illustrated. The Greeks, our pioneers in all insight and knowledge,
grappled (as Professor Myres has lately set forth[3]), and realised that
they were grappling, with this same problem. Even in the Minoan Age
their population would appear to have been full to overflowing; "there
were too many people in the world," and to the old Greeks the Trojan War
was the earliest divinely-appointed remedy. Wars, famines, pestilences,
colonisation, wide-spread infanticide were the methods, voluntary and
involuntary, by which this excessive birth-rate was combated, while the
greatest of Greek philosophers, a Plato or an Aristotle, clearly saw
that a regulated and limited birth-rate, a eugenically improved race, is
the road to higher civilisation. We may even see in Greek antiquity how
a sudden rise in industrialism leads to a crowded and fertile urban
population, the extension of slavery, and all the resultant evils. It
was a foretaste of what was seen during the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, when a sudden industrial expansion led to an enormously high
birth-rate, a servile urban proletariat (that very word indicates, as
Roscher has pointed out, that a large family means inferiority), and a
consequent outburst of misery and degradation from which we are only now
emerging.
As we are now able to realise, the sudden expansion of the population
accompanying the industrial revolution was an abnormal and, from the
point of view of society, a morbid phenomenon. All the evidence goes to
show that previously the population tended to increase very slowly, and
social evolution was thus able to take place equably and harmoniously.
It is only gradually that the birth-rate has begun to right itself
again. The movement, as is well known, began in France, always the most
advanced outpost of European civilisation. It has now spread to England,
to Germany, to all Europe, to the whole world indeed, in so far as the
world is in touch with European civilisation, and has long been well
marked in the United States.
When we realise this we are also enabled to realise how futile, how
misplaced, and how mischievous it is to raise the cry of "Race-suicide."
It is futile because no outcry can affect a world-wide movement of
civilisation. It is misplaced because the rise and fall of the
population is not a matter of the birth-rate alone, but of the
birth-rate combined with the death-rate, and while we cannot expect to
touch the former we can influence the latter. It is mischievous because
by fighting against a tendency which is not only inevitable but
altogether beneficial, we blind ourselves to the advance of civilisation
and risk the misdirection of all our energies. How far this blindness
may be carried we see in the false patriotism of those who in the
decline of the birth-rate fancy they see the ruin of their own
particular country, oblivious of the fact that we are concerned with a
phenomenon of world-wide extension.
The whole tendency of civilisation is to reduce the birth-rate, as
Leroy-Beaulieu concludes in his comprehensive work on the population
question. We may go further, and assert with the distinguished German
economist, Roscher, that the chief cause of the superiority of a highly
civilised State over lower stages of civilisation is precisely a greater
degree of forethought and self-control in marriage and child-bearing.[4]
Instead of talking about race-suicide, we should do well to observe at
what an appalling rate, even yet, the population is increasing, and we
should note that it is everywhere the poorest and most primitive
countries, and in every country (as in Germany) the poorest regions,
which show the highest birth-rate. On every hand, however, are hopeful
signs. Thus, in Russia, where a very high birth-rate is to some extent
compensated by a very high death-rate--the highest infantile death-rate
in Europe--the birth-rate is falling, and we may anticipate that it will
fall very rapidly with the extension of education and social
enlightenment among the masses. Driven out of Europe, the alarmist falls
back on the "Yellow Peril." But in Japan we find amid confused
variations of the birth-rate and the death-rate nothing to indicate any
alarming expansion of the population, while as to China we are in the
dark. We only know that in China there is a high birth-rate largely
compensated by a very high death-rate. We also know, however, that as
Lowes Dickinson has lately reminded us, "the fundamental attitude of the
Chinese towards life is that of the most modern West,"[5] and we shall
probably find that with the growth of enlightenment the Chinese will
deal with their high birth-rate in a far more radical and thorough
manner than we have ever ventured on.
One last resort the would-be patriotic alarmist seeks when all others
fail. He is good enough to admit that a general decline in the
birth-rate might be beneficial. But, he points out, it affects social
classes unequally. It is initiated, not by the degenerate and the unfit,
whom we could well dispense with, but by the very best classes in the
community, the well-to-do and the educated. One is inclined to remark,
at once, that a social change initiated by its best social classes is
scarcely likely to be pernicious. Where, it may be asked, if not among
the most educated classes, is any process of amelioration to be
initiated? We cannot make the world topsy-turvy to suit the convenience
of topsy-turvy minds. All social movements tend to begin at the top and
to permeate downwards. This has been the case with the decline in the
birth-rate, but it is already well marked among the working classes, and
has only failed to touch the lowest social stratum of all, too
weak-minded and too reckless to be amenable to ordinary social motives.
The rational method of meeting this situation is not a propaganda in
favour of procreation--a truly imbecile propaganda, since it is only
carried out and only likely to be carried out, by the very class which
we wish to sterilise--but by a wise policy of regulative eugenics. We
have to create the motives, and it is not an impossible task, which will
act even upon the weak-minded and reckless lowest social stratum.
These facts have a significance which many of us have failed to realise.
The Great War has brought home the gravity of that significance. It has
been the perpetual refrain of the Pan-Germanists for many years that the
vast and sudden expansion of the German peoples makes necessary a new
movement of the German nations into the world and a new enlargement of
frontiers, in other words, War. It is not only among the Germans, though
among them it may have been more conscious, that a similar cause has led
to the like result. It has ever been so. The expanding nation has always
been a menace to the world and to itself. The arrest of the falling
birth-rate, it cannot be too often repeated, would be the arrest of all
civilisation and of all humanity.
[1] Ralph Thicknesse, _A Year's Journey Through France and Spain_, 1777,
p. 298.
[2] The last twelve words quoted are by Miss Ethel Elderton in an
otherwise sober memoir (_Report on the English Birth-rate_, 1914, p.
237) which shows that the birth control movement has begun, just where
we should expect it to begin, among the better instructed classes.
[3] J.L. Myres, "The Causes of Rise and Fall in the Population of the
Ancient World," Eugenics Review, April, 1915.
[4] Roscher, _Grundlagen der Nationalkonomie_, 23rd ed., 1900, Bk. VI.
[5] G. Lowes Dickinson, _The Civilisation of India, China, and Japan_,
1914, p. 47.
VII
WAR AND DEMOCRACY
When we read our newspapers to-day we are constantly met by ingenious
plans for bringing to an end the activities of Germany after the War.
German military activity, it is universally agreed, must be brought to an
end; Germany will have no further need of a military system save on the
most modest scale. Germany must also be deprived of any colonial empire
and shut out from eastward expansion. That being the case, Germany no
longer needs a fleet, and must be brought back to Bismarck's naval
attitude. Moreover, the industrial activities of Germany must also be
destroyed; the Allied opponents of Germany will henceforth manufacture
for themselves or for one another the goods they have hitherto been so
foolish as to obtain from Germany, and though this may mean cutting
themselves aloof from the country which has hitherto been their own best
customer, that is a sacrifice to be cheerfully borne for the sake of
principle. It is further argued that the world has no need of German
activities in science; they are, it appears, much less valuable than we
had been led to believe, and in any case no self-respecting people would
encourage a science tainted by Kultur. The puzzled reader of these
arguments, overlooking the fallacies they contain, may perhaps sometimes
be tempted to ask: But what are Germans to be allowed to do? The implied
answer is clear: Nothing.
The writers who urge these arguments with such conviction may be
supposed to have an elementary knowledge of the history of the
Germans. We are concerned, that is to say, with a people which has
displayed an irrepressible energy, in one field or another, ever since
the time, more than fifteen hundred years ago, when it excited the
horror of the civilised world by sacking Rome. The same energy was
manifested, a thousand years later, when the Germans again knocked at
the door of Rome and drew away half the world from its allegiance to
the Church. Still more recently, in yet other fields of industry and
commerce and colonisation, these same Germans have displayed their
energy by entering into more or less successful competition with that
"Modern Rome," as some have termed it, which has its seat in the
British Islands. Here is a people,--still youthful as we count age in
our European world, for even the Celts had preceded them by nearly a
thousand years,--which has successfully displayed its explosive or
methodical force in the most diverse fields, military, religious,
economic. From henceforth it is invited, by an allied army of
terrified journalists, to expend these stupendous and irresistible
energies on just Nothing.
We know, of course, what would happen were it possible to subject Germany
to any such process of attempted repression. Whenever an individual or a
mass of individuals is bidden to do nothing, it merely comes about that
the activities aimed at, far from being suppressed, are turned into
precisely the direction most unpleasant for the would-be suppressors.
When in 1870 the Germans tried to "crush" France, the result was the
reverse of that intended. The effects of "crushing" had been even more
startingly reverse, on the other side--and this may furnish us with a
precedent--when Napoleon trampled down Germany. Two centuries ago, after
the brilliant victories of Marlborough, it was proposed to crush
permanently the Militarism of France. But, as Swift wrote to Archbishop
King just before the Peace of Utrecht, "limiting France to a certain
number of ships and troops was, I doubt, not to be compassed." In spite
of the exhaustion of France it was not even attempted. In the present
case, when the war is over it is probable that Germany will still hold
sufficiently great pledges to bargain with in safeguarding her own vital
interests. If it were not so, if it were possible to inflict permanent
injury on Germany, that would be the greatest misfortune that could
happen to us; for it is clear that we should then be faced by a yet more
united and yet more aggressively military Germany than the world has
seen.[1] In Germany itself there is no doubt on this point. Germans are
well aware that German activities cannot be brought to a sudden full
stop, and they are also aware that even among Germany's present enemies
there are those who after the War will be glad to become her friends. Any
doubt or anxiety in the minds of thoughtful Germans is not concerning the
continued existence of German energy in the world, but concerning the
directions in which that energy will be exerted.
What is Germany's greatest danger? That is the subject of a pamphlet by
Rudolf Goldscheid, of Vienna, now published in Switzerland, with a
preface by Professor Forel, as originally written a year earlier,
because it is believed that in the interval its conclusions have been
confirmed by events.[2] Goldscheid is an independent and penetrating
thinker in the economic field, and the author of a book on the
principles of Social Biology (_Höherentwicklung und Menschenökonomie_)
which has been described by an English critic as the ablest defence of
Socialism yet written. By the nature of his studies he is concerned
with problems of human rather than merely national development, but he
ardently desires the welfare of Germany, and is anxious that that
welfare shall be on the soundest and most democratic basis. After the
War, he says, there must necessarily be a tendency to approximate
between the Central Powers and one or other of their present foes.
It is clear (though this point is not discussed) that Italy, whose
presence in the Triple Alliance was artificial, will not return, while
French resentment at German devastation is far too great to be appeased
for a long period to come. There remain, therefore, Russia and England.
After the War German interests and German sympathies must gravitate
either eastwards towards Russia or westwards towards England. Which is
it to be?
There are many reasons why Germany should gravitate towards Russia.
Such a movement was indeed already in active progress before the war,
notwithstanding Russia's alliance with France, and may easily become
yet more active after the war, when it is likely that the bonds between
Russia and France may grow weaker, and when it is possible that the
Germans, with their immense industry, economy and recuperative power,
may prove to be in the best position--unless America cuts in--to
finance Russia. Industrially Russia offers a vast field for German
enterprise which no other country can well snatch away, and German is
already to some extent the commercial language of Russia.[3]
Politically, moreover, a close understanding between the two supreme
autocratic and anti-democratic powers of Europe is of the greatest mutual
benefit, for any democratic movement within the borders of either Power
is highly inconvenient to the other, so that it is to the advantage of
both to stimulate each other in the task of repression.[4] It is this
aspect of the approximation which arouses Goldscheid's alarm. It is
mainly on this ground that he advocates a counter-balancing approximation
between Germany and England which would lay Germany open to the West and
serve to develop her latent democratic tendencies. He admits that at some
points the interests of Germany and England run counter to each other,
but at yet a greater number of points their interests are common. It is
only by the development of these common interests, and the consequent
permeation of Germany by democratic English ideas, that Goldscheid sees
any salvation from Czarism, for that is "Germany's greatest danger," and
at the same time the greatest danger to Europe.
That is Goldscheid's point of view. Our English point of view is
necessarily somewhat different. With our politically democratic
tendencies we see very little difference between Russia and Prussia. As
they are at present constituted, we have no wish to be in very close
political intimacy with either. It so happens, indeed, that, for the
moment, the chances of fellowship in War have brought us into a condition
of almost sentimental sympathy with the Russian people, such as has never
existed among us before. But this sympathy, amply justified, as all who
know Russia agree, is exclusively with the Russian people. It leaves the
Russian Government, the Russian bureaucracy, the Russian political
system, all that Goldscheid concentrates into the term "Czarism,"
severely alone. Our hostility to these may be for the moment latent, but
it is as profound as it ever was. Czarism is even more remote from our
sympathies than Kaiserism. All that has happened is that we cherish the
pious hope that Russia is becoming converted to our own ideas on these
points, although there is not the smallest item of solid fact to support
that hope. Otherwise, Russian oppression of the Finns is just as odious
to us as Prussian oppression of the Poles, and Russian persecution of
Liberals as alien as German persecution of War-prisoners.[5] Our future
policy, in the opinion of many, should, however, be to isolate Germany as
completely as possible from English influence and to cultivate closer
relations with Russia.[6] Such a policy, Goldscheid argues, will defeat
its own ends. The more stringently England holds aloof from Germany the
more anxiously will Germany cultivate good relationships with Russia.
Such relationships, as we know, are easy to cultivate, because they are
much in the interests of both countries which possess so large an extent
of common frontier and so admirably supply each other's needs; it may be
added also that the Russian commercial world is showing no keen desire to
enter into close relations with England. Moreover, after the War, we may
expect a weakening of French influence in Russia, for that influence was
largely based on French gold, and a France no longer able or willing to
finance Russia would no longer possess a strong hold over Russia. A
Russo-German understanding, difficult to prevent in any case, is inimical
to the interests of England, but it would be rendered inevitable by an
attempt on the part of England to isolate Germany.[7]
Such an attempt could not be carried out completely and would break down
on its weakest side, which is the East. So that the way lies open to a
League of the Three Kaisers, the Dreikaiserbündnis which would form a
great island fortress of militarism and reaction amid the surrounding sea
of democracy, able to repress those immense possibilities of progress
within its own walls which would have been liberated by contact with the
vital currents outside.
So long as the War lasts it is the interest of England to strike Germany
and to strike hard. That is here assumed as certain. But when the War
is over, it will no longer be in the interests of England, it will
indeed be directly contrary to those interests, to continue cultivating
hostility, provided, that is, that no rankling wounds are left. The
fatal mistake of Bismarck in annexing Alsace-Lorraine introduced a
poison into the European organism which is working still. But the
Russo-Japanese War produced a more amicable understanding than had
existed before, and the Boer War led to still more intimate
relationships between the belligerents. It may be thought that the
impression in England of German "frightfulness," and in Germany of
English "treachery," may prove ineffaceable. But the Germans have been
considered atrocious and the English perfidious for a long time past,
yet that has not prevented English and Germans fighting side by side at
Waterloo and on many another field; nor has it stood in the way of
German worship of the quintessential Englishman, Shakespeare, nor
English homage to the quintessential German Goethe.
The question of the future relations of England and Germany may,
indeed, be said to lie on a higher plane than that of interest and
policy, vitally urgent as their claims may be. It is the merit of
Goldscheid's little book that--with faith in a future United States of
Europe in which every country would develop its own peculiar aptitudes
freely and harmoniously--he is able to look at the War from that
European standpoint which is so rarely attained in England. He sees
that more is at stake than a mere question of national rivalries; that
democracy is at stake, and the whole future direction of civilisation.
He looks beyond the enmities of the moment, and he knows that, unless
we look beyond them, we not only condemn Europe to the prospect of
unending war, we do more: we ensure the triumph of Reaction and the
destruction of Democracy. "War and Reaction are brethren"; on that
point Goldscheid is very sure, and he foretells and laments the
temporary "demolition of Democracy" in England. We have only too much
reason to believe his prophetic words, for since he wrote we have had
a Coalition Government which is predominantly democratic, Liberal and
Labour, and yet has been fatally impelled towards reaction and
autocracy.[8] That the impulse is really fatal and inevitable we cannot
doubt, for we see exactly the same movement in France, and even in
Russia, where it might seem that reaction has so few triumphs to achieve.
"The blood of the battlefield is the stream that drives the mills of
Reaction." The elementary and fundamental fact that in Democracy the
officers obey the men, while in Militarism the men obey the officers,
is the key to the whole situation. We see at once why all reactionaries
are on the side of war and a military basis of society. The fate of
democracy in Europe hangs on this question of adequate pacification.
"Democratisation and Pacification march side by side."[9] Unless we
realise that fact we are not competent to decide on a sound European
policy. For there is an intimate connection between a country's external
policy and its internal policy. An internal reactionary policy means an
external aggressive policy. To shut out English influence from Germany,
to fortify German Junkerism and Militarism, to drive Germany into the
arms of a yet more reactionary Russia, is to create a perpetual menace,
alike to peace and to democracy, which involves the arrest of
civilisation. However magnanimous the task may seem to some, it is not
only the interest of England, but England's duty to Europe, to take the
initiative in preparing the ground for a clear and good understanding
with Germany. It is, moreover, only through England that France can be
brought into harmonious relations with Germany, and when Russia then
approaches her neighbour it will be in sympathy with her more progressive
Western Allies and not in reactionary response to a reactionary Germany.
It is along such lines as these that amid the confusion of the present we
may catch a glimpse of the Europe of the future.
We have to remember that, as Goldscheid reminds us, this War is making
all of us into citizens of the world. A world-wide outlook can no longer
be reserved merely for philosophers. Some of the old bridges, it is true,
have been washed away, but on every side walls are falling, and the petty
fears and rivalries of European nations begin to look worse than trivial
in the face of greater dangers. As our eyes begin to be opened we see
Europe lying between the nether millstone of Asia and the upper millstone
of America. It is not by constituting themselves a Mutual Suicide Club
that the nations of Europe will avoid that peril.[10] A wise and
far-seeing world-policy can alone avail, and the enemies of to-day will
see themselves compelled, even by the mere logic of events, to join hands
to-morrow lest a worse fate befall them. In so doing they may not only
escape possible destruction, but they will be taking the greatest step
ever taken in the organisation of the world. Which nation is to assume
the initiative in such combined organisation? That remains the fateful
question for Democracy.
[1] Treitschke in his _History_ (Bk. I., Ch. III.) has well described
"the elemental hatred which foreign injury pours into the veins of our
good-natured people, for ever pursued by the question: 'Art thou yet on
thy feet, Germania? Is the day of thy revenge at hand!'"
[2] Rudolf Goldscheid, _Deutschlands Grösste Gefahr_, Institut Orell
Füssli, Zürich, 1916.