unintelligent; but the money-making life has of late become more and
more frankly predatory and anti-social. The great trusts, and the arts
of the company-promoter, can hardly be said to perform any social
service; they exist to levy tribute on the public. We may say therefore
that, though war between the leading nations of the world had become a
strange idea and a far-off memory, we had by no means risen above the
principles and practices of war in our internal life. The immunity from
militarism hitherto enjoyed by Britain and the United States was a
fortunate accident, not a proof of higher morality. Our fleet protected
both ourselves and the Americans from the necessity of maintaining a
conscript army; but we had drifted into a condition in which civil war
seemed not to be far off, and in which violence and lawlessness were
increasing. By a strange inconsistency, many who on moral or religious
grounds condemned wars between nations were found to condone or justify
acts of war against the State, organised by discontented factions of its
citizens. Revolutionary strikes, prepared long in advance by forced
levies of money which were candidly called war-funds, had as their
avowed aim the paralysis of the industries of the country and the
reduction of the population to distress by withholding the necessaries
of life. These acts of civil war, and disgraceful outbreaks of criminal
anarchism, were justified by persons who professed a conscientious
objection to defending their homes and families against a foreign
invader. This state of mind proves how little essential connexion there
is between democracy and peace. It discloses a confusion of ideas even
greater than the antithesis between industrialism and militarism in the
writings of Herbert Spencer. On this latter fallacy it is enough to
quote the words of Admiral Mahan; 'As far as the advocacy of peace rests
on material motives like economy and prosperity, it is the service of
Mammon; and the bottom of the platform will drop out when Mammon thinks
that war will pay better.' This is notoriously what has happened in
Germany. A short war, with huge indemnities, seemed to German financiers
a promising speculation. If such were the rotten foundations upon which
anti-militarism in this country was based, the Churches cannot be blamed
for giving the peace-movement a rather lukewarm support.
In Germany there was no internal anarchy, such as prevailed in England;
there was also no illusion about the imminence of war. Our politicians
ought to have read the signs of the times better; but they were too
intent on feeling the pulse of the electorate at home to attend to
disturbing and unwelcome symptoms abroad. The causes of the war are not
difficult to determine. War has long been a national industry of
Germany, and the idea of it evoked no moral repugnance. The military
virtues were extolled; the military profession enjoyed an astonishing
social prestige; the learned class proclaimed the biological necessity
of international conflicts. The army believed itself to be invincible,
and it had begun to control the policy of the country; where these two
conditions exist, no diplomacy can avert war. Professionalism always has
a selfish and anti-social element in its code, and the professionalism
of the soldier is always prone to override the rights and disdain the
scruples of civilians.
The dominant classes in Germany also found that their power was being
undermined by the growing industrialisation. The steady increase in the
social-democratic vote was a portent not to be disregarded. A letter
from a German officer to a friend in Roumania, which found its way into
the newspapers, tells a great deal of truth in a few words. 'You cannot
conceive,' he wrote, 'what difficulty we had in persuading our Emperor
that it was necessary to let loose this war. But it has been done; and I
hope that for a long time to come we shall hear no more in Germany of
pacifism, internationalism, democracy, and similar pestilent doctrines.'
Sir Charles Walston, in his thoughtful book 'Aristodemocracy,' lays
great stress on this. 'It appeared to me,' he says, 'ever since 1905,
that in the immediate future it was all a question as to whether the
labour-men, the practical pacifists, would arrive at the realisation of
their power before the militarists had forced a war upon us, or whether
the military powers would anticipate this result, and within the next
few years force a war upon the world.' To the influence of the military
was added the cupidity of the commercial and financial class. The law of
diminishing returns was driving capital further and further afield; and
large profits, it was hoped, might be made by the exploitation of
backward countries and the reduction of their inhabitants to serfdom. To
a predatory and parasitic class war seems only a logical extension of
the principles upon which it habitually acts; and for this reason
privileged orders seldom feel much moral compunction about a war-policy.
Lastly, among the causes of the war must be reckoned one which has
received far too little attention from social and political
philosophers--the tenacious and half-unconscious memories of a race.
Injustice comes home to roost, sometimes after an astonishingly long
interval. The disaffection of Catholic Ireland would be quite
unintelligible without the massacres of the sixteenth century and the
unjust trade-legislation of the seventeenth and eighteenth. The
bitterness of the working class in England has its roots in the earlier
period of the industrial revolution (about 1760-1832), when the
labourer, with his wife and children, was treated as the 'cannon-fodder'
of industry. Similarly, the seeds of Prussian brutality and
aggressiveness were sown at Jena and in the raiding of Prussia for
recruits before the Moscow expedition. If such were the causes of the
great world-war, how little can be hoped from courts of international
arbitration!
These considerations have, perhaps, made it clear that the main causes
of international conflicts are what the Epistle of St. James declares
them to be--'the lusts that war in your members,' the pugnacious and
acquisitive instincts which pervade our social life in times of peace,
and not least in those nations which pride themselves on having advanced
beyond the militant stage. There are some who accept this state of
things as natural and necessary, and who blame Christianity for carrying
on a futile campaign against human nature. This is a very different
indictment from that which condemns Christianity for tolerating a
preventible evil; and it is, in our opinion, even less justified. The
argument that, because war has always existed, it must always continue
to exist, is justly ridiculed by Mr. Norman Angell. 'It is commonly
asserted that old habits of thought can never be shaken; that, as men
have been, so they will be. That, of course, is why we now eat our
enemies, enslave their children, examine witnesses with the thumbscrew,
and burn those who do not attend the same church.'
The long history of war as a racial habit explains why a ruinous and
insane anachronism shows such tenacity; for the conditions which
established the habit among primitive tribes demonstrably no longer
exist. It is probably true, as William James says, that 'militarist
writers without exception regard war as a biological or sociological
necessity'; lawyers might say the same about litigation. But laws of
nature 'are not efficient causes, and it is open to any one to prove
that they are not laws, if he can break them with impunity. It would be
the height of pessimistic fatalism to hold that men must always go on
doing that which they hate, and which brings them to misery and ruin.
Man is not bound for ever by habits contracted during his racial nonage;
his moral, rational, and spiritual instincts are as natural as his
physical appetites; and against them, as St. Paul says, 'there is no
law,' Huxley's Romanes Lecture gave an unfortunate support to the
mischievous notion that the 'cosmic process' is the enemy of morality.
The truth seems to be that Nature presents to us not a categorical
imperative, but a choice. Do we prefer to pay our way in the world, or
to be parasites? War, with very few exceptions, is a mode of parasitism.
Its object is to exploit the labour of other nations, to make them pay
tribute, or to plunder them openly, as the Germans have plundered the
cities of Belgium. War is a parasitic industry; and Christianity forbids
parasitism. Nature has her own penalties for the lower animals which
make this choice, and they strike with equal severity 'the peoples that
delight in war,' The bellicose nations have nearly all perished.
There remains, however, a class of wars which escapes this
condemnation; and about them difficult moral problems may be raised. We
can hardly deny to a growing and civilised nation the right to expand at
the expense of barbarous hunters and nomads. No one would suggest that
the Americans ought to give back their country to the Indians, or that
Australia should be abandoned to the aborigines. But were the
Anglo-Saxons justified in expropriating the Britons, and the Spaniards
the Aztecs? There is room for differences of opinion in these cases; and
a very serious problem may arise in the future, as to whether the
European races are morally justified in using armed force to restrict
Asiatic competition. As a general principle, we must condemn the
expropriation of any nation which is in effective occupation of the
soil. The popular estimate of superior and inferior races is thoroughly
unchristian and unscientific, as is the prejudice against a dark skin.
The opinion that a nation which is increasing in population has a right
to expel the inhabitants of another country to make room for its own
emigrants is surely untenable. If it justifies war at all, it sanctions
a war of extermination, which would attain its objects most completely
by massacring girls and young women. The pressure of population is a
real cause of war; but the moral is, not that war is right, but that a
nation must cut its coat according to its cloth, and limit its numbers.
Unless we justify wars of extermination, war has no biological sanction,
and Christianity is not flying in the face of nature by condemning it.
On the contrary, by condemning every form of parasitism, it indicates
the true path of evolution. It is equally right in rejecting the purely
economic valuation of human goods. The 'economic man' does not exist in
nature; he is a fictitious creature who is responsible for a great deal
of social injustice. Some modern economists, like Mr. Hobson, would
substitute for the old monetary standards of production and distribution
an attempt to estimate the 'human costs' of labour. Creative work
involving ingenuity and artistic qualities is not 'costly' at all,
unless the hours of labour, or the nervous strain, exceed the powers of
the worker. More monotonous work is not costly to the worker if the
day's labour is fairly short, or if some variety can be introduced. The
human cost is greatly increased if the worker thinks that his labour is
useless, or that it will only benefit those who do not deserve the
enjoyment of its fruits. Work which only produces frivolous luxuries is
and ought to be unwelcome to the producer, even if he is well paid. It
must also be emphasised that worry and anxiety take the heart out of a
man more than anything else. Security of employment greatly reduces the
'human cost' of labour. These considerations are comparatively new in
political economy. They change it from a highly abstract science into a
study of the conditions of human welfare as affected by social
organisation. The change is a victory for the ideas of Buskin and
Morris, though not necessarily for the practical remedies for social
maladjustments which they propounded. It brings political economy into
close relations with ethics and religion, and should induce economists
to consider carefully the contribution which Christianity makes to the
solution of the whole problem. For Christianity has its remedy to
propose, and it is a solution of the problem of war, not less than of
industrial evils.
Christianity gives the world a new and characteristic standard of
values. It diminishes greatly the values which can accrue from
competition, and enhances immeasurably the non-competitive values. 'A
man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he
possesseth.' 'Is not the life more than meat, and the body than
raiment?' 'The Kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness
and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.' Passages like these are found in
every part of the New Testament. This Christian idealism has a direct
bearing on the doctrine of 'human costs.' Work is irksome, not only when
it is excessive or ill-paid, but when the worker is lazy, selfish,
envious or discontented. There is one thing which can make almost any
work welcome. If it is done from love or unselfish affection, the human
cost is almost _nil_, because it is not counted or consciously felt.
This is no exaggeration when it is applied to the devoted labour of the
mother and the nurse, or to that of the evangelist conscious of a divine
vocation. But in all useful work the keen desire to render social
service, or to do God's will, diminishes to an incalculable extent the
'human cost' of labour. This principle introduces a deep cleavage
between the Christian remedy and that of political socialism, which
fosters discontent and indignation as a lever for social amelioration.
Men are made unhappy in order that they may be urged to claim a larger
share of the world's wealth. Christianity considers that, measured by
human costs, the remedy is worse than the disease. The adoption of a
truer standard of value would tear up the lust of accumulation by the
roots, and would thus effect a real cure. It would also stop the
grudging and deliberately bad work which at present seriously diminishes
the national wealth.
The Christian cure is the only real cure. It is the fashion to assume
that militarism and cupidity are vices of the privileged classes, and
that democracies may be trusted neither to plunder the minority at home
nor to seek foreign adventures by unjust wars. There is not the
slightest reason to accept either of these views. Political power is
always abused; an unrepresented class is always plundered. Nor are
democracies pacific, except by accident. At present they do not wish to
see the capital which they regard as their prospective prey dissipated
in war; and for this reason their influence in our time will probably be
on the side of peace. But, as soon as the competition of cheap Asiatic
labour becomes acute, we may expect to see the democracies bellicose and
the employing class pacific. This is not guess-work; we already see how
the democracies of California and Australia behave towards immigrants
from Asia. Readers of Anatole France will remember his description of
the economic wars decreed by the Senate of the great republic, at the
end of 'L'Île des Pingouins.' It would, indeed, be difficult to prove
that the expansion of the United States has differed much, in methods
and morals, from that of the European monarchies; and the methods of
trade-unions are the methods of pitiless belligerency. Democracy and
socialism are broken reeds for the lover of peace to lean upon.
In conclusion, our answer to the indictment against Christianity is
that institutional religion does not represent the Gospel of Christ, but
the opinions of a mass of nominal Christians. It cannot be expected to
do much more than look after its own interests and reflect the moral
ideas of its supporters. The real Gospel, if it were accepted, would
pull up by the roots not only militarism but its analogue in civil life,
the desire to exploit other people for private gain. But it is not
accepted. We have seen that the Founder of Christianity had no illusions
as to the reception which His message of redemption would meet with. The
'Prince of this World' is not Christ, but the Devil. Nevertheless, He
did speak of the 'whole lump' being gradually leavened, and we shall not
exceed the limits of a reasonable and justifiable optimism if we hope
that the accumulated experience of humanity, and perhaps a real though
very slow modification for the better of human nature itself, may at
last eliminate the wickedest and most insane of our maleficent
institutions. The human race has probably hundreds of thousands of years
to live, whereas our so-called civilisation cannot be traced back for
more than a few thousand years. The time when 'nation shall not lift up
sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more,' will
probably come at last, though no one can predict what the conditions
will be which will make such a change possible.
The signs are not very favourable at present for internationalism. The
great nations, bankrupt and honey-combed with social unrest, will be
obliged after the war to organise themselves as units, with governments
strong enough to put down revolutions, and directed by men of the
highest mercantile ability, whose main function will be to increase
productiveness and stop waste. We may even see Germany mobilised as one
gigantic trust for capturing markets and regulating prices. A
combination so formidable would compel other nations, and our own
certainly among the number, to adopt a similar organisation. This would,
of course, mean a complete victory for bureaucratic state-socialism, and
the defeat of democracy and trade-union syndicalism. Such a change,
which few would just now welcome, will occur if no other form of state
is able to survive; and this is what we may live to see. But there is
no finality about any experiments in government. A period of
internationalism may follow the intense nationalism which historical
critics foresee for the twentieth century. Or perhaps the international
labour-organisations may be too strong for the centralising forces. It
is just possible that Labour, by a concerted movement during the violent
reaction against militarism which will probably follow the war, will
forbid any further military or naval preparations to be made.
Whatever forms reconstruction may take, Christianity will have its part
to play in making the new Europe. It will be able to point to the
terrible vindication of its doctrines in the misery and ruin which have
overtaken a world which has rejected its valuations and scorned its
precepts. It is not Christianity which has been judged and condemned at
the bar of civilisation; it is civilisation which has destroyed itself
because it has honoured Christ with its lips, while its heart has been
far from Him. But a spiritual religion can win a victory only within its
own sphere. It can promise no Deuteronomic catalogue of blessings and
cursings to those who obey or disobey its principles. Social happiness
and peace would certainly follow a whole-hearted acceptance of Christian
principles; but they would not certainly bring wealth or empire.
'Philosophy,' said Hegel, 'will bake no man's bread'; and it is only in
a spiritual sense that the meek-spirited can expect to possess the
earth. Nevertheless, it is a mistake to suppose that a Christian nation
would be unable to hold its own in the struggle for existence. A nation
in which every citizen endeavoured to pay his way and to help his
neighbour would be in no danger of servitude or extinction. The mills of
God grind slowly, but the future does not belong to lawless violence. In
the long run, the wisdom that is from above will be justified in her
children.
SURVIVAL AND IMMORTALITY
(1917)
The recrudescence of superstition in England was plain to all observers
many years before the war; it was perhaps most noticeable among the
half-educated rich. Several causes contributed to this phenomenon. The
craving for the supernatural, a very ancient and deeply rooted
thought-habit, had been suppressed and driven underground by the
arrogant dominance of a materialistic philosophy, and by the absorption
of society in the pursuit of gain and pleasure. Modern miracles were
laughed out of court. But materialism has supernaturalism for its
nemesis. An abstract science, erecting itself into a false philosophy,
leaves half our nature unsatisfied, and becomes morally bankrupt before
its intellectual errors are exposed. Supernaturalism is the refuge of
the materialist who wishes to make room for ideal values without
abandoning the presuppositions of materialism. By dovetailing acts of
God into the order of nature, he materialises the spiritual, but brings
the Divine will into the world of experience, from which it had been
expelled, and produces a rough scheme of providential government, by
which he can live.
The revolt against scientific materialism was made much easier by the
disintegration of the mechanical theory itself. Biology found itself
cramped by the categories of inorganic science, and claimed its
autonomy. The result was a fatal breach in the defences of materialism,
for biology is being driven to accept final causes, and would be glad to
adopt some theory of vitalism, if it could do so without falling back
into the old error of a mysterious 'vital force.' Biological truth, it
is plain, cannot be reduced to the purely quantitative categories of
mathematics and physics. Then psychology aspired to be a philosophy of
real existence, and attacked both absolutism and materialism. The
pretensions of psychology rehabilitated subjectivism and founded
pragmatism, till reactionary theology took heart of grace and defended
crude supernaturalism, with the whole apparatus of sacerdotal magic, as
the 'Gospel for human needs.' All protection against the grossest
superstitions was thus swept away. With no fixed standard of reference
to distinguish fact from fiction, it was possible to argue that
'whatever suits souls is true.'
In this atmosphere many old habits of thought reasserted themselves.
While we enjoyed peace and prosperity, the credulity of the public found
its chief outlet in various systems of faith-healing and in the
time-honoured pretensions of priest-craft. But the devastation which the
war has brought into countless loving families has turned the current of
superstition strongly towards necromancy. The 'will to believe,' no
longer inhibited and suspected as a reason for doubt, has been allowed
to create its own logic. A few highly educated men, who have long been
playing with occultism and gratifying their intellectual curiosity by
exploring the dark places of perverted mysticism, have been swept off
their feet by it, and their authority, as 'men of science,' has
dispelled the hesitation of many more to accept what they dearly wished
to believe. The longing of the bereaved has created for itself a
spurious and dreary satisfaction.
One cause of this strange movement cannot be emphasised too strongly. It
proves that the Christian hope of immortality burns very dimly among us.
Those who study the utterances of our religious guides must admit that
it is so. References to the future life had, before the war, become rare
even in the pulpit. The topic was mainly reserved for letters of
condolence, and was then handled gingerly, as if it would not bear much
pressure. Working-class audiences and congregations listened eagerly to
the wildest promises of an earthly utopia the day after tomorrow, but
cooled down at once when they were reminded that 'if in this life only
we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.' Accordingly,
the clerical demagogue showed more interest in the unemployed than in
the unconverted. Christianity, which began as a revolutionary idealism,
had sunk into heralding materialistic revolution. Such teachers have no
message of hope and comfort for those who have lost their dearest. And
they have, in fact, been deserted. Their secularised Christianity was
received with half-contemptuous approval by trade unions, but far deeper
hopes, fears, and longings have now been stirred, which concern all men
and women alike, and on the answers to which the whole value of
existence is now seen to depend. Christianity can answer them, but not
the Churches through the mouths of their accredited representatives. And
so, instead of 'the blessed hope of everlasting life,' the bereaved have
been driven to this pathetic and miserable substitute, the barbaric
belief in ghosts and dæmons, which was old before Christianity was
young. And what a starveling hope it is that necromancy offers us! An
existence as poor and unsubstantial as that of Homer's Hades, which the
shade of Achilles would have been glad to exchange for serfdom to the
poorest farmer, and with no guarantee of permanence, even if the power
of comforting or terrifying surviving relations is supposed to persist
for a few years. Such a prospect would add a new terror to death; and
none would desire it for himself. It is plainly the dream of an aching
heart, which cannot bear to be left alone.