TURKISH IDEALS IN OUR POLITICAL THOUGHT.
This war and "the Turks of Britain and Prussia"--The Anglo-Saxon and
opposed ideals--Mr. C. Chesterton's case for "killing and being killed"
as the best method of settling differences--Its application to Civil
Conflicts--As in Spanish-America--The difference between Devonshire and
Venezuela--Will the Balkans adopt the Turco-Venezuelan political ideals
or the British?
An English political writer remarked, on it becoming evident that the
Christian States were driving back the Turks: "This is a staggering blow
to _all_ the Turks--those of England and Prussia as well as those of
Turkey."
But, of course, the British and Prussian Turks will never see it--like
the Bourbons, they learn not. Here is a typically military system, the
work of "born fighters" which has gone down in welter before the
assaults of much less military States, the chief of which, indeed, has
grown up in what Captain von Herbert has called, with some contempt,
"stagnant and enfeebling peace conditions," formed by the people whom
the Turks regarded as quite unfit to be made into warriors; whom they
regarded much as some Europeans regard the Jews. It is the Christian
populations of the Balkans who were the traders and workers--those
brought most under economic influences; it was the Turks who escaped
those influences. A few years since, I wrote: "If the conqueror profits
much by his conquest, as the Romans in one sense did, it is the
conqueror who is threatened by the enervating effect of the soft and
luxurious life; while it is the conquered who are forced to labour for
the conqueror, and who learn in consequence those qualities of steady
industry which are certainly a better moral training than living upon
the fruits of others, upon labour extorted at the sword's point. It is
the conqueror who becomes effete, and it is the conquered who learn
discipline and the qualities making for a well-ordered State."
Could we ask a better illustration than the history of the Turk and his
Christian victims? I exemplified the matter thus: "If during long
periods a nation gives itself up to war, trade languishes, the
population loses the habit of steady industry, government and
administration become corrupt, abuses escape punishment, and the real
sources of a people's strength and expansion dwindle. What has caused
the relative failure and decline of Spanish, Portuguese, and French
expansion in Asia and the New World, and the relative success of English
expansion therein? Was it the mere hazards of war which gave to Great
Britain the domination of India and half of the New World? That is
surely a superficial reading of history. It was, rather, that the
methods and processes of Spain, Portugal, and France were military,
while those of the Anglo-Saxon world were commercial and peaceful. Is it
not a commonplace that in India, quite as much as in the New World, the
trader and the settler drove out the soldier and the conqueror? The
difference between the two methods was that one was a process of
conquest, and the other of colonizing, or non-military administration
for commercial purposes. The one embodied the sordid Cobdenite idea,
which so excites the scorn of the militarists, and the other the lofty
military ideal. The one was parasitism; the other co-operation....
"How may we sum up the whole case, keeping in mind every empire that
ever existed--the Assyrian, the Babylonian, the Mede and Persian, the
Macedonian, the Roman, the Frank, the Saxon, the Spanish, the
Portuguese, the Bourbon, the Napoleonic? In all and every one of them we
may see the same process, which is this: If it remains military it
decays; if it prospers and takes its share of the work of the world it
ceases to be military. There is no other reading of history."
But despite these very plain lessons, there are many amongst us who
regard physical conflict as the ideal form of human relationship;
"killing and being killed" as the best way to determine the settlement
of differences, and a society which drifts from these ideals as on the
high road to degeneration, and who deem those who set before themselves
the ideal of abolishing or attenuating poverty for the mass of men, "low
and 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 for
permission to print my reply.]