society to compel two individuals to settle their differences before a
tribunal, in accordance with abstractly determined principles of law and
reason, it is a vastly more difficult matter to compel two groups of
individuals so to settle their differences. A large part of the history
of all the great European countries has consisted in the progressive
conquest and pacification of small but often bellicose states outside,
and even inside, their own borders.[223] This is the case even within a
community. Hobbes, writing in the midst of a civil war, went so far as
to lay down that the "final cause" of a commonwealth is nothing else but
the abolition of "that miserable condition of war which is necessarily
consequent to the natural passions of men when there is no visible power
to keep them in awe." Yet we see to-day that even within our highly
civilized communities there is not always any adequately awful power to
prevent employers and employed from engaging in what is little better
than a civil war, nor even to bind them to accept the decision of an
impartial tribunal they may have been persuaded to appeal to. The
smallest state can compel its individual citizens to keep the peace; a
large state can compel a small state to do so; but hitherto there has
been no guarantee possible that large states, or even large compact
groups within the state, should themselves keep the peace. They commit
what injustice they please, for there is no visible power to keep them
in awe. We have attained a condition in which a state is able to enforce
a legal and peaceful attitude in its own individual citizens towards
each other. The state is the guardian of its citizens' peace, but the
old problem recurs: _Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?_
It is obvious that this difficulty increases as the size of states
increases. To compel a small state to keep the peace by absorbing it if
it fails to do so is always an easy and even tempting process to a
neighbouring larger state. This process was once carried out on a
complete scale, when practically the whole known world was brought under
the sway of Rome. "War has ceased," Plutarch was able to declare in the
days of the Roman Empire, and, though himself an enthusiastic Greek, he
was unbounded in his admiration of the beneficence of the majestic _Pax
Romana_, and never tempted by any narrow spirit of patriotism to desire
the restoration of his own country's glories. But the Roman organization
broke up, and no single state will ever be strong enough to restore it.
Any attempt to establish orderly legal relationships between states
must, therefore, be carried out by the harmonious co-operation of those
states. At the end of the sixteenth century a great French statesman,
Sully, inspired Henry IV with a scheme of a Council of Confederated
European Christian States; each of these states, fifteen in number, was
to send four representatives to the Council, which was to sit at Metz or
Cologne and regulate the differences between the constituent states of
the Confederation. The army of the Confederation was to be maintained in
common, and used chiefly to keep the peace, to prevent one sovereign
from interfering with any other, and also, if necessary, to repel
invasion of barbarians from without. The scheme was arranged in concert
with Queen Elizabeth, and twelve of the fifteen Powers had already
promised their active co-operation when the assassination of Henry
destroyed the whole plan. Such a Confederation was easier to arrange
then than it is now, but probably it was more difficult to maintain, and
it can scarcely be said that at that date the times were ripe for so
advanced a scheme.[224]
To-day the interests of small states are so closely identified with
peace that it is seldom difficult to exert pressure on them to maintain
it. It is quite another matter with the large states. The fact that
during the past half century so much has been done by the larger states
to aid the cause of international arbitration, and to submit disputes to
international tribunals, shows how powerful the motives for avoiding war
are nowadays becoming. But the fact, also, that no country hitherto has
abandoned its liberty of withdrawing from peaceful arbitration any
question involving "national honour" shows that there is no constituted
power strong enough to control large states. For the reservation of
questions of national honour from the sphere of law is as absurd as
would be any corresponding limitation by individuals of their liability
for their acts before the law; it is as though a man were to say: "If I
commit a theft I am willing to appear before the court, and will
probably pay the penalty demanded; but if it is a question of murder,
then my vital interests are at stake, and I deny altogether the right of
the court to intervene." It is a reservation fatal to peace, and could
not be accepted if pleaded at the bar of any international tribunal with
the power to enforce its decisions. "Imagine," says Edward Jenks, in his
_History of Politics_, "a modern judge 'persuading' Mr. William Sikes to
'make it up' with the relatives of his victim, and, on his remaining
obdurate, leaving the two families to fight the matter out." Yet that is
what was in some degree done in England until medieval times as regards
individual crimes, and it is what is still done as regards national
crimes, in so far as the appeal to arbitration is limited and voluntary.
The proposals, therefore--though not yet accepted by any
Government--lately mooted in the United States, in England, and in
France, to submit international disputes, without reservation, to an
impartial tribunal represent an advance of peculiar significance.
The abolition of collective fighting is so desirable an extension of the
abolition of individual fighting, and its introduction has waited so
long the establishment of some high compelling power--for the influence
of the Religion of Peace has in this matter been less than nil--that it
is evident that only the coincidence of very powerful and peculiar
factors could have brought the question into the region of practical
politics in our own time. There are several such factors, most of which
have been developing during a long period, but none have been clearly
recognized until recent years. It may be worth while to indicate the
great forces now warring against war.
(1) _Growth of International Opinion._ There can be no doubt whatever
that during recent years, and especially in the more democratic
countries, an international consensus of public opinion has gradually
grown up, making itself the voice, like a Greek chorus, of an abstract
justice. It is quite true that of this justice, as of justice generally,
it may be said that it has wide limits. Renan declared once, in a famous
allocution, that "what is called indulgence is, most often, only
justice," and, at the other extreme, Remy de Gourmont has said that
"injustice is sometimes a part of justice;" in other words, there are
varying circumstances in which justice may properly be tempered either
with mercy or with severity. In any case, and however it may be
qualified; a popular international voice generously pronouncing itself
in favour of justice, and resonantly condemning any Government which
clashes against justice, is now a factor of the international situation.
It is, moreover, tending to become a factor having a certain influence
on affairs. This was the case during the South African War, when
England, by offending this international sense of justice, fell into a
discredit which had many actual unpleasant results and narrowly escaped,
there is some reason to believe, proving still more serious. The same
voice was heard with dramatically sudden and startling effect when
Ferrer was shot at Barcelona. Ferrer was a person absolutely unknown to
the man in the street; he was indeed little more than a name even to
those who knew Spain; few could be sure, except by a kind of intuition,
that he was the innocent victim of a judicial murder, for it is only now
that the fact is being slowly placed beyond dispute. Yet immediately
after Ferrer was shot within the walls of Monjuich a great shout of
indignation was raised, with almost magical suddenness and harmony,
throughout the civilized world, from Italy to Belgium, from England to
Argentina. Moreover, this voice was so decisive and so loud that it
acted like those legendary trumpet-blasts which shattered the walls of
Jericho; in a few days the Spanish Government, with a powerful minister
at its head, had fallen. The significance of this event we cannot easily
overestimate. For the first time in history, the voice of international
public opinion, unsupported by pressure, political, social, or
diplomatic, proved potent enough to avenge an act of injustice by
destroying a Government. A new force has appeared in the world, and it
tends to operate against those countries which are guilty of injustice,
whether that injustice is exerted against a State or even only against a
single obscure individual. The modern developments of telegraphy and the
Press--unfavourable as the Press is in many respects to the cause of
international harmony--have placed in the hands of peace this new weapon
against war.
(2) _International Financial Development._ There is another
international force which expresses itself in the same sense. The voice
of abstract justice raised against war is fortified by the voice of
concrete self-interest. The interests of the propertied classes, and
therefore of the masses dependent upon them, are to-day so widely
distributed throughout the world that whenever any country is plunged
into a disastrous war there arises in every other country, especially in
rich and prosperous lands with most at stake, a voice of self-interest
in harmony with the voice of justice. It is sometimes said that wars are
in the interest of capital, and of capital alone, and that they are
engineered by capitalists masquerading under imposing humanitarian
disguises. That is doubtless true to the extent that every war cannot
fail to benefit some section of the capitalistic world, which will
therefore favour it, but it is true to that extent only. The old notion
that war and the acquisition of territories encouraged trade by opening
up new markets has proved fallacious. The extension of trade is a matter
of tariffs rather than of war, and in any case the trade of a country
with its own acquisitions by conquest is a comparatively insignificant
portion of its total trade. But even if the financial advantages of war
were much greater than they are, they would be more than compensated by
the disadvantages which nowadays attend war. International financial
relationships have come to constitute a network of interests so vast, so
complicated, so sensitive, that the whole thrills responsively to any
disturbing touch, and no one can say beforehand what widespread damage
may not be done by shock even at a single point. When a country is at
war its commerce is at once disorganized, that is to say that its
shipping, and the shipping of all the countries that carry its freights,
is thrown out of gear to a degree that often cannot fail to be
internationally disastrous. Foreign countries cannot send in the imports
that lie on their wharves for the belligerent country, nor can they get
out of it the exports they need for their own maintenance or luxury.
Moreover, all the foreign money invested in the belligerent country is
depreciated and imperilled. The international voice of trade and finance
is, therefore, to-day mainly on the side of peace.
It must be added that this voice is not, as it might seem, a selfish
voice only. It is justifiable not only in immediate international
interests, but even in the ultimate interests of the belligerent
country, and not less so if that country should prove victorious. So far
as business and money are concerned, a country gains nothing by a
successful war, even though that war involves the acquisition of immense
new provinces; after a great war a conquered country may possess more
financial stability than its conqueror, and both may stand lower in this
respect than some other country which is internationally guaranteed
against war. Such points as these have of late been ably argued by
Norman Angell in his remarkable book, _The Great Illusion_, and for the
most part convincingly illustrated.[225] As was long since said, the
ancients cried, _Væ victis_! We have learnt to cry, _Væ victoribus_!
It may, indeed, be added that the general tendency of war--putting aside
peoples altogether lacking in stamina--is to moralize the conquered and
to demoralise the conquerors. This effect is seen alike on the material
and the spiritual sides. Conquest brings self-conceit and intolerance,
the reckless inflation and dissipation of energies. Defeat brings
prudence and concentration; it ennobles and fortifies. All the glorious
victories of the first Napoleon achieved less for France than the
crushing defeat of the third Napoleon. The triumphs left enfeeblement;
the defeat acted as a strong tonic which is still working beneficently
to-day. The corresponding reverse process has been at work in Germany:
the German soil that Napoleon ploughed yielded a Moltke and a
Bismarck,[226] while to-day, however mistakenly, the German Press is
crying out that only another war--it ought in honesty to say an
unsuccessful war--can restore the nation's flaccid muscle. It is yet
too early to see the results of the Russo-Japanese War, but already
there are signs that by industrial overstrain and the repression of
individual thought Japan is threatening to enfeeble the physique and to
destroy the high spirit of the indomitable men to whom she owed her
triumph.
(3) _The Decreasing Pressure of Population._ It was at one time commonly
said, and is still sometimes repeated, that the pressure of
over-population is the chief cause of wars. That is a statement which
requires a very great deal of qualification. It is, indeed, possible
that the great hordes of warlike barbarians from the North and the East
which invaded Europe in early times, sometimes more or less overwhelming
the civilized world, were the result of a rise in the birth-rate and an
excess of population beyond the means of subsistence. But this is far
from certain, for we know absolutely nothing concerning the birth-rate
of these invading peoples either before or during the period of their
incursions. Again, it is certain that, in modern times, a high and
rising birth-rate presents a favourable condition for war. A war
distracts attention from the domestic disturbances and economic
wretchedness which a too rapid growth of population necessarily
produces, while at the same time tending to draw away and destroy the
surplus population which causes this disturbance and wretchedness. Yet
there are other ways of meeting this over-population beside the crude
method of war. Social reform and emigration furnish equally effective
and much more humane methods of counteracting such pressure. No doubt
the over-population resulting from an excessively high birth-rate, when
not met, as it tends to be, by a correspondingly high death-rate from
disease, may be regarded as a predisposing cause of war, but to assert
that it is the pre-eminent cause is to go far beyond the evidence at
present available.
To whatever degree, however, it may have been potent in causing war in
the past, it is certain that the pressure of population as a cause of
war will be eliminated in the future. The only nations nowadays that can
afford to make war on the grand scale are the wealthy and civilized
nations. But civilization excludes a high birth-rate: there has never
been any exception to that law, nor can we conceive any exceptions, for
it is more than a social law; it is a biological law. Russia, a still
imperfectly civilized country, stands apart in having a very high
birth-rate, but it also has a very high death-rate, and even should it
happen that in Russia improved social conditions lower the death-rate
before affecting the birth-rate, there is still ample room within
Russian territory for the consequent increase of population. Among all
the other nations which are considered to threaten the world's peace,
the birth-rate is rapidly falling. This is so, for instance, as regards
England and Germany. Germany, especially, it was once thought--though in
actual fact Germany has not fought for over forty years--had an interest
in going to war in order to find an outlet for her surplus population,
compelled, in the absence of suitable German colonies, to sacrifice its
patriotism and lose its nationality by emigrating to foreign countries.
But the German birth-rate is falling, German emigration is decreasing,
and the immense growth of German industry is easily able to absorb the
new generation. Thus the declining birth-rate of civilized lands will
alone largely serve in the end to eliminate warfare, partly by removing
one of its causes, partly because the increased value of human life will
make war too costly.
(4) _The Natural Exhaustion of the Warlike Spirit._ It is a remarkable
tendency of the warlike spirit--frequently emphasized in recent years by
the distinguished zoologist, President D.S. Jordan, who here follows
Novikov[227]--that it tends to exterminate itself. Fighting stocks, and
peoples largely made up of fighting stocks, are naturally killed out,
and the field is left to the unwarlike. It is only the prudent, those
who fight and run away, who live to fight another day; and they transmit
their prudence to their offspring. Great Britain is a conspicuous
example of a land which, being an island, was necessarily peopled by
predatory and piratical invaders. A long series of warlike and
adventurous peoples--Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, Normans--built
up England and imparted to it their spirit. The English were, it was
said, "a people for whom pain and death are nothing, and who only fear
hunger and boredom." But for over eight hundred years they have never
been reinforced by new invaders, and the inevitable consequences have
followed. There has been a gradual killing out of the warlike stocks, a
process immensely accelerated during the nineteenth century by a vast
emigration of the more adventurous elements in the population, pressed
out of the overcrowded country by the reckless and unchecked increase of
the population which occurred during the first three-quarters of that
century. The result is that the English (except sometimes when they
happen to be journalists) cannot now be described as a warlike people.
Old legends tell of British heroes who, when their legs were hacked
away, still fought upon the stumps. Modern poets feel that to picture a
British warrior of to-day in this attitude would be somewhat
far-fetched. The historian of the South African War points out, again
and again, that the British leaders showed a singular lack of the
fighting spirit. During that war English generals seldom cared to engage
the enemy's forces except when their own forces greatly outnumbered
them, and on many occasions they surrendered immediately they realized
that they were themselves outnumbered. Those reckless Englishmen who
boldly sailed out from their little island to face the Spanish Armada
were long ago exterminated; an admirably prudent and cautious race has
been left alive.
It is the same story elsewhere. The French long cherished the tradition
of military glory, and no country has fought so much. We see the result
to-day. In no country is the attitude of the intellectual classes so
calm and so reasonable on the subject of war, and nowhere is the popular
hostility to war so strongly marked.[228] Spain furnishes another instance
which is even still more decisive. The Spanish were of old a
pre-eminently warlike people, capable of enduring all hardships, never
fearing to face death. Their aggressively warlike and adventurous spirit
sent them to death all over the world. It cannot be said, even to-day,
that the Spaniards have lost their old tenacity and hardness of fibre,
but their passion for war and adventure was killed out three centuries
ago.
In all these and the like cases there has been a process of selective
breeding, eliminating the soldierly stocks and leaving the others to
breed the race. The men who so loved fighting that they fought till they
died had few chances of propagating their own warlike impulses. The men
who fought and ran away, the men who never fought at all, were the men
who created the new generation and transmitted to it their own
traditions.
This selective process, moreover, has not merely acted automatically; it
has been furthered by social opinion and social pressure, sometimes very
drastically expressed. Thus in the England of the Plantagenets there
grew up a class called "gentlemen"--not, as has sometimes been
supposed, a definitely defined class, though they were originally of
good birth--whose chief characteristic was that they were good fighting
men, and sought fortune by fighting. The "premier gentleman" of England,
according to Sir George Sitwell, and an entirely typical representative
of his class, was a certain glorious hero who fought with Talbot at
Agincourt, and also, as the unearthing of obscure documents shows, at
other times indulged in housebreaking, and in wounding with intent to
kill, and in "procuring the murder of one Thomas Page, who was cut to
pieces while on his knees begging for his life." There, evidently, was a
state of society highly favourable to the warlike man, highly
unfavourable to the unwarlike man whom he slew in his wrath. Nowadays,
however, there has been a revaluation of these old values. The cowardly
and no doubt plebeian Thomas Page, multiplied by the million, has
succeeded in hoisting himself into the saddle, and he revenges himself
by discrediting, hunting into the slums, and finally hanging, every
descendant he can find of the premier gentleman of Agincourt.
It must be added that the advocates of the advantages of war are not
entitled to claim this process of selective breeding as one of the
advantages of war. It is quite true that war is incompatible with a high
civilization, and must in the end be superseded. But this method of
suppressing it is too thorough. It involves not merely the extermination
of the fighting spirit, but of many excellent qualities, physical and
moral, which are associated with the fighting spirit. Benjamin Franklin
seems to have been the first to point out that "a standing army
diminishes the size and breed of the human species." Almost in
Franklin's lifetime that was demonstrated on a wholesale scale, for
there seems little reason to doubt that the size and stature of the
French nation have been permanently diminished by the constant levies of
young recruits, the flower of the population, whom Napoleon sent out to
death in their first manhood and still childless. Fine physical breed
involves also fine qualities of virility and daring which are needed for
other purposes than fighting. In so far as the selective breeding of war
kills these out, its results are imperfect, and could be better attained
by less radical methods.
(5) _The Growth of the Anti-Military Spirit._ The decay of the warlike
spirit by the breeding out of fighting stocks has in recent years been
reinforced by a more acute influence of which in the near future we
shall certainly hear more. This is the spirit of anti-militarism. This
spirit is an inevitable result of the decay of the fighting spirit. In a
certain sense it is also complementary to it. The survival of
non-fighting stocks by the destruction of the fighting stocks works most
effectually in countries having a professional army. The anti-military
spirit, on the contrary, works effectually in countries having a
national army in which it is compulsory for all young citizens to serve,
for it is only in such countries that the anti-militarist can, by
refusing to serve, take an influential position as a martyr in the cause
of peace.