CHAPTER IV

PEACE WITHOUT HONOUR

The argument therefore turns back to a choice between the two

alternatives alluded to: peace in submission to the rule of the German

dynastic establishment (and to Japan), or peace through elimination of

these enterprising Powers. The former alternative, no doubt, is

sufficiently unattractive, but it is not therefore to be put aside

without a hearing. As goes without saying, it is repugnant to the

patriotic sentiments of those peoples whom the Imperial German

establishment have elected for submission. But if this unreflecting

patriotic revulsion can once be made amenable to reason, there is always

something to be said in favor of such a plan of peaceable submission, or

at least in extenuation of it; and if it is kept in mind that the

ulterior necessity of such submission must always remain in perspective

as a condition precedent to a peaceful settlement, so long as one or

both of these enterprising Powers remains intact, it will be seen that a

sane appraisal of the merits of such a régime of peace is by no means

uncalled for. For neither of these two Powers is there a conclusive

issue of endeavour short of paramount dominion.

* * * * *

There should also be some gain of insight and sobriety in recalling that

the Intellectuals of the Fatherland, who have doubtless pondered this

matter longer and more dispassionately than all other men, have spoken

very highly of the merits of such a plan of universal submission to the

rule of this German dynastic establishment. They had, no doubt, been

considering the question both long and earnestly, as to what would, in

the light of reason, eventually be to the best interest of those peoples

whose manifest destiny was eventual tutelage under the Imperial crown;

and there need also be no doubt that in that time (two years past) they

therefore spoke advisedly and out of the fulness of the heart on this

head. The pronouncements that came out of the community of Intellectuals

in that season of unembarrassed elation and artless avowal are doubtless

to be taken as an outcome of much thoughtful canvassing of what had best

be done, not as an enforced compromise with untoward necessities but as

the salutary course freely to be pursued with an eye single to the best

good of all concerned.

It is true, the captious have been led to speak slightingly of the many

utterances of this tenure coming out of the community of Intellectuals,

as, e.g., the lay sermons of Professor Ostwald dating back to that

season; but no unprejudiced reader can well escape the persuasion that

these, as well as the very considerable volume of similar pronouncements

by many other men of eminent scholarship and notable for benevolent

sentiments, are faithfully to be accepted as the expressions of a

profound conviction and a consciously generous spirit. In so speaking of

the advantages to be derived by any subject people from submission to

the German Imperial rule, these Intellectuals are not to be construed as

formulating the drift of vulgar patriotic sentiment among their

compatriots at large, but rather as giving out the deliverances of their

own more sensitive spirit and maturer deliberation, as men who are in a

position to see human affairs and interests in a larger perspective.

Such, no doubt, would be their own sense of the matter.

Reflection on the analogous case of the tutelage exercised by the

American government over the subject Philippinos may contribute to a

just and temperate view of what is intended in the régime of tutelage

and submission so spoken for by the German Intellectuals,--and, it may

be added, found good by the Imperial statesmen. There would, of course,

be the difference, as against the case of the Philippinos, that whereas

the American government is after all answerable, in the last resort and

in a somewhat random fashion, to a popular opinion that runs on

democratic preconceptions, the German Imperial establishment on the

other hand is answerable to no one, except it be to God, who is

conceived to stand in somewhat the relation of a silent partner, or a

minority stockholder in this dynastic enterprise.

Yet it should not be overlooked that any presumptive hard usage which

the vassal peoples might look for at the hands of the German dynasty

would necessarily be tempered with considerations of expediency as

dictated by the exigencies of usufruct. The Imperial establishment has

shown itself to be wise, indeed more wise than amiable, but wise at

least in its intentions, in the use which it has made of subject peoples

hitherto. It is true, a somewhat accentuated eagerness on the part of

the Imperial establishment to get the maximum service in a minimum of

time and at a minimum cost from these subject populations,--as, e.g., in

Silesia and Poland, in Schleswig-Holstein, in Alsace-Lorraine, or in its

African and Oceanic possessions,--has at times led to practices

altogether dubious on humanitarian grounds, at the same time that in

point of thrifty management they have gone beyond "what the traffic will

bear." Yet it is not to be overlooked--and in this connection it is a

point of some weight--that, so far as the predatory traditions of its

statecraft will permit, the Imperial establishment has in all these

matters been guided by a singularly unreserved attention to its own

material advantage. Where its management in these premises has yielded a

less profitable usufruct than the circumstances would reasonably admit,

the failure has been due to an excess of cupidity rather than the

reverse.

The circumstantial evidence converges to the effect that the Imperial

establishment may confidently be counted on to manage the affairs of its

subject peoples with an eye single to its own material gain, and it may

with equal confidence be counted on that in the long run no unadvised

excesses will be practised. Of course, an excessive adventure in

atrocity and predation, due to such human infirmity in its agents or in

its directorate as has been shown in various recent episodes, is to be

looked for now and again; but these phenomena would come in by way of

fluctuating variations from the authentic routine, rather than as

systematic features of it.

That superfluity of naughtiness that has given character to the current

German Imperial policy in Belgium, e.g., or that similarly has

characterised the dealings of Imperial Japan in Korea during the late

"benevolent assimilation" of that people into Japanese-Imperial

usufruct, is not fairly to be taken to indicate what such an Imperial

establishment may be expected to do with a subject people on a footing

of settled and long-term exploitation. At the outset, in both instances,

the policy of frightfulness was dictated by a well-advised view to

economy of effort in reducing the subject people to an abject state of

intimidation, according to the art of war as set forth in the manuals;

whereas latterly the somewhat profligate excesses of the government of

occupation--decently covered with diplomatic parables on benevolence and

legality--have been dictated by military convenience, particularly by

the need of forced labor and the desirability of a reduced population in

the acquired territory. So also the "personally conducted" dealings with

the Armenians by use of the Turks should probably also best be explained

as an endeavour to reduce the numbers of an undesirable population

beforehand, without incurring unnecessary blame. All these things are,

at the most, misleading indications of what the Imperial policy would be

like under settled conditions and in the absence of insubordination.

By way of contrast, such as may serve to bring the specific traits of

this prospective Imperial tutelage of nations into a better light, the

Ottoman usufruct of the peoples of the Turkish dominions offers an

instructive instance. The Ottoman tutelage is today spoken of by its

apologists in terms substantially identical with the sketches of the

future presented by hopeful German patriots in the early months of the

current war. But as is so frequently the case in such circumstances,

these expressions of the officers have to be understood in a diplomatic

sense; not as touching the facts in any other than a formal way. It is

sufficiently evident that the Ottoman management of its usufruct has

throughout been ill-advised enough persistently to charge more than the

traffic would bear, probably due in great part to lack of control over

its agents or ramifications, by the central office. The Ottoman

establishment has not observed, or enforced, the plain rules of economy

in its utilisation of the subject peoples, and finds itself today

bankrupt in consequence. What may afford more of a parallel to the

prospective German tutelage of the nations is the procedure of the

Japanese establishment in Korea, Manchuria, or China; which is also duly

covered with an ostensibly decent screen of diplomatic parables, but the

nature and purpose of which is overt enough in all respects but the

nomenclature. It is not unlikely that even this Japanese usufruct and

tutelage runs on somewhat less humane and complaisant lines than a

well-advised economy of resources would dictate for the prospective

German usufruct of the Western nations.

There is the essential difference between the two cases that while Japan

is over-populated, so that it becomes the part of a wise government to

find additional lands for occupancy, and that so it is constrained by its

imperial ambitions to displace much of the population in its subject

territories, the Fatherland on the other hand is under-populated--

notoriously, though not according to the letter of the diplomatic

parables on this head--and for the calculable future must continue to be

under-populated; provided that the state of the industrial arts

continues subject to change in the same general direction as hitherto,

and provided that no radical change affects the German birth-rate. So,

since the Imperial government has no need of new lands for occupancy by

its home population, it will presumably be under no inducement to take

measures looking to the partial depopulation of its subject territories.

The case of Belgium and the measures looking to a reduction of its

population may raise a doubt, but probably not a well taken doubt. It is

rather that since it has become evident that the territory can not be

held, it is thought desirable to enrich the Fatherland with whatever

property can be removed, and to consume the accumulated man-power of the

Belgian people in the service of the war. It would appear that it is a

war-measure, designed to make use of the enemy's resources for his

defeat. Indeed, under conditions of settled occupation or subjection,

any degree of such depopulation would entail an economic loss, and any

well-considered administrative policy would therefore look to the

maintenance of the inhabitants of the acquired territories in

undiminished numbers and unimpaired serviceability.

The resulting scheme of Imperial usufruct should accordingly be of a

considerate, not to say in effect humane, character,--always provided

that the requisite degree of submission and subservience ("law and

order") can be enforced by a system of coercion so humane as not to

reduce the number of the inhabitants or materially to lower their

physical powers. Such would, by reasonable expectation, be the character

of this projected Imperial tutelage and usufruct of the nations of

Christendom. In its working-out this German project should accordingly

differ very appreciably from the policy which its imperial ambitions

have constrained the Japanese establishment to pursue in its dealings

with the life and fortunes of its recently, and currently, acquired

subject peoples.

The better to appreciate in some concrete fashion what should, by

reasonable expectation, be the terms on which life might so be carried

on _sub pace germanica_, attention may be invited to certain typical

instances of such peace by abnegation among contemporary peoples.

Perhaps at the top of the list stands India, with its many and varied

native peoples, subject to British tutelage, but, the British apologists

say, not subject to British usufruct. The margin of tolerance in this

instance is fairly wide, but its limits are sharply drawn. India is

wanted and held, not for tribute or revenue to be paid into the Imperial

treasury, nor even for exclusive trade privileges or preferences, but

mainly as a preserve to provide official occupation and emoluments for

British gentlemen not otherwise occupied or provided for; and

secondarily as a means of safeguarding lucrative British investments,

that is to say, investments by British capitalists of high and low

degree. The current British professions on the subject of this

occupation of India, and at times the shamefaced apology for it, is that

the people of India suffer no hardship by this means; the resulting

governmental establishment being no more onerous and no more expensive

to them than any equally, or even any less, competent government of

their own would necessarily be. The fact, however, remains, that India

affords a much needed and very considerable net revenue to the class of

British gentlemen, in the shape of official salaries and pensions, which

the British gentry at large can on no account forego. Narrowed to these

proportions it is readily conceivable that the British usufruct of India

should rest with no extraordinary weight on the Indian people at large,

however burdensome it may at times become to those classes who aspire to

take over the usufruct in case the British establishment can be

dislodged. This case evidently differs very appreciably from the

projected German usufruct of neighboring countries in Europe.

A case that may be more nearly in point would be that of any one of the

countries subject to the Turkish rule in recent times; although these

instances scarcely show just what to expect under the projected German

régime. The Turkish rule has been notably inefficient, considered as a

working system of dynastic usufruct; whereas it is confidently expected

that the corresponding German system would show quite an exceptional

degree of efficiency for the purpose. This Turkish inefficiency has had

a two-fold effect, which should not appear in the German case. Through

administrative abuses intended to serve the personal advantage of the

irresponsible officials, the underlying peoples have suffered a

progressive exhaustion and dilapidation; whereby the central authority,

the dynastic establishment, has also grown progressively, cumulatively

weaker and therefore less able to control its agents; and, in the second

place, on the same grounds, in the pursuit of personal gain, and

prompted by personal animosities, these irresponsible agents have

persistently carried their measures of extortion beyond reasonable

bounds,--that is to say beyond the bounds which a well considered plan

of permanent usufruct would countenance. All this would be otherwise and

more sensibly arranged under German Imperial auspices.

One of the nations that have fallen under Turkish rule--and Turkish

peace--affords a valuable illustration of a secondary point that is to

be considered in connection with any plan of peace by submission. The

Armenian people have in later time come partly under Russian dominion,

and so have been exposed to the Russian system of bureaucratic

exploitation; and the difference between Russian and Turkish Armenia is

instructive. According to all credible--that is unofficial--accounts,

conditions are perceptibly more tolerable in Russian Armenia. Well

informed persons relate that the cause for this more lenient, or less

extreme, administration of affairs under Russian officials is a

selective death rate among them, such that a local official who

persistently exceeds a certain ill-defined limit of tolerance is removed

by what would under other circumstances be called an untimely death. No

adequate remedy has been found, within the large limits which Russian

bureaucratic administration habitually allows itself in questions of

coercion. The Turk, on the other hand, less deterred by considerations

of long-term expediency, and, it may be, less easily influenced by

outside opinion on any point of humanity, has found a remedy in the

systematic extirpation of any village in which an illicit death occurs.

One will incline to presume that on this head the German Imperial

procedure would be more after the Russian than after the Turkish

pattern; although latterday circumstantial evidence will throw some

sinister doubt on the reasonableness of such an expectation.

It is plain, however, that the Turkish remedy for this form of

insubordination is a wasteful means of keeping the peace. Plainly, to

the home office, the High Command, the extinction of a village with its

population is a more substantial loss than the unseasonable decease of

one of its administrative agents; particularly when it is called to mind

that such a decease will presumably follow only on such profligate

excesses of naughtiness as are bound to be inexcusably unprofitable to

the central authority. It may be left an open question how far a

corrective of this nature can hopefully be looked to as applicable, in

case of need, under the projected German Imperial usufruct.

It may, I apprehend, be said without offense that there is no depth of

depravity below the ordinary reach of the Russian bureaucracy; but this

organisation finds itself constrained, after all, to use circumspection

and set some limits on individual excursions beyond the bounds of

decency and humanity, so soon as these excesses touch the common or

joint interest of the organisation. Any excess of atrocity, beyond a

certain margin of tolerance, on the part of any one of its members is

likely to work pecuniary mischief to the rest; and then, the

bureaucratic conduct of affairs is also, after all, in an uncertain

degree subject to some surveillance by popular sentiment at home or

abroad. The like appears not to hold true of the Turkish official

organisation. The difference may be due to a less provident spirit among

the latter, as already indicated. But a different tradition, perhaps an

outgrowth of this lack of providence and of the consequent growth of a

policy of "frightfulness," may also come in for a share in the outcome;

and there is also a characteristic difference in point of religious

convictions, which may go some way in the same direction. The followers

of Islam appear on the whole to take the tenets of their faith at their

face value--servile, intolerant and fanatic--whereas the Russian

official class may perhaps without undue reproach be considered to have

on the whole outlived the superstitious conceits to which they yield an

expedient _pro forma_ observance. So that when worse comes to worst, and

the Turk finds himself at length with his back against the last

consolations of the faith that makes all things straight, he has the

assured knowledge that he is in the right as against the unbelievers;

whereas the Russian bureaucrat in a like case only knows that he is in

the wrong. The last extremity is a less conclusive argument to the man

in whose apprehension it is not the last extremity. Again, there is some

shadow of doubt falls on the question as to which of these is more

nearly in the German Imperial spirit.

On the whole, the case of China is more to the point. By and large, the

people of China, more particularly the people of the coastal-plains

region, have for long habitually lived under a régime of peace by

non-resistance. The peace has been broken transiently from time to time,

and local disturbances have not been infrequent; but, taken by and

large, the situation has habitually been of the peaceful order, on a

ground of non-resisting submission. But this submission has not commonly

been of a whole-hearted kind, and it has also commonly been associated

with a degree of persistent sabotage; which has clogged and retarded the

administration of governmental law and order, and has also been

conducive to a large measure of irresponsible official corruption. The

habitual scheme of things Chinese in this bearing may fairly be

described as a peace of non-resistance tempered with sabotage and

assassination. Such was the late Manchu régime, and there is no reason

in China for expecting a substantially different outcome from the

Japanese invasion that is now under way. The nature of this Japanese

incursion should be sufficiently plain. It is an enterprise in

statecraft after the order of Macchiavelli, Metternich, and Bismarck. Of

course, the conciliatory fables given out by the diplomatic service, and

by the other apologists, are to be taken at the normal discount of

one-hundred percent. The relatively large current output of such fables

may afford a hint as to the magnitude of the designs which the fables

are intended to cover.

The Chinese people have had a more extended experience in peace of this

order than all others, and their case should accordingly be instructive

beyond all others. Not that a European peace by non-resistance need be

expected to run very closely on the Chinese lines, but there should be

a reasonable expectation that the large course of things would be

somewhat on the same order in both cases. Neither the European

traditions and habitual temperament nor the modern state of the

industrial arts will permit one to look for anything like a close

parallel in detail; but it remains true, when all is said, that the

Chinese experience of peace under submission to alien masters affords

the most instructive illustration of such a régime, as touches its

practicability, its methods, its cultural value, and its effect on the

fortunes of the subject peoples and of their masters.

Now, it may be said by way of preliminary generalisation that the

life-history of the Chinese people and their culture is altogether the

most imposing achievement which the records of mankind have to show;

whereas the history of their successive alien establishments of mastery

and usufruct is an unbroken sequence of incredibly shameful

episodes,--always beginning in unbounded power and vainglory, running by

way of misrule, waste and debauchery, to an inglorious finish in abject

corruption and imbecility. Always have the gains in civilisation,

industry and in the arts, been made by the subject Chinese, and always

have their alien masters contributed nothing to the outcome but misrule,

waste, corruption and decay. And yet in the long run, with all this

handicap and misrule, the Chinese people have held their place and made

headway in those things to which men look with affection and esteem when

they come to take stock of what things are worth while. It would be a

hopeless task to count up how many dynasties of masterful barbarians,

here and there, have meanwhile come up and played their ephemeral role

of vainglorious nuisance and gone under in shame and confusion, and

dismissed with the invariable verdict of "Good Riddance!"

It may at first sight seem a singular conjuncture of circumstances, but

it is doubtless a consequence of the same conjuncture, that the Chinese

people have also kept their hold through all history on the Chinese

lands. They have lived and multiplied and continued to occupy the land,

while their successive alien masters have come and gone. So that today,

as the outcome of conquest, and of what would be rated as defeat, the

people continue to be Chinese, with an unbroken pedigree as well as an

unbroken line of home-bred culture running through all the ages of

history. In the biological respect the Chinese plan of non-resistance

has proved eminently successful.

And, by the way, much the same, though not in the same degree, is true

for the Armenian people; who have continued to hold their hill country

through good days and evil, apparently without serious or enduring

reduction of their numbers and without visible lapse into barbarism,

while the successive disconnected dynasties of their conquering rulers

have come and gone, leaving nothing but an ill name. "This fable

teaches" that a diligent attention to the growing of crops and children

is the sure and appointed way to the maintenance of a people and its

culture even under the most adverse conditions, and that eventual death

and shameful destruction inexorably wait on any "ruling race." Hitherto

the rule has not failed. The rule, indeed, is grounded in the heritable

traits of human nature, from which there is no escape.

For its long-term biological success, as well as for the continued

integrity of a people's culture, a peace of non-resistance, under good

or evil auspices, is more to be desired than imperial dominion. But

these things are not all that modern peoples live for, perhaps it is

safe to say that in no case are these chief among the things for which

civilised Europeans are willing to live. They urgently need also freedom

to live their own life in their own way, or rather to live within the

bonds of convention which they have come in for by use and wont, or at

least they believe that such freedom is essential to any life that shall

be quite worth while. So also they have a felt need of security from

arbitrary interference in their pursuit of a livelihood and in the free

control of their own pecuniary concerns. And they want a discretionary

voice in the management of their joint interests, whether as a nation or

in a minor civil group. In short, they want personal, pecuniary and

political liberty, free from all direction or inhibition from without.

They are also much concerned to maintain favorable economic conditions

for themselves and their children. And last, but chiefly rather than

least, they commonly are hide-bound patriots inspired with an

intractable felt need of national prestige.

It is an assemblage of peoples in such a frame of mind to whom the

pacifists are proposing, in effect, a plan for eventual submission to an

alien dynasty, under the form of a neutral peace compact to include the

warlike Powers. There is little likelihood of such a scheme being found

acceptable, with popular sentiment running as it now does in the

countries concerned. And yet, if the brittle temper in which any such

proposal is rejected by popular opinion in these countries today could

be made to yield sufficiently to reflection and deliberate appraisal, it

is by no means a foregone conclusion that its acceptance would not be

the best way out of a critical situation. The cost of disabling and

eliminating the warlike Power whose dominion is feared, or even of

staving off the day of surrender, is evidently serious enough. The

merits of the alternative should be open to argument, and should,

indeed, be allowed due consideration. And any endeavour to present them

without heat should presumably find a hearing. It appears to have been

much of the fault of the pacifists who speak for the Peace League that

they have failed or refused to recognise these ulterior consequences of

the plan which they advocate; so that they appear either not to know

what they are talking about, or to avoid talking about what they know.

It will be evident from beforehand that the grave difficulty to be met

in any advocacy of peace on terms of non-resistant subjection to an

alien dynastic rule--"peace at any price"--is a difficulty of the

psychological order. Whatever may be conceived to hold true for the

Chinese people, such submission is repugnant to the sentiments of the

Western peoples. Which in turn evidently is due to the prevalence of

certain habitual preconceptions among modern civilised men,--certain

acquired traits of temper and bias, of the nature of fixed ideas. That

something in the way of a reasonably contented and useful life is

possible under such a régime as is held in prospect, and even some

tolerable degree of well-being, is made evident in the Chinese case. But

the Chinese tolerance of such a régime goes to argue that they are

charged with fewer preconceptions at variance with the exigencies of

life under these conditions. So, it is commonly accepted, and presumably

to be accepted, that the Chinese people at large have little if any

effectual sense of nationality; their patriotism appears to be nearly a

negligible quantity. This would appear to an outsider to have been their

besetting weakness, to which their successful subjection by various and

sundry ambitious aliens has been due. But it appears also to have been

the infirmity by grace of which this people have been obliged to learn

the ways of submission, and so have had the fortune to outlive their

alien masters, all and sundry, and to occupy the land and save the

uncontaminated integrity of their long-lived civilisation.

* * * * *

Some account of the nature and uses of this spirit of patriotism that is

held of so great account among Western nations has already been set out

in an earlier passage. One or two points in the case, that bear on the

argument here, may profitably be recalled. The patriotic spirit, or the

tie of nationalism, is evidently of the nature of habit, whatever

proclivity to the formation of such a habit may be native to mankind.

More particularly is it a matter of habit--it might even be called a

matter of fortuitous habit--what particular national establishment a

given human subject will become attached to on reaching what is called

"years of discretion" and so becoming a patriotic citizen.

The analogy of the clam may not be convincing, but it may at least serve

to suggest what may be the share played by habituation in the matter of

national attachment. The young clam, after having passed the

free-swimming phase of his life, as well as the period of attachment to

the person of a carp or similar fish, drops to the bottom and attaches

himself loosely in the place and station in life to which he has been

led; and he loyally sticks to his particular patch of ooze and sand

through good fortune and evil. It is, under Providence, something of a

fortuitous matter where the given clam shall find a resting place for

the sole of his foot, but it is also, after all, "his own, his native

land" etc. It lies in the nature of a clam to attach himself after this

fashion, loosely, to the bottom where he finds a living, and he would

not be a "good clam and true" if he failed to do so; but the particular

spot for which he forms this attachment is not of the essence of the

case. At least, so they say.

It may be, as good men appear to believe or know, that all men of sound,

or at least those of average, mind will necessarily be of a patriotic

temper and be attached by ties of loyalty to some particular national

establishment, ordinarily the particular establishment which is formally

identified with the land in which they live; although it is always

possible that a given individual may be an alien in the land, and so may

owe allegiance to and be ruled by a patriotic attachment to another

national establishment, to which the conventionalities governing his

special case have assigned him as his own proper nation. The analogy of

the clam evidently does not cover the case. The patriotic citizen is

attached to his own proper nationality not altogether by the accident of

domicile, but rather by the conventions, legal or customary, which

assign him to this or that national establishment according to certain

principles of use and wont.

Mere legal citizenship or allegiance does not decide the matter either;

at least not by any means unavoidably; as appears in the case of the

Chinese subject under Manchu or Japanese rule; and as appears perhaps

more perspicuously in the case of the "hyphenate" American citizen,

whose formal allegiance is to the nation in whose land he prefers to

live, all the while that his patriotic affection centers on his

spiritual Fatherland in whose fortunes he has none but a non-resident

interest. Indeed, the particular national tie that will bind the

affections--that is to say the effectual patriotic attachment--of any

given individual may turn out on closer scrutiny to be neither that of

domicile or of formal legal allegiance, nor that of putative origin or

pedigree, but only a reflex of certain national animosities; which may

also turn out on examination to rest on putative grounds--as illustrated

by a subsidiary class of hyphenate American citizens whose affections

have come to be bound up in the national fortunes of one foreign Power

for the simple, but sufficient, reason that, on conventional grounds,

they bear malice against another equally foreign Power.

Evidently there is much sophistication, not to say conventionalised

affectation, in all this national attachment and allegiance. It will

perhaps not do to say that it is altogether a matter of sophistication.

Yet it may not exceed the premises to say that the particular choice,

the concrete incidence, of this national attachment is in any given case

a matter of sophistication, largely tempered with fortuity. One is born

into a given nationality--or, in case of dynastic allegiance, into

service and devotion to a (fortuitously) given sovereign--or at least so

it is commonly believed. Still one can without blame, and without

excessive shame, shift one's allegiance on occasion. What is not

countenanced among civilised men is to shift out of allegiance to any

given nationality or dynasty without shifting into the like complication

of gainless obligations somewhere else. Such a shifting of national or

dynastic base is not quite reputable, though it is also not precisely

disreputable. The difficulty in the case appears to be a moral

difficulty, not a mental or a pecuniary one, and assuredly not a

physical difficulty, since the relation in question is not a physical

relation. It would appear to be of the moral order of things, in that

sense of the term in which conventional proprieties are spoken of as

moral. That is to say, it is a question of conforming to current

expectations under a code of conventional proprieties. Like much of the

conventional code of behavior this patriotic attachment has the benefit

of standardised decorum, and its outward manifestations are enjoined by

law. All of which goes to show how very seriously the whole matter is

regarded.

And yet it is also a matter of common notoriety that large aggregates of

men, not to speak of sporadic individuals, will on occasion shift their

allegiance with the most felicitous effect and with no sensible loss of

self-respect or of their good name. Such a shift is to be seen in

multiple in the German nation within the past half-century, when, for

instance, the Hanoverians, the Saxons, and even the Holsteiners in very

appreciable numbers, not to mention the subjects of minuscular

principalities whose names have been forgotten in the shuffle, all

became good and loyal subjects of the Empire and of the Imperial

dynasty,--good and loyal without reservation, as has abundantly

appeared. So likewise within a similar period the inhabitants of the

Southern States repudiated their allegiance to the Union, putting in its

place an equivalent loyalty to their new-made country; and then, when

the new national establishment slipped out from under their feet they

returned as whole-heartedly as need be to their earlier allegiance. In

each of these moves, taken with deliberation, it is not to be doubted

that this body of citizens have been moved by an unimpeachable spirit of

patriotic honour. No one who is in any degree conversant with the facts

is likely to question the declaration that it would be a perversion, not

to say an inversion, of fact to rate their patriotic devotion to the

Union today lower than that of any other section of the country or any

other class or condition of men.

But there is more, and in a sense worse, to be found along the same

general line of evidence touching this sublimated sentiment of group

solidarity that is called nationalism. The nation, of course, is large;

the larger the better, it is believed. It is so large, indeed, that

considered as a group or community of men living together it has no

sensible degree of homogeneity in any of their material circumstances or

interests; nor is anything more than an inconsiderable fraction of the

aggregate population, territory, industry, or daily life known to any

one of these patriotic citizens except by remote and highly dubious

hearsay. The one secure point on which there is a (constructive)

uniformity is the matter of national allegiance; which grows stronger

and more confident with every increase in aggregate mass and volume. It

is also not doubtful, e.g., that if the people of the British Dominions

in North America should choose to throw in their national lot with the

Union, all sections and classes, except those whose pecuniary interest

in a protective tariff might be conceived to suffer, would presently

welcome them; nor is it doubtful that American nationality would cover

the new and larger aggregate as readily as the old. Much the same will

hold true with respect to the other countries colonised under British

auspices. And there is no conclusive reason for drawing the limit of

admissible national extension at that point.

So much, however, is fairly within the possibilities of the calculable

future; its realisation would turn in great measure on the

discontinuance of certain outworn or disserviceable institutional

arrangements; as, e.g., the remnants of a decayed monarchy, and the

legally protected vested interests of certain business enterprises and

of certain office-holding classes. What more and farther might

practicably be undertaken in this way, in the absence of marplot

office-holders, office-seekers, sovereigns, priests and monopolistic

business concerns sheltered under national animosities and restraints of

trade, would be something not easy to assign a limit to. All the minor

neutrals, that cluster about the North Sea, could unquestionably be

drawn into such a composite nationality, in the absence, or with due

disregard, of those classes, families and individuals whose pecuniary or

invidious gain is dependent on or furthered by the existing division of

these peoples.

The projected defensive league of neutrals is, in effect, an inchoate

coalescence of the kind. Its purpose is the safeguarding of the common

peace and freedom, which is also the avowed purpose and justification of

all those modern nations that have outlived the régime of dynastic

ambition and so of enterprise in dominion for dominion's sake, and have

passed into the neutral phase of nationality; or it should perhaps

rather be said that such is the end of endeavour and the warrant of

existence and power for these modern national establishments in so far

as they have outlived and repudiated such ambitions of a dynastic or a

quasi-dynastic order, and so have taken their place as intrinsically

neutral commonwealths.

It is only in the common defense (or in the defense of the like

conditions of life for their fellowmen elsewhere) that the citizens of

such a commonwealth can without shame entertain or put in evidence a

spirit of patriotic solidarity; and it is only by specious and

sophistical appeal to the national honour--a conceit surviving out of

the dynastic past--that the populace of such a commonwealth can be

stirred to anything beyond a defense of their own proper liberties or

the liberties of like-minded men elsewhere, in so far as they are not

still imbued with something of the dynastic animus and the chauvinistic

animosities which they have formally repudiated in repudiating the

feudalistic principles of the dynastic State.

The "nation," without the bond of dynastic loyalty, is after all a

make-shift idea, an episodic half-way station in the sequence, and

loyalty, in any proper sense, to the nation as such is so much of a

make-believe, that in the absence of a common defense to be safeguarded

any such patriotic conceit must lose popular assurance and, with the

passing of generations, fall insensibly into abeyance as an archaic

affectation. The pressure of danger from without is necessary to keep

the national spirit alert and stubborn, in case the pressure from

within, that comes of dynastic usufruct working for dominion, has been

withdrawn. With further extension of the national boundaries, such that

the danger of gratuitous infraction from without grows constantly less

menacing, while the traditional régime of international animosities

falls more and more remotely into the background, the spirit of

nationalism is fairly on the way to obsolescence through disuse. In

other words, the nation, as a commonwealth, being a partisan

organisation for a defensive purpose, becomes _functa officio_ in

respect of its nationalism and its patriotic ties in somewhat the same

measure as the national coalition grows to such a size that partisanship

is displaced by a cosmopolitan security.

Doubtless the falling into abeyance through disuse of so pleasing a

virtue as patriotic devotion will seem an impossibly distasteful

consummation; and about tastes there is no disputing, but tastes are

mainly creations of habit. Except for the disquieting name of the thing,

there is today little stands in the way of a cosmopolitan order of

human intercourse unobtrusively displacing national allegiance; except

for vested interests in national offices and international

discriminations, and except for those peoples among whom national life

still is sufficiently bound up with dynastic ambition.

In an earlier passage the patriotic spirit has been defined as a sense

of partisan solidarity in point of prestige, and sufficient argument has

been spent in confirming the definition and showing its implications.

With the passing of all occasion for a partisan spirit as touches the

common good, through coalescence of the parts between which partisan

discrepancies have hitherto been kept up, there would also have passed

all legitimate occasion for or provocation to an intoxication of

invidious prestige on national lines,--and there is no prestige that is

not of an invidious nature, that being, indeed, the whole of its nature.

He would have to be a person of praeternatural patriotic sensibilities

who could fall into an emotional state by reason of the national

prestige of such a coalition commonwealth as would be made up, e.g., of

the French and English-speaking peoples, together with those other

neutrally and peaceably inclined European communities that are of a

sufficiently mature order to have abjured dynastic ambitions of

dominion, and perhaps including the Chinese people as well. Such a

coalition may now fairly be said to be within speaking distance, and

with its consummation, even in the inchoate shape of a defensive league

of neutrals, the eventual abeyance of that national allegiance and

national honour that bulks so large in the repertory of current

eloquence would also come in prospect.

All this is by no means saying that love of country, and of use and wont

as it runs in one's home area and among one's own people, would suffer

decay, or even abatement. The provocation to nostalgia would presumably

be as good as ever. It is even conceivable that under such a

(contemplated) régime of unconditional security, attachment to one's own

habitat and social circumstances might grow to something more than is

commonly seen in the precarious situation in which the chances of a

quiet life are placed today. But nostalgia is not a bellicose distemper,

nor does it make for gratuitous disturbance of peaceable alien peoples;

neither is it the spirit in which men lend themselves to warlike

enterprise looking to profitless dominion abroad. Men make patriotic

sacrifices of life and substance in spite of home-sickness rather than

by virtue of it.

* * * * *

The aim of this long digression has been to show that patriotism, of

that bellicose kind that seeks satisfaction in inflicting damage and

discomfort on the people of other nations, is not of the essence of

human life; that it is of the nature of habit, induced by circumstances

in the past and handed on by tradition and institutional arrangements

into the present; and that men can, without mutilation, divest

themselves of it, or perhaps rather be divested of it by force of

circumstances which will set the current of habituation the contrary

way.

The change of habituation necessary to bring about such a decay of the

bellicose national spirit would appear to be of a negative order, at

least in the main. It would be an habituation to unconditional peace and

security; in other words, to the absence of provocation, rather than a

coercive training away from the bellicose temper. This bellicose temper,

as it affects men collectively, appears to be an acquired trait; and it

should logically disappear in time in the absence of those conditions by

impact of which it has been acquired. Such obsolescence of patriotism,

however, would not therefore come about abruptly or swiftly, since the

patriotic spirit has by past use and wont, and by past indoctrination,

been so thoroughly worked into the texture of the institutional fabric

and into the commonsense taste and morality, that its effectual

obsolescence will involve a somewhat comprehensive displacement and

mutation throughout the range of institutions and popular conceits that

have been handed down. And institutional changes take time, being

creations of habit. Yet, again, there is the qualification to this last,

that since the change in question appears to be a matter, not of

acquiring a habit and confirming it in the shape of an article of

general use and wont, but of forgetting what once was learned, the time

and experience to be allowed for its decay need logically not equal that

required for its acquirement, either in point of duration or in point of

the strictness of discipline necessary to inculcate it.

While the spirit of nationalism is such an acquired trait, and while it

should therefore follow that the chief agency in divesting men of it

must be disuse of the discipline out of which it has arisen, yet a

positive, and even something of a drastic discipline to the contrary

effect need not be altogether ineffectual in bringing about its

obsolescence. The case of the Chinese people seems to argue something of

the sort. Not that the Chinese are simply and neutrally unpatriotic;

they appear also to be well charged with disloyalty to their alien

rulers. But along with a sense of being on the defensive in their common

concerns, there is also the fact that they appear not to be appreciably

patriotic in the proper sense; they are not greatly moved by a spirit

of nationality. And this failure of the national spirit among them can

scarcely be set down to a neutral disuse of that discipline which has on

the other hand induced a militant nationalism in the peoples of

Christendom; it should seem more probable, at least, that this relative

absence of a national ambition is traceable in good part to its having

been positively bred out of them by the stern repression of all such

aspirations under the autocratic rule of their alien masters.

* * * * *

Peace on terms of submission and non-resistance to the ordinary

exactions and rulings of those Imperial authorities to whom such

submission may become necessary, then, will be contingent on the virtual

abeyance of the spirit of national pride in the peoples who so are to

come under Imperial rule. A sufficient, by no means necessarily a total,

elimination or decadence of this proclivity will be the condition

precedent of any practicable scheme for a general peace on this footing.

How large an allowance of such animus these prospectively subject

peoples might still carry, without thereby assuring the defeat of any

such plan, would in great measure depend on the degree of clemency or

rigor with which the superior authority might enforce its rule. It is

not that a peace plan of this nature need precisely be considered to

fall outside the limits of possibility, on account of this necessary

condition, but it is at the best a manifestly doubtful matter. Advocates

of a negotiated peace should not fail to keep in mind and make public

that the plan which they advocate carries with it, as a sequel or

secondary phase, such an unconditional surrender and a consequent régime

of non-resistance, and that there still is grave doubt whether the

peoples of these Western nations are at present in a sufficiently

tolerant frame of mind, or can in the calculable future come in for such

a tolerantly neutral attitude in point of national pride, as to submit

in any passable fashion to any alien Imperial rule.

If the spiritual difficulty presented by this prevalent spirit of

national pride--sufficiently stubborn still, however inane a conceit it

may seem on sober reflection--if this animus of factional

insubordination could be overcome or in some passable measure be

conciliated or abated, there is much to be said in favor of such a plan

of peaceable submission to an extraneous and arbitrary authority, and

therefore also for that plan of negotiated peace by means of which

events would be put in train for its realisation.

Any passably dispassionate consideration of the projected régime will

come unavoidably to the conclusion that the prospectively subject

peoples should have no legitimate apprehension of loss or disadvantage

in the material respect. It is, of course, easy for an unreflecting

person to jump to the conclusion that subjection to an alien power must

bring grievous burdens, in the way of taxes and similar impositions. But

reflection will immediately show that no appreciable increase, over the

economic burdens already carried by the populace under their several

national establishments, could come of such a move.

As bearing on this question it is well to call to mind that the

contemplated imperial dominion is designed to be very wide-reaching and

with very ample powers. Its nearest historical analogue, of course, is

the Roman imperial dominion--in the days of the Antonines--and that the

nearest analogue to the projected German peace is the Roman peace, in

the days of its best security. There is every warrant for the

presumption that the contemplated Imperial dominion is to be

substantially all-inclusive. Indeed there is no stopping place for the

projected enterprise short of an all-inclusive dominion. And there will

consequently be no really menacing outside power to be provided against.

Consequently there will be but little provision necessary for the common

defense, as compared, e.g., with the aggregate of such provision found

necessary for self-defense on the part of the existing nations acting in

severalty and each jealously guarding its own national integrity.

Indeed, compared with the burden of competitive armament to which the

peoples of Europe have been accustomed, the need of any armed force

under the new régime should be an inconsiderable matter, even when there

is added to the necessary modicum of defensive preparation the more

imperative and weightier provision of force with which to keep the peace

at home.

Into the composition of this necessary modicum of armed force slight if

any contingents of men would be drawn from the subject peoples, for the

reason that no great numbers would be needed; as also because no devoted

loyalty to the dynasty could reasonably be looked for among them, even

if no positive insecurity were felt to be involved in their employment.

On this head the projected scheme unambiguously commends itself as a

measure of economy, both in respect of the pecuniary burdens demanded

and as regards the personal annoyance of military service.

As a further count, it is to be presumed that the burden of the Imperial

government and its bureaucratic administration--what would be called the

cost of maintenance and repairs of the dynastic establishment and its

apparatus of control--would be borne by the subject peoples. Here again

one is warranted in looking for a substantial economy to be effected by

such a centralised authority, and a consequent lighter aggregate burden

on the subjects. Doubtless, the "overhead charges" would not be reduced

to their practicable minimum. Such a governmental establishment, with

its bureaucratic personnel, its "civil list" and its privileged classes,

would not be conducted on anything like a parsimonious footing. There is

no reason to apprehend any touch of modesty in the exactions of such a

dynastic establishment for itself or in behalf of its underlying

hierarchy of gentlefolk.

There is also to be counted in, in the concrete instance on which the

argument here turns, a more or less considerable burden of contributions

toward the maintenance and augmentation of that culture that has been

the topic of so many encomiums. At this point it should be recalled that

it is the pattern of Periclean Athens that is continually in mind in

these encomiums. Which brings up, in this immediate connection, the

dealings of Periclean Athens with the funds of the League, and the

source as well as the destination of these surplus funds. Out of it all

came the works on the Acropolis, together with much else of intellectual

and artistic life that converged upon and radiated from this Athenian

center of culture. The vista of _Denkmäler_ that so opens to the vision

of a courageous fancy is in itself such a substance of things hoped for

as should stir the heart of all humane persons.[8] The cost of this

subvention of Culture would doubtless be appreciable, but those grave

men who have spent most thought on this prospective cultural gain to be

had from the projected Imperial rule appear to entertain no doubt as to

its being worth all that it would cost.

[Footnote 8: _Denk 'mall_]

Any one who is inclined to rate the prospective pecuniary costs and

losses high would doubtless be able to find various and sundry items of

minor importance to add to this short list of general categories on the

side of cost; but such additional items, not fairly to be included under

these general captions, would after all be of minor importance, in the

aggregate or in detail, and would not appreciably affect the grand

balance of pecuniary profit and loss to be taken account of in any

appraisal of the projected Imperial régime. There should evidently be

little ground to apprehend that its installation would entail a net loss

or a net increase of pecuniary burdens. There is, of course, the

ill-defined and scarcely definable item of expenditure under the general

head of Gentility, Dignity, Distinction, Magnificence, or whatever term

may seem suitable to designate that consumption of goods and services

that goes to maintain the high repute of the Court and to keep the

underlying gentlefolk in countenance. In its pecuniary incidence this

line of (necessary) expenditure belongs under the rubric of Conspicuous

Waste; and one will always have to face the disquieting flexibility of

this item of expenditure. The consumptive demand of this kind is in an

eminent degree "indefinitely extensible," as the phrasing of the

economists would have it, and as various historical instances of courtly

splendor and fashionable magnificence will abundantly substantiate.

There is a constant proclivity to advance this conventional "standard of

living" to the limit set by the available means; and yet these

conventional necessities will ordinarily not, in the aggregate, take up

all the available means; although now and again, as under the _Ancien

Régime_, and perhaps in Imperial Rome, the standard of splendid living

may also exceed the current means in hand and lead to impoverishment of

the underlying community.

An analysis of the circumstances governing this flexibility of the

conventional standard of living and of pecuniary magnificence can not be

gone into here. In the case under consideration it will have to be left

as an indeterminate but considerable item in the burden of cost which

the projected Imperial rule may be counted on to impose on the

underlying peoples. The cost of the Imperial court, nobility, and civil

service, therefore, would be a matter of estimate, on which no close

agreement would be expected; and yet, here as in an earlier connection,

it seems a reasonable expectation that sufficient dignity and

magnificence could be put in evidence by such a large-scale

establishment at a lower aggregate cost than the aggregate of

expenditures previously incurred for the like ends by various nations

working in severalty and at cross purposes.

Doubtless it would be altogether a mistaken view of this production of

dignity by means of a lavish expenditure on superfluities, to believe

that the same principle of economy should apply here as was found

applicable in the matter of armament for defense. With the installation

of a collective national establishment, to include substantially all the

previously competing nations, the need of defensive armament should in

all reason decline to something very inconsiderable indeed. But it would

be hasty to conclude that with the coalescence of these nations under

one paramount control the need of creating notoriety and prestige for

this resulting central establishment by the consumption of decorative

superfluities would likewise decline. The need of such dignity and

magnificence is only in part, perhaps a minor part, of a defensive

character. For the greater part, no doubt, the motive to this

conspicuously wasteful consumption is personal vanity, in Imperial

policy as well as in the private life of fashion,--or perhaps one should

more deferentially say that it is a certain range of considerations

which would be identified as personal vanity in case they were met with

among men beneath the Imperial level. And so far as the creation of this

form of "good-will" by this manner of advertising is traceable to such,

or equivalent, motives of a personal incidence, the provocation to

economy along this line would presumably not be a notable factor in the

case. And one returns perforce to the principle already spoken of above,

that the consumptive need of superfluities is indefinitely extensible,

with the resulting inference that nothing conclusive is to be said as to

the prospective magnitude of this item in the Imperial bill of expense,

or of the consequent pecuniary burdens which it would impose on the

underlying peoples.

* * * * *

So far the argument has run on the pecuniary incidence of this projected

Imperial dominion as it falls on the underlying community as a whole,

with no attempt to discriminate between the divergent interests of the

different classes and conditions of men that go to make up any modern

community. The question in hand is a question of pecuniary burdens, and

therefore of the pecuniary interests of these several distinguishable

classes or conditions of men. In all these modern nations that now stand

in the article of decision between peace by submission or a doubtful and

melancholy alternative,--in all of them men are by statute and custom

inviolably equal before the law, of course; they are ungraded and

masterless men before the law. But these same peoples are also alike in

the respect that pecuniary duties and obligations among them are

similarly sacred and inviolable under the dispassionate findings of the

law. This pecuniary equality is, in effect, an impersonal equality

between pecuniary magnitudes; from which it follows that these citizens

of the advanced nations are not ungraded men in the pecuniary respect;

nor are they masterless, in so far as a greater pecuniary force will

always, under this impersonal equality of the law, stand in a relation

of mastery toward a lesser one.

Class distinctions, except pecuniary distinctions, have fallen away. But

all these modern nations are made up of pecuniary classes, differing

from one another by minute gradations in the marginal cases, but

falling, after all, and in the large, into two broadly and securely

distinguishable pecuniary categories: those who have more and those who

have less. Statisticians have been at pains to ascertain that a

relatively very small numerical minority of the citizens in these modern

nations own all but a relatively very small proportion of the aggregate

wealth in the country. So that it appears quite safe to say that in such

a country as America, e.g., something less than ten percent of the

inhabitants own something more than ninety percent of the country's

wealth. It would scarcely be a wild overstraining of its practical

meaning to say that this population is made up of two classes: those who

own the country's wealth, and those who do not. In strict accuracy, as

before the law, this characterisation will not hold; whereas in

practical effect, it is a sufficiently close approximation. This latter

class, who have substantially no other than a fancied pecuniary interest

in the nation's material fortunes, are the category often spoken of as

The Common Man. It is not necessary, nor is it desired, to find a

corresponding designation for the other category, those who own.

The articulate recognition of this division into contrasted pecuniary

classes or conditions, with correspondingly (at least potentially)

divergent pecuniary interests, need imply no degree of approval or

disapproval of the arrangement which is so recognised. The recognition

of it is necessary to a perspicuous control of the argument, as bears on

the possible systematic and inherent discrepancy among these men in

respect of their material interests under the projected Imperial rule.

Substantially, it is a distinction between those who have and those who

have not, and in a question of prospective pecuniary loss the man who

has nothing to lose is differently placed from the one who has. It would

perhaps seem flippant, and possibly lacking in the courtesy due one's

prospective lord paramount, to say with the poet, _Cantabit vacuus coram

latrone viator_.

But the whole case is not so simple. It is only so long as the projected

pecuniary inroad is conceived as a simple sequestration of wealth in

hand, that such a characterisation can be made to serve. The Imperial

aim is not a passing act of pillage, but a perpetual usufruct; and the

whole question takes on a different and more complex shape when it so

touches the enduring conditions of life and livelihood. The citizen who

has nothing, or who has no capitalisable source of unearned income, yet

has a pecuniary interest in a livelihood to be gained from day to day,

and he is yet vulnerable in the pecuniary respect in that his livelihood

may with the utmost facility be laid under contribution by various and

sundry well-tried contrivances. Indeed, the common man who depends for

his livelihood on his daily earnings is in a more immediately

precarious position than those who have something appreciable laid up

against a rainy day, in the shape of a capitalised source of income.

Only that it is still doubtful if his position is precarious in such a

fashion as to lay him open to a notable increase of hardship, or to loss

of the amenities of life, in the same relative degree as his well-to-do

neighbour.

In point of fact it may well be doubted if this common man has anything

to apprehend in the way of added hardship or loss of creature comforts

under the contemplated régime of Imperial tutelage. He would presumably

find himself in a precarious case under the arbitrary and irresponsible

authority of an alien master working through an alien master class. The

doubt which presents itself is as to whether this common man would be

more precariously placed, or would come in for a larger and surer sum of

hard usage and scant living, under this projected order of things, than

what he already is exposed to in his pecuniary relations with his

well-to-do compatriots under the current system of law and order.

Under this current régime of law and order, according to the equitable

principles of Natural Rights, the man without means has no pecuniary

rights which his well-to-do pecuniary master is bound to respect. This

may have been an unintended, as it doubtless was an unforeseen, outcome

of the move out of feudalism and prescriptive rights and immunities,

into the system of individual liberty and manhood franchise; but as

commonly happens in case of any substantial change in the scheme of

institutional arrangements, unforeseen consequences come in along with

those that have been intended. In that period of history when Western

Europe was gathering that experience out of which the current habitual

scheme of law and order has come, the right of property and free

contract was a complement and safeguard to that individual initiative

and masterless equality of men for which the spokesmen of the new era

contended. That it is no longer so at every turn, or even in the main,

in later time, is in great part due to changes of the pecuniary order,

that have come on since then, and that seem not to have cast their

shadow before.

In all good faith, and with none but inconsequential reservations, the

material fortunes of modern civilised men--together with much else--have

so been placed on a pecuniary footing, with little to safeguard them at

any point except the inalienable right of pecuniary self-direction and

initiative, in an environment where virtually all the indispensable

means of pecuniary self-direction and initiative are in the hands of

that contracted category of owners spoken of above. A numerical

minority--under ten percent of the population--constitutes a conclusive

pecuniary majority--over ninety percent of the means--under a system of

law and order that turns on the inalienable right of owners to dispose

of the means in hand as may suit their convenience and profit,--always

barring recourse to illegal force or fraud. There is, however, a very

appreciable margin of legal recourse to force and of legally protected

fraud available in case of need. Of course the expedients here referred

to as legally available force and fraud in the defense of pecuniary

rights and the pursuit of pecuniary gain are not force and fraud _de

jure_ but only _de facto_. They are further, and well known,

illustrations of how the ulterior consequences of given institutional

arrangements and given conventionalised principles (habits of thought)

of conduct may in time come to run at cross purposes with the initial

purpose that led to the acceptance of these institutions and to the

confirmation and standardisation of these habitual norms of conduct. For

the time being, however, they are "fundamentally and eternally right and

good."

Being a pecuniary majority--what may be called a majority of the

corporate stock--of the nation, it is also fundamentally and eternally

right and good that the pecuniary interests of the owners of the

material means of life should rule unabated in all those matters of

public policy that touch on the material fortunes of the community at

large. Barring a slight and intermittent mutter of discontent, this

arrangement has also the cordial approval of popular sentiment in these

modern democratic nations. One need only recall the paramount importance

which is popularly attached to the maintenance and extension of the

nation's trade--for the use of the investors--or the perpetuation of a

protective tariff--for the use of the protected business concerns--or,

again, the scrupulous regard with which such a body of public servants

as the Interstate Commerce Commission will safeguard the legitimate

claim of the railway companies to a "reasonable" rate of earnings on the

capitalised value of the presumed earning-capacity of their property.

* * * * *

Again, in view of the unaccustomed freedom with which it is here

necessary to speak of these delicate matters, it may be in place to

disclaim all intention to criticise the established arrangements on

their merits as details of public policy. All that comes in question

here, touching these and the like features of the established law and

order, is the bearing of all this on the material fortunes of the common

man under the current régime, as contrasted with what he would

reasonably have to look for under the projected régime of Imperial

tutelage that would come in, consequent upon this national surrender to

Imperial dominion.

* * * * *

In these democratic countries public policy is guided primarily by

considerations of business expediency, and the administration, as well

as the legislative power, is in the hands of businessmen, chosen

avowedly on the ground of their businesslike principles and ability.

There is no power in such a community that can over-rule the exigencies

of business, nor would popular sentiment countenance any exercise of

power that should traverse these exigencies, or that would act to

restrain trade or discourage the pursuit of gain. An apparent exception

to the rule occurs in wartime, when military exigencies may over-rule

the current demands of business traffic; but the exception is in great

part only apparent, in that the warlike operations are undertaken in

whole or in part with a view to the protection or extension of business

traffic.

National surveillance and regulation of business traffic in these

countries hitherto, ever since and in so far as the modern democratic

order of things has taken effect, has uniformly been of the nature of

interference with trade and investment in behalf of the nation's

mercantile community at large, as seen in port and shipping regulations

and in the consular service, or in behalf of particular favored groups

or classes of business concerns, as in protective tariffs and subsidies.

In all this national management of pecuniary affairs, under modern

democratic principles, the common man comes into the case only as raw

material of business traffic,--as consumer or as laborer. He is one of

the industrial agencies by use of which the businessman who employs him

supplies himself with goods for the market, or he is one of the units

of consumptive demand that make up this market in which the business man

sells his goods, and so "realises" on his investment. He is, of course,

free, under modern principles of the democratic order, to deal or not to

deal with this business community, whether as laborer or as consumer, or

as small-scale producer engaged in purveying materials or services on

terms defined by the community of business interests engaged on so large

a scale as to count in their determination. That is to say, he is free

_de jure_ to take or leave the terms offered. _De facto_ he is only free

to take them--with inconsequential exceptions--the alternative being

obsolescence by disuse, not to choose a harsher name for a distasteful

eventuality.

The general ground on which the business system, as it works under the

over-ruling exigencies of the so-called "big business," so defines the

terms of life for the common man, who works and buys, is the ground

afforded by the principle of "charging what the traffic will bear;" that

is to say, fixing the terms of hiring, buying and selling at such a

figure as will yield the largest net return to the business concerns in

whom, collectively or in severalty, the discretion vests. Discretion in

these premises does not vest in any business concern that does not

articulate with the system of "big business," or that does not dispose

of resources sufficient to make it a formidable member of the system.

Whether these concerns act in severalty or by collusion and conspiracy,

in so defining the pecuniary terms of life for the community at large,

is substantially an idle question, so far as bears on the material

interest of the common man. The base-line is still what the traffic will

bear, and it is still adhered to, so nearly as the human infirmity of

the discretionary captains of industry will admit, whether the due

approximation to this base-line is reached by a process of competitive

bidding or by collusive advisement.

The generalisation so offered, touching the material conditions of life

for the common man under the modern rule of big business, may seem

unwarrantably broad. It may be worth while to take note of more than one

point in qualification of it, chiefly to avoid the appearance of having

overlooked any of the material circumstances of the case. The "system"

of large business, working its material consequences through the system

of large-scale industry, but more particularly by way of the large-scale

and wide-reaching business of trade in the proper sense, draws into the

net of its control all parts of the community and all its inhabitants,

in some degree of dependence. But there is always, hitherto, an

appreciable fraction of the inhabitants--as, e.g., outlying agricultural

sections that are in a "backward" state--who are by no means closely

bound in the orderly system of business, or closely dependent on the

markets. They may be said to enjoy a degree of independence, by virtue

of their foregoing as much as may be of the advantages offered by modern

industrial specialisation. So also there are the minor and interstitial

trades that are still carried on by handicraft methods; these, too, are

still somewhat loosely held in the fabric of the business system. There

is one thing and another in this way to be taken account of in any

exhaustive survey, but the accounting for them will after all amount to

nothing better than a gleaning of remnants and partial exceptions, such

as will in no material degree derange the general proposition in hand.

Again, there runs through the length and breadth of this business

community a certain measure of incompetence or inefficiency of

management, as seen from the point of view of the conceivable perfect

working of the system as a whole. It may be due to a slack attention

here and there; or to the exigencies of business strategy which may

constrain given business concerns to an occasional attitude of "watchful

waiting" in the hope of catching a rival off his guard; or to a lack of

perfect mutual understanding among the discretionary businessmen, due

sometimes to an over-careful guarding of trade secrets or advance

information; or, as also happens, and quite excusably, to a lack of

perfect mutual confidence among these businessmen, as to one another's

entire good faith or good-will. The system is after all a competitive

one, in the sense that each of the discretionary directors of business

is working for his own pecuniary gain, whether in cooperation with his

fellows or not. "An honest man will bear watching." As in other

collusive organisations for gain, confederates are apt to fall out when

it comes to a division of what is in hand. In one way and another the

system is beset with inherent infirmities, which hinder its perfect

work; and in so far it will fall short of the full realisation of that

rule of business that inculcates charging what the traffic will bear,

and also in so far the pressure which the modern system of business

management brings to bear on the common man will also fall short of the

last straw--perhaps even of the next-to-the-last. Again it turns out to

be a question not of the failure of the general proposition as

formulated, but rather as to the closeness of approximation to its

theoretically perfect work. It may be remarked by the way that vigilant

and impartial surveillance of this system of business enterprise by an

external authority interested only in aggregate results, rather than in

the differential gains of the interested individuals, might hopefully

be counted on to correct some of these shortcomings which the system

shows when running loose under the guidance of its own multifarious

incentives.

On the opposite side of the account, it is also worth noting that, while

modern business management may now and again fall short of what the

traffic will bear, it happens more commonly that its exactions will

exceed that limit. This will particularly be true in businessmen's

dealings with hired labour, as also and perhaps with equally

far-reaching consequences in an excessive recourse to sophistications

and adulterants and an excessively parsimonious provision for the

safety, health or comfort of their customers--as, e.g., in passenger

traffic by rail, water or tramway. The discrepancy to which attention is

invited here is due to a discrepancy between business expediency, that

is expediency for the purpose of gain by a given businessman, on the one

hand, and serviceability to the common good, on the other hand. The

business concern's interest in the traffic in which it engages is a

short-term interest, or an interest in the short-term returns, as

contrasted with the long-term or enduring interest which the community

at large has in the public service over which any such given business

concern disposes. The business incentive is that afforded by the

prospective net pecuniary gain from the traffic, substantially an

interest in profitable sales; while the community at large, or the

common man that goes to make up such a community, has a material

interest in this traffic only as regards the services rendered and the

enduring effects that follow from it.

The businessman has not, or at least is commonly not influenced by, any

interest in the ulterior consequences of the transactions in which he

is immediately engaged. This appears to hold true in an accentuated

degree in the domain of that large-scale business that draws its gains

from the large-scale modern industry and is managed on the modern

footing of corporation finance. This modern fashion of business

organisation and management apparently has led to a substantial

shortening of the term over which any given investor maintains an

effective interest in any given corporate enterprise, in which his

investments may be placed for the time being. With the current practice

of organising industrial and mercantile enterprises on a basis of

vendible securities, and with the nearly complete exemption from

personal responsibility and enduring personal attachment to any one

corporate enterprise which this financial expedient has brought, it has

come about that in the common run of cases the investor, as well as the

directorate, in any given enterprise, has an interest only for the time

being. The average term over which it is (pecuniarily) incumbent on the

modern businessman to take account of the working of any given

enterprise has shortened so far that the old-fashioned accountability,

that once was depended on to dictate a sane and considerate management

with a view to permanent good-will, has in great measure become

inoperative.

By and large, it seems unavoidable that the pecuniary interests of the

businessmen on the one hand and the material interests of the community

on the other hand are diverging in a more and more pronounced degree,

due to institutional circumstances over which no prompt control can be

had without immediate violation of that scheme of personal rights in

which the constitution of modern democratic society is grounded. The

quandary in which these communities find themselves, as an outcome of

their entrance upon "the simple and obvious system of Natural Liberty,"

is shown in a large and instructive way by what is called "labor

trouble," and in a more recondite but no less convincing fashion by the

fortunes of the individual workman under the modern system.

The cost of production of a modern workman has constantly increased,

with the advance of the industrial arts. The period of preparation, of

education and training, necessary to turn out competent workmen, has

been increasing; and the period of full workmanlike efficiency has been

shortening, in those industries that employ the delicate and exacting

processes of the modern technology. The shortening of this working-life

of the workman is due both to a lengthening of the necessary period of

preparation, and to the demand of these processes for so full a use of

the workman's forces that even the beginning of senescence will count as

a serious disability,--in many occupations as a fatal disability. It is

also a well ascertained fact that effectual old age will be brought on

at an earlier period by overwork; overwork shortens the working

life-time of the workman. Thorough speeding-up ("Scientific

Management"?) will unduly shorten this working life-time, and so it may,

somewhat readily, result in an uneconomical consumption of the

community's man-power, by consuming the workmen at a higher rate of

speed, a higher pressure, with a more rapid rate of deterioration, than

would give the largest net output of product per unit of man-power

available, or per unit of cost of production of such man-power.

On this head the guiding incentives of the businessman and the material

interest of the community at large--not to speak of the selfish interest

of the individual workman--are systematically at variance. The cost of

production of workmen does not fall on the business concern which

employs them, at least not in such definite fashion as to make it appear

that the given business concern or businessman has a material interest

in the economical consumption of the man-power embodied in this given

body of employees. Some slight and exceptional qualification of this

statement is to be noted, in those cases where the processes in use are

such as to require special training, not to be had except by a working

habituation to these processes in the particular industrial plant in

question. So far as such special training, to be had only as employees

of the given concern, is a necessary part of the workman's equipment for

this particular work, so far the given employer bears a share and an

interest in the cost of production of the workmen employed; and so far,

therefore, the employer has also a pecuniary interest in the economical

use of his employees; which usually shows itself in the way of some

special precautions being taken to prevent the departure of these

workmen so long as there is a clear pecuniary loss involved in replacing

them with men who have not yet had the special training required.

Evidently this qualifying consideration covers no great proportion of

the aggregate man-power consumed in industrial enterprises under

business management. And apart from the instances, essentially

exceptional, where such a special consideration comes in, the

businessmen in charge will, quite excusably as things go, endeavour to

consume the man-power of which they dispose in the persons of their

employees, not at the rate that would be most economical to the

community at large, in view of the cost of their replacement, nor at

such a rate as would best suit the taste or the viability of the

particular workman, but at such a rate as will yield the largest net

pecuniary gain to the employer.

There is on record an illustrative, and indeed an illustrious, instance

of such cannily gainful consumption of man-power carried out

systematically and with consistently profitable effect in one of the

staple industries of the country. In this typical, though exceptionally

thoroughgoing and lucrative enterprise, the set rule of the management

was, to employ none but select workmen, in each respective line of work;

to procure such select workmen and retain them by offering wages

slightly over the ordinary standard; to work them at the highest pace

and pressure attainable with such a picked body; and to discharge them

on the first appearance of aging or of failing powers. In the rules of

the management was also included the negative proviso that the concern

assumed no responsibility for the subsequent fortunes of discharged

workmen, in the way of pension, insurance or the like.

This enterprise was highly successful and exceedingly profitable, even

beyond the high average of profits among enterprises in the same line of

business. Out of it came one of the greater and more illustrious

fortunes that have been accumulated during the past century; a fortune

which has enabled one of the most impressive and most gracious of this

generation's many impressive philanthropists, never weary in well-doing;

but who, through this cannily gainful consumption of man-power, has been

placed in the singular position of being unable, in spite of avowedly

unremitting endeavour, to push his continued disbursements in the

service of humanity up to the figure of his current income. The case in

question is one of the most meritorious known to the records of modern

business, and while it will conveniently serve to illustrate many an

other, and perhaps more consequential truth come to realisation in the

march of Triumphant Democracy, it will also serve to show the

gainfulness of an unreservedly canny consumption of man-power with an

eye single to one's own net gain in terms of money.

* * * * *

Evidently this is a point in the articulation of the modern economic

system where a sufficiently ruthless outside authority, not actuated by

a primary regard for the pecuniary interests of the employers, might

conceivably with good effect enforce a more economical consumption of

the country's man-power. It is not a matter on which one prefers to

dwell, but it can do no harm to take note of the fact for once in a way,

that these several national establishments of the democratic order, as

they are now organised and administered, do somewhat uniformly and

pervasively operate with an effectual view to the advantage of a class,

so far as may plausibly be done. They are controlled by and administered

in behalf of those elements of the population that, for the purpose in

hand, make up a single loose-knit class,--the class that lives by income

rather than by work. It may be called the class of the business

interests, or of capital, or of gentlemen. It all comes to much the

same, for the purpose in hand.

The point in speaking of this contingent whose place in the economy of

human affairs it is to consume, or to own, or to pursue a margin of

profit, is simply that of contrasting this composite human contingent

with the common man; whose numbers account for some nine-tenths or more

of the community, while his class accounts for something less than

one-tenth of the invested wealth, and appreciably less than that

proportion of the discretionary national establishment,--the government,

national or local, courts, attorneys, civil service, diplomatic and

consular, military and naval. The arrangement may be called a

gentlemen's government, if one would rather have it that way; but a

gentleman is necessarily one who lives on free income from invested

wealth--without such a source of free, that is to say unearned, income

he becomes a decayed gentleman. Again, pushing the phrasing back a step

farther toward the ground facts, there are those who would speak of the

current establishments as "capitalistic;" but this term is out of line

in that it fails to touch the human element in the case, and

institutions, such as governmental establishments and their functioning,

are after all nothing but the accustomed ways and means of human

behaviour; so that "capitalistic" becomes a synonym for "businessmen's"

government so soon as it is designated in terms of the driving

incentives and the personnel. It is an organisation had with a view to

the needs of business (i.e. pecuniary) enterprise, and is made up of

businessmen and gentlemen, which comes to much the same, since a

gentleman is only a businessman in the second or some later generation.

Except for the slightly odious suggestion carried by the phrase, one

might aptly say that the gentleman, in this bearing, is only a

businessman gone to seed.

By and large, and taking the matter naively at the simple face value of

the material gain or loss involved, it should seem something of an idle

question to the common man whether his collective affairs are to be

managed by a home-bred line of businessmen and their successive filial

generations of gentlemen, with a view to accelerate the velocity and

increase the volume of competitive gain and competitive spending, on

the one hand, or by an alien line of officials, equally aloof from his

common interests, and managing affairs with a view to the usufruct of

his productive powers in furtherance of the Imperial dominion.

Not that the good faith or the generous intentions of these governments

of gentlemen is questioned or is in any degree questionable; what is

here spoken of is only the practical effect of the policies which they

pursue, doubtless with benevolent intentions and well-placed

complacency. In effect, things being as they are today in the civilised

world's industry and trade, it happens, as in some sort an unintended

but all-inclusive accident, that the guidance of affairs by business

principles works at cross purposes with the material interests of the

common man.

So ungraceful a view of the sacred core of this modern democratic

organisation will need whatever evidence can be cited to keep it in

countenance. Therefore indulgence is desired for one further count in

this distasteful recital of ineptitudes inherent in this institutional

scheme of civilised life. This count comes under the head of what may be

called capitalistic sabotage. "Sabotage" is employed to designate a

wilful retardation, interruption or obstruction of industry by

peaceable, and ordinarily by legally defensible, measures. In its

present application, particularly, there is no design to let the term

denote or insinuate a recourse to any expedients or any line of conduct

that is in any degree legally dubious, or that is even of questionable

legitimacy.

Sabotage so understood, as not comprising recourse to force or fraud, is

a necessary and staple expedient of business management, and its

employment is grounded in the elementary and indefeasible rights of

ownership. It is simply that the businessman, like any other owner, is

vested with the right freely to use or not to use his property for any

given purpose. His decision, for reasons of his own, not to employ the

property at his disposal in a particular way at a particular time, is

well and blamelessly within his legitimate discretion, under the rights

of property as universally accepted and defended by modern nations. In

the particular instance of the American nation he is protected in this

right by a constitutional provision that he must not be deprived of his

property without due process of law. When the property at his disposal

is in the shape of industrial plant or industrial material, means of

transportation or stock of goods awaiting distribution, then his

decision not to employ this property, or to limit its use to something

less than full capacity, in the way for which it is adapted, becomes

sabotage, normally and with negligible exceptions. In so doing he

hinders, retards or obstructs the working of the country's industrial

forces by so much. It is a matter of course and of absolute necessity to

the conduct of business, that any discretionary businessman must be free

to deal or not to deal in any given case; to limit or to withhold the

equipment under his control, without reservation. Business discretion

and business strategy, in fact, has no other means by which to work out

its aims. So that, in effect, all business sagacity reduces itself in

the last analysis to a judicious use of sabotage. Under modern

conditions of large business, particularly, the relation of the

discretionary businessman to industry is that of authoritative

permission and of authoritative limitation or stoppage, and on his

shrewd use of this authority depends the gainfulness of his enterprise.

If this authority were exercised with an eye single to the largest and

most serviceable output of goods and services, or to the most economical

use of the country's material resources and man-power, regardless of

pecuniary consequences, the course of management so carried out would be

not sabotage but industrial strategy. But business is carried on for

pecuniary gain, not with an unreserved view to the largest and most

serviceable output or to the economical use of resources. The volume and

serviceability of the output must wait unreservedly on the very

particular pecuniary question of what quantity and what degree of

serviceability will yield the largest net return in terms of price.

Uneconomical use of equipment, labor and resources is necessarily an

everyday matter under these circumstances, as in the duplication of

plant and processes between rival concerns, and in the wasteful use of

all resources that do not involve expenditure on the part of the given

concern.

It has been the traditional dogma among economists and publicists in

these modern communities that free competition between the businessmen

in charge will indefeasibly act to bring the productiveness of industry

to the highest practicable pitch and would lead to the most unreserved

and vigilant endeavour to serve the community's material needs at all

points. The reasons for the failure of this genial expectation,

particularly under latterday business management, might be shown in some

detail, if that were needed to enforce the argument as it runs in the

present connection. But a summary indication of the commoner varieties

and effects of sabotage as it is systematically applied in the

businesslike conduct of industry will serve the purpose as well and with

less waste of words and patience.

It is usual to notice, and not unusual to deplore the duplication of

plant and appliances in many lines of industry, due to competitive

management, as in factories engaged in the same class of manufacture, in

parallel or otherwise competing railways and boat lines, in retail

merchandising, and in some degree also in the wholesale trade. The

result, of course, is sabotage; in the sense that this volume of

appliances, materials and workmen are not employed to the best advantage

for the community. One effect of the arrangement is an increased

necessary cost of the goods and services supplied by these means. The

reason for it is competition for gain to be got from the traffic. That

all this is an untoward state of things is recognised on all hands; but

no lively regret is commonly spent on the matter, since it is commonly

recognised that under the circumstances there is no help for it except

at the cost of a more untoward remedy.

The competitive system having been tried and found good--or at least so

it is assumed--it is felt that the system will have to be accepted with

the defects of its qualities. Its characteristic qualities are held to

be good, acceptable to the tastes of modern men whose habits of thought

have been standardised in its terms; and it would be only reluctantly

and by tardy concession that these modern men could bring themselves to

give up that scheme of "Natural Liberty" within the framework of which

runs this competitive system of business management and its wasteful

manifolding of half-idle equipment and nugatory work. The common man, at

the worst, comforts himself and his neighbour with the sage reflection

that "It might have been worse." The businessmen, on the other hand,

have also begun to take note of this systematic waste by duplication

and consequent incompetence, and have taken counsel how to intercept the

waste and divert it to their own profit. The businessmen's remedy is

consolidation of competing concerns, and monopoly control.

To the common man, with his preconceptions on the head of "restraint of

trade," the proposed remedy seems more vicious than the evil it is

designed to cure. The fault of the remedy plainly is not that the

mismanagement of affairs due to competitive business can not be

corrected by recourse to monopoly, but only that the community, it is

presumed, would still suffer all the burdens and discomforts of the

régime of competition and sabotage, with, possibly, further

inconveniences and impositions at the hands of the businesslike

monopoly; which, men are agreed, may fairly be depended on to use its

advantage unsparingly under the business principle of charging what the

traffic will bear.

There is also this other singular phenomenon in this modern industrial

world, that something not very far short of one-half the industrial

equipment systematically lies idle for something approaching one-half

the time, or is worked only to one-half its capacity half the time; not

because of competition between these several industrial concerns, but

because business conditions will not allow its continued productive use;

because the volume of product that would be turned out if the equipment

were working uninterruptedly at its full capacity could not be sold at

remunerative prices. From time to time one establishment and another

will shut down during a period of slack times, for the same reason.

This state of things is singular only as seen from the point of view of

the community's material interest, not that it is in any degree

unfamiliar or that any serious fault is found with the captains of

industry for so shutting off the industrial process and letting the

industrial equipment lie waste. As all men know, the exigencies of

business will not tolerate production to supply the community's needs

under these circumstances; although, as is equally notorious, these

slack times, when production of goods is unadvisable on grounds of

business expediency, are commonly times of wide-spread privation, "hard

times," in the community at large, when the failure of the supply is

keenly felt.

It is not that the captains of industry are at fault in so failing, or

refusing, to supply the needs of the community under these

circumstances, but only that they are helpless under the exigencies of

business. They can not supply the goods except for a price, indeed not

except for a remunerative price, a price which will add something to the

capital values which they are venturing in their various enterprises. So

long as the exigencies of price and of pecuniary gain rule the case,

there is manifestly no escaping this enforced idleness of the country's

productive forces.

It may not be out of place also to remark, by way of parenthesis, that

this highly productive state of the industrial arts, which is embodied

in the industrial plant and processes that so are systematically and

advisedly retarded or arrested under the rule of business, is at the

same time the particular pride of civilised men and the most tangible

achievement of the civilised world.

A conservative estimate of this one item of capitalistic sabotage could

scarcely appraise it at less than a twenty-five percent reduction from

the normally possible productive capacity of the community, at an

average over any considerable period; and a somewhat thorough review of

the pertinent facts would probably persuade any impartial observer that,

one year with another, such businesslike enforced idleness of plant and

personnel lowers the actual output of the country's industry by

something nearer fifty percent of its ordinary capacity when fully

employed. To many, such an assertion may seem extravagant, but with

further reflection on the well-known facts in the case it will seem less

so in proportion as the unfamiliarity of it wears off.

However, the point of attention in the case is not the precise, nor the

approximate, percentages of this arrest and retardation, this partial

neutralisation of modern improvements in the industrial arts; it is only

the notorious fact that such arrest occurs, systematically and

advisedly, under the rule of business exigencies, and that there is no

corrective to be found for it that will comport with those fundamental

articles of the democratic faith on which the businessmen necessarily

proceed. Any effectual corrective would break the framework of

democratic law and order, since it would have to traverse the

inalienable right of men who are born free and equal, each freely to

deal or not to deal in any pecuniary conjuncture that arises.

But it is at the same time plain enough that this, in the larger sense

untoward, discrepancy between productive capacity and current productive

output can readily be corrected, in some appreciable degree at least, by

any sufficient authority that shall undertake to control the country's

industrial forces without regard to pecuniary profit and loss. Any

authority competent to take over the control and regulate the conduct of

the community's industry with a view to maximum output as counted by

weight and tale, rather than by net aggregate price-income over

price-cost, can readily effect an appreciable increase in the effectual

productive capacity; but it can be done only by violating that

democratic order of things within which business enterprise runs. The

several belligerent nations of Europe are showing that it can be done,

that the sabotage of business enterprise can be put aside by

sufficiently heroic measures. And they are also showing that they are

all aware, and have always been aware, that the conduct of industry on

business principles is incompetent to bring the largest practicable

output of goods and services; incompetent to such a degree, indeed, as

not to be tolerable in a season of desperate need, when the nation

requires the full use of its productive forces, equipment and man-power,

regardless of the pecuniary claims of individuals.

* * * * *

Now, the projected Imperial dominion is a power of the character

required to bring a sufficient corrective to bear, in case of need, on

this democratic situation in which the businessmen in charge necessarily

manage the country's industry at cross purposes with the

community's--that is the common man's--material interest. It is an

extraneous power, to whom the continued pecuniary gain of these nations'

businessmen is a minor consideration, a negligible consideration in case

it shall appear that the Imperial usufruct of the underlying nation's

productive forces is in any degree impaired by the businessmen's

management of it for their own net gain. It is difficult to see on what

grounds of self-interest such an Imperial government could consent to

tolerate the continued management of these underlying nations'

industries on business principles, that is to say on the principle of

the maximum pecuniary gain to the businesslike managers; and recent

experience seems to teach that no excessive, that is to say no

inconvenient, degree of consideration for vested rights, and the like,

would long embarrass the Imperial government in its administration of

its usufruct.

It should be a reasonable expectation that, without malice and with an

unprejudiced view to its own usufruct of these underlying countries, the

Imperial establishment would take due care that no systematically, and

in its view gratuitously, uneconomical methods should continue in the

ordinary conduct of their industry. Among other considerations of weight

in this connection is the fact that a contented, well-fed, and not

wantonly over-worked populace is a valuable asset in such a case.

Similarly, by contraries, as an asset in usufruct to such an alien

power, a large, wealthy, spendthrift, body of gentlefolk, held in high

esteem by the common people, would have but a slight value, conceivably

even a negative value, in such a case. A wise administration would

presumably look to their abatement, rather than otherwise. At this point

the material interest of the common man would seem to coincide with that

of the Imperial establishment. Still, his preconceived notions of the

wisdom and beneficence of his gentlefolk would presumably hinder his

seeing the matter in that reasonable light.

Under the paramount surveillance of such an alien power, guided solely

by its own interest in the usufruct of the country and its population,

it is to be presumed that class privileges and discrimination would be

greatly abated if not altogether discontinued. The point is in some

doubt, partly because this alien establishment whose dominion is in

question is itself grounded in class prerogatives and discrimination,

and so, not improbably, it would carry over into its supervision of the

underlying nations something of a bias in favor of class privileges. And

a similar order of things might also result by choice of a class-system

as a convenient means of control and exploitation. The latter

consideration is presumably the more cogent, since the Imperial

establishment in question is already, by ancient habit, familiar with

the method of control by class and privilege; and, indeed, unfamiliar

with any other method. Such a government, which governs without

effectual advice or formal consent of the governed, will almost

necessarily rest its control of the country on an interested class, of

sufficient strength and bound by sufficiently grave interest to abet the

Imperial establishment effectually in all its adventures and

enterprises.

But such a privileged order, that is to be counted in to share dynastic

usufruct and liabilities, in good days and evil, will be of a

feudalistic complexion rather than something after the fashion of a

modern business community doing business by investment and pecuniary

finesse. It would still be a reasonable expectation that discrimination

between pecuniary classes should fall away under this projected alien

tutelage; more particularly all such discrimination as is designed to

benefit any given class or interest at the cost of the whole, as, e.g.,

protective tariffs, monopolistic concessions and immunities, engrossing

of particular lines of material resources, and the like.

The character of the economic policy to be pursued should not be

difficult of apprehension, if only these underlying peoples are

conceived as an estate in tail within the dynastic line of descent. The

Imperial establishment which so is prospectively to take over the

surveillance of these modern peoples under this projected enterprise in

dominion, may all the more readily be conceived as handling its new and

larger resources somewhat unreservedly as an estate to be administered

with a shrewd eye to the main chance, since such has always been its

relation to the peoples and territories whose usufruct it already

enjoys. It is only that the circumstances of the case will admit a freer

and more sagacious application of those principles of usufruct that lie

at the root of the ancient Culture of the Fatherland.

* * * * *

This excessively long, and yet incomplete, review of the presumptive

material advantages to accrue to the common man under a régime of peace

by unconditional surrender to an alien dynasty, brings the argument

apparently to the conclusion that such an eventuality might be fortunate

rather than the reverse; or at least that it has its compensations, even

if it is not something to be desired. Such should particularly appear to

be the presumption in case one is at all inclined to make much of the

cultural gains to be brought in under the new régime. And more

particularly should a policy of non-resistant submission to the

projected new order seem expedient in view of the exceedingly high, not

to say prohibitive, cost of resistance, or even of materially retarding

its fulfillment.