THE GERMAN RACE HERESY AND THE WAR
I.
It is the purpose of the following article to single out one aspect of
the war which has been strangely neglected. It is our purpose to
emphasize the influence which the obsession of one particular idea,
the German race theory, has exercised over the German mind and the
part which it has played in bringing about the war of the nations.
False ideas have been the dragon's teeth from which have risen the
legions of five continents. Amongst those false ideas the most deadly,
the most fatal, has been the German heresy of race, the theory of race
inequality and race antagonism. It is in the name of that race heresy,
in the name of Germanism and Pan-Germanism, of Slavism and
Pan-Slavism, of Saxonism and Pan-Saxonism, the war is being waged.
We read the following passage in a recent book by Sven Hedin, the
official chronicler of the German armies:
"Here is a (German) reservist. What a tremendous figure! What can
Latins, Slavs, Celts, Japs, Negroes, Hindus, Ghurkas, Turcos, and
whatever they are called, do against such strapping giants of the
true Germanic type? His features are superbly noble, and he seems
pleased with his day's work. He does not regret that he has offered
his life for Germany's just cause."
In this odious passage we have in a few lines the whole history and
the whole philosophy of the tragedy. We have the spirit with which the
Germans have waged the war, we have the motive for which they have
waged it, and we have the ultimate purpose which they hope to
achieve--namely, to force upon a subjected Europe the rule of the
super-race of Treitschke and the _bionda bestia_ of Nietzsche.
In former times, in the so-called "Dark Age," nations would fight for
the human, rational, but impracticable principle of orthodoxy. To-day
we are fighting for the inhuman, for the equally impracticable and
immoral principle of race antagonism. Germans fight because through
their veins courses the red blood of the Teutons of Tacitus. They are
fighting because they are convinced that they have the Might and the
Right and the Duty of crushing the French and the Russians, because
through French veins courses the tainted blood of the Gauls of Cæsar,
and because through the veins of the Slavs courses the white fluid of
the slave and the yellow fluid of the Tatar.
II.
It is one of the commonplaces of the economic school that the economic
motive is the main factor which makes for peace or war, that material
interests only count, and that ideas do not matter. It is one of the
shallow illusions of the pseudo-rationalist school that the age of
religious wars is passed for ever. As a matter of fact, this war is as
much a religious war as any crusade that was ever waged. The only
difference between the religious war of to-day and the religious wars
of yesterday is that in the past dogmas were promulgated by priests
and saints in the name of Theology. The dogmas of to-day are
promulgated in the name of Science by the high-priests of Universities
and Academies. A few mystical Greek words, such as _homousios_ and
_homoiousios_, were the watchwords of the crusades of old. A few
equally mystical Greek words, _brachycephalic_ and _dolichocephalic_,
are the watchwords of the crusades of to-day.
III.
It may seem the idle conceit of a dreamer out of touch with reality to
assert that it is principles which mainly matter and that it is the
ideal which is the ultimate reality. It may seem a ludicrous
exaggeration to assert that a mere abstract scientific theory,
apparently so innocuous as is the German race theory, could be held
responsible for so titanic a catastrophe. Surely there seems to be
here no relation and no proportion between cause and effect. Yet it
does not take a prolonged effort of profound thinking to understand
the portentous political significance of the German race heresy. It is
not difficult to understand that according as we believe that history
is mainly a conflict of ideals or according as we believe that history
is mainly a conflict of material interests, or a conflict of races, we
shall consistently either believe in peace or in war as the normal
condition of humanity. Conflicts of ideas ought rationally to make for
peace. Conflicts of material interests will frequently, although not
necessarily, make for war. Conflicts of races must inevitably and
always make for war.
If you believe in the materialistic theory that human history is
mainly made up of the inevitable antagonism between Aryan and Semite,
between Slav and Teuton, between Celt and Anglo-Saxon, then you must
also believe that war is the permanent and beneficial factor in human
history. For the conflicts of races for supremacy can only be solved
through war.
On the other hand, if you believe in the idealistic theory that human
history is mainly a conflict of spiritual and moral and political
ideals, then peace is the ultimate factor. For human experience and
human reason equally teach us that a conflict of spiritual ideals
cannot be solved by violence. They can only be solved by discussion
and argument, by persuasion and conversion, by the spread of
education, by clear thinking and strenuous working, by the diffusion
of sweetness and light. Both reason and wisdom teach us that truth and
faith are like love--they cannot be imposed by force.
IV.
Underlying the theory of race there is a first assumption that there
is such a thing as a distinct racial type; that there are definite
breeds of men, Aryans and Semites, Celts and Teutons, just as there
are definite breeds of dogs and pigeons; that human breeds are
evolved by similar selective processes; that those distinct racial
types are the main factor in the history of nations; that those types
are endowed with specific anatomical and physiological characteristics,
and that those physiological characteristics carry with them equally
definite moral, intellectual, and political qualities.
And there is a second assumption which is the corollary of the first.
Not only is there a separation of races, there is also an inequality
of races. "L'Inégalité des Races humaines" is the title of the
epoch-making book of Count de Gobineau. The "Separation of Race" is a
biological and objective fact. But to that biological fact we must add
a moral and subjective distinction. Some races are noble, others are
ignoble. Some races are born to rule, other races are born to obey, to
be "hewers of wood and drawers of water." The Slav is born a slave to
be controlled by the Germans. The Serbian is born a serf to be
controlled by the Austrians. The Bohemian is an outcast. The Pole is a
drunkard. The Celt is a weakling. The Anglo-Saxon is a mercenary. The
Russian is a Tatar and a brute.
V.
The German race theory is propped up by a formidable array of
so-called scientific proofs. All the auxiliary disciplines of biology,
botany and zoology, physiology and anatomy, are enlisted in the
service of anthropology and ethnology. The question as to whether a
particular nation is a _Kultur Volk_ or whether it is only a rabble of
slaves depends entirely on whether the facies is square or oval,
brachycephalic or oligocephalic. It depends entirely--to use the
pedantic jargon of the anthropologist--on the "cephalic index" of the
race.
The historical sciences are called in to support the conclusions of
ethnology. It is especially philology which is the most efficient
instrument demonstrating the existence and the superiority of a
distinct race. Just as anatomy reveals to us the structure of the
cranium, so philology reveals to us the structure of the mind. The
philologist reveals the genealogies of words even as the
anthropologist studies the genealogies of races.
In the burning controversies which for the last generation have
divided the Tchech and Magyar and Croatian and Roumanian races of the
Austrian Empire, it is the philologists who have acted as umpires. In
Vienna philologists like von Jagic have all the authority and prestige
of statesmen. Similarly, in the Balkan States, Serbians and
Bulgarians, Roumanians and Greeks, find conclusive evidence of their
respective rights in the dialects of the Macedonian populations. Such
and such a province must be allotted to the Serbians, and not to the
Bulgarians, because such and such a dialect has more affinity to the
Serbian than to the Bulgarian language. Similarly, in the Latin
elements of their dictionary, Roumanian patriots find convincing
evidence of their Latin ancestry, and finally prove that they are the
lineal descendants of the Dacian legions of Emperor Trajan.[21]
[21] The Roumanian language is a composite language like
English. Even as the English vocabulary is mainly a blend of
Anglo-Saxon and Franco-Norman, so the Roumanian language is a
blend of Latin and Slavonic words. Many years ago the British
and Foreign Bible Society published a Roumanian Bible from
which the majority of the Slavonic words had been eliminated.
I pointed out in _Everyman_ that this Roumanian translation
was not Roumanian at all. The authorities of the Bible
Society indignantly protested and asked me to withdraw. I
refused to withdraw. The British and Foreign Bible Society
investigated the question, deferring to my criticisms, and
prepared and published a new revised version of their
Roumanian Bible in which the Slavonic words largely composing
the religious vocabulary of Roumania have been restored.
VI.
Those scientific arguments, biological and philological, may satisfy
the biologists and the philologists; they certainly satisfy nobody
else. All those pseudo-scientific facts belong to the realm of
fiction. Serious thinkers have ceased to prattle about the application
of biology to ethics since Huxley delivered his Romanes lecture on
"Evolution and Ethics." The encroachments of scientific materialism
have failed as signally in the political sciences as they have failed
in ethics.
It is futile to compare the processes which evolve races of man with
the processes which evolve breeds of animals. It is true that in the
lower stages of humanity the word "race" has a definite meaning. It
may be contended that there is a wide gulf between the races at the
extreme end of the human scale, a gulf which even the enthusiastic
devotion of missionary effort does not seem able to bridge. There is
such a thing as the "blackness" of the nigger and the "yellowness" of
the Chinese and the Japanese, although the Japanese have proved
themselves capable of assimilating Western civilization, and although
the black race has produced the greatest poet of Russia, Pouchkine,
and one of the greatest novelists of France, Alexandre Dumas. But it
is an all-important fact that as civilization advances the word "race"
entirely changes its meaning. Evolution entirely modifies its
processes. Biological factors steadily decrease in importance. Moral
and political and intellectual factors as steadily increase in
importance.
Isolation and selection are the main conditions required to produce a
definite breed of cattle. On the other hand, if we want to produce a
highly civilized type, it is not isolation which is the main
condition, but crossing and blending, mixture and intercourse. As we
rise in the scale of humanity there are no fixed types. All types are
equally plastic. There are no pure types. All types are equally mixed.
Even if we take the Jewish race, which seems to show extraordinary
fixity and stability of type, there is not one dominant Jewish type;
there are fully fifty different Jewish types. There is hardly any
resemblance between the Jew of Tiflis and the Jew of Tangier, between
democratic Ashkenazim and the aristocratic Sephardim. Race is not a
cause, but an effect. It is not biology which explains politics, it is
politics which dominate biology. It is not the physical which explains
the moral, it is the moral which produces the physical. It is not the
racial type which produces a racial belief and a racial community, it
is the religion which produces the race. It is not the Hindu caste
which produces the religion, it is religion which produces the caste.
Similarly, it is the religious and political conditions which have
kept the Jew apart, and which have preserved the characteristics of
the race. Even so, religion and persecution have kept the
characteristics of the Armenians or the Parsees and the Greek colonies
in the Levant.
VII.
A highly gifted race is invariably the outcome of complex elements, of
many cross-currents. Invariably it is the outcome of moral, spiritual,
and political factors. It is the outcome of unity of language, of
unity of religion, of community of traditions and institutions. It is
mainly religion which keeps apart the French and the Anglo-Saxon races
in Canada, and which divides the Celt from the Ulsterman in Ireland.
Let the religious boundary break down, and the Irish Celt will blend
with the Ulster Scot, the French Canadian will mix with the
Anglo-Saxon. The race heresy in its modern form is the sinister shadow
projected by the biological materialism of the early Darwinians. It is
the same materialistic conception which has triumphed in German
Marxism and in the economic interpretation of history. It is the same
conception which has triumphed in the _Realpolitik_ and _Weltpolitik_,
and the elimination of the moral factor from the activities of high
policy. The tyranny of the race dogma permeates the majority of the
German historians and publicists from the early nineteenth century. We
find it in Mommsen's "History of Rome." It has found a striking
expression in his famous chapter on the Celts, which is only a veiled
attack against the French, who are assumed to be the lineal
descendants of the Gauls. The same dogma is the dominant idea of
Treitschke's "History." We find it in the _bionda bestia_ of
Nietzsche. We find it in the "Foundations of the Nineteenth Century"
of Houston Stewart Chamberlain. We find it in the works of Count de
Gobineau, who, after working unnoticed in his own country, has been
heralded as the apostle of Pan-Germanism in the Vaterland. The race
heresy has been the _leitmotiv_ of all political controversies in the
Empire. We find it equally in the anti-Semitic, in the anti-Russian,
in the anti-French propaganda. It has culminated in the triple dogma
of the superman, of the super-race, and of the super-State, and this
triple dogma of the German _Realpolitik_ has worked for the
enslavement of Europe as inevitably as the triple dogma of the French
Revolution--_Liberté_, _Egalité_, _Fraternité_--was bound to lead to
the liberation of Europe.
VIII.
For the philosophy of race, with all the liberal demonstrations of its
votaries, is essentially and inevitably the philosophy of reaction and
the philosophy of militarism, if it is carried to its logical
conclusion. And, unfortunately, in Germany it has been carried to its
logical conclusion. In Britain and France thinkers have advocated the
same deadly theories. The same deadly poison of pseudo-science has
infected the body politic. But Darwin and Huxley always saved
themselves by inconsistency from the ruthless application of their
doctrines. The common sense of the community has shrunk from extreme
logic. In a country of free discussion and of free institutions
doctrines are counteracted by other influences. Theories are tested by
life. In an autocratic country theories are supreme. The undiluted
theories of Rousseau and Robespierre were supreme under the Reign of
Terror; the theories of Katkov and the extreme Pan-Slavists were
supreme in Russia under the reign of Alexander III. Under a government
like Prussia, where all the spiritual forces are mobilized, where
Universities, Churches, and newspapers are subject to the State, there
is nothing to counteract the doctrinaire spirit. It is, therefore, not
to be wondered at that the heresy of race should have become a fixed
idea, a monomania, in the German Empire. In Great Britain the theories
of the apostate Englishman Chamberlain could not have struck deep
root, notwithstanding all the enthusiastic praise which Mr. Bernard
Shaw has given to the "Foundations." In France the theories of Count
de Gobineau passed unnoticed. In Germany "Gobineau Societies" have
been established in order to propagate the gospel of the French
diplomat. In Germany one hundred thousand copies of the "Foundations"
of Chamberlain, with their ponderous twelve hundred pages compact with
facts and arguments, have been sold, have poisoned countless brains,
and have wielded enormous political influence.
IX.
The first inevitable outcome of the German race heresy has been to
stimulate the belief in the supremacy of the Teuton and to transform
the natural conceit of patriotism into an odious megalomania. Once the
Germans assumed in accordance with the race dogma that some European
races are born to rule and others to obey, it was inevitable that they
should draw the further inference that they of all races were the
dominant race. It is true that the belief of the Calvinist in
religious predestination may lead to a pessimistic as well as to an
optimistic conclusion. The believer in predestination may assume that
he is predestined to eternal damnation as easily as he assumes that he
is predestined to eternal salvation. But the pseudo-scientific mind
and the materialistic mind is not so easily addicted to humility and
pessimism. The slave morality of the Christian may lead to meekness
and charity and to all the negative virtues of a degenerate
Christianity. The master morality of the Anti-Christ Nietzsche must
lead to the ruthless assertion of power. The belief in race
predestination can therefore only result in megalomania, and in
Germany it has certainly resulted in the most acute, the most insane,
inflation of nationalism and imperialism recorded in modern history.
Of that megalomania the Kaiser has been, in innumerable speeches, the
eloquent and insolent spokesman.
X.
Even as race heresy must result in racial megalomania, it must result
in political reaction and in the government of caste. The principle
which is true of the nation as a whole is as true of every section of
that nation. And the pride of race in a nation is substantially the
same thing as the pride of birth in a class. If amongst the races of
man there is one particular breed, the Teuton, which constitutes the
born aristocracy of humanity, so amongst those Teutons there is one
special caste which is the born aristocracy of Teutonism. It is the
rooted belief in the race theory which has maintained the rule of
Junkerthum. On the race theory an exclusive aristocratic government
recruited and maintained by artificial selection is the only logical
and sensible government, and democracy is bound to be considered as a
principle of decay. The Kings of Prussia select their rulers on the
same principle on which King Frederick William selected his regiment
of six-foot grenadiers from the military caste.
That is why we find in Prussia the most exclusive aristocratic
government in the world. As a sop to Southern German opinion, Bismarck
was compelled to grant universal suffrage for the Reichstag, but in
the Prussian Parliament, or "Landtag," Bismarck, the Junker of blood
and iron, retained the good old principle of aristocratic government.
Under the three-class voting system of the Landtag, one voter
constituting by himself the first class may have as much political
power as the twenty thousand electors constituting the third class.
That is also why the Prussian Junker retains by right of birth a
monopoly in the higher ranks of the Army, of the Diplomatic and Civil
Service. The Junker is born to greatness even as the princely families
of Germany have been born to a monopoly of all the thrones of Europe.
XI.
As the race theory must inevitably lead to megalomania and reaction,
so it must inevitably lead to militarism. As it is incompatible with
democracy, so it is incompatible with peace. As we pointed out at the
beginning of this analysis, if it be indeed true that there are some
races which are born to rule, it is their duty to assert their will to
power over inferior races. If "the true Teutonic type"--to use the
words of Sven Hedin--be indeed superior to the Celt, to the
Anglo-Saxon, to the Slav, and to the Latin, he is morally bound to
assert that superiority. The Teuton will not only achieve the victory,
he will deserve it. _Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht_ (World
history is world judgment). History is not a conflict between
abstractions, between truth and error, between higher and lower
principles, between conflicting ideals; it is, above all, the tragic
conflict between higher and lower races. War is necessary and war is
beneficial. War is not only the instrument, it is also the criterion,
of progress. "Might is Right" ceases to be an immoral principle.
"Might is Right" is the ultimate formula of the most sublime morality,
for Might is but the Right of the strong to establish the rule of the
noble over the ignoble elements of humanity.