When I was invited to give a lecture in a series dealing with the
present crisis in its ethical and philosophical aspects, I had been
endeavouring to clear my own mind as to the basis of international
morality, and also as to some proposals aimed at the diminution of war;
and I thought that this endeavour might perhaps be of some use to
others.[4] I say the ‘basis’ of international morality; not the question
what in particular the duties of states to one another are, but the
question whether states are moral agents at all, and, if so, in what
sense. This question runs back into that of the nature of the state, and
cannot help being more or less a philosophical one; but I aim only at
the outline of an answer and at being intelligible rather than precisely
accurate; and, the subject being large, I intend, without reference to
opposing views, merely to expound, at any rate at first, a view that is
mine only in the sense that long since it got into my head out of other
peoples’, and to expound it without adding to every sentence the words
‘so far as I can see’. Perhaps you will be kind enough to supply them.
My second subject is not itself philosophical. Judgement on proposals
for diminishing war requires good sense, some knowledge of the past and
present, and some capacity for faith and hope about the future. These
things are not philosophy; and yet one of them, good sense, might be
called philosophy pretending not to know herself; and, in any case,
reflection on the nature of the state may help one in estimating
concrete schemes which cannot succeed unless they correspond fairly well
with that nature.
I must begin with some prefatory explanations suggested by the phrase
just used. First, the nature of the state appears, of course, in a
variety of forms; and a city-state such as Athens is very unlike a
nation-state such as France, and both are unlike a state, such as
Austria-Hungary, which is not based on nationality, or, again, a federal
union such as the United States of America. But, to save time, I propose
to ignore these differences and to take a national state as typical.
Next, the full nature of the state is realized but partially in any
individual state, and very feebly in some; and therefore, when I say
that the state is or does this or that, you may truly make the comment
that _our_ state, or any other, is or does this in a very poor degree.
And, lastly, I must point to what seems at first a curious fact. A state
rests on, and, in a sense, only exists in, the minds and wills of its
members, so that, if mind and will in all Frenchmen could suddenly
vanish, the French state would do so too. And, further, the improvement
of this state depends on the ideas of its members, and their will to
make their ideas good. And yet what we call the ‘nature’ of the state
does not depend on their thinking this or that, and if they think and
will what conflicts with that nature they will not succeed. They will
succeed only by developing further so much of that nature as is already
developed in France or elsewhere. On the other hand, there can be no
more fatal error than simply to identify the nature of the state with
any development of it that has hitherto appeared. It only lives in
realizing capacities still unfolded, and a state that does not advance
goes back and, apart from any external violence, may even die.
If now we ask what the state is, we may say that it is the nation
considered as an organized whole or individual. You have some millions
of people, inhabiting a definite piece or pieces of the earth, and, for
the most part, so united by blood, language, customs, traditions, and
history, that they have a special character and so can more fully
understand and count on one another, and can live together more easily
and happily, than any chance collection of human beings could. Further,
they are not a mere collection or aggregate, but form an organized
whole, performing a multitude of different functions, which should, and
more or less do, so complement and play into one another that they make
a common life and produce a common good—a good shared by the members in
degrees necessarily different, though not, one hopes, of necessity so
very different as they everywhere now are. Finally (for so far we have
not, strictly speaking, a state) the common life, mind, or will
expresses itself formally in laws binding on all the members, and in
acts explicitly done on behalf of the whole and in its name. It is in
these laws, and still more in these acts, that the whole appears most
plainly as individual or a single agent, over against its members taken
severally, and over against other states. Hence we often identify the
state with the particular organ through which it acts in this way,
asking, for example, indifferently whether the state, or whether
government, ought to own the railways. And this usage, though it leads
to confusion if we forget that the state is the whole, points to the
fact that it does not act _as_ the state except through the organ called
(in a wide sense) the government.
Is the state then a moral agent? It can hardly be so with reference to
other states, unless it is so with reference to itself; so that we may
safely consider it at first as if it stood alone in the world.
What is the end or object for which the state exists—its reason to be?
Aristotle, after his manner, replied in two words, ‘Good life’. We may
expand a little and say ‘The best possible life of its members’, or ‘The
fullest possible development in them of the forces and faculties of man’
(a Mazzinian formula), or ‘To make of human nature in them all that it
has in it to become’ (which is more like Green’s language). These are
various ways of expressing what is substantially the same idea. Suppose
it true; then what has _morality_ to do with this end, the best life or
the fullest realization of human capacities?
Morality, or moral goodness, is, in the first place, a large part of
this best life. To be self-controlled in regard to your desires and
fears, to be just and generous and the like; to do your part as well as
you can in the common life, in your functions, say, as a son, a
neighbour, a friend, a carpenter, or a poet; and to do this, not merely
because you happen to like it or because it pays you, but because it is
right and good to do it:—something like this is to be morally good. And
to be so is not a mere means to an end beyond it, but a great _part_ of
the end, or best life, or realization of human nature.
It is not, however, the whole. To discover or re-discover truth, for
example, and to make or re-make beauty, are certainly elements in the
best life; and truth and beauty are not morality, nor yet mere means to
it; they have an intrinsic value of their own. Moral goodness,
therefore, though a large part of the best life, is not the whole. No:
but it is the condition, the _sine qua non_, of these other parts. To
discover truth, for example, is not a mere matter of natural gifts—it
requires will, and a moral will. The investigator must undergo fatigue,
renounce many pleasant things, sacrifice his pre-conceived ideas and his
secret wish to reach a particular conclusion; and all this is morality,
whether in other respects he is moral or not. And these are only
examples. The same thing holds good over the whole of life, wherever
there is action, inward or outward.
Thus it appears, first, that morality is a large part of the good life;
and, secondly, that all those activities which in their special natures
are not moral still fall within the moral sphere so far as will and
character are concerned in them; and they cannot help being so
concerned. But, if so, the end of the state, the best life, is a moral
end, and the state a moral agent.
I said I would ignore objections; but there is an objection to this view
so obvious and so dangerous that I dare not pass it by. ‘If the state
had a moral end,’ it may be said, ‘it would not merely protect the life
and property of the citizen, and then leave him free to live well or ill
at his pleasure: it would enforce morality, or at any rate promote it by
rewards and punishments. But it neither does this, nor do most of us
think that it ought.’ Now even in England the state does much more than
this objection supposes; but, leaving that alone, we may answer thus.
The state, though its end is moral, does not enforce morality because it
cannot. It can enforce actions _outwardly_ the same as moral actions;
but to force a man to do them morally, to do them not because he must
but because he approves them or thinks them his duty, is beyond the
power, not only of the state, but of the whole universe. Moral action,
like immoral, is free action; and to talk of enforcing it is to talk of
a square circle. And, in the second place, the reason why, on the whole,
the state abstains, so far as possible, from enforcing or promoting
actions outwardly like moral ones, is itself a moral reason. To force or
bribe a man to do what he ought to do freely and morally, tends in some
degree to interfere with his doing it freely and morally. The state
cannot help taking this risk to some extent; for it must maintain the
necessary pre-requisites of good life, e. g. security of life and
property. But it limits its compulsive action, not in order that people
may freely live as badly as they please, but in order that they may
freely live as well as they can.[5]
We have now reached the conclusion that, as regards itself or (it is the
same thing) its members in their organic unity, the state is a moral
agent. But is it one in the further sense that it has duties to other
states, such duties that these other states have a moral right to their
performance? Almost all of us, probably, will be disposed to answer Yes;
yet, as soon as we begin to think about the question, we meet with facts
and considerations that perplex us. Not three centuries ago a great
philosopher could say that states are by nature enemies.[6] Bacon is
often called our great English moralist; and Bacon, writing of the
dealings of kings with their neighbours, tells us that only one general
rule can be given in the matter, but ‘one that ever holdeth; which is,
that Princes do keep due sentinel that none of their neighbours do
overgrow so ... as they become more able to annoy them than they
were’.[7] We may reassure ourselves by remembering that Bacon lived a
long time ago and had studied Machiavelli to some purpose; yet we, in
our own day, are not surprised if a subject of dispute between other
nations is dismissed by our Government in the phrase, ‘It does not
affect British interests’, a phrase which may _seem_ to imply that the
duty of a state is simply and solely to itself. What it does imply, a
moment’s thought will show us, is only that the state’s primary duty is
that; and this inoffensive implication we may be ready to accept. And
yet if a man saw two other men quarrelling in the street in a manner
that threatened bloodshed, we should hardly think it moral in him to
pass on with the remark, ‘It does not affect my interests’; we should
think he ought at any rate to look for a policeman. This difficulty,
again, we may remove by the just reflection that no policeman can be
found for states, and in general that we cannot safely argue from the
duties of a citizen to those of a nation. But then where will this
reflection lead us? Citizens, perhaps we shall say, have duties to one
another and to the state, and the state has duties to them, because they
are members of this one community and share its one life, will, and
good; but this moral community is the largest and highest that exists in
the visible or actual world, what we call mankind being evidently not an
organized whole but a mere scattered aggregate. Thus we may feel driven
after all to conclude that the state is its own absolute end and has no
duty except to itself. And if this conclusion still troubles us, we may
consider that, at any rate, the state has a duty to itself in respect of
its behaviour to other states; and we may even suspect that we are
vexing ourselves with a mere question of words, since in any case a
moral agent cannot have a duty to another which is not also a duty to
itself.
However this may be, we shall find it worth while to dwell for a minute
on the idea that the state has duties only to itself. If this idea were
fully carried out it would lead, I believe, to just the same result as
the view that states have duties to each other. For, as we have seen,
the end of the state, and therefore the state’s own ‘interest’,[8] is
nothing short of the best possible life of its members. Its independence
is necessary to that life; power is necessary to it; wealth is
necessary; even high spirit and a certain pride may be so; and times may
come when a resolute assertion of its rights even by war is necessary.
But the best possible life, including, permanently or on occasion, all
these things, is much wider than any or all of them. None of them has
value apart from it. Those of them which, like wealth and power, exist
only in this or that degree, are of value only in the degree in which
they really contribute to the best life, and in that life the goods of
the soul rank, in value, first. An action of the state, therefore, which
increases its wealth or power to the detriment of the character of its
citizens cannot be in its interest, but is, on the contrary, a violation
of its duty to itself. And so is any breach of promise to another state,
any intentional injury to another, or any war upon another, which is
inconsistent with that best life of its own citizens which is their one
and only absolute interest. Hence we may say that a state can do no
wrong to another which is not equally, or even more, a wrong to itself;
that, if it rightly understands its duty to itself, it need consider
nothing else; and that patriotism, in the true and complete meaning of
the word, is the final and all-inclusive virtue. And if this view of the
matter could really become the inspiration of a nation’s life, it would
certainly have great advantages. It would make the nation realize that,
next to the primary duty of maintaining the pre-requisites of its life,
its main business is not to improve others—least of all by conquest—but
to improve itself; and that to be grasping, inconsiderate, irritable,
and meddlesome is no part of the best life. Or imagine for a moment
that, when peace returns to England, we could retain undiminished that
sense of unity and that self-devotion which have been evoked by war, and
could use them wisely in all their strength, if only for ten years, to
make England, morally and socially, all that it might be. Why, it might
become, for itself, almost what Shakespeare called it, a ‘second Eden’,
and, for others, a light to lighten the nations.
Thus the doctrine that a state has duties only to itself, if taken in
its full sense, is far from being selfish or degrading. But then it is
fatally easy to take it in its more obvious and its untrue sense; and we
know too well how ideas, innocent and just in themselves, may be twisted
into shapes that affront any unsophisticated conscience. Besides, this
formula, even rightly construed, does not appear to suffice. To say that
the so-called duty of a state to another is simply its duty to itself in
respect of that other, would be satisfactory if that other were a tree
or a lion; because my having a duty to another implies, in strictness,
that this other has or may have a duty to me; and a tree or a lion, not
being a rational agent, is incapable of duty, and, for the same reason,
cannot be a member of a moral community. But the other state, like my
own, is a rational being. The two have the same nature and the same end,
the best possible life. That is common to them; and though it is by no
means enough to make them members of an actual community in which the
good of one is, in some degree, the good of another and of all, it
surely is enough to give them, so far as they come in contact, and apart
from obligations arising out of treaties between them, duties to one
another and moral rights against one another. Indeed this seems to hold
of all human beings, whether they belong to states or to lower forms of
society. Slavery, for example, is now among civilized peoples
universally admitted to be wrong, and states forbid their citizens to
practise it. To whom then is it a wrong? To the enslaver himself, no
doubt, but surely also to the slave. He—a negro, perhaps—is, like the
enslaver, a rational being with a capacity for a best life. He proves it
by his membership in a tribe, in which he has what, in effect, are
rights and duties. His tribal morality differs from our civic morality;
but what of that? It is enough to give him a claim against us to be left
free to live as well as he can, and enough to make it our duty to him,
if not to aid him, at least to leave him free.[9]
The duties which, on this showing, all men have to one another may now
be few and elementary; and this may be said even of the duties of states
to one another (over and above the unquestionable obligations arising
from their treaties). But these duties are bound to grow in number and
complexity, and the day perhaps may come when ‘mankind’ or ‘humanity’
will be no mere scattered aggregate, but an all-embracing organized
community of members—if not states, still corporate bodies of some
kind—united in pursuit of a common end, the best life of man. This life
would be different in each body, a harmony, not a monotone; and the
difference in each would be its special contribution to the whole. The
members of each would still be more closely united with one another than
with those of other bodies, and have duties to their own body that they
had not to others; and these bodies, being human, could hardly fail
sometimes to disagree. But none of them would dream of regarding itself
as its sole or absolute end, and one may surely believe that they would
not need to settle their differences by war. This community, at the
best, must be far distant; but to keep it in view and, so far as
possible, to feel and act as though it were already here, is, even in
warring, to live inwardly in peace with your enemy, and, it may be, to
lessen the distance by an hour or even a day.[10] And at least the
pre-requisite of such a community—I mean the closer contact of
mankind—is undeniably and rapidly being realized. Our own country makes
itself a huge far-extending Empire. In the East Japan starts into sudden
greatness. Africa is parcelled out among the states of Europe. The
states of the world are bound together more and more by trade. There is
another side, no doubt, to all these changes. In our Empire-making we
did things we cannot justify, and the Empire made becomes an object of
envy and a cause of war. The rise of Japan at once brings war in the
East, and alarm and enmity in the Western hemisphere. The parcelling of
Africa means the horrors of the Congo; and states bound together by
trade fight one another with tariffs. Nevertheless these changes do
visibly tend in one direction. Is it vain to hope that they move
invisibly to one goal, moving there neither by accident nor mainly by
the conscious purpose of men?
Meanwhile already we have in Europe a number of states, connected by
almost perpetual contact, sharing to some extent a single type of
civilization and morality, yet possessed of such distinct characters,
and developing this type in such individual forms, that each of them
brings to the common stock a contribution which no other can bring and
which it is essential to preserve. What further duties they have to one
another beyond that contribution I cannot discuss: I have to dwell on a
different point. That these duties may be more extensive and positive
than they are now generally recognized to be, one can well imagine; but
I find it difficult to imagine that the primary and main duty of a state
to other states can cease to be the contribution of its own best life.
Yet to many minds this appears a selfish view. Openly or unconsciously
they seem to demand that states should behave to one another like good
men, or even like friends, or even like brothers. And the flagrant
contradiction between such demands and the actual behaviour of states
causes not only painful disappointment but an injurious dismay. Yet what
is in fault here, perhaps, is not only, or even mainly, the behaviour of
states, but something unreasonable in the demand.
I have not read General Bernhardi’s book since it first appeared, but I
understand he says in it that the morality of a state cannot be the same
as that of an individual. This assertion, if one may judge from a poem
by Mr. Noyes and an article in one of our best weekly papers, is
considered almost diabolical; and very likely the author draws from it
false and immoral conclusions—one would expect him to. But surely the
statement itself is perfectly sound. All moralities, of course, are the
same, in the sense that they _are_ morality, or a doing of duty: but
what acts in particular are the duties of a moral agent must depend on
the nature of the agent and the position he occupies. The duty of my
brother to help me, if need be, with his money, or to tell me that I am
disgracing the family, does not therefore belong to every one here
present. It may be of use to point out some differences between a state
and an individual, which prevent them from having the same duties and
even account for their sometimes doing what two reasonable men,
practically speaking, never do—fighting one another.
If A and B, two reasonable Englishmen, cannot agree in interpreting
their contract, they do not fall to blows, they go to arbitration or a
court of law. If A vilifies B, the latter, if he thinks it of
importance, can take A into court. If A tries to pick B’s pocket or
assaults him, B may indeed use such force as is immediately necessary to
protect his person or property, but no more; it is the business of the
law to protect him and to punish A. This power, the law, has three
obvious characteristics. It purports to be, and in a good state is, the
expression of that reason and right will which is common to A and B, as
distinguished from their personal feelings and passions. It is perfectly
impartial in regard to A and B. And, lastly, it is a power, against
which they are powerless. Whatever they may think of its decision, it
will enforce it.
But if A and B are states, how do they stand? If they differ in
interpreting their treaty, or in fixing what sum A should pay to B for
an unintentional injury, they, like citizens, can go, in one way or
another, to arbitration. The arbiter, it is true, has no power to
enforce his decision, but that need not matter much, since A and B would
hardly have gone to him if they did not mean to abide by it. This,
however, is a narrow field. When the question concerns an assault of A
on B, or what they call their vital interests or even their honour
(which is not merely their private feeling but their repute and weight
in the world), where will they find an embodied reason with its perfect
impartiality? Seldom, if ever, in other states, either severally or
combined, when each of these others has its likes and dislikes to A and
B, and vital interests of its own, connected positively or negatively
with theirs. And even if this problem were surmounted and the impartial
arbiter found, his decision, so far from having overwhelming force
behind it, has or may have none at all except that of public opinion. Of
course it does not follow that B’s duty must be war, but it does follow
that you cannot find his duty by examining the duties of an individual.
Take a second difference. You, an individual citizen, have interests in
a special sense your own. But you may well think it your duty to injure
some of them; to be poor when you might be well off; to leave many of
your capacities undeveloped that you may do good through the
disproportionate growth of one or two; even to weaken your health and
shorten your life for some worthy object; nay, if need be, to risk it or
throw it away for the life of another. Asked to justify your conduct,
you might answer perhaps that your life is but one of forty million
English lives, that what you lose others gain, and that there are plenty
to take your place. But England, your state, _is_ forty million lives.
For it to surrender _its_ interest, to make itself poor, weak, or
maimed, is to do that to forty millions, many of them children. How then
can it have the same duty that you have; and how can its normal primary
duty help being its duty to itself? Nor is this all. It, your country,
is not merely these forty millions, any more than an oak is the leaves
of this year. Your country’s span of life is not a little threescore
years and ten. Its honour is the honour of its countless dead, and both
its honour and its welfare are those of its innumerable sons and
daughters yet to be. How can it, the state of this year, a mere trustee,
have the same right and duty to sacrifice that welfare that you have to
sacrifice yours? And even this, again, is not all. You can sacrifice
yours, for you are but one of forty millions. But how many states are
there in the world? Not a hundred, I imagine.[11] And, out of these, how
many whose value to mankind is equal to the value of your state? Let us
be modest and say ‘six’. Well, but if your country had only a hundred
inhabitants, and only six of them were as useful as you, your right and
duty to injure or risk your life would undergo a prodigious change. I do
not say it would vanish, nor that a state cannot have such a duty; but
the question whether such a duty has arisen cannot be settled by
comparison with the duties of a citizen.
I trust I have not seemed to be championing either national
selfishness[12] or war. No one can be more convinced that it is
sometimes the duty of a state to forgo an advantage, to run a risk, and
even to injure itself in some degree, in order to help another actively
or allow another to develop itself, if (I must add) it is satisfied that
this is to the advantage of mankind. And, as to war, I should like to
say briefly how I regard it (which it would be absurd to do if I thought
this view a merely personal one). Certainly I believe that a war may be
right and therefore a duty; and I do not see how to maintain that an
offensive war can _never_ be so. Nor could I for a moment admit—what is
often taken for granted—that peace is an unconditional good. Nothing is
so except the best possible life; and peace, though it is the normal
foundation of that, is no more. Hence, when I ask myself whether I wish
for the total disappearance of war, I answer ‘Yes, if, or when,
uninterrupted peace can perform the office and generate the good of
war’. There are wars almost entirely evil; but war, on the whole, may
roughly be compared with tragedy—I mean the tragic actions and
sufferings portrayed by great poets. If things had to be classed roughly
as good and evil, war and tragedy would be placed among the evils. But
if the disappearance of either meant the disappearance, or even a
lowering, of those noble and glorious energies of the soul which appear
in both and are in part the cause of both, the life of perpetual peace
would be a poor thing, superficially less terrible perhaps than the
present life, but much less great and good. Nor, if I may say so, do I
understand how this view can seem heathenish to any one who believes
that suffering, and even wrong, have some meaning in the world.
But those who think thus about war are not therefore champions of war.
They may believe that it does lie in man’s power slowly by degrees to
gain in peace all the good of war; that it is monstrous to call war an
end in itself, or even, if we speak strictly, one of the purposes of the
state; that many wars, perhaps most, have been, so far as we can see,
needless and therefore, in their origin, wholly wrong; and that the
diminution of war is assuredly to be desired and pursued. And so I
hasten to a few remarks on the second subject of the lecture.
This subject is not the conditions of the peace to which we are looking
forward—no safe matter for public discussion even by persons more
competent than I. And, further, the proposals, or rather the one
proposal of which there is time to speak, belong—in my view at least—to
a future more or less distant, and in any case subsequent to the period
when, as we trust, the feelings produced by this war will be dying away.
For we surely cannot imagine that any ambitious scheme can work unless
it has behind it positive goodwill as well as a desire to avoid the
evils of war.
Let us assume, and so dismiss, as a thing which seems clearly coming to
be in principle admitted, the duty of states to observe international
law,[13] and to refer to arbitration in some form such matters as may
safely be so referred; and I will merely remind the despondent that the
progress towards that admission during the last fifty or even twenty
years has been nothing less than immense. Even in this matter, no doubt,
much remains to be done; but what is desired is much more than this. It
is an arrangement or institution likely to diminish the chances of war
about the more difficult and dangerous questions: for example the
question, not of the complicity of Serbian officials in the murder of
the Archduke, but whether Serbia was pursuing a policy, or encouraging a
movement, aimed at the integrity of Austria-Hungary; a question which, I
imagine, neither state would have cared to submit to a court unless it
had been pretty sure what the decision would be. And, if we recall the
differences pointed out between an individual and a state, it seems
clear that what is wanted is something like that state-law which stands
above individuals, something which, at its best, is an embodiment of
reason, perfectly impartial, and possessed of overwhelming force.
The idea of a United States, or Confederation, of Europe has been mooted
for some centuries.[14] Kant took it up a hundred and twenty years ago,
and drew the outline of a scheme in his essay on _Perpetual Peace_. It
was a favourite idea with Mazzini. And it is now coming into the
foreground in various shapes, of which the following is perhaps the most
definite. The states of Europe, by federation or without it, would form
a permanent council to decide all international differences, arbitrable
or other, and, if necessary, to carry out the decision through an armed
force, to which in some agreed way their several armies would
contribute. But, considering the overwhelming power of the Union as
compared with that of a recalcitrant state, this necessity, it is
thought, would never, or at any rate very rarely, arise.
Just because this idea is so attractive and appears so hopeful, I
propose to pass by its obvious advantages and to touch on some of its
difficulties and dangers; but I must first mention a variation in the
scheme, due to a sense of one of these dangers. Seeley, soon after the
Franco-German War (_Macmillan’s Magazine_, March, 1871), considered the
United States idea, with results which may be thus condensed. (1) The
Union must be a federation, and a close one, as close as that of the
United States of America. (2) No state must possess an armed force of
its own: the only army would be that of the Federation. (3) Existing
states would never consent to this provision; but a long and unremitting
propaganda among all the populations (for it is to _them_ that peace is
all-important) might quite possibly compel their governments to adopt
the scheme. ‘Possibly’, I say to myself, ‘it might, but nothing else
would; and if the populations ever acquired so unanimous and resolute a
will for peace, surely the need of a Union would have disappeared, and,
with states remaining as separate as they are now, the chances of war
would be as much diminished as they can be.’ Therefore, without
discussing the feasibility of Seeley’s plan, or its desirability (which
is far from indubitable), I go on to some remarks on the unmodified
scheme.
1. Since the Union would deal with all disputes, and not only with what
may be called legal ones, could all its states have equal voices in the
council? Where vital interests are concerned, can one ask or expect that
a fifty-million state should have no more votes than a five-million one?
Surely not. In any case, whatever the voting-arrangements of the council
might be, it seems wellnigh certain that these disputes would in effect
be settled, I do not say in the interest of the Great Powers, but by
them.
2. When a decree unfavourable to a powerful state (or more than one) was
felt by it to touch deeply its honour or interests, there would always
be danger of its trying to elude the requirements laid on it, and an
equal danger that other states would shut their eyes to this attempt
rather than enforce the decree at the cost of all the evils of war. It
is vain to imagine that states would constantly put their duty to Europe
in front of their duty to their own people.
3. There would always be danger of secret combinations of individual
states in pursuit of what they thought their common interests over
against the interests of the rest; a danger therefore that things would
either drift back to their present position or else lead to civil war in
the Union. Some people appear to have forgotten that there was ever
civil war in the American Union; but ugly facts do not vanish by being
ignored, and we have to remember too that the European Union would
consist of states differing in race or nationality far more than the
American states.
4. Europe is not the world. There is, for example, a western hemisphere.
Would the American Union be willing to join the European, and so to
entangle itself in our disputes? And, if it were, would many European
states care to give it the chance? Scarcely, unless it became what some
writers apparently imagine it to be already, an eminently peace-loving,
self-sacrificing, and scrupulous Power.
Let us suppose, then, that it stayed outside. In that case, war between
it and one or more of the European states would not, presumably, be held
to involve the rest. And yet the success of the European Union would
depend a good deal on the growth of a special European feeling which
does not now exist; and, just as the growth of national feeling has
brought great dangers with it, so, though doubtless in smaller measure,
would the growth of that European feeling. And in the West, we must
remember, we have not only the United States but the Monroe doctrine.
The possibility I am pointing to is a frightful one, and, some will say,
too frightful to be realized. And so they said, a year ago, of a
possibility which at this moment is an appalling fact.
It should be needless to refer to similar risks arising from the
greatness of Japan, a possible revival of China, the facts that Russia
extends into Asia and that the other great European Powers have colonies
or dependencies outside Europe. When the idea of a European Union was
first broached, the dangers of which I have lately been speaking were
not yet in sight.
5. There is still another, and a very grave one. History is a continual
change, and, as we all hope and some of us believe, the change is, in
the main, a progress. But is it not probable, to say the least, that to
a European Union the easiest and the most tempting course would
generally be to discourage change and maintain the _status quo_? And if
its first or chief object were peace, would it not seem right in doing
this? Yet if such a Union had been formed a century ago, and had not
soon been broken by the secession of England and France, would it not
certainly have discouraged and even resisted most of the changes that we
now think good—changes, let us remember, made largely by insurrection
and war? We know what the Holy Alliance actually did and wanted to do.
Well, we may feel fairly secure that the European Union would not
resemble it in supporting mere ‘legitimacy’, but can we feel secure
that, in the very interest of law and peace, it would never ‘haply be
found fighting against God’; or, if that phrase is objected to, let us
say ‘fighting against changes that are necessary for the progress of
mankind’?[15]
The difficulties and dangers now mentioned (and there may well be
others) are formidable. To meet and surmount them would tax, no doubt,
the foresight and skill of statesmen, and the goodwill of populations
which cannot be expected to have foresight and skill. But they do not
appear to be more than dangers and difficulties, nor does the ideal of a
United States (not necessarily a federation) seem to conflict with
anything fundamental in the nature of the state; while both the course
of history and the minds of men do seem to have been moving for some
time in this direction. On the other hand, as has been suggested
already, any attempt to realize that ideal in the immediate future would
almost certainly be vain and, if vain, highly dangerous; and there are
reasons not yet mentioned for fearing that the time when it could
succeed must be distant. Must we not accept what Mazzini used to say of
such an ideal—that it could not be made real until two pre-requisites
had been attained?[16]
The map of Europe must first be re-drawn, he said, so that the divisions
of states correspond with those of nationality. A deliverance like this
must be taken somewhat loosely. It did not mean for Mazzini that the
Union of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland must be dissolved, or
that the German Empire must cease to exist; and we are told that there
are ethnical unities in the south-east of Europe which are
geographically so distributed that they could not form single states.
But, any really necessary qualification being admitted, the general
statement appears sound. The sentiment of nationality has unquestionably
been one of the chief causes of unrest and war in Europe ever since the
Powers established in 1815 a system based on legitimacy. And this
sentiment, which is not a sentiment but a passion and almost a religious
faith, shows not the slightest sign of dying away. It has wellnigh
destroyed the Turkish Empire in Europe, in Mazzini’s view one of the two
main obstacles to progress. The other was the Austrian Empire; and the
working of that same passion in Serbia may have initiated the
dissolution of that Empire too.
According to Mazzini, the second pre-requisite of a United States was
that all the states concerned should have become democratic. Kant, using
another terminology, had said the same thing. What is in question here
is, surely, not chiefly the ‘democratization’ of foreign policy and
diplomacy, about which much nonsense is being written just now, and some
good sense.[17] When we call a state democratic, and when we use the
word in a strictly political sense, we mean, roughly speaking, that it
has a very large electorate, and that the power which acts for the state
really represents, and is responsible to, this electorate. And, though
we may feel less confident than Mazzini was, that democracies would
always be friendly and never more pugnacious than nobles or kings, most
of us perhaps will agree that the prospects of peace will not be greatly
improved so long as the power to make war rests, openly or otherwise,
either with an autocrat, wise and good or foolish and ill-willed, as
chance may determine, or with representatives of sectional interests,
social, military, bureaucratic, or financial, all of which, though in
varying degrees, are separable from national interests and provide
motives for unnecessary wars. Only it must be remembered that a state is
not democratic merely because its government fairly represents the
nation. In this war, for example, the German Government appears to
represent the German people as fully as our Government does ours. Yet
Germany is in no sense democratic, and England, politically, is.[18]
This brings me to a last word. Perhaps some of my hearers, listening to
the earlier part of this lecture, may have said to themselves: ‘Why this
theorizing about the nature of the state and its exalted mission? It is
just what has brought the Germans to worship force and to glorify to
themselves their desire for domination.’ This particular charge against
German philosophy is in the fashion, and, although a proper discussion
of it is out of the question here, I should like to refer to it.
Even if it had much truth, we English are not Germans, and intoxication
by ideas is not exactly a failing of the English—nor even of the Scotch,
who do reverence intellect. But the truth in this charge is not great.
What has led, apparently, a large number of Germans to the strange,
perverted state of mind we witness, is surely not, in the main, ideas,
philosophical or other, but first and foremost what has happened to
Germany. After being for long years, even for centuries, a ‘Hamlet among
the nations’; great, that is to say, in the purely spiritual spheres of
religion, philosophy, music, poetry, but, to all appearance, incapable
in the world of political action, she found herself on a sudden,
five-and-forty years ago, the most powerful state in Europe. She owed
this, too, in the main, not to a long and arduous effort of her peoples
(for that would have had a different effect), but to a merely military
force enlarged and perfected by the unconstitutional action of a
statesman and a king. And on the success of this military force and of a
Machiavellian diplomacy in creating the Empire there followed (what also
was to a large extent new) an immense increase in industrial and
commercial activity, in wealth, and in population. It would be no great
wonder, I think, if any people’s head were turned by such a change.
Next to this chief cause comes the fact (as, on the testimony of others,
I suppose it to be) that the views and feelings thus generated
concerning the greatness and the future of Germany have been for years
assiduously fostered in the people through an admirably efficient system
of university and school education.[19]
Now what has philosophy had to do with the ideas so instilled, and with
other ideas that have gone to produce a perverted ideal and state of
mind? Something, no doubt, but of that something very little belongs to
the great philosophers. A leading German historian, I am told,
criticizes Plato and Aristotle because they say almost nothing about the
state’s being essentially _might_. Perhaps they thought this undeniable
fact too obvious to need emphasis; but in any case the same criticism
might be passed on Kant and Hegel. It is true that in Hegel’s
_Rechtsphilosophie_ there are a few expressions which, taken in
isolation and exaggerated as a philosopher’s ideas are apt to be, might
do harm; but in all its pages, while there is much about will and the
will for good, there is little enough about force.[20] Germany’s
greatest philosopher since Hegel, I suppose, is Lotze, a teacher about
as likely as Mill or Green to encourage the worship of force. Indeed, so
far as I know, the only philosopher who is, in a degree worth notice,
responsible for that worship is Nietzsche, who was neither an admirer of
the Prussian state nor by any means a great philosopher. He was,
however, a man of genius, with a poetic imagination and an admirable
style; and in Germany that is a thing rarer than a philosopher and, to
the mass of readers, much more dangerous. If he could have written as
Kant wrote he would scarcely have done much mischief. Nobody could bear
to read Kant who was not bent on finding truth, but truth is not the
quarry that Nietzsche’s thousands of readers hunt.
If Germany were doomed to win this war, she might continue—for how long,
we cannot tell—to be the victim of a perverse ideal. But any Englishman
who reveres and loves that soul of her which speaks in her music,
philosophy, and poetry, must desire her total defeat for her own sake as
well as for his country’s and the world’s. It is incredible that that
soul is dead, and that anguish would not wake it from its evil dream.
IV
THE CHANGING MIND OF A NATION AT WAR