(From _Scribner’s Magazine_, 1915.)
§ 1.
I went out into the wind—the first south-west wind after many days of
easterly drought. All the morning it had rained, but now the gray sky
was torn; the sun shone, and long white clouds were driven over pools of
blue, or piled up into heavenly mountains. The land of moor and valley,
the hills and fields and woods gleamed in the sunlight, or were shadowed
dark by the drifting clouds. Moss on the top of the old gray walls was
wet, but warm to the touch; the birds—daws, pigeons, hawks—flung
themselves at the wind. And the scent! Every frond of the bracken, each
sprig of the gorse and the heather, all the soughing boughs of young
pine-tree and oak, and the grass, gray-powdered with rain, were exhaling
their fragrance so that each breath drawn was a draught of wild perfume.
And in one’s heart rose an ecstasy of love for this wind-sweetened
earth, for the sun, and the clouds, the rain, and the wind, the trees
and the flowering plants, for the streams and the rocks—for this earth
which breeds us all, and into which we reabsorb, a passion as untutored,
wild, and natural as the love of life in the merest dumb thing that
knows nothing of ideals, of country, realms and policies, nothing of
war.
Germany calls the war “this English war;” we English as fervently
believe it a Prussian war, having deep root in Prussian will, and
history. One thing is certain: At the last moment the world, desperately
balancing, was thrust over the edge of the abyss by a sudden swoop of
the Prussian war party.
“Pourtales (German Ambassador to Russia) called Sazonoff’s
attention in the most serious manner to the fact that nowadays
measures of mobilization would be a highly dangerous form of
diplomatic pressure; for in that event the purely military
consideration of the question by the General Staffs would find
expression, and that _if that button were once touched in
Germany_ the situation would get out of control.” (Count
Szapary, Austrian Ambassador to Russia. Austrian Book, No.
28.)[8]
In a Europe teeming with mutual fears a few men, perhaps not a score in
all, have had the power to strip from millions their meed of life on
this wind-sweetened earth! For myths conceived in a few ambitious
brains, and the “strike-first” theory of a knot of strategists, the
whole world must pay with grief and agony! What can we do, when this war
is over, to insure that we shall not again be stampeded by professional
soldiers, and those—in whatever country—who dream paper dreams of
territory, trade, and glory, caring nothing for the lives of the simple,
knowing nothing of the beauty of the earth which is their heritage.
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[8] Since this was written Maximilian Harden in his paper _Zukunft_ has
used these words: “Germany is calumniated when it is said that she
wanted war, not to defend herself, but in order to conquer. But it is
equally false to suppose that England, France, or Russia, who were
either not armed at all, or only half ready . . . deliberately planned
an attack. The outbreak of the war could not be arrested; because at the
decisive moment _the Will of the Strategists was stronger than the Will
of the Statesmen_.”
§ 2.
“No corn planted, more men wanted!”—words of the Old Dalmatian song!
It is no use crying over spilt milk, and no good throwing down the
instruments in the middle of an operation. But there is every use in
keeping before oneself perpetually the thought that this war _is_ an
operation to excise the trampling instinct; for there are many among us
willing to speak of an operation while it serves their purpose, who
unconsciously believe in that which they profess to be cutting out.
Human nature is much the same all the world over. The Prussian Junker is
but a specially favoured variety of a well-marked type that grows in
every land. And the business of other men is to keep circumstances from
being favourable to its development and ascendancy.
When we talk of safeguarding democracy, liberty, and the rights of small
nations, we really only mean the muzzling of the Junkerism in human
nature—the restraint of this trampling instinct. Who would give a rush
for the immunity of any nation from the resurgence within itself of that
instinct, unless it watches with lynx eyes? I cannot but think that,
when peace comes and Prussian Junkerism is held harmless for a span,
Junkerism in general will have a better chance of pushing up its hydra
heads than it had before this war. Times will be very hard—the “have
nots” and “they who have” will be very nakedly set over against each
other. Circumstances will be favourable to civil strife; and civil
strife, whichever side wins, fosters despotic leaderships and the
trampling instinct. Those not merely hoping and meaning to try for a
better world, after the war, but expecting one almost as a matter of
course, forget that the devotion and unity, which men display under the
shadow of a great fear and the stimulus of that most powerful and
universal emotion, patriotism, will slip away from them when the fear
and the emotion are removed. If before the war men were incapable of
rising to great and united effort for their own betterment out of sheer
desire for perfection, are they even as likely to be able when, after
the war, economic stress puts a greater strain on each individual’s
good-will?
The words of a certain prophet, “Literature, Art, Industry, Commerce,
Politics, Statesmanship will, when this fighting day is over, come into
a new and better era,” are soothing syrup. Let us by all means hope for
and intend the best, but let us set ourselves to face the worst.
§ 3.
Because pens lie unused, or are but feebly wielded over the war, they
would have us believe that modern literature has been found wanting.
“Look,” they say, “how nobly the Greek and the Elizabethan pens rhymed
the epic struggles of their ages. What a degenerate, nerveless creature
is this modern pen! See how it fails when put to the touchstone of great
events and the thrilling realities of war!” I think this is nonsense.
The greatest pens of the past were strangers to the glamour of war.
Euripides made it the subject of a dirge; Shakespeare of casual
treatment; Cervantes of his irony. They were in advance of the feeling
of their day about war; but now their feeling has become that of mankind
at large; and the modern pen, good, bad, or indifferent, follows—_longo
intervallo_—their prevision of war’s downfalling glory. In the words of
a certain officer, war is now “damn dull, damn dirty, and damn
dangerous.” The people of Britain, and no doubt of the other
countries—however bravely they may fight—are fighting not because they
love it, not because it is natural to them, but because—alas!—they
must. This makes them the more heroic since the romance of war for them
is past, belonging to cruder stages of the world’s journey.
In our consciousness to-day there is a violent divorce between our
admiration for the fine deeds, the sacrifices, and heroisms of this war,
and our feeling about war itself. A shadowy sense of awful waste hangs
over it all in the mind of the simplest soldier as in that of the
subtlest penman. It may be real that we fight for our conceptions of
liberty and justice; but we feel all the time that we ought not to have
had to fight, that these things should be respected of the nations; that
we have grown out of such savagery; that the whole business is a kind of
monstrous madness suddenly let loose on the world. Such feelings were
never in the souls of ordinary men, whether soldiers or civilians, in
the days of Elizabeth or Themistocles. They fought, then, as a matter of
course. In those so-called heroic ages “the thrilling realities of war”
were truly the realities of life and feeling. To-day they are but a long
nightmare. We have discovered that man is a creature slowly, by means of
thought and life and art, evolving from the animal he was into the human
being he will be some day, and in that desperately slow progression
sloughing off the craving for physical combat and the destruction of his
fellow-man. This process does not apparently mean the loss of stoicism
and courage, but rather the increase thereof, as millions in this war,
after the most peaceful century in the world’s history, have proved. But
we are a few paces farther on toward the fully evolved human being than
were the compatriots of Themistocles or Elizabeth.
The true realities of to-day lie in peace. The great epic of our time is
the expression of man’s slow emergence from the blood-loving animal he
was. To that great epic the modern pen has long been consecrate, and is
not likely to betray its trust.
§ 4.
One day we read in our journals how an enemy Socialist or Pacifist has
raised his voice against the mob passions and war spite of his country,
and we think: “What an enlightened man!” And the next day, in the same
journals, we read that So-and-so has done the same thing in our own
country, and we think: “My God! He ought to be hung!” To-day we listen
with enthusiasm to orations of our statesmen about the last drop of our
blood, and the last pennies in our purses, and we think: “That is
patriotism!” To-morrow we read utterance by enemy notables about arming
the cats and dogs, and exclaim: “What truculent insanity!” We learn on
Monday that some disguised fellow-countryman has risked his life to
secure information from the heart of the enemy’s country, and we think:
“That was real courage!” And on Tuesday our bile rises at discovering
that an enemy has been arrested in our midst for espionage, and we
think: “The dirty spy!” Our blood boils on Wednesday at hearing of the
scurvy treatment of one of ourselves resident in the enemy’s country.
And on Thursday we read of the wrecking by our mob of aliens’ shops, and
think: “Well, what could they expect, belonging to that nation!” When
one of our regiments has defended itself with exceptional bravery, and
inflicted great loss on the enemy, we justly call it _heroism_. When
some enemy regiment has done the same, we use the word _ferocity_. The
comic papers of the enemy guy us, and we think: “How childish!” Ours guy
the enemy, and we cry: “Ah! that’s good!” Our enemies use a hymn of
hate, and we despise them for it. We do our hate in silence, and feel
ourselves the better for the practice.
Shall we not rather fight our fight, and win it, without these little
ironies?
§ 5.
The first thing he does when he comes down each morning is to read his
paper, and the moment he has finished breakfast he sticks the necessary
flags into his big map. He began to do that very soon after the war
broke out, and has never missed a day. It would seem to him almost as if
peace had been declared, and the universe were suddenly unbottomed, if
any morning he omitted to alter slightly three flags at least. What will
he do when the end at last is reached, and he can no longer tear the
paper open with a kind of trembling avidity; no longer debate within
himself the questions of strategy, and the absorbing chances of the
field, when he has, in fact, to sweep his flags into a drawer and forget
they ever were? It would haunt him, if he thought of it. But sufficient
unto his day is the good thereof. Yes! It has almost come to that with
him; though he will still talk to you of “this dreadful war,” and never
alludes to the days as “great” or to the times as “stirring” as some
folk do. No, he sincerely believes that he is distressed beyond measure
by the continuance of “the abominable business,” and would not confess
for worlds that he would miss it, that it has become for him a daily
“cocktail” to his appetite for life. It is not he, after all, who is
being skinned; to the skinning of other eels the individual eel is soon
accustomed. By proxy to be “making history,” to be witnessing the
“greatest drama” known to man since the beginning of the world—after
all it is something! He will never have such a chance again. He still
remembers with a shudder how he felt the first weeks after war was
declared; and the mere fact that he shudders shows that his present
feelings are by no means what they were. After all, one cannot remain
for ever prepossessed with suffering that is not one’s own, or with
fears of invasion indefinitely postponed. True, he has lost a nephew, a
second cousin, the sons of several friends. He has been duly sorry, duly
sympathetic, but then, he was not dangerously fond of any of them. His
own son is playing his part, and he is proud of it. If the boy should be
killed he will feel poignant grief, but even then there is revenge to be
considered. His pocket is suffering, but it is for the Country; and that
almost makes it a pleasure. And he goes on sticking in his flags in
spots where the earth is a mush of mangled flesh, and the air shrill
with the whir of shells, the moans of dying men, and the screams of
horses.
Is this pure fantasy, or does it hold a grain of truth?
§ 6.
The war brings up with ever greater insistence the two antagonistic
feelings of which one was always conscious: That men are radically
alike. And that there are two kinds of men, subtly but hopelessly
divided from each other.
Men are radically alike in the way they meet danger and death, in their
sentiment and in their laughter, in their endurance, their passions,
their self-sacrifice, their selfishness, their superstitions, and their
gratitude. They are radically divided by possession, or not, of that
extra sensitiveness to proportion, form, colour, sound, which we call
the sense of beauty. Would there still be war in a world the most of
whose dwellers had the sense of beauty? I think not. And they who have
it, so few by comparison, are tragically compelled to live and bear
their part in this hell, created by a world of which they are not.
These two kinds of men shade subtly the one into the other; but the
division is real, for all that—the bristles on the backs of each true
specimen on either side of the line rise at sight of the other sort.
And the war with its toil and hardships, its common humanity, deaths and
dangers and sacrifices shared, will not bring them one jot nearer one to
the other. Is there evidence for thinking that a sense of beauty is more
common than it was? I am not sure. But there is certainly no chance that
the sense of beauty can increase within measurable time, so as to give
its possessors a majority. No chance that wars will cease from that
reason. The little world of beauty-lovers will for many ages yet,
perhaps always, be pitifully in tow, half-drowned by the following surge
of the big insensitive world when it loses for a time what little
feeling for harmony it has, and goes full speed ahead.
§ 7.
Some argue earnestly that what really restrains and regulates the
conduct of individuals is not force, but the general sense of decency,
the public opinion of the community; and that the same rule applies to
nations. In other words, that there is no reason why inter-State
morality should be different from that prevailing amongst the
individuals within a State.
This argument neglects to perceive, first: That the public opinion of a
community is, in reality, latent force; that in a real community “Right
is Might,” up to a certain point. And, secondly: That there is as yet no
community within which the nations dwell.
An individual cannot pursue rank egotism to the complete overriding of
his neighbours without knowing that those neighbours can and will give
concrete expression to their resentment and suppress him. This latent
force is at the back of all State-law, and of all public opinion, which
is but State-law unwritten. The essence of its efficacy is the fact that
individuals do live in community, each one perceiving with the
non-rampant part of him that the rest are right in squashing his
rampancy, since life in community would soon be impossible if they did
not. He consents, subconsciously, to being squashed when he is rampant,
because he recognizes himself to be part of a whole.
Until nations have come to be parts of communities, or group-States,
there will be no really effective analogy between individual morality
and State morality. There is, of course, a growing international
decency, a reaching out toward co-operation, a recognition that certain
things are “not done”; but it is liable to be violated, as we have seen,
at any moment by any State which is, or thinks itself, strong enough to
override laws which have no adequate latent force behind them. To create
this latent controlling force we have paramount need of a system of
group-States, leading on by slow degrees, through the linking of one
group with another, to a United States of the world. The necessary line
of progression is sufficiently disclosed by the violation of Belgian
neutrality and other matters in this war. Public opinion not backed by
latent force has been proved useless. There is no such thing, I fear, as
public opinion worth the name except within a definite community. The
task of statesmen when peace comes is the formation of a United States
of Europe—linked if possible with the countries of America—the
creation of a real public opinion backed by a real, if latent, force.
§ 8.
Nietzsche was an individualist, a hater of the State and of the
Prussians, a sick man, a great artist in words to be read with delight
and—your tongue in your cheek. By quaint irony his central idea, “the
ego-rampant,” was temperamentally suited to those Prussians whom he
hated. The Neo-German conception of the State, (if one may fairly judge
it out of the mouths of certain Germans) as a law unto itself, demanding
all from the individuals who compose it, and taking all it can get from
the world at large, may be inverted Nietzscheism, but it is the creature
of Prussian history, and of very different men. It is based on what we
others, and I should imagine many Germans, think is a transient and
false notion of what States should be. We say they should not roam the
earth considering only their own strength. True that, in the absence as
yet of the system of group-States, States still can seize here or seize
there, if they be strong enough, but we emphatically deny that they
should do so _on principle_, as the new German philosophy seems to
teach, and set the robber’s ideal, the robber’s fashion of morality, for
the individuals who compose those States. The philosophy, not only of
the rest of Europe, but of Germany, before all, in the days of Kant and
Hegel, presumed that the hard-won morality of individuals amongst
themselves would ultimately become the morality of States.
“The fact that the sense of community among the peoples of the
earth has gone so far that the violation of right in one place
is felt everywhere, has made the idea of a Citizenship of the
world no fantastic dream, but a necessary extension of the
unwritten Code of States and Peoples.” (Kant.)
“The binding cord is not force, but the deep-seated feeling of
order that is possessed by us all.” (Hegel.)
The new German philosophy has anointed the present immorality of States
and thereby fixed it as the morality for individuals. I think these
philosophers in their characteristic German exuberance, with its habit
of over-statement, have been hard on Germany. For the German people at
large have presumably been acquiring throughout the ages some such
instincts toward altruism as the peoples of other countries. The new
German philosophy has succeeded to a dismal extent in its inoculation of
the German people, but it cannot in the long run impose its logical
ideal of the wild man in the forest, though never so gorgeously decked
out, on the Germans, any more than the old German philosophy made the
Germans replicas of Christ.
Man never attains to his philosophical ideal; but it is just as well
that he should see clearly its apotheosis before he tries too hard to
reach it.
§ 9.
Our enemy now proclaims that his objective is the crushing of Britain’s
world-power in the interests of mankind.
Are we justified in retaining if we can what, in a by no means unstained
past, we have acquired, or should we hand over our position, well and
ill-gotten, to this new claimant, with his new culture, for the benefit
of the world?
Man has a somewhat incurable belief that he can manage his own affairs,
and we Britons hold the faith that our character, ideals, and experience
fit us to control our own lives and property for the general good of
mankind, side by side with other nations of like mind. The fortunate
possessors of the greater Empire and the greater trade are not perhaps
the most convincing advocates of the principle “Live and let live.” For
all that, we find it impossible to admit the right of any nation to an
aggressive policy toward us. Germany, after being petrified with
surprise at our intervention, now accuses us of having planned the war
and deliberately attacked her. It is divinely easy to claim things both
ways when you are at war. We all see just now rather as in a glass
darkly. And yet, with an immense Empire, an immense trade, and nothing
that we wanted anywhere, with a crop of serious social and political
troubles on hand, “a contemptible little army,” a tradition of
abstention from European quarrels, a Free Trade policy, a democratic
system of government, a Foreign Minister remarkable up to then for his
services to peace, and a “degenerate, wealth-rotted, huckstering”
population, it still seems to us (always excepting our handful of
pre-war Jingoes) as improbable as it once seemed to Germany that we
hatched and set on foot such a wildcat enterprise.
§ 10.
“A war of exhaustion.” How often we use those words! They are current in
all the belligerent countries, and in all they are unreally used, as
yet. But they are, I fear, literally true. It is a war which—save for
some happy chance—can hardly end till one group or the other have no
longer the men to hold their lines. The sway of the fighting is of no
great moment; it does not seem to matter where precisely the killing,
maiming, and capturing go on, so long as they do go on with a certain
mathematical regularity. A year or so hence, when the total disablement
is nearer twenty than ten millions, the meaning of the words will be a
little clearer, and they will probably only then be used by the side
whose united population is still more than twice that of the other side.
Two years hence they will be seen to have meant exactly what they said.
All the swinging from optimism to pessimism and back again, the
cock-a-hoop of the Press one day, the dirge of the Press the next; the
alarms and excursions about the failure of this or that—they are all
storms in teacups. The wills of the nations fighting are equally
engaged, and will not break; the energies will not break; the food will
probably not quite fail; the money will be found somehow; but the human
flesh will give out, in time—that is all; on which side it will give
out first may be left to the child who can count up to two. No glory
about this business—just ding-dong shambles!
If one believed, with a certain Englishman, that there was no real
struggle of ideals involved, these words “a war of exhaustion,” meaning
what they really do, would be too intolerable even to think of. He who
denies this to be a struggle of ideals may have a brilliant intellect,
but he can surely have none of that instinctive perception of the
essence and atmosphere of things, which is a so much surer guide than
reason. He has perceived doubtless that autocratists and
force-worshippers in England, in Russia, in Italy (there are but few in
France) are fighting against the Central Empires as furiously as if they
were the most ardent lovers of liberty; and that the democrats and
humanists in Central Europe are fighting for their countries as
devotedly as their force-worshipping rulers, and he has thought: “This
is a mere blind game of ‘kill your neighbour,’ with nothing real at
stake save the aggrandizement of one group of countries or the other.”
But behind all this is the psychological heart of the matter—the states
of mind in the belligerent countries before they began to fight. There
are racial temperaments to which certain ideals are fatal. The Teuton of
all men requires the Christian, or shall we say the humanistic, ethic,
to modify something science-ridden, overbearing, and heady in his soul.
The Teuton, before the new philosophy of self-expansion at all costs
laid hold on him, was welcome, from his many great qualities, in a world
of other men. But his was the last nature that could afford to succumb
wholesale to the faith that his race was the only race that mattered. If
he could see himself he would realize that the very thoroughness and
over-exaltation of his nature made it ruinous for him to tamper with
this particular ideal, for he was bound sooner or later to run it to
death, to the danger and alarm of all other races. No one outside
Germany, unless his mind was warped, could miss this latter-day Teutonic
absorption in self; the Teuton has dinned it into every ear, and
forgotten, in so doing, that we should not take off discount for
temperamental extravagance of diction. The German imperialistic patriot
has done an incalculable, perhaps fatal, harm to the country he loves so
passionately. But even discounting for rhodomontade, no observer who has
feelers, can fail to be aware of the spiritual change in Germany. I
remember one tiny instance out of many—a mere straw showing the
direction of the wind. The winter before the war there were in a certain
hotel in Egypt four Teutons. A quiet, dignified old man, his tiny,
quiet, dignified wife, and their two big sons. The difference between
the two generations was distressing. In the older, such an air of
unassuming goodness, in the younger a demeanour so intolerant, and
domineering; those two sons were respectful and good to their father and
mother; but toward the rest of the world—to natives, English,
Americans, and other small fry—they displayed an astounding contempt.
The Berlin Concordia has just issued maxims of conduct to the German
people, in a little book called “Let Germany Learn.” I cull two of them:
“The soft corner in your heart for the foreigner will never give you his
affection, but only his contempt!” And: “Everything depends on your own
strength.”
It would be easy to make out some sort of case against any of the
belligerent nations. It would not be easy to show that any nation save
Germany was in that peculiar state of full-blooded self-confidence which
upholds the Will to Power, and denies the Will to Equity.
§ 11.
It seems certain that the practice of doping soldiers with ether or
other spirit before an attack has been largely resorted to by certain
nations in this war. Nothing that is happening so illuminates the nature
of modern warfare; illustrates more utterly the absorption of human
bodies and souls into the Machines that are crashing into each other.
Men have become mere lumps of coal to be converted into driving power.
And in supreme moments, lest the bewildered spirit, brought up to peace,
should move hand or foot in protest or recoil, that spirit is first
stolen away. The usage is not prompted by motives of mercy, yet has in
it a kind of awful humanity. Granted the premises, who dare grudge this
anodyne to the doomed?
Verily on every man who in time of peace speaks or writes one word to
foster bad spirit between nations a curse should rest; he is part and
parcel of that malevolence which at last sets these great Engines, fed
by lumps of human coal, to crash along, and pile up against each other,
in splintered wreckage. Only too well he plays the game of those grim
schemers to whose account lie the death, the dehumanization, the despair
of millions of their brother men.
§ 12.
A wonderful night to-night, so that the spirit goes forth a little,
enters the harmony of things, drinks the magic of the world. How beauty
moves the heart! And war cannot destroy it, cannot take from us the
feeling that—living or dead—we belong to such perfection. It cannot
take the voice from the streams, remove the flight of small wings in the
darkness, the gleam of moonlight, the whisper of night about us, nor
that bright star. It cannot take from within us the soul that vibrates
to loveliness, to the universal rhythm round us.
If in this war the figures of cruelty and death have surpassed
themselves in darkness, the figure of Humanity has never been so radiant
and so lovely. Perhaps we do not know enough what man was really like in
past ages to compare him with man to-day. But it does seem as if he had
grown in power for evil, and even more in power for good. Or perhaps it
is only that, being more sensitive and highly strung, the story of his
doings is altogether more poignant.
From the letters of a young French painter, who, after months in the
trenches, disappeared in an engagement on April 7th, 1915, I quote these
sayings:
“You know what I call religion—that which binds together in man all his
thoughts of the universal and of the eternal, those two forms of God!
. . . Don’t let’s lose hope; the trials of hope are many, but all beauty
lives for ever. . . . The dead won’t hurt the Spring! . . . Did you see
yesterday’s sun? How noble the country is, and how good Nature! She
seems to say to him who listens that nothing will be lost. . . . We know
not whether all this violence and disorder may not be leading us toward
a crowning good. . . . Out of this torment we shall be left with one
great aspiration toward pity, fraternity, and goodness. . . . Never has
life brought me such abundance of noble feelings;—never, perhaps, have
I had such freshness of sensibility for their recording; such a
sensation of safety in my spirit. . . . We spend the days like
children. . . . And the good from this war will be the making young
again the hearts of those who have been through it.”
And his last written words: “Beloved mother, I send you all my love.
Whatever happens, life will have been beautiful.”
Not to many is given so clear a soul as this, so fine a spirit. Peace
and loveliness be with him, and with all who die like him before their
time, following the light within them. And with all who live on in this
world of beauty, where the Dead harm not the Spring, may there be—in
his words—the longing for pity, fraternity, and goodness!