracles, almost too vast and great to conceive, were the outcome ofthat intangible thing, an idea, an aspiration, an ideal. And if theycould accomplish so much in that day when the popular press and cheapliterature and improved communication did not exist, how is it possibleto suppose that any great ferment of opinion can be limited to one groupin our day, when we have a condition of things in which the declarationof an English Cabinet Minister to-night is read to-morrow morning byevery reading German?

It should be to our everlasting glory that our political thought in thepast, some of our political institutions, parliamentary government, andwhat not, have had an enormous influence in the world. We have someground for hoping that another form of political institution which wehave initiated, a relationship of distinct political groups into whichforce does not enter, will lead the way to a better condition of thingsin Christendom. We have demonstrated that five independent nations, thenations of the British Empire, can settle their differences as betweenone another without the use of force. We have definitely decided thatwhatever the attitude Australia, Canada, and South Africa may adopt tous we shall not use force to change it. What is possible with five ispossible with fifteen nations. Just as we have given to the worldroughly our conception of Parliamentary Government, so it is to be hopedmay we give to the world our conception of the true relationship ofnations. 

The great steps of the past--religious freedom, the abolition of tortureand of slavery, the rights of the mass, self-government--every real stepwhich man has made has been made because men "theorised, " because aGalileo, or a Luther, or a Calvin, or a Voltaire, Rousseau, Bentham, Spencer, Darwin, wrote and put notes of interrogation. Had they not doneso none of those things could have been accomplished. The greatest workof the renaissance was the elimination of physical force in the struggleof religious groups, in religious struggles generally; the greatest workof our generation will be elimination of physical force from thestruggle of the political groups and from political struggles generally. But it will be done in exactly the same way: by a common improvement ofopinion. And because we possess immeasurably better instruments for thedissemination of ideas, we should be able to achieve the PoliticalReformation of Europe much more rapidly and effectively than ourpredecessors achieved the great intellectual Reformation of their time. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

WHAT MUST WE _DO_?

We must have the right political faith--Then we must give effect toit--Good intention not enough--The organization of the great forces ofmodern life--Our indifference as to the foundations of the evil--Theonly hope. 

What then must we _do_? Well the first and obvious thing is for each todo his civic duty, for each to determine that he at least shall notreject, with that silly temper which nearly always meets most new pointsof view, principles which do at least seek to explain things, and dopoint to the possibility of a better way. 

The first thing is to make our own policy right--and that is the work ofeach one of us; to correct the temper which made us, for instance, toour shame, the partners of the Turk in his work of oppression. 

And we must realise that mere good intent does not suffice; thatunderstanding, by which alone we can make headway, is not arrived at bya pleasant emotion like that produced by a Beethoven Sonata; that we payfor our progress in a little harder money than that, the money of hardwork, in which must be included hard thinking. And having got that far, we must realise that sound ideas do not spread themselves. They arespread by men. It is one of the astonishing things in the whole problemof the breaking of war, that while men realise that if women are to havevotes, or men to be made temperate, or the White Slave Traffic to bestopped, or for that matter, if battleships are to be built, orconscription to be introduced, or soap or pills to be sold, effort, organisation, time, money, must be put into these things. But thegreatest revolution that the world has known since mankind acquired theright to freedom of opinion, will apparently get itself accomplishedwithout any of these things; or that at least the Government can quiteeasily attend to it by asking other Governments to attend a Conference. We must realise that a change of opinion, the recognition of a new fact, or of facts heretofore not realised, is a slow and laborious work, evenin the relatively simple things which I have mentioned, and that youcannot make savages into civilised men by collecting them round a table. For the Powers of Europe, so far as their national policies areconcerned, are still uncivilised individuals. And their Conferences arebound to fail, when each unit has the falsest conception concerning thematters under discussion. Governments are the embodied expression ofgeneral public opinion--and not the best public opinion at that; anduntil opinion is modified, the embodiment of it will no more be capableof the necessary common action, than would Red Indians be capable offorming an efficient Court of Law, while knowing nothing of law orjurisprudence, or worse still, having utterly false notions of theprinciples upon which human society is based. 

And the occasional conferences of private men still hazy as to theseprinciples are bound to be as ineffective. If the mere meeting andcontact of people cleared up misunderstandings, we should not haveSuffragettes and Anti-Suffragettes, or Mr. Lloyd George at grips withthe doctors. 

These occasional conferences, whether official, like those of the Hague, or non-official like those which occasionally meet in London or inBerlin, will not be of great avail in this matter unless a better publicopinion renders them effective. They are of some use and no one woulddesire to see them dropped, but they will not of themselves stem or turnthe drift of opinion. What is needed is a permanent organisation ofpropaganda, framed, not for the purpose of putting some cut and driedscheme into immediate operation, but with the purpose of clarifyingEuropean public opinion, making the great mass see a few simple factsstraight, instead of crooked, and founded in the hope that ten orfifteen years of hard, steady, persistent work, will create in that time(by virtue of the superiority of the instruments, the Press and the restof it which we possess) a revolution of opinion as great as thatproduced at the time of the Reformation, in a period which probably wasnot more than the lifetime of an ordinary man. 

The organization for such permanent work has hardly begun. The PeaceSocieties have done, and are doing, a real service, but it is evident, for the reasons already indicated, that if the great mass are to beaffected, instruments of far wider sweep must be used. Our greatcommercial and financial interests, our educational and academicinstitutions, our industrial organizations, the political bodies, mustall be reached. An effort along the right lines has been made thanks tothe generosity of a more than ordinarily enlightened Conservativecapitalist. But the work should be taken up at a hundred points. Someable financier should do for the organization of Banking--which hasreally become the Industry of Finance and Credit--the same sort ofservice that Sir Charles Macara has done for the cotton industry of theworld. The international action and co-ordination of Trades Unions theworld over should be made practical and not, in this matter, be allowedto remain a merely platonic aspiration. 

The greater European Universities should possess endowed Chairs of theScience of International Statecraft. While we have Chairs to investigatethe nature of the relationship of insects, we have none to investigatethe nature of the relationship of man in his political grouping. And theoccupants of these Chairs might change places--that of Berlin coming toLondon or Oxford, and that of Oxford going to Berlin. 

The English Navy League and the German Navy League alike tell us thatthe object of their endeavours is to create an instrument of peace. Inthat case their efforts should not be confined to increasing the size ofthe respective arms, but should also be directed to determining how andwhy and when, and under what conditions, and for what purpose that armshould be used. And that can only be done effectually if the two bodieslearn something of the aims and objects of the other. The need for aNavy, and the size of the Navy, depends upon policy, either our ownpolicy, or the policy of the prospective aggressor; and to knowsomething of that, and its adjustment, is surely an integral part ofnational defence. If both these Navy Leagues, in the fifteen or sixteenyears during which they have been in existence, had possessed anintelligence committee, each conferring with the other, and spendingeven a fraction of the money and energy upon disentangling policy thathas been spent upon the sheer bull-dog piling up of armaments, in allhuman possibility, the situation which now confronts us would not exist. 

Then each political party of the respective Parliaments might have itsaccredited delegates in the Lobbies of the other: the Social Democratsmight have their permanent delegates in London, in the Lobbies of theHouse of Commons; the Labour Party might have their Permanent Delegatesin the Lobbies of the Reichstag; and when any Anglo-German questionarose, those delegates could speak through the mouth of the Members ofthe Party to which they were accredited, to the Parliament of the othernation. The Capitalistic parties could have a like bi-nationalorganisation. 

"These are wild and foolish suggestions"--that is possible. They havenever, however, been discussed with a view to the objects in question. All efforts in this direction have been concentrated upon an attempt torealize mechanically, by some short and royal road, a result far toogreat and beneficent to be achieved so cheaply. 

Before our Conferences, official or unofficial, can have much success, the parties to them must divest their minds of certain illusions whichat present dominate them. Until that is done, you might as reasonablyexpect two cannibals to arrive at a workable scheme for consuming oneanother. The elementary conceptions, the foundations of the thing areunworkable. Our statecraft is still founded on a sort of politicalcannibalism, upon the idea that nations progress by conquering, ordominating one another. So long as that is our conception of therelationship of human groups we shall always stand in danger ofcollision, and our schemes of association and co-operation will alwaysbreak down. 

APPENDIX. 

Many of the points touched upon in the last two chapters are brought outclearly in a recent letter addressed to the Press by my friend andcolleague Mr. A. W. Haycock. In this letter to the Press he says:--

 If you will examine systematically, as I have done, the comments which have appeared in the Liberal Press, either in the form of leading articles, or in letters from readers, concerning Lord Roberts' speech, you will find that though it is variously described as "diabolical, " "pernicious, " "wicked, " "inflammatory" and "criminal, " the real fundamental assumptions on which the whole speech is based, and which, if correct, justify it, are by implication admitted; at any rate, in not one single case that I can discover are they seriously challenged. 

 Now, when you consider this, it is the most serious fact of the whole incident--far more disquieting in reality than the fact of the speech itself, especially when we remember that Lord Roberts did but adopt and adapt the arguments already used with more sensationalism and less courtesy by Mr. Winston Churchill himself. 

 The protests against Lord Roberts' speech take the form of denying the intention of Germany to attach this country. But how can his critics be any more aware of the intentions of Germany--65 millions of people acted upon by all sorts of complex political and social forces--than is Lord Roberts? Do we know the intention of England with reference to Woman's Suffrage or Home Rule or Tariff Reform? How, therefore, can we know the intentions of "Germany"?

 Lord Roberts, with courtesy, in form at least and with the warmest tribute to the "noble and imaginative patriotism" of German policy, assumed that that policy would follow the same general impulse that our own has done in the past, and would necessarily follow it since the relation between military power and national greatness and prosperity was to-day what it always has been. In effect, Lord Roberts' case amounts to this:--

 "We have built up our Empire and our trade by virtue of the military power of our state; we exist as a nation, sail the seas, and carry on our trade, by virtue of our predominant strength; as that strength fails we shall do all these things merely on the sufferance of stronger nations, who, when pushed by the needs of an expanding population to do so, will deprive us of the capacity for carrying on those vital functions of life, and transfer the means of so doing to themselves to their very great advantage; we have achieved such transfer to ourselves in the past by force and must expect other nations to try and do the same thing unless we are able to prevent them. It is the inevitable struggles of life to be fought out either by war or armaments. "

 These are not Lord Roberts' words, but the proposition is the clear underlying assumption of his speech. And his critics do not seriously challenge it. Mr. Churchill by implication warmly supports it. At Glasgow he said: "The whole fortune of our race and Empire, the whole treasure accumulated during so many centuries of sacrifice and achievement would perish and be swept utterly away, if our naval supremacy were to be impaired. "

 Now why should there be any danger of Germany bringing about this catastrophe unless she could profit enormously by so doing? But that implies that a nation does expand by military force, does achieve the best for its people by that means; it does mean that if you are not stronger than your rival, you carry on your trade "on sufferance" and at the appointed hour will have it taken from you by him. And if that assumption--plainly indicated as it is by a Liberal Minister--is right, who can say that Lord Roberts' conclusion is not justified?

 Now as to the means of preventing the war. Lord Roberts' formula is:--

 "Such a battle front by sea and land that no power or probable combination of powers shall dare to attack us without the certainty of disaster. "

 This, of course, is taken straight from Mr. Churchill, who, at Dundee, told us that "the way to make war impossible is to be so strong as to make victory certain. "

 We have all apparently, Liberals and Conservatives alike, accepted this "axiom" as self-evident. 

 Well, since it is so obvious as all that we may expect the Germans to adopt it. At present they are guided by a much more modest principle (enunciated in the preamble of the German Navy Law); namely, to be sufficiently strong to make it _dangerous_ for your enemy to attack. They must now, according to our "axiom, " be so strong as to make our defeat certain. 

 I am quite sure that the big armament people in Germany are very grateful for the advice which Mr. Churchill and Lord Roberts thus give to the nations of the world, and we may expect to see German armaments so increased as to accord with the new principle. 

 And Lord Roberts is courageous enough to abide by the conclusion which flows from the fundamental assumption of Liberals and Conservatives alike, _i. E. _, that trade and the means of livelihood can be transferred by force. We have transferred it in the past. "It is excellent policy; it is, or should be, the policy of every nation prepared to play a great part in history. " Such are Lord Roberts' actual words. At least, they don't burke the issue. 

 The Germans will doubtless note the combination: be so strong as to make victory certain, and strike when you have made it certain, and they will then, in the light of this advice, be able to put the right interpretation upon our endeavours to create a great conscript force and our arrangements, which have been going on for some years, to throw an expeditionary force on to the continent. 

 The outlook is not very pleasant, is it? And yet if you accept the "axiom" that our Empire and our trade is dependent upon force and can be advantageously attacked by a stronger power there is no escape from the inevitable struggle--for the other "axiom" that safety can be secured merely by being enormously stronger than your rival is, as soon as it is tested by applying it to the two parties to the conflict--and, of course, one has as much right to apply it as the other--seen to be simply dangerous and muddle-headed rubbish. Include the two parties in your "axiom" (as you must) and it becomes impossible of application. 

 Now the whole problem sifts finally down to this one question: Is the assumption made by Lord Roberts and implied by Mr. Churchill concerning the relation of military force to trade and national life well founded? If it is, conflict is inevitable. It is no good crying "panic. " If there is this enormous temptation pushing to our national ruin, we ought to be in a panic. And if it is not true? Even in that case conflict will equally be inevitable unless we realise its falseness, for a universal false opinion concerning a fact will have the same result in conduct as though the false belief were true. 

 And my point is that those concerned to prevent this conflict seem but mildly interested in examining the foundations of the false beliefs that make conflict inevitable. Part of the reluctance to study the subject seems to arise from the fear that if we deny the nonsensical idea that the British Empire would instantaneously fall to pieces were the Germans to dominate the North Sea for 24 hours we should weaken the impulse to defence. That is probably an utterly false idea, but suppose it is true, is the risk of less ardour in defence as great as the risk which comes of having a nation of Roberts and Churchills on both sides of the frontier?

 If that happens war becomes not a risk but a certainty. 

 And it is danger of happening. I speak from the standpoint of a somewhat special experience. During the last 18 months I have addressed not scores but many hundreds of meetings on the subject of the very proposition on which Lord Roberts' speech is based and which I have indicated at the beginning of this letter; I have answered not hundreds but thousands of questions arising out of it. And I think that gives me a somewhat special understanding of the mind of the man in the street. The reason he is subject to panic, and "sees red" and will often accept blindly counsels like those of Lord Roberts, is that he holds as axioms these primary assumptions to which I have referred, namely, that he carries on his daily life by virtue of military force, and that the means of carrying it on will be taken from him by the first stronger power that rises in the world, and that that power will be pushed to do it by the advantage of such seizure. And these axioms he never finds challenged even by his Liberal guides. 

 The issue for those who really desire a better condition is clear. So long as by their silence, or by their indifference to the discussion of the fundamental facts of this problem they create the impression that Mr. Churchill's axioms are unchallengeable, the panic-mongers will have it all their own way, and our action will be a stimulus to similar action in Germany, and that action will again re-act on ours, and so on _ad infinitum. _

 Why is not some concerted effort made to create in both countries the necessary public opinion, by encouraging the study and discussion of the elements of the case, in some such way, for instance, as that adopted by Mr. Norman Angell in his book?

 One organization due to private munificence has been formed and is doing, within limits, an extraordinarily useful work, but we can only hope to affect policy by a much more general interest--the interest of those of leisure and influence. And that does not seem to be forthcoming. 

 My own work, which has been based quite frankly on Mr. Angell's book, has convinced me that it embodies just the formula most readily understanded of the people. It constitutes a constructive doctrine of International Policy--the only statement I know so definitely applicable to modern conditions. 

 But the old illusions are so entrenched that if any impression is to be made on public opinion generally, effort must be persistent, permanent, and widespread. Mere isolated conferences, disconnected from work of a permanent character, are altogether inadequate for the forces that have to be met. 

 What is needed is a permanent and widespread organization embracing Trades Unions, Churches and affiliated bodies, Schools and Universities, basing its work on some definite doctrine of International Policy which can supplant the present conceptions of struggle and chaos. 

 I speak, at least, from the standpoint of experience; in the last resort the hostility, fear and suspicion which from time to time gains currency among the great mass of the people, is due to those elementary misconceptions as to the relation of prosperity, the opportunities of life, to military power. So long as these misconceptions are dominant, nothing is easier than to precipitate panic and bad feeling, and unless we can modify them, we shall in all human probability drift into conflict; and this incident of Lord Roberts' speech and the comment which it has provoked, show that for some not very well defined reason, Liberals, quite as much as Conservatives, by implication, accept the axioms upon which it is based, and give but little evidence that they are seriously bestirring themselves to improve that political education upon which according to their creed, progress can alone be made. 

 Yours very faithfully, A. W. HAYCOCK.