When your Committee invited me to deliver the Moncure Conway address
this year, I was even more surprised at their choice of subject than at
their choice of person. For the chosen subject was Peace, and my chief
study, interest, and means of livelihood for some twenty years past has
been War. It seemed to me like inviting a butcher to lecture on
vegetarianism. So I wrote, with regret, to refuse. But your Committee
very generously repeated the invitation, giving me free permission to
take my own line upon the subject; and then I perceived that you did not
ask for the mere celebration of an established doctrine, but were still
prepared to join in pursuit, following the track of reason wherever it
might lead, as became the traditions of this classic building, which I
sometimes think of as reason's last lair. I perceived that what you
demanded was not panegyric, or immutable commonplace, but, above all
things, sincerity. And sincerity is a dog with nose to the ground,
uncertain of the trail, often losing the scent, often harking back, but
possessed by an honest determination to hunt down the truth, if by any
means it can be caught.
It is one of my many regrets for wasted opportunity that I never heard
Moncure Conway; but, with a view to this address, I have lately read a
good deal of his writings. Especially I have read the _Autobiography_,
an attractive record and commentary on the intellectual history of
rapidly-changing years, most of which I remember. On the question of
peace Moncure Conway was uncompromising--very nearly uncompromising.
Many Americans feel taller when they think of Lexington and the shot
that echoed round the world. Moncure Conway only saw lynchers in the
champions of freedom who flung the tea-chests into the sea; and in the
War of Independence he saw nothing but St. George Washington spearing a
George the Third dragon.[8] He quotes with approval the saying of Quaker
Mifflin to Washington: "General, the worst peace is better than the best
war."[9] Many Americans regard the Civil War between North and South
with admiration as a stupendous contest either for freedom and unity, or
for self-government and good manners. Moncure Conway was strongly and
consistently opposed to it. The question of slavery did not affect his
opposition. He thought few men had wrought so much evil as John Brown of
Harper's Ferry, whose soul marched with the Northern Armies.[10] "I
hated violence more than slavery," he wrote, "and much as I disliked
President Buchanan, I thought him right in declining to coerce the
seceding States."[11] Just before the war began, he wrote in a famous
pamphlet: "War is always wrong; it is because the victories of Peace
require so much more courage than those of war that they are rarely
won."[12] "I see in the Union War," he wrote, "a great catastrophe."
"Alas! the promises of the sword are always broken--always." And in the
concluding pages of his _Autobiography_, as though uttering his final
message to the world, he wrote:
"There can arise no important literature, nor art, nor real
freedom and happiness, among any people until they feel
their uniform a livery, and see in every battlefield an inglorious
arena of human degradation.... The only cause that can
uplift the genius of a people as the anti-slavery cause did in
America is the war against war."
For the very last words of his _Autobiography_ he wrote:
"And now, at the end of my work, I offer yet a new plan
for ending war--namely, that the friends of peace and justice
shall insist on a demand that every declaration of war shall be
regarded as a sentence of death by one people on another; and
shall be made only after a full and formal judicial inquiry and
trial, at which the accused people shall be fairly represented.... The
meanest prisoner cannot be executed without a trial. A
declaration of war is the most terrible of sentences: it sentences
a people to be slain and mutilated, their women to be widowed,
their children orphaned, their cities burned, their commerce
destroyed. The real motives of every declaration of war are
unavowed and unavowable. Let them be dragged into the
light! No war would ever occur after a fair judicial trial by a
tribunal in any country open to its citizens.
"Implore peace, O my reader, from whom I now part. Implore
peace, not of deified thunderclouds, but of every man,
woman, or child thou shalt meet. Do not merely offer the
prayer, 'Give peace in our time,' but do thy part to answer it!
Then, at least, though the world be at strife, there shall be
peace in thee."[13]
That sounds uncompromising. We cannot doubt that one of the main motives
of Conway's life was "War against War." He suffered for peace; he lost
friends and influence for peace; we may almost say he was exiled for
peace. Those are the marks of sincerity. He, if anyone, we might
suppose, was a "Peace-at-any-price man." But let us remember one passage
in an address delivered only a few months before his death. In that
address, on William Penn, given in April 1907 (he died in the following
November), speaking of Mr. Carnegie's proposal for a compulsory Court of
International Arbitration, he said:
"In order to prevent swift attacks of one nation on another without
notice, or outrages on weak and helpless tribes, there shall be selected
from the armaments of the world a combination armament to act as the
international police.... Even if in the last resort there were needed
such united force of mankind to prevent any one nation from breaking the
peace in which the interests of all nations are involved, that would not
be an act of war, but civilisation's self-defence. Self-defence is not
war, although the phrase is often used to disguise aggression."[14]
Speaking with all respect for a distinguished man's memory, I disagree
with every word of those sentences. An international police, directed by
the combined Powers, would almost certainly develop into a tremendous
engine of injustice and oppression. The Holy Alliance after Napoleon's
overthrow aimed at an international police, and we want no more Holy
Alliances. I would not trust a single government in the world to enter
into such a combination. I would rather trust Satan to combine with sin.
Think of the fate of Egypt from Arabi's time up to the present, or of
Turkey controlled by the Powers, or of Persia and Morocco to-day! But
the point to notice is that you cannot alter things by altering names.
The united force of civilisation brought to bear upon any nation,
however guilty, would be an act of war, however much you called it
international police. Civilisation's self-defence would be war. Every
form of self-defence by violence, whether it disguises aggression or
not, is war. For many generations every war has been excused as
self-defence of one kind or another. I can hardly imagine a modern war
that would not be excused by both sides as defensive. By making these
admissions--by maintaining that self-defence is not war--Moncure
Conway gives away the whole case of the "peace-at-any-price man," He
comes down from the ideal positions of the early Quakers, the modern
Tolstoyans, and the Salvation Army. They preach non-resistance to evil
consistently. Like all extremists who have no reservations, but will
trust to their principle though it slay them, they have gained a certain
glow, a fervour of life, which shrivels up our ordinary compromises and
political considerations. But by advocating civilisation's self-defence
in the form of a combined international armament, Moncure Conway
abandoned that vantage ground. He became sensible, arguable, uncertain,
submitting himself to the balances of reason and expediency like the
rest of us.
A certain glow, a fervour of life--those are signs that always
distinguish extremists--men and women who are willing literally to die
for their cause. I did not find those signs at the Hague Peace
Conference, when I was sent there in 1907 as being a war correspondent.
Such an assembly ought to have marked an immense advance in human
history. It was the sort of thing that last-century poets dreamed of as
the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World. It surpassed Prince
Albert's vision of an eternity of International Exhibitions. One would
have expected such an occasion to be heralded by Schiller's _Ode to Joy_
sounding through the triumph of the Choral Symphony. Long and dubious
has been the music's struggle with pain, but at last, in great
simplicity, the voices of the men give out the immortal theme, and the
whole universe joins in harmony with a thunder of exultation:
"Seid umschlungen, Millionen,
Diesen Kuss der ganzen Welt!"
Surely at the Hague Conference, in the fulfilment of time, peace had
come on earth and goodwill among men. Here once more would sound the
song that the morning stars sang together, when all the sons of God
shouted for joy.
As loaders in that celestial chorus, I found about 400 frock-coated,
top-hatted gentlemen from various parts of the world--elderly
diplomatists, ambassadors inured to the stifling atmosphere of courts,
Foreign Ministers who had served their time of intrigue, professors who
worshipped law, worthy officials primed with a stock of phrases about
"the noble sentiments of justice and humanity," but reared in the
deadening circle of uniforms, decorations, and insincere courtesy,
having no more knowledge of the people's desires than of the people's
bacon, and instructed to maintain the cause of peace chiefly by
safeguarding their country's military interests. An atmosphere of
suspicion and secrecy surrounded them, more dense than the fog of war.
For their president they elected an ambassador who had grown old in the
service of three Tsars, and now represented a tyrant who refused the
first principles of peace to his own people, and repressed the struggle
for freedom by methods of barbarism such as no general could use against
a belligerent in the stress of war without incurring the execration of
mankind.
With commendable industry, those delegates at this Second Peace
Conference devoted themselves to careful preparations for the next war,
especially for the next naval war. They appeared to me like two farmers
making arrangements to abstain from burning each other's hay-ricks.
"Look here," says one, "this rick-burning's a dangerous and expensive
job. Let us give up wax vestas, and stick to safety matches." "Done!"
says the other. "Now mind! Only safety matches in future!" and they part
with mutual satisfaction, conscious of thrift and Christian forbearance.
Or, again, I thought the situation might be expressed in the form of a
fable, how the Fox of the Conference said to the Rabbit of Peace, "With
what sauce, Brer Rabbit, would you like to be eaten?" "Please, Mr. Fox,
I don't want to be eaten at all," said the Rabbit "Now," answered the
Fox, "you are gettin' away from the pint."
Something, no doubt, has been gained. Even the jealous diplomatists and
cautious lawyers at The Hague have secured something. Mankind had
gradually learnt that certain forms of horror were too horrible for
average civilisation, and The Hague confirmed man's veto, in some
particulars. Laying mines at sea and the destruction of private property
at sea were not forbidden, nor were the rights of belligerents extended
to subject races or rebels. Men and women are still exposed to every
kind of torture and brutality, provided the brutalities are practised by
their own superior government. But it is something, certainly, to have
gained a permanent Court of Arbitration for the trial of disputed points
between nations. The points are at present minor, it is true. Questions
affecting honour, vital interests, and independence are expressly
excluded. But the habit of referring any question at all to arbitration
is a gain, if only we could trust the members of the Court. So long as
those members are appointed by the present governments of Europe, there
is danger of the Court becoming merely another engine in the hands of
despotism, as was proved by the conduct of the Savarkar case at The
Hague in February 1911. But the field of reference will grow
imperceptibly, and we have had President Taft protesting that he desires
an Arbitration Treaty with England from which even questions of honour,
vital interests, and independence shall not be excluded.[15] Out of the
eater cometh forth meat. Even a blood-stained Tsar's proposals for peace
have not been entirely without effect. But in the midst of the warring
diplomatists at The Hague one could discover none of that glow, that
fervour of devotion to peace, which distinguished the early Quakers and
is still felt among a few fine enthusiasts. The first duty imposed upon
every representative at The Hague was to get everyone to do as much as
possible for peace, except himself. It is not so that the world is
moved.
Neither in the representatives nor in their governments can we find any
principle or passionate desire for peace. The emperors, kings, and men
of wealth, birth, and leisure who impudently claim the right of deciding
questions of peace and war in all nations, display no objection to war,
provided it looks profitable. Provided it looks profitable--what a vista
of devilry those words call up! What a theme for satire! But also, to
some extent, and in the present day, what ground for hope!
They bring us suddenly face to face with a little book which will leave
its mark, not only on the mind, but, perhaps, on the actual and external
history of man. In my opinion, the next Nobel prize should be shared
equally between Mr. J.A. Hobson and Mr. Lane, the younger writer who
calls himself Norman Angell. Between them they have completely analysed
the motives, the pretexts, the hypocrisies, the deceptions, the
corruptions, and the fallacies of modern war.[16] When we say that the
men who impudently claim the control of foreign politics among the
nations display no objection to war, provided it looks profitable, we
enter at once the sphere of that "Great Illusion" which is the
distinguishing theme of Norman Angell's pamphlet.
His main contention is that in modern times, owing to the
interdependence of nations, especially in trade, the readiness of
communication, the conduct of commerce and finance almost entirely by
the exchange of bills and cheques, the complicated banking relations,
and the solidarity of credit in all great capitals, so that if London
credit is shaken the finance of Berlin, Paris, St. Petersburg, and New
York feels the shock almost equally--for all these reasons modern war
cannot be profitable even to the victorious Power.
To advocates of peace, here comes a gleam of hope at last--perhaps the
strongest gleam that has reached us yet. Upon the kings of the earth,
sitting, as Milton said, with awful eye; upon diplomatists, ambassadors,
Foreign Office officials, courtiers, clergy, and the governing class in
general, appeals to pity, mercy, humanity, religion, or reason have had
no effect whatever. If you think I speak too strongly, look around you.
Name within the last century any ruler or minister who has been guided
by humanity or religion in the question of peace or war. Name any ruler
who has abstained from war because force is no argument. With the
possible exception of Mr. Gladstone in the cases of the _Alabama_ and
Majuba Hill, I can think of none. Against that one possible exception
place all the wars of a century past, including three that were among
the most terrible in human history--the Napoleonic war, the
Franco-German, and the Russo-Japanese. And as to the sweet influences of
Christianity, remember the Russian Archbishops, how they blessed the
sacred Icons that were to lead the Russian peasants to the slaughter of
Japanese peasants. Remember our Archbishop of Canterbury in February
1911 deeply regretting that a previous engagement prevented him from
passing on the blessing of the Apostles to the battleship _Thunderer_.
Remember how he sent his wife as a substitute to occupy the Apostolic
position in the hope that the hand which rocks the cradle might prove
equally efficacious.
Against the pugnacity and courage which urge our rulers to send other
people to die for them, the claims of humanity, reason, and religion
have no effect. The new hope is that self-interest may succeed where the
motives that act upon most decent people almost invariably fail. Norman
Angell's appeal goes straight to the pocket, and his choice of that
objective inspires hope. If rulers can no longer plead that by war they
are advancing the material interests of their State, if it is recognised
that even a victorious war involves as great disaster as defeat, or even
greater (and it is remarkable that, in one of his latest speeches,
Moltke maintained that, next to defeat, the greatest disaster which
could befall any State was victory)--if it can be shown that, in a war
between great nations, trade does not follow the flag, but moves rapidly
in the other direction, then one of the pretexts of our rulers will be
removed, one veil of hypocrisy will be stripped off. To that extent the
hope of peace will have grown brighter, and that extent is large.
On the whole, it is the brightest hope that has lately risen--or the
brightest but one which we will speak of later on. I would only hint at
two considerations which may obscure it. Granted that in modern times
war-power or victory does not give prosperity; that the invader cannot
destroy or capture the enemy's trade; that his own finance is equally
disturbed; and that the most enormous indemnity can add nothing to the
victorious nation's actual wealth--granted all this, nevertheless, the
warlike, though vicarious, heroism of our rulers might not on this
account be restrained. In many, if not most, recent wars the object has
not been national aggrandisement, or even national commerce, but private
gain. We have but to think of the South African War, so cleverly
engineered in the gold-mining interest, or of the Russo-Japanese war,
where so many thousands died for the Russian aristocracy's timber
concessions on the Yalu. Or, as permanent incitements to warfare, we may
think of all the manufacturers of armaments, the enormous companies that
fatten on blood and iron, the contractors, purveyors, horse-breeders,
tailors, advertisers, army-coaches, landowners, and well-to-do families
whose wealth, livelihood, or position depends mainly upon the
continuance of warlike preparations, and whose personal interests are
enormously increased by actual war. When a nation is pouring out its
wealth at the rate of £2,000,000 or even £10,000,000 a week, as in the
future it may well do, much of it will run away to waste, but most of it
will stick to one finger or another; and the dirtier the finger the more
will stick. It seems silly, it seems almost incredible, that, only a few
generations ago, the peoples of Europe were engaged in killing each
other as fast as possible over a question of dynasty--whether this or
that poor forked radish of a mortal should be called King of Spain or
King of France. But in our own days men kill each other for dynasties of
cash--for wealthy firms and intermarried families. Nations fight that
private companies may show a higher percentage on dividends. It is
silly; it is almost incredible. But to shareholders and speculators
instigated by these motives Norman Angell's appeal is futile. Even a
victorious war may spell disaster to the nation; but even defeat spells
cash for them.
Holland was in February 1911 compelled to buy twenty-four inferior big
guns from Krupp, without contract or competition, for the defence of her
Javanese possessions, which no one thinks of attacking. Do you suppose
that Krupp's Company regards war as disadvantageous, or circulates
Norman Angell's book for a new gospel? "What plunder!" cried Blücher,
looking over London from St. Paul's. Nowadays he would not wait to
plunder a foreign nation; he would invest in a Dreadnought company, and
plunder his own. Our naval expenditure in 1911-12 amounted to
£46,000,000; our army expenditure to nearly £28,000,000--a total of
£73,650,000 for what is called defence! Ten years ago we were in the
midst of a most expensive war. Nevertheless, in ten years the annual
expenditure upon armaments has increased by £14,000,000--far more than
enough to double our Old Age Pensions. Within thirty years the naval
estimates have more than quadrupled. Are we to suppose that no one grows
fat on the people's money? _Quidquid delirant reges_. The kings of the
earth stood up and violently raged together; their subjects died. But
now the kings of the earth are raging financiers with a shrewd eye to
business, and their subjects starve to pay them. We used to be told that
the man who paid the piper called the tune. Do the people call the tune
of peace or war? Not at all. The ruling classes both call the tune and
pocket the pay.
There is one other point that may obscure the hope arising from Norman
Angell's book. His main contention concerns wars between great Powers,
nearly equally matched--Powers of high civilisation, with elaborate
systems of credit and complicated interdependence of trade. But most
recent wars have been attacks--defensive attacks, of course--upon small,
powerless, and semi-civilised nations by the great Powers. Under the
pretext of extending law and order, justice, peace, good government,
and the blessings of the Christian faith, a great Power attacks a small
and half-organised people with the object of taking up the White Man's
Burden, capturing markets, contracting for railways, and extending
territory. To wars of this kind, I think, Norman Angell's comforting
theory does not apply--the great illusion does not come in. A strong
Power may conquer Morocco, or Persia, or seize Bosnia, or enslave
Finland, or penetrate Tibet, or maintain its hold on India, or occupy
Egypt, or even destroy the Dutch Republics of South Africa, without
disorganising its own commerce or raising a panic on its own credit.
Most actual fighting has lately been of this character. It aims at the
suppression of freedom in small or unarmed nationalities, the absorption
of independent countries into great empires. It is the modern
counterpart of the slave-trade. It is supported by similar arguments,
and may be quite lucrative, as the slave-trade was.
Actual warfare generally takes this form now, but behind it one may
always feel the latent or diplomatic warfare that consists in the
calculation of armaments. A great Power says: "How much of Persia,
Turkey, China, or Morocco do I dare to swallow? Germany, Russia, France,
Japan, England, or Spain (as the case may be) will not like it if I
swallow much. But what force could she bring against me, if it came to
extremities, and what force could I set against hers?" Then the Powers
set to counting up army corps and Dreadnoughts. In Dreadnoughts they
seldom get their addition-sums right, but they do their poor best,
strike a balance, and declare that a satisfactory agreement has been
come to. This latent war is expensive, but cheaper than real war--and it
is not bloody; it does not shock credit, though it weakens it; it does
not ruin commerce, though it hampers it. The drain upon the nations is
exhausting, but it does not kill men so horribly, and our rulers do not
feel it; for the people pay, and the concession-hunters, the
contractors, the company directors, and suchlike people with whom our
rulers chiefly associate, grow very fat.
If, then, Norman Angell's hopeful theory applies only partially to these
common wars of Imperial aggrandisement and the perpetual diplomatic war
by comparison of armaments, to what may we look for hope? Lord Rosebery
would be the last person to whom one would look for hope in general. His
hope is too like despair for prudence to smother. Yet, in his speech at
the Press banquet during the Imperial Conference of 1909, when he spoke
of our modern civilisation "rattling into barbarism," he gave a hint of
the movement to which alone I am inclined to trust. "I can only
foresee," he exclaimed, "the working-classes of Europe uniting in a
great federation to cry: 'We will have no more of this madness and
foolery, which is grinding us to powder!'" The words may not have been
entirely sincere--something had to be said for the Liberal Press tables,
which cheered while the Imperialists sat glum; but there, I believe,
lies the ultimate and only possible chance of hope. We must
revolutionise our Governments; we must recognise the abject folly of
allowing these vital questions of peace, war, and armaments to be
decided according to the caprice or advantage of a single man, a clique
of courtiers, a gang of adventurers, or the Cabal of a Cabinet formed
from the very classes which have most to gain and least to lose, whether
from actual war or the competition in armaments. Over this Executive,
whether it is called Emperor, King, Court, or Cabinet, the people of the
nation has no control--or nothing like adequate control--in foreign
affairs and questions of war. In England in the year 1910 not a single
hour was allowed for Foreign Office debate in the Commons. In no country
of Europe have the men and women of the State a real voice in a matter
which touches every man and every woman so closely as war touches
them--even distant war, but far more the kind of war that devastates the
larder, sweeps out the drawing-room, encamps in the back garden, and at
any moment may reduce the family by half.[17] One remembers that picture
in Carlyle, how thirty souls from the British village of Dumdrudge are
brought face to face with thirty souls from a French Dumdrudge, after
infinite effort. The word "Fire!" is given, and they blow the souls out
of one another:
"Had these men any quarrel?" asks the Sartor. "Busy as
the Devil is, not the smallest! They lived far enough apart--were
the entirest strangers; nay, in so wide a Universe there
was even, unconsciously, by Commerce, some mutual helpfulness
between them. How then? Simpleton! their Governors had
fallen out; and, instead of shooting one another, had the
cunning to make these poor blockheads shoot."
Slowly and dimly the Dumdrudges of the world--the peasants and
artisans, the working people, the people who have most right to
count--are beginning to recognise the absurdity of paying and dying for
wars of which they know nothing, and in the quarrels of kings and
ministers for whom they have neither reverence nor love. "What is the
British Empire to me," I heard a Whitechapel man say, "when I have to
open the window before I get room to put on my trousers?" A section of
the country was opposed to the Crimean War; a far larger section was
opposed to the Boer War. Both were ridiculed, persecuted, and
maltreated; but nearly everyone now admits that both were right. In the
next unjust or unreasonable war the peace party will be stronger still.
Something has thus been gained; but the greatest gain ever yet won for
the cause of peace was the refusal of the Catalonian reservists to serve
in the war against the Riff mountaineers of Morocco in July 1909. "Risk
our lives and the subsistence of our little families to secure dividends
for shareholders in mining concessions illegally inveigled from a
semi-savage chieftain? Never! We will raise hell rather, and die in
revolution upon our native streets." So Barcelona flared to heaven, and
for nearly a week the people held the vast city. I have seen many noble,
as well as many terrible, events, but none more noble or of finer
promise for mankind than the sudden uprising of the Catalan working
people against a dastardly and inglorious war, waged for the benefit of
a few speculators in Paris and Madrid. Ferrer had no direct part in that
rising; his only part lay in sowing the seed of freedom by his writings.
It was a pity he had no other part. He lost an opportunity such as comes
in few men's lives--and he was executed just the same.[18]
The event was small and brief, but it was one of the most significant in
modern times. If the working classes refuse to fight, what will the
kings, ministers, speculators, and contractors do? Will they go out to
fight each other? Then, indeed, warfare would become a blessing
undisguised, and we could freely join the poet in calling carnage God's
daughter. When I was a child I drew up a scheme for a vast British army
recruited from our lunatic asylums. With lunatic soldiers, as I
explained to my mother, the heavier our losses, the greater would be our
gain. It seems to me still a promising idea. But an army recruited from
kings, lords, Cabinet Ministers, Members of Parliament, speculators,
contractors, and officials--the people who are the primary originators
of our wars--would have even greater advantages, and the losses in
battle would be balanced by still greater compensations.
The Barcelona rising was, indeed, full of promise. It marked the gradual
approach of a time when the working-people, who always supply most of
the men to be killed in war, will refuse to fight for the ruling
classes, as they would now refuse to fight for dynasties. If they refuse
to fight in the ordinary Government wars, either war will cease, or it
will rise to the higher stage of war between class and class. It will
become either civil war--the most terrible and difficult, but the finest
kind of war, because some principle of the highest value must be at
stake before civil war can arise; or it will become a combined war of
the classes in various countries between whom there is a feeling of
sympathy and common interest. That would take the form of a civil war
extended throughout Europe, and perhaps America and the highly-developed
parts of Asia. The allied forces in the various countries would then
strike where the need was greatest, the French or English army corps of
working-men going to the assistance of Russian or German working-men
against the forces of despotism or capital. But a social war on that
scale, however desirable, is like the Spanish fleet in the _Critic_--it
is not yet in sight. The growing perfection of modern arms gives too
enormous an advantage to established forces. The movement is much more
likely to take the Barcelona form of refusal to fight; and if the
peoples of Europe could combine in that determination, the effect would
be irresistible. This international movement is, in fact, very slowly,
growing. The telegraph, the railway, cheap tickets, Cook's tours, the
power of reading, and even the peculiar language taught as French in our
schools, combine to wear away the hostility of peoples. The "beastly
foreigner" is almost extinct. The man who has been for a week in
Germany, or for a trip to lovely Lucerne, feels a reflected glory in
saying those foreigners are not so bad. There was a fine old song with a
refrain, "He's a good 'un when you know him, but you've got to know him
first." Well, we are getting to know the foreigner whom we once called
"beastly."
Ultimately the best, the only hope for peace lies in the determination
of the peoples not to do anything so silly as to settle the quarrels of
their rulers by killing each other. But then come the deeper questions:
Do people love peace? Do they hate war? Would the total abolition of war
be a good thing for the world? After a lengthy period of peace there
usually arises a craving for battle. Nearly fifty years of peace
followed the defeat of the Persians in Greece, and at the end of that
time, just before the Peloponnesian War, which was to bring ruin on the
country, Thucydides tells us that all Greece, being ignorant of the
realities of war, stood a-tiptoe with excitement. It was the same in
England just before our disastrous South African War, when readers of
Kipling glutted themselves with imaginary slaughter, and Henley cried to
our country that her whelps wanted blooding. In England this martial
spirit was more violent than in Greece, because, when war actually came,
the Greeks were themselves exposed to all its horrors and sufferings,
but in England the bloodthirsty mind could enjoy the conflict in a
suburban train with a half-penny paper. As in bull-fights or
gladiatorial shows, the spectators watched the expensive but
entertaining scene of blood and death from a safe and comfortable
distance. They gave the cash and let the credit go; they thoroughly
appreciated the rumble of a distant drum. "Blood! blood!" they cried.
"Give us more blood to make our own blood circulate more agreeably under
our unbroken skins!" Christianity joined in the cry through the mouths
of its best accredited representatives. As at the Crucifixion it is
written, "On that day Herod and Pilate were friends," so on the outbreak
of a singularly unjust, avaricious, and cruel war, the Christian
Churches of England displayed for the first and last time some signs of
unity. Canterbury and Armagh kissed each other, and the City Temple
applauded the embraces of unrighteousness and war. Dean Farrar of
Canterbury, concluding his glorification of the hell which I then saw
enacted in South Africa, quoted with heartfelt approval the Archbishop
of Armagh's poem:--
"And, as I note how nobly natures form
Under the war's red rain, I deem it true
That He who made the earthquake and the storm
Perhaps makes battles too.
Thus as the heaven's many-coloured flames
At sunset are but dust in rich disguise,
The ascending earthquake-dust of battle frames
God's picture in the skies."[19]
We are no longer compelled to regard the dogmas of Christianity or the
opinions of eminent Christians as authoritative. The appeal to
Christianity, which used to be regarded as decisive in favour of peace,
is no longer decisive one way or other. Christ's own teaching is
submitted to critical examination like any other teacher's, and I should
be the last to decry the representatives of the Prince of Peace for
acclaiming the virtues of war, if they think their Master was mistaken.
When bishops and deans and leading Nonconformists thirst for war's red
rain, we must take account of their craving as part of man's nature. We
must remember also that war has popular elements sometimes overlooked in
its general horror. It is believed that in the American Civil War nearly
a million men lost their lives; but against this loss we must set the
peculiar longevity with which the survivors have been endowed, and the
increasing number of heroes who enjoyed the State's reward for their
services of fifty years before. Even during the South African War
certain compensations were found. A charitable lady went on a visit of
condolence to a poor woman whose husband's name had just appeared in the
list of the killed at Spion Kop. "Ah, Mum," exclaimed the widow with
feeling, "you don't know how many happy homes this war has made!"
Before we absolutely condemn war we must take account of these
religious, medicinal, and domestic considerations. On the side of peace
I think it is of little avail to plead the horrors and unreason of war.
We all know how horrible and silly it is for two countries to pretend to
settle a dispute by ordering large numbers of innocent men to kill each
other. If horrors would stop it, anyone who has known war could a tale
unfold surpassing all that the ghost of Hamlet's father had seen in
hell. There are sights on a battlefield under shell-fire, and in a
country devastated by troops, so horrible that even war correspondents
have silently agreed to leave them undescribed. But the truth is that
people who are not present in war enjoy the horror. That is what they
like reading about in their back-gardens, clubs, and city offices. The
more you talk of the horrors of war the more warlike they become, and I
have met no one quite so bloodthirsty as the warrior of peace. Nor is it
any good pleading for reason when about ninety-nine per cent. of every
man's motives are not reasonable, but spring from passion, taste, or
interest. The appeal even to expense falls flat in a country like ours,
where about 200,000 horses, valued at £12,000,000, and maintained at a
charge of £8,000,000 a year, are kept entirely for the pursuit of foxes,
which are preserved alive at great cost in order that they may be
pursued to death.[20] Protests against the horrors, the unreason, and
even the expense of war have hitherto had very small effect.
The real argument in favour of war welcomes horror, defies reason, and
disregards expense. There are certain military qualities and aspects of
life, it says, that are worth preserving at the cost of all the horror,
unreason, and waste of war. The stern military character, brave but
tender, is a type of human nature for which we cannot pay too much.
Consider physical courage alone, how valuable it is, and how rare. With
what speed the citizen runs at the first glimpse of danger! With what
pleasure or shamefaced cowardice citizens look on while women are being
violently and indecently assaulted when attempting to vindicate their
political rights! How gladly everyone shouts with the largest crowd!
Consider how many noble actions men leave undone through fear of being
hurt or killed. "Dogs! would you live for ever?" cried Frederick the
Great to his soldiers, in defeat; and most of us would certainly answer:
"Yes, we would, if you please!" Only through war, or the training for
war, says the argument, can this loathly cowardice be kept in check.
Only by war can the spirit be maintained that redeems the world from
sinking into a Pigs' Paradise. Only in the expectation or reality of war
can life be kept sweet, strong, and at its height. War is life in
extremes; it is worth preserving even for its discipline and training.
"Manhood training [said Mr. Garvin, editor of the _Observer_,
in the issue of January 22, 1911]--manhood training has become
the basis of public life, not only in every great European
State, but in young democratic countries, like Australia and
South Africa. 'One vote, one rifle,' says ex-President Steyn.... As
a means of developing the physical efficiency of whole
nations, of increasing their patriotic cohesion, of implanting in
individuals the sense of political reality and responsibility, no
substitute for manhood training has yet been discovered."
This kind of argument implies despair of perpetual, or even of
long-continued, peace. It is true that those who advocate a national
training of all our manhood for war generally urge upon us that it is
the best security for peace. In the same way, peaceful Anarchists might
plead that they maintained several enormous bomb-factories in order to
impress upon rulers the advantages of freedom. But if peace were the
real and only object of Conscription, and if Conscription precluded the
probability of war, military training, after some years, would almost
certainly decline, and its supposed advantages would be lost. When you
breed game-cocks, they will fight; but if you forbid cock-fighting, the
breed will decline. You cannot have training for war without the
expectation of war. For many years I was a strong advocate of national
service, even though I knew it would never be adopted in this country
until we had seen the realities of war in our very midst, and had sat in
morning trains to the City stopped by the enemy's batteries outside
Liverpool Street and London Bridge. I also foresaw the extreme
difficulty of enforcing military training upon Quakers, the Salvation
Army, the Peace Society, and many Nonconformists and Rationalists.
Nevertheless, twenty-five years ago I advocated Conscription in a
carefully-reasoned article that appeared in Mr. Stead's _Pall Mall
Gazette_. It was received with a howl of rage and derision by both
parties in the State, and by all newspapers that noticed it at all. It
is significant--perhaps terribly significant--that it would not be
received with derision now, but that nearly the whole of one party and
the great majority of newspapers would welcome it only too gladly.
It seemed to me at that time--and it seems to me still--one of the most
horrible things in modern British life that we bribe the unemployed,
that we compel them by fear of starvation, to do our killing and dying
for us. I have passed more men into the army, probably, than any
recruiting sergeant, and I have never known a man who wished to recruit
unless he was unemployed. The Recruiting Report issued by the War Office
for 1911 shows ninety per cent. of the recruits "out of work." I should
have put the percentage still higher. But when you next see a full
company of a hundred soldiers, and reflect that ninety of them have been
persuaded to kill and die for you simply through fear of starvation
under our country's social system--I say, whether you seek peace or
admire war, the thought is horrible; it is hardly to be endured.
To wipe out this hideous shame, to put ourselves all in one boat, and,
if war is licensed murder, at all events to share the murder that we
license, and not to starve the poor into criminals for our own relief,
perhaps Conscription would not be too high a price to pay. Other
advantages are more obvious--the physical advantage of two years'
regular food and healthy air and exercise for rich and poor alike, the
social advantage of the mixture of all classes in the ranks, the moral
advantage of giving the effeminate sons of luxury a stern and bitter
time. For all this we would willingly pay a very heavy price. I would
pay almost any price.
But should we pay the price of compulsion? That is the only price that
makes me hesitate. I used to cherish a frail belief in discipline and
obedience to authority and the State. My belief in discipline is still
alive--discipline in the sense of entire mutual confidence between
comrades fighting for the same cause; but I have come to regard
obedience to external authority as one of the most dangerous virtues. I
doubt if any possible advantage could balance an increase of that
danger; and every form of military life is almost certain to increase
it. To me the chief peril of our time is the growing power of the State,
its growing interference in personal opinion and personal life, the
intrusion of an inhuman being called an expert or official into the most
intimate, inexplicable, and changing affairs of our lives and souls, and
the arrogant social legislation of a secret and self-appointed Cabal or
Cabinet, which refuses even to consult the wishes of that half of the
population which social restrictions touch most nearly. If general
military service would tend to increase respect and obedience to
external authority of this kind, it might be too big a price to pay for
all its other advantages. And I do think it would tend to increase that
abhorrent virtue of indiscriminate obedience. Put a man in uniform, and
ten to one he will shoot his mother, if you order him. Yet the shame of
our present enlistment by hunger is so overwhelming that I confess I
still hesitate between the two systems, if we must assume that the
continuance of war is inevitable, or to be desired.
Is it inevitable? Is it to be desired? If it were dying out in the
world, should we make efforts to preserve war artificially, as we
preserve sport, which would die out unless we maintained it at great
expense? The sportsman is an amateur butcher--a butcher for love. Ought
we to maintain soldiers for love--for fear of losing the advantages of
war? Those advantages are thought considerable. War has inspired much
art and much literature. It is the background or foreground in nearly
all history; it sheds a gleam of uniforms and romance upon a drab world;
it delivers us from the horrors of peace--the softness, the monotony,
the sensual corruption, the enfeebling relaxation. No one desires a
population slack of nerve, soft of body, cruel through fear of pain, and
incapable of endurance or high endeavour.
"It is a calumny on men," said Carlyle, "to say they are
roused to heroic action by ease, hope of pleasure, recompense
in this world or the next. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom,
death, are the allurements that act on the heart of man."[21]
At times war appears as a kind of Last Judgment, sentencing folly and
sensuality to hell. The shame of France was consumed by the fire of
1870, and her true genius was restored. Abominable as the Boer War was,
the mind of England was less pestilential after it than before. Passion
purifies, and surely there can be no passion stronger than one which
drives you to kill or die.
The trouble is that, in modern wars, passion does not drive _you_, but
you drive someone else, who probably feels no passion at all. It is
thought a reproach against an unwarlike soldier that "he has never seen
a shot fired in anger." But in these days he might have been through
many battles without seeing a shot fired in anger. Except in the
Balkans, few fire in anger now. What passion can an unemployed workman
feel when he is firing at an invisible unemployed workman or semi-savage
in the interest of a mining concession? Nor is it true that war in these
days encourages eugenics by promoting the survival of the fittest. On
the contrary, the fittest, the bravest, and the biggest are the most
likely to be killed. The smallest, the cowards, the men who get behind
stones and stick there, will probably survive. And as to the dangers of
effeminate peace, it is only the very small circle of the rich, the
overfed, the over-educated, and the over-sensitive who are exposed to
them. There is no present fear of the working classes becoming too soft.
The molten iron, the flaming mine, the whirling machine, the engulfing
sea, and hunger always at the door take care of that. Every working man
lives in perpetual danger. Compared to him, and compared to any woman in
childbirth, a soldier is secure, even under fire. The daily peril, the
daily toil, the fear for the daily bread harden most working men and
women enough, and for that very reason we should welcome the fine
suggestion of Professor William James--his last great service--that the
rich and highly educated should pass through a conscription of labour
side by side with the working classes, who would heartily enjoy the
sight of young dukes, capitalists, barristers, and curates toiling in
the stokeholes, coal-mines, factories, and fishing-fleets, to the
incalculable advantage of their souls and bodies.
So the balance swings this way and that, and neither scale will
definitely settle down. It is very likely that the bias of temperament
makes us incapable of decision. What is called the personal equation
holds the two scales of our minds painfully equal, and while we meditate
perpetual peace we suddenly hear the trumpet blowing. In many of us a
primitive instinct survives which blinds and warps the reason, and calls
us like a bugle to the silly and atrocious field. For the immediate
future, I can only hope, as I confidently believe, that the present age
of capitalist war will pass, as the age of dynastic war has passed, for
ever into the inferno where slavery and religious persecution now lie
burning, though they seemed so natural and strong. I think it will not
much longer be possible to fool the working classes into wars for
concessions or the extension of empires. I believe that already the
peoples of the greatest countries are awakening to the folly of
entrusting their foreign politics, involving questions of peace and war,
to the guidance of rulers, Ministers, and diplomatists who serve the
interests of their own class, and have no knowledge or care for the
desires or interests of the vast populations beneath them. I look
forward to the time when the extreme arbitrament of war will be resorted
to mainly in the form of civil or class contentions, involving one or
other of the noblest and most profound principles of human existence. Or
if war is to be international, we may hope that the finest peoples of
the world will resolve only to declare it in defence of the threatened
independence of some small but gallant race, or for the assistance of
rebel peoples in revolt for freedom against an intolerable tyranny.
I suppose a man's truest happiness lies in the keenest energy, the
conquest of difficulties, the highest fulfilment of his own nature; and
I think it possible that, under the conditions of our existence as men,
the finest happiness--the happiness of ecstasy--can only exist against a
very dark background, or in quick succession after extreme toil and
danger. It can only blaze like lightning against the thunder-cloud, or
like the sun's radiance after storm. For most of us other perils or
disasters or calls for energy supply that terrific background to joy;
but it is none the less significant that most people who have shared in
perilous and violent contests would, in retrospect, choose to omit any
part of active and happy lives rather than the wars and revolutions in
which they have been present, no matter how terrible the misery, the
sickness, the hunger and thirst, the fear and danger, the loss of
friends, the overwhelming horror, and even the defeat.
We must not take as argument a personal note that may sound only from a
primitive and unregenerate mind. But when I look back upon the long
travail of our race, it appears to me still impossible to adopt the
peace position of non-resistance. As a matter of bare fact, in reviewing
history would not all of us most desire to have chased the enslaving
Persian host into the sea at Marathon, to have driven the Austrians back
from the Swiss mountains, to have charged with Joan of Arc at Orleans,
to have gone with Garibaldi and his Thousand to the wild redemption of
Sicily's freedom, to have severed the invader's sinews with De Wet, to
have shaken an ancient tyranny with the Russian revolutionists, or to
have cleaned up the Sultan's shambles with the Young Turks? Probably
there is no man or woman who would not choose scenes and actions like
those, if the choice were offered. To very few do such opportunities
come; but we must hold ourselves in daily readiness. We do well to extol
peace, to confront the dangers, labour, and temptations of peace, and
to hope for the general happiness of man in her continuance. But from
time to time there come awful moments to which Heaven has joined great
issues, when the fire kindles, the savage indignation tears the heart,
and the soul, arising against some incarnate symbol of iniquity,
exclaims, "By God, you shall not do that. I will kill you rather. I will
rather die!"