obvious. It needs, however, more public discussion in England than it
has hitherto received. The second method--operating at present only in a
very casual and unsystematic way--ought, one would say, to be very
systematically considered and dealt with by the modern States. For a
nation to plant out large bodies of colonists on comparatively
unoccupied lands, as in Africa or Australia or Canada, in a deliberate
and organized fashion, with every facility towards co-operation and
success, and yet on the principle of leaving, each colonial unit plenty
of freedom and autonomy, would not be a very difficult task, nor a very
expensive one, considering the end in view. And in such a case there
would really be no adequate reason for jealousy between States having
colonies in the neighbourhood of each other. If Germany (or any other
country) wishes to have a colony in East Africa or West Africa, it is
really ridiculous to go to war about such a matter. Any peaceful
arrangement would be less expensive; and, as a matter of fact, a
flourishing German (or other) colony in the neighbourhood of a British
settlement would help to bring prosperity to the latter. The two
colonies would benefit each other. It is only _unreasoning jealousy_
which prevents people understanding this.
Finally, there is the third method, of the intentional limitation of
families. Surely the time has come when blind and unlimited propagation
among civilized and self-respecting peoples must come to an end. The
old text "Blessed is he that hath his quiver full of them" has ceased to
have any use or application. Eugenic and healthy conditions of
child-rearing and nurture demand small families. The well-to-do and
educated do already limit their families; and for the poorer classes to
breed and propagate indefinitely is only to play into the hands of the
dividend-hunting rich by increasing the supply of cheap labour, while at
the same time the general standard of the population becomes more and
more degraded. It is indeed a curious question why, in the Press and
among the official classes, every effort to spread abroad the knowledge
of how in a healthy, humane, and eugenic way to limit the size of the
family is discountenanced. Sometimes one thinks that this is done partly
in order to encourage that said pullulation of workers which is so
favourable to, the keeping down of wages; but, of course, ancient
reasons of ignorance and religious bias weigh also. In the United States
the persecutions of Comstockery are worse than here.
The aborigines of Australia are so ignorant that they do not even know
that conception arises from the meeting of the male and female elements.
They think that certain bushes and trees are haunted by the spirits of
babies, which leap unawares into the bodies of passing women. It can be
imagined what evils and delusions spring from such a theory. We do not
want to return to such a period; and yet it would seem that many folk do
not want to go forward from our present condition, with all _its_ evils
and delusions, to something better and more intelligent.
If the nations haven't the sense to be able (if they wish) to limit
their families--short of resorting to such methods as War, Cannibalism,
the spread of Disease, the exposure of Infants, and the like--one can
only conclude that they must go on fighting and preying upon each other
(industrially and militarily) till they gain the sense. Mere unbridled
and irrational lust may have led to wars of extermination in the past.
Love and the sacrament of a true and intimate union may come some day
with the era of peace.
FOOTNOTES:
[26] Militating also against the idea of over-population is the fact
that so much of our agricultural land is obviously uncared for and
neglected.
XV
THE FRIENDLY AND THE FIGHTING INSTINCTS
_January_, 1915.
Fighting is certainly a deeply ingrained instinct in the human race--the
masculine portion. In the long history of human development it has
undoubtedly played an important part. It has even (such is the
cussedness and contrariety of Nature) helped greatly in the evolution of
love and social solidarity. There is no greater bond in early stages
between the members of a group or tribe than the consciousness that they
have a common enemy.[27] It is also obviously still a great _pleasure_
to a very large proportion of our male populations--as, indeed, the fact
of its being the fulfilment of a deep instinct would lead us to expect.
It does not follow, however, from these remarks that we expect war in
its crudest form to continue for ever. There will come a term to this
phase of evolution. Probably the impact and collision between
nations--if required for their impregnation and fecundity--will come
about in some other way.
If fighting is an ingrained instinct, the sociable or friendly instinct
is equally ingrained. We may, indeed, suppose it roots deeper. In the
midst of warfare maddest foes will turn and embrace each other. In the
tale of _Cuchulain of Muirthemne_[28] he (Cuchulain) and Ferdiad fought
for three days on end, yet at the close of each day kissed each other
affectionately; and in the present war there are hundreds of stories
already in circulation of acts of grace and tenderness between enemies,
as well as the quaintest quips and jokes and demonstrations of
sociability between men in opposing trenches who "ought" to have been
slaying each other. In the Russo-Japanese War during the winter, when
military movement was not easy, and the enemy lines in some cases were
very near each other, the men, Russians and Japanese, played games
together as a convenient and pleasant way of passing the time, and not
unfrequently took to snowballing each other.
A friend of mine, who was in that war, told me the following story. The
Japanese troops were attacking one of the forts near Port Arthur with
their usual desperate valour. They cut _zig-zag_ trenches up the
hillside, and finally stormed and took a Russian trench close under the
guns of the fort. The Russians fled, leaving their dead and wounded
behind. After the _mêlée_, when night fell, five Japanese found
themselves in that particular trench with seven Russians--all pretty
badly wounded--with many others of course dead. The riflemen in the fort
were in such a nervous state, that at the slightest movement in the
trench they fired, regardless of whom they might hit. The whole party
remained quiet during the night and most of the next day. They were
suffering from wounds, and without food or water, but they dared not
move; they managed, however, to converse with each other a
little--especially through the Japanese lieutenant, who knew a little
Russian. On the second night the fever for water became severe. One of
the less wounded Russians volunteered to go and fetch some. He raised
himself from the ground, stood up in the darkness, but was discerned
from the fort, and shot. A second Russian did the same and was shot. A
Japanese did likewise. Then the rest lay, quiet again. Finally, the
darkness having increased and the thirst and the wounds being
intolerable, the Japanese lieutenant, who had been wounded in the legs
and could not move about, said that if one of the remaining Russians
would take him on his back he would guide the whole party into a place
of safety in the Japanese lines. So they did. The Russian soldier
crawled on his belly with the Japanese officer lying on his back, and
the others followed, keeping close to the ground. They reached the
Japanese quarters, and were immediately, looked after and cared for. A
few days afterwards the five Russians came on board the transport on
which my friend was engineer. They were being taken as prisoners to
Japan; but the Japanese crew could not do enough for them in the way of
tea and cigarettes and dressing their wounds, and they made quite a
jolly party all together on deck. The Japanese officer was also on
board, and he told my friend the story.
Gallantry towards the enemy has figured largely in the history of
War--sometimes as an individual impulse, sometimes as a recognized
instruction. European records afford us plenty of examples. The Chinese,
always great sticklers for politeness, used to insist in early times
that a warrior should not take advantage of his enemy when the latter
had emptied his quiver, but wait for him to pick up his arrows before
going on with the fight. And in one tale of old Japan, when one Daimio
was besieging another, the besieged party, having run short of
ammunition, requested a truce in order to fetch some more--which the
besiegers courteously granted!
The British officer who the other day picked up a wounded German soldier
and carried him across into the German lines, acted in quite the same
spirit. He saw that the man had been left accidentally when the Germans
were clearing away their wounded; and quite simply he walked forward
with the object of restoring him. But it cost him his life; for the
Germans, not at first perceiving his intention, fired and hit him in two
or three places. Nevertheless he lifted the man and succeeded in bearing
him to the German trench. The firing of course ceased, and the German
colonel saluted and thanked the officer, and pinned a ribbon to his
coat. He returned to the British lines, but died shortly after of the
wounds received.
"Ils sont superbes, ces braves!" said a French soldier in hospital to
Mrs. Haden Guest, indicating the German wounded also there. And a dying
German whispered to her: "I would never have fought against the French
and English had I known how kind they were. I was told that I was only
going on manoeuvres!"[29]
The French are generous in the recognition of bravery. A small company
rushed a Prussian battery in the neighbourhood of the Aisne and put all
the gunners out of action, except one who fought gamely to the last and
would not give in till he was fairly surrounded and made prisoner. "_Tu
est chic, tu--tu est bien chic_" shouted the _pioupious_ with one
accord, and shook him cordially by the hand as they led him away. How
preposterous do such stories as these make warfare appear!--and others,
such as the two opposing forces tacitly agreeing to fetch water at the
evening hour from an intervening stream without molestation on either
side; or the two parties using an old mill as a post-office, by means of
which letters could pass between France and Germany in defiance of all
decent war-regulations! How they illustrate the absolutely instinctive
and necessary tendency of the natural man (notwithstanding occasional
bouts of fury) to aid his fellow and fall into some sort of
understanding with him! Finally the fraternizations last Christmas
between the opposing lines in Northern France almost threatened at one
time to dissolve all the proprieties of official warfare. If they had
spread a little farther and lasted a little longer, who knows what might
have happened? High politics might have been utterly confounded, and
the elaborate schemes of statesmen on both sides entirely frustrated.
Headquarters had, through the officers, to interfere and all such
demonstrations of amity to be for the future forbidden. Could anything
more clearly show the beating of the great heart of Man beneath the
thickly overlying husks of class and class-government? When, oh! when
indeed, will the real human creature emerge from its age-long chrysalis?
FOOTNOTES:
[27] And even the hundred and one humane Associations of to-day derive a
great part of their enthusiasm and vitality from fighting each other!
[28] Put into English by Lady Gregory. (John Murray, 6s. net.)
[29] From _T.P.'s Weekly_, November 7, 1914.
XVI
NEVER AGAIN!
Like a great cry these words to-day rise from the lips of the
nations--"Never Again!" Never before certainly have such enormous masses
of human beings been locked in deadly grip with each other over the
earth, and never before, equally certainly, has their warfare been so
horrible in its deliberate preparation, so hideous, so ghastly in its
after-effects, as to-day. The nations stand round paralysed with disgust
and despair, almost unable to articulate; and when they do find voice it
is with the words above written.
How are we to give effect to the cry? Must we not call upon the Workers
of all countries--those who are the least responsible for the inception
of wars, and yet who suffer most by them, who bear the brunt of the
wounds, the slaughter, the disease, and the misery which are a necessary
part of them--to rise up and forbid them for ever from the earth? Let us
do so! For though few may follow and join with us to-day, yet to-morrow
and every day in the future, and every year, as the mass-peoples come
into their own, and to the knowledge of what they are and what they
desire to be, those numbers will increase, till the cry itself is no
longer a mere cry but an accomplished fact.
It is a hopeful sign that not only among bewildered onlookers and
outsiders but among the soldiers themselves (of the more civilized
countries) this cry is being taken up. Who, indeed, should know better
than they what they are talking about? The same words are on the lips at
this moment of thousands and thousands of French and English and German
soldiers,[30] and in no faint-hearted or evasive sense, but with the
conviction and indignation of experience. We may hope they will not be
forgotten this time when the war is over.
The truth is that not only was this particular war "bound to come," but
(among the civilized peoples) the refusal of war is also bound to come.
Two great developments are leading to this result. On the one hand, the
soldiers themselves, the fighters, are as a class becoming infinitely
more sensitive, more intelligent, more capable of humane feeling, less
stupidly "patriotic" and prejudiced against their enemies than were the
soldiers of a century ago--say, of the time of Wellington; on the other
hand, the horrors, the hideousness, the folly, and the waste of war are
infinitely greater. It is inevitable that these two contradictory
movements, mounting up on opposite sides, must at last clash. The rising
conscience of Humanity must in the end say to the War-fiend, "Get thee
behind me, Satan!" Never before have there passed over the fields of
Europe armies so intelligent, so trained, so observant, so sensitive as
those to-day of Belgium, France, England, and Germany. Some day or other
they will return to their homes; but when they do it will be with a
tale that will give to the Western world an understanding of what war
means, such as it never had before.
All the same, if the word _is_ to be "Never Again!" it must come through
the masses themselves (from whom the fighters are mainly drawn); it must
be through them that this consummation must be realized. It must be
through the banding together and determined and combined effort of the
Unions, local, national, and international, and through the weight of
the workers' influence in all their associations and in all countries.
To put much reliance in this matter upon the "classes" is rash; for
though just now the latter are sentimentalizing freely over the
subject--having got into nearer touch with it than ever before--yet when
all is settled down, and the day arrives once more that _their_
interests point to war, it is only too likely that they (or the majority
of them) will not hesitate to sacrifice the masses--unless, indeed, the
power to do so has already departed from them.
And it is no good for _us_ to sentimentalize on the subject. We must not
blink facts. And the fact is that "it's a long way" to _Never Again_.
The _causes_ of War must be destroyed first; and, as I have more than
once tried to make clear, the causes ramify through our midst; they are
like the roots, pervading the body politic, of some fell disease whose
outbreak on the surface shocks and affrights us. To dislodge and
extirpate these roots is a long business. But there is this consolation
about it--that it is a business which we can all of us begin at once, in
our own lives!
Probably wars will still for many a century continue, though less
frequent we hope. And if the people themselves _want_ to fight, and must
fight, who is to say them Nay? In such case we need not be overmuch
troubled. There are many things worse than fighting; and there are many
wounds and injuries which people inflict on each other worse than bodily
wounds and injuries--only they are not so plain to see. But I certainly
would say--as indeed the peasant says in every land--"Let those who
begin the quarrel do the fighting"; and let those who have to do the
fighting and bear the brunt of it (including the women) decide whether
there _shall_ be fighting or not. To leave the dread arbitrament of War
in the hands of private groups and cliques who, for their own ends and
interests, are willing to see the widespread slaughter of their
fellow-countrymen and the ruin of innumerable homes is hateful beyond
words.
FOOTNOTES:
[30] See "A War-Note for Democrats," by H.M. Tomlinson _(English
Review_, December, 1914). "This war was bound to come, and we've got to
finish it proper. No more of this bloody rot for the kids, an' chance
it."
XVII
THE TREE OF LIFE
_February_, 1915.
Finally, and looking back on all we have said, and especially on the
Christmas scenes and celebrations between the trenches in this war and
the many similar fraternizations of the rank and file of opposing armies
in former wars, one realizes the monstrosity and absurdity of the
present conflict--its anachronism and out-of-dateness in the existing
age of human thought and feeling. The whole European situation resembles
a game of marbles played by schoolboys. It is not much more dignified
than that. Each boy tries on the quiet to appropriate some of the
marbles out of another boy's bag. From time to time, in consequence,
furious scrimmages arise--generally between two boys--the others
looking' on and laughing, knowing well that they themselves are guilty
of the same tricks. Presently, in the fortunes of the game, one boy--a
little more blundering or a little less disguised than the others--lays
himself open to the accusations of the whole crew. They all fall upon
him, and give him a good drubbing; and even some of them say they are
punishing him _for his good_! When shall we make an end, once for all,
of this murderous nonsense?
However our Tommy Atkinses have been worked up to fighting point by
fears for the safety of old England, or by indignation at atrocities
actually observed or distantly reported; however the German soldiers
have been affected by similar fears and indignations, or the French the
same; however the political coil has been engineered (as engineered in
such cases it always is), and whatever inducements of pay or patriotism
have been put in operation and sentiments circulated by the Press--one
thing remains perfectly certain: that left to themselves these men would
never have quarrelled, never have attacked each other. One thing is
perfectly certain: that such a war as the present is the result of the
activity of governing cliques and classes in the various nations,
acting through what are called "Diplomatic" channels, for the most part
in secret and unbeknown to their respective mass-peoples, and for
motives best known to themselves.
One would not venture to say that _all_ wars are so engineered, for
there certainly are occasionally wars which are the spontaneous
expression of two nations' natural hostility and hatred; but these are
rare, very rare, and the war in which we are concerned at present is
certainly not one of them. Also one would not venture to say that though
in the present affair the actuating motives have been of class origin,
and have been worked through secret channels, the motives so put in
action have all been base and mean. That would be going too far. Some of
the motives may have been high-minded and generous, some may have been
mean, and others may have been mean and yet _unconsciously_ so. But
certainly when one looks at the conditions of public and political life,
and the arrangements and concatenations by which influence there is
exerted and secured, and sees (as one must) the pretty bad corruption
which pervades the various parties in all the modern States--the
commercial briberies, the lies of the Press, the poses and
prevarications of Diplomats and Ministers--one cannot but realize the
great probability that the private advantage of individuals or classes
has been (in the present case) a prevailing instigation. The fact that
in Britain two influential and honourable Cabinet Ministers resigned at
once on the declaration of war (a fact upon which the Press has been
curiously silent) cannot but "give one to think." One cannot but realize
that the fighting men in all these nations are the pawns and counters of
a game which is being played for the benefit--or supposed benefit--of
certain classes; that public opinion is a huge millstream which has to
be engineered; that the Press is a channel for its direction, and Money
the secret power which commands the situation.
The fact is sad, but it must be faced. And the facing of it leads
inevitably to the question, "How, then, can Healing ever come?" If (it
will be said) the origin of wars is in the diseased condition of the
nations, what prospect is there of their ever ceasing? And one sees at
once that the prospect is not immediate. One sees at once that Peace
Societies and Nobel Prizes and Hague Tribunals and reforms of the
Diplomatic Service and democratic control of Foreign Secretaries and
Quaker and Tolstoyan preachments--though all these things may be good in
their way--will never bring us swiftly to the realization of peace. The
roots of the Tree of Life lie deeper.
We have seen it a dozen times in the foregoing pages. Only when the
nations cease to be diseased in themselves will they cease fighting with
each other. And the disease of the modern nations is the disease of
disunity--not, as I have already said, the mere existence of variety of
occupation and habit, for that is perfectly natural and healthy, but the
disease by which one class preys upon another and upon the nation--the
disease of parasitism and selfish domination. The health of a people
consists in that people's real _unity_, the organic life by which each
section contributes freely and generously to the welfare of the whole,
identifies itself with that welfare, and holds it a dishonour to snatch
for itself the life which should belong to all. A nation which realized
_that_ kind of life would be powerful and healthy beyond words; it would
not only be splendidly glad and prosperous and unassailable in itself,
but it would inevitably infect all other nations with whom it had
dealings with the same principle. Having the Tree of Life well rooted
within its own garden, its leaves and fruit and all its acts and
expressions would be for the healing of the peoples around. But a nation
divided against itself by parasitic and self-exalting cliques and
sections could never stand. It could never be healthy. No armaments nor
ingenuity of science and organization could save it, and even though the
form of its institutions were democratic, if the reality of Democracy
were not there, its peace crusades and prizes and sentimental
Conferences and Christianities would be of little avail.
At this juncture, then, all over Europe, when the classes are failing us
and by their underhand machinations continually embroiling one nation
with another, it is above all necessary that the mass-peoples should
move and insist upon the representation of their great unitary and
communal life and interests. It is high time that they should open
their eyes and see with clear vision what is going on over their heads,
and more than high time that they should refuse to take part in the
Quarrels of those who (professionally) live upon their labour. It is
indeed astonishing that the awakening has been so long in coming; but
surely it cannot be greatly delayed now. Underneath all the ambitions of
certain individuals and groups; underneath all the greed and chicanery
of others; underneath the widespread ignorance, mother of prejudice,
which sunders folk of different race or colour-deep down the human heart
beats practically the same in all lands, drawing us little mortals
together.