anti-militarism has taken the deepest hold of the people, though in
some smaller lands, notably among the obstinately peaceable inhabitants
of Holland, the same spirit also flourishes. Hervé, who is a leader of
the insurrectional socialists, as they are commonly called in opposition
to the purely parliamentary socialists led by Jaurès,--though the
insurrectional socialists also use parliamentary methods,--may be
regarded as the most conspicuous champion of anti-militarism, and many
of his followers have suffered imprisonment as the penalty of their
convictions. In France the peasant proprietors in the country and the
organized workers in the town are alike sympathetic to anti-militarism.
The syndicalists, or labour unionists with the Confédération Générale du
Travail as their central organization, are not usually anxious to
imitate what they consider the unduly timid methods of English trade
unionists;[229] they tend to be revolutionary and anti-military. The
Congress of delegates of French Trade Unions, held at Toulouse in 1910,
passed the significant resolution that "a declaration of war should be
followed by the declaration of a general revolutionary strike." The same
tendency, though in a less radical form, is becoming international, and
the great International Socialist Congress at Copenhagen has passed a
resolution instructing the International Bureau to "take the opinion of
the organized workers of the world on the utility of a general strike
in preventing war."[230] Even the English working classes are slowly
coming into line. At a Conference of Labour Delegates, held at Leicester
in 1911, to consider the Copenhagen resolution, the policy of the
anti-military general strike was defeated by only a narrow majority, on
the ground that it required further consideration, and might be
detrimental to political action; but as most of the leaders are in
favour of the strike policy there can be no doubt that this method of
combating war will shortly be the accepted policy of the English Labour
movement. In carrying out such a policy the Labour Party expects much
help from the growing social and political power of women. The most
influential literary advocate of the Peace movement, and one of the
earliest, has been a woman, the Baroness Bertha von Suttner, and it is
held to be incredible that the wives and mothers of the people will use
their power to support an institution which represents the most brutal
method of destroying their husbands and sons. "The cause of woman," says
Novikov, "is the cause of peace." "We pay the first cost on all human
life," says Olive Schreiner.[231]
The anti-militarist, as things are at present, exposes himself not only
to the penalty of imprisonment, but also to obloquy. He has virtually
refused to take up arms in defence of his country; he has sinned against
patriotism. This accusation has led to a counter-accusation directed
against the very idea of patriotism. Here the writings of Tolstoy, with
their poignant and searching appeals for the cause of humanity as
against the cause of patriotism, have undoubtedly served the
anti-militarists well, and wherever the war against war is being urged,
even so far as Japan, Tolstoy has furnished some of its keenest weapons.
Moreover, in so far as anti-militarism is advocated by the workers, they
claim that international interests have already effaced and superseded
the narrower interests of patriotism. In refusing to fight, the workers
of a country are simply declaring their loyalty to fellow-workers on the
other side of the frontier, a loyalty which has stronger claims on them,
they hold, than any patriotism which simply means loyalty to
capitalists; geographical frontiers are giving place to economic
frontiers, which now alone serve to separate enemies. And if, as seems
probable, when the next attempt is made at a great European war, the
order for mobilization is immediately followed in both countries by the
declaration of a general strike, there will be nothing to say against
such a declaration even from the standpoint of the narrowest patriotism,
although there may be much to say on other grounds against the policy of
the general strike.[232]
If we realize what is going on around us, it is easy to see that the
anti-militarist movement is rapidly reaching a stage when it will be
easily able, even unaided, to paralyse any war immediately and
automatically. The pioneers in the movement have played the same part as
was played in the seventeenth century by the Quakers. In the name of the
Bible and their own consciences, the Quakers refused to recognize the
right of any secular authority to compel them to worship or to fight;
they gained what they struggled for, and now all men honour their
memories. In the name of justice and human fraternity, the
anti-militarists are to-day taking the like course and suffering the
like penalties. To-morrow, they also will be revered as heroes and
martyrs.
(6) _The Over-growth of Armaments._ The hostile forces so far enumerated
have converged slowly on to war from such various directions that they
may be said to have surrounded and isolated it; its ultimate surrender
can only be a matter of time. Of late, however, a new factor has
appeared, of so urgent a character that it is fast rendering the
question of the abolition of war acute: the over-growth of armaments.
This is, practically, a modern factor in the situation, and while it is,
on the surface, a luxury due to the large surplus of wealth in great
modern states, it is also, if we look a little deeper, intimately
connected with that decay of the warlike spirit due to selective
breeding. It is the weak and timid woman who looks nervously under the
bed for the burglar who is the last person she really desires to meet,
and it is old, rich, and unwarlike nations which take the lead in
laboriously protecting themselves against enemies of whom there is no
sign in any quarter. Within the last half-century only have the nations
of the world begun to compete with each other in this timorous and
costly rivalry. In the warlike days of old, armaments in time of peace
consisted in little more than solid walls for defence, a supply of
weapons stored away here and there, sometimes in a room attached to the
parish church, and occasional martial exercises with the sword or the
bow, which were little more than an amusement. The true fighting man
trusted to his own strong right arm rather than to armaments, and
considered that he was himself a match for any half-dozen of the enemy.
Even in actual time of war it was often difficult to find either zeal or
money to supply the munitions of war. The _Diary_ of the industrious
Pepys, who achieved so much for the English navy, shows that the care of
the country's ships mainly depended on a few unimportant officials who
had the greatest trouble in the world to secure attention to the most
urgent and immediate needs.
A very difficult state of things prevails to-day. The existence of a
party having for its watchword the cry for retrenchment and economy is
scarcely possible in a modern state. All the leading political parties
in every great state--if we leave aside the party of Labour--are equally
eager to pile up the expenditure on armaments. It is the boast of each
party, not that it spends less, but more, than its rivals on this source
of expenditure, now the chief in every large state. Moreover, every new
step in expenditure involves a still further step; each new improvement
in attack or defence must immediately be answered by corresponding or
better improvements on the part of rival powers, if they are not to be
outclassed. Every year these moves and counter-moves necessarily become
more extensive, more complex, more costly; while each counter-move
involves the obsolescence of the improvements achieved by the previous
move, so that the waste of energy and money keeps pace with the
expenditure. It is well recognized that there is absolutely no possible
limit to this process and its constantly increasing acceleration.
There is no need to illustrate this point, for it is familiar to all.
Any newspaper will furnish facts and figures vividly exemplifying some
aspect of the matter. For while only a handful of persons in any country
are sincerely anxious under present conditions to reduce the colossal
sums every year wasted on the unproductive work of armament; an
increasing interest in the matter testifies to a vague alarm and anxiety
concerning the ultimate issue. For it is felt that an inevitable crisis
lies at the end of the path down which the nations are now moving.
Thus, from this point of view, the end of war is being attained by a
process radically opposite to that by which in the social as well as in
the physical organism ancient structures and functions are outgrown. The
usual process is a gradual recession to a merely vestigial state. But
here what may perhaps be the same ultimate result is being reached by
the more alarming method of over-inflation and threatening collapse. It
is an alarming process because those huge and heavily armed monsters of
primeval days who furnish the zoological types corresponding to our
modern over-armed states, themselves died out from the world when their
unwieldy armament had reached its final point of expansion. Will our own
modern states, one wonders, more fortunately succeed in escaping from
the tough hides that ever more closely constrict them, and finally save
their souls alive?
(7) _The Dominance of Social Reform._ The final factor in the situation
is the growing dominance of the process of social reform. On the one
hand, the increasing complexity of social organisation renders necessary
a correspondingly increasing expenditure of money in diminishing its
friction and aiding its elaboration; on the other hand, the still more
rapidly increasing demands of armament render it ever more difficult to
devote money to such social purposes. Everywhere even the most
elementary provision for the finer breeding and higher well-being of a
country's citizens is postponed to the clamour for ever new armaments.
The situation thus created is rapidly becoming intolerable.
It is not alone the future of civilization which is for ever menaced by
the possibility of war; the past of civilization, with all the precious
embodiments of its traditions, is even more fatally imperilled. As the
world grows older and the ages recede, the richer, the more precious,
the more fragile, become the ancient heirlooms of humanity. They
constitute the final symbols of human glory; they cannot be too
carefully guarded, too highly valued. But all the other dangers that
threaten their integrity and safety, if put together, do not equal war.
No land that has ever been a cradle of civilization but bears witness to
this sad truth. All the sacred citadels, the glories of
humanity,--Jerusalem and Athens, Rome and Constantinople,--have been
ravaged by war, and, in every case, their ruin has been a disaster that
can never be repaired. If we turn to the minor glories of more modern
ages, the special treasure of England has been its parish churches, a
treasure of unique charm in the world and the embodiment of the
people's spirit: to-day in their battered and irreparable condition they
are the monuments of a Civil War waged all over the country with
ruthless religious ferocity. Spain, again, was a land which had stored
up, during long centuries, nearly the whole of its accumulated
possessions in every art, sacred and secular, of fabulous value, within
the walls of its great fortress-like cathedrals; Napoleon's soldiers
over-ran the land, and brought with them rapine and destruction; so that
in many a shrine, as at Montserrat, we still can see how in a few days
they turned a Paradise into a desert. It is not only the West that has
suffered. In China the rarest and loveliest wares and fabrics that the
hand of man has wrought were stored in the Imperial Palace of Pekin; the
savage military hordes of the West broke in less than a century ago and
recklessly trampled down and fired all that they could not loot. In
every such case the loss is final; the exquisite incarnation of some
stage in the soul of man that is for ever gone is permanently
diminished, deformed, or annihilated.
At the present time all civilized countries are becoming keenly aware of
the value of their embodied artistic possessions. This is shown, in the
most decisive manner possible, by the enormous prices placed upon them.
Their pecuniary value enables even the stupidest and most unimaginative
to realize the crime that is committed when they are ruthlessly and
wantonly destroyed. Nor is it only the products of ancient art which
have to-day become so peculiarly valuable. The products of modern
science are only less valuable. So highly complex and elaborate is the
mechanism now required to ensure progress in some of the sciences that
enormous sums of money, the most delicate skill, long periods of time,
are necessary to produce it. Galileo could replace his telescope with
but little trouble; the destruction of a single modern observatory would
be almost a calamity to the human race.
Such considerations as these are, indeed, at last recognized in all
civilized countries. The engines of destruction now placed at the
service of war are vastly more potent than any used in the wars of the
past. On the other hand, the value of the products they can destroy is
raised in a correspondingly high degree. But a third factor is now
intervening. And if the museums of Paris or the laboratories of Berlin
were threatened by a hostile army it would certainly be felt that an
international power, if it existed, should be empowered to intervene, at
whatever cost to national susceptibilities, in order to keep the peace.
Civilization, we now realize, is wrought out of inspirations and
discoveries which are for ever passed and repassed from land to land; it
cannot be claimed by any individual land. A nation's art-products and
its scientific activities are not mere national property; they are
international possessions, for the joy and service of the whole world.
The nations hold them in trust for humanity. The international force
which will inspire respect for that truth it is our business to create.
The only question that remains--and it is a question the future alone
will solve--is the particular point at which this ancient and overgrown
stronghold of war, now being invested so vigorously from so many sides,
will finally be overthrown, whether from within or from without, whether
by its own inherent weakness, by the persuasive reasonableness of
developing civilization, by the self-interest of the commercial and
financial classes, or by the ruthless indignation of the proletariat.
That is a problem still insoluble, but it is not impossible that some
already living may witness its solution.
Two centuries ago the Abbé de Saint-Pierre set forth his scheme for a
federation of the States of Europe, which meant, at that time, a
federation of all the civilised states of the world. It was the age of
great ideas, scattered abroad to germinate in more practical ages to
come. The amiable Abbé enjoyed all the credit of his large and
philanthropic conceptions. But no one dreamed of realizing them, and the
forces which alone could realize them had not yet appeared above the
horizon.[233] In this matter, at all events, the world has progressed,
and a federation of the States of the world is no longer the mere
conception of a philosophic dreamer. The first step will be taken when
two of the leading countries of the world--and it would be most
reasonable for the states having the closest community of origin and
language to take the initiative--resolve to submit all their differences
without reserve to arbitration. As soon as a third power of magnitude
joined this federation the nucleus would be constituted of a world
state. Such a state would be able to impose peace on even the most
recalcitrant outside states, for it would furnish that "visible power to
keep them in awe," which Hobbes rightly declared to be indispensable; it
could even, in the last resort, if necessary, enforce peace by war. Thus
there might still be war in the world. But there would be no wars that
were not Holy Wars. There are other methods than war of enforcing peace,
and these such a federation of great states would be easily able to
bring to bear on even the most warlike of states, but the necessity of a
mighty armed international force would remain for a long time to come.
To suppose, as some seem to suppose, that the establishment of
arbitration in place of war means immediate disarmament is an idle
dream. At Conferences of the English Labour Party on this question, the
most active opposition to the proposed strike method for rendering war
impossible comes from the delegates representing the workers in arsenals
and dockyards. But there is no likelihood of arsenals and dockyards
closing in the lifetime of the present workers, and though the
establishment of peaceful methods of settling international disputes
cannot fail to diminish the number of the workers who live by armament,
it will be long before they can be dispensed with altogether.
[1] The Abbé de Saint-Pierre (1658-1743), a churchman without vocation,
was a Norman of noble family, and first published his _Mémoires pour
rendre la Paix Perpetuelle à l'Europe_ in 1722. As Siégler-Pascal well
shows (_Les Projets de l'Abbé dé Saint-Pierre_, 1900) he was not a mere
visionary Utopian, but an acute and far-seeing thinker, practical in his
methods, a close observer, an experimentalist, and one of the first to
attempt the employment of statistics. He was secretary to the French
plenipotentiaries who negotiated the Treaty of Utrecht, and was thus
probably put on the track of his scheme. He proposed that the various
European states should name plenipotentiaries to form a permanent
tribunal of compulsory arbitration for the settlement of all
differences. If any state took up arms against one of the allies, the
whole confederation would conjointly enter the field, at their conjoint
expense, against the offending state. He was opposed to absolute
disarmament, an army being necessary to ensure peace, but it must be a
joint army composed of contingents from each Power in the confederation.
Saint-Pierre, it will be seen, had clearly grasped the essential facts
of the situation as we see them to-day. "The author of _The Project of
Perpetual Peace_" concludes Prof. Pierre Robert in a sympathetic summary
of his career (Petit de Julleville, _Histoire de la Langue et de la
Littérature Française_, Vol. VI), "is the precursor of the twentieth
century." His statue, we cannot doubt, will be a conspicuous object,
beside Sully's, on the future Palace of any international tribunal.
It is, indeed, so common to regard the person who points out the
inevitable bankruptcy of war under highly civilized conditions as a mere
Utopian dreamer, that it becomes necessary to repeat, with all the
emphasis necessary, that the settlement of international disputes by law
cannot be achieved by disarmament, or by any method not involving force.
All law, even the law that settles the disputes of individuals, has
force behind it, and the law that is to settle the disputes between
nations cannot possibly be effective unless it has behind it a mighty
force. I have assumed this from the outset in quoting the dictum of
Hobbes, but the point seems to be so easily overlooked by the loose
thinker that it is necessary to reiterate it. The necessity of force
behind the law ordering international relations has, indeed, never been
disputed by any sagacious person who has occupied himself with the
matter. Even William Penn, who, though a Quaker, was a practical man of
affairs, when in 1693 he put forward his _Essay Towards the Present and
Future Peace of Europe by the Establishment of a European Diet,
Parliament or Estate_, proposed that if any imperial state refused to
submit its pretensions to the sovereign assembly and to abide by its
decisions, or took up arms on its own behalf, "all the other
sovereignties, united as one strength, shall compel the submission and
performance of the sentence, with damages to the suffering party, and
charges to the sovereignties that obliged their submission." In
repudiating some injudicious and hazardous pacificist considerations put
forth by Novikov, the distinguished French philosopher, Jules de
Gaultier, points out that law has no rights against war save in force,
on which war itself bases its rights. "Force _in abstracto_ creates
right. It is quite unimaginable that a right should exist which has not
been affirmed at some moment as a reality, that is to say a force....
What we glorify under the name of right is only a more intense and
habitual state of force which we oppose to a less frequent form of
force."[234] The old Quaker and the modern philosopher are thus at one
with the practical man in rejecting any form of pacification which rests
on a mere appeal to reason and justice.
[1] Jules de Gaultier, "Comment Naissent les Dogmes," _Mercure de
France_, 1st Sept., 1911. Jules de Gaultier also observes that "conflict
is the law and condition of all existence." That may be admitted, but it
ceases to be true if we assume, as the same thinker assumes, that
"conflict" necessarily involves "war." The establishment of law to
regulate the disputes between individuals by no means suppresses
conflict, but it suppresses fighting, and it ensures that if any
fighting occur the aggressor shall not profit by his aggression. In the
same way the existence of a tribunal to regulate the disputes between
national communities of individuals can by no means suppress conflict;
but unless it suppresses fighting, and unless it ensures that if
fighting occurs the aggressor shall not profit by his aggression, it
will have effected nothing.
It cannot be said that the progress of civilization has so far had any
tendency to render unnecessary the point of view adopted by Penn and
Jules de Gaultier. The acts of states to-day are apt to be just as
wantonly aggressive as they ever were, as reckless of reason and of
justice. There is no country, however high it may stand in the comity of
nations, which is not sometimes carried away by the blind fever of war.
France, the land of reason, echoed, only forty years ago, with the mad
cry, "À Berlin!" England, the friend of the small nationalities,
jubilantly, with even an air of heroism, crushed under foot the little
South African Republics, and hounded down every Englishman who withstood
the madness of the crowd. The great, free intelligent people of the
United States went to war against Spain with a childlike faith in the
preposterous legend of the blowing up of the _Maine_. There is no
country which has not some such shameful page in its history, the record
of some moment when its moral and intellectual prestige was besmirched
in the eyes of the whole world. It pays for its momentary madness, it
may valiantly strive to atone for its injustice, but the damaging record
remains. The supersession of war is needed not merely in the interests
of the victims of aggression; it is needed fully as much in the
interests of the aggressors, driven by their own momentary passions, or
by the ambitious follies of their rulers, towards crimes for which a
terrible penalty is exacted. There has never been any country at every
moment so virtuous and so wise that it has not sometimes needed to be
saved from itself. For every country has sometimes gone mad, while
every other country has looked on its madness with the mocking calm of
clear-sighted intelligence, and perhaps with a pharisaical air of
virtuous indignation.