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THE WORLD IN CHAINS
* * * * *
But should we stay to speak, noontide would come,
And thwart Silenus find his goats undrawn,
And grudge to sing those wise and lovely songs
Of Fate, and Chance, and God, and Chaos old,
And Love, and the Chained Titan's woeful doom,
And how he shall be loosed, and make the earth
One brotherhood....
* * * * *
THE WORLD
IN CHAINS
SOME ASPECTS OF WAR AND TRADE
BY JOHN MAVROGORDATO
M.A.
LONDON: MARTIN SECKER
NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET ADELPHI
_First Published 1917_
* * * * *
IN MEMORIAM AMICORUM
_R. F. C. GELDERD SOMERVELL
IVAR CAMPBELL: T. R. A. H.
NOYES: J. W. BAILEY_
QVI ANTE DIEM PERIERVNT
* * * * *
Note
_There may be some exaggeration in this book. I firmly believe that
England and her Allies entered this War with the noblest intentions. If
I have done less than justice to these, it is because my chief purpose
in this essay has been to express my equally firm belief that all these
fine emotions have been and are being exploited by the basest forms of
Imperialism and Capitalism._
_J. M._
_January 1st, 1917._
Contents
CHAPTER I
THE MASSACRE OF COLLEAGUES, 3
THE WIDENING SPHERE OF MORALITY, 4
THE RECEDING GOD, 6
THE PHILOSOPHER LOOKS AT SOCIETY, 8
HOMO HOMINI LUPUS, 8
TRIBE AGAINST TRIBE, 10
THE CITY STATE, 12
THE NATIONS OF EUROPE "FERAE NATURAE," 14
THE CONVENIENCE OF DIPLOMACY, 15
A NOTE ON DEMOCRACY, 18
DIPLOMACY NOT BAD IN ITSELF, 19
MANNERS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR MORALS, 21
WAR A MORAL ANACHRONISM, 21
CHAPTER II
THE ARMAMENT RING, 27
EUGENICS? 29
PATRIOTISM, 31
THE MORAL TEST, 36
TRADE, 39
TRADE IN TIME OF PEACE, 42
DUTIES OF COMMERCE TO THE STATE, 44
RESTRICTED SPHERE OF GOVERNMENT CORRESPONDING TO
RESTRICTED SPHERE OF MORALITY, 51
CHAPTER III
TRADE DURING THE WAR, 57
TRADE LIVES ON INCREASING DEMAND, 65
WAR A FORM OF DESTRUCTION, 66
WAR STANDS TO BENEFIT NEUTRAL AS WELL AS BELLIGERENT
NATIONS BUT NOT TO THE SAME EXTENT, 69
THE GREATER THE CAPITAL, THE GREATER THE WAR
PROFIT, 71
THE BLESSINGS OF INVASION, 72
THE LUXURY TRADES DON'T DO SO BADLY, 74
TRADE PROFITS IN WAR NOT SHARED BY THE NATION
BUT CONFINED TO EMPLOYERS, 77
TRADE PROFIT AND NATIONAL LOSS, 82
APPENDIX: SOME TYPICAL WAR PROFITS, 125
CHAPTER IV
DIALECTICS ROUND THE DEATH-BED, 89
GERMAN RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE WAR, 90
THE VALUE OF GERMAN CULTURE, 95
THE MANUFACTURE OF HATRED, 102
IMPERIALISM THE ENEMY, 107
POSSIBLE OBJECTS OF WAR, 112
PHYSICAL FORCE IN A MORAL WORLD, 118
IMPERIALISM AND CAPITALISM THROUGH WAR AND TRADE
THE ENEMIES: SOCIALISM TO THE RESCUE, 122
* * * * *
CHAPTER I
[Greek: môros de thnêtôn ostis ekporthôn poleis
naous de tumbous th, iera tôn kekmêktôn,
erêmiadous autos ôleth usteron.]
Euripides: Tro. 95.
§1
The Massacre of Colleagues
The existence of war in the modern world is primarily a question for the
moral philosopher. It may be of interest to the anthropologist to
consider war as a gallant survival with an impressive ritual and a code
of honour curiously detached from the social environment, like the Hindu
suttee; or with a procedure euphemistically disguised, like some
chthonic liturgy of ancient Athens. But it is a problem too broad for
the anthropologist when we consider that we have reached a stage of
civilisation which regards murder as the most detestable of crimes and
deprives the murderer of all civil rights and often even of the natural
right to live: while in the same community the organised massacre of our
colleagues in civilisation is not only tolerated but assumed to be
necessary by the principal expositors of law and religion, is the
scientific occupation of the most honoured profession in the State, and
constitutes the real sanction of all international intercourse.
§2
The Widening Sphere of Morality
The existence of war stimulates the astonished watcher in the tower of
ivory to examine the development, if any, of human morality; and to
formulate some law of the process whereby political man has been
differentiated from the savage.
Morality being a relation between two or more contracting parties, he
will notice that the history of mankind is marked by a consistent
tendency to extend this relation, to include in the system of
relationships more numerous and more distant objects, so that the moral
agent is surrounded by a continually widening sphere of obligations.
This system of relationship, which may be called the moral sphere, has
grown up under a variety of influences, expediency, custom, religious
emotion and political action; but the moral agents included in it at any
given time are always bound to each other by a theoretical contract
involving both rights and duties, and leading each to expect and to
apply in all his dealings with the others a certain standard of conduct
which is approximately fixed by the enlightened opinion of the majority
for the benefit of the totality.
The moral sphere then is a contractual unit of two or more persons who
agree to moderate their individual conduct for their common good: and
the State itself is only a stage in the growth of this moral unit from
its emergence out of primitive savagery to its superannuation in
ultimate anarchy, commonly called the Millennium. The State indeed is a
moral sphere, a moral unit, which has long been outgrown by enlightened
opinion; and the trouble is that we are now in a transition stage in
which the boundaries of the State survive as a limitation instead of
setting an ideal of moral conduct.[1]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: This conception of the gradually extending and still to be
extended sphere of morality, or from another aspect of law, was implied,
I think, by Lord Haldane in his Address on Higher Nationality. (_The
Conduct of Life, and Other Addresses_, p. 99.)
In this address Lord Haldane distinguished in the State three sanctions
of conduct.
1. Law.
2. The Moral Sanction, Kant's Categorical Imperative "that rules
the private and individual conscience, but that alone."
3. The force of social habit or _sittlichkeit_, "less than legal
and more than merely moral, and sufficient in the vast majority of
the events of daily life, to secure observance of general standards
of conduct without any question of resort to force." The Lord
Chancellor adds, "If this is so within a nation, can it be so as
between nations?"
But although Lord Haldane distinguishes three sanctions of conduct, the
resultant line of conduct is one. And it seems to me unimportant to
analyse the sanctions if we can only estimate the sum of their
obligations. It is this totality of obligations, the whole
systematisation of conduct in human life, that in my adumbrated analysis
I call the moral sphere.
Curiously enough Lord Haldane was hounded from the Government on the
paradoxical ground that he knew too much about the enemy against whom we
are fighting. It is certainly true that he has a better understanding
than any other statesman of the Prussian perversion of aristocracy and
of the true function of science in the State. But it is too much to hope
that philosophers should remain Ministers of a State in which
journalists are become dictators.]
§3
The Receding God
I don't know that it is necessary to drag God into the argument. But if
you like to regard God as the sanction and source of morality, or if you
like to call the moral drift in human affairs God, it is possible to
consider this "Sphere of Morality" from His point of view. His "point of
view" is precisely what, in an instructive fable, we may present as the
determining factor in morality. When He walked in the garden or lurked
hardly distinguishable among the sticks and stones of the forest,
morality was just an understanding between a man and his neighbour, a
temporary agreement entered on by any two hunting savages whom He might
happen to espy between the tree-trunks. When He dwelt among the peaks of
Sinai or Olympus, the sphere of morality had extended to the whole tribe
that occupied the subjacent valley. It came to include the nation, all
the subjects of each sovereign state, by the time He had receded to some
heavenly throne above the dark blue sky. And it is to be hoped that He
may yet take a broader view, so that His survey will embrace the whole
of mankind, if only we can banish Him to a remoter altitude in the
frozen depths of space, whence He can contemplate human affairs without
being near enough to interfere.
The moral of this little myth of the Receding God may be that the Sphere
of Morality is extended in inverse proportion to the intensity of
theological interference. Not that theology necessarily or always
deliberately limits the domain of morality: but because the extension of
moral relations and the relegation of anthropomorphic theology are
co-ordinate steps in human advancement.
§ 4
The Philosopher looks at Society
The philosopher is apt to explain the growth and interrelation of ideas
by tabulating them in an historical form, which may not be narrowly,
chronologically, or "historically" true. The notion of the Social
Contract may be philosophically true, though we are not to imagine the
citizens of Rousseau's State coming together on a certain day to vote by
show of hands, like the members of the Bognor Urban District Council. So
we may illustrate a theory of moral or social evolution by a sort of
historical pageant, which will not be journalistically exact, but will
give a true picture of an ideal development, every scene of which can be
paralleled by some actually known or inferred form of human life.
§ 5
Homo Homini Lupus
Our imagination, working subconsciously on a number of laboriously
accumulated hints, a roomful of chipped or polished stones, the sifted
debris of Swiss palafittes, a few pithecoid jawbones, some painted rocks
from Salamanca, produces a fairly definite picture of the earliest
essentially human being on earth: and we recognise a man not unlike one
of ourselves; with a similar industry interrupted from time to time by
the arbitrary stirrings of a similar artistic impulse; so close to us
indeed that some of his habits still survive among us. Some of us at
least have made a recreation of his necessity, and still go hunting wild
or hypothetically wild animals for food. But when this primeval hunter
emerged from his lair in the forest or his valley-cave, he was prepared
to attack at sight any man he happened to meet: and he thought himself a
fine fellow if he succeeded in cracking the skull of a possible rival in
love or venery. This was the age of preventive aggression with a
vengeance. We still feel a certain satisfaction in a prompt and crushing
blow, and in the simplicity of violence. But we no longer attack our
neighbour in the street, as dogs fight over a bone or over nothing at
all: though some of us reserve the right to snarl.
§ 6
Tribe against Tribe
But this fighter's paradise was too exciting to last long; and indeed it
is hard to visualise steadily the feral solitary man who lived without
any social organisation at all.[2] Consideration like an angel came and
did not indeed drive the offending devil out of him but taught him to
guide it into more profitable channels, by co-operating with his
neighbour. When a man first made peace with the hunter in the next cave
in order to go out with him against the bear at the head of the valley,
or even to have his assistance in carrying off a couple of women from
the family down by the lake, on that day the social and moral unit was
constituted, the sphere of morality, destined, who knows how soon, to
include the whole of mankind in one beneficent alliance, began with what
Professor McDougal has called "the replacement of individual by
collective pugnacity." The first clear stage in this progress is the
tribe or clan, the smallest organised community, sometimes no larger
than the self-contained village or camp, which can still be found in the
wild parts of the earth. Tribe against tribe is the formula of this
order of civilisation. Within the limits of the community man inhibits
his natural impulses and settles his personal disputes according to the
rules laid down by the headman or chief. But once outside the stockade
he can kill and plunder at will, though owing to the similarly strong
organisation of the next village he will usually reserve his predatory
exploits for the official and collective raids of village against
village and tribe against tribe.
Of course the family is a step leading up to the tribal stage of
morality, and it may be that the idea of incest marks the social stage
in which the moral sphere was conterminous with the family,
corresponding to the institution of exogamy in the moral system of the
tribe.
It may be added that even in the modern family the feeling which unites
the members often consists less, very much less, of affection than of a
sort of obligation to hang together for mutual defence.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 2: Cf. Plato's myth of Protagoras (_Prot_. 322 B ff.).]
§ 7
The City State
The City State, self-contained, self-supporting, truly democratic, is
marked by a similar pugnacity. Only full citizenship conferred full
moral rights, and any ferocity could be justified in war against another
city. Athens wore herself out in the long struggle with Sparta, and
Greece was lured to destruction by the devil of Imperialism, whose stock
argument is to suggest that a State can extend its rights without
extending its obligations. But the limitation of the moral sphere by the
boundaries of the city is less apparent in the Greek States, because in
the historical period at least they were already in transition to a
larger view, and enlightened opinion certainly believed in a moral
system which should include all Greek States, to the exclusion of course
of all "barbarians": but this larger view was even more definitely
limited, and the demarcation of those within from those outside the
moral sphere was never more sharply conceived, than in the difference
commonly held to exist between Greeks and Barbarians. Yet even so Greece
can maintain her pre-eminence in thought; for Plato and Euripides at
least glimpsed the conception, by which we do not yet consent to be
guided, of the moral equality of all mankind.[3]
For all these reasons the City State as a limited moral sphere is better
seen perhaps in Mediæval Italy, where, I imagine, a Florentine might
kill a native of Pisa whenever he liked; whereas if he killed a fellow
Florentine he risked at least the necessity of putting himself outside
the moral sphere, of having that is to leave Florence and stay in Pisa
till the incident was forgotten.[4]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 3: Even Aristotle probably had some suspicion of it; so in his
anxiety to justify the institution of slavery he had to make out that
slaves were not men at all but only machines.]
[Footnote 4: Duelling might be classified theoretically as a survival of
the wolfish condition sketched in § 5. But the persistent institution of
single combat should not be regarded as in itself a survival, but rather
as an outlet for the surviving instinct, a concession justified by
political or social considerations that vary from age to age. Even Plato
in his _Republic_ (465 A) agreed that the citizen might in certain
circumstances take the law into his own hands, probably regarding such
action as a sort of equity, what Aristotle calls [Greek: epanorthôma
nomou êlleipei dia ton katholou], a rectification of certain special
cases not covered by law.
In modern states again, e.g. in Austria and Germany, duelling is not so
much a survival as a corollary of militarism, which involves a
fetichistic veneration of the military uniform or of military "honour."]
§ 8
The Nations of Europe _ferae naturae_
In the next and latest stage in the expansion of the moral system we
find it again conterminous with the frontiers of the State. But it is
now no longer the small city state of Ancient Greece and Mediæval Italy,
but the large political unit, roughly and hypothetically national,[5]
which constitutes the modern State, whether Kingdom, Republic, or
Empire. I have called this the latest stage in the extension of the
sphere of morality because it is the one which actually prevails and
limits our national conduct. For the paradox of legal murder and
massacre in the modern world is resolved as soon as we realise that war
is a conflict between two or more isolated moral systems, each of which
only regards violence as a crime to be suppressed within the limits of
its own validity. International warfare in its crudest form is only a
manifestation of the original wolfish state of man, the "state of
nature" which exists between two moral agents who have no moral
obligation to each other (but only to themselves). The fact that the
primitive savage was an individual moral agent having no moral
obligation to anyone but himself, while the modern fighting nation is a
moral agent of who knows how many millions, does not alter the essential
character of the conflict.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 5: See below, Chapter IV, § 4. _Nationalism True and False_.]
§ 9
The Convenience of Diplomacy
As a matter of fact this original wolfish attitude of nations is already
obsolete, if it ever existed. The expansion and growth of political and
moral relations is a gradual process, and the fact that for the sake of
brevity and clearness we fix and describe certain arbitrary points in
that process must not be taken to imply that it is discontinuous. Anyhow
there is no doubt that the specifically wolfish attitude of one nation
to another can hardly be found in its pure state, being already tempered
and mitigated by the practice and custom of diplomacy: and this
diplomatic mitigation, however superficial, does something to break down
that windowless isolation which is the essential cause of violence
between two independent moral entities. Pacificists of the democratic
school sometimes present a fallacious view of international diplomacy,
and almost imply that the present war was made inevitable by the fact
that Viscount Grey was educated at Harrow, or that peace could have
been preserved with Germany if only Sir Edward Goschen had begun life as
a coal heaver, or had at least been elected by the National Union of
Boilermakers. Their panacea they vaguely call the democratic control of
Foreign Affairs, though it is not clear why we should expect twenty
million still ignorant voters to be more enlightened than one educated
representative who is, as a matter of fact, usually so much oppressed by
a due sense of his responsibility that he is in danger of bungling only
from excessive timidity. The experience of the Law Courts shows that
twelve men, be they never so good and true, cannot _at present_ be
trusted to weigh and discriminate as nicely as one[6]; and the fact that
the _Daily Mail_ has the largest circulation of any morning paper is a
sufficient mark of the present capacity and inclination of the majority
to control public affairs more directly than they do. It is said that
the secrecy of diplomatic affairs breeds an atmosphere of suspicion; and
it might be said with equal truth that all secrecy of every kind is
always and everywhere the most unnecessary thing in the world.[7] But
the fundamental fallacy of all these arguments is that they treat
diplomacy as an essential of international relations, whereas it is only
an accident, a trapping, a convenience, or a common form. Its defects
are the result and the reflection of national opinion. Diplomatists are
no more responsible for the defects of international relationship than
seconds are responsible for the practice of duelling: and we may note
incidentally that duels are if anything more frequent when the place of
the seconds in estimating their necessity is taken by a democratic court
of honour.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 6: The duties of a jury are, of course, very carefully limited
by law. But even in this reduced sphere they are remarkable chiefly for
their incompetence, prejudice, inattention, and stupidity. See
particularly André Gide's _Souvenirs de la Cour d'Assises_, all the
implied criticisms in which apply, _mutatis quibusdam mutandis_, with
equal force to English and indeed to all juries.]
[Footnote 7: It is possible to argue, though of course impossible to
prove, that if every diplomatic document of recent years had been
immediately made public, the relations between the Powers would have
remained very much what they are with "secret diplomacy"; that "public
diplomacy" would if anything have intensified the existing jealousy and
distrust. As a matter of fact anyone who takes the trouble can
approximately discover the diplomatic situation existing at a particular
moment between any two Powers, even if he cannot know the verbal text of
a particular treaty. And if the supporters of "public diplomacy"
reasonably point out that "publicity" is desired only as a means to
ensure the democratic control of Foreign policy, the answer is that the
only way to ensure the democratic control of diplomats or any other
public servants is to educate the people.]
§ 10
A Note on Democracy
The outcry for "democratic" control demands, I think, a note, if not a
volume,[8] on the limitations of democracy. We are all, I suppose,
agreed nowadays that the government of the future must be democratic, in
the sense that every adult has a _right_ to full citizenship, and every
citizen can claim a vote. But it is obviously impossible for a modern
State to be governed directly by the voices of say fifty or a hundred
million citizens: there must always be a small legislative and a still
smaller executive body; and these bodies should obviously be composed of
the finest and most capable citizens. If then Aristocracy means, as it
does mean, a government of the whole by the best elements, it follows
that we are all equally agreed that the government of the future must be
aristocratic. The solution of this antinomy is of course that democracy
is not an end in itself, but only a means for the selection and sanction
of aristocracy.[9] The best elements in the population can only come to
the top if every man has an opportunity of using his voice and his
intelligence. We may note in passing that a common objection, raised by
writers like Emile Faguet, to the effect that democracy puts a premium
on incompetence by choosing its officials almost fortuitously from the
mob, is the exact opposite of the truth. It is our present regime that
leaves the selection of our rulers to the chances of birth or wealth or
forensic success. Real democracy will stimulate the selection of the
best, just as trade union standardisation of wages encourages the
employment of the better workmen.[10]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 8: Such a volume or something very much like it has actually
made its appearance, since these lines were written, in Professor Robert
Michels' _Political Parties_ (Jarrold, 1916).]
[Footnote 9: Cf. Bernard Shaw, in Pease, _History of the Fabian
Society_, p. 268: "Sooner or later, unless democracy is to be discarded
in a reaction of disgust such as killed it in ancient Athens, democracy
itself will demand that only such men should be presented to its choice
as have proved themselves qualified for more serious and disinterested
work than 'stoking up' election meetings to momentary and foolish
excitement. Without qualified rulers a Socialist State is impossible."]
§ 11
Diplomacy not bad in itself
The real importance of diplomacy, as I have said, is in the fact that it
is a mitigation of primary ferocity, a symptom of readiness to
negotiate, a recognition of the fact that disputes need not be settled
by immediate violence: and as such it points to a time when war may be
superseded, as personal combat has been superseded by litigation. The
man who puts a quarrel with his neighbour into the hands of a legal
representative is a stage higher in social civilisation than the man who
fights it out at sight. Diplomats are the legal representatives of
nations--only there is no supernational court before which they can
state their case.
Of course, it is perfectly true that the ultimate sanction of diplomacy
is always force, that international negotiations may always be resolved
into a series of polite threats, and that the envoy of the small and
weak nation rarely has any influence. Indeed there are few less enviable
situations than that of the minister of a very small State at the court
of a very large one. But the mere fact that force is their sanction does
not _ipso facto_ dispose of diplomatic and arbitrational methods. We all
know that the force at the disposal of the Sovereign is the ultimate
sanction of Law. But that force never has to be fully exerted because
there is a common consent to respect the Law and its officers.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 10: Cf. Webb, _Industrial Democracy_, p. 718.]
§ 12
Manners no Substitute for Morals
The real difference between legal methods and the methods of diplomacy
(in which I here include international conversations of every sort) is
that the latter take place, as it were, in a vacuum. There is no
Sovereign, no common denominator, no unifying system in which both
parties are related by their common obligations. They exist and act in
two separate moral spheres, and no real intercourse is possible between
them. For all their ambassadors and diplomatic conferences the nations
of Europe are only wolves with good manners. And manners, as we all
know, are no substitute for morals.
§ 13
War a Moral Anachronism
Thus we come back to our thesis that war is not only possible but
inevitable so long as the extent of the moral sphere is conterminous
with the frontiers of the State. But merely to explain laboriously that
all this organised killing is not really a paradox but the natural
accompaniment of a certain stage of moral development, and to leave it
at that, would be rather to exaggerate our philosophic detachment. The
point is that we are long past the stage of regarding any but our
fellow-subjects as moral outlaws. For some years, to say the least, it
has been generally received that the sphere of morality is co-extensive
with mankind. In spite of certain lingering exceptions, it is to-day a
commonplace of thought that every human being on the earth is our
colleague in civilisation; is a member that is of the human race, which
finding itself on this earth has got somehow to make the best of it; is
a shareholder in the human asset of self-consciousness which we are
called upon to exploit. It would certainly be hard to find a man of what
we have called enlightened opinions who would not profess, whatever his
private feelings, that it is as great a crime to kill a Hottentot or a
Jew as to kill an Englishman. With certain lingering exceptions then we
already regard the foreigner as a member of our own moral system. The
moral sphere has already extended or is at least in course of extension
to its ultimate limits: and war is a survival from the penultimate stage
of morality. War, to put it mildly, is a moral anachronism. War between
European nations is civil war. Logically all war should be recognised at
once, at any rate by enlightened opinion, as the crime, the disaster,
the ultimate disgrace that it obviously is. Why then do we cling to the
implications of a system that we have grown out of? Why do we affect the
limitation of boundaries that have been already extended? Or is our
prison so lovely that though the walls fall down we refuse to walk out
into the air?