CHAPTER V

PEACE AND NEUTRALITY

Considered simply on the face of the tangible material interests

involved, the choice of the common man in these premises should seem

very much of a foregone conclusion, if he could persuade himself to a

sane and perspicuous consideration of these statistically apparent

merits of the case alone. It is at least safely to be presumed that he

has nothing to lose, in a material way, and there is reason to look for

some slight gain in creature comforts and in security of life and limb,

consequent upon the elimination, or at least the partial

disestablishment, of pecuniary necessity as the sole bond and criterion

of use and wont in economic concerns.

But man lives not by bread alone. In point of fact, and particularly as

touches the springs of action among that common run that do not

habitually formulate their aspirations and convictions in extended and

grammatically defensible documentary form, and the drift of whose

impulses therefore is not masked or deflected by the illusive

consistencies of set speech,--as touches the common run, particularly,

it will hold true with quite an unacknowledged generality that the

material means of life are, after all, means only; and that when the

question of what things are worth while is brought to the final test, it

is not these means, nor the life conditioned on these means, that are

seen to serve as the decisive criterion; but always it is some

ulterior, immaterial end, in the pursuit of which these material means

find their ulterior ground of valuation. Neither the overt testimony nor

the circumstantial evidence to this effect is unequivocal; but seen in

due perspective, and regard being had chiefly to the springs of

concerted action as shown in any massive movement of this common run of

mankind, there is, after all, little room to question that the things

which commend themselves as indefeasibly worth while are the things of

the human spirit.

These ideals, aspirations, aims, ends of endeavour, are by no means of a

uniform or homogeneous character throughout the modern communities,

still less throughout the civilised world, or throughout the checkered

range of classes and conditions of men; but, with such frequency and

amplitude that it must be taken as a major premise in any attempted

insight into human behaviour, it will hold true that they are of a

spiritual, immaterial nature.

The caution may, parenthetically, not be out of place, that this

characterisation of the ulterior springs of action as essentially not of

the nature of creature comforts, need be taken in no wider extension

than that which so is specifically given it. It will be found to apply

as touches the conduct of the common run; what modification of it might

be required to make it at all confidently applicable to the case of one

and another of those classes into whose scheme of life creature comforts

enter with more pronounced effect may be more of a delicate point. But

since it is the behaviour, and the grounds of behaviour, of the common

run that are here in question, the case of their betters in this respect

may conveniently be left on one side.

The question in hand touches the behavior of the common man, taken in

the aggregate, in face of the quandary into which circumstances have led

him; since the question of what these modern peoples will do is after

all a question of what the common man in the aggregate will do, of his

own motion or by persuasion. His betters may be in a position to guide,

persuade, cajole, mislead, and victimise him; for among the many

singular conceits that beset the common man is the persuasion that his

betters are in some way better than he, wiser, more beneficent. But the

course that may so be chosen, with or without guidance or persuasion

from the superior classes, as well as the persistence and energy with

which this course is pursued, is conditioned on the frame of mind of the

common run.

Just what will be the nature and the concrete expression of these ideal

aspirations that move the common run is a matter of habitual

preconceptions; and habits of thought vary from one people to another

according to the diversity of experience to which they have been

exposed. Among the Western nations the national prestige has come to

seem worth while as an ulterior end, perhaps beyond all else that is

comprised in the secular scheme of things desirable to be had or to be

achieved. And in the apprehension of such of them as have best preserved

the habits of thought induced by a long experience in feudal subjection,

the service of the sovereign or the dynasty still stands over as the

substantial core of the cultural scheme, upon which sentiment and

endeavour converge. In the past ages of the democratic peoples, as well

as in the present-day use and wont among subjects of the dynastic

States--as e.g., Japan or Germany--men are known to have resolutely

risked, and lost, their life for the sake of the sovereign's renown, or

even to save the sovereign's life; whereas, of course, even the

slightest and most nebulous reflection would make it manifest that in

point of net material utility the sovereign's decease is an idle matter

as compared with the loss of an able-bodied workman. The sovereign may

always be replaced, with some prospect of public advantage, or failing

that, it should be remarked that a regency or inter-regnum will commonly

be a season of relatively economical administration. Again, religious

enthusiasm, and the furtherance of religious propaganda, may come to

serve the same general purpose as these secular ideals, and will perhaps

serve it just as well. Certain "principles," of personal liberty and of

opportunity for creative self-direction and an intellectually worthy

life, perhaps may also become the idols of the people, for which they

will then be willing to risk their material fortune; and where this has

happened, as among the democratic peoples of Christendom, it is not

selfishly for their own personal opportunity to live untroubled under

the light of these high principles that these opinionated men are ready

to contend, but rather impersonally for the human right which under

these principles is the due of all mankind, and particularly of the

incoming and of later generations.

On these and the like intangible ends the common man is set with such

inveterate predilection that he will, on provocation, stick at nothing

to put the project through. For such like ends the common man will lay

down his life; at least, so they say. There may always be something of

rhetorical affectation in it all; but, after all, there is sufficient

evidence to hand of such substance and tenacity in the common man's hold

on these ideal aspirations, on these idols of his human spirit, as to

warrant the assertion that he is, rather commonly, prepared to go to

greater lengths in the furtherance of these immaterial gains that are to

inure to someone else than for any personal end of his own, in the way

of creature comforts or even of personal renown.

For such ends the common man, in democratic Christendom is, on

provocation, willing to die; or again, the patient and perhaps more

far-seeing common man of pagan China is willing to live for these idols

of an inveterate fancy, through endless contumely and hard usage. The

conventional Chinese preconceptions, in the way of things that are worth

while in their own right, appear to differ from those current in the

Occident in such a way that the preconceived ideal is not to be realised

except by way of continued life. The common man's accountability to the

cause of humanity, in China, is of so intimately personal a character

that he can meet it only by tenaciously holding his place in the

sequence of generations; whereas among the peoples of Christendom there

has arisen out of their contentious past a preconception to the effect

that this human duty to mankind is of the nature of a debt, which can be

cancelled by bankruptcy proceedings, so that the man who unprofitably

dies fighting for the cause has thereby constructively paid the

reckoning in full.

Evidently, if the common man of these modern nations that are

prospectively to be brought under tutelage of the Imperial government

could be brought to the frame of mind that is habitual with his Chinese

counterpart, there should be a fair hope that pacific counsels would

prevail and that Christendom would so come in for a régime of peace by

submission under this Imperial tutelage. But there are always these

preconceptions of self-will and insubordination to be counted with

among these nations, and there is the ancient habit of a contentious

national solidarity in defense of the nation's prestige, more urgent

among these peoples than any sentiment of solidarity with mankind at

large, or any ulterior gain in civilisation that might come of continued

discipline in the virtues of patience and diligence under distasteful

circumstances.

The occidental conception of manhood is in some considerable measure

drawn in negative terms. So much so that whenever a question of the

manly virtues comes under controversy it presently appears that at least

the indispensable minimum, and indeed the ordinary marginal modicum, of

what is requisite to a worthy manner of life is habitually formulated in

terms of what not. This appearance is doubtless misleading if taken

without the universally understood postulate on the basis of which

negative demands are formulated. There is a good deal of what would be

called historical accident in all this. The indispensable demands of

this modern manhood take the form of refusal to obey extraneous

authority on compulsion; of exemption from coercive direction and

subservience; of insubordination, in short. But it is always understood

as a matter of course that this insubordination is a refusal to submit

to irresponsible or autocratic rule. Stated from the positive side it

would be freedom from restraint by or obedience to any authority not

constituted by express advice and consent of the governed. And as near

as it may be formulated, when reduced to the irreducible minimum of

concrete proviso, this is the final substance of things which neither

shame nor honour will permit the modern civilised man to yield. To no

arrangement for the abrogation of this minimum of free initiative and

self-direction will he consent to be a party, whether it touches the

conditions of life for his own people who are to come after, or as

touches the fortunes of such aliens as are of a like mind on this head

and are unable to make head against invasion of these human rights from

outside.

As has just been remarked, the negative form so often taken by these

demands is something of an historical accident, due to the fact that

these modern peoples came into their highly esteemed system of Natural

Liberty out of an earlier system of positive checks on self-direction

and initiative; a system, in effect, very much after the fashion of that

Imperial jurisdiction that still prevails in the dynastic States--as,

e.g., Germany or Japan--whose projected dominion is now the immediate

object of apprehension and repugnance. How naively the negative

formulation gained acceptance, and at the same time how intrinsic to the

new dispensation was the aspiration for free initiative, appears in the

confident assertion of its most genial spokesman, that when these

positive checks are taken away, "The simple and obvious system of

Natural Liberty establishes itself of its own accord."

The common man, in these modern communities, shows a brittle temper when

any overt move is made against this heritage of civil liberty. He may

not be altogether well advised in respect of what liberties he will

defend and what he will submit to; but the fact is to be counted with in

any projected peace, that there is always this refractory residue of

terms not open to negotiation or compromise. Now it also happens, also

by historical accident, that these residual principles of civil liberty

have come to blend and coalesce with a stubborn preconception of

national integrity and national prestige. So that in the workday

apprehension of the common man, not given to analytic excursions, any

infraction of the national integrity or any abatement of the national

prestige has come to figure as an insufferable infringement on his

personal liberty and on those principles of humanity that make up the

categorical articles of the secular creed of Christendom. The fact may

be patent on reflection that the common man's substantial interest in

the national integrity is slight and elusive, and that in sober common

sense the national prestige has something less than a neutral value to

him; but this state of the substantially pertinent facts is not greatly

of the essence of the case, since his preconceptions in these premises

do not run to that effect, and since they are of too hard and fast a

texture to suffer any serious abatement within such a space of time as

can come in question here and now.

* * * * *

The outlook for a speedy settlement of the world's peace on a plan of

unconditional surrender to the projected Imperial dominion seems

unpromisingly dubious, in view of the stubborn temper shown by these

modern peoples wherever their preconceived ideas of right and honest

living appear to be in jeopardy; and the expediency of entering into any

negotiated compact of diplomatic engagements and assurances designed to

serve as groundwork to an eventual enterprise of that kind must

therefore also be questionable in a high degree. It is even doubtful if

any allowance of time can be counted on to bring these modern peoples to

a more reasonable, more worldly-wise, frame of mind; so that they would

come to see their interest in such an arrangement, or would divest

themselves of their present stubborn and perhaps fantastic prejudice

against an autocratic régime of the kind spoken for. At least for the

present any such hope of a peaceable settlement seems illusive. What

may be practicable in this way in the course of time is of course still

more obscure; but argument on the premises which the present affords

does not point to a substantially different outcome in the calculable

future.

For the immediate future--say, within the life-time of the oncoming

generation--the spiritual state of the peoples concerned in this

international quandary is not likely to undergo so radical a change as

to seriously invalidate an argument that proceeds on the present lie of

the land in this respect. Preconceptions are a work of habit impinging

on a given temperamental bent; and where, as in these premises, the

preconceptions have taken on an institutionalised form, have become

conventionalised and commonly accepted, and so have been woven into the

texture of popular common sense, they must needs be a work of protracted

and comprehensive habituation impinging on a popular temperamental bent

of so general a prevalence that it may be called congenital to the

community at large. A heritable bent pervading the group within which

inheritance runs, does not change, so long as the racial complexion of

the group remains passably intact; a conventionalised, commonly

established habit of mind will change only slowly, commonly not without

the passing of at least one generation, and only by grace of a

sufficiently searching and comprehensive discipline of experience. For

good or ill, the current situation is to be counted on not to lose

character over night or with a revolution of the seasons, so far as

concerns these spiritual factors that make or mar the fortunes of

nations.

At the same time these spiritual assets, being of the nature of habit,

are also bound to change character more or less radically, by insensible

shifting of ground, but incontinently,--provided only that the

conditions of life, and therefore the discipline of experience, undergo

any substantial change. So the immediate interest shifts to the

presumptive rate and character of those changes that are in prospect,

due to the unremitting change of circumstances under which these modern

peoples live and to the discipline of which they are unavoidably

exposed. For the present and for the immediate future the current state

of things is a sufficiently stable basis of argument; but assurance as

to the sufficiency of the premises afforded by the current state of

things thins out in proportion as the perspective of the argument runs

out into the succeeding years. The bearing of it all is two-fold, of

course. This progressive, cumulative habituation under changing

circumstances affects the case both of those democratic peoples whose

fortunes are in the hazard, and also of those dynastic States by whom

the projected enterprise in dominion is to be carried into effect.

* * * * *

The case of the two formidable dynastic States whose names have been

coupled together in what has already been said is perhaps the more

immediately interesting in the present connection. As matters stand, and

in the measure in which they continue so to stand, the case of these is

in no degree equivocal. The two dynastic establishments seek dominion,

and indeed they seek nothing else, except incidentally to and in

furtherance of the main quest. As has been remarked before, it lies in

the nature of a dynastic State to seek dominion, that being the whole of

its nature in so far as it runs true to form. But a dynastic State, like

any other settled, institutionalised community of men, rests on and

draws its effectual driving force from the habit of mind of its

underlying community, the common man in the aggregate, his

preconceptions and ideals as to what things are worth while. Without a

suitable spiritual ground of this kind such a dynastic State passes out

of the category of formidable Powers and into that of precarious

despotism.

In both of the two States here in question the dynastic establishment

and its bodyguard of officials and gentlefolk may be counted on to

persevere in the faith that now animates them, until an uneasy

displacement of sentiment among the underlying populace may in time

induce them judiciously to shift their footing. Like the ruling classes

elsewhere, they are of a conservative temper and may be counted on so to

continue. They are also not greatly exposed to the discipline of

experience that makes for adaptive change in habits of life, and

therefore in the correlated habits of thought. It is always the common

man that is effectually reached by any exacting or wide-reaching change

in the conditions of life. He is relatively unsheltered from any forces

that make for adaptive change, as contrasted with the case of his

betters; and however sluggish and reluctant may be his response to such

discipline as makes for a displacement of outworn preconceptions, yet it

is always out of the mass of this common humanity that those movements

of disaffection and protest arise, which lead, on occasion, to any

material realignment of the institutional fabric or to any substantial

shift in the line of policy to be pursued under the guidance of their

betters.

The common mass of humanity, it may be said in parenthesis, is of course

not a homogeneous body. Uncommon men, in point of native gifts of

intelligence, sensibility, or personal force, will occur as frequently,

in proportion to the aggregate numbers, among the common mass as among

their betters. Since in any one of these nations of Christendom, with

their all-inclusive hybridisation, the range, frequency and amplitude of

variations in hereditary endowment is the same throughout all classes.

Class differentiation is a matter of habit and convention; and in

distinction from his betters the common man is common only in point of

numbers and in point of the more general and more exacting conditions to

which he is exposed. He is in a position to be more hardly ridden by the

discipline of experience, and is at the same time held more consistently

to such a body of preconceptions, and to such changes only in this body

of preconceptions, as fall in with the drift of things in a larger mass

of humanity. But all the while it is the discipline which impinges on

the sensibilities of this common mass that shapes the spiritual attitude

and temper of the community and so defines what may and what may not be

undertaken by the constituted leaders. So that, in a way, these dynastic

States are at the mercy of that popular sentiment whose creatures they

are, and are subject to undesired changes of direction and efficiency in

their endeavors, contingent on changes in the popular temper; over which

they have only a partial, and on the whole a superficial control.

A relatively powerful control and energetic direction of the popular

temper is and has been exercised by these dynastic establishments, with

a view to its utilisation in the pursuit of the dynastic enterprise; and

much has visibly been accomplished in that way; chiefly, perhaps, by

military discipline in subordination to personal authority, and also by

an unsparing surveillance of popular education, with a view to fortify

the preconceptions handed down from the passing order as well as to

eliminate all subversive innovation. Yet in spite of all the

well-conceived and shrewdly managed endeavors of the German Imperial

system in this direction, e.g., there has been evidence of an obscurely

growing uneasiness, not to say disaffection, among the underlying mass.

So much so that hasty observers, and perhaps biased, have reached the

inference that one of the immediate contributory causes that led to the

present war was the need of a heroic remedy to correct this untoward

drift of sentiment.

For the German people the government of the present dynastic incumbent

has done all that could (humanly speaking) be expected in the way of

endeavoring to conserve the passing order and to hold the popular

imagination to the received feudalistic ideals of loyal service. And yet

the peoples of the Empire are already caught in the net of that newer

order which they are now endeavoring to break by force of arms. They are

inextricably implicated in the cultural complex of Christendom; and

within this Western culture those peoples to whom it fell to lead the

exodus out of the Egypt of feudalism have come quite naturally to set

the pace in all the larger conformities of civilised life. Within the

confines of Christendom today, for good or ill, whatever usage or

customary rule of conduct falls visibly short of the precedent set by

these cultural pioneers is felt to fall beneath the prescriptive

commonplace level of civilisation. Failure to adopt and make use of

those tried institutional expedients on which these peoples of the

advance guard have set their mark of authentication is today

presumptively a mistake and an advantage foregone; and a people who are

denied the benefit of these latterday ways and means of civic life are

uneasy with a sense of grievance at the hands of their rulers. Besides

which, the fashion in articles of institutional equipage so set by the

authentic pioneers of culture has also come to be mandatory, as a

punctilio of the governmental proprieties; so that no national

establishment which aspires to a decorous appearance in the eyes of the

civilised world can longer afford to be seen without them. The forms at

least must be observed. Hence the "representative" and

pseudo-representative institutions of these dynastic States.

These dynastic States among the rest have partly followed the dictates

of civilised fashion, partly yielded to the, more or less intelligent,

solicitations of their subjects, or the spokesmen of their subjects, and

have installed institutional apparatus of this modern pattern--more in

point of form than of substance, perhaps. Yet in time the adoption of

the forms is likely to have an effect, if changing circumstances favor

their taking effect. Such has on the whole been the experience of those

peoples who have gone before along this trail of political advance. As

instance the growth of discretionary powers under the hands of

parliamentary representatives in those cases where the movement has gone

on longest and farthest; and these instances should not be considered

idle, as intimations of what may presumptively be looked for under the

Imperial establishments of Germany or Japan. It may be true that

hitherto, along with the really considerable volume of imitative

gestures of discretionary deliberation delegated to these parliamentary

bodies, they have as regards all graver matters brought to their notice

only been charged with a (limited) power to talk. It may be true that,

for the present, on critical or weighty measures the parliamentary

discretion extends no farther than respectfully to say: "_Ja wohl_!" But

then, _Ja wohl_ is also something; and there is no telling where it may

all lead to in the long course of years. One has a vague apprehension

that this "_Ja wohl_!" may some day come to be a customarily necessary

form of authentication, so that with-holding it (_Behüt' es Gott_!) may

even come to count as an effectual veto on measures so pointedly

neglected. More particularly will the formalities of representation and

self-government be likely to draw the substance of such like "free

institutions" into the effectual conduct of public affairs if it turns

out that the workday experiences of these people takes a turn more

conducive to habits of insubordination than has been the case hitherto.

Indications are, again, not wanting, that even in the Empire the

discipline of workday experience is already diverging from that line

that once trained the German subjects into the most loyal and unrepining

subservience to dynastic ambitions. Of course, just now, under the

shattering impact of warlike atrocities and patriotic clamour, the

workday spirit of insubordination and critical scrutiny is gone out of

sight and out of hearing.

Something of this inchoate insubordination has showed itself repeatedly

during the present reign, sufficient to provoke many shrewd protective

measures on the side of the dynastic establishment, both by way of

political strategy and by arbitrary control. Disregarding many minor and

inconsequential divisions of opinion and counsel among the German people

during this eventful reign, the political situation has been moving on

the play of three, incipiently divergent, strains of interest and

sentiment: (a) the dynasty (together with the Agrarians, of whom in a

sense the dynasty is a part); (b) the businessmen, or commercial

interest (including investors); and (c) the industrial workmen.

Doubtless it would be easier to overstate than to indicate with any nice

precision what has been the nature, and especially the degree, of this

alienation of sentiment and divergence of conscious interest among these

several elements. It is not that there has at any point been a

perceptible faltering in respect of loyalty to the crown as such. But

since the crown belongs, by origin, tradition, interest and spiritual

identity, in the camp of the Agrarians, the situation has been such as

would inevitably take on a character of disaffection toward the dynastic

establishment, in the conceivable absence of that strong surviving

sentiment of dynastic loyalty that still animates all classes and

conditions of men in the Fatherland. It would accordingly, again, be an

overstatement to say that the crown has been standing precariously at

the apex of a political triangle, the other two corners of which are

occupied by these two divided and potentially recalcitrant elements of

the body politic, held apart by class antipathy and divergent pecuniary

interest, and held in check by divided counsels; but something after

that fashion is what would have resulted under similar conditions of

strain in any community where the modern spirit of insubordination has

taken effect in any large measure.

Both of these elements of incipient disturbance in the dynastic economy,

the modern commercial and working classes, are creatures of the new era;

and they are systematically out of line with the received dynastic

tradition of fealty, both in respect of their pecuniary interests and in

respect of that discipline of experience to which their workday

employment subjects them. They are substantially the same two classes or

groupings that came forward in the modernisation of the British

community, with a gradual segregation of interest and a consequent

induced solidarity of class sentiment and class animosities. But with

the difference that in the British case the movement of changing

circumstances was slow enough to allow a fair degree of habituation to

the altered economic conditions; whereas in the German case the move

into modern economic conditions has been made so precipitately as to

have carried the mediaeval frame of mind over virtually intact into this

era of large business and machine industry. In the Fatherland the

commercial and industrial classes have been called on to play their part

without time to learn their lines.

The case of the English-speaking peoples, who have gone over this course

of experience in more consecutive fashion than any others, teaches that

in the long run, if these modern economic conditions persist, one or the

other or both of these creatures of the modern era must prevail, and

must put the dynastic establishment out of commission; although the

sequel has not yet been seen in this British case, and there is no

ground afforded for inference as to which of the two will have the

fortune to survive and be invested with the hegemony. Meantime the

opportunity of the Imperial establishment to push its enterprise in

dominion lies in the interval of time so required for the discipline of

experience under modern conditions to work out through the growth of

modern habits of thought into such modern (i.e. civilised) institutional

forms and such settled principles of personal insubordination as will

put any effectual dynastic establishment out of commission. The same

interval of time, that must so be allowed for the decay of the dynastic

spirit among the German people under the discipline of life by the

methods of modern trade and industry, marks the period during which no

peace compact will be practicable, except with the elimination of the

Imperial establishment as a possible warlike power. All this, of

course, applies to the case of Japan as well, with the difference that

while the Japanese people are farther in arrears, they are also a

smaller, less formidable body, more exposed to outside forces, and their

mediaevalism is of a more archaic and therefore more precarious type.

What length of time will be required for this decay of the dynastic

spirit among the people of the Empire is, of course, impossible to say.

The factors of the case are not of a character to admit anything like

calculation of the rate of movement; but in the nature of the factors

involved it is also contained that something of a movement in this

direction is unavoidable, under Providence. As a preliminary

consideration, these peoples of the Empire and its allies, as well as

their enemies in the great war, will necessarily come out of their

warlike experience in a more patriotic and more vindictive frame of mind

than that in which they entered on this adventure. Fighting makes for

malevolence. The war is itself to be counted as a set-back. A very large

proportion of those who have lived through it will necessarily carry a

warlike bent through life. By that much, whatever it may count for, the

decay of the dynastic spirit--or the growth of tolerance and equity in

national sentiment, if one chooses to put it that way--will be retarded

from beforehand. So also the Imperial establishment, or whatever is left

of it, may be counted on to do everything in its power to preserve the

popular spirit of loyalty and national animosity, by all means at its

disposal; since the Imperial establishment finally rests on the

effectual body of national animosity. What hindrance will come in from

this agency of retardation can at least vaguely be guessed at, in the

light of what has been accomplished in that way under the strenuously

reactionary rule of the present reign.

Again, there is the chance, as there always is a chance of human folly,

that the neighboring peoples will undertake, whether jointly or

severally, to restrict or prohibit trade relations between the people of

the Empire and their enemies in the present war; thereby fomenting

international animosity, as well as contributing directly to the

economic readiness for war both on their own part and on that of the

Empire. This is also, and in an eminent degree, an unknown factor in the

case, on which not even a reasonable guess can be made beforehand. These

are, all and several, reactionary agencies, factors of retardation,

making for continuation of the current international situation of

animosity, distrust, chicane, trade rivalry, competitive armament, and

eventual warlike enterprise.

* * * * *

To offset these agencies of conservatism there is nothing much that can

be counted on but that slow, random, and essentially insidious working

of habituation that tends to the obsolescence of the received

preconceptions; partly by supplanting them with something new, but more

effectually by their falling into disuse and decay. There is, it will

have to be admitted, little of a positive character that can be done

toward the installation of a régime of peace and good-will. The

endeavours of the pacifists should suffice to convince any dispassionate

observer of the substantial futility of creative efforts looking to such

an end. Much can doubtless be done in the way of precautionary measures,

mostly of a negative character, in the way especially of removing

sources of infection and (possibly) of so sterilising the apparatus of

national life that its working shall neither maintain animosities and

interests at variance with the conditions of peace nor contribute to

their spread and growth.

There is necessarily little hope or prospect that any national

establishment will contribute materially or in any direct way to the

obsolescence of warlike sentiments and ambitions; since such

establishments are designed for the making of war by keeping national

jealousies intact, and their accepted place in affairs is that of

preparation for eventual hostilities, defensive or offensive. Except for

the contingency of eventual hostilities, no national establishment could

be kept in countenance. They would all fall into the decay of desuetude,

just as has happened to the dynastic establishments among those peoples

who have (passably) lost the spirit of dynastic aggression.

The modern industrial occupations, the modern technology, and that

modern empirical science that runs so close to the frontiers of

technology, all work at cross purposes with the received preconceptions

of the nationalist order; and in a more pronounced degree they are at

cross purposes with that dynastic order of preconceptions that converges

on Imperial dominion. The like is true, with a difference, of the ways,

means and routine of business enterprise as it is conducted in the

commercialised communities of today. The working of these agencies runs

to this effect not by way of deliberate and destructive antagonism, but

almost wholly by force of systematic, though unintended and incidental,

neglect of those values, standards, verities, and grounds of

discrimination and conviction that make up the working realities of the

national spirit and of dynastic ambition. The working concepts of this

new, essentially mechanistic, order of human interests, do not

necessarily clash with those of the old order, essentially the order of

personages and personalities; the two are incommensurable, and they are

incompatible only in the sense and degree implied in that state of the

case. The profoundest and most meritorious truths of dynastic politics

can on no provocation and by no sleight of hand be brought within the

logic of that system of knowledge and appraisal of values by which the

mechanistic technology proceeds. Within the premises of this modern

mechanistic industry and science all the best values and verities of the

dynastic order are simply "incompetent, irrelevant and impertinent."

There is accordingly no unavoidable clash and no necessary friction

between the two schemes of knowledge or the two habits of mind that

characterise the two contrasted cultural eras. It is only that a given

individual--call him the common man--will not be occupied with both of

these incommensurable systems of logic and appreciation at the same time

or bearing on the same point; and further that in proportion as his

waking hours and his mental energy are fully occupied within the lines

of one of these systems of knowledge, design and employment, in much the

same measure he will necessarily neglect the other, and in time he will

lose proficiency and interest in its pursuits and its conclusions. The

man who is so held by his daily employment and his life-long attention

within the range of habits of thought that are valid in the mechanistic

technology, will, on an average and in the long run, lose his grip on

the spiritual virtues of national prestige and dynastic primacy; "for

they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they

are spiritually discerned."

Not that the adepts in this modern mechanistic system of knowledge and

design may not also be very good patriots and devoted servants of the

dynasty. The artless and, on the whole, spontaneous riot of dynastic

avidity displayed to the astonished eyes of their fellow craftsmen in

the neutral countries by the most eminent scientists of the Fatherland

during the early months of the war should be sufficient warning that the

archaic preconceptions do not hurriedly fly out of the window when the

habits of thought of the mechanistic order come in at the door. But with

the passage of time, pervasively, by imperceptible displacement, by the

decay of habitual disuse, as well as by habitual occupation with these

other and unrelated ways and means of knowledge and belief, dynastic

loyalty and the like conceptions in the realm of religion and magic pass

out of the field of attention and fall insensibly into the category of

the lost arts. Particularly will this be true of the common man, who

lives, somewhat characteristically, in the mass and in the present, and

whose waking hours are somewhat fully occupied with what he has to do.

With the commercial interests the Imperial establishment can probably

make such terms as to induce their support of the dynastic enterprise,

since they can apparently always be made to believe that an extension of

the Imperial dominion will bring correspondingly increased opportunities

of trade. It is doubtless a mistake, but it is commonly believed by the

interested parties, which is just as good for the purpose as if it were

true. And it should be added that in this, as in other instances of the

quest of larger markets, the costs are to be paid by someone else than

the presumed commercial beneficiaries; which brings the matter under the

dearest principle known to businessmen: that of getting something for

nothing. It will not be equally easy to keep the affections of the

common man loyal to the dynastic enterprise when he begins to lose his

grip on the archaic faith in dynastic dominion and comes to realise that

he has also--individually and in the mass--no material interest even in

the defense of the Fatherland, much less in the further extension of

Imperial rule.

But the time when this process of disillusionment and decay of ideals

shall have gone far enough among the common run to afford no secure

footing in popular sentiment for the contemplated Imperial

enterprise,--this time is doubtless far in the future, as compared with

the interval of preparation required for a new onset. Habituation takes

time, particularly such habituation as can be counted on to derange the

habitual bent of a great population in respect of their dearest

preconceptions. It will take a very appreciable space of time even in

the case of a populace so accessible to new habits of thought as the

German people are by virtue of their slight percentage of illiteracy,

the very large proportion engaged in those modern industries that

constantly require some intelligent insight into mechanistic facts, the

density of population and the adequate means of communication, and the

extent to which the whole population is caught in the web of

mechanically standardised processes that condition their daily life at

every turn. As regards their technological situation, and their exposure

to the discipline of industrial life, no other population of nearly the

same volume is placed in a position so conducive to a rapid acquirement

of the spirit of the modern era. But, also, no other people comparable

with the population of the Fatherland has so large and well-knit a body

of archaic preconceptions to unlearn. Their nearest analogue, of course,

is the Japanese nation.

In all this there is, of course, no inclination to cast a slur on the

German people. In point of racial characteristics there is no difference

between them and their neighbours. And there is no reason to question

their good intentions. Indeed, it may safely be asserted that no people

is more consciously well-meaning than the children of the Fatherland. It

is only that, with their archaic preconceptions of what is right and

meritorious, their best intentions spell malevolence when projected into

the civilised world as it stands today. And by no fault of theirs. Nor

is it meant to be intimated that their rate of approach to the accepted

Occidental standard of institutional maturity will be unduly slow or

unduly reluctant, so soon as the pertinent facts of modern life begin

effectively to shape their habits of thought. It is only that, human

nature--and human second nature--being what it always has been, the rate

of approach of the German people to a passably neutral complexion in

matters of international animosity and aggression must necessarily be

slow enough to allow ample time for the renewed preparation of a more

unsparing and redoubtable endeavour on the part of the Imperial

establishment.

What makes this German Imperial establishment redoubtable, beyond

comparison, is the very simple but also very grave combination of

circumstances whereby the German people have acquired the use of the

modern industrial arts in the highest state of efficiency, at the same

time that they have retained unabated the fanatical loyalty of feudal

barbarism.[9] So long, and in so far, as this conjunction of forces

holds there is no outlook for peace except on the elimination of

Germany as a power capable of disturbing the peace.

[Footnote 9: For an extended discussion of this point, see _Imperial

Germany and the Industrial Revolution_, especially ch. v. and vi.]

It may seem invidious to speak so recurrently of the German Imperial

establishment as the sole potential disturber of the peace in Europe.

The reason for so singling out the Empire for this invidious

distinction--of merit or demerit, as one may incline to take it--is that

the facts run that way. There is, of course, other human material, and

no small volume of it in the aggregate, that is of much the same

character, and serviceable for the same purposes as the resources and

man-power of the Empire. But this other material can come effectually

into bearing as a means of disturbance only in so far as it clusters

about the Imperial dynasty and marches under his banners. In so speaking

of the Imperial establishment as the sole enemy of a European peace,

therefore, these outlying others are taken for granted, very much as one

takes the nimbus for granted in speaking of one of the greater saints of

God.

* * * * *

So the argument returns to the alternative: Peace by unconditional

surrender and submission, or peace by elimination of Imperial Germany

(and Japan). There is no middle course apparent. The old-fashioned--that

is to say nineteenth-century--plan of competitive defensive armament and

a balance of powers has been tried, and it has not proved to be a

success, even so early in the twentieth century. This plan offers a

substitute (_Ersatz_) for peace; but even as such it has become

impracticable. The modern, or rather the current late-modern, state of

the industrial arts does not tolerate it. Technological knowledge has

thrown the advantage in military affairs definitively to the offensive,

particularly to the offensive that is prepared beforehand with the

suitable appliances and with men ready matured in that rigorous and

protracted training by which alone they can become competent to make

warlike use of these suitable appliances provided by the modern

technology. At the same time, and by grace of the same advance in

technology, any well-designed offensive can effectually reach any given

community, in spite of distance or of other natural obstacles. The era

of defensive armaments and diplomatic equilibration, as a substitute for

peace, has been definitively closed by the modern state of the

industrial arts.

Of the two alternatives spoken of above, the former--peace by submission

under an alien dynasty--is presumably not a practicable solution, as has

appeared in the course of the foregoing argument.

The modern nations are not spiritually ripe for it. Whether they have

reached even that stage of national sobriety, or neutrality, that would

enable them to live at peace among themselves after elimination of the

Imperial Powers is still open to an uneasy doubt. It would be by a

precarious margin that they can be counted on so to keep the peace in

the absence of provocation from without the pale. Their predilection for

peace goes to no greater lengths than is implied in the formula: Peace

with Honour; which assuredly does not cover a peace of non-resistance,

and which, in effect, leaves the distinction between an offensive and a

defensive war somewhat at loose ends. The national prestige is still a

live asset in the mind of these peoples; and the limit of tolerance in

respect of this patriotic animosity appears to be drawn appreciably

closer than the formula cited above would necessarily presume. They will

fight on provocation, and the degree of provocation required to upset

the serenity of these sportsmanlike modern peoples is a point on which

the shrewdest guesses may diverge. Still, opinion runs more and more

consistently to the effect that if these modern--say the French and the

English-speaking--peoples were left to their own devices the peace might

fairly be counted on to be kept between them indefinitely, barring

unforeseen contingencies.

Experience teaches that warlike enterprise on a moderate scale and as a

side interest is by no means incompatible with such a degree of neutral

animus as these peoples have yet acquired,--e.g., the Spanish-American

war, which was made in America, or the Boer war, which was made in

England. But these wars, in spite of the dimensions which they presently

took on, were after all of the nature of episodes,--the one chiefly an

extension of sportsmanship, which engaged the best attention of only the

more sportsmanlike elements, the other chiefly engineered by certain

business interests with a callous view to getting something for nothing.

Both episodes came to be serious enough, both in their immediate

incidence and in their consequences; but neither commanded the

deliberate and cordial support of the community at large. There is a

meretricious air over both; and there is apparent a popular inclination

to condone rather than to take pride in these _faits accomplis_. The one

excursion was a product of sportsmanlike bravado, fed on boyish

exuberance, fomented for mercenary objects by certain business interests

and place-hunting politicians, and incited by meretricious newspapers

with a view to increase their circulation. The other was set afoot by

interested businessmen, backed by politicians, seconded by newspapers,

and borne by the community at large, in great part under

misapprehension and stung by wounded pride.

Opinions will diverge widely as to the chances of peace in a community

of nations among whom episodes of this character, and of such

dimensions, have been somewhat more than tolerated in the immediate

past. But the consensus of opinion in these same countries appears to be

setting with fair consistency to the persuasion that the popular spirit

shown in these and in analogous conjunctures in the recent past gives

warrant that peace is deliberately desired and is likely to be

maintained, barring unforeseen contingencies.

* * * * *

In the large, the measures conducive to the perpetuation of peace, and

necessary to be taken, are simple and obvious; and they are largely of a

negative character, exploits of omission and neglect. Under modern

conditions, and barring aggression from without, the peace is kept by

avoiding the breaking of it. It does not break of itself,--in the

absence of such national establishments as are organised with the sole

ulterior view of warlike enterprise. A policy of peace is obviously a

policy of avoidance,--avoidance of offense and of occasion for

annoyance.

What is required to insure the maintenance of peace among pacific

nations is the neutralisation of all those human relations out of which

international grievances are wont to arise. And what is necessary to

assure a reasonable expectation of continued peace is the neutralisation

of so much of these relations as the patriotic self-conceit and

credulity of these peoples will permit. These two formulations are by no

means identical; indeed, the disparity between what could advantageously

be dispensed with in the way of national rights and pretensions, and

what the common run of modern patriots could be induced to relinquish,

is probably much larger than any sanguine person would like to believe.

It should be plain on slight reflection that the greater part, indeed

substantially the whole, of those material interests and demands that

now engage the policy of the nations, and that serve on occasion to set

them at variance, might be neutralised or relinquished out of hand,

without detriment to any one of the peoples concerned.

The greater part of these material interests over which the various

national establishments keep watch and hold pretensions are, in point of

historical derivation, a legacy from the princely politics of what is

called the "Mercantilist" period; and they are uniformly of the nature

of gratuitous interference or discrimination between the citizens of the

given nation and outsiders. Except (doubtfully) in the English case,

where mercantilist policies are commonly believed to have been adopted

directly for the benefit of the commercial interest, measures of this

nature are uniformly traceable to the endeavours of the crown and its

officers to strengthen the finances of the prince and give him an

advantage in warlike enterprise. They are kept up essentially for the

same eventual end of preparation for war. So, e.g., protective tariffs,

and the like discrimination in shipping, are still advocated as a means

of making the nation self-supporting, self-contained, self-sufficient;

with a view to readiness in the event of hostilities.

A nation is in no degree better off in time of peace for being

self-sufficient. In point of patent fact no nation can be industrially

self-sufficient except at the cost of foregoing some of the economic

advantages of that specialisation of industry which the modern state of

the industrial arts enforces. In time of peace there is no benefit

comes to the community at large from such restraint of trade with the

outside world, or to any class or section of the community except those

commercial concerns that are favored by the discrimination; and these

invariably gain their special advantage at the cost of their

compatriots. Discrimination in trade--export, import or shipping--has no

more beneficial effect when carried out publicly by the national

authorities than when effected surreptitiously and illegally by a

private conspiracy in restraint of trade within a group of interested

business concerns.

Hitherto the common man has found it difficult to divest himself of an

habitual delusion on this head, handed down out of the past and

inculcated by interested politicians, to the effect that in some

mysterious way he stands to gain by limiting his own opportunities. But

the neutralisation of international trade, or the abrogation of all

discrimination in trade, is the beginning of wisdom as touches the

perpetuation of peace. The first effect of such a neutral policy would

be wider and more intricately interlocking trade relations, coupled with

a further specialisation and mutual dependence of industry between the

several countries concerned; which would mean, in terms of international

comity, a lessened readiness for warlike operations all around.

It used to be an argument of the free-traders that the growth of

international commercial relations under a free-trade policy would

greatly conduce to a spirit of mutual understanding and forbearance

between the nations. There may or may not be something appreciable in

the contention; it has been doubted, and there is no considerable

evidence to be had in support of it. But what is more to the point is

the tangible fact that such specialisation of industry and consequent

industrial interdependence would leave all parties to this relation less

capable, materially and spiritually, to break off amicable relations. So

again, in time of peace and except with a view to eventual hostilities,

it would involve no loss, and presumably little pecuniary gain, to any

country, locality, town or class, if all merchant shipping were

registered indiscriminately under neutral colors and sailed under the

neutral no-man's flag, responsible indiscriminately to the courts where

they touched or where their business was transacted.

Neither producers, shippers, merchants nor consumers have any slightest

interest in the national allegiance of the carriers of their freight,

except such as may artificially be induced by discriminatory shipping

regulations. In all but the name--in time of peace--the world's merchant

shipping already comes near being so neutralised, and the slight further

simplification required to leave it on a neutral peace footing would be

little else than a neglect of such vexatious discrimination as is still

in force. If no nation could claim the allegiance, and therefore the

usufruct, of any given item of merchant shipping in case of eventual

hostilities, on account of the domicile of the owners or the port of

registry, that would create a further handicap on eventual warlike

enterprise and add so much to the margin of tolerance. At the same time,

in the event of hostilities, shipping sailing under the neutral no-man's

flag and subject to no national allegiance would enjoy such immunities

as still inure to neutral shipping. It is true, neutrality has not

carried many immunities lately.

Cumulatively effective usage and the exigencies of a large, varied,

shifting and extensive maritime trade have in the course of time

brought merchant shipping to something approaching a neutral footing.

For most, one might venture to say for virtually all, routine purposes

of business and legal liability the merchant shipping comes under the

jurisdiction of the local courts, without reservation. It is true, there

still are formalities and reservations which enable questions arising

out of incidents in the shipping trade to become subject of

international conference and adjustment, but they are after all not such

as would warrant the erection of national apparatus to take care of them

in case they were not already covered by usage to that effect. The

visible drift of usage toward neutralisation in merchant shipping, in

maritime trade, and in international commercial transactions, together

with the similarly visible feasibility of a closer approach to

unreserved neutralisation of this whole range of traffic, suggests that

much the same line of considerations should apply as regards the

personal and pecuniary rights of citizens traveling or residing abroad.

The extreme,--or, as seen from the present point of view, the

ultimate--term in the relinquishment of national pretensions along this

line would of course be the neutralisation of citizenship.

This is not so sweeping a move as a patriotically-minded person might

imagine on the first alarm, so far as touches the practical status of

the ordinary citizen in his ordinary relations, and particularly among

the English-speaking peoples. As an illustrative instance, citizenship

has sat somewhat lightly on the denizens of the American republic, and

with no evident damage to the community at large or to the inhabitants

in detail. Naturalisation has been easy, and has been sought with no

more eagerness, on the whole, than the notably low terms of its

acquirement would indicate. Without loss or discomfort many law-abiding

aliens have settled in this country and spent the greater part of a

life-time under its laws without becoming citizens, and no one the worse

or the wiser for it. Not infrequently the decisive inducement to

naturalisation on the part of immigrant aliens has been, and is, the

desirability of divesting themselves of their rights of citizenship in

the country of their origin. Not that the privilege and dignity of

citizenship, in this or in any other country, is to be held of little

account. It is rather that under modern civilised conditions, and among

a people governed by sentiments of humanity and equity, the stranger

within our gates suffers no obloquy and no despiteful usage for being a

stranger. It may be admitted that of late, with the fomentation of a

more accentuated nationalism by politicians seeking a _raison d'être_,

additional difficulties have been created in the way of naturalisation

and the like incidents. Still, when all is told of the average American

citizen, _qua_ citizen, there is not much to tell. The like is true

throughout the English-speaking peoples, with inconsequential allowance

for local color. A definitive neutralisation of citizenship within the

range of these English-speaking countries would scarcely ripple the

surface of things as they are--in time of peace.

All of which has not touched the sore and sacred spot in the received

scheme of citizenship and its rights and liabilities. It is in the event

of hostilities that the liabilities of the citizen at home come into the

foreground, and it is as a source of patriotic grievance looking to

warlike retaliation that the rights of the citizen abroad chiefly come

into the case.

If, as was once, almost inaudibly, hinted by a well-regarded statesman,

the national establishment should refuse to jeopardise the public peace

for the safeguarding of the person and property of citizens who go out

_in partes infidelium_ on their own private concerns, and should so

leave them under the uncurbed jurisdiction of the authorities in those

countries into which they have intruded, the result might in many cases

be hardship to such individuals. This would, of course, be true almost

exclusively of such instances only as occur in such localities as are,

temporarily or permanently, outside the pale of modern law and order.

And, it may be in place to remark, instances of such hardship, with the

accompanying hazard of national complications, would, no doubt, greatly

diminish in frequency consequent upon the promulgation of such a

disclaimer of national responsibility for the continued well-being of

citizens who so expatriate themselves in the pursuit of their own

advantage or amusement. Meantime, let it not seem inconsiderate to

recall that to the community at large the deplorable case of such

expatriates under hardship involves no loss or gain in the material

respect; and that, except for the fortuitous circumstance of his being a

compatriot, the given individual's personal or pecuniary fortune in

foreign parts has no special claim on his compatriots' sympathy or

assistance; from which it follows also that with the definitive

neutralisation of citizenship as touches expatriates, the sympathy which

is now somewhat unintelligently confined to such cases, on what may

without offense be called extraneous grounds, would somewhat more

impartially and humanely extend to fellowmen in distress, regardless of

nativity or naturalisation.

What is mainly to the point here, however, is the fact that if

citizenship were so neutralised within the range of neutral countries

here contemplated, one further source of provocation to international

jealousy and distrust would drop out of the situation. And it is not

easy to detect any element of material loss involved in such a move. In

the material respect no individual would be any the worse off, with the

doubtful and dubious exception of the expatriate fortune-hunter, who

aims to fish safely in troubled waters at his compatriots' expense. But

the case stands otherwise as regards the balance of immaterial assets.

The scaffolding of much highly-prized sentiment would collapse, and the

world of poetry and pageantry--particularly that of the tawdrier and

more vendible poetry and pageantry--would be poorer by so much. The Man

Without a Country would lose his pathetic appeal, or would at any rate

lose much of it. It may be, of course, that in the sequel there would

result no net loss even in respect of these immaterial assets of

sentimental animation and patriotic self-complacency, but it is after

all fairly certain that something would be lost, and it is by no means

clear what if anything would come in to fill its place.

An historical parallel may help to illustrate the point. In the movement

out of what may be called the royal age of dynasties and chivalric

service, those peoples who have moved out of that age and out of its

spiritual atmosphere have lost much of the conscious magnanimity and

conviction of merit that once characterised that order of things, as it

still continues to characterise the prevalent habit of mind in the

countries that still continue under the archaic order of dynastic

mastery and service. But it is also to be noted that these peoples who

so have moved out of the archaic order appear to be well content with

this change of spiritual atmosphere, and they are even fairly well

persuaded, in the common run, that the move has brought them some net

gain in the way of human dignity and neighbourly tolerance, such as to

offset any loss incurred on the heroic and invidious side of life. Such

is the tempering force of habit. Whereas, e.g., on the other hand, the

peoples of these surviving dynastic States, to which it is necessary

continually to recur, who have not yet moved out of that realm of

heroics, find themselves unable to see anything in such a prospective

shift but net loss and headlong decay of the spirit; that modicum of

forbearance and equity that is requisite to the conduct of life in a

community of ungraded masterless men is seen by these stouter stomachs

as a loosening of the moral fiber and a loss of nerve.

* * * * *

What is here tentatively projected under the phrase, "neutralization of

citizenship," is only something a little more and farther along the same

general line of movement which these more modern peoples have been

following in all that sequence of institutional changes that has given

them their present distinctive character of commonwealths, as contrasted

with the dynastic States of the mediaeval order. What may be in

prospect--if such a further move away from the mediaeval landmarks is to

take effect--may best be seen in the light of the later moves in the

same direction hitherto, more particularly as regards the moral and

aesthetic merits at large of such an institutional mutation. As touches

this last previous shifting of ground along this line, just spoken of,

the case stands in this singular but significant posture, in respect of

the spiritual values and valuations involved: These peoples who have,

even in a doubtful measure, made this transition from the archaic

institutional scheme, of fealty and dynastic exploit and coercion, to

the newer scheme of the ungraded commonwealth, are convinced, to the

point of martyrdom, that anything like a return to the old order is

morally impossible as well as insufferably shameful and irksome; whereas

those people, of the retarded division of the race, who have had no

experience of this new order, are equally convinced that it is all quite

incompatible with a worthy life.

Evidently, there should be no disputing about tastes. Evidently, too,

these retarded others will not move on into the later institutional

phase, of the ungraded commonwealth, by preconceived choice; but only,

if at all, by such schooling of experience as will bring them insensibly

to that frame of mind out of which the ideal of the ungraded

commonwealth emerges by easy generalisation of workday practice.

Meantime, having not yet experienced that phase of sentiment and opinion

on civic rights and immunities that is now occupied by their

institutionally maturer neighbours, the subjects of the Imperial

Fatherland, e.g., in spite of the most laudable intentions and the best

endeavour, are, by failure of this experience, unable to comprehend

either the ground of opposition to their well-meaning projects of

dominion or the futility of trying to convert these their elder brothers

to their own prescriptive acceptation of what is worth while. In time,

and with experience, this retarded division of Christendom may come to

the same perspective on matters of national usage and ideals as has been

enforced on the more modern peoples by farther habituation. So, also, in

time and with experience, if the drift of circumstance shall turn out to

set that way, the further move away from mediaeval discriminations and

constraint and into the unspectacular scheme of neutralisation may come

to seem as right, good and beautiful as the democratic commonwealth now

seems to the English-speaking peoples, or as the Hohenzollern Imperial

State now seems to the subjects of the Fatherland. There is, in effect,

no disputing about tastes.

There is little that is novel, and nothing that is to be rated as

constructive innovation, in this sketch of what might not inaptly be

called peace by neglect. The legal mind, which commonly takes the

initiative in counsels on what to do, should scarcely be expected to

look in that direction for a way out, or to see its way out in that

direction in any case; so that it need occasion no surprise if the many

current projects of pacification turn on ingenious and elaborate

provisions of apparatus and procedure, rather than on that simpler line

of expedients which the drift of circumstance, being not possessed of a

legal mind, has employed in the sequence of institutional change

hitherto. The legal mind that dominates in the current deliberations on

peace is at home in exhaustive specifications and meticulous

demarkations, and it is therefore prone to seek a remedy for the burden

of supernumerary devices by recourse to further excesses of regulation.

This trait of the legal mind is not a bad fault at the worst, and the

quality in which this defect inheres is of the greatest moment in any

project of constructive engineering on the legal and political plane.

But it is less to the purpose, indeed it is at cross purposes, in such a

conjuncture as the present; when the nations are held up in their quest

of peace chiefly by an accumulation of institutional apparatus that has

out-stayed its usefulness. It is the fortune even of good institutions

to become imbecile with the change of conditioning circumstances, and it

then becomes a question of their disestablishment, not of their

rehabilitation. If there is anywhere a safe negative conclusion, it is

that an institution grown mischievous by obsolescence need not be

replaced by a substitute.

Instances of such mischievous institutional arrangements, obsolete or in

process of obsolescence, would be, e.g., the French monarchy of the

ancient régime, the Spanish Inquisition, the British corn laws and the

"rotten boroughs," the Barbary pirates, the Turkish rule in Armenia, the

British crown, the German Imperial Dynasty, the European balance of

powers, the Monroe Doctrine. In some sense, at least in the sense and

degree implied in their selective survival, these various articles of

institutional furniture, and many like them, have once presumably been

suitable to some end, in the days of their origin and vigorous growth;

and they have at least in some passable fashion met some felt want; but

if they ever had a place and use in the human economy they have in time

grown imbecile and mischievous by force of changing circumstances, and

the question is not how to replace them with something else to the same

purpose after their purpose is outworn. A man who loses a wart off the

end of his nose does not apply to the _Ersatz_ bureau for a convenient

substitute.

Now, a large proportion, perhaps even substantially the whole, of the

existing apparatus of international rights, pretensions,

discriminations, covenants and provisos, visibly fall in that class, in

so far as concerns their material serviceability to the nation at large,

and particularly as regards any other than a warlike purpose, offensive

or defensive. Of course, the national dignity and diplomatic punctilio,

and the like adjuncts and instrumentalities of the national honour, all

have their prestige value; and they are not likely to be given up out of

hand. In point of fact, however solicitous for a lasting peace these

patriotically-minded modern peoples may be, it is doubtful if they could

be persuaded to give up any appreciable share of these appurtenances of

national jealousy even when their retention implies an imminent breach

of the peace. Yet it is plain that the peace will be secure in direct

proportion to the measure in which national discrimination and prestige

are allowed to pass into nothingness and be forgot.

* * * * *

By so much as it might amount to, such neutralisation of outstanding

interests between these pacific nations should bring on a degree of

coalescence of these nationalities. In effect, they are now held apart

in many respects by measures of precaution against their coming to a

common plan of use and wont. The degree of coalescence would scarcely be

extreme; more particularly it could not well become onerous, since it

would rest on convenience, inclination and the neglect of artificial

discrepancies. The more intimate institutions of modern life, that

govern human conduct locally and in detail, need not be affected, or not

greatly affected, for better or worse. Yet something appreciable in that

way might also fairly be looked for in time.

The nature, reach and prescriptive force of this prospective coalescence

through neutralisation may perhaps best be appreciated in the light of

what has already come to pass, without design or mandatory guidance, in

those lines of human interest where the national frontiers interpose no

bar, or at least no decisive bar, whether by force of unconcern or

through impotence. Fashions of dress, equipage and decorous usage, e.g.,

run with some uniformity throughout these modern nations, and indeed

with some degree of prescriptive force. There is, of course, nothing

mandatory, in the simpler sense, about all this; nor is the degree of

conformity extreme or uniform throughout. But it is a ready-made

generalisation that only those communities are incorporated in this

cosmopolitan coalescence of usage that are moved by their own

incitement, and only so far as they have an effectually felt need of

conformity in these premises. It is true, a dispassionate outsider, if

such there be, would perhaps be struck by the degree of such painstaking

conformity to canons of conduct which it frequently must cost serious

effort even to ascertain in such detail as the case calls for.

Doubtless, or at least presumably, conformity under the jurisdiction of

the fashions, and in related provinces of decorum, is obligatory in a

degree that need not be looked for throughout the scheme of use and wont

at large, even under the advisedly established non-interference of the

authorities. Still, on a point on which the evidence hitherto is

extremely scant it is the part of discretion to hold no settled opinion.

A more promising line of suggestion is probably that afforded by the

current degree of contact and consistency among the modern nations in

respect of science and scholarship, as also in the aesthetic or the

industrial arts. Local color and local pride, with one thing and another

in the way of special incitement or inhibition, may come in to vary the

run of things, or to blur or hinder a common understanding and mutual

furtherance and copartnery in these matters of taste and intellect. Yet

it is scarcely misleading to speak of the peoples of Christendom as one

community in these respects. The sciences and the arts are held as a

joint stock among these peoples, in their elements, and measurably also

in their working-out. It is true, these interests and achievements of

the race are not cultivated with the same assiduity or with identical

effect throughout; but it is equally true that no effectual bar could

profitably be interposed, or would be tolerated in the long run in this

field, where men have had occasion to learn that unlimited collusion is

more to the purpose than a clannish discrimination.

* * * * *

It is, no doubt, beyond reasonable hope that these democratic peoples

could be brought forthwith to concerted action on the lines of such a

plan of peace by neutralisation of all outstanding national pretensions.

Both the French and the English-speaking peoples are too eagerly set on

national aims and national prestige, to allow such a plan to come to a

hearing, even if something of the kind should be spoken for by their

most trusted leaders. By settled habit they are thinking in terms of

nationality, and just now they are all under the handicap of an inflamed

national pride. Advocacy of such a plan, of course, does not enter

seriously into the purpose of this inquiry; which is concerned with the

conditions under which peace is sought today, with the further

conditions requisite to its perpetuation, and with the probable effects

of such a peace on the fortunes of these peoples in case peace is

established and effectually maintained.

It is a reasonable question, and one to which a provisional answer may

be found, whether the drift of circumstances in the present and for the

immediate future may be counted on to set in the direction of a

progressive neutralisation of the character spoken of above, and

therefore possibly toward a perpetuation of that peace that is to follow

the present season of war. So also is it an open and interesting

question whether the drift in that direction, if such is the set of it,

can be counted on to prove sufficiently swift and massive, so as not to

be overtaken and overborne by the push of agencies that make for

dissension and warlike enterprise.

Anything like a categorical answer to these questions would have to be a

work of vaticination or of effrontery,--possibly as much to the point

the one as the other. But there are certain conditions precedent to a

lasting peace as the outcome of events now in train, and there are

certain definable contingencies conditioned on such current facts as the

existing state of the industrial arts and the state of popular

sentiment, together with the conjuncture of circumstances under which

these factors will come into action.

The state of the industrial arts, as it bears on the peace and its

violation, has been spoken of above. It is of such a character that a

judiciously prepared offensive launched by any Power of the first rank

at an opportune time can reach and lay waste any given country of the

habitable globe. The conclusive evidence of this is at hand, and it is

the major premise underlying all current proposals and projects of

peace, as well as the refusal of the nations now on the defensive to

enter into negotiations looking to an "inconclusive peace." This state

of the case is not commonly recognised in so many words, but it is well

enough understood. So that all peace projects that shall hope to find a

hearing must make up their account with it, and must show cause why they

should be judged competent to balk any attempted offensive. In an

inarticulate or inchoate fashion, perhaps, but none the less with

ever-increasing certitude and increasing apprehension, this state of the

case is also coming to be an article of popular "knowledge and belief,"

wherever much or little thought is spent on the outlook for peace. It

has already had a visible effect in diminishing the exclusiveness of

nationalities and turning the attention of the pacific peoples to the

question of feasible ways and means of international cooperation in case

of need; but it has not hitherto visibly lessened the militant spirit

among these nations, nor has it lowered the tension of their national

pride, at least not yet; rather the contrary, in fact.

The effect, upon the popular temper, of this inchoate realisation of the

fatality that so lies in the modern state of the industrial arts, varies

from one country to another, according to the varying position in which

they are placed, or in which they conceive themselves to be placed.

Among the belligerent nations it has put the spur of fear to their need

of concerted action as well as to their efforts to strengthen the

national defense. But the state of opinion and sentiment abroad in the

nation in time of war is no secure indication of what it will be after

the return to peace. The American people, the largest and most

immediately concerned of the neutral nations, should afford more

significant evidence of the changes in the popular attitude likely to

follow from a growing realisation of this state of the case, that the

advantage has passed definitively to any well prepared and resolute

offensive, and that no precautions of diplomacy and no practicable

measures of defensive armament will any longer give security,--provided

always that there is anywhere a national Power actuated by designs of

imperial dominion.

It is, of course, only little by little that the American people and

their spokesmen have come to realise their own case under this

late-modern situation, and hitherto only in an imperfect degree. Their

first response to the stimulus has been a display of patriotic

self-sufficiency and a move to put the national defense on a

war-footing, such as would be competent to beat off all aggression.

Those elements of the population who least realise the gravity of the

situation, and who are at the same time commercially interested in

measures of armament or in military preferment, have not begun to shift

forward beyond this position of magniloquence and resolution; nor is

there as yet much intimation that they see beyond it, although there is

an ever-recurring hint that they in a degree appreciate the practical

difficulty of persuading a pacific people to make adequate preparation

beforehand, in equipment and trained man-power, for such a plan of

self-sufficient self-defense. But increasingly among those who are, by

force of temperament or insight or by lack of the pecuniary and the

placeman's interest, less confident of an appeal to the nation's

prowess, there is coming forward an evident persuasion that warlike

preparations--"preparedness"--alone and carried through by the Republic

in isolation, will scarcely serve the turn.

There are at least two lines of argument, or of persuasion, running to

the support of such a view; readiness for a warlike defense, by

providing equipment and trained men, might prove a doubtfully effectual

measure even when carried to the limit of tolerance that will always be

reached presently in any democratic country; and then, too, there is

hope of avoiding the necessity of such warlike preparation, at least in

the same extreme degree, by means of some practicable working

arrangement to be effected with other nations who are in the same case.

Hitherto the farthest reach of these pacific schemes for maintaining the

peace, or for the common defense, has taken the shape of a projected

league of neutral nations to keep the peace by enforcement of specified

international police regulations or by compulsory arbitration of

international disputes. It is extremely doubtful how far, if at all,

popular sentiment of any effectual force falls in with this line of

precautionary measures. Yet it is evident that popular sentiment, and

popular apprehension, has been stirred profoundly by the events of the

past two years, and the resulting change that is already visible in the

prevailing sentiment as regards the national defense would argue that

more far-reaching changes in the same connection are fairly to be looked

for within a reasonable allowance of time.

In this American case the balance of effectual public opinion hitherto

is to all appearance quite in doubt, but it is also quite unsettled. The

first response has been a display of patriotic emotion and national

self-assertion. The further, later and presumably more deliberate,

expressions of opinion carry a more obvious note of apprehension and

less of stubborn or unreflecting national pride. It may be too early to

anticipate a material shift of base, to a more neutral, or less

exclusively national footing in matters of the common defense.

The national administration has been moving at an accelerated rate in

the direction not of national isolation and self-reliance resting on a

warlike equipment formidable enough to make or break the peace at

will--such as the more truculent and irresponsible among the politicians

have spoken for--but rather in the direction of moderating or curtailing

all national pretensions that are not of undoubted material consequence,

and of seeking a common understanding and concerted action with those

nationalities whose effectual interests in the matters of peace and war

coincide with the American. The administration has grown visibly more

pacific in the course of its exacting experience,--more resolutely, one

might even say more aggressively pacific; but the point of chief

attention in all this strategy of peace has also visibly been shifting

somewhat from the maintenance of a running equilibrium between

belligerents and a keeping of the peace from day to day, to the ulterior

and altogether different question of what is best to be done toward a

conclusive peace at the close of hostilities, and the ways and means of

its subsequent perpetuation.

This latter is, in effect, an altogether different question from that of

preserving neutrality and amicable relations in the midst of importunate

belligerents, and it may even, conceivably, perhaps not unlikely, come

to involve a precautionary breach of the current peace and a taking of

sides in the war with an urgent view to a conclusive outcome. It would

be going too far to impute to the administration, at the present stage,

such an aggressive attitude in its pursuit of a lasting peace as could

be called a policy of defensive offense; but it will shock no one's

sensibilities to say that such a policy, involving a taking of sides and

a renouncing of national isolation, is visibly less remote from the

counsels of the administration today than it has been at any earlier

period.

In this pacific attitude, increasingly urgent and increasingly

far-reaching and apprehensive, the administration appears to be speaking

for the common man rather than for the special interests or the

privileged classes. Such would appear, on the face of the returns, to be

the meaning of the late election. It is all the more significant on that

account, since in the long run it is after all the common man that will

have to pass on the expediency of any settled line of policy and to bear

the material burden of carrying it into effect.

It may seem rash to presume that a popularly accredited administration

in a democratic country must approximately reflect the effectual changes

of popular sentiment and desire. Especially would it seem rash to anyone

looking on from the point of view of an undemocratic nation, and

therefore prone to see the surface fluctuations of excitement and

shifting clamor. But those who are within the democratic pale will know

that any administration in such a country, where official tenure and

continued incumbency of the party rest on a popular vote,--any such

administration is a political organisation and is guided by political

expediency, in the tawdry sense of the phrase. Such a political

situation has the defects of its qualities, as has been well and

frequently expounded by its critics, but it has also the merits of its

shortcomings. In a democracy of this modern order any incumbent of high

office is necessarily something of a politician, quite indispensably so;

and a politician at the same time necessarily is something of a

demagogue. He yields to the popular drift, or to the set of opinion and

demands among the effective majority on whom he leans; and he can not

even appear to lead, though he may surreptitiously lead opinion in

adroitly seeming to reflect it and obey it. Ostensible leadership, such

as has been staged in this country from time to time, has turned out to

be ostensible only. The politician must be adroit; but if he is also to

be a statesman he must be something more. He is under the necessity of

guessing accurately what the drift of events and opinion is going to be

on the next reach ahead; and in taking coming events by the forelock he

may be able to guide and shape the drift of opinion and sentiment

somewhat to his own liking. But all the while he must keep within the

lines of the long-term set of the current as it works out in the habits

of thought of the common man.

Such foresight and flexibility is necessary to continued survival, but

flexibility of convictions alone does not meet the requirements. Indeed,

it has been tried. It is only the minor politicians--the most numerous

and long-lived, it is true--who can hold their place in the crevices of

the party organisation, and get their livelihood from the business of

party politics, without some power of vision and some hazard of

forecast. It results from this state of the case that the drift of

popular sentiment and the popular response to the stimulus of current

events is reflected more faithfully and more promptly by the short-lived

administrations of a democracy than by the stable and formally

irresponsible governmental establishments of the older order. It should

also be noted that these democratic administrations are in a less

advantageous position for the purpose of guiding popular sentiment and

shaping it to their own ends.

* * * * *

Now, it happens that at no period within the past half-century has the

course of events moved with such celerity or with so grave a bearing on

the common good and the prospective contingencies of national life as

during the present administration. This apparent congruity of the

administration's policy with the drift of popular feeling and belief

will incline anyone to put a high rating on the administration's course

of conduct, in international relations as well as in national measures

that have a bearing on international relations, as indicating the course

taken by sentiment and second thought in the community at large,--for,

in effect, whether or not in set form, the community at large reflects

on any matters of such gravity and urgency as to force themselves upon

the attention of the common man.

Two main lines of reflection have visibly been enforced on the

administration by the course of events in the international field. There

has been a growing apprehension, mounting in the later months to

something like the rank of a settled conviction, that the Republic has

been marked down for reduction to a vassal state by the dynastic Empire

now engaged with its European adversaries. In so saying that the

Republic has been marked down for subjection it is not intended to

intimate that deliberate counsel has been had by the Imperial

establishment on that prospective enterprise; still less that a

resolution to such effect, with specification of ways and means, has

been embodied in documentary form and deposited for future reference in

the Imperial archives. All that is intended, and all that is necessary

to imply, is that events are in train to such effect that the

subjugation of the American republic will necessarily find its place in

the sequence presently, provided that the present Imperial adventure is

brought to a reasonably auspicious issue; though it does not follow that

this particular enterprise need be counted on as the next large

adventure in dominion to be undertaken when things again fall into

promising shape. This latter point would, of course, depend on the

conjuncture of circumstances, chief of which would have to be the

exigencies of imperial dominion shaping the policy of the Empire's

natural and necessary ally in the Far East. All this has evidently been

coming more and more urgently into the workday deliberations of the

American administration. Of course, it is not spoken of in set terms to

this effect in official utterances, perhaps not even within doors; that

sort of thing is not done. But it can do no harm to use downright

expressions in a scientific discussion of these phenomena, with a view

to understanding the current drift of things in this field.

Beyond this is the similar apprehension, similarly though more slowly

and reluctantly rising to the level of settled conviction, that the

American commonwealth is not fit to take care of its own case

single-handed. This apprehension is enforced more and more unmistakably

with every month that passes on the theatre of war. And it is reenforced

by the constantly more obvious reflection that the case of the American

commonwealth in this matter is the same as that of the democratic

countries of Europe, and of the other European colonies. It is not, or

at least one may believe it is not yet, that in the patriotic

apprehension of the common man, or of the administration which speaks

for him, the resources of the country would be inadequate to meet any

contingencies of the kind that might arise, whether in respect of

industrial capacity or in point of man-power, if these resources were

turned to this object with the same singleness of purpose and the same

drastic procedure that marks the course of a national establishment

guided by no considerations short of imperial dominion. The doubt

presents itself rather as an apprehension that the cost would be

extravagantly high, in all respects in which cost can be counted; which

is presently seconded, on very slight reflection and review of

experience, by recognition of the fact that a democracy is, in point of

fact, not to be persuaded to stand under arms interminably in mere

readiness for a contingency, however distasteful the contingency may be.

In point of fact, a democratic commonwealth is moved by other interests

in the main, and the common defense is a secondary consideration, not a

primary interest,--unless in the exceptional case of a commonwealth so

placed under the immediate threat of invasion as to have the common

defense forced into the place of paramount consequence in its workday

habits of thought. The American republic is not so placed. Anyone may

satisfy himself by reasonable second thought that the people of this

nation are not to be counted on to do their utmost in time of peace to

prepare for war. They may be persuaded to do much more than has been

their habit, and adventurous politicians may commit them to much more

than the people at large would wish to undertake, but when all is done

that can be counted on for a permanency, up to the limit of popular

tolerance, it would be a bold guess that should place the result at more

than one-half of what the country is capable of. Particularly would the

people's patience balk at the extensive military training requisite to

put the country in an adequate position of defense against a sudden and

well-prepared offensive. It is otherwise with a dynastic State, to the

directorate of which all other interests are necessarily secondary,

subsidiary, and mainly to be considered only in so far as they are

contributory to the nation's readiness for warlike enterprise.

America at the same time is placed in an extra-hazardous position,

between the two seas beyond which to either side lie the two Imperial

Powers whose place in the modern economy of nations it is to disturb the

peace in an insatiable quest of dominion. This position is no longer

defensible in isolation, under the later state of the industrial arts,

and the policy of isolation that has guided the national policy hitherto

is therefore falling out of date. The question is as to the manner of

its renunciation, rather than the fact of it. It may end in a defensive

copartnership with other nations who are placed on the defensive by the

same threatening situation, or it may end in a bootless struggle for

independence, but the choice scarcely extends beyond this alternative.

It will be said, of course, that America is competent to take care of

itself and its Monroe doctrine in the future as in the past. But that

view, spoken for cogently by thoughtful men and by politicians looking

for party advantage, overlooks the fact that the modern technology has

definitively thrown the advantage to the offensive, and that intervening

seas can no longer be counted on as a decisive obstacle. On this latter

head, what was reasonably true fifteen years ago is doubtful today, and

it is in all reasonable expectation invalid for the situation fifteen

years hence.

The other peoples that are of a neutral temper may need the help of

America sorely enough in their endeavours to keep the peace, but

America's need of cooperation is sorer still, for the Republic is coming

into a more precarious place than any of the others. America is also, at

least potentially, the most democratic of the greater Powers, and is

handicapped with all the disabilities of a democratic commonwealth in

the face of war. America is also for the present, and perhaps for the

calculable future, the most powerful of these greater Powers, in point

of conceivably available resources, though not in actually available

fighting-power; and the entrance of America unreservedly into a neutral

league would consequently be decisive both of the purposes of the league

and of its efficiency for the purpose; particularly if the

neutralisation of interests among the members of the league were carried

so far as to make withdrawal and independent action disadvantageous.

On the establishment of such a neutral league, with such neutralisation

of national interests as would assure concerted action in time of

stress, the need of armament on the part of the American republic would

disappear, at least to the extent that no increase of armed force would

be advisable. The strength of the Republic lies in its large and varied

resources and the unequalled industrial capacity of its population,--a

capacity which is today seriously hampered by untoward business

interests and business methods sheltered under national discrimination,

but which would come more nearly to its own so soon as these national

discriminations were corrected or abrogated in the neutralisation of

national pretensions. The neutrally-minded countries of Europe have been

constrained to learn the art of modern war, as also to equip themselves

with the necessary appliances, sufficient to meet all requirements for

keeping the peace through such a period as can or need be taken into

account,--provided the peace that is to come on the conclusion of the

present war shall be placed on so "conclusive" a footing as will make it

anything substantially more than a season of recuperation for that

warlike Power about whose enterprise in dominion the whole question

turns. Provided that suitably "substantial guarantees" of a reasonable

quiescence on the part of this Imperial Power are had, there need be no

increase of the American armament. Any increased armament would in that

case amount to nothing better than an idle duplication of plant and

personnel already on hand and sufficient to meet the requirements.

To meet the contingencies had in view in its formation, such a league

would have to be neutralised to the point that all pertinent national

pretensions would fall into virtual abeyance, so that all the necessary

resources at the disposal of the federated nations would automatically

come under the control of the league's appointed authorities without

loss of time, whenever the need might arise. That is to say, national

interests and pretensions would have to give way to a collective control

sufficient to insure prompt and concerted action. In the face of such a

neutral league Imperial Japan alone would be unable to make a really

serious diversion or to entertain much hope of following up its quest of

dominion. The Japanese Imperial establishment might even be persuaded

peaceably to let its unoffending neighbours live their own life

according to their own light. It is, indeed, possibly the apprehension

of some such contingency that has hurried the rapacity of the Island

Empire into the headlong indecencies of the past year or two.